Once you got the facilities built (lots of concrete, admittedly, but little in the way of technological input is necessary), the only cost is feeding the reactors, and filtering the output, then you have barrels of oil, to do with as you please.
Who's going to pay for these facilities? Who's going to pay for the transportation? I think your post just reinforces the point I am trying to make. I agree that the amount of cost is low, but money is money, and who is going to be the source?
1. Private Sector
There is lots of money in the private sector, but almost all this capital is tied to investors who want a good investment for their return. I don't see how any investor will justify the spending you speek of, when there is a cheap source of oil available, namely the crude oil I spoke of in the parent post. Now I am sure there are risk-taking investors/venture capitalists who would be willing to invest in alternative energy, my point is that most capital will be spent on what has 1) proven returns and 2) known costs.
2. Public Sector
This was the second point of my posting. That to get this technology off the ground, we need to convince the government to subsidize it. By lowering the cost of this alternative, or any alternative, energy source where investors will receive a greater return than what crude oil production and refinment provides, we can hopefully move away from fossil fuels.
As with all alternative energy sources. It's the cost that holds it back. Whether we like it or not, oil is still the cheapest source of energy we have. Not only because of the price per barrel, albeit the highest is been in a while, but also because of the infrastructure costs associated with any new energy source.
What we need in the US, and in the rest of the world, is a real effort to fund and off-set the costs of these alternative sources. Although I will support the free-market until my face is blue, I believe this is a good case for a the public sector to intervene in the business world. The problem is that this effort must come from the top. The presidential administration, who ever is in office, must be the one to lead this effort.
I'd rather not get into a heated political discussion, but I do believe that the Bush administration wants to see us move from oil (you can stop laughing now). But they want the oil companies to lead the way. You notice that many of them, Exxon-Mobile for instance, now bill themselves as "Energy Companies," no longer wholy concentrating on petroleum. Despite the cynic, these companies do develope much of the solar, wind, and other non-oil technologies today, but don't pursure them due to cost.
(That being said, John Kerry doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose presidental administration will supprt non-petroleum/fossil fuel causes.)
True freedom from fossil fuels will not come quickly or cheaply, but I believe that if we pressure our leaders to help fund these alternative sources and lower their total cost of implementation, we can speed up the process. It may be naive but I can hope.
I think many people, including myself, had no context in which this internal memo was sent. We don't know the boss who sent it. We don't know the employees s/he was sending it too. As a result we all imagined ourselves receiving this memo at our own place of work.
Where I work, we have a very lax enviornment. We use our computers and our phone system for personal use all the time. It is tolerated as long as it is not egregous. If you could imagine such a memo being sent in this situation, it would cause many unintended ripples.
Back to the point... On face value this memo is too harsh. It is written from a person who looks down on his/her employees. The phrase "I expect" reinforces this point. You're right, I don't know the context of this memo, but there are more diplomatic ways of saying the same thing without coming off a jerkwad (using your word). As I said, style over substance. It was not what was said but how it was said that most people are taking issue with.
And, often the professor is the author of the book, so every student in their course equals a textbook royalty coming their way.
Although it sounds like a racket, I have been told that professors don't get royalties for books sold at their own universities. This is to prevent the abuse that you just mentioned, which although cynical, is not true.
Professors don't care. In fact in some cases they are paid to select the more expensive of two options by bookstores who offer them a kickback based on a percentage of the sales.
Perhaps it is because I have a positive view of academia but I have had a good number of professors who said (paraphrasing): I was thinking about book X but it was too expensive at $100 so I went with book Y at a more reasonable $50. Don't get me wrong, they could go out of their way to make it really cheap for us students by doing something like you suggested. So you can look at this two ways.
Positively: Professors care about us so they "let" us buy cheaper books.
Negatively: Professors only do what is minimally necessary to help their students out. They could do more but they are lazy/assholes/uncaring.
Lastly, professors in the sciences only want to write two kinds of books (I know I'm generalizing):
1st year text. The general think kind that costs $150. They want this book to be adopted by many schools so that they will receive royalties for the sales
The definitive graduate level text on a subject. For example: J.D. Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics. Royalties is part of this as well, but it's also for the immortality it affords.
The reason why there are no wheels in larger animals is because of the problem in feeding the wheels. How would a rotary joint carry blood across? Indeed, I think you are right, if Nature had evolved wheels, many animals would have tracks instead of legs.
I think a better explaination is that nature never developed roads. Only a few natural locations exist where long straight even terrain would be benificail to those organisms with wheels instead of legs. On the other hand, nature is mostly rough, uneven, and marked with vegitation. Small creatures might get away with rolling around for short distance, but large animals with wheels instead of legs are unpractical.
Do you recall an airline company called "Pan Am", the biggest one of their time?
They were the victim of this little incident above and in Lockerbie. You may want to check out the results for Pan Am shortly afterwards, to see how well this turned out.
We're getting off topic here, but PanAm filed for bankruptcy because of airline deregulation.
In the 1980s the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was shut down. It was the federal regulatory body that regulated airlines. The CAB was not the modern FAA, but instead regulated such aspects of the airline industries as prices, routes, and destinations. PanAm was the greatest beneficiary of the CAB, considering it was the largest US airline during the 50s through the 70s. PanAm basically didn't have to compete with rivals because the CAB's regulations basically guaranteed it profits.
In the past the only way an airline differentiated itself was with service. Only a few people could actually afford to fly, and as a result airlines were sort of a "luxury" form of travel with full service (throughout the cabin) and amenities.
The the CAB was dissolved airlines realized that they didn't have to compete with service, but could do so with prices. For a while, it seemed like airlines were popping out like wildflowers (remember TrumpAir?). Again, as a consequence of deregulation consumers had more choice in their airlines, more choice in routes, and more choice in prices.
