If you had to contact your lawyer every time you entered a commercial transaction, you would experience a lot of what economists call friction. If everyone did this, it would significantly dampen the economy. If this became a common thing, you can be sure that the political process would force disclosure. It already does in many areas, exactly because of these kinds of abuse of trust.
The problem with complex corporate contracts is that few people can afford the time to read them unless they are for something really expensive. One expects certain norms in those contracts, and this is why slipping in a nasty term in the middle of a big contract for a routine purchase is considered a bad thing!
Why are people outraged by this? Because it is unusual. It is sneaky, in that unless properly disclosed it is an unexpected and normally unseen part of the agreement, inconsistent with normal practice. This is what is meant by "fine print" - stuff most people don't have the time to read in their normal life.
The company is either lying, or they run a lousy franchise.
The *entire point* of franchising is renting your brand identity to a third party. And the reason this is valuable is that the brand identity conveys information to the consumer. This means that franchisors work hard to make sure that your experience with their franchisees is uniform. Typically they have all sorts of rules, inspectors, etc. Consider how uniform the experience is with a MacDonalds, for example.
I spent many years in the hotel industry. Many hotel chains are franchises. For example, a Super-8 is typeically run by a small businessman who has purchased the franchise. Rental cars can work the same way. In fact, Avis is owned by a company that also franchises hotels (Cendant). Interestingly, Best Western, one of my favorite chains for storm chasing, is an association, which makes it truly wierd. But then again, Visa and Mastercard are also associations, but AMEX is not. Go figure.
In this case, what Budget's response tells *me* is that they don't care if their franchisees screw consumers. Given that, it means to me that the Budget Brand has no objection to screwing consumers, so I can expect to get screwed when dealing with them.
NASA has been using fuel cells since the Apollo project, so they are unlikely to make any new major advances in that area.
However, it is true that the space race and the ICBM race resulted in tremendous leaps in technology. It is hard to say what would have happened without that investment, but my guess is that the technological leaps would have taken longer.
But NASA is no longer the hard driven organization that it was in the moon race. It has developed too many of the characteristics of other government bureaucracies, in spite of the fact that is has a lot of really smart people on its staff.
NASA fell into the space shuttle trap as the only way to justify its existence. The result is an absurdly expensive launch system (and for many years, a total prohibition on competition). Then they justified the ISS on pretty much bogus grounds... the microgravity research is unlikely to be worth the many dozens of billions of dollars going into it.
Even hardware random generators are prone to bias. For example, the germanium diode might generate more 1's than 0's. That knowledge alone may be enough to break messages. Thus it is not trivial to even create one time pads... they source of THAT data must also be random.
Another example... use the time between radioactive decay detects. This is theoretically random from quantum physics.... BUT.... there may be artifacts. For example, there will be a minimum time resolution of your detector. It may have hysteresis or dead times after a particle is detected.
As has been shown many times, cryptography isn't for the faint of heart. It also isn't for the foolish, like this kid's father.
The problem is not the lack of a clear-cut definition of terrorism. The problem is yourself and others who broadcast their ignorance of the definition.
Oh, btw, hijacking a satellite channel isn't terrorism - it doesn't terrorize anyone! It may be vandalism, it may be revolutionary, it may be theft, but it ain't terrorism.
And blowing up children with a bomb is not revolution - it is terrorism.
And our revolutionary soldiers, in general, were revolutionarys, not terrorists, because they fought against military forces, not civilians.
You seem to be rather confused about the difference between terrorists, protestors and revolutionaries.
Terrorists are people who attack innocent civilians with the intent and methods of terror, with the goal of coercing desired behavior.
Thus, Palestinian suicide bombers are terrorists; Al Queda's attacks against the WTC are terrorist attacks. Al Queda's attack against the USS Cole was NOT a terrorist attack ( it was a military attack ), the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon was NOT a terrorist attack. Israeli army occupation of Palestinian sites, and their attacks on Palestinian terrorists, are not terrorist actions. Palestinian attacks on Israeli military occupiers are not terrorist attacks (they are revolutionary attacks).
Does that help?
Lets not let the word "terrorism" get as watered down and meaningless as the word "genocide."
Why not abuse the telemarketers? They are being incredibly rude, and they are abusing you by calling you.
I usually just tell them to put me on the no-call list, but if I am in a bad mood, they give me a chance to vent.
I once had a telemarketer call who was very persistent. I told him the got go f*ck himself. He hung up on me.
