For short in-city trips electric vehicles are fairly efficient (especially with regenerative breaking). Moreover, these vehicles will have established parking spots where they can be efficiently charged. I can see this being a cost-effective alternative to taxis, and possibly to public transport (especially for several people at once).
The question is what to do about them if they are driven until the battery is drained, which is not an issue for bicycles. If that becomes prevalent it will increase costs.
Currently the minimal threshold for filing suit is way too low. The "rights holders" here surely have some colorable claim that infringement happened (i.e. some kind of network monitoring log, and a claim from an ISP that the monitored IP address belonged to this guy). So far US courts have decided that this is enough to file a lawsuit, something which creates a lot of work for lawyers and greatly advantages those who file extortionate suits -- the cost of actually defending a suit like this (tends of thousands of dollars) is much higher than the cost of settling. Worse, by filing suit the plaintiffs get the right to use the courts to coerce the defendant into assisting in the investigation (and to pay the costs of that!).
A second problem is that even if you are successful in defending a lawsuit you are unlikely to get your legal (let alone indirect) costs reimbursed.
So, the solution is: first, to require more evidence before a lawsuit can be filed, and, second, to make cost shifting the default when a lawsuit is dismissed on the pleading.
Hurray, now we can buy crippled CPUs and unlock them later.
I think you don't understand what's going on. Intel is giving everyone more options. There's no way this can make you worse off.
You probably don't realize that Intel doesn't make separate "1.8 GHz" and "2.0 GHz" chips. What they do is make many of the same chip, test each chip, and then set the clock frequency depending on how well each chip handles things.
Now imagine many people would rather buy a 1.8GHz chip (it's cheaper and they don't need the extra speed), but the manufacturing process is good and makes mostly 2.0Ghz chips. Intel now has three choices:
Keep things as they are. This makes 1.8GHz chips more expensive (supply is less than demand at the current price), and forces people to buy 2.0GHz chips they don't want.
Lower prices on 2.0GHz chips. This will increase sales, but means giving up on the money of those people who really need (or think they need) the extra speed and are willing to pay for it.
Take some chips that could run at 2.0GHz, mark them "1.8GHz" and sell them for a lower price.
Under the last scenario Intel is happier (they got the money of the people who want cheaper parts and got to charge a premium from the people who want faster parts). The consumers are also happier (they got the processor speed they want at the price they want). Why should the people who wanted 1.8GHz speed care that the part they got could in theory run at 2.0GHz? that's not the speed they wanted in the first place.
I'm fairly certain that this "error" found by the government was in S&P's arithmetic (or even in their data). I doubt that S&P was doing any actual mathematics for this report.
One expert, who is part of the investigation and wants to remain anonymous because the inquiry is at an early stage, told The New York Times he wondered how the hackers could have known to breach security by focusing on the vulnerability in the browser.
He said: 'It would have been hard to prepare for this type of vulnerability.'
If this kind of "expertise" is used for the investigation, no wonder they are not getting it. First, the vulnerability was in the server-side, not client-side. Secondly, comparing requests for information against the authorization level of the current user is SOP. It's axiomatic that you need to "prepare" for such checks.
In other words: this is going to be an experimental field for years, and the rules should be 100% on the side of the principle of assumption of risk: you go up there at your own risk, except in cases of reckless negligence on part of the carrier.
Actually, it wasn't my argument. The paragraph I wrote was a paraphrase of the arguments made by publisher associations (RIAA, MPAA etc). An argument with which I disagree. I thought writing it this way would make it clear how tenuous the supposed link is between the cost to the public (loss of freedom) and the possible benefit (more creative work).
My only argument is that since copyright is a creation intended to balance costs and benefits, our rejection of the **AA arguments must be on cost-benefit grounds -- "we will actually get more entertainment if copyright rules were weakened...".
These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.
Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".
Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) that I don't think blocking these sites is a good trade-off, but when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.
It always takes time for technological advances to make their way from the workshop to the home. The first servo motors were expensive devices; today we take it for granted that a DVD player will automatically retract the platter.
Same here: applying the scientific method to cooking starts as a high-end expensive hobby, but eventually the lessons learned and some of the technology will become household items.
