No one involved in a data center project is likely to be a large consumer of government services.
Sure they will be large consumers of government services. They will drive on the roads, they will receive protection from the police, they will sent their kids to school, they will visit the parks, they will use the state courts, they will eat the food inspected by the government. A person with a decent job will use as much of these particular services than people without jobs.
They are going to be net tax-payers. The only question is whether how much damage the government can do to them. This deal limits that damage somewhat.
The state government (in this case anyway) is the not enemy. It's providing necessary services used by everyone and begrudging them the money to do so effectively is short-sighted and destructive.
I'm sure there's plenty of waste, fraud and abuse, but most of it is not. The idea that "Government has become a wealth re-distribution scheme from people who produce to people who don't" is overblown bullshit. Most of the money is reasonably well spent, and there are plenty of people watching the government and how spends its money. And they aren't sitting around making fatuous statements in anti-government rants.
The difference is who benefits (in theory) from the money collected. Protection money goes to the individual threatening the business, and only to him. Nobody has a say in how that money is used.
Taxes by the state are spent for the benefit of the people, and the decisions are made by their representatives and those hired by the state.
Complaining that tax money is inefficiently spent (it is) or that there is corruption (there is) does not negate the fundamental difference between protection money and taxes.
1. Log as most of possible but do not forget if(LOG.isDebugEnabled()) {
LOG.debug(...) } In an enterprise application CPU is (should be) not the bottleneck but file IO, DB's and Network, so a simple if does not hurt your performance at all.
I have not found this to be particularly useful. The only time that this is beneficial is when the parameter being passed in the debug call includes something difficult or time consuming to create. Rarely is this the case. When it _is_ the case, you should use it, but otherwise, conserve your brackets.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "Hm...that's funny..." ~Isaac Asimov
the games don't cost that much, so here's a solution: have someone run a part of the several games and see what the framerates are. here's my go-to: tomshardware.com
Yes, maybe tom's hardware is being paid off by one of the makers. Then, their tests would be biased, which is why we need multiple testers. So, I have to compare it with anandtech.com. I suppose that they could be paid off by makers too.
I wish nations would finally grasp that an arms race is ultimately at best a zero sum game.
[snip]
And I just don't buy the "War is good for technology thing". It is funds that limit developement of whatever, not a sudden patriotic zeal in your scientists working harder for victory.
Ok then, military funding is good for technology. It might not be efficient or get you where you want to go in many areas, but it sure provides the research money in lots of areas. From the internet, to active optics, to computer hardware, to materials research (composites, single crystal fan blades), to weather, to neurobiology (my area), funding from the military has been vital.
You can argue that we should be funding the research directly, through say NSF, but the amounts wouldn't be nearly as much. Saying 'we need it for defending ourselves' works so much better for the politicians than 'we need it for understanding the world' or some other philosophical underlying reason. You can whine about how it just isn't fair or right, but it just doesn't work that way.
So, I'm happy with the military funding X-37/X-38/X-40.
This is because everybody and their dog has an opinion about ANWR, when the simple truth is that it's as much the business of Outsiders what Alaskans do with ANWR as it is Alaskan's business what development plans are in New York, Los Angeles, or Texas.
First, ANWR stands for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Note the 'National'. It is as much my business about what happens in ANWR as what happens in Yosemite or the Everglades (National Park). It belongs to all the people of the U.S., not just the people whose state the land is in. You have as much say in the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge as people in NY do.
Second, about the indictment being a 'political attack': Stevens either paid for his house reconstruction or he didn't. If he did not, then he either knew about it or not. I'd guess that he didn't pay for it but is too out of touch to know much about it one way or the other. The former CEO of VECO plead guilty to bribery charges, for heavens sake. But, I find it very hard for a Justice Department run by Republicans for the last ~8 years to indict a Republican Senator without a really good reason, and that reason is not political attack.
Mexico is not part of the USA. Both are separate countries, both are located in North America, where that's defined as part of the North American continent or the continental plate.
Istanbul is in the country of Turkey, and is the largest city in Europe. What counts as 'Europe'? It's a traditional geopolitical continental boundary, though it's part of the Eurasian landmass and continental plate. Most of Turkey is considered part of Asia. Wikipedia: "Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country in Western Asia (UN region) and Southern Europe. However the population and area figures include the entire state, both the European and Asian portions."
This is the whole point isn't it. The old 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' (Sagan, boy, I miss him).
At the least, he needs to give details that could be either verified or corroborated in some way. Just saying 'we have them' and 'Roswell is real' does not do anybody any good. If he claims that he has knowledge of something like their anatomy, he should tell us exactly how he knows that their anatomy is like that.
