Faster than light communication could be based on paired quanta with one on planet A and the other on planet B. As long as each planet has one of the pair from each of the other colonized planets, they can communicate and thus coordinate. No need for a biological solution to a technical problem.
I don't generally speed because the math doesn't hold up (for local driving -- long distance driving is a different story, but this thread has been talking about rush-hour traffic for the most part). Even going 10 miles @ 45mph (.75miles per minute) is 13 1/3 minutes. Speeding up to 60 (1 mile per minute) only saves you 3 1/3 minutes. And it would be rare that you could maintain that speed over the entire trip. Plus, you risk a high ticket and everything else. 3 minutes isn't really that significant.
Actually, I know a couple of vintage computer buffs who weren't born when some of the technology they tinker with was built. And Scotty is probably the most likely person on the Enterprise to fall into that category. It isn't implausible that he'd find some ancient tech in a junkyard, figure out how to make it work, and learn enough about it to use it.
uncommon for a person to work 30 years and retire.
I always assumed 45 years. If you start working at age 21 and retire at age 65, that's 44 years. I'm 37 with 15 years of experience and I generally think of myself as having 30 more years until retirement. Of course, I thought the same thing when I was 35, but the market crash decimated my 401k/IRA and I'm not expecting a quick run back up to those levels. Even still, 45 is probably closer to the normal number now that pensions are a rarity.
The thing about it, though is it opens up different markets. My family likes Rock Band well enough (enough that we bought Rock Band 2 as well), but they never got into the game as much because they had to play *ROCK* songs. If there were a POP band game, they'd play more. The don't like the content of RB or GH as much.
Just because the song wasn't originally played with those instruments, I'm sure they could make up something for you to do while the song plays because really all the game is about is pushing the right buttons in time with the music.....sort of like playing Track & Field at a slower beat. It's just the layout of the buttons that makes it feel like you are playing music instead of sprinting the 100m dash.
It is producing alcohol. It is spending a part of its energy budget into producing alcohol, which is totally useless for reproduction and survival. Thus out in the wild it will be swamped out by the regular bacteria. Remember the currently bacteria living in the ocean have been fighting it out for some 3 billion years and they are as fine tuned to optimum as they can get. Any deviation from it is likely to fall at a suboptimal point in the fitness landscape. Any large deviation like producing alcohol is really a saltation. It will land it so far off the starting point in the fitness landscape it is likely to be much much lower than optimum.
Or the alcohol produced will make the immediate area uninhabitable for the existing buggers. This genetically modified version will start with a small area but reproduce and wipe out not only the competing bacteria, but all other marine life as they upset the balance that currently exists......these things not only change the scale biologically, but environmentally. Who will win? Who knows right now. But both outcomes are possible.....and it only takes a couple of mutations for it to swing a different way.
I would think at a minimum, the LLC would shield some of your assets if a client ever wanted to sue you for some reason or another......even if there isn't any tax benefit, the extra paper work might be worth a little more protection.
That keyboard has potential, but I'm not sure the keyboard + Wiimote would be the best combination because one is flat surface focused and the other is air focused. Imagine typing with one hand while pointing at the screen with the other......it would be like patting your head and rubbing your belly. It's possible, but the extra focus required to keep the right motion going with the correct hand would take away from your ability to play the game as well......
Still one of my favorite games. And you are right that it isn't intuituve because of how many commands there are.....but I'm willing to invest the time if the game is worth the investment. Which goes back to my comment about the right tool for the job....in this case a keyboard (I couldn't imagine all of the "macros" that would be needed to play nethack with a Wii-mote). FYI, a decent Nethack-like game that can be played entirely with a stylus is Powder (http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about); similar level of complexity and a decent stylus based navigation.
Even touch games on the iPhone.....some lend themselves very well to a touch interface, others not so much. Luckily, there are other inputs that can be paired with touch (GPS, tilt, now a compass) which can open up more gaming options.....but you still will find that some games just aren't suited for some platforms. (Also why PC gaming will never die...nor will console gaming. They will just find their balance point and co-exist.)
