Just from looking at the picture I know that's not right.
And pray tell what exactly is your experience in analyzing these images as compared to professional and semi professional observers? (sound of crickets chirping...) I thought so.
Parallax on the contrail tells me the object is receding.
Nonsense. You'll the same parallax whether the object is approaching or receding. (Hint: find a straight stretch of road - define one direction as 'receding', then turn around and notice the 'approaching' segment looks exactly the same as the receding.)
All 'parallax' tells you is that you're looking along the object.
Re:file sharing is the hydra of greek legend
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LimeWire Lives Again
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so when the cost associated with supply = $0, demand follows to that natural economically determined price point, and no other price is possible
The problem is, the cost to supply isn't zero. Somebody paid for the instruments, equipment, studio time, etc... etc... That someone usually insists on being paid back - so the natural price point is nonzero.
Nor is the cost to distribute (what you confuse with the cost to supply) zero. Servers, connectivity, bandwidth, it all costs money. So again, that cost is non zero. (Minuscule on a per song basic, but still non zero.)
Nobody in the State House or Senate will ever propose an income tax. Ever. It's a third rail issue here, and even proposing an income tax could be a career ender. Voting in favor of an income tax would be political suicide.
My point exactly!
That's why the anti-1098 scaremongering about the idea that the legislature would extend the tax to cover everyone was nothing but FUD. The legislature wouldn't vote to extend the high-earners income tax to all residents for the same reason that they haven't proposed an income tax on their own: it's political suicide.
Your naive faith in the Legislature is touching.
But twice now the Legislature has overridden the caps on tax increases placed on the State by initiative. Twice. That means in two years they appeal to the voters to again 'punish the rich' - and the tax floor gets a little lower. And the year after when they've again spent themselves into a hole, lower still... The simple fact is that in the past decade, Washington's budget has grown by 80% despite the attempts by the voters to rein in state spending. You have to be truly naive to believe that pattern will not continue. You have to massively ignorant to believe that Legislature will not ride the camel into the tent once it's nose is in - because once the tax is in place, the whole dynamic changes.
If you live here, you may trust Olympia and place your naive faith in them 'listening to' the high income earners... But your fellow citizens, after suffering through the past decade and a half, are not so trusting and naive.
It's "trusting and naive" to think that legislators will tend to put upper-class interests ahead of middle-class interests? That's a new one.
If your only argument is 'the Legislature is a slave to the upper class'... you have a soundbite, not an argument. And that makes you, as I said before, profoundly ignorant. (Actually much worse than profoundly ignorant, because you ignorance can be cured - but you've willingly blinded yourself.)
We've seen, again and again, how the people have attempted to rein in State spending - and how again and again the Legislature has tried to work around the will of the people.
The people have attempted to rein in taxation, but spending? Show me the polls where a majority of residents want to cut back on state programs.
Again, FUD and handwaving in place of facts. You're correct in that the voters are mostly stupid and don't understand that one comes with others - but only an idiot would argue that somehow negates the simple fact that the voters have repeatedly attempted to reign in spending by reigning in taxes.
Though you're right about Yahoo! branded properties with huge pageviews and a large installed userbase... But the elephant in the room is a property most people don't think of when they think Yahoo! - Flickr.
Google has tried to make a competitor, but like so many of their attempts outside of search they haven't really put much effort into it.
tvtropes is very likely large enough to make it worthwhile.
Maybe, but almost certainly not. It's a very niche audience on a fairly small site.
I previously worked with a company that sold ~10-20M banner impressions per month (so, under that in raw pageviews) and it was more than worth our while dealing directly instead of via Google.
I find it hard to believe that so few impressions paid the salary of a salesman and left anything over to make it worth selling the ads in the first place. That tells me you have a site that people want to advertise on - either due to the nature of your demographics or the nature of your content.
They should approach those advertisers and deal direct, which would allow the site to operate more freely. As a bonus, cutting out the middleman (Google), would likely result in more revenue than before.
There's a reason why people use middlemen. Sure, they take a cut of the revenue - but they also do much of the heavy lifting. I seriously doubt that many websites can make any money off of advertising if they have to pay for all the legwork that 'approaching those advertisers and dealing directly' would require. (Assuming the advertisers are willing to spend the time/money/effort it takes to deal with individual websites - there's a reason why they are using middlemen too.)
'm just appalled people are willing to accept the status quo.