As a product becomes more expensive, developing alternative means of production becomes more profitable. For example, extracting oil from the shale in Alberta (Canada) is more expensive than the bare costs of extracting it from wells in the middle east. If political risks make middle-eastern oil more expensive, it will now be profitable to extract oil in Alberta. But oil prices could also come down if the political situation becomes more stable, so it's difficult to tell if the investment in alternatives is worth it. It depends on the ability of the market to deal with the volatility coming from the political instability (if it can, then the fluctuations in prices don't mean much in the long run).
If you view the product more generally (energy) then again more expensive oil would make alternative energy solutions more profitable. For example, shifting from gasoline-powered to electric-powered cars tends to reduce the volatility in the cost of driving the car, since electricity can be produced by many means.
What I don't see is why the so-called "clean" alternatives to oil would be cheaper than the "non-clean" ones. Given the terrible experience with wind power in Spain and Germany, the disaster that corn-based ethanol is in the US etc, it is simply not believable that such technologies would be cheaper than, say, natural gas.
Then there's fusion reactors, a proven clean energy source that seems to always be left out of the discussion. At current oil prices building nuclear reactors should be more profitable, but given the possibility that oil prices will eventually come down, I don't think short-term savings will be enough to counter the public's irrational fears of nuclear reactors.
Actually, I think that the assertion that most of a plant's mass comes from the soil is correct.
The majority of plant species are mostly water by mass, and water enters a plant primarily through the roots.
For this reason biologists (including the paper under debate) are careful to define biomass as the mass excluding water.
At the end of TFA they give the original reference, a paper preprinted in 2007. One way to tell if this holds water is to see if other research groups have done follow-ups in the intervening three years.
Honestly, math students have been using calculators on exams for years now, and that's turned out well.
Having taught mathematics at the university, let me tell you: calculators have been a total disaster. You see students stare at "14/7" and reach for the calculator. Students have no feel for numbers whatsoever, and since they do all the arithmetic by calculator they have had no practice of the algebraic properties of arithmetic, and hence have also failed to learn algebra.
What about:
Using Sage/Maple/Mathematica/Wolfram Alpha to solve algebra and calculus problems.
driving a car in gym class instead of running?
hiring a carpenter instead of doing the work in shop class?
(Obligatory reference) We are talking about what is clearly an experimental vehicle, and as such quite risky. There are sure to be accidents, just like any other new technology. The question is what will happen then -- will the doctrine of assumption of risk serve to protect the infant industry, will the government try to limit access, or will lawsuits simply kill the whole thing off?
Oh -- I definitely agree that the prise is well deserved. It's just notable that a well-deserved prize is given 6 years after publication and not 36 years after publication. It's also notable that you don't always need very expensive equipment to do ground-breaking work in condensed matter physics -- it's still possible to do top-notch research with everyday tools.
As far as Nobel prizes in Physics go, this one is for a very recent result. The experimental apparatus itself was very simple (some graphite and scotch tape!), but the result is very interesting.
The whole point of the story is to make the electronics heat-proof. Apparently silicon-carbide electronics can function at much higher temperatures than ordinary silicon.
No. Chess has no random elements to it. You play against an opponent, with a very strict set of rules.
I don't think you understand what the discussion in this post is about. The game of chess has no element of randomness -- but the players do, and it's the players we are trying to model. Just because, on average, player A is better than player B, doesn't mean that player A will win every game. The fact is that the same player will play at different levels of ability on different days, and that is the randomness that is relevant to models trying to predict outcomes of chess games.
Basically all rating systems are based on the assumption that players' ability for a given game fluctuates around an "average ability level" according to some distribution, and the goal of the rating system is to discover the average (and perhaps spread) of this indvidual distribution. So even under best conditions the most the system can do is predict the outcome with an error coming from the distribution of abilities. Now assume the distributions are relatively wide -- then there will be a large statistical error even for the best system.
Returning to the main point, the discussion of the last paragraph has nothing to do with the fact that chess is deterministic. In fact, the fact that there is no randomness in chess makes things easier.
