Well it used to be the cost of the computer...back when a decent computer was 3500 and a basic one was 2k. Then it was worth paying someone 500 (or more) to fix it. These days the hardware cost has gone down, but the data value has gone up substantially.
Back when my computer cost 3500 i honestly didn't have so much data that i couldn't print it out or save on a few floppies. Now, i save my data (mostly) but many people do not because of the hassle. Why do you think someone i work with just payd 1300$ to have ARD recover his trashed hard drive? Because he had so much data on there that it was basically his job (and worse) if he didn't get it back. I've seen people pay way more than that too.
Now the problem is, people trust big stores BECAUSE they're big stores...which i think is a horrible mistake. In my experience, the majority of Big Box/chain/franchise stores are simply horrible when it comes to customer service and how they deal with empoyees to boot. But small companies and individuals scare people even more...go figure.
That, and on a serious level it's another sign of how little BB trusts their employees (read: not at all).
They'll have seminars, classes, training materiel about honesty, respecting the company, having pride (sic) in your job, and they essentially treat you like a criminal. Oh, and the pay is crap too.
Does anyone really wonder why geek squad "techs" have little to no interest in their jobs and would rather look for pron (or pics of the guy's wife even better) then do what they're supposed to.
Honestly, i have access to every file, every email, every profile, every hard drive in my company. Want to know what I do with all that power? I check my CEO's calendar to see when he'll be traveling our of the country (international blackberry swap) or in a different office (start up and log in that computer) and let my techs know so we stay ahead of the curve.
Seriously. This is another pile of shi....erm... sensationalist 'cry wolf' journalism.
Google has my data that they're storing for me, for free, because i gave it to them...along with my email...and a spot on my MSIE toolbar, and a spot on on the MSIE searchabr, and a spot on my desktop for desktop search...
Seriously, we coudl all say to encrypt it but 99% of people out there won't. Ease of use + free > privacy to most people. In fact google still keeps your data private. Yes, they'll give you targeted advertizing...same as every other 'free' website. They do it better, with a better interface, faster, and are less intrusive. Know what? Sometimes their adds are actually USEFUL. So yeah, if i save and upload and work on a presentation about the price of sex slaves in asia and a link pops up offering a tour...remind me why i should complain?
Half the time the adds are...pre-emptive searching.
Considering does not mean they're actuallg going to do it.
You know "Mr. Overpaid Exec #1" at RIAA will call "Mr. Way-Overpaid Exec #2" at EMI and say something like 'Hey Bill, we'll try to fuck you guys up a little less next year. Promise. Besides, I my kid's going to for her degree in basket weaving and I need to make sure I get my raise to pay for that and the new ferrari'
So instead EMI coughs up extra cash this year for the MAFIAA to "change tactics" whereby they sue...everyone!
HAHAHAHA. Ok, so -1 troll but i'll respond anyway. You're clearly someoen who's pissed off they do (or did) work a service job that subsists off tips.
So let me get this straight - you want me to pay your salary instead of your employer. By itself, stupid but that's 'how things are'. Fine. Moving on...
First off, saying '20% for everything' means you're used to being the one getting tipped. It shows. You're greedy. That said, if service is good I will tip 18-20%. If the service is NOT good I will NOT tip anywhere near 20%. I'm not stupid, I can tell when a waiter is inattentive as opposed to the kitchen screwing everything up. I've had my meal come out wrong !twice! and still left a good tip because the waiter was actually there, available, explained the problem and did his/her best to fix it. I've had other times where i'm watching a waiter BS with his friends and then my food comes out cold and (god forbid) i ask for a drink refill and it takes 10 minutes. Guess what? He's getting 5% (not nothing so me might think I forgot) to make a point.
Beyond that. If you want to cry about "Anyone who has to stand up and pretend to be happy while dealing with the public" well then those people SHOULD GET A DIFFERENT JOB! If you hate the public, don't get a service job. It's THAT SIMPLE. You don't get sympathy (and money) from me because you don't like your job. There are plenty of people who are happy and keep a good attitude. They get good tips in general.
Again though, TIPS are reward/compensation for GOOD service. You may consider it mandatory but it's NOT. Welcome to merrit-based pay. You suck, you get jack. You're good, you can easily exceed your co-workers. If you don't like it, get a 9-5 and quit crying.