When the things change, usually the largest and most entrenched entities are slowest to react. PanAm basically didn't know how to compete in this new environment. Airlines lowered prices to the point where anyone could fly. Today flying is not reserved for the privileged few but to most everyone in the US. In the early 90s, PanAm basically found itself barraged with "new" lower cost airlines and went out of business.
Some big airlines managed to survive thanks to smart management. American Airlines today is the one of the world's largest carrier. Some other big airlines wound up dying but not dead. TWA is a shell of its former self. The big winner in the industry is Southwest, whose low cost model is replicated with other airlines such as JetBlue.
Many of the airlines that sprung up thanks to deregulation no longer exist. Trump's airline is one example. When all the cards fell into place only about ten major airline remained in the 90s. But even so air travel demand kept going up, and prices still went down. Every major airline today has filled for bankruptcy in some for or another (United, American, Continental, US Air, Delta) or bought out by another airline (US Air, TWA). Ironically Southwest, although a "discount" airline is 1) the most successful 2) posts profits even post Sept. 11th.
Many people have complained that airline deregulation ruined air-travel. I don't believe this is true. Complaints are usually about travel delays, long lines at terminals, passengers being treated like cattle, and that was before Sept. 11th! [With airport security a big buzzword today it's probably even worse.] But keep in mind what has happened thanks to deregulation. Airlines are flying to more destinations, especially those with large markets. Airline prices have dropped to almost nothing compared to the past. Passenger ridership has increased significantly in the last twenty years. I would contend that most of the problems seen today with air-travel (not a result of security measures) are a result of the "old" regulated mentality that some management still have.
The Austrailian ballot is where candidates (for all elections) are listed entirely on one ballot and you get to choose which candidate you want regardless of party.
It may bewilder some people that before the 1920's when you went to vote, a member of the Republican or Democratic party stood outside your polling in place and handed you a "Republican" or "Democratic" ballot. Said ballot would have only the party nominations for President, Senator, House Representatives, State Governor, State Senator, etc. As a result you "voted the party line."
The Austrailian ballot was introduced between the 1920s and 1940s in the US (different municipalities adopted it at different times). It changed US politics because now people could vote for a Democratic President but a Republican Senator. One major result is that since WWII there have been very few times when the party of the president coincided with the majority party of Congress. In fact the Bush administration which has had a Republican Congress for most of the three years it has been in office is an exception not a norm.
Money has the power to let people forget the difference between good and evil. --paraphrased from the movie Sneakers
At Business schools they try to teach business ethics. In fact with the recent stink of corporate scandals, many schools are finding it necessary and not an elective to have ethics traning. I heard an NPR interview with an ex-con who went to prison for fraud on a coporate level. He now works by speaking to MBA students about his experience with ethics and how not to fall into the same trap he did.
That being said the quote is still very relavant. Business fundamentally deals with money and money can be used to receive any form of reward. Since businesses deal with the bottom line, anything that brings in more money must be good, regardless of any ethical issues.
Money Laundering in Five Easy Steps
on
P2P Meets Push
·
· Score: 1
Okay, here's the plan. Let's say you have aquired lots of illegal money, that's not counterfeit.
Apply and get an American Express Card. This may take a while if you have bad credit.
With your Amex card, you have no spending limit. But yourself one plane ticket to the carribean island of your choice with offshore banking. The Caymen's are a supposidly popular destination.
Take the money you have, somewhat risky if you're caught carrying millions out of the country, but as long as you don't look like a terrorist you should get out okay; and desposit the money a offshore holidng account.
Pay back American Express if you want to avoid the repo man.
For once--actually Profit!!!!
Now-a-days an entry level VISA card cas anywhere between $2000+ in credit line. All you need for a plane ticket and a large truck won't cost you more than a $1000, so any credit card will do.
Notice there is no "????--hold on someone's calling: Hello... Treasury Dept.?
Re:Y'all don't seem to understand.
on
P2P Meets Push
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I've got all this pr0n, and all this bandwidth... but no IPs to share it with.
I believe this is a first for humanity. Sort of like why you never hear the statement, "Man! What am I going to do with all these drugs?"
Yeah, and when you want music instead of just "sound" get something like the Digital Audio Labs card (http://www.digitalaudio.com/ [digitalaudio.com]) or one of M Audios board (http://www.midiman.net/products/consumer/index.ph p [midiman.net])
What is the advantage of using a digital output? I am trying to research this on the internet right now. In my mind the Digital-to-Analouge conversion must occur somewhere, after all speakers/sound is analouge. What does a digital output do for you? Since you have to decode the digital signal into analouge sound I would imagine it would be best to have your computer handle this.
The one alternative is to have the digital output hook up into an A/V receiver which then performs the D/A conversion. I don't see an advantage to normal audio signals- with one exception: dolby or dts multi-channel sound output. If you could send out the digital audio output from a DVD player into your A/V receiver, it could decode the dolby digital audio and give you surround sound.
Is any of this correct or am I just wasting by breadth (probably yes regardless)?
Soft Drink companies discovered years ago that it is not the taste that sells cola, but the image that sells. This change is mostly attributed to New Coke which bombed, but caused a rush to buy "classic" coke. (Aside: conspiracy theorists say Coke purposely did this to boost sales, snopes.com has the story otherwise.)
This is why Pepsi got Brintey Spears to sell their soft drink, because the target audience of her musi^H^H^H^Himage is Pepsi's main demographic, and hence they want to build their image that Brittney Spears drinks Pepsi and so should you. Blind taste tests show that people can't tell the difference between Coke and it's competitors anyway. Actually, people prefer Pepsi's sweeter taste over Coke's, which is why Pepsi has/had their "blind taste test" advertising. Of course once you start drinking a product you then say you drink it because of the taste. After all, you have become acclimated to it. I gave up drinking most sodas a while back, and now they all taste too syrupy sweet to me. Even Coke which I swore by years ago, I can say I don't really like anymore.
