In the case of an accident, Google would do what most other companies do. Offer a reasonably large settlement offer now to avoid the prospect of a 2 decade long court battle to possibly win more. Besides, chances are good that Google's car will likely cause far fewer accidents than human driven cars would, so they wouldn't need nearly as large of a settlement budget that conventional car companies do. Also, in the case of an accident, there is a huge flood of data available to the engineers to determine the exact cause of the problem and implement a solution to prevent a similar accident from happening in the future. The patch can then be applied to ALL of their vehicles currently on the road without requiring an expensive recall action.
50 years from now, there will probably be people that believe 9/11 never happened. I don't mean like the ones who claim the government was involved in it or something like that, I mean, will say, completely, without any doubt, that it NEVER happened. The twin towers never existed, planes never crashed, etc, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince them otherwise. There are people now that say the same thing about the Holocaust. It goes way beyond a simple non-belief. It's practically a sickness. You could kidnap one of these people, strap him down in a rocket, land them on the moon, kick them out the airlock, and they would STILL deny that anyone ever went to the moon, including themselves.
Best thing I ever read about the moon-hoax people is something to the effect of the fact that 10-20% of people think that we never landed on the moon, which is coincidentally about the same number of people who happen to be intoxicated at any one time.
Although your blog is clearly geared toward Astronomy related topics, and far more of the good than the bad as the name might otherwise indicate, you also delve into a number of unrelated topics, primarily global warming and anti-vax opposition. Of course, it's your blog and you can write about anything you want, and I can choose to read everything or just skip over those topics that I'm either uninterested in, or in some rare cases might disagree with. Sometimes, even for a controversial topic for which we are 100% in agreement on, I don't want to waste brainspace getting emotionally charged up on an issue when all I want to do is look at awesome pictures and explore not only the visual appeal of the cosmos, but the scientific background as well. Therefore, since astronomy is clearly your core strength and the only reason I come to visit, in more recent years I've noticed that I've gone from visiting once a day to only visiting once every couple weeks, so I can skim past the posts I'm uninterested in and get to the juicy astronomy stuff. Problem is, now I find myself only visiting when it dawns on me that I hadn't been there in a while.
So, my question is this.. do you think that having a blog with a more diverse set of topics, especially some of a more controversial nature (which astronomy itself typically isn't), attracts and retains a larger and/or more preferable audience than one that is more focused on a single discipline, and do you think the resulting commentary contributes well or distracts from interest and attention to the blog's core mission (whatever that may be)?
Any chance of ever bringing back your Mad Scientist section, where you do a Q&A sort of like the Straight Dope, only with generally more Astronomy related topics? That's the particular feature that caused me to discover your site in the first place.
I would think that acting would be the one profession where pretty much anything goes. They need actors that are 6 months old and they need actors who are in their 80's. It all depends on the part, and if the part calls for a mid-40s character, they're generally going to cast mid-40s actors, or at least try. Of course, if she's trying to get acting gigs as a high school student, then I can see how that might be a turnoff.
It has nothing to do with her age. The lack of opportunities for any "up and coming" actress will be due to an enormous amount of competition. In the end, having the "right look", the talent to get it right on the first try, and awesome networking skills will be more valuable than any hangups about your age.
And likewise, alcohol companies realize that every time alcohol facilitates a fatal car accident, or contributes to the destruction of a marriage, or the requirement for a liver transplant, the company and their product get a bad rap. "Too much" alcohol contributes to things like prohibition, excessive taxes on alcoholic beverages, the reason why "closing time" is a legally mandated concept, etc. And for all of you drug legalization folks, its the reason why pot is illegal and likely will continue to be. Man people have proven, over many centuries, that as a group, we can't or won't consume the product in a responsible fashion, and therefore annoying laws and regulations have to be implemented and enforced to be the primary annoyance for those who can, and routinely ignored by those who don't.
Granted, the government is unlikely to pass any laws to make it more difficult for you to dress up like Spock on a daily basis or show off your prowess for learning Klingon, but there might be some sense in recognizing the fact that many of our best and brightest have chosen to spend an extraordinary amount of their free time and money indulging in an obsessive hobby instead of pushing the advancement of science and technology. I'm not saying that I agree with that assessment; people can do whatever they like. But I can certainly see the viewpoint of someone who hoped to inspire kids to grow up to be astronauts, or develop amazing breakthroughs in physics, or build amazing new vehicles, instead must consider that a great part of their lasting legacy is instead warming the hearts of deranged fanboys.
This works fine as long as those who are investing money have unlimited opportunities to examine and dissect the workings of any such invention, or at least the plans if it hasn't been built yet. They would likely do so under terms of a strict NDA, and wouldn't be talking about it afterward, endorsements or otherwise. If the invention actually works as claimed, he wouldn't NEED to talk about it. Just set it up and start selling cheap energy at a rate below which all other conventional energy providers can compete at. That's the beautiful thing about energy. You don't HAVE to market it. People already want it and the lowest price will win out over all other factors, provided you're not doing something politically suicidal to fund/operate it.
Scammers tend to work in a different way though. They boast endlessly about their new product, and provide scripted demonstrations in very well controlled environments and prohibit anyone from having any physical access to the technology at hand, especially the investors. They then request large amounts of money to fund this slight of hand product. Most importantly, they never deliver.
