Re:Obligatory Blackadder reference
on
Isn't It Ironic?
·
· Score: 1
Check the Websters Unabridged Dictionary definition here.
Go figure.
Actually, it isn't.
Are you using the full Unabridged version, or just the free online edition? I'm not turning over my credit card number for a trial subscription, but is it possible that there is additional content available for subscribers?
If we break out the biggest gun--the OED itself--one finds the last definition for irony is as follows. Unfortunately, a subscription most definitely is required, so you will have to take my word for it. (Do you think I would go to the trouble of making this stuff up?)
irony ('aI@rnI, 'aI@r@nI), a. Also 4-7 yrony, -ie, 6 yrnye. [f. iron sb.1 + -y.] Consisting of iron; of the nature of iron; resembling iron in some quality, as hardness, taste, or colour; abounding in or containing iron.
1382 Wyclif Deut. xxviii. 23 Be heuene that is aboue thee braasny [1388 brasun]; and the lond that thou tredist yrony [1388 yrun, 1611 of iron]. 1583 Stanyhurst Æneis, etc. Ps. ii. (Arb.) 127 From oure persons pluck we there yrnye yokes. 1654 Hammond Fundamentals (J.), It is not strange if the irony chains have more solidity than the contemplative. 1764 Nat. Hist. in Ann. Reg. 82/2 It is a ponderous irony earth. 1843 Portlock Geol. 541 Sulphate of barytes, associated with irony quartz. 1875 G. Macdonald Malcolm II. xviii. 243 Crystals of a clear irony brown.
Re:Obligatory Blackadder reference
on
Isn't It Ironic?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
However, you are correct that something not being in the dictionary doesn't necessarily make it untrue. At least, in American english. In the UK, the Oxford dictionary is the official lexicon, as far as I know. In Spain, there is a governmental organization which codifes the Castillian spanish, and thus its dictionary is the authority on Castillian spanish. Any word not present in it, isn't Castillian spanish. Period. Of course, South American spanish (not to mention Cuban spanish) has no such singular authority.
Similarly, the French have l'Académie française, responsible for the French lexicon since Louis XIII. Of course, in other parts of the world, the language is butchered mercilessly. In parts of Québec and in northern Ontario, I have heard phrases like (overheard this one in a bar)
" 'ey boys! J'ai trouvé un lighter!"
Presumably, the fellow had found a lighter...
The introduction of English words into the French language in Québec prompted the provincial government many years ago to establish a 'language police' (the Office québécois de la langue française), charged with ensuring that product labels and outdoor signage in the province have appropriate French content. It's a losing battle, but it's amusing to watch the fight, sometimes.
CODS SMURF
CDR FUM SOS
CDR OF MS US
CDR OF SUMS
CDR OF MUSS
CDR FOSS MU
CDR FUSS OM
SCUDS FROM
SCUDS FORM
SCUD FORMS
FMC DO RUSS
FMC DO USSR
FMC ROD SUS
FMC RODS US
FMC DR SO US
FMC SURD SO
FMC SUDS OR
FMC DU ROSS
COM DR FUSS
SCUMS FORD
SCUMS DR OF
SCUM FORDS
RCS MUDS OF
RCS SOD FUM
RCS DOS FUM
Clearly, SCUD FORMS are the documents one requires to order or ship a SCUD missile. CDR OF SUMS is a position within the U.S. army--he is resposible for payroll. DR OF SCUMS is the guy who cleans my aquarium. SMURF CODS are the small blue fish that live there.
While us Americans are chuckling and wondering why anyone would want this, as many posts are showing...
In Japan is is absolutely critical for every teenage girl to have exactly the same stuff as every other, or else she faces some rather severe social consequences. It's no secret that these girls/sheep run the Japanese economy.
Right. The RIAA doesn't intend to sue him again, or really attempt to rescind the settlement. They're just going to keep doing things that result in/. stories, and kill the kid with bandwidth costs.
How does it feel to be a puppet of the regime, everyone?;)
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure copyright infringement is a civil crime and hence is not an arrestable offense. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
If we limit our discussion to the United States, then usually copyright infringement is a civil matter. Criminal proceedings can take place under 17 USC 506. (A fellow/.er filled me in during a previous discussion.)
The bit governing criminal offenses:
Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. -
Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement...
The applicability of this section to all to be the most profligate of file traders is questionable--I figure a reasonable retail value of ~$1 per track for music lets you download about 1000 tracks every six months before you hit criminal prosecution. Then again, IANAL, and yerricide raised some excellent points about alternate interpretation of 506(a)(1).
