Comment Re:I am a Republican voting Conservative. (Score 1) 347
Let me ask. In what arena is AGW contentious?
Let me ask. In what arena is AGW contentious?
Why should any scientist tailor their theories to ease your pain?
Yes, politicians and voters imagine themselves to be Canute, without understanding the moral of the story.
The real moral, of course, is that the Universe doesn't give a fuck about Congress, democracy, the GOP, the Democrats or the economy. It obeys specific laws that humans can harness and manipulate, but not change. Blaming scientists because some of their theories make people uncomfortable or because they challenge ideological, economic or political models is a pointless, futile exercise. The laws of physics owe humanity no favors.
If your monthly payment is 1000 and you pay an extra 50, you take 50 off the principle.
Each payment, you pay for accrued interest. You accrue like $980 of interest on that first payment, $979.93 on that second, etc.
If you pay $50 more on that first payment, you skip the immediate next payment. You have 1 fewer payment to make, and it's not that last payment where you pay $999 principle and $1 interest; you skip that second payment where you pay $20 principle and $980 interest.
The math is right. Use a mortgage amortizer, use the Pe^RT formula for compound interest, and look logically at how mortgages work--how the payment schedule works. It works the way it does because we've written laws about precomputed interest to make sure it works the way I say--it's illegal to precompute all of the interest up-front and make the person pay it all even if the pre-pay; interest must be compounded by the passage of time, instead of the prediction of time's passage.
Something tells me you're not a financial expert.
I can't believe Kelley was screwed around like that. For chrissakes, he was the only actor in The Motion Picture who appeared to have any motion, and he was absolutely critical to TOS's success. In fact, one of the big problems I have with the fandom TOS continuations is that they haven't found a strong Dr. McCoy, and it feels like a jelly filled doughnut without the jelly.
She may have been a minor character, but I remember the first time I watched Return Of Spock, and there was her cameo in Space Dock as the wounded Enterprise limped in. It was pretty emotional scene, and it was nice to see one of the second tier actors again. I thought it was pretty damned nice of Nimoy to bring her back for that cameo.
Or, he filed the patent years ago, and then filed a series of updates to it. Each update delays the final "approval date" and allows him to modify the patent. Over time, he can craft a vague sounding patent and/or one that covers existing technology. Then, his "prior art date" is from a year before when he INITIALLY filed the patent. So while the final patent might have been considered innovative if filed as-is on the initial filing date, patent trolls abuse the "update" system to draw their patents out until they are hard to beat via prior art.
That's simply not true. While patent applicants can file continuation applications with revised claims, they must have support in the originally-filed application, and the applicant cannot modify the original application at all. If anything is added that wasn't in the original document, then the "prior art date" is moved to when the modification was added. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application#Continuation.
No, its still only the interest rate percentage return.
If I use the Pe^(RT) formula on $100 at 10% for 15 years, I get a much smaller value than the amount of total cost saved if I pay an extra $100 on a 10% mortgage with a $300,000 balance.
You're missing something: $100 in the bank gets 15 years of 10% interest compounding continuously on $100 (yes, banks pay simple interest; that's not the point). That means it's 1/365 of $100, then 1/365 of $100+$100/365, and so forth. Loans don't work that way.
With a loan, you accrue interest, and then pay down balance. If your early payments are $1053, and you accrue $1000 interest, you're only paying $50 in. Instead of getting 10% interest on $1053, you're paying $1053 to avoid paying 10% interest on $53. Month over month, that $1000 comes rolling in; but if you pay an extra $53, you skip a month--suddenly $53 is worth $1000.
For $53 to turn into $1000 over 30 years, the interest rate must 23.13%. For a $120,000 loan at 10% interest, your first payment will be $1053.09, with $1000 paying accrued interest, and $53.09 paying down balance; the first payment in the second year pays $994 interest and $58.64 balance. If you drop about $50-$60 into any of those first payments, you save $995-$1000.
$60 at 10% compounded continuously over 30 years is $489.29. $60 dropped into your very first loan payment at 10% saves you $1000. $1000 is bigger than $489.29; paying off long-term debt is bigger than holding continuously-compounding savings at the same interest rate for the same period.
Contrary to some peoples belief: The sun still exists during winter. Panel efficiency falls by half during cloudy weather, but you will still get some power. Just means you pull more from the grid during winter.
Actually, panel efficiency (Watts of electrical output divided by Watts of insolation) tends to increase in winter, because photovoltaics are more efficient when cold (conversely, the efficiency falls when the solar cells are hot). The output of the panel will fall in cloudy weather, because the total insolation will be less, but the efficiency may well increase.
A guy lecturing others on maturity when he starts off with the term "libtard". My irony meter just exploded.
Too bad it was just a procedural dismissal due to wrong venue and not due to the merits of the case.
United said such ticketing schemes violate its fare rules. For one thing, the tickets capture seats that will go unused, and an airline would have no way to sell those unused seats
Well, actually, they already *have* sold those seats -- to the person that bought the ticket and decided not to use the rest of it. But it's not true that they have no way to sell those seats -- if the flight is overbooked or full, then they'll fill the unused seat with a bumped or standby passenger.
Do you really want to encourage them to overbook and bump more people?!
They couldn't do it with iOS, but why couldn't Microsoft just do what BB did and throw an Android compatibility layer into Windows? Since from what I'm reading now it doesn't sound like these new projects are going to fix UI specifics, why not just say "fuck it", and put Android or Dalvik in a VM?
Yes, now those five poor bastards who bought Windows 8 phones might, at some still unspecified date, get some decent apps. Of course, even binary Android compatibility hasn't done a fucking thing for Blackberry, but like, this time, it's gonna be so totally different!
That has to be the fastest turnaround time for Microsoft committing to a feature and then putting it off to a later release.
"Buy into our platform, and some day, we'll deliver on those features we promised you."
There have been recent (good) rulings that saying "X, but on a computer" is not a valid patent. I hope that lower courts say that this is just "X, but on a mobile computer" so we don't have to have an explicit ruling also blocking "X, but on a phone".
On another note, I wonder if it would be worth having some crowd-funded anti-patent-troll fund. I know the EFF takes the fight when able, but that's usually after smaller companies/individuals have caved and paid the extortion fee. If there was a fund that would take the patent-holder to court and pay out any ruling against the defendant, should the patent be deemed baseless (any patent, not just electronics), that would hopefully halt the trolls far earlier in the process and dissuade others.
Not really... Contrary to popular wisdom (and Subby's attempt to call a 500 person company a small shoe store), patent trolls almost never go after individuals, because individuals don't have any money. Unlike copyright infringement with the $150k per work, there are no statutory damages in patents, and damages aren't even 100% of profits - they're limited to a reasonable royalty. If even a small patent lawsuit costs $200-500k, and you can expect to get 5% royalties, you aren't going to sue someone with less than $4M in annual revenue... And in reality, try closer to $1M to run a small patent lawsuit and royalties closer to 2-3%. So, now you're talking $50M in revenue to be a real target.
So, the real question is can you crowdfund $2-5 million to defend companies with tens of millions in annual revenue? It's like you're asking David to donate to protect Goliath.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford
