Basing a calendar on the orbit of a planet when you might not be around the planet would be sort of silly. The calendar is created to standardize time such that when someone eventually leaves this solar system they have some time to use that isn't based on something they can no longer measure.
Earth time is handy if you are on earth but it's terribly inconvenient off it, partially because they are constantly applying corrections to that time to compensate for things like the planets rotation changing. You might not be aware of this but even thing like earthquakes that shift the planets mass around can and do changes the planets rotation. IIRC they have to apply "corrections" to the time every couple years to correct for these changes. These corrections would be meaningless to someone not on earth.
They may be a bit premature but eventually we'll need something like this for the people that (hopefully before we destroy ourselves) leave the solar system.
The only reason they used to be too small for IP was because the people that wanted to buy these small computers weren't planning on hooking them up to a network. They were used in industrial controls and cars and other applications where network connectivity was a non-issue.
NASA holding onto? Are you insane? The space shuttle was MANDATED by congress, just like the heavy lift rocket they are developing for no reason. Not only does congress tell NASA what to build, they insist certain companies and states manufacturing capacity be used. NASA often isn't even allowed to price shop because it would price ATK and other defense contractors out of competition. NASA is treated by congress as one great big pork barrel where rather than giving NASA options to reduce cost they force NASA to buy and build things they don't even want. Not unlike the military where congress frequently forces the military to buy defense products they don't want because some congresscritter's district holds the factory.
Remember Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex? Well NASA is a key component of that abuse because just like the DOD NASA spends enough money to draw the attention of those with influence who can make lots of money on those items.
Here here I've been saying that all along, I was terribly disappointed when he provided the legitimate espionage information, particularly on China. The NSA domestic surveillance of the US population was a direct threat to our republic. The surveillance of China allowed us to better understand the Chinese their motivations and their hot buttons.
And though I dislike spying on "allies" the point is that every nation must look out for their own interests. The NSA is most certainly spying on the German PM just as German security services are spying on the US president. This is par for the course and everyone realizes it but apparently all these ignorant people that have thought none of this is going on. Of course it is, and it's a good thing for exactly the same reasons as I listed for the Chinese.
The only kind of spying I find distasteful is non-targeted wholesale slurping of ordinary people and industrial espionage. Both have no real place in state security but eavesdropping on the head of state? Better believe everyone is doing it and each nation attempts to counter it.
Ultimately if Snowden ever returns to the US he's going to spend the rest of his life in Prison and by my account he deserves it.
I wasn't aware it was a sale contract, I thought Toyota leased them half the building with a buy to own provision and Toyota was using the other part of the factory for the Rav4 EV production.
It will be very interesting to see what Musk can do to pricing once he has that factory in full operation with 3 shifts. I'm willing to bet he puts one of the smaller car companies right out of business (or out of the US market) within a few years. If he can get the price of a car like the Model S (even with many of the Luxury features trimmed off) down to ~$40k he's going to be production constrained badly. In fact he's probably going to have to manage pricing a bit to ensure he doesn't ramp demand beyond production capability and piss a bunch of people off.
I would love to own a model S and it's fully worth the money in the mid 40k segment and it would be the number one car by sales if he could get the price to low $30k. Once the gigafactory comes online it will be just a matter of time till he can drive the price down. The other battery tech that's on the horizon boosts capacity and lowers price and weight and almost all of them are compatible with the current manufacturing tech meaning they'd just have to switch the factory over to the new chem process and they could start production on the same line.
If your concern is carbon emissions, diesel offers almost not advantage over gasoline. Considering it contains more than 30% more carbon (and energy) per volume explains much of the difference. The diesel isn't more efficient, there's just more carbon and energy in the fuel. Because of that they reduce the fuel tank and these days the diesel price reflects the energy differential though I think you still get a slight price per mile advantage over gas.
If you want a fair comparison you need to take that 76MPG and multiply it by 2/3rd to get the rough equivalent in gas. Or if you like in Europe you can compare the carbon emissions per mile on the sticker which you will find are roughly equivalent to the gas model. The only time you see a difference is if one of the engines is advantaged by a turbo charger.
