As a geek, it's a knee-jerk reaction to turn instantly to a new technology to solve the problem. But depending on why your phone bill is expensive, Voice over IP might be a difficult/costly solution to your problem.
If your main costs come from calling someone long distance (particularly for long stretches of time), may I suggest one of the many 1 cent (or your denomination of choice)/minute phone cards? I used them in the past with someone with whom I would have long (2+ hours) conversations, and once the initial connection fee of 30 odd cents was paid, I could pretty much talk as long as I wanted. My phone bill went down from $60-80/month to one phone card ($20) per month or less (2000 minutes is a lot of minutes).
There are also 3-4c/minute phone cards with *no connection fees* and just a weekly "mainenance" fee on the card of 35c or so.
Many of these cards are now also rechargeable through the Internet or over the phone.
My experience has been that the sound quality of these cards is pretty adequate for voice conversations. If you're using the phones to swap recordings of symphonies, then I wouldn't suggest it.
Finally, my understanding is that there are many phone plans offering *unlimited* minutes for a reasonable rate. This may do the trick for you as well.
My point is, there are a lot of solutions to your problem that don't involve tossing your phone.
As far as I understand it, there aren't that many species that actually can teach each other things like this.
Also, from what I've seen written, birds don't actually last that long after they've hit a window. It messes them up pretty bad. They probably make it to a tree somewhere, where they keel over and die.
This is, incidentally, the whole point of the article -- that birds are dying, not that they're getting massive headaches.
Hi, thanks for all the Funny mods, but please mod me redundant instead. When you scroll down the comments, you'll see this link listed at least 3 times, posted at an earlier date than mine. I should have read through the comments before posting, and I deserve to be punished.
Right, but here the effort just might be worth it. Consider the market: let's say that just 20% of the users make their obfuscated e-mail available through Slashdot.
At last count, there were 743,601 users on Slashdot. 20% of that is around 168,720 emails. Now, all of these people are geeks, tech-minded, probably have above average earning potential and are much more likely to shell out for technology related items. And if the stereotype were true, they also love reading pr0n and could probably could stand to have their dicks enlarged. Granted, they also hate spam, but that's never been a consideration for spammers anyway.
Since all of the e-mails use the same form of obfuscation, once they've set up the scrubber for that week it's a fairly simple matter to scrub all of the e-mails.
All that being said, I recall reading an article that said simply translating them to numerical entities would do the trick.
Browsers can read them easily; Scrubbers can't. Apparently, they're not a solution on Slashdot, though: I can't get them to show up.
Personally, I think this is the ultimate solution to the problem. Sure, it's possible for scrubbers to change their algorithms to grab these too, but as other people have pointed out more eloquently, there are plenty more fish in the sea -- people who put their addresses out with no obfuscation at all are an easier target.
A broken link on the "Research" page. (Yeah, I know: "Here, you will find a number of in-progress research projects. At times, they will be unavailable. At times, they will produce spurious results. And at times, they will amaze and delight you." Still, a 404 isn't a research problem, guys.)
Concept Discovery - Utter crap. I looked through it and I don't think the algorithm is all that refined. I mean, it made "martin luther king", "martin luther king jr." and "martin luther king jr" three separate terms. Anything similar developed by Google would have easily merged the terms.
One of their "success stories": Spelling Correction: "Based on techniques...[blah blah blah]...our researchers developed a patent-pending method for determining which spelling correction candidates were better than others in a given context. In this way, we are able to match the most appropriate advertiser keywords to misspelled user queries." Hmmm... Let's search for Kawasaki, except I accidentally misspelled it Kawusaki. Ooops. No results. Let's see how Google does! Did I mean Kawasaki? Yes, yes I did.
Have more than one woman involved in the research lab for the company.
Not to get into a whole discussion about gender here, but I'm guessing that having a larger percentage of women in the group might lead to research in different areas.
I mean, women are probably a decent chunk of search engine users these days; it might be interesting to see if they have different interests or ideas on how they want to search.
If their goal is to increase market share, then one step might be to make services that cater to a now generally marginalized but growing sector of net users -- women.
Re:It won't be hard to beat Google
on
Yahoo! Research Labs
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Google News was originally featured in their research labs.
