This makes perfect pitch that much stranger, because it means people have an innate ability to attune themselves to an artificial note naming scheme.
I don't believe perfect/absolute pitch is being born with the ability to simply hear a note and know that it's C#. Rather, you have to be trained at least once that a certain sound is Bb, but later, any time you hear it, you know it's Bb. And I doubt that they'd be limited to a 12-tone pitch system unless that was all you ever exposed them to.
I think the same thing can happen with color. Some people (tetrachromats, I think) have a very sensitive ability to discern and remember colors, such that they could see paint swab at the store and know if it matches the paint on the wall at home.
I know I don't have perfect pitch myself, but I play piano. Now suppose I sit down at the piano at the beginning of the day, having not listened to any music, I can almost always tell what the note I'm about to hit first will sound like. In fact, sometimes I'll play a game and try to hum the sound before playing the first note. Sometimes, though, I'm off by up to a whole step. Someone with perfect pitch would probably never make that mistake.
police officers should never be allowed to say "I'm sorry, I fucked up, have a nice day
Luckily enough for them, they don't have to. Short of a cop committing a crime against you, your only redress is through a "1983 Complaint" (CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLAINT UNDER 42 U.S.C. 1983: PRISONER CASES) - basically saying your civil rights were violated. But considering the system is very heavily stacked in the cop's favor you will not have much chance of winning unless it was an extreme case.
IANAL, but one of my best friends is a public defender and I get to hear about all kinds of interesting things like this.
Finally, this being Germany, you should expect the following to happen - the constituational court will strike it down - the politicians will pass a similar law again - the consitutational court will strike that one down again...
Kudos to the constitutional court in Germany. I wish ours worked so well...
yes. there was a story net a few says ago where a court ordered that the guy couldn't use anything other than windows because their monitering software only worked on it,
There is a huge difference. In the case you're referring to, the man was already convicted of a crime. A result of conviction is often a loss of certain liberties and rights. As a condition of his parole (which can be quite arbitrary on the part of the state) he can continue to use a computer provided it is with the monitoring software running - this is only possible with Windows. It's difficult to make a case that will stand up that the conditions are particularly onerous or truly cruel and unusual.
On the other hand, this article is about a case where a government wants to send spy software to suspected criminals in the homes they can get useful information for a prosecution. I'm not familiar with German law, but if this were the US, it's probably okay for the government to do this. There are similar tactics that have not been thrown out, such as mailing a "you won a prize" envelope to a suspected murderer/rapist - which he then licked, leaving his DNA, and returned - thus giving the probable cause for an arrest and prosecution).
The government can't yet compel someone to give up their DNA and I suspect that a similar logic would be applied to a person's choice of computer software - the government can't compel you to use a certain kind of software just to make it convenient to gather data to be used against you. We are all presumed innocent and they have to have probable cause merely to investigate. To actually compel you to give up rights (requiring you to run specific software) you need to have a conviction... or a law that applies to all of us.
While I agree with your statement that mailing yourself an envelope is useless, I don't think you could easily do what you said.
Every time I remember sending a registered mail, the post office stamped ink across the seams of the envelope - presumably to ensure that it wasn't opened.
But seriously, Slashdot is the worst place to get good legal advice. Yikes.
That said, there was a good article on the August 11th Talk of the Nation Science Friday called "What Inventors Need to Know". One of the guests emphasis was on securing a way to finance and market your idea rather than the actual protection of IP. But if you're really worried, he suggested getting a temporary patent for $100, which will cover you for a year.
Many name brands own "value channel" brands strictly to be sold in Walmart and other low-end retailers. In the case of the company I work for, the shoes and apparel items are sourced in the same factories as the name brand products with no decreasing of labor standards.
The only real difference is the quality of the materials used and the technologies used. For example, I wear the Walmart-channel shoes because they fit better. They look a lot like the name-brand shoes but instead of leather, there is often vinyl or instead of high-tech soles, the soles are more of a solid rubber - and they're not quite as durable.
The margin is lower for these value items, and some of that is made up with the cheaper materials. The overall profitability is maintained by the much higher volume that goes through stores like Walmart.
Oh, and none of our shoes or apparel are made by 8 year olds (or anything even close) and that is verified by outside auditors. I expect our biggest competitors can honestly make the same claim.
