Why would you not base it on inside/outside temperature? Seems to me that is easier than remote control....
Because not every application needs to heat based on the ambient temperature (that just takes a thermostat). Usage enters into it as well.
I have a friend with an unheated airplane hanger, and an antique prop-start plane he flies once or twice a week. He has a magnetically attached heater for warming the engine oil prior to starting it in cold weather (really useful when you have to spin it by hand.) Because of the risk and expense of operating a heater unattended, he wants to power it as little as possible. Since he needs to turn the heater on about an hour before he flies, and he lives about half an hour from the airport, this is the perfect application for a remotely controlled switch to operate a heater.
A better trigger would start a one-shot cycle that would power it on only for about two hours max, and then shut itself off as a safety precaution. It would also be wired into a smoke detector, and be thermostatically protected. And finally, it would be much better protected from malicious users than the WeMo is.
I downloaded a home automation script for my Vera that flashes the front lights rapidly in case of emergency; and I can trigger it to signal the first responders. (It tests OK on a lamp, but I've never had an emergency requiring me to actually use it.)
Yes, there's probably someone out there who won't realize their appliances are online, and then these devices start doing things on their own all of a sudden. It will be ghosts, goblins, shenanigans, and lulz for all.
One day at noon a few months ago, my wife was in our kitchen watching a TV show about paranormal activity of some sort or other. At the same time, being unaware that she had gone home for lunch, I was demonstrating my home automation setup to a co-worker by flicking the kitchen lights on and off from my phone.
She is so cool. She immediately assumed I was playing with the home automation. The thought of it being ghosts synchronized with the TV show simply amused her.
FOSS and "mad moneys" are not mutually exclusive. Look at asterisk, which is open but was made available in large part to sell their PBX hardware. Look at TiVo, who built upon Linux and made money by locking FOSS into a closed cabinet. Look at MySQL, and how it got forked and hijacked and eventually "bought" by Oracle, presumably to reduce the threat to Oracle's database products. And there are thosands of examples of free software that don't include source (see Windows for those).
And many FOSS creators have no interest in the money. They do it for themselves, for their community, for humanity. Some want no money (which might absolve them of some liability), some want donations to a humanitarian organization.
I don't think you can be liable for damages, if those damages arise from using un-licenced software that the plaintiff copied in violation of copyright law.
No license is NO RIGHT TO USE whatsoever.
Then you would be wrong. Many years ago a burglar broke into my father in law's business, and severed two fingers on a table saw that had its guards removed. He sued over the injury, even though he was trespassing at the time.
The lawyers settled it all out of court, so no precedent was established, but it still cost a ton of money to pay the lawyers and deal with the mess.
The point is "you can always be sued for liability", not "you will win the suit because someone was violating a different law."
As an American, it would take me less than two weeks to get a visa approved to work in India. That's because the tax rate on foreign workers is 34%. Throw the VAT on top of that, plus living expenses in an ex-pat community, and not very much money would leave their country.
Unlike the H-1B, which U.S. companies use primarily to bring in cheap labor, India is very interested in importing skills they can learn from, especially American English teachers or technical mentors. You would not believe how eager they are for such people. They recognize that their global position as a "low cost country" is only temporary, and will ultimately dwindle as more of their population shifts out of poverty and they become more expensive. They're taking full advantage of the opportunity now so when the Western money dries up they'll have a better trained workforce.
"what political party does he donate to?" It has become public information that Ron Paul supporters were put on DEA and DHS watch lists labelled as potential terrorists.
That's an almost unbelievable accusation to simply take your word on. As it's public information, could you please post a citation for the Ron Paul donors ending up on a DHS watchlist? By citation, I don't mean an episode number of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or another Rupert Murdoch source, or an interview with a tea party fancier like Michelle Bachmann. I would need to see actual proof before I would believe such a claim. That proof would include the watch list in question, authenticated by the DHS, as well as a list of Ron Paul supporters.
Let's just say that outrageous claims like these need to meet an extremely high level of proof. Lacking such evidence, they sound very much like paranoid conspiracy theorist ravings, little more than echoes of Fox News beating the Scare Drum; and are completely devoid of merit.
