>This is why the fallout from a military target like missle silos was always assumed to be much worse because the device would have to detonate at or near ground level as opposed to miles up for a "soft" civilian target like a city.
It bears noting: both the United States and the Soviet Union subscribed to a doctrine that mandated tactical (military) and not strategic (population & infrastructure) targeting. By the mid-sixties, the US had begun to develop sufficiently small, targetable warheads to point-target facilities in the SIOP (single integrated operations plan) list. This is why there were so many warheads developed -- as I remember, Moscow had 54 different targets for warheads, and this was a *good* thing, compared to using one warhead to destroy the whole city.
Both total warhead and targeting statistics were used by activists to "demonstrate" that the arms race was insane. It wasn't (in the sense they mean): it was designed to achieve set military objectives with a minimum of collateral consequences. The same activists now oppose the development of tunnelling or directed nuclear armaments, despite the fact that these armaments could allow the destruction of facilities such as bunkers while producing much less, and much more contained, radiation.
For the issue above: yes, it is possible to build limited, directed explosives. The chance they'll work is fairly high (90%?). The 10% chance they'll either explode at a much higher tonnage, or not be controlled in direction, seems unacceptable in a civil project.
Anyone for a revival of Project Orion ("Jupiter by '88!", as Dyson put it)?
And some miscellany:
>anti-tank mines,
The Eastern NATO front is extensively mined with nukes, which need to be activated in case of invasion. Nuclear munitions were also available for theatre (3-5 mile) use. Backpack nukes (for sneaking to bridges etc.) were also created. My favorite (non-implemented) was the nuclear bullet, guaranteed to kill the target and his whole neighborhood:)
The problem with this, of course, is that Bayes is prefectly applicable to urns; and that you're pulling the balls out of the urns in essentially random order.
There's nothing random about your selection of individuals; and, since we have only one example of the 'intelligent species' urn, there's not much evidence that any probabilistic models make sense.
Greater minds than I, notably Carl Sagan, have based survival calculations on other, more predictable criteria. I kept wondering whether the Discover article was an April Fool's joke.
when this fired worker applies for his next job it's, (interviewer to himself) "What? You're married with two kids?"
It is blantantly illegal for an interviewer to ask about marital or family status, and if they ask, there's a presumtion that they're making decisions based on this, which is also grounds for a labor discrimination suit.
You always have a little Nomad II set on record when you're interviewed, don't you?
Whoops! Tiny mistake here: corporations don't have a choice between [a] sell X million options to employees at below market value and [b] sell X million options to the market at market value.
Partially but not entirely true. They could just keep the equity to themselves in the first place... they could issue less bonus options... etc.
If you examine the capital structure, you'll actually find that Microsoft has more outstanding employee options than it has common stock available for distribution -- and has jumped through some hoops to have more common stock available. This changes the game quite a bit...
&miscellany: just because the company wouldn't want to dump stock onto the open market (=devaluation), exercising options does not equal doing the same thing without the market effect Because most corporations will prefer to keep control of their stock if possible, 'dumping' directly might affect market confidence; but most employees should prefer to hold it if they feel it will go up in value, and employees dumping it would also bring down value. (As you note -- but exercised options don't necessarily get dumped, and there's no particular market effect because of their exercise -- except the tax advantage).
But this isn't a 'special, no-loss' stock dumping option that they 'get away with.' Given the double taxation of dividents, stock/options are the primary way of transferring the value that the company produces to employees, CEO on down. The employees get taxed on the value transferred, usually at an unreasonably high rate (see John Walker). Corporations do get to play with the tax benefit, which can improve their market position. But no tricks, no loopholes.
M$ and Cisco get to deduct the loss of stock that they pay their employees. Imagine that. They pay their employees in stock, which has market value (and which they could sell at that market value). This payment is a loss for them, and they deduct it, just like I would deduct what I pay my cleaners. Imagine that.
These employees then get to pay their own taxes on the gain, usually at a full 37%, the same thing that M$ or Cisco would have paid -- sometimes more -- meaning that the government doesn't lose a cent.
Thank you, bleeding-liberal-sensationalist SF Gate and SlashDot, for informing us of this atrocity. That certainly proves that corporations run this country.
In the real world, the tax structure generally sucks for corporations, minus a few tax shelter structures (which are being closed this year, as reported in yesterday's NYTimes and elsewhere). For a techies' view of US taxes and trying to make a corporation fly, try John Walker's The AutoDesk File, which (in varying parts -- I believe Info letter 14? and the stuff on stock options) explains just how the US governments fucks corporations just as well as individual citizens.
The defini tio n of planet requires that it be in orbit around a star
Uh, whose definition? Planeton are simply wanderers in the sky -- which these would be in a cosmic sense, but not in the "point of light that wanders relative to the fixed stars" sense.
Of course, on the latter logic, planets in other solar systems wouldn't be planets, because we can't see them and because, if we could, they wouldn't wander relative to our eye. Indeed, the Greek definition of 'star' didn't (for most) include something not visible by the naked eye, from the surface of the earth.
Is this a[sic] valid? Like I said before, I'm no lawyer... far from one...
No. Professors do not conduct work for hire. You do not own what they produce. (In fact, neither does the University, a fact that the country of California seems to ignore).
Under federal copyright law, I own the copyright to my lectures as long as they are fixed in a tangible medium
A liberal interpretation IMHO, unless you mean "I own[sic] the copyright as long as I fix them in a tangible medium. But note that is the copyright on that expression of your work that you hold (not own). Your lectures themselves are not fixed in a tangible medium unless recorded, in case it is the recording that is copyrighted, not the intangible 'original lecture.' A set of lecture notes taken by you, a student, etc. may be a simply a "derivative work" -- or may be a creative interpretation that presents the material to someone else in a unique, copyrighted manner, as a legitimate 'study aid' -- or more likely, complete bunk that bears little relationship to what you said, but nonetheless bears copyright protection (at least this is the problem with Black Lightening &etc at Berkeley).
Your own lecture notes, of course, would be copyrighted and good proof of the extent to which any student's work was 'derivative' or 'creative reporting.' Nonetheless, what the legislature is attempting scares me, in that it restricts the distribution of "lecture notes" without any test of their derivative or creative merits, thus, in restriction of free speech.
Fortunately, they have about a snowball's chance in hell:
What this law does is extend copyright protection to all lectures regardless of fixation
Definition of the extent of copyright is reserved for the US Congress and the interpretation of the courts; moreover, in the last several cases to reach them, the Supremes have indicated they would oppose further Congressional restriction of fair use, even in commercial setting. This legislation is dead in the water.
