Sure the executives are mandated by shareholders to maximize the value of the company, but that shouldn't and doesn't mean the executives have to do every last sleazy, slimy, and dirty (yet legal) trick to do so.
The line between "sell out" and "protect customer privacy" is drawn the same way a lot of executive decisions are made: where do they think the future negative impacts of an act will outweigh the present benefits (e.g. quick cash to make quarterly report vs. weakening company position long term)
For example: Amazon might be able to make a killing in quick cash by selling all their user's info to "Cock Ring Warehouse", but the negative backlash will be much more costly in the future.
The problem is people have given info to so many companies now it's hard for the average Joe to track down just who sold him out. Even then, companies obviously think it's worth the occasional "I'll never do business here again!" when they get caught.
You left something out: Hz, B, B, Hz. "G" is not a unit.
Now I checked it out on Apple's site: The Machine you spec'd out above is indeed just under $5000. But a NVIDIA 7300GT? That's a sub-$100 budget card now, and was never a top of the line unit. Definitely a dog for a machine with that kind of horsepower, but it's the default for the system
If you don't want a POS video card, you have the option of buying multiple 7300s (overpriced at $150 a pop, ok for lots of monitors doing 2d, but no SLI) a x1900XT 512MB (for $250, nearly market price) or a Quadro FX 4500 (for $1600, $600 over market price) SLI and Crosfire don't work at all.
Sounds like Apple is still up to their old tricks of screwing you over in the video card dept: Shitty default with limited overpriced upgrade options. Question is, can Macs even use regular OEM cards, or is there something hardware locked still?
As stated by some Fry's employee here, Fry's doesn't offer any rebates themselves, Fry's merely provides copies of manufacturer's rebates as a courtesy.
That being said, it is misleading to offer to mail you a rebate form when they didn't have one on hand (and then mail it late), but you could have called up the company and asked for one direct, checked the internet or checked a different Fry's store if you didn't get the mail promptly.
My guess is that if you had mailed in the rebate late, with the envelope from Fry's and a note explaining why it was delinquent, they would have honored it anyhow. I once found a stamped and sealed rebate envelope I'd forgotten. I mailed it in ~2 months late with "Oops, just found this in the car" written on the envelope. I still got my money:-) Trying is worth the cost of a stamp anyhow.
I agree with you that pressure to finish investigating gaps and holes needs to come from somewhere. If they do nothing else of value, conspiracy theorists are invaluable in making sure every stone gets turned over and scrutinized. That's a good thing.
As for the free fall thing, every video I've seen shows the building collapsing unhindered, and every video showing the entire collapse shows them falling at roughly free fall speed. Show me a video where this is not the case.
"Roughly free fall" to the naked, untrained eye does not equal free fall. While other valid questions that remain unanswered can still be made, I'd drop this point: it's completely disproved. The floors above the damage move as a unit as they fall, and the floors below do not give way or move until they are hit by those falling above. A controlled demolition blows out all the floor supports at once so they do not collapse as a rigid unit. Again, video analysis timing shows the WTC falling slower than free fall, consistent in speed with conventional collapse (unless there is a conspiracy to alter film speed). The little puffs of gas escaping during collapse are not demo explosions, but air being blown out as the building compresses. Once the top floors started falling there would be no need for further explosives anyhow, gravity would take over.
As for the BBC, it was a freaking mistake amidst chaos! The reporter might not have been able to point out WTC 7 even if she looked for it. It was neither the focus of attention (VERY far from it) or a very distinct landmark on the NYC skyline (it sort of blended in with the crowd around the towers). Do you assume a foreign journalist would know exactly where "The Salomon Brother's" building was and then check the info for veracity during a time of chaos? Given the situation, reporters with a piece of news they believed to be correct are going to report it right away. It's a huge deal for a reporter to be "first" with a bit of important news (same reason we had Gore- No, Bush! No, Gore wins! etc. Reporters don't like to wait:-) It's far too big of a leap to consider this anything other than eager-reporter error.
Sure Silverstein insured the building for terrorism. WTC had been bombed once already, remember? I would have done the same. No different than insuring for fire and flooding. As for the Bushies owning the security company, it's cronyism for sure (rich guys help their rich friends), but if that points towards a conspiracy to destroy the building, once again they could have managed something much simpler but disastrous enough to destroy files and data (fire, employee gone "postal", blame it on hackers etc). I find it hard to believe that someone as rich and powerful as that could find no cheaper, easier way to dispose of the info than to buy the building (that you say was on rocky financial grounds) just to blow it up. Also, destroying a building for the insurance wouldn't really pay off too well, as it's my understanding you can't insure for more than the assessed value, which would be nearly what Silverstein paid just 6 months prior. Not much better than break-even at best (and we all know about the problems people have had collecting on policies). Insurance fraud like this only really works when the value of the business has dropped far below the insured value and the money couldn't be recouped by selling.