A while later, his supervisor called to chew me out for making his employee unhappy. I told *him* to go f*ck himself and hung up.
Never heard from them again.
This "its just their job" stuff shouldn't work for them any more than it did for the Waffen SS.
I don't work for immoral companies (I could make a lot of money selling my skills to organized crime, for example), and neither should they.
My current approach is to use my Fax number whenever I need to give a home phone number. Its amazing how many calls my Fax gets that never leave a fax message. Hee hee hee
This analysis is nonsense. The judges aren't corporatized, no matter how wrong they are! They are appointed for life, and they decide however they like it. That's the way the constitution is written, and it has nothing to Hollywood or anyone else owning the judges!
It is not obvious to me that publishing DeCSS is protected by the first amendment. It is not obvious to me that it is not. The amendment is not absolute... you can be prosecuted for a number of things you speak or write - for example, shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, or inciting a riot, *or* participating in a criminal conspiracy.
Copyright law exists to protect private property. The law is out of date in that it (and here is where corporatism - or more accurately - special interests come in) extends too far into the future. Beyond that, it is not at all unresonable that a person who creates something should control what he creates, and that is what this is all about. I think the copyright holders are idiots and haven't adapted to the digital age. But that doesn't change their rights.
What I find more questionable is the remedies which they have been given in DMCA and other areas. It is one thing to have a property right, and another thing when the government persecutes people in an attempt to protect those rights.
Traditionally, theft of copyrighted material has resulted in prosecution of those who profit by doing it en mass - i.e. tape and CD duplicators. This is not unreasonable. But when one can prosecute somebody for simply publishing, at no profit, technology for stealing the material... well... I think that's going to far.
But it doesn't mean the judges are owned by corporations. The judges are making their decision - First Amendment vs. law and property rights. We may disagree, but from a legal standpoint, the judges are not obviously wrong - however much we dislike their ruling..
There is no constitutional conflict here. The president is free to pick judges by any criteria he wishes. And congress can reject them by any criteria we want.
What they cannot do is pass (and expect to have upheld) a law which codifies the criteria.
To read the constitution otherwise means that one has to read the minds of the president and congress when they reject someone. Let us say Bush rejects someone because he doesn't like their religion. Let's say he even (foolishly) says so. What exactly is the lawsuit to be brought? What does one argue before the supreme court? Do you argue that he must appoint this person because his reasons were invalid? To do so would be to violate the President's duties... the court cannot force him to appoint a person of their choosing!
We use Postgresql and like it. We chose it because at the time MySQL did not have atomicity.
But... Postgresql doesn't have (or didn't last time I looked which admittedly has been a while) point in time recovery. You can only recover to the last backup - not to the last completed transaction.
Does MySQL?
Also, you mentioned scaling on MySQL... We are looking at potentially large databases (100's of GB) with high transaction loads (say - 500 simple queries per second and 100 simple updates).
Which scales better at that level? (yes, I know Oracle and Informix can do it, but that isn't what we want to pay for).
MySQL has had the reputation of being the little, simple RDBMS for people that didn't have high performance with ACID requirements. I don't know if that is still a valid viewpoint.
Thanks in advance. Maybe this actual information would be useful to others reading all of this too.
This is exactly backwards. The problem in the US is that the FCC allowed the phone companies to implement any standard they wanted as long as it met spectral density requirements. Most of the rest of the world (Japan excluded, btw) required one system: GSM.
In Arizona, the lost hiker burned down forest!
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Can You Hear Me Now?
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· Score: 3, Informative
One of the two huge forest fires in Arizona (which have now merged into one) was set by an equally clueless hiker who decided to set a signal fire to attract a rescuer. It worked - a TV helicopter rescued her. But it also set a wildfire (the Chediski fire) which is now part of the record-setting Rodeo-Chediski fire which has been in world news lately. It is burning the largest stand of Ponderosa pines in the world, not to mention hundreds of structures.
Sigh.
If people are going to get lost, they oughta at least prepare for the fact! Of course, if they were prepared, they probably wouldn't get lost in the first place.
Errr... if you are in Arizona, you aren't limited by Verizon or SBC, because they don't provide the service. You are limited by QWest, which, if you follow the financial follies, is in deep doodoo. They don't have the money to invest in DSL or anything else right now... they are just on the edge of bankrupcy. It seems that Mountain Bell ( a crappy phone company, but at least it knew it was a phone company) was acquired by Quest, a "telecommunications giant." And we know what has been happening to all the telecommunications giants!
