The Raspberry Pi is not a development board, no matter how much its fanboys repeat that same false assertion.
A development board is marketed and sold to companies and engineers to facilitate their research and development of finished end products based on the architecture embodied in the development board.
In contrast, the RPi is being marketed, sold, and hyped to death, as a very low cost general purpose computer, based on a proprietary and IP-restricted Broadcom SOC, to be used by school children (and hobbyists) to learn basic programming and micro-controller principles. None of the customers buying the RPi will be using it to design other finished products based on the RPi architecture.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the Raspberry Pi foundation's next excuse is that all of the boards are in Gregory Blepp's briefcase, and will be shipped out to customers just as soon as he returns from his vacation to never-never land.
Due to the oversimplified and poorly written terms of the CC licenses, which leave many details undefined, neither the copyright owner nor the publications wishing to license the owner's work can have any certainty about which uses are permitted and which prohibited, in some borderline cases. Moreover, since the CC license is irrevocable once granted, content creators can easily find themselves unable to stop others from using their work in ways that they don't want, and didn't anticipate, or which they mistakenly believed were expressly prohibited.
Writing "3dB" is conceptually *exactly* the same as writing "200%".
I just checked the Wikipedia article, and it is totally correct, and agrees 100% with what I stated, as does every physics text that I've ever seen. The definition is what it is, and your assertion that "3dB" is exactly the same as "200%" is simply incorrect.
I don't want to repeat myself or belabor the point, but 3dB represents a 2:1 ratio of power, and a 1.41:1 ratio of voltage. This follows simply and irrefutably from the laws of physics at work, and the underlying mathematical relationship of the quantities being measured, be they field quantities or power quantities.
Remember the basic definitions of the quantities, which is that power is proportional to voltage^2, so it is mathematically impossible for them to change together by the same ratio.
When power changes 2:1, or expressed in dB, 10 * log(2) = 3dB,
Then voltage changes 1.41:1, or expressed in dB, 20 * log(1.41) = 3dB.
I hope that you can see now that your mistaken idea that "3dB==2:1 or 200%" for both voltage and power is impossible, because power is proportional to voltage^2, it is mathematically impossible for them to both vary by 2:1 at the same time.
(Just for posterity, a factor of 2 == 3dB *always*.)
That last point that you made for posterity is not correct, because the definition of dB relates to power ratios, and a 2:1 ratio of power is 3dB, whereas a 2:1 ratio of voltage results in a 4:1 ratio of power and 6dB of change.
So, a factor of 2 is only 3dB when measuring power, because for power dB is defined as: dB = 10 * log(P1/P0),
and 10 * log(2) = 3
But when measuring voltage, a factor of 2 is 6dB, because for voltage ratios, dB is defined as: dB = 20 * log(V1/V0),
"I have several pieces of fruit, one of which is a banana grown in Ecuador."
It may well be that the second piece of fruit was also grown in Ecuador, just like the first one was, but I simply don't know, so I don't make any statement about its country of origin, nor do I ask you to make any assumption or draw any inference about its country of origin. Therefore, this statement isn't deliberately misleading, because I don't know the country of origin of the second piece of fruit, as it doesn't have a country of origin sticker on it. My statement is totally true and complete to the best of my knowledge, and does not deliberately withold any information.
The way I see it, the fact that I stated that the country of origin of the first piece of fruit is Ecuador does not imply or require that the second piece of fruit is or is not from Ecuador also.
The way I read and analyze the sentence is that it is conveying complete information about just one piece of fruit, and no information at all about the other piece of fruit. I don't think that it's correct to assume any facts or restrictions not explicitly stated.
Likewise, in the original problem, "I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on Tuesday. What is the probability that the other is also a boy?"
The parent may not know what day of the week their other child was born on, for many reasons, such as separation due to war from the pregnant mother before the child was born. The father may have escaped from the conflict with one child, and only know from witnesses that his pregnant wife was captured and gave birth to a child while in a prison camp. The child born in prison may have been born on a Tuesday too, but the father doesn't know, and doesn't say. So his statement is totally true and complete to the best of his knowledge. But we can't assume that his statement says anything at all about the day of birth of the second child, nor use it in our calculation of the probability that he or she is a boy.
