They don't know how to live wealthy because it takes a lot of training. Among other things they don't know the difference between an investment and a bet - see the fact that they played the Lotto.

Look, when the jackpot gets very high, then it becomes an actual investment.

If the odds are 1 in 175 million, then a $2 breaks even when the after tax, instant profit exceeds $350 million. In this particular jackpot was $564 million. Instant payment of $381 million. Now, taxes (and the chance of splitting it with others) makes this not a real investment, but it got pretty darn close.

But if the jackpot got to say $800 million, buying a ticket becomes a mathematically good bet.

But there are other things going on. Honestly, if you hit the jackpot for anything over 20 million, it won't make that much of a difference. It will radically change your life in pretty much the same way. Most likely you will gain somewhere between six months to one year of happiness, a year or so of realizing that things are going poorly and then the rest of you life with a CRAPLOAD of depression and anger about how everything went to hell.

Why? Because if you gain something too quickly and easily, you neither value it nor do you know how to maintain and keep it.

Chances are very high you will want to help out a few people you know that really need it, which will cause a bunch of people that don't really need it to come begging for help. If you turn them down, suddenly your friends turn on you. If you don't turn them down, suddenly you are broke.

Your leisure activities will dramatically change and your friends won't be able to afford to go with you unless you pay for them. Which turns the relationship from friends to hanger-ons. It's hard enough to keep family from disintegrating, let alone your friendships.

Honestly, my advice to anyone that wins is to REFUSE TO TELL ANYONE YOU WON. At most, tell them you won a smaller amount. Don't sign anything giving up your privacy, instead keep it a secret from EVERYONE you are not married to. Set up a Trust that will anonymously help people you think truly need it, and do NOT take credit for it.

You can't 'bring your friends' along for the lifestyle, but you can occasionally show them a fantastic time.

NO, it is not fine. You clue-lessly missed the sarcasm.

The point is that this was a thread about alcohol, not a thread about Mormonism. Many religions have rules against alcohol. Bringing up a quote from his specific religion was totally in-appropriate. It was off topic, obnoxious and rude.

So i responded in kind - bringing up pretty much the worst incident about Mormonism to make a point, that it is NOT appropriate to push your religion into a discussion that had nothing to do with it.

And I knew the whole story. My leaving it out was part of the sarcasm, that you clearly missed.

I understand that Mormons have a religious requirement to preach. But there is a time and place for that. You never saw Huntsman or Romney do it while they were campaigning. Why? Because it would have been inappropriate. Similarly it was INAPPROPRIATE to do it here on Slashdot. If you want to be evangelical, go door to door in a residential are, or find a website that encourages that kind of behavior.

We don't encourage it. This is a tech website, not a forum for anyone to preach at us.

Wow. A lot of anger there.

You have some serious issues. If I were you, I would look into talking to someone about them.

For the record:

I have the super taster gene. Like many such people, alcohol tastes extremely bitter and I have never liked it. When I did go out with friends, I usually bought one drink to be sociable, but never finished the dreadful thing.

But wait, it gets worse. Before I turned 30, I had contracted a disease that damaged my kidney. As such my doctor advised me to not drink alcohol again. So I don't.

So when you say I need alcohol to survive I laugh. Repeatedly.

I gave no excuses. I described the world accurately. You on the other hand feel the need to preach. Anonymously.

{ joke } That would be the sickly group {/joke}

But seriously, while I agree they exist (I am in fact one of them), we are a small percentage of the population.

Every single job I ever had, since part time summer jobs to my current job was 90% simple and 10% interesting.

I learned how to do 90% of the work in a week, but the other 10% you never finishing learning how to do. Of course, that last 10% is the difference between a professional/expert and a rank amateur.

I think this is due to the mental capacity of human beings. If the job is so complex you can't learn how to do most of the work quickly, then we split the job into two or more sub-jobs.

The same guy that plants the food no longer transports it or cooks it. Why? Because those jobs have gotten so complex.

But back to the main point, the simpler stuff may not get the applause, but it is still a large part of the work. Just because someone doesn't think that declaring the variable counts as relevant to the program, it doesn't mean it shouldn't 'count'.

