Our burglar alarm at home has never gone off and meant that a burglar has been caught - but we have no way of knowing how many burglars have looked at our house and decided to go somewhere else instead because of the burglar alarm. So, we keep it. On a simplistic level it could seem like a waste of money.
CCTV may not catch many people committing crimes, but it may put off an awful lot of people.
Airport security may not catch many people trying to carry on 'dangerous' items (bottles of water etc) onto planes, but if it makes a few people decide not to bother trying, then it's a good thing in my book.
That's not to say that I don't think they're often dumb, and usually take it too far - like the time the metal detector went off when I went through it, and they told me to take my shoes off - scanned them, and then let me go on my way - no frisking or going back through the detector or anything - I could have been carrying an automatic rifle under my coat and they'd never have noticed... I did consider pointing this out to them, but decided against it, because I wasn't in the mood for probes in random parts of my body.
My six year old son loves playing Lego (not Legos) Star Wars and he's quite good at planning in video games. When my wife's playing Mario Super Galaxy he keeps telling her things like 'if you go there and get that, you can come back here, do this, then go over to that place and do so and so'. He often works things like this out before grown ups.
Also, playing Wii Brain Training he can do things like the memory games a LOT better than grown ups.
We ration video game playing (probably 4 or 5 hours a week) and TV watching (probably 10 hours a week). I think video games are more intellectually involved than TV, but a lot of video game playing is a solo activity, which is the downside.
Books are well and good, but sitting quietly and reading during the day isn't in our kids' nature. My older daughter loves reading, but even she won't read if she could be doing something else.
Everywhere else it's just plain 'Lego' or if you refuse to believe it's a mass noun, use 'Lego blocks'. 'Legos' is wrong everywhere in the world apart from the US.
Which doesn't actually answer my question at all... It explains how space time would affect the observer, but not the light. As I understand it, it wouldn't affect the light at all, which is different from what you are saying.
Based on the Wikipedia article about the LIGO, it looks like my understanding that light would appear to change speed is correct. LIGO works on the theory that the two light beams down the different legs are normally out of phase, so there is no resulting wave when they are interfere at recombination. If one of the legs changes length, the light travels down it AT THE SAME SPEED AS BEFORE, so comes back slightly out of phase from what it should be, so you get some resulting light after recombination.
As the light DOES travel at the same speed, despite the gravity wave making the leg shorter or longer, that would mean that to US the light would appear to be travelling faster or slower than normal (by a minute amount. LIGO effectively measures how much the speed of light appears to change (as long as it doesn't change by a whole wavelength per time taken to travel the 75x4km).
Why? Is the light in the leg affected by the gravity wave differently from light outside the leg? How? Is there 'gravity shielding' or 'inertial dampening' involved?
I have proof - it's on that DVD I've got at home, right at the beginning, in the bit I always try and skip, but usually can't, so I go and make a pot of tea instead.
Whether the legal term for it is 'stealing' or not - lots of people call it stealing. So, it "is called stealing".
I said WHY it's "called" stealing. Lower down in my message I said how it *is* "similar to" stealing. I never said the legal term for it was 'stealing'. I never said it IS stealing - because it isn't.
The observer is dilating/compressing as well, so the photons will stay the same distance apart (if what you are saying is the case), so the observer will notice no change (as long as the observer is affected by the gravity wave in the same way as the test equipment - which would happen in this case).
What dlevitan was saying was the opposite. The observer/test equipment will dilate/compress, but the photons are unaffected by the gravity wave, so the light goes at the same speed (relative to an unknown metric, which must be outside space-time so it is unaffected by gravity changes). To the observer/test equipment, the speed of light will change, but it's really the observer/test equipment which has changed, the light has stayed the same.
So, what you're effectively saying that light would appear to slow down if space-time dilates?
If it travels 300000000 m/s in a vacuum, it would suddenly be travelling at 299999999.999 dilated-m/s.
So, to the observer it would appear that light goes slower?
Would the converse apply, that if space-time is compressed, light would appear to go faster than the speed of light?
