The key word here is 'efficient'. The researchers claim to have come up with a way to seperate hydrogen and oxygen from water that is significantly more efficient thant elctrolisis.
It's very similar in the US: Any electronic product you sell (or build for more than personal use) must be certified to be compliant with (at least) Part 15 of the FCC rules. (Part 15 deals with the amount of RF energy that can be radiated by a device that is not designed to produce RF radiation). You don't necessarily need a complete metal case, a full metal case will generally make it easier to pass the certification testing.
Of course, home-built computers also need to comply with Part 15, but as long as you're not selling them, there is no requirement for certification.
If they went in middle of the local winter on the other hand...
They are going there to set-up a robotic weather station that will record and transmit weather data for up to 5 years. Why send a team in the middle of winter to do what can be done much more easily and safely in the middle of summer?
Now, however, with our factory education system, there are dozens of people all working on the same issues and they come up with the same solution.
To me there seems a pretty simple solution to this: Keep all patent applications secret for 18 months (or some more suitable period of time), before the patent can be issued. If the invention is invented independantly during this time frame, it is evidence that the invention is obvious to others in its field.
Of course, the problem with this is that I take a big risk if I put my invention on the market during this waiting period: If somebody seems my invention and tries to patent it as their own, my patent application will be rejected.
I can actually see how a non-technical lawmaker could imagine a developer tackling some design/coding issues, entering a few search words into a patent company website, and getting pages of concepts which this developer then uses to write a better program, or finish the task in less time.
It's not in software, but at work I am currently working with a "patent company" to determine if one of their inventions is suitable for our application. If their invention is suitable, it is a win-win situation: We license their invention for much less than what it would have cost us to develop a comperable invention, and they some return on the investment required to develop their invention.
I think it is important to realize that not every company whose business model is based on licensing patents makes use of ethically-questionable "submarine patent" business tactics. In the case of the company I'm working with, they seem to want to do everything they can do advertise their inventions in hopes of gaining more licensees.
And those very same security "experts" obviously don't know that there are methods for secure encryption known throughout the world even now? You don't need to be an expert to know that!
Keep in mind that encrypting the data would do little to keep the data secure. The problem is that anybody who wants to use the RFID tag for legitimate purposes needs to have a copy of the decryption key. There would be so many copies of the decryption key that it wouldn't stay secret for long. At least this way, there is no false perception that the data in the RFID chip is safe.
Why did they expect to find a boat/plane in a apartment building?
Boats can be hauled by trailters to various places, including parking lots. Somebody working on their boat in the parking lot could accidentally set off the emergency beacon. Airplanes can and do crash, although crashing near an apartment complex without being noticed might be a bit of a stretch.
At the point the signal is localized to an apartment building, its probably pretty clear that it is not an intentional distress signal (although I suppose somebody could have been kidnapped and found an emergency beacon sitting in the kidnapper's closet...). They still need to find and disable whatever is creating the signal, though, to avoid interfearing with a real distress signal in the future.
Anyone know if there is a reason for the floating point reference other than just as a 'gee whiz' number?
Echelon needs to find target words within a spoken converstaion. This implies some heavy-duty voice recognition software, given the large volume of telephone traffic to sift through and low quality of some of the most interesting data (for example, internation calls to thrid-world countries on the other side of the world). Good floating-point performance probably helps in that regard.
Rather than arguing endlessly about which is the best machinery for elections, perhaps it would be better to address the real problem.
To the extent that Florida's 2000 Presidential election has spurred the implementation of electronic voting machines, the real problem is not whether vothes are cast freely, or reall whether or not votes are cast accurately. The real problem is that the margin of victory in Flordia was so small that the election was essentially a tie.
No matter what voting system is used, there will be a margin of victory where the voting system cannot determine that one candidate received more voltes than a second candidate. As I see it, this is best handled through non-technological means. One solution would be to change state election law in the 'winner-take-all' states so that the electorial volts are divided proportionately among each of the candidates receiving at least a small percentage of the votes. A second solution would be to amend the constitution to allow a nation-wide vote.
