Photons have momentum, which is transferable (solar sails, etc.).
Also, a photon's energy can be converted into mass via e=mc^2 (high energy gamma rays can spontaneously form stable particle/antiparticle pairs with actual mass). That possible "mass of conversion" can be expressed as the potential mass or equivalent mass of a photon.
Actually, you'd be correct if you were to say that neutrons are not affected by electric fields. But neutrons are fermions with magnetic spin and are affected by (and can be moved around with) magnetic fields, so...
Almost all of the waste from a molten salt Thorium fuel cycle reactor has a half life of 30 years or less (total storage of 300 years and it's as clean as the thorium ore it came from). Also, the mass/volume of the waste to be stored is substantially lower than a light water reactor because you can continuously mechanically and chemically extract the waste from the liquid fuel. With a solid fuel reactor, the waste is physically tied to 90% of the still-good U235 and the now damaged ceramic that makes up the rest of the pellet. You have to sequester all of that unfissioned U235 along with the pellet body which amounts to about 200x more waste to deal with.
Because the waste from a liquid fueled reactor can be continuously extracted in very small quantities, it's fairly easy to make uber-safe small containment vessels and constantly courier it to your long-term storage site. (a 1GW reactor would produce less than a half liter of waste product per day so you could make each container hold 100cc of the stabilized waste products and only need a modified armored vehicle to safely transport the five uber-bottles each day) With solid fuel reactors, you have large refueling events that generate multiple tons of waste per event. The quantity that must be managed at once makes it that much more dangerous to handle and transport safely.
Another nice thing about molten salt reactors is that they can be 97% fuel efficient. Unlike our current light water reactors which only burn about 10% of the fuel before the solid fuel is too contaminated with reaction poisoning fission products to keep an efficient reaction going any more. This efficiency is mostly due to on-site constant fuel reprocessing. There's an alternative molten salt reactor approach that doesn't involve reprocessing that is about 50% fuel efficient but gives you a lot of crappy waste every 20 years. I prefer frequent small quantities myself...
Possibly the nicest thing is that if you use a dual fuel configuration (a LiF/BiF2/UF4 kernel and a LiF/BiF2/ThF4 shielding/breeding layer) the core is thermally self-limiting. As the reactor heats up, the salt mixture expands and reduces the reaction rate until the whole thing stabilizes around 1500-1900C (the final temp depends on the exact fraction of UF4 in the mixture). You don't need control rods or any of the additional equipment to maintain moving parts in the reactor. All you need are pumps to cycle the kernel fluid and the primary cooling fluid and if those shut down, there's nothing to go wrong. The whole thing heats up and sits there radiating heat. If you want to put an automatic stop to the heat, put a thermal plug in the bottom that will melt if primary cooling ever stops and drain the whole core into subcritical storage containers underneath the core.
One big problem with the molten salt reactor is that the existing nuclear equipment industry makes most of it's money from fuel manufacturing. Molten salt reactors are constantly reforming the liquid fuel on-site, which means that the existing nuclear infrastructure has to change their business model (or be supplanted) before it can possibly work.
The other huge problem is that most of the advantages of the Thorium fuel cycle come from the fact that it's a breeding/reprocessing cycle. Both of which (fuel breeding and fuel reprocessing) are currently illegal in most first world countries due to nuclear proliferation concerns. Laws can be changed, but governments would have to be reassured about the risks. The thorium fuel cycle can be spiked with U232 which will prevent the creation of nuclear bombs (because U232 decays into a hard gamma emitter that destroys nearby electronics), but wouldn't prevent the construction of radiological "dirty" bombs (basically what Korea can build right now).
Ultimately, the big advantage of newer fission reactors over fusion reactors is that we can build the fission reactors today. Further, if we decide to breed fuel, there's enough known U238 and Th232 in the upper crust to prov
[...] the vast majority of firearm homicides [could be prevented by a little common sense]
You're being glib. Common sense won't disarm gangs in Compton. It would take a decades-long effort and the decriminalization of drugs (which funds the vast majority of criminal violence in this country). Preventing accidental gun deaths means locking up your guns, even the home-defense gun. Which is just common sense.
It sounds like you're trying to defend gun ownership, when the fact remains we have about 10,000 gun deaths per year, whatever the cause.
