The FAA employs economists to assess the economic and risk impact of possible regulations, such as exploding batteries.
One that came up a few years back was whether to require infants to have their own airline seats. Sounds like an obvious safety issue. Require every child to have a seat, then they are safer, no? The FAA economist did an assessment that the increased cost of travel to mothers and families would lead many to travel instead by car. This would lead to many more infant car deaths on the highways than would ever be saved by a child in it's own seat really making a difference in a plane crash.
I was quite impressed that the FAA was considering the bigger picture. This is just another example of how *some* gov't agencies show some sanity.
This is so true! You may no longer have the choice to die once on life support.
My relative had a living will specifying life support as long as there was brain function. This sounds entirely reasonable to the layman. As long he could think, he wanted to stay alive to make a choice himself.
The fallacy is that you can make a choice at that time. This is totally false. If you ever make a living will, be aware of what sort of extraordinary life support you allow yourself to be put on, because even if you change your mind later, you often cannot choose to remove the life support anymore later. My relative was put on life support without his choice while unconscious (based upon his living will). When he regained consciousness he was presented with the news that his close relatives passed away while he was in coma, and that he had the prognosis never leaving the hospital, being unable to speak, and with limited eyesight for reading or writing. He made the personal choice that it would be better to withdraw life support, as he did not have much lifespan to look forward to (he was 85), and his care costs were extremely high.
He was told that he no longer had the choice, and that the rehab hospital could not withdraw life support once offered. They did put him on prozac and elavil, when he tried to remove the tubes himself. The drugs helped him endure the stay, and he passed away after a year of not much fun, and he died only due to hospital error. It might have gone on for longer. The only time you have full choice to refuse life support is when it is offered. Be aware that once you are on life support, even involuntarily, it may not always be withdrawn easily. It depends a lot on state law and the care facility you have chosen. Note that any care facility has a financial interest in keeping the fully insured alive on life support as long as possible.
The doctors at the original hospital tried to warn the family of this possiblity, but they were ignored. Don't let this happen to yourself or your loved ones; a little foresight goes a long way. Give medical power of attorney to someone you trust, and make sure they are aware that some types of life support cannot be revoked. Do not depend upon a living will alone, it has absolutely no power without someone looking after your interests, otherwise it can be totally ignored.
If you want better candidates, register for one of the parties and participate in the primaries. Most candidates are forced into extreme positions just to obtain the candidacy, the more of us who participate to mitigate that, the better.
While I also used to register as independent, it's not enough to protest the dysfunction of the parties. We really need to start participating earlier. Pick the party who has the worst candidates, register, and try to get better candidates. Ignore the party lines, you are just trying to improve the candidate slate for everyone. Republicans and Democrats are both pretty bad, but it's what we have to live with, try to register to get a good candidate on one side or another, so we have a choice between candidates that are not too extreme.
Until we change the winner takes all voting system, we will have basically only two parties. We're stuck with them. The party system is not a great way to choose candidates; a very small sliver of people, mostly extremists, control the candidate slate. One solution is to participate. Otherwise all candidates end up beholden to party extremist groups in order to get the candidacy.
A suite of unit tests document exactly the software specs for each software unit. It really improves modularity.
Unit tests usually test for ambiguities and edge cases, and report back when results are not as expected. I've found that when programmers write unit tests, their code has far fewer stupid errors, just because they have to think about edge cases and boundary cases in designing the unit test. When finding unit interaction bugs, the unit tests make finding errors much easier... you already know the behaviour of a routine, and if there is ambiguous or incorrect behavior, it is time to extend the unit test.
The extra time in writing unit tests is well worth it if the end software needs to be reliable or is going to be maintained over time. Total no-brainer from the organizational viewpoint. From the individual software developer's viewpoint, it's not so clear if the unit tests are worth it, especially if you probably won't be the one maintaining it. It's usually easier to write it without any tests, probably save about 30-50% of the time coding, use some of the time savings to fix any glaring bugs that crop up, and leave/blame the inevitable unobvious bugs to your successors. Or charge the client/company more to fix them.
This is reminiscent of the tobacco research showing that cigarettes cause lung cancer. There was incredible controversy about this, mostly because of industry funded research throwing doubt on the results. People were also saying that it was just a scare tactic.
http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PowerPoint/FundingEffect4.pdf
Just look at the larger picture of research funding involved since 1960's. Climate change was a total non-starter for most scientists years ago. The first scientists to proclaim climate change had an uphill battle to get any funding at all. The energy industry and the auto industries have a financial interest in throwing doubt on climate change, and then on whether the climate change is man-made. And they provide a lot of the current research funding motivation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange
Now what motivation does a scientist have for proclaiming climate change? Scientists are ordinary people, most don't have grand agendas, they just want to get ahead with research papers and get tenure; they try to do some science. Controversy hurts researchers a lot when they get up for tenure. Climate change garners a lot of opposition, and there wasn't historically much research funding for it. What does any single researcher get for saying such a thing? A lot of grief, really.
