I have paid much more in taxes than I have received back, so can you send some poor people over to dig me a pool. I feel like they "owe me."
You'll never get a government grant that way.
I have a desperate need for a subterranean pool installation. I'd like it installed under my house, but with fresh air and sunlight ducted/windowed in. The pool should meet all relevant standards, including olympic regulations.
An environmental impact study should also be performed - if the construction would negatively impact the local environment I should be relocated to a custom-built home in a nice area where there is much more open space so that impact on neighbors would be minimized.
I'd like my brothers to be on the project management team - they should have sufficient budget to actually hire qualified managers to run the actual project, but they should be well-paid for their oversight responsibilities.
I understand that my neighbors might object to the construction noise. Each should be given $10 million to compensate them for their inconvenience. Except for the old lady across the street who is so annoying and who doesn't want the $10 million. Just eminent domain her property and give her $10,000 for it. Use it as an auxiliary parking lot for my pool, which will be closed to the public.
Seriously - how can you possibly expect to get a government grant if you're only asking for a $10,000 pool installation. How much can you expect to kick back to high-ranking officials with that kind of total budget? You need to increase the scope so that kickbacks and bribes are rounded down to zero when they round the total cost to only six significant figures...
Maybe you shouldn't be hiring your project managers from the "welfare-to-work" program.
This seems to be a typical problem. Government hires project manager for $50k. Vendor sends in $300k laywer specializing in IT contracts. Guess which side gets the better deal?
How many/.'ers are contemplating government jobs. You trade half your salary and any chance of merit-based advancement for a guaranteed job no matter how much you mess up. Hmm, wonder what kind of employees that tends to attract?
I've looked at government jobs - they just don't pay at all. The only benefit is that you don't have to do any work. Maybe when I'm ready to retire I'll apply for one and call it early retirement - pays better than social security for about the same amount of contribution to society...:)
I'm sure there are exceptions to this principle, but if an employer wants to pay half the prevailing wage they can't expect the most conscientious employees...
Well, it probably would bring the cops, but at least it wouldn't bring a SWAT team invasion with flashbangs and the whole works. If the president were in town it might bring an airstrike...
Usually the convention is that if you added it yourself you stick it in/usr/local. Package management systems almost never touch anything in there./opt is usually used for stuff like closed-source binary-only software which a distro only packages to the extent that they ship you a tarball of what they were given. This stuff is semi-managed.
Distros like gentoo will use/opt for any binary-based software,/opt is the one tree that generally isn't well-definied in most linux distros...
I hate to be redundant but I can't stress how useful this has been for me.
I've been running courier-imap using maildir for ages now, and typically use kmail and squirrelmail as clients, but I can use anything I want at any time and not get out of sync.
Per a suggestion in this thread I just switched to dovecot in about 15-20 minutes, and that seems to work just fine after a little tweaking of my imap root settings.
Cyrus seems to be a good option, but I'm hesitant to try it since documentation and howtos seem to be lacking. One thing I like about my choices so far is that my mail just stays in maildir format, and I could read that with grep and less if I had to.
Anybody have any luck with a single-user scale instllation of cyrus? Can it handle a maildir where the mail delivery agent and procmail just stick mail in folders? If the various indexes get messed up can you just blow them away without losing anything?
Too slow for what? I have 3 DTiVos, each has 2 160G drives and the only time I see any speed issues are when 2 recordings are being made on a DTiVo, a stream is being extracted across the NIC and I'm trying to do something data9intensive like reorganize season passes.
I own a DTivo and the thing was practially grinding to a halt a few weeks ago on the original hardware. I added a 120GB drive and this weekend I'll be ripping everything out to run diagnostics since it is now actually dropping video on recordings and rebooting a few times per week at random hours. Could be old hardware. However, even at best a Tivo does NOT run fast. Maybe the series 2 units are faster, but you can't get those as DirecTivos.
Honestly, if my Tivo finally dies I'd consider Myth or something else if I could get it working with DirecTV economically with two tuners. I can't say I dislike the Tivo, but when you resort your season passes and you get the message "this could take a minute" and it takes 15, there is a speed problem.
My other Tivo complaint is how season pass priority is handled. Suppose I have three shows on season pass. All three are on at the same time, but I only have two tuners. The first priority show is also on in the middle of the night (SciFi channel).
