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Would you like another? Really now, I could do this allllll the time and not run out of articles.

Wrong. In discharging a gun, the bullet is given much more kinetic energy than the gun, due to the disparity in masses. This follows from conservation of momentum, and the definition of kinetic energy.

This is why an armoured soldier can still be injured through his body armour, despite the armour stopping the bullet, whereas the shooter's shoulder is just fine.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070824072530AA0GeNF in slashdot a link it worth more than a pile of 'didn't read the license agreement that you made by opening a disc'

Any term in the fine print that says you can't rent it isn't legally binding. You can put anything you want in a piece of paper, but that doesn't make it enforceable. The first sale doctrine basically says that if you walk into walmart and hand them cash and get a box you keep forever, then it is a sale regardless of what anything else says. You're not allowed to copy it, but you can do almost anything else with it, including reselling it, lending it out, or renting it out.

Copyright governs COPYING and exhibition of works. Rental involves neither (though streaming does). Copyright holders generally cannot impose restrictions on how their works are used after they are first sold. They often try to do so anyway, but no court would uphold their right to take action against you.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070824072530AA0GeNF in slashdot a link it worth more than a pile of 'didn't read the license agreement that you made by opening a disc'

Google now incorporates things such as your search history and your emails to provided a customized start page.

Unfortunately in the process of doing this they abandoned the incredibly handy iGoogle page despite much protest but Google's "solution" was to tell everyone to switch to the Chrome browser from whatever browser you're using.

No thank you I'll continue to use Firefox and use igHome or My Yahoo! instead.

[movie] set

Looks like I was right.

For every 10 morbidly fascinating conspiracy theories, there is one possibility that is most likely, boring and correct.

There was never a chance of giving away the meters to an NPO, trade school, or public school. The hardware would inevitably be as suspect as the look-alike case. I am not convinced that there is a place for the $15 multimeter even in the makerbot movement.

Any shorthand description of Fluke and its product lines will read like corporate PR. but that can't be helped.

Fluke, a subsidiary of Danaher (maker of Craftsman tools), makes handheld electronic test tools used by electricians, HVAC technicians, and engineers to install, maintain, and service electrical and electronic equipment. Its multimeters, oscilloscopes, and other devices measure current, voltage resistance, frequency, pressure, temperature, and air quality. It also makes calibrators and calibration software, waveform generators, and power harmonics meters. Its Fluke Biomedical unit makes patient simulators, diagnostic imaging, and radiation safety products, among others.

Fluke Corporation Company Profile

The cheapest Fluke multimeter I could find online sells for about $150 and is CAT III rated for 600 volts.

This category refers to measurements on hard-wired equipment in fixed installations, distribution boards, and circuit breakers. Other examples are wiring, including cables, bus bars, junction boxes, switches, socket outlets in the fixed installation, and stationary motors with permanent connections to fixed installations.

What are Measurement Categories (CAT I, CAT II, etc...)?

well said.
Unfortunately, this time Europe is more corrupted by Russia.

British are weak, as "Russians are your major investors and bought a couple of football clubs". Besides, I question their army's ability to do their trade.
German responce seemed hard, but unfortunately CDU's coalition partner, SPD are in reality russian agents. Former chancellor from that party is now employed by russian gas company. Besides, for russian-german relations it is business as usual (LetterOne is russian).
France would traditionally do anything to retreat or surrender. And communist trade unions would do anything to support rebuilding "USSR 2".
Italy is a corrupt farce that was unable to impeach a paedophile moron from the post for over a decade. They have very amicable relations with Russia.
Austria does plenty of business with Russia, they are HQ for russian company's subsidiaries in EU.
Greece, Bulgaria will remain silent, as "Russians are their brothers in orthodox faith".
Sweden lost ability to defent itself from own crowd, and with strong socialist sentiment they are unlikely to fight, in physical way, anyone.
Spain, Portugal fart in general direction of any troubles on the opposite side of continent.
Hungary seemed to act "independently" to some point, but few months ago prime minister Orban was "pacified" by Putin with major russian investment.
Czechs are trained in France to prepare quick welcome parties to any occupiers.
Poland, Romania and Lithuania are too weak to stand against Russia. They are heavily dependent on Russian petrol/gas. While they mostly understand the severity of situation, will remain not understood by the rest of EU, as "they are idiots who are always agains Russia".
Estonia, Latvia are checkmated, as they have huge (40%) Russian minority. If they speak too loud, Moscow will "hear Russians living in Tallin, requesting help"..
Finland and Slovakia will remain silent in hope, that in case of conventional military conflict Russian troops will opt to drive through other countries.
Cyprus is Russian bank.