I'll be lucky to get DSL before the 2100! At least I have Sprint Broadband Direct, which my neighbors can't get because the mountains are in the way.
Sprint, BTW, has no problem with you running routers, but they do inform you at their tech support line that they aren't going to diagnose your own LAN problems... not an unreasonable approach.
That term seems to be in use by newbies. When I was *spelunking* in the 1960's (yes, NSS... yes... the real thing), it was called spelunking *or* caving.
It is always amazing how granfaloons of people adopt terminology to make themselves feel special and elite.
This story would have you believe that you need this ferrite material to make a microwave shield. But that is nonsense. Any sort of screen will greatly attenuate the signal also. In fact, stucco houses (populare in SW US) use "chicken wire" as the base for the material to cling to.
So... why would they be pushing this ferromagnetic material for shielding? Doesn't make sense.
Most likely, this is a typical example of journalism misreporting a technical story. OR, it is a con man trying to make people buy an expensive solution for a simple problem.
Hmmm.... mine doesn't do much of that as far as I can tell. Ny provider (QWest grumble grumble) doesn't provide any data service for the 6035
So, I have a secondary phone number for somebody. I would like to be able to train it as a voice recognition number. How do I do that? It owuld be nice if there were an option in the address book to let me do that.
The stuff available to the palm app is nice, but it would be nicer if the phone came with palm apps to take advantage of all of that!
Also, I got one of the very first units. I wonder if it needs an upgrade (if that is doable in the field).
Errrr... Integration is when the functions work together. What you and I have is two gadgets in one package - a nice thing to have but not as powerful as integrating the gadgets where appropriate.
I am a longtime owner of the Kyocera QCP-6035 and I find it a surprisingly lousy product compared to what it could be. The integration of the Palm PDA and the phone is almost non-existent. I want an integrated device, not just two devices in one package (although I have it because the latter is still better than the same two devices in two packages).
I would be much more careful next time, as Kyocera has not demonstrated to me the ability to create a good user interface that integrates the features properly.
Maybe I'm just missing something or didn't RTFM enough times, but just calling someone in the Palm phone book is a real pain
For those of us who are a bit older, the issue with insurance isn't so much the price as it is the availability.
Insurance companies will deny coverage to individuals, or will deny coverage for preexisting conditions, for the flimsiest of reasons. Also, there is no federal law preventing them from cancelling your insurance, or raising the rates through the roof if you get sick.
This same "medical underwriting" applies to small businesses and associations.
In the US, if you don't have a job, you run a real chance of losing everything in order to pay for a medical event. You can always get the treatment - you just may end up broke to get it.
All of the federal protections on health insurance is offered only to people covered by group insurance (companies, etc.) and not to individuals.
Oh, BTW, the insurance companies don't do this just because they are evil predators. They know that if they offer insurance without conditions, too many people will wait until they get sick, or at least until they get old, before applying. This negates the "share the risk" aspect of insurance. OTOH Company insurance, which is virtually forced on all employees, produces a crop of young and healthy people to pay the expenses for us older folks.
Some states have pools from which you can buy insurance regardless of your medical status. Unfortunately, these are almost impossible to get into, or are extremely expensive. And given the previous paragraph, you can see why this is not an ultimate solution.
Modern ICBM's are solid fueled, and they can certainly reach that height.
Re:Days of denial are over.
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
In principle it is only one prediction: The average global temperature will rise, the plural referring to increased average measured temperate of normal weather stations, oceanianic temperatures the raise of global sea-level, the reduction of glaciers, the increase of desertsâ¦.
This is not a test of anthropogenic global warming, because it does not distinguish between natural and man-made causes.
Uh, I must have been living in a left turning universe? For one thing SUVâ(TM)s are an obvious menace for regular cars consequently some insurances will ask for higher premiums, disregarding the fact that SUVâ(TM)s are involved in fewer accidents, and the picture for the passengers of SUVâ(TM)s themselves isnâ(TM)t all that rosy either. Until recently SUVâ(TM)s were classified as light weight trucks which allowed for cutting corners on the more stringed security regulating for normal passenger cars. The main SUV safety issue was their rigid frame leading to an immediate and unhealthy deceleration of its unfortunate passengers.
