Considering that there's also a city named Washington in this country, "Washington state" is a good way to disambiguate the state from the federal capital.
Gold has almost no real value. You can do very little with it other than make jewelry.
Gold is also an excellent conductor of electricity, a soft, easily malleable metal, along with other cool properties. It likely has countless possible uses that are stripped from the human race by the ancient superstition that a slightly-more-rare metal has some magical and mystical value to it. Aluminum was once more valuable than gold, until its myriad of uses was unleashed by the invention of our electricity-intensive processes to produce aluminum from bauxite. Now aluminum has contributed positively to the human race in very obvious ways. I wonder how much good the wholesale release of stored gold would do.
The depositors at Northern Rock were, sorry to say, idiots. I would _never_ put my money into a fractional reserve bank....
Fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, it is theft, and it should be criminal. The idea is criminal for anyone to perform except for banks licensed by the State or Federal governments.
People who die from surgical errors are, sorry to say, idiots. I would _never_ undergo surgery. Surgery is physical assault, it is mutilation, and it should be criminal. The idea is criminal for anyone to perform except for physicians licensed by the state or federal governments. Did you see the fallacy? There's two: first, you severely mischaracterize why and how fractional reserve banking is legally controlled. If you act as a bank (in some strictly-defined ways) without being licensed, you're guilty of banking without a license, just as I would be guilty of performing medicine without a license if I tried giving people open-heart surgery. It doesn't mean that fractional-reserve banking (or surgery for that matter) are inherently bad things, just that they are high-risk endeavors that are considered deserving of licensing and control.
Your second fallacy is your apparent belief that, since fractional-reserve banking involves a degree of risk, it shouldn't be done at all. That's absurd. Risks can be controlled and mitigated, and in the decades of experience we have with fractional-reserve banking, the risks in question have been mitigated. The biggest failure in fractional-reserve banking was the monetary contraction towards the beginning of the Depression, which was caused by a combination of poor banking regulation and poor monetary policy (including what remained of the Gold Standard at the time).
All banks are bankrupt -- if each person that visits Slashdot this week was to withdraw all their savings, checking accounts, money markets and CDs (even at a penalty), many banks in the U.S. would be insolvent.
No, the bank would not be insolvent. Uncollected debts that are owed to you are still assets, and insolvency only occurs when your liabilities exceed your assets--not when your short-term liabilities exceed your cash on hand. (That's a cashflow problem. And yes, they borrow funds from the Fed to cover that cashflow problem, but once they collect their debts they pay the Fed back with interest--part of the cost of doing business.) And yes, the percentage of uncollected debt that never ends up being collected due to deadbeats is already accounted for--that's one of the purposes of interest, to mitigate risk. In any case, I enjoy living in a society where I can collect interest and borrow money without too much difficulty, and where the risk is spread out sufficiently. If you want to bury gold in your backyard instead, that's up to you.
I made a similar observation awhile back, and agree that it's rather annoying (even as a strong critic of Bush myself) to see constant off-topic criticisms of Bush. However, this one is actually on-topic--Iraq is Bush's war, Iraq is hideously expensive, and NASA is one of many agencies that could put that money to better use.
While I'm not the GP poster, nor have I ever seen gay fursuit porn, it can't be nearly as bad as the harlequin fetus. If we weren't so desensitized to them, goatse and tubgirl would probably be worse too. Hell, a lot of the stuff on rotten.com is definitely worse.
Apple had DRM-free music available first, albeit at a higher price and with a better codec. Of course, I don't think they really care about owning the digital download market as long as everyone is DRM-free, but they're in a good position to compete.
What, just like instant messengers? If something as simple as "sending a rich text message from one computer to another" can't interoperate across providers, who the hell is going to make 3D virtual worlds interoperate, when they have entirely different graphics engines?
You know what fair pay is for an executive? $10 million in stock. Match that share-for-share--if the stock doubles in value, they get $20 million. If the stock tanks, they might only get $5 million. Pay dividends and the incentive bonuses take care of themselves. If you don't have a personal stake in the company, they shouldn't be making the calls.
Apple doesn't do anything to prevent modded AppleTV's, modded iPods, or modded Macs. There are only two cases in which Apple has done anything to prevent "homebrewing"--unlocking the iPhone and running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. Making Mac OS X unusable on non-Apple hardware is a rather reasonable and light-handed approach to preventing software copyright infringement--the only way you can get Mac OS X for Intel is to buy a Mac. You might say "yes, but what about people who bought a Mac, installed Linux on it, and installed Mac OS X on their other Intel box". I don't think anyone believes that's actually what is happening in that case.
