Oh BTW, my sister in law's purchased new Ford Focus has transmission problems at 38,000 miles. It also has had the brake system recalled, twice. Currently it eats brakes every 10,000 miles. This is just the beginning of the list. Since Ford has been very little help, they are seriously considering painting the car yellow, and writing the word "lemon" on it.
Yeah, my aunt asked me for advice about a car for her daughter going off to college... She mentioned a Ford Focus, and I told her that, from talking with friends, my impression was that it was basically a 4-year disposable vehicle. She was looking for something that would last through 4 years of college and a couple years after that, so her kid could get a few years more use out of it (and some money in the bank from a job) before having to get a new car payment.
She wanted this to start with a 2-3 year old used vehicle, to reduce the initial outlay costs. She's looking for something else now, I believe. My recommendation was a European import microcar, turbo-diesel. Long lasting, good mileage, decent safety. You tend to pay for it, though... (No, this isn't a "Looking to buy" advertisement.)
I had a Ford Tempo through college, and several years afterwards... It was fine until it was about ten years old, then it simultaneously developed transmission and brake problems, and I decided it would be cheaper (and more satisfying, I admit) to replace it instead of repairing it. I'm kind of disappointed that Ford's low-end vehicles don't last that well any more.
For instance, the company that owns the Empire State Building in NYC lists the asset on its general ledger as being worth exactly $1. No, NOT $1 million, but one single dollar. They're perfectly allowed to do that, and there is a sensible reason for it as far as how they initially dealt with the costs of building the place.
I don't have any problem with this. Really. They can pay taxes on this valued however they want to.
But they can't insure it for any more than that value either. Doesn't that seem fair?
Yes, I understand depreciation, and that this would have... very bad consequences for how you handle that.
This also gets into differences between appraised value and booked asset value. Damn, I hate accounting.
Second, how do you value it - presumed value? potential value? actual value?
That's easy.
The owner sets the value. Seems fair.
The gotcha? You link claimed value to claimed damages. Infringing a patent valued at $5 cannot cause damages greater than $5. Violating a copyright valued at $10 cannot cause damages greater than $10.
No more $150,000 per occurrence... Just $10. Total.
That'll get you realistic valuations, and realistic settlements too.
It is not hypocritical to be in favor of GPL but be against conventional copyright
Sure it is.
You either support a creator's right to control how his creation is distributed, or you don't.
If you don't support this right, then the RIAA is wrong, and so are the people that try to enforce the GPL.
If you do support this right, then the RIAA is right, and so are the GPL enforcers.
Oh, and if you think "information would be free" in your ideal world... then you *don't* support the right of the author/artist to control his creation. And therefore you lost any moral high ground.
I'm not arguing against the GPL. I support it. I am saying, you need to figure out your morals and ethics, and stop being contradictory. You either force people to your worldview, or you give them a choice.
And you seem to be arguing for force. That's a dangerous road.
BCWipe and other such applications will allow you to use a classified (up to SECRET only, nothing more sensitive) harddrive in an unclassified computer/network, but you must STILL track that harddrive, and physically destroy it when you excess the computer. The utility is approved for re-purposing the drive, but it must still be disposed of as any other classified storage, i.e., physically destroyed.
TS and higher drives may NOT be re-purposed like this, they must be physically destroyed.
Generally, "physically destroyed" means the drive must be disassembled, and the individual platters wiped with a magnet of a gauranteed minimum field strength. (Sorry, I'd tell you the required field strength, but I don't remember off hand.) After this, the platters can be disposed of just like shredded classified documents would be.
10 years ago using BCWipe-style software was approved in DOD for declassifying harddrives. This is not the case any more. Pay attention to how harddrives work. They've gotten too smart for this to be guaranteed to wipe data now. They ship with "excess" sectors, and can internally remap any bad sectors to these excess sectors, reading data from them and copying it when the sector is internally detected as "going bad but still accessible". Data in these "bad" remapped sectors can be accessed when the drive is connected in diagnostic mode. If you have a classified storage device, within certain boundaries, you won't know if the drive has performed such a remapping and hidden classified data that could be recovered by an intelligent operator. Therefor, BCWipe-style software is only approved for re-purposing where you maintain physical control of the harddrive. To dispose of the harddrive, you must physically destroy it, basically because the drives have gotten too smart.
Taking a look at this 19" Jetway LCD monitor shows that it consumes 48 Watts during normal operation, which is less than your typical light bulb. In contrast, a 19" CRT such as this one from Viewsonic may draw up to 160 Watts.
I have switched to a lot of energy saving bulbs in my house and I plan to switch more as the bulbs die off... Why not my computer crap too?
Just make sure you know what you're paying for your energy savings.
I use compact flourescents for lighting at home also. I like the 5000-hour bulb life, and I like the reduced energy usage. And the light actually pays for itself in energy savings.
I pay about 8cents per kilowatt-hour. Normal bulb: 5000 hours at 100watts = 500 kilowatt-hours @ $0.08/kilowatt-hour = $40. (plus cost of bulb) Compact flourescent = 5000 hours at 27 watts = 135 kilowatt-hours @ $0.08/kilowatt-hour = $10.80.
