And I thought this was just a movie. Harrison Ford starred in a movie where a genius inventor makes exactly such a device that makes ice without electricity. Suffice it to say things didn't go to well for his character.
However, it still does not make enough to pay for itself. In various places, the recycling has been propped up with government subsidies or even just the law.
And again, you're 100% wrong about this. Why, if aluminum doesn't make money would a city try to stop people from "stealing" aluminum cans from recycling bins? Why is there a ton of people that collect aluminum cans that then sell them? Because of course aluminum recycling is profitable. It doesn't make enough money to pay for the rest of the recycling collection, but it's still profitable. If it was cost efficient, aluminum manufacturers would have deposits on cans everywhere. They'd be trying their best to get new cans.
You obviously can't re-use the cans because they're easily crushed, the top gets broken when you open it, etc. To a manufacturer aluminum is aluminum. There's no advantage to getting the cans back over getting new aluminum. The impetus for aluminum recycling is on indivuduals who collect cans since aluminum. Prices for recycled aluminum cans are about.35 per pound.
The theory is that glass can be melted at lower temperature, saving energy.
And that theory is correct. You make it sound as if there's something incorrect about this by calling it a theory. In actual fact, a lot of the recycled glass goes the same process as new glass.
Then you should be in favor of giving companies incentives for saving the energy they'd waste instead of just being against recycling glass entirely. Or be in favor of deposits on more bottles since that would save even more energy. In addition, talking saving a certain amount of energy is crazy when the energy required to get the glass isn't factored in. (This is a problem with most recycling.)
I haven't added up the numbers, but I doubt you spend all the energy saved in transportation. Pop tabs. Yup, that's about it. The tabs on soda cans are worth recycling.
I know for a fact that you're 100% wrong about this. Cities make money on aluminum recycling, and it's not just the tabs. Minneapolis has gone so far that they're trying to catch people "stealing" the aluminum cans from other peoples recycling bins. Aluminum takes a HUGE amount of energy to seperate it from oxygen. That's why Aluminum is the best candidate for recycling.
If you want the stupidest thing we recycle, that's plastic. It costs a ton to recycle the stuff, and the use of it is very limited. Plastic doesn't really pollute, so it'd be wiser to just throw out the plastic and concentrate on collecting things that actually DO pollute, like lead batteries, old paint, household chemicals, etc.
The main differences would probably be the lack of effective filtration and the yeasts.
I'd agree that the yeasts were definitely different (the strains used today have been developed by selection by brewers over the last several hundred years). I wouldn't agree that one of the major differences in beer between today and the past was filtering. I'm a homebrewer and I never have filtered my beer. The difference is taste isn't really noticeable. Most beer that is is filtered is done so for cosmetic reasons (getting rid of haze), and also to get rid of any sediment on the bottom. Most strains of yeast have a fairly high "floctuation" (that is clump up together) and fall to the bottom of the tank, so they don't often tend to be hazy. It's possible that yeasts of old didn't have high floctuation, and thus beer had a more yeasty taste (think hefe-weizen, which means yeast wheat). The strain of yeast used to make hefe-weizen has low floctuation, and thus tends to be cloudy.
The biggest difference between beers of old and modern beer is the addition of hops. Hops weren't even used in beer until somewhere around 700-800 AD. Until then there were using various other herbs added to beer to add flavor (and probbably preservative qualities) that hops provides. Hops didn't become widely popular in much of europe until somewhere after the 14th century. This has the interesting side effect that modern beers and wines are substantially less nutritious than their ancient counterparts.
I guess I don't know why beer would be more nutrituous for lack of yeast (most of which settles out anyway). Anyway, many modern beers aren't filtered (maybe even most, but I really don't know that for sure). Guiness is one good example of an unfiltered beer.
Or people recycling glass, which has to be the stupidist thing to do in existence. Good Lord, we wouldn't want our silicon dioxide to end up buried in landfills, we might run out!
The point in recycling glass is the energy saved when you have to make new glass. Old glass can be heated and melted to a lower temperature than it takes to make new glass.
