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first they better shut down every redirector service that doesn't rely on their official DNS:
http://navig8.to/
http://kickme.to/
http://no-ip.com/
etc...

Then we'll be forced to enter IP-addresses manually. Surely that will stop all piracy, because we all know pirates are lazy and stupid and won't know what to do!!

We sure didn't invent like 20 other protocols we could use or anything... I've never heard of anything like Direct Connect, Gnutella2, NNTP (usenet), BitTorrent (with DHT), Kademlia, Soulseek/Nicotine, FastTrack, OpenNap, P2PTV.

These idiots *ALWAYS* try this, they shut down one or two sites that were indexing movies or games or whatever. It makes a difference for like a week, 2 people that probably deserved it end up in trouble, 20,000 morons have to spend a few minutes researching how to steal things again, and most of them figure it out. A couple people that have lots of money and know better than to waste their time are further discouraged. A bunch of lawyers and lobbyists get richer. Some detectives get promoted. And everyone else gets used to the stupidity of the whole thing. I don't know if I should even feel sorry for their wasted efforts. It's nice to see them cluelessly claiming victory over these things, but that effort could be so much better spent on some other problem like homelessness. Of course, the politicians solution would probably be to relocate all the homeless people to another city, or just harass them with police. Are these policy makers just lazy or something? I don't see how it's so difficult to come up with a solution to a problem when you have a proper education...

Well there are about 4.6 MILLION hits for "Iran children suicide bombers" so knock yourself out "sparky" but pretending that Islam is the same as Christianity or Judaism, which BTW I'm an atheist so I'm not for or against ANY religion, is a fools belief that can cause the destruction of the West. Just ask those in Germany, Denmark, and France, how well the Muslims play with others? Or look up on Youtube "Muslims block streets Paris" to see that the Muslims there don't even bother to follow the rule of law and stage mass sit ins anytime without even a permit and the police are afraid of them.

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt

Oops, maybe not. Now. "angefressene Mitarbeiter" ="corroded coworkers". Has a nice ring to it, though.

Saying that is like saying that Obama killed 52 people in 2009. (52 people were executed by different states in 2009 citation: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-united-states-2009 )

See, that number your tossing around was performed by Los Angeles, and it was 7.76 jobs. http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100917/bs_yblog_upshot/report-los-angeles-spent-70-million-in-stimulus-funds-to-create-7-76-jobs

Obama is the American president, not a Los Angeles mayor, nor a California governor.

Fact.

No buffering, according to this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100917/tc_pcworld/samsunggalaxytabfaq

"All content from the Media Hub is offered as downloads over Wi-Fi. There will be no online streaming through the Samsung Media Hub."

$1.73 million buys the whole company. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOXQ.PK

Actually, it is the income taxes.

Actually, using your scenario and even real world data, no, income taxes are not an issue for manufacturing in the United States.

About 22%, on avarege, of the price of American goods goes to pay income taxes incurred by US manufacturers. About 11.5% is recoverable by the companies if the income tax went away. Would a $25,000 Jeep Liberty selling for $22,125 sell better?

I believe you and I will have a very strong agreement on the importance of manufacturing in the United States. It is not only important for the United States economically but also for our national security and future prosperity. But where we will disagree is on income taxes imposed on manufacturing corporations.

First let me state that I think you are on to a very accurate and strong principle that has to do with global competition. Part of the cost in global competition is related to taxes and the cost of running the government of each nation. If the United States is bearing the burden of security costs around the world while other nations skimp on governmental security expenses then the United States will be placed at a significant economic disadvantage. All one has to do is look at French history before and after the American Revolutionary War to see how economic burden can destroy a nation.

That said, corporate taxes are levied on Gross Profits, not Retail Sales Prices. Based on this fact it becomes readily apparent that the amount of tax dollars in the retail price of a manufactured good is completely dependant upon the Gross Profit Margin. So we end up with the following equation:

gross % margin = tax % of retail price / corporate % tax rate

You say on average U.S. manufacturers have a 22% income tax burden attached to the price of retail goods. So we can calculate the average gross margin and verify this with real world numbers. 22% / 35% = 63% Gross Margin.

