Posts by Tom 13 7544 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Before Snowden the money spent on fleshies to handle data made the agency look more important. With Snowden breaching his contract's security requirement, it is now blatantly obvious they have a security issue that has to be fixed. Even at the cost of not looking as important at budget time.
No, you're understanding of economics is flawed. Deeply flawed. Hopefully not fatally so, but depressingly probably so.
Shale gas is not differentiated from non-shale gas. Adding the huge potential production from shale deposits will lower all gas prices. In the US prices have fallen to about $3.25/unit from a high around $10.50 in mid 2008 and a more typical price of around $8.00/unit prior to us unlocking our shale reserves. Furthermore, it because it can substitute for coal and oil those prices tend to fall as well. And the Warmists seem to prefer gas to coal on the environmental front.
You might have meant it as a joke, but there for e-books, it is a serious question.
For printed books there are clear compatibility issues with trying to combine braille and text in the same artifact. For an electronic copy of a book not so much. It's all just electrons moving around to process other electrons. I don't own an ebook myself, but others here have posted that they include rudimentary text vocalization devices. Given that ACS is the law of the land, and given that there are far more titles available in ebooks than there are in braille (which I am told is dying anyway with advances in technology), what is the cost-benefit analysis of making sure ebooks are accessible to the blind? In fact, as I read the first paragraph I was thinking to myself, even if it isn't a communications service, does that invalidate the heart of the complaint or merely place a technical obstacle in its path? If the suit is dismissed under ACS, could it be refiled the next day by simply replacing ACS with ADA?
I'm not really in favor of ACS/ADA-type legislation. But if you're damn fool enough to make it the law of the land, every damn fool should have to live with it. Even the ones who max out their political donations every election cycle.
Lots of things that are commodities have been currencies. Gold, silver, copper and bronze are the most obvious and most easily transported. But other things including beaver skins and tobacco have been used. As recently as post WWII cigarettes were a practical currency in Germany. The only thing that matters to currency is that it is readily accepted by most people as payment to complete trade. So if everyone accepted chickens in payment for services, chickens would be a currency.
At its simplest: currency/money can be readily traded to obtain commodities. Commodities aren't necessarily easily traded. Some things like gold can be both.
Can currency tax laws be side-stepped? Probably, but doing so is still illegal and if you get caught you WILL be prosecuted. Remember, regardless of how convoluted and oppressive current currency laws may be, the original intent behind them was to protect people from being defrauded.
If I were the judge I wouldn't have ruled on whether or not Bitcoin was currency. Even though the US dollars were changed by a third party, the intention of the cretin was to use bitcoin as the means by which to engage in an investment Ponzi scheme. That is, it promised you'd get more money out the other side than you put in but had no planned means of making more money in the middle. That should be sufficient to bring charges of investment fraud.
Meh. I think they know they can't produce it, so they're opting for the next best thing: The Sco Lawsuit strategy. This lays the groundwork so that when someone else finally does produce a marketable solution to the problem, they can sue for infringement then collect 10% of the revenue stream.
IIRC the default settings on those systems is 600dpi and they switched to 200. Even IIRIC and the default is 300dpi, that's still better than the 200 dpi at which they were scanning. So there is some user participation in the problem. I'd assign it a 95:5 split with Xerox owning most of the blame.
Where Xerox owns 100% of the problem however is that there is insufficient warning about possible problems. In a world in which step ladder manufacturers have to put "Do Not Stand on Top of Ladder" warnings on 18ft step ladders, burying the warning in the user's manual doesn't cut it. In fact being aware of the problem and not fixing it doesn't cut it.
Yes that's what they are these days. But that's not what copiers were when they first came out. Back then you were bouncing a light beam off the paper onto a photoptically sensitive rotating drum that eventually transferred toner/ink to the page. It might smudge, but then the characters were illegible and you had to confirm the numbers or use a better original. More to the point, the data corruption was immediately obvious at least to the consumer.
When we switched to the scanner/printer model because it was more useful and cost effective, it was under the assumption it produced the same sort of output. But what is apparently happening is that the system uses some sort of sample or dynamic image storing and compression that results in CHANGING THE DATA. Were I on a jury in a death or injury case and Xerox hauled out that disclaimer I'd triple the damages for vexation.
The downvoter(s) to this AC need to buy a clue. Like it or not (I don't) he's stating a fact, not an opinion. The DRM is included in the Blueray license, as is the ability for the manufacturer of the disk to control playback. And really, even the commercials don't irritate me as much as having to sit through 25 versions of the FBI Piracy warning that are written in languages I don't read. I understood the first one thank-you, very much. I would hope they don't stick non-Merkins with that crap since FBI doesn't apply to you, but given the number of languages I expect they do.
