Idiot. Because they want to make ALL THE MONEY. If they can produce an energy-dense, carbon-negative, substitute for oil, for CHEAPER than oil, they will be selling to EVERYONE. In other words, they will have ALL THE MONEY.
There is nothing wrong with price discrimination. All companies should be allowed to sell their products for whatever price they want, based on any criteria they want (except, arguably, race/sex/religion etc, because society doesn't like it).
However, using the legal system to enforce that price discrimination is a bad idea. Without the extensive legal barriers set up to "make prices fair", and with uniform labor/production/safety etc laws worldwide, the average incomes of people in the West and people in China (in this example) would equalise much more rapidly.
When corporations hijack governments to protect their own interests, it is bad for everyone.
What if, literally, the head of NASA, the pope, the president of the USA and 90% of all that scientist's fellow researchers assure you that this scientist's data is accurate and his conclusion is true, even though he isn't exactly a PR genius?
James Hansen gets his money from an organisation that FLIES ROCKETS INTO SPACE. There is NOTHING about this man that fits your climate-change-proponent stereotype.
I cook all the time, and I can think of several ways in which I could use an automated kitchen system like the one that the parent describes:
- Download recipes made for the system from the net, my phone/pda tells me what to put in when;
- Visual indicators of when everything's going to be ready, and more importantly, the status of the various dishes I have cooking;
- Teaching someone anywhere in the world how to cook, by monitoring what they're doing in real-time so I can give them instant feedback and advice.
These are just the "radio with pictures" ideas anyone can come up with; in actual use, these systems will spawn new and awesome ways of living that we cannot yet imagine.
Birds have little magnets in their heads, they use the MAGNETIC field of the Earth to navigate, not the ELECTROMAGNETIC field, except when they use their eyes.
Oh, and we haven't just CALCULATED that the only effect is thermal; we've SHOWN it, in many scientific experiments.
Okay, so how do you change weapons? How do you open windows? How do you jump? What, you can't clamber over a thigh-high wall? Yeah, this is so immersive. Right.
I think they made an exception in Kirk's case because he saved the entire fucking Federation of Planets, and had an entire crew of Starfleet personell willing to raise hell if he didn't remain as Captain.
her death caused the deaths of all the Borg she controlled.
I thought that was the corrosive gas that did that. Not much of a collective intelligence if you have a single point of failure.
The corrosive gas only killed the Borg in Main Engineering. It didn't flood the entire ship. The Borg swarming all over the rest of the ship, and heading for the surface, died when the Queen died.
I took the implication was that the Queen was just another drone that was chosen to embody the collective consciousness. It made for some interesting dialog between Data and the Queen. But I think the the idea is that even though the Borg have a collective consciousness why would that uber-mind be cold and emotionless. Since its probably damn near impossible to portray the traditional disembodied group echo as having emotion I think the Queen was a reasonable plot vehicle as a "Borg Mouthpiece" much as Locutus was meant to be.
Nope, sorry. The Borg Queen could not be a simple mouthpiece for the collective, because she was the point of failure for the entire local collective; her death caused the deaths of all the Borg she controlled.
Which is why, as was pointed out above, her addition to the plot was like a turd down the throat of the Borg's awesomeness.
I must protest at your villainous misrepresentation of my nation's most important substance. Vegemite is not only awesome for adding a wonderful salty savour to nearly anything (toast, eggs, cheese, sandwiches, vegetables, chops, salads, caviar, soup, etc) but it is the most nutritious food in existence.
Eating Vegemite with every meal and snack will give you all your daily dietary requirements of vitamins, minerals, tar, natural hydrocarbons, and salt. Its mysterious effects include regeneration of teeth, brain acceleration, regrowth of eyebrows, and a tendency to shout "Oy!" - which is an important life-saving skill in Australia.
Vegemite is not only a great tasting universal food-additive, it will one day be acknowledged as the universal substance around which all life in the cosmos revolves.
Why should we be happy about cheap petroleum derived from coal? Coal is still a fossil fuel, which means that making fuel out of it, then burning the fuel, is just as damaging, greenhouse-wise, as burning the coal itself would be.
Obviously there's a lot to be said for reducing the soot and sulphur pollution, but ecologically speaking I would prefer that countries which are unable to convert directly to carbon-free technologies like electric cars pursue biofuels made from algae. This technology is incredibly impressive in its potential, and unlike current first-generation biofuels, could scale sufficiently to meet world demand in petrol use.
Because it would cost just as much in delta-vee to synch the probe's orbit with the asteroid's orbit and land on it, as to just put the probe in the EXACT SAME orbit without the asteroid being there.
To save fuel using the asteroid, you'd have to use some sort of springy tether to hook the asteroid and let it accelerate you without fuel. Not an entirely crazy idea, but we don't know how to do it yet.
Another possible use for the asteroid is physical shielding from the Sun's heat, but we don't know whether this asteroid is going near the Sun or not.
Slashdot Mirror
The government should stay out of *personal* morality *in matters that affect no-one else*, it's best for everyone.
There, fixed that for ya.
Idiot. Because they want to make ALL THE MONEY. If they can produce an energy-dense, carbon-negative, substitute for oil, for CHEAPER than oil, they will be selling to EVERYONE. In other words, they will have ALL THE MONEY.
They'd have to reroute the plasma flow and depolarise the graviton matrix first. Duh.
