An excellent choice if you want to understand the masses(necessary for an IT specialist) is The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord. What's most frightening is not that he's right, but that he wrote it 30+ years ago.
A less depressing choice, more on the border of Philosophy & Mysticism.(If you make such a distinction) is Rene Daumal - he's a bit obscure, but excellent. His best work is definitely Mont Analogue - An Adventure in Non-Euclidean Mountaineering.
Your correct there are probably not any unlterior motives behind a companies reluctance to raise pay for the other employees. It's just a sign of poor management. It will end up being extraordinarily damaging to moral if(more like when) it's discovered that one employee received a substantial raise, and no other employees did - particularly if the employee was average in productivity. It's why I left my employer without even looking at their offer(and I wasn't the first!).
Actually having a fiber tha sensitive would be a wonderful idea for distributed sensing apparati. You'd have an extraordinarily sensitive, sheap, and disposable sensor for heat, compression, what ever you like - their is enormous possibility to fiber sensing. Boeing is now using it for Aircraft Development, and Norway has installed a fiber sensor system in a Boat for realtime, constant Stress Management.
Speaking from experience sputtered coatings would add a couple of cents to the _manufacture_ of light bulbs, minimum. Probably close to a nickel - extrapolate this out to retail pricing and your probably talking about an increase of.25 to.50 cents. A substantial difference for the lightbulb world.
Of course my odea has always been to sell a stereo cabinet with "a new improved IR reflective coating that improves playback on your CD's" and doesn't allow one to use the remote. I wonder how many I could sell before the first return?
Until trains can equal planes in time, and be significant lower in cost this will not exist in the US.
Trains often do equal planes in both cost, and total journey time, i.e door to door - particularly with the current security at airports, if you live on the East Coast.
As for funding - laying the track won't be the hurdle. Getting funding for a real rail system through congress would be the first nightmare. After all - the rail dollars would come out of the pork available for pet highway projects in their district.
It's not solely an economic issue in parts of the country. For many it's an ideological issue, to illustrate: "Environmentalists are telling us how to live our lives, preventing us from driving cars, and forcing us to live downtown," "In America, these are still personal choices. Tyranny didn't win in South Korea. Don't let it get a foothold here." These are quotes from the Georgia Highway Contractors Association, in a recent campaign against public transportation in the Atlanta area. I've met people from Detroit (surprise) who have a similar ideological attachment to the car - opposed to anything that may take away their car, whilst us Californians have an extreme cultural attachment to the car - we simply can't fathom not being able to drive everywhere.
NIF isn't solely being built for Nuclear Weapons research - indeed it's predecessor as the largest laser in the world, the University of Rochester's Omega Laser (a mere 60 beams www.lle.rochester.edu was only used for classified research 2 weeks a year. The primary purpose of the NIF laser is to research is to research Inertial confinement fusion reactions - by studying the reaction we learn how to build better bombs, by studying the reaction & it's confinement, we learn how to build the holy grail of power sources - a fusion reactor.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty sure the rules of "first sale" do not include the right to photo-copy the book and sell the copies or even give them away for free
No you are correct - if you wish to follow the law when copying you must renumerate the author. This is why the last photocopied textbook I had cost $75.00 for a 200 page book. Most of the illustrations are illegible, as is much of the text - and the graphs are completely unusable. In short it was a waste. But required! Damn the Optics Mafia!
If your in the Bay Area - have you ever been to Bells Books in Palo Alto? It may not have the best prices, but it has the best ambiance of any used book store I've ever been to.
"I expect it'll be a few years before we're able to get the majority of used-book stores on-line though. Most stores have far too much stock and too few resources to make that happen."
You are a bit behind the times. Many small stores, even private dealers, are now online via the Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com) or Alibris.com . They may not post their entire inventory online, but many post a substantial portion, or books over a certain value.
No. No. The reason Canadians voted for Chretien is he knows which way Niagra Falls flows. Stockwell Day didn't - and was using a north flowing falls as an analogy for the Canuck brain drain.
