Well, that is more or less true indeed. Some roads I have seen really end in the water - that are the end points of the winter roads. Very interesting. Of course winter roads are only short cuts, in summer you have to take a road over the mountains instead.
On the maps of course these winter roads are clearly indicated using a different colour and the lake itself you can of course also see.
41.000 people killed in traffic in the USA? That is a very bad record.
Compare to my home, The Netherlands. 16.4 mln people packed together, very busy and often chaotic traffic (far worse than in the USA, that is what Americans tell me, many don't dare to drive on our "narrow, winding, chaotic roads where people drive so fast", indeed our max speed on motorways is about 30 km/h higher than the max allowed in USA), and we had 791 dead and 18,190 wounded in 2007.
Scaled up to the population of the USA (303 mln) that would give me 14,600 dead and 336,000 wounded.
Netherlands is one of the safest countries in the world when it comes to traffic. For the complete European Union (497 mln people) suffered 39,200 dead on the roads in 2006, per head of the population still over 40% less than the USA.
You Americans really can do a lot to improve traffic safety!
A car crossing an intersection is typically not stationary (and if it is and in your way - presumably waiting for other traffic before proceeding, you'd better slow down or stop depending on your distance of that other car).
Radar can look ahead pretty far, add smart software and the car will know whether an object is moving or not.
The road is so slippery it doesn't allow breaking then it usually doesn't allow for sufficient steering to go all the way around another car (assuming there is space to either side in the first place - on most roads there isn't because it's a single lane or there are other vehicles in the other lanes).
In Sweden (and other parts of northern Europe) it is allowed to drive on spiked tyres in winter; and many people actually do this. It is quite helpful when driving e.g. on the winter roads: frozen lakes. Those roads are opened every winter and are indicated on normal road maps.
Not true - as a matter of fact some people have more than two nipples. We have the genes for about a dozen nipples (all the way down to the top of the thighs!), think the rows of nipples in sows and bitches (the first being a female pig, the second a female dog). Those extra nipples are never well developed, and are often by the owner not recognised as nipple.
An interesting photo of a male with five nipples visible is given in Wikipedia, along with more info on the subject.
After nursing our son, my wife always gave him to me for burping, and he would usually let out a good one.
When bottle feeding (extracted milk) we often had to burp him halfway as well... let out a big burp (and keep a towel at hand for the possible other mess coming up with it), and he could continue drinking.
On the other hand, I find it somewhat ridiculous that you would not object to showing whatever it is you're showing, in public, to a handful of strangers, but you would suddenly object if it was shown, over the Internet, to a few more strangers.
Doing it in public is time-limited, for a few strangers maybe, or if you don't like the strangers you can stop it immediately.
When it appears on the Internet it's out of your control, all strangers can see it, and possibly abuse it.
There is a huge difference to say breastfeed sitting in a quiet corner in a restaurant or in a mall, to having a photo taken of it and having it posted on the internet without your consent.
Nudity seems to be defined as showing male or female genitals or the areola/nipple of a female breast. It is not much related to the actual showing of skin.
Why is a bare shoulder not nudity, nor an exposed deep cleavage of a woman's breast, nor a completely bare chest of a man, nipples and all?
And why would a photo of a nursing mum be nudity, but a woman wearing a tiny bikini isn't? The second case would likely show a larger portion of the woman's skin.
And finally it still surprises me that while female breasts are not allowed to be shown and are called indecent or even obscene, unless it is of indigenous tribes whose female members go naked or wearing only a skirt. Then showing the breasts is no problem. Even when they are of underage girls.
Here in Hong Kong there has been a huge row over some photos of a female singer, 14 at the time, being photographed in a wet see-through t-shirt and skin coloured bra. In the meantime we can receive the Discovery Channel including shows like "Tribe" uncensored - and afaik this channel is relayed from Singapore, with even more prudish laws, sometimes blurring out the deeper decolletes.
It's a strange and very hypocritical world we live in when it comes to issues like nudity.
Hopefully consumers remain accustomed to paying for software even when microsoft dies, or the market that pays our salaries shrinks by 90% or so. Even if companies continue to pay it will still be a large portion that dies.
Sorry to say, no consumer pays for software. The Microsoft tax is included in their new PC purchase; rarely any consumer buys software directly. The rest is simply copied from friends or TPB.
Business, however, do pay for software. Many already pay for Linux: the commercial distro's, that come with support. That's what they pay for: a kinda guarantee that things work, or when break, get fixed reasonably quickly.