There is very little historical motivation for any reputable scientist to manufacture a scare, all they want is research funding now, not research funding years from now. The government does not like climate change as a problem, they'd much rather the problem goes away. On the other hand there is plenty of financial motivation for many powerful industries to deny climate change. If there is a significant subset of scientists saying there is man-made climate change, we should really pay attention, as it is very likely to be true.
With family and Windows, the computer *will* collect trojans viruses, etc. like crazy. I totally agree with the parent, and emphasize that the key is having an image of the partition with OS and apps. The Data/user folders are on a separate partition/drive.
Make a bootable auto DVD with an image of the OS+Apps partition in a clean known state with all the apps they want installed with all the settings they want, etc. Update this image every 3- 6 months or so for them, working from the clean image, and adding updates and new apps they might want. Booting into the DVD will restore or allow a restore of the clean image.
If something goes wrong, the family members can just reboot into DVD, get the OS back to the normal known state without losing data. They will lose any apps and settings they have installed since the last time you made a known state DVD. That's ok, any stuff they installed they can always install again (since they did it themselves), and what they recently installed was probably the flaky app/game causing the problem anyways.
This has saved me lots and lots of time, and I use it for my own Windows computers also. There is a lot of peace of mind knowing that you can totally hose the system and get it back into a clean state easily. Family members who are not computer-literate do not apply tech well, not because they are stupid, but because they are afraid of breaking something. A computer is very complicated, and the difference between a tech-savvy person and a noob is that the tech-savvy person has gradually learnt what is safe to change. Having a known state to go back to gives family a much better sense of security to learn from.
Also, if the Volt ever requires new batteries, you might be able to pick up a fairly new surplus battery very cheaply, due to an on-going supply from new Volt car accidents.
The Prius battery bank is quite expensive new. But perfectly good used Toyota Prius batteries can be found very cheaply, because of the huge number of totalled cars, where each salvaged Prius battery is almost new and still usable. Just look at ebay. More cars are totalled with good batteries than ever needed for replacements for wear and tear.
If you ever need a huge battery bank, consider picking up some Prius used batteries, they have terrific energy capacity value for the money
Yes, your post is very informative and I am glad that someone who knows the PTO internals is posting. I mention anecdotally some examiners' own perspectives (from about six examiners from a single art unit) as typical post-work socializing.
Although only from a single work group, the examiners perspectives don't necessarily match reality. Many of them felt a lack of support from the appeals board and upper management in disputes with attorneys, ( such as restricting the scope? of patents). Most feel that giving an allowance will save time in the long run, although a rejection is faster in getting a count in the short term. They also feel as if there is pressure from above to give more allowances.
Everything else you said, including the difficulty of giving an allowances, especially for junior examiners, seems in line with what they said. Gripes are undoubtedly exaggerated over drinks, so take it with a grain of salt.
Mod the parent up! The parent post is totally spot on about the courts and the PTO deferring to each other. I wish any of the solutions would be implemented.
The more senior PTO examiners I know in Alexandria, VA are very qualified, most with doctorates, and one or two have passed the patent bar... they are well versed in the field. However, they mention that they have to "turn off their common sense" in order to function as an examiner. Here are some things I've heard that seem relevant here:
1. The appeals boards and the upper management at the PTO almost always side with the applicants in granting patents, overturning the examiner's ruling almost all the time.
2. An examiner has a docket of cases, and has about a few hours on average to review an application depending upon their seniority (less time the higher up you are). Examiners are promoted based upon throughput, and approving applications is the best way to improve throughput. Rejecting cases is faster, but the case will come back again and again for a much greater total time.
3. The courts keep on extending the range of what is patentable. The results court rulings on marginal patents seems to change the internal PTO's idea of what is patentable.
The parent has best post I've read about GMO risks. The US focuses on the food risks, but the new risks are the ones to watch out for. Current regulation is about testing for GMO food safety. We have *lots* of regulations in place already about food safety. GMO foods are pretty safe to eat in the short term, I'm pretty certain. But the main risk of GMO foods is not the food safety, but regulations focus mainly on the product of a genetically modified organism, not on it's effects on the ecology.
The risk of releasing a "programmed" organism out into the wild, where the genetic material cannot be withdrawn once it gets out, is a new risk, and regulation has just not yet caught up, especially in the US. The long term effect of a GMO on the ecology is not tested much before release... and with a GMO, you can't withdraw the experiment! Once it's out it's out. If a GMO plant kills all the honeybees, for instance, well, what can you do to put the genie back in the bottle? Destroy all the pollen?
All it takes is one company to skimp on testing in the short term and release a GM organism that in some way destroys the food ecology. Then we're toast. At least require some sort of enclosed biodome for testing or something.
