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At first I thought cloning a human at would be extremely cruel because of what happened to Dolly the sheep, but then I used teh Googlz and found that scientist have subsequently cloned Rhesus monkeys with success. So now I only think it would be totally reckless to clone a human, given how limited our understanding of its long-term consequences are.

Here you go, http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/knittel/papers/gas_demand_083006.pdf

According to research by UC Davis's Jonathan Hughes, Christopher Knittel and Daniel Sperling, Americans are now less responsive to increases in gas prices.

Still prefer Augmented Reality Sandbox.

Example on the tubes

A similar situation occurred with the papaya ringspot virus threatening to devastate the papaya industry in Hawaii. However, in 1998, researchers developed a genetically modified papaya resistant to the virus, and this scientific development has been credited with saving Hawaii's papaya industry. Perhaps this offers some hope for a good outcome in using genetic modification to solve the problem of citrus greening.

"The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor." - Dr. Norman Matloff http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Some of the information presented in the following links will shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. Bill Gates, John Chambers, Eric Schmidt, and many, many others - including the principals of the most prominent immigration law firms, who profit from this outrage, are lying through their teeth. There is NO shortage of STEM workers in the US!!

The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans **$10TRILLION** dollars, since 1975. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.

One of the most respected technology pundits in Silicon Valley: http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-about-h-1b-visas-could-hurt-us-all/

Watch this attorney and his consultants teach corporations how to manipulate the law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Here's more abuse of the L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg http://economyincrisis.org/content/l-visa-programs-brimming-abuses

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Also, little known is the tactic of creating many different kinds of sub-visa categories to "fool the system". There are almost TWENTY different kinds of work visas. The whole thing is a sham and a lie, designed to drag down wages and keep from having to re-train Americans. Never thought I would see this day!

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Those aren't "studies", they are a screwball's collected and biased web links. Matloff hasn't done "studies".

Have a look at his earlier web pages, where he was talking about the supposed evils of immigration in general:

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/Imm.html

He switched over to flaming just against H-1B because that's presumably more politically correct.

True, but bringing 100's of thousands of unqualified tech workers into this country to replace those who are already here is a bit much, don't you think?

First of all, they are qualified to do the low-level tech jobs they get hired for, otherwise employers wouldn't hire them. And I don't think it's "a bit much". You can see a good economic analysis here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/04/24/an-alternative-theory-of-the-skills-shortage/

In effect, US companies are willing to pay up to a certain amount for tech workers, but no more. If the price of labor rose more, companies would just move the jobs themselves overseas.

So, Matloff is right to the degree that H-1B visas are about keeping wages down. He's wrong in believing that that's a bad thing, since the alternative to hiring the H-1Bs is not higher-paid IT jobs for Americans, it is losing IT jobs from the US altogether.

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Those aren't "studies", they are a screwball's collected and biased web links. Matloff hasn't done "studies".

Have a look at his earlier web pages, where he was talking about the supposed evils of immigration in general:

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/Imm.html

He switched over to flaming just against H-1B because that's presumably more politically correct.

True, but bringing 100's of thousands of unqualified tech workers into this country to replace those who are already here is a bit much, don't you think?

First of all, they are qualified to do the low-level tech jobs they get hired for, otherwise employers wouldn't hire them. And I don't think it's "a bit much". You can see a good economic analysis here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/04/24/an-alternative-theory-of-the-skills-shortage/

In effect, US companies are willing to pay up to a certain amount for tech workers, but no more. If the price of labor rose more, companies would just move the jobs themselves overseas.

So, Matloff is right to the degree that H-1B visas are about keeping wages down. He's wrong in believing that that's a bad thing, since the alternative to hiring the H-1Bs is not higher-paid IT jobs for Americans, it is losing IT jobs from the US altogether.

True, but bringing 100's of thousands of unqualified tech workers into this country to replace those who are already here is a bit much, don't you think? In fact, it's a direct attack on the American tech worker, no matter his/her ethnic origin. There is NO shortage of qualified tech workers in America; there is also no shortage of greed as professed by those in Zuckerberg's cabal of moneyed lobbyists.

Don't believe me? Here's some unbiased research and FACTS for you to peruse.

What's little known is that American corporations are using large-scale outright deception and manipulation in an attempt to displace American Workers.

Some of the information presented in the following links will shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans $10TRILLION dollars, since 1975. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.

