You know, you might possibly have a point if those were the only two wind projects in Texas rather than a simple example. It's really too bad you can't put windmills on land, too.
It is definitely in your personal interest for other people to both have kids and have them educated, though. You don't live in a bubble. Parents shoulder plenty of financial burden already, tax cuts for private education doesn't make the little rugrats profitable, it just takes a little of the burden off. The fact that you don't have kids means you're not contributing to the future of society. If enough people decide to imitate you, we're far more screwed than just having to pay a few more bucks in taxes.
Free speech is simply whether the government has the authority to suppress and punish you. No, the government can't arrest and execute you if they don't like what you say, that's the whole point. Private citizens still retain their own freedom to hold you accountable for what you say, though, within the limits of the law. This is how it should be. AFAIK, there's no law on the books exonerating people who pummel others for saying something disagreeable, though, so you could still take the attackers to court in this case.
Um, we do live in a society like this. If you think campaign donations buy legislation in a simple quid pro quo fashion, you're missing the point. The truth is usually much more subtle. They don't buy a legislator's vote, they buy a legislator's access. Billy Bob from Podunk can try just dropping by his senator's office and say he wants to talk to him, and he'll be told his senator is a very busy man, which is mostly true. It's really not practical for the senator to visit with every last constituent on every little detail. XYZ corp that contributed $25,000 can say it needs to talk to the senator, and it will be ushered right in. The end result is Billy Bob never had the chance to make his case, while XYZ corp did.
Okay, so we outlaw XYZ corp from donating to the senator, then what. Even if we're talking about a pristine official with no hints of corruption, people from XYZ corp are more likely to hang around the same social circles as the senator and know people who know people that are responsible for informing the senator on the issues of the day and are inherently more persuasive and will have more impact on the senator's decisions than Billy Bob simply because they've actually had the chance to talk to the senator and make their case. Assuming they spent some money on silver-tongued lobbyists, they can even make a convincing case why the senator should advance their own interests without giving a hint of bald-faced manipulation to him or anyone else present through good old persuasion. Any way you slice it, someone's going to be getting the senator's ear, and it most likely won't be Billy Bob.
Way to use those linear equations in what the parent was already saying is a non-linear equation. Just for comparison, combustion of a gallon of gasoline releases 125 MJ. You figure you can get to orbit for a gallon of gas per 5 kg of payload though? Okay, you'd need LOX, too, so throw in some of that. You're saving the drag where the air is densest. You also don't have to carry the fuel to overcome that first 10 km, and don't have to start off carrying the fuel required to carry that fuel for the first 10 km.
Oh, cry me a river. What's funniest to me is that if you actually talk to all these horrible little religious boogiemen, they think the country is in decline precisely because God is being taken out of public life, etc. And in truth they really know as little of what the kind of folks who I see dominating 99% of the posts so far here as these folks know of them. It's gets rather obvious fast when people are talking out of their ass about the opposition who they've never really bothered to get to know. Having some exposure to people on both sides of the aisle makes me laugh sometimes. It's so much easier to just whine and complain and make others your scapegoat.
And everyone likes to feel threatened, because then that means the nation is at peril you must follow THEIR plan exactly to make everything alright. Banish any trace of religion from public life or we're all doomed! Bring God back into the classroom or we're all doomed! Bleh. Too bad both sides are too busy hunkered down in their camps to actually get out and talk to one another once in a while. And the only representatives each side sees of the other are media whores like Marilyn Manson or Pat Robertson, who get expanded fill the void of ignorance to encompass everyone they "represent".
The RIAA doesn't really want to file criminal charges with laws whose penalities were designed for something else because it would lead to the laws getting thrown out (either by the court or the legislature after public outcry) and them losing their nasty-looking club that was designed for "professional" counterfeiters. Throwing some college kid in jail for years and slapping fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars per song for putting them up for free on the Internet is pretty much the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
It would be about someone threatening to turn in and prosecute a bunch of Wiccans for witchcraft and pointing out that they could be burned at the stake, since the laws are still on the books somewhere. There's no way the case would stand on the merits, but get someone gullible enough and you could probably extort some money in a "settlement".