The law defines "financial gain" to "includ[e] receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works."
I would argue that applying that condition is still iffy at best. File traders who make available copyrighted works are not doing it out of a specific expectation that they will receive other copyrighted works. It is common knowledge that copyrighted works are readily available through various file sharing networks without any such quid pro quo.
Those infringers of copyright who do make available copyrighted works for download through networks (Kazaa et al.) may do so for several reasons:
They don't know that their software shares their music collection by default;
They have a twisted sense of altruism to the 'community' of infringers at large
They have an expectation that specific works will be made available to them--to which they would otherwise not have access--if they provide without permission certain copyrighted works.
I would suggest that only in the latter case could a 'financial gain' argument even be considered.
That's a good point. Thank you for providing the link. For those who are interested, the relevant section describing the offense (linked in the parent) is:
Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. -
Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1)
for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2)
by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement...
Okay, for most casual file traders, Sec.506(a)(1) doesn't apply, so let's look at (2). It looks like you have to download $1000 (retail) worth of music in a 180 day period--about six months. At about a buck of retail value per track, that's 1000 songs in six months. Some people do collect music at that rate--but I suspect it's a small fraction of the population. Maybe it should be a Slashdot poll.
It certainly means that it is inappropriate to describe individuals with moderate file collections 'criminals'. Heck, mp3s have been readily available for what, about five years now? If you download steadily, you could have acquired a ten thousand song music library without committing a criminal act. It may also be difficult in a criminal case to prove that the requisite amount of music was downloaded within the 180 day time frame. It might be difficult to find a prosecutor who wanted to go to the trouble of charging you, even if you asked very nicely. Civil proceedings still make more sense.
Why doesn't everyone just turn themselves in. The legal system will be backlogged and this is the ONLY WAY congress will see that we arent talking about Pirats (narrr) but real people.
You can't 'turn yourself in'. The act that you have engaged in is copyright violation: a civil infraction. The copyright holder may sue you, but the police cannot arrest you--you have not, legally speaking, committed a criminal act. You can turn yourself in, but they'll laugh and send you on your way. They have nothing to charge you with.
You're welcome to contact RIAA or its members directly and ask to settle--but you can bet that they'll ask for more than what their lawyers will cost them. They'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Newsflash: People who illegally copy music ARE criminals!
Er, no. Technically not. What they are doing may render them civilly liable, and it is morally questionable. In general, they are not criminals--in most jurisdictions, they are not committing a crime within the definition of criminal law.
Yes, I do know I sound pedantic. Nevertheless, this sort of semantic distinction is quite important--if we are going to discuss legal issues, we should take the time to use technically correct language. To take an example likely more familiar to the Slashdot crowd--how many of us have friends or family who just don't get the distinction between memory and hard drive space? As in, "My new computer has eighty gigabytes of memory. That's a lot, isn't it?" Members of the legal profession no doubt cringe at Slashdot legal discussions the way that Slashdotters cringe at technical commentary from the lay public.
Or drink tea, which contains something that stops your body absorbing caffeine.
Or...not. Your body will perfectly happily absorb and respond to the caffeine in tea. The perception that tea is only a weak stimulant probably has several sources.
Some people make really weak tea.
There are many teas that do not contain appreciable amounts of caffeine. Many 'herbal' teas, for instance. Different types and brands of black and green teas often have very different caffeine content.
Psychosomatic effects. People in our society are conditioned anticipate a jolt from coffee. Tea in North America is often (unfairly) portrayed, seen, and marketed as a drink for the elderly--and for those weak-kneed Europeans.
We spent millions of years to evolving to eat the shit that grows around us - not some factory grown crap that no-one actually has any idea about what it's effects on everything else (us, other plants, the biosphere) might be. Some scientist with too much funding and driven by greedy food corporations (Hi Monsanto!) simply is not going to improve on what we evolved to consume.
I'm pretty sure that our ancestors did not evolve with access to dried, roasted coffee beans, boiling water, or espresso machines.
Caffeine may or may not be harmful (it's certainly not extremely dangerous; we'd all be dead) but it is by no means an essential part of the diet. Why shouldn't people who don't like its effects have the opportunity to avoid it?
What was the old drivers ed rule, one carlength spacing per 10 miles per hour of speed? A typical car is what 20 ft., tops? 300 feet is reasonable then if the vehicle in question is going c. 150 mph.
