CaptainPanic

The real question is how much money investors should be allowed to extract. They aren't limited in any way at the moment. Right now they're extracting so much that the 'financial' sector is one of the main sectors in the world. What if it doubles in size again, and becomes twice as big, and 'extracts' twice the amount of money it does today? Or 10 times? Please note that I'm not saying that the concept of investment bankers is wrong. I'm saying that it's a good idea what ydoaPs proposes: make banks state-owned and remove their profit-incentive. I'm glad you mentioned the word "extract".

The cheapest laser pointers go for just a few euro/dollar. I guess the cheapest way to get all necessary components for a laser pointer is to buy a cheap laser pointer. Sorry that I am not helpful...

A quantity can decrease in multiple ways in a 10 year period. It can decrease linearly. That means you lose 89/10 (or 8.9) in year 1. And again 8.9 in year 2. And again 8.9 in year 3. It can also be an exponential decay. You can lose for example 50% every year. Starting with 100, you lose 50 in year 1. You have 50 left, and therefore you lose only 25 in year 2. And only 12.5 in year 3. What you just did is that you assumed that the decrease (-89/10) is the linear value. But then you applied it to the exponential decay. Since this sounds an awful lot like homework, I will not give you the answer.

Unhindered by any real knowledge about addictions, I postulate that a coffee addiction is mostly a mindset, and very often not really physical. But this mindset can have effects which are very much like the addictions described... meaning that you can show withdrawal symptoms and all. Occupy the mind with something other than coffee, and the craving disappears. It's not as physically addictive as most people think. Drinking coffee, or smoking cigarettes, it's just a habit. As soon as I break my daily routines, and do something different, I can suddenly function properly without coffee. But if I have a very standard day in the office, I want my coffee.

In our universe, everything influences everything else... If God therefore lives in our universe, I can influence god. That means it's not almighty, and therefore it's not god. Anyway, if we ignore even that, and go with the idea that God is the omnipotent creator and had nothing to do with any religion or holy books, then I would react with utter fear. Fear of a World War between the different religious factions of the world, under the rather uninterested eye of the creator, to whom our wars must seem rather insignificant in relation to the bigger things in the universe. Obviously, the logical thing would be to make peace, and accept all religions as equal. But that's not how human politics works. And religion is politics. We now know for fact that (1) God doesn't really care if we slaughter each other, because of our previous experiences in all the wars and (2) god is with everybody and nobody at the same time. So the only way to really come out on top is to completely eradicate the opponents. I would travel to a far away remote area of the world and sit it out. Indeed. It would be typically human to consider God an enemy as soon as it's discovered. "What if we're a mishap that need correction?". "Wouldn't it be safer to destroy the omnipotent god before it destroys us?". "God never helped us, he has never sides with us. Therefore, he must be against us". That kind of thinking.

I think it's cheaper to build 20 meter high hills in every coastal village and along main coastal roads at regular intervals. This idea might sound a little bizarre, but it's very old, and has been used in the Netherlands for ages and ages. Albeit, the hills we have built are more like 5 meters, not 20 m. Easier than making all the cars waterproof and smash-proof. You're essentially saying that cars should be more like tanks. That means they're heavier, more expensive, and less fuel efficient. While that's a noble idea, we have to realize that casualties cannot be prevented at all costs. There is a point where the costs are just too high.

Yes, they need cooling water. The sea provides that, which makes it a lot cheaper to build at the coast. This facility is so big that no river in Japan is big enough to provide enough cooling water. It was either the sea, or massive cooling towers. It's also a lot easier to develop a factory on a flat surface. Higher ground is not flat. This facility is enormous. Several hectares of flat ground are hard to come by on higher ground. Both of these arguments are ultimately a matter money. It's possible to make the surface flat, even if it's not flat yet. And it's possible to pipe water to a higher location inland. But both cost money...

Makes a lot of sense to me. A bank should be a service, and a non-profit (or profit-minimization) model suits such a role. Same for insurance companies.

A quick Google search has told me that "Microsystem engineering" is very often only a Master, meaning you have to do a Bachelor in for example Mechanical Engineering first. To get detailed info, I would advise to contact the university directly.

With interest and curiosity. Still wouldn't be interested in all the religious stuff. I have always lived a good life, and I don't see any reasons to change it, if that's what you're aiming at. I'd be very curious too what god would say about all the numerous religious movements that constantly fight about who has the one and only really right belief. Also, I would be very curious how we would prove beyond doubt that god is really omnipotent. These would be really interesting tests, with god the subject of the tests. It would probably immediately offend some religious people, because the scientific community would try to disprove the omnipotence for a long, long time. I don't see why I would have new emotions like love or hate. Those kinds of emotions have very little to do with any scientific discovery. Also, I don't see why worshipping would do any good. Your post doesn't assume anything about the usefulness of worshipping, so I guess I wouldn't - because worshipping seems a bit of a waste of time to me. I would ask him "how are you doing?" which is a more polite way of saying " "

The same newspaper opens this morning with a picture of a helicopter (looks like a chinook?) that carries water.

At this moment (01.40 AM, CET) a Dutch newspaper (link in Dutch) reports that Japan plans to drop water onto the Fukushima #4 nuclear reactor in order to cool it. It seems quite desperate, so I thought I'd tell you about it. Wikipedia at the moment (01.40 AM on Wed, CET) also has the same info, including 3 references for it: Other sources mention that this plan was deemed impractical, and instead: The situation in Japan is really confusing. News agencies keep updating their websites and pages, so linking is quite unreliable. One moment the info is there, the next it's gone. Bottom line to me is: The situation in Japan is quite desperate. Dropping stuff from helicopters does not seem like it's under control at all. I really feel for those guys there. I really wish them the best of luck to solve the problems. I hope that for once their lucky. I'm looking forward to some better news.