The other kind of glass recycling (before we called it recycling) is just plain old re-use. The problem is that most states don't have deposits on beer bottles, so they all get tossed.
The problem isn't so much the singular focus, it's the lack of seeing things in context, and magnitude. Many of the clean water people are obsessed about "saving" every last gallon of water from being dirty. I used to know someone who would turn on the super-water-saver mode of the dishwasher, despite the fact that the dishes wouldn't get clean and would later have to re-done by someone else. (ignoring the dishwashers don't really use that much water to begin with).
Where singular focus becomes a problem is seeing your problem in relation to other problems. If all you value is "saving' water, your solutions often wind up causing more harm than good.
Settle down Beavis. The word "activist" is indeed a political bullcrap used by mostly fanatics to describe themselves or by people who which to demonize "the other side". See "Activist judges".
"Reach for my revolver" is a reference to German playwright Hanns Johst's play Schlageter, which has in it the (translated) phrase "Whenever I hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" The last part is more often translated as "I reach for my revolver." Often the quote is attributed to Hermann Goring, though Johst is the true source.
The point is that much like high culture, "activism" has taken on this unquestionable nobleness instead of just being politics as usual. (Either that or a demonic evil). I don't have a problem with people being passionate about their beliefs, only fanatical about them. Activists, and the word activist in general I associate with people who are singularly (and often myopically) focused on one goal. I find that to be a terrible world view which doesn't lead to finding any truth. So, when I hear someone speak of activism or activists I generally expect some bullshit to follow. Hence the revolver reaching (though in truth I don't own a gun nor ever have).
Indeed. A psychiatrist was mentioning somewhere that one of the worst things for people who have been through disasters is to sit around with nothing to do and nothing but the disaster to think about. For people developing PTSD, it can intensify and lengthen their problems.
I heard the same thing on NPR. I believe the guy was talking about the relief effort for the sunami. It was in reference to the style of accomodations people were given.
If there are important things to say that the refugees need to hear over the radio, why not get one of the dozens of existing radio stations in the area to broadcast it. If your message is really that crucial, it shouldn't be a problem finding someone to play it.
I think you're missing the point of a micro broadcast radio station. Is a local station that serves the needs of the entire Houston area going to broadcast a message like "lunch of the day for the astrodome is cheeseburgers" If you really think that, you're just naive. This isn't about broadcasting ultra-important messages to everyone, it's about keeping people informed about the resources available to them, giving them something to do, etc. This is just a bunch of geeks that got told, "No, your idea won't actually help anyone", so they went and complained to/.
Very true, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it WILL help people. This isn't some wild crazy techno geek idea of giving out free Wi-Fi internet access to people that don't have laptops or computers in the first place. Radios are dirt cheap, and anyone that has a few dollars can buy a portable one. They're cheap enough that someone could buy a thousand of them and distribute them to everyone in the Astrodome.
If you lose control over information, you could lose control over the mass of people. I'm sure what they're worried about is the radio station broadcasting anything that's no in line with the message that the officials want heard. It's sad to imagine that our government has become more like China in this whole matter, caring more about saving face, and keeping the serfs in line than actually providing assistance.
If you know anything about scanners you'll know that part of it is just a big camera. The parent is obviously correct that the optics quality is very important. Just look at any cheap 35mm film camera compared to an expensive 35mm camera. They both have the same "resolution" because they can use the same film. The optics of the cheap camera are probbably crappy poorly "ground" plastic lenses, while the expensive camera likely has very high quality well ground glass (or whatever ueber-optics material they're using these days).
DPI is to all intents and purposes, the same as "resolution" which is not something you do at New Years.
I think the article submitter knows what DPI means. But like him, I've heard that DPI is mostly a meaningless statistic touted by the scanner makers. This is especially true if the scanner is going to only be used for OCR of music, where beyond a certain resolution more DPI is useless.
