Local Police - Most Criminal Matters State Police - If you're out on the highway or something FBI - If the crime breaks state lines CIA - If it's more to do with espionage and spy stuff overseas DHS - 'Helpdesk', supposed to have contacts with the rest NSA - Why are you considering calling these guys? They're the security guards of the government. Peace Corps - ??? Coast Guard - You're lost on around the coast? National Guard - It's a natural disaster, but you should probably get ahold of FEMA first.
Each of these have their own areas of expertise and proficiency. The NG is a poor choice for local policing under normal situations. The CIA would be worse. Etc...
China is no pushover - you can barter with, but can't ignore the history that got us here and still keep the newbie coal burners at the table.
And thus far, most of our 'savings' in CO2 have actually been exports in manufacturing and production to China. Frequently with WORSE pollution and CO2 emissions than the production was in the USA.
I mean, just look at the Kyoto protocol - universally said to not be enough, yet the US turned it down, and a majority of the signers aren't going to meet the requirements. Oops.
Complicated means corruptable, I like rain-forest as much as the next guy but they don't belong in this market because of the complexity of measuring the cost/benifit in term of tons of carbon.
There are various methods of capturing CO2, thing is, stuff like rain forest deforestation aversion is indeed marginal, iffy causes.
I'm all for saving the environment, but I want to be practical about it.
As for the coal industry, there'll still be plenty of coal power plants for years, and even after that we'll have uses for the coal - nuclear power isn't going to be efficient for steel production anytime soon. 900C is the top end even for GenIV reactors, and you need ~1500C for steel.
On the power plants - that's why I specified the most polluting plants first; they're also normally the closest to end of life, most uneconomical plants anyways. Basically you replace coal with nuclear via attrition. Growth is through a combination of green and nuclear technologies.
And yes, they need incentives.
My personal preference is cap and trade as espoused by the Brazilian proposal since it addresses the inequities of GH gasses released since 1960.
Seems to be another proposal designed to penalize the USA/Europe. You have to realize that the more painful you make the process, the less likely the country is to adopt it. Yes, I know it sucks, but we're all in this together and it'll be easier for countries that didn't emit much in the past to keep their emissions down than to get the USA to stop emitting; especially if you're going to penalize it more for it's past.
If you want a credit then I think you should be able to point to a one ton block of carbon that you have taken out of the system long term (eg: biochar).
It's more complicated than that, but could indeed be part of any 'trading' program.
This would put coal on an equal footing with renewables and nukes, ie: you buy credits/permits to burn coal but you get reimbursed with credits for whatever you capture in the chimney. And yeah, a dutch auction is a good way to maximise the return to state coffers and they can then use that cash to offset the cost to consumers with tax breaks....well...I can dream can't I?
The whole idea is to penalize carbon emissions, isn't it? If you capture the CO2 or carbon out of the chimney in some fashion, you don't need the credit in the first place.
For miscellaneous sequestration projects, otherwise known as 'offsets', those would have to be regulated in some way to avoid fraud.
The dutch auction is to maximize income while being fair and allowing the most economical use of allowable carbon emissions in the first place. IE everybody estimates how many carbon credits they'll need, how much they can afford to pay and still make a profit, etc... One thing complicating things would be that I'd allow multiple bids - they can bid for 2k credits at $1, but only 1k at $4.
Nuke plants and other green power sources wouldn't get any money(directly) from carbon credits, and I certainly wouldn't issue them to power plants(or other companies), but it'd be one expense they wouldn't have to worry about, giving them a couple feet up on coal, and a foot up on NG.
Start the carbon auctions at a minimal cost at first - maybe not even an auction, just $1 per X tons of CO2. Then take the amount sold, drop by 1-10% a year. Credits are only good for a year.
but they won't help with existing coal plants that have still got decades of use left in them.
Honestly enough, a existing power plant, no matter the fuel, has a powerful incentive in the form of sunk capital to keep operating. Indeed, most coal plants in the USA will have to be almost entirely rebuilt to even have the hope of carbon capture.
Still, in the USA demand for electricity is still rising, and many power plants are reaching end of life. If I was evil overlord* of the USA, one of the many things I'd be doing would be an almost crash project to get new nuke plants up and operational. I'd outright build them to render the most polluting(per kwh) plants offline first. The idea would be to build a nuclear plant(preferably a GenIV), in the best spot, with the associated infrastructure to shut down one or more dirty power plants. In many cases I'd replace a megawatt sized station with a gigawatt one - this would allow more expensive peak plants like the NG ones to operate less often, saving lots of money. I'd make them cogeneration to help with payoff. When demand is low, use the spare heat to produce some other product, such as desalinated water. When it's high, concentrate on electricity.
