You have a point, but it has not kept people from trying to do just that. Although, I imagine the most usual use for a fake is simply to cover your tracks so that it isn't as clear when the theft happened, and perhaps to give some time to get away.
I think you have an excellent point. Images in print or on the internet do not do any justice to a lot of art work.
Also, many of the sizes of the works are not what you'd expect. At least one portrait that I had seen in a book before I went to see if in the museum I hadn't realized was a life-sized portrait. And since it was a head to toe with background and a little foreground, it was a very big painting.
Technique, materials, and the colors that they are able to create are something to see. Most oil paintings are very much 3D works of art in the sense that the images are layered colors and texture, but it's all flattened out in a book or an image.
Anyway, the last time I have checked approximately 50% of world's population did not have proper sewer, and approximately 15% do not have running water and electricity. Just a small fraction of interstellar travel project would bring these necessities to the fellow human beings.
I agree that we should take care of people, but money isn't the problem with water and electricity for those people. It's usually politics. 100 million dollars is a small fraction of the US yearly budget. Don't you think we would have already done all of that if it was just a matter of throwing money at the problem?
In any event, you can do more than one thing without neglecting the others. You pay for maintenance and infrastructure, but you do need to spend money on R&D as well. Work on all of these things pays off.
And a laser that can move a small object to 10% of c could possibly have other real uses in space and on Earth. For instance imparting that sort of power wouldn't necessarily move a large object, but it could deflect a very distant inbound massive object enough so that it misses the Earth, for instance. The capacitors used to output that sort of power would probably be very useful on Earth as well.
Dust isn't stationary in space. Even if you could reliably sweep some dust out, you'd still end up with some on your path. And I don't believe the laser would have the necessary power and coherence that far out to have cleared even a fraction of the whole route. The laser is mostly for quick acceleration that would probably happen mostly within the Solar System. It would probably be down to a very small fraction of its power before it even reached the Oort Cloud.
And it is hard, although not impossible, to have planets in a stable orbit in a multi-star system which Alpha Centauri is. They tend to have their orbits perturbed enough by the other close stars over millions of years that they get ejected or plunge into their sun.
There is some evidence there could be one or two planets possible around B, but none confirmed.
The Asteroid Belt is not particularly dense. There are colossal gaping spaces between asteroids. It's not rocks with little pebbles and dust filling in all of the space in between.
Yes, there is more of that than in the space outside the Asteroid Belt, but you'll find that the smaller particles will tend to clump a bit around the bigger objects. That's basically the effect of gravity on things over the period of millions of years. Bigger objects will sweep up smaller objects, even if they aren't massive enough to clump into a planet.
The risk of failure is higher, of course, but it is not particularly high.
Possibly, but you'd need to take the sail down on occasion to allow the beam to pass through it to clear the way ahead of it.
I'm sure that the laser could technically act on objects that are somehow stationary and in the path of the laser, but it is most likely that an object would impact the craft from an angle that is less than head-on. If so, then the object would have originated outside the path of the laser and would not be affected.
Additionally, for the laser to clear even straight ahead, the sail would have to come down, at least on occasion, to avoid blocking the laser's path. And that seems theoretically possible, but more complex and power intensive where you'd have a very limited power budget on such a craft to begin with.
I honestly don't know how they'd maintain a viable interstellar craft for that long without at least an RTG onboard, and RTGs are pretty heavy.
Something like that would hit the atmosphere of a planet like it was solid rock. There might be a light show, but it is unlikely that something that small, even at.5c would impart enough energy to cause a catastrophe on the ground.
Of course if there was an orbital habitat in the way... that could be different.
Strictly speaking, FTL by means other than simply exceeding the velocity of light in a vacuum does not invalidate general relativity. Wormholes and space-time warping are not ruled out by GR, although they require some things like matter with negative mass which has not been found and may well not exist.
There are also closed timelike curves which are also considered to be a valid, if unlikely solution, which allow for time travel. This does not actually require FTL, but it is done with warped space that could be utilized by an FTL travel method.
