He could. The problem is that it is in practice impossible to say precisely how good the legs can be to be parity with normal legs.
There's not enough professional athletes lacking real legs that any kind of statistical analysis is possible. So if he won, it migth just be that he was allowed to use sligthly too good legs. And vice-versa: if he *didn't* win it could very well be that the reason was that his allowed legs where -sligthly- too bad.
Which is precisely what I said: You can't realistically -do- it that way. Knuth is meticolous to the point of absurdity, but even he did not get even close to acomplishing the task he set out to do. In practice, we'd have been better off if he was just -sligthly- less ambitious in defining his project and methodology, but on the other hand actually capable of finishing the project in reasonable time.
Also, not everyone can or want to dedicate 40 years to a single project.
No reason, and indeed such "shoes" or whatever you want to call them exist. They're not hugely popular, mostly I guess because the risk of injury is fairly high without a lot of practice and training.
You get me wrong. Offcourse your opinion counts too.
My point is, some things are matters of FACT: How many states are there, in fact, in USA ? Is Earth larger or smaller than Mars ? In such questions it makes no difference what the majority thinks, the truth is the truth regardless.
But other questions are matter of -opinion-. What meanings do the word "spam" have ? There obviously can be no authoritative source on it, you can't -count- and have an answer, as with the states. Indeed, words would not have meaning at ALL unless groups of people agreed to attach a certain meaning to a certain word. The attachmen it ARBITRARY and can and do change over time.
My point ? If a group of people agree to attach a certain meaning to a certain word or phrase, then that word or phrase -has- that meaning, to that group. By some collective process we agreed on attaching new meaning to "spam", that meaning wasn't there 20 years ago, but nevertheless, today it's without a doubt in every sense CORRECT to use spam in that new sense.
Sorry if I was overly sharp. Your message was just terribly ill-informed. The point is, really REALLY black surfaces don't end up incredibly hot -- they just end up -sligthly- warmer than almost-black surfaces.
If the sun shining on a 90% black surface provides 500W/m2 and heats the surface to say 150F, then the same sun shining on a 99.9% black surface will provide aproximately 550W/m2, which may heat the surface to say 170F. No biggie.
It -would- be preferable for solar heat-collectors, but only juts sligthly better than average black.
You're being ignorant or silly. It's not possible to find "all of the available" information on any topic, and much less to be -certain- that you've found it all. Not even for tiny, specialised subjects. For larger more complex subjects, you can easily find enough information that you'd spend 10 lifetimes just reading trough it once, nevermind critically assess and synthesise anything whatsoever. Then what ?
There are areas where you can get a reasonable overview -- namely those areas where we know next to nothing or that interest nobody (or both!), but that is by nessecity niche.
You can't collect, read, assess and synthesise "all available information" on Computer-Science, so you migth go more narrow and do Cryptography, but that's equally impossible. So you might go more narrow and do Diffie-Hellman. Even then you could only be certain you've found the most well-known articles and research on it, there's always going to be a risk that some student in India (say) has published a paper that includes information not found anywhere else. There's no way to tell.
But the meaning of a word or phrase is not a fact, it is established by common agreement.
If enough people start using the word "spam" which previously was used for a sort of canned meat to mean unsolicited comercial mail, then yes, after a while one can REALLY say that today spam MEANS that. (in addition to the original meaning, allthough outnumbering that 50:1 I'm sure)
The legs aren't generally superior though, just superior for this single purpose (sprinting on a solid high-traction surface). It's no surprise at all, he's basically running on springs -- said as much in the report: 91% of the energy that goes into compressing the things on step-down return on step-up, which is vastly better than the 50% or so that a human ankle can do.
The thing is, the human ankle is also useful for climbing a tree, kicking a football, balancing on one foot and tons of other things where these prostethics would be quite unpractical.
If he was allowed to attach another, more fish-tail-like prostethic, I bet he woulda won the olympics in swimming too...
Who owns english ? Who has the power to authoratively say what is correct english and what is not ?
In Germany it's simple, most people don't question authority, so everyone accepts that whatever Duden chooses to put in its dictionaries is correct, everything else is wrong. Yes, even if 99% of the population, including linguistically trained people, do it differently.