One of the most respected technology pundits in Silicon Valley: http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-about-h-1b-visas-could-hurt-us-all/

Watch this attorney and his consultants teach corporations how to manipulate the law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Here's more abuse of the L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg http://economyincrisis.org/content/l-visa-programs-brimming-abuses

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

Employers are largely composed of con men and criminals. Ask any IRS agent about it; they just take this as an accepted fact going in and they're not wrong. I have worked for upwards of 20 employers of various descriptions from flipping burgers to mega corps and I can say with certainty that each and every one of them was some species of scammer.

Congress listens to them at all because Congress is more of the same- ambitious men who want money, women and power. Anything that gets in the way- in this case paying Americans American wages instead of pretending there's a desperate STEM labor shortage and flooding the market with H1Bs- is a total non-starter for them. They don't even think twice about it- "oh... here's how you run THIS scam ..."

There's not really more to it than that. Employers are liars through and through and the companies they create are in a constant game of cat and mouse with the law, with their customers and with their employees.

It's genetic and what we need to find is a genetic cure for it. We need to tone down the sociopathic impulses that drive people and tone up the empathetic ones. Doing that will be THE achievement of the 21st century.

It's not panacea, but any little movement in that direction would yield huge savings in law enforcement, regulation, societal disruption and a massive increase in egalitarian outcomes. We can then take all that saved energy and money and attention and put it on creating even better things and circumstances for ourselves.

People from future generations will look at our literature and TV and movies and culture and be glad they didn't now just as we're glad we didn't live in the Dark Ages.

In all projections of a future (where humans have survived), we're more peaceful, more productive, there aren't have and have nots , there isn't just base level strife that causes grown men to rape 5 year old children.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/africa-child-rape-crisis_n_3103558.html

How do we get there? By religion? By indoctrination? By capitalism? By communism? The fact is men are genetically predisposed to not just crave having more than the other guy but to FLAUNT it and to absolutely GRIND the other guy down. This is how men show their brightly colored feathers to females and females do indeed prefer men who have more stuff, power and prestige.

Women like winners and men like to win. It's a marriage made by hell.

So sure, the corporations are knowing and deliberately lying about the STEM graduate situation. They've been doing that since at least 1995 according to Norm Matloff.

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/feb/08/citylights1-fed-H1B-visa-engineers/

  And Congress and the press go along with the lie because all the men at the top of THOSE hierarchies stand to benefit by undermining other men who do not hold those positions of power. This is just instinctive knowledge. Congress knows they're lying, knows why they're lying and knows it's their part in this scam to wring their hands and decry their fellow (male) citizens qualifications.

Zuckerberg, Melissa Mayer, Bill Gates, John Chambers and the rest of that crowd PROFIT by encouraging this race to the bottom. It's disgusting, and a blatant betrayal of the American worker. These people made billions off the backs of American high tech workers, and they are using blatant deception and outright lies to support their cause to bring in more H-1B workers.

Here are some references that *accurately* put the lie to the claims made by these lying SOBs. Does that sound harsh? It's meant to. These so-called "American leaders" are betraying the very workers who helped them make their unreal wealth. They need to be called out.

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-brightest-immigration-policy/

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_23_2/tsc_23_2_nelson_printer.shtml

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers

What's little known is that American corporations are using large-scale outright deception and manipulation in an attempt to displace American Workers.

Some of the information presented in the following links will shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans $10TRILLION dollars, since 1975. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.

Watch this attorney and his consultants teach corporations how to manipulate the law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Here's more abuse of the L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg http://economyincrisis.org/content/l-visa-programs-brimming-abuses

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

From the perspective of a friend who lives in Silicon Valley, what is especially upsetting to her about the requested increase in H-1B and other visas (whose blatant goal it is to import more "high-tech" workers) is the support it receives from high profile high-tech leaders like Bill Gates, John Chambers, Eric Schmidt, and other. Those men made billions off the backs of American high tech workers, and they are using deception and outright lies to support their cause to bring in more H-1B workers. This is a pure race to the bottom, for salary, and skill. There is *some* need for H-1B's, but it's a mere fraction of the current 85,000 cap. This is an agregious attempt to displace qualified American workers, period. Read on if you want accurate information about this outrage.

Some of the information presented in the following links would shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans $10TRILLION dollars, since 1975 (fromProfessor Norm Matloff's study (UC Davis).. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.

