Why is everyone commenting on the business aspect of this?
"Bill Gates is actually quite a philanthropist."
This is the scary part for me. A man as rich as Gates is not going to see any problem with giving away all of my money. He has already demonstrated this with his opinion on the inheritance tax.
Proving that various actions are right or wrong (or in some cases demonstrating them beyond a reasonable doubt) is possible, providing that definitions are properly made and that decisions about morality are made within a reasonable and delimited context. This is much too broad a subject to be properly concluded here, but one consideration should be noted. When saying something is right or wrong, part of the context is "to achieve what goal?" If my goal is to get the solution to a difficult mathematical problem, discrimination against Swedes is wrong, discrimination against the profoundly stupid is right.
In addition to the other reasons for acting in what is generally considered a moral manner, consider this:
Most people want to live as pleasantly as possible. It is pleasant to be part of a civilized society, unpleasant to live in chaos. Behaving in a civilized manner contributes to civilization and helps a person gain its benefits; acting to promote chaos makes your surroundings and your life in particular worse. This means that moral behavior is rational behavior.
By acting very well one gains the virtue and reward called "pride". It is a particular black mark against Christianity that pride is considered a sin.
A human's rights are determined by what a human is, a rational animal. They are inalienable because you never lose your rights as long as you retain your humanity. That is not to say your rights cannot be violated: you can be stolen from or injured; you retain your rights but they have been violated. No "Creator" can grant you anything, because no such being exists, or can exist.
Morality can be rationally defined; it is not arbitrary. Religious "morality" is by definition irrational; it is based upon falacies such as argument from authority or argumentum ad baculum. If you're being "good" because "the Bible told my so" or "the preacher told me so", that's not morality, that's forsaking moral responsibility for someone else's word. If you're being "good" because you're being threatened to behave that way, that's not morality, it's cowardice. If you're being "good" because "God told me so", that's not morality, that's insanity.
I think Tektronix made a very sensitive differential amplifier for one of their plugin oscilloscope systems. This might work, but it's not really the best approach. If you have electrical engineering abilities, make a good low frequency differential amp. Chop the output and feed it into the audio input of your computer. Use software to demodulate the chopped signal. (If your audio card has good response down to about 1/4 Hz, skip the chop/demod steps). You now have data on the computer that can be displayed, printed out, or analysed. Costs could be below $30, but there's a fair amount of software and hardware design and construction involved.
The average insolation for the desert American southwest is over 10 hours a day. See http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook /atlas/ and select Average, Annual, Two Axis Tracking Flat Plate. Now you have $1.2M a day or $438M a year. Although a 4.5 year payback is not what most businessmen would like to see, the power industry thinks long-term by necessity, and this looks reasonable.
This is for a desert area. Deserts have dust storms, storms of wind-driven sand. It won't be long before any plastic mirror or fresnel lens has a frosty, dimpled surface. Glass is better but will suffer the same fate eventually.
Perhaps you haven't been paying attention, but Democrats have a decades-long history of multiple votes per person and fraudulent voter registration. Two generations ago, Democrat Dick Tuck was the king of dirty election campaign tricks.
The problem is that there's too much political power available, and people who want political power are without exception bad people.
The problem is that it's likely to backfire. I've been receiving these calls here in NH daily, and if it weren't for the fact I consider the Democrats horrid, the calls would cause my to vote against the Republicans making them. I hate robocalls and I hate them more when they're repeated.
You are correct that the increase in spending causes an eventual increase in total taxes paid. Although lowering tax rates now will increase taxes that have to be paid later, the lower tax rates increase the total economy, and before long more taxes are paid at the lower rate than would have been paid at the higher rate. This is the effect of the Laffer Curve, which any honest and competent economist can tell you about. The real benefit of the lower tax rate is that the populace is richer in the short term and much richer in the long term.
The argument is that people have the capability to live to be grandparents during the full childhood of their grandchildren, and that is not a recent event, nor does it require advanced technology. Aristotle lived into his sixties; that was 2300 years ago.
In Vietnam, we had an (unjustified) fear of mainland China officially joining the war. Also, the situation was not serious enough to justify nuclear weapons. If we had been serious about defeating North Vietnam, we could have done it.
In the early 1970s, when the two-bladed razor was new, Saturday Night Live had a spoof ad for a three blade razor, using cartoon graphics similar to a Gillette ad. The tag line was something like, "because there's one born every minute."
Aluminum is already in common use. Thermal problems are handled somehow. I think stainless steel and titanium are less a problem than aluminum. As long as the thermal coefficient of expansion is isotropic, it can be handled.
So, titanium is almost 6 times stiffer than aluminum. I'm guessing that stainless steel has fair internal damping, which might reduce wobble propagation. (I'm not a mechanical engineer.)
Slashdot Mirror
Bush served in the National Guard. That's a lot more than 100 hours of community service.
