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Facts are a bitch, aren't they?

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

Yes, he was against the strikes by public unions, however without the ability to strike, the union has little teeth and no purpose but to pay dues and create a monopoly in labour.

The teachers union that was striking was clearly "preventing and obstructing the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied".

So would FDR be for a public union in this case or not? I think the answer is obvious: "unthinkable and intolerable".

Um... what?

FDR was never against public unions. The closest FDR EVER got to being opposed to public unions was a comment about how he opposed federal employees going on strike. He actually supported the formal organization of government employees to present their needs and desires to their employers(the government).

I think what you mean to say(unless, of course, you're using entirely disingenuous rhetoric to simply make your point) is that FDR firmly opposed strikes against the government, and was wary of transplanting the traditional methods of collective bargaining. He felt that collective bargaining would be difficult since generally the government's role was to oversee such things, but there could be no objectivity where a union of public employees is concerned. He supported the notion that the people were the true employers, and that they decided through their elected officials what the appropriate laws and policies were with regards to public employees.

What's more, that one quote from which most people attain their vitriolic interpretations of FDR's stance is with regards to Federal unions. That is to say, for instance, while there is a Federal teachers union(The NEA), they largely do not handle collective bargaining issues. That is performed by local and state unions(e.g. the UFT in NY, or the CTA in CA). The NEA represents teachers on larger issues, but teachers are still state employees; their income is meted out by the state, as well as their benefits. NEA lobbies against things like the No Child Left Behind act and the like, broader issues and matters that are generally decided upon at a federal level. You'll notice that teachers the nation 'round did NOT go on strike when that act got passed, because that's not what they do.

Teachers Unions are just an example, but the point is that at a state level FDR offered no real opinion, only at a federal level. And at a federal level he still clearly recognizes the right for unions to exist in the second and third paragraphs of his statement. Whether or not he was correct, his opinion is neither relevant to this discussion nor accurately represented by your statements.

A grad student at UCSB recently gave this presentation: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~xiazhou/papers/sigcomm12_beam3d.pdf

I see you have email.
Don't forget: You also have a browser.
You can do useful things with a browser.
(like fact check political emails)

Ah, the 'executive orders' email. The number of people that take these emails as gospel just astounds me. This 'Executive Orders' baloney was forwarded to me by my dad. I never ever read a political email and just assume it is factual. And indeed, they are almost always not. This one certainly falls in the 'pants on fire' category.

So far, Obama has issued 138. That is less than 'W' and from a brief inspection everyone else all of the way back to Grover Cleveland (if you average the per term numbers for those with multiple terms). For example Bush issued 173 the first term and 118 the second for an average of about 145.

A couple of links for you:
American Presidency Project - Executive Orders
Snopes article

Yea, it was actually 56.3% to 43%. Memory is fading...but the damage from that election remains with us today.

Even FDR thought public unions were a bad idea:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445

... is not rockstar developers it's that making and understanding how software will perform and it's impacts is a hard problem. It's not like engineering where the laws of nature are relatively fixed and known and is a matter of trade offs (time vs cost), ANY change to a program has potential impacts and ripple effects on all other subsystems effectively changing program behavior to some extent. The real issue is the tools for software development and making these things understandable in complex systems is a hard problem. It's a matter of framing problems and solutions in ways that you can actually understand their impacts. Too much software development is undefined and uncharted because of the nature of coding itself. There is a lot of research going on in visualization trying to make these ethereal systems of code easy to grasp and understand in ways that are much easier and more natural for our senses as human beings.

http://www.allosphere.ucsb.edu/

It's a matter of being able to grasp what is that you are trying to do and it's impact. Most developers (even rockstars) have issues with not even knowing where they are headed and what will be needed down the line as projects grow and outstrip human ability to understand them. Software has long since passed the complexity where the human mind has the ability to full grasp all the complex interactions. The real problem now is getting the research and data to make demystify this complexity (i.e. complexity partially being a synonym for not being able to see/understand what a problem and solutions are and it's impacts).

