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This was the case when I was an Engineering student at the University of Michigan in '03 and continues to be the case now.

http://ro.umich.edu/tuition/full.php#Lower_Eng

Your first two years as Engineering student will cost you about $100/$400 (out-of-state/in-state) more per semester versus general undergraduate. Those numbers shoot up to $1000/$1500 more your second two years (when courses are typically more lab intensive).

What should simply happen is that universities should publish their own journals, online, using the simple, cheap web distribution methods.

Interestingly The University of Michigan is doing exactly that. They combined their university press with their library, and shifted the press focus to digital instead of print. As their site says, "The press mission is to use the best emerging digital technology to disseminate such information as freely and widely as possible while preserving the integrity of published scholarship." They also do some print-on-demand stuff for people who want paper copies.

I hope to see this approach adopted by a great many more universities. It cuts profiteering parasitic publishers out of the loop, and simultaneously reinvigorates the university library by expanding its mission to include publication and dissemination of new research in addition to the more traditional roles of archiving existing materials.

Every day, as I search for papers to research, I encounter pay-walls asking for $30, $40, $50 for a single paper.

If you haven't already, check your university library's holdings for those. They have likely already paid a great deal of money to crappy parasitic publishers for access to databases full of journals, and you have to check through the library web site. Your library's holdings usually won't show up in Google results, again because the crappy parasitic publishers don't let Google index the library's licensed databases. Pro tip: look for a "journal title" search or something similar, and search for the title of the publication first, then narrow down to the specific issue/volume containing the article you want.

Might be for Dow, but looking for a couple of minutes on Google shows several companies that sell them.

i.e.: a blog from 2005/2006 and he had solar shingles back then.

An I wrote about on Slashdot was it approaching a decade ago?
    "Both CATS and DOGS are needed... (Score:2)"
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=5821178&sid=62113

See also, from J.D. Bernal in the 1920s(!):
    http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred years or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant."

We can do this, and we can support quadrillions of people (and other beings) living in the solar system in space habitats. The only question is if we want to.

So, while there may be limits to growth, we are nowhere near them when considering the solar system.

That article is just ignorant in part because it ignores things like laser launched craft or possibly the new cold fusion ideas (by Rossi, if they work out):
    http://pesn.com/2011/04/07/9501805_Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Validated_by_Swedish_Skeptics_Society/

Also, it says resources are not concentrated, but that is what energy and robots are for.

So, it is a pretty ignorant and defeatist article.

A better thing:
    http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

My hopes:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
   

Actually us pavement engineer types do this all the time. Basically the input to the function is the profile of the pavement measured by a pavement profilometer which essentially captures pavement elevation about every 6 in or so. (http://www.dynatest.com/functional-rsp.php) Then this profile is fed through an algorithm that models the response of a hypothetical "quarter car" (basically a spring above a tire to simulate the amount of movement experienced by something on the axle). This measurement is called the International Roughness Index and it has been correlated to "Ride Quality" perceived by highway users. It is not a perfect measurement but it is used quite frequently to help decide pavement projects. if you are more interested.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Roughness_Index http://www.umtri.umich.edu/content/LittleBook98R.pdf So for this thing they would need some other model to calculate the "movement" induced by road profile on the vehicle much like IRI. Once you have that you could correlate it to Ride Quality, have they done that? That is the question...

Bluetooth is nowhere near low-power enough. The hearing aids can actually communicate via a lower power (less info of course) wireless method that I don't know much about. Such allows both hearing aids to change modes simultaneously, but that's not a feature I want to be restrained by, and so had my audiologist disable it.

I have wires that plug directly into an add-on boot on my hearing aids. I have zero problem listening to music.

Plus I've played with bluetooth enough to find it to be unreliable way too often.

I combined bluetooth and the wires into a 2-of-a-kind setup that you can see here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~erelson/BluetoothHeadphones.html

I enjoy discussing my observations regarding my hearing aids experience :)

At the University of Michigan we have developed a "Mobile Participation System" that allows students to participate/interact in lectures (up to 1000 students or so). The instructor can setup multiple choice, math or word based questions, and subsequently, students respond using any of the following options:
1. Text-messaging (SMS)
2. An iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch App
3. Android App
4. A Laptop

Best of all ... it's free!

