Posts by Tom 13

Re: Did they ever consider

Nope. Those thoughts get drowned out in the leftist echo chamber that is the US MSM.

Re: there can be only one

That's not only a different actor, it's a different genre!

Re: 2 things...

Let's assume I'm a home user and I wanted to legally own the suite. So I've been saving my pennies for the last 6 months to finally be able to buy the product. And now, with no fanfare, the price has tripled.

And you don't see a problem?

Re: I shall celebrate with

He's a bleeding SI goon! What did you expect? Possibly the best reason of all to tell them to sod off regardless of poll results is that none of them have a sense of humor (or should that be humour?).

Re: simply send them a letter or email pointing out the infringement

Nope, been there, done that, bought the tee shirt. It rarely ends well.

First letter is always a registered letter from the lawyer spelling out exactly what has to happen. Problem is Jobs had an ego the size of the former Soviet Union, and infused his company with it. They get that kind of letter and their immediate reaction is to fight it. Big mistake. Especially going up against the only industry where everybody has an ego just as big as Jobs did.

If it doesn't involve the EXCHANGE of valuable property

it isn't a contract. Now, "valuable property" may only be 1 dollar or pound depending on your locality, but if money doesn't change hands, you got nuttin.

Re: could have prevented 9/11

There are a lot of things that could have prevented 9/11, many of them were in fact, in place (including agents actively reporting the suspicious behavior at the flight school which could have been used to legally start surveillance and get search warrants for wiretaps). The one critical failure was that at the highest levels for the previous 4 years there was an active denial that events like 9/11 were possible let alone being actively planned. The current mess in Libya is deja vu all over again.

Re: Look at France

Yes, let's take a look at France. France pushed their nuke policy through because they had a fascist (although they called themselves socialist) government that pushed it through without having popular support. Everywhere there is a truly democratic government the enviro-weenies have convinced everyone nukes are more dangerous than the Third Reich was and are off the table.

That leaves fossil fuels or unicorn farts. I'll take fossil fuels thank-you.

Re: Shares are valued on expectations of future profits distributed as dividends, right?

Once upon a time, before tax laws made a hash of it, yes. These days, a decent dividend is more a sign of a moribund, government regulated monopoly/oligopoly than anything else. Stocks instead are bought and sold on the basis of how much you think you'll net when you sell it for capital gains. The overall negative effect this has had on the market, and its usefulness as an economic indicator is tremendous.

Of course, the safest estimate of that gain is a division of expected profit from selling widgets to the public divided by the number of shares, with a simultaneous examination of the sales growth trend for the company. Facebook doesn't make widgets so that first bit is right out the window, and now what we're hearing is that FB knew they were on a down slope for their "sales growth" proxy to boot.

So the end result of your analysis stands, albeit via a more circuitous route.

Re: Limits.

The limit question in Special Relativity is intrinsically more nuanced and interesting. Einstein assumed continuous increase in acceleration. Quantum physics gives us discreet increases. The equations still work if V > c and you assume the i is an indicator of (for lack of a better term) a phase shift. Which is what these mathematicians explored.

Would I ever want to be the test monkey in an experimental device based on these assumptions? Hell no! But it can be fun to talk about, even though Al's musings based on practicality are probably spot on.

Re: Bloody hell, talk about a spoilt little brat.

He's not complaining they aren't making complex processors. He's complaining that there are four companies that are putting little red 2mm x 2mm x2mm boxes on their board that are supplied from commodity red 2mm x 2mm x 2mm vendors and that the logical interface to the box is the same. But company A calls it a hoser, company b calls it a lifter, company D calls it a vator, and company calls it a faucet, and each of them customize a front end that only interacts with that box and Linux has to work with the front end instead of the box, or even better, a cross industry standard that would let you talk to the box regardless of which ARM chip is used.

Re: And all those US chips designed in Israel?

I see antisemitism is alive and well in the UK, all the while disparaging rational reasons one might not want dictatorial governments running the companies that are installing hardware.

Frankly, I would expect that if the UK were building out a secure network for their military, that they'd exclude Yanks for the same reason. And have no objection to it.

@Graham Triggs: That's probably be because you don't collect coins.

At today's spot price for gold, more than half the cost of the 3 proofs is in the bullion value of the coins. They'll need a fair chunk of overhang to allow for the increasing value of that. Then there's the premium for the proof. They issued them as legal tender because that makes the collectable as official currency instead of as medallions (for whatever reason this tends to make them worth more as collectibles). Typically the size of the coin is set by the size of the officially circulating piece, regardless of the bullion value of the coin, as is the case with US "silver proof" coinage. The sizes for the coins are usually the result of the last date at which coins were actually minted from gold or silver. I think if they changed the face value of the coin they get into other problems because nobody issues legal tender made from precious metals anymore.

If I had the money, I'd probably buy a set for myself. If I really, really had the money, I'd buy sets for my friends too. But I don't have the money. Might get one of the peasant priced pieces though.

Re: Lewis

You should consider the possibility that Lewis DOES bring his knowledgable and methodical approach to AWG and that it is your own prejudices/religious beliefs which are offended. And yes, he did include a few deliberately inflammatory remarks (which I will let slide unless pressed) because it was, like his climate articles, a fun and informative read.

Re: CTO of some hi-tech Californian outfit

you can't swing a live-dead cat in Silicon valley without hitting a CTO.

Whether or not he's a CTO worth talking to is another story.

Re: Not sure there's much margin

If there's no margin, they need to kill or spin off the business. If they intend to keep it, they have to fix it.

It isn't just the consumer market either, the business end sucks as well because they aren't doing what business needs. About 5 years back I got into a bit of a fight with the purchasing manager because every time he bought a new printer for the company it was a different model that required us to stock a different toner, and our toner supply closet was already as well stocked as the local Office Despot, if not better. He said "Tom, I tried. But they just don't keep printer models for more than 6 months these days." When I checked the HP website he was right. That has to be costing HP in tooling costs. Manufacturing makes money when you can write off the investment over a period of years, so products with a 3-6 month shelf life kill HP's bottom line too. Time was you could buy the exact same HP model for 4 years and expect serviceable equipment for 6+ years. Even if they don't get back to that level of machine reliability, they need to get back to that level of ordering reliability.

Re: but fail to mention

Even the CBO admits the Republican plan scores the change more accurately.

Re: someone in possession of such a thing

The first owner sure. The second?

Perhaps not.

Re: I imagine Lewis...

Having worked at a scientific journal once upon a time, yes actually I do. And a far better idea than the myth you and the rest of the warmists portray. Peer review is an even worse piece of crap than anything a politician says during a campaign, because in a campaign you at least KNOW what they are peddling is crap.

I don't work in a power plant either,

but I've at least done enough reading to have an inkling of what the real problems are instead of your mindless rant.

The primary issue for power plants these days is monitoring the grid, not the furnace/reactor. That means scads and scads of remote monitoring scada equipment. And the best way to get it all connected back to the central monitoring station is via the internet. Yes, they do need to do a much better job at hardening things, but a magic wand solution simply doesn't exist.

Re: Unlucky guy dials...

He wasn't unlucky, he was trying to get something for free, and hence got into trouble. More trouble than he bargained for, and for an overstated charge. Therefore he is now free. But he wasn't some dude just standing at the bus stop that the cops mistakenly picked up for something he didn't do.