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seems like you're a little too late

I've posted a small greasemonkey script to hide any comments with these URLs on my blog

I've just made a blog post on the very thing

"If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I'll be the first person to stand up and say it."

well... you were wrong.

I'm not holding my breath for you to stand up, though.

You might want to read up on ARMs. Try this article for starters. The problem here is that in most cases, Adjustable Rate Mortgages are not an opportunity to own a home. More like an opportunity to pay excessive rent for a few years then experience the joys of bankrupcy.

I'll spare you lengthy essay on why this is looks to be a problem for all of us, not just a matter of bad individual choices. Bottom line: One guy makes a bad financial decision. He has a problem. Two million guys and a lot of companies and (apparently) all our financial institutions make bad decisions, We -- all of us -- have a problem. It's already chiseled in stone. We are going to bail the banks out because the alternative -- let them fail -- is worse. We bail them out, and we'd have to be pretty stupid not to constrain them so we don't have to bail them out of the same stupid situation again.

Interestingly, MOBE2001 makes a number of scientific testable predictions based on his bible code theories, predictions which may some day be either confirmed or refuted.

Well, thanks for pointing this out. I make no apologies to anybody about my work. If my religious convictions bother you, just ignore it, that's all. In particular, I make a scientific prediction about the human cerebellum that should be very easy to falsify, if you're a neurobiologist. In addition, I suggest a simple experiment at the bottom of the page that almost anybody can perform. Check it out.

What we need first is an overall theory to play with

For those interested, I just wanted to let people know MOBE2001's brain theories and expertise are based on his work decoding secret messages hidden in the bible. Secret coded messages rewriting the laws of physics too.

Interestingly, MOBE2001 makes a number of scientific testable predictions based on his bible code theories, predictions which may some day be either confirmed or refuted. So those interested in secret science messages coded in the bible can follow this work and the eventual success/failure of these predictions, and those who are not-so-interested in secret science messages coded in the bible can not-follow this work for the duration of eagerly anticipating the arrival of ground breaking scientific news coverage of confirmed predictions.

-

merry christmas all

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/breakfast-with-apple-lawyer.html

If you're not familiar with Andy Kaufman characters, you might need to Google 'Tony Clifton.' Reading through the comments in some preceding entries (where a few commenters wryly accuse Dan's writing of becoming Kaufman-esque) helps too.

Having said that, the tone of my original posting was unnecessarily snide and condescending. I am sorry and apologize to you; there was no reason for me to personally attack or insult you.

...By creating a metrics-based standard, it is open to be used to measure innovation.

Creating a "standard" through the banning of a technology restricts innovation. And GE's announcement of high efficiency incandescent bulbs shows how short-sighted and misdirected implementation-based standards are.

This is very similar to how FLOSS software has been excluded from many governments and other organizations: the "standard" that is applied is one defined by a particular implementation, such as "must comply with Software X from Big Vendor Y", not a measurable metric or agreed-on open standard. With such fuzzy, incomplete or completely opaque "standards" -- often obfuscated by interested parties -- compliance is not possible and the standard itself is an impossible moving target...

I am glad they chose to use standards (or metrics) --based criteria, instead of technolopgy (or implementation) --based criteria.

I blogged about the issue of standards vs. technology in the light bulb debate and the parallels in the Open Source world last March ( Software, light bulbs & standards: Banning incandescent bulbs akin to banning FLOSS ).

In another comparison reported by the World Health Organization that used a different set of health indicators, the U.S. also fared poorly with a ranking of 15 among 25 industrialized nations

In that same report, it is noted the if accidents were removed from the statistics, the US would have the number one lifespan in the world.

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/11/beyond-those-health-care-numbers-us.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-the-us-lead-in-life-expectancy-223/
http://firstfriday.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/world-health-organization-rankings-distort-us-position/

"I'm not sure how you think Occam's Razor applies here. It's nothing to do with 'simplest solution that fits the facts' because we have two equally simple solutions - either Lyons is lying or Jobs is. The rest of the story unfolds from there."

oh.. so a faketard blogger with a book comming out lying to get some interest seems in the same league as a fortune 500 company CEO taking the time to lie about this...

  OK. fair enough. How about this comment about FSJ approaching the EFF for legal advice:

"Q. "You should get EFF to represent you."

