What if I could invest in anything I wanted under the umbrella of social insurance?
Then most of the people would probably start investing in dubious schemes promising 3-4x higher returns than Social Security. Many of which would fail, beacuse, as a most basic economic rule, higher return means higher risks. What do you propose the society does with those unlucky (hundreds of) thousands whose retirement funds are gone? Leave them to die on the streets? Cover their losses?
Real Audio has been one of the main reasons I find myself booting Linux daily instead of Windows, since there is a fantastic clean real audio player for UNIX variants.
Dude, no need to burden yourself with booting Linux... Real Alternative
And, before you ask, yeah, there is a similar codec pack for Quicktime. The Google incantation for it will be left as an excersize to the viewer.:-)
...removes more CO2 from the atmosphere for the same reason that liquid Hydrogen adds more: The second law of thermodynamics.
How do you figure that? Sure, if hydrogen comes from reprocessing fossil fuel, but if it comes from nuclear plants ('pebble bed' reactors are ideal for it) or some future technology, possibly deriving from photosynthesis, it wouldn't add any CO2. Am I missing something?
Please also note that there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen
Didn't RTFA, eh? Noone is disputing that. It's just that gasoline is limited in supply, and has carbon which messes up the atmosphere, so it's simply not an option for the future.
Isn't Psuedoscience Fun?
Yeah, you go, dude! Tell those quacks at Physics Today what's coming to them. A bunch of ignorants, for sure.
Would be a KILLER app. Being able to download and save, schedule, find 'if you like this you might also like...' shows. Works with tv and movies.
Well, a couple of scripts, BT client, RSS feeds, broadband connection and some disk space and you can roll your own, today. I'm betting someone is already working on this, if not done.
Yup. I must say that the whole thing looks like snake-oil to me. Lotsa big words, talk of 'incredibly complex technologies', ready with a couple of MagicTech(tm) names. And a $25k price tag. And a web site that buckles under 5 minutes of slashdotting.
Well, shit hits the fan. The whole world economy will tank. At the moment, south-east Asia is crediting the ongoing US mad spending. Because it's Aisan goods they're buying, they have a direct economic interest. US government's hope is that the dollar will continue to slide, but in a slow, controlled fashion, so the huge $ debts won't mean as much 10 years down the line.
It's a rather large bet, it seems to me, and if Asia blinks for whatever reason, and starts demanding higher inerest rates on US treasuries, the people in the US could be in for a very rough ride.
Of course, noone will invade the US because of it, that would be silly. If someone owes you lots of money, he becomes your long-term partner, not an enemy.:-)
I guess that can rougly be translated as 150,000 people will have something to do with this. Not jobs that will be created out of thin air.
Count all the people that work in all of compaines that will be doing the engineering, manufacturing, accounting, servicing, driving, consulting... On a high-tech project lasting a couple of years, with a budget like that, you can easily arrive at that figure.
A single commercial space launch of any kind probably involves thousands of people.
Really, it's pretty sad if you think W2K is better than XP in any way, shape, or form.
The major difference is, to get W2k to behave properly, you need only about a week of beating it with a large stick. XP is an continuing struggle. And don't even get me started on XP Home.
If you're after 'ooohh... pretty', then XP is the thing for you. If you need to get something done, XP doesn't come close to w2k.
Filter out the highest frequency signals and viola...
Yeah, sure. If the government and the printer manufacturers were idiots who failed to notice the last 20 years of research in steganography.
Modern steganography systems can make their payload survive cropping out 50% of the picture, scanning it, enhancing contrast and printing it out again. In black and white. To put it another way - if you can visually recognise the picture, you can probably retrieve the payload.
Assuming 8 digits of hexadecimal, that would give you 32 bits. So a little box 6 x 6 pixels would be enough.
