.."Experts also say there is plenty of capacity left on the networks -- a fact Bell admits to -- so the traffic-shaping is being done merely to interfere with internet applications the companies see as threats to their own businesses."..and there's the rub. There needs to be a clear business separation between bandwith providers and content providers, then there won't be as much inclination for the bandwith providers to engage in net data bits manipulation mischief.
I live in north georgia on a two lane blacktop road, more suburban now than rural (although this is a farm), and there is no broadband here, and the line technician told me quite clearly they would *never* offer broadband unless it was mandated by law.. The last place we lived in north georgia was much farther out in the sticks, down several dirt roads (miles of them with few houses) leading to a third of a mile private dirt driveway, serious boonies with bears in the yard and so on, and they were rolling out broadband all over, just when we were moving unfortunately, but they did do it. The difference, where we are now is hell south territory, the last place was a local community telco-ETC- that actually cared. They ran new good copper underground everyplace (14 pairs, I looked), here, hell south uses the same cheap overhead vulnerable to every windstorm thin lines crap forever and just doesn't care, probably conflicts with Cxx salaries and "shareholder value!!!"
US agriculture is dominated by commodities traders and a handful of middleman packers/shippers/distributors. That's where your prices come from, farmers for the most part can't make enough to barely break even. I'll give you an example from here on our farm, if you could pay an additional 5 cents per whole chicken at the grocery store, that would double our net. *Double it*, if we got that nickle and it wasn't skimmed away upstream from us. The thing is, we can't set prices because it costs millions to set up a packing plant and a ton of governmental bribery..I mean hoop jumping, to pull that off. There's a small handful of large corporations that dominate the packing and distribution markets, and *they* set the prices on a take it or leave it manner, and if you leave it, you are screwed, out of business, you can't distribute in bulk (varies state by state, but mostly true). It makes getting Linux on all the OEM computers easy.
Anyway, all legals here, we are doing the jobs that...what was your point again?
It's very similar in most of farming, between local governments upping property taxes, that you can't avoid, cost of production, that you can't avoid-diesel, propane, electricity, bought in water, machinery, yada yada, salt to taste depending on type of farming, there's not much left to cut that you have any control over except labor. It's like they are doing all they can to destroy domestic agriculture on the family sized model, and the bulk of those subsidies you hear about go to those huge corporate conglomerates.
You can compete by being very small and in niche markets, or by being hugemongous and being part of a corporate enterprise, anything in between-the traditional professional family farm- is getting wonky.
NAFTA screwed over Mexican campesino farmers big time, put *millions* out of their own little farm jobs, drove them north in desperation, then here, caused a severe lowering of wages for existing workers. Remember way back a long time ago, Cesar Chavez, head of the farm workers union? HE called the illegals the ultimate wage lowering scab labor. It's like it was designed on purpose to turn family farms in both nations into FarmAgco International, Inc corporate farms. Gee, what a coincidence how that worked out, same as like what happened to them screwing over domestic manufacturing and now white collar IT, it's all designed to make the top 1% wealthier, that's it, that's the sum total of US economic policy in any direction you want to look at, just like now it is going to bail out the billionaire investment bankers.
It could go either way,on a case by case basis and determined by the judge, just like that dancing MS baboon haranguing open source Linux about their precious patents, every day they wait and not produce the actual patents and sue or send out notices, etc, means they might encounter the doctrine of laches.
That isn't commercial broadcasting. Completely different deal there. That's amateur hobbiest radio, doing "shows" isn't permitted at all. The closest they have to cheap in low power is called "micro broadcasting" and even then it isn't allowed to be commercial, and still has unacceptable restrictions and it is ~reasonably~ hard to be licensed for it. The "pirate" radio stations you hear of are those, microbroadcasters who operate outside the technical law and frequently get busted and have their gear confiscated and so on, although a lot still exist out there, typically running like 10-20 watt stations in major urban areas, along those lines.
Nope, the big established commercial guys and the FCC have made it pretty hard to "join their club".
Ya, I looked into any sort of small commercial AM station, egads, you need to be a millionaire to even think about it. Then I looked at commercial shortwave (thinking a SSB rig might work for cheap), SOL again, just the monthly fees to the FCC rule that out, let alone operating expenses. More or less, millionaires and corporations own the airwaves, there are *no* "peoples airwaves" to use, the system is rigged.
I listen to AM radio all the time (it propagates well, I can listen to stations from all over the nation at night when I listen, and there is a dearth of talk radio on the FM bands and you are limited to close by stations) and most of the shows have phone numbers you can call in and comment. Go right ahead, challenge the views of guests or hosts you don't agree with, with reasons, etc. That is what it is all about. If you feel even stronger about the subject or subjects, get your own show on some radio station or do netcasting. So far, the RIAA hasn't screwed over net "talk" radio, just anything with music.
I know I would have had my own station (low power, all I could afford) long ago if the FCC and the big broadcasters weren't such dicks about it, and that includes those NPR cretins who lobbied hard to restrict any competition. I can see it from the major broadcasters, but that was sure a bummer to find out they were against opening up low power. I don't want to go pirate radio because the HAMS throw hissy fits over it (even if you aren't interfering anyplace and have a clean signal) and nark on people, and netcasting takes a decent broadband connection, which I can't get here. Someday though...although reading that WiMax thread was a bummer, kept hoping that might be the magic to get broadband out into the sticks, and so far, cellphone broadband ain't it either. So...I type on teh internets.
