Not to bust your imagination, but to build on the idea I figure that the first 'fork lifts' were actually intended to move heavy equipment. Lots of generators and such have cuts in their support platforms to support movement by fork. Now, Initially I figure they moved equipment via crane and such, but moving industrial equipment without dealing with a huge high roof is a lot easier if you can come in from below, to to mention that you need a frame anyways even if you're using a crane - as equipment gets heavier the less likely any random point you might hook into will be able to support the equipment without damage. You just need less framing if you're doing it via clever cuts in the floor stand.

Go back to the 'old days' on non-standardization, I can see a company that uses heavy equipment having some device, a sort of proto-jack, to move their equipment around, then deciding, hey, we can use this jack to help move supplies around! Perhaps with something more expensive/better built than modern pallets, which are built to be cheap.

Yeah, you're off. Really, my solve rate was darn near 100%, but I hit the occasional spot where I was asking 'what the hell are they looking for me to produce?' - and the answer wasn't in the book.

I wasn't counting the problems where I already knew what to do, or could figure it out without outside assistance. That's practice, not learning. Of my learning, IE learning the symbols, the properties of various constants and such, the execution of various rules*, that was done as I said - mostly NOT using the book.

*Not enough time in the tests to re-derive them, had to memorize

I'd hardly call what I did 'giving up'. I would work a problem until I not only had it solved, but I understood the solving method. It must of worked, seeing as how I pulled an A in a class where 90% of my grade was from closed book tests.

Can you self-publish and get any respect from college book departments? Professors might be fairly easy, but getting the okay from your department to use a non-certified publisher/reviewed book might be difficult. Can you sell enough in order to justify printing sufficient quantities such that printing costs alone don't swamp most of the price difference?

It's not easy. Especially if he was under contract with the publisher for it and they pulled some shenanigans in order to raise the price.

That being said, I'd love to pull in some charity minded professionals to write and deliberately open source sets of textbooks.

How long is this going to be true with resources like Khan Academy, Purple math, and everything else out there?

I am currently pissed at my calculus text(Larson/Edwards 5thEd ETC). While I read the chapters, more than half the book is actually just problems to work out, and worse, the methods to solve said problems are often not in the text. So I'd place my actual learning at about 10% textbook(and I'm being generous), 30% lecture, 20% math tutoring/TA help, 40% internet.

When the teacher is assigning roughly 1/10th of the problems as homework in a manner that often resembles 'this looks good, I like this one', etc... It should be trivial for him to do up said problems on a handout. Well, I'd recommend he make the problems up himself, but you should get the point.

If they're doing it regularly it's just asking for an eventual FBI sting and ensuing shitstorm.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think that would actually be illegal under the constitution. The states aren't allowed to get into trade wars with each other with prohibitions, taxes, duties, and such.

Yes, I know in this case that Nebraska doesn't want the stuff, but it's free to pass a general prohibition, it's not allowed to ban only weed from Colorado. Colorado isn't allowed to ban weed to Nebraska.

There's a really simple solution here: Do basically what Colorado did, and tell the feds that if they want to prohibit weed they can do it themselves.

Yeah, when I saw the measures I said they were setting the tax too high. Part of the problem is higher expenses due to the Fed's threatening the banks and such.

You want 'effective' dry counties, look towards Alaska. There are places that are pretty much only accessible by plane, and they have officers there that are almost like customs. They still get alcohol in there, but it's at a lot lower rate.

Down south, the only reason most counties are still 'dry' is a combination of:
1. Cronyism - the politicians are relatives/part owners of the alcohol stores located just outside of their jurisdiction
2. Temperance types - MAD types that are against any alcohol
3. NIMBY types - they're convinced that any change would be bad and that a liquor store would set up right next to them and draw drunks from counties over to their door step(despite the fact that the only reason they see lots of drunks at the store the next county over is all the people migrating from their county PLUS the drunks in the county the store is located in).

And how much would that be? I know that federal statutes have rules in them where if you have more then X amount it's 'obvious' you intended to sell them, then lowered said amounts because the dealers simply started carrying less, stashing their stuff in small amounts. The only ones with large amounts were the mules. There are recorded cases of tolerant people where a week's worth of their habit busted those limits easily.

If you're an individual user driving the 200 miles from Denver to Scottsbluff, or the roughly 500 miles from Denver to Lincoln or Omaha, how much are you going to buy? Enough for a weekend, week, or are you going to consider buy months worth?

That being said, I'd rather see small scale dealers buying from Colorado than large scale drug gangs bringing it up from Mexico.

I think of it like red light cameras, the 2nd invasion of Iraq, and most political campaigns - the justification they will give for the action isn't necessarily their justification, but the justification they think YOU will care most about.

IE for red light cameras they'll advertise on safety, but to most planning boards they're trying to sell them to they'll talk revenue. Bush wanted to finish daddy's war, but talked chemical weapons to the world for allied assistance.

scholar.google.com if anybody's interested.

Effects of scheduled overtime on labor productivity - Abstract says 'no significant effect on productivity'
Productivity in manufacturing...: As hours/day dropped, they worked more days(of the year), so productivity remained about the same.
Scheduled Overtime and Labor Productivity: Quantitative Analysis: Productivity drops 10-15% for 50/60 hour work weeks.
Effect of Reducing Interns' Work Hours: Surprise, Surprise, NOT working medical interns for 24+ hours straight reduces serious medical errors by more than 50%.

Disclaimer: AC mentioned it's against the TOS, but I've done it in the past - Military deployed to the middle east, various countries. I've had issues where I 'had' to use my VPN* in order to purchase games on steam due to mismatches between my local IP and my CC(payment method). Even picked up some cheaper games in a couple spots.

I didn't receive any bans, but given that I was actually *in* the foreign country, but VPN's back to the USA in order to use my US credit card to buy a game for my US steam account, I figure I'm not the target audience. Probably hard to tell I'm VPNing as well given that I used a VPS that I'm the only one VPNing from. The pingponging might be a clue, but I wasn't using it to buy lots of 'gifts'(IE act as a retailer). Even then, they might figure out that I'm likely a US military person from the location and not want to deal with the butthurt and negative publicity when I'm not actually getting a price cut.

*From a VPS that I control, not a public VPN service

I *think* Germany is one of the countries with a game rating mafia that insists on changes to their version of the game in order to authorize it's sale in country. Wikipedia agrees at first glance with "Censorship of motion pictures, video games and Internet sites hosted in Germany are considered to be the strictest in the European Union."

Ergo more programming expense as they have to make the blood cool-aid colored, make it seem like all the bad guys are actually robots, etc...

The voice acting may be part of it, but usually quite small.

I was in grade school during that period and I don't remember them covering the former USSR states much. It might have been a regional thing.