You get strange things like; "Everyone says gukken, but it's really kukken that is correct" (for look, glance). If you try asking a Germany -WHY- gukken is wrong if that is what everyone says, you get a bland stare, they don't really even get the question.
English, and most languages really, are somewhat more open: The *natives* define the language. Those putting out dictionaries merely *document* the language. Yes, there are "common misperceptions", i.e. things that many people do but which are nevertheless wrong and should probably remain so. Those are the things that break the -structure- of the language.
But stuff like meaning of phrases and/or pronounciation changes meaning over time trough actual use. Also, the same phrase has different (often related, but different) meaning in different fields. A photographer and a filesystem-designer do NOT mean the same thing when both talk about "taking a snapshot".
Begging the question means one thing in formal logic. In practice, it has other common meanings in everyday english. Deal with it.
True. But this is a "forest" of nanotubes standing on end.
Light that is scattered on impact with the first tube stands a high chance of then ending up hitting a second tube, where it is absorbed. That is the reason this forest-of-nanotubes is blacker than say any other pile of nanotubes.
How do you figure that ? If you absorb 99.9% of all light, then you are heated 10% more than some normal black material that "only" absorbs 90%. So what ? No big deal. Okay, where the "normal" black material reaches equilibrium with its surroundings at 70 degrees F, this thing may be 75 degrees F, who cares ?
Being black does not mean it won't radiate. It'll radiate and cool just as well as any other object. (infact nanotubes can be -very- good conductors of heat)
I'm not now, and I have no plans to in the near future. And I'm a parent of 3. (one son, twin girls)
Changing would be a large investment: The things needs to be playable in the main living-room, in the spare living-room, on my laptop and in the car, ESPECIALLY in the car.
I've not even checked, but my guess would be the minimum investment to have this work is well upwards of $1000, assuming car blu-ray players are available at all, which I sorta doubt.
So what would I get if I DID spend the kilobuck ? Certainly the increasd resolution is completely irrelevant on the 14" screens in the car, the screens don't even -have- higher resolution than 640x480 or somesuch. Also, the kids really honestly truly do not CARE. They watch the story, not the pixels. Infact, one of the favourtite DVDs is a crappy digitalisation (made by yours truly) of a VHS from the start of the 80ies. Picture-quality is poor. Oh, and I'd lose the possibility of making backups.
Movie-selection is also 3 orders of magnitude better on DVD than on any of the competing HD-formats. This will change over time, but I don't think anyone will -stop- making DVDs aslong as there are literally 50 DVD-players for every -one- HD-player....
So: Am I going to spend a grand or more for no benefit whatsoever ? Is this a trick question ?
Are you certain ? More commonly you'd use -one- integer that stores simply the number of cents. $73.50 stored simply as 7350, simple and effective. Has the benefit that all the standard mathemathical operations simply work, without needing to track dollars and cents separately.
As these things go though, "doubling every 5 years" is not ambitious at all, infact that is very VERY conservative and much less than the increase in production of PV currently taking place. It is, afterall, less than 15% of growth a year.
The IEA PV trends report from 2003 estimated 20% growth a year for the next decade, but has since been revised upwards. Current trend is looking more like 25% growth in area produced year, which gives somewhat more than that in power generated because average efficiencies are climbing (allbeit slowly).
Furthermore, increased awareness and interest in global warming is likely to lead to increased incentives and consumer-interest, so I personally think the trend is more likely to grow rather than stall. My guess would be 30% growth a year for the next decade, which is aproximately double your estimate. This is also ignoring HEAT from the sun, which is currently at about half a percent of our energy-needs and *also* growing rapidly.
Still, you're right: Neither solar nor any other renewable can singlehandedly solve the problem in the next 20 years timeframe. They can contribute, particularily when many and diverse ones are used, but they can't alone solve the problem.
Proven tech can do a lot though. Did you know that if USA where as efficient measured in GDP/Energy-consumed as Sweden is, you'd be consuming -half- the energy you currently do ? That's not rocket science, that's what Sweden does -TODAY- (and Sweden is improving too!)
We're going to need more than -one- answer; if it was easy, it woulda been done a long time ago.
