...and thus might end up being as cheap as nuclear energy if you count in the nukes' externalities like reprocessing, security, radioactive waste that are mostly dealt with by the government
In the US at least, nuclear power plant operators are required to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund for just this purpose. "As of March 31, 2005, the total revenue paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund amounted to $24.9 billion. Of that amount, only $8.9 billion has been spent on program costs, leaving a balance of $16.02 billion that has been collected, but not applied to the used nuclear fuel disposal program." So there is a big (and growing) pile of money for whatever long-term solution we eventually settle on.
I am not sure of the degree to which security costs are externalized. I think they pay their own dedicated protective forces, or pay the NRC a security fee. But after 911, the National Guard also got involved, which sounds like an externality, though I don't know whether that was permanent.
Since the theory is that stale sperm go bad, you might not get to (er, need to) "refresh" every day - only the day before you need some high quality stuff. (If so, the rationale for daily action is undermined.) That is my theory. Please cite me in your next study, thx.
I think if you took a poll of whether 1+1 is 2 or 5, of if you asked people whether they themselves are male or female, probably 5% would get it wrong. Why? Because they're "just messing with you," or they're filling in the same column of answers all the way down, or they think it must be trick question, or they're dyslexic, or just sloppy, or the machine used to read their answers didn't get oiled the night before. You just can't get the margin of error below a few percent.
I also believe that nothing short of dragging the conspiracy nuts up to the moon themselves will convince them of the fact. Maybe not even that.
How many such people actually exist? With every slashdot article mentioning the moon landings, there is a great uproar about these heretics. I'm sure they exist, but I've never met one, nor do I recall even reading a post from one on slashdot. It makes me wonder why these people (whoever they are) get under people's skin so much.
I like Gladwell's books because he selects a field and recaps the landmark studies (or anecdotes) in an interesting way. Granted, he then tries to make some over-arching argument, which is sometimes not too convincing. But IMHO he is an engaging reporter of others' research.
Maybe there is something about the reporting that makes this seem boring, but really, intellectual property is a huge issue at the present moment and going forward. Basing our economy on something that may or may not have any actual long-term value (depending whether nations play nice and protect each others' IP) is actually quite momentous.
I live in New Mexico, and super-saver shipping is so slow I have actually wondered whether they warehouse the goods enroute to make sure their cheapest shipping option isn't competitive with higher fare services. I mean, it cannot physically take over a week to drive across the country.
I've tried again and again to get info on DSL, but the phone company cannot tell me: A) how fast it would be at my address, and B) how much would it cost... not the intro base rate assuming you also pay them for local phone, but the total, bottom-line, amount-out-of-my-bank-account bill, after the intro rate expires. What kind of sucker do they take me for? If they can't tell me how much I'll be paying or what I'll get in return, I can't sign a contract now can I?
I didn't say that's where all the money went. What I said was "he lived a life of luxury, squandering more stolen money than he can ever repay," which is obviously true. But on top of what he squandered and paid out to investors to maintain the illusion of gains, he very well may have squirreled some away in foreign accounts, with relatives, whatever. I have no doubt that one more teams of auditors are running all the numbers and investigating every lead. There will be no shortage of folks digging for his buried treasure.
NEW YORK--Court documents show that Bernard Madoff and his wife Ruth lived a life of high luxury, with exclusive homes, yachts and other assets worth $823 million.
The revelations came in documents filed with the US Court of Appeals, which is due on March 19 to hear Madoff's appeal to be granted bail. He was jailed on Thursday after pleading guilty to a multibillion-dollar investment fraud.
The documents, filed by Madoff's lawyer Friday, show the Wall Street con man and his wife had $22 million worth of real estate at the end of 2008.
This includes the $7-million Manhattan apartment where Madoff lived from his arrest in December to Thurday's court hearing, when he pleaded guilty to 11 counts including fraud, perjury, money laundering and theft.
Lawyers for Madoff, 70, argue that he should be allowed back there on bail while he waits for his June 16 sentencing hearing. He is expected to receive a lengthy prison sentence, with a maximum term of 150 years.
In addition to the $7-million apartment, the Madoffs had a $1-million house in exclusive Cap d'Antibes in France, another in New York state and an $11-million house in Palm Beach, Florida.
$7-M yacht
Aside from the real estate, the disclosure lists nearly $10 million worth of furniture and art and a $7-million yacht named "Bull" in France, complete with its own $1.5-million slip.
The details in the legal documents regarding the couples' wealth follow months of lurid speculation in tabloid newspapers about how Madoff spent his ill-gotten gains.
In a list of monthly expenses, Madoff says he paid out a modest $200 a month in medical fees, with $250 for doctors' visits.
