The Toyota is an interesting example - they don't expect a slice of the price you get when you sell your car, even though cheap second-hand cars are a viable alternative to expensive brand new ones.
Not everyone who wants a car can afford a new one as well as people who, whilst able to afford a new car, would prefer not to spend money they don't have to.
I can't see how the resale value affects the costs of inputs - raw materials, labour etc.
It affects how much customers are able/willing to pay for the whatever new. (Which also by implication affects the number of possible customers). Whilst this dosn't affect production (directly) affect production costs (something which can happen if demand drastically changes) it does affect profit margins.
I dirty bomb requires significant expertise if you want to avoid being killed transporting the bomb. Imagine material so hot that its mere radioactivity could endanger a wide area, then concentrate it into the size of a bomb. Plus, dirty bombs are very easy to detect.
Alpha emitters are the most harmful it ingested. They are also the easiest to shield. A cardboard box would probably do the trick. If you could get hold of the right materials a "dirty bomb" could equate to a moderatly sized firework.
Paranoia and distrust of the Government should only be taken so far.
Paranoid may or may not be justified. However considering the sort of people you find involved in government, especially national governments, distrust by default is the only rational position.
Do you inspect each and every case where a person thinks they saw something "unexplainable"? People think they see weird shit all the time, be it UFO's, their dead relatives, Elvis or God. Yes, we basically should subject any such sightings to rigorous scientific investigation.
There is an explanation. In the ability of the human brain to see patterns, even in random things, especially where that's what they expect to see. Thinking strangers are familiar people or that a piece of toast contains the image of a historical figure is nothing compared with ideal of constellations in the night sky!
UFO = Unindentified Flying/Floating Object. It does not mean "Alien spaceship". When an astronaut says "hey, I saw something passig by there !" it is classified as a UFO because no one wants to take the time to find the identification of the debris he observed.
Including such things as waste water dumped by the spacecraft... There's going to be more concern if there is a risk of collision or the whatever is identified as something which should be attached to the spacecraft!
That is well and true, it however has a little problem: Those are UFOs in the literal sense, they are "unidentified flying object", not extra terrestrial spacecrafts. When you can't tell what something is, it simply means you don't know, it doesn't confirm that aliens are involved.
Indeed the whole "don't know what it is, so it must be aliens" idea is rather irrational. It's not unlike our ancestors saying "can't explain that, a god did it"...
When it comes to hard evidence, there is simply nothing that points to E.T. Blobs of light in the sky can be lots of things, clouds, planets, satellites, floating lanterns, lense flare, insects and tons of more stuff.
All of which are a lot more likely than "aliens".
How many clear non-blurry pictures are there of alien space crafts? None. You'd guess in a time where every mobile has camera people would come up with some good pictures, but that hasn't happened.
Most likely non blurry pictures would equate to less things which can't be identified. However camera in phones is likely to mean more blurry pictures and vidoes which could be just about anything.
Britain definitely does not have a Ministry of Defense and we also don't have a TV License either.
Except presumably in the same reality where the US has a "World Trade Centre" in New Your and "The Pentagon" is operated by the "Department of Defence". (Both of which were attacked on 119.) For that matter a "meter" is a measuring device, not a unit of measurement.
Can't you just allow her non-privledged account access to the appropriate keys in the Windows registry? I know that works fine for older version of AutoCAD.
How much help are you likely to get from the vendor to identify which registry keys/files are involved? (Assuming they don't just say "unsupported". Or don't even know how their own software works.)
We can't get it from iTunes because we use Ubuntu.
We can't get the mp3 from Amazon.com because you have to be US resident.
We can't get it from Amazon.co.uk because you have to have a UK billing address.
We can't get it from Amazon.ie because that doesn't exist.
Given that Amazon.co.uk will ship to just about anywhere on the planet there's a very good chance that they are breaking some law or other by to supply an mp3 to elsewhere within the EU.
So I have a choice, buy the whole album on CD from Play.com or pirate it....
Most likely ripping it from CD would still violate copyright law.
I'm getting a bit sick of this malarkey where I'm told what I can and can't buy with my money. Obviously, I accept the principle that Xyz has the rights to sell something in this market, but if Xyz won't sell it to me then I say screw Xyz.
IIRC the Canadian judicary are of a similar mindset.
It's stupid not to fear terrorism at all. 19 guys were able to do significant damage to the US. They since have successfully operated in Britain and Spain.
Certainly not the same 19 guys. Also both Britain and Spain have previously experienced attacks from far more competent (and dangerous) terrorists. However the British Government and media appear somewhat lacking in a clue. Doing things like warning about the threat of "Islamic terrorists" a couple of weeks after some Irish terrorists killed soldiers on a military base.