Tivo will record the first and second priority shows, and totally lose the third. I have to rejuggle priorities so that the show I like the most is in 3rd, so that it gets recorded in the middle of the night and I get all three.
The problem with this is that if for some reason my favorite show ISN'T on in the middle of the night it will be the one that isn't recorded at all, when my true preference would be to go ahead and bump one of the other ones. I have to lie to Tivo about my true preference since it can't figure out that I can have my cake and eat it too.
Don't get me wrong. I like Tivo. However, I'm not under the delusion that there is no room for improvement. I'm also annoyed that little has been done to improve it in the last year or two. I got a few big upgrades early on which added nice features (wish lists, multi-tuner support, etc.). However, it seems like Tivo is content to just compete on a two-year-old design against companies that have figured out how to copy it. The Tivo guys are smart - they could be a step ahead if they kept improving things...
lock down the borders: INS has been trying to do this, but every time they are called racist or something about causing untold environmental damage (that 3.5 mile fence they want to build in texas).
Many libertarians would propose exactly those sorts of measures. However, they would also be likely to greatly liberalize immigration. When only one or two people go running across the desert per year you can just mount infrared survailence and send in a stike team to aprehend them. When 100 people do it every night this becomes impractical. The libertarian goal is to let anybody in the front door who isn't a terrorist, so nobody but terrorists use the back door. When only criminals are running through the desert you don't get nearly as much bad press if you have a shoot-to-kill policy.
We have a defence treaty with SK where we defend them and if we left NK would most likely invade SK.
Most libertarians would advocate abandoning that treaty - probably with some kind of defined timeframe for SK to build up its own forces. They'd suggest that if you don't want NK to invade SK you're welcome to volunteer to join the SK army.
I believe that the National Guard does some of what you mention here, just for inside the US only.
The national guard probably wouldn't go away under libertarians - these are state militia. They can be used in foreign wars as well as for domestic problems, and they are generally used as a reserve.
I don't think most libertarians advocate the formation of a taxpayer-funded expeditionary force. They do not oppose the existance of such forces, but they would not be given any support by the US. Actually, if they're smart they wouldn't even give them haven on US territory. If somebody launches a crusade to "liberate palestine" from US-based camps, I doubt that that the middle east wouldn't treat things the same as the Taliban harboring Bin Laden.
Libertarians generally don't believe in mutual-defence treaties - they might consider them with bordering nations like Canada and Mexico, but probably not overseas. Honestly, what is the value in having received a pledge of SK support to stop an invasion of US territory? The concept is one of "no entangling alliances". That and leave saving the world to others.
The idea is that if nobody messes with the US, then the US won't mess with them (in any way - not just in warfare). However, the US would still maintain a military strong enough to deter any attack - if you mess with the US then the repercussions will be very harsh.
I doubt we'll ever see it. Too many sunday afternoon quarterbacks who look at having an army and will say "gee, just think of all the good we could be doing if we just deployed these guys and shot at the right people". Of course, somehow I don't think it would get worded that way...
Modern conflicts will generally be over within weeks, I think.
Depends on how you define "over". Iraq was about destroying military units out in the open and then occupying towns surrounded by desert.
Imagine trying to occupy the New York Suburbs to a level necessary to control flow of materials and arms. You'd need an army just for that - you can't just draw a line around a town and block all entry and exit at the three main roads.
If all of china showed up on boats in California and started marching East it would probably take months to consolidate their gains.
Now, if they just want to bomb some bases that might not take long, but that would not be sufficient to prevent counter-attack. Most US territory is well inland and not really susceptible to air attack except by long-range bombers, and those aren't practical except for targetted attacks or nuclear attack. If the US just parked its military planes at random private airports you'd never find them all.
Also - if somebody started massing troops on the border or treatening invasion, I'm sure the military would be mobilized and ready to go. Right now nobody is talking about taking over Kansas, so the need for a huge active military is questionable. If Canada signed a pact with China allowing them to use their territory to stage an invasion I'm sure there would be no shortage of army volunteers. Of course, that would never actulaly happen.
I suppose the logic should be that if you want to post online and not worry about laws in other countries then you would do best not to ever leave your own country.
I can violate Chinese laws with impunity as long as I don't violate my local laws and never travel to China...