It might be better for him to research the teachers as in your example and pick the university that way instead. Choose the subject (down to a more fine detail level) that is really interesting and seems to have the most potential, then see who are the leading researchers in that subject, go to their school.
Ac Propulsion, who also make electric cars and components (they are supplying a lot of other manufacturers and do-it-your-selfers now), came up with the rigidly attached generator trailer idea, the modular hybrid approach- rigid as in no flexing, the trailer axle stays inline with the cars rear axle, it tracks, easy for noobs to back up with then-that turns a pure electric car into a modular hybrid. Around town short distance, electric only, long trips, attach the trailer and away you go, stop and fillerup as you would normally. Their model sportscar still fits within a normal parking space *with* the generator trailer attached.
And that is really the way to do hybrids, cramming all that stuff, the ICE, the electric motor, the gas tank, and the batteries, inside one car is nuts, an overly complicated cobjob, you got two of everything-drive train system and "stored power"- when you really only need one.
Confinement adds weight *faster*, but just makes a lot fattier beef. It makes them money faster, but no way is it "better". Some people like that half-fat beef but I think that whole "marbling" stuff is mostly consumer fraud, because that is the sort of meat you get from the feedlots so they have pushed it for generations now with "beef council" propaganda advertising. OMG you need all that fat mixed in to make it tender and delicious! Well, BS (appropriate) to that!
And a lot of folks really have never even tasted a real alternative. Letting them walk around normally and munch grass mostly instead of confined feedlots and eating corn actually makes superior beef (check prices between the two for more proof), I have a freezer full of it now (from our herd), very little fat, but still very tender and tasty and a lot more useful protein pound for pound over the fatty supermarket beef.
Ya, you want them unstressed all the time, but normal walking around and grazing is in no way stressful, they *like* to do that. It's their nature to go out, graze a little, lay around, go to the creek and drink, the little calves run around and play, etc. Normal cow stuff isn't stressful to them, being confined in shitlots *is*. You can see the same thing with eggs, we have a small flock that get full daytime pasture access, where they can go around and scratch and eat bugs and seeds and whatever cluckers eat and do, they love it, you can tell, the difference in our eggs and store bought battery farmed eggs is amazing, no comparison, richer golden yolk color, the whites stand up firmer, etc. Same with the stuff from our garden, I'd put up my squash or tomatoes or cabbage, etc against any supermarket trucked in "factory food" stuff.
And quite frankly, large scale "ship food thousands of miles" action is going to have to slow down soon, that was last century's "food factory" model with oil at ten bucks a barrel. ain't that way now, they are losing that economic advantage that allowed that to happen, meaning local grown can now "compete" even at low grocery budgets. Local grown, fresher stuff from farmers who actually care about producing quality food is where it is at now if you care about what you eat and have intact tastebuds.
I really don't care what the big industry experts say (because mostly they suck) food isn't manufactured, it is nurtured and grown. You got to remember, these big agcos are kissin cuzzins to the same big economic "experts" who are bringing you the current economic meltdown courtesy of the bogus paper financial alleged "products" industry (repackaged and rebranded glorified IOUs based on MAFIAA accounting standards) disaster, the same sort of mindset. It's stupid and failing right now. It's still big, granted, but it's big and *dumb*.
Same old engineering deal, it's never changed, good, fast or cheap, *pick two*.
The overly expensive price gouging copies of music industry is ailing, because people by and large all over the planet realized copies should be incredibly cheap, as in pennies cheap, and some old dinosaur buggywhip interests still want to charge serious folding dollars for cheap copies.
Musicians who go out and like play music and are even half way decent have no problems making money while making music.
Aftermarket copy makers-who aren't the people who "make music"- are having problems because people don't like being price gouged, so they routed around the problem.
Way back in the olden days when making and delivering a copy of some musical performance was very expensive, they charged a decent markup and people were by and large OK with that payment. Fast forward to the digital age where making and delivering a copy can be done on any scale you want, up to the billions of copies if necessary, and delivered for chump change per copy over the internet. The *problem* is, they want like a 10,000% markup, something ridiculous like that, just like there had never been any tech advances.
That's just crazy. If any of those music industry copy-selling execs would just put down the booze bottle and put away the mirror with the peruvian marching powder for a few weeks and get their brains cleaned up a little, they would realize that. The technological world passed them by, and they want to hold on to the past, and it just won't last. Any schemes that involve serious price gouging eventually fail, as human beings hate being price gouged, and then when you manipulate laws against them and sue them and call them criminals and etc, and screw with trying to "protect" your precious overpriced copies-well, your potential customers lose all respect for you and ignore you.
The solution is simple and has been staring them in the face for years now, seriously drop per-copy charges (99 cents for a few megs of download is still a price gouge,make it *cheaper* than that by a large amount), and make the profit on huge volume sales.
human powered flight-you got me, maybe sometime in the future with even better materials there might be some money in making joyride airplanes. Hobby flight in various forms is a good enough industry,normal piston engine planes at the low end, cessnas, etc., hang gliding, regular gliders, sport ballooning, sport parachuting, etc, Pedal powered planes would sell or lease OK I think...
x-prize-they are going to be making billions with a B on selling space tourism, they already announced they are constructing a small fleet
darpa grand challenge-multi billions possible just in the defense industries there, self navigating machines-land, sea and air and space obviously- are a *huge* part of projected forward expenditures in robotics, team oshkosh (TerraMax) actually enters working prototypes of military cargo trucks that they want to sell in big quantities as soon as they work good enough. And it is applicable in other areas, for example, it is already well established in agriculture, we buy a lot of corn from a farming family that uses sophisticated self steering tractors, and hospitals and warehouses are using a lot of robotic delivery bots now. Roomba is another example and that robot lawn mower, forget the name now.
