Full of it? Subliminal ads and related tactics were banned back when James Vicary's bogus marketing claims were first circulated, but the overall neutral-to-positive trend observed for results in every study done so far means it at least won't hurt to try mixing it with other more conventional methods when you're already on the wrong side of the law.
If only you were so lucky....
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 3, Funny
You mean we should all die coding?
Given the typical geek's hobbies, diet, and idea of what constitutes a regular exercise program, a heart attack while wanking off to downloaded pr0n seems more likely.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a batch script to modify.
Don't try to tell me they don't. Glancing at the back of my left hand, I count eleven easily visible scars. One is from stuffing my hand through a storm door at age 11, one from a grill accident while working at a restaurant. The other nine are all from computer cases attacking me at work while trying to fix them.
I'm glad I went with a Lian Li for my home machine; it hasn't bit me yet.
On the other hand, computers generally aren't venomous when they bite and scratch... except for smokers' machines.
Of course, this may be just FUD, but I am pretty certain it qualifies as unlawful data collection and breach of privacy in my jurisdiction.
How about wiretapping under US federal law (18 USC 2511)? I really think Google will have a hard time stretching an EULA that far. Since it's possible Eve might install it on her personal laptop, leave it in the office while she's gone, and her coworkers Alice and Bob might get recorded without their knowledge or consent, this is a BAD idea.
Of course, the NSA may be interested in the idea....
Sure you can talk about limited talent that drives up demand.
If you're going to blather about economics, try and blather with the correct terminology. Limit on talent is a restriction on supply, with fixed relative demand: that gives an increase in price.
It occurs to me (with the benefit of some sleep) that that's an even bigger problem than the massive mess of assumptions before. One of the fundamental assumptions for an ideal market is "perfect information". However, we're not only talking about a public good, but an information good. The existence of DRM inherently precludes one assumption required for an ideal market.
Oopsy.
There's probably a Nobel awaiting for anyone who works out a mathematical model for information markets. Hmmm, I don't have anything more important to work on today....
Varley is a Heinlein fan but he only writes Varley books. I think its too late in his career for him to write a good Heinlein novel.
More exactly, he isn't versatile enough to be able to do a Heinlein. Time in the career has little to do with it (onset of senility aside). Being able to convincingly copy another's literary style is relatively rare. P.J. Farmer is the only SF name that comes to mind with a demonstrated knack, and I wouldn't want him to have tried at this point; I've felt his marbles have been getting badly worn since the late 80's. Perhaps if PJF had been approached right after RAH's death, he might have been a better option. At this point, Robinson's still got all his marbles (that he ever had), and is both more flexible and starts closer to Heinlein in style than Varley.
Anyway, quit your whining. Either you're a serious Heinlein fan, and will buy the book, or you aren't and won't. Kvetch after the results hit the bookstores.
In other words he slowly transitioned from young serious author to mature exploratory author to dirty old man.
You overlook For Us, the Living, which while (ironically?) not published while he was among the living, was written before any of his other novels or short stories were published. Perhaps this resembles the now-common practice of novice amateurs writing Mary-Sue themed wank material, before getting serious. (There's a reason it spent over half a century unpublished.
Heinlein was always a dirty old man. He just stopped bothering to hide it after Stranger.
Further, it is a theorem of economics that in the long run, competition will force prices to the level of manufacturing costs. As goods become popular, the investment needed to produce them will dwindle in proportion to the number of goods produced, and their prices will fall. In a DRM system, popular information goods will be inexpensive, and well supplied. There will be no shortages. DRM is an optimal way to manage information goods.
...provided that you have no externalities, neglect information costs, have no economics of scale and scope, have goods that are homogeneous, all market utility is pecuniary-metric, time-value utility effects are neglected, and there are no barriers to market entry. Any takers?
Also note that one fundamental assumption of the original question (zero marginal manufacturing cost) is incorrect. Costs are de minimus, not zero; there are marked differences in economic effect.