That leaves the iPhone. And you're right, Apple probably is in the wrong here. But it's not characteristic of them to be this way, as it is for Sony or Microsoft.
Mexico's literacy rate is 91% (CIA World Factbook). Their poverty rate is 40% (same source). 18% of Mexico's labor force is engaged in agriculture in Mexico.
Only if you're using some type of newfangled technology. In ordinary, coaxial cable TV, all channels are sent down the same cable simultaneously on different frequencies. The cable company has no way of telling if your TV is even on, much less what you're watching.
I think you would find that a lot of right wingers on the forefront of the illegal immigration charge have a lot of H1-B employees with engineering degrees wondering why they have to jump through so many hoops to be a citizen when evidentally a bunch of illiterate crop pickers get to be citizens after sneaking across the border.
Now now, just because they aren't fluent in English doesn't mean they can't read any written languages. You do know that there are other languages, right?
When it comes to protecting our rights to free expression, we don't have to be sporting about it. Politics is war, and in war "fair play" is not a legitimate consideration.
It also failed to work once before. Calculations of the orbit of the planet Mercury were noticeably inaccurate; the planet wasn't quite where it ought to have been. One explanation was that this was the result of the gravitational effect of the planet Vulcan, which orbited so close to the Sun that it was practically impossible to observe. Then relativity came out, and the new calculations were accurate.
Letting six violent criminals go, based upon the color of their skin, simply because they live in a community where other injustices have gone unpunished is absurd. Is the racial prejudice the Jena Six have been subjected to perhaps a mitigating factor that should influence their sentencing? Maybe. Does it make them innocent? No. The Jena Six are racist thugs and they deserve to be prosecuted to the extent of the Ku Klux Klan.
You left out the most incredible example--waterbeds. Charles Hall, the inventor of the modern waterbed, was denied a patent because Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, Double Star, and Stranger in a Strange Land all described waterbeds in enough detail to qualify as prior art.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been going to WSU since 2003. "Washington State" is attested usage. I have a sweatshirt that says "Washington State" on it.
It isn't. They don't.
Yes, that was the joke.
Considering that there's also a city named Washington in this country, "Washington state" is a good way to disambiguate the state from the federal capital.
Gold is also an excellent conductor of electricity, a soft, easily malleable metal, along with other cool properties. It likely has countless possible uses that are stripped from the human race by the ancient superstition that a slightly-more-rare metal has some magical and mystical value to it. Aluminum was once more valuable than gold, until its myriad of uses was unleashed by the invention of our electricity-intensive processes to produce aluminum from bauxite. Now aluminum has contributed positively to the human race in very obvious ways. I wonder how much good the wholesale release of stored gold would do.
People who die from surgical errors are, sorry to say, idiots. I would _never_ undergo surgery. Surgery is physical assault, it is mutilation, and it should be criminal. The idea is criminal for anyone to perform except for physicians licensed by the state or federal governments. Did you see the fallacy? There's two: first, you severely mischaracterize why and how fractional reserve banking is legally controlled. If you act as a bank (in some strictly-defined ways) without being licensed, you're guilty of banking without a license, just as I would be guilty of performing medicine without a license if I tried giving people open-heart surgery. It doesn't mean that fractional-reserve banking (or surgery for that matter) are inherently bad things, just that they are high-risk endeavors that are considered deserving of licensing and control.
Your second fallacy is your apparent belief that, since fractional-reserve banking involves a degree of risk, it shouldn't be done at all. That's absurd. Risks can be controlled and mitigated, and in the decades of experience we have with fractional-reserve banking, the risks in question have been mitigated. The biggest failure in fractional-reserve banking was the monetary contraction towards the beginning of the Depression, which was caused by a combination of poor banking regulation and poor monetary policy (including what remained of the Gold Standard at the time).