As for the trading stuff, yeah, it's real damn fishy and I'd like to know more about that. It seems that maybe someone who knew about the attack beforehand was buying UAL puts- damn straight that should be investigated thoroughly, and likewise the "Options trading newsletter" for American puts and the other stuff. The most obvious suspect would be someone tipped off by al-qaeda. As for not wanting to "claim the money", I don't understand: whoever placed those puts, already made the money. It's his or hers to spend as desired. You don't have to show up like a lotto winner to get it. Maybe he hasn't cashed out and the mon
Look, I have nothing against a second, exhaustive investigation and review of evidence. Are there holes? Yes. Are parts of the report incomplete? Yes - but that is not to say that the incomplete reports will never be finished (taking time to get it done well is a good thing)
But all to often September 11 conspiracy theories hinge on falsehoods and a logical fallacy that lack of evidence constitutes proof of conspiracy.
Even if the fire weakened the steel, why did the building collapse at roughly free fall speed? This is a myth. Video analysis shows it not collapsing at free fall speed, and building demo experts have said it doesn't fit the controlled demo fall type. Popular mechanics showed this, and National Geographic IIRC, (unless you think they messed with the video speed to further a conspiracy).
why weren't any of the 47 giant steel columns sticking up out of the rubble about 20 stories Think about that for a second. They were steel, not adamantium. Even steel bends and breaks - no matter how a building that big comes down, the girders are not going to be poking up 20 stories through rubble, unmoved, like steadfast tin soldiers. They would be bent, broken and pushed out of the way under and around the rubble, which we saw.
How do you explain the BBC reporting that the WTC 7 had collapsed approximately 20 minutes before it actually DID? A mistake. Things were confusing, people got a ton of things wrong in the mix. Consider the options: Are we to assume that 1) The BBC (Not American) was in on the conspiracy and got the timing wrong? Or 2) the conspirator feeding information to the BBC got his/her timing wrong? Or 3) the BBC got some bad information that tragically later became correct? Honestly, the first two assume not only conspiracies, but poorly executed conspiracies. How hard would it be for #badguy to watch WTC-7 and wait until it actually fell to phone it in to the BBC?
What evidence is there that there was a raging fire at WTC 7? What evidence is there that any of the diesel tanks were breached? Once again, it is the simplest theory that best fits the evidence. Lack of explicit evidence does not discount this as a valid theory.
How do you explain Larry Silverstein's statement that he told the firefighters to 'pull it'? He was telling the firefighters to "pull-out" of the building so no one (more) would die. The conspiracy option leads one to believe that he was ordering the firefighters to demo the building, which implies that the firefighters who were dying left and right were in on the conspiracy. If it wasn't the firefighters he was ordering to demo the building, why announce it like that? If he was ordering someone else to demo the building, why did the firefighters get out when he said pull it?
Interesting how all of the people implicated in it (except the FBI informant) were on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the CIA has a long and sordid history of paying and arming people who don't like the USA as long as they fight someone else the CIA hates. I'd bet the CIA also gives out a fair chunk of money to informants who hate the USA and plan to fuck us as soon as they can. But do you imply that because we gave Afghani's money and arms to fight the Ruskies, or for info on al-Qaeda, they are somehow our lap dogs to order about? That we could order them to attack? It's not like Osama was short on cash and they didn't need monetary motivation anyhow, it was a suicide attack.
motivation the neocons might have to 'blow up' the buildings by planes Sure, neo-conservatives have played the events to promote their agenda, and managed to do very well (for them, disastrous for the rest of the country). However, reacting to a situation to further one's agenda is FAR from causing an even to further said agenda. Would you entertain the notion of a Liberal conspiracy causing global warming, so they could line their pockets with fat IPOs and profits fro
That has to be the coolest swap meet buy evar. I would think sputter-coating a live spider would necessarily kill it though (electricity, and plasma etc). If it did manage to live, it probably didn't have a very good coating, as any movement would start to rub it off.
Oh, and by the way, how do you explain the collapse of the three world trade center buildings if you do not accept controlled demolition? Look at all the entities that were stationed in WTC #7 and tell me that it wasn't convenient that that building collapsed?
How can one explain the collapse of the towers? I dunno, when a jumbo-jet full of jet fuel crashes into a building at high speed and then burns hot and long enough to weaken* the structural steel, collapse will start. Once the support is gone the structure is compromised and the undamaged floors below can't hold back the falling upper floors. (*to answer "jet fuel can't melt steel" tin-foil-types, you only need to heat it enough to weaken it below the loading, not melt it, for structural steel to fail. Jet fuel can do that handily.)
As for WTC #7, two large skyscrapers rained tons of debris (literally tons of steel and concrete) on it, it caught fire and was allowed to burn. There were large diesel fuel tanks for backup generators that probably fueled this fire as well. The FDNY had more important things on their hands and didn't wan't to risk more life unnecessarily. The fact that it contained things "convenient to dispose" for some shadow conspiracy is irrelevant, it was in a disaster zone and lots of other buildings were damaged to near collapse, and many buildings in that area probably fit the criteria of "convenient to dispose of".
We know Al Qaeda tried to blow it up once before, there is pretty damn compelling evidence that they tried again and succeeded. These conspiracies not only fail Ockham's razor, they fail a simple logic-check: if there existed a conspiracy powerful enough to orchestrate the collapse of WTC #7 to get rid of data and services, they would be powerful enough to accomplish it by means less crude than blowing up two adjacent buildings and then collapsing it in the mayhem.