You CAN'T sell commodity items on ebay successfully unless you get them for free.
You forget the effect of information costs. There's a fair bit of information value in stupidity; IE, buyers who don't know any better than to buy something at $10 more than I get it from Newegg. Of course, there's still a 1:2 birth ratio between the suckers and those who take 'em, so while you can sell pretty much anything on E-bay, you can't necessarily make a living at it. =)
I think it's pretty telling that I can't sell something for $200 that CDW is selling for $3000
Most stuff on Ebay is either 7- or 30-day DOA warranty — or just "as is". Those willing to pay $3K for a Cisco router want a good warranty, and thus look at CDW or similar. Those looking on Ebay (with any brains) don't expect the higher warranty... and thus shop with the 0-7-30 DOA warranty pricing in mind.
Ebay is a very sick marketplace today, prices too low to sustain any sort of valid business.
Any sort? Not true. It's not bad for the small artist, for manufacturers wanting an outlet for factory refurbished items, or for surplus/clearance sellers. Which, I admit, is not your business. But they are valid sorts of business to be in. I've also noticed one PC whitebox store that was using Ebay auctions to measure real market prices for their stuff, and adjusting their base builds accordingly.
I don't think Ebay will continue booming the way they have, but when their bubble pops, they'll have a solid business base to fall back on. It just won't be commodity retail via "auction" for the most part.
Perhaps a refinement, with semi-volunteers. Offer buyers meeting certain criteria (say, 95%+ positive feedback, 25 net minimum, at least one item bought in each of the last three quarters, et cetera) the option to hunt and nominate auctions as bogus. The hunter specifies why from a few common problems ("Banned item", "information-only auction outside information-only category", etc), and "other", where they fill in a field with the reason. Hunters may not nominate auctions from any seller they have offered a bid to in the last 30 days. Auctions are suspended immediately on nomination.
Employees make the final decisions. If the hunter was in error, it's a demerit on his hunting record, and the item can be relisted (with the same description) internally flagged as ineligible for "hunting". Perhaps even offer a partial rebate of the original listing fee.
In addition to employees, have an intermediate reviewer category, based on good performance as hunters; like Slashdot meta-mods, they get presented a list of nominees to agree with or not (or say "not sure). Reviewers are only shown items they were eligible to hunt. Items get forwarded for final action when at least five have voted, stopping when 2/3 or more agree on the disposition, or after 10 have seen it. Employees can thus triage, sorting through those where reviewers vote mostly bogus (bad auction) or mostly legit (bad hunter) first, getting through the "no-brainer" stuff first. Reviewers or hunters who are consistently too far out of line with final actions loose eligibility for those functions.
This is much like the original proposal. What's the refinement? Money.
Except for things under "other" reasons, auctions yanked this way charge a $0.50 fee to the attempted seller, first incident waived. Multiple incidents may cause the seller account to be frozen (say, 30 days), and require an amount be escrowed to cover the risk of future fees. A bounty (say, ten cents) of the fee goes to the hunter who first finds the bad auction, a penny (or some fraction) to each reviewer. The rest covers the costs of an appeals process. If a new type of bad auction begins to clutter up the process, increase the bounty.
Hunters and reviewers will have an incentive: a little money while they browse Ebay. If they deviate too much from the expected end result, they're no longer doing the job, so the number of re-listings should be kept low. And the employees can get through the no-brainer bad auctions a lot faster. The review feed can be adjusted based on the number of reviews needed to be done, or to offer more accurate reviewers more frequent chances to review.
I've probably missed something. What way can bad guys scam this?
Free energy is the scientific community's equivalent to the "winning the lottery" dream.
No. It's the equivalent to the "getting superpowers by being bitten by a radioactive spider" dream. Which is also cool, and great fun to hear about, and if it's going to be told well even qualifies as news for nerds... but doesn't deserve anything but ridicule when brought out in public.
