I for one am enjoying my growing collection of $13-15 HD-DVDs on my $130 HD-DVD player (which I bought to replace an old broken DVD-upscaler). In a few years there will probably be enough good titles available only on blu-ray that I'll be interested in buying a blu-ray player. Or a PS3. And by then I'll probably get either one for under than $200.
Am I happy that my format of choice lost the war? No. But I'm not particularly upset about it either. In fact I think I'm getting a pretty good deal out of this situation.
The correct title should be "Telcos give improper access to records, FBI acts swiftly to correct privacy violations". I'm not saying the FBI doesn't screw up (a lot), but come on. This article clearly has an agenda-driven bias.
Oh no, you can't support a tax that would have the EVIL RICH paying less, can you? I bet you don't support the current tax cuts that had the "rich" paying less (and everyone else paying less too) but still _increased_ tax revenue because it stimulated economic growth.
The FairTax would have the poor (families making the poverty level income) paying NO taxes. Everyone below the poverty level would actually receive money from the FairTax. Everyone above the poverty level would have their tax payments increase linearly with spending (rather than with income). The rich spend more than the poor, so they will pay more tax. For everyone who's currently paying taxes, their tax burden would go down, because the tax base would be expanded and the economy would grow, and the tax is designed to be revenue neutral.
The FairTax is an "everybody wins" system! Some people will win more than others, as is inevitable, but the benefits will be shared by everyone. Who cares if the rich will pay less, if YOU will pay less too? I say everyone should pay less, the rich included - because they are paying way more than their fair share currently!
And for all those IRS agents and H&R Block employees out of a job: in a growing economy they will find new jobs, putting their skills to work to create wealth, rather than to destroy wealth as they currently do. Don't you think an accountant would prefer to work managing somebody's investments to create wealth, rather than trying to save them a dime on taxes?
The newly price-reduced Toshiba HD-DVD players are currently the #1 and #4 best-selling players on Amazon.com. The best-selling Blue-Ray players are #5 and #10. I wonder if HD-DVD players are now out-selling Blue-Ray players overall.
Wow, so Sony finally did something right! Well I just contacted Toshiba to confirm that what I said in my previous post was correct. Here's what their rep said:
-Toshiba HD-DVD players WILL in fact output HD-DVDs in 1080i via component, but only if the DVD is not content-protected. It turns out that most (all?) HD-DVDs currently on the market are NOT content-protected... probably because they don't want to screw over us early adopters.
-Their rep claims that this player WILL upconvert standard-def DVDs to 1080i via component. I made sure he was very explicit about this, but I still wonder if this is true, because 99% of all standard-def upconverting DVD players limit component output to 480p (I know, I own several). So, if anyone actually has this (or a similar) HD-DVD player and can confirm this, I'd love to hear from you.
I ordered this player yesterday. The combination of low price + 7 free HD-DVDs was too hard to refuse! This morning I canceled my order. I have an older 50" HDTV and a front projector, neither of which have HDMI inputs, and I discovered that this player (er, all players in fact) will only output 480p max via component. So we "early adopters" who forked over vast amounts of cash for early-gen HDTVs are now discovering that we've been screwed over royally by the HD content providers! Life sucks.
... glitches in the system. Like one morning we wake up and gravity repels, and a BSoD message is written across the sky in clouds. Only then would I be convinced that our universe is in fact a digital simulation.
Nah. Fine titanium powder is explosive, due to the high surface area. A solid chunk of titanium should be fine to grind, and any powder generated from grinding should be fully oxidized by the time it cools. Just clean up after you're done.
Still, I'd say the best way to tell would be a simple density measurement (Archimedes Principle). If that's not possible and for some reason this is very important to you, then make a friend at your local university and get it analyzed by some method of x-ray spectroscopy.
Here's where everyone's wrong. At least as far as my personal experience goes. By the time I was a Freshman in college (back in '98), I had a collection of maybe 100 purchased CDs. I continued to purchase CDs at the rate of about 5-10 per year, because that's all I could afford as a student. But I downloaded maybe 1000 mp3s from Napster. The record companies did not lose any money from this action. Had I not downloaded those mp3s, I still would not have purchased the CDs that contained those songs. I downloaded music that I would not otherwise have purchased, for the simple reason that it was so damn convenient.