Also Don't forget they only go by what is publicly available as evidence, whereas the numerous and well-funded investigative committees set up by the government get to use all that top secret information. This is yet another reason why their conclusions are suspect
If you're using a 20 meter dish, I don't think it qualifies as "amateur" anything*. But my main question is did they get usable data, or just a signal that they can't decode or use? I don't think NASA would keep those computers around if there was a way to get at the underlying data without them. If they actually got real, usable data then it is beyond cool, like a gold medal of geek-dom.
*Sure, you may just do it as an unpaid hobby, but I'm guessing most people consider "amateur" in this sense to mean within the realm of feasibility for the average Joe, e.g. an amateur pilot could fly around in an F-22, but it wouldn't be considered amateur aviation at that point - there is no "hobby" use for an F-22 (joyriding fun notwithstanding), and the cost and training required would be prohibitive anyhow. "Amateur" ARRL members can re-task a 20m dish, but it is beyond the scope of amateur radio in the same way - expensive, non-commodity equipment that takes specialized skill and training to use.
Now if you did it with an old C-band TV satellite dish, an oscilloscope and a pc, that would be amateur, and by amateur I mean totally sweet.
In a lot of places in Africa, the presence of corruption at lower levels is just tacitly accepted. It's not hard to understand why when sometimes people need bribe money just to put food on their table.
The problem it's that in many cases when you deal with "donor" money, they don't consider it necessarily stealing from their people, but just getting "free" money from the donors.
I've seen it first hand on the national scale: In Tanzania, during the midst of a severe power crisis I sat down in a cafe in Dar and had chai with the president of the Richmond Development Corperation "based" in Houston TX. They were under contract to import and install emergency power generators to the country. This was a deal worth 10s of millions of USD (This money was of course aid money, Tanzania doesn't have 10 Million in hard currency to toss about). We talked about the power situation and how nice it would be to have it fixed, about foreign aid, and about the USA and Tanzania in general. He was a very pleasant man overall, he gave me his business card and even paid my tab.
Several weeks later it came to light that RDC was basically a shell company with no real corporate presence anywhere, or capability to buy and ship generators (Google it if you want). It was purely an attempt to swindle millions of dollars (the attitude being that since it was donor money, it wasn't really taking money from Tanzania) How the heck did they win the contract in the first place? I'm sure they greased a few palms along the way.
Even on the village level, if you write a grant for a building and budget X TSH money for concrete, you can damn well be sure that someone will try their hardest to short a bag or two and pocket the money (concrete is very expensive FWIW). Receipt tracking for grants would be hell if you were not solely in charge of buying and paying for things.
Considering the harshness of life there, I can't be to angry at people for trying for a few bucks, but with that in mind, the people stealing millions are even more reprehensible.
RPCV Tanzania 2005-2007 Still have the business card and newspaper clippings
I was going to post the same thing. It was the first thing that popped into my head after reading the headline.
Another group is producing much the same thing commercially, in a nice case and all. A 4 node Core 2 1.8Ghz with 1 gig ram per node and 2x 250Gb storage is about $7000 (USD)
(Wonder how that stacks up to what he built speed/cost wise, though I'd bet the Via cluster beats all in power use (140W max load))
If you bothered to RTFA, or taken 5 seconds to google "Moller flying car" you would have noticed a link to the homepage, and demo videos of both this M200x flying around and the Skycar (which, granted, only hovers thus far).
Since they are ACTUALLY selling these things, they are far from the Duke Nukem Forever of anything. It's also pretty remarkable that they've accomplished so much given the size of their operation.
/You fail the interweb.
//but win at trolling.
This is why I don't post to youtube, or most photo sites: you give up too many of your rights to your own works.
Same thing with registrars. Many registrars have nasty clauses that say something to the effect of "you don't actually have any rights to this domain, if we want it or some company pays us more money, we can take it and sucks to you."
Does anyone know of a website that has compared and summarized the uploading "agreements" of sites like Photobucket, flickr, youtube, metacafe etc to see what rights each strips you of?
I know it's a lot of grunt-work to wade through all the legalese, but it would be nice to see it all side by side. A few years back I found a site that did that for registrars, which helped me choose the one I did.
How?
In Soviet Russia, if CDMA, for one, bows down to our new beowulf-cluster-of-iPhones overlords, GSM would hack you! and cover Natalie Portman in hot grits, you insensitive clod!
...if I can some how show that netcraft confirms Holy Grail is dying, it just might work.
Try doing 3k RPM in any specific gear in a truck over the same stretch of road with and without a full load in the bed, or towing a boat. You will have to hit a higher RPM or go slower under load.
Speed is not just RPM x (gear ratio) x (wheel size)
The difference with just passenger weight is usually pretty small (barring super-fatties), but if you really pay attention you'll notice it too. Especially if you're paying for gasoline.
/If you have an SUV or van and don't normally have many passengers, take out a seat or two. You will save money!
Either you forgot where you are [Slashdot- where 1)Doesn't run Internet Explorer and 2) Not enough wizards to get stuff set up are BONUSES!] AND essentially admitted to being a computer n00b...