Much of science history is littered with the debris of these kinds of arguments. Many of us have forgotten that when Einstein originally proposed eliminating "the ether" from physics he met with fierce opposition from the scientific establishment. It was a bedrock foundation underlying all other assumptions and doing away with it was a threat to all of science.
Private companies are companies that face competition. Being a 'Merkin I'm not well informed of the particulars with regard to BT, but it sounds to me like what you have there is an off-book government operation with private colored lipstick smeared all over the pig. So you have the worst of all possible worlds, but not something that is actually private.
Woz was the brains, Jobs was the front man. It really is that simple.
As far as the trial goes, looking at the proposed penalty I conclude I was right about the trial. This is a hatchet job from folks who are just pissed that Apple has all that money. I never really cared for their computers. I cared even less for Jobs' fascist way of running his company. But it was HIS company and I didn't have to work there or buy his stuff. But for all I dislike his equipment and his methodology, he made his money honestly. Nobody should be able to take money away from a man if he has made it honestly.
Even one "shareholder activist" is too many. Granted the rest of your statement is true, there are too many "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" types on boards. But "shareholder activists" are just as bad if not worse because they are in it for political reasons. What we really need are more businessmen on boards. By "businessman" I mean someone who is actively engaged in determining what buyers need/want, making it, and delivering it to them.
In the IT business he has precisely zero credibility as far as running a business goes, so presumably he has some credibility in another field (comedy perhaps?) .
Ichan made his money by buying up dying companies, splitting their assets apart, and selling them off. Sometimes this involved piling them up with debt first then running away like the modern day pirate he is. Other times it was just looting the corpses. I'll grant that sometimes this is a necessary function in the market, sort of like the having the garbage collector come around to take away your trash. But you wouldn't want the garbage collector coming into your house taking whatever he feels like. And my apologies to any actual garbage collectors who might read this post for comparing them to Ichan.
The way the votes are counted is a poison pill provision that is typically written to allow the original owners of the company to control the direction of the company going forward. Specifically it makes it very difficult to launch a hostile (Ichan) takeover of a company. But it can also make it very difficult for a friendly takeover (Michael Dell).
No, hundreds of politicians believe they can shake us down for more money if they link their pocket lining schemes to Climate Change. Since they line a few scientific pockets, this has worked out well for them.
No, an egotistical shipping magnate believed his ship was unsinkable. His engineers told him otherwise.
Not even a hundred engineers worked on the O-rings for the shuttle, and their team was telling the manager to recommend against the launch on the day in question. For this error alone you should be flogged 39 times.
Finally we get to a true statement. Still, not one that will help Warmists see the truth for they have no eyes with which to see.
I've never bought the "not reported" argument in the Linux uptake threads, I'm not buying it here either.
Solar has it's own problems which will eventually come home to roost. I'd rather have a new coal fired electrical plant next to my house than one manufactures solar panels which produce electricity.
Actually we've done a pretty good job at cleaning up the first 90% of all the pollutants in coal plants compared to say the 1940s. The problem is, after the big push back in the 70s all the easy conversions were done. So we're now working on either the hugely expensive ones, or trying to get the same benefits out of that last 10% that we got cleaning up the first 90%. The Warmists won't admit to this, because it makes their wailing less effective. If you know you've spent $2 billion cleaning up 90% of what you can, and that the next 9% is going to cost $200 billion, the head has a better chance of winning against the heart.
Of course this has been exacerbated by their "you have to do it all or don't do anything" with respect to coal (at least in the US). If part of a coal facility breaks you can either repair the equipment at the level at which it was installed, or you can refit the entire plant with current technology. You can't just refit the part that broke with current technology to reduce your pollution output for that part of the plant.
Except that even armchair scientists know
(2) While ultimately the radiative transfer is responsible for cooling, at lower levels the density of the atmosphere makes convection the dominating cooling transfer. In some locations you also have conduction as the primary cooling transfer. Also, what exactly are the data on the CO2 densities at which atmospheric levels? If you're assuming it is constant as a percentage through out the whole atmospheric shell, I don't need a reference article to know you've got your ass hanging out the car window on the autobahn.
(3)a The output of CO2 from burning coal can be readily calculated. A decade of us burning across all the continents on the surface of the planet is less than the CO2 output of a single volcanic event like Mt. St Helens. Furthermore, the volcanic eruption will put the CO2 into the atmosphere at much higher altitude than a factory smokestack, so it has less chance of interacting with trees and plants to be converted to sugar. If CO2 were to have the strongly coupled affect on temperature as claimed, we should see measurable shifts that correspond to each similar volcanic eruption in history. We don't.
(3)b 1. Lack of evidence of a natural source to increase CO2 is not proof of a lack of natural sources. 2. I gave you one such source in (3)a above, but you deny it's truth.