It is their quantum computing research group. http://stationq.ucsb.edu/

Everybody who's is interested in advances of quantum computation should have a look at this publication
It was uploaded to arXiv today and shows another implementation of Shor's algorithm in a four-qubit system.
Althought their fidelity is not as high as the one claimed by IBM, I do think that their technology is a little bit more advanced.

The race to the bottom is complete, in the sense that these books were being given away free of charge long before any reward was offered. This is also the case with many more text books, and not only in undergraduate education. See e.g. Mark Srednicki's Quantum Field Theory book: http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/qft.html

Sure, it's a preprint version with a few minor errors, but it was immensely useful when I took QFT 1. (Tony Zee's QFT in a Nutshell was the approved course book, and that is a good book as well, but completely opposite of Srednicki in terms of how detailed calculations they do, etc., so it was useful to have both.)

>>In 2011, in multiple states in the US, the Republican Party... abolished unions.

No. They attempted to curtail the power of government unions, not unions in private industries.

You can read FDR's excellent treatise over why government unions are immoral here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15445#axzz1bjLjmwma

FDR. Not Herman Cain.

Basically, when you have the same people in power on both sides of a negotiating table, then the people that lose aren't the people at the table, but the taxpayers. In other words, it's a conspiracy by the government, for the government, against the people.

There is AppScale, an open source implementation of App Engine which can run App Engine apps on your own web server -- that helps to mitigate the lock-in. I thought I read that a Google employee was behind at least the datastore implementation (but not doing it on Google's time).

Frankly, I think it's in Google's interest to make sure that App Engine apps are portable. That would be consistent with their philosophy of "we don't lock you in; we hope you stay because our service is the best."

Don't forget the Coinage Act of 1965...

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27108#axzz1YxIqbbn7

The penalty for debasing the currency prior to this act was Death.

Ooh, shiny..

He ALSO signed a continuation of Emergency Powers.

How Nice.

Funny this little occurrence receives so little attention, when, of these invoked powers, The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001:

Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law.

I guess there wasn't enough NewSpeak in that article for the WT to preserve it from their Memory Hole. Here it is on the Wayback:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010918184425/www.washtimes.com/national/20010918-1136.htm

Now, back to Barry's continuation of the legacy:

Notice of September 9, 2011

Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency previously declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2011. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency that was declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

(Signed, BO)

"We are now threatened with a script kiddie gap that leaves us in a position of potentially grave danger."

Senator John F. Kennedy, American Legion Convention, Miami Beach, FL http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74096#ixzz1UdOSia3p

I fully expect this to get lost in the noise here, but there is such a program (nearly). UCSB has a tiny college called the College of Creative Studies, which bills itself as a graduate school for undergraduates. While they do require general ed classes (8 quarter-long classes in total), that's as specific as the requirement is. You can fulfill it with any classes unrelated to your major - I do hope you have some interests outside of CS. Also, you can skip the prerequisites for classes, even those outside your major. The CS program is considerably more compact than most undergraduate degrees, because it is assumed you will come in already experienced in computer science and be able to start on the upper-division material during your first year. http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/welcome/ Look into it.

The idea that the photos can be used by those who hate us to drum up support (i.e., LOOK what they did to Bin Laden!) for additional attacks on innocent people is not whimsical. A picture is worth a thousand words. You may not wish to believe it, but it is so.

I mean, other Sesame Street characters need their 15 minutes in the political spotlight. Not just Bert and Elmo.

My money is on Oscar.

Such leadership! Even if they had agreed to slash the budget by 50%, it would only take us back to the level of spending of the Clinton administration. But no, they only managed to agree to $38 billion in spending reductions - about 1% of total outlays.

With leaders like this, we just as well jump off the cliff ourselves.

>>For instance, take the recent stuff in Wisconsin and the constant Retardican attacks on trade unions in general.

You're an idiot if you don't know the fucking difference between unions for private employees and public employees.

