Hey, I'm not judging, I'm just pointing out that when Moore says "no one from the NRA has sued me over Bowling for Columbine," that's misleading. Someone has sued him, though not as a representative of the NRA. The lawsuit may be frivolous, but he exists. That's all I'm saying here.
Also, using Howard Stern is somewhat disingenious. I'd hardly call Stern a paragon of journalistic virtue.
Isn't that what makes it a HUD, that you don't look down? Indeed, isn't that why the term "heads-up display" was coined, to contrast it to instrument panels that you had to look down to read?
That being said, I agree with the sentiment expressed in your post. Having information displayed on a helmet overlay seems like a great idea, it means the motorcyclist won't have to look down to get information, and more space is available to display a greater variety of data.
Look at that map (or better, look at the larger map someone else above posted). Notice the massive overlaps between UK, Argentina, and Chilean claims? Notice the "undefined extent" label attached to the Norwegian claim (on the larger map, but not on your smaller map). These are mere claims, mostly unrecognized except by other nations with non-overlapping claims (all 5 of them). The Antartica Treaty you linked to lists as one of its provisions that "Territorial claims in Antarctica not affected by the Convention." So the existence of the treaty in no way means that claims have been recognized by signatory states. The territorial claims have no practical result at the moment (the US puts bases all over the place, despite having no claims), and they'll mean even less if anyone ever finds anything of value in Antartica.
If you actually read that article, you notice that the only time they use the word "phaser" is in the headline. It is also variously referred to as a "freeze gun" and a "ray gun." In actual point of fact, all it is is a taser gun, but instead of shooting darts attached to wires, it uses a laser to make an ionized pathway in the air.
There is still no such thing as a phaser, the word has no definition, beyond that found in Star Trek. This device may mimic one of the effects of the fictional weapon, but that is all.
Nope. The economy consistently grows, so incomes consistently rise, so more and more money is constantly pouring into the market. However, over the long run, the market cannot grow faster than the rate of economic growth + the rate of inflation.
As someone else pointed out, this may be an urban legend; the version I'd heard of this involved shoeshine boys. The lesson to take away, however, is not "the whole system is wrong." The lesson is that all available sources of cash had been exhausted. The stock market will only rise so long as there are more buyers than sellers. The only way that happens is if there are people with cash that has not yet been invested in the market. During runaway bull markets, everyone wants in, so people sell bonds, cash out their savings accounts, etc. and dump it all in the stock market. Eventually, these sources of cash run dry, and the market crashes. The point of the original story is that if busboys are putting money in the market, then we're near the limit, there are no more new sources of cash for the market, and it's time for a crash.
The same thing happened in the 90's. I read an article about how states which, during the great depression, had passed laws forbidding governmental organizations from putting money in the market were now repealing those prohibitions. Well, if Depression-era legal prohibitions were being repealed, then the market was due for a crash. Unfortuately, my prediction was a good two years eary, but oh well.
No, it's not different. No one is forcing you to go to a bar. You don't like smoke, you don't go to the bar, simple as that. If there is a large subset of people who patron bars on a regular basis but don't like smoke, then smoke free bars would exist. Frankly, I'm not sure I can imagine anti-smoking health nazis getting shitfaced in bars anyway, which is probably why the market didn't provide such nonsmoking bars.
Because as you say, two thirds of Texas is conservative. People are always willing to believe whatever will get their party into power. This is why Gerrymandering works, it relies on the fact that democracy is a dictatorship of the majority. Gerrymandering is simply a way to ensure that slim majorities will remain in power, without having to make concessions to minorities.
This is the same reason why support for the Florida recounts was almost precisely divided along party lines. It's hardly a coincidence that virtualy all Democrats believed that "hand recounts are the only way to be sure," while virtually all Republicans believed that "ballot tampering/theft and inconsistent counting of hanging/pregnant chads makes the hand recount actually less accurate, or at least more subjective, than the original machine tabulation." People believe what will get their canidates into power.
Yup, actually according to the first inflation calculator I found on Google, $0.25 in 1980 is $0.59 in 2002. Although, on the other hand, computer hardware has generally gotten much, much cheaper, so it seems entirely reasonable that the game should be cheaper in real terms.