Don't expect any Churchills :-(

'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.'

That has been true in the past.

And, let's take the bottom line: let's say it IS true and you have "significant compound greater earnings." - if you are straddled with obscene student debt while working at a shitty retail job, your net is going to be less than if you worked as a plumber let's say.

And let's stop this crap about how all unemployed college graduates majored in English or some other liberal or fine arts. EVERY major is having issues with employment in this economy.

In other news no-one should care about, Cheney has blamed Ukraine's invasion on Obama and George Zimmerman has released a video about how he's a great guy.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/earth-secret-reservoir-water-scientists-191039455.html

Hans Keppler, a geologist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, cautioned against extrapolating the size of the subterranean water find from a single sample of ringwoodite.

And he also said

"In some ways it is an ocean in Earth's interior, as visualised by Jules Verne... although not in the form of liquid water," Keppler said in a commentary also published by Nature.

Ain't nothing swimming around down there.

We didn't think anything was swimming around in the deepest, darkest trenches of the ocean either.

We were wrong.

That said, I couldn't get over how horribly pointless the last sentence of the summary was. "Water" leads to steam building up which leads to volcanic eruptions. This is important to understand why? Because we will refuse to build and live near volcanoes and fault lines? I hope no one in Hawaii or California heard of this "news". Might start a panic.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/earth-secret-reservoir-water-scientists-191039455.html

Hans Keppler, a geologist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, cautioned against extrapolating the size of the subterranean water find from a single sample of ringwoodite.

And he also said

"In some ways it is an ocean in Earth's interior, as visualised by Jules Verne... although not in the form of liquid water," Keppler said in a commentary also published by Nature.

Ain't nothing swimming around down there.

I hear complaints from every field these days about not enough jobs for graduates, even in the medical fields.

Not according to companies. If you listen to them, there isn't anyone who's qualified for their positions which is why they have a worker shortage.

Witness this article which claims employers are whining they can't find enough people to fill these ten positions which include the medical field.

As a [whatever], I do know that nearly every single objection I have ever encountered to evolution - and, in particular, common descent, especially as applied to humans and apes - has ultimately been driven by a religious viewpoint, usually a belief in the literal truth of the Old Testament.

You can find a new lie to spread:

http://answers.yahoo.com/quest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.rationalskepticism....
http://whyevolutionistrue.word...
http://prince.org/msg/105/3323...

Happens all the time. When a coworker expresses skepticism in the moon landing or the official 9-11 explanation, I don't jump to religion as cause.

BTW, I'm an atheist.

"The CIA's internal watchdog is investigating allegations that the agency improperly spied on Senate staffers probing secret details of a now-defunct interrogation program.

Senator Dianne Feinstein acknowledged Wednesday the existence of the probe, which highlights a rare public clash between lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee she chairs and the US espionage community it oversees." ref http://news.yahoo.com/cia-unde...

Being a Soviet republic be the first step in joining the Russian Federation?

Huh? What do you mean? How are those two things related?

4. The Russian Federation guaranteed the territorial integrity [wikipedia.org] of the Ukraine.

Please Joe, there's a difference between "assurance" and "guarantee", besides it being an unratified agreement.

5. The Russian Federation has now invaded the Crimea.

Repeat after me: this is not an invasion.

In case you're wondering about stationing the troops only on the bases,
- the *democratically elected* president of Ukraine asked Russia to use military force.

[Putin] added that deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had no political future but asserted he was legally still head of state. "I think that he has no political future. And I told him this," Mr Putin said [...] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10669670/Ukraine-Russia-crisis-live.html)

- Russia was asked by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to aid them:

Sergei Aksenov, the [...] prime minister of the Crimea region, has declared that he is in control of all military, police and other security services in the region. But he appealed to Russia's president for help in keeping peace there.(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10670827/Ukraine-live-Crimea-leader-appeals-to-Putin-to-help-as-Obama-warns-of-costs-to-Moscow.html)

Except that GP was not talking about copying the US' computer-based espionage operations, but the US' various illegal wars.