One of the most respected technology pundits in Silicon Valley: http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-about-h-1b-visas-could-hurt-us-all/

Watch this attorney and his consultants teach corporations how to manipulate the law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Here's more abuse of the L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg http://economyincrisis.org/content/l-visa-programs-brimming-abuses

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

I think you just described my level of math knowledge as well. I was trying to understand this explanation of Weil conjectures and couldn't make it past the first paragraph without being lost.

You might want to try reading Gowers's account of the work of Deligne. It's a short article, and slightly less technical than the one you "read". Here : Pierre Deligne's Work

I think you just described my level of math knowledge as well. I was trying to understand this explanation of Weil conjectures and couldn't make it past the first paragraph without being lost.

The problem is, the cutter moves in the real world, and if it doesn't move smoothly, one gets a rough surface which requires hand finishing, which defeats the purpose of using a machine. See:

``G codes for the specification of Pythagorean-hodograph tool paths...''
http://mae.engr.ucdavis.edu/~farouki/ijmtm99a.pdf

"Yet I doubt you can point to a reputable, peer-reviewed, study making those claims, AFAIK it's standard practice around the world that neither the dog nor the trainer know where the drugs are hidden during the training sessions, often they don't know what they are looking for, it could be drugs, explosives, even apples if your a certain Beagle working Hobart airport."

Hmmm. I think maybe this paper from UC Davis in 2011 might qualify. It was published in Animal Cognition, and it took me all of about 15 seconds to find it with Google.

If A.C. and UC Davis are not sufficiently reputable or peer-reviewed for your taste, then I challenge you to show me a paper that shows that they ARE reliable, and is more reputable and peer-reviewed.

Rick Joyce and Gopal Gupta - Identity Authentication Based on Keystroke Latencies, 1990

F Monrose, A Rubin - Authentication via Keystroke Dynamics, 1997

Arkady G. Zilberman - US Patent 6442692: Security method and apparatus employing authentication by keystroke dynamics, 1998 (I think some of the claims in this patent could be invalidated because of previous disclosure in the 1990 and 1997 papers)

Do your own research and learn that there is no vaccine effective against the strains of salmonella that make you sick. The vaccination they do is Europe is simply a dog-and-pony-show with no real benefit.

Known to not cause any problems? Seriously?

http://ccr.ucdavis.edu/biot/new/StarLinkCorn_new.html

There's more. Quite simply, your statements are quite inaccurate. This is not to say we shouldn't be contemplating doing this sort of stuff- but there is no wisdom applied to what's being done, along with people with your mistaken attitude about there being no problems whatsoever.

Violence in suffrage movement actually happened, so I don't understand your post.

This post argues there was no violence on the part of the movement, but they certainly endured violence.

However, over in England violence on the part of the movement was a tactic. "Meanwhile, and in striking contrast, the woman suffrage movement in Great Britain under such leaders as Emmaline Pankhurst, escalated its militant tactics. By 1910, it had moved from mass meetings, marches, and heckling of cabinet ministers, to arson, violence, and hunger strikes. The radical tactics enacted by British suffragists captured the media's attention and helped gain their victory."

Drug dogs are a formality, if they bring a drug dog to a location the dog handler only has to /say/ that the dog got a "hit" - so it's all on the honor system anyway. It doesn't matter if the drug dealer sealed everything in cellophane and washed it down with bleach and sprayed cayenne pepper all over the yard: the cops are going to search. Even well-meaning handlers are subject to bias as the whole thing is based off of interpreting a dog's behavior.

"You mean the "Clever Hans" effect where the handler provides the cues instead of the smell? It's a know issue, both handlers and dogs are trained to try and avoid it."

No, they are usually not, and even when they are, they are still notoriously, and ridiculously, unreliable.

Study after study and analysis after analysis prove you wrong.

Drug-sniffing dogs are TERRIBLE at their jobs. In the Chicago review of actual police statistics, the average reliability of drug-sniffing dogs was only 44% true positives (vastly too small a number to qualify as probable cause), and in the case of one minority (can you say "Handler bias?" Sure, I knew you could) it was only 27%. That's not theory, those are actual historical figures.

Unless some vastly better method of training comes up, drug-sniffing dogs need to be taken out of the picture. They are responsible for a huge amount of injustice in this country.

But not very well, it would appear: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/2010-2011/02/20110223_drug_dogs.html

Ok, your understanding of Organic Farming could use some reasearch.

