The point of Bluetooth is not to transfer gigabytes of data. The point of bluetooth is to be able to connect a headset to a cell phone while barely lowering the battery life. The point of bluetooth is to be able to have wireless headphones that can run on a small battery. Wifi direct will be great for printers and the like, but Bluetooth is not going anywhere.
Linux is probably not going to be officially supported by any school's IT department. However, that doesn't mean that they won't allow you to use a Linux computer. Of the 3 school networks I've used as a student (1 as undergrad, 1 for summer research, 1 for grad), all followed this rule (I graduated from undergrad 3 years ago). The least supported will be custom applications for scheduling/payroll/etc... But many of these are being moved to the web in a cross-platform environment (this is the case for my undergrad school). You may also have problems registering your computer. Very often, you can just call up the IT department and provide the MAC address. A bit annoying, but not difficult. Worst case, boot into Windows (or use VMware/VirtualBox) for anything that requires Windows.
You shouldn't need a VPN as a student. Most schools now proxy library connections. It's a bit annoying, but very easy. Wifi can be problematic since Linux sometimes has issues with WPA2 Enterprise connections. But it gets better every time I upgrade my Linux laptop and recently I've had as many problems with Macs as Linux for wireless support. I've had problems with printing because my undergrad institution used a custom Kerberos application to do it, but worst case print it as a PDF and use a flash disk at the library. Any classroom applications needed will usually be installed on lab computers and won't be something you can use on your own computer anyway.
In short, install VirtualBox/VMware in case she needs it, be a bit flexible, and don't worry about it.
But as others have said, this is the least of your worries. She should be picking a school based on everything else, not their support of Linux.
One problem with this is that contact lenses float on your eye and are not stationary. This is a serious problem, because to keep a constant orientation, you'll either need to constantly rotate any light emitters to stay in the same place (probably not possible), or weight the contact lens as is currently done with astigmatic lenses (not a great solution).
Apart from this, contact lenses tear, break, get lost, etc... At the moment, my soft lenses cost $5 apiece. If one tears, gets lost, or something else equally destructive, it's not a problem. If the same lens cost $1000, that would be a much bigger problem. And I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. If you make the lenses soft, they'll degrade quickly (as current soft lenses do). If you make them hard, then they will fall, get scratched, and the like over the long term.
US cellular service is actually not too difficult to understand. CDMA is technologically superior to TDMA. It provides better call quality. The original GSM was based on TDMA (UMTS is, in fact, CDMA). In the US, where the government decided to let companies develop their own networks, AT&T and Verizon became the two dominant carriers (I'm ignoring a lot of the history here).
AT&T used to be TDMA (I'm guessing because it was an easy upgrade from AMPS). They then switched to GSM, but because the European frequencies were in use here, they used different frequencies. AT&T is continuing on the GSM upgrade path.
VZW deployed a technologically superior CDMA network. Since most Americans don't travel between countries all that much, it's not really a major problem. The upgrade path for CDMA was much easier than switching everyone from CDMA to GSM. So Verizon continued to use that path to EV-DO.
4G would require a massive hardware upgrade regardless of what network the carriers were using originally, so VZW is pushing LTE (the 4G GSM standard). LTE will likely use VoIP for voice calls, so within a decade, most of the US should be on the same system as Europe.
Basically, the point is that there's a good logical explanation for the network progression in the US. It doesn't help that AT&T has poor network coverage, customer service, and just about everything (except phones). VZW's obsession with locking out consumers is annoying, but most of the people who care about this can get around many of these limitations, and the rest don't care.
This is why you save the receipts. Usually the receipts have a space #, purchase time, and length of time purchased. Keep them around for a month or two. If someone did this and you get a ticket, you should have ample proof that the ticket is invalid. If the ticket is not immediately discarded, sue.
Quite frankly, if the Government is going to mandate insurance, then it should also offer a base insurance program, at cost. Just one that covers the minimum insurance levels. If you want more, then you can buy more from an insurance company.
No, please no. Or at least, raise the insurance requirements in California first. The current requirements are 15/30/5 (one person injury/more than one person injury/property damage). In today's world, that covers nothing. In a serious accident, today's average car won't be paid for with that, nor will anyone's medical expenses be covered. With government provided insurance, we'd have even fewer people having higher coverage limits. They don't need to be 100/300/100 (like I have), but they need to be much higher than the current requirements. Liability coverage isn't that expensive is you're a good driver, and if you're not a good driver, you shouldn't be on the road.
Cornell University actually did this exact thing to cool a good chunk of the campus. It's called lake source cooling. While there will of course be some environmental impact, the energy usage is 20% of normal chillers and thus is, I'm sure, an environmental net gain.