I've got the 10Mbps-thing, I generally get the full speed assuming the server on the other end handles that much pro connection. (which many servers don't)
There are no service-guarantees or similar, it's a normal residential internet-connection with normal residential rules, if there *where* guarantees, it'd probably cost a LOT more.
Housing prices are high. It's boom-times in Norway (though there are some signs that things are slowing down, it's still record-levels), so everyone who wants a job has a job. (essentially; there's 1.7% unemployment officially, but many of those are either in reality unfit for work, or they're just between jobs or something) And everyone earns well -- average salary-growth over the last 2 years was aproximately 11%. (no, there's not much inflation, 2% perhaps)
Here in Stavanger it's particularily expensive. Our main oil-town, which means lots of people make 6-digit salaries, which tend to push housing-prices upwards.
An average 100 square metre (1070 square feet) apartment costs roughly $350K, more if you're downtown, less if it's somewhat outside of town. I guess compared to Tokyo it's cheap, but compared to most places it's expensive. That has to be measured against average salaries being aproximately $75K. (so it'd be hard to afford something like that if you're single, rather easy if you're a couple)
Renting is uncommon for established couples, sure students and single-person-households and poor people will rent, but not many above 30 with normal jobs rent. If you -did- rent you'd probably rent something smaller, a couple might be happy with a 500 square feet modern apartment that they could rent for like $1500-$2000 depending on standard and location. Also expensive, but if they are average earners, they'll take home aproximately $7.500/month (after taxes) so they'll be able to afford it without any problem.
The -nice- thing about living in a place with high salaries and high prices is that it makes wonders for vacationing and for products that are "made in Korea" anyway. A single months salary will buy you hell of a vacation, since most places have much lower prices (and salaries) than Norway. What kinda vacation does a couple get if they plan to spend 2 weeks in Canada and spend $7500 ? Laptops are almost free, well, atleast you get a VERY good laptop for one weeks salary. Even the PS3 doesn't seem so outrageous here; $399 is less of a big deal when that in practice means: You have to work for -one- day to pay for this. (well, perhaps 1.5 days, but you get the point)
You must be American. Seriously: Do you assume english is the everyones native language ? For me there are 3 languages that I know better than english.
Feel free to be a smart-ass when we can hold this discussion in -your- language number 4.
Both Germany and Norway are in Europe, and I can tell you with certanity that employers in neither "expect" to get a CV filling 2+ pages. To the contrary, most expect you to -consisely- state your core competences and education. The point is for them to figure out if you're worth talking to afterall, the details can always be cleared on the interview.
It would be uncommon to deliver a Resume longer than a single page in either country. In Germany that page would almost certainly be labeled "Lebenslauf", in Norway some people do call it a "CV", or the more verbose: "Oversikt over utdanning og praksis" (overview over education and experience)
It's actually -not- generally true. It may be true in some limited circumstances, depending on what you mean by "not even close".
Excellent quality analog film, shot with a good lens, under good light-conditions, on a tripod, can capture up to about 20Mp, which is indeed significantly more than HD.
But that's not the norm. In the average film there are less well-lit scenes, there are short exposures, there are higher-iso film, there are quick camera and subject-movements. Under such circumstances you're more likely to get 4Mp or thereabouts. Which is still more than HD, but not actually "not even close" to HD.
Sure it can, the article even said so: Extraction from the atmosphere is not cost-effective.
In other words: The only reason we -don't- extract the stuff from the atmosphere is that there are other cheaper sources.
So it's not as if helium runs out or anything. It's just that much of it escapes to the atmosphere, from which we can extract it again if we need to. Yes, doing so will mean higher prices for helium than current. Whatever, not really much of a "crisis" though.
I know US broadband has major suckitude, but I find this hard to believe.
I live in Norway, a large country with only 5 million people or so, and lots of fjords and mountains. (i.e. expensive to network), my ISP Lyse has 10Mbps/symetrical (i.e. 10Mbps upload and the same download) as the -slowest- available speed, 100Mbps/symetrical is the fastest, but only because currently there is no demand for more. It's all fibre-to-the-basement anyway, and we all know the fibre can do a few orders of magnitude more than 100Mbps.