Specific events could be something along the lines of "Col. Green from Special Command gave us a brief on this day prior to liftoff. The brief covered X. Also present were astronauts Y and Z." Being briefed on aliens, or viewing aliens, or some similar event would leave such an indelible mark in his memory that he should be able to tell you everything about the event. I remember where I was when I saw the Challenger explode. I remember where I was on 9/11. If I was briefed on aliens, I'd remember it so well I could reproduce it almost verbatim. Absent this sort of information, I call bullshit.
I can believe time travel before I believe faster than light travel.
We are, actually, much closer to FTL travel than we are to time travel. You can't travel faster than light through the fabric of spacetime, but, as we all know, that fabric isn't flat. If you can change the shape (as large objects do), then you can effectively get from point A to point B faster than light could by taking the normal route. See:
It's completely theoretical, and requires extra dimensions, and we have no chance of doing anything with it any time soon. But, that's farther than we are with time travel.
Free speech in Europe? Try promoting Nazism in Germany. Try denying that the Holocaust happened in Austria. Try insulting Ataturk in Turkey (okay, let's not argue whether or not Turkey is in Europe).
Earlier in this discussion, we have people concerned about the flight dynamics, controllability, number of SRB's, etc. The Ares I-X will test these things, won't it?
Maybe I'm wrong, but to me this does not seem to be a boondoggle or publicity stunt. It's a reasonable stepping stone in the project.
You are absolutely correct, which is why the printable solar panels is so important, and economies of scale are so important.
Nanosolar is expecting (hoping) to produce them at ~$1/W. That's more important than the efficiency IMHO because there's more land than money. If given the option between a 10% efficient panel at $1/W or a 20% efficient panel at $3/W, then it makes more sense to buy the less efficient panel and use 2 times as much of it.
I totally agree with the parent. Writing code on the whiteboard makes no sense; we ask our interviewees to put up the architecture of their latest app, and maybe some UML stuff, DB stuff, but not code.
For coding, we have a computer that has pretty much every IDE that you could want. Yes, it has emacs (though it wouldn't have your.emacs on it; bonus points for editing that on the fly), but also has netbeans, and eclipse, and Intellij, and notepad and a couple others too. If you say you use something else, we'll install it, buying it if needed.
The important thing is that if you are a coder, you need to be able to code; and you can do it in whatever tool you want. But if you can't easily use your own choice of tool, you're SOL.
2) The government will not (or at least should not) magically pull $2 billion dollars out of thin air. It would probably take the bureaucrats months to allocate that funding. Pickens already put down the money.
The government (i.e. the U.S. taypayers) will be paying for it as well. Pickens is counting on tax incentives, or the whole thing isn't going to work for him economically. And a large part of the advertisements that he is producing is to generate the public interest in making sure that those tax-credits happen.
I think that it's great that Pickens is doing this. I agree philosophically with him, but it's going to cost us all money, not just him; and I think it's probably worth it.
I am appalled at the acrimonious nature of so many posts when a subject like this comes up. Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
No, Darwinism can be questioned. I, and other scientists, openly welcome questions. Maybe you'd like to pose some in a scientific context, publish some results that indicate that something is wrong with evolutionary theory, and propose some alternative mechanism.
The problem is that 'intelligent design' (ID), as such' does not do the above. It is little more than saying 'we don't think evolution works, so God did it'; that's a bit of unfair paraphrasing, but get's the gist. What published results indicate that evolutionary theory is incorrect? I'll wait..... Oh, none? That's what I thought. No, popular books don't count.
The typical creationist response to such a challenge (show us the published results) is that the journals would not publish their results. But, it would be nice if they actually tried.
From a science standpoint, ID doesn't exist beyond saying 'God did it'. Here's another challenge: What happened and when? You don't have to be exact, but some idea of what happened. Pick your favorite designed mechanism (Behe likes the blood clotting system and the flagellum, for example) and tell me what ID says happened. Be as broad as you want, beyond saying 'God did it'. I'll wait....
There are questions that Darwinism cannot answer. Intelligent Design is about a search for the answers to those questions. Intelligent design theory does not say that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution.
Please tell me what it does say, beyond 'evolution doesn't work' and 'God did it'. I could be wrong and have missed it, but my reading of the ID literature entirely omits proposing anything and claiming victory by default.
Many things are very complex. A pile of sand is complex, for instance. And a pile of sand might evolve if more sand were dumped on the pile every day. What separates one type of complexity (such as a pile of sand) from another type of complexity (such as a living organism) is that one type seems to require some kind of intelligence. In that respect, the universe and a good book seem to have more in common than a sand pile has to either of them.
