Oh, it gets worse than that. For instance, what if you're a college student and you live in, say California, so your billing address is there. You use, say, Amazon.com to order a gift for someone's wish list who lives in MD, but you go to school in Texas, so that's where the transaction took place.
NOW who gets the tax?
Most places would use the billing address for the sales tax. As whoever is technically doing the buying pays the sales tax and it has little to do with who is recieving the item. Hence why I used my VA address under billing when ordering things when I was in CT, 5% [VA] sales tax vs. 6% [CT]. That is what CDW does as I recall (I could be wrong, has been a while since I did that).
Lets make it even more complex. The company HQ is in Australia, the servers are in the UK and the wharehouse is in Canada. Now which country gets the use/sales/value added/import/export tax.
The example you give of a digital camera is a good example "the light falls on a CCD and the pictures end up in flash memory" probably is all users generally need to know - the problem is many don't even know that. Tell them digital cameras emit dangerous radiation to "see" the picture and (if you're convincing) many will probably believe you.
Q's that the average user would have on your statement.
What's a CCD? First time I heard of something called "CCD" it meant "sunday school".
Flash Memmory? what's that? a flash is something that emits bright light isn't it?
Now your average geek like us not only knows how these things work, but in some of our cases how to design one. However, the average person doesn't even understand our basic acronyms. Statements from people I have known: "I have 250GB of RAM!". Q.Which version of windows are you running: A."Dell". "What's PCMCIA?" "Do I have USB" [hell, none even know what USB stands for].
Taking a leap, I would guess that he meant megawatt-hour instead of megawatt. To put that claim into perspective, the energy density of gasoline is 12 MWh/kg. How much gasoline would such a 300 mile trip take and how much MWh is that?
If anyone sees a problem in my calculations, please correct it.
Given a 300 mile trip at 30mpg (my car can do 35 on highway, and that it is not a hybrid), gives us 10 gallons of gas.
1.3 x 10^8 J/gallon x 10 gallon = 1.3 x 10^9 J
Gasoline 4.4 x 10^7 J/kg
1.3 x 10^9 J/ 4.4 x 10^7 J/kg = 29.54kg gas
29.54kg * 12 MWh/kg = 354.54MWh for 300 miles.
Now, given that gasoline engines are not 100% efficient, it is much less than this. From here it implies that they are 15% efficient. Given that:
354.54 MWh*0.15 efficiency = 53.18 MWh.
53.18 MWh *1000 K/M = 53180KWh.
Cost of Electricity: ~$0.05/KWh
53180 KWh * $0.05/KWh = $26.60
Given that we started with 10 gallons, $2.66/gallon equivalent. Then again, he didn't say what car (a civic/VW bug is going to be way different than a tracktor trailor or pickup).
I'm reminded of the old "tales" that seamen told when they came back from sea. Circa ~1400s, give or take a few centuries. There was a giant seamonst that looked a lot like a giant squid, except it had a beak below the eyes on the outside of it's head. Well, giant squid have a beak, it's just betweent he tentacles instead. Here's a picture of a Kraken. Look familiar?
though I can't imagine there's too many predators that want to tangle with a 40 foot long tentacle monster.
It only takes one, and the squid is dead. That one happens to be sperm whales, maybe other giant squid as well. Possibly even some other large predators we have never found as of yet (or think are extinct).
It'll probably be a while before major US ISP's start going to higher speeds. Kind of sucks.
I'm not sure how much use a 24Mb connection is, considering that most websited don't have that much bandwidth to begin with. With the current backbones it's hard enough to use up 10Mb with only one site. Maybe when the backbones get up higher or server bandwith goes up, but not till then.
However, is 'purity' merely subjective to their collective opinions? Look at the case of courriel. what they do seems to be reactionary, and not necessarily suited to anything but their own ambitions.
Unfortunately, they technically control the national language. So anything they say in a way has the force of law. From what I was told by my German German teacher, the 40 immortals try to replace any word that comes into popular use from English with one that they come up with. So pretty much instead of letting the masses come up/adopt a word, they come up with one and (probably) has to be taught that way in the language classes [this part is my guess, so take with a grain of salt].
