Comment Re:Russian Rocket Motors? (Score 1) 166
I believe the operation being attempted right now is:
Ukraine=Crimea=Rusia
This is one of those few times that someone used == where = is the correct option!
Comment Re:Russian Rocket Motors? (Score 3, Funny) 166
3) Take over Ukraine
50 Years of BASIC, the Language That Made Computers Personal 224
harrymcc (1641347) writes "On May 1, 1964 at 4 a.m. in a computer room at Dartmouth University, the first programs written in BASIC ran on the university's brand-new time-sharing system. With these two innovations, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz didn't just make it easier to learn how to program a computer: They offered Dartmouth students a form of interactive, personal computing years before the invention of the PC. Over at TIME.com, I chronicle BASIC's first 50 years with a feature with thoughts from Kurtz, Microsoft's Paul Allen and many others."
How the FCC Plans To Save the Internet By Destroying It 217
New submitter dislikes_corruption writes: "Stopping the recently announced plan by the FCC to end net neutrality is going to require a significant outcry by the public at large, a public that isn't particularly well versed on the issue or why they should care. Ryan Singel, a former editor at Wired, has written a thorough and easy to understand primer on the FCC's plan, the history behind it, and how it will impact the Internet should it come to pass. It's suitable for your neophyte parent, spouse, or sibling. In the meantime, the FCC has opened a new inbox (openinternet@fcc.gov) for public comments on the decision, there's a petition to sign at whitehouse.gov, and you can (and should) contact your congressmen."
Comment Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score 3, Funny) 461
I'm sorry, but BUYING a pair of shoes that costs more than $200 should be a felony!
Comment Re:Grudgingly reluctantly... (Score 1, Informative) 386
I would believe what you said if two facts were not true:
1) The majority of taxes are used to take money from one class of people, and give it to another.
2) We live in a democracy where more than half the people are "takers" rather than "givers"
I wouldn't be upset if "givers" voted to make transfer payments. That wouldn't be theft.
I wouldn't be upset if "takers" voted to not have transfer payments. That wouldn't be theft either.
But when takers gang up and vote to steal money from a smaller group under threat of violence, that is simply government condoned theft.
The government doesn't invest in the future. They merely pay their friends rents.
[https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0539.pdf]
[http://taxfoundation.org/article_ns/summary-2009-federal-individual-income-tax-data]
[http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-being/transfer-payments.aspx#.U01rPcegGOE]
Comment Re:So if they (GM/whomever) wanted to buy the comp (Score 1) 151
Your inability to buy Microsoft has nothing to do with Microsoft's stock price being "too high." And if you could convince a) Microsoft, and b) a bank (or the markets) that you could run Microsoft better than the current management the money would not be a significant hurdle.
Comment Re:So if they (GM/whomever) wanted to buy the comp (Score 1) 151
What's hilarious is that no one has seen the obvious: no company's "stock price is too high
Company A: valued at $X
Company B: valued at $Y
Company A+B: valued at $X+$Y
No one has to have the cash on hand to do a merger (the traditional form of "purchase"). If you wanted to actually make a "purchase", all you would have to do is involve a bank.
Of course, Elon Musk has absolutely no reason to sell his company to a bunch of people that wouldn't know how to run it!
Study: Exposure To Morning Sunlight Helps Managing Weight 137
jones_supa (887896) writes "A new Northwestern Medicine study reports the timing, intensity and duration of your light exposure during the day is linked to your weight — the first time this has been shown. People who had most of their daily exposure to even moderately bright light in the morning had a significantly lower body mass index (BMI) than those who had most of their light exposure later in the day, the study found. It accounted for about 20 percent of a person's BMI and was independent of an individual's physical activity level, caloric intake, sleep timing, age or season. About 20 to 30 minutes of morning light is enough to affect BMI. The senior author Phyllis C. Zee rationalizes this by saying that light is the most potent agent to synchronize your internal body clock that regulates circadian rhythms, which in turn also regulate energy balance. The study was small and short. It included 54 participants (26 males, 28 females), an average age of 30. They wore a wrist actigraphy monitor that measured their light exposure and sleep parameters for seven days in normal-living conditions. Their caloric intake was determined from seven days of food logs. The study was published April 2 in the journal PLOS ONE. Giovanni Santostasi, a research fellow in neurology at Feinberg, is a co-lead author."
Comment Re:Bailouts for them, crumbs for us (Score 2) 246
Inflation transfers wealth from lenders to borrowers.