The California DMV recommends a three second cushion in front. Young Drivers (Canada's largest driving school) says a minimum of two seconds in good weather, three or more otherwise. On the highway, you cover three hundred feet in about three seconds.
Even at the best of times, your reaction time is going to be a minimum of about one second--usually it's closer to at least 1.5 seconds. Worse, if you're starting to snooze and drift into oncoming traffic then three hundred feet puts you only a second and a half away from the other guy.
If you come up on a stationary vehicle on the road--stalled, say, at night--braking from a mile a minute to zero at one gee (good luck braking that hard, by the way) costs you a hundred and fifty feet...plus reaction time.
Nope, three hundred feet isn't too far to be able to look ahead. Obviously, if you're only doing ten miles per hour in a parking lot, the system isn't going to use all of that long-distance information.
Link to chart of stopping distances under realistic conditions of braking ability and reaction time.
This link has some more information. The satellites orbit at a nominal altitude of 20 200 km above the Earth's surface, in nearly perfectly circular orbits. Their orbital period is exactly 12 sidereal hours: 11 hours and 58 minutes to the rest of us. (My back of the envelope numbers start here...) Taking the Earth's radius to be 6300 km, the satellites cover 166 420 km twice daily, for an orbital velocity of 3900 meters per second (to two sig figs). The correction factor for special relativity at that velocity is sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) which comes out to about one part in ten billion--a handful of microseconds per day.
Here's a link. I haven't checked his numbers, but they seem to be the right order of magnitude. The GR correction for being further up the gravity well speeds the clocks by an apparent 49 microseconds per day. (The GPS satellites are in a high orbit, with a period of about 12 hours.) The SR correction due to satellite motion slows the clocks by about 5 us per day.
So, the total correction is 44 us per day--the clocks must be slower by about half a part per billion. That's one second difference every sixty years.
Or how about the illegal [as the WTO ruled] tarrif on Softwood lumber?
Same problem as above--Canada's socialist, anti-market subsidies propped up softwood lumber producers so they could dump their products in the US. Just like in the case being discussed, the US applied a corrective measure. If the Canadian industry can't handle a little competition, that's not our problem.
The point here is that the WTO has ruled that the Canadian government does not unfairly subsidize the softwood lumber industry. The Canadian softwood producers are not 'propped up' by 'socialist, anti-market subsidies'. Canada does use a different system (from the U.S.) for the sale of logging rights, but it is not intrinsically unfair. Unless, of course, you wish to make the assertion that the WTO is a bastion of 'leftist' and 'socialist' thinking.
Until recently, the Canadian dollar was at all-time historic lows against the U.S. dollar--consequently, Canadian products became cheaper (relatively) in the American market. Now, the Canadian dollar has jumped in value about fifteen percent in the last year or two--Canadian goods will become more expensive. We should also consider the possibility that the American softwood lumber industry is inefficient and uncompetitive, and should be subjected to market forces instead of hiding behind protectionist tariffs.
Yep. Leftists and socialists such as yourself think it's peachy for every country but the US to prop up uncompetitive industries, using far more nationalist propaganda than anything you'll ever see in US markets. But if the big, bad US of A, which probably sent soldiers to fight for your freedom to bitch at some point, tries to defend its own markets, oh, what a monster.
Hypocrite.
They were also fighting for their own 'freedom to bitch'. In case you're wondering, Canada too has paid in blood for the right of its citizens to bitch. Battles like Vimy Ridge and Ypres in WWI, and the Juno Beach landing in WWII are as well known to Canadians as events like Leyte Gulf or Pearl Harbor are to Americans. Feel free to discuss differences of opinion about international trade policy, but don't insult the millions of men and women in other countries who have also died for our freedom.
The United States is one of the world's largest markets. If it engages in unfair trade practices, it distorts commerce for the rest of the world. If it chooses to employ protectionist tariffs while purportedly supporting free trade...'hypocrite' indeed.
Yes but lasers don't require megawatthours of electricity to generate. This sort of thing absolutely requires super high energies...
Therefore there will probably never be a commercial application to quark gluon plasma generation.
First of all, I agree with you--it's unlikely that there will be a commercial application for a quark-gluon plasma anytime soon. The power requirements border on the ludicrous, and the scale of equipment is absurd.
Nevertheless, if you asked Theodore Maiman about his 'optical maser' in 1960, he probably wouldn't have anticipated every teenager in the country carrying a laser with them all day--powered by a pair of AA batteries. (How do you power the flashlamp? Where do you put it? How do these kids afford the little ruby that's the lasing medium? Oh, and what the hell is a CD?)