You need more self-confidence or another neighborhood. Far more effective than trying to fight violence with more violence. Do you seriously expect that people who have careers in chemistry will teach you (and the rest of the internet) how to make something worse than a pepperspray or a tazer????? You are quite naive. Of course we're NOT going to do that. Do you really think the world becomes a better place if there exist more powerful, more easily available non-lethal weapons? How long do you think it takes the baddies to get your new and wonderful anti-robbery invention, and turn it into a very effective weapon to rob people???

If you would somehow have only water and a single oxygen atom, then you might get peroxide as a result. But it's quite unlikely that you will get a single oxygen atom in the presence of only water... and a single oxygen atom would much rather react with something other than the water.

It doesn't surprise me that there's a lot of fraud going on in the banking world. If the whole business model is based on a pyramid scheme of ever increasing debt, and if you allow the institutions to create money with money, then it's just a matter of time before it spirals out of control. And when things become more difficult, as it has been in the last couple of years, fraud and corruption increase. I personally think that the gates have barely opened. The large majority of the dirt isn't out on the street yet.

I think that such an eel can at best generate an average of 1 W. It can give a large power output, but only for a millisecond or so. So, for 1 household, you need at least 1000 fish... and a massive machine to convert all those shocks in the water into some useful form of electricity. I conclude that it's a useless idea.

Zjar, I think that the 2 main reasons are: - Laziness - Incapability of taking shoes off and/or putting shoes back on I think that laziness is one of the main reasons that people don't want to put their shoes on and off. It takes 30 of their precious seconds, and they'd prefer to spend those 30 seconds doing some other useless activity such as watching TV. Also, many people just cannot comfortably bend or kneel down to put their shoes on, either because they're too fat, too stiff, too old, or because their clothes to not allow it, or because the hall does not allow it (because it's too small, with too many guests, and the only way to bend down is to put your face into someone else's ass).

First of all: don't try this forum. The ubuntu forums are a far better place for questions, and it's quite likely that the answer is already out there. Anyway I also had a problem once installing Ubuntu. Turned out I had screwed up creating the .iso. Everything was functioning well, but it was a human failure (me!). My experience is that by far the easiest is to put the iso on a CD. In other words, download a fresh version from the ubuntu website, burn it as an iso onto a cd, and install. Just my 2 cents. I realize that it's not 100% the answer you wanted.

14-3 is NOT pie-day, you America-centric insensitive clod! The insensitive clod remark might only be funny for slashdot readers...

Mother nature has designed eggs to be able to breathe (which is quite a good idea if an egg is meant to be the home for a developing animal). So, if you increase the air pressure slowly, it will never break. If you increase it rapidly, then probably just a few mbar will be sufficient to break it. Why don't you just take an egg, and put some weights on it to see when it breaks? It's not a very precise answer, but then again, the quality of egg shells (depending on the diet of the chicken) is probably quite huge too.

Same here in the Netherlands. You can (theoretically) get a fine. In practice however the police are more likely to congratulate you for riding a bike when drunk (instead of taking the car). Drunk people on bicycles tend to only hurt themselves, and do no other damage or harm.

Interestingly, this graph suggests that indeed US oil consumption has dropped. http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/oil_consumption.html

Wait until you find out what's in natural products (like an apple, milk, eggs, wheat, tomato). DNA and all other proteins are just freaky at the molecular level. The way sugars are produced (and consumed) in the plant and animal life is also pretty funky. We all know it's healthy, but if you see it written out like chemicals, I still think it looks wrong... Food's pretty weird from a chemical perspective. And not simple at all. Luckily, it's almost always possible to work with a simplified version of reality... especially if you're working in the chemical industry or food/drink industry (which as you're now finding out is also just chemical industry, even if it uses only natural products).

I think a bar is open for public, but still privately owned (i.e. not public space). So, yes, I would think that it's completely allowed. Contrary to a public place, the bar owner can hold a private party. But it's for example not possible for a private person to close off part of a street for a private party (not without explicit permission from some government agency). So, I conclude that at least in the Netherlands a bar is not considered public space. Anyway, I maintain that it would be very impractical and unnecessary to adopt a zero-tolerance regarding the alcohol laws we have. Most people that go out drink more than is officially allowed (the limit is very low). And the very large majority cause no problems. But it's still useful because it gives the police a chance to arrest someone who is really annoying for being drunk in public. ... and I think that a similar approach is useful for enforcement of certain traffic laws. <-- that's to bring the discussion back on topic.

I installed Ubuntu. Then it came up with some popups, which I all accepted. It installed some stuff. Then some more. And then all my drivers worked, and I've had no reason to upgrade them. Some are 'non-free' or whatever they're called. That means they are not open source, but still really easy to install. It's funny that if you're just a very average user (i.e. practically a newbie), then Ubuntu works fine. On the far other side of the spectrum: If you're a complete geek, then it's often also the preferred operating system. But for that intermediate user, the businessman, the scientist, with a few special needs and applications, Windows is the best. But I am happy to see that Ubuntu is now closing that gap from both sides... and it's now mostly up to the third party programs to come up with an Ubuntu version... but that's just a matter of time.