Get me some coverage in Yosemite. Death Valley. Appalachia. Crater Lake. Yellowstone. Shasta. Mt. McKinley. Grand Canyon. From Blaine, WA to Miami, FL. San Diego, CA to Eastport, ME. Cover it all and let us get on with really living in this great big country of ours.
No. Please no more coverage in Yosemite or death valley or any other part of the "great outdoors". I go to these places to get away from everything - not to listen to some stupid idiot blabbering away on his cell phone. The only legitimate use of cell phones in parks is emergencies. The only way I'd be in agreement with cell phone companies providing coverage in national parks/forests is if they charge $100/minute for calls except 911, which would be routed to the local ranger station. They can even do a 50/50 split with the NPS - win-win-win situation for the NPS, cell phone companies, and the public.
This may work great for southern California, Florida, and the like, but what about places like New York? Sure, you'll lower the temperature in the summer, but you'll also lower the temperature in the winter. How will that effect carbon emissions from the need to heat more?
There's a difference between an earache and something not simple to diagnose and cure. That's kind of like trying to get (in the spirit of/. car analogies) the guy at the local oil change place to figure out why the air conditioner isn't working all the time. Sure, maybe he'll get it right, but most likely you'll need someone more specialized. In the UK, the answer would be "well, the A/C still works half the time, so you don't really have a problem."
As for my friend, I'm sure he had bad symptoms, but I don't know how he told the doctor of them. There's a difference between cancer and respiratory issues due to smoke. Quite frankly, I become nauseous around people who smoke as well, and specifically avoid them. It's not that uncommon of a problem. The doctor acknowledged he had problems, couldn't figure out what was going on, but couldn't do anything either. As to why he didn't move immediately, this was a flat issued to him by the university he's a student at as part of his pay for being a hall tutor. They couldn't really understand the concept that someone might not be very happy in a flat that smells of smoke.
As for private health services, I really don't know the UK system. My friend is a grad student there and doesn't exactly have money to throw around. And as a comparison, I'm a grad student (in the US) and if I need to see a specialist, my school's health insurance will cover it without any problems. I don't even need a referral from anyone - just pay the $20 copay. The same policy here applies to international students.
YEAH! Like universal health care, and an end to the 35% of health care expenditure that goes to parasite insurance companies! WOOT!
I was never for universal health care, and the experiences of a friend of mine who has been in England for a year have only made me more against it. Sure, England has a universal health care system. But when my friend started having health problems (most likely due to his flat having been inhabited by a smoker before him), the doctors there were absolutely no use. He had difficulty breathing and other symptoms, which the general practitioners he saw couldn't figure out. When he asked to be sent to a specialist, the request was denied because he hadn't experienced anaphylactic shock yet. In other words, if you're not near death, you can't see someone who can actually help you. And since it's the national government's rules and plan, you can't exactly ignore it.
Universal health care is a great idea in theory, and a horrible one in practice. Do I think our system is great? No. But neither is any other system I've seen. I, personally, don't believe health care is a right - it's something you need to earn. And if you don't earn it, then you shouldn't have it. Granted, I think we need a better system than we have right now (maybe start with affordable health care for children and those recently unemployed), but universal health care managed by the government is not what we need.
So when Intel and AMD couldn't increase the speed of their processors any more, they decided to introduce dual core chips. Does this mean that Microsoft has decided they couldn't slow down computers any more with Windows 7 and is now planning on shipping a dual OS system to ensure slow performance?
Our national labs are filled with nothing but bureaucracy and useless political management. There's no sense of urgency, there's no focused direction.
I can't speak for the manned program, but I am loosely affiliated with a NASA unmanned mission (I'm a grad student). The major problem is lack of funding. Sure, NASA gets some money, but the competition for it is so intense that everyone suffers. Missions take decades from conception to launch and are doomed to failure as lack of money forces cost cutting that delays the mission.
The horrible thing is that the amount of money it takes to design, develop, build, launch, and operate a flagship mission over a 10-20 year period is a few billion dollars - almost nothing for the government. But that money is not available because no one outside of the scientific community cares (since reality TV or celebrity gossip is so much more interesting). And if the population doesn't care, the government won't fund it besides token support. The only reason the US is still better than any other country at exploring space is because the politics of other countries are even worse.
But no, I'm definitely not bitter that the mission I'm working on, which was conceived in the 90's and had most of its technology developed in the 2000's, may, if the government budget gods look favorably on us, launch in the 2020's. Then it'll collect the data it needs to for a few years, eventually shut down, and the whole cycle will repeat. It might even happen that the successor will launch before I die. And no, this is not the only mission that has worked like this.
