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Solution: Why not raise our import tariff rates to match that of our so-called trading partners?

Because the politicians (and make no mistake, I'm talking both major parties in the U.S.) are bought and paid for by the multinational corporations.

That's a great idea, if you want to start another Great Deprerssion. Protectionist laws like the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act virtually shutdown international trade causing the world's economy to collapse. US exports themselves declined by 61%, falling from "US$5.4 billion to US$2.1 billion". Before Pres Herbert Hoover signed it more than a 1000 economists warned him not to, but of course he did. In retaliation other national governments passed their own protectionist laws.

Falcon

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_philosopher_said_the_needs_of_the_many_outweigh_the_needs_of_the_few

Hitler's politics are nowadays mostly described "Nazism", but he invented nothing, the underlying philosophy was Fascism. It was embarassingly also adopted by many US corporations of the time, a short-sighted, desperate reaction to the growth of anarchism and soviet communism. In regards to production, Fascism's model for distribution of labor was Corporatism . Corporatism mostly survived WW2 and continues to guide labor distribution. As corporate products, all cellphones would be results of contemporary Corporatist labor ideas. Open source however, important component of Android, has some labor performed in a method mostly compatible with Anarchism, (kernel.org, et al) and some labor from Corporatism (google.com.) so it is a rather a mixed animal, but already breaks with pure Corporatism labor management ideas. Even iOS has some open source, though perhaps not enough to make it mixed. Pure Corporatism-production would include no open souce code at all. That would leave us with WinCE and many other proprietary cellphones systems.

Evidence that windows os's are aligned with Corporatism, associated with Mussolini and Fascism, and adopted by Hitler and the Nazi, are that Enigma, the famous military encryption code, ran on Windows 95, and was created at George Mason University.

. http://www.thenextwave.com/EnigmaHP-Win.html

I think you're off by several orders of magnitude.

According to Wikipedia, the area of the earth's surface is approximately 510,072,000 square kms. With a bit of math, that spits out a number equalling about 7.90613181E+17 square inches (according to Google Calculator at any rate).

Given that IPv6 is a 128-bit address space, it should necessarily contain (2^128) addresses. Thanks again, to Google Calculator, that number is approximately 3.40282367E+38.

A fixed length number multiplied by (10^38) is clearly, many orders of magnitude greater than one of equal length multiplied by (10^17) (about 21 orders I'd surmise)...

For reference, that's more than the number of atoms within the earth (approximately 6.42E+23) but less than the number of atoms within the sun (approximately 3.8E+50) (according to Astronomer John Dreher as posted on Answers.com).

-AC

When laws are written in America there is an entire body of written material that accompanies them - including the Legislative History which includes the sum of all the discussions, debates, research, transcripts, and so on that represent the process of formulating said piece of legislation. This is a handy secondary authority when you're trying to decide what the law as written means. If you read the Act you'll find that there's some ambiguity as to what is meant, if we had Legislative History to fall back on we could trawl through the arguments that lead to the final writing and thereby follow the logic as it developed. The Judicial Branch often refers back to intent if it's demonstrable in the histories, it's hardly a bleating cry for instruction. Indeed the parlimentary discussion that was linked by DKF helps contextualise the question at hand and would be really useful for anyone seeking to challenge or support the law.

I think you got the conversion math wrong. It's (9/5)C + 32, not 2C + 32.

According to answers.com, the highest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth was a mere 136 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, unless you're on the ground, it's gonna be a lot colder than that. For a cargo hold in flight, I've read that the temperatures typically range between about 30 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 degrees Fahrenheit---in other words, much colder than inside the passenger compartment, not hotter.

I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.

4,366,386 messages x $200,000 = $873,277,200,000 or $873.3 billion. Would it be theoretically possible for him to walk into the court, and pay in cash?

No. Let's say that the largest bill = $100,000. Let's also say that that bill weighs 25 grams (an approximation and lower bound). Now, 8,732,772 x 25 grams = 218 319.3 kilograms. I mean, it's about 218 tonnes. He could bring it in a truck (weight-wise), but he'd need one OMGWTFBBQ truck for that.