At first, I thought it was a neat idea. We have an orchid collection, and various species have unique and complex natural watering requirements, such as dry winters, rainy seasons, lithophytes that live with roots in streams, epiphytes with roots hanging on tree branches. And we have them in a variety of media, including mounted on cork bark, potted in bark, potted in clay pellets, potted in sphagnum moss, climbing on tree fern. We have dozens in high humidity habitats. All of these factors affect how fast the roots dry out. Making sure that each species gets watered according to a unique schedule that matches each plant's natural habitat is crucial to getting many of them to bloom. And this would be a really useful tool to measure moisture during a healthy growth cycle to be able to replicate it.
But with a collection of over 200 plants, I think price is kind of a deal breaker.
No, it's only useless for the specific application you're imagining, not "useless" in general. A jet airliner may be really, really fast in comparison to my car, but is useless if my task is to get to the grocery store for milk and eggs. That doesn't invalidate the usefulness of jet airliners.
There are a lot of ways to improve software quality. Some are cheap and easy. Others are hard and organizational.
Static code analysis. Use a tool like Coverity, Klocwork, or Fortify. Get your manager to make them fix the bugs those tools reveal. It's a cheap and easy way to dramatically reduce existing bugs.
Code quality metrics. Use McCabe Complexity, the Maintainability Index that comes with Visual Studio, or download a copy of sonar, or whatever fits your environment. Use them to convince other developers that your code is not of high quality. If they don't believe in the tools (lots of people discount them) run them and show them in real time how the tool instantly zooms in on the modules you all know and agree are the real stinkers. As a group activity, refactor one of them, so they can all see how it becomes simple. It demonstrates why the code is bad, and how you can make it better. But don't force everyone to meet a complexity standard of 7 for every module - that's one of those ridiculous management ideas. Just use the tool to make some improvements for a while.
You need to be really good. Learn the SOLID design principles. Learn design patterns. Learn object-oriented design. Even if you don't buy into them as a religion, those are the concepts that underlie most readable, maintainable, high quality code. Be able to speak the language to anyone who will listen.
Write Automated Unit Tests. Learn how a good test serves as documentation for calling a method. Learn how hard it is to write a good test unless the code is well written, and then you can see how easy it is to write a good test. Start your code reviews by following the calls from the unit tests. But AUT are really hard to write if you've never done it before, or if you're trying to add tests to existing bad code. I highly recommend Michael Feathers' book Working Effectively With Legacy Code.
Use Test Driven Development. TDD forces you to think of your methods' testability first, which drives you to make decisions that keep your code tightly cohesive and loosely coupled. You think in terms of interface, and dependency injection, not in giant displays of ladder logic and inherited functionality. Besides, your valuable automated unit tests will fall by the wayside unless you keep them up. TDD is how you encourage teams to keep them current.
Use code reviews. Your code reviews can look at the output of the static code analysis tool, and make sure they're cleaning up the egregious errors like null pointers or off-by-one arrays. The reviewers can look at the quality metrics for identifying problem code. They can look at the automate unit tests to see if they're effectively proving the code works. And you can use the review as a time to pass on the wisdom they are missing.
Use management for good instead of evil. Get their focus on software quality. Get them to agree that software quality is a problem, and that you have a plan to do something about it. Get them to agree that producing good code now is more important than meeting arbitrary deadlines with bad code. Get them to agree to spend a bit more on projects so you can do TDD and AUT. And get them to push that message down to the developers.
If it's just you, and you don't have strong management support, you'll have to start small and build up a group of allies who think as you do. Demonstrate how quality code is written instead of just asking for it. Mentor people to help improve their skills, and spread it. If you need the quick and showy splash of a new initiative, hire a new software engineer from outside the company who already does these things, and who is willing to help you implement them.
the US government has increased their requests by astronomical amounts
A 33% rise over one year is high, but certainly not astronomical (at least not by any measure we used in astronomy class.) The question is who and why. Is it more requests from local governments, or more from the FBI? Are they asking about local drug dealers, violent felons, drunken frat party pictures, or is it "did Abdul al Tikrit search for a copy of PowerPlantBlueprints.pdf?" Have they moved on to asking "what church does he belong to?" or "what political party does he donate to?"
