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Comment Re: 153 GOP voted to default (Score 1) 999

by cadeon (#45155843) Attached to: US Government Shutdown Ends

There is no need for tax. In a system where the government can create money directly, government projects which create "civilization" can be funded by simply creating the extra cash. Doing so devalues the existing cash (because now it's less rare) so this cash creation needs to happen in moderation, but it does work.

And this is how things work now. Tax does not fund the government. If it did, we wouldn't be taking out loans and racking up debt. As this situation proves, tax provides a very small amount of the government funding.

And that's fine. I like the government being able to create money. I like roads and schools and national parks and NASA. In fact, creating money is the perfect tax- the dollar decreases in value and therefore those with a lot of dollars lose more than those with only a few. And there's no administration to be done to facilitate it.

What's not fine is the only mechanism the government has to create money is to borrow it from a bank. People like to rant about which banks it borrows from (the fed, china, wherever) but that's short sighted.

The problem is the fact we end up paying interest on ever dollar the government creates.

And that's what isn't sustainable. Paying tax to pay interest is unacceptable.

The idea behind defaulting is to get away from this ridiculous idea that the government of this nation has to borrow money to create money. Going about it this way would have been horrible, but seriously considering breaking the tie is worth real consideration.

Comment Tomorrowland Terrrance (Score 1) 273

One of the features I'm most proud of I coded almost entirely at the Tomorrowland Terrance Restaurant in the Magic Kingdom (WDW Florida).

Quiet places can be found just about anywhere. All you need is electricity, and for the most part you can bring your own these days (laptop batteries are way better than they used to be).
Network

Submission + - Increasing wireless network speed by 1000%, by replacing packets with algebra (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "A team of researchers from MIT, Caltech, Harvard, and other universities in Europe, have devised a way of boosting the performance of wireless networks by up to 10 times — without increasing transmission power, adding more base stations, or using more wireless spectrum. The researchers’ creation, coded TCP, is a novel way of transmitting data so that lost packets don’t result in higher latency or re-sent data. With coded TCP, blocks of packets are clumped together and then transformed into algebraic equations that describe the packets. If part of the message is lost, the receiver can solve the equation to derive the missing data. The process of solving the equations is simple and linear, meaning it doesn’t require much processing on behalf of the router/smartphone/laptop. In testing, the coded TCP resulted in some dramatic improvements. MIT found that campus WiFi (2% packet loss) jumped from 1Mbps to 16Mbps. On a fast-moving train (5% packet loss), the connection speed jumped from 0.5Mbps to 13.5Mbps. Moving forward, coded TCP is expected to have huge repercussions on the performance of LTE and WiFi networks — and the technology has already been commercially licensed to several hardware makers."
Patents

Submission + - US Patent Office Invalidates Apple's "Rubber Banding" Patent (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by
bhagwad
bhagwad writes: "The patent that was the cause of so much grief to Samsung in the recently concluded trial with Apple has been tentatively invalidated by the USPTO. The challenge was filed anonymously, but it obviously could have been filed by any smartphone manufacturer. Will this have an effect on further proceedings in the case or perhaps more importantly on the inevitable appeal?"

Submission + - When is it right to enforce a software patent?

Submitted by cadeon
cadeon writes: I work for a small company with a workforce management software product. We brought a fairly unique approach to market in 2004, and have developed the idea continuously since then. Our first of three patents was awarded in 2007.

At the moment we have exactly one customer. And while I can't blame our lack of commercial success on our ideas being copied — "No one ever got fired for buying $established_product" — I find myself wondering if it's time to try and enforce our patents.

Would doing so make us a patent troll, or is this the situation patents were created to help solve? If this isn't the right situation, what is?

Comment Re:I hate it when museums do this (Score 4, Informative) 52

by cadeon (#39383067) Attached to: Space Shuttles Discovery and Atlantis Meet One Last Time

The engines, in this case, are due to be used by the Space Launch System. They are planning on using 15 SSMEs from the shuttle program in the first launches of SLS. I'm sure a lot of the other components have similar fates, since the SLS is shuttle derived.

Aside from that, yes, I am totally with you. Seeing the Enterprise in DC was a rather empty experience. It looked like plywood.

Submission + - Large Solar Flare To Glance Off Earth (spaceweather.com) 1

Submitted by JoeRobe
JoeRobe writes: According to spaceweather.com, a major X5 solar flare is on it's way to deliver a glancing blow to the Earth's magnetic field. This is the second x-class flare to be released by the same sunspot in the past few days, the first being an X1. In both cases, the sunspot (spot 1429) was not directly facing Earth, but it is still active, and poses a threat for a large, Earth-directed flare in the next few days.

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