As for your comment on Brusing; well gee mister, did you ever think that gas stuff just goes away cause you can't see it?

IT millionaires beware! Your sushi is eating you This explains a lot.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/2010-2011/02/20110223_drug_dogs.html

It's not that trainers train the dog to lie. Dogs are pack animals and pick up on cues from the pack leader (the handler); if the human thinks "this guy must have drugs", the dog picks up on his pack leader's subtle (possibly unconscious) cues and performs as he believes he is expected. No maliciousness required on the part of the trainer or handler, just a ridiculous legal precedent that allows a dumb (as in unable to properly communicate) non-human animal to make legally valid "judgment" calls that trump citizens' constitutional rights.

"People do not want to admit that death==nonexistence so they make-up imaginary 'trips' to some other place (heaven, hell, Elysian Fields, space, whatever). In reality Sally Ride's personality dissolved into nothingness at the moment her brain's neurons broke connection with one another when they were deprived of oxygen."

For another perspective, see: http://noetic.org/search/?q=survival
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/tart/
http://physicalismisdead.blogspot.com/2012/05/charles-tart-on-postmortem-survival.html
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charles+tart
http://www.amazon.com/States-Consciousness-Charles-Tart/dp/0595151965
http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Materialism-Evidence-Paranormal/dp/1572246456
"Charles Tart reconciles the scientific and spiritual worlds by looking at empirical evidence for the existence of paranormal phenomena that point toward our spiritual nature, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing.
    Science seems to tell us that we are all meaningless products of blind biological and chemical forces, leading meaningless lives that will eventually end in death. The truth is that unseen forces such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and other phenomena inextricably link us to the spiritual world, and while many skeptics and scientists deny the existence of these spiritual phenomena, the experiences of millions of people indicate that they do take place.
    In this book, copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart presents over fifty years of scientific research conducted at the nation's leading universities that proves humans do have natural spiritual impulses and abilities. The End of Materialism presents an elegant argument for the union of science and spirituality in light of this new evidence, and explains why a truly rational viewpoint must address the reality of a spiritual world. Tart's work marks the beginning of an evidence-based spiritual awakening that will profoundly influence your understanding of the deeper forces at work in our lives."

Sadly, it looks like Sally Ride might have died of sunlight deficiency and vegetable deficiency:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/

"All the claims made about the scientists where disproven in multiple investigations."

Absolute nonsense. What the "multiple investigations" found (5 of them so far by my count), was that they were not guilty of actionable wrongdoing. That is a far, far different thing than being proven innocent of "all the claims".

They very clearly, and by their own admission, engaged in conduct that most people would probably call unethical.

Technically -- and only technically -- they didn't quite break the rules. But that they did conspire to keep certain other parties they perceived to be "enemies" out of the peer-reviewed journals is not in doubt.

From Keith Briffa to Edward Cook, June 4, 2003:

"I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review -- Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting -- to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please
Keith"

Cook back to Briffa, June 4, 2003:

If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically...

The paper they were discussing was very likely this one. (pdf)

Phil Jones to Michael Mann on March 31, 2004:

Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.

Phil Jones (I don't know the recipient right now, I'd have to look it up) Jul. 8, 2004:

"The other paper by MM is just garbage -- as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well â" frequently as I see it. I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

However, as we know, although they tried Jones and Kevin Trenberth were not able to keep the Michaels & McKitrick (M&M) papers completely out after the first draft round.

Email from Phil Jones to several people, Jan. 29 2009:

"With free wifi in my room, I've just seen that M+M have submitted a paper to IJC on your H2 statistic -- using more years, up to 2007. They have also found your PCMDI data -- laughing at the directory name -- FOIA? ... Anyway you'll likely get this for review, or poor Francis will. Best if both Francis and Myles did this. If I get an email from Glenn I'll suggest this."

Those are by no means all of the emails on the subject. No need to fill the whole page.

As has been pointed out before, the point of H1-B visas is to get rid of older American workers who with education and experience have become highly trained, and replace them with less trained, cheap foreign labor. In 2010, during record-high unemployment, 117,409 people came in on the H1-B visa. Which is just one of many visas that people come to the US and work on. Professor Norm Matloff has a web page about this.