The best scammers will use the investors' greed to their advantage. They offer up something that sounds generally reasonable considering the current state of technological advancement, but offers the opportunity to get a few years head start over the competition. To be ahead of the game in any emerging industry means you can make a 10fold return on your investment almost literally overnight. Many investors see that possibility as being worth the risk, since they falsely consider the risk to be the product not selling as well as hoped or perhaps not performing as well as promised. The fact that they were being duped from the beginning didn't factor into that assessment.
So, is this real? Probably not. If it were, we wouldn't be hearing about a "secret catalyst" that nobody's allowed to inspect, we wouldn't hear anything about the process at all. Or.. more likely, we'd hear about some experiment in a laboratory somewhere (probably at a school) where they discovered (probably by accident, or after a LOT of trial and error) some chemical arrangement that makes something like this work,... and the best part of all, we always hear "maybe in 10 years, this technology 'MIGHT' be able to produce cheaper electricity". And then it goes through lots of peer review and refinement research. If it works, we hear more about it later, if not, well... we probably hear nothing at all. So this potential scammer, if he's actually legit, likely spent the last 20 years working in a lab somewhere, and did all of this work himself, bypassing the peer review process, collaboration with other scientists, or involving any lab assistants, TAs, students, etc. If so, that'd be a pretty important dot to look for on his resume, and it'd probably be a good idea to confirm it before writing any checks.
... just open up the drives and work on the plates with a combination of tools such as a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, router, drill, and/or hacksaw. Even if you don't separate the pieces, there's a pretty good chance that nothing you have on those drives would ever be worth the cost and hassle to attempt to recover. If it actually IS that important, than hooking them up long enough to run dd on it a few times would not be out of the question.
If I told you I ate eggs for breakfast, you'll probably believe me. First off, there's no compelling reason for me to lie about it, and secondly, there's no reasonable way for you to prove me wrong, and even if I WAS lying about it, it certainly wouldn't be worth the effort to expose my perjury on that issue. As for the wet paint, if I believe you're right, I won't attempt to prove you wrong. However, if personal observation or specific knowledge of the painting event leads me to believe that the paint is in fact dry, there's a very easy way to test it.
Wil Wheaton has done well enough for himself, but I really think he screwed the pooch when it came to Star Trek. Sure, he faced the risk of being typecast, and the character he played tended to draw derision from the audience, but he WAS a kid... and lets face it, he had about the most awesome job a teenage geek could ever hope to have. I figure he missed an opportunity with the character. Since the character he played was an awkward teenager, he could have embraced that role and had that character grow up as he did, mature, become less whiny, less naive, more confident, etc. While I realize you usually have to play the lines you're given, improv from good actors is always considered and sometimes makes it into the final cut. He could have helped guide the character into something more positively memorable instead of trying to distance himself from it. And if you ultimately do decide to cut your losses and run, it's better not to publicly complain about it after the fact. Even years later, opportunities can present themselves, but burned bridges tend to remain burned. Star Trek didn't end with TNG, and both Michael Dorn and Colm Meany were able to stay in the game longer than the duration of a single series. Wesley, recently graduated from the academy, could have easily found himself replacing ensign Kim on Voyager, which could have been REALLY awesome if they had Robert McNeill reprise the role of Nicholas Locarno instead of Tom Paris (who had very similar backgrounds).
Not to say that his career hasn't turned out well enough. I just think he really dropped the ball there.
Wait about 3 days and you can probably watch the entire game on youtube, with "commentary". You might not be able to easily tell how great the graphics are, but you can probably tell if the game is fun. So watch a few minutes of it to see if it's worth any further investigation.
First of all, he's asking for advice. There's no reason to assume he hasn't already done some of his own research, but if someone out there has already accomplished the same goal and could provide a simple, clear, precise answer, then it certainly doesn't hurt to ask.
Secondly, his question, and any reasonable responses that result from it could lead to inform and inspire others who have considered something similar, but never followed through on it, not to mention those who never even pondered the idea before, but are now thinking about it. Even if the submitter ultimately leaves unsatisfied, others may indirectly benefit from the discussion, and ANY responses which provide ANY solution are still potentially meaningful to someone.
I actually liked the in-box junk that came with the old Ultima games. The cloth map, and the trinkets, and the faux-leather bound user manual/"Book of Lore". Something real-world and tangible to bring just that little bit of extra life to the game.
I don't know where exactly we all went wrong. I know WHY such a law was enacted, but how did we get this far? Student and teacher have an inappropriate relationship. Ok, fine. It happens. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and it has likely happened since there were teachers and students. Somewhere along the line, the issue of what is appropriate (and legal) eventually made its way into policy and legislation, and we were all content to understand that everyone knew the rules and occasionally we would have to slap down someone who violated it. For those of you who are 30 or older, think back to your school years. You've probably heard a rumor or two, or if it got really bad, maybe read about it in the newspaper, where some local teacher and a student had an inappropriate relationship. It was scandalous to be sure, but it was rare enough to be considered an oddity. Something that doesn't happen often enough to get really excited about. Just take care of it when it DOES happen and let everyone's lives continue as normal. It's likely that the percentages haven't really changed. What HAS changed though is the fact that with the internet making sure that every local story is potentially nationwide news, we now get to hear about EVERY SINGLE CASE. And if by some chance the national media overlooks one, someone on digg or fark will be sure to publicize it, with a snarky, memorable headline, so we don't miss out on any. This makes what is actually a very rare event seem like it's happening every day, all around us. It makes it seem so rampant that surely EVERY teacher is pondering the possibilities. So enough concerned parents get just loud enough for the politicians to pay attention, and the message is that we want to preemptively prevent this from happening.