To finish...I just have to point out this one: "Maintaining a positive attitude in that situation requires compensation that is visible and frequent". HAHAHAHAHA. You know what? Learn some people skills. It's not like every person I deal with in my job is a perfect gentleman or lady. It's not like everyone, every time, is as considerate as they can be or even understands a situation completly. I deal with assholes all the time and i'm not a waiter! Guess what. No Vice President is going to hand me a $20 for dealing with his inane questions during my presentation.
First - check case law. A judge has ruled on a similar case where an individual declined to pay a "mandatory" tip and was arrested for it. The judge ruled that a tip is just that - an optional gratuity and can not be required.
Second - posting a 'sign' (it's usually a very small line at the bottom of the last page of the menu) still does not make something required or law. Especially if it violates existing law a/o case law.
If the waiter verbally informs the entire party and everyone CONSENTS to the charge then that's a different story.
I love places that try to require a tip on the bill. Those places, shoudl I happen to wind up at one unknowingly, will never get a cent for a tip. I'll figure out the actual check total and pay exactly that. The can go scratch on the tip for being retarded about it.
When a pre-requisite for getting free computers (recent Buy-two, get-one thing) is that 10 year old children aren't running around half-starved with AK_47's then i'll pay more attention. When you're faced with a situation where you have this fancy new laptop and are starving and day-to-day survival are an issue...the laptop isn't going to win. I wonder how many of these get traded around like currency for food?
How about we put basic agriculture, animal husbandry, hygiene, and basic medicine on these things? I'm not an expert on the needs of developing third world countries but those sound like much better uses than teaching children other abstract things. Instead of handing everything out, why not offer the people the ability to build the infrastructure they need to develop past 3rd world poor status?
Oh, and the first mandatory course that must be passed before you can use it...birth control! lol
There seems to be a lot of disagreement over which laptop is "better". Each model has their merrits, granted. OLPC is cheaper, MS/Intel magic is "windows" which is far more important when trying to integrate into the modern technical society.
Yes, there are mac/linux/unix/VAX/etc. machines out there that a OLPC student might be able to equate their experience with (in theory as OLPC is extremely point-click-go oriented by default). But that leaves them out of the ~90% of computers that run windows and puts them at a substantial disadvantage in that regards.
If you look at the computer from a non-techie world learning perspective, and assume you're not teaching these children for a career in technology but instead trying to use the laptop to facilitate basic education, the OLPC has the advantage for being outright cheaper.
Now...OLPC took how many years of preaching before the price creeped up by 100% and it finally launched? MS/Intel took what? 6 months? It seems to re-inforce the point that i've seen a long time in the coming - OLPC is a good idea poorly implemented. MS/Intel, I think, have done a better job in making an expensive laptop destined for those who will most benefit.
Would a starving ethernopian want a $200 laptop for free or $200 worth of durable farming goods (or whatever other example)? Would a lower-class poor child in a minor to moderately developed country (i.e. running water, electricity, basic telephone) benefit more from learning computer skills as basic food is available? If you really want to "help teh childrenz" how about offering what is most appropriate for someone's level of need.
Just because it's renewable doesn't mean it has to be more expensive. It just is now. Low use = high cost
As for the new challenge. Converting power beamed down from orbit is child's play. Creating the beam - in space or anywhere - that contains "statistically significant portion of the US electricity usage" is 99% of the difficulty. There already exist large mirror farms focusing sunlight to make steam and drive a turbine. Skip the mirrors, bigger focus target, and you're done with the ground-based system. No, it's not as pretty as a direct conversion to household AC but it's far far simpler and your main power source is essentially unlimited.
So one failure, even many (totally unrelated!) failures means that this idea can not possibly work either?
I can't stand people who argue like you. "Someone attacked world trade so the farmers market in union square should have armed MPs in case the chinese invade in frogsuits." The best counter-argument is laughter i think. Because, excluding sheeple that accept similar logic on their nightly news, we're all sitting back and wondering what planet you're from.
Oh, and you realize that that for every big success in R&D you have dozens, hundereds, thousands! of poor results or outright failures.
Actually conversion of highly concentrated radiation (whatever wavelength you prefer) is not all that difficult. Give me a couple gigawatt laser, maser, etc. beam and we'll convert it to power. You're aware there are mirror farms that focus onto a small point to flash boil water into steam...which drives turbines that drive generators. Scale it up a bit. There's no huge innovation required. There's no scientific breakthroughs required - just some good engineering.
