If the material isn't changing and the book gives a good presentation of it, what's lazy about continuing to use it? Sounds prudent to me (or are new books almost always cheaper?).
There is a disconnect between the current ease of mass electronic publishing and current text books. This article provides evidence that it is going away. 20 years ago, developing free (both unencumbered and no cost) electronic texts didn't make a huge amount of sense. 10 years ago, it only made sense if you bothered to think about it. Now, it still makes sense and the big publishers are providing electronic editions of their texts, so it is really hard not to think about it. Give it ten years, there will be a dozen or so really good texts. A while after that, there will be even more.
State colleges in the United States(so, publicly owned universities) charge $3,000-4,000 a semester for tuition(That's reasonable ballpark in-state tuition at in-residence colleges. Expensive public schools charge a heckuva lot more, private universities barely let you look at the grass for a heckuva lot more and community colleges charge a heckuva lot less).
That doesn't make $400 for books any cheaper, but quite a few of the people who are finding $10,000 year to go to school are actually pretty willing to spend another $1,000 to avoid it being a pain in the ass(which is how many people would describe reading electronic text).
Alternatively, how do you fine the employees of a government agency if there aren't any, because no one was crazy enough to expose themselves to getting fined while working at government rates?
What do you do if the budget machinery of the government they are working for won't provide funding for encryption?
It has to start with definition of reasonable practices and funding of those practices. For government, external review and control(i.e. a check or a balance) is a good idea, but it would be very hard to implement in terms of penalties or fines.
If some joker tried to sell $100 million of stolen information yo someone with the resources to buy $100 million of stolen information, they would end up dead, not rich.
Hell, the very availability of that much stolen information would destroy its value.
I live there. Of course, out of the several hundred people I know, none of them are currently involved in a law suit.
I do know someone who sued someone after they got t-boned. (that's a kind of car accident, the party that got sued drove into the side of the guy's vehicle, turning it up onto its side and totaling it, the guy got hurt pretty bad.)
The dollar will stabilize over the next two years, at levels above where they are today. Deep water drilling will provide some supply relief. Demand increases will moderate. The speculative component will be driven out of the price of oil by 2011(where it will be closer to $85 than $150).
Given enough food, population can easily double in 20 years. Use 40 for a doubling, just to be conservative. 70,000/40 = 1750. 2000 * 2**1750 = A number with 531 digits.
Or use 1000 years for a doubling. That's 70 times(note that the global population more than doubled in the last 100 years). 2000 * 2**70 = 2,361,183,241,434,822,606,848,000.
I'm pretty sure that my numbers are correct within a factor of 1 billion or so, so it seems pretty plausible.
Social wars. Tribe A is slightly smarter than Tribe B(let's say 1 guy is 1% smarter). Tribe A invents and shares clubs. Tribe A needs more room. Tribe A kills Tribe B. Tribe A slowly splits into Tribe A and new Tribe B. This time, Tribe B is slightly smarter. Tribe B kills Tribe A and slowly splits again. Repeat.
And I'm pretty sure that shouting something outrageous and scandalous about someone you don't like or disagree with is exactly a witch hunt style tactic, especially when it is done out of the view of the subject.
Paper scan voting pretty much solves all of the problems, at reasonable cost. The interface is one that people are used to(paper that is), there is a paper trail, the machines are well understood.
Hopefully people manage to remember the ongoing debacle in New Jersey for at least an election cycle or two.
I'll bet you a nickle that oil doesn't cross $150 in the next five years.
Cellulosic is being industrialized as we speak. People are noticing that butanol isn't nearly as polar as ethanol and has a higher energy density to boot. Junk to diesel processes seem to work. There is plenty being done; trying the 10,000 best ideas isn't necessarily better than trying the 500 best ideas.
Yeah, I don't know enough about fossilization to argue with you. My assumption is that you are defining conditions that are much more narrow than it actually takes. There is a boggy pond near here. It has the stink of anaerobic decay pretty much constantly(Sewer gas -- Hydrogen Sulfide). I don't pretend to understand what happens over thousands or millions of years in such a situation, but it amuses me to no end that there is a well head 100 feet off to the side of the pond.