Oh, and don't forget romanian.
Interesting, didn't know that there was a fourth romance language that came from latin.
ow the bad news: Models of an ocean impact suggest the global climate would be upset for decades - if not longer. It would impose near ice-age conditions due to solar energy reflected by the planet-wide clouds caused by the vaporization of several trillion tons of seawater. Muddy, salty rain would destroy the world's breadbaskets. Sunlight might not reach the surface for tens of years.
As opposed to when hitting a land mass and throwing up several thousand tons of dust/ash into the atmosphere? 1816 "Year Without A Summer" believed to have been caused by volcanic eruptions. A large enough asteroid impact is thought to be capable of causing a Nuclear Winter.
Actualy, the heavy elements (uranium and plutonium are way over on the heavy end of the periodic table) weren't 'decayed out of something else' they were fused inside stars from lighter elements. Inside fission reactors they 'decay' into lighter elements.
I was spcifically talking about Plutonium and said "decayed out to something else". The half life of plutonium is short enough that all naturally created plutonium decayed into Uranium (or some lower metals). All plutonium currently existing on earth has been man made in the past century.
Smart enough to get to Mars, but not creative enough to think up new names for things...?
Do you know how many things/places in the US are named:
Springfield
New [insert name of other place here]
After something that was previously there
After other cities in other countries (i.e. Moscow Idaho/Pennsylvania)
People
The fact is that the vaccine for Smallpox is actually not Smallpox, but another human hosted pox virus similar and mostly not deadly.
If I remember my history lessons correctly, the Small Pox vaccine uses the Cow Pox virus (so named because milk maids got it, or it was carried by cows or something like that). People exposed to Cow Pox (the milk maids) were found to be immune to Small Pox.
I speak German This is absolutely not the case with Indo-European languages where a modern English person can usually not understand their own language from 1200 years ago, much less German or Dutch
I think you missed another great point to make. The variety of German dialects in Germany. [side note, how the heck did English get Germany as the name for Deutschland?] Especially since (as I understand it) it is very hard for two people in Germany speaking there native dialects (as opposed to High German) to understand each other if they are speaking different dialects.
On a slighty different note, I can understand the syntax of Shakespear (16/17c) and the "Canterbury Tales" (14c) untranslated. The words themselves have changed (and pronunciation probably has as well), but I can still understand the syntax. Some of the words I have trouble with as they are either no longer used or the modern versions have changed too much. In fact, looking over the Cantebury Tales, I can still understand most of the words.
As the joke goes:
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle jack off a horse".
As for ambiguity, a lot of language is context sensitive. Even in Japanese and German this is so. And example from German is this. There is no future tense of words. It drove one of my german teachers nuts (he husband is german and the other german teacher, she is from the US). Her husband would say "I go to the store" [in english]. In german, it can mean either he is going now or in the future. In english, it means he is going now.
Look at language purification attempts of the past: Sanskrit, Latin, and some others to be sure. It doesn't work, and should not be expected to.
To play back an analog motion picture, you need a lamp, a shutter, a motor (or handcrank), and a lens (optional with a pinhole aperature). All of this can be made from scratch fairly easily. Even if a motion picture were found thousands of years from now (which with certain types of film stock is actually possible), it wouldn't be that hard to figure out, even with no prior knowledge.
You forgot about the optically encoded stereo soundtrack that is also on the film. This also requires prior knowlege, among other things.
you'd realize how lucky we've been there haven't been numerous meltdowns.
We've had one meltdown in the commercial reactors in the US that was due to not following procedure and about ~30 something things going wrong simultaniously. Radiation released to the public was about the amount you'd get on a couple cross country flights. We don't have a problem with this in the US.
There is no way for us to generate more plutoniam or uranium. Once it's gone.. that's it.
Only because Carter banned breeder reactors in the US. With them, we could refine and reuse what is currently defined as "nuclear waste".
But it was simple economics that stalled the nuclear power program.
Along with all the anti-nuclear bias floating around in the US that has been promoted.
