Depending on how the fungus in question lives and grows, it could be more useful to see if the fungus could be encouraged to grow (or at least metabolize) anaerobically. If the diesel-producing fungus can do this trick anaerobically, then the chances of being able to do this under water could be good.
The application of this should be apparent - underwater diesel production would allow us to utilize this fungus in large vats, feeding waste material into the vats and then pulling the diesel from the rest of the solution as we go.
the government-sponsored monopoly of Blue Cross/Blue Shield
Are you talking about the enormous tax cuts that were given to them?
I'm not aware of BCBS being government-sponsored in any other way. I work for the state (in NY state) and we have United health care - perhaps BCBS is government-sponsored in other parts of the country?
Sure, Canadians pay higher taxes. But their taxes include health care and pension. If you counted what both you and your employer pay for your health care and retirement as taxes, you would find that we actually pay more in the US.
If we take a look at the costs of manufacturing in the US, there is one expense that manufacturers (such as the auto makers) pay here that they don't pay pretty much anywhere else - health insurance. For every new American-built car sold, a staggering portion of the price of the car goes to cover health insurance.
Yet our country spends more per capita on health care than just about any other country on the planet, thanks at least in part to our for-profit system. In other industrialized countries, the workers are still paying for health care, but it comes out of their paychecks in the same way taxes come out. And in the end those other countries can make similar products at a lower final manufacturing cost (even after paying to export to the US).
If people are so certain that the US system is great, then please answer one question. How can we make American manufacturing competitive on the world market again while paying the highest health care costs in the world?
If you look at our top trading partner (that would be Canada), you'll see that their workers make comparable wages for equivalent jobs to those in the US. Yet numerous auto manufacturing facilities have been moved to Canada to save money. Where is the savings if the workers make similar wages? It is in health care and pensions, both managed by the state.
Most of what passes for music in the US is indistinguishable from noise anyways. If you just add noise to ambient sound, you're saving money versus paying for "music".
But unless your a share holder why should any corporation listen to us?
That is a valid question. You're right, they don't necessarily have to listen to us. We cannot force them to react to input received through that address.
However, we could take a less pessimistic approach to this and ask what is the cost of contacting ICANN through the published channel (email address)? Any user here could write an email in just a few minutes to express their concern. Isn't a few minutes of time to write an email worth the effort if it would prevent an upcoming deluge of spam?
I would then block any e-mail coming form @*.v1agra.
Email domains are easily - and frequently - spoofed. What I was trying to get to is that the actual spamvertised domain would be something in a new gTLD (such as.v1agra). Blocking traffic from.v1agra would be useless in this situation, as you'll still see email from some other.com domain which is spamvertising the pretend pharmacy in the new.v1agra domain.
Sorry if I was not clear on that one. While many people place the blame for spam on the domain from which the spam was sent, I for one prefer to blame those responsible for the registration and hosting of the domain that is being advertised by said spam.
Is how many orders of "herbal viagra" do you need to sell to pull in $185,000 to register.v1agra (or other such clever alternate spelling) to run your spamming operation with no registrar oversight ever again?
So this is the third year of the Wii being available, but it is still at the same (retail) price as when it was originally released. Granted, sales are still outpacing supplies so we can assume that demand has at least remained roughly static over these three years.
However, we all know that hardware prices tend to fall over time. Unless I am mistaken, the Wii of this year is identical to the Wii of 2006 in terms of hardware. So why hasn't the console price fallen? Will we see it fall before Nintendo releases their next system (whenever that will be)?
An earlier post said that console life cycles average about 5 years. If we are therefore over half-way into this cycle, wouldn't we expect to have seen a price drop by now?
T Rex International Paleontonomics Experiment (TRIPE)
Credit Given to Ross Geller
Genes "identified" included TINY_ARMS and SMALL_BRAIN
DNA was said to be extracted from a fossilized big toe
Of course, this was all placed on April 1 of approximately 2002, and promptly removed on April 2. It was understood to be a hoax, but still a very funny one.
As it is, ICANN has been falling flat on what they could be doing to curb the spam epidemic. But now if they start selling TLDs to any schmuck with enough money, they've just thrown what little clout they had, right out the window.