So basically, since Dollar bills are basically IOUs, we're in debt to China. In a normal trade relationship, they would be using those dollars to buy stuff back from us. The problem here is that we don't really make much to sell to them.
See my previous post - it's a 3-way process. We buy tons of cheap stuff from China using $US. They buy tons of oil from the middle east using those $US, and then we sell expensive weapons systems to the middle east to get those $US back.
The thing to watch in this tenuous situation is the growing Chinese weapons industry. If they can start selling their own weapons systems to the middle east countries then their need for $US drops a lot.
So basically, since Dollar bills are basically IOUs, we're in debt to China. In a normal trade relationship, they would be using those dollars to buy stuff back from us.
As you said, the US does not have much that China can buy with all its dollars. There are two things that help keep that from being a problem. Currently a vast majority of oil is bought and sold in $US, and China needs a lot of oil to fuel its economy.
So, the US buys lots of cheap Chinese stuff with $US, and China uses those $US to buy lots of oil from the Middle East. Now, how does the US get those dollars back (and keep from being extorted by having too much of its money out of its control?)? By selling very expensive weapons systems.
The big risk here is the worry that major oil producers may start selling oil in other currencies besides dollars, because if that happens, the demand for dollars decreases. This is the VERY thing that Saddam was threatening to do with a huge chunk of the world's oil reserves and production - selling it in Euros. There is already a fledgling petro-euros market but it's tiny and stays that way with Iraq not joining it. I don't have ready access to sources (nor the time to find them), but there is speculation that this was one of the key reasons for the invasion of Iraq - to keep its oil from going Euro and posing a huge threat to the $US.
Another interesting part of the mix is the use of $US for the wholesale international drug trade. I haven't followed this for years, but when the Euro came out, one of the more interesting benchmarks for its success would be the percentage of the international drug trade that would get traded in Euros instead of $US. It's a black-market economy to be sure, but it's large enough to have a significant impact on the value of the dollar. This is coming out of my own head now, but considering that Afghanistan is a major source of Opium and that after the US action there that production has increased tremendously, it makes me wonder if there is an economic benefit for the dollar to have that increased production happening in $US.
I'm not an economist either but I find these things fascinating. Even with billions of people, I'm not too worried about a Chinese invasion of the US. Actually taking over a country and occupying it is so 19th and 20th century (look how well the US is holding up in Iraq - just like Britain some 60 years earlier) and quite expensive (Plus, while Americans tend to be pretty apathetic, I think we'd actually get a charged up a bit over an actual invasion - we'd just have to pitch it like a big football game or "American Idol: Sniper".). I'm actually more worried about economic dominance and subtle economic warfare. The Chinese, as a people, have a long history of thinking and acting in the long-term, much unlike the people of the US. We Americans will gladly sell out our local industries to get a cheaper pair of shoes today, not realizing the precarious situation we put ourselves in. What happens when China starts making weapons that are good enough for the middle east and lots cheaper - they no longer need the dollar to trade for their oil. At that point they can start dumping their dollar reserves and deliver serious shocks to US economy. The scary thing to me about the steady increase in oil prices isn't about oil production or scarcity, but that it's an indication that the dollar is weakening in the world. The price of oil has no choice but to increase.
I think the thing to watch for will be a growing Chinese military-goods export industry because that will mark the beginning of the end of its reliance on the $US. That line of thinking puts that recent destruction of a satellite into an interesting context - was it really a drum-beating "look what we can do" or was it a slick "look what we can sell you"?
Confessions of an Economic Hitman gives some interesting details about the US and its use of economic leverage against other countries. I don't think there will be many non-USians crying a lot if the same kinds of leverage are used against the US.
Back to topic, isn't Seagate already made in China? Even if final assembly isn't done there, how many of the components are already made there?
I'm terrified of the power that any of these goons in office hold. I just wish the government would be drastically reduced.
But where do you think the power will go? It doesn't just go away.
We did the mistake of voting in term limits here in Oregon for legislators. The result has been essentially a transfer of power and influence from legislators to their aids and the lobbyists - who don't get removed after so many terms.
Voter turnout less than 20%? That's what the entrenched parties want. If you can get the middle to be apathetic and not turn out then all you have to do is activate your base more than the other guy. The middle voters are so unpredictable that it's better to keep them at home and unwilling to participate.
