I have a late-1930s drill press in my basement. Purchased by my great-grandfather. Almost 70 years old. I replaced the power cord, and need to investigate why the return spring doesn't work; it may need replacing as well.
A modern drill press is only a tiny bit more capable; I have to move a belt across pulleys to change its speed, while modern ones have electronic speed controls.
The story is the same for lathes. Table saws have seen little change; they're not even variable speed.
Woodworking tools are far cheaper than they were 20, 40, 60, or 80 years back. And some new types of tools have made some operations far easier (biscuit joiner, power miter saws). But the rest of it is still shaping wood with precision, and that takes time and skill and practice.
Changes in the IT world have been far more dramatic.
Median wages for the country have been stagnant for the last 5 years, while inflation has been chipping away, so people actually have less money to spend after you account for inflation.
And energy costs were way up last year. Add cost of gas to get to the multiplex to the ever increasing costs of "going out".
Western Electric and Bell Labs are now Lucent. NEC and ITT are now independent (and largely out of the US phone market). AT&T has abandoned consumer long distance.
Remember, AT&T was broken up because they were trying to keep Long Distance rates artificially high, to subsidize the local operating companies. Long Distance was viewed as a service that should be provided by competing companies. That fear is now long dead.
SBC bought Ameritech and Pacific Telesys. Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX, and then merged with GTE to form Verizon. QWEST bought U S WEST, and BellSouth has remained independent up until this development.
I do not find this aquisition particularly disturbing or threatening. Consumers have several viable sources for telephone services: cell phones, the incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, or ip phones over cable.
Choice is good. Customer choice with anti-trust regulators preserving competition and preventing cartels is even better.
See the War Powers Act, passed by Congress and signed in the aftermath of Watergate.
The President has the authority, as Commander in Chief, to order deployment of troops for up to 60 days without an act of Congress. Longer than that, and Congress has to exercise (or, in the case of recent events, abdicate) it's constitutional authority.
Presidents have used strikes on foreign targets without declarations of war on many occasions. Reagan's strikes on Libya, or the "invasion" of Grenada, or Bush's attack on Panama/Noriega, or Clinton's strikes on bin Laden or intervention in Yugoslavia.
OTTH (On the third hand...) if your skin is sweaty, it conducts a lot better than when it is dry. Enough better that enough current flows to dissipate enough power to heat your skin past the point where you suffer burns. Or worse.
On my cell phone, I have to pay a nickel for every text message I receive. So far, it's only been my 8-year-old daughter, and I'm working to encourage her to read any way I can.
But paying a nickel for SCO's text message ads? That's criminal.
Wouldn't the schools also have to keep there ducks in row if using Linux under GPL? They would need to make sure that there are no modified kernels or other software that hasn't been submitted back.
No. One is free to modify GPL'ed code to ones heart's content, and suffer no additional burden. The GPL would affect anyone who _distributes_ GPL'ed code.
Yes, it would be much easier and cheaper if schools could simply ignore the licenses - that is exactly why any corporation would be wary about license violations in this case.
If the school district switched to Linux, they could ignore Microsoft's license. And save the cost of being prepared for the audits.
Whether the boom box is expensive or not depends an awful lot on how it sounds, and how it is marketed. If it compares favorably to the Bose Wave Radio or Boom-Box, then it's a deal. The tuned-port woofer suggests premium sound, not $59 boom-box sound.
$800 for a 1.66 GHz Core Duo mini. You pay a big premium for the small size. Yes, it has a dual-layer DVD burner. But Notebook hard drive, with notebook hard-drive performance. Integrated video.
No Keyboard. No Monitor. No mouse. No spreadsheet. No drawing program. Pricy for what you do get.
For me, it was the Ewoks. How badass could the empire be if the friggin' Ewoks can do such damage to the place where they're building a new death star. It's like letting native americans on horseback with bows and arrows take over the site where a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is being built.
And, in a few years, when melting arctic and Greenland ice has disrupted the Atlantic Conveyor, northern europe, including Great Britain and Scandanavia, will be much, much colder.
has it been demonstrated that enforcing patents provide a net benefit to society?
