Another Enron or some really bad case of mother nature might be a threat to the power system, but I can't think of many other ways for the power system to be threatened on a large scale than by terrorists (i.e. anyone intentionally causing damage, not just the Taliban types). If a big problem comes up the government can't just go "oh, well we didn't think about that". I agree it isn't a highly probable scenario, but it is a severe enough one that it is worth spending the time to consider, but while also addressing more pressing problems and not as a diversion from the relevant stuff.
Knowing how O'hare is on delays, they wouldn't get the wifi running until May, and even then you'd have a ping of 12s or so with a 20% chance of your connection being canceled altogether.
The energy would correspond to the mass rather than the radius; assuming constant density we can use volume so 7^3/10^3=0.343 or 34% of the energy of the 10m asteroid. I don't know my meteor impact science, but I wouldn't be surprised if the higher surface/volume ratio means proportionally more of it burns up in the atmosphere to reduce the impact energy even further.
Regardless, a post farther down links to an impact calculator that claims it bursts in mid-air and results in no significant impact, so this speculation is moot (I am assuming the calculator is well-written).
...and that is why I am doing my ME undergrad at a non-research school, so all of the professors are here to teach and they tend to do a good job of it.
The stakes are higher now than back when everything was made by skilled craftsmen. Between R+D costs and investment in production line equipment and staffing, a corporation is at a significant loss before they make their first sale. Back when one-man industries were common, not only were economies more localized (allowing less competition), but I am assuming larger projects were generally agreed (even paid) in advance, so that only a few days' wages were often at stake when producing anything.
Without patents, only corporations would ever invent anything. An individual does not have the resources to produce anything near the scale a $multi-billion corporation can, so anyone not tied to a corporation has zero benefit. Even so, most products take time to start turning a profit- if the corporation that invested in developing the product has maybe a year head start instead of 14 or so, they have to rush to production as soon as anyone sees the first prototype, meaning less time to improve quality- not to mention the profits will be slim enough that quality cannot be afforded.
People love talking about corporations not getting that their business model is obsolete and not adapting- maybe patents weren't needed before but they've become necessary to adapt.
I like the idea that information should be free, but until I'm convinced that can be truly beneficial, I'm going to support patent and copyright. I disapprove of their current implementation, though.
I can understand that it doesn't seem right to punish someone for things out of their control, but part of the purpose of putting murderers in prison is to make it harder for them to kill more people (at least that's my impression). They could maybe put him in a nicer prison, but if anything having the gene implies he's more dangerous than most people, so there is more reason to keep him in prison longer- not less. Hopefully they can help him overcome his genetic aggression, but it makes no sense to put him back on the streets if he is higher risk than most people.
You're making things up to keep your argument valid- holding a door and helping someone move are similar in the way making a joke or making a book are similar. "Friend" isn't a binary quality so you can't use it to divide rules of politeness. Expectations of what you should and shouldn't do are weighted by the value of the relationship, so you have different breakpoints of what quantity of effort is expected depending on where your relationship lies in the spectrum. Obviously it is hard to quantify rules of politeness, so generalization is NEEDED.
Holding a door open and helping someone move have no direct benefit to you. You do them with the expectation that people will do likewise. The reason you will hold a door open for just about anyone is that it takes little effort so the resources at risk are low. Helping someone move takes more time (resources), so doing so with an expectation of future payment is higher risk. Helping friends move is lower risk, as you have a better idea of how they reciprocate, so you are more willing to do so. If someone proves to be high risk you are less likely to help them. Future payment may be in the form of pizza afterwords, or reciprocated moving help.
Everyone should be better off if all creative ideas are immediately shared with society as a whole, but no one person benefits from contributing without the expectation of reciprocity. A joke takes little effort to come up with, so contributing it to society is low risk. Writing a book takes much more time and effort (and possibly money), so sharing it openly is higher risk. Trading original work for direct compensation is a greater benefit to an individual than putting the work out in the open if no one reciprocates, so that is the option usually taken with high-risk work.