I am not sure where you acquired that 22% number but to me it looks like BS. From my personal experience with gross margins in electronics manufacturing a 63% gross margin profit is unheard of. In fact, based on recent data the highest gross margin for electronics manufacturers was 58.4%. From my experience the average gross margin is more like 20% to 40%.

And while I understand you are only making a point with the auto analogy I must point out that auto manufacturers have abysmal profit margins and as a result the average cost of corporate income taxes on the retail price of a car is more like 1%.

Well why didn't you say so? Let the old Hairyfeet point you in the right direction. Now if you want a bad ass laptop I'd go with this one as I've had good luck with Acer and this one is top notch on CPU and GPU. Or if you are looking for something light and cheap I'd go with this one which I've sold quite a few of and my customers love it. I liked it so much I got one for my dad, it has a great picture and the Radeon 3200 is great for video.

But whether you go desktop or laptop the money you save by going AMD will allow you to have better hardware all around. That said I've always been a desktop man at heart because I like being able to pop the hood and hot rod it. Have you thought about a KVM switch? I currently have 2 desktops running on a 4 port KVM that cost a whole $20 and when I had my laptop (gave it away to my oldest when he started college) I just plugged it in and used it with the desktop monitor. Having a nice big screen to work just makes everything that much nicer IMHO. But either way you'll save serious cash over the i series which you can then use for nicer gear. Have fun!

And to say that the Internet can't handle such things is junk that was disproved about ten or more years ago when everyone got off their modems and jumped onto broadband.

I'm sorry but, I must disagree with your "junk" assertion. The internet, even with the 100Gbps future you cite, cannot possibly support unicast/multicast streaming of all of today's broadcast content. Do the math yourself.

For this illustration, I'll use a SINGLE viewing event, the 2010 World Cup game. On ABC(American Broadcasting Corporation) ALONE, it was viewed by over 15 million people. Let's examine 15 million High Definition(HD) unicast streams. 1080p HD requires upwards of 6Mbps. That equates to approximately 90Pbps or 90,000,000,000,000 bits per second. For a single show. On a single channel. In a single region.

Now, where I live, there were 100 other HD(alone) channels spewing out 100 other broadcasts being viewed by perhaps 100,000,000 people. And that's still only in one country! That's not global numbers. The internet CANNOT possibly support the number of HD broadcasts being viewed right at this very moment all around the world in a unicast or multicast streaming scenario. The internet cannot support today's theoretical bandwidth requirement in even ten years from now.

Going back to the original question, when will streaming wit the wall? When will people like yourself see that it cannot do the job?

Latest version of Android 'not designed' for tablets, report says
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/20100910/tc_ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc3593

"Hugo Barra, Google’s director of mobile products, told TechRadar UK that Android 2.2 Froyo is "not optimized for use on tablets," and that while Android itself is still an "open platform," the Android Market — Google’s version of Apple’s App Store — is "not going to be available on devices that don’t allow applications to run correctly.""

Exactly what I was thinking. How is yahoo still even ranked in the top 10?

SBC partnered with Yahoo! as the default portal for SBC ISP customers (at least residential) back before they bought AT&T and adopted AT&T's name for themselves; if I'm not mistaken, the install procedure for the software that comes with the combined DSL modem/wireless router you get with AT&T internet service also sets your homepage to the "ATT.NET" portal, which is not at http://att.net/ as its name my suggest, but instead is located at http://att.my.yahoo.com./

Never underestimate the power of defaults.

>There is Microsoft blood in the water and Oracle is run by a shark.

Yeah, I think that too. We'll know when it happens, though.

I continue to think Larry is partially ideologically (or personally) motivated. Look how fast he hired Mark Turd.

I'm hoping to see him continue, increase funding for, and push OpenOffice just to stick it to Microsoft. Spending merely millions of dollars can cost Microsoft billions in its Office and Windows cash cows.