It's hard to believe nobody saw this coming. Hey, let's create a massive amount of food in the ocean and let it sink to the bottom. Did they think the ocean dwellers were just going to let it be for the sake of science or something?
Actually, yes they did. Not that I really expect anyone to read the article. But if you do, you'll find the following:
The grazing effect had not been seen in previous fertilisation experiments. These had caused blooms of diatoms, a type of phytoplankton that is protected against grazers by a hard shell of silica. But the Lohafex experiment did not trigger a diatom bloom because there was little silicic acid available in the water for diatoms to build their shells from.
Thus, as you can see, the idea was that phytoplankton that is protected from such grazers was supposed to have grown. But it didn't, and that's why the experiment didn't produce the expected results.
From this press release this appears to have only 60 electrodes (and I assume only grayscale). This is definitely remarkable progress, but still nowhere close to achieving a bionic eye that can come even close to rivaling the real human eye.
The question they're also answering (besides how well does this work) is how well can the brain interpret simple images into more complex images that would allow someone to get by in life. That may be as interesting, if not more interesting, than the actual experiment with the device.
NASA probably has a good idea. Published estimates were likely wrong on purpose from the start to give them the opportunity for more media coverage and subsequently budget opportunities.
Not exactly. Estimates are based on worst case scenarios. What would have been the public's reaction if NASA had said that the rovers would last 1 year but they only lasted 6 months? NASA guidelines require that when something is supposed to last x months/years, then it's engineered such that it will last that long, no matter what. Specifying mission requirements is actually a tricky problem for the scientists on a mission because you want the most possible science that fits within a budget and that will last for as long as you say it will last. And usually the only way to convince NASA that something will last is if you add in backup systems. With new, expensive technology this becomes even harder.
So yes, the rovers were conservatively estimated to last 3 months. I'm sure the scientists on the mission expected that they would last longer, but 3 months was a good benchmark that provided a good amount of science for a reasonable cost. Everything else has just been icing on the cake (and in this case, a lot of icing). Personally, I think they did a great job and cannot fault them at all.
(I am a grad student working on a NASA mission and have seen a bit of how this process works)
I wish that more software would default to 587 instead of 25. For example, Thunderbird doesn't even mention the possibility of 587 as a "default" port, which really needs to be changed.
In any case, it's good to see the change to 587 become more widespread and hopefully it will eventually become the default port for sending messages (along with encryption + authentication), while 25 will be reserved exclusively for server-to-server communication.
Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Dude! Way to totally reverse priorities. Did it occur to you that maybe she's the one with the high-paying job, and all that groveling got him better hardware than he could have bought if his was the only income?
Should it matter? In my opinion, if you're married, then it doesn't matter who makes the money, you're in it together. By that reasoning, should a parent who stays home with the children not be able to buy anything at all since they don't earn anything? Granted, I think that any major purchase or decision should be made together, and a $1k purchase is usually considered major, but one person shouldn't be begging the other for anything. That kind of relationship is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone.
"As we move towards digital photography, the limitations of the format are going to become apparent as the technology progresses to the point where today's 16MP shots simply don't have enough detail to compete with 8x10 sheets of Kodachrome."
Except that digital photography can and does compete with film quality. The film photographers I know do not dispute that, they have moved on to claiming that there are things that can be done to photographs with film that cannot be done digitally; while they are correct, the techniques they describe are not common needed, and are not technologically impossible with a digital camera.
Sure, digital has replaced 35mm. And yes, it's wonderful to use. But there is no way that a Canon 5D Mark II can compete with even medium format film, let alone 4x5 sheet film. Nor will a camera with the 5D's size ever be able to. Now, if they had shot the portrait on a professional medium format digital camera with 50 MP resolution (these camera's aren't that expensive anymore), that might have been nice. But there is no way that a 5D MkII will ever rival the quality of medium/large format film. And the fact that they're shooting the presidential portrait on a 35mm equivalent camera is sad, considering that it's not uncommon for portraits to be done on at least medium format.
I think this would be amazing for law enforcement sketches. Instead of having to ask a witness what the person looked like, they could just copy it out of their visual cortex. No, it wouldn't be perfect, and it wouldn't be acceptable in court as proof someone was there (since you can just imagine your worst enemy in the place of the actual person), but it would help with sketches for wanted posters and the like. Especially if it was cheap and easy.