It is not clear if we'd notice those situations if they occurred. Obviously, they do seem unlikely given how causality seems to work, but if they are closed systems, they could exist, but we may not be able to observe them.
The universe should also be teeming with alien life just by the sheer age of the universe and probability of life arising elsewhere, but you'd think we'd have noticed that by now too. I'm not saying FTL is likely, but I don't know that it is actually impossible, even under GR. People like Hawking also assume that Quantum Mechanical solutions will eventually remove certain odd possibilities of relativity, but they actually are just making highly educated guesses based on what we can observe.
Yes, historically Congress passed an unfunded mandate which effectively made women into a class of people who it costs more to employ, with no benefit to the employer.
And we are surprised that in a scenario where it is difficult to evaluate and confirm the reasons why employers aren't hiring women, that they are, in fact, not hired.
Now presumably there is some benefit to employing women which makes the extra cost necessary. And if someone could actually identify and quantify that particular set of benefits, then calculations on the hiring of women can be added to the calculations and appropriate measures can be taken to show that it is a benefit to the bottom line.
And let's be honest, just saying "it's fair" is completely bogus. You could say that, *based on one set of priorities*. However, it is distinctly *unfair* if you evaluate another set of priorities. And then you ask yourself, whose priorities are they? Are they an employer's priorities or the government's priorities.
If it is the government's priorities, then the government should pay for it. Of course, the government loves getting votes by listening to the "there oughta be a law" people, but the whole "paying for it" thing would make them unpopular, so they just dump the responsibility on someone else.
After all, if you already own a bunch of guns, it's just cheaper to point them at an employer and tell them they have to do it, or else. But then, don't expect employers to be eager to pay for your little social revolution that gets them nothing.
Honestly, if there is some way in which women, all factors being nearly equal, are being paid less then men, then I am totally for eradicating that, but I don't see that being the case.
However, if you're going to tell me that we just have to sort of engage in unfairness that does not have any bearing on productivity, then I really think someone actually needs to do a significantly better job of selling it, if you really want any real movement on the "wage gap". Or we could just have a vote to entirely remove the onus on employers for the responsibility for undertaking "enhanced equality methods" and move it to the government and tax people for it appropriately instead of hiding in their usual weaselly way and making the employers the bad guys for simply trying to not get shafted by what even you admit was unfair.
As an "asset", a slave has to be maintained. You can whip slaves and all of that, but all it does is put a slave out of commission. You usually aren't permitted to kill slaves, but even where you are, you just flushed the money you paid for them down the toilet.
"Free" but low wage workers must shift for themselves in terms of finding shelter, health care, etc. If that worker does not take care of themselves and dies or is sick, they don't get paid and are replaced by someone else.
Understand that a slave is entirely maintained at the expense of the slaveholder. Since the slave will never get more than a slave bunk and slave labor, they're not even going to try and work harder. If they make no money, they have no one to send their checks back to in order to make it worthwhile to sleep in a dorm with a bunch of others.
Slave labor has basically one advantage over low wage free people, they can be forcibly imported to work on something, which means you don't have to go to a place with a high rate of available low wage workers. This was a big advantage of the slave trade in the Americas. Native populations either wouldn't do the work, or couldn't handle it. And more to the point, there were really never that many natives to enslave anyway, particularly in Thirteen Colonies. African slaves were imported to make up for that lack of labor. If they had high numbers of, let's say, illegal immigrant populations like today, slavery would not have been as economically beneficial.
You did the right thing. I wouldn't begrudge the women their time off, especially if is part of their promised benefits, but *you* have a right to time off too. I don't take a lot of vacation, but I should never be in a situation where I cannot do so because someone else is always out.
That's when they hire someone else to pick up the slack, or have the manager suck it up, or I'd walk out the door.
I don't see how that addresses his point. It may affect your ability to get a *new* job, and that can be a problem, but it doesn't affect your rate if you're hired. Or if it does, the law requires that the discrepancy be addressed.
I think you are right for some people, but these are people who have less means who simply wouldn't be able to justify that expense to begin with. They will always be with us.