Where do you live? I live in Hawaii, and the cost of living here is simply atrocious.

Currently going to college and, because I prefer *not* spending all my money on housing, I live with my parents. Yes, yes, slacker, but I save a significant amount of my paycheck for not having to pay housing and can give a lot of it to my parents for their mortgage. Their home is modestly sized, and still costed about 400? 500? thousand or so. Still being paid off!

According to Yahoo Real Estate, the home details are as follows.

Residence: Single Family | Beds: 4 | Bath: 2.0 | Square Feet: 1,427
Lot Size: 6,835 | Year Built: 1993

Also, a pdf that shows average home prices per state.

Honolulu Hawaii 2010 = 620k for a single family.

US average 2010 = 177k.

Believe you me, if we lived anywhere *but* Hawaii, I'm sure your 48k per year would be comfortable, but it's not anywhere near that here.

Anecdotally at least, it seems there are plenty of tech job postings out there, especially in California (where I don't live), and especially in software. It may be front-loaded, that is heavy on the posting/recruiting end and light on the actual offer/hiring end of the pipeline, which could help explain the unemployment numbers. It may also be that like other industries, larger established companies have had layoffs. But plenty of companies (small or innovative firms) appear to be hiring like mad. Either way, the current job market in tech looks to me to be good for those actively seeking work or a promotion. As usual, I expect innovation in various sectors (not just so-called "tech") to be a major driving force of any serious turnaround.

I've been looking on and off for the last year or so and did check out lots of those so-called "jobs" listed out in California. The requirements for these positions, especially anything listed as 'entry level' was way out of line for the description of the position or the pay being offered Exhibit A. I overwhelmingly got the impression that a lot of these companies, in the interest of cost-cutting, got rid of their high-paid (and probably highly-experienced) staff, and are looking to hire someone else to do the same job at a fraction of the pay.

Unless of course you work at the Pentagon or the NSA, in which case you can buy kiddie porn and not have to worry about being arrested. Funny how the rules that apply to everyone else DON'T apply to them, huh?

Just more greedy power hungry piggies wanting more power for themselves. Is anyone surprised?

These stupid stories based on lame research and over simplification of the human condition are really pissing me off. $75,000 per year may buy a lot of happiness, if that is possible, in a place where the cost of living is really low, but in LA , NYC or Frisco? Forget about it - $75,000 is chicken feed - you can barely pay your rent on that salary.

Ah, so all articles related to wages should be adjusted relative to the LA, NYC standard of living. Yeah that's not an over simplification of the human condition is it...

Guess most people living in LA, NYC and San Fran are really unhappy if this is the case.

That probably is the case. Those places are the poster childs of bad spending practices. They aren't expensive by accident, people there have voted-in their problems time and time again. I would be mighty pissed if my local gov't went and spent nearly $600 million on a school. No wonder nobody has any money there. If $75k isn't enough to get a decent way of life, then guess what, you picked a bad place to live. And before some dumbass whines about not being able to move someplace cheaper, if you can afford a bus ticket, you can afford to move. Don't like that idea, then live in your misery.

If it were so easy to catch people who do $bad_things, these networks would have failed the litmus test (presence of "child porn").

Seems to me child porn isn't really fought over by the major copyright holders.

As for the government, I guess you missed the news:

In a related inquiry, the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot...ld-pornography

Let's not forget his charging passengers for using the plane's toilets:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7914542.stm

People! RyanAir's CEO makes these crazy suggestions for the news coverage! He has no intention of going through with any of these mad schemes. He just does it because he believes any publicity is good publicity.

And judging by RyanAir's share price on the London and Dublin stock exchange since last week when this was first announced, it's a plan that has some merit...

Let's not forget his charging passengers for using the plane's toilets:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7914542.stm

People! RyanAir's CEO makes these crazy suggestions for the news coverage! He has no intention of going through with any of these mad schemes. He just does it because he believes any publicity is good publicity.