I doubt that electronic voting machines would help if the 2004 election in Florida is as close as the 2000 election. If the margin of victory is that small, the candidates will agian be tempted to demand recounts in case the voting machine counted wrong, or will try to challenge the on-screen layout of the ballot, etc.
How do you "defend" against something like that? You can't dispute a warrant/search order. When the cops show up with paper in hand, you don't get to say "Hey, wait a sec, let's talk this over." They have the warrant. Period.
Well, it sounds like the warrant was presented to staff in a U.S. office seeking physical items located in the U.K. Given the presence of the Atlantic Ocean, the staff in the U.S. office have no way to comply with the order directly. I would guess that they would call their boss, who would in turn call his boss, and so on until they got ahold of somebody with the authority to tell the U.K. staff to go get the disks. At that point, the company lawyers should have been (and probably were) consulted to see what the legal issues are. If the corporate counsel said you are legally required to hand over the disks, that is probably exactly what the company did. If corporate council advised that the guys with the warrant in the U.S. office have no authority to require that the disks be retreived, that word could have filtered down the chain of command until things got back to the U.S. office. The staff in the U.S. office would relay the message and law enforcement would have to walk away empty handed.
I can think of two reforms that might work better and be more practical than forbidding that a paten be knowingly infringed:
First, patent applications are currently kept secret for 18 months following the date of application. (IANAL, so I may be a bit off on this). My suggestion is to keep patent applications and patents themselves secret for 18 months following application. If somebody else "invents" the same thing during that 18 month period, that should be considered proof that the content of the patent is obvious and non-innovative.
Second, don't allow patents that are simply a unique combination of existing inventions. That way, you couldn't simply patent using Widget A and Widget B together. If an "invention" is required to use Widget A and Widget B in combination, that invention could be patented.
I recently ran accross a patent at work from one of our competitors (expired BTW). Basically, it patented printing a particular type of potentiometer (already invented) onto a flexible film (already invented). Nothing in the claim indicates that anything new needed to be invented to use the two in combination. As a result, I really have a hard time imaging how the public received any benifit from what the inventor disclosed in the patent. If the inventor had to invent a material, process, etc. in order to print a potentiometer onto a flexible film, those inventions are the patent system should allow.
Likewise, if Widget A and Widget B can be used togther to do something that isn't possible with existing inventions, you could patent the use of Widget A and Widget B together to accomplish that goal. In the above case, printing the potentionmeter on a flexible film allows the potentiometer to fit in a smaller volume, and could be used to improve the linearity of a rotary potentiometer by arranging the potentiometer in a configuration that wouldn't work if the potentiometer were printed on a rigit substrate. (BTW, how one might arrange the potentiometer to achieve this advantage isn't mentioned in the patent)
Re:one of my friends works there
on
Inside Wal-Mart IT
·
· Score: 2, Informative
In any situation, 49.99% are bringing the average down.
Not strictly the case. Lets say that 99% percent of your population makes less than $50,000/year and ther remaining 1% makes over $3,000,000. 99% of your people are dragging down the average.
So, people will not want more, if no one has more than them? (Hint: Bill Gates.)
Nope, but if everything falls into one of two categories: "Everyone has it" and "Nobody has it", theft of physical items would be pretty pointless. Why would I steal a bike when I already have one just like it? I can't sell it, because everybody else already has one. I can't combine it the bike I have to make some sort of super-bike since that would give me something nobody else has (therefor is very illegal). Keep in mind that I don't think this is a practical solution. I meant it as an example of a dystopia resulting from over-emphasis on a single social goal (living in a society where nobody has to worry about theft).
Besides, what makes you think that "equality" could be enforced any better than the current property laws are enforced?
Exactly. I didn't mean to put forced equality foward as a resonable solution. First, for the reason you pointed out, and others, it is not practical. Second, enforcing absolute equality seems to me to be the most unfair (and in its own way unequal) thing a government could do.
That being said, if everybody had the exact same bike, there would be little point in stealing one.
Too bad we couldn't just live in a society where we wouldn't have to worry about theft!