I've never quoted my salary to include my bonus.....but I do quote it anually. A bonus is not always paid and is not a consistent sum. It's usually based on my performance as well as the company's performance. My salary is owed to me until I'm fired or leave on my own.
You can't quote it hourly because as a salaried worker, you are paid "flat-rate" regardless of how many extra hours they con you out of.....errr I mean request that you work. You can't quote it daily because leap years change your daily rate. You can't quote it monthly because there are a variable number of days in a month. Annually is the only (natural) time window where the salary makes sense.
You could always create an arbitrary time window (such as every two weeks -- which happens to coincide with my pay schedule). But in terms of "natural" time windows, annually is the only one that your salary wouldn't fluctuate based on. (Australian fortnight schedule not included because I'm an arrogant American.)
There is a difference between outsourcing and offshoring. We've got a lot of off-shore resources (and more work seems to be going there). But they are all company badged. With Outsourcing, it's all about the bottom-line (cheapest head available writing the code -- quality isn't even an afterthought). With Off-shoring, it's about cheapER resources but still getting decent quality (one can argue if it's as good or not). My experience is that you need a mix of on-shore and off-shore (with little to no outsourcing) to get quality at lower cost.
I'm not about to try to play Starcraft 2 using only motion controls. I need a keyboard. A *REAL* keyboard (not even a Chat Pad that has all of the right buttons). There are certain cases where the game lends itself to motion control (bowling or tennis, sure -- flight sim, no). As long as game designers use the right controller for the job, I'll be happy. I don't mind playing a game that makes me expend some energy manipulating a motion controller -- it's very immersive. I also don't mind playing a game that required 40 different buttons and three keyboard overlays to give the right feel. As long as they stick to that, they can be successful.
How many $1.80 taxes does it take to eat away your paycheck? If you let one slide and then the next, eventually you can't afford anything. The government should be more accountable for where the money is spent. Reduce some of the pork and use those funds for these various tax initiatives. Make legislators particpate in the same retirement plans that common folk have. Enact laws where bills that involve money can only deal with one monetary issue (so that they don't pass a bill to improve roads that has a rider about an unrelated pork project -- the pork project would never pass were it to stand on its own).
Register 1,000 domains @ $ 10 per = ($10,000) Ad revenue 500 domains @ $ 10 per = $ 5,000 Admin 1,000 domains @ $ 5 per = ($ 5,000) Domains sold 50 domains @ $200 per = $10,000 (10% of 1,000 = 100 within 2 years, assuming half in the first year)
Seems to me that at $200 per domain, you break even each year using your numbers. At $500 per domain, you would be making $15,000 per 1,000 domains. If you are selling domains for $2,500 per you'd be looking at $115,000 profit. I know that $115k > $15k and I'm sure there is some sort of sweet spot where $/domain and % sold are both optimized and I'm guessing it is lower than the $ per domain you are currently at......
This would be the equivalent of buying an undeveloped lot for $10,000 and trying to flip it for $1,000,000 (that $10 domain being sold for $1,000) without doing *ANYTHING* to it. Sure, there are areas (lake/river front, growing commercial area, etc.) where a piece of land will appreciate enough in a short time to garner a decent multiple with no real work, but rarely on that level of magnitude. If you buy a piece of property and then have it rezoned or get some sort of building permits for it, sure, that takes some investment on your part which should see a higher multiple, but that isn't the case here, the domains are just sitting there waiting for a buyer (granted, there are some who will sell "complete domains", but the general mode of operation is: register domain / put up landing page with ads / sell domain).
If you want to buy the domain make an offer, but a fair one or you will be added to ignore list after the first message. We get loads of offers which are too low by two-three orders of magnitude and reading all off them is not really an option.
I think this is the key sticking point. What is "too low"? We all know that your costs are $10 per year (probably less due to bulk, but let's just go with that number) plus some administrative $$$'s. We know that the domains do generate some income from ads. This isn't a case of having registered McDonalds.com because that was your name and you can sell it to the company for 1 bazillion dollars. It's a speculation. I'm ok with some level of "profit" or reward for that but there is no brand associated with the domain already (*you* aren't marketing it), so what constitutes reasonable? I think that $500 is on the high end of what an undeveloped domain name is worth, but when I see $5,000, that just floors me. The key being that the domain is undeveloped. Marketing is the key to whether a domain is successful or not and speculative registration does nothing for that.