And judging by RyanAir's share price on the London and Dublin stock exchange since last week when this was first announced, it's a plan that has some merit...

I think that's the hard part.

Think about developing a handheld game that needs to work on all screen sizes (iPhone, iPad, Android, Simbian, etc etc....). There have been efforts to minimize these problems.

Then think about the UI for a web page or game. There have been some pretty successful results, while they are anything but simple.

Now think about adding a 3rd dimension to all those problems. It's not as easy as saying "just make it realistic". There is a reason why lives are spent on UI. It's not an easy task and it just got a 3rd Dimension.

Oh and was it just me or did anyone think it was just a 3D FPS (Like Tribes, Q3, you know.... All FPS?) and not a 3D Displayed FPS.

but I blame that on the voters who decided, shortsightedly, that there was probably no reason taxes should ever go up

California's fiscal problems are not due to low taxes. Nor are they due to not raising taxes. CA's fiscal problems can be traced to the 1990s when while CA's economy was roaring the state increased spending just as fast. When tax revenue dropped the state didn't drop spending too. Hell, look at the Taj Mahal of public schools. While teachers are being laid off LA spends more than half a billion dollars on a new school. And as TFA says, that's not the only school costing hundreds of millions of dollars in CA.

Falcon

There are quite a few actresses who operates their own paysites. If people download free porn *instead of* subscribing to their sites, then obviously that hurts their bottom line. Many porn actresses also do escort work on the side, maybe because recording movies doesn't pay enough, to support their coke addiction or just because it is funny, I don't know. The fees for one hour with Jill Kelly or Nina Hartley, two of the absolute top names, is about $1000/hour. Wicked Pictures made a revenue of merely 2.6 million in 2008. Hardly a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, I'd say.

Really, if you believe there are people "much richer than they deserve to be" in porn, you dont know what you're talking about.

I don't get it. I don't see any biased result: when I google it.

In all seriousness, their algorithm works based on how many people look for something. Sometimes I use the search bar on my Firefox to look for Google (instead of using the URL bar). In any case, I'm not very surprised by the results of this search anyways. Neither from these results although I find interesting that bing doesn't show up in their own search! Of course the latter are very similar to Yahoo's results. But even Yahoo promotes itself and Google (see the "Also try:")

Hai, I'm in your services stealing your bandwidths?

Seems that if bandwidth is truly a priority you're likely on a capped plan and likely already have the tools or software to see what's using what.

So will that guy with the oldest preorder receipt for DNF actually get GameStop to honor it?

An oil plume 100 feet wide and a mile long has been spotted spreading from the platform.

http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=longest+running+play+of+all+time

That's how. Google, or Yahoo if you prefer. . . http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Aku9Hp_M6GXpSATA.tR9246bvZx4?p=longest+running+play+of+all+time

And no I'm not going to look on Bing as well for you.

Just because you can use wikipedia to find out that one fact about something, that is not all wikipedia is designed for, so if that is all you want to know, and you don't want to accidently find out more, and get a spoiler from a site that will tell you "everything about anything" then don't look there.

It's not wikipedia or anyone else's job, to make the end user have common sense.

It's true:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100831/sp_yblog_upshot/washington-post-suspends-columnist-for-twitter-hoax

Accordng to Yahoo, "Apple unveils new box for streaming movies, TV". First Steve claimed to have revolutionised telephony by -- OH WOW -- video calls (FaceTime) and now they have found the way to stream movies to homes: Television!

The second woman should've been asking that sort of question up front if he didn't say anything, but he should've been saying something. It sounds to me like she found out after the fact that he'd had unprotected sex with someone else only a few hours earlier and that's why she bust a gusset -- although why "a few hours earlier" is somehow better than "a few weeks" or any other period of time, could well be, as you said, jealousy. He should've told her up front, and if he didn't, she should have asked. Maybe she did and he lied, in which case I can see her filing charges. Maybe she didn't, in which case filing charges is after-the-fact rape.