The story is about Russian hacking. Naturally the subject won't turn to Russian hacking, or even Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but to false allegations of "illegal" wars by the US. Typical, and a diversion.

So, which "illegal wars" is the US uniquely "guilty" of?

You know, there is a bit of a mess unfolding in Ukraine. There are pro-russian and pro-european factions and the russians are obviously supporting the former -- with a completely illegal show of force.

I've heard.

Less well known is that the pro-european factions supported by the West are largely far-right nationalists. Neonazis, pretty much. See, e.g. this piece by Max Blumenthal.

Yes, I'm familiar with Russian charges that they are going to fight fascists in another smaller neighboring country. That was the excuse to invade Finland. The charge is recycled to invade and take territory from Ukraine.

During the Stalin era, Soviet propaganda painted Finland's leadership as a "vicious and reactionary Fascist clique". Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim and Väinö Tanner, the leader of the Finnish Social Democratic Party, were targeted for particular scorn.[52] With Joseph Stalin gaining near-absolute power through the Great Purge of 1938, the Soviet Union changed its foreign policy toward Finland in the late 1930s. The Soviet Union began pursuing the reconquest of the provinces of Tsarist Russia lost during the chaos of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The Soviet leadership believed that the old empire had ideal security and territorial possessions, and wanted the newly christened city of Leningrad to enjoy a similar security. -- Winter War

Yes, that is all too familiar.

As for Max Blumenthal, I'm aware of his work. I don't consider his views useful given their crank fringe attributes.

Are Mainstream Liberals Embracing Max Blumenthal’s ‘I Hate Israel Handbook’?

You can see the nonsense in his piece that you link to. As part of the "proof" he mentions "white supremacist banners and Confederate flags," but somehow passes over the British, French, Canadian, and other flags present. Does that mean that the Ukrainians are also secretly French, British, and Canadian too, or just crypto-Confederates? It contains no small bit of rubbish. He is a useful idiot making excuses for Russia's invasion.

Besides, if it the concern that prompted the invasion really was fighting "fascism," why didn't Russia take care of their own neo-Nazi and fascist problems at home first? It isn't a small problem, and they have been letting it bleed into Ukraine.

Russian Neo-Nazis Are Now Beating Up Gays in Ukraine
Russia neo-Nazis jailed for life over 27 race murders
Russia: Far-Right Nationalists And Neo-Nazis March In Moscow
Viral Vigilantism: Russian Neo-Nazis Take Gay Bashing Online
Russian Neo-Nazis Made These Horrifying Videos of Anti-LGBT Attacks

The Russians seem to be good at finding fascism and fighting it in all their neighbors, not

1. Apple maps is a joke and completely useless

The launch of iMaps was botched and it still has a ways to go, but it's not completely useless. The alternative for in-car navigation was it is may never be updated if the owner decides not to fork over money to buy a new navigation DVD.

The alternative alternative would be people using Google Maps and/or Navigation, tying into the cars existing Bluetooth/aux in port, and not driving down private driveways insisting "this is the best route to Roundtop Mountain!!!"

2. considering how many people hate Apple, they're losing prospective customers for a $60,000 car for example because of one tiny feature.

You mean considering how many slashdot geeks hate Apple don't you? The general public likes Apple.

That sounds like fanboy talk to me. Corporate executives, government employees, and any other high-powered types who are already tied deeply to Blackberry might not care to pay extra for a feature they'll never use. How many people does Google employ? I bet they wouldn't care much for iPhone integration, either.

Point being, just because you can't fathom that there might be a subset of the population who aren't madly in love with a certain company's products doesn't mean the aforementioned subset doesn't exist.

Also, you are aware that many other car manufacturers are getting on board, right? It's the same as iPod integration: many of them offer it today, and there have not been riots in the streets over this feature.

For me, I wouldn't care if they put an iPlug hidden in the glovebox, but if using all the features of the $60,000 automobile I just bought means being locked into any proprietary ecosystem, I won't be spending my money with that car company.

