No, the primary use case is "oh, this is nifty, let me play with it". The accuracy is nowhere near good enough for any measurement that actually matters.
The more interesting question is why would Twitter even have such information? Do you need to enter a credit card number to post more than 20 tweets a month or something?
Copyright holders aren't responsible when their bots screw up? Okay, fine, I can buy that. Programs do occasionally make mistakes. I don't get angry at Netflix for occasionally recommending Shindler's List based on my interest in Wall-E. But if content hosters have to pull down content when they receive a notice from a company holding the copyright, then there needs to be a way for the hoster to know if the company holds the copyright.
Media companies engaging in such scattershot tactics should therefore be required to host a database listing every copyright they own. That way if they send a takedown notice for video X to YouTube, someone at YouTube can check the video, check the database, and say "yep, that shouldn't be here" or "nope, this request must have been sent in error."
If they own the copyright but don't list it in their database, then it's their own damn fault if hosters don't pull it. If they don't own the copyright and but do list it in the database, then that can no longer be dismissed as just an error in their bot's algorithm, and they should be open to lawsuits from both sites receiving takedown notices and from the actual copyright holder.
Well, you can actually do most of that with Motorola's Droid X2 (and probably other Android phones). I've got a decently long HDMI cable laid out in my living room. One end in the TV, the other ending up near the couch. Plug it into the phone, enabling "mirror mode" -- everything on the phone's screen shows up on the TV in 720p -- and use the phone as a sort of remote. I also use a mini-speaker to get better sound quality than the built in speakers are capable of.
For Netflix, baseball, and football, I use the appropriate apps. For Amazon Instant Video, you have to navigate to the website (and tell it to use the full version), but you can then play the videos full screen and they work fine. Hulu Plus has an app, but I'm not a subscriber, and they won't let you play their free content on an Android. I doubt iTunes works, but I've never tried, so who knows?
It's not a tablet, so it can't replace your laptop, but hopefully there are some tablets out there with similar features. Honestly, these features would be better on a tablet, since it would mean you could take a phone call without interrupting the show for everyone else.
Have you ever actually tried to put a 3rd party book into a Kindle? You just plug it into your computer with the provided USB cable, drag the file over, and you're done.
Regardless, you are right that if you want a device to read reference books on, the Kindle (like all e-ink solutions) is a poor choice. Even with all the advancements they've made to speed page turns, it's still too slow to be a good reference book.
You don't need to give up your CC number (or any personal information) unless you are buying a game with your CC. How, exactly, do you think they should handle credit card purchases?
Liar. If you try to start Steam without an internet connection, it pops up a window with two options "Retry" and "Start in Offline Mode". You absolutely do not need to go into offline mode ahead of time. Did you really think no one would catch that lie?
Liar! If you had purchased the game outside of Steam, then you didn't enter ANY personal info into Steam - just a (throwaway) email address and a username/password. If you bought the game in Steam, then you had the option to pay in Paypal or to tell them not to store your info.
The only way you're at risk is if you: a) Chose to buy a game in Steam b) Chose to pay with a credit card c) Told Steam to remember your info
Are you on EA's payroll, or are you just so pathetic that you feel the need to make up lies with which to criticize video game companies you dislike?
You're seriously citing a Free Republic post and an American Spectator article called "EPA Jackboots" as sources? Rush Limbaugh is more reliable.
Oh, and that lovely conservative lie about Mr. Pozsgai is bunk. Here's the truth of what happened.
Mr. Pozsgai wanted to build a 12000 sq ft garage on some land near his business. He hired an engineer to survey the site. That engineer warned him that the site met the government's definition of wetlands, and he would need a permit before filling the land. He hired another engineer for a second opinion, and then a third. Each told him the same thing. Note that he had not yet bought the land. He could have just accepted the law at this point, and only been out the cost of the surveys.
Instead he purchased the site, negotiating a 20% discount because he wouldn't be able to build there. He then immediately began an illegal filling operation. The Army Corps of Engineers came out and warned him to stop, in writing and in person. He claimed that the site was already like that, and he had been fixing it. However, the Corps came out again the next month, and found even more landfill than before. They warned him to stop it, and gave him a cease and desist letter. They came out again the next month, and the month after that, each time finding more landfill and each time telling Mr. Pozsgai to cut it out. This went on for over a year, from April of 1987 to May of 1988.