I prefer Google's SMS interface. I can type exactly what I mean without talking to the computer. Response it texted back, so I don't have to call back for repeats (and I don't have to still be connected to the web page because it's saved in my text message history). I can even "click" phone numbers returned to dial them. Even though people push for the HAL-like interface, I'll stick to textual when possible until all of the kinks are worked out.
Back in the early 90's (92, I believe), I was co-op'ing for IBM and was lucky enough to get to go to COMDEX provided I man a booth for a while. The product I was demo'ing was voice independant voice recognition (it was all the rage at the time). There was no training required, random guy from the street could walk up and interact with the computer by voice, regardless of dialect or accent. I got pretty good with it, but I noticed that some people did have to repeat themselves (but not more than twice) to get it to work -- again, early times in terms of speech recognition. But the reason I was good at it was that repeated practice actually trained ME to speak the way it wanted instead of it being able to adjust to how I spoke. Speech recognition has become more prevelant since then (BING 411 anyone? http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/411/ ), and I'm sure you've made adjustments to how you speak to computers just to get past the voice prompts. You speak slower with more distinct pauses between words.
Behavior modification is an effective way to improve computer input.
Not free, but I have paid for a copy of Active@Boot (www.ntfs.com - http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm). It boots into Windows PE and lets you access the drives (as well as the Network/Internet). I restored to a network mounted drive since I was recovering a laptop drive and had no way of physically mounting it into my desktop. Boots from CD or USB. Some other features that you may or may not use, but the drive recovery was very effective (including across multiple repartitions, formats, and installs of windows).
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Mothra was an alien? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothra
Faster than light communication could be based on paired quanta with one on planet A and the other on planet B. As long as each planet has one of the pair from each of the other colonized planets, they can communicate and thus coordinate. No need for a biological solution to a technical problem.
I don't generally speed because the math doesn't hold up (for local driving -- long distance driving is a different story, but this thread has been talking about rush-hour traffic for the most part). Even going 10 miles @ 45mph (.75miles per minute) is 13 1/3 minutes. Speeding up to 60 (1 mile per minute) only saves you 3 1/3 minutes. And it would be rare that you could maintain that speed over the entire trip. Plus, you risk a high ticket and everything else. 3 minutes isn't really that significant.
As is the one on your wife's finger!
The cheap bastard bought an occluded diamond......
Actually, I know a couple of vintage computer buffs who weren't born when some of the technology they tinker with was built. And Scotty is probably the most likely person on the Enterprise to fall into that category. It isn't implausible that he'd find some ancient tech in a junkyard, figure out how to make it work, and learn enough about it to use it.
uncommon for a person to work 30 years and retire.
I always assumed 45 years. If you start working at age 21 and retire at age 65, that's 44 years. I'm 37 with 15 years of experience and I generally think of myself as having 30 more years until retirement. Of course, I thought the same thing when I was 35, but the market crash decimated my 401k/IRA and I'm not expecting a quick run back up to those levels. Even still, 45 is probably closer to the normal number now that pensions are a rarity.
The thing about it, though is it opens up different markets. My family likes Rock Band well enough (enough that we bought Rock Band 2 as well), but they never got into the game as much because they had to play *ROCK* songs. If there were a POP band game, they'd play more. The don't like the content of RB or GH as much.
Just because the song wasn't originally played with those instruments, I'm sure they could make up something for you to do while the song plays because really all the game is about is pushing the right buttons in time with the music.....sort of like playing Track & Field at a slower beat. It's just the layout of the buttons that makes it feel like you are playing music instead of sprinting the 100m dash.
at least 5 people to participate
I thought it was six: Rosey Palm and her five friends....well, I guess that's seven counting the ahhh recipient.