The developing world, especially the countries heavily struck by a "brain drain" could make good use "of older American workers who with education and experience have become highly trained" to bring their own productivity and their technological level up. If I understand well, the position of these experts is often between rock and a hard place and many are struggling to make a living, so, following the market logic, they should be obtainable on a discounted price.

I wonder what would it take to attract old overqualified Americans to work abroad as consultants, trainers, or start their own businesses? Is it matter of absolute amount of income, overall standards of living, political/freedom issues, taxes ... ?

How should "debrained" countries market themselves to prospective ... brains?

As has been pointed out before, the point of H1-B visas is to get rid of older American workers who with education and experience have become highly trained, and replace them with less trained, cheap foreign labor. In 2010, during record-high unemployment, 117,409 people came in on the H1-B visa. Which is just one of many visas that people come to the US and work on. Professor Norm Matloff has a web page about this.

On old models, newer ones operate down below 5m/sec and effectively have no upper limit. The blades alter their angle of attack to keep the speed of rotation constant.

Maybe you should look into wind turbine design. Take a look at the second to last page of this product brochure from a modern turbine on sale from the largest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world. Please note the following;
1. the minimum wind speed is 3m/sec (so there are times when there is wind and no power)
2. The power generation increases till 13m/sec so there are times when the turbine is not creating full power
3. Even though the scale at the bottom of the grid goes to 30 m/sec the graph stops at 25m/sec. That is because altering the angle of the blades is not anough to protect the turbine and is must be stopped.
Note that the third to last page has a cut out wind speed of 25 m/sec. That confirms the issue that the turbine must be stopped when wind speeds exceed 25m/sec.

Fortunately those are evened out by the very large amount of momentum in the blades, and the fact that they can vary their angle to accommodate different wind speeds.

Take a look at figure 5 from this paper. Notice how jagged the graph is. The power grid works by balancing load and generation. When generation fluctuates minute by minute it becomes much more difficult to manage that balance.

Why do you expect everything to be perfect and flawless from the very start?

Because it is the power grid and if the power generation is not perfect it can cause major disruptions in the grid. A good example of this is a that took out power to 7 states and one province. It was started by one plant going off line at a bad time.

Have you not noticed that we still don't have a good way to deal with nuclear waste, or pollution from coal burning?

From a generation point of view these points are irrelevant as they will not cause instability in the grid and blackouts.

No, I think it's actually just the money. The rest is probably just to justify a budgetary move.

It would be an interesting battle. I read the Rogaway original paper years ago and he was granting free use to anything GPL licensed. For a more modern view you can also see"

http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/license.htm

I've looked into MOSH recently, and it is GPL. The battle would be, does mosh live under Rogaway's OCB patents which makes it free, or IBMs patents, which makes it unclear... From a "money is justice" perspective, I donno if ucdavis would win against IBM, but they'd have better odds than "just a bunch of random hackers" vs IBM.

To burn an informative couple hours on the topic, simply google for "rogaway OCB" and start reading.

The patents are freely licensed for any GPL software; see link for details.
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/offer.htm

Mosh appears to be GPL:
https://github.com/keithw/mosh/blob/master/COPYING

People smart enough to know about the hacks are usually smart enough not to run their bill down to zero.
People see their historical usage on every Electric bill, its not like they are unaware records are being kept.

Thieves just run down their usage over time by 25% of their prior usage, which is consistent with what you can accomplish by being frugal
(or going on vacation). Public awareness of shortages can drive electrical usage for an entire city down by 25%.

Dumb people might go for "the big hack", but these are the only ones that get caught, because simple computer programs running
against billing data make them so obvious.

Without meter-by-meter inspection, you can't tell if loss of household income (layoff) caused increased frugality or if they tampered
with the meter, as long as they keep from pushing usage down by less than 25% or so.

If you Read TFA, you will find that detection is very difficult, and these were with users that had hacked their meter in a very obvious way,
such that the"altered meter typically reduces a customer’s bill by 50 percent to 75 percent". If you can't easily spot 50% reduction, you
would have no chance of spotting a 25% reduction.

We get at least one of these overhyped materials science articles each month. This time, someone has figured out how to deposit a garnet layer in a wafer fab. This is blown up into "photonic computing real soon now". It's not.

There's a lot of work in progress (PowerPoint) on optical on-chip interconnects. This is not "photonic computing". It's clusters of CPUs with a network of optical interconnects, all on one IC. The CPUs are still made of transistors. IBM has a very active research program in this area. But it's a long way from working. There are optical switching elements that work experimentally, but nothing ready for volume manufacturing yet. The optical interconnects themselves aren't considered to be the big problem.

