Both are valid arguments, but they somewhat miss their mark.
Yes, GM seeds might be able to grow in marginal areas. But the vast majority of GM foods is grown in the US where there aren't millions starving. Actually, patented GM foods create a problem for farmers in developing countries since they can't keep back part of their harvest as seed for the next growing season. If they can't afford seed corn, they'll starve or have to wait for th UN air drop. I haven't seen Monsanto or anyone put a huge effort into GM plants for the Sahel or the Tibetan desert yet. And, quite frankly, improved irrigation or similar changes to production are probably much more efficient.
There are reasonably good arguments for using GM foods to help counteract nutritional deficiencies, though. Golden Rice is probably the best example.
GM foods do require stringent testing, but past experience shows that even the most stringent testing can reliably weed out all problems Two examples for failed pharmaceutical testing would be Contagan and Vioxx, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are two examples that even if something is tested to be almost idiot proof, someone will invent a better operator. If you screw up FDA testing for medications, you can just destroy what was produced. With GM foods, you simply can't. Some will escape and multiply.
The no fish/fowl gene argument is a bit spurious. There have been experiments along those lines. But just think what would happen if pesticide resistant rice cross pollinates with weed grasses. Instant huge problem.
No, nobody would dare to disenfranchise minority voters. It just didn't work in the counties that Kerry carried in 2004. Montgomery (66% for Kerry in 2004), Prince George's (82%), and either Baltimore (52%) or Baltimore City (83%)? Montgomery and Prince George's are pretty affluent, even by Maryland standards. Baltimore City not so much, though.
In hindsight, the thought that a fusion bomb would ignite the atmosphere might look ridiculous, but that idea was put forward by a number of people on the Manhattan project, including Edward Teller. Whatever you think of the "father of the H-bomb", he definitely knew more about this stuff than you and I.
No, we don't. If you have many nodes, filtering out the effects that you mention is a simple matter of correlation. Earthquakes send shockwaves over wide areas, your effects are very localized. If you see a few nodes firing in a city, it's probably a subway train. If you see a wave of messages from many nodes in a radial fashion from some center, you probably have an earthquake or a similar event.
Uh, in Britain, he would have been hit with the Official Secrets Act, prosecuted, driven out of the country and maybe put in prison for a few weeks until the government realized that they mede complete asses of themselves.;)
But the main difference is that the SS Badger is going from way out in the boonies to effing nowhere in 4 hours. Getting from any population center in WI to any in MI is as fast or a lot faster by car (Green Bay->Grand Rapids or Milwaukee -> Detroit). The Lake Express is less extreme, but still not a huge improvement. I lived South of Chicago until last year and contrary to all the complains, the Tri-State isn't really that crowded most of the time. Now if anyone tries to save on the tolls by driving thought the city or take a shortcut via the Edens, Kennedy and Ryan Expressway, s/he is in for a lot of pain.
Re:Back-seat drivers: discipline
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
You know, the image of some RIAA invetigators going to a firebase in Baghdad, Mossul or anywhere else in Iraq to try and take iPod with pirated songs from a bunch of armed and pissed off Marines almost makes having the RIAA tax worthwhile.
I'd even pay for Cary Sherman to fly there, get into a Land Rover and try take the iPod directly from the MTTs.
As some others have mentioned, you have to keep your work email one day longer than your boss and your co-workers. Maybe not in the email program, but definitely archived somewhere. Everything else is just suicidal. All my private email is Gmail, and I am currently using 159MB out of whatever they offer right now. I do delete everything that ends up in the spam filter once a month or so, though.
I do clean out my inbox by the end of every day, though. The emails either get answered and moved to a per month or per project folder, or go into a todo folder. I used to be a lot more anal, but desktop search engines make it pretty much irrelevant where I filed the email. When I switch jobs, all my email go on a couple of DVDs if allowed by my former employer. I still get occasional questions even from the university department I left 10 years ago.