Why not? I'll tell you why not. You know what it's called when you take protons out of an atom's nucleus, thereby transforming one element into another with a lower atomic number? It's called nuclear fission. Conversely, adding protons is known as fusion. These operations take tremendous power, several orders of magnitude more than any mere molecular reconfiguration. There's a reason that the force which binds molecules is called the "weak force," while the force binding nuclei is called the "strong force."
Now, far be it from me to call anything impossible, but the existence of molecular assemblers in no way implies the existence of atomic assemblers. We're talking about a whole new ballgame there.
Actually, I believe that the Western industrialized nations are diamond shaped. Not many at the top, not many at the bottom, most in the aptly named middle class.
However, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're talking about handmade items that are generally superior in quality to the machine made items, right? In Diamond Age, on the other hand, the handmade items were of inferior quality. Apparently they used to make handmade cars in Italy. They were originally of superior quality, and charged a high premium. As the machines got better, and cars got more complex, the handmade cars became worse and worse relatively, but charged ever increasing premiums as labor became more expensive. Obviously, they're not around anymore.
Okay, well now we run into the detour problems I was talking about before. And believe you me, such a route would by no means be speedy. There's a San Francisco to Truckee route which takes about 3.5 hours to drive, or about 6 hours to take the train. Why? Well, first off because of all the stops, but more importantly, once you get into the mountains the tracks start getting really curvy, and the train has to slow down substantially (I've never gone LA to Vegas myself, I'm from SF, but it is my understanding that the Sierra-Nevadas extend that far south). People just aren't going to want to lose a day at either end of their vacation for transportation.
How do you get that from what I said? Isn't that why museums call them "voluntary contributions," so that people who are unable to pay can still visit the museum? You're right, I don't believe it's stealing to not pay a museum's voluntary contribution, though if you have the ability to pay I believe it is immoral.
They DO care if you buy their CD, because it affects them in a very real rent-and-groceries sort of way.
I know, I wasn't arguing against that. I was saying, on the assumption that you would never buy a cd from them, downloading their music is not theft.
If you weren't going to buy their album, why should you get to have the song for free?
Yes, NOW you're actually adressing what I said. Except you don't actually provide an argument, you just leave an open ended question. Why shouldn't you get to have the song for free? One could say "because it's not fair to derive benefits from someone else's work if you don't pay to support him." Well what if the artist is dead? Does that matter?
Let me put the argument differently. Suppose I steal a chocolate bar from the grocery store. The owner of that store is now worse off. Suppose I download a song by Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson is no worse off. The grocery store owner would be better off if I had never been born. Michael Jackson would be no better or worse off if I had never been born. See the distinction?
Now, it's fine if you want to say that copyright infringement is morally no better than theft, that's your perogative. But in the real world, there's a substantial difference. If the two were equivalent, and every song downloaded actually cost the artist something, they all would have been forced into bankruptcy 2 years ago.
If the semantics are not important, why do you insist upon using an inaccurate term? It flat out IS NOT THEFT. When something is stolen, the other person doesn't have it anymore. Copyright infringement is only half of a theft. In a real theft, the person who used to have an item loses it, while the thief gains it. In copyright infringement, the infringer gains the item, but the original person still has it as well.
That point invalidates many of the moral arguments on your site. In your rent-a-car example, the rental company is depriving the proper owner of the use of his car. Copyright infringement doesn't deprive anyone of anything. To take a random name off the top of my head, consider Michael Jackson. Suppose that I would never buy a Michael Jackson CD (whether because I don't like his music enough, or I'm just morally outraged by his supposed behavior around children). It doesn't matter to Michael Jackson if I listen to his music or not. The only time it would matter is if I SAY I would never buy a MJ cd, but in actual point of fact, I would have bought it if it hadn't been available free online.
Why carbon? The parent is right, you will need to pay for access to rare elements (such as platinum, for example). Carbon, as you say, is so easy to find as to be effectively free, but not all elements are quite so plentiful.
Yeah, um, how do you think you're going to get the energy to "Make gasoline, or hydrogen at home?" Thermodynamics still applies when you're dealing with nanobots, you can't get more energy out than you put in.
Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age is probably a more reasonable assesment of where things will go. People will still be employed in the design of new machines, and will be able to afford better pieces of land, and more electricity (Stephenson also suggested that perhaps handmade items would become status symbols). The (unemployed?) masses will live in unparalleled comfort from a historical perspective, being well clothed, fed, etc.
Right, that was my point. The Northeast is the only area that's densly populated enough for multiple stops to make sense, and has the right kind of intermediate length trips to make it time efficient. Most of the USA is not like that.
Someone elsewhere was suggesting a Vegas to San Diego route. Well, the problem is, you'd have about 10 people get on or off at each stop in between, and then the train would totally empty out at the end. Japan is ideal for trains, because there are many highly populated cities in a reasonably sized area (about the size of California is my understanding, though I've never been there), more or less linearly laid out. The USA is more likely to have a few isolated islands amidst an enormous empty sea. The Northeast is an exception. The Midwest is not conveniently shaped (to hit the major cities, you have to go way the hell out of your way), and the West Coast is just not dense enough yet (but it is rapidly growing, small towns are becoming big towns, maybe in another 10 years it'll start making sense to have a railway along the coast).
You would think that, but you'd be wrong. In point of fact, even these super high speed trains Japan is rolling out are slower than a jumbo jet, especially considering that trains generally have to make stops along the way. On the other hand, you have to get to airports early, and it takes a little while to take off and land. So, the longer the journey, the more efficient airplanes are.
Conversely, getting to the train stations takes a little while, and you have to adjust your schedule to meet the timetable. So for very short trips, cars are more efficient (until traffic becomes a problem, so old and overcrowded cities tend to have the best subway systems).
So now that we've established that trips within an urban area, as well as coast to coast trips, are more efficient by car or plane respectively, it should be clear that Americans just don't make enough medium length trips for rail service to be useful. The one place where Amtrak does make money is the Northeast Corridor, Boston to New York
Okay, well it's simple enough to do a present value calculation. Assuming a discount rate of 10% (double what he'd be earning in his risk free bond), that'd be equivalent to an immediate payment of $13.5 million, enough to pay him $405,000 per year in interest. If he wanted to deduct from the principal, with even payments over the next 55 years, he'd get $505,000 per year.
Seeing as how I've been posting to slashdot for years, it should be obvious that this is not the case. I know that posting complimentary things about Microsoft can sometimes be taken the wrong way, but One Note is actually a fairly clever little program (though not as responsive as I'd like. Something this small should run very fast, the fact that there's a brief delay in switching from pen to eraser, or dragging text boxes, is kind of lame).
Quick note: I don't think you properly appreciate the speed and size difference between a palm and a tablet. If a medical professional has to look at (or even worse, edit) a patient's records, a tablet is going to provide a much larger, easier to read display, and is going to be much faster to write on. I know plenty of people who can't use PDAs without their reading glasses, large fonts on tablet PCs make that unnecessary. Palms make you write 1 letter at a time, wait while it interprets the writing, and then correct mistakes. Tablets let you write cursive, so long as you're writing dictionary words (note that the dictionary can be edited with a PowerTool, so medical folks can create a customized dictionary with whatever words they actually use), and when you correct mistakes you can correct the entire word using one of the suggested alternatives. Moreover if you're in a rush you can simply leave your writing as cursive until you actually have time to convert it to plain text, perhaps back at the docking station.
Now obviously there's also a substantial cost differential. I'm not a hospital administrator, so I won't even pretend that I can hold an intelligent conversation on whether the benefits are worth it. I will say, however, that there absolutely are benefits to anyone who, like a doctor, has to take notes while standing and/or walking around indoors. There are also a couple models with reflective screens, useful for those who have to do their notetaking outdoors (folks in the construction/landscaping/etc. industries).
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Also, using Howard Stern is somewhat disingenious. I'd hardly call Stern a paragon of journalistic virtue.
I don't know about the NRA, but at least one lawsuit has been filed by an individual appearing in the film.
Isn't that what makes it a HUD, that you don't look down? Indeed, isn't that why the term "heads-up display" was coined, to contrast it to instrument panels that you had to look down to read?