It is producing alcohol. It is spending a part of its energy budget into producing alcohol, which is totally useless for reproduction and survival. Thus out in the wild it will be swamped out by the regular bacteria. Remember the currently bacteria living in the ocean have been fighting it out for some 3 billion years and they are as fine tuned to optimum as they can get. Any deviation from it is likely to fall at a suboptimal point in the fitness landscape. Any large deviation like producing alcohol is really a saltation. It will land it so far off the starting point in the fitness landscape it is likely to be much much lower than optimum.
Or the alcohol produced will make the immediate area uninhabitable for the existing buggers. This genetically modified version will start with a small area but reproduce and wipe out not only the competing bacteria, but all other marine life as they upset the balance that currently exists......these things not only change the scale biologically, but environmentally. Who will win? Who knows right now. But both outcomes are possible.....and it only takes a couple of mutations for it to swing a different way.
There's a reason they are called Sperm Whales..........I'm just saying.
I would think at a minimum, the LLC would shield some of your assets if a client ever wanted to sue you for some reason or another......even if there isn't any tax benefit, the extra paper work might be worth a little more protection.
The use of i and b tags is (officially) discouraged. http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/graphics.html
I don't understand why the lower-level transfer protocol is the best place to include this functionality
The protocol existed long before the problem was rendered moot.
That keyboard has potential, but I'm not sure the keyboard + Wiimote would be the best combination because one is flat surface focused and the other is air focused. Imagine typing with one hand while pointing at the screen with the other......it would be like patting your head and rubbing your belly. It's possible, but the extra focus required to keep the right motion going with the correct hand would take away from your ability to play the game as well......
Nethack
Still one of my favorite games. And you are right that it isn't intuituve because of how many commands there are.....but I'm willing to invest the time if the game is worth the investment. Which goes back to my comment about the right tool for the job....in this case a keyboard (I couldn't imagine all of the "macros" that would be needed to play nethack with a Wii-mote). FYI, a decent Nethack-like game that can be played entirely with a stylus is Powder (http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about); similar level of complexity and a decent stylus based navigation.
Even touch games on the iPhone.....some lend themselves very well to a touch interface, others not so much. Luckily, there are other inputs that can be paired with touch (GPS, tilt, now a compass) which can open up more gaming options.....but you still will find that some games just aren't suited for some platforms. (Also why PC gaming will never die...nor will console gaming. They will just find their balance point and co-exist.)
I've never quoted my salary to include my bonus.....but I do quote it anually. A bonus is not always paid and is not a consistent sum. It's usually based on my performance as well as the company's performance. My salary is owed to me until I'm fired or leave on my own.
You can't quote it hourly because as a salaried worker, you are paid "flat-rate" regardless of how many extra hours they con you out of.....errr I mean request that you work.
You can't quote it daily because leap years change your daily rate.
You can't quote it monthly because there are a variable number of days in a month.
Annually is the only (natural) time window where the salary makes sense.
You could always create an arbitrary time window (such as every two weeks -- which happens to coincide with my pay schedule). But in terms of "natural" time windows, annually is the only one that your salary wouldn't fluctuate based on. (Australian fortnight schedule not included because I'm an arrogant American.)
There is a difference between outsourcing and offshoring. We've got a lot of off-shore resources (and more work seems to be going there). But they are all company badged. With Outsourcing, it's all about the bottom-line (cheapest head available writing the code -- quality isn't even an afterthought). With Off-shoring, it's about cheapER resources but still getting decent quality (one can argue if it's as good or not). My experience is that you need a mix of on-shore and off-shore (with little to no outsourcing) to get quality at lower cost.
Use the right tool for the job.
I'm not about to try to play Starcraft 2 using only motion controls. I need a keyboard. A *REAL* keyboard (not even a Chat Pad that has all of the right buttons). There are certain cases where the game lends itself to motion control (bowling or tennis, sure -- flight sim, no). As long as game designers use the right controller for the job, I'll be happy. I don't mind playing a game that makes me expend some energy manipulating a motion controller -- it's very immersive. I also don't mind playing a game that required 40 different buttons and three keyboard overlays to give the right feel. As long as they stick to that, they can be successful.
