I'm waiting for the anti-(anti-missile missile) missile
I'm sure Russia and China are working on that right now. Just put a couple of them on you nuclear warheads and you have a much greater chance of your nuke reaching its target. The only problem is that anti-missile missiles are much smaller than root-missiles. Of course, then the anti-missile missiles will then have smaller missiles still. Ultimately, the success of a nuclear strike will depend on one nanobot wrestling another.
Similarly, I am annoyed at how mathematicians hold on to their belief that 1 + 1 = 2 with such religious fervor. These heretics need to give the 1 + 1 = 3 theory equal time in our children's education.
I am curious about the part of your message where you say "Likewise we still only see macro exolution in the fosil record and haven't observed it in living animals." Assuming that you have seen at least a couple of these weekly stories about evolution how could you not know that this claim is false? There is no distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution as far as mechanism goes (just multiply by a kajillion years) and speciation has been observed many times.
for example venezuela's hugo chavez is using petrodollar-funded socialism to aid venezuela's poor... the venezuelan people rejected his power grab
The reason they rejected his power grab is because he screwed up. He has dictated that the farmers must sell food for less than it costs them to produce it. Result—they have stopped growing food. So now, his people go hungry and they spend their petro-dollars on importing food. The American money leaves the country as quickly as it comes in and the people have been reduced to a subsistence existence for as long as the oil continues flowing. People don't like to vote for you when you are the reason they are starving.
Chavez's solution to this problem is to force the banks to loan the farmers more money so they can sell their food at a loss and sink deeply into debt. I suspect this won't work either. If he wants to feed his people, he will either have to remove the price controls or nationalize the farming industry.
Chavez has gutted the rest of the economy to such an extent that oil exporting is pretty much the only game in town. He has helped to support his reforms by pillaging wealth from the wealthy, but he is rapidly running out of wealthy people to pillage, so this revenue stream will dry up soon. The multinational corporations, responsible for the bulk of the wealth of the first world, aren't very keen to operate in Venezuela since
they were the first victims of his pillaging of wealth.
At some point in the near future, whenever Chavez threatens to cut off the oil supply to the US, the US will make the much more devastating threat to stop buying it. (Few other countries can refine the low grade of oil Venezuela sells.) Chavez turned the Venezuelan economy into a basket case in a misguided attempt to buy votes. The mess he created is starting to catch up to him and petrodollars will be insufficient to cover the losses. He seems a little bit like Mugabe in this respect; maybe he manufactured this disaster intentionally.
It remains to be seen whether he will take the power he wanted by force.
I was kind of hoping HD DVD would win this one, now we'll be stuck with region locked movies for another decade till the next thing comes along.
About two-thirds of Blu-ray discs have been released region-free. It seems that the distributers may be trying not to piss off customers unnecessarily.
On more than one occassion various industry groups in the US have threatened to cut Canada off if we don't do something about copyright infringement.
I double-dog dare them to. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot by eliminating 26-million easily-accessible customers (English-speaking Canadians). But, more importantly, they wouldn't do it because they know that their rhetoric is bullshit.
Maybe people who have cell phones are younger, more outgoing, and more likely to partake in risky activities. Perhaps they smoke more or eat spicier foods. Maybe they give more oral sex or have odd piercings. Maybe they over-eat. What are the risk factors for salivary-gland cancer and how does this study factor them out?
This is just another $100 million that M$ does not mind pissing away.
I don't understand how this cash injection serves Microsoft's interests. SCO is on track to lose all of its court cases. This will only serve to confirm that Linux has a clean code base.
What Microsoft should do is sell SCO a dozen of its 236 bullshit patents it claims Linux violates and have SCO launch the patent lawsuits. Then Microsoft can pretend to be innocent and avoid a patent Armageddon scenario with IBM and other players.
Let's say the ISO votes should be weighted by the country's PPP GDP divided by US$1-trillion plus the per-capita PPP GDP divided by US$20,000. The US would have a voting weight of 16.16; China, 7.31; Germany, 4.55; Canada, 3.18; Russia, 2.81; New Zealand, 1.48; Iran, 1.47; Brunei, 1.29; Cote d'Ivoire, 0.123 [CIA World Fact Book]. It would take quite a number of bullshit dictatorships to match the weight of a smaller first-world country — as it should be.
