As are most "brands" are overvalued relative to their market share...
However, value is not generally directly proportional to market share. There's lots of value associated with growth potential and being number 1 in a market...
Then again, there's always a limit to how many tulips people want...
Actually, from what I can tell it's more like a VLIW with it's program chopped up into horizontal and vertical microcode "chunks" for more efficient register forwarding, than a vector processor...
I figure that it chops up the code into 128-instruction chunks (or smaller if there are branch dependancies that can't be done with predicates) and schedules it horizontally (the classic wide VLIW microcode which feeds independent instruction pipelines), and vertically (the sequence that can distribute over time and use register forwarding paths). The pipelines seem to be loosely coupled through reservation stations and the forwarding done with low bandwidth wormhole routes so it isn't a rigid as a classic VLIW machine.
I doubt it does that much better with normal scalar code (which has lots of branches), but it probably is much better than a vector processor would be with irregular code.
ARKANSAS CITY, KS (March 29, 2007) - Creekstone Farms Premium Beef ("Creekstone") announced today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA") must allow private industry to test cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("BSE" or "mad cow disease").
According to a ruling from U.S. District Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the USDA's "prohibition of the private use of rapid test kits to screen cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy is unlawful." (Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, et al., Civil Action No. 06-0544).
"We are very pleased with the ruling handed down by the Court and we stand ready to work with the USDA," stated Dennis Buhlke, Creekstone's President and CEO, "This decision confirms the position Creekstone has taken for over three years that the USDA should not prevent businesses from responding to their customers' demands for more information about their products, such as BSE testing."
The Court stayed the effective date of its ruling until June 1, 2007, to allow USDA time to determine whether to appeal. Creekstone already has built, with the advice of BSE-testing experts, a state-of-the-art laboratory and is positioned at this time to implement its stated plans for BSE testing of some or all of the cattle it processes at its Arkansas City, Kansas plant.
The ruling held that USDA has authority to regulate the use of diagnostic tests in general, but that it lacks authority to prohibit the private use of BSE test kits, which are not used in the treatment of BSE, but are used on cattle that are already dead to see if they had significant levels of BSE infection. Noting that many other countries test large numbers of healthy-appearing cattle for BSE at slaughter, Judge Robertson suggested that USDA's stated concerns about the conclusions consumers might draw from private BSE testing were not within USDA's statutory areas of responsibility.
However, if I were to extend your meterology and climatology to astronomy and cosmology, I think you see where some people are coming from when they doubt the climatologist.
Astronomy and meterology are pretty much observational and akin to a naturalist style science (applying basic scientific principles to natural phenomena). Where cosmology and climatology are more of a model verification (big-bang and global warming).
Although you might state that the later has more "predictive" power, I would suggest to you that the correctness of the models are really beyond the understanding of most people, and especially the people that are the most vocal about them.
Just as it does not follow that climatologist are wrong because thy cannot predict the weather next week, doesn't mean they are wrong. It doesn't inherently mean they are right either (to simplify two "not's" don't make a "true"). It just means their model is inaccurate. So just what tells us their model is accurate under a scientific model? There would have to be an experiment (not just a prediction). It may turn out that they are correct in the end, but they aren't applying science as we know it, they currently just have a model that is somewhat predictive in a local observation model (much like the _theory_ of relativity or _theory_ of gravity, they have a _theory_ of global warming).
Regardless of the short term predictive power, it wouldn't be the first time a theory is right or wrong, but having said that, perhaps it is fair to say it might predict things okay (in the way we know relativity predicts things okay), but the model, is just a model, and in the case of relativity, we are pretty sure that it is wrong (at the quantum level), because we have done years of analysis. It doesn't stop us from making atomic clocks and sending space probes out because the theory is wrong, but it doesn't serve the scientific interest to say that it heresey to doubt it's conclusions.
I think the biggest problem with the _theory_ of global warming, is that many people have similar theories that are being bunched up into one PR effort. Nobody takes the time to estimate and publicize the range and validity of their theories instead choosing to jump on the band-wagon. In my opinion, this isn't science, but a big PR effort and it's no doubt to me why many are skeptical (we've seen too many results of PR/bandwagon science to treat any thing like it skeptically).
For me, I've read as much research as I can about this and although I'm not an expert, the PR doesn't seem to be able to be backed up with the facts. The measurements themselves of course are very alarming (deltaT in ocean water, changing precipitation rates), but the theories and models trends that are being used to predict the future don't seem to be analyzed very well and most of the research is built off of other research (nobody is doing very much basic research in the model issues). Most people are just developing refinement of other people's models, plug and chug with the same climactic data and popping out correlation coefficients over a short period of time (in geologic terms). We all know the models have their parameters tweaked to match historical data and often it seems there isn't enough analysis of the model itself to assess its predictive power yet.
I'm not saying this is a nay-sayer, but you (the parent poster) are giving very poor analogies to back your case. Sure you can measure energy and heat, but if your theoretical climatologist puts in heat (analogous to the sun warming up), and how much the energy the lid traps (analagous to green house gasses), but forgets to put in phase-change variables (as an example, I don't think a _real_ climatologist would ever be that stupid), he might interpret the temperature deltas near the phase change from liquid ocean to water vapor very differently, RIGHT?
Which brings me back to the fact that the model parameters to do prediction should always be open to analysis, yet is rarely publicized, just the grim
There's nothing stopping people from getting a credit card from a bank in another country in the EU is there?
You don't get anything delivered to a street address with music downloads, and you can certainly pay your bills on line so what's the problem?
Or perhaps the EU just hasn't gotten around to charging banks in the EU with antitrust yet discriminating against their nationality as to providing banking services...
I know many people in the UK working in France (on more or less permanent assignment for a company for the last 8 years). I know one French citizen who spends > 1/2 the year in Italy. Although I don't know this specifically, I'm guessing they have credit cards based on where they are living (and their nearby bank) rather than one arbitrarily issued by their country.
In the US I know many so-called green card holders (the card is really pink colored). They are not US citizens, but I know specifically nearly all have credit cards issued by US banks (since we go to the same bank).
Despite the idea of nationalistic pride, there is a very big difference between distinguishing against nationality and race or religion. This is true even in the EU. I'm not saying it's legal or not (that's a legal issue), but from a practical and moral point of view, it's not the same thing.
Copyright was _not_ originally created to protect contect from those who would _change_ it and resell it as original.
Copyright was originally created to protect book publisher from being undercut by _verbatim_ duplicates created by rival book publishers. There used to be a booming business for rogue publisher to create cheap copies that undercut the original publishers. That was the reason for copyright, not people co-opting the work of others as their own or changing it in some way or producing edited versions to be confused by purchasers.
Prior to the modern version of copyright, essentially publishers purchase the rights to copy from authors for a one-time-fee and then were granted a virtual monopoly to restrict other publishers from printing copies. This took a different form in different countries, but many times these restriction were mostly agreements between guild members rather than some elaborate law like is the case in England until later the rights were transfered to the author of the work in the modern version of copyright (for an example also in england, the Statute of Anne).
