Zinc Melting Point: 419.53C/787.15F (Liquid density 6.57 g/cm) Copper Melting Point: 1084.62C/1984.3F (Solid density 8.96 g/cm)
Heat a melting pot of pennies up to 1984.3F. Then bring the temperature down below that. Pour the liquid zinc off the top:-)
(If there is something wrong with that plan - other than it being illegal to destroy US currency - then I apologize. I don't pretend to be a metallurgist.)
As someone who is considering lawschool in the future....what is your take on the horror stories of first year law? Do you really spend every waking minute doing research and studying?
Hmmmm. I can only speak from my personal experience, of course, so bear with me. I am going to a small, tier-4 lawschool for a variety of personal reasons/priorities. It's a good school. I have professors with terminal degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. I think they, like me, enjoy the more laid back, rural atmosphere and like to *teach*. That said, I don't know how a top-ranked program at a big school would differ. (I did get into a top school...and decided there was no way in hell I was going $150,000 in debt, among other things.)
As I said, there is certainly work involved, but I find it easy to keep up with most of the time. In fact, when I treat it as an 8-to-5 job, I find myself free most evenings and on the weekends. That is 45 hours/week after all. Right now's a little hectic with a trial in Civil Procedure, legal research/memoranda, filling out my outlines and preparing for finals, and so forth, but it isn't killing me. Just pace yourself and keep up.
On the other hand, some people are freaking out. Completely. The people who were psych majors, especially. Compared to the liberal arts, law is a pretty drastic increase in workload. You can't just blow off the reading and such, like they may have done in undergrad. I get a tremendous amount of insight out of the lectures, but without the reading beforehand, you might as well not go to class. And the lack of grade-feedback is a bit daunting. We had one midterm, in Property, just to prepare us for the format of the finals. I felt confident enough in what I had learned to just review my outline a bit beforehand and I did pretty damn well.
Mostly, I find it terribly amusing that I'm enjoying myself in law school, having prepared myself for the worst.
Also...as somewhat of an odd question....as a very experienced D&D dungeon master and self-professed "rules lawyer", do you think any of that experience might help give me a leg up? If I was a natural at understanding D&D rules and their abuses/loopholes, do you think I have the right mindset for lawschool?
Oh, probably. I was a DM way back in the day too:-) I'm used to problem-solving as an engineer and I find my analytical skills invaluable in law. You need to be able to see the different facets of an argument and try to resolve a given case for both sides, and with varying fact patterns.
Consider U.C.C. 2-207. Probably one of the most ambiguous and argued about sections of the Uniform Commercial Code. I've read a couple of cases now where both sides cited it when they presented their case. Who made the offer? Who was accepting? Do both parties meet the definition of merchant? (Under the UCC, a person who has a specialized skill, such as a PhD in something, may meet the definition.) Lots of ways to turn it to your favor. ProCD v. Zeidenberg is a good case about 2-207, EULAs, copyright, and so forth. (I agree with the district court more than the later appellate decision though.)
So I'd say yeah. If you're a pedant like me, you'll probably like learning the law. Just remember that 'black letter law' isn't sacrosanct. The real point is the reasoning behind it and the impetus/need that created the law in the first place.
Also, graduate school in general is different in that your classmates want to be there. The people who go on past undergrad tend to be more hardcore; the ones who aren't get weeded out quick enough. It's kinda neat to hear people walking by, arguing about points of law as much as they talk about "who's having a party that weekend." Nothing like an animated discussion with smart people about
I started law school this fall; it differs from undergrad in that nearly everyone has a laptop and uses it to take notes. In my entering class, I think perhaps 6 or 7 students don't have a laptop. As an engineer and a techie in general, I find it terrific to have. I type much, much faster than I can write with a pen, and have FindLaw/Westlaw/Lexis-Nexis, state codes & regulations, the U.C.C., etc, all right at my fingertips for reference during class.
What amazes me are the people who chat on aim the whole class, or browse facebook, or play MMORPGs (seriously). Even if you're a freakin' genius and don't need to listen to the professor and class discussion, it's distracting and just plain rude. The corolary, of course, is that it's natural selection in action:-) You reap what you sow.