I fear that as long as there are things not everybody has (money/power/fame/etc.), some portion of the population will turn to illegal, immoral, or socially unacceptable means to achieve their goals. Unless we really want to live in a society where equality is enforced and nobody is allowed to have anymore than anyone else, the presence of thieves and other criminals is something we will always need to deal with.
As most RFID tags in use are the el-cheapo "just respond with a serial number" type, I would be hard pressed to find a way that it would be terribly useful to a third party.
One word: Aggregator.
A company could 'buy' RFID information from retailers, say at a rate of 1 cent per 1000 person-item or item-item links. They could then sell that information to other parties. For example, you buy a set of tires with embedded RFID tags. The tire store sells the aggregator four person-item links, one for each tire.
Next, when you go through the drive-through at McDonalds, their RFID reader embedded in the drive-through lane reads the tire RFID tags (or any others in range on your vehicle) and sells the aggregator an item-item link for each tire to the super-size value meal you bought.
Finally, your health insurance company pays the aggregator for a list of items you probably bought. They see that someone in your vehicle buys a lot of meals from McDonalds, and raises your rates on the assumption that you are probably over-weight, with high-blood pressure and chlorestoral. Next, you auto insurance company pays for the same information and raises your auto insurance rated based on the assumption that you must be eating alot while driving.
As you and other's have said, there is nothing inharently bad about RFID as long as I know it's there and I can turn it off. That way, if companies start pulling tricks like the above, I can disable tags in items I buy.
There is no reason why encrypting the data would decrease the range of the device. To the radio link, bits are bits. The details of the encryption method may require additional computation or may require sending additional bits, both of which would reduce the apparent speed of the connection.
Huh? Where does this guy live that he gets consumable water out of his tap? Mine tastes like a dirty swimming pool.
Where do you live that you can't consume the water from your tap? I have no issue drinking the water from my tap. I also know excatly where the water comes from. (If you have to know, it is pumped from Lake Michigan, treated at the nearby water treatment plant, and stored in a large tank on top of a local sand dune for distribution).
If you're daring enough to consume the water out of the tap you are probably ignorant of its contents: heavy metals, pesticides, chlorine variants, sometimes fluoride, and who knows what else.
Yes, all of which are well below the maximum 'safe' levels. (Let's not get into the correctness of those levels. They seem reasonably sane to me). Now what exactly is a chlorine variant? Chlorine, the element, is used to kill bacteria and other micro-organisms that otherwise thrive in water. Fluoride is intentionally added to water to help with dental health. Both of these are good things, at the appropriate levels. As far as the heavy metals and who knows what else, have you actually had your tap water tested to see what is in it? If there are dangerous levels of these in your water then, well, it sucks to be you.
Frankly, if you paid $120,000 for you're degree, its probably because you could affort the $120,000 bill and you/your parents throught it was worth it.
I went to a pretty good private college for five years in an engineering program and paid nowhere near $120,000. If I had paid full tuition, bought every book and education supply some professor thoght necessary new from the bookstore, stayed in the dorms and paid for the full meal plan every term, I probably could have managed to get close to $120,000. In reality, I don't know anybody who actually paid the full 'advertised' tuition price. Most people buy used books and supplies, usually from somewhere other than the book store. Hardly anyone elected to live in the dorms beyond the manditory first year, opting instead for the much better and less expensive off campus housing. Nobody that didn't have a good reason to (such as being able to charge it against a scholorship), paid for the meal-plan which came out to somewhere on the order of $6/meal (even if I can't figure out how to use a microwave, I could eat at most fast food places for less than $6 per meal).
Television is the only thing I see on that list that could qualify with your statement.
Actually, I'd say large-scale farming. Think about it: When was the last time you worried that there might not be enough food to last through the winter? I'm not talking about not being able to afford food (that's another issue), but whether or not enough food exists for everybody in your area to survive the winter. I'm betting never. Large-scale farming allows us to produce plently of food to feed an population which is much larger than 100 year ago on much less land.
Note that I'm talking more about mechanization than the trend to corporate vs. family operations.
