Let's be real, most workplaces use Windows/Linux. So kids are better off.
This is not true for scientific research, particularly in the mathematical-based sciences, where Linux/Unix is the de facto standard (although I am sure some do use Windows). However of the past couple of years I have noticed that the number of mac laptops used by students in my lectures has declined enormously to be replaced by a large variety of windows machines.
As I see it the reasons are twofold: price and ability to write on the screen. Students cannot afford the insanely inflated prices for new hardware which is now far from the leading edge. Plus the ability to write on the screen in tablet mode makes it very easy to email mathematical working and diagrams to professors which is really useful for subjects like physics.
Furthermore with the addition of the Linux subsystem for Windows these machines can now run Linux executables without rebooting. The increasing innovation and price/performance advantage of Windows machines has been enough to get me to convert from mac and while I would love to be able to run MacOS on my Dell laptop, I am happier saving $1000 (Canadian) for a better spec of machine and a less desirable but still workable (and improving) OS.
So, we should see advertising billboards along roads removed because they are specifically designed to grab peoples attention.
What billboards? The UK already has strict rules limiting the placement of billboards along motorways and majors roads for exactly this reason which is why so see so few.
Most nations are smart and know that just having one part of a gov giving out a visa in another nation is not really that secure.
No actually they do not know that because that is what every government I have ever applied for a visa from has done. How is this any less secure than a passport?
So a second line of questions are in place to ensure the visa and person are correct when entering the USA.
This second line of questions needs to be ones that the border guard is qualified to ask and understand the answer to. Such as who you are, what your business is etc. Having an unqualified individual trying to ask technical questions they do not understand is just stupid. When I worked at Fermilab 10+ years ago a colleague of mine was stopped at the US border and when he said he was a physicist the guard got out a large book, flipped through it, and asked him what "potential energy" was but, despite answering correctly, because he did not reproduce the exact answer given in the book he almost got denied entry.
By all means protect your borders but please do it in a sensible, effective manner.
Well a good start will be if IBM now sue the US Patent Office for patent infringement because their email system sends out-of-office emails as I presume it probably does.
First would dispute some of your logic. The second amendment of you constitution says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". So to me the clear intent was to make sure that the early US government had a body of armed and trained civilians to call on to defend it should Britian, or any other European power, decide to invade. This goal did indeed make a lot of sense 200+ years ago but not so much today. However importantly the clear aim was the defence of your country i.e. not to fight against your government but to fight for it against foreign invaders. If you want to have a look at a "well regulated militia" today try Switzerland. They arm, but also train their citizens. The result is a well regulated and trained militia but very few deaths due to gun violence.
Secondly though there seems little point for the law in today's world. The US has a huge military force and it is just about inconceivable that it would ever need to rely on armed citizens to defend itself. That same force means that even you interpretation, that citizens need guns to hold the government to account, is also irrelevant today. There is no way that they could possibly defeat the US armed forces if they continued to follow the government's orders. The best defence of democracy today is the same as it has always been: the will of the people. Governments are made up of people and if enough people refuse to serve it, and many resist it, it will fall.
So I agree that there was a very good reason for the law initially. However now the actual aim of that law is being completely ignored and, in today's world, the aim is irrelevant anyway. If you cannot change your laws to deal with changing circumstances you will end up in a lot of trouble.
Uh, no. This is where a good scientist keeps digging into it in order to expand our level of knowledge.
In which case your original premise that "causation is frequently so complex that it can not be deciphered with our current level of knowledge" is not correct. You cannot have it both ways: either the causation is understandable - with hard work and insight - or it is not. If it is understandable then this is what a scientist will go after because understanding is their goal. For a medical researcher establishing causation is enough which is very susceptible to random statistical flukes.
No, they focus on correlation because causation is frequently so complex that it can not be deciphered with our current level of knowledge.
Exactly but if they were a scientist then this is when they would stop and go and look at a different problem that they can decipher with our current level of knowledge. That is part of being a good scientist: you have to tackle things which you can ultimately understand because it is that understanding which is the goal of science. In medicine the correlation is enough: if substance X or activity Y cures ailment Z that's good medicine, why and how is of secondary importance.
Having Amazon record and keep all that audio is the unreasonable invasion of privacy. The fact that people will not use their service if they realize what it does is Amazon's problem and not a reason to deny use of the material in court.
This is medical research, not science. Medicine uses science because often the best way to cure something is to understand it but, very importantly, it has a very different motivation to science. Finding a "magic" pill which cures disease X without side effects but whose mechanism is completely unknown is great medicine but appalling science. Science is all about understanding how things work, medicine is all about treating human ailments.
