It makes sense- something unique is different somehow; if it is very different, "more unique" gets that across. Maybe your favorite grammar authority says otherwise, but as long as you are communicating clearly, it works for me.
According to the quantum computing video from a while ago (I think it was 90 minutes or something, I just watched 20), a quantum computer is designed for the problem it solves- they aren't general purpose like the processors in use today. As far as I understood from the video*, quantum computers are mostly just useful for doing calculations related to quantum physics.
I'm confused too. I was convinced Microsoft had the patent on feature creep, and I don't remember hearing about them licensing it out to the cellphone companies.
I'd say Meet Me in St. Louis was the first choose your own adventure movie. You watch some, then depending on when you fall asleep and wake up, you get a different story (not a different plot, though- there isn't really one).
(I was going for a joke around the idea that the cellphone ecourages you to be on the phone while driving, with the power source being the physical motion, not from the car battery)
Just make a phone that, while making a call, recharges its battery from the motion of the car. You've got a lot more energy to work with there than just sound energy, especially if you can derive energy from sudden stops.
He didn't say notes are bad, just that complete dependence is. Many exams I'm taking as a mechanical engineering undergrad are open notes, but due to time constraints if I have to actually read my notes, I'm in trouble. I think it works well- I feel compelled to know the material really well, but I know I don't have to memorize, which frees up my study time to actually doing practice problems.
I wasn't questioning the validity of his answer, but his analysis that the problem tested both understanding of friction and conservation of momentum (by coming up with solutions that "solve" the ice problem). Of course I'm only joking around, but I am kind of going along the same line as the famous "how to measure the height of a building with a barometer" (google it if you must).
A great way to demonstrate mastery of material is to have problems that require multiple steps- "an object starts at rest touching a horizontal compressed spring, 1 meter from a frictionless quarterpipe, what coefficient of friction must the 1 meter section have for the object to reach a maximum height of h assuming it goes directly upwards from the quarterpipe". Done symbolically, the problem would be somewhat complicated answered correctly- make a mistake early on, and finishing the problem may become nearly impossible- grading it for partial credit truly impossible. By using numbers, students should reduce to some number for each step, making it easier to isolate their mistakes, in addition to making it easier to grade later parts of the problem (if the initial velocity is 21.4 but they got 12.3, you have to figure out what the correct answers are with that wrong velocity). Also, if a student gets stuck, they can always say "I don't remember how to do that part, but I will continue the problem assuming a velocity of 10".
There is also the fact that solving problems numerically will give you a feel for what the answer should be like- if your answer is off by a factor of 10 you can often figure it looks wrong. A symbolic answer is much harder to identify as looking wrong (you can still check units of course). I'm not saying symbolic work is a bad thing (students should stay in symbolic form as much as possible), but numerical work has its benefits too; a well-made test takes advantage of both.
Er, you misunderstood the question: you could escape by breaking the ice and swimming (before hypothermia kills you), you could wake up from the dream (frictionless? really?), you could wait for spring for the ice to thaw, you could wait for snowfall and use that for friction, you could yell and hope to trigger an avalanche (nearby mountain required), or you could put an elephant in the way- allowing dozens more solutions... I could go on, but the point is the problem required no knowledge of conservation of momentum, only your basic pond survival skills.
Well, duh. One side wants the government to do very little, while the other side wants the government to spend lots of money on stuff, so the politicians do as they're told and spend a lot of money getting nothing done.
It is easy to enforce a law banning driving while on a hand-held cellphone, but extremely difficult to enforce one for hands-free. I think there should be penalties in place for getting into an accident while on (any) cellphone, but creating an unenforceable law is bad practice.
If you could split it 7 ways, that would be a 18 MB line each at $50, which is a good deal compared to the semi-monopoly prices you usually get. Of course, this could vary depending on how close to a gigabit the line will actually get you (although it shouldn't be worse than the big ISPs, and may be significantly better).
A child raised by geocentrist parents either will have issues with their parents or learn to hate science (as science class will repeatedly be saying the kid's parents are wrong). Chances are, that mechanic would defer to you pretty quickly if you corrected him (he's simply mistaken); geocentrists tend to believe as they do in spite of the evidence they've been confronted with. The problem isn't that they are wrong, but that they actively resist science.
Oil price increases have two effects: it adds more incentive to both exploit untapped sources of oil and expand the use of alternatives, and it puts a major strain on the economy. Exploitation of oil and research into alternatives takes money (a finite resource), so oil prices increasing will have a diminishing effect here . On the other hand, enough of our economy is oil-dependent that oil prices going up can keep taking a toll on our economy, with diminishing effects taking longer to set in- this is exacerbated by the fact that a bad economy means less money for that investment.
