Well, it doesn't always have to be money. One of the ways it used to work is the best tickets would go to those people who were willing to spend the most time to get them (camp out in line, things like that). Another way to do things is to allocate the tickets to the luckiest fans (basically, a lottery system). While these are simply alternative ways to distribute a scarce resource, most people consider them to be more fair than the system where the tickets go to the people who are willing to pay the most, which is what the scalpers turn it into.
You mean to tell me that Alpha Decay is rare in the universe? I simply don't buy the argument.
You might want to consider that heavy elements themselves are pretty rare in the universe. Anything heavier than iron came from a supernova, as that's the only natural process we know about that can make them. Yes, they are somewhat more common on Earth, but Earth is a very unusual place in the universe.
The problem with helium is that while it's abundant, there are very very few places that have it in any sort of concentration. It's all over the place, but most of the time the densities are on the order of number of atoms per square meter.
Also, there aren't "a million different ways to make Helium" that I know about. The only ways I know is to fuse hydrogen (insanely expensive for any significant quantity) or decay of heavy elements (you could probably build a reactor of some kind to harvest helium if money was no object). It's a noble gas, so there's no way to obtain it chemically.
Similar to the argument in the US that the big banks were right to pay out large bonuses with the bailout money so they could retain their top talent. The same top talent that caused the banks to implode spectacularly in the first place.
Actually, I would say that the imperial measurements are less arbitrary, as they are more or less designed that anyone could approximate a measurement using either common items or easily understood concepts (at least back when the system came into being - some of those concepts are outdated now).
For example, if I knew nothing about any measurement system, and someone told me a foot was about the size of an adult male foot, I would instantly know about how big a foot was. If someone told me a meter was one ten-millionth the distance from the Equator to the North Pole or that it was the distance light travels in one three-hundred thousandths of a second I would still have no idea how big a meter is (outside a very rough sense) because those definitions would be meaningless to me.
Why should I buy a special mouse when I can use the mouse I have with mouse gestures to accomplish the same thing? (Actually, my mouse at work does have those buttons, but I'm so used to mouse gestures I never use them and have them disabled to avoid erroneous clicks).
Take it apart. You should be able to tell pretty easily if it's got the needed brains to be a "smart" charger, or if it's little more than a glorified DC power supply.
Maybe Apple could license Microsoft's idea? All you have to worry about is getting the batteries lined up all the same, but which way they are lined up wouldn't matter.
Is it really fair to link to a power supply from a 7-year old model? While I certainly remember those days, as far as I can tell, their standard towers nowadays are all standard parts, though some do seem to use the not-very-widespread BTX form-factor. Their mini computers are propriety, which I can't really blame them for.
Depending on your situation, it may not be that hard. For example, the city of Minneapolis, MN gets its water supply for the Mississippi River. A few miles away, most of the southern suburbs get their water from the Jordan and Prairie Du Chien-Jordan aquifers. On one hand, that may make it easier to pinpoint where someone is from, but on the other hand it also means I would not have to travel far to get water from a very different source.
It was an option in 1992, when we had a 3rd party presidential candidate that actually had a non-zero chance of getting elected. While our election system favors a two-party system, there's no reason those two parties have to be the Republicans and the Democrats. It's possible for a third party to rise up and take the place of one of the dominant parties, it's happened before.
The early ATX spec had the power supply fan blowing inwards, or in other words the air would be heated by the power supply before being blown across the CPU, making sure it was good and hot before getting to the harddrives. I remember taking apart my K6 system back in the day to reverse the direction of the fan, which made a dramatic difference in how hot the system ran. Though I think the GX150 came well after the ATX spec was changed to allow either direction.
How about the ability to have two (or more) keyboards each with different layouts? Though I'd settle for Microsoft fixing the 'Language Bar' so that you can change the keyboard layout across all applications with just one click...
What are you doing where you're always moving the mouse more than 4 inches? Or are you one of those people who turn the sensitivity way down so you have to move the mouse across the desk to make the cursor go to the other side of the screen?
Also, I would guess that a HTPC would be one of the niche uses.
Considering that over half the web is still running XP, an OS whose successor has been out over three years and said successor has been succeeded by an even newer OS, I'd say XP is still doing pretty well. How many people did you know who were still running Windows 95 in 2001?
How close do you sit to the LCD's? While I can certainly notice a difference in shade across the whole panel if I have it display a solid color (magenta is the worst for this it seems), I certainly don't see a big difference between my left and right eyes unless I'm very close to the panel. Though maybe this is worse for widescreen?
I will agree with you on the TN-panels though. It actually seems harder to buy a quality LCD now than it was a few years ago, now that HDTV resolutions have taken over and non-TN panels seems to be almost a niche product.
A TrueCrypt volume is designed to appear no different than random data until the correct key is applied to decrypt it. If there is a way to determine if a bunch of random data is or is not a TrueCrypt volume without knowing the key, that would be a big deal.
Problem with taxis is that they run continuously for long periods of time, longer than any currently available battery technology is going to last. However, taxis are an ideal situation for hybrids.
It doesn't take very long for modern cars to warm up, especially in a place like Oregon which is much more temperate than the upper midwest. Unless you back out of your driveway straight onto an on-ramp, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
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Well, it doesn't always have to be money. One of the ways it used to work is the best tickets would go to those people who were willing to spend the most time to get them (camp out in line, things like that). Another way to do things is to allocate the tickets to the luckiest fans (basically, a lottery system). While these are simply alternative ways to distribute a scarce resource, most people consider them to be more fair than the system where the tickets go to the people who are willing to pay the most, which is what the scalpers turn it into.