So far, most of the proposed approaches involve un-buffered circuit switched networks. An optical connection is set up from CPU 1 to CPU 2 by electrical means, and then data is blasted across it. Circuit setup time is long compared to the data rate. So this is for long messages within a cluster, not cache synchronization. Think (inevitably) Beowulf cluster on a chip, not thousand-CPU shared memory microprocessors. The technology may also be useful as a network optical switch.

Short version: when this all works, servers get more densely packed.

In fact the really expensive procedures aren't even an alternative because there is not enough of a market to do the research.

You can go to a university medical center and get open heart surgery for your dog if you want to. Here's the first one that shows up on a search.

The procedure for open heart surgery at UC Davis is exactly the same as that which is performed on human patients.

Truth be told, your technical analysis is above my pay grade. I don't say that to dismiss your point, but just to say I won't comment on the specifics of the skype protocol and what it offers for the internet. With that said, I believe you've missed the forest for the trees in my comment. I was merely taking the position that innovation is driven by networks of people, not superior technology. The position that I illustrated was not born from any research I did, but the research done by a professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. I saw him speak on this very topic and he had a very compelling argument for the conclusions he reached during this speech.

Andrew Hargadon
His Book

And I am soon to be a student at UC Davis, GSM. I don't bring this up to toot my own horn (and it's only a very good business school not an elite one), but rather to say that there's a possibility that I may have begun drinking the kool aid :)

I have 30874 on the Ptolemy II repository, see http://www.ohloh.net/accounts/cxbrx. Hauke Fuhrmann put up Codeswarm videos of the software evolution of the Ptolemy II project. See Chaotic, Less Chaotic. The number of commits is a poor measure though. I tend to make lots of small commits while cleaning code. A student doing a Ph.D., may make many fewer commits, but their commits have greater impact in the form of support for their Ph.D. We see software as a form of publication, see Software Practice in the Ptolemy Project.

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html

This is like questioning the fact that we have more than one set of automobile designs and assembly plants

On the contrary there is always need to question that fact.

Copyright, patents and trade secrets ensure that the best of breed solutions have as minimal an impact on the economy as possible. As a bonus they guarantee mediocre but different solutions are rewarded.

  We have these whole systems dedicated to ensuring that new automobiles and new plants have to be different. They are completely artificial systems to fight the natural behavior of world. Their operation is expensive and the side-effects are often wide-spread in the culture.

Oh, you thought the IP systems were designed to reward people for creativity? No, that's a funny idea but it sadly is at odds with what they actually do. The IP system of Industrialized nations rewards the status quo and sometimes enriches the already established, usually the middle-men and not the actual creators. And I use the term men loosely since most are now companies - fake people - who 'own' this stuff under the artificial monopolies created by all this paperwork. It does not matter that this is direct opposition to the justifications used to support creation of these systems in the first place.

Political parties are just a fine example of false dichotomies and oversimplifying the world. It's easier to demonize a group if you first label them. It's easier to make people stupid if you first make them into a group.

I will agree that people shouldn't complain about a dozen different editors, IM clients, music players when people don't blink at the latest FPS-on-some-custom-engine when it's just a slightly prettier clone of Doom with more guns and less blood.

Mythbusters successfully demonstrated that a SCUBA tank, which have pressures up to 30 MPa (4400 psi) and internal volumes up to 18 liters, will turn itself into a missile if its regulator catastrophically fails. The tank proposed in TFA would have a pressure of 34 MPa and a volume of 54 liters, meaning that it will store even more energy.

An over-pressurized liquid nitrogen tank caused major damage to a Texas A&M building when it failed (read: exploded). According to the engineer's report (pdf):

The blast cracked the floor but due to the presence of the supporting beam, which shattered, the floor held. Since the floor held the force of the explosion was directed upward and propelled the cylinder, sans bottom, through the concrete ceiling of the lab into the mechanical room above. It struck two 3 inch water mains and drove them and the electrical wiring above them into the concrete roof of the building, cracking it. The cylinder came to rest on the third floor leaving a neat 20" diameter hole in its wake. The entrance door and wall of the lab were blown out into the hallway, all of the remaining walls of the lab were blown 4–8" off of their foundations.