Difference of $29, and the compact flourescent costs less than $20. (2-packs for $12 now, or so?) So that saves money as well as energy.
19" CRT vs 19" LCD? That's harder, because it includes "How long do you use it per day?" to decide when/if it pays for itself.
Assume 8 hours per day of usage.
CRT: Base cost, $150. LCD: Base cost, $300 (for cheap ones) or $500 (for pricier ones)
So... at 8 hours per day, how many days to make up that $150, or, worse, than $350, in initial price difference?
energy difference is 160 - 48 = 112 watts @ 8 hours/day = 0.896 kilowatt-hours per day. Or $0.07168 a day.
$150 / $0.07168/day = 2092 days.
Used every day... Your cheap LCD pays for its higher initial cost in only 5.7 years. Your pricier LCD pays for itself in... 13.3 years.
How often do you replace your monitors? It better be less than every 6 years, or you're losing money on your "savings" here.
They are legally bound to warn you that you may be monitored or recorded however
Kinda.
This varies state-by-state. Some states are One-Party Notify, some states are Two-Party Notify.
Generally, the legal limitation is on the party doing the recording, not explicitly either the calling or called party. No, I don't know if this is a limit based on where the company is incorporated, or where the phone support personnel are located. 3rd party and Offshore phone support probably make this all kinds of complicated.
This makes for some fun little interactions. For instance, when Maryland (a 2-party notify state) cops want to record someone they are calling on the phone, they drive over the state line into Virginia (a 1-party notify state), make their phone call, record it without notifying the call recipient, and have a legal recording of a phone call that they could not have made in the state whose laws they are enforcing.
Of course, IANAL, and this is not legal advice. Just be aware.
I have the same problem with safe following distance. I've decided I'll just drive with a following distance I feel is safe, and back off a little when some idiot pulls into the space that isn't really big enough for them safely. I get frustrated, and remark frequently that it's a good thing consumers can't buy tactical nuclear weapons... Otherwise my CC would be maxed out all the time.
IMHO, it's a lot safer to do 80 MPH on an empty highway (even with orange cones on the side) than to do 65 MPH, 10 feet off my bumper.
Hmm... guess where my last speeding ticket was? Construction zone right at sunset... with no construction going on and no other traffic. Cop was in a good mood, appearently, he didn't write it up as a construciton zone violation. I still think it was a silly ticket.
But at one place, I also figured out that the system had a list of your 20 most recent passwords, and wouldn't let you use any of those. So every month, I'd change the password 21 times in a row, then change it back to what I wanted.
Where I work, the network server will only let you change your password twice a day. It would take you 10 days to cycle through the 20-password history, and on the 11th day you could set to whatever you wanted. I'm not sure how long the password-history is here... longer than 5, but more than that I haven't checked.
I've always thought we had particularly evil network admins here...
I have an iPod. It's getting close to 2 years old. I use the default white earbuds. I'll use them until they die. Probably won't be long, they're getting that stiff feel that says the plastic is aging.
I use the default white earbuds for a couple of reasons.
1) I mostly listen in a high-background-noise environment. 2) I don't want isolation from my environment, I just want my own music. 3) My hearing really isn't good enough to tell the difference between halfway-decent earbuds (iPod default) and really good earbuds. 4) I'm not willing to use anything but earbuds.
Now, the place I mostly use my iPod is my local gym. They play music anyway, but not what I want to hear. I know a bunch of people there, and want to be able to hear them when they say Hi. So I keep the music volume at a level that I can hear outside voices (and outside music, ugh).
I don't really listen to the music much, it's just background noise to distract me and make me wonder if this was the second or third time I counted to 12...
The iPod was worth the money because I like the interface and I like the formfactor.
Tell me why different earbuds would have been worth the money?
Think of it this way... Have you seen any of the new-ish high-end refridgerators that have LCD screens on the front door? Well, now, instead of putting you grocery list on a piece of paper that's stuck to the fridge door with a magnet, you put it into the computer in the fridge, and email it to the grocery store. Go to the store, pick up your cart, run your customer swipe card, your list comes up.
When all your items have RFIDs, making the list becomes automatic. The fridge (or, eventually, cabinet) detects the item being taken out, and the garbage can detects it going in, and they talk to each other through a network. Wireless, wired, doesn't really matter... you'll have to plug both of them in now anyway for power. Might as well do network over powerlines.
See? Your fridge really does need internet access! Now, how do we justify internet access on the toaster...
Oh, yes, I am ignoring the fact that we replaced a 79 cent stack of paper and a $1.39 pen with about $1000 in computer and networking equipment, and called it "more efficient"
The article talks about putting 3U of 140GB 3.5" HD RAID storage in 2U of 73GB 2.5" HD RAID storage now, for the same total HD space for the array.
Same storage space. Twice the number of drives. 2/3 the rack space. 44% power use PER DRIVE. That works out to 92% of the power of a 3U RAID stack, in a 2U RAID stack. Which means you just UPPED the power requirement for a fully-populated rack by about 40%.