[As an aside, I actually find law school fun and, while not easy, certainly not hard. It is a feeling shared by the other handful of hard-science and engineering grads. We're basically used to the workload, if not the type of work . (No worries Slashdot-crowd, I'm not in it for the money and I'd sooner commit seppuku than work for the likes of the **AA.) ]
>>BTW, whenever you here someone speaking of physics and using feets, you should doubt that s/he knows anything about the subject. >>
As an engingeer, there's nothing I hate more than working with averdupois/English units, but it happens frequently, even with "physics" type problems. Ballistics, statics/dynamics, radiation... Ugh.
I would like to give a preemptive screw you to all the developers of Civ IV for my failing grades during finals week.
I second that. I'm in law school; when I read the news a while back that Civ IV would shortly be going gold I went, "AWESOME....oh hell. There goes my GPA, damn it."
Civ has remained continuously on my hard drive in one incarnation or another since 1990. Can't wait to try this one.
>>there is no way to make a recording that is compressed by a lossy algorithm such as MP3 sound as good as the original without creating information out of thin air. >>
Right. I bet Creative's gone the way of BOSE (damn their eyes) and made the audio "sound better." To lay-people at least. BOSE accomplishes this 'amazing' feat by boosting the level of certain frequencies and/or increasing the volume. In blind tests, many people say that a louder soundbyte sounds better, and so forth.
I personally just want accurate reproduction. I have a very nice receiver/speaker combo that does that trick, and a (now fairly old) Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card that has pretty accurate analog output.
Amusingly, Creative even has an affordable line of semi-pro cards that do a excellent job in sound reproduction. The tradeoff, of course, is that they don't have all the snazzy 3d game effects and so forth. I personally don't care. For my needs, if I were going to shell out $150-200 for a Creative sound card, the E-MU 1212M would be the superior choice.
Who knows though; I could be completely off-base. I'll reserve judgement until I read some professional comparisons and hear the thing for myself.
>Where the hell are you from? Must be american with a comment like that. Ive yet to meet a person in europe who doesnt know what a plough is. Do you not learn about agricultural history in school? Most irish ppl like me know what a plough is from the moment were born =P >
He must be from the city. I grew up in the middle of Ohio Amish country. Lots of plows to behold.:-)
This particular Professor, I think, managed to just scrape by for most of his undergrad, ended up doing well by the end, and never finished his terminal degree.
Did he know his subject matter? Oh yes, very well. It just took him a while to get there. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, in some respects.
As part as my undergratuate engineering coursework, we had to take a Professional Ethics class. During that time, I spent 4 weeks going over the Challenger disaster with a fine-tooth comb. It absolutely disgusted me.
By and large, the engineers did their jobs to the best of their ability. They were aware of the O-ring problems, having been warned by the manufacturer and they knew the O-rings had never been tested or launched at the low temperatures that day. They repeatedly voiced their concerns to management. They even refused to sign off on the launch.
The management, on the other hand, didn't take any of it as a serious problem. Of the group directly involved with the launch, only one had a technical background, and he caved almost immediately from the pressure of the majority. The managers were under political pressure to make the launch a go, and that was their only concern.
An engineer by the name of Boisjoly blew the whistle* on what happened knowing full well that by doing so, he would probably ruin his career. No one hires whistleblowers. Otherwise, we might have heard a very different story.
What was the point I was going to make... Ah. Management never seems to have much use for professional ethics, too little understanding of what they are managing, and always seem to think their MBAs are advanced degrees that somehow trump a "lowly" B.S. in Engineering.
I think one of my old professors summed it up best.
Engineers: The A students go into teaching/academia The B students get most of the jobs. The C students go into / switch to management.
*he was later awarded the Prize for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility by the AAAS for doing everything in his power at the time to halt the launch and exemplifying professional behavior
>> More importantly, it draws attention to the fact that Google has drained the market of talent, caused a 25% to 50% hike in salaries and made it difficult for startups to get funding. >>
Right. This sort of thing happens in a free market, especially when a company has earned a good reputation and provides a high quality service.
You want to work for a company like that. In turn, the company's success makes it affluent enough to pay premium salaries for the best people.
In terms of the startups... Funding any startup is a risk, but it would be ludicrous for a venture capitalist to fund a startup in the face of direct, ostensibly superior competition. That's a no-brainer.