These days, cars are mechanically more sound than they were previously, but electronicly less sound. Cars used to overheat because of serious problems... Now they overheat because the $5 sensor (that costs $200 to have replaced) went out, and the electric fan didn't kick on when things were getting too hot... Meanwhile, a mechnical fan, connected to the engine shaft, would have worked just as well, never failed, and would have been cheaper.
I can think of at least four reasons to use an electric fan. First, it increases fuel efficiency. By turning off the fan when not needed more of the power from the engine is used to move the car down the road. Second, having fan speed proportional to engine speed really is not the correct relationship. If I am idling in heavy traffic on a hot day, I probably want the fan running faster than if I'm flying down the freeway at 80MPH on a cool day. Third, I have to imagine that it simplifies vehicle assembly since you don't have these large, thin, fairly delicate sheets of metal hanging off the front of the engine. Instead, the fan can be attached to and installed with the radiator. Finally, it allows for configurations where there the axis of rotation for the fan and the engine fall in different planes.
None of these reasions have anything to do with adding complexity to get more money on repairs.
All elected officials (and bureaucrats) need to live in the immediate vicinity of a power plant. Nuclear, coal, wind, hydro, solar, etc.
I agree. Its not nuclear, but our utility is run by the city, and operates this plant and another right downtown. I imagine this arrangement, (politicians living near the plants) contributes to their support of projects like this and this
With modern identification cards (i.e. not laminated paper), it probably isn't easer. Even as states move away from the laminated paper documents, many people still have the older laminated paper versions. If I had a middle initial of O or P (or potentially even L, U, V depending on the font and my skill), it would be much easier to add a single mark to the initial, or alter the name (i.e. from JOHN MOPS to JOHN MORS) than it would be to change the entire name).
The same is probably true for newer, less easily changed ID cards. In most cases, in order to get an ID card, (Driver's license or state ID), you need to show sufficent identification in other forms, such as birth certificates, credit cards, social security cards, etc. If one can change a single letter on these cards and then obtain a legitimate ID in the new name, the problem remains. Again, I assume it is much easier to alter a single letter on an existing document than to change the whole name or create an entirly new document.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't know vodka was an element now.
It is not. Neither is water.
The key word here is 'efficient'. The researchers claim to have come up with a way to seperate hydrogen and oxygen from water that is significantly more efficient thant elctrolisis.
It's very similar in the US: Any electronic product you sell (or build for more than personal use) must be certified to be compliant with (at least) Part 15 of the FCC rules. (Part 15 deals with the amount of RF energy that can be radiated by a device that is not designed to produce RF radiation). You don't necessarily need a complete metal case, a full metal case will generally make it easier to pass the certification testing.
Of course, home-built computers also need to comply with Part 15, but as long as you're not selling them, there is no requirement for certification.
If they went in middle of the local winter on the other hand...
They are going there to set-up a robotic weather station that will record and transmit weather data for up to 5 years. Why send a team in the middle of winter to do what can be done much more easily and safely in the middle of summer?
Now, however, with our factory education system, there are dozens of people all working on the same issues and they come up with the same solution.
To me there seems a pretty simple solution to this: Keep all patent applications secret for 18 months (or some more suitable period of time), before the patent can be issued. If the invention is invented independantly during this time frame, it is evidence that the invention is obvious to others in its field.
Of course, the problem with this is that I take a big risk if I put my invention on the market during this waiting period: If somebody seems my invention and tries to patent it as their own, my patent application will be rejected.
I can actually see how a non-technical lawmaker could imagine a developer tackling some design/coding issues, entering a few search words into a patent company website, and getting pages of concepts which this developer then uses to write a better program, or finish the task in less time.
It's not in software, but at work I am currently working with a "patent company" to determine if one of their inventions is suitable for our application. If their invention is suitable, it is a win-win situation: We license their invention for much less than what it would have cost us to develop a comperable invention, and they some return on the investment required to develop their invention.
I think it is important to realize that not every company whose business model is based on licensing patents makes use of ethically-questionable "submarine patent" business tactics. In the case of the company I'm working with, they seem to want to do everything they can do advertise their inventions in hopes of gaining more licensees.