There is nothing wrong with price discrimination. All companies should be allowed to sell their products for whatever price they want, based on any criteria they want (except, arguably, race/sex/religion etc, because society doesn't like it).
However, using the legal system to enforce that price discrimination is a bad idea. Without the extensive legal barriers set up to "make prices fair", and with uniform labor/production/safety etc laws worldwide, the average incomes of people in the West and people in China (in this example) would equalise much more rapidly.
When corporations hijack governments to protect their own interests, it is bad for everyone.
Okay. So why can I buy a perfectly good calculator for 5 bucks, if there's all these external costs that you mentioned?
What if, literally, the head of NASA, the pope, the president of the USA and 90% of all that scientist's fellow researchers assure you that this scientist's data is accurate and his conclusion is true, even though he isn't exactly a PR genius?
What's your position then?
James Hansen gets his money from an organisation that FLIES ROCKETS INTO SPACE. There is NOTHING about this man that fits your climate-change-proponent stereotype.
Al Gore's read a book?
I cook all the time, and I can think of several ways in which I could use an automated kitchen system like the one that the parent describes:
- Download recipes made for the system from the net, my phone/pda tells me what to put in when;
- Visual indicators of when everything's going to be ready, and more importantly, the status of the various dishes I have cooking;
- Teaching someone anywhere in the world how to cook, by monitoring what they're doing in real-time so I can give them instant feedback and advice.
These are just the "radio with pictures" ideas anyone can come up with; in actual use, these systems will spawn new and awesome ways of living that we cannot yet imagine.
220 kilometers a second is NOT 0.2c, unless relativity has decided to get weird.
...as World of Warcraft is to games. One more way to charge a monthly fee.
Birds have little magnets in their heads, they use the MAGNETIC field of the Earth to navigate, not the ELECTROMAGNETIC field, except when they use their eyes.
Oh, and we haven't just CALCULATED that the only effect is thermal; we've SHOWN it, in many scientific experiments.
That's Maunder.
Okay, so how do you change weapons? How do you open windows? How do you jump? What, you can't clamber over a thigh-high wall? Yeah, this is so immersive. Right.
Yeah, because a shoulder-mounted SAM can hit a balloon without a strong infrared source AT 80,000 FEET...
I think they made an exception in Kirk's case because he saved the entire fucking Federation of Planets, and had an entire crew of Starfleet personell willing to raise hell if he didn't remain as Captain.
her death caused the deaths of all the Borg she controlled.
I thought that was the corrosive gas that did that. Not much of a collective intelligence if you have a single point of failure.
The corrosive gas only killed the Borg in Main Engineering. It didn't flood the entire ship. The Borg swarming all over the rest of the ship, and heading for the surface, died when the Queen died.
I took the implication was that the Queen was just another drone that was chosen to embody the collective consciousness. It made for some interesting dialog between Data and the Queen. But I think the the idea is that even though the Borg have a collective consciousness why would that uber-mind be cold and emotionless. Since its probably damn near impossible to portray the traditional disembodied group echo as having emotion I think the Queen was a reasonable plot vehicle as a "Borg Mouthpiece" much as Locutus was meant to be.
Nope, sorry. The Borg Queen could not be a simple mouthpiece for the collective, because she was the point of failure for the entire local collective; her death caused the deaths of all the Borg she controlled.
Which is why, as was pointed out above, her addition to the plot was like a turd down the throat of the Borg's awesomeness.
Microwaves are not gamma rays, chum. All they do is gently warm your testicles, not mutate them.
I must protest at your villainous misrepresentation of my nation's most important substance. Vegemite is not only awesome for adding a wonderful salty savour to nearly anything (toast, eggs, cheese, sandwiches, vegetables, chops, salads, caviar, soup, etc) but it is the most nutritious food in existence.
Eating Vegemite with every meal and snack will give you all your daily dietary requirements of vitamins, minerals, tar, natural hydrocarbons, and salt. Its mysterious effects include regeneration of teeth, brain acceleration, regrowth of eyebrows, and a tendency to shout "Oy!" - which is an important life-saving skill in Australia.
Vegemite is not only a great tasting universal food-additive, it will one day be acknowledged as the universal substance around which all life in the cosmos revolves.
Why should we be happy about cheap petroleum derived from coal? Coal is still a fossil fuel, which means that making fuel out of it, then burning the fuel, is just as damaging, greenhouse-wise, as burning the coal itself would be.
Obviously there's a lot to be said for reducing the soot and sulphur pollution, but ecologically speaking I would prefer that countries which are unable to convert directly to carbon-free technologies like electric cars pursue biofuels made from algae. This technology is incredibly impressive in its potential, and unlike current first-generation biofuels, could scale sufficiently to meet world demand in petrol use.
I forgive you... you utter, utter, utter...
It's okay to call Australians that because Australia is the only country on the island of Australia.
America has dozens of countries on it. However, I agree: USian is dumb.
Because it would cost just as much in delta-vee to synch the probe's orbit with the asteroid's orbit and land on it, as to just put the probe in the EXACT SAME orbit without the asteroid being there.
To save fuel using the asteroid, you'd have to use some sort of springy tether to hook the asteroid and let it accelerate you without fuel. Not an entirely crazy idea, but we don't know how to do it yet.
Another possible use for the asteroid is physical shielding from the Sun's heat, but we don't know whether this asteroid is going near the Sun or not.
What if "your affairs" are harming other people? Should the government continue to leave you alone?
Or should it step in to protect other people's "affairs"?