No, we didn't vote for the status quo - we sent a clear message to Olympia to trim state spending. The state budget has grown 80% in the last decade, and we're tired of paying for it. We're tired of the Legislature overriding the express will of the people (by twice removing the limits on tax increases put in place by initiative). We're tired of the Legislature raiding earmarked funds for other purposes. Etc... etc...
That either means that people are incredibly concerned about the welfare of rich people, or that people are more than willing to make decisions that harm themselves if they are convinced to do so by advertising.
Or maybe we seen the pig-in-his-trough behavior of the Legislature down in Olympia and are appalled at it - and have no faith that the tax will remain limited to the 'rich'.
if the legislature wanted to pass an income tax, they would've done it already.
You are obviously not a Washington State citizen or resident, or if you are - you are profoundly ignorant of the political situation here.
Nobody in the State House or Senate will ever propose an income tax. Ever. It's a third rail issue here, and even proposing an income tax could be a career ender. Voting in favor of an income tax would be political suicide.
Every time an income tax has been placed before the voters it has gone down in flames by a wide margin.
But it's just as likely that the legislature would repeal the tax after "only two years": after all, the tax would only have impacted high income earners, and that's who the legislature listens to.
If you live here, you may trust Olympia and place your naive faith in them 'listening to' the high income earners... But your fellow citizens, after suffering through the past decade and a half, are not so trusting and naive. We've seen, again and again, how the people have attempted to rein in State spending - and how again and again the Legislature has tried to work around the will of the people.
Yep, even from a mid-50s standing start. Fifteen years to get to the Moon. We've known that we'd have to retire the Shuttles for almost 25 years, when the replacement for Challenger was built partly using long-lead-time spares that were not replaced.
*yawn* You're powers of mathematics are impressive. Your actual knowledge of the world, much less so. (Short version: you're an idiot. We knew the Shuttle would eventually retire before we even started building them.)
When program managers wail to their congresscritters about how many jobs will be "lost", guess where said congresscritters decide to devote funds.
Which has pretty much zip point shit to do with the fact that Congress has refused to significantly fund new vehicles. (Protip for the clueless: Congress routinely funds replacements for things when the previous things service. But that have routinely starved NASA for funds, manned and unmanned.
Do most congress people know much about space technology development? No. Who are they going to listen to? Their NASA experts.
A meaningless non sequitur having nothing to do with what proceeded it - presupposing you have an actual clue and knowledge of how space funding has flowed for the last forty odd years. (Protip: You don't possess such a clue, and mistakenly believe that a collection of knee-jerk soundbites is an adequate substitute.)
Here we have yet another example of the Eloi hate of the greasy Moorlocks that actually do stuff other than lounge around in a garden waiting to be eaten. Have you considered that the workers in question would actually be proud of their work and watch the launch with the joy of seeing the results of a job well done?
Yep. The slacker slashdotter is incapable of imagining that any mindset but their own exists, let alone being capable of understanding it.
Not that we haven't known this was coming for longer than it took to go from a standing start to men walking on the Moon
Except we never went from a standing start - unless you count the standing start as being around the early to mid 50's. When President Kennedy set us on the path to the moon every single major component of the Apollo program was already under development.
too many managers have been more concerned with protecting their turf than ensuring continued manned access to space.
Protip: the managers can only do what Congress funds. Guess who has consistently declined to put money into manned space development?
In other words, pride in one's work never existed then. (Except in some fantasy yesterday where the things you cite were common. But that fantasy world isn't the real one.)
A fact is something that can be corroborated with some form of evidence. Since you provided none
This from the person who provided no numbers in his initial statement?
Not only that, but someone with a modicum of reading comprehension would note that I neither agreed nor disagreed with your position - I merely pointed out the logical inconsistincies in your 'arguments'. But, being the illiterate moron you are, you made the (false and ignorant) assumption that since I wasn't agreeing with you - I must be disagreeing with you.
I expressed my opinion of your statement.
Wrong. You (again) stated an opinion as if it was a fact.
I was merely hoping for a citation noting a significant difference.
As I pointed out above, if you could read, you'd have noted I neither agreed nor disagreed with you.
My original post did not claim all schools are identical; it merely compared the difference in quality to the difference in cost and made a conclusion.
Wrong again. Your original post made no comparisons whatsoever - it made flat statements and presented opinions as facts.
