FWIW: The standard IOL (inter-ocular lenses) that you get today if you have cataract surgery are generally of one focal length (mono-focal) and usually selected for far vision. Since IOLs are not attached to your squinting/focusing muscles so you pretty much need reading glasses to look at anything close up after you get them. However, there also exists today some multi-focal IOLs that seem like they work on a similar principle to the described contact lens.
FYI, the current generation of multi-focal IOLs have an inner region (focused to near-er objects) and one or more annulus regions (focusing on progressively farther objects). When the pupil is mostly closed (reading in bright light), you only see through the center of the lens allowing fairly clear near vision, but when your pupil is more dialated (when say outside, or in a dimly lit room) say you get images from one or more of the annulus regions which dominate the light received and are focused farther. It isn't a perfect solution as patients often initially see halos from the multi-focal parts, but apparently your brain apparently eventually learns to "filter" this out. There are better multi-focal IOLs in development (that allow for actual focus accommodation with eye muscles), but this is the common multi-focal case today.
With this scheme, it seems that the described contact lenses would have similar effect of the multi-focal IOL in its dialated pupil/far focus configuration except of course instead of part of the image originating from a near focus and thus blurry in the IOL case, would be replaced by a close distance Heads-up display and in clear focys on the retina. Seems like it might work just fine.
Of course with a contact lens like in the article, you can always take it off. With a multi-focal IOL, you are stuck with this all the time. On the other hand,100-of-thousands of folks have multi-focal IOLs for their cataract replacement and they voluntarily have this kind of stuff permanently sewn in their eyes, so there's no reason to think this won't just work.
GPL copyright is on the source code not the language our the API. if someone wants to create an entirely new version of python from scratch and close source it they are welcome to do that.
If it is a completely *from-scratch* implementation, then I agree with you. However, if someone did this level of copying from a gcc header file for their own closed source compiler distribution, I'm sure lots of people would be screaming about a GPL violation.
But of course if no C-api's are copyrightable, well, then, I guess, someone could do that and all would be kosher.
FWIW, at least in the C programming case, the ISO/IEC claims copyright of the specifcation itself. ISO/IEC sells the specification (called 14882:2011) and says you can't copy the specification without a license from them.
Of course, the question is not if someone copies the java (or c) language spec word-for-word (e.g, photo or electronic copy), but if someone made a derivative of this work (say an implementation with its own reference or subset specification) if it subject to being considered having a derivative work liability of the underlying original work. Ironically, if google did not make a derivative java, it might actually be in a better position as most of java itself likely considered to be derivative and the non-derivative parts (say the stuff java borrowed from c) are not subject to copyright protection and if they did not copy the specification itself.
IANAL, maybe yes, maybe no, but my original point was to be careful what you wish for as the same thing could be done on to you...
Of course Java can't be copyrighted, but Go, Renderscript and the Android library interface can be copyrighted?
IANAL, but on the other hand, if no computer language or library API can enjoy copyright protection, then it appears to me that it doesn't have GPL or Creative Commons protection either (since being required to follow these licences follows from the copyright holder's discretion)...
Aside from the misspelling I find the use of the word missile versus rocket interesting. They are essentially the same thing but the two words certainly have different connotations.
I don't really see much different between using the words rockets and missiles. They are mostly interchangeable. V2 rockets, bottle rockets, "rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air", etc, show how historically rockets meant basically the same as missile. Or even pocket rockets, or heat seeking missile (in a more urban slang usage)...
I may be mistaken, but I think even Nasa often called vehicle used in the Atlas program a missile.
Instead of allowing people on highways to drive faster w/o damaging their cars, why not deploy them to cause damage to cars that are driving too fast.
Maybe this stuff can be used as a movable speed bumps in school zones and children play zones? If you drive slow enough, no problem. If you run over them too fast, you destroy your car's suspension. People are pointing out that it can be stolen, perhaps this mobility is just what you need for this problem. In the middle of the day (or the weekend), you can just move them away. That seems like this would be much more effective than the radar speed-signs that exist there now and less of a liability and expense for hiring lots of crossing guards. You might also sell this to HOAs that can't convince local fire departments to allow them to put in speed bumps or neighborhood groups that have lots of children playing in their front yards.
It seems to me that competitions really focus the currently existing players in a field for publicity purposes. The solutions for contests are often already feasible, but the unclear rewards and the risk of failure deter the investment levels required for the attempts. Somehow the prize money tips the scale and forces the existing player to take on more risk (often even out of proportion to the reward). Maybe that's not particuarly useful to advance technology leading up to the prize, but it does help with investment in the field which is the fuel for developing the technology for the future (and often what the prize aims for).