After the Wright Brothers invented an airplane that could (a) carry people, and (b) be controlled in flight, they received a patent. Glenn Curtiss made some improvements, and got another patent. Other inventors did the same. And then the patent fight pretty much stopped aviation development, because noone could make a decent airplane without infringing on some patents held by someone.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, this was intolerable. So Congress basically nationalized all airplane patents, and then aviation took off.
Einstein's theory of general relativity tells us that to you he will have aged 24 hours, but to him you will have aged 24 hours
No, it doesn't.
_Special_Relativity_ says that two observers moving past each other in unaccelerated reference frames will each perceive that the other's clocks are running more slowly. The observations are consistent. To get the two observers into the same reference frame, one or both of them would have to accelerate, and general relativity conveniently works it so that the paradox vanishes.
In the actual example, one observer is remaining stationary, while the other is accellerating to high velocity, then accelerating to change velocity ("around the solar system") and then presumably accelerating a third time to return to the original reference frame. All three accellerations, plus travelling at high velocity relative to the rest frame, will cause the traveller's clock to run more slowly, as observed by someone in the rest frame.
Re:Of course time travel is possible!
on
No Time Travel, Sorry
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Oh, come on. Every one knows Bush won the 2000 election fair and square, 5 votes to 4.
Rumsfeld was not getting the "right" intelligence from the CIA, so he set up a special organization in the Department of Defense to send the "right" information directly to him and to the White House.
It wasn't "the same bad British intel". The voices that said "this is bunk" were simply ignored.
The East African Embassy bombings, and the retaliatory missile strikes, were in 1998.
The USS Cole was bombed in October, 2000. The Clinton Administration briefed the Bush administration on that, and decided not to saddle the incoming Bush administration with an operation already in progress (remember how well Somalia turned out? Started by Bush, and turned over to Clinton...)
There are (I think) far, far more important issues than just the degree to which one party or the next spends pork dollars in congress. Paying interest on it sucks, but not even having the economic activity sucks even more.
Right. But Republicans have a poor track record of generating economic activity.
The happy budget position that Clinton got to enjoy had more to do with post-tax-cut inertia from years before than it did anything else.
Bullshit. The happy budget position the Clinton got to enjoy had most to do with (a) recognizing that deficits matter, (b)making the politically hard choice to raise taxes in 1993, and (c) holding the line on overall spending through both his terms.
Those wise choices kept the economy growing, and the deficit shrinking.
The recession that got under way before he left office,
The recession started in March 2001, and lasted until November 2001
and which had a role in kicking off the current defecit as much as many other factors,
5% of the 2002 deficit is attributable to reduced economic activity from the recession of 2001. 70% is the tax cut, and 25% is increased spending.
was partly cyclical, and partly owing to policies that took shape during those 8 years. It's already correcting itself, and more people - substantially more - are working now than they were then.
In the current "recovery", job growth has trailed dramatically the average job growth of all the other post-WWII recessions/recoveries. So it is easy to make the case that current policies are hampering, not helping, the economy.
I'm not seeing all of this through rose-colored glasses, but my point is that it's not as simple "this year, the Republicans are spending more, so it's their fault."
Budget deficits are a simple arithmatical consequence of decreasing income and increasing spending. Republicans say one thing, that they are for small government and low taxes, and then do something else, big-government spending, and not paying for that spending. And to make it all even worse, Republican spending tends to maximize the benefits for the politically well-connected, like the Medicaid Part D plan that benefits pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies far more than it does old people who need medication.
It all hinges on the larger economy, and that's as impacted by weather, energy costs, baby boomer aging demographics, and jillion other factors as anything else. But taxing the activities (and invesments/investors) that keep things moving/growing doesn't help, and the urge to do so (or not) is a pretty clear philosophical distinction between the two political camps.
Typical "have my cake and eat it too" respone. Government programs have to be paid for. It is irresponsible to spend like gangbusters and pass tax cuts so that future generations have to pay for that spending in addition to what benefits they want government to provide.
In 1993, all the usual Republican suspects whined and gnashed their teeth that Clinton's deficit reduction package would sink the economy. It did no such thing, and the longest, strongest economic expansion in history happened. In 2000, Bush campaigned on "giving the people back their money", and with 1+1+1=5 arithmatic, persuaded folks that his first tax cut wouldn't use up the whole surplus. It did, and the economic solution to good times (tax cuts) was applied to the recession. More tax cuts in 2002, and again more tax cuts in 2003. The economic recovery is the weakest one yet.