And those very same security "experts" obviously don't know that there are methods for secure encryption known throughout the world even now? You don't need to be an expert to know that!
Keep in mind that encrypting the data would do little to keep the data secure. The problem is that anybody who wants to use the RFID tag for legitimate purposes needs to have a copy of the decryption key. There would be so many copies of the decryption key that it wouldn't stay secret for long. At least this way, there is no false perception that the data in the RFID chip is safe.
Why did they expect to find a boat/plane in a apartment building?
Boats can be hauled by trailters to various places, including parking lots. Somebody working on their boat in the parking lot could accidentally set off the emergency beacon. Airplanes can and do crash, although crashing near an apartment complex without being noticed might be a bit of a stretch.
At the point the signal is localized to an apartment building, its probably pretty clear that it is not an intentional distress signal (although I suppose somebody could have been kidnapped and found an emergency beacon sitting in the kidnapper's closet...). They still need to find and disable whatever is creating the signal, though, to avoid interfearing with a real distress signal in the future.
Anyone know if there is a reason for the floating point reference other than just as a 'gee whiz' number?
Echelon needs to find target words within a spoken converstaion. This implies some heavy-duty voice recognition software, given the large volume of telephone traffic to sift through and low quality of some of the most interesting data (for example, internation calls to thrid-world countries on the other side of the world). Good floating-point performance probably helps in that regard.
Rather than arguing endlessly about which is the best machinery for elections, perhaps it would be better to address the real problem.
To the extent that Florida's 2000 Presidential election has spurred the implementation of electronic voting machines, the real problem is not whether vothes are cast freely, or reall whether or not votes are cast accurately. The real problem is that the margin of victory in Flordia was so small that the election was essentially a tie.
No matter what voting system is used, there will be a margin of victory where the voting system cannot determine that one candidate received more voltes than a second candidate. As I see it, this is best handled through non-technological means. One solution would be to change state election law in the 'winner-take-all' states so that the electorial volts are divided proportionately among each of the candidates receiving at least a small percentage of the votes. A second solution would be to amend the constitution to allow a nation-wide vote.
I doubt that electronic voting machines would help if the 2004 election in Florida is as close as the 2000 election. If the margin of victory is that small, the candidates will agian be tempted to demand recounts in case the voting machine counted wrong, or will try to challenge the on-screen layout of the ballot, etc.
How do you "defend" against something like that? You can't dispute a warrant/search order. When the cops show up with paper in hand, you don't get to say "Hey, wait a sec, let's talk this over." They have the warrant. Period.
Well, it sounds like the warrant was presented to staff in a U.S. office seeking physical items located in the U.K. Given the presence of the Atlantic Ocean, the staff in the U.S. office have no way to comply with the order directly. I would guess that they would call their boss, who would in turn call his boss, and so on until they got ahold of somebody with the authority to tell the U.K. staff to go get the disks. At that point, the company lawyers should have been (and probably were) consulted to see what the legal issues are. If the corporate counsel said you are legally required to hand over the disks, that is probably exactly what the company did. If corporate council advised that the guys with the warrant in the U.S. office have no authority to require that the disks be retreived, that word could have filtered down the chain of command until things got back to the U.S. office. The staff in the U.S. office would relay the message and law enforcement would have to walk away empty handed.
I can think of two reforms that might work better and be more practical than forbidding that a paten be knowingly infringed:
First, patent applications are currently kept secret for 18 months following the date of application. (IANAL, so I may be a bit off on this). My suggestion is to keep patent applications and patents themselves secret for 18 months following application. If somebody else "invents" the same thing during that 18 month period, that should be considered proof that the content of the patent is obvious and non-innovative.
Second, don't allow patents that are simply a unique combination of existing inventions. That way, you couldn't simply patent using Widget A and Widget B together. If an "invention" is required to use Widget A and Widget B in combination, that invention could be patented.
I recently ran accross a patent at work from one of our competitors (expired BTW). Basically, it patented printing a particular type of potentiometer (already invented) onto a flexible film (already invented). Nothing in the claim indicates that anything new needed to be invented to use the two in combination. As a result, I really have a hard time imaging how the public received any benifit from what the inventor disclosed in the patent. If the inventor had to invent a material, process, etc. in order to print a potentiometer onto a flexible film, those inventions are the patent system should allow.