About as ironic as the fact that the country that defeated the Germans on their own soil ~150 years later is now vilified by the French. At least we had fond feelings for a couple of centuries.
It did seem like they put a bunch of unnecessary constraints in. The assumption seems to be that there could be no better power source than artificial light/photoelectrics, so why bother with anything else. They even interviewed other space elevator folks whose existing designs wouldn't qualify for this. Seems like it would be better to just let people try any crazy way they can come up with to accomplish the goal of getting up rather than insisting everyone stick with the photoelectric idea.
Yeah, the same thing happened to me over a PS2. Paypal said they found the seller was at fault and they couldn't recover the money, even though it had been less that 2 weeks since the payment. I thought there was some limit on how quick folks could clear out their account after getting a payment. So I called the credit card company and they took care of everything. Paypal then sent me some vague threat that my account could be canceled for not going through their "process" but didn't back it up. Silly me, I thought reporting the fraud and them saying the seller was at fault and they couldn't recover the money was their process.
What's so disgusting about saying having a common standard to measure things quantitatively would be scientific?
It actually would be a good idea to be able to measure most of the factors in a standardized fashion and then make final judgments based on that. What do you think that $150 to recycle stuff goes into? Fuel for transport and hazardous chemicals to recycle things mostly I'd imagine - hardly environmentally benign. Just saying it's "to do something good for others" is meaningless if in the final analysis you're really doing more harm than good. If you just blindly stumble around because it offends your sensibilities to "cheapen" things by measuring them beforehand, you're far more likely do to just that.
When did making sense ever have anything to do with making record execs richer? Soon as you sign on the dotted line, you're theirs. I'm not sure about this issue in particular, but it wouldn't really surprise me, the recording industry has refined rape via contract into an art form.
They just use it as an example to show you the size required. It's like when people say everyone in the world could live with a reasonable amount of personal space in Texas. They're not proposing everyone moves to Texas, just showing you the actual amount of space we all take up.
Um, and farmers would want to do this why exactly? That's quite literally killing the patient to cure the disease; their soil would be useless then. I doubt anything else besides bamboo is growing in you alley, either.
Great, now all that's required for the next 10-15 years is an actual need for the thing. I only wish the F-22 were being cancelled, the money should be going to help with the real dangers out there, like dirt cheap RPG's.
Authors generally don't make much money off of textbooks anyway, it's more about name recognition and being a productive member of academia.
As far as other professors adopting the books, I could see it happening. I've had quite a few professors that seemingly complained about the price of textbooks more than the students did. I've even had a handful that put a textbook on the syllabus to keep the state happy but then told us not to waste our money on the textbook on the first day of class and instead make use of the online resources and class notes provided. They'd love to see something like this.
Not to mention in good old open-source fashion, professors using the books could quite possibly be able to have more input in the process. They might be more favorably inclined to the accuracy of the material if they knew they and others can and do correct mistakes.
It's not really so simple. Corporations tend to have more luck "buying" laws that concern topics that don't generally register on the general public's radar. DMCA, yeah, that's doable, because it's complicated, and most AARP members don't really read the publications that talk much about it. Once something's on the public radar, that's all politicians care about. Enron donated tremendous sums to the government and expected a bit of quid pro quo, fat lot of good it did them once Ken Lay made the cover of Newsweek. Politicians only care about getting elected; if grandstanding against evil corporation B trying to rip off the public will win more votes than a fat campaign contribution from evil corporation B, what do you expect him to do?
Slashdot Mirror
It would be nice if police cars had to get a mimimum 35 mpg. I'd never get another speeding ticket again.
You know, you might possibly have a point if those were the only two wind projects in Texas rather than a simple example. It's really too bad you can't put windmills on land, too.