"The fourth and final part of my ideal book would explain how to diagnose and repair problems. One of the reasons this isn't trivial is that a book should necessarily focus on the most common problems, but has to leave open the possibility that something unlikely is happening. One of the problems I have with my laptop at work is that when I eat lunch at my desk, the touchpad will interpret dropped crumbs as a continual touch, which immediately makes the cursor uncontrollable. Touchpads are not mentioned in It's Never Done That Before - but that's not necessarily an issue."
In other words, the reviewer should simply not be allowed near anything that is more sophisticated then a stone axe. I mean seriously the fix for that is soo easy:
(1) put laptop under broiler on high for 10 minutes to dry out the bread crumbs (2) take out notebook (use bare hands--we don't want it to slip through gloves) (3) blow off the crumbs.
The solid booster ones should be in reasonable shape, but the Dnjepr is based on the SS-18--a liquid propelled rocket. And yes, given the usual quality of Soviet manufacturing, I do wonder how many of the SS-18 would actually go boom. After all, since they probably only flight tested a few percent of the total production, anyone who took a few shortcuts on the assembly line was probalby reasonably safe. That's unlike satellite launching systems where pretty much every rocket ever assembled will be fired at one point or another.
I don't know about the USSR first hand, but in Eastern Germany it was very common to assemble some percentage of the production very carefully (public demonstrations, testing, the one the party leaders get delivered) and do a very slipshot job on the rest.
First of all, kudos to the author. I haven't checked the numbers or the references, but it looks like a very well researched masters thesis. Certainly a lot better than the normal *expert* analysis. One minor gripe, though: Why can't anyone--not even Harvard--teach social scientists that if you rank averages from responses that range from 1 (agree strongly) to 7 (disagree strongly) by "best", 1 should be on the freaking top of the charts? Or even better, teach them to put the x-axes on the neutral answer and have the bars go above and below.
I wouldn't call it corruption, but Smart Cards have always been much more popular in Europe and Asia than in the US. Almost every non-US phone or payment card uses Smart Cards, as do health insurance cards in countries like Germany. So it's probably fair to assume that non-US manufacturers have more Smart Card experience than US companies. For RFID, the field is much more open, although ironically Wikipedia states that RFID technology was invented by or for the KGB.
Uh, no. The payload is usually more expensive than the rocket. The economic return from a commercial rocket launch always is more than what the launch costs. Otherwise, nobody would use communications satellites, for example.
Also, part of the low costs of V2 were due to the fact that the Nazis used slave labor to build them. I wouldn't want any country to get any ideas along thse lines.
Additionally, the V2 never reached LEO. They were designed to crash into the ground around 300 kilometers from their launch site.
> If you think about, very few 3rd world countries have ever made it out of the 3rd world.
Singapore, Malaysia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Korea and some others definitely have. A few more like South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, and some more South American countries have made big strides, but still have high degrees of inequality in their societies.
I don't like Microsoft licensing as much as the next person, but--unless there are some hidden implications for case law--, I don't think the judge was far off. The company who sold these licenses knew exactly that what they were doing was wrong, or at least not covered by the license agreements. Please lets not make them into victims or crusaders for free software just because their lawyers tried to come up with some justification after the fact.
Anyone who tells a customer: "I can do you an Office 2003 [Microsoft software] without a licence for eighty-five quid. The licensed version is one hundred and eighty-five quid. With the eighty-five quid one we're not lining Bill Gates's pocket. If he's installing it in a business or something he might want to do the licence. He might want to do it properly." knows 10000% that he's doing something that's not entirely kosher.
Or do you think someone who tells you: "I can get you a BMW without a title for $10,000 in cash" is entirely legit?
I think this is mainly a British thing. Most EU countries only extradite to other EU countries. And IIRC, in Germany, the contries have to send the German convicts back after sentencing if they request it.