Or, (as I'm inclined to hope) you made a clever fake troll and it got missed: Honestly, can anyone here read "I've used all three versions of Linux" and "Don't even get me started on the lack of a Linux version of Weather Bug and think it's serious? (please tell me it's not... I passed on funny-mod-points for the parent so I could post)
Have you ever looked at a picture on a monitor compared to a (quality) photo print of it? If you can't tell the difference, it's time to see the ophthalmologist, you may be colour-blind Print has monitors beat on DPI and colour, hands down.
Have you ever seen a monitor do a fluorescent colour realistically? No. Start to look a little more critically and you'll notice that there is still a LOT of room to improve with screen tech. OLED is one just over the horizon tech that is supposed to blow LCDs away with better colour. It's just starting to show up in small sizes like phones screens and such.
*The new whiz-bang Dell monitors just recently got to 92% of the NTSC colour gamut, and that was a BIG step up from the average 70% for most consumer flat panels. Further, the NTSC colour gamut is still just a limited set of what the eye can actually see.
I was under the impression that the Wii is region free, so (if you can find one at all) you can just import games. Is this correct?
Also, do newer UK TVs support NTSC? I am aware that there were dual-mode units sold back in the day, but do all new Hi-def TVs support NTSC since they can do the much higher HDTV resolutions?*
I've always felt sad for UK gamers getting raked over the coals price-wise.
*UK HDTVs do the same 720 or 1080 that US HDTVs do right? Or did USA screw the pooch on that like we did with GSM frequencies?
High Fructose corn syrup is not the problem at all. It is no more fattening than sugar, calorie for calorie. And it has generally similar sweetness, so there is no need to put more calories of it in.
I think what the GP was referring to is not the caloric values, but the body's response to fructose being supposedly different* enough from that of sucrose and glucose that in massive quantities (32oz Coke) it causes increased fatty-ness.
*Is this theoretical or proved? My cell bio-fu is fading, but I remember fructose being trivially convertible to glucose in humans, at a non-limiting rate, i.e. so fast it's crazy. But maybe it doesn't trigger the right cascade when it's brought into cells and something ends up not getting phosphorylated?
High fructose corn syrup vs. cane sugar? I almost spit out the first regular Coke I had in the USA after living abroad where they're made with real sugar. High fructose corn syrup tastes just plain nasty. In the USA I'll drink diet, unless I can get some of the sugar sweetened Mexican stuff in glass bottles. That's always a nice find.
That's funny, I've never had a problem with Gmail attachments. In fact I once sent an attachment of a 10Mb zip file (pictures). This may not seem special, but:
It was from an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere East Africa, on a computer running a shady copy of 98 loaded with crap-ware, and it froze up mid way through.
I didn't have the time to reboot and start over, so I just stared at a frozen screen for 10 odd minutes and then tried to get it to send. It worked. Outside of Africa, I've never had a problem with speed either.
Plus the fact that there is a program out there that lets you mount your gmail account as a network drive, by storing and sending the data as attachments.* Somehow I don't think that would work if they sent very many attachments to/dev/null.
*I played around with it when gmail first came out, haven't heard anything about it since. Anybody know what I'm talking about?
This is what I was going to say, it should be trivial to convert from component to composite with a cable adapter that just combines the 3 signals (Luminance, red difference and blue difference) into one wire (composite) or two wires of Luminance and Chroma(S-video)....but IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer)
I have the needed RCA and S-video adapters somewhere in storage, this may be fun to try...
Is it just me or does his site bear some resemblance to our friends at http://www.timecube.com/ ?
White background - check Red and blue text with lots of bold and under-lining - check Rambling, quasi-religious writing going against overwhelming scientific opinion - check Laid out in one massively tall, single column page - check Graphics stolen from a circa 1996 Geocities website - check
If we somehow combined these two, the offspring would be the crackpot ubermensch
The "hippo shares" analogy is not quite correct: (regular)shares are a fractional ownership of REAL companies that have legal status, registration with authorities, employees and assets. Sure the value is largely dependent on what people are willing to pay for them, but make no mistake: a share does equal ownership (of a small part) of something real and tangible.
A "hippo share" would be a share of something purely imagined and intangible. There may be a demand for them, people may even be willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for them, but they still represent only an imagined thing with no physical aspect: Likewise, WoW gold or items exist purely in the "imagination" (Servers) of Blizzard. Blizzard can create or destroy them at whim. I don't think you can make a rational argument that WoW gold or items are equal to a share (partial ownership) of WoW or Blizzard. In fact, I think it's debatable that you even own them at all since they are intangible: Blizzard can take them away whenever they please and you have no recourse.
Lastly, you are right that taxing people who make profit this way is not unreasonable. They are (in the USA) already taxed for it! If someone sells something virtual for real money, it doesn't matter what they sold or how: all that matters is that they got money. Income from any source gets (should be...) reported for income tax. "Virtual" sales shouldn't have a sales tax because nothing real gets exchanged except money from one person to another. It's more akin to gambling in that way: a virtual object (correct guess) is exchanged for money, and gambling income is taxed.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure the executives are mandated by shareholders to maximize the value of the company, but that shouldn't and doesn't mean the executives have to do every last sleazy, slimy, and dirty (yet legal) trick to do so.
