The transgenic hybrids had higher rates of photosynthesis, grew more shoots and flowers and produced 48 — 125% more seeds per plant than non-transgenic hybrids
That's not necessarily a fitness boost.
By analogy, having the genes that let you become a top athlete isn't a fitness boost either, otherwise we'd all have them by now.
Well, obviously, if Obama wanted to kill Assange in a drone strike, he wouldn't just fly a drone into the embassy, he would first fabricate evidence making Assange look like a terrorist and the embassy a storehouse of WMDs. And then many would, again, tacitly agree with his choice of target.
One could make a similar claim about any politician. "Politician X's failure regarding issue Z demonstrates his ideology is detached from reality."
No, not "any" politician, only politicians who actually promise that they can address issues. You may be so brainwashed that you think that addressing issues is the primary job of a politician, but it really isn't.
Sorry, you are wrong on several edges. I don't know when you believe to have taken a high speed train. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago?
Whenever I'm in Europe, and quite recently; I don't like driving in Europe, European drivers are rude and aggressive and the highways are full of trucks.
Sorry, you are wrong on several edges. I don't know when you believe to have taken a high speed train. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago? The distance from Stuttgart to Paris is 3.5h in a TGV(frensh high speed train), it costs -- if you book in time: 29â By car it takes you 6h. The cost for the road tolls alone is about 35â, with a car that uses 8liters per 100km you use 48l fuel. for 1.50â each. So the total cost by car is 101â verus the 29â by train.
That's not how it works in real life. Unless you live near the train station and your destination is near the train station as well, you need two feeder trains, plus enough time to change trains. In addition, since the feeder trains are frequently delayed, you need to leave enough time not to miss the TGV, because if you do, you will be delayed half a day. In addition, you need to leave an additional couple of hours before your appointment at the destination because of delays of the TGV or the final feeder train. So you end up with several more hours overhead. But then you don't actually have a car at the destination, and you can only take a very limited amount of luggage.
Regular one-way fare is EU 120, and that's what you need to compare to the car (namely be able to plan trips short term). The low cost fares also don't give you any flexibility (i.e., if your plans change, you lose everything), and EU 29 is frankly a joke; are you a 12 year old? First class is EU 220 one way, and even that doesn't come close to the comfort and privacy of driving or a short flight. The trains to Paris are crowded and stuffy even in first class. More importantly, you get Stuttgart-Paris round trip (!) flights for about EU 150 (e.g. on KLM) or even less on smaller companies.
As I was saying: the European train system is great for people who can afford to have luxury apartments in city centers and need to go to corporate meetings at Europe's finest corporations in other city centers; it's a subsidized boondoggle for the rich and powerful. It's also great for tourists, who don't have much of a schedule and tend to stay near where train stations are. For the mass of normal people who need to get from point A to point B within a country, it is a nuisance and a colossal waste of money.
Regarding subsidices: those trains/routes are not subsidiced at all. Railway is subsidiced in rural areas, not on main connections.
Of course they are. Here is just one of the many ways in which they are: http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/eu-db-bahn100.html Another is that Germany has for decades tried to use legal restrictions and onerous legislation to kill competition for passenger rail.
In Japan, for instance, the Shinkansen between almost anywhere is significantly faster than driving (the exception would be for short hops inside a single city, which is not what the shinkansen is really for), and is cheaper, faster and more comfortable than air travel. So that's one strike.
No, that's not "one strike". It's cheaper and easier in Japan because Japan deliberately makes other forms of transportation more of a hassle.
I haven't been on high speed rail in any of the other locations you mention but unlike you, I'm not willing to spout off about how my experience on regional trains/metros means that High Speed rail in different locations will never work ever.
It has nothing to do with experience with regional trains; I was living in Europe for several years using the train system as my primary mode of long distance travel. You can believe me: it sucks.
The law is pretty vague on this point, so it's far from clear that it is de jure illegal either. Until SCOTUS rules either way, the matter remains unsettled.
I'd agree that it is a bad idea and immoral though.
