Have you ever worked construction? No you haven't.
Take the few seconds saved for each fastener, multiply that across all the fasteners in a house, then all the houses in a subdivision. Construction labour isn't cheap. You've just save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in a notoriously low margin and cutthroat industry.
1. It decreases the value of your reserves (assets, witness the huge Royal Dutch reserve writedown, that didn't turn out too well). 2. It encourages research into alternatives. 3. It increases price volatility, which leads to consumer frustration. Far better to have slowly increasing prices due to increasing demand and "increasing" supply based on strettttched reserve estimates.
And I don't give a damn. If more churches acted like the SA (shunning promotion, attempting to illustrate the benefit of religion through selfless acts rather than shameless guilting) I would be a lot less leery of organized religion in general.
Don't hate religion. There isn't anything terribly wrong with believing in a power beyond one's self and brotherhood with your fellow man. Hate the corruption and human fallibility that has wound tight over the millenia with the threads of innocent belief.
A stock does not just represent a share of future earnings - it represents a share of ownership in the company.
Companies have cash in the bank, real estate holdings, computers, etc - all assets that can be liquidated for real cash. The reason this stock still has value is because the company still has value - albeit not much.
There is little "growth" value left for lack of a better term. However, SCO's real measurable assets have a value >0, which is why the stock is not 0.
number one, yes i realise that in a closed system freezing ice to cool yourself off is foolish. this is why i make ice in the kitchen, and cool my room off at night.
which addresses the why no recirculation/you need an infinite supply of ice criticisms. this was designed to cool me off before bed, so i could fall asleep without wanting to kill myself. once the bucket runs out of water/ice, it just becomes a regular fan which is fine once the house cools off in the wee hours. plus i dont have to worry about knocking anything over in a morning daze.
ive rigged it up to a slowly flowing garden hose which will keep things cool indefinitely, but i find it easier and a bit cooler to just pick up a big bag of ice and dump it in when it gets really hot.
anyways, take it or leave it. and to the graduating chemmie that said he was ashamed to call me a student - come visit me at my office by the weef lab (e2-1311), im sure i can address any of your concerns to my satisfaction.
Come on, we both know what a bindle or two is going to cost.
Heroin is expensive in the sense that it carries an extremely high risk and demand premium (from transport, legislation, and effects) relative to its intrinsic physical value.
Except this never actually happens. I wouldn't expect slashdotters to have any first hand familarity with heroin or the drug trade, but let's just think this through in a few steps.
1. Demand for heroin is extremely high. 2. Supply for heroin is extremely limited. 3. This lack of supply, coupled with extreme demand, will produce very high prices. 4. Extremely large profits can be made easily in this trade, as there is a large volume of willing buyers with little "brand" loyalty, and a consistent "regional price" (compared to a "world price" in macroeconomics) due to easy (local) transport and a highly liquid market.
So the major problem in the heroin chain is not selling (very deep liquid market relative to supply), but instead obtaining supply to sell.
Now that we know this problem, ask yourself why dealers would choose to give away supply? Answer: they don't. There is no benefit to them, as there is already a large volume of willing buyers. There is only downside, namely the opportunity cost of not selling the damn stuff instead of giving it away.
Too many people have this vision of a guy hanging aroung with a truck of heroin twiddling his thumbs wondering how to addict people and make cash. Doesn't quite work like that.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but that's pretty much how steroids work. It's not like you take steriods and start growing muscles, there remains the prerequisite of physical activity.
It's not like they fit 25 lbs of muscle in a tiny syringe...
Good point. If it's a rare disease that would require a battery of standard tests before a specific confirmatory test, going to several doctors for one round of testing means nothing.
Like some other posters, I'd suggest going to facility with a strong research component (they love strange diseases), sticking with a good doctor, and being a stubborn, but open minded, bastard.
On a completely unrelated topic, the views toward the medical "industry" are new to me. This must be an oddly American attitude... perhaps there may be something to socialised medicine after all, if only in the perception of the patients.
This man is very intelligent, and does his job very well.