...the 21 year old minimum wage store manager would call the police. Who would tear gas and arrest every single shopper for tresspassing and then spend 5 days with the Department of Homeland Security trying to figure out the terrorism plot.
Actually, that is the law--and has been as long as I can remember. For every H1-B application, the employer has to file a LCA (Labor Condition Application) with USCIS. One of the parts of this is that the Department of Labor--not the employer--has to certify that the person they sponsor is paid the prevailing wage in the area.
Which at real cheapskate companies leads to H1-B employees making more than US workers, because nobody requires companies to pay US citizens the prevailing wave.
The reason why H1-B workers have the potential to lower wages is because they have more people competing for tech jobs, not because they are paid less. If you think a H1-B worker is paid less than the prevailing wage, LCA are matters of public record. Request them from the DoL or USCIS and pass them on to a US attorney.
Please read the document you are commenting on before spouting empty rethoric. It strongly suggests that "global warming" is linked to man, oil, and other favorite donors of the right. The Earth goes through cycles regularly, but the rate of the current rise in temperature is unprecented as far as scientists can check back. Until you can PROVE that someone has WMDs, or that homosexuality destroys families, or that use of marihuana turns innocent children into crazed killer, or that storing every phone call ever made stops terrorists with the same amount of certainty before taking some inappropriate and inefficient course of action--including, but not limited to infringing on civil rights or starting a war--, stop using your ignorance of the scientific process as fuel for political attacks.
Signed, The Voice of Fairness and Reason (not assocuiated with the Fair and Balanced Voice)
Ever heard of the small state of California? And what's that software company in Redmond, WA again? Not that anybody uses a computer or reads/. in either place.
By the way, the OP must be right, it's about 100 here in Walnut Creek and in the high 90s in the South Bay.
Slashdot Mirror
Both are valid arguments, but they somewhat miss their mark.
Yes, GM seeds might be able to grow in marginal areas. But the vast majority of GM foods is grown in the US where there aren't millions starving. Actually, patented GM foods create a problem for farmers in developing countries since they can't keep back part of their harvest as seed for the next growing season. If they can't afford seed corn, they'll starve or have to wait for th UN air drop. I haven't seen Monsanto or anyone put a huge effort into GM plants for the Sahel or the Tibetan desert yet. And, quite frankly, improved irrigation or similar changes to production are probably much more efficient.
There are reasonably good arguments for using GM foods to help counteract nutritional deficiencies, though. Golden Rice is probably the best example.
GM foods do require stringent testing, but past experience shows that even the most stringent testing can reliably weed out all problems Two examples for failed pharmaceutical testing would be Contagan and Vioxx, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are two examples that even if something is tested to be almost idiot proof, someone will invent a better operator. If you screw up FDA testing for medications, you can just destroy what was produced. With GM foods, you simply can't. Some will escape and multiply.
The no fish/fowl gene argument is a bit spurious. There have been experiments along those lines. But just think what would happen if pesticide resistant rice cross pollinates with weed grasses. Instant huge problem.
No, nobody would dare to disenfranchise minority voters. It just didn't work in the counties that Kerry carried in 2004. Montgomery (66% for Kerry in 2004), Prince George's (82%), and either Baltimore (52%) or Baltimore City (83%)? Montgomery and Prince George's are pretty affluent, even by Maryland standards. Baltimore City not so much, though.
In hindsight, the thought that a fusion bomb would ignite the atmosphere might look ridiculous, but that idea was put forward by a number of people on the Manhattan project, including Edward Teller. Whatever you think of the "father of the H-bomb", he definitely knew more about this stuff than you and I.
No, we don't. If you have many nodes, filtering out the effects that you mention is a simple matter of correlation. Earthquakes send shockwaves over wide areas, your effects are very localized. If you see a few nodes firing in a city, it's probably a subway train. If you see a wave of messages from many nodes in a radial fashion from some center, you probably have an earthquake or a similar event.