The truth is only now getting out, and that is causing support for the war to drop.
This problem is not caused by a feckless populace. It is not caused by insufficiently patriotic media. It is a problem caused by the administration, when they chose to lie about why they were taking the country to war. On their hands is the blood of 50,000 Iraqis.
Slashdot Mirror
The article is pointing out that Coffee, Chemistry, the Parachute, vaccinations, etc. were invented or discovered or brought to Europe by muslims.
Didn't MIDI start from a Media-lab project to record timings and velocities of piano keystrokes, and building a machine to play them back?
I have a late-1930s drill press in my basement. Purchased by my great-grandfather. Almost 70 years old. I replaced the power cord, and need to investigate why the return spring doesn't work; it may need replacing as well.
A modern drill press is only a tiny bit more capable; I have to move a belt across pulleys to change its speed, while modern ones have electronic speed controls.
The story is the same for lathes. Table saws have seen little change; they're not even variable speed.
Woodworking tools are far cheaper than they were 20, 40, 60, or 80 years back. And some new types of tools have made some operations far easier (biscuit joiner, power miter saws). But the rest of it is still shaping wood with precision, and that takes time and skill and practice.
Changes in the IT world have been far more dramatic.
You could be on to something.
Median wages for the country have been stagnant for the last 5 years, while inflation has been chipping away, so people actually have less money to spend after you account for inflation.
And energy costs were way up last year. Add cost of gas to get to the multiplex to the ever increasing costs of "going out".
What do people cut out first? Entertainment.
Western Electric and Bell Labs are now Lucent. NEC and ITT are now independent (and largely out of the US phone market). AT&T has abandoned consumer long distance.
Remember, AT&T was broken up because they were trying to keep Long Distance rates artificially high, to subsidize the local operating companies. Long Distance was viewed as a service that should be provided by competing companies. That fear is now long dead.
SBC bought Ameritech and Pacific Telesys. Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX, and then merged with GTE to form Verizon. QWEST bought U S WEST, and BellSouth has remained independent up until this development.
I do not find this aquisition particularly disturbing or threatening. Consumers have several viable sources for telephone services: cell phones, the incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, or ip phones over cable.
Choice is good. Customer choice with anti-trust regulators preserving competition and preventing cartels is even better.
See the War Powers Act, passed by Congress and signed in the aftermath of Watergate.
The President has the authority, as Commander in Chief, to order deployment of troops for up to 60 days without an act of Congress. Longer than that, and Congress has to exercise (or, in the case of recent events, abdicate) it's constitutional authority.
Presidents have used strikes on foreign targets without declarations of war on many occasions. Reagan's strikes on Libya, or the "invasion" of Grenada, or Bush's attack on Panama/Noriega, or Clinton's strikes on bin Laden or intervention in Yugoslavia.
OTTH (On the third hand...) if your skin is sweaty, it conducts a lot better than when it is dry. Enough better that enough current flows to dissipate enough power to heat your skin past the point where you suffer burns. Or worse.
On my cell phone, I have to pay a nickel for every text message I receive. So far, it's only been my 8-year-old daughter, and I'm working to encourage her to read any way I can.
But paying a nickel for SCO's text message ads? That's criminal.
Whether the boom box is expensive or not depends an awful lot on how it sounds, and how it is marketed. If it compares favorably to the Bose Wave Radio or Boom-Box, then it's a deal. The tuned-port woofer suggests premium sound, not $59 boom-box sound.
But you can't tell until you hear it.
$800 for a 1.66 GHz Core Duo mini. You pay a big premium for the small size. Yes, it has a dual-layer DVD burner. But Notebook hard drive, with notebook hard-drive performance. Integrated video.
No Keyboard. No Monitor. No mouse. No spreadsheet. No drawing program. Pricy for what you do get.
I don't have any mod points today. If I did, dtsazza would get another (+1 Insightful), because he nails it.
I agree with this post 100%.
You've nailed the history of the 1990s spot on. Efficiency gains in the 1980s. Reduction in demand. Low energy prices in the 1990s. Hummers.
