The tax exemption for remote businesses arises from two U.S. Supreme Court rulings (National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Dept of Revenue of Illinois in 1967 and,
Quill Corp. v. North Dakota in 1992), which concluded that states and cities cannot compel out-of-state companies to collect sales tax. To do so would amount to an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce. Only those firms that have a physical presence, or nexus, within the state are required to collect sales taxes.
The Court, however, noted that Congress has the power to change this policy. It could enact legislation authorizing states to require remote businesses to collect and remit sales tax.
Once the states "simplify" their tax codes, there is no impediment for Congress to make a new law allowing or requiring interstate sales taxation. In fact, as representatives of the,I>states, your senators might be pretty encouraged to do just that.
According to the United States Department of Energy Office of Power, the most daunting problem associated with current hydrogen production is the energy needed to produce it and to provide for energy losses in the hydrogen-to-application chain. Using existing conventional technology, "hydrogen requires at least twice as much energy as electricity -- twice the tonnage of coal, twice the number of nuclear plants, or twice the field of PV panels -- to perform an equivalent unit of work. Most of today's hydrogen is produced from natural gas, which is only an interim solution since it discards 30% of the energy in one valuable but depletable fuel (natural gas) to obtain 70% of another (hydrogen). The challenge is to develop more appropriate methods based on sustainable energy sources, methods that do not employ electricity as an intermediate step." (14)
The most cost-efficient method currently employed in the industrial manufacture of hydrogen is steam hydrocarbon reforming, where natural gas is treated with high temperature steam, causing a chemical breakdown of the natural gas releasing hydrogen. Other methods start with the gasification of low sulfur coal in an extremely high temperature industrial furnace, and the subsequent chemical "scrubbing" of this gas to extract hydrogen, along with carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Both of these technologies produce hydrogen at an acceptable price for the role hydrogen currently plays in manufacturing, but are not nearly competitive with gasoline or natural gas in terms of providing economic energy for transportation or any other energy-oriented application. In industrial applications where extremely pure hydrogen is needed, electrolysis is the preferred method of production. Using electricity to chemically decompose water into its component elements of hydrogen and oxygen, electrolysis is very energy intensive and cannot compete economically on a large scale with other methods at this time due to the cost involved in generating electricity for the process.
What if independent authors can't afford the copyright tax? Large publishers and media companies (like Disney) always would. All that's going to do is tip the scales even further toward big media
That's why I proposed a term of "life + 10 years". No little guy would have a problem with that.
Forcing companies to have to renew copyrights every 5-10 years would help but you'd need some major incentives to keep them from just putting everything they roughly own on a list they automaticlly keep renewing. Possibly after the first 10 years the rate starts climbing exponetially.
Makes a lot of sense. And I also figure that the first payment should be substantially high hurdle in order to force most stuff out quickly. But then perhaps it could double every 5 years or so?
Goes to show that the written word is a de-valued commodity in the information age...
Uhhh, isn't this post hypocritical?
If your post isn't worth anything, why'd you write it?
The same specious argument you use for copyrights could go for patents. They're completely devalued in our 'information age' because anything you build, Mr. VoidEngineer, can be copied cheaper and sold faster in China or Korea than in the US. So I imagine that anything you're doing (whether or not a billion others are doing it) is just as 'devalued' as writing or any other form of human creation.
Why not have a short copyright term as the standard (say life + 10 years). But if a corporate entity wants to keep that copyright past that point, it would have to pay a substantial fixed fee plus some small royalties to the government (i.e. a tax on profits).
This way, the list of long-term copyrights would be small, maintained in a single place, and thus easily searchable. There would be a financial disincentive in place to keep companies from locking up works unless they were actively making money. Companies are happy, museums are happy, the gov'ment is happy, and the internet is happy.
2. Why aren't watches ever labeled or described in advertising as "waterproof" even if they can be worn deep-sea diving?
According to guidelines issued by the Federal Trade Commission, watch marketers are not allowed to label their watches "water-proof." Even watches designed for deep-sea diving cannot claim to be water-proof.
Many Leonids are about marble sized
on
Meet The Leonids
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The faintest meteor that becomes visible to the average viewer on Earth is typically about 0.6 millimeters across (less than one-tenth of an inch or about the size of a sand grain). While such a speck is here and gone in a flash, the energy involved could light a 100-watt light bulb for about 2.5 seconds, Cooke said.