In May of '88, witnesses living next door reported hundreds of dump trucks showing up to pour more landfill into the wetlands. The Army Corps of Engineers installed a video camera and captured footage of another 25 such dump trucks pooring landfill into the site, completely demolishing Mr. Pozsgai's claim that he was trying to clean up existing dumping. He was brought to trial, where he did not even bother to deny the dumping anymore. Instead, he claimed that since the phrase "wetlands" isn't explicitly mentioned in the Clean Water Act, wetlands must not count as water! This defense was understandably rejected, and he was sentenced to 3 years in a minimum security prison.
I take the bus whenever possible (average 1000 mi of driving per year), use energy efficient bulbs and appliances, turn off everything when its not in use, buy local food where possible, and got good insulation so I can turn down the heat in non-bedrooms during the night, never use AC in my house (don't even own one), and only use it in my car in short bursts to cool it down after it's been baking in the sun all day.
But all of that is nothing if we don't get political change as well.
The powers that profit from the status quo are devastatingly effective at propaganda. Nothing you change about your own lifestyle will make a difference if they convince a hundred million of your neighbors that you're just some stupid hippie to be laughed at and ignored.
1) Do you have any actual numbers to back up the notion that solar energy is worse for the environment than current technologies (coal, mostly)? 2) Even if you do, it's irrelevant, since my only point was the absurdity of thinking that "Big Solar" could somehow afford to buy off more scientists than the oil and coal industries. 3) Chemicals required in manufacture are completely unrelated to climate change. We don't make a habit of dumping them into the environment the way we do with CO2. 4) Climate has been hotter and colder. Yes, it was colder during the ice age, and hotter 4 billion years ago. Would you have liked to live in either of those time periods? The climate is changing. It is scientific fact that we have a hand in it. If it changes too much, many, many people will die. We should therefore attempt to prevent it from changing. This is really straightforward stuff.
There will be irreversible climate change. The corporate powers that profit from the status quo have more than enough money to continue confusing the issue for centuries to come. Short of a major catastrophe (i.e. millions dead in first world countries), nothing will ever break through the wall of propaganda to awaken the masses.
Cue deniers coming in to lie about how all the world's climatologists are in a conspiracy being funded by Big Solar or whatever.
Starting with the second, since it's incredibly bad... two thirds of the debt is owned by Americans. Businesses that want a safe investment lend money to the government because they know it will pay them back. The government takes this money and reinvests it, earning a higher rate of return than they pay in interest. Having a smaller debt would be nice, but no debt? That's the sort of thinking you get when you try to apply household economics to a nation of three hundred million people.
Requiring a 66% majority to raise taxes is also a bad idea. Firstly because even if you were to accept the idea that revenues should always go down, the proposed law wouldn't do that. You can't control the actions of future Congresses with a law, because they can just repeal that law. You would need a Constitutional amendment, and this is exactly the sort of micromanagement that shouldn't be in the Constitution. But even if such a law were possible, it would be harmful, because it encourages pork barrel spending. Now, when you reach a point that the government desperately needs more revenues, you have even more horse trading as you try to get a super-super-majority to agree on it. And guess how you win over reluctant congressmen?
The smart solution is to improve the efficiency of government spending, not to eliminate it. Businesses don't get healthier by slashing their budget to ribbons, but by eliminating waste while simultaneously investing in their future. A business that only ever cuts will go bankrupt. A government that only ever cuts will collapse.
It was first developed, to the best of my knowledge, jointly by researchers at RPI and Rice in Jan 2008. Here's their presentation and here's a link showing the date.
In fact, their material is ten times darker than the one apparently developed by NASA, with a reflectivity of 0.05% compared to NASA's 0.5%.
There are solutions to the regressiveness of sales taxes, but limiting them to non-essential goods isn't one. People will argue endlessly about what is and is not essential, and the people with the least political clout (i.e. the poor) will always lose.
