Wouldn't it be hypocritical to give you unfettered access to the internet while the citizens do not?
I do see where you're coming from, but I believe the core of the objection is that the idea of censorship -- especially the heavy-handed stuff the Chinese are notorious for -- is antithetical to the very concept of the Games. China represses its citizens in order to control them. The Games are (or were) about the wonder and glory of what man -- all of man, not just those who've escaped censorship -- can accomplish in friendship and competition. Instead, Beijing wants to welcome everyone's money and media so it can show foreigners that China is a world-class power to be feared and respected. It's China's debut on the 21st-century world publicity stage. I find it disgusting if for no other reason than that.
Maybe, if you stop being those "fuckers who killed my son" and start being "the people who helped us during the drought" - your ennemies won't find it so easy to recruit ?
Tell you what. When you get those huge racial and political chips off your shoulder, come down off that high holy righteous mountain you've put yourself on, and decide to be rational, this conversation can continue. Until then, please don't waste my time with your frothing. Suffice to say, I find your viewpoints to be hopelessly one sided and not bearing much resemblance to reality.
RESOLVE your differences and come to peaceful agreements.
Pray tell, how does one come to a "peaceful agreement" with a group that has, as a stated purpose of their charter, a mission to either convert, enslave, or murder anyone who does not follow their faith? What comfortable middle ground would you be willing to accept, the murder of only half of us infidels?
Peaceful agreements require both sides to be willing to compromise. The Islamists are, by their own statements, unwilling to compromise on anything at all. That alone makes negotiations predestined to fail, yet you make it seem like we're the ones who are failing to live up to your lofty standards.
And if you think the U.S. isn't at least indirectly related to the current and/or former security of South Africa, you're more naive than I originally took you for. Communist rebels funded by the Soviets were actively seeking to topple the S.A. government and replace it with your typical Africa thug-style dictatorship reporting to Moscow. The U.S. and, to a larger extent, all of NATO worked directly and indirectly against that. So, I'll again say "you're welcome" even though you're too proud and too full of yourself to say "thank you."
You are aware are you not that the risk of an American being killed by a terrorist is just about the lowest of all the things likely to kill one right ?
Have you stopped to consider this might be the logical outcome of a pro-active intelligence gathering policy just like the one you're currently attacking? The argument you are making is analogous to saying "I don't know why I bother securing my servers anymore since they never get rooted!"
As I've stated elsewhere in other posts, I'm in the U.S. Marine Corps. I've been in Iraq. I'm willing to bet you haven't. I'm also in the intel branch. You have no idea how many bad guy ops are stopped long before a bomb goes off. And you never, ever hear about it because the terrorists didn't pull off their objective. So you can smugly sit there at your keyboard feeling all safe and happy, knowing that you're far more likely to die from Burger King cholesterol than from a terrorist plot. You can do that because people you despise and denigrate are using methods you abhor to protect you from your naivete. You're welcome.
immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason.
It is neither "spying on American citizens" nor "for no reason." It's pathetic that you've got to make it sound like something more sinister than it is in order to try and scare people to your side of the fence on the issue. If Microsoft had written that article summary, people would be screaming "FUD!"
The truth of the matter is conversations originating overseas from known or suspected terrorist organizations to their contacts in the U.S. may be monitored. Your chats with Grandma about what to get little Jimmy for his birthday are of no interest to anyone and cannot be legally intercepted without a warrant. Trying to find out what next big operation terrorists are planning against us ought to be everybody's interest, and perhaps it would be if most Democrat weren't afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Personally, I think the whole thing stinks. Who goes to all the trouble to escape jail so they can kill themselves when they succeed?
If you read the circumstances of his "escape" you'd know that he was in a minimum security "prison." He literally walked away. No jumping of fences, no evading slavering dogs, no digging tunnels under walls.
In that context, you can probably understand that the decision to commit a murder-suicide wasn't all that hard. He figured his lavish spam-financed life was over, hence there was no reason to live. He probably rationalized that he was doing his family a favor by killing them since they would be unable to enjoy the lavish lifestyle his spam money had provided up to that point. It's a stupid rationalization, but that's the most likely scenario. If you consider this guy was probably a very materialistic jerk, it makes a twisted kind of sense.
I swear, Microsoft finds a way to mess up even the simplest of tasks! Can't those fools in Redmond even push out a simple patch for......wait, did you say a patch for named? But...named isn't a Microsoft product.
Surely you're not suggesting that a cherished and prestigious vendor like Red Hat can make a mistake, right? Something is amiss! Must. Find. Way. To. Blame. Microsoft!
The shuttle is made up of a bunch of very well engineered components, they're just all stuck together into an overall package that isn't that useful. Sure, the next generation of spacecraft doesn't need wings. But that doesn't mean that technology developed for the shuttle's engines isn't better than Apollo era engines.
That depends on your definition of "better." Do the SSME's produce more thrust than any other similarly-sized liquid fuel rocket yet flown? Yes. Their efficiency and power are unmatched. However, an F1 racing engine produces far more power from a 2.4L V8 than anything you can buy on your dealer's lot. It also costs 100x-1000x as much and only lasts for a few hundred miles between overhauls. Yet despite the incredible power and efficiency of the SSME's, the Shuttle can only lift a fraction of what the Saturn V could with its "primitive, inefficient, non-reusable" engines.
What about the heat tiles? Are they "better" than ablative, non-reusable materials? Operational evidence says no. The tiles are fragile, as Columbia found out. They are difficult to maintain, requiring significant overhaul between missions.
Other than its engines and re-usable nature, there is very little on the Shuttle that departs from the typical rocket formula (except for the wings that we no longer want or need). If I'm missing something notable, please point it out. There's nothing in it or on it that's demonstrably "better" than either its predecessor or successor. In fact, Ares pretty much repudiates the entire idea. So, I'd again say that while we learned to build some interesting things during the Shuttle program, ultimately we've gained very little from the whole experiment.
in the space business, proven designs count for a LOT in risk mitigation.
Very true, which is why the Shuttle continues to fly with 1970's-era technology controlling most of it.
However, I would posit the following: the Shuttle program dumped most of Apollo in the trash bin and started with something new. I'm of the opinion that what we ended up with was not an improvement over Apollo. The Shuttle is more expensive, more finicky, less reliable, and arguably much more dangerous than Apollo ever was. So, while we have a large body of knowledge centered around Shuttle systems, the systems themselves may not be worth prolonging through to Ares. Hence the justification for breaking with the (Shuttle) past with Ares.
The Shuttle was a great experiment, but ultimately we learned it was something we shouldn't have built. Everything it's done in the last quarter century could've been done better, faster, and cheaper with Apollo-era tech (with incremental improvements as you alluded to earlier) just as the Russians have proven with their launch systems.
No human has been out of low Earth orbit in roughly thirty years. The last three that did, did so on top of a Saturn V. The Shuttle has had us going in circles (literally) since then. The ISS prolongs that boondoggle. Why do we need an ISS? To give the Shuttle some place to go! Why do we need a Shuttle? To build the ISS! What fantastic circular logic. What a horrific waste.
The Shuttle was a lie from the get-go, though I don't think the original intent was malicious. I suspect they were "overly optimistic."
The Shuttle is what happens when you have multiple governmental bureaucracies funding a single project, yet each bureaucracy has a wildly different idea of what they want to fund. NASA wanted a space truck, but the Air Force wanted something that could snatch Soviet satellites and perform other military duties. The problem is, the military duties required the shuttle to go to significantly different orbits than typical commercial payloads. Hence, the Shuttle was redesigned with a different wing along with a host of other changes that made it heavier, more expensive, and less flexible.