There is more to scanners than DPI obviously. In inkjet printers you get bleed, and other effects from one dot to another. Does the same thing happen in scanners? I don't know much about the finer points of scanner technology, but I'll make a hard bet there's a lot more to comparing scanner quality than DPI.
Sadly, I think you're exactly right. I don't pay much attention to ESR, but from the little I've seen he's turned into a bit of a blowhard. There's something a bit immature in his reply to the job inquiry. The audience he's really talking to his fans in attempt to get high-fives from then all around. It reminds me of the pretty girl (but allaround bitch) who gets asked out to the prom by the nerd, then proceeds to make a big scene so her friends can make fun of the nerd. See "Mean Girls" or "Heathers" if you need a movie reference.
I think his last comment of "not causing enough trouble" is dead on. I doubt many people at Microsoft (especially outside of developer circles) knows who he is.
Not sure who you think "we" are. Even some Shuttle managers freely admit that they were uncomfortable with repeated foam strikes on multiple launches over the years and that it was just a matter of time before enough damage was done to take an orbiter down.
You're right, it's always been known by people in the know that the system has flaws. What I meant was the same "we" who think the Soyuz is safe. It's that same "it's safe until it blows up" mentality in operation. It's the same people who think Burt Rutan has somehow accomplished more than Nasa because Spaceship one in its 3 powered suborbital flights never blew up. I do think, however, that you can look at the basic design and ask yourself whether it's prone to failure. I find it kind of interesting that the new head of NASA recently said that the US would never again build a launch system where the primary spacecraft and its crew were placed in a position where falling debris from the booster could do catastrophic damage.
That may in fact be true. I'm not a rocket scientist though, so I have no idea of the tradeoffs between the capsule and "attatch to the side" systems. My only point in this whole matter was to refute the original posters claim (and what seems to have become a common belief) that the Soyuz is more safe/reliable than the Shuttle. The capsule design may be one aspect of a safer design, but of course you have to look at the whole system. I don't know that anyone qualified has done that between the Shuttle and Soyuz. The superior safety claim of Soyuz seems to be the old "no accidents.. yet" claim.
And you conveniently forget that before Feb 2003 we thought the Shuttle problems were solved almost 20 years ago. Since so few of these things have been launched we have very little real world evidence of the safety record of either of these craft. Really we have even LESS data than you would think from Soyuz since it's been re-designed a few times.
This isn't news. Two secretaries got into a personal fight and were fired over it. The fact that it happened over email is irrelevant. When did slashdot become the gossip section of the internet?
This nonsense that the Soyuz is more reliable than the Shuttle has to stop. I've posted before about this, but the takehome information is that the shuttle has flown far more times than the Soyuz. The Soyuz has one fatal accident, the Shuttle two. The safetey record is about the same.
but of course this is Slashdot, where everyone is stupid (or worse) if they don't say exactly what you expect, right?
I hold people to the words they use. "barely done any work" sounds like Nasa isn't even bothering to try to fix this problem. If that's not what you meant I'd suggest using different words that don't imply that.
I'd also suggest that since you aren't a Nasa engineer, maybe you don't understand the complexities of the problem. Saying that Nasa is "clueless" simply because they haven't yet shown results in the little more than a month since the Discovery launch sounds like you're perhaps over-simplifiying the problems involved.
Re:6 months off on their estimates - inexcusable
on
Katrina Delays Shuttle
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· Score: 2, Informative
but when you've barely done any work so far on fixing the problem (that I'm aware; I haven't seen any test summaries beyond "we got a few tanks to work on now"
Since when does lack of public news releases work done mean there's been no work done? Do you seriously think they're all sitting on their hands over at Nasa because you haven't read an article about what's going on?
And unlike some slashdotters, I read about what actually happened instead of relying on a foggy (or perhaps just plain innacurate) memory from events of more than 25 years ago.