Wonderful. Now propose a positive history of the universe that includes intelligent design, or for some part of the universe, that we can consider. (Yes, we'll do our best to disprove it, but that's science for you)
I would love to see a more in-depth analysis that supports this. Here's what I see: Europe becoming more and more secular, but their population is dropping; the middle east and far east (esp. Indonesia) becoming more and more fanatical, but their population is increasing, with lots of immigration to the rest of the world.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I think that the defenders of the light are losing, especially in the U.S.
Also, the article says that the wording itself is not unconstitutional, but:
Political analyst Clancy DuBos said the legislations wording may keep it from being challenged legally, but depending on how school systems use it, it could be challenged in its application.
While this might seem like a good idea in the short run, it's a really bad idea in the long run. Those students will vote; those students will become politicians; those students will become business people that she has to work with. Their lack of education, close-mindedness, and (likely) fundamentalism mean that her life will be far worse off.
Further, the lack of science education has a dire effect on the long term viability of the U.S. economy and technological progress. Yesterday, there was a/. article on NASA and lots of hand-wringing about how we can't keep up with China and Russia. That's the result of poor education; don't support it, even if it makes you (or your daughter) look good for a little while.
The bad news, from my point of view, is that Jindal is considered in the running for VP under McCain. While I have a lot of respect for McCain and would consider voting for him to keep Congress and the White House out of control of the same party, there is now absolutely no way that I could vote for McCain if Jindal is on the ballot with him.
I simply cannot consider voting for someone who supports defacing education.
Slashdot Mirror
No one involved in a data center project is likely to be a large consumer of government services.
Sure they will be large consumers of government services. They will drive on the roads, they will receive protection from the police, they will sent their kids to school, they will visit the parks, they will use the state courts, they will eat the food inspected by the government. A person with a decent job will use as much of these particular services than people without jobs.
They are going to be net tax-payers. The only question is whether how much damage the government can do to them. This deal limits that damage somewhat.
The state government (in this case anyway) is the not enemy. It's providing necessary services used by everyone and begrudging them the money to do so effectively is short-sighted and destructive.
Yes, there are parasites that live off government money, but they are not where most of the money goes. Where you live might be different, but I live in Virginia. Take a look at the budget: http://dpb.virginia.gov/budget/faq.cfm or try http://dpb.virginia.gov/budget/vabud/vabud.cfm?vBiennium=2008-2010&vTable=O
I'm sure there's plenty of waste, fraud and abuse, but most of it is not. The idea that "Government has become a wealth re-distribution scheme from people who produce to people who don't" is overblown bullshit. Most of the money is reasonably well spent, and there are plenty of people watching the government and how spends its money. And they aren't sitting around making fatuous statements in anti-government rants.
Not even close.
The difference is who benefits (in theory) from the money collected. Protection money goes to the individual threatening the business, and only to him. Nobody has a say in how that money is used.
Taxes by the state are spent for the benefit of the people, and the decisions are made by their representatives and those hired by the state.
Complaining that tax money is inefficiently spent (it is) or that there is corruption (there is) does not negate the fundamental difference between protection money and taxes.
And you're a dick.
1. Log as most of possible but do not forget
if(LOG.isDebugEnabled()) {
LOG.debug(...)
}
In an enterprise application CPU is (should be) not the bottleneck but file IO, DB's and Network, so a simple if does not hurt your performance at all.
I have not found this to be particularly useful. The only time that this is beneficial is when the parameter being passed in the debug call includes something difficult or time consuming to create. Rarely is this the case. When it _is_ the case, you should use it, but otherwise, conserve your brackets.
I'd add:
6. When you throw an exception, log it.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "Hm...that's funny..." ~Isaac Asimov
the games don't cost that much, so here's a solution: have someone run a part of the several games and see what the framerates are. here's my go-to: tomshardware.com
Yes, maybe tom's hardware is being paid off by one of the makers. Then, their tests would be biased, which is why we need multiple testers. So, I have to compare it with anandtech.com. I suppose that they could be paid off by makers too.
I wish nations would finally grasp that an arms race is ultimately at best a zero sum game.
[snip]
And I just don't buy the "War is good for technology thing". It is funds that limit developement of whatever, not a sudden patriotic zeal in your scientists working harder for victory.
Ok then, military funding is good for technology. It might not be efficient or get you where you want to go in many areas, but it sure provides the research money in lots of areas. From the internet, to active optics, to computer hardware, to materials research (composites, single crystal fan blades), to weather, to neurobiology (my area), funding from the military has been vital.
