It only takes a little bit of alloying metals to make most different kinds of high-grade steel. Some of those are available from asteroids or the moon quite easily. Shipping a little of some of the rarer alloying elements like chromium up is still a lot less mass than boosting everything. Nickel is the other major element of nickel-iron asteroids and it is great both on its own and in alloys. High performance steels and nickel superalloys are truly high-tech stuff - often the best materials at any price, not just on the basis of cost.
There are also large quantities of platinum-group metals in some asteroids that have many, many technological uses but are just in too short supply on earth to use as much as engineers and chemists would like.
No, better value call centers benefit most people - that is not at all the same as cheaper, and better value is directly opposed to using offshore call centers, which are even lower quality service than the difference in price. Second, support is usually rolled into the price of goods. The customer does not see a drop in price of goods when service is sent overseas, rather just a drop in quality of service. The savings in price goes into corporate profits.
Training here in the US helps people, too, which pays greater dividends in not shipping off what's left of our economy, building our economy, reducing consumer and government debt, building our tax base, national security, decent tech support, prevention of domestic unrest, reduction of poverty, and increasing political support here at home (where it's actually worth something.)
No, reductions in government spending were not a factor in either place. Greece, on the other hand, has wrecked their economy with austerity, and Britain is having a go at it, too.
No doubt about it, Romney is the liberal in this race. Also, just like only Nixon could go to China, only a Republican can get the blue dog Dems in line.
The bailout was started under Bush, the Fed would have done their thing no matter who was in power. The blame for the roots of the crisis was about 55% Banks, 1% Clinton, 10% Congress, 25% Fed, 9% Bush and 0% Obama. Failing to do the stimulus would have had terrible effects - massive deflation leading to real economic collapse.
It's just too bad so much went to banks without getting their equity in return, and so little went to starting productive ventures. (And the green energy stimulus was well spent, especially given the time and money constraints.)
How would not using government funds to train overseas call center workers (who are directly displacing jobs that used to be done in the US) be "penalizing businesses"? Troll indeed.
No one was speaking Middle English in the 17th and 18th centuries, or at least it was vanishingly rare. Pronouncing "ask" as "ax" may have been a part of some dialect brought from England, but I haven't seen any evidence of it. More likely that is just how it sounded to those with native tongues where "ks" was a frequent sound and "sk" was rare or unused.
You really are trolling here. If you honestly aren't aware of how languages develop from dialects of common ancestral languages you have no business stating your opinions as facts in a discussion on dialects and languages, let alone with such a tone.
No citation is needed. It is the basis of comparative philology, which is the better part of the whole field of linguistics. If you want citations, go read a few pages anywhere in the OED.
"people complain about AAV but not all the other creoles and vernaculars (from New Yawker to Boston Southie to Alabaman slang to Louisiana patois"
No, those all mark one as a hick or lower class. Anybody who doesn't speak like a newscaster in the US will get mocked on occasion, and quietly considered a lower form of life on a frequent basis. More and more all those accents and dialects are disappearing, and the extreme forms are almost only found in the older generation.
As for subjective - so what? So is all aesthetics. It's subjective that Beethoven is better than Schoenberg, but nearly everyone will agree it's true. The NYC and Southie accents are just as ugly and grating as atonal music. I'm glad to see then go. Black English or Ebonics or African-American Vernacular or Negro dialect - or whatever the PC term is this week - is subjectively (though almost universally) seen as ignorant and ungrammatical and its use helps perpetuate those stereotypes being seen as being true of blacks in general. The same is true of the southern dialects and southerners. They can all choose to talk however they like, but you can't tell the rest of us that have to like the way it sounds, nor that we have to listen to what we find ugly.
I don't know much East Bloc SF, but Stanislaw Lem never cheered me up much - Kafka was really more fun. The movie "Stalker" was the most dystopian thing I have ever seen, even 30 years later, even just counting the bits I could manage to stay awake through.
Who are some of these optimistic Soviet SF writers? Any translated into English?
