Every time I've looked at a HD display in a store, I've thought the same thing. The compression they are using on HD transmissions suck. Lot's of blocky artifacts and obvious quantization errors. I still think the picture is better than SD, but it's not as good as one would hope. I really don't think they have enough bandwidth, or a sophisticated enough algorithm, for over-the-air HD. HD players should be someone better in this department. I've also never been a fan of LCD displays or any rear projection TV system, but LCD displays are getting better.
A couple days ago I went into a Cambridge soundworks store and they had an large Sony LCD display being fed by an HD player. (I assume blu-ray). I have to admit, I was impressed. Very detailed and no obvious artifacts. Unfortunately, the movie that was displayed (Corpse Bride) had very dull colors, and there wasn't any fast motion. I'm not giving a final verdict, but it showed promise. I'd like to see a scene with a lot of moving water or rain. (My experience is that compression algorithms choke on these scenes due to the rapidly changing high frequency information).
For slashdotter's information, the different varieties of potatoes, bananas and grapes often are genetic clones.
True, but the grape phylloxera reeked havoc on French wine grapes in mid-late 1800's. Currently there is some concern that a fungus is going to wipe out the Cavendish banana (the variety we all eat) in the near future. A lack of genetic diversity (and in the banana's case it's sterile) makes these problems much more likely and harder to deal with.
I agree with you, but I want to point out that most of the time nothing is ever lost. (Or, the only consequences are more aggressive marketting). The reality is, this loss of privacy doesn't really affect most people in a negative way and probably never will. Think of it of a sort of backwards lottery. You get $0.50, but you are more likely to become a victim of identity theft in the future. It might not sound worth the risk, but it might. After all, we do all sorts of dangerous things everyday (such as drive) on the basis that the odds are we are going to be OK.
If a game console is going to make a hit on your power bill then you really do have problems there on Long Island:)
This is wandering off-topic, but yes there certainly are problems on Long Island - at least there was 10 years ago when I lived there. At the time, Long Island had the distinction of the most expensive electric rates in the country. The reason for this is that they built a nuclear power plant in Shoreham that they were never allowed to turn on. (The reason being they decided there was no practical way to evacuate Long Island). LIPA came into being around this time in an effort to bring the prices down. The electric company at the time was bought/forced out (with the executives receiving millions of dollars) and LIPA was born. I'm not sure were the money for this came from - probably from taxes. Our electic rates did drop a couple cents, from highest in the country to something like 3rd place.
The old anouncement uses Raman gain- where you throw shitloads of optical power down a waveguide (or fiber) at one wavelength and you get new light at another. For this to happen, you only need a silicon waveguide (and perhaps some electronics to pull out carriers that are formed).
In this new case they are bonding InP (a III-V material like GaAs) to silicon. This hybrid device allows the light to be guided mostly by the silicon, but the gain is occuring in the InP in a typical way.
People are concerned about bandwidth, not speed. I.e. how much data can you put down a wire (and how big is the wire). Or, at least bandwidth is the only thing they can hope to improve, electrical signals already travel pretty close to the speed of light. Part of what limits electrically lines is RC limits - frequencies beyond resistance * capacitance can't travel. Any line is going to have finite capacitance and resistance. In addition, there may be dispersion and other effects causing high frequency pulses not to travel well.
Because the frequency of light is so high (~200 Terahertz at a wavelength of 1550 nm), light can carry a lot more bandwidth before similar troubles set in. But, making transistors and wires is easy. Making lasers, modulators, detectors, waveguides isn't.
I was at a conference last weel (http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/leos/LE OSCONF/GFP2006/index.html) were this was presented by John Bowers. As they explain briefly in the article, they are bonding InP to Silicon wafers. The silicon provides the waveguiding, and enough of the mode is in the InP to give them gain. They achieved an optically pumped laser, and were still working on an electrically pumped one. I wonder if this announcement will mean that they achieved electrically pumped lasing.
It's good work, but I'm not sure if the bonding process will ever be suitable for monolithography integrated CMOS and photonics. I was more impressed by the work done in Huffaker's lab (http://www.chtm.unm.edu/huffaker/index.html) where they are working on growing III-V materials directly on silicon. However, the work by Bowers is more mature and will lead to devices sooner.
I brought up Israel and oil-reserves as separate issues. Israel is sitting on virtually no oil, so there's no reason to discuss Israel when speaking about oil. You focused on Israel, so that's were I took the discussion.
If you are willing to concede that I have a point about Israel then I will concede that you have a point about us messing in the Arab world's affairs. We have a history of meddling, and this certainly hasn't made us popular. Some of the policies, (particularly recent Iraq and killing democracy in Iran) I don't agree with, so I can't really defend them. I do wonder if we had taken a different path, if it would have really made any difference?