If a startup is significantly different from google, or can unequivocally provide a superior service, or if google's quality declines (which some predict) then it will be easier to procure capital and get off the ground.
These are all really *desired* things under capitalism. People are just griping that they didn't get in on Google's IPO or something. Things only begin to look grim for the market once all of google's competition is eliminated entirely. And even a monopoly doesn't guarantee bad news for the service recipient, although theory and historical precedent make it much more likely.
The last, but far more important issue is that google has yet to perform any actions of dubious moral or ethical* nature. No frivolous lawsuits. No submarine patents. No unfair competition.
They have acceded to the requests of China, France, etc, to alter their service to those countries in a manner that might seem offensive or tyrannical to some, but the point is that those are sovereign nations within whose borders google is technically operating. They have not done that here and, I assure you, I would be the first to denounce and vilify them for such.
In short, the premise is (at least currently) a bunch of hogwash.
*corporations cannot exactly be characterized by these descriptions, but rather are anthropomorphized in the public's eye into such affected entities through the actions of their CEO, board, and so forth. So let it rest, ok?
What about areas where the is no competetion (with cable, etc)? It seems to me like this ruling will be ambivalent at best for people in large metro areas, but rural America - whose broadband infrastructure is still spotty at best, and often unavailable - gets screwed.
I grew up and my parents still live in a small town (~1200 people) in northeast Ohio. Broadband cable became available from Adelphia - the only cable provider in the area - about 4 years ago, and the bargain price of $59.95/mo w/o cable TV. I convinced my folks to try it...it was only slightly more than paying for a second phone line and dial up. It was an improvement, but just barely. Terrible uptimes, slow speeds (lucky if a download broke 35kb/s), and other crap...but still not dial up.
A couple of years ago, SBC took over the local telco, upgraded the equipment, and offered DSL to those lucky enough to live in town. 1.5m/512k service for $30 a month. I got my parents switched over and the difference is astounding. They're currently getting 3.0m/768k service for $26.95. I thought, "WOW! Broadband has become cheap, widely available, and fast!"
Not so. I am heading back to college this fall to begin studying law. The local population near the school is about 10x the size of my home town, so i figured they had to have good broadband, eh? I called the cable company. They don't service my street. Ok. I called the telco. After initially telling me I couldn't get DSL, they called me back to say that I could, in fact, but that they had to manually verify the "rural" address by sending someone in a truck.
In order to get DSL, I had to subscribe to local phone service. After much haggling over packacges I didn't want, I finally got them to give me *just* local service for $17/mo. 1.5mb/128k(!) will be $50/mo more; effectively, $67/mo for crappy broadband. I'm being bamboozled.
After I had signed up for a one year commitment with the Telco, I found out that a local ISP offered DSL for $7 less per month. The moral of the story? ANYTHING that has the potential to reduce number of options available to consumers is bad. I had another choice I didn't know about...but at least it was there.
I've been waiting (and drooling) over the prospect of laser projection techs for the last 10 years or so. Sony's done a lot in the field recently. In fact, they have a 2005 inch screen set up at their exhibition building at the 2005 World's Fair in Seto, Japan. I dearly wish I could see this thing in person...
CompUSA, CircuitCity, and BestBuy. They always have great prices, along with incredibly knowledgable staff if you decide to visit their physical stores. Oh, and always make sure to get the extended warranty. You're a fool if you don't.
I'll up the ante. Go to Radioshack! Reasonable prices* and great service.
*who says $50 for a 12ft USB cable is unreasonable!
He's saying people have no right to make a profit, only the opportunity. What the government provides is an compromise in the form of an exchange:
We give you certain advantages that make it easier for you to make a profit, and in exchange, your creative prodcut becomes publically and freely available after a prededermined amount of time.
And yes, governments do the same thing with real, physical property. They can take your land, your possessions whenever they feel like it; they are bigger than you. That's why there exist documents like the Bill of Rights here in the USA that outline what the government ostensibly can and can't do. In this country, the legal system is your recourse/remedy when there is an issue. It's a hell of a better system than armed conflict to settle disputes over property.