(4) Do you see that bit above where I mention my astro background? Yeah, I got news for you baby. This Creationist can guarantee you that even for a 6000 year old Earth, your data baseline isn't nearly long enough to predict anything. If I put it into the context of a 6 million year old Earth as required by Evolutionists, your data baseline ain't even a pimple on a gnat's butt.
Sure.
A model that accurately predicts the climate for the next 15 years and then matches it.
Which is why I reject the current warmist agenda. Five years ago you said we couldn't claim the current lull in global warming proved anything because until you got to 20 years of data you weren't outside the normal variability of the system. Now that we're closing in on the magic number from your last defense, you've thrown out a new number. Just like those end of the world preachers who finally gave up.
Then you are an incompetent searcher or don't know much about basic science.
It took me about 3 hours with Google once to figure out how crappy the assertions of the The Holy Church of Man-Caused Global Warming are. I followed the link to a paper on the model and read some of the basic assumptions. One in particular caught my eye: the one where they assume constant solar output for their model to simplify things. Then I went and looked up measured solar radiative output. First up, the number on the charts I found for measure output was 1-3% above the assumed number for the calculation. That's a really bad start. Then I found measurable variation in the solar output. So they don't even make it out of the starting gate.
Full disclosure: I went looking for it because more than 20 years ago during the semester I was taking Astro 440 (which included calculating radiative outputs for the sun depending on certain assumptions about transfer), or as I called it Applied Mathematics, as my 3rd math course for the semester, I finally realized math and I don't get along well enough for me to have gone into the field. I did manage to understand a fair bit of the radiative transfer theory though. And the bottom line was, beyond some ideas about the nuclear reaction chain, we don't know squat about how the sun really shines. If you can't calculate that, you don't have a baseline from which to work your CO2 theory. If you don't have a baseline, you don't have anything.
You want to know why we keep working to refine the measured distance of an AU, even though we know it to more than 4 decimals in the Celestial Goofy Shit* system (CGS, or centimeter, gram, second for you non-astro types)? It's because when your baseline is long enough, those missing decimal places work out to billions of light years. The same thing applies to repetitive feedback mechanisms.
*Why the name? Because, I mean really?! When you know from the outset that you're going to wind up putting a 'x 10^Y' in your notation, why would you intentionally add more digits to the exponents than you need to?
So let me get this straight....
All H20 is constantly recycled. It never get trapped in ice or underground streams. And it certainly gets injected into the air as part of a Pacific Rim island having a volcanic eruption.
Furthermore, only humans produce CO2 in their manufacturing processes so CO2 must be continually increasing by whatever that industrial process is. There are no trees, bushes, mosses, or algae which convert CO2 to O2. And therefore there can't be any feedback processes which might increase as the temperature goes up.
Right.
Get back to me when you have two brain cells to rub together.
Neither.
Given the regulator environment for energy companies the only option is to be as aggressively political as your opponents. The Greens decided oil was bad long before they took the name "Greens" and have politicized and demonized the oil companies ever since. AWG is just their latest fad in that defamation. The disadvantage for the oil companies is that in addition to buying Congresscritters the way the Greens do, they also have to make a profit and pay their shareholders.
This is an interesting point/question. A couple days ago a poster posited that Dell's price was putting a cap on the share price that is Keeping Carl's bid from looking possible. I'm inclined to agree with you, that Mike's offer has put a floor under the price because people think they can make a few percent when he buys at his price.
When both bids fail, we will perform the experiment. If you own Dell stock: hang on to your hat kids because it's going to be a heck of an amusement park ride.
Unencrypted email messages are the same as sending a postcard in the mail. That can be read and copied by any government agent without a warrant. And that's what the NSA is collecting. Similarly, the routing information for the letter can legally be copied without requiring a warrant. And it was that way even when Ben was alive and advocating for the federal Postal delivery service.
We do, at least those of us who bother to vote in primaries.
If you want a bit more influence, get off your ass and volunteer as a precinct organizer for your preferred party. I know people who have made a difference on that front. There just aren't enough of us doing it. And no, there likely won't be any obstacles because typically 2/3 of the positions are empty.
No we're not and never were. We are and have been a Republic which is something a bit different.
The point about electing the right people might hold. But we've been doing a shitty job on that front since at least 1932 and possible a good 40 or so years before that. Hell, there are a bunch of people out there who will tell you we stopped being a Republic around the time Lincoln freed the slaves.
If you want a complex password, ask us to set a password. If you ask me to set a Personal Identification Number I'm not likely to use alphabetic characters or symbols in it.
Also, let us know how many characters it can be. I've been trained to expect 4. Not that I think that's secure, but it has too frequently been the limit so it is now my default.
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