However, there are people who can budget for streaming, and I can tell you, piracy is free and a lot more convenient than it used to be, but it's still more work that I'd like to put into getting tracks. A streaming service with a reasonable cost and a wide selection means that someone like me can justify spending some money on the service. And I am happy to be paying a reasonable price for music itself. There is certainly work that goes into making it and if I can support that for a reasonable sum, I will.
Now that things are getting exclusionary again, they're again making it desirable for people to pirate. I mean, I can certainly justify paying one service, I cannot justify paying for two just to get one artist's exclusive. What is more, even if I switched for one exclusive, then tomorrow another artist is going to have an exclusive on the service that I just left. It's not really possible for me to win in that situation, and if the difference between the services is effectively 20-30 tracks out of thousands, there's no real incentive to want to move. At that point, you're simply going to shrug and get the tracks some other way.
Now you can argue, I have no inherent right to that person's music. And I agree. But that's not really going to be an argument that will sway very many downloaders.
I would have to agree for the services that are set up to extract more money. And these exclusives are more of the same exclusionary rent seeking that I thought that we'd gotten beyond already. Looks like we only convinced their music business overlords, but not the artists that have their own labels and followings.
In the end, I guess I don't care. If Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Kanye want to extract even more money out of their audience, go for it. That's just one more reason they aren't on my playlist to begin with. There's other music out there for me. If they have a audience that will put up with that, good for them.
At the same time, when I think of starving artists, these aren't who I am thinking of. So, I don't shed even the tiniest of little tears for them if someone pirates them. That's just the cost of exclusion. I know it is upsetting that they might have to wait a month to buy another Bentley.
Actually, at least in the US, IP addresses are *not* considered proof of identity, although that doesn't keep the enforcers from using that information any way they can.
And the telemetry data is a stretch as well. Even if they could subpoena it, that data isn't telling MS what songs you are playing, at most it is telling them what you have installed and maybe what files there are. MS gains no benefit from acting as a collector for content enforcers. They're trying to get ad revenue.
I admit, an album can be a beautifully crafted work of art through proper song selection and a general mood that one wishes to convey.
Unfortunately, most albums are compilations of one or two singles, one, maybe two, non-singles that are decent and the rest is 10-12 tracks of shit. On some of the worst albums that actually sell, there is only the one hit single. And sometimes that filler shit is some random person talking or the sound of pigs fucking just so the album can sound edgy and not really require any studio time.
An album should not be the default unit of sale for music. It encourages the release of mediocrity. I'd rather pay more for one good song than be forced to pay for an album of shit. Perhaps they can figure out how to do that. I wish they would.
As far as low streaming prices, let's be honest. Music probably just isn't worth that much per unit. There is no reason that Music has to exist for everything and support the release of new groups every year. If people want to have variety they need to pay for it, but I think there has to be a different way than ramming out songs like they are industrial product and bundling them together.
Fusion reactors can make things radioactive over time, but they cannot meltdown. Fusion plants or devices only use a very tiny amount of fuel at once.
Fission plants can meltdown because they are stocked with a decade's worth of fuel in the plant all at once, which means that criticality always needs to be controlled.
With a fusion plant, the reaction stops the second the tiny amount of fuel is used up or the reaction is disturbed in some way.
Fukushima is all fission products. This is fusion, which a field trip there won't do squat for, other that more quickly exposing them to a lifetime's supply of radiation if they get too close.
I don't think you need an NRC license for a Fusor. This isn't ever going to be a power plant and the radiation threat is minimal. You probably want to protect against those free neutrons though if you're going to run it for extended periods, but otherwise, no big deal.
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You have a point, but it has not kept people from trying to do just that. Although, I imagine the most usual use for a fake is simply to cover your tracks so that it isn't as clear when the theft happened, and perhaps to give some time to get away.
I think you have an excellent point. Images in print or on the internet do not do any justice to a lot of art work.
