That's why the DECT band was set aside. The 1.9 GHz band is reserved exclusively for voice communication, and as such doesn't overlap wireless networks, baby monitors, etc.
No, I don't know why baby monitor makers haven't interpreted "voice communications" to cover baby monitors. Maybe the FCC ruled it doesn't count until they can speak a language?
Vehicle registration is fixed whether you drive one mile or a million miles. Fuel surcharges are effectively reduced with better fuel efficiency, while the increase in traffic is roughly fixed, per vehicle. That said, some brief research does indicate you are right; highway funding appears to derive at least 50% from road related taxes.
Despite that, you're still ignoring the larger part of the argument: In many large cities, if not for the people who take public transit, driving would be impossible. Having a small amount of your taxes subsidizing public transit is good for you, whether or not you use it.
What about *useful* time? Driving, you're not doing anything but driving (I'm assuming you're not one of those idiots that checks e-mail while driving). Take public transit and you can read, work (possibly offline) even get some exercise if you walk part of the way.
Your roads are subsidized too you know. Should I demand back every tax dollar I pay that would go to roads? Shall we install meters on everyone's car and charge them $X/mile to repair the damage they do?
And if everyone dropped public transit in NYC and drove to work, traffic would triple, parking would double in price, and the air would become unbreathable (okay, mild exaggeration, but I suspect asthma rates would skyrocket).
Every penny you pay that subsidizes public transit makes it more pleasant for you to drive. I wouldn't complain.
Just because public transit takes longer doesn't mean it's automatically a waste of time. I used to work a job where my choice was a 40 minute drive (in bad traffic, it could double, but that was fairly uncommon) or a 120 minute bus/subway commute (never varied by more than 10 minutes). While public transit took longer, I never considered those 120 minutes to be wasted. I read a novel a day for months.
I view it as wasting 80 minutes a day doing nothing but driving, vs. using every second "productively".
The web is changing - full of in-browser videos, web apps, and other resource intensive content, and firefox has had trouble catching up.
Of course, with add-ons to Firefox like Adblock Plus, FlashBlock and NoScript, all that crap becomes Opt-In. Aside from occasional problems with the Java plugin (which I need for a specific site), I've never felt that Firefox was slowing me down. Chrome felt slower despite handling JavaScript faster, because it had to run the JavaScript, period.
Carbon-14 testing is calibrated against other, trusted external indicators. One example is counting tree rings in trees in the vicinity of the sample.
In this case it is actually simpler. Since the test is only verifying that the carbon-14 level is does not exhibit a spike caused by nuclear testing, it doesn't need full calibration. If the carbon-14 level is extraordinarily high, then it's post-1945, if not, then it's pre-1945. I don't think they are currently verifying exact ages.
On a side note, while bullet matching is unreliable for a number of reasons, DNA testing is not nearly so unreliable as you posit. Granted, initial tests were less reliable, but they get more and more accurate every year. Yes, they do exhibit false matches, and corroborating evidence should be required for a conviction, but they are extremely useful for ruling out suspects that might otherwise be prosecuted.
In practice though, virtually no company is engaged in privately funded R&D right now. Long term investment doesn't happen, because a quick buck from existing technologies, or patents on trivial things, is a lot better for the immediate bottom line. Ideally, the research paid for by the government ought to be available, unencumbered by patents, to anyone, since it is a benefit paid for with public dollars. Much like we all benefit from roads, military protection, police and fire departments, we all benefit from the fruits of government sponsored research, and private investment cannot replace that source of funding.
Eliminate income tax and replace it with voluntary program where people can donate a share of their income to be used for purposes of their choice and if they want to fund science fine, if they don't then they accept the risk that they and their children will be living in a country that is lagging behind in science. What is wrong with that?
If I pay for this research, then everyone gets the benefits. If someone else pays for it, then everyone still gets the benefits. But what if everyone waits for someone else to pay for it?
Bettery yet, why not take x number of ships, create a convoy that is protected by x number of war ships from different nations and run them through? Each nation gets it's chance to be the flag ship so that eveyone gets the credit..