This system is about 2 semesters old at this point and will be presented this year's ASEE conference. If you'd like more information, here is a link to the document: http://braunschweig.eecs.umich.edu/~mlapp/downloads/refs/P08-ASEE-2011_MPS.pdf

For a live-demo, check out our YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKuH3pq58E

Viruses of the Mind. I used to hope that science teaching would be the anti virus.

In the midst of slashdot posts that refer to these theories as pretty much completely accepted... regarding matter at the aforementioned Big Bang:

You should tell the University of Michigan

And Berkeley, I guess

It apparently highly depends. Some sites (again, education ones) appear to say there was no matter, just anti-matter. Some say matter.

I felt strongly enough about this to post my first comment on Slashdot. Flame away at the noob.

Psychological Bulletin, a peer-reviewed and well-respected psychology journal, published a large meta-analysis of existing (published and unpublished) research on video games and aggression-related outcomes in 2010: Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern and Western Countries: A Meta-Analytic Review (pdf). The authors analyze results from 136 studies (total sample size, 130,296) that used a variety of methodologies (laboratory/experimental, correlational, and longitudinal). They find (from the abstract): "The evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior."

The journal published with it a critique from a perennial naysayer on the video game violence - aggression hypothesis: Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game Effects in Eastern and Western Nations (pdf), as well as a response to the critique (pdf) and an additional comment (pdf).

I am happy to leave you all with this information--though the fact that it is social science rather than hard science means that many Slashdot readers will dismiss it reflexively--but I'd like to share a sentence from the abstract of the additional comment piece with the readers of Slashdot: "The results of meta-analyses are unlikely to change the critics’ view or the public’s perception that the issue is undecided because some studies have yielded null effects, because many people are concerned that the implications of the research threaten freedom of expression, and because many people have their identities or self-interests closely tied to violent video games." (emphasis mine)

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2117312
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/Guide/Overview.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html

Enjoy, there are lots more.

This was also the first year of the multi autonomous ground-robotic international challenge (MAGIC), in which teams of robots collaborated to perform urban recon/search-rescue type missions. This competition focused on autonomous exploration, map building, object recognition, and coordination between both the robots and the human operators. 23 teams from around the world entered the competition, with the top five finalists competing just a few weeks ago in Adelaide, Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Autonomous_Ground-robotic_International_Challenge

It was also covered on slashdot:

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/11/19/004203

And Team Michigan, from the University of Michigan, took first place and $750k in prize money. (Forgive my obvious bias, I'm the team leader :)

http://april.eecs.umich.edu/magic/

No doubt the terrorists will have read this.

Not interested in neutrinos, I take it?

-l

Guess again.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sanders/214/other/news/030699china-nuke.html

http://april.eecs.umich.edu/magic/about/

The Michigan team won $750K! You call that nowhere close to meeting development costs?! http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=8127 Even if the prize was $5K or something, that is absolutely no reason not to participate! Else hundreds of universities all over the world would not be participating in Formula SAE style events.

While plain text solves this problem for novels, it is useless for math books, because OCR renders the equations (which are the essence of the book) as garbage characters. And it's not clear how one would communicate them as plain text anyway, unless the OCR was extremely sophisticated and generated say LaTeX output.

Thankfully, some of the ones I need are in the University of Michigan Historical Mathematics Collection, with a much higher quality. But for the ones that are not there, I've used the Google pdf as a last resort - at least I can get an overview, if somewhat unpleasant to read. But for books I actually want to study, I've ended up making my own scan from a library copy (which, if done with care, is better quality than even the U Mich. version) when Google's is the only one I can find on-line.

However, scanning physically stresses these old books. I think it is sad that I have to repeat what Google has done, when they (presumably) could have scanned them with high quality with a little more effort or better equipment with automatic focusing. In some cases, the books have been in the rare book section of the university library, which can't be checked out, and making copies of the whole book locally is frowned upon because of possible damage and sometimes, depending on the book's condition, not allowed.

