Here's a good reason for offering a prize rather than hiring some engineers to design it for you: If you hire some engineers then you have one team working on the project. If you offer a prize than suddenly teams of engineers from all over the world will begin working on the project for you. And you won't have to worry about any of the buisness aspects of getting it done, you just hold up the money and sit back while everybody else scrambles to solve all the problems.
Then there's the publicity aspect of it. If you own a company and you start working on a large project like private space flight, so what? But if there's a big prize to be had and teams all over the world are racing to win then you've just created a big news story that could possibly get other people interested in the project and maybe get other rich people to throw their money at it too.
The x prize isn't the only time this sort of thing has been done. If I remember correctly there were several similar prizes during the early days of aviation, and sometimes in science and math there are prizes for the first to solve some sticky problem. Even the bounties that are offered for fixing bugs and whatnot in some open source projects work the same way.
I never said a job should be fun, I just said if you can do something that you find satifying then you'll probably be a lot happier. For instance back in high school I worked at a shop that fabricated electric lighted signs for retail buisnesses. The work was hot and dirty and I was forever cutting the hell out of my hands on sheet steel and having to dig huge holes to make the foundations for sign poles etc. It wasn't fun, but it was very satisfying because at the end of the day I could step back and see that I had created something concrete out of raw materials. Even now ten years later I can drive around and look at some of the work I did. So the fact that I was leaving a thumbprint (so to speak) on my home town made me like the work so I was always happy at the end of a long hard day.
Well, if you sleep 8 hours a day and spend say 4 hours a day on mundane activities (commuting, eating although granted sometimes eating is a fun social activity, getting dressed in the morning etc.) then you have 12 hours a day left and 8 of that is spent working. So now you have 4 hours a day to yourself. Now I've had lots of jobs, I really loved a couple of 'em and hated most of the rest. And I noticed that when I got home from work after the haeful jobs I was tired and pissed off so my four hours of free time usually consisted of drinking beer and watching T.V. because I didn't want to do anything else. But when I got home from the jobs I loved I was usually in a good mood and wanted to go out and do things.
And the jobs I liked happend to pay less than the others, so even though I was makiing less money my life as a whole was way better. I had more fun when I wasn't working and when I was at work I didn't feel like I was wasting my time at some futile activity just to go home and rot on the couch.
My wife and I use our oven all the time. I love baking fresh bread, cake, cookies, pies etc. And shes a world class cook who roasts and broils and bakes all the damn time. Just because you don like to make your own food doesn mean no one else does.
Well certainly not this time of year. But in the summer it can be sunny enough that the inside of a car could probably get hot enough to damage tape. Haha maybe it was clear out that day and the "thief" was just trying to save the tapes.
Why is it useless? If it turns out to work well then old suits could be used as an inexpensive platform for space experiments, perhaps for use by universities and organizations that can't otherwise afford the enormous costs of building a satallite. Also, if you need to launch an experiment that's designed to orbit for a short time then crash when it's done why go through all the bother and expense of designing something from scratch when you can just load up one of these? Plus, these suits are really expensive it seems pretty wastful to just toss them out when they've reached the point where they're no longer fit to be used by astronauts.
Well presumably these suits would be doing a job up there. Meaning that some object is going to be in that orbit anyway. And, since this is a working satellite we're talking about it's orbit will be known and it will be tracked, so it's not really space junk at all.
Perhaps that's Infinium's true purpose. They'll suck all the money from brainless venture capitalists and then we'll be left with only the smart and responsible ones.
Thank you, Infinium.
As a college student I think this could really be a great gadget. The price seems a little steep at first but it's actually about the same as only two or three textboks. And if you could buy one of these and then download the book onto it for a few bucks a you'd actually save a lot of money over the course of your education. And it's much lighter than books too. Last year I was taking two physics courses and calculus and my bag weighed about 40 lbs and that was on days I didn't need to bring my lappy.
