Re:That post is wasteful, and the wrong direction.
on
X-43 Scramjet Rollout
·
· Score: 1
Jet fuel prices have been rising a lot for the past few years. According to Southwest Airlines' financial statements they spent 39 cents per gallon in 1999, and 82 cents per gallon in 2000. It probably is higher now.
Of course, as a high-volume carrier, Southwest is probably paying less than people or companies without high-volume contracts.
Kevin Fox
--
That post is wasteful, and the wrong direction.
on
X-43 Scramjet Rollout
·
· Score: 4
I'll bite:
"A space plane like the space shuttle costs the same amount of money in terms of fuel as a jumbo jet from London to New York does."
How do you figure that? Mile-per-mile? Did you not notice the external fuel tank needed to get the Shuttle to orbit? Do you think LOX and LH are so much less expensive than jet fuel? The External Tank alone uses 526,000 gallons of fuel in the 8.5 minutes before it's jettisoned (That's 1031 gallons per second (g/s). A 747 on the other hand, has a maximum fuel capacity of 57,285 gallons, which it sips at 1.06 g/s.
Jet fuel currently costs about 77 cents/gallon, while LH costs about 75 cents and LOX costs about 35 cents, but that kind of logic is like saying it would be more economically efficient to walk to the moon.
"Wall Street would be the new mission control, and you can bet that the analysts of that city would make space trave as cheap as boarding a jumbo jet - there is no reason why it should not be."
I'd suggest you take a look at this economic analysis of the $/lb costs for the Space Shuttle under various scenarios, including daily launches. It'll never get beneath $640/lb, which is significantly more expensive than boarding a jumbo jet, unless you're a mouse. but then, mice fly free...
It would be more accurate to say that Wall Street would be able to raise enough money in an IPO to send the company's founders into space, but Wall Street itself doesn't have as much to do with the creation of economical solutions as they do the speculation of profitability of said systems.
Following this logic, they would probably put out the barebones DVD, then come out with a 'collectors edition' 6 months later, ala American Beauty and so many other DVDs. It's almost a standard practice.
Then again, George already got us, releasing the trilogy on video when the remastered versions were in the theater, then releasing the remastered in letterbox VHS 8 months later...
Umm, Blogger isn't funded by any dotcoms either. It used to be from time to time, but it's standing pretty much on it's own (or onEvan's shoulders, as it were).
Having made a couple sites that have gone from zero to hero in a matter of hours (and back to nearly zero after a few months), the more important question I'd ask of the HotOrNot people is how to work with an ISP so that, within hours, you can actually get them to do the prep, installation, and load-balancing required for these 'flashcrowd' sites. All it takes is 8 hours of "SERVER TOO BUSY" before your site's viral momentum is shot to hell and your site will decidedly never be hot.
I'd think this is a question/.ers would be keenly interested in, considering how often we're on that first wave that will bring down sites that aren't prepared for a sudden onslaught.
As a participant of last year's 5K contest, I just want to say thanks to Stewart for making this more than just a one-shot wonder. By the entries I've seen so far, the first 5K served as the thrown-down gauntlet, and it's great to see so many people take up the challenge, and doing such an admirable job.
It's also wonderful to see the5k.org doing so well. The whole site was made quite a while after the 5k contest ended, and a lot of people would have been loath to put in the effort.
He had a weak point--this Anonymous Coward--although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in humor. Few/.ers have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity-- to practise imposture upon the RIAA and MPAA elite. In painting and gemmary, AC, like his countrymen, was a quack-- but in the matter of old jokes he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in the apropo pun myself, and laughed largely whenever I could.
"In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
...
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
Actually, Congress had quite a bit more to say in the notes portion of the same 1976 Copyright Act (summarized version):
SECTION 107: FAIR USE EXEMPTION
Educators are allowed exemptions under the "Fair Use" doctrine, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use) and scholarly research.