One thing is apparent from Iraq: without brutally strong leaders willing to ruthlessly put down insurgencies, these countries are time-bombs waiting to go off. Whether or not I agree with everything my country has done I could understand why we might take short cuts (such as supporting monarchs and dictators) to avoid such explosions. I suspect that if oil (and Israel) wasn't involved, we would just let the time-bombs go off. (See Africa for example)
Israel was imposed in 1948 mainly so Britain and The US did not have to take in all those refugees from the German nastiness.
Although many holocost survivors did wind up in Israel, most of the original Jewish population of Israel were Jews who were already in the area (or soon left other parts of the Middle East). Israel was proposed before WWII as part of the carving up of the Middle East. Although it was originally England's idea (England and France were pretty much in charge of dividing the Middle East after WWI), the UN was the one who finally adopted it. The Arabs rejected the plan, war ensued, and Israel grabbed a little more land than the UN mandated. This is the what has sinced been the formally recognized boundaries of Israel (at least by the UN).
While I'd agree that our invasion into Iraq definitely falls into the "what were we thinking?" catagory, (and just so you know, I never thought it was a good idea), I'm not sure what differences we have that can realistically be resolved. Are you suggesting we simply bud out of the middle east, sacrificing Israel and letting the largest oil reserves in the world end up in the hands of a bunch of religious fanatics? Because that's what these people want (for starters at least).
I'm not saying our behaviour has ever been perfect, and there's certainly times we've added fuel to the fire. However, I don't think there's any realistic policy we can pursue that would make the fanatics happy.
Nobody has found terrorists at any point in history with chemical analysis machines, and they've been in use for years (they can't detect a ceramic knife). The incident at Heathrow was taken care of by good old-fashioned detective work.
You are correct that this detection methods are nearly useless by themselves. Any terrorist will know about them and figure out a way around them. However, the more hoops you make the terrorists jump through, the more likely your detectives will be able to find them.
If it's really easy to hijack/blow up a plane, then any jerk can do it. If it doesn't take much planning for a terrorist to pull it off, your detectives will have hard time catching the terrorists during the planning stage. If, however, you need special planning overcome obstacles, your investigators have much more time to catch the terrorists while they do the research/recruitment to execute their plans. In addition, the harder you make it for the terrorists, the more likely they are to simply screw up and get caught.
Some people randomly carry a fake bomb (or perhaps a stuffed Elmo). The guy asks are you carrying a fake bomb (or a stuffed Elmo), and then detects if you are lying. It really doesn't matter what you are lying about, the reaction is going to be similar. What I am saying that it doesn't matter is the lying is part of a game, you are still lying, and lie detection will still work. Essentially all this is is a lie detector which operates at a stand-off. And not suprisingly, it is just as unreliable.
Depending on how fast and easy the test is, this doesn't have to be 100% reliable to be a big help. Let's say you do have a test that is 100% reliable, but it takes several minutes to do it (such as searching and sniffing all of your goods). You don't have the time or the money to do this longer test on everyone, but if you can narrow down the field by a factor of 10, it's now very useful.
The only issue is can terroists be trained to beat this thing? I doubt any of us are qualified to answer that.
Good point. I'd add that in the example of old rigid car hitting a new car with crumble zones, the crumple zone of the second car will slow down the deceleration of both cars. In effect, the crumple zone of the second car serves both cars equally well (although half as well as if both cars have crumple zones).
(the following is directed toward the GP...)
So, sure drive a big heavy tank, and if you hit a well engineered Toyota you'll do great. Too bad about that Mom and her kids you just plowed through, though. I suppose she should have been driving a big heavy tank, too? Wait a minute, if she's driving a big heavy tank, then there's no advantage to you having one. You might as well both be driving Toyotas and at least save gas.
That's what irks me about this heavy car=safer arguement. It's only safer because you are driving a heavy car and other's aren't. (Yes, there are occasions, such as if you hit something deformable like a small tree, you are safer in a heavy car, but those are rare). If everyone buys into this arguement, pretty soon we are all driving big cars and we are all no safer. We are just burning more gas.
You make a lot of good points. The US has mismanaged the Middle a lot since 9/11. The history of the West's meddling in the region's affairs helps make us an easy scapegoat. But unfortunately, you blow your arguement's with statements like "You know, I think those Jews should just keep all that "holy land" they stole from us when they corralled us up, and moved us out to lovely, serene West Bank and Gaza". (Are you actually writing this from the West Bank or Gaza? If so, I thank you for giving us a perspective that we don't often get).
What do expect those "Jews" to do? Give up Israel? Israel is here to stay. Get over it already!
I will agree that the Palestinians refugees have certainly gotten the short shaft out of this whole deal. Yes, they were kicked out of Israel and I can see why they have an axe to grind. (I will point out, though, that roughly the same number of Jews were kicked out of the rest of the middle east and into Israel so I don't see why this isn't fair as far as the Arab world is concerned). Can I ask why haven't all the Arab countries gotten together and offered to take in these poor Arab brothers?