The price controls on gas were a legacy of Richard Nixon, the 1973 energy crisis and his attempts at fighting inflation. Nixon had a long history of price controls, wage freezes, and other ultimately fruitless acts in an attempt to control the runaway inflation of the 70s. While Carter did impose some price controls on energy, he also proposed ending the price controls. From wikipedia:
More importantly, Carter, as part of his administration's efforts at deregulation, proposed removing price controls that had been imposed in the administration of Richard Nixon during the 1973 energy crisis. Congress agreed to remove price controls in phases; they were finally dismantled in 1981 under Ronald Reagan.
So if you're going to blame any President for gas price controls, that'd be Nixon. If you're going to credit any president with ending them, that'd be Carter. Reagan simply inhereited a system where price controls were already on the way out.
Why won't a big impact virus just destroy thousands of files, trash hard disks, or some other destructive action?
Because if you kill the host, you lose the very thing that spreads the virus. This is true for physical viruses too. Think of the most sucessful viruses, the common cold. It never kills anyone (except perhaps immuno-compromised people), doesn't take you out of commision bad enough that you just sit in bed (so you interact with more people, more people to spread it to).
If you started deleting hard drives, renaming files, or otherwise making yourself known you only compromise the ability of the virus to spread. The viruses that do destroy their hosts aren't very successfull, so they don't spread too far. You also probbably don't hear about those viruses for that very reason.
Of course no one seems to have thought about WHY paypal canceled the account. I mean, they're an "evil corporation" cause SA says so thus they must have done it for kicks.
Check out some of the other posts. I've heard terrible stories about Paypal screwing people over for years. With the number of stories I've heard (and the consistency) I think Paypal is a very poor company that seems to shut down accounts on a whim and rarely explain why. I'm sure they have a lot of problems with money laundering, etc, but there's just too many stories of innocent people getting burned by Paypal for there not to be something wrong with paypal itself. This isn't just an "evil corporation" story, it's a company with a long long track record of unscrupulous behaviour.
I considered that, but I don't think the poster was trying to be sarcastic, I think he was quite serious. If it was sarcasm it was a very poor attempt at it.
And you're just naive. You're honestly trying to tell me that this article isn't just an advertisement for cool tech gadgets? So it's just a co-incidence that each item has multiple links to vendors who advertise on the tech zone?
I don't have any problem with the whole concept of doing that, but let's get real here.
Slashdot Mirror
And I thought this was just a movie. Harrison Ford starred in a movie where a genius inventor makes exactly such a device that makes ice without electricity. Suffice it to say things didn't go to well for his character.
However, it still does not make enough to pay for itself. In various places, the recycling has been propped up with government subsidies or even just the law.
And again, you're 100% wrong about this. Why, if aluminum doesn't make money would a city try to stop people from "stealing" aluminum cans from recycling bins? Why is there a ton of people that collect aluminum cans that then sell them? Because of course aluminum recycling is profitable. It doesn't make enough money to pay for the rest of the recycling collection, but it's still profitable.
If it was cost efficient, aluminum manufacturers would have deposits on cans everywhere. They'd be trying their best to get new cans.
You obviously can't re-use the cans because they're easily crushed, the top gets broken when you open it, etc. To a manufacturer aluminum is aluminum. There's no advantage to getting the cans back over getting new aluminum. The impetus for aluminum recycling is on indivuduals who collect cans since aluminum. Prices for recycled aluminum cans are about
The theory is that glass can be melted at lower temperature, saving energy.
And that theory is correct. You make it sound as if there's something incorrect about this by calling it a theory.
In actual fact, a lot of the recycled glass goes the same process as new glass.
Then you should be in favor of giving companies incentives for saving the energy they'd waste instead of just being against recycling glass entirely. Or be in favor of deposits on more bottles since that would save even more energy.
In addition, talking saving a certain amount of energy is crazy when the energy required to get the glass isn't factored in. (This is a problem with most recycling.)
I haven't added up the numbers, but I doubt you spend all the energy saved in transportation.
Pop tabs.
Yup, that's about it. The tabs on soda cans are worth recycling.
