As someone who's actually had a product line manufactured in China, I can say this. In general, they consider product specifications as a guideline only. They'll do whatever they can to relax tolerances, substitute materials and shortcut processes to lower costs, without the engineering or product research background to support those decisions. They don't pass those lower costs on either.
I gave up having anything made in China years ago. The quality control alone ended up costing more than any savings I got from Chinese labor. In some products, we had as high as a 20% defect rate, and 5% was normal. Now I use automated machines to make my goods, and I hire local employees to do the design and operations work. You know what? now I have a better product AND a better price than I used to get from China!
How clever of these folks to reverse engineer someone's work, then offer a modification for a price.
I wonder how they'll feel when someone else reverse engineers their product (the un-locking software) and gives it away for free?
--- Help a kid become an engineer, buy them a Catapult Kit today!
When I started in IT, my mentor confessed to me that all he wanted to do was quit and open an ice cream shop. At the time, I didn't understand. Now I do.
After 15 years in IT, I quit (actually, not by choice. The dot-com meltdown of 2000 left me unemployed.) So, I started a toy company. You can see some of it at http://www.rlt.com/
Now that the waves of destruction from the internet big boom have subsided, would I go back to IT? No way! I'm a toymaker now and loving it. So do my kids...
As I've said before, programmers and sysadmins have some incredible advantages over most MBAs. You have LOGIC. You are CREATIVE. You have a propensity for PROBLEM SOLVING. You can think through and visualize a plan of action from beginning to end. You can change course and re-program the system when requirements change. You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when it breaks, we'll fix it". Guess what, these qualities plus a willingness to try and fail then try again (kind of like compiling) are what make entrepreneurs successful. Another advantage you have is that you won't have to hire some expensive tech guy to do your programming/sysadmin/DBA stuff for you.
You can do it. Just remember- there are a million reasons why you'll fail, and everyone will be happy to remind you of them constantly. But there's only one reason why you will succede- because you make it happen. So, ignore the naysayers and the critics, trust your instincts and go start a business.
I've actually done work on something like this for a science project- a compressed air powered engine. In my research, I stumbled upon a French inventor and saw the video of his compressed air powered car. Not a concept, an actual working prototype.
The difficulty in using compressed air instead of an explosion to move the piston is in the dwell time of the piston in the cylinder. He has a patented system of rods to connect the piston to the crankshaft for increased dwell time and longer stroke.
Like a diesel engine, the torque can be adjusted on the fly by leaving the valve open longer during the downstroke. It's really pretty cool and naturally, I can't find the web site now.
The other major obstacle is the air tank. the French prototype used a single carbon-fiber sphere to hold the pressure.
I don't remember the details of the thermodynamics. Maybe someone else can enlighten us, but I recall that it's not very efficient. Heat loss is generated during compression that is lost to the environment, then more inefficiency as the tank is cooled during operation.
The thermodynamics are the killer. Like the Stirling Engine, this has been tried many times in the last hundred years or so. It never gets very far.
Perhaps. I'm in no position to challenge that claim. But how many months was that book in the NY Times best seller list? I agree that the contents were mostly fluff, but damn, authors (best selling authors) typically get 10% of the retail price in royalties. At $10/book, that's $1 to the author, times well over a million copies sold. And the hardback version was more than $10.
So, the quote holds true whether it really happened or not. His book may have been terrible literature, the grammar was atrocious, and he tended to be redundant, but the important thing to remember is that it SOLD well! Very well.
One other rule of business I've seen to be true is that "there's a huge difference between a compliment and a contract."
So, to summarize, when starting your business use freeware, cheap hardware, develop or retail important skills, concentrate on what your market is/wants/expects, satisfy that, and ignore the naysayers and critics.
Also remember this- There are a million reasons why your business will fail, and only one reason why it will succeed, YOU. You have to make it happen. Robert Kennedy said, "Things do not [just] happen, things [must be] made to happen." So, to be successful, follow the words of Jean-Luc Picard and "Make it so."
(And don't forget to have some fun! I'd suggest some AirZookas or Zero Blasters for impromptu office battles - http://www.backyardartillery.com/ )
Hah! What you don't know about marketing shows. I'm not trying to win any awards, and my customers aren't influenced by flash and dazzle. Yep, I've tried Amazon, and Ebay, and I even had a fancy web redesign done once on a bet. The designer lost- sales actually dropped, and I reverted back to the old one. I've also abandoned Amazon and Ebay- too expensive for too little returned. Cost efficiency is important too you know.
First rule of small business- know your market! Your market IS your business. Great service is what my customers value! Robert T. Kiyosaki said, in his mega best seller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, "I'm not a best writing author, I'm a best SELLING author!" In response to a pulitzer prize winner who was criticizing his work.
Case in point- I used to supply ThinkGeek with the Shot-Blade toy (I'm the exclusive dealer in the US) However, I sold FAR more of them on http://www.backyardartillery.com/ than ThinkGeek ever did, in the same time frame. It's a really cool toy too! review- http://www.dansdata.com/shotblade.htm
Design is mostly an ego trip for the designers. Results are what counts, and I doubt many of my customers are designers!
Digital technology DEFINITELY increases productivity, and decreases it too. It's all about the people, and what they do with it. It's not about spending money by any means.
Case in point- Using almost exclusively freeware and extremely cheap hardware, I've been able to create and build a company that needs only TWO employees to run ( http://www.rlt.com/ ). And it makes a good income for both of us. Both of us are IT capable. Both of us know how to use digital technologies to our advantage.
Digital technology is the TOOL. Henry Ford said that if you need a tool, and you don't buy it, you end up paying for it anyway but you don't get to use it. Do tools make us more productive? Ask any carpenter to give up power tools and see what he says. By the same token, give a hopeless amateur a world-class workshop and the best materials to work with, and any chair he makes will still wobble. But give a master craftsman a hammer, a chisel and some scrap wood, and he'll make you a chair that will be sturdy, strong and will last a lifetime. It's all about the people, their skills, and their tools. I'd like to see any modern company try to compete without any computers in today's world.
Want to be more productive? Make more money? YOU are the master carpenter! And mostly, your employers are the hopeless amateurs who are using you as the tool! When I finally figured that out, I started my own business and I've never looked back.
As programmers and sysadmins, you have some incredible advantages over most MBAs. You have LOGIC. You are CREATIVE. You have a propensity for PROBLEM SOLVING. You can think through and visualize a plan of action from beginning to end. You can change course and re-program the system when requirements change. You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when it breaks, we'll fix it". Guess what, these qualities plus a willingness to try and fail then try again are what make entrepreneurs successful. Another advantage you have is that you won't have to hire some expensive tech guy to do your programming/sysadmin/DBA stuff for you. I can't count how many people have asked me who does my web sites. It's fun to watch the blank stare on their faces when I tell them "I did".
In short, don't BE the tool, USE the tool. Skills first, equipment second.
I concur with this posting. Not only do I have a four year old and a two year old in the same situation, I also happen to own a toy business - http://www.rlt.com/
My observation of not only my own kids, but also of my customers, is that kids really prefer to use toys they can learn something from, without feeling like they're being taught. In other words, they want to explore and discover things on their own.
Give them a toy that only seems exciting, and they'll play with it for five minutes and put it away forever. Give them something where they can learn a skill, and they'll keep playing with it. Case in point - The Hula Hoop, legos or a frisbee vs. 99% of the colorful cheap crap on toy shelves today.
Same with Tech toys. Tech toys that amuse adults are designed to capture your attention within a few seconds, and get you to buy it. Just like a Roger Corman film. Once you've bought the ticket, what's in the box doesn't really matter. Colors, shapes and cool noises won't make a toy a good one.
