Accusing people of class envy doesn't make it go away, nor does it make it unimportant. Class envy has been one of the main driving forces in world history. Over the centuries, many have learned this point the hard way.
In an era before the invention of the wheel, it wouldn't have been any easier to drag a 20-ton concrete mixer truck chassis up the pyramid than to just drag up a 20-ton block of stone.
You do understand that insurance involves risk pooling and cost sharing and not 'magic' right?
Insurance covers unpredictable risks. Since the minimum healthcare costs of many individuals can be easily determined in advance to be higher than any reasonable premium, healthcare plans are not "insurance" at all. Most of them are little mini socialist-style programs run for corporations, shifting costs from the healthy to the less healthy in some arbitrary group in a predictable manner. This modern version of a feudal system keeps employees highly dependent on staying with their employers, and that's the way employers like it.
OTOH (ignoring for now the unlikelyhood of this event), typically about 50% of the matter falling into a black hole is converted to pure energy by the frictional forces of the swirling vortex and radiated into space. The ISS would be vaporized in an instant, and even the moon might not come out looking too good.
Don't be so obtuse. Of course they were obvious in 1991. A more non-obvious innovation would be to find a use for a wireless computer that doesn't involve e-mail.
Saying they aren't obvious doesn't make it so. Are you really claiming to be so stupid as to say that if someone showed you a wireless computer and asked you what it might be used for, you wouldn't think of e-mail?
Consulting for RIM in their patent case would be useless, since the current tests used by the court system have no basis in reality.
Maybe the test is bad, but under the current test, NTP's patents were NOT obvious.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that they ARE obvious. (Anyone who thinks otherwise must have an IQ in the lowest quartile.) Therefore, the current test is rubbish.
Sorry to break it to you, but Windows's security model is now superior to Linux's.
That's always been true since Windows NT 3.51. The funny thing is, here in the real world, that's rarely if ever made any difference. Nobody has used that stuff effectively in the Windows ecosystem, least of all Microsoft themselves. Maybe Vista will change things, maybe it won't.
Don't buy this stuff... it's some kind of scam. I ordered a bunch, and I set it aside until I got around to needing it. About one year later when I wanted to use it, more than 80% of it had mysteriously disappeared into thin air! Talk about planned obsolescence... and this stuff ain't cheap. This is worse than inkjet cartridges.
Since then, I've found a place that will send me Polonium *209*. It costs more, but so far it doesn't seem have the self-destruct feature that the Polonium 210 shysters build into their product.
You're ignoring the fact that the political environment surrounding the Iraq fiasco is completely different from that which would surround a hypothetical future revolution against a totalitarian government in the USA.
The US could achieve a complete victory in Iraq a matter of months by employing brutal ethnic cleansing tactics. This was demonstrated many times by various tyrants in the 20th century, and in fact it is how Saddam kept a lid on Iraq's internal problems. However, for obvious reasons, we can't use that approach. Since Iraq is primarily a TV reality show broadcast on cable news networks and not a real war, we're bound to "lose" no matter which weapons each side has.
A government presiding over hypothetical US uprising would almost certainly not have any of the political constraints that apply to Iraq. There would be no independent TV coverage allowed. Government forces would be free to use any and all weapons and tactics unrestrained by outside oversight. In that scenario, a bunch of dorks running around in the woods with hunting rifles and homemade weapons wouldn't stand a chance. The most they'd be likely to achieve would be to get their families shipped off to a gulag after the government runs a DNA match on their remains.
The main benefit of having an HD set is the ability to watch HD programming at full resolution.
Actually, given the scarcity of HD programming (there's usually only about 1 HD show per week that I actually want to watch), the main benefit of my HDTV has been its line doubler that deinterlaces SDTV content (along with the associated filters that clean up most of the NTSC color subcarrier artifacts). From my vantage point back on the couch, the line doubler alone provides a bigger step up from normal SDTV than HDTV provides over line-doubled SDTV anyway.
SSTO, silly requirements from Air Force generals, etc. are all examples of bad design decisions. A reliable, cost-effective launch system would use multistaged, lower performance, sturdy hardware. Such hardware would be more easily designed to be reusable without needing expensive maintenance after every use.
The shuttle's main engines have an Isp of around 450 seconds. There are plenty of viable launch systems that get by with not much more than half of that. They don't require things like liquid hydrogen fuel, whose difficulty of use was a direct contributor to the latest shuttle disaster. Those engines are total overkill for lifting a 25 ton payload into LEO.
Like a top fuel dragster a SRB is designed to perform really well for a very short period of time.