I'd like to see a shopping list that would last for two weeks and cost under $50. Maybe one week but not two. Ramen noodles for every meal might cut it but your lacking on some nutritional value there.
I lived in a fairly expensive, major metropolitan area (>1 million people) for a year and I easily fed myself for around $100/mo. And I'm a picky eater. Whole grain foods, fruits, vegetables, lean meats. Most people either don't take the time to look forbargains or buy expensive convenience foods. If you stock up on staples and cook for yourself, living is much cheaper.
I mean, if you really wanted to, a bag of enriched flour, milk, and some eggs is nearly all you need to survive.
I was just going to suggest that. It's also a nice play on argonaut, which is appropriate for anyone who'd go on such a dangerous, far off, long term expedition.:-)
>>In fact, Fusion tends to produce far MORE energy than Fission (as shown by thermonuclear weapons) but the problem is that no one has found a method for creating a self-maintaining Fusion reaction. >>
I'd just like to helpfully point out that a single fusion event, say: (D+T -> 4He + n) produces much less energy than a single fission event, say: (235U + n -> 144Ba + 89Kr +n+n+n).
Fusion: 17.6MeV excess energy Fission: ~200 MeV excess energy (However, fusion does have a higher release of energy per nucleon)
Now, bombs. A fission weapon, you know what you're going to get. You design it carefully to precisely go critical, use up your fuel and that's it. The goal of a thermonuclear (fusion) bomb is a little different. You instead basically build it to be as wildly uncontrolled as possible - which isn't hard, since fusion is tremendously difficult to control in the first place. I mean, it takes a fission bomb just to set it off!
So yeah, fusion will "produce more energy". It's the difference between a stick of dynamite and a stick of dynamite shoved into a barrel of thermite molded out of C4;-)
>>> What if it takes longer than 10-20 years to even have your creation become popular? >>>
Er, that's life? Seriously, if it takes 20 years for your work to become popular, too bad. I realize that popular culture changes, etc, over time, and thus, your work might not be appreciated at first. On the other hand, with anything else except IP, can you expect to be rewarded for work you did two decades earlier? Highly doubtful.
What you can hope for, if your work suddenly becomes popular later on, is that people will also suddenly respect you as an artist - and want more of your respective work. And hopefully you aren't too old to provide it. Again, too bad if you are.
Ultimately, I think you need a better marketing/PR person to make your work more initially salable.
I'm not a hard-core libertarian, but I think a free market with only limited government protections (but certainly some) serves the public best.
>> Funny, I've never understood why people will pay $x000 for a tricked-out gaming PC when they can get the same performance from a $x00 console. >>
Well personally, I'd never buy a console. One, games are tertiary to me, and were, even when I was a kid. And while I do enjoy the occasional FPS (Halflife and its decendants, especially), my favorite genres of games are 4X and wargames, followed by adventure games (which have lamentably disappeared over the past 10 years.) Civilzation I,II, & III, Master of Orion I&II, Master of Magic, etc, and all the classic Sierra adventure games, for some examples.
I have a high-end PC that I use for everything from programming to 3d modeling which, consequently, I can use as a gaming system. And while many of the titles that I mentioned are now a bit long in the tooth, some aren't. Civ III might not require the latest video card, but man can it suck up CPU time. Try a gigantic map with max opponents...
The PC just fits my user-case better than a console.
Why put the list in cyberspace at all? That's the beauty of paper, nobody online can steal a sheet of paper sitting in your home/office/dorm/loft/cave.
Not necessarily:) I used to know someone who had a webcam in their office. It was one of those geeky "things to do" at the time. He had controls to pan & zoom, control the a small light, etc, on his website.
One day, I zoomed in on a piece of paper on the corner of his desk. Some rotation & sharpening in photoshop* revealed an IP and the word "gizzards8524". I telnetted** to the IP, tried his usual nickname and that word as the password and bingo - I was in.
He was quite startled when a he got a console chat invitation from...himself.:)
*as opposed to hollywood's ideas of image restoration that boggle the mind and break the laws of physics.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, ok. I thought the price of zinc was closer to 1:1, but it is actually at about $0.90/lb...