I'd say that's pretty useful now, wouldn't you? I suppose making money off of Google News is another matter.
I think that in order to group its stories according to general topic, it uses Google Sets, also developed in their research labs.
Really, it's research.overture.com
on
Yahoo! Research Labs
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Go to http://labs.yahoo.com Click on the "Research", then the "Open Source Search", and then the "Staff" tab.
Notice the URL now says: http://research.overture.com/staff.xml
Now, I'm not sure whether the two sites, research.overture.com and labs.yahoo.com were launched at the same time. There's no Netcraft record for research.overture.com (at least, there wasn't when I last checked it), so I couldn't get an uptime or anything of that nature.
But considering that the URL changes halfway through while you're browsing through the site, it leaves me to believe this was a fast hatchet job of getting something, anything out of the door to compete with Google, now that Yahoo is severing its ties with the search engine.
Yeah I had lots of trouble in school. Manly because I wouldn't take as face value rote learning or that what was told to me to just believe.
Maybe it was because you were an asshole and couldn't spell worth a d-a-m? Don't blame it on typos, man. You've been touch typing for at least 20 years.
You suck it up and perserve and win or you chuck it. Either you got what it takes or you don't. You don't blame it on pyschobabble bs.
Hey, I'm just curious. Do you wear glasses?
Maybe you don't.
But let's say you do!
Well, grow up. Take them off. Stop being such a wuss for not wanting to use the eyes you were given.
Can't see so well? Squint.
Heck, maybe you just weren't cut out to be someone who does things involving far distances. Become a jeweler, and walk everywhere instead of driving....
Ever broken your leg and had it put in a cast?
Wimp. Why didn't you just walk it off. Sure, it might hurt and maybe it will set in a terribly bad position, but hey! Maybe you're not made out to be someone who ever walks again....
Look, I've posted in this thread a billion times because ADD is something of a sensitive topic for me.
It's easy to not believe in something or someone you don't know anything about.
That's why it's easy for me to not believe you've ever had sex with a woman.
I know you're probably just a troll, but you've really pissed me off.
You know, for the longest time people claimed that autism derived from an unconscious message of rejection and hatred from the mother. This comes from an e-mail of someone who taught classes in the history of psychology:
In the history of autism, there was a dominant theory that came from Freudianism (but not Freud himself) that the cause of autism was the mother's unconscious rejection of her child, which the child in its sensitivity could feel, even though there was no overt behavior by the mother that anyone watching her could notice as "rejection" and the mothers denied that they rejected their child. So, the treatment was to bring the mother into psychotherapy and to first convince the mother that she did in fact hate her child. Then treatment was the psychoanalysis of the mother to find out what from her own childhood caused her to hate her child. This all takes maybe 5 to 10 years of weekly therapy. And the marriage would usually break, when the husband learned that the mother had done this damage by hating her own child. Meanwhile, the autistic child is getting no treatment at all, and now lives in the poverty of a single-parent family with even reduced resources. In fact, autism is a neurological failing, and the cause is not in the mother. Autistic children do benefit from early behavioral therapy to teach language and social behavior by overt means, and mothers need support and instructions on how best to help their child. I shudder to think of the thousands of mothers who were put through emotional and mental hell during those decades of dumb theory and dumb therapy, while their children got no help at all.
In the 1950s, kids with ADD were regarded as disobedient, unruly students who were purposefully wicked. Frankly, I'm glad we've moved forward in our understanding.
I get kind of pissed off when the assumption is made that parents are to blame for some trait in a child. While that is often the case, I've known some incredibly cool people with really fucked up childhoods.
This isn't the first time that I've had to defend ADD as a genuine disability that some people actually have that can be a real problem. I am posting here to respond not only to the parent posting, but also to all of the replies in which similar sentiments were expressed:
1) Some people are just a little bit eccentric/different. 2) The kids just don't feel challenged by the classes they're in. 3) It's just a clash between this generation's pace and the previous generation's pace.
