Well, sort of. Apple seems to sell hardware and entertainment (iPhone apps,imho, are primaily for entertainment - though not exclusively - but Apple is really just a middle man there anyway). They don't sell iTunes, they don't sell OSX (unless you already own their hardware), they don't sell the iPhone OS. They sell hardware and entertainment you can access on that hardware. Apple-written, core software is either "free," "free with a hardware purchase," or "an upgrade to the software you received with your hardware purchase."
I won't disagree that they sell a system, but what they actually "sell" looks like hardware or entertainment. The software isn't separate - it's about as close to embedded as you can get. You might as well call Cisco a software company.
That was my thought too. People responding to 12% of all spam is quite a bit different than 12% of people having every responded to a spam email. A 12% response rate for an email marketing campaign is enough to make any marketers nipples hard enough to cut glass.
"If this had been a frame from a video it would (more) likely fall under fair use being an insignificant part of the whole. Each still photo is individually copyrighted, borrowing one still photo is less 'fair' than one frame of a video."
That brings up an interesting distinction, especially as video gets better and better. We already record HD at 1920x1080 - fully 2 megapixels. (For the young 'uns out there, my first digital camera was less than 1MP, and I have some negatives on Konica 3200 which can certainly be argued have less effective resolution than a 2MP image. Also, it's not uncommon for still photogrpahers to take shotgun photos, snapping off thousands of images a day, many of which can be strung together as a "flip book" style video. I suspect it could be argued that - once extracted - the frame is the art, and is copyrightable. Certainly cells from old animation films are already treated as such.
Fairey had no idea who created the image, and as I understand it there was no credit in the clip he found on the internet. Last year I tried to search for an image of a pro football player (not one of the "stars") to frame for a big fan of his who is a friend. I looked all over the net and found several, but most were not the quality needed for reproduction, and most had no attribution whatsoever. By chance, a full resolution photo was posted to a fan site associated with the team - again with no attribution whatsoever. Luckily, the photographer _had_ placed his name in the EXIF data, and the photo had been uploaded without any modifications. From his name, I found his website and obtained permission to reproduce the photo (he printed a nice 16x20 at his printer and shipped it to me for a reasonable fee). Honestly, it can be hard to track down a copyright owner with all the thumbnail clips on the net. If you stopped 100 people on the street in middle America and asked them how to view the EXIF data on a jpeg photo, do you think you'd get more than 4 or 5 people to actually be able to tell you? I knew, and it was still difficult to find.
It's not as easy as you think to find the author. I got burned for $2k by Getty about a year ago for two 150x200pixel images on my business website. The images were contained on a "royalty free" CD purchased by my web designer some 8 years prior, and the images contained no attribution to the author or copyright holder. A web crawler for Getty matched the images to their catalog, and I got a "bend over" letter in the mail. The actual usage would have cost me about $180, had I known the images weren't royalty free, and known that Getty owned/managed the copyright.
I don't think that particular photo made any difference to the art. It could have been one of many photos to act as a "portrait setting" for the bold color scheme and MLK-like pose for the poster (which I believe is the art of the piece)
So, if this is not a unique pose for Obama, and the shirt and tie are also common, is this not "a conventional meme/plot" or - in this case - pose which is a feature of the personality of the man, rather than the creative originality on the part of the original photographer?
If this were a shot of the Capitol, would it make a difference? What if the graphic artist who created this:
The perspective, lighting and general form are nearly identical. A small amount of cropping has been done (as with the bottom of the Obama photo), the print has been colored using a "watercolor" look which is easily applied in Photoshop by even a rank amateur (as with the look in the Obama poster), the sky has been changed in color (as with the Obama poster) and some small additional artistic/relevance has been added (leaves in the foreground of the sky vs Obama logo on the lapel).
What if the artist mentioned that she saw that photo on a postcard and used it to get the perspective correct? Would that be infringement? How would it be proven, aside from an admission of the use by the artist, given the large number of pictures of the capitol?
...you could find a frame in the thousands of hours of TV coverage of Obama that has his face in this approximate pose and orientation - enough from which to base the stylization of the bust, and crop out the background to the multi-colored sky and banner bottom? Would the existence of such a frame nullify this lawsuit, or create a second one allowing one of the TV networks to sue the artist as well?