Slashdot Mirror
I hereby move that we place a moratorium of no less than 5 years on all "When I first read that I thought it said..." posts. All in favor?
please don't fead the troll
Yeah, I can think of no better way of spending my time than burning and re-ripping everysong I own.
Then there's the publicity aspect of it. If you own a company and you start working on a large project like private space flight, so what? But if there's a big prize to be had and teams all over the world are racing to win then you've just created a big news story that could possibly get other people interested in the project and maybe get other rich people to throw their money at it too.
The x prize isn't the only time this sort of thing has been done. If I remember correctly there were several similar prizes during the early days of aviation, and sometimes in science and math there are prizes for the first to solve some sticky problem. Even the bounties that are offered for fixing bugs and whatnot in some open source projects work the same way.
Haha, believe me pal Im familiar with the effects of LSD. Its not addictive but the profit margins are enormous.
The first one is free but next time you have to pay.
I'm gonna guess that you've never tried LSD.
I never said a job should be fun, I just said if you can do something that you find satifying then you'll probably be a lot happier. For instance back in high school I worked at a shop that fabricated electric lighted signs for retail buisnesses. The work was hot and dirty and I was forever cutting the hell out of my hands on sheet steel and having to dig huge holes to make the foundations for sign poles etc. It wasn't fun, but it was very satisfying because at the end of the day I could step back and see that I had created something concrete out of raw materials. Even now ten years later I can drive around and look at some of the work I did. So the fact that I was leaving a thumbprint (so to speak) on my home town made me like the work so I was always happy at the end of a long hard day.
And the jobs I liked happend to pay less than the others, so even though I was makiing less money my life as a whole was way better. I had more fun when I wasn't working and when I was at work I didn't feel like I was wasting my time at some futile activity just to go home and rot on the couch.
That'd make me move to Ireland.
Will you share your impulse buys?
My wife and I use our oven all the time. I love baking fresh bread, cake, cookies, pies etc. And shes a world class cook who roasts and broils and bakes all the damn time. Just because you don like to make your own food doesn mean no one else does.
Well certainly not this time of year. But in the summer it can be sunny enough that the inside of a car could probably get hot enough to damage tape. Haha maybe it was clear out that day and the "thief" was just trying to save the tapes.
Why is it useless? If it turns out to work well then old suits could be used as an inexpensive platform for space experiments, perhaps for use by universities and organizations that can't otherwise afford the enormous costs of building a satallite. Also, if you need to launch an experiment that's designed to orbit for a short time then crash when it's done why go through all the bother and expense of designing something from scratch when you can just load up one of these? Plus, these suits are really expensive it seems pretty wastful to just toss them out when they've reached the point where they're no longer fit to be used by astronauts.
That's why it's an experiment.
Well presumably these suits would be doing a job up there. Meaning that some object is going to be in that orbit anyway. And, since this is a working satellite we're talking about it's orbit will be known and it will be tracked, so it's not really space junk at all.
Perhaps that's Infinium's true purpose. They'll suck all the money from brainless venture capitalists and then we'll be left with only the smart and responsible ones. Thank you, Infinium.
And if whatever you need IE for is just a one off kinda thing then you can use the crossover office demo.
Says who? Maybe in the meantime someone will have perfected a life-extension treatment and I'll have been around making money the whole time.
Alas, the textbook I mentioned had just been published and wasn't available used.
Well, it would last however long it takes you to read 7500 pages.
As a college student I think this could really be a great gadget. The price seems a little steep at first but it's actually about the same as only two or three textboks. And if you could buy one of these and then download the book onto it for a few bucks a you'd actually save a lot of money over the course of your education. And it's much lighter than books too. Last year I was taking two physics courses and calculus and my bag weighed about 40 lbs and that was on days I didn't need to bring my lappy.
"Oh man this battery is a total pain to replace. I wish I was still blind."
Nope, waiting for your dealer is hugely stressful ;)
I've done this with Guinness Draught, delicious.