Nuclear plants can be built more safely now than in the 50s and 60s, but up until just now they haven't been economically competitive with natural gas-fired plants. Industry makes its investments where it can make the best return.
See above. Idiot protesters can shut down/delay/hassle a program to make it un-economical as easily as anything else. Why should they try (although one group is trying to build one), when protest groups will delay it into oblivion. Industry will try best return with the least hassle. Natural gas just doesn't have the hassle that nuclear does, even though it produces CO2 and nuclear doesn't.
Yes, there could have been more nuclear plants built meanwhile, if nobody had cared about safety (which is expensive to build in), either in terms of potential catastrophe or radioactive releases.
Again, look at 3 mile island and all that led up to its problem. We have built them safley and 3 mile island is about the worst that can happen.
There is no way for us to generate more plutoniam or uranium. Once it's gone.. that's it.
Hmmm... How to put this. All plutonium in the universe decayed out to something else about a billion or so years ago. The reason we have it now? Well, there's this thing called breeder reactors. We usually start with uranium and make plutonium. However, there is no reason we can not start with Thorium (of which we will probably never run out of) and work up to uranium. Good luck getting rid of all the fisionables on the planet.
Also, geological processes create uranium. It just takes a really long time.
This is already happening with analog recordings. The Piano Paper that you put into a piano and the piano plays the music. The old drums that were originally used to record sound. Records (45s, 33s, 78s), 8 Track Tape, Reel-to-Reel, dictaphone, Cassettes (becoming this way).
Want picture/video? My father has some negatives that are 3 inches by 5 inches. Back before the days of 35mm film. Then there are those old home movies that predate VHS.
The only difference between that and digital is that digital is newer.
I know that EA, for instance, will sell you a replacement CD of the Battlefield 2 game for the PC if you can prove you bought it, but I've never heard of similar service from any music publisher/distributor.
At least 1 hollywood studio will do this. Ah here we go, quick google for 'dvd replacement' turns up everybodys favorite, Fox. Costs $7 (admin fees, the physical product and shipping is my guess). http://www.foxhome.com/replacement/
Not sure about power consumption, but what I found interesting is that it has about the same power supply as the file server I built for myself. 600w power supply and only 3 hard drives? Must be the SLI video cards. The file server I have has 9 hard drives (8 in a raid) and would not boot up properly with a "mere" 480w power supply. Hence why I upgraded to a 600w.
Lets see, 600w @ 120v rms = ~5 amps. Your standard household circuit is 10 or 20 amps.... I think we are almost at the point where computers need their own dedicated circuit breaker like dryers and ovens do.
Depends on how much frustration/anger you have at the time. When I'm mildly frustrated I will say scheise, frell, fraking, son of a (thats it, nothing afterwards), and a few other things that are quite mild. I also say these quite calmly and in a low voice.
Now, when I get really angry people in the next building/down the hall/next door can hear me and I swear like a sailor. In the second case, I usually feel much better after letting off a string of swear words, like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulder. So it all depends on what's going on I guess.
Is that possible? The chase for lower voltage -> less heat -> speed up the clock?
I think you missed something in there.
The chase for lower voltage -> less heat -> speed up the clock -> higher power consumption -> The chase for lower voltage
Unfortunately, that isn't even how the studios make the money. On the cost of US theatre tickets alone (as in, how much money the studios get from the US movie theatres) the movie companies (today) loose money. They make their money off of the foreign film market (as in, translated and/or released in other countries) and off the DVD sales/rentals.
So the studios lower prices to the first runs, but would have to make it up in other markets, maybe by raising the price of DVDs where they are currently sold for less than half as much in the US? (I've heard legal DVDs sell for $1 in China.)
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Oh, it gets worse than that. For instance, what if you're a college student and you live in, say California, so your billing address is there. You use, say, Amazon.com to order a gift for someone's wish list who lives in MD, but you go to school in Texas, so that's where the transaction took place. NOW who gets the tax?