Here's another example- recently, I took my kids to Utah. The skiing wasn't so hot, so we went to a place called "The Treehouse." It's a playroom for kids, crammed with all sorts of toys and adventures. We spent the whole day there, and to my surprise the most popular thing was a block toy called Kapla.
Kapla is just wooden sticks, all the same. 1/4" x 1" x 4". There were about 4000 of them in a big wheelbarrow, and a few pictures of some amazing things that people have built with them. Kids loved to try and duplicate what they saw in the pictures with the blocks. Meanwhile, in another part of the exhibit, a very friendly looking robotic grandma waited to read stories to anyone who would sit in her lap. No one did. They were all playing with the Kapla blocks. I watched a three year old girl build a tower over several attempts, until she finally made it taller than she was.
The lesson I learned was that hi-tech or not, the best toys offer kids the opportunity for discovery and achievement. Any hi-tech toy that's just tech for tech's sake gets boring pretty quickly. Old tech can be pretty cool too. One of my most popular products is a catapult - http://www.catapultkits.com/ - high tech from 800 years ago! The feedback I get from parents is that nothing has gotten their kids more excited about learning math than the catapult, and the equations for calculalting range and efficiency that come with it. "That egg only went 100 feet. How can we get it to clear the fence?!" Longer sling? More counterweight? Different release angle? -- opportunities to explore...
I recently took my kid to a place called "the treehouse" in Ogden, UT. She discovered a toy called "Kapla" It's brilliant- nothing but a wheelbarrow filled with sticks measuring 1" x 4" x 1/4" each. About 2000 of them. She made a tower over 3 feet tall, then had a blast knocking it down by throwing things at it. Tactile toys have their own appeal.
In fact, I make a living by selling kids a set of plans that can turn a brick, a stick, and some string into a machine that hurls eggs. It's called a trebuchet. There is a market for old school stuff. Just look at http://www.catapultkits.com./ Then there's the toy guns, pogo sticks and skateboards - http://www.ballistictoys.com/ - that help a kid get an intuitive feel for ballistic motion, the foundations of physics.
Here's the appeal- Kids learn real physics, not simulated physics as in a computer game. With the catapult kits, they get to do simple math to predict how far it will throw, then (and this is the part that gets them hooked) they go outside, into the field to test their work. When they see the connection between the math and the real world machine, one that hurls an egg about 200 feet, then they get excited. They see how to apply math to do something fun, outside, away from the CPU and CRT, LCD, etc.
Real toys are an important part of a kid's total education. Even if it's a piece of string, a stick and a brick.
Hey, I was a windows user for fifteen years. I've also been a developer for AIX and been using Slackware since it was born- still do on all my servers (and not planning to change that).
I bought my first mac (Mac Pro) two months ago to replace my desktop on the home computer. I'm now in the process of replacing ALL my windows computers with Macs in my business too, starting with the CEO (my own box). Costly, yes. But I'm convinced it will be well worth it.
Why are Macs better- I believe it's because of a dedication to this quote: "People who are serious about software design their own hardware." I forget who said it, but as a programmer, I agree 100% and I believe it's BETTER that you have to buy the OS AND the hardware from Mac.
> many of us spend more on gas than any other commodity
You must not be a homeowner. I am. Let's see... If I add up my gas bills for both my F-350 pickup truck and my minivan for a whole month, add in my electric bill and my water bill, hell, throw in the trash, sewage and phone bills (including internet DSL) too, then we're still a far cry short of what I pay in PROPERTY TAX on a monthly basis.
Sure, I'd be happy to pay $6 per gallon on gas and double my electric bill if I could deduct the difference from my property taxes.
It's the damn high cost of government we should be looking at. And they say this isn't a socialist nation. Right. When 60% to 80% of your productive efforts go to support the government, what do you call it?
Add it up- income tax, sales tax, property tax, payroll taxes and other corporate taxes that get rolled into every product you buy (and you pay sales tax on that additional amount too) all the little taxes on phone service, gasoline, airports, hotels, etc... Out of every dollar you _could_ have earned, at least 80% of it is taxed away- in the US.
High gas prices? It's a diversion. Your government is the most expensive thing you pay for.
I tried to buy one in early summer, 2000. I was told at that time (by Sawstop) that they were not available, Period. I was a ready, willing and anxious customer with only a few questions, and the treatment I recieved was positively rude.
Six years go by and a lot of things can change, but that's the truth.
In the mean time, I spent about $1000 for a damn good 5 HP 220V tablesaw from Grizzly. I use it in my business everyday and I love it. The blades I use cost $85 each.
"Retooling the manufacturing process" is BS though. It amazes me how often things are re-designed and changed. It seems like half the time when I try to buy accessories or replacement parts for something, I have to specify the year it was made, becuase the parts are not interchangeable year-to-year.
I saw this demonstrated once, on the Tonight show, with Johnny Carson (yes, I'm that old and yes, this thing's been around that long!)
So, when I finally had a reason to go buy a tablesaw for my business, and I saw the horrible cost of insurance, I tried to buy the auto-shut-off table saw. Of course, I searched the web. Then I called the big saw distribution importers and distributors. It took some effort, but I finally got an answer why they were not, and probably would never be available.
It's not a perfect product. It is still possible to get your fingers cut off, and it is possible to have it "jam" on plain old wood too. When it jams, you have to replace the blade and the whole blade jamming mechanism- it can take most of a day to do that, if you have the parts, and it's expensive. It can cost as much as a whole new table saw each time it goes off.
All those things are solveable, but I was also told that the insurance companies hate the thing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you know that a table saw is dangerous. If you believe that it's less dangerous, then you might be more careless too. The car companies had a similar argument against seat belts back in the 1960s.
There are better solutions in industry. CNC automated machines are used where lots of similar parts need to be made. There are very few, if any, one-off parts in manufacturing environments. So the only real market for this machine is the hobbyist or general contractor and cabinet maker, and the professionals have really good stafety rules anyway (at least the ones where I worked did).
But, as it stands, nobody has a case if he tries to sue the manufacturer because he cut off his finger. But put an auto-brake on the saw, and every time it fails the manufacturer and insurance company have a dismemberment case to settle.
As I said, I've been doing it for years and haven't been stopped. I did get asked once why I didn't have any baggage. I said "I'm on vacation, going to my parent's house." No problem. For you older folks who might not get away with that one, try "I'm going on vacation, to an all-inclusive, clothing optional, private resort. I won't be needing anything while I'm there." Uh, In New York? "That's right, I said it's a PRIVATE resort."
Regarding the explosives up the butt thing- think about the technology man! The last time I carried bags was on a trip to Hawaii four years ago. They scanned my suitcase and had to open it up because the bomb detector found something. It was a chocolate bar that just happened to have the same density as plastic explosives. They let me go after I ate the bar in front of them.
So, as long as you're not storing chocolate up your Axx, I doubt you'll have to worry. They have scanners...
On another point- the effectiveness of this "security" is only as good/bad as the creativity of the bad guys. It's not too hard to think of things that might get by. But, how do you know this "security" is not just a smoke screen, with the *real* security going on behind the scenes, out of sight of the general public. The terrorists know everything the public knows. And yet, they did catch these guys. Security that's overt is merely a deterrent. Security that you don't know about is what catches these people.
The "smoke screen" security is there to protect the economic interests of the airlines as much as anything. It keeps the ignorant public [more] comfortable and willing to buy airline tickets. As the public perception of risk fades, so too will the overt security measures.