This doesn't make any sense to me either. Current pills containing hydrocodone are a mixture with other drugs, mostly other drugs that have a higher toxicity, and part of the reason for that is to keep people from taking too many of them. If you OD on Vicodin, it's not the 5mg of hydrocodone that kills you, it's the 500mg of acetaminophen. For a 50kg person, you can get to a reasonably toxic quantity of acetaminophen (200 mg/kg) with 20 vicodin, which gives you a dose of 100mg of hydrocodone, or 2 mg/kg. Quick googling found this: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-... that gives animal toxicity studies showing an LD50 for hydrocodone in the range of 86 mg/kg (mice) to 375 mg/kg (rats). Granted, you certainly don't want to take anything *near* to the LD50 of any drug, but the highest dosage for a Zohydro pill is 50 mg. For a 50kg person to get a dose of 1/4 the mouse LD50 would be over 20 pills. As noted, if those 20 pills were vicodin, then they would also be toxic, but only because of the acetaminophen. And really, if you're downing 20 of *any* prescription painkiller, you almost certainly have a different goal in mind than temporary pain relief. I just really don't see this as causing much harm, and potentially helping a fairly specific set of people who need it.

People who are intent on abusing pills can get around the acetaminophen simply by breaking the pills up, putting them in cold water, and running them through a coffee filter. This is known as cold water extraction.

Part of the reason for the acetaminophen in painkillers is because of a loophole in the 1970 Controlled Substances Act that classified pure Hydrocodone as a strictly controlled Schedule II drug (Which Zohydro will fall under). However, Hydrocodone combination products, such as Vicodin, which contains Hydrocodone and acetaminophen, into the less strict Schedule III classification. As a Schedule III drug, combination drugs such as Vicodin can be refilled as many as five times, while Schedule II drugs can be filled only once.

So why is there so much pushback against Zohydro, when it clearly fits a need and will be more difficult to obtain and abuse than Vicodin? I think it might have to do with the fact that it's put out by a tiny company (Zogenix) rather than one of the big players. Teva Pharmaceuticals who literally spent millions on lobbying last year has a competing product "TD Hydrocodone" which they're trying to get to market, but Zogenix beat them to it. If Zohydro were delayed for a little while, perhaps they could get to market with their competing drug and given their vastly larger resources they'd likely win market share. Another large company Purdue Pharma (the makers of OxyContin) also have something in the works

...and they eat people's bibles for fuel. Luckily, there's Old Glory Insurance.

(WARNING: those denying the existence of evil robots may be evil robots themselves)

Old Glory Insurance. For when the soulless metal ones come for YOU.

There's an internal process to report, and then there are multiple agencies (Inspector General, to name one) who investigate. So there's an internal and external mechanism to investigate illegal usage. Just like any organization that employs humans, there are those who can and will have a lapse. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes not. For the times it's happened, they've been investigated, and then the appropriate action take against those who have broken the law. These are words spoken directly by Letitia Long, the NGA Director. I'm not in the NSA but she (Director Long) is aware of the investigations and then briefed the results (which I've read). I know there's a certain element here on Slashdot that will always see Dragons and "Lack of evidence of a conspiracy confirm there is a conspiracy," however your question seems sincere so it's all I can offer. Let's pose this question the other way around: Most of the Intelligence Community are former military. They are your typical, "By the book," kind of people who operate in most cases by the letter of the law, or "Technical Order." (Quoting my Air Force background). If there was truly illegal activity rampant, and this was an abuse going on frequently, do you really think it would just be a high school drop out (Snowden) to bring this to light? Given my time in and out of uniform, I can assure you there'd be a lot of pissed off former military who'd love to sound off on something as bad as the pro-Snowden's would like to make this sound. Take for example, "Veteran's For Peace" against the current war. You just don't see it here.

Although I think Obama and the Democratic party are not ones I would normally agree with, I have respect for their position and authority. The President called for an investigation of the NSA programs Snowden leaked. His comments are found here but to skip to the end he says, "The Review Group turned up no indication that this database has been intentionally abused. And I believe it is important that the capability that this program is designed to meet is preserved." And, to appease those who still are skeptical, they're increasing public release of information, increased oversight, and ending the government holding bulk metadata. This last one is curious to me because I've listened to the NSA Director explain why they approached it from the technical perspective, and I've been a telecom engineer, and so I understand why they did it like they did. So, I'm a bit uncertain how they're handing it off and still, as Obama states, "preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk meta-data." I'm sure very smart people will figure out legal, technical and other means to meet the capability while following our laws.