Whether you believe the author or the publisher deserve more money is of course open to debate (esp if you are an author or a publisher), but I think there are three schools of thought on the rationale of copyright. One school of thought is that copyright is inherently a "moral" right of the author which is independent of public costs (the so called "right-to-withhold" publication). Another school of thought is that copyrights are a support/welfare mechanism for artists (this is sort of the populist view). Finally, a smaller school of thought is that copyright is the backstop that slows things down enough to prevent the system from collapse when technological discontinuities threaten established business models until new business models can be worked out. Although many may dispute these ways of looking at things, I think it's fair to say most opinion falls into one of these camps.
I think no-one can really ever compute a cost-benefit analysis of copyright, no more than you can compute a cost-benefit of allowing say, non-property owners the right to vote. It depends so much on your definition of cost and benefit that two reasonable people can come up with a different answer. In face, I actually think it's completely unreasonable for all governmental policy to be required to show societal cost-benefit (as an extreme example show me the cost benefit analysis that says the government shouldn't allow for companies to profit from the extermination of people with genetic defects). This is why I generally prefer a the check-and-balance of representative government of people, not an authoritarian or libertarian government that is "scientific-study-based".
I don't dispute that copyright laws as is currently stands is basically generally unenforcable statute sort of like speeding is basically generally unenforcable unless we submit to egrgious restrictions, but that doesn't make it unreasonable to actually have a speed limit.
This old cnet article has a pointer to an animation about this and that talks about the black holes themselves colliding. The gravity wave phenomena is potentially very interesting.
However, the original question was about the accretion discs and being in some sort of time-dialated matrix-like slo-mo explosion, which is an entirely different thing...
To an observer outside of a black hole, it takes an ever increasing amount of wall-clock time to see something near the event horizon move (things look very still). Of course to the stuff falling into the hole, things sort of happen at "real-time" locally.
From your observer's perspective you might be thinking that all the collision will be in slo-mo which might be "interesting" or "the-matrix-movie-like", but in real-life you can only see photons, so everything will also be getting dimmer at the same time (red shifted until at the photons being emitted near the event horizon almost have zero frequency as their time gets stretched out and energy approaching zero and thus relatively invisible).
Short answer is they are having a party, but on the outside we probably don't get to see too much.
"I also wondered what might happen to the matter trapped in the accretion disks of two black holes when they began to merge, especially if they had opposing rotation... matter travelling at virtually the speed of light, hitting yet more matter, travelling at virtually the speed of light in the opposite direction... meaning an effective speed of impact almost double the speed of light... and all that happening in an area of dilated time... you have to wonder what that would look like..."
I haven't done the math, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be as interesting as you might hope.
The "worst" case seems to me would be the accretion discs would be spinning the same rotation (because if they were spinning the opposite way, the relative velocity of the intersecting parts of the accretion discs would be nearly the same, no?). If they were spinning the same way, and because accretion disc are generally present because of increased viscosity (w/o viscosity, the matter would generally just fall directly into the black hole), the discs would likely just merge and the composite disc would have approximatly double the angular momentum. If some of the theories current are correct, and that the polar jets are ways of bleeding the energy instead of mass to limit angular momentum, then the polar jets would likely more intense, but over two black holes, so the net effect seems like it wouldn't be that different.
If we when with the opposite, where the rotation was oppossing, the angular momentum seems like it would cancel each other so that there would be less of a reason to need polar jets to bleed energy and although I'm sure there would be lots of crunching, but this would be near the event horizon meaning most of it would just probably "fall-into" one of the black hole's event horizon.
BTW, just to be nitpicky, when two flash lights are pointed at each other, the photons don't hit each other at twice the speed of light in an area of dilated time (or any other reference frame). In the reference frame of one of the photons (what you are calling dilated time), the other photon is just travelling the speed of light towards it. However, the speed isn't conserved, but of course momentum is conserved within a frame of reference, so that ignoring the relativistic effects for the moment, the resulting momentum of the collision is the momentum of the other object in first object's frame of reference (just like the other object hitting you at near the speed of light, the fact that you are also going near the speed of light isn't gonna make this much different, no?). Now when we put relativistics effects in there, because of conservation of momentu, other object is gonna seem much heavier to the other moving object than to the stationary observer. Did that make any sense?
Going back, that means the "net" momentum after collision would be pretty much zero for your "worst" case. Big crunch, but now the relative angular momentum is low and all that matter is sitting right near a black hole, might be interesting to them, but would you see it?
I've done some work as an alum-rep for the admission dept of Caltech for the last few years, and as Editor of the school newspaper we did a series on admissions I can tell you getting perfect SATs really don't do much for you over having very good SAT scores. SAT scores are such poor predictors fo student performance that other than bragging rights they don't mean much after a certain level (meaning perhaps above 1850/2400).
More important is what classes you took (e.g., did you duck the advance calculus class for the regular calculus class, or did you take all the offered AP classes and some at the local community college), and what you teachers think of you relative to your peers. If you can get a teacher say that you walk on water, or you are smarter than the last student they know that went to MIT or Caltech, you are probably golden. If on the other hand, you can't get a very good recommendiation from a teacher (meaning they say way more than yeah he's nice, quiet and got A's), don't even bother to apply.
Caltech used to do interviews, but gave up quite a while ago. They studied it and like the SAT, the correlation seemed to be pretty low and it was pretty time-consuming for little payback. Different interviewers were looking at different things and all had biases that were almost impossible to normalize out.
But to second the parent poster's comment. Stand OUT. You don't have to join 20 clubs, just one or two where you stuck with it for say 4 years (maybe it's too late for you, but perhaps people will be reading this). Any admissions person will see through the fact that when you list that you play piano/keyboard or program your computer in your spare time, and are part of NHS and honor role, that you probably haven't done much in your highschool career and will probably not bring very much to the school (because if you are part of a band that's gone viral, wrote part of the linux kernel, or was the only Sophmore president of the NHS you probably would have said so in your application, right?). Leadership isn't just about being "president", or "treasurer" of the club. Most admissions folks know that many HS clubs have 2-3 folks that "do", but most of the organizing and motivation is done by the faculty sponsors. If you are one of the "do-ers", you have to figure out how to make this shine through your application.
On the money side, there's something to be said about going to a less wallet challenging school, but at least Caltech is pretty good on the financial aid front. Although all debt is something serious, but at least college debt is something that can be considered an investment. Of course you wouldn't invest $100,000 in something that would only pay back $1,000/year in increased salary, if you think it will pay back more, it's not a bad investment. Life isn't about getting the best ROI, but using the resources available to you have effectively. If the resources are available to you (e.g, loans, rich uncles, lottery tickets, whatever), and you can use those resources effectively (e.g., make a positive ROI, don't go into life crippling debt), then I don't see any good reason to maximize ROI...