And for programmers, a small portion is employed by Microsoft and other big businesses, most others are self-employed or in small enterprises writing highly specialised custom applications. That market will stay, regardless of the underlying O/S.
The main lay-offs will be in the first line helpdesk of ISP's, computer vendors (Dell etc), and similar companies. I have worked part-time for a couple months for an ISP help desk, first line, and about 90% of the calls we got were problems directly caused by Windows. The rest were general questions, help for the installation of their dial-up service, and direct technical questions like "what is your dial-up number", "what is the name of your mailserver", and forgotten passwords.
Nonsensical, you obviously heard this somewhere and never gave it any critical thought (if only as to why they could have so much UV light and are not used in solariums, nor do you get tanned sitting under a bunch of normal CFLs).
As another poster replied: according to manufacturer the amount of UV is less than in sunlight. I assume that is relative to the total amount of light.
Secondly, direct sunlight is much brighter than any normal artificial light, can easily be 100 times as bright. You don't notice it as such as your eyes correct for brightness, just try using your photo camera's light meter. Again much more UV coming your way from the sun than from any normal CFL.
Well if that means that those anti-environmentalists are buying less stuff (everything has to be made after all, and transported if only from the next-door factory to your home, and thus causes emissions) then we're there as well. Less consumption is no matter what less draw on the environment.
Hydro and nuclear: depending on where you live those two are significant. Nuclear is probably worldwide even pretty significant for power supplies.
Wind is gaining traction, solar is a niche and geothermal experimental at best. Their overall contributions are nowadays still not significant.
The vast majority of electricity in most countries is still produced with conventional fuel: coal, oil and gas. It's cheap, reliable, and well developed.
The 4.5 gallons becomes no more than 9 gallons as you still have to produce that electricity. And as far as I know modern power plants are still stuck at around 40% efficiency. There rest is wasted as heat.
3-6 minutes to charge that thing, that would mean a power use of about 520-1040 kW. Not too much for a gasoline engine, but huge for the power net. No home has that much electricity available. At 380V, 3 phase power supply it would take like 450-900 Amps to charge it that fast. This is a huge draw, and of course a serious peak for the power company.
Now to the real world. In my home we have an instant-on water heater, this is rated 21 kW. My father who used to work for an electricity company could barely believe me, so much power. This thing is rated 31 Amp at three-phase power (380V). Our home has a hefty 64 Amp, 380Vx3 available. That is because of this water heater, and all the aircos we have.
Compare this to a more moderate climate, like where my parents live: The Netherlands. They have like 32 Amp, single phase available. That's it. Fine for washing machine, dryer, lights, computers, etc, not for charging an electrical car.
Electrical cars are nice and all but the recharging is an issue. We have as yet no way to produce peaks of electricity like that. It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it. Charging a car like this at home may work, but it will have to slow down to a couple of hours to prevent melting the supply cables.
I think a large part of the effectiveness of a ticket is the irritation it gives the receiver. Even getting off the ticket this way still costs money and effort, which could have been prevented by not getting the ticket in the first place.
Part of efficiency of speed tickets is also that they are delivered quickly... in The Netherlands it used to be 6-8 weeks, by the time the offence was long forgotten. Then the efficiency is largely lost.
And for your case: I hope your parents take their role seriously and gave your younger brother a serious warning after receiving those tickets. Even though no-one was going to pay for it, he did break the law after all.
which is likely at least partly because the settlers killed off most of the bisons that kept the young trees in check. Bisons, buffalos, cattle, etc all eat young trees preventing grass to become forest. Naturally the trees always win from other vegetation as long as the climate isn't too dry/cold/whatever.
Half year or so the new idle was introduced - fine with me. Some stupid stories to waste time, nicely grouped together.
Then a few months ago now and then idle stories started making the front page. Acceptable, easy to filter using preferences.
But nowadays I see two, three of these idle type stories hit the front page every day! Now this stupid shark thing, masking as a science story. Appropriately tagged 'idle' already.
Please editors: keep idle type stories in the idle section, not in other sections, so we can filter them out if we like. And only real science stories in the science section. It's what those sections are made for, right?
My first computer, an MSX-2 that I bought from my own pocket money (I was 13 or so at the time), did come with restrictions. It had to stay in the living room, and no more than a few hours of play per day.
The restrictions you mention are reasonable but it is useless to try to put them on the laptop. Block those ports on the school's firewalls instead.