So definitely no walking.

(and this doesn't even touch upon the dimensions of that heap of bills)

Corn is a species of grass.A big, tall species of grass that produces lots of big seeds, but it's still a grass.

Fuck U.S. intellectual property laws, and the American legal system for condoning the litigious tendencies of those wanting to bully or extort money from others. Apple's suit is disgusting, yet almost any other U.S. company would pursue the same suit if in the same position; hell, we've had a car company both sponsor and send legal threats to the same web site (with no significant changes to the site).

The lawsuit is a direct consequence of the American trademark laws. From http://www.answers.com/topic/trademark :

The owners of registered trademarks can lose their rights in a number of ways. When a trade or the general public adopts a trademark as the name for a type of goods, the mark is no longer distinctive and the rights to it are lost. The owner of trademark rights must be vigilant to ensure that this does not occur.

The general idea is that, if Apple allows the practice of calling a small electronic device a 'pod' to continue without objection, I can sell my ePod and directly claim that it is 'a better Pod than the iPod!'. Apple has no recourse, because 'pod' can be argued to be a common term applying to handheld electronics, and not anything particularly referring to the 'iPod' or any Apple product...

The general message: blame the legislation and legal precedent. Don't blame Apple for vigilantly defending its trademarks; Apple has to do this or else face losing any trademark rights that it has...

"At least I think I do, since your use of "appreciate" is confusing."

It's the original meaning:

http://www.answers.com/topic/appreciate

Your point works while the percentages are low. When the population overwhelmingly believes something... it will lead to dumb laws, No? How about this?

it still implies that because men are more likely the killer females are more likely the victim, while the statistics I pointed to show that over 65 percent of the murders are a man killing another man. The fact is that men kill more, but the stereotype that women suffer disproportionately under the aggression of men isn't.

The stats have a section where only male/female killings are considered. In fact, it's kind of hard to miss - it's right at the top of the page: Male offender/Female victim 22.7%
Female offender/Male victim 9.6%

The vast majority of the time, it's the woman who is the victim.

Like the anecdote heard all too often of nightlife incidents involving groups of both males and females where the men are driven to defend the women, often cheered on by them, which sometimes results in one man killing a man from the other group.

Don't you think this says more about "drunks shouldn't have guns"? Being cheered on, even by 1,000 women, is not a rationale to kill someone. "But judge, I couldn't help myself. She made me do it - she was cheering me on." This wouldn't even work for a speeding ticket. If you want to look at the social and cultural aspects, look no further than your gun culture. The US has an out-of-control crime problem, which explains why it has more people in jail than any other country in the world. Anecdotes like the one you describe are a symptom of that. They also have absolutely nothing to do with the ratio between men killing women and women killing men, which is a separate statistic.

A second contributor is laws that encourage murder. The three-strikes law is one such really bad law. "If I get caught this is my 3rd strike, so I have nothing to lose by killing the b*tch." Laws that encourage the killing of witnesses to a crime are dumb. People who vote for politicians who cynically push for such laws are equally dumb. A culture that supports this sort of stupidity via the voting booth, the executive branch, and the courts, is going to be a violent culture, because now both "sides" need to escalate, and when you create a situation where people have nothing to lose, don't be so surprised when they act "rationally" by killing people who could send them to jail for life.

Feminism proved that a lot of presumed inherently female aspects are stereotypical, why is it so hard for people to understand the same applies to a lot of male gender roles?

People understand, which is why the "she cheered me on" defense doesn't work. However, just because "a lot of" aspects are stereotypical doesn't invalidate that there is a biological basis for much human behaviour. To say that it can be explained away by culture doesn't work - the differential murder rate between men killing women and women killing men, and the universally higher rates of men as killers, say otherwise. Both sexes have the same "fight or flight" mechanism, but men are by far more likely to fight.