Don't get me wrong; I don't think Israel is always in the right, either. I don't know what they hell they are doing bombing the crap of out Lebenon. Their treatment of the Palestinians and the Arabs within their country is abhorrent.
Still, the Arab world needs to accept Israel and needs to help find a solution for the Palestinian refugees, if they ever want lasting peace.
Well, since you can add or remove things from your queue as you see fit and order them as you see fit and even split them into parallel queues as you see fit I could see why people here (including myself) think you're an idiot.
Hey, no need for name calling. You are right that Netflix only sends movies you asked for, so presumably you want to watch those movies. However, the movie you think you want to watch 3 days from now, is not always the movie you actually want to watch when that day arrives. Having up to 3 movies on-hand helps, but even so, I often find that the movies on my shelf don't include any that I want to watch that evening, even if they are all movies I want to watch at some point.
The article points out that something that one would expect to increase movie consumption (abundant movies) actually causes the reverse. This is an interesting phenomenom (and one that occurs other places as well, such as having too many choices at the grocery store), but whether it's good or bad depends on your point of view.
For Netflix it certainly isn't a bad thing. Postage makes up a large amount of their costs, so if people are holding onto their movies for a long time it's a boon for them.
For the renters, though, Netflix makes no economic sense if the movies sitting around a long time. These people may be better served by renting movies a la carte, at least as far as economics is concern. (Strange that the Wall Street Journal would be concerned with economics). Happyiness-wise, whose to say?
Of course, Netflix offers other benefits, such as a deep catalog. In addition, I find Netflix perfect for watching old TV shows. Unless you plan to dedicate your life to it, it's impossible to watch a TV series before your DVD is due back at a standard rental store. But, with Netflix you watch an episode every few days and you get through it in no time.
Yea, and of all the dumb slogans: "it's thinking" is what I would usually say as my computer pauses and is thrashing away as I switch programs, etc. Not exactly a positive image for a computer/video game.
Sega built up a reasonable buzz and had a very successful launch for the Dreamcast. But they didn't really keep it up or do a good enough job against Sony's FUD.
This was my thought when I read the headline. I actually have this for my new car. I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say it sucks, but it's not great.
First of all, it would take, like, 2 hours to read me all of my albums on my iPod, so I can't jump to anything quickly... also, you have to click a button with a second or so of it reading the one you want.
Fortunately, it first lets you select a letter, then it lists all the albums (or artists, or songs, or playlists) that begin with that letter. (Unfortunately, it takes some practice to hit the buttons just right at the right time). So, you don't have to wait for it to list all your albums.
My conclusion about the product is, if all you want to do is select from a few playlists, it works OK. If occasionally you want to select an artist or album it's not great, but it's workable. If you want to select a particular song, forget about it. I could say the same thing about having to use the iPod in the usual manner while driving. So, a power adapter and an aux input would make me just as happy.
One review I read of it likened the experience to handing your iPod to a friend on the other side of a door and having them read the contents to you, then poking them with a coathanger when they read the song you want.
That's not too far off. I'd say that your friend also needs to mumble and mispronounce things, however, the button on the stereo is slightly easier to reach. The good news is at least the sound is much better than the cassette adapter I used to use.
The populations of most first world nations are already flat or declining. The US population would be fairly flat if it wasn't for immigration; many European nations and Japan have declining populations. It would therefore seem that the best way to control population growth is to modernize a country.
Most countries go through a population explosion as they transisition from an agrarian to an industrialized economy. After the transition, the population growth slows down or even reverses. I'm not sure why. Probably, the survival rate of children goes way up at first, but people are still in the mindset of having large families to be assured some survive. Eventually, people shrink the family size because having a child becomes a financial liability (an extra mouth to feed, etc.) instead of an asset (an extra set of hands for the farm). In addition, the more equal women are, the more likely they are to want to do something besides stay at home and raise a large family.
China may be in a bit of pickle as as the current population ages. Because they rapidly cut back on their birthrates (right after a period of large population growth), they are going to have a large number of old people with a relatively small number of young to take care of them. Should prove interesting...
My questions is, does microsoft have some way of forcing this on me or has the fact that i stopped using windows update over a year ago saved me?
I recently tried to install a piece of software that would not install unless I upgraded to SP2. (And there was no obvious way of upgrading to SP2 without installing WPA). This is how they will force everyone to "upgrade".
That's why sniping is the smart move. It's not the snipers that are the cause of the "problem", it's those incremental bidders. Snipers are just keeping your price DOWN (despite all appearances to the contrary) to the benefit of all bidders...