I know for a fact that you're 100% wrong about this. Cities make money on aluminum recycling, and it's not just the tabs. Minneapolis has gone so far that they're trying to catch people "stealing" the aluminum cans from other peoples recycling bins. Aluminum takes a HUGE amount of energy to seperate it from oxygen. That's why Aluminum is the best candidate for recycling.
If you want the stupidest thing we recycle, that's plastic. It costs a ton to recycle the stuff, and the use of it is very limited. Plastic doesn't really pollute, so it'd be wiser to just throw out the plastic and concentrate on collecting things that actually DO pollute, like lead batteries, old paint, household chemicals, etc.
The main differences would probably be the lack of effective filtration and the yeasts.
I'd agree that the yeasts were definitely different (the strains used today have been developed by selection by brewers over the last several hundred years). I wouldn't agree that one of the major differences in beer between today and the past was filtering. I'm a homebrewer and I never have filtered my beer. The difference is taste isn't really noticeable. Most beer that is is filtered is done so for cosmetic reasons (getting rid of haze), and also to get rid of any sediment on the bottom. Most strains of yeast have a fairly high "floctuation" (that is clump up together) and fall to the bottom of the tank, so they don't often tend to be hazy. It's possible that yeasts of old didn't have high floctuation, and thus beer had a more yeasty taste (think hefe-weizen, which means yeast wheat). The strain of yeast used to make hefe-weizen has low floctuation, and thus tends to be cloudy.
The biggest difference between beers of old and modern beer is the addition of hops. Hops weren't even used in beer until somewhere around 700-800 AD. Until then there were using various other herbs added to beer to add flavor (and probbably preservative qualities) that hops provides. Hops didn't become widely popular in much of europe until somewhere after the 14th century.
This has the interesting side effect that modern beers and wines are substantially less nutritious than their ancient counterparts.
I guess I don't know why beer would be more nutrituous for lack of yeast (most of which settles out anyway). Anyway, many modern beers aren't filtered (maybe even most, but I really don't know that for sure). Guiness is one good example of an unfiltered beer.
Or people recycling glass, which has to be the stupidist thing to do in existence. Good Lord, we wouldn't want our silicon dioxide to end up buried in landfills, we might run out!
The point in recycling glass is the energy saved when you have to make new glass. Old glass can be heated and melted to a lower temperature than it takes to make new glass.
The other kind of glass recycling (before we called it recycling) is just plain old re-use. The problem is that most states don't have deposits on beer bottles, so they all get tossed.
The problem isn't so much the singular focus, it's the lack of seeing things in context, and magnitude. Many of the clean water people are obsessed about "saving" every last gallon of water from being dirty. I used to know someone who would turn on the super-water-saver mode of the dishwasher, despite the fact that the dishes wouldn't get clean and would later have to re-done by someone else. (ignoring the dishwashers don't really use that much water to begin with).
Where singular focus becomes a problem is seeing your problem in relation to other problems. If all you value is "saving' water, your solutions often wind up causing more harm than good.
Settle down Beavis. The word "activist" is indeed a political bullcrap used by mostly fanatics to describe themselves or by people who which to demonize "the other side". See "Activist judges".
"Reach for my revolver" is a reference to German playwright Hanns Johst's play Schlageter, which has in it the (translated) phrase "Whenever I hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" The last part is more often translated as "I reach for my revolver." Often the quote is attributed to Hermann Goring, though Johst is the true source.
The point is that much like high culture, "activism" has taken on this unquestionable nobleness instead of just being politics as usual. (Either that or a demonic evil). I don't have a problem with people being passionate about their beliefs, only fanatical about them. Activists, and the word activist in general I associate with people who are singularly (and often myopically) focused on one goal. I find that to be a terrible world view which doesn't lead to finding any truth. So, when I hear someone speak of activism or activists I generally expect some bullshit to follow. Hence the revolver reaching (though in truth I don't own a gun nor ever have).
Indeed. A psychiatrist was mentioning somewhere that one of the worst things for people who have been through disasters is to sit around with nothing to do and nothing but the disaster to think about. For people developing PTSD, it can intensify and lengthen their problems.