I'd certainly like to know more before waking the neighbors.
While the statistics are indeed vague, we are meant to understand that Google is scrutinizing each request harder. But let's look at the potential causes for them to say "no":
Improper request using an official process - invalid warrant, unclear requests, etc.
Overbroad legitimate request: "We need a list of everyone on Google+ who has the state of TX in their address line."
Technically unable to comply: the data could have been purged before the request was made
Illegally unwilling to comply: they wanted tax data on Sergei, and the Google person decided to "lose" the request in the paperwork shuffle
Legitimate request using an unofficial process - "we have a lit-fuse bomber, you gotta break the rules and help us without a warrant!" "No."
Improper request using an unofficial process - "Hey, Sally, I'll take you to dinner if you get me this data."
Legitimate request from an illegitimate organization: "This is Turkish Secret Police, give us this data so we can break some skulls."
Of those, only a few are the moral high road, yet they're all lumped into that "reduction in granting requests." We have no way of knowing what percentages are attributable to which reason.
Also, take a look at the bottom link. While the overall compliance is 75%, the rate of compliance in the U.S. is about 90%, regardless of the legal process used to request it. They're not complying at all with requests from Turkey or Russia, and they don't even accept requests from China.
RTFS, FFS. What part of "requests broken down by the legal process used " did you fail to understand? The link shows only 10% were "other", the rest were subpoenas and warrants.
Hasbro gave a sack full of money to the people who owned Wizards of the Coast, in order to own the rights to the books. WotC gave a sackful of money to the people who owned then owned TSR, in exchange for the rights to the books. TSR was founded by Gary Gygax and his friend Don Kaye. Gygax was one of the original authors who owned the rights to the books (near as I can figure out Dave Arneson, the co-author, was paid for his work but was not a shareholder in the company.) But writing a book does not immediately turn into money, which they needed to produce the game, so they brought in a third shareholder, Brian Blume, as an investor. When Kaye died, Blume's father bought out his shares for a sackful of cash, and later transferred those shares to his other son. Those shares represented the assets of the company, which were primarily the rights to the books. So again, the rights were transferred in exchange for a sack of cash. Eventually the Blume brothers and Gygax parted ways, in exchange for another sack of cash. Note that everybody who transferred their rights got their payday when it happened.
So the original owners wrote the books, made some money (and names for themselves), then SOLD the rights to the books. Every time the ownership of the books changed, the new owners paid the old owners for the privilege. The old owners got their payday for a sum that considered some future sales (which is why the buyers are willing to pay the money.) That transfer doesn't take away the value the books have to the current readers or to the future purchasers, which means that if the books have more than zero value to you, it's not ethical for you to make a copy of them -- regardless of the owner of the rights.
And your last sentence doesn't even scan: "last ditch attempt to monetize assets that otherwise have little value to the company"?? That's kind of the point of purchasing assets, which is to make money off them. They have exactly as much the value to the company as the company can make from them. It's interesting that you even acknowledge that the rights to the books are assets.
Now, if you don't like Hasbro for whatever reason, (maybe you had a traumatic experience as a kid with a G.I.Joe action figure,) then don't give them your business. But you have no right to copy from them without paying the price they're asking. Not only is it the law, but it's fair.
No, but in 1971 it wasn't exactly common, either. As I recall (unverifiably, as my originals were decades ago 'loaned to a friend'), my copy of Chainmail was lithographically printed from typewritten originals, so it was never originally typeset. The AD&D boxed set was typeset, but back then it was far more likely set in lead than with a digital typesetting machine. Some small print shops back then were still hand setting type, as they could not afford those fancy Linotype machines. The digital machines were far more expensive still.
They probably didn't account for the cost of Office 2003 users having productivity issues when the ribbon was pushed on them. And they're similarly unlikely to be counting the cost of people infuriated and inconvenienced by the hostile Windows 8 changeover.