I agree. I agree with you totally. OMG, the stories you present are not very encouraging.
People with open wifi or fonera may be taking too much risk, as your posts (and others here) really make it clear. But as long as they know the extra risks, they should really be applauded for being courageous.
Widespread availability of open wi-fi might make everyone a little safer from legal persecution as it provides more anonymity to both users and subscribers of internet services. Witchhunting prosecutors assume that an ip address must be the owner unless clearly proven otherwise; an assumption hard to disprove to those without technical knowledge. It's obviously untrue, as many different people use the connection at different times, even with no wifi connection at all. And wifi can be easily hacked. A closed wifi connection is secure only because there are other easier open wifi networks around to attack.
More widespread user anonymity helps because a prosecutor must have a clearly defined target to proceed with a case. Yes, the owner of an ip address has some responsibility for the usage on the account, but that should be covered under the contract TOS with the provider, but not by some legal fear of prosecution. Unless every device has it's own unique unspoofable ip address (ipv6?), then the link between a user and the ip address is too tenuous for any legal prosecution. Anything that breaks that link should help.
Fonera should be encouraged, even if you don't directly benefit. If more people have fonera or open wifi spots, it can't hurt, and it may indirectly benefit you if the some prosecutor knocks on your door, as it helps break the link between the many users of an ip address and the subscriber. Even people who don't believe in open wifi will benefit, as their closed wifi networks will be more secure by contrast.
For fonera subscribers, the direct benefit is that fonera gives a solid reason to have an open access wifi spot, so in a way, it does give some covering legal protection, despite the higher risk.
T-mobile tries harder than the others, but t-mobile is blessed with the worst network coverage.
T-mobile survives by having the best customer service, and enlightened data plan policies.
The customer service folks are actually helpful, they will discuss how to configure unlocked iphones and other phones on t-mobile. They also unlock t-mobile purchased phones in 90 days, even sooner in most cases, etc.
AT&T has the absolutely worst customer service. All the other carriers ('cept for T-mobile) are pretty evil. I would not be surprised at any informal price fixing... everyone is locked in anyways. But network quality is very important also, and T-mobile doesn't do well there.
I only switched to T-mobile when they allowed their phones to do calls over the wifi network as well as the cell tower network. The coverage isn't great, but you can supplement it by placing wifi points where you use the cell phone the most... it actually is better for use in some rural areas. But my blood pressure is much lower whenever I deal with customer service, that's priceless!
I agree, for seasoned programmers, the #1 job is to shield them from upper management, and focusing on communicating upstream to do it.
The most ignored task of a manager is constantly letting upper management or the client know ahead of time that the combination of features, schedules or deadlines are unrealistic, and forcing realism on upper management's expectations.
America is a two-party system and must be as long as we can only express a vote for one candidate over all others.
When you can only vote for one candidate, the only fair election is a contest between two candidates. Any extra candidates mess up the voting system. With three candidates, the two candidates that are the similar split the votes, and the dissimilar candidate has an unfair advantage. At some level, voters know this, which is why we tend to have only two parties.
In other countries, they allow voting preferences, such as ranking the candidates; in those cases, multiple parties work well.
If you want a third party, start at the local state level, and campaign to change the voting structure. so that you can rank the candidates at least, rather than voting for your favorite... otherwise, voting for 3rd party candidates makes things unbalanced, especially in a close election.
Of course if you truly think that the top two candidates are equally bad (no preference), feel free to vote for anyone else, it conveys a valuable message. But if you have the slightest preference between the top two parties, voting for anyone else is unfair.
This is not about gaming the system. America's current voting system just does not support more than two candidates at a time. If you want a better selection of candidates, focus your energies on the primaries to get the candidates you want, or change the voting system for the state you live in.
Er, I would say that your good personal experience with HW Bush means very little with regard to his son GW. HW Bush was an excellent president, much much better than GW Bush ever was, and history proves that out. I don't think GW deserves any kudos at all.
...
In the first Gulf war, America led a coalition of nations to free Kuwait and with clear objectives won. HW Bush did outstandingly well, especially in hindsight of the later Iraq war started by his son. The Gulf war was well-planned, well-executed, and had few casualties. An attempt to topple Saddam at that point was deemed to be counter-productive, despite good world opinion, for lack of resources to do policing and nation-building in a foreign country.
From his actions, GW apparently thinks his father was a complete wuss in the Gulf war. Although speculation, one probable motivation of GW in starting the Iraq War is the apparent belief that his father was totally wrong in not toppling Hussein during the Gulf War.
GW does not listen to anyone who gives information that shows flaws in his plans, no matter how accurate or true: the White House has fired policy people who gave the the most accurate estimates of the Iraq War costs at the time.