And a good thing, too. The core of the problem that the legislature is trying to address is that many UC students rely on lecture notes instead of class, for whatever reason. (I write after having been a UC instructor, primarily in the humanities, familiar with the on-campus issue). "Lecture Notes" are particularly insulting, particularly when a parent or community member brings them to you and asks, "Is this what you're teaching?" They remind us -- and especially administrators -- of the failures of the UC system. But those are educational failures, and this level of highhandedness -- while typical -- certainly will not solve those problems.
Finally, I can't help but noting that there is a internet-phobia in all of this, the profound realization that Universities make their money by hoarding knowledge, and that the freedom of knowledge on the Internet challenges that profoundly.
Uh, the firms that train these people do it in 6-12 months. "A decade or two" is too far out to ever solve anything. The US "educational system" needs to have some relationship to reality, which no one who runs it is capable of creating, no one in politics has the power or vision to create.
It is much more economical to give people intensive courses in Chakra or Dubai, then pay them $80K/yr to work 80hr weeks, than educate lazy Americans at expensive institutions like Stanford and Berkeley and then pay them $100K/yr to work 60hr weeks. And the foreigners don't complain too much, rarely know how to sue you over workplace issues, and will probably eventually leave the country -- indeed, if there is a dispute and you have to fire them, they have to get their little asses out of our country in 10 days!
And now that there are more of them, but the same number of green card slots, I bet they'll work even harder! Aren't they wonderfully competitive and productive, those little slant-eyed ants, those red-skinned wonders! Model minorities! Oh, how I love the dollars they produce! Oh, how many slow Americans can I fire tommorrow?
Ah, it is a wonderful day, to be an entrepreneur in America, and an even more wonderful time, to be a Company!
P.S. -- Must remember to send in that 'campaign donation' tommorrow!
H1-B holders cannot hold an ownership stake in the company which sponsors them. In practice, this would tend to exclude H1-Bs from founding startup ventures, as startups tend to take all your time.
As a former doctoral candidate at Berkeley, I hasten to point out that: - Mr. Lockard shares Berkeley's radical dream of politics and community. The real substance of this dream is being able to sit around writing armchair articles about community and politics (see resume above, and Howard Rheingold's much-more-real take on things, HR comment.). - Academia's 'community' is a sham several orders of magnitude greater than "Virtual Community." Lockard is part of a priviledged (if deluded) few who get to think about "democracy," etc., while enjoying access to libraries, publications and resources that are not available to the common public -- even the Web public. - The real issue here is access to knowledge. Abhay Bhushan said, that when he wrote ftp, he thought of making any piece of human knowledge available to anyone on Earth. The Internet has always been committed to that. The humanities, like the medieval Catholic church, have always been far from it. - Most (humanities) academics are glorified gatekeepers to knowledge, whose jobs are fundamentally threatened by the InterNet. Mr. Lockard and others get to lead a genteel life of sitting around in cafes and chatting with students, etc., because they know where information is in hard-to-search publications, where it is buried in libraries, etc. The essence of their work is digging through those publications, taking notes, and remembering how to get to things -- in essence, knowledge management. On top of this, of course, the usual rigamarole of initiation to knowledge, interpretation to students, etc. -- just like the Catholic church had when the Bible was in Latin and 'interpreted' to the people. - The Internet threatens the jobs of academics in the humanities. It is sad but unsurprising that the humanities have not embraced sharing knowledge online like the sciences. If everything in Berkeley's libraries were online, humanities students would start reading like programmers -- I mean they would have thosands of pages of documentation always with them, and easily find what they needed, instead of spending hours in libraries, looking for and pouring over MeatSpace texts -- and quickly outpace their professors, who have spent years learning that "X is discussed on page yy of T," and other jobs that can be aided greatly by computer automation. But if the public would suddenly have instant access to this information, professors would have more to think about than where to buy their next latte. - Academia is much harder for the poor to access, than the InterNet Access problems to the InterNet??? Huh? Compared to what? Lockard is missing free email kiosks for the homeless in Budapest and net access in 80% of public library in America. He clearly has no comprehension of what the people who do real work creating the InterNet think about, or the dedication to the sharing of knowledge that permeates everyone who has been involved. No doubt he has a publish-or-perish deadline for his next article, but his thourough ignorance of the history of internet technology is insulting. (I suspect this is because the limited line of knowledge his professors feed his doesn't include much writing by Berners-Lee, even if it is easily available on the InterNet). So much for "access problems." - The Internet is several orders of magnitude more accessable than academic knowledge, especially in the humanities, who call themselves 'guardians of democracy.' Or was that "guardians of knowledge?" Simply, the InterNet is the most democratically availabel communications medium ever, and Lockard doesn't even bother to touch the wordwide communities it enables -- from programming collectives to Yugoslavian dissidents -- and the very real effects it has on their lives. See Rheingold. Enough said.
- And if the InterNet isn't a democratic enough community, it's academia's fault. Exactly why isn't Lockard committed enough to sharing knowledge, to put his article online (scientists regularly flout copyright restrictions). Academics are supposed to create community, share knowledge, foster understanding. But they -- especially they in Berkeley -- don't do this. Why? It threatens their jobs, their ability to get published in their old boys' networks, their career advancement, their sense of superiority in handing out knowledge, and their very way of life. To wit, THE REAL SHAM HERE IS ACADEMICS' COMPLAINING. The InterNet represents a real opportunity to democratically distribute knowledge and access to community, but instead of getting on with that real work, Lockard and his acadmic masters complain about the fact that it is elite, that it is corporate, that it... whatever they can find. That technology is ruining our real relations. That online publishing ruins the ability to learn from a written text. Etc. And why? Because they're scared, they don't want to understand, they don't want newness, they just want another latte and the New World to go away.
It seems to me that what no one understands here, is the absolute significance of 'one-click' to e-commerce.
Jupiter Communications reports that 60% of e-comm carts are abandoned, due to the time/pain of filling out those (@##* forms.
One-click shopping allowed Amazon to CUT LOST CARTS BY MORE THAN HALF. This has created ENORMOUS financial advantages.
Sure, from a technical standpoint, one-click is easy to implement.
In the context of solving the problems that face e-commerce sites -- primarily, how to make shopping easy and convenient, and get more visitors through to purchases -- it was not clear that one-click would be the 'solution.' In short, there was nothing obvious about what one-click woudl be, BEFORE it had been done.
