"Example: overdrawing a market results in market collapse and creates an optimal environment for competing upstarts to emerge, therefore, a balanced profit draw maximizes long term profit."
Lol, sounds Gordon Gecko is your economics professor. In reality, it costs a huge amount of money to enter a market and build criticial mass and therefore potential competition is stifled and the established players can continue to abuse their (near) monopolies. Have you noticed that there is no real alternative to facebook? Do you really use Bing to find something on the internet (even though google pisses you off with their shitty interface and aggravating "localized results")? Can you name any serious competitors to Amazon?
Throughout human development, monopolies, extreme concentration of capital and profits have been the rule, not the exception. Our few post-war decades were a historical anomaly and we are quickly returning to a pre-war type of society. Don't take my word for it, check the numbers yourself.
it's called gerrymandering I believe. Democracy in the US is absurdly broken, corporate and special interests campaign money, gerrymandering, fillibustering, all degrade the once shining example of democracy that the US once was.
wikileaks is not about free speech, governments need to have a way of communicating securely, this is in the interest of the public. just like you and your wife/gf/bf/whatever don't want each and every discussion about yoru inlaws to be in the open. I don't see why people are so happy about wikileaks, publishing secrets is dangerous to our own security. Add to that that JA threatens to publish information if he is in put in jail; what if he did indeed commit the crimes, does he have the right to have a get out of jail card where others don't? I don't think so...
Large ships already have extremely efficient two stroke diesel engines (even over 50% which is extremely high if you consider the carnot max) They also have many devices to recover waste heat.
Propeller designs are already very sophisticated, difficult to improve there.
weight: the weight of the ship is very low relative to the amount of cargo it carries (compared to e.g. a truck). Also, the ship sails at relatively low speeds and mostly in a straight line so acceleration/deceleration losses that increase with mass are not really a factor.
All in all cargo ships are already the most efficient mode of transport on a fuel/cargo weight-distance ratio basis.
I'm not an expert on electro-magnetism but I know a bit about ocean waves. The swell typically has a period in the range of 5-15 seconds depending on location and depth, taking into consideration the wave height you can easily work out that there will be a fair bit of variation/acceleration at the buoy. Also, keep in mind that the waves generally aren't regular waves but part of a seastate that consists of various components with different periods, heights and directions. Personally I don't expect much from this idea, it is too complex and probably too expensive. All I'm saying is that I think that you under-estimate the energy content of waves a bit.
most governments do have the right to determine what you look at; child porn is illegal in most countries and in some countries regular porn is even illegal.
so, yes, governments already censor other media (what do you think happens when customs find kiddy porn in your luggage?), thus it is to be expected that they try to censor the internet as well.
Off course there's a fine line between censoring and censoring. However, if your government is doing a reasonable job of providing relative free "old" media like tv, print, radio etc. I don't see a reason why they can't be trusted with the internet, there's no reason to be so paranoid.
And let's not focus on the government here, let's focus on the scum that brought this about; the child abusing kiddy porn people. Yes, some people will always find a way to do evil but let's make it as difficult as reasonably possible for them.
sorry, I don't mind ubuntu at all but windows is not all that hard to administer if you set it up right, especially if it's only a single pc. Just install it on a virtual machine on a linux host if necessary so you can restore it from time to time if need be.
Apart from that, the main advantage of windows is that all the "popular" apps and peripherals in the senior citizen crowd (think of, web-browsing, photo viewing, photo-printing, web-cams etc.) are much more readily available for windows than for linux.
so your argument for nasa spending is basically that you think that the usa defeated communist russia through it? and you think that the usa would lose a lot by cutting nasa spending _because_ the world hates the usa?
interesting logic.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
"To be honest, dual citizenship alone should be enough to disqualify anyone from holding any civil post in a country, because it creates a clear conflict of interest."
that's tolerance for you isn't it?
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
read article 137c of the dutch "wetboek van strafrecht" if you don't believe it:
"Hij die zich in het openbaar, mondeling of bij geschrift of afbeelding, opzettelijk beledigend uitlaat over een groep mensen wegens hun ras, hun godsdienst of levensovertuiging of hetero- of homosexuele gerichtheid, wordt gestraft met een gevangenisstraf van ten hoogste een jaar of een geldboete van de derde categorie. "
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
ok, you're right, I thought that he lost (maybe he initially did?).
I still think that there is a limit on freedom of speech in effect though because he needed to justify his beliefs by means of freedom of religion. What happens if an says that homosexuals are "sick"?.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
that all depends on whether they're christian or muslem. Christian-bashing is ok with the left wingers, muslem bashing is not ok.
i distinctly remember a case against a christian politician a while back (can't remember his name), he basically said that homosexuals were no better than thieves (he meant in a religious way). Some homosexual movement took offense and took him to court, he lost, I'm very sure of that.
muslem groups off course can bash homosexuals all they like and will indeed get subsidies.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
I see your point and I agree to an extent. However, you also have to consider that some states in the usa officially had racist laws (segregation) until 1968 which is only 5 years before I was born. So voting in a black president is really quite a turnaround. I cannot imagine that holland will have a black prime minister any time soon. And what if our crown prince would have married a black woman? I think people wouldn't have been so friendly to her. But I hope that I'm wrong.
btw I'm dutch too.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
actually it's crap because there aren't a lot of places that actually don't require a visum, a lot of countries will give out "visa on arrival" which means that even though they give you the visum when you get there you still need a visum.