Ironically, there IS a bigger problem you didn't address. That's converting the electricity produced in orbit TO a laser beam. You might recall that a highly efficient laser setup is what...20, 30, 50% efficient? Let's say you're going to use (a lot of) laser diodes. We're up to what...best case 90% efficiency? Let's say 99% for the hell of it. That means you have to find some what to dump 10MW of waste heat. In space. Minimum. Drop to 90% and you've got 100MW to deal with.
I think what's far more likely is a mirror farm with a ground receiver or a very different spectrum. Perhaps microwave? That's child's play to convert to heat energy and drive a turbine.
As for a conspiracy... You realize that a company deciding "yah, let's dooo eeeet" can't just plop down some cash and have their toys in space the next day...right? Do you truly believe that big businesses might not... nudge the powers-that-be in a certain direction that would make it far more difficult for the magic do-gooder clean energy company?
Let's see. I make $100billions per year selling oil. Company X has all their funding, VC, loan $, etc. and reputation on the line to make their space energy venture work and according to their claims it will cost me business soon enough. Well hmm, let's see. They might kill birds beaming that power. Let's let PETA know. They might miss their target and fry little timmy and lassie running through the field. Let's let the press know. They're "using" airspace and transmitting so let's make sure they have a FCC license...that doesn't exist and will take the FCC 5-10 years to figure out. You really think it would be difficult to derail a startup company just long enough to go bankrupt?
Once a couple billion of private funding is lost on the idea...no one will try it again for a looooong time. E.g. nuclear power! Long Island residents (lower NY for those living elsewhere) pay some of the highest power rates in the country. Why? Becasue we're paying for the $billions shoreham nuclear power plant that was build and never allowed to operate. When was the last nuclear power plant proposed before the few recent ones? Yeah.
Or better, reference with supporting documentation with original, raw, unedited data.
First, no one that i'm aware of has published true raw data that "proves" global warming on a scale greater than the past ~100 years.
Second, where's your reference for claiming runaway global warming for the next 100years if CO2 production was halted?! It's claims like yours - hysteria with no supporting evidence - that news shows use to get people all worked up for no good reason.
Oh, and news at 11: Find out what you're doing right now that could be killing you and you don't even know it.
ULV procs...going to slow you down regardless. You also might be missing key drivers or something.
I've got a D420 in front of me (haven't snagged a '30 to trade up yet) with the 32GB SSD and it's great. No, it's not as fast as the D630 in proc-heavy work but it's great for general office use. Ever try to delete a crap-ton of emails from a multi-GB PST file and then compact it? way less painful now:)
I have to say the D430 behaves better (faster) with the SSD and battery life is at least somewhat improved.
Now if only i could get someone to buy me a 2.5"SATA SSD for the D630
In fact, I'd even hesitate to call it spoofing since that word usually implies some sort of...i don't know...technical skill? Next time you're bored look at the properties for your network card. One of the options...yep, you guessed it. MAC Address. Some generic drivers may not support this but that's a pretty easy fix too.
10 years ago this might have been harder. Then again 10 years ago spoofing ANI for the skilled or CallerID for the simple was far more important anyway.
I'm not a support of the myraid of laws we have to follow on a daily basis... but they're there regardless. Given that; a 19 year old college student, a 45 year old college professor, the janitor, and the CEO of Big Bucks Corp all are obliged to follow the same laws. Regardless of how stupid many laws are, equal accountability across all demographics I still very much believe in.
If you're paralyzed, you still can't rape and murder (pun ignored) without being considered a criminal just the same as i can't. I think the MAFIAA is one of the most vile corporations in existance in the US at the moment but that doesn't excuse someone because they're a single mom.
Common sense - yes. The DMCA and copyright law are retarded and totally opposite of common sense. They should be re-written or simply repealed so we can start over from scratch. Until that time though, there's no free pass because you need viagra to get a woody and are thus scorned. We need to fix the LAWS, not selectvely enforce them based on pity.
Name one other organization that sends armed people to your door if you refuse to buy to their "services"
Erm, the US gov't? Granted they're not selling much but...we do tend to go blow things up when people don't do what we want. Odd, that sounds a lot like terrorism...
Require an additional clause added where they guarantee you 6 months severance pay should you leave the company for any reason while that agreement is still in effect.
Yes...refuse to sign. Or better - just ignore it. Put it off, defer them, 'will get around to it'...till they either forget or you find a new job.