But let's look at other stuff that isn't so violent, but reinforces typical stereotypes. How about shopping? I love shopping, even when I don't buy anything. Guys? They admit that most of them approach it like a military mission - go in, acquire the target, and get out. Why the difference? It can't be entirely cultural when so many different cultures share the same stereotypical behaviour. Another one - shoes. How many pair of shoes does the average man have? 3 Women? it depends on age

a female from ages 13-16 may own about 15 pair of shoes including sneakers.
And older woman 16-21, who perhaps has a job: 25-40 pairs
A mature woman 25-50, anywhere from 40-60 pair of shoes

And th

it still implies that because men are more likely the killer females are more likely the victim, while the statistics I pointed to show that over 65 percent of the murders are a man killing another man. The fact is that men kill more, but the stereotype that women suffer disproportionately under the aggression of men isn't.

The stats have a section where only male/female killings are considered. In fact, it's kind of hard to miss - it's right at the top of the page: Male offender/Female victim 22.7%
Female offender/Male victim 9.6%

The vast majority of the time, it's the woman who is the victim.

Like the anecdote heard all too often of nightlife incidents involving groups of both males and females where the men are driven to defend the women, often cheered on by them, which sometimes results in one man killing a man from the other group.

Don't you think this says more about "drunks shouldn't have guns"? Being cheered on, even by 1,000 women, is not a rationale to kill someone. "But judge, I couldn't help myself. She made me do it - she was cheering me on." This wouldn't even work for a speeding ticket. If you want to look at the social and cultural aspects, look no further than your gun culture. The US has an out-of-control crime problem, which explains why it has more people in jail than any other country in the world. Anecdotes like the one you describe are a symptom of that. They also have absolutely nothing to do with the ratio between men killing women and women killing men, which is a separate statistic.

A second contributor is laws that encourage murder. The three-strikes law is one such really bad law. "If I get caught this is my 3rd strike, so I have nothing to lose by killing the b*tch." Laws that encourage the killing of witnesses to a crime are dumb. People who vote for politicians who cynically push for such laws are equally dumb. A culture that supports this sort of stupidity via the voting booth, the executive branch, and the courts, is going to be a violent culture, because now both "sides" need to escalate, and when you create a situation where people have nothing to lose, don't be so surprised when they act "rationally" by killing people who could send them to jail for life.

Feminism proved that a lot of presumed inherently female aspects are stereotypical, why is it so hard for people to understand the same applies to a lot of male gender roles?

People understand, which is why the "she cheered me on" defense doesn't work. However, just because "a lot of" aspects are stereotypical doesn't invalidate that there is a biological basis for much human behaviour. To say that it can be explained away by culture doesn't work - the differential murder rate between men killing women and women killing men, and the universally higher rates of men as killers, say otherwise. Both sexes have the same "fight or flight" mechanism, but men are by far more likely to fight.

But let's look at other stuff that isn't so violent, but reinforces typical stereotypes. How about shopping? I love shopping, even when I don't buy anything. Guys? They admit that most of them approach it like a military mission - go in, acquire the target, and get out. Why the difference? It can't be entirely cultural when so many different cultures share the same stereotypical behaviour. Another one - shoes. How many pair of shoes does the average man have? 3 Women? it depends on age

a female from ages 13-16 may own about 15 pair of shoes including sneakers.
And older woman 16-21, who perhaps has a job: 25-40 pairs
A mature woman 25-50, anywhere from 40-60 pair of shoes

And th

There are 397,403 km of paved road in the UK so that makes it about 1 camera / 100 meters

[...]Even you said it, that even the craziest "Christians", the WBC, is considered less nuts than radical islam and muslims.[...]

WBC are hardly the craziest "Christians".

Let's start our tour with an inquisitor, then move on to The Troubles, then back way up to the Crusades. This Crusade is a particularly fine example. Jumping ahead, we have Jim Jones et al, and of course, as others have pointed out, a whole list of violent crazies on Wikipedia. (Darn it, I tried to avoid Wikipedia links.)