And even with a dutch passport I've travelled to many places that don't even give visa on arrival. Nigeria, China, bangladesh (indonesia, depending on when/where you go). Even for the usa we need to register some stuff in advance now.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 1
oh yes, maybe you should also think about this: The usa just voted in its first black president, in the netherlands people went nuts when rotterdam recently got its first morrocan born mayor. Dutch tolerance is a myth.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
dutch freedom of speech is a joke compared to american freedom of speech. Dutch freedom of speech basically means you're allowed to say what the left-wing elite thinks is right. In the usa freedom of speech is absolute as long as you're not inciting violence. For example in holland, try saying that you don't like black people, homosexuals, muslems, etc*. Try starting a racist movement*. Try saying that you think homosexuals are sick*. You will get into problems with the law, even if it is your honest to god opinion.
and where do you get the idea that you cannot get an abortion in the usa? or drink on a sunday? or get divorced? Or pay for sex?
*disclaimer; i'm not a bigot by any means, i just used those things as examples.
i didn't know there was a "noise" problem but if there was; how is this going to solve it?
one of the problems I can see is that there will be a lot of torque/forces on the turbine hubs/axes due to the gyroscopic forces/spar motion combo. I'm sure the engineers thought of that already though, I'm just wondering how they solved it.
I have dual core processor. Apparently means that each processor contains two processors. With a little recursion, there's no limit to the computing power at my disposal.
that only works for GNU/dual cores
Re:Uh, get the dish or quit crying.
on
Dealing With Dialup
·
· Score: 4, Funny
have you told the UN about this? obviously your human rights are being violated!
technically you cannot prove that the earth is _not_ the center of the universe... (not that I think it is likely that it is) you cannot even prove that you or I are not the center of the universe.
the purpose of the robot attendant is to help disabled people fill up their car, it isn't intended for "regular" customers. Don't ask me what people that are so disable that they cannot fill up their cars are doing actually _driving_ those cars. (although I remember there was some guy with no arms caught driving in new zealand a while back, seems he had been driving for years and got caught for some minor offense)
Slashdot Mirror
julian, how's life in the embassy, they gave you back your utp cable yet?
"Example: overdrawing a market results in market collapse and creates an optimal environment for competing upstarts to emerge, therefore, a balanced profit draw maximizes long term profit."
Lol, sounds Gordon Gecko is your economics professor. In reality, it costs a huge amount of money to enter a market and build criticial mass and therefore potential competition is stifled and the established players can continue to abuse their (near) monopolies. Have you noticed that there is no real alternative to facebook? Do you really use Bing to find something on the internet (even though google pisses you off with their shitty interface and aggravating "localized results")? Can you name any serious competitors to Amazon?
Throughout human development, monopolies, extreme concentration of capital and profits have been the rule, not the exception. Our few post-war decades were a historical anomaly and we are quickly returning to a pre-war type of society. Don't take my word for it, check the numbers yourself.
it's called gerrymandering I believe. Democracy in the US is absurdly broken, corporate and special interests campaign money, gerrymandering, fillibustering, all degrade the once shining example of democracy that the US once was.
wikileaks is not about free speech, governments need to have a way of communicating securely, this is in the interest of the public. just like you and your wife/gf/bf/whatever don't want each and every discussion about yoru inlaws to be in the open. I don't see why people are so happy about wikileaks, publishing secrets is dangerous to our own security. Add to that that JA threatens to publish information if he is in put in jail; what if he did indeed commit the crimes, does he have the right to have a get out of jail card where others don't? I don't think so...
ehm, have you ever studied ships?
Large ships already have extremely efficient two stroke diesel engines (even over 50% which is extremely high if you consider the carnot max) They also have many devices to recover waste heat.
Propeller designs are already very sophisticated, difficult to improve there.
weight: the weight of the ship is very low relative to the amount of cargo it carries (compared to e.g. a truck). Also, the ship sails at relatively low speeds and mostly in a straight line so acceleration/deceleration losses that increase with mass are not really a factor.
All in all cargo ships are already the most efficient mode of transport on a fuel/cargo weight-distance ratio basis.
I'm not an expert on electro-magnetism but I know a bit about ocean waves. The swell typically has a period in the range of 5-15 seconds depending on location and depth, taking into consideration the wave height you can easily work out that there will be a fair bit of variation/acceleration at the buoy. Also, keep in mind that the waves generally aren't regular waves but part of a seastate that consists of various components with different periods, heights and directions. Personally I don't expect much from this idea, it is too complex and probably too expensive. All I'm saying is that I think that you under-estimate the energy content of waves a bit.
iI iThink iThis iiThing (iYes, iThat iIs iA iDouble ii) iIs iIs iSo i90's iAnd iIt iIs iGetting iVery iAnnoying.
most governments do have the right to determine what you look at; child porn is illegal in most countries and in some countries regular porn is even illegal.
so, yes, governments already censor other media (what do you think happens when customs find kiddy porn in your luggage?), thus it is to be expected that they try to censor the internet as well.
