For a sense of scale: the cost [ wiki again ] of the Apollo program, in 2006 dollars, was about $135 billion.
While I agree with most of what you said, I think it's conservative to estimate that the costs of establishing a moon base would be at least 20 and perhaps 50 times as much as the original Apollo program. Remember: In Apollo, all we did was visit for a few hours.
Do you think any nation on the planet has between two and five TRILLION dollars to spare?
Currently, Russia holds the third largest money reserves in the world.
Irrelevant in the face of the costs of establishing a base on the moon. Your assumption is that when I said that Russia didn't have a big enough credit card that I meant that anyone else did.
Shoot, I can plan a base on the moon. Doesn't mean a thing. It will cost them billions of rubles to actually DO it, and I don't think they have a big enough credit card.
Well, if you go back one more step, there were tons of reasons to go from NT4 to 2K, not least of which was reasonable removable device (PCCard, USB, etc) support. What I take away from that was that with each iteration there is less reason to upgrade.
We saw this pattern in the 90s as well. Windows 95 was a huge step forward from 3.1, then Windows 98 was much less important, and then Windows ME was just pointless.
I'm actually an OS X fanboi. And while I agree with most of your anecdotal evidence, I must say that for me, WIndows XP does not crash. I suspect that 99% of the reason for that is that I don't expect it to actually do very much. When you don't really load much software on it, or use it for web surfing or e-mail, XP is stable.
Of course the fact that you have to treat it with kid gloves to keep it that way is likely the point.
Don't class actiion suits essentially make the company immune to any further claims from individuals? Presumably because everyones claims are already represented.
Only for those torts that were committed before the suit. For most corporations, once a suit is filed they either immediately stop engaging in the given behavior (as with erroneous or illegal billing/accounting practices), or the suit is about a product class or series no longer being offered (as in the case of a recalled defective product), or they add that behavior to a list of disclosures for all future customers (caution: this coffee is hot). In this case, the suit is on behalf of people who are not engaged in a contractual behavior with the RIAA, so if they keep doing what they have been, then there can be future class actions of the same sort. Since those future suits would potentially have more case law on their side as a result of the instant case, the RIAA would have to be either suicidal or idiotic to keep it up.
Unless the record companys themselves are included in the class action, I see no real solution.
Given the list of claims (particularly that RICO has been raised) and the nature of the RIAA, it seems to me quite possible that the court might be able to pierce the corporate veil of the RIAA and go after the assets of its owners/members. That would prevent steps 4 and 5 of your end-game.
It almost makes me regret the lack of motivation I have toward seeing anything filmed in the last forty years. They have stuff older than that if you prefer.
Whoops... Not 18 gigawatts... forgot we're dealing with SQUARE units. There are 10^6 square meters in a square kilometer. So we're talking 9.82663E12 square meters of area, times 2, equals 19 TERAwatts.
You've got it about right. Consider that solar radiation hits the earth with several hundred watts per square meter (averaged over the entire year over the entire earth). Say, 200. Now assume that your agricultural conversion is 1% efficient. 2 watts per square meter over the entire US land mass would be 18 gigawatts. Why, that's enough to send Michael J. Fox to the 50s 15 times.
In the most pedantic sense, I agree with him - there ought to be limits to freedom. I ought to not have the freedom to rob a bank. But, of course, in that same sense of pedantry, there *are* limits like that to freedom. His use of 'ought to be' suggests that he meant there ought to be *more* limits, whereupon I and our commander in chief part company.
Reed Hastings has said that they want to make Watch Now available on every screen possible, be it a PC, Mac, TV or mobile.
A few months ago, Netflix did a demo at the Silverlight coming-out party. I suspect that once Silverlight supports the DRM crap that that's how they'll make their cross-platform thing happen.
It is unconstitutional for the government to restrict non-obscene content. In the past, they got away with it because it was the least intrusive way to "protect" children from being exposed to indecent material.
When they put forward the V chip, I became very happy. Why? Because if the V chip is universally implemented, then banning indecent material suddenly is no longer the least intrusive way to protect children. Instead, parents could use the V chip to prevent their children from viewing TV-MA content.
And guess what! In January of 2009, analog broadcasting will be turned off. That means that there will not be a single working television in the country without a V chip in it (legacy TVs will require a set-top box, which will have a V chip). I look forward to the ACLU bringing suit in February to overturn the ban on indecent programming that is NOT marked as TV-MA in a manner that interoperates with the V chip. And I guarantee that approximately 2 minutes and 35 seconds after the courts rule, there will be T&A on Fox in prime time.
