Stranger in a Strange land was also pretty depressing.
Then, you didn't finish it. When you get to the end, you find out it was actually pretty boring. The whole thing is basically mock-religious award bait with a scifi book jacket.
Let me spoil the ending for you:
It turns out he's Jesus. It turns out everybody is Jesus.
Wait, what? There was a real optical effect going on? I always thought they were just wacky designs with holes in them so you can see the other people at the halloween party...
Just use a password safe, and generate passwords to use as the answers to those questions. You could have a special password file which contains all the answers, in case your primary password file is corrupted.
You can put anything in those fields. It doesn't have to be the actual answer. It doesn't even have to be words.
It's probably not environmentally friendly, but I recommend you also try some animals not in the "big four," if you haven't already. I have found that when people describe things as, "gamey," what they mean is that it doesn't taste like dry, bland, overcooked chicken. Oddly, some of those same people will occasionally complain that "everything tastes like chicken..."
So, what you're saying is that, if I want to consume conspicuously, I should consume the meat of lions who feed only on humans who ate beef?
As for the fast food... I don't see how high meat prices would kill it. The need fast food fills isn't for meat products per se, but for food that is a) cheap and b) doesn't take a lot of time for the purchaser to purchase, obtain, and consume. That need doesn't go away sans meat, it just gets filled in a different way.
Sudoku puzzles are like solving simultaneous equations, sometimes it's really easy to fill in a cell - it's the last empty one in a row, for instance. One equation. Sometimes you need to keep track of many cells and their effects to solve them all at once.
The difficulty of a sudoku depends on how many cells have to be solved at once in the most difficult set in the puzzle. There could also be a number of difficult sets that individually are moderately difficult, but taken as a whole require some endurance. Those are probably more satisfying to solve than a puzzle with a huge set, but they're not more difficult.
If I needed a hardness rating, that's what I'd pick - the the number of cells in the largest group that must be solved together. This chaos method offers no fidelity. 0-3 is easy and the hardest puzzle they found to study is 3.6, wth?
American companies ignore you guys. In both directions. We don't get to see stuff from the old continent unless it's either rebranded, or old and made by a government grant to nigh amateurs. Before netflix, it was only the first option, even...
Surely, in a continent of 700 million people, you have media companies of comparable technical capability.
IIRC, the original iPod was pretty fugly. But it did two things that none of the MP3 players had even thought of. 1) the touch wheel - this was a huge interface improvement over the the other guys where the state of the art was, "hold the button down for accelerating repeat button presses."
2) The touch wheel - Instead of dozens of buttons that are really too small to be machined correctly at the necessary price points, they got the number of buttons down to something like 1 DPad rocker/touchpad, 1 button, and one slide switch. They were able to machine these to tolerances that allowed the buttons to all fit without becoming wobbly or breaking right away.
Additionally, iTunes, Podcasting, etc. contributed to their success, but I'm not sure they had those available with the gen 1 devices. I don't think they were really fashionable until the minis and white earbuds came out...
Social Security Surplus should never have been put into the General Fund
Well, sort of. it really should never have been collected in the first place. Instead, it should've just charged what was needed, and published the expected rates going forward 60 years out based on actuarial tables and the expected benefits.
The problem is that the surplus, having been collected, needs to go somewhere. You can't just stick it under a mattress - inflation would eat at its value, and it would also have a chilling effect on the economy. But you can't invest it, either, because that involves risk, and no one wants to be held accountable for a hundred million person's losses.
The only "safe" thing to do is invest in the instrument that defines the "risk-free" rate - treasury bonds - which are backed by the ability of the government to tax its citizens. The money wasn't "put into the general fund" per se, but it was used to incur an additional debt obligation on the part of the taxpayers, which is one big, "huh?"
Since SS is just a branch of the government anyway, and the premiums are also collected as taxes, that doesn't really accomplish anything except to keep some bean-counters busy making up numbers. Far better to just never have collected the surplus in the first place - the amount people pay in taxes would not change, as they would be paying less in "regular" taxes to match the "more" in SS taxes, but there would be no resources expended maintaining the fiction of a "lock box" and the bureaucracy involved in all the transactions in both directions.
You know there are different models of iPad, one of which sells for $499. Which one costs $375 to make? It can't be all of them...
Also, are most people really buying the $730 model? It looks like it's the second most expensive out of the six models they offer, and it requires a data plan to make use of the cellular radio (without which it would be priced $130 less, so who would buy it without one?)