As for my 51/49 example- to keep you from making up new rules I'll be specific and say it's 100 math problems you and a partner are assigned to work on. Any partner would consider you a jerk if you chew them out for only doing 49 problems, yet you would have a base for your criticism if they only did 30. Don't add varibles- the only variables here are the size of the infraction and the size of the response. If your only options were to say nothing or complain to the teacher (for example), then there would be a certain point where you decide to go to the teacher, and before that you would suppress your mild issue with the partner. Similarly, if your options with the joke are don't complain and ask to be paid, you'd have to have quite a joke to decide it's time to ask for money. A book is worth more, so you have more in-between options from ask for nothing and ask for the value of the book. You can either call ignoring the small things a product of kindness, or be mathematical and call it an artifact of limited resolution. Yes, you have more options than I suggest here, but at some point you can't split hairs any more finely- the more value involved the more fine you can get, i.e. a 5 cent joke can only be charged for in 20% increments.
If you don't like my analogies you should still get the point I'm trying to make and be able to apply the argument to an analogy more palatable to you- I can't make an analogy that takes everything into account (you don't take into account what kind of book or whether people involved are professional comedians, or...), so please decide when the difference is too small to worry about and when it is large enough to be worth mentioning (see what I did there?).
Let me try again with an analogy you won't take too literally: I'll hold the door open for you with no expected reciprocity because it takes so little effort. If I help you move I won't help you twice if I'm getting no favors/kindness in return.
Another: If you do 51% of the work and your partner does 49% you probably won't notice, and even if you do you wouldn't complain. Make it 70/30 and you will notice and might speak up about it.
You are ignoring social implications which vary by the significance of the subject at hand. Unless you can somehow concretely define all social costs and benefits your model is going to have error.
If that research is valuable, then people will be willing to pay for it even if they aren't getting pills in return.
I don't follow. I think it is fairly established opinion on/. that basic science research is worth the money, but that corporations will not fund it at a sufficient level, so government-funded research is necessary. Manufacturing pills makes money, but without patents knowing how to make them doesn't make money. Tragedy of the commons can and will happen if you don't tie profit to research. I could understand if research companies earned patents then sold them to the manufacturer with the highest bid, but otherwise I do not know how separating the functions will keep the now-separate industries both viable.
I understand it is a nice ideal, but I don't get all of these people saying industries need a new business model without suggesting one. If you want to argue that is the job of the business majors then you have the same weight as that business major telling you how to code that program or design that appliance. You might have a plausible idea but I'm saying I'll stick with the pay-per-copy method until I see a better idea that doesn't have gaping holes in it.
If I'm buying something at your sandwich shop and come up 2 cents short, you would be considered a jerk to tell me I don't get my sandwich. Something tells me that principle doesn't scale when I'm buying a car from you and I'm short $10k.
The time and effort to come up with a joke is small enough that most people don't think twice about giving it away- the same doesn't always hold true for large pieces of software or collections of original songs or other art. I'm assuming* a significant motivation for contributing free software is that people are trying to pay for their use of others' contributions past and future (i.e. they like the software)- I don't expect many people to spend time programming for free if it were a thankless job.
*I've never talked to people who contribute to free software so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Unless you disagree with patents, I don't get the logic that just because you can copy mp3s easily it means the music industry needs to stop selling them. Otherwise you should argue big pharma should never sue generics that start selling before the patents are up- but we all know that would make medicine more costly as R+D earns less of a payoff. I agree copyright terms need to be brought back around where patents are, but otherwise I'm not following your logic. Non-generic medicine prices are only partially driven by manufacturing costs, and mostly R+D. Just because media is all "R+D" and almost zero manufacturing does not mean it should cost nothing.
If media companies can make money while piracy is allowed to continue uninhibited, I wouldn't have any problems with that. I'm just concerned that making it okay to pirate will greatly reduce the amount of quality media out there (I don't care about the change in low-quality media). Until I'm persuaded otherwise I'm defaulting to supporting the pay per copy model.
The measurements gathered by the SMOS probe can be used to track [...] soil moisture -- data that can be used to predict quickly drought and flood risk in certain areas
So when they measure that soil moisture is zero for a while, they can predict that a drought is going to have happened, and with soil moisture of about 6 feet of surface water, they can predict that flooding is going to have happened. Finally we should have a system more accurate than whatever those "meteorologists" use.