Nuclear plants would benefit just as much as the other non-hydrocarbon power producers with carbon credits in most scenarios. Still, I don't trust the politicians to not screw that up. Personally, I'd do carbon credits as a complicated dutch auction each year.
Thus far, the extra expenses for 'clean coal', without even carbon sequestriation, looks to push the BUILD expense up higher than building a nuclear plant. Fuel and operating costs are lower for a nuke plant, thus once a coal plant is more expensive than the nuke, there's no reason to build coal.
From my reading, adding carbon capture costs the power plant something like 10% efficiency, on top of extra expenses for the carbon capture technology.
Unless they can figure out some cheaper, more efficient, methods to capture carbon, or have a sideline benefit like using the CO2 to get more oil/gas out of a well, then a nuke plant is a serious contender against 'clean coal'.
Not only is it shortsighted and greedy, but bio-oil is still oil. Dressing on a pig.
I'd hardly call bio-oil dressing on a pig. Bio-oil, oil from recent organic sources, is a renewable resource. More expensive than dino-oil, but renewable.
We can't really tell yet; but gasoline from bio-oils might well prove to be superior to ethanol. Higher energy density, no problems with hydroscopy having water contaminate the fuel at the slightest excuse.
If nothing else, biooil is also useful for all the OTHER things we do with oil - making lubricants, plastics, various other chemicals, etc...
Now, this isn't something I see happening with conventional farming - more algae farms in the desert. But bio-oil, bio-fuel DOES have a place in the future; Solar and wind aren't really a replacement unless we have some SERIOUS breakthroughs in battery/electric energy storage methods.
In fact, it's likely the reason that oil is well below the $150 line right now because Big Oil actually saw it as a risk.
Actually, it was discovered that oil @$150 is currently the price point to actually drop demand and have people seek replacements seriously.
You are not wrong but there are some considerations that are different.
But? Of course there are different considerations. Besides the roof, there's also how you install the insulation vapor barriers, termite considerations, heating/cooling load requirements, snow load vs hurricane load, and the list goes on.
This would probably be a severe mistake in Florida though; but that might not stop people from doing it for aesthetic reasons.
My whole point.
My grandfather lives in a old concrete block house. Unlike many houses of that type, it actually has insulation over the ceiling. Heat is via electric in the ceiling. Totally insufficient and inefficient for climates that regularly see snow, but it works for him.
On the other hand, the very open design of the house, the filled concrete blocks providing thermal mass, the semi-reflective metal roof(with insulation under) etc... It's a very cheap house to keep cool, not needing AC except for the dead of summer. Assuming that you're used to 80-90F air temperatures, of course.
How is no insulation a standard / good building practice in the NE?
I think you misunderstood. What I was getting at is that people moving from the northeast to Florida go looking for a house similar to the ones back home. They're often built REALLLY cheap, with the absolute minimum legal insulation, sometimes less due to fraud. No insulation is survivable, if expensive, in Florida. That level of insulation in the northeast during a really cold spell can easily move beyond 'expensive' or 'uncomfortable' if the furnace isn't up to the task.
A house built for the conditions presented by Florida can be comfortable and economical for not much money at all, actually. Still, said house would be designed to radiate/get rid of heat on average, since there's only a short mild heating system. A NE house, on the other hand, is best designed to be a heat trap
Insulation is very important, whether to protect you from the cold in the NE, or the heat of the south.
Which is why I said cheap, lacking, among other things, the insulation. Cheap, as opposed to inexpensive. Cheap tends to connotate 'lowest upfront costs' to me. 'Inexpensive' or 'economical' allows for higher up front costs for lower costs down the road.
Well, google might be approaching it from the end that we're a lost generation due to the excesses of the 'punch the monkey' era before effective blocking became available and retailers realized that the ads had gotten intrusive to the point of reducing their effectiveness.
They go for the ones they can get, in other words.
but a different quality that I can't imagine anyone would think as a loss of quality. Just a change of tone.
It's still a distortion from the original, not easily correctable. Overall, it's still a loss in information, just different than MP3
And it just so happens that like in every other arena of human opinion most people prefer crap.