Previously, domain registrars were obligated to abide by the registrars terms set forth by ICANN/Internic as part of their terms for being a registrar in the ICANN-controlled TLDs. But if ICANN is going to sell new TLDs outright, they are handing over the keys entirely. Just wait until people start buying TLDs that are misspelled variants of viagra. Then we'll see spam floods from those and nobody will be accountable for the bogus pharmacies under those domains that are selling poison across the internet.
I agree, ICANN's time has come and gone. It should be replaced by an international organization with international allies for international goals and solving international problems. Anyone who thinks that the US can solve the spam problem just by passing new laws is a fool.
I broke the slashdot rule and decided to RTFA. I even watched the movie of the game in action. However, I still couldn't figure out one thing.
How does a player know where they are standing on the tennis court? If you watch the movie you can see that they can volley the ball back from multiple positions on the court, but I couldn't see where the player was standing on the court.
Anyone know? I have some colleagues that are out at Brookhaven the next few days, but I doubt they'll have time to stop by and see it.
No, Christopher doesn't. My name is on the phone line in question.
That is interesting, then. I figured that you may have purchased a phone line for your five-year-old (I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time its happened in this country).
I'll guess that you and your son don't have the same first name, since you said the campaign is calling for him and not you. Have you tried calling the local campaign office to get your son's name removed from the list?
I had to fill out this RMA form that took like 5 minutes, then I had to ship the old drive back, THEN I had to wait 1 whole week for a new drive to show up.
Some of us remember a time when customer support was important enough that companies would be willing to cross-ship the drives - send you a replacement before you send back your defective one so you can try to get your data off.
And where did you get the shipping material from? When I was getting ready to send mine back they told me that if I did not use the very specific containers and packing methods, they would void the warranty and not ship anything back. And being as I had already thrown out my original box, I had nothing to pack it into that would meet their specification - nor was anything available within 100 miles of my house that would.
where the hell did you come from?
I came from the past, when customer support actually meant someone on the phone gave a damn and wanted customers to be... supported!
Unless you WANT to hit F4 to finish booting up your computer every time you turn it on.
Well, that depends. Will my system remain booted afterwards? Because the crappy seagate drive I bought was causing my system to crash when it was otherwise running. If the system is reliable enough to not need to be rebooted, I'll take a minor booting inconvenience for that.
I know I'm not the only person around who feels that Seagate's consumer-level drives have taken a turn for the worse in terms of QC, and their customer service is terrible at best. But it doesn't seem like the other manufacturers are doing a whole lot to try to take over the high-quality consumer-level niche.
Anyone have a recommendation for a drive manufacturer whose quality has improved over the years, and actually makes good consumer drives? I'm so disgusted with Seagate I'm even willing to consider Connor or Maxtor.
Come on, I don't think this phone does enough yet. If they can't make a phone that can run SETI@Home while I play Duke Nukem Forever, then I'm not interested!
And there's no word on its ability to make my dinner, either. What good is a cell phone if it can't deep fry?
I'm guessing based on my own experience with calls from various phone scammers that they left a 1-800 call back number, right?
If thats the case, see if you can figure out who sold the 1-800 number. I have been dealing with annoying bogus credit counselors that won't stop calling and leaving their 1-800 numbers as callbacks. There are some good resources for this stuff online that may be able to help you find the company who sold the number - they are sold similarly to web domains, though without any obligation to anyone to release the data on who has it.
It adds significant risk and potential complexity to their operating activities. As such, it reduces the economic incentive significantly.
The problem with that is that very few countries enforce anti-spam laws with criminal prosecution. The US could pass the most brutal anti-spam laws they want and it wouldn't make an impact because there would still be plenty of other countries that have no anti-spam laws at all.
If spamming were a capital offense in the US, but not a crime at all in another country, the spammers will just go to another country and setup shop there. The end result would just be less spam originating in the US. The net effect of spam received in the US would likely be completely negligible.
Slashdot Mirror
Depending on how the fungus in question lives and grows, it could be more useful to see if the fungus could be encouraged to grow (or at least metabolize) anaerobically. If the diesel-producing fungus can do this trick anaerobically, then the chances of being able to do this under water could be good.