Five years ago there was an economy-shattering real estate crash due to shady sub-prime mortgages. Coincidence or coverup?
Just kidding; of course it was a coincidence. But if you throw out statements like this, the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork. You could even say the moon landings were faked because the time on the computers of the day was kept in an 8-bit register, which rolled over during the Apollo 13 mission!
Don't forget the other important bit for security: the simple keyboard and display are on the device, too, and separated from the hackable PC by an air gap. Keyboard sniffing is restricted to video cameras looking over your shoulder, and is not electronic (I suppose there might be some Van Eck leakage, but that's not something you can take advantage of on a remotely pwned box using just malware.)
Generally, a charge should be accompanied by the identity of who I am authorizing my bank to pay, and how much I'm authorizing them to pay. In a bricks and mortar store, they might have a sticker that says "our account number for payments is 123-456-789." But how do I know that's really their account, and not just a sticker hiding the real account number, and I just authorized a payment to www.scammers.com? I'd also like to authorize the amount: the price of Snacky Cakes should be no more than $1.00, so I don't want my bank to send them $50.00.
In store, the cash register might have something my device could read -- NFC, a QR code, Bluetooth, or something else. After scanning it, I'd look at my screen to read that I was authorizing my bank to pay Brickson-Mortar Store $1.00, then type my PIN to approve it. But how would that work on-line? Would I know I was transferring funds to the real Brickson-Mortar Store, and not to some man-in-the-middle faked Brikcson-Morter Store? The weakness of any system is that the user can still be duped.
The way I see it, we need more "frists!" and not so much "psots". And I think kludges are absolutely perfect ways to prototype new ideas. Is D-Shape going to be the next big construction company? Probably not, but who knows what will come of this?
3D printers have quietly been around for over 20 years, and they're just now catching on in a much larger way. Why not see how big and practical (or impractical) they can go?
Sure, wooden forms are pretty fast to set up. And I especially like those new foam forms that remain in place as insulation after the pour - there's a brilliant idea. And I have no idea how much effort or how long it will take to dig out the building from beneath the tons of sand left behind by this D-shape printer. But we shall see. Perhaps this might turn out to be the best way to achieve continuous curves for the same price as straight lines, and that will appeal to certain customers. Maybe it's a reduced labor device - just add sand and glue, and out pops a hurricane-resistant house.
Or maybe they'll decide that the printed concrete thing isn't viable, but what about converting it to a polyurethane foam printer? The foam hardens fairly rapidly and could be made self supporting, not requiring all that extra sand. They could print hollow forms for concrete, if they need the strength. People use spray foam today to make portable insulated shelters - why not expand upon that idea? (Practically, I'm thinking there's no way a rolling gantry machine could reliably operate for long in the sticky mess that spray foam machines produce. That, and the raw surface of the foam is completely ugly. But I'm just tossing out other ideas.)
Anyway, I think it's way too early to be calling this technology "not worth it." Its day may yet come.
Read the link to D-Shape in the article above, and you can see that this is not just spitting out custom blocks: it's a room-sized printer that's placed on site. Two workmen can disassemble, move it to a new location on site, and reassemble it in a few hours.
The slowness in adoption to new construction methods you might witness in America does not translate to the Netherlands. They're far more willing to try cool new building ideas than we are.
In general, are people making projects like this with 3D printers just to show they can? Is there some other motivation at work here?
You see no use for a portable factory that can erect a completely custom building on demand? That it won't in any way change the way people live and work? That it won't impact the construction industry in the least? That a flock of them might come in and rebuild cities after a devastating disaster? Nothing about that strikes you as even remotely valuable?
There's more than 18 pounds of variation between flights of the typical passenger and luggage payload.
That doesn't even make sense. Variations in weight doesn't mean that the luggage or the passengers are weightless, it just means the standard deviation of their average weight has a value larger than zero. Those amounts are factored into the equation for calculating the fuel needed to carry those passengers and their luggage to their destinations.