Uh, in Britain, he would have been hit with the Official Secrets Act, prosecuted, driven out of the country and maybe put in prison for a few weeks until the government realized that they mede complete asses of themselves. ;)
You mean like in California? PG&E gives cash back on all kinds of energy saving appliances including light bulbs.
But the main difference is that the SS Badger is going from way out in the boonies to effing nowhere in 4 hours. Getting from any population center in WI to any in MI is as fast or a lot faster by car (Green Bay->Grand Rapids or Milwaukee -> Detroit). The Lake Express is less extreme, but still not a huge improvement. I lived South of Chicago until last year and contrary to all the complains, the Tri-State isn't really that crowded most of the time. Now if anyone tries to save on the tolls by driving thought the city or take a shortcut via the Edens, Kennedy and Ryan Expressway, s/he is in for a lot of pain.
Is there a Tufte equivalent for academic prose?
You know, the image of some RIAA invetigators going to a firebase in Baghdad, Mossul or anywhere else in Iraq to try and take iPod with pirated songs from a bunch of armed and pissed off Marines almost makes having the RIAA tax worthwhile.
I'd even pay for Cary Sherman to fly there, get into a Land Rover and try take the iPod directly from the MTTs.
As if the government, or for that matter the military, could develop something complicated like a computer network.
.
.
.
Uhhhh wait....
As some others have mentioned, you have to keep your work email one day longer than your boss and your co-workers. Maybe not in the email program, but definitely archived somewhere. Everything else is just suicidal. All my private email is Gmail, and I am currently using 159MB out of whatever they offer right now. I do delete everything that ends up in the spam filter once a month or so, though.
I do clean out my inbox by the end of every day, though. The emails either get answered and moved to a per month or per project folder, or go into a todo folder. I used to be a lot more anal, but desktop search engines make it pretty much irrelevant where I filed the email. When I switch jobs, all my email go on a couple of DVDs if allowed by my former employer. I still get occasional questions even from the university department I left 10 years ago.
"The fourth and final part of my ideal book would explain how to diagnose and repair problems. One of the reasons this isn't trivial is that a book should necessarily focus on the most common problems, but has to leave open the possibility that something unlikely is happening. One of the problems I have with my laptop at work is that when I eat lunch at my desk, the touchpad will interpret dropped crumbs as a continual touch, which immediately makes the cursor uncontrollable. Touchpads are not mentioned in It's Never Done That Before - but that's not necessarily an issue."
In other words, the reviewer should simply not be allowed near anything that is more sophisticated then a stone axe. I mean seriously the fix for that is soo easy:
(1) put laptop under broiler on high for 10 minutes to dry out the bread crumbs
(2) take out notebook (use bare hands--we don't want it to slip through gloves)
(3) blow off the crumbs.
'nuff said
The solid booster ones should be in reasonable shape, but the Dnjepr is based on the SS-18--a liquid propelled rocket. And yes, given the usual quality of Soviet manufacturing, I do wonder how many of the SS-18 would actually go boom. After all, since they probably only flight tested a few percent of the total production, anyone who took a few shortcuts on the assembly line was probalby reasonably safe. That's unlike satellite launching systems where pretty much every rocket ever assembled will be fired at one point or another.
I don't know about the USSR first hand, but in Eastern Germany it was very common to assemble some percentage of the production very carefully (public demonstrations, testing, the one the party leaders get delivered) and do a very slipshot job on the rest.
First of all, kudos to the author. I haven't checked the numbers or the references, but it looks like a very well researched masters thesis. Certainly a lot better than the normal *expert* analysis.
One minor gripe, though: Why can't anyone--not even Harvard--teach social scientists that if you rank averages from responses that range from 1 (agree strongly) to 7 (disagree strongly) by "best", 1 should be on the freaking top of the charts?
Or even better, teach them to put the x-axes on the neutral answer and have the bars go above and below.