For example, the Orteig Prize inspired the Lindbergh flight and although the Lindbergh flight was arguably over-optimized for the contest, the prize was just enough to motivate the current big players, but not enough to fund the endeavor itself. I seem to remember, that the planes of the day that had the capability to do the transatlantic crossing were ~$50K, but the prize was only ~$25K. Most of the attempts to win this prize were quite conventional (nobody built a new plane), so any tech that was used were certainly applicable to the real-world problems the competion was aimed at. The fact that Lindbergh won this prize is often just attributed to his huberis than any skill or planning on his part (basically, he flew solo on a single engine plane w/o a radio, even though the competions rules allowed for multiple pilots, multi-engined planes and radio and instruments). He took the most risk and won, but it was certainly in the reach of nearly all the competitors. After the contest, there was a surge in investement in aviation based companies which no-doubt fueled research in solving even more "real-world" problems.
The X-prize is another interesting data point. The leading contender and winner (scaled composites) really had the capability and plan to do this, it was a matter of time and focus (the original plan, if you believe Paul Allen, was to piggy-back on the contest publicity, but not actually attempt to win, until the insurance policy guaranteeing money showed up). Even non-participants (e.g., SpaceX) probably had the capability (but declined to compete to focus on more commercial issues) saw that they had to step up in their game to keep from being percieved as falling behind another company in the space business. The x-prize (like the orteig prize) also fueled investment in space access companies (Virgin Galactic, Bigalow Aerospace, Blue-origin, etc) and highlighted some alternate technologies that may or may-not be picked up by more viable companies in the future.
On the other hand, the more sceptical among us might envision this scenario instead... 1. Have some money to invest... 2. Find someone doing something cool in an obscure speculative field... 3. Invest in their company, and encourage the development of a prize in that field... 4. ??? someone wins the prize 5. Profit when investment starts pouring into that previously obscure speculative field.
Of course the money to keep the BBuy showroom will come from? Yes that is the problem with this model. People will still use BBuy as a showroom, go home and order it on Amazon (or other website).
One of the bigger problems of BBuy is inventory. The inventory at BBuy (~55 days) is relatively low from an electronics retail industry point of view (~74 days), but of course higher than a company that sells consumables+electronics (say like walmart ~44days) and much higher than an e-tailer (like amazon ~30days). Assuming you get rid of inventory (in your model), that might help their bottom line, but what helps grow sales (the top line) enough to compensate for the loss of immediate/impulse sales?
Historically, the sales-room business model only worked well when there are geographical distribution territories to allocate sales. In this model, it doesn't matter who you actually buy your product from, the regional distributor got credit for the sale (small amount of territorial based commission, but smaller than the actual sales commission) and thus the distributor had an incentive (and financial resources) to maintain a showroom. Do you think that Apple, HP, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba (the top 5 suppliers for BBuy) would allocate sales credit geographically to BBuy? I don't think so (what do you think Walmart and Amazon would do if the Big5 started doing this)...
It's not like they scan your driver's license at time of purchase, so would-be abusers I'm sure could easily to find a friend or family member to return their product (still using the same receipt of course).
They are making an assumption... That people that generally abuse return policies will soon run out of friend and family members that want to take the fall for them. Me thinks that might be a good enough assumption to bound the problem to a constant factor that is something reasonable (and write-off-able which is the only goal)...
However, the "I can't tell you" criticism still stands. Among the posts at the on-line article in the Slashdot update, someone points out that the Nature article is a complaint about irreproducible results, but is not itself reproducible. Basically, from what I'm reading, Nature published an anecdote.
Maybe it was a letter rather than a paper?
I can understand the complaint about "I can't tell you", but on the other side of the fence I'm sure the Amgen folks might be thinking: we spent all this money trying to replicate these results and know we know, why should we give this info to our competitors for free? Note that apparently another large company (Bayer AG) revealed last year that they have similar difficulty replicating results in published journals.
I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong, but you might look at this as Amgen trying to reproduce Bayer's hypothesis;^) Okay, that was a cheap shot.
Yet we never seem to learn the lessons from the past. Here's an excerpt from a popular a speech given by Richard Feyman...
For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid-- not only what you thing is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked-- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. ... In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
A drug that works no better than the placebo could be used for years or decades before anyone figures out that it doesn't do anything but create side effects.
Not years, more like decades, maybe even a century....
As a child, I was subjected to almost every known type of prescription cough syrup/suppressant stuff to almost no effect (even the heavy duty codine laced stuff). Now ~30years later, they are only just admitting that the non-prescription stuff cough stuff is no better than placebo. Next thing you know they'll say the same thing about the prescription stuff.
By the time they take this stuff off the market I'm sure it'll have been sold for 100 years and then the OTC stuff will probably morph into something like Dr Pepper, Coca-cola, and Hires RootBeer which started life on the medicinal side of the fence.