NOTE: This is a controversial idea that has grown out of 200 years of court rulings in U.S. history. When Congress passed the 1976 Copyright Act, it was loathe to define FAIR USE, saying, "there is no disposition to freeze the (fair use) doctrine in the statute, especially during a period of rapid technological change." However, Congress did provide certain basic "criteria" to determine what use was "fair." The 1976 Copyright Act set forth four "provisions" by which copyrighted materials could be used in non-profit educational settings. Remember, these are guidelines only; the Copyright Act doesn't set quantitative limits on what can be copied. In determining if "fair use" has been violated, courts try to answer the following four questions, based on the four provisions of the law:
Is the purpose or character of use commercial or non-profit (i.e., educational)?
Is the nature of the copyrighted work creative or informational (i.e., factual)?
What is the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole? (Rule of thumb: use no more than is necessary. For small poems, perhaps the entire work; for larger works, only a small amount; but NEVER copy the "heart" or "creative essence" of a work -- that's infringement!)
What is the effect of this use on the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work? (This is the most important question of the four; did the copying or use deprive the copyright holder of a sale? Copying should not harm the commercial value of the work.)
SINGLE COPIES FOR CLASSROOM USE
Fair use guidelines allow teachers to make single copies of the following:
A chapter from a book.
An article from a periodical or newspaper.
A short story, short essay, or short poem, whether or not from a collective work.
A chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, periodical or newspaper.
...
MULTIPLE COPIES FOR CLASSROOM USE
Fair use guidelines allow teachers to make multiple copies with the following limitations:
The copying MUST be done at the initiative of the teacher (at a moment of inspiration, when it is unreasonable to get permission from the copyright owner). NOTE: If you have time to seek a publisher's reprint, or get permission, you are obligated to do so. It is only if you do NOT have time that "fair use" allows you to make copies for students.
Only one copy is made for each student.
No charge is made to the student except to recover the cost of copying.
The copying is done for only one course.
The same item is NOT reproduced from term to term.
No more than one work is copied from a single author.
No more than three authors are copied from a single collective work (e.g., an anthology).
No more than nine instances of multiple copying occur during a single term or semester.
For an article, the limit is 2,500 words.
For a longer work of prose, the limit is 1,000 words, or 10% of the work, whichever is less.
For a poem, the limit is 250 words.
For a longer poem, an excerpt of no more than 250 words.
For a chart, diagram, cartoon or picture, the limit is no more than one from a book, periodical or newspaper.
"Consumable works," (e.g., workbooks and standardized tests) shall NOT be copied.
COURSEPACKS
The practice of creating "Coursepacks" of selected readings for students to use in their coursework is surrounded by controversy. It's probably an
issue that falls more properly under the category of making multiple copies. In any event, under the law, coursepacks may be:
Limited for brevity.
Limited to one semester or term.
Limited to non-profit educational settings.
Subject to acquisition of permissions or licensing.
As you can see, 17.107 is a starting point, from which many interpretations can be made. Since I no longer have access to Lexis-Nexis I can't pop up court cases, but citing 107 as a blanket permission for classroom use is not an accurate representation of the law in practice.
Actually, you're not quite right. Readers are very often collections of excerpts from books, be they novels, textbooks, whatever. These excerpts, like the chapter photocopied by a teacher for their students, are protected by copyright law.
Publishers rarely make an issue of it, but a teacher photocopying just those chapters of a textbook as are relevant to their lesson plan and distributing them to their students, are just as much in violation of copyright law as I would be if I posted the first chapter of the latest Neal Stephenson novel on my website.
Actually, I'm not confusing copyright law and plagiarism at all. Your original post said copying is okay if it's for educational purposes and that simply isn't true from a legal standpoint, whatever 'rules' you believe exist about research and paper writing.
Sure you can cite and quote pieces of a copyrighted work in your thesis or term paper, just as I could do so in a newspaper article or a website. that's 'fair use' and applies if you're using excerpts for use as examples or references.
There are legal rules for what constitutes fair use, limiting you from copying an entire document, or selling excerpts without added value. These rules don't have anything to do with whether the document or individual is associated with an educational institution. They don't have any greater right under the law to bypass copyright.
