the most efficient form of movement on the planet is a man on a racing bicycle, but he is only slightly ahead of a fully laden 747 which flies in excess of 5000 miles.
I don't know about that. I recently saw a documentary on supertankers, and some expert was pointing out how efficient their operation was. They claimed that to move a shipment across an ocean only consumed the equivalent of 1% of the amount of oil delivered. There's no way that a jetliner would be able to achieve anything near the same feat; the total mass of fuel that they consume is on the same order as the mass of the payload they deliver. If jets were really so efficient, then there wouldn't be a demand for cargo ships.
The one domain per organisation is an absolutely fantastic idea, and I'd start with the movie studios. Talk about pollution... all those now unused movie sites.
That's nothing. A house recently went up for sale on my block, and the "for sale" sign had a URL on it like "http://1279morningwoodlane.com". This idea could generate a million throwaway domains every year.
I bet somebody has already applied for a patent on using street addresses as URLs for real estate sales.
Each of us should be taking local actions to do our part for the planet. For example, I've been using my own anaerobic process to turn beer into methane gas for many years now.
What's your deal with the Linux kernel on usenet? Posting it in source form would be a GPL-compatible distribution, so that's fine. Maybe a modified binary wouldn't be, but the person making the post would be infringing copyright by putting it into such a system. There is no practical way to unpost it once it has automatically propagated to thousands of news servers.
If you have a problem, it's with the guy who made the post, not with Google. Google is simply operating a news server as it was designed to work, the same way news servers have been working for 3 decades.
It's not an ad hominem attack. Your opinions on this topic are dubious, and you don't understand how the law actually works in the real world. It's not as one-dimensional or simple as you seem to think.
Here's a typical snippet from Yahoo's ISP agreement:
With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, you grant SBC and Yahoo! the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sub-licensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
Google doesn't need to enter into an agreement with you. In this case, if you post it via Yahoo, they 0wn it. By transmitting it to other news servers, Yahoo is sublicencing it as they see fit under terms of their choice, which they are entitled to do under this agreement. Most any ISP is going to have very similar terms.
Because as a copyright holder I have the right to dictate the terms of redistribution of my content, and I want to?
Sure. Now, if you read the fine print of you agreement with your ISP or news server provider, you'll find that you almost certainly agreed to let them redistribute any of your usenet postings without restriction. Those are the terms you chose.
I suggest next time you just follow my suggestion and simply don't post your dubious opinions on usenet if you don't want them automatically reproduced.
What if I posted a licence with my content stating that only nntp servers and individuals could redistribute what I have posted?
I've got a much simpler idea: If you don't want something to get freely archived and redistributed by countless 3rd parties outside your control, why don't you just try not posting it on Usenet?
What's your point? Almost every single song on iTunes is also available unencrypted on a plain-old CD, and is probably already traded on illegal file trading networks. Moreover, circumventing their DRM is as easy as burning it onto a standard CD. The DRM in iTunes has zero effect on piracy.
Just because some people put up with Apple's DRM doesn't mean that their DRM is effective at stopping piracy. In fact, the only reason so many people accept it is because it is so loose that a 10-year-old can avoid it by burning a CD. It's nothing more than a token gesture to appease clueless record industry executives.
Any DRM scheme that were tight enough to claim to *actually* prevent piracy would be annoying enough to be a total market failure (on top of being as just as technically ineffective as any other DRM).
And that's why DRM is pointless. It only takes one single person anywhere in the world who's smart enough to get at the unencrypted bits (even if it takes connecting probes to the tube drivers in their TV set), and then the cat is out of the bag. That one copy will get conveniently replicated bit-for-bit all over the world.
It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, or if the pirates are callously destroying the industry. It's a fact of life: people cheat, and it's going to happen regardless of how difficult the media industry makes it for their paying customers to connect a player to a TV.
Why are they called 'podcasts' if they're in OGG format and therefore not playable on an iPod?
After the user has loaded the file into his iPod and then discovers that it won't play, he throws the device at a wall in a fit of anger. The file provokes him to cast his pod, hence the name.
What can we do to minimize this negative consequence?
As many others have pointed out, in 446 bytes, we can't do anything. All the Microsoft boot loader have historically done when it barfs is print something like "NT Loader not Found", and then left you "locked out of your system", just as GRUB did.
BTW, you're not really locked out. You can create a GRUB boot floppy and manually boot into your OS installation. You can also use the Windows CD to set the MBR back to its original state. Or you could use most Linux distros' rescue CDs to fix the problem.