The line between "sell out" and "protect customer privacy" is drawn the same way a lot of executive decisions are made: where do they think the future negative impacts of an act will outweigh the present benefits (e.g. quick cash to make quarterly report vs. weakening company position long term)
For example: Amazon might be able to make a killing in quick cash by selling all their user's info to "Cock Ring Warehouse", but the negative backlash will be much more costly in the future.
The problem is people have given info to so many companies now it's hard for the average Joe to track down just who sold him out. Even then, companies obviously think it's worth the occasional "I'll never do business here again!" when they get caught.
You left something out: Hz, B, B, Hz. "G" is not a unit.
Now I checked it out on Apple's site: The Machine you spec'd out above is indeed just under $5000.
But a NVIDIA 7300GT? That's a sub-$100 budget card now, and was never a top of the line unit. Definitely a dog for a machine with that kind of horsepower, but it's the default for the system
If you don't want a POS video card, you have the option of buying multiple 7300s (overpriced at $150 a pop, ok for lots of monitors doing 2d, but no SLI) a x1900XT 512MB (for $250, nearly market price) or a Quadro FX 4500 (for $1600, $600 over market price) SLI and Crosfire don't work at all.
Sounds like Apple is still up to their old tricks of screwing you over in the video card dept: Shitty default with limited overpriced upgrade options. Question is, can Macs even use regular OEM cards, or is there something hardware locked still?
Especially when it's not your fault.
:-) Trying is worth the cost of a stamp anyhow.
As stated by some Fry's employee here, Fry's doesn't offer any rebates themselves, Fry's merely provides copies of manufacturer's rebates as a courtesy.
That being said, it is misleading to offer to mail you a rebate form when they didn't have one on hand (and then mail it late), but you could have called up the company and asked for one direct, checked the internet or checked a different Fry's store if you didn't get the mail promptly.
My guess is that if you had mailed in the rebate late, with the envelope from Fry's and a note explaining why it was delinquent, they would have honored it anyhow. I once found a stamped and sealed rebate envelope I'd forgotten. I mailed it in ~2 months late with "Oops, just found this in the car" written on the envelope. I still got my money
I agree with you that pressure to finish investigating gaps and holes needs to come from somewhere. If they do nothing else of value, conspiracy theorists are invaluable in making sure every stone gets turned over and scrutinized. That's a good thing.
:-) It's far too big of a leap to consider this anything other than eager-reporter error.
As for the free fall thing, every video I've seen shows the building collapsing unhindered, and every video showing the entire collapse shows them falling at roughly free fall speed. Show me a video where this is not the case.
"Roughly free fall" to the naked, untrained eye does not equal free fall. While other valid questions that remain unanswered can still be made, I'd drop this point: it's completely disproved. The floors above the damage move as a unit as they fall, and the floors below do not give way or move until they are hit by those falling above. A controlled demolition blows out all the floor supports at once so they do not collapse as a rigid unit. Again, video analysis timing shows the WTC falling slower than free fall, consistent in speed with conventional collapse (unless there is a conspiracy to alter film speed). The little puffs of gas escaping during collapse are not demo explosions, but air being blown out as the building compresses. Once the top floors started falling there would be no need for further explosives anyhow, gravity would take over.
As for the BBC, it was a freaking mistake amidst chaos! The reporter might not have been able to point out WTC 7 even if she looked for it. It was neither the focus of attention (VERY far from it) or a very distinct landmark on the NYC skyline (it sort of blended in with the crowd around the towers). Do you assume a foreign journalist would know exactly where "The Salomon Brother's" building was and then check the info for veracity during a time of chaos? Given the situation, reporters with a piece of news they believed to be correct are going to report it right away. It's a huge deal for a reporter to be "first" with a bit of important news (same reason we had Gore- No, Bush! No, Gore wins! etc. Reporters don't like to wait
Sure Silverstein insured the building for terrorism. WTC had been bombed once already, remember? I would have done the same. No different than insuring for fire and flooding. As for the Bushies owning the security company, it's cronyism for sure (rich guys help their rich friends), but if that points towards a conspiracy to destroy the building, once again they could have managed something much simpler but disastrous enough to destroy files and data (fire, employee gone "postal", blame it on hackers etc). I find it hard to believe that someone as rich and powerful as that could find no cheaper, easier way to dispose of the info than to buy the building (that you say was on rocky financial grounds) just to blow it up. Also, destroying a building for the insurance wouldn't really pay off too well, as it's my understanding you can't insure for more than the assessed value, which would be nearly what Silverstein paid just 6 months prior. Not much better than break-even at best (and we all know about the problems people have had collecting on policies). Insurance fraud like this only really works when the value of the business has dropped far below the insured value and the money couldn't be recouped by selling.