Depends. Am I trying to interview for jobs, or have I already found work where I won't be subconsciously judged on my appearance and passed over for promotions as a result of subconscious prejudices?
Far less limited than fossil fuels, however. If we use thorium breeder reactors only for all of our energy needs, I believe the sources I have read have suggested that we have identified only 50,000 years worth of thorium deposits....
You hear the remorse angle all the time, but... when was dynamite used as a weapon of war? As far as I can tell, it's only real use would be for the engineers - mining out an area for fortifications. And perhaps undermining enemy fortifications. It doesn't look like it would be all that effective in an anti-personnel role at all.
In, I think, the first story in the Silmarilion, the head god creates the lesser gods, and they have a jam session. But secretly, it wasn't a jam session, it was the story of the world. Then they all get together and build the world and it goes according to the song. Including the one guy who sort-of hates everybody else and tried to ruin the song, but that's part of the story, too, and the head god knew it would happen that way.
The statement is still correct. If it's not a problem with the computer program, there is something wrong with with the tax code portion of the process if it requires 20 million lines of computer code to calculate. How can you ever be sure you have done them correctly? Even without using a computer.
Perhaps especially without.. 20 million computer-lines worth of tax code doesn't seem like something that a person would even be able to calculate without a computer.
Maybe computers are the worst thing to happen to accounting and taxation, because they allow the code to accumulate to preposterous levels without collapsing under its own sheer weight.
Although, for something with the scope of Quicken, a scripting or plugin system would actually not be a bad idea for the tax logic. It's not intended to do the taxes for a large corporation, is it? It's supposed to be used by individuals with perhaps hundreds of transactions in a year, running on machines that are idle at lest 90% of the year.
With a signed plugin system, they could support changes to tax law without having to upgrade the entire program annually, and with a scripting system, savvy users could do those updates without having to buy the patches, even.
Slashdot Mirror
Stranger in a Strange land was also pretty depressing.
Then, you didn't finish it. When you get to the end, you find out it was actually pretty boring. The whole thing is basically mock-religious award bait with a scifi book jacket.
Let me spoil the ending for you:
It turns out he's Jesus. It turns out everybody is Jesus.
Wait, what? There was a real optical effect going on? I always thought they were just wacky designs with holes in them so you can see the other people at the halloween party...
Just use a password safe, and generate passwords to use as the answers to those questions. You could have a special password file which contains all the answers, in case your primary password file is corrupted.
You can put anything in those fields. It doesn't have to be the actual answer. It doesn't even have to be words.
It's probably not environmentally friendly, but I recommend you also try some animals not in the "big four," if you haven't already. I have found that when people describe things as, "gamey," what they mean is that it doesn't taste like dry, bland, overcooked chicken. Oddly, some of those same people will occasionally complain that "everything tastes like chicken..."
So, what you're saying is that, if I want to consume conspicuously, I should consume the meat of lions who feed only on humans who ate beef?
As for the fast food... I don't see how high meat prices would kill it. The need fast food fills isn't for meat products per se, but for food that is a) cheap and b) doesn't take a lot of time for the purchaser to purchase, obtain, and consume. That need doesn't go away sans meat, it just gets filled in a different way.
Think of the creepy dinner parties those wealthy enough to run their own batches will have!
"I put a lot of myself into this dish, I hope you enjoy it!"
Hey, if DSL can get updated, why not Toms?
I mean, yeah, we don't need to fit in a floppy any more, but how would you like to have an OS that fits entirely in on-die cache?
...the old days when they just reported the news factually and let people make up their own minds
Pics or it didn't happen.
Sudoku puzzles are like solving simultaneous equations, sometimes it's really easy to fill in a cell - it's the last empty one in a row, for instance. One equation. Sometimes you need to keep track of many cells and their effects to solve them all at once.
The difficulty of a sudoku depends on how many cells have to be solved at once in the most difficult set in the puzzle. There could also be a number of difficult sets that individually are moderately difficult, but taken as a whole require some endurance. Those are probably more satisfying to solve than a puzzle with a huge set, but they're not more difficult.
If I needed a hardness rating, that's what I'd pick - the the number of cells in the largest group that must be solved together. This chaos method offers no fidelity. 0-3 is easy and the hardest puzzle they found to study is 3.6, wth?
American companies ignore you guys. In both directions. We don't get to see stuff from the old continent unless it's either rebranded, or old and made by a government grant to nigh amateurs. Before netflix, it was only the first option, even...
Surely, in a continent of 700 million people, you have media companies of comparable technical capability.
