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The fair tax contains provision for allowing the basics to go untaxed. This is why it is NOT unfair to the middle and lower classes. Not mentioning this is paramount to bald faced deception.

Current tax mechanism in a nutshell

Why the current tax system is hopelessly regressive

Why a/the fair tax is FAIR

How do you explain all the green leaves still on the trees on October 30. When we moved here 18 years ago, the leaves were turned and generally falling off.

All the long-term-average indicators I know of point to a warmer climate. Short-term indicators are not so meaningful.

That's part of what this study in TFA is about -- we can't point to any single weird event and say "that's global warming!!!!" but we can start to look at sequences of events, and get a handle on how likely that collection of events would be, with and without warming.

It also snowed here (near Boston) on October 29, 2005: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32419497@N05/sets/72157627882228751/

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2482/3599696922_55c66c87f5.jpg

Also: My aurora shots

add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

Apple's biggest design flaw is that they use the same name ("Macbook") for all of their laptops, year after year. So a Google for "macbook battery" or "macbook screen" returns every rant anyone has ever posted about every Apple laptop ever sold.

All the other manufacturers keep changing names so you can't keep track. HP has added "Envy" and "ProBook" to the "Presario" and "Pavillion" and "EliteBook", plus they add random model numbers like "dv5000." Makes it a lot harder to keep track. Dell does the same thing: What the hell is a Vostro? Is it like an Inspiron or a Latitude? It's certainly not an XPS, right, because that's the line they built to compete with Alienware, except now they own Alienware, and use that name, too.

Changing names often helps to encourage the short memories of consumers. I don't know anyone that's had a problem with a Vostro or an Envy...because I've never known anyone whose owned anything other than an Inspiron or a Pavillion.

add in the classic cracking/yellow plastic on prior models, the crappy 15-bit TN screens they've used in the past (fixed under performance guarantees, IIRC, after legal action), too much thermal paste causing massive overheating, nVidia gfx chips cracking and falling off, exploding batteries, cooling ports blocked by plastic film and numerous HW failures-by-design - well, it's no wonder he's looking for a heavy duty warranty.

I'd recommend a Dell, if you can stand the hardware - their NBD warranties kick ass. You can practically (ab)use the hardware for anything except hammering fenceposts & they'll replace it for you. Plus there's the data recovery option, might be worth it if you're special enough to keep important data on a laptop.

If you're within 100 miles of an airport with an international terminal and customs, then you're within 100 miles of the "border". I've built a map using Google showing these radii, for those interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7877280@N05/6266115249/in/photostream

So it's not the majority of the country, but it's a big chunk of it. And all of this land falls under the TSA's direction. Welcome to your shiny new police state.

Considering that most of our budget is consumed by social security, medicare, and the defense department? Not so bad, considering we'd still have to pay for those three things out of the federal government's budget anyway if we shrunk the federal gov's responsibilities.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/designbyseeing/5474288518/sizes/l/in/photostream/

The problem isn't wasteful spending, not at all. The problem is that we've accumulated massive liabilities without saving for those liabilities. Yes, you can cut DoD spending, as long as we move to a fuel source that we don't have to defend from the other side of the world. Sure, you can cut social security and medicare, but be prepared to deal with a demographic with sizable influence (AARP) as well as poverty for that age bracket.

No, there are no simple answers. We are going to have to fundamentally change the structure of both our economy and our social safety nets in the US. But I sure as hell can tell you that Ron Paul isn't the answer. In my educated opinion, he's a fucking nutjob.

My daughter started watching Signing Time (http://www.signingtime.com) when she was 10 months old. She loved the show so we watched it once per day, for about 25 minutes per day.

By the time she was 14 months old I could take her to the zoo and she could sign Monkey, Zebra, Horse and many other signs. Here is a video of her doing exactly that: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikejenphotos/3467807751/in/set-72157604954739094

By the time she was 20 months old she had a huge vocabulary of hundreds of signs even before she could say all of the words.

Now that she is 3.5 we communicate via sign language all the time. That TV show has been influential in teaching her to spell and read by incorporating finger spelling.

Of course, I wasn't just sitting her down and leaving her there. I would watch with her (that's how I learned to sign) and incorporate real world items so that she could see that link between the signs on TV and her own things (like toys, food, etc) but that TV show was absolutely instrumental in her language skills. (It didn't hurt that she's a genius... I'm not biased...)

My second will be born in January and there is nothing that could convince me not to repeat the same process with her.

I am intrigued by your comments and wish to subscribe to your periodical.

It's not just that. It's also shit like this.

That came from this/ screen cap.

