Additionally, there is a strong ethical argument against protectionism. "Buy American" is essentially a racist statement. You're implying that the value of an American is higher than that of someone from another country by saying that it's better to protect industries in this country to protect the jobs. At some point, we've got to start calling out "Buy American" for the racist statement that it is.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "Buy American." Honda and Toyota have manufacturing plants in America. Is it "buying American" when you purchase a car manufactured at one of these plants? I'd argue that it is. All other things being equal, I see nothing wrong with "Buy American." It isn't really that much different than the "Buy Local" movement that is popular across the country, especially here in Vermont.
Buying products that are made/grown in closer proximity to you has many advantages: * Lower transportation costs & less pollution * Keeps the money you're spending in the local economy * Helps to secure employment for local people * Encourages cohesion in the local community
Obviously, the scale of "local" depends on the situation, but I don't see why at least some of the benefits don't scale up to the national level. What is wrong with wanting to improve the economic situation in the neighborhood/town/city/state/country where you live? You do, after all, live there. You need to have a job. A steady income. Services like fresh water, sewer, police, hospitals, etc.
Now that same company comes out and produces the 360 with its notoriously high failure rate. And it's wasn't down to the complexity of the design. The red ring of death was due to parts and material failures. Scratched discs were again down to a substandard component. Now we have a loose video chip problem.
This is NOT down to design. These issues are trivial to fix if only Microsoft was willing to pay the money. The fact is, they're not. These errors all exist because Microsoft is cutting costs across the board on 360 manufacturing. For every error that is found, you can be sure that three more lurk beneath the surface as a result of substandard parts, components and assembly line procedures.
So, you're saying it didn't fail because of poor design but because they designed it to be inexpensive to manufacture? That sounds to me like bad design. They didn't design it to stand up to normal use and instead designed it to save a few pennies here and there during the manufacturing and assembly process. Sounds like a classic example of a poorly chosen design trade-off where quality is sacrificed to save costs. Now it is coming back to bite them.
What's the point of this? The judge already instructs jurors not to discuss the trial or do any research. How is "don not discuss the trial" any different from "do not discuss the trial on the internet"? Do we really have to ban discussion of the trial via every different means of communication? How is this really enforceable, anyway?
When I was called up for jury duty last summer, I had to surrender my cell phone before going through the metal detector. I think other electronics were prohibited as well. Seems like this would be pretty simple to stop by a small rules change at the court house. Just ban cell phones and similar devices.
I'm generally opposed to this sort of stuff, but this particular application doesn't seem so bad. Uninsured motorists are a problem for everyone. If you're going to drive a car, you should have a license and your car should be registered, insured, and inspected according to state laws. Yes, this makes money for repair shops, insurance companies, state government, and the police. However, all of this is important for having safe roads and keeping down the cost of insurance.
I dunno that I agree. I mean, what's really the difference between a map that's "1 unit big" with 16 players and a map that's "2 units big" with 32 players? The density of players on the map is about the same. Yeah, there's potentially a bigger variety of players, but how much does that really add? I guess playing on a larger map is nice, and you do need more players to be sure that you don't spend most of your time just looking for somebody to shoot at, but are there any other benefits? After all, we are talking about a shooter. You don't do much but shoot at things that move and shoot back at you.
Quake 1 came out 13 years ago, most of what has come out since then isn't all that different. Better graphics sure, but the recipe is the same, the worlds are still 3D, multiplayer support has actually gotten worse - we've gone from 24 to 32 players being fine in Quake/QW CTF down to 8 - 16 being the average in a lot of games nowadays.
I generally agree with your post, but more players doesn't necessarily make for better gameplay. I recall plenty of times playing Quake, 10 years ago, that the map was over saturated with players and you'd essentially get fragged as soon as you spawned. It was basically a giant cluster-f**k when the player count got too high. In my opinion, it is more fun to have to hunt a little for somebody to kill rather than having players everywhere you look.
According to the article, the restaurant locations fry in vegetable oil, but the fries were partially fried in animal fat before they are frozen and shipped out to the restaurants.