The article hints at the possibility of bringing back other species, but doesn't elaborate. We have museum specimens of other extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, and ivory-billed woodpecker, and those are certainly much more recent (all 3 species went extinct within the last century). Doesn't this open up the possibility of bringing back a few of these species, too?
My understanding is that current cloning techniques (essentially what this will be except for the addition of DNA reconstruction) are only for mammals since they basically implant the cell into a surrogate mother. I don't think one can do this for a bird's egg.
For General Relativity, the standard undergrad book is Hartle's Gravity. But since you're a math PhD, you can go straight to the finest first grad level Relativity book by Sean Carroll: Spacetime and Geometry
For a math PhD, I'd go with Wald's General Relativity instead. Much more math oriented than Carroll's. Carroll's book is a good overview of GR, but not quite as broad as Gravitation (by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler) or as deep as Wald's. Gravitation is an excellent reference, but it's definitely written from more of a physics point of view than Wald. Hartle is a great intro at a more basic level than Carroll, but even more physically oriented than Carroll.
Kip Thorne does not use any book to teach his GR classes at Caltech (which I've taken). He relies primarily on MTW though with plenty of references to newer papers, Wald, and sometimes Carroll.
Now, personally, I see no reason why T-Mobile would care whether you're running Android or Debian. Google might care because they want you running those nice Android apps which interface with Google because that's how they're paying for Android development. But I'm not sure that they have any kind of agreement which would require the makers of the G1 to make sure that the phones are tamper-proof.
I doubt even Google will care. How many people will actually install Debian on a G1? How many people will actually install it and keep it on there? I doubt even 0.1% of users will do either. But these are also the people who will praise Google for an open platform and for not locking it up like the iPhone. They're also the people who'll probably create apps for Android that bypass Google. Will Google notice the drop in revenue? Probably not, and certainly not enough to offset the bad PR.
Obama may be the Messiah and all (but I personally doubt he's going to be able to do anything, not that McCain would have), but I'm a lot more worried about propositions. As a relatively new resident of California, I got my first taste of proposition fever, where stupid people vote on complicated issues like spending billions of tax dollars on emotional issues. It's rather sad in my opinion.
But specifically, I think there's two propositions that are more important and, in fact, belong on the ballot since they're either asking a fundamental question or doing something the legislature would never in a million years do. First, there's prop 8 which is, amazingly enough, passing and will ban gay marriage. Not totally unexpected, but not not really expected either.
Second, there's prop 11, which would have moved redistricting from the state legislature to a separate, bi-partisan, non-political committee and is supported by just about every newspaper in the state and most politicians except Nancy Pelosi and many, but not all, other Democrats. The solution is not perfect, but I finally found out last night why people are against it. And the reason is that Democrats believe that they will lose seats in the state government and in the House. Now, I am a libertarian and registered Republican, but I support such measures in all states, including California and Texas. The fact that Democrats are essentially being anti-democratic on this is simply pathetic, and I still have hopes that it will pass (it's leading by 1% currently). If you want to see what it'll prevent, see Wikipedia's entry on Gerrymandering.
I'm personally a libertarian, but one of the few things I think the government should be spending money on is education and scientific research. Education is an investment in the future. If we raise the level of education in this country, encourage students to like learning, and really progress we will remain a superpower, if only because we will dominate technology and science in the world.
We need to pay teachers a competitive wage to get the really bright people interested in being teachers. And we need to give them the resources to really inspire the next generation. A good teacher can make the difference in someone's life. We also need to fund programs to give smarter children access to the resources they need to jump to the next level, not just keep them with the average person. And we need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator - the slowest person in a class should not be dragging everyone else down.
For college, we should be paying students who do well and who aren't going into high paying careers like Wall Street or lawyers. If you offer someone the ability to go to the top private schools for free if they later become a teacher or scientist a lot more people will do that. Higher up, we should be paying more money to graduate students, postdocs, and scientists. Only the most dedicated stay in the field when you get paid so little (disclaimer: I am a graduate student in astrophysics right now, and I've seen plenty of people leave for higher paying jobs in other fields after finishing).
And instead of welfare, we should be getting people educated so that they can work in a more demanding job. I would much rather pay $50,000 for someone to get a college degree and then start working at a good wage then pay someone $20,000 as welfare.
How can I justify this based on my libertarian leanings? Because it's an investment. If the government funds someone's education and it costs $100,000, but then that person is able to make $150k/year instead of $50k, the government will get it's money back in a matter of years. Hopefully there will be fewer criminals because more people will be interested in working instead of doing nothing. Obviously money won't solve everything, but it will be a good start and personally I would much rather see the money currently being spent on social programs invested in the future, not in the present.