It's absurd.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/passiveaggressive/4773512458/

http://disinfo.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Screen-shot-2010-11-17-at-10.30.55-AM.png

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6231/6238828974_5389387b60_b.jpg

"I don't know if Apple is on the [REACT] steering committee," Stephen Wagstaffe told Yahoo! News when asked about a link between Apple and the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) Task Force that entered Jason Chen's home and seized four computers and two servers as evidence in a felony investigation. Documents revealed that Apple did indeed sit on REACT's steering committee, which provided 'direction and oversight' to the law enforcement agency.

> they copied the front style

Totally copied, indistinguishable, I say.

Also, Samsung never could have thought about such a design, of course. It's totally Apple's invention to have minimalistic cover design with only picture of product

> Other than being black, the two US-style power bricks are the same. You're just clutching at straws here.

Nope, there are still slight differences in shape. Also, what shape would you expect a power adapter to be, spheric? Clutching at straws is saying that Samsung (imprecisely) copied power adapter - what sense would it make? Confusing the customer? "I know this AC adapter, it surely must be iPad, I'm buying!"

When I saw the camera array focus through the bushes behind their subject... I was hooked. However I didn't have the budget, so I started experimenting with 1 camera and many shots from a small area... if you have stationary subjects, you can do the refocusing with a single camera and a lot of time....

Here are some photos of Chicago in synthetic focus as an example.

I would love to be able to build a portable 64 camera array.

That would allow you shutter speeds that would freeze even the fastest children.

You clearly don't have enough experience in trying to capture good shots of busy children ;)

I actually get paid for capturing good shots of busy children =D. The only thing more important then having the right equipment, is knowing how to use it, and my nephew's boundless energy allows me many opportunities to practice. The only piece of equipment that you would need besides a camera as described before (doesn't have to be that EXACT camera) is a flash unit for overcoming low lighting. The strobist blog has a lighting 101 tutorial that hits all the bases on "off camera flash", and you could even get a camera that doesn't have a hot-shoe as long as the flash is capable of reacting to the flash of the camera, like the Lumapro LP160, which I use when shooting indoors.

Check my photostream for proof.

Or the stories of Homo erectus , who was the velociraptor of our human ancestors. She was a total badass, which is why I love this statue of her at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins carrying a rotting caribou carcass across the Serengeti.

Just to be nit-picky, that looks more like an ibex than a caribou. The description of location (Serengeti, vs. tundra) is further confirmation.

This is why Science is so $#@%ing awesome. As Samuel Clemens put it best, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact.” This will be a very tough hypothesis to sell, but the researcher says his evidence is ready to take on all skeptics.

There are incredible stories waiting to be revealed in the fossil record and stories we have already uncovered. There's the footprints of Austrolopithecus, which were preserved in volcanic ash, large and small, male and female, close together as if they were huddling--perhaps the male had his arm around his mate, and the female's footprints lopsided as if she were carrying an infant. Imagine what it was like for them, walking fearfully across a landscape raining ash from a distant volcano... This story is drawn in this famous diorama.

Or the Taung child, whose skull bares the scars of an eagle attack. The child was carried away by a bird of prey. A story both fantastic and tragic at once.

Or the stories of Homo erectus , who was the velociraptor of our human ancestors. She was a total badass, which is why I love this statue of her at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins carrying a rotting caribou carcass across the Serengeti.

Science has thousands of these stories that we have already discovered, and an infinite supply of them in store for us if we keep exploring. Knowing this, I simply don't understand how people can be so impressed with a book covering a few hundred years of human history and consider it sacred. The sacred is all around us, written in the natural world waiting for us to read it.

This is why Science is so $#@%ing awesome. As Samuel Clemens put it best, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact.” This will be a very tough hypothesis to sell, but the researcher says his evidence is ready to take on all skeptics.

There are incredible stories waiting to be revealed in the fossil record and stories we have already uncovered. There's the footprints of Austrolopithecus, which were preserved in volcanic ash, large and small, male and female, close together as if they were huddling--perhaps the male had his arm around his mate, and the female's footprints lopsided as if she were carrying an infant. Imagine what it was like for them, walking fearfully across a landscape raining ash from a distant volcano... This story is drawn in this famous diorama.

Or the Taung child, whose skull bares the scars of an eagle attack. The child was carried away by a bird of prey. A story both fantastic and tragic at once.

Or the stories of Homo erectus , who was the velociraptor of our human ancestors. She was a total badass, which is why I love this statue of her at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins carrying a rotting caribou carcass across the Serengeti.