Cost ? $50/month - $100/month depending on capcaity. It's actually cheaper than that measured against wages (which is what counts for normal people: how long must I work to pay for X?), because salaries here are somewhat higher than in the US. Put differently, 10Mbps/symetrical costs what you would earn for 3 hours of burgerflipping or thereabouts.
It's hard to believe it costs $1000 in the US. How many hours of burgerflipping is that at US salaries, 100 ?
I'm not that pessimistic; we *have* seen some standardisation on plugs for charging, and this trend will likely continue.
Devices that have USB anyway for data-transfer, and that have low enough power-requirements that it's practical, increasingly recharge over USB. There's even usb-wall-warts that only provide the recharge-power, no data-comms.
This is true for the PS3-controller, the iPod (but with a stupid nonstandard connector!), and one of our mobile phones, I expect in the future it'll be true for even more gadgets.
Second, *one* reason plugs are harder to standardise is that devices are physically very different. Some need a tiny plug, because the device itself is tiny. Some need a waterproof plug, because the device itself is. Some need sligthly more power, which tends to prevent using the tiniest of plugs.
And it's a network-effect:
The moment 3-4 major gadget-makers agree to use one shared standard, there's a strong pressure for the others to get onboard, becauce consumers will notice. If Nokia, Sony and Philips, to take a random trio, all agree all their gadgets will be rechargable from the same pad, there's a strong incentive for Ericsson and others to get on board, and with each one that joins, the incentive for the remaining ones grow.
Witness how the PS2 had proprietary memory-cards and proprietary controller-ports (despite being equipped with USB-ports !!!) but the PS3 uses bog-standard usb for both, not because sony particularily likes that, but because consumers have come to -expect- that data-storage and controllers attach to usb.
True. I've never even been asked to provide evidence that I attended college at all for any of the 3 programming jobs I've held up until now.
It's always been more like; What experience do you have ? What kind of projects have you worked on ? Could we see an example of a 1K LOC project that is your work ? How would you go about solving [some-hypothethical-performance-problem] ?
For my last interview, I did bring along evidence that yes I've got 4 years of University CS-studies, and good grades to show for it. In the end that was never a topic, neither the HR-person nor the technical interviewer even asked about it, so the Diploma stayed in my pack, my current employer has never even seen it, and ain't interested in seeing it.
That's -NOT- to say the education was worthless, not even close. I learned a *LOT* of really useful stuff. But thing is, my company is VERY interested in the fact that I know how to do those things. But they have -zero- interest in where I learned it, or if I've got a paper that purports to prove I've learned it.
True, that'd work. But how would you arrange the "high probability of being caught" part ? Without the cure hurting society a whole lot more than the disease ?
Filesharing is something that can be (and frequently are) done by something as simple as donating a burned DVD to a friend. Or attaching a cool new piece of music to an email. Or any number of other actions that occur fully in private.
There's no way of preventing it other than erecting a totalitarion police-state.
Even if you're in favor of strong copyrights, that is surely a price much too high to pay. Given a choice between authoritarian police state with a copyright-system, and a democratic free state with no copyrights, I don't think the choice is even sligthly hard.
Yes it's different. The main advantage would be it could be standardised.
A "form-fitting" cradle with physical contacts is fine when you've got -one- device. It's less fine when you've got a dozen, each with a -different- form to fit a different power-supply and end up with a -dozen- ugly wall-warts and a hell of a mess.
For example, If we add the devices me and my wife regularily charge we get:
2 laptops
2 digital cameras
2 mobile phones.
1 Nintendo DS
1 PS2 controller.
1 PS3 controller.
1 Wii-controller
1 cordless dect-phone
1 universal remote-control
All of these have their own different charging-solution. It's a mess.
It'd be a *huge* advantage to have a magnetic-coupling pad that we could place in some bookshelf, and whenever one or more of these devices need charging, simply place it on the pad. Even -more- of an advantage when you start considering that half of these devices tend to come along on travels, and with these pads standard, you could charge anywhere a charger existed, not be dependant on bringing your own.
Other conserns are mere bonus: less external ports tend to improve the physical design of a device. One less opening make the device sligthly easier to water/dust proof. etc.
Also, airports, trains and so on could have tables with built-in chargers, which would have the advantage that merely placing your laptop on the provided table lets you use it for as long as you like without draining the battery.