Here's the problem. ADD is a disorder that is overdiagnosed and frequently misdiagnosed. As a result, there are a lot of mostly normal (although hyper) kids who are being slapped with the label "ADD". I think one of the reasons is the decline and fall of corporal punishment in schools. Am I saying that it should be reinstated? No! But I do believe that fear was an effective deterrent to actual normal behavior that adults just didn't want to deal with. So now, children who are behaving exactly as they should act at their age are being given Ritalin so that they'll act like tiny grownups in class.
Okay, so what is the result? The result is that we have a whole class of people growing up who have at most mild to medium ADD symptoms with an understanding of ADD that reflects their experience with it. In their cases, most of them did not have any problems themselves; only that some teachers and authority figures had problems with them. Most of them see ADD through the prism of their own experience: kids with ADD are just bored; they need more interesting classes and they just need to be accepted for who they are. They don't have problems; it's only society that has the problem.
However, there are some people with ADD who experienced problems themselves because of the ADD. They had problems focusing, not just in school, but in every part of their day. They struggled to complete even simple tasks. At the same time, certain activities allowed them to hyperfocus; during these activities, they became unaware of the outside world. Their mother might need to literally "grab" their attention by taking their head in her hands. At school, they found it difficult to relate with and and get along with any of the students. They felt ostracized and unwanted, and couldn't figure out why. Many of them had no close friends when growing up.
I was one of these people, and it was very, very hard. When I was finally diagnosed with ADD and began treatment (Dexedrine), it was as if the world suddenly became balanced. Without any huge effort on my part, it was easier for me to relate to others, to stay focused on tasks, and to be aware of my surroundings.
I've struggled for a long time internally between the idea, "If I try to 'treat' my ADD, won't that just cover up the person I really am?" and the other, just as valid "If I don't try to treat it, won't my ADD get in the way of the things I want to do and the person I want to become?"
Right now, I'm favoring the latter. We're all individuals; we all have something unique to share with the world; I feel that my special qualities shine through whether I'm on medication or not. I don't feel dumbed down by my current medication (Concerta), although YMMV. I've found that the typical anti-depressants that are diagnosed for ADD have a *very* negative effect on me, making me feel sluggish and depressed.
Social interaction is in my mind the real barometer of ADD. If you're hyperactive and are bored in class but get along very well with others and have lots of genuine friends, you probably don't need to worry as much about your ADD. But if it's hurting your relationships with others, then it's something that needs to be addressed.
I once listened to a lecture about couples where one of the partners has ADD, and one of the things said on tape stuck with me:
If you have ADD, there's someone in your life who is very angry with you.
It was bad enough when we just had humans scientists playing God.
Imagine what happens when robot scientists play God?
"The results of our experiment were unfortunate. Fortunately, we robots do not actually need there to be oxygen in the atmosphere in order to live, so the damaging effects were limited to a subset of more primitive beings."
Foreign bills are made of worse paper. The United State's bills are made of superior paper which can instantly be identified as genuine. It's very difficult, apparently, to exactly replicate the texture of the dollar bill.
So, if you are presenting US Bills in a foreign country, they are going to feel it with their hands to determine whether it is genuine or not.
I can see how you thought I was talking about them feeling foreign bills (i.e., non-US bills), but I meant they would feel US bills to determine their authenticity.
So, your final statement is correct. US Bills *are* truly better quality paper, and it *is* easier to recognize legitimate bills by the texture of the paper.
Maybe not (although I don't see how the technology wouldn't be easy to implement) but considering that the U.S. Government seems comfortable spending the dough to redesign the bill every 3-5 years or so, it seems to me that they could afford to make these kind of technology investments instead.
Try making a damn $20 bill that doesn't look like Disney money, and maybe it'll be more difficult to counterfeit.
Seriously, the US was like, one of the last countries to finally put watermarks in their bills. Even Turkey had watermarks before we did. Turkey!
Of course, their money is made out of crappier fibers; it doesn't hold up nearly as well as a US bill. From some people who are world travellers, I'm told the people in other countries don't even bother spot-checking a bill to see if it's genuine. They feel it with their hands. Apparently, tt's pretty easy to distinguish the real paper from the fake.