Indeed, Sagarin has shown that applying Elo in sports where the winner is based on points scored is not optimal, since the average margin of victory is a better predictor of strength than won-loss record. But this has nothing to do with applying the Elo method to its original setting of chess, where the outcome of the game is only "win/draw/loss" and there is no margin of victory.
Slashdot Mirror
For short in-city trips electric vehicles are fairly efficient (especially with regenerative breaking). Moreover, these vehicles will have established parking spots where they can be efficiently charged. I can see this being a cost-effective alternative to taxis, and possibly to public transport (especially for several people at once). The question is what to do about them if they are driven until the battery is drained, which is not an issue for bicycles. If that becomes prevalent it will increase costs.
Currently the minimal threshold for filing suit is way too low. The "rights holders" here surely have some colorable claim that infringement happened (i.e. some kind of network monitoring log, and a claim from an ISP that the monitored IP address belonged to this guy). So far US courts have decided that this is enough to file a lawsuit, something which creates a lot of work for lawyers and greatly advantages those who file extortionate suits -- the cost of actually defending a suit like this (tends of thousands of dollars) is much higher than the cost of settling. Worse, by filing suit the plaintiffs get the right to use the courts to coerce the defendant into assisting in the investigation (and to pay the costs of that!).
A second problem is that even if you are successful in defending a lawsuit you are unlikely to get your legal (let alone indirect) costs reimbursed.
So, the solution is: first, to require more evidence before a lawsuit can be filed, and, second, to make cost shifting the default when a lawsuit is dismissed on the pleading.
I think you don't understand what's going on. Intel is giving everyone more options. There's no way this can make you worse off. You probably don't realize that Intel doesn't make separate "1.8 GHz" and "2.0 GHz" chips. What they do is make many of the same chip, test each chip, and then set the clock frequency depending on how well each chip handles things. Now imagine many people would rather buy a 1.8GHz chip (it's cheaper and they don't need the extra speed), but the manufacturing process is good and makes mostly 2.0Ghz chips. Intel now has three choices:
Under the last scenario Intel is happier (they got the money of the people who want cheaper parts and got to charge a premium from the people who want faster parts). The consumers are also happier (they got the processor speed they want at the price they want). Why should the people who wanted 1.8GHz speed care that the part they got could in theory run at 2.0GHz? that's not the speed they wanted in the first place.
I'm fairly certain that this "error" found by the government was in S&P's arithmetic (or even in their data). I doubt that S&P was doing any actual mathematics for this report.
From TFA:
If this kind of "expertise" is used for the investigation, no wonder they are not getting it. First, the vulnerability was in the server-side, not client-side. Secondly, comparing requests for information against the authorization level of the current user is SOP. It's axiomatic that you need to "prepare" for such checks.
In other words: this is going to be an experimental field for years, and the rules should be 100% on the side of the principle of assumption of risk: you go up there at your own risk, except in cases of reckless negligence on part of the carrier.
Actually, it wasn't my argument. The paragraph I wrote was a paraphrase of the arguments made by publisher associations (RIAA, MPAA etc). An argument with which I disagree. I thought writing it this way would make it clear how tenuous the supposed link is between the cost to the public (loss of freedom) and the possible benefit (more creative work). My only argument is that since copyright is a creation intended to balance costs and benefits, our rejection of the **AA arguments must be on cost-benefit grounds -- "we will actually get more entertainment if copyright rules were weakened ...".
These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.
Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".
Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) that I don't think blocking these sites is a good trade-off, but when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.
It always takes time for technological advances to make their way from the workshop to the home. The first servo motors were expensive devices; today we take it for granted that a DVD player will automatically retract the platter. Same here: applying the scientific method to cooking starts as a high-end expensive hobby, but eventually the lessons learned and some of the technology will become household items.
Yes; I meant to say "fission". Unfortunately you can't edit posts on Slashdot ...
