Yes, but the parent I was replying to claimed that "I don't think corporations should be able to hold copyright or patents". That's what my response was to.
Because many of us North Americans have "Moneyback" or "AirMiles" deals on our credit cards. After I've spent the first $1,000 each year on Visa, I get 1% back from them on everything thereafter. On the other hand, my Mastercard gives me 1 Airmile (real air miles, i.e. one hundred airmiles means you get a one hundred mile round trip ticket) for every $15 spent on the card. I've taken the whole family to Cuba twice on this deal in the last few years.
Plus, if I buy something on the 25th of December, I get the bill January 22nd and it's not due until February 14th.
They don't keep you from running, they keep you from winning, often at the primary stage or earlier. If rich and poor in the US had an equal chance of winning elections then Congress wouldn't consist almost exclusively of multimillionaires.
Admittedly this presumes some connection between corporations and multimillionaires, but I'm willing to make that leap.
Well it's true that if you want a MakerBot assembled instead of a kit the price doubles ($2499 vs. $1299). And the kit is not for beginners, nor do they guarantee anything at all if you choose the kit option. Nevertheless, it's a pretty impressive device.
But I do admit that if I didn't use for 3D prototypes in my job, it would probably just be infrequently used for toys / game bits and the occasional novelty item.
It's complicated to make, but it's not complicated to use -- any ten-year-old playing games like DND or Warhammer 30000 can use it easily to make any pieces they want -- and they can find thousands of them online. Saves more than the cost of the machine just in stupid pewter models.
My three pre-teenish kids are totally able to use our MakerBot Thing-o-Matic to do this already. It's only slightly over 1K$ and can print anything (almost) from thingiverse.com or things they make themselves in Google Sketchup.
Sorry, I was unclear. I should have said "...to the penny. How many of those (cash transactions) do you actually make in a day?".
The point I was trying to make is: - When using debit or credit cards, nothing changes; - When buying more than one article, the total is rounded to the nearest nickle but it almost always balances out (because they can't know how many things you will buy); - When buying one article, the cost is rounded to the nearest nickel, which some claim will usually wind up being upwards.
So one only loses out in the last case -- buying a single item with cash -- each instance of which will at worst cost you two cents.
If they do it in the same way as e.g. the (pre-Euro) Netherlands, the prices don't change at all. It's only rounded when you pay, and it's the total purchase amount that gets rounded up or down, not each item. So if you buy one carton of milk, it's $0.98, and you have to pay $1.00 -- thus they get 2 cents. But if you buy two, it's 1.96, and you pay $1.95 -- and you get a penny. So the most you can win or lose is two cents per store you visit, and even with clever pricing on the store's part, it often works in your favor anyway.
Anyway, it's only on cash transactions, as debit and credit transactions are still always done to the penny. How many of those do you actually make in a day?
Having more than once been in your boss's role, you mustn't forget the costs involved with doing what you ask. Since (we assume) the company is not yet public, then depending on the current structure, this could involve significant legal fees to set up. In my experience, which is limited, this has ranged from $5,000 to $30,000. Of course, this doesn't apply if the company already has a mechanism to provide equity to its employees.
In addition to the other suggestions, be sensitive to whether or not they can easily make this change.
In installations where the speakers are not near the amp (e.g. speakers in other rooms), a 50m run (= 100m round trip) of 14 gauge copper wire has a reactance of about 1.47 ohms at 1kHz. If your speakers are 8 ohms, this means your amp is trying to drive about 9.5 ohms, and about 16% of the power is being lost in the wire.
Not a huge amount, but worth evaluating the cost of upgraded wire vs. upgrading your amp.
Got rid of both the TV and cable 12 years ago when the first kid was born. Gave the kids a PC and lots of (video) DVDs that we approved of. Now they're older, they watch (mostly crappy) series on YouTube and get (a little better) TV series in DVD boxed sets (Firefly, Buffy, Red Dwarf, that kind of stuff).
A few years ago we set up an projection system, fed by BluRay, Wii, XBox or, in very rare cases, WinTV on a Boot-camped MacBook. But still (nearly) no commercials.
In the meantime, I can watch important events (elections, catastrophies, playoffs) when I want to, either on a web feed from some news organization, or in HD using the over-the-air digital TV on my Samsung desktop combination monitor/TV.