Not to mention increased cognitive activity!
on
The Almighty Buck
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· Score: 1
"While I am not going to say they are happier than others (i personally am a pretty happy motherfucker) they seem more sociable/family oreinted. Such are the advantages of living without televisions,game boys etc.."
Several studies have shown increased cognitive activity, across the population as a whole, for populations without "modern" conveniences & urban social structures. This difference is particularly apparent in Hunter/Gatherer societies - and generally attributed to the constant environmental interaction & increased content of social interractions.
In general the poor in America are extraordinarily well off in comparison to those in other countries. That isn't too say that there aren't people living in condition equal to the 3rd world - take a drive through Appalachia, or the Delmarva - or the Delta. Yes they may have a television - but the home contruction (1 or 2 rooms, outside plumbing) is very similar to that in India.
SpeedVision does excellent, well-edited, coverage of endurance races.
This was somewhat my point - enduro races are extraordinarily boring to watch as there happening - like soccer games they become excellent entertainment when condensed. I agree with you that Touring Car racing is awesome - British series is great(though I miss watching the Volvo wagons from a couple years ago!)
For Motor Racing my ideal has always been the Mille Miglia (ended in 57) the Targa Florio (ended in 73) or the Nordschlieffe of Nurburgring(of which their are some videos here http://www.motorcycle-dk.com/en/multimedia/ ) I always though that a long course >10 miles made for a much more challenging race, and I particularly liked the theory behind the Mille Miglia. 1000 miles on Italian Public roads. Straight through. Would have been fun to stand alongside the course.
"Your car has to be designed and built RIGHT in order to be competitive. Sure, you need fast driving too, but that race is won and lost on the drawing board and in pit lane. Great great stuff."
I'll agree that the technology behind racing is very interesting - Racecar Engineering Magazine used to be a favorite of mine. Interesting technology doesn't particularly make for a particularly gripping race to watch, however. Do you actually watch Le Mans live? (Is there anyone that televises Le Mans live?)
"Why? Even if we had a flat 20% tax, 20% of their income is still waaaaay more money than 20% of your income. The rich are more than paying their fair share."
It all really depends on what you wish to call "fair" The rich receive proportionately larger benefits from living in America - it's where their welath was established, isn't it? Shouldn't they then pay a tax portion that reflects the fiscal gain they have received from America?
Active suspension was very popular in formula 1 about a decade ago - it was outlawed due to cost reasons. The technology even transfered into prductions cars - the first Infiniti Q45 was blessed with it. It then went into hibernation until the most recent Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
K2 skis have had a piezoelectric ski on the market since 1996, the Merlin V complete with a little blinking red light to show that its working(just like a BE, ahh how we morn the BEOS). More here: http://www.acx.com/lab/cool_ski.html
Dampening technology has advantages yes - but generally the reason high tech gadgets make it to the finals have to do with sponsorship & psychology, not necessarily technological superiority.
In general your right. The problem is often the porn being surfed is not necessarily naked women - but things that are offensive to many people, like the picture of a woman and a pig I came across in the printer. Material such as this is broad grounds for a lawsuit, not to mention generally disturbing
An exaggeration, yes. It's not forced - no one is pointing a gun to your head. If you want a book or magazine to read, and you didn't bring it - you don't have much choice now, do you?
It is very much analagous to the strategy Coke and Pepsi have used to suceed. Buy up all ditribution space, and take advantage of existing demand, even if it's diminished because people dislike your product.
"Yep... and computers, too... Games and net activities"
For some people yes, particularly net activities. Still most of the people I work with (at an Engineering Frim) spend more time watching TV than browsing the web.
If there were no music companies - who would sort out the bad from the good music? Who could see all of those bands and decide what music the public would like? Certainly the public would never be able too!
Slashdot Mirror
An excellent choice if you want to understand the masses(necessary for an IT specialist) is The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord. What's most frightening is not that he's right, but that he wrote it 30+ years ago.