I'm just pointing out that you are full of shit (again). You wrote:
Neurons don't communicate in an analogue fashion—they send digital pulses of the same magnitude periodically, with more rapid pulses indicating more signal. This is both more robust and more effective at preventing over-adaptation. When researchers figured out how to mimic the imperfections in the biological digital system, their neural networks got significantly better [arxiv.org].
Why revoke it? The actions of the Nobel peace prize committee and Obama's subsequent conduct as president are a perfect microcosm of the unbridgeable gap between progressive and left-wing aspirations and reality.
We should award the Ignoble peace prize to the Nobel peace prize committee for making this point so clearly.
For those who are armchair civil engineers, the BBC program "Top Gear" provides ample evidence of this observation with its 'challenges'. They frequently race a car on normal roadways against public transport on trains, including high speed rail. They are easily able to set challenges where the car and train take a very similar amount of time.
And I assume that doesn't even take into account the extra few hours you need to leave early because (1) the train schedule doesn't actually fit perfectly with the schedule at the destination, and (2) because delays and missed connections are a frequent occurrence and if you want to make it somewhere by a specific time, you can't rely on the connection that gets you there in time, you need to take one or two connections earlier.
They often show that the bicycle is the fastest way to navigate the city.
True, although safety, weather, and convenience play a role there as well. But, yeah, if we are going to spend money on city infrastructure, it is probably best to spend it on safe bicycle lanes.
And computer scientists find it awfully amusing that linguists and psychologists construct all these elaborate models based on experimental observations but never actually test whether those models work.
For example, if you actually implemented the models of grammar and semantics that linguists developed on their own, they didn't work at all. The same is true for most models in psychology and cognitive science.
Neurons don't communicate in an analogue fashion—they send digital pulses of the same magnitude periodically, with more rapid pulses indicating more signal.
That's frequency modulation. It's still analog.
When researchers figured out how to mimic the imperfections in the biological digital system,
That paper has little to do with "mimicking the imperfections in the biological digital systems".
(Really, you should stop commenting on subjects you evidently don't understand very well.)
Note that for trains, you usually lose a couple of hours due to scheduling: they don't run exactly when you need them to, and you need to leave an extra couple of hours to allow for delays and missed connections.
Trust me, I have traveled a lot on trains in Europe. It's great fun as a tourist when you don't have to worry about time or schedules; as a practical means of transportation, it sucks.
I have frequently taken trains in Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and Switzerland. High speed rail does not "work" in any of those countries. It usually takes twice as long to get anywhere than by car, and even with subsidies, it is considerably more expensive than other modes of transportation. The trains are uncomfortable and packed at rush hour, and at most other times are nearly empty. Delays are frequent.
I don't want the US to have a European-style rail system precisely because I have taken a lot of trains in Europe. It's an inefficient and overpriced system.
Shareholder wealth maximization is a consideration, but is by far need not be be-all, end-all goal from a legal perspective
But from an economic perspective, it is, and should be, the major driving force behind everything a company does.
Many of us have heard that corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder value. Guess what, they are not. The law in the United States does not require management to maximize shareholder value
Of course not. Corporations can be established for many purposes. But management has to be honest and accountable for what it is doing. If it isn't maximizing shareholder value, it better be crystal clear about it, and in that case, shareholders are likely to leave.
I have frequently taken trains in Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and Switzerland. High speed rail does not "work" in any of those countries. It usually takes twice as long to get anywhere than by car, and even with subsidies, it is considerably more expensive than other modes of transportation. The trains are uncomfortable and packed at rush hour, and at most other times are nearly empty. Delays are frequent.
The US has an extensive and fully utilized rail system, and it is used appropriately for freight. I think my country should be smart enough not to repeat the stupid mistakes that those other nations have made in their transportation infrastructure.
You thought wrong. The concept of "public airwaves" derives from the fact that there is a single spectrum that is usable everybody without investment. The FCC was created to regulate this public, free resource. "The web" is a collection of largely privately owned, privately financed cables and routers. Congress might craft laws to promote neutrality, but that's never the same as "public airwaves", and without specific legislation and justification, there is no reason for the FCC to regulate "the web".