Security, like politics, is a game of chess wrapped up in a game of poker. Bluff, then make your moves while no one is looking.
Your actual risk of death? Number 1- heart disease. 2- car crash. You're more likely to drown in your own swimming pool that to be the victim of an accidental shooting. And, lower still that those, you're more likely to die in a war in a foreign country than to die in a terrorist attack. I read that more Americans have died in Iraq than died in 9/11. That means that George W. Bush is a bigger threat to your life than Osama Bin Laden is.
But, there are other risks than death. Economic and social instability can make life pretty unpleasant for all of us.
----- Get creative with your own lump of very high viscosity dimorphic semi-liquid at SuperPutty.com! http://www.superputty.com/
Avoid the hassle of flying by taking all your luggage and carry on stuff you would normally take on the flight, and box it up. Drop it off at the nearest Fedex or UPS to be shipped to your destination.
Get a cab to the airport and be sure to have nothing but folding money (use any coins you happen to collect in change for tips), your cell phone (in case of emergency), of course, your ID (you have papers, no?) and a plain paperback book. Take a credit card if you feel it's necessary. Wear comfortable, simple clothes (with a pocket for your stuff- no bags!) and shoes that you can slip on and off without using your hands.
Be sure to feel sorry for all the other poor slobs who have to have their bags inspected as you breeze through security. Then feel sorry for them again as they wait for baggage claim.
Downsides to this method? It costs a bit more, but well worth it. It makes flying virtually stress-free. You'll lose potentially productive hours in flight where you could have been working on something. So take a nap and stay up later. If you can't sleep and get bored, use that silly little lump of grey matter in your head. Get creative and make up some mind games you can play with yourself. How many friends can you remember in your life? When are their birthdays? What's the square root of my birthday? Is the price of gold related in any way to the fed interest rate? How would I go about figuring that out? Can I make-up and memorize a poem with more than 20 lines? seriously, we're supposed to be the creative ones. If we can't even entertain ourselves, we might as well be robots.
Hmm. 50 GB on a CD seems like a no-brainer considering what I just bought today.
I got one of those new "chocolate" cell phones. Cool. It takes a Micro-SD memory card, so I went to my local computer superstore to get one.
A one GB micro-SD memory card cost me $74.00. I'd never seen one before, and when I opened the package I was afraid the wind would blow it away. It's litterally smaller than my little fingernail and about as thick as a potato chip. A 7x7 grid of these cards would be 49 GB, and easily fit within the bounds of an ancient 1.44 MB floppy disk case. Hell, you could fit three or four layers of 7x7 grids of these things in that case.
Ok, so $3626 might be a bit pricey for a movie disk, but the technology is there. It's just a matter of price. Remember, all the features in this $149 cell phone would have cost well over $Ten Grand thirty years ago and would have required a suitcase full of hardware too.
I predict than in 20 years or less, we'll have terrabytes on disks the size of a quarter.
I've read all these posts, and they almost exclusively focus on the music business and a little on the book business. But what about the rest of us little businesses who would not, could not exist without the Internet?
In 2000, I shocked my friends when I told them I was going to start a business selling catapult kits ( http://www.trebuchet.com/http://www.catapultkits.com/http://www.mangonel.com/http://www.trebuchetplans.com/ and more). "Who needs a catapult kit?" was the reaction I got. "People do." was my response. I told them I'd sell my kits on the Internet- this was just after the big dot-com stock market meltdown. Because of that meltdown, all too many people believed that e-commerce was a doomed business and that I was a fool.
Maybe I am a fool, but I started my business with about $200 (not a typo- two hundred dollars), a digital camera and a fistfull of open source software. I spent zero dollars on marketing, zero dollars on advertising, and after a few months, I was already profitable.
Now I employ myself and some other people too. It's a very small niche market. So small, that it's actually NOT cost effective to manufacture these things in China (I tried). It's such a small niche market, that if I had to spend any money on advertising, I wouldn't survive. I tried actually- Radio, magazines, direct mail (not spam!) even a few appearances on TV. None was cost effective. Not even Google's AdSense is cost effective for my product line.
So, I live by the internet. I do no advertising other than a simple affiliate model. It's a widely distributed market, impossible to target. Thanks to the search engines, I don't have to find my market, they can find me.
Without the Internet, I wouldn't be in business. I am a cell in the long, long tail of niche businesses that simply do not make sense for a brick and mortar world, but thrive in cyberspace.
The long tail is real. My business is proof of that.
Oh yeah... I was born in 1960. Really. Not only that, but my parents refused to buy me those hot wheels or any of the other cool toys that the other kids in the 'hood were toting. Did I feel bad about it? I sure did. I spent a lot of time in the backyard, developing cooler toys of my own. I built catapults to fling my dog's poop into their yards, I built flying toys that really flew, and I made huts and other structures to shade me and my work from the sun. All out of scrap lumber I scrounged from construction sites. I learned engineering and problem solving. I learned how to use my dad's tools and other hardware. And I had fun doing it too.
My other friends who had all the cool toys eventually ended up in ho-hum jobs. One is a manager of a music store, one is a truck driver, etc. Out of them all. I was the only one who became an engineer and eventually started my own business. I am by far the most successful of them all.
What's the point of all this? Imagination isn't enough, kids also need to excercise their creativity and develop the drive to complete a project. They need a goal, one with a reward. Building a machine that hurled dog poop into my neighbors yard was an incredible reward for a ten year old kid!
That's my complaint with hot-wheels. What's the goal? The real toy isn't the car, it should be the tracks and the tunnels and the other things that make the toy interesting. You only need one kind of car for that.
So, in my business I make toys that kids can learn engineering from. I make and sell the catapult projects that helped me down that path towards becoming an engineer. http://www.catapultkits.com/ The reason I do it is because these days, and in the days to come, the world needs and will increasingly need good scientists and engineers who can think creatively and be resourceful, and that starts with the toys they play with as kids.
Old tech is just as good as new tech for getting kids to learn while they play! (as long as there's really a lesson in there somewhere.)
If you can't buy a catapult kit for your kid, at least give them some rope and sticks to play with sometimes. (legal disclaimer- Just be sure to supervise them at all times too. Ropes can strangle, and sticks can be used as weapons. They can also be used to make bridges and machines to pull tree stumps out of the ground, but I'll leave that as an excersize for the reader.)
All the responses I've read so far are missing the real problem.
The Earth isn't infinite. Neither is any species. Try to think in terms of birth-infancy-youth-adulthood-death when reading this question, and replace the word "we" with "civilization".
Humanity may survive for many centuries, or millennia to come, but will our civilization?
There's only one way it can- it has to grow. A "steady-state" world is a fools game. It invites stagnation, which is ultimately a dead-end road. The species becomes complacent, and dies.
In order to grow, we have to find and exploit more and more energy. Constantly. Energy fuels civilization via technology. Technology is freedom. Don't think so? Just look at how technology has changed the lives of everyday people throuought history. With enough energy, virtually anything is possible.
The oil, coal and uranium we get from the Earth will either run out or poison our own habitat one way or another- eventually. Probably within about a hundred years or so. If we wait until then, it's too late. Remember, energy cannot be created. It's either there, or it isn't. And it takes energy to develop technology.
Wind? Waves? Geothermal? Maybe as stopgaps, but not sufficient to fuel continued growth.
Fission? Not enough uranium, unless you want to spread nuclear weapons technology around the world via fast breeder reactors.
Fusion? If anyone can ever get it to work, and what about all that dangerous radioactive tritium that's bound to leak out all the time?