If they were serious, everyone they were telling about it would be forced to sign some serious blood-oath NDAs. They wouldn't leak this much until they had a small-scale pilot facility ready to run their lab for a while... or perhaps after they had set it up and been selling power to the utilities in the US for a few years. This looks like just another variant on lost treasure maps, forgotten gold mines, wildcat oil wells, and Florida "real" estate.
Probably not. I did. My storage router is non-wireless, and behind another router... which only forwards three WAN ports to it (HTTP, FTP, VPN). I also keep my wired and wireless devices on two other (separate) routers. Yes, I'm deeply paranoid.
If I had the cash, I might buy one of these just to put up with wireless on and no uplink, to see what the neighbors started storing on it. =)
Use "CD %SYSTEMDRIVE%" and "CD %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32" instead. Otherwise you may run into problems on systems using (say) D:\WINXP as the system drive & folder. On my system, C:\WINNT and C:\WINDOWS are decoys.
If DVDs become obsolete and players hard to find, it isn't because Hollywood walked into every electronics store in the world and threw their merchandise on the ground. It's because a new format has become more popular and stores aren't interested in stocking something that hardly anybody buys.
While Hollywood doesn't absolutely dictate what the market does, it's not like they can't influence the decision; EG, by ceasing to release new movies on DVD in order to shift to (say) BlueRay.
(Though that said, I also find it hard to believe that you would not be able to find a DVD player anywhere, but we'll ignore this for now.)
I work at a small department within a much larger University. While my primary job these days is computer support, for various historical reasons, the department has maintained it's own collection of media equipment that it also under my balliwick. The main library media office has a standing (frantic) request for any LaserDisk or BetaMax players that other departments are no longer using. I've mentioned that we have one of each that I should be getting rid of Real Soon Now. They've been calling to ask about it around once a month since I told them. (Lately, they've started sending over one of the Cute Young Librarians to flirt with me while inquiring about it. From past dating experience, librarians tend to be a LOT of fun once you get them somewhere they don't need to worry about being quiet.)
You can buy a wax cylinder reader (if you fork up enough cash) or a record player. Finding a cassette player isn't that hard these days. But reel-to-reel audio and video players, Laserdisc, and Betamax players are getting to be a serious challenge. Furthermore, except in the case of DVDs, copyright has now been extended beyond the expected lifetime of the storage medium. The shifts of technology might make it so that DVDs get protected by copyright outlasting the manufacture of the players. From where I sit, that's Not Fair.
Absolutely: Pelican. Perfect for any high-value frangibles. Optional foam interior that you can custom fit to whatever you plan to put inside. Waterproof. Airtight. Guaranteed forever. (Well, unless "abused beyond normal and sensible wear and tear". While they have a fairly lax sense of the words "normal" and "sensible", they expressly exclude "shark bite, bear attack and children under five" from coverage.) The gorilla from the old commercials could probably beat open Samsonite luggage with one.
Nope, I don't work for them. I just really like the products.
Bwahahaha. You've evidently not spent a winter in the Upper penninsula. Yes, Michigan will work REAL well for cooling, even with Global Warming problems. =)
I don't buy the Oak Ridge story. Most people in congress didn't know about that project much less where the facilities where.
The congresscritter didn't need to know diddly-squat about the project... except the price tag. That, he heard. Can you say "Pork"? Admittedly, it wasn't completely stupid pork (there was a war on), but something near the Hoover Dam would have made more sense for the Manhattan project.
Here's why I don't buy many games, in decreasing order of importance:
I don't entirely agree on everything but...
1) Yes, games have stagnated. I haven't bought a Cube or PS2, because nothing really appealed to me. The only new PC game I've bought this year was Galactic Civilizations, and that was as a political statement because of their bravely forgoing copy protection. (I got the Half-Life saga free with it as part of a special offer, but I don't really count that because I was getting GC regardless, because I owned a copy already, and because the next best "free" choice was "Mahjong".) There's been too much push for eye candy of late, and not enough story. I blame the Hollywood influence.