Addressing only this point, shipping businesses have decided that the opportunity cost of waiting until enough ships are loaded to form a convoy is greater than the probability of an attach multiplied by the expected cost of a ransom. The problem is roughly the same one that afflicted the housing and derivatives market. They look at the short term costs "possible ransom cost < convoy cost" and ignore the long term problems like "incentivizing piracy".
These pirates generally aren't ideological extremists; they do this because it's one of the few financially viable job options in Somalia. And it's only viable because accountants don't consider psychology when assessing costs.
Damn. It's already trickier to hold the Wiimote exactly on target for multiple aimed shots (as opposed to analogs, where the initial aiming is more difficult, but keeping the target steady is effortless). Imagine if you also have to do calculus problems in your head to fire...
So there's a training curve. You think people wouldn't spend a little time teaching the machine to read them so they could avoid manual labor? I know it didn't work so well with early speech recognition, but then, the payoff for finishing the training was less impressive.
As TFA notes, they've already had some success with using more targeted "mind reading" implants to enable full body paralysis patients to control wheelchairs, check e-mail, turn lights on and off, etc. By approaching this from two angles, one where they get full function, but are highly invasive, and another with limited function, but non-invasive, they may end up finding a happy medium.
Modern medicine (in the sense of heavily evidence based trials) has been moving at the same speed as computing. Don't write off this technology just because the initial steps are so small. The home PC was arguably introduced with Pong, this isn't so different.
Apparently they perform more or less efficiently depending on how well you are able to "concentrate". TFA notes that lawyers and others in jobs that require a lot of multitasking can't control the ball nearly as well. Single minded types, (e.g. copy editors and IT) tend to do it rather well. I imagine ADHD is a problem for it.
On the other hand, there is some evidence that behavioral therapy can mitigate ADHD symptoms. Perhaps this "toy" could be therapeutic for users; by incentivizing concentration and providing real time feedback, it might be a form of self-therapy.
Isn't the justification for outrageous movie theater concession prices the fact that the studios collect some absurd percentage of the ticket price from them, requiring the theaters to make their profit elsewhere? I've heard 90% or so of each ticket goes direct to the studio, admittedly I don't have an authoritative source. If so, then the gross for the studio is still well above the costs.
Around here (Midtown Manhattan), matinee has been redefined from "before 5 PM" to "before noon". And on weekdays, they almost never show movies before noon. I discovered this when I went to see Watchmen on a Monday, and discovered that for a group of three, the tickets alone (no tax, no concessions) would be $48.
Even at matinee prices, it would have come to $30. Granted, it was IMAX, and space for an IMAX theater is hard to come by in Manhattan, but it's still outrageous. Buying the DVD (at whatever store first offers a decent sale price) would be $15, with infinite viewings for as many people as fit in my apartment. One single viewing on a larger screen runs 2-3 times that. Alternatively, for the same price I could buy a one-at-a-time NetFlix subscription for 5 months, and watch a movie a week (~22-24 movies). Something is out of whack on the economics.
I used to wonder why I stopped seeing movies in theaters. Between the cost and the fact that New Yorkers seem to have a problem with carrying on loud conversations mid-movie, I'm reminded why. I have a 40" TV and surround sound speakers; the incremental improvement of the theater is barely worth it.
Wait, I thought the achievement was for posting in the original Achievement April Fools thread? Not that it matters,/. was useless even before the achievement spamming.
Hate English speakers? I'm somewhat doubtful. Disliking particular ethnicities or nationalities, of course. Disliking people because of a language they speak, a language that is the official language and/or the primary spoken language of dozens of countries (you'd be surprised how many African countries have it as one of their official languages), seems a bit unlikely.
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That's why the DECT band was set aside. The 1.9 GHz band is reserved exclusively for voice communication, and as such doesn't overlap wireless networks, baby monitors, etc.
No, I don't know why baby monitor makers haven't interpreted "voice communications" to cover baby monitors. Maybe the FCC ruled it doesn't count until they can speak a language?