Ya, the initial prize money might not cover everything, but certainly enough to get the competition heated up, and the whole idea of selecting prize goals is that they *will* be useful, therefore valuable in terms of business money later on.
As to the "losing" teams, I bet if you asked them if it was worth is so far, even at a monetary loss, they would mostly say "yes".
....according to the comments, this is some sort of trap, you get "rickroll'd". Which leads me to believe it isn't the bumbot.....
I'm on dialup anyway, I rarely look at any videos, they take way too long to convert to something reasonable (I don't do flash, and I can't make sound work anyway), then download and view.
I never got accidentally goatsed either (I check all my links at least preview, force of habit), but I did on purpose look at it once just to see what it was..sheesh
No rule of law there. None, zero. There are *many* areas of Atlanta that have no actual police presence except to come up and pick up bodies or similar things like that. Even the "mad dogs"-that's 4 beefy cops to a cruiser, that's the local street slang term--give a lot of the areas a wide berth unless there is a huge bust going down and there's like 20 cops with full auto weapons handy. I used to have to work in such a neighborhood, doing repairs on rental units. I couldn't leave my work van unlocked for 15 seconds, the bums, crackheads and winos and local gangstas would come and just stand around and wait for you to leave then go right to trying to break in. I am not kidding. I went armed all the time when I was working around there, it was dang scary. A lot of times I had to just give up and leave, not even try to get into a unit and do some work depending on how bad the local street scene was when I showed up. I have found needles in second story gutters I was tasked to repair. I've put in new doors and plumbing fixtures and window screens etc that were gone-stripped out-within an hour, or just destroyed for some sort of sport.
I really don't think you have a handle on how bad some of these neighborhoods are, and kids are trying to grow up there and somehow come out reasonable sane and normal. It's just terrible really. Robert Heinlein action, AAs or abandoned areas.
..they are an anachronism in the modern world given the nation of China and the "manufacturer for the world" reality. You can get all the expensive and time consuming hardware (or software) patents you want, they'll be broken and violated and for sale with clones and copies or adaptations within a short time now. And that's reality. They do a few showcase busts now and then, like we saw with the cisco clone routers recently...but that's all it is, like the occasional big splashy PR drug bust. A quarter century of the war on some drugs..and what do you see? Same deal with patents and copyrights now, because there is no such thing as a white or gray or black market, there is just a "global market" and that's it.
The best bet today if you invent a new widget, just shut up about it, skip the patent, scrape together the money for a production run, get it out the door and for sale and sold and be done with it and be content with what you can make off of that, go on to your next invention, because after the first run you *certainly* are not going to have an exclusivity to the idea.
It's the old theory and practice. In theory you can get a patent, which is supposed to guarantee some exclusivity for x-years, in practice..just ain't gonna happen, so no sense beating yourself up over it and just working for the lawyers.
well, I was sorta going for a giggle factor, but who knows, it might be true! It is a well known fact there is a direct correlation between the "honey-do" list and "social stability" around the house! hahahaha!
...gates is a geek and actually lucked out a long time ago and *got a girl*. Years later, his wife gets an idea to go do good stuff, along with her friends, approaches him, "psst, you know that "fun stuff" we do?? You want more?? You do? OK, open up the checkbook!"
...you payment, for the extremely small "marginal costs of production" for making digital copies? Swell, this is how the (revolutionary and evolutionary)digital open source knowledge industry works for the most part, although a lot of places are attempting to combine the old methods with the new in a wide variety of success levels....
You create knowledge that is extremely cheap to copy and can be shared cheaply as well, so cheap that it is a trivial amount. This knowledge-this product- is digitally shared, it is a commodity that is tradeable, in classical historical sense, it is yet another form of portable wealth or "money". You in turn get access to other peoples "money" that they share with you, you get "paid" that way, same as with other transactions, just the style of "money" is different.
This is called in economic terms "payment in kind", and people who recognize that and participate within this new digital "payment in kind" economy are already quite collectively "rich" and are getting "richer" daily as they completely bypass the traditional middle man skimming and "interest" and "inflation" and "taxes" that goes on when created wealth has to be represented by the established bankers of the realms and kings closed source "money". And they then take all these riches they accrue and apply them to other sorts of business, which in turn, makes them even more "money", either in kind, or else-wise, back to the kings and bankers representations of actual wealth.
If you are looking for other sorts of payment with other sorts of recognizable and transferable portable wealth loosely defined as money for your particular digital work, if you aren't content with the mass "payment in kind model", the methods are there and are also in common usage, you need to create in the "closed source" manner, DRM hell out of it, hire lawyers, get patents, garner ever increasing and more restrictive laws of the anti free trade "protectionist" kind, apply holograms and watermarks and "activation" so called "keys" and so on and so forth, and be prepared always 24/7 to repel "pirate boarders" and so on.
