I agree, I do wonder myself. There is such big money involved that sometimes what is in the best interest of the public may be changed for political or business reasons. Examples I can think of would be how long it took for big tobacco to be deemed a danger after years of conclusive proof. Or the 0 calorie sweetner aspartame being banned until Rumsfeld was brought on board to be the political cheerleader. Or even an outside testing of the new TSA scanners to know just how much radiation you're getting. I know the chemicals used for new carpeting at an office made my mother have a rash for months, just the fumes in the air.
I know I make sure my Orange Juice is now only made with American oranges because the FDA allows pesticides from other countries to be detected in the imported orange juice, pesticides banned in the US for being harmful.
I would like some large study done for various rates of cancer, autism, other diseases, for population centers that do live a more organic lifestyle. Do the Amish have the same problems with autism? They're the biggest non-modern food eaters I can think of, there are probably many more. Maybe those who stick to a strick Halal diet, etc. What about cancer rates? I assume there are such studies but the studies must not be anything overwhelming conclusive because the headlines would be shouting out the news.
LendingClub, a peer 2 peer investment firm, was a Forbes 2011 most promising company. For people who have invested about 20K, 100% have not lost any money. Basically it allows people to get loans that are graded A-F, better grade, lower interest. Then you can buy into a loan from $25 - $5k. Once enough people fund the loan it goes active. Average loan is 11K for debt consolidation, average return is 6%. Not bad. They also have done over 1/2 a billion in loans.
I'm not part of the company, I was just investigating a good investment for some excess money and dug into them. Sadly, this is not usable for me since I'm in a state it is not allowed - Michigan. However there is also a secondary market for trading already bought loans and that is workable, not as nice, but a possibility.
I can see why only about 1/2 the states allow this, the banks have to be fighting to stop this very hard. Borrowers can gets loans for half of what banks want to change, investors can be one step away from their investments, it's a nice setup. But it goes against the golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules.
It's a Fox network owned station not just a local station with an affiliate feed to fox, therefore it's FOX. But I'm not spreading lies, any news station can legally lie since there is no law against news stations not telling the truth. Ya know like the title says "Fox news can legally lie, so can any news". By the same token NBC, MSNBC CNN, CBS, PBS, can legally lie. I I haven't seen any other lawsuits against other news stations so while the others can, so far just fox has been caught so blatantly.
Fox news did show that news shows are not legally obligated to tell the truth http://www.foxbghsuit.com/. News team showed that Canada and other countries ban Bovine Growth Hormone. Monsanto didn't like that and pressured Fox to keep changing the story before release to the point the new story would have been a lie. Finally the news team quit and filed a whistleblower lawsuit. The whistleblower lawsuit was thrown out because Fox news was not guilty of breaking the law as the FCC has no rules requiring news to be the truth.
I have used intuit for a few years for many sales. Being able to hand someone a paper receipt with the bluetooth swiper/printer is nice. Some people don't care for a receipt, the older crowd seem to demand it to feel comfortable.
That is part of what the government does. It outsources huge contracts to private contractors that lobby very hard. And then people wonder why nothing ever changes.
Make it a challenge, go lower tech. Forget those pesky scopes and high powered rifles. As a pre-teen on a trip to northern Ontario I hit a black bear and a moose with a slingshot. I'll admit the moose was easy, they're huge. The black bear was a bit of a challenge. Also scary even with a van being there to jump into.
Yes, the swords books are great. I'm glad I'm not the only one to this they were missing in the list.
Empire of the east series for a prequel, the book of swords, and the lost book of swords.
For a more modern, but which I found highly readable, was the Barrow series by John Deakins. A number of tales were wound together very well. Almost like a collection of short stories but the characters were fun.
For Sci Fi series there are the classics like the 2 trilogies of the UpLift Saga. Simply amazing works. Or for more fun detective style Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict series.
Gil The Long ARM of the law was a good Niven character. I know his stories mention a number of organlegging operations - finding reasons to steal organs to sell.
I hadn't heard of that language, thanks for the laugh. On a related note, we had an employee with a last name Lovelace. An older client, always prim and proper, left a message once to see when "Mr. Deepthroat would be stopping by to finish the job". Client would have probably died of embarassment if she realized her slip-up.