But they are composed in a way which is unique. It's my assertion that the unique features which make a photograph have been almost entirely removed - transformed into an image which could very well be found to be nearly identical to a frame of a TV clip of the same - or even another - speaking engagement the (now) President has given over the last 2 years.
FWIW - I've been doing photography for 30 years, almost never for money, but I work in the Architecture field, which is all about creativity, uniqueness, and just filthy with copyright issues.
I don't necessarily disagree with the photo being copyrighted, and not redistributable. I just happen to believe that the work is transformative. Many key elements of the photo have been removed or altered beyond recognition or to the point of being wholly generic (collared shirt, tied tie, blank background turned into two contrasting colors). There is no way to tell from the poster where he is (inside? outside? etc...)
Does it/should it come down to "did he create it from scratch or use the photo as a template for his work?" As I understand copyright, it doesn't. If he had created this from seeing Obama in person, or from the photo in the paper, without the digital version as a starting point - would it still be copyright infringement?
Let me try a different direction: as a public figure, with the cameras "always on," and the number of poses that are common to a man who carefully considers his speeches and deliveries - is there any shot of him that _can't_ be found to match a realistic rendering of his bust in a "natural" or "common" stance from scratch? I suspect, though I can't prove, that amongst the thousands and thousands of hours of TV footage of the campaign and first 6 months of his presidency there is a shot of him at least once, if not multiple times, with a pose similar enough to the photo to use as a model for the poster. That, to me , makes the subject so generic as to be a fact, and not copyrightable. The exact digital file, however, is still copyrightable, as it puts him in a place, with particular fine, defining features of the time, and with a specific background, foreground, and the like - i.e., a photograph.
Sorry 'bout the Heller's Bakery line...I forgot to delete it when I chose another JCE print. FWIW, he does very nice work, and they're a bit of fun when you want to add color to a room. It's a bonus if you're from the DC area and know the spots he likes to take as subjects.
So, lets say that this isn't Obama, since the personality and timeliness of the subject appear to be clouding the issue. I'm presuming that the timliness of an image, since the copyright lasts for over a century, isn't salient (someone will doubtless correct me if I'm wrong).
Let's say this is the picture of the Hellers Bakery. Let's say it's a photo of a street flower vendor, and someone takes an anonymous photo off the net and decides to base a work of art on it. It might look like this http://www.josephcraigenglish.com/SidewalkFlowers.jpg and the artist would be required to create the hundred-plus silk screens and choose the colors to create a particular mood. How about if it were more generic? Say, a photo of the Capitol, posterized down to 8 colors with a red-white-and-blue sky?
Having seen the photo and the print for the first time today (but having hear about it previously), I'm calling bullshit on the AP and Garcia. Yes, the photograph is copyright, but the content - Obama looking up in a button down shirt and a tie - is so generic as to be reduced to almost "factual" information when translated into the poster.
I fear that the court will rule in favor or either the AP or Garcia. If they do, it will be just one more proof that the system is broken, and is stifling rather than promoting and enabling.
Good point; I suspect that a larger reactor would scale as some some inverse power relationship to weight rather than linear as I suggested. Still, you're going to need a pretty damned large reactor and a lot of engines to get any significant thrust. It's probably a better choice for an extra-solar mission, or one to a planet much farther than mars, to get the benefit of the long-term, constant thrusting.
Of course, I hate them because it makes then math hard (we did a solar sail for my senior project). Impulsive Delta V is so much easier. These days, though, computers can help out in that scenario. Back when I was in school, analysis like this was pretty limited - my 4 year old laptop has more memory, more drive space, and more operations per second than all the computers of the entire freshman engineering class (1300) combined - and I've been out of school less than 20 years!
Acetylene has a whole raft of problems, but we use it 'cause it's such a good fuel.
Storing hydrogen by someone who understands it is no big deal. Storing hydrogen by someone who either never had chemistry or barely passed it 5 to 50 years prior and who hasn't put a thought into it since isn't such a good idea. And that's most of the drivers on the road.
It puts H2 at 4%-75%, Acetylene at 2.5-81%; the only one worse is Silane (with which I'm generally unfamiliar). This is for air, btw, not oxygen, which expands the range. In contrast, gasoline is a nice, tight 1.4-7.6%. Of course, nobody is suggesting we fill cars full of acetylene. They do seem to be suggesting it for Hydrogen.