I seriously doubt that would be the system used. More likely would be some sort of spread spectrum encoding, where you spread a small amount of information over a large number of carrier bits. Systems like that are much more resiliant to defects (copying, scanning, cropping and such) and much much harder to discover (practically impossible unless you know exactly where to look and what to look for).
Basically, a magnifying glass and patience would get you nowhere.:-)
Isn't that the textbook definition of conspiracy? Just because everyone knows about it doesn't mean it isn't a conspiracy.
Umm... no. The textbook definition of conspiracy would be "an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons". So, this would only be an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan.:-)
The problem with your equasion is that you are almost certainly using inflated numbers. The 100k number that you are using is very suspect in terms of timing, results, and methodology.
Ok, the number probably is inflated. But, even if it's an order of magntude off, it still doesn't make the '2x' claim true.
Things might still go to hell, but it certainly looks promising.
Right. The only thing the US accomplished is shaking up the status quo by removing Saddam. Which, by any and all objective standards they had no right to do. Yes, Saddam was a murderous tyrant. But, so is Kim Yong Il. So are a handful of dictators in other X-stans, and quite a few African regimes. The case could be made for Israeli leaders, too. But, Bush decided to settle the score with Saddam, under the false pretenses of terrorism and WMDs. And now the people of Iraq have to bear the consequences. It's a sad, sad situation.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair puts the remains in mass graves at 400,000 so far."
Ok. And Saddam had been in power for how long? Two years?
Furthermore, I would expect the majority of those executions happened during the war with Iran [1] and in the aftermath of the Kuwait invasion [2].
All things considered, I'm would be very surprised if the Iraqi people considered the US to be their liberators and champions of freedom.
[1] When Saddam & Rumsfeld were chums [2] When the US called the Iraqi people to rebel, and then promptly abandoned them to Saddam's mercy, or lack thereof.
Saddam would have killed 2X the the number that have been killed this year just for the sake of repression.
Do you have _any_, and I mean _ANY_ evidence to back this claim up? I can provide you with one side of the equation. More than 100k people have died since the begining of the US invasion on Iraq, as a consequence of that invasion. Here's my source: New scientist.
Can you point us where it says that Saddam used to kill some 200-300k annually? Or were you just pulling the '2X' out of your ass, because 'we all know he was a murderous tyrant'?
The Iraqis as a people are much better off this year.
Try upgrading 300 year old streets, sewers and other infrastructure in cobblestone historic districts in Boston, MA, or Providence, RI, and its a different story.
Wait a minute, 300 years is old? My home town (Split/Croatia) is 1700 years old. The whole city (some 250000 people) gets water from a water system built by the Romans (no shit). And we still get DSL.:-) At exorbitant prices, but that's a different story.
Dude, USA is a very young country, a toddler practically.
What I'd like to know is did they upgrade their god-awful UI and game menus?
I'm having a real hard time thinking of a game that had a worse user interface and menu navigation. It sucked beyond belief. A menu system 10 levels deep and sometimes over 20 chioces on each level, and all you can see is the current selection and two immediately next to it. A nightmare. The person responsible should suffer public humiliation.
The game looks like they spent two years on developing gameplay (which is great, unless you play as a single player, but I won't go into that), and then hacked the menu system in two days.
Quick poll: How long before malvare starts using Google's thingy to find sensitive information?
With it, malvare can catalogoue your complete computer inventory (including files, IM contatcs, mail, addressbook...) and deliver it to someone waiting at a nearby IRC channel. Good times ahead.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for speaking for the rest of the world. Are you its spokesman?
Yup. We appointed him last week.
So who was responsible for the TNG episode where Q transfers everyone into the Robin Hood world?
Well, at least that episode gave us the unforgettable Worf line: "I protest! I am not a Merry Man!"
What if I could invest in anything I wanted under the umbrella of social insurance?
Then most of the people would probably start investing in dubious schemes promising 3-4x higher returns than Social Security. Many of which would fail, beacuse, as a most basic economic rule, higher return means higher risks. What do you propose the society does with those unlucky (hundreds of) thousands whose retirement funds are gone? Leave them to die on the streets? Cover their losses?