I am thinking they are sticking their dropping in worth dollars (and paper financial IOUs that are near worthless now-the jig is up on that con) *someplace*, and it doesn't matter right now where or what that someplace is as long as it is sort of something. All the rich farts are lining up all over the planet scarfing up cheap companies and other sorts of assets. The big real estate buyouts will start once the recession is more severe and the prices drop more, then dime on the dollar wealth transference begins, just like in great depression vs 1.
They are just dumping dollars without it looking like they are. Who knows, but I doubt MS is done with Linux yet, like a lot of people stated oh so long ago, the SCO case was just a very small scouting expedition. Linux OS and Open Office (and google on the net and now going into cellphones/mobiles) is a "clear and present danger" to MS old cash cow business model. They can and will throw billions at protecting hundreds of billions. 100 mil is just covering some bases to that sort of money and interest.
The entire idea and practice of globalization, that is so well loved and practiced by big business, is the ability to produce cheap copies. Cheap copies of a manufactured product, or cheap copies of an hour of labor. Business moves a factory that was employing a lot of people over to-someplace else, where they can make their product cheaper. If it is too inconvenient or impractical to move the business, they might import people where their labor-copy is cheaper than the existent local status quo of copies of the labor-hour (legal or not, it appears they can flaunt any sort of moving the labor around laws they want to with no repercussions, wink wink, nudge nudge, not P2P but B2B "labor-hour pirating").
Big business (and their sock puppets big government that they own completely and control now in the modern corporacracy (which is what are governments are now mostly) care not a whit how many "little people" are hurt economically, as long as their "cheap copy" business model stays intact. they promise and insist this is the "best method" possible for the modern economy.
We are told by our business and governmental leaders that this is the new plan of the 21st century, that to be efficient, we need the cheapest copies of a good or labor-hour as possible, with the tradeoffs to those disposed of their previous employment that they will receive-cheaper copies of whatever-else, could be the same exact thing they used to make, and frequently is. Lather rinse repeat across the board in the employment world.
The official rule now is, you accept globalization, take your day to day chances with your job, in exchange, big business and big government are promising "cheap copies" for you as a consumer. Of everything, no exceptions, the cheapest copies possible.
OK, fair enough! That is the economic "deal" they have created for everyone to enjoy. Globalization rules! Cheap copies of everything for everyone!
But...wait a minute..something isn't quite right here yet... exactly where are the "cheap copies" of digital bits "for sale" legally?
We have this "cheap copy" replicator technology now that shows us the cost of making the cheap copies of digital bits is pretty low, amazingly low. But the business world insists on "legal" copies that are vastly higher in end user retail price than what their own globalization cheap copy models suggest should be the actual true "tradeoff price" according to their "you must accept globalization no matter what, it is the new law and practice" rules.
Critics of that might say "you are leaving out the costs of producing the original in the first place, someone has to pay for that as well!". True enough as a criticism on the surface level, but let us go just *one* step below that and look at it.
When big business, with big governments help and permission, moves non-digital bits copy manufacturing to the "cheaper to make copies" place, they are *also* sidestepping why this new move becomes cheaper. A primary reason is they can completely sidestep a series of societally imposed environmental regulations, or actual costs of production...they can "make more profit" by *not* paying their previously worked out societal "bill" or "cost of original production" of being a little more respective of our commons, the environment. They usually also-at the same new "cheaper to make copies" place- can get to use and exploit the "cheap copy" of lower cost per hour labor by being allowed to support local near-slave drivers tied to repressive regimes who can seriously exploit their own labor force slaves in complete avoidance-avoiding a previous production cost- to what they previously had to include in the cost of making copies, by ignoring such things as child labor laws, workplace safety, and so on. But see, that doesn't matter, as long as a "cheap copy" can then be resold back to "the consumer". That's the globalization trade structure we are under now.
Pointing out data is not trolling, it is just facts. Right now, there is no free lunch with energy, if you are discussing trapped heat. If you add excess heat-from any source at all, including nuclear, plus "trap" it more, you will get global warming to a larger degree than what would have been normal without any anthropocentric additions. Uranium in the ground gradually decays and gives off the heat, that isn't the issue really, the issue is the rapidity by which the heat is released and then trapped compared to normal human society evolution. Natural decay=zillions of years, whereas inside a fission reactor than down to the consumer = a few years = rapid rise in global temps if done on a huge scale. And it scales quite literally, one for one. Nuclear fission power is an anthropocentric addition to global warming. that huge amount of heat is *released*, that's all a reactor does is get "hot", we use turbines to make electricity and transfer that energy around, but it all gets back to just transferring the heat around. Just reality. Same with burning biomatter, whether dug up out of the ground, pumped out, or grown on the surface. The biological stuff on the surface though is a lot closer-not perfect but a lot closer- to being neutral in heat addition and the "trapping" effect with the gases compared to coal or oil or nuclear fission plants. Solar thermal is probably about the same level as purposefully grown biofuels.
I repeat, no free lunch, and a massive addition of hundreds or thousands more nuke plants around the world will, without any doubt whatsoever, add to global warming in a significant degree, unless one suspends the laws of thermodynamics somehow, which I don't think is all that possible. And the faster it happens, the faster the warming happens, the less chance humans have of adapting to it in a non chaotic or socially destructive way.