What justification in the world would there be for the FCC to regulate and license video transmissions over the Internet? Their job was to ensure orderly sharing of the public airwaves, nothing else.
I think you fail to account for a big difference between the EU and the USA
I don't know what point you're trying to make. The US rail system is used almost to capacity for freight; as you point out, the US moves more freight by rail than the entire EU by any mode. That's a good thing, it's an efficient use of US rail lines. European rail systems are used much more for passenger transport and European highways are clogged with freight transport (and European rail systems don't make much of a dent in the usage of personal automobiles either).
The original point of this debate was that people often point to Europe to say how wonderful passenger rail supposedly is. But, actually, the experience in Europe provides no support for increasing passenger rail in the US. Europe's passenger rail system is expensive and subsidized, European highways are clogged. Either the European experience doesn't apply to the US, or if it does, it provides an argument against expanding passenger rail in the US.
A president who stands for the rule of law and liberties: "Polygraph tests are unreliable and have little scientific data to back them up; I am immediately ending their use by government by executive order and working towards making them illegal as part of job applications."
A totalitarian-leaning president with a disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution: "Let's prosecute people who teach others to get around our unreliable and unproven interrogation tactics."
It's clear what kind of president we have. Guys, don't elect such a loser and liar again. At least by 2012 it should have been clear to everybody what kind of president he was.
I can't tell whether you're trying to be sarcastic or not, but passenger rail in Europe is a constant political problem: it loses money, it is unreliable, and it carries only a small percentage of overall traffic. So, yeah, Europeans don't feel good about it either. And they would feel even worse about it if they realized how much it costs and how much highway congestion it causes (because all the freight traffic that isn't traveling by rail ends up clogging up the highways).
"conventional" high-speed rail is a proven concept in use today in many non-North American countries
Yes, it is quite "proven": proven to be an expensive, money-losing boondoggle in Europe. Something that allows the well-off to travel in comfort between city centers where ordinary people can't afford to live. For ordinary people, high speed rail requires feeder lines that make the whole trip slower than driving, and the tickets are more expensive than (the already expensive) gas or flying. Why would we possibly want this in the US?
The US has an active rail system bigger than European nations combined. It's primarily used for freight, which is the most efficient way of using a modern rail system. Europeans are misusing their rail system for inefficient passenger transport while putting a lot more freight on the roads.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not necessarily a fitness boost.
By analogy, having the genes that let you become a top athlete isn't a fitness boost either, otherwise we'd all have them by now.
Well, obviously, if Obama wanted to kill Assange in a drone strike, he wouldn't just fly a drone into the embassy, he would first fabricate evidence making Assange look like a terrorist and the embassy a storehouse of WMDs. And then many would, again, tacitly agree with his choice of target.
No, not "any" politician, only politicians who actually promise that they can address issues. You may be so brainwashed that you think that addressing issues is the primary job of a politician, but it really isn't.
If you book ahead of time, a long distance bus Stuttgart-Paris can be had for EU 15, by the way.
Whenever I'm in Europe, and quite recently; I don't like driving in Europe, European drivers are rude and aggressive and the highways are full of trucks.
That's not how it works in real life. Unless you live near the train station and your destination is near the train station as well, you need two feeder trains, plus enough time to change trains. In addition, since the feeder trains are frequently delayed, you need to leave enough time not to miss the TGV, because if you do, you will be delayed half a day. In addition, you need to leave an additional couple of hours before your appointment at the destination because of delays of the TGV or the final feeder train. So you end up with several more hours overhead. But then you don't actually have a car at the destination, and you can only take a very limited amount of luggage.