I don't see what the problem is with incremental bidders. Sure, it quickly jacks up the price, but about the same price would be reached if eveyone actually went with a "single maximum-price-you-want-to-pay" place during the course of the auction. People incrementally bid for the same reason they snipe - to win the bid at the best price they can. Sure, they may be willing to pay more, but they'd rather not if they don't have to. (Also, they'd often rather not commit to it, yet). I'd agree that incremental bidding is not a good strategy. I'll also agree that sniping (vs other bidding styles) does keep the prices low.
The problem I have with e-bay is it can't decide what it wants to be. It sort of like a silent auction where you bid until time is up (and others don't necessarily get to see it). And it's sort of like a regular auction where you can see the price go up and up until the end. Both of these types of auctions work well. In the silent auction you are forced to truly bid the maximum you are willing. In a standard auction after each bid you get to decide if you want to raise it. The auction doesn't end until every bidder lets it.
In an ebay auction the clock decides who gets to make that last bid. Whoever is bidding at the end of the auction has the advantage. Now, since everyone knows when the bidding ends, it's still fair. What this ends up meaning is that the last minute is the only one that matters. All bidding until that point is silly, so why have the bidding extend over days?
There's already frequent train service between Boston and DC. Currently, it takes about 6.5 hours. So you're saying we should have faster trains? The stops on that route are already only like 15 minutes apart, so in order for a "bullet train" to make any significant difference it'll have to skip over the "small towns" like New Haven CT, Newark NJ, and Philadelphia PA.
You're right in that some stops would probably have to go, but I don't think that's what will limit your speed. Right now the biggest limitation is the track. For example, the new Accela trains can go fast but the track isn't good enough for most stretches. (Also I think the towns they go through don't allow the trains to run at full speed). In addition the track is shared with slower trains. In the end, for the stretch from Boston to NY, there's only a short stretch where the trains run at full speed. For this trip, the new trains were all of 20 minutes faster than the old (and tickets are twice as expensive). To make the trains fast you'd need new dedicated track. It's just too expensive, especially through the heavy populated Northeast.
If you think about it, it's not clear who these trains would serve. Planes are fast, and not horrible if you calculate the fuel consumption per person mile (50 miles per person per gallon). Trains are slower but use about 3x less fuel per person. Buses are slower still and have similar efficiencies as trains. However, buses are cheaper than trains, since they can use the same roads as cars and trucks. So, you have the slow, low cost option of buses and the fast, high cost option of planes. Trains are left trying to fill a niche in the middle. Unless the cost is low enough, there is little reason for people to choose a train over a plane.
Don't get me wrong; trains appeal to me. Here in the Northeast I'd love to see a fast train connecting the cities. I think it could be popular if done right. However, to be successful it needs to be much cheaper and more convenient than planes. I don't know if it can be done cheaply enough without major subsidies to build the new track (and obtain the rights of ways). I don't think there's any political will to do this.
anyone have any further fond memories of the mid 1990s GPU situation?
When quake came out, 3D cards were pretty much non existant. (I don't recall if the S3's Virge 3D decelerator was out, yet, but it wasn't supported and pretty useless either way). I think the first 3D card to support Quake was the Verite 1000 through "VQuake". Then 3DFX came out with their Voodoo card which could run GLQuake and 3D gaming was never the same.
The telcos/cable companies want a tiered internet so they can offer services, such as video on demand/ videoconferencing, which require large bandwidth and low latency. However, they need to improve the infrastructure to do this. They don't want to spend the money upgrading everything if they have to do all the expense of building the infrastructure and then someone else comes along and sells the services. So, they want a tiered internet so the other people who are taking full advantage of this new infrastructure have to pay more, too.
At first that doesn't sound unreasonable. The fear is that once they create a tiered internet, it's not clear how it really would work. Will the telco's charge rates that effectively shut everyone out from these services but themselves? Will anyone hoping to use the new faster internet (not really a new internet just high priority on an improved internet) need to negotiate with every company that provides a pipe in the country? Will the little guy get screwed? Will the rest of the internet slow down because there is now all this high priority traffic which dominates?
Personally, I don't think the companies controlling the pipes should be allowed to put content on them. It's like having the roads own by a trucking company. It gives them too much power to favor their own.
Yet I'm sure we'd all agree that colleges do a better job than public schools. Why is that??
The biggest difference between public and private schools (or secondary public and college) is the private schools and all colleges get to choose their students. This means that the really bad students are weeded out, so the teachers can concetrate on those who want to (or can) learn. In addition, if some students struggle, the assumption is the students need to work harder, not that the teacher needs to lower the level to the weakest students.
This also means that public schools have to teach special needs students. These students obviously need a lot more attention and money then regular students.
I don't disagree with what you and the grandparent said, though. We do waste a lot of money in schools on nonsense (such as shiny computers that need to be replaced constantly) instead of concentrating on basics. But, that's not the whole story.