Also, many of the sizes of the works are not what you'd expect. At least one portrait that I had seen in a book before I went to see if in the museum I hadn't realized was a life-sized portrait. And since it was a head to toe with background and a little foreground, it was a very big painting.
Technique, materials, and the colors that they are able to create are something to see. Most oil paintings are very much 3D works of art in the sense that the images are layered colors and texture, but it's all flattened out in a book or an image.
Anyway, the last time I have checked approximately 50% of world's population did not have proper sewer, and approximately 15% do not have running water and electricity. Just a small fraction of interstellar travel project would bring these necessities to the fellow human beings.
I agree that we should take care of people, but money isn't the problem with water and electricity for those people. It's usually politics. 100 million dollars is a small fraction of the US yearly budget. Don't you think we would have already done all of that if it was just a matter of throwing money at the problem?
In any event, you can do more than one thing without neglecting the others. You pay for maintenance and infrastructure, but you do need to spend money on R&D as well. Work on all of these things pays off.
And a laser that can move a small object to 10% of c could possibly have other real uses in space and on Earth. For instance imparting that sort of power wouldn't necessarily move a large object, but it could deflect a very distant inbound massive object enough so that it misses the Earth, for instance. The capacitors used to output that sort of power would probably be very useful on Earth as well.
Dust isn't stationary in space. Even if you could reliably sweep some dust out, you'd still end up with some on your path. And I don't believe the laser would have the necessary power and coherence that far out to have cleared even a fraction of the whole route. The laser is mostly for quick acceleration that would probably happen mostly within the Solar System. It would probably be down to a very small fraction of its power before it even reached the Oort Cloud.
And it is hard, although not impossible, to have planets in a stable orbit in a multi-star system which Alpha Centauri is. They tend to have their orbits perturbed enough by the other close stars over millions of years that they get ejected or plunge into their sun.
There is some evidence there could be one or two planets possible around B, but none confirmed.
The Asteroid Belt is not particularly dense. There are colossal gaping spaces between asteroids. It's not rocks with little pebbles and dust filling in all of the space in between.
Yes, there is more of that than in the space outside the Asteroid Belt, but you'll find that the smaller particles will tend to clump a bit around the bigger objects. That's basically the effect of gravity on things over the period of millions of years. Bigger objects will sweep up smaller objects, even if they aren't massive enough to clump into a planet.
The risk of failure is higher, of course, but it is not particularly high.
Possibly, but you'd need to take the sail down on occasion to allow the beam to pass through it to clear the way ahead of it.
I'm sure that the laser could technically act on objects that are somehow stationary and in the path of the laser, but it is most likely that an object would impact the craft from an angle that is less than head-on. If so, then the object would have originated outside the path of the laser and would not be affected.
Additionally, for the laser to clear even straight ahead, the sail would have to come down, at least on occasion, to avoid blocking the laser's path. And that seems theoretically possible, but more complex and power intensive where you'd have a very limited power budget on such a craft to begin with.
I honestly don't know how they'd maintain a viable interstellar craft for that long without at least an RTG onboard, and RTGs are pretty heavy.
Nope. There's a rich Russian involved in there. That's where at least some of the money is coming from.
Apparently he got bored of buying tiny giraffes.
Something like that would hit the atmosphere of a planet like it was solid rock. There might be a light show, but it is unlikely that something that small, even at .5c would impart enough energy to cause a catastrophe on the ground.
Of course if there was an orbital habitat in the way... that could be different.
Strictly speaking, FTL by means other than simply exceeding the velocity of light in a vacuum does not invalidate general relativity. Wormholes and space-time warping are not ruled out by GR, although they require some things like matter with negative mass which has not been found and may well not exist.
There are also closed timelike curves which are also considered to be a valid, if unlikely solution, which allow for time travel. This does not actually require FTL, but it is done with warped space that could be utilized by an FTL travel method.
It is not clear if we'd notice those situations if they occurred. Obviously, they do seem unlikely given how causality seems to work, but if they are closed systems, they could exist, but we may not be able to observe them.