2) I do see the advantage of DX; the low level system calls it allows is all but essential to modern FP game performance (unless you're willing to throw $400 at a new graphics card annually). OpenGL might be a workable alternative, but there would be some performance penalty; Microsoft REALLY worked to get the Game developers hooked on DX.
3) I'll agree games are pricey, especially on-line MMORPGs. I buy ones that are a decent value for my entertainment dollar. This generally means something I will play through at least four or five times in differing ways, probably giving me 200 hours of game play for my $20-40 bucks. This is a fairly high standard. It also has to be a game where I expect that time will be more fun than spending those hours playing Warcraft III, Starcraft II, Diablo I or II, Total Annihilation, MOO-0/1/2/3/MOM... all of which I already own. ($100 for Virtual PC was the best gaming money I ever spent... and now it's a free download.) Oh, and it also has to beat going out and buying a book. Or a beer.
I'll agree the overemphasis on visual appeal is the problem. Of course, the tabletop gaming industry has problems too. I wonder where the creativity is being sucked into. Not Hollywood, for sure. Advertising?
I'll second the suggestion. Virtual PC is currently a free download for Windows; however, I paid good money for it a few years back and have no regrets. Of course, most of the games I'm fondest of are turn-based, and not affected by a smidge of lag here and there.
I'll not argue your estimates over cost factors, but I suspect your figures may be high.
I'd be suprised if they'd be right on budget... but turbines are multi-million dollar toys. The last one my sister worked on before retiring to raise rugrats had a forty-some megabuck pricetag -- which, admittedly, is higher than par. Still, I wouldn't be shocked to be off by a factor of four either way once you include the infrastructure support, too.
But even if it is, NSA could conceivably build a big enough plant to sell excess power back to BG&E and perhaps reduce the cost somewhat
Not without changing federal law; the government isn't allowed to compete commercially with private business IIR. However, you could probably loophole around it without stepping on too many toes by dedicating surplus production to offset the Pentagon power use, as I suggested.
[N]othing says that the people working in a power plant need the same level of clearances - or any clearances at all - of regular NSA information processing employees just because it's a power plant run by NSA instead of BG&E.
Even leaving aside the interesting considerations suggested by the paranoia of the previous response to your post, I wasn't suggesting they'd need a full clearance. I'm merely thinking enough of a clearance to insure a level of trust precluding any risk of sabotage. However, I'd agree they wouldn't need the full TS/SCI TK/SI/Crypto clearances of an inside NSA geek. While I've heard a TS is needed to get any kind of job whatsoever inside Ft. Meade proper, I'd think Ordinary Secret would be enough for the plant job. And while yes, the plant doesn't have to be on site, the longer the transmission distance, the more transmission line is vulnerable to sabotage.
I think that a lot of the comments here are missing the point. You do not have to advirtise for the bottom 50% of music. It already has a devoted niche following. Just realize that it will never be as popular as the chart toppers.
I wouldn't quite go as far as to say "don't advertise". However, the focus of targeted advertising campaigns should remain on the big hits, where a small percentage sales increase may yield big numbers. Long tail advertising should probably rely on broader swaths... not single hits, but entire genres; facilitating searches of music, conceptually linking one song to another so people can find more of what they might want, might help. That's one main point of effective advertising: reducing consumer information costs.
The facility at Oak Ridge was located where it is at because of cheap power and cooling.
That's one reason, yes. I was also told when I was studying nuclear engineering was that it was put there because one of the congresscritters in charge of the finance committee asked one of the Manhattan project people discussing the proposed labs, "So, where in Tennessee do you propose putting this project?" And that effectively settled that matter.