This so called "discovery" is nothing but the annoucment of the results of MAP, or Microwave Anisotropy Probe. It was launched a couple of years ago and took 4 pi sterradian measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (or CMB). The news conference was originally planned for last thursday the 6th, and scheduled before the space shuttle Columbia was lost during reentry. It was delayed because the scientists (and NASA) didn't want this to turn into a "Columbia Disaster" press conference where all the questions would be Off-Topic.
I have been told the US maintains a permanent presence at the South Pole for specifically that reason. Basically, although no country owns Antarctica, the resources there are free for grabs. Although inconceivable due to the expense, the US wants to maintain their claims on the resources in Antarctica, and the only way to do this is to have a permanent human presence.
As a result the US, though the NSF, funds lots of scientific experiments at the pole. Some examples besides Ice Cube are:
(Note: BOOMERANG and TopHat are balloon experiments which are not located at the south pole, but are funded by NSF in Antarctica)
Basically the pole is really good for cosmic background radiation (CMB) studies because the atmosphere is incredibly stable. This allows telescopes like DASI and balloons like BOOMERANG and TopHat to observe the sky without much atmospheric interference. IceCube involves drilling a hole in the ice and lowering a string of photomultiplier tubes(PMTs) down into the hole. After adding water, which freezes into very clear ice, the PMTs will look for neutrino interactions within the ice.
So I've gotten a little off topic so I'll conclude by saying that if such a road could be built, it would greatly increase the capacity of the good that can be shipped down. Currently only C-130's equipped with skis and land at the pole, which is so dangerous that there is one fatal accident every year. Also the limit on the weight of the equipment that can be brought down is only about 25 tons; I seem to remember this number for some reason. So any increase in cargo capacity to the south pole would be welcome.
"Ill-advised and stupid" does not, unfortunately, mean "unconstitutional."
I think that sums it all up. But here are some good point the justicies bring up. In her majority opinion Ginsburg says,
"The wisdom of Congress action, however, is not within our province to second guess. Satisfied that the legislation before us remains inside the domain the Constitution assigns to the First Branch, we affirm the judgment [for the respondent (the attorney general)]."
In her argument, which I only read lightly, the majority seems to agree that the legislation is constitutional for various reasons. It says nothing about the actual implications of the said lesgislation. It should be noted, and this is something I did not know, that the 1976 copyright , which act extended copyright lifetimes to 50 years after the death of the author/creator, was part of an international treaty that the US signed. More over copyrights have been extended in the nation's past to from 14 years to 28 years to (whatever) again and again, all through legislation.
In the dessent, both Stevens and Breyer note that the legislation harms the general public. From Stevens',
"Indeed, Congress has apparently indulged in those assumptions for under the series of extensions to copyrights, only one year's worth of creative work that copyrighted in 1923 has fallen into the public domain during the last 80 years. But as our cases repeatedly and consistently emphasize, ultimate public access is the overriding purpose of the constitutional provision. . . Ex post facto extensions of existing copyrights, unsupported by any consideration of the public interest, frustrate the central purpose of the Clause."
And from Breyer's:
"It is easy to understand how the statute might benefit the private financial interests of corporations or heirs who own existing copyrights. But I cannot find any constitutionally legitimate, copy-right-related way in which the statute will benefit the public."
It seems to be that the argument within the court was whether or not one should abide by the constitution regardless of what the actual legislation does or whether or not one should use broader public good to judge a case. I would have to agree with the former. Justices should not be legislating. The purpose of the court should be to evaluate whether or not legislation passed by Congress is constitutionally valid.
For a numerical comparison I found some rough numbers for what other living organisms can survive. The unit of radiation used is a Gray, which is the unit used to measure the absorbed dosage of radiation. It does not tell relate the biological effects of that radiation.
These numbers are ones I received from a radiation safety lecture at CERN. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the numbers. But remember, they are obtained from non-controlled experiments (like nuclear accidents) and are an estimates of the amount of dosage needed to kill said organism.
Animal________Grays(Gy)
Sheep_________1.6
Donkey________1.6
Swine_________2.0
Goat__________2.3
Dog___________2.7
Man__________2.7,2.4,2.3 (depending on study)
Rabbit_________8.4
Rat___________9.0
Mouse________11-12
Desert Mouse__13-15
Frog_________30
Snail_________200
Amoeba_______3000
Now according to the Science magazine article, the bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans can stand up to 15,000 Gy of radiation!
I think they actually had Pierce Brosnan on for that show, so it was even one of the real Bonds.;-)
Not that you really wanted to know, but that episode of SNL stars Garth Brooks (with musical guest Chris Gains) and Chris Parnell plays Bond in that sketch.
It is only mentioned briefly in the article, but I'll try to elaborate.
Basically gravity waves will stretch space in one direction (say x) and contract space in a perpendicular direction (y). Given this, the "easiest" way to detect gravity waves is to build a very large interferometer. LIGO is the current ongoing gravity wave interferometer, which splits one laser beam into two lasers beams, sending each perpendicularly down a vacuum "hallway" four kilometers long. At the end, the beams are reflected by mirrors. The two lasers meet again after another 4km.
The two beams are recombined afterwards. If the distances the two travel are exactly equal, then the two beams will interfere constructively. But if the lengths which the two beams are stretched/contracted by a passing gravity wave, the beams will interfere since one will be "shifted" (it had to travel a longer/shorter distance. By measuring the interference pattern between theses two beams, and hopefully physicists will be able to detect a gravity wave.