Slashdot Mirror
.."Experts also say there is plenty of capacity left on the networks -- a fact Bell admits to -- so the traffic-shaping is being done merely to interfere with internet applications the companies see as threats to their own businesses."..and there's the rub. There needs to be a clear business separation between bandwith providers and content providers, then there won't be as much inclination for the bandwith providers to engage in net data bits manipulation mischief.
I live in north georgia on a two lane blacktop road, more suburban now than rural (although this is a farm), and there is no broadband here, and the line technician told me quite clearly they would *never* offer broadband unless it was mandated by law.. The last place we lived in north georgia was much farther out in the sticks, down several dirt roads (miles of them with few houses) leading to a third of a mile private dirt driveway, serious boonies with bears in the yard and so on, and they were rolling out broadband all over, just when we were moving unfortunately, but they did do it. The difference, where we are now is hell south territory, the last place was a local community telco-ETC- that actually cared. They ran new good copper underground everyplace (14 pairs, I looked), here, hell south uses the same cheap overhead vulnerable to every windstorm thin lines crap forever and just doesn't care, probably conflicts with Cxx salaries and "shareholder value!!!"
US agriculture is dominated by commodities traders and a handful of middleman packers/shippers/distributors. That's where your prices come from, farmers for the most part can't make enough to barely break even. I'll give you an example from here on our farm, if you could pay an additional 5 cents per whole chicken at the grocery store, that would double our net. *Double it*, if we got that nickle and it wasn't skimmed away upstream from us. The thing is, we can't set prices because it costs millions to set up a packing plant and a ton of governmental bribery..I mean hoop jumping, to pull that off. There's a small handful of large corporations that dominate the packing and distribution markets, and *they* set the prices on a take it or leave it manner, and if you leave it, you are screwed, out of business, you can't distribute in bulk (varies state by state, but mostly true). It makes getting Linux on all the OEM computers easy.
Anyway, all legals here, we are doing the jobs that...what was your point again?
It's very similar in most of farming, between local governments upping property taxes, that you can't avoid, cost of production, that you can't avoid-diesel, propane, electricity, bought in water, machinery, yada yada, salt to taste depending on type of farming, there's not much left to cut that you have any control over except labor. It's like they are doing all they can to destroy domestic agriculture on the family sized model, and the bulk of those subsidies you hear about go to those huge corporate conglomerates.
You can compete by being very small and in niche markets, or by being hugemongous and being part of a corporate enterprise, anything in between-the traditional professional family farm- is getting wonky.
NAFTA screwed over Mexican campesino farmers big time, put *millions* out of their own little farm jobs, drove them north in desperation, then here, caused a severe lowering of wages for existing workers. Remember way back a long time ago, Cesar Chavez, head of the farm workers union? HE called the illegals the ultimate wage lowering scab labor. It's like it was designed on purpose to turn family farms in both nations into FarmAgco International, Inc corporate farms. Gee, what a coincidence how that worked out, same as like what happened to them screwing over domestic manufacturing and now white collar IT, it's all designed to make the top 1% wealthier, that's it, that's the sum total of US economic policy in any direction you want to look at, just like now it is going to bail out the billionaire investment bankers.
It could go either way,on a case by case basis and determined by the judge, just like that dancing MS baboon haranguing open source Linux about their precious patents, every day they wait and not produce the actual patents and sue or send out notices, etc, means they might encounter the doctrine of laches.
That isn't commercial broadcasting. Completely different deal there. That's amateur hobbiest radio, doing "shows" isn't permitted at all. The closest they have to cheap in low power is called "micro broadcasting" and even then it isn't allowed to be commercial, and still has unacceptable restrictions and it is ~reasonably~ hard to be licensed for it. The "pirate" radio stations you hear of are those, microbroadcasters who operate outside the technical law and frequently get busted and have their gear confiscated and so on, although a lot still exist out there, typically running like 10-20 watt stations in major urban areas, along those lines.
Nope, the big established commercial guys and the FCC have made it pretty hard to "join their club".
Ya, I looked into any sort of small commercial AM station, egads, you need to be a millionaire to even think about it. Then I looked at commercial shortwave (thinking a SSB rig might work for cheap), SOL again, just the monthly fees to the FCC rule that out, let alone operating expenses. More or less, millionaires and corporations own the airwaves, there are *no* "peoples airwaves" to use, the system is rigged.
I listen to AM radio all the time (it propagates well, I can listen to stations from all over the nation at night when I listen, and there is a dearth of talk radio on the FM bands and you are limited to close by stations) and most of the shows have phone numbers you can call in and comment. Go right ahead, challenge the views of guests or hosts you don't agree with, with reasons, etc. That is what it is all about. If you feel even stronger about the subject or subjects, get your own show on some radio station or do netcasting. So far, the RIAA hasn't screwed over net "talk" radio, just anything with music.
I know I would have had my own station (low power, all I could afford) long ago if the FCC and the big broadcasters weren't such dicks about it, and that includes those NPR cretins who lobbied hard to restrict any competition. I can see it from the major broadcasters, but that was sure a bummer to find out they were against opening up low power. I don't want to go pirate radio because the HAMS throw hissy fits over it (even if you aren't interfering anyplace and have a clean signal) and nark on people, and netcasting takes a decent broadband connection, which I can't get here. Someday though...although reading that WiMax thread was a bummer, kept hoping that might be the magic to get broadband out into the sticks, and so far, cellphone broadband ain't it either. So...I type on teh internets.
