Usenet between 1989 and 1998 was gold. Despite flame wars in places like soc.men and soc.women, or soc.culture.indian / soc.culture.pakistan
in general the quality of discussions were good. Quality of information unbiased or the bias of the poster was obvious. The "travel agents survey" of
soc.culture.indian was gold to the PIGS. (Poor Indian Grad Students). When commercial ISPs were being discussed, many usenet users
predicted the death of usenet. They were prescient. Usenet died under the weight of spam and shills.
Early internet had so many review sites that gave relatively unbiased information while the established players like PC Mag was seen to be basically shills. Eventually those review sites died or became shills or got lost in the noise of shill sites. Reviews in Circuit City, Best Buy, Costco etc all started out decent and died due to shills. Amazon seems to be fighting a losing battle with the shills.
Essentially the basic rule is this: If costs nothing to post a review or a message, expect to be overwhelmed by spam and shills. It is simply vendors adapting to the new medium. No way good samaritans would be able to keep up with the volume churned out by the vested interests and they will be lost in the noise. Bold prediction: Same fate will befall wikipedia, eventually.
In my limited understanding of these things, (mostly from articles meant for mass consumption, not scholarly journal papers), I imagine a black hole to be so massive not even light can escape its gravitational pull. Which technically means the escape velocity is the speed of light. So anything at the event horizon should be at the speed of light. This is of course, a naive view. The escape velocity is based on Newtonian, not Relativistic, physics.
OK, this is the best I could make out based on my limited understanding. You can turn on two factor authentication on and every time you log in from a browser, you need to get a code to cell phone or use a one time pad number as the second factor. But not all google accounts/applications/services use a plain browser to log-in. Looks like this is more common the apps/mobile/android world. So you create a special password for those applications alone. But if those app specific passwords are captured by a thirdparty, they can use it to reset the full account password or capture the account.
So if I had not created any app-specific password I should be safe right? Or have I implicitly created some app specific passwords to let my android phone to log in to my google account? I don't have any serious app in my mobile phone. All I do with my phone is to make phone calls, listen to FM radio and look at the clock. Why I got a smart phone I don't know. Now it looks like it is making my google accounts vulnerable.
This new technology would become obsolete as soon as we find a good source for unobtainium. But the smart money is on the administranium that would thwart any competitor from emerging.
The poverty line is defined by our almighty government as some $ 23K/year (2012 $) for a family of four. International poverty threshold is some $ 1825 a year (2005 $). Even allowing for inflation, there is an order of magnitude different.
In the last election cycle the Republicans tried to point out that what America calls poor would not be called poor in most other nations. But they got lots of flak and backed off. But there is some truth in noting that "there is no food in the fridge in my kitchen" sounds crazy to people who don't have homes, and those who do don't have kitchens, and those who do dont have fridges! It like the story about the poor written by a rich kid. "There was a poor man. His butler was poor, His chauffeur was poor, His cook was poor and so was his maid.
A household barely on the poverty line in USA is richer than 80% of the world! About 10% of the world, or 700 million people or twice the population of USA, lives in less than $365 a year! Again these dollar figures are not the foreign exchange rate based dollars. These are "purchase power parity" dollars. Which means the $365 buys in the poor country, what $365 would buy in the USA.
So the conclusions of this study are rather obvious.
The last pangea was about 300 million years ago. Indian subcontinent dashed across the Indian ocean and rammed into the underbelly of Asia just 70 million years ago. But these zircon cyrstals are 1900 million years ago. Enough time for one or two pangeas to form and break apart. The data is data, never argue with it. The crust could be 20 km thick where Arabian Sea is today and these crystals could be 1.9 billion years old. But I wish there is a better explanation than this idea of a lost continent.