And like a dragster, the shuttle engines are overkill for the transportation job at hand, and they require prohibitively expensive maintenance after each use. In contrast to the shuttle, nobody is silly enough to use a money-pit such as a dragster for anything other than entertainment.
Yeah, probably the same people who decided it would be a good idea to haul 75 tons of extra dead weight in and out of orbit on each launch, thereby requiring the use of super high-performance engines and the liquid H2 to fuel it, which in turn requires all that wonderful foam insulation.
Well, it's an extremely high-performing rocket engine. A top-fuel dragster also has a an extremely high-performing engine. Neither engine is necessarily the "best" for any application other than performing stunts. For most applications, whether it's cars or rockets, you want a reliable, cost-effective engine that operates on an easy-to-use fuel.
The very fact that they're planning to recycle designs from the astoundingly overpriced and underachieving shuttle program, which is one of the costliest technology boondoggles in the history of human civilization, is prima facie evidence that they're still operating in design-by-committee group-idiot mode.
They're still making design decision based on issues like which defense contractors have sites in which key congressional districts. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that. What makes you think that it would be wise to just defer to the judgement of NASA bureaucrats given the results of their past 35 years of manned space efforts?
Why doesn't GM make Starbucks Coffee? It's much more profitable than their cars.....
It might not be a bad idea. The last time GM made serious amounts of easy money was when they were in the satellite TV business. They decided to focus more on automobiles, and look where that's got them.
Because rightly or wrongly, a patent grants exclusive rights to make, sell or use an invention. The end users are infringing on the patent by using the technology, and unless they got explicit indemnification from the manufacturer, they can be sued.
The main reason that they probably won't get sued is because it's simply easier to extract a lot of money from a few manufacturers than tiny amounts of money from each of millions of users.
Ummm... the editors didn't editorialize. The random person who submitted the story did, and the editors just posted the comment verbatim. This has always been the way this site has been operated.
So you think that MORE restrictions are a good idea?
It's simply unbelievable how backwards you have it. Copyright exist only because of government interference. Eliminating copyright would be reducing government power. It would be *decreasing* the number of laws.
In a default world, if I buy a shiny disc, then I own it along with everything imprinted on it. I can do anything with it I like, including making and selling more copies. The current world is different, however, and the thing that prevents me from doing that is government power. Eliminating copyright would not require any government forces to seize anything; it would simply be restoring my full rights to control the objects in my household.
The current copyright owners would not be imprisoned, etc. They would just no longer be entitled to direct government agents to imprison others.
It's really too bad our society is moving away from the free-enterprise capitalism market that made the US so great so quickly and moving towards a feel-good socialistic system.
We can start fixing that by paring back on the runaway government entitlement program called "copyright". Few people seem to remember that just a few decades ago binary object files were not generally considered to be copyrightable at all. If push back against ever-expanding government meddling and move back to that interpretation, then the whole problem with Microsoft interfering with the free market would go away.
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Accusing people of class envy doesn't make it go away, nor does it make it unimportant. Class envy has been one of the main driving forces in world history. Over the centuries, many have learned this point the hard way.
In an era before the invention of the wheel, it wouldn't have been any easier to drag a 20-ton concrete mixer truck chassis up the pyramid than to just drag up a 20-ton block of stone.
Insurance covers unpredictable risks. Since the minimum healthcare costs of many individuals can be easily determined in advance to be higher than any reasonable premium, healthcare plans are not "insurance" at all. Most of them are little mini socialist-style programs run for corporations, shifting costs from the healthy to the less healthy in some arbitrary group in a predictable manner. This modern version of a feudal system keeps employees highly dependent on staying with their employers, and that's the way employers like it.
OTOH (ignoring for now the unlikelyhood of this event), typically about 50% of the matter falling into a black hole is converted to pure energy by the frictional forces of the swirling vortex and radiated into space. The ISS would be vaporized in an instant, and even the moon might not come out looking too good.
Don't be so obtuse. Of course they were obvious in 1991. A more non-obvious innovation would be to find a use for a wireless computer that doesn't involve e-mail.
Consulting for RIM in their patent case would be useless, since the current tests used by the court system have no basis in reality.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that they ARE obvious. (Anyone who thinks otherwise must have an IQ in the lowest quartile.) Therefore, the current test is rubbish.
That's always been true since Windows NT 3.51. The funny thing is, here in the real world, that's rarely if ever made any difference. Nobody has used that stuff effectively in the Windows ecosystem, least of all Microsoft themselves. Maybe Vista will change things, maybe it won't.
That's still not as cool as that guy who overclocked his astronomical computer with an aeolipile.
Since then, I've found a place that will send me Polonium *209*. It costs more, but so far it doesn't seem have the self-destruct feature that the Polonium 210 shysters build into their product.