I wouldn't call it corruption, but Smart Cards have always been much more popular in Europe and Asia than in the US. Almost every non-US phone or payment card uses Smart Cards, as do health insurance cards in countries like Germany. So it's probably fair to assume that non-US manufacturers have more Smart Card experience than US companies. For RFID, the field is much more open, although ironically Wikipedia states that RFID technology was invented by or for the KGB.
Uh, no. The payload is usually more expensive than the rocket. The economic return from a commercial rocket launch always is more than what the launch costs. Otherwise, nobody would use communications satellites, for example.
Also, part of the low costs of V2 were due to the fact that the Nazis used slave labor to build them. I wouldn't want any country to get any ideas along thse lines.
Additionally, the V2 never reached LEO. They were designed to crash into the ground around 300 kilometers from their launch site.
There was a small, secret "hey, our new invisible space-based laser has worked three times in a row now" party at Vandenberg AFB.
> If you think about, very few 3rd world countries have ever made it out of the 3rd world.
Singapore, Malaysia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Korea and some others definitely have. A few more like South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, and some more South American countries have made big strides, but still have high degrees of inequality in their societies.
I don't like Microsoft licensing as much as the next person, but--unless there are some hidden implications for case law--, I don't think the judge was far off. The company who sold these licenses knew exactly that what they were doing was wrong, or at least not covered by the license agreements. Please lets not make them into victims or crusaders for free software just because their lawyers tried to come up with some justification after the fact.
Anyone who tells a customer: "I can do you an Office 2003 [Microsoft software] without a licence for eighty-five quid. The licensed version is one hundred and eighty-five quid. With the eighty-five quid one we're not lining Bill Gates's pocket. If he's installing it in a business or something he might want to do the licence. He might want to do it properly." knows 10000% that he's doing something that's not entirely kosher.
Or do you think someone who tells you: "I can get you a BMW without a title for $10,000 in cash" is entirely legit?
I think this is mainly a British thing. Most EU countries only extradite to other EU countries. And IIRC, in Germany, the contries have to send the German convicts back after sentencing if they request it.
...the 21 year old minimum wage store manager would call the police. Who would tear gas and arrest every single shopper for tresspassing and then spend 5 days with the Department of Homeland Security trying to figure out the terrorism plot.
Happy 230th everyone.
Actually, that is the law--and has been as long as I can remember. For every H1-B application, the employer has to file a LCA (Labor Condition Application) with USCIS. One of the parts of this is that the Department of Labor--not the employer--has to certify that the person they sponsor is paid the prevailing wage in the area.
Which at real cheapskate companies leads to H1-B employees making more than US workers, because nobody requires companies to pay US citizens the prevailing wave.
The reason why H1-B workers have the potential to lower wages is because they have more people competing for tech jobs, not because they are paid less. If you think a H1-B worker is paid less than the prevailing wage, LCA are matters of public record. Request them from the DoL or USCIS and pass them on to a US attorney.
To: Mr. Wingnut
Please read the document you are commenting on before spouting empty rethoric. It strongly suggests that "global warming" is linked to man, oil, and other favorite donors of the right. The Earth goes through cycles regularly, but the rate of the current rise in temperature is unprecented as far as scientists can check back. Until you can PROVE that someone has WMDs, or that homosexuality destroys families, or that use of marihuana turns innocent children into crazed killer, or that storing every phone call ever made stops terrorists with the same amount of certainty before taking some inappropriate and inefficient course of action--including, but not limited to infringing on civil rights or starting a war--, stop using your ignorance of the scientific process as fuel for political attacks.
Signed,
The Voice of Fairness and Reason (not assocuiated with the Fair and Balanced Voice)
Ever heard of the small state of California? And what's that software company in Redmond, WA again? Not that anybody uses a computer or reads /. in either place.
By the way, the OP must be right, it's about 100 here in Walnut Creek and in the high 90s in the South Bay.