New job...good call. On your exit interview point out that you're leaving because the company clearly has no interest in treating people fairly or even caring in the slightest bit about them.
I'd rather give them to poor and underprivledged children in OUR OWN FRIGGIN COUNTRY but not like that'll happen. Your politicians and upity-up business types get much better press from giving a starving ethernopian a laptop.
Come black friday I guarantee there will be plenty of $400 "real" laptops for sale...there have already been quite a few anyhow. Not much of a deal. Oh, and for those who will say how rugged and durable the OLPC is...yes. But when you can't do jack shit with it even if it survives the trip through a dishwasher...what good is it? As evil as they are, MS is the de facto standard. If you don't know windows you're missing a key skill to join the technology work force. Giving a bunch of kids a one-off linux based laptop leaves out critical skills.
There are a lot of bad phones out there. The iphone is...cute. It's good as a gadget or toy. It's certainly not a "bad" phone. It's good in many situations. It's not good in many others.
Re: locking to networks. The whole practice is horrible. They'll come out with 5 versions of one phone for the different networks. Bah. Yes, there are several cell bands out there. Guess what, quad-band phones are fairly common. I can take my TMO phone and ROAM almost anywhere in the world. Getting on the network is not the problem.
Re: OTA calendar, contacts. Critical for any business use. Not so much for personal use. Audio and video OTA...cute gimmic and another lovely result of copyright/DRM hell we live in. I'll pass on youtube OTA honestly.
Re: Bricking. Who says they didn't do it intentionally? Who says they did? Guess what, you don't know. I DO know though that they could have designed an open phone. I DO know they could have designed the phone to be unlockable and still work (like almost every other phone).
Re: real keyboard. Go trial the blackberry curve. They keys are small, yes. But it's very usable as a keyboard. The phone is NOT an inch and a half thick by any means. I can guarantee you i type faster on my BB curve than you do on the iphone. I'd bet the fast majority of people would be the same. The trick is many people type very little on the iphone. I type a lot on my blackberry.
My "tiny" screen (~2/3 of iphone) and "tiny" keyboard (oh wait, where's yours?) suit a purpose. Other phones can substitute for an iphone. An iphone can't substitute for all other phones.
See...i'm a pack rat. The kind of 'oh,i might need this let me bring it' person that always has a backpack with him.
For me, I always have my blackberry. Almost always I have my backpack with digicam, laptop, 1.8" external HDD, couple USB thumb drives, USB to mini5 cable, memory card adapter for my digicam, and SecureID token. I used to have my ipod nano with me too but my blackberry does that job now.
Now, I *could* just carry the blackberry. It can do almost anything i can do with the rest of the stuff. The problem is a matter of quality and user interface.
I only just started using camera phones. Now that i have 2MP and somewhat reasonable quality...it's good for "informational" pics. Like...'here's the price sticker from store x' while i drive to store y to compare. I'm still goign to cary my digicam.
The same applies to almost everything else. A jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. My BB is a decent phone, decent rolodex, decent email/calendar/etc., poor camera, functional MP3 player. If i had to take one thing and hit the road in an emergency (ok, i'd grab my backpack that has my stuff but i digress) i'd take the BB and survive.
When you can give me something hand-held, pocketable, with a substantial battery life (meaning 2+ days if you're calling it a cell phone) that can do an equal job to my bag of tricks i will happily leave the backpack home. Technology is moving in that direction but there are several generations of products to go though before the integration-level products are good enough to meet my demands.
We're getting there, I no longer need to purchase the largest hard drive or fastest CPU to make my day-to-day tasks and entertainment as good as i care about. I don't need a 12MP digital camera to take good pictures. I don't need a 120GB ipod.
Maybe in 5 years i'll have my universal device and a laptop for a full interface (until someoen designs a portable interface that's equally good to the keyboard and 13-19" screen). For now I'm keeping my backpack.
FYI, liquid N2 isn't really that expensive. On the order of $20 per litre in small quantities.
Buy a couple hundered gallons and it'll be much cheaper. In fact, you start getting to the point where it's cheaper to make it youself. Since most hospitals make and store LOX, it shouldn't be too difficult.
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Well it used to be the cost of the computer...back when a decent computer was 3500 and a basic one was 2k. Then it was worth paying someone 500 (or more) to fix it. These days the hardware cost has gone down, but the data value has gone up substantially.