If we humans squander all the energy we've found in the ground, without using it as the stepping stone it needs to be, to get to a cleaner, inexhaustible energy source, then we and our civilization are surely doomed to return to the stone age and dissapear like the Neaderthals did before us. Then, a few million years into the future, after another layer of oil and coal deposits are layed down, perhaps the squid or some other intelligent, tool-capable beast will rise and become the next sentient life on earth.
Kardashev postulated that planet-based energy is only the first stage of a civilization. The second stage uses all the energy from a star. Third stage uses all the energy of a galaxy. Let's not give up now, we've got a hell of a long way to go!
We could enforce conservation of our existing, dwindling energy resources by raising the price of oil and coal (via government action, of course) to three or four times - no, ten times it's current low value, and dedicate a significant portion of the remaining energy to getting real, abundant alternatives.
Don't think energy prices are low? Look at your ceiling. See the lights? the ones being powered by a coal fired generator many miles away, that uses coal that was transported over many miles by train to get to the generator, The coal that we had to rip a mountain apart to get to? That's a lot of work and energy being squandered just to replace the light that's already available on your building, light that's a few feet away, pouring down from the sun, only to be blocked by your roof.
Why do we do it that way? Because we need those lights at nighttime, and it's too expensive to install dual lighting systems- you know, skylight windows. Those are too expensive. A freaking window. That's what I mean when I say energy is way too cheap.
Is anyone doing any research into quantum energy sources? What about tapping the Higgs field? Could there be a better way to utilize E=MC^2 than just making hot water to power a steam/turbine engine? There's got to be a better way to liberate the energy locked into normal matter. Who's looking into that?
NASA studied space based solar power in 1976 and again in 1995. They shelved it each time. Why? Why can't we tap the unimaginably huge amount of sun generated energy that's just wafting by between the Earth and the Moon? It's not a question of how- we know several ways how. It's a question of cost and politics. What technologies need to be improved, invented,
Ok, lots of people have had PRK and Lasik and loved it. It was becasue of two friends of mine who had LASIK and loved it that I decided to do it. I wish I hadn't. I really really wish I hadn't
First off, I used a very highly recommended doc. He even had photos in his office of all the Hollywood celebrities he'd done it on. Not that hollywood celebrities add any credibility to any expertise other than acting, and even that's debatable. Except that they do tend to have very big, strong social networks, and cost is typically no object, so I felt like this was at least a good goc with fabulous word of mouth recommendations, and he wasn't cheap. He also had a "zero failure rate" in at least ten years of practice.
So I did it, and had 20-20 vision. I don't qualify as a faiure, but I certainly didn't know how many ways your vision can be not-right either. Sure, I can read the 20-20 line on the chart at 20 feet. So I'm a success, right? Well, the letters aren't acutually supposed to have drop-shadows. But I do see them and I can read them with no difficulty.
My cornea had developed a "wrinkle" in it. That's what the doc called it. So small and slight that it can't be seen without special instruments. But the doc could see it. And I can see the refractive abberation it causes on my retina. I see double vision on anything with high contrast. It's especially bad in the blue-green part of the spectrum. When driving, I see double green lights but only one red light.
Don't misunderstand, it's not a two-eye focusing on the same thing problem. Even with one eye shut, I see double, like a drop shadow. It's a slightly left-right misalignment with my left eye and a 45 degree diagonal misalignment with my right eye. Looking at the full moon at night is depressing. It's a big fat misshapen blur. This kind of thing can NOT be corrected with glasses either.
To be fair, I have incredible vision at certain distances. I can still see very well up close, no reading glasses needed at all even though I'm 45 years old (I had the surgery 3.5 years ago to cure myopia, so I've never needed reading glasses anyway) I can also see details on distant mountains and in clouds and passing jet planes I could never have seen with my glasses on. What the sunsets do to clouds truly blows me away now. I've never seen such beauty before in my life! But that's not very useful generally. Driving- especially at night is maddening because of all the double images from traffic lights and other lighted signs. I hate neon signs now like you wouldn't believe. And then there's the moon, and I see at least twice as many stars as you probably do. I see twin-stars that should be solitary.
But, I still have 20-20 vision, because I can make out the damn letters on that friggin chart. So I'm not a failure. I'm a screaming success, from the doc's point of view anyway.
The solution? I've been told the only thing to do is have the operation again. For free this time, of course. I don't think so. I wish I could have my old eyes back. I fear they'll only get worse if I do it again.
I wonder how the military is dealing with the possibility of pilots who can pass the 20-20 test on the chart but aren't reporting the double vision thing. Then again, maybe they've perfected the "details on mountaintops" thing and are exploiting it somehow. That could be useful for military pilots!
My 5 year old daughter broke a window while no one was looking. She wanted to avoid being punished, so when I asked her what happened, she told me a lion had jumped through the window and that's how it was broken.
On pressing her for details, I remembered that we had watched a TV show where a lion jumped through a hoop in a circus act. She also knows that birds occasionally fly into the windows- we've had to clean up the carcasses and go through that explanation several times. But, using pure logic, and knowing that no one was here to see otherwise, she concluded that it was logical to tell me that a lion was walking by and jumped through the window because he didn't know the window was closed. Apparently he jumped in because he wanted a drink of water from our toilet- like the dogs. It was beautiful logic coming from a 5 year old! But, as you can see, what you don't know can truly ruin your day when it comes to haphazardly applied logic.
One degree Farhenheit, multiplied by the volume of the entire atmosphere, is an incredible amount of heat energy. All that extra energy sloshing around can make some pretty nasty storms, and it can shift global rainfall patterns too. Remember Etheopia in the 1980s? Where is your food grown? Are you prepared to get it from somewhere else?
That chemical you asked about- how's this logic:
1. We burn a measureable amount of fossil fuel each year.
2. It's well known how much CO2 that produces.
3. We know how much CO2 we're putting in the air.
4. We know how much the atmospheric CO2 has been rising over the last 100 years, and there is a correlation.
5. We know that CO2, among other things, traps heat.
6. New research is showing that the earth should have trapped much more heat than it has, but, atmoshperic particulates (smog, smoke, con trails, etc.) are blocking some of the sun's energy- as much as 10% it seems. That's why we cooled between 1940 and 1980, but now the CO2 heat-trap is catching up. IF we clean up our act in terms of particle pollution, we could actually increase the rate of global warming without any new CO2 going into the air.
7. Cars and trucks are not the biggest source of CO2, it's the coal fired electric generating plants. While they're still in business, those silly little hybrid vehicles are entirely pointless.
8. Another chemical marker produced by coal fired power plants is mercury. Consumer Reports has advised, based on EPA data, that pregnant women should NOT eat tuna in any form due to concentrated mercury poisining.
How's that for a chemical marker?
Pure logic, without empirical observations and testable hypothesis, is little better than religion.
In other words, it's equally succeptible to abuses by arrogance and ego.
Slashdot Mirror
This was shown in a time-lapse sequence in a movie called Koyaniskatsi (or some spelling similar to that)
Produced about 20 or 30 years ago.
Cool movie.
If anyone can find it or confirm the proper spelling, I'd appreciate an update.
"Keep young children in the walled garden, those that survive and escape can be schooled those that don't are no longer a drain on my resources."
Don't we already do that?
It's called "religion".
Except the ones still inside the garden are now a valuable resource we call "consumer".
Don't leave the gate open!
http://www.rlt.com/ -- for Reason, Logic and Truth in your kid's education.