The current boy scout handbook, before anything else, starts off with a dozen or so pages about sex abuse. There are very strict rules for troop leaders/helpers - always do things in pairs, etc. So who in their right mind would want to videochat or be a troop leader for a bunch of kids online - instant lawsuits.
Also yup, you have to be a believer. They are very lax on what qualifies as belief and accept almost any faith. They need a badge for 'technically following the letter of the rules' if someone is a pastafarian. It's a serious shame. I helped out as a co-leader with a local troop for a year and the issue didn't come up, I don't remember having to put my religious beliefs on any official paperwork. However I do know athiest troop leaders have been removed from news stories I've seen. It's hard enough to get participation in the boy scouts and girl scouts as it is. I doubt religion keeps many people from being involved.
Michigan has no caps on injuries. Everything here is no fault insurance with very high premiums. There have been some ballot proposals to remove the no fault, or to change the no cap injury, but they've failed.
Part of the sudden adoption was the free market at work, at least in the states. The 1996 telco reform act allowed companies other than the monopolies to handle local phone calls. That's why there were thousands of ISPS that opened up overnight, cheap phone lines. It also had a nice confluence of technology and society. Technology was also improving so that suddenly all those racks and racks of modems could be jammed into rack mount cards cheaply. Also you had all those college kids who liked it and got into the real world and still wanted the convenience of email and other services.. That's the power of the free market.
Of course Bush Jr put Powel's son in charge of the FCC, they rolled back the telco reform because monopolies liked being monopolies, and suddenly every non-monopoly ISP goes out of business. The US bandwidth speeds become a joke compared to the rest of the modern world. That's corporatism at work.
It's perfectly legal to carry over as many gift cards or even a pre-pay credit card with 20,000 on it. Cash the feds don't like, stored value instruments are another matter. But why bother with the bitcoins and cell phone meetup, that's what offshore accounts are for.
At last, I can make a 3d model of the archie bunker chair. I hope they scan that before the padding goes away. If it worked for Archie to sit around in, it may make a really good programming chair.
buying with bitcoins is easly. The hard part is using Tor to go to silk road, and then figuring out shipping in a way that doesn't make you concerned.
In all seriousness paypal does suck but no one has come out with a 'we suck less' service that has taken off. Here are the alternatives I know about tho :
know other countries allows simple bank transfers to people safely which is nice, I have seen a few US banks trying to get into that but it hasn't really happened. Chase is advertising something along that line
The new American Express serve.com (Get your free $10 now by signing up) which is paypal with a pre-paid credit card attached, but they have absolutely no merchant services for websites to use them so I don't see much traction. Also limit to 2,500 a month which for business websites is a limiting factor.
There is alertpay which is a little more loose on the rules than paypal but not overly so.
Western Union / Money orders suck, try to use alibaba and not get burned at the small level (Their aliexpress service works alright since it uses Credit Cards)
For the average company merchant accounts to accept credit cards are a royal pain to qualify for. Also paypal's website APIs really are super easy, unlike the merchant accounts I've used. But I haven't done a real merchant account for a few years now so I may be out of date
A variety of app startups. Square payments, dwolla - nice ideas but again it's more for point of sale replacements and not website simplicity
I don't really see us suddenly having a colonized space in a decade, or a hundred years. But I am sure it will happen. Now that you have private companies like spaceX launching into space it doesn't take much imagination to see a few wealthy individuals setting up shop. Once you start being able to mine some asteroids for material easier than on Earth there is an economic reason for it. I forget the book series, but it had the moon colonized because Earth refused to allow nanotechnology to be allowed on it. So people went to the moon or other system locations to live. It won't be like the American Wild West, it will be a slow and boring progression that wouldn't merit a sci fi book or a tv show.
FB got 12.7 mil in second round funding through accel partners, headed by the guy who had previously headed the CIA's venture fund. Now that doesn't mean it's an outright CIA operation but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a room 641A style fiber beam splitter somewhere in the FB server farms.
Off topic, but have you watched the new show House of Lies? I was surprised how hilarious I found it when Don Cheadle's character broke the 4th wall just before spouting off buzzwords.