Amazon spent many dollars and took on substantial business risk to implement one-click on their site. It was an enourmous success, due to the diligence and care they took in making it work. They are entitled to benefit from taking on that risk, when no one else had, and showing the rest of the world how to do it.
Barnes&Noble, and everyone else, realizes that one-click would raise their bottom lines significantly. But they didn't pay to develop and test one-click in the market. Again, why should they get the benefit without the risk?
Aerobic bacteria require oxygen to live.
Anaerobic bacteria thrive in the absence of oxygen.
[..., QED:]
So, yes, this form of life can live in a vacuum.
Since when has 'lack of oxygen' = vacuum?
And, as far as I can tell, the article did not make it clear that the porthole growth was outside the station. Portholes are typically constructed in layers, and the layers are likely to have some gas between them.
HUH? What exactly do you mean? As an alternative hypertext system, it's been opensourced (see udanax etc. in my original) and is functional and scalable.
If you mean that it would never have been socially accepted, well, I won't even get into that. But let's just say that the Xanadu idea is hardly dead... that the Web is less than a decade old... and that a number of us don't intend to let it survive another decade:)
Finally: as far as the 'the Web is what Ted was trying to prevent' argument goes -- I don't know that Ted specifically said that before the fact, but it's accurate. Ted and others saw the possible mess that is the Web in the mid-60s, and tried to work around it... IMHO, they didn't succeed in understanding the core issues of knowledge management... too data driven...
In any case, BT's patent is on things Ted, Doug, and many others were aware of, and had demonstrated in detail, by the mid-sixties. The only difference is that the BT guys (like the Mozilla guys) didn't see the overall picture that Ted did.
And the only difference between the Mozilla guys and the BT guys, that the BT guys didn't do a damned thing about what they had thought up.
Since no one has mentioned it, it bears saying that Ted Nelson and others were also working on this stuff since Ted coined the term 'hypertext' in '62, and this eventually became Xanadu:
http:www.xanadu.com
and (in a different incarnation of sorts) was led by Roger Gregory:
http:www.udanax.org
Unfortunately, AutoDESK (no longer under John's direct control) killed Xanadu in 92, of all times, not seeing any future in hypertext -- which is a shame, since IMHO Xanadu was and is much better than the mess which is the web.
Roger and Ted are certainly bemused by the BT thing... and would probably be more bemused if BT won:)
Don't let the other assholes in this thread get you down. It's pretty clear to me why they can't get a job, and it has nothing to do with you or I.
True. There are some real jerks here, as everywhere.
But more likely it has to do with the fact that the people hiring perceive that US programmers won't work 60-80 hours a weeks; and many US workers don't have the advantages of being represented by a hiring agency that gets 30% of the cut.
I understand that you are a skilled worker who is offering much to this country. Please understand that citizens of this country, having worked to establish their standard of living and a reasonable work week, are reasonably frustrated by employers who pass them up for workers who are... simply cheaper, both in overall salary and cost per hour.
Finally -- it bears saying -- it is not accurate to claim that the US makes you pay H1-B holders as much as US workers. I direct hiring at my company, and the two agencies we know provide programmers at 80% of what we would pay for US workers. Our founder came to the US on a H1-B, and was simply classified as a lower-pay worker than the duties he was expected to perform. H1-Bs provide an enormous economic advantage and flexibility to companies. There is little difference, in fact, with the issue of allowing agricultural workers that the Democrats have attached. The core is admitting workers who will reduce costs.
This is a situation which is hard to swallow, given that the agencies we use train programmers in 6 months, and that their is no effort to provide US workers with similar training. And you might come to think of it quite differently, once you become a citizen of this country, wish to spend some time with family, friends or children, and find that the economics of the situation suddenly make you much less attractive than a foreign worker.
As I understand, that would make it rather difficult to explain quarks, much less tachyons...
At its most basic, light (photons) must propagate at the speed of light. Photons 'produce' a waveform, which means they have amplitude (well, a phi distribution which looks like a wave, if you're taking the particle view) along their 'linear' path. Points along the phi distribution wavepath are further away than points along the linear path. Points along the phi wavepath are subject to quantum effects -- that wavefront may encounter an electron's field, after all.
Is this becomning clear? Viewed as a 'straight line' particle, light must travel at the speed of light. But as a particle-wave, light travels along a sine-curve. The shorter the wavelength, the longer the sine curve. 'Events' must be able to occur along that sine curve at 'faster than the speed of light,' else light could not propagate at the speed of light. These events are quantum; they do not sum to the ability to transmit information past c at non-quantum distances.
Now, if only someone could explain how this works with microwaves, which is beyond what I remember from taking Quantum 12 years ago:), and then apply it to chip design one it reaches the quantum level...
Do you have any idea whay inflation is and how it really works?
Not really. I read too many government reports and statistics to, myself, have much of a grip of reality. Occassional doses of John Walker do set me a bit closer to the straight and narrow.
A 3.5 multiplier may be a little high, but it is what's been used by the Berkeley Landowner's Association in attempting to assess damages due to price controls established by the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, and seems more or less right to me.
One could start with something like the CPI ( CPI Calculator) and compare a 'dollar' in 1980 to a 'dollar' in 2000. The multiplier is only 2.09... suggesting that a 100K salary is a little under 50K in 1980 dollars.
Ah, but wait! Type in 1970 and 1980. Oh. 2.12x. That already seems a little high... but the 70s did have a few economic problems... except that it took several years into the 80s for the double digit inflation to stop... except that the economy sucked 88-96 or so again, along with some real inflation before the feds damped things... but, as the example at the bottom of the page points out, items like movie tickets have been rising quite briskly, despite the Feds keeping a lid on inflation.
Have I managed to give a sense that there are multiple factors at work here -- much less that they apply to whole ranges of goods?
Alas, the CPI is poor indicator of the real cost of living, for reasons ranging from it being based on improper rations and outdated commodoties, to a lot of fiddling going on to incorporate 'special categories,' to downright fudging on the part of industries reporting their prices (does anyone really believe apparel has been getting 5% cheaper for the last four years?). The CPI is thus a very poor indication of the rate of inflation over time (there are many others, as well).
I prefer the Federal discount bond rate, as (a) it seems to do a much better job of matching inflation of goods in practice, over long periods -- see that movie ticket example
(b)it should, on most economic theories, be the rate at which the Fed is willing to re-compensate bondholders for the devaluation of the currency -- and in fact the modern Fed sees it as the driver of "inflation."