There are many different denominations of Christians, and they do not all agree about abortion.
"Bill Gates is actually quite a philanthropist."
This is the scary part for me. A man as rich as Gates is not going to see any problem with giving away all of my money. He has already demonstrated this with his opinion on the inheritance tax.
Proving that various actions are right or wrong (or in some cases demonstrating them beyond a reasonable doubt) is possible, providing that definitions are properly made and that decisions about morality are made within a reasonable and delimited context. This is much too broad a subject to be properly concluded here, but one consideration should be noted. When saying something is right or wrong, part of the context is "to achieve what goal?" If my goal is to get the solution to a difficult mathematical problem, discrimination against Swedes is wrong, discrimination against the profoundly stupid is right.
Most people want to live as pleasantly as possible. It is pleasant to be part of a civilized society, unpleasant to live in chaos. Behaving in a civilized manner contributes to civilization and helps a person gain its benefits; acting to promote chaos makes your surroundings and your life in particular worse. This means that moral behavior is rational behavior.
By acting very well one gains the virtue and reward called "pride". It is a particular black mark against Christianity that pride is considered a sin.
Morality can be rationally defined; it is not arbitrary. Religious "morality" is by definition irrational; it is based upon falacies such as argument from authority or argumentum ad baculum. If you're being "good" because "the Bible told my so" or "the preacher told me so", that's not morality, that's forsaking moral responsibility for someone else's word. If you're being "good" because you're being threatened to behave that way, that's not morality, it's cowardice. If you're being "good" because "God told me so", that's not morality, that's insanity.
I think Tektronix made a very sensitive differential amplifier for one of their plugin oscilloscope systems. This might work, but it's not really the best approach. If you have electrical engineering abilities, make a good low frequency differential amp. Chop the output and feed it into the audio input of your computer. Use software to demodulate the chopped signal. (If your audio card has good response down to about 1/4 Hz, skip the chop/demod steps). You now have data on the computer that can be displayed, printed out, or analysed. Costs could be below $30, but there's a fair amount of software and hardware design and construction involved.
"Four pounds of lead in a monitor" is a bogus issue. It's in the form of leaded glass. The glass is not soluble in water.
Last I heard, the SEC was going after more than 100 companies for illegally back-dated stock options.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
A motor-generator type inverter will cover your surge problems, so would some form of rotating energy storage.
The average insolation for the desert American southwest is over 10 hours a day. See http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook /atlas/ and select Average, Annual, Two Axis Tracking Flat Plate. Now you have $1.2M a day or $438M a year. Although a 4.5 year payback is not what most businessmen would like to see, the power industry thinks long-term by necessity, and this looks reasonable.
This is for a desert area. Deserts have dust storms, storms of wind-driven sand. It won't be long before any plastic mirror or fresnel lens has a frosty, dimpled surface. Glass is better but will suffer the same fate eventually.
The problem is that there's too much political power available, and people who want political power are without exception bad people.
The problem is that it's likely to backfire. I've been receiving these calls here in NH daily, and if it weren't for the fact I consider the Democrats horrid, the calls would cause my to vote against the Republicans making them. I hate robocalls and I hate them more when they're repeated.
You are correct that the increase in spending causes an eventual increase in total taxes paid. Although lowering tax rates now will increase taxes that have to be paid later, the lower tax rates increase the total economy, and before long more taxes are paid at the lower rate than would have been paid at the higher rate. This is the effect of the Laffer Curve, which any honest and competent economist can tell you about. The real benefit of the lower tax rate is that the populace is richer in the short term and much richer in the long term.
The argument is that people have the capability to live to be grandparents during the full childhood of their grandchildren, and that is not a recent event, nor does it require advanced technology. Aristotle lived into his sixties; that was 2300 years ago.
Here's the timeline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/katrina/katrina_ timeline.html
Lowered taxes. This has done more to strengthen the economy than anything since Reagan's presidency.
When you make an idiotic claim, it weakens the force of your other claims.
The idea that most Americans want Bush impeached is laughable.
In Vietnam, we had an (unjustified) fear of mainland China officially joining the war. Also, the situation was not serious enough to justify nuclear weapons. If we had been serious about defeating North Vietnam, we could have done it.
In the early 1970s, when the two-bladed razor was new, Saturday Night Live had a spoof ad for a three blade razor, using cartoon graphics similar to a Gillette ad. The tag line was something like, "because there's one born every minute."
Aluminum is already in common use. Thermal problems are handled somehow. I think stainless steel and titanium are less a problem than aluminum. As long as the thermal coefficient of expansion is isotropic, it can be handled.
aluminum: 69
common glass: 70 to 95
stainless steel: 190 to 200
titanium: 406
So, titanium is almost 6 times stiffer than aluminum. I'm guessing that stainless steel has fair internal damping, which might reduce wobble propagation. (I'm not a mechanical engineer.)