I have several pieces of fruit and one of them is a banana
But the statement in the puzzle is: "I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday
Your example sentence is not analagous to the original problem, because the original statement provides two facts about one of the children, whereas your sentence provides only one fact about one of the pieces of fruit, therefore your argument is flawed.
The correct analogy is: "I have several pieces of fruit, one of which is a banana grown in Ecuador."
It is obvious that this statement about one of the pieces of fruit does not make any statements about the nature of the other piece of fruit, and certainly does not preclude the possiblility that the second piece of fruit is also a banana. For example, the second piece of fruit could very easily be a banana grown in Honduras, and nobody would consider the statement about the first piece of fruit to be a lie.
No, millimeter waves are at least 10 to 100 times shorter in wavelength than the other items you mentioned.
Millimeter waves, by definition, have a wavelength between 1mm and 10mm. A microwave oven, wireless router, or cell phone all have a wavelength of around 125mm or longer. So the energy in each photon of millimeter wave radiation is 10 to 100 times greater than the energy in each photon from a wireless router.
It is possible, therefore, that it could be sufficient to trigger adverse effects in living cells. And it is just common sense and basic respect for human rights and dignity to investigate the long term health effects of repeated exposure to millimeter waves, before irradiating hundreds of millions of innocent people every year.
That's amazing that you are able to encode, do motion detection, and write to disk, 25fps * 8 channels = 200fps in real time on a low power Atom based system! I would never have imagined that the Atom could do that.
I would appreciate it if you would post the details of the motherboard, encoding card, and storage system that you're using to achieve these results.
Regardless of one's views on supernatural experiences, religion, or life after death, the arguments presented in the linked article must be rejected, because they are illogical, and very embarrasingly so for their authors, and also for their publishers.
In essence, they argue from the premise that the mere fact that a perception of having an experience can be triggered by an artificial stimulus to the brain, implies that the experience itself is never caused by anything in objective reality, and is entirely a product of subjective internal biochemical processes. But that conclusion doesn't follow logically, at all.
For example, we know that visual hallucinations can be triggered by artificial stimuli, but from that observation, it does not follow that light does not exist, and that those of us who claim to see things, such as this text on the screen, must be imagining it.
We also know from experiments conducted by electrically stimulating the brains of patients undergoing brain surgery, that vivid memories of childhood experiences can be evoked, having such clarity and vividness that they seem to the patient as if they were happening right then and there on the operating table, at the time of the experiment. But from these observations it does not follow that those experiences never really took place at all, or that the persons claiming to have had those childhood experiences were merely hallucinating when they were four years old, and thought that they were playing with their father.
A hearing aid is specifically designed, manufactured, marketed, and dispensed, for one and only one purpose: to treat a human disease. It is not intended to be used, nor can it safely be used, by people with normal hearing.
By its very nature, it modifies the function of the human body. It is not in any way comparable to an article of clothing, or an mp3 player, whose fit and function can be ascertained by a layman, and which can be worn or used safely by virtually anyone.
Using an improperly made hearing aid, or even a properly made one that isn't specifically prescribed for you, would certainly cause you harm, including potentially irreversible nerve damage, and hearing loss. And a layman, end-user, who bought one over the counter, is not qualified to determine whether it is functioning correctly, or appropriately for his hearing deficit. It could be producing levels at certain frequencies that cause long-term damage, and he would never know it, until it was too late. So, it is absolutely in no way analogous or comparable to a pair of track shoes, or an mp3 player.
A hearing aid is obviously a medical device, and correctly regulated as such, in my opinion, because it must be dispensed properly, and must perform correctly, or it can cause serious adverse health effects for its user.
I don't agree with the premise that a hearing aid is innocuous, and incapable of causing death or serious injury, therefore doesn't require stringent safety testing.
Given that every component of every device is subject to possible failure, I could imagine a scenario where a component failure in a defectively designed hearing aid could convert it from an amplifier, into an oscillator. Imagine that you are driving down the highway at 100km/h when suddenly, you have a 110dB tone at 2khz blasting into your ear, coming from a device the size of a pea, wedged deep in your ear canal. I could see that scenario very easily leading to serious injury, or death.
I would want to know that my hearing aid has been design validated, so that no possible failure, or combination of failures, could ever cause that to happen.