Unfortunately, these advantages can quickly turn into a liability. In the same way that a doctor may end up losing his shirt when he starts daytrading, experience and competence in one area does not necessarily translate to the next. Confidence however, generally does.
He's frequently using medical terms in very poor "context" for lack of a better expression. While technically appropriate, it ends up reading more like an essay written by someone who used a thesaurus too often without knowing exactly what the words mean.
He has been to many doctors, and all of them have found little to nothing wrong. This is drastically different from his own assessment of looming death. Statistically, from the number and variety of doctors he's visited, a false negative at this point is incredibly unlikely. As the saying goes, when everyone else is wrong, you're probably wrong yourself.
Yes, it is important to verify information and diagnoses given to you. But it isn't critical evaluation to assume a conclusion from day one, and stick to it regardless of multiple, consistent, informed opinion.
But then again, if he ends up dying from some bizarre rare disease, I'm going to feel pretty bad about this post.
I think this is a rather flippant judgement to pass on everyone who passes up their right to vote. The idea that voting should be reserved for some (educated/wealthy/"qualified") elite is disturbing.
The people who run your country affect everyone in it. The arguments of "if politics affect you, you vote of course" are shallow and miss the real point.
This ad is obviously aimed at MTVs core demographic with the ability to vote, namely those between 18-25 years old. This is a group in transition between child/teen and adult responsibilities, with all the inherent psychological upheaval.
The prime message drilled into young people as they grow up (ie high school and younger) is that due to your youth, you lack the necessary qualifications to make certain decisions. You can decide what to wear/eat/consume, but any "important" decisions (namely the decisions that change the alternatives to what one may consume) must be left up to those older and wiser.
Then, the adult world comes along. You are now old enough to make decisions for yourself! Passing the magic barrier of 18, you can now (fight/fuck/flee) anything you choose!
This is where the issue arises. It is obvious that a paradigm shift to the degree demanded by society (from forced lack of personal responsibility to forced personal responsibility) cannot take place overnight. One must start at the authority symbols nearest and easiest to usurp. I can do my own laundry! I have my own place! Once accomplished, one can move up the ladder to financial/romantic responsibilities, and so on.
The problem is that this "ladder" view is flawed. Typically geopolitical and economic concerns are relegated to the very top rungs of perception, with many people living their lives blissfully handing off responsibility. In reality, geo/local politics are intertwined at every step of the ladder. Bought your first car! Ever wonder if the current high price of gas is a result of your chosen leader's interesting foriegn policy decisions?
Of course not. Why? Because we teach politics in school as a seperate and elite topic. And math, and science, and geography, without the acknowledgement that politics is as much a part of science and geography as math is a part of physics.
Politics is regarded (and therefore avoided) as an old boys club by the young boys and girls who have the power to change it. Activities such as these "get out and vote" campaigns attempt to empower those who think that their vote and their voice does not and cannot matter.
The point of democracy is everyone participates, not just those deemed worthy.
The whole point of space mining to me isn't bringing it back to earth. Like you said, we could tow back an asteroid made of CPUs and diamonds and it still likely would not be cost effective.
Instead, the advantage lies in the fact that the resources already lie outside the gravity well of earth. Currently, the cost to bring raw material into space is prohibitive. Notice how construction in space is pretty much snap-together assembly? Typical land-based economics of assembly at site reducing costs do not apply.
Where asteroid mining could reduce costs is for the construction of space facilities that require larger/heavier components. Instead of shipping up finished beams (where transport costs are 99% of the total) for a moon base, just slap some thrusters on an ore-rich asteroid and wait a few months/years for it to arrive. A relatively constant stream of these would eliminate any time issues, as you would only wait for the first one.
Assuming (and this is a big assumption) proper refining and construction facilities, the incredibly high costs to lift materials into orbit is avoided.
(I'll readily admit space construction is a fantasy of mine)
just have to rep for a bit of uwaterloo controversy here...
every unix geek is rebelling at the possibility of a ms prescence on campus, but the one thing that made me think of this when i read your comment was the following.
"A new team of UW researchers intend to collaborate to develop a pen-based mathematics manipulation interface engine to enable Microsoft's Tablet PC to enter, manipulate, and interact with complex formulae."
this is quoted from the above link which was intended to clarify exactly what the ms funding would entail... everyone's up in arms, and the debate isnt over yet.