Still don't pay a penny to anyone except for DVDs, BluRays, and projector bulbs.
Human vision uses several cues to determine relative depths in a perceived scene[1]. Some of these cues are:
* Stereopsis
* Accommodation of the eyeball (eyeball focus)
* Occlusion of one object by another
* Subtended visual angle of an object of known size
* Linear perspective (convergence of parallel edges)
* Vertical position (objects higher in the scene generally tend to be perceived as further away)
* Haze, desaturation, and a shift to bluishness
* Change in size of textured pattern detail
All the above cues, with the exception of the first two, are present in traditional two-dimensional images such as paintings, photographs, and television. Stereoscopy is the enhancement of the illusion of depth in a photograph, movie, or other two-dimensional image by presenting a slightly different image to each eye, and thereby adding the first of these cues (stereopsis) as well. It is important to note that the second cue is still not satisfied and therefore the illusion of depth is incomplete.
No, but the people doing it are new to it, and very few bother trying to learn from any previous efforts in the field (a disease avant-garde / experimental filmmakers are especially prone to).
Actually polarized viewing of 3D has been around since at least 1936 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarized_3D_glasses](see history). A bigger advance was made in the 1980's when IMAX started A) paying proper attention to the detailed mathematical accuracy required and B) had enough breadth of image to show interesting 3D content. But you are right about the digital technology aspects, which have arrived only in the last decade or so.
Leave your door wide open all day. Leave the music on, but at normal listening level. At night, close the door but don't lock it. Have kids, let them play with a sprinkler in the yard. Let the kids get into frequent fights (it doesn't matter whether they are play fights or real fights, they are both intimidating to just about everyone). Get the kids lots of pets, especially odd ones that get lost all through the house. Have the kids' friends over all the time, and tell your friends to drop by too -- aim for 10-15 people for dinner every night.
Hell, it's worked for us for 15 years and not a single theft in site...
No, that's wrong. A typical North American vehicle gets about 6 miles on a tank of diesel. I learned this after my (first) wife filled my Mazda RX-7 with diesel instead of gasoline, and she got about 6 miles from the gas station before the car died.
We make S3D movies. Lots of them, in HD, IMAX, 2K DCP, etc. Tons and tons of data, with lots of revisions, none of which any creator ever actually is willing to get rid of.
Our server array is (mostly) made up of machines each of which has a 14-bay case, a fairly basic mobo with 6 onboard SATA ports, two added 4-port PCI-E SATA controllers for a total of 14 x 2TB = 28TB per server for less than $1K not including drives. Our servers happen (for stupid red-tape reasons) to run W2K8 Server but any SAMBA equivalent would work just as well.
No redundancy or backup though: this is only for (easily reproducible) render output. Key stuff is kept on systems with RAID-5 arrays, nightly mirroring, etc.
Good thing you didn't post your location -- a clear case of child abuse if ever there was one!
Now my first child could tear down a machine and do a full reinstall of Windows 95 before he reached the age of 9 -- and the skill supported him all the way through both high school and college.
I was actually looking forward to reading your link until I read the footer: "The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies...".
Digital cinema conforms to DCI standards which allows (eve expects) dramatic image compression in the content (check out Digital Cinema Initiative on Wikipedia.
Very very few players are using uncompressed pipelines from end to end.
Your body has always had six senses: Sight, Touch, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Balance. Why the tradition has been to claim there are only five is beyond me.
But most IT managers don't think it's crap (Vista excluded). They just think it's a PITA, because it's expensive, bloated, requires endless updates, needs extensive anti-virus support, yada, yada, yada. On the other hand, it generally works, is broadly compatible, won't get you fired, and allows the IT department extensive control at all levels of the hierarchy (via GPOs etc).
In summary (for those of us who remember the 1970's), just the same reasons why most IT managers bought their equipment from IBM rather the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) back in the heyday of the mainframes. And look where Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell are now (at least in terms of mainframe sales)...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but the parent I was replying to claimed that "I don't think corporations should be able to hold copyright or patents". That's what my response was to.
So does that mean that I, as an employer, am unable to hire / employ someone to invent a something new for me? If not, how would I do so?