Congratulations, your lower power device has you using more power. And therefore dissipating more heat in the same volume. Of course, you DO get a 50% increase in storage capacity for that.
But you still upped your total power per rack by 40% if you do that.
Remember your ear protection. The drives are quiet, but that many fans make a lot of noise.
He did it for the money. There's nothing really surprising about this.
We've been taught that Greed is Good after all, so why do we even comment on stuff like this? Oh yeah... that attitude only works when it's a small number of parasites feeding off society, not all of society with that attitude.
If you actually read the article, it sounds like his real complaint isn't that his program is being used for illegal/unethical/immoral purposes... it's just that he isn't getting paid for it, because it has a 3-day try-before-you-buy feature.
This is no different than a story about "Enterprising young man pimps out neighberhood girls." Only the tools are different.
And having read some comments in here... this posting is already -1, Redundant.
It will be a short hop from here to allowing any business the right to install a cell-phone jammer. Restuarants and certain cafes in the Latin Quarter will jump at the chance to push out that vile modern convenience.
Frankly, that would be fine with me. If they post those signs, like you suggested, I'd be very happy with that.
SO LONG as they didn't interfere with cell phones in the movie rental store next door, or the hair salon on the other side.
That whole "your rights stop where mine start" works both ways. If I'm not on your business premises, you'd better not interfere with my service. And if I am, and you post an obvious sign... then it was my choice to give you my business, and you can assume I'm voting with my dollars/euros/pounds.
If you want local travel, such as your stated flight to Austalia... SpaceShipOne really isn't what you want. It isn't designed for that, at least not the current incarnation. Look here http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/logs-WK-SS1.htm and you'll see a bit about its specs... Mach 2.9 with a 76 second rocket burntime. Now, if you could hold that Mach 2.9, you'd get from L.A. to Sydney in closer to 3 hours than the current 15. But it isn't made for this. And, frankly, as long as they are seeing dollar signs from selling 200 seconds of freefall at barely-in-space, don't expect it.
So, really, what you want is a local use of long distance development.
And that, really, means to move from "barely enters space" on to the harder things... in order, that would be
LEO (230 miles)
Geo-stationary (22,000 miles)
lunar/lagrange (250,000 miles)
inter-planetary
Each of those steps gets progressively harder. But, for your uses... once LEO becomes economical, your trip from L.A. to Sydney is just a modification of a LEO orbital insertion.
LEO is closer to 230 miles high, instead of the current 60 miles high. It's a serious difference, and, from what I've read, SpaceShipOne isn't really designed for that. I'm not bashing Rutan and his people, they made a well-designed craft for the purpose it was designed, which, unfortunately, has nothing to do with going into orbit.
But then, give them a few years of income from people willing to pay $200K for "Oh! I got in space for 3 minutes!" and they'll be working on the next level, which is that hotel in LEO you've probably already heard about. And then they (or someone else) will start thinking about hotels on the moon, and you'll get another level of development.
If you want to make this commercial, forget about science as a driving factor. It will be economics and Return On Investment, and for the next 10-20 years that's going to mean "silly" tourism. Profitable, but not terribly useful, other than for funding development towards stages that will be useful. If we're lucky, when the LEO hotel becomes a reality, some space will be devoted to science, but it will probably be purely for PR purposes.
Remember also that this was never planned for heavy-lift capabilities, which limits the scientific usefulness, because scientific gear for space tends to be heavy.
People mention asteroid mining, but I'm not so sure that will happen any time in the next 50 years. It would be nice, I admit... but it's not even needed until we get some good space construction capabilities, and even then you have the moon to play around with first. There's plenty of resources on the moon, and getting them off is easy, as long as it's just cargo... Mass drivers built to barely exceed lunar escape velocity gets you processed packages in orbit for easy pickup, and not nearly the miles required to go snag an asteroid... even the closer ones inside the orbit of Mars. Remember, it's not just getting there... it's getting there with something you can use to move the thing back to a useful orbit close to Earth. That's a whole different level of complexity and difficulty. What do you use to move something that masses 100 million tons, anyway? That's about what an asteroid 1/2 mile in diameter will mass. (Aircraft carriers are less than 100,000 tons, oil super tankers around 250,000 tones.) Or do you want to set up an outpost there? (And you thought corporate-owned mining towns in the US Old West were bad...)
This Ford Escape Hybrid is marketed by Ford as 36MPG. That's probably city, and highway is likely closer to 30MPG.
Check out Ford's website, and the current Escape XLT V6 is 20MPG city, 25MPG highway.
The cost premium for a hybrid vehicle is closer to $3,000, also. The waiting list right now for the Escape hybrid is awful, but the cost premium isn't that bad.
Personally, right now I'm driving 20,000 miles per year. About 14,000 of that is highway, and 6,000 of that is city miles.
Let's do some math...
14,000 miles / 25MPG = 560gal * $2/gal = $1120 6,000 miles / 20MPG = 300gal * $2/gal = $600 Total cost for my driving with a normal V6 Escape is $1720/year.