I feel that many (though not all of course) of today's college students are in the same situation. Record companies are living in a dream world if they think the average college student with a collection of several thousand mp3s would have actually purchased those songs if they had not been "available" to download for free. Record companies look at the number of songs being shared on the internet and count each one as lost revenue. I say that if most of those songs weren't shared for free, nobody would be listening to them.
Now that I'm finished school (well undergrad at least), I can afford to purchase all the music I like, and I no longer download pirated mp3s. My act of downloading/sharing mp3s in college may have been illegal, but it was not "immoral", because there was no victim. Record companies did not lose money, because I would not have purchased those songs/CDs anyway (I couldn't afford to). I benefited from listening to the music, and some of the bands benefited from gaining me as a fan - and now that I can afford to, I buy their albums and catch them on tour. So what's the problem?
The flip side of course is that not everyone is like me. Some people will download all their music and never buy a CD in their life. I say, if the RIAA is going to sue someone for downloading music, the "moral" thing would be to first check the size of that person's purchased music collection. I think they'd find that, in many cases, the biggest downloaders are also the biggest purchasers.
Not viable for smaller countries like Australia? Try France, which today supplies about 70% of its energy with nuclear power (as has been mentioned before).
You gotta be kidding me. We don't use nuclear because it would hurt the oil industry? First off, there's a difference between oil, which runs our cars, and coal, which runs our power plants, which you don't seem to grasp. Second and more importantly, the real reason we don't have much nuclear power in the US is because for decades "environmentalists" have been waging a misguided war against nuclear power. These activists eroded public support for nuclear energy, and their lobbyists got our politicians to impose such stringent roadblocks and regulations that it became impossible for any company to even think about building in a new nuclear power plant in the US. Thanks to their ignorance and short-sightedness, these activists contributed in a major way to the problem of global warming, which they now say will be the doom of us all. And what makes it even more ironic is that the activists are still at it today.
Sure nuclear is not perfect. But the safety issue was settled long ago. So the only downside is waste disposal, and the technology to process nuclear waste is advancing rapidly. And anyway, the stuff comes out of the ground, so we just have to put it back there, and make sure it stays there. All this talk about nuclear waste being a terrible hazard and environmental concern for the "next 10,000 years" is ridiculous. Some time in the next 500 years we'll figure out an even better way to handle, or use, nuclear waste, and it'll become a null issue (unless global warming kills us all by then of course).
Regarding your claim that laser eye surgery is destroying the navy...
At the US Naval Academy summer seminar a few years ago, I was informed by some officers that having laser eye surgery would immediately disqualify me from being a pilot. This is due to the uncertain effect of altitude/pressure/high g-forces on the vision of someone who's had laser surgery. I was disappointed by this policy because my vision is not perfect, and I was told that the best I could aim for was being a "back-steater", like Goose in Top Gun. I decided not to apply to the Academy. But if what you say is true and the surgery is now allowed, I might reconsider my decision and go for some Lasik... wait, did I just prove your point?
This is incorrect. UV radiation is of higher energy, but much lower intensity than light in the visible range, so overall much less energy is extracted from UV, and improving UV efficiency is not a big deal. The technological challenge in the development of photovoltaic materials is to develop a system that works efficiently in the visible range.
My experience is that most journals accept TeX submissions, but they strongly recommend submissions using a Word (2003 or earlier) template. Personally, I write all my papers using LaTeX, and submit the TeX-generated PDFs to the journals. Then I generate a Word document using a program like Tex2Word (or whatever) and submit that as well. The journal emails only the PDF (which, thanks to TeX, looks nice and professional) to the reviewers. The reason journals require a Word document is because it is simple for them to copy the text from the Word document into their commercial typesetting system to produce the print versions of the article. Since most journals don't use TeX as their internal typesetting system, conversion of TeX submissions to their proprietary format takes extra effort on their part, and they discourage it. However, many journals (ACS journals in particular) will still accept TeX submissions, simply because so many academics use it.