As for the trading stuff, yeah, it's real damn fishy and I'd like to know more about that. It seems that maybe someone who knew about the attack beforehand was buying UAL puts- damn straight that should be investigated thoroughly, and likewise the "Options trading newsletter" for American puts and the other stuff. The most obvious suspect would be someone tipped off by al-qaeda. As for not wanting to "claim the money", I don't understand: whoever placed those puts, already made the money. It's his or hers to spend as desired. You don't have to show up like a lotto winner to get it. Maybe he hasn't cashed out and the mon
Look, I have nothing against a second, exhaustive investigation and review of evidence. Are there holes? Yes. Are parts of the report incomplete? Yes - but that is not to say that the incomplete reports will never be finished (taking time to get it done well is a good thing)
But all to often September 11 conspiracy theories hinge on falsehoods and a logical fallacy that lack of evidence constitutes proof of conspiracy.
Even if the fire weakened the steel, why did the building collapse at roughly free fall speed?
This is a myth. Video analysis shows it not collapsing at free fall speed, and building demo experts have said it doesn't fit the controlled demo fall type. Popular mechanics showed this, and National Geographic IIRC, (unless you think they messed with the video speed to further a conspiracy).
why weren't any of the 47 giant steel columns sticking up out of the rubble about 20 stories
Think about that for a second. They were steel, not adamantium. Even steel bends and breaks - no matter how a building that big comes down, the girders are not going to be poking up 20 stories through rubble, unmoved, like steadfast tin soldiers. They would be bent, broken and pushed out of the way under and around the rubble, which we saw.
How do you explain the BBC reporting that the WTC 7 had collapsed approximately 20 minutes before it actually DID?
A mistake. Things were confusing, people got a ton of things wrong in the mix.
Consider the options:
Are we to assume that 1) The BBC (Not American) was in on the conspiracy and got the timing wrong? Or 2) the conspirator feeding information to the BBC got his/her timing wrong? Or 3) the BBC got some bad information that tragically later became correct? Honestly, the first two assume not only conspiracies, but poorly executed conspiracies. How hard would it be for #badguy to watch WTC-7 and wait until it actually fell to phone it in to the BBC?
What evidence is there that there was a raging fire at WTC 7? What evidence is there that any of the diesel tanks were breached?
Once again, it is the simplest theory that best fits the evidence. Lack of explicit evidence does not discount this as a valid theory.
How do you explain Larry Silverstein's statement that he told the firefighters to 'pull it'?
He was telling the firefighters to "pull-out" of the building so no one (more) would die. The conspiracy option leads one to believe that he was ordering the firefighters to demo the building, which implies that the firefighters who were dying left and right were in on the conspiracy. If it wasn't the firefighters he was ordering to demo the building, why announce it like that? If he was ordering someone else to demo the building, why did the firefighters get out when he said pull it?
Interesting how all of the people implicated in it (except the FBI informant) were on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, the CIA has a long and sordid history of paying and arming people who don't like the USA as long as they fight someone else the CIA hates. I'd bet the CIA also gives out a fair chunk of money to informants who hate the USA and plan to fuck us as soon as they can. But do you imply that because we gave Afghani's money and arms to fight the Ruskies, or for info on al-Qaeda, they are somehow our lap dogs to order about? That we could order them to attack? It's not like Osama was short on cash and they didn't need monetary motivation anyhow, it was a suicide attack.
motivation the neocons might have to 'blow up' the buildings by planes
Sure, neo-conservatives have played the events to promote their agenda, and managed to do very well (for them, disastrous for the rest of the country). However, reacting to a situation to further one's agenda is FAR from causing an even to further said agenda. Would you entertain the notion of a Liberal conspiracy causing global warming, so they could line their pockets with fat IPOs and profits fro
That has to be the coolest swap meet buy evar. I would think sputter-coating a live spider would necessarily kill it though (electricity, and plasma etc). If it did manage to live, it probably didn't have a very good coating, as any movement would start to rub it off.
Oh, and by the way, how do you explain the collapse of the three world trade center buildings if you do not accept controlled demolition? Look at all the entities that were stationed in WTC #7 and tell me that it wasn't convenient that that building collapsed?
How can one explain the collapse of the towers? I dunno, when a jumbo-jet full of jet fuel crashes into a building at high speed and then burns hot and long enough to weaken* the structural steel, collapse will start. Once the support is gone the structure is compromised and the undamaged floors below can't hold back the falling upper floors. (*to answer "jet fuel can't melt steel" tin-foil-types, you only need to heat it enough to weaken it below the loading, not melt it, for structural steel to fail. Jet fuel can do that handily.)
As for WTC #7, two large skyscrapers rained tons of debris (literally tons of steel and concrete) on it, it caught fire and was allowed to burn. There were large diesel fuel tanks for backup generators that probably fueled this fire as well. The FDNY had more important things on their hands and didn't wan't to risk more life unnecessarily. The fact that it contained things "convenient to dispose" for some shadow conspiracy is irrelevant, it was in a disaster zone and lots of other buildings were damaged to near collapse, and many buildings in that area probably fit the criteria of "convenient to dispose of".
We know Al Qaeda tried to blow it up once before, there is pretty damn compelling evidence that they tried again and succeeded. These conspiracies not only fail Ockham's razor, they fail a simple logic-check: if there existed a conspiracy powerful enough to orchestrate the collapse of WTC #7 to get rid of data and services, they would be powerful enough to accomplish it by means less crude than blowing up two adjacent buildings and then collapsing it in the mayhem.