Off course there's a fine line between censoring and censoring. However, if your government is doing a reasonable job of providing relative free "old" media like tv, print, radio etc. I don't see a reason why they can't be trusted with the internet, there's no reason to be so paranoid.
And let's not focus on the government here, let's focus on the scum that brought this about; the child abusing kiddy porn people. Yes, some people will always find a way to do evil but let's make it as difficult as reasonably possible for them.
sorry, I don't mind ubuntu at all but windows is not all that hard to administer if you set it up right, especially if it's only a single pc. Just install it on a virtual machine on a linux host if necessary so you can restore it from time to time if need be.
Apart from that, the main advantage of windows is that all the "popular" apps and peripherals in the senior citizen crowd (think of, web-browsing, photo viewing, photo-printing, web-cams etc.) are much more readily available for windows than for linux.
so your argument for nasa spending is basically that you think that the usa defeated communist russia through it? and you think that the usa would lose a lot by cutting nasa spending _because_ the world hates the usa?
interesting logic.
"To be honest, dual citizenship alone should be enough to disqualify anyone from holding any civil post in a country, because it creates a clear conflict of interest."
that's tolerance for you isn't it?
read article 137c of the dutch "wetboek van strafrecht" if you don't believe it:
"Hij die zich in het openbaar, mondeling of bij geschrift of afbeelding, opzettelijk beledigend uitlaat over een groep mensen wegens hun ras, hun godsdienst of levensovertuiging of hetero- of homosexuele gerichtheid, wordt gestraft met een gevangenisstraf van ten hoogste een jaar of een geldboete van de derde categorie. "
ok, you're right, I thought that he lost (maybe he initially did?).
I still think that there is a limit on freedom of speech in effect though because he needed to justify his beliefs by means of freedom of religion. What happens if an says that homosexuals are "sick"?.
that all depends on whether they're christian or muslem. Christian-bashing is ok with the left wingers, muslem bashing is not ok.
i distinctly remember a case against a christian politician a while back (can't remember his name), he basically said that homosexuals were no better than thieves (he meant in a religious way). Some homosexual movement took offense and took him to court, he lost, I'm very sure of that.
muslem groups off course can bash homosexuals all they like and will indeed get subsidies.
I see your point and I agree to an extent. However, you also have to consider that some states in the usa officially had racist laws (segregation) until 1968 which is only 5 years before I was born. So voting in a black president is really quite a turnaround. I cannot imagine that holland will have a black prime minister any time soon. And what if our crown prince would have married a black woman? I think people wouldn't have been so friendly to her. But I hope that I'm wrong.
btw I'm dutch too.
actually it's crap because there aren't a lot of places that actually don't require a visum, a lot of countries will give out "visa on arrival" which means that even though they give you the visum when you get there you still need a visum.
And even with a dutch passport I've travelled to many places that don't even give visa on arrival. Nigeria, China, bangladesh (indonesia, depending on when/where you go). Even for the usa we need to register some stuff in advance now.
oh yes, maybe you should also think about this: The usa just voted in its first black president, in the netherlands people went nuts when rotterdam recently got its first morrocan born mayor. Dutch tolerance is a myth.
dutch freedom of speech is a joke compared to american freedom of speech. Dutch freedom of speech basically means you're allowed to say what the left-wing elite thinks is right. In the usa freedom of speech is absolute as long as you're not inciting violence. For example in holland, try saying that you don't like black people, homosexuals, muslems, etc*. Try starting a racist movement*. Try saying that you think homosexuals are sick*. You will get into problems with the law, even if it is your honest to god opinion.
and where do you get the idea that you cannot get an abortion in the usa? or drink on a sunday? or get divorced? Or pay for sex?
*disclaimer; i'm not a bigot by any means, i just used those things as examples.
cthulhu?
i didn't know there was a "noise" problem but if there was; how is this going to solve it?
one of the problems I can see is that there will be a lot of torque/forces on the turbine hubs/axes due to the gyroscopic forces/spar motion combo. I'm sure the engineers thought of that already though, I'm just wondering how they solved it.
that only works for GNU/dual coresI have dual core processor. Apparently means that each processor contains two processors. With a little recursion, there's no limit to the computing power at my disposal.
have you told the UN about this? obviously your human rights are being violated!
technically you cannot prove that the earth is _not_ the center of the universe... (not that I think it is likely that it is) you cannot even prove that you or I are not the center of the universe.
I wouldn't be surprised if this study was funded by insurance companies seeking a way to lower the amount of money the pay for anti-depressant drugs.
the purpose of the robot attendant is to help disabled people fill up their car, it isn't intended for "regular" customers. Don't ask me what people that are so disable that they cannot fill up their cars are doing actually _driving_ those cars. (although I remember there was some guy with no arms caught driving in new zealand a while back, seems he had been driving for years and got caught for some minor offense)