You can argue that we should be funding the research directly, through say NSF, but the amounts wouldn't be nearly as much. Saying 'we need it for defending ourselves' works so much better for the politicians than 'we need it for understanding the world' or some other philosophical underlying reason. You can whine about how it just isn't fair or right, but it just doesn't work that way.
So, I'm happy with the military funding X-37/X-38/X-40.
This is because everybody and their dog has an opinion about ANWR, when the simple truth is that it's as much the business of Outsiders what Alaskans do with ANWR as it is Alaskan's business what development plans are in New York, Los Angeles, or Texas.
First, ANWR stands for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Note the 'National'. It is as much my business about what happens in ANWR as what happens in Yosemite or the Everglades (National Park). It belongs to all the people of the U.S., not just the people whose state the land is in. You have as much say in the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge as people in NY do.
Second, about the indictment being a 'political attack': Stevens either paid for his house reconstruction or he didn't. If he did not, then he either knew about it or not. I'd guess that he didn't pay for it but is too out of touch to know much about it one way or the other. The former CEO of VECO plead guilty to bribery charges, for heavens sake. But, I find it very hard for a Justice Department run by Republicans for the last ~8 years to indict a Republican Senator without a really good reason, and that reason is not political attack.
OMFG. Why are geeks such freakin' pedants?!
Several reasons.
1. We're anti-social AND competitive (intellectually anyway), so we want to show we're better.
2. Precision matters when you are programming a computer, and this overflows into what counts as RL for us.
I know I should not rise to this bait.
Mexico is not part of the USA. Both are separate countries, both are located in North America, where that's defined as part of the North American continent or the continental plate.
Istanbul is in the country of Turkey, and is the largest city in Europe. What counts as 'Europe'? It's a traditional geopolitical continental boundary, though it's part of the Eurasian landmass and continental plate. Most of Turkey is considered part of Asia. Wikipedia: "Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country in Western Asia (UN region) and Southern Europe. However the population and area figures include the entire state, both the European and Asian portions."
Ah....and me with no mod points.
This is the whole point isn't it. The old 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' (Sagan, boy, I miss him).
At the least, he needs to give details that could be either verified or corroborated in some way. Just saying 'we have them' and 'Roswell is real' does not do anybody any good. If he claims that he has knowledge of something like their anatomy, he should tell us exactly how he knows that their anatomy is like that.
Specific events could be something along the lines of "Col. Green from Special Command gave us a brief on this day prior to liftoff. The brief covered X. Also present were astronauts Y and Z." Being briefed on aliens, or viewing aliens, or some similar event would leave such an indelible mark in his memory that he should be able to tell you everything about the event. I remember where I was when I saw the Challenger explode. I remember where I was on 9/11. If I was briefed on aliens, I'd remember it so well I could reproduce it almost verbatim. Absent this sort of information, I call bullshit.
I can believe time travel before I believe faster than light travel.
We are, actually, much closer to FTL travel than we are to time travel. You can't travel faster than light through the fabric of spacetime, but, as we all know, that fabric isn't flat. If you can change the shape (as large objects do), then you can effectively get from point A to point B faster than light could by taking the normal route. See:
http://arxivblog.com/?p=523 or
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/physicists-do-t.html
It's completely theoretical, and requires extra dimensions, and we have no chance of doing anything with it any time soon. But, that's farther than we are with time travel.
Free speech in Europe? Try promoting Nazism in Germany. Try denying that the Holocaust happened in Austria. Try insulting Ataturk in Turkey (okay, let's not argue whether or not Turkey is in Europe).
Free speech is more free in the U.S.
The funny (sad/scary) thing is that the same sort of logic is used seriously in other places:
-- The USA flew planes into the World Trade Center to start a war (as if a reason was necessary)
-- Atmospheric scientists are faking the climate change data to get more funding for atmospheric sciences
Wait a minute.
Earlier in this discussion, we have people concerned about the flight dynamics, controllability, number of SRB's, etc. The Ares I-X will test these things, won't it?
Maybe I'm wrong, but to me this does not seem to be a boondoggle or publicity stunt. It's a reasonable stepping stone in the project.
You are absolutely correct, which is why the printable solar panels is so important, and economies of scale are so important.
Nanosolar is expecting (hoping) to produce them at ~$1/W. That's more important than the efficiency IMHO because there's more land than money. If given the option between a 10% efficient panel at $1/W or a 20% efficient panel at $3/W, then it makes more sense to buy the less efficient panel and use 2 times as much of it.
I totally agree with the parent. Writing code on the whiteboard makes no sense; we ask our interviewees to put up the architecture of their latest app, and maybe some UML stuff, DB stuff, but not code.