People tend to prefer what they're used to. Witness building trends down in Florida. You get people building/buying cheap reproductions* of Northeastern style houses down there because that's what they prefer - despite that being a lousy way to build a house in Florida. As would the inverse of building a house suited for Florida in the North.
I'm not actually sure how cookie based ad tracking would affect me in the long run?
Well, the theory is that if you browse for a while, say Slashdot, ArsTech, Dan's Data, newegg, etc, all end up using this system.
Google, will through the tracking, eventually build a profile of you and start advertising computer and interesting flashlight ads over, say, feminine hygene products. All bets are off if you have a female who browses using the same profile, of course(or are female and visit 'feminine' sites).
If you browse car sites all the time, it might start showing you cars.
The idea is that, while small, each ad display costs money. The higher the clickthrough rate, the more effective the ad. Not everybody is interested in the same stuff, so showing NAS/Server ads to network admins is better than showing them to little jimmy looking for transformers stuff.
Hmm... Just had a thought - with this system, you'd be able to track indirect visits. IE you show the Ad to person X. Person X notes down the site, but doesn't immediately click. He then manually goes to the site later when he discovers the need. Basically, the justification for most TV ads, brand familiarity. With this system, while the correlation wouldn't be guarenteed, you'd be able to at least measure it.
Another thing would be to help ensure that you don't ad-fatigue people by showing them the *same* ad all over the place - like the annoying 'punch the monkey' and X-10 ads.
Thought 2 - It'd be a good thing to develop some sort of MP* system for detecting husband/wife/kid browsing habits. IE you get browsing patterns that are highly discognitive, assume that they're seperate people and flip between ad sets depending. Mr. Doe gets neat electronic gadgets, Mrs. Doe gets Jewelry, and Little Joey gets toys. You should be able to determine which personality set to use within a couple pages. Along with this, detect public browsing computers such as those in cafes, for their own specific ad sets.
So if I build and sell a home I should be able to control it while I still live?
The home is a physical object, it's a book vs the story on it's pages. Believe it or not, I can't just go to a (new)home, measure it, and produce a copy - it's a violation of the copyright on the building plans.
Once you sell it(the physical home), it's out of your control(excluding selling contract riders and such). You can build another. It's more like controlling the plans for building that particular house. But that's not even a good analogy. You can sell your copyright, in which case I'd have a provision that the CR only lasts the 50 years. So if you wrote something at 20 and are now 75, you effectively can't sell the CR, but can release it into the public domain.
You can't rewrite your novel and sell it again. Print more books, press more CDs, whatever, that you can do. The CR is different than that, the CR doesn't protect a 'physical good'.
Oh yeah, and I'd limit unregistered copyrights to 10 years, maybe 20 for 'unfinished manuscripts'. Part of registration would be the storing of an archival copy in a national archive. The form the copy would take depends on the media, of course. For artwork a print would be acceptable. For music, a copy of the 'master'. Software, unobfusticated, compilable source code. So on and so forth.
To fund the system, I'd limit 'corporate' copyrights to 10 years, requiring renewal fees for every 10 after that. Then again, the end result would be CR still held by individuals, just locked up with 'exclusive contracts'. It'd be corporate property in all but name. So make it universal, and cahrge fees low enough that individuals can afford to keep their stuff copyrighted if they want, but high enough to make disney think about releasing some of their stuff into the public domain.
My proposals are normally along the lines of 'life or 50 years, whichever's greater'.
The 50 years is so the work of a sick author like Robert Jordan still has enough value to interest publishers, or if the dude has an accident or whatever.
The life because, well, an author should be able to control his works while still living.
On the other hand, 50 years/life has the copyright expiring while there's still individuals/groups interested in preserving/distributing the work.
For example, Elvis made a bunch of movies. I saw reruns of them a lot as a kid, but as time goes on, the number of people who remember Elvis live drop. Statistically speaking, very, very few will be left by the time the copyrights on his work expire.
Then again, some (un)common sense in their shipping divisions of various companies would help. Dell Batteries HP Newegg
Still, the disc thing is probably more for packing shipping containers from China - the extra control and distance being shipped makes packing efficienty easier and more economical than discovering a way to pack random UPS trucks better.
Does ~50 miles away from the transmitters count as 'between towns' enough for you?