Suppose somebody launces a DOS attack against a website from Honduras. The local government doesn't care. Is a US-based target of the attack without legal options?
In general as long as a crime took place in a country the local courts will genrally accept the case.
If I put up a website that says that China is a dictatorship the local government just might decide to issue a warrant for my arrest. If I ran such a website I would most likely not visit China as a result.
Suppose somebody libels you from a country that grants no court access to non-citizens. You would have no recourse at all in such a case. Also - if you were libeled would you want to fly halfway around the world to make your case?
Often there are benefits to going to the originating country, since they have more power to actually stop the damaging activity. However, your local courts should still be accessible.
Of course, a Canadian court can only fine someone in Canada. As long as the Post has no assets in Canada, then they are untouchable.
Uh, I'm sure they own something in the country. If nothing else customer subscription payments can be siezed I'd imagine, and those most liable can be put on an immigration watch list.
Well, the whole idea of extradition is that the government being petitioned gets to take a quick informal look at the merits and decide whether the accused is going to get treated fairly.
European countries routinely deny US extradition requests unless there is an agreement to not apply the death penalty.
If a US-based democracy activist was accused of inciting rebellion in China, the US government would be right to deny extradition.
On the other hand, if you are guilty of corporate embezzelment in Sweeden most likely you'll end up on the first plane headed their way.
I think the main objection to the ICC is that it will be highly politicized. We aren't talking about going after thieves and murderers, but heads of states that commit atrocities. I doubt the US would just give shelter to such a person unless they were acting in the interests of the US (such as a US general found liable for accidental deaths of civilians in an armed conflict). The question would be whether the trial was fair and the rights of the citizen in question were respected.
No nation has ever given an outside agency unchecked power to just aprehend its citizens/leaders...
By contrast, how much does the U.S. spend on gasoline or diesel for military vehicles within the borders of the U.S.?
Interesting comparison.
Most libertarians would argue that this is the one area of military spending which is appropriate - readiness for home defense. You can't deter an invasion unless you actually have a military, and you can't have one of those without spending money on training/maintenance/etc. Granted, most libertarians would still scale down the size of the army.
They'd complain more about how much is spent on operations overseas - except in retaliation to an actual attack.
A 300GB (compressed) SDLT tape costs about $50 these days.
You aren't going to get a 150GB drive for anywhere near that cost.
For 1TB of space, those tapes would run you about $500 (uncompressed space). Equivalent cost for internal hard drives would be about $900. For external drives you'll pay more.
Tapes also work better in libraries, which make management easier.
I guess it depends on the situation. Hard drives are probably faster, but more expensive. On the other hand, tapes require an expensive drive. If you were just making one backup per year the drives would probably be cheaper just from a hardware cost perspective. On the other hand, if you ran two backups per day and retained them for a month, and retained one backup per week for a year and one per month for a decade, the tapes are going to work out much better most likely.
Ditto for other archs. Kernel support for amd64 is actually really good - I wish I could say the same about other FOSS.
Having major developers using non-x86 hardware just encourages everybody to write platform-neutral code. It isn't like it takes a degree in rocket science or anything - just don't assign pointers to ints and make other assumptions about data-type-sizes, endianness, etc...
Sure, but by the same argument anything from a CB to a light bulb to a warm object does the exact same thing.
I'm too lazy, but in theory you could just look at the black body emissions of the Sun and the known spectrum of a cell phone and figure out which is more likely to churn out photons that are capable of breaking bonds. My guess is the Sun would be a far bigger culprit, but neither will be a big deal.
Well, in theory you can get wierd stereoisomers that are technically interconvertable without breaking bonds, but are not interconverable in practice.
For example, take a bunch of rings (a-la antracene) but stagger them in a meta-config rather than para. If you have about 6-7 of them you get a helix. The resulting molecule exists in two enantiomers, but none of the atoms in the molecule are sterogenic. In theory if you could grab both ends with tweezers you could stress all the bonds slightly and pull the ends past each other to convert between the enantiomers.
However, this is more of a curiousity and doesn't really have anything to do with protein structure. Proteins certainly can take a variety of shapes, but they are not stereoisomers (you'd need to use D-amino acids to make you protein at the very least).