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Every time I've looked at a HD display in a store, I've thought the same thing. The compression they are using on HD transmissions suck. Lot's of blocky artifacts and obvious quantization errors. I still think the picture is better than SD, but it's not as good as one would hope. I really don't think they have enough bandwidth, or a sophisticated enough algorithm, for over-the-air HD. HD players should be someone better in this department. I've also never been a fan of LCD displays or any rear projection TV system, but LCD displays are getting better.
A couple days ago I went into a Cambridge soundworks store and they had an large Sony LCD display being fed by an HD player. (I assume blu-ray). I have to admit, I was impressed. Very detailed and no obvious artifacts. Unfortunately, the movie that was displayed (Corpse Bride) had very dull colors, and there wasn't any fast motion. I'm not giving a final verdict, but it showed promise. I'd like to see a scene with a lot of moving water or rain. (My experience is that compression algorithms choke on these scenes due to the rapidly changing high frequency information).
For slashdotter's information, the different varieties of potatoes, bananas and grapes often are genetic clones.
True, but the grape phylloxera reeked havoc on French wine grapes in mid-late 1800's. Currently there is some concern that a fungus is going to wipe out the Cavendish banana (the variety we all eat) in the near future. A lack of genetic diversity (and in the banana's case it's sterile) makes these problems much more likely and harder to deal with.
I agree with you, but I want to point out that most of the time nothing is ever lost. (Or, the only consequences are more aggressive marketting). The reality is, this loss of privacy doesn't really affect most people in a negative way and probably never will. Think of it of a sort of backwards lottery. You get $0.50, but you are more likely to become a victim of identity theft in the future. It might not sound worth the risk, but it might. After all, we do all sorts of dangerous things everyday (such as drive) on the basis that the odds are we are going to be OK.
If a game console is going to make a hit on your power bill then you really do have problems there on Long Island :)
This is wandering off-topic, but yes there certainly are problems on Long Island - at least there was 10 years ago when I lived there. At the time, Long Island had the distinction of the most expensive electric rates in the country. The reason for this is that they built a nuclear power plant in Shoreham that they were never allowed to turn on. (The reason being they decided there was no practical way to evacuate Long Island). LIPA came into being around this time in an effort to bring the prices down. The electric company at the time was bought/forced out (with the executives receiving millions of dollars) and LIPA was born. I'm not sure were the money for this came from - probably from taxes. Our electic rates did drop a couple cents, from highest in the country to something like 3rd place.
Actually, you are both right and wrong.
The old anouncement uses Raman gain- where you throw shitloads of optical power down a waveguide (or fiber) at one wavelength and you get new light at another. For this to happen, you only need a silicon waveguide (and perhaps some electronics to pull out carriers that are formed).
In this new case they are bonding InP (a III-V material like GaAs) to silicon. This hybrid device allows the light to be guided mostly by the silicon, but the gain is occuring in the InP in a typical way.
People are concerned about bandwidth, not speed. I.e. how much data can you put down a wire (and how big is the wire). Or, at least bandwidth is the only thing they can hope to improve, electrical signals already travel pretty close to the speed of light. Part of what limits electrically lines is RC limits - frequencies beyond resistance * capacitance can't travel. Any line is going to have finite capacitance and resistance. In addition, there may be dispersion and other effects causing high frequency pulses not to travel well.
Because the frequency of light is so high (~200 Terahertz at a wavelength of 1550 nm), light can carry a lot more bandwidth before similar troubles set in. But, making transistors and wires is easy. Making lasers, modulators, detectors, waveguides isn't.
I was at a conference last weel (http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/leos/LE OSCONF/GFP2006/index.html) were this was presented by John Bowers. As they explain briefly in the article, they are bonding InP to Silicon wafers. The silicon provides the waveguiding, and enough of the mode is in the InP to give them gain. They achieved an optically pumped laser, and were still working on an electrically pumped one. I wonder if this announcement will mean that they achieved electrically pumped lasing.
It's good work, but I'm not sure if the bonding process will ever be suitable for monolithography integrated CMOS and photonics. I was more impressed by the work done in Huffaker's lab (http://www.chtm.unm.edu/huffaker/index.html) where they are working on growing III-V materials directly on silicon. However, the work by Bowers is more mature and will lead to devices sooner.
I brought up Israel and oil-reserves as separate issues. Israel is sitting on virtually no oil, so there's no reason to discuss Israel when speaking about oil. You focused on Israel, so that's were I took the discussion.
If you are willing to concede that I have a point about Israel then I will concede that you have a point about us messing in the Arab world's affairs. We have a history of meddling, and this certainly hasn't made us popular. Some of the policies, (particularly recent Iraq and killing democracy in Iran) I don't agree with, so I can't really defend them. I do wonder if we had taken a different path, if it would have really made any difference?