This leads to a different approach using the tools of science. Medical researchers tend to focus far more on correlation over causation because that is what is most important to this. Unfortunately this approach leaves them open to random statistical effects which require a very good understanding of statistics to avoid and even then it can still be very easy to fool yourself e.g. the Monty Hall effect.
So lets call this problem what it is: a problem with medical research.
That is because, like major wars and catastrophes, it can devalue established wealth and power and empowers others to succeed based on their ability. The great thing about technology though is that it usually does this with far fewer people dying and it does not require wars to spur it on even though they often do.
American border patrol was just given authority to conduct is security theatre in Canadian airports too
There is one subtle difference doing it in Canada though and that is while Canadian law requires you to tell the truth you have the option to withdraw from the process at any time and not enter the US. Hence if you are asked for your phone you can choose to decline but then you will not be allowed to travel to the US. This is actually quite a sensible arrangement: countries should be free to set their entrance requirements and foreign travelers should be free to decline to travel there if they do not like them. The problem is that if you come from Europe you are already in the US and declining leads to arrest and detention not just denied entry and a return flight home.
It seems that they're claiming energy densities of ~20Wh/L
Compare that to petrol which has an energy density of 46.4MJ/kg which is 12.9kWh per "equivalent litre" (1l water has a mass of ~1kg but petrol itself is less dense than water). Now you gain something back because an internal combustion engine is far less efficient than an electric motor but even if you assume it is ten times less efficient (which is not the case) you would need a fuel tank ~64 times larger to have the same range as an internal combustion engine.
Even for a laptop you would need a 4 litre tank to replace the existing Li-ion which is typically ~80Whr. Before this technology becomes useful they need to gain at least an order of magnitude in energy density. That's when it will become interesting.
Actually you would probably want it to work down to -50C since -30C is not the extreme low just the typical low for a week or two most winters. Going below -40C is not uncommon for a day or two every few years so -50C should be relatively safe unless you live up in the territories.
Is the interior of your igloo usually that cold? I doubt that very much.
No but the exterior often is in the winter and that's usually where the car spends most of its time. Plus who wants a mobile which will not work outside half the year?
They can build something that can fly itself and take you from point A to point B.
Yes they can but can they do this at a cost which most people can afford and with a vehicle that is small enough that it does not take up much more space than a car and can take off and land vertically while not making more noise than a car? It also needs to be capable of travelling a few hundred kilometres too.
By the time you add all those caveats it becomes a lot harder to build such a device. This is what is preventing the era of flying cars, not the lack of infrastructure. That will come once a practical flying car is available which I doubt will be in three years.
I expect that their angle is pragmatism. Given the way things seem to be going in the US foreigners are increasingly unlikely to travel there so you won't encounter people speaking foreign languages and the same restrictions will mean there will be a huge shortage of IT skills such as programming.
That appears to mean that the person who used gmail lives in the US, and Google just randomly decided to store part of it in Ireland.
Then the US needs to have laws which do not allow companies to do this because once the data has left the US and entered the EU it is subject to EU law. You would not want data in the US related to chinese citizens to be subject to the chinese government accessing it would you? The same principle applies here.
We in the US have Trump (nee: Drumpf) to deal with, you guys have Brexit. Welcome to the global hangover!
If it's a global hangover then when did we have the preceding party? It clearly must have been a really good one because I don't remember it happening at all.
if I buy a part off a guy who makes them in his tool shed and hey tells me "hey, I'm not sure that this thing won't explode when apply the brake," then I am pretty sure I have no recourse whatsoever.
There are limits to this: if the seller in question made the brake pads out of plastic explosive I'm pretty sure the police will soon be knocking on his door. Putting a disclaimer on things does not magically allow you to get away with anything and some countries like the EU have mandatory minimum guarantees.
However in this case the software is not sold but given away so there is no sale which probably keeps the author protected unless they put something deliberately bad in the code.
This is what actually happens at research universities now.
Not at the one where I work but that's not in the US and the research overhead is way less than 50% and paid out of channel by direct payments from the grant agency to the institute.
But we're not talking about taxes here, we're talking about tuition. Your argument may make somewhat more sense at a public school, but doesn't really work when looking at private schools.
Who cares about private universities? They either adapt to a low tuition environment by accepting state funding to provided subsidized positions or they somehow persuade people to pay ten times the tuition cost. At least in the UK there only is one private university I'm aware of and it doesn't exactly have a brilliant reputation and I believe the same is true in Canada. Private universities usually do not get good students because they can only take students from the subset of the population rich enough to afford the tuition rather than take the smartest students out there regardless of background.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's be real, most workplaces use Windows/Linux. So kids are better off.
This is not true for scientific research, particularly in the mathematical-based sciences, where Linux/Unix is the de facto standard (although I am sure some do use Windows). However of the past couple of years I have noticed that the number of mac laptops used by students in my lectures has declined enormously to be replaced by a large variety of windows machines.