Good point. For all we know, people who talk on cell phones a lot are more likely to spend time working around cars breathing in exhaust fumes or something like that. Or maybe they're more likely to drink coffee in the morning and caffeine has some kind of effect.
Correllation is not causation. It often does indicate that there is something worth studying, but the answer can be coincidence...
Actually - that wouldn't be hard. Stick needles into random places that accupuncture practicioners agree shouldn't have any effect. Otherwise, use the same needes with the same levels of penetration, and in areas that cause the same levels of pain/discomfort.
You can come up with a placebo for anything.
Even cell phones. Make one group tape real phones to their heads - the other group tape fake ones. Both are programmed not to work, but one transmits and the other does not.
The question is whether you could fine enough subjects who don't want to use a working cell phone for however many years...
I'd rather download a binary driver than the kernel sources to get one to compile for my kernel version, as if that should matter. Especially considering that I'm on dialup here.
Interesting - I found many benefits from using a source-based distro over dialup.
Suppose a security bug is discovered in firefox. The bug was fixed by adding two lines of code. The patch is as a result about 100 bytes long.
For a binary distro you end up downloading a new 7MB binary package. For something like gentoo you just download a 100 byte patch - you already downloaded the rest of the source the last time you installed it.
In theory you could use binary diffs - but nobody seems to do so...
I did a quick check and it looks like 50% of the stock is held by a few families. That is a good recipie for long-term success. The company is essentially only 50% public.
As long as the company is owned by people who have an interest in the company beyond just the stock dividends for the next few quarters, you can sustain practices like Porsche's. However, one the founders are gone, the stock often gets diluted, and at that point there is no leadership for the company beyond that of the mutual funds, who will quickly impose quarterly reporting, etc.
I have worked with a fairly small company that is privately owned. The owner has virtually no turnover - and employees are expected to even make up sick time. However, a worker right out of college starts out at about $35k, and will most likely get a 100% bonus on average each quarter. $70k out of school is a good recipie for no turnover.
They also have barbeques out on the lawn, and the owner fitted the cafeterias with 5.1 surround and plasma TV. The guy is raking in a small fortune, and he doesn't care that he could be raking in an even bigger fortune. If the company were public the fortune this quarter would be well and good, but they'd be doing cost-cutting to improve on it the following quarter.
As a result of private ownership, the guy has a very stable workforce which is highly satisfied and motivated, and anybody will come in on a weekend if the company needs them. He is quick to cut dead weight, but good workers do not fear for arbitrary headcount reductions from on high. His customers can count on stuff getting done on time, and they can expect to be able to talk to the same guy working on their projects at the bottom of the ladder year after year.
You can even have a personal touch in a huge enterprise. However, what kills it really fast is when no amount of profit is enough.
I once heard a speech at a big fortune 500 company - they said "We are !", of course trying to build employee loyalty. After all, the employees are the company, right? WRONG! The employees work for the company, but the company is really just the investments of the shareholders, and they are the ones that come first. Sure, working hard probably does tend to make one last longer in the company, but nobody is under the illusion that the company exists as some sort of collective.
Employees need good leadership. They need leaders who show a genuine interest in them - those are the leaders who will get good quality of work. When the leader is more interested in which department made the most money, the employees will respond by playing games...
Uh, isn't the idea of a going conern that it will generate future earnings?
Seriously - if you thought that a company would never generate earnings - why would you buy its stock?
If it does generate future earnings, then it is a "going concern".
I'll admit that there are other intangibles like branding and IP and such that go into the value as well. However, if a company has buildings worth $1 billion and is likely to make another $2 billion over the next 10 years, you probably can't support a market cap of $50 billion...
It's not entirely clear that a rogue startup could potentially topple an American-based corporation with deep, deep pockets.
Depends on how you define "topple".
Which scenario sounds better to you:
Get your Ph.D. in America and then,
1. work for big-American-company for $50k, 60 hours per week, and if you get less done than the next up-and-coming kid you're out on the street.
2. go back home and start saving cash (you make 1/5th the salary, but still live like a king). Then start a competitor to big-American-company. Big-American-company gets upset and buys out your company. As the "loser" in the race you are forced to retire with only $50 million in buyout money to show for your trouble.
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I have paid much more in taxes than I have received back, so can you send some poor people over to dig me a pool. I feel like they "owe me."
You'll never get a government grant that way.