One thing is apparent from Iraq: without brutally strong leaders willing to ruthlessly put down insurgencies, these countries are time-bombs waiting to go off. Whether or not I agree with everything my country has done I could understand why we might take short cuts (such as supporting monarchs and dictators) to avoid such explosions. I suspect that if oil (and Israel) wasn't involved, we would just let the time-bombs go off. (See Africa for example)
Israel was imposed in 1948 mainly so Britain and The US did not have to take in all those refugees from the German nastiness.
Although many holocost survivors did wind up in Israel, most of the original Jewish population of Israel were Jews who were already in the area (or soon left other parts of the Middle East). Israel was proposed before WWII as part of the carving up of the Middle East. Although it was originally England's idea (England and France were pretty much in charge of dividing the Middle East after WWI), the UN was the one who finally adopted it. The Arabs rejected the plan, war ensued, and Israel grabbed a little more land than the UN mandated. This is the what has sinced been the formally recognized boundaries of Israel (at least by the UN).
While I'd agree that our invasion into Iraq definitely falls into the "what were we thinking?" catagory, (and just so you know, I never thought it was a good idea), I'm not sure what differences we have that can realistically be resolved. Are you suggesting we simply bud out of the middle east, sacrificing Israel and letting the largest oil reserves in the world end up in the hands of a bunch of religious fanatics? Because that's what these people want (for starters at least).
I'm not saying our behaviour has ever been perfect, and there's certainly times we've added fuel to the fire. However, I don't think there's any realistic policy we can pursue that would make the fanatics happy.
Nobody has found terrorists at any point in history with chemical analysis machines, and they've been in use for years (they can't detect a ceramic knife). The incident at Heathrow was taken care of by good old-fashioned detective work.
You are correct that this detection methods are nearly useless by themselves. Any terrorist will know about them and figure out a way around them. However, the more hoops you make the terrorists jump through, the more likely your detectives will be able to find them.
If it's really easy to hijack/blow up a plane, then any jerk can do it. If it doesn't take much planning for a terrorist to pull it off, your detectives will have hard time catching the terrorists during the planning stage. If, however, you need special planning overcome obstacles, your investigators have much more time to catch the terrorists while they do the research/recruitment to execute their plans. In addition, the harder you make it for the terrorists, the more likely they are to simply screw up and get caught.
Let's say the test went something like this...
Some people randomly carry a fake bomb (or perhaps a stuffed Elmo). The guy asks are you carrying a fake bomb (or a stuffed Elmo), and then detects if you are lying. It really doesn't matter what you are lying about, the reaction is going to be similar. What I am saying that it doesn't matter is the lying is part of a game, you are still lying, and lie detection will still work. Essentially all this is is a lie detector which operates at a stand-off. And not suprisingly, it is just as unreliable.
Depending on how fast and easy the test is, this doesn't have to be 100% reliable to be a big help. Let's say you do have a test that is 100% reliable, but it takes several minutes to do it (such as searching and sniffing all of your goods). You don't have the time or the money to do this longer test on everyone, but if you can narrow down the field by a factor of 10, it's now very useful.
The only issue is can terroists be trained to beat this thing? I doubt any of us are qualified to answer that.
Good point. I'd add that in the example of old rigid car hitting a new car with crumble zones, the crumple zone of the second car will slow down the deceleration of both cars. In effect, the crumple zone of the second car serves both cars equally well (although half as well as if both cars have crumple zones).
(the following is directed toward the GP...)
So, sure drive a big heavy tank, and if you hit a well engineered Toyota you'll do great. Too bad about that Mom and her kids you just plowed through, though. I suppose she should have been driving a big heavy tank, too? Wait a minute, if she's driving a big heavy tank, then there's no advantage to you having one. You might as well both be driving Toyotas and at least save gas.
That's what irks me about this heavy car=safer arguement. It's only safer because you are driving a heavy car and other's aren't. (Yes, there are occasions, such as if you hit something deformable like a small tree, you are safer in a heavy car, but those are rare). If everyone buys into this arguement, pretty soon we are all driving big cars and we are all no safer. We are just burning more gas.
You make a lot of good points. The US has mismanaged the Middle a lot since 9/11. The history of the West's meddling in the region's affairs helps make us an easy scapegoat. But unfortunately, you blow your arguement's with statements like "You know, I think those Jews should just keep all that "holy land" they stole from us when they corralled us up, and moved us out to lovely, serene West Bank and Gaza". (Are you actually writing this from the West Bank or Gaza? If so, I thank you for giving us a perspective that we don't often get).
What do expect those "Jews" to do? Give up Israel? Israel is here to stay. Get over it already!
I will agree that the Palestinians refugees have certainly gotten the short shaft out of this whole deal. Yes, they were kicked out of Israel and I can see why they have an axe to grind. (I will point out, though, that roughly the same number of Jews were kicked out of the rest of the middle east and into Israel so I don't see why this isn't fair as far as the Arab world is concerned). Can I ask why haven't all the Arab countries gotten together and offered to take in these poor Arab brothers?