I apologizing for not providing evidence originally but here it is.
Where? The links you provide fail entirely to support your claims in your original post. (From a factual point of view that is. From the point of view of an individual like yourself, unable to discern fact from fiction and lacking in basic reading comprehension,I can see how you can mistakenly believe they do.)
I must change my earlier estimations of you - you're not a moron, you're not an illiterate moron, you're a fucking stupid illiterate moron with the pathetic delusions of adequacy.
Note that they had half a billion bucks to open with (and probably non financial assistance from the same foundation - which has a long history of working with institutes of higher education), and they're paired with an existing (and almost a century old) college.
And even so, it'll still take a decade or more to build any kind of rep.
What I would like to see is someone create a new university or universities that compete with the Harvards, Princetons, and Yales of the world.
That's a task akin to asking your local Little League team take on the (recent World Series winning) San Francisco Giants.
Seriously, those schools got where they are based on decades/centuries of work. No new school is going to be able to recruit the professors, have the billions to invest in the infrastructure, attract the top tier students...
But frankly, the elephant in the room is that the students they DO accept get stuck with loans they can't pay off--proving their education was wildly overpriced.
Um, no. It proves they took on more debt than they could handle.
Being from a Big-Name School these days just isn't worth the extra $50,000.
That's an opinion - not a fact. There is a difference you know.
"What expressive art tools are available that deemphasize precision work with your coordinated hand?"
Precisely none.
And what kind of a question is that anyhow? "My friend is used to doing precision work, what can I replace that precision work with?". The answer is trivially simple and should be blindingly obvious - you can't replace precision work with anything but precision work. You can retrain the non coordinated hand, eventually, but that's down to the person - the usual Slashdot "t3chn0l0gy ub3r all3s!" answers need not apply.
The shuttle was an misconceived expensive piece of junk designed to make the Russians go broke copying it. (Read Buran). We should have never given up on the Saturn V as out heavy lift platform.
Had we kept Saturn V's, they'd be just as expensive, if not more expensive, as the Shuttle. They need much more infrastructure (in the form of the manufacturing facilities) and many more man hours to prepare for flight - and are only worth flying when a multi-billion dollar payload is ready.
The problem is... there just aren't that many multi-billion dollar payloads to be had.*
We also could build a modern Saturn V with better metallurgy, and computers very easily. I think the reason we don't is that the design is public domain and the usual contractors can't charge 10 times what it is worth.
See above. The reason we haven't tried to build a modern Saturn V is simply that there is no need for one. Nowadays, it's *much* cheaper to buy multiple launches on one of the bigger Atlas' or Deltas and assemble on orbit. (Not that building an umaintainable space station like MIR, or like ISS is going to be once Shuttle stops flying, is a good idea to start with...)
If you've ever studied astronomy, then you would know that faint signals need to be acquired for as long as possible in order to get good signal to noise.
I have studied astronomy, and it's abundantly clear you have not. ("Geostationary orbit would let you look all night long"? ROTFLMAO. There is no night in space you moron.)
For those of you that don't know, Mythbusters did an episode not that long ago that confirmed that placing dimples in a car body will increase fuel effecieincy, just as it increases distance for a golfball. I always thought the car companies are morons for not following up on this idea.
With a trivial amount of thought (I.E. during the time it takes to pick up my coffee cup and take a sip), I can come up with several reasons why they may not have followed it up. (I.E. I'd be careful throwing around the moron tag if I were you.)
Potential problems with structural efficiency.
Potential problems with ensuring that the crumple zones built into the body operate properly.
Potential problems with corrosion and damage (the sharper edges of the dimple are stress risers for the paint).
Potential driving hazards (the dimples trap rain/snow/mud and suddenly discharge it onto the windshield, rear window, or oncoming cars).
Potential loss of interior volume (problematic in the door and in the hood).
Increased costs of tooling and QA.
Increased costs of painting and QA.
The Mythbusters are constrained only by the laws of nature, their budget, and what makes good TV. Real world engineers are rather more constrained and have quite a few more considerations to account for than just raw fuel mileage.
Then there's the penultimate possible reason:
The tests performed by the Mythbusters may or may not be valid under real world conditions.
The Mythbusters are not exactly known for their scientific rigor. They do a good job of making it look like they are, but they actually are anything but.