The apple thing aside (sibling posts will, no doubt address the poor choice), there's still no reason to allow trademark on a common word. Xerox, Starkist, Kleenex, Charmin, Ubuntu, Microsoft - all "new" words to describe a particular brand. Windows, Apple, Rosetta Stone, Stealth - words with existing definitions and usages which were co-opted and removed from use in a particular industry by corporations with poor imaginations.
I'm not saying I don't understand the purported limitations of Trademark (though I'm no expert), but it really does seem foolish to let people and corporations lock up those words just because they couldn't make up something new.
BMI is a good measure of a population as a whole, but not necessarily applicable to individuals. Body fat is a better measure, but is significantly more difficult to measure accurately, and accurate methods are not economical for regular (semi-weekly) tracking of your condition.
It is, sadly, fairly accurate for most people (I'm presuming better than 80%), but it has been modified for many reasons. Most people would say that (as of a year ago) my BMI of ~27 was far from obese (6'-0", 202lbs, 35"-36" waist). I was not in good physical shape, but was moderately healthy and I ate reasonably well (for an American). I was incredulous of my obese status. Now, over a decade ago, that was considered normal. About ten years ago, I became "borderline". Four or five years ago, I was reclassified as obese. As I understand it, the traditional BMI crossover from normal to obese was 27.2, but that's "too hard a number to remember" so they (WHO, I think) changed it to 25 so that the health care professionals could remember the right number easier. I feel feel sorry for all the doctors and nurses who can't seem to memorize a number of equal difficulty to their area code.
About 8 months ago I started working out. Slowly. In those 8 months, I've dropped 15 pounds, increased my stamina to swimming a mile twice a week, and do light lifting (my 7 year old likes to sit on my back and have me do push ups). I'm still overweight by BMI standards...and I've realized that I _am_ still a bit overweight. I've still got a roll around my middle that's not exactly attractive. An "ideal" weight for me, I think, would put me close to 180, or a BMI around 24.5. When I drop another 7 lbs (prob 8 lbs of fat and add a lb of muscle), I'll be pretty happy. My wife's Wii Fit wants me to be 162 (BMI-22). 162lbs would likely take some hard training and I'd be back to doing triathlons on a regular basis (which I did at 195lbs 15 years ago). At 40, that's not going to happen. almost certainly overweight. If you're over a BMI of 25 and you think you're in such good shape that BMI is bullshit, you probably know your body fat percentage, so BMI doesn't matter since you have a better index.
Sadly (for most people), the BMI is a valid statistical tool for judging populations. It's taken me almost a year to open my eyes and realize that I fall withing the typical body type demographic.
You know, this was modded as funny, but it probably should have been insightful. Why is it that we let companies trademark words which are already in the common lexicon?
Your AP science experiment was very, very flawed. Hydrogen has the ability to combust over a very, very wide range - something like 90% (I don't remember exactly, and am too lazy to google it). This is especially true when compared to gasoline (vapor), which is more like 7-11% (again...to lazy). The only saving grace for H2 is that it's so light it doesn't collect near the ground awaiting a spark, which reduces the danger in an accident.
The problems with H2 storage is that it has a very low density. Whether you compress it or you liquify it, you're putting a great deal of energy into the process of storage (beyond the lossy process of simply splitting the hydrogen off from its base material).
I presume you must teach in the humanities? I can't imagine different (presumably successive) mathematics or engineering textbook editions actually having different material, or in a substantially different order. Also, very, very little is taught "from the book" in such classes. Much of that stuff hasn't changed in the last century at the undergrad level*. Homework assignments, I'll admit, often come from the book in lower level classes, but I can remember very few professors (usually those laden with research) who assigned problems from the book after the sophomore year, and none in graduate school (wait - I take that back, statistics was that way).
It's been a couple decades for me, too, though my masters class in space vehicle guidance and nav had the final as a mars shot (NASA Admin Griffin was the professor; yes he has always been hyped on mars!)
Anyway, while the sibling posts are correct, there are orders of magnitude between this technology and the reality of meaningfully shifting the duration of a Mars shot. There are certain "safe" transfer orbits which get the crew back to earth automatically (you can intercept mars, and if you miss injection your orbit will return you to earth orbit, tangent to earth's orbit, and at the same time that earth is in that location).