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The point of Bluetooth is not to transfer gigabytes of data. The point of bluetooth is to be able to connect a headset to a cell phone while barely lowering the battery life. The point of bluetooth is to be able to have wireless headphones that can run on a small battery. Wifi direct will be great for printers and the like, but Bluetooth is not going anywhere.
Linux is probably not going to be officially supported by any school's IT department. However, that doesn't mean that they won't allow you to use a Linux computer. Of the 3 school networks I've used as a student (1 as undergrad, 1 for summer research, 1 for grad), all followed this rule (I graduated from undergrad 3 years ago). The least supported will be custom applications for scheduling/payroll/etc... But many of these are being moved to the web in a cross-platform environment (this is the case for my undergrad school). You may also have problems registering your computer. Very often, you can just call up the IT department and provide the MAC address. A bit annoying, but not difficult. Worst case, boot into Windows (or use VMware/VirtualBox) for anything that requires Windows.
You shouldn't need a VPN as a student. Most schools now proxy library connections. It's a bit annoying, but very easy. Wifi can be problematic since Linux sometimes has issues with WPA2 Enterprise connections. But it gets better every time I upgrade my Linux laptop and recently I've had as many problems with Macs as Linux for wireless support. I've had problems with printing because my undergrad institution used a custom Kerberos application to do it, but worst case print it as a PDF and use a flash disk at the library. Any classroom applications needed will usually be installed on lab computers and won't be something you can use on your own computer anyway.
In short, install VirtualBox/VMware in case she needs it, be a bit flexible, and don't worry about it.
But as others have said, this is the least of your worries. She should be picking a school based on everything else, not their support of Linux.
One problem with this is that contact lenses float on your eye and are not stationary. This is a serious problem, because to keep a constant orientation, you'll either need to constantly rotate any light emitters to stay in the same place (probably not possible), or weight the contact lens as is currently done with astigmatic lenses (not a great solution).
Apart from this, contact lenses tear, break, get lost, etc... At the moment, my soft lenses cost $5 apiece. If one tears, gets lost, or something else equally destructive, it's not a problem. If the same lens cost $1000, that would be a much bigger problem. And I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. If you make the lenses soft, they'll degrade quickly (as current soft lenses do). If you make them hard, then they will fall, get scratched, and the like over the long term.
US cellular service is actually not too difficult to understand. CDMA is technologically superior to TDMA. It provides better call quality. The original GSM was based on TDMA (UMTS is, in fact, CDMA). In the US, where the government decided to let companies develop their own networks, AT&T and Verizon became the two dominant carriers (I'm ignoring a lot of the history here).
AT&T used to be TDMA (I'm guessing because it was an easy upgrade from AMPS). They then switched to GSM, but because the European frequencies were in use here, they used different frequencies. AT&T is continuing on the GSM upgrade path.
VZW deployed a technologically superior CDMA network. Since most Americans don't travel between countries all that much, it's not really a major problem. The upgrade path for CDMA was much easier than switching everyone from CDMA to GSM. So Verizon continued to use that path to EV-DO.
4G would require a massive hardware upgrade regardless of what network the carriers were using originally, so VZW is pushing LTE (the 4G GSM standard). LTE will likely use VoIP for voice calls, so within a decade, most of the US should be on the same system as Europe.
Basically, the point is that there's a good logical explanation for the network progression in the US. It doesn't help that AT&T has poor network coverage, customer service, and just about everything (except phones). VZW's obsession with locking out consumers is annoying, but most of the people who care about this can get around many of these limitations, and the rest don't care.
This is why you save the receipts. Usually the receipts have a space #, purchase time, and length of time purchased. Keep them around for a month or two. If someone did this and you get a ticket, you should have ample proof that the ticket is invalid. If the ticket is not immediately discarded, sue.
Quite frankly, if the Government is going to mandate insurance, then it should also offer a base insurance program, at cost.
Just one that covers the minimum insurance levels. If you want more, then you can buy more from an insurance company.
No, please no. Or at least, raise the insurance requirements in California first. The current requirements are 15/30/5 (one person injury/more than one person injury/property damage). In today's world, that covers nothing. In a serious accident, today's average car won't be paid for with that, nor will anyone's medical expenses be covered. With government provided insurance, we'd have even fewer people having higher coverage limits. They don't need to be 100/300/100 (like I have), but they need to be much higher than the current requirements. Liability coverage isn't that expensive is you're a good driver, and if you're not a good driver, you shouldn't be on the road.
Cornell University actually did this exact thing to cool a good chunk of the campus. It's called lake source cooling. While there will of course be some environmental impact, the energy usage is 20% of normal chillers and thus is, I'm sure, an environmental net gain.