The problem with politicians is they tend to be reactionary. When some kid shows up to school armed to the teeth and kills 15 classmates, those politicians BETTER DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Some new law better be passed that will prevent this thing from ever happening again. The problem is, the easiest, cleanest, and least debatable solution would usually revolve around some controversial issue, like outlawing all guns. Fortunately, there is enough resistance to make sure THAT doesn't quite happen. But consider teachers and social media, and how it relates with the bottomless pit of scandal that revolves around protecting our children at all costs. I'm sure, especially in the last few years, that a lot of the inappropriate teacher/student relationships had some element of social media involvement. That's a simple but potent fact that people and politicians can latch onto. Cut THAT particular cord, and maybe the relationships will never materialize in the first place. The problem is, it seems too weak to just make it a general policy to avoid unnecessary off-campus communication with current students. That's not really a law... people can't really BREAK that law, and therefore we can't punish anyone who does. So they come up with something that's absolute, thorough (so nobody finds a loophole), and concise, so people can actually read all of it in one sitting. By the time you're done drafting such a law, you end up with a much larger problem than the one you were trying to solve in the first place.
Chris Hansen must be proud of what he has achieved.
Insurance is a protection against statistics, same as warranties are. If you purchase 1000 laptops, a certain percentage of those ARE going to break. However, Unless you purchase a particularly crappy brand, the cost to replace the percentage that breaks will not exceed (or probably even get close to) the cost of having an extended warranty on all of them. Although you probably don't want to purchase laptops in bulk, you can consider the same costs over the purchase of all of your electronic devices, and consider that at least one of them will probably break, but not most of them. If the 52" TV breaks, that will hit you harder than if your ipod breaks, but ultimately it's still a wash in the long run.
Even house insurance is unnecessary (and not worth it), if you own a sufficiently large number of houses. Say you're a landlord and you own 100 houses, each worth $100k. Chances are good that at least one or two of them are going to be catastrophically damaged over the course of a 30 year period, but if you add up how much you're going to pay in insurance over that timeframe, it's a lot cheaper to just replace the house and pay for the damages yourself. Car insurance is a bit of a middle ground. If the car is old, you don't likely purchase comprehensive coverage on it, since you're never going to get its true value back. But you still have to purchase liability insurance. HOWEVER... if you know you're a safe driver and the chances of you being at fault in an accident are slim to none, there are options available to post your own insurance bond for the amount of the required liability coverage, and therefore not be required to purchase auto insurance.
That reminds me of when I first purchased this house. I was going to be doing work here for a while before I moved in, so I didn't want to move all of my expensive computers over here, but I still needed simple internet access. I ended up bringing over an old linux box so I could hook it up to the newly installed cable modem and I could at least use ssh.
Only problem is, the cable company requires you to first go through a series of webpages to agree to the terms of service and set up email addresses and such before they actually grant you an ip address, and I didn't have a functional browser on the box I brought with me... and lynx wouldn't work. Ended up having to call them and have them manually do it over the phone. The techie I talked to seemed to think it was very odd that I needed internet access but didn't have a web browser.
No, they said they wanted to avoid extra wiring, not equipment purchases. Also, you don't need the dsl runs to each room, just to each access point, of which there will be at most a dozen or so covering the entire hotel (or maybe far less.. not sure how large it is).
I don't think the issue is about security, just about keeping freeloaders off of the network, so the speed is available for the people who are actual customers. If you're THAT concerned about security, stay off of the unencrypted access points or route everything through a vpn.
I "dispose" of my old PCs like I "dispose" of all of my old electronics and appliances. On trash day, I set them out, lined up, by the trash can, and one of several different guys with a flatbed truck will roll by and take all of it before the garbage men get here. I would assume they're either fixing them and putting them back into service (good), or recycling them and getting a profit out of that (even better). I doubt they're just throwing them away, since it costs a lot around here to get rid of that much trash. In any event, it's no longer my problem.
What I DO find highly ironic though... they won't take TV sets. In fact, we had a neighbor evicted and he apparently, unable to pay his rent, had I counted FIVE television sets that were placed out on the curb along with several pieces of furniture and other junk. Those TVs sat there, untouched, for a couple weeks before a bulk trash truck came by and took all of it.
Although we like to think all accidents are preventable (and in theory, they are), that theory changes a bit when you claim that all accidents are preventable when only one driver is attempting to prevent them. Now, I'm sure this happened under a typical, well controlled situation (stopped cars in the middle of the street, for instance), something that happens quite regularly on any drive, and therefore a very typical obstacle. However, consider that there has to be SOME condition for which lesser of evil choices might have to be made. If I, as a regular human driver, are driving down a residential street and a child jumps out in front of me at the last second, and I don't have time to stop, but I DO have time to swerve, but swerving means I will hit another car/tree/mailbox/etc, the non-living, inanimate object is going to have a really bad day.