While Asimov is my favorite sci-fi grandmaster, personally I'm hoping more for Scalzi Old Man's war - grow a clone and transfer brainwaves - or Morgan's Takashi Kovacs style dump the brain into a grown clone.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly Gateway's past CEO is now governor of Michigan. Boy do we know how to pick 'em.
I agree, I do wonder myself. There is such big money involved that sometimes what is in the best interest of the public may be changed for political or business reasons. Examples I can think of would be how long it took for big tobacco to be deemed a danger after years of conclusive proof. Or the 0 calorie sweetner aspartame being banned until Rumsfeld was brought on board to be the political cheerleader. Or even an outside testing of the new TSA scanners to know just how much radiation you're getting. I know the chemicals used for new carpeting at an office made my mother have a rash for months, just the fumes in the air.
I know I make sure my Orange Juice is now only made with American oranges because the FDA allows pesticides from other countries to be detected in the imported orange juice, pesticides banned in the US for being harmful.
I would like some large study done for various rates of cancer, autism, other diseases, for population centers that do live a more organic lifestyle. Do the Amish have the same problems with autism? They're the biggest non-modern food eaters I can think of, there are probably many more. Maybe those who stick to a strick Halal diet, etc. What about cancer rates? I assume there are such studies but the studies must not be anything overwhelming conclusive because the headlines would be shouting out the news.
LendingClub, a peer 2 peer investment firm, was a Forbes 2011 most promising company. For people who have invested about 20K, 100% have not lost any money. Basically it allows people to get loans that are graded A-F, better grade, lower interest. Then you can buy into a loan from $25 - $5k. Once enough people fund the loan it goes active. Average loan is 11K for debt consolidation, average return is 6%. Not bad. They also have done over 1/2 a billion in loans.
I'm not part of the company, I was just investigating a good investment for some excess money and dug into them. Sadly, this is not usable for me since I'm in a state it is not allowed - Michigan. However there is also a secondary market for trading already bought loans and that is workable, not as nice, but a possibility.
I can see why only about 1/2 the states allow this, the banks have to be fighting to stop this very hard. Borrowers can gets loans for half of what banks want to change, investors can be one step away from their investments, it's a nice setup. But it goes against the golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules.
What am I working on? Uhh... I'm working on something that will change the world, and human life as we know it.
It's a Fox network owned station not just a local station with an affiliate feed to fox, therefore it's FOX. But I'm not spreading lies, any news station can legally lie since there is no law against news stations not telling the truth. Ya know like the title says "Fox news can legally lie, so can any news". By the same token NBC, MSNBC CNN, CBS, PBS, can legally lie. I I haven't seen any other lawsuits against other news stations so while the others can, so far just fox has been caught so blatantly.
Fox news did show that news shows are not legally obligated to tell the truth http://www.foxbghsuit.com/. News team showed that Canada and other countries ban Bovine Growth Hormone. Monsanto didn't like that and pressured Fox to keep changing the story before release to the point the new story would have been a lie. Finally the news team quit and filed a whistleblower lawsuit. The whistleblower lawsuit was thrown out because Fox news was not guilty of breaking the law as the FCC has no rules requiring news to be the truth.
I have used intuit for a few years for many sales. Being able to hand someone a paper receipt with the bluetooth swiper/printer is nice. Some people don't care for a receipt, the older crowd seem to demand it to feel comfortable.
That is part of what the government does. It outsources huge contracts to private contractors that lobby very hard. And then people wonder why nothing ever changes.
Make it a challenge, go lower tech. Forget those pesky scopes and high powered rifles. As a pre-teen on a trip to northern Ontario I hit a black bear and a moose with a slingshot. I'll admit the moose was easy, they're huge. The black bear was a bit of a challenge. Also scary even with a van being there to jump into.
I agree. Case in point, those short litlte ewoks easily beat the much taller galactic empire stormtroopers without a problem.
Yes, the swords books are great. I'm glad I'm not the only one to this they were missing in the list. Empire of the east series for a prequel, the book of swords, and the lost book of swords.
For a more modern, but which I found highly readable, was the Barrow series by John Deakins. A number of tales were wound together very well. Almost like a collection of short stories but the characters were fun.