Science has thousands of these stories that we have already discovered, and an infinite supply of them in store for us if we keep exploring. Knowing this, I simply don't understand how people can be so impressed with a book covering a few hundred years of human history and consider it sacred. The sacred is all around us, written in the natural world waiting for us to read it.

The below is perfect for making bookmarks and placing in store windows:

http://disinfo.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Screen-shot-2010-11-17-at-10.30.55-AM.png

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6164/6225849088_4fd0c3e282_b.jpg

The Newtons 26 pin connector: http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2009/07/interconnect-port-101.html

Pics:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/4281355248_0d8d04f355.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/3090113889_9483dbd7af.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_86fa3woQOHU/SgV_ZUYBrrI/AAAAAAAAAfk/jxzCukhEE2M/s1600-h/IMG_6905.JPG

The Newtons 26 pin connector: http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2009/07/interconnect-port-101.html

Pics:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/4281355248_0d8d04f355.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/3090113889_9483dbd7af.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_86fa3woQOHU/SgV_ZUYBrrI/AAAAAAAAAfk/jxzCukhEE2M/s1600-h/IMG_6905.JPG

Perhaps he wasn't as hated as Carly? ;)

That said, he was a minimalist: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacman3000/4042368287/

Even his car didn't have license plates... ;)

sort of.

Some inspirational speeches
"Focus is not about saying Yes, but about saying No"
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-1997-video-2011-6

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

âoeThis was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and thatâ(TM)s what I had.â ...Steve Jobs, at home in 1982.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacman3000/4042368287/

The one that got banned in Germany is the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Box art: http://assets.gearlive.com/blogimages/gallery/galaxy-tab-10/01-galaxy-tab-10_medium.jpg Power adapter: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3647/5719189901_a2ca040d3d.jpg Connector: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3637/5719194513_b5ef1f5fc0.jpg Case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0PXJvJEfdU

The one that got banned in Germany is the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Box art: http://assets.gearlive.com/blogimages/gallery/galaxy-tab-10/01-galaxy-tab-10_medium.jpg Power adapter: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3647/5719189901_a2ca040d3d.jpg Connector: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3637/5719194513_b5ef1f5fc0.jpg Case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0PXJvJEfdU

UV photos can look very cool. You should have an advantage in being able to see things that look interesting in UV without having to make a photo to check.

I have no clue if what you see is anything like on the photos, but I figure it should at least give you a clue of what kind of thing to photograph.

Apparently Gruber thinks so.

Harbor Freight Hydraulic Press. The data's hard to retrieve if things aren't flat and spinny anymore. $59 ($48 with 20% off coupon). I dare you to get data off this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33743995@N00/6197334169/

(And at 2 minutes vs. Several Hours, it's faster, too!)

There's a problem with that -- smaller releases means smaller cakes.

it looked to be about 100 people from the cellphone picture I saw

A single cell phone pic doesn't have enough information. Here's a random Flickr crowdshot cropped and showing a much bigger crowd.

Maybe Friday was lighter and the weekends were more populated.

I've never been to the St.Patrick's Day Parade, so, I couldn't make a comparison on that basis, even though I bet you guessed I was of Irish decent by my handle. :) Also, I was not present during the protest over the weekend. So I couldn't give you any first-hand numbers.

Thousands of people walk through New York City's streets in the financial district every day - by the videos, it would be hard to figure out who the 'bystanders' and 'protesters' were, for me at least, especially after having visited the park - a lot of the protesters don't really "look" like protesters - some of them are just kids, there are a few people who are well into or above middle age. The protest was enough to warrant at least one police helicopter and what I like to term as an "AT-ST", and a good contingency of police officers (more than were there at the park today), so I would guess it had to be substantial.

As a point of reference, the last time I saw a police deployment that large was at the West Indian Parade in Crown Heights (where, sadly, three people lost their lives), and there were definitely thousands of people there.

Oh, and I think this goes without saying, but if it isn't obvious, it would have a bitchin' America-tastic paint job, like this.

Get some grip of reality, you idiot.

Nature knows no "good" and "bad". We life-forms individually assign those values to things. "Bad" becomes "hurts us" and "good" become "helps us". Regarding resources.
So obviously following from that is the fact that one individual's "good" can be the other one's "bad".
That's why modern criminology has abandoned those concepts.

Now think about what reasons people have for their actions, and you will notice that people never ever think that they themselves are bad. (OK, except for "emos". ;)
They either say "I think it is the right thing to do." or "I have no choice but to do it.".

