Not flaming here. However, how can you be sure that your visitor using his own device is not doing something illegal? The answer is that you can't know, especially if you, like the vast majority, are not a computer expert. It's too easy to hide a process that is sitting around cracking passwords or downloading movies.

And that doesn't even take into account the fact that even a reasonably secured access point is crackable in a reasonable time frame, mac addresses are generally trivially spoofable, and so on. Thus, because wireless is easilly accessed compared to hard-wired networks, it is a reasonable argument that even a consciencious home network operator may not be aware of the infringing activity which may not even be happening on his property where he can see it.

And finally, the insanely stupid argument: are you going to hold the homeowner responsible for a burglar using his network to download illegal files? After all, a burglar is clearly not authorized by the homeowner but he will also appear to come from the IP address. Thus it is reasonable that the person alleging wrongdoing should have something other than an IP address.

It's not clear that common law makes the situation any better. It may seem to do so when the relevant legal history is short but when you have many centuries of precedents, laws, and other confusion, it hardly makes things simpler.

Actually, it can. Let's use the $10 example. The bank lends $9 on the $10, which ends up deposited. Now the bank has $9 more in deposits of which it can now lend 90% ($8.10) which gets deposited. Now it can lend 90% of that $8.10 which gets deposited and then it can lend 90% of that, and so on. After the second iteration, the bank has lent $17.10 on the original $10 deposit. That is a convergent exponential series with a limit of about $90. Of course, if the first loan were taken in cash, there could be no further loan (no further deposit) so the practical limit is less than that since any amount withdrawn reduces the reserve. Also, I've assumed exactly one bank in the system but it works the same whether there is one bank or one hundred banks.

That repetetive process is that part that is glossed over when fractional reserve is explained. The multiplication effect is quite significant when reserves start to get down into the single digit percents.

I should have been more clear. The money from nothing is not a premise. It's a fact of fractional reserve banking which pretty much every country practices. Let's take a 10% reserve requirement - that means a bank with $1 in acceptable assets (varies some by jurisdiction) can "lend" $9. How is that not creating $8 out of nothing? Assuming they do "lend" that $9, that means for $1 in real money (federal reserve notes (cash) or deposits at the federal reserve in this case), there is an additional $8 in circulation (electronically usually). That means the real *usable* money supply is considerably more than the total cash in circulation. (I haven't shown the math but it's relatively easy to work out.)

Every country that does fractional reserve has a similar situation, regardless of local regulations or specific structure. Thus, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, etc., which all have quite different specific rules, still have the same problem with money being created by bank lending.

Incidentally, fractional reserve lending is exactly the same thing as renting a house to three different parties simultaneously except fractional reserve lending is legal and renting the house three times is fraud. In both cases, the same object is being let to different parties at the same time. It's clearly ridiculous to do so with physical objects so why is is okay with money? (And before you pounce, I am *well* aware of the way economics works and the history and reasons for fractional reserve. I still don't agree with it.)

It's not actually the central banks that are increasing the money supply. Its the *commercial* banks. You might not realize it but banks do not lend money they have on hand when they make a loan. They actually create the money they "lend" out of thin air. Thus it is *borrowing* that is increasing the money supply.

The central banks do contribute to this by buying government bonds (thus giving loans to the governments) but the vast majority of the money supply increase comes from things like mortgages.

It's not clear that a gold standard or similar would actually help matters. The reason for that is too complex to go into here but basically if you peg the currency to a commodity, you will either significantly limit or reverse inflation which will actually cause a complete economic collapse.

Check out http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/ for a decent explanation. (It's UK centric but the central bank structure is the same in most countries so the basic problem is the same.)

Well, you know, he didn't say he hired the HUGE man to like him, did he? I dunno about you, but if I am gaining something I value highly enough, I can put up with a lot of people I hate.

Between Northern Ireland and Ireland, I'd expect.

Same here. And it had a brutally condescending tone to it to boot.