And you never know. Look at medicine. Devices like cyclotrons are becoming much more common in medical research facilities for creating short-lived isotopes. (I can think of at least three or four within a couple hours' drive from here.) There is talk of using synchrotron radiation--not to mention more exotic particles like pi mesons--for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
Suppose there are parallel advances in high temperature superconducting magnets, and other tools of the particle collider trade. Perhaps you can make a quark-gluon plasma for a hundred million dollars rather than multiple billions. Suddenly the field becomes more accessible, and people will come up with all kinds of applications.
What I read from that is that the clocks on the satellites operate with a slightly redefined notion of a 'second' to compensate for the effects of relativity. Further, for clocks on Earth's surface at sea level, the effects of special and general relativity coincidentally cancel, so that a clock at the pole will seem to run at the same rate as one on the equator. Fair enough, it means that everybody's second seems to be the same length, to an observer at sea level on the earth.
Nevertheless, someone had to be able to do the calculation for just what the adjusted second should be in the first place--this requires special and general relativity.
Further, there is a small discrepancy introduced due to relativity for observers not at sea level, or travelling at significant speeds. Presumably, a knowledge of SR and GR would be handy to account for these effects.
Having said that, we could indeed use GPS with no knowledge whatsoever of relativity. We would notice pretty quickly that atomic clocks aboard satellites seemed to drift, and we could come up with a completely empirical system to compensate. (Of course, this would lead to someone developing a theory of relativity...scientists abhor this sort of unsolved problem.)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it isn't.
Are you using the full Unabridged version, or just the free online edition? I'm not turning over my credit card number for a trial subscription, but is it possible that there is additional content available for subscribers?
If we break out the biggest gun--the OED itself--one finds the last definition for irony is as follows. Unfortunately, a subscription most definitely is required, so you will have to take my word for it. (Do you think I would go to the trouble of making this stuff up?)
Similarly, the French have l'Académie française, responsible for the French lexicon since Louis XIII. Of course, in other parts of the world, the language is butchered mercilessly. In parts of Québec and in northern Ontario, I have heard phrases like (overheard this one in a bar)
Presumably, the fellow had found a lighter...
The introduction of English words into the French language in Québec prompted the provincial government many years ago to establish a 'language police' (the Office québécois de la langue française), charged with ensuring that product labels and outdoor signage in the province have appropriate French content. It's a losing battle, but it's amusing to watch the fight, sometimes.
CODS SMURF
CDR FUM SOS
CDR OF MS US
CDR OF SUMS
CDR OF MUSS
CDR FOSS MU
CDR FUSS OM
SCUDS FROM
SCUDS FORM
SCUD FORMS
FMC DO RUSS
FMC DO USSR
FMC ROD SUS
FMC RODS US
FMC DR SO US
FMC SURD SO
FMC SUDS OR
FMC DU ROSS
COM DR FUSS
SCUMS FORD
SCUMS DR OF
SCUM FORDS
RCS MUDS OF
RCS SOD FUM
RCS DOS FUM
Clearly, SCUD FORMS are the documents one requires to order or ship a SCUD missile. CDR OF SUMS is a position within the U.S. army--he is resposible for payroll. DR OF SCUMS is the guy who cleans my aquarium. SMURF CODS are the small blue fish that live there.
Shouldn't that be phidelity?
I know; you're kidding. But Niue is at 19 02 S, 169 52 W (link contains many useful facts about Niue). Where are the bird planning on migrating to?
The first time I read that, I thought you were talking about people who really like to juggle.
Obviously, I need to get out more.
In Japan is is absolutely critical for every teenage girl to have exactly the same stuff as every other, or else she faces some rather severe social consequences. It's no secret that these girls/sheep run the Japanese economy.
Yes. It's a good thing teenage American girls don't run their own economy...
Right. The RIAA doesn't intend to sue him again, or really attempt to rescind the settlement. They're just going to keep doing things that result in /. stories, and kill the kid with bandwidth costs.
How does it feel to be a puppet of the regime, everyone? ;)
If we limit our discussion to the United States, then usually copyright infringement is a civil matter. Criminal proceedings can take place under 17 USC 506. (A fellow /.er filled me in during a previous discussion.)
The bit governing criminal offenses:
The applicability of this section to all to be the most profligate of file traders is questionable--I figure a reasonable retail value of ~$1 per track for music lets you download about 1000 tracks every six months before you hit criminal prosecution. Then again, IANAL, and yerricide raised some excellent points about alternate interpretation of 506(a)(1).