No expenses spared
No more than $70 a month went for entertainment at the New York apartment.
But in other areas, the Madoffs did not spare expenses. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent at their various houses on security and they listed paying $3,448 a month just to maintain the Florida yacht.
The vessel's skipper was paid $5,250--less than the $5,600 paid monthly to the captain of the yacht in France.
Long known for lavish tastes, the Madoffs are revealed to have owned $2.6 million in jewelry, a $39,000-Steinway piano and $65,000 worth of silverware in their New York apartment alone.
The couple's monthly expenses included $100,000 for legal fees, $140,000 for personal security, $2,860 for a housekeeper and $885 for a gardener, the document said. It also detailed more mundane monthly expenditures, such as $700 each for electricity and phones and $370 for cable.
At the same time, hedge funds were facing an unprecedented run on redemptions from their own investors. That meant the hedge funds may have had to quickly extract cash from their Madoff positions to pay their own investors back.
"People didn't stop believing in Madoff. They just needed the money, and that started this spiral," said Stephen Breitstone of the law firm Meltzer Lippe Goldstein & Breitstone, which is representing Madoff investors.
I wonder how that defence will fly when the son's are sued: "Your honor, members of the jury, my clients should not have to repay the millions of dollars that they received in salary, because they did nothing whatsoever to earn it."
People don't care about that, look how they cry about the so-called "death tax."
Wishful thinking. Case in point, the "ultimate regulator" would have caught Madoff decades ago, before he lived a life of luxury, squandering more stolen money than he can ever repay. Sure, govt. regulators failed to Catch Madoff for far too long, but according to you, they aren't necessary anyways, just step back and let the invisible hand sort it out, which is effectively what happened due to lax regulation. Well, the invisible hand failed. Madoff won. If you offered the average person all the money they could spend until the age of 70, at which point they have to finish out their life with treatment which is probably about average for rest homes anyways, they would take it.
As a backpacker, I'm amazed every year they fail to find a synthetic sleeping bag insulation superior to goose down. Synthetics are somewhat competitive per lb, and insulate better when wet, but they don't compress nearly as much as down. I wonder if the hydrogen-absorbing power of feathers is related to the air-trapping, insulating power of feathers? The article says the strong, hollow tubes of feathers are part of why they hold hydrogen.
"The fancier they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." -Scotty
Sounds nice, but statistically the truth is exactly the opposite here. Over the years, planes have become increasingly safe and reliable with more technology (complexity), accident rates have steadily declined. And even today, the highest-tech aircraft are the safest ones - the big new ones flown by major airlines. Colgan Air 3407 wouldn't have crashed if the pilot hadn't been allowed to nose-up in response to a stall - a patently stupid thing to, which the A330 prevents according to another post in this thread.
Meanwhile, on the other side, we have the argument that this Air France A330 crash was due to a software failure that forced the crew to fly without the autopilot. This is theory is highly speculative, yet even if true, all it means is the autopilot is not directly to blame because it wasn't operable during the crash, i.e. humans were in control. So I don't understand the anti-automation spin on this story at all.
That's a pretty broad statement to make without a shred evidence or reason. You say all environmental scientists are drinking the same kool-aid, I say it's probably just you choosing to dismiss an entire field of research because you disagree with what you know of their findings.
At ten times the energy output, it may be 10x more dangerous.
Who cares? All this fear is based on practically nothing. An increase in battery density of 10x, if true, is an incredible step forward, and could really open the door for electricity to displace oil. That is huge.
Not if your code is not tuned for this new "advanced hardware". Surely there are new compile flags to consider, and if you are not tuning your code for the new processor features it could very well be slower than before.
Then it isn't much of an upgrade. The CPU market thrived from its inception until just a few years ago because regular upgrades were justified by predictable performance increases. We went from about 7 mhz to about 3000 mhz in about 20 years, and it was great, the so-called "mhz myth" notwithstanding.
I would have thought the vast majority of surface area would simply be fold-out metallized mylar to concentrate the energy to a small collector?
I have a different theory
on
IT and Health Care
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Hold the conspiracy theories. It's relatively easy to install a stand-alone diagnostic device. It's a thousand times harder to migrate a system that's ingrained into how everybody does their work from moment to moment throughout the day. It requires conformity, and that means resistance (sometimes well justified!)
Actually, I think genetic comparisons are much more objective than most other real-world comparisons, because they are a digital code of finite length. Just use a very large sample of randomly chosen genes. Now if you want to join the argument of whether Republicans or Democrats are more similar to Nazis:), or whether the Iraq war is more like the Vietnam war or WWII Japan, or the economy is more like the 1970s recession or the 1930s depression, then you have a much less well-defined data set to work with.