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He could. The problem is that it is in practice impossible to say precisely how good the legs can be to be parity with normal legs.
There's not enough professional athletes lacking real legs that any kind of statistical analysis is possible. So if he won, it migth just be that he was allowed to use sligthly too good legs. And vice-versa: if he *didn't* win it could very well be that the reason was that his allowed legs where -sligthly- too bad.
Which is precisely what I said: You can't realistically -do- it that way. Knuth is meticolous to the point of absurdity, but even he did not get even close to acomplishing the task he set out to do. In practice, we'd have been better off if he was just -sligthly- less ambitious in defining his project and methodology, but on the other hand actually capable of finishing the project in reasonable time.
Also, not everyone can or want to dedicate 40 years to a single project.
No reason, and indeed such "shoes" or whatever you want to call them exist. They're not hugely popular, mostly I guess because the risk of injury is fairly high without a lot of practice and training.
You get me wrong. Offcourse your opinion counts too.
My point is, some things are matters of FACT: How many states are there, in fact, in USA ? Is Earth larger or smaller than Mars ? In such questions it makes no difference what the majority thinks, the truth is the truth regardless.
But other questions are matter of -opinion-. What meanings do the word "spam" have ? There obviously can be no authoritative source on it, you can't -count- and have an answer, as with the states. Indeed, words would not have meaning at ALL unless groups of people agreed to attach a certain meaning to a certain word. The attachmen it ARBITRARY and can and do change over time.
My point ? If a group of people agree to attach a certain meaning to a certain word or phrase, then that word or phrase -has- that meaning, to that group. By some collective process we agreed on attaching new meaning to "spam", that meaning wasn't there 20 years ago, but nevertheless, today it's without a doubt in every sense CORRECT to use spam in that new sense.
Sorry if I was overly sharp. Your message was just terribly ill-informed. The point is, really REALLY black surfaces don't end up incredibly hot -- they just end up -sligthly- warmer than almost-black surfaces.
If the sun shining on a 90% black surface provides 500W/m2 and heats the surface to say 150F, then the same sun shining on a 99.9% black surface will provide aproximately 550W/m2, which may heat the surface to say 170F. No biggie.
It -would- be preferable for solar heat-collectors, but only juts sligthly better than average black.
You're being ignorant or silly. It's not possible to find "all of the available" information on any topic, and much less to be -certain- that you've found it all. Not even for tiny, specialised subjects. For larger more complex subjects, you can easily find enough information that you'd spend 10 lifetimes just reading trough it once, nevermind critically assess and synthesise anything whatsoever. Then what ?
There are areas where you can get a reasonable overview -- namely those areas where we know next to nothing or that interest nobody (or both!), but that is by nessecity niche.
You can't collect, read, assess and synthesise "all available information" on Computer-Science, so you migth go more narrow and do Cryptography, but that's equally impossible. So you might go more narrow and do Diffie-Hellman. Even then you could only be certain you've found the most well-known articles and research on it, there's always going to be a risk that some student in India (say) has published a paper that includes information not found anywhere else. There's no way to tell.
Not in general, no. Not for matters of fact.
But the meaning of a word or phrase is not a fact, it is established by common agreement.
If enough people start using the word "spam" which previously was used for a sort of canned meat to mean unsolicited comercial mail, then yes, after a while one can REALLY say that today spam MEANS that. (in addition to the original meaning, allthough outnumbering that 50:1 I'm sure)
The legs aren't generally superior though, just superior for this single purpose (sprinting on a solid high-traction surface). It's no surprise at all, he's basically running on springs -- said as much in the report: 91% of the energy that goes into compressing the things on step-down return on step-up, which is vastly better than the 50% or so that a human ankle can do.
The thing is, the human ankle is also useful for climbing a tree, kicking a football, balancing on one foot and tons of other things where these prostethics would be quite unpractical.
If he was allowed to attach another, more fish-tail-like prostethic, I bet he woulda won the olympics in swimming too...
That depends on your outlook, now doesn't it ?
Who owns english ? Who has the power to authoratively say what is correct english and what is not ?
In Germany it's simple, most people don't question authority, so everyone accepts that whatever Duden chooses to put in its dictionaries is correct, everything else is wrong. Yes, even if 99% of the population, including linguistically trained people, do it differently.