It's not really the engineering so much as the lack of commitment. Building a small number of these on a one off process makes the prices silly. If they built the real full production assembly line and put the engineering into the cost reductions they'd have a far cheaper car where the costs would go down year over year as the supply and manufacturing scale play into price reductions.
Honestly the battery IS expensive but it's not that much more expensive than all the junk you are losing and many buyers fail to take into account all the positives such as the fact that you will never change the oil or have to flush a cooling system again. There are a dozen different systems in an ICE car that are no longer needed in an electric car. Combine this with the fact that battery advances have spend up dramatically over the last decade and any manufacturer that isn't prepared for the electric car is going to get their lunch eaten and FIAT has just proved they are in the latter category.
Just FYI Tesla is making money on every car sold, pretty decent money too. The problem they face is that selling only 20k cars a year they can't keep an entire production line busy, let alone an entire plant (they are renting a line in a Toyota factory part time). The average car plant runs 24/7 with three shifts and can push upwards of several hundred thousand vehicles a year. Once you get to that volume your factory costs are spread so thin and design costs spread out that you're pushing the manufacturing cost right down to the price of parts (which are also driven down by the volume).
I personally have no doubt in my mind that once Tesla gets Panasonic's battery factory built and they can fully take over the soon to be abandoned Toyota production facilities in California that they'll be able to push enough volume to cut the Model-S price in half. I'd pay $40k for a Model S so fast I'd be a blur running by and I suspect I wouldn't be alone jumping in line, after all the equivalent of a gallon of gas in an electric car is about 5 cents and I'd be fully willing to keep a gas car on standby (or even rent) if I needed more than 300 miles and didn't think the Model S could get me there.
It's actually kind of surprising how short sighted these other manufacturers are because of their ties to fossil fuels. Tesla should be giving these CEO's nightmares. I suspect they think they can shift production (or possibly get Musk to sell them the parts) if Musk is successful but I think they will find they are so far behind in the technology and Tesla has secured exclusive access to key resources that they'll get their lunch eaten and it's possible some of the big boys will end up going bankrupt.
Generally refusing? You are demonstrating a clear lack of knowledge. It's a violation of medical ethics to assist in state sanctioned murder. The AMA and every single licensing board in the US will revoke a doctors medical license in a heartbeat for participating in state sanctioned murder and they bloody well should. Would you go to a doctor who kills people as a side job?
Amazon is using tried and true business methods here to lower costs by strong arming the producers. As long as they aren't a monopoly (and they aren't unless B&N goes out of business) there is absolutely nothing illegal about what they are doing. In fact it might just lower prices for consumers at the expense of revenue for the publishers and I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.
Consider their goal is lower prices overall I support their push to force publishers to lower book prices. eBook prices in particular are absurd, publishers took the opportunity to dramatically boost profit margins (I wouldn't be surprised if eBook pricing had boosted profits triple their dead tree version) and I love the idea of Amazon using their size and sales volume as a weapon to bring those prices back in line with dead tree versions. Publishers fuck the authors over just like the music and movie companies and they all deserve a healthy slap and dramatically reduced margins, selling a book shouldn't net more than 10% ROI IMO and should be closer to 3%.
Those stateside operation limits were removed as part of the patriot act and the removal IIRC was made permanent during the bush admin. Though I can't recall if it was both the NSA or CIA or only the NSA.
The patriot act was one scary jumble of stuff that these agencies had wanted for a very long time. It shouldn't surprise you that those limits were waved when it was passed.
You free teachers to teach and they might do something like teach students about evolution. Then you have to go through all the bother of trying them and putting them in jail.
No need to hope, ask yourself with a straight face what "anticipated research" is. They've buried it in a legitimate complaint that you can sue for (and likely have no chance of prevailing on the legitimate portion) but I guarantee their whole case turns on the idea that they can sue for "anticipated research".
They put in all the other easily disprovable stuff so the case isn't dismissed by summary judgement so they can try to argue that what ever was in Carmack's head was "anticipated research" that even though he didn't actually do any of it for Zenimax (because they wouldn't let him work on it) they still own it. See they have to call it anticipated research because if they claimed they owned all his future work the case would be thrown out in a heartbeat. So we have a lawsuit about "anticipated research".