I heard the same thing on NPR. I believe the guy was talking about the relief effort for the sunami. It was in reference to the style of accomodations people were given.
If there are important things to say that the refugees need to hear over the radio, why not get one of the dozens of existing radio stations in the area to broadcast it. If your message is really that crucial, it shouldn't be a problem finding someone to play it.
I think you're missing the point of a micro broadcast radio station. Is a local station that serves the needs of the entire Houston area going to broadcast a message like "lunch of the day for the astrodome is cheeseburgers" If you really think that, you're just naive. This isn't about broadcasting ultra-important messages to everyone, it's about keeping people informed about the resources available to them, giving them something to do, etc.
This is just a bunch of geeks that got told, "No, your idea won't actually help anyone", so they went and complained to
Very true, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it WILL help people. This isn't some wild crazy techno geek idea of giving out free Wi-Fi internet access to people that don't have laptops or computers in the first place. Radios are dirt cheap, and anyone that has a few dollars can buy a portable one. They're cheap enough that someone could buy a thousand of them and distribute them to everyone in the Astrodome.
If you lose control over information, you could lose control over the mass of people. I'm sure what they're worried about is the radio station broadcasting anything that's no in line with the message that the officials want heard. It's sad to imagine that our government has become more like China in this whole matter, caring more about saving face, and keeping the serfs in line than actually providing assistance.
If you know anything about scanners you'll know that part of it is just a big camera. The parent is obviously correct that the optics quality is very important. Just look at any cheap 35mm film camera compared to an expensive 35mm camera. They both have the same "resolution" because they can use the same film. The optics of the cheap camera are probbably crappy poorly "ground" plastic lenses, while the expensive camera likely has very high quality well ground glass (or whatever ueber-optics material they're using these days).
DPI is to all intents and purposes, the same as "resolution" which is not something you do at New Years.
I think the article submitter knows what DPI means. But like him, I've heard that DPI is mostly a meaningless statistic touted by the scanner makers. This is especially true if the scanner is going to only be used for OCR of music, where beyond a certain resolution more DPI is useless.
There is more to scanners than DPI obviously. In inkjet printers you get bleed, and other effects from one dot to another. Does the same thing happen in scanners? I don't know much about the finer points of scanner technology, but I'll make a hard bet there's a lot more to comparing scanner quality than DPI.
Sadly, I think you're exactly right. I don't pay much attention to ESR, but from the little I've seen he's turned into a bit of a blowhard. There's something a bit immature in his reply to the job inquiry. The audience he's really talking to his fans in attempt to get high-fives from then all around. It reminds me of the pretty girl (but allaround bitch) who gets asked out to the prom by the nerd, then proceeds to make a big scene so her friends can make fun of the nerd. See "Mean Girls" or "Heathers" if you need a movie reference.
I think his last comment of "not causing enough trouble" is dead on. I doubt many people at Microsoft (especially outside of developer circles) knows who he is.
Most of which seem to be comenting on what a stupid story this is or relaying their own stories which are far more interesting than this story.
Not sure who you think "we" are. Even some Shuttle managers freely admit that they were uncomfortable with repeated foam strikes on multiple launches over the years and that it was just a matter of time before enough damage was done to take an orbiter down.
You're right, it's always been known by people in the know that the system has flaws. What I meant was the same "we" who think the Soyuz is safe. It's that same "it's safe until it blows up" mentality in operation. It's the same people who think Burt Rutan has somehow accomplished more than Nasa because Spaceship one in its 3 powered suborbital flights never blew up.
I do think, however, that you can look at the basic design and ask yourself whether it's prone to failure. I find it kind of interesting that the new head of NASA recently said that the US would never again build a launch system where the primary spacecraft and its crew were placed in a position where falling debris from the booster could do catastrophic damage.