Anecdotal only... but I would suspect any new facility would probably need to be in Michigan or Iowa... pending the next election, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Full of it? Subliminal ads and related tactics were banned back when James Vicary's bogus marketing claims were first circulated, but the overall neutral-to-positive trend observed for results in every study done so far means it at least won't hurt to try mixing it with other more conventional methods when you're already on the wrong side of the law.
You mean we should all die coding?
Given the typical geek's hobbies, diet, and idea of what constitutes a regular exercise program, a heart attack while wanking off to downloaded pr0n seems more likely.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a batch script to modify.
Luckily computer parts don't have sharp claws.
Don't try to tell me they don't. Glancing at the back of my left hand, I count eleven easily visible scars. One is from stuffing my hand through a storm door at age 11, one from a grill accident while working at a restaurant. The other nine are all from computer cases attacking me at work while trying to fix them.
I'm glad I went with a Lian Li for my home machine; it hasn't bit me yet.
On the other hand, computers generally aren't venomous when they bite and scratch... except for smokers' machines.
Can you nominate them for this registry? After all, they've been fucking future generations for ages....
Of course, this may be just FUD, but I am pretty certain it qualifies as unlawful data collection and breach of privacy in my jurisdiction.
How about wiretapping under US federal law (18 USC 2511)? I really think Google will have a hard time stretching an EULA that far. Since it's possible Eve might install it on her personal laptop, leave it in the office while she's gone, and her coworkers Alice and Bob might get recorded without their knowledge or consent, this is a BAD idea.
Of course, the NSA may be interested in the idea....
It's like an intellectual bum fight.
A battle of wits between a horde of unarmed opponents....
Sure you can talk about limited talent that drives up demand.
If you're going to blather about economics, try and blather with the correct terminology. Limit on talent is a restriction on supply, with fixed relative demand: that gives an increase in price.
It occurs to me (with the benefit of some sleep) that that's an even bigger problem than the massive mess of assumptions before. One of the fundamental assumptions for an ideal market is "perfect information". However, we're not only talking about a public good, but an information good. The existence of DRM inherently precludes one assumption required for an ideal market.
Oopsy.
There's probably a Nobel awaiting for anyone who works out a mathematical model for information markets. Hmmm, I don't have anything more important to work on today....
Varley is a Heinlein fan but he only writes Varley books. I think its too late in his career for him to write a good Heinlein novel.
More exactly, he isn't versatile enough to be able to do a Heinlein. Time in the career has little to do with it (onset of senility aside). Being able to convincingly copy another's literary style is relatively rare. P.J. Farmer is the only SF name that comes to mind with a demonstrated knack, and I wouldn't want him to have tried at this point; I've felt his marbles have been getting badly worn since the late 80's. Perhaps if PJF had been approached right after RAH's death, he might have been a better option. At this point, Robinson's still got all his marbles (that he ever had), and is both more flexible and starts closer to Heinlein in style than Varley.
Anyway, quit your whining. Either you're a serious Heinlein fan, and will buy the book, or you aren't and won't. Kvetch after the results hit the bookstores.
Wrong spelling.
In other words he slowly transitioned from young serious author to mature exploratory author to dirty old man.
You overlook For Us, the Living, which while (ironically?) not published while he was among the living, was written before any of his other novels or short stories were published. Perhaps this resembles the now-common practice of novice amateurs writing Mary-Sue themed wank material, before getting serious. (There's a reason it spent over half a century unpublished.
Heinlein was always a dirty old man. He just stopped bothering to hide it after Stranger.
Further, it is a theorem of economics that in the long run, competition will force prices to the level of manufacturing costs. As goods become popular, the investment needed to produce them will dwindle in proportion to the number of goods produced, and their prices will fall. In a DRM system, popular information goods will be inexpensive, and well supplied. There will be no shortages. DRM is an optimal way to manage information goods.
Also note that one fundamental assumption of the original question (zero marginal manufacturing cost) is incorrect. Costs are de minimus, not zero; there are marked differences in economic effect.