Even if you go with a non-safe orbit (non-tangential initial delta V) which doesn't intercept Mars at perihelion (Hohmann transfer of you leave earth tangential to the orbit), you've got to have some significant acceleration.
Now, this thing is going to need 200kW per engine to apply 5N worth of thrust. To get this into perspective, do you remember those old Estes engines you played with as a kid? The small ones produce about 5N of thrust. Now, strap one of those to a 200kW generator. The Topaz generator, flown by the Soviets produced 5kW of power and weighed over a ton. Now, that's the only thing I could find on google in 2 seconds, so we'll assume you can get an order of magnitude better performance today - strap that Estes C6 engine to a 5,000lb nuclear reactor. You're not exactly going to be racing the new Veyron in terms of acceleration. (okay, the Veyron won't do well in space...point taken).
If you do the math, I'm thinking you'll be getting 0.0001m/s/s acceleration if you count the generator/engine combo as 50% of the spaceship mass. In 9 months, you'll be traveling at 2.3km/s faster than when you left earth orbit, which was probably in the 6-7km/s range. At that point you can turn around and start decelerating to you reach Mars at a desirable rate.
None of which really matters (since the orbital durations may be highly suspect), except to say that you're not going to be getting any massive delta-V out of this thing on a short term basis.
Here's the question, and one that is salient here: Is the "sharing" (i.e. non-commercial, passive distribution) of a copyrighted work - no matter how small or valuable/invaluable - considered worth more than the average American makes in nearly 3 years? That means a full album of 12 songs will financially ruin an individual for life. Is there proportionality in that?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, sort of. Apple seems to sell hardware and entertainment (iPhone apps,imho, are primaily for entertainment - though not exclusively - but Apple is really just a middle man there anyway). They don't sell iTunes, they don't sell OSX (unless you already own their hardware), they don't sell the iPhone OS. They sell hardware and entertainment you can access on that hardware. Apple-written, core software is either "free," "free with a hardware purchase," or "an upgrade to the software you received with your hardware purchase."
I won't disagree that they sell a system, but what they actually "sell" looks like hardware or entertainment. The software isn't separate - it's about as close to embedded as you can get. You might as well call Cisco a software company.
Penis. That's what I get for skimming the summaries. I figured they'd found another one of these:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Giant_ice_penis_-_is_climate_change_to_blame?&in_article_id=304450&in_page_id=2
That was my thought too. People responding to 12% of all spam is quite a bit different than 12% of people having every responded to a spam email. A 12% response rate for an email marketing campaign is enough to make any marketers nipples hard enough to cut glass.
And it's not what the ISP is advertising.
I was afraid of that, but was too lazy to google ;-)
"If this had been a frame from a video it would (more) likely fall under fair use being an insignificant part of the whole. Each still photo is individually copyrighted, borrowing one still photo is less 'fair' than one frame of a video."
That brings up an interesting distinction, especially as video gets better and better. We already record HD at 1920x1080 - fully 2 megapixels. (For the young 'uns out there, my first digital camera was less than 1MP, and I have some negatives on Konica 3200 which can certainly be argued have less effective resolution than a 2MP image. Also, it's not uncommon for still photogrpahers to take shotgun photos, snapping off thousands of images a day, many of which can be strung together as a "flip book" style video. I suspect it could be argued that - once extracted - the frame is the art, and is copyrightable. Certainly cells from old animation films are already treated as such.
Fairey had no idea who created the image, and as I understand it there was no credit in the clip he found on the internet. Last year I tried to search for an image of a pro football player (not one of the "stars") to frame for a big fan of his who is a friend. I looked all over the net and found several, but most were not the quality needed for reproduction, and most had no attribution whatsoever. By chance, a full resolution photo was posted to a fan site associated with the team - again with no attribution whatsoever. Luckily, the photographer _had_ placed his name in the EXIF data, and the photo had been uploaded without any modifications. From his name, I found his website and obtained permission to reproduce the photo (he printed a nice 16x20 at his printer and shipped it to me for a reasonable fee). Honestly, it can be hard to track down a copyright owner with all the thumbnail clips on the net. If you stopped 100 people on the street in middle America and asked them how to view the EXIF data on a jpeg photo, do you think you'd get more than 4 or 5 people to actually be able to tell you? I knew, and it was still difficult to find.