What is a "US car company" anyways? Can it be defined? In practice it all boils down to the number of American voters employed by a particular company, which does make some sense.
Slashdot Mirror
In the US at least, nuclear power plant operators are required to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund for just this purpose. "As of March 31, 2005, the total revenue paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund amounted to $24.9 billion. Of that amount, only $8.9 billion has been spent on program costs, leaving a balance of $16.02 billion that has been collected, but not applied to the used nuclear fuel disposal program." So there is a big (and growing) pile of money for whatever long-term solution we eventually settle on.
I am not sure of the degree to which security costs are externalized. I think they pay their own dedicated protective forces, or pay the NRC a security fee. But after 911, the National Guard also got involved, which sounds like an externality, though I don't know whether that was permanent.
Since the theory is that stale sperm go bad, you might not get to (er, need to) "refresh" every day - only the day before you need some high quality stuff. (If so, the rationale for daily action is undermined.) That is my theory. Please cite me in your next study, thx.
I think if you took a poll of whether 1+1 is 2 or 5, of if you asked people whether they themselves are male or female, probably 5% would get it wrong. Why? Because they're "just messing with you," or they're filling in the same column of answers all the way down, or they think it must be trick question, or they're dyslexic, or just sloppy, or the machine used to read their answers didn't get oiled the night before. You just can't get the margin of error below a few percent.
How many such people actually exist? With every slashdot article mentioning the moon landings, there is a great uproar about these heretics. I'm sure they exist, but I've never met one, nor do I recall even reading a post from one on slashdot. It makes me wonder why these people (whoever they are) get under people's skin so much.
I like Gladwell's books because he selects a field and recaps the landmark studies (or anecdotes) in an interesting way. Granted, he then tries to make some over-arching argument, which is sometimes not too convincing. But IMHO he is an engaging reporter of others' research.
Maybe there is something about the reporting that makes this seem boring, but really, intellectual property is a huge issue at the present moment and going forward. Basing our economy on something that may or may not have any actual long-term value (depending whether nations play nice and protect each others' IP) is actually quite momentous.
I live in New Mexico, and super-saver shipping is so slow I have actually wondered whether they warehouse the goods enroute to make sure their cheapest shipping option isn't competitive with higher fare services. I mean, it cannot physically take over a week to drive across the country.
I've tried again and again to get info on DSL, but the phone company cannot tell me: A) how fast it would be at my address, and B) how much would it cost... not the intro base rate assuming you also pay them for local phone, but the total, bottom-line, amount-out-of-my-bank-account bill, after the intro rate expires. What kind of sucker do they take me for? If they can't tell me how much I'll be paying or what I'll get in return, I can't sign a contract now can I?
I can see how the clock swallows, but more importantly, where does it poop?
I didn't say that's where all the money went. What I said was "he lived a life of luxury, squandering more stolen money than he can ever repay," which is obviously true. But on top of what he squandered and paid out to investors to maintain the illusion of gains, he very well may have squirreled some away in foreign accounts, with relatives, whatever. I have no doubt that one more teams of auditors are running all the numbers and investigating every lead. There will be no shortage of folks digging for his buried treasure.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gqvXBPfrYOKdzGqoOStYPAH_fEAQ
NEW YORK--Court documents show that Bernard Madoff and his wife Ruth lived a life of high luxury, with exclusive homes, yachts and other assets worth $823 million.
The revelations came in documents filed with the US Court of Appeals, which is due on March 19 to hear Madoff's appeal to be granted bail. He was jailed on Thursday after pleading guilty to a multibillion-dollar investment fraud.
The documents, filed by Madoff's lawyer Friday, show the Wall Street con man and his wife had $22 million worth of real estate at the end of 2008.
This includes the $7-million Manhattan apartment where Madoff lived from his arrest in December to Thurday's court hearing, when he pleaded guilty to 11 counts including fraud, perjury, money laundering and theft.
Lawyers for Madoff, 70, argue that he should be allowed back there on bail while he waits for his June 16 sentencing hearing. He is expected to receive a lengthy prison sentence, with a maximum term of 150 years.
In addition to the $7-million apartment, the Madoffs had a $1-million house in exclusive Cap d'Antibes in France, another in New York state and an $11-million house in Palm Beach, Florida.
$7-M yacht
Aside from the real estate, the disclosure lists nearly $10 million worth of furniture and art and a $7-million yacht named "Bull" in France, complete with its own $1.5-million slip.
The details in the legal documents regarding the couples' wealth follow months of lurid speculation in tabloid newspapers about how Madoff spent his ill-gotten gains.