A. I tried, but at first they ignored me and then when I persisted I was told that EFF doesn't appreciate some of the shit I've said about them in the past, because I've been pretty critical of them. I said okay, maybe you don't like what I've written about you, but surely you'll defend my right to say it, won't you? Their response: "We only help people we like. Good luck." Click. Dial tone."

ahha. and that definetly makes sense, right?

Apparently, the guy tried to contact EFF and was turned down (see bottom of the link) because the EFF didn't like some of his posts.

Assuming that this is true, this doesn't shed too good a light on the EFF. Isn't the EFF supposed to help bloggers that are being attacked by large corporations, regardless of what is posted on the blog and, in particular, of whether the person likes the EFF? At least, isn't that what people who donate to the EFF expect it to do?

It is.

Octave does not come included with Sage, but Sage can make use of any installed version of Octave. There is a Sage spkg for Octave which can be installed by running the command "sage -i octave-2.1.73". With the new release of Octave, that spkg should be updated soon.

For an interesting post by the lead developer of Sage (William Stein) on the relationship between Sage and Octave in terms of overall goals, see this http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-isnt-sage-just-part-of-octave.html

--Mike (a Sage developer)

I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to sjobs@apple.com, and actually got a response.

Here is the text of the conversation (read bottom to top, of course) ...

I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.

Steve

On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:

I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html

On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:

What, praytell, are you talking about?

On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:

I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.

Gary Baldwin

I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to sjobs@apple.com, and actually got a response.

Here is the text of the conversation (read bottom to top, of course) ...

I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.

Steve

On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:

I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html

On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:

What, praytell, are you talking about?

On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:

I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.

Gary Baldwin

How do you define "girlfriend"?

They would only be able to see Earth as a single pixel

How about we launch some giant pixels so that they see more.

It worked with Google push-pins.

James Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, who did the first research with embryonic stem cells, has now taken a major step toward ending the "ethical" controversy over their use. But hold on: That controversy was generated by specific objections from one religion, not some universal ethic. There is every reason to continue research along the old path, with embryo-derived cells: The new methods may carry unknown liabilities, so making the case for changing Bush's 2001 presidential order should continue.

House Democrats recently celebrated passage of a bill that would expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR). On the House floor, Speaker Pelosi (D-California) described research on embryonic stem cells as "a gift from God" and "biblical in its power to cure." Taking exception to the remark, Brownback says life -- not embryo-destructive research -- is "a gift from God." "You destroy life to get these embryonic stem cells," the presidential hopeful notes. "It's like she avoids that portion of the discussion; and on top of that, we've just had even another breakthrough where they've been able to reprogram skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells .... we don't have to destroy human life." The Kansas lawmaker says embryo-destructive research is not only unethical, but also unnecessary. "We don't need to do this research for the cures," he explains. "Indeed, were getting zero cures out of embryonic stem cells -- and were up to 73 human maladies being treated by adult stem cells. So if we're going on the science of this issue, the right route to go is more funding of adult stem cells."

MercatorNet: Obtaining eggs from women volunteers is essential for Harvard?s experiments. Do you foresee any problems?

Sherley: Very knowledgeable human endocrinologists, bioethicists, and women's rights advocates have provided prescient warnings regarding the potential for exploitation of women in meeting the demand for egg donors that may be created by human embryo cloning research. There is already an active unregulated service economy based on provision of human eggs for IVF in the US. Currently, women receive significant financial compensation for undergoing an invasive procedure for harvest of their artificially hormonally-matured eggs. The US National Academy of Sciences has recommended that women who donate eggs for human embryo cloning experiments receive no compensation beyond the costs they incur for participation. This is the policy to which Harvard reports that its scientists will adhere.

Even Economics 101 is not required to realize that this is plan may potentially reduce the plight that cloning experiments pose for human embryos. Harvard scientists are likely to find that they cannot recruit sufficient women who will volunteer their eggs to make embryos that will be killed for cloning research, when instead they could receive as much as US$15,000 for eggs that will be used to conceive babies for infertile parents.

