I find it interesting that SCOTUS is, in effect, stating that communism is perfectly okay, whereas capitalism is not. If this were a capitalistic decision, it would be argued that the source of the product is not necessary, so long as the product is genuine (advertised product meets expectations). Since it is being argued that the manufacturer has complete control over the pricing of their product, and is able to fix prices for specific markets, SCOTUS just legitimized single-entity cartels, voided the entirety of the RICO act, and advocated a communist-like approach to the market (from each according to the manufacturer, to each according to their local ability to pay).

Personally, I find it objectionable that a retailer found a way to reduce the cost of a product, passed the savings on to their customers, and was slapped in the face for it.

Actually, I'm thinking the topic of discussion (the SCOTUS ruling, or lack thereof) is the "trite and inflammatory" portion of this thread.

I don't see the issue. If a $Year $Car.Manufacturer $Car.Model has a defect that existed from the time of manufacture, why does it matter who it belongs to at the point in time that this is discovered? What difference does it make whether it's still in the showroom, in the garage of the first owner, or being sold in the newspaper by the 6th owner? The original product is recalled, the original manufacturer should fix it, regardless of who it "belongs" to.

More to the point, when I hear about a manufacturer denying in-warranty repair service on their legally-acquired products, I subsequently refuse to have any dealings with that company.
Apple, I'm looking at you.

Now, to get back on topic:
Copyright being involved in a situation lacking any copying? Ridiculous.
As to a company suing anyone for "abusing" pricing differences, regardless of whether they're suing a company or an individual... Please allow me to quote (ok, paraphrase) Dennis Leary:

"Life is rough. Get a helmet."

I rebut:

If the corporation is both funding and directing the state, then the corporation, for all intents and purposes, *is* the state.

The Guardian says you Euro guys are fatter than those American guys. Got any other retarded copypasta you wanna spew?

I must agree, teamwork makes things much more enjoyable. Some of my family and friends will gather at my house every once in a while, and we hook all our systems into the LAN to play WoW. Zero-lag voice communications (ie, leaning over and speaking directly to a person) makes for a truly enjoyable dungeoning experience, and having 6 to 8 people with which to run a 10-man raid (albeit not at full speed) makes for several hours of fun.

Similarly, running a classic raid (designed for 40 players at level 60) with a 5-man group of 80s is absurd fun... especially when someone drops the ball, and we wipe to a group of 35 or 40 "low-level" mobs.

Of course, these are the same people who will come over and whip out Diablo or Diablo2, make new toons, and kill several hours beating the game in the same fashion.

Occasionally, we will even whip out the old NES and have Contra or Zelda races.

Hmm... maybe my friends and I are just weird.

How do you pay a monthly fee, when it's so easy to come up with the 300-350 million ISK for a PLEX?

Seriously, I played EVE Online for about 10 days, then I realized that it was possible to "win" the game by simply accumulating wealth at an absurd rate and play for free forever. To prove it, I made a brand-new character on a brand-new 14-day trial, bought him a speedy ship, and spent the next 48 hours literally adding digits to my ISK counter. It's actually pretty silly, how easy it is to acquire "money". I estimated that it would take me 5 days from "character creation" to "earning enough ISK to purchase a PLEX", and quit on the spot. Liquidated my 30,000,000 ISK and quit right there.

Yes, 30 million ISK on a 2-day-old character.

No, none of it was given to me; all was earned myself.

On a trial account.

With pitiful combat skills.

On a side note, EVE's in-game voice chat is pretty awesome, and their idea of using the middle mouse button for push-to-talk revolutionized my WoW experience.

Amen.

No, really, that is all.

Sorry, I guess I should have been more precise in my response.

A "pile of rocks", regardless of whether it is a "naturally-occuring nuclear reactor", is not usable to generate power that is immediately available for use by humans. A "nuclear reactor" is a purpose-built facility designed to do exactly that.

Oh, and Oklo is more of an out-lier than you seem to imply, seeing as it is the only one of its kind (and the reactions occurred 2 billion years ago).

As for Petratherm's Paralana Geothermal Project, you're getting very disingenuous there. Geothermal power != nuclear power, and that particular "pile of rocks" has quite a bit of human interaction before it's ready to supply usable power... Ie, engineering.