As I said, I'm sure the google car crashed for much less sensational reasons. Either it was a bug in the software, or a human really had full control of the vehicle and it's not a software/hardware issue at all. Still, I can foresee a decision tree that allows for the decision to hit another vehicle to avoid hitting a person. I've brought up this issue before in fact, in the case that AI, as good as it might be, will have difficulty determining the difference between a small child, a dog, and a fire hydrant standing at the edge of the street. A human, when approaching either the child or dog will pay attention and adjust speed and passing distance to ensure that should a last second "dart out into traffic" moment occur, appropriate action can be taken to avoid a tragic accident. Google's car won't have an easy way to know for sure if that fire hydrant is going to dart out into traffic or not, and without being absolutely sure will HAVE to slow down for each and every one of them, JUST IN CASE. That alone will do more to kill the program than any number of fender benders ever will.
The "slave labor" wages we've been paying are plenty good enough for us. But WE are the ones complaining about the working conditions there, not considering the fact that in 3rd world or developing countries, the citizens would damn near kill to have a job with such horrible working conditions because it's a huge step up from the alternative. Now we've complained, and those very people who were perfectly happy with the jobs that no Americans wanted to do at a pay rate that none of us want to work at, are going to lose those jobs, just to make us happy. And don't delude yourself into thinking that unemployment in China is as great as it is here. I'm guessing people who have been out of work for 2+ years don't have half of a congress going to bat trying to get them yet another extension to their unemployment benefits.
The sad thing is, we could have had this here. Robotic assembly lines DO replace the low skill jobs, and they DO cost a lot of R&D and capital investment up front to get operational, but in the long run they are a lot less expensive and create a lot of newer high-tech jobs. But those new jobs require people to have skills and education, and they replace the low skill jobs by basically eliminating them. Unions have a tendency to resist such things, because yes.. they are NOT worker friendly for the guy who's job is about to get replaced by a machine. No doubt about that. So if a company is going to face a 10 year cycle of slowly upgrading their operation to eliminate their workforce, facing union resistance the whole way, or suddenly offshore the whole operation, and receive the same financial benefit, which would YOU choose? Now it's come full circle, but instead of having those robotic manufacturing operations here in the United States, where all of the jobs related to designing, building, deploying, and maintaining the robotic workforce would be US based, we get none of it. But we still pay for all of it, since we still buy all of those products. And just think, we got this way because too many people wanted to meddle in someone else's working conditions.
I mean, right now, I only get around 80kbps upstream anyway... IN 3G. I realize that i didn't mention downstream there, but for my most bandwidth intensive application, I don't use it. So where's my limit going to be? 2gigs? 5gigs? and what are they going to throttle that 80kbps down to? Will it be incremental based on total data transferred or is it going to get cut sharply? Will it vary based on peak times or will it be constant? Will bandwidth used during non-peak times count as much as bandwidth used when the towers are overloaded? Details will be helpful so we (or at least *I*) can attempt to work within the system to ensure the best quality of service for myself as well as others.
Not that I would ever come down on the side of the RIAA, but this issue isn't as simple as it seems.
Keep in mind, when the record company signs a band, the contract the band signs states that the band will pay for the recording and other upfront costs. In exchange, the record company will pay them an advance and issue them what accounts basically to an interest free loan (which the band never has to pay back if enough copies don't sell). The record company handles all of the marketing, sale, and distribution of the product and the band will get a small royalty percentage which gets applied toward the loan.
Of course, the record company is in the black on the deal long before the band has recouped the costs, but technically, the band is in the black from the moment it signs. Since the marketing of the CD (and therefore the band) is at the record company's expense, a popular band that tours frequently will be able to do quite well, and the royalty payment from the record company if and when the costs are recouped, would just be a bonus.
As far as all of that goes, I have no issue with the RIAA's side of things. That's all a simple, straightforward contract, and a band that is actually good will benefit from the arrangement. However, the RIAA are still vultures in many other respects, the least of which involves locking bands into a contract for multiple albums, and of course, the abuse of the legal system with regards to suing their own customers.
As it stands, the average band has a lot more options available to it today than it did in the past. Marketing and distribution, which are about the only things the record company are really useful for, can now be accomplished very well via the Internet. If a band is able to afford their own recording studio time (which can likely be done at a significant discount from what the average record company would charge for that service), they could avoid the whole record company fiasco and possibly make more in royalties in the long run, even if they sell far fewer copies. Still, that's a choice for the band to make, and if the proverbial teenage rockstar wannabe wants to follow his stereotypical dream of getting signed by a record company to chase the future possibilities of being a coked out celebrity hasbeen before he's 30, well, lets not lay all of the blame at the feet of RIAA.