It is definitely in your personal interest for other people to both have kids and have them educated, though. You don't live in a bubble. Parents shoulder plenty of financial burden already, tax cuts for private education doesn't make the little rugrats profitable, it just takes a little of the burden off. The fact that you don't have kids means you're not contributing to the future of society. If enough people decide to imitate you, we're far more screwed than just having to pay a few more bucks in taxes.
You really think the Republicans give a rat's ass about a balanced budget any more? Where have you been?
Free speech is simply whether the government has the authority to suppress and punish you. No, the government can't arrest and execute you if they don't like what you say, that's the whole point. Private citizens still retain their own freedom to hold you accountable for what you say, though, within the limits of the law. This is how it should be. AFAIK, there's no law on the books exonerating people who pummel others for saying something disagreeable, though, so you could still take the attackers to court in this case.
I read an article a while back that hybrid mileage isn't as good as the sticker says.
0 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,63413,0
Did you find that to be the case, or was the mileage really as good as you expected? I'm genuinely curious.
Half of the moderation for this is informative. This frightens me.
Um, we do live in a society like this. If you think campaign donations buy legislation in a simple quid pro quo fashion, you're missing the point. The truth is usually much more subtle. They don't buy a legislator's vote, they buy a legislator's access. Billy Bob from Podunk can try just dropping by his senator's office and say he wants to talk to him, and he'll be told his senator is a very busy man, which is mostly true. It's really not practical for the senator to visit with every last constituent on every little detail. XYZ corp that contributed $25,000 can say it needs to talk to the senator, and it will be ushered right in. The end result is Billy Bob never had the chance to make his case, while XYZ corp did.
Okay, so we outlaw XYZ corp from donating to the senator, then what. Even if we're talking about a pristine official with no hints of corruption, people from XYZ corp are more likely to hang around the same social circles as the senator and know people who know people that are responsible for informing the senator on the issues of the day and are inherently more persuasive and will have more impact on the senator's decisions than Billy Bob simply because they've actually had the chance to talk to the senator and make their case. Assuming they spent some money on silver-tongued lobbyists, they can even make a convincing case why the senator should advance their own interests without giving a hint of bald-faced manipulation to him or anyone else present through good old persuasion. Any way you slice it, someone's going to be getting the senator's ear, and it most likely won't be Billy Bob.
Way to use those linear equations in what the parent was already saying is a non-linear equation. Just for comparison, combustion of a gallon of gasoline releases 125 MJ. You figure you can get to orbit for a gallon of gas per 5 kg of payload though? Okay, you'd need LOX, too, so throw in some of that. You're saving the drag where the air is densest. You also don't have to carry the fuel to overcome that first 10 km, and don't have to start off carrying the fuel required to carry that fuel for the first 10 km.
Oh, cry me a river. What's funniest to me is that if you actually talk to all these horrible little religious boogiemen, they think the country is in decline precisely because God is being taken out of public life, etc. And in truth they really know as little of what the kind of folks who I see dominating 99% of the posts so far here as these folks know of them. It's gets rather obvious fast when people are talking out of their ass about the opposition who they've never really bothered to get to know. Having some exposure to people on both sides of the aisle makes me laugh sometimes. It's so much easier to just whine and complain and make others your scapegoat.
And everyone likes to feel threatened, because then that means the nation is at peril you must follow THEIR plan exactly to make everything alright. Banish any trace of religion from public life or we're all doomed! Bring God back into the classroom or we're all doomed! Bleh. Too bad both sides are too busy hunkered down in their camps to actually get out and talk to one another once in a while. And the only representatives each side sees of the other are media whores like Marilyn Manson or Pat Robertson, who get expanded fill the void of ignorance to encompass everyone they "represent".
The RIAA doesn't really want to file criminal charges with laws whose penalities were designed for something else because it would lead to the laws getting thrown out (either by the court or the legislature after public outcry) and them losing their nasty-looking club that was designed for "professional" counterfeiters. Throwing some college kid in jail for years and slapping fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars per song for putting them up for free on the Internet is pretty much the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
It would be about someone threatening to turn in and prosecute a bunch of Wiccans for witchcraft and pointing out that they could be burned at the stake, since the laws are still on the books somewhere. There's no way the case would stand on the merits, but get someone gullible enough and you could probably extort some money in a "settlement".