Hope that helped. And, repeating what I said in another branch... I'm no longer replying to this thread since it (as I figured) devolved to personal attacks (not by you) and the volume of replies. Your reply came in before my self-induced cut off, but I'm just now getting caught back up on personal emails.

Also, what happens when there is a lunar eclipse?

Not much, in North Korea.

Sorry you're bitter about it. I've lived it, been through 2 hostile acquisitions (one on one side, one on the other) as an employee of one of the companies. In the end what sealed both of them is the same investor class (i.e., professionally managed pension funds and private big-money hedge funds) owned both the companies that were being acquired and doing the acquiring, and they were essentially bought off on the deal.

Look at Comcast: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?...

Go pitch this to them, and see what they say. Your empty-mouthed diatribe: "Comcast is publicly traded." - belies the fact that the public securities market is by no means a free market. There are big players and if you do something they don't like, they can and will stop you and the SEC can or won't do anything about it.

The Washington Post is "suspicious" of a report slamming the Obama Administration's thuggish treatment of the press? Color me shocked. Let's see if the New York Times follows suit . . . after all, Holder went after one of their own.

Or more likely they were bitching all of january about the new suites but too much money and sponsorships were on the line and the US Olympic committee just told them to shut up.

In most other sports you have quite a bit of leeway as to your sport clothing. As long as the colors pretty much match the team colors, nobody checks the labels and sizes.

If not for my generation, Bush would have drafted you kids to die in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You say that as if it's a good thing. To many of those cocaine-addled kids, being drafted would have been better than being feckless unemployed welfare leeches, or in prison for drug possession.

What? You're the one who said they were crack addicts. If you're gonna start trashing the kids, don't hold back the punches, gramps. ::Seymour Skinner:: Come on Edna you know these kids have no future!

My generation fought against the Vietnam war and won, fought against pollution and got the Clean Air and water acts passed... my generation's protests were all effective. How's your "occupy" movement coming?

First, the withdrawal of the US has just as much to do with the incompetence of management (Nixon and co, the "Greatest Generation"), and the resilience of the Viet Cong, as your domestic protest. Likewise, the occupy movement isn't the single thing that changes everything. And it'll certainly not change things overnight. Wiki pegs anti-war protest to have started as early as 1964, and the US didn't withdrawal until 73.

Second, it's not entirely correct to categorize occupy as a simply a movement of the young. About 64% are young, but there are older Xers and Boomers too. Many also had jobs. Not the sort I'd consider to be "cocaine-addled"

My generation brought you PCs and cell phones and file sharing. Meanwhile, yours killed the unions.

Except the Taft Hartley Act which curbed union power started back in 47. Unions peaked around the 70s, before many kids were even born.

Also worth noting is that many union unfriendly private companies are owned/run by Boomers. The board and shareholders they answer to are also full of Boomers and their pensions, not the young.

As to what the young generation brought... I don't know if you consider Larry Page or Linus Torvalds to be "kids", but they're not old enough to be boomers. You may hate Facebook, FourSquare, Spotify, or Tumblrr, but they're all started by the younger generation.

Oh sure, they are all operating on top of that PC your generation made, but your PCs, sir, is using the transistors and other technologies developed by your forefathers. What was that about shoulders and giants? I'm sorry, I guess literacy is one thing the young lack... ill giv u dat ;)

I would also like to end with this: the young also brought us Mr Edward Snowden.

And now it's apparently alive again .

The courts will just dismiss this case for "lack of standing" as they did his father's lawsuit against Obama for violating the War Powers Act regarding Libya.

The Constitution provides a remedy for the Executive Branch violating laws, and it's not having the Legislative Branch go to the Judicial Branch. Congress should pass a veto-proof law clarifying its intention that universal wiretapping is against the law, and then if the Executive Branch persists, then start impeachment proceedings, where members of Congress act as judge and jury. Rand Paul's lawsuit is nothing but grandstanding -- similar to the conservative all-talk-no-results Republicans have been feeding their constituents for the past half-century, but this time it's libertarian all-talk-no-results. And unconstitutional to boot.