They can do it so much cheaper because the first $1500 of each car goes to cover medical insurance costs, not so in Japan. 69% of that health care cost is going to cover retired employees.
That might be true comparing a car made in Japan and one made in the US. However, most "Japanese" cars sold in the US are actually manufactured here in the US. Those plants have to pay the same competitive healthcare and benefits as other employers.
The "trick" to the success of places like Toyota is that they streamline their production, improving their processes and striving to eliminate inefficiencies. They don't sit on piles of inventory to build parts and they often force suppliers to co-locate so that transit times are shorter. And any worker who sees a problem can stop the line. I could use a bunch of buzzwords like LEAN, TPS, JIT, etc. Instead, I'll recommend reading "The Toyota Way" (http://books.google.com/books?id=9v_sxqERqvMC) by Jeff Liker.
You're confused. Israel has never fought an aggressive war.
Right - like the war in 1948 where Arabs were massacred or ethnic-cleansed out of their villages... that wasn't aggressive. And nor was the unilateral "preemptive" strike on the Iraqi nuclear facility. Oh, and lets not forget the unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty (how many Americans were killed in the "accidental" attack that lasted several hours?). Oh, and the invasions into Lebanon... how many times now? Nope, no aggression there.
Having read all the Oz books as a kid I was thrilled to see a more accurate, darker picture of the land of Oz after the more saccharine MGM version. I guess I should check out 'Wicked' for the same reason
You might enjoy Snow White: A Tale of Terror http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119227/ with Sigourney Weaver playing the evil stepmother. I felt it lived up to its name quite well.
I don't know. I think "HD" is the new "e-". We had e-commerce, and e-mail, now we have hd-tv, hd-radio, hd-blenders, hd-bath towels, hd-dvds, and my favorite, the hd-flamethrower (the kids love it). It's like a bad sequel.
There is a fundamental limit of how much work can be extracted by heat flow between two temperatures.
The sad thing is that the Greeks figured out how to heat water to make steam and make objects turn more than two thousand years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile. Today, we have harnessed the power of the atom, and what do we do with it? Heat water to make steam and make objects turn.
It's too bad we can't figure out how to make some kind of transducers that can convert the energy released in the nuclear reaction into something more usable without the step of making hot water.
I suppose inside is where the germs do their jobs best...
I only said, "I can't point to any sources" because I can't point to any sources (maybe I heard it on the radio, maybe Dr. Dean Adell's show) and I don't want to lend any more weight to my statement than hearsay. The idea sounds plausible, but then again, I haven't studied immunology.
Apple was once the established market leader for PC's. Not today.
Apple's not a good example here. Apple was a leader in a small immature market that was growing rapidly. It's easy to be displaced in such a market because there are so many new customers who don't need to switch from one product to another.
The Office App market is pretty mature with well-entrenched players and anyone who wants a pretty good office app can get one (even legitimately for free). You would have quite a bit better than say, Open Office, since that's free and pretty good. And you'd have to be so astoundingly good that you could get a lot of people to actually make the effort to switch from MS Office to the point where Microsoft can't break your app by making you incompatible with them. And Microsoft has the huge advantage of being entrenched in many large corporations and governments, who are not likely to quickly change their infrastructure to try something hot and new. Many aren't even upgrading their version of Office for fear of breaking existing processes with slight incompatibilities and the huge expense and effort of retraining.
I'm not saying it won't happen, but there's a lot working against a new Office App vendor in their efforts to become profitable. And even Word Perfect, as good as it was, was only dominating a market that was rapidly growing.
I can't point to any sources, but I've heard it said that a possible cause in the rise in asthma in the US is this hyper-cleanliness that some parents are obsessed with. By trying to sterilize everything, children's immune systems just don't get the exposure to all the things they should while they're in "learning mode" early in life. They then spend the rest of their life with a somewhat compromised immune system.
The hypothesis relies on the idea that when you're an infant that your immune system is in a special mode where it is trying to learn about as many pathogens as possible. I don't know if that's really true, however.
I had watched Star Trek most of my life and I didn't figure it out until I started watching DVDs without commercials.
It's subtle, but there. In one case, he's trying to seduce a woman to regain control of the ship. They start to kiss. And there's a commercial break. When it resumes from the break, she is fixing her hair and he is sitting on the bed putting his boots back on.
Clearly, something happened during the commercial. Sadly, it wasn't until I was 23 that I actually got to experience the ins and outs of that something.