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In the case of an accident, Google would do what most other companies do. Offer a reasonably large settlement offer now to avoid the prospect of a 2 decade long court battle to possibly win more. Besides, chances are good that Google's car will likely cause far fewer accidents than human driven cars would, so they wouldn't need nearly as large of a settlement budget that conventional car companies do. Also, in the case of an accident, there is a huge flood of data available to the engineers to determine the exact cause of the problem and implement a solution to prevent a similar accident from happening in the future. The patch can then be applied to ALL of their vehicles currently on the road without requiring an expensive recall action.
-Restil
50 years from now, there will probably be people that believe 9/11 never happened. I don't mean like the ones who claim the government was involved in it or something like that, I mean, will say, completely, without any doubt, that it NEVER happened. The twin towers never existed, planes never crashed, etc, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince them otherwise. There are people now that say the same thing about the Holocaust. It goes way beyond a simple non-belief. It's practically a sickness. You could kidnap one of these people, strap him down in a rocket, land them on the moon, kick them out the airlock, and they would STILL deny that anyone ever went to the moon, including themselves.
Best thing I ever read about the moon-hoax people is something to the effect of the fact that 10-20% of people think that we never landed on the moon, which is coincidentally about the same number of people who happen to be intoxicated at any one time.
-Restil
Although your blog is clearly geared toward Astronomy related topics, and far more of the good than the bad as the name might otherwise indicate, you also delve into a number of unrelated topics, primarily global warming and anti-vax opposition. Of course, it's your blog and you can write about anything you want, and I can choose to read everything or just skip over those topics that I'm either uninterested in, or in some rare cases might disagree with. Sometimes, even for a controversial topic for which we are 100% in agreement on, I don't want to waste brainspace getting emotionally charged up on an issue when all I want to do is look at awesome pictures and explore not only the visual appeal of the cosmos, but the scientific background as well. Therefore, since astronomy is clearly your core strength and the only reason I come to visit, in more recent years I've noticed that I've gone from visiting once a day to only visiting once every couple weeks, so I can skim past the posts I'm uninterested in and get to the juicy astronomy stuff. Problem is, now I find myself only visiting when it dawns on me that I hadn't been there in a while.
So, my question is this.. do you think that having a blog with a more diverse set of topics, especially some of a more controversial nature (which astronomy itself typically isn't), attracts and retains a larger and/or more preferable audience than one that is more focused on a single discipline, and do you think the resulting commentary contributes well or distracts from interest and attention to the blog's core mission (whatever that may be)?
-Restil
Any chance of ever bringing back your Mad Scientist section, where you do a Q&A sort of like the Straight Dope, only with generally more Astronomy related topics? That's the particular feature that caused me to discover your site in the first place.
-Restil
I would think that acting would be the one profession where pretty much anything goes. They need actors that are 6 months old and they need actors who are in their 80's. It all depends on the part, and if the part calls for a mid-40s character, they're generally going to cast mid-40s actors, or at least try. Of course, if she's trying to get acting gigs as a high school student, then I can see how that might be a turnoff.
It has nothing to do with her age. The lack of opportunities for any "up and coming" actress will be due to an enormous amount of competition. In the end, having the "right look", the talent to get it right on the first try, and awesome networking skills will be more valuable than any hangups about your age.
-Restil
And likewise, alcohol companies realize that every time alcohol facilitates a fatal car accident, or contributes to the destruction of a marriage, or the requirement for a liver transplant, the company and their product get a bad rap. "Too much" alcohol contributes to things like prohibition, excessive taxes on alcoholic beverages, the reason why "closing time" is a legally mandated concept, etc. And for all of you drug legalization folks, its the reason why pot is illegal and likely will continue to be. Man people have proven, over many centuries, that as a group, we can't or won't consume the product in a responsible fashion, and therefore annoying laws and regulations have to be implemented and enforced to be the primary annoyance for those who can, and routinely ignored by those who don't.
Granted, the government is unlikely to pass any laws to make it more difficult for you to dress up like Spock on a daily basis or show off your prowess for learning Klingon, but there might be some sense in recognizing the fact that many of our best and brightest have chosen to spend an extraordinary amount of their free time and money indulging in an obsessive hobby instead of pushing the advancement of science and technology. I'm not saying that I agree with that assessment; people can do whatever they like. But I can certainly see the viewpoint of someone who hoped to inspire kids to grow up to be astronauts, or develop amazing breakthroughs in physics, or build amazing new vehicles, instead must consider that a great part of their lasting legacy is instead warming the hearts of deranged fanboys.
-Restil
This works fine as long as those who are investing money have unlimited opportunities to examine and dissect the workings of any such invention, or at least the plans if it hasn't been built yet. They would likely do so under terms of a strict NDA, and wouldn't be talking about it afterward, endorsements or otherwise. If the invention actually works as claimed, he wouldn't NEED to talk about it. Just set it up and start selling cheap energy at a rate below which all other conventional energy providers can compete at. That's the beautiful thing about energy. You don't HAVE to market it. People already want it and the lowest price will win out over all other factors, provided you're not doing something politically suicidal to fund/operate it.
Scammers tend to work in a different way though. They boast endlessly about their new product, and provide scripted demonstrations in very well controlled environments and prohibit anyone from having any physical access to the technology at hand, especially the investors. They then request large amounts of money to fund this slight of hand product. Most importantly, they never deliver.