Because many of us North Americans have "Moneyback" or "AirMiles" deals on our credit cards. After I've spent the first $1,000 each year on Visa, I get 1% back from them on everything thereafter. On the other hand, my Mastercard gives me 1 Airmile (real air miles, i.e. one hundred airmiles means you get a one hundred mile round trip ticket) for every $15 spent on the card. I've taken the whole family to Cuba twice on this deal in the last few years.
Plus, if I buy something on the 25th of December, I get the bill January 22nd and it's not due until February 14th.
They don't keep you from running, they keep you from winning, often at the primary stage or earlier. If rich and poor in the US had an equal chance of winning elections then Congress wouldn't consist almost exclusively of multimillionaires.
Admittedly this presumes some connection between corporations and multimillionaires, but I'm willing to make that leap.
Well it's true that if you want a MakerBot assembled instead of a kit the price doubles ($2499 vs. $1299). And the kit is not for beginners, nor do they guarantee anything at all if you choose the kit option. Nevertheless, it's a pretty impressive device.
But I do admit that if I didn't use for 3D prototypes in my job, it would probably just be infrequently used for toys / game bits and the occasional novelty item.
It's complicated to make, but it's not complicated to use -- any ten-year-old playing games like DND or Warhammer 30000 can use it easily to make any pieces they want -- and they can find thousands of them online. Saves more than the cost of the machine just in stupid pewter models.
Can you use it to replace that one lost Lego block (most likely went up the vacuum cleaner) that you need in order to complete your masterpiece?
Yes, of course. See for example http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:591.
My three pre-teenish kids are totally able to use our MakerBot Thing-o-Matic to do this already. It's only slightly over 1K$ and can print anything (almost) from thingiverse.com or things they make themselves in Google Sketchup.
So what makes this new thing better?
These aren't "new", they're the same images that were floating around last week -- they're from the 15th, for heaven's sake!
Sorry, I was unclear. I should have said "...to the penny. How many of those (cash transactions) do you actually make in a day?".
The point I was trying to make is:
- When using debit or credit cards, nothing changes;
- When buying more than one article, the total is rounded to the nearest nickle but it almost always balances out (because they can't know how many things you will buy);
- When buying one article, the cost is rounded to the nearest nickel, which some claim will usually wind up being upwards.
So one only loses out in the last case -- buying a single item with cash -- each instance of which will at worst cost you two cents.
No. At least not necessarily so.
If they do it in the same way as e.g. the (pre-Euro) Netherlands, the prices don't change at all. It's only rounded when you pay, and it's the total purchase amount that gets rounded up or down, not each item. So if you buy one carton of milk, it's $0.98, and you have to pay $1.00 -- thus they get 2 cents. But if you buy two, it's 1.96, and you pay $1.95 -- and you get a penny. So the most you can win or lose is two cents per store you visit, and even with clever pricing on the store's part, it often works in your favor anyway.
Anyway, it's only on cash transactions, as debit and credit transactions are still always done to the penny. How many of those do you actually make in a day?
Having more than once been in your boss's role, you mustn't forget the costs involved with doing what you ask. Since (we assume) the company is not yet public, then depending on the current structure, this could involve significant legal fees to set up. In my experience, which is limited, this has ranged from $5,000 to $30,000. Of course, this doesn't apply if the company already has a mechanism to provide equity to its employees.
In addition to the other suggestions, be sensitive to whether or not they can easily make this change.
In installations where the speakers are not near the amp (e.g. speakers in other rooms), a 50m run (= 100m round trip) of 14 gauge copper wire has a reactance of about 1.47 ohms at 1kHz. If your speakers are 8 ohms, this means your amp is trying to drive about 9.5 ohms, and about 16% of the power is being lost in the wire.
Not a huge amount, but worth evaluating the cost of upgraded wire vs. upgrading your amp.
Got rid of both the TV and cable 12 years ago when the first kid was born. Gave the kids a PC and lots of (video) DVDs that we approved of. Now they're older, they watch (mostly crappy) series on YouTube and get (a little better) TV series in DVD boxed sets (Firefly, Buffy, Red Dwarf, that kind of stuff).
A few years ago we set up an projection system, fed by BluRay, Wii, XBox or, in very rare cases, WinTV on a Boot-camped MacBook. But still (nearly) no commercials.