And it will be a good idea keep all those kid's laptops on a separate network, a "dirty" network so to say, as control is less. As you mentioned "iChat" I suppose you go for Apples, still no guarantee of no viruses or so. Not to be mixed up with the school's own network.
And then it will even be possible to install all the web filtering software and whatnot required by the powers that be on the firewalls upstream, so the students can install what they want but still not get around those restrictions when at school.
You do not belong to their target anyway, as the downgrade includes labour. Instead of buying the computer with Vista, it's supplied with XP Pro. People like you and me and most of the/. crowd buys their computer preferably without O/S, to install their favourite on it (unless it's Windows when buying including O/S is the cheaper option).
No need to switch to lower quality: when copying the disk bit by bit (should be reasonably easy, with the proper equipment I'd expect trivial even to do), the copy will play in any licensed player, like the original. There is no difference between the original and the copy after this process. No need for the pirates that want to sell copied disks to go through the hassle of decrypting the content.
That said I honestly have never seen nor heard of BR disks on the Chinese market (where like 95% of the CD's and DVD's is pirated). I guess this says more about the adoption of BR than the technical difficulties of making those disks.
When you buy a DVD and/or player (and presumably the same is true for Blu-Ray, never bought one) nobody asks you to sign an agreement, the dvd player doesn't make you click through an EULA before you can watch the disc. As far as I can tell, no licensing contract exists. The only contract that exists is the one made when money was exchanged for a good, which is a transfer of ownership. If that's the only contract, then the buyer owns the dvd and player, and can do what he damn well pleases with it.
There are many other products that have limitations to their use after you buy it, even though you do not sign a contract for that.
For example, your car. You are limited to certain roads/areas to drive it, limited in speed, sometimes even in direction. Some places you are allowed to drive by but not stop.
Or the house you own, even when the mortgage is over there are limitations on it's use. Maybe you are not allowed to run certain businesses their (brothels being an easy example), and more of those limitations. You can not just start expanding it for example, that you will have to apply for.
So no I don't think there is the need for an explicit licence agreement to be signed when you buy the DVD to make the restrictions valid. Unless you want special liberties (e.g. republishing, showing it to an open audience, etc) in which you will have to open special negotiations with the copyright holder.
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Well, that is more or less true indeed. Some roads I have seen really end in the water - that are the end points of the winter roads. Very interesting. Of course winter roads are only short cuts, in summer you have to take a road over the mountains instead.
On the maps of course these winter roads are clearly indicated using a different colour and the lake itself you can of course also see.
How GPS systems handle this I really don't know.
41.000 people killed in traffic in the USA? That is a very bad record.
Compare to my home, The Netherlands. 16.4 mln people packed together, very busy and often chaotic traffic (far worse than in the USA, that is what Americans tell me, many don't dare to drive on our "narrow, winding, chaotic roads where people drive so fast", indeed our max speed on motorways is about 30 km/h higher than the max allowed in USA), and we had 791 dead and 18,190 wounded in 2007.
Scaled up to the population of the USA (303 mln) that would give me 14,600 dead and 336,000 wounded.
Netherlands is one of the safest countries in the world when it comes to traffic. For the complete European Union (497 mln people) suffered 39,200 dead on the roads in 2006, per head of the population still over 40% less than the USA.
You Americans really can do a lot to improve traffic safety!
A car crossing an intersection is typically not stationary (and if it is and in your way - presumably waiting for other traffic before proceeding, you'd better slow down or stop depending on your distance of that other car).
Radar can look ahead pretty far, add smart software and the car will know whether an object is moving or not.
The road is so slippery it doesn't allow breaking then it usually doesn't allow for sufficient steering to go all the way around another car (assuming there is space to either side in the first place - on most roads there isn't because it's a single lane or there are other vehicles in the other lanes).
In Sweden (and other parts of northern Europe) it is allowed to drive on spiked tyres in winter; and many people actually do this. It is quite helpful when driving e.g. on the winter roads: frozen lakes. Those roads are opened every winter and are indicated on normal road maps.
Not true - as a matter of fact some people have more than two nipples. We have the genes for about a dozen nipples (all the way down to the top of the thighs!), think the rows of nipples in sows and bitches (the first being a female pig, the second a female dog). Those extra nipples are never well developed, and are often by the owner not recognised as nipple.
An interesting photo of a male with five nipples visible is given in Wikipedia, along with more info on the subject.
After nursing our son, my wife always gave him to me for burping, and he would usually let out a good one.
When bottle feeding (extracted milk) we often had to burp him halfway as well... let out a big burp (and keep a towel at hand for the possible other mess coming up with it), and he could continue drinking.