So, if it were possible to have a permanently "compressed" area of space-time, light would travel faster than the speed of light in a permanently "dilated" area? How do we know that all space-time is 'compressed' to the same level everywhere?
So, apart from the fact that all this is total conjecture, and even scientists can't decide how fast gravity waves travel - let's say that gravity waves travel at C + 5%. Now, if the gamma waves DID originate at Andromeda M31, that's 2.2 million light years away, so that means that we're about 110,000 years too late to catch the gravity wave passing.
What a pointless experiment.
Even if the speed of gravity waves is 0.001% away from C, that's 22 years between the gamma waves passing and the gravity wave passing. Even if they DID detect a gravity wave, how would anyone know whether it was related to the gamma burst or something totally different which happened or will happen a few millenia away?
I said I see the similarity between 'stealing' and illegally copying movies. Maybe it's different words, but it has the same effect - you are getting something without paying, and someone else is losing out financially.
If you were a computer consultant, and you worked for someone for 5 hours at an agreed price of $50 an hour, and then your customer refused to pay you at the end, you'd probably say that they'd 'stolen $250' from you, even though they haven't really. They haven't got any of your property.
Also, if they then said, "thank you for that, but I think it was only worth $100, so that's all I'll pay" you'd be upset. If you don't want to pay the full price, don't use the service. Watching a movie is like using a service.
Is it OK to sneak into a theme park without paying, and go on the rides, just because they're running half empty - "no one is losing"?
If you want to use a service, whether it's hiring someone to do something, going on rides at a theme park, visiting a museum, watching a movie, or something else, you have to make the decision "is it worth (to me) the money that's being charged". If not, don't do it, if so, then pay.
(FWIW, I agree that the MPAA/RIAA using the words 'stealing' and 'theft' for illegal copying is wrong, but if they said 'downloading movies is copyright infringment which we will persue in the courts' isn't quite as understandable to most people as 'downloading movies is theft' - their idea is to get across to people that it is 'wrong' and can lead to nasty things happening to you if you are found out).
You spend $10,000 developing your own 'special' sourdough starter. Then you sell it to 5 people. Because they can't afford to spend $2,000 each to buy it, you sell it for $10 each, but tell them 'I'll give you it for this price, as long as you don't let anyone else have any'. You'd be miffed if they gave a bit to each of their friends, or if they started selling it themselves without your permission.
The movie companies COULD charge everyone $20,000,000 to see a film, and forget about piracy since their costs have been covered by the first person to see the film, but that obviously wouldn't work, so they only charge a small percentage to the people who do see it, and need lots of people to see it (and pay to see it!) to cover their costs.
It's called "stealing" because if you bought/rented the movie, then they would get some money, but since you don't, they don't get anything.
In a broad sense: If you buy the movie, the studio has $10, if you download it illegally, they have $0. You may not call this stealing, but I can certainly see the similarity. If the producer had $10 in his pocket and you picked it, you'd call it stealing - so not buying/renting the movie legitimately is the same.
Just because the people losing out have loads of money is not a valid reason to say it's not wrong. If you think they have too much money, you should protest by not watching their movies - watch indie movies instead.
Personally, I don't download movies, it's just too much hassle. I have an 'unlimited rental for £x per month' subscription to Blockbuster which I use - it's much easier.
I *do* occasionally (maybe 2 or 3 times a year) download TV episodes which I've missed because the DVR messed up or something, and I realise that this is 'wrong' because I'm not watching the adverts which pay for that, but (a) I would happily download it with the adverts if the TV company made it available, (b) I fast-forward past the adverts anyway, (c) if I *didn't* download the missed episodes I often wouldn't bother watching the rest of the series, so the TV company would 'lose out' more that way. (I know the concept of 'losing' advertising revenue by me not watching it is a bit specious, but you know what I mean).
Re:Let me be the first to cry
on
RIAA Website Hacked
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This sounds like the best idea for what should have been done. (Except with a few hundred pieces, not just one, as the penalties are based on the number of items available for download AIUI, whether or not anyone actually downloaded them).