It might be better for him to research the teachers as in your example and pick the university that way instead. Choose the subject (down to a more fine detail level) that is really interesting and seems to have the most potential, then see who are the leading researchers in that subject, go to their school.
Ac Propulsion, who also make electric cars and components (they are supplying a lot of other manufacturers and do-it-your-selfers now), came up with the rigidly attached generator trailer idea, the modular hybrid approach- rigid as in no flexing, the trailer axle stays inline with the cars rear axle, it tracks, easy for noobs to back up with then-that turns a pure electric car into a modular hybrid. Around town short distance, electric only, long trips, attach the trailer and away you go, stop and fillerup as you would normally. Their model sportscar still fits within a normal parking space *with* the generator trailer attached.
And that is really the way to do hybrids, cramming all that stuff, the ICE, the electric motor, the gas tank, and the batteries, inside one car is nuts, an overly complicated cobjob, you got two of everything-drive train system and "stored power"- when you really only need one.
Where there's a will, a rich guy will find a way....
Neat looking rig! And you know they work well, because they have an Acme screw! ;)
What do they use for the really big onboard batteries then? (if you know) thanks in advance!
Confinement adds weight *faster*, but just makes a lot fattier beef. It makes them money faster, but no way is it "better". Some people like that half-fat beef but I think that whole "marbling" stuff is mostly consumer fraud, because that is the sort of meat you get from the feedlots so they have pushed it for generations now with "beef council" propaganda advertising. OMG you need all that fat mixed in to make it tender and delicious! Well, BS (appropriate) to that!
And a lot of folks really have never even tasted a real alternative. Letting them walk around normally and munch grass mostly instead of confined feedlots and eating corn actually makes superior beef (check prices between the two for more proof), I have a freezer full of it now (from our herd), very little fat, but still very tender and tasty and a lot more useful protein pound for pound over the fatty supermarket beef.
Ya, you want them unstressed all the time, but normal walking around and grazing is in no way stressful, they *like* to do that. It's their nature to go out, graze a little, lay around, go to the creek and drink, the little calves run around and play, etc. Normal cow stuff isn't stressful to them, being confined in shitlots *is*. You can see the same thing with eggs, we have a small flock that get full daytime pasture access, where they can go around and scratch and eat bugs and seeds and whatever cluckers eat and do, they love it, you can tell, the difference in our eggs and store bought battery farmed eggs is amazing, no comparison, richer golden yolk color, the whites stand up firmer, etc. Same with the stuff from our garden, I'd put up my squash or tomatoes or cabbage, etc against any supermarket trucked in "factory food" stuff.
And quite frankly, large scale "ship food thousands of miles" action is going to have to slow down soon, that was last century's "food factory" model with oil at ten bucks a barrel. ain't that way now, they are losing that economic advantage that allowed that to happen, meaning local grown can now "compete" even at low grocery budgets. Local grown, fresher stuff from farmers who actually care about producing quality food is where it is at now if you care about what you eat and have intact tastebuds.
I really don't care what the big industry experts say (because mostly they suck) food isn't manufactured, it is nurtured and grown. You got to remember, these big agcos are kissin cuzzins to the same big economic "experts" who are bringing you the current economic meltdown courtesy of the bogus paper financial alleged "products" industry (repackaged and rebranded glorified IOUs based on MAFIAA accounting standards) disaster, the same sort of mindset. It's stupid and failing right now. It's still big, granted, but it's big and *dumb*.
Same old engineering deal, it's never changed, good, fast or cheap, *pick two*.
The overly expensive price gouging copies of music industry is ailing, because people by and large all over the planet realized copies should be incredibly cheap, as in pennies cheap, and some old dinosaur buggywhip interests still want to charge serious folding dollars for cheap copies.
Musicians who go out and like play music and are even half way decent have no problems making money while making music.
Aftermarket copy makers-who aren't the people who "make music"- are having problems because people don't like being price gouged, so they routed around the problem.
Way back in the olden days when making and delivering a copy of some musical performance was very expensive, they charged a decent markup and people were by and large OK with that payment. Fast forward to the digital age where making and delivering a copy can be done on any scale you want, up to the billions of copies if necessary, and delivered for chump change per copy over the internet. The *problem* is, they want like a 10,000% markup, something ridiculous like that, just like there had never been any tech advances.
That's just crazy. If any of those music industry copy-selling execs would just put down the booze bottle and put away the mirror with the peruvian marching powder for a few weeks and get their brains cleaned up a little, they would realize that. The technological world passed them by, and they want to hold on to the past, and it just won't last. Any schemes that involve serious price gouging eventually fail, as human beings hate being price gouged, and then when you manipulate laws against them and sue them and call them criminals and etc, and screw with trying to "protect" your precious overpriced copies-well, your potential customers lose all respect for you and ignore you.
The solution is simple and has been staring them in the face for years now, seriously drop per-copy charges (99 cents for a few megs of download is still a price gouge,make it *cheaper* than that by a large amount), and make the profit on huge volume sales.
human powered flight-you got me, maybe sometime in the future with even better materials there might be some money in making joyride airplanes. Hobby flight in various forms is a good enough industry,normal piston engine planes at the low end, cessnas, etc., hang gliding, regular gliders, sport ballooning, sport parachuting, etc, Pedal powered planes would sell or lease OK I think...
x-prize-they are going to be making billions with a B on selling space tourism, they already announced they are constructing a small fleet
darpa grand challenge-multi billions possible just in the defense industries there, self navigating machines-land, sea and air and space obviously- are a *huge* part of projected forward expenditures in robotics, team oshkosh (TerraMax) actually enters working prototypes of military cargo trucks that they want to sell in big quantities as soon as they work good enough. And it is applicable in other areas, for example, it is already well established in agriculture, we buy a lot of corn from a farming family that uses sophisticated self steering tractors, and hospitals and warehouses are using a lot of robotic delivery bots now. Roomba is another example and that robot lawn mower, forget the name now.