The hand wringing over long term fuel costs from a slightly heavier battery is nonsense. If micromanaged weight savings is so important then have the stewardesses remove their clothes before boarding.
The math is fairly simple. Cutting 18 pounds of additional static weight equates to $12,500 dollars worth of fuel saved over the projected 30 year lifetime of the aircraft. Just because it's saved over a long period of time doesn't make it less money.
This is just one of many thousands (millions?) of decisions that add up to the overall weight of the plane. How thick should the aluminum bars be that hold up the tray tables? Should we use stamped steel instead of aluminum castings? How about machined titanium? What kind of covering is used for the interior walls? What is the formulation of the paint? Should we use painted plastic or dyed plastic? If every decision on airframe design completely ignored weight, the plane would be so heavy it would never leave the ground. Instead, every material is chosen and decisions made based on tensile strength, compressive strength, durability, elasticity, machineability, color, cost, size, density, weight, flammability, porosity, translucency, toxicity, conductivity, and no doubt hundreds of other factors. Some attributes are more important than others (such as weight to strength ratio) because it's commonly accepted wisdom that a plane needs to be as light as practical.
Regarding uniforms, don't think they've escaped this decision making process either. They have plenty of choices made there as well: comfort and style certainly float to the top, but they have to be practical as well. Don't expect to see heavy denim or canvas fabrics in their clothing. And you're not likely to see obese flight attendants, either - there is no published maximum weight, but crew quarters and physical space for working are not generous.
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It doesn't require an engine for guidance control. Aerodynamic changes (fins) would allow a flying missile to re-target itself.
Why would you not base it on inside/outside temperature? Seems to me that is easier than remote control....
Because not every application needs to heat based on the ambient temperature (that just takes a thermostat). Usage enters into it as well.
I have a friend with an unheated airplane hanger, and an antique prop-start plane he flies once or twice a week. He has a magnetically attached heater for warming the engine oil prior to starting it in cold weather (really useful when you have to spin it by hand.) Because of the risk and expense of operating a heater unattended, he wants to power it as little as possible. Since he needs to turn the heater on about an hour before he flies, and he lives about half an hour from the airport, this is the perfect application for a remotely controlled switch to operate a heater.
A better trigger would start a one-shot cycle that would power it on only for about two hours max, and then shut itself off as a safety precaution. It would also be wired into a smoke detector, and be thermostatically protected. And finally, it would be much better protected from malicious users than the WeMo is.
I downloaded a home automation script for my Vera that flashes the front lights rapidly in case of emergency; and I can trigger it to signal the first responders. (It tests OK on a lamp, but I've never had an emergency requiring me to actually use it.)
Yes, there's probably someone out there who won't realize their appliances are online, and then these devices start doing things on their own all of a sudden. It will be ghosts, goblins, shenanigans, and lulz for all.
One day at noon a few months ago, my wife was in our kitchen watching a TV show about paranormal activity of some sort or other. At the same time, being unaware that she had gone home for lunch, I was demonstrating my home automation setup to a co-worker by flicking the kitchen lights on and off from my phone.
She is so cool. She immediately assumed I was playing with the home automation. The thought of it being ghosts synchronized with the TV show simply amused her.
I married well.
FOSS and "mad moneys" are not mutually exclusive. Look at asterisk, which is open but was made available in large part to sell their PBX hardware. Look at TiVo, who built upon Linux and made money by locking FOSS into a closed cabinet. Look at MySQL, and how it got forked and hijacked and eventually "bought" by Oracle, presumably to reduce the threat to Oracle's database products. And there are thosands of examples of free software that don't include source (see Windows for those).
And many FOSS creators have no interest in the money. They do it for themselves, for their community, for humanity. Some want no money (which might absolve them of some liability), some want donations to a humanitarian organization.
The whole world isn't one-size-fits-all.
I don't think you can be liable for damages, if those damages arise from using un-licenced software that the plaintiff copied in violation of copyright law.
No license is NO RIGHT TO USE whatsoever.
Then you would be wrong. Many years ago a burglar broke into my father in law's business, and severed two fingers on a table saw that had its guards removed. He sued over the injury, even though he was trespassing at the time.