Zinc Melting Point: 419.53C/787.15F (Liquid density 6.57 g/cm)
:-)
Copper Melting Point: 1084.62C/1984.3F (Solid density 8.96 g/cm)
Heat a melting pot of pennies up to 1984.3F. Then bring the temperature down below that. Pour the liquid zinc off the top
(If there is something wrong with that plan - other than it being illegal to destroy US currency - then I apologize. I don't pretend to be a metallurgist.)
>>And it's a quibble, but there is no "fair use" provision in US law. "Fair use" is a defense...the law doesn't mention it at all...
... is not an infringement of copyright."
Try 17 U.S.C. sec. 107
The doctrine of Fair Use has largely been codified as law.
"[F]air use of a copyrighted work
Hmmmm. I can only speak from my personal experience, of course, so bear with me. I am going to a small, tier-4 lawschool for a variety of personal reasons/priorities. It's a good school. I have professors with terminal degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. I think they, like me, enjoy the more laid back, rural atmosphere and like to *teach*. That said, I don't know how a top-ranked program at a big school would differ. (I did get into a top school...and decided there was no way in hell I was going $150,000 in debt, among other things.)
As I said, there is certainly work involved, but I find it easy to keep up with most of the time. In fact, when I treat it as an 8-to-5 job, I find myself free most evenings and on the weekends. That is 45 hours/week after all. Right now's a little hectic with a trial in Civil Procedure, legal research/memoranda, filling out my outlines and preparing for finals, and so forth, but it isn't killing me. Just pace yourself and keep up.
On the other hand, some people are freaking out. Completely. The people who were psych majors, especially. Compared to the liberal arts, law is a pretty drastic increase in workload. You can't just blow off the reading and such, like they may have done in undergrad. I get a tremendous amount of insight out of the lectures, but without the reading beforehand, you might as well not go to class. And the lack of grade-feedback is a bit daunting. We had one midterm, in Property, just to prepare us for the format of the finals. I felt confident enough in what I had learned to just review my outline a bit beforehand and I did pretty damn well.
Mostly, I find it terribly amusing that I'm enjoying myself in law school, having prepared myself for the worst.
Oh, probably. I was a DM way back in the day too :-) I'm used to problem-solving as an engineer and I find my analytical skills invaluable in law. You need to be able to see the different facets of an argument and try to resolve a given case for both sides, and with varying fact patterns.
Consider U.C.C. 2-207. Probably one of the most ambiguous and argued about sections of the Uniform Commercial Code. I've read a couple of cases now where both sides cited it when they presented their case. Who made the offer? Who was accepting? Do both parties meet the definition of merchant? (Under the UCC, a person who has a specialized skill, such as a PhD in something, may meet the definition.) Lots of ways to turn it to your favor. ProCD v. Zeidenberg is a good case about 2-207, EULAs, copyright, and so forth. (I agree with the district court more than the later appellate decision though.)
So I'd say yeah. If you're a pedant like me, you'll probably like learning the law. Just remember that 'black letter law' isn't sacrosanct. The real point is the reasoning behind it and the impetus/need that created the law in the first place.
Also, graduate school in general is different in that your classmates want to be there. The people who go on past undergrad tend to be more hardcore; the ones who aren't get weeded out quick enough. It's kinda neat to hear people walking by, arguing about points of law as much as they talk about "who's having a party that weekend." Nothing like an animated discussion with smart people about
I started law school this fall; it differs from undergrad in that nearly everyone has a laptop and uses it to take notes. In my entering class, I think perhaps 6 or 7 students don't have a laptop. As an engineer and a techie in general, I find it terrific to have. I type much, much faster than I can write with a pen, and have FindLaw/Westlaw/Lexis-Nexis, state codes & regulations, the U.C.C., etc, all right at my fingertips for reference during class.
:-) You reap what you sow.
What amazes me are the people who chat on aim the whole class, or browse facebook, or play MMORPGs (seriously). Even if you're a freakin' genius and don't need to listen to the professor and class discussion, it's distracting and just plain rude. The corolary, of course, is that it's natural selection in action
[As an aside, I actually find law school fun and, while not easy, certainly not hard. It is a feeling shared by the other handful of hard-science and engineering grads. We're basically used to the workload, if not the type of work . (No worries Slashdot-crowd, I'm not in it for the money and I'd sooner commit seppuku than work for the likes of the **AA.) ]
>>BTW, whenever you here someone speaking of physics and using feets, you should doubt that s/he knows anything about the subject.