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I for one am enjoying my growing collection of $13-15 HD-DVDs on my $130 HD-DVD player (which I bought to replace an old broken DVD-upscaler). In a few years there will probably be enough good titles available only on blu-ray that I'll be interested in buying a blu-ray player. Or a PS3. And by then I'll probably get either one for under than $200.
Am I happy that my format of choice lost the war? No. But I'm not particularly upset about it either. In fact I think I'm getting a pretty good deal out of this situation.
The correct title should be "Telcos give improper access to records, FBI acts swiftly to correct privacy violations". I'm not saying the FBI doesn't screw up (a lot), but come on. This article clearly has an agenda-driven bias.
Oh no, you can't support a tax that would have the EVIL RICH paying less, can you? I bet you don't support the current tax cuts that had the "rich" paying less (and everyone else paying less too) but still _increased_ tax revenue because it stimulated economic growth.
The FairTax would have the poor (families making the poverty level income) paying NO taxes. Everyone below the poverty level would actually receive money from the FairTax. Everyone above the poverty level would have their tax payments increase linearly with spending (rather than with income). The rich spend more than the poor, so they will pay more tax. For everyone who's currently paying taxes, their tax burden would go down, because the tax base would be expanded and the economy would grow, and the tax is designed to be revenue neutral.
The FairTax is an "everybody wins" system! Some people will win more than others, as is inevitable, but the benefits will be shared by everyone. Who cares if the rich will pay less, if YOU will pay less too? I say everyone should pay less, the rich included - because they are paying way more than their fair share currently!
And for all those IRS agents and H&R Block employees out of a job: in a growing economy they will find new jobs, putting their skills to work to create wealth, rather than to destroy wealth as they currently do. Don't you think an accountant would prefer to work managing somebody's investments to create wealth, rather than trying to save them a dime on taxes?
The newly price-reduced Toshiba HD-DVD players are currently the #1 and #4 best-selling players on Amazon.com. The best-selling Blue-Ray players are #5 and #10. I wonder if HD-DVD players are now out-selling Blue-Ray players overall.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1036922/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_3_last
Wow, so Sony finally did something right! Well I just contacted Toshiba to confirm that what I said in my previous post was correct. Here's what their rep said:
-Toshiba HD-DVD players WILL in fact output HD-DVDs in 1080i via component, but only if the DVD is not content-protected. It turns out that most (all?) HD-DVDs currently on the market are NOT content-protected... probably because they don't want to screw over us early adopters.
-Their rep claims that this player WILL upconvert standard-def DVDs to 1080i via component. I made sure he was very explicit about this, but I still wonder if this is true, because 99% of all standard-def upconverting DVD players limit component output to 480p (I know, I own several). So, if anyone actually has this (or a similar) HD-DVD player and can confirm this, I'd love to hear from you.
I ordered this player yesterday. The combination of low price + 7 free HD-DVDs was too hard to refuse! This morning I canceled my order. I have an older 50" HDTV and a front projector, neither of which have HDMI inputs, and I discovered that this player (er, all players in fact) will only output 480p max via component. So we "early adopters" who forked over vast amounts of cash for early-gen HDTVs are now discovering that we've been screwed over royally by the HD content providers! Life sucks.
Haha... exactly!
... glitches in the system. Like one morning we wake up and gravity repels, and a BSoD message is written across the sky in clouds. Only then would I be convinced that our universe is in fact a digital simulation.
Nah. Fine titanium powder is explosive, due to the high surface area. A solid chunk of titanium should be fine to grind, and any powder generated from grinding should be fully oxidized by the time it cools. Just clean up after you're done.
Still, I'd say the best way to tell would be a simple density measurement (Archimedes Principle). If that's not possible and for some reason this is very important to you, then make a friend at your local university and get it analyzed by some method of x-ray spectroscopy.
Here's where everyone's wrong. At least as far as my personal experience goes. By the time I was a Freshman in college (back in '98), I had a collection of maybe 100 purchased CDs. I continued to purchase CDs at the rate of about 5-10 per year, because that's all I could afford as a student. But I downloaded maybe 1000 mp3s from Napster. The record companies did not lose any money from this action. Had I not downloaded those mp3s, I still would not have purchased the CDs that contained those songs. I downloaded music that I would not otherwise have purchased, for the simple reason that it was so damn convenient.