There's a reason why even FDR was against collective bargaining for government employees, and public unions in general, and why Reagan got all up in the grille of the ATC workers on strike.

It's because you can't have the rooster conspiring with the fox to guard the henhouse.

Here in California, teachers don't even have to pay into Social Security - they have an exemption for it, and get their own private retirement system (CalSTRS). But any politician trying to put teachers on an even playing field would get destroyed, politically. As the union makes explicitly clear, telling our legislators (on tape in congress): "We put you into office, we can get you out of there, too." The public unions destroyed Schwarzenegger.

I work with teachers every week, and know how hard they work, but you can't pretend they don't get special deals due to their immense political clout.

Read FDR's speech here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445

In 1943, a New York Supreme Court judge held: "To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous."

Like what? Bionic eyes?

That's a contemptible statement and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Yes like Bionic Eyes:
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/pgs/papers/applied1.pdf

Why not a sensing cane, like this:
http://www.ieeehtn.org/htn/index.php/Electronic_Blind_Mobility_Aid

Why do you think enabling technology is contemptible?

Please post back when you have actually lived a day as a blind person you Luddite fool. In the mean time STFU before a blind person actually hears you dissing technology they have been waiting for their entire life.

and a distraction from policy measures that could actually solve the problem (and other pernicious problems at the same time): reducing sugar and ethanol import tariffs drastically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil#Comparison_with_the_United_States
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sc019
http://sugarcaneblog.com/2010/03/22/washington-post-editorial-on-u-s-sugar-policy/
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12623

It is possible that Haiti and other impoverished nations could develop into self-sustaining economies by adopting some of Brazil's agricultural methods while providing a robust, diverse supply of fuel. And with corn's inefficiency versus sugar ethanol, it would go back to its proper market of food, reducing onerous cost burdens imposed on Mexico and Latin America for corn meal, a staple food.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10057/MainText.4.1.shtml

The increase in the amount of corn used to produce ethanol has exerted upward pressure on corn prices, boosted the demand for cropland, and raised the price of animal feed. Those effects, in turn, have lifted the prices of many farm commodities (for example, soybeans, meat, poultry, and dairy products) and, consequently, the retail price of food. The rise in food prices has affected not only the costs to individual consumers but also spending for the federal government’s food assistance programs.

http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/Ec1F07/tortillas.htm

"The price of oil is driving up the price of corn (because of increased ethanol production), which is driving up the price of tortillas," said Peter Navarro, a business professor at UC Irvine. "You push on one thing and another thing moves," added Navarro, the author of "If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks."

He said the U.S. ethanol stampede could be thought of "as a regressive tax on Mexico, because it raises the price of a basic commodity. In economics, we call these general equilibrium effects. Something happens in one market and it ripples through other markets."

The metal connections are certainly fast enough, after all the signals on the metal lines will travel at a fraction of the speed of light divided by the index of refraction of the surrounding dielectric medium, same as an optical waveguide.

But there are two important problems which this does not address: loss and crosstalk.

Because the conductor loss is very significant for metal interconnects, much more power is consumed in long interconnects. This power consumption only increases with transistor density as wires get narrower, and minimizing power dissipation is one of the major challenges in continuing to scale chips smaller and smaller. The resistance also introduces an RC charging time constant when driving the gate capacitance of the receiving transistor.

Each wire/transmission line on a chip also has an associated electric/magnetic field around it, and closely spaced lines suffer from crosstalk. Take for example the LGA1366 socket that the i7 uses: there are 1366 pins very tightly packed on the chip package, and even more tightly packed on chip itself. Eventually we cannot pack them any tighter because the crosstalk will kill the signal to noise ratio.

Optical systems are better because the loss is much smaller, so less power is required to transmit each bit a certain distance, much more bandwidth is available per optical channel, and you can multiplex multiple color channels, and crosstalk is less of a problem for optical waveguides (both because fields are better confined and because you need fewer waveguides).

Most of this I got from a talk by John Bowers who leads one of the many research groups working in this area.