Re:50% below average... not true
on
CD Copy Stopper
·
· Score: 1
assuming a completely borked distribution, then you would be correct. however, in a large enough sample group (say the world/us/whatever in the case of iq) we tend toward a bell curve, where 50% of people would be below average.
Not possible if the key system uses public key encyption.
Alright, as a math major and a former warez monkey, ill bite. We know the public key. I'm assuming the program itself is the holder of the public key. Assuming you couldn't just pull the program itself apart to grab the private key, which is pretty unrealistic assumption imho, but alright... it would boil down to, worst case, factoring n. Which isn't trivial, but the important thing here is that it's constant. One person needs to do it on one machine. Once. Then, you make a wonderful keygen, and it's all over.
It's a bit disturbing just how insecure most programs are. Sorry to be the one to tell you...
Many people have issues running executables from sources as trustworthy as warez sites
jeeesus, you know this is grasping at straws. Try to tell me that your average amatuer punter who seeks out cracks on http sites in the first place will balk at running something from a website.
Re:there's always a deal to be found...
on
Low-end Laptops?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I worked (past tense thankfully) at Staples a while back, and I'd like to correct this. Official company policy is to let the bastards run away, and just grab a licence plate/description of the person, and then let the police do their job. The explanation I got was that it was to prevent employees from playing hero and getting shot in the face or the like.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, Geoff here... one of the sites linked above.
I don't believe that "BASSE" is a misspelling - I think it's an error on the part of the writer.
See this for more detail.
I put some preliminary analysis on my blog here.
Unless I'm mistaken, I confirm the same digits as you and el_gato
Have you ever worked construction? No you haven't.
Take the few seconds saved for each fastener, multiply that across all the fasteners in a house, then all the houses in a subdivision. Construction labour isn't cheap. You've just save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in a notoriously low margin and cutthroat industry.
Wrong...
1. It decreases the value of your reserves (assets, witness the huge Royal Dutch reserve writedown, that didn't turn out too well).
2. It encourages research into alternatives.
3. It increases price volatility, which leads to consumer frustration. Far better to have slowly increasing prices due to increasing demand and "increasing" supply based on strettttched reserve estimates.
And I don't give a damn. If more churches acted like the SA (shunning promotion, attempting to illustrate the benefit of religion through selfless acts rather than shameless guilting) I would be a lot less leery of organized religion in general.
Don't hate religion. There isn't anything terribly wrong with believing in a power beyond one's self and brotherhood with your fellow man. Hate the corruption and human fallibility that has wound tight over the millenia with the threads of innocent belief.
A stock does not just represent a share of future earnings - it represents a share of ownership in the company.
Companies have cash in the bank, real estate holdings, computers, etc - all assets that can be liquidated for real cash. The reason this stock still has value is because the company still has value - albeit not much.
There is little "growth" value left for lack of a better term. However, SCO's real measurable assets have a value >0, which is why the stock is not 0.
i am a weef ta.
that is the right room number... come visit, im next to lorie.
i thought i might get ripped for this...
it's my girlfriend's makeup mirror. bedroom gets even hotter with two bodies in there.
thanks for the kind words man, i appreciate it.
:P)
this is what 99% of the flames on here don't address, the fact that actually building something is a satisfying activity in itself.
in short, my point wasn't saving money. it was a cheap project that would be great if it worked, and result in a minor loss if it all went to hell.
take it or leave it. i sleep well at night. (literally!
number one, yes i realise that in a closed system freezing ice to cool yourself off is foolish. this is why i make ice in the kitchen, and cool my room off at night.
which addresses the why no recirculation/you need an infinite supply of ice criticisms. this was designed to cool me off before bed, so i could fall asleep without wanting to kill myself. once the bucket runs out of water/ice, it just becomes a regular fan which is fine once the house cools off in the wee hours. plus i dont have to worry about knocking anything over in a morning daze.
ive rigged it up to a slowly flowing garden hose which will keep things cool indefinitely, but i find it easier and a bit cooler to just pick up a big bag of ice and dump it in when it gets really hot.
anyways, take it or leave it. and to the graduating chemmie that said he was ashamed to call me a student - come visit me at my office by the weef lab (e2-1311), im sure i can address any of your concerns to my satisfaction.