Understood though I did get your original point and I agree with it. My post was not intended to target you, more to question the level to which being terrified by terrorism is justifiable. I don't think it is. You will not die from a terrorist act. Given you aren't in a military occupation that statement is 99.99%+ likely to be true.
In the case of being a soldier the line between "terrorism" and "war" can be a very fine one. However if they were to work in an abortion clinic or somewhere where experiments are performed on animals their risk of terrorism would be several times higher than regular members of the public. Simply because because this is where you find the most terrorists in places like the USA.
So your chance of dying in a car crash is tens of thousands of times more likely than dying due to a terrorist attack. And yet, i'm willing to bet you haven't changed your driving habits (I, on the other hand, have - I can do math.)
IIRC post 911 some Americans who would have previously taken internal flights have decided to drive instead.
Your fear is irrational. Get over it.:)
They probably won't until governments and the media do so. It's more likely that someone will genetically engineer porcines into airline pilots before that happens.
Instead of using corn (worse than sugar cane), soy beans and bio diesel would be beter.
You still end up with the problem of the price of food rising. For a bio fuel you need something which would not otherwise be "food" and which can be grown somewhere other than regular farmland.
Trace amounts of cocaine were found in the German parliament toilets.
Ergo, German politicians should be banned from Germany.
In some countries having politicians use cocaine could actually improve things. e.g. having all British MPs drugged up might save some taxpayers' money...
MS requested the opportunity to present oral arguments, the EU scheduled the meeting, MS felt that, although all the required attendees could make it, the date conflicted with another large event, leaving MS without a chance to orally lobby some of those on the sidelines.
You'd think a company the size of Microsoft would have/could buy some spare lawyers/lobbiests.
I'm completely perplexed as to why the public are so apparently offended by these, too. Especially the expenses. How so many people can get so worked up at the loss of such a comparatively small amount of money is beyond me.
Even MPs basic pay is more than that of many people in the UK. On top of that they get rather more than the median wage (once you take into account tax, etc) as "expenses". It certainly dosn't help either the sort of things MPs have been spending that money on.
Why the British government would drag is feet on something like this is an Enigma to me.
Look how long it took them to do the right thing in respect of the Gurkhas. As well as the continuing foot dragging in respect of MPs' "expenses". They still do not appear to understand why the public is so offended by their actions.
The problem is not panicking very easily but how irrationale our panic is (well, not that someone would expect otherwise, it's panic after all):
Consider all the fuss over "swine flu"... Which as a cause of death ranks well below "freak accidents". Even as an infectious disease isn't really an issue.
It's a shame that a relatively interesting idea, has to be marketed as an ANTI-TERROR product for it to get any attention.
Maybe that's where the political kudos and the "big bucks" is.
I can imagine this being useful for all sorts of problems related to drinking supply water - accidental contamination due to agricultural products, algal blooms etc.
It would be far more rational to compare this with existing methods used to monitor the quality of drinking water. Using such criteria as cost, speed of detection, etc, etc. IIRC one of the factors which can affect what treatment is needed is rainfall. Since rainfall can wash all sorts of contamination into rivers and lakes.
I sometimes wonder if [terrorist group here] has any plans to do anything to countries that have been attacked at this point. As far as I can tell the countries that have been are spending insane amounts of money on "feel good" measures that are frankly worthless.
Worthless to most people. But not to the companies who are in receipt of that money or the politicans who's egos/chance of re-election is being boosted (even if they don't get any "backhanders").
Things like this get me irked that we are spending billions upon billions each year on equipment, employees, and wasted time for all the added airport security since 9/11.
The fact is, is I were a terrorist I'd simply walk onto a bus or subway during rush hour with a bomb, like has been done in England and Spain. Effective, cheap, and little can be done to stop it. Not the same impact as collapsing two skyscrapers, but I seriously doubt any future plane hijackings will be successful since the rules have changed.
If you were a terrorist obsessed with aviation then bombs, even guns, used against the crowds of people in airports (which may well be more concentrated due to "security") would be an obvious method.
The overreaction to airplane hijackings is disturbing to me. The high school in my home town had a similar reaction to the Columbine shootings. They installed metal detectors at every entrance and hired extra security even though there had been little more than small knives confiscated at school, and never any real violence. Of course, there wasn't time to check people's bags properly, so it would have been trivial to smuggle something in anyway.
Wonder if "they" considered the possibility of an attack from outside the building. As people such as Bruce Schneier
explain security is a tradeoff. This means that not only is guarding against an unlikely risk often a poor use of scarce resources it can also be the case that measures to prevent one threat may increase the risk from other threats.
Slashdot Mirror
Nowadays it seems that anything remotely suspicious or potentially dangerous ought to be banned for the general well being of the peons.