Unforutnatly, it doesn't meet all of your criteria...
* only 8 light minutes from earth (closer than 1 light year) * actually engages in nuclear reactions (although you didn't specify fusion vs fision) * doesn't use current nuclear infrastructure (check!) * produces lots of waste (e.g., low energy cosmic rays) * is actually "nuclear" in the fusion sense (but not fission sense) * uses techology that has billions of years of hardcore reliability testing (check!) * generally doesn't offend anyone's delicate sensibility (other than basement dwellers and vampires)
For now, I'll keep this perfect place a secret, because as soon as people find out about it, people are gonna protest and want to have it shut it down...
You write a good post. But you aim at the wrong subject. You should ask yourself: Why does Yahoo find themselves in this position in the first place? (hint: it has something to do with not giving customers what they want)
It depends on who your customer is. Yahoo has been pretty good at giving end users what they want. Google has been pretty good at giving people with advertising dollars to spend what they want. Unfortunatly, one of these types of customers pay much better than the other (given that the content is "free").
Strong companies don't have these problems with "hedge fund" guys. Weak ones do. Like nature, american enterprise and the markets can be very cruel. It seems odd to me that you complain when things work the way they are supposed to work. What did you think was supposed to happen when you don't give customers what they want? (ie: you are not successful in the marketplace - for whatever reason).
If you define companies w/ high valuation and/or preferred voting share structure as "strong", I agree with you. However in a company with a more equitable share structure, if a so called "hedge fund" guy thinks that some large company assests aren't being used as profitably as they think they can be managed (they smell a short term untapped business opportunity), they often buy a bunch of shares (buy low) and try to force their way on the board to implement their idea. Of course this manuver isn't very easy in a company with a share structure that doesn't allow them to easily force their way on the board to implement their plan.
In this situation, Yahoo, has some large assets (Alibaba, large user base), and no doubt some hedge fund has some idea that they can (in the short term) take advantage of these assets better than the current board or management for quick profit. Yahoo share price is low and the structure allows for the hedge company to do this. As a non-tech example, a hedge fund once tried to get McDonalds to spin off their corporately owned restaurants into a separate company using this strategy. Might have been a good idea in the short term, but might not be in McD's long term interest. I don't think McD's is a "weak" company.
I got a call this morning from a head hunter representing them. I asked about this layoff. He denied it. I turned down the offer.
FYI: Head hunters don't offer jobs, they merely refer you to a company that may or may not give you a job offer (which undoubtely has to get approved by HR). Just because a head hunter claims that their is a job for you doesn't mean that: 1. There is a job, or 2. The company will offer you the job if there is one.
No doubt there is one of several things going on here: 1. The head hunter saw a stale job listing at Yahoo and cold called you up about it hoping to score some commission. 2. You are making this whole thing up.
IANAL, but look up "intervening cause". Just because you start a chain of event, if there is any intervening cause that can be attributed to the harm, you are generally off the hook. Of course if you could have predicted the intervening cause, then maybe not.
In this case, the advanced intervening cause may be what the details of the altercation were. If this is the determination, then it is irrelevent if Zimmerman got out of his car or not, and only the details of the altercation.
There seems to be a big problem with the French trying to overmanage this situation.
On one hand, there is SNEP which is in charge of the enforcement of the French language quota (mostly on radio for this argument), but apparently is having many issues with this. The number of albums produced in French is declining precipitously from 718 releases in 2003, to 158 in 2011. Also many radio stations struggle to fill the quota with songs that are of similar programming format and thus repeat top rated songs many times to fill the quota resulting in lots of overplay (a similar overplay problem exists in the US, but for different "payola" reasons). After this much overplay you might imagine that...
1. people are either sick of the music and won't download it, or 2. have already purchased the one-and-only copy that they are likely to buy, or 3. have already pirated the music.
Now you put HADOPI on top of this problem of French music piracy. How much can they affect this situation? As the amount of French language music declines, they can affect sales less and less. Seems like a no win situation for the French on this (there have been recent attempts to increase the quota), but just maybe if the quota goes down, people might have more of an incentive to buy music. Seems so strange an idea that it might just work...
A professor that I took a class from once mentioned in a lecture the primary difficulty of scaling a laser cannon.
With standard munitions, you send something over to the other ship and it blows up and releases all of its energy over there. With a laser cannon you blow something up in your own ship and send a light beam over there with whatever laser efficiency you have.
Today, laser efficiency is about 30%, the math isn't very favorable.
The point here is that, in the West, we have appointed people to 'look after us' and 'tell us what to do' in every conceivable activity in life. And a large portion of the people who apply for these jobs are assertive bullies. You can see it everywhere - people telling us what to eat, how much we should exercise, what kind of sex is legal... And when they run out of sensible things to tell us, they just start to make it up...
