How on Earth does SETI@Home benefit society? Even if by some bizarre coincidence, we actually detected evidence of intelligent life outside of the solar system, the likelihood that society would benefit by that is basically nil.
It increases our knowledge of the nature of the universe.
Also, it gives us practice developing distributed computing systems.
I'm shocked that Facebook (& friends) don't have some type of "legal request mechanism" that would work as a "backdoor" for this type of thing. They can reset passwords and such, so it's hard to believe they don't have a mechanism to handle requests from legal systems for a history of posts, images, etc.
You shouldn't be shocked; they do, of course, have such a mechanism. You might be shocked that in this case it wasn't used.
What we can agree on, I believe, is that pretty much all the first world countries are in a bit of a bind when it comes to the matters of debt and the solidity of their economies.
To a degree. It's hard to say. We've been in more dire situations before, but perhaps in the past approached them less stupidly. The US is still able to sell bonds at incredibly low rates, so at present the market seems to think our debt is no big deal. The European situation is complicated, but it's certainly not going well.
Certainly we can agree that there are a lot of countries that manage to have less debt than we do. Most have much lower GDPs, but not all.
Your three references are to completely different things. My two references are on the Wikipedia page we're talking about.
As I understand it, all debt figures cited by the CIA World Factbook are public debt. Public debt is also the standard for comparing debt of countries.
That table is inaccurate. (It's the first place I looked.) Remember I said public debt, which is what's usually used to compare the debts of different countries. That page has two sources for public debt figures: CIA world factbook and the IMF. If you look at the CIA World Factbook for the US (actually, they have a whole table, just like the Wikipedia page), you'll find that it's 68%. If you look at the IMF table that the Wikipedia page cites, you'll see that they're actually listing "general government gross debt", which is not the same as public debt. Notably, gross debt includes debt between agencies within the same government, while public debt does not.
You know how people harp on not just using Wikipedia as a source? That's why.
Note that both of your other lists are total external debt, which includes private (i.e., nongovernmental) debts, so they're a horse of a different color altogether.
Voice: RedPhone. SMS: TextSecure. Data: SSL. (Both RedPhone and TextSecure were developed and are distributed within the US, by the way.)
Strong encryption isn't hard. But it requires both endpoints of the communication to agree to use the same system for encryption and it requires them to share information ahead of time (or to both have shared information, like a PKI infrastructure).
Lawyers are always going to recommend you sue another party whenever reasonable. What the intent of a design patent is and how it ends up being actually used aren't necessarily the same thing. More's the pity.
Of course, both sides have differing views on the facts. Apple thinks that Samsung intentionally designed their tablet to look and behave like an iPad so that it could better compete against the iPad and, in doing so, made design choices that are covered under one of Apple's design patents. Samsung thinks that's a bunch of crap.
Trademark only protects against competitors creating confusion about the source of a product. A design patent protects against a competitor copying your characteristic design even if they make clear the source of the product.
Some things are covered by trademark and design patent (e.g., the Coca-cola bottle), but for the most part, a design patent provides a very different set of protections than a trademark. (A trademark prevents you from making a device called an iPhone, even if it looks different. A design patent prevents you from making a device that looks just like an iPhone, even if it's clearly not an iPhone.)
Oh, I don't think it's an overhead issue either. But it's optimistic to say that most packets will be near the maximum -- it depends a lot on how the connection is used. Saying "at most" 48 bytes per 1500 is backwards, though -- it's the best-case scenario ("at least") unless jumbo packets are used.
In addition, it seems like the submitter asked what the method they measure bandwidth usage is. That's not the same as their definition of bandwidth usage.
In other words, they ought to be able to answer how you could measure your own bandwidth. They don't necessarily have to tell you how they measure it.
No, at least 48 bytes for every 1500. Smaller packets have the same headers but smaller datagrams, so the overhead is higher. He's losing at most 48 bytes per 0 data bytes -- empty datagrams are legal.
But consider: Apple has patents on the external shape and icons of the iPad. That is infinitely much worse; and even worse is that Apple feels that 'innovation' is worth $20 per device copying the rounded rectangular shape.
That is a design patent, not a utility patent. They're nothing alike, except for the word "patent". A design patent doesn't cover an innovation at all, it covers the non-functional appearance aspects of a functional object. For example, the external shape and icons of a branded product that are not critical to how it functions but are characteristic of that product. A design patent is supposed to be narrowly-defined. Its function is not to prevent competitors from making a similar product, but rather to prevent competitors from making a knock-off of your product.