As I see it the reasons are twofold: price and ability to write on the screen. Students cannot afford the insanely inflated prices for new hardware which is now far from the leading edge. Plus the ability to write on the screen in tablet mode makes it very easy to email mathematical working and diagrams to professors which is really useful for subjects like physics.
Furthermore with the addition of the Linux subsystem for Windows these machines can now run Linux executables without rebooting. The increasing innovation and price/performance advantage of Windows machines has been enough to get me to convert from mac and while I would love to be able to run MacOS on my Dell laptop, I am happier saving $1000 (Canadian) for a better spec of machine and a less desirable but still workable (and improving) OS.
Welcome to Canada! It's EXTREME!!!
Unfortunately too extreme since the batteries won't work for several weeks a year up here.
So, we should see advertising billboards along roads removed because they are specifically designed to grab peoples attention.
What billboards? The UK already has strict rules limiting the placement of billboards along motorways and majors roads for exactly this reason which is why so see so few.
Most nations are smart and know that just having one part of a gov giving out a visa in another nation is not really that secure.
No actually they do not know that because that is what every government I have ever applied for a visa from has done. How is this any less secure than a passport?
So a second line of questions are in place to ensure the visa and person are correct when entering the USA.
This second line of questions needs to be ones that the border guard is qualified to ask and understand the answer to. Such as who you are, what your business is etc. Having an unqualified individual trying to ask technical questions they do not understand is just stupid. When I worked at Fermilab 10+ years ago a colleague of mine was stopped at the US border and when he said he was a physicist the guard got out a large book, flipped through it, and asked him what "potential energy" was but, despite answering correctly, because he did not reproduce the exact answer given in the book he almost got denied entry.
By all means protect your borders but please do it in a sensible, effective manner.
People need to complain and stop this nonsense.
Well a good start will be if IBM now sue the US Patent Office for patent infringement because their email system sends out-of-office emails as I presume it probably does.
First would dispute some of your logic. The second amendment of you constitution says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". So to me the clear intent was to make sure that the early US government had a body of armed and trained civilians to call on to defend it should Britian, or any other European power, decide to invade. This goal did indeed make a lot of sense 200+ years ago but not so much today. However importantly the clear aim was the defence of your country i.e. not to fight against your government but to fight for it against foreign invaders. If you want to have a look at a "well regulated militia" today try Switzerland. They arm, but also train their citizens. The result is a well regulated and trained militia but very few deaths due to gun violence.
Secondly though there seems little point for the law in today's world. The US has a huge military force and it is just about inconceivable that it would ever need to rely on armed citizens to defend itself. That same force means that even you interpretation, that citizens need guns to hold the government to account, is also irrelevant today. There is no way that they could possibly defeat the US armed forces if they continued to follow the government's orders. The best defence of democracy today is the same as it has always been: the will of the people. Governments are made up of people and if enough people refuse to serve it, and many resist it, it will fall.
So I agree that there was a very good reason for the law initially. However now the actual aim of that law is being completely ignored and, in today's world, the aim is irrelevant anyway. If you cannot change your laws to deal with changing circumstances you will end up in a lot of trouble.
Uh, no. This is where a good scientist keeps digging into it in order to expand our level of knowledge.
In which case your original premise that "causation is frequently so complex that it can not be deciphered with our current level of knowledge" is not correct. You cannot have it both ways: either the causation is understandable - with hard work and insight - or it is not. If it is understandable then this is what a scientist will go after because understanding is their goal. For a medical researcher establishing causation is enough which is very susceptible to random statistical flukes.
No, they focus on correlation because causation is frequently so complex that it can not be deciphered with our current level of knowledge.
Exactly but if they were a scientist then this is when they would stop and go and look at a different problem that they can decipher with our current level of knowledge. That is part of being a good scientist: you have to tackle things which you can ultimately understand because it is that understanding which is the goal of science. In medicine the correlation is enough: if substance X or activity Y cures ailment Z that's good medicine, why and how is of secondary importance.
Having Amazon record and keep all that audio is the unreasonable invasion of privacy. The fact that people will not use their service if they realize what it does is Amazon's problem and not a reason to deny use of the material in court.
This is medical research, not science. Medicine uses science because often the best way to cure something is to understand it but, very importantly, it has a very different motivation to science. Finding a "magic" pill which cures disease X without side effects but whose mechanism is completely unknown is great medicine but appalling science. Science is all about understanding how things work, medicine is all about treating human ailments.
This leads to a different approach using the tools of science. Medical researchers tend to focus far more on correlation over causation because that is what is most important to this. Unfortunately this approach leaves them open to random statistical effects which require a very good understanding of statistics to avoid and even then it can still be very easy to fool yourself e.g. the Monty Hall effect.