The lawyers settled it all out of court, so no precedent was established, but it still cost a ton of money to pay the lawyers and deal with the mess.
The point is "you can always be sued for liability", not "you will win the suit because someone was violating a different law."
???
As an American, it would take me less than two weeks to get a visa approved to work in India. That's because the tax rate on foreign workers is 34%. Throw the VAT on top of that, plus living expenses in an ex-pat community, and not very much money would leave their country.
Unlike the H-1B, which U.S. companies use primarily to bring in cheap labor, India is very interested in importing skills they can learn from, especially American English teachers or technical mentors. You would not believe how eager they are for such people. They recognize that their global position as a "low cost country" is only temporary, and will ultimately dwindle as more of their population shifts out of poverty and they become more expensive. They're taking full advantage of the opportunity now so when the Western money dries up they'll have a better trained workforce.
"what political party does he donate to?" It has become public information that Ron Paul supporters were put on DEA and DHS watch lists labelled as potential terrorists.
That's an almost unbelievable accusation to simply take your word on. As it's public information, could you please post a citation for the Ron Paul donors ending up on a DHS watchlist? By citation, I don't mean an episode number of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or another Rupert Murdoch source, or an interview with a tea party fancier like Michelle Bachmann. I would need to see actual proof before I would believe such a claim. That proof would include the watch list in question, authenticated by the DHS, as well as a list of Ron Paul supporters.
Let's just say that outrageous claims like these need to meet an extremely high level of proof. Lacking such evidence, they sound very much like paranoid conspiracy theorist ravings, little more than echoes of Fox News beating the Scare Drum; and are completely devoid of merit.
At first, I thought it was a neat idea. We have an orchid collection, and various species have unique and complex natural watering requirements, such as dry winters, rainy seasons, lithophytes that live with roots in streams, epiphytes with roots hanging on tree branches. And we have them in a variety of media, including mounted on cork bark, potted in bark, potted in clay pellets, potted in sphagnum moss, climbing on tree fern. We have dozens in high humidity habitats. All of these factors affect how fast the roots dry out. Making sure that each species gets watered according to a unique schedule that matches each plant's natural habitat is crucial to getting many of them to bloom. And this would be a really useful tool to measure moisture during a healthy growth cycle to be able to replicate it.
But with a collection of over 200 plants, I think price is kind of a deal breaker.
You mean like Snow Crash?
No, it's only useless for the specific application you're imagining, not "useless" in general. A jet airliner may be really, really fast in comparison to my car, but is useless if my task is to get to the grocery store for milk and eggs. That doesn't invalidate the usefulness of jet airliners.
There are a lot of ways to improve software quality. Some are cheap and easy. Others are hard and organizational.
If it's just you, and you don't have strong management support, you'll have to start small and build up a group of allies who think as you do. Demonstrate how quality code is written instead of just asking for it. Mentor people to help improve their skills, and spread it. If you need the quick and showy splash of a new initiative, hire a new software engineer from outside the company who already does these things, and who is willing to help you implement them.
the US government has increased their requests by astronomical amounts
A 33% rise over one year is high, but certainly not astronomical (at least not by any measure we used in astronomy class.) The question is who and why. Is it more requests from local governments, or more from the FBI? Are they asking about local drug dealers, violent felons, drunken frat party pictures, or is it "did Abdul al Tikrit search for a copy of PowerPlantBlueprints.pdf?" Have they moved on to asking "what church does he belong to?" or "what political party does he donate to?"
I'd certainly like to know more before waking the neighbors.
While the statistics are indeed vague, we are meant to understand that Google is scrutinizing each request harder. But let's look at the potential causes for them to say "no":
Of those, only a few are the moral high road, yet they're all lumped into that "reduction in granting requests." We have no way of knowing what percentages are attributable to which reason.
Also, take a look at the bottom link. While the overall compliance is 75%, the rate of compliance in the U.S. is about 90%, regardless of the legal process used to request it. They're not complying at all with requests from Turkey or Russia, and they don't even accept requests from China.