As someone who's actually had a product line manufactured in China, I can say this. In general, they consider product specifications as a guideline only. They'll do whatever they can to relax tolerances, substitute materials and shortcut processes to lower costs, without the engineering or product research background to support those decisions. They don't pass those lower costs on either.
I gave up having anything made in China years ago. The quality control alone ended up costing more than any savings I got from Chinese labor. In some products, we had as high as a 20% defect rate, and 5% was normal. Now I use automated machines to make my goods, and I hire local employees to do the design and operations work. You know what? now I have a better product AND a better price than I used to get from China!
http://www.rlt.com/
--- Help a kid become an engineer, buy them a Catapult Kit today!
When I started in IT, my mentor confessed to me that all he wanted to do was quit and open an ice cream shop. At the time, I didn't understand. Now I do.
After 15 years in IT, I quit (actually, not by choice. The dot-com meltdown of 2000 left me unemployed.) So, I started a toy company. You can see some of it at http://www.rlt.com/
Now that the waves of destruction from the internet big boom have subsided, would I go back to IT? No way! I'm a toymaker now and loving it. So do my kids...
As I've said before, programmers and sysadmins have some incredible advantages over most MBAs. You have LOGIC. You are CREATIVE. You have a propensity for
PROBLEM SOLVING. You can think through and visualize a plan of action from beginning to end. You can change course and re-program the system
when requirements change. You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the
hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when
it breaks, we'll fix it". Guess what, these qualities plus a willingness to try and fail then try again (kind of like compiling) are what make entrepreneurs
successful. Another advantage you have is that you won't have to hire some expensive tech guy to do your programming/sysadmin/DBA stuff for
you.
You can do it. Just remember- there are a million reasons why you'll fail, and everyone will be happy to remind you of them constantly. But there's only one reason why you will succede- because you make it happen. So, ignore the naysayers and the critics, trust your instincts and go start a business.
Have fun!
Simple enough URL.
http://www.theaircar.com/howitworks.html
----------
How about an airZOOKA! http://www.backyardartillery.com/soft/
I've actually done work on something like this for a science project- a compressed air powered engine. In my research, I stumbled upon a French inventor and saw the video of his compressed air powered car. Not a concept, an actual working prototype.
The difficulty in using compressed air instead of an explosion to move the piston is in the dwell time of the piston in the cylinder. He has a patented system of rods to connect the piston to the crankshaft for increased dwell time and longer stroke.
Like a diesel engine, the torque can be adjusted on the fly by leaving the valve open longer during the downstroke. It's really pretty cool and naturally, I can't find the web site now.
The other major obstacle is the air tank. the French prototype used a single carbon-fiber sphere to hold the pressure.
I don't remember the details of the thermodynamics. Maybe someone else can enlighten us, but I recall that it's not very efficient. Heat loss is generated during compression that is lost to the environment, then more inefficiency as the tank is cooled during operation.
The thermodynamics are the killer. Like the Stirling Engine, this has been tried many times in the last hundred years or so. It never gets very far.
--
Have some fun and help feed my family. Visit http://www.rlt.com/ today!
Perhaps. I'm in no position to challenge that claim. But how many months was that book in the NY Times best seller list? I agree that the contents were mostly fluff, but damn, authors (best selling authors) typically get 10% of the retail price in royalties. At $10/book, that's $1 to the author, times well over a million copies sold. And the hardback version was more than $10.
So, the quote holds true whether it really happened or not. His book may have been terrible literature, the grammar was atrocious, and he tended to be redundant, but the important thing to remember is that it SOLD well! Very well.
One other rule of business I've seen to be true is that "there's a huge difference between a compliment and a contract."
So, to summarize, when starting your business use freeware, cheap hardware, develop or retail important skills, concentrate on what your market is/wants/expects, satisfy that, and ignore the naysayers and critics.
Also remember this- There are a million reasons why your business will fail, and only one reason why it will succeed, YOU. You have to make it happen. Robert Kennedy said, "Things do not [just] happen, things [must be] made to happen." So, to be successful, follow the words of Jean-Luc Picard and "Make it so."
(And don't forget to have some fun! I'd suggest some AirZookas or Zero Blasters for impromptu office battles - http://www.backyardartillery.com/ )
Oh, I almost forgot - Craigslist.com "has all the visual appeal of a pipe wrench."
I forget who said that, but they're obviously doing all right!
Here's my personal favorite set of toys (that I sell) - http://www.exexeq.com/
How I love doing product evaluations!
Hah! What you don't know about marketing shows. I'm not trying to win any awards, and my customers aren't influenced by flash and dazzle. Yep, I've tried Amazon, and Ebay, and I even had a fancy web redesign done once on a bet. The designer lost- sales actually dropped, and I reverted back to the old one. I've also abandoned Amazon and Ebay- too expensive for too little returned. Cost efficiency is important too you know.
First rule of small business- know your market! Your market IS your business. Great service is what my customers value! Robert T. Kiyosaki said, in his mega best seller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, "I'm not a best writing author, I'm a best SELLING author!" In response to a pulitzer prize winner who was criticizing his work.
Case in point- I used to supply ThinkGeek with the Shot-Blade toy (I'm the exclusive dealer in the US) However, I sold FAR more of them on http://www.backyardartillery.com/ than ThinkGeek ever did, in the same time frame. It's a really cool toy too! review- http://www.dansdata.com/shotblade.htm
Design is mostly an ego trip for the designers. Results are what counts, and I doubt many of my customers are designers!
Now, go have some fun! - http://www.rlt.com/
Digital technology DEFINITELY increases productivity, and decreases it too. It's all about the people, and what they do with it. It's not about spending money by any means.
Case in point- Using almost exclusively freeware and extremely cheap hardware, I've been able to create and build a company that needs only TWO employees to run ( http://www.rlt.com/ ). And it makes a good income for both of us. Both of us are IT capable. Both of us know how to use digital technologies to our advantage.
Digital technology is the TOOL. Henry Ford said that if you need a tool, and you don't buy it, you end up paying for it anyway but you don't get to use it. Do tools make us more productive? Ask any carpenter to give up power tools and see what he says. By the same token, give a hopeless amateur a world-class workshop and the best materials to work with, and any chair he makes will still wobble. But give a master craftsman a hammer, a chisel and some scrap wood, and he'll make you a chair that will be sturdy, strong and will last a lifetime. It's all about the people, their skills, and their tools. I'd like to see any modern company try to compete without any computers in today's world.
Want to be more productive? Make more money? YOU are the master carpenter! And mostly, your employers are the hopeless amateurs who are using you as the tool! When I finally figured that out, I started my own business and I've never looked back.
As programmers and sysadmins, you have some incredible advantages over most MBAs. You have LOGIC. You are CREATIVE. You have a propensity for PROBLEM SOLVING. You can think through and visualize a plan of action from beginning to end. You can change course and re-program the system when requirements change. You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when it breaks, we'll fix it". Guess what, these qualities plus a willingness to try and fail then try again are what make entrepreneurs successful. Another advantage you have is that you won't have to hire some expensive tech guy to do your programming/sysadmin/DBA stuff for you. I can't count how many people have asked me who does my web sites. It's fun to watch the blank stare on their faces when I tell them "I did".
In short, don't BE the tool, USE the tool. Skills first, equipment second.
I concur with this posting. Not only do I have a four year old and a two year old in the same situation, I also happen to own a toy business - http://www.rlt.com/
My observation of not only my own kids, but also of my customers, is that kids really prefer to use toys they can learn something from, without feeling like they're being taught. In other words, they want to explore and discover things on their own.
