Did you even read those links? She didn't get condemned for taking pictures of kids at bathtime, or even sharing them with others. The problem came when she tried to SELL them. Can you not see the problem with someone selling pictures of naked children? Now the age is another consideration. Naked infant pictures on the internet? Fine with me, though still creepy at best to sell them. It wasn't clear to me if the photos were just of a baby or older kids too.
I think the ire is so strong because we expect exactly what you're talking about from NPR, but we don't from the commercial news outlets. Matt Louer (sp?) swallows crap and it's expected. When NPR lets someone use their show to spout crap, we get upset because they've not met our standards for them. I didn't hear the piece, but I hope that they introduced it as commentary. In that case, I'm not sure they should really be expected to check facts, but either way the appropriate response is to write them about it.
Me either. That would also mean if the customer forgets to hang up after the conversation, the T-Mobile rep would have to just sit there until the phone company terminated the connection. How long does that take? How much money would T-M be paying their employee to sit on their hands?
one very obvious way to do this would be to require (and enforce) that any bills passing into law must use direct and solid speech, rather than leaving ubiquitous remarks such as "patently offensive".
That's already the case! This court decision in question states precisely that the language of the bill is so broad as to be illegal. So in your new plan, who enforces that requirement? The legislature? They're the ones passing the bill, no help there. The courts? That's what we have now. The executive? If the executive gets final word, then that's way too much power. If the law could still be challenged in court after executive approval, then that would be no different than what we have now. That would be... let's see, yeah all three branches right there.:-)
I was mostly talking about strategic nuclear bombing when I said "relic of the Cold War".
After the 2008 elections I'll be more confident that's a relic.;-) Just kidding really. I think Bush might consider tactical nuclear bombing (plenty scary), but not strategic.
What motivation did Microsoft have to cooperate at all?
None, and nobody expected them to. What's being pointed out is that they're pretending to cooperate, rather than openly saying "Frack you, Massachusettes!" Which is also exactly what I would expect from them.
There's no end to what you can do when you buy the right senators.
So you're saying super-efficient engines have been outlawed?
There's no end to what you can hide when people dismiss everything as a conspiracy theory. (Thanks conspiracy theorists!)
All the conspiracy theories I've heard say the car companies have these designs, and either they or the oil companies are keeping them on the shelf. Presumably these theorists believe the oil companies are paying off the car companies not to make these cars. The problem is, all it takes is one defector who thinks maybe the oil payoff isn't big enough to not make a car 100 times more efficient than the competition's. We've had plenty of time for a car company to make that decision, and plenty of time for a disgruntled engineer to take the secret and sell it to, say, Toyota. And you really think the Japanese would sit on this technology? Secrets this powerful just don't get kept for very long. Beyond that, it ignores the physics. There's only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline. Even if you harnessed almost all of it, and even if you reduced internal friction by (for example) 90%, and even if you reduced coefficient of drag to (for example).05 from the.2-.3 where it is now, and reduced average weight to (say) 2000 pounds rather than 3200-3500 (and ignoring the fact that car weights are going up, not down) I suspect some of these theories have mileage numbers that, for a useful car, really are impossible. I'm just guessing here, though. They're certainly extraordinary claims, which as we all know require extraordinary evidence. The evidence is covered up, you say. Well, I've already examined that possibility and it sure isn't convincing to me.
And there's no end to the not-giving-a-shit of the average American.
That's for sure, except maybe where money is involved. And here, there is definitely money involved. If the public found out Detroit could have been producing cars that reduced our fuel expenditures by 75%, I doubt the reaction would be "oh well".
(a Lotus F1 once had a thirty pound foot rest in order to make weight)
Doubtless that was to meet minimum mass requirements of the sanctioning body, not for safety. I agree with your point, and would like to add that this strong light car will be safer for another reason: active safety. A lighter vehicle accelerates, turns, and stops more quickly, making it easier to avoid an accident in the first place.
Did it occur to you that MS is the biggest software company in the known universe and this is a tech news site? When auto executives resign, you don't hear about it here, but Car and Driver reports it. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
long-range bombers (nuclear and conventional warheads there, think intercontinental bombing, a relic of the Cold War)
Relic of the cold war? I believe long-range bombing was conducted during the Balkan conflicts, Desert Storm, the beginning of the current Iraq war, and maybe Afghanistan too. IIRC B-2s struck Iraq from Missouri (in-flight refueling). Now that's long-range bombing. Certainly the Air Force still operates a fleet of long-range bombers (B-1, B-2, and amazingly B-52). And in the list of things the AF is in charge of you forgot fighters. You could argue that they're completely irrelevant now, but they're still in service and there are new ones on the way.
Water makes its own ions? You're saying that if pure water isn't exposed to anything (sealed in a nonreactive container) it will spontaneously create ions? How, and what kind?
On the other hand, Some Al rivets have to be kept in a freezer from the time they are made till they are used, as otherwise they will age harden, so that's another possible source of trouble there.
Couldn't the rivets be steel or some other metal? Do they have to be Al too?
Whereas a certain Java application may need a cluster of 90 to 100 2.8 GHz Opteron systems to run effectively, a similarly-written (ie. algorithms of the same complexity, etc.) system in C++ can make do on 15 of those machines.