First, it's a medical device, not a commodity consumer item like a netbook, so its manufacturer must prove both its safety and effectiveness, with independent tests, before it can be licensed for sale by the FDA in the U.S., or the corresponding medical regulatory authority in other countries. That process is time consuming, and expensive. Those costs must be paid for, and are reflected in the price.
Second, its technology requires extremely low power circuitry, and a much higher level of miniaturization, than a netbook. These factors too, naturally increase the cost of the device.
The article adresses that issue up front, stating explicitly that 90-100% of the absorbed light is converted into electricity. From the article:
Atwater and his colleagues--including Nathan Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry at Caltech, and graduate student Michael Kelzenberg--assessed the performance of these arrays in a paper appearing in the February 14 advance online edition of the journal Nature Materials.
Atwater notes that the solar cells' enhanced absorption is "useful absorption.".
"Many materials can absorb light quite well but not generate electricity--like, for instance, black paint," he explains. "What's most important in a solar cell is whether that absorption leads to the creation of charge carriers.".
The silicon wire arrays created by Atwater and his colleagues are able to convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons--in technical terms, the wires have a near-perfect internal quantum efficiency. "High absorption plus good conversion makes for a high-quality solar cell," says Atwater. "It's an important advance.".
The key to the success of these solar cells is their silicon wires, each of which, says Atwater, "is independently a high-efficiency, high-quality solar cell." When brought together in an array, however, they're even more effective, because they interact to increase the cell's ability to absorb light..
So, assuming their worst case figure of 90% efficiency, and 85% absorption, the overall light to electricity conversion efficiency would be ~76.5%
If this technology scales, and can be manufactured economically, it will be a tremendous breakthrough, which could deliver significant and long lasting benefits for the entire planet.
That's not correct. Not all prescription medications are controlled substances. Controlled substances are a subset of prescription medications that have a high potential for abuse, such as narcotics, for example. They are specified in the Controlled Substances Act, and are regulated by the DEA. Controlled substances have much tighter controls placed on their prescriptions than other prescription drugs, such as limits on the number of pills that can be prescribed at one time, the number of refills permitted, requiring the use of special prescription forms, etc. In addition, prescriptions written for controlled substances are monitored, and prescribers can face investigation if they appear to be over prescribing them.
The abstract says that the researchers conducted these successful experiments on retinas, and optic nerves, so maybe it could be used to help people who suffer from conditions like your father's.
...but as with all software licenses, the GPL must give you permission to install and run the program in the first place...
That's not correct.
From the standpoint of copyright law, nobody needs a license just to install, or run, a legally acquired copy of GPL software, nor any other software.
U.S. copyright law, 17 USC 117(a)(1), specifically states that the owner of a program has the right to copy it, as an essential step in utilizing it:
TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.-- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
The GPL acknowledges this fact, in section 9 which states, "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."
The fact that the GPL acknowledges the owner's right to use the softare is laudable, but it is not really needed by the end-user, because the right to use software that has been legally acquired is already guaranteed by law.
Yes, there's a patent-claim writing rule that says that each claim must be expressed in exactly one sentence, of whatever length and complexity necessary to completely express the claim.
Quote: "Eachclaimbeginswithacapitalletterandendswitha
period.Periodsmaynotbeusedelsewhereintheclaimsexcept
for abbreviations."
Source: Manual of Patent Examination and Procedure (MPEP) Section 608.01(m)
Apologies to all for replying to myself, but the most important paragraph was dropped when I copied the section from the original pdf text. Here is the corrected full text:
2.10 Underlying Principle 9: Openness
Within the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members
of a community of interest to share knowledge and to stimulate debate within that community of interest, having as ultimate goal the advancement of knowledge and the use thereof to solve relevant problems. In that sense, openness leads to considerable gains in efficiency.
Interoperability involves the sharing of information and knowledge between organisations, hence implies a certain degree of openness. There are varying degrees of openness.
Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results
of which can freely be accessed, reused and shared are considered open and lie at one end of the
spectrum while non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software and the reluctance or
resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the "not invented here" syndrome, lie at the other end.
The spectrum of approaches that lies between these two extremes can be called the openness
continuum.