"Look", exactly. Look at the population growth curve, for example Figure 7, here Exponential would require a constantly rising curve (check) at a constantly increased RATE (not check). Here is an explanation and a visualization of true exponential growth, as opposed to some other forms of growth. Is the growth too large and too out of control? Arguably, but exponential it's not.

Being able to transplant whole organ, transfuse blood and bone marrow makes it not seem all that wild to me.

I've enjoyed this discussion including your most recent comment here; thanks.

At this point, we may continue to disagree about whether the ends justify the means, and whether the ends should be a person with a lot of skills or a person with a lot of self-direction. No doubt, the truth will be somewhere in the middle (some ends justify some means, and people need both skills and some degree of self-direction to have a happy life). I'm indeed glad that you paint a better picture of people in schools very seriously trying to consider substantial reforms (even if I may still think the entire paradigm remains broken).

Although I would add that schools might improve a lot when we accept that not only should adults try to shape kids into civilized creatures, but also adults should let them be shaped back into joyful creatures by (re)learning many things from children. :-) Something I learned from a comedian (Michael Pritchard), from his video "Making the World a Better Place: Commit Random Acts of Comedy and Create Inverse Paranoids":
http://www.humorproject.com/bookstore/2010.php
as he was quoting Kahlil Gibran:
http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html
"""
On Children
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
"""

Just something to think about. That video is really great. I got it at a "humor conference" I went to a couple years ago.

A couple factoids, for you to make what you will of:

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.speregen/physical_education_and_school_performance
"Despite the wealth of knowledge concerning the benefits of physical education and physical activity, only 8% of elementary schools, 6.4% of middle schools, and 5.8% of high schools provide daily physical education to all of its students (SHPPS, 2000)."

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
"Studies show that if you go out in the summer sun in your bathing suit until your skin just begins to turn pink, you make between 10,000 and 50,000 units of cholecalciferol in your skin. Professor Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine has studied this extensively and believes a reasonable average of all th

Numerous studies indicate that is is best to keep children under 3 away from all tv's, including dvd's, normal tv programming, movies, video games,etc... and to limit video exposure only increasing allowed hours per day gradually as the child gets older.

No tv under 2, limit to under 2 hours for 3 year No tv under 2

That's not research, that is extrapolation and interpretation (there's actually an important difference).

Numerous studies indicate that is is best to keep children under 3 away from all tv's, including dvd's, normal tv programming, movies, video games,etc... and to limit video exposure only increasing allowed hours per day gradually as the child gets older.

No tv under 2, limit to under 2 hours for 3 year
No tv under 2

NASA could coordinate a global effort towards designing and deploying self-Replicating Space Habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore; ideas towards that here by me:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
    http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=5821178
and others who inspired me:
    http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
    http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm
    http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/

From the last, written in the 1920s by J.D. Bernal: "Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred years or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant."

Anyway, I work towards that dream on-and-off as I can...

An admission that the machines are flawed would undermine the reputation of experts going back 20 years - and the corresponding elections. From http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/pub/papers/evm-ccs10.pdf :-

There have been two official technical evaluations of EVM [Electronic Voting Machine] security performed at the behest of the Election Commission. The first was conducted in 1990 prior to the decision to introduce EVMs on a national scale, in response to "apprehensions articulated by leaders of political parties" about the machines' security. The study [35] was conducted by an "expert committee" composed of C. Rao Kasarbada, P.V. Indiresan, and S. Sampath, none of whom appear to have had prior computer security expertise. The committee had no access to EVM source code; instead, it relied on presentations and demonstrations by the manufacturers. Their report identifies two potential attacks: replacing the entire system with a fake one, and inserting a device between the ballot unit cable and the control unit. Both attacks, the report states, can be defeated by inspection of the machine. In the report's conclusion, the committee "unanimously certified that the System is tamperproof in the intended environment."