So lets call this problem what it is: a problem with medical research.
Yes, technology levels the playing field.
That is because, like major wars and catastrophes, it can devalue established wealth and power and empowers others to succeed based on their ability. The great thing about technology though is that it usually does this with far fewer people dying and it does not require wars to spur it on even though they often do.
...your government really needs to grow a pair.
The problem with the US government is that is has "grown a pair" but it has not yet grown a brain that is mature enough to know how to use them.
American border patrol was just given authority to conduct is security theatre in Canadian airports too
There is one subtle difference doing it in Canada though and that is while Canadian law requires you to tell the truth you have the option to withdraw from the process at any time and not enter the US. Hence if you are asked for your phone you can choose to decline but then you will not be allowed to travel to the US. This is actually quite a sensible arrangement: countries should be free to set their entrance requirements and foreign travelers should be free to decline to travel there if they do not like them. The problem is that if you come from Europe you are already in the US and declining leads to arrest and detention not just denied entry and a return flight home.
It seems that they're claiming energy densities of ~20Wh/L
Compare that to petrol which has an energy density of 46.4MJ/kg which is 12.9kWh per "equivalent litre" (1l water has a mass of ~1kg but petrol itself is less dense than water). Now you gain something back because an internal combustion engine is far less efficient than an electric motor but even if you assume it is ten times less efficient (which is not the case) you would need a fuel tank ~64 times larger to have the same range as an internal combustion engine.
Even for a laptop you would need a 4 litre tank to replace the existing Li-ion which is typically ~80Whr. Before this technology becomes useful they need to gain at least an order of magnitude in energy density. That's when it will become interesting.
Actually you would probably want it to work down to -50C since -30C is not the extreme low just the typical low for a week or two most winters. Going below -40C is not uncommon for a day or two every few years so -50C should be relatively safe unless you live up in the territories.
Ah but with a liquid battery they might be doing that a lot especially in cars because I expect replacing the liquid is a very fast way to charge it.
Is the interior of your igloo usually that cold? I doubt that very much.
No but the exterior often is in the winter and that's usually where the car spends most of its time. Plus who wants a mobile which will not work outside half the year?
They can build something that can fly itself and take you from point A to point B.
Yes they can but can they do this at a cost which most people can afford and with a vehicle that is small enough that it does not take up much more space than a car and can take off and land vertically while not making more noise than a car? It also needs to be capable of travelling a few hundred kilometres too.
By the time you add all those caveats it becomes a lot harder to build such a device. This is what is preventing the era of flying cars, not the lack of infrastructure. That will come once a practical flying car is available which I doubt will be in three years.
What's their angle - drive wages down?
I expect that their angle is pragmatism. Given the way things seem to be going in the US foreigners are increasingly unlikely to travel there so you won't encounter people speaking foreign languages and the same restrictions will mean there will be a huge shortage of IT skills such as programming.
That appears to mean that the person who used gmail lives in the US, and Google just randomly decided to store part of it in Ireland.
Then the US needs to have laws which do not allow companies to do this because once the data has left the US and entered the EU it is subject to EU law. You would not want data in the US related to chinese citizens to be subject to the chinese government accessing it would you? The same principle applies here.
We in the US have Trump (nee: Drumpf) to deal with, you guys have Brexit. Welcome to the global hangover!
If it's a global hangover then when did we have the preceding party? It clearly must have been a really good one because I don't remember it happening at all.
Um, shouldn't your focus be on contraceptives?
What's the point? As a homeopath he would end just up using highly diluted viagra.
if I buy a part off a guy who makes them in his tool shed and hey tells me "hey, I'm not sure that this thing won't explode when apply the brake," then I am pretty sure I have no recourse whatsoever.
There are limits to this: if the seller in question made the brake pads out of plastic explosive I'm pretty sure the police will soon be knocking on his door. Putting a disclaimer on things does not magically allow you to get away with anything and some countries like the EU have mandatory minimum guarantees.
However in this case the software is not sold but given away so there is no sale which probably keeps the author protected unless they put something deliberately bad in the code.
This is what actually happens at research universities now.
Not at the one where I work but that's not in the US and the research overhead is way less than 50% and paid out of channel by direct payments from the grant agency to the institute.
But we're not talking about taxes here, we're talking about tuition. Your argument may make somewhat more sense at a public school, but doesn't really work when looking at private schools.
Who cares about private universities? They either adapt to a low tuition environment by accepting state funding to provided subsidized positions or they somehow persuade people to pay ten times the tuition cost. At least in the UK there only is one private university I'm aware of and it doesn't exactly have a brilliant reputation and I believe the same is true in Canada. Private universities usually do not get good students because they can only take students from the subset of the population rich enough to afford the tuition rather than take the smartest students out there regardless of background.