That's silly, it's different crimes. Different crimes have different prison sentences. 4oz of crack will get you a nearly life sentence where the same amount of cocaine will get you a month or two. Is the baking soda and cooking process that important that it'll net you a sentence 10 times worse?
Obama actually did try to close Guantanamo. He was blocked by Congress, with particular blocking by some very strong Republican opposition.
Personally I think we should charge them and put them in a nice supermax for life. We're wasting time, money and valuable assets holding those guys in Cuba and it's beyond stupid. Bring them home and let civilian guards watch them, let them "congregate" with US prisoners. Bush's claim that you couldn't get them convicted is just BS. Every single terrorist they've tried in the US has been convicted and received HUGE prison time. The only reason not to bring them home is you don't have any actual evidence they did anything.
They wouldn't allow him to work on it which is one of the reasons he left so he didn't do anything on zenimax's equipment.
They are essentially claiming ownership of things in his head that he didn't work on, just thought about. That's what line 23 is talking about ownership of things he thought about.
This is about Zenimax rent seeking on Facebook. They think they can extract a pound of flesh now that Occulus has deep pockets backing it.
Prison does that. Americans are so interested in retribution and punishment that they forget what can happen to someone you treat like an animal, particularly given that said person will be released some day. The ironic part is that death row inmates are treated far better.
In a certain Christian sect that values free agency that believes that Satan had a plan that involved basically outlawing sin and thereby saving everyone. He would have done this by taking away everyone's freedom to sin. The plan was rejected and Satan went to war against god.
This same sect supports the "war" on drugs which has as it's goal to make sin illegal and to punish that sin even though their own religious books tell them and judgement and punishment will come from god and not man.
This is the biggest struggle those of us that oppose the war on drugs face, that is convincing people that you can't protect people from themselves. It's like making suicide illegal, utterly and totally pointless. We should try to help people but everyone should have the choice to live their life and even die the way they choose.
The birth of the order primates in relationship to the birth of humans has little to nothing to do with what I said. As I noted research has indicated that the selection pressure that caused homo sapiens development was a switch in climate triggered by an ice age, but this has little to nothing to do with the birth of the order primate.
We are a species that is and was born during the ice age cycles and our very development was directly related to those ice ages. Those ice ages are something we may very well have ended possibly for millions of years. Again, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at 400ppm hasn't been seen by the human species till now.
Terra-forming Earth back to the climate of the dinosaurs is likely to have extreme consequences for our species. Sensible people realize we don't fully comprehend exactly what it will mean for our species with this ongoing climate alteration.
The US has aggressively been targeting tax evaders since about 2008. They've collected billions in back taxes, penalties and interest. Most haven't gone to jail because they are using the government's amnesty program that grants amnesty from criminal charges and partial penalty relief (but still typically takes better than 50% of the value of the accounts often far more than the taxes and interest).
The interesting bit is each year you don't come forward the amount of penalties they reduce goes down. If you took them up in 2008 you got a pretty decent deal, not so in 2014. With the steady decrease in what they will forgive they are setting the stage for genuine criminal prosecutions once the amnesty programs winds down in a few more years. IIRC the IRS has estimated they've discovered and taxed better than 50% of the hidden accounts and the people coming forward goes up each year because of the agreements the US is striking with other nations is revealing the tax cheats. Fact is you either come forward using the amnesty program and take your lumps or in a few years you could be looking at jail time.
And if you had actually read the real research those garbage stories are referring to you would know that those volcano's have little to no effect on the ice sheet because the ice refreezes almost immediately after it's melted due to the fact that it's under several hundred (up to thousands) feet of ice. Hell, even the steam vents refreeze all the moisture in the air before the gases reach open air (creating some rather magnificent stalactites and ice formations).
The last time the earth had atmospheric concentrations of CO2 of 400ppm there weren't any humans. We were a species born of the ice age (at least all the evidence points to the early primates leaving the trees because all the trees in the area died during the ice age when the area turned into grassland).
Yea it's $300 and google will let you pay it over a year as a monthly fee of $25 a month. Amazingly that's right at the low end of your $25-30 range you listed.
Slashdot Mirror
Basing a calendar on the orbit of a planet when you might not be around the planet would be sort of silly. The calendar is created to standardize time such that when someone eventually leaves this solar system they have some time to use that isn't based on something they can no longer measure.
