If I am reading this correctly, no. It does not appear to have significant value at the production level. The cost per quantity is astronomical. But what it can be used for is rapid prototyping. Say you have an idea for a new doping agent for a photovoltaic cell. Previously, you would have to either manually concoct the agent, or you would have to design a production system to make it for you. Both of which are incredibly time and financially intensive, especially for something that is just a theory. This machine would allow you to "print" a small batch of your agent, enough to do a proof of concept so that you can determine if it is worth moving forward with a production system to produce it more efficiently.

-Rick

My point is that any time you create an original work using someone else's characters, you've already met 3 of the 4 criteria above, and if you make it free, then you've met all 4 criteria.

And yet, we do have the concept of character copyrights, which says that you cannot use someone else's copyright characters even for your own entirely original work.

So my point is that the very existence of character copyrights means that that reasoning cannot be entirely valid.

In particular, I would dispute your reasoning in this step: "How much of the original work does it copy? In this case, very little. Just the appearance of the characters. All the footage is original."

But the copyright that we're talking about is not a copyright on the original work, it's a copyright on the characters. And then the question becomes "How much of the original character did you use?" and the answer, is, essentially, 100% -- because a character either makes an appearance in your story, or they don't. (Especially in this case where the whole short film is about these characters.)

In the article, the words "characters themselves can be protected by copyright" are linked to this page, which is written by a lawyer:
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/cha...
Ergo, thank you for calling my post interesting.

It's an editorial, not a news article.

Regarding "not having a clear picture of what's going on" -- the opening paragraph links to the fan-made movie, and says that Vimeo took it down but Youtube left it up. If everybody else (including the people who vehemently disagreed with me) seems to have a clear picture of what's going on, perhaps the problem is with you?

If this were the standard, then the concept of "copyrighted characters" would be meaningless, because anybody would be free to create new works of fiction using someone else's characters, as long as it was noncommercial and used no portion of the original work.

But, the general legal consensus seems to be that character copyrights are enforceable, i.e., you are not free to create works using someone else's characters even meeting criteria 1-4 above.

Ahh good call. My knowledge is dated. The 3rd phase was the leg that connected the gulf cost and it was completed last year.

I should have double checked. If you excuse me, I'm going to go wipe this egg of my face.

-Rick

"Nope - because oil is a world market"

Correct, except that it costs money to move. Having a continuous pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast makes it dramatically cheaper to get the crude to the world market. Having the line terminate in Chicago makes it cheaper to refine and distribute regionally. This offsets shipping costs of bringing imported fuels in to the middle of the country. While oil as a whole is a fungible commodity in the concept of investment and pricing, the realistic implementation of it is still dependent on infrastructure and transportation.

"It will certainly reduce prices in the US by increasing the global oil supply."

The XL pipeline doesn't alter the world's supply. The same oil is already being pumped and refined, it just makes it cheaper to get to higher priced markets. It would reduce prices in the US if it were more profitable to sell in the US, which is largely what we currently see with the Keystone pipeline terminating in Chicago. With the termination point in the Gulf, the reduced cost of international distribution allows a greater profit to be earned by shipping it to other countries.

"Becoming a net exporter of oil would be terriffic"

And the XL pipeline would have no meaningful impact here. This is Canadian oil.

"and because we'd no longer have a strategic interest in the Middle-East "

The US doesn't currently have any strategic oil interests of our own in the Middle-East, and the XL pipeline would not impact that. The US only imports ~1/4 of our total oil consumption, the vast majority of that comes from Canada and Central America because it's closer and cheaper than floating barges over from Saudi Arabia.

Europe on the other hand, has extremely limited oil supplies, they are quite dependent on Russia, the eastern block states, and the Middle East for their fuel. And the XL pipeline, even with direct access to the coast, isn't going to push enough oil to offset any sort of major disruption from Saudi Arabia or Russia.

So in closing, no, the XL pipeline would not change us into a net exporter, it would not reduce gas prices in the US, and it would not have a meaningful impact on the global oil supply.

-Rick

This bill would move forward with the XL portion of the pipeline. The Keystone pipeline currently terminates at the refineries near Chicago, Il. The XL portion of the pipeline would extends the line to the Gulf Coast, allowing for the oil to be more easily re-sold on the world market as opposed to being land locked into the US market.

The XL portion was never meant to reduce oil prices in the US, it was meant to increase profit margins by reducing costs to transport the oil and oil products to higher priced markets.

Can we take down the environmentalism straw man yet?

-Rick

Not saying that this judge is deserving of a doxxing, but I would like to point out his trial history: http://www.plainsite.org/judge...