The Election Commission conducted a second "expert committee" study [1] in 2006 to evaluate upgrades for the third-generation EVMs. This time the committee members were A.K. Agarwala and D.T. Shahani, with P.V. Indiresan serving as chair. All three were affiliated with IIT Delhi, but, like the first committee, none appear to have had prior computer security expertise. Again, the committee members did not have access to EVM source code and relied on presentations, demonstrations, and site visits with the manufacturers. In their report, the commission reiterated the belief that the machines were "tamper-proof"

Furthermore:-

In a television interview, P.V. Indiresan, who chaired the Election Commission's 2006 technical review, went as far as to liken doubting the security of the EVMs to "asking Sita to prove her virginity [sic] by having Agni pariksha [trial by fire]" (a reference to a famous in the Ramayana) [18].

I think you should read up on the story of onan...

[7] And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.
[8] And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
[9] And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
[10] And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also."

(kjv genesis 38 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV2&byte=159188)

ie if you spill your seed it will displease the LORD and he will slay you...

Contrast this to the UK and EU

You were doing so well up until that point. Don't you know it's unAmerican to do what other countries do, even if it's demonstrably superior?

I can imagine the headline if theodp saw your post in a news story: "US plans to adopt Euro!".

Now you've got me going. I am going to have to read Distraction again.

=== to test equality

I think ADA was := [ http://groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis400/ada/array_summation.html ]

Java, C, and C++ use ==

Shell script, eq. ...If I am remembering correctly :)

That's the point Hawking is trying to make I think, anyway Heinlein said it better: "The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. " There's no real reason for us to stay planet bound, on this or any other planet. By the way, I checked out Dr. Katherine Freese's homepage, and it turns out she's a real hotty, as well as smart: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ktfreese/.

There is actual research on the subject, if you are interested.

Here's the abstract:

Numerous studies have shown that exposure to media violence increases aggression, though the mechanisms of this effect have remained elusive. One theory posits that repeated exposure to media violence desensitizes viewers to real world violence, increasing aggression by blunting aversive reactions to violence and removing normal inhibitions against aggression. Theoretically, violence desensitization should be reflected in the amplitude of the P300 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), which has been associated with activation of the aversive motivational system. In the current study, violent images elicited reduced P300 amplitudes among violent, as compared to nonviolent video game players. Additionally, this reduced brain response predicted increased aggressive behavior in a later task. Moreover, these effects held after controlling for individual differences in trait aggressiveness. These data are the first to link media violence exposure and aggressive behavior to brain processes hypothetically associated with desensitization.

Doesn't seem so far fetched.

Well, maybe you should start with http://www-personal.umich.edu/~scheeres/conferences/AIAA-2004_1446.pdf , http://www.b612foundation.org/papers/wpdynamics.pdf etc. Most of the posts on this thread are ignorant and clueless. Don't treat everything you don't understand with scorn.

My old boss already did something like this! http://robots.engin.umich.edu/Projects/VAN

Can be found here http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf. The statistical correlations found were weak, in some cases not even statistically significant. Also, for some questions they didn't see any backfire effect (where corrections make people believe the lies more) for all questions. For example, when dealing with liberals, there was no backfire effect when correcting the misconception that George Bush banned stem cell research (he in fact restricted it to a specific set of cell lines). However, in this case, correction did not alter the belief level although it didn't create a backfire result. Clearly, more research is needed. There's also a relevant older article which shows that uninformed people are more likely to think they are informed. http://ann.sagepub.com/content/560/1/143.abstract. This connects with the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect where incompetent individuals generally overestimate their own competency.

It is apparently very difficult to talk about probability over a uniform distribution of an infinite space (link) so I'm not sure that what you're saying about a boy that likes the number 1835736583 would be true (see also xckd puzzle).

But yes, as N possibilities increases the probability seems to converge to 1/2, but it's hard to talk about if N is actually countably or uncountably infinite.

Sorry if you already know this or I grossly misunderstand something or are far more knowledgable than me on the subject (you probably are), I just thought it might be interesting if anyone hasn't read that article.

Use this picture of John "Horned" Conway. (Here's the math behind it.)