(Congress could conceivably start impeachment proceedings now without first passing clarifying legislation, but impeachment is a card that realistically can be played only once every couple of decades, so you want to make sure. If you don't have the votes for legislation, you sure aren't going to have them for impeachment. (You can also substitute "ethics and political will" for "votes".))

"big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs"

How many of them are derivatives of existing drugs introduced just for patenting? According to Dr. Marcia Angell, they constituted about 77% of all approved drugs in 1998-2002.

"the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research."

The referenced paper gives a break down: only $37B comes from pharmaceutical companies, $32B comes from biotechnology and medical technology companies, the rest mostly from the government.

How does it compare with marketing spending? A random bit: $33B for R&D and $25B for marketing in 2004, with some essentially marketing activities labeled as "doctor education".

The "managers" at Dice are not only ruining Slashdot, they can't even run their legacy business. Look at Dice Holdings stock performance:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=D...

While the S&P 500 and Dow 30 are each up 20% and 10% over the last year, DHX is down close to 30%. I wonder if the stock analysts who cover DHX even know what is happening to this newly acquired "asset". I wonder how many DHX shareholders know.

If the decision makers at Dice won't listen to the nerds, maybe they will listen to their shareholders.

Well, those few needed tweaks never stop piling up. On top of that, UX research and (more importantly) user expectations continue to evolve.

What research? Which users? "Users" aren't a monolithic group, you know. Slashdot attracts a very different crowd from, say, espn.com.

And "UX" is a stupid buzzword. When I go to a website--any website--I'm not looking for an "experience." I'm looking for something that loads quickly, renders readably, and provides the functionality I expect.

To keep up with that, websites either need to constantly change in small increments, or to do it in big chunks.

Or not change at all. That's an option. It really is.

The classic design in 2014? Not too bad. The classic design in 2018? Probably not going to cut it.

It's been "cutting it" for fifteen years, more or less; it's certainly changed some during that time, but it's still recognizably the same site. Why shouldn't it be good for (at least) another four?

In another post, you wrote:

For example, fire up the Wayback Machine and look at some popular sites from a decade ago. Many of them look radically different. Can you honestly say they wouldn't look out of place alongside modern sites? If you were browsing through modern news sites and you stumbled across this, would it not give you pause? At some point, your website just looks old and unmaintained -- that's why virtually every major website updates their design.

That BBC page isn't bad. Not great, but at least as good as the current one. And really, a decade ago was when the web was at its best. The browser wars were over, and it was reasonably easy to code a standards-compliant page that rendered well in the major browsers of the day. Sites offered all the functionality you expected, and still managed to load quickly even when a lot of people were still on dial-up (often faster than they do now over DSL and cable).

And for the most part, they looked great! I was a regular Salon reader in those days; please don't try to tell me that the current crapflood looks better. Yahoo was still a useful web index in those days, as opposed to ... whatever it's supposed to be now. Google News was attractive, fast, well-organized and information-rich; it's still not bad, but it's definitely not as useful as it once was. And you know, there was this really nifty technology news site that I absolutely loved; there's still something at that URL, but it looks like the domain might have been hijacked or something.

All the opposite, they will be required to have backdoors, and security, as with most embedded things, will be a long posponed priority (even 0day fixes will have to pass the NSA approval to get applied, or wait till get widely enough exploited). And you cellphone will be a vector to cause massive "accidents" if the car don't connect by itself to internet.

And yet, even China claims that it is 3000 miles long (which would suggest that it is MUCH longer)

and also shorter intestines than humans: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/qu...

So, dogs can eat a lot of old stuff that would make humans very sick.

BTW, Dr. Pitcairn is a much better than average source of nutritional advice from a vet:
http://www.amazon.com/Pitcairn...

I would like to know of the laws and unfunded mandates that the federal government uses over highway funding. The only one I could think of was the NMSL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ), but that's been repealed for nearly 20 years now.