With a 25 year guarantee, in a typical US site where the average annual solar resource is 4.5 kWh/m^2/day assuming peak insolation is 1 kW/m^2 so that you have 4.5 hours per day of peak equivilent then at $1/watt the cost of power is $1000/(4.5*365*25 hours)=$0.024/kWh. For large installations, inverters likely run about $0.60/watt over 25 years and putting the panels in place could cost $1.50/watt (including land) so your looking at about $0.075/kWh. This is under the average retail price near $0.11/kWh so that installations with low transmission costs should help to stabilize the cost of electricity with a pretty good return on investment. Things are even more favorable when you compare with daytime electricity sources which tend to be gas rather than coal. Installations in the Southwest probably justify transmission to the Southeast which is probably why some Southwestern senators voted against the energy bill. They can prevent the Southeast from developing their own resource and thus corner the power market. The cost of power in the southwest would be about $0.036/kWh given the low cost of land there.
--
Rent solar power for your home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html

GM says 2010 for production, there's a working prototype,
Theres nothing like that. The "prototype" you are talking about has nothing of the final car, the entire powertrain is not developed, batteries are not ready by far, and the body styling is far from complete.
What you saw unveiled was an empty styling shell, moved around by a small DC motor. Its called a "Design concept", its not even close what the final car will look like.
Take a peek under the hood of this thing here
You cant call this thing a prototype, its not even a mule, commonly used by the industry to test the components of the car. First mules of Volt are supposed to be on the road sometime early 2008, and they will be based on Malibu. The final car is reportedly closer to Cobalt.

Well, I don't know about other people, but to me, it's not really a question of the reader quality. It's just that there are so many reasons to boycott the entire Sony brand, and maybe just one reason to not like Amazon.

In fact, I might even say that with the exception of RIAA and MPAA, whenever any Sony product is compared with a competitor, Sony always loses because it's a brand that needs to be boycotted, with no regard to any technical merits whatsoever.

I know I might buy Kindle if it were a little cheaper (borderline at $200, definitely at $100). I know I will never use anything with "Sony" in its name, even if I was getting paid to use it.

People interested in this thread should take note of Science Debate 2008. It's an effort to encourage a presidential debate on matters of science and technology. I'm pleased to note that my humble blog was a charter member. At present many influential scientists have signed on.

My game of the year is Portal, simply an awesome game with my review here.

My console game of the year is Call of Duty 4 (yes the game is also on the PC, but I played it on the Xbox 360). My review for that is here.

I played a lot of portable games this year but nothing really that new, mostly catching up on things. Two games of note were Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (review). Both good games but nothing I can say is game of the year quality.

I also traditionally pick a game that didn't come out this year but I played it for the first time, this year I have to give that to Psychonauts. Truly a wonderful and hilarious experience. If you're wondering... here's my review.

Disclaimer, there's no ads or anything on my site so I'm not trying to cash in on Slashdot, but if you're interested in a further opinion, check them out.

My game of the year is Portal, simply an awesome game with my review here.

My console game of the year is Call of Duty 4 (yes the game is also on the PC, but I played it on the Xbox 360). My review for that is here.

I played a lot of portable games this year but nothing really that new, mostly catching up on things. Two games of note were Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (review). Both good games but nothing I can say is game of the year quality.

I also traditionally pick a game that didn't come out this year but I played it for the first time, this year I have to give that to Psychonauts. Truly a wonderful and hilarious experience. If you're wondering... here's my review.

Disclaimer, there's no ads or anything on my site so I'm not trying to cash in on Slashdot, but if you're interested in a further opinion, check them out.

My game of the year is Portal, simply an awesome game with my review here.

My console game of the year is Call of Duty 4 (yes the game is also on the PC, but I played it on the Xbox 360). My review for that is here.

I played a lot of portable games this year but nothing really that new, mostly catching up on things. Two games of note were Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (review). Both good games but nothing I can say is game of the year quality.

I also traditionally pick a game that didn't come out this year but I played it for the first time, this year I have to give that to Psychonauts. Truly a wonderful and hilarious experience. If you're wondering... here's my review.

Disclaimer, there's no ads or anything on my site so I'm not trying to cash in on Slashdot, but if you're interested in a further opinion, check them out.

My game of the year is Portal, simply an awesome game with my review here.

My console game of the year is Call of Duty 4 (yes the game is also on the PC, but I played it on the Xbox 360). My review for that is here.

I played a lot of portable games this year but nothing really that new, mostly catching up on things. Two games of note were Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (review). Both good games but nothing I can say is game of the year quality.