I feel that many (though not all of course) of today's college students are in the same situation. Record companies are living in a dream world if they think the average college student with a collection of several thousand mp3s would have actually purchased those songs if they had not been "available" to download for free. Record companies look at the number of songs being shared on the internet and count each one as lost revenue. I say that if most of those songs weren't shared for free, nobody would be listening to them.
Now that I'm finished school (well undergrad at least), I can afford to purchase all the music I like, and I no longer download pirated mp3s. My act of downloading/sharing mp3s in college may have been illegal, but it was not "immoral", because there was no victim. Record companies did not lose money, because I would not have purchased those songs/CDs anyway (I couldn't afford to). I benefited from listening to the music, and some of the bands benefited from gaining me as a fan - and now that I can afford to, I buy their albums and catch them on tour. So what's the problem?
The flip side of course is that not everyone is like me. Some people will download all their music and never buy a CD in their life. I say, if the RIAA is going to sue someone for downloading music, the "moral" thing would be to first check the size of that person's purchased music collection. I think they'd find that, in many cases, the biggest downloaders are also the biggest purchasers.
If RJ didn't reveal who killed Asmodean somewhere in those volumes of notes and dictations, I might go postal.
Not viable for smaller countries like Australia? Try France, which today supplies about 70% of its energy with nuclear power (as has been mentioned before).
You gotta be kidding me. We don't use nuclear because it would hurt the oil industry? First off, there's a difference between oil, which runs our cars, and coal, which runs our power plants, which you don't seem to grasp. Second and more importantly, the real reason we don't have much nuclear power in the US is because for decades "environmentalists" have been waging a misguided war against nuclear power. These activists eroded public support for nuclear energy, and their lobbyists got our politicians to impose such stringent roadblocks and regulations that it became impossible for any company to even think about building in a new nuclear power plant in the US. Thanks to their ignorance and short-sightedness, these activists contributed in a major way to the problem of global warming, which they now say will be the doom of us all. And what makes it even more ironic is that the activists are still at it today. Sure nuclear is not perfect. But the safety issue was settled long ago. So the only downside is waste disposal, and the technology to process nuclear waste is advancing rapidly. And anyway, the stuff comes out of the ground, so we just have to put it back there, and make sure it stays there. All this talk about nuclear waste being a terrible hazard and environmental concern for the "next 10,000 years" is ridiculous. Some time in the next 500 years we'll figure out an even better way to handle, or use, nuclear waste, and it'll become a null issue (unless global warming kills us all by then of course).
Regarding your claim that laser eye surgery is destroying the navy...
At the US Naval Academy summer seminar a few years ago, I was informed by some officers that having laser eye surgery would immediately disqualify me from being a pilot. This is due to the uncertain effect of altitude/pressure/high g-forces on the vision of someone who's had laser surgery. I was disappointed by this policy because my vision is not perfect, and I was told that the best I could aim for was being a "back-steater", like Goose in Top Gun. I decided not to apply to the Academy. But if what you say is true and the surgery is now allowed, I might reconsider my decision and go for some Lasik... wait, did I just prove your point?
This is incorrect. UV radiation is of higher energy, but much lower intensity than light in the visible range, so overall much less energy is extracted from UV, and improving UV efficiency is not a big deal. The technological challenge in the development of photovoltaic materials is to develop a system that works efficiently in the visible range.
My experience is that most journals accept TeX submissions, but they strongly recommend submissions using a Word (2003 or earlier) template. Personally, I write all my papers using LaTeX, and submit the TeX-generated PDFs to the journals. Then I generate a Word document using a program like Tex2Word (or whatever) and submit that as well. The journal emails only the PDF (which, thanks to TeX, looks nice and professional) to the reviewers. The reason journals require a Word document is because it is simple for them to copy the text from the Word document into their commercial typesetting system to produce the print versions of the article. Since most journals don't use TeX as their internal typesetting system, conversion of TeX submissions to their proprietary format takes extra effort on their part, and they discourage it. However, many journals (ACS journals in particular) will still accept TeX submissions, simply because so many academics use it.