And just to be clear, even though it happens all the time, it's not legal for a teacher to photocopy a chapter of a book for all their students without written permission from, and/or compensation to, the copyright holder.
Though we're happy living here, the Earth is highly corrosive and chaotic. We don't see it because it happens in slow motion (by our perspective) but everything's getting worn away, oxidised, bleached, or otherwise transformed by chemical reactions.
If we want to save data we need to make redundant copies, in a form that is resistant to electromagnetic radiation (say, microetched in carbon, silicon, or other stable element), and put it into a heliocentric orbit 1 radii behind or ahead of the earth's orbit (this way it's not in a trojan point, which could result in collision damage, but is still in a 'mathematically likely' place).
Most of the corrosive factors would be left behind on Earth, and the data would be stable for the long haul. Alternatively, we could put data on the moon, where it would be stable until a meteor hit it or covered it up, likely tens or hundreds of millions of years, and if we put several down, they'd last longer.
Hmm, maybe a big micro-etched monolith buried just under the surface...
The way to keep data long term is to form long-lasting institutions (like libraries, for example) whos purpose it is to perpetuate knowledge and information. Within the Earth, you can't see any medium as being eternal, so you have to create a social construct that will perpetuate the data, across media and societal changes.
A good example of this is the Bible. The original 'Bible' is long gone, but it's one of the most solid pieces of historical data because there is a social constuct, Christianity, that has a primary tenant of keeping that word alive.
This isn't a religious rant, but just an example of ways to archive data beyond the lifespan of any given medium.
Kevin Fox
--
If we want to get technical about it, (2b | !2b) would always be equivilant to true, as 2b is either true or false, and if it's false, then its opposite is true. So the whole thing simplifies to True (or '1').
Perhaps a more accurate way to convey Hamlets intent is:
switch $2b
case true: (blahblah from speech)
case flase: (blahblah from speech)
"I believe it's actually supposed to be '2b || !2b"
Actually, 2b | !2b is more accurate. '||' denotes a short-circuit 'or' which means that if 2b is true, it won't examine !2b for validity.
I believe that Hamlet's strife is that he saw the merits in both possibilities, and so an accurate representation would necessitate him evaluating both 2b and !2b before reaching a conclusion.
I was working on a major e-commerce project a few years ago that was threatened by Visual SourceSafe gnomes. Time and time again, on different computers all sharing the same VSS repository, the 2048th character in a checked out document would be removed and placed at the end of the file. Gnomes if I ever saw them, and the instigator of quite a few 'who broke the build?' discussions...
Gnomes aren't biased by platform or program. Watch out for them wherever you go!
Kevin Fox
--
Slashdot Mirror
Jet fuel prices have been rising a lot for the past few years. According to Southwest Airlines' financial statements they spent 39 cents per gallon in 1999, and 82 cents per gallon in 2000. It probably is higher now.
Of course, as a high-volume carrier, Southwest is probably paying less than people or companies without high-volume contracts.
Kevin Fox
--
I'll bite:
"A space plane like the space shuttle costs the same amount of money in terms of fuel as a jumbo jet from London to New York does."
How do you figure that? Mile-per-mile? Did you not notice the external fuel tank needed to get the Shuttle to orbit? Do you think LOX and LH are so much less expensive than jet fuel? The External Tank alone uses 526,000 gallons of fuel in the 8.5 minutes before it's jettisoned (That's 1031 gallons per second (g/s). A 747 on the other hand, has a maximum fuel capacity of 57,285 gallons, which it sips at 1.06 g/s.
Jet fuel currently costs about 77 cents/gallon, while LH costs about 75 cents and LOX costs about 35 cents, but that kind of logic is like saying it would be more economically efficient to walk to the moon.
"Wall Street would be the new mission control, and you can bet that the analysts of that city would make space trave as cheap as boarding a jumbo jet - there is no reason why it should not be."