In the press for the last eight years, we get the idea that his father, arguably an excellent former president, and also a political public relations asset, is totally out of the loop in the present administration. GW gives the impression that he doesn't talk at all with his father, and by his actions, actually repudiates what HW has done.
So your experience with HW only reinforces that. HW's true nature is kind, according to your experience. In hindsight, he listened to people and was a truly good president.
GW, by his actions, is saying that his father's choices were wrong. Saying that HW has a good true nature, or is a great leader, or anything similar, may be very true, but that makes GW look even more stupid, as GW totally repudiates what choices HW has made in the Gulf War as a former president. GW, unfortunately, in both public media and his actions, has always tried to dissociate his administration from his father, and what his father has done.
9/11 is very unlikely to ever happen on a passenger plane again. The main reason planes were vulnerable on 9/11 was that there was a former air policy to "cooperate with any airplane hijackers" at all costs.
Why isn't the parent's perpective more prevalent in mainstream media?
There are two types of insurance risks. People get the two mixed up!
1. Individual Catastrophic Risks. This is insurance that pays against the risk that may wipe you, the individual, out financially.
It should pay off only in the event of a medical catastrophe. All other routine and minor health care should be paid out of pocket, since it costs to shuffle the monies around. You don't give the car insurance company money to fund your routine car maintenance, unless it somehow saved money! It also means that there is less medical records that may be bandied about
2. Public Health Risks-
Public Health is to prevent diseases like MRSA or TB from developing. Or AIDs. We must keep *everyone* at a certain level of health, or problems develop for everyone as a whole.
This is what government would be good for, protecting public health. Public health insurance is insurance to protect the public from any health threats any individual may pose by being sick, preferably by making them fully well again.
The balance of power has already shifted from the availability of free wiretapping. When you have warrantless wiretapping, what is to stop one to wiretap one's political opponents? There is serious temptation to using wiretapping politically, if there was absolutely no oversight? Especially if it is to save America from "traitorous Congressmen would sell us to the terrorists" it's obviously ok to wiretap political opponents "for America's safety"
Nixon was impeached for the same sort of thing, but now it's allowed at a whim without judicial oversight, and it's a balance of powers loophole you could drive a truck through. Of course, the administration says that no one would use these powers for anything but listening to "potential" terrorists, but the loophole is there. This is terrible, and no one in Congress seems to be saying anything.
Forgiving the telecoms unconditionally for illegal wiretapping by the administration is incredibly bad precedent to set. It rewards corporations for doing illegal things for the government. A better idea would be to give telecoms a chance to disclose any illegal wiretaps they've done for the White House in exchange for full immunity for those wiretaps. Then all telecoms have no fear of prosecution or liability, in exchange for full disclosure. But that didn't happen.
If wiretaps were already working on a political scale, not in terms of blackmail, but in influencing Congresspeople by knowing what they want... you'd have Congress rolling over for the White House almost on every issue. But of course, the White House would wiretap Congressmen only to protect America, and they would never use any information gained for political influence. Would they?
Well, more school choices for parents would improve all the choices for everyone. Right now very rich parents can choose to send their kids to expensive private schools. Moderately rich parents get a better school by moving to the best school districts. Poor parents are stuck with only one school choice, and if it's miserable school they have no recourse.
There will always be stratification of choices, the rich always have more resources and more choices. IMO, it would be good if more choices available to everyone. If the impoverished parents can elect one of several public schools to send their kids to, then at least they have more choices, and the schools in question at least have some incentive to improve. Right now, schools have no incentive to change. There is little experimentation, and lots of resistance to good ideas. That's because each school is practically a monopoly, most of the kids have no alternative, even a different public school nearby.
The better schools may have a lottery wait list to get in, but they'll be the ones to get extra funding to expand their capacity. The worst schools will hopefully emulate the better schools to survive.
Well, the best part of free markets is the ability to choose your school out of at least two or three. While we don't necessarily need free markets or vouchers, the good part that is common with those approaches is the availability of more than one school choice, versus a single "monopoly" school choice that is hard to change without moving to a new school district.
As we all know on/., whenever there is only a single choice, as in Comcast for cable... ("it's the worst cable company ever!"), or one Internet provider being available, you get terrible service, product, and value. But there is no alternative! So service stays miserable, until an alternate choice appears... then all the choices improve! It's a miracle of having independent choices.
The main thing is to allow parents a choice between at least two schools for their children. They can even all be public schools.
MIT had a study which examined the quality of public education when parent's had more or less choice of the school that their children went to. This was determined by measuring what a parent needed to do to change schools (moving, changing residence, alternate schooling, etc.) They found that school quality correlated very closely to the ability of the parents to switch schools. This was for *all* schools with parental choice and was true despite the poverty or affluence of the school districts.
What it shows is that when schools have to compete with each other for students, all the competing schools improve.
