I always put energy-efficient bulbs in my closets (but I look for the absolute cheapest ones available)... because multiple people in my household tend to turn them on and shut the closet door.
A 40 W bulb left on for 24 hours uses about 1 kW-hr, so about $0.12 or so depending on where you life. Doesn't take too many times for the switch to CFL to pay for itself, and it makes me less frustrated with my family.
Besides, I got these CFLs for about $1 each. Sure they take forever to warm up and have a weird green color, but who cares? It's a closet!
The only religion not being practiced here is a fantacy religion that only exists in your head.
If you ask Mormons what they believe, they'll tell you one thing. If you ask someone with an axe to grind (often an ex-Mormon or another church's pastor),they'll say something completely different. While both will be biased in one way or another, only one is actively trying to misportray Mormons.
If you want to know about what a religion believes, read what it publishes, listen to what it teaches, and talk to its practicioners. Especially when it comes to the Mormons, because of how much nonsense is out there on them.
Don't pretend to know what you're talking about, because you might as well be talking about the religion of the mold on my cheese, for all you "know" about Mormons. It must be nice to be able to just make things up, but most people need reality.
Here's the facts, but I expect you to spew more nonsense soon enough.
The rules for men and women are the same. They must be endowed (receive their garments) in order to serve a mission or to be married in the temple. The ceremony occurs shortly before. If a member of the church is not endowed by the time they are 30 years old, they can discuss with their Bishop about receiving their endowments.
And thus we see that you don't know anything about Mormons that is actually based in reality.
Thus is so utterely stupid and ill-informed it's no even funny. I'll leave it to others to debunk these points, but please mode, do your job. The only thing informative about this post is what it tells us about the submitter.
And American retailers will continue to accept your funny-looking pennies with some lady on them. I had one cashier remark how they're always changing the coins, and how it must be Lincoln's wife.
The benefit goes beyond knowing what experiments don't work. Look at the FTL neutrino experiment for an example: now we know at least a few pitfalls of using GPS as an extremely accurate time source, and that is knowledge that is worth preserving for future generations.
The interesting knowledge isn't the fact that an experiment failed, but why it failed.
It's a popular theory that speed traps and other traffic stops are only used to generate cash for the police department. While this is true to some extent, it's also a rather effective method for the police to catch people involved in more significant crimes. Run the plates, check for arrest warrants, and so forth.
Ever heard of Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, or Dennis Rader? All caught during routine traffic stops.
So, what you're saying is that copying a product with distinctive design features is grounds for design patent infringement. I don't think you'd find anybody who would disagree with that. But what about a design where the distinction is the lack of distinction?
Now, I should point out that there's a few things that the iPad's design patent does call out that might be slightly distinctive (I believe specific colors fall into this category), but overall the patent is for a rather minimalistic design, much of which is simply a description of what a device of this sort must have regardless.
Except that software is part of the details. Like the design and color scheme of certain icons.
On the other hand, if you only consider hardware for a minute... is absence of design a design in itself?
Is the absence of color a color in itself? Is the absence of religion a religion in itself? Alternatively, at what point does minimalism (see also: 4'33") become the same as a blank piece of paper art? At what point does it stay patentable?
Sorry, this is a bit too philosophical for my tastes.
I 100% disagree. From experience. In my view, smart phones are too small to be useful, and many are too large to be a good phone. 10" is definitely too large to be portable (might as well haul around a smallish laptop at that point), too heavy and awkward to hold comfortably. 7" can fit into a purse, pocket (jeans or suit, even with a case on it), backpack, or whatever you want while still having plenty of space to do everything I could want. It's also a convenient size for holding with one hand.
But, really, could it be that 7" is too small for the way you want to use it? Yeah, never mind that other people have different needs.
How do you evaluate someone when what they do depends so much on other people? That's the real question, isn't it?
Fortunately, schools aren't the only ones with this problem. For an obvious example, let's look at salesmen. Their managers give them sales quotas, but they have no direct control over how much people buy. But there are some things they can control. They can work longer hours, and they can be more persuasive. Even though their sales are based on the actions of others, you'll find that better salesmen tend to achieve their quotas while the less effective salesmen tend to come up short.
A smart sales manager will look at the region a salesman works in as then assign an appropriate goal, taking into account the demographics of the region, how many sales have occurred in the past, and much more.
Teachers could be likewise evaluated. Give them a goal, such as test scores for their class. Keep in mind how well similar classes have done in this school when setting the expectation. You can also see how well these same students did in their previous classes. The teacher's job, then, is to help the students learn the subject matter and do well on the tests. Like a salesman, even though they can't force students (and the students' parents) to do anything, effective teachers are able to help students (and parents) do and learn more, leading to better test scores.
This scheme depends on two things to be effective. First, the goal must be set in a reasonable matter, given the demographics of the class and how well similar classes have performed in the past. Second, the teacher must be fairly evaluated against that goal. These are tough, but tractable, problems.