On the other hand, I find it somewhat ridiculous that you would not object to showing whatever it is you're showing, in public, to a handful of strangers, but you would suddenly object if it was shown, over the Internet, to a few more strangers.
Doing it in public is time-limited, for a few strangers maybe, or if you don't like the strangers you can stop it immediately.
When it appears on the Internet it's out of your control, all strangers can see it, and possibly abuse it.
There is a huge difference to say breastfeed sitting in a quiet corner in a restaurant or in a mall, to having a photo taken of it and having it posted on the internet without your consent.
Nudity seems to be defined as showing male or female genitals or the areola/nipple of a female breast. It is not much related to the actual showing of skin.
Why is a bare shoulder not nudity, nor an exposed deep cleavage of a woman's breast, nor a completely bare chest of a man, nipples and all?
And why would a photo of a nursing mum be nudity, but a woman wearing a tiny bikini isn't? The second case would likely show a larger portion of the woman's skin.
And finally it still surprises me that while female breasts are not allowed to be shown and are called indecent or even obscene, unless it is of indigenous tribes whose female members go naked or wearing only a skirt. Then showing the breasts is no problem. Even when they are of underage girls.
Here in Hong Kong there has been a huge row over some photos of a female singer, 14 at the time, being photographed in a wet see-through t-shirt and skin coloured bra. In the meantime we can receive the Discovery Channel including shows like "Tribe" uncensored - and afaik this channel is relayed from Singapore, with even more prudish laws, sometimes blurring out the deeper decolletes.
It's a strange and very hypocritical world we live in when it comes to issues like nudity.
Hopefully consumers remain accustomed to paying for software even when microsoft dies, or the market that pays our salaries shrinks by 90% or so. Even if companies continue to pay it will still be a large portion that dies.
Sorry to say, no consumer pays for software. The Microsoft tax is included in their new PC purchase; rarely any consumer buys software directly. The rest is simply copied from friends or TPB.
Business, however, do pay for software. Many already pay for Linux: the commercial distro's, that come with support. That's what they pay for: a kinda guarantee that things work, or when break, get fixed reasonably quickly.
And for programmers, a small portion is employed by Microsoft and other big businesses, most others are self-employed or in small enterprises writing highly specialised custom applications. That market will stay, regardless of the underlying O/S.
The main lay-offs will be in the first line helpdesk of ISP's, computer vendors (Dell etc), and similar companies. I have worked part-time for a couple months for an ISP help desk, first line, and about 90% of the calls we got were problems directly caused by Windows. The rest were general questions, help for the installation of their dial-up service, and direct technical questions like "what is your dial-up number", "what is the name of your mailserver", and forgotten passwords.
Good idea. Now where is my stockbroker gone? They're never there when you really need them!
Nonsensical, you obviously heard this somewhere and never gave it any critical thought (if only as to why they could have so much UV light and are not used in solariums, nor do you get tanned sitting under a bunch of normal CFLs).
As another poster replied: according to manufacturer the amount of UV is less than in sunlight. I assume that is relative to the total amount of light.
Secondly, direct sunlight is much brighter than any normal artificial light, can easily be 100 times as bright. You don't notice it as such as your eyes correct for brightness, just try using your photo camera's light meter. Again much more UV coming your way from the sun than from any normal CFL.
Well if that means that those anti-environmentalists are buying less stuff (everything has to be made after all, and transported if only from the next-door factory to your home, and thus causes emissions) then we're there as well. Less consumption is no matter what less draw on the environment.
Hydro and nuclear: depending on where you live those two are significant. Nuclear is probably worldwide even pretty significant for power supplies.
Wind is gaining traction, solar is a niche and geothermal experimental at best. Their overall contributions are nowadays still not significant.
The vast majority of electricity in most countries is still produced with conventional fuel: coal, oil and gas. It's cheap, reliable, and well developed.
The 4.5 gallons becomes no more than 9 gallons as you still have to produce that electricity. And as far as I know modern power plants are still stuck at around 40% efficiency. There rest is wasted as heat.
3-6 minutes to charge that thing, that would mean a power use of about 520-1040 kW. Not too much for a gasoline engine, but huge for the power net. No home has that much electricity available. At 380V, 3 phase power supply it would take like 450-900 Amps to charge it that fast. This is a huge draw, and of course a serious peak for the power company.