Which includes almost $300,000 in civil forfeiture cases in southern Texas. Those cases most folks refer to as "state-sanctioned highway robbery".

-Rick

Some fedex driver posted a 'day in the life of' blog and mentioned his 150+ mile daily route. Base salary of a fedex driver is ~$13/hr. Call it $20 as costs (tax/benies/sick/vacation/etc), that puts it at $160/day. Which is right about $1/mile.

But here's the rub, the article claims that switching from a Diesel truck to an electric truck takes their operating expenses from $1/mile to $0.30/mile.

If labor is already $1/mile, then they are either doing absolutely no maintenance and using no fuel on the Diesel and they have hired illegal immigrants to drive the electrics that they are charging up on stolen electricity, or....

labor is not included in the numbers they provided.

I'll let you choose which you feel is correct ;)

-Rick

The full block from TFA:

An electric truck is already a step up in efficiency and environmental responsibility from traditional internal combustion trucks, with a delivery cost to the shipping company of 30 cents per mile (compared to roughly a dollar per mile with diesel).

they're claiming a 70% cost reduction by going to an electric truck. Same driver, same parcel load, same mileage, ect...

Which would imply that their Diesel fuel + Diesel specific maintenance costs them 70 cents per mile MORE than their electricity and electric specific maintenance.

If they can put that same driver in an electric vehicle and do the same deliveries for 30 cents a mile, I'm thinking that they are doing something really wrong with the Diesel vehicles.

The big wear and tear that they will see over my horse truck is brakes. But even if you figure they drop $1000 on rotors, pads, and labor for brake jobs, every year, they're still putting probably 50k miles a year on those trucks. Which works out to be 2 cents per mile. And that's the hardest hit area.

You could toss in the tranny (although it should be holding up for much more than a single year of stop and go). But even if they're only getting 1 year out of a tranny, and they drop $5k for a new tranny installed each year, that's still only 10 cents a mile.

Suspension, power steering, tires, etc... would all be taking the same abuse whether you're in a Diesel or an electric.

To be spending $0.70/mile on a vehicle putting down 50k+ miles a year, means spending over $35,000 a year on vehicle maintenance.

To put that into scope, a Ford e-350 stripped chassis (your basic commercial delivery frame) MSRPs for $25,000. Jump up to an e-350 cutaway (your standard UHaul truck) for $30,000. Even if they blow $15k on a custom cab/body, you're still looking at a $40,000 vehicle. How the heck are they blowing over $35,000 a year maintaining a $40,000 vehicle?

-Rick

I would assume that the goal would be to pull into a subdivision, park, and then let the drone(s) deliver a half dozen parcels to residence in that subdivision.

Or identify packages that cannot be drone delivered (shape/size/weight), drive to those locations, and have drones launching/returning for the smaller packages while the driver is en route with the big stuff.

-Rick

From TFA:
"A delivery truck costs roughly a dollar per mile with diesel."

I have a 1997 F-250 that pulls a fully loaded 3-horse slant load goose neck trailer and even with amorting out the depreciation over mileage, including tires and maintenance, and obviously Diesel fuel, I'm no where's close to $1/mile.

We don't put nearly as many miles on the truck as a delivery truck, so they are likely seeing higher maintenance costs, but with so many miles their amorted costs are going to be way lower per mile driven.

If they're looking to save costs and they're currently spending $1/mile on their trucks, I think there are some low hanging fruit they could tackle before jumping to drones.

-Rick

Actually you can do diffing of MS Office docs via SharePoint. Makes picking out when people try to ninja requirement changes into a spec super easy to see ;)

There are horrible, horrible things people try to do in SharePoint, but storage/organization, versioning, and collaboration of MS Office documents is actually something it does really, really well.

-Rick

Ha, that's funny. I was disliked by the senior leadership at my last company because they felt that I didn't work my employees hard enough (expectation was a 42+ hour average work week, my team hovered just over 41)

If one person is really into technology, and they come into work with a bunch of coworkers that are completely disinterested in advancing their knowledge, they will either quickly burn out, or leave.

But if I get two people who are like minded, they come to work and bounce ideas off of each other.

I've found that getting 3 of these people together is where it really takes off. At 3 you have enough to make a majority rule, you have enough that even if someone is busy or uninterested for a bit, the cycle continues, you have enough that they start to carry some weight. It switches from 'those noisy kids and their new fangled technology' to 'the guys/gals that are setting the technical roadmap'.

I don't need everyone to be of that mindset, but I'd rather herd cats of a team of people pushing the envelope than have to walk around kicking complacent people in the seat of the pants.

-Rick