How many of those are police inflicted? How many are suicides? How many are self-defense? And then the other side of the coin. How many positive uses of guns (self-defense, police, etc.) don't result in a fatality?
Guns in the hands of Americans kill more people in this country every year than islamic terrorists ever have, but somehow, it's the terrorists that we're all afraid of.
True, but guns have an upside. They can help the good guys as much as the bad guys (more so, IMNSHO). Not that I think we should be afraid of terrorists. But I think that being afraid of guns is equally self-destructive.
If you're going to then come back and say those 10,000 people would have just been killed some other way without guns [...]
Nah. Some of the gun deaths are replaced with knifings and clubbings, but not quite as many. Interestingly, though, fewer victims die, but a LOT fewer attackers die (since it's much more dangerous to defend yourself with a knife than with a gun).
Having guns in our society has a cost and a benefit. When I look at the numbers, I see that most (not all) gun injuries and fatalities happen to a specific high-crime, high-risk part of society (not me or my family/community). The beneficial aspect is both society wide as well as personal. So from my upper-middle-class seat, the cost is low and the benefit substantial. Colt marketed his six gun as "The Equalizer", so that a five foot 100 lb woman could hold her own against a six foot bruiser out to do her harm. That's how I perceive guns and that's why I want them in my neighbor's homes and in my home.
You may as well console someone who gets mugged by saying "well, you know, people accidentally lose money every day." It's not relevant to the incident.
But the usual response to such a crime (afraid to go out, jumping at every noise in a shadow) is just the same as our current national fear-fest, and just as self-destructive. The appropriate internal response to being mugged is to be a little upset with yourself for being in a situation where you could be mugged and learning how to avoid that situation in the future. Externally, go to the police and describe the suspect as well as you can, then forget about it. When consoling a mugging victim--express sympathy, and internally hope that they don't become afraid of the world. Offering to be with them while "getting back out there" may help quite a bit.
Back to terrorism, one appropriate response to 9/11 is to avoid the situation that got you there (i.e. stop being the cause of so many people's deaths, which causes their surviving relatives to attempt to lash out at you). One other appropriate response is to do a better job of screening packages in high-risk areas. Getting on an airplane, knives don't matter (sharp knives are usually available in the first-class service area). Bombs and guns matter. Make sure there are no bombs in any luggage and no guns in carry-on luggage. Oh, and since it's not difficult to locate or bring a weapon onto an airplane, decide not to simply hand over the airplane to anyone who threatens a stewardess (this actually happened before flight 93 crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside).
Getting all wound up about small knives, bottles over 100ml, x-raying shoes, stopping business travelers from bringing both a carry-on and a briefcase, the color of the national fear-o-meter, etc. is a complete and utter travesty. That is not how you mourn or deal with ~3000 deaths brought about by deliberate fury and rage.
In the United States roughly three times as many people are killed in gun accidents per year than 9/11.
Not to disagree with your overall argument, but this statistic is wrong. Three times 9/11 would be about 9000 accidental firearm deaths per year. According to the CDC, there are actually about 750 accidental deaths attributed to guns each year in the US (CDC Mortality Statistics - select "after 1999", then "intent -> unintentional" and "cause -> firearm"). Which is about 25% of 9/11.
I would suggest using automobile accidents in the US as well, since it only takes about three-four weeks of US automobile fatalities (~45,000/year) to equal one 9/11.
So why is there talk about trading liberty for security? Even though the security vs liberty argument is as flawed as the mythical man month, the point still remains - why do I need this extra security anyway? It's expensive, it costs me my rights and it's ineffective.
Incorrect, as this may well throw the election to the Democrats.
What? If you're not gung-ho for Bush et.al., why would you object to Obama being elected? I consider myself a libertarian, but if the Dems won this one, I'm not going to be boo-hooing in the streets about it. The Republicans need a few more smackdowns before they'll decide to return to the moderate middle.
I want a Republican party that doesn't pander to neocons or the religious right. So as long as the Republican Party continues to claim it represents those repulsive groups, my vote goes elsewhere. People who want a better Republican party, but still vote for the same old Republican candidates aren't going to be the cause of any change.