Our oil reserves can be used similar to how the central bank prints money or takes it out of the system- you use it to affect the market, not substitute for it. When prices go high enough that further increases will just hurt the economy, we should tap into reserves to supplement oil supplies. As soon as demand for oil drops enough, or oil production increases enough, we stop using the reserves. If we do it right, each time we have to tap into the reserves, alternatives have taken more of the market, and the effects of oil shortages will diminish over time.
I agree that we're in big trouble if suddenly the reserves were our only supply of oil, but the reserves are supposed to be a stop-gap, not a "solution".
In the video, there is a part showing a man talking, and eventually he waves his arms around. At that point, you can see some parts of the picture become brighter near his arms- clearly not shadows, so it must be an artifact of the HDR processing. Anyone care to explain what might cause this, or how it might be addressed? I don't know much about HDR so I wouldn't have a clue, but some insight into the technical stuff behind the process would be interesting (and help people like me better learn and appreciate HDR).
Wait, how were you modded insightful? You say biometrics will be over-relied on, therefore biometrics are the problem... over-reliance is the problem, and will exist with any system unless properly addressed (again, independent of what system you use). So, how about actually considering how biometrics is different from other systems: any system needs to be considered for two metrics: false positives (false identity stuff), and false negatives (someone can't prove their own identity).
Social security numbers won't get memorized, and ID cards will get lost (just try to hand out ID cards in a shanty town or teach illiterate people how to deal with SSNs), but with biometrics it is simple for people to prove they are who they say they are. As far as false negatives go, biometrics may well be the best system out there.
As for false positives, it is harder to forge a fingerprint or iris scan than to memorize the victim's ID number. A physical ID may or may not be harder to forge, so IDs may be better in this respect. If fingerprints an iris scans and whatnot requires someone observing (and perhaps checking your fingers, etc.), you quickly reduce system failures to bribery, which again is largely independent of what ID solution you use. Of course, even a corrupt biometrics worker might not be able to forge a fingerprint for you the way they could look up the victim's SSN for you.
Was the fingerprint faked to a dumb machine, or to a machine supervised by a person? Of course India may just use the dumb machine variant, but if not I expect it would be far more difficult to keep your antics from being noticed. Keep in mind the article also mentions an iris scanner, although I don't know how the security of that compares to a fingerprint.
Yes, there is always bribery, but this system may be more secure than others on that aspect, as you may still need that faked fingerprint (as opposed to the corrupt worker just looking up the victim's SSN).
Before someone says picky eaters just have to deal with it, keep in mind kids may just go without food than eat their vegetables (especially without a parent around). Healthy food is a good idea, but making the lunch taste good to the kids is the most important criteria- without that you'll just teach kids healthy food tastes bad as a rule (which can really be a problem). I'm not saying there's no such thing as a healthy menu that kids will like, but if the meal planner works with healthy food lists like the GP's*, they'll be catering to an adult palate, not a kid's.
*GP may or may not have intended the list as a kid's menu, but there are certainly people out there who would.
Except in India I doubt they could get a SSN system to work- with biometric identification no one needs to memorize numbers or keep them written down somewhere (or be able to write for that matter). You also have an easier time being sure someone is who they say they are (compared to how a lot of places in America take mother's maiden name plus SSN, which nowhere near secure or reliable). Yes, there are a lot of bad things that can be tied to such a biometric system, but having a functioning equivalent to a SSN system would be a big enough benefit it is misguided at best to blindly reject this system.
Keep in mind, this system in itself isn't necessarily evil, but it allows a lot of bad stuff to be implemented. You can have this system yet block any government encroachment on privacy (or repeal the privacy problems after it after it becomes a hot-button issue). However unlikely that separation may be, you have to consider that chance compared to the chance of getting a less-intrusive system to work at a similar level of reliability. There may be some such system (and I welcome it), but some people will come up with some wild idea and never put it in perspective.
Um, have you heard anyone insult someone by saying "You're as dumb as a stamp!"? Clearly, they do have intelligence- enough that being compared to one isn't an insult.
Of course, you'd at least have to be smart as a stamp to understand that, so I won't be too hopeful.
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It makes sense- something unique is different somehow; if it is very different, "more unique" gets that across. Maybe your favorite grammar authority says otherwise, but as long as you are communicating clearly, it works for me.