Don't get me wrong; I don't think Israel is always in the right, either. I don't know what they hell they are doing bombing the crap of out Lebenon. Their treatment of the Palestinians and the Arabs within their country is abhorrent.
Still, the Arab world needs to accept Israel and needs to help find a solution for the Palestinian refugees, if they ever want lasting peace.
Well, since you can add or remove things from your queue as you see fit and order them as you see fit and even split them into parallel queues as you see fit I could see why people here (including myself) think you're an idiot.
Hey, no need for name calling. You are right that Netflix only sends movies you asked for, so presumably you want to watch those movies. However, the movie you think you want to watch 3 days from now, is not always the movie you actually want to watch when that day arrives. Having up to 3 movies on-hand helps, but even so, I often find that the movies on my shelf don't include any that I want to watch that evening, even if they are all movies I want to watch at some point.
The article points out that something that one would expect to increase movie consumption (abundant movies) actually causes the reverse. This is an interesting phenomenom (and one that occurs other places as well, such as having too many choices at the grocery store), but whether it's good or bad depends on your point of view.
For Netflix it certainly isn't a bad thing. Postage makes up a large amount of their costs, so if people are holding onto their movies for a long time it's a boon for them.
For the renters, though, Netflix makes no economic sense if the movies sitting around a long time. These people may be better served by renting movies a la carte, at least as far as economics is concern. (Strange that the Wall Street Journal would be concerned with economics). Happyiness-wise, whose to say?
Of course, Netflix offers other benefits, such as a deep catalog. In addition, I find Netflix perfect for watching old TV shows. Unless you plan to dedicate your life to it, it's impossible to watch a TV series before your DVD is due back at a standard rental store. But, with Netflix you watch an episode every few days and you get through it in no time.
Yea, and of all the dumb slogans: "it's thinking" is what I would usually say as my computer pauses and is thrashing away as I switch programs, etc. Not exactly a positive image for a computer/video game.
Sega built up a reasonable buzz and had a very successful launch for the Dreamcast. But they didn't really keep it up or do a good enough job against Sony's FUD.
This was my thought when I read the headline. I actually have this for my new car. I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say it sucks, but it's not great.
First of all, it would take, like, 2 hours to read me all of my albums on my iPod, so I can't jump to anything quickly... also, you have to click a button with a second or so of it reading the one you want.
Fortunately, it first lets you select a letter, then it lists all the albums (or artists, or songs, or playlists) that begin with that letter. (Unfortunately, it takes some practice to hit the buttons just right at the right time). So, you don't have to wait for it to list all your albums.
My conclusion about the product is, if all you want to do is select from a few playlists, it works OK. If occasionally you want to select an artist or album it's not great, but it's workable. If you want to select a particular song, forget about it. I could say the same thing about having to use the iPod in the usual manner while driving. So, a power adapter and an aux input would make me just as happy.
One review I read of it likened the experience to handing your iPod to a friend on the other side of a door and having them read the contents to you, then poking them with a coathanger when they read the song you want.
That's not too far off. I'd say that your friend also needs to mumble and mispronounce things, however, the button on the stereo is slightly easier to reach. The good news is at least the sound is much better than the cassette adapter I used to use.
The populations of most first world nations are already flat or declining. The US population would be fairly flat if it wasn't for immigration; many European nations and Japan have declining populations. It would therefore seem that the best way to control population growth is to modernize a country.
Most countries go through a population explosion as they transisition from an agrarian to an industrialized economy. After the transition, the population growth slows down or even reverses. I'm not sure why. Probably, the survival rate of children goes way up at first, but people are still in the mindset of having large families to be assured some survive. Eventually, people shrink the family size because having a child becomes a financial liability (an extra mouth to feed, etc.) instead of an asset (an extra set of hands for the farm). In addition, the more equal women are, the more likely they are to want to do something besides stay at home and raise a large family.
China may be in a bit of pickle as as the current population ages. Because they rapidly cut back on their birthrates (right after a period of large population growth), they are going to have a large number of old people with a relatively small number of young to take care of them. Should prove interesting...
My questions is, does microsoft have some way of forcing this on me or has the fact that i stopped using windows update over a year ago saved me?
I recently tried to install a piece of software that would not install unless I upgraded to SP2. (And there was no obvious way of upgrading to SP2 without installing WPA). This is how they will force everyone to "upgrade".
That's why sniping is the smart move. It's not the snipers that are the cause of the "problem", it's those incremental bidders. Snipers are just keeping your price DOWN (despite all appearances to the contrary) to the benefit of all bidders...