Oh yeah, those people in the "east" are all easy going, right? Might want to check out some of the laws in Korea, Japan, China, India, Cambodia, Malaysia, etc... Of course the "middle-east" is even more easy going, right?
This is part of the human condition and why it's important to have democracies where you can get voted out of office (rather than have a civil war say like Syria). Of course many aren't doing their voting part in the "western" democracy very well (otherwize something as unpopular as the TSA would be eliminated long ago)...
Of course it is a shell game (that is what "money" is).
The only thing that give "money" any value at all is the belief that you can exchange it for something you value at some time in the future. Credit cards just like "money" in that respect, you get something of value today from the retailer and they hope to get some value out of that credit card transaction they made with you some time in the future. If you don't trust money will have any value in the future (or say a particular credit card transaction), the system doesn't work. Most folks trust that "money" has some value because they trust the government to make it so (fiat currency). Vendors trust that credit card transactions have some value because credit cards issuers hold your credit history as collateral.
The only reason you worry about security of a credit card transaction is that you worry about your collateral. However, I submit to you that by applying for the credit card in the first place, you have already lost that game, regardless of what you do (or what someone else does) with your credit card. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and they have your collateral. The only way to "win" is to not play the credit game.
The security you talk about is not for your (or other card holders') benefit, it is simply loss prevention by the credit card issuers. It cost some amount of effort to prevent a certain amount of loss and they just trade that off. To get companies handling credit cards to pay more attention to their customers' collateral (as opposed to their own losses), it needs to cost them (e.g., financial penalty for security breaches that affect credit histories). Right now those penalties are nominal (basically erasing fraudulent transactions and a year of "free" credit monitoring), so there is only that level of incentive for credit card handling companies (including retailers), to protect your collateral (that is, your credit history) and that incentive is scarily near zero.
...I wanted to know who had the breach, so I could avoid ever giving them business that wasnt cash based, but they would not tell me. That part pisses me off. There needs to be an awareness as to which vendors dont find it worth their time to protect me , so I can make a decision to not use them.
I don't know if you can believe the story, but if the breach occured with a credit card processor and not the retailer. The Credit card processor is the retailer's vendor (e.g., the company that the retailer contracts with to process credit card batches). This vendor relationship is not unlike the company that the retailer buys paperclips from, or the company that processes their payroll. Credit card processing is a highly competitive industry. Some retailers will often switch processors every few years when competing companies offer promotions with lower merchant fees (the fees/percentage that they charge the retailer for processing a credit card transaction).
Even if you had been told what retailer the fraudulent charges were made at, since there are so many credit card processing companies, it's quite likely that the retailer didn't use the same processing company. Additionally, because of credit card merchant contracts, retailers are supposed to follow certain "merchant" rules (e..g, no minimum*** or maximum purchase amounts, no steering to different forms of payment, not allowed to require ID, etc, etc). So even if the retailer wanted to be more careful when trying to accept this apparently frauduant card transaction, they probably aren't allowed by contract to be as paranoid as you apparently want them to be...
So feel free to throw the baby out with the bath water, but it's might be just as likely that the retailer you want to disown actually helped the credit card company identify the fraudulent transaction before it appeared on your credit card statement. If that were the case, perhaps you should be thinking about thanking them, before you disown them?
*** As of part of the Dodd-Frank wall street reform act of 2010, retailers are now allowed by law to imposed a minimum transaction amount up to $10 (this law supercedes the language in the contracts in place with the credit card companies)
Perhaps the cause of "rejection" of science is that the so-called scientific culture tolerates stuff like over-diagnosis, or changing definitions as part of the cost of communicating scientific information. I don't think it has to be that way, but unfortunatly, it is a cancer that pervades the sciences and the policy wonks that distribute scientific information...
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another...
If more people communicating science would practice this, I'll bet there would be more trust in the sciences (by all folks)...
[citation needed] Although culturally, US and UK may still be somewhat similar, and maybe initially (say 200 years ago), the genetics were similar, I don't think the "genetics" are that similar today.
AFAIK, demographically, the UK is about (~90% white, ~5% black, ~5% asian), where the US is about (~60% white, ~15% hispanic/latino, ~15% black, ~5% asian)...
Even if you just look at the "white" (majority) of the population, much of the "white" population in the US originates from multiple areas of europe (sometimes via south & central america). This map on this wiki page shows how this might affect the resulting genetics diversity of the US after a few generations...
Slashdot Mirror
Of course in my experience, some people believe that everything which is written in a slashdot comment is true.
The rest of us live a fact-based life.