If they then used the 'But we were hacked, it wasn't our fault' defense, and win because of it, that would then be easier to use as a defense by anyone else whose website/PC was used for distributing copyrighted materials. The RIAA could not then say 'you should have taken reasonable care to secure it'.
If they lose, then all their fines could go to the funds to defend innocent people against them.
a) You go to the website b) make a shopping list of what you want to buy c) go to the store and swipe your card in the cart
If you're already doing (a) and (b) why not change (c) to 'tell the store when to deliver it'
Getting shopping delivered is more fuel efficient than getting it yourself if you're going to drive to the store, and, in the UK at least, you tell the store a 2 hour slot when you want the shopping to be delivered (all day, up to around 10pm) so you're not going to be "sitting around all day" waiting for the delivery. For me, the delivery cost is also similar to the cost of fuel to drive there and back myself, PLUS I've saved the time.
Yes, choosing fresh produce is sometimes done better yourself, but, to be honest, when I've bought stuff online the shoppers have generally picked good quality stuff. You can always check the items as they're delivered and refuse any you don't like the look of.
There seems to be lots of hype about it being efficient with it capable of doing 54mpg, but...
My BMW 320d Touring can do 57.6 mpg (combined cycle) according to the official figures (which is probably the same method that they came up with 54mpg). Since the Tato Nano should weigh so much less than my Beamer, I'd expect it to be more efficient, not less...
I can't find any technical specs for the Nano anywhere to know how the 54mpg was measured, but even if it's in the urban cycle, the BMW does 46.7mpg, which isn't that much less to say all the extra room, safety (and probably comfort) that you get from it.
OK, the BMW is considerably more expensive, but the way the Tato Nano is being written about you'd think 54mpg was so amazingly efficient it's newsworthy, when it isn't (at least by European standards)... The price is, but nothing else.
At all the airports I've been too this has been the case. There's several places to get rid of bottles, including at the scanners themselves, and ziplock bags were available at many places.
I'm convinced that the ban on water is just a ploy by airports/airlines to increase their sales of water. Most low cost airlines are very reluctant to *give* you water on the plane at all, so will make a decent profit from selling vastly overpriced bottled water.
Airports should have to have tap water available in the 'secure' zone so you could fill up your empty bottles there.
I'm surprised no suicide bomber has decided to blow themselves up in the line waiting for security checks... They're normally so crowded it seems like it'd be a good place...
HD-TVs are selling. We've got two in our house - OK, they're only 20 inch ones, but they're 'HD'.
BUT, we don't get HD broadcasts on them as that would mean paying loads of money to Sky along with lots of extra fancy cabling to distribute HD throughout the house. When we've borrowed a (PS3) Blu-ray player to try with them we thought 'so what'.. Potentially on our main 34" TV we might be able to see a difference with a Blu-ray/HD DVD, but that's not HD yet as we don't want to spend $2000+ just to try it out when the TV we have is plenty good enough. We COULD tell a difference on my gaming setup with a 90" projector screen, but not that many people have screens that big:)
TBH, we only got the HD-TVs because we wanted LCD ones for the kids' rooms, and all the LCD ones were HD whether we wanted it or not.
The issue isn't really whether you've got a HD-TV as those are almost as cheap as non-HD TVs, but whether you've got a high def DVD player. Only one person I know has one (in a PS3) and they don't see what the fuss is about. No one I know has actually gone out to buy a standalone high def DVD player...
Stores *are* cutting back on normal TVs in favour of HD sets, because the pricing differential is minimal if at all. But they're still selling far more standard DVD players than high def ones at least partly because high def ones are so much more expensive with minimal benefit over standard ones.
One button that does lots of things is generally considered nasty UI design. It's "pretty" and people think it's 'cool' but most people have trouble using it.
It's generally a lot easier to use 'one button per action' UI designs. They may not be as pretty, and they're certainly more expensive to produce, but they're generally considered easier to use.