:)
Except that it's not "everything". Otherwise they'd wind up banning themselves PDQ
The Toyota is an interesting example - they don't expect a slice of the price you get when you sell your car, even though cheap second-hand cars are a viable alternative to expensive brand new ones.
Not everyone who wants a car can afford a new one as well as people who, whilst able to afford a new car, would prefer not to spend money they don't have to.
I can't see how the resale value affects the costs of inputs - raw materials, labour etc.
It affects how much customers are able/willing to pay for the whatever new. (Which also by implication affects the number of possible customers). Whilst this dosn't affect production (directly) affect production costs (something which can happen if demand drastically changes) it does affect profit margins.
I dirty bomb requires significant expertise if you want to avoid being killed transporting the bomb. Imagine material so hot that its mere radioactivity could endanger a wide area, then concentrate it into the size of a bomb. Plus, dirty bombs are very easy to detect.
Alpha emitters are the most harmful it ingested. They are also the easiest to shield. A cardboard box would probably do the trick. If you could get hold of the right materials a "dirty bomb" could equate to a moderatly sized firework.
Paranoia and distrust of the Government should only be taken so far.
Paranoid may or may not be justified. However considering the sort of people you find involved in government, especially national governments, distrust by default is the only rational position.
Do you inspect each and every case where a person thinks they saw something "unexplainable"? People think they see weird shit all the time, be it UFO's, their dead relatives, Elvis or God. Yes, we basically should subject any such sightings to rigorous scientific investigation.
There is an explanation. In the ability of the human brain to see patterns, even in random things, especially where that's what they expect to see. Thinking strangers are familiar people or that a piece of toast contains the image of a historical figure is nothing compared with ideal of constellations in the night sky!
UFO = Unindentified Flying/Floating Object. It does not mean "Alien spaceship". When an astronaut says "hey, I saw something passig by there !" it is classified as a UFO because no one wants to take the time to find the identification of the debris he observed.
Including such things as waste water dumped by the spacecraft... There's going to be more concern if there is a risk of collision or the whatever is identified as something which should be attached to the spacecraft!
That is well and true, it however has a little problem: Those are UFOs in the literal sense, they are "unidentified flying object", not extra terrestrial spacecrafts. When you can't tell what something is, it simply means you don't know, it doesn't confirm that aliens are involved.
Indeed the whole "don't know what it is, so it must be aliens" idea is rather irrational. It's not unlike our ancestors saying "can't explain that, a god did it"...
When it comes to hard evidence, there is simply nothing that points to E.T. Blobs of light in the sky can be lots of things, clouds, planets, satellites, floating lanterns, lense flare, insects and tons of more stuff.
All of which are a lot more likely than "aliens".
How many clear non-blurry pictures are there of alien space crafts? None. You'd guess in a time where every mobile has camera people would come up with some good pictures, but that hasn't happened.
Most likely non blurry pictures would equate to less things which can't be identified. However camera in phones is likely to mean more blurry pictures and vidoes which could be just about anything.
Well that explains why your crops keep getting attacked by artistic aliens.
:)
As opposed to drunks kicked out of the pub too early
We have the Ministry of Silly Walks
Tends to get overlooked as it's next to the much bigger Ministry of Fiddling Expenses and Wasting Taxpayers' Money
Britain definitely does not have a Ministry of Defense and we also don't have a TV License either.
Except presumably in the same reality where the US has a "World Trade Centre" in New Your and "The Pentagon" is operated by the "Department of Defence". (Both of which were attacked on 119.) For that matter a "meter" is a measuring device, not a unit of measurement.
Can't you just allow her non-privledged account access to the appropriate keys in the Windows registry? I know that works fine for older version of AutoCAD.
How much help are you likely to get from the vendor to identify which registry keys/files are involved? (Assuming they don't just say "unsupported". Or don't even know how their own software works.)
We can't get it from iTunes because we use Ubuntu.
We can't get the mp3 from Amazon.com because you have to be US resident.
We can't get it from Amazon.co.uk because you have to have a UK billing address.
We can't get it from Amazon.ie because that doesn't exist.
Given that Amazon.co.uk will ship to just about anywhere on the planet there's a very good chance that they are breaking some law or other by to supply an mp3 to elsewhere within the EU.
So I have a choice, buy the whole album on CD from Play.com or pirate it....
Most likely ripping it from CD would still violate copyright law.
I'm getting a bit sick of this malarkey where I'm told what I can and can't buy with my money. Obviously, I accept the principle that Xyz has the rights to sell something in this market, but if Xyz won't sell it to me then I say screw Xyz.
IIRC the Canadian judicary are of a similar mindset.
It's stupid not to fear terrorism at all. 19 guys were able to do significant damage to the US. They since have successfully operated in Britain and Spain.