According to the quantum computing video from a while ago (I think it was 90 minutes or something, I just watched 20), a quantum computer is designed for the problem it solves- they aren't general purpose like the processors in use today. As far as I understood from the video*, quantum computers are mostly just useful for doing calculations related to quantum physics.
*If I'm wrong/misleading, please correct me.
I'm confused too. I was convinced Microsoft had the patent on feature creep, and I don't remember hearing about them licensing it out to the cellphone companies.
I'd say Meet Me in St. Louis was the first choose your own adventure movie. You watch some, then depending on when you fall asleep and wake up, you get a different story (not a different plot, though- there isn't really one).
(I was going for a joke around the idea that the cellphone ecourages you to be on the phone while driving, with the power source being the physical motion, not from the car battery)
Just make a phone that, while making a call, recharges its battery from the motion of the car. You've got a lot more energy to work with there than just sound energy, especially if you can derive energy from sudden stops.
He didn't say notes are bad, just that complete dependence is. Many exams I'm taking as a mechanical engineering undergrad are open notes, but due to time constraints if I have to actually read my notes, I'm in trouble. I think it works well- I feel compelled to know the material really well, but I know I don't have to memorize, which frees up my study time to actually doing practice problems.
I wasn't questioning the validity of his answer, but his analysis that the problem tested both understanding of friction and conservation of momentum (by coming up with solutions that "solve" the ice problem). Of course I'm only joking around, but I am kind of going along the same line as the famous "how to measure the height of a building with a barometer" (google it if you must).
A great way to demonstrate mastery of material is to have problems that require multiple steps- "an object starts at rest touching a horizontal compressed spring, 1 meter from a frictionless quarterpipe, what coefficient of friction must the 1 meter section have for the object to reach a maximum height of h assuming it goes directly upwards from the quarterpipe". Done symbolically, the problem would be somewhat complicated answered correctly- make a mistake early on, and finishing the problem may become nearly impossible- grading it for partial credit truly impossible. By using numbers, students should reduce to some number for each step, making it easier to isolate their mistakes, in addition to making it easier to grade later parts of the problem (if the initial velocity is 21.4 but they got 12.3, you have to figure out what the correct answers are with that wrong velocity). Also, if a student gets stuck, they can always say "I don't remember how to do that part, but I will continue the problem assuming a velocity of 10".
There is also the fact that solving problems numerically will give you a feel for what the answer should be like- if your answer is off by a factor of 10 you can often figure it looks wrong. A symbolic answer is much harder to identify as looking wrong (you can still check units of course). I'm not saying symbolic work is a bad thing (students should stay in symbolic form as much as possible), but numerical work has its benefits too; a well-made test takes advantage of both.
Er, you misunderstood the question: you could escape by breaking the ice and swimming (before hypothermia kills you), you could wake up from the dream (frictionless? really?), you could wait for spring for the ice to thaw, you could wait for snowfall and use that for friction, you could yell and hope to trigger an avalanche (nearby mountain required), or you could put an elephant in the way- allowing dozens more solutions... I could go on, but the point is the problem required no knowledge of conservation of momentum, only your basic pond survival skills.
Well, duh. One side wants the government to do very little, while the other side wants the government to spend lots of money on stuff, so the politicians do as they're told and spend a lot of money getting nothing done.
It is easy to enforce a law banning driving while on a hand-held cellphone, but extremely difficult to enforce one for hands-free. I think there should be penalties in place for getting into an accident while on (any) cellphone, but creating an unenforceable law is bad practice.
That makes two- just need 5 more, one of them knowing where to get a couple thousand miles of ethernet cable for cheap...
If you could split it 7 ways, that would be a 18 MB line each at $50, which is a good deal compared to the semi-monopoly prices you usually get. Of course, this could vary depending on how close to a gigabit the line will actually get you (although it shouldn't be worse than the big ISPs, and may be significantly better).
A child raised by geocentrist parents either will have issues with their parents or learn to hate science (as science class will repeatedly be saying the kid's parents are wrong). Chances are, that mechanic would defer to you pretty quickly if you corrected him (he's simply mistaken); geocentrists tend to believe as they do in spite of the evidence they've been confronted with. The problem isn't that they are wrong, but that they actively resist science.
Oil price increases have two effects: it adds more incentive to both exploit untapped sources of oil and expand the use of alternatives, and it puts a major strain on the economy. Exploitation of oil and research into alternatives takes money (a finite resource), so oil prices increasing will have a diminishing effect here . On the other hand, enough of our economy is oil-dependent that oil prices going up can keep taking a toll on our economy, with diminishing effects taking longer to set in- this is exacerbated by the fact that a bad economy means less money for that investment.