The best scammers will use the investors' greed to their advantage. They offer up something that sounds generally reasonable considering the current state of technological advancement, but offers the opportunity to get a few years head start over the competition. To be ahead of the game in any emerging industry means you can make a 10fold return on your investment almost literally overnight. Many investors see that possibility as being worth the risk, since they falsely consider the risk to be the product not selling as well as hoped or perhaps not performing as well as promised. The fact that they were being duped from the beginning didn't factor into that assessment.
So, is this real? Probably not. If it were, we wouldn't be hearing about a "secret catalyst" that nobody's allowed to inspect, we wouldn't hear anything about the process at all. Or.. more likely, we'd hear about some experiment in a laboratory somewhere (probably at a school) where they discovered (probably by accident, or after a LOT of trial and error) some chemical arrangement that makes something like this work, ... and the best part of all, we always hear "maybe in 10 years, this technology 'MIGHT' be able to produce cheaper electricity". And then it goes through lots of peer review and refinement research. If it works, we hear more about it later, if not, well... we probably hear nothing at all. So this potential scammer, if he's actually legit, likely spent the last 20 years working in a lab somewhere, and did all of this work himself, bypassing the peer review process, collaboration with other scientists, or involving any lab assistants, TAs, students, etc. If so, that'd be a pretty important dot to look for on his resume, and it'd probably be a good idea to confirm it before writing any checks.
-Restil
That's none of your business. :)
-Restil
... just open up the drives and work on the plates with a combination of tools such as a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, router, drill, and/or hacksaw. Even if you don't separate the pieces, there's a pretty good chance that nothing you have on those drives would ever be worth the cost and hassle to attempt to recover. If it actually IS that important, than hooking them up long enough to run dd on it a few times would not be out of the question.
-Restil
If I told you I ate eggs for breakfast, you'll probably believe me. First off, there's no compelling reason for me to lie about it, and secondly, there's no reasonable way for you to prove me wrong, and even if I WAS lying about it, it certainly wouldn't be worth the effort to expose my perjury on that issue. As for the wet paint, if I believe you're right, I won't attempt to prove you wrong. However, if personal observation or specific knowledge of the painting event leads me to believe that the paint is in fact dry, there's a very easy way to test it.
-Restil
Wil Wheaton has done well enough for himself, but I really think he screwed the pooch when it came to Star Trek. Sure, he faced the risk of being typecast, and the character he played tended to draw derision from the audience, but he WAS a kid... and lets face it, he had about the most awesome job a teenage geek could ever hope to have. I figure he missed an opportunity with the character. Since the character he played was an awkward teenager, he could have embraced that role and had that character grow up as he did, mature, become less whiny, less naive, more confident, etc. While I realize you usually have to play the lines you're given, improv from good actors is always considered and sometimes makes it into the final cut. He could have helped guide the character into something more positively memorable instead of trying to distance himself from it. And if you ultimately do decide to cut your losses and run, it's better not to publicly complain about it after the fact. Even years later, opportunities can present themselves, but burned bridges tend to remain burned. Star Trek didn't end with TNG, and both Michael Dorn and Colm Meany were able to stay in the game longer than the duration of a single series. Wesley, recently graduated from the academy, could have easily found himself replacing ensign Kim on Voyager, which could have been REALLY awesome if they had Robert McNeill reprise the role of Nicholas Locarno instead of Tom Paris (who had very similar backgrounds).
Not to say that his career hasn't turned out well enough. I just think he really dropped the ball there.
-Restil
There are always bridges to be burned.
-Restil
Wait about 3 days and you can probably watch the entire game on youtube, with "commentary". You might not be able to easily tell how great the graphics are, but you can probably tell if the game is fun. So watch a few minutes of it to see if it's worth any further investigation.
-Restil
First of all, he's asking for advice. There's no reason to assume he hasn't already done some of his own research, but if someone out there has already accomplished the same goal and could provide a simple, clear, precise answer, then it certainly doesn't hurt to ask.
Secondly, his question, and any reasonable responses that result from it could lead to inform and inspire others who have considered something similar, but never followed through on it, not to mention those who never even pondered the idea before, but are now thinking about it. Even if the submitter ultimately leaves unsatisfied, others may indirectly benefit from the discussion, and ANY responses which provide ANY solution are still potentially meaningful to someone.
-Restil
I actually liked the in-box junk that came with the old Ultima games. The cloth map, and the trinkets, and the faux-leather bound user manual/"Book of Lore". Something real-world and tangible to bring just that little bit of extra life to the game.