European public administrations need to decide where they wish to position themselves on this continuum with respect to the issues discussed in the EIF. The exact position may vary, on a case-by-case basis, depending on their needs, priorities, legacy, budget, market situation and a number of other factors. While there is a correlation between openness and interoperability, it is also true that interoperability can be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service.
Recommendation 5. Public administrations should favour openness when working together to
establish European Public Service while taking into account their priorities and constraints.
With your selective quoting, and careful omissions, you have distorted and misrepresented what they have actually said. They never defined, nor attempted to redefine closed as open. In fact, they fully recognize and accurately define what constitutes "Open" and carefully noted that closed, propietary software and standards lie on the opposite end of the spectrum, or continuum. Here is the full, fair, non-distorted quote:
Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results
of which can freely be accessed, reused and shared are considered open and lie at one end of the spectrum while non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software and the reluctance or resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the "not invented here" syndrome, lie at the other end.
By placing open on one and of the spectrum, and closed on the other, they very clearly are stating that the two are opposites. And to me, that seems like a perfectly fair and accurate description of the range of openness that exists in information systems and standards.
Moreover, they conclude the section on openness with this recommendation:
Recommendation 5. Public administrations should favour openness when working together to
establish European Public Service while taking into account their priorities and constraints.
Do you not see that by distorting their words to advance your own agenda, and attributing to them malicious intent without any basis in fact, you undermine the very cause which you pretend to champion? Is that what you want to do? Do you really want to undermine the credibility of those who advocate for free and open standards, especially in the public sector?
Here is the full text of the section on oppenness, so that everyone can see it in its entirety, and draw their own conclusions.
2.10 Underlying Principle 9: Openness
Within the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members
of a community of interest to share knowledge and to stimulate debate within that community of interest, having as ultimate goal the advancement of knowledge and the use thereof to solve relevant problems. In that sense, openness leads to considerable gains in efficiency.
Interoperability involves the sharing of information and knowledge between organisations, hence implies a certain degree of openness. There are varying degrees of openness.
The spectrum of approaches that lies between these two extremes can be called the openness
continuum.
European public administrations need to decide where they wish to position themselves on this continuum with respect to the issues discussed in the EIF. The exact position may vary, on a case-by-case basis, depending on their needs, priorities, legacy, budget, market situation and a number of other factors. While there is a correlation between openness and interoperability, it is also true that interoperability can be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service.
Recommendation 5. Public administrations should favour openness when working together to
establish European Public Service while taking into account their priorities and constraints.
Be that as it may, atoms are not ions, which is what the attempt at an article states.
The article doesn't state that atoms are ions. Rather, it states that ions are electrically charged atoms, which is totally correct. Here is the exact quote, in context:
As the diagram explains, what Mr Sparrow and Mr Zoshi create by doing this is a type of electrical circuit. Instead of electrons carrying the current, though, it is carried by electrically charged atoms called ions.
Salt is made of two ions: positively charged sodium and negatively charged chloride. These flow in opposite directions around the circuit. Each of the four streams of water is connected to two neighbours by what are known as ion bridges. These are pathways made of polystyrene that has been treated so it will allow the passage of only one sort of ion--either sodium or chloride. Sodium and chloride ions pass out of the concentrated solution to the neighbouring weak ones by diffusion though these bridges (any chemical will diffuse from a high to a low concentration in this way).
I don't find any incorrect statement in the above quote regarding ions.
The confusion probably arises because not all countries and languages use the same terminology for large numbers.
There are two naming conventions in general use, short-scale, and long-scale. In the short-scale countries such as the US, UK, etc, Trillion = 10^12, but in the long-scale countries, Trillion = 10^18. Obviously, if you are in a long-scale country, a Trillion (10^18) bytes is a (10^6) times more than a Terabyte (10^12 bytes). You can see this article for more on short and long scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Are you sure about that definition of theory? Is a theory really verifiable?
I always thought that in the physical sciences, a theory is a falsifiable statement about the mechanism of some natural phenomenon, rather than a verifiable statement. That is, the best you can do is to say that your theory is not inconsistent with observations or experimental results, but you can never say that you have verified it to be "true", because there is always the possibility that advances in technology, or new discoveries will end up disproving the theory, or requiring some modification to it, in light of new knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
The Raspberry Pi is not a development board, no matter how much its fanboys repeat that same false assertion.