Get me some coverage in Yosemite. Death Valley. Appalachia. Crater Lake. Yellowstone. Shasta. Mt. McKinley. Grand Canyon. From Blaine, WA to Miami, FL. San Diego, CA to Eastport, ME. Cover it all and let us get on with really living in this great big country of ours.
No. Please no more coverage in Yosemite or death valley or any other part of the "great outdoors". I go to these places to get away from everything - not to listen to some stupid idiot blabbering away on his cell phone. The only legitimate use of cell phones in parks is emergencies. The only way I'd be in agreement with cell phone companies providing coverage in national parks/forests is if they charge $100/minute for calls except 911, which would be routed to the local ranger station. They can even do a 50/50 split with the NPS - win-win-win situation for the NPS, cell phone companies, and the public.
This may work great for southern California, Florida, and the like, but what about places like New York? Sure, you'll lower the temperature in the summer, but you'll also lower the temperature in the winter. How will that effect carbon emissions from the need to heat more?
There's a difference between an earache and something not simple to diagnose and cure. That's kind of like trying to get (in the spirit of /. car analogies) the guy at the local oil change place to figure out why the air conditioner isn't working all the time. Sure, maybe he'll get it right, but most likely you'll need someone more specialized. In the UK, the answer would be "well, the A/C still works half the time, so you don't really have a problem."
As for my friend, I'm sure he had bad symptoms, but I don't know how he told the doctor of them. There's a difference between cancer and respiratory issues due to smoke. Quite frankly, I become nauseous around people who smoke as well, and specifically avoid them. It's not that uncommon of a problem. The doctor acknowledged he had problems, couldn't figure out what was going on, but couldn't do anything either. As to why he didn't move immediately, this was a flat issued to him by the university he's a student at as part of his pay for being a hall tutor. They couldn't really understand the concept that someone might not be very happy in a flat that smells of smoke.
As for private health services, I really don't know the UK system. My friend is a grad student there and doesn't exactly have money to throw around. And as a comparison, I'm a grad student (in the US) and if I need to see a specialist, my school's health insurance will cover it without any problems. I don't even need a referral from anyone - just pay the $20 copay. The same policy here applies to international students.
YEAH! Like universal health care, and an end to the 35% of health care expenditure that goes to parasite insurance companies! WOOT!
I was never for universal health care, and the experiences of a friend of mine who has been in England for a year have only made me more against it. Sure, England has a universal health care system. But when my friend started having health problems (most likely due to his flat having been inhabited by a smoker before him), the doctors there were absolutely no use. He had difficulty breathing and other symptoms, which the general practitioners he saw couldn't figure out. When he asked to be sent to a specialist, the request was denied because he hadn't experienced anaphylactic shock yet. In other words, if you're not near death, you can't see someone who can actually help you. And since it's the national government's rules and plan, you can't exactly ignore it.
Universal health care is a great idea in theory, and a horrible one in practice. Do I think our system is great? No. But neither is any other system I've seen. I, personally, don't believe health care is a right - it's something you need to earn. And if you don't earn it, then you shouldn't have it. Granted, I think we need a better system than we have right now (maybe start with affordable health care for children and those recently unemployed), but universal health care managed by the government is not what we need.
So when Intel and AMD couldn't increase the speed of their processors any more, they decided to introduce dual core chips. Does this mean that Microsoft has decided they couldn't slow down computers any more with Windows 7 and is now planning on shipping a dual OS system to ensure slow performance?
Our national labs are filled with nothing but bureaucracy and useless political management. There's no sense of urgency, there's no focused direction.
I can't speak for the manned program, but I am loosely affiliated with a NASA unmanned mission (I'm a grad student). The major problem is lack of funding. Sure, NASA gets some money, but the competition for it is so intense that everyone suffers. Missions take decades from conception to launch and are doomed to failure as lack of money forces cost cutting that delays the mission.
The horrible thing is that the amount of money it takes to design, develop, build, launch, and operate a flagship mission over a 10-20 year period is a few billion dollars - almost nothing for the government. But that money is not available because no one outside of the scientific community cares (since reality TV or celebrity gossip is so much more interesting). And if the population doesn't care, the government won't fund it besides token support. The only reason the US is still better than any other country at exploring space is because the politics of other countries are even worse.
But no, I'm definitely not bitter that the mission I'm working on, which was conceived in the 90's and had most of its technology developed in the 2000's, may, if the government budget gods look favorably on us, launch in the 2020's. Then it'll collect the data it needs to for a few years, eventually shut down, and the whole cycle will repeat. It might even happen that the successor will launch before I die. And no, this is not the only mission that has worked like this.