I get digital television better than analog. Now, yes, I do have a huge antenna on the roof. Still, I had snow on the analog stations. Now I get perfect pictures on the digital stations.
Re:Digital broadcast
on
Why TV Lost
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I LIVE in a 'snowy broadcast' area. My new LCD TV has the digital channels perfectly clear, while the analog channels show lots of artifacts. I'd even rate one of the stations that did a flash-cut as 'unwatchable' before the transition, is now perfectly clear at 1080i.
Are you sure that you're not comparing the lower power temporary digital channels against the old full power analog? Many stations are transmitting both, but the digital station at a tenth or less of the power.
When they finally turn off the analog stations, most are going to put their digital broadcast on the original station at the old power.
Some acts in the past have actually gotten rich enough to buy back the copyright and have exclusive control over their music, but not many do.
Given the age and success of Metallica, I wouldn't bet that Lars and the rest of the band don't have a firm grip on the copyrights to their songs, even if it's through a holding company like the beetles had it done.
Generally, you want the short term studies done first; old dude who's going to likely to die soon anyways is likely to cost a lot less if something unexpected messes up bad.
Save the long term studies for the next version that might actually restore some useful vision.
It's more like I go and defeat the Mongols on the eastern border, but they're light calvery. Then I have to face the Teutons on the western border, but they're heavy calvery, requiring different tactics and equipment. Then on the northern border are the infrantry Slavs, and so on...
Yes, the Emperor doesn't care about the taxonomy of the various threats/invaders(I'll assume he's not a military emperor and is far too busy with his harem), but it doesn't change the fact that: Each cancer has to be treated differently; there is no 'universal' cure, much to the dismay of the masses, and B: Doctors are far from useless. They aren't perfect, but far from useless.
And the Emperor is demanding to know why I haven't defeated everybody yet...
Slashdot Mirror
Local Police - Most Criminal Matters
State Police - If you're out on the highway or something
FBI - If the crime breaks state lines
CIA - If it's more to do with espionage and spy stuff overseas
DHS - 'Helpdesk', supposed to have contacts with the rest
NSA - Why are you considering calling these guys? They're the security guards of the government.
Peace Corps - ???
Coast Guard - You're lost on around the coast?
National Guard - It's a natural disaster, but you should probably get ahold of FEMA first.
Each of these have their own areas of expertise and proficiency. The NG is a poor choice for local policing under normal situations. The CIA would be worse. Etc...
If anything, why not put the aptly named and 'been working on it for decades' NSA in charge?
China is no pushover - you can barter with, but can't ignore the history that got us here and still keep the newbie coal burners at the table.
And thus far, most of our 'savings' in CO2 have actually been exports in manufacturing and production to China. Frequently with WORSE pollution and CO2 emissions than the production was in the USA.
I mean, just look at the Kyoto protocol - universally said to not be enough, yet the US turned it down, and a majority of the signers aren't going to meet the requirements. Oops.
Complicated means corruptable, I like rain-forest as much as the next guy but they don't belong in this market because of the complexity of measuring the cost/benifit in term of tons of carbon.
There are various methods of capturing CO2, thing is, stuff like rain forest deforestation aversion is indeed marginal, iffy causes.
I'm all for saving the environment, but I want to be practical about it.
As for the coal industry, there'll still be plenty of coal power plants for years, and even after that we'll have uses for the coal - nuclear power isn't going to be efficient for steel production anytime soon. 900C is the top end even for GenIV reactors, and you need ~1500C for steel.
On the power plants - that's why I specified the most polluting plants first; they're also normally the closest to end of life, most uneconomical plants anyways. Basically you replace coal with nuclear via attrition. Growth is through a combination of green and nuclear technologies.
And yes, they need incentives.
My personal preference is cap and trade as espoused by the Brazilian proposal since it addresses the inequities of GH gasses released since 1960.
Seems to be another proposal designed to penalize the USA/Europe. You have to realize that the more painful you make the process, the less likely the country is to adopt it. Yes, I know it sucks, but we're all in this together and it'll be easier for countries that didn't emit much in the past to keep their emissions down than to get the USA to stop emitting; especially if you're going to penalize it more for it's past.
If you want a credit then I think you should be able to point to a one ton block of carbon that you have taken out of the system long term (eg: biochar).
It's more complicated than that, but could indeed be part of any 'trading' program.