And I'm sure you have access to research demonstrating that this is generally true, and not just that it happened once. Right?
Many Americans were furious to discover that the NSA had recently obtained their cell phone records, yet how many EFF members will raise a complaint against this system? None. Why? Because it's OK to discriminate against kids & students.
Your examples of schools and governments are not equivalent, morally or legally, to privacy invasions by parents of their own children. It is not only OK to discriminate between (treat differently) kids and adults, but necessary, and it would be unethical not to do so. Whether it's wise for parents to track their kids is separate from A) whether it's ethical and legal to do so and B) whether it would be ethical and legal for the government to do it.
Then how do you explain the increasing demand mentioned in the article? Nobody is suggesting we won't be using steel anymore in 20 years, but clearly titanium has substantial advantages over steel and aluminum for some applications, or nobody would use it.
I've heard that aluminum welds lose stiffness over time (with use, actually), thus one reason car companies now bond and rivet aluminum frames rather than welding them. True?
Many engine blocks are made from aluminum. You can read a few of the 4 million Google results for "aluminum engine block". I've never heard of any problems with them, but then I'm not an automotive engineer. My impression is though that they're getting more common, so I doubt there are serious problems with it. I don't know why softness would be an issue anyway, since in street cars the engine is not a stressed member. It just has to be strong enough to withstand the forces the engine produces.
It's clear, but I've never really found that argument convincing. How hard is it to plug in a phone anyway? I take my phone off when I go to bed anyway, I can just plug it in at the same time. I have a USB cable sitting here on my PC at work and I can just plug my phone into that while I'm sitting at my desk and charge it that way (I just did today). Car chargers are common, my wife charges her phone while she drives. Is it really such a trial to plug in your phone for an hour a couple of times a week?
Not to sound like too much of a fanboy, but my understanding of the term "grunt" isn't really compatible with the Master Chief. Would you call an elite superhuman special forces cyborg a grunt? Not sure what you mean by boot mentality; that may or may not fit.
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Did you even read those links? She didn't get condemned for taking pictures of kids at bathtime, or even sharing them with others. The problem came when she tried to SELL them. Can you not see the problem with someone selling pictures of naked children? Now the age is another consideration. Naked infant pictures on the internet? Fine with me, though still creepy at best to sell them. It wasn't clear to me if the photos were just of a baby or older kids too.
I think the ire is so strong because we expect exactly what you're talking about from NPR, but we don't from the commercial news outlets. Matt Louer (sp?) swallows crap and it's expected. When NPR lets someone use their show to spout crap, we get upset because they've not met our standards for them. I didn't hear the piece, but I hope that they introduced it as commentary. In that case, I'm not sure they should really be expected to check facts, but either way the appropriate response is to write them about it.
Me either. That would also mean if the customer forgets to hang up after the conversation, the T-Mobile rep would have to just sit there until the phone company terminated the connection. How long does that take? How much money would T-M be paying their employee to sit on their hands?
After the five years it takes to make back the price of the NAS, yes.
Did it occur to you that MS is the biggest software company in the known universe and this is a tech news site? When auto executives resign, you don't hear about it here, but Car and Driver reports it. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Water makes its own ions? You're saying that if pure water isn't exposed to anything (sealed in a nonreactive container) it will spontaneously create ions? How, and what kind?
Then how do you explain the increasing demand mentioned in the article? Nobody is suggesting we won't be using steel anymore in 20 years, but clearly titanium has substantial advantages over steel and aluminum for some applications, or nobody would use it.
Right, nobody else has any titanium ore.
r ra-leone/geography.htmli a/geography.html/ in.htmld ucts/582B60B066B26906CA2570DE00173BBD?opendocument
http://www.nap.edu/openbook/POD140/html/23.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium#Occurrence
http://reference.allrefer.com/world/countries/sie
http://reference.allrefer.com/world/countries/ind
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
http://www.mixcorp.com/stcharles.htm
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestpro
That was transparent aluminum.
I've heard that aluminum welds lose stiffness over time (with use, actually), thus one reason car companies now bond and rivet aluminum frames rather than welding them. True?
Many engine blocks are made from aluminum. You can read a few of the 4 million Google results for "aluminum engine block". I've never heard of any problems with them, but then I'm not an automotive engineer. My impression is though that they're getting more common, so I doubt there are serious problems with it. I don't know why softness would be an issue anyway, since in street cars the engine is not a stressed member. It just has to be strong enough to withstand the forces the engine produces.
It's clear, but I've never really found that argument convincing. How hard is it to plug in a phone anyway? I take my phone off when I go to bed anyway, I can just plug it in at the same time. I have a USB cable sitting here on my PC at work and I can just plug my phone into that while I'm sitting at my desk and charge it that way (I just did today). Car chargers are common, my wife charges her phone while she drives. Is it really such a trial to plug in your phone for an hour a couple of times a week?
Not to sound like too much of a fanboy, but my understanding of the term "grunt" isn't really compatible with the Master Chief. Would you call an elite superhuman special forces cyborg a grunt? Not sure what you mean by boot mentality; that may or may not fit.