hotpockets

Most people don't make over $1 million dollars in a lifetime. I like to think the value comes from the desire to compensate a family member for a lost loved one. Some manner of putting a dollar value of the pain of the loss.

Also the greatest impact of spent dollars comes from investing in knowledge creation since new knowledge benefits everyone who will exist in the future, and we are extremely close (on the earth time scale) to our species becoming effectively permanent (space faring). So any minor new discovery can have enormous benefits, or at least benefits that are many orders of magnitude greater than stopping any number of different terror attacks.

You also have biological terrorism to worry about. Both natural (new severe viral outbreaks as in 1918 virus) and man made threats, which are not included in any estimates of the toll of disease.

A. I don't understand the comparison. Crime is different than terror. For example some of the highest value terror targets are where the highest density of people are. Obviously people aren't moving away from city centers. Crime on the other hand is associated with poverty and is not committed by terrorists. People who are capable move away, sometimes just a few miles away.

B. I don't undestand the following types of argument:

1. people are ignorant of something and have irrational fears about it.

2. Lets spend a bunch of money so they feel better.

What ever happened to education?

There's even stronger arguments that this article doesn't make. Cures last forever (at least until the entropy death of the universe assuming we can become space-faring and continue to exist for ~10^50 years) benefiting incalculable numbers of people. On the other hand, preventing one terrorist attack, has very temporally limited benefits. New knowledge lasts forever.

Conversely, what would a huge epidemic do? Unlike terrorist nukes, we've already encountered massive global flu epidemics.

Its hard to imagine the negative effects of terrorism are greater than those of disease. After all, many more people die of disease than die of terrorism. Its pretty easy for people to move away from terror zones. I could just move to the country if I was afraid of terrorism. When people spread out, terrorism becomes more difficult. Except very few people do this.

On the other hand, if there was a magical place where all diseases would be cured, I imagine there would be a mad scramble to get in.

I also made a crude estimate for economic impact of disease in another comment of ~$250 trillion per year.

Ever heard of the economic impact of chronic disease? Its in the trillions per year (CDC, WHO, others). Ever consider the economic value of a human life? Its around $5 million. Since around 50 million people die each year from disease we can estimate the societal burden of disease to be ~$250 trillion dollars per year. If you do an full analysis, I would have a hard time believing you'd find the societal burden of terrorism is greater than the detrimental impact of disease.

Google could be searching email for certain series of characters, like "xxxx obama" and handing that over. Perhaps NSA supplies google a list of phrases to look for.

Restating your numbers in consistent units (number per million) for easier comparison:

Median 1

Texas 20

Ok 25

There is no shortage of people who have an innate love and aptitude for programming. There is a shortage of companies willing to offer training.

Sorry, I don't get it. If there were an easier way to obtain copper, the value of copper would fall. Likewise if a superior metal was found, copper's value would drop. This value doesn't sound very intrinsic. And my initial claim was not about whether something makes a good currency or not. I was claiming that that which imbues copper with value is basically the same thing that imbues bitcoins with value. Namely, their utility to people and being noncounterfeitable.

but copper doesn't have value until it is used. Copper wires aren't useful just sitting around being copper.

I don't understand intrinsic value. Copper can be used in useful things that improve our lives, which I claim is what gives it its "intrinsic" value. Bitcoin improves my life in ways that other currencies can't, so doesn't it also have intrinsic value?

But you seemed to leave out an important component of valuation, unrealized capability. The protocol supports more than has been implemented.

I listed two examples, not sure what you're looking for. But, this page has more: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

I don't get this argument. Bitcoin lets you do things you can't do without it. That's not zero sum, that's creating value that wasn't there before. And we are only at the beginning. Pretty much no one understands what can be done with it in the future. Smart property, oracles, etc.

By your logic, a person should never try to save another person's life, because so many people die that you can't even make a dent.

I dunno man. He set the cruise control for like an hour. And he adjusted it a few times. Sorry niggler, but if you are a car journalist for the ny times and reviewing a car and cant even be bothered to check how fast you are going (forgetting for a moment the safety issues, and potential speeding tickets) then you are a poor car reviewer.

What do you mean that "Broder did get it right"?

I thought Broder lied about how fast he was going for the whole trip.

Whoah, celiac doesn't cause your small intestine to necrotise. And it doesn't put you in the ER if you eat a little gluten. For one thing, every celiac has a different set of symptoms. Many many people go there whole life not knowing they have celiac until they come down with a very specific type of cancer later in life, when they find out they were celiac.

I don't think its been settled. Mr Broder lost a lot of credibility when outright lying about how fast he was going for the entire trip. Why wouldn't he lie about whether he saw the charging station. Since we don't have any data about what was going through his mind, Broder knows he can say anything in order to defend himself.

Looking closer, it uses the Lab colorspace. Here is what I was using: http://www.mathworks.us/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29702

Interesting point. Though, some of the colors in OPs preset examples seemed very similar, even with only 7 colors. For generating graphs, maximally distinct colors seems the primary goal, even if they compete for attention, perhaps because of it.

I've used something similar in matlab, which I though worked a little better. It started out with red green blue, colors frequently considered maximally distinct, at least on color monitors for the non-colorblind. Then it just found maximally distant points in the color cube. I found it worked nicely and you could also seed it with your own starting color(s).

Edit: found out it is based on Lab color space.

article link http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nnano....

also more informative stories http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57541381-76/ibm-brings-car...

http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/newsid=27115.php

Facing a potential health crisis without insurance has got to be one of the biggest disincentives to starting a business.

Even if that disincentive is irrelevant to most entrepreneurs, you still have potential entrepreneurs with health issues. If X% of potential entrepreneurs have managed but costly health problems, the disincentive to starting a business must be much higher.

Also, this article mentions that it is a tube of some sort: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-13/elon-musk-th...

Interesting, but then you have to worry about keeping oxygen in the train, and not having leaks?

I tried a calculation. It appears there is an optimal gas velocity in between 0 and V_train. It depends on a lot of factors that I didn't spend much time trying to come up with realistic values. If I weight things heavily in my favor, you can save over 50% power requirements by moving the air at around ~120m/s. If I weight things in your favor there is a pretty paltry power savings at around ~10m/s. If you care, here was my method:

f=0.006; %wall friction factor inside tube, also skin friction outside a train rho=1.2; %air density [kg/m^3] R=1.5; %tube radius [m] Vg=0:200; %velocity of tube gas [m/s] Vt=250; %velocity of train [m/s] L=500e3; %length of tube [m] Cd=0.8; %drag coefficient, form drag trainfill=0.1; %percent of tube filled by train airfill=1-trainfill; %percent of tube filled by air ncars=1000; %number of cars in tube Pg=pi/4fVg.^3LairfillR; %power required to move gas through tube Pt_fm=ncars0.5rhopiR^2Cd(Vt-Vg).^3; %power required to overcome form drag on each car Pt_sk=pi/4f(Vt-Vg).^3LtrainfillR; %power required to overcome skin friction drag Pg_annulus=0; %since the mass of air is so small between the train and tube wall, assume 0. Pt=Pg+Pt_fm+Pt_sk; %total power requirements

Nah I am saying move the air at the same speed as the trains.

A closed tube could maybe have negligible air friction, if you can keep it moving.