For example, your average Android phone wouldn't infringe on an iPhone design patent. They look and behave similarly, but not the same. You can tell the difference. Now go to a market in China and pick up a knock-off iPhone. It looks exactly like an iPhone, it has the same UI widgets as an iPhone, and it's pretty hard for a casual observer to tell it apart from an iPhone. But it's not. That's a design patent infringement.
Of course, how well this works in practice comes down to how courts decide individual cases.
It's the record of whether or not you voted, which is public information. (Which party you declare when you register, and whether you're registered, is also public information.)
One of the things they talk about in TFA (I know, I know) is that an important part of their model is figuring out whether people are likely to vote and, for those who aren't but could be convinced, what strategy will convince them to vote. Probably your past history of whether you've voted is a component in that analysis.
Ever notice, when you walk up to the poll worker, how they scan your ID, write a number next to your name in their little book, then write the same number on the top of your ballot?
...
In New York, at least, every part of this statement is false.
Repeating it doesn't make it true. You pronounce the extra "s" if it's present.
You actually provide a good example. Normally, the correct possessive of "Los Angeles" would be "Los Angeles's". However, this is treated as an exception, since the extra "s" is considered difficult to pronounce. So the possessive actually follows the pronunciation: "Los Angeles'". In this case, knowing the exceptions for making possessives can be tricky -- but what *isn't* tricky is knowing how to pronounce it, as the exceptions exist because of the pronunciation pattern.
For almost all mistakes, you only need to know rules 1, 2, 4, and 9. Rule 9 isn't even about apostrophes -- it's about possessives. Rule 10, for example, is completely redundant once you have rules 1 and 9.
In the case of " Chrises' " it's complicated enough for there to be no set rule about how it's pronounced (although most people would say 'Chrises' because 'Chriseses' sounds silly).
Also, "Chriseses" adds letters that aren't there. There is a set rule about how it's pronounced: it's "Chrises". Weirdly, this is one of those cases in English where you pronounce the letters that are there. The apostrophe is not pronounced "es".
...unless the disk is nearly full, in which case it'll be writing the same cells over and over again.
(unless the supply a utility which moves data from least-used cells to most-used...)
That happens even if the disk is nowhere near full, and performing wear leveling is a major part of what the SSD controller does. If you're on a system that doesn't support TRIM, a nearly-full disk could end up with write amplification problems, though.
Well, you're to some extent confusing lower-quality polls and much lower-quality statistics with the modern incarnation. Individual polls still aren't particularly accurate, which is why we do modern statistical analysis on them. Even then, a key component of Silver's analysis is looking at the track record of different polling agencies, estimating their bias and error, and using that information to improve the aggregate data. That said, even Silver acknowledges that there are potentially-serious sources of systematic bias where poll-based data could be wrong.
but that does not seem to be what is being discussed: from the blog, emphasis mine: "And increasingly, it is hard to find leads for Mr. Romney in national surveys — although several of them show a tie."
I can see how that might be confusing. Silver includes national polling data, but his "probability of winning the election" is actually based on a statistical model of the electoral college. Read the blocks down the right-hand side. The mention of national surveys is distracting -- it's something about how if Romney was ahead in a national survey, it would suggest that his numbers in individual states could well be higher than what state-by-state polls are currently predicting. (There's a long blog post about that and it's not really very relevant to the overall statistical treatment.) He's just looking at bellwethers that could suggest the other numbers might be painting an inaccurate picture.
It's not the New York Times saying this, it's Nate Silver's blog, 538, which is owned by the NYT.
As a statistician, Silver knows all of the things that you complain about, has models that try to account for them, and has even used his blog to explain a lot about exactly how such things work. You should try reading it before you make shit up about the statistics.
For example,
I have no idea who will win, but "national" polls aren't useful because of the Electoral college (skipping the U.S. history lesson)
They're not necessarily useless, but state-by-state polls are critical for determining a winner because of the electoral college. Fortunately, they conduct state-by-state polls.
Slashdot Mirror
How on Earth does SETI@Home benefit society? Even if by some bizarre coincidence, we actually detected evidence of intelligent life outside of the solar system, the likelihood that society would benefit by that is basically nil.
It increases our knowledge of the nature of the universe.
Also, it gives us practice developing distributed computing systems.