Regular one-way fare is EU 120, and that's what you need to compare to the car (namely be able to plan trips short term). The low cost fares also don't give you any flexibility (i.e., if your plans change, you lose everything), and EU 29 is frankly a joke; are you a 12 year old? First class is EU 220 one way, and even that doesn't come close to the comfort and privacy of driving or a short flight. The trains to Paris are crowded and stuffy even in first class. More importantly, you get Stuttgart-Paris round trip (!) flights for about EU 150 (e.g. on KLM) or even less on smaller companies.
As I was saying: the European train system is great for people who can afford to have luxury apartments in city centers and need to go to corporate meetings at Europe's finest corporations in other city centers; it's a subsidized boondoggle for the rich and powerful. It's also great for tourists, who don't have much of a schedule and tend to stay near where train stations are. For the mass of normal people who need to get from point A to point B within a country, it is a nuisance and a colossal waste of money.
Of course they are. Here is just one of the many ways in which they are: http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/eu-db-bahn100.html Another is that Germany has for decades tried to use legal restrictions and onerous legislation to kill competition for passenger rail.
No, that's not "one strike". It's cheaper and easier in Japan because Japan deliberately makes other forms of transportation more of a hassle.
It has nothing to do with experience with regional trains; I was living in Europe for several years using the train system as my primary mode of long distance travel. You can believe me: it sucks.
The law is pretty vague on this point, so it's far from clear that it is de jure illegal either. Until SCOTUS rules either way, the matter remains unsettled.
I'd agree that it is a bad idea and immoral though.
I'm just pointing out that you are full of shit (again). You wrote:
Pretty much every statement there is wrong.
No, it's just a statement of fact: Obama has ordered numerous drone strikes and hasn't been charged with, or convicted of, murder.
Stop trying to weasel out of it. Frequency modulation is actual analog transmission
And what inspired Hinton doesn't matter as to whether his model is biologically relevant. The benzene molecule isn't relevant to herpetology either.
Why revoke it? The actions of the Nobel peace prize committee and Obama's subsequent conduct as president are a perfect microcosm of the unbridgeable gap between progressive and left-wing aspirations and reality.
We should award the Ignoble peace prize to the Nobel peace prize committee for making this point so clearly.
If it's an Obama-ordered drone strike, it isn't legally murder.
Merely being hateful doesn't make anything "hate speech". Hate speech only applies to specific, protected groups.
And, most importantly, the US protects free speech, and hate speech isn't illegal in the US.
And I assume that doesn't even take into account the extra few hours you need to leave early because (1) the train schedule doesn't actually fit perfectly with the schedule at the destination, and (2) because delays and missed connections are a frequent occurrence and if you want to make it somewhere by a specific time, you can't rely on the connection that gets you there in time, you need to take one or two connections earlier.
True, although safety, weather, and convenience play a role there as well. But, yeah, if we are going to spend money on city infrastructure, it is probably best to spend it on safe bicycle lanes.
And computer scientists find it awfully amusing that linguists and psychologists construct all these elaborate models based on experimental observations but never actually test whether those models work.
For example, if you actually implemented the models of grammar and semantics that linguists developed on their own, they didn't work at all. The same is true for most models in psychology and cognitive science.
That's frequency modulation. It's still analog.
That paper has little to do with "mimicking the imperfections in the biological digital systems".
(Really, you should stop commenting on subjects you evidently don't understand very well.)
Here is some info about Germany (use Google translate):
http://www.test.de/Deutsche-Bahn-Wie-puenktlich-fahren-die-Zuege-wirklich-1617492-2617492/
Note in particular that people reached only half the train connections without problems.
Here are some more news stories (these probably aren't the best ones to illustrate the problems, just some examples):
http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/handel-dienstleister/deutsche-bahn-bund-will-konkurrenz-auf-der-schiene-foerdern-seite-all/7154850-all.html
http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/wirtschaftsticker/verband-kritisiert-bahn-verspaetungen-schaden-unternehmen_aid_1067256.html
Try some comparisons between car and train routes:
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=chemnitz&daddr=fulda&hl=en&ll=50.785102,11.228027&spn=2.927746,4.493408&sll=50.951506,11.304932&sspn=2.917317,4.493408&geocode=FUWSBwMdGirFACnpnf0BX0anRzEc0XUJKPjdUQ%3BFaJrAwMdzbeTACktufnpSTSjRzEwq7ApUEMiBA&mra=ltm&t=m&z=8
Note that for trains, you usually lose a couple of hours due to scheduling: they don't run exactly when you need them to, and you need to leave an extra couple of hours to allow for delays and missed connections.