The amount that a gravity wave will shrink/extent one of the beam lines is amazingly small. Each 4km beam line will have it's distance changed by 10^-18 meters, or on the scale of attometers! Because of this, any vibration or local variation will affect the beam length. So the physics who are part of the LIGO collaboration built two such laser devices, one in Livingston, Louisiana and the other in Hanford, Washington. When a gravity wave (from outer space) travels through the earth, hopefully both sites will measure the same small variation, which will correspond to a passing gravity wave.
I believe that the narwhal tusk was considered the "unicorn's horn." Narwhals are whales whose "nasal" tusks can grow up to six feet (2m) in length. They are made of ivory and are straight, but have a spiral grove going down the entire length. See this link for a picture.
I am not a marine biologist, so I don't know if the tusk simply falls off after death or something, but Europeans managed to get their hands on them. (Obviously they could have been gathered though hunting as well). They thought that these tusks were the mythical unicorn horns. Unicorn horns were thought to be incarnations of Christ, or something similarly religious, and therefore had life giving powers.
If you go to the Treasury Museum in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, you can see the Hapsburg's collection of crowns, orbs, and scepters[1]. In this collection there are narwhal tusks which were made into scepters and lances since the Holy Roman Emperors thought they were unicorn horns. What I just said here is a summery of what I learned off of the audio recording at the museum.
[1] Visit this museum if you get the chance. You can see lots of treasures collected by the Hapsburgs over their reign of Holy Roman Empire and Austria.
Or that is the argument against it, regardless of you are a seven-year-old girl or a 21 year old/. reply-er. I don't happen to agree with the agruments, and I reason my opinions below.
Should law reflect morality and our sense of public morals? Sodomy laws are an example of legislation that because of morality. Obscenity laws are also justified through morality. Historically pornography has been deemed immoral and therefore obscenity laws are on the books making pornography illegal. Is this position justified? Proponents of public morality intertwined with legislation argue that morality is what holds our society together. They also argue that morality and politics are interconnected.
I would argue that morality, although important, should not be a justification for the state to regulate our behavior. I don't buy the argument that the lack of "morality" laws result in the downfall of society. Certainly the acceptance of homosexuality into our society has not destroyed it, yet laws were (and sometimes still are) passed that ban homosexual behavior on the grounds of morality.
The other argument against pornography is that it is harmful to women. J.S. Mill published the Harm Principle in the 19th century, and it is till relevant today. The state may only regulate behavior that is harmful to others. Mill has a hard time defining harm, so he defines it vaguely. Mill says in the end that it is easier to define what harm isn't. He lists liberty of consciousness, liberty of tastes and pursuit, and freedom to unite as rights that are not to be infringed upon.
The problem with the harm argument against pornography is that it is difficult to prove that it harms women. Feminists argue that rapists, wife-beaters, etc.; men who harm women, usually view pornography, and that it causes their harmful behavior. I would argue that correlation is not the same as cause. It is hard to show that because a rapist views pornography, that it was the cause of his behavior.
Finally, a state can regulate behavior with what's known as the offense principle. However, what is offensive to some (goatse.cx) may not be offensive to others. Usually, the only condition that is used when someone is judged to be illegal because it is offensive is if it is so offensive and so prevalent that you cannot avert your attention to it. So with goatse.cx, although I find it offensive (and disgusting), the fact that I can simply not go to that Web page means that it is not offensive enough to regulate.
Unfortunately, my arguments break down when it comes to children and pornography. Is your seven-year-old girl harmed when she (accidentally) sees Debbie Does Dallas? Mill wrote his Harm Principle before medicine understood emotional trauma, and mental damage. It is difficult to say whether or not your seven-year-old is harmed when she looks at pornography.
Is it moral for children to see pornography? Again, my argument starts breaking down. I think we would all agree it is immoral to force children in participating in pornography, but is it immoral for them to see it? Many posters here on/. complain about our legislators, but hopefully you can see that legislation is not as easy as/. sometimes make it out to be.
Oh, and they screwed up Parsec again. Well done. If two star systems one parsec apart, they are closer then Alpha Centauri is to Earth. You have to do an awful lot of fanwanking to explain why Tatooine is in range while the Arena planet isn't.
For those of you who are wondering, a parsec is a unit of distance, equal to about 3.086 x 10^18 meters. The distance to Alpha Centauri is about 1.2 parsecs from earth. If you systems are less than one parsec apart in distance, then they are about 3 light years apart.
I havn't seen the film, but I really hope that Lucas did not use parsecs as a unit of time. I swear I will walk out of the theater if he does. He has had 25 years to not make the same mistake twice. From your post it seems that he used it to mean distance.
One of the great revelations about special relativity is that time and distance are really the same thing, if we use the speed of light as a metric. Since c=2.99 x 10^8 m/s is constant, we can use both meters and seconds to describe the other. For example, if I say, "The store is 1000 meters away," I can also say "The store is 3.34 x 10^-6 seconds" away. The amount of distance it takes light to travel in 3.34 x 10^-6 seconds is about 1000 meters. In the opposite direction the context is a little more screwy, so that I can say, "I will be there is 1200 seconds" can also be translated as "I will be there in 3.6 x 10^11 meters" since it takes light 1200 s to travel that distance.
So Han Solo, having the fastest ship in the galaxy can make the Kessel run in 40 parsecs. 1 parsec = 3.086 x 10^18 meters and the speed of light is 2.99 x 10^8 m/s so he was saying, "... made the Kessel run 4.11 x 10^9 seconds" or 130.5 years. Gee Han, if you have the fastest ship in the galaxy I would hate to make the Kessel run in one of those bulk freighters.