RTFS, FFS. What part of "requests broken down by the legal process used " did you fail to understand? The link shows only 10% were "other", the rest were subpoenas and warrants.
Hasbro gave a sack full of money to the people who owned Wizards of the Coast, in order to own the rights to the books. WotC gave a sackful of money to the people who owned then owned TSR, in exchange for the rights to the books. TSR was founded by Gary Gygax and his friend Don Kaye. Gygax was one of the original authors who owned the rights to the books (near as I can figure out Dave Arneson, the co-author, was paid for his work but was not a shareholder in the company.) But writing a book does not immediately turn into money, which they needed to produce the game, so they brought in a third shareholder, Brian Blume, as an investor. When Kaye died, Blume's father bought out his shares for a sackful of cash, and later transferred those shares to his other son. Those shares represented the assets of the company, which were primarily the rights to the books. So again, the rights were transferred in exchange for a sack of cash. Eventually the Blume brothers and Gygax parted ways, in exchange for another sack of cash. Note that everybody who transferred their rights got their payday when it happened.
So the original owners wrote the books, made some money (and names for themselves), then SOLD the rights to the books. Every time the ownership of the books changed, the new owners paid the old owners for the privilege. The old owners got their payday for a sum that considered some future sales (which is why the buyers are willing to pay the money.) That transfer doesn't take away the value the books have to the current readers or to the future purchasers, which means that if the books have more than zero value to you, it's not ethical for you to make a copy of them -- regardless of the owner of the rights.
And your last sentence doesn't even scan: "last ditch attempt to monetize assets that otherwise have little value to the company"?? That's kind of the point of purchasing assets, which is to make money off them. They have exactly as much the value to the company as the company can make from them. It's interesting that you even acknowledge that the rights to the books are assets.
Now, if you don't like Hasbro for whatever reason, (maybe you had a traumatic experience as a kid with a G.I.Joe action figure,) then don't give them your business. But you have no right to copy from them without paying the price they're asking. Not only is it the law, but it's fair.
You know that troff existed in 1971, right?
Computerized typesetting isn't exactly new.
No, but in 1971 it wasn't exactly common, either. As I recall (unverifiably, as my originals were decades ago 'loaned to a friend'), my copy of Chainmail was lithographically printed from typewritten originals, so it was never originally typeset. The AD&D boxed set was typeset, but back then it was far more likely set in lead than with a digital typesetting machine. Some small print shops back then were still hand setting type, as they could not afford those fancy Linotype machines. The digital machines were far more expensive still.
They probably didn't account for the cost of Office 2003 users having productivity issues when the ribbon was pushed on them. And they're similarly unlikely to be counting the cost of people infuriated and inconvenienced by the hostile Windows 8 changeover.
Five years ago there was an economy-shattering real estate crash due to shady sub-prime mortgages. Coincidence or coverup?
Just kidding; of course it was a coincidence. But if you throw out statements like this, the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork. You could even say the moon landings were faked because the time on the computers of the day was kept in an 8-bit register, which rolled over during the Apollo 13 mission!
Don't forget the other important bit for security: the simple keyboard and display are on the device, too, and separated from the hackable PC by an air gap. Keyboard sniffing is restricted to video cameras looking over your shoulder, and is not electronic (I suppose there might be some Van Eck leakage, but that's not something you can take advantage of on a remotely pwned box using just malware.)
Generally, a charge should be accompanied by the identity of who I am authorizing my bank to pay, and how much I'm authorizing them to pay. In a bricks and mortar store, they might have a sticker that says "our account number for payments is 123-456-789." But how do I know that's really their account, and not just a sticker hiding the real account number, and I just authorized a payment to www.scammers.com? I'd also like to authorize the amount: the price of Snacky Cakes should be no more than $1.00, so I don't want my bank to send them $50.00.
In store, the cash register might have something my device could read -- NFC, a QR code, Bluetooth, or something else. After scanning it, I'd look at my screen to read that I was authorizing my bank to pay Brickson-Mortar Store $1.00, then type my PIN to approve it. But how would that work on-line? Would I know I was transferring funds to the real Brickson-Mortar Store, and not to some man-in-the-middle faked Brikcson-Morter Store? The weakness of any system is that the user can still be duped.