14,000 miles / 30MPG = 466gal * $2/gal = $933 6,000 miles / 36MPG = 167gal * $2/gal = $333 Total cost for my driving with a hybrid Escape is $1300/year.
The price difference per year is $420. (That's for 20,000 miles per year.)
So, to pay for that $3,000 permium for the Hybrid, I have to drive this vehicle for... $3000 / $420/year = 7.1years, or about 142,000 miles.
It pays for itself after 7 years? Okay... when will the batteries need to be replaced? (Toyota talks about batteries being replaced, for a cost of about $1000, every 100,000 miles, I believe. I'd give you a website stating that, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.:)
Hmm... at 100,000 miles, I spend an extra $1000. Since I don't reach my break-even point before 100,000 miles, the real price difference for that hybrid is $4,000 ($3,000 original price difference, plus $1,000 battery replacement)
So that "pay for itself" caluclation becomes... $4000 / $420/year = 9.5 years (190,000 miles... I'm 10,000 miles from another $1,000 battery replacement. Which really should be included in this calculation, if you want to be honest...
So... (maybe I shouldn't have complained about your "say it adds on $5,000") $5,000 / $420/year = 11.9 years (238,000 miles)
The hybrid pays for itself after 12 years, and almost 240,000 miles. That's with a 70/30 highway/city mileage split.
12 years?
Umm... This is not a sound economic decision.
There are plenty of reasons to get a hybrid, but don't pretend it's a smart money decision.
Yes, I realize that you didn't say we'd never have space colonization at all, but why presume to know that it won't happen before you die? The cost of maintaining life there is to high...ahh...yes. Of course, all of the programs, vehicles, habitats, and support systems created to date to accomplish that goal have been developed by governments. Same thing happened with early aviation, but of course, commercialization changed a lot about the costs.
I keep hearing this comparison of commercialization of space travel and aviation... and I think there's a little bit missing there.
Aviation allowed for more rapidly going from where people were already to... another place where people were already. Maybe for travel, maybe for military reasons, maybe for transporting some product. But almost always from one place where people are already, to another place where people are already.
That's not the case with space travel.
I support space travel/exploration/colonization, but I think it's going to be more complicated than commercialization changing a lot of costs. It will also have to change a lot of risk assessments. Think more along the lines of early trans-atlantic sailing ship voyages. Some just didn't make it. And fleets weren't grounded when one ship was lost.
We'll have to redefine acceptable losses. Both in human and monetary terms. Which is part of what this question was about, admittedly.
How heavy is a gallon of water in Imperial/English units?
Couldn't tell you without doing some math.
I'm a scuba diver. I don't deal with gallons of water, I deal with cubic feet. A cubic foot of seawater is about 64 pounds. There's about 8 gallons in a cubic foot (google says 7.48). Therefore, a gallon is about 8 pounds.
No, there's not a lot of precision there (that "about" is a very vague term) but it's close enough for non-scientific use. And if I need to know more precisely... that's what google is for.
And you Europeans that use liters for tanks and bars for pressure... I can convert bar to psi easily, but liters to cubic feet for tanks still bugs me.
1) theaters are a medium for instant gratification True.
2) most people WANT to get out of the house I could argue with this, but I really don't want to.:)
3) movies are cheap enough to enjoy regularly This doesn't scale well.
4) movie theaters offer sound systems & quality that takes big bucks to reproduce, even if prices come down on home components Home audio is fine. 7.1 or even 5.1 Dolby sound is really very good. Video still has a way to go... But on the flip side, video at home is 30fps or 60fps, and doesn't have that horrible "My Eyes! My Eyes!" every time the scene pans too fast with 24fps film in a theater.
5) most movies aren't worth owning personally or even watching the first time - less people are willing to own something bad if they hear a bad review, more people are willing to check out a movie with a bad review if it's a one time experience. This doesn't scale well.
My two "doesn't scale" remarks... These two statements from you are true for 3 people or less. For more than 3 people, the individual cost of buying a DVD is less than paying for the movie tickets for the group. (This ignores the costs of setting up the home theater system, which is usually *not* an ignorable cost.)
The real answer here is that as long as the cost of setting up a home theater system is $5,000 or more, most people will go to the theater. Because most people will prefer to pay per event for a long time (paying more over all) than they will a single lump sum at the beginning, and then lower individual continuing payments.
Until they hear a cell phone ring during the movie one time too many.
and that you have to cut through 10 centimeters of the missile before you affect it's circuitry enough to guarantee non-operation
Huh? Affect its circuitry???
Why bother? You just need to ruin the aerodynamic shape. The plan is to catch the missiles in the boost phase. When you catch them then, and use something like this, you don't care about burning out the circuitry. You just rupture the skin. Then the missile, no longer a smooth airflow design, will tumble and burn itself to bits.
You don't need to cut through the shell... just deform it enough to affect the aerodynamic shape. And that's a much easier goal.
That's also why these are airborne lasers, and not ground-based. Ground-based laers, on the US mainland, would target missiles in the terminal/ballistic phase, either when they are out of the atmosphere, or re-entering. They are much less susceptible to changing the aerodynamic shape then, you just change the point of impact by some miles.