You get strange things like; "Everyone says gukken, but it's really kukken that is correct" (for look, glance). If you try asking a Germany -WHY- gukken is wrong if that is what everyone says, you get a bland stare, they don't really even get the question.
English, and most languages really, are somewhat more open: The *natives* define the language. Those putting out dictionaries merely *document* the language. Yes, there are "common misperceptions", i.e. things that many people do but which are nevertheless wrong and should probably remain so. Those are the things that break the -structure- of the language.
But stuff like meaning of phrases and/or pronounciation changes meaning over time trough actual use. Also, the same phrase has different (often related, but different) meaning in different fields. A photographer and a filesystem-designer do NOT mean the same thing when both talk about "taking a snapshot".
Begging the question means one thing in formal logic. In practice, it has other common meanings in everyday english. Deal with it.
True. But this is a "forest" of nanotubes standing on end.
Light that is scattered on impact with the first tube stands a high chance of then ending up hitting a second tube, where it is absorbed. That is the reason this forest-of-nanotubes is blacker than say any other pile of nanotubes.
How do you figure that ? If you absorb 99.9% of all light, then you are heated 10% more than some normal black material that "only" absorbs 90%. So what ? No big deal. Okay, where the "normal" black material reaches equilibrium with its surroundings at 70 degrees F, this thing may be 75 degrees F, who cares ?
Being black does not mean it won't radiate. It'll radiate and cool just as well as any other object. (infact nanotubes can be -very- good conductors of heat)
I'm thinking you failed physics 101.
I'm not now, and I have no plans to in the near future. And I'm a parent of 3. (one son, twin girls)
Changing would be a large investment: The things needs to be playable in the main living-room, in the spare living-room, on my laptop and in the car, ESPECIALLY in the car.
I've not even checked, but my guess would be the minimum investment to have this work is well upwards of $1000, assuming car blu-ray players are available at all, which I sorta doubt.
So what would I get if I DID spend the kilobuck ? Certainly the increasd resolution is completely irrelevant on the 14" screens in the car, the screens don't even -have- higher resolution than 640x480 or somesuch. Also, the kids really honestly truly do not CARE. They watch the story, not the pixels. Infact, one of the favourtite DVDs is a crappy digitalisation (made by yours truly) of a VHS from the start of the 80ies. Picture-quality is poor. Oh, and I'd lose the possibility of making backups.
Movie-selection is also 3 orders of magnitude better on DVD than on any of the competing HD-formats. This will change over time, but I don't think anyone will -stop- making DVDs aslong as there are literally 50 DVD-players for every -one- HD-player....
So: Am I going to spend a grand or more for no benefit whatsoever ? Is this a trick question ?
Are you certain ? More commonly you'd use -one- integer that stores simply the number of cents. $73.50 stored simply as 7350, simple and effective. Has the benefit that all the standard mathemathical operations simply work, without needing to track dollars and cents separately.
As these things go though, "doubling every 5 years" is not ambitious at all, infact that is very VERY conservative and much less than the increase in production of PV currently taking place. It is, afterall, less than 15% of growth a year.
The IEA PV trends report from 2003 estimated 20% growth a year for the next decade, but has since been revised upwards. Current trend is looking more like 25% growth in area produced year, which gives somewhat more than that in power generated because average efficiencies are climbing (allbeit slowly).
Furthermore, increased awareness and interest in global warming is likely to lead to increased incentives and consumer-interest, so I personally think the trend is more likely to grow rather than stall. My guess would be 30% growth a year for the next decade, which is aproximately double your estimate. This is also ignoring HEAT from the sun, which is currently at about half a percent of our energy-needs and *also* growing rapidly.
Still, you're right: Neither solar nor any other renewable can singlehandedly solve the problem in the next 20 years timeframe. They can contribute, particularily when many and diverse ones are used, but they can't alone solve the problem.
Proven tech can do a lot though. Did you know that if USA where as efficient measured in GDP/Energy-consumed as Sweden is, you'd be consuming -half- the energy you currently do ? That's not rocket science, that's what Sweden does -TODAY- (and Sweden is improving too!)