Most places would use the billing address for the sales tax. As whoever is technically doing the buying pays the sales tax and it has little to do with who is recieving the item. Hence why I used my VA address under billing when ordering things when I was in CT, 5% [VA] sales tax vs. 6% [CT]. That is what CDW does as I recall (I could be wrong, has been a while since I did that).
Lets make it even more complex. The company HQ is in Australia, the servers are in the UK and the wharehouse is in Canada. Now which country gets the use/sales/value added/import/export tax.
The example you give of a digital camera is a good example "the light falls on a CCD and the pictures end up in flash memory" probably is all users generally need to know - the problem is many don't even know that. Tell them digital cameras emit dangerous radiation to "see" the picture and (if you're convincing) many will probably believe you.
Q's that the average user would have on your statement.
What's a CCD? First time I heard of something called "CCD" it meant "sunday school".
Flash Memmory? what's that? a flash is something that emits bright light isn't it?
Now your average geek like us not only knows how these things work, but in some of our cases how to design one. However, the average person doesn't even understand our basic acronyms. Statements from people I have known: "I have 250GB of RAM!". Q.Which version of windows are you running: A."Dell". "What's PCMCIA?" "Do I have USB" [hell, none even know what USB stands for].
Taking a leap, I would guess that he meant megawatt-hour instead of megawatt. To put that claim into perspective, the energy density of gasoline is 12 MWh/kg. How much gasoline would such a 300 mile trip take and how much MWh is that?
If anyone sees a problem in my calculations, please correct it.
Given a 300 mile trip at 30mpg (my car can do 35 on highway, and that it is not a hybrid), gives us 10 gallons of gas.
1.3 x 10^8 J/gallon x 10 gallon = 1.3 x 10^9 J
Gasoline 4.4 x 10^7 J/kg
1.3 x 10^9 J/ 4.4 x 10^7 J/kg = 29.54kg gas
29.54kg * 12 MWh/kg = 354.54MWh for 300 miles.
Now, given that gasoline engines are not 100% efficient, it is much less than this. From here it implies that they are 15% efficient. Given that:
354.54 MWh*0.15 efficiency = 53.18 MWh.
53.18 MWh *1000 K/M = 53180KWh.
Cost of Electricity: ~$0.05/KWh
53180 KWh * $0.05/KWh = $26.60
Given that we started with 10 gallons, $2.66/gallon equivalent. Then again, he didn't say what car (a civic/VW bug is going to be way different than a tracktor trailor or pickup).
I'm reminded of the old "tales" that seamen told when they came back from sea. Circa ~1400s, give or take a few centuries. There was a giant seamonst that looked a lot like a giant squid, except it had a beak below the eyes on the outside of it's head. Well, giant squid have a beak, it's just betweent he tentacles instead. Here's a picture of a Kraken. Look familiar?
though I can't imagine there's too many predators that want to tangle with a 40 foot long tentacle monster.
It only takes one, and the squid is dead. That one happens to be sperm whales, maybe other giant squid as well. Possibly even some other large predators we have never found as of yet (or think are extinct).
It'll probably be a while before major US ISP's start going to higher speeds. Kind of sucks.
I'm not sure how much use a 24Mb connection is, considering that most websited don't have that much bandwidth to begin with. With the current backbones it's hard enough to use up 10Mb with only one site. Maybe when the backbones get up higher or server bandwith goes up, but not till then.
However, is 'purity' merely subjective to their collective opinions? Look at the case of courriel. what they do seems to be reactionary, and not necessarily suited to anything but their own ambitions.
Unfortunately, they technically control the national language. So anything they say in a way has the force of law. From what I was told by my German German teacher, the 40 immortals try to replace any word that comes into popular use from English with one that they come up with. So pretty much instead of letting the masses come up/adopt a word, they come up with one and (probably) has to be taught that way in the language classes [this part is my guess, so take with a grain of salt].
Oh, and don't forget romanian.
Interesting, didn't know that there was a fourth romance language that came from latin.
ow the bad news: Models of an ocean impact suggest the global climate would be upset for decades - if not longer. It would impose near ice-age conditions due to solar energy reflected by the planet-wide clouds caused by the vaporization of several trillion tons of seawater. Muddy, salty rain would destroy the world's breadbaskets. Sunlight might not reach the surface for tens of years.