The fast-food chain had maintained for more than a decade that only vegetable oil was used in the hope of appealing to vegetarians and religious groups who do not eat beef products. Yesterday's apology triggered a violent protest by Hindus in India.
The American company, which has served more than 200 billion portions of french fries around the world, confessed to a method of using beef fat to partly fry chips before they are sent to restaurants. They are then frozen and refried on the premises using vegetable oil.
Here's an interesting effect discovered by a group of Iranian physicists at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran (it's not often we hear from these guys).
Aside from the actual scientific content of the article, I found this lead quote to be interesting with many subtle and not so subtle implications. Discuss.
What you forgot to mention is the wind farm you're talking about was built over 30 years ago and uses outdated technology. The multitude of smaller turbines turn faster and are much more dangerous to birds than today's larger, more efficient, and slower turning turbines. In fact, the older turbines are being slowly replaced with newer ones to produce more electricity for less money while also killing fewer birds.
Considered largely obsolete, these numerous small turbines are being gradually replaced with much larger and more cost-effective units. The small turbines are dangerous to various raptors that hunt California Ground Squirrels in the area. 1300 raptors are killed annually. Among them are 70 golden eagles that are federally protected. In total, 4700 birds are killed annually.[2] The larger units turn more slowly and, being elevated higher, are less hazardous to the local wildlife.
It really isn't as simple as "just add printers" unfortunately. Any time that the voting and vote tabulating is done by the same machine, there is a higher risk of a problem.
To have secure and reliable electronic voting, you have to do think separation of concerns. At a high levels, there's two important use cases activities from the perspective of the voter (we'll ignore the administrative activities of creating the ballots for now):
1) Casting a vote 2) Counting votes
Therefore, there should be two machines. One machine allows the voter to cast their vote and marks it on an optical scan ballot. The second machine reads the ballot and tabulates the votes. The voter manually takes the completed ballot from the voting machine, verifies that the selections have been recorded correctly, and deposits the ballot in the counting machine.
This works just like many of us are used to. In fact, it would allow for the use of the same optical scan ballots in use today. Only people with special needs have to use the electronic voting machines. Voters with the ability to vote without assistance would have the option of manually marking their optical scan ballots with a pen or pencil.
Not only does this save money (less electronic voting machines required, most ballots are counted by optical scan machines today and these machines could be reused in the new system), but it also gives you all the security that we enjoy today. We have a paper trail, each ballot cast on an electronic voting machine is verified by the voter, the counting is done on a simple tabulating machine, and recounts are possible.
Not necessarily. Let's say I participated in a survey from a company attempting to decide on a new product name. (My wife actually does surveys like this, so it's not far-fetched.) Let's also say that some unscrupulous individual notes all the names, then goes to register ALL of them. The company then chooses a name based on the survey feedback, only to find that every one of their choices has been locked out. Does the company have a right to demand their domain back? (Especially if we're talking about made-up words here.) Do they have a right to demand it back if the person starts a "discussion site" on the upcoming product?
I'd imagine that pretty much any company doing this sort of thing would be smart enough to snap up the domain names in question before doing that type of market research.
I'm the same way. When I'm sitting close to the monitor, 60Hz gives me a headache pretty fast. Sitting farther away, such as with a TV, it doesn't seem to bother me as much. Not really sure why.
I'd like to see some references for your numbers. What I've found is that the grid is much more efficient (over 90%) and even coal generation can be over 60% efficient using newer technology. That means that you're getting 54% efficiency at the wall plug from a brand new highly efficient coal plant. Much better than a gasoline powered car.
Batteries can be recycled. Today, you pay more for your new lead acid car battery unless you turn in your old one. You get a pretty considerable discount when turning in an old one, which gets recycled into more car batteries. I think there's something like a 90% recycling rate for car batteries as a result.
I've got some first-hand experience with this because my girlfriend recently finished up a "fast track" teacher training and certification program and is starting as an English teacher at a technical high school in the fall.
We'd routinely discuss the stuff that they were teaching her in class and I was appalled. It seems that "modern" Pedagogy is formulated more on the necessity of our current funding and education systems rather than what is actually most effective.