In a list of monthly expenses, Madoff says he paid out a modest $200 a month in medical fees, with $250 for doctors' visits.
No expenses spared
No more than $70 a month went for entertainment at the New York apartment.
But in other areas, the Madoffs did not spare expenses. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent at their various houses on security and they listed paying $3,448 a month just to maintain the Florida yacht.
The vessel's skipper was paid $5,250--less than the $5,600 paid monthly to the captain of the yacht in France.
Long known for lavish tastes, the Madoffs are revealed to have owned $2.6 million in jewelry, a $39,000-Steinway piano and $65,000 worth of silverware in their New York apartment alone.
The couple's monthly expenses included $100,000 for legal fees, $140,000 for personal security, $2,860 for a housekeeper and $885 for a gardener, the document said. It also detailed more mundane monthly expenditures, such as $700 each for electricity and phones and $370 for cable.
OK, I found the answer (cite):
At the same time, hedge funds were facing an unprecedented run on redemptions from their own investors. That meant the hedge funds may have had to quickly extract cash from their Madoff positions to pay their own investors back.
"People didn't stop believing in Madoff. They just needed the money, and that started this spiral," said Stephen Breitstone of the law firm Meltzer Lippe Goldstein & Breitstone, which is representing Madoff investors.
People don't care about that, look how they cry about the so-called "death tax."
Wishful thinking. Case in point, the "ultimate regulator" would have caught Madoff decades ago, before he lived a life of luxury, squandering more stolen money than he can ever repay. Sure, govt. regulators failed to Catch Madoff for far too long, but according to you, they aren't necessary anyways, just step back and let the invisible hand sort it out, which is effectively what happened due to lax regulation. Well, the invisible hand failed. Madoff won. If you offered the average person all the money they could spend until the age of 70, at which point they have to finish out their life with treatment which is probably about average for rest homes anyways, they would take it.
Wow, so he actually beat the market?
Seriously, if he had nothing invested, I wonder why the implosion of Wall Street impacted his ponzi scheme at all?
As a backpacker, I'm amazed every year they fail to find a synthetic sleeping bag insulation superior to goose down. Synthetics are somewhat competitive per lb, and insulate better when wet, but they don't compress nearly as much as down. I wonder if the hydrogen-absorbing power of feathers is related to the air-trapping, insulating power of feathers? The article says the strong, hollow tubes of feathers are part of why they hold hydrogen.
Sounds nice, but statistically the truth is exactly the opposite here. Over the years, planes have become increasingly safe and reliable with more technology (complexity), accident rates have steadily declined. And even today, the highest-tech aircraft are the safest ones - the big new ones flown by major airlines. Colgan Air 3407 wouldn't have crashed if the pilot hadn't been allowed to nose-up in response to a stall - a patently stupid thing to, which the A330 prevents according to another post in this thread.
Meanwhile, on the other side, we have the argument that this Air France A330 crash was due to a software failure that forced the crew to fly without the autopilot. This is theory is highly speculative, yet even if true, all it means is the autopilot is not directly to blame because it wasn't operable during the crash, i.e. humans were in control. So I don't understand the anti-automation spin on this story at all.
That's a pretty broad statement to make without a shred evidence or reason. You say all environmental scientists are drinking the same kool-aid, I say it's probably just you choosing to dismiss an entire field of research because you disagree with what you know of their findings.
Who cares? All this fear is based on practically nothing. An increase in battery density of 10x, if true, is an incredible step forward, and could really open the door for electricity to displace oil. That is huge.
Then it isn't much of an upgrade. The CPU market thrived from its inception until just a few years ago because regular upgrades were justified by predictable performance increases. We went from about 7 mhz to about 3000 mhz in about 20 years, and it was great, the so-called "mhz myth" notwithstanding.
I would have thought the vast majority of surface area would simply be fold-out metallized mylar to concentrate the energy to a small collector?
Hold the conspiracy theories. It's relatively easy to install a stand-alone diagnostic device. It's a thousand times harder to migrate a system that's ingrained into how everybody does their work from moment to moment throughout the day. It requires conformity, and that means resistance (sometimes well justified!)
Actually, I think genetic comparisons are much more objective than most other real-world comparisons, because they are a digital code of finite length. Just use a very large sample of randomly chosen genes. Now if you want to join the argument of whether Republicans or Democrats are more similar to Nazis :), or whether the Iraq war is more like the Vietnam war or WWII Japan, or the economy is more like the 1970s recession or the 1930s depression, then you have a much less well-defined data set to work with.
Huh? Tell me the Model S does't resemble other consumer vehicles in that price range.
What is a "US car company" anyways? Can it be defined? In practice it all boils down to the number of American voters employed by a particular company, which does make some sense.