In the meantime, I can watch important events (elections, catastrophies, playoffs) when I want to, either on a web feed from some news organization, or in HD using the over-the-air digital TV on my Samsung desktop combination monitor/TV.
Still don't pay a penny to anyone except for DVDs, BluRays, and projector bulbs.
From Wikipedia:
Human vision uses several cues to determine relative depths in a perceived scene[1]. Some of these cues are:
* Stereopsis
* Accommodation of the eyeball (eyeball focus)
* Occlusion of one object by another
* Subtended visual angle of an object of known size
* Linear perspective (convergence of parallel edges)
* Vertical position (objects higher in the scene generally tend to be perceived as further away)
* Haze, desaturation, and a shift to bluishness
* Change in size of textured pattern detail
All the above cues, with the exception of the first two, are present in traditional two-dimensional images such as paintings, photographs, and television. Stereoscopy is the enhancement of the illusion of depth in a photograph, movie, or other two-dimensional image by presenting a slightly different image to each eye, and thereby adding the first of these cues (stereopsis) as well. It is important to note that the second cue is still not satisfied and therefore the illusion of depth is incomplete.
No, but the people doing it are new to it, and very few bother trying to learn from any previous efforts in the field (a disease avant-garde / experimental filmmakers are especially prone to).
Actually polarized viewing of 3D has been around since at least 1936 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarized_3D_glasses](see history). A bigger advance was made in the 1980's when IMAX started A) paying proper attention to the detailed mathematical accuracy required and B) had enough breadth of image to show interesting 3D content. But you are right about the digital technology aspects, which have arrived only in the last decade or so.
Leave your door wide open all day. Leave the music on, but at normal listening level. At night, close the door but don't lock it. Have kids, let them play with a sprinkler in the yard. Let the kids get into frequent fights (it doesn't matter whether they are play fights or real fights, they are both intimidating to just about everyone). Get the kids lots of pets, especially odd ones that get lost all through the house. Have the kids' friends over all the time, and tell your friends to drop by too -- aim for 10-15 people for dinner every night.
Hell, it's worked for us for 15 years and not a single theft in site...
No, that's wrong. A typical North American vehicle gets about 6 miles on a tank of diesel. I learned this after my (first) wife filled my Mazda RX-7 with diesel instead of gasoline, and she got about 6 miles from the gas station before the car died.
We make S3D movies. Lots of them, in HD, IMAX, 2K DCP, etc. Tons and tons of data, with lots of revisions, none of which any creator ever actually is willing to get rid of.
Our server array is (mostly) made up of machines each of which has a 14-bay case, a fairly basic mobo with 6 onboard SATA ports, two added 4-port PCI-E SATA controllers for a total of 14 x 2TB = 28TB per server for less than $1K not including drives. Our servers happen (for stupid red-tape reasons) to run W2K8 Server but any SAMBA equivalent would work just as well.
No redundancy or backup though: this is only for (easily reproducible) render output. Key stuff is kept on systems with RAID-5 arrays, nightly mirroring, etc.
Good thing you didn't post your location -- a clear case of child abuse if ever there was one!
Now my first child could tear down a machine and do a full reinstall of Windows 95 before he reached the age of 9 -- and the skill supported him all the way through both high school and college.
I was actually looking forward to reading your link until I read the footer: "The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies...".
Clearly unbiased, then.
Wrong.
Digital cinema conforms to DCI standards which allows (eve expects) dramatic image compression in the content (check out Digital Cinema Initiative on Wikipedia.
Very very few players are using uncompressed pipelines from end to end.
Your body has always had six senses: Sight, Touch, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Balance. Why the tradition has been to claim there are only five is beyond me.
But most IT managers don't think it's crap (Vista excluded). They just think it's a PITA, because it's expensive, bloated, requires endless updates, needs extensive anti-virus support, yada, yada, yada. On the other hand, it generally works, is broadly compatible, won't get you fired, and allows the IT department extensive control at all levels of the hierarchy (via GPOs etc).
In summary (for those of us who remember the 1970's), just the same reasons why most IT managers bought their equipment from IBM rather the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) back in the heyday of the mainframes. And look where Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell are now (at least in terms of mainframe sales)...