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  1. Re:bnw on Human Hibernation on the Horizon? · · Score: 1

    Yes, I read it but honestly it did not seem that bad to me.

    Ok, being a gama is not the way to go but overall they are much better of than many people in say the innner city or your average war zone. Now I think we can do better but clearly we could do a lot worse such as the old 1984. If you look at it realy closely it's not that far from where the US is right now. Granted the diet thing not setup in the womb but via Burger King but read it again and see how far they are from us.

  2. Re:Java Desktop on New Desktop Features Of Next Java · · Score: 1

    Check out dbvis or Azureus before you talk down to java apps. Java makes networking and database code a lot easer to write which realy shines though on these apps.

    From what I hear Azureus is about as fast as any C++ BT client but it adds a good UI and a lot more features than the av BT client.

    As to dbvis I have been using it for a while at work and the free vertion works great. Now you want to show me a free / cheep C++ app that does the same things on OS X I will look into it untill then I am going to stick with dbvis.

  3. Re:How does Windows XP even get written on Rapid J2EE Development · · Score: 1

    How about this: If you install it on a box connected to the internet it get's owend in under 20 min. Now if it where a server OS I could deal with that but it's a desktop and I honestly can't think of a reason for it to accept connectons from the internet out of the box.

    Having said that, I use XP at home and OS X at work and the only reason I use XP at home is it let's me play more games. Now if most people has OS X boxes then most games would be for OS X so I can call windows a POS and still use it.

  4. Re:Methodology Schmethodolgy on Rapid J2EE Development · · Score: 1

    As I see it.

    To get stuff done projects need Good People. Good People cost lot's money and are in short supply. But, instead of limiting the projects scope and using "Good People" companies try to find ways to use / manage less knowledgeable people. This seems to work for a while until projects stall as the amount of manpower it takes to get anything done increases exponentially. At which point the project either fails, or act's as a somewhat working demo for the next project. See Windows ME > Windows XP ect ect.

  5. Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA on Congress Declares War on File Leakers · · Score: 1

    I am a liberal. I want to end Medicare and SS. I think the rich should pay at least as high a % of their income in taxes as the middle class. I think we need to have more roads and less military spending. I think schools should be federally funded and parents should be able to get just as much money to send their students to an accredited private institution as a public school. I also think that you need to regulate clean air and water though large enforced penalties for non-compliance and not by giving people cash to clean up their act. I think it should cost as much to use federal government land as it does to use private land. (Oil / Mineral / Logging / Grazing rights.)

    I think the tax code should be simple and 100% automated with no tax breaks other than # of dependents. Want to give people money for collage fine give people cash don't add it to the tax code.

    I think the government should spend at least 200 Billion a year doing basic research into material science, medicine, fusion, ect. But the gov should never subsidies private research into things like another form of Viagra. If you have a patentable idea on a US grant fine you can patent it in every country but the US.

    Your thoughts?

  6. Re:Turing Test irrelevant on Turing's Original Test Played First Time Ever · · Score: 1

    If A then B is only false when A is true and B is false.

    All living humans need food to O2 to stay alive says nothing about dead peole or trees.

    Anyway, if the the computer can pass the test then it is about as intelegnet as you are. Don't forget you get to ask it things like "If sam was was 17 years older than sally 5 years ago and sam is now twice sally's age, how old is sam now?" or "Did you ever think hamlet might have been gay?" not just "Do you like red cars?"

  7. Re:Doh on Verizon CEO Calls Municipal Wi-Fi 'a Dumb Idea' · · Score: 1

    STOP drinking the cool aid.

    If you require nationwide service then we have almost twice the population density they do. Covering Alaska would cost a lot but New York City would help even that out to the point where it's a lower cost per user to cover the entire US than Finland.

    Once again you need to compare Alaska to Lapland not Finland it's part of the whole not the whole.