Pictures of the devastation are included in the report. This tank, like all compressed gas cylinders, had both a safety relief valve and an emergency blowout disc. The explosion only occurred when both of these safety features were compromised due to improper maintenance.

While the hybrid's gaseous nitrogen tank is substantially different than the liquid nitrogen tank described above, it is safe to say that compressed gas cylinders are dangerous beasts. Unless you're planning on participating in the Hybrid Space Program, I would suggest steering away from vehicles like this.

The variant I remember used rare earth magnets buried in the center of the lane to give the cars an idea of where they should be on the roadway, and sensors and inter-vehicle communications were used so that each car knew where the others in its platoon were. There was an assumption that something like a cellular communication network and traffic management computer would tell entire platoons what a safe speed for this block of road was. Because the auto drive system had reaction times in the very low millisecond range, it was quite practical and safe to space cars a meter apart at 130 km/h, which offered big fuel economy benefits. Remove the cellular block command and control system and you have what the Europeans are proposing.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/bishopahs.htm
http://www.williamson-labs.com/ivhs.htm
http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/publication_detail.php?id=859

This is yet another thing that evaporated after 9/11 so that the US could afford to create the TSA and replace a dictator in Iraq with a power vacuum...

The ULTIMATE alternative fuel conspiracy ... I found this story myself just searching around on the web for a few days over a period of many years ... Here is the first source in 2000 an IRAQI professor at the University of Babylon in Iraq claims to create an AWSOME alternative fuel ... http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=0487992EN&q=related%3AcvDnjuQ1qzgJ%3Ascholar.google.com%2F&uid=787066510&setcookie=yes "Performance study of a four-stroke spark ignition engine working with both of hydrogen and ethyl alcohol as supplementary fuel Al-Baghdadi, Maher A.-R. Sadiq" Here a Davis grad student who previously was referencing the above professor in his quest to get funding to do similar research as the only expertise in the field with these fuel supplements ... http://gate.its.ucdavis.edu/enrollment/preprop06/jordan/ “GATE Center > Enrollment > Research Proposals Awarded in August 2005 > Eddie Jordan Hydrogen Enriched Ethanol Project” The library at the University of Babylon was particularly looted and destroyed over a long period of time after the war started. This is where the original work was done ... http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_4_63/ai_104971393/ A few years later the author/professor, Al-Baghdadi, Maher A.-R. Sadiq, shows up at a university in Libya researching fuel cells but that link is DEAD, but now there is this book at Borders ... http://www.borders.com.au/book/cfd-modeling-and-analysis-of-different-novel-designs-of-air-breathing-pem-fuel-cells/7689234/

Oh, but the right believes that Public Transportation is "big government that can't support itself".

Actually, it is pretty expensive, and not very energy efficient. Here's a table of efficiencies. Energy efficiency (article is a direct link to a DOE report on the subject). The most important thing to look at is the comparison of the Telsa roadster and the Japanese Train - it's close. Japan is the biggest public transport riding countries in the G8 - so all the typical responses about how trains would be better if people already rode them go out the window. It gets even better. If you divide the Telsa's numbers by 1.57 (the average number of people in a car), you get almost exactly the same number. But it gets better. Google has been testing some plug-in hybrid Escapes and Priuses, and they've been running around about half the Telsa's numbers in average driving (those Tesla numbers are straight and level at 65 mph). What that means is that these cars are more efficient than the train, with only one person in them. You can even compare the gas cars to buses, and note how they edge out buses, ever so slightly.

Car drivers pay about 80-90 of their costs, equivalent to a 11 cent gas tax increase to make up the difference. This works out to about 0.05 cents per mile. Edmunds estimates the TCO of a new 2011 Hyundai Accent at $0.44 per mile. Make that $0.45 to make up for the shortfall and you're done. That includes, gas, insurance, taxes, the tax shortfall, parking, highways, depreciation, the highway patrol, financing, the works. Of course, that's a brand new car. What if you run an old beater into the ground, like many poor people do? A lot of those costs go out the window.

By far, insurance is the biggest cost. A robocar could avoid much of that cost. Public transport may be safer in some cases, and that is a valid point.

So, instead, we're going to implement fine control of individual's actions, which is "being tough on crime".

It'll be a disaster. Fortunately, we're not going to have this: the official response.

Both those first points are refuted in the article. The systems take into account that less trains and cars get run. The way these numbers are calculated is by taking the total energy consumption and the total amount of passenger miles provided by the system. It takes in to account less trains, less cars, more trains, more cars, signals, people sticking their hands out the windows, and just about everything else.