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The FAA employs economists to assess the economic and risk impact of possible regulations, such as exploding batteries.
One that came up a few years back was whether to require infants to have their own airline seats. Sounds like an obvious safety issue. Require every child to have a seat, then they are safer, no? The FAA economist did an assessment that the increased cost of travel to mothers and families would lead many to travel instead by car. This would lead to many more infant car deaths on the highways than would ever be saved by a child in it's own seat really making a difference in a plane crash.
I was quite impressed that the FAA was considering the bigger picture. This is just another example of how *some* gov't agencies show some sanity.
This is so true! You may no longer have the choice to die once on life support.
My relative had a living will specifying life support as long as there was brain function. This sounds entirely reasonable to the layman. As long he could think, he wanted to stay alive to make a choice himself.
The fallacy is that you can make a choice at that time. This is totally false. If you ever make a living will, be aware of what sort of extraordinary life support you allow yourself to be put on, because even if you change your mind later, you often cannot choose to remove the life support anymore later. My relative was put on life support without his choice while unconscious (based upon his living will). When he regained consciousness he was presented with the news that his close relatives passed away while he was in coma, and that he had the prognosis never leaving the hospital, being unable to speak, and with limited eyesight for reading or writing. He made the personal choice that it would be better to withdraw life support, as he did not have much lifespan to look forward to (he was 85), and his care costs were extremely high.
He was told that he no longer had the choice, and that the rehab hospital could not withdraw life support once offered. They did put him on prozac and elavil, when he tried to remove the tubes himself. The drugs helped him endure the stay, and he passed away after a year of not much fun, and he died only due to hospital error. It might have gone on for longer. The only time you have full choice to refuse life support is when it is offered. Be aware that once you are on life support, even involuntarily, it may not always be withdrawn easily. It depends a lot on state law and the care facility you have chosen. Note that any care facility has a financial interest in keeping the fully insured alive on life support as long as possible.
The doctors at the original hospital tried to warn the family of this possiblity, but they were ignored. Don't let this happen to yourself or your loved ones; a little foresight goes a long way. Give medical power of attorney to someone you trust, and make sure they are aware that some types of life support cannot be revoked. Do not depend upon a living will alone, it has absolutely no power without someone looking after your interests, otherwise it can be totally ignored.
If you want better candidates, register for one of the parties and participate in the primaries. Most candidates are forced into extreme positions just to obtain the candidacy, the more of us who participate to mitigate that, the better.
While I also used to register as independent, it's not enough to protest the dysfunction of the parties. We really need to start participating earlier. Pick the party who has the worst candidates, register, and try to get better candidates. Ignore the party lines, you are just trying to improve the candidate slate for everyone. Republicans and Democrats are both pretty bad, but it's what we have to live with, try to register to get a good candidate on one side or another, so we have a choice between candidates that are not too extreme.
Until we change the winner takes all voting system, we will have basically only two parties. We're stuck with them. The party system is not a great way to choose candidates; a very small sliver of people, mostly extremists, control the candidate slate. One solution is to participate. Otherwise all candidates end up beholden to party extremist groups in order to get the candidacy.
A suite of unit tests document exactly the software specs for each software unit. It really improves modularity.
Unit tests usually test for ambiguities and edge cases, and report back when results are not as expected. I've found that when programmers write unit tests, their code has far fewer stupid errors, just because they have to think about edge cases and boundary cases in designing the unit test. When finding unit interaction bugs, the unit tests make finding errors much easier... you already know the behaviour of a routine, and if there is ambiguous or incorrect behavior, it is time to extend the unit test.
The extra time in writing unit tests is well worth it if the end software needs to be reliable or is going to be maintained over time. Total no-brainer from the organizational viewpoint. From the individual software developer's viewpoint, it's not so clear if the unit tests are worth it, especially if you probably won't be the one maintaining it. It's usually easier to write it without any tests, probably save about 30-50% of the time coding, use some of the time savings to fix any glaring bugs that crop up, and leave/blame the inevitable unobvious bugs to your successors. Or charge the client/company more to fix them.
Excellent post. Superb description of regulatory capture, and the wikipedia entry is not as fun to read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
This is reminiscent of the tobacco research showing that cigarettes cause lung cancer. There was incredible controversy about this, mostly because of industry funded research throwing doubt on the results. People were also saying that it was just a scare tactic.
http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PowerPoint/FundingEffect4.pdf
Just look at the larger picture of research funding involved since 1960's. Climate change was a total non-starter for most scientists years ago. The first scientists to proclaim climate change had an uphill battle to get any funding at all. The energy industry and the auto industries have a financial interest in throwing doubt on climate change, and then on whether the climate change is man-made. And they provide a lot of the current research funding motivation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange
Now what motivation does a scientist have for proclaiming climate change? Scientists are ordinary people, most don't have grand agendas, they just want to get ahead with research papers and get tenure; they try to do some science. Controversy hurts researchers a lot when they get up for tenure. Climate change garners a lot of opposition, and there wasn't historically much research funding for it. What does any single researcher get for saying such a thing? A lot of grief, really.