A less depressing choice, more on the border of Philosophy & Mysticism.(If you make such a distinction) is Rene Daumal - he's a bit obscure, but excellent. His best work is definitely Mont Analogue - An Adventure in Non-Euclidean Mountaineering.
Your correct there are probably not any unlterior motives behind a companies reluctance to raise pay for the other employees. It's just a sign of poor management. It will end up being extraordinarily damaging to moral if(more like when) it's discovered that one employee received a substantial raise, and no other employees did - particularly if the employee was average in productivity. It's why I left my employer without even looking at their offer(and I wasn't the first!).
Actually having a fiber tha sensitive would be a wonderful idea for distributed sensing apparati. You'd have an extraordinarily sensitive, sheap, and disposable sensor for heat, compression, what ever you like - their is enormous possibility to fiber sensing. Boeing is now using it for Aircraft Development, and Norway has installed a fiber sensor system in a Boat for realtime, constant Stress Management.
Speaking from experience sputtered coatings would add a couple of cents to the _manufacture_ of light bulbs, minimum. Probably close to a nickel - extrapolate this out to retail pricing and your probably talking about an increase of .25 to .50 cents. A substantial difference for the lightbulb world.
Of course my odea has always been to sell a stereo cabinet with "a new improved IR reflective coating that improves playback on your CD's" and doesn't allow one to use the remote. I wonder how many I could sell before the first return?
Oh Bud is the best example of road pork, but by no means the only - look at the new West Virginia Interstate. It solely serves Chicken Farmers.
Until trains can equal planes in time, and be significant lower in cost this will not exist in the US.
Trains often do equal planes in both cost, and total journey time, i.e door to door - particularly with the current security at airports, if you live on the East Coast.
As for funding - laying the track won't be the hurdle. Getting funding for a real rail system through congress would be the first nightmare. After all - the rail dollars would come out of the pork available for pet highway projects in their district.
It's not solely an economic issue in parts of the country. For many it's an ideological issue, to illustrate:
"Environmentalists are telling us how to live our lives, preventing us from driving cars, and forcing us to live downtown," "In America, these are still personal choices. Tyranny didn't win in South Korea. Don't let it get a foothold here."
These are quotes from the Georgia Highway Contractors Association, in a recent campaign against public transportation in the Atlanta area. I've met people from Detroit (surprise) who have a similar ideological attachment to the car - opposed to anything that may take away their car, whilst us Californians have an extreme cultural attachment to the car - we simply can't fathom not being able to drive everywhere.
NIF isn't solely being built for Nuclear Weapons research - indeed it's predecessor as the largest laser in the world, the University of Rochester's Omega Laser (a mere 60 beams
www.lle.rochester.edu
was only used for classified research 2 weeks a year. The primary purpose of the NIF laser is to research is to research Inertial confinement fusion reactions - by studying the reaction we learn how to build better bombs, by studying the reaction & it's confinement, we learn how to build the holy grail of power sources - a fusion reactor.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty sure the rules of "first sale" do not include the right to photo-copy the book and sell the copies or even give them away for free
No you are correct - if you wish to follow the law when copying you must renumerate the author. This is why the last photocopied textbook I had cost $75.00 for a 200 page book. Most of the illustrations are illegible, as is much of the text - and the graphs are completely unusable. In short it was a waste. But required! Damn the Optics Mafia!
If your in the Bay Area - have you ever been to Bells Books in Palo Alto? It may not have the best prices, but it has the best ambiance of any used book store I've ever been to.
"I expect it'll be a few years before we're able to get the majority of used-book stores on-line though. Most stores have far too much stock and too few resources to make that happen."
You are a bit behind the times. Many small stores, even private dealers, are now online via the Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com) or Alibris.com . They may not post their entire inventory online, but many post a substantial portion, or books over a certain value.
This law promotes the art most recognized by Americans young and old, rich and poor. The art of the deal - the glorification of the dollar.