Likewise, if Widget A and Widget B can be used togther to do something that isn't possible with existing inventions, you could patent the use of Widget A and Widget B together to accomplish that goal. In the above case, printing the potentionmeter on a flexible film allows the potentiometer to fit in a smaller volume, and could be used to improve the linearity of a rotary potentiometer by arranging the potentiometer in a configuration that wouldn't work if the potentiometer were printed on a rigit substrate. (BTW, how one might arrange the potentiometer to achieve this advantage isn't mentioned in the patent)
In any situation, 49.99% are bringing the average down.
Not strictly the case. Lets say that 99% percent of your population makes less than $50,000/year and ther remaining 1% makes over $3,000,000. 99% of your people are dragging down the average.
So, people will not want more, if no one has more than them? (Hint: Bill Gates.)
Nope, but if everything falls into one of two categories: "Everyone has it" and "Nobody has it", theft of physical items would be pretty pointless. Why would I steal a bike when I already have one just like it? I can't sell it, because everybody else already has one. I can't combine it the bike I have to make some sort of super-bike since that would give me something nobody else has (therefor is very illegal). Keep in mind that I don't think this is a practical solution. I meant it as an example of a dystopia resulting from over-emphasis on a single social goal (living in a society where nobody has to worry about theft).
Besides, what makes you think that "equality" could be enforced any better than the current property laws are enforced?
Exactly. I didn't mean to put forced equality foward as a resonable solution. First, for the reason you pointed out, and others, it is not practical. Second, enforcing absolute equality seems to me to be the most unfair (and in its own way unequal) thing a government could do.
That being said, if everybody had the exact same bike, there would be little point in stealing one.
Too bad we couldn't just live in a society where we wouldn't have to worry about theft!
I fear that as long as there are things not everybody has (money/power/fame/etc.), some portion of the population will turn to illegal, immoral, or socially unacceptable means to achieve their goals. Unless we really want to live in a society where equality is enforced and nobody is allowed to have anymore than anyone else, the presence of thieves and other criminals is something we will always need to deal with.
As most RFID tags in use are the el-cheapo "just respond with a serial number" type, I would be hard pressed to find a way that it would be terribly useful to a third party.
One word: Aggregator.
A company could 'buy' RFID information from retailers, say at a rate of 1 cent per 1000 person-item or item-item links. They could then sell that information to other parties. For example, you buy a set of tires with embedded RFID tags. The tire store sells the aggregator four person-item links, one for each tire.
Next, when you go through the drive-through at McDonalds, their RFID reader embedded in the drive-through lane reads the tire RFID tags (or any others in range on your vehicle) and sells the aggregator an item-item link for each tire to the super-size value meal you bought.
Finally, your health insurance company pays the aggregator for a list of items you probably bought. They see that someone in your vehicle buys a lot of meals from McDonalds, and raises your rates on the assumption that you are probably over-weight, with high-blood pressure and chlorestoral. Next, you auto insurance company pays for the same information and raises your auto insurance rated based on the assumption that you must be eating alot while driving.
As you and other's have said, there is nothing inharently bad about RFID as long as I know it's there and I can turn it off. That way, if companies start pulling tricks like the above, I can disable tags in items I buy.
There is no reason why encrypting the data would decrease the range of the device. To the radio link, bits are bits. The details of the encryption method may require additional computation or may require sending additional bits, both of which would reduce the apparent speed of the connection.
Yep. Nothing spooks a burglar like stepping on a sleeping cat.
[I can't remember where I heard this from.]
Huh? Where does this guy live that he gets consumable water out of his tap? Mine tastes like a dirty swimming pool.
Where do you live that you can't consume the water from your tap? I have no issue drinking the water from my tap. I also know excatly where the water comes from. (If you have to know, it is pumped from Lake Michigan, treated at the nearby water treatment plant, and stored in a large tank on top of a local sand dune for distribution).