I'm shocked that Facebook (& friends) don't have some type of "legal request mechanism" that would work as a "backdoor" for this type of thing. They can reset passwords and such, so it's hard to believe they don't have a mechanism to handle requests from legal systems for a history of posts, images, etc.
You shouldn't be shocked; they do, of course, have such a mechanism. You might be shocked that in this case it wasn't used.
What we can agree on, I believe, is that pretty much all the first world countries are in a bit of a bind when it comes to the matters of debt and the solidity of their economies.
To a degree. It's hard to say. We've been in more dire situations before, but perhaps in the past approached them less stupidly. The US is still able to sell bonds at incredibly low rates, so at present the market seems to think our debt is no big deal. The European situation is complicated, but it's certainly not going well.
Certainly we can agree that there are a lot of countries that manage to have less debt than we do. Most have much lower GDPs, but not all.
Your three references are to completely different things. My two references are on the Wikipedia page we're talking about.
As I understand it, all debt figures cited by the CIA World Factbook are public debt. Public debt is also the standard for comparing debt of countries.
That table is inaccurate. (It's the first place I looked.) Remember I said public debt, which is what's usually used to compare the debts of different countries. That page has two sources for public debt figures: CIA world factbook and the IMF. If you look at the CIA World Factbook for the US (actually, they have a whole table, just like the Wikipedia page), you'll find that it's 68%. If you look at the IMF table that the Wikipedia page cites, you'll see that they're actually listing "general government gross debt", which is not the same as public debt. Notably, gross debt includes debt between agencies within the same government, while public debt does not.
You know how people harp on not just using Wikipedia as a source? That's why.
Note that both of your other lists are total external debt, which includes private (i.e., nongovernmental) debts, so they're a horse of a different color altogether.
As a fraction of GDP, the US has less public debt than Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, or the UK.
So... yes. European debt crisis.
Bug is the right term here. Terrible design decisions and intentional but stupid implementation decisions are also bugs.
Voice: RedPhone. SMS: TextSecure. Data: SSL. (Both RedPhone and TextSecure were developed and are distributed within the US, by the way.)
Strong encryption isn't hard. But it requires both endpoints of the communication to agree to use the same system for encryption and it requires them to share information ahead of time (or to both have shared information, like a PKI infrastructure).
Lawyers are always going to recommend you sue another party whenever reasonable. What the intent of a design patent is and how it ends up being actually used aren't necessarily the same thing. More's the pity.
Of course, both sides have differing views on the facts. Apple thinks that Samsung intentionally designed their tablet to look and behave like an iPad so that it could better compete against the iPad and, in doing so, made design choices that are covered under one of Apple's design patents. Samsung thinks that's a bunch of crap.
Trademark only protects against competitors creating confusion about the source of a product. A design patent protects against a competitor copying your characteristic design even if they make clear the source of the product.
Some things are covered by trademark and design patent (e.g., the Coca-cola bottle), but for the most part, a design patent provides a very different set of protections than a trademark. (A trademark prevents you from making a device called an iPhone, even if it looks different. A design patent prevents you from making a device that looks just like an iPhone, even if it's clearly not an iPhone.)
Oh, I don't think it's an overhead issue either. But it's optimistic to say that most packets will be near the maximum -- it depends a lot on how the connection is used. Saying "at most" 48 bytes per 1500 is backwards, though -- it's the best-case scenario ("at least") unless jumbo packets are used.
In addition, it seems like the submitter asked what the method they measure bandwidth usage is. That's not the same as their definition of bandwidth usage.
In other words, they ought to be able to answer how you could measure your own bandwidth. They don't necessarily have to tell you how they measure it.
he's losing, at most, 48 bytes for every 1500
No, at least 48 bytes for every 1500. Smaller packets have the same headers but smaller datagrams, so the overhead is higher. He's losing at most 48 bytes per 0 data bytes -- empty datagrams are legal.
But consider: Apple has patents on the external shape and icons of the iPad. That is infinitely much worse; and even worse is that Apple feels that 'innovation' is worth $20 per device copying the rounded rectangular shape.
That is a design patent, not a utility patent. They're nothing alike, except for the word "patent". A design patent doesn't cover an innovation at all, it covers the non-functional appearance aspects of a functional object. For example, the external shape and icons of a branded product that are not critical to how it functions but are characteristic of that product. A design patent is supposed to be narrowly-defined. Its function is not to prevent competitors from making a similar product, but rather to prevent competitors from making a knock-off of your product.