The universe should also be teeming with alien life just by the sheer age of the universe and probability of life arising elsewhere, but you'd think we'd have noticed that by now too. I'm not saying FTL is likely, but I don't know that it is actually impossible, even under GR. People like Hawking also assume that Quantum Mechanical solutions will eventually remove certain odd possibilities of relativity, but they actually are just making highly educated guesses based on what we can observe.
Yes, historically Congress passed an unfunded mandate which effectively made women into a class of people who it costs more to employ, with no benefit to the employer.
And we are surprised that in a scenario where it is difficult to evaluate and confirm the reasons why employers aren't hiring women, that they are, in fact, not hired.
Now presumably there is some benefit to employing women which makes the extra cost necessary. And if someone could actually identify and quantify that particular set of benefits, then calculations on the hiring of women can be added to the calculations and appropriate measures can be taken to show that it is a benefit to the bottom line.
And let's be honest, just saying "it's fair" is completely bogus. You could say that, *based on one set of priorities*. However, it is distinctly *unfair* if you evaluate another set of priorities. And then you ask yourself, whose priorities are they? Are they an employer's priorities or the government's priorities.
If it is the government's priorities, then the government should pay for it. Of course, the government loves getting votes by listening to the "there oughta be a law" people, but the whole "paying for it" thing would make them unpopular, so they just dump the responsibility on someone else.
After all, if you already own a bunch of guns, it's just cheaper to point them at an employer and tell them they have to do it, or else. But then, don't expect employers to be eager to pay for your little social revolution that gets them nothing.
Honestly, if there is some way in which women, all factors being nearly equal, are being paid less then men, then I am totally for eradicating that, but I don't see that being the case.
However, if you're going to tell me that we just have to sort of engage in unfairness that does not have any bearing on productivity, then I really think someone actually needs to do a significantly better job of selling it, if you really want any real movement on the "wage gap". Or we could just have a vote to entirely remove the onus on employers for the responsibility for undertaking "enhanced equality methods" and move it to the government and tax people for it appropriately instead of hiding in their usual weaselly way and making the employers the bad guys for simply trying to not get shafted by what even you admit was unfair.
Slaves have poor productivity and zero incentive.
As an "asset", a slave has to be maintained. You can whip slaves and all of that, but all it does is put a slave out of commission. You usually aren't permitted to kill slaves, but even where you are, you just flushed the money you paid for them down the toilet.
"Free" but low wage workers must shift for themselves in terms of finding shelter, health care, etc. If that worker does not take care of themselves and dies or is sick, they don't get paid and are replaced by someone else.
Understand that a slave is entirely maintained at the expense of the slaveholder. Since the slave will never get more than a slave bunk and slave labor, they're not even going to try and work harder. If they make no money, they have no one to send their checks back to in order to make it worthwhile to sleep in a dorm with a bunch of others.
Slave labor has basically one advantage over low wage free people, they can be forcibly imported to work on something, which means you don't have to go to a place with a high rate of available low wage workers. This was a big advantage of the slave trade in the Americas. Native populations either wouldn't do the work, or couldn't handle it. And more to the point, there were really never that many natives to enslave anyway, particularly in Thirteen Colonies. African slaves were imported to make up for that lack of labor. If they had high numbers of, let's say, illegal immigrant populations like today, slavery would not have been as economically beneficial.
Of course their stock tumbled. They did something that looked like it wasn't making immediate short term profit.
Nevertheless, it could score them some sweet PR in the longer term.
Possibly. He's brought out a lot of angry people. That could cause a paragraph's worth of trouble.
It's not like they need to give two paragraphs over to Hillary winning.
Yes. It is understandable that they take so much at once, but the company does not get to shaft you to make up for it.
You did the right thing. I wouldn't begrudge the women their time off, especially if is part of their promised benefits, but *you* have a right to time off too. I don't take a lot of vacation, but I should never be in a situation where I cannot do so because someone else is always out.
That's when they hire someone else to pick up the slack, or have the manager suck it up, or I'd walk out the door.