If you're daring enough to consume the water out of the tap you are probably ignorant of its contents: heavy metals, pesticides, chlorine variants, sometimes fluoride, and who knows what else.
Yes, all of which are well below the maximum 'safe' levels. (Let's not get into the correctness of those levels. They seem reasonably sane to me). Now what exactly is a chlorine variant? Chlorine, the element, is used to kill bacteria and other micro-organisms that otherwise thrive in water. Fluoride is intentionally added to water to help with dental health. Both of these are good things, at the appropriate levels. As far as the heavy metals and who knows what else, have you actually had your tap water tested to see what is in it? If there are dangerous levels of these in your water then, well, it sucks to be you.
Frankly, if you paid $120,000 for you're degree, its probably because you could affort the $120,000 bill and you/your parents throught it was worth it.
I went to a pretty good private college for five years in an engineering program and paid nowhere near $120,000. If I had paid full tuition, bought every book and education supply some professor thoght necessary new from the bookstore, stayed in the dorms and paid for the full meal plan every term, I probably could have managed to get close to $120,000. In reality, I don't know anybody who actually paid the full 'advertised' tuition price. Most people buy used books and supplies, usually from somewhere other than the book store. Hardly anyone elected to live in the dorms beyond the manditory first year, opting instead for the much better and less expensive off campus housing. Nobody that didn't have a good reason to (such as being able to charge it against a scholorship), paid for the meal-plan which came out to somewhere on the order of $6/meal (even if I can't figure out how to use a microwave, I could eat at most fast food places for less than $6 per meal).
Television is the only thing I see on that list that could qualify with your statement.
Actually, I'd say large-scale farming. Think about it: When was the last time you worried that there might not be enough food to last through the winter? I'm not talking about not being able to afford food (that's another issue), but whether or not enough food exists for everybody in your area to survive the winter. I'm betting never. Large-scale farming allows us to produce plently of food to feed an population which is much larger than 100 year ago on much less land.
Note that I'm talking more about mechanization than the trend to corporate vs. family operations.
These days, cars are mechanically more sound than they were previously, but electronicly less sound. Cars used to overheat because of serious problems... Now they overheat because the $5 sensor (that costs $200 to have replaced) went out, and the electric fan didn't kick on when things were getting too hot... Meanwhile, a mechnical fan, connected to the engine shaft, would have worked just as well, never failed, and would have been cheaper.
I can think of at least four reasons to use an electric fan. First, it increases fuel efficiency. By turning off the fan when not needed more of the power from the engine is used to move the car down the road. Second, having fan speed proportional to engine speed really is not the correct relationship. If I am idling in heavy traffic on a hot day, I probably want the fan running faster than if I'm flying down the freeway at 80MPH on a cool day. Third, I have to imagine that it simplifies vehicle assembly since you don't have these large, thin, fairly delicate sheets of metal hanging off the front of the engine. Instead, the fan can be attached to and installed with the radiator. Finally, it allows for configurations where there the axis of rotation for the fan and the engine fall in different planes.
None of these reasions have anything to do with adding complexity to get more money on repairs.
All elected officials (and bureaucrats) need to live in the immediate vicinity of a power plant. Nuclear, coal, wind, hydro, solar, etc.
I agree. Its not nuclear, but our utility is run by the city, and operates this plant and another right downtown. I imagine this arrangement, (politicians living near the plants) contributes to their support of projects like this and this
With modern identification cards (i.e. not laminated paper), it probably isn't easer. Even as states move away from the laminated paper documents, many people still have the older laminated paper versions. If I had a middle initial of O or P (or potentially even L, U, V depending on the font and my skill), it would be much easier to add a single mark to the initial, or alter the name (i.e. from JOHN MOPS to JOHN MORS) than it would be to change the entire name).
The same is probably true for newer, less easily changed ID cards. In most cases, in order to get an ID card, (Driver's license or state ID), you need to show sufficent identification in other forms, such as birth certificates, credit cards, social security cards, etc. If one can change a single letter on these cards and then obtain a legitimate ID in the new name, the problem remains. Again, I assume it is much easier to alter a single letter on an existing document than to change the whole name or create an entirly new document.