(c)it is the de-factoreturn rate which a corporation must break to be viable for investment (before risk is calculated), and thus provides a minimum standard of economic break-even that is much more central than cost-of-living or cost-of-goods derivatives.
(d)using it usually keeps one out of tedious discussions like this, as everyone else who does these sort of calculations agrees it's fine.
(e)& as long as the Fed keeps thinking discount bond rate=inflation, they won't ever move the rate above 8% again -- else they'll destroy corporations as well as they did in 75-85.
In any case, the boil-down is that 7.5% is a reasonable rate to use for back-of-envelope compound calculations of inflation from 1980 to 2000, and it comes out to about a 3.5 multiplier; plus energy, medical care, and housing have all outpaced that by a lot. This makes 100K -- well, alas, not a lot of money, however much you'd like to think so.
It amazes me how much the effects of compounded inflation on dollar amounts have fooled people into ignoring their real pay. $100,000 sure does sound like a lot!
Assuming 7-8% CAGR of prices since 1980, consumer products cost about 3.5 times what they did in 1980. (Housing in the Bay Area alone is another story; medical insurance and education are higher by percent growth than consumer goods;...).
In 2000 dollars, a salary in the 100K range is roughly equivalent to what a salary in the 30K range was 1980 dollars. (Ignoring that you get taxed more on the 100K).
My father, for instance, made 30K in 1980 working as a technician in a rural water plant, a job that required his attention about half of the forty hours he put in per week, and required only a high school education plus a good knowledge of chemistry. Costs of living in rural areas are MUCH less than, say, Silicon Valley; etc.
As an entrepreneur, I could hardly hope for a better labour market:) -- and by 2020, I should be able to find millions who will code 110 hours, for a mere $250K, and think they're better off than people today!
I've seen each of the original Star Wars movies over 50 times. I love them. I think they're great storytelling. I can watch them again and again, like, say, Princess Bride and other college repeat classics. They're just great.
But Episode I? I thought it was interesting the first time through because I knew the story, was invested in the characters, had been waiting 20 years for more. The second time, I groaned through the more-than-obvious plot turns and the fact that the Anakin-kid simply can't act, and dealt with the stomach-ache afterwards. The third time, I simply gave up before vomiting from the stench.
Face it. Episode I sucks. There's no drama, there's no mystery, there's no overaching moral theme. There are fucking trade wars and insignificant political intrigues and some nice shots of a cute-if-naive princess and a cool car race. "The Force" turns into a nanotech textbook. Nothin' I couldn't find in Montana on a Friday night, at least with a few beers:)
Disbelief? The only disbelief I can't suspend is my disbelief that Lucas could have fallen so far, and that my belief in the vision of the first three films has been so utterly slashed by this mediocrity.
Plaintiff's argument relies on assumption that the acts of Pavlovich et. al. may reduced to a simple 'harm' inflicted on victims located in the state of California, thus, that it would be ridiculous to argue this case multiple times, in multiple jurisdictions. Viz.:
Arguing and re-arguing
these facts and legal issues in many different jurisdictions ensures the waste of valuable judicial resources and risks the propagation of conflicting verdicts
and court rulings. California, as plaintiff s primary place of business and as the site of the greatest injury, is undeniably the jurisdiction in which this case
should be tried.
Plaintiff's assertion is, prima facie, specious and unreasonable. Speciousity. In the case of a bullet fired into one state from another, it is reasonable to assume that there will be no substantive disagreement between potential jurisdictions as to the nature of the crime or the harm inflicted. In such cases, it is perfectly reasonable for 'long arm' jurisdiction to fall to fall to California, as we expect the California courts to act on substantively the same principles as any other Court. Unreasonability In the case before the Court, there is more than substantive reason to believe that jurisdictions ourside the State of California might come to substantively different conclusions regarding the issues at stake here. Plaintiffs note that defendants in their action hail from jurisdictions as far away as Norway... and, in fact, the defendent from Norway received a national award for his work on the DeCSS code. It is reasonable to assume that a Norwegian court might well come to a different conclusion about the nature of these events than a California one. Moreover, if the plaintiffs were to prevail here, the Court will be forced into the absurd proposition that it may extend a jurisdiction over the sovereign state of Norway -- and over many more sovereign states -- to which those sovereign jurisdictions, following their own legal traditions and procedures, would never willingly submit.
Uniqueness of the case demands multiple jurisdiction. Where there exists substantive agreement between diverse people and jurisdictions over the nature of issues, infractions, and harms, it serves judicial efficiency to create a single forum in the jurisdiction that has bourne the brunt of the harm. Such a procedure is not appropriate to the current case. The ability of the internet to widely distribute information technologies and to create complex relationships between enitities in hitherto much more separate jurisdictions has created, and will doubtless continue to create, new situations and problems that will demand the attention of the world's courts and legislatures, and potentially significant change in legal procedure. Plaintiffs may not be allowed to end-run the legislative process. Plaintiffs, representing themselves as defenders of "the music industry," "the computer industry," and other parties "centered in the State of California," are attempting to use the singular jurisdiction of the State of California as the forum in which to resolve the world-wide effects of information technologies. It bears stating that the creation of these technologies has been, in fact, world-wide in scope, and the effects of the decision the Court is asked to make -- and its potential harms -- are equally global in reach. The Hon. Senator Orrin Hatch, addressing this "Industry" as part of Congressional investigations, has stated that he would take legislative action to expand the definition of free use should "the Industry" continue on its current path of litigation -- indicating that, in face, there exists substantive jurisdictional interest in these issues outside the scope of this court and the laws of the State of California.
Allowing plaintiffs to prevail in current motion would create an unreasonable precedent. If plaintiffs prevail, a multiplicity of similarly situated 'plaintiffs,' acting under the jurisdiction of the State of California, could raise the spectre of alleged unique and intangible 'harms' suffered in the internet era, in order then to bring a host of plaintiffs from conflicting jurisdictions across the world into the jurisdiction of the California Court. It is hard to image that the legislative framers of "long arm" jurisdiction intended it to extend this far beyond the simple example of a bullet shot from one state into another, extending, in effect, the reasonable jurisdiction of the State of California over clear harms inflicted in the State into a power of legal compulsion worldwide in scope.
What? What crack you smoking when you watch the Discovery channel?