A better solution is a flat government stipend to every man, woman, and child in the country, giving them an amount of money each week such that the bottom 20% get back more than they pay in, the next 20% roughly break even, and the remaining 60% pay more than they get back. You'd still need a millionaire's tax to keep the top 1% from making out like bandits, but the rest of the income tax brackets could be removed. This also has the benefit of discouraging illegal immigration without the racial undertones of Arizona's solution or the magical thinking of a border fence, since they obviously wouldn't get the stipend, but couldn't realistically avoid the tax.
Unfortunately, Democrats are (understandably) reflexively opposed to a flat tax, and Republicans would balk at the notion of the government mailing out checks on a regular basis.
Disclaimer: My one paragraph exposition is not intended as a complete solution. I'm sure there are plenty of problems that would need to be ironed out. That's why laws always end up being hundreds of pages long. It is intended only as a starting point for any serious discussion on a nationwide sales tax.
You realize that goods manufactured in China are also subject to this tax, right?
Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, sales taxes are regressive and therefore bad. On the other hand, if we're going to have sales taxes, it makes sense for them to hit nation-wide corporations just as hard as they hit the local mom-and-pop businesses. But under no circumstances can this be painted as benefiting Chinese businessmen. If anything, it harms them, because it will make cheap Chinese widgets that much more expensive, which means they'll sell fewer of them.
But once you build the fab, you have a fab. It makes money. It's an asset.
When you spend millions weeding out counterfeit parts in a given year, you're in the exact same spot next year. In fact, you're even worse off, because every year we spend manufacturing things overseas makes it that much harder to ever bring the jobs back home.
Put another way, the net present value of a fab is likely higher than the NPV of searching for counterfeits. But since when did corporate America ever care about long term benefits? Short term profits and padding your own bank account are all that matter. And in the short term, fabs are expensive.
There are still prodigies (I know one myself), but they run into other problems. First of all, there's more stuff to learn before you can start making contributions. You know the quote about standing on the shoulders of giants. What they don't tell you is that first you need to climb those shoulders, and they get taller every years.
More important though, is the fact that science doesn't pay. You can make a lot more money with a lot less effort going into finance, or business, or even engineering. I had a friend in college who finished his undergrad when he was 17, with a triple major in software, electrical, and computer hardware engineering. Needless to say, he's a smart guy. Had he put in the effort to get a doctorate and do some original research, he might have discovered the next big thing. Instead he started his own small business making some widget or another, and makes big time money. That's not a bad thing. It's good for him and his employees. But it's not good for science as a whole to lose such promising minds to better paying fields.
AP Physics comes in three flavors: A, B, and C. Type A is really, really basic and rarely offered. Type B is the most commonly offered one, intended to replace Phys 101 at college, and is calculus-free. Type C uses calculus, but it's divided into two halves (EM and Mechanics) making it more expensive to teach, plus it's obviously harder, so few students are offered it, and even fewer take it.
In the US, a lot of schools offer students the choice of whether they want to take physics with or without calc. Most students, predictably, take the easy option. Those students end up being woefully unprepared. Some smaller schools (such as my old high school) don't even offer the calc option, because not enough students sign up for it.
In my case, my graduating class had 80-something students, and only five of us signed up for calc-based physics. I lucked out in that our physics teacher took the time to tutor us in calc during study halls, so we weren't completely unprepared.
I think by "practical" the OP meant that the basic stuff is more hands-on and observable. Basic electric circuits are easy to explain with the popular "water flowing in pipes" analogies. Once you start talking about solid state physics, all of those analogies break down, and it becomes harder to wrap your mind around.
Oh, sure, every Phys 101 course will talk about quantum a bit. I though you were talking about a dedicated quantum course. Solving the classic "electron in an infinite square well" is only like week 1 in an actual quantum course. It doesn't get hard until you start digging deep into bra-ket notation and Hilbert spaces.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Claim reviews are trickling in
2. Only link to your own review, and repeat your own thoughts in the summary.
3. Profit.
No missing step required. MrSeb submits a link to a review written by someone named Sebastian. Coincidence? I think not.
