This is what regulations do - they drive business away to places which are more business friendly. Companies exist to make profit, not to employ old people.
Even the 911 tax is a lot of baloney. I read recently that the bulk of it goes to the NYS general fund. See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60 A16FD39580C738DDDAC0894DC404482
people should complain about other things
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 1
I always find it sad that people worry about $0.30/gal changes in gas prices, causing maybe all of $100 or $200 a year in cost increases, but don't complain about our taxes adding up to about 50%. Who cares about $500 when you're paying $15000-$30000 in taxes? (note that gas prices are also about 50% tax).
When I worked at an oil company several years ago, I investigated this issue. Cell phones do not store or emit enough energy to ignite gasoline vapors even when the mixture requires the least amount of energy to ignite - which corresponds to a staggeringly high fuel/air ratio not found outside of the car. This is an urban legend more than anything else.
The same year my school district initiated retirement incentives resulting in the loss of practically all the senior teachers was the year they put through a $4 Million bond issue to put computers everywhere. I personally witnessed the superintendent of the district say "how can you expect fifth graders to do 3 digit multiplication without a calculator?".
The quality of education there dropped like a rock over a 20 year period, and went from producing Westinghouse champions and World Physics Olympiad champions to producing lots of mediocre high school graduates.
As background, I have designed and built a hybrid vehicle in the past (hev.cornell.edu), so I have some familiarity with the subject.
People see hybrid vehicles as the end-all of fuel economy, but hybrids cannot perform magic. As long as vehicles have high drag and are heavy, fuel economy will be relatively low. Hybrid vehicles save fuel primarily by two mechanisms:
1) regenerative braking - capture energy normally wasted as heat during braking and store it for future use
2) operate the engine at a more efficient speed-load point.
Neither (1) nor (2) has much of an effect on the highway, which is why hybrids have a minimal benefit there. The reason Insights get good highway mileage is more due to their low drag than because it's a hybrid.
Once you add cost into the equation, it becomes clear that hybrids are a waste of money. Thousands of dollars _per vehicle_ cannot be recouped easily by the customer, especially with low gas prices ($1.80/gallon is not historically high when adjusted for inflation). That same money is better spent on other technologies (diesels, lighter materials, etc.).
However, as long as politicians feel that they are qualified as engineers, and dictate not only end results (fuel economy) but the means (through hybridization via tax incentives), the most efficient solutions will not be used.
I've looked into Qt, but I'm part of a small, for profit entity. Qt's licensing is prohibitively expensive for us.
Besides, I want the Mac version to have a "true" Mac look and feel. The look is easy, but the feel is difficult without using Apple's frameworks.
The lower education system is awful. Not for lack of money, but because helping the minority of intelligent children excel is not a focus - instead it's to have everybody be equal. Equally incompetent.
Military spending has always pushed research. There is a lot of cutting edge control system and signal processing work happening right now. It just takes time for those technologies to evolve, get declassified, and trickle down to consumer products.
I am looking to write some software for a project of mine. Being a Mac user, I will write a Mac version. Understanding market realities, I will have to write a Windows version. I'd love to have a Linux version which would be a straight recompile, but that's not possible yet. I'm aware of and considering GNUStep, but I really would like a straight recompile.
Apple hardware would likely sell itself if it didn't have fewer available software titles, and having excellent cross-platform development tools would result in greater software availability.
The education is what makes it about the money. Our awful American lower education allows for third world countries to provide equally or more talented labor at a lower cost. In foreign countries, they do our undergraduate level college math and science courses in high school.
Given a problem that doesn't scale well in a cluster environment, throwing more nodes at it will not help significantly. In that case, the cluster will run slower than the Cray at an equal cost. When you're paying several researchers $100k/year each, the Cray is probably the better solution for problems which are not easily parallelizable.
Increasing manifold pressure (i.e., turning up the boost), does not result in an exponential increase in wear unlike an increase in RPM. Moderate increase in boost, as long as it does not induce knock, can be done without an excessive drop in longevity (excessive being relative), depending on the vehicle.
The linked press release indicates that the recorder that's going to be produced is suitable for producing masters for next generation discs. I'm guessing the product is going to fill a room, not fit in a standard stereo equipment case or drive bay.
I'm right in the middle of that age range, and I don't watch TV. I get cable with around 100 channels, but I don't really use it. Not because I've substituted for it with the internet, or because I download and burn DVDs, but because TV is a one way communications medium with, for the most part, content my grandfather would call "rubbish". I'd rather be doing something creative or thought provoking than rot in front of the TV. If I spend a couple of hours in front of a TV, I wonder "is this all my life is worth?"
I wonder if this will help Yahoo have a P/E ratio of better than their current 128. It seems like the tech bubble is back - Yahoo's stock price has more than doubled in the last year.