I dearly wish the airlines recognized my carry permit; I'd feel much better if I could pack my 9mm aboard planes.
That's an even worse idea. Are you prepared to maintain perfect vigilance over your weapon for an entire, say, 8 hour transcontinental flight? If someone who doesn't have a permit knows or finds out that you do have one, then don't you wind up being an excellent way to get a weapon on board the plane if only someone could separate you from it?
If you're wondering how this doesn't apply to Air Marshals, well, since they're on the clock they are supposed to maintain that perfect vigilance for the entire flight. Not so any random passenger.
If all citizens were allowed to carry guns on a plane 911 would not have happened.
Now I am as anti-gun-control as they come, but even I have to take a pause here.
Air marshals carry guns. That much is true. But their guns are loaded with "light" ammunition to make sure that the bullet doesn't go through the target and damage something important. I don't think I'd feel like I was done a favor if some Dirty Harry type shoots a bunch of holes in the plane trying to take down a hijacker. Also, airplanes have other issues that suggest that having everyone armed to the teeth would be a less than helpful idea:
Everyone is, more or less, confined together within a small space. There is no reasonable way to require someone to leave the premises.
There is no way to obtain additional law enforcement assistance in an emergency.
Any medical response is likely to take 25-30 minutes longer than it would under other circumstances.
Combine these points and I think you wind up with a dozen or so extra fatalities every year from incidents that get out of hand.
Of course, we could only really be talking about concealable weapons. Can you imagine trying to stow a 12 gauge under the seat in front of you?
In the past, the idea of harvesting energy from living tissue has centered on chemical reactions - attempting to use the glucose in the bloodstream or what not. That's fine (so long as it can be done safely), because the systems that regulate glucose availability probably have the overhead capacity to spare (at least by comparison). But when you talk about tapping the bloodstream's KE, I start to get nervous, because then you're talking about the heart. That's where the energy you're tapping is going to come from. When your heart wears out, you're more or less done. I'm already doing enough bad things to my heart (vis diet and exercise) - I don't want to make it work any harder.
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While I agree with most of what you said, I think it's conservative to estimate that the costs of establishing a moon base would be at least 20 and perhaps 50 times as much as the original Apollo program. Remember: In Apollo, all we did was visit for a few hours.
Do you think any nation on the planet has between two and five TRILLION dollars to spare?
Irrelevant in the face of the costs of establishing a base on the moon. Your assumption is that when I said that Russia didn't have a big enough credit card that I meant that anyone else did.
Shoot, I can plan a base on the moon. Doesn't mean a thing. It will cost them billions of rubles to actually DO it, and I don't think they have a big enough credit card.
If anything, that's probably less secure.
Well, if you go back one more step, there were tons of reasons to go from NT4 to 2K, not least of which was reasonable removable device (PCCard, USB, etc) support. What I take away from that was that with each iteration there is less reason to upgrade.
We saw this pattern in the 90s as well. Windows 95 was a huge step forward from 3.1, then Windows 98 was much less important, and then Windows ME was just pointless.
What's past is prologue.
I'm actually an OS X fanboi. And while I agree with most of your anecdotal evidence, I must say that for me, WIndows XP does not crash. I suspect that 99% of the reason for that is that I don't expect it to actually do very much. When you don't really load much software on it, or use it for web surfing or e-mail, XP is stable.
Of course the fact that you have to treat it with kid gloves to keep it that way is likely the point.
Only for those torts that were committed before the suit. For most corporations, once a suit is filed they either immediately stop engaging in the given behavior (as with erroneous or illegal billing/accounting practices), or the suit is about a product class or series no longer being offered (as in the case of a recalled defective product), or they add that behavior to a list of disclosures for all future customers (caution: this coffee is hot). In this case, the suit is on behalf of people who are not engaged in a contractual behavior with the RIAA, so if they keep doing what they have been, then there can be future class actions of the same sort. Since those future suits would potentially have more case law on their side as a result of the instant case, the RIAA would have to be either suicidal or idiotic to keep it up.