Cite these "popularly accepted historical views". Or shut up.
Holocaust denial (which was Zundel's cup of tea) is hardly a "popularly accepted historical view".
Come on, we both know what a bindle or two is going to cost.
Heroin is expensive in the sense that it carries an extremely high risk and demand premium (from transport, legislation, and effects) relative to its intrinsic physical value.
Except this never actually happens. I wouldn't expect slashdotters to have any first hand familarity with heroin or the drug trade, but let's just think this through in a few steps.
1. Demand for heroin is extremely high.
2. Supply for heroin is extremely limited.
3. This lack of supply, coupled with extreme demand, will produce very high prices.
4. Extremely large profits can be made easily in this trade, as there is a large volume of willing buyers with little "brand" loyalty, and a consistent "regional price" (compared to a "world price" in macroeconomics) due to easy (local) transport and a highly liquid market.
So the major problem in the heroin chain is not selling (very deep liquid market relative to supply), but instead obtaining supply to sell.
Now that we know this problem, ask yourself why dealers would choose to give away supply? Answer: they don't. There is no benefit to them, as there is already a large volume of willing buyers. There is only downside, namely the opportunity cost of not selling the damn stuff instead of giving it away.
Too many people have this vision of a guy hanging aroung with a truck of heroin twiddling his thumbs wondering how to addict people and make cash. Doesn't quite work like that.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but that's pretty much how steroids work. It's not like you take steriods and start growing muscles, there remains the prerequisite of physical activity.
It's not like they fit 25 lbs of muscle in a tiny syringe...
Good point. If it's a rare disease that would require a battery of standard tests before a specific confirmatory test, going to several doctors for one round of testing means nothing.
Like some other posters, I'd suggest going to facility with a strong research component (they love strange diseases), sticking with a good doctor, and being a stubborn, but open minded, bastard.
On a completely unrelated topic, the views toward the medical "industry" are new to me. This must be an oddly American attitude... perhaps there may be something to socialised medicine after all, if only in the perception of the patients.
This man is very intelligent, and does his job very well.
Unfortunately, these advantages can quickly turn into a liability. In the same way that a doctor may end up losing his shirt when he starts daytrading, experience and competence in one area does not necessarily translate to the next. Confidence however, generally does.
He's frequently using medical terms in very poor "context" for lack of a better expression. While technically appropriate, it ends up reading more like an essay written by someone who used a thesaurus too often without knowing exactly what the words mean.
He has been to many doctors, and all of them have found little to nothing wrong. This is drastically different from his own assessment of looming death. Statistically, from the number and variety of doctors he's visited, a false negative at this point is incredibly unlikely. As the saying goes, when everyone else is wrong, you're probably wrong yourself.
Yes, it is important to verify information and diagnoses given to you. But it isn't critical evaluation to assume a conclusion from day one, and stick to it regardless of multiple, consistent, informed opinion.
But then again, if he ends up dying from some bizarre rare disease, I'm going to feel pretty bad about this post.
but can we at least pretend we care about the servers we link to?
A 1.5 meg jpg as the first link in the story is a disaster anyone can see coming...
I think this is a rather flippant judgement to pass on everyone who passes up their right to vote. The idea that voting should be reserved for some (educated/wealthy/"qualified") elite is disturbing.
The people who run your country affect everyone in it. The arguments of "if politics affect you, you vote of course" are shallow and miss the real point.
This ad is obviously aimed at MTVs core demographic with the ability to vote, namely those between 18-25 years old. This is a group in transition between child/teen and adult responsibilities, with all the inherent psychological upheaval.
The prime message drilled into young people as they grow up (ie high school and younger) is that due to your youth, you lack the necessary qualifications to make certain decisions. You can decide what to wear/eat/consume, but any "important" decisions (namely the decisions that change the alternatives to what one may consume) must be left up to those older and wiser.