Then, when you add Title IV funding, there is an financial incentive for the state to place a child first in foster care, and then adopted out.

Ok, you touched on my mother's job in the last one, and my sister's in this. For one, the custody orders in divorces are handled by a different government in Texas (not just different agency, but an entirely different and unrelated goverment). I don't know about WA. So one order from one will have no effect on the other. Regardless of the state's financial incentives, the people working feel no such pressure. There is a push to keep children out of foster care whenever possible. The only reason they wouldn't be placed with the next closest relative is if that relative doesn't want them, can't care for them, or is a danger to them. There is no conceivable case where a capable father wouldn't be given their child. Unless there are unresolved issues of accusations of abuse, assertions that the father still has close ties with the abusive mother, or a lack of interest/ability from the father, he should always end up with the child. I'm under the impression that there are legal resources (Even for working males) to assist if one can't afford the battle, though I've not needed any of those.

in many cases the children will be put into foster care rather than returned to the father.

I'm curious about more of those cases. The only things close to that are when the father was accused of abuse or has a criminal record (sometimes just an arrest) and the placement is made to protect the child. So I'd like to hear some examples where a healthy 30-something male with a full-time job and has never had an arrest nor accusation of any crime or violent act against them and had requested full custody at the time of the divorce wasn't given full custody after the mother was sent to jail. You agree that shouldn't happen, but assert things like that do happen. I'm curious how.

Oh, and I think that the system can't be too far off. The women are complaining now. "Used to be that the child always went to the mother. But it's no longer uncommon for fathers seeking sole custody in a contested case to prevail at least 50 percent of the time, according to [Working Mother magazine]." http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/working-moms-are-losing-custody-546541/

Perhaps the issue is that the system is biased against the workers, not males. And that all claims of male bashing are completely false. After all, the women are complaining of losing as well. In a divorce, if both sides are unhappy, then you did something right. And at this point, mens magazines claim the system is unfair, and the women magazines complain the system is unfair, so I think it's not nearly as bad as it once was, and may actually be relatively even now.

An expesinve possibilty would be something like building a robot with Lego Mindstorms. If you are on a budget, let them integrate some web services, using Yahoo Pipes. You can even spilt them into different groups. An advanced group can add a custom stream to the pipe using Google App Engine.

By just piping existing components together, they can quickly build an useful web application. With a web application they can cooperate and even show their creation to others. When the application is really useful for them, they will be motivated to tweak it and extend it. Thus they might even be motivated to dive deeper into IT.

I think the hardest part is converting them from computer and internet consumers to producers.

The full citation of your quote is: Anthropological Journal of Canada 19(3): 9-29 (1981), although being a creationist you probably got it from Creation Research Society Quarterly 19(2): 117-127 (1982), or somebody who read that and quoted the quote, which you in turn quoted. As for the original source, Robert E. Lee (not the general) was briefly the editor/publisher of what could be summed up as a "vanity journal" called "Anthropological Journal of Canada" that was set up by his father Thomas E. Lee. The journal went defunct shortly after the death of the elder Lee. It consisted mostly of his father's own papers, according to a quick search. This is probably the most you can find about Robert E. Lee (not the general) due to the similarity in name to Robert E. Lee (the general).

So your sole support is a 29 year old quote from an article, written by somebody who may or may not have any expertise in the subject, in a now-defunct and obscure journal.

What this really bolis down to is a mass media news outlet http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest trying to make a moutain out of mole hill in order to sell more advertising.

Basically bugger the schools, buggers the students, bugger the country, this story will sell more page views to reactionary idiots, "YAHOO".

Yet again mass media demonstrating it's adherence to profits over public interests.

Lol. Seems you're so deep into your case of fanboyitis that you wouldn't recognize reality if it hit you with a clue stick in the face. Android has been sustaining about a 100% growth PER QUARTER for the last year. While Apple were touching themselves for selling 1.4 million iphone 4 handsets a week after their launch event, android was silently sustaining 160k+ activations per day, the equivalent of a launch event every week!