Back when my computer cost 3500 i honestly didn't have so much data that i couldn't print it out or save on a few floppies. Now, i save my data (mostly) but many people do not because of the hassle. Why do you think someone i work with just payd 1300$ to have ARD recover his trashed hard drive? Because he had so much data on there that it was basically his job (and worse) if he didn't get it back. I've seen people pay way more than that too.
Now the problem is, people trust big stores BECAUSE they're big stores...which i think is a horrible mistake. In my experience, the majority of Big Box/chain/franchise stores are simply horrible when it comes to customer service and how they deal with empoyees to boot. But small companies and individuals scare people even more...go figure.
That, and on a serious level it's another sign of how little BB trusts their employees (read: not at all).
They'll have seminars, classes, training materiel about honesty, respecting the company, having pride (sic) in your job, and they essentially treat you like a criminal. Oh, and the pay is crap too.
Does anyone really wonder why geek squad "techs" have little to no interest in their jobs and would rather look for pron (or pics of the guy's wife even better) then do what they're supposed to.
Honestly, i have access to every file, every email, every profile, every hard drive in my company. Want to know what I do with all that power? I check my CEO's calendar to see when he'll be traveling our of the country (international blackberry swap) or in a different office (start up and log in that computer) and let my techs know so we stay ahead of the curve.
Seriously. This is another pile of shi....erm... sensationalist 'cry wolf' journalism.
Google has my data that they're storing for me, for free, because i gave it to them...along with my email...and a spot on my MSIE toolbar, and a spot on on the MSIE searchabr, and a spot on my desktop for desktop search...
Seriously, we coudl all say to encrypt it but 99% of people out there won't. Ease of use + free > privacy to most people. In fact google still keeps your data private. Yes, they'll give you targeted advertizing...same as every other 'free' website. They do it better, with a better interface, faster, and are less intrusive. Know what? Sometimes their adds are actually USEFUL. So yeah, if i save and upload and work on a presentation about the price of sex slaves in asia and a link pops up offering a tour...remind me why i should complain?
Half the time the adds are...pre-emptive searching.
Considering does not mean they're actuallg going to do it.
You know "Mr. Overpaid Exec #1" at RIAA will call "Mr. Way-Overpaid Exec #2" at EMI and say something like 'Hey Bill, we'll try to fuck you guys up a little less next year. Promise. Besides, I my kid's going to for her degree in basket weaving and I need to make sure I get my raise to pay for that and the new ferrari'
So instead EMI coughs up extra cash this year for the MAFIAA to "change tactics" whereby they sue...everyone!
LOL. Ok, while i'll argue plenty of other points and crying about tips, I bow to your logic here.
:)
I'm used to NYC and it's suburbs. You can't spit without it landing on somewhere to eat around here. Death Valley is clearly different
That said, freedom of choice. I choose not to tip, they choose not to serve me tomorrow. Fair enough!
HAHAHAHA. Ok, so -1 troll but i'll respond anyway. You're clearly someoen who's pissed off they do (or did) work a service job that subsists off tips.
So let me get this straight - you want me to pay your salary instead of your employer. By itself, stupid but that's 'how things are'. Fine. Moving on...
First off, saying '20% for everything' means you're used to being the one getting tipped. It shows. You're greedy. That said, if service is good I will tip 18-20%. If the service is NOT good I will NOT tip anywhere near 20%. I'm not stupid, I can tell when a waiter is inattentive as opposed to the kitchen screwing everything up. I've had my meal come out wrong !twice! and still left a good tip because the waiter was actually there, available, explained the problem and did his/her best to fix it. I've had other times where i'm watching a waiter BS with his friends and then my food comes out cold and (god forbid) i ask for a drink refill and it takes 10 minutes. Guess what? He's getting 5% (not nothing so me might think I forgot) to make a point.
Beyond that. If you want to cry about "Anyone who has to stand up and pretend to be happy while dealing with the public" well then those people SHOULD GET A DIFFERENT JOB! If you hate the public, don't get a service job. It's THAT SIMPLE. You don't get sympathy (and money) from me because you don't like your job. There are plenty of people who are happy and keep a good attitude. They get good tips in general.
Again though, TIPS are reward/compensation for GOOD service. You may consider it mandatory but it's NOT. Welcome to merrit-based pay. You suck, you get jack. You're good, you can easily exceed your co-workers. If you don't like it, get a 9-5 and quit crying.
