Sorry, but that is bullshit. I followed the link to the grandparent article which talks about 300K farmers suing Monsanto. This story was already shown to be completely false in an earlier discussion on slashdot.
DARPA was founded after Sputnik. Their mission is 'creating and preventing strategic surprise'.
Something Sputnik certainly provided.
This particular grant funds makerspaces in high schools. Obviously this is something with broad benefits if you think technology is overall a good thing.
I have training and experience in chemistry which includes developing products used in direct and indirect food contact. I am suggesting that there are many plastic products that are perfectly safe for use in food contact during cooking.
Also, if you follow slashdot you aware of recent skepticism regarding the approaches make in much of the medical literature which report correlations between exposure at extremely low levels and certain deleterious effects. BPA reports fall right smack dab into this category. The exposure levels are minute, and the effects reported are large. In addition there is no actual known metabolic mechanism that supports these observations. Even more telling the effects reported are not observed in occupational cohorts - that is people who work in factories that make BPA based products.
Scientific American printed an article that summed up this problem:
"Although experts debate whether mice make good models for human effects, the crux of the argument over BPA is that experimental results have not been reproduced. A 2004 report from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis found âoeno consistent affirmative evidence for low-dose BPA effects.â According to I. Glenn Sipes of the University of Arizona, a co-author of that paper, it is this inconsistency that bothers skeptics. âoeIâ(TM)ve never had a problem saying that we can see biological effects in these low-dose studies,â he says. âoeBut why are we seeing these studies that canâ(TM)t be repeated?â A onetime result in a rodent model, Sipes argues, cannot be extrapolated to mean negative impacts for human health."
So while I support the idea that BPA in the food chain should be carefully regulated because of reports that it MAY be an issue, I also believe that the case against BPA is far from conclusive.
The US FDA, the EU EFSA and the Japanese, and the regulatory agencies of many other countries have all reviewed the evidence and reached the conclusion that BPA is safe under current regulations.
Jewel looked pretty guilty too. It is only after a complete investigation that the truth came out - 3 months later. Meanwhile he lived a hunted life while this was going on.
We had a similar spectacle in NY recently with DSK. Some inappropriate behavior, but no evidence of actual crime. Meanwhile there was a media frenzy.
Doing original research isn't sufficient to escape being considered a patent troll.
As far as income, IV gets a lot from the companies that have bought a stake in their operations. They aren't solely funded by patent income either.
Now CSIRO may be a research organization. But this business model of turning government funding into lawsuits around the world is patent trolling. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the way it is.
Yes they are a troll. One of the main characteristics of patent trolls is that they do not manufacture anything associated with the patents they own so you can't countersue them for infringement of your own patents in the same field.
Their only income from their inventions comes from suing other people or licensing fees extorted by threatening to sue.
The cost per month of a mortgage is typically 33% because that's the most a reasonable underwriting policy will allow.
As far as inflation, it's a given. Right now it's low, but that's typical in this point in an economic cycle. That's why home buying is generally attractive during recessions, and quite often home purchases are the first signs of economic recoveries. The current housing crash has really made a mess of things because banks got burnt, making buying a house hard.
With the national debt and actions the Fed has been taking to artificially suppress interest rates it's pretty clear that there will be increased inflation in the future.
Wages often lag inflation but ultimately they go up too. If the economy really gets booming wages can actually be the primary contributing factor to inflation.
Here is an interesting analysis of the current situation w.r.t. wages and inflation:
Over the past 100 years or so the dollar has lost 98% of it's value due to inflation. When you buy a house one of the benefits is paying it off in future dollars. With the extraordinary low interest rates it will be fewer future dollars. My first house had a mortgage payment of $343 per month. As I progressed in my career inflation plus advancement caused that payment to end up being less than 5% of my monthly salary. Now I have no mortgage, and my property taxes are twice what my original mortgage payment was.
I would sure hate to be renting now.
Renters get screwed because they have to pay on a current cost basis.
Now it may take a decade for things to normalize because the excesses were really large, but already it is already starting to look like there is a lot of pent up demand for houses, and in almost all markets the classical buy or rent calculation is firmly pointing to buy.
After the Richard Jewel case I don't get into rush to judgement any more.
However the initial response of the police to let Zimmerman walk without a real investigation deserves a whole lot of criticism. Now we are getting the investigation so hopefully the facts will become evident.
The current low interest rates mean that the cost of purchasing a house (not the actual price of the house) is not likely to be lower any time soon. Throw in the pent up demand and likely increases in inflation in the future and the fact is that it is pretty likely that you will wish you bought a house when they were cheap....
No you don't need a high tech house. American marketing companies have brainwashed you into wanting a high tech house.