If you watch with other people, you can go get a drink, etc. without unnecessarily delaying the show for others. Also it makes for a nice chance to talk about the show without missing anything (or talk about whatever). Otherwise I agree- when watching something alone it is easier to just skip commercials altogether.
Any voting system will have risk due to human judges- this test will hopefully prove that electronic voting (on Brazilian machines) has no additional openings. If this works for Brazil, American companies have no excuse not to let us do the same to their machines (not that it will likely happen anyways). In any case this sounds great and I wish more governments would do things like this to prove trustworthiness rather than expect everyone to trust the government baselessly.
I'm at an engineering college where all students have to get a laptop freshman year- it comes with MS Office, Matlab and Maple among other programs. I never see students using a laptop to take notes unless the professor is doing Matlab or Maple code. I haven't seen students try tablets so I can't comment on that, but I see no problems with pencil and paper. I agree with others that transferring the notes later can help them sink in better, so there is no reason you can't do that.
We need to be taking our examples from better sources, so this calls for drastic measures before it is too late. We must declare war on Japan, then immediately surrender to them. They will have no choice but to occupy us to ensure a safe recovery from the war, especially with reconstruction. When the Japanese realize our horrible internet situation, they will declare a humanitarian emergency. This should secure us UN funding to upgrade our networks while ATT and Comcast have sanctions imposed against them. Problem solved.
I propose the three strikes law three strikes law. A politician gets a strike for mentioning the three strikes law in a non-derisive manner, and gets banned from government after three strikes.
Slashdot Mirror
Another Enron or some really bad case of mother nature might be a threat to the power system, but I can't think of many other ways for the power system to be threatened on a large scale than by terrorists (i.e. anyone intentionally causing damage, not just the Taliban types). If a big problem comes up the government can't just go "oh, well we didn't think about that". I agree it isn't a highly probable scenario, but it is a severe enough one that it is worth spending the time to consider, but while also addressing more pressing problems and not as a diversion from the relevant stuff.
Knowing how O'hare is on delays, they wouldn't get the wifi running until May, and even then you'd have a ping of 12s or so with a 20% chance of your connection being canceled altogether.
The energy would correspond to the mass rather than the radius; assuming constant density we can use volume so 7^3/10^3=0.343 or 34% of the energy of the 10m asteroid. I don't know my meteor impact science, but I wouldn't be surprised if the higher surface/volume ratio means proportionally more of it burns up in the atmosphere to reduce the impact energy even further.
Regardless, a post farther down links to an impact calculator that claims it bursts in mid-air and results in no significant impact, so this speculation is moot (I am assuming the calculator is well-written).
...and that is why I am doing my ME undergrad at a non-research school, so all of the professors are here to teach and they tend to do a good job of it.
...and app makers have to think harder about their bottom line when collecting user data and not being upfront about it.
He's talking short-term, you are talking long-term. Both solutions should be pursued on an appropriate time-scale.
The stakes are higher now than back when everything was made by skilled craftsmen. Between R+D costs and investment in production line equipment and staffing, a corporation is at a significant loss before they make their first sale. Back when one-man industries were common, not only were economies more localized (allowing less competition), but I am assuming larger projects were generally agreed (even paid) in advance, so that only a few days' wages were often at stake when producing anything.
Without patents, only corporations would ever invent anything. An individual does not have the resources to produce anything near the scale a $multi-billion corporation can, so anyone not tied to a corporation has zero benefit. Even so, most products take time to start turning a profit- if the corporation that invested in developing the product has maybe a year head start instead of 14 or so, they have to rush to production as soon as anyone sees the first prototype, meaning less time to improve quality- not to mention the profits will be slim enough that quality cannot be afforded.
People love talking about corporations not getting that their business model is obsolete and not adapting- maybe patents weren't needed before but they've become necessary to adapt.
I like the idea that information should be free, but until I'm convinced that can be truly beneficial, I'm going to support patent and copyright. I disapprove of their current implementation, though.
