http://www.xkcd.com/1379/ or http://m.xkcd.com/1379/
Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).
New XKCD posts are published M W F
Seriously FFF*
Note: Video is a compendium of speakers exhorting the goodness of Thorium and the badness of the alternatives. Much food for thought and history.
*Free Fuel Forever
Also Watch:
From http://www.spacex.com/press/2014/04/29/eelv-right-compete
EELV: The Right to Compete | SpaceX
On April 28, 2014, SpaceX filed a bid protest in the United States Court of Federal Claims to challenge the U.S. Air Force’s latest Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) contract with United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The long-term contract, which guarantees the purchase of 36 rocket cores from ULA to be used in national security launches, was granted to ULA on a sole-source basis without any competition from other launch providers.
Found in the lobby of a nursing home
Elon Musk wins the RD-80 ban by default
From The Telegraph
Click the above image to read full article.
Russia will also ban its rocket engines from being used to launch US military payloads, possibly giving Elon Musk’s SpaceX a chance at the US military launch market currently monopolized by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint-venture between aeronautics industry leaders Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.
Carl Sagan said this over thirty years ago and sadly it is even more true today than it was then.
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Credit: Brainy Quotes
The Vikings would be so disappointed in their heirs.
Here is a blast from the past. I updated it ever so slightly.
If you haven’t seen it it’s new to you 🙂
Two Indians walk into the saloon of a Western town.
View original post 139 more words
He’ll chase the rats out of Washington
Click on the above image to be directed to campaign headquarters.
With a bit of a mind flip, you’re into the time-slip, and nothing can ever be the same.
~ Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975
Let’s do the Time Warp again
Several posts ago, I told you that I had figured out how to schedule posts into the future. If you look at the posting time for all of the TNW – Day nn chapters, you will see that they are all posted, that is scheduled, for Sunday at 2:00 AM.
Except for TNW – Day 45
When I tried to schedule it for 2 AM, the 2 was grayed out. No matter how hard I tried, it would jump back to 1 or ahead to 3. It was frustrating, but I ended up scheduling it for 1:05 AM and thought nothing more about it.
It just occurred to me a short while ago …
2 AM didn’t exist.
The 2 o’clock hour didn’t exist.
With a bit of a mind flip, you’re into the time-slip, and nothing can ever be the same.
• • •
What would aliens say when told Earthlings shift clocks twice a year to fool themselves into thinking there’s more sunlight.
John Watkinson is an expert witness and on many occasions has had to deal with patent litigation. Here he describes the application of ideas in the art of invention both historically and currently from Galileo to patent trolls.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/15/tales_from_an_expert_witness_prior_art_and_patent_trolls/
I couldn’t have done it without you.
So my neighbor sends me the following email:
Hey all,
Please forward this to all of your mailbox addresses and ask them to do the same.
I bought a policy from this company (CHOICE HOME WARRANTY) and the sales rep told me that if they couldn’t repair an item it would be replaced as long as regular maintenance was kept up. I have regular maint on my equip, but the company still will not repair my furnace as “valves are not covered” and then the Director of the company named Alex who reports to no one but the President of the Company told me that no sales rep told me that. I beg to differ with Alex, but when I told him the rep did say that, Alex said that was not true and to me, he may just have called me a liar. Please do not buy a policy from CHOICE HOME WARRANTY and make sure that all your friends get the info.
Let the country know this outfit (CHOICE HOME WARRANTY) might insinuate that you are a liar as well, and that my friends came at the cost of $1,125.00.
He was obviously angry
So I did some web sleuthing …
I found this video at http://atomicinsights.com/
Forget everything you thought you knew about nuclear power and watch this video,
LFTR in Five Minutes – Is thorium better than a silver bullet energy solution?
Kinda makes you think, eh?
Kirk Sorensen http://energyfromthorium.com
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Nobody every accused me of not being passionate. Just ask the Mrs.
About EFF
From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990—well before the Internet was on most people’s radar—and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.
My last post (21st Century I. P.) got two reblogs, one reply, and several comments. If you feel as strongly about this as I do, please visit their website by clicking on the EFF banner at the top of this post. If they make their case to you, please donate. In my last post I said that only the rich could afford the time and money to hire the lawyers to write and represent the laws. The EFF is everyman’s representative in the the new digital age.
RANT
Hey Googstapos … To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, “You’ve got at lot of damn gall to come after folks who include copyrighted music in their YouTube videos when you collect and store FOREVER every damn bit of personal information you can about us to be used against us to try to sell us crap we don’t need!”