I'll go one better than voting for the Libertarian candidate: as long as the Democrat candidate isn't Hillary, I'm going to vote Democrat in 2008. Even if it is Hillary, I'll vote Libertarian. But there's not really a chance in hell that this registered Republican is going to vote Republican in 2008. They've fucked this country up for far too long.
I think we're agreeing. I'm simply interpreting the original argument differently from you.
When someone says "we've already spent..." as a response to someone else's "We should change to..." I hear: "we'll have to spend that much all over again." The subsequent counter-arguments you provide are potential arguments, but unlikely. It's much more likely that the MBA's don't believe that the cost of redeveloping the IT software and services will be significant. Most likely, they've been sold a bill of goods by a MS salesperson and the IT staff is now dealing with the fallout of that conversation.
Not that I disagree with your characterization of sunk costs. Throwing good money after bad is a waste of time, energy, and money. However, I think that the argument you responded to was actually making a valid argument in a roundabout way. That the roundabout argument has merit (even if poorly phrased) is all I was saying.
Sunk costs are never a valid reason for continuing an action; despite that many people do just that.
Sunk costs should never be used as part of the argument to continue doing something that's failing.
In this case, sunk costs are a proxy argument for the cost of redeveloping all of the same applications in the new environment. Most MBA's have absolutely no clue how expensive software is to develop. Every time I have come out of a scheduling meeting, the MBA's believe I'm sandbagging on the "best case" estimate, the developers believe I didn't put enough emphasis on the "worst case" estimate.
Whenever someone tries to use sunk costs to justify a course of action I show them the door since I know they haven't thought things through.
If their LAMP applications and services are working (which they appear to be), your hasty objection would be for all the wrong reasons.
It's just my opinion. But since you asked for specifics:
Lack of personal hygiene. Inability to understand other points of view. Attempt to completely opt out of all sides of producer/consumer relationships. Renouncing parenthood (my wife and I are trying).
Richard Stallman is a loon, but he's absolutely right. The only mistake I can see is that he was optimistic on the schedule by 25 years or so.
Re:And what do horoscopes have to do with science?
on
Winnie Wrote a Math Book
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Your horoscope for today:
Aries - certain deficiencies in your education and upbringing will lead you to the sadly mistaken belief that the location of celestial bodies can influence events in your life.
(paraphrased from memory, originally in "The Onion")
Actually, money does "just go away". It's cash that doesn't just go away, but cash is not what got created (and then lost) in the internet bubble. Money was.
When a stock price goes up, the holders of that stock, who used to have less money (on paper) now have more money (on paper). One guy bought some stock from one other guy and the paper value of thousands or millions of people changed. The stock price changed because the market value of the stock has increased, usually because some measure of the wealth creating capability of the company has gone up (earnings and/or profits).
What companies and the people in them actually do is wealth by adding marginal value. This ability is measured through revenues and expenses. When a company shows its approach to creating wealth can make a profit, the difference between expenses and revenues is valued by both investors and potential investors and the stock price of the company increases, increasing the value of the company. That increase of the value of the company is where money aka wealth (as distinct from cash or currency) actually comes from.
Most people don't seem to have a strong grasp of where money comes from or why it's worth what it's worth. In our modern global economy, most of the world's money appears and disappears in stock markets. In the bubble, a LOT of money appeared and then disappeared. Some people did manage to make some money in the bubble, but something on the order of $5 trillion USD appeared and then disappeared over the course of 6 years, and 1) nobody came out of nowhere and invested that much money or 2) now has that money squirreled away somewhere.
He seemed surprised when I asked for the actual amount financed
He wasn't suprised, he was deliberately trying to keep you from thinking of the actual numbers and keep you considering the monthly payment. The monthly payment (without mention of balloon payments at the start and end of the term) can be arbitrarily set to any number and manipulation of that amount is the most important deceptive practice in car sales.
For that reason, I always start the conversation by mentioning that I'll be paying cash for the car and we'll be discussing the cash price. Once the cash price is set, I'm sometimes amenable to financing.
I like helmet mounted mirrors like this or this. I've heard the "third eye" mirrors are more fragile than other designs, but their warranty service is excellent... YMMV
Why would you vote for Obama? If you're a registered republican and a real conservative why would you vote for higher taxes, bigger government, and moar [sic] spending?