Imagine having a bank web site with a single entry box and a single "Do something" button on it. To make a payment, you have to enter the details of the payee and click the button quickly, and then enter the amount to pay and click it for 2 seconds. To set up a regular payment you have to do the same but click it for 4 seconds. That's a 'nice, elegant' design as there's less messy controls involved, but imagine what a nightmare it would be to use.
It might be 'trivial' to learn how to use your single button answering machine, but imagine you have to use an answering machine at work with different effects to the same actions, and then your mother has one with yet different effects for the actions.... Or, come back to yours after 6 months of not using it, without access to the instructions and see how easy it is. Wouldn't it be easier to have different buttons for the different actions with instructive text/good icons on/by them?
The problem with "directly producing electricity" is that in most parts of the world you will produce almost useless electricity. Electricity can't be easily stored by most countries which makes renewable sources very hard to utilise efficiently. Liquid hydrocarbons can be.
This sounds like a good idea to me, at least as a short term thing.
If we can get efficient extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere as well, it could be a good long term thing as well.
If they could adapt the idea to produce hydrocarbons from surplus electricity it would be even better.
The problem is that the 'niche demographic' are actually the very few people who want high definition DVDs anyway... The vast majority of users are quite happy with normal DVDs.
Why spend $200 on a high-def DVD player when you can get a standard one for $30 and it's plenty good enough for most people? Why buy a movie for $28 on Blu-Ray when the same on a normal DVD only costs half that?
High-def DVD is not THAT much better than normal DVD for the vast majority of people to make it worth the extra money. DVD *was* far better than VHS (no rewinding, jammed tapes etc AS WELL AS better quality). High-def DVD is just a costly gimmick.
TBH, I don't care who 'wins'. No one really does except people who have been conned into buying players already, and the companies involved in making them.
Sony have probably won by simply *giving away* Blu-ray players to people who wanted a PS3, and by paying companies to produce Blu-ray DVDs. Technical merit has nothing to do with it, it's just who had the biggest pockets or could get the RIAA to ramp up efforts to get money from innocent people to pay for it.
The difference between being allowed VPN access and having something like a Blackberry is that you have to decide to go to your PC and log on to the VPN and do something. Whereas, with the Blackberry it shouts at you for attention (unless you turn it off)
IMHO a Blackberry is 'worse' than text messaging on a phone because it's often easier to send an email than a text message. Also, everyone knows that a text message arrives immediately. Some people may not realise that an email will get through to the Blackberry immediately as well, they may expect it to wait until morning.
IMV, a Blackberry should be a purely voluntary thing for most employees. Whether that means deciding whether to have one at all, or being able to turn it off once you walk out of the door (in which case why have one?). Text messaging works for urgent messages.
I can see them being useful for people who travel as part of their work, but that doesn't describe most people who have them... Why should someone who is at a desk in the office all day have to have one unless they want one? The ONLY possible reason is to intrude into their home life. If they want to work from home on some days, lend them a laptop with VPN access, you can't do much 'real' work on a Blackberry anyway, so they'd need a laptop to do most jobs in any case.
Wind turbines may look slower, but the tips of those vanes are still traveling at over 100 mph. Not many birds can get out of the way if one of those is coming at it. They COULD put noise generators on them to keep the birds away, but then people would complain, so they're made to be as unobtrusive as possible, which fools the birds into thinking they're safe.
Maybe the aim is to make it TOTALLY incompatible with today's lorries, rather than "only just" compatible.
If you make it obviously incompatible at a place where there's an alternative way for the lorry to go, you're onto a winner.
Eg, put a 10ft high bridge over the road or barriers with a 6 ft wide gap at the start of the road to the village - problem solved.
A lorry might ignore signs and try to go under a slightly-too-low bridge if the alternative is to reverse for 3 miles or spend 30 minutes turning round, but if the choice is turn left at this junction and immediately hit the cab on a bridge, or carry straight on following that sign which says 'lorries this way', guess which they'll all do.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, we just need all the rest of the ccTLD registries to do the same, and spammers' lives will get that little bit harder.
That's the case with all security.