To finish...I just have to point out this one: "Maintaining a positive attitude in that situation requires compensation that is visible and frequent". HAHAHAHAHA. You know what? Learn some people skills. It's not like every person I deal with in my job is a perfect gentleman or lady. It's not like everyone, every time, is as considerate as they can be or even understands a situation completly. I deal with assholes all the time and i'm not a waiter! Guess what. No Vice President is going to hand me a $20 for dealing with his inane questions during my presentation.
Wrong, for several reasons.
First - check case law. A judge has ruled on a similar case where an individual declined to pay a "mandatory" tip and was arrested for it. The judge ruled that a tip is just that - an optional gratuity and can not be required.
Second - posting a 'sign' (it's usually a very small line at the bottom of the last page of the menu) still does not make something required or law. Especially if it violates existing law a/o case law.
If the waiter verbally informs the entire party and everyone CONSENTS to the charge then that's a different story.
Running a red light would be a infraction which is the lowest level of criminal offense and generally not tracked on any criminal record.
Infraction misdemeanor felony
AFAIK it is still 'criminal' though - however minor.
I love places that try to require a tip on the bill. Those places, shoudl I happen to wind up at one unknowingly, will never get a cent for a tip. I'll figure out the actual check total and pay exactly that. The can go scratch on the tip for being retarded about it.
Semi-poor and semi-modernized.
When a pre-requisite for getting free computers (recent Buy-two, get-one thing) is that 10 year old children aren't running around half-starved with AK_47's then i'll pay more attention. When you're faced with a situation where you have this fancy new laptop and are starving and day-to-day survival are an issue...the laptop isn't going to win. I wonder how many of these get traded around like currency for food?
How about we put basic agriculture, animal husbandry, hygiene, and basic medicine on these things? I'm not an expert on the needs of developing third world countries but those sound like much better uses than teaching children other abstract things. Instead of handing everything out, why not offer the people the ability to build the infrastructure they need to develop past 3rd world poor status?
Oh, and the first mandatory course that must be passed before you can use it...birth control! lol
There seems to be a lot of disagreement over which laptop is "better". Each model has their merrits, granted. OLPC is cheaper, MS/Intel magic is "windows" which is far more important when trying to integrate into the modern technical society.
Yes, there are mac/linux/unix/VAX/etc. machines out there that a OLPC student might be able to equate their experience with (in theory as OLPC is extremely point-click-go oriented by default). But that leaves them out of the ~90% of computers that run windows and puts them at a substantial disadvantage in that regards.
If you look at the computer from a non-techie world learning perspective, and assume you're not teaching these children for a career in technology but instead trying to use the laptop to facilitate basic education, the OLPC has the advantage for being outright cheaper.
Now...OLPC took how many years of preaching before the price creeped up by 100% and it finally launched? MS/Intel took what? 6 months? It seems to re-inforce the point that i've seen a long time in the coming - OLPC is a good idea poorly implemented. MS/Intel, I think, have done a better job in making an expensive laptop destined for those who will most benefit.
Would a starving ethernopian want a $200 laptop for free or $200 worth of durable farming goods (or whatever other example)? Would a lower-class poor child in a minor to moderately developed country (i.e. running water, electricity, basic telephone) benefit more from learning computer skills as basic food is available? If you really want to "help teh childrenz" how about offering what is most appropriate for someone's level of need.
Just because it's renewable doesn't mean it has to be more expensive. It just is now. Low use = high cost
As for the new challenge. Converting power beamed down from orbit is child's play. Creating the beam - in space or anywhere - that contains "statistically significant portion of the US electricity usage" is 99% of the difficulty. There already exist large mirror farms focusing sunlight to make steam and drive a turbine. Skip the mirrors, bigger focus target, and you're done with the ground-based system. No, it's not as pretty as a direct conversion to household AC but it's far far simpler and your main power source is essentially unlimited.
So one failure, even many (totally unrelated!) failures means that this idea can not possibly work either?
I can't stand people who argue like you. "Someone attacked world trade so the farmers market in union square should have armed MPs in case the chinese invade in frogsuits." The best counter-argument is laughter i think. Because, excluding sheeple that accept similar logic on their nightly news, we're all sitting back and wondering what planet you're from.
Oh, and you realize that that for every big success in R&D you have dozens, hundereds, thousands! of poor results or outright failures.
Actually conversion of highly concentrated radiation (whatever wavelength you prefer) is not all that difficult. Give me a couple gigawatt laser, maser, etc. beam and we'll convert it to power. You're aware there are mirror farms that focus onto a small point to flash boil water into steam...which drives turbines that drive generators. Scale it up a bit. There's no huge innovation required. There's no scientific breakthroughs required - just some good engineering.