Give them a toy that only seems exciting, and they'll play with it for five minutes and put it away forever. Give them something where they can learn a skill, and they'll keep playing with it. Case in point - The Hula Hoop, legos or a frisbee vs. 99% of the colorful cheap crap on toy shelves today.
Same with Tech toys. Tech toys that amuse adults are designed to capture your attention within a few seconds, and get you to buy it. Just like a Roger Corman film. Once you've bought the ticket, what's in the box doesn't really matter. Colors, shapes and cool noises won't make a toy a good one.
Here's another example- recently, I took my kids to Utah. The skiing wasn't so hot, so we went to a place called "The Treehouse." It's a playroom for kids, crammed with all sorts of toys and adventures. We spent the whole day there, and to my surprise the most popular thing was a block toy called Kapla.
Kapla is just wooden sticks, all the same. 1/4" x 1" x 4". There were about 4000 of them in a big wheelbarrow, and a few pictures of some amazing things that people have built with them. Kids loved to try and duplicate what they saw in the pictures with the blocks. Meanwhile, in another part of the exhibit, a very friendly looking robotic grandma waited to read stories to anyone who would sit in her lap. No one did. They were all playing with the Kapla blocks. I watched a three year old girl build a tower over several attempts, until she finally made it taller than she was.
The lesson I learned was that hi-tech or not, the best toys offer kids the opportunity for discovery and achievement. Any hi-tech toy that's just tech for tech's sake gets boring pretty quickly. Old tech can be pretty cool too. One of my most popular products is a catapult - http://www.catapultkits.com/ - high tech from 800 years ago! The feedback I get from parents is that nothing has gotten their kids more excited about learning math than the catapult, and the equations for calculalting range and efficiency that come with it. "That egg only went 100 feet. How can we get it to clear the fence?!" Longer sling? More counterweight? Different release angle? -- opportunities to explore...
Bricks are cool. Lego never went away....
I recently took my kid to a place called "the treehouse" in Ogden, UT. She discovered a toy called "Kapla" It's brilliant- nothing but a wheelbarrow filled with sticks measuring 1" x 4" x 1/4" each. About 2000 of them. She made a tower over 3 feet tall, then had a blast knocking it down by throwing things at it. Tactile toys have their own appeal.
In fact, I make a living by selling kids a set of plans that can turn a brick, a stick, and some string into a machine that hurls eggs. It's called a trebuchet. There is a market for old school stuff. Just look at http://www.catapultkits.com./ Then there's the toy guns, pogo sticks and skateboards - http://www.ballistictoys.com/ - that help a kid get an intuitive feel for ballistic motion, the foundations of physics.
Here's the appeal- Kids learn real physics, not simulated physics as in a computer game. With the catapult kits, they get to do simple math to predict how far it will throw, then (and this is the part that gets them hooked) they go outside, into the field to test their work. When they see the connection between the math and the real world machine, one that hurls an egg about 200 feet, then they get excited. They see how to apply math to do something fun, outside, away from the CPU and CRT, LCD, etc.
Real toys are an important part of a kid's total education. Even if it's a piece of string, a stick and a brick.
Hey, I was a windows user for fifteen years. I've also been a developer for AIX and been using Slackware since it was born- still do on all my servers (and not planning to change that).
I bought my first mac (Mac Pro) two months ago to replace my desktop on the home computer. I'm now in the process of replacing ALL my windows computers with Macs in my business too, starting with the CEO (my own box). Costly, yes. But I'm convinced it will be well worth it.
Why are Macs better- I believe it's because of a dedication to this quote: "People who are serious about software design their own hardware." I forget who said it, but as a programmer, I agree 100% and I believe it's BETTER that you have to buy the OS AND the hardware from Mac.
Go Steve!
> many of us spend more on gas than any other commodity
You must not be a homeowner. I am. Let's see... If I add up my gas bills for both my F-350 pickup truck and my minivan for a whole month, add in my electric bill and my water bill, hell, throw in the trash, sewage and phone bills (including internet DSL) too, then we're still a far cry short of what I pay in PROPERTY TAX on a monthly basis.
Sure, I'd be happy to pay $6 per gallon on gas and double my electric bill if I could deduct the difference from my property taxes.
It's the damn high cost of government we should be looking at. And they say this isn't a socialist nation. Right. When 60% to 80% of your productive efforts go to support the government, what do you call it?
Add it up- income tax, sales tax, property tax, payroll taxes and other corporate taxes that get rolled into every product you buy (and you pay sales tax on that additional amount too) all the little taxes on phone service, gasoline, airports, hotels, etc... Out of every dollar you _could_ have earned, at least 80% of it is taxed away- in the US.
High gas prices? It's a diversion. Your government is the most expensive thing you pay for.
Sorry, it's not BS.
I tried to buy one in early summer, 2000. I was told at that time (by Sawstop) that they were not available, Period. I was a ready, willing and anxious customer with only a few questions, and the treatment I recieved was positively rude.
Six years go by and a lot of things can change, but that's the truth.
In the mean time, I spent about $1000 for a damn good 5 HP 220V tablesaw from Grizzly. I use it in my business everyday and I love it. The blades I use cost $85 each.
"Retooling the manufacturing process" is BS though. It amazes me how often things are re-designed and changed. It seems like half the time when I try to buy accessories or replacement parts for something, I have to specify the year it was made, becuase the parts are not interchangeable year-to-year.
----
Don't have a tablesaw? Buy your catapult and trebuchet kit pre-cut! http://www.catapultkits.com/
I saw this demonstrated once, on the Tonight show, with Johnny Carson (yes, I'm that old and yes, this thing's been around that long!)
So, when I finally had a reason to go buy a tablesaw for my business, and I saw the horrible cost of insurance, I tried to buy the auto-shut-off table saw. Of course, I searched the web. Then I called the big saw distribution importers and distributors. It took some effort, but I finally got an answer why they were not, and probably would never be available.
It's not a perfect product. It is still possible to get your fingers cut off, and it is possible to have it "jam" on plain old wood too. When it jams, you have to replace the blade and the whole blade jamming mechanism- it can take most of a day to do that, if you have the parts, and it's expensive. It can cost as much as a whole new table saw each time it goes off.
All those things are solveable, but I was also told that the insurance companies hate the thing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you know that a table saw is dangerous. If you believe that it's less dangerous, then you might be more careless too. The car companies had a similar argument against seat belts back in the 1960s.
There are better solutions in industry. CNC automated machines are used where lots of similar parts need to be made. There are very few, if any, one-off parts in manufacturing environments. So the only real market for this machine is the hobbyist or general contractor and cabinet maker, and the professionals have really good stafety rules anyway (at least the ones where I worked did).
But, as it stands, nobody has a case if he tries to sue the manufacturer because he cut off his finger. But put an auto-brake on the saw, and every time it fails the manufacturer and insurance company have a dismemberment case to settle.
-------------------
Use your table saw today! Get catapult and trebuchet kit plans at http://www.trebuchetplans.com/
Ok, no cell phones. I can live with that.
As I said, I've been doing it for years and haven't been stopped. I did get asked once why I didn't have any baggage. I said "I'm on vacation, going to my parent's house." No problem. For you older folks who might not get away with that one, try "I'm going on vacation, to an all-inclusive, clothing optional, private resort. I won't be needing anything while I'm there." Uh, In New York? "That's right, I said it's a PRIVATE resort."
Regarding the explosives up the butt thing- think about the technology man! The last time I carried bags was on a trip to Hawaii four years ago. They scanned my suitcase and had to open it up because the bomb detector found something. It was a chocolate bar that just happened to have the same density as plastic explosives. They let me go after I ate the bar in front of them.