Evaluating any employee is a hard problem. Take software engineering, for example. You can evaluate by output, such as lines of code or number of closed bugs. Or you can evaluate by company growth, such as bringing in new business or taking classes. Or you can evaluate against goals that are set each year. Each of these works for a while, until the programmer catches on. The problem is that no matter how an employer performs evaluations, there's always some way to game the system. Anything from writing lots and lots of lines of worthless code to becoming best buds with the evaluators.
What's really frustrating is that it's actually really easy to tell if a teacher is good or not if you take a step back from any artificial metric. Think back on your education! Who were the good teachers? They were personable, likable, and helped you learn. At the end of the year, you came out of that class with knowledge of the subject matter and with a desire to learn more. Or maybe the teacher turned a hated subject into something more tolerable. We want to find those teachers and reward them, hold them up for everyone to see and shout "You should be more like them!"
An evaluation system should directly encourage and reward behaviors that make for a good employee. But as soon as you talk about objectively measuring teacher performance, this all goes out the window. Subjective systems are unfair, objective systems can and will be gamed to the detriment of the student.
1) Adoptive and foster mothers (usually) can't breastfeed 2) Not all women can produce sufficient milk for their children (even the most productive mother has a hard time with triplets, and some have a hard time nursing just one baby) 3) Some American will sue the airline over indecent exposure if the woman on the same isle breastfeeds 4) Working women have a hard time breastfeeding. They usually must pump during the day to get enough milk flowing, and often the child starts to prefer the bottles they get during the day anyway.
I could go on, of course. The point is that even though "breast is best," it is not always possible due to individual circumstances and physiology. If you can do it, great... but don't expect everyone to do the same.
First, you're wrong about software being a machine. The hardware is the machine. Software is the set of instructions telling the machine what to do.
Second, patents do not protect only things that "do something." Machines are just one type of patent. Processes are also patentable, as are "compositions of matter" and "articles of manufacture." All four of these apply to software in one way or another (some better than others).
Sometimes we get caught up in the distinction between hardware and software. The line separating them almost doesn't exist anymore, honestly. VHDL and Verilog give us a way to describe hardware in the same way that we describe software. Software gives us mechanisms to emulate hardware. We code instructions directly into the hardware and call it "firmware"... but is it software or hardware? We write HD video decoding software, and then decide to do the exact same thing in hardware. What about widgets on a screen: is a "composition of matter" possible by combining widgets together in a new way, even though widgets don't really exist? At what point do the metaphors used for widgets not equate the physical objects? (Relevant example: a sliding latch to open or unlock something versus a sliding widget on a screen to perform a similar function.)
Most people seem to agree that hardware patents are perfectly fine (as long as they're novel and non-obvious, of course). But what if you turn around and reimplement the same thing in software? Now it's not patentable?
No, the real problem is not "software patents" or "patenting math" (what a load of hogwash, btw). It's the utter rubbish that's patented in the current system. The level of infraction itself is evidence that what's being patented is neither novel nor non-obvious. Most people around here say "well, duh, that's exactly what I would have done." And on top of it all, the patents are so broad as to include almost any solution to a problem.
Vim, however, does have a small selection of modifier keys. (Well, small relative to Emacs) For example, after you use:split to divide the window into two views, there's a whole mess of ^W commands to manipulate those views (move them around, switch between them, resize them, etc.).
Well, splicers already exist. You just need to convert the plug to micro-USB. However, these things cost $25 by themselves!
So, I've been thinking of building my own. Stepping down the voltage (from 44-57 V to 5 V) is the easy part. The hard part is negotiating the power you're about to draw.
Fortunately, you can get the appropriate controller from Digikey for about a buck.
So, to make your own, you'd need the PoE-PD interface, a DC-converter, two RJ-45 port and one USB port to plug everything in, a dozen or so external components (capacitors, inductors, diodes, etc), and a PCB board to tie it all together. Just using mini-USB is cheaper, of course, but building your own splitter isn't out of the question.
All in all, this would add a couple bucks to the price of a Raspberry Pi (but model B only) and take up board space at the same time, so I can see why they didn't do this for the first generation.
Slashdot Mirror
I always put energy-efficient bulbs in my closets (but I look for the absolute cheapest ones available) ... because multiple people in my household tend to turn them on and shut the closet door.
A 40 W bulb left on for 24 hours uses about 1 kW-hr, so about $0.12 or so depending on where you life. Doesn't take too many times for the switch to CFL to pay for itself, and it makes me less frustrated with my family.
Besides, I got these CFLs for about $1 each. Sure they take forever to warm up and have a weird green color, but who cares? It's a closet!
The only religion not being practiced here is a fantacy religion that only exists in your head.