It's not as easy as you think to find the author. I got burned for $2k by Getty about a year ago for two 150x200pixel images on my business website. The images were contained on a "royalty free" CD purchased by my web designer some 8 years prior, and the images contained no attribution to the author or copyright holder. A web crawler for Getty matched the images to their catalog, and I got a "bend over" letter in the mail. The actual usage would have cost me about $180, had I known the images weren't royalty free, and known that Getty owned/managed the copyright.
I don't think that particular photo made any difference to the art. It could have been one of many photos to act as a "portrait setting" for the bold color scheme and MLK-like pose for the poster (which I believe is the art of the piece)
So, if this is not a unique pose for Obama, and the shirt and tie are also common, is this not "a conventional meme/plot" or - in this case - pose which is a feature of the personality of the man, rather than the creative originality on the part of the original photographer?
If this were a shot of the Capitol, would it make a difference? What if the graphic artist who created this:
http://www.lneuman.com/ACEOs/images/m2588.jpg
was sued by the photographer who took this shot:
http://creativebushido.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/us-capitol-building1.jpg
The perspective, lighting and general form are nearly identical. A small amount of cropping has been done (as with the bottom of the Obama photo), the print has been colored using a "watercolor" look which is easily applied in Photoshop by even a rank amateur (as with the look in the Obama poster), the sky has been changed in color (as with the Obama poster) and some small additional artistic/relevance has been added (leaves in the foreground of the sky vs Obama logo on the lapel).
What if the artist mentioned that she saw that photo on a postcard and used it to get the perspective correct? Would that be infringement? How would it be proven, aside from an admission of the use by the artist, given the large number of pictures of the capitol?
...you could find a frame in the thousands of hours of TV coverage of Obama that has his face in this approximate pose and orientation - enough from which to base the stylization of the bust, and crop out the background to the multi-colored sky and banner bottom? Would the existence of such a frame nullify this lawsuit, or create a second one allowing one of the TV networks to sue the artist as well?
But they are composed in a way which is unique. It's my assertion that the unique features which make a photograph have been almost entirely removed - transformed into an image which could very well be found to be nearly identical to a frame of a TV clip of the same - or even another - speaking engagement the (now) President has given over the last 2 years.
FWIW - I've been doing photography for 30 years, almost never for money, but I work in the Architecture field, which is all about creativity, uniqueness, and just filthy with copyright issues.
I don't necessarily disagree with the photo being copyrighted, and not redistributable. I just happen to believe that the work is transformative. Many key elements of the photo have been removed or altered beyond recognition or to the point of being wholly generic (collared shirt, tied tie, blank background turned into two contrasting colors). There is no way to tell from the poster where he is (inside? outside? etc...)
Does it/should it come down to "did he create it from scratch or use the photo as a template for his work?" As I understand copyright, it doesn't. If he had created this from seeing Obama in person, or from the photo in the paper, without the digital version as a starting point - would it still be copyright infringement?
Let me try a different direction: as a public figure, with the cameras "always on," and the number of poses that are common to a man who carefully considers his speeches and deliveries - is there any shot of him that _can't_ be found to match a realistic rendering of his bust in a "natural" or "common" stance from scratch? I suspect, though I can't prove, that amongst the thousands and thousands of hours of TV footage of the campaign and first 6 months of his presidency there is a shot of him at least once, if not multiple times, with a pose similar enough to the photo to use as a model for the poster. That, to me , makes the subject so generic as to be a fact, and not copyrightable. The exact digital file, however, is still copyrightable, as it puts him in a place, with particular fine, defining features of the time, and with a specific background, foreground, and the like - i.e., a photograph.
Sorry 'bout the Heller's Bakery line...I forgot to delete it when I chose another JCE print. FWIW, he does very nice work, and they're a bit of fun when you want to add color to a room. It's a bonus if you're from the DC area and know the spots he likes to take as subjects.
So, lets say that this isn't Obama, since the personality and timeliness of the subject appear to be clouding the issue. I'm presuming that the timliness of an image, since the copyright lasts for over a century, isn't salient (someone will doubtless correct me if I'm wrong).