For example, the hot new thing is "differentiated instruction" which is newspeak for "put all the kinds in one class, regardless of ability, and let the teacher sort it out." Seems like this is a huge step backwards to the days of the one room school house. How can you expect a teacher to provide differentiated instruction to each student in a 9th grade class of 25 (and that's a relatively small class these days) when some are reading on a 3rd grade level and some are at a 12th grade level? It simply cannot be done.
I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had 5 levels for most classes. Most of my classes were level 4 (advanced) and level 5 (honors) and the teacher was able to push the class so that most students were challenged and very few were truly struggling to keep up.
It simply isn't possible to challenge the top achievers while giving the low achievers the attention and help that they need to succeed and improve. When you mix the students like this, you risk losing the top achievers to boredom while being unable to keep the low achievers on task and everyone loses.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess that depends on what you mean by "Buy American." Honda and Toyota have manufacturing plants in America. Is it "buying American" when you purchase a car manufactured at one of these plants? I'd argue that it is. All other things being equal, I see nothing wrong with "Buy American." It isn't really that much different than the "Buy Local" movement that is popular across the country, especially here in Vermont.
Buying products that are made/grown in closer proximity to you has many advantages:
* Lower transportation costs & less pollution
* Keeps the money you're spending in the local economy
* Helps to secure employment for local people
* Encourages cohesion in the local community
Obviously, the scale of "local" depends on the situation, but I don't see why at least some of the benefits don't scale up to the national level. What is wrong with wanting to improve the economic situation in the neighborhood/town/city/state/country where you live? You do, after all, live there. You need to have a job. A steady income. Services like fresh water, sewer, police, hospitals, etc.
So, you're saying it didn't fail because of poor design but because they designed it to be inexpensive to manufacture? That sounds to me like bad design. They didn't design it to stand up to normal use and instead designed it to save a few pennies here and there during the manufacturing and assembly process. Sounds like a classic example of a poorly chosen design trade-off where quality is sacrificed to save costs. Now it is coming back to bite them.
What's the point of this? The judge already instructs jurors not to discuss the trial or do any research. How is "don not discuss the trial" any different from "do not discuss the trial on the internet"? Do we really have to ban discussion of the trial via every different means of communication? How is this really enforceable, anyway?
When I was called up for jury duty last summer, I had to surrender my cell phone before going through the metal detector. I think other electronics were prohibited as well. Seems like this would be pretty simple to stop by a small rules change at the court house. Just ban cell phones and similar devices.
I'm generally opposed to this sort of stuff, but this particular application doesn't seem so bad. Uninsured motorists are a problem for everyone. If you're going to drive a car, you should have a license and your car should be registered, insured, and inspected according to state laws. Yes, this makes money for repair shops, insurance companies, state government, and the police. However, all of this is important for having safe roads and keeping down the cost of insurance.
I dunno that I agree. I mean, what's really the difference between a map that's "1 unit big" with 16 players and a map that's "2 units big" with 32 players? The density of players on the map is about the same. Yeah, there's potentially a bigger variety of players, but how much does that really add? I guess playing on a larger map is nice, and you do need more players to be sure that you don't spend most of your time just looking for somebody to shoot at, but are there any other benefits? After all, we are talking about a shooter. You don't do much but shoot at things that move and shoot back at you.
I generally agree with your post, but more players doesn't necessarily make for better gameplay. I recall plenty of times playing Quake, 10 years ago, that the map was over saturated with players and you'd essentially get fragged as soon as you spawned. It was basically a giant cluster-f**k when the player count got too high. In my opinion, it is more fun to have to hunt a little for somebody to kill rather than having players everywhere you look.
Google knows all: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1331625/McDonalds-admits-using-beef-fat-for-vegetarian-french-fries.html
According to the article, the restaurant locations fry in vegetable oil, but the fries were partially fried in animal fat before they are frozen and shipped out to the restaurants.
You must be new here...
Aside from the actual scientific content of the article, I found this lead quote to be interesting with many subtle and not so subtle implications. Discuss.