    Now I can see the point in not covering Alaska in cell phone towers but if you make the system nationwide then US company's would have twice the people per mile as Finland even though they need to cover all of Alaska so it would be worth it to do the whole country where is if you break it into smaller peaces you end up with shitty coverage and an inability to move from one providers network to another's.

    Think of it this way what if someone said you needed a separate TV to watch FOX as it takes to watch NBC? Now why do you accept that you need a new phone when moving from Sprint to Version?

  8. Re:High cheese factor on Revenge of the Sith TV Spots Revealed · · Score: 1

    I think SW missing the difference between a plot and a plot hook. Take The Princess Bride which has about the same target audience and about as complex background, aka prince try's to set up a war with gilder by having his peasant bride killed, but it's used as back-story story. The plot is all about long lost love coming back and rescuing her they run off are captured he is rescued and leads a party to bring her back. Now this is a comedic fantasy so you add your odd chase, mystic healer, and lot's of laughs. At the same time you have a few side plot's like the whole 'my name is Inigo Montoya you killed my father prepare to die" Now compare this with star wars where the plot is used so sparingly that it's easy to forget what's going on. You have things like 20 min chase with basically no dialog and then almost no reference as to why that happened. Yea, if you bother to pay attention there is a basic plot but it seems as ill used as the premise "the mail man showed up" in some cheesy porno.

    Look at it this way if you want to have a hidden plot within the story you need to hide it behind the basic plot no simply have 20 pages of dialog spread over 2 hours and say well sorry if you missed that side comment your missing the point so please come back and see it again.

  9. Re:I always wondered... on Asteroid 2004 MN4 May Hit Earth After All · · Score: 1

    I was trying to compare things of similar body mass to get the point across that mamals tend spend a lot more of there energy per body mass in brains than lizards do. But let's compare a smare "lizard" back then to an ape. Ok first off let's say there about as intelegent as each other (probably not true) what would there path be to tool users? Now an Ape to tool users seems strait forward they can eat either plants or meat so anything that lets them eat more meat = good which would get selected for. Now picking up a club and bashing things with it is about as far a they need to go before club use = better hunting. But a raptor can hunt vary well and has week arms that would give him little advantage so it would not be selected for. Now club to spear is a small jump as is spear to thoughing spear at which point learning how to make spears with good point's would have value as they would be rare to find just siting around but you could find one or two to get the basic idea. Now from spear it's little ways to and aul(SP?), a complex spear where a small spear sits in a sling and can be shot about twice as far. Add to this the advantge of hunting party's and get the the pack advante to adding language. Now this is a compex tool so going from there to a bow or a sling is not that far at which point you have packs of smart tool users wandering around that can kill just about anything that has walked the earth. 20 - 30 humans could easly take down a T-Rex using aul's.

    Now that's all based around hunting as ominevors we can learn to plant food and afer a few plant mutations siting around tending crops can becomes insanly productive leting humans learn how to build city's and develope compex trade routs thus spreading new idea and ending up with the PC. (Hunter gathers might have had trade as would hearders but you get the idea.)

    Basied on this it seems clear that it's much easer to go from an omnivore living in trees to a PS user than say a pack hunter like a dog. Reading though this a while ago I had some similar thoughts as to what types of alians we might meet up with some day and if it would realy take 3 billion years of evolution to reach us: http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html

  10. Re:I always wondered... on Asteroid 2004 MN4 May Hit Earth After All · · Score: 1

    But apes are already reasonably intelegent I don't know how intelegent most lisards are but when comparing a lizard to say a rat I think the rat wins.

  11. Re:Secure Hashes vs. Fake Files on Finnish Firm Claims Fake P2P Hash Technology · · Score: 1

    A 10mb file that has 10 X 8192 bit hashes would still have a around 1000 files of the same size that would produce identical hashes.

    The only way to avoid having more than one file hash to the same value is for the hash to be equal in size or larger than the file you start with. Otherwise all your really doing is creating a Meta hash that is a composite of several functions.