For days all the headlines I've seen about this mission talk mainly about how risky it is. It looks like NASA has learned to saturate the PR channels with pessimism so that if things don't work out, people just figure "oh well", and if they do work out, NASA looks heroic for overcoming the odds.
Part of living longer because you don't smoke means you live healthier longer too, and so can work longer.
I don't believe that you come out ahead. I know a couple of older people who have already had multiple joint replacements, each one of which cost tens of thousands of dollars. The longer you live, the more things you need to get patched up. In many cases, the costs of this extra care will exceed any reasonable salary that will be earned by continuing to work.
That chart shows the current budget at $16B. Assuming that there are around ~250 million actual taxpayers in this country, that comes out to $64 per taxpayer per year.
Eliminating cigarettes and alcohol would just cause more people to live longer lives. They would spend more time retired, receiving government payouts but not working and paying taxes. Then they'd eventually die of something, and in the process they would most likely require medical treatments just as costly as the alcohol or tobacco-related ailments would have.
Bottom line: killing people off near retirement age like alcohol and tobacco tend to do most likely saves money in the GDP.
Actually, high-speed flywheels are a viable energy storage system. IIRC, the most advanced ones currently use a Kevlar ring suspended on magnetic bearings in a vacuum container.
The container has to be heavily armored, because if the flywheel fails and flies apart, all of the energy gets released at once. I saw a picture of the results of that in an article somewhere; it was a pretty big mess.
Considering that it would be storing the energy equivalent of 30 tons of TNT, if you were to notice the lid starting to bulge on that cap, it would be wise to run like hell.
I don't see why it needs to be an ion thruster at all. Just send up a small nuclear reactor, and have it power some kind of linear motor, steam catapult, high-tech trebuchet or other means of hurling material. With a 1 gigaton rock and a relatively low-performance catapult that pushes to 1000m/s, you would need to load up and eject 1 million tons of rubble to nudge the orbit by 1m/s. That sounds like a lot, but it's only equivalent to a the mass held in a few large seagoing cargo ships, and you have almost a century to get the job done.
the gold Spain brought back from the New World ignited centuries of economic growth and propelled Europe into the dominant group of nations on the planet.
It was actually more like: the gold Spain brought back from the new world created a major glut that significantly devalued the price of gold, and the resulting inflation ended up devastating Spain's economy.
Since gold had little if any actual intrinsic value in those times (today at least we can plate electrical connectors with it), acquiring more of it had just the same effect as printing more paper money today: it created inflation, not any new real wealth.
Sure, it's always sucked, especially in areas involving the "scary threat du jour". However, in this country there has always been pushback that eventually reigned in most of the abuses (sometimes after many years). You seem to be arguing against continuing that tradition. That position is far more indicative of a neocon than any kind of libertarian.
But are yuo willing to pay for the security you want, the liberty you demand, and still having them following all laws?
History shows it's vitally important that they follow the laws. Over the past century, a few tens of thousands have been killed by terrorists, but countless millions have been killed by the security apparatus of their own countries.
Organizations that wield such power need to be kept on a very short leash because they have a track record of turning on their own people. Keeping them in line is the first step to ensuring security, not some optional afterthought.
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I don't know about that. I recently saw a documentary on supertankers, and some expert was pointing out how efficient their operation was. They claimed that to move a shipment across an ocean only consumed the equivalent of 1% of the amount of oil delivered. There's no way that a jetliner would be able to achieve anything near the same feat; the total mass of fuel that they consume is on the same order as the mass of the payload they deliver. If jets were really so efficient, then there wouldn't be a demand for cargo ships.
That's nothing. A house recently went up for sale on my block, and the "for sale" sign had a URL on it like "http://1279morningwoodlane.com". This idea could generate a million throwaway domains every year.
I bet somebody has already applied for a patent on using street addresses as URLs for real estate sales.
That's inhibited by most pervasive and universal force in the world of engineering: NIH.
Each of us should be taking local actions to do our part for the planet. For example, I've been using my own anaerobic process to turn beer into methane gas for many years now.
If you don't want your SSN redistributed, you certainly don't post it on usenet. Duh.
If you have a problem, it's with the guy who made the post, not with Google. Google is simply operating a news server as it was designed to work, the same way news servers have been working for 3 decades.
It's not an ad hominem attack. Your opinions on this topic are dubious, and you don't understand how the law actually works in the real world. It's not as one-dimensional or simple as you seem to think.
Google doesn't need to enter into an agreement with you. In this case, if you post it via Yahoo, they 0wn it. By transmitting it to other news servers, Yahoo is sublicencing it as they see fit under terms of their choice, which they are entitled to do under this agreement. Most any ISP is going to have very similar terms.