But with all that said, you point is still very valid... you need a skin that is highly reflective in the proper wavelengths to defend against such a weapon.
Since 'save' is an option but not default in AOL's chat, you can't save it if anybody is from those 12 states.
Umm... no.
If *you* are in one of those 12 states, you must have consent of all parties. But someone in a one-party-consent state can record you, even if you are in an all-parties-consent state, without your consent.
The Maryland cops use this a lot. Maryland is an all-parties-consent state. They routinely pop over the border into Virginia (a one-party-consent state), make a phone call to a Maryland phone, record it, go back to Maryland, and have a (legal) recording of a Maryland phone by a Maryland law enforcement officer, with only one party consenting.
Tell me again why I should have respect for the law, when the police obviously don't?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh BTW, my sister in law's purchased new Ford Focus has transmission problems at 38,000 miles. It also has had the brake system recalled, twice. Currently it eats brakes every 10,000 miles. This is just the beginning of the list. Since Ford has been very little help, they are seriously considering painting the car yellow, and writing the word "lemon" on it.
Yeah, my aunt asked me for advice about a car for her daughter going off to college... She mentioned a Ford Focus, and I told her that, from talking with friends, my impression was that it was basically a 4-year disposable vehicle. She was looking for something that would last through 4 years of college and a couple years after that, so her kid could get a few years more use out of it (and some money in the bank from a job) before having to get a new car payment.
She wanted this to start with a 2-3 year old used vehicle, to reduce the initial outlay costs. She's looking for something else now, I believe. My recommendation was a European import microcar, turbo-diesel. Long lasting, good mileage, decent safety. You tend to pay for it, though... (No, this isn't a "Looking to buy" advertisement.)
I had a Ford Tempo through college, and several years afterwards... It was fine until it was about ten years old, then it simultaneously developed transmission and brake problems, and I decided it would be cheaper (and more satisfying, I admit) to replace it instead of repairing it. I'm kind of disappointed that Ford's low-end vehicles don't last that well any more.
For instance, the company that owns the Empire State Building in NYC lists the asset on its general ledger as being worth exactly $1. No, NOT $1 million, but one single dollar. They're perfectly allowed to do that, and there is a sensible reason for it as far as how they initially dealt with the costs of building the place.
I don't have any problem with this. Really. They can pay taxes on this valued however they want to.
But they can't insure it for any more than that value either. Doesn't that seem fair?
Yes, I understand depreciation, and that this would have... very bad consequences for how you handle that.
This also gets into differences between appraised value and booked asset value. Damn, I hate accounting.
Second, how do you value it - presumed value? potential value? actual value?
That's easy.
The owner sets the value. Seems fair.
The gotcha? You link claimed value to claimed damages.
Infringing a patent valued at $5 cannot cause damages greater than $5. Violating a copyright valued at $10 cannot cause damages greater than $10.
No more $150,000 per occurrence... Just $10. Total.
That'll get you realistic valuations, and realistic settlements too.
And anything valued at $0 is free to infringe.
Now isn't that elegant?
It is not hypocritical to be in favor of GPL but be against conventional copyright
Sure it is.
You either support a creator's right to control how his creation is distributed, or you don't.
If you don't support this right, then the RIAA is wrong, and so are the people that try to enforce the GPL.
If you do support this right, then the RIAA is right, and so are the GPL enforcers.
Oh, and if you think "information would be free" in your ideal world... then you *don't* support the right of the author/artist to control his creation. And therefore you lost any moral high ground.
I'm not arguing against the GPL. I support it. I am saying, you need to figure out your morals and ethics, and stop being contradictory. You either force people to your worldview, or you give them a choice.
And you seem to be arguing for force. That's a dangerous road.
Is BCWipe legally authorized for that use though?
That's easy...
NO.
BCWipe and other such applications will allow you to use a classified (up to SECRET only, nothing more sensitive) harddrive in an unclassified computer/network, but you must STILL track that harddrive, and physically destroy it when you excess the computer. The utility is approved for re-purposing the drive, but it must still be disposed of as any other classified storage, i.e., physically destroyed.
TS and higher drives may NOT be re-purposed like this, they must be physically destroyed.
Generally, "physically destroyed" means the drive must be disassembled, and the individual platters wiped with a magnet of a gauranteed minimum field strength. (Sorry, I'd tell you the required field strength, but I don't remember off hand.) After this, the platters can be disposed of just like shredded classified documents would be.
10 years ago using BCWipe-style software was approved in DOD for declassifying harddrives. This is not the case any more. Pay attention to how harddrives work. They've gotten too smart for this to be guaranteed to wipe data now. They ship with "excess" sectors, and can internally remap any bad sectors to these excess sectors, reading data from them and copying it when the sector is internally detected as "going bad but still accessible". Data in these "bad" remapped sectors can be accessed when the drive is connected in diagnostic mode. If you have a classified storage device, within certain boundaries, you won't know if the drive has performed such a remapping and hidden classified data that could be recovered by an intelligent operator. Therefor, BCWipe-style software is only approved for re-purposing where you maintain physical control of the harddrive. To dispose of the harddrive, you must physically destroy it, basically because the drives have gotten too smart.