The application of this should be apparent - underwater diesel production would allow us to utilize this fungus in large vats, feeding waste material into the vats and then pulling the diesel from the rest of the solution as we go.
If you feel that scientific research funding is important to education (or anything at all, for that matter), then you should be concerned about the Science Budget Freezes Proposed by John Sidney McCain III.
the government-sponsored monopoly of Blue Cross/Blue Shield
Are you talking about the enormous tax cuts that were given to them?
I'm not aware of BCBS being government-sponsored in any other way. I work for the state (in NY state) and we have United health care - perhaps BCBS is government-sponsored in other parts of the country?
their tax rates are higher
Sure, Canadians pay higher taxes. But their taxes include health care and pension. If you counted what both you and your employer pay for your health care and retirement as taxes, you would find that we actually pay more in the US.
If we take a look at the costs of manufacturing in the US, there is one expense that manufacturers (such as the auto makers) pay here that they don't pay pretty much anywhere else - health insurance. For every new American-built car sold, a staggering portion of the price of the car goes to cover health insurance.
Yet our country spends more per capita on health care than just about any other country on the planet, thanks at least in part to our for-profit system. In other industrialized countries, the workers are still paying for health care, but it comes out of their paychecks in the same way taxes come out. And in the end those other countries can make similar products at a lower final manufacturing cost (even after paying to export to the US).
If people are so certain that the US system is great, then please answer one question. How can we make American manufacturing competitive on the world market again while paying the highest health care costs in the world?
If you look at our top trading partner (that would be Canada), you'll see that their workers make comparable wages for equivalent jobs to those in the US. Yet numerous auto manufacturing facilities have been moved to Canada to save money. Where is the savings if the workers make similar wages? It is in health care and pensions, both managed by the state.
we have to add our own noise.
Most of what passes for music in the US is indistinguishable from noise anyways. If you just add noise to ambient sound, you're saving money versus paying for "music".
But unless your a share holder why should any corporation listen to us?
That is a valid question. You're right, they don't necessarily have to listen to us. We cannot force them to react to input received through that address.
However, we could take a less pessimistic approach to this and ask what is the cost of contacting ICANN through the published channel (email address)? Any user here could write an email in just a few minutes to express their concern. Isn't a few minutes of time to write an email worth the effort if it would prevent an upcoming deluge of spam?
I would then block any e-mail coming form @*.v1agra.
Email domains are easily - and frequently - spoofed. What I was trying to get to is that the actual spamvertised domain would be something in a new gTLD (such as .v1agra). Blocking traffic from .v1agra would be useless in this situation, as you'll still see email from some other .com domain which is spamvertising the pretend pharmacy in the new .v1agra domain.
Sorry if I was not clear on that one. While many people place the blame for spam on the domain from which the spam was sent, I for one prefer to blame those responsible for the registration and hosting of the domain that is being advertised by said spam.
I strongly encourage people to write to that address and voice your opinion on the issue. That is, after all, why it is called a public forum.
Is how many orders of "herbal viagra" do you need to sell to pull in $185,000 to register .v1agra (or other such clever alternate spelling) to run your spamming operation with no registrar oversight ever again?
Yes, this is a terrible idea for reasons already brought up.
So this is the third year of the Wii being available, but it is still at the same (retail) price as when it was originally released. Granted, sales are still outpacing supplies so we can assume that demand has at least remained roughly static over these three years.
However, we all know that hardware prices tend to fall over time. Unless I am mistaken, the Wii of this year is identical to the Wii of 2006 in terms of hardware. So why hasn't the console price fallen? Will we see it fall before Nintendo releases their next system (whenever that will be)?
An earlier post said that console life cycles average about 5 years. If we are therefore over half-way into this cycle, wouldn't we expect to have seen a price drop by now?
Of course, this was all placed on April 1 of approximately 2002, and promptly removed on April 2. It was understood to be a hoax, but still a very funny one.
As it is, ICANN has been falling flat on what they could be doing to curb the spam epidemic. But now if they start selling TLDs to any schmuck with enough money, they've just thrown what little clout they had, right out the window.