I am bracing for another assault from the Tamil literature majors. There are references to sea level rise and lost cities (South Madurai) and lost rivers (Pahtruli) and lost temples (near Mamallapuram) and lost harbours (near Poompuhar) and lost grammar books (by Agastiyar ) in Tamil. Best explained by the ending of last ice age some 9000 years ago and the seas coming in a few kilometers and probably flooding a large river delta. But these guys postulate a "lost continent" of Lemuria, exactly in the Arabian Sea./Indian Ocean. Now they are going to come on like a ton of bricks claiming vindication and "proof" that the Tamil language is 1.9 billion years old. Especially since there is a literary reference that translates as, "after the rocks have appeared, but the sand has not yet been formed, [Tamils] were born with swords, the eldest civilization". That would gel with a 1.9 billion year old language.
Firefox does not have deep pockets. So it does not attract patent trolls that much. But it also means, it can not defend itself against a deep pocketed entity that is threatened by its emergence. So it will be killed by the big players if it shows any sign of stamina.
Wait, wait, I hear you say. We are talking about firefox, firefox the giant slayer who took on IE like David took Goliath! That happened because millions of users faithfully downloaded and installed firefox with great determination and perseverance, IE had many security holes, Microsoft took its users for granted. Now in the smart phone arena, iPhone takes the place of IE, but without that many known and visible security holes. But a strong alternative to iPhone exists, by a well funded opponent, Android. There simply are not enough determined firefox fans left to make a big dent. In fact firefox has ceded dominance to Chrome even in the browser arena. Firefox peaked at 47% share in 2009. Chrome has been gobbling up the market share of both firefox and IE. Firefox is still the second most popular platform, though.
He came for the 16 oz soda, I did not say anything... yada yada yada,..he came for the guns... blah blah.. now he is coming after my iPhone but there is no one...
First
For all that talk about clean coal and pandering to the coal producing states by the government, the basic fact is this: Dirty coal, mined by companies exploiting every available safety loophole, and creating more loop holes by buying judges, politicians and bureaucrats, is still more expensive than natural gas. Especially after the Marcellus Shale and fracking extraction methods. So no matter how efficient this clean coal process is, it is not going to be competitive. Of course we could make it competitive by some big government subsidies like Solyndra or by tilting the marketplace by laws like we did for ethanol. But without serious and continuous government subsidies, coal will be uncompetitive and it will die eventually. All the decent coal mining companies have exited the business. Leaving it to the vulture capitalists to pick the bones. Eventually there will be nothing to pick. As the famous saying goes, stone age did not end because we ran out of stone. Coal age will end with most of the remaining coal left in the ground.
Second
The particulate oxidation using rust balls and powdered coal still happens at high temperatures and it still produces gaseous carbon dioxide. We might as well burn them using atmospheric oxygen for all that trouble. The carbon sequestration process requires carbon dioxide to be captured and sequestered using the same procedures. This process of taking atmospheric oxygen, creating rust balls, reducing them (reduce = (! oxidize)), is too much of work with too little to gain.
When Google unveils the other super secret project it has been keeping under the wraps, the Google WiMax Nationwide (tm) project that gives Wi-Fi access to all Chromebook Pixel users for free, who will be laughing? Pixel users get 50GB data per month, Nexus users 10 GB/month, all other Android users get 2GB/month free, Wi-Fi calling using VoIP is included too. If you need more data than that the planned rate is something like 1$/GB or something. Non Android gmail users pay 5$ a month for 2GB/ month. Non-Android Non-gmail users pay some 20$ a month for 2GB/month.
How accurate are the numbers? Where did I get this info? Well, I am just day dreaming, hoping this comes to pass, and everyone thinks I have a super high level mole inside Google organization. That should be worth some 15 minutes of fame, should it come to pass, that is.
How good would you rate the service provided by your burglar? Reliable? Does the job in the appointed window? Is the window reasonably short? Does not take more than what is contracted, right? What kind of fees? How untraceable is the guy?
Basically, would you hire him again, when it is time to do the next round of upgrades?