So, as long as you're not storing chocolate up your Axx, I doubt you'll have to worry. They have scanners...
On another point- the effectiveness of this "security" is only as good/bad as the creativity of the bad guys. It's not too hard to think of things that might get by. But, how do you know this "security" is not just a smoke screen, with the *real* security going on behind the scenes, out of sight of the general public. The terrorists know everything the public knows. And yet, they did catch these guys. Security that's overt is merely a deterrent. Security that you don't know about is what catches these people.
The "smoke screen" security is there to protect the economic interests of the airlines as much as anything. It keeps the ignorant public [more] comfortable and willing to buy airline tickets. As the public perception of risk fades, so too will the overt security measures.
Security, like politics, is a game of chess wrapped up in a game of poker. Bluff, then make your moves while no one is looking.
Your actual risk of death? Number 1- heart disease. 2- car crash. You're more likely to drown in your own swimming pool that to be the victim of an accidental shooting. And, lower still that those, you're more likely to die in a war in a foreign country than to die in a terrorist attack. I read that more Americans have died in Iraq than died in 9/11. That means that George W. Bush is a bigger threat to your life than Osama Bin Laden is.
But, there are other risks than death. Economic and social instability can make life pretty unpleasant for all of us.
-----
Get creative with your own lump of very high viscosity dimorphic semi-liquid at SuperPutty.com!
http://www.superputty.com/
I've been doing this for years now.
Avoid the hassle of flying by taking all your luggage and carry on stuff you would normally take on the flight, and box it up. Drop it off at the nearest Fedex or UPS to be shipped to your destination.
Get a cab to the airport and be sure to have nothing but folding money (use any coins you happen to collect in change for tips), your cell phone (in case of emergency), of course, your ID (you have papers, no?) and a plain paperback book. Take a credit card if you feel it's necessary. Wear comfortable, simple clothes (with a pocket for your stuff- no bags!) and shoes that you can slip on and off without using your hands.
Be sure to feel sorry for all the other poor slobs who have to have their bags inspected as you breeze through security. Then feel sorry for them again as they wait for baggage claim.
Downsides to this method? It costs a bit more, but well worth it. It makes flying virtually stress-free.
You'll lose potentially productive hours in flight where you could have been working on something. So take a nap and stay up later. If you can't sleep and get bored, use that silly little lump of grey matter in your head. Get creative and make up some mind games you can play with yourself. How many friends can you remember in your life? When are their birthdays? What's the square root of my birthday? Is the price of gold related in any way to the fed interest rate? How would I go about figuring that out? Can I make-up and memorize a poem with more than 20 lines? seriously, we're supposed to be the creative ones. If we can't even entertain ourselves, we might as well be robots.
--------------------
Buy a gun for your kids today! http://www.backyardartillery.com/
Hmm. 50 GB on a CD seems like a no-brainer considering what I just bought today.
I got one of those new "chocolate" cell phones. Cool. It takes a Micro-SD memory card, so I went to my local computer superstore to get one.
A one GB micro-SD memory card cost me $74.00. I'd never seen one before, and when I opened the package I was afraid the wind would blow it away. It's litterally smaller than my little fingernail and about as thick as a potato chip. A 7x7 grid of these cards would be 49 GB, and easily fit within the bounds of an ancient 1.44 MB floppy disk case. Hell, you could fit three or four layers of 7x7 grids of these things in that case.
Ok, so $3626 might be a bit pricey for a movie disk, but the technology is there. It's just a matter of price. Remember, all the features in this $149 cell phone would have cost well over $Ten Grand thirty years ago and would have required a suitcase full of hardware too.
I predict than in 20 years or less, we'll have terrabytes on disks the size of a quarter.
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http://www.trebuchet.com/ - where the past opens doors to the future.
I've read all these posts, and they almost exclusively focus on the music business and a little on the book business. But what about the rest of us little businesses who would not, could not exist without the Internet?
In 2000, I shocked my friends when I told them I was going to start a business selling catapult kits ( http://www.trebuchet.com/ http://www.catapultkits.com/ http://www.mangonel.com/ http://www.trebuchetplans.com/ and more). "Who needs a catapult kit?" was the reaction I got. "People do." was my response. I told them I'd sell my kits on the Internet- this was just after the big dot-com stock market meltdown. Because of that meltdown, all too many people believed that e-commerce was a doomed business and that I was a fool.
Maybe I am a fool, but I started my business with about $200 (not a typo- two hundred dollars), a digital camera and a fistfull of open source software. I spent zero dollars on marketing, zero dollars on advertising, and after a few months, I was already profitable.
Now I employ myself and some other people too. It's a very small niche market. So small, that it's actually NOT cost effective to manufacture these things in China (I tried). It's such a small niche market, that if I had to spend any money on advertising, I wouldn't survive. I tried actually- Radio, magazines, direct mail (not spam!) even a few appearances on TV. None was cost effective. Not even Google's AdSense is cost effective for my product line.
So, I live by the internet. I do no advertising other than a simple affiliate model. It's a widely distributed market, impossible to target. Thanks to the search engines, I don't have to find my market, they can find me.
Without the Internet, I wouldn't be in business. I am a cell in the long, long tail of niche businesses that simply do not make sense for a brick and mortar world, but thrive in cyberspace.
The long tail is real. My business is proof of that.
http://www.rlt.com/
Oh yeah... I was born in 1960. Really. Not only that, but my parents refused to buy me those hot wheels or any of the other cool toys that the other kids in the 'hood were toting. Did I feel bad about it? I sure did. I spent a lot of time in the backyard, developing cooler toys of my own. I built catapults to fling my dog's poop into their yards, I built flying toys that really flew, and I made huts and other structures to shade me and my work from the sun. All out of scrap lumber I scrounged from construction sites. I learned engineering and problem solving. I learned how to use my dad's tools and other hardware. And I had fun doing it too.
My other friends who had all the cool toys eventually ended up in ho-hum jobs. One is a manager of a music store, one is a truck driver, etc. Out of them all. I was the only one who became an engineer and eventually started my own business. I am by far the most successful of them all.
What's the point of all this? Imagination isn't enough, kids also need to excercise their creativity and develop the drive to complete a project. They need a goal, one with a reward. Building a machine that hurled dog poop into my neighbors yard was an incredible reward for a ten year old kid!
That's my complaint with hot-wheels. What's the goal? The real toy isn't the car, it should be the tracks and the tunnels and the other things that make the toy interesting. You only need one kind of car for that.
So, in my business I make toys that kids can learn engineering from. I make and sell the catapult projects that helped me down that path towards becoming an engineer. http://www.catapultkits.com/
The reason I do it is because these days, and in the days to come, the world needs and will increasingly need good scientists and engineers who can think creatively and be resourceful, and that starts with the toys they play with as kids.
Old tech is just as good as new tech for getting kids to learn while they play! (as long as there's really a lesson in there somewhere.)
If you can't buy a catapult kit for your kid, at least give them some rope and sticks to play with sometimes. (legal disclaimer- Just be sure to supervise them at all times too. Ropes can strangle, and sticks can be used as weapons. They can also be used to make bridges and machines to pull tree stumps out of the ground, but I'll leave that as an excersize for the reader.)
The Earth isn't infinite. Neither is any species. Try to think in terms of birth-infancy-youth-adulthood-death when reading this question, and replace the word "we" with "civilization".
Humanity may survive for many centuries, or millennia to come, but will our civilization?
There's only one way it can- it has to grow. A "steady-state" world is a fools game. It invites stagnation, which is ultimately a dead-end road. The species becomes complacent, and dies.