The key car-vs-train comparison is that of a Tesla roadster to a Japanese electric train. Japanese trains have high ridership and insane efficiency. The fact that they are only about 25% below an American electric car is troubling. Given that Japanese do less than 50 percent of their passenger miles in cars, the lowest in the G8, I suspect that they might know something about trains. Even though the train is 25% less than the solo car, average cars have 1.54 people in them, so after that it becomes really close. So close in fact, that other trivial factors make the difference. Like how hard the driver accelerates, the wind and sun, etc. However, the tie breaker in favor of the electric car to the electric train is the charging. An electric train has to use electricity when it needs it. That is often near peak time. An electric car can use off peak electricity. Estimates range that from 80 to 100 percent of US EV demand could be provided by off peak electricity without building any new powerplants. If the cars (or trains) had to guzzle all that electricity during the day, the grid just couldn't take it. It would be inefficient too, because a lot of energy is wasted starting and stopping powerplants. Battery powered cars could essentially turn the grid into a hybrid, cutting fuel use in the powerplants.

As for the issue of maintenance, we need some data on train track maintenance costs. What we have though, is data on road maintenance. This paper (PDF alert) that we pay between 172.5 and 433 billion dollars for the roads. We do 4274.251 billion passenger miles in private vehicles. This translates to about 4-10 cents per passenger mile in roads, parking, police, and other related costs. It does not include military or global warming, but these are not car problems. These are oil problems. There is also a flaw in this study. It did not take into account that buses and big trucks do a lot more damage to the roads (up to 1000x) than cars. If we reduced the usage of such vehicles (another story - vanpools are more efficient than buses), we could cut costs big.

Sexual background checks are good in schools to prevent child molesters from teaching, however

Wouldn't that just come up in a normal background check under "criminal history"? You don't need to spend the time and money poking around asking who a teacher has dated or whether they're gay to learn that.

Not sure what you meant by that, but just for the record, homosexuals are not more likely to molest children.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20090218_autism_environment/index.html

This study last year showed that while better recognition was part of the increase, it did not even come close to accounting for the skyrocketing rate. So everyone who a part of the serious discussion on autism recognizes the increase is not an artifact, but it is real.

Plus if you talk to educators who have been in the field for thirty years, they can tell you that they never saw kids that were anything like the children with autism we have today. School systems were not going broke from their special ed budgets like they are now.

Your problem with results is easily resolved if you take a look at papers of the author ( they are at his site http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/research.html look for coal). He spent good part of his life calculating impact of coal on British economy and he calculates overall impact of coal on economy. I think that using just the same approach he made conclusion on impact of energy prices on modern economy.

I thought I had already responded to this, but apparently it didn't get into Slashdot somehow...

That's been happening to me as well. Sometimes the post shows up just a bit later.

As for the example of public transit, the thing is that its benefits are larger than the mere cost of individual travel.

There's a big and critical difference between public transport and highways. Public transport does not pay for itself, and has no hope of doing so. Ticket sales for public transport are only %20 percent of public transport, while gas taxes pay for pay 80-90 percent of direct construction costs. This pays for the externalities of the automobile, not the externalities of the petrochemical engine, which is shared by both some transport, and most automobiles. You might also be interested in the paradoxes involved in transport efficiency.

I agree with pretty much everything you said up until the stuff about solar.

The problem with this idea is that the power companies and the rooftop solar companies are not the same company. The power companies are utilities. The solar companies are home improvement companies. The issue with solar power is that many people (I know a few) are happy to invest a great deal of money in solar power. The problem is that solar is uneconomical. This is changing, due to the decreasing price of raw materials, the increasing price of fossil fuels, and technical improvements.

Now, the utilities, public/private transport companies, are all special cases. My belief is that when a service requires an infrastructure that goes everywhere, it needs to be a public enterprise. Also, if the government is the sole consumer of a product, it needs to be a public enterprise. This is because in order for the market to do its magic, it needs a lot of buyers and sellers. If there are only a few, there is opportunity for price gouging without bound. This happens in the case of both transit, and blackwater. Both cases were a disaster. Another problem is when businesses successfully stack the government to reduce their liability. This happened in Gulf Spill. Imagine if BP had to pay the whole cost of the spill, instead of the 500 million that they are capped to.