Investment firms and corperations usually keep sums of money around specifically allocated for the use in high risk projects. The idea is based on Pascal's wager. In a nutshell Pascal's wager says that it is better to belive that God exists because if you are correct you gain everything, and if you are wrong you lose (almost) nothing. I won't go into the details of the philosphy or argue whether or not his line of thinking is/was right or wrong.
VooDoo Science by Dr. Robert Park, which was reviewed here on slashdot, talks about how companies set aside money which they invest in inventions like this. The thinking is that if the invention really works, the company will win big. If you invention is a scam (in most cases it is) the company is only out a couple of million. You must remember that if you do "win," your company will make billions. It is the same (some would say misguided) logic that results in people playing the lottery.
I am not going to debate whether or not this logic holds water. I do want to say that many times when (large) investors look into these scams, regardless of what a scientific study says, they are willing to invest because they are already predicting they will lose the money. Unfortunately, small and personal investors fall for the scam too.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always prefered something like 1433 E. Belmont Ave., Chicago, IL. "I live with other Mayor Daley voters."
Once you got the facilities built (lots of concrete, admittedly, but little in the way of technological input is necessary), the only cost is feeding the reactors, and filtering the output, then you have barrels of oil, to do with as you please.
Who's going to pay for these facilities? Who's going to pay for the transportation? I think your post just reinforces the point I am trying to make. I agree that the amount of cost is low, but money is money, and who is going to be the source?
1. Private Sector
There is lots of money in the private sector, but almost all this capital is tied to investors who want a good investment for their return. I don't see how any investor will justify the spending you speek of, when there is a cheap source of oil available, namely the crude oil I spoke of in the parent post. Now I am sure there are risk-taking investors/venture capitalists who would be willing to invest in alternative energy, my point is that most capital will be spent on what has 1) proven returns and 2) known costs.
2. Public Sector
This was the second point of my posting. That to get this technology off the ground, we need to convince the government to subsidize it. By lowering the cost of this alternative, or any alternative, energy source where investors will receive a greater return than what crude oil production and refinment provides, we can hopefully move away from fossil fuels.
As with all alternative energy sources. It's the cost that holds it back. Whether we like it or not, oil is still the cheapest source of energy we have. Not only because of the price per barrel, albeit the highest is been in a while, but also because of the infrastructure costs associated with any new energy source.
What we need in the US, and in the rest of the world, is a real effort to fund and off-set the costs of these alternative sources. Although I will support the free-market until my face is blue, I believe this is a good case for a the public sector to intervene in the business world. The problem is that this effort must come from the top. The presidential administration, who ever is in office, must be the one to lead this effort.
I'd rather not get into a heated political discussion, but I do believe that the Bush administration wants to see us move from oil (you can stop laughing now). But they want the oil companies to lead the way. You notice that many of them, Exxon-Mobile for instance, now bill themselves as "Energy Companies," no longer wholy concentrating on petroleum. Despite the cynic, these companies do develope much of the solar, wind, and other non-oil technologies today, but don't pursure them due to cost.
(That being said, John Kerry doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose presidental administration will supprt non-petroleum/fossil fuel causes.)
True freedom from fossil fuels will not come quickly or cheaply, but I believe that if we pressure our leaders to help fund these alternative sources and lower their total cost of implementation, we can speed up the process. It may be naive but I can hope.
FYI, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) voted against the USA PATRIOT Act.
I think many people, including myself, had no context in which this internal memo was sent. We don't know the boss who sent it. We don't know the employees s/he was sending it too. As a result we all imagined ourselves receiving this memo at our own place of work.
Where I work, we have a very lax enviornment. We use our computers and our phone system for personal use all the time. It is tolerated as long as it is not egregous. If you could imagine such a memo being sent in this situation, it would cause many unintended ripples.
Back to the point... On face value this memo is too harsh. It is written from a person who looks down on his/her employees. The phrase "I expect" reinforces this point. You're right, I don't know the context of this memo, but there are more diplomatic ways of saying the same thing without coming off a jerkwad (using your word). As I said, style over substance. It was not what was said but how it was said that most people are taking issue with.
Although it sounds like a racket, I have been told that professors don't get royalties for books sold at their own universities. This is to prevent the abuse that you just mentioned, which although cynical, is not true.
Professors don't care. In fact in some cases they are paid to select the more expensive of two options by bookstores who offer them a kickback based on a percentage of the sales.
Perhaps it is because I have a positive view of academia but I have had a good number of professors who said (paraphrasing): I was thinking about book X but it was too expensive at $100 so I went with book Y at a more reasonable $50. Don't get me wrong, they could go out of their way to make it really cheap for us students by doing something like you suggested. So you can look at this two ways.
Lastly, professors in the sciences only want to write two kinds of books (I know I'm generalizing):
The reason why there are no wheels in larger animals is because of the problem in feeding the wheels. How would a rotary joint carry blood across? Indeed, I think you are right, if Nature had evolved wheels, many animals would have tracks instead of legs.
I think a better explaination is that nature never developed roads. Only a few natural locations exist where long straight even terrain would be benificail to those organisms with wheels instead of legs. On the other hand, nature is mostly rough, uneven, and marked with vegitation. Small creatures might get away with rolling around for short distance, but large animals with wheels instead of legs are unpractical.
He gets the girl. (And graduates too!)
Do you recall an airline company called "Pan Am", the biggest one of their time?
They were the victim of this little incident above and in Lockerbie. You may want to check out the results for Pan Am shortly afterwards, to see how well this turned out.
We're getting off topic here, but PanAm filed for bankruptcy because of airline deregulation.