I'd suggest you take a look at this economic analysis of the $/lb costs for the Space Shuttle under various scenarios, including daily launches. It'll never get beneath $640/lb, which is significantly more expensive than boarding a jumbo jet, unless you're a mouse. but then, mice fly free...
It would be more accurate to say that Wall Street would be able to raise enough money in an IPO to send the company's founders into space, but Wall Street itself doesn't have as much to do with the creation of economical solutions as they do the speculation of profitability of said systems.
Kevin Fox
--
Following this logic, they would probably put out the barebones DVD, then come out with a 'collectors edition' 6 months later, ala American Beauty and so many other DVDs. It's almost a standard practice.
Then again, George already got us, releasing the trilogy on video when the remastered versions were in the theater, then releasing the remastered in letterbox VHS 8 months later...
Kevin Fox
--
Some of the features I'm looking forward to:
Kevin Fox
--
Except that it might be nice to refer to the outgoing CEO as a person, not an object.
"...Nat, which we all love..."
Kevin Fox
--
Umm, Blogger isn't funded by any dotcoms either. It used to be from time to time, but it's standing pretty much on it's own (or onEvan's shoulders, as it were).
Kevin Fox
--
Just what geeks need: Another reason to be afraid of shorts...
Kevin Fox
--
Having made a couple sites that have gone from zero to hero in a matter of hours (and back to nearly zero after a few months), the more important question I'd ask of the HotOrNot people is how to work with an ISP so that, within hours, you can actually get them to do the prep, installation, and load-balancing required for these 'flashcrowd' sites. All it takes is 8 hours of "SERVER TOO BUSY" before your site's viral momentum is shot to hell and your site will decidedly never be hot.
/.ers would be keenly interested in, considering how often we're on that first wave that will bring down sites that aren't prepared for a sudden onslaught.
I'd think this is a question
Any stories, advice?
Kevin Fox
--
As a participant of last year's 5K contest, I just want to say thanks to Stewart for making this more than just a one-shot wonder. By the entries I've seen so far, the first 5K served as the thrown-down gauntlet, and it's great to see so many people take up the challenge, and doing such an admirable job.
It's also wonderful to see the5k.org doing so well. The whole site was made quite a while after the 5k contest ended, and a lot of people would have been loath to put in the effort.
Thanks Stewart!!!
Kevin Fox
--
He had a weak point--this Anonymous Coward--although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in humor. Few /.ers have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity-- to practise imposture upon the RIAA and MPAA elite. In painting and gemmary, AC, like his countrymen, was a quack-- but in the matter of old jokes he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in the apropo pun myself, and laughed largely whenever I could.
Kevin Fox
--
Perhaps it was in the "Rack of Amontillado"
In pace requiescat...
Kevin Fox
--
Excerpt from the same document:
Actually, Congress had quite a bit more to say in the notes portion of the same 1976 Copyright Act (summarized version):
As you can see, 17.107 is a starting point, from which many interpretations can be made. Since I no longer have access to Lexis-Nexis I can't pop up court cases, but citing 107 as a blanket permission for classroom use is not an accurate representation of the law in practice.
Kevin Fox
--
Actually, you're not quite right. Readers are very often collections of excerpts from books, be they novels, textbooks, whatever. These excerpts, like the chapter photocopied by a teacher for their students, are protected by copyright law.
Publishers rarely make an issue of it, but a teacher photocopying just those chapters of a textbook as are relevant to their lesson plan and distributing them to their students, are just as much in violation of copyright law as I would be if I posted the first chapter of the latest Neal Stephenson novel on my website.
Kevin Fox
--
Actually, I'm not confusing copyright law and plagiarism at all. Your original post said copying is okay if it's for educational purposes and that simply isn't true from a legal standpoint, whatever 'rules' you believe exist about research and paper writing.
Sure you can cite and quote pieces of a copyrighted work in your thesis or term paper, just as I could do so in a newspaper article or a website. that's 'fair use' and applies if you're using excerpts for use as examples or references.
There are legal rules for what constitutes fair use, limiting you from copying an entire document, or selling excerpts without added value. These rules don't have anything to do with whether the document or individual is associated with an educational institution. They don't have any greater right under the law to bypass copyright.