WBC are just a relatively mild set of nutjobs in the long view. Christianity can offer hundreds of years of worse.

With that said, pick any other large group, and I'll be able to find similar levels of crazy within it. It's a human thing, not particular to any one religious or ethnic grouping. One of the fallacies humanity will hopefully eventually overcome is the crazy idea that one group of people is inherently "better" or "worse" than any other group of people. As far as I can tell, you can only really judge on an individual level, and that can be pretty messy and ambiguous in most cases.

Also:

I'm not saying Islam is going to disappear tomorrow due to terrorists, but recruitment is probably down since the 90s.

I haven't found a good comparison of Muslim growth in the ten years before and the ten years after 2000, but it seems like they have a pretty solid growth rate currently.

Problem is that the business is incarceration and seizure of "ill gotten" property. The police departments in the USA need to enforce drug laws to get funding via seizures and the prisons need to expand to get more $ from the Fed.
There is a reason why the USA has 50% of ALL LAWYERS IN THE WORLD!

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_country_in_the_world_has_most_lawyers_per_capita

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_were_Barack_Obama's_grades_in_college

You can't use an Android phone without a GMail account http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=22aadb7bd265418a&hl=en.

The term for that is "tying arrangement" (http://www.answers.com/topic/tying-arrangement) and ... tying arrangements are regulated by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Clayton (anti-trust) Act (15 U.S.C.A. 14)).

I am not "thinking" of anything. I'm making a joke that is referencing a trope. I didn't make it up, even if it is not accurate (and jokes don't have to be accurate).

I do suggest the following links though:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_explosive_smells_like_almonds

http://ask.metafilter.com/157267/Does-C4-smell-like-Almonds

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

Part of the problem with prison as it exists now is that it provides so much -- food, shelter, freedom from having to work, etc.

What? Don't you guys have rigorous imprisonment ?

I'm pretty sure we have it in some places at least, but I think it is the exception rather than the rule. (I could be wrong.) Aside from that, what happens if someone refuses to do the work? Do you stop feeding and sheltering them? If not, then my point still stands.

Part of the problem with prison as it exists now is that it provides so much -- food, shelter, freedom from having to work, etc.

What? Don't you guys have rigorous imprisonment ?

Personally I would prefer they sub-contract prisoners to do manual labor which nowadays is outsourced to other countries and pay them the same (so that companies are attracted).

And then, charge prisoners some rent from their hard earn cash.

That way tax payers do not have to pay to maintain those bastards.

This is a really nice idea that I have often thought would be a brilliant solution. Unfortunately it does not factor in just how bloody expensive prisons are.

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/statsbrief/cost.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_it_cost_to_house_a_prisoner_in_2008

This basically means that the third world will always be able to undercut slave labour incarcerated in the first world unless we can bring the cost of prison down by one hell of a lot. The best we can hope for is to reduce the amount of our taxes spent on prisons.

Then there is the problem that some of the scum bags we lock up cannot be trusted to do sweet FA. They are incredibly violent, will turn any tool you give them into a weapon, and are just lucky enough not to be caught doing anything that earns them a seat on old smoky. We have to find a way of dealing with these elements of our society.

Personally I am one of these liberal hippies being discussed so I would like to find away of stopping them get like this in the first place. That is by far the best way of limiting the amount we spend. There will always be some of them who slip through though and so some method of protecting the rest of us from them will always be needed and I am yet to understand how slapping an ankle bracelet on them will do that adequately.

A tag is all very well for knowing where the little critters were after the fact and determining if they can have committed a particular crime. As a law abiding member of society this is pretty much bugger all good to me if I am murdered by a socio-path wearing a tag.

No, what is needed is to actually deprive some elements of society of their liberty for my safety. Tags are only useful for people we are 99.9% sure about not re-offending or people who have finished their sentence but we still want to keep tabs on because we think they will re-offend but are unable to incarcerate for any longer without proof.

The "improper" way is so widespread it has become acceptable usage now, perhaps even the standard usage.