Earth time is handy if you are on earth but it's terribly inconvenient off it, partially because they are constantly applying corrections to that time to compensate for things like the planets rotation changing. You might not be aware of this but even thing like earthquakes that shift the planets mass around can and do changes the planets rotation. IIRC they have to apply "corrections" to the time every couple years to correct for these changes. These corrections would be meaningless to someone not on earth.
They may be a bit premature but eventually we'll need something like this for the people that (hopefully before we destroy ourselves) leave the solar system.
The only reason they used to be too small for IP was because the people that wanted to buy these small computers weren't planning on hooking them up to a network. They were used in industrial controls and cars and other applications where network connectivity was a non-issue.
NASA holding onto? Are you insane? The space shuttle was MANDATED by congress, just like the heavy lift rocket they are developing for no reason. Not only does congress tell NASA what to build, they insist certain companies and states manufacturing capacity be used. NASA often isn't even allowed to price shop because it would price ATK and other defense contractors out of competition. NASA is treated by congress as one great big pork barrel where rather than giving NASA options to reduce cost they force NASA to buy and build things they don't even want. Not unlike the military where congress frequently forces the military to buy defense products they don't want because some congresscritter's district holds the factory.
Remember Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex? Well NASA is a key component of that abuse because just like the DOD NASA spends enough money to draw the attention of those with influence who can make lots of money on those items.
Here here I've been saying that all along, I was terribly disappointed when he provided the legitimate espionage information, particularly on China. The NSA domestic surveillance of the US population was a direct threat to our republic. The surveillance of China allowed us to better understand the Chinese their motivations and their hot buttons.
And though I dislike spying on "allies" the point is that every nation must look out for their own interests. The NSA is most certainly spying on the German PM just as German security services are spying on the US president. This is par for the course and everyone realizes it but apparently all these ignorant people that have thought none of this is going on. Of course it is, and it's a good thing for exactly the same reasons as I listed for the Chinese.
The only kind of spying I find distasteful is non-targeted wholesale slurping of ordinary people and industrial espionage. Both have no real place in state security but eavesdropping on the head of state? Better believe everyone is doing it and each nation attempts to counter it.
Ultimately if Snowden ever returns to the US he's going to spend the rest of his life in Prison and by my account he deserves it.
I wasn't aware it was a sale contract, I thought Toyota leased them half the building with a buy to own provision and Toyota was using the other part of the factory for the Rav4 EV production.
It will be very interesting to see what Musk can do to pricing once he has that factory in full operation with 3 shifts. I'm willing to bet he puts one of the smaller car companies right out of business (or out of the US market) within a few years. If he can get the price of a car like the Model S (even with many of the Luxury features trimmed off) down to ~$40k he's going to be production constrained badly. In fact he's probably going to have to manage pricing a bit to ensure he doesn't ramp demand beyond production capability and piss a bunch of people off.
I would love to own a model S and it's fully worth the money in the mid 40k segment and it would be the number one car by sales if he could get the price to low $30k. Once the gigafactory comes online it will be just a matter of time till he can drive the price down. The other battery tech that's on the horizon boosts capacity and lowers price and weight and almost all of them are compatible with the current manufacturing tech meaning they'd just have to switch the factory over to the new chem process and they could start production on the same line.
It really can't come soon enough.
By the time Meg and Carly are both done there isn't going to be an HP anymore. Meg wouldn't be a republican if she didn't destroy HP.
If your concern is carbon emissions, diesel offers almost not advantage over gasoline. Considering it contains more than 30% more carbon (and energy) per volume explains much of the difference. The diesel isn't more efficient, there's just more carbon and energy in the fuel. Because of that they reduce the fuel tank and these days the diesel price reflects the energy differential though I think you still get a slight price per mile advantage over gas.
If you want a fair comparison you need to take that 76MPG and multiply it by 2/3rd to get the rough equivalent in gas. Or if you like in Europe you can compare the carbon emissions per mile on the sticker which you will find are roughly equivalent to the gas model. The only time you see a difference is if one of the engines is advantaged by a turbo charger.