Real Audio has been one of the main reasons I find myself booting Linux daily instead of Windows, since there is a fantastic clean real audio player for UNIX variants.
:-)
Dude, no need to burden yourself with booting Linux... Real Alternative
And, before you ask, yeah, there is a similar codec pack for Quicktime. The Google incantation for it will be left as an excersize to the viewer.
...removes more CO2 from the atmosphere for the same reason that liquid Hydrogen adds more: The second law of thermodynamics.
How do you figure that? Sure, if hydrogen comes from reprocessing fossil fuel, but if it comes from nuclear plants ('pebble bed' reactors are ideal for it) or some future technology, possibly deriving from photosynthesis, it wouldn't add any CO2. Am I missing something?
Please also note that there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen
Didn't RTFA, eh? Noone is disputing that. It's just that gasoline is limited in supply, and has carbon which messes up the atmosphere, so it's simply not an option for the future.
Isn't Psuedoscience Fun?
Yeah, you go, dude! Tell those quacks at Physics Today what's coming to them. A bunch of ignorants, for sure.
Would be a KILLER app. Being able to download and save, schedule, find 'if you like this you might also like...' shows. Works with tv and movies.
Well, a couple of scripts, BT client, RSS feeds, broadband connection and some disk space and you can roll your own, today. I'm betting someone is already working on this, if not done.
First of all, where is the proof of concept???
Yup. I must say that the whole thing looks like snake-oil to me. Lotsa big words, talk of 'incredibly complex technologies', ready with a couple of MagicTech(tm) names. And a $25k price tag. And a web site that buckles under 5 minutes of slashdotting.
To many red flags.
Like other countries, we can just keep borrowing to pay the interest, so defaulting is not an issue.
Like... Argentina?
What happens if the US defaults?
:-)
Well, shit hits the fan. The whole world economy will tank. At the moment, south-east Asia is crediting the ongoing US mad spending. Because it's Aisan goods they're buying, they have a direct economic interest. US government's hope is that the dollar will continue to slide, but in a slow, controlled fashion, so the huge $ debts won't mean as much 10 years down the line.
It's a rather large bet, it seems to me, and if Asia blinks for whatever reason, and starts demanding higher inerest rates on US treasuries, the people in the US could be in for a very rough ride.
Of course, noone will invade the US because of it, that would be silly. If someone owes you lots of money, he becomes your long-term partner, not an enemy.
I guess we'll see.
150,000 jobs? Doing what?
I guess that can rougly be translated as 150,000 people will have something to do with this. Not jobs that will be created out of thin air.
Count all the people that work in all of compaines that will be doing the engineering, manufacturing, accounting, servicing, driving, consulting... On a high-tech project lasting a couple of years, with a budget like that, you can easily arrive at that figure.
A single commercial space launch of any kind probably involves thousands of people.
I for one do not trust European governments.
Well, I for one will welcome our new European overlords.
Hopefully, in a few years when my country (Croatia) joins the EU. I believe that, as far as overlords go, we could do worse. A lot worse.
I know a guy who has every episode of MST3K ever in a giant spindle.
:-)
Great! Could you give me his e-mail?
Really, it's pretty sad if you think W2K is better than XP in any way, shape, or form.
The major difference is, to get W2k to behave properly, you need only about a week of beating it with a large stick. XP is an continuing struggle. And don't even get me started on XP Home.
If you're after 'ooohh... pretty', then XP is the thing for you. If you need to get something done, XP doesn't come close to w2k.
Filter out the highest frequency signals and viola...
Yeah, sure. If the government and the printer manufacturers were idiots who failed to notice the last 20 years of research in steganography.
Modern steganography systems can make their payload survive cropping out 50% of the picture, scanning it, enhancing contrast and printing it out again. In black and white. To put it another way - if you can visually recognise the picture, you can probably retrieve the payload.