Cosmic ray events tend to affect multiple neighboring transistors. For this reason, they tend to affect multiple bits. However, by laying out memory cells so immediate neighbors are from different locations, the ability of single-bit-correction-double-bit-detection (SECDED) methods to detect most events is usually preserved.

The main concern is for structures with no error correction, such as the gates in the processor pipeline. Several research ideas have been put forward. See here (PDF) for a good overview of the issues.

-Todd

how can you consider typing more stressful for your hands than writing with a pen?

Have you ever heard of Repetitive Sprain Injury? While writing can cause it I bet more people get it from typing. Some statistics:

"If you type 40 words a minute : you press 12,000 keys per hour or 96,000 keys per 8-hour day."

"Approximately 8 ounces of force is necessary to depress one key."

"Almost 16 tons of force will be exercised by your fingers."

"Note on computer users and typists: Repetitive typing and key entry is highly associated with missing work due to CTS. The risk for CTS in this group, however, is still much lower than with occupations involving heavy labor. One small 2001 study reported that nerve conduction tests on frequent computer users showed the same rate of CTS (3.5%) as in the general population. However, 10% of the computer users complained of CTS symptoms and 30% reported tingling and burning in the hand. The typing speed may affect risk. For example, the fingers of typists whose speed is 60 words per minute exert up to 25 tons of pressure each day."

I doubt cursive writing uses that much force.

Falcon

An actual Spitzer image of L1448 is here: http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~jjtobin/images/L1448.jpg and the preprint of the Astrophysical Journal paper is located here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.2443

I get the impression that there is plenty of research on data structures and tiered memory. If no one had done it before, it'd be an easy thesis. What grad student wouldn't jump at that opportunity. Anyway, a cursory search gives examples like this:

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~jignesh/quickstep/publ/cci.pdf

As for pedagogy, you're probably right that more focus needs to be put on the effects of tiered memory on various data structures.

Actually, the BIG breakthrough in computer design was by Lynn Conway. This is all the more remarkable considering the issues she had to overcome in her personal life.

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/skonrath/files/empathy_decline.pdf

Sure the program was flawed. But stop spewing the biased implication that the program's result was just "going from 20 to 25mpg".

That may have been allowed under the law. But the actual results were that the average trade-in went from 15.8 to 24.9mpg. [dot.gov]

Actually, it's a lot worse than the parent said. If you look at the average fuel economy for the vehicles sold the two months the program was in effect, it's only 0.6MPG and 0.7MPG higher than it would be if the program wasn't in effect. Source (warning: PDF). So in other words, people are already buying more fuel efficient vehicles, and thus all the program really did was give a bunch of people free taxpayer money to buy a car they probably would have bought anyway in the near future.

If you follow the links, you'll see that only 70% of the female fruit bats do it. This is consistent with the widely known fact that most humans will burn in Hell, but some will be saved. Repent!

Seriously now, another very concerning note in the Huffington Post article was this link. Apparently a student in a university can be prosecuted not only for writing something, but also for reading a book from the university library.

Agreed on the 3rd party email. I can't believe that people get themselves tied up with an ISP or, worse, their workplace for their personal email account. But I'd still be reluctant to establish myself with any commercial provider for my main email account. Google isn't evil today, but they might be in a few years.

I use my alma mater for my permanent address. They've been around for almost two centuries and their mission statement includes "communicating, preserving and applying knowledge" rather than "turn a profit by any means necessary", so I trust them to be around and act in my interest for the extent of my life. Right now I pay them $10 a month for my email and web space, but they'll forward emails for free if I ever want to go the cheap route.

You you rather agree with me and compromise your values or disagree with me and be a Nazi?

Nice fallacy buddy. I take option C.

Declaring something to be a fallacy when it is not, is also a fallacy. In the case of our subject, the choice is being allowing these employers to work their employees at the wages described or to interfere and cause some or all of these workers to lose their jobs.