The changes in program costs snowballed from there, affecting a myriad of other decisions. Solid or liquid boosters? Solids were deemed to have lower up-front costs but higher long-term costs compared to liquid boosters, so solids were chosen. And since solids can't be throttled or even turned off once lit, that led to the decision to abandon any sort of crew escape system. The result was America's first man-rated spacecraft without any type of abort mode during the first -- and most dangerous -- minutes of launch.
The lack of abort modes led to another problem: if the astronauts can't escape, then the system has to work perfectly every time, on time, without degradation. This causes NASA no end of headaches in the form of launch delays, because every quadruple-backup system has to be quadruple-checked and quadruply readied or the flight is scrubbed. This drives up per-flight costs dramatically.
I could go on, but I'd instead direct you to a great book that reveals a lot of the compromises and problems that came out of the Shuttle design period. It's called The Challenger Launch Decision, and it details the decisions -- some of them all the way back to the Shuttle conceptual stages -- that set the stage for Challenger. Another good one is Comm Check which details what happened to Columbia. It references a lot of historical problems with the Shuttle program as well. The former is something of a dry read in parts because it deals with the psychology of decision making. The latter is much faster paced, a real page turner, and has much more engineering information. Both are highly recommended.
The Saturn V stood as a monument to JFK, and folks from the Republican Party saw an opportunity to tear it down and replace it with the Shuttle. Burns my bacon, it does.
The Shuttle had no more to do with Republicans than with Democrats. Both parties had equal hands in trying to snag pork-barrel funding for their respective districts. If blame must be laid somewhere, blame it on those who tried to take a square peg and a round peg and fit both of them into an oval hole. The Shuttle is an object lesson of what happens to an engineering project when it's asked to be all things to all people.
In other words, keeping a Shuttle in orbit would be more trouble and expense than it's worth. If you want to do that sort of thing, do it with a Soyuz.
Or, if we'd had any sense, we'd have kept our Saturn V technology around and used it instead of the Shuttle. In dollars per pound of launch cost, the S-V was much cheaper to operate despite the fact that you threw away the entire system every launch. The Shuttle's biggest cost is inspecting, reconditioning, refurbishing, and repairing it between launches which takes months and costs millions of dollars. Far from being the cheap, reliable "space truck" NASA sold the public on, the Shuttle is an expensive, finicky system that in no way improved upon its predecessor. The only thing the Shuttle can do that the S-V couldn't is return orbiting hardware to Earth. That capability has always been of dubious value, as the cost of putting up a satellite and retrieving (via the expensive Shuttle) has been greater than the cost of de-orbiting the satellite and launching a new, improved one.
We could go further on the boondoggle that is the ISS, which exists mainly to give the Shuttle a place to go to. And why does the Shuttle still exist? To build the ISS. It's circular reasoning at its finest, and it's sucked up all of NASA's budget -- which could've had a permanent lunar outpost in place by now -- since the early 1970's. What a disgrace.
Increasing the number of layers does not significantly add changeover costs
Really? That's funny, because Toshiba would beg to differ. As would Sony, who had to spend a lot of time and money convincing people to go with a standard that requires scrapping a lot of DVD fab gear. As would the folks who are producing (or trying to produce with reasonable yields) these multilayer discs you say are so cheap and easy to come by.
Blu-ray's decision to put the layers nearer the surface of the disk have nothing to do with adding layers. It's to do with increasing capacity.
Perhaps your reading comprehension skills are a bit off, so I'll type this slowly a second time: I said there were several reasons why Blu-ray went with a different layer location. One of them was indeed greater capacity due to a different numerical aperture of the lens. Another reason -- you could almost call it a happy side effect -- was more room for layers. Even someone with elementary skills in mathematics can deduce that if you have a fixed disc thickness and you reduce the height of the non-data-bearing portions which are merely coatings, you have more room for data-bearing layers.
you might want to ask yourself how HD-VMD does it - that's a very real format that uses regular DVD pressing equipment.
I don't have to ask. The data are available on the web for anyone to peruse. I will point out that HD-VMD is nowhere near the volume of either Blu-ray or DVD in production. I will point out that at 5GB per layer, HD-VMD must go with many, many layers in order to even be remotely competitive with Blu-ray's two layers. I will point out that no HD-VMD producer has released numbers indicating what yields they are getting for quad-layer HD-VMD discs.
HD DVD is cheaper (at a media level) than HD-VMD not because the equipment is cheaper - it's the same - but because adding layers adds costs directly at the media level. If it takes 10x as long to make a ten layer disc as a single layer disc, it's going to cost several times as much too, and that's exactly what happens here. Worse, as every layer's integrity matters to the final product, you're increasing the chances of a bad disk by 10x by increasing the number of layers this way.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You've been going on and on about how much nicer this all would've been if the world had just gone with HD-VMD, but in the same breath you say that more layers results in lower yields -- a fact I established quite some time ago. So, what you're arguing is that a ten-layer HD-VMD (50GB) would've been a superior solution to a two-layer Blu-ray (50GB). Your argument does not add up, my friend.
If this was a viable technology, HD DVD would have used it with red lasers. It would have ended up ahead of the game. It's not viable not because of plant changeover costs (the costs are minimal, as with blue-laser HD DVD), but because you need to throw away four-eight times as many discs as you would a regular DVD or Blu-ray disc, and take four-eight times as long to make them.
You underestimate the plant changeover costs. If nothing else, Blu-ray discs require additional coating steps for the Durabis coatings (which is itself not a cheap substance) beyond the additional costs of plant mechanicals, higher costs for masters, lower overall yields, etc. Costs for Blu-ray production are noticeably higher than HD-DVD, which was in turn slightly higher than that of DVD's.
I run a small video disc production business, by the way. This subject is not foreign to me.
Remember, when I say blu-ray is only a minor improvement, I am talking about the experience most people will have with it. Not some idealized microcosm inhabited by people with honest-to-god home theatres, with viewing distances THX would certify.
Then it's my turn to call your assessment dishonest. Would it be fair to say that Linux is far inferior to Windows because "most people" are unable to grasp the intricacies of its foibles? Would it be fair to say that a Ferrari Enzo is no better than Honda Civic because "most people" cannot drive a Ferrari hard enough to bring out its pedigree? Would it be fair to say Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is no better than an arts & crafts store copy because "most people" aren't art experts and wouldn't know the difference?
And it is not some idealized microcosm where people enjoy a good set at reasonable viewing distances. I know people who've literally spent over a million dollars on their home theater -- inside a $30 million mansion, no less. Me, I have a far more humble setup that I've spent less than $10,000 on (that's video, audio, and furnishings all put together), yet it's not difficult to tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-ray. I think you either give too much credit to those with uber-theaters or take away too much credit from the average consumer.
The same way they store liquid fuel -- in a storage container designed for the purpose.
You make it sound so easy! I wish I had your easy genius. Now, since batteries have an energy density far less than gasoline, explain to me where your typical filling station is going to get the 300%-400% more storage space they're going to need. I know! Maybe they can store the batteries underground in a large tank and pump them through pipes to waiting cars!
That's a question of inventory on hand. See my answer to your first objection.
I'm continually amazed at your problem solving skills. Again, without offering a shred of evidence, you've completely destroyed my objection.
By factoring in the replacement cost into their pricing, either on a blanket basis, or by assessing a surcharge based upon battery age.