Our burglar alarm at home has never gone off and meant that a burglar has been caught - but we have no way of knowing how many burglars have looked at our house and decided to go somewhere else instead because of the burglar alarm. So, we keep it. On a simplistic level it could seem like a waste of money.
CCTV may not catch many people committing crimes, but it may put off an awful lot of people.
Airport security may not catch many people trying to carry on 'dangerous' items (bottles of water etc) onto planes, but if it makes a few people decide not to bother trying, then it's a good thing in my book.
That's not to say that I don't think they're often dumb, and usually take it too far - like the time the metal detector went off when I went through it, and they told me to take my shoes off - scanned them, and then let me go on my way - no frisking or going back through the detector or anything - I could have been carrying an automatic rifle under my coat and they'd never have noticed... I did consider pointing this out to them, but decided against it, because I wasn't in the mood for probes in random parts of my body.
My six year old son loves playing Lego (not Legos) Star Wars and he's quite good at planning in video games. When my wife's playing Mario Super Galaxy he keeps telling her things like 'if you go there and get that, you can come back here, do this, then go over to that place and do so and so'. He often works things like this out before grown ups.
Also, playing Wii Brain Training he can do things like the memory games a LOT better than grown ups.
We ration video game playing (probably 4 or 5 hours a week) and TV watching (probably 10 hours a week). I think video games are more intellectually involved than TV, but a lot of video game playing is a solo activity, which is the downside.
Books are well and good, but sitting quietly and reading during the day isn't in our kids' nature. My older daughter loves reading, but even she won't read if she could be doing something else.
Only in the USA.
Everywhere else it's just plain 'Lego' or if you refuse to believe it's a mass noun, use 'Lego blocks'. 'Legos' is wrong everywhere in the world apart from the US.
Which doesn't actually answer my question at all... It explains how space time would affect the observer, but not the light. As I understand it, it wouldn't affect the light at all, which is different from what you are saying.
Based on the Wikipedia article about the LIGO, it looks like my understanding that light would appear to change speed is correct. LIGO works on the theory that the two light beams down the different legs are normally out of phase, so there is no resulting wave when they are interfere at recombination. If one of the legs changes length, the light travels down it AT THE SAME SPEED AS BEFORE, so comes back slightly out of phase from what it should be, so you get some resulting light after recombination.
As the light DOES travel at the same speed, despite the gravity wave making the leg shorter or longer, that would mean that to US the light would appear to be travelling faster or slower than normal (by a minute amount. LIGO effectively measures how much the speed of light appears to change (as long as it doesn't change by a whole wavelength per time taken to travel the 75x4km).
And eventually there will be no more 'big movies'...
Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of opinion.
Why? Is the light in the leg affected by the gravity wave differently from light outside the leg? How? Is there 'gravity shielding' or 'inertial dampening' involved?
It *IS* called stealing!
I have proof - it's on that DVD I've got at home, right at the beginning, in the bit I always try and skip, but usually can't, so I go and make a pot of tea instead.
Whether the legal term for it is 'stealing' or not - lots of people call it stealing. So, it "is called stealing".
I said WHY it's "called" stealing. Lower down in my message I said how it *is* "similar to" stealing. I never said the legal term for it was 'stealing'. I never said it IS stealing - because it isn't.
No.
The observer is dilating/compressing as well, so the photons will stay the same distance apart (if what you are saying is the case), so the observer will notice no change (as long as the observer is affected by the gravity wave in the same way as the test equipment - which would happen in this case).
What dlevitan was saying was the opposite. The observer/test equipment will dilate/compress, but the photons are unaffected by the gravity wave, so the light goes at the same speed (relative to an unknown metric, which must be outside space-time so it is unaffected by gravity changes). To the observer/test equipment, the speed of light will change, but it's really the observer/test equipment which has changed, the light has stayed the same.
So, what you're effectively saying that light would appear to slow down if space-time dilates?
If it travels 300000000 m/s in a vacuum, it would suddenly be travelling at 299999999.999 dilated-m/s.