I have a desperate need for a subterranean pool installation. I'd like it installed under my house, but with fresh air and sunlight ducted/windowed in. The pool should meet all relevant standards, including olympic regulations.
An environmental impact study should also be performed - if the construction would negatively impact the local environment I should be relocated to a custom-built home in a nice area where there is much more open space so that impact on neighbors would be minimized.
I'd like my brothers to be on the project management team - they should have sufficient budget to actually hire qualified managers to run the actual project, but they should be well-paid for their oversight responsibilities.
I understand that my neighbors might object to the construction noise. Each should be given $10 million to compensate them for their inconvenience. Except for the old lady across the street who is so annoying and who doesn't want the $10 million. Just eminent domain her property and give her $10,000 for it. Use it as an auxiliary parking lot for my pool, which will be closed to the public.
Seriously - how can you possibly expect to get a government grant if you're only asking for a $10,000 pool installation. How much can you expect to kick back to high-ranking officials with that kind of total budget? You need to increase the scope so that kickbacks and bribes are rounded down to zero when they round the total cost to only six significant figures...
The funny thing is that it would probably end up taking half the time and cost to do it that way when all is said and done.
Maybe you shouldn't be hiring your project managers from the "welfare-to-work" program.
/.'ers are contemplating government jobs. You trade half your salary and any chance of merit-based advancement for a guaranteed job no matter how much you mess up. Hmm, wonder what kind of employees that tends to attract?
:)
This seems to be a typical problem. Government hires project manager for $50k. Vendor sends in $300k laywer specializing in IT contracts. Guess which side gets the better deal?
How many
I've looked at government jobs - they just don't pay at all. The only benefit is that you don't have to do any work. Maybe when I'm ready to retire I'll apply for one and call it early retirement - pays better than social security for about the same amount of contribution to society...
I'm sure there are exceptions to this principle, but if an employer wants to pay half the prevailing wage they can't expect the most conscientious employees...
Well, it probably would bring the cops, but at least it wouldn't bring a SWAT team invasion with flashbangs and the whole works. If the president were in town it might bring an airstrike...
Usually the convention is that if you added it yourself you stick it in /usr/local. Package management systems almost never touch anything in there. /opt is usually used for stuff like closed-source binary-only software which a distro only packages to the extent that they ship you a tarball of what they were given. This stuff is semi-managed.
/opt for any binary-based software, /opt is the one tree that generally isn't well-definied in most linux distros...
Distros like gentoo will use
I hate to be redundant but I can't stress how useful this has been for me.
I've been running courier-imap using maildir for ages now, and typically use kmail and squirrelmail as clients, but I can use anything I want at any time and not get out of sync.
Per a suggestion in this thread I just switched to dovecot in about 15-20 minutes, and that seems to work just fine after a little tweaking of my imap root settings.
Cyrus seems to be a good option, but I'm hesitant to try it since documentation and howtos seem to be lacking. One thing I like about my choices so far is that my mail just stays in maildir format, and I could read that with grep and less if I had to.
Anybody have any luck with a single-user scale instllation of cyrus? Can it handle a maildir where the mail delivery agent and procmail just stick mail in folders? If the various indexes get messed up can you just blow them away without losing anything?
Too slow for what? I have 3 DTiVos, each has 2 160G drives and the only time I see any speed issues are when 2 recordings are being made on a DTiVo, a stream is being extracted across the NIC and I'm trying to do something data9intensive like reorganize season passes.
I own a DTivo and the thing was practially grinding to a halt a few weeks ago on the original hardware. I added a 120GB drive and this weekend I'll be ripping everything out to run diagnostics since it is now actually dropping video on recordings and rebooting a few times per week at random hours. Could be old hardware. However, even at best a Tivo does NOT run fast. Maybe the series 2 units are faster, but you can't get those as DirecTivos.
Honestly, if my Tivo finally dies I'd consider Myth or something else if I could get it working with DirecTV economically with two tuners. I can't say I dislike the Tivo, but when you resort your season passes and you get the message "this could take a minute" and it takes 15, there is a speed problem.
My other Tivo complaint is how season pass priority is handled. Suppose I have three shows on season pass. All three are on at the same time, but I only have two tuners. The first priority show is also on in the middle of the night (SciFi channel).