Slashdot Mirror
And pray tell what exactly is your experience in analyzing these images as compared to professional and semi professional observers? (sound of crickets chirping...) I thought so.
Nonsense. You'll the same parallax whether the object is approaching or receding. (Hint: find a straight stretch of road - define one direction as 'receding', then turn around and notice the 'approaching' segment looks exactly the same as the receding.)
All 'parallax' tells you is that you're looking along the object.
NOTAMS use GMT for their times...
The problem is, the cost to supply isn't zero. Somebody paid for the instruments, equipment, studio time, etc... etc... That someone usually insists on being paid back - so the natural price point is nonzero.
Nor is the cost to distribute (what you confuse with the cost to supply) zero. Servers, connectivity, bandwidth, it all costs money. So again, that cost is non zero. (Minuscule on a per song basic, but still non zero.)
Your naive faith in the Legislature is touching.
But twice now the Legislature has overridden the caps on tax increases placed on the State by initiative. Twice. That means in two years they appeal to the voters to again 'punish the rich' - and the tax floor gets a little lower. And the year after when they've again spent themselves into a hole, lower still... The simple fact is that in the past decade, Washington's budget has grown by 80% despite the attempts by the voters to rein in state spending. You have to be truly naive to believe that pattern will not continue. You have to massively ignorant to believe that Legislature will not ride the camel into the tent once it's nose is in - because once the tax is in place, the whole dynamic changes.
If your only argument is 'the Legislature is a slave to the upper class'... you have a soundbite, not an argument. And that makes you, as I said before, profoundly ignorant. (Actually much worse than profoundly ignorant, because you ignorance can be cured - but you've willingly blinded yourself.)
Again, FUD and handwaving in place of facts. You're correct in that the voters are mostly stupid and don't understand that one comes with others - but only an idiot would argue that somehow negates the simple fact that the voters have repeatedly attempted to reign in spending by reigning in taxes.
Though you're right about Yahoo! branded properties with huge pageviews and a large installed userbase... But the elephant in the room is a property most people don't think of when they think Yahoo! - Flickr.
Google has tried to make a competitor, but like so many of their attempts outside of search they haven't really put much effort into it.
Maybe, but almost certainly not. It's a very niche audience on a fairly small site.
I find it hard to believe that so few impressions paid the salary of a salesman and left anything over to make it worth selling the ads in the first place. That tells me you have a site that people want to advertise on - either due to the nature of your demographics or the nature of your content.
There's a reason why people use middlemen. Sure, they take a cut of the revenue - but they also do much of the heavy lifting. I seriously doubt that many websites can make any money off of advertising if they have to pay for all the legwork that 'approaching those advertisers and dealing directly' would require. (Assuming the advertisers are willing to spend the time/money/effort it takes to deal with individual websites - there's a reason why they are using middlemen too.)
No, we didn't vote for the status quo - we sent a clear message to Olympia to trim state spending. The state budget has grown 80% in the last decade, and we're tired of paying for it. We're tired of the Legislature overriding the express will of the people (by twice removing the limits on tax increases put in place by initiative). We're tired of the Legislature raiding earmarked funds for other purposes. Etc... etc...
Or maybe we seen the pig-in-his-trough behavior of the Legislature down in Olympia and are appalled at it - and have no faith that the tax will remain limited to the 'rich'.
You are obviously not a Washington State citizen or resident, or if you are - you are profoundly ignorant of the political situation here.
Nobody in the State House or Senate will ever propose an income tax. Ever. It's a third rail issue here, and even proposing an income tax could be a career ender. Voting in favor of an income tax would be political suicide.
Every time an income tax has been placed before the voters it has gone down in flames by a wide margin.
If you live here, you may trust Olympia and place your naive faith in them 'listening to' the high income earners... But your fellow citizens, after suffering through the past decade and a half, are not so trusting and naive. We've seen, again and again, how the people have attempted to rein in State spending - and how again and again the Legislature has tried to work around the will of the people.
*yawn* You're powers of mathematics are impressive. Your actual knowledge of the world, much less so. (Short version: you're an idiot. We knew the Shuttle would eventually retire before we even started building them.)
Which has pretty much zip point shit to do with the fact that Congress has refused to significantly fund new vehicles. (Protip for the clueless: Congress routinely funds replacements for things when the previous things service. But that have routinely starved NASA for funds, manned and unmanned.
