BearOfNH

Soon your webcam will be sending its pictures to various police agencies

Wow, that was quick:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134022

Incredible! Coloring is very 1970s. I'd like to get a T-shirt with some of the later patterns.

The ending is not to be missed.

matter could not accelerate to the speed of light

That was Kevin Spacey's claim in the movie K-Pax.

For all I know, we're falling through time at the speed of light.

Whatever you think of Oracle the company or Oracle the product, you have to admire what Larry has accomplished. Especially considering his humble origins, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

The Internet is becoming the Police State's favorite bogeyman. The unprecedented volume of information freely available to all quickly turns into a vast number of potential crimes from which the Police State must protect the peeple.

It's no longer the camel's nose under the tent. It's the camels eyes, ears and tape recorder as well. Soon your webcam will be sending its pictures to various police agencies. Were he still alive and not in the throes of a nervous breakdown, Orwell would be proud.

Are these numbers based on page fetches or unique visitors? It's obviously easier to count page fetches but the article implies it's broken down by visitor, without being explicit about it.

Well, there was that SNL skit about the Sodom city council plotting how to compete with the more successful Gomorrah. Sorry, can't find it on YouTube but here's a .RAM file:

http://cip.law.ucla.edu/ramfiles/i_love_sodom.ram

(Bill Murray develops a pitch for "I Love Sodom", a riff on "I Love New York", leading to a real-life lawsuit. SNL won.)

as long as there is enough energy left to start the printing presses

Intuitively this makes sense but in reality it is not practical. As soon as investors hear the presses crank up (metaphorically speaking) they can predict what's coming and will dump all their US debt, driving up interest rates and forcing a deep[-er] US recession. Politics will then correct this before the USA becomes Northern Zimbabwe.

I have read [no citation available :-( ] the actual crime rate is somewhat correlated with the number of young men -- say, aged 13-30 -- in the population. This would explain an increase in the 1960s followed by a decrease in the 1990s and beyond.

One of the few movies where I consider the (1997) remake to be superior to the original. With the absolutely creepy scene where a conversation is punctuated by insects getting bug-zapped.

Neither movie contains anything explicit beyond kissing, as I recall. But there's no doubt what's going on.

Books^2: When I buy a paperback novel to read on a plane (or while waiting to get on a plane :-) I often finish it in some distant city and leave it someplace where somebody else can find it. Just too much work to sell for a pittance, and too valuable to simply toss out. So I leave its fate to Fate.

I don't know much astrology so I'm not able to address that issue, but decades ago I studied handwriting analysis. I realized there were "opposites", but they were always described in a positive manner. For example, long endings on a script 'e' were associated with generous people. The opposite, a short 'e' ending, would be associated with a thrifty individual -- as opposed to the more blunt cheapskate.

Maybe that's just wordsmithing but it seems reasonable to characterize attributes in a positive way.

Would The Pirate Bay be welcome there as well?

I once hired a professional to draw a caricature of a friend of mine, based on internet photos and some biographical info. He did an outstanding job in a short time: http://www.rickscartoons.com/

I am not affiliated with Rick, but would use his services again.

1. Casablanca

2. Chinatown

3. The Maltese Falcon

They don't make 'em like they used to ...

Would it be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" to inflict brain surgery upon habitual violent criminals?

Almost sounds like something from the Soviet era, or earlier.

If IBM can't pay the pensions that it promised, IBM pensioners take the hit.

Have you heard of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation?

all we need to do is repudiate all the debt that China currently owns

At which point every other holder of U.S. Treasuries will wonder "Am I next?". This will lead to a massive sales of U.S. debt instruments around the world, and would not be good for anyone.

it's a joyless wasteland of big box stores and cookie cutter urban development

Fair enough. But one man's joyless wasteland is another man's cheerful paradise.

There's no accounting for taste. At least, I hope not.

Sounds like something Tyler Durden might have said.

It's very difficult to find developers that have never installed the Adobe software ever

Kids -- by which I mean anybody under 18 -- cannot enter into contracts. An Adobe EULA cannot be enforced against somebody so young. In lawyer-speak the EULA is "voidable" (as opposed to "void").

So all you'd need do is hire 'em young and make sure they don't agree to anything once they turn 18.

IANAL, do this at your own risk, yada-yada-yada.

CO2 actually is considered a pollutant by the EPA

A political decision, not a scientific one. Made recently by the current administration, and likely to be dropped by the next administration.

I agree on the "natural" bit though. Hell, cyanide is all-natural. For that matter, peanuts are all natural but still deadly to some people.

It would be nice if there were a nutrition label for the entire package. Until then I can use Wolfram Alpha, which has quite a good database.

And I agree with you on the fructose. It is bad stuff, at least in the concentrations found in processed food.

It is a bit comical that the EPA is raising holy hell over carbon dioxide while the FDA turns a blind eye to HFCS.

That adjusted-for-inflation line on the first chart didn't seem right to me so I looked up some official data. The CPI-U price levels for January 2008 and 2009 both read about 211, while for January 1985 the same price level was 105.5, meaning prices doubled between 1985 and 2008 ... to the extent such data is trustworthy.

In the first chart the 1985 blue bar reads about $0.50 and the corresponding black (inflation-adjusted) line reads about $1, which is exactly how you would adjust for a doubling in inflation.

So there's a rough correspondence between the level of inflation and price of ads. Which actually makes sense.

I'm sure we can look at the numbers and come up with a conclusion.

A long, long time ago I read an article comparing the increase in the cost of college education vs. the published inflation rate. They were roughly the same. Really. But this was a long, long time ago...Camelot.

After student loans came into existence this rough equality disappeared and the cost of an education rose faster than inflation. Economically, that makes sense. Subsidize something (education) and you get more demand. With a somewhat inelastic supply of colleges, the price goes up.

Of course correlation is not causation. Many other reasons can be cited as well. But once upon a time college, while still expensive, only kept pace with inflation.

one can greatly increase their income with other strategies

Of course those "other strategies" have a different risk profile. You might be right about not considering income, but then you should also ignore risks. All of them.

If I were in the same position, I would go for it ... or something vaguely similar (like, say, Kwajalein radar support). But then, I never was a party animal.

Does one necessarily have to make a purchase prior to payment? Couldn't this concept include a "wallet" as well? Just tell the Qwacker "Bill me $10", take the $10 coupon and $10 cash to the 7/11 and get credited with $10. As an option, possibly for somebody who wants to repair a bad reputation.

let two observers in different locations see the same event simultaneously [...]

So ... what if observer B does nothing while observer A (a long, long ways distant) measures something. Can B then "see" the corresponding wave function collapse, thereby knowing that A took a measurement?

What I'm working towards here is not caring about the measurement outcome, but rather knowing that a measurement took place, and using that as "information". If you have enough entangled quanta don't you then have a primitive serial line?

It should be obvious here that I'm not very familiar with QM. Just wondering.

I have a little book of things I want to open-source before I die.

So do I. And I'll be retiring in a few years, if you get my drift.

Where are good places to deposit stuff? Things that may not be worthy of (say) SourceForge? Things that may only interest a handful of people every year? Someplace where they will get cataloged by Google so every few months a single geek can be pleasantly surprised to find somebody else solved part of his problem, and is willing to share?

Time flies like an arrow; space flies like a bow.