Then, the adult world comes along. You are now old enough to make decisions for yourself! Passing the magic barrier of 18, you can now (fight/fuck/flee) anything you choose!
This is where the issue arises. It is obvious that a paradigm shift to the degree demanded by society (from forced lack of personal responsibility to forced personal responsibility) cannot take place overnight. One must start at the authority symbols nearest and easiest to usurp. I can do my own laundry! I have my own place! Once accomplished, one can move up the ladder to financial/romantic responsibilities, and so on.
The problem is that this "ladder" view is flawed. Typically geopolitical and economic concerns are relegated to the very top rungs of perception, with many people living their lives blissfully handing off responsibility. In reality, geo/local politics are intertwined at every step of the ladder. Bought your first car! Ever wonder if the current high price of gas is a result of your chosen leader's interesting foriegn policy decisions?
Of course not. Why? Because we teach politics in school as a seperate and elite topic. And math, and science, and geography, without the acknowledgement that politics is as much a part of science and geography as math is a part of physics.
Politics is regarded (and therefore avoided) as an old boys club by the young boys and girls who have the power to change it. Activities such as these "get out and vote" campaigns attempt to empower those who think that their vote and their voice does not and cannot matter.
The point of democracy is everyone participates, not just those deemed worthy.
Can you expand on this? Or are you just making things up.
"modify the ionic structure of a molocule"
"time necessary to traverse the matrix"
"parallelism... nullify any limits"
You either love being incredibly vague, or you copied some buzzwords. Moderators, where are you?
The whole point of space mining to me isn't bringing it back to earth. Like you said, we could tow back an asteroid made of CPUs and diamonds and it still likely would not be cost effective.
Instead, the advantage lies in the fact that the resources already lie outside the gravity well of earth. Currently, the cost to bring raw material into space is prohibitive. Notice how construction in space is pretty much snap-together assembly? Typical land-based economics of assembly at site reducing costs do not apply.
Where asteroid mining could reduce costs is for the construction of space facilities that require larger/heavier components. Instead of shipping up finished beams (where transport costs are 99% of the total) for a moon base, just slap some thrusters on an ore-rich asteroid and wait a few months/years for it to arrive. A relatively constant stream of these would eliminate any time issues, as you would only wait for the first one.
Assuming (and this is a big assumption) proper refining and construction facilities, the incredibly high costs to lift materials into orbit is avoided.
(I'll readily admit space construction is a fantasy of mine)
so, if i was driving along in your neighbourhood and managed to crash my car into a tree on your lawn, you now own my car?
think this through a bit more.
every unix geek is rebelling at the possibility of a ms prescence on campus, but the one thing that made me think of this when i read your comment was the following.
"A new team of UW researchers intend to collaborate to develop a pen-based mathematics manipulation interface engine to enable Microsoft's Tablet PC to enter, manipulate, and interact with complex formulae."
this is quoted from the above link which was intended to clarify exactly what the ms funding would entail... everyone's up in arms, and the debate isnt over yet.
assuming a completely borked distribution, then you would be correct. however, in a large enough sample group (say the world/us/whatever in the case of iq) we tend toward a bell curve, where 50% of people would be below average.
Alright, as a math major and a former warez monkey, ill bite. We know the public key. I'm assuming the program itself is the holder of the public key. Assuming you couldn't just pull the program itself apart to grab the private key, which is pretty unrealistic assumption imho, but alright... it would boil down to, worst case, factoring n. Which isn't trivial, but the important thing here is that it's constant. One person needs to do it on one machine. Once. Then, you make a wonderful keygen, and it's all over.
It's a bit disturbing just how insecure most programs are. Sorry to be the one to tell you...
Many people have issues running executables from sources as trustworthy as warez sites
jeeesus, you know this is grasping at straws. Try to tell me that your average amatuer punter who seeks out cracks on http sites in the first place will balk at running something from a website.
I worked (past tense thankfully) at Staples a while back, and I'd like to correct this. Official company policy is to let the bastards run away, and just grab a licence plate/description of the person, and then let the police do their job. The explanation I got was that it was to prevent employees from playing hero and getting shot in the face or the like.