... nudge the powers-that-be in a certain direction that would make it far more difficult for the magic do-gooder clean energy company?
Ironically, there IS a bigger problem you didn't address. That's converting the electricity produced in orbit TO a laser beam. You might recall that a highly efficient laser setup is what...20, 30, 50% efficient? Let's say you're going to use (a lot of) laser diodes. We're up to what...best case 90% efficiency? Let's say 99% for the hell of it. That means you have to find some what to dump 10MW of waste heat. In space. Minimum. Drop to 90% and you've got 100MW to deal with.
I think what's far more likely is a mirror farm with a ground receiver or a very different spectrum. Perhaps microwave? That's child's play to convert to heat energy and drive a turbine.
As for a conspiracy... You realize that a company deciding "yah, let's dooo eeeet" can't just plop down some cash and have their toys in space the next day...right? Do you truly believe that big businesses might not
Let's see. I make $100billions per year selling oil. Company X has all their funding, VC, loan $, etc. and reputation on the line to make their space energy venture work and according to their claims it will cost me business soon enough. Well hmm, let's see. They might kill birds beaming that power. Let's let PETA know. They might miss their target and fry little timmy and lassie running through the field. Let's let the press know. They're "using" airspace and transmitting so let's make sure they have a FCC license...that doesn't exist and will take the FCC 5-10 years to figure out. You really think it would be difficult to derail a startup company just long enough to go bankrupt?
Once a couple billion of private funding is lost on the idea...no one will try it again for a looooong time. E.g. nuclear power! Long Island residents (lower NY for those living elsewhere) pay some of the highest power rates in the country. Why? Becasue we're paying for the $billions shoreham nuclear power plant that was build and never allowed to operate. When was the last nuclear power plant proposed before the few recent ones? Yeah.
Reference!?
Or better, reference with supporting documentation with original, raw, unedited data.
First, no one that i'm aware of has published true raw data that "proves" global warming on a scale greater than the past ~100 years.
Second, where's your reference for claiming runaway global warming for the next 100years if CO2 production was halted?! It's claims like yours - hysteria with no supporting evidence - that news shows use to get people all worked up for no good reason.
Oh, and news at 11: Find out what you're doing right now that could be killing you and you don't even know it.
ULV procs...going to slow you down regardless. You also might be missing key drivers or something.
:)
I've got a D420 in front of me (haven't snagged a '30 to trade up yet) with the 32GB SSD and it's great. No, it's not as fast as the D630 in proc-heavy work but it's great for general office use. Ever try to delete a crap-ton of emails from a multi-GB PST file and then compact it? way less painful now
I have to say the D430 behaves better (faster) with the SSD and battery life is at least somewhat improved.
Now if only i could get someone to buy me a 2.5"SATA SSD for the D630
Spoofing a MAC is...child's play.
In fact, I'd even hesitate to call it spoofing since that word usually implies some sort of...i don't know...technical skill? Next time you're bored look at the properties for your network card. One of the options...yep, you guessed it. MAC Address. Some generic drivers may not support this but that's a pretty easy fix too.
10 years ago this might have been harder. Then again 10 years ago spoofing ANI for the skilled or CallerID for the simple was far more important anyway.
I'm not a support of the myraid of laws we have to follow on a daily basis ... but they're there regardless. Given that; a 19 year old college student, a 45 year old college professor, the janitor, and the CEO of Big Bucks Corp all are obliged to follow the same laws. Regardless of how stupid many laws are, equal accountability across all demographics I still very much believe in.
If you're paralyzed, you still can't rape and murder (pun ignored) without being considered a criminal just the same as i can't. I think the MAFIAA is one of the most vile corporations in existance in the US at the moment but that doesn't excuse someone because they're a single mom.
Common sense - yes. The DMCA and copyright law are retarded and totally opposite of common sense. They should be re-written or simply repealed so we can start over from scratch. Until that time though, there's no free pass because you need viagra to get a woody and are thus scorned. We need to fix the LAWS, not selectvely enforce them based on pity.
I'm moving to australia. Someone in charge there actually appears to have a functional brain.
Erm, the US gov't? Granted they're not selling much but...we do tend to go blow things up when people don't do what we want. Odd, that sounds a lot like terrorism...