What you NEED to do as a newly married man with a new mortgage is to stay out of debt and start building up savings for the expenses you will face over your lifetime. And hopefully you will be locking in the current low interest rates with a 15 year fixed rate mortgage.
Actually it is very much true. Since 2001 a grand total of 153 Americans have been killed in air travel accidents. Compare this to the 4000 or so killed in one day in 2001 and you can clearly see the reasonableness of continuing efforts to improve security.
Your mistake is taking the world wide totals which are clearly not applicable here as these regulations affect travel around the US only.
As far as checking car drivers you analogy is plain stupid. Car hijackings are not a cause of mass deaths.
Air travel is safe because of tremendous efforts exerted towards making the process safe. Improvements in the area are ongoing and the result of considerable research and development into the technology of air flight. If you want to talk about statistics, please mull over the fact that more people died in the WTC attacks than in all passenger air accidents in the past 10 years. By far.
LIkewise last I looked we exerted similar efforts towards traffic safety. Every vehicle on the roads is built towards rather exacting and ever increasing safety standards. Roads are constantly reviewed for safety and any and all trouble spots are corrected. Drivers are spot checked for alcohol influence and must pass an exam for proficiency and knowledge before getting a license. Drivers with a bad traffic record lose their license and in egregious cases are thrown in jail. Law enforcement officers patrol the roads on a regular basis looking for people not observing traffic laws.
So exactly why shouldn't similar improvements to aircraft security be undertaken?
When there is a record problems in area an attitude of complacency is NOT justified.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but that is bullshit. I followed the link to the grandparent article which talks about 300K farmers suing Monsanto. This story was already shown to be completely false in an earlier discussion on slashdot.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/15/1956248/300k-organic-farmers-to-sue-monsanto-for-seed-patent-claims
Mistake -1: you have more than 0 social media accounts.
The terrorists are laughing up their sleeves.
DARPA was founded after Sputnik. Their mission is 'creating and preventing strategic surprise'.
Something Sputnik certainly provided.
This particular grant funds makerspaces in high schools. Obviously this is something with broad benefits if you think technology is overall a good thing.
And strip searched once you get to the jail.
Probably something they hold the patents on.
Metro = Revenge of Bob.
You heard it first on Slashdot.
Fortunately I'm old enough so this is a realistic goal.
I have training and experience in chemistry which includes developing products used in direct and indirect food contact. I am suggesting that there are many plastic products that are perfectly safe for use in food contact during cooking.
Also, if you follow slashdot you aware of recent skepticism regarding the approaches make in much of the medical literature which report correlations between exposure at extremely low levels and certain deleterious effects. BPA reports fall right smack dab into this category. The exposure levels are minute, and the effects reported are large. In addition there is no actual known metabolic mechanism that supports these observations. Even more telling the effects reported are not observed in occupational cohorts - that is people who work in factories that make BPA based products.
Scientific American printed an article that summed up this problem:
"Although experts debate whether mice make good models for human effects, the crux of the argument over BPA is that experimental results have not been reproduced. A 2004 report from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis found âoeno consistent affirmative evidence for low-dose BPA effects.â According to I. Glenn Sipes of the University of Arizona, a co-author of that paper, it is this inconsistency that bothers skeptics. âoeIâ(TM)ve never had a problem saying that we can see biological effects in these low-dose studies,â he says. âoeBut why are we seeing these studies that canâ(TM)t be repeated?â A onetime result in a rodent model, Sipes argues, cannot be extrapolated to mean negative impacts for human health."
So while I support the idea that BPA in the food chain should be carefully regulated because of reports that it MAY be an issue, I also believe that the case against BPA is far from conclusive.
The US FDA, the EU EFSA and the Japanese, and the regulatory agencies of many other countries have all reviewed the evidence and reached the conclusion that BPA is safe under current regulations.
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/bisphenol.htm
Presumably some of the people working for these agencies are trained in chemistry.
IANAL but I would have thought exigent circumstances would have applied in this case.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_upholds_exigent-circumstances_search_of_apartment_that_smelle/
Depends on the plastic. Some are tested pretty carefully and have various certifications.
Of course you could take the word of internet chain letters over the Harvard Medical School.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/HEALTHbeat_081606.htm
It's your choice as to whether or not you want to behave rationally.
Jewel looked pretty guilty too. It is only after a complete investigation that the truth came out - 3 months later. Meanwhile he lived a hunted life while this was going on.
We had a similar spectacle in NY recently with DSK. Some inappropriate behavior, but no evidence of actual crime. Meanwhile there was a media frenzy.
One of the biggest patent trolls in the world is acknowledged to be Intellectual Ventures. And they do original research of their own too.
http://www.intellectualventures.com/Home.aspx
Doing original research isn't sufficient to escape being considered a patent troll.