Like, what 'remote regions of Europe?' You mean northern Finland? Commuters? Who the fuck would want to commute to Lapland? and, like, in one of these they'd likely freeze anyway...
Catch on? They're doing wind-tunnel tests, you fool... there are some jet-pack rescue systems out there, but nothing like this was being used by commuters in Europe for trips in '95. Well, unless you mean an acid trip...
(Excuse me, but no mod points at the moment, so I'm trying to be funny)
Slashdot Mirror
>This is why the fallout from a military target like missle silos was always assumed to be much worse because the device would have to detonate at or near ground level as opposed to miles up for a "soft" civilian target like a city.
:)
It bears noting: both the United States and the Soviet Union subscribed to a doctrine that mandated tactical (military) and not strategic (population & infrastructure) targeting. By the mid-sixties, the US had begun to develop sufficiently small, targetable warheads to point-target facilities in the SIOP (single integrated operations plan) list. This is why there were so many warheads developed -- as I remember, Moscow had 54 different targets for warheads, and this was a *good* thing, compared to using one warhead to destroy the whole city.
Both total warhead and targeting statistics were used by activists to "demonstrate" that the arms race was insane. It wasn't (in the sense they mean): it was designed to achieve set military objectives with a minimum of collateral consequences. The same activists now oppose the development of tunnelling or directed nuclear armaments, despite the fact that these armaments could allow the destruction of facilities such as bunkers while producing much less, and much more contained, radiation.
For the issue above: yes, it is possible to build limited, directed explosives. The chance they'll work is fairly high (90%?). The 10% chance they'll either explode at a much higher tonnage, or not be controlled in direction, seems unacceptable in a civil project.
Anyone for a revival of Project Orion ("Jupiter by '88!", as Dyson put it)?
And some miscellany:
>anti-tank mines,
The Eastern NATO front is extensively mined with nukes, which need to be activated in case of invasion. Nuclear munitions were also available for theatre (3-5 mile) use. Backpack nukes (for sneaking to bridges etc.) were also created. My favorite (non-implemented) was the nuclear bullet, guaranteed to kill the target and his whole neighborhood
The problem with this, of course, is that Bayes is prefectly applicable to urns; and that you're pulling the balls out of the urns in essentially random order.
There's nothing random about your selection of individuals; and, since we have only one example of the 'intelligent species' urn, there's not much evidence that any probabilistic models make sense.
Greater minds than I, notably Carl Sagan, have based survival calculations on other, more predictable criteria. I kept wondering whether the Discover article was an April Fool's joke.
It is blantantly illegal for an interviewer to ask about marital or family status, and if they ask, there's a presumtion that they're making decisions based on this, which is also grounds for a labor discrimination suit.
You always have a little Nomad II set on record when you're interviewed, don't you?
Uh, be realistic. "Will offer" would never have been included as an article on /. Therefore "will include" must be right.
Partially but not entirely true. They could just keep the equity to themselves in the first place... they could issue less bonus options... etc.
If you examine the capital structure, you'll actually find that Microsoft has more outstanding employee options than it has common stock available for distribution -- and has jumped through some hoops to have more common stock available. This changes the game quite a bit...
&miscellany: just because the company wouldn't want to dump stock onto the open market (=devaluation), exercising options does not equal doing the same thing without the market effect Because most corporations will prefer to keep control of their stock if possible, 'dumping' directly might affect market confidence; but most employees should prefer to hold it if they feel it will go up in value, and employees dumping it would also bring down value. (As you note -- but exercised options don't necessarily get dumped, and there's no particular market effect because of their exercise -- except the tax advantage).
But this isn't a 'special, no-loss' stock dumping option that they 'get away with.' Given the double taxation of dividents, stock/options are the primary way of transferring the value that the company produces to employees, CEO on down. The employees get taxed on the value transferred, usually at an unreasonably high rate (see John Walker). Corporations do get to play with the tax benefit, which can improve their market position. But no tricks, no loopholes.
These employees then get to pay their own taxes on the gain, usually at a full 37%, the same thing that M$ or Cisco would have paid -- sometimes more -- meaning that the government doesn't lose a cent.
Thank you, bleeding-liberal-sensationalist SF Gate and SlashDot, for informing us of this atrocity. That certainly proves that corporations run this country.
In the real world, the tax structure generally sucks for corporations, minus a few tax shelter structures (which are being closed this year, as reported in yesterday's NYTimes and elsewhere). For a techies' view of US taxes and trying to make a corporation fly, try John Walker's The AutoDesk File, which (in varying parts -- I believe Info letter 14? and the stuff on stock options) explains just how the US governments fucks corporations just as well as individual citizens.
Uh, whose definition? Planeton are simply wanderers in the sky -- which these would be in a cosmic sense, but not in the "point of light that wanders relative to the fixed stars" sense.
Of course, on the latter logic, planets in other solar systems wouldn't be planets, because we can't see them and because, if we could, they wouldn't wander relative to our eye. Indeed, the Greek definition of 'star' didn't (for most) include something not visible by the naked eye, from the surface of the earth.
Definitions change :)
No. Professors do not conduct work for hire. You do not own what they produce. (In fact, neither does the University, a fact that the country of California seems to ignore).
A liberal interpretation IMHO, unless you mean "I own[sic] the copyright as long as I fix them in a tangible medium. But note that is the copyright on that expression of your work that you hold (not own). Your lectures themselves are not fixed in a tangible medium unless recorded, in case it is the recording that is copyrighted, not the intangible 'original lecture.' A set of lecture notes taken by you, a student, etc. may be a simply a "derivative work" -- or may be a creative interpretation that presents the material to someone else in a unique, copyrighted manner, as a legitimate 'study aid' -- or more likely, complete bunk that bears little relationship to what you said, but nonetheless bears copyright protection (at least this is the problem with Black Lightening &etc at Berkeley).
Your own lecture notes, of course, would be copyrighted and good proof of the extent to which any student's work was 'derivative' or 'creative reporting.' Nonetheless, what the legislature is attempting scares me, in that it restricts the distribution of "lecture notes" without any test of their derivative or creative merits, thus, in restriction of free speech.
Fortunately, they have about a snowball's chance in hell:
What this law does is extend copyright protection to all lectures regardless of fixation
Definition of the extent of copyright is reserved for the US Congress and the interpretation of the courts; moreover, in the last several cases to reach them, the Supremes have indicated they would oppose further Congressional restriction of fair use, even in commercial setting. This legislation is dead in the water.