As a product becomes more expensive, developing alternative means of production becomes more profitable. For example, extracting oil from the shale in Alberta (Canada) is more expensive than the bare costs of extracting it from wells in the middle east. If political risks make middle-eastern oil more expensive, it will now be profitable to extract oil in Alberta. But oil prices could also come down if the political situation becomes more stable, so it's difficult to tell if the investment in alternatives is worth it. It depends on the ability of the market to deal with the volatility coming from the political instability (if it can, then the fluctuations in prices don't mean much in the long run).
If you view the product more generally (energy) then again more expensive oil would make alternative energy solutions more profitable. For example, shifting from gasoline-powered to electric-powered cars tends to reduce the volatility in the cost of driving the car, since electricity can be produced by many means.
What I don't see is why the so-called "clean" alternatives to oil would be cheaper than the "non-clean" ones. Given the terrible experience with wind power in Spain and Germany, the disaster that corn-based ethanol is in the US etc, it is simply not believable that such technologies would be cheaper than, say, natural gas.
Then there's fusion reactors, a proven clean energy source that seems to always be left out of the discussion. At current oil prices building nuclear reactors should be more profitable, but given the possibility that oil prices will eventually come down, I don't think short-term savings will be enough to counter the public's irrational fears of nuclear reactors.
The US could have (should have?) bombed the wreckage at the time.
For this reason biologists (including the paper under debate) are careful to define biomass as the mass excluding water.
At the end of TFA they give the original reference, a paper preprinted in 2007. One way to tell if this holds water is to see if other research groups have done follow-ups in the intervening three years.
At the moment, cash is basically the only (mostly) anonymous means of payment available. Since when is less anonymous is a good idea?
Having taught mathematics at the university, let me tell you: calculators have been a total disaster. You see students stare at "14/7" and reach for the calculator. Students have no feel for numbers whatsoever, and since they do all the arithmetic by calculator they have had no practice of the algebraic properties of arithmetic, and hence have also failed to learn algebra.
What about:
The 2007 guidelines were needed after KSR v. Teleflex . It seems the USPTO is now trying to push back against that ruling.
I wonder when this tech will be cheap enough to be commonly used for private security (guarding installations) and private investigators.
(Obligatory reference) We are talking about what is clearly an experimental vehicle, and as such quite risky. There are sure to be accidents, just like any other new technology. The question is what will happen then -- will the doctrine of assumption of risk serve to protect the infant industry, will the government try to limit access, or will lawsuits simply kill the whole thing off?
Oh -- I definitely agree that the prise is well deserved. It's just notable that a well-deserved prize is given 6 years after publication and not 36 years after publication. It's also notable that you don't always need very expensive equipment to do ground-breaking work in condensed matter physics -- it's still possible to do top-notch research with everyday tools.
As far as Nobel prizes in Physics go, this one is for a very recent result. The experimental apparatus itself was very simple (some graphite and scotch tape!), but the result is very interesting.
The whole point of the story is to make the electronics heat-proof. Apparently silicon-carbide electronics can function at much higher temperatures than ordinary silicon.
Actually, MacOS uses the Mach microkernel in a BSD system; some code was taken from FreeBSD -- but not the kernel.
I don't think you understand what the discussion in this post is about. The game of chess has no element of randomness -- but the players do, and it's the players we are trying to model. Just because, on average, player A is better than player B, doesn't mean that player A will win every game. The fact is that the same player will play at different levels of ability on different days, and that is the randomness that is relevant to models trying to predict outcomes of chess games.
Basically all rating systems are based on the assumption that players' ability for a given game fluctuates around an "average ability level" according to some distribution, and the goal of the rating system is to discover the average (and perhaps spread) of this indvidual distribution. So even under best conditions the most the system can do is predict the outcome with an error coming from the distribution of abilities. Now assume the distributions are relatively wide -- then there will be a large statistical error even for the best system.
Returning to the main point, the discussion of the last paragraph has nothing to do with the fact that chess is deterministic. In fact, the fact that there is no randomness in chess makes things easier.
Indeed, Sagarin has shown that applying Elo in sports where the winner is based on points scored is not optimal, since the average margin of victory is a better predictor of strength than won-loss record. But this has nothing to do with applying the Elo method to its original setting of chess, where the outcome of the game is only "win/draw/loss" and there is no margin of victory.