So, ultimately, I think that intricate designs are no longer going to stop counterfeiters. What's going to work is making the composite materials more difficult to mimic. What I think they should do, and I think this would probably work, is to weave the fibers so that there is contrast built into the paper weave itself which spells out the denomination: twenty, ten, etc. All you'd have to do is look at it from an angle or hold it to the light to see the weave. That would make it much, much more difficult to counterfeit.
Celiac disease is actually quite common (my mom has it), and it very, very, very undiagnosed in the US. In Ireland I know (from yet another Celiac friend) and in Europe I'm pretty sure that knowledge of Ciliac disease is greater there, and it is more likely to be diagnosed. They actually have entire aisles in grocery stores devoted to gluten-free products, and restaurants puts notes by dishes in restaurants that are gluten-free (meaning not containing even a small amount of gluten-containing flour).
It tends to be genetic, so I may have it myself, but I dread taking the test and finding out that I have to give up pasta. Still, I guess if it's a battle between the food I love and my health, I'll probably choose my health.
Your CPA is better than our CPA, then. We followed all of those steps, and then bubkas. We even got the letters from the organizations listing the amount of the donation.
Probably not, unless they can show lost profit due to this maneuver. I once tried to donate a few websites to some organizations. After I'd developed them, I found out that I can't deduct one dollar of their value. Not one. Basically, the only thing you can easily take a deduction for is hard goods or cash.
I don't think it used to be as much of a problem before everything went digital. Before, there weren't pixels, since it was analog. It might get blurrier the closer you were looking at the screen, but *not* pixellated.
As a child, I used to watch movies from the front 3 rows all the time. Nowadays, I just can't do it, and it's not just because my eyes have changed over time. Movies look funny up close.
I'm up to here with articles on Slashdot that oversell an item.
Saying that it makes a great gift made it sound like something already in production, or at least imminently so.
If it can't yet slice through a block of cheese, then it's hardly a cheese slicer, is it?
Granted, I suppose there's something to be said for having slices of cheese cut into neat shapes. Oh, wait, my bad. There really isn't. As far as I'm concerned, shaped cheese is just one luxury that kids today will have to do without. When I was young, I got a normal square piece of cheese put in my sandwich, and that was if I was lucky!
Okay, granted, Windows 2000, 2003 or whatever version they're peddling now is supposedly more secure and offers more features, but if an operating system works for you and you're familiar with it, what is the benefit in upgrading to an unfamiliar system?
I think within the geek mindset, there's an assumption that of course people would always want the latest and greatest. The truth is, they want what works.
Now, I myself use OS X, but my boss's computer runs Windows 98. He doesn't want to send Microsoft another dime -- he's somewhat upset with their crazy licensing. However, he still wants to be able to use the Windows-based software that he's got on his machine, and no, uninstalling everything and running some windows emulator on top of Linux is not something I can get him excited about.
If it has to be called inertia, then inertia can sometimes be a good thing. I call it pragmatism.
Slashdot Mirror
As a geek, it's a knee-jerk reaction to turn instantly to a new technology to solve the problem. But depending on why your phone bill is expensive, Voice over IP might be a difficult/costly solution to your problem.
If your main costs come from calling someone long distance (particularly for long stretches of time), may I suggest one of the many 1 cent (or your denomination of choice)/minute phone cards? I used them in the past with someone with whom I would have long (2+ hours) conversations, and once the initial connection fee of 30 odd cents was paid, I could pretty much talk as long as I wanted. My phone bill went down from $60-80/month to one phone card ($20) per month or less (2000 minutes is a lot of minutes).
There are also 3-4c/minute phone cards with *no connection fees* and just a weekly "mainenance" fee on the card of 35c or so.
Many of these cards are now also rechargeable through the Internet or over the phone.
My experience has been that the sound quality of these cards is pretty adequate for voice conversations. If you're using the phones to swap recordings of symphonies, then I wouldn't suggest it.
Finally, my understanding is that there are many phone plans offering *unlimited* minutes for a reasonable rate. This may do the trick for you as well.
My point is, there are a lot of solutions to your problem that don't involve tossing your phone.
As far as I understand it, there aren't that many species that actually can teach each other things like this.
Also, from what I've seen written, birds don't actually last that long after they've hit a window. It messes them up pretty bad. They probably make it to a tree somewhere, where they keel over and die.