Certainly not the same 19 guys. Also both Britain and Spain have previously experienced attacks from far more competent (and dangerous) terrorists. However the British Government and media appear somewhat lacking in a clue. Doing things like warning about the threat of "Islamic terrorists" a couple of weeks after some Irish terrorists killed soldiers on a military base.
Understood though I did get your original point and I agree with it. My post was not intended to target you, more to question the level to which being terrified by terrorism is justifiable. I don't think it is. You will not die from a terrorist act. Given you aren't in a military occupation that statement is 99.99%+ likely to be true.
In the case of being a soldier the line between "terrorism" and "war" can be a very fine one. However if they were to work in an abortion clinic or somewhere where experiments are performed on animals their risk of terrorism would be several times higher than regular members of the public. Simply because because this is where you find the most terrorists in places like the USA.
So your chance of dying in a car crash is tens of thousands of times more likely than dying due to a terrorist attack. And yet, i'm willing to bet you haven't changed your driving habits (I, on the other hand, have - I can do math.)
:)
IIRC post 911 some Americans who would have previously taken internal flights have decided to drive instead.
Your fear is irrational. Get over it.
They probably won't until governments and the media do so. It's more likely that someone will genetically engineer porcines into airline pilots before that happens.
Instead of using corn (worse than sugar cane), soy beans and bio diesel would be beter.
You still end up with the problem of the price of food rising. For a bio fuel you need something which would not otherwise be "food" and which can be grown somewhere other than regular farmland.
Trace amounts of cocaine were found in the German parliament toilets.
Ergo, German politicians should be banned from Germany.
In some countries having politicians use cocaine could actually improve things. e.g. having all British MPs drugged up might save some taxpayers' money...
MS requested the opportunity to present oral arguments, the EU scheduled the meeting, MS felt that, although all the required attendees could make it, the date conflicted with another large event, leaving MS without a chance to orally lobby some of those on the sidelines.
You'd think a company the size of Microsoft would have/could buy some spare lawyers/lobbiests.
I'm completely perplexed as to why the public are so apparently offended by these, too. Especially the expenses. How so many people can get so worked up at the loss of such a comparatively small amount of money is beyond me.
Even MPs basic pay is more than that of many people in the UK. On top of that they get rather more than the median wage (once you take into account tax, etc) as "expenses".
It certainly dosn't help either the sort of things MPs have been spending that money on.
Why the British government would drag is feet on something like this is an Enigma to me.
Look how long it took them to do the right thing in respect of the Gurkhas. As well as the continuing foot dragging in respect of MPs' "expenses". They still do not appear to understand why the public is so offended by their actions.
The problem is not panicking very easily but how irrationale our panic is (well, not that someone would expect otherwise, it's panic after all):
Consider all the fuss over "swine flu"... Which as a cause of death ranks well below "freak accidents". Even as an infectious disease isn't really an issue.
It's a shame that a relatively interesting idea, has to be marketed as an ANTI-TERROR product for it to get any attention.
Maybe that's where the political kudos and the "big bucks" is.
I can imagine this being useful for all sorts of problems related to drinking supply water - accidental contamination due to agricultural products, algal blooms etc.
It would be far more rational to compare this with existing methods used to monitor the quality of drinking water. Using such criteria as cost, speed of detection, etc, etc.
IIRC one of the factors which can affect what treatment is needed is rainfall. Since rainfall can wash all sorts of contamination into rivers and lakes.
I sometimes wonder if [terrorist group here] has any plans to do anything to countries that have been attacked at this point. As far as I can tell the countries that have been are spending insane amounts of money on "feel good" measures that are frankly worthless.
Worthless to most people. But not to the companies who are in receipt of that money or the politicans who's egos/chance of re-election is being boosted (even if they don't get any "backhanders").
Things like this get me irked that we are spending billions upon billions each year on equipment, employees, and wasted time for all the added airport security since 9/11. The fact is, is I were a terrorist I'd simply walk onto a bus or subway during rush hour with a bomb, like has been done in England and Spain. Effective, cheap, and little can be done to stop it. Not the same impact as collapsing two skyscrapers, but I seriously doubt any future plane hijackings will be successful since the rules have changed.
If you were a terrorist obsessed with aviation then bombs, even guns, used against the crowds of people in airports (which may well be more concentrated due to "security") would be an obvious method.
The overreaction to airplane hijackings is disturbing to me. The high school in my home town had a similar reaction to the Columbine shootings. They installed metal detectors at every entrance and hired extra security even though there had been little more than small knives confiscated at school, and never any real violence. Of course, there wasn't time to check people's bags properly, so it would have been trivial to smuggle something in anyway.
Wonder if "they" considered the possibility of an attack from outside the building. As people such as Bruce Schneier explain security is a tradeoff. This means that not only is guarding against an unlikely risk often a poor use of scarce resources it can also be the case that measures to prevent one threat may increase the risk from other threats.