Or I. Asimov, or F. Pohl, or for that matter, H.G.Wells. Even Swift was pointing out the dystopian potentials of the trends of his time, particularly the sections in Laputa and Luggnagg. But as the GP poster said, there has always been dark fiction.
I'd put the tipping point a little earlier than cyberpunk, though. It seems like SF in the 60s was mostly basically optimistic, but by the early 70s nearly everything had turned sludge-colored.
No, in some states judges are voted for. "Justices of the Peace" in Texas and state Supreme Court justices in West Virginia, just off the top of my head.
You're a mediocre, boot-licking hack. If you go out of your way to spit that kind of witless babbitry at someone you think you have pegged as an outsider, it shows you up as a conformist bully toward your intellectual and moral betters, a sad little wanna-be who thinks he's part of the gang. On your own, or in person, I'll bet you're a quivering coward.
Agreed. The Baroque Cycle was entertaining and well-written all the way through. Those that don't like it should stick to their novelizations, vampire series, star-war-gate-trek-teletubby-hentai or whatever other kind of drivel it is they do like.
I linked to the L-Prize test data above, but here it is again: http://www.lightingprize.org/60watttest.stm . These are very tough, long-lasting bulbs with good performance and durability verified by extensive outside lab and field testing. The lifespan rating should likely be much higher than they put on the box, too.
"things would be far simpler if we actually had our homes wired up with DC power."
Until you look at how thick the wires would have to be. If you used higher voltage DC everything would need a DC--DC converter anyway, which is really DC->AC->DC. And, as you said, everything seems to need a different low-voltage DC, anyway.
The Phillips LEDs have a CRI of 93, which is as good as the best florescents. The yellow filter takes out the blue spike pretty well, but the color temperature is only 2700K. The American market generally likes a warmer look like original tungsten, even though halogens are much better, with a high color temperature.
Slashdot Mirror
It only takes a little bit of alloying metals to make most different kinds of high-grade steel. Some of those are available from asteroids or the moon quite easily. Shipping a little of some of the rarer alloying elements like chromium up is still a lot less mass than boosting everything. Nickel is the other major element of nickel-iron asteroids and it is great both on its own and in alloys. High performance steels and nickel superalloys are truly high-tech stuff - often the best materials at any price, not just on the basis of cost.
There are also large quantities of platinum-group metals in some asteroids that have many, many technological uses but are just in too short supply on earth to use as much as engineers and chemists would like.
1997.
No, better value call centers benefit most people - that is not at all the same as cheaper, and better value is directly opposed to using offshore call centers, which are even lower quality service than the difference in price. Second, support is usually rolled into the price of goods. The customer does not see a drop in price of goods when service is sent overseas, rather just a drop in quality of service. The savings in price goes into corporate profits.
Training here in the US helps people, too, which pays greater dividends in not shipping off what's left of our economy, building our economy, reducing consumer and government debt, building our tax base, national security, decent tech support, prevention of domestic unrest, reduction of poverty, and increasing political support here at home (where it's actually worth something.)
What was your point again?
No, reductions in government spending were not a factor in either place. Greece, on the other hand, has wrecked their economy with austerity, and Britain is having a go at it, too.
Or some foreigners would pay more, others would choose not to come, spots would be freed for US students, and costs for US students would fall a bit.
No doubt about it, Romney is the liberal in this race. Also, just like only Nixon could go to China, only a Republican can get the blue dog Dems in line.
The bailout was started under Bush, the Fed would have done their thing no matter who was in power. The blame for the roots of the crisis was about 55% Banks, 1% Clinton, 10% Congress, 25% Fed, 9% Bush and 0% Obama. Failing to do the stimulus would have had terrible effects - massive deflation leading to real economic collapse.
It's just too bad so much went to banks without getting their equity in return, and so little went to starting productive ventures. (And the green energy stimulus was well spent, especially given the time and money constraints.)
That would be Romney, then.
(Just for those who didn't get your point.)
How would not using government funds to train overseas call center workers (who are directly displacing jobs that used to be done in the US) be "penalizing businesses"? Troll indeed.