You CAN'T sell commodity items on ebay successfully unless you get them for free.
You forget the effect of information costs. There's a fair bit of information value in stupidity; IE, buyers who don't know any better than to buy something at $10 more than I get it from Newegg. Of course, there's still a 1:2 birth ratio between the suckers and those who take 'em, so while you can sell pretty much anything on E-bay, you can't necessarily make a living at it. =)
I think it's pretty telling that I can't sell something for $200 that CDW is selling for $3000
Most stuff on Ebay is either 7- or 30-day DOA warranty — or just "as is". Those willing to pay $3K for a Cisco router want a good warranty, and thus look at CDW or similar. Those looking on Ebay (with any brains) don't expect the higher warranty... and thus shop with the 0-7-30 DOA warranty pricing in mind.
Ebay is a very sick marketplace today, prices too low to sustain any sort of valid business.
Any sort? Not true. It's not bad for the small artist, for manufacturers wanting an outlet for factory refurbished items, or for surplus/clearance sellers. Which, I admit, is not your business. But they are valid sorts of business to be in. I've also noticed one PC whitebox store that was using Ebay auctions to measure real market prices for their stuff, and adjusting their base builds accordingly.
I don't think Ebay will continue booming the way they have, but when their bubble pops, they'll have a solid business base to fall back on. It just won't be commodity retail via "auction" for the most part.
Perhaps a refinement, with semi-volunteers. Offer buyers meeting certain criteria (say, 95%+ positive feedback, 25 net minimum, at least one item bought in each of the last three quarters, et cetera) the option to hunt and nominate auctions as bogus. The hunter specifies why from a few common problems ("Banned item", "information-only auction outside information-only category", etc), and "other", where they fill in a field with the reason. Hunters may not nominate auctions from any seller they have offered a bid to in the last 30 days. Auctions are suspended immediately on nomination.
Employees make the final decisions. If the hunter was in error, it's a demerit on his hunting record, and the item can be relisted (with the same description) internally flagged as ineligible for "hunting". Perhaps even offer a partial rebate of the original listing fee.
In addition to employees, have an intermediate reviewer category, based on good performance as hunters; like Slashdot meta-mods, they get presented a list of nominees to agree with or not (or say "not sure). Reviewers are only shown items they were eligible to hunt. Items get forwarded for final action when at least five have voted, stopping when 2/3 or more agree on the disposition, or after 10 have seen it. Employees can thus triage, sorting through those where reviewers vote mostly bogus (bad auction) or mostly legit (bad hunter) first, getting through the "no-brainer" stuff first. Reviewers or hunters who are consistently too far out of line with final actions loose eligibility for those functions.
This is much like the original proposal. What's the refinement? Money.
Except for things under "other" reasons, auctions yanked this way charge a $0.50 fee to the attempted seller, first incident waived. Multiple incidents may cause the seller account to be frozen (say, 30 days), and require an amount be escrowed to cover the risk of future fees. A bounty (say, ten cents) of the fee goes to the hunter who first finds the bad auction, a penny (or some fraction) to each reviewer. The rest covers the costs of an appeals process. If a new type of bad auction begins to clutter up the process, increase the bounty.
Hunters and reviewers will have an incentive: a little money while they browse Ebay. If they deviate too much from the expected end result, they're no longer doing the job, so the number of re-listings should be kept low. And the employees can get through the no-brainer bad auctions a lot faster. The review feed can be adjusted based on the number of reviews needed to be done, or to offer more accurate reviewers more frequent chances to review.
I've probably missed something. What way can bad guys scam this?
Free energy is the scientific community's equivalent to the "winning the lottery" dream.
No. It's the equivalent to the "getting superpowers by being bitten by a radioactive spider" dream. Which is also cool, and great fun to hear about, and if it's going to be told well even qualifies as news for nerds... but doesn't deserve anything but ridicule when brought out in public.