    There is an advantage to using more than one hash function in that you may find out if one of them get's broken in time to change your system to use a new one. However, there is little value in using more than two reasonably strong Hash functions in your Meta hash, as doing so would eat up a lot of CPU time and Hash functions tend to last a while with out being broken and even if both functions are broken they still need to break though your Meta hash function.

  12. Re:I've always thought that ... on Music Industry P2P Claims Dismantled · · Score: 1

    That's the problem with P2P the RIAA needs for you to not only buy music but their music. So anything that caused a sale that the RIAA can't controwl must be stoped as it will cause the RIAA to lose the band's who would like go it alone but can't drum up enough listeners without RIAA support.

  13. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    Are you shure?

    I buy 100 shares of MS stock at 10$.
    At my death it's woth 20$ now I did not sell it so there is no capital gains taxes on it.
    My son get's 100 shares of MS stock does he pay death tax on 100 shares is it on 20$ shares, 10$ shares or 20$ shares minus the capital gains tax on the 10-20$ shares. My understanding is while you need to pay any taxes they owe you death tax overrides capital gains tax so you just pay death tax on 100 x 20$ shares and you only pay capital gains on the change in value from those 20$ shares.

  14. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    The "break the bank" costs are fuel, electricity, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and the mortgage.

    Your missing my point. Yes pesticides might have a near even price per unit land but all costs add up and as you said lage farms tend to get better prices here. Yes I over simplyfied the numbers a lot but the idea is in situations where your margons are small, EX: 100$ worth of stuff sold net profit 2$, minor changes in efficency can make a big diffrence in profitablity. Farming is an extreamly competitive market so you should only do it if you think you can be more efficent than most farmers. Now all other things being equil larger farms can be more efficent on some things and less efficnt on nothing so they win in the end. Thus, small farms are going to lose out and so small farmers should get out of the market.

    PS: While a large farmer can buy a 10,000g tank if he needs to he can also buy a two 5,000g tanks and he will do what ever is cheeper to do, but while a small farmer could buy the 10,000g tank it would provide him no advantage over the 5,000g tank so even if it's got a better price per g he has no choice. Now based on that there is no way small farms can compeat with large farms on a level playing field. So, are you sujesting that the playing field is level or we should provide tax breaks so it becomes level?

    PPS: The above is part of my point about tractors they sell many sizes because the most efficent tractor to use depends on the amount of land your using it on. If your a small farmer you don't get an advantage from finishing 20% faster because there is little for you to do with the extra time to make it worth the extra cost but the large farm can deside it's worth it to buy something with a little more power thus letting him be more productive. If it where realy cheepter to run more smaller tractors he could do that but because he does not there is probably some advantege to the larger equipment.

  15. Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    So it works like this?

    I have 1m and leave it to Joe.
    Joe pays 0 tax.
    Joe leaves 1.5mil to sindy
    Sindy pays tax on 1 mil
    Sindy leaves .5mil to Sam
    Sam pays tax on .5mil
    Sam leaves 30mil to Gill
    Gill pays tax on .5 mil

    I think I like this it makes it hard for old money to sit around and do nothing but helps new money get set up.

    Then again I say no tax breaks for anyone the cost of a complex system is just not worth it. I say it's a simple look up table you make X you pay Y. Have X capital pay Y. With added taxes on some goods aka imports or sin tax. That way the IRS can more or less go away and there is no need to worry about loop holes in the tax code if you want somone to no do something fine make a law about that but don't try and make people do things thought the tax code.

  16. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    But it it's not taxed on death the children don't need to pay capital gains tax on the money. It just all shows up as cash they get to keep and do whatever they want with it.