How much do you wanna bet that he thought he had no choice but do do this?
It doesn't matter if he did. What matters is that in his perceived reality (yes, an unbiased view is physically impossible for everyone of us), it looked like that.
Maybe he knew other choices, but those were even worse. In which case there still really was just that one choice.
So he chose it.
And if you had been in his situation, with his memories, you would have acted exactly like this.

That's why it's just human.

Out of the perspective of the one paying him for those fake pictures, it may have hurt them, which would make it bad. (It definitely didn't hurt the stock photo maker, since information is not a physical object or product, and hence can't be sold, owned or stolen. Only the actual work is worth something. And you can hardly steal that.)

But it didn't hurt anyone of us, now did it?
Avoid him if you plan to pay someone for making pictures if you want., but quit being a dick despite it having absolutely no relationship to your life whatsoever. Go be angry about your government instead. They at least fuck up your life.

Or in other words: Get yourself a brain and seriously think about things for a couple of years or so, before commenting again. You look like a 13 year old who thinks he's wise, but really is the biggest fool.

(Of course most people here on /. aren't grown-up enough to comprehend all this, and will mod it down out of a knee-jerk reaction to a few key words/phrases that are negatively associated or don't fit into their simple model of reality. Which is also just human, I guess...)

Wouldn't be the first time!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/214854623/

The Prada and the iPhone 4 look almost the same too, as per the link you seem to not how clicked. It's just so amusing seeing some apologist bitching about its antiquated design, when Apple decided to imitate it instead of going with the original iPhone look (though from the front the Prada is very similar to the original iPhone). But the Prada is only one of the things that show that the iPhone design didn't just come out of thin air, the N810 released only a few months after the iPhone is strikingly similar, yet is a clear evolution from the N800. There are many more, but those two are interesting because they show that several companies very developing very similar devices at the time, yet Apple is the one who claims to have come up with it all by themselves and have sole dominion over it.

What's the intrinsic value of gold?

Gold is the most preferred material to cover the roof of Vishnu Temples. http://www.bharatwaves.com/portal/uploads/original_TTD_4d4d73b65b1b3.jpg Also it is the most recommended material to make armor for Vishnu and his consorts. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/4894875010_e7c89e86c7.jpg The highest possible use for any material is to be in service of The Lord. So yeah, Gold has lots of intrinsic value.

Yes, and flickr... I use flickr constantly, and as near as I can tell, the service is thriving. I'm worried about what will become of it.

Right next to the Dulles airport in Virginia there is the CIT Building that has a similar look. Address is 2214 Rock Hill Road, Herndon, VA 20170.

No, that's the "upside down" building.

Ask someone here how to get to the "sandcrawler building" and you'll probably get a blank stare. But EVERYONE knows what the "upside down" building is.

Right next to the Dulles airport in Virginia there is the CIT Building that has a similar look. Address is 2214 Rock Hill Road, Herndon, VA 20170.

even the best cellphone camera is a toy compared to what a pro or semi pro would be using

I agree, but we should be careful not to underestimate cellphone cameras, they can be surprisingly good:

iPhone @ New York streets
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonatasluzia/6103884318/
http://365iphone.blogspot.com/2011/08/1382010.html
http://365iphone.blogspot.com/2011/08/2882011.html
http://365iphone.blogspot.com/2011/08/2382011_24.html
http://365iphone.blogspot.com/2011/08/2082011.html
http://365iphone.blogspot.com/2011/08/1782011_17.html
http://365iphone.blogspot.com/2011/07/1872011_18.html

Grease pencil on weapons placards was common (the Navy may still use it).

When we deployed to Al Dhafra, grease pencils were even used for nose art:

http://www.f-16.net/interviews_article33.html

Note the old-school white placard on this O-2:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/432712455_fda36d0f7d.jpg

Tape is available and produces the required contrast. There is no functional reason not to use tape and marker.

Here you go!

Oh, wait, you wanted pictures of Negus.

In many places all across America, engine braking is illegal. Technically these laws are intended to prevent big rigs from engine braking at 3am and waking the whole town but they make it illegal for everyone to do so. Here are but two examples. Admittedly, I've never seen the "unmuffled" variant. Its trivial to find more examples with varying verbiage.

Me, the IT ninja

haha, forgot about this picture from the party at leopold bros.

OMG!!!
Going off and getting a life? Hey that's no fair!

Obligatory image...

Indeed. When I was in Japan, I was surprised that everyone carried umbrellas with them all day if there was a cloud in the sky, they had little umbrella wrapping machines outside of buildings to make sure as little moisture as possible got inside. People were very concerned they might get wet.

A mild earthquake on the other hand, people continued getting onto elevators, didn't stop to look around to make sure nothing was falling over onto them.