In the 1980s the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was shut down. It was the federal regulatory body that regulated airlines. The CAB was not the modern FAA, but instead regulated such aspects of the airline industries as prices, routes, and destinations. PanAm was the greatest beneficiary of the CAB, considering it was the largest US airline during the 50s through the 70s. PanAm basically didn't have to compete with rivals because the CAB's regulations basically guaranteed it profits.
In the past the only way an airline differentiated itself was with service. Only a few people could actually afford to fly, and as a result airlines were sort of a "luxury" form of travel with full service (throughout the cabin) and amenities.
The the CAB was dissolved airlines realized that they didn't have to compete with service, but could do so with prices. For a while, it seemed like airlines were popping out like wildflowers (remember TrumpAir?). Again, as a consequence of deregulation consumers had more choice in their airlines, more choice in routes, and more choice in prices.
When the things change, usually the largest and most entrenched entities are slowest to react. PanAm basically didn't know how to compete in this new environment. Airlines lowered prices to the point where anyone could fly. Today flying is not reserved for the privileged few but to most everyone in the US. In the early 90s, PanAm basically found itself barraged with "new" lower cost airlines and went out of business.
Some big airlines managed to survive thanks to smart management. American Airlines today is the one of the world's largest carrier. Some other big airlines wound up dying but not dead. TWA is a shell of its former self. The big winner in the industry is Southwest, whose low cost model is replicated with other airlines such as JetBlue.
Many of the airlines that sprung up thanks to deregulation no longer exist. Trump's airline is one example. When all the cards fell into place only about ten major airline remained in the 90s. But even so air travel demand kept going up, and prices still went down. Every major airline today has filled for bankruptcy in some for or another (United, American, Continental, US Air, Delta) or bought out by another airline (US Air, TWA). Ironically Southwest, although a "discount" airline is 1) the most successful 2) posts profits even post Sept. 11th.
Many people have complained that airline deregulation ruined air-travel. I don't believe this is true. Complaints are usually about travel delays, long lines at terminals, passengers being treated like cattle, and that was before Sept. 11th! [With airport security a big buzzword today it's probably even worse.] But keep in mind what has happened thanks to deregulation. Airlines are flying to more destinations, especially those with large markets. Airline prices have dropped to almost nothing compared to the past. Passenger ridership has increased significantly in the last twenty years. I would contend that most of the problems seen today with air-travel (not a result of security measures) are a result of the "old" regulated mentality that some management still have.
The Austrailian ballot is where candidates (for all elections) are listed entirely on one ballot and you get to choose which candidate you want regardless of party.
It may bewilder some people that before the 1920's when you went to vote, a member of the Republican or Democratic party stood outside your polling in place and handed you a "Republican" or "Democratic" ballot. Said ballot would have only the party nominations for President, Senator, House Representatives, State Governor, State Senator, etc. As a result you "voted the party line."
The Austrailian ballot was introduced between the 1920s and 1940s in the US (different municipalities adopted it at different times). It changed US politics because now people could vote for a Democratic President but a Republican Senator. One major result is that since WWII there have been very few times when the party of the president coincided with the majority party of Congress. In fact the Bush administration which has had a Republican Congress for most of the three years it has been in office is an exception not a norm.
Money has the power to let people forget the difference between good and evil. --paraphrased from the movie Sneakers
At Business schools they try to teach business ethics. In fact with the recent stink of corporate scandals, many schools are finding it necessary and not an elective to have ethics traning. I heard an NPR interview with an ex-con who went to prison for fraud on a coporate level. He now works by speaking to MBA students about his experience with ethics and how not to fall into the same trap he did.
That being said the quote is still very relavant. Business fundamentally deals with money and money can be used to receive any form of reward. Since businesses deal with the bottom line, anything that brings in more money must be good, regardless of any ethical issues.
Okay, here's the plan. Let's say you have aquired lots of illegal money, that's not counterfeit.
Now-a-days an entry level VISA card cas anywhere between $2000+ in credit line. All you need for a plane ticket and a large truck won't cost you more than a $1000, so any credit card will do.
Notice there is no "????--hold on someone's calling: Hello ... Treasury Dept.?
I've got all this pr0n, and all this bandwidth... but no IPs to share it with.
I believe this is a first for humanity. Sort of like why you never hear the statement, "Man! What am I going to do with all these drugs?"
Yeah, and when you want music instead of just "sound" get something like the Digital Audio Labs card (http://www.digitalaudio.com/ [digitalaudio.com]) or one of M Audios board (http://www.midiman.net/products/consumer/index.ph p [midiman.net])
What is the advantage of using a digital output? I am trying to research this on the internet right now. In my mind the Digital-to-Analouge conversion must occur somewhere, after all speakers/sound is analouge. What does a digital output do for you? Since you have to decode the digital signal into analouge sound I would imagine it would be best to have your computer handle this.
The one alternative is to have the digital output hook up into an A/V receiver which then performs the D/A conversion. I don't see an advantage to normal audio signals- with one exception: dolby or dts multi-channel sound output. If you could send out the digital audio output from a DVD player into your A/V receiver, it could decode the dolby digital audio and give you surround sound.
Is any of this correct or am I just wasting by breadth (probably yes regardless)?
You are the exception to the rule.
Soft Drink companies discovered years ago that it is not the taste that sells cola, but the image that sells. This change is mostly attributed to New Coke which bombed, but caused a rush to buy "classic" coke. (Aside: conspiracy theorists say Coke purposely did this to boost sales, snopes.com has the story otherwise.)
This is why Pepsi got Brintey Spears to sell their soft drink, because the target audience of her musi^H^H^H^Himage is Pepsi's main demographic, and hence they want to build their image that Brittney Spears drinks Pepsi and so should you. Blind taste tests show that people can't tell the difference between Coke and it's competitors anyway. Actually, people prefer Pepsi's sweeter taste over Coke's, which is why Pepsi has/had their "blind taste test" advertising. Of course once you start drinking a product you then say you drink it because of the taste. After all, you have become acclimated to it. I gave up drinking most sodas a while back, and now they all taste too syrupy sweet to me. Even Coke which I swore by years ago, I can say I don't really like anymore.