With those artificial wombs you'll have to keep this article in mind so you don't deprive those children of their early language development.
Look up "echolocation boy" on youtube- that kid plays video games despite being blind.
I can understand that it doesn't seem right to punish someone for things out of their control, but part of the purpose of putting murderers in prison is to make it harder for them to kill more people (at least that's my impression). They could maybe put him in a nicer prison, but if anything having the gene implies he's more dangerous than most people, so there is more reason to keep him in prison longer- not less. Hopefully they can help him overcome his genetic aggression, but it makes no sense to put him back on the streets if he is higher risk than most people.
You're making things up to keep your argument valid- holding a door and helping someone move are similar in the way making a joke or making a book are similar. "Friend" isn't a binary quality so you can't use it to divide rules of politeness. Expectations of what you should and shouldn't do are weighted by the value of the relationship, so you have different breakpoints of what quantity of effort is expected depending on where your relationship lies in the spectrum. Obviously it is hard to quantify rules of politeness, so generalization is NEEDED.
Holding a door open and helping someone move have no direct benefit to you. You do them with the expectation that people will do likewise. The reason you will hold a door open for just about anyone is that it takes little effort so the resources at risk are low. Helping someone move takes more time (resources), so doing so with an expectation of future payment is higher risk. Helping friends move is lower risk, as you have a better idea of how they reciprocate, so you are more willing to do so. If someone proves to be high risk you are less likely to help them. Future payment may be in the form of pizza afterwords, or reciprocated moving help.
Everyone should be better off if all creative ideas are immediately shared with society as a whole, but no one person benefits from contributing without the expectation of reciprocity. A joke takes little effort to come up with, so contributing it to society is low risk. Writing a book takes much more time and effort (and possibly money), so sharing it openly is higher risk. Trading original work for direct compensation is a greater benefit to an individual than putting the work out in the open if no one reciprocates, so that is the option usually taken with high-risk work.
As for my 51/49 example- to keep you from making up new rules I'll be specific and say it's 100 math problems you and a partner are assigned to work on. Any partner would consider you a jerk if you chew them out for only doing 49 problems, yet you would have a base for your criticism if they only did 30. Don't add varibles- the only variables here are the size of the infraction and the size of the response. If your only options were to say nothing or complain to the teacher (for example), then there would be a certain point where you decide to go to the teacher, and before that you would suppress your mild issue with the partner. Similarly, if your options with the joke are don't complain and ask to be paid, you'd have to have quite a joke to decide it's time to ask for money. A book is worth more, so you have more in-between options from ask for nothing and ask for the value of the book. You can either call ignoring the small things a product of kindness, or be mathematical and call it an artifact of limited resolution. Yes, you have more options than I suggest here, but at some point you can't split hairs any more finely- the more value involved the more fine you can get, i.e. a 5 cent joke can only be charged for in 20% increments.
If you don't like my analogies you should still get the point I'm trying to make and be able to apply the argument to an analogy more palatable to you- I can't make an analogy that takes everything into account (you don't take into account what kind of book or whether people involved are professional comedians, or...), so please decide when the difference is too small to worry about and when it is large enough to be worth mentioning (see what I did there?).
Let me try again with an analogy you won't take too literally: I'll hold the door open for you with no expected reciprocity because it takes so little effort. If I help you move I won't help you twice if I'm getting no favors/kindness in return.
Another: If you do 51% of the work and your partner does 49% you probably won't notice, and even if you do you wouldn't complain. Make it 70/30 and you will notice and might speak up about it.
You are ignoring social implications which vary by the significance of the subject at hand. Unless you can somehow concretely define all social costs and benefits your model is going to have error.
Maybe they should have included some sarcasm detectors in the satellite too. I hear some people could make use of those.
If that research is valuable, then people will be willing to pay for it even if they aren't getting pills in return.
I don't follow. I think it is fairly established opinion on /. that basic science research is worth the money, but that corporations will not fund it at a sufficient level, so government-funded research is necessary. Manufacturing pills makes money, but without patents knowing how to make them doesn't make money. Tragedy of the commons can and will happen if you don't tie profit to research. I could understand if research companies earned patents then sold them to the manufacturer with the highest bid, but otherwise I do not know how separating the functions will keep the now-separate industries both viable.