The Romans invented concrete.

That's only 1600-2200 or so years ago.

The Romans started using concrete before 200 B.C., but Wikipedia says the Egyptian pyramids were built with concrete long before that. So that makes its invention 2200-4600 years ago.

IMO "several hundred" was correct.

From your link: "being more than two but fewer than many". Considering civilization has only been around for ~60 centuries, "several" is arguably less than twenty. Try "many hundreds" next time you go for your pedantic medal. Thanks for playing.

As a conservative, to me the problem isn't with private unions of workers of private companies. In truth there should be no bailouts for a company that signs labor contracts that bankrupt themselves, nor for labor unions that force such companies to go under, and themselves out of a job with ever-increasing demands - Free Market demands that both are responsible for their own demise, no matter how they shift the blame. Unions that partner with their companies for mutual benefit (or unions that take significant ownership) will always make sense for everyone.

The problem is with public unions (Police, Fire, Teachers, Social Workers) who both get to write their own contracts and then tell their bosses (elected politicians) to approve them, or else. Have you seen the union-dictated pay-rates for federal road-construction contracts? Have you seen the pensions for your city employees? Did you know it takes government workers only 5 years of employment to be eligible for a pension at age 62? http://www.opm.gov/retire/pre/fers/eligibility.asp

Even Roosevelt was wary of the power of the public union. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445

And one more thing: "Manufacturing in the US was healthiest when labor unions were healthiest."
Correlation =\= Causation. Manufacturing and Labor were both healthy at the same time because of large postwar demand and no outside competition. Once the markets started getting tough in the 70's and 80's Labor refused to bow to the cuts Manufacturers needed to stay competitive, Manufacturers couldn't force the issue because of those meddlesome kids in congress (more public union interference in the free-market) and, in the end, both have crashed.

one. inclusive of this event.

The Ixtoc blowout, also in the Gulf, leaked for almost a year.

West coast blowout in 1969.

It is likely there have been others. They would have occurred far enough away from western media to have gone unreported.

In any case, thanks for playing!

Have any reference or citation to back up the validity of your statement? I did find an unsupported statement on Wikipedia making the same claim, but skimming the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, and reading President Carter's statement upon signing it, it doesn't sound like freeing us from dependence on foreign oil was a major focus. If DOE had been "formed to attempt to free us from dependence on foreign oil", I would think the subject would be raised more prominently by one or the other.

A guy that I once met had a tattoo of a Smith Chart. Smart RF guy. Definitely dedicated to the field. ;)

A Futures Market in Computer Time, Communications of the ACM, June 1968: "An auction method is described for allocating computer time that allows the price of computer time to fluctuate with the demand...if the computer ever is idle, its price automatically becomes attractively low."

They do exist, and Macondo isn't unique as an oil field either. There is ample evidence for natural plumes of oil and gas seeping from the sea floor at many locations world-wide, including the Gulf of Mexico and offshore California where they have been well-studied. There are some details at this site, which includes a number of publications about California seeps. This site has more information, including a nice aerial photo of the natural oil slick produced by the seeps off the coast of California. This paper [PDF] is a good summary of the best known California locations.

here and here [PDF] are some examples [PDF] of seeps, gas plumes [PDF], and seep-related life [PDF] in the Gulf of Mexico [PDF]. The tube worms growing on asphalt [PDF] or "ice worms" in burrows in gas hydrate (!) [PDF] are particularly cool. Some life *likes* oil and gas leaking into the ocean.