Lastly, of course, be introspective. Most people who go to MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princton, Yale, Harvard, etc, are in the top 5% of their HS classes. If 95.6/100 is where you stand, that's realistic, but what do you have that the other folks don't? Everyone has got something they are which is unique and important, but most HS students often haven't found it yet (this is something ususally discovered in college or even later in life), but if you can figure it out and make it show through your application (e.g., on the caltech application, they usually have a box that you can fill with anything you want, don't be creative in this box, be assertive and introspective).
Remember, the admissions committee doesn't know you and they get a bazillion applications that look the same. Students that apply to college often forget there are people with IQ's greater than 100 r
The fact that they just left the key in the clear in dram isn't something that was inevitable, just their particular implementation and something that is somewhat fixable.
So to make a quick analogy, which security measure should they they have choosen?
1. Leaving the door open to your house inviting someone that happens to be driving by to notice it and walk in...
2. Leaving your door closed but unlocked requiring them to select your door out of several on your block to open...
3. Locking your door with a 5-pin standard door lock that you would have to bump to open, but hoping the bad guys pick some other house to rob that choose security measure #1 or #2...
4. Living in a cave under a mountain with bars on your one entrance/exit...
Seems to me that they selected door #2, where selecting door #3 would have probably been a better choice in retrospect.
As a quick example, the key could have been xored with "0xdeadbeef" in memory and some inline code to un-xor it as needed into cpu registers could be done. Although this is essentially non-cryptographic scrambling, it would have required someone to find and disassemble the decryption subroutine instead of just search a 2G memory dump for a key...
"Most favored" doesn't mean what you probably think it does.
The closest analogy is sort of like the "sale price" vs the "manufacturer suggested retail price". Nobody except people you hate or people you don't care about pay the "msrp", just about everyone gets the "sale price", just like every country except the ones that the US officially hates or doesn't care about has "most favored" status.
In recognition of this confusion, I recall that "most favored" has been officially changed to be called "Normal Trade Relations" to indicate what it really means, the country basically gets the standard trade treatment on tariffs and such.
This is analagous to renaming the "sale price" to the "list price" and the "msrp" to the "we don't really want to sell this to you, but if you insist you have to pay this price".
Although many might lament the quality of the "non-IIT" indian educations (see other articles), there are very few "third-world" countries with education systems that are remotely on par with china or india (not that I would call them third world, but let's say emerging world)...
The jobs may not fly back to the US, but I don't think we'll be seeing the level of outsourcing to other so-called thrid world countries as they don't have the population nor the fractional amount of locally trained talent pool (needed to fill out any organization) that would be able to sustain any reasonable amount of outsourcing over time (making it worth it for a company to invest in the first place). Not saying it won't happen eventually, but you don't just stick up a tent, call it a university and start churning out graduates to bulk out companies (and still be successful at it).
For example, if you follow the history of chinese, korean, and indian out-sourcing you might have been able to predict the current situation by looking at the graduate student population over the past 20 years.
Early on, those countries were definitely being "brain-drained" by the US and Western Europe (although not so much Japan, because of their immigration policies) because the educational and commercial opportunities were better than their home countries. It was only a matter of time for the educational opportunities to get better in their countries, followed shortly by the commercial opportunities. With the local commercial opportunities, and some ties to the US (through graduate student coming over and returning to their homes), they built up enough critical mass to start attracting outsourcing.
Russia (although, not third world) already had the good educational opportunities and now are getting more commercial opportunities (and would be more if their commercial environment was better). If we look at the graduate student population as a leading indicator, perhaps Eastern Europe or Iran is probably the next wave, although it will probably take a while. I think the line of countries in line to be the next outsourcing hub is NOT very long though, and these things will take quite a while to play out (15-20 years or maybe more)...
I think one of the things that has made the whole battery problem more acute is the recent increase number of devices that use a rechargeable but not-replaceable battery. One of the biggest complaints about the iPod is the relatively short battery life. This issue could be nullified by an easily-user-replacable battery: the battery wears out, quickly replace it with a new one, the music continues.
One of the reasons that many high-energy density lithium-ion batteries are not easily-user-replacable is because they are toxic (although not nearly as bad as heavy metal batteries) and can explode if short circuited (as witnessed by many people). Also lithium-ion batteries age and are unlikley to be stocked by convenience retailers (unlike alkaline batteries at the store that are good until 2010, lithium-ion batteries age and are long dead by then even if they are unused). Any environmentaly concious and lawsuit fearing company will make such batteries difficult to replace by joe-six-pack...
Although light from the "nearby" supernova travels at the speed of light towards earth, the shockwave from matter of the supernova which potentially destroyed this formation travels slower (think like the supernova generated lightning and thunder). When the supernova blew, it sent light towards earth and a shockwave towards the "pillars" (at least this is what is suggested by the latest picture).
In the BBC article, it seems to indicate more detailed observations of a "shell-shaped" cloud of hot dust near the pillars being heated by a exploding star. Using data from the telescope they were able to infer the temperature of the dust and match it to a supernova. I'm guessing they predicted the speed of the shockwave and noted that it would take about 1000 years to destroy this formation given the recent observation, but since the distances to both are "astronomical", we see what it was doing 7000 years ago, so if the shockwave speed prediction is correct, it will have already happened and we are just waiting for the light from this event that probably already happened to reach us.
If you are really, really interested, apparently there is a scheduled talk on this given by Mr Flagey at caltech on Jan 16th http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/seminars/
I'm guessing that you do (as do most of us). I suggest boycott and stopping immediatly if you want to stay on your high horse (lest you compromize your own values by providing profit to companies who do test).
Note that this list has "google" as a urine tester, so you might want to start using yahoo search and avoid logging into youtube (so much for do no evil). Most banks are also listed, so you might just have to stuff your money under your matress. Not to mention avoiding starbucks, coca-cola, pepsi products and canceling your AAA membership and stop shopping at costco, target and walmart, throw away your dell and hp computers, etc, etc...
Can't do that and live your life (or feed your family), well, I guess we're all owned by the man with your definition and might as well pack it in anyhow.;^)
Perhaps we the weak are willing to give up some privacy for convenience, which might mean (paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson) we don't deserve and privacy nor convenience and will lose both. However, everyone has their own threshold as to the battles they wage and the ones that they avoid to fight another day.
However, even Thomas Jefferson had slaves while he promoted an end to slavery he spent pretty much his entire life in debt (many historians think the two were related as he basically couldn't afford to release his slaves). So in many respects Mr. Jefferson lived his life in the practical even though he tried to promote the ideal within the limitations of his own life. Sometimes if we must compromise our privacy to live a more practical convenient life, it isn't totally horrible is it?
Maybe with your priorities and circumstance you can draw the line at employment, but still allow yourself to do business what you regard as companies, but I'm guessing not everyone has your priorities or circumstance, so "get-over-yourself";^)
My argument exactly is that the USGS seems to have it's share of biased research work product and hardly needs people to complain about it being "meddeled" with (from either party).