And station owners will be able to discern the age of the packs...how? With printed dates? Like that won't get faked. Or perhaps with some sort of electronics in the pack? How long until some 733t h4x0r cracks the code and lets everyone designate their depleted packs as "brand new"? Silly me. Here I am bringing up practical problems in the real world when all I need to do is wait for you to type "no problem" and make it all go away.
Pneumatic lifts? Hydraulic lifts? There is plenty of mechanical assistance available for lifting heavy objects. As for environmental concerns, how do garages cope with the same wrt engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc?
Your average gas station has none of the above equipment, nor does it have any facilities for adding it. Further, your average gas station doesn't deal with engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc. because it's a gas station, not a garage. You'll find lots of the former but far fewer of the latter. Perhaps you'll now explain how all the gas stations will magically morph into full-fledged garages, and how the cost of all of this infrastructure will somehow magically not get passed on to the customer, taxpayer, or both in exorbitant amounts.
Who says we need to use coal? Maybe as a stop-gap, but nuclear and renewables are good options in the future.
It takes roughly a decade or more to bring a nuclear plant online. In the meantime, people are rushing pell-mell onto this absurd electric car idea as if that's the only practical solution. It is not the only solution, and it's actually one of the less practical ones.
In short, every problem has a solution, and while the economics need to be worked out, it sure seems to me that you're an obstructionist and would rather look at the problems and say, "Why bother?" than look at the problems and say "How can that be solved?".
Perhaps you are unaware of the difference between being an "obstructionist" and being a pragmatist. Allow me to educate you. You, my friend, are an idealist. You believe every problem has a neat, tidy, why-didn't-somebody-already-think-of-this solution just waiting around the corner. I admire your optimism, but it masks a greater naivete. Fact is, people much smarter than either of us have thought about this, far longer than both of us put together. And guess what? It's not practical, even at $200/barrel for oil. It is not economically feasible. You want it to be feasible so you overlook the glaring holes in your solution.
Here's some advice: if you come across a major problem facing the world and you think you've got a simple solution to it, you can pretty much say with 99.99999% certainty that you have no grasp of the situation. Things are the way they are for a reason, and if you don't see that reason, you haven't looked hard enough or thought long enough about all the ramifications.
And it's not that I'm saying "why bother?" I'm instead saying "show me somet
The fact is, we already have an extremely modern and efficient system of transferring energy practically anywhere which could replace the petrol distribution network: our electricity grid. All we need is to develop good-enough battery technology for the cars.
The "extremely modern and efficient" system you speak of has nowhere near the capacity to do what you are proposing. You need that problem solved first before you can even consider your ill-advised plan. And don't toss around the idea of "people can charge at night when there is excess capacity" argument. With the long charge times and limited range prevalent in every electric-only car currently in production or even envisioned, people are going to plug in every time they park their cars, day or night.
Second, once the problem of generating the power has been fixed (and that's not a trivial problem), you've got to get it from the power plant to the end user efficiently. Power transmission losses are not insignificant, so you lose a fair amount of efficiency right there.
Third, you've got to get the power into the car rapidly enough to make it practical for people who are used to filling up in under five minutes. Gasoline (or diesel, if you prefer) has a very high energy density, and transferring it from one container to another is very fast and easy. Trying to replicate that with a copper conductor is neither fast nor easy. For example, the Tesla Roadster -- touted as the current state-of-the-art -- requires thirty hours to charge from a typical 120V outlet. You can improve on that by going to a higher voltage, but the practical limit for most homes (in the U.S. anyways) is about 240V. Above that and you're just not going to find many homes with the infrastructure to charge these magical electric cars from your magical electric grid.
And all we need is better batteries, right? Gosh, why didn't I think of that? Forget me, why hasn't the entire chemist world thought of that? Actually, they have, and the batteries we have today are the culmination of decades (or, in some cases, centuries) of refinement. But we're not making leaps-and-bounds progress anymore. Battery improvements are yielding fewer and fewer advances, while R&D and production costs are getting higher and higher. There is no reason to suspect this is going to change anytime soon.
I've seen it proposed many times, here's the solution:
You pull into a gas station and they swap out your battery for a completely charged one.
You drive away and they recharge the battery.
Problem solved.
Your powers of problem solving are amazing! You've just singlehandedly solved the entire electric car/battery issue by typing a few words into your browser!
Of course, you gloss over the "few issues to be worked out" as if they weren't the biggest, most difficult, impractical problems confounding your whole idea, such as:
- How would "refilling stations" store the massive number of batteries needed to support such rapid changeout procedures?
- How would these stations charge the batteries quickly enough for a fast turnaround?
- Batteries -- especially Li-Ion ones -- begin to degrade as soon as they're manufactured, usually losing 40% or more of their charge capacity in 18-24 months. How is a station going to deal with customers dropping off old battery packs and picking up new ones?
- How is the station going to physically handle the battery packs? Lead-acid cells are cheap and sturdy but heavy as...well, lead. Not to mention the environmental concerns.
- Where is the national grid going to get the power to charge all these wonderfully swappable packs?
These are not trivial issues. In fact, they're the most non-trivial piece of the whole let's-all-plug-in-our-cars-and-feel-warm-and-fuzzy-about-being-green hysteria. And these are just the few I can come up with in five minutes are less.
There are many more reasons why this is a silly idea that will do little or nothing to help the environment. It may, in fact, actually harm the environment if we (meaning the U.S.) turn to our most abundant power-producing resource (coal) to provide the needed power.
I'd be in favor of this idea if we'd get our heads out of the sand about nuclear power, but the tree huggers seem quite intent on keeping that option off the table.
The downside, though, is that they're not using the right compression scheme. Artifacts which I would not have noticed on DVD are readily apparent on BluRay disk. Either they need a better algorithm or a lot more bits.
Don't blame Blu-ray. Blame the studio producing the disc. Some of the early BD and HD-DVD releases were done quickly and with very little attention to detail. The quickest and most well-known codec for the studios was MPEG-2, despite AVC and VC-1 being superior. But that was only part of the problem.
The other problem was the source the discs were mastered from. Studios have been mastering DVD's from 2K sources for a while, and the results are very good. Why? Because you're starting with much higher resolution than the end product. But with 1080p, a 2K source just doesn't cut it. You need a 4K source to really do it justice. The studios didn't want to foot the bill for 4K re-mastering, so we ended up with crappy initial releases. After early adopters complained, the studios got off their duffs and did it right.
Last, there's an issue of the equipment the disc is mastered on. Believe it or not, many high-end Hollywood studios preview their masters on tiny little studio monitors. I'm talking itsy bitsy, anywhere from 24" to 36" usually. Anything looks good when it's scrunched down onto a tiny screen. It may look like crap on a 100" screen and the guys mastering it will never know it. And that's exactly what happened.
You should head over to Joe Kane Productions and see what the guy has to say about film and video. He produces discs that are the de facto standards for calibrating equipment. He's also the most amazingly anal-retentive, nitpicking, perfection-obsessed videophile I've ever met. But he's great fun to listen to when he's giving a seminar on video standards and quality.
No. The only people who really care whether they are watching an up-converted DVD or a blu-ray are are videophile snobs looking to justify the expense, who pause the movie to point at some intricate pattern in the corner of the screen and gloat.
While I've been around a fair number of videophile snobs (who pale in snobbery comparison to audiophiles, by the way), I can honestly say that if you have good-quality gear, it's properly calibrated, and the screen is reasonably large (50+ inches) the difference between upconverted SD and native HD is rather obvious. And I'm not talking about a $40,000 Runco projector on a Stewart Greyhawk screen as the definition of "good-quality gear," either...although such gear does ensure the quality difference is blindingly obvious.