The bottom line is, seeps of gas and liquid hydrocarbons into the water column happen all the time, and the ocean deals with them by bacteria eating the oil. On the sea floor there are flourishing biological communities associated with the release of hydrocarbons, like a little "oasis" of life in the deep sea, supported by creatures eating the bacteria that are in turn eating the hydrocarbons that are expelled. However, the rate of release at the BP well is several times the total output of natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico, so the scale of the release is much bigger and concentrated in one gigantic point source. It would be like trying to feed on a volcano. There certainly won't be any seep communities setting up at the BP well any time soon :-) Anyway, the life in the ocean will consume this stuff as it spreads out, whether it is in a plume or on the surface, but it will take a while. Also, the plume they are talking about in the water column is extremely low concentration (ppb average). 99%+ of the oil is making it to the surface, and most of the gas is either dissolving in or venting to the atmosphere. The plume is interesting from a scientific perspective and probably will have some kind of environmental effect that could be important, but it's not the main part of the environmental problem. People are hyped about it because they are obsessed with the idea that the disaster could be 10x worse than the oil that is obvious on the surface. These studies show that simply isn't the case because of the low concentrations. A significant fraction of the oil is not lurking below, only a tiny, instrument-detectable amount is.

They do exist, and Macondo isn't unique as an oil field either. There is ample evidence for natural plumes of oil and gas seeping from the sea floor at many locations world-wide, including the Gulf of Mexico and offshore California where they have been well-studied. There are some details at this site, which includes a number of publications about California seeps. This site has more information, including a nice aerial photo of the natural oil slick produced by the seeps off the coast of California. This paper [PDF] is a good summary of the best known California locations.

here and here [PDF] are some examples [PDF] of seeps, gas plumes [PDF], and seep-related life [PDF] in the Gulf of Mexico [PDF]. The tube worms growing on asphalt [PDF] or "ice worms" in burrows in gas hydrate (!) [PDF] are particularly cool. Some life *likes* oil and gas leaking into the ocean.

The bottom line is, seeps of gas and liquid hydrocarbons into the water column happen all the time, and the ocean deals with them by bacteria eating the oil. On the sea floor there are flourishing biological communities associated with the release of hydrocarbons, like a little "oasis" of life in the deep sea, supported by creatures eating the bacteria that are in turn eating the hydrocarbons that are expelled. However, the rate of release at the BP well is several times the total output of natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico, so the scale of the release is much bigger and concentrated in one gigantic point source. It would be like trying to feed on a volcano. There certainly won't be any seep communities setting up at the BP well any time soon :-) Anyway, the life in the ocean will consume this stuff as it spreads out, whether it is in a plume or on the surface, but it will take a while. Also, the plume they are talking about in the water column is extremely low concentration (ppb average). 99%+ of the oil is making it to the surface, and most of the gas is either dissolving in or venting to the atmosphere. The plume is interesting from a scientific perspective and probably will have some kind of environmental effect that could be important, but it's not the main part of the environmental problem. People are hyped about it because they are obsessed with the idea that the disaster could be 10x worse than the oil that is obvious on the surface. These studies show that simply isn't the case because of the low concentrations. A significant fraction of the oil is not lurking below, only a tiny, instrument-detectable amount is.

They do exist, and Macondo isn't unique as an oil field either. There is ample evidence for natural plumes of oil and gas seeping from the sea floor at many locations world-wide, including the Gulf of Mexico and offshore California where they have been well-studied. There are some details at this site, which includes a number of publications about California seeps. This site has more information, including a nice aerial photo of the natural oil slick produced by the seeps off the coast of California. This paper [PDF] is a good summary of the best known California locations.

here and here [PDF] are some examples [PDF] of seeps, gas plumes [PDF], and seep-related life [PDF] in the Gulf of Mexico [PDF]. The tube worms growing on asphalt [PDF] or "ice worms" in burrows in gas hydrate (!) [PDF] are particularly cool. Some life *likes* oil and gas leaking into the ocean.