There is strong suspicion that it is common that congressional members (under "suggestions" from people lobbying congress) direct research in government labs in order to provide fodder for their political arguments by convincing scientist of compatible political pursuation to initiate specific directly research with an agenda which then gets published under a US Govt. banner. Realizing that until recently these publication could barely qualify as journals and weren't even subject to indpendent external peer review you might see how this could be a problem.
Someone needs to continue try and clean up the USGS work product to filter out the political crap. Perhaps this is a case of bush can't do it (politically) since he's dirty already, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a worthy goal? You seem to think it's unacheivable anyhow, so why try, is that your argument? Once the research is published it's too late, but perhaps bush is going too far by wanting advanced notice, but sadly I doubt there is going to be any actual intelligent discussion about this issue.
For example, I'm sure that Clinton and Gore would have been interested in getting some advanced notice of the Yucca Mountain research before it got published in the USGS report and lapped up by the media contrary to the clinton-gore stated public policy. If I remember correclty, it all surfaced during the run-up to the 2K election and even bush2 denounced the biased YM research when it came out. Perhaps this is just something we have to live with (can't get the corruption out of this part of the civil service), but I wouldn't call it crap...
In answer to your other question, it doesn't matter if you hate the president or not (I don't care). I think it's actually the bush bashers that distract from this problem and hence my post that expresses surprize that people are coming to defense of this USGS as a proxy for "scientist free speech being impared", just as an opportunistic way to bush bash.
I guess I can't even denigrate the bushbasher when they seem to be jumping on the wrong issue. I suppose bushbashers are the "untouchables" on slashdot these days... Sigh... I guess I shouldn't mention that I use "vi" and "bsd"...;^)
Gee, when have scientist been elected to censor the public's view of knowledge just in case it might be misinterpreted. Perhaps us commonfolk are too stupid to understand and need "qualified" guidance to help us interpret things properly...
Where have I heard this kind of shit before? Oh yeah, from that other side...
Geesh, what a load of crap. Just like most things, sounds good until you read the fine print.
I guess people would rather just bushbash than take a critical look at the USGS in specific...
In case people don't remember, the USGS was the same agency that in 1998-2000 (under the clinton administration oversight) was accused of falsifying many research documents in support of the proposed nuclear waste processing facility in Yucca Mountain. I believe some of their scientists that were involved with this research falsification are under federal investigation for this today.
I'm not saying all of their scientists are bad apples (they do some good research there), but the agency as a whole untainted as unbiased scientific researchers (as they know who butters their bread) and all the stuff that comes out of the door there should be taken with a grain of salt.
In response to this and other problems, in 2004 (under the bush2 administration oversite), the USGS started a procedure of external peer review for their papers. This new "alert" of course goes beyond external peer review, so isn't all that great news, but I think the USGS has a long way to go to clean up their act before they cry idea censorship.
I don't totally buy the argument that PC+OS=product, however, in HP's defense, it probably doesn't work as advertised without the windows OS and is really a different product without it.
Also, in most juristictions, there is a implied warranty of merchantability that comes with every item that is sold: that is reasonably functional for their ordinary purpose. Of course we are free to debate what the "ordinary purpose" is of a french computer and if it requires and OS to reach that level of functionality out of the box. If a french computer isn't expected to work out of the box and needs and OS install, then presumably this is a slam dunk. Otherwize, it's perhaps less clear.
For example, the french "bundling" law taken to extremes could be interpreted as forcing cars dealers to sell cars w/o tires because it's possible to buy a different brand of tires for the car instead of the tires that came with the car (or even the brand of synthetic motor oil). Although I doubt it could ever be interpreted to apply to these things because it wouldn't be a merchantable car without oil or tires.
In any case, as with the US, I think in France you can techically get a rebate/refund for the OS if you don't use it. It seem you have to change the terms of the default purchase contract and request it in writing and threaten to sue to get them to refund you...;^)
Perhaps that is a shallow victory for some. Also note that it seems the history of applying this law to the OS is against the unbundling in the case of a computer and an OS (and iTunes and iPods), even though bundling appears to apply in these case, such is the vagaries of the DDGCRF (the french directorate in charge of competition and fraud). They had to pass a specific law in france to make the iTunes/iPod bundling thing against the law and they'd probably have to do the same for computer+Windows.
Actually I'd just like to see this bundling OS+processor be eliminated on cell phones. I could care less about the desktop and lap top computer stuff.
Seems to me like this is like "John Smith, J.D." complaining to "John Smith" that the phone book publisher accidentially listed "John Smith" first in the yellow pages under "sharks" and that "John Smith" should ask the phone book publisher to remove his name from the yellow pages because obviously he is not a professional shark, unlike "J.D." which is a professional shark and much more deserving of the first listing. Of course "John Smith" has nothing to do with the fact he was listed in the yellow pages under "sharks" and can't be bothered to complain to the phone book publisher when obviously "J.D." won't appreciate his efforts anyhow...
Google microcredit, the idea finally won the nobel peace prize in 2006...
It's not that poor people have no choice, it's because we, the rich, have been too ignorant to make this widely available (even though according to wikipedia, the idea has been around since the marshall plan post WWII and has mostly been successful where available), and of course sadly, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur to get themselves out of hand-to-mouth existance.
Fortunatly, the tide is changing on microcredit and more opportunties are opening up, but sadly not everyone will be able to avail themselves of this new type of opportunity, but that doesn't mean no opportunity exist at all for people that find themselves in a hand-to-mouth existance.
I'm not saying that the poor deserve it (because they can't save money, etc, as intoned by the grandfather post), but all is not doom and gloom for the dirt poor, but entrepreneurial. To say they have no choice is to both misunderstand their situation dismiss the value of their daily efforts to survive. I would categorize both views as being ignorant myself.
I think that people that pity the "poor" for their lot in life are often group apologist for any bad decisions indivduals may have made and are almost just as bad as the people that prejudice people that deride the poor for their unfortuitous lot in life. Maybe all people don't have the same choices as you or I, but that doesn't mean they have no choice and the could have done some things better (or worse) and that some people don't succeed where others fail. To dismiss anyone with a "no-choice" is to disrespect their humanity and dignity.
It is sad that there aren't more opportunties availble to poor people as a group. It is not sad that they are poor. The first is something we have experience with and could change if we wanted to, the later is something that we have no experience with (assuming we are all typing on computers, we don't fall in this category). We don't know if a particular individual who was poor had a choice or not, we are not them and we should not stereotypicalize the group.
Slashdot Mirror
As are most "brands" are overvalued relative to their market share...
However, value is not generally directly proportional to market share. There's lots of value associated with growth potential and being number 1 in a market...
Then again, there's always a limit to how many tulips people want...
In the WTO "technical barriers to trade" gateway which the EU (and member states are party too)...