Presumably, the eagles would be as susceptible to the ring's corrupting influence as the races of men. There was a fairly big deal made of its corrupting influence, after all. Consider that even Frodo failed to destroy the ring in the end. It was only destroyed due to the happenstance of Gollum being there. Besides, what's to think that the eagles would have stood any better chance getting past Mordor's defenses. That is one thing that we don't get a 50 page digression to describe in excruciating detail - we only learn about the defenses that are relevant to Sam, Frodo, and the attacking army.

That's not to say that the plot doesn't have holes, but that is not necessarily one of them.

The "refuse to spend money" thing assumes the company has the money to spend at all. This is often just not the case in the current economic climate. Consider how many small businesses are hanging on by a thread and simply do not have the resources to commit to even the most desirable improvements. And before you say that is obviously the mark of poor management, consider that many times the choice is between going bankrupt by spending money to fix a looming problem that has not yet materialized or staying in business another three months. How is choosing the bankruptcy option beneficial to anyone?

Sure, spending the money on a clean system that is not loaded with kludges, bandaids, and binder twine is the correct choice for the long term, but you cannot get to the long term if you completely ignore short term needs.

Interesting assertion. I'm quite happy most of the time and I do not have any deep self-loathing. Therefore your assertion is disproved. (Any statement can be disproved by finding a single example contrary to that statement.)

The original I replied to stated that not everything in nature serves a useful purpose. That assertion is plausible. After all, species do not survive because they serve a useful purpose - they survive because they are good enough at surviving.

On the topic of humans. If all humans vanished, slowly or otherwise, it would not take long for other predators to take over from us on the hunting side of things and as far as plant life goes, it would do just fine, in the general case. Thus, nature would get along just fine without us.

Admittedly, my wisecrack about humans serving no useful purpose was somewhat tongue in cheek. Obviously, the situation is not nearly so simple as such a statement would suggest.

Like, for instance, humans. Nature would get along much better without us, probably.

Theoretically, you can, indeed, do the same for the pressure difference. After all, you can calculate the necessary forces to move any particular grain of sand. You can calculate various forces from the wind. You can even throw in electromagnetic effects. However, the volume of calculation makes that difficult at best. So the wind tunnel is useful, and would be a faster way to see how different air pressure, air composition, etc., affect the result. And what's to say there weren't dozens or more different experiments calibrated to measure different aspects of the problem?

And no, I don't have a specific formula to share. But I also have not conducted a detailed study (and I never claimed I did) so I do not have a detailed understanding of the dynamics in play. Still, I would expect formulas used in fluid dynamics and, get this, the formulas related to gravity, would likely apply. And given there is probably an electrostatic effect of some kind with the small particles, formulas related to electricity and magnetism might be involved.

In any event, my assertion was that it *should* be possible. I don't have any special knowledge of the problem.

Also, sure, there are suspended particulates in the Martian atmosphere. However, those are not the particles that form the dunes in the first place. The dunes would be composed of the larger (heavier) particles that need more force to move. And before you ask, I'm basing that statement on having observed drifting sand.

Finally, let me direct to you my signature, "If it works in theory, try something else in practice." I have no delusions that my "theory" is any more correct than any other.

Seems to me that if you can work out the air speed needed to move sand with air of a particular density in at 1 g, you should be able to do some math to work out how that would translate at 1/3 g.

Even if this is possible (and it is on some of the hardware I've used over the years), the change must be made on *both* ends or no data can be passed through. It makes no difference if the downstream box switches its transmit and receive lines. You still have no way of making the upstream box do the same unless you have physical access to it, in which case there's no point doing the serial link anyway. So as long as the upstream box has not been tampered with physically, there is no way to send anything *that it is going to receive* because it's not listening for it.

For those who haven't seen it yet, let me repeat: changing one end to transmit on the receive line does not magically mean the other end is going to receive on its transmit line.