The pedant in me wants to point out that if they did use M-16s, it wouldn't have been in 1066 as they were only formed in 1099 - but given I wasn't alive in 1099 I don't have any proof of that either:/
Although I guess they could have used whatever time-travel machine they used to get a hold of M-16s to go back and fight in the Battle of Hastings.
I agree with you, debt without evaluating the cost and a plan to manage it is bad news.
However you say "it would be better to buy with cash and avoid paying all the interest"
Sure buying with cash avoids paying interest, however it also avoids collecting interest on whatever else you would have invested in. Essentially buying a house with cash can be considered as investing in property at the mortgage rate of interest. If you can beat that in the market (with a suitable level of security/liquidity) then it's worth condiering a mortgage and investing.
Of course differential tax treatment, stamp duty on house purchase, duration you expect to hold the house/asset, etc all feed in to make it a more complex analysis. YMMV, this is not financial advice, etc
Thanks for the information. I don't have mod points at the moment (and couldn't mod in here now anyway) but have an informal +1 informative from me anyway:)
I would be surprised if a group of contractors funded and directed by American sources but who happen to live in Argentina would be classed as Argentinian, but then I'm not a lawyer and there's lots about the law that surprises me. One example would be Hezbollah - they are based in Lebanon but believed to be funded by Iran, and so what they do is often considered to be done by Iran not by Lebanon.
With the US v Nicaragua point, I've never really known much about what went on with Reagan and the Contras, but from having a look on Wikipedia it seems that:
- If you mean the US attack on Nicaragua, that was based on the US's unilateral opinion rather than an agreed international opinion. As such I wouldn't count that as a widely held agreement on what counts as an act of war - If you mean the ICJ decision on the aftermath of the US attacks I would agree that it is at least a consensus decision on what acts are considered valid - From the ICJ decision: - Nicaragua supplying arms to El Salvador opposition does not constitute an armed attack (and thus I guess would not be an act of war). This seems in line with your suggestion that financing someone in a foreign country doesn't make them your army, the army belongs to the country in which they live not the country which supplies them. - However it also suggests that the US arming, financing and training the contra groups intervened in the sovereignty of another state, and through various attacks the US was considered to have used force against another state. While not an act of war it seems in that direction which is the other way round to the findings in the Nicaragua v El Salvador point above - although the contras were based in Nicaragua since they were US funded, they are considered to be US?
I guess there are particular circumstances with each of the two above, ie perhaps the US attacks on Nicaragua were much more clearly linked to the US government. Also there's a lot of different actions ("act of war", "armed attack", "intervene in sovereignty", "used force" - what do they all mean?). I have some more reading to do it seems!
I assumed that essentially paying a group of mercenaries or contractors to invade someone without using your own formal government troops would still be considered an act of war. Otherwise why not rename the army to the "Army plc" and claim that although they do tend to do a lot of contract work for the government they are an independant company. So sorry that they decided to invade your country but it's not an act of war so feel free to try and sue them in the US courts - good luck.
Do you have a reference for your example? You imply that some case examples exist.
Therefore if you "predict" that everyone is straight, you will be correct around 95% of the time. Even randomly picking 1 out of 20 people as homosexual with no analysis of their likes would retain a 95% strike rate.
(I know, chances are they mean that they only get 12% false negatives on their homosexual predictions, compared to 100% or 95% on my systems)
I assume by "Elsewhere they tend to do rather more good" you're not including the UK. Over here in the UK they are also all about protecting lazyness and weird working practices such as holding back modernisation, reinstating bullies, etc
(I know this is a generalisation, and therefore I'm sure there are exceptions, however the biggies such as train staff in particular and public sector unions fall into this category)
Spotted a typo: Israel knows that attacking Hamas with airstrikes will result in a reaction. They take this action with the full knowledge that it will lead to not only innocent Palestinian civilians dying but their own people as well. But, somehow, it's Hamas's fault. Always.
Now IANAL but I think you shot yourself in the foot there.
Your quote from the OSCE document clearly states that participating states [ie the US] invites observers to observe the election "to the extent permitted by law". If the law says they're allowed to observe, but from no closer than 100 feet, then how is that in disagreement with international agreements?
Admittedly you could argue about how much observation can be done from a distance, but it doesn't appear to be in disagreement to me.
Having said that it increasingly seems to me that right/wrong and legal/illegal are orthogonal axes
Erm, callous jokes are unfortunately a case of free speech. As Voltaire (didn't) say: I don't find your joke funny but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Things don't stop being free speech just because you disagree with them.
"we can watch electrons move" - I thought quantum dynamics, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in particular, prohibits things like that? After all, watching something move essentially means you are able to measure both it's position and velocity?
Amazon was selling ebooks below cost? You do know that the marginal cost of creating an ebook is virtually zero, so it's frankly pretty difficult to sell them below cost.