In order to grow, we have to find and exploit more and more energy. Constantly. Energy fuels civilization via technology. Technology is freedom. Don't think so? Just look at how technology has changed the lives of everyday people throuought history. With enough energy, virtually anything is possible.
The oil, coal and uranium we get from the Earth will either run out or poison our own habitat one way or another- eventually. Probably within about a hundred years or so. If we wait until then, it's too late. Remember, energy cannot be created. It's either there, or it isn't. And it takes energy to develop technology.
Wind? Waves? Geothermal? Maybe as stopgaps, but not sufficient to fuel continued growth.
Fission? Not enough uranium, unless you want to spread nuclear weapons technology around the world via fast breeder reactors.
Fusion? If anyone can ever get it to work, and what about all that dangerous radioactive tritium that's bound to leak out all the time?
If we humans squander all the energy we've found in the ground, without using it as the stepping stone it needs to be, to get to a cleaner, inexhaustible energy source, then we and our civilization are surely doomed to return to the stone age and dissapear like the Neaderthals did before us. Then, a few million years into the future, after another layer of oil and coal deposits are layed down, perhaps the squid or some other intelligent, tool-capable beast will rise and become the next sentient life on earth.
Kardashev postulated that planet-based energy is only the first stage of a civilization. The second stage uses all the energy from a star. Third stage uses all the energy of a galaxy. Let's not give up now, we've got a hell of a long way to go!
We could enforce conservation of our existing, dwindling energy resources by raising the price of oil and coal (via government action, of course) to three or four times - no, ten times it's current low value, and dedicate a significant portion of the remaining energy to getting real, abundant alternatives.
Don't think energy prices are low? Look at your ceiling. See the lights? the ones being powered by a coal fired generator many miles away, that uses coal that was transported over many miles by train to get to the generator, The coal that we had to rip a mountain apart to get to? That's a lot of work and energy being squandered just to replace the light that's already available on your building, light that's a few feet away, pouring down from the sun, only to be blocked by your roof.
Why do we do it that way? Because we need those lights at nighttime, and it's too expensive to install dual lighting systems- you know, skylight windows. Those are too expensive. A freaking window. That's what I mean when I say energy is way too cheap.
Is anyone doing any research into quantum energy sources? What about tapping the Higgs field? Could there be a better way to utilize E=MC^2 than just making hot water to power a steam/turbine engine? There's got to be a better way to liberate the energy locked into normal matter. Who's looking into that?
NASA studied space based solar power in 1976 and again in 1995. They shelved it each time. Why? Why can't we tap the unimaginably huge amount of sun generated energy that's just wafting by between the Earth and the Moon? It's not a question of how- we know several ways how. It's a question of cost and politics. What technologies need to be improved, invented,
First off, I used a very highly recommended doc. He even had photos in his office of all the Hollywood celebrities he'd done it on. Not that hollywood celebrities add any credibility to any expertise other than acting, and even that's debatable. Except that they do tend to have very big, strong social networks, and cost is typically no object, so I felt like this was at least a good goc with fabulous word of mouth recommendations, and he wasn't cheap. He also had a "zero failure rate" in at least ten years of practice.
So I did it, and had 20-20 vision. I don't qualify as a faiure, but I certainly didn't know how many ways your vision can be not-right either. Sure, I can read the 20-20 line on the chart at 20 feet. So I'm a success, right? Well, the letters aren't acutually supposed to have drop-shadows. But I do see them and I can read them with no difficulty.
My cornea had developed a "wrinkle" in it. That's what the doc called it. So small and slight that it can't be seen without special instruments. But the doc could see it. And I can see the refractive abberation it causes on my retina. I see double vision on anything with high contrast. It's especially bad in the blue-green part of the spectrum. When driving, I see double green lights but only one red light.
Don't misunderstand, it's not a two-eye focusing on the same thing problem. Even with one eye shut, I see double, like a drop shadow. It's a slightly left-right misalignment with my left eye and a 45 degree diagonal misalignment with my right eye. Looking at the full moon at night is depressing. It's a big fat misshapen blur. This kind of thing can NOT be corrected with glasses either.
To be fair, I have incredible vision at certain distances. I can still see very well up close, no reading glasses needed at all even though I'm 45 years old (I had the surgery 3.5 years ago to cure myopia, so I've never needed reading glasses anyway) I can also see details on distant mountains and in clouds and passing jet planes I could never have seen with my glasses on. What the sunsets do to clouds truly blows me away now. I've never seen such beauty before in my life! But that's not very useful generally. Driving- especially at night is maddening because of all the double images from traffic lights and other lighted signs. I hate neon signs now like you wouldn't believe. And then there's the moon, and I see at least twice as many stars as you probably do. I see twin-stars that should be solitary.
But, I still have 20-20 vision, because I can make out the damn letters on that friggin chart. So I'm not a failure. I'm a screaming success, from the doc's point of view anyway.
The solution? I've been told the only thing to do is have the operation again. For free this time, of course. I don't think so. I wish I could have my old eyes back. I fear they'll only get worse if I do it again.
I wonder how the military is dealing with the possibility of pilots who can pass the 20-20 test on the chart but aren't reporting the double vision thing. Then again, maybe they've perfected the "details on mountaintops" thing and are exploiting it somehow. That could be useful for military pilots!
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My 5 year old daughter broke a window while no one was looking. She wanted to avoid being punished, so when I asked her what happened, she told me a lion had jumped through the window and that's how it was broken.
On pressing her for details, I remembered that we had watched a TV show where a lion jumped through a hoop in a circus act. She also knows that birds occasionally fly into the windows- we've had to clean up the carcasses and go through that explanation several times. But, using pure logic, and knowing that no one was here to see otherwise, she concluded that it was logical to tell me that a lion was walking by and jumped through the window because he didn't know the window was closed. Apparently he jumped in because he wanted a drink of water from our toilet- like the dogs. It was beautiful logic coming from a 5 year old! But, as you can see, what you don't know can truly ruin your day when it comes to haphazardly applied logic.
One degree Farhenheit, multiplied by the volume of the entire atmosphere, is an incredible amount of heat energy. All that extra energy sloshing around can make some pretty nasty storms, and it can shift global rainfall patterns too. Remember Etheopia in the 1980s? Where is your food grown? Are you prepared to get it from somewhere else?
That chemical you asked about- how's this logic:
1. We burn a measureable amount of fossil fuel each year.
2. It's well known how much CO2 that produces.
3. We know how much CO2 we're putting in the air.
4. We know how much the atmospheric CO2 has been rising over the last 100 years, and there is a correlation.
5. We know that CO2, among other things, traps heat.
6. New research is showing that the earth should have trapped much more heat than it has, but, atmoshperic particulates (smog, smoke, con trails, etc.) are blocking some of the sun's energy- as much as 10% it seems. That's why we cooled between 1940 and 1980, but now the CO2 heat-trap is catching up. IF we clean up our act in terms of particle pollution, we could actually increase the rate of global warming without any new CO2 going into the air.
7. Cars and trucks are not the biggest source of CO2, it's the coal fired electric generating plants. While they're still in business, those silly little hybrid vehicles are entirely pointless.
8. Another chemical marker produced by coal fired power plants is mercury. Consumer Reports has advised, based on EPA data, that pregnant women should NOT eat tuna in any form due to concentrated mercury poisining.
How's that for a chemical marker?
Pure logic, without empirical observations and testable hypothesis, is little better than religion.
In other words, it's equally succeptible to abuses by arrogance and ego.
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