Vehicle registration is fixed whether you drive one mile or a million miles. Fuel surcharges are effectively reduced with better fuel efficiency, while the increase in traffic is roughly fixed, per vehicle. That said, some brief research does indicate you are right; highway funding appears to derive at least 50% from road related taxes.
Despite that, you're still ignoring the larger part of the argument: In many large cities, if not for the people who take public transit, driving would be impossible. Having a small amount of your taxes subsidizing public transit is good for you, whether or not you use it.
What about *useful* time? Driving, you're not doing anything but driving (I'm assuming you're not one of those idiots that checks e-mail while driving). Take public transit and you can read, work (possibly offline) even get some exercise if you walk part of the way.
Your roads are subsidized too you know. Should I demand back every tax dollar I pay that would go to roads? Shall we install meters on everyone's car and charge them $X/mile to repair the damage they do?
And if everyone dropped public transit in NYC and drove to work, traffic would triple, parking would double in price, and the air would become unbreathable (okay, mild exaggeration, but I suspect asthma rates would skyrocket).
Every penny you pay that subsidizes public transit makes it more pleasant for you to drive. I wouldn't complain.
Just because public transit takes longer doesn't mean it's automatically a waste of time. I used to work a job where my choice was a 40 minute drive (in bad traffic, it could double, but that was fairly uncommon) or a 120 minute bus/subway commute (never varied by more than 10 minutes). While public transit took longer, I never considered those 120 minutes to be wasted. I read a novel a day for months.
I view it as wasting 80 minutes a day doing nothing but driving, vs. using every second "productively".
The web is changing - full of in-browser videos, web apps, and other resource intensive content, and firefox has had trouble catching up.
Of course, with add-ons to Firefox like Adblock Plus, FlashBlock and NoScript, all that crap becomes Opt-In. Aside from occasional problems with the Java plugin (which I need for a specific site), I've never felt that Firefox was slowing me down. Chrome felt slower despite handling JavaScript faster, because it had to run the JavaScript, period.
Carbon-14 testing is calibrated against other, trusted external indicators. One example is counting tree rings in trees in the vicinity of the sample.
In this case it is actually simpler. Since the test is only verifying that the carbon-14 level is does not exhibit a spike caused by nuclear testing, it doesn't need full calibration. If the carbon-14 level is extraordinarily high, then it's post-1945, if not, then it's pre-1945. I don't think they are currently verifying exact ages.
On a side note, while bullet matching is unreliable for a number of reasons, DNA testing is not nearly so unreliable as you posit. Granted, initial tests were less reliable, but they get more and more accurate every year. Yes, they do exhibit false matches, and corroborating evidence should be required for a conviction, but they are extremely useful for ruling out suspects that might otherwise be prosecuted.
Specter didn't run last year, so your point is irrelevant.
In practice though, virtually no company is engaged in privately funded R&D right now. Long term investment doesn't happen, because a quick buck from existing technologies, or patents on trivial things, is a lot better for the immediate bottom line. Ideally, the research paid for by the government ought to be available, unencumbered by patents, to anyone, since it is a benefit paid for with public dollars. Much like we all benefit from roads, military protection, police and fire departments, we all benefit from the fruits of government sponsored research, and private investment cannot replace that source of funding.
Eliminate income tax and replace it with voluntary program where people can donate a share of their income to be used for purposes of their choice and if they want to fund science fine, if they don't then they accept the risk that they and their children will be living in a country that is lagging behind in science. What is wrong with that?
If I pay for this research, then everyone gets the benefits. If someone else pays for it, then everyone still gets the benefits. But what if everyone waits for someone else to pay for it?
Bettery yet, why not take x number of ships, create a convoy that is protected by x number of war ships from different nations and run them through? Each nation gets it's chance to be the flag ship so that eveyone gets the credit. .
Addressing only this point, shipping businesses have decided that the opportunity cost of waiting until enough ships are loaded to form a convoy is greater than the probability of an attach multiplied by the expected cost of a ransom. The problem is roughly the same one that afflicted the housing and derivatives market. They look at the short term costs "possible ransom cost < convoy cost" and ignore the long term problems like "incentivizing piracy".