What do you mean I have to turn it off? The cell phone booster I got ain't got an off switch. Sounds funny, but to get this cell phone booster is so thin it fits between the battery and the inside of the battery cover. I was really lucky because they had a promotion going and this 30.. 40 or even 50$ value booster was on sale at 19$ and I was fast enough to call them within the next 10 minutes and got the second one for free, just paid S&H alone for the second one.
This amazing cell phone booster works on all brands. It looks like a sticker with weird tattoo image like log printed on it. All I have to do is to open the battery cover and stick it to the inside of that cover. That is all. I am guaranteed to get four bars on the antenna no matter where I go. I itching to get my hands on this thing, I would like to rub it in the face of my friends who are paying big bucks for brand name companies like Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile. My cell phone provider just charges me 10$ and his coverage map does not include my home. But, they don't know about this amazing cell phone booster. It is going to be sweet baby!, so I thought.
Suddenly this big government is thrusting its nose where it is none of its business and is banning the cell phone booster. What am I going to do?
You got it backwards buddy. Not connecting most things would mean there can not be a fire. What happened was they ordered 60 miles of wiring when they needed only 60 km. The extra wire was looped round and round, held together with plastic ties, just in case we need it later. That is what causing the fires.
I mean, they have hacked both US and Brit planes' software. So if we could persuade them to CC: the American and Brit planes, they could have direct encrypted communication, just a minor delay for round-tripping via Unit 6 1398 in the Beijing suburb.
Tie this pen to a robotic arm to control the movement of the tip very precise. Also control the speed of travel and may be bead size. May be tie three or four such pens oozing different materials. That contraption is the equivalent of rendering images using scalable vector graphics instead of raster scanning!. If we adjust the temperature and material properties, and some kind of active cooling we could create very strong wire frames. May be these wire frames could form the skeleton with some kind of charge to accrete charge particles to acquire thickness, color and other surface properties. The possibilities are endless.
No, the methane is not concentrated enough to burn off. The waste is collected into ponds that stink up the atmosphere for a mile or so. Methane and noxious gases go straight into atmosphere. That methane is a serious contributor to greenhouse gases. Methane is 100 times worse than CO2, molecule for molecule. Still any talk about that usually degenerates into cartoons of white coated scientists running around with glasses to capture cow farts in an open field filled with laughing farmers and the cows with bemused expressions.
The farm waste from cows, pigs and chicken, can be a very serious partial solution in switching over to renewable energy sources. America has 100 million cows. Once I calculated something like 6 cows can produce enough natural gas to keep one car going, i,e they produce enough natural gas to run a car for some 15000 miles in one year.
The methane is odorless, the smell comes from other chemicals and bacteria, By covering the waste to capture methane you would also reduce odor pollution too.
Once the methane has been extracted what remains is a great organic fertilizer.
It is not as sexy as windmills and solar arrays but it is a good viable path. But, alas, USA is never going to go this path. The hydraulic fracking breakthrough has dropped the price of natural gas so low, now it is not worth capturing methane to sell off. Only if there is any kind of credit for not emitting the methane into the atmosphere, odor pollution abatement and value of organic fertilizer works out farmers will invest on this low tech solution. Pond the waste, cover it with thick plastic, capture the gas, separate the methane, and chimney up the noxious pollutants. The break even cost was working out to a dairy farm of at least 1000 cows at the height of oil price spike. Now it is likely to be at 4000 or 5000 cows. Practically impossible in USA.
It would be a great boon for India and China though. Hope it works out
That is regular Fidelity. Mine was netbenefits, the 401K arm of fidelity. For some reason their authentication server seems to be different and uses a different protocol. But it starts with a PIN number assigned by the employer to even start an on line access user id.
How many key fobs should I be carrying around? Both E-Trade and Schwab give away rsa key fobs for account holders with a certain minimum. 401k, IRA, everything counts to the balance, even the market value of the unexercised stock options count towards balance. So if you dont mind jingling around a whole bunch of key fobs, I suppose you could find institutions.