The bottom line is, seeps of gas and liquid hydrocarbons into the water column happen all the time, and the ocean deals with them by bacteria eating the oil. On the sea floor there are flourishing biological communities associated with the release of hydrocarbons, like a little "oasis" of life in the deep sea, supported by creatures eating the bacteria that are in turn eating the hydrocarbons that are expelled. However, the rate of release at the BP well is several times the total output of natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico, so the scale of the release is much bigger and concentrated in one gigantic point source. It would be like trying to feed on a volcano. There certainly won't be any seep communities setting up at the BP well any time soon :-) Anyway, the life in the ocean will consume this stuff as it spreads out, whether it is in a plume or on the surface, but it will take a while. Also, the plume they are talking about in the water column is extremely low concentration (ppb average). 99%+ of the oil is making it to the surface, and most of the gas is either dissolving in or venting to the atmosphere. The plume is interesting from a scientific perspective and probably will have some kind of environmental effect that could be important, but it's not the main part of the environmental problem. People are hyped about it because they are obsessed with the idea that the disaster could be 10x worse than the oil that is obvious on the surface. These studies show that simply isn't the case because of the low concentrations. A significant fraction of the oil is not lurking below, only a tiny, instrument-detectable amount is.

While child mortality is rather high for hunter-gatherers, adult life expectancy is 72 (Range: 68-78), although it obvious varies quite a bit. That figure shouldn't really surprise anyone, menopause is an adaptation so clearly a lot of women were living into their 60s and 70s. Accidental deaths are fairly common (20%), but infectious diseases are less common due to lowered exposure. Carbohydrate intake is also responsible for the timing of puberty. A farmer will go through puberty in their early teens, while someone who eats almost exclusively animal products will go through puberty closer to their twenties. So the cave-man living to age 30 is kind of a myth.

Now, an early farmer's life isn't as easy as you're portraying it. For one, relying on a small number of crops puts them at risk of crop failure and subsequent starvation. The limited number of crops also all-but ensures they have a vitamin deficiency in something (conversely, animal entrails have a complete set of vitamins & minerals, and hunter-gathers ate ~200 types of plants). Hunter-gathers didn't really suffer from food shortages like you describe. A human can kill basically anything with endurance hunting, and plants are abundant in most places.

Now, you're probably wondering why people would switch to farming at all. It turns out farming is the only way to get enough hops to brew beer in any significant quantities, so our ancestors were likely the drunks. (Which probably explains why we adapted to low beer consumption being optimal for life-expectancy, rather than drinking no alcohol at all.) The other advantage of farming is that it supports much larger (albeit less healthy) populations, and grants higher reproductive rates, so guess who got kicked out of the fertile lands... From there, the high population density worsened infectious diseases, so when a farmer happened to encounter a hunter-gatherer, and you can imagine what the hunter-gatherer took home.

Now I'm not saying that we should go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, nor do I advocate a paleolithic diet or similar. But I think it is important to understand that high population density comes at a great cost (which technology can reduce), and to separate fact from stereotype. Our ancestors were the farmers, so obviously they painted a rosy picture of agriculture and branded the hunter-gatherers as primitives living a harsh life. OTOH, there are competing theories where that view is supported, but realistically our species hunted and gathered easily ten times longer than we've had agriculture, so evolutionarily it makes more sense for us to be better adapted to that lifestyle. Ten thousand years allows for some adaptation to farming, but it's very far from complete.

Stimulated emission is not perfect cloning. The monkey wrench which prevents lasers from violating the no-cloning rule is the non-zero probability of spontaneous emission. See this paper:

Experimental Quantum Cloning of Single Photons

Although perfect copying of unknown quantum systems is forbidden by the laws of quantum mechanics, approximate cloning is possible. A natural way of realizing quantum cloning of photons is by stimulated emission. In this context, the fundamental quantum limit to the quality of the clones is imposed by the unavoidable presence of spontaneous emission.

According to the researchers' website the nano-mechanical resonator is a few micrometers in diameter:
http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~clelandgroup/research.html

The previous record was a buckyball.

Because Hillary would never want anything censored now would she.

(Not the same league as China, but its still the same sport...)

>If UCSB had such a system back in the 1990s, then UCSB would likely have produced as much multiprocessor research as Stanford University
Actually, UCSB had exactly such a system in the 90's, called Meiko: "The Department of Computer Science at UCSB purchased a 64-processor CS-2 in June 1994."

Really?