The way I see it, we need more "frists!" and not so much "psots". And I think kludges are absolutely perfect ways to prototype new ideas. Is D-Shape going to be the next big construction company? Probably not, but who knows what will come of this?
3D printers have quietly been around for over 20 years, and they're just now catching on in a much larger way. Why not see how big and practical (or impractical) they can go?
Sure, wooden forms are pretty fast to set up. And I especially like those new foam forms that remain in place as insulation after the pour - there's a brilliant idea. And I have no idea how much effort or how long it will take to dig out the building from beneath the tons of sand left behind by this D-shape printer. But we shall see. Perhaps this might turn out to be the best way to achieve continuous curves for the same price as straight lines, and that will appeal to certain customers. Maybe it's a reduced labor device - just add sand and glue, and out pops a hurricane-resistant house.
Or maybe they'll decide that the printed concrete thing isn't viable, but what about converting it to a polyurethane foam printer? The foam hardens fairly rapidly and could be made self supporting, not requiring all that extra sand. They could print hollow forms for concrete, if they need the strength. People use spray foam today to make portable insulated shelters - why not expand upon that idea? (Practically, I'm thinking there's no way a rolling gantry machine could reliably operate for long in the sticky mess that spray foam machines produce. That, and the raw surface of the foam is completely ugly. But I'm just tossing out other ideas.)
Anyway, I think it's way too early to be calling this technology "not worth it." Its day may yet come.
Read the link to D-Shape in the article above, and you can see that this is not just spitting out custom blocks: it's a room-sized printer that's placed on site. Two workmen can disassemble, move it to a new location on site, and reassemble it in a few hours.
The slowness in adoption to new construction methods you might witness in America does not translate to the Netherlands. They're far more willing to try cool new building ideas than we are.
In general, are people making projects like this with 3D printers just to show they can? Is there some other motivation at work here?
You see no use for a portable factory that can erect a completely custom building on demand? That it won't in any way change the way people live and work? That it won't impact the construction industry in the least? That a flock of them might come in and rebuild cities after a devastating disaster? Nothing about that strikes you as even remotely valuable?
There's more than 18 pounds of variation between flights of the typical passenger and luggage payload.
That doesn't even make sense. Variations in weight doesn't mean that the luggage or the passengers are weightless, it just means the standard deviation of their average weight has a value larger than zero. Those amounts are factored into the equation for calculating the fuel needed to carry those passengers and their luggage to their destinations.
The hand wringing over long term fuel costs from a slightly heavier battery is nonsense. If micromanaged weight savings is so important then have the stewardesses remove their clothes before boarding.
The math is fairly simple. Cutting 18 pounds of additional static weight equates to $12,500 dollars worth of fuel saved over the projected 30 year lifetime of the aircraft. Just because it's saved over a long period of time doesn't make it less money.
This is just one of many thousands (millions?) of decisions that add up to the overall weight of the plane. How thick should the aluminum bars be that hold up the tray tables? Should we use stamped steel instead of aluminum castings? How about machined titanium? What kind of covering is used for the interior walls? What is the formulation of the paint? Should we use painted plastic or dyed plastic? If every decision on airframe design completely ignored weight, the plane would be so heavy it would never leave the ground. Instead, every material is chosen and decisions made based on tensile strength, compressive strength, durability, elasticity, machineability, color, cost, size, density, weight, flammability, porosity, translucency, toxicity, conductivity, and no doubt hundreds of other factors. Some attributes are more important than others (such as weight to strength ratio) because it's commonly accepted wisdom that a plane needs to be as light as practical.
Regarding uniforms, don't think they've escaped this decision making process either. They have plenty of choices made there as well: comfort and style certainly float to the top, but they have to be practical as well. Don't expect to see heavy denim or canvas fabrics in their clothing. And you're not likely to see obese flight attendants, either - there is no published maximum weight, but crew quarters and physical space for working are not generous.