Given the list of claims (particularly that RICO has been raised) and the nature of the RIAA, it seems to me quite possible that the court might be able to pierce the corporate veil of the RIAA and go after the assets of its owners/members. That would prevent steps 4 and 5 of your end-game.
If they pass a Turing test (at least for the limited subject domain), does it matter?
Whoops... Not 18 gigawatts... forgot we're dealing with SQUARE units. There are 10^6 square meters in a square kilometer. So we're talking 9.82663E12 square meters of area, times 2, equals 19 TERAwatts.
You've got it about right. Consider that solar radiation hits the earth with several hundred watts per square meter (averaged over the entire year over the entire earth). Say, 200. Now assume that your agricultural conversion is 1% efficient. 2 watts per square meter over the entire US land mass would be 18 gigawatts. Why, that's enough to send Michael J. Fox to the 50s 15 times.
Actually, they do. That they don't spend the money efficiently is the issue. And, of course, for the government, it's business as usual.
In the most pedantic sense, I agree with him - there ought to be limits to freedom. I ought to not have the freedom to rob a bank. But, of course, in that same sense of pedantry, there *are* limits like that to freedom. His use of 'ought to be' suggests that he meant there ought to be *more* limits, whereupon I and our commander in chief part company.
Reed Hastings has said that they want to make Watch Now available on every screen possible, be it a PC, Mac, TV or mobile.
A few months ago, Netflix did a demo at the Silverlight coming-out party. I suspect that once Silverlight supports the DRM crap that that's how they'll make their cross-platform thing happen.
Here's the thing.
It is unconstitutional for the government to restrict non-obscene content. In the past, they got away with it because it was the least intrusive way to "protect" children from being exposed to indecent material.
When they put forward the V chip, I became very happy. Why? Because if the V chip is universally implemented, then banning indecent material suddenly is no longer the least intrusive way to protect children. Instead, parents could use the V chip to prevent their children from viewing TV-MA content.
And guess what! In January of 2009, analog broadcasting will be turned off. That means that there will not be a single working television in the country without a V chip in it (legacy TVs will require a set-top box, which will have a V chip). I look forward to the ACLU bringing suit in February to overturn the ban on indecent programming that is NOT marked as TV-MA in a manner that interoperates with the V chip. And I guarantee that approximately 2 minutes and 35 seconds after the courts rule, there will be T&A on Fox in prime time.
So it's an RBI instead of a bases-clearing home run. Still a score.
That's an even worse idea. Are you prepared to maintain perfect vigilance over your weapon for an entire, say, 8 hour transcontinental flight? If someone who doesn't have a permit knows or finds out that you do have one, then don't you wind up being an excellent way to get a weapon on board the plane if only someone could separate you from it?
If you're wondering how this doesn't apply to Air Marshals, well, since they're on the clock they are supposed to maintain that perfect vigilance for the entire flight. Not so any random passenger.
And if the hijacker was a 9/11 style terrorist, that scenario still gets chalked up in the "win" column.
Now I am as anti-gun-control as they come, but even I have to take a pause here.
Air marshals carry guns. That much is true. But their guns are loaded with "light" ammunition to make sure that the bullet doesn't go through the target and damage something important. I don't think I'd feel like I was done a favor if some Dirty Harry type shoots a bunch of holes in the plane trying to take down a hijacker. Also, airplanes have other issues that suggest that having everyone armed to the teeth would be a less than helpful idea:
Combine these points and I think you wind up with a dozen or so extra fatalities every year from incidents that get out of hand.
Of course, we could only really be talking about concealable weapons. Can you imagine trying to stow a 12 gauge under the seat in front of you?
If your wireless card is claiming that its address is a broadcast address, then it is misconfigured or broken.
Ocean city, NJ? Cue the Chris Hanson jokes...
Try actually installing it and then compare the size of the resulting directory to the one for Firefox.
Quick hint: The Safari download is big because it includes quicktime (which is an optional part of the installation).
In the past, the idea of harvesting energy from living tissue has centered on chemical reactions - attempting to use the glucose in the bloodstream or what not. That's fine (so long as it can be done safely), because the systems that regulate glucose availability probably have the overhead capacity to spare (at least by comparison). But when you talk about tapping the bloodstream's KE, I start to get nervous, because then you're talking about the heart. That's where the energy you're tapping is going to come from. When your heart wears out, you're more or less done. I'm already doing enough bad things to my heart (vis diet and exercise) - I don't want to make it work any harder.