-Restil
I don't know where exactly we all went wrong. I know WHY such a law was enacted, but how did we get this far? Student and teacher have an inappropriate relationship. Ok, fine. It happens. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and it has likely happened since there were teachers and students. Somewhere along the line, the issue of what is appropriate (and legal) eventually made its way into policy and legislation, and we were all content to understand that everyone knew the rules and occasionally we would have to slap down someone who violated it. For those of you who are 30 or older, think back to your school years. You've probably heard a rumor or two, or if it got really bad, maybe read about it in the newspaper, where some local teacher and a student had an inappropriate relationship. It was scandalous to be sure, but it was rare enough to be considered an oddity. Something that doesn't happen often enough to get really excited about. Just take care of it when it DOES happen and let everyone's lives continue as normal. It's likely that the percentages haven't really changed. What HAS changed though is the fact that with the internet making sure that every local story is potentially nationwide news, we now get to hear about EVERY SINGLE CASE. And if by some chance the national media overlooks one, someone on digg or fark will be sure to publicize it, with a snarky, memorable headline, so we don't miss out on any. This makes what is actually a very rare event seem like it's happening every day, all around us. It makes it seem so rampant that surely EVERY teacher is pondering the possibilities. So enough concerned parents get just loud enough for the politicians to pay attention, and the message is that we want to preemptively prevent this from happening.
The problem with politicians is they tend to be reactionary. When some kid shows up to school armed to the teeth and kills 15 classmates, those politicians BETTER DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Some new law better be passed that will prevent this thing from ever happening again. The problem is, the easiest, cleanest, and least debatable solution would usually revolve around some controversial issue, like outlawing all guns. Fortunately, there is enough resistance to make sure THAT doesn't quite happen. But consider teachers and social media, and how it relates with the bottomless pit of scandal that revolves around protecting our children at all costs. I'm sure, especially in the last few years, that a lot of the inappropriate teacher/student relationships had some element of social media involvement. That's a simple but potent fact that people and politicians can latch onto. Cut THAT particular cord, and maybe the relationships will
never materialize in the first place. The problem is, it seems too weak to just make it a general policy to avoid unnecessary off-campus communication with current students. That's not really a law... people can't really BREAK that law, and therefore we can't punish anyone who does. So they come up with something that's absolute, thorough (so nobody finds a loophole), and concise, so people can actually read all of it in one sitting. By the time you're done drafting such a
law, you end up with a much larger problem than the one you were trying to solve in the first place.
Chris Hansen must be proud of what he has achieved.
-Restil
Insurance is a protection against statistics, same as warranties are. If you purchase 1000 laptops, a certain percentage of those ARE going to break. However, Unless you purchase a particularly crappy brand, the cost to replace the percentage that breaks will not exceed (or probably even get close to) the cost of having an extended warranty on all of them. Although you probably don't want to purchase laptops in bulk, you can consider the same costs over the purchase of all of your
electronic devices, and consider that at least one of them will probably break, but not most of them. If the 52" TV breaks, that will hit you harder than if your ipod breaks, but ultimately it's still a wash in the long run.
Even house insurance is unnecessary (and not worth it), if you own a sufficiently large number of houses. Say you're a landlord and you own 100 houses, each worth $100k. Chances are good that at least one or two of them are going to be catastrophically damaged over the course of a 30 year period, but if you add up how much you're going to pay in insurance over that timeframe, it's a lot cheaper to just replace the house and pay for the damages yourself. Car insurance is a bit of a middle ground. If the car is old, you don't likely purchase comprehensive coverage on it, since you're never going to get its true value back. But you still have to purchase liability insurance. HOWEVER... if you know you're a safe driver and the chances of you being at fault in an accident are slim to none, there
are options available to post your own insurance bond for the amount of the required liability coverage, and therefore not be required to purchase auto insurance.
-Restil
That reminds me of when I first purchased this house. I was going to be doing work here for a while before I moved in, so I didn't want to move all of my expensive computers over here, but I still needed simple internet access. I ended up bringing over an old linux box so I could hook it up to the newly installed cable modem and I could at least use ssh.
Only problem is, the cable company requires you to first go through a series of webpages to agree to the terms of service and set up email addresses and such before they actually grant you an ip address, and I didn't have a functional browser on the box I brought with me... and lynx wouldn't work. Ended up having to call them and have them manually do it over the phone. The techie I talked to seemed to think it was very odd that I needed internet access but didn't have a web browser.
-Restil
No, they said they wanted to avoid extra wiring, not equipment purchases. Also, you don't need the dsl runs to each room, just to each access point, of which there will be at most a dozen or so covering the entire hotel (or maybe far less.. not sure how large it is).
-Restil
I don't think the issue is about security, just about keeping freeloaders off of the network, so the speed is available for the people who are actual customers. If you're THAT concerned about security, stay off of the unencrypted access points or route everything through a vpn.
-Restil
I "dispose" of my old PCs like I "dispose" of all of my old electronics and appliances. On trash day, I set them out, lined up, by the trash can, and one of several different guys with a flatbed truck will roll by and take all of it before the garbage men get here. I would assume they're either fixing them and putting them back into service (good), or recycling them and getting a profit out of that (even better). I doubt they're just throwing them away, since it costs a lot around here to get rid of that much trash. In any event, it's no longer my problem.
What I DO find highly ironic though... they won't take TV sets. In fact, we had a neighbor evicted and he apparently, unable to pay his rent, had I counted FIVE television sets that were placed out on the curb along with several pieces of furniture and other junk. Those TVs sat there, untouched, for a couple weeks before a bulk trash truck came by and took all of it.