And a good thing, too. The core of the problem that the legislature is trying to address is that many UC students rely on lecture notes instead of class, for whatever reason. (I write after having been a UC instructor, primarily in the humanities, familiar with the on-campus issue). "Lecture Notes" are particularly insulting, particularly when a parent or community member brings them to you and asks, "Is this what you're teaching?" They remind us -- and especially administrators -- of the failures of the UC system. But those are educational failures, and this level of highhandedness -- while typical -- certainly will not solve those problems.
Finally, I can't help but noting that there is a internet-phobia in all of this, the profound realization that Universities make their money by hoarding knowledge, and that the freedom of knowledge on the Internet challenges that profoundly.
Uh, the firms that train these people do it in 6-12 months. "A decade or two" is too far out to ever solve anything. The US "educational system" needs to have some relationship to reality, which no one who runs it is capable of creating, no one in politics has the power or vision to create.
It is much more economical to give people intensive courses in Chakra or Dubai, then pay them $80K/yr to work 80hr weeks, than educate lazy Americans at expensive institutions like Stanford and Berkeley and then pay them $100K/yr to work 60hr weeks. And the foreigners don't complain too much, rarely know how to sue you over workplace issues, and will probably eventually leave the country -- indeed, if there is a dispute and you have to fire them, they have to get their little asses out of our country in 10 days!
And now that there are more of them, but the same number of green card slots, I bet they'll work even harder! Aren't they wonderfully competitive and productive, those little slant-eyed ants, those red-skinned wonders! Model minorities! Oh, how I love the dollars they produce! Oh, how many slow Americans can I fire tommorrow?
Ah, it is a wonderful day, to be an entrepreneur in America, and an even more wonderful time, to be a Company!
P.S. -- Must remember to send in that 'campaign donation' tommorrow!
H1-B holders cannot hold an ownership stake in the company which sponsors them. In practice, this would tend to exclude H1-Bs from founding startup ventures, as startups tend to take all your time.
and his resume at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~lockar d/c v.html
is very interesting reading.
As a former doctoral candidate at Berkeley, I hasten to point out that: ... whatever they can find. That technology is ruining our real relations. That online publishing ruins the ability to learn from a written text. Etc. And why? Because they're scared, they don't want to understand, they don't want newness, they just want another latte and the New World to go away.
- Mr. Lockard shares Berkeley's radical dream of politics and community. The real substance of this dream is being able to sit around writing armchair articles about community and politics (see resume above, and Howard Rheingold's much-more-real take on things, HR comment.).
- Academia's 'community' is a sham several orders of magnitude greater than "Virtual Community." Lockard is part of a priviledged (if deluded) few who get to think about "democracy," etc., while enjoying access to libraries, publications and resources that are not available to the common public -- even the Web public.
- The real issue here is access to knowledge. Abhay Bhushan said, that when he wrote ftp, he thought of making any piece of human knowledge available to anyone on Earth. The Internet has always been committed to that. The humanities, like the medieval Catholic church, have always been far from it.
- Most (humanities) academics are glorified gatekeepers to knowledge, whose jobs are fundamentally threatened by the InterNet. Mr. Lockard and others get to lead a genteel life of sitting around in cafes and chatting with students, etc., because they know where information is in hard-to-search publications, where it is buried in libraries, etc. The essence of their work is digging through those publications, taking notes, and remembering how to get to things -- in essence, knowledge management. On top of this, of course, the usual rigamarole of initiation to knowledge, interpretation to students, etc. -- just like the Catholic church had when the Bible was in Latin and 'interpreted' to the people.
- The Internet threatens the jobs of academics in the humanities. It is sad but unsurprising that the humanities have not embraced sharing knowledge online like the sciences. If everything in Berkeley's libraries were online, humanities students would start reading like programmers -- I mean they would have thosands of pages of documentation always with them, and easily find what they needed, instead of spending hours in libraries, looking for and pouring over MeatSpace texts -- and quickly outpace their professors, who have spent years learning that "X is discussed on page yy of T," and other jobs that can be aided greatly by computer automation. But if the public would suddenly have instant access to this information, professors would have more to think about than where to buy their next latte.
- Academia is much harder for the poor to access, than the InterNet Access problems to the InterNet??? Huh? Compared to what? Lockard is missing free email kiosks for the homeless in Budapest and net access in 80% of public library in America. He clearly has no comprehension of what the people who do real work creating the InterNet think about, or the dedication to the sharing of knowledge that permeates everyone who has been involved. No doubt he has a publish-or-perish deadline for his next article, but his thourough ignorance of the history of internet technology is insulting. (I suspect this is because the limited line of knowledge his professors feed his doesn't include much writing by Berners-Lee, even if it is easily available on the InterNet). So much for "access problems."
- The Internet is several orders of magnitude more accessable than academic knowledge, especially in the humanities, who call themselves 'guardians of democracy.' Or was that "guardians of knowledge?" Simply, the InterNet is the most democratically availabel communications medium ever, and Lockard doesn't even bother to touch the wordwide communities it enables -- from programming collectives to Yugoslavian dissidents -- and the very real effects it has on their lives. See Rheingold. Enough said.
- And if the InterNet isn't a democratic enough community, it's academia's fault. Exactly why isn't Lockard committed enough to sharing knowledge, to put his article online (scientists regularly flout copyright restrictions). Academics are supposed to create community, share knowledge, foster understanding. But they -- especially they in Berkeley -- don't do this. Why? It threatens their jobs, their ability to get published in their old boys' networks, their career advancement, their sense of superiority in handing out knowledge, and their very way of life. To wit,
THE REAL SHAM HERE IS ACADEMICS' COMPLAINING. The InterNet represents a real opportunity to democratically distribute knowledge and access to community, but instead of getting on with that real work, Lockard and his acadmic masters complain about the fact that it is elite, that it is corporate, that it
It seems to me that what no one understands here, is the absolute significance of 'one-click' to e-commerce.
Jupiter Communications reports that 60% of e-comm carts are abandoned, due to the time/pain of filling out those (@##* forms.
One-click shopping allowed Amazon to CUT LOST CARTS BY MORE THAN HALF. This has created ENORMOUS financial advantages.
Sure, from a technical standpoint, one-click is easy to implement.
In the context of solving the problems that face e-commerce sites -- primarily, how to make shopping easy and convenient, and get more visitors through to purchases -- it was not clear that one-click would be the 'solution.' In short, there was nothing obvious about what one-click woudl be, BEFORE it had been done.