Um. You're wrong. Even if I didn't distinctly remember it and you don't trust the wiki, other sources say the same.

How much Helium are we actually 'using'?

All that's extracted.

What I mean is; how much Helium is getting trapped in some form that is not reclaimable? It's not like Helium is burnt, and I don't know what kind of compounds have Helium bonds or otherwise trap a Helium molecule. So where is the Helium going that we are using up?

Into space.

I'm obviously no Helium expert, which is why I'm asking so many questions, but I've never heard of a 'Helium mine', so I'm assuming that most of the Helium we have wasn't trapped in gas pockets underground, so we must have distilled it from the atmosphere. So can't we do it again after the Helium has fulfilled it's 'use'? Like melting down circuit boards to make jewelery?

Actually, all of it was trapped in gas pockets underground. None of it is distilled from the atmosphere as there isn't enough, as all the helium in the atmosphere eventually escapes into space.

Just a few tidbits I found since I assume many will follow the same track:

REF: http://www.helium.com/items/19276-the-uses-of-helium

Helium has many uses even though it is inert. There are three major uses for helium.It is used in low-temperature cooling systems and pressure, lighter-than-air objects and purge systems.

Helium can be very useful in low-temperature cooling because at -270*, or liquid temperature, is able to cool anything because it is so cold. A good example of this as useful is in superconducting devices, because superconducting (electricity can pass from one place to another without wasting any energy) can occur only at very low temperatures.
In pressure systems a gas is used to pressurize the system but the gas is not acceptable if it is able to react with any of the surroundings. Helium is an inert gas that is ideal for these situations. As well, in a purge system an inert gas is used to sweep all gas in a container without reacting with the contents, being inert it is ideal for these situations as well.
Helium is ideal for blimps, balloons and other lighter-than-air crafts because it is neither flammable nor have the lifting effects of hydrogen, this makes it much safer. Although only used for advertising and other limited purposes, it is an ideal element to make these possible.....

Some other common uses for helium include: :leak detection systems :welding :growing silicon and germanium crystals; protective shield :titanium and zirconium production; protective shield :nuclear reactors; cooling medium :diving and others working under pressure; artificial atmosphere with 20% oxygen :supersonic wind tunnels :cryogenic applications :liquid fuel rockets; pressurizing :effecting voice if breathed

I was then curious as to how quickly we lose helium to space and ran across this:

REF: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_gases_such_as_helium_escape_Earth's_atmosphere

No planet can hold any gas. Everything escapes, the only question is how fast.

Atmosphere is lost faster, when:
gas is lighter
temperature is higher,
gravity is lower,
planet has smaller size.

Potential energy of helium atom near the surface is
P = -mgRe = -/Na gRe

Exponential factor in Boltzmann distribution is
exp(-P/kT) = exp(/Na gRe / kT) = exp(/(RT) gRe)

Assuming T= 300 K we have /RT gRe = 0.004/(8.3 300) 9.8 6,370,000 = 100

So once per exp(-100) ~ 10^-43 attempts at escaping helium atom manages to do so. Probabilty 10^-34 is very small, but it sharply depends on temperature. Throw in 1000K and you have p ~ 10^-13, which means rather quick escape.

I gather from the above that although helium can escape earths atmosphere, it does so very slowly.

In the end, it seems foolish to me to release a known finite resource (finite as to what our technology can easily harvest today) to the hands of whim.

The book is written by probably the world's best expert on Asperger's Syndrome. He will reply to email, too. He's very approachable and friendly, and he "gets" how aspies think.