Our oil reserves can be used similar to how the central bank prints money or takes it out of the system- you use it to affect the market, not substitute for it. When prices go high enough that further increases will just hurt the economy, we should tap into reserves to supplement oil supplies. As soon as demand for oil drops enough, or oil production increases enough, we stop using the reserves. If we do it right, each time we have to tap into the reserves, alternatives have taken more of the market, and the effects of oil shortages will diminish over time.
I agree that we're in big trouble if suddenly the reserves were our only supply of oil, but the reserves are supposed to be a stop-gap, not a "solution".
Having posted the question I can't use mod points here. I think a +5 informative is in order.
The video is here. Thanks goes to the guy who copy/pasted TFA in anticipation of a /. .
In the video, there is a part showing a man talking, and eventually he waves his arms around. At that point, you can see some parts of the picture become brighter near his arms- clearly not shadows, so it must be an artifact of the HDR processing. Anyone care to explain what might cause this, or how it might be addressed? I don't know much about HDR so I wouldn't have a clue, but some insight into the technical stuff behind the process would be interesting (and help people like me better learn and appreciate HDR).
Wait, how were you modded insightful? You say biometrics will be over-relied on, therefore biometrics are the problem... over-reliance is the problem, and will exist with any system unless properly addressed (again, independent of what system you use). So, how about actually considering how biometrics is different from other systems: any system needs to be considered for two metrics: false positives (false identity stuff), and false negatives (someone can't prove their own identity).
Social security numbers won't get memorized, and ID cards will get lost (just try to hand out ID cards in a shanty town or teach illiterate people how to deal with SSNs), but with biometrics it is simple for people to prove they are who they say they are. As far as false negatives go, biometrics may well be the best system out there.
As for false positives, it is harder to forge a fingerprint or iris scan than to memorize the victim's ID number. A physical ID may or may not be harder to forge, so IDs may be better in this respect. If fingerprints an iris scans and whatnot requires someone observing (and perhaps checking your fingers, etc.), you quickly reduce system failures to bribery, which again is largely independent of what ID solution you use. Of course, even a corrupt biometrics worker might not be able to forge a fingerprint for you the way they could look up the victim's SSN for you.
Was the fingerprint faked to a dumb machine, or to a machine supervised by a person? Of course India may just use the dumb machine variant, but if not I expect it would be far more difficult to keep your antics from being noticed. Keep in mind the article also mentions an iris scanner, although I don't know how the security of that compares to a fingerprint.
Yes, there is always bribery, but this system may be more secure than others on that aspect, as you may still need that faked fingerprint (as opposed to the corrupt worker just looking up the victim's SSN).
Before someone says picky eaters just have to deal with it, keep in mind kids may just go without food than eat their vegetables (especially without a parent around). Healthy food is a good idea, but making the lunch taste good to the kids is the most important criteria- without that you'll just teach kids healthy food tastes bad as a rule (which can really be a problem). I'm not saying there's no such thing as a healthy menu that kids will like, but if the meal planner works with healthy food lists like the GP's*, they'll be catering to an adult palate, not a kid's.
*GP may or may not have intended the list as a kid's menu, but there are certainly people out there who would.
Except in India I doubt they could get a SSN system to work- with biometric identification no one needs to memorize numbers or keep them written down somewhere (or be able to write for that matter). You also have an easier time being sure someone is who they say they are (compared to how a lot of places in America take mother's maiden name plus SSN, which nowhere near secure or reliable). Yes, there are a lot of bad things that can be tied to such a biometric system, but having a functioning equivalent to a SSN system would be a big enough benefit it is misguided at best to blindly reject this system.
Keep in mind, this system in itself isn't necessarily evil, but it allows a lot of bad stuff to be implemented. You can have this system yet block any government encroachment on privacy (or repeal the privacy problems after it after it becomes a hot-button issue). However unlikely that separation may be, you have to consider that chance compared to the chance of getting a less-intrusive system to work at a similar level of reliability. There may be some such system (and I welcome it), but some people will come up with some wild idea and never put it in perspective.
Physicists have been able to manipulate tiny particles over miniscule distances by using lasers for years.
I hope the new tractor beams don't take as long to operate. I don't have that kind of time.
Um, have you heard anyone insult someone by saying "You're as dumb as a stamp!"? Clearly, they do have intelligence- enough that being compared to one isn't an insult.
Of course, you'd at least have to be smart as a stamp to understand that, so I won't be too hopeful.