I disagree. The point of those x/100 is that they usually combine many other reviews.

At heart, people really only give 3 reviews.

1) Bad

2) Meh

3) Good.

Yeah, some times you get "worst" and "best", but those really don't matter, except in unusual circumstances. They don't matter, as the average will deal with those situations.

You get 65 out of a hundred only when you compile a huge number of reviews.

Then you can get helpful stats. Simply take the average. If the average of 20 people is a scored of 2.7, out of 3, that becomes a 90 out of 100. At 1.5, the score is 50. etc. etc.

What do you think the man mande exploration device's purpose is? To do the environmental study, discovery the needs of the native species.

Yes, it is a cliche, but an accurate one. It became a cliche because of how often people make the mistake.

The quiet truth is that if you are sick or have any real health issues, you stop drinking alcohol. Alcohol is a powerful drug that affects your body in many ways. If you are not healthy, you often can not drink it.

Moreover, most healthy people in the US drink alcohol. It is one of the primary social activities that people engage in. Look at dating events, they almost always alcohol.

As such, people that do not drink alcohol fall into three general categories. Religious, Sickly, and Ex-Alcoholics.

So cause and effect were reversed. Being healthy lets you drink alcohol, rather than drinking alcohol making you healthy.

True. Question - is that anywhere near near the section that says it is OK to kill non-believer families that try to pass through your territory, kidnap their surviving children, blame it on Indians, and protect the guilty when the US government comes calling.

What, you don't think it's appropriate for me to bring up unrelated points?

You know what, you are right. We should all stop bringing up off-topic facts about the Mormons.

I am. The first date is usually out tango dancing - I am good enough to teach.

And my favorite third date is a helicopter ride around NYC.

So I am a very fun date.

Where exactly did I say I was only talking about chemical batteries? Oh, I didn't? Could that perhaps be because I wasn't? I was talking about ALL methods of storing energy, not just batteries.

All methods have similar, if not identical problems.

You pump water up a hill, may cost you 100 kilowatts. An hour later, when you run the turbine on the water coming out, you get 70 kilowatts, if you are lucky.

As I said before, storage is an extremely DIFFICULT problem, not a simple one. We have been working on it for more than a hundred years and repeatedly FAILED.

As you said, we pump water up for later use in a turbine. Poor method.

We use electricity separate hydrogen from oxygen, store it then burn the hydrogen. Poor method.

We pump air into high pressure containers. Poor method.

We heat up salt. Poor method.

We spin gyros up to high speed. Poor method.

We pump electricity into batteries and/or capacitors. Poor method - but at least it is easily portable.

I did not make any assumptions - you did. And you made very very poor ones. In general, when you assume someone is an idiot, you are make an ass of yourself, not the opponent.

Storage is notoriously DIFFICULT.

If you came up with some kind of Shipstone (Heinlein's super battery) then your idea would work.

But using current technology, electrical storage is:

1) heavy

2) Expensive

3) Leaky (slowly losing power, converting it to heat)

4) Relatively short term - see leaky.

5) Limited lifespan (each charge cycle decreases how much the next one can hold).

6) inefficient - it takes 200 units to store 100 units.

So while your idea works in principle, in practice it fails.

They don't just put a microphone on it. They make it always on and then they intentionally let themselves hear everything you say and transmit it over the internet. They specifically gave themselves permission to eaves drop on all your conversations, not just after you say Hi TV. My laptop needs a password to connect to the internet, and is set up by default to NOT turn on the mike. Someone would have to hack my laptop to make it act like this TV

Some might argue that it's no worse than Facebook.

Which proves my point - only an idiot would buy one of these.

I have nothing to hide but am mortally offended that some asswipe wants to bug my home. It's my home, not yours.

Selling one of thee thigns is no different from going up to random hot women wearing a light summer dress and asking "Hey, can I take you picture with an infrared camera designed to see through thin clothing?"

It's legal to do, but it should also be legal to punch the slime bag trying to do it.