So, to the observer it would appear that light goes slower?
Would the converse apply, that if space-time is compressed, light would appear to go faster than the speed of light?
So, if it were possible to have a permanently "compressed" area of space-time, light would travel faster than the speed of light in a permanently "dilated" area? How do we know that all space-time is 'compressed' to the same level everywhere?
+/- 20%????
So, apart from the fact that all this is total conjecture, and even scientists can't decide how fast gravity waves travel - let's say that gravity waves travel at C + 5%. Now, if the gamma waves DID originate at Andromeda M31, that's 2.2 million light years away, so that means that we're about 110,000 years too late to catch the gravity wave passing.
What a pointless experiment.
Even if the speed of gravity waves is 0.001% away from C, that's 22 years between the gamma waves passing and the gravity wave passing. Even if they DID detect a gravity wave, how would anyone know whether it was related to the gamma burst or something totally different which happened or will happen a few millenia away?
I said I see the similarity between 'stealing' and illegally copying movies. Maybe it's different words, but it has the same effect - you are getting something without paying, and someone else is losing out financially.
If you were a computer consultant, and you worked for someone for 5 hours at an agreed price of $50 an hour, and then your customer refused to pay you at the end, you'd probably say that they'd 'stolen $250' from you, even though they haven't really. They haven't got any of your property.
Also, if they then said, "thank you for that, but I think it was only worth $100, so that's all I'll pay" you'd be upset. If you don't want to pay the full price, don't use the service. Watching a movie is like using a service.
Is it OK to sneak into a theme park without paying, and go on the rides, just because they're running half empty - "no one is losing"?
If you want to use a service, whether it's hiring someone to do something, going on rides at a theme park, visiting a museum, watching a movie, or something else, you have to make the decision "is it worth (to me) the money that's being charged". If not, don't do it, if so, then pay.
(FWIW, I agree that the MPAA/RIAA using the words 'stealing' and 'theft' for illegal copying is wrong, but if they said 'downloading movies is copyright infringment which we will persue in the courts' isn't quite as understandable to most people as 'downloading movies is theft' - their idea is to get across to people that it is 'wrong' and can lead to nasty things happening to you if you are found out).
Let's see...
You spend $10,000 developing your own 'special' sourdough starter. Then you sell it to 5 people. Because they can't afford to spend $2,000 each to buy it, you sell it for $10 each, but tell them 'I'll give you it for this price, as long as you don't let anyone else have any'. You'd be miffed if they gave a bit to each of their friends, or if they started selling it themselves without your permission.
The movie companies COULD charge everyone $20,000,000 to see a film, and forget about piracy since their costs have been covered by the first person to see the film, but that obviously wouldn't work, so they only charge a small percentage to the people who do see it, and need lots of people to see it (and pay to see it!) to cover their costs.
It's called "stealing" because if you bought/rented the movie, then they would get some money, but since you don't, they don't get anything.
In a broad sense: If you buy the movie, the studio has $10, if you download it illegally, they have $0. You may not call this stealing, but I can certainly see the similarity. If the producer had $10 in his pocket and you picked it, you'd call it stealing - so not buying/renting the movie legitimately is the same.
Just because the people losing out have loads of money is not a valid reason to say it's not wrong. If you think they have too much money, you should protest by not watching their movies - watch indie movies instead.
Personally, I don't download movies, it's just too much hassle. I have an 'unlimited rental for £x per month' subscription to Blockbuster which I use - it's much easier.
I *do* occasionally (maybe 2 or 3 times a year) download TV episodes which I've missed because the DVR messed up or something, and I realise that this is 'wrong' because I'm not watching the adverts which pay for that, but (a) I would happily download it with the adverts if the TV company made it available, (b) I fast-forward past the adverts anyway, (c) if I *didn't* download the missed episodes I often wouldn't bother watching the rest of the series, so the TV company would 'lose out' more that way. (I know the concept of 'losing' advertising revenue by me not watching it is a bit specious, but you know what I mean).
This sounds like the best idea for what should have been done. (Except with a few hundred pieces, not just one, as the penalties are based on the number of items available for download AIUI, whether or not anyone actually downloaded them).
If they then used the 'But we were hacked, it wasn't our fault' defense, and win because of it, that would then be easier to use as a defense by anyone else whose website/PC was used for distributing copyrighted materials. The RIAA could not then say 'you should have taken reasonable care to secure it'.
If they lose, then all their fines could go to the funds to defend innocent people against them.
Ah, but the point of these carts is that
a) You go to the website
b) make a shopping list of what you want to buy
c) go to the store and swipe your card in the cart
If you're already doing (a) and (b) why not change (c) to 'tell the store when to deliver it'
Getting shopping delivered is more fuel efficient than getting it yourself if you're going to drive to the store, and, in the UK at least, you tell the store a 2 hour slot when you want the shopping to be delivered (all day, up to around 10pm) so you're not going to be "sitting around all day" waiting for the delivery. For me, the delivery cost is also similar to the cost of fuel to drive there and back myself, PLUS I've saved the time.
Yes, choosing fresh produce is sometimes done better yourself, but, to be honest, when I've bought stuff online the shoppers have generally picked good quality stuff. You can always check the items as they're delivered and refuse any you don't like the look of.
There seems to be lots of hype about it being efficient with it capable of doing 54mpg, but...
My BMW 320d Touring can do 57.6 mpg (combined cycle) according to the official figures (which is probably the same method that they came up with 54mpg). Since the Tato Nano should weigh so much less than my Beamer, I'd expect it to be more efficient, not less...
I can't find any technical specs for the Nano anywhere to know how the 54mpg was measured, but even if it's in the urban cycle, the BMW does 46.7mpg, which isn't that much less to say all the extra room, safety (and probably comfort) that you get from it.
OK, the BMW is considerably more expensive, but the way the Tato Nano is being written about you'd think 54mpg was so amazingly efficient it's newsworthy, when it isn't (at least by European standards)... The price is, but nothing else.
At all the airports I've been too this has been the case. There's several places to get rid of bottles, including at the scanners themselves, and ziplock bags were available at many places.
I'm convinced that the ban on water is just a ploy by airports/airlines to increase their sales of water. Most low cost airlines are very reluctant to *give* you water on the plane at all, so will make a decent profit from selling vastly overpriced bottled water.
Airports should have to have tap water available in the 'secure' zone so you could fill up your empty bottles there.
I'm surprised no suicide bomber has decided to blow themselves up in the line waiting for security checks... They're normally so crowded it seems like it'd be a good place...
HD-TVs are selling. We've got two in our house - OK, they're only 20 inch ones, but they're 'HD'.
:)
BUT, we don't get HD broadcasts on them as that would mean paying loads of money to Sky along with lots of extra fancy cabling to distribute HD throughout the house. When we've borrowed a (PS3) Blu-ray player to try with them we thought 'so what'.. Potentially on our main 34" TV we might be able to see a difference with a Blu-ray/HD DVD, but that's not HD yet as we don't want to spend $2000+ just to try it out when the TV we have is plenty good enough. We COULD tell a difference on my gaming setup with a 90" projector screen, but not that many people have screens that big
TBH, we only got the HD-TVs because we wanted LCD ones for the kids' rooms, and all the LCD ones were HD whether we wanted it or not.
The issue isn't really whether you've got a HD-TV as those are almost as cheap as non-HD TVs, but whether you've got a high def DVD player. Only one person I know has one (in a PS3) and they don't see what the fuss is about. No one I know has actually gone out to buy a standalone high def DVD player...
Stores *are* cutting back on normal TVs in favour of HD sets, because the pricing differential is minimal if at all. But they're still selling far more standard DVD players than high def ones at least partly because high def ones are so much more expensive with minimal benefit over standard ones.
One button that does lots of things is generally considered nasty UI design. It's "pretty" and people think it's 'cool' but most people have trouble using it.
It's generally a lot easier to use 'one button per action' UI designs. They may not be as pretty, and they're certainly more expensive to produce, but they're generally considered easier to use.