I stand by my answer, this is merely clarification.

Let's take this to an individual chip level, so my point comes through crystal clear.

Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601975 - $1,039.99

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT90ZFBGRBOX $229.00

This is a direct comparison of the "best" Intel desktop chip on newegg.com and the "best" AMD desktop chip on newegg.com. I didn't research this too terribly hard, so I may have missed some uber something or other, but I feel fairly confident that these chips are the best in class for the same class, using newegg as my only source.

I've looked up some reviews and benchmarks online, (here and here - I wanted to find someone who had reviewed both, in order to get a "fair" reviewing process) and I can't claim the AMD is faster, although I suspect that a "fair" test (using software that isn't compiled using anything from Intel (who was proven to have rigged their compiler to give themselves a performance advantage against any other chip manufacturer), and using as many cores simultaneously as is possible) would tell a slightly different story.

Silliness and rumor-mongering aside...

Yes, the Intel chip is slightly faster in single-threaded applications, and even (surprisingly) in the multi-threaded apps.

On the other hand... spending four times the money for a gain of approximately 3-4 fps seems kinda silly.

Oh, and that garbage you're spewing about power consumption (heat output) is an outright fabrication. If you're going to lie, do it in a fashion that is less likely to be easily disproven. To be perfectly clear, the "under load" numbers are similar (of course), but the AMD chips idle with a much lower power consumption. In other words, the Intel chips actually put off more heat than the AMD chips. Yes, I just called you a liar. To your face.

TL;DR:
On the one hand, the Intel chip is slightly better (for many values of "better").
On the other hand, it's 4x the price for roughly 1.04x the performance.

I went to newegg.com, and looked at the current pricing. If they were sales, I didn't notice. My current response (the one you're reading, since I appear to have to spell everything out to you twice) is not based on any sale pricing to my knowledge.

Gah, I'm an idiot. I just realized you were answering my closing question, not attempting to agree with my point in a braindead manner.

Sorry.

And again, you're reversing the concept. Twice, actually.

A: The wind is coming from behind, and pushing the vehicle (ie, wind resistance), not coming from in front of it.

B: The propeller uses the wheels as a motive force. That is, the wheels' rotation causes the propeller to rotate.

Your example of driving a windmill-on-a-cart into the wind is completely and precisely perpendicular to the concept being described.

By "report", do you mean "summary"?
If so, I commend you for thinking a summary could have enough information to form an opinion with.

By "report", do you mean "article"?
If so, you didn't read it.

The wind pushes the craft forward, same as a sail-powered craft. The tricky part is using the ground's braking effect on the wheels to power a propeller that supplies additional forward motive force.

In effect, the craft is using the difference in speed between the air and the ground, and minimizing as much as possible the friction effects on the craft. In other words, it's not so much using the wind against itself for power, it is more using the difference between groundspeed and airspeed to propel itself.

You're missing the part where there are two surfaces (air and ground) being utilized for energy input.

The sail portion gets it moving, sure. The ground moving underneath the vehicle applies additional motive force, which is used via gearing to turn the propeller faster, which increases the motive force. It works just like an airplane's propeller, except using the ground to spin the wheels which turn the propeller, instead of a combustion engine.

As I understand it, the trick is using both surfaces - if it became airborne, it wouldn't work.

I think the part you're missing is that the propeller does not drive the wheels; as a matter of fact, there is a ratchet mechanism between the prop and the wheels that prevents this, specifically for the purpose of adhering to the NALSA rules about stored energy usage (the propeller could be considered a flywheel).

The wheels drive the propeller, not the other way 'round.

As far as I can tell (and I'm no physics wiz, so I may be completely wrong), the wind pushes against the prop, causing forward momentum. The wheels turn as the vehicle is pushed forward (essentially sailing, at this point), and the turning wheels turn the prop. The turning prop generates forward momentum by pulling air through itself, as well as creating a pressure front via its rotation.

In other words, it works just like the propeller on an airplane, except using the wheels' interaction with the ground as the motive force for the propeller, rather than an engine.

My big question is, how hard would it be to do the same thing against the wind, rather than running downwind? That is, can this same principle be used to go in an arbitrary direction, as long as there is wind to use for energy? I can think of many places where a "free" transportation service based on the ever-present wind would drastically increase quality of life.