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A few of us make hardware for the humble Speccy still, you can now go on the Internet with the Spectranet http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc - at the VCF in 2010, much fun was had sending tweets from a Sinclair Spectrum, you can connect hard drives/CF cards with the DivIDE http://baze.au.com/divide/, there's a USB interface (although the developer seems to have disappeared, hmm...) and various other fun bits of hardware to play with. Retro enthusasts are still writing some really nice games for the Spectrum and there's a strong demoscene, too.

The ULA (the custom logic IC) has also been reverse engineered by actually de-encapsulating the chip and photographing it with a microscope http://www.zxdesign.info/ - you can buy the book there, by the way... There were some interesting anecdotes from that. Today we have FPGAs and CPLDs and you can essentially make custom logic at home, but back in the early 1980s, companies like Ferranti made generic dies, and stored them, and you made your actual custom logic by specifying the interconnection layer. Richard Altwasser had only 6 weeks to design the circuit for the Spectrum's ULA (which handles video and all other I/O for the basic machine). When Ferranti completed the first wafer of Spectrum ULAs, they ran tests and found that they didn't work. It turns out that a Ferranti engineer had made a mistake when making the phototools to make the metallization layer, and basically half the chip lacked its clock signal. However, one single die on the whole wafer DID work. It turns out that despite all this being done in a clean room, a spec of dust had landed in precisely the right place on the phototools to connect the clock circuit, so they had one working ULA die on the wafer, and Sinclair could test and validate their ULA.

Incidentally if you're in London on the 5th/6th May, there's a 30th anniversary of the Spectrum celebration at the British Film Institute. It's free to enter. Details are here:
http://www.imperica.com/horizons

How much more expensive are these notes?

On par, if not slightly cheaper then trying to increase the security the cotton-linen blend that the US uses. The biggest cost is in replacing printing machines, seeing as the technology has been around for a while this cost will be lower then that of Australia.

While notes in Australia might only last six months, in the US the replacement rate is more like 2 years. If plastic notes are, for example, 3X more expensive to produce, then that is kind of false economy.

I don't see how.

In the case of Vietnam, increasing security of paper notes would have cost more and not have resulted in the same security as a polymer note. The economic benefits come in less counterfeit notes which decreases insurance costs for banks and federal reserves. With the case of New Zealand, switching to Polymer bank notes cost them twice as much as paper notes but resulted in a note that lasted four times as long, over the lifetime of the note costs were essentially halved. If the US has a 2 year replacement cycle then there would be clear benefits to using polymer notes compared to the fragile cotton-linen notes (When I handled USD, compared to the polymer AUD, SGD and MYR the US notes were extremely fragile and often frayed or torn, I felt like I needed kid gloves to handle them).

Polymer notes are also recycled. After being shredded into a fine pulp by the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) the notes are melted down, mixed with other polymers or impurities and re-cast into other plastic items. This is more environmentally friendly then what we did with our old Paper currencies, which was burn them.

How much harder are they to counterfeit?

As I said with the case of Vietnam, these notes are significantly harder to counterfeit. The most expensive paper note protection hasn't been able to match cheaper polymer note protection.

Right now a counterfeit bill might only stay in circulation a few years. With plastic money, it might be harder to counterfeit, but if it stays in circulation, the damage in increased through repeated circulation.

This depends on how much more difficult it is to produce a fake note that can avoid detection. America's biggest problem is not counterfeit notes in the US, it's counterfeit notes outside the US where security detection is not as good. This has lead many international banks to flatly refuse to accept certain batches of notes and notes beyond a certain age (a serious inconvenience for US travellers, a lamentation I hear often when abroad from Americans). Polymer bank notes increase the cost, time and skill required to produce copies and increases the ability of banks to detect counterfeits, six out of every million AUD notes are found to be counterfeit.