Now, for someone looking at upconverted content on a 37" CRT of reasonable quality, I'm sure there is practically no noticeable difference between SD and HD, especially in cases where the SD transfer is very good (as most recent releases are) or the HD transfer isn't very good (as several early Blu-ray releases were), or both.
But go view a DVD on a 65" screen. The inherent limitations of NTSC -- something that's survived largely unchanged since the 1950's -- and the limits of MPEG-2 -- developed in the early 1990's -- show up loud and clear. Macroblock noise. Banding in areas of subtle gradients. Crushed blacks. Blown-out whites. You don't have to be a snob to notice it. AVC and VC-1 both do superior jobs with the same bit budget, or they do much, much better jobs with a larger bit budget.
If you can't tell the difference between SD and HD on the gear you're using, fine, no problem. Enjoy your upconverted DVD's and more power to you. But do not case aspersions on those who do have gear that can show off the difference.
If anyone doubts this is an issue, you might want to ask why anyone went with blue lasers for the HD formats in the first place. DVD can be increased to 50G just by making the discs 10-11 layers. Everyone's known how to do that for a while, there's even a (real, disks being pressed, players being made) HD format called HD-VMD that works exactly that way. The DVD Forum could have made HD DVD use that format, and would have thus killed Blu-ray's chances completely by making profitable sub-$100 players, in massive quantities. The only cost-adding modification you'd have to make to a DVD drive to make this work is to dampen the noise due to the 3-5X spin increase.
There are a number of faults with your argument. First off, the DVD Forum's decision to go with a maximum of two (later three) layers for HD-DVD had absolutely nothing to do with what was technically possible at the time. It had everything to do with accommodating existing DVD production lines, all of which could (supposedly) produce HD-DVD discs with only minor changeover costs. This was supposed to give HD-DVD a production price advantage over Blu-ray, as Blu-ray production required a complete overhaul of production facilities.
And why did Blu-ray require a complete overhaul of production facilities? Was it because of the use of a blue (violet, actually) laser? Nope. It was because of how Blu-ray was layered, with the data-bearing disc surface being much closer to the physical surface than DVD's. There were several reasons why Blu-ray chose this approach, but one of them was (drum roll please) to accommodate a larger number of layers in the disc while preserving the "standard DVD" thickness.
So, while it was perfectly possible for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray to use a red laser, it made no sense for either camp to do so. HD-DVD's capacity would've been too small with a red laser unless they went with more than two layers, and that would've mooted the production cost advantages that were the cornerstone of HD-DVD's "buy us, we're cheaper!" market strategy. Blu-ray could've gone with red lasers and many layers as well, but it would then have higher production costs than DVD without as much of a capacity advantage.
Global capitalism, spread and maintained largely through Microsoft products, causes more problems with poverty and economic disparity than Gates' foundation can ever fix.
Right! And that's why, when you're looking for flourishing economies and prosperous, free societies, you seek out despotic dictators, corrupt monarchies, and repressive communist regimes. They are bastions of bringing freedom and wealth to their constituents. Yessiree, if you want to see impoverished, oppressive societies, look no further than capitalistic Republics.
Oh, wait, I had that all backwards. And so did you. Not that it's likely to change a mind as ridiculously blindered as yours.
the obvious rebuttal is that communism relied on 'central planning' to manage scarce resources, like labor and equipment while free software - and all other ideas - are abundant resources that remain the product of free markets in scarce resources labor and equipment.
Except that you, like many other FOSS proponents, leave out one hugely critical piece of the equation: how do FOSS programmers support themselves? Past surveys have shown that FOSS projects are almost always started and maintained by people who program proprietary, non-FOSS software for a living. Ergo, proprietary, non-FOSS software for profit is an absolute necessity in order to support the FOSS community.
Now, some FOSS projects are given away free but with paid-for support infrastructures. This is a great idea, but it damages quite a bit of the we're-cheaper-than-non-FOSS argument. Study after study -- and your own argument -- holds that initial purchase price is an almost-insignificant piece of the TCO. If I get a piece of software for free but pay the same to support it as I would've a proprietary solution, I've gained little or nothing in the process.
And don't say I've gained independence, or I'm supporting "the movement" or any other ideology-based argument. I don't give two damns about where my software comes from or what economic model supports it. I care that it (a) performs the function I want it to perform with reasonable efficiency and reliability, and (b) I want the cost of the software to be reasonably related to the value I extract from it. Leave the preaching and proselytizing to the RMS's of the world.
You would have to have a Big Zinc executive as president
And since a Democratically-controlled congress voted the president war powers, you'd have to include them in this vast right-wing...err, left-wing...err...well, both-wing conspiracy.
And no points for giving a president war powers and then (a) changing your mind or (b) saying "we never really though he'd actually use the war powers for a real war" argument.
No. Taxes on corporations affect five groups: The owners, the executives, the employees, the suppliers, and the customers. You cannot tell a priori which of the five groups will be affected by changing the taxes on the corporation.
Assuming the taxes are applied on an industry-wide basis (i.e. not to any one particular company to the exclusion of its competitors), the most likely and logical outcome would be an overall rise in prices of whatever goods or services are produced by that industry.
Across the fortune 500, the top 5 executives capture 10% of all corporate profits; shareholders get the remaining 90%.
I'm not quite sure how to interpret the figures you're putting forth. You seem to say the executives of the top 5 firms in the Fortune 500 all receive compensation equal to 10% of the gross profits of their respective companies. I'm quite sure that's not true, and it's relatively easy to demonstrate.
The top company in the F500 is Wal-Mart. According to Fortune, Wal-Mart posted a $12.7 billion for the most current year. This would mean the top executives would've received almost $1.3 billion in compensation. H. Lee Scott, Jr. is the CEO of Wal-Mart, and according to Forbes he is paid $1.4 million per year in salary and $30 million in "long term compensation" (which probably means stock options). His compensation works out to 2.4% of company profits if you factor in the stock options, but only 0.1% without. Although I haven't done the research and math yet, I have a hard time believing the entire executive team of Wal-Mart consumes 10% of the profits of the company. And I similarly have a hard time believing the rest of the F500 companies have compensation plans as lucrative as you describe. If I'm misinterpreted your statement, please provide me with insight into what you really meant.
Whenever you see a scare-monger story like this, remember: economics is designed to fix stuff like this. As zinc becomes harder to get, zinc becomes more expensive.
Yet what you don't take into account is some fool congressman calling a hearing from the heads of the zinc industry (which will be collectively termed "Big Zinc") asking them how they can justify the high prices -- and thus high profits -- of zinc when people are having to make hard choices between food and a new flat screen television.
Big Zinc will respond that prices are high because demand is high and supply is low, but the congressmen will ignore that obviously-logical argument.
Big Zinc will say it would like to increase supply, but all attempts to open new mines are being stymied by environmentalists, bureaucrats, and tax laws but congress will ignore this as well.
In the end, congress will pass a "windfall profits tax" on Big Zinc, which will be passed along (as all corporate taxes are) to the end consumer -- that being us. Yet there will be much fanfare for the congressmen who pass this tax since they will be perceived Standing Up For The Little Guy Against Big Zinc. Many votes and campaign contributions will flow to them, and in the meantime nothing will have been done to fix the problem.
Not gonna happen, you say? It's already happened. Just replace "zinc" with "oil" and compare it with contemporary headlines.
After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
So when Al-Jazeera runs programs saying Jews are apes and pigs, or that being gay should be punished by death, or that blowing yourself up is a blessed service to Allah, are they similarly guilty of "delivering the quality" that their viewers are demanding? Just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't it be hypocritical to give you unfettered access to the internet while the citizens do not?