For me, it was the Ewoks. How badass could the empire be if the friggin' Ewoks can do such damage to the place where they're building a new death star. It's like letting native americans on horseback with bows and arrows take over the site where a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is being built.
And, in a few years, when melting arctic and Greenland ice has disrupted the Atlantic Conveyor, northern europe, including Great Britain and Scandanavia, will be much, much colder.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, this was intolerable. So Congress basically nationalized all airplane patents, and then aviation took off.
_Special_Relativity_ says that two observers moving past each other in unaccelerated reference frames will each perceive that the other's clocks are running more slowly. The observations are consistent. To get the two observers into the same reference frame, one or both of them would have to accelerate, and general relativity conveniently works it so that the paradox vanishes.
In the actual example, one observer is remaining stationary, while the other is accellerating to high velocity, then accelerating to change velocity ("around the solar system") and then presumably accelerating a third time to return to the original reference frame. All three accellerations, plus travelling at high velocity relative to the rest frame, will cause the traveller's clock to run more slowly, as observed by someone in the rest frame.
Oh, come on. Every one knows Bush won the 2000 election fair and square, 5 votes to 4.
Rumsfeld was not getting the "right" intelligence from the CIA, so he set up a special organization in the Department of Defense to send the "right" information directly to him and to the White House.
It wasn't "the same bad British intel". The voices that said "this is bunk" were simply ignored.
The East African Embassy bombings, and the retaliatory missile strikes, were in 1998.
The USS Cole was bombed in October, 2000. The Clinton Administration briefed the Bush administration on that, and decided not to saddle the incoming Bush administration with an operation already in progress (remember how well Somalia turned out? Started by Bush, and turned over to Clinton...)
Bullshit. The happy budget position the Clinton got to enjoy had most to do with (a) recognizing that deficits matter, (b)making the politically hard choice to raise taxes in 1993, and (c) holding the line on overall spending through both his terms.
Those wise choices kept the economy growing, and the deficit shrinking.
The recession started in March 2001, and lasted until November 2001
5% of the 2002 deficit is attributable to reduced economic activity from the recession of 2001. 70% is the tax cut, and 25% is increased spending.
In the current "recovery", job growth has trailed dramatically the average job growth of all the other post-WWII recessions/recoveries. So it is easy to make the case that current policies are hampering, not helping, the economy.
Budget deficits are a simple arithmatical consequence of decreasing income and increasing spending. Republicans say one thing, that they are for small government and low taxes, and then do something else, big-government spending, and not paying for that spending. And to make it all even worse, Republican spending tends to maximize the benefits for the politically well-connected, like the Medicaid Part D plan that benefits pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies far more than it does old people who need medication.
Typical "have my cake and eat it too" respone. Government programs have to be paid for. It is irresponsible to spend like gangbusters and pass tax cuts so that future generations have to pay for that spending in addition to what benefits they want government to provide.
In 1993, all the usual Republican suspects whined and gnashed their teeth that Clinton's deficit reduction package would sink the economy. It did no such thing, and the longest, strongest economic expansion in history happened. In 2000, Bush campaigned on "giving the people back their money", and with 1+1+1=5 arithmatic, persuaded folks that his first tax cut wouldn't use up the whole surplus. It did, and the economic solution to good times (tax cuts) was applied to the recession. More tax cuts in 2002, and again more tax cuts in 2003. The economic recovery is the weakest one yet.
Newton's "Universal Law of Gravitation" is incorrect. It gets the orbit of Mercury wrong.
Einstein's "Theory of General Relativity" corrects Newton's Law of Gravitation.
The Universal Gas Law, PV = nRT, isn't quite correct. You need to correct for the size of gas molecules, and Van der Waal's forces.
So what is the relationship between a theory and a law? Laws are mostly 19th century and before. Now it is all theory.
If, by 50-50, you mean that 45% of the public still thinks going to war was a good idea, and 55% of the public thinks it was a mistake.
The truth is only now getting out, and that is causing support for the war to drop.
This problem is not caused by a feckless populace. It is not caused by insufficiently patriotic media. It is a problem caused by the administration, when they chose to lie about why they were taking the country to war. On their hands is the blood of 50,000 Iraqis.