As opposed to when hitting a land mass and throwing up several thousand tons of dust/ash into the atmosphere? 1816 "Year Without A Summer" believed to have been caused by volcanic eruptions. A large enough asteroid impact is thought to be capable of causing a Nuclear Winter.
Not sure why you bring up french.
The 40 Immortals are why. Pretty much it's a group of 40 people who have been tasked with keeping the French language "pure" for the past ~375 years.
Side note, you do realize French (along with Spanish and Italian) is decended from Latin, right?
Actualy, the heavy elements (uranium and plutonium are way over on the heavy end of the periodic table) weren't 'decayed out of something else' they were fused inside stars from lighter elements. Inside fission reactors they 'decay' into lighter elements.
I was spcifically talking about Plutonium and said "decayed out to something else". The half life of plutonium is short enough that all naturally created plutonium decayed into Uranium (or some lower metals). All plutonium currently existing on earth has been man made in the past century.
Plutonium Decay: http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-3/puchange.html
Plutonium Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Occurrence
Smart enough to get to Mars, but not creative enough to think up new names for things...?
Do you know how many things/places in the US are named:
Springfield
New [insert name of other place here]
After something that was previously there
After other cities in other countries (i.e. Moscow Idaho/Pennsylvania)
People
The fact is that the vaccine for Smallpox is actually not Smallpox, but another human hosted pox virus similar and mostly not deadly.
If I remember my history lessons correctly, the Small Pox vaccine uses the Cow Pox virus (so named because milk maids got it, or it was carried by cows or something like that). People exposed to Cow Pox (the milk maids) were found to be immune to Small Pox.
I speak German
This is absolutely not the case with Indo-European languages where a modern English person can usually not understand their own language from 1200 years ago, much less German or Dutch
I think you missed another great point to make. The variety of German dialects in Germany. [side note, how the heck did English get Germany as the name for Deutschland?] Especially since (as I understand it) it is very hard for two people in Germany speaking there native dialects (as opposed to High German) to understand each other if they are speaking different dialects.
On a slighty different note, I can understand the syntax of Shakespear (16/17c) and the "Canterbury Tales" (14c) untranslated. The words themselves have changed (and pronunciation probably has as well), but I can still understand the syntax. Some of the words I have trouble with as they are either no longer used or the modern versions have changed too much. In fact, looking over the Cantebury Tales, I can still understand most of the words.
The only 'wrong' grammar results in ambiguity.
As the joke goes:
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle jack off a horse".
As for ambiguity, a lot of language is context sensitive. Even in Japanese and German this is so. And example from German is this. There is no future tense of words. It drove one of my german teachers nuts (he husband is german and the other german teacher, she is from the US). Her husband would say "I go to the store" [in english]. In german, it can mean either he is going now or in the future. In english, it means he is going now.
Look at language purification attempts of the past: Sanskrit, Latin, and some others to be sure. It doesn't work, and should not be expected to.
French.....
To play back an analog motion picture, you need a lamp, a shutter, a motor (or handcrank), and a lens (optional with a pinhole aperature). All of this can be made from scratch fairly easily. Even if a motion picture were found thousands of years from now (which with certain types of film stock is actually possible), it wouldn't be that hard to figure out, even with no prior knowledge.
You forgot about the optically encoded stereo soundtrack that is also on the film. This also requires prior knowlege, among other things.
you'd realize how lucky we've been there haven't been numerous meltdowns.
We've had one meltdown in the commercial reactors in the US that was due to not following procedure and about ~30 something things going wrong simultaniously. Radiation released to the public was about the amount you'd get on a couple cross country flights. We don't have a problem with this in the US.
There is no way for us to generate more plutoniam or uranium. Once it's gone.. that's it.
Only because Carter banned breeder reactors in the US. With them, we could refine and reuse what is currently defined as "nuclear waste".
But it was simple economics that stalled the nuclear power program.
Along with all the anti-nuclear bias floating around in the US that has been promoted.