Here is the thread. Enjoy!
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
You know, your sig haiku takes on a whole new meaning in this context...
I don't know about a 747, but snagging a 727 seems not to be terribly difficult.
I would argue that applying that condition is still iffy at best. File traders who make available copyrighted works are not doing it out of a specific expectation that they will receive other copyrighted works. It is common knowledge that copyrighted works are readily available through various file sharing networks without any such quid pro quo.
Those infringers of copyright who do make available copyrighted works for download through networks (Kazaa et al.) may do so for several reasons:
They don't know that their software shares their music collection by default;
They have a twisted sense of altruism to the 'community' of infringers at large
They have an expectation that specific works will be made available to them--to which they would otherwise not have access--if they provide without permission certain copyrighted works.
I would suggest that only in the latter case could a 'financial gain' argument even be considered.
What do you call someone who is "civilly liable"? (Other than broke)
How about an 'infringer'? Even, an 'infringer of copyright'? Heck, call them 'lawyer bait'--that's also not inaccurate.
Is this still Slashdot?
Okay, for most casual file traders, Sec.506(a)(1) doesn't apply, so let's look at (2). It looks like you have to download $1000 (retail) worth of music in a 180 day period--about six months. At about a buck of retail value per track, that's 1000 songs in six months. Some people do collect music at that rate--but I suspect it's a small fraction of the population. Maybe it should be a Slashdot poll.
It certainly means that it is inappropriate to describe individuals with moderate file collections 'criminals'. Heck, mp3s have been readily available for what, about five years now? If you download steadily, you could have acquired a ten thousand song music library without committing a criminal act. It may also be difficult in a criminal case to prove that the requisite amount of music was downloaded within the 180 day time frame. It might be difficult to find a prosecutor who wanted to go to the trouble of charging you, even if you asked very nicely. Civil proceedings still make more sense.
You can't 'turn yourself in'. The act that you have engaged in is copyright violation: a civil infraction. The copyright holder may sue you, but the police cannot arrest you--you have not, legally speaking, committed a criminal act. You can turn yourself in, but they'll laugh and send you on your way. They have nothing to charge you with.
You're welcome to contact RIAA or its members directly and ask to settle--but you can bet that they'll ask for more than what their lawyers will cost them. They'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Er, no. Technically not. What they are doing may render them civilly liable, and it is morally questionable. In general, they are not criminals--in most jurisdictions, they are not committing a crime within the definition of criminal law.
Yes, I do know I sound pedantic. Nevertheless, this sort of semantic distinction is quite important--if we are going to discuss legal issues, we should take the time to use technically correct language. To take an example likely more familiar to the Slashdot crowd--how many of us have friends or family who just don't get the distinction between memory and hard drive space? As in, "My new computer has eighty gigabytes of memory. That's a lot, isn't it?" Members of the legal profession no doubt cringe at Slashdot legal discussions the way that Slashdotters cringe at technical commentary from the lay public.
Or...not. Your body will perfectly happily absorb and respond to the caffeine in tea. The perception that tea is only a weak stimulant probably has several sources.
Some people make really weak tea.
There are many teas that do not contain appreciable amounts of caffeine. Many 'herbal' teas, for instance. Different types and brands of black and green teas often have very different caffeine content.
Psychosomatic effects. People in our society are conditioned anticipate a jolt from coffee. Tea in North America is often (unfairly) portrayed, seen, and marketed as a drink for the elderly--and for those weak-kneed Europeans.
I'm pretty sure that our ancestors did not evolve with access to dried, roasted coffee beans, boiling water, or espresso machines.
Caffeine may or may not be harmful (it's certainly not extremely dangerous; we'd all be dead) but it is by no means an essential part of the diet. Why shouldn't people who don't like its effects have the opportunity to avoid it?
The California DMV recommends a three second cushion in front. Young Drivers (Canada's largest driving school) says a minimum of two seconds in good weather, three or more otherwise. On the highway, you cover three hundred feet in about three seconds.
Even at the best of times, your reaction time is going to be a minimum of about one second--usually it's closer to at least 1.5 seconds. Worse, if you're starting to snooze and drift into oncoming traffic then three hundred feet puts you only a second and a half away from the other guy.
If you come up on a stationary vehicle on the road--stalled, say, at night--braking from a mile a minute to zero at one gee (good luck braking that hard, by the way) costs you a hundred and fifty feet...plus reaction time.