Amazon spent many dollars and took on substantial business risk to implement one-click on their site. It was an enourmous success, due to the diligence and care they took in making it work. They are entitled to benefit from taking on that risk, when no one else had, and showing the rest of the world how to do it.
Barnes&Noble, and everyone else, realizes that one-click would raise their bottom lines significantly. But they didn't pay to develop and test one-click in the market. Again, why should they get the benefit without the risk?
Since when has 'lack of oxygen' = vacuum?
And, as far as I can tell, the article did not make it clear that the porthole growth was outside the station. Portholes are typically constructed in layers, and the layers are likely to have some gas between them.
HUH? What exactly do you mean? As an alternative hypertext system, it's been opensourced (see udanax etc. in my original) and is functional and scalable.
If you mean that it would never have been socially accepted, well, I won't even get into that. But let's just say that the Xanadu idea is hardly dead... that the Web is less than a decade old... and that a number of us don't intend to let it survive another decade :)
Finally: as far as the 'the Web is what Ted was trying to prevent' argument goes -- I don't know that Ted specifically said that before the fact, but it's accurate. Ted and others saw the possible mess that is the Web in the mid-60s, and tried to work around it... IMHO, they didn't succeed in understanding the core issues of knowledge management... too data driven...
In any case, BT's patent is on things Ted, Doug, and many others were aware of, and had demonstrated in detail, by the mid-sixties. The only difference is that the BT guys (like the Mozilla guys) didn't see the overall picture that Ted did.
And the only difference between the Mozilla guys and the BT guys, that the BT guys didn't do a damned thing about what they had thought up.
http:www.xanadu.com
and (in a different incarnation of sorts) was led by Roger Gregory:
http:www.udanax.org
and finally incorporated into AutoDESK in '88, at the urging of John Walker:
Statement for the Autodesk/Xanadu Press Conference
Unfortunately, AutoDESK (no longer under John's direct control) killed Xanadu in 92, of all times, not seeing any future in hypertext -- which is a shame, since IMHO Xanadu was and is much better than the mess which is the web.
Roger and Ted are certainly bemused by the BT thing... and would probably be more bemused if BT won :)
True. There are some real jerks here, as everywhere.
But more likely it has to do with the fact that the people hiring perceive that US programmers won't work 60-80 hours a weeks; and many US workers don't have the advantages of being represented by a hiring agency that gets 30% of the cut.
I understand that you are a skilled worker who is offering much to this country. Please understand that citizens of this country, having worked to establish their standard of living and a reasonable work week, are reasonably frustrated by employers who pass them up for workers who are... simply cheaper, both in overall salary and cost per hour.
Finally -- it bears saying -- it is not accurate to claim that the US makes you pay H1-B holders as much as US workers. I direct hiring at my company, and the two agencies we know provide programmers at 80% of what we would pay for US workers. Our founder came to the US on a H1-B, and was simply classified as a lower-pay worker than the duties he was expected to perform. H1-Bs provide an enormous economic advantage and flexibility to companies. There is little difference, in fact, with the issue of allowing agricultural workers that the Democrats have attached. The core is admitting workers who will reduce costs.
This is a situation which is hard to swallow, given that the agencies we use train programmers in 6 months, and that their is no effort to provide US workers with similar training. And you might come to think of it quite differently, once you become a citizen of this country, wish to spend some time with family, friends or children, and find that the economics of the situation suddenly make you much less attractive than a foreign worker.
As I understand, that would make it rather difficult to explain quarks, much less tachyons...
:), and then apply it to chip design one it reaches the quantum level...
At its most basic, light (photons) must propagate at the speed of light. Photons 'produce' a waveform, which means they have amplitude (well, a phi distribution which looks like a wave, if you're taking the particle view) along their 'linear' path. Points along the phi distribution wavepath are further away than points along the linear path. Points along the phi wavepath are subject to quantum effects -- that wavefront may encounter an electron's field, after all.
Is this becomning clear? Viewed as a 'straight line' particle, light must travel at the speed of light. But as a particle-wave, light travels along a sine-curve. The shorter the wavelength, the longer the sine curve. 'Events' must be able to occur along that sine curve at 'faster than the speed of light,' else light could not propagate at the speed of light. These events are quantum; they do not sum to the ability to transmit information past c at non-quantum distances.
Now, if only someone could explain how this works with microwaves, which is beyond what I remember from taking Quantum 12 years ago
Not really. I read too many government reports and statistics to, myself, have much of a grip of reality. Occassional doses of John Walker do set me a bit closer to the straight and narrow.
A 3.5 multiplier may be a little high, but it is what's been used by the Berkeley Landowner's Association in attempting to assess damages due to price controls established by the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, and seems more or less right to me.
One could start with something like the CPI ( CPI Calculator) and compare a 'dollar' in 1980 to a 'dollar' in 2000. The multiplier is only 2.09... suggesting that a 100K salary is a little under 50K in 1980 dollars.
Ah, but wait! Type in 1970 and 1980. Oh. 2.12x. That already seems a little high... but the 70s did have a few economic problems... except that it took several years into the 80s for the double digit inflation to stop... except that the economy sucked 88-96 or so again, along with some real inflation before the feds damped things... but, as the example at the bottom of the page points out, items like movie tickets have been rising quite briskly, despite the Feds keeping a lid on inflation.
Have I managed to give a sense that there are multiple factors at work here -- much less that they apply to whole ranges of goods?
Alas, the CPI is poor indicator of the real cost of living, for reasons ranging from it being based on improper rations and outdated commodoties, to a lot of fiddling going on to incorporate 'special categories,' to downright fudging on the part of industries reporting their prices (does anyone really believe apparel has been getting 5% cheaper for the last four years?). The CPI is thus a very poor indication of the rate of inflation over time (there are many others, as well).
I prefer the Federal discount bond rate, as
(a) it seems to do a much better job of matching inflation of goods in practice, over long periods -- see that movie ticket example
(b)it should, on most economic theories, be the rate at which the Fed is willing to re-compensate bondholders for the devaluation of the currency -- and in fact the modern Fed sees it as the driver of "inflation."
(c)it is the de-factoreturn rate which a corporation must break to be viable for investment (before risk is calculated), and thus provides a minimum standard of economic break-even that is much more central than cost-of-living or cost-of-goods derivatives.