Assuming 8 digits of hexadecimal, that would give you 32 bits. So a little box 6 x 6 pixels would be enough.
:-)
I seriously doubt that would be the system used. More likely would be some sort of spread spectrum encoding, where you spread a small amount of information over a large number of carrier bits. Systems like that are much more resiliant to defects (copying, scanning, cropping and such) and much much harder to discover (practically impossible unless you know exactly where to look and what to look for).
Basically, a magnifying glass and patience would get you nowhere.
http://www.jesusonic.com/
Dude rulez supreme.
Isn't that the textbook definition of conspiracy? Just because everyone knows about it doesn't mean it isn't a conspiracy.
:-)
Umm... no. The textbook definition of conspiracy would be "an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons". So, this would only be an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan.
You see, I'm with the nonlinear dynamics and chaos research group.
The problem with your equasion is that you are almost certainly using inflated numbers. The 100k number that you are using is very suspect in terms of timing, results, and methodology.
Ok, the number probably is inflated. But, even if it's an order of magntude off, it still doesn't make the '2x' claim true.
Things might still go to hell, but it certainly looks promising.
Right. The only thing the US accomplished is shaking up the status quo by removing Saddam. Which, by any and all objective standards they had no right to do. Yes, Saddam was a murderous tyrant. But, so is Kim Yong Il. So are a handful of dictators in other X-stans, and quite a few African regimes. The case could be made for Israeli leaders, too. But, Bush decided to settle the score with Saddam, under the false pretenses of terrorism and WMDs. And now the people of Iraq have to bear the consequences. It's a sad, sad situation.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair puts the remains in mass graves at 400,000 so far."
Ok. And Saddam had been in power for how long? Two years?
Furthermore, I would expect the majority of those executions happened during the war with Iran [1] and in the aftermath of the Kuwait invasion [2].
All things considered, I'm would be very surprised if the Iraqi people considered the US to be their liberators and champions of freedom.
[1] When Saddam & Rumsfeld were chums
[2] When the US called the Iraqi people to rebel, and then promptly abandoned them to Saddam's mercy, or lack thereof.
Saddam would have killed 2X the the number that have been killed this year just for the sake of repression.
Do you have _any_, and I mean _ANY_ evidence to back this claim up? I can provide you with one side of the equation. More than 100k people have died since the begining of the US invasion on Iraq, as a consequence of that invasion. Here's my source: New scientist.
Can you point us where it says that Saddam used to kill some 200-300k annually? Or were you just pulling the '2X' out of your ass, because 'we all know he was a murderous tyrant'?
The Iraqis as a people are much better off this year.
Yeah, right. +1, Insightful.
Try upgrading 300 year old streets, sewers and other infrastructure in cobblestone historic districts in Boston, MA, or Providence, RI, and its a different story.
:-) At exorbitant prices, but that's a different story.
Wait a minute, 300 years is old? My home town (Split/Croatia) is 1700 years old. The whole city (some 250000 people) gets water from a water system built by the Romans (no shit). And we still get DSL.
Dude, USA is a very young country, a toddler practically.
What I'd like to know is did they upgrade their god-awful UI and game menus?
I'm having a real hard time thinking of a game that had a worse user interface and menu navigation. It sucked beyond belief. A menu system 10 levels deep and sometimes over 20 chioces on each level, and all you can see is the current selection and two immediately next to it. A nightmare. The person responsible should suffer public humiliation.
The game looks like they spent two years on developing gameplay (which is great, unless you play as a single player, but I won't go into that), and then hacked the menu system in two days.
Seems to bind itself to 127.0.0.1 only.
Nice.
Quick poll: How long before malvare starts using Google's thingy to find sensitive information?
With it, malvare can catalogoue your complete computer inventory (including files, IM contatcs, mail, addressbook...) and deliver it to someone waiting at a nearby IRC channel. Good times ahead.