My Suggestion:
Require an additional clause added where they guarantee you 6 months severance pay should you leave the company for any reason while that agreement is still in effect.
Yes...refuse to sign. Or better - just ignore it. Put it off, defer them, 'will get around to it'...till they either forget or you find a new job.
New job...good call. On your exit interview point out that you're leaving because the company clearly has no interest in treating people fairly or even caring in the slightest bit about them.
I'd rather give them to poor and underprivledged children in OUR OWN FRIGGIN COUNTRY but not like that'll happen. Your politicians and upity-up business types get much better press from giving a starving ethernopian a laptop.
Come black friday I guarantee there will be plenty of $400 "real" laptops for sale...there have already been quite a few anyhow. Not much of a deal. Oh, and for those who will say how rugged and durable the OLPC is...yes. But when you can't do jack shit with it even if it survives the trip through a dishwasher...what good is it? As evil as they are, MS is the de facto standard. If you don't know windows you're missing a key skill to join the technology work force. Giving a bunch of kids a one-off linux based laptop leaves out critical skills.
Fail.
There are a lot of bad phones out there. The iphone is...cute. It's good as a gadget or toy. It's certainly not a "bad" phone. It's good in many situations. It's not good in many others.
Re: locking to networks. The whole practice is horrible. They'll come out with 5 versions of one phone for the different networks. Bah. Yes, there are several cell bands out there. Guess what, quad-band phones are fairly common. I can take my TMO phone and ROAM almost anywhere in the world. Getting on the network is not the problem.
Re: OTA calendar, contacts. Critical for any business use. Not so much for personal use. Audio and video OTA...cute gimmic and another lovely result of copyright/DRM hell we live in. I'll pass on youtube OTA honestly.
Re: Bricking. Who says they didn't do it intentionally? Who says they did? Guess what, you don't know. I DO know though that they could have designed an open phone. I DO know they could have designed the phone to be unlockable and still work (like almost every other phone).
Re: real keyboard. Go trial the blackberry curve. They keys are small, yes. But it's very usable as a keyboard. The phone is NOT an inch and a half thick by any means. I can guarantee you i type faster on my BB curve than you do on the iphone. I'd bet the fast majority of people would be the same. The trick is many people type very little on the iphone. I type a lot on my blackberry.
My "tiny" screen (~2/3 of iphone) and "tiny" keyboard (oh wait, where's yours?) suit a purpose. Other phones can substitute for an iphone. An iphone can't substitute for all other phones.
See...i'm a pack rat. The kind of 'oh,i might need this let me bring it' person that always has a backpack with him.
For me, I always have my blackberry. Almost always I have my backpack with digicam, laptop, 1.8" external HDD, couple USB thumb drives, USB to mini5 cable, memory card adapter for my digicam, and SecureID token. I used to have my ipod nano with me too but my blackberry does that job now.
Now, I *could* just carry the blackberry. It can do almost anything i can do with the rest of the stuff. The problem is a matter of quality and user interface.
I only just started using camera phones. Now that i have 2MP and somewhat reasonable quality...it's good for "informational" pics. Like...'here's the price sticker from store x' while i drive to store y to compare. I'm still goign to cary my digicam.
The same applies to almost everything else. A jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. My BB is a decent phone, decent rolodex, decent email/calendar/etc., poor camera, functional MP3 player. If i had to take one thing and hit the road in an emergency (ok, i'd grab my backpack that has my stuff but i digress) i'd take the BB and survive.
When you can give me something hand-held, pocketable, with a substantial battery life (meaning 2+ days if you're calling it a cell phone) that can do an equal job to my bag of tricks i will happily leave the backpack home. Technology is moving in that direction but there are several generations of products to go though before the integration-level products are good enough to meet my demands.
We're getting there, I no longer need to purchase the largest hard drive or fastest CPU to make my day-to-day tasks and entertainment as good as i care about. I don't need a 12MP digital camera to take good pictures. I don't need a 120GB ipod.
Maybe in 5 years i'll have my universal device and a laptop for a full interface (until someoen designs a portable interface that's equally good to the keyboard and 13-19" screen). For now I'm keeping my backpack.
FYI, liquid N2 isn't really that expensive. On the order of $20 per litre in small quantities.
Buy a couple hundered gallons and it'll be much cheaper. In fact, you start getting to the point where it's cheaper to make it youself. Since most hospitals make and store LOX, it shouldn't be too difficult.