Considering 99.9% of guns are never used in the commission of a crime, all you have to do is open the blinders on your eyes.
Let's start with hunting, varmit removal, and self-protection. We won't even have to get into just plain fun.
Guns are used for legitimate purposes hundreds, probably even thousands, of times for every time they are used in the commission of a crime. BitTorrent is much closer to the reverse. Probably 5%/95%. Also, plenty of legitimate alternatives for BitTorrent exist. This is not true for guns. In other words, eliminating BT barely affects the ability of legitimate BT users to exercise any rights, while eliminating guns severely restricts the rights of legitimate gun owners.
anime fans.
They can be divided into two groups: those that legimately purchase, rent, or borrow their anime, and those who pirate.
There is almost no middle ground from my point-of-view. Strangely enough, many of the pirates have plenty of money.
Quit trying to justifying your petty theft.
Yes, it may be a good deal for an unknown band or show to offer sneak previews or provide givaways in order to generate excitement about their product. That is THEIR decision to make, not yours.
In the case of established names, who account for the vast majority of piracy, the opposite holds true. Releasing large amouts of work for free gets you nothing.
Quit pirating and pay for your goodies. And please quit justifying your petty theft. In particular, any line that is tantamount to "I don't like the people I am stealing from, so it is OK" is utterly juvenile.
It is what I have been saying all along. Note the threat level of nine. That is where the author's logical reasoning goes wrong. In hindsight, the threat was a nine, or even a ten. But in foresight, it was just another needle in a very big haystack. Would it have caught the president's attention if the box was green and was rated a 4?
in a titanium vs silicon debate, but there is one obvious point here: There are limited reserves of titanium (estimated at 50 years at current pace) while the amount of silicon (as silica) is virtually infinite. Even if titanium is cheaper now, it won't be for long.
I've always thought it rather silly to make "renewable" technologies from non-renewable and obviously scarce resources such as Ti and Ru.
This company is the real deal. The product, of course, is overhyped (I bet the 5 cent/kWh is in the Arizona desert!), but this company is one of the serious major players in this field.
Actually, I just saw a mention of them this morning in a peer-reviewed journal.
There are many positive and negative feedbacks. My point was that the simulations that get really high numbers get caught in the positives. Having so much feedback is why it is so difficult to predict. I really don't put much stock in any of the simulations because of this. It is simply too complex to model. Instead, I look at the facts. Temperatures have increased about 1 degree C and sea levels haven't changed at all. I am not even sure that this is bad.
I'd be surprised to see a global mean temperature rise of more than 2C. The effects of such a temperature change are not particularly bad and definitely not worth the enormous costs of putting the smallest dent in the increase. With the money Kyoto costs, for example, we could provide clean water and food to everyone on earth that doesn't have it, with billions to spare. Which is a better investment?
C02 is not the major contributor to global warming, either now (yes, we have quite a bit of us as it is, which is why it ain't -40C outside), nor under the projections. Rather, it is water vapor that is the real greenhouse gas.
The problem with the simulations is positive feedback, and anyone who has ever dealt with such a phenomena knows how chaotic it can be. The simulations that predict these really high numbers essentially get caught in a loop - more C02 = slight rise in temp = more water vapor and C02 = more rise in temp = more water vapor and C02, etc
However, we have been hotter than this before. If positive feedback was really that easy, we would have already triggered it and wouldn't be where we are now.
It reminded me of the time my neighbors responded to my objections to their loud music by claiming that I "just didn't like their style". My response, of course, was that at 2am on a Wednesday, whether they were playing 50Cent or Beethoven was irrelevant - the pounding base was not.
I highly doubt that these guys were arrested for "telling lawyer jokes". They were probably arrested for being obnoxious WHILE telling lawyer jokes.
Of course, none of us have the facts so it is a moot point.
the basis of science everywhere, including Japan (where I am moving in a few months, actually).
Generally, scientists working for a corporation do receive some type of bonus or royalty for a patent. This is all contractal, and generally minor. The basic essence of the relationship is the company's money in return for our ideas.
I am not an expert in law, but the whole darned reason a corporation pays a scientist his SALARY is so that they get the rights to his INVENTIONS.
This is in the contract that we all sign. Typical corporations usually pay a little bonus for any patent accepted, and obviously promotions are related to the successful application of your research.
It sounds like this court is literally throwing the contract out the window. So much for law.
It is simply a matter of statistical definition. If you run a hundred tests on unrelated things, you will get on average five tests that support a correlation.
What these researchers seem to be seeing is noise. Even when they do see something, it is pathetically small.
You are about a billion times more likely to die on the way to the store where you bought your cell phone than you are to die from the non-ionizing radiation it emits.
For you non-thinkers out there, the "radition" (ie, light) emitted by cell-phones is so low in energy that it is less than the thermal background energy. Its like throwing marbles in a bowling alley.
Space cadet news article - 30% (note the "could").
Nat. Mat. article - 3% (internal at that!).