FWIW: The standard IOL (inter-ocular lenses) that you get today if you have cataract surgery are generally of one focal length (mono-focal) and usually selected for far vision. Since IOLs are not attached to your squinting/focusing muscles so you pretty much need reading glasses to look at anything close up after you get them. However, there also exists today some multi-focal IOLs that seem like they work on a similar principle to the described contact lens.
FYI, the current generation of multi-focal IOLs have an inner region (focused to near-er objects) and one or more annulus regions (focusing on progressively farther objects). When the pupil is mostly closed (reading in bright light), you only see through the center of the lens allowing fairly clear near vision, but when your pupil is more dialated (when say outside, or in a dimly lit room) say you get images from one or more of the annulus regions which dominate the light received and are focused farther. It isn't a perfect solution as patients often initially see halos from the multi-focal parts, but apparently your brain apparently eventually learns to "filter" this out. There are better multi-focal IOLs in development (that allow for actual focus accommodation with eye muscles), but this is the common multi-focal case today.
With this scheme, it seems that the described contact lenses would have similar effect of the multi-focal IOL in its dialated pupil/far focus configuration except of course instead of part of the image originating from a near focus and thus blurry in the IOL case, would be replaced by a close distance Heads-up display and in clear focys on the retina. Seems like it might work just fine.
Of course with a contact lens like in the article, you can always take it off. With a multi-focal IOL, you are stuck with this all the time. On the other hand,100-of-thousands of folks have multi-focal IOLs for their cataract replacement and they voluntarily have this kind of stuff permanently sewn in their eyes, so there's no reason to think this won't just work.
GPL copyright is on the source code not the language our the API. if someone wants to create an entirely new version of python from scratch and close source it they are welcome to do that.
If it is a completely *from-scratch* implementation, then I agree with you.
However, if someone did this level of copying from a gcc header file for their own closed source compiler distribution, I'm sure lots of people would be screaming about a GPL violation.
But of course if no C-api's are copyrightable, well, then, I guess, someone could do that and all would be kosher.
FWIW, at least in the C programming case, the ISO/IEC claims copyright of the specifcation itself. ISO/IEC sells the specification (called 14882:2011) and says you can't copy the specification without a license from them.
Of course, the question is not if someone copies the java (or c) language spec word-for-word (e.g, photo or electronic copy), but if someone made a derivative of this work (say an implementation with its own reference or subset specification) if it subject to being considered having a derivative work liability of the underlying original work. Ironically, if google did not make a derivative java, it might actually be in a better position as most of java itself likely considered to be derivative and the non-derivative parts (say the stuff java borrowed from c) are not subject to copyright protection and if they did not copy the specification itself.
IANAL, maybe yes, maybe no, but my original point was to be careful what you wish for as the same thing could be done on to you...
Of course Java can't be copyrighted, but Go, Renderscript and the Android library interface can be copyrighted?
IANAL, but on the other hand, if no computer language or library API can enjoy copyright protection, then it appears to me that it doesn't have GPL or Creative Commons protection either (since being required to follow these licences follows from the copyright holder's discretion)...
Be careful what you wish for google...
Aside from the misspelling I find the use of the word missile versus rocket interesting. They are essentially the same thing but the two words certainly have different connotations.
I don't really see much different between using the words rockets and missiles. They are mostly interchangeable.
V2 rockets, bottle rockets, "rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air", etc, show how historically rockets meant basically the same as missile.
Or even pocket rockets, or heat seeking missile (in a more urban slang usage)...
I may be mistaken, but I think even Nasa often called vehicle used in the Atlas program a missile.
That would be "below median intelligence".
Which is approximately the same in a near-Gaussian distribution. :)
Or a bimodal distribution (with low skew)...
Instead of allowing people on highways to drive faster w/o damaging their cars, why not deploy them to cause damage to cars that are driving too fast.
Maybe this stuff can be used as a movable speed bumps in school zones and children play zones? If you drive slow enough, no problem. If you run over them too fast, you destroy your car's suspension. People are pointing out that it can be stolen, perhaps this mobility is just what you need for this problem. In the middle of the day (or the weekend), you can just move them away. That seems like this would be much more effective than the radar speed-signs that exist there now and less of a liability and expense for hiring lots of crossing guards. You might also sell this to HOAs that can't convince local fire departments to allow them to put in speed bumps or neighborhood groups that have lots of children playing in their front yards.
Dibs on the patent for this use case. ;^)
It seems to me that competitions really focus the currently existing players in a field for publicity purposes. The solutions for contests are often already feasible, but the unclear rewards and the risk of failure deter the investment levels required for the attempts. Somehow the prize money tips the scale and forces the existing player to take on more risk (often even out of proportion to the reward). Maybe that's not particuarly useful to advance technology leading up to the prize, but it does help with investment in the field which is the fuel for developing the technology for the future (and often what the prize aims for).
