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Comment State schools aren't really state these days (Score 1) 551

For example, the University of Texas at Austin's state funding comes from the Available University Fund, a contribution from the Permanent University Fund, largely derived through land usage income (oil, minerals, etc.). This is about $158 million out of the University’s total budget of $2.26 billion — about 7 percent. So, you could say its president's income (around $750K salary, plus benefits) is only 7% indebted to the state.

Comment Re:I have always said this is the wrong approach (Score 1) 325

Actually, that's the point. By effectively canceling out transactions, you don't raise any alarms, like "where'd all our money go?" Rather, you cause chaos because nobody can tell who owes what money to whom. It's really quite sinister. Considering how the uncertainty surrounding CDOs and mortgage backed securities screwed with the financials, a complete lack of trust in any balance sheet would positively destroy them.

Anyway, if you do this, just let me know before you do it to MY banks :)

Comment I have always said this is the wrong approach (Score 1) 325

The "Fight Club" style of "getting back at the Man" isn't very practical. There would be some period of disarray, but if you really want to screw things royally, you would introduce random, but very small data errors that hopefully get overlooked. Over time, these affect the balance sheets, the "business algorithms" in place, and generally make it a nightmare to figure out how to fix things. All of this "silent data corruption" would be propagated to disaster recovery systems. Your "backup tapes" would basically contain a perfect copy of bad data. Yes, eventually, you could find the point at which the "disaster" occurred and go back to that time, but if days, weeks, months have passed, how do you replay all of those transactions from that point on? The bank (market, economy, etc.) is screwed.

Yes, this is a little like the "Superman 3 Salami Slicing Fraud" but the only reason that gets flagged is because there is a net output from the balance sheet. If everything just got twisted up internal to the bank, it would be much easier to hide.

Bug

Vanishing Honeybees Will Affect Future Crops 322

daninbusiness writes "Across the US, beekeepers are finding that their bees are disappearing — not returning while searching for nectar and pollen. This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as $14 billion worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination. Reasons for this problem, dubbed 'colony collapse disorder,' are still unknown. Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides."

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Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem. -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

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