If they were serious, everyone they were telling about it would be forced to sign some serious blood-oath NDAs. They wouldn't leak this much until they had a small-scale pilot facility ready to run their lab for a while... or perhaps after they had set it up and been selling power to the utilities in the US for a few years. This looks like just another variant on lost treasure maps, forgotten gold mines, wildcat oil wells, and Florida "real" estate.
Do they really think this through?
Probably not. I did. My storage router is non-wireless, and behind another router... which only forwards three WAN ports to it (HTTP, FTP, VPN). I also keep my wired and wireless devices on two other (separate) routers. Yes, I'm deeply paranoid.
If I had the cash, I might buy one of these just to put up with wireless on and no uplink, to see what the neighbors started storing on it. =)
Use "CD %SYSTEMDRIVE%" and "CD %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32" instead. Otherwise you may run into problems on systems using (say) D:\WINXP as the system drive & folder. On my system, C:\WINNT and C:\WINDOWS are decoys.
If DVDs become obsolete and players hard to find, it isn't because Hollywood walked into every electronics store in the world and threw their merchandise on the ground. It's because a new format has become more popular and stores aren't interested in stocking something that hardly anybody buys.
While Hollywood doesn't absolutely dictate what the market does, it's not like they can't influence the decision; EG, by ceasing to release new movies on DVD in order to shift to (say) BlueRay.
(Though that said, I also find it hard to believe that you would not be able to find a DVD player anywhere, but we'll ignore this for now.)
I work at a small department within a much larger University. While my primary job these days is computer support, for various historical reasons, the department has maintained it's own collection of media equipment that it also under my balliwick. The main library media office has a standing (frantic) request for any LaserDisk or BetaMax players that other departments are no longer using. I've mentioned that we have one of each that I should be getting rid of Real Soon Now. They've been calling to ask about it around once a month since I told them. (Lately, they've started sending over one of the Cute Young Librarians to flirt with me while inquiring about it. From past dating experience, librarians tend to be a LOT of fun once you get them somewhere they don't need to worry about being quiet.)
You can buy a wax cylinder reader (if you fork up enough cash) or a record player. Finding a cassette player isn't that hard these days. But reel-to-reel audio and video players, Laserdisc, and Betamax players are getting to be a serious challenge. Furthermore, except in the case of DVDs, copyright has now been extended beyond the expected lifetime of the storage medium. The shifts of technology might make it so that DVDs get protected by copyright outlasting the manufacture of the players. From where I sit, that's Not Fair.
Absolutely: Pelican. Perfect for any high-value frangibles. Optional foam interior that you can custom fit to whatever you plan to put inside. Waterproof. Airtight. Guaranteed forever. (Well, unless "abused beyond normal and sensible wear and tear". While they have a fairly lax sense of the words "normal" and "sensible", they expressly exclude "shark bite, bear attack and children under five" from coverage.) The gorilla from the old commercials could probably beat open Samsonite luggage with one.
Nope, I don't work for them. I just really like the products.
Well Michigan could work for cooling.
Bwahahaha. You've evidently not spent a winter in the Upper penninsula. Yes, Michigan will work REAL well for cooling, even with Global Warming problems. =)
I don't buy the Oak Ridge story. Most people in congress didn't know about that project much less where the facilities where.
The congresscritter didn't need to know diddly-squat about the project... except the price tag. That, he heard. Can you say "Pork"? Admittedly, it wasn't completely stupid pork (there was a war on), but something near the Hoover Dam would have made more sense for the Manhattan project.
Here's why I don't buy many games, in decreasing order of importance:
I don't entirely agree on everything but...
1) Yes, games have stagnated. I haven't bought a Cube or PS2, because nothing really appealed to me. The only new PC game I've bought this year was Galactic Civilizations, and that was as a political statement because of their bravely forgoing copy protection. (I got the Half-Life saga free with it as part of a special offer, but I don't really count that because I was getting GC regardless, because I owned a copy already, and because the next best "free" choice was "Mahjong".) There's been too much push for eye candy of late, and not enough story. I blame the Hollywood influence.