I do see where you're coming from, but I believe the core of the objection is that the idea of censorship -- especially the heavy-handed stuff the Chinese are notorious for -- is antithetical to the very concept of the Games. China represses its citizens in order to control them. The Games are (or were) about the wonder and glory of what man -- all of man, not just those who've escaped censorship -- can accomplish in friendship and competition. Instead, Beijing wants to welcome everyone's money and media so it can show foreigners that China is a world-class power to be feared and respected. It's China's debut on the 21st-century world publicity stage. I find it disgusting if for no other reason than that.
Maybe, if you stop being those "fuckers who killed my son" and start being "the people who helped us during the drought" - your ennemies won't find it so easy to recruit ?
Tell you what. When you get those huge racial and political chips off your shoulder, come down off that high holy righteous mountain you've put yourself on, and decide to be rational, this conversation can continue. Until then, please don't waste my time with your frothing. Suffice to say, I find your viewpoints to be hopelessly one sided and not bearing much resemblance to reality.
RESOLVE your differences and come to peaceful agreements.
Pray tell, how does one come to a "peaceful agreement" with a group that has, as a stated purpose of their charter, a mission to either convert, enslave, or murder anyone who does not follow their faith? What comfortable middle ground would you be willing to accept, the murder of only half of us infidels?
Peaceful agreements require both sides to be willing to compromise. The Islamists are, by their own statements, unwilling to compromise on anything at all. That alone makes negotiations predestined to fail, yet you make it seem like we're the ones who are failing to live up to your lofty standards.
And if you think the U.S. isn't at least indirectly related to the current and/or former security of South Africa, you're more naive than I originally took you for. Communist rebels funded by the Soviets were actively seeking to topple the S.A. government and replace it with your typical Africa thug-style dictatorship reporting to Moscow. The U.S. and, to a larger extent, all of NATO worked directly and indirectly against that. So, I'll again say "you're welcome" even though you're too proud and too full of yourself to say "thank you."
You are aware are you not that the risk of an American being killed by a terrorist is just about the lowest of all the things likely to kill one right ?
Have you stopped to consider this might be the logical outcome of a pro-active intelligence gathering policy just like the one you're currently attacking? The argument you are making is analogous to saying "I don't know why I bother securing my servers anymore since they never get rooted!"
As I've stated elsewhere in other posts, I'm in the U.S. Marine Corps. I've been in Iraq. I'm willing to bet you haven't. I'm also in the intel branch. You have no idea how many bad guy ops are stopped long before a bomb goes off. And you never, ever hear about it because the terrorists didn't pull off their objective. So you can smugly sit there at your keyboard feeling all safe and happy, knowing that you're far more likely to die from Burger King cholesterol than from a terrorist plot. You can do that because people you despise and denigrate are using methods you abhor to protect you from your naivete. You're welcome.
immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason.
It is neither "spying on American citizens" nor "for no reason." It's pathetic that you've got to make it sound like something more sinister than it is in order to try and scare people to your side of the fence on the issue. If Microsoft had written that article summary, people would be screaming "FUD!"
The truth of the matter is conversations originating overseas from known or suspected terrorist organizations to their contacts in the U.S. may be monitored. Your chats with Grandma about what to get little Jimmy for his birthday are of no interest to anyone and cannot be legally intercepted without a warrant. Trying to find out what next big operation terrorists are planning against us ought to be everybody's interest, and perhaps it would be if most Democrat weren't afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Personally, I think the whole thing stinks. Who goes to all the trouble to escape jail so they can kill themselves when they succeed?
If you read the circumstances of his "escape" you'd know that he was in a minimum security "prison." He literally walked away. No jumping of fences, no evading slavering dogs, no digging tunnels under walls.
In that context, you can probably understand that the decision to commit a murder-suicide wasn't all that hard. He figured his lavish spam-financed life was over, hence there was no reason to live. He probably rationalized that he was doing his family a favor by killing them since they would be unable to enjoy the lavish lifestyle his spam money had provided up to that point. It's a stupid rationalization, but that's the most likely scenario. If you consider this guy was probably a very materialistic jerk, it makes a twisted kind of sense.
I swear, Microsoft finds a way to mess up even the simplest of tasks! Can't those fools in Redmond even push out a simple patch for... ...wait, did you say a patch for named? But...named isn't a Microsoft product.
Surely you're not suggesting that a cherished and prestigious vendor like Red Hat can make a mistake, right? Something is amiss! Must. Find. Way. To. Blame. Microsoft!
The shuttle is made up of a bunch of very well engineered components, they're just all stuck together into an overall package that isn't that useful. Sure, the next generation of spacecraft doesn't need wings. But that doesn't mean that technology developed for the shuttle's engines isn't better than Apollo era engines.
That depends on your definition of "better." Do the SSME's produce more thrust than any other similarly-sized liquid fuel rocket yet flown? Yes. Their efficiency and power are unmatched. However, an F1 racing engine produces far more power from a 2.4L V8 than anything you can buy on your dealer's lot. It also costs 100x-1000x as much and only lasts for a few hundred miles between overhauls. Yet despite the incredible power and efficiency of the SSME's, the Shuttle can only lift a fraction of what the Saturn V could with its "primitive, inefficient, non-reusable" engines.
What about the heat tiles? Are they "better" than ablative, non-reusable materials? Operational evidence says no. The tiles are fragile, as Columbia found out. They are difficult to maintain, requiring significant overhaul between missions.
Other than its engines and re-usable nature, there is very little on the Shuttle that departs from the typical rocket formula (except for the wings that we no longer want or need). If I'm missing something notable, please point it out. There's nothing in it or on it that's demonstrably "better" than either its predecessor or successor. In fact, Ares pretty much repudiates the entire idea. So, I'd again say that while we learned to build some interesting things during the Shuttle program, ultimately we've gained very little from the whole experiment.
in the space business, proven designs count for a LOT in risk mitigation.
Very true, which is why the Shuttle continues to fly with 1970's-era technology controlling most of it.
However, I would posit the following: the Shuttle program dumped most of Apollo in the trash bin and started with something new. I'm of the opinion that what we ended up with was not an improvement over Apollo. The Shuttle is more expensive, more finicky, less reliable, and arguably much more dangerous than Apollo ever was. So, while we have a large body of knowledge centered around Shuttle systems, the systems themselves may not be worth prolonging through to Ares. Hence the justification for breaking with the (Shuttle) past with Ares.
The Shuttle was a great experiment, but ultimately we learned it was something we shouldn't have built. Everything it's done in the last quarter century could've been done better, faster, and cheaper with Apollo-era tech (with incremental improvements as you alluded to earlier) just as the Russians have proven with their launch systems.
No human has been out of low Earth orbit in roughly thirty years. The last three that did, did so on top of a Saturn V. The Shuttle has had us going in circles (literally) since then. The ISS prolongs that boondoggle. Why do we need an ISS? To give the Shuttle some place to go! Why do we need a Shuttle? To build the ISS! What fantastic circular logic. What a horrific waste.
The Shuttle was a lie from the get-go, though I don't think the original intent was malicious. I suspect they were "overly optimistic."
The Shuttle is what happens when you have multiple governmental bureaucracies funding a single project, yet each bureaucracy has a wildly different idea of what they want to fund. NASA wanted a space truck, but the Air Force wanted something that could snatch Soviet satellites and perform other military duties. The problem is, the military duties required the shuttle to go to significantly different orbits than typical commercial payloads. Hence, the Shuttle was redesigned with a different wing along with a host of other changes that made it heavier, more expensive, and less flexible.