A mole of gas is about 22 liters. So you'll have enough helium to fill about two balloons.
You might want to consider that heavy elements themselves are pretty rare in the universe. Anything heavier than iron came from a supernova, as that's the only natural process we know about that can make them. Yes, they are somewhat more common on Earth, but Earth is a very unusual place in the universe.
The problem with helium is that while it's abundant, there are very very few places that have it in any sort of concentration. It's all over the place, but most of the time the densities are on the order of number of atoms per square meter.
Also, there aren't "a million different ways to make Helium" that I know about. The only ways I know is to fuse hydrogen (insanely expensive for any significant quantity) or decay of heavy elements (you could probably build a reactor of some kind to harvest helium if money was no object). It's a noble gas, so there's no way to obtain it chemically.
Similar to the argument in the US that the big banks were right to pay out large bonuses with the bailout money so they could retain their top talent. The same top talent that caused the banks to implode spectacularly in the first place.
It's also an attempt to marginalize those that don't pay taxes too by implying that they should have no say in the government.
The program most definitely sold cars, but it was a miserable failure for both the economy and for the environment.
Actually, I would say that the imperial measurements are less arbitrary, as they are more or less designed that anyone could approximate a measurement using either common items or easily understood concepts (at least back when the system came into being - some of those concepts are outdated now).
For example, if I knew nothing about any measurement system, and someone told me a foot was about the size of an adult male foot, I would instantly know about how big a foot was. If someone told me a meter was one ten-millionth the distance from the Equator to the North Pole or that it was the distance light travels in one three-hundred thousandths of a second I would still have no idea how big a meter is (outside a very rough sense) because those definitions would be meaningless to me.
Why should I buy a special mouse when I can use the mouse I have with mouse gestures to accomplish the same thing? (Actually, my mouse at work does have those buttons, but I'm so used to mouse gestures I never use them and have them disabled to avoid erroneous clicks).
Take it apart. You should be able to tell pretty easily if it's got the needed brains to be a "smart" charger, or if it's little more than a glorified DC power supply.
Maybe Apple could license Microsoft's idea? All you have to worry about is getting the batteries lined up all the same, but which way they are lined up wouldn't matter.
Is it really fair to link to a power supply from a 7-year old model? While I certainly remember those days, as far as I can tell, their standard towers nowadays are all standard parts, though some do seem to use the not-very-widespread BTX form-factor. Their mini computers are propriety, which I can't really blame them for.
Depending on your situation, it may not be that hard. For example, the city of Minneapolis, MN gets its water supply for the Mississippi River. A few miles away, most of the southern suburbs get their water from the Jordan and Prairie Du Chien-Jordan aquifers. On one hand, that may make it easier to pinpoint where someone is from, but on the other hand it also means I would not have to travel far to get water from a very different source.
What about Senator Russ Feingold?
It was an option in 1992, when we had a 3rd party presidential candidate that actually had a non-zero chance of getting elected. While our election system favors a two-party system, there's no reason those two parties have to be the Republicans and the Democrats. It's possible for a third party to rise up and take the place of one of the dominant parties, it's happened before.
The early ATX spec had the power supply fan blowing inwards, or in other words the air would be heated by the power supply before being blown across the CPU, making sure it was good and hot before getting to the harddrives. I remember taking apart my K6 system back in the day to reverse the direction of the fan, which made a dramatic difference in how hot the system ran. Though I think the GX150 came well after the ATX spec was changed to allow either direction.
How about the ability to have two (or more) keyboards each with different layouts? Though I'd settle for Microsoft fixing the 'Language Bar' so that you can change the keyboard layout across all applications with just one click...
What are you doing where you're always moving the mouse more than 4 inches? Or are you one of those people who turn the sensitivity way down so you have to move the mouse across the desk to make the cursor go to the other side of the screen?
Also, I would guess that a HTPC would be one of the niche uses.
Maxtor still around? I thought Seagate bought them out, then quietly phased out the brand.
Or people who need a lot of IO-intensive storage. Or people running systems that are more than about a year or two old.
People routinely record sport matches? I would think that porn would easily be a bigger factor than that.
Besides, 2 hours wouldn't be enough to record most sport matches anyway, even in the early 1980's, unless you did some aggressive on-the-fly editing.
Considering that over half the web is still running XP, an OS whose successor has been out over three years and said successor has been succeeded by an even newer OS, I'd say XP is still doing pretty well. How many people did you know who were still running Windows 95 in 2001?
How close do you sit to the LCD's? While I can certainly notice a difference in shade across the whole panel if I have it display a solid color (magenta is the worst for this it seems), I certainly don't see a big difference between my left and right eyes unless I'm very close to the panel. Though maybe this is worse for widescreen?
I will agree with you on the TN-panels though. It actually seems harder to buy a quality LCD now than it was a few years ago, now that HDTV resolutions have taken over and non-TN panels seems to be almost a niche product.
A TrueCrypt volume is designed to appear no different than random data until the correct key is applied to decrypt it. If there is a way to determine if a bunch of random data is or is not a TrueCrypt volume without knowing the key, that would be a big deal.
Problem with taxis is that they run continuously for long periods of time, longer than any currently available battery technology is going to last. However, taxis are an ideal situation for hybrids.
It doesn't take very long for modern cars to warm up, especially in a place like Oregon which is much more temperate than the upper midwest. Unless you back out of your driveway straight onto an on-ramp, I wouldn't worry too much about it.