I also traditionally pick a game that didn't come out this year but I played it for the first time, this year I have to give that to Psychonauts. Truly a wonderful and hilarious experience. If you're wondering... here's my review.

Disclaimer, there's no ads or anything on my site so I'm not trying to cash in on Slashdot, but if you're interested in a further opinion, check them out.

You clearly deserve a government job!

Perhaps in Denmark.

Or Spain

Or, hey, maybe you should produce videos for Greenpeace, threatening anyone who doesn't agree with them. I'm sure that would help.

After crawling the web a bit I found a few more interesting links about Toshiba's "Micro-Nuke" technology. First an article from 2005 about a similar Toshiba reactor running on liquid Sodium that was slated to be installed in a remote Alaskan village some time before 2010. This doesn't appear to be the same reactor as mentioned here on /.

A blog entry with more information and links about this and other small reactors.

It seems to be fairly safe, though I can't imagine the red tape they'll have to get through in order to begin installing them, especially in North America. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US has about a 60 month process to certify a reactor from the time the application is filed, Toshiba probably has a head start on this application from 2005 with its "4S" mini-reactor, but this new Lithium version will probably need its own application process. They plan to build these things at least 30m underground, encased in steel and concrete walls that probably put most bank vaults to shame, so I don't think tampering will be a major issue.

Here you go:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/11/ron-pauls-record-in-congress.html

That's what he's been up to in congress.

Ammending the constitution to define a zygote as a peson is not in any a consistent with a libertarian position on liberty.

If you read the above link you'll see he's opposed to federal funds for all family planning efforts, not just abortion. He's also opposed to gay equality.

There's a reason he's a republican. Libertarians consider the right to be left alone and unmolested sacred. They wouldn't let him get away with using elected office to impose his religious views on the country.

Really?

Then why does he vote like a Christian fascist?

Once you dig into his record a bit more you'll find that while he's opposed to big government, he's also opposed to the separation of church and state. You know what you get when you have a skeleton state and encourage religious groups to provide social services? You get Hamas. If organized religion is larger and more powerful than the government of the state hosting it, it will become the government of the state hosting it.

No thank you. I admit that government could really use an enema right about now, but given the choice, I'll take a corrupt oligarchy over a corrupt theocracy any day.

I happen to remember Obama saying that nuclear power had a place in solving the global warming dilemma on one of those C-SPAN debates. I don't think he's vehemently anti-nuke at all, and Internet seems to agree. But I think it's fishy none of the candidates are taking sides one way or the other on such an important issue.

While the FCC has no authority to regulate newspapers, it does have the authority to deny broadcast spectrum licenses in situations where it judges the grant not to be in the public interest, and it has for decades held the position that granting a television license to a daily newspaper in the same market is automatically not in the public interest. Tuesday's decision changes that position.

If this decision had been made a decade ago, you would have seen a burst of acquisitions by newspaper companies. Today they simply don't have the access to capital. McClatchy's current market cap is about what it paid in 1997 to buy the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And local TV isn't as attractive as it once was. Is audience has been drained away to cable and the Internet, or driven away by cheap-to-produce "reality" shows.

So there may be a burst of property-trading in which media companies consolidate geographic holdings, I don't expect it to be all that significant.

All this seems to me like a case of fighting the last war. The Internet has made it impossible for any local media entity to dictate the public agenda. And I think that's a good thing.

See also Ben Compaine: http://wotmedia.blogspot.com/

for anyone else thats fed up of this guy - this greasemonkey script shows the actual tinyurl destination in the tooltip when you hover over it.

and if you dont want to run greasemonkey directly - convert it into a standalone firefox extension

How would you suggest I do it? Slashdot only allows very small headlines. The case names are listed here. The plaintiffs are the bad guys.

There is nothing inaccurate by saying the cases are run by the RIAA. The cases, including settlement negotiations, are completely managed by the RIAA cartel.

If you're suggesting that I add a list of 5 to 8 record company names to every post, I don't agree... it would be a bunch of extra work on my part, to produce a very boring sentence.