... NOT!
Isn't world government great!
You can read more about it here...
Actually, from what I can tell it's more like a VLIW with it's program chopped up into horizontal and vertical microcode "chunks" for more efficient register forwarding, than a vector processor...
I figure that it chops up the code into 128-instruction chunks (or smaller if there are branch dependancies that can't be done with predicates) and schedules it horizontally (the classic wide VLIW microcode which feeds independent instruction pipelines), and vertically (the sequence that can distribute over time and use register forwarding paths). The pipelines seem to be loosely coupled through reservation stations and the forwarding done with low bandwidth wormhole routes so it isn't a rigid as a classic VLIW machine.
I doubt it does that much better with normal scalar code (which has lots of branches), but it probably is much better than a vector processor would be with irregular code.
A news clip from the company that started this controversy....
e _press_mar2007.html
http://www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com/news_bs
ARKANSAS CITY, KS (March 29, 2007) - Creekstone Farms Premium Beef ("Creekstone") announced today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA") must allow private industry to test cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("BSE" or "mad cow disease").
According to a ruling from U.S. District Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the USDA's "prohibition of the private use of rapid test kits to screen cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy is unlawful." (Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, et al., Civil Action No. 06-0544).
"We are very pleased with the ruling handed down by the Court and we stand ready to work with the USDA," stated Dennis Buhlke, Creekstone's President and CEO, "This decision confirms the position Creekstone has taken for over three years that the USDA should not prevent businesses from responding to their customers' demands for more information about their products, such as BSE testing."
The Court stayed the effective date of its ruling until June 1, 2007, to allow USDA time to determine whether to appeal. Creekstone already has built, with the advice of BSE-testing experts, a state-of-the-art laboratory and is positioned at this time to implement its stated plans for BSE testing of some or all of the cattle it processes at its Arkansas City, Kansas plant.
The ruling held that USDA has authority to regulate the use of diagnostic tests in general, but that it lacks authority to prohibit the private use of BSE test kits, which are not used in the treatment of BSE, but are used on cattle that are already dead to see if they had significant levels of BSE infection. Noting that many other countries test large numbers of healthy-appearing cattle for BSE at slaughter, Judge Robertson suggested that USDA's stated concerns about the conclusions consumers might draw from private BSE testing were not within USDA's statutory areas of responsibility.
However, if I were to extend your meterology and climatology to astronomy and cosmology, I think you see where some people are coming from when they doubt the climatologist.
Astronomy and meterology are pretty much observational and akin to a naturalist style science (applying basic scientific principles to natural phenomena). Where cosmology and climatology are more of a model verification (big-bang and global warming).
Although you might state that the later has more "predictive" power, I would suggest to you that the correctness of the models are really beyond the understanding of most people, and especially the people that are the most vocal about them.
Just as it does not follow that climatologist are wrong because thy cannot predict the weather next week, doesn't mean they are wrong. It doesn't inherently mean they are right either (to simplify two "not's" don't make a "true"). It just means their model is inaccurate. So just what tells us their model is accurate under a scientific model? There would have to be an experiment (not just a prediction). It may turn out that they are correct in the end, but they aren't applying science as we know it, they currently just have a model that is somewhat predictive in a local observation model (much like the _theory_ of relativity or _theory_ of gravity, they have a _theory_ of global warming).
Regardless of the short term predictive power, it wouldn't be the first time a theory is right or wrong, but having said that, perhaps it is fair to say it might predict things okay (in the way we know relativity predicts things okay), but the model, is just a model, and in the case of relativity, we are pretty sure that it is wrong (at the quantum level), because we have done years of analysis. It doesn't stop us from making atomic clocks and sending space probes out because the theory is wrong, but it doesn't serve the scientific interest to say that it heresey to doubt it's conclusions.
I think the biggest problem with the _theory_ of global warming, is that many people have similar theories that are being bunched up into one PR effort. Nobody takes the time to estimate and publicize the range and validity of their theories instead choosing to jump on the band-wagon. In my opinion, this isn't science, but a big PR effort and it's no doubt to me why many are skeptical (we've seen too many results of PR/bandwagon science to treat any thing like it skeptically).
For me, I've read as much research as I can about this and although I'm not an expert, the PR doesn't seem to be able to be backed up with the facts. The measurements themselves of course are very alarming (deltaT in ocean water, changing precipitation rates), but the theories and models trends that are being used to predict the future don't seem to be analyzed very well and most of the research is built off of other research (nobody is doing very much basic research in the model issues). Most people are just developing refinement of other people's models, plug and chug with the same climactic data and popping out correlation coefficients over a short period of time (in geologic terms). We all know the models have their parameters tweaked to match historical data and often it seems there isn't enough analysis of the model itself to assess its predictive power yet.
I'm not saying this is a nay-sayer, but you (the parent poster) are giving very poor analogies to back your case. Sure you can measure energy and heat, but if your theoretical climatologist puts in heat (analogous to the sun warming up), and how much the energy the lid traps (analagous to green house gasses), but forgets to put in phase-change variables (as an example, I don't think a _real_ climatologist would ever be that stupid), he might interpret the temperature deltas near the phase change from liquid ocean to water vapor very differently, RIGHT?
Which brings me back to the fact that the model parameters to do prediction should always be open to analysis, yet is rarely publicized, just the grim
There's nothing stopping people from getting a credit card from a bank in another country in the EU is there?
You don't get anything delivered to a street address with music downloads, and you can certainly pay your bills on line so what's the problem?
Or perhaps the EU just hasn't gotten around to charging banks in the EU with antitrust yet discriminating against their nationality as to providing banking services...
I know many people in the UK working in France (on more or less permanent assignment for a company for the last 8 years). I know one French citizen who spends > 1/2 the year in Italy. Although I don't know this specifically, I'm guessing they have credit cards based on where they are living (and their nearby bank) rather than one arbitrarily issued by their country.
In the US I know many so-called green card holders (the card is really pink colored). They are not US citizens, but I know specifically nearly all have credit cards issued by US banks (since we go to the same bank).
Despite the idea of nationalistic pride, there is a very big difference between distinguishing against nationality and race or religion. This is true even in the EU. I'm not saying it's legal or not (that's a legal issue), but from a practical and moral point of view, it's not the same thing.
Copyright was _not_ originally created to protect contect from those who would _change_ it and resell it as original.
Copyright was originally created to protect book publisher from being undercut by _verbatim_ duplicates created by rival book publishers. There used to be a booming business for rogue publisher to create cheap copies that undercut the original publishers. That was the reason for copyright, not people co-opting the work of others as their own or changing it in some way or producing edited versions to be confused by purchasers.
Prior to the modern version of copyright, essentially publishers purchase the rights to copy from authors for a one-time-fee and then were granted a virtual monopoly to restrict other publishers from printing copies. This took a different form in different countries, but many times these restriction were mostly agreements between guild members rather than some elaborate law like is the case in England until later the rights were transfered to the author of the work in the modern version of copyright (for an example also in england, the Statute of Anne).