>>
As an engingeer, there's nothing I hate more than working with averdupois/English units, but it happens frequently, even with "physics" type problems. Ballistics, statics/dynamics, radiation... Ugh.
An amusing aside is that the USA officially adopted the metric system in 1893...and then we used it to better define the foot, the pound, etc. *sigh*
I second that. I'm in law school; when I read the news a while back that Civ IV would shortly be going gold I went,
"AWESOME
Civ has remained continuously on my hard drive in one incarnation or another since 1990. Can't wait to try this one.
>>there is no way to make a recording that is compressed by a lossy algorithm such as MP3 sound as good as the original without creating information out of thin air.
>>
Right. I bet Creative's gone the way of BOSE (damn their eyes) and made the audio "sound better." To lay-people at least. BOSE accomplishes this 'amazing' feat by boosting the level of certain frequencies and/or increasing the volume. In blind tests, many people say that a louder soundbyte sounds better, and so forth.
I personally just want accurate reproduction. I have a very nice receiver/speaker combo that does that trick, and a (now fairly old) Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card that has pretty accurate analog output.
Amusingly, Creative even has an affordable line of semi-pro cards that do a excellent job in sound reproduction. The tradeoff, of course, is that they don't have all the snazzy 3d game effects and so forth. I personally don't care. For my needs, if I were going to shell out $150-200 for a Creative sound card, the E-MU 1212M would be the superior choice.
Who knows though; I could be completely off-base. I'll reserve judgement until I read some professional comparisons and hear the thing for myself.
>>Most people don't know what a plough looks like
:-)
>Where the hell are you from? Must be american with a comment like that. Ive yet to meet a person in europe who doesnt know what a plough is. Do you not learn about agricultural history in school? Most irish ppl like me know what a plough is from the moment were born =P
>
He must be from the city. I grew up in the middle of Ohio Amish country. Lots of plows to behold.
This particular Professor, I think, managed to just scrape by for most of his undergrad, ended up doing well by the end, and never finished his terminal degree.
Did he know his subject matter? Oh yes, very well. It just took him a while to get there. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, in some respects.
As part as my undergratuate engineering coursework, we had to take a Professional Ethics class. During that time, I spent 4 weeks going over the Challenger disaster with a fine-tooth comb. It absolutely disgusted me.
By and large, the engineers did their jobs to the best of their ability. They were aware of the O-ring problems, having been warned by the manufacturer and they knew the O-rings had never been tested or launched at the low temperatures that day. They repeatedly voiced their concerns to management. They even refused to sign off on the launch.
The management, on the other hand, didn't take any of it as a serious problem. Of the group directly involved with the launch, only one had a technical background, and he caved almost immediately from the pressure of the majority. The managers were under political pressure to make the launch a go, and that was their only concern.
An engineer by the name of Boisjoly blew the whistle* on what happened knowing full well that by doing so, he would probably ruin his career. No one hires whistleblowers. Otherwise, we might have heard a very different story.
What was the point I was going to make... Ah. Management never seems to have much use for professional ethics, too little understanding of what they are managing, and always seem to think their MBAs are advanced degrees that somehow trump a "lowly" B.S. in Engineering.
I think one of my old professors summed it up best.
Engineers:
The A students go into teaching/academia
The B students get most of the jobs.
The C students go into / switch to management.
*he was later awarded the Prize for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility by the AAAS for doing everything in his power at the time to halt the launch and exemplifying professional behavior
>>
More importantly, it draws attention to the fact that Google has drained the market of talent, caused a 25% to 50% hike in salaries and made it difficult for startups to get funding.
>>
Right. This sort of thing happens in a free market, especially when a company has earned a good reputation and provides a high quality service.
You want to work for a company like that. In turn, the company's success makes it affluent enough to pay premium salaries for the best people.
In terms of the startups... Funding any startup is a risk, but it would be ludicrous for a venture capitalist to fund a startup in the face of direct, ostensibly superior competition. That's a no-brainer.