State of the Union Messages to the Congress are mandated by Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution which states,"He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;"

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou.php

A few notes, banks are not forced into lending to anyone, the CRA only applies to banks who sign up for FDIC coverage and even then only some banks fall under the CRA regulations. There are ways that banks can work around the CRA and guess what, they did.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

"More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions."
"Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year."
"Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."
"Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance"
"only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans."
"private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans."

GW Bush was calling for reforms until they arrived...

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24851
Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1461 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005
October 26, 2005 "H.R. 1461 fails to include key elements that are essential to protect the safety and soundness of the housing finance system and the broader financial system at large. As a result, the Administration opposes the bill. "

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74353
Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1427 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007
May 16, 2007 "Any efforts to weaken the existing portfolio language contained in H.R. 1427 will threaten the Administration's support for this bill. "

The house actually passed H.R. 1461 but was never cosidered by the Senate and McCain's support for S190 came only after the report of corruption and bad management of Fannie and Freddie came out. And then what did he do? Nada, the Senate let it slide.

There is plenty of blame to go around but this idea that some how the Democrats in concert with lower income earning U.S. citizens caused the current economic crisis is dumb founding idiocy.

A few notes, banks are not forced into lending to anyone, the CRA only applies to banks who sign up for FDIC coverage and even then only some banks fall under the CRA regulations. There are ways that banks can work around the CRA and guess what, they did.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

"More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions."
"Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year."
"Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."
"Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance"
"only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans."
"private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans."

GW Bush was calling for reforms until they arrived...

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24851
Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1461 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005
October 26, 2005 "H.R. 1461 fails to include key elements that are essential to protect the safety and soundness of the housing finance system and the broader financial system at large. As a result, the Administration opposes the bill. "

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74353
Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1427 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007
May 16, 2007 "Any efforts to weaken the existing portfolio language contained in H.R. 1427 will threaten the Administration's support for this bill. "

The house actually passed H.R. 1461 but was never cosidered by the Senate and McCain's support for S190 came only after the report of corruption and bad management of Fannie and Freddie came out. And then what did he do? Nada, the Senate let it slide.

There is plenty of blame to go around but this idea that some how the Democrats in concert with lower income earning U.S. citizens caused the current economic crisis is dumb founding idiocy.

Richard Nixon, Statement on Signing the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, January 2, 1974:
"I AM pleased to sign into law H.R. 11372, an act aimed principally at helping to reduce gasoline and diesel fuel consumption during the energy crisis."

I'm not saying you are wrong about the ads, I am saying the official reason for the change was to save energy. I am also saying that if some Wikipedia article is claiming otherwise, it needs to be reconciled with the two articles I mentioned above. Happy editing.

If you're good enough, you'll remove the other applicants as well, and be the last man standing.

I personally enjoy International Capture The Flag

The source material for this LED is Gallium Nitride(GaN). Its quite a revolutionary semiconductor material developed first by Shuji Nakamura in the 90s at Nichia Corporation, Japan.
It has a multitude of applications in different fields - optoelectronics, HF microwave communications and anti-radiation hardening for space vehicles.

These LEDs are very efficient in the sense that they consume less power and have more lumen output. And they die out gradually, unlike traditonal sources of lights like tubes/bulbs which will immediately fuse off. Which explains why they are robust alternatives for street lights, traffic signals, etc. They need less power, less maintainance and due to their solid state nature are quite tough materials.

Lot of research has been conducted on them. Here are couple of leading centres for GaN research -
UCSB - http://my.ece.ucsb.edu/mishra/studygane.htm
Cambridge(UK) - http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/GaN/

There is an online journal of Nitride Semiconductor research not updated much now, but very useful -
http://nsr.mij.mrs.org/

Check it out.

Many traffic light signals use these LEDs already across the world nowadays for less power consumption. Watch out for few in your city.
I remember back in my college days that it was already being touted as a replacement for the century+ old incandescent bulb. Buzz and hype I guess but still with a lot of substance.

Cheers!