It's hard to believe nobody saw this coming. Hey, let's create a massive amount of food in the ocean and let it sink to the bottom. Did they think the ocean dwellers were just going to let it be for the sake of science or something?
Actually, yes they did. Not that I really expect anyone to read the article. But if you do, you'll find the following:
The grazing effect had not been seen in previous fertilisation experiments. These had caused blooms of diatoms, a type of phytoplankton that is protected against grazers by a hard shell of silica. But the Lohafex experiment did not trigger a diatom bloom because there was little silicic acid available in the water for diatoms to build their shells from.
Thus, as you can see, the idea was that phytoplankton that is protected from such grazers was supposed to have grown. But it didn't, and that's why the experiment didn't produce the expected results.
From this press release this appears to have only 60 electrodes (and I assume only grayscale). This is definitely remarkable progress, but still nowhere close to achieving a bionic eye that can come even close to rivaling the real human eye.
The question they're also answering (besides how well does this work) is how well can the brain interpret simple images into more complex images that would allow someone to get by in life. That may be as interesting, if not more interesting, than the actual experiment with the device.
NASA probably has a good idea. Published estimates were likely wrong on purpose from the start to give them the opportunity for more media coverage and subsequently budget opportunities.
Not exactly. Estimates are based on worst case scenarios. What would have been the public's reaction if NASA had said that the rovers would last 1 year but they only lasted 6 months? NASA guidelines require that when something is supposed to last x months/years, then it's engineered such that it will last that long, no matter what. Specifying mission requirements is actually a tricky problem for the scientists on a mission because you want the most possible science that fits within a budget and that will last for as long as you say it will last. And usually the only way to convince NASA that something will last is if you add in backup systems. With new, expensive technology this becomes even harder.
So yes, the rovers were conservatively estimated to last 3 months. I'm sure the scientists on the mission expected that they would last longer, but 3 months was a good benchmark that provided a good amount of science for a reasonable cost. Everything else has just been icing on the cake (and in this case, a lot of icing). Personally, I think they did a great job and cannot fault them at all.
(I am a grad student working on a NASA mission and have seen a bit of how this process works)
I wish that more software would default to 587 instead of 25. For example, Thunderbird doesn't even mention the possibility of 587 as a "default" port, which really needs to be changed.
In any case, it's good to see the change to 587 become more widespread and hopefully it will eventually become the default port for sending messages (along with encryption + authentication), while 25 will be reserved exclusively for server-to-server communication.
Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Dude! Way to totally reverse priorities. Did it occur to you that maybe she's the one with the high-paying job, and all that groveling got him better hardware than he could have bought if his was the only income?
Should it matter? In my opinion, if you're married, then it doesn't matter who makes the money, you're in it together. By that reasoning, should a parent who stays home with the children not be able to buy anything at all since they don't earn anything? Granted, I think that any major purchase or decision should be made together, and a $1k purchase is usually considered major, but one person shouldn't be begging the other for anything. That kind of relationship is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone.
"As we move towards digital photography, the limitations of the format are going to become apparent as the technology progresses to the point where today's 16MP shots simply don't have enough detail to compete with 8x10 sheets of Kodachrome."
Except that digital photography can and does compete with film quality. The film photographers I know do not dispute that, they have moved on to claiming that there are things that can be done to photographs with film that cannot be done digitally; while they are correct, the techniques they describe are not common needed, and are not technologically impossible with a digital camera.
Sure, digital has replaced 35mm. And yes, it's wonderful to use. But there is no way that a Canon 5D Mark II can compete with even medium format film, let alone 4x5 sheet film. Nor will a camera with the 5D's size ever be able to. Now, if they had shot the portrait on a professional medium format digital camera with 50 MP resolution (these camera's aren't that expensive anymore), that might have been nice. But there is no way that a 5D MkII will ever rival the quality of medium/large format film. And the fact that they're shooting the presidential portrait on a 35mm equivalent camera is sad, considering that it's not uncommon for portraits to be done on at least medium format.
I think this would be amazing for law enforcement sketches. Instead of having to ask a witness what the person looked like, they could just copy it out of their visual cortex. No, it wouldn't be perfect, and it wouldn't be acceptable in court as proof someone was there (since you can just imagine your worst enemy in the place of the actual person), but it would help with sketches for wanted posters and the like. Especially if it was cheap and easy.