IIRC, the original iPod was pretty fugly. But it did two things that none of the MP3 players had even thought of. 1) the touch wheel - this was a huge interface improvement over the the other guys where the state of the art was, "hold the button down for accelerating repeat button presses."
2) The touch wheel - Instead of dozens of buttons that are really too small to be machined correctly at the necessary price points, they got the number of buttons down to something like 1 DPad rocker/touchpad, 1 button, and one slide switch. They were able to machine these to tolerances that allowed the buttons to all fit without becoming wobbly or breaking right away.
Additionally, iTunes, Podcasting, etc. contributed to their success, but I'm not sure they had those available with the gen 1 devices. I don't think they were really fashionable until the minis and white earbuds came out...
Social Security Surplus should never have been put into the General Fund
Well, sort of. it really should never have been collected in the first place. Instead, it should've just charged what was needed, and published the expected rates going forward 60 years out based on actuarial tables and the expected benefits.
The problem is that the surplus, having been collected, needs to go somewhere. You can't just stick it under a mattress - inflation would eat at its value, and it would also have a chilling effect on the economy. But you can't invest it, either, because that involves risk, and no one wants to be held accountable for a hundred million person's losses.
The only "safe" thing to do is invest in the instrument that defines the "risk-free" rate - treasury bonds - which are backed by the ability of the government to tax its citizens. The money wasn't "put into the general fund" per se, but it was used to incur an additional debt obligation on the part of the taxpayers, which is one big, "huh?"
Since SS is just a branch of the government anyway, and the premiums are also collected as taxes, that doesn't really accomplish anything except to keep some bean-counters busy making up numbers. Far better to just never have collected the surplus in the first place - the amount people pay in taxes would not change, as they would be paying less in "regular" taxes to match the "more" in SS taxes, but there would be no resources expended maintaining the fiction of a "lock box" and the bureaucracy involved in all the transactions in both directions.
You know there are different models of iPad, one of which sells for $499. Which one costs $375 to make? It can't be all of them...
Also, are most people really buying the $730 model? It looks like it's the second most expensive out of the six models they offer, and it requires a data plan to make use of the cellular radio (without which it would be priced $130 less, so who would buy it without one?)
.. can't you live without your iron?
Depends. Am I trying to interview for jobs, or have I already found work where I won't be subconsciously judged on my appearance and passed over for promotions as a result of subconscious prejudices?
The thorium fuel supply is limited, however.
Far less limited than fossil fuels, however. If we use thorium breeder reactors only for all of our energy needs, I believe the sources I have read have suggested that we have identified only 50,000 years worth of thorium deposits....
You hear the remorse angle all the time, but... when was dynamite used as a weapon of war? As far as I can tell, it's only real use would be for the engineers - mining out an area for fortifications. And perhaps undermining enemy fortifications. It doesn't look like it would be all that effective in an anti-personnel role at all.
In, I think, the first story in the Silmarilion, the head god creates the lesser gods, and they have a jam session. But secretly, it wasn't a jam session, it was the story of the world. Then they all get together and build the world and it goes according to the song. Including the one guy who sort-of hates everybody else and tried to ruin the song, but that's part of the story, too, and the head god knew it would happen that way.
The statement is still correct. If it's not a problem with the computer program, there is something wrong with with the tax code portion of the process if it requires 20 million lines of computer code to calculate. How can you ever be sure you have done them correctly? Even without using a computer.
Perhaps especially without.. 20 million computer-lines worth of tax code doesn't seem like something that a person would even be able to calculate without a computer.
Maybe computers are the worst thing to happen to accounting and taxation, because they allow the code to accumulate to preposterous levels without collapsing under its own sheer weight.
The "business logic" is code...
Although, for something with the scope of Quicken, a scripting or plugin system would actually not be a bad idea for the tax logic. It's not intended to do the taxes for a large corporation, is it? It's supposed to be used by individuals with perhaps hundreds of transactions in a year, running on machines that are idle at lest 90% of the year.
With a signed plugin system, they could support changes to tax law without having to upgrade the entire program annually, and with a scripting system, savvy users could do those updates without having to buy the patches, even.
Well, here's the thing. Take out 95% of the literary value of LOtR, and you're still doing better than 95% of the movies out there....
Or one pop song....
Perception is also logarithmic...
Eh.. Only four bases used in your DNA. What's your point?
Are they perhaps trying to kill institutionalized education? If so, they're definitely on the right path.
I don't think they want to kill the institutionalized part...