This is, incidentally, the whole point of the article -- that birds are dying, not that they're getting massive headaches.
Hi, thanks for all the Funny mods, but please mod me redundant instead. When you scroll down the comments, you'll see this link listed at least 3 times, posted at an earlier date than mine. I should have read through the comments before posting, and I deserve to be punished.
Here's a movie of Dubya's desktop in action!
Right, but here the effort just might be worth it. Consider the market: let's say that just 20% of the users make their obfuscated e-mail available through Slashdot.
At last count, there were 743,601 users on Slashdot. 20% of that is around 168,720 emails. Now, all of these people are geeks, tech-minded, probably have above average earning potential and are much more likely to shell out for technology related items. And if the stereotype were true, they also love reading pr0n and could probably could stand to have their dicks enlarged. Granted, they also hate spam, but that's never been a consideration for spammers anyway.
Since all of the e-mails use the same form of obfuscation, once they've set up the scrubber for that week it's a fairly simple matter to scrub all of the e-mails.
All that being said, I recall reading an article that said simply translating them to numerical entities would do the trick.
Browsers can read them easily; Scrubbers can't. Apparently, they're not a solution on Slashdot, though: I can't get them to show up.
Personally, I think this is the ultimate solution to the problem. Sure, it's possible for scrubbers to change their algorithms to grab these too, but as other people have pointed out more eloquently, there are plenty more fish in the sea -- people who put their addresses out with no obfuscation at all are an easier target.
Have more than one woman involved in the research lab for the company.
Not to get into a whole discussion about gender here, but I'm guessing that having a larger percentage of women in the group might lead to research in different areas.
I mean, women are probably a decent chunk of search engine users these days; it might be interesting to see if they have different interests or ideas on how they want to search.
If their goal is to increase market share, then one step might be to make services that cater to a now generally marginalized but growing sector of net users -- women.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Google News was originally featured in their research labs.
I'd say that's pretty useful now, wouldn't you? I suppose making money off of Google News is another matter.
I think that in order to group its stories according to general topic, it uses Google Sets, also developed in their research labs.
Go to http://labs.yahoo.com
Click on the "Research", then the "Open Source Search", and then the "Staff" tab.
Notice the URL now says:
http://research.overture.com/staff.xml
Now, I'm not sure whether the two sites, research.overture.com and labs.yahoo.com were launched at the same time. There's no Netcraft record for research.overture.com (at least, there wasn't when I last checked it), so I couldn't get an uptime or anything of that nature.
But considering that the URL changes halfway through while you're browsing through the site, it leaves me to believe this was a fast hatchet job of getting something, anything out of the door to compete with Google, now that Yahoo is severing its ties with the search engine.
Yeah I had lots of trouble in school. Manly because I wouldn't take as face value rote learning or that what was told to me to just believe.
...
...
Maybe it was because you were an asshole and couldn't spell worth a d-a-m? Don't blame it on typos, man. You've been touch typing for at least 20 years.
You suck it up and perserve and win or you chuck it. Either you got what it takes or you don't. You don't blame it on pyschobabble bs.
Hey, I'm just curious. Do you wear glasses?
Maybe you don't.
But let's say you do!
Well, grow up. Take them off. Stop being such a wuss for not wanting to use the eyes you were given.
Can't see so well? Squint.
Heck, maybe you just weren't cut out to be someone who does things involving far distances. Become a jeweler, and walk everywhere instead of driving.
Ever broken your leg and had it put in a cast?
Wimp. Why didn't you just walk it off. Sure, it might hurt and maybe it will set in a terribly bad position, but hey! Maybe you're not made out to be someone who ever walks again.
Look, I've posted in this thread a billion times because ADD is something of a sensitive topic for me.
It's easy to not believe in something or someone you don't know anything about.
That's why it's easy for me to not believe you've ever had sex with a woman.
I know you're probably just a troll, but you've really pissed me off.
Fuck me? No, fuck you.
I was referring more to her ongiong use of Ritalin and her parent's willingness to seemingly try ANYTHING, even chemical.
:-)
My parents, tried *everything*. Finally, chemical is what worked.