As far as income, IV gets a lot from the companies that have bought a stake in their operations. They aren't solely funded by patent income either.
Now CSIRO may be a research organization. But this business model of turning government funding into lawsuits around the world is patent trolling. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the way it is.
What can you convict somebody of based on this? Nothing.
Like I said, I'm going to wait for a more complete picture.
Yes they are a troll. One of the main characteristics of patent trolls is that they do not manufacture anything associated with the patents they own so you can't countersue them for infringement of your own patents in the same field.
Their only income from their inventions comes from suing other people or licensing fees extorted by threatening to sue.
The cost per month of a mortgage is typically 33% because that's the most a reasonable underwriting policy will allow.
As far as inflation, it's a given. Right now it's low, but that's typical in this point in an economic cycle. That's why home buying is generally attractive during recessions, and quite often home purchases are the first signs of economic recoveries. The current housing crash has really made a mess of things because banks got burnt, making buying a house hard.
With the national debt and actions the Fed has been taking to artificially suppress interest rates it's pretty clear that there will be increased inflation in the future.
Wages often lag inflation but ultimately they go up too. If the economy really gets booming wages can actually be the primary contributing factor to inflation.
Here is an interesting analysis of the current situation w.r.t. wages and inflation:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/05/19/should-the-fed-be-worried-about-wage-inflation/
Over the past 100 years or so the dollar has lost 98% of it's value due to inflation. When you buy a house one of the benefits is paying it off in future dollars. With the extraordinary low interest rates it will be fewer future dollars. My first house had a mortgage payment of $343 per month. As I progressed in my career inflation plus advancement caused that payment to end up being less than 5% of my monthly salary. Now I have no mortgage, and my property taxes are twice what my original mortgage payment was.
I would sure hate to be renting now.
Renters get screwed because they have to pay on a current cost basis.
Now it may take a decade for things to normalize because the excesses were really large, but already it is already starting to look like there is a lot of pent up demand for houses, and in almost all markets the classical buy or rent calculation is firmly pointing to buy.
After the Richard Jewel case I don't get into rush to judgement any more.
However the initial response of the police to let Zimmerman walk without a real investigation deserves a whole lot of criticism. Now we are getting the investigation so hopefully the facts will become evident.
Generally a DA will NEVER divulge information during an ongoing investigation. Doing so would cause all sorts of problems with sources etc.
The current low interest rates mean that the cost of purchasing a house (not the actual price of the house) is not likely to be lower any time soon. Throw in the pent up demand and likely increases in inflation in the future and the fact is that it is pretty likely that you will wish you bought a house when they were cheap....
No you don't need a high tech house. American marketing companies have brainwashed you into wanting a high tech house.
What you NEED to do as a newly married man with a new mortgage is to stay out of debt and start building up savings for the expenses you will face over your lifetime. And hopefully you will be locking in the current low interest rates with a 15 year fixed rate mortgage.
Hmm so the fact that people regularly do get by TSA security is irrelevant?
Actually it is very much true. Since 2001 a grand total of 153 Americans have been killed in air travel accidents. Compare this to the 4000 or so killed in one day in 2001 and you can clearly see the reasonableness of continuing efforts to improve security.
Your mistake is taking the world wide totals which are clearly not applicable here as these regulations affect travel around the US only.
As far as checking car drivers you analogy is plain stupid. Car hijackings are not a cause of mass deaths.
The rest of your posting is equally nonsense.
The term 'demand' seems to be a journalistic excess here. For example the Canadians actually passed cooperative legislation enabling this.
http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2011/2011-10-12/html/sor-dors209-eng.html
As has the UK.
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2012/march/uk-opts-in-to-eu-us-pnr-agreement/
So this so-called 'demand' seems to have been handled by typical intergovernment negotiations.
Why is this a surprise all of a sudden? The EC agreed to this long ago.
Air travel is safe because of tremendous efforts exerted towards making the process safe. Improvements in the area are ongoing and the result of considerable research and development into the technology of air flight. If you want to talk about statistics, please mull over the fact that more people died in the WTC attacks than in all passenger air accidents in the past 10 years. By far.
LIkewise last I looked we exerted similar efforts towards traffic safety. Every vehicle on the roads is built towards rather exacting and ever increasing safety standards. Roads are constantly reviewed for safety and any and all trouble spots are corrected. Drivers are spot checked for alcohol influence and must pass an exam for proficiency and knowledge before getting a license. Drivers with a bad traffic record lose their license and in egregious cases are thrown in jail. Law enforcement officers patrol the roads on a regular basis looking for people not observing traffic laws.
So exactly why shouldn't similar improvements to aircraft security be undertaken?
When there is a record problems in area an attitude of complacency is NOT justified.