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Comment Re:Well that and if your lucky like I am (Score 1) 380

A side note, my cable lists a cap of 250g a month. I haven't hit that cap yet but I am wondering if the improved show quality (1080p) offered by some services will push me over.

Exactly. Anyone who torrents, uses newsgroups, or HD netflix knows that 250g is nothing.

In my area there are two "competitors", and they both cap at 250g. They also, coincidentally, sell bundled cable service.

That 250g data cap will stay (or get worse) unless the FCC does their job.

Comment Re:The 1% are insulated (Score 1) 1799

Even if you're screaming right outside their door, they're just going to call the cops and crank up the volume on the TV. I don't seriously believe that the Occupy campaign are going to do that much to change what is going on. The 1% already control everything. Everything that you buy, everything that you watch and everything that you do is controlled completely by this 1% group. Just about the only way I can think of to wrest power away from these folks is if the 99% were to stop buying everything for more than 90 days. Once the corporations see their income statements go to zilch then you would see real change.

You're forgetting the 2nd ammendment. It's there for a reason.

250+ million armed civilians will get you some hope and change.

Comment These Protesters are Targetting the Right People (Score 2) 1799

Wall St. is strangling the economy. Not the president, not congress, not even the lobbyists.

Outsourcing, H1Bs, downsizing, hostile takeovers, monopolies, mergers, automation, corruption, bribes, slave labor...you name it...it's all in the name of putting profits before human beings without exception. We used to have decent protections against these things, but since Reagan they have been systematically dismantled by both parties.

Shareholders & Boards of Directors are paying Lobbyists, and Lobbyists own Congress. If you believe otherwise...you are simply wrong.

Corporations are Sociopaths with shareholders profitting from the blood and suffering of those who get trampled in the process.

Comment Why isn't this much brighter? (Score 1) 182

I remember reading about supernovae being so bright they could be observed during the day, brighter than Venus for instance.

From History of supernova observation

The supernova SN 1006 appeared in the southern constellation of Lupus during the year 1006 CE. This was the brightest recorded star ever to appear in the night sky, and its presence was noted in China, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Japan and Switzerland. It may also have been noted in France, Syria, and North America. Egyptian physician, astronomer and astrologer Ali ibn Ridwan gave the brightness of this star as one-quarter the brightness of the Moon. Modern astronomers have discovered the faint remnant of this explosion and determined that it was only 7,100 light-years from the Earth.[7]

It looks like this one will top out at magnitude 9 at best, making it appear like a dim star at night. How is that this supernova, if it's so close to us, appears so dim?

Can anyone clarify this? I thought type I/II supernova have roughly the same energetic magnitude...so if this one is only 21 million light years away, why isn't it brighter?

Edit: Nevermind, I figured it out. 21 million light-years vs. 7,100 light-years (the example above) is 5 orders of magnitude. It's faint because it's very very far away.

Businesses

Hewlett Packard's Cult Calculator Turns 30 318

Hugh Pickens writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett Packard's HP-12C financial calculator has remained outwardly unchanged since its introduction in 1981. 'Once you learned it on the 12C, there was no need to change,' says David Carter, chief investment officer of New York wealth-management firm Lenox Advisors, who has owned his 12C for 22 years and still keeps it on his desk. 'It's not like the math was changing.' The 12C, which costs $70 on HP's website, is HP's best-selling calculator of all time, though the company won't reveal how many units it has sold over the years. The 12C still uses an unconventional mathematical notation called 'Reverse Polish Notation,' which eschews parentheses and equal signs in an effort to run long calculations more efficiently."

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