We're going to need more than -one- answer; if it was easy, it woulda been done a long time ago.
I've got the 10Mbps-thing, I generally get the full speed assuming the server on the other end handles that much pro connection. (which many servers don't)
There are no service-guarantees or similar, it's a normal residential internet-connection with normal residential rules, if there *where* guarantees, it'd probably cost a LOT more.
Housing prices are high. It's boom-times in Norway (though there are some signs that things are slowing down, it's still record-levels), so everyone who wants a job has a job. (essentially; there's 1.7% unemployment officially, but many of those are either in reality unfit for work, or they're just between jobs or something) And everyone earns well -- average salary-growth over the last 2 years was aproximately 11%. (no, there's not much inflation, 2% perhaps)
Here in Stavanger it's particularily expensive. Our main oil-town, which means lots of people make 6-digit salaries, which tend to push housing-prices upwards.
An average 100 square metre (1070 square feet) apartment costs roughly $350K, more if you're downtown, less if it's somewhat outside of town. I guess compared to Tokyo it's cheap, but compared to most places it's expensive. That has to be measured against average salaries being aproximately $75K. (so it'd be hard to afford something like that if you're single, rather easy if you're a couple)
Renting is uncommon for established couples, sure students and single-person-households and poor people will rent, but not many above 30 with normal jobs rent. If you -did- rent you'd probably rent something smaller, a couple might be happy with a 500 square feet modern apartment that they could rent for like $1500-$2000 depending on standard and location. Also expensive, but if they are average earners, they'll take home aproximately $7.500/month (after taxes) so they'll be able to afford it without any problem.
The -nice- thing about living in a place with high salaries and high prices is that it makes wonders for vacationing and for products that are "made in Korea" anyway. A single months salary will buy you hell of a vacation, since most places have much lower prices (and salaries) than Norway. What kinda vacation does a couple get if they plan to spend 2 weeks in Canada and spend $7500 ? Laptops are almost free, well, atleast you get a VERY good laptop for one weeks salary. Even the PS3 doesn't seem so outrageous here; $399 is less of a big deal when that in practice means: You have to work for -one- day to pay for this. (well, perhaps 1.5 days, but you get the point)
You must be American. Seriously: Do you assume english is the everyones native language ? For me there are 3 languages that I know better than english.
Feel free to be a smart-ass when we can hold this discussion in -your- language number 4.
That info is dubious anyways.
Both Germany and Norway are in Europe, and I can tell you with certanity that employers in neither "expect" to get a CV filling 2+ pages. To the contrary, most expect you to -consisely- state your core competences and education. The point is for them to figure out if you're worth talking to afterall, the details can always be cleared on the interview.
It would be uncommon to deliver a Resume longer than a single page in either country. In Germany that page would almost certainly be labeled "Lebenslauf", in Norway some people do call it a "CV", or the more verbose: "Oversikt over utdanning og praksis" (overview over education and experience)
It's actually -not- generally true. It may be true in some limited circumstances, depending on what you mean by "not even close".
Excellent quality analog film, shot with a good lens, under good light-conditions, on a tripod, can capture up to about 20Mp, which is indeed significantly more than HD.
But that's not the norm. In the average film there are less well-lit scenes, there are short exposures, there are higher-iso film, there are quick camera and subject-movements. Under such circumstances you're more likely to get 4Mp or thereabouts. Which is still more than HD, but not actually "not even close" to HD.
Sure it can, the article even said so: Extraction from the atmosphere is not cost-effective.
In other words: The only reason we -don't- extract the stuff from the atmosphere is that there are other cheaper sources.
So it's not as if helium runs out or anything. It's just that much of it escapes to the atmosphere, from which we can extract it again if we need to. Yes, doing so will mean higher prices for helium than current. Whatever, not really much of a "crisis" though.
I know US broadband has major suckitude, but I find this hard to believe.
I live in Norway, a large country with only 5 million people or so, and lots of fjords and mountains. (i.e. expensive to network), my ISP Lyse has 10Mbps/symetrical (i.e. 10Mbps upload and the same download) as the -slowest- available speed, 100Mbps/symetrical is the fastest, but only because currently there is no demand for more. It's all fibre-to-the-basement anyway, and we all know the fibre can do a few orders of magnitude more than 100Mbps.