A slightly larger meteor, just 1 millimeter across and only moderately bright, packs the punch of a.22 caliber bullet.
Spectacularly bright fireballs, for which this annual event is known, dissipate far more energy during their plunge through the atmosphere. A typical fireball, which can briefly shine as bright as the planet Venus, is the size of a marble, about 9 millimeters in diameter.
"Such a critter has a striking power in excess of 1 million joules, or about the same punch as a VW moving at 60 mph," Cooke marveled, "from a particle just over one-third of an inch across!"
Actually, if you're going realitivistic speeds, you have to apply the lorentz equation to get the Kinetic Energy.
KE = (1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) - 1) * mc^2
So for v = 1.2e8 m/s (~10% blueshift) and m=1kg
KE = 10% * 1kg * 9e16 m^2/s^2 = 9e15 Joules
which would only be about 2-9 Megatons (depending on your coversion factor.)
Of course, our big bombs today are about 20 Megatons, but Hiroshima was only about 12 kilotons. So I agree - RUN FOR COVER! ;)
At a few thousand blasts per hour, that would be enough to significantly warm the atmosphere, and since we'd be hitting them head-on, it would slow the earth's orbital velocity, dropping the orbit closer to the sun. Hope you can swim.
FWIW, I also realised that it would have to be coming straight at you to see the full blueshift - if you saw a tail at all, it would be entering at an angle and the shift would be diminished by a cosine factor.
For relativistic blueshift, the frequency of light will scale by the lorentz equation:
f' = f * sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) For a 10% blue shift, the relative speed would have to be about 0.4*c = 1.2x10^8 m/s = 432,000,000 KPH = 268,430,000 MPH. Hell, protons coming off of the sun only hit one million MPH.
High speed meteors hit the atmosphere around 80 km/s (damn fast if you think about it!) = 288,000 KPH = 175,950 MPH. This would result in only a 0.000000712% change in apparent wavelength. Not to mention that it will slow down drastically as soon as it hits the atmosphere.
Besides, there is no reason to think that even if there were any blueshift it would cause these things to be more visible to the human eye. I would imagine that it has something like a blackbody spectrum which will cover a very large portion of the visible spectrum, with the peak concentrated somewhere around the yellow - where our eyes are pretty sensitive already.
Furthermore, optical background radiation is only a few photons per second - not hardly enough to make any difference to the human eye, and AFAIK, sunspots have nothing to do with it. Besides, sunspots aren't particularly out of whack right now: Solar Physics Dept of Belgium (Official sunspot counts).
You're right. But the Supreme Court decision (Quill Corp. v. North Dakota) that exempted us from interstate sales tax was based upon the fact that the myriad of seperate state/county tax laws would create an "unfair burden" on interstate commerce. Furthermore, they strongly suggested in the ruling that the US Congress should make new law regarding this issue.
Once the states "simplify" their tax codes, there is no impediment for Congress to make a new law requiring interstate sales taxation. In fact, as representatives of the states, your representatives might be pretty encouraged to do just that.
Cheap mutilayer (usually SiO on quartz) filters are already >80% transmissive. Here is a spectrum from an example. You really couldn't get 100 times that just from the filter. And I don't see how you could get more out of the sensor either, as cheap Si phototransistors have nearly perfect quantum efficiency in the infared. My question is "more sensitive to what?"
In the early seventies, the world's climate scientists were paranoid about global cooling. Has the system really changed that much in 30 years due solely to human intervention? I would think the climate would have more inertia than that; are we just reading signals in the noise?
A quote from the article:
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
It seems like they're using psychoacoustic masking -- which really isn't a bad idea, as it won't change the perceptual SNR (unlike the spread-spectrum white noise espoused here). Psychoacoustic masking carefully removes bits of audio information that we would be unlikely to hear anyway. Dolby Digital gets about a maximum compression about 16:1, which would do for cheap-o speakers, but it would probably be placed more around 5:1 so those with nice stereos wouldn't hear the difference. MP3 uses similar masking compression ideas, and a 128k mono bitstream gets a compression of about 5.5:1.