For example, your average Android phone wouldn't infringe on an iPhone design patent. They look and behave similarly, but not the same. You can tell the difference. Now go to a market in China and pick up a knock-off iPhone. It looks exactly like an iPhone, it has the same UI widgets as an iPhone, and it's pretty hard for a casual observer to tell it apart from an iPhone. But it's not. That's a design patent infringement.
Of course, how well this works in practice comes down to how courts decide individual cases.
I don't recall if you even have the option of giving them your phone number. But, with a name and address, getting a phone number is pretty easy.
It's the record of whether or not you voted, which is public information. (Which party you declare when you register, and whether you're registered, is also public information.)
One of the things they talk about in TFA (I know, I know) is that an important part of their model is figuring out whether people are likely to vote and, for those who aren't but could be convinced, what strategy will convince them to vote. Probably your past history of whether you've voted is a component in that analysis.
Ever notice, when you walk up to the poll worker, how they scan your ID, write a number next to your name in their little book, then write the same number on the top of your ballot?
...
In New York, at least, every part of this statement is false.
Repeating it doesn't make it true. You pronounce the extra "s" if it's present.
You actually provide a good example. Normally, the correct possessive of "Los Angeles" would be "Los Angeles's". However, this is treated as an exception, since the extra "s" is considered difficult to pronounce. So the possessive actually follows the pronunciation: "Los Angeles'". In this case, knowing the exceptions for making possessives can be tricky -- but what *isn't* tricky is knowing how to pronounce it, as the exceptions exist because of the pronunciation pattern.
Easy: this story is on Slashdot, and people on Slashdot like to complain about the U.S. Justice system.
For almost all mistakes, you only need to know rules 1, 2, 4, and 9. Rule 9 isn't even about apostrophes -- it's about possessives. Rule 10, for example, is completely redundant once you have rules 1 and 9.
In the case of " Chrises' " it's complicated enough for there to be no set rule about how it's pronounced (although most people would say 'Chrises' because 'Chriseses' sounds silly).
Also, "Chriseses" adds letters that aren't there. There is a set rule about how it's pronounced: it's "Chrises". Weirdly, this is one of those cases in English where you pronounce the letters that are there. The apostrophe is not pronounced "es".
...unless the disk is nearly full, in which case it'll be writing the same cells over and over again.
(unless the supply a utility which moves data from least-used cells to most-used...)
That happens even if the disk is nowhere near full, and performing wear leveling is a major part of what the SSD controller does. If you're on a system that doesn't support TRIM, a nearly-full disk could end up with write amplification problems, though.
Well, you're to some extent confusing lower-quality polls and much lower-quality statistics with the modern incarnation. Individual polls still aren't particularly accurate, which is why we do modern statistical analysis on them. Even then, a key component of Silver's analysis is looking at the track record of different polling agencies, estimating their bias and error, and using that information to improve the aggregate data. That said, even Silver acknowledges that there are potentially-serious sources of systematic bias where poll-based data could be wrong.
but that does not seem to be what is being discussed: from the blog, emphasis mine: "And increasingly, it is hard to find leads for Mr. Romney in national surveys — although several of them show a tie."
I can see how that might be confusing. Silver includes national polling data, but his "probability of winning the election" is actually based on a statistical model of the electoral college. Read the blocks down the right-hand side. The mention of national surveys is distracting -- it's something about how if Romney was ahead in a national survey, it would suggest that his numbers in individual states could well be higher than what state-by-state polls are currently predicting. (There's a long blog post about that and it's not really very relevant to the overall statistical treatment.) He's just looking at bellwethers that could suggest the other numbers might be painting an inaccurate picture.
It's not the New York Times saying this, it's Nate Silver's blog, 538, which is owned by the NYT.
As a statistician, Silver knows all of the things that you complain about, has models that try to account for them, and has even used his blog to explain a lot about exactly how such things work. You should try reading it before you make shit up about the statistics.
For example,
I have no idea who will win, but "national" polls aren't useful because of the Electoral college (skipping the U.S. history lesson)
They're not necessarily useless, but state-by-state polls are critical for determining a winner because of the electoral college. Fortunately, they conduct state-by-state polls.
Which in turn is why the Times bought him and, as far as I can tell, hasn't changed anything but the branding.