Previously, domain registrars were obligated to abide by the registrars terms set forth by ICANN/Internic as part of their terms for being a registrar in the ICANN-controlled TLDs. But if ICANN is going to sell new TLDs outright, they are handing over the keys entirely. Just wait until people start buying TLDs that are misspelled variants of viagra. Then we'll see spam floods from those and nobody will be accountable for the bogus pharmacies under those domains that are selling poison across the internet.
I agree, ICANN's time has come and gone. It should be replaced by an international organization with international allies for international goals and solving international problems. Anyone who thinks that the US can solve the spam problem just by passing new laws is a fool.
I broke the slashdot rule and decided to RTFA. I even watched the movie of the game in action. However, I still couldn't figure out one thing.
How does a player know where they are standing on the tennis court? If you watch the movie you can see that they can volley the ball back from multiple positions on the court, but I couldn't see where the player was standing on the court.
Anyone know? I have some colleagues that are out at Brookhaven the next few days, but I doubt they'll have time to stop by and see it.
96,4% of them developed in C, and 3,3% using assembler
That leaves .3% that is unaccounted for. What was it written in?
No, Christopher doesn't. My name is on the phone line in question.
That is interesting, then. I figured that you may have purchased a phone line for your five-year-old (I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time its happened in this country).
I'll guess that you and your son don't have the same first name, since you said the campaign is calling for him and not you. Have you tried calling the local campaign office to get your son's name removed from the list?
Could you even try to go further from the topic?
Does your 5 year old son have his own phone line? I'm guessing the goldfish in question probably didn't.
I had to fill out this RMA form that took like 5 minutes, then I had to ship the old drive back, THEN I had to wait 1 whole week for a new drive to show up.
Some of us remember a time when customer support was important enough that companies would be willing to cross-ship the drives - send you a replacement before you send back your defective one so you can try to get your data off.
And where did you get the shipping material from? When I was getting ready to send mine back they told me that if I did not use the very specific containers and packing methods, they would void the warranty and not ship anything back. And being as I had already thrown out my original box, I had nothing to pack it into that would meet their specification - nor was anything available within 100 miles of my house that would.
where the hell did you come from?
I came from the past, when customer support actually meant someone on the phone gave a damn and wanted customers to be ... supported!
Unless you WANT to hit F4 to finish booting up your computer every time you turn it on.
Well, that depends. Will my system remain booted afterwards? Because the crappy seagate drive I bought was causing my system to crash when it was otherwise running. If the system is reliable enough to not need to be rebooted, I'll take a minor booting inconvenience for that.
This is not a software problem, they are just not using the correct battery.
I wonder if that would explain my A/C and four-wheel-drive problems as well.
I know I'm not the only person around who feels that Seagate's consumer-level drives have taken a turn for the worse in terms of QC, and their customer service is terrible at best. But it doesn't seem like the other manufacturers are doing a whole lot to try to take over the high-quality consumer-level niche.
Anyone have a recommendation for a drive manufacturer whose quality has improved over the years, and actually makes good consumer drives? I'm so disgusted with Seagate I'm even willing to consider Connor or Maxtor.
Come on, I don't think this phone does enough yet. If they can't make a phone that can run SETI@Home while I play Duke Nukem Forever, then I'm not interested!
And there's no word on its ability to make my dinner, either. What good is a cell phone if it can't deep fry?
I'm guessing based on my own experience with calls from various phone scammers that they left a 1-800 call back number, right?
If thats the case, see if you can figure out who sold the 1-800 number. I have been dealing with annoying bogus credit counselors that won't stop calling and leaving their 1-800 numbers as callbacks. There are some good resources for this stuff online that may be able to help you find the company who sold the number - they are sold similarly to web domains, though without any obligation to anyone to release the data on who has it.
It adds significant risk and potential complexity to their operating activities. As such, it reduces the economic incentive significantly.
The problem with that is that very few countries enforce anti-spam laws with criminal prosecution. The US could pass the most brutal anti-spam laws they want and it wouldn't make an impact because there would still be plenty of other countries that have no anti-spam laws at all.
If spamming were a capital offense in the US, but not a crime at all in another country, the spammers will just go to another country and setup shop there. The end result would just be less spam originating in the US. The net effect of spam received in the US would likely be completely negligible.