All banks are bankrupt -- if each person that visits Slashdot this week was to withdraw all their savings, checking accounts, money markets and CDs (even at a penalty), many banks in the U.S. would be insolvent.No, the bank would not be insolvent. Uncollected debts that are owed to you are still assets, and insolvency only occurs when your liabilities exceed your assets--not when your short-term liabilities exceed your cash on hand. (That's a cashflow problem. And yes, they borrow funds from the Fed to cover that cashflow problem, but once they collect their debts they pay the Fed back with interest--part of the cost of doing business.) And yes, the percentage of uncollected debt that never ends up being collected due to deadbeats is already accounted for--that's one of the purposes of interest, to mitigate risk. In any case, I enjoy living in a society where I can collect interest and borrow money without too much difficulty, and where the risk is spread out sufficiently. If you want to bury gold in your backyard instead, that's up to you.
I made a similar observation awhile back, and agree that it's rather annoying (even as a strong critic of Bush myself) to see constant off-topic criticisms of Bush. However, this one is actually on-topic--Iraq is Bush's war, Iraq is hideously expensive, and NASA is one of many agencies that could put that money to better use.
While I'm not the GP poster, nor have I ever seen gay fursuit porn, it can't be nearly as bad as the harlequin fetus. If we weren't so desensitized to them, goatse and tubgirl would probably be worse too. Hell, a lot of the stuff on rotten.com is definitely worse.
Indeed, and I bought MP3's from eMusic in the late 90's, but they aren't a major player.
So you're shifting the money from executives to corporate cash holdings. I'm not sure that accomplishes anything.
Apple had DRM-free music available first, albeit at a higher price and with a better codec. Of course, I don't think they really care about owning the digital download market as long as everyone is DRM-free, but they're in a good position to compete.
What, just like instant messengers? If something as simple as "sending a rich text message from one computer to another" can't interoperate across providers, who the hell is going to make 3D virtual worlds interoperate, when they have entirely different graphics engines?
You know what fair pay is for an executive? $10 million in stock. Match that share-for-share--if the stock doubles in value, they get $20 million. If the stock tanks, they might only get $5 million. Pay dividends and the incentive bonuses take care of themselves. If you don't have a personal stake in the company, they shouldn't be making the calls.
So you're shifting the money from executives to dividend-receiving shareholders? How is that more equitable?
Apple doesn't do anything to prevent modded AppleTV's, modded iPods, or modded Macs. There are only two cases in which Apple has done anything to prevent "homebrewing"--unlocking the iPhone and running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. Making Mac OS X unusable on non-Apple hardware is a rather reasonable and light-handed approach to preventing software copyright infringement--the only way you can get Mac OS X for Intel is to buy a Mac. You might say "yes, but what about people who bought a Mac, installed Linux on it, and installed Mac OS X on their other Intel box". I don't think anyone believes that's actually what is happening in that case.
That leaves the iPhone. And you're right, Apple probably is in the wrong here. But it's not characteristic of them to be this way, as it is for Sony or Microsoft.
Wow, this is the first time I've seen the explanation to a joke modded Funny and the joke itself not modded up at all.
Mexico's literacy rate is 91% (CIA World Factbook). Their poverty rate is 40% (same source). 18% of Mexico's labor force is engaged in agriculture in Mexico.
Only if you're using some type of newfangled technology. In ordinary, coaxial cable TV, all channels are sent down the same cable simultaneously on different frequencies. The cable company has no way of telling if your TV is even on, much less what you're watching.
Now now, just because they aren't fluent in English doesn't mean they can't read any written languages. You do know that there are other languages, right?
When it comes to protecting our rights to free expression, we don't have to be sporting about it. Politics is war, and in war "fair play" is not a legitimate consideration.
It also failed to work once before. Calculations of the orbit of the planet Mercury were noticeably inaccurate; the planet wasn't quite where it ought to have been. One explanation was that this was the result of the gravitational effect of the planet Vulcan, which orbited so close to the Sun that it was practically impossible to observe. Then relativity came out, and the new calculations were accurate.
For your own sake, don't listen to it. This applies regardless of the RIAA's tactics.
Letting six violent criminals go, based upon the color of their skin, simply because they live in a community where other injustices have gone unpunished is absurd. Is the racial prejudice the Jena Six have been subjected to perhaps a mitigating factor that should influence their sentencing? Maybe. Does it make them innocent? No. The Jena Six are racist thugs and they deserve to be prosecuted to the extent of the Ku Klux Klan.
I was doing my best parody of a pompus science fiction purist, many of whom draw such distinctions with great importance.
You left out the most incredible example--waterbeds. Charles Hall, the inventor of the modern waterbed, was denied a patent because Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, Double Star, and Stranger in a Strange Land all described waterbeds in enough detail to qualify as prior art.