And just to be clear, even though it happens all the time, it's not legal for a teacher to photocopy a chapter of a book for all their students without written permission from, and/or compensation to, the copyright holder.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Kevin Fox
--
'educational use' is not a legitimate use of 'anything copyrighted'.
Funny thing, I'm not allowed to go photocopy textbooks or swipe stat software from campus computers for homework.
Why do you think readers cost so much? It's not for the photocopying and binding, it's for the copyright royalties.
IANAL, but I know that much.
Kevin Fox
--
Though we're happy living here, the Earth is highly corrosive and chaotic. We don't see it because it happens in slow motion (by our perspective) but everything's getting worn away, oxidised, bleached, or otherwise transformed by chemical reactions.
If we want to save data we need to make redundant copies, in a form that is resistant to electromagnetic radiation (say, microetched in carbon, silicon, or other stable element), and put it into a heliocentric orbit 1 radii behind or ahead of the earth's orbit (this way it's not in a trojan point, which could result in collision damage, but is still in a 'mathematically likely' place).
Most of the corrosive factors would be left behind on Earth, and the data would be stable for the long haul. Alternatively, we could put data on the moon, where it would be stable until a meteor hit it or covered it up, likely tens or hundreds of millions of years, and if we put several down, they'd last longer.
Hmm, maybe a big micro-etched monolith buried just under the surface...
Kevin Fox
--
The way to keep data long term is to form long-lasting institutions (like libraries, for example) whos purpose it is to perpetuate knowledge and information. Within the Earth, you can't see any medium as being eternal, so you have to create a social construct that will perpetuate the data, across media and societal changes. A good example of this is the Bible. The original 'Bible' is long gone, but it's one of the most solid pieces of historical data because there is a social constuct, Christianity, that has a primary tenant of keeping that word alive. This isn't a religious rant, but just an example of ways to archive data beyond the lifespan of any given medium.
Kevin Fox
--
Perhaps not equivalent to Bell, but adding a pretty picture can make a lot of difference. Witness the difference between radio and television.
FWIW, I'd call this tech 'teleportration'. Holoportation combines all the wrong roots and would translate to 'total move' instead of 'across image'
Kevin Fox
--
Here's an easy way to get around the pricy hardware problem:
Buy a used mac.
Kevin Fox
--
The original poster didn't say OS X was FreeBSD. He said it was a BSD Desktop Operating System, which it is.
Kevin Fox
--
If we want to get technical about it, (2b | !2b) would always be equivilant to true, as 2b is either true or false, and if it's false, then its opposite is true. So the whole thing simplifies to True (or '1').
Perhaps a more accurate way to convey Hamlets intent is:
switch $2b
case true: (blahblah from speech)
case flase: (blahblah from speech)
Or, even shorter:
$2b?stuff_to_live_for:ways_to_end_it_all;
Kevin Fox
--
"I believe it's actually supposed to be '2b || !2b"
Actually, 2b | !2b is more accurate. '||' denotes a short-circuit 'or' which means that if 2b is true, it won't examine !2b for validity.
I believe that Hamlet's strife is that he saw the merits in both possibilities, and so an accurate representation would necessitate him evaluating both 2b and !2b before reaching a conclusion.
Kevin Fox
--
private $h1, $h2;
$h1.dignity eq $h2.dignity;
setScene(VERONA);
$h1.mutiny.renew($h2);
(civil) $hands.taint((civil) $blood);
And so on...
Kevin Fox
--
Shouldn't that be '2b | !2b'?
$_ = $q.
Kevin Fox
--
I was working on a major e-commerce project a few years ago that was threatened by Visual SourceSafe gnomes. Time and time again, on different computers all sharing the same VSS repository, the 2048th character in a checked out document would be removed and placed at the end of the file. Gnomes if I ever saw them, and the instigator of quite a few 'who broke the build?' discussions... Gnomes aren't biased by platform or program. Watch out for them wherever you go!
Kevin Fox
--