Whether you believe the author or the publisher deserve more money is of course open to debate (esp if you are an author or a publisher), but I think there are three schools of thought on the rationale of copyright. One school of thought is that copyright is inherently a "moral" right of the author which is independent of public costs (the so called "right-to-withhold" publication). Another school of thought is that copyrights are a support/welfare mechanism for artists (this is sort of the populist view). Finally, a smaller school of thought is that copyright is the backstop that slows things down enough to prevent the system from collapse when technological discontinuities threaten established business models until new business models can be worked out. Although many may dispute these ways of looking at things, I think it's fair to say most opinion falls into one of these camps.
I think no-one can really ever compute a cost-benefit analysis of copyright, no more than you can compute a cost-benefit of allowing say, non-property owners the right to vote. It depends so much on your definition of cost and benefit that two reasonable people can come up with a different answer. In face, I actually think it's completely unreasonable for all governmental policy to be required to show societal cost-benefit (as an extreme example show me the cost benefit analysis that says the government shouldn't allow for companies to profit from the extermination of people with genetic defects). This is why I generally prefer a the check-and-balance of representative government of people, not an authoritarian or libertarian government that is "scientific-study-based".
I don't dispute that copyright laws as is currently stands is basically generally unenforcable statute sort of like speeding is basically generally unenforcable unless we submit to egrgious restrictions, but that doesn't make it unreasonable to actually have a speed limit.
This old cnet article has a pointer to an animation about this and that talks about the black holes themselves colliding. The gravity wave phenomena is potentially very interesting.
However, the original question was about the accretion discs and being in some sort of time-dialated matrix-like slo-mo explosion, which is an entirely different thing...
To an observer outside of a black hole, it takes an ever increasing amount of wall-clock time to see something near the event horizon move (things look very still). Of course to the stuff falling into the hole, things sort of happen at "real-time" locally.
From your observer's perspective you might be thinking that all the collision will be in slo-mo which might be "interesting" or "the-matrix-movie-like", but in real-life you can only see photons, so everything will also be getting dimmer at the same time (red shifted until at the photons being emitted near the event horizon almost have zero frequency as their time gets stretched out and energy approaching zero and thus relatively invisible).
Short answer is they are having a party, but on the outside we probably don't get to see too much.
"I also wondered what might happen to the matter trapped in the accretion disks of two black holes when they began to merge, especially if they had opposing rotation... matter travelling at virtually the speed of light, hitting yet more matter, travelling at virtually the speed of light in the opposite direction... meaning an effective speed of impact almost double the speed of light... and all that happening in an area of dilated time... you have to wonder what that would look like..."
I haven't done the math, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be as interesting as you might hope.
The "worst" case seems to me would be the accretion discs would be spinning the same rotation (because if they were spinning the opposite way, the relative velocity of the intersecting parts of the accretion discs would be nearly the same, no?). If they were spinning the same way, and because accretion disc are generally present because of increased viscosity (w/o viscosity, the matter would generally just fall directly into the black hole), the discs would likely just merge and the composite disc would have approximatly double the angular momentum. If some of the theories current are correct, and that the polar jets are ways of bleeding the energy instead of mass to limit angular momentum, then the polar jets would likely more intense, but over two black holes, so the net effect seems like it wouldn't be that different.
If we when with the opposite, where the rotation was oppossing, the angular momentum seems like it would cancel each other so that there would be less of a reason to need polar jets to bleed energy and although I'm sure there would be lots of crunching, but this would be near the event horizon meaning most of it would just probably "fall-into" one of the black hole's event horizon.
BTW, just to be nitpicky, when two flash lights are pointed at each other, the photons don't hit each other at twice the speed of light in an area of dilated time (or any other reference frame). In the reference frame of one of the photons (what you are calling dilated time), the other photon is just travelling the speed of light towards it. However, the speed isn't conserved, but of course momentum is conserved within a frame of reference, so that ignoring the relativistic effects for the moment, the resulting momentum of the collision is the momentum of the other object in first object's frame of reference (just like the other object hitting you at near the speed of light, the fact that you are also going near the speed of light isn't gonna make this much different, no?). Now when we put relativistics effects in there, because of conservation of momentu, other object is gonna seem much heavier to the other moving object than to the stationary observer. Did that make any sense?
Going back, that means the "net" momentum after collision would be pretty much zero for your "worst" case. Big crunch, but now the relative angular momentum is low and all that matter is sitting right near a black hole, might be interesting to them, but would you see it?
I've done some work as an alum-rep for the admission dept of Caltech for the last few years, and as Editor of the school newspaper we did a series on admissions I can tell you getting perfect SATs really don't do much for you over having very good SAT scores. SAT scores are such poor predictors fo student performance that other than bragging rights they don't mean much after a certain level (meaning perhaps above 1850/2400).
More important is what classes you took (e.g., did you duck the advance calculus class for the regular calculus class, or did you take all the offered AP classes and some at the local community college), and what you teachers think of you relative to your peers. If you can get a teacher say that you walk on water, or you are smarter than the last student they know that went to MIT or Caltech, you are probably golden. If on the other hand, you can't get a very good recommendiation from a teacher (meaning they say way more than yeah he's nice, quiet and got A's), don't even bother to apply.
Caltech used to do interviews, but gave up quite a while ago. They studied it and like the SAT, the correlation seemed to be pretty low and it was pretty time-consuming for little payback. Different interviewers were looking at different things and all had biases that were almost impossible to normalize out.
But to second the parent poster's comment. Stand OUT. You don't have to join 20 clubs, just one or two where you stuck with it for say 4 years (maybe it's too late for you, but perhaps people will be reading this). Any admissions person will see through the fact that when you list that you play piano/keyboard or program your computer in your spare time, and are part of NHS and honor role, that you probably haven't done much in your highschool career and will probably not bring very much to the school (because if you are part of a band that's gone viral, wrote part of the linux kernel, or was the only Sophmore president of the NHS you probably would have said so in your application, right?). Leadership isn't just about being "president", or "treasurer" of the club. Most admissions folks know that many HS clubs have 2-3 folks that "do", but most of the organizing and motivation is done by the faculty sponsors. If you are one of the "do-ers", you have to figure out how to make this shine through your application.
On the money side, there's something to be said about going to a less wallet challenging school, but at least Caltech is pretty good on the financial aid front. Although all debt is something serious, but at least college debt is something that can be considered an investment. Of course you wouldn't invest $100,000 in something that would only pay back $1,000/year in increased salary, if you think it will pay back more, it's not a bad investment. Life isn't about getting the best ROI, but using the resources available to you have effectively. If the resources are available to you (e.g, loans, rich uncles, lottery tickets, whatever), and you can use those resources effectively (e.g., make a positive ROI, don't go into life crippling debt), then I don't see any good reason to maximize ROI...