Just make sure you know what you're paying for your energy savings.
I use compact flourescents for lighting at home also. I like the 5000-hour bulb life, and I like the reduced energy usage. And the light actually pays for itself in energy savings.
I pay about 8cents per kilowatt-hour.
Normal bulb: 5000 hours at 100watts = 500 kilowatt-hours @ $0.08/kilowatt-hour = $40. (plus cost of bulb)
Compact flourescent = 5000 hours at 27 watts = 135 kilowatt-hours @ $0.08/kilowatt-hour = $10.80.
Difference of $29, and the compact flourescent costs less than $20. (2-packs for $12 now, or so?) So that saves money as well as energy.
19" CRT vs 19" LCD? That's harder, because it includes "How long do you use it per day?" to decide when/if it pays for itself.
Assume 8 hours per day of usage.
CRT: Base cost, $150.
LCD: Base cost, $300 (for cheap ones) or $500 (for pricier ones)
So... at 8 hours per day, how many days to make up that $150, or, worse, than $350, in initial price difference?
energy difference is 160 - 48 = 112 watts @ 8 hours/day = 0.896 kilowatt-hours per day. Or $0.07168 a day.
$150 / $0.07168/day = 2092 days.
Used every day... Your cheap LCD pays for its higher initial cost in only 5.7 years. Your pricier LCD pays for itself in... 13.3 years.
How often do you replace your monitors? It better be less than every 6 years, or you're losing money on your "savings" here.
This varies state-by-state. Some states are One-Party Notify, some states are Two-Party Notify.
Generally, the legal limitation is on the party doing the recording, not explicitly either the calling or called party. No, I don't know if this is a limit based on where the company is incorporated, or where the phone support personnel are located. 3rd party and Offshore phone support probably make this all kinds of complicated.
This makes for some fun little interactions. For instance, when Maryland (a 2-party notify state) cops want to record someone they are calling on the phone, they drive over the state line into Virginia (a 1-party notify state), make their phone call, record it without notifying the call recipient, and have a legal recording of a phone call that they could not have made in the state whose laws they are enforcing.
Of course, IANAL, and this is not legal advice. Just be aware.
Hmm... guess where my last speeding ticket was? Construction zone right at sunset... with no construction going on and no other traffic. Cop was in a good mood, appearently, he didn't write it up as a construciton zone violation. I still think it was a silly ticket.
Where I work, the network server will only let you change your password twice a day. It would take you 10 days to cycle through the 20-password history, and on the 11th day you could set to whatever you wanted. I'm not sure how long the password-history is here... longer than 5, but more than that I haven't checked.
I've always thought we had particularly evil network admins here...
Yeah, after all, I don't have any credit cards that have magnetic strips.
Oh, wait...
I have an iPod. It's getting close to 2 years old. I use the default white earbuds. I'll use them until they die. Probably won't be long, they're getting that stiff feel that says the plastic is aging.
I use the default white earbuds for a couple of reasons.
1) I mostly listen in a high-background-noise environment.
2) I don't want isolation from my environment, I just want my own music.
3) My hearing really isn't good enough to tell the difference between halfway-decent earbuds (iPod default) and really good earbuds.
4) I'm not willing to use anything but earbuds.
Now, the place I mostly use my iPod is my local gym. They play music anyway, but not what I want to hear. I know a bunch of people there, and want to be able to hear them when they say Hi. So I keep the music volume at a level that I can hear outside voices (and outside music, ugh).
I don't really listen to the music much, it's just background noise to distract me and make me wonder if this was the second or third time I counted to 12...
The iPod was worth the money because I like the interface and I like the formfactor.
Tell me why different earbuds would have been worth the money?
Think of it this way... Have you seen any of the new-ish high-end refridgerators that have LCD screens on the front door? Well, now, instead of putting you grocery list on a piece of paper that's stuck to the fridge door with a magnet, you put it into the computer in the fridge, and email it to the grocery store. Go to the store, pick up your cart, run your customer swipe card, your list comes up.
When all your items have RFIDs, making the list becomes automatic. The fridge (or, eventually, cabinet) detects the item being taken out, and the garbage can detects it going in, and they talk to each other through a network. Wireless, wired, doesn't really matter... you'll have to plug both of them in now anyway for power. Might as well do network over powerlines.
See? Your fridge really does need internet access! Now, how do we justify internet access on the toaster...
Oh, yes, I am ignoring the fact that we replaced a 79 cent stack of paper and a $1.39 pen with about $1000 in computer and networking equipment, and called it "more efficient"
Kind of... but only on a per-drive basis.
The article talks about putting 3U of 140GB 3.5" HD RAID storage in 2U of 73GB 2.5" HD RAID storage now, for the same total HD space for the array.