It's not really the engineering so much as the lack of commitment. Building a small number of these on a one off process makes the prices silly. If they built the real full production assembly line and put the engineering into the cost reductions they'd have a far cheaper car where the costs would go down year over year as the supply and manufacturing scale play into price reductions.
Honestly the battery IS expensive but it's not that much more expensive than all the junk you are losing and many buyers fail to take into account all the positives such as the fact that you will never change the oil or have to flush a cooling system again. There are a dozen different systems in an ICE car that are no longer needed in an electric car. Combine this with the fact that battery advances have spend up dramatically over the last decade and any manufacturer that isn't prepared for the electric car is going to get their lunch eaten and FIAT has just proved they are in the latter category.
Just FYI Tesla is making money on every car sold, pretty decent money too. The problem they face is that selling only 20k cars a year they can't keep an entire production line busy, let alone an entire plant (they are renting a line in a Toyota factory part time). The average car plant runs 24/7 with three shifts and can push upwards of several hundred thousand vehicles a year. Once you get to that volume your factory costs are spread so thin and design costs spread out that you're pushing the manufacturing cost right down to the price of parts (which are also driven down by the volume).
I personally have no doubt in my mind that once Tesla gets Panasonic's battery factory built and they can fully take over the soon to be abandoned Toyota production facilities in California that they'll be able to push enough volume to cut the Model-S price in half. I'd pay $40k for a Model S so fast I'd be a blur running by and I suspect I wouldn't be alone jumping in line, after all the equivalent of a gallon of gas in an electric car is about 5 cents and I'd be fully willing to keep a gas car on standby (or even rent) if I needed more than 300 miles and didn't think the Model S could get me there.
It's actually kind of surprising how short sighted these other manufacturers are because of their ties to fossil fuels. Tesla should be giving these CEO's nightmares. I suspect they think they can shift production (or possibly get Musk to sell them the parts) if Musk is successful but I think they will find they are so far behind in the technology and Tesla has secured exclusive access to key resources that they'll get their lunch eaten and it's possible some of the big boys will end up going bankrupt.
Generally refusing? You are demonstrating a clear lack of knowledge. It's a violation of medical ethics to assist in state sanctioned murder. The AMA and every single licensing board in the US will revoke a doctors medical license in a heartbeat for participating in state sanctioned murder and they bloody well should. Would you go to a doctor who kills people as a side job?
Neither is acceptable as you noted but you can be released from Prison, we haven't found any way to reverse death.
Amazon is using tried and true business methods here to lower costs by strong arming the producers. As long as they aren't a monopoly (and they aren't unless B&N goes out of business) there is absolutely nothing illegal about what they are doing. In fact it might just lower prices for consumers at the expense of revenue for the publishers and I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.
Consider their goal is lower prices overall I support their push to force publishers to lower book prices. eBook prices in particular are absurd, publishers took the opportunity to dramatically boost profit margins (I wouldn't be surprised if eBook pricing had boosted profits triple their dead tree version) and I love the idea of Amazon using their size and sales volume as a weapon to bring those prices back in line with dead tree versions. Publishers fuck the authors over just like the music and movie companies and they all deserve a healthy slap and dramatically reduced margins, selling a book shouldn't net more than 10% ROI IMO and should be closer to 3%.
Those stateside operation limits were removed as part of the patriot act and the removal IIRC was made permanent during the bush admin. Though I can't recall if it was both the NSA or CIA or only the NSA.
The patriot act was one scary jumble of stuff that these agencies had wanted for a very long time. It shouldn't surprise you that those limits were waved when it was passed.
You free teachers to teach and they might do something like teach students about evolution. Then you have to go through all the bother of trying them and putting them in jail.
And the "classic" 7 continents model calls Europe a continent when it's not.
No need to hope, ask yourself with a straight face what "anticipated research" is. They've buried it in a legitimate complaint that you can sue for (and likely have no chance of prevailing on the legitimate portion) but I guarantee their whole case turns on the idea that they can sue for "anticipated research".
They put in all the other easily disprovable stuff so the case isn't dismissed by summary judgement so they can try to argue that what ever was in Carmack's head was "anticipated research" that even though he didn't actually do any of it for Zenimax (because they wouldn't let him work on it) they still own it. See they have to call it anticipated research because if they claimed they owned all his future work the case would be thrown out in a heartbeat. So we have a lawsuit about "anticipated research".