Having worked in a school district when NCLB was instituted, I can tell you that it does, indeed, divert resources from teaching.
NCLB requires use of standard tests, which cost a lot of money to administer. In Oregon, those tests are done by computer, and the systems required upgrades to the computer systems and computers. In fact, several schools in the district created computer labs that were only to be used for testing and not for instruction. In addition, new administrative staff have to be hired to handle the workload of ensuring compliance.
In a rural school district with limited resources, the money for all this testing and equipment has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is usually the budget for optional programs, laying off teachers, skimping on resources such as needed new textbooks, and building enhancements.
This is why many school districts claim the NCLB requirements are an unfunded mandate. They have been required by the federal government do to these things yet were not given funds to do it.
On top of that, the testing regime takes about a week of class time out of the year.
So basically NCLB is a big win for companies who sell and administer standard tests. Everyone else pretty much gets screwed. Schools have less money, students get less education, and the country gets dumber.
If you really want to help the US education system, do the following: * ban sodas and candy and fastfood * expand the free lunch program to every kid and include breakfast - hungry kids can't learn - and there are too many of them * go to year-round schooling with longer non-summer seasonal breaks * make physical education mandatory at every grade level - they need breaks and exercise * allow merit-based pay/bonuses for teachers who do a good job (using a variety of metrics) * lower class sizes - a teacher can't manage 38 kids AND teach them * lower the administrative burden on schools so they can hire more teachers and fewer administrators
Only by being legally pedantic, we're all (in the US) supposed to have the benefit of the doubt and the presumption of innocence. If the law says having a BAC over a certain % while driving is illegal, and in this scenario the guy isn't yet at that level when pulled over then he is still not guilty of a crime.
Should he be driving, from a common sense point of view? No.
Slashdot Mirror
This makes perfect pitch that much stranger, because it means people have an innate ability to attune themselves to an artificial note naming scheme.
I don't believe perfect/absolute pitch is being born with the ability to simply hear a note and know that it's C#. Rather, you have to be trained at least once that a certain sound is Bb, but later, any time you hear it, you know it's Bb. And I doubt that they'd be limited to a 12-tone pitch system unless that was all you ever exposed them to.
I think the same thing can happen with color. Some people (tetrachromats, I think) have a very sensitive ability to discern and remember colors, such that they could see paint swab at the store and know if it matches the paint on the wall at home.
I know I don't have perfect pitch myself, but I play piano. Now suppose I sit down at the piano at the beginning of the day, having not listened to any music, I can almost always tell what the note I'm about to hit first will sound like. In fact, sometimes I'll play a game and try to hum the sound before playing the first note. Sometimes, though, I'm off by up to a whole step. Someone with perfect pitch would probably never make that mistake.
Additionally, while they don't mention details in the article, I presume they have a specially designed camera.
I _Why%20Now.htm
n dex.htm
They are using a new kind of CCD that somehow lowers the noise floor. Details are at:
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~optics/Lucky_Web_Site/L
In fact this site (same basic place) is much more informative than the press release and answers a lot of questions:
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~optics/Lucky_Web_Site/i
police officers should never be allowed to say "I'm sorry, I fucked up, have a nice day
Luckily enough for them, they don't have to. Short of a cop committing a crime against you, your only redress is through a "1983 Complaint" (CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLAINT UNDER 42 U.S.C. 1983: PRISONER CASES) - basically saying your civil rights were violated. But considering the system is very heavily stacked in the cop's favor you will not have much chance of winning unless it was an extreme case.
IANAL, but one of my best friends is a public defender and I get to hear about all kinds of interesting things like this.
Finally, this being Germany, you should expect the following to happen ...
- the constituational court will strike it down
- the politicians will pass a similar law again
- the consitutational court will strike that one down again
Kudos to the constitutional court in Germany. I wish ours worked so well...
yes. there was a story net a few says ago where a court ordered that the guy couldn't use anything other than windows because their monitering software only worked on it,
There is a huge difference. In the case you're referring to, the man was already convicted of a crime. A result of conviction is often a loss of certain liberties and rights. As a condition of his parole (which can be quite arbitrary on the part of the state) he can continue to use a computer provided it is with the monitoring software running - this is only possible with Windows. It's difficult to make a case that will stand up that the conditions are particularly onerous or truly cruel and unusual.