Believe me, if you have a child with severe ADD, you will try *anything*.
I get kind of pissed off when the assumption is made that parents are to blame for some trait in a child. While that is often the case, I've known some incredibly cool people with really fucked up childhoods.
This isn't the first time that I've had to defend ADD as a genuine disability that some people actually have that can be a real problem. I am posting here to respond not only to the parent posting, but also to all of the replies in which similar sentiments were expressed:
1) Some people are just a little bit eccentric/different.
2) The kids just don't feel challenged by the classes they're in.
3) It's just a clash between this generation's pace and the previous generation's pace.
Here's the problem. ADD is a disorder that is overdiagnosed and frequently misdiagnosed. As a result, there are a lot of mostly normal (although hyper) kids who are being slapped with the label "ADD". I think one of the reasons is the decline and fall of corporal punishment in schools. Am I saying that it should be reinstated? No! But I do believe that fear was an effective deterrent to actual normal behavior that adults just didn't want to deal with. So now, children who are behaving exactly as they should act at their age are being given Ritalin so that they'll act like tiny grownups in class.
Okay, so what is the result? The result is that we have a whole class of people growing up who have at most mild to medium ADD symptoms with an understanding of ADD that reflects their experience with it. In their cases, most of them did not have any problems themselves; only that some teachers and authority figures had problems with them. Most of them see ADD through the prism of their own experience: kids with ADD are just bored; they need more interesting classes and they just need to be accepted for who they are. They don't have problems; it's only society that has the problem.
However, there are some people with ADD who experienced problems themselves because of the ADD. They had problems focusing, not just in school, but in every part of their day. They struggled to complete even simple tasks. At the same time, certain activities allowed them to hyperfocus; during these activities, they became unaware of the outside world. Their mother might need to literally "grab" their attention by taking their head in her hands. At school, they found it difficult to relate with and and get along with any of the students. They felt ostracized and unwanted, and couldn't figure out why. Many of them had no close friends when growing up.
I was one of these people, and it was very, very hard. When I was finally diagnosed with ADD and began treatment (Dexedrine), it was as if the world suddenly became balanced. Without any huge effort on my part, it was easier for me to relate to others, to stay focused on tasks, and to be aware of my surroundings.
I've struggled for a long time internally between the idea, "If I try to 'treat' my ADD, won't that just cover up the person I really am?" and the other, just as valid "If I don't try to treat it, won't my ADD get in the way of the things I want to do and the person I want to become?"
Right now, I'm favoring the latter. We're all individuals; we all have something unique to share with the world; I feel that my special qualities shine through whether I'm on medication or not. I don't feel dumbed down by my current medication (Concerta), although YMMV. I've found that the typical anti-depressants that are diagnosed for ADD have a *very* negative effect on me, making me feel sluggish and depressed.
Social interaction is in my mind the real barometer of ADD. If you're hyperactive and are bored in class but get along very well with others and have lots of genuine friends, you probably don't need to worry as much about your ADD. But if it's hurting your relationships with others, then it's something that needs to be addressed.
I once listened to a lecture about couples where one of the partners has ADD, and one of the things said on tape stuck with me:
If you have ADD, there's someone in your life who is very angry with you.
When you have ADD a
It was bad enough when we just had humans scientists playing God.
Imagine what happens when robot scientists play God?
"The results of our experiment were unfortunate. Fortunately, we robots do not actually need there to be oxygen in the atmosphere in order to live, so the damaging effects were limited to a subset of more primitive beings."
Yeah, but communists were really, really evil.
Obviously, you never grokked what Ronald Reagan was talking about.
I mean, even perverted baby killers aren't so craven as to bad-mouth the free market economy.
You misunderstood me.
Foreign bills are made of worse paper. The United State's bills are made of superior paper which can instantly be identified as genuine. It's very difficult, apparently, to exactly replicate the texture of the dollar bill.
So, if you are presenting US Bills in a foreign country, they are going to feel it with their hands to determine whether it is genuine or not.
I can see how you thought I was talking about them feeling foreign bills (i.e., non-US bills), but I meant they would feel US bills to determine their authenticity.