A common myth along these lines is the "Ford Five Dollar Day". The myth is that Ford, by offering his workers above average pay (along with a heaping helping of amateur psychology), created the demand for his cars. The reality is that Ford needed to pay his workers more in order that they would stay and work. Even if each of his workers bought a car at regular price, they wouldn't have been enough to keep Ford in business. Now suppose aliens came by and were horrified by the working conditions of Ford's factories? It is possible that either Ford couldn't meet those conditions (he wasn't making a very pricey car in the first place) or that he might end up with a much smaller and less efficient business making much more expensive cars. The relatively terrible working conditions went away but so did some of the jobs and some of the valuable goods produced.

I think this is the sort of choice we face here which is where my original question came in. Kind people who will kill jobs and raise the price of manufactured goods or unkind people who employ more workers and deliver cheaper goods. The former harms despite their intentions while the latter helps despite their mercenary motivations.

People in the real Sciences would have been forced to take enough Mathematics and/or Statistics to be able to properly interpret Statistics.

You would think so, if you've never worked with Real Scientists. Most biologists and chemists (can't speak to the other ones) know just enough statistics to get by, and make exactly the kinds of mistakes TFA is describing - there's only so much you can "force" people to learn.

My favourite example of puncturing the "Real Scientists (tm)" who think they're above making these sorts of mistakes?

So You Think You Have a Power Law - Well Isn't That Special?

They do not need to time the attack for when the computation is underway. The CPU automatically uses more power during the computation, causing the errors the researchers are interested in.

To make this attack possible, faults with the characteristics de-
scribed must be injected in the attacked microprocessor. For this
purpose, we exploit a circuit-level vulnerability common in micro-
processor design: multiplier circuits tend to be fairly complex, and
much effort has been dedicated to developing high performance
multipliers, that is, multipliers with short critical path delays. Even
so, often the critical path of a microprocessor system goes through
the multiplier circuit [12]. If environmental conditions (such as
high temperatures or voltage manipulation by an attacker) slow
down the signal propagation in the system, it is possible that signals
through the critical path do not reach their corresponding registers
or latches before the next clock cycle begins. In such situations,
one of the first units to fail in computing correct results tends to
be the multiplier, because its "margin" of delay is minimal. Note
that not all multiplications would be erroneous, only those which
required values generated through the critical path.

- Fault-Based Attack of RSA Authentication, Page 3, Section 4.

Assuming that the RSA algorithm is going to burn more power than any other process, and base an attack that is intended to be undetectable on that assumption, is making a big mistake. Far more likely that a voltage tweak is going to affect some other part of the system that uses the multiplier and cause either an application or the kernel to fail. To get around that, the attacker needs to know at least *probably* when the RSA algorithm is going to be on-chip and executing. Unless I'm mistaken, that's kernel-level knowledge which means to exploit this weakness, the system must already have been compromised.

They do not need to time the attack for when the computation is underway. The CPU automatically uses more power during the computation, causing the errors the researchers are interested in.

To make this attack possible, faults with the characteristics de- scribed must be injected in the attacked microprocessor. For this purpose, we exploit a circuit-level vulnerability common in micro- processor design: multiplier circuits tend to be fairly complex, and much effort has been dedicated to developing high performance multipliers, that is, multipliers with short critical path delays. Even so, often the critical path of a microprocessor system goes through the multiplier circuit [12]. If environmental conditions (such as high temperatures or voltage manipulation by an attacker) slow down the signal propagation in the system, it is possible that signals through the critical path do not reach their corresponding registers or latches before the next clock cycle begins. In such situations, one of the first units to fail in computing correct results tends to be the multiplier, because its "margin" of delay is minimal. Note that not all multiplications would be erroneous, only those which required values generated through the critical path.

- Fault-Based Attack of RSA Authentication, Page 3, Section 4.

More specifically it was a U of M graduate student:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7537

OK, I know Michigan has low admission standards. But admitting a pea-brained sauropod? Even a whole herd of those wouldn't help them beat Ohio State....

More specifically it was a U of M graduate student:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7537

Please be clear. U of Michigan. The Universities of Minnesota and Manitoba also use "U of M". There's also the Universities of Memphis, Montana, Montreal, Moncton, and probably others, though they don't seem to use the abbreviation as frequently.