The article hints at the possibility of bringing back other species, but doesn't elaborate. We have museum specimens of other extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, and ivory-billed woodpecker, and those are certainly much more recent (all 3 species went extinct within the last century). Doesn't this open up the possibility of bringing back a few of these species, too?
My understanding is that current cloning techniques (essentially what this will be except for the addition of DNA reconstruction) are only for mammals since they basically implant the cell into a surrogate mother. I don't think one can do this for a bird's egg.
For General Relativity, the standard undergrad book is Hartle's Gravity. But since you're a math PhD, you can go straight to the finest first grad level Relativity book by Sean Carroll: Spacetime and Geometry
For a math PhD, I'd go with Wald's General Relativity instead. Much more math oriented than Carroll's. Carroll's book is a good overview of GR, but not quite as broad as Gravitation (by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler) or as deep as Wald's. Gravitation is an excellent reference, but it's definitely written from more of a physics point of view than Wald. Hartle is a great intro at a more basic level than Carroll, but even more physically oriented than Carroll.
Kip Thorne does not use any book to teach his GR classes at Caltech (which I've taken). He relies primarily on MTW though with plenty of references to newer papers, Wald, and sometimes Carroll.
Now, personally, I see no reason why T-Mobile would care whether you're running Android or Debian. Google might care because they want you running those nice Android apps which interface with Google because that's how they're paying for Android development. But I'm not sure that they have any kind of agreement which would require the makers of the G1 to make sure that the phones are tamper-proof.
I doubt even Google will care. How many people will actually install Debian on a G1? How many people will actually install it and keep it on there? I doubt even 0.1% of users will do either. But these are also the people who will praise Google for an open platform and for not locking it up like the iPhone. They're also the people who'll probably create apps for Android that bypass Google. Will Google notice the drop in revenue? Probably not, and certainly not enough to offset the bad PR.
Obama may be the Messiah and all (but I personally doubt he's going to be able to do anything, not that McCain would have), but I'm a lot more worried about propositions. As a relatively new resident of California, I got my first taste of proposition fever, where stupid people vote on complicated issues like spending billions of tax dollars on emotional issues. It's rather sad in my opinion.
But specifically, I think there's two propositions that are more important and, in fact, belong on the ballot since they're either asking a fundamental question or doing something the legislature would never in a million years do. First, there's prop 8 which is, amazingly enough, passing and will ban gay marriage. Not totally unexpected, but not not really expected either.
Second, there's prop 11, which would have moved redistricting from the state legislature to a separate, bi-partisan, non-political committee and is supported by just about every newspaper in the state and most politicians except Nancy Pelosi and many, but not all, other Democrats. The solution is not perfect, but I finally found out last night why people are against it. And the reason is that Democrats believe that they will lose seats in the state government and in the House. Now, I am a libertarian and registered Republican, but I support such measures in all states, including California and Texas. The fact that Democrats are essentially being anti-democratic on this is simply pathetic, and I still have hopes that it will pass (it's leading by 1% currently). If you want to see what it'll prevent, see Wikipedia's entry on Gerrymandering.
I'm personally a libertarian, but one of the few things I think the government should be spending money on is education and scientific research. Education is an investment in the future. If we raise the level of education in this country, encourage students to like learning, and really progress we will remain a superpower, if only because we will dominate technology and science in the world.
We need to pay teachers a competitive wage to get the really bright people interested in being teachers. And we need to give them the resources to really inspire the next generation. A good teacher can make the difference in someone's life. We also need to fund programs to give smarter children access to the resources they need to jump to the next level, not just keep them with the average person. And we need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator - the slowest person in a class should not be dragging everyone else down.
For college, we should be paying students who do well and who aren't going into high paying careers like Wall Street or lawyers. If you offer someone the ability to go to the top private schools for free if they later become a teacher or scientist a lot more people will do that. Higher up, we should be paying more money to graduate students, postdocs, and scientists. Only the most dedicated stay in the field when you get paid so little (disclaimer: I am a graduate student in astrophysics right now, and I've seen plenty of people leave for higher paying jobs in other fields after finishing).
And instead of welfare, we should be getting people educated so that they can work in a more demanding job. I would much rather pay $50,000 for someone to get a college degree and then start working at a good wage then pay someone $20,000 as welfare.
How can I justify this based on my libertarian leanings? Because it's an investment. If the government funds someone's education and it costs $100,000, but then that person is able to make $150k/year instead of $50k, the government will get it's money back in a matter of years. Hopefully there will be fewer criminals because more people will be interested in working instead of doing nothing. Obviously money won't solve everything, but it will be a good start and personally I would much rather see the money currently being spent on social programs invested in the future, not in the present.