That may in fact be true. I'm not a rocket scientist though, so I have no idea of the tradeoffs between the capsule and "attatch to the side" systems. My only point in this whole matter was to refute the original posters claim (and what seems to have become a common belief) that the Soyuz is more safe/reliable than the Shuttle. The capsule design may be one aspect of a safer design, but of course you have to look at the whole system. I don't know that anyone qualified has done that between the Shuttle and Soyuz. The superior safety claim of Soyuz seems to be the old "no accidents.. yet" claim.
And you conveniently forget that before Feb 2003 we thought the Shuttle problems were solved almost 20 years ago. Since so few of these things have been launched we have very little real world evidence of the safety record of either of these craft. Really we have even LESS data than you would think from Soyuz since it's been re-designed a few times.
This isn't news. Two secretaries got into a personal fight and were fired over it. The fact that it happened over email is irrelevant. When did slashdot become the gossip section of the internet?
This nonsense that the Soyuz is more reliable than the Shuttle has to stop. I've posted before about this, but the takehome information is that the shuttle has flown far more times than the Soyuz. The Soyuz has one fatal accident, the Shuttle two.
The safetey record is about the same.
but of course this is Slashdot, where everyone is stupid (or worse) if they don't say exactly what you expect, right?
I hold people to the words they use. "barely done any work" sounds like Nasa isn't even bothering to try to fix this problem. If that's not what you meant I'd suggest using different words that don't imply that.
I'd also suggest that since you aren't a Nasa engineer, maybe you don't understand the complexities of the problem. Saying that Nasa is "clueless" simply because they haven't yet shown results in the little more than a month since the Discovery launch sounds like you're perhaps over-simplifiying the problems involved.
but when you've barely done any work so far on fixing the problem (that I'm aware; I haven't seen any test summaries beyond "we got a few tanks to work on now"
Since when does lack of public news releases work done mean there's been no work done? Do you seriously think they're all sitting on their hands over at Nasa because you haven't read an article about what's going on?
The price controls on gas were a legacy of Richard Nixon, the 1973 energy crisis and his attempts at fighting inflation. Nixon had a long history of price controls, wage freezes, and other ultimately fruitless acts in an attempt to control the runaway inflation of the 70s. While Carter did impose some price controls on energy, he also proposed ending the price controls. From wikipedia:
So if you're going to blame any President for gas price controls, that'd be Nixon. If you're going to credit any president with ending them, that'd be Carter. Reagan simply inhereited a system where price controls were already on the way out.
Why won't a big impact virus just destroy thousands of files, trash hard disks, or some other destructive action?
Because if you kill the host, you lose the very thing that spreads the virus. This is true for physical viruses too. Think of the most sucessful viruses, the common cold. It never kills anyone (except perhaps immuno-compromised people), doesn't take you out of commision bad enough that you just sit in bed (so you interact with more people, more people to spread it to).
If you started deleting hard drives, renaming files, or otherwise making yourself known you only compromise the ability of the virus to spread. The viruses that do destroy their hosts aren't very successfull, so they don't spread too far. You also probbably don't hear about those viruses for that very reason.
Of course no one seems to have thought about WHY paypal canceled the account. I mean, they're an "evil corporation" cause SA says so thus they must have done it for kicks.
Check out some of the other posts. I've heard terrible stories about Paypal screwing people over for years. With the number of stories I've heard (and the consistency) I think Paypal is a very poor company that seems to shut down accounts on a whim and rarely explain why. I'm sure they have a lot of problems with money laundering, etc, but there's just too many stories of innocent people getting burned by Paypal for there not to be something wrong with paypal itself. This isn't just an "evil corporation" story, it's a company with a long long track record of unscrupulous behaviour.
I considered that, but I don't think the poster was trying to be sarcastic, I think he was quite serious. If it was sarcasm it was a very poor attempt at it.
You'r so cynical.
And you're just naive. You're honestly trying to tell me that this article isn't just an advertisement for cool tech gadgets? So it's just a co-incidence that each item has multiple links to vendors who advertise on the tech zone?
I don't have any problem with the whole concept of doing that, but let's get real here.