Your linked article seems to complain that Amazon with their Kindle proved to be too successful. I have to say that authors/publishers brought this on themselves by insisting on DRM. With DRM, consumers get locked into a single format, to avoid having to repurchase their entire library for use with a different eReader. As such, whoever sells them their first eReader will subsequently get all future eBook sales. The music industry has (sort of) learned this lesson, and I had hoped that book publishing would learn from their mistakes but it seems not. If you want to remove Amazon's stranglehold, sell eBooks elsewhere with no DRM. Other stores will then be able to compete with Amazon's eBooks and consumers will still be able to use their exising Kindle eReader. Amazon's competitve advantage of being able to read on the Kindle is gone overnight, with the advantage that publishers can then start to sell their own eReaders, which will be able to import consumers entire library.
I'm on t-mobile, and pay £20 for six months of "unlimited" data and pay something like £5 a month in calls and texts. Overall I'm less than £10 a month which works out as much cheaper than paying a subsidised price for the phone and a hefty monthly bill.
And the point is $200 + $35 per month for two years is a lot more than shelling out $400 for the phone and paying $10 a month on pay as you go. Same deal as with the $99 xbox - and anything where you can pay in monthly installments rather than all up front.
Sci-Fi does seem to be one of the smaller genres by nominations.
However, does it really matter? I know I stopped reading critics reviews of movies decades ago, because largely they all review from a particular viewpoint. A more action/sci-fi/fantasy film may not be up for winning an oscar, but if it does it's job (ie entertains) then its genre shouldn't be held against it. As such I'll only read reviews of films which are penned by people interested in that genre and the film's objective.
If you COPY a DVD for ANY purpose (other than the temporary copy in memory sort of a thing) and by any methods you have committed copyright infringement.
Didn't Blizzard manage to sue WoWglider for copyright infringement because it made a copy of the WoW client into memory?
That's certainly good news, hadn't heard that. I just always get suspicious of companies that promise to do things at a point when they have lost control of their company. It's good if Valve has already written it and so won't need resources to develop.
Yes, because if they go belly up they'll definitely have the time and resources to come up with a patch to let you play their games. Plus I very much doubt the insolvency practitioner/debtor / purchaser will be willing to let them have funds.
The only way I'd believe that claim is if the patch had alread been written (and was kept updated with changes to the system) and in the hands of a third party to be released on a list of conditions - such as the servers going dark.
Slashdot Mirror
The pedant in me wants to point out that if they did use M-16s, it wouldn't have been in 1066 as they were only formed in 1099 - but given I wasn't alive in 1099 I don't have any proof of that either :/
Although I guess they could have used whatever time-travel machine they used to get a hold of M-16s to go back and fight in the Battle of Hastings.
I agree with you, debt without evaluating the cost and a plan to manage it is bad news.
However you say "it would be better to buy with cash and avoid paying all the interest"
Sure buying with cash avoids paying interest, however it also avoids collecting interest on whatever else you would have invested in. Essentially buying a house with cash can be considered as investing in property at the mortgage rate of interest. If you can beat that in the market (with a suitable level of security/liquidity) then it's worth condiering a mortgage and investing.
Of course differential tax treatment, stamp duty on house purchase, duration you expect to hold the house/asset, etc all feed in to make it a more complex analysis. YMMV, this is not financial advice, etc
Thanks for the information. I don't have mod points at the moment (and couldn't mod in here now anyway) but have an informal +1 informative from me anyway :)
I would be surprised if a group of contractors funded and directed by American sources but who happen to live in Argentina would be classed as Argentinian, but then I'm not a lawyer and there's lots about the law that surprises me. One example would be Hezbollah - they are based in Lebanon but believed to be funded by Iran, and so what they do is often considered to be done by Iran not by Lebanon.
With the US v Nicaragua point, I've never really known much about what went on with Reagan and the Contras, but from having a look on Wikipedia it seems that:
- If you mean the US attack on Nicaragua, that was based on the US's unilateral opinion rather than an agreed international opinion. As such I wouldn't count that as a widely held agreement on what counts as an act of war
- If you mean the ICJ decision on the aftermath of the US attacks I would agree that it is at least a consensus decision on what acts are considered valid
- From the ICJ decision:
- Nicaragua supplying arms to El Salvador opposition does not constitute an armed attack (and thus I guess would not be an act of war). This seems in line with your suggestion that financing someone in a foreign country doesn't make them your army, the army belongs to the country in which they live not the country which supplies them.
- However it also suggests that the US arming, financing and training the contra groups intervened in the sovereignty of another state, and through various attacks the US was considered to have used force against another state. While not an act of war it seems in that direction which is the other way round to the findings in the Nicaragua v El Salvador point above - although the contras were based in Nicaragua since they were US funded, they are considered to be US?
I guess there are particular circumstances with each of the two above, ie perhaps the US attacks on Nicaragua were much more clearly linked to the US government. Also there's a lot of different actions ("act of war", "armed attack", "intervene in sovereignty", "used force" - what do they all mean?). I have some more reading to do it seems!
I assumed that essentially paying a group of mercenaries or contractors to invade someone without using your own formal government troops would still be considered an act of war. Otherwise why not rename the army to the "Army plc" and claim that although they do tend to do a lot of contract work for the government they are an independant company. So sorry that they decided to invade your country but it's not an act of war so feel free to try and sue them in the US courts - good luck.
Do you have a reference for your example? You imply that some case examples exist.