That being said, I agree with the sentiment expressed in your post. Having information displayed on a helmet overlay seems like a great idea, it means the motorcyclist won't have to look down to get information, and more space is available to display a greater variety of data.
Look at that map (or better, look at the larger map someone else above posted). Notice the massive overlaps between UK, Argentina, and Chilean claims? Notice the "undefined extent" label attached to the Norwegian claim (on the larger map, but not on your smaller map). These are mere claims, mostly unrecognized except by other nations with non-overlapping claims (all 5 of them). The Antartica Treaty you linked to lists as one of its provisions that "Territorial claims in Antarctica not affected by the Convention." So the existence of the treaty in no way means that claims have been recognized by signatory states. The territorial claims have no practical result at the moment (the US puts bases all over the place, despite having no claims), and they'll mean even less if anyone ever finds anything of value in Antartica.
There is still no such thing as a phaser, the word has no definition, beyond that found in Star Trek. This device may mimic one of the effects of the fictional weapon, but that is all.
Nope. The economy consistently grows, so incomes consistently rise, so more and more money is constantly pouring into the market. However, over the long run, the market cannot grow faster than the rate of economic growth + the rate of inflation.
The same thing happened in the 90's. I read an article about how states which, during the great depression, had passed laws forbidding governmental organizations from putting money in the market were now repealing those prohibitions. Well, if Depression-era legal prohibitions were being repealed, then the market was due for a crash. Unfortuately, my prediction was a good two years eary, but oh well.
No, it's not different. No one is forcing you to go to a bar. You don't like smoke, you don't go to the bar, simple as that. If there is a large subset of people who patron bars on a regular basis but don't like smoke, then smoke free bars would exist. Frankly, I'm not sure I can imagine anti-smoking health nazis getting shitfaced in bars anyway, which is probably why the market didn't provide such nonsmoking bars.
This is the same reason why support for the Florida recounts was almost precisely divided along party lines. It's hardly a coincidence that virtualy all Democrats believed that "hand recounts are the only way to be sure," while virtually all Republicans believed that "ballot tampering/theft and inconsistent counting of hanging/pregnant chads makes the hand recount actually less accurate, or at least more subjective, than the original machine tabulation." People believe what will get their canidates into power.
Yup, actually according to the first inflation calculator I found on Google, $0.25 in 1980 is $0.59 in 2002. Although, on the other hand, computer hardware has generally gotten much, much cheaper, so it seems entirely reasonable that the game should be cheaper in real terms.
Now, far be it from me to call anything impossible, but the existence of molecular assemblers in no way implies the existence of atomic assemblers. We're talking about a whole new ballgame there.
Actually, I believe that the Western industrialized nations are diamond shaped. Not many at the top, not many at the bottom, most in the aptly named middle class.
However, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're talking about handmade items that are generally superior in quality to the machine made items, right? In Diamond Age, on the other hand, the handmade items were of inferior quality. Apparently they used to make handmade cars in Italy. They were originally of superior quality, and charged a high premium. As the machines got better, and cars got more complex, the handmade cars became worse and worse relatively, but charged ever increasing premiums as labor became more expensive. Obviously, they're not around anymore.
Okay, well now we run into the detour problems I was talking about before. And believe you me, such a route would by no means be speedy. There's a San Francisco to Truckee route which takes about 3.5 hours to drive, or about 6 hours to take the train. Why? Well, first off because of all the stops, but more importantly, once you get into the mountains the tracks start getting really curvy, and the train has to slow down substantially (I've never gone LA to Vegas myself, I'm from SF, but it is my understanding that the Sierra-Nevadas extend that far south). People just aren't going to want to lose a day at either end of their vacation for transportation.
How do you get that from what I said? Isn't that why museums call them "voluntary contributions," so that people who are unable to pay can still visit the museum? You're right, I don't believe it's stealing to not pay a museum's voluntary contribution, though if you have the ability to pay I believe it is immoral.
I know, I wasn't arguing against that. I was saying, on the assumption that you would never buy a cd from them, downloading their music is not theft.