The extra insurance cost is because insurance companies pay much more money on liability claims than on collision and medical. Yes, in a collision, the SUV is more likely to cause injuries than have injuries in it. Guess where I want MY family. Nonetheless, you are missing the analysis of the NRC which directly attributes a huge death toll to fuel efficiency standards. They don't blame SUV's, they blame small cars.
My SUV has not only frontal airbags, but driver side airbags, engineered crumple points, and a zillion other safety features. They are still classified as light trucks for fuel conservation measures (they are exempt from CAFE) but when people buy for safety, they don't buy SUV's with no safety features! This is simply the market responding to a desire for safety - the SUV's are getting plenty safe, even if the government doesn't mandate it (this must come as a shock to those who live on the left side of the universe - safety improvements without government mandates).
As far as rapidly decelerating passengers... mine seems to be just fine. Engineered crumple zones in front, but a rigid frame around the passengers. Sounds like good enigneering to me. And because the vehicle is large and not subject to CAFE, it can have a lot more strength in that frame. In general, the ratio of mass of the vehicle to mass of its passengers is important, in addition to the ratio of the mass of the vehicle to the mass of what it collides with. The SUV wins in both categories.
Come on there were plenty of people pointing the obvious: It is not a good idea to base a tax cut on a projected budget surplus which, in ten years down the road, might or might not materialize. If that were all it were based on, you would be right. But it is equally a bad idea to base ANY tax policy on such a scenario. There are three basic tax policies in any given year: increase them, leave them the same, lower them. Your criticism applies exactly the same to all three. Given that, it is meaningless!
The ``voodoo scienceâ(TM)â(TM) was obviously mend polemic and based on my personal left leaning biases. Your impression that I cannot understand at least some of the difficulties of climate predictions is probably wrong (I hope didnâ(TM)t get a Ph.D. in Math for nothing) but it is obviously impossible for me to competently judge the iffy issues.
Obviously my response was an equivalent polemic to your voodoo science polemic, and your implication that my opinions come from conservative think tanks.
Thanks for the reference on the history of the politics of research. It is indeed interesting. BTW... some of my friends in the climate community have been afraid to express their contrarian opinions because they were afraid of losing funding... this due to the Clinton Administrations politicization of the science. Other friends in the agricultural area were unable to get funding to research the CO2 effects on crop growth after previous research showed, not surprisingly, that the CO2 increases caused major improvements in crop growth. Also not covered here is the experience of yet another acquaintance in the area, who is an outspoken anti-global warming advocate with his own research foundation. He found a rapid drop in energy industry demand for his services (as a spokesman, speaker, etc) as various companies discovered that they could profit from the market disruptions to be caused by Kyoto.
Last but not least I do think that implementing the Kyoto accord in itself has only symbolic value. Your point of view seems to be that it would have led to compliancy and that would have been enormously costly for the US economy. I am doubtful about either claim, what really worries me is the message send by the US-refusal to ratify the accord.
No, my point of view is that the costs, which are major, would be to no purpose, because Kyoto itself will have result in no significant improvement in climate - if you use the numbers provided by its own supporters! In fact, the models show only a.15C decrease in resulting temperatures in 2000, which is so small that it would be undetectable due to the larger noise in the system. Thus, Kyoto is completely silly unless it is seen as a first step towards more drastic, and more expensive responses. Since the latter is admitted by Kyoto advocates, but hidden entirely from the US public in the debate (which is not nearly as balanced as implied by the history you presented), it is a strong argument that Kyoto is merely a trojan horse.
As far as I am concerned, the message that the US sends is that it will not bind itself to global initiatives that:
1 - are expensive but ineffective
and
2 - have gross disparities in the sacrifices required by different nations
In other words, I believe that the US sends a message that in this case it will not sign on to folly. I think that is a good message.
If you can convince me that Kyoto is not folly in itself, then I would reconsider.
BTW... In addition to being enormously expensive, Kyoto depends on global compliance for 100 years to achieve its negligible effect. This compliance is somehow supposed to magically happen even though we have no global police force, and in the face of rapidly changing technology and a very unstable world situation. Given the history of the last 100 years, this is really silly!
Slashdot Mirror
If you had to contact your lawyer every time you entered a commercial transaction, you would experience a lot of what economists call friction. If everyone did this, it would significantly dampen the economy. If this became a common thing, you can be sure that the political process would force disclosure. It already does in many areas, exactly because of these kinds of abuse of trust.