A development board is marketed and sold to companies and engineers to facilitate their research and development of finished end products based on the architecture embodied in the development board.
In contrast, the RPi is being marketed, sold, and hyped to death, as a very low cost general purpose computer, based on a proprietary and IP-restricted Broadcom SOC, to be used by school children (and hobbyists) to learn basic programming and micro-controller principles. None of the customers buying the RPi will be using it to design other finished products based on the RPi architecture.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the Raspberry Pi foundation's next excuse is that all of the boards are in Gregory Blepp's briefcase, and will be shipped out to customers just as soon as he returns from his vacation to never-never land.
Due to the oversimplified and poorly written terms of the CC licenses, which leave many details undefined, neither the copyright owner nor the publications wishing to license the owner's work can have any certainty about which uses are permitted and which prohibited, in some borderline cases. Moreover, since the CC license is irrevocable once granted, content creators can easily find themselves unable to stop others from using their work in ways that they don't want, and didn't anticipate, or which they mistakenly believed were expressly prohibited.
This article has a good discussion of the problems inherent in the CC licenses.
What is this phrase supposed to mean, exactly? Would the author of the fine summary please fill us in, because I can't parse it at all. Thanks.
I just checked the Wikipedia article, and it is totally correct, and agrees 100% with what I stated, as does every physics text that I've ever seen. The definition is what it is, and your assertion that "3dB" is exactly the same as "200%" is simply incorrect.
I don't want to repeat myself or belabor the point, but 3dB represents a 2:1 ratio of power, and a 1.41:1 ratio of voltage. This follows simply and irrefutably from the laws of physics at work, and the underlying mathematical relationship of the quantities being measured, be they field quantities or power quantities.
Remember the basic definitions of the quantities, which is that power is proportional to voltage^2, so it is mathematically impossible for them to change together by the same ratio.
When power changes 2:1, or expressed in dB, 10 * log(2) = 3dB,
Then voltage changes 1.41:1, or expressed in dB, 20 * log(1.41) = 3dB.
I hope that you can see now that your mistaken idea that "3dB==2:1 or 200%" for both voltage and power is impossible, because power is proportional to voltage^2, it is mathematically impossible for them to both vary by 2:1 at the same time.
That last point that you made for posterity is not correct, because the definition of dB relates to power ratios, and a 2:1 ratio of power is 3dB, whereas a 2:1 ratio of voltage results in a 4:1 ratio of power and 6dB of change.
So, a factor of 2 is only 3dB when measuring power, because for power dB is defined as: dB = 10 * log(P1/P0),
and 10 * log(2) = 3
But when measuring voltage, a factor of 2 is 6dB, because for voltage ratios, dB is defined as: dB = 20 * log(V1/V0),
and 20 * log(2) = 6
"I have several pieces of fruit, one of which is a banana grown in Ecuador."
It may well be that the second piece of fruit was also grown in Ecuador, just like the first one was, but I simply don't know, so I don't make any statement about its country of origin, nor do I ask you to make any assumption or draw any inference about its country of origin. Therefore, this statement isn't deliberately misleading, because I don't know the country of origin of the second piece of fruit, as it doesn't have a country of origin sticker on it. My statement is totally true and complete to the best of my knowledge, and does not deliberately withold any information.
The way I see it, the fact that I stated that the country of origin of the first piece of fruit is Ecuador does not imply or require that the second piece of fruit is or is not from Ecuador also.
The way I read and analyze the sentence is that it is conveying complete information about just one piece of fruit, and no information at all about the other piece of fruit. I don't think that it's correct to assume any facts or restrictions not explicitly stated.
Likewise, in the original problem, "I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on Tuesday. What is the probability that the other is also a boy?"
The parent may not know what day of the week their other child was born on, for many reasons, such as separation due to war from the pregnant mother before the child was born. The father may have escaped from the conflict with one child, and only know from witnesses that his pregnant wife was captured and gave birth to a child while in a prison camp. The child born in prison may have been born on a Tuesday too, but the father doesn't know, and doesn't say. So his statement is totally true and complete to the best of his knowledge. But we can't assume that his statement says anything at all about the day of birth of the second child, nor use it in our calculation of the probability that he or she is a boy.
