Now normally, cameras would be a bad idea IMHO, but this is a public service operated by public funds.

If only... a private service operated by public funds is closer to the truth.

How will the douchebags convey their vision of why the only way the company could possibly work is if they're grossly overcompensated while everyone else learns to make due with less?

> The ROOT cause, as you imply, was Europtimism.
> The PanEurope folks were willing to accept any tissue-paper rationalization or flimsy camouflage to encourage
> more countries to join in their giant Kum-Bay-Yah fest of the EU.

The fundamental problem of liberalism. It is based on wishful thinking, not on facts.
Whe the Euro came said that they should have had 2 currencies. But that would have been politically incorrect since you now have a 'good' and a 'bad' currency.

Whether the liberals like it or not, things tick differently in the south of Europe. That does not mean the people are bad or that you are insulting when telling them that. But things are diffeent there for many historical, cultural and geographic reasons. Throwing everyone into the same pot was a bad idea.

in a city i used to live i photographed dozens of cars making illegal left turns at an intersection where lefties were not allowed (according to a sign with a slash over a lefty pointer). they were taken at an angle clearly showing readable license plates and that they were doing a lefty. i offered the photos to the police but they said they needed the evidence of who was doing the driving because the law applied to the driver, not the car. i guess i need to introduce them to the D.C. police to get them to be more creative about applying laws and go arrest some car owners.

gotta do something to keep idle trade negotiators off the streets.

I used to disagree with the philosophy of the laser zapping mosquito killer...

The information gathered by the non-lethal laser can be used to determine the type of insect, and even its gender because wing beat patterns are unique to each species and gender. This is important in preventing malaria because only female mosquitoes bite humans

But now... if we switch them all to female first, THEN zap them... I can agree.

Even though this sounds reassuring, I started creating par2 checksums for my family pictures (and then back up the whole bunch, of course).

If you run OS X on the desktop, it installs nicely via Homebrew:

  $ brew install par2

Then use as follows:

  $ cd familypics
  $ par2create par2file *

And to verify:

  $ cd familypics
  $ par2verify par2file.par2

It takes about 5% of extra storage. If you run Linux, you can get that back by using btrfs and mounting it compressed.

I have a few recipes I use mine for. It's a combo pressure/slow cooker. I admit the pressure side of things kind of intimidates me but I'll happy cook any of the following for 4 hours:

* Lentil Curry Stew
* Vietnamese chicken curry stew
* Green Chili
* Red (or "Chocolate Chipotle Imperial Stout") Chili
* Beef and truffle beef stew
* Jerk Chicken/Beef/Pork

I've found or posted a lot of these recipes in the Google+ "Crockpot Obsession" group.

Lipid formulations of cancer drugs already exist, notably liposomal doxorubicin. Usually these result in better intracellular delivery and less toxicity. The problem is that making stable lipid formulations is quite hard and the resulting product quite expensive. If this, apparently simple, method can create liposomal carboplatin (or whatever other drug), it could allow cheaper and more diverse liposomal anti-cancer drugs. That would be nice. Especially carboplatiin (and cisplatin) are extremely important for many, many different chemotherapy protocols.

Ultimately there is no security anywhere. Everything the investors own and the very concept of that ownership itself is imaginary and can disappear in an instant. True, they've stacked the rules in their favor, but that only holds true as long as everyone agrees to play by those rules. All it would take would be for one guy to point out that the Emperor has no clothes at the right moment and the entire house of cards will collapse. It's a toss up whether Greece is that one guy versus whether the Germans decide they don't appreciate people pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes and decide to foreclose on Greece. My guess is that the IMF and Greek leaders will decide they don't want either of those outcomes and come to another agreement that neither side particularly likes.

The resources required for an AI are radically different from stupid squishy meatputers. An AI would not need a large amount of space, had plenty of options for energy and could make its own arrangements for secure generation of such, could easily automate construction replacement parts and frankly would find the 25 miles or so of gases that meat-based creatures inhabit to be rather toxic. An AI would surely be much happier with magnetically-shielded facilities in space. Pretty much anywhere in the universe that meatbags find inhospitable would be prime territory for a superior AI entity. I'd think the biggest danger to humanity from an AI would be that it would find them to be completely irrelevant. Unless, that is, they go out of their way to make themselves an actual threat.

No? Then it is useless for me.

The point about an advanced workstation is an advanced OS.

> For example, Sweden has to abide by most EU rules even though it isn't in the EU, because it wants a free trade agreement

Sweden certainly is in the EU. Norway ain't. Nor is Switzerland. I live next to the Swiss border and things are really, really expensive there (ever wanted to eat a not-very-good 15 Dollar burger???. Go to Basel.). they seem to do pretty well for themselves.

I would think that open-source SaaS products would be, if anything, MORE viable than open-sourcing a traditional, locally-hosted application. The code only gets written once, so the provider isn't really producing a product afterwards. This makes it hard both to keep rivals from releasing the same product, or to charge for the product in the first place. With SaaS, you're providing maintenance, hosting, and reliability to your customer continually. Any competitor would have to do the same thing, keeping the bar to entry high.

No, of course FDR didn't cause the Depression (just extended it).

He was a commie in the 30s and early 40s, despite the fact he never sent anyone to the Gulag (kinda the defining aspect of Communism in the 30s and early 40s)

If you want to be pedantic about what is and what isn't Communism, you could at least break out the Manifesto because I can think of a lot of ideological nitpicks that you could put in advance of "did not establish a gulag".

the business community fought him tooth and nail the whole way ... but he enriched his friends in business, etc.

Yeah, go read about the National Recovery Administration. Essentially they suspended antitrust law if you adopted a certain minimum wage. Clarence Darrow (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) briefly headed up the National Recovery Review Board, a body which issued a few nice reports on how effectively this crushed smaller businesses, and was then promptly dissolved. You could try reading one or two. (Of course the Supreme Court found the act establishing the administration unconstitutional, leading to the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, an utterly transparent attempt to pack the Supreme Court.) The Montgomery Ward incident, incidentally, was much much later, in 1944, during the war.

but then it was never sold as a way to reduce overall costs.

Hahahhahahahahahahhaha... let's see what Google can say on the topic in the next 15 seconds... Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it." -- Politico, 8/9/2010. (I'm sure I could find more coverage in the event that you don't think Politico's worth the paper it's printed on.)