A meaningless non sequitur having nothing to do with what proceeded it - presupposing you have an actual clue and knowledge of how space funding has flowed for the last forty odd years. (Protip: You don't possess such a clue, and mistakenly believe that a collection of knee-jerk soundbites is an adequate substitute.)
Yep. The slacker slashdotter is incapable of imagining that any mindset but their own exists, let alone being capable of understanding it.
Except we never went from a standing start - unless you count the standing start as being around the early to mid 50's. When President Kennedy set us on the path to the moon every single major component of the Apollo program was already under development.
Protip: the managers can only do what Congress funds. Guess who has consistently declined to put money into manned space development?
In other words, pride in one's work never existed then. (Except in some fantasy yesterday where the things you cite were common. But that fantasy world isn't the real one.)
This from the person who provided no numbers in his initial statement?
Not only that, but someone with a modicum of reading comprehension would note that I neither agreed nor disagreed with your position - I merely pointed out the logical inconsistincies in your 'arguments'. But, being the illiterate moron you are, you made the (false and ignorant) assumption that since I wasn't agreeing with you - I must be disagreeing with you.
Wrong. You (again) stated an opinion as if it was a fact.
As I pointed out above, if you could read, you'd have noted I neither agreed nor disagreed with you.
Wrong again. Your original post made no comparisons whatsoever - it made flat statements and presented opinions as facts.
Where? The links you provide fail entirely to support your claims in your original post. (From a factual point of view that is. From the point of view of an individual like yourself, unable to discern fact from fiction and lacking in basic reading comprehension,I can see how you can mistakenly believe they do.)
I must change my earlier estimations of you - you're not a moron, you're not an illiterate moron, you're a fucking stupid illiterate moron with the pathetic delusions of adequacy.
It's an opinion that there is a difference between and opinion and a fact? What a moron you are.
Note that they had half a billion bucks to open with (and probably non financial assistance from the same foundation - which has a long history of working with institutes of higher education), and they're paired with an existing (and almost a century old) college.
And even so, it'll still take a decade or more to build any kind of rep.
That's a task akin to asking your local Little League team take on the (recent World Series winning) San Francisco Giants.
Seriously, those schools got where they are based on decades/centuries of work. No new school is going to be able to recruit the professors, have the billions to invest in the infrastructure, attract the top tier students...
Um, no. It proves they took on more debt than they could handle.
That's an opinion - not a fact. There is a difference you know.
Yeah, last mile bandwidth is unlimited after all. It's just not possible to overload it.
Oh, wait. It's not.
"What expressive art tools are available that deemphasize precision work with your coordinated hand?"
Precisely none.
And what kind of a question is that anyhow? "My friend is used to doing precision work, what can I replace that precision work with?". The answer is trivially simple and should be blindingly obvious - you can't replace precision work with anything but precision work. You can retrain the non coordinated hand, eventually, but that's down to the person - the usual Slashdot "t3chn0l0gy ub3r all3s!" answers need not apply.
Huh? Autofocus is not a new technology.
All the dark fiber in the world won't help solve the Last Mile problem.
Had we kept Saturn V's, they'd be just as expensive, if not more expensive, as the Shuttle. They need much more infrastructure (in the form of the manufacturing facilities) and many more man hours to prepare for flight - and are only worth flying when a multi-billion dollar payload is ready.
The problem is... there just aren't that many multi-billion dollar payloads to be had.*
See above. The reason we haven't tried to build a modern Saturn V is simply that there is no need for one. Nowadays, it's *much* cheaper to buy multiple launches on one of the bigger Atlas' or Deltas and assemble on orbit. (Not that building an umaintainable space station like MIR, or like ISS is going to be once Shuttle stops flying, is a good idea to start with...)
I have studied astronomy, and it's abundantly clear you have not. ("Geostationary orbit would let you look all night long"? ROTFLMAO. There is no night in space you moron.)
With a trivial amount of thought (I.E. during the time it takes to pick up my coffee cup and take a sip), I can come up with several reasons why they may not have followed it up. (I.E. I'd be careful throwing around the moron tag if I were you.)
The Mythbusters are constrained only by the laws of nature, their budget, and what makes good TV. Real world engineers are rather more constrained and have quite a few more considerations to account for than just raw fuel mileage.
Then there's the penultimate possible reason:
The Mythbusters are not exactly known for their scientific rigor. They do a good job of making it look like they are, but they actually are anything but.