The problem with complex corporate contracts is that few people can afford the time to read them unless they are for something really expensive. One expects certain norms in those contracts, and this is why slipping in a nasty term in the middle of a big contract for a routine purchase is considered a bad thing!
Why are people outraged by this? Because it is unusual. It is sneaky, in that unless properly disclosed it is an unexpected and normally unseen part of the agreement, inconsistent with normal practice. This is what is meant by "fine print" - stuff most people don't have the time to read in their normal life.
The company is either lying, or they run a lousy franchise.
The *entire point* of franchising is renting your brand identity to a third party. And the reason this is valuable is that the brand identity conveys information to the consumer. This means that franchisors work hard to make sure that your experience with their franchisees is uniform. Typically they have all sorts of rules, inspectors, etc. Consider how uniform the experience is with a MacDonalds, for example.
I spent many years in the hotel industry. Many hotel chains are franchises. For example, a Super-8 is typeically run by a small businessman who has purchased the franchise. Rental cars can work the same way. In fact, Avis is owned by a company that also franchises hotels (Cendant). Interestingly, Best Western, one of my favorite chains for storm chasing, is an association, which makes it truly wierd. But then again, Visa and Mastercard are also associations, but AMEX is not. Go figure.
In this case, what Budget's response tells *me* is that they don't care if their franchisees screw consumers. Given that, it means to me that the Budget Brand has no objection to screwing consumers, so I can expect to get screwed when dealing with them.
Guess what! Many modern cars have tattle-tail recorders in the engine computers that can be read out to find out your maximum speed, etc.
The insurance companies could use these against you.
NASA has been using fuel cells since the Apollo project, so they are unlikely to make any new major advances in that area.
However, it is true that the space race and the ICBM race resulted in tremendous leaps in technology. It is hard to say what would have happened without that investment, but my guess is that the technological leaps would have taken longer.
But NASA is no longer the hard driven organization that it was in the moon race. It has developed too many of the characteristics of other government bureaucracies, in spite of the fact that is has a lot of really smart people on its staff.
NASA fell into the space shuttle trap as the only way to justify its existence. The result is an absurdly expensive launch system (and for many years, a total prohibition on competition). Then they justified the ISS on pretty much bogus grounds... the microgravity research is unlikely to be worth the many dozens of billions of dollars going into it.
Even hardware random generators are prone to bias. For example, the germanium diode might generate more 1's than 0's. That knowledge alone may be enough to break messages. Thus it is not trivial to even create one time pads... they source of THAT data must also be random.
Another example... use the time between radioactive decay detects. This is theoretically random from quantum physics.... BUT.... there may be artifacts. For example, there will be a minimum time resolution of your detector. It may have hysteresis or dead times after a particle is detected.
As has been shown many times, cryptography isn't for the faint of heart. It also isn't for the foolish, like this kid's father.
The problem is not the lack of a clear-cut definition of terrorism. The problem is yourself and others who broadcast their ignorance of the definition.
Oh, btw, hijacking a satellite channel isn't terrorism - it doesn't terrorize anyone! It may be vandalism, it may be revolutionary, it may be theft, but it ain't terrorism.
And blowing up children with a bomb is not revolution - it is terrorism.
And our revolutionary soldiers, in general, were revolutionarys, not terrorists, because they fought against military forces, not civilians.
You seem to be rather confused about the difference between terrorists, protestors and revolutionaries.
Terrorists are people who attack innocent civilians with the intent and methods of terror, with the goal of coercing desired behavior.
Thus, Palestinian suicide bombers are terrorists; Al Queda's attacks against the WTC are terrorist attacks. Al Queda's attack against the USS Cole was NOT a terrorist attack ( it was a military attack ), the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon was NOT a terrorist attack. Israeli army occupation of Palestinian sites, and their attacks on Palestinian terrorists, are not terrorist actions. Palestinian attacks on Israeli military occupiers are not terrorist attacks (they are revolutionary attacks).
Does that help?
Lets not let the word "terrorism" get as watered down and meaningless as the word "genocide."
Err... my assault rifles have never been used for harming people. I am sure you will get a number of replies like this.
Sigh... I just realized I am responding to an idiotic troll.
Mod the asshole down for bringing up the gun issue.
Why not abuse the telemarketers? They are being incredibly rude, and they are abusing you by calling you.
I usually just tell them to put me on the no-call list, but if I am in a bad mood, they give me a chance to vent.
I once had a telemarketer call who was very persistent. I told him the got go f*ck himself. He hung up on me.