You're ignoring the fact that the political environment surrounding the Iraq fiasco is completely different from that which would surround a hypothetical future revolution against a totalitarian government in the USA.
The US could achieve a complete victory in Iraq a matter of months by employing brutal ethnic cleansing tactics. This was demonstrated many times by various tyrants in the 20th century, and in fact it is how Saddam kept a lid on Iraq's internal problems. However, for obvious reasons, we can't use that approach. Since Iraq is primarily a TV reality show broadcast on cable news networks and not a real war, we're bound to "lose" no matter which weapons each side has.
A government presiding over hypothetical US uprising would almost certainly not have any of the political constraints that apply to Iraq. There would be no independent TV coverage allowed. Government forces would be free to use any and all weapons and tactics unrestrained by outside oversight. In that scenario, a bunch of dorks running around in the woods with hunting rifles and homemade weapons wouldn't stand a chance. The most they'd be likely to achieve would be to get their families shipped off to a gulag after the government runs a DNA match on their remains.
Actually, given the scarcity of HD programming (there's usually only about 1 HD show per week that I actually want to watch), the main benefit of my HDTV has been its line doubler that deinterlaces SDTV content (along with the associated filters that clean up most of the NTSC color subcarrier artifacts). From my vantage point back on the couch, the line doubler alone provides a bigger step up from normal SDTV than HDTV provides over line-doubled SDTV anyway.
SSTO, silly requirements from Air Force generals, etc. are all examples of bad design decisions. A reliable, cost-effective launch system would use multistaged, lower performance, sturdy hardware. Such hardware would be more easily designed to be reusable without needing expensive maintenance after every use.
The shuttle's main engines have an Isp of around 450 seconds. There are plenty of viable launch systems that get by with not much more than half of that. They don't require things like liquid hydrogen fuel, whose difficulty of use was a direct contributor to the latest shuttle disaster. Those engines are total overkill for lifting a 25 ton payload into LEO.
And like a dragster, the shuttle engines are overkill for the transportation job at hand, and they require prohibitively expensive maintenance after each use. In contrast to the shuttle, nobody is silly enough to use a money-pit such as a dragster for anything other than entertainment.
Yeah, probably the same people who decided it would be a good idea to haul 75 tons of extra dead weight in and out of orbit on each launch, thereby requiring the use of super high-performance engines and the liquid H2 to fuel it, which in turn requires all that wonderful foam insulation.
Well, it's an extremely high-performing rocket engine. A top-fuel dragster also has a an extremely high-performing engine. Neither engine is necessarily the "best" for any application other than performing stunts. For most applications, whether it's cars or rockets, you want a reliable, cost-effective engine that operates on an easy-to-use fuel.
IIRC, at one time the Hughes Electronics/DirecTV division of GM was worth more on paper than GM as a whole.
They're still making design decision based on issues like which defense contractors have sites in which key congressional districts. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that. What makes you think that it would be wise to just defer to the judgement of NASA bureaucrats given the results of their past 35 years of manned space efforts?
It might not be a bad idea. The last time GM made serious amounts of easy money was when they were in the satellite TV business. They decided to focus more on automobiles, and look where that's got them.
Because rightly or wrongly, a patent grants exclusive rights to make, sell or use an invention. The end users are infringing on the patent by using the technology, and unless they got explicit indemnification from the manufacturer, they can be sued.
The main reason that they probably won't get sued is because it's simply easier to extract a lot of money from a few manufacturers than tiny amounts of money from each of millions of users.
Except others had done spreadsheets on mainframes before VisiCalc. So he didn't exactly deserve to sit back and rake in billions in royalties either.
Ummm... the editors didn't editorialize. The random person who submitted the story did, and the editors just posted the comment verbatim. This has always been the way this site has been operated.
It's simply unbelievable how backwards you have it. Copyright exist only because of government interference. Eliminating copyright would be reducing government power. It would be *decreasing* the number of laws.
In a default world, if I buy a shiny disc, then I own it along with everything imprinted on it. I can do anything with it I like, including making and selling more copies. The current world is different, however, and the thing that prevents me from doing that is government power. Eliminating copyright would not require any government forces to seize anything; it would simply be restoring my full rights to control the objects in my household.
The current copyright owners would not be imprisoned, etc. They would just no longer be entitled to direct government agents to imprison others.
We can start fixing that by paring back on the runaway government entitlement program called "copyright". Few people seem to remember that just a few decades ago binary object files were not generally considered to be copyrightable at all. If push back against ever-expanding government meddling and move back to that interpretation, then the whole problem with Microsoft interfering with the free market would go away.