Ya, the initial prize money might not cover everything, but certainly enough to get the competition heated up, and the whole idea of selecting prize goals is that they *will* be useful, therefore valuable in terms of business money later on.
As to the "losing" teams, I bet if you asked them if it was worth is so far, even at a monetary loss, they would mostly say "yes".
....according to the comments, this is some sort of trap, you get "rickroll'd". Which leads me to believe it isn't the bumbot.....
I'm on dialup anyway, I rarely look at any videos, they take way too long to convert to something reasonable (I don't do flash, and I can't make sound work anyway), then download and view.
I never got accidentally goatsed either (I check all my links at least preview, force of habit), but I did on purpose look at it once just to see what it was..sheesh
No rule of law there. None, zero. There are *many* areas of Atlanta that have no actual police presence except to come up and pick up bodies or similar things like that. Even the "mad dogs"-that's 4 beefy cops to a cruiser, that's the local street slang term--give a lot of the areas a wide berth unless there is a huge bust going down and there's like 20 cops with full auto weapons handy. I used to have to work in such a neighborhood, doing repairs on rental units. I couldn't leave my work van unlocked for 15 seconds, the bums, crackheads and winos and local gangstas would come and just stand around and wait for you to leave then go right to trying to break in. I am not kidding. I went armed all the time when I was working around there, it was dang scary. A lot of times I had to just give up and leave, not even try to get into a unit and do some work depending on how bad the local street scene was when I showed up. I have found needles in second story gutters I was tasked to repair. I've put in new doors and plumbing fixtures and window screens etc that were gone-stripped out-within an hour, or just destroyed for some sort of sport.
I really don't think you have a handle on how bad some of these neighborhoods are, and kids are trying to grow up there and somehow come out reasonable sane and normal. It's just terrible really. Robert Heinlein action, AAs or abandoned areas.
..they are an anachronism in the modern world given the nation of China and the "manufacturer for the world" reality. You can get all the expensive and time consuming hardware (or software) patents you want, they'll be broken and violated and for sale with clones and copies or adaptations within a short time now. And that's reality. They do a few showcase busts now and then, like we saw with the cisco clone routers recently...but that's all it is, like the occasional big splashy PR drug bust. A quarter century of the war on some drugs..and what do you see? Same deal with patents and copyrights now, because there is no such thing as a white or gray or black market, there is just a "global market" and that's it.
The best bet today if you invent a new widget, just shut up about it, skip the patent, scrape together the money for a production run, get it out the door and for sale and sold and be done with it and be content with what you can make off of that, go on to your next invention, because after the first run you *certainly* are not going to have an exclusivity to the idea.
It's the old theory and practice. In theory you can get a patent, which is supposed to guarantee some exclusivity for x-years, in practice..just ain't gonna happen, so no sense beating yourself up over it and just working for the lawyers.
well, I was sorta going for a giggle factor, but who knows, it might be true! It is a well known fact there is a direct correlation between the "honey-do" list and "social stability" around the house! hahahaha!
...gates is a geek and actually lucked out a long time ago and *got a girl*. Years later, his wife gets an idea to go do good stuff, along with her friends, approaches him, "psst, you know that "fun stuff" we do?? You want more?? You do? OK, open up the checkbook!"
I always go there to look for NYT articles because IHT doesn't require lame and unnecessary registration.
...you payment, for the extremely small "marginal costs of production" for making digital copies? Swell, this is how the (revolutionary and evolutionary)digital open source knowledge industry works for the most part, although a lot of places are attempting to combine the old methods with the new in a wide variety of success levels....
You create knowledge that is extremely cheap to copy and can be shared cheaply as well, so cheap that it is a trivial amount. This knowledge-this product- is digitally shared, it is a commodity that is tradeable, in classical historical sense, it is yet another form of portable wealth or "money". You in turn get access to other peoples "money" that they share with you, you get "paid" that way, same as with other transactions, just the style of "money" is different.
This is called in economic terms "payment in kind", and people who recognize that and participate within this new digital "payment in kind" economy are already quite collectively "rich" and are getting "richer" daily as they completely bypass the traditional middle man skimming and "interest" and "inflation" and "taxes" that goes on when created wealth has to be represented by the established bankers of the realms and kings closed source "money". And they then take all these riches they accrue and apply them to other sorts of business, which in turn, makes them even more "money", either in kind, or else-wise, back to the kings and bankers representations of actual wealth.
If you are looking for other sorts of payment with other sorts of recognizable and transferable portable wealth loosely defined as money for your particular digital work, if you aren't content with the mass "payment in kind model", the methods are there and are also in common usage, you need to create in the "closed source" manner, DRM hell out of it, hire lawyers, get patents, garner ever increasing and more restrictive laws of the anti free trade "protectionist" kind, apply holograms and watermarks and "activation" so called "keys" and so on and so forth, and be prepared always 24/7 to repel "pirate boarders" and so on.
