Sigh, the point of the tax wasn't about the gas (or how much of it you use) it was about how many miles of road your car drove over. In other words, it was an easy way to estimate how much damage your car was doing to the roads. Bigger vehicles used more gas per mile but also weighed more, thus causing more damage per mile. Your father was doing as much damage to the road while coasting down the hill as he would have done with the engine running. Basically, he found a way to, potentially, cheat the system. On the other hand, the amount of tax money he save was, probably, minuscule and, as ctetc007 mentioned, restarting the engine may have ended up costing him more gas in the end anyway.
I went to school in Rochester, NY, so I'm familiar with the area. The good news is that the power up there is obscenely cheap (if you're in a township that gets the hydro power) and that they should have no problem cooling the facility for much of the year. The bad news is that the snow gets so bad that they've, routinely, had to shut down the NY State Thruway West of Rochester during winter storms. Good luck getting to work in those conditions, they may want to consider setting up cots for the Admins.
IANAL, but think I can see, at least, one way that she could try to justify "actual damages". Newspapers fund themselves through advertising. They justify their rates to their advertisers through thee of their readership and the size of their readership is based on the quality of their content. Basically, they could figure out what percentage of that edition of the paper her letter represented and use that number to calculate what percentage of that edition's ad revenue is based on the content they stole from her. Of course, they may want to weight that value based on the section of the paper it's in which could use a similar scale as the cost of advertising in that section vs. the cost of advertising in the most expensive section in the paper. I would think that that would provide some concrete "actual damages" on top of the consequential damages to her father's business.
As far as any possible fair use right the paper might have, I think that the only leg that they have left (according to the lawyer above who was the most stridently pro fair use rights) is the idea that they were using the information for criticism, comment, and newspaper reporting. What I would think would discredit this possibility, completely, is the fact that they actively chose to falsely represent the letter as having been sent in, by her, as a letter to the editor. Had they printed the letter acknowledging that she hadn't chosen to send it in then this claim might make more sense.
Another possibility is that they prefer to milk people out of their money in a more direct and personal matter while they use the website and PR to back up their sales pitch. Or, perhaps they landed a large venture capital deal/group of deals early on and have been milking that money while pretending to work on the technology. They may not have a need to go looking for more cash right now.
It's, probably, also "creatively" translated to eliminate any "questionable" themes and add in some pro-regime themes. My understanding is that that's a pretty common practice in a lot of the more opressive countries.
I do, but I don't want, even the chance, that they'll think I'm an out of state applicant using a friend/family address in order to apply for jobs outside my area. The biggest trick in job hunting is to get your resume past those first few "weed out" stages where HR people just look for any excuse to disqualify an applicant so that they can wheedle the number down to a more manageable quantity. I've seen this in action while temping in and HR department. In the end, I try to make sure that anything that might look out of the ordinary (in anything other than a good way) is purged from my resume.
Your concepts seem sound, but you don't seem to have a good understanding of solar systems or this situation, in particular. Nowhere in the post did I see anything to suggest that this is an "off grid" system. In fact, looking at his one month update immediately mentions what his electricity bill has dropped to which, explicitly, implies that it's a grid tied system (the most common type of system). Instead of storing energy, it just flows back into the grid when not being used and the electric company gives you a credit towards any grid based power you end up using in the future. In fact, if you bother to read his original article, it clearly states that the only components in the system are the solar cells, the wiring, and the AC inverter. Like most things designed for home/commercial power management, I think it's safe to assume that the inverter, probably, has an expected lifespan that meets, or exceed, that of the panels.
The only thing you might have a point about would be the issue of baseballs, hail, etc. Personally, I would expect that the panels are, reasonably, durable but damage is always possible. Of course, that's one of the reasons you would want to have homeowners insurance.