If you weren't going to buy their album, why should you get to have the song for free?
Yes, NOW you're actually adressing what I said. Except you don't actually provide an argument, you just leave an open ended question. Why shouldn't you get to have the song for free? One could say "because it's not fair to derive benefits from someone else's work if you don't pay to support him." Well what if the artist is dead? Does that matter?
Let me put the argument differently. Suppose I steal a chocolate bar from the grocery store. The owner of that store is now worse off. Suppose I download a song by Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson is no worse off. The grocery store owner would be better off if I had never been born. Michael Jackson would be no better or worse off if I had never been born. See the distinction?
Now, it's fine if you want to say that copyright infringement is morally no better than theft, that's your perogative. But in the real world, there's a substantial difference. If the two were equivalent, and every song downloaded actually cost the artist something, they all would have been forced into bankruptcy 2 years ago.
That point invalidates many of the moral arguments on your site. In your rent-a-car example, the rental company is depriving the proper owner of the use of his car. Copyright infringement doesn't deprive anyone of anything. To take a random name off the top of my head, consider Michael Jackson. Suppose that I would never buy a Michael Jackson CD (whether because I don't like his music enough, or I'm just morally outraged by his supposed behavior around children). It doesn't matter to Michael Jackson if I listen to his music or not. The only time it would matter is if I SAY I would never buy a MJ cd, but in actual point of fact, I would have bought it if it hadn't been available free online.
Wasn't there one case where an 80+ year old mac user was being sued?
Why carbon? The parent is right, you will need to pay for access to rare elements (such as platinum, for example). Carbon, as you say, is so easy to find as to be effectively free, but not all elements are quite so plentiful.
Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age is probably a more reasonable assesment of where things will go. People will still be employed in the design of new machines, and will be able to afford better pieces of land, and more electricity (Stephenson also suggested that perhaps handmade items would become status symbols). The (unemployed?) masses will live in unparalleled comfort from a historical perspective, being well clothed, fed, etc.
Someone elsewhere was suggesting a Vegas to San Diego route. Well, the problem is, you'd have about 10 people get on or off at each stop in between, and then the train would totally empty out at the end. Japan is ideal for trains, because there are many highly populated cities in a reasonably sized area (about the size of California is my understanding, though I've never been there), more or less linearly laid out. The USA is more likely to have a few isolated islands amidst an enormous empty sea. The Northeast is an exception. The Midwest is not conveniently shaped (to hit the major cities, you have to go way the hell out of your way), and the West Coast is just not dense enough yet (but it is rapidly growing, small towns are becoming big towns, maybe in another 10 years it'll start making sense to have a railway along the coast).
Conversely, getting to the train stations takes a little while, and you have to adjust your schedule to meet the timetable. So for very short trips, cars are more efficient (until traffic becomes a problem, so old and overcrowded cities tend to have the best subway systems).
So now that we've established that trips within an urban area, as well as coast to coast trips, are more efficient by car or plane respectively, it should be clear that Americans just don't make enough medium length trips for rail service to be useful. The one place where Amtrak does make money is the Northeast Corridor, Boston to New York
Okay, well it's simple enough to do a present value calculation. Assuming a discount rate of 10% (double what he'd be earning in his risk free bond), that'd be equivalent to an immediate payment of $13.5 million, enough to pay him $405,000 per year in interest. If he wanted to deduct from the principal, with even payments over the next 55 years, he'd get $505,000 per year.
Seeing as how I've been posting to slashdot for years, it should be obvious that this is not the case. I know that posting complimentary things about Microsoft can sometimes be taken the wrong way, but One Note is actually a fairly clever little program (though not as responsive as I'd like. Something this small should run very fast, the fact that there's a brief delay in switching from pen to eraser, or dragging text boxes, is kind of lame).
Now obviously there's also a substantial cost differential. I'm not a hospital administrator, so I won't even pretend that I can hold an intelligent conversation on whether the benefits are worth it. I will say, however, that there absolutely are benefits to anyone who, like a doctor, has to take notes while standing and/or walking around indoors. There are also a couple models with reflective screens, useful for those who have to do their notetaking outdoors (folks in the construction/landscaping/etc. industries).