The changes in program costs snowballed from there, affecting a myriad of other decisions. Solid or liquid boosters? Solids were deemed to have lower up-front costs but higher long-term costs compared to liquid boosters, so solids were chosen. And since solids can't be throttled or even turned off once lit, that led to the decision to abandon any sort of crew escape system. The result was America's first man-rated spacecraft without any type of abort mode during the first -- and most dangerous -- minutes of launch.
The lack of abort modes led to another problem: if the astronauts can't escape, then the system has to work perfectly every time, on time, without degradation. This causes NASA no end of headaches in the form of launch delays, because every quadruple-backup system has to be quadruple-checked and quadruply readied or the flight is scrubbed. This drives up per-flight costs dramatically.
I could go on, but I'd instead direct you to a great book that reveals a lot of the compromises and problems that came out of the Shuttle design period. It's called The Challenger Launch Decision , and it details the decisions -- some of them all the way back to the Shuttle conceptual stages -- that set the stage for Challenger. Another good one is Comm Check which details what happened to Columbia. It references a lot of historical problems with the Shuttle program as well. The former is something of a dry read in parts because it deals with the psychology of decision making. The latter is much faster paced, a real page turner, and has much more engineering information. Both are highly recommended.
The Saturn V stood as a monument to JFK, and folks from the Republican Party saw an opportunity to tear it down and replace it with the Shuttle. Burns my bacon, it does.
The Shuttle had no more to do with Republicans than with Democrats. Both parties had equal hands in trying to snag pork-barrel funding for their respective districts. If blame must be laid somewhere, blame it on those who tried to take a square peg and a round peg and fit both of them into an oval hole. The Shuttle is an object lesson of what happens to an engineering project when it's asked to be all things to all people.
In other words, keeping a Shuttle in orbit would be more trouble and expense than it's worth. If you want to do that sort of thing, do it with a Soyuz.
Or, if we'd had any sense, we'd have kept our Saturn V technology around and used it instead of the Shuttle. In dollars per pound of launch cost, the S-V was much cheaper to operate despite the fact that you threw away the entire system every launch. The Shuttle's biggest cost is inspecting, reconditioning, refurbishing, and repairing it between launches which takes months and costs millions of dollars. Far from being the cheap, reliable "space truck" NASA sold the public on, the Shuttle is an expensive, finicky system that in no way improved upon its predecessor. The only thing the Shuttle can do that the S-V couldn't is return orbiting hardware to Earth. That capability has always been of dubious value, as the cost of putting up a satellite and retrieving (via the expensive Shuttle) has been greater than the cost of de-orbiting the satellite and launching a new, improved one.
We could go further on the boondoggle that is the ISS, which exists mainly to give the Shuttle a place to go to. And why does the Shuttle still exist? To build the ISS. It's circular reasoning at its finest, and it's sucked up all of NASA's budget -- which could've had a permanent lunar outpost in place by now -- since the early 1970's. What a disgrace.
Increasing the number of layers does not significantly add changeover costs
Really? That's funny, because Toshiba would beg to differ. As would Sony, who had to spend a lot of time and money convincing people to go with a standard that requires scrapping a lot of DVD fab gear. As would the folks who are producing (or trying to produce with reasonable yields) these multilayer discs you say are so cheap and easy to come by.
Blu-ray's decision to put the layers nearer the surface of the disk have nothing to do with adding layers. It's to do with increasing capacity.
Perhaps your reading comprehension skills are a bit off, so I'll type this slowly a second time: I said there were several reasons why Blu-ray went with a different layer location. One of them was indeed greater capacity due to a different numerical aperture of the lens. Another reason -- you could almost call it a happy side effect -- was more room for layers. Even someone with elementary skills in mathematics can deduce that if you have a fixed disc thickness and you reduce the height of the non-data-bearing portions which are merely coatings, you have more room for data-bearing layers.
you might want to ask yourself how HD-VMD does it - that's a very real format that uses regular DVD pressing equipment.
I don't have to ask. The data are available on the web for anyone to peruse. I will point out that HD-VMD is nowhere near the volume of either Blu-ray or DVD in production. I will point out that at 5GB per layer, HD-VMD must go with many, many layers in order to even be remotely competitive with Blu-ray's two layers. I will point out that no HD-VMD producer has released numbers indicating what yields they are getting for quad-layer HD-VMD discs.
HD DVD is cheaper (at a media level) than HD-VMD not because the equipment is cheaper - it's the same - but because adding layers adds costs directly at the media level. If it takes 10x as long to make a ten layer disc as a single layer disc, it's going to cost several times as much too, and that's exactly what happens here. Worse, as every layer's integrity matters to the final product, you're increasing the chances of a bad disk by 10x by increasing the number of layers this way.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You've been going on and on about how much nicer this all would've been if the world had just gone with HD-VMD, but in the same breath you say that more layers results in lower yields -- a fact I established quite some time ago. So, what you're arguing is that a ten-layer HD-VMD (50GB) would've been a superior solution to a two-layer Blu-ray (50GB). Your argument does not add up, my friend.
If this was a viable technology, HD DVD would have used it with red lasers. It would have ended up ahead of the game. It's not viable not because of plant changeover costs (the costs are minimal, as with blue-laser HD DVD), but because you need to throw away four-eight times as many discs as you would a regular DVD or Blu-ray disc, and take four-eight times as long to make them.
You underestimate the plant changeover costs. If nothing else, Blu-ray discs require additional coating steps for the Durabis coatings (which is itself not a cheap substance) beyond the additional costs of plant mechanicals, higher costs for masters, lower overall yields, etc. Costs for Blu-ray production are noticeably higher than HD-DVD, which was in turn slightly higher than that of DVD's.
I run a small video disc production business, by the way. This subject is not foreign to me.
Remember, when I say blu-ray is only a minor improvement, I am talking about the experience most people will have with it. Not some idealized microcosm inhabited by people with honest-to-god home theatres, with viewing distances THX would certify.
Then it's my turn to call your assessment dishonest. Would it be fair to say that Linux is far inferior to Windows because "most people" are unable to grasp the intricacies of its foibles? Would it be fair to say that a Ferrari Enzo is no better than Honda Civic because "most people" cannot drive a Ferrari hard enough to bring out its pedigree? Would it be fair to say Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is no better than an arts & crafts store copy because "most people" aren't art experts and wouldn't know the difference?
And it is not some idealized microcosm where people enjoy a good set at reasonable viewing distances. I know people who've literally spent over a million dollars on their home theater -- inside a $30 million mansion, no less. Me, I have a far more humble setup that I've spent less than $10,000 on (that's video, audio, and furnishings all put together), yet it's not difficult to tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-ray. I think you either give too much credit to those with uber-theaters or take away too much credit from the average consumer.
The same way they store liquid fuel -- in a storage container designed for the purpose.
You make it sound so easy! I wish I had your easy genius. Now, since batteries have an energy density far less than gasoline, explain to me where your typical filling station is going to get the 300%-400% more storage space they're going to need. I know! Maybe they can store the batteries underground in a large tank and pump them through pipes to waiting cars!
That's a question of inventory on hand. See my answer to your first objection.
I'm continually amazed at your problem solving skills. Again, without offering a shred of evidence, you've completely destroyed my objection.
By factoring in the replacement cost into their pricing, either on a blanket basis, or by assessing a surcharge based upon battery age.
And station owners will be able to discern the age of the packs...how? With printed dates? Like that won't get faked. Or perhaps with some sort of electronics in the pack? How long until some 733t h4x0r cracks the code and lets everyone designate their depleted packs as "brand new"? Silly me. Here I am bringing up practical problems in the real world when all I need to do is wait for you to type "no problem" and make it all go away.