The key thing to understand is that it's not a limitation, but a difference. Sure, aspies will always struggle with social affairs, but the majority of aspies have high intelligence, often falling into the gifted category (IQ 130+). We also tend to make connections others won't, and we often innate abilities to do complicated mental things. We can also stay focused on our interests for hours/days/months on end, and accomplish great things that most people don't have the dedication for. Since I discovered that I am indeed an aspie, I made a decision to stop trying to be normal. I had always forced myself to be social, but now that I've accepted it's okay to be different a great amount of stress and frustration have disappeared. The best thing about finding out that I'm an aspie is that I finally have a reason for why I experience the problems I do, and why I just don't seem to get better. (And why everyone else seems so slow and stupid! lol)

The character which you describe certainly sounds autistic, although autistic people are creative! AS is basically on the mild end of the autistic spectrum. Some say it's impossible to be a great artist or inventor without being at least somewhat autistic. Wikipedia has a list of well-known people speculated to have been autistic. Here is another. Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent is an aspie. Isaac Asimov is suspected.

I think living with AS is basically a matter of focusing on your interests and your gifts. You have a talent for prose. Use it!

"Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park.

It'd kill the airlines in a week."

I was thinking the exact same thing. I'd never fly or drive more than 300 miles again and I'd actually take a train for the first time in my life.

This would also help electric cars because you no longer need a car that can drive 400 miles on a tank of gas and be refilled in 5 minutes.

1) Drive electric car 20-50 miles to train

2) drive electric car onto train

3) leave car and go to quarters for sleeping, eating, etc

4) get back in car and depart train to destination

only problem I see is that a boxcar is only about 10 feet wide while a large SUV is closer to 20 feet long so you couldn't drive vehicles on there the easiest way which would be sideways, they'd have to go lengthway like the train. I'm afraid by the time you loaded hundreds of vehicles on the train most people could have already arrived by plane.

Mind you, Amtrak's Auto Train has been pulling this off for a while, albeit in the limited sense of one route departing each terminus once daily. Were they to add more trains (which itself might not necessarily be practical, considering the way rail traffic observes prioritized access and spacing along a given stretch of track -- but if the departures are 11 hours apart, that'd be OK, wouldn't it? Theoretically, at least?) or more routes (like, say, outside Chicago to San Antonio, or to San Fran or Seattle), Auto Trains could prove extremely popular.

Since there's only one route (Lorton, VA to/from Sanford, FL), the transit to either station to travel on the train can vary quite a bit -- I used the Auto Train to move from SW PA to Tampa last summer, and I had roughly a 2.5-3 hour run from my original hometown to Lorton. Were I moving from just outside of the DC beltway, I would've of course used considerably less fuel (not even driving a hybrid, me) for my trip.

"Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park. It'd kill the airlines in a week."

I was thinking the exact same thing. I'd never fly or drive more than 300 miles again and I'd actually take a train for the first time in my life.

This would also help electric cars because you no longer need a car that can drive 400 miles on a tank of gas and be refilled in 5 minutes.

1) Drive electric car 20-50 miles to train
2) drive electric car onto train
3) leave car and go to quarters for sleeping, eating, etc
4) get back in car and depart train to destination

only problem I see is that a boxcar is only about 10 feet wide while a large SUV is closer to 20 feet long so you couldn't drive vehicles on there the easiest way which would be sideways, they'd have to go lengthway like the train. I'm afraid by the time you loaded hundreds of vehicles on the train most people could have already arrived by plane.

"Of course, you're both playing semantics games. In a von Neumann machine, such as is every desktop computer, for example, the separation of data and program is superficial--it's just a psychologically-driven convention."

The term "semantic games" doesn't mean what you appear to believe it does. It is absurd to state that there is no difference between algorithms and data. To make this perfectly clear, it makes perfect sense to talk about self modifying code, but to speak of self-modifying data would be absurd. So in other words, while I agree with you that the OP was indeed playing a semantic game (and he lost, miserably) I was certainly doing no such thing.

You do realize that Air is already 78% nitrogen, don't you? Oxygen makes up about nearly 21%, and argon is nearly 1%; the the rest are trace gasses that combined make up less than 1%. (source)

Diffusion of gasses through a permeable barrier (such as a tire wall) is largely a matter of how large the molecule is. Helium will leak out of an ordinary latex balloon quickly compared to air, because the helium atom is so small. In the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen are both diatomic molecules and, being right next to each other on the periodic table, are almost the same size.