Nope, three hundred feet isn't too far to be able to look ahead. Obviously, if you're only doing ten miles per hour in a parking lot, the system isn't going to use all of that long-distance information.
Link to chart of stopping distances under realistic conditions of braking ability and reaction time.
This link has some more information. The satellites orbit at a nominal altitude of 20 200 km above the Earth's surface, in nearly perfectly circular orbits. Their orbital period is exactly 12 sidereal hours: 11 hours and 58 minutes to the rest of us. (My back of the envelope numbers start here...) Taking the Earth's radius to be 6300 km, the satellites cover 166 420 km twice daily, for an orbital velocity of 3900 meters per second (to two sig figs). The correction factor for special relativity at that velocity is sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) which comes out to about one part in ten billion--a handful of microseconds per day.
So, the total correction is 44 us per day--the clocks must be slower by about half a part per billion. That's one second difference every sixty years.
Same problem as above--Canada's socialist, anti-market subsidies propped up softwood lumber producers so they could dump their products in the US. Just like in the case being discussed, the US applied a corrective measure. If the Canadian industry can't handle a little competition, that's not our problem.
The point here is that the WTO has ruled that the Canadian government does not unfairly subsidize the softwood lumber industry. The Canadian softwood producers are not 'propped up' by 'socialist, anti-market subsidies'. Canada does use a different system (from the U.S.) for the sale of logging rights, but it is not intrinsically unfair. Unless, of course, you wish to make the assertion that the WTO is a bastion of 'leftist' and 'socialist' thinking.
Until recently, the Canadian dollar was at all-time historic lows against the U.S. dollar--consequently, Canadian products became cheaper (relatively) in the American market. Now, the Canadian dollar has jumped in value about fifteen percent in the last year or two--Canadian goods will become more expensive. We should also consider the possibility that the American softwood lumber industry is inefficient and uncompetitive, and should be subjected to market forces instead of hiding behind protectionist tariffs.
Yep. Leftists and socialists such as yourself think it's peachy for every country but the US to prop up uncompetitive industries, using far more nationalist propaganda than anything you'll ever see in US markets. But if the big, bad US of A, which probably sent soldiers to fight for your freedom to bitch at some point, tries to defend its own markets, oh, what a monster.
Hypocrite.
They were also fighting for their own 'freedom to bitch'. In case you're wondering, Canada too has paid in blood for the right of its citizens to bitch. Battles like Vimy Ridge and Ypres in WWI, and the Juno Beach landing in WWII are as well known to Canadians as events like Leyte Gulf or Pearl Harbor are to Americans. Feel free to discuss differences of opinion about international trade policy, but don't insult the millions of men and women in other countries who have also died for our freedom.
The United States is one of the world's largest markets. If it engages in unfair trade practices, it distorts commerce for the rest of the world. If it chooses to employ protectionist tariffs while purportedly supporting free trade...'hypocrite' indeed.
Therefore there will probably never be a commercial application to quark gluon plasma generation.
First of all, I agree with you--it's unlikely that there will be a commercial application for a quark-gluon plasma anytime soon. The power requirements border on the ludicrous, and the scale of equipment is absurd.
Nevertheless, if you asked Theodore Maiman about his 'optical maser' in 1960, he probably wouldn't have anticipated every teenager in the country carrying a laser with them all day--powered by a pair of AA batteries. (How do you power the flashlamp? Where do you put it? How do these kids afford the little ruby that's the lasing medium? Oh, and what the hell is a CD?)
And you never know. Look at medicine. Devices like cyclotrons are becoming much more common in medical research facilities for creating short-lived isotopes. (I can think of at least three or four within a couple hours' drive from here.) There is talk of using synchrotron radiation--not to mention more exotic particles like pi mesons--for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
Suppose there are parallel advances in high temperature superconducting magnets, and other tools of the particle collider trade. Perhaps you can make a quark-gluon plasma for a hundred million dollars rather than multiple billions. Suddenly the field becomes more accessible, and people will come up with all kinds of applications.
Nevertheless, someone had to be able to do the calculation for just what the adjusted second should be in the first place--this requires special and general relativity.
Further, there is a small discrepancy introduced due to relativity for observers not at sea level, or travelling at significant speeds. Presumably, a knowledge of SR and GR would be handy to account for these effects.
Having said that, we could indeed use GPS with no knowledge whatsoever of relativity. We would notice pretty quickly that atomic clocks aboard satellites seemed to drift, and we could come up with a completely empirical system to compensate. (Of course, this would lead to someone developing a theory of relativity...scientists abhor this sort of unsolved problem.)