Be honest. The Republican presidential candidates running now will all support bigger government, more spending and bigger budget deficits. Trading bigger deficits for higher taxes isn't much of a trade. If you'd like a party to represent fiscal responsibility, the Republican party isn't going to do it. Not any more.
If Ron Paul wins the primary (he is who I will vote for in the primary), I'll vote for Ron Paul in the general election. To be honest, though, it doesn't look like Ron Paul is going to win the Republican primary. Not one of the other Republican candidates is even slightly palatable. I used to think that McCain would work out, but then he started courting the religious right, supports the Iraq debacle, and has stood up to be counted with Bush. So I lost any possible interest there.
Obama will be better than Bush, and will probably build back some foreign policy credibility for this country. His election will also be a huge smackdown for neocon leadership. Good enough for me.
Regards, Ross
Re:Unresponsiveness and inaction on /.'s part...
on
Microsoft FUD Watch
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· Score: 1
Have you been reading this discussion at all? Everyone's been pretty consistent:
These PR statements are not FUD, just typical PR-speak.
Once a great nation was told "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Are you trying to refute my point or something? I don't see the relation... We did not have enemies, who could destroy a city of ours within minutes, so we did not have anything to fear.
That quote was made in 1963. Height of the cold war. We most definitely did have enemies who could destroy a city of ours within minutes. Could destroy most of our cities within minutes, actually. And at that time, our leadership was proclaiming that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Hmmm...
Now we're being told to be fearful according to the DHS "fear-o-meter" and believe it or not, there are actually people who listen to that propagandist twaddle. The rest of us call them cowards.
Personally, I think it's just the difference between actual leadership and the worst fearmonging substitute for a president this country has ever had.
Where do you see "cowardice" here?
Asked and answered. If you buy into one word of the Bush administration's rhetoric and propaganda about "terrorists" and the need to limit freedoms for the sake of security... you're the coward because that is coward-speak.
Regards, Ross
PS, I consider myself a conservative (I voted for Reagan twice) and am a registered Republican and yet I voted for the libertarian nutbar in '00 (I was living in Texas and knew better) and '04. Unless it's Hillary, it looks like I'll vote Democrat in '08.
If you're burning fossil fuels to make the electricity, which do you think is more efficient: a car which turns chemical energy directly into kinetic energy, or a car which starts by converting that same fuel first to electricty at the power plant, then transmitting it many miles, then converting it to chemical energy in the battery, then converting that back to electricity, and then using that electricity to produce kinetic energy?
It's amazing that gasoline engines are so ridiculously inefficient, but the powerplant to EV "well to wheel" path is more efficient than the ICE vehicle (don't forget the distribution costs of gasoline, which are higher than for power plants). The "power plant to EV" path also substantially reduces carbon and nitrogen emissions (though usually increases the sulfur emissions when coal is in the mix).
Here's a well-cited "paper" on the subject. Even if you don't trust the author to be objective (since his business is selling electric car kits), the references are unimpeachable and the numbers impressive.
I'm all for reducing pollution, but if electric cars are running off the power grid, aren't they _worse_ than gas cars?
I don't think you realize just how low my expectations were heading into the movie. Yes, some of the technobabble was nonsense... Meh. Par for the course, IMHO.
Maybe it was the intern they fired for refusing to do what he was told because he knew it was idiotic. You'd make some money, and prove your point all at the same time.
Replace "intern" with "highly paid consultant" and you've got the plot of "Live Free or Die Hard". Turned out to be an unexpectedly good movie.
The best thing I see coming from this, there will longer be a Linksys WRT54G. [...] [Best Buy employees] constantly tell my customers that it is the finest router money can buy, and my customers, being the idiots they are, listen to the minimum wage dumbass patrol at Best Buy instead of their ISP.
What you want to start recommending is the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. It's also sold by Best Buy and the Best Buy salespeople will be more than happy to sell them this item when a specific request is made. Tell them that the extra $20 buys them reliability (in this case, it does).