If a startup is significantly different from google, or can unequivocally provide a superior service, or if google's quality declines (which some predict) then it will be easier to procure capital and get off the ground.
These are all really *desired* things under capitalism. People are just griping that they didn't get in on Google's IPO or something. Things only begin to look grim for the market once all of google's competition is eliminated entirely. And even a monopoly doesn't guarantee bad news for the service recipient, although theory and historical precedent make it much more likely.
The last, but far more important issue is that google has yet to perform any actions of dubious moral or ethical* nature. No frivolous lawsuits. No submarine patents. No unfair competition.
They have acceded to the requests of China, France, etc, to alter their service to those countries in a manner that might seem offensive or tyrannical to some, but the point is that those are sovereign nations within whose borders google is technically operating. They have not done that here and, I assure you, I would be the first to denounce and vilify them for such.
In short, the premise is (at least currently) a bunch of hogwash.
*corporations cannot exactly be characterized by these descriptions, but rather are anthropomorphized in the public's eye into such affected entities through the actions of their CEO, board, and so forth. So let it rest, ok?
What about areas where the is no competetion (with cable, etc)? It seems to me like this ruling will be ambivalent at best for people in large metro areas, but rural America - whose broadband infrastructure is still spotty at best, and often unavailable - gets screwed.
I grew up and my parents still live in a small town (~1200 people) in northeast Ohio. Broadband cable became available from Adelphia - the only cable provider in the area - about 4 years ago, and the bargain price of $59.95/mo w/o cable TV. I convinced my folks to try it...it was only slightly more than paying for a second phone line and dial up. It was an improvement, but just barely. Terrible uptimes, slow speeds (lucky if a download broke 35kb/s), and other crap...but still not dial up.
A couple of years ago, SBC took over the local telco, upgraded the equipment, and offered DSL to those lucky enough to live in town. 1.5m/512k service for $30 a month. I got my parents switched over and the difference is astounding. They're currently getting 3.0m/768k service for $26.95. I thought, "WOW! Broadband has become cheap, widely available, and fast!"
Not so. I am heading back to college this fall to begin studying law. The local population near the school is about 10x the size of my home town, so i figured they had to have good broadband, eh? I called the cable company. They don't service my street. Ok. I called the telco. After initially telling me I couldn't get DSL, they called me back to say that I could, in fact, but that they had to manually verify the "rural" address by sending someone in a truck.
In order to get DSL, I had to subscribe to local phone service. After much haggling over packacges I didn't want, I finally got them to give me *just* local service for $17/mo. 1.5mb/128k(!) will be $50/mo more; effectively, $67/mo for crappy broadband. I'm being bamboozled.
After I had signed up for a one year commitment with the Telco, I found out that a local ISP offered DSL for $7 less per month. The moral of the story? ANYTHING that has the potential to reduce number of options available to consumers is bad. I had another choice I didn't know about...but at least it was there.
I've been waiting (and drooling) over the prospect of laser projection techs for the last 10 years or so. Sony's done a lot in the field recently. In fact, they have a 2005 inch screen set up at their exhibition building at the 2005 World's Fair in Seto, Japan. I dearly wish I could see this thing in person...
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/GxL/
Be sure to have a look at their tech explanation too. They went with the Grating Light Valve design, using MEMS.
CompUSA, CircuitCity, and BestBuy. They always have great prices, along with incredibly knowledgable staff if you decide to visit their physical stores. Oh, and always make sure to get the extended warranty. You're a fool if you don't.
I'll up the ante. Go to Radioshack! Reasonable prices* and great service.
*who says $50 for a 12ft USB cable is unreasonable!
Radioshack. You've got questions? We've got blank stares.
[Alternatively, You've got questions? We've got batteries.]
He's saying people have no right to make a profit, only the opportunity. What the government provides is an compromise in the form of an exchange:
We give you certain advantages that make it easier for you to make a profit, and in exchange, your creative prodcut becomes publically and freely available after a prededermined amount of time.
And yes, governments do the same thing with real, physical property. They can take your land, your possessions whenever they feel like it; they are bigger than you. That's why there exist documents like the Bill of Rights here in the USA that outline what the government ostensibly can and can't do. In this country, the legal system is your recourse/remedy when there is an issue. It's a hell of a better system than armed conflict to settle disputes over property.