Same storage space. Twice the number of drives. 2/3 the rack space. 44% power use PER DRIVE. That works out to 92% of the power of a 3U RAID stack, in a 2U RAID stack. Which means you just UPPED the power requirement for a fully-populated rack by about 40%.
Congratulations, your lower power device has you using more power. And therefore dissipating more heat in the same volume. Of course, you DO get a 50% increase in storage capacity for that.
But you still upped your total power per rack by 40% if you do that.
Remember your ear protection. The drives are quiet, but that many fans make a lot of noise.
He did it for the money. There's nothing really surprising about this.
We've been taught that Greed is Good after all, so why do we even comment on stuff like this? Oh yeah... that attitude only works when it's a small number of parasites feeding off society, not all of society with that attitude.
If you actually read the article, it sounds like his real complaint isn't that his program is being used for illegal/unethical/immoral purposes... it's just that he isn't getting paid for it, because it has a 3-day try-before-you-buy feature.
This is no different than a story about "Enterprising young man pimps out neighberhood girls." Only the tools are different.
And having read some comments in here... this posting is already -1, Redundant.
Frankly, that would be fine with me. If they post those signs, like you suggested, I'd be very happy with that.
SO LONG as they didn't interfere with cell phones in the movie rental store next door, or the hair salon on the other side.
That whole "your rights stop where mine start" works both ways. If I'm not on your business premises, you'd better not interfere with my service. And if I am, and you post an obvious sign... then it was my choice to give you my business, and you can assume I'm voting with my dollars/euros/pounds.
So, really, what you want is a local use of long distance development.
And that, really, means to move from "barely enters space" on to the harder things... in order, that would be
Each of those steps gets progressively harder. But, for your uses... once LEO becomes economical, your trip from L.A. to Sydney is just a modification of a LEO orbital insertion.
LEO is closer to 230 miles high, instead of the current 60 miles high. It's a serious difference, and, from what I've read, SpaceShipOne isn't really designed for that. I'm not bashing Rutan and his people, they made a well-designed craft for the purpose it was designed, which, unfortunately, has nothing to do with going into orbit.
But then, give them a few years of income from people willing to pay $200K for "Oh! I got in space for 3 minutes!" and they'll be working on the next level, which is that hotel in LEO you've probably already heard about. And then they (or someone else) will start thinking about hotels on the moon, and you'll get another level of development.
If you want to make this commercial, forget about science as a driving factor. It will be economics and Return On Investment, and for the next 10-20 years that's going to mean "silly" tourism. Profitable, but not terribly useful, other than for funding development towards stages that will be useful. If we're lucky, when the LEO hotel becomes a reality, some space will be devoted to science, but it will probably be purely for PR purposes.
Remember also that this was never planned for heavy-lift capabilities, which limits the scientific usefulness, because scientific gear for space tends to be heavy.
People mention asteroid mining, but I'm not so sure that will happen any time in the next 50 years. It would be nice, I admit... but it's not even needed until we get some good space construction capabilities, and even then you have the moon to play around with first. There's plenty of resources on the moon, and getting them off is easy, as long as it's just cargo... Mass drivers built to barely exceed lunar escape velocity gets you processed packages in orbit for easy pickup, and not nearly the miles required to go snag an asteroid... even the closer ones inside the orbit of Mars. Remember, it's not just getting there... it's getting there with something you can use to move the thing back to a useful orbit close to Earth. That's a whole different level of complexity and difficulty. What do you use to move something that masses 100 million tons, anyway? That's about what an asteroid 1/2 mile in diameter will mass. (Aircraft carriers are less than 100,000 tons, oil super tankers around 250,000 tones.) Or do you want to set up an outpost there? (And you thought corporate-owned mining towns in the US Old West were bad...)
Umm... Why are you wearing a kilt?
This Ford Escape Hybrid is marketed by Ford as 36MPG. That's probably city, and highway is likely closer to 30MPG.
:)
Check out Ford's website, and the current Escape XLT V6 is 20MPG city, 25MPG highway.
The cost premium for a hybrid vehicle is closer to $3,000, also. The waiting list right now for the Escape hybrid is awful, but the cost premium isn't that bad.
Personally, right now I'm driving 20,000 miles per year. About 14,000 of that is highway, and 6,000 of that is city miles.
Let's do some math...
14,000 miles / 25MPG = 560gal * $2/gal = $1120
6,000 miles / 20MPG = 300gal * $2/gal = $600
Total cost for my driving with a normal V6 Escape is $1720/year.
14,000 miles / 30MPG = 466gal * $2/gal = $933
6,000 miles / 36MPG = 167gal * $2/gal = $333
Total cost for my driving with a hybrid Escape is $1300/year.
The price difference per year is $420. (That's for 20,000 miles per year.)
So, to pay for that $3,000 permium for the Hybrid, I have to drive this vehicle for...
$3000 / $420/year = 7.1years, or about 142,000 miles.