There is very little historical motivation for any reputable scientist to manufacture a scare, all they want is research funding now, not research funding years from now. The government does not like climate change as a problem, they'd much rather the problem goes away. On the other hand there is plenty of financial motivation for many powerful industries to deny climate change. If there is a significant subset of scientists saying there is man-made climate change, we should really pay attention, as it is very likely to be true.
With family and Windows, the computer *will* collect trojans viruses, etc. like crazy. I totally agree with the parent, and emphasize that the key is having an image of the partition with OS and apps. The Data/user folders are on a separate partition/drive.
Make a bootable auto DVD with an image of the OS+Apps partition in a clean known state with all the apps they want installed with all the settings they want, etc. Update this image every 3- 6 months or so for them, working from the clean image, and adding updates and new apps they might want. Booting into the DVD will restore or allow a restore of the clean image.
If something goes wrong, the family members can just reboot into DVD, get the OS back to the normal known state without losing data. They will lose any apps and settings they have installed since the last time you made a known state DVD. That's ok, any stuff they installed they can always install again (since they did it themselves), and what they recently installed was probably the flaky app/game causing the problem anyways.
This has saved me lots and lots of time, and I use it for my own Windows computers also. There is a lot of peace of mind knowing that you can totally hose the system and get it back into a clean state easily. Family members who are not computer-literate do not apply tech well, not because they are stupid, but because they are afraid of breaking something. A computer is very complicated, and the difference between a tech-savvy person and a noob is that the tech-savvy person has gradually learnt what is safe to change. Having a known state to go back to gives family a much better sense of security to learn from.
Also, if the Volt ever requires new batteries, you might be able to pick up a fairly new surplus battery very cheaply, due to an on-going supply from new Volt car accidents.
The Prius battery bank is quite expensive new. But perfectly good used Toyota Prius batteries can be found very cheaply, because of the huge number of totalled cars, where each salvaged Prius battery is almost new and still usable. Just look at ebay. More cars are totalled with good batteries than ever needed for replacements for wear and tear.
If you ever need a huge battery bank, consider picking up some Prius used batteries, they have terrific energy capacity value for the money
Yes, your post is very informative and I am glad that someone who knows the PTO internals is posting. I mention anecdotally some examiners' own perspectives (from about six examiners from a single art unit) as typical post-work socializing.
Although only from a single work group, the examiners perspectives don't necessarily match reality. Many of them felt a lack of support from the appeals board and upper management in disputes with attorneys, ( such as restricting the scope? of patents). Most feel that giving an allowance will save time in the long run, although a rejection is faster in getting a count in the short term. They also feel as if there is pressure from above to give more allowances.
Everything else you said, including the difficulty of giving an allowances, especially for junior examiners, seems in line with what they said. Gripes are undoubtedly exaggerated over drinks, so take it with a grain of salt.
Mod the parent up! The parent post is totally spot on about the courts and the PTO deferring to each other. I wish any of the solutions would be implemented.
The more senior PTO examiners I know in Alexandria, VA are very qualified, most with doctorates, and one or two have passed the patent bar... they are well versed in the field. However, they mention that they have to "turn off their common sense" in order to function as an examiner. Here are some things I've heard that seem relevant here:
1. The appeals boards and the upper management at the PTO almost always side with the applicants in granting patents, overturning the examiner's ruling almost all the time.
2. An examiner has a docket of cases, and has about a few hours on average to review an application depending upon their seniority (less time the higher up you are). Examiners are promoted based upon throughput, and approving applications is the best way to improve throughput. Rejecting cases is faster, but the case will come back again and again for a much greater total time.
3. The courts keep on extending the range of what is patentable. The results court rulings on marginal patents seems to change the internal PTO's idea of what is patentable.
The parent has best post I've read about GMO risks. The US focuses on the food risks, but the new risks are the ones to watch out for. Current regulation is about testing for GMO food safety. We have *lots* of regulations in place already about food safety. GMO foods are pretty safe to eat in the short term, I'm pretty certain. But the main risk of GMO foods is not the food safety, but regulations focus mainly on the product of a genetically modified organism, not on it's effects on the ecology.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8688/regulation_of_gmos_in_europe_and_the_united_states.html
The risk of releasing a "programmed" organism out into the wild, where the genetic material cannot be withdrawn once it gets out, is a new risk, and regulation has just not yet caught up, especially in the US. The long term effect of a GMO on the ecology is not tested much before release... and with a GMO, you can't withdraw the experiment! Once it's out it's out. If a GMO plant kills all the honeybees, for instance, well, what can you do to put the genie back in the bottle? Destroy all the pollen?