For example, the Orteig Prize inspired the Lindbergh flight and although the Lindbergh flight was arguably over-optimized for the contest, the prize was just enough to motivate the current big players, but not enough to fund the endeavor itself. I seem to remember, that the planes of the day that had the capability to do the transatlantic crossing were ~$50K, but the prize was only ~$25K. Most of the attempts to win this prize were quite conventional (nobody built a new plane), so any tech that was used were certainly applicable to the real-world problems the competion was aimed at. The fact that Lindbergh won this prize is often just attributed to his huberis than any skill or planning on his part (basically, he flew solo on a single engine plane w/o a radio, even though the competions rules allowed for multiple pilots, multi-engined planes and radio and instruments). He took the most risk and won, but it was certainly in the reach of nearly all the competitors. After the contest, there was a surge in investement in aviation based companies which no-doubt fueled research in solving even more "real-world" problems.
The X-prize is another interesting data point. The leading contender and winner (scaled composites) really had the capability and plan to do this, it was a matter of time and focus (the original plan, if you believe Paul Allen, was to piggy-back on the contest publicity, but not actually attempt to win, until the insurance policy guaranteeing money showed up). Even non-participants (e.g., SpaceX) probably had the capability (but declined to compete to focus on more commercial issues) saw that they had to step up in their game to keep from being percieved as falling behind another company in the space business. The x-prize (like the orteig prize) also fueled investment in space access companies (Virgin Galactic, Bigalow Aerospace, Blue-origin, etc) and highlighted some alternate technologies that may or may-not be picked up by more viable companies in the future.
On the other hand, the more sceptical among us might envision this scenario instead...
1. Have some money to invest...
2. Find someone doing something cool in an obscure speculative field...
3. Invest in their company, and encourage the development of a prize in that field...
4. ??? someone wins the prize
5. Profit when investment starts pouring into that previously obscure speculative field.
Of course the money to keep the BBuy showroom will come from? Yes that is the problem with this model. People will still use BBuy as a showroom, go home and order it on Amazon (or other website).
One of the bigger problems of BBuy is inventory. The inventory at BBuy (~55 days) is relatively low from an electronics retail industry point of view (~74 days), but of course higher than a company that sells consumables+electronics (say like walmart ~44days) and much higher than an e-tailer (like amazon ~30days). Assuming you get rid of inventory (in your model), that might help their bottom line, but what helps grow sales (the top line) enough to compensate for the loss of immediate/impulse sales?
Historically, the sales-room business model only worked well when there are geographical distribution territories to allocate sales. In this model, it doesn't matter who you actually buy your product from, the regional distributor got credit for the sale (small amount of territorial based commission, but smaller than the actual sales commission) and thus the distributor had an incentive (and financial resources) to maintain a showroom. Do you think that Apple, HP, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba (the top 5 suppliers for BBuy) would allocate sales credit geographically to BBuy? I don't think so (what do you think Walmart and Amazon would do if the Big5 started doing this)...
It's not like they scan your driver's license at time of purchase, so would-be abusers I'm sure could easily to find a friend or family member to return their product (still using the same receipt of course).
They are making an assumption... That people that generally abuse return policies will soon run out of friend and family members that want to take the fall for them. Me thinks that might be a good enough assumption to bound the problem to a constant factor that is something reasonable (and write-off-able which is the only goal)...
However, the "I can't tell you" criticism still stands. Among the posts at the on-line article in the Slashdot update, someone points out that the Nature article is a complaint about irreproducible results, but is not itself reproducible. Basically, from what I'm reading, Nature published an anecdote.
Maybe it was a letter rather than a paper?
I can understand the complaint about "I can't tell you", but on the other side of the fence I'm sure the Amgen folks might be thinking: we spent all this money trying to replicate these results and know we know, why should we give this info to our competitors for free? Note that apparently another large company (Bayer AG) revealed last year that they have similar difficulty replicating results in published journals.
I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong, but you might look at this as Amgen trying to reproduce Bayer's hypothesis ;^) Okay, that was a cheap shot.
Yet we never seem to learn the lessons from the past. Here's an excerpt from a popular a speech given by Richard Feyman...
For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid-- not only what you thing is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked-- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
... In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
Feynman called this Cargo-cult science...
A drug that works no better than the placebo could be used for years or decades before anyone figures out that it doesn't do anything but create side effects.
Not years, more like decades, maybe even a century....
As a child, I was subjected to almost every known type of prescription cough syrup/suppressant stuff to almost no effect (even the heavy duty codine laced stuff). Now ~30years later, they are only just admitting that the non-prescription stuff cough stuff is no better than placebo. Next thing you know they'll say the same thing about the prescription stuff.
