Ok, I took the time to read the one referenced by artor3 and the one from the original post, and I don't see where either said the severity of right-angle collisions increased. Both said the total cost of all accidents, including rear-end, went up, but didn't have any more detail.

Even if the average severity had increased, that could just mean that the accidents prevented were usually the less severe ones. Is there another article, or is the original report available the actual breakdown?

Sugar and cream. The goal is clearly maple walnut ice cream. I just can't work out why. Where is Adam West when we need him?

The cream will be last because it spoils, so watch out for a massive sugar heist next.

When the article said the point-of-sale terminals were compromised, I took that to mean the units that scan your card and let you type the PIN. If you can re-wire or replace those, then there is no way to protect against it. The account number is read from the magstripe, and the keypad is right on the terminal.

Now, if you had a smart card, then the information could be encrypted between the card and the bank, and the point-of-sale terminal would just need an OK from the bank that everything is good. The account number wouldn't need to be in clear text anywhere except inside the card and at the bank, and a fake card wouldn't be able to talk with the bank anyhow. So long as magstripes are used, there is no protection from a compromised terminal.

They do have security designed in, but it's the hard-outer-shell variety. Doesn't GSM authenticate handsets by having the home register send a challenge along with the appropriate response in a plain-text packet to the cell? The first GSM "attack" I heard about involved connecting your fake phone to a cell, and listening to the microwave channel to hear what response you should send when it sends a challenge. It doesn't sound like a clever design, but I suppose it was trying to reduce communication and memory requirements at the home register?

It is nice to have writers because we like to read books. If there is no business model that allows people to work as full-time authors, then it's not just the would-be authors who suffer.

It's like putting a capacitor in parallel with the circuit. Smooths out bumps in both directions.

So ... not dead then.

Does anyone remember hearing that Des O'Malley once claimed the Maastricht treaty had "been dealt, at least temporarily, a fatal blow."

Gennum corporation made hearing aids for a long time, and decided five or six years ago that their technology could be transferred to making Bluetooth headsets. They had a product called nxZEN (great headsets for noisy environments), but searching for references shows that the company was bought by Samtech in March of this year, and I don't see any references to either nxZEN or hearing aids on the Samtech site.

Anyhow, the idea must have occurred to them at some point, but I can't find a reference. Especially now with the Bluetooth Low Energy, it shouldn't have any real impact on the hearing aid battery (for control, that is, using your hearing aid as a telephone headset would need a regular Bluetooth connection, which would start affecting battery life).

I don't think that list is relevant to colleges and universities.

The Trillium guide explains that "School boards may select textbooks from the Trillium List and approve them for use in their schools." but the Ontario College of Art & Design is a university with a board of governors (6 individuals appointed by the Ontario government, 2 elected by the OCAD U Alumni, and 9 by the Board itself), not a school with a school board.

Does this do the van der Waals force trick that Gecko feet do, or does it need to be more flexible for that?

Oh! Now I get it. That makes a lot more sense. (Still shouldn't happen, but I finally understand why it's possible.) So you do pay income tax on your income, even if they pay you in stocks, but not until the market value of that payment is known (i.e. you sell it). In the mean time, dividends are investment income, and loans against the holdings are just shuffling your own accounts. If you need to sell off some of them to cover interest on the loan, then that wouldn't count as income either because the loan interest is a deduction and exactly equal to the income. Eventually someone will need to sell a bunch to pay off the principal of the loan, assuming there is enough value left in the stocks to cover it, but you can save that as a pick-me-up bonus to make you feel better some year when you took losses on something else.

Thanks!

Thanks. What I was figuring with the 10% loss was that you would need to find $100K to pay it back, but you had already saved some $150K on taxes, so you are still ahead on the game. Wouldn't it make more sense for the book value of the compensation to be "earned income" in the year you received it, and the "investment income" be just the difference between that and market value when you sell it?

Actually, that's why I asked. You are implying that what's above is wrong. Which specific parts of that example don't reflect reality, and why not?

Ok, so if it's not really a hash, but more of a public key, then it's still a possible (although very difficult) thing to reverse. But even if you were able to reverse it, all you would get is the ability to spend any money still in that account when you finished the factorization, not the identity of the person. Is that the point?

That's worse than I thought, and I already thought it was pretty sneaky. So, in my example, even the original $1M would have been taxed at about $150K, so long as it was paid in the form of stocks that were not sold for at least one year? Would the tax folks have a problem if you were to get a bank loan on good terms by using those stocks as collateral, then sell them a year later to pay off the loan? Even if the stocks went down by 10% you would probably come out ahead.

Thanks for the info. Very interesting.