These pirates generally aren't ideological extremists; they do this because it's one of the few financially viable job options in Somalia. And it's only viable because accountants don't consider psychology when assessing costs.
Damn. It's already trickier to hold the Wiimote exactly on target for multiple aimed shots (as opposed to analogs, where the initial aiming is more difficult, but keeping the target steady is effortless). Imagine if you also have to do calculus problems in your head to fire...
So there's a training curve. You think people wouldn't spend a little time teaching the machine to read them so they could avoid manual labor? I know it didn't work so well with early speech recognition, but then, the payoff for finishing the training was less impressive.
As TFA notes, they've already had some success with using more targeted "mind reading" implants to enable full body paralysis patients to control wheelchairs, check e-mail, turn lights on and off, etc. By approaching this from two angles, one where they get full function, but are highly invasive, and another with limited function, but non-invasive, they may end up finding a happy medium.
Modern medicine (in the sense of heavily evidence based trials) has been moving at the same speed as computing. Don't write off this technology just because the initial steps are so small. The home PC was arguably introduced with Pong, this isn't so different.
Apparently they perform more or less efficiently depending on how well you are able to "concentrate". TFA notes that lawyers and others in jobs that require a lot of multitasking can't control the ball nearly as well. Single minded types, (e.g. copy editors and IT) tend to do it rather well. I imagine ADHD is a problem for it.
On the other hand, there is some evidence that behavioral therapy can mitigate ADHD symptoms. Perhaps this "toy" could be therapeutic for users; by incentivizing concentration and providing real time feedback, it might be a form of self-therapy.
What part of the tags "bluepenis" and "bigbluepenis" makes you think this wasn't the porn version? ;-)
Isn't the justification for outrageous movie theater concession prices the fact that the studios collect some absurd percentage of the ticket price from them, requiring the theaters to make their profit elsewhere? I've heard 90% or so of each ticket goes direct to the studio, admittedly I don't have an authoritative source. If so, then the gross for the studio is still well above the costs.
Around here (Midtown Manhattan), matinee has been redefined from "before 5 PM" to "before noon". And on weekdays, they almost never show movies before noon. I discovered this when I went to see Watchmen on a Monday, and discovered that for a group of three, the tickets alone (no tax, no concessions) would be $48.
Even at matinee prices, it would have come to $30. Granted, it was IMAX, and space for an IMAX theater is hard to come by in Manhattan, but it's still outrageous. Buying the DVD (at whatever store first offers a decent sale price) would be $15, with infinite viewings for as many people as fit in my apartment. One single viewing on a larger screen runs 2-3 times that. Alternatively, for the same price I could buy a one-at-a-time NetFlix subscription for 5 months, and watch a movie a week (~22-24 movies). Something is out of whack on the economics.
I used to wonder why I stopped seeing movies in theaters. Between the cost and the fact that New Yorkers seem to have a problem with carrying on loud conversations mid-movie, I'm reminded why. I have a 40" TV and surround sound speakers; the incremental improvement of the theater is barely worth it.
As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice. Given how much of the web is devoted to porn, why is anyone surprised that the best site for marketing prostitution is doing so well?
Note to sarcasm impaired: This is (mostly) a joke.
Dammit. Forgot the qualifier. It was useless *on April Fools*. It's only *mostly* useless on other days.
Wait, I thought the achievement was for posting in the original Achievement April Fools thread? Not that it matters, /. was useless even before the achievement spamming.
See the explanation here: http://slashdot.org/faq/accounts.shtml#ac1300
W00t. New achievement for me! Damn I feel lame.
Hate English speakers? I'm somewhat doubtful. Disliking particular ethnicities or nationalities, of course. Disliking people because of a language they speak, a language that is the official language and/or the primary spoken language of dozens of countries (you'd be surprised how many African countries have it as one of their official languages), seems a bit unlikely.
In particular, the wildly inconsistent grammar, that allows for fifty different ways to say the same thing, is a great first step in learning Perl.
It's up to you to guess if the product is to be used by men or women.
Well, I have this brand new product that increases the size of a body part which 95% of men would prefer larger. Perhaps I should inform people of it?