Ja, mein Herr
No one was speaking Middle English in the 17th and 18th centuries, or at least it was vanishingly rare. Pronouncing "ask" as "ax" may have been a part of some dialect brought from England, but I haven't seen any evidence of it. More likely that is just how it sounded to those with native tongues where "ks" was a frequent sound and "sk" was rare or unused.
You really are trolling here. If you honestly aren't aware of how languages develop from dialects of common ancestral languages you have no business stating your opinions as facts in a discussion on dialects and languages, let alone with such a tone.
No citation is needed. It is the basis of comparative philology, which is the better part of the whole field of linguistics. If you want citations, go read a few pages anywhere in the OED.
"people complain about AAV but not all the other creoles and vernaculars (from New Yawker to Boston Southie to Alabaman slang to Louisiana patois"
No, those all mark one as a hick or lower class. Anybody who doesn't speak like a newscaster in the US will get mocked on occasion, and quietly considered a lower form of life on a frequent basis. More and more all those accents and dialects are disappearing, and the extreme forms are almost only found in the older generation.
As for subjective - so what? So is all aesthetics. It's subjective that Beethoven is better than Schoenberg, but nearly everyone will agree it's true. The NYC and Southie accents are just as ugly and grating as atonal music. I'm glad to see then go. Black English or Ebonics or African-American Vernacular or Negro dialect - or whatever the PC term is this week - is subjectively (though almost universally) seen as ignorant and ungrammatical and its use helps perpetuate those stereotypes being seen as being true of blacks in general. The same is true of the southern dialects and southerners. They can all choose to talk however they like, but you can't tell the rest of us that have to like the way it sounds, nor that we have to listen to what we find ugly.
I don't know much East Bloc SF, but Stanislaw Lem never cheered me up much - Kafka was really more fun. The movie "Stalker" was the most dystopian thing I have ever seen, even 30 years later, even just counting the bits I could manage to stay awake through.
Who are some of these optimistic Soviet SF writers? Any translated into English?
Or I. Asimov, or F. Pohl, or for that matter, H.G.Wells. Even Swift was pointing out the dystopian potentials of the trends of his time, particularly the sections in Laputa and Luggnagg. But as the GP poster said, there has always been dark fiction.
I'd put the tipping point a little earlier than cyberpunk, though. It seems like SF in the 60s was mostly basically optimistic, but by the early 70s nearly everything had turned sludge-colored.
No, in some states judges are voted for. "Justices of the Peace" in Texas and state Supreme Court justices in West Virginia, just off the top of my head.
You're a mediocre, boot-licking hack.
If you go out of your way to spit that kind of witless babbitry at someone you think you have pegged as an outsider, it shows you up as a conformist bully toward your intellectual and moral betters, a sad little wanna-be who thinks he's part of the gang. On your own, or in person, I'll bet you're a quivering coward.
Agreed. The Baroque Cycle was entertaining and well-written all the way through. Those that don't like it should stick to their novelizations, vampire series, star-war-gate-trek-teletubby-hentai or whatever other kind of drivel it is they do like.
I linked to the L-Prize test data above, but here it is again: http://www.lightingprize.org/60watttest.stm .
These are very tough, long-lasting bulbs with good performance and durability verified by extensive outside lab and field testing. The lifespan rating should likely be much higher than they put on the box, too.
http://www.lightingprize.org/60watttest.stm
(Shamelessly posted here at the top to make it easier to find.)
"things would be far simpler if we actually had our homes wired up with DC power."
Until you look at how thick the wires would have to be. If you used higher voltage DC everything would need a DC--DC converter anyway, which is really DC->AC->DC. And, as you said, everything seems to need a different low-voltage DC, anyway.
The Phillips LEDs have a CRI of 93, which is as good as the best florescents. The yellow filter takes out the blue spike pretty well, but the color temperature is only 2700K. The American market generally likes a warmer look like original tungsten, even though halogens are much better, with a high color temperature.
93 CRI, 2700K = good spectrum, warm light. CFLs are usually around 83CRI, incandescents 100CRI.