No, that's kind of my point - wealth is destroyed by contracts and savings destruction, but borrowers are not actually helped that much. In the contracts case, the supplier company goes out of business and both parties lose value. In the savers case, the saver loses all savings but the borrowers can't capitalize on the gains because the prices of everything that they care about goes up.
The people that do the best are those that are borrowers on a large asset. Their loan is devalued, so they don't have to pay as much back, true. But even then, the asset (typically a house) loses value because interest rates soar, making it difficult for future buyers to pay you for the asset.
Inflation is just generally bad for everyone. It is a global economy destroyer. Try to think of a single case where there was hyperinflation, but not economic destruction... hyperinflation is always bad, even for the guys that are supposed to be helped by it.
Comment Re:Bailouts for them, crumbs for us (Score 1) 246
Except that even this best case scenario isn't true...
Think about this: What sets prices? The fact that there is (for example) only 1 hamburger per person created in the US per day. Currently, everyone has $1, and needs 1 hamburger. So the price is $1/hamburger. There is this rich guy, who has $1T, but he still only east 2 hamburgers.
OK, so now every has $1M. The rich guy is still fine, and he still buys his 2 hamburgers. But how many hamburgers can everyone else buy? Hm... there's still only one hamburger per person. So each normal person can still only buy one hamburger! So what is the price of a hamburger? $1M per hamburger!
OK, so you then say "well, there must be a huge incentive now to create more hamburgers, since people will pay $1M/hamburger." But here's the thing, at the end of the day, no one wants $1M, they want an extra hamburger. So since the number of "hamburger equivalents" you will pay per hamburger has not changed, there is not extra incentive. So nothing has changed, except that we just had massive inflation.
Poor people do not compete with rich people for goods, in general. Poor people compete with poor people for goods. Giving all the poor people $1M does not make them any better off, and it doesn't make the rich any worse off, it only destroys those that were on the cusp of breaking out of poverty.
Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? 308
X10 writes "Suppose you're assigned to a project that someone else has created. It's an app, you'll work on it alone. You think 'how hard can it be,' you don't check out the source code before you accept the assignment. But then, it turns out the code is not robust. You create a small new feature, and the app breaks down in unexpected ways. You fix a bug, and new bugs pop up all over the place. The person who worked on the project before you is well respected in the company, and you are 'just a contractor,' hired a few months ago. The easy way out is to just quit, as there's plenty of jobs you can take. But that doesn't feel right. What else can you do?"
Through a Face Scanner Darkly 336
An anonymous reader writes in with a story that raises the issue of how public anonymity is quickly disappearing thanks to facial recognition technology. "NameTag, an app built for Google Glass by a company called FacialNetwork.com, offers a face scanner for encounters with strangers. You see somebody on the sidewalk and, slipping on your high-tech spectacles, select the app. Snap a photo of a passerby, then wait a minute as the image is sent up to the company's database and a match is hunted down. The results load in front of your left eye, a selection of personal details that might include someone's name, occupation, Facebook and/or Twitter profile, and, conveniently, whether there's a corresponding entry in the national sex-offender registry."
Rovio Denies Knowledge of NSA Access, Angry Birds Website Defaced Anyway 71
Nerval's Lobster writes "Rovio Entertainment, the software company behind Angry Birds, denies that it knowingly shares data with the NSA, Britain's GCHQ, or any other national intelligence agency. But that didn't stop hackers from briefly defacing the Angry Birds website with an NSA logo and the title
'Spying Birds.' Rovio's troubles began with a New York Times article that suggested the NSA and GCHQ had installed backdoors in popular apps such as Angry Birds, allowing the agencies to siphon up enormous amounts of user data. The Times drew its information from government whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has leaked hundreds of pages of top-secret documents related to NSA activities over the past few months. 'The alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks used by millions of commercial web sites and mobile applications across all industries,' Rovio wrote in a statement on its website. 'If advertising networks are indeed targeted, it would appear that no Internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled web sites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance.' The company pledged to evaluate its relationships with those ad networks. The controversy is unlikely to dampen enthusiasm for the Angry Birds franchise, which has enjoyed hundreds of millions of downloads across a multitude of platforms. It could, however, add momentum to continuing discussions about the NSA's reach into peoples' lives."
Comment Oblig Freefall quote - Re:Fishing expedition (Score 1) 201
'fishing expedition' and search prior to an arrest, without warrant, IS unreasonable.