Population? Oh yeah, letting China and India take 1/3 of the votes is a great idea. Democracy? Well, first, you have to define democracy.
For ISO, I would say that a formula that combines GDP with per-capita GDP would give a good measure of who the real industrial innovators and players are. China has a high GDP but a low per-capita GDP. It has massive internal corruption, but it is still a global player. Per-capita GDP provides a good measure of corruption, since corruptions syphons it off.
I'm hoping that the non-bought votes that voted "yes" last time figure out what's going on and vote "no" this time. We'll see.
However, ISO has the same idiotic notion as the UN that all countries are equal, so there are probably a hundred more bullshit dictatorships that Microsoft can pay off to join the vote. I just hope that the bullshit dictatorships Microsoft paid off before make such outrageous demands for a new payoff that Microsoft refuses to pay.
I think the shuttle secrets were intentionally leaked to lead the Chinese to waste their resources building a fleet of the multi-billion-dollar unsafe-at-any-speed white elephants. Meanwhile, the US will quietly switch back to the 1960's rocket designs.
No, when the contract is up their union renegotiates. If they disagree there's a strike.
Unions. An industry-wide union is a monopoly. If it was a corporation, it would be carved up by the courts for being illegal (at least in theory they would be). Monopolies are toxic to free markets.
Beyond that writers aren't as interchangeable as ford workers and they don't "make" each product. They write once and the product is reproduced.
Software developers aren't paid royalties either, unless they are super-stars who can negotiate their own contracts. We are paid a salary for the code we write. The software company then takes our work and makes millions of copies and billions of bucks. This is fair because we work for them, are guaranteed a salary, and take no risks with the market. If we wanted to take risks, we would set up our own software companies and pocket the profits ourselves. But most of us are too wussy to do that and therefore deserve no royalties, just like the writers of TV and movie scripts.
Monopoly isn't the opposite of capitalism... And it's where capitalism will go if left unregulated.
I completely agree with you — the participants would like to have monopoly positions in markets. However, that situation is not capitalism; it is its opposite. *cough* Centrally planed economy *cough* Commies.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure Russia and China are working on that right now. Just put a couple of them on you nuclear warheads and you have a much greater chance of your nuke reaching its target. The only problem is that anti-missile missiles are much smaller than root-missiles. Of course, then the anti-missile missiles will then have smaller missiles still. Ultimately, the success of a nuclear strike will depend on one nanobot wrestling another.
Similarly, I am annoyed at how mathematicians hold on to their belief that 1 + 1 = 2 with such religious fervor. These heretics need to give the 1 + 1 = 3 theory equal time in our children's education.
I am curious about the part of your message where you say "Likewise we still only see macro exolution in the fosil record and haven't observed it in living animals." Assuming that you have seen at least a couple of these weekly stories about evolution how could you not know that this claim is false? There is no distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution as far as mechanism goes (just multiply by a kajillion years) and speciation has been observed many times.
The reason they rejected his power grab is because he screwed up. He has dictated that the farmers must sell food for less than it costs them to produce it. Result—they have stopped growing food. So now, his people go hungry and they spend their petro-dollars on importing food. The American money leaves the country as quickly as it comes in and the people have been reduced to a subsistence existence for as long as the oil continues flowing. People don't like to vote for you when you are the reason they are starving.
Chavez's solution to this problem is to force the banks to loan the farmers more money so they can sell their food at a loss and sink deeply into debt. I suspect this won't work either. If he wants to feed his people, he will either have to remove the price controls or nationalize the farming industry.
Chavez has gutted the rest of the economy to such an extent that oil exporting is pretty much the only game in town. He has helped to support his reforms by pillaging wealth from the wealthy, but he is rapidly running out of wealthy people to pillage, so this revenue stream will dry up soon. The multinational corporations, responsible for the bulk of the wealth of the first world, aren't very keen to operate in Venezuela since they were the first victims of his pillaging of wealth.