No, the primary use case is "oh, this is nifty, let me play with it". The accuracy is nowhere near good enough for any measurement that actually matters.
The more interesting question is why would Twitter even have such information? Do you need to enter a credit card number to post more than 20 tweets a month or something?
Copyright holders aren't responsible when their bots screw up? Okay, fine, I can buy that. Programs do occasionally make mistakes. I don't get angry at Netflix for occasionally recommending Shindler's List based on my interest in Wall-E. But if content hosters have to pull down content when they receive a notice from a company holding the copyright, then there needs to be a way for the hoster to know if the company holds the copyright.
Media companies engaging in such scattershot tactics should therefore be required to host a database listing every copyright they own. That way if they send a takedown notice for video X to YouTube, someone at YouTube can check the video, check the database, and say "yep, that shouldn't be here" or "nope, this request must have been sent in error."
If they own the copyright but don't list it in their database, then it's their own damn fault if hosters don't pull it. If they don't own the copyright and but do list it in the database, then that can no longer be dismissed as just an error in their bot's algorithm, and they should be open to lawsuits from both sites receiving takedown notices and from the actual copyright holder.
Well, you can actually do most of that with Motorola's Droid X2 (and probably other Android phones). I've got a decently long HDMI cable laid out in my living room. One end in the TV, the other ending up near the couch. Plug it into the phone, enabling "mirror mode" -- everything on the phone's screen shows up on the TV in 720p -- and use the phone as a sort of remote. I also use a mini-speaker to get better sound quality than the built in speakers are capable of.
For Netflix, baseball, and football, I use the appropriate apps. For Amazon Instant Video, you have to navigate to the website (and tell it to use the full version), but you can then play the videos full screen and they work fine. Hulu Plus has an app, but I'm not a subscriber, and they won't let you play their free content on an Android. I doubt iTunes works, but I've never tried, so who knows?
It's not a tablet, so it can't replace your laptop, but hopefully there are some tablets out there with similar features. Honestly, these features would be better on a tablet, since it would mean you could take a phone call without interrupting the show for everyone else.
Have you ever actually tried to put a 3rd party book into a Kindle? You just plug it into your computer with the provided USB cable, drag the file over, and you're done.
Regardless, you are right that if you want a device to read reference books on, the Kindle (like all e-ink solutions) is a poor choice. Even with all the advancements they've made to speed page turns, it's still too slow to be a good reference book.
You don't need to give up your CC number (or any personal information) unless you are buying a game with your CC. How, exactly, do you think they should handle credit card purchases?
Liar. If you try to start Steam without an internet connection, it pops up a window with two options "Retry" and "Start in Offline Mode". You absolutely do not need to go into offline mode ahead of time. Did you really think no one would catch that lie?
Liar! If you had purchased the game outside of Steam, then you didn't enter ANY personal info into Steam - just a (throwaway) email address and a username/password. If you bought the game in Steam, then you had the option to pay in Paypal or to tell them not to store your info.
The only way you're at risk is if you:
a) Chose to buy a game in Steam
b) Chose to pay with a credit card
c) Told Steam to remember your info
Are you on EA's payroll, or are you just so pathetic that you feel the need to make up lies with which to criticize video game companies you dislike?
Nope. They may be overpaid swine, but Zynga still has no right to demand they give the money back.
Since the CEO and his buddies usually run the board of directors, this seems unlikely.
You're seriously citing a Free Republic post and an American Spectator article called "EPA Jackboots" as sources? Rush Limbaugh is more reliable.
Oh, and that lovely conservative lie about Mr. Pozsgai is bunk. Here's the truth of what happened.
Mr. Pozsgai wanted to build a 12000 sq ft garage on some land near his business. He hired an engineer to survey the site. That engineer warned him that the site met the government's definition of wetlands, and he would need a permit before filling the land. He hired another engineer for a second opinion, and then a third. Each told him the same thing. Note that he had not yet bought the land. He could have just accepted the law at this point, and only been out the cost of the surveys.