It's all about establishing a balance.
BrownSHIRTS rising again would indeed be a scary thing. We are BrownCOATS.
;-)
Hahaha. Indeed. When I read his post I about choked on my tea. Suprised no one tried to twist that into some anti-republican propoganda
I lived in a fairly expensive, major metropolitan area (>1 million people) for a year and I easily fed myself for around $100/mo. And I'm a picky eater. Whole grain foods, fruits, vegetables, lean meats. Most people either don't take the time to look forbargains or buy expensive convenience foods. If you stock up on staples and cook for yourself, living is much cheaper.
I mean, if you really wanted to, a bag of enriched flour, milk, and some eggs is nearly all you need to survive.
agronauts
:-)
I was just going to suggest that. It's also a nice play on argonaut, which is appropriate for anyone who'd go on such a dangerous, far off, long term expedition.
That's why you need a doctor's note* that says you have "allergies" and need an air conditioner.
:-)
*I mean, I think just about everyone has an allergy to something and to some degree. YMMV convincing your doc of that.
>>In fact, Fusion tends to produce far MORE energy than Fission (as shown by thermonuclear weapons) but the problem is that no one has found a method for creating a self-maintaining Fusion reaction.
;-)
>>
I'd just like to helpfully point out that a single fusion event, say:
(D+T -> 4He + n)
produces much less energy than a single fission event, say:
(235U + n -> 144Ba + 89Kr +n+n+n).
Fusion: 17.6MeV excess energy
Fission: ~200 MeV excess energy
(However, fusion does have a higher release of energy per nucleon)
Now, bombs. A fission weapon, you know what you're going to get. You design it carefully to precisely go critical, use up your fuel and that's it. The goal of a thermonuclear (fusion) bomb is a little different. You instead basically build it to be as wildly uncontrolled as possible - which isn't hard, since fusion is tremendously difficult to control in the first place. I mean, it takes a fission bomb just to set it off!
So yeah, fusion will "produce more energy". It's the difference between a stick of dynamite and a stick of dynamite shoved into a barrel of thermite molded out of C4
>>> What if it takes longer than 10-20 years to even have your creation become popular?
>>>
Er, that's life? Seriously, if it takes 20 years for your work to become popular, too bad. I realize that popular culture changes, etc, over time, and thus, your work might not be appreciated at first. On the other hand, with anything else except IP, can you expect to be rewarded for work you did two decades earlier? Highly doubtful.
What you can hope for, if your work suddenly becomes popular later on, is that people will also suddenly respect you as an artist - and want more of your respective work. And hopefully you aren't too old to provide it. Again, too bad if you are.
Ultimately, I think you need a better marketing/PR person to make your work more initially salable.
I'm not a hard-core libertarian, but I think a free market with only limited government protections (but certainly some) serves the public best.
Ha, whoever said work was my first priority :-p
>> Funny, I've never understood why people will pay $x000 for a tricked-out gaming PC when they can get the same performance from a $x00 console.
>>
Well personally, I'd never buy a console. One, games are tertiary to me, and were, even when I was a kid. And while I do enjoy the occasional FPS (Halflife and its decendants, especially), my favorite genres of games are 4X and wargames, followed by adventure games (which have lamentably disappeared over the past 10 years.) Civilzation I,II, & III, Master of Orion I&II, Master of Magic, etc, and all the classic Sierra adventure games, for some examples.
I have a high-end PC that I use for everything from programming to 3d modeling which, consequently, I can use as a gaming system. And while many of the titles that I mentioned are now a bit long in the tooth, some aren't. Civ III might not require the latest video card, but man can it suck up CPU time. Try a gigantic map with max opponents...
The PC just fits my user-case better than a console.
Not necessarily
One day, I zoomed in on a piece of paper on the corner of his desk. Some rotation & sharpening in photoshop* revealed an IP and the word "gizzards8524". I telnetted** to the IP, tried his usual nickname and that word as the password and bingo - I was in.
He was quite startled when a he got a console chat invitation from...himself.
*as opposed to hollywood's ideas of image restoration that boggle the mind and break the laws of physics.
**ssh wasn't popular yet.