Well, I meant communism in the literal sense. Communism is a system of all state-run enterprise, without the concept of the private company. It doesn't really have anything to do with content control (though that's often the case when the media is government run).
BTW, I don't see why my original post was modded as flamebait. Fact: the government wants to tell cable companies what to charge. When you have such regulations, the natural temptation is for the cable company to compromise to keep their profits up. What if that means modifying their content to keep a senator or two happy? Government regulation leads to corruption, and if saying that is flamebait, so be it.
Cable is not a monopoly - they provide a television signal, just like satellite providers and broadcasters do.
It's ridiculous to have government regulation of a business just because some consumers want it. The top of the slippery slope was electricity price regulation. This is far worse. Looks like we're headed towards the bottom - full fleged Communism. Thomas Jefferson must be turning in his grave.
I think you're thinking of the ATRAC compression scheme that Sony uses instead of AAC. As far as I know, there are no MiniDisc players that natively support AAC compression.
OS X isn't all that expensive to a big company. If it saves them $50/pop in volume, that's only $500K for 10,000 machines. That's maybe 5 people's salary + benefits for a year. If they can make that up because it's slightly quicker to configure, it wipes out the savings.
Maybe this child has poor social skills presicely _because_ his peers make fun of his hair and do not accept him into their social circles. Intelligent children want to be accepted by their peers, but they are not willing to sell their soul by feigning stupidity. There are two solutions. Force the other students to accept the child as he is by not tolerating mean, bullying behavior. Second, perhaps less practical, is to surround him with equally capable students, such as in a program for gifted students.
Cool. Coffee is now good for you. Beer (and any other form of alcohol) is good for you. Now I just need to find out bacon is healthy too, and maybe I'll be less likely to get a heart attack!
It's about time that the thieves who exploit flaws in tort law face some accountability. Put yourself in the shoes of a doctor who is constantly faced with the threat of lawsuits and pays 6 figure malpractice insurance premiums. Would you want to treat a patient who you know has sued someone else? The vast majority of lawsuits are frivolous, and I see nothing wrong with making their lives a little harder.
Besides, these patients probably won enough money through their lawsuits to fly to another part of the country or the world whenever they need to see a doctor.
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This is what regulations do - they drive business away to places which are more business friendly. Companies exist to make profit, not to employ old people.
Sounds like a new generation of biological weapons are waiting to be developed which would be far more difficult to detect...
Even the 911 tax is a lot of baloney. I read recently that the bulk of it goes to the NYS general fund. See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60 A16FD39580C738DDDAC0894DC404482
I always find it sad that people worry about $0.30/gal changes in gas prices, causing maybe all of $100 or $200 a year in cost increases, but don't complain about our taxes adding up to about 50%. Who cares about $500 when you're paying $15000-$30000 in taxes? (note that gas prices are also about 50% tax).
When I worked at an oil company several years ago, I investigated this issue. Cell phones do not store or emit enough energy to ignite gasoline vapors even when the mixture requires the least amount of energy to ignite - which corresponds to a staggeringly high fuel/air ratio not found outside of the car. This is an urban legend more than anything else.
The same year my school district initiated retirement incentives resulting in the loss of practically all the senior teachers was the year they put through a $4 Million bond issue to put computers everywhere. I personally witnessed the superintendent of the district say "how can you expect fifth graders to do 3 digit multiplication without a calculator?". The quality of education there dropped like a rock over a 20 year period, and went from producing Westinghouse champions and World Physics Olympiad champions to producing lots of mediocre high school graduates.
As background, I have designed and built a hybrid vehicle in the past (hev.cornell.edu), so I have some familiarity with the subject. People see hybrid vehicles as the end-all of fuel economy, but hybrids cannot perform magic. As long as vehicles have high drag and are heavy, fuel economy will be relatively low. Hybrid vehicles save fuel primarily by two mechanisms: 1) regenerative braking - capture energy normally wasted as heat during braking and store it for future use 2) operate the engine at a more efficient speed-load point. Neither (1) nor (2) has much of an effect on the highway, which is why hybrids have a minimal benefit there. The reason Insights get good highway mileage is more due to their low drag than because it's a hybrid. Once you add cost into the equation, it becomes clear that hybrids are a waste of money. Thousands of dollars _per vehicle_ cannot be recouped easily by the customer, especially with low gas prices ($1.80/gallon is not historically high when adjusted for inflation). That same money is better spent on other technologies (diesels, lighter materials, etc.). However, as long as politicians feel that they are qualified as engineers, and dictate not only end results (fuel economy) but the means (through hybridization via tax incentives), the most efficient solutions will not be used.