Let's assume some rockin' speakers with a 22kHz rolloff, and a great FM reception with 96dB Signal-to-Noise (and a very quiet listening room). That's approximately 16 bits at 44kHz or 704Kb/s of information. That has to carry both the audio and the data signal. The data signal would have to be mono, since most toys & cell phones don't have two ears (err, microphones). Now, you have a 704Kb/s bandwidth in which you only need about 1/5 = 140Kb/sec for good audio, leaving you with a theoretical maximum of 563Kb/s left for data. Put in some forward error correction and packet and coding and other overhead and you'll probably get something more akin to 200Kb/s.
But wait! Let's assume a car with some poor tweeters with a 15kHz rolloff, and poor FM reception with 65dB Signal-to-Noise with road noise added in. That's approximately 11 bits at 7.5kHz or 82Kb/s of total information. Ooops! You've exceeded your channel capacity by almost 2x, and you'll pretty much get a big fat zero data bits.
So, the makers have make a tradeoff -> 1) Low data rates: significantly less than ~200kB/sec to accomodate cheap stereos but retain audio quality. 2) Poor audio quality: significantly less than ~140kB/sec to accomodate higher data rates or cheap stereos. 3) Lose functionality on cheap stereos: but retain both good data rates and quality audio for those who can receive it.
My guess is that they'll just go to something tiny like 500b/s, in order to reach the most market share. Even at that rate, a text ad would come through right quick.
I can just see the next Furby craze, now they get instructions (programming??) from the TV!
Anyone know the max bandwith and SNR of NTSC audio?
Slashdot Mirror
Once the states "simplify" their tax codes, there is no impediment for Congress to make a new law allowing or requiring interstate sales taxation. In fact, as representatives of the
What if independent authors can't afford the copyright tax? Large publishers and media companies (like Disney) always would. All that's going to do is tip the scales even further toward big media That's why I proposed a term of "life + 10 years". No little guy would have a problem with that.
Forcing companies to have to renew copyrights every 5-10 years would help but you'd need some major incentives to keep them from just putting everything they roughly own on a list they automaticlly keep renewing. Possibly after the first 10 years the rate starts climbing exponetially.
Makes a lot of sense. And I also figure that the first payment should be substantially high hurdle in order to force most stuff out quickly. But then perhaps it could double every 5 years or so?
Goes to show that the written word is a de-valued commodity in the information age...
Uhhh, isn't this post hypocritical?
If your post isn't worth anything, why'd you write it?
The same specious argument you use for copyrights could go for patents. They're completely devalued in our 'information age' because anything you build, Mr. VoidEngineer, can be copied cheaper and sold faster in China or Korea than in the US. So I imagine that anything you're doing (whether or not a billion others are doing it) is just as 'devalued' as writing or any other form of human creation.
Why not have a short copyright term as the standard (say life + 10 years). But if a corporate entity wants to keep that copyright past that point, it would have to pay a substantial fixed fee plus some small royalties to the government (i.e. a tax on profits).
This way, the list of long-term copyrights would be small, maintained in a single place, and thus easily searchable. There would be a financial disincentive in place to keep companies from locking up works unless they were actively making money. Companies are happy, museums are happy, the gov'ment is happy, and the internet is happy.
Get your Apple engraved for only $29.95!
Crane your neck 90 degrees to the right and think about it for just a moment...
Propelled by a solid-fuel rocket motor, the parachute is released from a special opening on top of the fuselage.
Cool!!! A rocket-propelled parachute!
Now it just needs a nuclear-powered life raft for the 'water landings'.
Actually, if you're going realitivistic speeds, you have to apply the lorentz equation to get the Kinetic Energy.
;)
At a few thousand blasts per hour, that would be enough to significantly warm the atmosphere, and since we'd be hitting them head-on, it would slow the earth's orbital velocity, dropping the orbit closer to the sun. Hope you can swim.
KE = (1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) - 1) * mc^2
So for v = 1.2e8 m/s (~10% blueshift) and m=1kg
KE = 10% * 1kg * 9e16 m^2/s^2 = 9e15 Joules
which would only be about 2-9 Megatons (depending on your coversion factor.)
Of course, our big bombs today are about 20 Megatons, but Hiroshima was only about 12 kilotons. So I agree - RUN FOR COVER!
FWIW, I also realised that it would have to be coming straight at you to see the full blueshift - if you saw a tail at all, it would be entering at an angle and the shift would be diminished by a cosine factor.
For relativistic blueshift, the frequency of light will scale by the lorentz equation:
f' = f * sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
For a 10% blue shift, the relative speed would have to be about 0.4*c = 1.2x10^8 m/s = 432,000,000 KPH = 268,430,000 MPH.
