"...There are always penalties associated with being successful..."
And the fact that you believe this is pretty damn sad.

In my view, that's naked envy.

It's a fairly clean identifier, I'd guess, of which side of the political spectrum you belong on: "Should there be a penalty for success?"

Honestly, that concept is fundamentally reprehensible. Next time my kid wins a game of checkers, I should slap him? Or maybe just make him do the dishes? Or sit in an uncomfortable chair to teach him that "...There are always penalties associated with being successful.."?

Wow.

If the point is to point out that a fascist totalitarian state can implement broad policies more efficiently, then that's not news; the Romans understood that since 249BC when they appointed Aulus Atilius Calatinus as dictator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator

But even the Romans understood that there were likely some unpleasant consequences to be found living in a totalitarian state. But hey, they probably had the best internet access times of anyone in the ancient world, right?

I can't speak to this specific study, but two I'd had the opportunity to review in detail (one in 2004, the other in the early 1990s I think), ABSOLUTELY DIDN'T account for different legal / reporting differences for live births, and had results comparable to this study.

Draw your own conclusions, I guess.

So the lesson here is that if you build a business, develop something that's really awesome and becomes the go-to choice for nearly everyone on the planet, your reward is to be considered a monopoly and regulated as a utility?

That's brilliant.

Let's remember that antitrust legislation was about PRICING. If I drive all my competitors out of business, I can then charge anything I want. Presumably, barriers to entry in terms of capital, etc. are too high for free-market competition.

However, what is google CHARGING? And last time I checked, I can develop my own search algorithm and put up my web page. If it's better than google's, that will quickly be evident. Now unless google is ACTIVELY diverting traffic away from its competition, I don't believe antitrust legislation here is anything but a punitive slap to a business that has been successful.

Does watching this put me on a list of "might be assassinated by Israeli agents"?

From TFA:
"...CMI specifically plans to organize its efforts in four mutually supporting focus areas:
Diversify Supply
Develop Substitutes
Improve Reuse and Recycling
Conduct Crosscutting Research ..."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Rare Earths aren't really rare in the sense of scarcity - they're about as common as lead or tin. They're "rare" in the sense that they're not found in veins or nuggets, they're found only by processing large quantities of materials (a usually complicated and toxic process that the US has largely farmed out to China because China's far more tolerant of environmental pollution). the article asserts that China controls 95% of the supplies of rare earths - I presume this means they currently produce 95% of the world's production, NOT that they sit on 95% of the world's reserves; two entirely different situations.

So aside from perhaps the first subject peripherally, as far as I can tell none of these points tries to substantively address that MAIN barrier to our 'supply' of "rare earths": regulatory reform to allow US firms to compete economically and viably with Chinese rare earth recovery companies. There must be an economic motivation if so many countries are nervous about China's lock on the processing capability, certainly?

If it was intended to be only for people with extant licenses, wouldn't they already HAVE serial codes? They posted the files AND working codes, and the software is 7-10 years old anyway.

I think it was deliberate, AND not a bad move. I know I've got a crappy, gray-area copy of Sony Vegas 6 that I've used for years and am tempted to brave the learning curve to learn Premiere Pro and switch now that I could be using an
a) more current tech (ie it understands MP4, etc)
b) legitimate copy.

Except that it's pretty much the honor system. Having made FULL versions available for download, as well as full working serial numbers, saying "but you should only download this if you legitimately own a copy" is fairly silly.

AFAIK it's probably the most advanced passenger plane ever built, with a host of new techs and new ways of doing things.

That suggests it's going to have some teething issues.

Please understand, I cheerfully agree that conversions between units is MUCH MUCH easier in metric. But don't fool yourself/lie to others that metric is any less arbitrary than Imperial. It has an advantage in conversion, that's it.

Further, most people buy their meat by weight and drive by distance; a relative few really give a crap about converting from one measure to another on a regular basis.

Finally, your histrionics about the 2x4 are entirely off base. That has NOTHING to do with 'measurement' systems, and everything to do with economics and practice. A 2x4 IS 2"x4" when it's cut from the original timber. After dressing and drying, it's smaller (1.5"x3.5" in fact) but still saying 2x4 is easier than being all engineer-y and saying "one and a half by three and a half", particularly since everyone understands a 2x4 isn't.