Data meets reality.
Catching some of the IR light that is nothing but waste and converting it to electricity - good.
Practicality - a long ways off.
been sentenced to 15 years. It is simply the maximum he could get. In reality, he will get one or two - much less than a typical rapist.
In any case, here is a fun argument as to how this person could have caused more harm than a rapist. Let us presume for a moment than the $50 million figure cited was correct (actually, it is more complicated than this, of course). How much harm, in monetary terms, does a rapist do? Many people quibble about how one can do this, but I have no problem with it at all. First, we start with the pretty solid basis that a typical American values their life at roughly ten million dollars. How do you figure this? Risk analysis - people with risky jobs are paid more than otherwise similar jobs. One can then simply extrapolate the risk/reward curve to figure that at the margins, $1 is worth about 1/10 million of your life. Other methods of calculation by various economists produce similar results.
Now, given that your whole life is worth about $10 million, it is obvious that being raped, while sucking quite hard, is clearly better than dying. Maybe 10% as bad, at most. So therefore, a rape is something on the order of $1 million dollars in damage, mostly to the victim, but also to society in general which experiences fear and must pay for police protection, courts, etc.
So at least by this logic, this guy caused 50 times the damage of a rapist. The primary difference is not that he did less damage, but that his damage is diffuse - spread among thousands of stockholders, rather than essentially focused on one person. Stealing a few bucks from millions of people doesn't manifest itself as clearly as stealing a million bucks from one person.
can't just pay for your music and movies?
There is almost no legal reason to use such services as bittorrent. You can get far more movies, books, and songs than you ever could need at a reasonable price (even free!) via legal methods, and you darned well know it.
Quit whining and start paying.
You are talking about layers that are sub-micron in thickness, often less than 100 nanometers. A one micron thick layer on a meter-square screen is 10-6 m^3, or a cm^3. Therefore, you would need 1-2g of whatever substance you are talking about. Even the most exotic research-grade chemicals rarely cost more than $100/g, or $100 to $200 per screen. In reality, the cost would be much less for anything a production scale - $10/g at most, or $10-20 per screen. The raw material cost is dwarfed by the processing cost.
On another point, does anyone know how nano-diamond is synthesized and in what quantity it can currently be done? I didn't find the answer with a quick web search, though I didn't look in the literature at all. The other half of my research group is now synthesizing nano-sapphire (alpha alumina). Pretty interesting stuff, actually, especially if you ever see the machine in operation. They call it "Smaug" for a reason.
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Considering 99.9% of guns are never used in the commission of a crime, all you have to do is open the blinders on your eyes.
Let's start with hunting, varmit removal, and self-protection. We won't even have to get into just plain fun.
Guns are used for legitimate purposes hundreds, probably even thousands, of times for every time they are used in the commission of a crime. BitTorrent is much closer to the reverse. Probably 5%/95%. Also, plenty of legitimate alternatives for BitTorrent exist. This is not true for guns. In other words, eliminating BT barely affects the ability of legitimate BT users to exercise any rights, while eliminating guns severely restricts the rights of legitimate gun owners.
anime fans. They can be divided into two groups: those that legimately purchase, rent, or borrow their anime, and those who pirate. There is almost no middle ground from my point-of-view. Strangely enough, many of the pirates have plenty of money. Quit trying to justifying your petty theft.
Quit copying and start paying the authors.
Yes, it may be a good deal for an unknown band or show to offer sneak previews or provide givaways in order to generate excitement about their product. That is THEIR decision to make, not yours.
In the case of established names, who account for the vast majority of piracy, the opposite holds true. Releasing large amouts of work for free gets you nothing.
Quit pirating and pay for your goodies. And please quit justifying your petty theft. In particular, any line that is tantamount to "I don't like the people I am stealing from, so it is OK" is utterly juvenile.
It is what I have been saying all along. Note the threat level of nine. That is where the author's logical reasoning goes wrong. In hindsight, the threat was a nine, or even a ten. But in foresight, it was just another needle in a very big haystack. Would it have caught the president's attention if the box was green and was rated a 4?
in a titanium vs silicon debate, but there is one obvious point here: There are limited reserves of titanium (estimated at 50 years at current pace) while the amount of silicon (as silica) is virtually infinite. Even if titanium is cheaper now, it won't be for long. I've always thought it rather silly to make "renewable" technologies from non-renewable and obviously scarce resources such as Ti and Ru.
This company is the real deal. The product, of course, is overhyped (I bet the 5 cent/kWh is in the Arizona desert!), but this company is one of the serious major players in this field. Actually, I just saw a mention of them this morning in a peer-reviewed journal.
There are many positive and negative feedbacks. My point was that the simulations that get really high numbers get caught in the positives. Having so much feedback is why it is so difficult to predict. I really don't put much stock in any of the simulations because of this. It is simply too complex to model. Instead, I look at the facts. Temperatures have increased about 1 degree C and sea levels haven't changed at all. I am not even sure that this is bad. I'd be surprised to see a global mean temperature rise of more than 2C. The effects of such a temperature change are not particularly bad and definitely not worth the enormous costs of putting the smallest dent in the increase. With the money Kyoto costs, for example, we could provide clean water and food to everyone on earth that doesn't have it, with billions to spare. Which is a better investment?