Tivo will record the first and second priority shows, and totally lose the third. I have to rejuggle priorities so that the show I like the most is in 3rd, so that it gets recorded in the middle of the night and I get all three.
The problem with this is that if for some reason my favorite show ISN'T on in the middle of the night it will be the one that isn't recorded at all, when my true preference would be to go ahead and bump one of the other ones. I have to lie to Tivo about my true preference since it can't figure out that I can have my cake and eat it too.
Don't get me wrong. I like Tivo. However, I'm not under the delusion that there is no room for improvement. I'm also annoyed that little has been done to improve it in the last year or two. I got a few big upgrades early on which added nice features (wish lists, multi-tuner support, etc.). However, it seems like Tivo is content to just compete on a two-year-old design against companies that have figured out how to copy it. The Tivo guys are smart - they could be a step ahead if they kept improving things...
lock down the borders: INS has been trying to do this, but every time they are called racist or something about causing untold environmental damage (that 3.5 mile fence they want to build in texas).
Many libertarians would propose exactly those sorts of measures. However, they would also be likely to greatly liberalize immigration. When only one or two people go running across the desert per year you can just mount infrared survailence and send in a stike team to aprehend them. When 100 people do it every night this becomes impractical. The libertarian goal is to let anybody in the front door who isn't a terrorist, so nobody but terrorists use the back door. When only criminals are running through the desert you don't get nearly as much bad press if you have a shoot-to-kill policy.
We have a defence treaty with SK where we defend them and if we left NK would most likely invade SK.
Most libertarians would advocate abandoning that treaty - probably with some kind of defined timeframe for SK to build up its own forces. They'd suggest that if you don't want NK to invade SK you're welcome to volunteer to join the SK army.
I believe that the National Guard does some of what you mention here, just for inside the US only.
The national guard probably wouldn't go away under libertarians - these are state militia. They can be used in foreign wars as well as for domestic problems, and they are generally used as a reserve.
I don't think most libertarians advocate the formation of a taxpayer-funded expeditionary force. They do not oppose the existance of such forces, but they would not be given any support by the US. Actually, if they're smart they wouldn't even give them haven on US territory. If somebody launches a crusade to "liberate palestine" from US-based camps, I doubt that that the middle east wouldn't treat things the same as the Taliban harboring Bin Laden.
Libertarians generally don't believe in mutual-defence treaties - they might consider them with bordering nations like Canada and Mexico, but probably not overseas. Honestly, what is the value in having received a pledge of SK support to stop an invasion of US territory? The concept is one of "no entangling alliances". That and leave saving the world to others.
The idea is that if nobody messes with the US, then the US won't mess with them (in any way - not just in warfare). However, the US would still maintain a military strong enough to deter any attack - if you mess with the US then the repercussions will be very harsh.
I doubt we'll ever see it. Too many sunday afternoon quarterbacks who look at having an army and will say "gee, just think of all the good we could be doing if we just deployed these guys and shot at the right people". Of course, somehow I don't think it would get worded that way...
Modern conflicts will generally be over within weeks, I think.
Depends on how you define "over". Iraq was about destroying military units out in the open and then occupying towns surrounded by desert.
Imagine trying to occupy the New York Suburbs to a level necessary to control flow of materials and arms. You'd need an army just for that - you can't just draw a line around a town and block all entry and exit at the three main roads.
If all of china showed up on boats in California and started marching East it would probably take months to consolidate their gains.
Now, if they just want to bomb some bases that might not take long, but that would not be sufficient to prevent counter-attack. Most US territory is well inland and not really susceptible to air attack except by long-range bombers, and those aren't practical except for targetted attacks or nuclear attack. If the US just parked its military planes at random private airports you'd never find them all.
Also - if somebody started massing troops on the border or treatening invasion, I'm sure the military would be mobilized and ready to go. Right now nobody is talking about taking over Kansas, so the need for a huge active military is questionable. If Canada signed a pact with China allowing them to use their territory to stage an invasion I'm sure there would be no shortage of army volunteers. Of course, that would never actulaly happen.
I suppose the logic should be that if you want to post online and not worry about laws in other countries then you would do best not to ever leave your own country.
I can violate Chinese laws with impunity as long as I don't violate my local laws and never travel to China...