In fact (and here's the hilarious part about your point), in the metric system:
"...(in Australia)...The old nominal sizes based on inches were generally converted at the rate of 25 mm to the inch, so the nominal stud equivalent of 2 by 4 inches is 50 x 100 mm, though what you actually get is closer to 40 x 90 mm...."
So in fact not only are they converted imprecisely (1" = 25mm instead of 1" = 25.4mm), they TOO quote out the original measures of 50x100, when in fact you get isn't nearly that, either.
(http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=555120)

Finally, you destroy your own point; if the 'value' of the metric system lies entirely in the ease of conversion and decimalization, then your "decimal clock" (which is worthless as an example, only useful as a trivia footnote), radians, and Kelvin/Centigrade aren't?

"0 C - point at which water freezes, 100 C - point at which water boils."
Funny, I was just in Copenhagen. The water in the bay was below zero, but hadn't frozen, but you assert that "water freezes at 0", right?
And when in Gateway, Colorado, I was shocked that my pot of coffee started boiling at a mere 89 C ?
Oh wait, you're saying DISTILLED water, at an arbitrary temperature and pressure?
Quick question: if you're not a scientist or doctor, how many times a day are you dealing with distilled water?

KG not arbitrary? Really?

Yes, you're right, conversions are a TON easier in metric. But see, most people don't have to convert from one to the next in their daily lives. Most people buy a certain weight of meat, drive a distance to work, and drink a quantity of soda. Couldn't give a shit how the measures inter-relate (those that do, already probably use metric).

In the US, people use the measures they want; this is apparently the core "baffling fact" to non-Americans. Americans are taught the metric system (we have been officially metric since 1975) but use whatever suits their occupation/life. I work in logistics and *constantly* am converting from imperial to metric and back, and honestly, it's no big deal. I don't whinge that "everyone should just switch" so my life would be marginally easier.

For some reason SI-evangelists DO accept without question or complaint a variety of their own non-decimal systems, such as the calendar, clock, circular measure (angles) and thermometer showing that even to them, apparently decimalization isn't the ne plus ultra after all?

Use the unit of measure you want. Let other people use the units they want.
If you don't like the units they use, and it's THAT BIG a deal to you, don't deal with them.

You're simply mistaken.

The metric system is - like the Imperial - completely arbitrary.
The meter is precisely as arbitrary as the foot.
The liter is precisely as arbitrary as the gallon.
The kilogram is equally arbitrary as the pound.

Each of these was a unit of measure selected ex nihilo.

The meter was originally defined to be 0.000001 the distance from the Equator to the North Pole (which it isn't), and then rationalized back to "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second"
Really? 299,792.458 is pretty arbitrary.

The kilogram/liter is even more amusing: "...as the volume of one kilogram of pure water at 4 ÂC and 760 millimetres of mercury pressure. The kilogram was in turn specified as the mass of a platinum/iridium cylinder held at SÃvres in France and was intended to be of the same mass as the 1 litre of water referred to above. It was subsequently discovered that the cylinder was around 28 parts per million too large and thus, during this time, a litre was about 1.000028 dm3. Additionally, the mass-volume relationship of water (as with any fluid) depends on temperature, pressure, purity, and isotopic uniformity. In 1964, the definition relating the litre to mass was abandoned in favour of the current one."

Hell, the liter isn't even an official SI unit, and the kilogram self-identifies that it's not even a unit - it's 1000 arbitrary units (how inconsistent is that?), with further a 'standard unit' (the ton, 1000kg) that doesn't use the proper prefixture, but an arbitrarily-chosen name.

In fact, one might say that the core fact of the metric system IS its arbitrariness; rather than being analogous to a body part (the foot, or the cubit, for examples), the meter has little to do with anything.

Your point about coherence (CnP from wiki) is absolutely true, however. Which is why the people that use such calculations DO tend to use metric measures.

Then again, for some reason the SI-evangelists DO accept without question or complaint a variety of their own non-decimal systems, such as the calendar, clock, circular measure (angles) and thermometer showing that even to them, apparently decimalization isn't the ne plus ultra after all?

Use the unit of measure you want. Let other people use the units they want.
If you don't like the units they use, and it's THAT BIG a deal to you, don't deal with them.

(And it's pointless to whinge about conversion errors and 'all the disasters' these have caused like the MRO or the Gimli Glider. "Crap" happens all the time, mostly due to sloppy work, and the proportion of such incidents due to metric/Imperial conversions is astonishingly small. Conversions are just a symptom, not a cause.)

Not to mention father, who had a mildly cool idea proved true, now has this obscure idea/paper discussed everywhere because a 15 year old's name is on it.

Well played, sir. Well played.

1) the White House never responds substantively to any of these stupid petitions. They are to convince the gullible about "change".

2) everyone that needs metric uses it already.

3) 14,000 300 million. Like, by a lot. Like, not EVEN a drop-in-the-bucket amount.

Jebediah Kerbal gives this two thumbs way, way up.