Moreover, that you think it is not designed as a device shows you have no clue what you are talking about. Android is just as much an appliance as iOS is. With over 100k apps in Android's market and growing faster than iOS's, the app count e-peen wars are just as obsolete as the p&s megapixel wars. Many thousands of great apps, and many more shitty, on both sides.

Show the average consumer what they have to do to get there music onto a galaxy s phone and they'll look at you dumbfounded and just use their iPod.

Yeah right. Plug your generic usb cable in and drag'n'drop as if onto a usb stick. Or use any media manager you might be using to sync playlists and the songs within. On the iPod? Locked into crappy iTunes, and god forbid you'd want to add that one song from a friend's computer you haven't synced from? Yeah, it'll wipe your iOS's whole app and music library, which you'll have to go through the hassle of re-syncing when you get back to your home pc. Pure win, right?

Okay, first the citation. They used PS3 footage for XBox's Final Fantasy XIII.

Secondly, I agree wholeheartedly that people who try to game the comment system by replying to the first post just to get at the top of the thread are fricking annoying. I wish I had modpoints left to downmod GP.

Parent is serious.

I'm so glad the LAUSD has solved all its financial woes, so that it can spend this kind of money on schools.

Is facing? Corruption, especially in Chicago and New York has been widespread for generations. Look up the Chicago Machine for example.

Crime in the US overall continues to fall 4-8% depending on the type.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0524/US-crime-rate-is-down-six-key-reasons

Excluding Detroit and New Orleans, what cities are suffering from urban decay?

National debt is up, but personal saving rates are up.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Savings-Rate-zacks-3817749700.html?x=0&.v=1

First, in regards to the campaign contributions: based on that list you cited, it looks like one should be more concerned about tribal gaming than the NEA. While NEA was #1, the various tribal gaming donors were #2, #3, #4, #8, and #9. Combined, they squash teacher interest.

Now think about this for a moment, because I think this is incredibly important. What do you consider more important to our society, gambling or public education? What should we be fighting to preserve more? A little news for you: Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of our country, fought tooth-and-nail to establish a public educational system in this country, as he understood that it was one of the most important methods of preserving our form of government. "I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:393. And that's just one quote. You can read another whole fist-full here.

Considering how vital education is to our country, I think a national educators union deserves to spend whatever it needs to preserve the interests of public education, which sadly has been under attack from various businesses, philanthropists, and other institutions over the last few decades. Which leads me to my second point...

You do get what you pay for, and the teacher's union (NEA) are the single largest campaign contributors in the United States.

Then explain to me why No Child Left Behind is so vehemently opposed by teachers at large? It received widespread, bipartisan support when it was passed and renewed in Congress, so why were teachers and the unions so against it? If we were truly getting what we paid for, then I think you would see legislation that was more supportive of unions, rather than trying to undermine them and work against them. (And while NCLB was bad, it doesn't hold a candle to what Duncan and Obama are trying to push through the pipes with the latest "Race to the Top." And remember, the NEA backed Obama during the election, so why such opposition?)

Rather, I believe the NEA is spending that much money to do the best that it can to fight such radical undermining of public education.

I'm a teacher. And I will admit, there are problems with public education. Some of those are coming from outside, and some from within. Long has the unions ignored the problems with permitting poor teachers to stay on the payroll and do nothing to help them improve in their teaching skills, it has created a subgroup of individuals with no motivation to improve. But creating a punitive system that stands to bring down an entire school due to poor performance of a student population at large on invalid assessment methods is no way to fix the system. Replacing elected school board officials with unilateral tyrants who are not accountable to the public is no way to fix a the system. Teachers know better than anyone what makes a student learn, and we're so overwhelmed by all these biased and/or misguided individuals, politicians, and businesses who all fighting to take charge of a system that they have no idea how to operate, it's like letting a three-year-old into

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100426131935AAA3l4u

I'm just saying, you're not the only Anon feelin' the pain. :-/

2G was well defined, as meaning digital. 4G is also well defined, with features like an all-IP network, 100Mb/s mobile bandwidth (1Gb/s stationary), and so on. 3G is not so well defined, but it's generally understood to mean something in the same category as UMTS.