What you forgot to mention is the wind farm you're talking about was built over 30 years ago and uses outdated technology. The multitude of smaller turbines turn faster and are much more dangerous to birds than today's larger, more efficient, and slower turning turbines. In fact, the older turbines are being slowly replaced with newer ones to produce more electricity for less money while also killing fewer birds.
From the Wikipedia article you linked:
It really isn't as simple as "just add printers" unfortunately. Any time that the voting and vote tabulating is done by the same machine, there is a higher risk of a problem.
To have secure and reliable electronic voting, you have to do think separation of concerns. At a high levels, there's two important use cases activities from the perspective of the voter (we'll ignore the administrative activities of creating the ballots for now):
1) Casting a vote
2) Counting votes
Therefore, there should be two machines. One machine allows the voter to cast their vote and marks it on an optical scan ballot. The second machine reads the ballot and tabulates the votes. The voter manually takes the completed ballot from the voting machine, verifies that the selections have been recorded correctly, and deposits the ballot in the counting machine.
This works just like many of us are used to. In fact, it would allow for the use of the same optical scan ballots in use today. Only people with special needs have to use the electronic voting machines. Voters with the ability to vote without assistance would have the option of manually marking their optical scan ballots with a pen or pencil.
Not only does this save money (less electronic voting machines required, most ballots are counted by optical scan machines today and these machines could be reused in the new system), but it also gives you all the security that we enjoy today. We have a paper trail, each ballot cast on an electronic voting machine is verified by the voter, the counting is done on a simple tabulating machine, and recounts are possible.
AM or your local FM NPR station if you can pull it in. I've found NPR's live election coverage to be quite good.
Don't forget to explain the difference between tubes and dump trucks
How about value = quality / price
I'd imagine that pretty much any company doing this sort of thing would be smart enough to snap up the domain names in question before doing that type of market research.
I'm the same way. When I'm sitting close to the monitor, 60Hz gives me a headache pretty fast. Sitting farther away, such as with a TV, it doesn't seem to bother me as much. Not really sure why.
I guess my karma whoring is done for now
Here's the goods:
Full 100mb version: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu.nyud.net/~seclab/projects/voting/ucsb_evoting_attack_dl.mov
Compressed 10mb version: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu.nyud.net/~seclab/projects/voting/ucsb_evoting_attack_dl_small.3gp
Posting to YouTube after download finishes...
Oops. Wrong link. This is what I meant to include:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=49238
I'd like to see some references for your numbers. What I've found is that the grid is much more efficient (over 90%) and even coal generation can be over 60% efficient using newer technology. That means that you're getting 54% efficiency at the wall plug from a brand new highly efficient coal plant. Much better than a gasoline powered car.
http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html
Batteries can be recycled. Today, you pay more for your new lead acid car battery unless you turn in your old one. You get a pretty considerable discount when turning in an old one, which gets recycled into more car batteries. I think there's something like a 90% recycling rate for car batteries as a result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-acid_battery#Environmental_concerns
Don't forget Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare
I've got some first-hand experience with this because my girlfriend recently finished up a "fast track" teacher training and certification program and is starting as an English teacher at a technical high school in the fall.
We'd routinely discuss the stuff that they were teaching her in class and I was appalled. It seems that "modern" Pedagogy is formulated more on the necessity of our current funding and education systems rather than what is actually most effective.
For example, the hot new thing is "differentiated instruction" which is newspeak for "put all the kinds in one class, regardless of ability, and let the teacher sort it out." Seems like this is a huge step backwards to the days of the one room school house. How can you expect a teacher to provide differentiated instruction to each student in a 9th grade class of 25 (and that's a relatively small class these days) when some are reading on a 3rd grade level and some are at a 12th grade level? It simply cannot be done.
I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had 5 levels for most classes. Most of my classes were level 4 (advanced) and level 5 (honors) and the teacher was able to push the class so that most students were challenged and very few were truly struggling to keep up.
It simply isn't possible to challenge the top achievers while giving the low achievers the attention and help that they need to succeed and improve. When you mix the students like this, you risk losing the top achievers to boredom while being unable to keep the low achievers on task and everyone loses.
Are you wearing your buddy anklet today?