Actually, NPR had a piece yesterday about how the number of people with only cell phones (no landlines) just surpassed the number with landlines in the US. However, "Jason Levine" is right that even people with only one phone might find this useful. Personally, since moving to Chicago from upstate NY I haven't changed my area code (I save a lot of money by staying on my parents "Friends and Family plan" and would want to give up my phone number even if I could). However, if I decide I want to submit resumes for jobs I want the phone number to have a local area code. My concern is that the unusual area code will either make them think I'm applying from out of state or that it's a type (my old NY area code is only one number off from one of the area codes in the Chicago area). Either of those two possibilities could be used as a way for them to weed out my application early in the hiring process. Before this, I had to buy cheap pre-paid phone with a local number and keep putting a little money into it every month, or so, to keep it active.
As MindStalker said, the Microsoft profit margins are exceptional and only seen in industries controlled by monopolies (which Microsoft, coincidentally, was found to be on two continents). Another industry where you can find similar, absurd, margins is probably diamonds sold by DeBeers. In the case of Apple, and to a much lesser extent even Microsoft, they are selling more than just a product service, they are also selling an image which can drive up the margin. You call food "boring" but how is it any different that the bandwidth industry? That's right, companies like Verizon and AT&T may want everyone to believe they are selling a "sexy" product, but they're just selling a commodity called bandwidth. There's nothing special about a website, phone call, etc. sent over AT&T vs. one sent over Verizon.
The real reason why they're able to demand such high margins is that as much as some people whine about how the FCC should stay out of their business and let the free market function, the telecomm market is, by it's nature, anything but free, especially in the case of cellphone providers. Right from the start, competition is severely limited as they are given a, government granted, monopoly on the limited radio frequencies. Pair that with government granted, exclusive access to municipal easements and the extremely high cost of entry into the industry and you end up with a de-facto cartel of a very small number of companies.
The reason we've had things like the original Carterphone ruling (which allowed the FCC to force the old AT&T to let people "tether" whatever equipment they want to AT&Ts original analog network without needing permission) is that the FCC exists to balance the equation and make sure that these companies aren't allowed to rape the public. The problem is, the FCC hasn't been doing it's job for the last few decades and has been in the phone companies' pockets. We need the FCC to step up and force the telco/cellphone/cable companies to stop playing word games with their products and start selling bandwidth by simple measures just like how electricity is sold by kWh and water is sold by the gallon. Those rates should be monitored to make sure that things like text messaging aren't, artificially, singled out for price gouging. Also, they should be banned from limiting what hind of hardware you can connect to the network and banned from charging you a fee for doing so. If I pay for bandwidth, it's should be none of their business what kind of equipment I'm using.
I disagree, I think we will, definitely, see an exoskeletal combat suit come into use. The thing is, I don't think it'll be anywhere near as big as the suits amine/this guy seem to advocate. I think that they will end up being as form fitting as possible.
The thing is that regardless of all the advanced weaponry we've developed, the last few wars have shown that you still need feet on the ground to take and hold populated areas. When it comes to breaching buildings and patrolling insurgent infested areas, we've seen that our technological advantage is, largely, neutralized.
A combat exoskeleton designed to be little larger than an average man (or maybe, even, the size of an average man with below average sized men being chosen as pilots) would allow travel inside confined places like buildings while also providing the ability to mount heavier armor; carry heavier weapons; carry more ammo; and carry better communications gear. This could make it so that the troops put in the most dangerous positions (breaching buildings and running dangerous patrols) would be impervious to injury from all but the largest IEDs/mines/grenades that would have killed or maimed troops wearing today's heaviest body armor.
Of course, at some point it will be possible to design robots that can do the same job. However, I've seen much of the cutting edge technology in both exoskeleton design, robotics, and AI and I think that the exoskeleton will be here much sooner than a robot/AI that can physically do all the things a person can as well as make judgment (ex. whether someone encountered is an enemy combatant or a civilian) calls as well as a human soldier. This all assumed that we decide that we, actually, want robots/computers to have that kind of independent power.