This would put coal on an equal footing with renewables and nukes, ie: you buy credits/permits to burn coal but you get reimbursed with credits for whatever you capture in the chimney. And yeah, a dutch auction is a good way to maximise the return to state coffers and they can then use that cash to offset the cost to consumers with tax breaks....well...I can dream can't I?
The whole idea is to penalize carbon emissions, isn't it? If you capture the CO2 or carbon out of the chimney in some fashion, you don't need the credit in the first place.
For miscellaneous sequestration projects, otherwise known as 'offsets', those would have to be regulated in some way to avoid fraud.
The dutch auction is to maximize income while being fair and allowing the most economical use of allowable carbon emissions in the first place. IE everybody estimates how many carbon credits they'll need, how much they can afford to pay and still make a profit, etc... One thing complicating things would be that I'd allow multiple bids - they can bid for 2k credits at $1, but only 1k at $4.
Nuke plants and other green power sources wouldn't get any money(directly) from carbon credits, and I certainly wouldn't issue them to power plants(or other companies), but it'd be one expense they wouldn't have to worry about, giving them a couple feet up on coal, and a foot up on NG.
Start the carbon auctions at a minimal cost at first - maybe not even an auction, just $1 per X tons of CO2. Then take the amount sold, drop by 1-10% a year. Credits are only good for a year.
but they won't help with existing coal plants that have still got decades of use left in them.
Honestly enough, a existing power plant, no matter the fuel, has a powerful incentive in the form of sunk capital to keep operating. Indeed, most coal plants in the USA will have to be almost entirely rebuilt to even have the hope of carbon capture.
Still, in the USA demand for electricity is still rising, and many power plants are reaching end of life. If I was evil overlord* of the USA, one of the many things I'd be doing would be an almost crash project to get new nuke plants up and operational. I'd outright build them to render the most polluting(per kwh) plants offline first. The idea would be to build a nuclear plant(preferably a GenIV), in the best spot, with the associated infrastructure to shut down one or more dirty power plants. In many cases I'd replace a megawatt sized station with a gigawatt one - this would allow more expensive peak plants like the NG ones to operate less often, saving lots of money. I'd make them cogeneration to help with payoff. When demand is low, use the spare heat to produce some other product, such as desalinated water. When it's high, concentrate on electricity.
Nuclear plants would benefit just as much as the other non-hydrocarbon power producers with carbon credits in most scenarios. Still, I don't trust the politicians to not screw that up. Personally, I'd do carbon credits as a complicated dutch auction each year.
*President doesn't have enough power. ;)
Thus far, the extra expenses for 'clean coal', without even carbon sequestriation, looks to push the BUILD expense up higher than building a nuclear plant. Fuel and operating costs are lower for a nuke plant, thus once a coal plant is more expensive than the nuke, there's no reason to build coal.
From my reading, adding carbon capture costs the power plant something like 10% efficiency, on top of extra expenses for the carbon capture technology.
Unless they can figure out some cheaper, more efficient, methods to capture carbon, or have a sideline benefit like using the CO2 to get more oil/gas out of a well, then a nuke plant is a serious contender against 'clean coal'.
Not only is it shortsighted and greedy, but bio-oil is still oil. Dressing on a pig.
I'd hardly call bio-oil dressing on a pig. Bio-oil, oil from recent organic sources, is a renewable resource. More expensive than dino-oil, but renewable.
We can't really tell yet; but gasoline from bio-oils might well prove to be superior to ethanol. Higher energy density, no problems with hydroscopy having water contaminate the fuel at the slightest excuse.
If nothing else, biooil is also useful for all the OTHER things we do with oil - making lubricants, plastics, various other chemicals, etc...
Now, this isn't something I see happening with conventional farming - more algae farms in the desert. But bio-oil, bio-fuel DOES have a place in the future; Solar and wind aren't really a replacement unless we have some SERIOUS breakthroughs in battery/electric energy storage methods.
In fact, it's likely the reason that oil is well below the $150 line right now because Big Oil actually saw it as a risk.
Actually, it was discovered that oil @$150 is currently the price point to actually drop demand and have people seek replacements seriously.
These batteries would be ~99% efficient, thus limiting the heat from rapid discharge.
Though you might have to do what the Tesla Roadster does have have forced air cooling or some such.
You are not wrong but there are some considerations that are different.