(d)using it usually keeps one out of tedious discussions like this, as everyone else who does these sort of calculations agrees it's fine.
(e)& as long as the Fed keeps thinking discount bond rate=inflation, they won't ever move the rate above 8% again -- else they'll destroy corporations as well as they did in 75-85.
In any case, the boil-down is that 7.5% is a reasonable rate to use for back-of-envelope compound calculations of inflation from 1980 to 2000, and it comes out to about a 3.5 multiplier; plus energy, medical care, and housing have all outpaced that by a lot. This makes 100K -- well, alas, not a lot of money, however much you'd like to think so.
For more than that, do your own research.
I keep hearing "we get paid damn well."
...).
:) -- and by 2020, I should be able to find millions who will code 110 hours, for a mere $250K, and think they're better off than people today!
It amazes me how much the effects of compounded inflation on dollar amounts have fooled people into ignoring their real pay. $100,000 sure does sound like a lot!
Assuming 7-8% CAGR of prices since 1980, consumer products cost about 3.5 times what they did in 1980. (Housing in the Bay Area alone is another story; medical insurance and education are higher by percent growth than consumer goods;
In 2000 dollars, a salary in the 100K range is roughly equivalent to what a salary in the 30K range was 1980 dollars. (Ignoring that you get taxed more on the 100K).
My father, for instance, made 30K in 1980 working as a technician in a rural water plant, a job that required his attention about half of the forty hours he put in per week, and required only a high school education plus a good knowledge of chemistry. Costs of living in rural areas are MUCH less than, say, Silicon Valley; etc.
As an entrepreneur, I could hardly hope for a better labour market
Oh, bloodly hell.
:)
I've seen each of the original Star Wars movies over 50 times. I love them. I think they're great storytelling. I can watch them again and again, like, say, Princess Bride and other college repeat classics. They're just great.
But Episode I? I thought it was interesting the first time through because I knew the story, was invested in the characters, had been waiting 20 years for more. The second time, I groaned through the more-than-obvious plot turns and the fact that the Anakin-kid simply can't act, and dealt with the stomach-ache afterwards. The third time, I simply gave up before vomiting from the stench.
Face it. Episode I sucks. There's no drama, there's no mystery, there's no overaching moral theme. There are fucking trade wars and insignificant political intrigues and some nice shots of a cute-if-naive princess and a cool car race. "The Force" turns into a nanotech textbook. Nothin' I couldn't find in Montana on a Friday night, at least with a few beers
Disbelief? The only disbelief I can't suspend is my disbelief that Lucas could have fallen so far, and that my belief in the vision of the first three films has been so utterly slashed by this mediocrity.
Uh, what?
The speed of light limitation does not exist at the quantum level, significantly altering your back-of-envelope calculation.
Arguing and re-arguing these facts and legal issues in many different jurisdictions ensures the waste of valuable judicial resources and risks the propagation of conflicting verdicts and court rulings. California, as plaintiff s primary place of business and as the site of the greatest injury, is undeniably the jurisdiction in which this case should be tried.
Plaintiff's assertion is, prima facie, specious and unreasonable.
Speciousity. In the case of a bullet fired into one state from another, it is reasonable to assume that there will be no substantive disagreement between potential jurisdictions as to the nature of the crime or the harm inflicted. In such cases, it is perfectly reasonable for 'long arm' jurisdiction to fall to fall to California, as we expect the California courts to act on substantively the same principles as any other Court.
Unreasonability In the case before the Court, there is more than substantive reason to believe that jurisdictions ourside the State of California might come to substantively different conclusions regarding the issues at stake here. Plaintiffs note that defendants in their action hail from jurisdictions as far away as Norway... and, in fact, the defendent from Norway received a national award for his work on the DeCSS code. It is reasonable to assume that a Norwegian court might well come to a different conclusion about the nature of these events than a California one. Moreover, if the plaintiffs were to prevail here, the Court will be forced into the absurd proposition that it may extend a jurisdiction over the sovereign state of Norway -- and over many more sovereign states -- to which those sovereign jurisdictions, following their own legal traditions and procedures, would never willingly submit.
Uniqueness of the case demands multiple jurisdiction. Where there exists substantive agreement between diverse people and jurisdictions over the nature of issues, infractions, and harms, it serves judicial efficiency to create a single forum in the jurisdiction that has bourne the brunt of the harm. Such a procedure is not appropriate to the current case. The ability of the internet to widely distribute information technologies and to create complex relationships between enitities in hitherto much more separate jurisdictions has created, and will doubtless continue to create, new situations and problems that will demand the attention of the world's courts and legislatures, and potentially significant change in legal procedure. Plaintiffs may not be allowed to end-run the legislative process. Plaintiffs, representing themselves as defenders of "the music industry," "the computer industry," and other parties "centered in the State of California," are attempting to use the singular jurisdiction of the State of California as the forum in which to resolve the world-wide effects of information technologies. It bears stating that the creation of these technologies has been, in fact, world-wide in scope, and the effects of the decision the Court is asked to make -- and its potential harms -- are equally global in reach. The Hon. Senator Orrin Hatch, addressing this "Industry" as part of Congressional investigations, has stated that he would take legislative action to expand the definition of free use should "the Industry" continue on its current path of litigation -- indicating that, in face, there exists substantive jurisdictional interest in these issues outside the scope of this court and the laws of the State of California.
Allowing plaintiffs to prevail in current motion would create an unreasonable precedent. If plaintiffs prevail, a multiplicity of similarly situated 'plaintiffs,' acting under the jurisdiction of the State of California, could raise the spectre of alleged unique and intangible 'harms' suffered in the internet era, in order then to bring a host of plaintiffs from conflicting jurisdictions across the world into the jurisdiction of the California Court. It is hard to image that the legislative framers of "long arm" jurisdiction intended it to extend this far beyond the simple example of a bullet shot from one state into another, extending, in effect, the reasonable jurisdiction of the State of California over clear harms inflicted in the State into a power of legal compulsion worldwide in scope.
What? What crack you smoking when you watch the Discovery channel?
Like, what 'remote regions of Europe?' You mean northern Finland? Commuters? Who the fuck would want to commute to Lapland? and, like, in one of these they'd likely freeze anyway...
Catch on? They're doing wind-tunnel tests, you fool... there are some jet-pack rescue systems out there, but nothing like this was being used by commuters in Europe for trips in '95. Well, unless you mean an acid trip...
(Excuse me, but no mod points at the moment, so I'm trying to be funny)