Sure. Now, if you read the fine print of you agreement with your ISP or news server provider, you'll find that you almost certainly agreed to let them redistribute any of your usenet postings without restriction. Those are the terms you chose.
I suggest next time you just follow my suggestion and simply don't post your dubious opinions on usenet if you don't want them automatically reproduced.
I've got a much simpler idea: If you don't want something to get freely archived and redistributed by countless 3rd parties outside your control, why don't you just try not posting it on Usenet?
Just because some people put up with Apple's DRM doesn't mean that their DRM is effective at stopping piracy. In fact, the only reason so many people accept it is because it is so loose that a 10-year-old can avoid it by burning a CD. It's nothing more than a token gesture to appease clueless record industry executives.
Any DRM scheme that were tight enough to claim to *actually* prevent piracy would be annoying enough to be a total market failure (on top of being as just as technically ineffective as any other DRM).
It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, or if the pirates are callously destroying the industry. It's a fact of life: people cheat, and it's going to happen regardless of how difficult the media industry makes it for their paying customers to connect a player to a TV.
After the user has loaded the file into his iPod and then discovers that it won't play, he throws the device at a wall in a fit of anger. The file provokes him to cast his pod, hence the name.
As many others have pointed out, in 446 bytes, we can't do anything. All the Microsoft boot loader have historically done when it barfs is print something like "NT Loader not Found", and then left you "locked out of your system", just as GRUB did.
BTW, you're not really locked out. You can create a GRUB boot floppy and manually boot into your OS installation. You can also use the Windows CD to set the MBR back to its original state. Or you could use most Linux distros' rescue CDs to fix the problem.
For days all the headlines I've seen about this mission talk mainly about how risky it is. It looks like NASA has learned to saturate the PR channels with pessimism so that if things don't work out, people just figure "oh well", and if they do work out, NASA looks heroic for overcoming the odds.
I don't believe that you come out ahead. I know a couple of older people who have already had multiple joint replacements, each one of which cost tens of thousands of dollars. The longer you live, the more things you need to get patched up. In many cases, the costs of this extra care will exceed any reasonable salary that will be earned by continuing to work.
That chart shows the current budget at $16B. Assuming that there are around ~250 million actual taxpayers in this country, that comes out to $64 per taxpayer per year.
Bottom line: killing people off near retirement age like alcohol and tobacco tend to do most likely saves money in the GDP.
Actually, high-speed flywheels are a viable energy storage system. IIRC, the most advanced ones currently use a Kevlar ring suspended on magnetic bearings in a vacuum container.
The container has to be heavily armored, because if the flywheel fails and flies apart, all of the energy gets released at once. I saw a picture of the results of that in an article somewhere; it was a pretty big mess.
Yeah, but propane tanks haven't had a history of problems due to shoddy manufacturers filling them with substandard electrolytes.
Considering that it would be storing the energy equivalent of 30 tons of TNT, if you were to notice the lid starting to bulge on that cap, it would be wise to run like hell.
I don't see why it needs to be an ion thruster at all. Just send up a small nuclear reactor, and have it power some kind of linear motor, steam catapult, high-tech trebuchet or other means of hurling material. With a 1 gigaton rock and a relatively low-performance catapult that pushes to 1000m/s, you would need to load up and eject 1 million tons of rubble to nudge the orbit by 1m/s. That sounds like a lot, but it's only equivalent to a the mass held in a few large seagoing cargo ships, and you have almost a century to get the job done.
It was actually more like: the gold Spain brought back from the new world created a major glut that significantly devalued the price of gold, and the resulting inflation ended up devastating Spain's economy.
Since gold had little if any actual intrinsic value in those times (today at least we can plate electrical connectors with it), acquiring more of it had just the same effect as printing more paper money today: it created inflation, not any new real wealth.
That's exactly what happened in some localities when cars were first introduced.
Sure, it's always sucked, especially in areas involving the "scary threat du jour". However, in this country there has always been pushback that eventually reigned in most of the abuses (sometimes after many years). You seem to be arguing against continuing that tradition. That position is far more indicative of a neocon than any kind of libertarian.
History shows it's vitally important that they follow the laws. Over the past century, a few tens of thousands have been killed by terrorists, but countless millions have been killed by the security apparatus of their own countries.
Organizations that wield such power need to be kept on a very short leash because they have a track record of turning on their own people. Keeping them in line is the first step to ensuring security, not some optional afterthought.