For coding, we have a computer that has pretty much every IDE that you could want. Yes, it has emacs (though it wouldn't have your .emacs on it; bonus points for editing that on the fly), but also has netbeans, and eclipse, and Intellij, and notepad and a couple others too. If you say you use something else, we'll install it, buying it if needed.
The important thing is that if you are a coder, you need to be able to code; and you can do it in whatever tool you want. But if you can't easily use your own choice of tool, you're SOL.
2) The government will not (or at least should not) magically pull $2 billion dollars out of thin air. It would probably take the bureaucrats months to allocate that funding. Pickens already put down the money.
The government (i.e. the U.S. taypayers) will be paying for it as well. Pickens is counting on tax incentives, or the whole thing isn't going to work for him economically. And a large part of the advertisements that he is producing is to generate the public interest in making sure that those tax-credits happen.
I think that it's great that Pickens is doing this. I agree philosophically with him, but it's going to cost us all money, not just him; and I think it's probably worth it.
EESTOR? Yeah, right.
A123 is a better bet; you can get them now.
Nevada solar one: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Nevada+Solar+One,+NV&ie=UTF8&ll=35.799402,-114.973984&spn=0.032336,0.051327&t=h&z=15
but it was under construction at the time of the pix.
For the love of God, someone with available points please mod up parent.
I am appalled at the acrimonious nature of so many posts when a subject like this comes up. Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
No, Darwinism can be questioned. I, and other scientists, openly welcome questions. Maybe you'd like to pose some in a scientific context, publish some results that indicate that something is wrong with evolutionary theory, and propose some alternative mechanism.
The problem is that 'intelligent design' (ID), as such' does not do the above. It is little more than saying 'we don't think evolution works, so God did it'; that's a bit of unfair paraphrasing, but get's the gist. What published results indicate that evolutionary theory is incorrect? I'll wait..... Oh, none? That's what I thought. No, popular books don't count.
The typical creationist response to such a challenge (show us the published results) is that the journals would not publish their results. But, it would be nice if they actually tried.
From a science standpoint, ID doesn't exist beyond saying 'God did it'. Here's another challenge: What happened and when? You don't have to be exact, but some idea of what happened. Pick your favorite designed mechanism (Behe likes the blood clotting system and the flagellum, for example) and tell me what ID says happened. Be as broad as you want, beyond saying 'God did it'. I'll wait....
There are questions that Darwinism cannot answer. Intelligent Design is about a search for the answers to those questions. Intelligent design theory does not say that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution.
Please tell me what it does say, beyond 'evolution doesn't work' and 'God did it'. I could be wrong and have missed it, but my reading of the ID literature entirely omits proposing anything and claiming victory by default.
Many things are very complex. A pile of sand is complex, for instance. And a pile of sand might evolve if more sand were dumped on the pile every day. What separates one type of complexity (such as a pile of sand) from another type of complexity (such as a living organism) is that one type seems to require some kind of intelligence. In that respect, the universe and a good book seem to have more in common than a sand pile has to either of them.
Wonderful. Now propose a positive history of the universe that includes intelligent design, or for some part of the universe, that we can consider. (Yes, we'll do our best to disprove it, but that's science for you)
I would love to see a more in-depth analysis that supports this. Here's what I see: Europe becoming more and more secular, but their population is dropping; the middle east and far east (esp. Indonesia) becoming more and more fanatical, but their population is increasing, with lots of immigration to the rest of the world.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I think that the defenders of the light are losing, especially in the U.S.
Lots of stupid things are constitutional.
Also, the article says that the wording itself is not unconstitutional, but:
Political analyst Clancy DuBos said the legislations wording may keep it from being challenged legally, but depending on how school systems use it, it could be challenged in its application.
While this might seem like a good idea in the short run, it's a really bad idea in the long run. Those students will vote; those students will become politicians; those students will become business people that she has to work with. Their lack of education, close-mindedness, and (likely) fundamentalism mean that her life will be far worse off.
Further, the lack of science education has a dire effect on the long term viability of the U.S. economy and technological progress. Yesterday, there was a /. article on NASA and lots of hand-wringing about how we can't keep up with China and Russia. That's the result of poor education; don't support it, even if it makes you (or your daughter) look good for a little while.
The bad news, from my point of view, is that Jindal is considered in the running for VP under McCain. While I have a lot of respect for McCain and would consider voting for him to keep Congress and the White House out of control of the same party, there is now absolutely no way that I could vote for McCain if Jindal is on the ballot with him.
I simply cannot consider voting for someone who supports defacing education.