The study claims they can predict homosexuality with an 88% accuracy?
You can do far better than that by chance. surveys suggest that around 3-7% say of the population is homosexual (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States)
Therefore if you "predict" that everyone is straight, you will be correct around 95% of the time. Even randomly picking 1 out of 20 people as homosexual with no analysis of their likes would retain a 95% strike rate.
(I know, chances are they mean that they only get 12% false negatives on their homosexual predictions, compared to 100% or 95% on my systems)
Why do you think they make you close all the windows and reopen them during a flight? It's because the pilot's control panel has frozen up
I assume by "Elsewhere they tend to do rather more good" you're not including the UK. Over here in the UK they are also all about protecting lazyness and weird working practices such as holding back modernisation, reinstating bullies, etc
(I know this is a generalisation, and therefore I'm sure there are exceptions, however the biggies such as train staff in particular and public sector unions fall into this category)
If it's online only, you're not buying it and you don't have "physical posession" of it, even if you have a shiny disc which is also required to play.
designed? pah. The piano is badly evolved you mean!
To be fair, the pope has probably never had sex without using a Trojan
Spotted a typo:
Israel knows that attacking Hamas with airstrikes will result in a reaction. They take this action with the full knowledge that it will lead to not only innocent Palestinian civilians dying but their own people as well. But, somehow, it's Hamas's fault. Always.
Now IANAL but I think you shot yourself in the foot there.
Your quote from the OSCE document clearly states that participating states [ie the US] invites observers to observe the election "to the extent permitted by law". If the law says they're allowed to observe, but from no closer than 100 feet, then how is that in disagreement with international agreements?
Admittedly you could argue about how much observation can be done from a distance, but it doesn't appear to be in disagreement to me.
Having said that it increasingly seems to me that right/wrong and legal/illegal are orthogonal axes
Erm, callous jokes are unfortunately a case of free speech. As Voltaire (didn't) say: I don't find your joke funny but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Things don't stop being free speech just because you disagree with them.
"we can watch electrons move" - I thought quantum dynamics, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in particular, prohibits things like that? After all, watching something move essentially means you are able to measure both it's position and velocity?
Amazon was selling ebooks below cost? You do know that the marginal cost of creating an ebook is virtually zero, so it's frankly pretty difficult to sell them below cost.
Your linked article seems to complain that Amazon with their Kindle proved to be too successful. I have to say that authors/publishers brought this on themselves by insisting on DRM. With DRM, consumers get locked into a single format, to avoid having to repurchase their entire library for use with a different eReader. As such, whoever sells them their first eReader will subsequently get all future eBook sales. The music industry has (sort of) learned this lesson, and I had hoped that book publishing would learn from their mistakes but it seems not. If you want to remove Amazon's stranglehold, sell eBooks elsewhere with no DRM. Other stores will then be able to compete with Amazon's eBooks and consumers will still be able to use their exising Kindle eReader. Amazon's competitve advantage of being able to read on the Kindle is gone overnight, with the advantage that publishers can then start to sell their own eReaders, which will be able to import consumers entire library.
Well, on average there's one boob* per person - surely that's enough?
(I'm excluding moobs here)
Since a while ago - in the UK at least.
I'm on t-mobile, and pay £20 for six months of "unlimited" data and pay something like £5 a month in calls and texts. Overall I'm less than £10 a month which works out as much cheaper than paying a subsidised price for the phone and a hefty monthly bill.
See internet boosters here
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/price-plans/pay-as-you-go/boosters/
Um, $200 + $35 per month is a cell phone plan ....
And the point is $200 + $35 per month for two years is a lot more than shelling out $400 for the phone and paying $10 a month on pay as you go. Same deal as with the $99 xbox - and anything where you can pay in monthly installments rather than all up front.
I'm OK then - when I'm not passing people I drive in the right lane.
Having said that I do live in the UK ...
The BBC has an article up which shows the breakdown of nominations by genre:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17074585
Sci-Fi does seem to be one of the smaller genres by nominations.
However, does it really matter? I know I stopped reading critics reviews of movies decades ago, because largely they all review from a particular viewpoint. A more action/sci-fi/fantasy film may not be up for winning an oscar, but if it does it's job (ie entertains) then its genre shouldn't be held against it. As such I'll only read reviews of films which are penned by people interested in that genre and the film's objective.
If you COPY a DVD for ANY purpose (other than the temporary copy in memory sort of a thing) and by any methods you have committed copyright infringement.
Didn't Blizzard manage to sue WoWglider for copyright infringement because it made a copy of the WoW client into memory?
That's certainly good news, hadn't heard that. I just always get suspicious of companies that promise to do things at a point when they have lost control of their company. It's good if Valve has already written it and so won't need resources to develop.
Yes, because if they go belly up they'll definitely have the time and resources to come up with a patch to let you play their games. Plus I very much doubt the insolvency practitioner /debtor / purchaser will be willing to let them have funds.
The only way I'd believe that claim is if the patch had alread been written (and was kept updated with changes to the system) and in the hands of a third party to be released on a list of conditions - such as the servers going dark.
Yes, the RIAA