HTH Good luck!
I am thinking they are sticking their dropping in worth dollars (and paper financial IOUs that are near worthless now-the jig is up on that con) *someplace*, and it doesn't matter right now where or what that someplace is as long as it is sort of something. All the rich farts are lining up all over the planet scarfing up cheap companies and other sorts of assets. The big real estate buyouts will start once the recession is more severe and the prices drop more, then dime on the dollar wealth transference begins, just like in great depression vs 1.
They are just dumping dollars without it looking like they are. Who knows, but I doubt MS is done with Linux yet, like a lot of people stated oh so long ago, the SCO case was just a very small scouting expedition. Linux OS and Open Office (and google on the net and now going into cellphones/mobiles) is a "clear and present danger" to MS old cash cow business model. They can and will throw billions at protecting hundreds of billions. 100 mil is just covering some bases to that sort of money and interest.
The entire idea and practice of globalization, that is so well loved and practiced by big business, is the ability to produce cheap copies. Cheap copies of a manufactured product, or cheap copies of an hour of labor. Business moves a factory that was employing a lot of people over to-someplace else, where they can make their product cheaper. If it is too inconvenient or impractical to move the business, they might import people where their labor-copy is cheaper than the existent local status quo of copies of the labor-hour (legal or not, it appears they can flaunt any sort of moving the labor around laws they want to with no repercussions, wink wink, nudge nudge, not P2P but B2B "labor-hour pirating").
Big business (and their sock puppets big government that they own completely and control now in the modern corporacracy (which is what are governments are now mostly) care not a whit how many "little people" are hurt economically, as long as their "cheap copy" business model stays intact. they promise and insist this is the "best method" possible for the modern economy.
We are told by our business and governmental leaders that this is the new plan of the 21st century, that to be efficient, we need the cheapest copies of a good or labor-hour as possible, with the tradeoffs to those disposed of their previous employment that they will receive-cheaper copies of whatever-else, could be the same exact thing they used to make, and frequently is. Lather rinse repeat across the board in the employment world.
The official rule now is, you accept globalization, take your day to day chances with your job, in exchange, big business and big government are promising "cheap copies" for you as a consumer. Of everything, no exceptions, the cheapest copies possible.
OK, fair enough! That is the economic "deal" they have created for everyone to enjoy. Globalization rules! Cheap copies of everything for everyone!
But...wait a minute..something isn't quite right here yet... exactly where are the "cheap copies" of digital bits "for sale" legally?
We have this "cheap copy" replicator technology now that shows us the cost of making the cheap copies of digital bits is pretty low, amazingly low. But the business world insists on "legal" copies that are vastly higher in end user retail price than what their own globalization cheap copy models suggest should be the actual true "tradeoff price" according to their "you must accept globalization no matter what, it is the new law and practice" rules.
Critics of that might say "you are leaving out the costs of producing the original in the first place, someone has to pay for that as well!". True enough as a criticism on the surface level, but let us go just *one* step below that and look at it.
When big business, with big governments help and permission, moves non-digital bits copy manufacturing to the "cheaper to make copies" place, they are *also* sidestepping why this new move becomes cheaper. A primary reason is they can completely sidestep a series of societally imposed environmental regulations, or actual costs of production...they can "make more profit" by *not* paying their previously worked out societal "bill" or "cost of original production" of being a little more respective of our commons, the environment. They usually also-at the same new "cheaper to make copies" place- can get to use and exploit the "cheap copy" of lower cost per hour labor by being allowed to support local near-slave drivers tied to repressive regimes who can seriously exploit their own labor force slaves in complete avoidance-avoiding a previous production cost- to what they previously had to include in the cost of making copies, by ignoring such things as child labor laws, workplace safety, and so on. But see, that doesn't matter, as long as a "cheap copy" can then be resold back to "the consumer". That's the globalization trade structure we are under now.
So that counter
Pointing out data is not trolling, it is just facts. Right now, there is no free lunch with energy, if you are discussing trapped heat. If you add excess heat-from any source at all, including nuclear, plus "trap" it more, you will get global warming to a larger degree than what would have been normal without any anthropocentric additions. Uranium in the ground gradually decays and gives off the heat, that isn't the issue really, the issue is the rapidity by which the heat is released and then trapped compared to normal human society evolution. Natural decay=zillions of years, whereas inside a fission reactor than down to the consumer = a few years = rapid rise in global temps if done on a huge scale. And it scales quite literally, one for one. Nuclear fission power is an anthropocentric addition to global warming. that huge amount of heat is *released*, that's all a reactor does is get "hot", we use turbines to make electricity and transfer that energy around, but it all gets back to just transferring the heat around. Just reality. Same with burning biomatter, whether dug up out of the ground, pumped out, or grown on the surface. The biological stuff on the surface though is a lot closer-not perfect but a lot closer- to being neutral in heat addition and the "trapping" effect with the gases compared to coal or oil or nuclear fission plants. Solar thermal is probably about the same level as purposefully grown biofuels.
I repeat, no free lunch, and a massive addition of hundreds or thousands more nuke plants around the world will, without any doubt whatsoever, add to global warming in a significant degree, unless one suspends the laws of thermodynamics somehow, which I don't think is all that possible. And the faster it happens, the faster the warming happens, the less chance humans have of adapting to it in a non chaotic or socially destructive way.