Hell, protons coming off of the sun only hit one million MPH.
High speed meteors hit the atmosphere around 80 km/s (damn fast if you think about it!) = 288,000 KPH = 175,950 MPH. This would result in only a 0.000000712% change in apparent wavelength. Not to mention that it will slow down drastically as soon as it hits the atmosphere.
Besides, there is no reason to think that even if there were any blueshift it would cause these things to be more visible to the human eye. I would imagine that it has something like a blackbody spectrum which will cover a very large portion of the visible spectrum, with the peak concentrated somewhere around the yellow - where our eyes are pretty sensitive already.
Furthermore, optical background radiation is only a few photons per second - not hardly enough to make any difference to the human eye, and AFAIK, sunspots have nothing to do with it. Besides, sunspots aren't particularly out of whack right now: Solar Physics Dept of Belgium (Official sunspot counts).
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
I'd feel a lot safer with a little nuclear pile than with a little 5000psi tank of hydrogen.
Really?
Why don't you stop paying your income tax and see what happens in a year or so?
Better yet, just refuse to pay sales tax next time you drop by the grocery store.
You're right. But the Supreme Court decision (Quill Corp. v. North Dakota) that exempted us from interstate sales tax was based upon the fact that the myriad of seperate state/county tax laws would create an "unfair burden" on interstate commerce. Furthermore, they strongly suggested in the ruling that the US Congress should make new law regarding this issue.
Once the states "simplify" their tax codes, there is no impediment for Congress to make a new law requiring interstate sales taxation. In fact, as representatives of the states, your representatives might be pretty encouraged to do just that.
CNN has the story here
Cheap mutilayer (usually SiO on quartz) filters are already >80% transmissive.
Here is a spectrum from an example.
You really couldn't get 100 times that just from the filter. And I don't see how you could get more out of the sensor either, as cheap Si phototransistors have nearly perfect quantum efficiency in the infared. My question is "more sensitive to what?"
www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
(Article from Newsweek April 28, 1975)
In the early seventies, the world's climate scientists were paranoid about global cooling. Has the system really changed that much in 30 years due solely to human intervention? I would think the climate would have more inertia than that; are we just reading signals in the noise?
A quote from the article:
It seems like they're using psychoacoustic masking -- which really isn't a bad idea, as it won't change the perceptual SNR (unlike the spread-spectrum white noise espoused here). Psychoacoustic masking carefully removes bits of audio information that we would be unlikely to hear anyway. Dolby Digital gets about a maximum compression about 16:1, which would do for cheap-o speakers, but it would probably be placed more around 5:1 so those with nice stereos wouldn't hear the difference. MP3 uses similar masking compression ideas, and a 128k mono bitstream gets a compression of about 5.5:1.
Let's assume some rockin' speakers with a 22kHz rolloff, and a great FM reception with 96dB Signal-to-Noise (and a very quiet listening room). That's approximately 16 bits at 44kHz or 704Kb/s of information. That has to carry both the audio and the data signal. The data signal would have to be mono, since most toys & cell phones don't have two ears (err, microphones). Now, you have a 704Kb/s bandwidth in which you only need about 1/5 = 140Kb/sec for good audio, leaving you with a theoretical maximum of 563Kb/s left for data. Put in some forward error correction and packet and coding and other overhead and you'll probably get something more akin to 200Kb/s.
But wait! Let's assume a car with some poor tweeters with a 15kHz rolloff, and poor FM reception with 65dB Signal-to-Noise with road noise added in. That's approximately 11 bits at 7.5kHz or 82Kb/s of total information. Ooops! You've exceeded your channel capacity by almost 2x, and you'll pretty much get a big fat zero data bits.
So, the makers have make a tradeoff ->
1) Low data rates: significantly less than ~200kB/sec to accomodate cheap stereos but retain audio quality.
2) Poor audio quality: significantly less than ~140kB/sec to accomodate higher data rates or cheap stereos.
3) Lose functionality on cheap stereos: but retain both good data rates and quality audio for those who can receive it.
My guess is that they'll just go to something tiny like 500b/s, in order to reach the most market share. Even at that rate, a text ad would come through right quick.
I can just see the next Furby craze, now they get instructions (programming??) from the TV!
Anyone know the max bandwith and SNR of NTSC audio?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)