-Restil
Although we like to think all accidents are preventable (and in theory, they are), that theory changes a bit when you claim that all accidents are preventable when only one driver is attempting to prevent them. Now, I'm sure this happened under a typical, well controlled situation (stopped cars in the middle of the street, for instance), something that happens quite regularly on any drive, and therefore a very typical obstacle. However, consider that there has to be SOME condition for which lesser of evil choices might have to be made. If I, as a regular human driver, are driving down a residential street and a child jumps out in front of me at the last second, and I don't have time to stop, but I DO have time to swerve, but swerving means I will hit another car/tree/mailbox/etc, the non-living, inanimate object is going to have a really bad day.
As I said, I'm sure the google car crashed for much less sensational reasons. Either it was a bug in the software, or a human really had full control of the vehicle and it's not a software/hardware issue at all. Still, I can foresee a decision tree that allows for the decision to hit another vehicle to avoid hitting a person. I've brought up this issue before in fact, in the case that AI, as good as it might be, will have difficulty determining the difference between a small child, a dog, and a fire hydrant standing at the edge of the street. A human, when approaching either the child or dog will pay attention and adjust speed and passing distance to ensure that should a last second "dart out into traffic" moment occur, appropriate action can be taken to avoid a tragic accident. Google's car won't have an easy way to know for sure if that fire hydrant is going to dart out into traffic or not, and without being absolutely sure will HAVE to slow down for each and every one of them, JUST IN CASE. That alone will do more to kill the program than any number of fender benders ever will.
-Restil
The "slave labor" wages we've been paying are plenty good enough for us. But WE are the ones complaining about the working conditions there, not considering the fact that in 3rd world or developing countries, the citizens would damn near kill to have a job with such horrible working conditions because it's a huge step up from the alternative. Now we've complained, and those very people who were perfectly happy with the jobs that no Americans wanted to do at a pay rate that none of us want to work at, are going to lose those jobs, just to make us happy. And don't delude yourself into thinking that unemployment in China is as great as it is here. I'm guessing people who have been out of work for 2+ years don't have half of a congress going to bat trying to get them yet another extension to their unemployment benefits.
The sad thing is, we could have had this here. Robotic assembly lines DO replace the low skill jobs, and they DO cost a lot of R&D and capital investment up front to get operational, but in the long run they are a lot less expensive and create a lot of newer high-tech jobs. But those new jobs require people to have skills and education, and they replace the low skill jobs by basically eliminating them. Unions have a tendency to resist such things, because yes.. they are NOT worker friendly for the guy who's job is about to get replaced by a machine. No doubt about that. So if a company is going to face a 10 year cycle of slowly upgrading their operation to eliminate their workforce, facing union resistance the whole way, or suddenly offshore the whole operation, and receive the same financial benefit, which would YOU choose? Now it's come full circle, but instead of having those robotic manufacturing operations here in the United States, where all of the jobs related to designing, building, deploying, and maintaining the robotic workforce would be US based, we get none of it. But we still pay for all of it, since we still buy all of those products. And just think, we got this way because too many people wanted to meddle in someone else's working conditions.
-Restil
I mean, right now, I only get around 80kbps upstream anyway... IN 3G. I realize that i didn't mention downstream there, but for my most bandwidth intensive application, I don't use it. So where's my limit going to be? 2gigs? 5gigs? and what are they going to throttle that 80kbps down to? Will it be incremental based on total data transferred or is it going to get cut sharply? Will it vary based on peak times or will it be constant? Will bandwidth used during non-peak times count as much as bandwidth used when the towers are overloaded? Details will be helpful so we (or at least *I*) can attempt to work within the system to ensure the best quality of service for myself as well as others.
-Restil
Not that I would ever come down on the side of the RIAA, but this issue isn't as simple as it seems.
Keep in mind, when the record company signs a band, the contract the band signs states that the band will pay for the recording and other upfront costs. In exchange, the record company will pay them an advance and issue them what accounts basically to an interest free loan (which the band never has to pay back if enough copies don't sell). The record company handles all of the marketing, sale, and distribution of the product and the band will get a small royalty percentage which gets applied toward the loan.
Of course, the record company is in the black on the deal long before the band has recouped the costs, but technically, the band is in the black from the moment it signs. Since the marketing of the CD (and therefore the band) is at the record company's expense, a popular band that tours frequently will be able to do quite well, and the royalty payment from the record company if and when the costs are recouped, would just be a bonus.
As far as all of that goes, I have no issue with the RIAA's side of things. That's all a simple, straightforward contract, and a band that is actually good will benefit from the arrangement. However, the RIAA are still vultures in many other respects, the least of which involves locking bands into a contract for multiple albums, and of course, the abuse of the legal system with regards to suing their own customers.
As it stands, the average band has a lot more options available to it today than it did in the past. Marketing and distribution, which are about the only things the record company are really useful for, can now be accomplished very well via the Internet. If a band is able to afford their own recording studio time (which can likely be done at a significant discount from what the average record company would charge for that service), they could avoid the whole record company fiasco and possibly make more in royalties in the long run, even if they sell far fewer copies. Still, that's a choice for the band to make, and if the proverbial teenage rockstar wannabe wants to follow his stereotypical dream of getting signed by a record company to chase the future possibilities of being a coked out celebrity hasbeen before he's 30, well, lets not lay all of the blame at the feet of RIAA.
-Restil