nagrom

30 ms·

241.
by nagrom 15y ago
Your credit rating determines the cost of borrowing money - the AAA status is essential if you want to borrow money (i.e. issue bonds to) some of the biggest, most risk-averse funds in the world. If the US loses its AAA rating then you cann
242.
by nagrom 15y ago
Yes, but hadrons basically make up a lot of matter :-) You want free quark, or if you want obscure-physics cred, you could say 'rarer than an odderon'. The (non?)existence of odderons has been an argument in particle physics for about 30 ye
243.
by nagrom 15y ago
1. The search for new routes to the Far East was as much due to political pressures in Europe as it was to any Islamic interference. The British didn't 'resort to colonialism to build their way to modernity.' At that time, Britain defined
244.
by nagrom 15y ago
I'm not for a second claiming that Britain didn't exploit India - I'm merely refuting the idea that all of the British acts were purely negative. 1. Well, I don't necessarily agree that your point c. is the most difficult and I would guess
245.
by nagrom 15y ago
Wow, are you angry. 1) The British GDP increased dramatically with the (British-led) industrial revolution, regardless of any effect the British had on India. Comparing the two and claiming that it is entirely due to Britain's involvement w
246.
by nagrom 15y ago
> There are entire generations of british historians since WW2 dedicated to the PR propaganda of how good the british were for the colonies and until very recently the western opinion has been entirely shaped by this propaganda - almost
247.
by nagrom 15y ago
I think you're a little restrictive on scifi by referencing only television. There's a lot of very new scifi published as books - television has maybe dropped away, but read something by Charles Stross, for example. I don't think that such
248.
by nagrom 15y ago
It is part of the strategy - and one I have no heart to fight. There is simply no point in listening when the signal-to-noise ratio is too low and your chances of effecting the outcome are minimal. Yes, expensive energy may do that - but is
249.
by nagrom 15y ago
I do genuinely believe that a lot of the reporting and comment on climate-related issues is a form of frenzy by the people involved - not rationally thought-out but a tendency on one side to claim that nothing's wrong and everything's fine
250.
by nagrom 15y ago
I'd love to see more engineering efforts going towards improving our standard of living regardless of what the climate does. By all means, worry about whether the planet is getting warmer or cooler or a bit of both dependent on the place...
251.
by nagrom 15y ago
I think the problem is the aspect of intimidation. If these guys were to offer to buy the ticket off you in a fair way, they may have a point. I can assure you that this is not what happens ;-)
252.
by nagrom 15y ago
In some senses, protons exert an "electrostatic pressure" on each other. The bound neutron cannot become a proton, because of this electrostatic pressure applied by its companion protons - if it were to become a proton, it would need to get
253.
by nagrom 15y ago
This is also a problem when looking at books on the Kindle. Many books are good, but their reviews are destroyed by a terrible Kindle conversion. See the version of Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks, for example: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surf
254.
by nagrom 15y ago
We're not considering only luxury goods though. There'll always be other suppliers of shoes willing to cut their prices to match demands, just like other colleges will cut their prices to match a spectrum of demand. I think the point is tha
255.
by nagrom 15y ago
I cannot find it online, but I remember reading an essay by an ex-faculty member in CS who eventually went to work for Sun. He thought that academia was a rip-off, training-wise, when compared to Sun. At his job in Sun, when he trains peopl
256.
by nagrom 15y ago
Yes and no. If fewer people have degrees, the status will go up. If more people don't even consider them, demand also goes down and hence prices. So status and cost can both drop until it becomes cheap enough that everyone gets a degree a
257.
by nagrom 15y ago
I always thought that universities charge overseas students a premium as it's the only chance to make money?
258.
by nagrom 15y ago
To approach your points individually: - The wider middle-class in the US are used to paying for quality. It's not so ingrained in the UK mindset, where we have been used, up until recently, to government subsidies. - The UK market is still
259.
by nagrom 15y ago
I think we're talking at cross-purposes :-) Did you donate any money to Google or Freebox because of their kind and generous offers, or did you use their free service and just expect them t figure the money part out themselves? (For what it
260.
by nagrom 15y ago
I have no idea. I do know that Weihanstephaner market themselves as the world's oldest brewery. Not the best. The oldest ;-)
261.
by nagrom 15y ago
It depends where you hail from. Brits and Americans will drink it because they have a HUGE advertising budget. The Japanese won't drink it because imported beer is hellishly expensive and Asahi isn't that bad. The French won't drink it, b
262.
by nagrom 15y ago
And the point is he didn't lose money. Other people bought the app who wouldn't, it seems, off the back of his generous gesture. Note that this certainly would not work for a large company - it only works for a (very) small-scale outfit.
263.
by nagrom 15y ago
You can get Weihanstephaner in Germany. You shouldn't, but you can.
264.
by nagrom 15y ago
When I was a kid, my local town had a 'leisure library'. It was a small-ish facility (10m x 10m) filled with teenage-books, videos, a few computers (back in 1994!) and consoles. The librarian operated a shop where you could buy coke, pepsi,
265.
by nagrom 15y ago
Sure there are benefits. The keys are backed up remotely and you have access off-premises. If anything goes wrong, presumably you can call up tech support and they can access the system without your opening ports on your router or messing w
266.
by nagrom 15y ago
Probably, but it would certainly cost human lives and effort. I'm not au fait with vaccine creation, so I cannot answer whether it is technically possible, but it seems probable.
267.
by nagrom 15y ago
That's true - but you probably don't grind your own flour, service your own car, run your own bank or make your own furniture. Why run your own server?
268.
by nagrom 15y ago
The advantage is that (theoretically) you can't lose them, you can grant and revoke access permissions at will based on time limitations and you can share them very easily. See other comments on the thread about airbnb for example.
269.
by nagrom 15y ago
Ebola's not that deadly, because it kills people too quickly and the transmission process is difficult. It's easily quarantined and therefore deadly to individuals, but not to populations. Smallpox is almost the opposite - 66% of victims su
270.
by nagrom 15y ago
The question is unnecessarily emotional and anthropomorphizes smallpox - smallpox hates that. The question is really "There is a threat contained in labs in the US and Russia. Should we eliminate it, or hold onto it for future research and

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