I don't see how that addresses his point. It may affect your ability to get a *new* job, and that can be a problem, but it doesn't affect your rate if you're hired. Or if it does, the law requires that the discrepancy be addressed.
I think you are right for some people, but these are people who have less means who simply wouldn't be able to justify that expense to begin with. They will always be with us.
However, there are people who can budget for streaming, and I can tell you, piracy is free and a lot more convenient than it used to be, but it's still more work that I'd like to put into getting tracks. A streaming service with a reasonable cost and a wide selection means that someone like me can justify spending some money on the service. And I am happy to be paying a reasonable price for music itself. There is certainly work that goes into making it and if I can support that for a reasonable sum, I will.
Now that things are getting exclusionary again, they're again making it desirable for people to pirate. I mean, I can certainly justify paying one service, I cannot justify paying for two just to get one artist's exclusive. What is more, even if I switched for one exclusive, then tomorrow another artist is going to have an exclusive on the service that I just left. It's not really possible for me to win in that situation, and if the difference between the services is effectively 20-30 tracks out of thousands, there's no real incentive to want to move. At that point, you're simply going to shrug and get the tracks some other way.
Now you can argue, I have no inherent right to that person's music. And I agree. But that's not really going to be an argument that will sway very many downloaders.
I would have to agree for the services that are set up to extract more money. And these exclusives are more of the same exclusionary rent seeking that I thought that we'd gotten beyond already. Looks like we only convinced their music business overlords, but not the artists that have their own labels and followings.
In the end, I guess I don't care. If Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Kanye want to extract even more money out of their audience, go for it. That's just one more reason they aren't on my playlist to begin with. There's other music out there for me. If they have a audience that will put up with that, good for them.
At the same time, when I think of starving artists, these aren't who I am thinking of. So, I don't shed even the tiniest of little tears for them if someone pirates them. That's just the cost of exclusion. I know it is upsetting that they might have to wait a month to buy another Bentley.
Actually, at least in the US, IP addresses are *not* considered proof of identity, although that doesn't keep the enforcers from using that information any way they can.
And the telemetry data is a stretch as well. Even if they could subpoena it, that data isn't telling MS what songs you are playing, at most it is telling them what you have installed and maybe what files there are. MS gains no benefit from acting as a collector for content enforcers. They're trying to get ad revenue.
So... fuck albums.
I admit, an album can be a beautifully crafted work of art through proper song selection and a general mood that one wishes to convey.
Unfortunately, most albums are compilations of one or two singles, one, maybe two, non-singles that are decent and the rest is 10-12 tracks of shit. On some of the worst albums that actually sell, there is only the one hit single. And sometimes that filler shit is some random person talking or the sound of pigs fucking just so the album can sound edgy and not really require any studio time.
An album should not be the default unit of sale for music. It encourages the release of mediocrity. I'd rather pay more for one good song than be forced to pay for an album of shit. Perhaps they can figure out how to do that. I wish they would.
As far as low streaming prices, let's be honest. Music probably just isn't worth that much per unit. There is no reason that Music has to exist for everything and support the release of new groups every year. If people want to have variety they need to pay for it, but I think there has to be a different way than ramming out songs like they are industrial product and bundling them together.
*Just think, if the supply ever dried up, the war would be over. Interesting concept, don't you think?
Then they would fight with sticks and stones. People have been killing each other since there have been people. Bullets just make it more efficient.
Fusion reactors can make things radioactive over time, but they cannot meltdown. Fusion plants or devices only use a very tiny amount of fuel at once.
Fission plants can meltdown because they are stocked with a decade's worth of fuel in the plant all at once, which means that criticality always needs to be controlled.
With a fusion plant, the reaction stops the second the tiny amount of fuel is used up or the reaction is disturbed in some way.
Fukushima is all fission products. This is fusion, which a field trip there won't do squat for, other that more quickly exposing them to a lifetime's supply of radiation if they get too close.
I don't think you need an NRC license for a Fusor. This isn't ever going to be a power plant and the radiation threat is minimal. You probably want to protect against those free neutrons though if you're going to run it for extended periods, but otherwise, no big deal.