Suppose somebody launces a DOS attack against a website from Honduras. The local government doesn't care. Is a US-based target of the attack without legal options?
In general as long as a crime took place in a country the local courts will genrally accept the case.
If I put up a website that says that China is a dictatorship the local government just might decide to issue a warrant for my arrest. If I ran such a website I would most likely not visit China as a result.
Suppose somebody libels you from a country that grants no court access to non-citizens. You would have no recourse at all in such a case. Also - if you were libeled would you want to fly halfway around the world to make your case?
Often there are benefits to going to the originating country, since they have more power to actually stop the damaging activity. However, your local courts should still be accessible.
Of course, a Canadian court can only fine someone in Canada. As long as the Post has no assets in Canada, then they are untouchable.
Uh, I'm sure they own something in the country. If nothing else customer subscription payments can be siezed I'd imagine, and those most liable can be put on an immigration watch list.
Well, the whole idea of extradition is that the government being petitioned gets to take a quick informal look at the merits and decide whether the accused is going to get treated fairly.
European countries routinely deny US extradition requests unless there is an agreement to not apply the death penalty.
If a US-based democracy activist was accused of inciting rebellion in China, the US government would be right to deny extradition.
On the other hand, if you are guilty of corporate embezzelment in Sweeden most likely you'll end up on the first plane headed their way.
I think the main objection to the ICC is that it will be highly politicized. We aren't talking about going after thieves and murderers, but heads of states that commit atrocities. I doubt the US would just give shelter to such a person unless they were acting in the interests of the US (such as a US general found liable for accidental deaths of civilians in an armed conflict). The question would be whether the trial was fair and the rights of the citizen in question were respected.
No nation has ever given an outside agency unchecked power to just aprehend its citizens/leaders...
By contrast, how much does the U.S. spend on gasoline or diesel for military vehicles within the borders of the U.S.?
Interesting comparison.
Most libertarians would argue that this is the one area of military spending which is appropriate - readiness for home defense. You can't deter an invasion unless you actually have a military, and you can't have one of those without spending money on training/maintenance/etc. Granted, most libertarians would still scale down the size of the army.
They'd complain more about how much is spent on operations overseas - except in retaliation to an actual attack.
The few years ago part is relevant here.
A 300GB (compressed) SDLT tape costs about $50 these days.
You aren't going to get a 150GB drive for anywhere near that cost.
For 1TB of space, those tapes would run you about $500 (uncompressed space). Equivalent cost for internal hard drives would be about $900. For external drives you'll pay more.
Tapes also work better in libraries, which make management easier.
I guess it depends on the situation. Hard drives are probably faster, but more expensive. On the other hand, tapes require an expensive drive. If you were just making one backup per year the drives would probably be cheaper just from a hardware cost perspective. On the other hand, if you ran two backups per day and retained them for a month, and retained one backup per week for a year and one per month for a decade, the tapes are going to work out much better most likely.
Ditto for other archs. Kernel support for amd64 is actually really good - I wish I could say the same about other FOSS.
Having major developers using non-x86 hardware just encourages everybody to write platform-neutral code. It isn't like it takes a degree in rocket science or anything - just don't assign pointers to ints and make other assumptions about data-type-sizes, endianness, etc...
Sometimes it seams like those in the F500 forget that those they fire so they can buy a 10,000 US shower curtian also can vote.
Uh, they must not vote enough - somebody on your list was in fact elected...
Sure, but by the same argument anything from a CB to a light bulb to a warm object does the exact same thing.
I'm too lazy, but in theory you could just look at the black body emissions of the Sun and the known spectrum of a cell phone and figure out which is more likely to churn out photons that are capable of breaking bonds. My guess is the Sun would be a far bigger culprit, but neither will be a big deal.
Well, in theory you can get wierd stereoisomers that are technically interconvertable without breaking bonds, but are not interconverable in practice.
For example, take a bunch of rings (a-la antracene) but stagger them in a meta-config rather than para. If you have about 6-7 of them you get a helix. The resulting molecule exists in two enantiomers, but none of the atoms in the molecule are sterogenic. In theory if you could grab both ends with tweezers you could stress all the bonds slightly and pull the ends past each other to convert between the enantiomers.
However, this is more of a curiousity and doesn't really have anything to do with protein structure. Proteins certainly can take a variety of shapes, but they are not stereoisomers (you'd need to use D-amino acids to make you protein at the very least).