Nuclear plants can be built more safely now than in the 50s and 60s, but up until just now they haven't been economically competitive with natural gas-fired plants. Industry makes its investments where it can make the best return.
See above. Idiot protesters can shut down/delay/hassle a program to make it un-economical as easily as anything else. Why should they try (although one group is trying to build one), when protest groups will delay it into oblivion. Industry will try best return with the least hassle. Natural gas just doesn't have the hassle that nuclear does, even though it produces CO2 and nuclear doesn't.
Yes, there could have been more nuclear plants built meanwhile, if nobody had cared about safety (which is expensive to build in), either in terms of potential catastrophe or radioactive releases.
Again, look at 3 mile island and all that led up to its problem. We have built them safley and 3 mile island is about the worst that can happen.
There is no way for us to generate more plutoniam or uranium. Once it's gone.. that's it.
Hmmm... How to put this. All plutonium in the universe decayed out to something else about a billion or so years ago. The reason we have it now? Well, there's this thing called breeder reactors. We usually start with uranium and make plutonium. However, there is no reason we can not start with Thorium (of which we will probably never run out of) and work up to uranium. Good luck getting rid of all the fisionables on the planet.
Also, geological processes create uranium. It just takes a really long time.
This is already happening with analog recordings. The Piano Paper that you put into a piano and the piano plays the music. The old drums that were originally used to record sound. Records (45s, 33s, 78s), 8 Track Tape, Reel-to-Reel, dictaphone, Cassettes (becoming this way).
Want picture/video? My father has some negatives that are 3 inches by 5 inches. Back before the days of 35mm film. Then there are those old home movies that predate VHS.
The only difference between that and digital is that digital is newer.
I know that EA, for instance, will sell you a replacement CD of the Battlefield 2 game for the PC if you can prove you bought it, but I've never heard of similar service from any music publisher/distributor.
h tml
At least 1 hollywood studio will do this. Ah here we go, quick google for 'dvd replacement' turns up everybodys favorite, Fox. Costs $7 (admin fees, the physical product and shipping is my guess).
http://www.foxhome.com/replacement/
Disney (cost, $7): http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/dvdsupport/faq.
Haven't found much info about any others.
Not sure about power consumption, but what I found interesting is that it has about the same power supply as the file server I built for myself. 600w power supply and only 3 hard drives? Must be the SLI video cards. The file server I have has 9 hard drives (8 in a raid) and would not boot up properly with a "mere" 480w power supply. Hence why I upgraded to a 600w.
Lets see, 600w @ 120v rms = ~5 amps. Your standard household circuit is 10 or 20 amps.... I think we are almost at the point where computers need their own dedicated circuit breaker like dryers and ovens do.
What you have been talking about sounds similar to a "sky hook".
A variant on a space elevator, it's basically something in orbit that dips down and gets a package from orbit.
The Alternative Dictionaries
2743 Curse and Slang words in 162 different languages.
I wonder how Wimpy Curses work vs. Real Curses.
Depends on how much frustration/anger you have at the time. When I'm mildly frustrated I will say scheise, frell, fraking, son of a (thats it, nothing afterwards), and a few other things that are quite mild. I also say these quite calmly and in a low voice.
Now, when I get really angry people in the next building/down the hall/next door can hear me and I swear like a sailor. In the second case, I usually feel much better after letting off a string of swear words, like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulder. So it all depends on what's going on I guess.
Is that possible? The chase for lower voltage -> less heat -> speed up the clock?
I think you missed something in there.
The chase for lower voltage -> less heat -> speed up the clock -> higher power consumption -> The chase for lower voltage
Unfortunately, that isn't even how the studios make the money. On the cost of US theatre tickets alone (as in, how much money the studios get from the US movie theatres) the movie companies (today) loose money. They make their money off of the foreign film market (as in, translated and/or released in other countries) and off the DVD sales/rentals.
So the studios lower prices to the first runs, but would have to make it up in other markets, maybe by raising the price of DVDs where they are currently sold for less than half as much in the US? (I've heard legal DVDs sell for $1 in China.)