If you ask Mormons what they believe, they'll tell you one thing. If you ask someone with an axe to grind (often an ex-Mormon or another church's pastor) ,they'll say something completely different. While both will be biased in one way or another, only one is actively trying to misportray Mormons.
If you want to know about what a religion believes, read what it publishes, listen to what it teaches, and talk to its practicioners. Especially when it comes to the Mormons, because of how much nonsense is out there on them.
Don't pretend to know what you're talking about, because you might as well be talking about the religion of the mold on my cheese, for all you "know" about Mormons. It must be nice to be able to just make things up, but most people need reality.
Here's the facts, but I expect you to spew more nonsense soon enough.
The rules for men and women are the same. They must be endowed (receive their garments) in order to serve a mission or to be married in the temple. The ceremony occurs shortly before. If a member of the church is not endowed by the time they are 30 years old, they can discuss with their Bishop about receiving their endowments.
And thus we see that you don't know anything about Mormons that is actually based in reality.
Thus is so utterely stupid and ill-informed it's no even funny. I'll leave it to others to debunk these points, but please mode, do your job. The only thing informative about this post is what it tells us about the submitter.
If you're a mormon, the answer is yes. It's creators all the way down.
And American retailers will continue to accept your funny-looking pennies with some lady on them. I had one cashier remark how they're always changing the coins, and how it must be Lincoln's wife.
The benefit goes beyond knowing what experiments don't work. Look at the FTL neutrino experiment for an example: now we know at least a few pitfalls of using GPS as an extremely accurate time source, and that is knowledge that is worth preserving for future generations.
The interesting knowledge isn't the fact that an experiment failed, but why it failed.
Small crimes ... like speeding?
It's a popular theory that speed traps and other traffic stops are only used to generate cash for the police department. While this is true to some extent, it's also a rather effective method for the police to catch people involved in more significant crimes. Run the plates, check for arrest warrants, and so forth.
Ever heard of Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, or Dennis Rader? All caught during routine traffic stops.
My Samsung TV has a very distinctive design.
So, what you're saying is that copying a product with distinctive design features is grounds for design patent infringement. I don't think you'd find anybody who would disagree with that. But what about a design where the distinction is the lack of distinction?
Now, I should point out that there's a few things that the iPad's design patent does call out that might be slightly distinctive (I believe specific colors fall into this category), but overall the patent is for a rather minimalistic design, much of which is simply a description of what a device of this sort must have regardless.
Except that software is part of the details. Like the design and color scheme of certain icons.
On the other hand, if you only consider hardware for a minute ... is absence of design a design in itself?
Is the absence of color a color in itself? Is the absence of religion a religion in itself? Alternatively, at what point does minimalism (see also: 4'33") become the same as a blank piece of paper art? At what point does it stay patentable?
Sorry, this is a bit too philosophical for my tastes.
But, at least now we know there are three fewer 0-day exploits than before. That's something, isn't it?
They haven't yet sealed the deal, and who knows what antitrust issues might be involved as well.
I 100% disagree. From experience. In my view, smart phones are too small to be useful, and many are too large to be a good phone. 10" is definitely too large to be portable (might as well haul around a smallish laptop at that point), too heavy and awkward to hold comfortably. 7" can fit into a purse, pocket (jeans or suit, even with a case on it), backpack, or whatever you want while still having plenty of space to do everything I could want. It's also a convenient size for holding with one hand.
But, really, could it be that 7" is too small for the way you want to use it? Yeah, never mind that other people have different needs.
Big deal. We have 'holes everywhere in the USA, too. One cut me off on my commute this morning, in fact.
And also completely redundant (every local variable is an auto variable unless declared differently), and thus completely useless and never used.
I think it's wonderful they managed to re-purpose a dead keyword into something wonderfully useful, and the name even fits so well.
in Java of course you can just use the foreach syntax (Kitten kitten : kittens).
Which is also a C++11 feature, now. Except they call it a "range-based for loop."
for ( Kitten& kitten : kittens )
Using a reference is optional, I think, but is probably the better way to go in the general case (so you can modify the object instead of a copy).
However, take a look at clang. One day, this and much more will be possible.
How do you evaluate someone when what they do depends so much on other people? That's the real question, isn't it?
Fortunately, schools aren't the only ones with this problem. For an obvious example, let's look at salesmen. Their managers give them sales quotas, but they have no direct control over how much people buy. But there are some things they can control. They can work longer hours, and they can be more persuasive. Even though their sales are based on the actions of others, you'll find that better salesmen tend to achieve their quotas while the less effective salesmen tend to come up short.
A smart sales manager will look at the region a salesman works in as then assign an appropriate goal, taking into account the demographics of the region, how many sales have occurred in the past, and much more.