So, your final statement is correct. US Bills *are* truly better quality paper, and it *is* easier to recognize legitimate bills by the texture of the paper.
Maybe not (although I don't see how the technology wouldn't be easy to implement) but considering that the U.S. Government seems comfortable spending the dough to redesign the bill every 3-5 years or so, it seems to me that they could afford to make these kind of technology investments instead.
Try making a damn $20 bill that doesn't look like Disney money, and maybe it'll be more difficult to counterfeit.
Seriously, the US was like, one of the last countries to finally put watermarks in their bills. Even Turkey had watermarks before we did. Turkey!
Of course, their money is made out of crappier fibers; it doesn't hold up nearly as well as a US bill. From some people who are world travellers, I'm told the people in other countries don't even bother spot-checking a bill to see if it's genuine. They feel it with their hands. Apparently, tt's pretty easy to distinguish the real paper from the fake.
So, ultimately, I think that intricate designs are no longer going to stop counterfeiters. What's going to work is making the composite materials more difficult to mimic. What I think they should do, and I think this would probably work, is to weave the fibers so that there is contrast built into the paper weave itself which spells out the denomination: twenty, ten, etc. All you'd have to do is look at it from an angle or hold it to the light to see the weave. That would make it much, much more difficult to counterfeit.
Or, to stay truer to the original name:
"I can't believe it's not Unix"
Believing that it isn't Microsoft is pretty easy, actually.
I'd imagine a communion wafer is already low calorie. Now, is it low carb?
Actually, more importantly, is it gluten free?
Celiac disease is actually quite common (my mom has it), and it very, very, very undiagnosed in the US. In Ireland I know (from yet another Celiac friend) and in Europe I'm pretty sure that knowledge of Ciliac disease is greater there, and it is more likely to be diagnosed. They actually have entire aisles in grocery stores devoted to gluten-free products, and restaurants puts notes by dishes in restaurants that are gluten-free (meaning not containing even a small amount of gluten-containing flour).
It tends to be genetic, so I may have it myself, but I dread taking the test and finding out that I have to give up pasta. Still, I guess if it's a battle between the food I love and my health, I'll probably choose my health.
Huh.
Your CPA is better than our CPA, then. We followed all of those steps, and then bubkas. We even got the letters from the organizations listing the amount of the donation.
Nothing.
Probably not, unless they can show lost profit due to this maneuver. I once tried to donate a few websites to some organizations. After I'd developed them, I found out that I can't deduct one dollar of their value. Not one. Basically, the only thing you can easily take a deduction for is hard goods or cash.
I don't think it used to be as much of a problem before everything went digital. Before, there weren't pixels, since it was analog. It might get blurrier the closer you were looking at the screen, but *not* pixellated.
As a child, I used to watch movies from the front 3 rows all the time. Nowadays, I just can't do it, and it's not just because my eyes have changed over time. Movies look funny up close.
I'm up to here with articles on Slashdot that oversell an item.
Saying that it makes a great gift made it sound like something already in production, or at least imminently so.
If it can't yet slice through a block of cheese, then it's hardly a cheese slicer, is it?
Granted, I suppose there's something to be said for having slices of cheese cut into neat shapes. Oh, wait, my bad. There really isn't. As far as I'm concerned, shaped cheese is just one luxury that kids today will have to do without. When I was young, I got a normal square piece of cheese put in my sandwich, and that was if I was lucky!
inherent benefits
What inherent benefits?
Okay, granted, Windows 2000, 2003 or whatever version they're peddling now is supposedly more secure and offers more features, but if an operating system works for you and you're familiar with it, what is the benefit in upgrading to an unfamiliar system?
I think within the geek mindset, there's an assumption that of course people would always want the latest and greatest. The truth is, they want what works.
Now, I myself use OS X, but my boss's computer runs Windows 98. He doesn't want to send Microsoft another dime -- he's somewhat upset with their crazy licensing. However, he still wants to be able to use the Windows-based software that he's got on his machine, and no, uninstalling everything and running some windows emulator on top of Linux is not something I can get him excited about.
If it has to be called inertia, then inertia can sometimes be a good thing. I call it pragmatism.
Or,
"If it ain't broke..."