Also Don't forget they only go by what is publicly available as evidence, whereas the numerous and well-funded investigative committees set up by the government get to use all that top secret information. This is yet another reason why their conclusions are suspect
Take the foil hat off
If you're using a 20 meter dish, I don't think it qualifies as "amateur" anything*. But my main question is did they get usable data, or just a signal that they can't decode or use? I don't think NASA would keep those computers around if there was a way to get at the underlying data without them. If they actually got real, usable data then it is beyond cool, like a gold medal of geek-dom.
*Sure, you may just do it as an unpaid hobby, but I'm guessing most people consider "amateur" in this sense to mean within the realm of feasibility for the average Joe, e.g. an amateur pilot could fly around in an F-22, but it wouldn't be considered amateur aviation at that point - there is no "hobby" use for an F-22 (joyriding fun notwithstanding), and the cost and training required would be prohibitive anyhow. "Amateur" ARRL members can re-task a 20m dish, but it is beyond the scope of amateur radio in the same way - expensive, non-commodity equipment that takes specialized skill and training to use.
Now if you did it with an old C-band TV satellite dish, an oscilloscope and a pc, that would be amateur, and by amateur I mean totally sweet.
In a lot of places in Africa, the presence of corruption at lower levels is just tacitly accepted. It's not hard to understand why when sometimes people need bribe money just to put food on their table.
The problem it's that in many cases when you deal with "donor" money, they don't consider it necessarily stealing from their people, but just getting "free" money from the donors.
I've seen it first hand on the national scale:
In Tanzania, during the midst of a severe power crisis I sat down in a cafe in Dar and had chai with the president of the Richmond Development Corperation "based" in Houston TX. They were under contract to import and install emergency power generators to the country. This was a deal worth 10s of millions of USD (This money was of course aid money, Tanzania doesn't have 10 Million in hard currency to toss about). We talked about the power situation and how nice it would be to have it fixed, about foreign aid, and about the USA and Tanzania in general. He was a very pleasant man overall, he gave me his business card and even paid my tab.
Several weeks later it came to light that RDC was basically a shell company with no real corporate presence anywhere, or capability to buy and ship generators (Google it if you want). It was purely an attempt to swindle millions of dollars (the attitude being that since it was donor money, it wasn't really taking money from Tanzania) How the heck did they win the contract in the first place? I'm sure they greased a few palms along the way.
Even on the village level, if you write a grant for a building and budget X TSH money for concrete, you can damn well be sure that someone will try their hardest to short a bag or two and pocket the money (concrete is very expensive FWIW). Receipt tracking for grants would be hell if you were not solely in charge of buying and paying for things.
Considering the harshness of life there, I can't be to angry at people for trying for a few bucks, but with that in mind, the people stealing millions are even more reprehensible.
RPCV Tanzania 2005-2007
Still have the business card and newspaper clippings
I was going to post the same thing. It was the first thing that popped into my head after reading the headline.
n i-itx-cluster
Another group is producing much the same thing commercially, in a nice case and all. A 4 node Core 2 1.8Ghz with 1 gig ram per node and 2x 250Gb storage is about $7000 (USD)
(Wonder how that stacks up to what he built speed/cost wise, though I'd bet the Via cluster beats all in power use (140W max load))
See the link at Mini-ITX
http://www.mini-itx.com/2007/02/26/the-octimod-mi
Company site
http://ainkaboot.co.uk/octimod.php
If you bothered to RTFA, or taken 5 seconds to google "Moller flying car" you would have noticed a link to the homepage, and demo videos of both this M200x flying around and the Skycar (which, granted, only hovers thus far).
Since they are ACTUALLY selling these things, they are far from the Duke Nukem Forever of anything. It's also pretty remarkable that they've accomplished so much given the size of their operation.This is why I don't post to youtube, or most photo sites: you give up too many of your rights to your own works.
Same thing with registrars. Many registrars have nasty clauses that say something to the effect of "you don't actually have any rights to this domain, if we want it or some company pays us more money, we can take it and sucks to you."
Does anyone know of a website that has compared and summarized the uploading "agreements" of sites like Photobucket, flickr, youtube, metacafe etc to see what rights each strips you of?
I know it's a lot of grunt-work to wade through all the legalese, but it would be nice to see it all side by side. A few years back I found a site that did that for registrars, which helped me choose the one I did.
In Soviet Russia, if CDMA, for one, bows down to our new beowulf-cluster-of-iPhones overlords, GSM would hack you! and cover Natalie Portman in hot grits, you insensitive clod!
Speed is not just RPM x (gear ratio) x (wheel size)
The difference with just passenger weight is usually pretty small (barring super-fatties), but if you really pay attention you'll notice it too. Especially if you're paying for gasoline.
I see one of two things you could have done:
Either you forgot where you are [Slashdot- where 1)Doesn't run Internet Explorer and 2) Not enough wizards to get stuff set up are BONUSES!] AND essentially admitted to being a computer n00b...
Or, (as I'm inclined to hope) you made a clever fake troll and it got missed: Honestly, can anyone here read "I've used all three versions of Linux" and "Don't even get me started on the lack of a Linux version of Weather Bug and think it's serious?