If they're tech-savvy, they can flash the Buffalo with OpenWRT, and then they'll really be cooking. If they ask for your advice on firmware, keep them away from DD-WRT (in favor of OpenWRT) as DD-WRT has several routing and stability problems it inherited from the original commercial firmware. The Buffalo router I'm using here at home with OpenWRT has an uptime of... 156 days (when I started using OpenVPN). Same hardware with DD-WRT wouldn't stay stable for more than a few weeks.
She carried round a sodding speaker that 'converted the radiation to sound' and demonstrated how it sounded like loud static which was "clearly not good".
Um. All she was demonstrating was that the sun broadcasts radio and that the sun's broadcast sounds like static (since it is random).
What a loser. If you're going to come up with a crackpot theory, at least find a "problematic example" that isn't fully explained by 19th century science. Then again, I have the same problem with the ID crowd, so who knows.
Slashdot Mirror
Photons have momentum, which is transferable (solar sails, etc.).
Also, a photon's energy can be converted into mass via e=mc^2 (high energy gamma rays can spontaneously form stable particle/antiparticle pairs with actual mass). That possible "mass of conversion" can be expressed as the potential mass or equivalent mass of a photon.
Regards,
Ross
Actually, you'd be correct if you were to say that neutrons are not affected by electric fields. But neutrons are fermions with magnetic spin and are affected by (and can be moved around with) magnetic fields, so...
Regards,
Ross
Almost all of the waste from a molten salt Thorium fuel cycle reactor has a half life of 30 years or less (total storage of 300 years and it's as clean as the thorium ore it came from). Also, the mass/volume of the waste to be stored is substantially lower than a light water reactor because you can continuously mechanically and chemically extract the waste from the liquid fuel. With a solid fuel reactor, the waste is physically tied to 90% of the still-good U235 and the now damaged ceramic that makes up the rest of the pellet. You have to sequester all of that unfissioned U235 along with the pellet body which amounts to about 200x more waste to deal with.
Because the waste from a liquid fueled reactor can be continuously extracted in very small quantities, it's fairly easy to make uber-safe small containment vessels and constantly courier it to your long-term storage site. (a 1GW reactor would produce less than a half liter of waste product per day so you could make each container hold 100cc of the stabilized waste products and only need a modified armored vehicle to safely transport the five uber-bottles each day) With solid fuel reactors, you have large refueling events that generate multiple tons of waste per event. The quantity that must be managed at once makes it that much more dangerous to handle and transport safely.
Another nice thing about molten salt reactors is that they can be 97% fuel efficient. Unlike our current light water reactors which only burn about 10% of the fuel before the solid fuel is too contaminated with reaction poisoning fission products to keep an efficient reaction going any more. This efficiency is mostly due to on-site constant fuel reprocessing. There's an alternative molten salt reactor approach that doesn't involve reprocessing that is about 50% fuel efficient but gives you a lot of crappy waste every 20 years. I prefer frequent small quantities myself...
Possibly the nicest thing is that if you use a dual fuel configuration (a LiF/BiF2/UF4 kernel and a LiF/BiF2/ThF4 shielding/breeding layer) the core is thermally self-limiting. As the reactor heats up, the salt mixture expands and reduces the reaction rate until the whole thing stabilizes around 1500-1900C (the final temp depends on the exact fraction of UF4 in the mixture). You don't need control rods or any of the additional equipment to maintain moving parts in the reactor. All you need are pumps to cycle the kernel fluid and the primary cooling fluid and if those shut down, there's nothing to go wrong. The whole thing heats up and sits there radiating heat. If you want to put an automatic stop to the heat, put a thermal plug in the bottom that will melt if primary cooling ever stops and drain the whole core into subcritical storage containers underneath the core.
One big problem with the molten salt reactor is that the existing nuclear equipment industry makes most of it's money from fuel manufacturing. Molten salt reactors are constantly reforming the liquid fuel on-site, which means that the existing nuclear infrastructure has to change their business model (or be supplanted) before it can possibly work.
The other huge problem is that most of the advantages of the Thorium fuel cycle come from the fact that it's a breeding/reprocessing cycle. Both of which (fuel breeding and fuel reprocessing) are currently illegal in most first world countries due to nuclear proliferation concerns. Laws can be changed, but governments would have to be reassured about the risks. The thorium fuel cycle can be spiked with U232 which will prevent the creation of nuclear bombs (because U232 decays into a hard gamma emitter that destroys nearby electronics), but wouldn't prevent the construction of radiological "dirty" bombs (basically what Korea can build right now).