A while later, his supervisor called to chew me out for making his employee unhappy. I told *him* to go f*ck himself and hung up.
Never heard from them again.
This "its just their job" stuff shouldn't work for them any more than it did for the Waffen SS.
I don't work for immoral companies (I could make a lot of money selling my skills to organized crime, for example), and neither should they.
My current approach is to use my Fax number whenever I need to give a home phone number. Its amazing how many calls my Fax gets that never leave a fax message. Hee hee hee
This analysis is nonsense. The judges aren't corporatized, no matter how wrong they are! They are appointed for life, and they decide however they like it. That's the way the constitution is written, and it has nothing to Hollywood or anyone else owning the judges!
It is not obvious to me that publishing DeCSS is protected by the first amendment. It is not obvious to me that it is not. The amendment is not absolute... you can be prosecuted for a number of things you speak or write - for example, shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, or inciting a riot, *or* participating in a criminal conspiracy.
Copyright law exists to protect private property. The law is out of date in that it (and here is where corporatism - or more accurately - special interests come in) extends too far into the future. Beyond that, it is not at all unresonable that a person who creates something should control what he creates, and that is what this is all about. I think the copyright holders are idiots and haven't adapted to the digital age. But that doesn't change their rights.
What I find more questionable is the remedies which they have been given in DMCA and other areas. It is one thing to have a property right, and another thing when the government persecutes people in an attempt to protect those rights.
Traditionally, theft of copyrighted material has resulted in prosecution of those who profit by doing it en mass - i.e. tape and CD duplicators. This is not unreasonable. But when one can prosecute somebody for simply publishing, at no profit, technology for stealing the material... well... I think that's going to far.
But it doesn't mean the judges are owned by corporations.
The judges are making their decision - First Amendment vs. law and property rights. We may disagree, but from a legal standpoint, the judges are not obviously wrong - however much we dislike their ruling..
There is no constitutional conflict here. The president is free to pick judges by any criteria he wishes. And congress can reject them by any criteria we want.
What they cannot do is pass (and expect to have upheld) a law which codifies the criteria.
To read the constitution otherwise means that one has to read the minds of the president and congress when they reject someone. Let us say Bush rejects someone because he doesn't like their religion. Let's say he even (foolishly) says so. What exactly is the lawsuit to be brought? What does one argue before the supreme court? Do you argue that he must appoint this person because his reasons were invalid? To do so would be to violate the President's duties... the court cannot force him to appoint a person of their choosing!
This reply is an RFI to the previous poster...
We use Postgresql and like it. We chose it because at the time MySQL did not have atomicity.
But... Postgresql doesn't have (or didn't last time I looked which admittedly has been a while) point in time recovery. You can only recover to the last backup - not to the last completed transaction.
Does MySQL?
Also, you mentioned scaling on MySQL... We are looking at potentially large databases (100's of GB) with high transaction loads (say - 500 simple queries per second and 100 simple updates).
Which scales better at that level? (yes, I know Oracle and Informix can do it, but that isn't what we want to pay for).
MySQL has had the reputation of being the little, simple RDBMS for people that didn't have high performance with ACID requirements. I don't know if that is still a valid viewpoint.
Thanks in advance. Maybe this actual information would be useful to others reading all of this too.
This is exactly backwards. The problem in the US is that the FCC allowed the phone companies to implement any standard they wanted as long as it met spectral density requirements. Most of the rest of the world (Japan excluded, btw) required one system: GSM.
One of the two huge forest fires in Arizona (which have now merged into one) was set by an equally clueless hiker who decided to set a signal fire to attract a rescuer. It worked - a TV helicopter rescued her. But it also set a wildfire (the Chediski fire) which is now part of the record-setting Rodeo-Chediski fire which has been in world news lately. It is burning the largest stand of Ponderosa pines in the world, not to mention hundreds of structures.
Sigh.
If people are going to get lost, they oughta at least prepare for the fact! Of course, if they were prepared, they probably wouldn't get lost in the first place.
I'd carry a plastic bottle that I could put snow into, then put the bottle into my clothes. After it melts, then you can drink it. That's much safer.
Do not eat without melting! Eating snow and ice can reduce body temperature and will lead to more dehydration. [aircav.com]
I wonder if the poster realizes that melting the snow in his clothes with his body heat lowers his body temperature just as much as eating it???