For Sci Fi series there are the classics like the 2 trilogies of the UpLift Saga. Simply amazing works. Or for more fun detective style Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict series.
Gil The Long ARM of the law was a good Niven character. I know his stories mention a number of organlegging operations - finding reasons to steal organs to sell.
I hadn't heard of that language, thanks for the laugh. On a related note, we had an employee with a last name Lovelace. An older client, always prim and proper, left a message once to see when "Mr. Deepthroat would be stopping by to finish the job". Client would have probably died of embarassment if she realized her slip-up.
The current boy scout handbook, before anything else, starts off with a dozen or so pages about sex abuse. There are very strict rules for troop leaders/helpers - always do things in pairs, etc. So who in their right mind would want to videochat or be a troop leader for a bunch of kids online - instant lawsuits.
Also yup, you have to be a believer. They are very lax on what qualifies as belief and accept almost any faith. They need a badge for 'technically following the letter of the rules' if someone is a pastafarian. It's a serious shame. I helped out as a co-leader with a local troop for a year and the issue didn't come up, I don't remember having to put my religious beliefs on any official paperwork. However I do know athiest troop leaders have been removed from news stories I've seen. It's hard enough to get participation in the boy scouts and girl scouts as it is. I doubt religion keeps many people from being involved.
Michigan has no caps on injuries. Everything here is no fault insurance with very high premiums. There have been some ballot proposals to remove the no fault, or to change the no cap injury, but they've failed.
Part of the sudden adoption was the free market at work, at least in the states. The 1996 telco reform act allowed companies other than the monopolies to handle local phone calls. That's why there were thousands of ISPS that opened up overnight, cheap phone lines. It also had a nice confluence of technology and society. Technology was also improving so that suddenly all those racks and racks of modems could be jammed into rack mount cards cheaply. Also you had all those college kids who liked it and got into the real world and still wanted the convenience of email and other services.. That's the power of the free market.
Of course Bush Jr put Powel's son in charge of the FCC, they rolled back the telco reform because monopolies liked being monopolies, and suddenly every non-monopoly ISP goes out of business. The US bandwidth speeds become a joke compared to the rest of the modern world. That's corporatism at work.
It's perfectly legal to carry over as many gift cards or even a pre-pay credit card with 20,000 on it. Cash the feds don't like, stored value instruments are another matter. But why bother with the bitcoins and cell phone meetup, that's what offshore accounts are for.
At last, I can make a 3d model of the archie bunker chair. I hope they scan that before the padding goes away. If it worked for Archie to sit around in, it may make a really good programming chair.
buying with bitcoins is easly. The hard part is using Tor to go to silk road, and then figuring out shipping in a way that doesn't make you concerned.
In all seriousness paypal does suck but no one has come out with a 'we suck less' service that has taken off. Here are the alternatives I know about tho :
Didn't you ever dissect a worm in a bio class? Small little brains but they can be found easy enough.
I don't recall Picard ever using the enterprise when he had a PADD handy
I don't really see us suddenly having a colonized space in a decade, or a hundred years. But I am sure it will happen. Now that you have private companies like spaceX launching into space it doesn't take much imagination to see a few wealthy individuals setting up shop. Once you start being able to mine some asteroids for material easier than on Earth there is an economic reason for it. I forget the book series, but it had the moon colonized because Earth refused to allow nanotechnology to be allowed on it. So people went to the moon or other system locations to live. It won't be like the American Wild West, it will be a slow and boring progression that wouldn't merit a sci fi book or a tv show.
FB got 12.7 mil in second round funding through accel partners, headed by the guy who had previously headed the CIA's venture fund. Now that doesn't mean it's an outright CIA operation but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a room 641A style fiber beam splitter somewhere in the FB server farms.
Off topic, but have you watched the new show House of Lies? I was surprised how hilarious I found it when Don Cheadle's character broke the 4th wall just before spouting off buzzwords.
While Asimov is my favorite sci-fi grandmaster, personally I'm hoping more for Scalzi Old Man's war - grow a clone and transfer brainwaves - or Morgan's Takashi Kovacs style dump the brain into a grown clone.