Ultimately, the big advantage of newer fission reactors over fusion reactors is that we can build the fission reactors today. Further, if we decide to breed fuel, there's enough known U238 and Th232 in the upper crust to prov
Having guns in our society has a cost and a benefit. When I look at the numbers, I see that most (not all) gun injuries and fatalities happen to a specific high-crime, high-risk part of society (not me or my family/community). The beneficial aspect is both society wide as well as personal. So from my upper-middle-class seat, the cost is low and the benefit substantial. Colt marketed his six gun as "The Equalizer", so that a five foot 100 lb woman could hold her own against a six foot bruiser out to do her harm. That's how I perceive guns and that's why I want them in my neighbor's homes and in my home.
Back to terrorism, one appropriate response to 9/11 is to avoid the situation that got you there (i.e. stop being the cause of so many people's deaths, which causes their surviving relatives to attempt to lash out at you). One other appropriate response is to do a better job of screening packages in high-risk areas. Getting on an airplane, knives don't matter (sharp knives are usually available in the first-class service area). Bombs and guns matter. Make sure there are no bombs in any luggage and no guns in carry-on luggage. Oh, and since it's not difficult to locate or bring a weapon onto an airplane, decide not to simply hand over the airplane to anyone who threatens a stewardess (this actually happened before flight 93 crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside).
Getting all wound up about small knives, bottles over 100ml, x-raying shoes, stopping business travelers from bringing both a carry-on and a briefcase, the color of the national fear-o-meter, etc. is a complete and utter travesty. That is not how you mourn or deal with ~3000 deaths brought about by deliberate fury and rage.
Regards,
Ross
I would suggest using automobile accidents in the US as well, since it only takes about three-four weeks of US automobile fatalities (~45,000/year) to equal one 9/11.Hear! Hear!
Regards,
Ross
I want a Republican party that doesn't pander to neocons or the religious right. So as long as the Republican Party continues to claim it represents those repulsive groups, my vote goes elsewhere. People who want a better Republican party, but still vote for the same old Republican candidates aren't going to be the cause of any change.
I'll go one better than voting for the Libertarian candidate: as long as the Democrat candidate isn't Hillary, I'm going to vote Democrat in 2008. Even if it is Hillary, I'll vote Libertarian. But there's not really a chance in hell that this registered Republican is going to vote Republican in 2008. They've fucked this country up for far too long.
I think we're agreeing. I'm simply interpreting the original argument differently from you.
When someone says "we've already spent..." as a response to someone else's "We should change to..." I hear: "we'll have to spend that much all over again." The subsequent counter-arguments you provide are potential arguments, but unlikely. It's much more likely that the MBA's don't believe that the cost of redeveloping the IT software and services will be significant. Most likely, they've been sold a bill of goods by a MS salesperson and the IT staff is now dealing with the fallout of that conversation.
Not that I disagree with your characterization of sunk costs. Throwing good money after bad is a waste of time, energy, and money. However, I think that the argument you responded to was actually making a valid argument in a roundabout way. That the roundabout argument has merit (even if poorly phrased) is all I was saying.
Regards,
Ross
In this case, sunk costs are a proxy argument for the cost of redeveloping all of the same applications in the new environment. Most MBA's have absolutely no clue how expensive software is to develop. Every time I have come out of a scheduling meeting, the MBA's believe I'm sandbagging on the "best case" estimate, the developers believe I didn't put enough emphasis on the "worst case" estimate.If their LAMP applications and services are working (which they appear to be), your hasty objection would be for all the wrong reasons.
Regards,
Ross
It's just my opinion. But since you asked for specifics:
Lack of personal hygiene.
Inability to understand other points of view.
Attempt to completely opt out of all sides of producer/consumer relationships.
Renouncing parenthood (my wife and I are trying).
Regards,
Ross
Richard Stallman is a loon, but he's absolutely right. The only mistake I can see is that he was optimistic on the schedule by 25 years or so.
