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Comment Re: probabilities? (Score 2, Insightful) 238

There's more to it than that. These libertarians all circle jerk each other over a revelation that money equals debt and inflation is a hidden tax on the people. It likely all started with the zeitgeist movement, which is merely an extension of the wild ramblings of Acharya S.

What all these new age libertarians fail to realize is that for most of history the world ran exactly how they are advocating. The invention of "easy credit" isn't a genius conspiracy perpetrated on the people by shadowy unknown figures, but rather an attempt to empower the common man with privileges like land ownership, and starting his own business. Banks, or anyone for that matter, wouldn't lend you hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy property if it had to come out of their own pocket. This means the only people able to buy land, would be those with the cash on hand, or more accurately, the rich. History is full of elite aristocracies of business' and land owners that existed actual tyrants over the common man. I don't think anyone really wants to go back to that times.

That being said, the banking system certainly isn't perfect. Allowing a private entity to have so much control over our money supply is probably a bad idea. At the very least the central bank should probably be government controlled and not for profit, with the sole ability to lend money through brokerage arms. Private banks would thus have to become brokers for the publicly owned central bank. Of course, given the titanic industry that is private banking, it would be a massive and messy undertaking to make a change like this.

Comment Re:Thomas Jefferson said.... (Score 4, Insightful) 261

Sadly, I don't think the government has feared the people in quite some time. Even worse, I've noticed an increasing trend of this generation looking towards the government as a sort of surrogate parent to take care of them in their adult lives. We have big brother, because we've asked for it.

Comment No consequences for lying (Score 1) 769

The easy solution for all of this ridiculous behaviour is to enact a federal law making lying illegal. A punishment equal to purgery if the act is committed in the public forum would be sufficient. Perhaps then all these scum sucking spineless cowards would think twice about their first tactic being dishonesty.

Comment Pedantic (Score 1) 360

Of course it's both forces (pressure and gravity). This is simply a pedantic attack at the way the dictionary defines the process.

Dictionary definition:

"A pipe or tube of glass, metal or other material, bent so that one leg is longer than the other, and used for drawing off liquids by means of atmospheric pressure, which forces the liquid up the shorter leg and over the bend in the pipe."

This definition is correct as atmospheric pressure differences start the process. However the dictionary doesn't explain that gravity eventually takes over. Dr. Hughes sums up:

As any petrol thief knows, to get the liquid over the "hump" of the tube you have to suck the other end or, more pedantically, lower the pressure in your lungs to beneath atmospheric pressure by expanding them. Once the liquid has passed the highest point in the tube, the continuous chain of cohesive bonds between the liquid molecules in the tube, and the force of gravity, do the rest.

Submission + - One Phone to rule them all

Qbertino writes: The Oneplus One, brazingly subtitled "2014 Flagship Killer", is a mobile phone specifically designed to go head-to-head with and beat the flagship products of existing behemoths in the industry and apparently also caters to the opinion leading crowd, i.e. us. It sports a quadcore 2.5 Ghz Snapdragon CPU, 3GB of RAM with a Sysclock of 1.8Ghz and 32GB (299$) / 64GB (349$) of storage, a replacable battery, a 6-lens 13 Megapixel sony camera and a 5 megapixel webcam for videochat. It runs CyanogenMod 11S based off Android 4.4 KitKat. Specs, especially when compared to pricing, blow the lid off current expectations and definitely raise the bar for next gen phones. Three concluding words: I want one.

Submission + - WhatsApp Is Experiencing The Facebook Effect (readwrite.com) 1

redletterdave writes: In just two months since Facebook dropped $19 billion to buy WhatsApp, the five-year-old mobile messaging app on Tuesday announced its its active user base has grown to more than half a billion people. This is not the first time that an app has seen a major pop in users after it was acquired by Facebook: When Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012, the service boasted some 30 million users. In one month after the deal, Instagram gained 20 million new users. By July, Instagram grew to 80 million active users. WhatsApp seems to be having a similar growth spurt, gaining roughly 25 million users each month since the Facebook deal was announced.

Comment Re:Oil-alcohol-fuel vs oil-fuel (Score 1) 159

How do you think methanol would be produced at industrial scale?

You can produce methanol from methane (a problem greenhouse gas), and more importantly carbon dioxide.

From wikipedia:

Methanol has been generated directly from carbon dioxide in solution using copper oxide (CuO) nanorods coated by cuprous oxide (Cu2O) and energy from (simulated) sunlight. The process operated with 95% electrochemical efficiency and is claimed to be scalable to industrial size.

It's astonishing this technology isn't more widely used.

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