On the other hand, this article is about a case where a government wants to send spy software to suspected criminals in the homes they can get useful information for a prosecution. I'm not familiar with German law, but if this were the US, it's probably okay for the government to do this. There are similar tactics that have not been thrown out, such as mailing a "you won a prize" envelope to a suspected murderer/rapist - which he then licked, leaving his DNA, and returned - thus giving the probable cause for an arrest and prosecution).
The government can't yet compel someone to give up their DNA and I suspect that a similar logic would be applied to a person's choice of computer software - the government can't compel you to use a certain kind of software just to make it convenient to gather data to be used against you. We are all presumed innocent and they have to have probable cause merely to investigate. To actually compel you to give up rights (requiring you to run specific software) you need to have a conviction... or a law that applies to all of us.
Make that August 17th.
While I agree with your statement that mailing yourself an envelope is useless, I don't think you could easily do what you said.
_ 081707.html
Every time I remember sending a registered mail, the post office stamped ink across the seams of the envelope - presumably to ensure that it wasn't opened.
But seriously, Slashdot is the worst place to get good legal advice. Yikes.
That said, there was a good article on the August 11th Talk of the Nation Science Friday called "What Inventors Need to Know". One of the guests emphasis was on securing a way to finance and market your idea rather than the actual protection of IP. But if you're really worried, he suggested getting a temporary patent for $100, which will cover you for a year.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Aug/hour2
Many name brands own "value channel" brands strictly to be sold in Walmart and other low-end retailers. In the case of the company I work for, the shoes and apparel items are sourced in the same factories as the name brand products with no decreasing of labor standards.
The only real difference is the quality of the materials used and the technologies used. For example, I wear the Walmart-channel shoes because they fit better. They look a lot like the name-brand shoes but instead of leather, there is often vinyl or instead of high-tech soles, the soles are more of a solid rubber - and they're not quite as durable.
The margin is lower for these value items, and some of that is made up with the cheaper materials. The overall profitability is maintained by the much higher volume that goes through stores like Walmart.
Oh, and none of our shoes or apparel are made by 8 year olds (or anything even close) and that is verified by outside auditors. I expect our biggest competitors can honestly make the same claim.
So basically, since Dollar bills are basically IOUs, we're in debt to China. In a normal trade relationship, they would be using those dollars to buy stuff back from us. The problem here is that we don't really make much to sell to them.
See my previous post - it's a 3-way process. We buy tons of cheap stuff from China using $US. They buy tons of oil from the middle east using those $US, and then we sell expensive weapons systems to the middle east to get those $US back.
The thing to watch in this tenuous situation is the growing Chinese weapons industry. If they can start selling their own weapons systems to the middle east countries then their need for $US drops a lot.
So basically, since Dollar bills are basically IOUs, we're in debt to China. In a normal trade relationship, they would be using those dollars to buy stuff back from us.
As you said, the US does not have much that China can buy with all its dollars. There are two things that help keep that from being a problem. Currently a vast majority of oil is bought and sold in $US, and China needs a lot of oil to fuel its economy.
So, the US buys lots of cheap Chinese stuff with $US, and China uses those $US to buy lots of oil from the Middle East. Now, how does the US get those dollars back (and keep from being extorted by having too much of its money out of its control?)? By selling very expensive weapons systems.
The big risk here is the worry that major oil producers may start selling oil in other currencies besides dollars, because if that happens, the demand for dollars decreases. This is the VERY thing that Saddam was threatening to do with a huge chunk of the world's oil reserves and production - selling it in Euros. There is already a fledgling petro-euros market but it's tiny and stays that way with Iraq not joining it. I don't have ready access to sources (nor the time to find them), but there is speculation that this was one of the key reasons for the invasion of Iraq - to keep its oil from going Euro and posing a huge threat to the $US.
Another interesting part of the mix is the use of $US for the wholesale international drug trade. I haven't followed this for years, but when the Euro came out, one of the more interesting benchmarks for its success would be the percentage of the international drug trade that would get traded in Euros instead of $US. It's a black-market economy to be sure, but it's large enough to have a significant impact on the value of the dollar. This is coming out of my own head now, but considering that Afghanistan is a major source of Opium and that after the US action there that production has increased tremendously, it makes me wonder if there is an economic benefit for the dollar to have that increased production happening in $US.