I will agree that there are anarchists that are willing to give up roadbuilding, but I believe they are largely centered on the right wing of Congress, who refuse to fund infrastructure upgrades. I believe they claim that all government funding needs to be stopped to prevent some catastrophic debt burden, despite the projected debt not actually exploding ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... ) and current interest rates for federal debt being at historically low levels ( http://finance.yahoo.com/echar...; ).

On the second part, my response would be "So do research." Just take a portion of the money, build roads in different ways, and see which are the most durable/safest/cost effective. It'll be different in different places, so you probably have to do the research in multiple places to cover weather variations, but you just do it. Then, get this: you share that information with everyone. You don't need to have each state blindly try things.

Competition is not the solution to all problems. You don't need to run a complex Monte Carlo test to figure out how to fit a line to some data. You can use math to figure that out. Similarly, you don't need to have everyone come up with their best ideas and experiment on actual things people use everyday. You can do research to figure that out beforehand.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echar...;

Fixed it for you. He took over it was trading mid 50's, now it trades mid 30's. I think businesses using MS tech have more to thank him for. SQL Server, .Net, and Windows Server all were created/made huge gains under his leadership. Actually turning that into money in shareholders pockets? Not so much.

Oh wait...

(almost obligatory, don't you think?)

This guy agrees with you, anyway.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs...

Women are terrible people.

had good interest rates

This is because historic interest rates were insane at the time -- the highest they've ever been. When you bought a house, your mortgage rate was about the same as the one you have when you run a balance on a credit card today. Can you imagine buying a house with your credit card, and running that balance for decades? That's what it was like -- so be careful what you wish for when pining for the 80s, especially regarding interest rates.

Another (automotive-related, even) example of the "premium" feature effect you describe:

Automatic transmissions. They are mechanically much simpler, and cheaper to manufacture, than old-fashioned manual transmissions.

Wow; you know absolutely nothing about automotive transmissions. I'm not trying to be a dick, either, I mean that purely as a statement of fact.

Start here, then check out this video and this video. that should bring you up to speed.

In the most narrow sense, that is largely, but not completely, correct. Some of the anti-Klan or civil rights laws related laws do in fact touch questions of free speech or expression. Some examples:

Georgia Supreme Court Reinstates Ban on Wearing of Klan Masks
DOJ Attorney Cracks Down on Anti-Muslim Hate Speech
The Law and Your Job - Sexual Harassment

This is a slick misuse of statistics by Apple fans.

Yeah, that's why Apple's stock price is plummeting and they are strapped with so much corporate debt. Oh, wait...

"Almost all donated organs in China used to come from executed prisoners. A growing proportion now come from ordinary people, but the government is seeking to eliminate prisoner donations altogether."
  Cultural attitudes impede organ donations in China
  Organ transplantation in China

to earn big bucks from climate change, although quite how they earn this money is never spelled out

Climate Change Is the Next $10 Trillion Opportunity

While I'm not debating that the climate is changing, let's also not pretend that this is not all about $$$. .

The article you have linked shows that there are business opportunities created as a result of dealing with climate change. It does not show how climate scientists benefit from the results of their studies going one way or the other, as is often alleged by climate change deniers.

to earn big bucks from climate change, although quite how they earn this money is never spelled out

Climate Change Is the Next $10 Trillion Opportunity

While I'm not debating that the climate is changing, let's also not pretend that this is not all about $$$.

.

Sir, we are going to have to ask you to turn in your geek card and step away from the Internet Pipes...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081210130756AA2GwcM

Yahoo is dead as fried chicken.

Keep thinking that, and look at their financials. Here's a 5 year chart.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=YHOO&t=5y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=

Then you should use names. Google is terrible at finding something by version number. For some reason it often seems to think any number is a sufficient hit.

Agreed. This is a problem with firefox version searches too. I preferred version numbers back 6 years ago when google didn't ignore your search queries and quotes.

Up until recently, if you looked for something like firefox 28 and get something like 3.5.28. What on earth? It seems to be better, as I can't replicate. Yahoo is still affected

Even with the recent cold snap here when temperatures 'as cold as Mars' our Nest never failed to start the furnace.

My thermostat also did that and it's a rolled up piece of metal that contracts and expands to complete a circuit. No batteries required! I haven't seen a thermostat that "failed to start the furnace" just because it was cold..