All it takes is one company to skimp on testing in the short term and release a GM organism that in some way destroys the food ecology. Then we're toast. At least require some sort of enclosed biodome for testing or something.
I agree. I agree with you totally. OMG, the stories you present are not very encouraging.
People with open wifi or fonera may be taking too much risk, as your posts (and others here) really make it clear. But as long as they know the extra risks, they should really be applauded for being courageous.
Widespread availability of open wi-fi might make everyone a little safer from legal persecution as it provides more anonymity to both users and subscribers of internet services. Witchhunting prosecutors assume that an ip address must be the owner unless clearly proven otherwise; an assumption hard to disprove to those without technical knowledge. It's obviously untrue, as many different people use the connection at different times, even with no wifi connection at all. And wifi can be easily hacked. A closed wifi connection is secure only because there are other easier open wifi networks around to attack.
More widespread user anonymity helps because a prosecutor must have a clearly defined target to proceed with a case. Yes, the owner of an ip address has some responsibility for the usage on the account, but that should be covered under the contract TOS with the provider, but not by some legal fear of prosecution. Unless every device has it's own unique unspoofable ip address (ipv6?), then the link between a user and the ip address is too tenuous for any legal prosecution. Anything that breaks that link should help.
Fonera should be encouraged, even if you don't directly benefit. If more people have fonera or open wifi spots, it can't hurt, and it may indirectly benefit you if the some prosecutor knocks on your door, as it helps break the link between the many users of an ip address and the subscriber. Even people who don't believe in open wifi will benefit, as their closed wifi networks will be more secure by contrast.
For fonera subscribers, the direct benefit is that fonera gives a solid reason to have an open access wifi spot, so in a way, it does give some covering legal protection, despite the higher risk.
T-mobile tries harder than the others, but t-mobile is blessed with the worst network coverage. T-mobile survives by having the best customer service, and enlightened data plan policies.
The customer service folks are actually helpful, they will discuss how to configure unlocked iphones and other phones on t-mobile. They also unlock t-mobile purchased phones in 90 days, even sooner in most cases, etc.
AT&T has the absolutely worst customer service. All the other carriers ('cept for T-mobile) are pretty evil. I would not be surprised at any informal price fixing... everyone is locked in anyways. But network quality is very important also, and T-mobile doesn't do well there.
I only switched to T-mobile when they allowed their phones to do calls over the wifi network as well as the cell tower network. The coverage isn't great, but you can supplement it by placing wifi points where you use the cell phone the most... it actually is better for use in some rural areas. But my blood pressure is much lower whenever I deal with customer service, that's priceless!
The most ignored task of a manager is constantly letting upper management or the client know ahead of time that the combination of features, schedules or deadlines are unrealistic, and forcing realism on upper management's expectations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEP7uti0PDw
At least she knows France is a country!
An LCD screen shows different colors depending upon your view angle. This is not good for graphics professionals.
When you can only vote for one candidate, the only fair election is a contest between two candidates. Any extra candidates mess up the voting system. With three candidates, the two candidates that are the similar split the votes, and the dissimilar candidate has an unfair advantage. At some level, voters know this, which is why we tend to have only two parties.
In other countries, they allow voting preferences, such as ranking the candidates; in those cases, multiple parties work well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
If you want a third party, start at the local state level, and campaign to change the voting structure. so that you can rank the candidates at least, rather than voting for your favorite... otherwise, voting for 3rd party candidates makes things unbalanced, especially in a close election.
Of course if you truly think that the top two candidates are equally bad (no preference), feel free to vote for anyone else, it conveys a valuable message. But if you have the slightest preference between the top two parties, voting for anyone else is unfair.
This is not about gaming the system. America's current voting system just does not support more than two candidates at a time. If you want a better selection of candidates, focus your energies on the primaries to get the candidates you want, or change the voting system for the state you live in.
In the first Gulf war, America led a coalition of nations to free Kuwait and with clear objectives won. HW Bush did outstandingly well, especially in hindsight of the later Iraq war started by his son. The Gulf war was well-planned, well-executed, and had few casualties. An attempt to topple Saddam at that point was deemed to be counter-productive, despite good world opinion, for lack of resources to do policing and nation-building in a foreign country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
From his actions, GW apparently thinks his father was a complete wuss in the Gulf war. Although speculation, one probable motivation of GW in starting the Iraq War is the apparent belief that his father was totally wrong in not toppling Hussein during the Gulf War.
GW does not listen to anyone who gives information that shows flaws in his plans, no matter how accurate or true: the White House has fired policy people who gave the the most accurate estimates of the Iraq War costs at the time.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/10/news/economy/costofwar.fortune/index.htm
In the press for the last eight years, we get the idea that his father, arguably an excellent former president, and also a political public relations asset, is totally out of the loop in the present administration. GW gives the impression that he doesn't talk at all with his father, and by his actions, actually repudiates what HW has done.