Now to the real world. In my home we have an instant-on water heater, this is rated 21 kW. My father who used to work for an electricity company could barely believe me, so much power. This thing is rated 31 Amp at three-phase power (380V). Our home has a hefty 64 Amp, 380Vx3 available. That is because of this water heater, and all the aircos we have.
Compare this to a more moderate climate, like where my parents live: The Netherlands. They have like 32 Amp, single phase available. That's it. Fine for washing machine, dryer, lights, computers, etc, not for charging an electrical car.
Electrical cars are nice and all but the recharging is an issue. We have as yet no way to produce peaks of electricity like that. It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it. Charging a car like this at home may work, but it will have to slow down to a couple of hours to prevent melting the supply cables.
I think a large part of the effectiveness of a ticket is the irritation it gives the receiver. Even getting off the ticket this way still costs money and effort, which could have been prevented by not getting the ticket in the first place.
Part of efficiency of speed tickets is also that they are delivered quickly... in The Netherlands it used to be 6-8 weeks, by the time the offence was long forgotten. Then the efficiency is largely lost.
And for your case: I hope your parents take their role seriously and gave your younger brother a serious warning after receiving those tickets. Even though no-one was going to pay for it, he did break the law after all.
which is likely at least partly because the settlers killed off most of the bisons that kept the young trees in check. Bisons, buffalos, cattle, etc all eat young trees preventing grass to become forest. Naturally the trees always win from other vegetation as long as the climate isn't too dry/cold/whatever.
Half year or so the new idle was introduced - fine with me. Some stupid stories to waste time, nicely grouped together.
Then a few months ago now and then idle stories started making the front page. Acceptable, easy to filter using preferences.
But nowadays I see two, three of these idle type stories hit the front page every day! Now this stupid shark thing, masking as a science story. Appropriately tagged 'idle' already.
Please editors: keep idle type stories in the idle section, not in other sections, so we can filter them out if we like. And only real science stories in the science section. It's what those sections are made for, right?
My first computer, an MSX-2 that I bought from my own pocket money (I was 13 or so at the time), did come with restrictions. It had to stay in the living room, and no more than a few hours of play per day.
The restrictions you mention are reasonable but it is useless to try to put them on the laptop. Block those ports on the school's firewalls instead.
And it will be a good idea keep all those kid's laptops on a separate network, a "dirty" network so to say, as control is less. As you mentioned "iChat" I suppose you go for Apples, still no guarantee of no viruses or so. Not to be mixed up with the school's own network.
And then it will even be possible to install all the web filtering software and whatnot required by the powers that be on the firewalls upstream, so the students can install what they want but still not get around those restrictions when at school.
Depending on how you define peripheral, I'd say a mouse is an essential component of a computer running Windows.
You do not belong to their target anyway, as the downgrade includes labour. Instead of buying the computer with Vista, it's supplied with XP Pro. People like you and me and most of the /. crowd buys their computer preferably without O/S, to install their favourite on it (unless it's Windows when buying including O/S is the cheaper option).
No need to switch to lower quality: when copying the disk bit by bit (should be reasonably easy, with the proper equipment I'd expect trivial even to do), the copy will play in any licensed player, like the original. There is no difference between the original and the copy after this process. No need for the pirates that want to sell copied disks to go through the hassle of decrypting the content.
That said I honestly have never seen nor heard of BR disks on the Chinese market (where like 95% of the CD's and DVD's is pirated). I guess this says more about the adoption of BR than the technical difficulties of making those disks.
When you buy a DVD and/or player (and presumably the same is true for Blu-Ray, never bought one) nobody asks you to sign an agreement, the dvd player doesn't make you click through an EULA before you can watch the disc. As far as I can tell, no licensing contract exists. The only contract that exists is the one made when money was exchanged for a good, which is a transfer of ownership. If that's the only contract, then the buyer owns the dvd and player, and can do what he damn well pleases with it.
There are many other products that have limitations to their use after you buy it, even though you do not sign a contract for that.
For example, your car. You are limited to certain roads/areas to drive it, limited in speed, sometimes even in direction. Some places you are allowed to drive by but not stop.
Or the house you own, even when the mortgage is over there are limitations on it's use. Maybe you are not allowed to run certain businesses their (brothels being an easy example), and more of those limitations. You can not just start expanding it for example, that you will have to apply for.
So no I don't think there is the need for an explicit licence agreement to be signed when you buy the DVD to make the restrictions valid. Unless you want special liberties (e.g. republishing, showing it to an open audience, etc) in which you will have to open special negotiations with the copyright holder.