That's silly, it's different crimes. Different crimes have different prison sentences. 4oz of crack will get you a nearly life sentence where the same amount of cocaine will get you a month or two. Is the baking soda and cooking process that important that it'll net you a sentence 10 times worse?
Obama actually did try to close Guantanamo. He was blocked by Congress, with particular blocking by some very strong Republican opposition.
Personally I think we should charge them and put them in a nice supermax for life. We're wasting time, money and valuable assets holding those guys in Cuba and it's beyond stupid. Bring them home and let civilian guards watch them, let them "congregate" with US prisoners. Bush's claim that you couldn't get them convicted is just BS. Every single terrorist they've tried in the US has been convicted and received HUGE prison time. The only reason not to bring them home is you don't have any actual evidence they did anything.
They wouldn't allow him to work on it which is one of the reasons he left so he didn't do anything on zenimax's equipment.
They are essentially claiming ownership of things in his head that he didn't work on, just thought about. That's what line 23 is talking about ownership of things he thought about.
This is about Zenimax rent seeking on Facebook. They think they can extract a pound of flesh now that Occulus has deep pockets backing it.
Prison does that. Americans are so interested in retribution and punishment that they forget what can happen to someone you treat like an animal, particularly given that said person will be released some day. The ironic part is that death row inmates are treated far better.
In a certain Christian sect that values free agency that believes that Satan had a plan that involved basically outlawing sin and thereby saving everyone. He would have done this by taking away everyone's freedom to sin. The plan was rejected and Satan went to war against god.
This same sect supports the "war" on drugs which has as it's goal to make sin illegal and to punish that sin even though their own religious books tell them and judgement and punishment will come from god and not man.
This is the biggest struggle those of us that oppose the war on drugs face, that is convincing people that you can't protect people from themselves. It's like making suicide illegal, utterly and totally pointless. We should try to help people but everyone should have the choice to live their life and even die the way they choose.
The birth of the order primates in relationship to the birth of humans has little to nothing to do with what I said. As I noted research has indicated that the selection pressure that caused homo sapiens development was a switch in climate triggered by an ice age, but this has little to nothing to do with the birth of the order primate.
We are a species that is and was born during the ice age cycles and our very development was directly related to those ice ages. Those ice ages are something we may very well have ended possibly for millions of years. Again, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at 400ppm hasn't been seen by the human species till now.
Terra-forming Earth back to the climate of the dinosaurs is likely to have extreme consequences for our species. Sensible people realize we don't fully comprehend exactly what it will mean for our species with this ongoing climate alteration.
The US has aggressively been targeting tax evaders since about 2008. They've collected billions in back taxes, penalties and interest. Most haven't gone to jail because they are using the government's amnesty program that grants amnesty from criminal charges and partial penalty relief (but still typically takes better than 50% of the value of the accounts often far more than the taxes and interest).
The interesting bit is each year you don't come forward the amount of penalties they reduce goes down. If you took them up in 2008 you got a pretty decent deal, not so in 2014. With the steady decrease in what they will forgive they are setting the stage for genuine criminal prosecutions once the amnesty programs winds down in a few more years. IIRC the IRS has estimated they've discovered and taxed better than 50% of the hidden accounts and the people coming forward goes up each year because of the agreements the US is striking with other nations is revealing the tax cheats. Fact is you either come forward using the amnesty program and take your lumps or in a few years you could be looking at jail time.
And if you had actually read the real research those garbage stories are referring to you would know that those volcano's have little to no effect on the ice sheet because the ice refreezes almost immediately after it's melted due to the fact that it's under several hundred (up to thousands) feet of ice. Hell, even the steam vents refreeze all the moisture in the air before the gases reach open air (creating some rather magnificent stalactites and ice formations).
The last time the earth had atmospheric concentrations of CO2 of 400ppm there weren't any humans. We were a species born of the ice age (at least all the evidence points to the early primates leaving the trees because all the trees in the area died during the ice age when the area turned into grassland).
Yea it's $300 and google will let you pay it over a year as a monthly fee of $25 a month. Amazingly that's right at the low end of your $25-30 range you listed.