Instead he purchased the site, negotiating a 20% discount because he wouldn't be able to build there. He then immediately began an illegal filling operation. The Army Corps of Engineers came out and warned him to stop, in writing and in person. He claimed that the site was already like that, and he had been fixing it. However, the Corps came out again the next month, and found even more landfill than before. They warned him to stop it, and gave him a cease and desist letter. They came out again the next month, and the month after that, each time finding more landfill and each time telling Mr. Pozsgai to cut it out. This went on for over a year, from April of 1987 to May of 1988.
In May of '88, witnesses living next door reported hundreds of dump trucks showing up to pour more landfill into the wetlands. The Army Corps of Engineers installed a video camera and captured footage of another 25 such dump trucks pooring landfill into the site, completely demolishing Mr. Pozsgai's claim that he was trying to clean up existing dumping. He was brought to trial, where he did not even bother to deny the dumping anymore. Instead, he claimed that since the phrase "wetlands" isn't explicitly mentioned in the Clean Water Act, wetlands must not count as water! This defense was understandably rejected, and he was sentenced to 3 years in a minimum security prison.
I take the bus whenever possible (average 1000 mi of driving per year), use energy efficient bulbs and appliances, turn off everything when its not in use, buy local food where possible, and got good insulation so I can turn down the heat in non-bedrooms during the night, never use AC in my house (don't even own one), and only use it in my car in short bursts to cool it down after it's been baking in the sun all day.
But all of that is nothing if we don't get political change as well.
The powers that profit from the status quo are devastatingly effective at propaganda. Nothing you change about your own lifestyle will make a difference if they convince a hundred million of your neighbors that you're just some stupid hippie to be laughed at and ignored.
See, there you go. Confusing the issue.
1) Do you have any actual numbers to back up the notion that solar energy is worse for the environment than current technologies (coal, mostly)?
2) Even if you do, it's irrelevant, since my only point was the absurdity of thinking that "Big Solar" could somehow afford to buy off more scientists than the oil and coal industries.
3) Chemicals required in manufacture are completely unrelated to climate change. We don't make a habit of dumping them into the environment the way we do with CO2.
4) Climate has been hotter and colder. Yes, it was colder during the ice age, and hotter 4 billion years ago. Would you have liked to live in either of those time periods? The climate is changing. It is scientific fact that we have a hand in it. If it changes too much, many, many people will die. We should therefore attempt to prevent it from changing. This is really straightforward stuff.
There will be irreversible climate change. The corporate powers that profit from the status quo have more than enough money to continue confusing the issue for centuries to come. Short of a major catastrophe (i.e. millions dead in first world countries), nothing will ever break through the wall of propaganda to awaken the masses.
Cue deniers coming in to lie about how all the world's climatologists are in a conspiracy being funded by Big Solar or whatever.
Terrible, terrible ideas.
Starting with the second, since it's incredibly bad... two thirds of the debt is owned by Americans. Businesses that want a safe investment lend money to the government because they know it will pay them back. The government takes this money and reinvests it, earning a higher rate of return than they pay in interest. Having a smaller debt would be nice, but no debt? That's the sort of thinking you get when you try to apply household economics to a nation of three hundred million people.
Requiring a 66% majority to raise taxes is also a bad idea. Firstly because even if you were to accept the idea that revenues should always go down, the proposed law wouldn't do that. You can't control the actions of future Congresses with a law, because they can just repeal that law. You would need a Constitutional amendment, and this is exactly the sort of micromanagement that shouldn't be in the Constitution. But even if such a law were possible, it would be harmful, because it encourages pork barrel spending. Now, when you reach a point that the government desperately needs more revenues, you have even more horse trading as you try to get a super-super-majority to agree on it. And guess how you win over reluctant congressmen?
The smart solution is to improve the efficiency of government spending, not to eliminate it. Businesses don't get healthier by slashing their budget to ribbons, but by eliminating waste while simultaneously investing in their future. A business that only ever cuts will go bankrupt. A government that only ever cuts will collapse.
It was first developed, to the best of my knowledge, jointly by researchers at RPI and Rice in Jan 2008. Here's their presentation and here's a link showing the date.
In fact, their material is ten times darker than the one apparently developed by NASA, with a reflectivity of 0.05% compared to NASA's 0.5%.