Maybe the confusion is just a US thing?

Indeed this confusion seems to be a US thing. On the other side of the pond, probably thanks to a much more uniform standard, there is no doubt about what a 3G phone is, and noone (that I'm aware of) even considered trying to pass a non-3G phone for one.

Anyway it never ceases to amaze me how much you guys let your telcos rob you blind (not claiming it doesn't happen here - far from it - but your average bill is like 3 times ours, and the dollar is weaker atm), lie to you, tie you into years of awful contracts with hefty termination fees, pull all sorts of crap (aided by mutually incompatible standards which also make your handset useless if you want to change carrier), delay upgrades by years, remove functions like tethering or data connections from phones which are created with them, etc.

AT&T is posting record revenues in times of recession and yet skimping on needed upgrades to its insufficient network, I wonder how come there isn't an angry mob at their door.

we just have to respectfully disagree.

the mandelbrot set is a red herring because it is fractal.

on the other hand, even if the genetic code is fractal, we know its granularity: its final granularity is not on the level of atoms. Nowhere even close.

Its final granularity is on the level of cells.

We know, for a fact, that the genetic code describes a way to produce the cells in the human body.

What we do not know, as you point out, is the atomic interactions that produce proteins and so on. But those atomic interactions are simply not important.

You know, we are getting to where we can just arbitrarily change the source code and see what happens (ie genetically modified organism).

I don't care what you say, when for the next ten years we have teams of researchers working with a compiler and 600 megabytes of binary code, and they can move anything and get the result (ie they can breed a new mouse with whatever changes to its genetic code they want) you cannot pretend that we won't have things figured out.

Going back to reality, as opposed to your red herring of the mandelbrot set, the number of transistors in a quad-core Nahalem Intel i7 processor is 731M and costs $287. When you compare the physical atoms of the brain to the physical atoms of the i7, you will not find as large a difference between the number that constitute an atomic computing element as you would have us believe.

I want you to imagine the brain squished down into a 2D matrix that is 1 neuron tall. How much area does it take up? You are pretending that the answer is "a larger area than the Solar System".

But it obviously isn't a larger area than a solar system. If you take 2-3 pounds of stuff (the human brain) and use it to put a 1-neuron thick coat on as large an area as you can, you're still not talking about many square kilometers.

How many neurons are in the human brain? 100 billion.

What is the density of neurons in the human brain? 1200 cubic centimeters.

You divide the two, you get 83,333,333 neurons per cubic centimeter. The cube root of that gives you the fact that there are 436 neurons per centimeter in each dimension. So, how much larger is it if you need the same 83 million neurons but you are working with with square metal? The square root of 83 million is 9,128. So each cubic centimeter of the brain is 9128 square centimeters at the same density. Therefore, the 1200 cubic centimeters of the whole brain in three dimensions represents 25,123 square centimeters at the same density.

ie we are talking about 158.5 centimeters by 158.5 centimeters of silicon (sqrt of above number). Remember my i7 link? It says the die size is 263 square mm. So, if we just divide 25122 square centimeters by 263 square millimeters, we get the fact that 9552 processors, at a cost of $287 each, will represent the same area as the human brain, squashed.
Call it $400 per processing unit (along with motherboard, interconnects, but also bulk pricing on the chip itself), and you get 9552 * $400 = $3,820,800 of hardware.

I guarantee you an i7 can simulate 436 neurons by 437 neurons in a square centimeter of metal. But let's say it can't. Let's say it takes 100 square centimeters of metal just to simulate the 437 by 437 neurons found in a "square centimeter worth" of human brain. You multiply the figure of 3.8 million by a hundred, you get 380 million.

Honestly, simulating two to three pounds of stuff, when you have the source code, can play with it until you discover how it works, is not that hard.