So tell me, genius, what magical part of Air are you worried about leaking out, that replacing it with pure nitrogen is going to help?

You know, I wasn't sure either, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. That was hard to understand, so I googled it and got this answer from Answers.com. But that left me even more confused, like wondering why that entry would be filed under "Sports Science and Medicine". I then looked for a book on google books to aid my understanding. And apparently a narrow focus is a necessity for good business, as well as "animals in the wild". This was especially disconcerting because I didn't even know animals cared at ALL about good business.

All in all, I just don't know what to think about it anymore.

Today our evidence primarily deals with the question of whether these accounts have been reliably preserved and recorded by credible witnesses.

If Jesus died in 33 AD, then why was it first written about around 50 AD? How accurate can a detailed account be when it's written 20 years after the events?

And than what about the books that were written even later? How old were these people when they supposedly witnessed Jesus, and why did they write their stories down 40+ years later? Weren't they afraid of dying before they could get the word out? I think it's just far easier to falsely claim something happened 20-40 years ago than to say it just happened recently.

Evidence for one point of view has to eliminate or reduce the chance that a competing point of view is correct, otherwise it isn't evidence. The books of the New Testament are only evidence if you can remove or diminish the possibility that they weren't true first-hand accounts, and I don't think you can.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_computer's_loopback_IP_address

(Look there, you'll see it's been answered as 127.0.0.1, as was stated in my init. posts here also (that 127.0.0.1 is the loopback adapter address)

This also backs it as well:

"127.0.0.1 is the loopback adapter address present in every TCP/IP-enabled computer which causes the computer to refer to itself without knowledge of its own name or address"

(Pertinent Quote above is from here -> http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/112264/ in fact).

Heck, I suppose you can check the RFC's themselves even to further verify this, but I think that attempting to further "nitpick" my points on this will be fruitless on your parts guys (I've been into this area since the mid 1980's really on *NIX systems, & put up a lot about it for PC users since, oh, 1996-1997 or so, online on forums etc.)

APK

Is "mam" the new "babby"?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_spell_mam_as_in_yes_mam

Not sure if you could call it that either.

An addictive drug, such as opium, that reduces pain, alters mood and behavior, and usually induces sleep or stupor. Natural and synthetic narcotics are used in medicine to control pain.

The term narcotic (pronounced /nrktk/) strictly refers (medically) to any psychoactive compound with morphine-like effects (see Opiate). A Narcotic is defined as a drug such as opium or morphine that in moderate doses relieves pain and induces deep sleep. Excessive use can cause tremors and seizures. However, the term is also used colloquially to refer to any psychoactive drug that induces sleep. Examples of narcotics include morphine, laudanum, and heroin.

From answers.com and Wikipedia.

Citing acde.org for information about marijuana is pretty much like citing BP for studies of the effects of vast quantities of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or the American Nazi Party's web site for holocaust information. It's almost as bad as citing the Partnership for a Drug Free America; both are propaganda machines full of misinformation and outright lies.

Your wikipedia citation is a good one, though, since it, itself cites an actual study. It doesn't, however, state how much reaction times are diminished, although I would guess the actual study does.

You can take a certain amount of alcohol or other drug and remain within the safe limits for reaction time (this amount depends on the individual) but with marijuana there tends to be less of a safe zone that exists with alcohol due to the rapid rate at which marijuana is consumed (1 bong can intoxicate an individual as much as 100 ml of hard liquor in one go

Sorry, but that's just bullshit. First, three shots of what, Captain Morgan? Sailor Jerry? 190 proof White Lightning? It's a completely meaningless metric; "hard liquor", like marijuana, varies gratly in its potency. Secondly, have you ever had an Irish Car Bomb? It's the equivalent of a six pack of "American" beer consumed in less than thirty seconds. Not even the very best bud is going to get you as intoxicated on one hit as three shots of Captain will.

Yes, there is an effect, but you have wildly overstated it.