There are solutions to the regressiveness of sales taxes, but limiting them to non-essential goods isn't one. People will argue endlessly about what is and is not essential, and the people with the least political clout (i.e. the poor) will always lose.
A better solution is a flat government stipend to every man, woman, and child in the country, giving them an amount of money each week such that the bottom 20% get back more than they pay in, the next 20% roughly break even, and the remaining 60% pay more than they get back. You'd still need a millionaire's tax to keep the top 1% from making out like bandits, but the rest of the income tax brackets could be removed. This also has the benefit of discouraging illegal immigration without the racial undertones of Arizona's solution or the magical thinking of a border fence, since they obviously wouldn't get the stipend, but couldn't realistically avoid the tax.
Unfortunately, Democrats are (understandably) reflexively opposed to a flat tax, and Republicans would balk at the notion of the government mailing out checks on a regular basis.
Disclaimer: My one paragraph exposition is not intended as a complete solution. I'm sure there are plenty of problems that would need to be ironed out. That's why laws always end up being hundreds of pages long. It is intended only as a starting point for any serious discussion on a nationwide sales tax.
You realize that goods manufactured in China are also subject to this tax, right?
Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, sales taxes are regressive and therefore bad. On the other hand, if we're going to have sales taxes, it makes sense for them to hit nation-wide corporations just as hard as they hit the local mom-and-pop businesses. But under no circumstances can this be painted as benefiting Chinese businessmen. If anything, it harms them, because it will make cheap Chinese widgets that much more expensive, which means they'll sell fewer of them.
But once you build the fab, you have a fab. It makes money. It's an asset.
When you spend millions weeding out counterfeit parts in a given year, you're in the exact same spot next year. In fact, you're even worse off, because every year we spend manufacturing things overseas makes it that much harder to ever bring the jobs back home.
Put another way, the net present value of a fab is likely higher than the NPV of searching for counterfeits. But since when did corporate America ever care about long term benefits? Short term profits and padding your own bank account are all that matter. And in the short term, fabs are expensive.
There are still prodigies (I know one myself), but they run into other problems. First of all, there's more stuff to learn before you can start making contributions. You know the quote about standing on the shoulders of giants. What they don't tell you is that first you need to climb those shoulders, and they get taller every years.
More important though, is the fact that science doesn't pay. You can make a lot more money with a lot less effort going into finance, or business, or even engineering. I had a friend in college who finished his undergrad when he was 17, with a triple major in software, electrical, and computer hardware engineering. Needless to say, he's a smart guy. Had he put in the effort to get a doctorate and do some original research, he might have discovered the next big thing. Instead he started his own small business making some widget or another, and makes big time money. That's not a bad thing. It's good for him and his employees. But it's not good for science as a whole to lose such promising minds to better paying fields.
AP Physics comes in three flavors: A, B, and C. Type A is really, really basic and rarely offered. Type B is the most commonly offered one, intended to replace Phys 101 at college, and is calculus-free. Type C uses calculus, but it's divided into two halves (EM and Mechanics) making it more expensive to teach, plus it's obviously harder, so few students are offered it, and even fewer take it.
In the US, a lot of schools offer students the choice of whether they want to take physics with or without calc. Most students, predictably, take the easy option. Those students end up being woefully unprepared. Some smaller schools (such as my old high school) don't even offer the calc option, because not enough students sign up for it.
In my case, my graduating class had 80-something students, and only five of us signed up for calc-based physics. I lucked out in that our physics teacher took the time to tutor us in calc during study halls, so we weren't completely unprepared.
I think by "practical" the OP meant that the basic stuff is more hands-on and observable. Basic electric circuits are easy to explain with the popular "water flowing in pipes" analogies. Once you start talking about solid state physics, all of those analogies break down, and it becomes harder to wrap your mind around.
Oh, sure, every Phys 101 course will talk about quantum a bit. I though you were talking about a dedicated quantum course. Solving the classic "electron in an infinite square well" is only like week 1 in an actual quantum course. It doesn't get hard until you start digging deep into bra-ket notation and Hilbert spaces.