Counterfeit notes are only good if they are not detected, a bank is the most likely place to detect a counterfeit and it is quite hard to prevent a note from reaching a bank. So the calculation you have is: (ability + cost required to make fake notes)=number of fake notes/banks ability to detect fake notes. If you increase the ability to detect notes you decrease circulation, if you increase the cost and skill to make fake notes you decrease introduction. Polymer notes attack both the supply and longevity of counterfeit notes. This PDF is informative, showing the ratio of production to circulation and comparing the counterfeit rates to the EUR, GBP and CAD.

What IS the exact count for each? In terms of sheer body count, there's a pretty fair chance that the US/UK coalition killed more Iraquis than Saddam did during his entire reign. Of course, the coalition killed them in order to liberate them, so that's OK.

Okay, either you're regurgitating anti-American propaganda or, more likely, haven't paid much mind to history since the late 1970s.

Let's take a look.

Saddam Hussein: ~2 million.
Since the invasion: almost 100,000.

Now, to be fair, Saddam ruled for approximately 24 years, and his numbers include deaths that were not necessarily civilian casualities. That gives him a death tally of about 80,000 deaths per year versus around 17,000 per year under coalition forces. However, it is exceedingly important to remember that many of the deaths recorded in Iraq, particularly recently, have been the result of suicide bombings, executions, and other acts of violence not tied to the coalition. If you have an unbiased source that supports your view, I'd certainly be happy to hear it.

Yes, the deaths per year is still unnecessarily high, but to make the statement that MORE deaths have occurred because US/UK forces have actively killed civilians is an outright lie. On the other hand, yours could be a two-liner troll!

Nepenthes Rajah is probably the most notorious rat catcher. The pitchers on average are about the size of a NFL football and dwarf these newly discovered ones. http://www.vcps.au.com/pics/plants/n_rajah.jpg

I think that many will agree that both Hitler and Mussolini stand very high up in the list of people who did "crimes against humanity", and I don't think there is any point in arguing who is higher up on the list - all I care about is that we will not get new entries. But could you please explain what you are talking about?

The mussolini killer file mentions "Over 400,000 Italians killed during the Second World War. At least 30,000 Ethiopians killed during Italian occupation of Ethiopia." (wikipedia cites "more than 275,000" Ethiopians killed)

For Hitler, it mentions "Directly responsible for the deaths of over 60 million worldwide as a result of the Second World War."

Who are the 20 million that were killed by Mussolini and his followers? Can you give me references?

Oh and see this : not only in the 2 million they count the war Iran irak but also the death of children due to the sanction imposed by the west !!

Death Count

IF you count Saddam as butcher, then the west hands are full of blood too.

Anyone else find themselves reminded of Idi Amin??

I once saw a documentary that was made with his blessing -- it followed Idi Amin around for several weeks. Even on his best behaviour for the international cameras, the man was a complete raving loon, whose only real interest was his own paranoia and aggrandizement. Probably the worst thing that ever happened to Uganda. (Wikipedia is far too kind. http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/amin.html is more to the point. I see Kim has a page there too.)

please don't confuse communism .. which really has nothing to do with politricks .. and fascism

but which has everything to do with economics .. communism is an economic model .. not a political model

it apples and oranges ..

just ask the people in Chile .. who had elected the world first democratically elected communist government ..

which was then promptly overthrown by a United States backed and orchestrated military Coup d'État ..lead by Augusto Pinochet .. on September 11, 1973

http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pinochet.html

29 years to the day of September 11, 2001

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A716591

http://www.iisg.nl/collections/chile/

the ruling class could not leave something like democratic communism laying around to work it'self out .. it would put a big hole in the fascist/capitalist ideology ..

Millions, can seem to get into the millions. How about some links?

My fault, I should have simply said "over a million."

1
2>
3>

There are as many as you might want to go Googling for.

zogger writes:
So far, US forces have killed more innocent civilians than saddam did, by the year.