Teachers could be likewise evaluated. Give them a goal, such as test scores for their class. Keep in mind how well similar classes have done in this school when setting the expectation. You can also see how well these same students did in their previous classes. The teacher's job, then, is to help the students learn the subject matter and do well on the tests. Like a salesman, even though they can't force students (and the students' parents) to do anything, effective teachers are able to help students (and parents) do and learn more, leading to better test scores.
This scheme depends on two things to be effective. First, the goal must be set in a reasonable matter, given the demographics of the class and how well similar classes have performed in the past. Second, the teacher must be fairly evaluated against that goal. These are tough, but tractable, problems.
Evaluating any employee is a hard problem. Take software engineering, for example. You can evaluate by output, such as lines of code or number of closed bugs. Or you can evaluate by company growth, such as bringing in new business or taking classes. Or you can evaluate against goals that are set each year. Each of these works for a while, until the programmer catches on. The problem is that no matter how an employer performs evaluations, there's always some way to game the system. Anything from writing lots and lots of lines of worthless code to becoming best buds with the evaluators.
What's really frustrating is that it's actually really easy to tell if a teacher is good or not if you take a step back from any artificial metric. Think back on your education! Who were the good teachers? They were personable, likable, and helped you learn. At the end of the year, you came out of that class with knowledge of the subject matter and with a desire to learn more. Or maybe the teacher turned a hated subject into something more tolerable. We want to find those teachers and reward them, hold them up for everyone to see and shout "You should be more like them!"
An evaluation system should directly encourage and reward behaviors that make for a good employee. But as soon as you talk about objectively measuring teacher performance, this all goes out the window. Subjective systems are unfair, objective systems can and will be gamed to the detriment of the student.
Yeah, that's not going to fly (pardon the pun).
1) Adoptive and foster mothers (usually) can't breastfeed
2) Not all women can produce sufficient milk for their children (even the most productive mother has a hard time with triplets, and some have a hard time nursing just one baby)
3) Some American will sue the airline over indecent exposure if the woman on the same isle breastfeeds
4) Working women have a hard time breastfeeding. They usually must pump during the day to get enough milk flowing, and often the child starts to prefer the bottles they get during the day anyway.
I could go on, of course. The point is that even though "breast is best," it is not always possible due to individual circumstances and physiology. If you can do it, great ... but don't expect everyone to do the same.
I'll add docks and bluetooth keyboards to the very thin list of accessories, but I know few people that have even those.
Wouldn't it be hard to make exact change with an irrational coin?
Just my sqrt(2) cents.
First, you're wrong about software being a machine. The hardware is the machine. Software is the set of instructions telling the machine what to do.
Second, patents do not protect only things that "do something." Machines are just one type of patent. Processes are also patentable, as are "compositions of matter" and "articles of manufacture." All four of these apply to software in one way or another (some better than others).
Sometimes we get caught up in the distinction between hardware and software. The line separating them almost doesn't exist anymore, honestly. VHDL and Verilog give us a way to describe hardware in the same way that we describe software. Software gives us mechanisms to emulate hardware. We code instructions directly into the hardware and call it "firmware" ... but is it software or hardware? We write HD video decoding software, and then decide to do the exact same thing in hardware. What about widgets on a screen: is a "composition of matter" possible by combining widgets together in a new way, even though widgets don't really exist? At what point do the metaphors used for widgets not equate the physical objects? (Relevant example: a sliding latch to open or unlock something versus a sliding widget on a screen to perform a similar function.)
Most people seem to agree that hardware patents are perfectly fine (as long as they're novel and non-obvious, of course). But what if you turn around and reimplement the same thing in software? Now it's not patentable?
No, the real problem is not "software patents" or "patenting math" (what a load of hogwash, btw). It's the utter rubbish that's patented in the current system. The level of infraction itself is evidence that what's being patented is neither novel nor non-obvious. Most people around here say "well, duh, that's exactly what I would have done." And on top of it all, the patents are so broad as to include almost any solution to a problem.
Vim, however, does have a small selection of modifier keys. (Well, small relative to Emacs) For example, after you use :split to divide the window into two views, there's a whole mess of ^W commands to manipulate those views (move them around, switch between them, resize them, etc.).
Well, splicers already exist. You just need to convert the plug to micro-USB. However, these things cost $25 by themselves!
So, I've been thinking of building my own. Stepping down the voltage (from 44-57 V to 5 V) is the easy part. The hard part is negotiating the power you're about to draw.
Fortunately, you can get the appropriate controller from Digikey for about a buck.
So, to make your own, you'd need the PoE-PD interface, a DC-converter, two RJ-45 port and one USB port to plug everything in, a dozen or so external components (capacitors, inductors, diodes, etc), and a PCB board to tie it all together. Just using mini-USB is cheaper, of course, but building your own splitter isn't out of the question.
All in all, this would add a couple bucks to the price of a Raspberry Pi (but model B only) and take up board space at the same time, so I can see why they didn't do this for the first generation.