By the time they take this stuff off the market I'm sure it'll have been sold for 100 years and then the OTC stuff will probably morph into something like Dr Pepper, Coca-cola, and Hires RootBeer which started life on the medicinal side of the fence.
Unforutnatly, it doesn't meet all of your criteria...
* only 8 light minutes from earth (closer than 1 light year)
* actually engages in nuclear reactions (although you didn't specify fusion vs fision)
* doesn't use current nuclear infrastructure (check!)
* produces lots of waste (e.g., low energy cosmic rays)
* is actually "nuclear" in the fusion sense (but not fission sense)
* uses techology that has billions of years of hardcore reliability testing (check!)
* generally doesn't offend anyone's delicate sensibility (other than basement dwellers and vampires)
For now, I'll keep this perfect place a secret, because as soon as people find out about it, people are gonna protest and want to have it shut it down...
You write a good post. But you aim at the wrong subject. You should ask yourself: Why does Yahoo find themselves in this position in the first place? (hint: it has something to do with not giving customers what they want)
It depends on who your customer is. Yahoo has been pretty good at giving end users what they want. Google has been pretty good at giving people with advertising dollars to spend what they want. Unfortunatly, one of these types of customers pay much better than the other (given that the content is "free").
Strong companies don't have these problems with "hedge fund" guys. Weak ones do. Like nature, american enterprise and the markets can be very cruel. It seems odd to me that you complain when things work the way they are supposed to work. What did you think was supposed to happen when you don't give customers what they want? (ie: you are not successful in the marketplace - for whatever reason).
If you define companies w/ high valuation and/or preferred voting share structure as "strong", I agree with you. However in a company with a more equitable share structure, if a so called "hedge fund" guy thinks that some large company assests aren't being used as profitably as they think they can be managed (they smell a short term untapped business opportunity), they often buy a bunch of shares (buy low) and try to force their way on the board to implement their idea. Of course this manuver isn't very easy in a company with a share structure that doesn't allow them to easily force their way on the board to implement their plan.
In this situation, Yahoo, has some large assets (Alibaba, large user base), and no doubt some hedge fund has some idea that they can (in the short term) take advantage of these assets better than the current board or management for quick profit. Yahoo share price is low and the structure allows for the hedge company to do this. As a non-tech example, a hedge fund once tried to get McDonalds to spin off their corporately owned restaurants into a separate company using this strategy. Might have been a good idea in the short term, but might not be in McD's long term interest. I don't think McD's is a "weak" company.
I got a call this morning from a head hunter representing them. I asked about this layoff. He denied it. I turned down the offer.
FYI: Head hunters don't offer jobs, they merely refer you to a company that may or may not give you a job offer (which undoubtely has to get approved by HR).
Just because a head hunter claims that their is a job for you doesn't mean that: 1. There is a job, or 2. The company will offer you the job if there is one.
No doubt there is one of several things going on here:
1. The head hunter saw a stale job listing at Yahoo and cold called you up about it hoping to score some commission.
2. You are making this whole thing up.
IANAL, but look up "intervening cause". Just because you start a chain of event, if there is any intervening cause that can be attributed to the harm, you are generally off the hook. Of course if you could have predicted the intervening cause, then maybe not.
In this case, the advanced intervening cause may be what the details of the altercation were. If this is the determination, then it is irrelevent if Zimmerman got out of his car or not, and only the details of the altercation.
There seems to be a big problem with the French trying to overmanage this situation.
On one hand, there is SNEP which is in charge of the enforcement of the French language quota (mostly on radio for this argument), but apparently is having many issues with this. The number of albums produced in French is declining precipitously from 718 releases in 2003, to 158 in 2011. Also many radio stations struggle to fill the quota with songs that are of similar programming format and thus repeat top rated songs many times to fill the quota resulting in lots of overplay (a similar overplay problem exists in the US, but for different "payola" reasons). After this much overplay you might imagine that...
1. people are either sick of the music and won't download it, or
2. have already purchased the one-and-only copy that they are likely to buy, or
3. have already pirated the music.
Now you put HADOPI on top of this problem of French music piracy. How much can they affect this situation? As the amount of French language music declines, they can affect sales less and less. Seems like a no win situation for the French on this (there have been recent attempts to increase the quota), but just maybe if the quota goes down, people might have more of an incentive to buy music. Seems so strange an idea that it might just work...
A professor that I took a class from once mentioned in a lecture the primary difficulty of scaling a laser cannon.
With standard munitions, you send something over to the other ship and it blows up and releases all of its energy over there.
With a laser cannon you blow something up in your own ship and send a light beam over there with whatever laser efficiency you have.
Today, laser efficiency is about 30%, the math isn't very favorable.