About as ironic as the fact that the country that defeated the Germans on their own soil ~150 years later is now vilified by the French. At least we had fond feelings for a couple of centuries.
It did seem like they put a bunch of unnecessary constraints in. The assumption seems to be that there could be no better power source than artificial light/photoelectrics, so why bother with anything else. They even interviewed other space elevator folks whose existing designs wouldn't qualify for this. Seems like it would be better to just let people try any crazy way they can come up with to accomplish the goal of getting up rather than insisting everyone stick with the photoelectric idea.
Yeah, the same thing happened to me over a PS2. Paypal said they found the seller was at fault and they couldn't recover the money, even though it had been less that 2 weeks since the payment. I thought there was some limit on how quick folks could clear out their account after getting a payment. So I called the credit card company and they took care of everything. Paypal then sent me some vague threat that my account could be canceled for not going through their "process" but didn't back it up. Silly me, I thought reporting the fraud and them saying the seller was at fault and they couldn't recover the money was their process.
Someone stealing a pizza when it would be their third offense is more retarded.
What's so disgusting about saying having a common standard to measure things quantitatively would be scientific?
It actually would be a good idea to be able to measure most of the factors in a standardized fashion and then make final judgments based on that. What do you think that $150 to recycle stuff goes into? Fuel for transport and hazardous chemicals to recycle things mostly I'd imagine - hardly environmentally benign. Just saying it's "to do something good for others" is meaningless if in the final analysis you're really doing more harm than good. If you just blindly stumble around because it offends your sensibilities to "cheapen" things by measuring them beforehand, you're far more likely do to just that.
"Mommy, why does the station smell like poopy?"
"Because your father is a cheap bastard who thought he'd save a few bucks by taking us to the Econo-Lodge. Now eat your cabbage."
I can tell you've never stayed in a hotel in Utah.
When did making sense ever have anything to do with making record execs richer? Soon as you sign on the dotted line, you're theirs. I'm not sure about this issue in particular, but it wouldn't really surprise me, the recording industry has refined rape via contract into an art form.
They just use it as an example to show you the size required. It's like when people say everyone in the world could live with a reasonable amount of personal space in Texas. They're not proposing everyone moves to Texas, just showing you the actual amount of space we all take up.
Um, and farmers would want to do this why exactly? That's quite literally killing the patient to cure the disease; their soil would be useless then. I doubt anything else besides bamboo is growing in you alley, either.
Great, maybe xenophobia will result in meaningful anti-spam legislation over here if nothing else.
Great, now all that's required for the next 10-15 years is an actual need for the thing. I only wish the F-22 were being cancelled, the money should be going to help with the real dangers out there, like dirt cheap RPG's.
Authors generally don't make much money off of textbooks anyway, it's more about name recognition and being a productive member of academia.
As far as other professors adopting the books, I could see it happening. I've had quite a few professors that seemingly complained about the price of textbooks more than the students did. I've even had a handful that put a textbook on the syllabus to keep the state happy but then told us not to waste our money on the textbook on the first day of class and instead make use of the online resources and class notes provided. They'd love to see something like this.
Not to mention in good old open-source fashion, professors using the books could quite possibly be able to have more input in the process. They might be more favorably inclined to the accuracy of the material if they knew they and others can and do correct mistakes.
It's not really so simple. Corporations tend to have more luck "buying" laws that concern topics that don't generally register on the general public's radar. DMCA, yeah, that's doable, because it's complicated, and most AARP members don't really read the publications that talk much about it. Once something's on the public radar, that's all politicians care about. Enron donated tremendous sums to the government and expected a bit of quid pro quo, fat lot of good it did them once Ken Lay made the cover of Newsweek. Politicians only care about getting elected; if grandstanding against evil corporation B trying to rip off the public will win more votes than a fat campaign contribution from evil corporation B, what do you expect him to do?