Comment What is a USC Santa Barbara? (Score 4, Informative) 131
I've heard of a UC Santa Barbara and a USC, but I've never heard of a USC Santa Barbara.
Comment Re:So who gets rationed? (Score 1) 395
Isn't this basically what banks do? Loan out money they don't have and hope that their depositors won't withdraw their money at the same time? (Not that it's right for banks to do that, but just a note.)
Comment Re:Actually more like $650... (Score 4, Funny) 1147
Watching the man in Redmond throw a chair across the office: priceless
Comment Re:Here's the sum total of the knowledge gained... (Score 2, Insightful) 212
Or rather, short sell them.
Scientists Build an Ark To Save Jungle Amphibians 127
Peace Corps Online writes "In the 1980s a deadly fungus called chytrid appeared in Central America and began moving through mountain streams, killing as many as 8 out of 10 frogs and extinguishing some species entirely. (The fungus has little effect on any other vertebrates.) Now a returned Peace Corps volunteer and her husband have opened the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in western Panama to house more than 600 frogs as chytrid cuts a lethal path through the region. Experts agree that the only hope of saving some of the more endangered, restricted-range species is to collect animals from remaining wild populations, establish captive breeding programs, and be prepared to conduct reintroduction projects in the future. But before reintroduction can even begin, scientists must find some way to overcome the chytrid in native habitats using vaccines, breeding for resistance, or genetic engineering of the fungus. Conservationists are budgeting for 25 years of captive breeding, long enough, they believe, to allow some response to chytrid to be found. 'There are more species in need of rescue than there are resources to rescue them,' says Amphibian Ark's program director. 'When you're talking about insidious threats like disease or climate change, threats that can't be mitigated in the wild, there's simply no alternative.'"
Comment How Many More "Oops"... (Score 1) 598
How many more of these mistakes will people tolerate before they turn in disgust from buying a $20+ POS that stops working randomly? I know that if I bought this game (and was foolish enough to install it, DRM and all) and the DRM kicked in like this, my first stop would be to The Pirate Bay.
Comment Re:Define slowing (Score 4, Interesting) 126
The ISPs have large areas where they are the only high-speed Internet providers, besides expensive and high-ping satellite connections. You know just as well as I that there's no feasible way to build your own ISP. Caps are only possible because of the ISPs' anti-competitive behavior.
What you're saying is, "Hey, DeBeers has a business model of 'managing costs'. They can do what they want. If you don't like it, find another player (never mind that DeBeers controls 90%+ of the market) or make your own diamond mining corporation."
Comment Incentive (Score 3, Insightful) 198
Where there is an financial incentive to spam (there are those dumb people that click on the v1@9r@ ads, believe it or not), there will be spam.
Comment It Will Help The Big Three (Score 3, Insightful) 740
Regardless, encouraging sale of old vehicles to scrapyard means that people will buy new cars. A portion of this will go to the domestic manufacturers, who at this point are not as worried about selling more cars than their foreign competitors, but rather just selling more cars.
Comment Re:Is it must me, or is that sum peanuts? (Score 0, Offtopic) 101
You're right. Compared to the size of the recent bailout, 600k is a drop in the bucket. Even 100x this would still be almost trivial for the government.
Comment Re:Power Savings!! (Score 2, Insightful) 82
What enthusiast that spends big dollars on the latest cards uses their card for more than a year?
Most people that rush out to buy these type of cutting-edge hardware replace them every few months or so. The savings realized by power conservation will never cover the difference between the two with the crowd these new cards (indeed, all new cards) are targeted at.
Most people that rush out to buy these type of cutting-edge hardware replace them every few months or so. The savings realized by power conservation will never cover the difference between the two with the crowd these new cards (indeed, all new cards) are targeted at.
Comment Re:wow (Score 1) 844
Statistically, African Americans are more likely to kill than those of other races. So the ones that don't go around killing people need to police the ones that do?
Sounds like suicide.
Comment Re:Well.... (Score 1) 151
Just a computer running Vista, 'tis all.
Comment Sounds like this. (Score 1) 173
Comment What was I going to post? (Score 4, Funny) 120
I forgot.