Does it really have to be spelled out to you?

On 17 August 1896, 44-year-old Bridget Driscoll became the first person to be killed by a motor car.

the first person world-wide who died as a result of being hit by a car (not in a car crash) was Mrs Bridget Driscoll

The quote relates to the first person to be killed after being hit by a car. You may note the profound irony in the coroner's statement.

hmmm. How about intent. Saying you'll do it is reasonable suspicion to detain you and search your house and if they find a gun in your room or anything they can arrest you for intent.

But Motorolla is a major player too, with 17% that is nothing to laugh at. http://www.answers.com/topic/motorola-inc

How much money does the music industry make?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_money_does_the_music_industry_make

40 Billion (no idea if that is accurate in anyway)

Convert to millions for fun: 40,000 Million

How much did the court cases cost? 16 Million

Its a drop in the bucket to try and perpetuate their current business model.

Its like the damages that BP will face... realistically the amount is nothing to them if you consider how much money they make. Call it a cost of doing buisness and move on.

This may clear things up: http://www.answers.com/topic/lego

I still remember learning that rooves is the plural of roof. It is quite correct - in English, that is, as opposed to American. The latter has over the past century or so made up their own spelling and called it English. See http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_plural_form_of_roof_-_roofs_or_rooves and http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081014042809AArplwb I was taught English in Northern Ireland, not Australia.

Supply and demand are a short-term adjustment, not a long term one.

I think the problem here is that you think we need a long term adjustment. I disagree. What is the point of planning helium consumption a full century into the future? Especially given that there are heavy opportunity costs to any attempt to save helium for some unknown use in the future?

For example, I used to work with an aerospace not-for-profit that launched helium filled high altitude balloons (to 100k feet routinely). The cost of our helium is a few hundred dollars while the payloads and other parts of the mission tend to be a few thousand dollars. Multiplying the cost of helium by a factor of 20 means helium cost is most of the mission cost and more than doubles our mission costs. Now maybe you don't appreciate development of high altitude ballooning and rocket technology, but I am hard pressed to imagine any use of helium in a century that warrants doubling our costs much less the ridiculous market distortion that would hit the helium market.

Incidentally, in the worst case scenario, an increase in the cost of helium by a factor of 1000 opens up interesting opportunities in low Earth orbit. Helium today is worth roughly $0.05 per gram. At $50 per gram, that is similar to gold in price per mass. I think that would enable helium scooping and would be an interesting revenue generator.

The protectionist law Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act [wikipedia.org], which became law in 1930, led to the Great Depression

Sorry, that's yet another right wing free trader myth with absolutely no basis in reality. The stock market collapse took place in October, 1929.

I phrased it wrong. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the depression last longer and get worse than it would have without the act being law. Read what the Department of State says. Before President Hoover signed it 1000 economists urged him to veto the act. Then as Info Please says, "U.S. foreign trade suffered a sharp decline, and the depression intensified."

So then people, perhaps you, will say FDR's policies brought the Great Depression to an end. HAHA! FDR came to office on 4 March 1933 yet the Great Depression bottomed in 1932. The "U.S. economy was growing again by 1933, and technically the United States was not in recession from 1933 to 1937." The Great Depression may of seemed to last longer, but that's partially because of the Recession of 1937-38.

Falcon

World population is split closer to 50.25% male, 49.75% female. Therefore, it's 0.5025 probability of being male. 201/400

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_ratio_of_women_to_men_in_the_world Abstract thought ftw!

If nobody said it then how is it a commonly used expression?

or a pedophile:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_Muhammad_a_pedophile

I believe that would be Hilo, Hawaii...

Well, I don't know how accurate it is, but this link doesn't include anyplace in Hawaii as the cloudiest place on Earth.

Scotland, however, is well represented with 2 of the top 10, which matches their reputation. :-P

It occurs to me that the mediterranean doesn't have tides either. (well, minimal compared with elsewhere) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_the_Mediterranean_have_no_tide