I can see the Milkyway just fine here in the Chicago area, day or night. The trick is, instead of looking up, look down and, unless the fog is really heavy, you'll be looking at part of the Milkyway (though, technically, I guess the fog would be part of the Milkyway too).
Race is a genetic terminology. People with similar genetic features (stemming from a common ancestor) are from the same race). That is the only definition. What you described is your own, incompetent, re-definition. There's a reason why U.S. anti-discrimination law, specifically, differentiates between "race" and "National Origin" as two, completely separate, protected classes of people. There are many different, distinct, races of people in Europe, especially now that there has been so much immigration from all over the world. The story was bigoted, but it wasn't racist.
Personally, I think it was time traveling, alien, mushrooms. Until they find, even a small amount, of evidence my theory is almost as strong as this one. In other words, until there is some evidence, one way or the other, any conjecture over the cause is nothing more than mental self manipulation (if you know what I mean).
Honestly, they should be released here in the US. We're the reason they, unjustly, spent the last half a decade in a hellish prison we should, at the least, man-up and take responsibility for our actions rather than try to pawn them off on someone else. I think the bigger disgrace is that they have spent even a day in that place past the point where we, publicly, admitted they aren't terrorists.
It may lead to behavioral modification, but the immediate result is to lower the amount of false positives. It errs on the side of not registering a key press rather than registering an unintended key choice.
After that he took a moment out of the interview to stick his head out the window and yell at a group of young kids to "get off my lawn"...
Seriously though all languages evolve and English isn't an exception. Sci-Fi is a generally accepted short-hand for "science fiction" most of the rest of society, that bothers to use the word, out-voted my Bradbury and they're the ones that get to decide.
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Oops, NM. I just noticed the second part of your statement already pointing out everything I just mentioned.
Sigh, the point of the tax wasn't about the gas (or how much of it you use) it was about how many miles of road your car drove over. In other words, it was an easy way to estimate how much damage your car was doing to the roads. Bigger vehicles used more gas per mile but also weighed more, thus causing more damage per mile. Your father was doing as much damage to the road while coasting down the hill as he would have done with the engine running. Basically, he found a way to, potentially, cheat the system. On the other hand, the amount of tax money he save was, probably, minuscule and, as ctetc007 mentioned, restarting the engine may have ended up costing him more gas in the end anyway.
I went to school in Rochester, NY, so I'm familiar with the area. The good news is that the power up there is obscenely cheap (if you're in a township that gets the hydro power) and that they should have no problem cooling the facility for much of the year. The bad news is that the snow gets so bad that they've, routinely, had to shut down the NY State Thruway West of Rochester during winter storms. Good luck getting to work in those conditions, they may want to consider setting up cots for the Admins.
Like vishbar said, you refuse to allow the studios to do business in Iran unless they agree to use your officially sanctioned subtitle script.
IANAL, but think I can see, at least, one way that she could try to justify "actual damages". Newspapers fund themselves through advertising. They justify their rates to their advertisers through thee of their readership and the size of their readership is based on the quality of their content. Basically, they could figure out what percentage of that edition of the paper her letter represented and use that number to calculate what percentage of that edition's ad revenue is based on the content they stole from her. Of course, they may want to weight that value based on the section of the paper it's in which could use a similar scale as the cost of advertising in that section vs. the cost of advertising in the most expensive section in the paper. I would think that that would provide some concrete "actual damages" on top of the consequential damages to her father's business.
As far as any possible fair use right the paper might have, I think that the only leg that they have left (according to the lawyer above who was the most stridently pro fair use rights) is the idea that they were using the information for criticism, comment, and newspaper reporting. What I would think would discredit this possibility, completely, is the fact that they actively chose to falsely represent the letter as having been sent in, by her, as a letter to the editor. Had they printed the letter acknowledging that she hadn't chosen to send it in then this claim might make more sense.
Another possibility is that they prefer to milk people out of their money in a more direct and personal matter while they use the website and PR to back up their sales pitch. Or, perhaps they landed a large venture capital deal/group of deals early on and have been milking that money while pretending to work on the technology. They may not have a need to go looking for more cash right now.