I see the 3d sound capability as a differentiator vs merely a spherical screen. Dr Kuchera-Morin is a musician after all.

I've heard of a UC Santa Barbara and a USC, but I've never heard of a USC Santa Barbara.

male chimp comes up to a female with a banana in his hand, kinda tugs on her, she reacts neutrally, he hands her the banana and tugs again, they go off and have sex.

Part of what's new about this finding is that the chimpanzees are engaging in a long-term exchange, not just an instantaneous trade like in your bonobo example. The male chimp gives the female some meat now, and at some point later in time she mates with him.

This is interesting because the ability to engage in long-term exchanges requires some pretty sophisticated cognitive machinery that isn't necessary for an instantaneous trade. You have to keep track of who you have active deals with and what the running balance is, and you have to be sensitive to cheaters (and have an effective response, like ostracizing them) lest you get exploited. Evolutionary psychologists think that humans have special cognitive adaptations to help us manage long-term exchanges. This study appears to present evidence of similar abilities in other primates.

While, as far as I am aware, there are no actual studies regarding this specific subject (I'd love to know of one if it exists), there have been similar studies on pornography in general that showed no causal relationship between viewing pornography and delinquent or criminal behaviour. Of course, politicians didn't like these results the first time either, and so decreed they were invalid, despite strong scientific evidence to the contrary.

This happens over and over again for just about every "vice" in our society -- a small group gets in an uproar, studies are commissioned, studies show no harm, politicians ignore study results in lieu of their predetermined conclusions and continue beating the drum of war. It's shameful and horrifying and makes me sick.

Given how many studies have shown there is no causal relationship between viewing "obscene" or "unsavory" material and actually committing crimes, one would think that people would eventually stop jumping to the same invalid conclusion for every social problem. Sadly, it seems to not to be the case, and so we continue to allow actual criminals -- murders, rapists, torturers, child abusers, warmongers, ponzi schemers -- to get away with harming others, while others that haven't hurt anyone are put in jail.

Set up a Eucalyptus installation and compete with Amazon. OK, not really, but you can have an EC2 workalike without the usage charges. Use this setup as a sandbox to test migrating your current IT infrastructure to AWS. When it all works, hit the switch and actually make the move to EC2. Then, sell your no-longer-used hardware. You just converted Capital Expenses into Operational Expenses.

All it did was make me realize how much of the world was being hidden from me by adults, and it got me to read some childbirth books in the library to confirm the rumours.

Clearly, the library is a source of disturbed thinking and flagrant immorality!

One of my earliest exposures to pornography was quite by accident, in a library, and thanks to the U.S. Government. Somehow I stumbled upon the Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which describes pornography in surprising detail. It also says porn ain't so bad. I was a kid -- a voracious reader, but still a kid -- and thought to myself, what the heck? It didn't really interest me until I was a little older.

(Aside: not unlike the dissenting attorney generals noted in the social-networking article, then-President Nixon issued a statement against the report.)

I don't know much about ray-tracing, but I thought it used 3x3 and 4x4 matrices, so for that our speedup wouldn't be particularly useful. More generally, measurement in quantum computers is likely to be painful, so we think the most dramatic quantum speedups will occur when the answer is a few bits, rather than megabytes, as occurs in ray tracing.

Chaotic systems we also probably can't do much with yet, but my friend Tobias Osborne is working on something that may be applicable.

As for fragility, this is addressed through fault-tolerant quantum computing techniques, just like for any other quantum algorithm. It's not easy, but it's in principle possible.

Dan and Mike: Hi! :)

Having said that, Obama is young, charismatic, and is promoting the change that 18.8% of Americans did not want.

There, fixed that for ya. America has a population of ~305,621,847. 57,434,084 (which is 46% of the popular, not 48%, by the way) voted for McCain. 57,434,084 / 305,621,847 = 18.8%. Aside from the 21.4% who voted Obama, we can't really know what the other ~60% of the American population thinks. And if you want to adjust the numbers based on the voting age population only, check this link here.