At some point in the near future, whenever Chavez threatens to cut off the oil supply to the US, the US will make the much more devastating threat to stop buying it. (Few other countries can refine the low grade of oil Venezuela sells.) Chavez turned the Venezuelan economy into a basket case in a misguided attempt to buy votes. The mess he created is starting to catch up to him and petrodollars will be insufficient to cover the losses. He seems a little bit like Mugabe in this respect; maybe he manufactured this disaster intentionally.
It remains to be seen whether he will take the power he wanted by force.
Wow, I didn't know al Qaeda carried out suicide bombings against plants. It's amazing what headlines the global news organizations don't carry.
...you could record two hours of video on one tape instead of betamax's one.
About two-thirds of Blu-ray discs have been released region-free. It seems that the distributers may be trying not to piss off customers unnecessarily.
I'd give her my hard drive, but her box is SCSI.
I double-dog dare them to. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot by eliminating 26-million easily-accessible customers (English-speaking Canadians). But, more importantly, they wouldn't do it because they know that their rhetoric is bullshit.
Indeed, the Queen probably won't crap on your car.
Yes, they should implement the CSI filters you see on all those forensic-investigation TV shows. There'd be no need for Blu-ray at all.
"Ow, my sperm!" (takes another call) "Hmm, didn't hurt that time."
Maybe people who have cell phones are younger, more outgoing, and more likely to partake in risky activities. Perhaps they smoke more or eat spicier foods. Maybe they give more oral sex or have odd piercings. Maybe they over-eat. What are the risk factors for salivary-gland cancer and how does this study factor them out?
* Tens of millions of the investment will be paid to Novell.
* Unknown millions will be paid to IBM when it prevails on its counterclaims.
Also, SCO will have the money to pay IBM for its countersuits.
Gee, Michael Moore didn't phrase it like this.
I don't understand how this cash injection serves Microsoft's interests. SCO is on track to lose all of its court cases. This will only serve to confirm that Linux has a clean code base.
What Microsoft should do is sell SCO a dozen of its 236 bullshit patents it claims Linux violates and have SCO launch the patent lawsuits. Then Microsoft can pretend to be innocent and avoid a patent Armageddon scenario with IBM and other players.
I think Canada should impose a massive export tariff on oil if the Americans get uppity.
Stargate Atlantis. You'll love Dr. McKay.
Let's say the ISO votes should be weighted by the country's PPP GDP divided by US$1-trillion plus the per-capita PPP GDP divided by US$20,000. The US would have a voting weight of 16.16; China, 7.31; Germany, 4.55; Canada, 3.18; Russia, 2.81; New Zealand, 1.48; Iran, 1.47; Brunei, 1.29; Cote d'Ivoire, 0.123 [CIA World Fact Book]. It would take quite a number of bullshit dictatorships to match the weight of a smaller first-world country — as it should be.
For ISO, I would say that a formula that combines GDP with per-capita GDP would give a good measure of who the real industrial innovators and players are. China has a high GDP but a low per-capita GDP. It has massive internal corruption, but it is still a global player. Per-capita GDP provides a good measure of corruption, since corruptions syphons it off.
However, ISO has the same idiotic notion as the UN that all countries are equal, so there are probably a hundred more bullshit dictatorships that Microsoft can pay off to join the vote. I just hope that the bullshit dictatorships Microsoft paid off before make such outrageous demands for a new payoff that Microsoft refuses to pay.
I think the shuttle secrets were intentionally leaked to lead the Chinese to waste their resources building a fleet of the multi-billion-dollar unsafe-at-any-speed white elephants. Meanwhile, the US will quietly switch back to the 1960's rocket designs.
Unions. An industry-wide union is a monopoly. If it was a corporation, it would be carved up by the courts for being illegal (at least in theory they would be). Monopolies are toxic to free markets.
Software developers aren't paid royalties either, unless they are super-stars who can negotiate their own contracts. We are paid a salary for the code we write. The software company then takes our work and makes millions of copies and billions of bucks. This is fair because we work for them, are guaranteed a salary, and take no risks with the market. If we wanted to take risks, we would set up our own software companies and pocket the profits ourselves. But most of us are too wussy to do that and therefore deserve no royalties, just like the writers of TV and movie scripts.
I completely agree with you — the participants would like to have monopoly positions in markets. However, that situation is not capitalism; it is its opposite. *cough* Centrally planed economy *cough* Commies.