It's, probably, also "creatively" translated to eliminate any "questionable" themes and add in some pro-regime themes. My understanding is that that's a pretty common practice in a lot of the more opressive countries.
No-one ever said that it was translated faithfully. Or, perhaps, it was translated to be full of "faith"...
I do, but I don't want, even the chance, that they'll think I'm an out of state applicant using a friend/family address in order to apply for jobs outside my area. The biggest trick in job hunting is to get your resume past those first few "weed out" stages where HR people just look for any excuse to disqualify an applicant so that they can wheedle the number down to a more manageable quantity. I've seen this in action while temping in and HR department. In the end, I try to make sure that anything that might look out of the ordinary (in anything other than a good way) is purged from my resume.
Your concepts seem sound, but you don't seem to have a good understanding of solar systems or this situation, in particular. Nowhere in the post did I see anything to suggest that this is an "off grid" system. In fact, looking at his one month update immediately mentions what his electricity bill has dropped to which, explicitly, implies that it's a grid tied system (the most common type of system). Instead of storing energy, it just flows back into the grid when not being used and the electric company gives you a credit towards any grid based power you end up using in the future. In fact, if you bother to read his original article, it clearly states that the only components in the system are the solar cells, the wiring, and the AC inverter. Like most things designed for home/commercial power management, I think it's safe to assume that the inverter, probably, has an expected lifespan that meets, or exceed, that of the panels.
The only thing you might have a point about would be the issue of baseballs, hail, etc. Personally, I would expect that the panels are, reasonably, durable but damage is always possible. Of course, that's one of the reasons you would want to have homeowners insurance.
Actually, NPR had a piece yesterday about how the number of people with only cell phones (no landlines) just surpassed the number with landlines in the US. However, "Jason Levine" is right that even people with only one phone might find this useful. Personally, since moving to Chicago from upstate NY I haven't changed my area code (I save a lot of money by staying on my parents "Friends and Family plan" and would want to give up my phone number even if I could). However, if I decide I want to submit resumes for jobs I want the phone number to have a local area code. My concern is that the unusual area code will either make them think I'm applying from out of state or that it's a type (my old NY area code is only one number off from one of the area codes in the Chicago area). Either of those two possibilities could be used as a way for them to weed out my application early in the hiring process. Before this, I had to buy cheap pre-paid phone with a local number and keep putting a little money into it every month, or so, to keep it active.
LEDs will hurt you if they are powerful enough and you stare directly into them as the GP suggests. Also, IT WAS A JOKE.
I don't know for certain, but I think it involves a portly Philadelphian and a key...
As MindStalker said, the Microsoft profit margins are exceptional and only seen in industries controlled by monopolies (which Microsoft, coincidentally, was found to be on two continents). Another industry where you can find similar, absurd, margins is probably diamonds sold by DeBeers. In the case of Apple, and to a much lesser extent even Microsoft, they are selling more than just a product service, they are also selling an image which can drive up the margin. You call food "boring" but how is it any different that the bandwidth industry? That's right, companies like Verizon and AT&T may want everyone to believe they are selling a "sexy" product, but they're just selling a commodity called bandwidth. There's nothing special about a website, phone call, etc. sent over AT&T vs. one sent over Verizon.
The real reason why they're able to demand such high margins is that as much as some people whine about how the FCC should stay out of their business and let the free market function, the telecomm market is, by it's nature, anything but free, especially in the case of cellphone providers. Right from the start, competition is severely limited as they are given a, government granted, monopoly on the limited radio frequencies. Pair that with government granted, exclusive access to municipal easements and the extremely high cost of entry into the industry and you end up with a de-facto cartel of a very small number of companies.