Cashing out using stolen passwords is very difficult. If it was easy, customers themselves would transfer money in an untraceable manner and falsely claim fraud. The thief steals from the money mule, not the bank customer. Customers do not suffer direct harm, the indirect costs are not noticed.
I have made many posts asking for two level access. First level password is good for looking at balances and bills etc. And you need the second level password to actually move money or cash it out. But each financial institution does it its own way. The final decision seems to be made by some old coot who gets mortally afraid of computers, who has a bevy of secretaries who print their emails and put them in folders, whose on line skills match that of Donald "I save classified docs in my unsecured personal laptop" Rumsfeld or David "gee I will exchange mail using drafts folder, no one will think of it ha ha ha" Petraeus.
Fidelity. Made me choose all numeric password because alphabets would confuse their old retirees who use phone based transactions. I was shocked and wanted to disable phone based transactions on my account immediately. Was told to take a hike. They can't disable it without disabling on-line access as well. Was forced to continue the account because our company 401K is with these morons. Have not checked recently if it has changed.
ETrade They used to be good. They had the concept of a "trading password" on top of a regular password. Exactly what I wanted. You need to provide the trading password to actually do trade or cash out money or transfer funds. They took it away! I called to complain. They gave me a free RSA dongle. These jokers imagine their customers having an RSA key fob for each account. Cant ditch them. Our company stock purchase plan is with them.
Schwab would give a RSA fob if I asked. But don't know how it works with Quicken. Will upgrade to latest quicken and see if it is supported. Even then I don't fancy dangling around with key fobs.
PNC Bank if you setup an all numeric username it would also serve as your phone banking user id. But you need all numeric password to use it with phones. Thank you PNC! I set up an all numeric username and a alphanumeric password. So phone transactions are not possible. With VOIP and caller-id spoofing phone banking is as vulnerable as on line banking. At least let me cut down one attack surface.
Why cant they give me two level passwords? Why cant they implement a two factor authentication like google does with cell phones? Why cant they send a text message on every transaction so that I would be alerted by any fraudulent activity?
Slashdot Mirror
Early internet had so many review sites that gave relatively unbiased information while the established players like PC Mag was seen to be basically shills. Eventually those review sites died or became shills or got lost in the noise of shill sites. Reviews in Circuit City, Best Buy, Costco etc all started out decent and died due to shills. Amazon seems to be fighting a losing battle with the shills.
Essentially the basic rule is this: If costs nothing to post a review or a message, expect to be overwhelmed by spam and shills. It is simply vendors adapting to the new medium. No way good samaritans would be able to keep up with the volume churned out by the vested interests and they will be lost in the noise. Bold prediction: Same fate will befall wikipedia, eventually.
But that does not always happen. They just gave a flippant response to the one I signed, "We are not in the business of blowing up planets".
Till I read the summary I thought ion is a iron with the letter r removed. Now I know what is removed is not r but electrons. Got it.
In my limited understanding of these things, (mostly from articles meant for mass consumption, not scholarly journal papers), I imagine a black hole to be so massive not even light can escape its gravitational pull. Which technically means the escape velocity is the speed of light. So anything at the event horizon should be at the speed of light. This is of course, a naive view. The escape velocity is based on Newtonian, not Relativistic, physics.
They also said, Surface-to-Air missiles are going to make fighters obsolete
They also said, robots are going to make soldiers obsolete.
You know what, we have to find the "they" make them stop making insane predictions.
So if I had not created any app-specific password I should be safe right? Or have I implicitly created some app specific passwords to let my android phone to log in to my google account? I don't have any serious app in my mobile phone. All I do with my phone is to make phone calls, listen to FM radio and look at the clock. Why I got a smart phone I don't know. Now it looks like it is making my google accounts vulnerable.
This new technology would become obsolete as soon as we find a good source for unobtainium. But the smart money is on the administranium that would thwart any competitor from emerging.