Pneumatic lifts? Hydraulic lifts? There is plenty of mechanical assistance available for lifting heavy objects. As for environmental concerns, how do garages cope with the same wrt engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc?
Your average gas station has none of the above equipment, nor does it have any facilities for adding it. Further, your average gas station doesn't deal with engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc. because it's a gas station, not a garage. You'll find lots of the former but far fewer of the latter. Perhaps you'll now explain how all the gas stations will magically morph into full-fledged garages, and how the cost of all of this infrastructure will somehow magically not get passed on to the customer, taxpayer, or both in exorbitant amounts.
Who says we need to use coal? Maybe as a stop-gap, but nuclear and renewables are good options in the future.
It takes roughly a decade or more to bring a nuclear plant online. In the meantime, people are rushing pell-mell onto this absurd electric car idea as if that's the only practical solution. It is not the only solution, and it's actually one of the less practical ones.
In short, every problem has a solution, and while the economics need to be worked out, it sure seems to me that you're an obstructionist and would rather look at the problems and say, "Why bother?" than look at the problems and say "How can that be solved?".
Perhaps you are unaware of the difference between being an "obstructionist" and being a pragmatist. Allow me to educate you. You, my friend, are an idealist. You believe every problem has a neat, tidy, why-didn't-somebody-already-think-of-this solution just waiting around the corner. I admire your optimism, but it masks a greater naivete. Fact is, people much smarter than either of us have thought about this, far longer than both of us put together. And guess what? It's not practical, even at $200/barrel for oil. It is not economically feasible. You want it to be feasible so you overlook the glaring holes in your solution.
Here's some advice: if you come across a major problem facing the world and you think you've got a simple solution to it, you can pretty much say with 99.99999% certainty that you have no grasp of the situation. Things are the way they are for a reason, and if you don't see that reason, you haven't looked hard enough or thought long enough about all the ramifications.
And it's not that I'm saying "why bother?" I'm instead saying "show me somet
The fact is, we already have an extremely modern and efficient system of transferring energy practically anywhere which could replace the petrol distribution network: our electricity grid. All we need is to develop good-enough battery technology for the cars.
The "extremely modern and efficient" system you speak of has nowhere near the capacity to do what you are proposing. You need that problem solved first before you can even consider your ill-advised plan. And don't toss around the idea of "people can charge at night when there is excess capacity" argument. With the long charge times and limited range prevalent in every electric-only car currently in production or even envisioned, people are going to plug in every time they park their cars, day or night.
Second, once the problem of generating the power has been fixed (and that's not a trivial problem), you've got to get it from the power plant to the end user efficiently. Power transmission losses are not insignificant, so you lose a fair amount of efficiency right there.
Third, you've got to get the power into the car rapidly enough to make it practical for people who are used to filling up in under five minutes. Gasoline (or diesel, if you prefer) has a very high energy density, and transferring it from one container to another is very fast and easy. Trying to replicate that with a copper conductor is neither fast nor easy. For example, the Tesla Roadster -- touted as the current state-of-the-art -- requires thirty hours to charge from a typical 120V outlet. You can improve on that by going to a higher voltage, but the practical limit for most homes (in the U.S. anyways) is about 240V. Above that and you're just not going to find many homes with the infrastructure to charge these magical electric cars from your magical electric grid.
And all we need is better batteries, right? Gosh, why didn't I think of that? Forget me, why hasn't the entire chemist world thought of that? Actually, they have, and the batteries we have today are the culmination of decades (or, in some cases, centuries) of refinement. But we're not making leaps-and-bounds progress anymore. Battery improvements are yielding fewer and fewer advances, while R&D and production costs are getting higher and higher. There is no reason to suspect this is going to change anytime soon.
I've seen it proposed many times, here's the solution:
You pull into a gas station and they swap out your battery for a completely charged one.
You drive away and they recharge the battery.
Problem solved.
Your powers of problem solving are amazing! You've just singlehandedly solved the entire electric car/battery issue by typing a few words into your browser!
Of course, you gloss over the "few issues to be worked out" as if they weren't the biggest, most difficult, impractical problems confounding your whole idea, such as:
- How would "refilling stations" store the massive number of batteries needed to support such rapid changeout procedures?
- How would these stations charge the batteries quickly enough for a fast turnaround?
- Batteries -- especially Li-Ion ones -- begin to degrade as soon as they're manufactured, usually losing 40% or more of their charge capacity in 18-24 months. How is a station going to deal with customers dropping off old battery packs and picking up new ones?
- How is the station going to physically handle the battery packs? Lead-acid cells are cheap and sturdy but heavy as...well, lead. Not to mention the environmental concerns.
- Where is the national grid going to get the power to charge all these wonderfully swappable packs?
These are not trivial issues. In fact, they're the most non-trivial piece of the whole let's-all-plug-in-our-cars-and-feel-warm-and-fuzzy-about-being-green hysteria. And these are just the few I can come up with in five minutes are less.
There are many more reasons why this is a silly idea that will do little or nothing to help the environment. It may, in fact, actually harm the environment if we (meaning the U.S.) turn to our most abundant power-producing resource (coal) to provide the needed power.
I'd be in favor of this idea if we'd get our heads out of the sand about nuclear power, but the tree huggers seem quite intent on keeping that option off the table.
The downside, though, is that they're not using the right compression scheme. Artifacts which I would not have noticed on DVD are readily apparent on BluRay disk. Either they need a better algorithm or a lot more bits.
Don't blame Blu-ray. Blame the studio producing the disc. Some of the early BD and HD-DVD releases were done quickly and with very little attention to detail. The quickest and most well-known codec for the studios was MPEG-2, despite AVC and VC-1 being superior. But that was only part of the problem.
The other problem was the source the discs were mastered from. Studios have been mastering DVD's from 2K sources for a while, and the results are very good. Why? Because you're starting with much higher resolution than the end product. But with 1080p, a 2K source just doesn't cut it. You need a 4K source to really do it justice. The studios didn't want to foot the bill for 4K re-mastering, so we ended up with crappy initial releases. After early adopters complained, the studios got off their duffs and did it right.
Last, there's an issue of the equipment the disc is mastered on. Believe it or not, many high-end Hollywood studios preview their masters on tiny little studio monitors. I'm talking itsy bitsy, anywhere from 24" to 36" usually. Anything looks good when it's scrunched down onto a tiny screen. It may look like crap on a 100" screen and the guys mastering it will never know it. And that's exactly what happened.
You should head over to Joe Kane Productions and see what the guy has to say about film and video. He produces discs that are the de facto standards for calibrating equipment. He's also the most amazingly anal-retentive, nitpicking, perfection-obsessed videophile I've ever met. But he's great fun to listen to when he's giving a seminar on video standards and quality.
No. The only people who really care whether they are watching an up-converted DVD or a blu-ray are are videophile snobs looking to justify the expense, who pause the movie to point at some intricate pattern in the corner of the screen and gloat.
While I've been around a fair number of videophile snobs (who pale in snobbery comparison to audiophiles, by the way), I can honestly say that if you have good-quality gear, it's properly calibrated, and the screen is reasonably large (50+ inches) the difference between upconverted SD and native HD is rather obvious. And I'm not talking about a $40,000 Runco projector on a Stewart Greyhawk screen as the definition of "good-quality gear," either...although such gear does ensure the quality difference is blindingly obvious.