Good point. For all we know, people who talk on cell phones a lot are more likely to spend time working around cars breathing in exhaust fumes or something like that. Or maybe they're more likely to drink coffee in the morning and caffeine has some kind of effect.
Correllation is not causation. It often does indicate that there is something worth studying, but the answer can be coincidence...
Actually - that wouldn't be hard. Stick needles into random places that accupuncture practicioners agree shouldn't have any effect. Otherwise, use the same needes with the same levels of penetration, and in areas that cause the same levels of pain/discomfort.
You can come up with a placebo for anything.
Even cell phones. Make one group tape real phones to their heads - the other group tape fake ones. Both are programmed not to work, but one transmits and the other does not.
The question is whether you could fine enough subjects who don't want to use a working cell phone for however many years...
I'd rather download a binary driver than the kernel sources to get one to compile for my kernel version, as if that should matter. Especially considering that I'm on dialup here.
Interesting - I found many benefits from using a source-based distro over dialup.
Suppose a security bug is discovered in firefox. The bug was fixed by adding two lines of code. The patch is as a result about 100 bytes long.
For a binary distro you end up downloading a new 7MB binary package. For something like gentoo you just download a 100 byte patch - you already downloaded the rest of the source the last time you installed it.
In theory you could use binary diffs - but nobody seems to do so...
I did a quick check and it looks like 50% of the stock is held by a few families. That is a good recipie for long-term success. The company is essentially only 50% public.
As long as the company is owned by people who have an interest in the company beyond just the stock dividends for the next few quarters, you can sustain practices like Porsche's. However, one the founders are gone, the stock often gets diluted, and at that point there is no leadership for the company beyond that of the mutual funds, who will quickly impose quarterly reporting, etc.
I have worked with a fairly small company that is privately owned. The owner has virtually no turnover - and employees are expected to even make up sick time. However, a worker right out of college starts out at about $35k, and will most likely get a 100% bonus on average each quarter. $70k out of school is a good recipie for no turnover.
They also have barbeques out on the lawn, and the owner fitted the cafeterias with 5.1 surround and plasma TV. The guy is raking in a small fortune, and he doesn't care that he could be raking in an even bigger fortune. If the company were public the fortune this quarter would be well and good, but they'd be doing cost-cutting to improve on it the following quarter.
As a result of private ownership, the guy has a very stable workforce which is highly satisfied and motivated, and anybody will come in on a weekend if the company needs them. He is quick to cut dead weight, but good workers do not fear for arbitrary headcount reductions from on high. His customers can count on stuff getting done on time, and they can expect to be able to talk to the same guy working on their projects at the bottom of the ladder year after year.
You can even have a personal touch in a huge enterprise. However, what kills it really fast is when no amount of profit is enough.
I once heard a speech at a big fortune 500 company - they said "We are !", of course trying to build employee loyalty. After all, the employees are the company, right? WRONG! The employees work for the company, but the company is really just the investments of the shareholders, and they are the ones that come first. Sure, working hard probably does tend to make one last longer in the company, but nobody is under the illusion that the company exists as some sort of collective.
Employees need good leadership. They need leaders who show a genuine interest in them - those are the leaders who will get good quality of work. When the leader is more interested in which department made the most money, the employees will respond by playing games...
Uh, isn't the idea of a going conern that it will generate future earnings?
Seriously - if you thought that a company would never generate earnings - why would you buy its stock?
If it does generate future earnings, then it is a "going concern".
I'll admit that there are other intangibles like branding and IP and such that go into the value as well. However, if a company has buildings worth $1 billion and is likely to make another $2 billion over the next 10 years, you probably can't support a market cap of $50 billion...
It's not entirely clear that a rogue startup could potentially topple an American-based corporation with deep, deep pockets.
Depends on how you define "topple".
Which scenario sounds better to you:
Get your Ph.D. in America and then,
1. work for big-American-company for $50k, 60 hours per week, and if you get less done than the next up-and-coming kid you're out on the street.
2. go back home and start saving cash (you make 1/5th the salary, but still live like a king). Then start a competitor to big-American-company. Big-American-company gets upset and buys out your company. As the "loser" in the race you are forced to retire with only $50 million in buyout money to show for your trouble.