But? Of course there are different considerations. Besides the roof, there's also how you install the insulation vapor barriers, termite considerations, heating/cooling load requirements, snow load vs hurricane load, and the list goes on.
This would probably be a severe mistake in Florida though; but that might not stop people from doing it for aesthetic reasons.
My whole point.
My grandfather lives in a old concrete block house. Unlike many houses of that type, it actually has insulation over the ceiling. Heat is via electric in the ceiling. Totally insufficient and inefficient for climates that regularly see snow, but it works for him.
On the other hand, the very open design of the house, the filled concrete blocks providing thermal mass, the semi-reflective metal roof(with insulation under) etc... It's a very cheap house to keep cool, not needing AC except for the dead of summer. Assuming that you're used to 80-90F air temperatures, of course.
How is no insulation a standard / good building practice in the NE?
I think you misunderstood. What I was getting at is that people moving from the northeast to Florida go looking for a house similar to the ones back home. They're often built REALLLY cheap, with the absolute minimum legal insulation, sometimes less due to fraud. No insulation is survivable, if expensive, in Florida. That level of insulation in the northeast during a really cold spell can easily move beyond 'expensive' or 'uncomfortable' if the furnace isn't up to the task.
A house built for the conditions presented by Florida can be comfortable and economical for not much money at all, actually. Still, said house would be designed to radiate/get rid of heat on average, since there's only a short mild heating system. A NE house, on the other hand, is best designed to be a heat trap
Insulation is very important, whether to protect you from the cold in the NE, or the heat of the south.
Which is why I said cheap, lacking, among other things, the insulation. Cheap, as opposed to inexpensive. Cheap tends to connotate 'lowest upfront costs' to me. 'Inexpensive' or 'economical' allows for higher up front costs for lower costs down the road.
Well, google might be approaching it from the end that we're a lost generation due to the excesses of the 'punch the monkey' era before effective blocking became available and retailers realized that the ads had gotten intrusive to the point of reducing their effectiveness.
They go for the ones they can get, in other words.
but a different quality that I can't imagine anyone would think as a loss of quality. Just a change of tone.
It's still a distortion from the original, not easily correctable. Overall, it's still a loss in information, just different than MP3
And it just so happens that like in every other arena of human opinion most people prefer crap.
People tend to prefer what they're used to. Witness building trends down in Florida. You get people building/buying cheap reproductions* of Northeastern style houses down there because that's what they prefer - despite that being a lousy way to build a house in Florida. As would the inverse of building a house suited for Florida in the North.
*IE missing the insulation, among other things
I'm not actually sure how cookie based ad tracking would affect me in the long run?
Well, the theory is that if you browse for a while, say Slashdot, ArsTech, Dan's Data, newegg, etc, all end up using this system.
Google, will through the tracking, eventually build a profile of you and start advertising computer and interesting flashlight ads over, say, feminine hygene products. All bets are off if you have a female who browses using the same profile, of course(or are female and visit 'feminine' sites).
If you browse car sites all the time, it might start showing you cars.
The idea is that, while small, each ad display costs money. The higher the clickthrough rate, the more effective the ad. Not everybody is interested in the same stuff, so showing NAS/Server ads to network admins is better than showing them to little jimmy looking for transformers stuff.
Hmm... Just had a thought - with this system, you'd be able to track indirect visits. IE you show the Ad to person X. Person X notes down the site, but doesn't immediately click. He then manually goes to the site later when he discovers the need. Basically, the justification for most TV ads, brand familiarity. With this system, while the correlation wouldn't be guarenteed, you'd be able to at least measure it.
Another thing would be to help ensure that you don't ad-fatigue people by showing them the *same* ad all over the place - like the annoying 'punch the monkey' and X-10 ads.
Thought 2 - It'd be a good thing to develop some sort of MP* system for detecting husband/wife/kid browsing habits. IE you get browsing patterns that are highly discognitive, assume that they're seperate people and flip between ad sets depending. Mr. Doe gets neat electronic gadgets, Mrs. Doe gets Jewelry, and Little Joey gets toys. You should be able to determine which personality set to use within a couple pages. Along with this, detect public browsing computers such as those in cafes, for their own specific ad sets.
*Multiple Personality
So if I build and sell a home I should be able to control it while I still live?
The home is a physical object, it's a book vs the story on it's pages. Believe it or not, I can't just go to a (new)home, measure it, and produce a copy - it's a violation of the copyright on the building plans.