Trust me, I have traveled a lot on trains in Europe. It's great fun as a tourist when you don't have to worry about time or schedules; as a practical means of transportation, it sucks.
Let me quote from my other post:
I don't want the US to have a European-style rail system precisely because I have taken a lot of trains in Europe. It's an inefficient and overpriced system.
But from an economic perspective, it is, and should be, the major driving force behind everything a company does.
Of course not. Corporations can be established for many purposes. But management has to be honest and accountable for what it is doing. If it isn't maximizing shareholder value, it better be crystal clear about it, and in that case, shareholders are likely to leave.
I have frequently taken trains in Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and Switzerland. High speed rail does not "work" in any of those countries. It usually takes twice as long to get anywhere than by car, and even with subsidies, it is considerably more expensive than other modes of transportation. The trains are uncomfortable and packed at rush hour, and at most other times are nearly empty. Delays are frequent.
The US has an extensive and fully utilized rail system, and it is used appropriately for freight. I think my country should be smart enough not to repeat the stupid mistakes that those other nations have made in their transportation infrastructure.
You thought wrong. The concept of "public airwaves" derives from the fact that there is a single spectrum that is usable everybody without investment. The FCC was created to regulate this public, free resource. "The web" is a collection of largely privately owned, privately financed cables and routers. Congress might craft laws to promote neutrality, but that's never the same as "public airwaves", and without specific legislation and justification, there is no reason for the FCC to regulate "the web".
What justification in the world would there be for the FCC to regulate and license video transmissions over the Internet? Their job was to ensure orderly sharing of the public airwaves, nothing else.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. The US rail system is used almost to capacity for freight; as you point out, the US moves more freight by rail than the entire EU by any mode. That's a good thing, it's an efficient use of US rail lines. European rail systems are used much more for passenger transport and European highways are clogged with freight transport (and European rail systems don't make much of a dent in the usage of personal automobiles either).
The original point of this debate was that people often point to Europe to say how wonderful passenger rail supposedly is. But, actually, the experience in Europe provides no support for increasing passenger rail in the US. Europe's passenger rail system is expensive and subsidized, European highways are clogged. Either the European experience doesn't apply to the US, or if it does, it provides an argument against expanding passenger rail in the US.
A president who stands for the rule of law and liberties: "Polygraph tests are unreliable and have little scientific data to back them up; I am immediately ending their use by government by executive order and working towards making them illegal as part of job applications."
A totalitarian-leaning president with a disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution: "Let's prosecute people who teach others to get around our unreliable and unproven interrogation tactics."
It's clear what kind of president we have. Guys, don't elect such a loser and liar again. At least by 2012 it should have been clear to everybody what kind of president he was.
I can't tell whether you're trying to be sarcastic or not, but passenger rail in Europe is a constant political problem: it loses money, it is unreliable, and it carries only a small percentage of overall traffic. So, yeah, Europeans don't feel good about it either. And they would feel even worse about it if they realized how much it costs and how much highway congestion it causes (because all the freight traffic that isn't traveling by rail ends up clogging up the highways).
Yes, it is quite "proven": proven to be an expensive, money-losing boondoggle in Europe. Something that allows the well-off to travel in comfort between city centers where ordinary people can't afford to live. For ordinary people, high speed rail requires feeder lines that make the whole trip slower than driving, and the tickets are more expensive than (the already expensive) gas or flying. Why would we possibly want this in the US?
The US has an active rail system bigger than European nations combined. It's primarily used for freight, which is the most efficient way of using a modern rail system. Europeans are misusing their rail system for inefficient passenger transport while putting a lot more freight on the roads.