If your perspective is that the world is a couple weeks walking in either direction big, a large river flood is going to seem like quite the event and is going to be quite the tale to tell to the youngsters.
That doesn't invalidate consistent legends, but it raises the bar on the level of consistency needed to be interesting.
New supply would help with oil prices some, but it isn't clear that it would help very much. The problem is that there are a lot of people who want to buy oil(and a bunch of people speculating for profit). For instance, demand in the U.S. hasn't shrunk a whole lot since $2. I'm sure that people are more inclined to buy smaller cars, and that they will be for several years, even if oil prices go down, but demand isn't contracting a huge amount.
Hopefully, if oil gets gas back down under $2.50(or $2, or $1.80), the federal government decides to stick in some sort of price adjusting tax(oil goes up, tax goes down, oil goes down, tax goes up) and puts the proceeds towards energy research. It might not accomplish a whole lot on the research side, but it is pretty clear that people can deal with paying $2 for gas, and it would help keep efficiency decisions a little more long term.
I'm concerned about global warming. I look for ways to live efficiently(I live in the US but consume energy more on par with Europeans, and I don't even have my ground source heat pump or superinsulated house yet). That said, the predictions haven't turned out yet. Climatic data for 20 years doesn't mean anything outside the context of that 20 years.
Not everyone necessarily ends up with massive genetic problems. If some survive, they may up with fewer genetic problems than the population started with.
Slashdot Mirror
If the material isn't changing and the book gives a good presentation of it, what's lazy about continuing to use it? Sounds prudent to me (or are new books almost always cheaper?).
There is a disconnect between the current ease of mass electronic publishing and current text books. This article provides evidence that it is going away. 20 years ago, developing free (both unencumbered and no cost) electronic texts didn't make a huge amount of sense. 10 years ago, it only made sense if you bothered to think about it. Now, it still makes sense and the big publishers are providing electronic editions of their texts, so it is really hard not to think about it. Give it ten years, there will be a dozen or so really good texts. A while after that, there will be even more.
State colleges in the United States(so, publicly owned universities) charge $3,000-4,000 a semester for tuition(That's reasonable ballpark in-state tuition at in-residence colleges. Expensive public schools charge a heckuva lot more, private universities barely let you look at the grass for a heckuva lot more and community colleges charge a heckuva lot less).
That doesn't make $400 for books any cheaper, but quite a few of the people who are finding $10,000 year to go to school are actually pretty willing to spend another $1,000 to avoid it being a pain in the ass(which is how many people would describe reading electronic text).
There is more than one kind of calculator so there isn't any "the" version. Look here for lots of games:
http://www.ticalc.org/
That's where I went back when I needed calculator games(but you might have a Casio or something).
Apparently, they removed "inappropriate material":
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/archive/index.php/t-31456.html
It's the internets, there is a Google, you'll figure something out.
How do you fine a government agency?
Alternatively, how do you fine the employees of a government agency if there aren't any, because no one was crazy enough to expose themselves to getting fined while working at government rates?
What do you do if the budget machinery of the government they are working for won't provide funding for encryption?
It has to start with definition of reasonable practices and funding of those practices. For government, external review and control(i.e. a check or a balance) is a good idea, but it would be very hard to implement in terms of penalties or fines.
If some joker tried to sell $100 million of stolen information yo someone with the resources to buy $100 million of stolen information, they would end up dead, not rich.
Hell, the very availability of that much stolen information would destroy its value.
The kids already have that on their calculators.
I live there. Of course, out of the several hundred people I know, none of them are currently involved in a law suit.
I do know someone who sued someone after they got t-boned. (that's a kind of car accident, the party that got sued drove into the side of the guy's vehicle, turning it up onto its side and totaling it, the guy got hurt pretty bad.)
Make that irresponsible.
It's only responsible if they mislead their customers about it.
If you buy some gasoline and severely burn yourself, is your first response to blame the gas station?
I pulled $150 out of my ass, but I'm not the only one(I searched on Boone Pickens, not $150):
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/04/17/t-boone-pickens-says-oil-is-headed-to-125/
Other crazy predictions:
The dollar will stabilize over the next two years, at levels above where they are today.