Let's say this is the picture of the Hellers Bakery. Let's say it's a photo of a street flower vendor, and someone takes an anonymous photo off the net and decides to base a work of art on it. It might look like this http://www.josephcraigenglish.com/SidewalkFlowers.jpg and the artist would be required to create the hundred-plus silk screens and choose the colors to create a particular mood. How about if it were more generic? Say, a photo of the Capitol, posterized down to 8 colors with a red-white-and-blue sky?
Having seen the photo and the print for the first time today (but having hear about it previously), I'm calling bullshit on the AP and Garcia. Yes, the photograph is copyright, but the content - Obama looking up in a button down shirt and a tie - is so generic as to be reduced to almost "factual" information when translated into the poster.
I fear that the court will rule in favor or either the AP or Garcia. If they do, it will be just one more proof that the system is broken, and is stifling rather than promoting and enabling.
Good point; I suspect that a larger reactor would scale as some some inverse power relationship to weight rather than linear as I suggested. Still, you're going to need a pretty damned large reactor and a lot of engines to get any significant thrust. It's probably a better choice for an extra-solar mission, or one to a planet much farther than mars, to get the benefit of the long-term, constant thrusting.
Of course, I hate them because it makes then math hard (we did a solar sail for my senior project). Impulsive Delta V is so much easier. These days, though, computers can help out in that scenario. Back when I was in school, analysis like this was pretty limited - my 4 year old laptop has more memory, more drive space, and more operations per second than all the computers of the entire freshman engineering class (1300) combined - and I've been out of school less than 20 years!
Acetylene has a whole raft of problems, but we use it 'cause it's such a good fuel.
Storing hydrogen by someone who understands it is no big deal. Storing hydrogen by someone who either never had chemistry or barely passed it 5 to 50 years prior and who hasn't put a thought into it since isn't such a good idea. And that's most of the drivers on the road.
Here's a useful link: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/explosive-concentration-limits-d_423.html
It puts H2 at 4%-75%, Acetylene at 2.5-81%; the only one worse is Silane (with which I'm generally unfamiliar). This is for air, btw, not oxygen, which expands the range. In contrast, gasoline is a nice, tight 1.4-7.6%. Of course, nobody is suggesting we fill cars full of acetylene. They do seem to be suggesting it for Hydrogen.
The apple thing aside (sibling posts will, no doubt address the poor choice), there's still no reason to allow trademark on a common word. Xerox, Starkist, Kleenex, Charmin, Ubuntu, Microsoft - all "new" words to describe a particular brand. Windows, Apple, Rosetta Stone, Stealth - words with existing definitions and usages which were co-opted and removed from use in a particular industry by corporations with poor imaginations.
I'm not saying I don't understand the purported limitations of Trademark (though I'm no expert), but it really does seem foolish to let people and corporations lock up those words just because they couldn't make up something new.
BMI is a good measure of a population as a whole, but not necessarily applicable to individuals. Body fat is a better measure, but is significantly more difficult to measure accurately, and accurate methods are not economical for regular (semi-weekly) tracking of your condition.
It is, sadly, fairly accurate for most people (I'm presuming better than 80%), but it has been modified for many reasons. Most people would say that (as of a year ago) my BMI of ~27 was far from obese (6'-0", 202lbs, 35"-36" waist). I was not in good physical shape, but was moderately healthy and I ate reasonably well (for an American). I was incredulous of my obese status. Now, over a decade ago, that was considered normal. About ten years ago, I became "borderline". Four or five years ago, I was reclassified as obese. As I understand it, the traditional BMI crossover from normal to obese was 27.2, but that's "too hard a number to remember" so they (WHO, I think) changed it to 25 so that the health care professionals could remember the right number easier. I feel feel sorry for all the doctors and nurses who can't seem to memorize a number of equal difficulty to their area code.