The reason we've had things like the original Carterphone ruling (which allowed the FCC to force the old AT&T to let people "tether" whatever equipment they want to AT&Ts original analog network without needing permission) is that the FCC exists to balance the equation and make sure that these companies aren't allowed to rape the public. The problem is, the FCC hasn't been doing it's job for the last few decades and has been in the phone companies' pockets. We need the FCC to step up and force the telco/cellphone/cable companies to stop playing word games with their products and start selling bandwidth by simple measures just like how electricity is sold by kWh and water is sold by the gallon. Those rates should be monitored to make sure that things like text messaging aren't, artificially, singled out for price gouging. Also, they should be banned from limiting what hind of hardware you can connect to the network and banned from charging you a fee for doing so. If I pay for bandwidth, it's should be none of their business what kind of equipment I'm using.
I suppose he could do the same thing they did in the M1A1 Abrams tank and replace the batter with a turbo-shaft engine based gen-set.
I disagree, I think we will, definitely, see an exoskeletal combat suit come into use. The thing is, I don't think it'll be anywhere near as big as the suits amine/this guy seem to advocate. I think that they will end up being as form fitting as possible.
The thing is that regardless of all the advanced weaponry we've developed, the last few wars have shown that you still need feet on the ground to take and hold populated areas. When it comes to breaching buildings and patrolling insurgent infested areas, we've seen that our technological advantage is, largely, neutralized.
A combat exoskeleton designed to be little larger than an average man (or maybe, even, the size of an average man with below average sized men being chosen as pilots) would allow travel inside confined places like buildings while also providing the ability to mount heavier armor; carry heavier weapons; carry more ammo; and carry better communications gear. This could make it so that the troops put in the most dangerous positions (breaching buildings and running dangerous patrols) would be impervious to injury from all but the largest IEDs/mines/grenades that would have killed or maimed troops wearing today's heaviest body armor.
Of course, at some point it will be possible to design robots that can do the same job. However, I've seen much of the cutting edge technology in both exoskeleton design, robotics, and AI and I think that the exoskeleton will be here much sooner than a robot/AI that can physically do all the things a person can as well as make judgment (ex. whether someone encountered is an enemy combatant or a civilian) calls as well as a human soldier. This all assumed that we decide that we, actually, want robots/computers to have that kind of independent power.
I can see the Milkyway just fine here in the Chicago area, day or night. The trick is, instead of looking up, look down and, unless the fog is really heavy, you'll be looking at part of the Milkyway (though, technically, I guess the fog would be part of the Milkyway too).
Silly, you don't need to be a superhero in order to be able to walk around on broken glass, you just need to be a masochist.
Race is a genetic terminology. People with similar genetic features (stemming from a common ancestor) are from the same race). That is the only definition. What you described is your own, incompetent, re-definition. There's a reason why U.S. anti-discrimination law, specifically, differentiates between "race" and "National Origin" as two, completely separate, protected classes of people. There are many different, distinct, races of people in Europe, especially now that there has been so much immigration from all over the world. The story was bigoted, but it wasn't racist.
Personally, I think it was time traveling, alien, mushrooms. Until they find, even a small amount, of evidence my theory is almost as strong as this one. In other words, until there is some evidence, one way or the other, any conjecture over the cause is nothing more than mental self manipulation (if you know what I mean).
Honestly, they should be released here in the US. We're the reason they, unjustly, spent the last half a decade in a hellish prison we should, at the least, man-up and take responsibility for our actions rather than try to pawn them off on someone else. I think the bigger disgrace is that they have spent even a day in that place past the point where we, publicly, admitted they aren't terrorists.
You can, but then they'll all have the shits.
It may lead to behavioral modification, but the immediate result is to lower the amount of false positives. It errs on the side of not registering a key press rather than registering an unintended key choice.
*Mr.
After that he took a moment out of the interview to stick his head out the window and yell at a group of young kids to "get off my lawn"...
Seriously though all languages evolve and English isn't an exception. Sci-Fi is a generally accepted short-hand for "science fiction" most of the rest of society, that bothers to use the word, out-voted my Bradbury and they're the ones that get to decide.