I'm not an economist either but I find these things fascinating. Even with billions of people, I'm not too worried about a Chinese invasion of the US. Actually taking over a country and occupying it is so 19th and 20th century (look how well the US is holding up in Iraq - just like Britain some 60 years earlier) and quite expensive (Plus, while Americans tend to be pretty apathetic, I think we'd actually get a charged up a bit over an actual invasion - we'd just have to pitch it like a big football game or "American Idol: Sniper".). I'm actually more worried about economic dominance and subtle economic warfare. The Chinese, as a people, have a long history of thinking and acting in the long-term, much unlike the people of the US. We Americans will gladly sell out our local industries to get a cheaper pair of shoes today, not realizing the precarious situation we put ourselves in. What happens when China starts making weapons that are good enough for the middle east and lots cheaper - they no longer need the dollar to trade for their oil. At that point they can start dumping their dollar reserves and deliver serious shocks to US economy. The scary thing to me about the steady increase in oil prices isn't about oil production or scarcity, but that it's an indication that the dollar is weakening in the world. The price of oil has no choice but to increase.
I think the thing to watch for will be a growing Chinese military-goods export industry because that will mark the beginning of the end of its reliance on the $US. That line of thinking puts that recent destruction of a satellite into an interesting context - was it really a drum-beating "look what we can do" or was it a slick "look what we can sell you"?
Confessions of an Economic Hitman gives some interesting details about the US and its use of economic leverage against other countries. I don't think there will be many non-USians crying a lot if the same kinds of leverage are used against the US.
Back to topic, isn't Seagate already made in China? Even if final assembly isn't done there, how many of the components are already made there?
I'm terrified of the power that any of these goons in office hold. I just wish the government would be drastically reduced.
But where do you think the power will go? It doesn't just go away.
We did the mistake of voting in term limits here in Oregon for legislators. The result has been essentially a transfer of power and influence from legislators to their aids and the lobbyists - who don't get removed after so many terms.
Voter turnout less than 20%? That's what the entrenched parties want. If you can get the middle to be apathetic and not turn out then all you have to do is activate your base more than the other guy. The middle voters are so unpredictable that it's better to keep them at home and unwilling to participate.
They can do it so much cheaper because the first $1500 of each car goes to cover medical insurance costs, not so in Japan. 69% of that health care cost is going to cover retired employees.
That might be true comparing a car made in Japan and one made in the US. However, most "Japanese" cars sold in the US are actually manufactured here in the US. Those plants have to pay the same competitive healthcare and benefits as other employers.
The "trick" to the success of places like Toyota is that they streamline their production, improving their processes and striving to eliminate inefficiencies. They don't sit on piles of inventory to build parts and they often force suppliers to co-locate so that transit times are shorter. And any worker who sees a problem can stop the line. I could use a bunch of buzzwords like LEAN, TPS, JIT, etc. Instead, I'll recommend reading "The Toyota Way" (http://books.google.com/books?id=9v_sxqERqvMC) by Jeff Liker.
You're confused. Israel has never fought an aggressive war.
Right - like the war in 1948 where Arabs were massacred or ethnic-cleansed out of their villages... that wasn't aggressive. And nor was the unilateral "preemptive" strike on the Iraqi nuclear facility. Oh, and lets not forget the unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty (how many Americans were killed in the "accidental" attack that lasted several hours?). Oh, and the invasions into Lebanon... how many times now? Nope, no aggression there.
Wasn't that called Carnivore? But instead of just watching convicted criminals, it's watching all of us?
Having read all the Oz books as a kid I was thrilled to see a more accurate, darker picture of the land of Oz after the more saccharine MGM version. I guess I should check out 'Wicked' for the same reason
You might enjoy Snow White: A Tale of Terror http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119227/ with Sigourney Weaver playing the evil stepmother. I felt it lived up to its name quite well.
I don't know. I think "HD" is the new "e-". We had e-commerce, and e-mail, now we have hd-tv, hd-radio, hd-blenders, hd-bath towels, hd-dvds, and my favorite, the hd-flamethrower (the kids love it). It's like a bad sequel.
Can we have an article or link? Or should we write directly to tech.luver?
There is a fundamental limit of how much work can be extracted by heat flow between two temperatures.