How many $1.80 taxes does it take to eat away your paycheck? If you let one slide and then the next, eventually you can't afford anything. The government should be more accountable for where the money is spent. Reduce some of the pork and use those funds for these various tax initiatives. Make legislators particpate in the same retirement plans that common folk have. Enact laws where bills that involve money can only deal with one monetary issue (so that they don't pass a bill to improve roads that has a rider about an unrelated pork project -- the pork project would never pass were it to stand on its own).
Register 1,000 domains @ $ 10 per = ($10,000)
Ad revenue 500 domains @ $ 10 per = $ 5,000
Admin 1,000 domains @ $ 5 per = ($ 5,000)
Domains sold 50 domains @ $200 per = $10,000 (10% of 1,000 = 100 within 2 years, assuming half in the first year)
Seems to me that at $200 per domain, you break even each year using your numbers. At $500 per domain, you would be making $15,000 per 1,000 domains. If you are selling domains for $2,500 per you'd be looking at $115,000 profit. I know that $115k > $15k and I'm sure there is some sort of sweet spot where $/domain and % sold are both optimized and I'm guessing it is lower than the $ per domain you are currently at......
This would be the equivalent of buying an undeveloped lot for $10,000 and trying to flip it for $1,000,000 (that $10 domain being sold for $1,000) without doing *ANYTHING* to it. Sure, there are areas (lake/river front, growing commercial area, etc.) where a piece of land will appreciate enough in a short time to garner a decent multiple with no real work, but rarely on that level of magnitude. If you buy a piece of property and then have it rezoned or get some sort of building permits for it, sure, that takes some investment on your part which should see a higher multiple, but that isn't the case here, the domains are just sitting there waiting for a buyer (granted, there are some who will sell "complete domains", but the general mode of operation is: register domain / put up landing page with ads / sell domain).
If you want to buy the domain make an offer, but a fair one or you will be added to ignore list after the first message. We get loads of offers which are too low by two-three orders of magnitude and reading all off them is not really an option.
I think this is the key sticking point. What is "too low"? We all know that your costs are $10 per year (probably less due to bulk, but let's just go with that number) plus some administrative $$$'s. We know that the domains do generate some income from ads. This isn't a case of having registered McDonalds.com because that was your name and you can sell it to the company for 1 bazillion dollars. It's a speculation. I'm ok with some level of "profit" or reward for that but there is no brand associated with the domain already (*you* aren't marketing it), so what constitutes reasonable? I think that $500 is on the high end of what an undeveloped domain name is worth, but when I see $5,000, that just floors me. The key being that the domain is undeveloped. Marketing is the key to whether a domain is successful or not and speculative registration does nothing for that.
I prefer Google's SMS interface. I can type exactly what I mean without talking to the computer. Response it texted back, so I don't have to call back for repeats (and I don't have to still be connected to the web page because it's saved in my text message history). I can even "click" phone numbers returned to dial them. Even though people push for the HAL-like interface, I'll stick to textual when possible until all of the kinks are worked out.
Back in the early 90's (92, I believe), I was co-op'ing for IBM and was lucky enough to get to go to COMDEX provided I man a booth for a while. The product I was demo'ing was voice independant voice recognition (it was all the rage at the time). There was no training required, random guy from the street could walk up and interact with the computer by voice, regardless of dialect or accent. I got pretty good with it, but I noticed that some people did have to repeat themselves (but not more than twice) to get it to work -- again, early times in terms of speech recognition. But the reason I was good at it was that repeated practice actually trained ME to speak the way it wanted instead of it being able to adjust to how I spoke. Speech recognition has become more prevelant since then (BING 411 anyone? http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/411/ ), and I'm sure you've made adjustments to how you speak to computers just to get past the voice prompts. You speak slower with more distinct pauses between words.
Behavior modification is an effective way to improve computer input.
Not free, but I have paid for a copy of Active@Boot (www.ntfs.com - http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm). It boots into Windows PE and lets you access the drives (as well as the Network/Internet). I restored to a network mounted drive since I was recovering a laptop drive and had no way of physically mounting it into my desktop. Boots from CD or USB. Some other features that you may or may not use, but the drive recovery was very effective (including across multiple repartitions, formats, and installs of windows).
There is a free trial.