Errr... if you are in Arizona, you aren't limited by Verizon or SBC, because they don't provide the service. You are limited by QWest, which, if you follow the financial follies, is in deep doodoo. They don't have the money to invest in DSL or anything else right now... they are just on the edge of bankrupcy. It seems that Mountain Bell ( a crappy phone company, but at least it knew it was a phone company) was acquired by Quest, a "telecommunications giant." And we know what has been happening to all the telecommunications giants!
I'll be lucky to get DSL before the 2100! At least I have Sprint Broadband Direct, which my neighbors can't get because the mountains are in the way.
Sprint, BTW, has no problem with you running routers, but they do inform you at their tech support line that they aren't going to diagnose your own LAN problems... not an unreasonable approach.
That term seems to be in use by newbies. When I was *spelunking* in the 1960's (yes, NSS... yes... the real thing), it was called spelunking *or* caving.
It is always amazing how granfaloons of people adopt terminology to make themselves feel special and elite.
This story would have you believe that you need this ferrite material to make a microwave shield. But that is nonsense. Any sort of screen will greatly attenuate the signal also. In fact, stucco houses (populare in SW US) use "chicken wire" as the base for the material to cling to.
So... why would they be pushing this ferromagnetic material for shielding? Doesn't make sense.
Most likely, this is a typical example of journalism misreporting a technical story. OR, it is a con man trying to make people buy an expensive solution for a simple problem.
Hmmm.... mine doesn't do much of that as far as I can tell. Ny provider (QWest grumble grumble) doesn't provide any data service for the 6035
So, I have a secondary phone number for somebody. I would like to be able to train it as a voice recognition number. How do I do that? It owuld be nice if there were an option in the address book to let me do that.
The stuff available to the palm app is nice, but it would be nicer if the phone came with palm apps to take advantage of all of that!
Also, I got one of the very first units. I wonder if it needs an upgrade (if that is doable in the field).
Errrr... Integration is when the functions work together. What you and I have is two gadgets in one package - a nice thing to have but not as powerful as integrating the gadgets where appropriate.
I am a longtime owner of the Kyocera QCP-6035 and I find it a surprisingly lousy product compared to what it could be. The integration of the Palm PDA and the phone is almost non-existent. I want an integrated device, not just two devices in one package (although I have it because the latter is still better than the same two devices in two packages).
I would be much more careful next time, as Kyocera has not demonstrated to me the ability to create a good user interface that integrates the features properly.
Maybe I'm just missing something or didn't RTFM enough times, but just calling someone in the Palm phone book is a real pain
For those of us who are a bit older, the issue with insurance isn't so much the price as it is the availability.
Insurance companies will deny coverage to individuals, or will deny coverage for preexisting conditions, for the flimsiest of reasons. Also, there is no federal law preventing them from cancelling your insurance, or raising the rates through the roof if you get sick.
This same "medical underwriting" applies to small businesses and associations.
In the US, if you don't have a job, you run a real chance of losing everything in order to pay for a medical event. You can always get the treatment - you just may end up broke to get it.
All of the federal protections on health insurance is offered only to people covered by group insurance (companies, etc.) and not to individuals.
Oh, BTW, the insurance companies don't do this just because they are evil predators. They know that if they offer insurance without conditions, too many people will wait until they get sick, or at least until they get old, before applying. This negates the "share the risk" aspect of insurance. OTOH Company insurance, which is virtually forced on all employees, produces a crop of young and healthy people to pay the expenses for us older folks.
Some states have pools from which you can buy insurance regardless of your medical status. Unfortunately, these are almost impossible to get into, or are extremely expensive. And given the previous paragraph, you can see why this is not an ultimate solution.
Why not Postgres 7.2 on Windows? I use it all the time. You don't need to go to Firebird.
Modern ICBM's are solid fueled, and they can certainly reach that height.
In principle it is only one prediction: The average global temperature will rise, the plural referring to increased average measured temperate of normal weather stations, oceanianic temperatures the raise of global sea-level, the reduction of glaciers, the increase of deserts⦠.
.15C decrease in resulting temperatures in 2000, which is so small that it would be undetectable due to the larger noise in the system. Thus, Kyoto is completely silly unless it is seen as a first step towards more drastic, and more expensive responses. Since the latter is admitted by Kyoto advocates, but hidden entirely from the US public in the debate (which is not nearly as balanced as implied by the history you presented), it is a strong argument that Kyoto is merely a trojan horse.