Imagine having a bank web site with a single entry box and a single "Do something" button on it. To make a payment, you have to enter the details of the payee and click the button quickly, and then enter the amount to pay and click it for 2 seconds. To set up a regular payment you have to do the same but click it for 4 seconds. That's a 'nice, elegant' design as there's less messy controls involved, but imagine what a nightmare it would be to use.
It might be 'trivial' to learn how to use your single button answering machine, but imagine you have to use an answering machine at work with different effects to the same actions, and then your mother has one with yet different effects for the actions.... Or, come back to yours after 6 months of not using it, without access to the instructions and see how easy it is. Wouldn't it be easier to have different buttons for the different actions with instructive text/good icons on/by them?
The problem with "directly producing electricity" is that in most parts of the world you will produce almost useless electricity. Electricity can't be easily stored by most countries which makes renewable sources very hard to utilise efficiently. Liquid hydrocarbons can be.
This sounds like a good idea to me, at least as a short term thing.
If we can get efficient extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere as well, it could be a good long term thing as well.
If they could adapt the idea to produce hydrocarbons from surplus electricity it would be even better.
The problem is that the 'niche demographic' are actually the very few people who want high definition DVDs anyway... The vast majority of users are quite happy with normal DVDs.
Why spend $200 on a high-def DVD player when you can get a standard one for $30 and it's plenty good enough for most people? Why buy a movie for $28 on Blu-Ray when the same on a normal DVD only costs half that?
High-def DVD is not THAT much better than normal DVD for the vast majority of people to make it worth the extra money. DVD *was* far better than VHS (no rewinding, jammed tapes etc AS WELL AS better quality). High-def DVD is just a costly gimmick.
TBH, I don't care who 'wins'. No one really does except people who have been conned into buying players already, and the companies involved in making them.
Sony have probably won by simply *giving away* Blu-ray players to people who wanted a PS3, and by paying companies to produce Blu-ray DVDs. Technical merit has nothing to do with it, it's just who had the biggest pockets or could get the RIAA to ramp up efforts to get money from innocent people to pay for it.
The difference between being allowed VPN access and having something like a Blackberry is that you have to decide to go to your PC and log on to the VPN and do something. Whereas, with the Blackberry it shouts at you for attention (unless you turn it off)
IMHO a Blackberry is 'worse' than text messaging on a phone because it's often easier to send an email than a text message. Also, everyone knows that a text message arrives immediately. Some people may not realise that an email will get through to the Blackberry immediately as well, they may expect it to wait until morning.
IMV, a Blackberry should be a purely voluntary thing for most employees. Whether that means deciding whether to have one at all, or being able to turn it off once you walk out of the door (in which case why have one?). Text messaging works for urgent messages.
I can see them being useful for people who travel as part of their work, but that doesn't describe most people who have them... Why should someone who is at a desk in the office all day have to have one unless they want one? The ONLY possible reason is to intrude into their home life. If they want to work from home on some days, lend them a laptop with VPN access, you can't do much 'real' work on a Blackberry anyway, so they'd need a laptop to do most jobs in any case.
Wind turbines may look slower, but the tips of those vanes are still traveling at over 100 mph. Not many birds can get out of the way if one of those is coming at it. They COULD put noise generators on them to keep the birds away, but then people would complain, so they're made to be as unobtrusive as possible, which fools the birds into thinking they're safe.
Maybe the aim is to make it TOTALLY incompatible with today's lorries, rather than "only just" compatible.
If you make it obviously incompatible at a place where there's an alternative way for the lorry to go, you're onto a winner.
Eg, put a 10ft high bridge over the road or barriers with a 6 ft wide gap at the start of the road to the village - problem solved.
A lorry might ignore signs and try to go under a slightly-too-low bridge if the alternative is to reverse for 3 miles or spend 30 minutes turning round, but if the choice is turn left at this junction and immediately hit the cab on a bridge, or carry straight on following that sign which says 'lorries this way', guess which they'll all do.