In the last election cycle the Republicans tried to point out that what America calls poor would not be called poor in most other nations. But they got lots of flak and backed off. But there is some truth in noting that "there is no food in the fridge in my kitchen" sounds crazy to people who don't have homes, and those who do don't have kitchens, and those who do dont have fridges! It like the story about the poor written by a rich kid. "There was a poor man. His butler was poor, His chauffeur was poor, His cook was poor and so was his maid.
A household barely on the poverty line in USA is richer than 80% of the world! About 10% of the world, or 700 million people or twice the population of USA, lives in less than $365 a year! Again these dollar figures are not the foreign exchange rate based dollars. These are "purchase power parity" dollars. Which means the $365 buys in the poor country, what $365 would buy in the USA.
So the conclusions of this study are rather obvious.
I am bracing for another assault from the Tamil literature majors. There are references to sea level rise and lost cities (South Madurai) and lost rivers (Pahtruli) and lost temples (near Mamallapuram) and lost harbours (near Poompuhar) and lost grammar books (by Agastiyar ) in Tamil. Best explained by the ending of last ice age some 9000 years ago and the seas coming in a few kilometers and probably flooding a large river delta. But these guys postulate a "lost continent" of Lemuria, exactly in the Arabian Sea./Indian Ocean. Now they are going to come on like a ton of bricks claiming vindication and "proof" that the Tamil language is 1.9 billion years old. Especially since there is a literary reference that translates as, "after the rocks have appeared, but the sand has not yet been formed, [Tamils] were born with swords, the eldest civilization". That would gel with a 1.9 billion year old language.
Wait, wait, I hear you say. We are talking about firefox, firefox the giant slayer who took on IE like David took Goliath! That happened because millions of users faithfully downloaded and installed firefox with great determination and perseverance, IE had many security holes, Microsoft took its users for granted. Now in the smart phone arena, iPhone takes the place of IE, but without that many known and visible security holes. But a strong alternative to iPhone exists, by a well funded opponent, Android. There simply are not enough determined firefox fans left to make a big dent. In fact firefox has ceded dominance to Chrome even in the browser arena. Firefox peaked at 47% share in 2009. Chrome has been gobbling up the market share of both firefox and IE. Firefox is still the second most popular platform, though.
He came for the 16 oz soda, I did not say anything... yada yada yada, ..he came for the guns ... blah blah .. now he is coming after my iPhone but there is no one ...
Second The particulate oxidation using rust balls and powdered coal still happens at high temperatures and it still produces gaseous carbon dioxide. We might as well burn them using atmospheric oxygen for all that trouble. The carbon sequestration process requires carbon dioxide to be captured and sequestered using the same procedures. This process of taking atmospheric oxygen, creating rust balls, reducing them (reduce = (! oxidize)), is too much of work with too little to gain.
How accurate are the numbers? Where did I get this info? Well, I am just day dreaming, hoping this comes to pass, and everyone thinks I have a super high level mole inside Google organization. That should be worth some 15 minutes of fame, should it come to pass, that is.
Basically, would you hire him again, when it is time to do the next round of upgrades?
This amazing cell phone booster works on all brands. It looks like a sticker with weird tattoo image like log printed on it. All I have to do is to open the battery cover and stick it to the inside of that cover. That is all. I am guaranteed to get four bars on the antenna no matter where I go. I itching to get my hands on this thing, I would like to rub it in the face of my friends who are paying big bucks for brand name companies like Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile. My cell phone provider just charges me 10$ and his coverage map does not include my home. But, they don't know about this amazing cell phone booster. It is going to be sweet baby!, so I thought.
Suddenly this big government is thrusting its nose where it is none of its business and is banning the cell phone booster. What am I going to do?
You got it backwards buddy. Not connecting most things would mean there can not be a fire. What happened was they ordered 60 miles of wiring when they needed only 60 km. The extra wire was looped round and round, held together with plastic ties, just in case we need it later. That is what causing the fires.
I mean, they have hacked both US and Brit planes' software. So if we could persuade them to CC: the American and Brit planes, they could have direct encrypted communication, just a minor delay for round-tripping via Unit 6 1398 in the Beijing suburb.