It pays for itself after 7 years? Okay... when will the batteries need to be replaced? (Toyota talks about batteries being replaced, for a cost of about $1000, every 100,000 miles, I believe. I'd give you a website stating that, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Hmm... at 100,000 miles, I spend an extra $1000. Since I don't reach my break-even point before 100,000 miles, the real price difference for that hybrid is $4,000 ($3,000 original price difference, plus $1,000 battery replacement)
So that "pay for itself" caluclation becomes...
$4000 / $420/year = 9.5 years (190,000 miles... I'm 10,000 miles from another $1,000 battery replacement. Which really should be included in this calculation, if you want to be honest...
So... (maybe I shouldn't have complained about your "say it adds on $5,000")
$5,000 / $420/year = 11.9 years (238,000 miles)
The hybrid pays for itself after 12 years, and almost 240,000 miles. That's with a 70/30 highway/city mileage split.
12 years?
Umm... This is not a sound economic decision.
There are plenty of reasons to get a hybrid, but don't pretend it's a smart money decision.
Yes, I have to admit... I was amused when my government decided to call Gulf War II...
Operation
Iraqi
Freedom
rather than...
Operation
Iraqi
Liberation
It just made me smile.
I keep hearing this comparison of commercialization of space travel and aviation... and I think there's a little bit missing there.
Aviation allowed for more rapidly going from where people were already to... another place where people were already. Maybe for travel, maybe for military reasons, maybe for transporting some product. But almost always from one place where people are already, to another place where people are already.
That's not the case with space travel.
I support space travel/exploration/colonization, but I think it's going to be more complicated than commercialization changing a lot of costs. It will also have to change a lot of risk assessments. Think more along the lines of early trans-atlantic sailing ship voyages. Some just didn't make it. And fleets weren't grounded when one ship was lost.
We'll have to redefine acceptable losses. Both in human and monetary terms. Which is part of what this question was about, admittedly.
I'm a scuba diver. I don't deal with gallons of water, I deal with cubic feet. A cubic foot of seawater is about 64 pounds. There's about 8 gallons in a cubic foot (google says 7.48). Therefore, a gallon is about 8 pounds.
No, there's not a lot of precision there (that "about" is a very vague term) but it's close enough for non-scientific use. And if I need to know more precisely... that's what google is for.
And you Europeans that use liters for tanks and bars for pressure... I can convert bar to psi easily, but liters to cubic feet for tanks still bugs me.
Hmm...
:)
1) theaters are a medium for instant gratification
True.
2) most people WANT to get out of the house
I could argue with this, but I really don't want to.
3) movies are cheap enough to enjoy regularly
This doesn't scale well.
4) movie theaters offer sound systems & quality that takes big bucks to reproduce, even if prices come down on home components
Home audio is fine. 7.1 or even 5.1 Dolby sound is really very good. Video still has a way to go... But on the flip side, video at home is 30fps or 60fps, and doesn't have that horrible "My Eyes! My Eyes!" every time the scene pans too fast with 24fps film in a theater.
5) most movies aren't worth owning personally or even watching the first time - less people are willing to own something bad if they hear a bad review, more people are willing to check out a movie with a bad review if it's a one time experience.
This doesn't scale well.
My two "doesn't scale" remarks... These two statements from you are true for 3 people or less. For more than 3 people, the individual cost of buying a DVD is less than paying for the movie tickets for the group. (This ignores the costs of setting up the home theater system, which is usually *not* an ignorable cost.)
The real answer here is that as long as the cost of setting up a home theater system is $5,000 or more, most people will go to the theater. Because most people will prefer to pay per event for a long time (paying more over all) than they will a single lump sum at the beginning, and then lower individual continuing payments.
Until they hear a cell phone ring during the movie one time too many.
The first model of a bumblebee did indeed say it couldn't fly.
Then someone noticed "Hey! Bumblebees have curved wings!" and suddenly the models said "Oh sure, bumblebees can fly, no problem."
Garbage in, garbage out. Hmm... that applies to a lot of stuff on
Why bother? You just need to ruin the aerodynamic shape. The plan is to catch the missiles in the boost phase. When you catch them then, and use something like this, you don't care about burning out the circuitry. You just rupture the skin. Then the missile, no longer a smooth airflow design, will tumble and burn itself to bits.
You don't need to cut through the shell... just deform it enough to affect the aerodynamic shape. And that's a much easier goal.
That's also why these are airborne lasers, and not ground-based. Ground-based laers, on the US mainland, would target missiles in the terminal/ballistic phase, either when they are out of the atmosphere, or re-entering. They are much less susceptible to changing the aerodynamic shape then, you just change the point of impact by some miles.
But with all that said, you point is still very valid... you need a skin that is highly reflective in the proper wavelengths to defend against such a weapon.
If *you* are in one of those 12 states, you must have consent of all parties. But someone in a one-party-consent state can record you, even if you are in an all-parties-consent state, without your consent.
The Maryland cops use this a lot. Maryland is an all-parties-consent state. They routinely pop over the border into Virginia (a one-party-consent state), make a phone call to a Maryland phone, record it, go back to Maryland, and have a (legal) recording of a Maryland phone by a Maryland law enforcement officer, with only one party consenting.
Tell me again why I should have respect for the law, when the police obviously don't?