Just to inject a little fact into your fiction, here's what http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/hussein.html says about Saddam Hussein:

Kill tally: Approaching two million, including between 150,000 and 340,000 Iraqis and between 450,000 and 730,000 Iranians killed during the Iran-Iraq War. An estimated 1,000 Kuwaiti nationals killed following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. No conclusive figures for the number of Iraqis killed during the Gulf War, with estimates varying from as few as 1,500 to as many as 200,000. Over 100,000 Kurds killed or "disappeared". No reliable figures for the number of Iraqi dissidents and Shi'ite Muslims killed during Hussein's reign, though estimates put the figure between 60,000 and 150,000. (Mass graves discovered following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 suggest that the total combined figure for Kurds, Shi'ites and dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000). Approximately 500,000 Iraqi children dead because of international trade sanctions introduced following the Gulf War.

Perhaps you have some other favorite sources of Saddam's kill stats?

Others disagree.

Kill tally: 14 to 20 million deaths from starvation

"responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime"

You can find more for themselves.

Besides, even if Mao were actually harmless, why all the fuss? Did the agents confiscate the book? Did the threaten the reader? If not, then what's the big deal with them stopping by to see who was reading the book, and why?

.
Good point, let me summarize:

Tsunami....... - 6 hours - 140,000 dead - 23,000 per hour
Hitler+Germany - 6 years - 20,000,000 - 380 per hour
Saddam........ - 30 years - 2,000,000 dead - 8 per hour
Since Saddam.. - 1.5 years - 50,000 dead** - 4 per hour

This instance of Mother Nature wins by two orders of magnitude.

(**) Compromise with the famous 100,000 study. Clearly at least 20,000 deaths, probably more so I'll accept 50,000. I will not include 50,000 that died due to plain outright person to person non-insurrection related murders. And remember, of the 50,000, 20,000 were evil people who deserved to die. They were the 20,000 who helped murder the 2,000,000 over the prior 30 years.

There are runaway models that support a self feeding or positive feed back model for temperature rise. Astronomers have been trying to explain Venus' atmosphere and temperature for decades. The most common theory is the Green House effect.
Venus Facts.

While I believe that there are greater climatological forces (greater than Yuppies with SUV's) at work which cause up and down cycles in global temperature; life in general has had a very marked hand in contributing to these changes. The most radical planetary change attributed to life forces has to do with early bacteria and algae giving the earth its oxygen rich atmosphere.
Early life formsand O2

I do support using more efficient energy technologies as these not only help slow down CO2 emissions (which may or may not contribute to global warming) but more importantly reduce sulfur, ozone, and nitrate emissions which are known to cause acid rain and contribute to air pollution. I have been doing my part by replacing old light bulbs with energy efficient ones and by better insulating my house and running an attic fan in stead of the AC when weather permits, etc. If everyone makes lots of little changes then this will have a big impact on our overall quality of life. I'm not talking about shivering in the corner during the winter because you shouldn't run your heater but the stakes are too high not to pay attention and try to take the best actions even if the data is incomplete. Baby steps.
Climate change

Just like it would be good riddance if the .au.com domains dropped off the internet. These scammers register a single .com domain for $15/year or whatever and then try so sell as many ".au.com" domains as they can, all pure profit, to suckers who couldn't get the .com.au domain they wanted.

Back to the topic, yes, humans like the way tube amps sound, because they add a kind of distortion that makes the music sound "warm". On the other hand, Hi-Fi stands for High Fidelity, and tube amps aren't. If you want the music to sound like when it was recorded, get a decent solid state amp. If you want to shell out insane amounts of money for an inferior product, buy a tube amp and listen to it while you drive to work on your steam tractor. Info on audio, amps (and how to build your own): Rod Elliott's Pages.

All said, the file is in text file format and is a simple list of spammer addresses, which I am sure someone could convert/import to the format needed.

The nice thing is that people send him the names of spammers. And so it is constantly updated.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Oooh look, a NSI related company at au.com - where you're supposed to buy a yourname.au.com domain!

It helps ensure your domain coverage, wow, peachy keen.