So your experience with HW only reinforces that. HW's true nature is kind, according to your experience. In hindsight, he listened to people and was a truly good president.
GW, by his actions, is saying that his father's choices were wrong. Saying that HW has a good true nature, or is a great leader, or anything similar, may be very true, but that makes GW look even more stupid, as GW totally repudiates what choices HW has made in the Gulf War as a former president. GW, unfortunately, in both public media and his actions, has always tried to dissociate his administration from his father, and what his father has done.
9/11 is very unlikely to ever happen on a passenger plane again. The main reason planes were vulnerable on 9/11 was that there was a former air policy to "cooperate with any airplane hijackers" at all costs.
Why isn't the parent's perpective more prevalent in mainstream media?
There are two types of insurance risks. People get the two mixed up!
1. Individual Catastrophic Risks. This is insurance that pays against the risk that may wipe you, the individual, out financially.
It should pay off only in the event of a medical catastrophe. All other routine and minor health care should be paid out of pocket, since it costs to shuffle the monies around. You don't give the car insurance company money to fund your routine car maintenance, unless it somehow saved money! It also means that there is less medical records that may be bandied about
2. Public Health Risks-
Public Health is to prevent diseases like MRSA or TB from developing. Or AIDs. We must keep *everyone* at a certain level of health, or problems develop for everyone as a whole.
This is what government would be good for, protecting public health. Public health insurance is insurance to protect the public from any health threats any individual may pose by being sick, preferably by making them fully well again.
Yes, you are absolutely right! Thanks for the correction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
The balance of power has already shifted from the availability of free wiretapping. When you have warrantless wiretapping, what is to stop one to wiretap one's political opponents? There is serious temptation to using wiretapping politically, if there was absolutely no oversight? Especially if it is to save America from "traitorous Congressmen would sell us to the terrorists" it's obviously ok to wiretap political opponents "for America's safety"
Nixon was impeached for the same sort of thing, but now it's allowed at a whim without judicial oversight, and it's a balance of powers loophole you could drive a truck through. Of course, the administration says that no one would use these powers for anything but listening to "potential" terrorists, but the loophole is there. This is terrible, and no one in Congress seems to be saying anything.
Forgiving the telecoms unconditionally for illegal wiretapping by the administration is incredibly bad precedent to set. It rewards corporations for doing illegal things for the government. A better idea would be to give telecoms a chance to disclose any illegal wiretaps they've done for the White House in exchange for full immunity for those wiretaps. Then all telecoms have no fear of prosecution or liability, in exchange for full disclosure. But that didn't happen.
If wiretaps were already working on a political scale, not in terms of blackmail, but in influencing Congresspeople by knowing what they want... you'd have Congress rolling over for the White House almost on every issue. But of course, the White House would wiretap Congressmen only to protect America, and they would never use any information gained for political influence. Would they?
Well, more school choices for parents would improve all the choices for everyone. Right now very rich parents can choose to send their kids to expensive private schools. Moderately rich parents get a better school by moving to the best school districts. Poor parents are stuck with only one school choice, and if it's miserable school they have no recourse.
There will always be stratification of choices, the rich always have more resources and more choices. IMO, it would be good if more choices available to everyone. If the impoverished parents can elect one of several public schools to send their kids to, then at least they have more choices, and the schools in question at least have some incentive to improve. Right now, schools have no incentive to change. There is little experimentation, and lots of resistance to good ideas. That's because each school is practically a monopoly, most of the kids have no alternative, even a different public school nearby.
The better schools may have a lottery wait list to get in, but they'll be the ones to get extra funding to expand their capacity. The worst schools will hopefully emulate the better schools to survive.
Well, the best part of free markets is the ability to choose your school out of at least two or three. While we don't necessarily need free markets or vouchers, the good part that is common with those approaches is the availability of more than one school choice, versus a single "monopoly" school choice that is hard to change without moving to a new school district.
/., whenever there is only a single choice, as in Comcast for cable... ("it's the worst cable company ever!"), or one Internet provider being available, you get terrible service, product, and value. But there is no alternative! So service stays miserable, until an alternate choice appears... then all the choices improve! It's a miracle of having independent choices.
As we all know on
The main thing is to allow parents a choice between at least two schools for their children. They can even all be public schools.
MIT had a study which examined the quality of public education when parent's had more or less choice of the school that their children went to. This was determined by measuring what a parent needed to do to change schools (moving, changing residence, alternate schooling, etc.) They found that school quality correlated very closely to the ability of the parents to switch schools. This was for *all* schools with parental choice and was true despite the poverty or affluence of the school districts.
What it shows is that when schools have to compete with each other for students, all the competing schools improve.