Duff

50 ms·

571.
by Duff 16y ago
Easy. Oil is an awesome fuel for energy generation, especially distributed generation. In the 19th century, it was awesome enough for people to go to sea for months at a time slaughtering whales and rendering their fat to provide light to h
572.
by Duff 16y ago
Of course, it's nonsense, because it doesn't include the "off budget" supplemental expenditures, nor the money contributed to the Social Security Trust Fund that is dumped on the Federal balance sheet. (in exchange for an IOU)
573.
by Duff 16y ago
Correction: Nobody has attacked a datacenter. I think that's a fact because the folks who blow things up aren't cognizant of their importance, or aren't using weapons appropriate to the task. When the US attacks a country, what do they blow
574.
by Duff 16y ago
You're just shifting from the credit card processor to the dollar/euro/bitcoin exchange person.
575.
by Duff 16y ago
If you do that, what's the advantage of bitcoin?
576.
by Duff 16y ago
From a practical standpoint, Bitcoin has other problems for using it in a real business -- mainly the fact that taxes are only payable in the coin of the realm. If you are a real, legal business, do you want your entire personal and busines
577.
by Duff 16y ago
I'm not knocking welders, but if you want to go to school and come out with a specific job, you go to a school that turns you into a specialist, in this case a welder! I worked on a farm in high school, mostly throwing hay, feeding animals
578.
by Duff 16y ago
The whole premise of Cisco's teleconferencing business is maintaining the illusion that that it has to be expensive to do -- which isn't true for 80% of the market at least. Cisco won't make billions on peddling their stuff to the 20% of th
579.
by Duff 16y ago
Majoring and doing well in English develops good analytical and analysis skills. You learn to read between the lines -- it's not a trivial field of study. Also, going to college is supposed to be about training your mind. Writing an Android
580.
by Duff 16y ago
Absolutely. That's where the small organization shines. Once you get big, where big == more than a couple of hundred people, subcultures start to develop that may not share positive values. A few key negative people can poison an organizati
581.
by Duff 16y ago
This stuff is a great demonstration of the type of advantages that a small organization has over a larger one. The problem with weighting more subjective assessments of people like "cultural fit" higher than more objective assessments like
582.
by Duff 16y ago
In my city, a 3 BR home assessed at $175k goes gets hit for $3100 school and $2100 city/county taxes. A little less than 3x more. That said I'm not claiming that San Francisco is a cheap place to live, but I'm assuming, that like NYC, livin
583.
by Duff 16y ago
Rapacious universities are testing the theory of creating affiliates in pursuit of more money. NYU, Cornell, Texas A&M, and Carnegie-Mellon are opening up campuses in the UAE to pull in some more money.
584.
by Duff 16y ago
This is going to sound mean. Sorry. It sounds like you're running from stuff all the time. You need to break that habit now, especially if you are serious about running a business. Pretending that things will just go away if ignored sounds
585.
by Duff 16y ago
Try living in Upstate NY. My school taxes were $2,500 in 2007. With no change in property assessment, they are up to $3,400 this year. And we just found out that the local library wants to jack their portion of the tax by over 25%. This pla
586.
by Duff 16y ago
Aggregate numbers are misleading, because oil supplies to specific regions of the country have radically different origins. Also, much of the oil "imported" from Canada actually transits through Canadian oil ports and is delivered to the US
587.
by Duff 16y ago
Pretty much. The US once created lots of stuff, now 31% of corporate profits are earned by the financial sector. (ie. passing our money back and forth) See: http://www.thestreet.com/story/11061024/1/the-cannibalizatio...
588.
by Duff 16y ago
We're pretty much there. Probably 60% of the average family's spending is on housing, fuel and food. All of which are heavily subsidized.
589.
by Duff 16y ago
When control of congress is split, you routinely see wacky legislation coming out of the house. Why? The House is designed to be the "rabble", Congressmen have two year terms and their re-election campaigns start about 5 minutes after they
590.
by Duff 16y ago
That analogy only works if the husband is also printing money in the basement. As long as you need dollars to buy oil, we'll continue with nonsensical debate like this.
591.
by Duff 16y ago
Think about what those things actually are. We're a post-industrial economy, since we don't make anything anymore, your "big 3" are the American equivalent of Bread & Circuses in Rome. Defense. Job program for millions of workers. Socia
592.
by Duff 16y ago
I agree. I'd be very nervous if my wife were a regular user of AirBNB. IMO, this service will slowly transform into a platform for independent hotels and real BNB's. Especially since the prices are so high -- why would I want to deal with p
593.
by Duff 16y ago
EBay's reputation system is a joke People routinely create fake accounts, farm for reputation by making lots of low-value purchases, then wait a few weeks until you cannot browse the details of their purchase history. Once that happens, the
594.
by Duff 16y ago
Since day 1, I've been reading things like "Unless something catastrophic and unexpected happens, things are ok." The problem is, catastrophic and unexpected things keep happening. I find the whole thing really depressing, as I think long-t
595.
by Duff 16y ago
Now I'm starting to get worried. This has been up for 2 hours, and typically the "atomic trolls" would have at least 5-6 comments up about how all of this is nothing to worry about. So I guess this is truly bad.
596.
by Duff 16y ago
Homeschooling or sending your kids to private school is out of the current norm because the compulsory system is so expensive that most folks cannot afford to pay for both. My school taxes in NY are $3,000 for a middle-class house -- $2,500
597.
by Duff 16y ago
Many of the specific issues that Gatto has with the public school system are addressed by alternate private schools.
598.
Fukushima Reactor 2 has breached its containment vessel(guardian.co.uk)
4 points by Duff 16y ago|0 comments
599.
by Duff 16y ago
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/30/home-schooli... "Five areas of academic pursuit were measured. In reading, the average home-schooler scored at the 89th percentile; language, 84th percentile; math, 84th percentile; science,
600.
by Duff 16y ago
I think the relevance of technology like this is driven by the price floors of smartphones vs. not-so-smart phones. A pre-paid phone somewhat similar to the once $300+ Motorola Razr is like $20 at Wal-Mart. If a low-rent Android device is p

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