Lastly, of course, be introspective. Most people who go to MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princton, Yale, Harvard, etc, are in the top 5% of their HS classes. If 95.6/100 is where you stand, that's realistic, but what do you have that the other folks don't? Everyone has got something they are which is unique and important, but most HS students often haven't found it yet (this is something ususally discovered in college or even later in life), but if you can figure it out and make it show through your application (e.g., on the caltech application, they usually have a box that you can fill with anything you want, don't be creative in this box, be assertive and introspective).
Remember, the admissions committee doesn't know you and they get a bazillion applications that look the same. Students that apply to college often forget there are people with IQ's greater than 100 r
The fact that they just left the key in the clear in dram isn't something that was inevitable, just their particular implementation and something that is somewhat fixable.
So to make a quick analogy, which security measure should they they have choosen?
1. Leaving the door open to your house inviting someone that happens to be driving by to notice it and walk in...
2. Leaving your door closed but unlocked requiring them to select your door out of several on your block to open...
3. Locking your door with a 5-pin standard door lock that you would have to bump to open, but hoping the bad guys pick some other house to rob that choose security measure #1 or #2...
4. Living in a cave under a mountain with bars on your one entrance/exit...
Seems to me that they selected door #2, where selecting door #3 would have probably been a better choice in retrospect.
As a quick example, the key could have been xored with "0xdeadbeef" in memory and some inline code to un-xor it as needed into cpu registers could be done. Although this is essentially non-cryptographic scrambling, it would have required someone to find and disassemble the decryption subroutine instead of just search a 2G memory dump for a key...
"Most favored" doesn't mean what you probably think it does.
The closest analogy is sort of like the "sale price" vs the "manufacturer suggested retail price". Nobody except people you hate or people you don't care about pay the "msrp", just about everyone gets the "sale price", just like every country except the ones that the US officially hates or doesn't care about has "most favored" status.
In recognition of this confusion, I recall that "most favored" has been officially changed to be called "Normal Trade Relations" to indicate what it really means, the country basically gets the standard trade treatment on tariffs and such.
This is analagous to renaming the "sale price" to the "list price" and the "msrp" to the "we don't really want to sell this to you, but if you insist you have to pay this price".
Although many might lament the quality of the "non-IIT" indian educations (see other articles), there are very few "third-world" countries with education systems that are remotely on par with china or india (not that I would call them third world, but let's say emerging world)...
The jobs may not fly back to the US, but I don't think we'll be seeing the level of outsourcing to other so-called thrid world countries as they don't have the population nor the fractional amount of locally trained talent pool (needed to fill out any organization) that would be able to sustain any reasonable amount of outsourcing over time (making it worth it for a company to invest in the first place). Not saying it won't happen eventually, but you don't just stick up a tent, call it a university and start churning out graduates to bulk out companies (and still be successful at it).
For example, if you follow the history of chinese, korean, and indian out-sourcing you might have been able to predict the current situation by looking at the graduate student population over the past 20 years.
Early on, those countries were definitely being "brain-drained" by the US and Western Europe (although not so much Japan, because of their immigration policies) because the educational and commercial opportunities were better than their home countries. It was only a matter of time for the educational opportunities to get better in their countries, followed shortly by the commercial opportunities. With the local commercial opportunities, and some ties to the US (through graduate student coming over and returning to their homes), they built up enough critical mass to start attracting outsourcing.
Russia (although, not third world) already had the good educational opportunities and now are getting more commercial opportunities (and would be more if their commercial environment was better). If we look at the graduate student population as a leading indicator, perhaps Eastern Europe or Iran is probably the next wave, although it will probably take a while. I think the line of countries in line to be the next outsourcing hub is NOT very long though, and these things will take quite a while to play out (15-20 years or maybe more)...
One of the reasons that many high-energy density lithium-ion batteries are not easily-user-replacable is because they are toxic (although not nearly as bad as heavy metal batteries) and can explode if short circuited (as witnessed by many people). Also lithium-ion batteries age and are unlikley to be stocked by convenience retailers (unlike alkaline batteries at the store that are good until 2010, lithium-ion batteries age and are long dead by then even if they are unused). Any environmentaly concious and lawsuit fearing company will make such batteries difficult to replace by joe-six-pack...
Okay, I'll bite...
. stm
_ FORM.PDF ).
Although light from the "nearby" supernova travels at the speed of light towards earth, the shockwave from matter of the supernova which potentially destroyed this formation travels slower (think like the supernova generated lightning and thunder). When the supernova blew, it sent light towards earth and a shockwave towards the "pillars" (at least this is what is suggested by the latest picture).
FWIW, the bbc has a better article on this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6246333
In the BBC article, it seems to indicate more detailed observations of a "shell-shaped" cloud of hot dust near the pillars being heated by a exploding star. Using data from the telescope they were able to infer the temperature of the dust and match it to a supernova. I'm guessing they predicted the speed of the shockwave and noted that it would take about 1000 years to destroy this formation given the recent observation, but since the distances to both are "astronomical", we see what it was doing 7000 years ago, so if the shockwave speed prediction is correct, it will have already happened and we are just waiting for the light from this event that probably already happened to reach us.
A quick google search shows that Nicholas Flagey (the scientist quoted) has an article on this type of stuff (in french, for those that read french http://www.ias.u-psud.fr/www/data/document/01/004
If you are really, really interested, apparently there is a scheduled talk on this given by Mr Flagey at caltech on Jan 16th
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/seminars/
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/07/08/ricoh-laser-
http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/09/new-lasers-fro
FWIW, M. LostRace, there's quite a bit of grey in this world...
t s4.cfm
;^)
;^)
t +over+yourself
For example, do you do business with any of these companies?
http://www.testclear.com/dtcompanies/companyresul
I'm guessing that you do (as do most of us). I suggest boycott and stopping immediatly if you want to stay on your high horse (lest you compromize your own values by providing profit to companies who do test).
Note that this list has "google" as a urine tester, so you might want to start using yahoo search and avoid logging into youtube (so much for do no evil). Most banks are also listed, so you might just have to stuff your money under your matress. Not to mention avoiding starbucks, coca-cola, pepsi products and canceling your AAA membership and stop shopping at costco, target and walmart, throw away your dell and hp computers, etc, etc...
Can't do that and live your life (or feed your family), well, I guess we're all owned by the man with your definition and might as well pack it in anyhow.
Perhaps we the weak are willing to give up some privacy for convenience, which might mean (paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson) we don't deserve and privacy nor convenience and will lose both. However, everyone has their own threshold as to the battles they wage and the ones that they avoid to fight another day.
However, even Thomas Jefferson had slaves while he promoted an end to slavery he spent pretty much his entire life in debt (many historians think the two were related as he basically couldn't afford to release his slaves). So in many respects Mr. Jefferson lived his life in the practical even though he tried to promote the ideal within the limitations of his own life. Sometimes if we must compromise our privacy to live a more practical convenient life, it isn't totally horrible is it?