I understand it is a nice ideal, but I don't get all of these people saying industries need a new business model without suggesting one. If you want to argue that is the job of the business majors then you have the same weight as that business major telling you how to code that program or design that appliance. You might have a plausible idea but I'm saying I'll stick with the pay-per-copy method until I see a better idea that doesn't have gaping holes in it.
If I'm buying something at your sandwich shop and come up 2 cents short, you would be considered a jerk to tell me I don't get my sandwich. Something tells me that principle doesn't scale when I'm buying a car from you and I'm short $10k.
The time and effort to come up with a joke is small enough that most people don't think twice about giving it away- the same doesn't always hold true for large pieces of software or collections of original songs or other art. I'm assuming* a significant motivation for contributing free software is that people are trying to pay for their use of others' contributions past and future (i.e. they like the software)- I don't expect many people to spend time programming for free if it were a thankless job.
*I've never talked to people who contribute to free software so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
.99 cents on a song
I keep hearing about this version of iTunes but never can find it...
Unless you disagree with patents, I don't get the logic that just because you can copy mp3s easily it means the music industry needs to stop selling them. Otherwise you should argue big pharma should never sue generics that start selling before the patents are up- but we all know that would make medicine more costly as R+D earns less of a payoff. I agree copyright terms need to be brought back around where patents are, but otherwise I'm not following your logic. Non-generic medicine prices are only partially driven by manufacturing costs, and mostly R+D. Just because media is all "R+D" and almost zero manufacturing does not mean it should cost nothing.
If media companies can make money while piracy is allowed to continue uninhibited, I wouldn't have any problems with that. I'm just concerned that making it okay to pirate will greatly reduce the amount of quality media out there (I don't care about the change in low-quality media). Until I'm persuaded otherwise I'm defaulting to supporting the pay per copy model.
The measurements gathered by the SMOS probe can be used to track [...] soil moisture -- data that can be used to predict quickly drought and flood risk in certain areas
So when they measure that soil moisture is zero for a while, they can predict that a drought is going to have happened, and with soil moisture of about 6 feet of surface water, they can predict that flooding is going to have happened. Finally we should have a system more accurate than whatever those "meteorologists" use.
If you watch with other people, you can go get a drink, etc. without unnecessarily delaying the show for others. Also it makes for a nice chance to talk about the show without missing anything (or talk about whatever). Otherwise I agree- when watching something alone it is easier to just skip commercials altogether.
One thing to also remember is that changing the mechanics of the polling process does nothing to address [...] gerrymandering
In case anyone doubts gerrymandering still happens: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=IL&district=17 and http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=IL&district=4.
Any voting system will have risk due to human judges- this test will hopefully prove that electronic voting (on Brazilian machines) has no additional openings. If this works for Brazil, American companies have no excuse not to let us do the same to their machines (not that it will likely happen anyways). In any case this sounds great and I wish more governments would do things like this to prove trustworthiness rather than expect everyone to trust the government baselessly.
I'm at an engineering college where all students have to get a laptop freshman year- it comes with MS Office, Matlab and Maple among other programs. I never see students using a laptop to take notes unless the professor is doing Matlab or Maple code. I haven't seen students try tablets so I can't comment on that, but I see no problems with pencil and paper. I agree with others that transferring the notes later can help them sink in better, so there is no reason you can't do that.
We need to be taking our examples from better sources, so this calls for drastic measures before it is too late. We must declare war on Japan, then immediately surrender to them. They will have no choice but to occupy us to ensure a safe recovery from the war, especially with reconstruction. When the Japanese realize our horrible internet situation, they will declare a humanitarian emergency. This should secure us UN funding to upgrade our networks while ATT and Comcast have sanctions imposed against them. Problem solved.
I have no doubt the patent system is broken when "synonym" is an important part of a patent.
I propose the three strikes law three strikes law. A politician gets a strike for mentioning the three strikes law in a non-derisive manner, and gets banned from government after three strikes.