  17. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    UPS and Fed-Ex are at least as competitive as USPS not realy they don't do bulk mail they are trying to just do cream of the crop service. If they where able to operate significantly more eficently than the USPS they would easly take over it's operations. The USPS is not significantly subsudised and if say DHL wanted to take over a given market from USPS while keeping the same level of service the Gov would be more than willing to let them do that but they realy can't compeat.

    NASA can build it for less but they are not given that option. BOING can say I will build it for 5mil and L.M. can say I will build that for 4.5 mil but NASA is not given the option to say yea shure you say 4.5 but by the time it's done your going to charge us 7 so I am just going to do it for 5.1 and leave it at that. Basicly, most contracts are under bid to start with and then when the bill shows up it tends to be larger than what they said. B: Even when the quoted price is less it tends to be lower by reducing the quality. The Gov. can't build a crap bridge for it's self but contractors are more than willing to step in an do a shitty job for less. Look at road construction most US roads are build with materials that will last less than 1/2 the time that that best materials would but they cost more than 1/2 the price how is that a net win?

    Hell, look at the cost of running SS some time (there operating budget not how much money there giving away) and see if you could do it for less.

    As to public / private school I went to public school which cost under 9.2k / year out of state (aka. non subsudised) and I knew people that transferd to Harvard from there and EVERY credit transfered. I mean I thought about going to MIT for a while but it was realy just not worth it. It's in shepherds town WV so it's low cost of living, smalll student body, great teaching staff and realy a top notch undergrad education.

    check out shepherd.edu. Tuition and Fees, 2004-2005 (yearly) $3,654 for residents of West Virginia; $9,234 for students from other states. Hell that's less than room and bord at most places I looked at. When I went there I think I had 4 classes over 35 studens. AV was around 18 and this is with the state giving them 1/2 the cash per student as went to WVU.

    As to K-12 the largest problem is unlike say Japan we don't drop students. Several public schools test as well as Japan even though it's a shorter year, they don't get to send students to trade school when there grades are not keeping up ect. Which is why most private schools are better they cost about the same to operate but they just get better students.

    OK public school let me leave without teaching me how to spell I will give you that one.

  18. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    I am talking about things like having people use the largest tractors available. Take 2 corn farms of 5,000 acres the other is 10,000 now owning equipment over a given size is useless for the small farms so there suck with 2 mall tractors and 2 people using them but with the larger one the guy can buy a larger system and do the work of 2 farmers at the same time. On cattle farms you see the same thing with fencing the a 1.42mile x 1.42 mile box has 2x the area of a 1 * 1 mile box but it needs only 42% more fencing.

    Granted this might not seem like a big deal but it tends to work out so 20 people can do the work of 30 if there working on one project instead of 2. Which means they can sell there crop for less AND make more money at the same time. Thus driving everyone else out of business while make good money. People seem to want to help the small farmer out but need to go do something else OR farm something else. If they can make organic soy products and survive then that's great they should start to buy everyone else out and become the top dog.

  19. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    Under your system family owned buisness NEVER pay capital gains tax. Once again this is capital gains so your only taxed if it's worth more over time. It's not like they can't keep the farm just take a loan for 1/3 the value of the farm and they can operate just fine or have a life inshurence policy to cover this cost. In family buissness you only pay the death tax once every 25+ years and they only pay it if it's worth more (Under my system). I look at inheritence as just another form of entitlement some people feel that if there parents where rich they should get rich I don't realy feel that's the case. Under the old system you could get 900,000$ tax free which is more than enough to life the rest of your life on so let's say the left you 4 mill paying 1/3 of 4 mill would leave you with 3 mill which is more than enough to live off of.

    PS: if your running things eficently you should be geting 12% ROI from your capital every year and the salory's of everyone involved should be payed out of income above and beyond that. AKA if your doing a 40K / year job and geting paid 60k then 20k should be from less than 200k capital and 40k should come fromt the work your doing or you should be doing something else.