(please tell me it's not... I passed on funny-mod-points for the parent so I could post)
A reference to the sequel where they re-burn the ashes at an extra 6 degrees? *Rim-shot*
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 FTW!
Maddox covered this recently:
p hone
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=i
Seems pretty persuasive...
Have you ever looked at a picture on a monitor compared to a (quality) photo print of it?
If you can't tell the difference, it's time to see the ophthalmologist, you may be colour-blind
Print has monitors beat on DPI and colour, hands down.
Have you ever seen a monitor do a fluorescent colour realistically? No. Start to look a little more critically and you'll notice that there is still a LOT of room to improve with screen tech. OLED is one just over the horizon tech that is supposed to blow LCDs away with better colour. It's just starting to show up in small sizes like phones screens and such.
*The new whiz-bang Dell monitors just recently got to 92% of the NTSC colour gamut, and that was a BIG step up from the average 70% for most consumer flat panels. Further, the NTSC colour gamut is still just a limited set of what the eye can actually see.
I was under the impression that the Wii is region free, so (if you can find one at all) you can just import games. Is this correct?
Also, do newer UK TVs support NTSC? I am aware that there were dual-mode units sold back in the day, but do all new Hi-def TVs support NTSC since they can do the much higher HDTV resolutions?*
I've always felt sad for UK gamers getting raked over the coals price-wise.
*UK HDTVs do the same 720 or 1080 that US HDTVs do right? Or did USA screw the pooch on that like we did with GSM frequencies?
High Fructose corn syrup is not the problem at all. It is no more fattening than sugar, calorie for calorie. And it has generally similar sweetness, so there is no need to put more calories of it in.
I think what the GP was referring to is not the caloric values, but the body's response to fructose being supposedly different* enough from that of sucrose and glucose that in massive quantities (32oz Coke) it causes increased fatty-ness.
*Is this theoretical or proved? My cell bio-fu is fading, but I remember fructose being trivially convertible to glucose in humans, at a non-limiting rate, i.e. so fast it's crazy. But maybe it doesn't trigger the right cascade when it's brought into cells and something ends up not getting phosphorylated?
High fructose corn syrup vs. cane sugar? I almost spit out the first regular Coke I had in the USA after living abroad where they're made with real sugar. High fructose corn syrup tastes just plain nasty. In the USA I'll drink diet, unless I can get some of the sugar sweetened Mexican stuff in glass bottles. That's always a nice find.
That's funny, I've never had a problem with Gmail attachments. In fact I once sent an attachment of a 10Mb zip file (pictures). This may not seem special, but:
/dev/null.
It was from an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere East Africa, on a computer running a shady copy of 98 loaded with crap-ware, and it froze up mid way through.
I didn't have the time to reboot and start over, so I just stared at a frozen screen for 10 odd minutes and then tried to get it to send. It worked. Outside of Africa, I've never had a problem with speed either.
Plus the fact that there is a program out there that lets you mount your gmail account as a network drive, by storing and sending the data as attachments.* Somehow I don't think that would work if they sent very many attachments to
*I played around with it when gmail first came out, haven't heard anything about it since. Anybody know what I'm talking about?
+1 informative for the parent
...but IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer)
This is what I was going to say, it should be trivial to convert from component to composite with a cable adapter that just combines the 3 signals (Luminance, red difference and blue difference) into one wire (composite) or two wires of Luminance and Chroma(S-video).
I have the needed RCA and S-video adapters somewhere in storage, this may be fun to try...
Is it just me or does his site bear some resemblance to our friends at http://www.timecube.com/ ?
White background - check
Red and blue text with lots of bold and under-lining - check
Rambling, quasi-religious writing going against overwhelming scientific opinion - check
Laid out in one massively tall, single column page - check
Graphics stolen from a circa 1996 Geocities website - check
If we somehow combined these two, the offspring would be the crackpot ubermensch
The "hippo shares" analogy is not quite correct: (regular)shares are a fractional ownership of REAL companies that have legal status, registration with authorities, employees and assets. Sure the value is largely dependent on what people are willing to pay for them, but make no mistake: a share does equal ownership (of a small part) of something real and tangible.
A "hippo share" would be a share of something purely imagined and intangible. There may be a demand for them, people may even be willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for them, but they still represent only an imagined thing with no physical aspect: Likewise, WoW gold or items exist purely in the "imagination" (Servers) of Blizzard. Blizzard can create or destroy them at whim. I don't think you can make a rational argument that WoW gold or items are equal to a share (partial ownership) of WoW or Blizzard. In fact, I think it's debatable that you even own them at all since they are intangible: Blizzard can take them away whenever they please and you have no recourse.
Lastly, you are right that taxing people who make profit this way is not unreasonable. They are (in the USA) already taxed for it! If someone sells something virtual for real money, it doesn't matter what they sold or how: all that matters is that they got money. Income from any source gets (should be...) reported for income tax. "Virtual" sales shouldn't have a sales tax because nothing real gets exchanged except money from one person to another. It's more akin to gambling in that way: a virtual object (correct guess) is exchanged for money, and gambling income is taxed.