Once you sell it(the physical home), it's out of your control(excluding selling contract riders and such). You can build another. It's more like controlling the plans for building that particular house. But that's not even a good analogy. You can sell your copyright, in which case I'd have a provision that the CR only lasts the 50 years. So if you wrote something at 20 and are now 75, you effectively can't sell the CR, but can release it into the public domain.
You can't rewrite your novel and sell it again. Print more books, press more CDs, whatever, that you can do. The CR is different than that, the CR doesn't protect a 'physical good'.
Oh yeah, and I'd limit unregistered copyrights to 10 years, maybe 20 for 'unfinished manuscripts'. Part of registration would be the storing of an archival copy in a national archive. The form the copy would take depends on the media, of course. For artwork a print would be acceptable. For music, a copy of the 'master'. Software, unobfusticated, compilable source code. So on and so forth.
To fund the system, I'd limit 'corporate' copyrights to 10 years, requiring renewal fees for every 10 after that. Then again, the end result would be CR still held by individuals, just locked up with 'exclusive contracts'. It'd be corporate property in all but name. So make it universal, and cahrge fees low enough that individuals can afford to keep their stuff copyrighted if they want, but high enough to make disney think about releasing some of their stuff into the public domain.
My proposals are normally along the lines of 'life or 50 years, whichever's greater'.
The 50 years is so the work of a sick author like Robert Jordan still has enough value to interest publishers, or if the dude has an accident or whatever.
The life because, well, an author should be able to control his works while still living.
On the other hand, 50 years/life has the copyright expiring while there's still individuals/groups interested in preserving/distributing the work.
For example, Elvis made a bunch of movies. I saw reruns of them a lot as a kid, but as time goes on, the number of people who remember Elvis live drop. Statistically speaking, very, very few will be left by the time the copyrights on his work expire.
If you did well, you were rewarded; if you didn't, you were...not.
Sounds almost like a real-life game of tetris. In 3d. ;)
Then again, some (un)common sense in their shipping divisions of various companies would help.
Dell Batteries
HP
Newegg
Still, the disc thing is probably more for packing shipping containers from China - the extra control and distance being shipped makes packing efficienty easier and more economical than discovering a way to pack random UPS trucks better.
Artifacting isn't limited to digital.
I used artifact in this context to mean 'my picture isn't perfect'. Snow is a specific artifact from a source termed 'noise'.
Does ~50 miles away from the transmitters count as 'between towns' enough for you?
I get digital television better than analog. Now, yes, I do have a huge antenna on the roof. Still, I had snow on the analog stations. Now I get perfect pictures on the digital stations.
I LIVE in a 'snowy broadcast' area. My new LCD TV has the digital channels perfectly clear, while the analog channels show lots of artifacts. I'd even rate one of the stations that did a flash-cut as 'unwatchable' before the transition, is now perfectly clear at 1080i.
Are you sure that you're not comparing the lower power temporary digital channels against the old full power analog? Many stations are transmitting both, but the digital station at a tenth or less of the power.
When they finally turn off the analog stations, most are going to put their digital broadcast on the original station at the old power.
I know that; but they DID have control back in the past when they were still a producing band.
Some acts in the past have actually gotten rich enough to buy back the copyright and have exclusive control over their music, but not many do.
Given the age and success of Metallica, I wouldn't bet that Lars and the rest of the band don't have a firm grip on the copyrights to their songs, even if it's through a holding company like the beetles had it done.
Generally, you want the short term studies done first; old dude who's going to likely to die soon anyways is likely to cost a lot less if something unexpected messes up bad.
Save the long term studies for the next version that might actually restore some useful vision.
The Emperor might still be less than pleased, but he should be able to understand this.
ooh... I like that explanation. Very good.
telephone sanitizers... heh...
It's more like I go and defeat the Mongols on the eastern border, but they're light calvery. Then I have to face the Teutons on the western border, but they're heavy calvery, requiring different tactics and equipment. Then on the northern border are the infrantry Slavs, and so on...
Yes, the Emperor doesn't care about the taxonomy of the various threats/invaders(I'll assume he's not a military emperor and is far too busy with his harem), but it doesn't change the fact that: Each cancer has to be treated differently; there is no 'universal' cure, much to the dismay of the masses, and B: Doctors are far from useless. They aren't perfect, but far from useless.
And the Emperor is demanding to know why I haven't defeated everybody yet...