    PPS: Once again I am talking about taxable capital like houses. Reputation is not taxable but should represent a large chunk of most small buissness capital. Think of this way if you have 300k in equity in your house you should take that out and pay 5% intrest on the loan for that capital and have 300k in the stock market. If your an auto body shop then you can't realy get a loan from owning your tools but you should be geting a ROI from them of around 12% or you should be working for someone else and investing that money to get the highest ROI.

  20. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    FUCK FARMERS! If they can't run there buissness eficently then sell out and let somone else take over. I know a lot of farmers and most of the time there trying to run an operation that is way to small. If you can't support your family with 1000 acres sell that land to somone else and let them take care of it then get a job and add that income to the intrest on the land. For the most part farms only start being efficent at around 20,000 acres up to that point it's just a waste of resorces to have some guy trying to make a living on 1000 acres.

    Making someone sell off a farm does not distroy farm land it tends to make people use it more efficently. I know weathy farmers and I know poor farmers and the difrence tends to be farm size and ability to manage money thus kicking out people who don't know what there doing is a net win as is creating ever larger farms.

    It's just more efficent to run a huge operation than it is to have 10,000 farmers doing what 500 could.

  21. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    Is this supposed to be as opposed to the government's stellar investment returns and ruthless efficiency?

    It's not a question of how much taxes will be paid but rather who will pay those taxes. Tax breaks don't result in reduced spending they just add to debt. But, if you ignorge what there spending it on government's is fairly effecent most times something like education gets privatised the costs go up or the quality go down. As offten as it's done most programmes are much more effecent when run by the government than private interprise. See: schools, post office, park service, hoover dam. Defence spending is way out of whack but thats becouse the government is footing the bill without building it them selves. NASA looks wastefull on the outside but there doing great it's the private contractors that are in efficent.

  22. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    But much of this was not taxed as capital gain you only pay that when you liquidate the assest which for truely weatly might not happen for large chunks of there weath over there lifetime. I dont think we need a true death tax but atleast make the dead guy pay capital gains on the untaxed portion of his estate.

  23. Re:Dammit, skip the moon, go to Mars... on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    You can spin up your luanr stations you don't even need to spin them as fast to get earth level gravity. I think lunar bases will work out because geting out of the lunar gravity well is easy enough to compeat with moving astorids for raw materials. It's also easy to mine under 1/6g than in a weightless enviernment so I don't think it's going to be as cut and dry as many people thing. As to Mars I can see people living there becouse once you build a self sustaining base there it's going to just keep growing so all it's going to take is one good mine and given enough time the planet is ours.

  24. Re:Dammit, skip the moon, go to Mars... on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    Coupple fusion power with an ion drive system and geting astorods is going to be easy. Many of these things are cublic MILES in size which means you don't exactly need a lot of them to build with. The asteroid belt has an insane surface area so there should be plenty of He3 to mine which should make it pay for it's self.

    Anyway, I don't see us doing any of this stuff for a good 100 years anyway but once we start it's going to be insane. Think limitless energy, food, and raw materials.

  25. Re:Taxes on Site for Moon Base Determined · · Score: 1

    The problem is that in the Riches to rags side of the equation there wasting huge amounts of resorces either though poor investing or pointless waste. There are many system that could prevent this I think a 1% wealth tax on weath over 10million would work the best but at the vary least we should tax capital apreatiaion at somones death otherwise you just have this huge gaping hole in the tax code aka don't pay taxes till you die then you never need pay taxes on that money.

    The point everyone seems to forget is taxes are owed to society on ALL earnings becouse without roads, an education system, and basic law and order you would have been unable to make that money. I say you can give all the money to charity you want but there is no reason to give you a tax break on that. Ditto for sending money to your kids if you did it while you where alive you would have been taxes so sorry if you died but you still need to pay your taxes.

    PS: One of the most basic sytes that keeps money flowing is inflation if you don't do something to make your money make you more money you lose it over time this is a good thing. I say do the same thing with all forms of capital and society would be much better off.