I've looked into Qt, but I'm part of a small, for profit entity. Qt's licensing is prohibitively expensive for us. Besides, I want the Mac version to have a "true" Mac look and feel. The look is easy, but the feel is difficult without using Apple's frameworks.
The lower education system is awful. Not for lack of money, but because helping the minority of intelligent children excel is not a focus - instead it's to have everybody be equal. Equally incompetent. Military spending has always pushed research. There is a lot of cutting edge control system and signal processing work happening right now. It just takes time for those technologies to evolve, get declassified, and trickle down to consumer products.
I am looking to write some software for a project of mine. Being a Mac user, I will write a Mac version. Understanding market realities, I will have to write a Windows version. I'd love to have a Linux version which would be a straight recompile, but that's not possible yet. I'm aware of and considering GNUStep, but I really would like a straight recompile. Apple hardware would likely sell itself if it didn't have fewer available software titles, and having excellent cross-platform development tools would result in greater software availability.
The education is what makes it about the money. Our awful American lower education allows for third world countries to provide equally or more talented labor at a lower cost. In foreign countries, they do our undergraduate level college math and science courses in high school.
I've always figured that MS execs were smart enough to know that their products are garbage. This just confirms that.
Given a problem that doesn't scale well in a cluster environment, throwing more nodes at it will not help significantly. In that case, the cluster will run slower than the Cray at an equal cost. When you're paying several researchers $100k/year each, the Cray is probably the better solution for problems which are not easily parallelizable.
Increasing manifold pressure (i.e., turning up the boost), does not result in an exponential increase in wear unlike an increase in RPM. Moderate increase in boost, as long as it does not induce knock, can be done without an excessive drop in longevity (excessive being relative), depending on the vehicle.
And the fact that software keeps getting more and more bloated, eating those newly available CPU cycles.
The linked press release indicates that the recorder that's going to be produced is suitable for producing masters for next generation discs. I'm guessing the product is going to fill a room, not fit in a standard stereo equipment case or drive bay.
I'm right in the middle of that age range, and I don't watch TV. I get cable with around 100 channels, but I don't really use it. Not because I've substituted for it with the internet, or because I download and burn DVDs, but because TV is a one way communications medium with, for the most part, content my grandfather would call "rubbish". I'd rather be doing something creative or thought provoking than rot in front of the TV. If I spend a couple of hours in front of a TV, I wonder "is this all my life is worth?"
I wonder if this will help Yahoo have a P/E ratio of better than their current 128. It seems like the tech bubble is back - Yahoo's stock price has more than doubled in the last year.
Well, I meant communism in the literal sense. Communism is a system of all state-run enterprise, without the concept of the private company. It doesn't really have anything to do with content control (though that's often the case when the media is government run). BTW, I don't see why my original post was modded as flamebait. Fact: the government wants to tell cable companies what to charge. When you have such regulations, the natural temptation is for the cable company to compromise to keep their profits up. What if that means modifying their content to keep a senator or two happy? Government regulation leads to corruption, and if saying that is flamebait, so be it.
Cable is not a monopoly - they provide a television signal, just like satellite providers and broadcasters do. It's ridiculous to have government regulation of a business just because some consumers want it. The top of the slippery slope was electricity price regulation. This is far worse. Looks like we're headed towards the bottom - full fleged Communism. Thomas Jefferson must be turning in his grave.
I think you're thinking of the ATRAC compression scheme that Sony uses instead of AAC. As far as I know, there are no MiniDisc players that natively support AAC compression.
OS X isn't all that expensive to a big company. If it saves them $50/pop in volume, that's only $500K for 10,000 machines. That's maybe 5 people's salary + benefits for a year. If they can make that up because it's slightly quicker to configure, it wipes out the savings.
Maybe this child has poor social skills presicely _because_ his peers make fun of his hair and do not accept him into their social circles. Intelligent children want to be accepted by their peers, but they are not willing to sell their soul by feigning stupidity. There are two solutions. Force the other students to accept the child as he is by not tolerating mean, bullying behavior. Second, perhaps less practical, is to surround him with equally capable students, such as in a program for gifted students.
Cool. Coffee is now good for you. Beer (and any other form of alcohol) is good for you. Now I just need to find out bacon is healthy too, and maybe I'll be less likely to get a heart attack!
It's about time that the thieves who exploit flaws in tort law face some accountability. Put yourself in the shoes of a doctor who is constantly faced with the threat of lawsuits and pays 6 figure malpractice insurance premiums. Would you want to treat a patient who you know has sued someone else? The vast majority of lawsuits are frivolous, and I see nothing wrong with making their lives a little harder. Besides, these patients probably won enough money through their lawsuits to fly to another part of the country or the world whenever they need to see a doctor.