I don't see what the problem is with incremental bidders. Sure, it quickly jacks up the price, but about the same price would be reached if eveyone actually went with a "single maximum-price-you-want-to-pay" place during the course of the auction. People incrementally bid for the same reason they snipe - to win the bid at the best price they can. Sure, they may be willing to pay more, but they'd rather not if they don't have to. (Also, they'd often rather not commit to it, yet). I'd agree that incremental bidding is not a good strategy. I'll also agree that sniping (vs other bidding styles) does keep the prices low.
The problem I have with e-bay is it can't decide what it wants to be. It sort of like a silent auction where you bid until time is up (and others don't necessarily get to see it). And it's sort of like a regular auction where you can see the price go up and up until the end. Both of these types of auctions work well. In the silent auction you are forced to truly bid the maximum you are willing. In a standard auction after each bid you get to decide if you want to raise it. The auction doesn't end until every bidder lets it.
In an ebay auction the clock decides who gets to make that last bid. Whoever is bidding at the end of the auction has the advantage. Now, since everyone knows when the bidding ends, it's still fair. What this ends up meaning is that the last minute is the only one that matters. All bidding until that point is silly, so why have the bidding extend over days?
There's already frequent train service between Boston and DC. Currently, it takes about 6.5 hours. So you're saying we should have faster trains? The stops on that route are already only like 15 minutes apart, so in order for a "bullet train" to make any significant difference it'll have to skip over the "small towns" like New Haven CT, Newark NJ, and Philadelphia PA.
You're right in that some stops would probably have to go, but I don't think that's what will limit your speed. Right now the biggest limitation is the track. For example, the new Accela trains can go fast but the track isn't good enough for most stretches. (Also I think the towns they go through don't allow the trains to run at full speed). In addition the track is shared with slower trains. In the end, for the stretch from Boston to NY, there's only a short stretch where the trains run at full speed. For this trip, the new trains were all of 20 minutes faster than the old (and tickets are twice as expensive). To make the trains fast you'd need new dedicated track. It's just too expensive, especially through the heavy populated Northeast.
If you think about it, it's not clear who these trains would serve. Planes are fast, and not horrible if you calculate the fuel consumption per person mile (50 miles per person per gallon). Trains are slower but use about 3x less fuel per person. Buses are slower still and have similar efficiencies as trains. However, buses are cheaper than trains, since they can use the same roads as cars and trucks. So, you have the slow, low cost option of buses and the fast, high cost option of planes. Trains are left trying to fill a niche in the middle. Unless the cost is low enough, there is little reason for people to choose a train over a plane.
Don't get me wrong; trains appeal to me. Here in the Northeast I'd love to see a fast train connecting the cities. I think it could be popular if done right. However, to be successful it needs to be much cheaper and more convenient than planes. I don't know if it can be done cheaply enough without major subsidies to build the new track (and obtain the rights of ways). I don't think there's any political will to do this.
anyone have any further fond memories of the mid 1990s GPU situation?
When quake came out, 3D cards were pretty much non existant. (I don't recall if the S3's Virge 3D decelerator was out, yet, but it wasn't supported and pretty useless either way). I think the first 3D card to support Quake was the Verite 1000 through "VQuake". Then 3DFX came out with their Voodoo card which could run GLQuake and 3D gaming was never the same.
The telcos/cable companies want a tiered internet so they can offer services, such as video on demand/ videoconferencing, which require large bandwidth and low latency. However, they need to improve the infrastructure to do this. They don't want to spend the money upgrading everything if they have to do all the expense of building the infrastructure and then someone else comes along and sells the services. So, they want a tiered internet so the other people who are taking full advantage of this new infrastructure have to pay more, too.
At first that doesn't sound unreasonable. The fear is that once they create a tiered internet, it's not clear how it really would work. Will the telco's charge rates that effectively shut everyone out from these services but themselves? Will anyone hoping to use the new faster internet (not really a new internet just high priority on an improved internet) need to negotiate with every company that provides a pipe in the country? Will the little guy get screwed? Will the rest of the internet slow down because there is now all this high priority traffic which dominates?
Personally, I don't think the companies controlling the pipes should be allowed to put content on them. It's like having the roads own by a trucking company. It gives them too much power to favor their own.
Yet I'm sure we'd all agree that colleges do a better job than public schools. Why is that??
The biggest difference between public and private schools (or secondary public and college) is the private schools and all colleges get to choose their students. This means that the really bad students are weeded out, so the teachers can concetrate on those who want to (or can) learn. In addition, if some students struggle, the assumption is the students need to work harder, not that the teacher needs to lower the level to the weakest students.
This also means that public schools have to teach special needs students. These students obviously need a lot more attention and money then regular students.
I don't disagree with what you and the grandparent said, though. We do waste a lot of money in schools on nonsense (such as shiny computers that need to be replaced constantly) instead of concentrating on basics. But, that's not the whole story.