Maybe with your priorities and circumstance you can draw the line at employment, but still allow yourself to do business what you regard as companies, but I'm guessing not everyone has your priorities or circumstance, so "get-over-yourself"
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ge
My argument exactly is that the USGS seems to have it's share of biased research work product and hardly needs people to complain about it being "meddeled" with (from either party).
;^)
There is strong suspicion that it is common that congressional members (under "suggestions" from people lobbying congress) direct research in government labs in order to provide fodder for their political arguments by convincing scientist of compatible political pursuation to initiate specific directly research with an agenda which then gets published under a US Govt. banner. Realizing that until recently these publication could barely qualify as journals and weren't even subject to indpendent external peer review you might see how this could be a problem.
Someone needs to continue try and clean up the USGS work product to filter out the political crap. Perhaps this is a case of bush can't do it (politically) since he's dirty already, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a worthy goal? You seem to think it's unacheivable anyhow, so why try, is that your argument? Once the research is published it's too late, but perhaps bush is going too far by wanting advanced notice, but sadly I doubt there is going to be any actual intelligent discussion about this issue.
For example, I'm sure that Clinton and Gore would have been interested in getting some advanced notice of the Yucca Mountain research before it got published in the USGS report and lapped up by the media contrary to the clinton-gore stated public policy. If I remember correclty, it all surfaced during the run-up to the 2K election and even bush2 denounced the biased YM research when it came out. Perhaps this is just something we have to live with (can't get the corruption out of this part of the civil service), but I wouldn't call it crap...
In answer to your other question, it doesn't matter if you hate the president or not (I don't care). I think it's actually the bush bashers that distract from this problem and hence my post that expresses surprize that people are coming to defense of this USGS as a proxy for "scientist free speech being impared", just as an opportunistic way to bush bash.
I guess I can't even denigrate the bushbasher when they seem to be jumping on the wrong issue. I suppose bushbashers are the "untouchables" on slashdot these days... Sigh... I guess I shouldn't mention that I use "vi" and "bsd"...
... while scientist may elect to withhold ...
Gee, when have scientist been elected to censor the public's view of knowledge just in case it might be misinterpreted.
Perhaps us commonfolk are too stupid to understand and need "qualified" guidance to help us interpret things properly...
Where have I heard this kind of shit before? Oh yeah, from that other side...
Geesh, what a load of crap. Just like most things, sounds good until you read the fine print.
I guess people would rather just bushbash than take a critical look at the USGS in specific...
In case people don't remember, the USGS was the same agency that in 1998-2000 (under the clinton administration oversight) was accused of falsifying many research documents in support of the proposed nuclear waste processing facility in Yucca Mountain. I believe some of their scientists that were involved with this research falsification are under federal investigation for this today.
I'm not saying all of their scientists are bad apples (they do some good research there), but the agency as a whole untainted as unbiased scientific researchers (as they know who butters their bread) and all the stuff that comes out of the door there should be taken with a grain of salt.
In response to this and other problems, in 2004 (under the bush2 administration oversite), the USGS started a procedure of external peer review for their papers. This new "alert" of course goes beyond external peer review, so isn't all that great news, but I think the USGS has a long way to go to clean up their act before they cry idea censorship.
Just my 2-cents worth...
I don't totally buy the argument that PC+OS=product, however, in HP's defense, it probably doesn't work as advertised without the windows OS and is really a different product without it.
;^)
Also, in most juristictions, there is a implied warranty of merchantability that comes with every item that is sold: that is reasonably functional for their ordinary purpose. Of course we are free to debate what the "ordinary purpose" is of a french computer and if it requires and OS to reach that level of functionality out of the box. If a french computer isn't expected to work out of the box and needs and OS install, then presumably this is a slam dunk. Otherwize, it's perhaps less clear.
For example, the french "bundling" law taken to extremes could be interpreted as forcing cars dealers to sell cars w/o tires because it's possible to buy a different brand of tires for the car instead of the tires that came with the car (or even the brand of synthetic motor oil). Although I doubt it could ever be interpreted to apply to these things because it wouldn't be a merchantable car without oil or tires.
In any case, as with the US, I think in France you can techically get a rebate/refund for the OS if you don't use it. It seem you have to change the terms of the default purchase contract and request it in writing and threaten to sue to get them to refund you...
Perhaps that is a shallow victory for some. Also note that it seems the history of applying this law to the OS is against the unbundling in the case of a computer and an OS (and iTunes and iPods), even though bundling appears to apply in these case, such is the vagaries of the DDGCRF (the french directorate in charge of competition and fraud). They had to pass a specific law in france to make the iTunes/iPod bundling thing against the law and they'd probably have to do the same for computer+Windows.
Actually I'd just like to see this bundling OS+processor be eliminated on cell phones. I could care less about the desktop and lap top computer stuff.
Seems to me like this is like "John Smith, J.D." complaining to "John Smith" that the phone book publisher accidentially listed "John Smith" first in the yellow pages under "sharks" and that "John Smith" should ask the phone book publisher to remove his name from the yellow pages because obviously he is not a professional shark, unlike "J.D." which is a professional shark and much more deserving of the first listing. Of course "John Smith" has nothing to do with the fact he was listed in the yellow pages under "sharks" and can't be bothered to complain to the phone book publisher when obviously "J.D." won't appreciate his efforts anyhow...
Google microcredit, the idea finally won the nobel peace prize in 2006...
It's not that poor people have no choice, it's because we, the rich, have been too ignorant to make this widely available (even though according to wikipedia, the idea has been around since the marshall plan post WWII and has mostly been successful where available), and of course sadly, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur to get themselves out of hand-to-mouth existance.
Fortunatly, the tide is changing on microcredit and more opportunties are opening up, but sadly not everyone will be able to avail themselves of this new type of opportunity, but that doesn't mean no opportunity exist at all for people that find themselves in a hand-to-mouth existance.
I'm not saying that the poor deserve it (because they can't save money, etc, as intoned by the grandfather post), but all is not doom and gloom for the dirt poor, but entrepreneurial. To say they have no choice is to both misunderstand their situation dismiss the value of their daily efforts to survive. I would categorize both views as being ignorant myself.
I think that people that pity the "poor" for their lot in life are often group apologist for any bad decisions indivduals may have made and are almost just as bad as the people that prejudice people that deride the poor for their unfortuitous lot in life. Maybe all people don't have the same choices as you or I, but that doesn't mean they have no choice and the could have done some things better (or worse) and that some people don't succeed where others fail. To dismiss anyone with a "no-choice" is to disrespect their humanity and dignity.
It is sad that there aren't more opportunties availble to poor people as a group. It is not sad that they are poor. The first is something we have experience with and could change if we wanted to, the later is something that we have no experience with (assuming we are all typing on computers, we don't fall in this category). We don't know if a particular individual who was poor had a choice or not, we are not them and we should not stereotypicalize the group.