2) I do see the advantage of DX; the low level system calls it allows is all but essential to modern FP game performance (unless you're willing to throw $400 at a new graphics card annually). OpenGL might be a workable alternative, but there would be some performance penalty; Microsoft REALLY worked to get the Game developers hooked on DX.
3) I'll agree games are pricey, especially on-line MMORPGs. I buy ones that are a decent value for my entertainment dollar. This generally means something I will play through at least four or five times in differing ways, probably giving me 200 hours of game play for my $20-40 bucks. This is a fairly high standard. It also has to be a game where I expect that time will be more fun than spending those hours playing Warcraft III, Starcraft II, Diablo I or II, Total Annihilation, MOO-0/1/2/3/MOM... all of which I already own. ($100 for Virtual PC was the best gaming money I ever spent... and now it's a free download.) Oh, and it also has to beat going out and buying a book. Or a beer.
I'll agree the overemphasis on visual appeal is the problem. Of course, the tabletop gaming industry has problems too. I wonder where the creativity is being sucked into. Not Hollywood, for sure. Advertising?
I'll second the suggestion. Virtual PC is currently a free download for Windows; however, I paid good money for it a few years back and have no regrets. Of course, most of the games I'm fondest of are turn-based, and not affected by a smidge of lag here and there.
I'll not argue your estimates over cost factors, but I suspect your figures may be high.
I'd be suprised if they'd be right on budget... but turbines are multi-million dollar toys. The last one my sister worked on before retiring to raise rugrats had a forty-some megabuck pricetag -- which, admittedly, is higher than par. Still, I wouldn't be shocked to be off by a factor of four either way once you include the infrastructure support, too.
But even if it is, NSA could conceivably build a big enough plant to sell excess power back to BG&E and perhaps reduce the cost somewhat
Not without changing federal law; the government isn't allowed to compete commercially with private business IIR. However, you could probably loophole around it without stepping on too many toes by dedicating surplus production to offset the Pentagon power use, as I suggested.
[N]othing says that the people working in a power plant need the same level of clearances - or any clearances at all - of regular NSA information processing employees just because it's a power plant run by NSA instead of BG&E.
Even leaving aside the interesting considerations suggested by the paranoia of the previous response to your post, I wasn't suggesting they'd need a full clearance. I'm merely thinking enough of a clearance to insure a level of trust precluding any risk of sabotage. However, I'd agree they wouldn't need the full TS/SCI TK/SI/Crypto clearances of an inside NSA geek. While I've heard a TS is needed to get any kind of job whatsoever inside Ft. Meade proper, I'd think Ordinary Secret would be enough for the plant job. And while yes, the plant doesn't have to be on site, the longer the transmission distance, the more transmission line is vulnerable to sabotage.
I think that a lot of the comments here are missing the point. You do not have to advirtise for the bottom 50% of music. It already has a devoted niche following. Just realize that it will never be as popular as the chart toppers.
I wouldn't quite go as far as to say "don't advertise". However, the focus of targeted advertising campaigns should remain on the big hits, where a small percentage sales increase may yield big numbers. Long tail advertising should probably rely on broader swaths... not single hits, but entire genres; facilitating searches of music, conceptually linking one song to another so people can find more of what they might want, might help. That's one main point of effective advertising: reducing consumer information costs.
The facility at Oak Ridge was located where it is at because of cheap power and cooling.
That's one reason, yes. I was also told when I was studying nuclear engineering was that it was put there because one of the congresscritters in charge of the finance committee asked one of the Manhattan project people discussing the proposed labs, "So, where in Tennessee do you propose putting this project?" And that effectively settled that matter.
Anecdotal only... but I would suspect any new facility would probably need to be in Michigan or Iowa... pending the next election, of course.