No. No. The reason Canadians voted for Chretien is he knows which way Niagra Falls flows. Stockwell Day didn't - and was using a north flowing falls as an analogy for the Canuck brain drain.
"While I am not going to say they are happier than others (i personally am a pretty happy motherfucker) they seem more sociable/family oreinted. Such are the advantages of living without televisions,game boys etc.."
Several studies have shown increased cognitive activity, across the population as a whole, for populations without "modern" conveniences & urban social structures. This difference is particularly apparent in Hunter/Gatherer societies - and generally attributed to the constant environmental interaction & increased content of social interractions.
Of course we're smarter than we've ever been.
In general the poor in America are extraordinarily well off in comparison to those in other countries. That isn't too say that there aren't people living in condition equal to the 3rd world - take a drive through Appalachia, or the Delmarva - or the Delta. Yes they may have a television - but the home contruction (1 or 2 rooms, outside plumbing) is very similar to that in India.
SpeedVision does excellent, well-edited, coverage of endurance races. This was somewhat my point - enduro races are extraordinarily boring to watch as there happening - like soccer games they become excellent entertainment when condensed. I agree with you that Touring Car racing is awesome - British series is great(though I miss watching the Volvo wagons from a couple years ago!) For Motor Racing my ideal has always been the Mille Miglia (ended in 57) the Targa Florio (ended in 73) or the Nordschlieffe of Nurburgring(of which their are some videos here http://www.motorcycle-dk.com/en/multimedia/ ) I always though that a long course >10 miles made for a much more challenging race, and I particularly liked the theory behind the Mille Miglia. 1000 miles on Italian Public roads. Straight through. Would have been fun to stand alongside the course.
"Your car has to be designed and built RIGHT in order to be competitive. Sure, you need fast driving too, but that race is won and lost on the drawing board and in pit lane. Great great stuff." I'll agree that the technology behind racing is very interesting - Racecar Engineering Magazine used to be a favorite of mine. Interesting technology doesn't particularly make for a particularly gripping race to watch, however. Do you actually watch Le Mans live? (Is there anyone that televises Le Mans live?)
"Why? Even if we had a flat 20% tax, 20% of their income is still waaaaay more money than 20% of your income. The rich are more than paying their fair share."
It all really depends on what you wish to call "fair" The rich receive proportionately larger benefits from living in America - it's where their welath was established, isn't it? Shouldn't they then pay a tax portion that reflects the fiscal gain they have received from America?
the same people win again, and again, and again, and again. yawn.
Can't this just be said for all current televised sports?
Active suspension was very popular in formula 1 about a decade ago - it was outlawed due to cost reasons. The technology even transfered into prductions cars - the first Infiniti Q45 was blessed with it. It then went into hibernation until the most recent Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
K2 skis have had a piezoelectric ski on the market since 1996, the Merlin V complete with a little blinking red light to show that its working(just like a BE, ahh how we morn the BEOS). More here: http://www.acx.com/lab/cool_ski.html Dampening technology has advantages yes - but generally the reason high tech gadgets make it to the finals have to do with sponsorship & psychology, not necessarily technological superiority.
In general your right. The problem is often the porn being surfed is not necessarily naked women - but things that are offensive to many people, like the picture of a woman and a pig I came across in the printer. Material such as this is broad grounds for a lawsuit, not to mention generally disturbing
An exaggeration, yes. It's not forced - no one is pointing a gun to your head. If you want a book or magazine to read, and you didn't bring it - you don't have much choice now, do you?
It is very much analagous to the strategy Coke and Pepsi have used to suceed. Buy up all ditribution space, and take advantage of existing demand, even if it's diminished because people dislike your product.
"Yep... and computers, too... Games and net activities"
For some people yes, particularly net activities. Still most of the people I work with (at an Engineering Frim) spend more time watching TV than browsing the web.
If there were no music companies - who would sort out the bad from the good music? Who could see all of those bands and decide what music the public would like? Certainly the public would never be able too!