The sad thing is that the Greeks figured out how to heat water to make steam and make objects turn more than two thousand years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile. Today, we have harnessed the power of the atom, and what do we do with it? Heat water to make steam and make objects turn.
It's too bad we can't figure out how to make some kind of transducers that can convert the energy released in the nuclear reaction into something more usable without the step of making hot water.
I suppose inside is where the germs do their jobs best...
I only said, "I can't point to any sources" because I can't point to any sources (maybe I heard it on the radio, maybe Dr. Dean Adell's show) and I don't want to lend any more weight to my statement than hearsay. The idea sounds plausible, but then again, I haven't studied immunology.
Apple was once the established market leader for PC's. Not today.
Apple's not a good example here. Apple was a leader in a small immature market that was growing rapidly. It's easy to be displaced in such a market because there are so many new customers who don't need to switch from one product to another.
The Office App market is pretty mature with well-entrenched players and anyone who wants a pretty good office app can get one (even legitimately for free). You would have quite a bit better than say, Open Office, since that's free and pretty good. And you'd have to be so astoundingly good that you could get a lot of people to actually make the effort to switch from MS Office to the point where Microsoft can't break your app by making you incompatible with them. And Microsoft has the huge advantage of being entrenched in many large corporations and governments, who are not likely to quickly change their infrastructure to try something hot and new. Many aren't even upgrading their version of Office for fear of breaking existing processes with slight incompatibilities and the huge expense and effort of retraining.
I'm not saying it won't happen, but there's a lot working against a new Office App vendor in their efforts to become profitable. And even Word Perfect, as good as it was, was only dominating a market that was rapidly growing.
I can't point to any sources, but I've heard it said that a possible cause in the rise in asthma in the US is this hyper-cleanliness that some parents are obsessed with. By trying to sterilize everything, children's immune systems just don't get the exposure to all the things they should while they're in "learning mode" early in life. They then spend the rest of their life with a somewhat compromised immune system.
The hypothesis relies on the idea that when you're an infant that your immune system is in a special mode where it is trying to learn about as many pathogens as possible. I don't know if that's really true, however.
I personally wanted to know how many Library of Congresses it could pass in an hour.
I had watched Star Trek most of my life and I didn't figure it out until I started watching DVDs without commercials.
It's subtle, but there. In one case, he's trying to seduce a woman to regain control of the ship. They start to kiss. And there's a commercial break. When it resumes from the break, she is fixing her hair and he is sitting on the bed putting his boots back on.
Clearly, something happened during the commercial. Sadly, it wasn't until I was 23 that I actually got to experience the ins and outs of that something.
NCLB does not divert resources away from teaching
Having worked in a school district when NCLB was instituted, I can tell you that it does, indeed, divert resources from teaching.
NCLB requires use of standard tests, which cost a lot of money to administer. In Oregon, those tests are done by computer, and the systems required upgrades to the computer systems and computers. In fact, several schools in the district created computer labs that were only to be used for testing and not for instruction. In addition, new administrative staff have to be hired to handle the workload of ensuring compliance.
In a rural school district with limited resources, the money for all this testing and equipment has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is usually the budget for optional programs, laying off teachers, skimping on resources such as needed new textbooks, and building enhancements.
This is why many school districts claim the NCLB requirements are an unfunded mandate. They have been required by the federal government do to these things yet were not given funds to do it.
On top of that, the testing regime takes about a week of class time out of the year.
So basically NCLB is a big win for companies who sell and administer standard tests. Everyone else pretty much gets screwed. Schools have less money, students get less education, and the country gets dumber.
If you really want to help the US education system, do the following:
* ban sodas and candy and fastfood
* expand the free lunch program to every kid and include breakfast - hungry kids can't learn - and there are too many of them
* go to year-round schooling with longer non-summer seasonal breaks
* make physical education mandatory at every grade level - they need breaks and exercise
* allow merit-based pay/bonuses for teachers who do a good job (using a variety of metrics)
* lower class sizes - a teacher can't manage 38 kids AND teach them
* lower the administrative burden on schools so they can hire more teachers and fewer administrators
Only by being legally pedantic, we're all (in the US) supposed to have the benefit of the doubt and the presumption of innocence. If the law says having a BAC over a certain % while driving is illegal, and in this scenario the guy isn't yet at that level when pulled over then he is still not guilty of a crime.
Should he be driving, from a common sense point of view? No.