This is not a test of anthropogenic global warming, because it does not distinguish between natural and man-made causes.
Uh, I must have been living in a left turning universe? For one thing SUVâ(TM)s are an obvious menace for regular cars consequently some insurances will ask for higher premiums, disregarding the fact that SUVâ(TM)s are involved in fewer accidents, and the picture for the passengers of SUVâ(TM)s themselves isnâ(TM)t all that rosy either. Until recently SUVâ(TM)s were classified as light weight trucks which allowed for cutting corners on the more stringed security regulating for normal passenger cars. The main SUV safety issue was their rigid frame leading to an immediate and unhealthy deceleration of its unfortunate passengers.
The extra insurance cost is because insurance companies pay much more money on liability claims than on collision and medical. Yes, in a collision, the SUV is more likely to cause injuries than have injuries in it. Guess where I want MY family. Nonetheless, you are missing the analysis of the NRC which directly attributes a huge death toll to fuel efficiency standards. They don't blame SUV's, they blame small cars.
My SUV has not only frontal airbags, but driver side airbags, engineered crumple points, and a zillion other safety features. They are still classified as light trucks for fuel conservation measures (they are exempt from CAFE) but when people buy for safety, they don't buy SUV's with no safety features! This is simply the market responding to a desire for safety - the SUV's are getting plenty safe, even if the government doesn't mandate it (this must come as a shock to those who live on the left side of the universe - safety improvements without government mandates).
As far as rapidly decelerating passengers... mine seems to be just fine. Engineered crumple zones in front, but a rigid frame around the passengers. Sounds like good enigneering to me. And because the vehicle is large and not subject to CAFE, it can have a lot more strength in that frame. In general, the ratio of mass of the vehicle to mass of its passengers is important, in addition to the ratio of the mass of the vehicle to the mass of what it collides with. The SUV wins in both categories.
Come on there were plenty of people pointing the obvious: It is not a good idea to base a tax cut on a projected budget surplus which, in ten years down the road, might or might not materialize.
If that were all it were based on, you would be right. But it is equally a bad idea to base ANY tax policy on such a scenario. There are three basic tax policies in any given year: increase them, leave them the same, lower them. Your criticism applies exactly the same to all three. Given that, it is meaningless!
The ``voodoo scienceâ(TM)â(TM) was obviously mend polemic and based on my personal left leaning biases. Your impression that I cannot understand at least some of the difficulties of climate predictions is probably wrong (I hope didnâ(TM)t get a Ph.D. in Math for nothing) but it is obviously impossible for me to competently judge the iffy issues.
Obviously my response was an equivalent polemic to your voodoo science polemic, and your implication that my opinions come from conservative think tanks.
Thanks for the reference on the history of the politics of research. It is indeed interesting. BTW... some of my friends in the climate community have been afraid to express their contrarian opinions because they were afraid of losing funding... this due to the Clinton Administrations politicization of the science. Other friends in the agricultural area were unable to get funding to research the CO2 effects on crop growth after previous research showed, not surprisingly, that the CO2 increases caused major improvements in crop growth. Also not covered here is the experience of yet another acquaintance in the area, who is an outspoken anti-global warming advocate with his own research foundation. He found a rapid drop in energy industry demand for his services (as a spokesman, speaker, etc) as various companies discovered that they could profit from the market disruptions to be caused by Kyoto.
Last but not least I do think that implementing the Kyoto accord in itself has only symbolic value. Your point of view seems to be that it would have led to compliancy and that would have been enormously costly for the US economy. I am doubtful about either claim, what really worries me is the message send by the US-refusal to ratify the accord.
No, my point of view is that the costs, which are major, would be to no purpose, because Kyoto itself will have result in no significant improvement in climate - if you use the numbers provided by its own supporters! In fact, the models show only a
As far as I am concerned, the message that the US sends is that it will not bind itself to global initiatives that:
1 - are expensive but ineffective
and
2 - have gross disparities in the sacrifices required by different nations
In other words, I believe that the US sends a message that in this case it will not sign on to folly. I think that is a good message.
If you can convince me that Kyoto is not folly in itself, then I would reconsider.
BTW... In addition to being enormously expensive, Kyoto depends on global compliance for 100 years to achieve its negligible effect. This compliance is somehow supposed to magically happen even though we have no global police force, and in the face of rapidly changing technology and a very unstable world situation. Given the history of the last 100 years, this is really silly!