But the statement in the puzzle is: "I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday
Your example sentence is not analagous to the original problem, because the original statement provides two facts about one of the children, whereas your sentence provides only one fact about one of the pieces of fruit, therefore your argument is flawed.
The correct analogy is: "I have several pieces of fruit, one of which is a banana grown in Ecuador."
It is obvious that this statement about one of the pieces of fruit does not make any statements about the nature of the other piece of fruit, and certainly does not preclude the possiblility that the second piece of fruit is also a banana. For example, the second piece of fruit could very easily be a banana grown in Honduras, and nobody would consider the statement about the first piece of fruit to be a lie.
No, millimeter waves are at least 10 to 100 times shorter in wavelength than the other items you mentioned.
Millimeter waves, by definition, have a wavelength between 1mm and 10mm. A microwave oven, wireless router, or cell phone all have a wavelength of around 125mm or longer. So the energy in each photon of millimeter wave radiation is 10 to 100 times greater than the energy in each photon from a wireless router.
It is possible, therefore, that it could be sufficient to trigger adverse effects in living cells. And it is just common sense and basic respect for human rights and dignity to investigate the long term health effects of repeated exposure to millimeter waves, before irradiating hundreds of millions of innocent people every year.
That's amazing that you are able to encode, do motion detection, and write to disk, 25fps * 8 channels = 200fps in real time on a low power Atom based system! I would never have imagined that the Atom could do that.
I would appreciate it if you would post the details of the motherboard, encoding card, and storage system that you're using to achieve these results.
Regardless of one's views on supernatural experiences, religion, or life after death, the arguments presented in the linked article must be rejected, because they are illogical, and very embarrasingly so for their authors, and also for their publishers.
In essence, they argue from the premise that the mere fact that a perception of having an experience can be triggered by an artificial stimulus to the brain, implies that the experience itself is never caused by anything in objective reality, and is entirely a product of subjective internal biochemical processes. But that conclusion doesn't follow logically, at all.
For example, we know that visual hallucinations can be triggered by artificial stimuli, but from that observation, it does not follow that light does not exist, and that those of us who claim to see things, such as this text on the screen, must be imagining it.
We also know from experiments conducted by electrically stimulating the brains of patients undergoing brain surgery, that vivid memories of childhood experiences can be evoked, having such clarity and vividness that they seem to the patient as if they were happening right then and there on the operating table, at the time of the experiment. But from these observations it does not follow that those experiences never really took place at all, or that the persons claiming to have had those childhood experiences were merely hallucinating when they were four years old, and thought that they were playing with their father.
A hearing aid is specifically designed, manufactured, marketed, and dispensed, for one and only one purpose: to treat a human disease. It is not intended to be used, nor can it safely be used, by people with normal hearing.
By its very nature, it modifies the function of the human body. It is not in any way comparable to an article of clothing, or an mp3 player, whose fit and function can be ascertained by a layman, and which can be worn or used safely by virtually anyone.
Using an improperly made hearing aid, or even a properly made one that isn't specifically prescribed for you, would certainly cause you harm, including potentially irreversible nerve damage, and hearing loss. And a layman, end-user, who bought one over the counter, is not qualified to determine whether it is functioning correctly, or appropriately for his hearing deficit. It could be producing levels at certain frequencies that cause long-term damage, and he would never know it, until it was too late. So, it is absolutely in no way analogous or comparable to a pair of track shoes, or an mp3 player.
A hearing aid is obviously a medical device, and correctly regulated as such, in my opinion, because it must be dispensed properly, and must perform correctly, or it can cause serious adverse health effects for its user.
I don't agree with the premise that a hearing aid is innocuous, and incapable of causing death or serious injury, therefore doesn't require stringent safety testing.
Given that every component of every device is subject to possible failure, I could imagine a scenario where a component failure in a defectively designed hearing aid could convert it from an amplifier, into an oscillator. Imagine that you are driving down the highway at 100km/h when suddenly, you have a 110dB tone at 2khz blasting into your ear, coming from a device the size of a pea, wedged deep in your ear canal. I could see that scenario very easily leading to serious injury, or death.