OK … That about sums up the rest of this post. This is an incoherent rant. Deal with it.
Weggieboy’s comments on my JOSIV5 post hit a nerve.
Now I am not a lawyer and I don’t even play one on TV, so I have no legal insight here. But consider the following: let’s say
Oh and somewhere in there is “I go to a local coffee shop and play C. W. McCall’s Convoy loud enough that everyone can hear it.”
Do you see where this is going?
Let’s try to separate “ethical” from “legal”. “Ethical” is doing the right thing. “Legal” is some arbitrary construct decided upon by lawyers and the courts, often in favor of big business and the rich. I say the rich, because the poor and middle class have neither the time nor the money to hire the lawyers to write the laws.
Ethical is paying artists for their work. Legal is making sure that the corporate entities who bought the rights to the music get every penny possible in order to pay large CEO salaries and lawyers to ensure they get every possible penny.
Ethical is not selling something that is not yours to sell. Legal is making sure that no one has access to art, music, information, or technology without paying for it. (How do libraries even exist anymore?)
So back to my scenario of C. W. McCall’s Convoy above. At what point does it stop being Ethical? Selling you a digital copy sounds unethical to me. Giving it to you … possibly. Letting you listen to it? I would argue that every scenario where I let you listen to it, whether at my home, or at the coffee shop, or via a link on the Internet is ethical. Implicit in this is that if you like it and want to listen to it again … you go buy it. (Thus my links to Amazon and iTunes for C. W. McCall’s Greatest Hits). Just ask yourself “What’s the right thing to do? How would I like to be treated? Think of the Golden Rule.
Legal is an entirely different answer. Selling a digital copy? Illegal. Giving a digital copy? Illegal. Posting online via YouTube for one-time use? Illegal. Uploading for download and unlimited use? Illegal. Play in public for others to hear? Illegal. (It is illegal to even sing Happy Birthday in public without paying royalties). Playing for a friend to listen to while in the physical presence of your friend? (lawyers: is there a way we can get him to pay to listen? No? Whaaaa) OK Legal
Ethical – everyone knows what feels right. Just ask the question “Is this fair? How would I like to be treated?”
Legal – you don’t know what is legal without access to the law or statute, the legal opinions handed down by the courts, or a lawyer to explain it to you. Two different lawyers might give two different interpretations.
Ethical is about fair.
Legal is about greed.
Now hold on a minute … You say “We need laws, otherwise people could just do whatever the wanted.” True. But how many laws are at the end of the day all about the Benjamins. ($$$)
Sharing is a fundamentally socialist construct. You can’t make money when people share things. That is the problem with the Internet. Is was designed at its very core to be collaborative, to share. Hence the ability of hyperlinks to jump all over the web. The ease of embedding images and videos from other sites. It was never about making money. You will notice that there are no ads on my site. I am not making any money off of this site. My links to iTunes and Amazon were “doing the right thing” … if you like the music, buy it “here”. Rest assured when (if) I finally have a book to sell, I will direct you to a site that will accept your hard earned currency in exchange for my product, but until then just do the right thing.
Copyright Law
The idea of Copyright Law was an attempt to assure one had the ability to profit from one’s work for a period of time before it transferred to the Public Domain. There was a fixed period of time. Now it seems that copyrights are bought and sold, renewed, long out-living their original owners. Multinational corporations now hold the copyright to books, music, movies in perpetuity. They never go into the public domain. At least it seems that way. Ethical is making sure a musician is paid for his music while he/she is alive. Legal is making sure that the corporate entity that bought the rights from the musician or his/her estate continues to make money from it as long as (legally) possible.
Patent Law
Same thing with Patent Law. At one time patents were only granted to things, actual working prototypes of machines. Now any concept no matter how general or far-fetched can be patented. And it is in the best interest of the patent applicant to patent as many variations as possible to keep another person from patenting the invention out from under him and then suing or threatening to sue once the item is in production.
Even so most patent cases either end up in court or patent trolls end up extorting money from manufacturers who can not afford to go to court. Once in court, the rulings are either completely arbitrary, or determined by the skill of the winning legal team.
Oh well, it’s late. I’m tired. I’ve blown off steam. There is so more more to vent about on this subject, but not now. Respond if you wish.
cb
You don’t need a PhD in economics, sociology, or psychology to know that unequal pay for the same job causes social strife.
Let’s stop the monkey business and guarantee equal pay for equal work!
Contrafactual 