This so called "discovery" is nothing but the annoucment of the results of MAP, or Microwave Anisotropy Probe. It was launched a couple of years ago and took 4 pi sterradian measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (or CMB). The news conference was originally planned for last thursday the 6th, and scheduled before the space shuttle Columbia was lost during reentry. It was delayed because the scientists (and NASA) didn't want this to turn into a "Columbia Disaster" press conference where all the questions would be Off-Topic.
I have been told the US maintains a permanent presence at the South Pole for specifically that reason. Basically, although no country owns Antarctica, the resources there are free for grabs. Although inconceivable due to the expense, the US wants to maintain their claims on the resources in Antarctica, and the only way to do this is to have a permanent human presence.
As a result the US, though the NSF, funds lots of scientific experiments at the pole. Some examples besides Ice Cube are:
(Note: BOOMERANG and TopHat are balloon experiments which are not located at the south pole, but are funded by NSF in Antarctica)
Basically the pole is really good for cosmic background radiation (CMB) studies because the atmosphere is incredibly stable. This allows telescopes like DASI and balloons like BOOMERANG and TopHat to observe the sky without much atmospheric interference. IceCube involves drilling a hole in the ice and lowering a string of photomultiplier tubes(PMTs) down into the hole. After adding water, which freezes into very clear ice, the PMTs will look for neutrino interactions within the ice.
So I've gotten a little off topic so I'll conclude by saying that if such a road could be built, it would greatly increase the capacity of the good that can be shipped down. Currently only C-130's equipped with skis and land at the pole, which is so dangerous that there is one fatal accident every year. Also the limit on the weight of the equipment that can be brought down is only about 25 tons; I seem to remember this number for some reason. So any increase in cargo capacity to the south pole would be welcome.
"Ill-advised and stupid" does not, unfortunately, mean "unconstitutional."
I think that sums it all up. But here are some good point the justicies bring up. In her majority opinion Ginsburg says,
In her argument, which I only read lightly, the majority seems to agree that the legislation is constitutional for various reasons. It says nothing about the actual implications of the said lesgislation. It should be noted, and this is something I did not know, that the 1976 copyright , which act extended copyright lifetimes to 50 years after the death of the author/creator, was part of an international treaty that the US signed. More over copyrights have been extended in the nation's past to from 14 years to 28 years to (whatever) again and again, all through legislation.
In the dessent, both Stevens and Breyer note that the legislation harms the general public. From Stevens',
And from Breyer's:
It seems to be that the argument within the court was whether or not one should abide by the constitution regardless of what the actual legislation does or whether or not one should use broader public good to judge a case. I would have to agree with the former. Justices should not be legislating. The purpose of the court should be to evaluate whether or not legislation passed by Congress is constitutionally valid.
For a numerical comparison I found some rough numbers for what other living organisms can survive. The unit of radiation used is a Gray, which is the unit used to measure the absorbed dosage of radiation. It does not tell relate the biological effects of that radiation.
These numbers are ones I received from a radiation safety lecture at CERN. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the numbers. But remember, they are obtained from non-controlled experiments (like nuclear accidents) and are an estimates of the amount of dosage needed to kill said organism.
Now according to the Science magazine article, the bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans can stand up to 15,000 Gy of radiation!
I think they actually had Pierce Brosnan on for that show, so it was even one of the real Bonds. ;-)
Not that you really wanted to know, but that episode of SNL stars Garth Brooks (with musical guest Chris Gains) and Chris Parnell plays Bond in that sketch.
The transcript is available here:
It is only mentioned briefly in the article, but I'll try to elaborate.
Basically gravity waves will stretch space in one direction (say x) and contract space in a perpendicular direction (y). Given this, the "easiest" way to detect gravity waves is to build a very large interferometer. LIGO is the current ongoing gravity wave interferometer, which splits one laser beam into two lasers beams, sending each perpendicularly down a vacuum "hallway" four kilometers long. At the end, the beams are reflected by mirrors. The two lasers meet again after another 4km.
The two beams are recombined afterwards. If the distances the two travel are exactly equal, then the two beams will interfere constructively. But if the lengths which the two beams are stretched/contracted by a passing gravity wave, the beams will interfere since one will be "shifted" (it had to travel a longer/shorter distance. By measuring the interference pattern between theses two beams, and hopefully physicists will be able to detect a gravity wave.
The amount that a gravity wave will shrink/extent one of the beam lines is amazingly small. Each 4km beam line will have it's distance changed by 10^-18 meters, or on the scale of attometers! Because of this, any vibration or local variation will affect the beam length. So the physics who are part of the LIGO collaboration built two such laser devices, one in Livingston, Louisiana and the other in Hanford, Washington. When a gravity wave (from outer space) travels through the earth, hopefully both sites will measure the same small variation, which will correspond to a passing gravity wave.
You can get more information about LIGO at:
LIGO's Home Page
LIGO collaboration page.
Slashdot recently had a science story about LIGO.
This is a little OT from the main story.
I believe that the narwhal tusk was considered the "unicorn's horn." Narwhals are whales whose "nasal" tusks can grow up to six feet (2m) in length. They are made of ivory and are straight, but have a spiral grove going down the entire length. See this link for a picture.
I am not a marine biologist, so I don't know if the tusk simply falls off after death or something, but Europeans managed to get their hands on them. (Obviously they could have been gathered though hunting as well). They thought that these tusks were the mythical unicorn horns. Unicorn horns were thought to be incarnations of Christ, or something similarly religious, and therefore had life giving powers.