I would want to know that my hearing aid has been design validated, so that no possible failure, or combination of failures, could ever cause that to happen.
First, it's a medical device, not a commodity consumer item like a netbook, so its manufacturer must prove both its safety and effectiveness, with independent tests, before it can be licensed for sale by the FDA in the U.S., or the corresponding medical regulatory authority in other countries. That process is time consuming, and expensive. Those costs must be paid for, and are reflected in the price. Second, its technology requires extremely low power circuitry, and a much higher level of miniaturization, than a netbook. These factors too, naturally increase the cost of the device.
I stand corrected. Thanks for that explanation.
So, assuming their worst case figure of 90% efficiency, and 85% absorption, the overall light to electricity conversion efficiency would be ~76.5%
If this technology scales, and can be manufactured economically, it will be a tremendous breakthrough, which could deliver significant and long lasting benefits for the entire planet.
That's not correct. Not all prescription medications are controlled substances. Controlled substances are a subset of prescription medications that have a high potential for abuse, such as narcotics, for example. They are specified in the Controlled Substances Act, and are regulated by the DEA. Controlled substances have much tighter controls placed on their prescriptions than other prescription drugs, such as limits on the number of pills that can be prescribed at one time, the number of refills permitted, requiring the use of special prescription forms, etc. In addition, prescriptions written for controlled substances are monitored, and prescribers can face investigation if they appear to be over prescribing them.
The abstract says that the researchers conducted these successful experiments on retinas, and optic nerves, so maybe it could be used to help people who suffer from conditions like your father's.
That's not correct.
From the standpoint of copyright law, nobody needs a license just to install, or run, a legally acquired copy of GPL software, nor any other software.
U.S. copyright law, 17 USC 117(a)(1), specifically states that the owner of a program has the right to copy it, as an essential step in utilizing it:
The GPL acknowledges this fact, in section 9 which states, "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."
The fact that the GPL acknowledges the owner's right to use the softare is laudable, but it is not really needed by the end-user, because the right to use software that has been legally acquired is already guaranteed by law.
Yes, there's a patent-claim writing rule that says that each claim must be expressed in exactly one sentence, of whatever length and complexity necessary to completely express the claim.
Quote: "Eachclaimbeginswithacapitalletterandendswitha period.Periodsmaynotbeusedelsewhereintheclaimsexcept for abbreviations."
Source: Manual of Patent Examination and Procedure (MPEP) Section 608.01(m)
By placing open on one and of the spectrum, and closed on the other, they very clearly are stating that the two are opposites. And to me, that seems like a perfectly fair and accurate description of the range of openness that exists in information systems and standards. Moreover, they conclude the section on openness with this recommendation:
Do you not see that by distorting their words to advance your own agenda, and attributing to them malicious intent without any basis in fact, you undermine the very cause which you pretend to champion? Is that what you want to do? Do you really want to undermine the credibility of those who advocate for free and open standards, especially in the public sector?
Here is the full text of the section on oppenness, so that everyone can see it in its entirety, and draw their own conclusions.
Be that as it may, atoms are not ions, which is what the attempt at an article states.
The article doesn't state that atoms are ions. Rather, it states that ions are electrically charged atoms, which is totally correct. Here is the exact quote, in context:
I don't find any incorrect statement in the above quote regarding ions.
For every hole moving in one direction within the semiconductor substrate, is there not a corresponding electron moving in the opposite direction?
The confusion probably arises because not all countries and languages use the same terminology for large numbers.
There are two naming conventions in general use, short-scale, and long-scale. In the short-scale countries such as the US, UK, etc, Trillion = 10^12, but in the long-scale countries, Trillion = 10^18. Obviously, if you are in a long-scale country, a Trillion (10^18) bytes is a (10^6) times more than a Terabyte (10^12 bytes). You can see this article for more on short and long scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Are you sure about that definition of theory? Is a theory really verifiable?
I always thought that in the physical sciences, a theory is a falsifiable statement about the mechanism of some natural phenomenon, rather than a verifiable statement. That is, the best you can do is to say that your theory is not inconsistent with observations or experimental results, but you can never say that you have verified it to be "true", because there is always the possibility that advances in technology, or new discoveries will end up disproving the theory, or requiring some modification to it, in light of new knowledge.