Your horoscope for today:
Aries - certain deficiencies in your education and upbringing will lead you to the sadly mistaken belief that the location of celestial bodies can influence events in your life.
(paraphrased from memory, originally in "The Onion")
When a stock price goes up, the holders of that stock, who used to have less money (on paper) now have more money (on paper). One guy bought some stock from one other guy and the paper value of thousands or millions of people changed. The stock price changed because the market value of the stock has increased, usually because some measure of the wealth creating capability of the company has gone up (earnings and/or profits).
What companies and the people in them actually do is wealth by adding marginal value. This ability is measured through revenues and expenses. When a company shows its approach to creating wealth can make a profit, the difference between expenses and revenues is valued by both investors and potential investors and the stock price of the company increases, increasing the value of the company. That increase of the value of the company is where money aka wealth (as distinct from cash or currency) actually comes from.
Most people don't seem to have a strong grasp of where money comes from or why it's worth what it's worth. In our modern global economy, most of the world's money appears and disappears in stock markets. In the bubble, a LOT of money appeared and then disappeared. Some people did manage to make some money in the bubble, but something on the order of $5 trillion USD appeared and then disappeared over the course of 6 years, and 1) nobody came out of nowhere and invested that much money or 2) now has that money squirreled away somewhere.
Regards,
Ross
For that reason, I always start the conversation by mentioning that I'll be paying cash for the car and we'll be discussing the cash price. Once the cash price is set, I'm sometimes amenable to financing.
Regards,
Ross
I like helmet mounted mirrors like this or this. I've heard the "third eye" mirrors are more fragile than other designs, but their warranty service is excellent... YMMV
Regards,
Ross
Hm. You're right. I thought it was JFK. Have to upgrade the old memory...
Regards,
Ross
If Ron Paul wins the primary (he is who I will vote for in the primary), I'll vote for Ron Paul in the general election. To be honest, though, it doesn't look like Ron Paul is going to win the Republican primary. Not one of the other Republican candidates is even slightly palatable. I used to think that McCain would work out, but then he started courting the religious right, supports the Iraq debacle, and has stood up to be counted with Bush. So I lost any possible interest there.
Obama will be better than Bush, and will probably build back some foreign policy credibility for this country. His election will also be a huge smackdown for neocon leadership. Good enough for me.
Regards,
Ross
- These PR statements are not FUD, just typical PR-speak.
- "Microsoft Watch" column is lame.
- Please move along.
- Nothing to see here.
So, what were you complaining about again?Now we're being told to be fearful according to the DHS "fear-o-meter" and believe it or not, there are actually people who listen to that propagandist twaddle. The rest of us call them cowards.
Personally, I think it's just the difference between actual leadership and the worst fearmonging substitute for a president this country has ever had.Asked and answered. If you buy into one word of the Bush administration's rhetoric and propaganda about "terrorists" and the need to limit freedoms for the sake of security... you're the coward because that is coward-speak.
Regards,
Ross
PS, I consider myself a conservative (I voted for Reagan twice) and am a registered Republican and yet I voted for the libertarian nutbar in '00 (I was living in Texas and knew better) and '04. Unless it's Hillary, it looks like I'll vote Democrat in '08.
Here's a well-cited "paper" on the subject. Even if you don't trust the author to be objective (since his business is selling electric car kits), the references are unimpeachable and the numbers impressive.No. They seem to be much better.
Regards,
Ross
I don't think you realize just how low my expectations were heading into the movie. Yes, some of the technobabble was nonsense... Meh. Par for the course, IMHO.
If they're tech-savvy, they can flash the Buffalo with OpenWRT, and then they'll really be cooking. If they ask for your advice on firmware, keep them away from DD-WRT (in favor of OpenWRT) as DD-WRT has several routing and stability problems it inherited from the original commercial firmware. The Buffalo router I'm using here at home with OpenWRT has an uptime of... 156 days (when I started using OpenVPN). Same hardware with DD-WRT wouldn't stay stable for more than a few weeks.
Regards,
Ross
What a loser. If you're going to come up with a crackpot theory, at least find a "problematic example" that isn't fully explained by 19th century science. Then again, I have the same problem with the ID crowd, so who knows.
Ross
And the result of the study is that the causation probably has more to do with NIMBY than mast proximity.