Cost ? $50/month - $100/month depending on capcaity. It's actually cheaper than that measured against wages (which is what counts for normal people: how long must I work to pay for X?), because salaries here are somewhat higher than in the US. Put differently, 10Mbps/symetrical costs what you would earn for 3 hours of burgerflipping or thereabouts.
It's hard to believe it costs $1000 in the US. How many hours of burgerflipping is that at US salaries, 100 ?
I'm not that pessimistic; we *have* seen some standardisation on plugs for charging, and this trend will likely continue.
Devices that have USB anyway for data-transfer, and that have low enough power-requirements that it's practical, increasingly recharge over USB. There's even usb-wall-warts that only provide the recharge-power, no data-comms.
This is true for the PS3-controller, the iPod (but with a stupid nonstandard connector!), and one of our mobile phones, I expect in the future it'll be true for even more gadgets.
Second, *one* reason plugs are harder to standardise is that devices are physically very different. Some need a tiny plug, because the device itself is tiny. Some need a waterproof plug, because the device itself is. Some need sligthly more power, which tends to prevent using the tiniest of plugs.
And it's a network-effect:
The moment 3-4 major gadget-makers agree to use one shared standard, there's a strong pressure for the others to get onboard, becauce consumers will notice. If Nokia, Sony and Philips, to take a random trio, all agree all their gadgets will be rechargable from the same pad, there's a strong incentive for Ericsson and others to get on board, and with each one that joins, the incentive for the remaining ones grow.
Witness how the PS2 had proprietary memory-cards and proprietary controller-ports (despite being equipped with USB-ports !!!) but the PS3 uses bog-standard usb for both, not because sony particularily likes that, but because consumers have come to -expect- that data-storage and controllers attach to usb.
True. I've never even been asked to provide evidence that I attended college at all for any of the 3 programming jobs I've held up until now.
It's always been more like; What experience do you have ? What kind of projects have you worked on ? Could we see an example of a 1K LOC project that is your work ? How would you go about solving [some-hypothethical-performance-problem] ?
For my last interview, I did bring along evidence that yes I've got 4 years of University CS-studies, and good grades to show for it. In the end that was never a topic, neither the HR-person nor the technical interviewer even asked about it, so the Diploma stayed in my pack, my current employer has never even seen it, and ain't interested in seeing it.
That's -NOT- to say the education was worthless, not even close. I learned a *LOT* of really useful stuff. But thing is, my company is VERY interested in the fact that I know how to do those things. But they have -zero- interest in where I learned it, or if I've got a paper that purports to prove I've learned it.
You're just silly: No scientific theory can EVER be proven true. No, not even in principle.
True, that'd work. But how would you arrange the "high probability of being caught" part ? Without the cure hurting society a whole lot more than the disease ?
Filesharing is something that can be (and frequently are) done by something as simple as donating a burned DVD to a friend. Or attaching a cool new piece of music to an email. Or any number of other actions that occur fully in private.
There's no way of preventing it other than erecting a totalitarion police-state.
Even if you're in favor of strong copyrights, that is surely a price much too high to pay. Given a choice between authoritarian police state with a copyright-system, and a democratic free state with no copyrights, I don't think the choice is even sligthly hard.
A "form-fitting" cradle with physical contacts is fine when you've got -one- device. It's less fine when you've got a dozen, each with a -different- form to fit a different power-supply and end up with a -dozen- ugly wall-warts and a hell of a mess.
For example, If we add the devices me and my wife regularily charge we get:
All of these have their own different charging-solution. It's a mess.
It'd be a *huge* advantage to have a magnetic-coupling pad that we could place in some bookshelf, and whenever one or more of these devices need charging, simply place it on the pad. Even -more- of an advantage when you start considering that half of these devices tend to come along on travels, and with these pads standard, you could charge anywhere a charger existed, not be dependant on bringing your own.
Other conserns are mere bonus: less external ports tend to improve the physical design of a device. One less opening make the device sligthly easier to water/dust proof. etc.
Also, airports, trains and so on could have tables with built-in chargers, which would have the advantage that merely placing your laptop on the provided table lets you use it for as long as you like without draining the battery.