Now, for someone looking at upconverted content on a 37" CRT of reasonable quality, I'm sure there is practically no noticeable difference between SD and HD, especially in cases where the SD transfer is very good (as most recent releases are) or the HD transfer isn't very good (as several early Blu-ray releases were), or both.
But go view a DVD on a 65" screen. The inherent limitations of NTSC -- something that's survived largely unchanged since the 1950's -- and the limits of MPEG-2 -- developed in the early 1990's -- show up loud and clear. Macroblock noise. Banding in areas of subtle gradients. Crushed blacks. Blown-out whites. You don't have to be a snob to notice it. AVC and VC-1 both do superior jobs with the same bit budget, or they do much, much better jobs with a larger bit budget.
If you can't tell the difference between SD and HD on the gear you're using, fine, no problem. Enjoy your upconverted DVD's and more power to you. But do not case aspersions on those who do have gear that can show off the difference.
If anyone doubts this is an issue, you might want to ask why anyone went with blue lasers for the HD formats in the first place. DVD can be increased to 50G just by making the discs 10-11 layers. Everyone's known how to do that for a while, there's even a (real, disks being pressed, players being made) HD format called HD-VMD that works exactly that way. The DVD Forum could have made HD DVD use that format, and would have thus killed Blu-ray's chances completely by making profitable sub-$100 players, in massive quantities. The only cost-adding modification you'd have to make to a DVD drive to make this work is to dampen the noise due to the 3-5X spin increase.
There are a number of faults with your argument. First off, the DVD Forum's decision to go with a maximum of two (later three) layers for HD-DVD had absolutely nothing to do with what was technically possible at the time. It had everything to do with accommodating existing DVD production lines, all of which could (supposedly) produce HD-DVD discs with only minor changeover costs. This was supposed to give HD-DVD a production price advantage over Blu-ray, as Blu-ray production required a complete overhaul of production facilities.
And why did Blu-ray require a complete overhaul of production facilities? Was it because of the use of a blue (violet, actually) laser? Nope. It was because of how Blu-ray was layered, with the data-bearing disc surface being much closer to the physical surface than DVD's. There were several reasons why Blu-ray chose this approach, but one of them was (drum roll please) to accommodate a larger number of layers in the disc while preserving the "standard DVD" thickness.
So, while it was perfectly possible for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray to use a red laser, it made no sense for either camp to do so. HD-DVD's capacity would've been too small with a red laser unless they went with more than two layers, and that would've mooted the production cost advantages that were the cornerstone of HD-DVD's "buy us, we're cheaper!" market strategy. Blu-ray could've gone with red lasers and many layers as well, but it would then have higher production costs than DVD without as much of a capacity advantage.
Global capitalism, spread and maintained largely through Microsoft products, causes more problems with poverty and economic disparity than Gates' foundation can ever fix.
Right! And that's why, when you're looking for flourishing economies and prosperous, free societies, you seek out despotic dictators, corrupt monarchies, and repressive communist regimes. They are bastions of bringing freedom and wealth to their constituents. Yessiree, if you want to see impoverished, oppressive societies, look no further than capitalistic Republics.
Oh, wait, I had that all backwards. And so did you. Not that it's likely to change a mind as ridiculously blindered as yours.
the obvious rebuttal is that communism relied on 'central planning' to manage scarce resources, like labor and equipment while free software - and all other ideas - are abundant resources that remain the product of free markets in scarce resources labor and equipment.
Except that you, like many other FOSS proponents, leave out one hugely critical piece of the equation: how do FOSS programmers support themselves? Past surveys have shown that FOSS projects are almost always started and maintained by people who program proprietary, non-FOSS software for a living. Ergo, proprietary, non-FOSS software for profit is an absolute necessity in order to support the FOSS community.
Now, some FOSS projects are given away free but with paid-for support infrastructures. This is a great idea, but it damages quite a bit of the we're-cheaper-than-non-FOSS argument. Study after study -- and your own argument -- holds that initial purchase price is an almost-insignificant piece of the TCO. If I get a piece of software for free but pay the same to support it as I would've a proprietary solution, I've gained little or nothing in the process.
And don't say I've gained independence, or I'm supporting "the movement" or any other ideology-based argument. I don't give two damns about where my software comes from or what economic model supports it. I care that it (a) performs the function I want it to perform with reasonable efficiency and reliability, and (b) I want the cost of the software to be reasonably related to the value I extract from it. Leave the preaching and proselytizing to the RMS's of the world.
You would have to have a Big Zinc executive as president
And since a Democratically-controlled congress voted the president war powers, you'd have to include them in this vast right-wing...err, left-wing...err...well, both-wing conspiracy.
And no points for giving a president war powers and then (a) changing your mind or (b) saying "we never really though he'd actually use the war powers for a real war" argument.
No. Taxes on corporations affect five groups: The owners, the executives, the employees, the suppliers, and the customers. You cannot tell a priori which of the five groups will be affected by changing the taxes on the corporation.
Assuming the taxes are applied on an industry-wide basis (i.e. not to any one particular company to the exclusion of its competitors), the most likely and logical outcome would be an overall rise in prices of whatever goods or services are produced by that industry.
Across the fortune 500, the top 5 executives capture 10% of all corporate profits; shareholders get the remaining 90%.
I'm not quite sure how to interpret the figures you're putting forth. You seem to say the executives of the top 5 firms in the Fortune 500 all receive compensation equal to 10% of the gross profits of their respective companies. I'm quite sure that's not true, and it's relatively easy to demonstrate.
The top company in the F500 is Wal-Mart. According to Fortune, Wal-Mart posted a $12.7 billion for the most current year. This would mean the top executives would've received almost $1.3 billion in compensation. H. Lee Scott, Jr. is the CEO of Wal-Mart, and according to Forbes he is paid $1.4 million per year in salary and $30 million in "long term compensation" (which probably means stock options). His compensation works out to 2.4% of company profits if you factor in the stock options, but only 0.1% without. Although I haven't done the research and math yet, I have a hard time believing the entire executive team of Wal-Mart consumes 10% of the profits of the company. And I similarly have a hard time believing the rest of the F500 companies have compensation plans as lucrative as you describe. If I'm misinterpreted your statement, please provide me with insight into what you really meant.
Whenever you see a scare-monger story like this, remember: economics is designed to fix stuff like this. As zinc becomes harder to get, zinc becomes more expensive.
Yet what you don't take into account is some fool congressman calling a hearing from the heads of the zinc industry (which will be collectively termed "Big Zinc") asking them how they can justify the high prices -- and thus high profits -- of zinc when people are having to make hard choices between food and a new flat screen television.
Big Zinc will respond that prices are high because demand is high and supply is low, but the congressmen will ignore that obviously-logical argument.
Big Zinc will say it would like to increase supply, but all attempts to open new mines are being stymied by environmentalists, bureaucrats, and tax laws but congress will ignore this as well.
In the end, congress will pass a "windfall profits tax" on Big Zinc, which will be passed along (as all corporate taxes are) to the end consumer -- that being us. Yet there will be much fanfare for the congressmen who pass this tax since they will be perceived Standing Up For The Little Guy Against Big Zinc. Many votes and campaign contributions will flow to them, and in the meantime nothing will have been done to fix the problem.
Not gonna happen, you say? It's already happened. Just replace "zinc" with "oil" and compare it with contemporary headlines.
After all, this is a free market, and Fox News is only delivering the quality that people are demanding in that free market.
So when Al-Jazeera runs programs saying Jews are apes and pigs, or that being gay should be punished by death, or that blowing yourself up is a blessed service to Allah, are they similarly guilty of "delivering the quality" that their viewers are demanding? Just a thought.