If you go to the Treasury Museum in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, you can see the Hapsburg's collection of crowns, orbs, and scepters[1]. In this collection there are narwhal tusks which were made into scepters and lances since the Holy Roman Emperors thought they were unicorn horns. What I just said here is a summery of what I learned off of the audio recording at the museum.
[1] Visit this museum if you get the chance. You can see lots of treasures collected by the Hapsburgs over their reign of Holy Roman Empire and Austria.
Pronography is immoral and it harms women.
Or that is the argument against it, regardless of you are a seven-year-old girl or a 21 year old /. reply-er. I don't happen to agree with the agruments, and I reason my opinions below.
Should law reflect morality and our sense of public morals? Sodomy laws are an example of legislation that because of morality. Obscenity laws are also justified through morality. Historically pornography has been deemed immoral and therefore obscenity laws are on the books making pornography illegal. Is this position justified? Proponents of public morality intertwined with legislation argue that morality is what holds our society together. They also argue that morality and politics are interconnected.
I would argue that morality, although important, should not be a justification for the state to regulate our behavior. I don't buy the argument that the lack of "morality" laws result in the downfall of society. Certainly the acceptance of homosexuality into our society has not destroyed it, yet laws were (and sometimes still are) passed that ban homosexual behavior on the grounds of morality.
The other argument against pornography is that it is harmful to women. J.S. Mill published the Harm Principle in the 19th century, and it is till relevant today. The state may only regulate behavior that is harmful to others. Mill has a hard time defining harm, so he defines it vaguely. Mill says in the end that it is easier to define what harm isn't. He lists liberty of consciousness, liberty of tastes and pursuit, and freedom to unite as rights that are not to be infringed upon.
The problem with the harm argument against pornography is that it is difficult to prove that it harms women. Feminists argue that rapists, wife-beaters, etc.; men who harm women, usually view pornography, and that it causes their harmful behavior. I would argue that correlation is not the same as cause. It is hard to show that because a rapist views pornography, that it was the cause of his behavior.
Finally, a state can regulate behavior with what's known as the offense principle. However, what is offensive to some (goatse.cx) may not be offensive to others. Usually, the only condition that is used when someone is judged to be illegal because it is offensive is if it is so offensive and so prevalent that you cannot avert your attention to it. So with goatse.cx, although I find it offensive (and disgusting), the fact that I can simply not go to that Web page means that it is not offensive enough to regulate.
Unfortunately, my arguments break down when it comes to children and pornography. Is your seven-year-old girl harmed when she (accidentally) sees Debbie Does Dallas? Mill wrote his Harm Principle before medicine understood emotional trauma, and mental damage. It is difficult to say whether or not your seven-year-old is harmed when she looks at pornography.
Is it moral for children to see pornography? Again, my argument starts breaking down. I think we would all agree it is immoral to force children in participating in pornography, but is it immoral for them to see it? Many posters here on /. complain about our legislators, but hopefully you can see that legislation is not as easy as /. sometimes make it out to be.
Oh, and they screwed up Parsec again. Well done. If two star systems one parsec apart, they are closer then Alpha Centauri is to Earth. You have to do an awful lot of fanwanking to explain why Tatooine is in range while the Arena planet isn't.
For those of you who are wondering, a parsec is a unit of distance, equal to about 3.086 x 10^18 meters. The distance to Alpha Centauri is about 1.2 parsecs from earth. If you systems are less than one parsec apart in distance, then they are about 3 light years apart.
I havn't seen the film, but I really hope that Lucas did not use parsecs as a unit of time. I swear I will walk out of the theater if he does. He has had 25 years to not make the same mistake twice. From your post it seems that he used it to mean distance.
One of the great revelations about special relativity is that time and distance are really the same thing, if we use the speed of light as a metric. Since c=2.99 x 10^8 m/s is constant, we can use both meters and seconds to describe the other. For example, if I say, "The store is 1000 meters away," I can also say "The store is 3.34 x 10^-6 seconds" away. The amount of distance it takes light to travel in 3.34 x 10^-6 seconds is about 1000 meters. In the opposite direction the context is a little more screwy, so that I can say, "I will be there is 1200 seconds" can also be translated as "I will be there in 3.6 x 10^11 meters" since it takes light 1200 s to travel that distance.
So Han Solo, having the fastest ship in the galaxy can make the Kessel run in 40 parsecs. 1 parsec = 3.086 x 10^18 meters and the speed of light is 2.99 x 10^8 m/s so he was saying, "... made the Kessel run 4.11 x 10^9 seconds" or 130.5 years. Gee Han, if you have the fastest ship in the galaxy I would hate to make the Kessel run in one of those bulk freighters.
Investment firms and corperations usually keep sums of money around specifically allocated for the use in high risk projects. The idea is based on Pascal's wager. In a nutshell Pascal's wager says that it is better to belive that God exists because if you are correct you gain everything, and if you are wrong you lose (almost) nothing. I won't go into the details of the philosphy or argue whether or not his line of thinking is/was right or wrong.
VooDoo Science by Dr. Robert Park, which was reviewed here on slashdot, talks about how companies set aside money which they invest in inventions like this. The thinking is that if the invention really works, the company will win big. If you invention is a scam (in most cases it is) the company is only out a couple of million. You must remember that if you do "win," your company will make billions. It is the same (some would say misguided) logic that results in people playing the lottery.
I am not going to debate whether or not this logic holds water. I do want to say that many times when (large) investors look into these scams, regardless of what a scientific study says, they are willing to invest because they are already predicting they will lose the money. Unfortunately, small and personal investors fall for the scam too.