Deep water drilling will provide some supply relief.
Demand increases will moderate.
The speculative component will be driven out of the price of oil by 2011(where it will be closer to $85 than $150).
It's on private land that isn't mine.
Do you really think you understand 10,000 years so well?
Given enough food, population can easily double in 20 years. Use 40 for a doubling, just to be conservative. 70,000/40 = 1750. 2000 * 2**1750 = A number with 531 digits.
Or use 1000 years for a doubling. That's 70 times(note that the global population more than doubled in the last 100 years). 2000 * 2**70 = 2,361,183,241,434,822,606,848,000.
I'm pretty sure that my numbers are correct within a factor of 1 billion or so, so it seems pretty plausible.
Social wars. Tribe A is slightly smarter than Tribe B(let's say 1 guy is 1% smarter). Tribe A invents and shares clubs. Tribe A needs more room. Tribe A kills Tribe B. Tribe A slowly splits into Tribe A and new Tribe B. This time, Tribe B is slightly smarter. Tribe B kills Tribe A and slowly splits again. Repeat.
Often, jokes are funny.
And I'm pretty sure that shouting something outrageous and scandalous about someone you don't like or disagree with is exactly a witch hunt style tactic, especially when it is done out of the view of the subject.
Paper scan voting pretty much solves all of the problems, at reasonable cost. The interface is one that people are used to(paper that is), there is a paper trail, the machines are well understood.
Hopefully people manage to remember the ongoing debacle in New Jersey for at least an election cycle or two.
I'll bet you a nickle that oil doesn't cross $150 in the next five years.
Cellulosic is being industrialized as we speak. People are noticing that butanol isn't nearly as polar as ethanol and has a higher energy density to boot. Junk to diesel processes seem to work. There is plenty being done; trying the 10,000 best ideas isn't necessarily better than trying the 500 best ideas.
Venter won the last round of betting against him(human genome project), we'll see what happens this time:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227
What other advantages that come from eating babies do you use to throw slurs at people?
Balmer's probably a dick, but that doesn't justify witch hunt style tactics.
Yeah, I don't know enough about fossilization to argue with you. My assumption is that you are defining conditions that are much more narrow than it actually takes. There is a boggy pond near here. It has the stink of anaerobic decay pretty much constantly(Sewer gas -- Hydrogen Sulfide). I don't pretend to understand what happens over thousands or millions of years in such a situation, but it amuses me to no end that there is a well head 100 feet off to the side of the pond.
If your perspective is that the world is a couple weeks walking in either direction big, a large river flood is going to seem like quite the event and is going to be quite the tale to tell to the youngsters.
That doesn't invalidate consistent legends, but it raises the bar on the level of consistency needed to be interesting.
New supply would help with oil prices some, but it isn't clear that it would help very much. The problem is that there are a lot of people who want to buy oil(and a bunch of people speculating for profit). For instance, demand in the U.S. hasn't shrunk a whole lot since $2. I'm sure that people are more inclined to buy smaller cars, and that they will be for several years, even if oil prices go down, but demand isn't contracting a huge amount.
Hopefully, if oil gets gas back down under $2.50(or $2, or $1.80), the federal government decides to stick in some sort of price adjusting tax(oil goes up, tax goes down, oil goes down, tax goes up) and puts the proceeds towards energy research. It might not accomplish a whole lot on the research side, but it is pretty clear that people can deal with paying $2 for gas, and it would help keep efficiency decisions a little more long term.
Soiled plastic diapers seem like they would be just fine in one of those garbage to oil machines or an incinerator.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes before all the landfills are gone, once they become cheaper than natural ores on an energy basis.
I'm concerned about global warming. I look for ways to live efficiently(I live in the US but consume energy more on par with Europeans, and I don't even have my ground source heat pump or superinsulated house yet). That said, the predictions haven't turned out yet. Climatic data for 20 years doesn't mean anything outside the context of that 20 years.
Not everyone necessarily ends up with massive genetic problems. If some survive, they may up with fewer genetic problems than the population started with.
How did you stop being a biologist?