I would be downright surprised if within my lifetime this was not done (and for well under fi

Ignoring the technology incompatibilities between v6 and v4 for a second, and just taking connectivity at heart, let's examine the effect of "isolation": your community runs out of telephone numbers for its area code. Your state creates a new area code. NEW numbers are given out to new owners; all old phone line owners remain unaffected and able to reach old phone lines and continue with business as usual with their other giant companies also using the old phone lines

With IPv6, all new owners can talk to the old owners. The old ones already have websites that they can reach. Top sites like youtube, google, facebook and maybe even windows update with reserved IPv4 address isn't just going to magically lose it. They'll shuffle less important services to IPv6 the day they are forced to exceed their IPv4 allocation.

Nobody is forced to "switch" to IPv6 entirely. They create DNS subdomains like the little known ipv6.google.com (if it works for you, then you have ipv6, by the way.) In the US, the government forced digital / HDTV adoption last year, but old and new channels coexist in your digital-ready cable boxes through the simple use of different channel numbers. I have no idea how many years it will take for them to force the non-HDTV channel numbers off, but I suspect that this will take as many decades as it took to implement HDTV and force it on us.

The only people having reachability problems like you mentioned will be those in NEW address blocks from poorly developed countries. Large companies needing more IP's may have issues, but nothing their IT teams can't fix with more 10.x.x.x addresses (2^24 addresses for internal company addressing "oughta be enough for [er, OK, most companies]") Consider the address space sizes. Though IPv4 is only 16 bits smaller than the MAC address space, which is small compared to the IPv6 total of 128 bits, nobody I have every heard is saying that billions of computers out there are going to run out of MAC addresses to give out soon. Funny because wireless devices and network devices tend to have multiple macs a piece.

Internet doesn't make people stupid, correct, but they all manage to congregate in a very special place all the same

Not sure about your local jurisdiction of course but...
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Motoring/Road-rules/Question591380.html
Hi, I was recently caught by a mobile speed camera just before the junction of a 30 to 40mph zone at 38mph twice within the space of 30 minutes. Can these two instances be regarded as one offense?
No, it is two separate offences.

And it looks like in some cases, the officer can ticket you twice in the same stop for two different speeding violations. Cool, huh?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070716094658AA0fomT

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a dictionary wherein "literally" is described to mean "metaphorically."

There are notes explaining the usage problem of using "literally" as an intensity modifier, but this is not considered correct usage.

Here even explicitly rejects using "literally" as "metaphorically."

Languages need not be regular to be useful, but a minimum degree of rigor is necessary for them to function (and hence exist). Languages exist to facilitate communication, which they can't do [well or maybe even at all] if words also properly mean opposite things. Definitions may be loose, but not that loose, otherwise no one could understand anyone else.

In the end, it's possible, but unlikely. Thus, citation please.

And on Tuesday, an Amnesty offical is quoted as saying 'that while other human rights groups had also sent a joint letter to WikiLeaks, Amnesty was not among its signatories.'

The only thing I remember about yahoo was back in 1995-96 when it was nothing but a single webpage with lots of links maintained by some chinese guy. Essentially that's what it remains..

  Oh, really? You, and the folks who modded you up, need to get over your prejudices and get out more.
 
Yahoo is a lot more than just links - and is the primary reason why Google has added Gmail, iGoogle, News... and all the other things that aren't search.

Well, yes, I can understand the logic. However, if I understand this TIME article, very roughly 0.1% of all light aircraft flying in Alaska will crash in a given year. That figure seems very high.

The key questions are:

1. Will some of the big holders get bitchy and want Google to start whoring they're data.
2. Does the management have enough backing votes to block other big shareholders from forcing the whoring.

When some of the shareholders get wind that Google is holding back to be "good", you can bet you asses that there's going to be some fighting and these are the times when founders and their values get thrown out the window.

What could save them is that most of the shareholders are mutual funds. Those guys are usually passive and are just along for the ride.