The point here is that, in the West, we have appointed people to 'look after us' and 'tell us what to do' in every conceivable activity in life. And a large portion of the people who apply for these jobs are assertive bullies. You can see it everywhere - people telling us what to eat, how much we should exercise, what kind of sex is legal... And when they run out of sensible things to tell us, they just start to make it up...
Oh yeah, those people in the "east" are all easy going, right? Might want to check out some of the laws in Korea, Japan, China, India, Cambodia, Malaysia, etc... Of course the "middle-east" is even more easy going, right?
This is part of the human condition and why it's important to have democracies where you can get voted out of office (rather than have a civil war say like Syria). Of course many aren't doing their voting part in the "western" democracy very well (otherwize something as unpopular as the TSA would be eliminated long ago)...
It is all a shell game propping up fake security.
Of course it is a shell game (that is what "money" is).
The only thing that give "money" any value at all is the belief that you can exchange it for something you value at some time in the future. Credit cards just like "money" in that respect, you get something of value today from the retailer and they hope to get some value out of that credit card transaction they made with you some time in the future. If you don't trust money will have any value in the future (or say a particular credit card transaction), the system doesn't work. Most folks trust that "money" has some value because they trust the government to make it so (fiat currency). Vendors trust that credit card transactions have some value because credit cards issuers hold your credit history as collateral.
The only reason you worry about security of a credit card transaction is that you worry about your collateral. However, I submit to you that by applying for the credit card in the first place, you have already lost that game, regardless of what you do (or what someone else does) with your credit card. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and they have your collateral. The only way to "win" is to not play the credit game.
The security you talk about is not for your (or other card holders') benefit, it is simply loss prevention by the credit card issuers. It cost some amount of effort to prevent a certain amount of loss and they just trade that off. To get companies handling credit cards to pay more attention to their customers' collateral (as opposed to their own losses), it needs to cost them (e.g., financial penalty for security breaches that affect credit histories). Right now those penalties are nominal (basically erasing fraudulent transactions and a year of "free" credit monitoring), so there is only that level of incentive for credit card handling companies (including retailers), to protect your collateral (that is, your credit history) and that incentive is scarily near zero.
...I wanted to know who had the breach, so I could avoid ever giving them business that wasnt cash based, but they would not tell me. That part pisses me off. There needs to be an awareness as to which vendors dont find it worth their time to protect me , so I can make a decision to not use them.
I don't know if you can believe the story, but if the breach occured with a credit card processor and not the retailer. The Credit card processor is the retailer's vendor (e.g., the company that the retailer contracts with to process credit card batches). This vendor relationship is not unlike the company that the retailer buys paperclips from, or the company that processes their payroll. Credit card processing is a highly competitive industry. Some retailers will often switch processors every few years when competing companies offer promotions with lower merchant fees (the fees/percentage that they charge the retailer for processing a credit card transaction).
Even if you had been told what retailer the fraudulent charges were made at, since there are so many credit card processing companies, it's quite likely that the retailer didn't use the same processing company. Additionally, because of credit card merchant contracts, retailers are supposed to follow certain "merchant" rules (e..g, no minimum*** or maximum purchase amounts, no steering to different forms of payment, not allowed to require ID, etc, etc). So even if the retailer wanted to be more careful when trying to accept this apparently frauduant card transaction, they probably aren't allowed by contract to be as paranoid as you apparently want them to be...
So feel free to throw the baby out with the bath water, but it's might be just as likely that the retailer you want to disown actually helped the credit card company identify the fraudulent transaction before it appeared on your credit card statement. If that were the case, perhaps you should be thinking about thanking them, before you disown them?
*** As of part of the Dodd-Frank wall street reform act of 2010, retailers are now allowed by law to imposed a minimum transaction amount up to $10 (this law supercedes the language in the contracts in place with the credit card companies)
Perhaps the cause of "rejection" of science is that the so-called scientific culture tolerates stuff like over-diagnosis, or changing definitions as part of the cost of communicating scientific information. I don't think it has to be that way, but unfortunatly, it is a cancer that pervades the sciences and the policy wonks that distribute scientific information...
I refer you to this historical piece of wisdom...
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another...
If more people communicating science would practice this, I'll bet there would be more trust in the sciences (by all folks)...
The US and UK are genetically very similar....
[citation needed] Although culturally, US and UK may still be somewhat similar, and maybe initially (say 200 years ago), the genetics were similar, I don't think the "genetics" are that similar today.
AFAIK, demographically, the UK is about (~90% white, ~5% black, ~5% asian), where the US is about (~60% white, ~15% hispanic/latino, ~15% black, ~5% asian)...
Even if you just look at the "white" (majority) of the population, much of the "white" population in the US originates from multiple areas of europe (sometimes via south & central america). This map on this wiki page shows how this might affect the resulting genetics diversity of the US after a few generations...