I like reading the Editorials in the Wall Street Journal. Too bad they don't have funnies. :(

The Boston Globe Editorial page sucks, but they have a nice collection of funnies: Dilbert and Fox Trot come to mind.

http://sentenceofdave.blogspot.com/

This is not any kind of Good. And it has its roots back with none other than U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who slammed affirmative action programs designed to maintain and to promote diversity. http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2007/12/kingcast-provides-clarence-thomas.html He intentionally delayed a vote back in '91 that would have expanded protections for women in media. He delayed the vote because he thought it would have a negative impact on his Supreme Court Judicial appointment, and not only that, he really applied strict scrutiny instead of the mid-level scrutiny used in sex cases. "He said in the decision that the Federal Communications Commission's policy of giving preference to women was unconstitutional because it denied equal protection of the laws to white men." The decision flew in the face of recent case law established by the Brennan Decision in Metromedia v. FCC as noted in these NYTimes links one and two (at my blawg entry above).

The simpler a system is, the easier it is to secure. India already uses electronic voting machines with great success. Now that is well engineered solution.

No, Diebold, it's not gonna be secure when you introduce 1024 bit encryption.

> Given the significant resources spend for NASA, is this monies better off spent elsewhere or is this spent responsibly?

          NASA accounts for only 0.5% of US federal spending. NASA's budget is insignificant compared to the total amount of money that the federal government spends each year.

http://mrsquid.blogspot.com/

For example, when psychologist Angela Neal-Barnett in 1999 asked some focus-group students to identify acting-white behavior, they listed actions that ranged from speaking standard English and enrolling in an Advanced Placement or honors class to wearing clothes from the Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch (instead of Tommy Hilfiger or FUBU) and wearing shorts in winter!

Dodd put a hold on this bill; under Senate traditions that should have killed it. And under Harry Reid's turn as majority leader, that's still the case...if you're a Republican. Lindsey Graham placed a hold on a bill to prevent the CIA from using torture. Or when Tom Coburn placed a hold on a nondiscrimination bill. But when a Democrat wants to place a hold on a bill to protect our rights, he is simply ignored.

That is one of the stupidest ideas that I have ever heard. There are so many things wrong with it that it is hard to know where to start, so I will just pick two points. First, this is an excellent way to drive good people out of government and ensure that future government employees are people who have no other job prospects. Do you really want the government to consist of people scraped from the bottom of the barrel? I certainly don't. Second, this is little more than voyeurism: people with nothing better to do spying on people who are actually doing something. Is that the sort of society that you want to live in: one where anyone can get their jollies by spying on you at work? I don't.

http://mrsquid.blogspot.com/

Indeed and that's a feature. Guido's argument is that it is essentially impossible (at least for the average programmer) to write correct parallel code. After a 20+ years experience in programming, I fully agree. I wrote several multithreaded programs, working apparently correctly. But after checking the typical multithread programming errors, I had come to realize that I made almost all of them. Welcome to hell.

BTW, the author of Tcl concurs

You can fix all the languages you want, and add a few dozen keywords and constructs, it will not change the fact that, at the end, multi-threading is overly complex. In this day and age, it is therefore a waste of time - because most program would benefit greatly from increased reliability, and for extra features. E.g., even if Notepad is quite fast, most people use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice - for the features.

I believe in things that most Christians would disavow. I believe that the Bible uses clever metaphors to hide revolutionary scientific secrets that will astonish the world and transform human civilization. I believe that the most advanced and far-reaching scientific breakthroughs in this century will come straight from the Bible.

When I first started programming, in BASIC on an Apple ][ (not IIe), I remember being baffled by the fact that the computer did not operate with multiple concurrent streams. To me, this seemed the point of making something that was "more than a calculator," and the only way we would be able to do the really interesting stuff with it.

When I first started writing object-oriented code, I was somewhat dismayed to find that OO was an extension to the same ol' linear programming. It seemed to me that objects should be able to exist as if alive and react freely, but really, they were just a fancy interface to the linear runtime. Color me disapointed yet again.

It's an important paradigm shift to recognize parallel computing. Maybe when the world realizes the importance of parallel computing, and parallel thinking, we'll have that singularity that some writers talk about. People will no longer think in such basic terms and be so ignorant of context and timing. That in itself must be nice.

Sutter's article hits home with all of this. His conclusion is that efficient programming, and elegant programming that takes advantage of, not conforms to, the parallel model is the future. Judging by the chips I see on the market today, he was right, 2.5 years ago. He will continue to be right. The question is whether programmers step up to this challenge, and see it as being as fun as I think it will be.