About 8 months ago I started working out. Slowly. In those 8 months, I've dropped 15 pounds, increased my stamina to swimming a mile twice a week, and do light lifting (my 7 year old likes to sit on my back and have me do push ups). I'm still overweight by BMI standards...and I've realized that I _am_ still a bit overweight. I've still got a roll around my middle that's not exactly attractive. An "ideal" weight for me, I think, would put me close to 180, or a BMI around 24.5. When I drop another 7 lbs (prob 8 lbs of fat and add a lb of muscle), I'll be pretty happy. My wife's Wii Fit wants me to be 162 (BMI-22). 162lbs would likely take some hard training and I'd be back to doing triathlons on a regular basis (which I did at 195lbs 15 years ago). At 40, that's not going to happen.
almost certainly overweight. If you're over a BMI of 25 and you think you're in such good shape that BMI is bullshit, you probably know your body fat percentage, so BMI doesn't matter since you have a better index.
Sadly (for most people), the BMI is a valid statistical tool for judging populations. It's taken me almost a year to open my eyes and realize that I fall withing the typical body type demographic.
You know, this was modded as funny, but it probably should have been insightful. Why is it that we let companies trademark words which are already in the common lexicon?
Your AP science experiment was very, very flawed. Hydrogen has the ability to combust over a very, very wide range - something like 90% (I don't remember exactly, and am too lazy to google it). This is especially true when compared to gasoline (vapor), which is more like 7-11% (again...to lazy). The only saving grace for H2 is that it's so light it doesn't collect near the ground awaiting a spark, which reduces the danger in an accident.
The problems with H2 storage is that it has a very low density. Whether you compress it or you liquify it, you're putting a great deal of energy into the process of storage (beyond the lossy process of simply splitting the hydrogen off from its base material).
You really need to see more of the internet. (or, maybe not...)
If the wrong people hear you, it will spell the end of the most obvious work-around.
I presume you must teach in the humanities? I can't imagine different (presumably successive) mathematics or engineering textbook editions actually having different material, or in a substantially different order. Also, very, very little is taught "from the book" in such classes. Much of that stuff hasn't changed in the last century at the undergrad level*. Homework assignments, I'll admit, often come from the book in lower level classes, but I can remember very few professors (usually those laden with research) who assigned problems from the book after the sophomore year, and none in graduate school (wait - I take that back, statistics was that way).
It's been a couple decades for me, too, though my masters class in space vehicle guidance and nav had the final as a mars shot (NASA Admin Griffin was the professor; yes he has always been hyped on mars!)
Anyway, while the sibling posts are correct, there are orders of magnitude between this technology and the reality of meaningfully shifting the duration of a Mars shot. There are certain "safe" transfer orbits which get the crew back to earth automatically (you can intercept mars, and if you miss injection your orbit will return you to earth orbit, tangent to earth's orbit, and at the same time that earth is in that location).
Even if you go with a non-safe orbit (non-tangential initial delta V) which doesn't intercept Mars at perihelion (Hohmann transfer of you leave earth tangential to the orbit), you've got to have some significant acceleration.
Now, this thing is going to need 200kW per engine to apply 5N worth of thrust. To get this into perspective, do you remember those old Estes engines you played with as a kid? The small ones produce about 5N of thrust. Now, strap one of those to a 200kW generator. The Topaz generator, flown by the Soviets produced 5kW of power and weighed over a ton. Now, that's the only thing I could find on google in 2 seconds, so we'll assume you can get an order of magnitude better performance today - strap that Estes C6 engine to a 5,000lb nuclear reactor. You're not exactly going to be racing the new Veyron in terms of acceleration. (okay, the Veyron won't do well in space...point taken).
If you do the math, I'm thinking you'll be getting 0.0001m/s/s acceleration if you count the generator/engine combo as 50% of the spaceship mass. In 9 months, you'll be traveling at 2.3km/s faster than when you left earth orbit, which was probably in the 6-7km/s range. At that point you can turn around and start decelerating to you reach Mars at a desirable rate.
None of which really matters (since the orbital durations may be highly suspect), except to say that you're not going to be getting any massive delta-V out of this thing on a short term basis.
You are correct, though I like to use terms like "wings of rubber" when referring to my college traveling days. :-)
Clearly a brain fart, as I'm currently working on plans for an AGM (40% scale Harpoon) to fly next year.
Here's the question, and one that is salient here: Is the "sharing" (i.e. non-commercial, passive distribution) of a copyrighted work - no matter how small or valuable/invaluable - considered worth more than the average American makes in nearly 3 years? That means a full album of 12 songs will financially ruin an individual for life. Is there proportionality in that?
I think it's a valid argument.