C02 is not the major contributor to global warming, either now (yes, we have quite a bit of us as it is, which is why it ain't -40C outside), nor under the projections. Rather, it is water vapor that is the real greenhouse gas. The problem with the simulations is positive feedback, and anyone who has ever dealt with such a phenomena knows how chaotic it can be. The simulations that predict these really high numbers essentially get caught in a loop - more C02 = slight rise in temp = more water vapor and C02 = more rise in temp = more water vapor and C02, etc However, we have been hotter than this before. If positive feedback was really that easy, we would have already triggered it and wouldn't be where we are now.
It reminded me of the time my neighbors responded to my objections to their loud music by claiming that I "just didn't like their style". My response, of course, was that at 2am on a Wednesday, whether they were playing 50Cent or Beethoven was irrelevant - the pounding base was not. I highly doubt that these guys were arrested for "telling lawyer jokes". They were probably arrested for being obnoxious WHILE telling lawyer jokes. Of course, none of us have the facts so it is a moot point.
quit whining when someone busts you when you don't.
the basis of science everywhere, including Japan (where I am moving in a few months, actually). Generally, scientists working for a corporation do receive some type of bonus or royalty for a patent. This is all contractal, and generally minor. The basic essence of the relationship is the company's money in return for our ideas.
I am not an expert in law, but the whole darned reason a corporation pays a scientist his SALARY is so that they get the rights to his INVENTIONS.
This is in the contract that we all sign. Typical corporations usually pay a little bonus for any patent accepted, and obviously promotions are related to the successful application of your research.
It sounds like this court is literally throwing the contract out the window. So much for law.
It is simply a matter of statistical definition. If you run a hundred tests on unrelated things, you will get on average five tests that support a correlation. What these researchers seem to be seeing is noise. Even when they do see something, it is pathetically small. You are about a billion times more likely to die on the way to the store where you bought your cell phone than you are to die from the non-ionizing radiation it emits. For you non-thinkers out there, the "radition" (ie, light) emitted by cell-phones is so low in energy that it is less than the thermal background energy. Its like throwing marbles in a bowling alley.
Space cadet news article - 30% (note the "could"). Nat. Mat. article - 3% (internal at that!). Data meets reality. Catching some of the IR light that is nothing but waste and converting it to electricity - good. Practicality - a long ways off.
been sentenced to 15 years. It is simply the maximum he could get. In reality, he will get one or two - much less than a typical rapist. In any case, here is a fun argument as to how this person could have caused more harm than a rapist. Let us presume for a moment than the $50 million figure cited was correct (actually, it is more complicated than this, of course). How much harm, in monetary terms, does a rapist do? Many people quibble about how one can do this, but I have no problem with it at all. First, we start with the pretty solid basis that a typical American values their life at roughly ten million dollars. How do you figure this? Risk analysis - people with risky jobs are paid more than otherwise similar jobs. One can then simply extrapolate the risk/reward curve to figure that at the margins, $1 is worth about 1/10 million of your life. Other methods of calculation by various economists produce similar results. Now, given that your whole life is worth about $10 million, it is obvious that being raped, while sucking quite hard, is clearly better than dying. Maybe 10% as bad, at most. So therefore, a rape is something on the order of $1 million dollars in damage, mostly to the victim, but also to society in general which experiences fear and must pay for police protection, courts, etc. So at least by this logic, this guy caused 50 times the damage of a rapist. The primary difference is not that he did less damage, but that his damage is diffuse - spread among thousands of stockholders, rather than essentially focused on one person. Stealing a few bucks from millions of people doesn't manifest itself as clearly as stealing a million bucks from one person.
can't just pay for your music and movies? There is almost no legal reason to use such services as bittorrent. You can get far more movies, books, and songs than you ever could need at a reasonable price (even free!) via legal methods, and you darned well know it. Quit whining and start paying.
But that might be asking too much, right?
You are talking about layers that are sub-micron in thickness, often less than 100 nanometers. A one micron thick layer on a meter-square screen is 10-6 m^3, or a cm^3. Therefore, you would need 1-2g of whatever substance you are talking about. Even the most exotic research-grade chemicals rarely cost more than $100/g, or $100 to $200 per screen. In reality, the cost would be much less for anything a production scale - $10/g at most, or $10-20 per screen. The raw material cost is dwarfed by the processing cost. On another point, does anyone know how nano-diamond is synthesized and in what quantity it can currently be done? I didn't find the answer with a quick web search, though I didn't look in the literature at all. The other half of my research group is now synthesizing nano-sapphire (alpha alumina). Pretty interesting stuff, actually, especially if you ever see the machine in operation. They call it "Smaug" for a reason.