Tie this pen to a robotic arm to control the movement of the tip very precise. Also control the speed of travel and may be bead size. May be tie three or four such pens oozing different materials. That contraption is the equivalent of rendering images using scalable vector graphics instead of raster scanning!. If we adjust the temperature and material properties, and some kind of active cooling we could create very strong wire frames. May be these wire frames could form the skeleton with some kind of charge to accrete charge particles to acquire thickness, color and other surface properties. The possibilities are endless.
But, the mushroom is not patentable. But this new "drug" will be patentable.
No, the methane is not concentrated enough to burn off. The waste is collected into ponds that stink up the atmosphere for a mile or so. Methane and noxious gases go straight into atmosphere. That methane is a serious contributor to greenhouse gases. Methane is 100 times worse than CO2, molecule for molecule. Still any talk about that usually degenerates into cartoons of white coated scientists running around with glasses to capture cow farts in an open field filled with laughing farmers and the cows with bemused expressions.
The methane is odorless, the smell comes from other chemicals and bacteria, By covering the waste to capture methane you would also reduce odor pollution too.
Once the methane has been extracted what remains is a great organic fertilizer.
It is not as sexy as windmills and solar arrays but it is a good viable path. But, alas, USA is never going to go this path. The hydraulic fracking breakthrough has dropped the price of natural gas so low, now it is not worth capturing methane to sell off. Only if there is any kind of credit for not emitting the methane into the atmosphere, odor pollution abatement and value of organic fertilizer works out farmers will invest on this low tech solution. Pond the waste, cover it with thick plastic, capture the gas, separate the methane, and chimney up the noxious pollutants. The break even cost was working out to a dairy farm of at least 1000 cows at the height of oil price spike. Now it is likely to be at 4000 or 5000 cows. Practically impossible in USA.
It would be a great boon for India and China though. Hope it works out
That is regular Fidelity. Mine was netbenefits, the 401K arm of fidelity. For some reason their authentication server seems to be different and uses a different protocol. But it starts with a PIN number assigned by the employer to even start an on line access user id.
How many key fobs should I be carrying around? Both E-Trade and Schwab give away rsa key fobs for account holders with a certain minimum. 401k, IRA, everything counts to the balance, even the market value of the unexercised stock options count towards balance. So if you dont mind jingling around a whole bunch of key fobs, I suppose you could find institutions.
Cashing out using stolen passwords is very difficult. If it was easy, customers themselves would transfer money in an untraceable manner and falsely claim fraud. The thief steals from the money mule, not the bank customer. Customers do not suffer direct harm, the indirect costs are not noticed.
Fidelity. Made me choose all numeric password because alphabets would confuse their old retirees who use phone based transactions. I was shocked and wanted to disable phone based transactions on my account immediately. Was told to take a hike. They can't disable it without disabling on-line access as well. Was forced to continue the account because our company 401K is with these morons. Have not checked recently if it has changed.
ETrade They used to be good. They had the concept of a "trading password" on top of a regular password. Exactly what I wanted. You need to provide the trading password to actually do trade or cash out money or transfer funds. They took it away! I called to complain. They gave me a free RSA dongle. These jokers imagine their customers having an RSA key fob for each account. Cant ditch them. Our company stock purchase plan is with them.
Schwab would give a RSA fob if I asked. But don't know how it works with Quicken. Will upgrade to latest quicken and see if it is supported. Even then I don't fancy dangling around with key fobs.
PNC Bank if you setup an all numeric username it would also serve as your phone banking user id. But you need all numeric password to use it with phones. Thank you PNC! I set up an all numeric username and a alphanumeric password. So phone transactions are not possible. With VOIP and caller-id spoofing phone banking is as vulnerable as on line banking. At least let me cut down one attack surface.
Why cant they give me two level passwords? Why cant they implement a two factor authentication like google does with cell phones? Why cant they send a text message on every transaction so that I would be alerted by any fraudulent activity?