It mostly replicates a system that is working well, with known failure points and workarounds.
In Mass. but the Netherlands uses a similar system also. They spend less, have lower mortality, and greater life expectancy than we do.
It's totally true that the ideas underlying the ACA have been hashed about since they were first proposed by the GOP in 1993's HEART act, tested in the real world, and proven.
The idea of making people register in order to view plans though, that was just bad web application design, no argument there. PHB wins that one.
Given that vaccines Drs want to give to kids have increased 3x since 1980, and many are for non-lethal diseases like rotavirus or for things like Hep B that a baby is highly unlikely to contract, and given that drug production is imperfect, I think many parents have legitimate concerns and being ordered to unquestionably follow their known-to-be-imperfect doctor's advice feed the backlash against vaccines.
Dr. Sears has good information for parents who want to take an informed, balanced approach:
Lots of Scalzi's aliens eat humans. Some find us delicious.
Most of the 'sensible' interplanetary war stories start with cheap, easy FTL and fewish habitable planets. In which case conflict is likely for species that can use the same planets. Of course its a HUGE leap to cheap easy FTL.
One I remember that didn't have cheap/easy FTL had a species flee their dying home planet on a slower than light colony ship, and end up here. They wanted to come down and party with us, and we didn't want them to.
"I wish (ha, and a pony) that those with a political agenda would not misrepresent science as being in anyone's 'interest' or misquoting scientific papers to show one thing when the full results show something completely different."
Your link says correctly that what heats glass greenhouses is not the greenhouse effect caused by carbon in the air.
The mythbusters demonstrated that containers with higher CO2/Methane levels grew warmer than a control. How exactly were they off-base?
"So hard that it has never been empirically tested,"
That is about as solid falsification as any lab experiment - if one had to put an entire system into a controlled experiment in order to test a hypothesis, most of what we call science would be impossible - we test hypotheses about gravity, gas pressure, genetics, etc. in controlled lab experiments, but for some reason we can't test the effect of carbon on infrared light??
If the lab experiments demonstrated that carbon had no effect on heat, we would need to re-examine the whole theory. But what is possible to reproduce in a lab does support the theory, as does historical data (insolation, global temperature, and atmospheric carbon levels from the Carboniferous period, etc) as does insolation vs. heat data from other planets (Mars, Venus, etc.).
If the Carboniferous was cold or Venus was cooler than it is, we'd have verifiable evidence that carbon and other greenhouse gasses do not have a the same effect on a planetary scale as they do in the lab, but all empirical evidence we can gather, both via observation and controlled experiment, supports the theory of the effect greenhouse gasses have of planetary temperature.
The PDF simply reports the results of a study - I don't see anything there that suggests that soil erosion is going to stop global warming in the short term, its just a cool study, IMO, that helps everyone learn more about the complexity of the total system.
Do you think science be put through a political lens before it's published or talked about?
Its a matter of speed and scale, if a violent individual has a gun, he can kill more people more rapidly than if he has a knife. Likewise if the individual has semtex. We make semtex illegal for a reason.
If guns were not a better tool for killing people than knives, then....
Presumably they would use sunlight gathered by solar panels for power to spit the H2O. I don't think the challenge here is to find the most efficient (in terms of using the least amount of energy) way to power the spacecraft- but rather to provide fuel the spacecraft can use in its rockets.
One could be much more purely efficient with a solar sail or the like, no conversion, but they don't accelerate very quickly and have some problems tacking.
I like large projects to have their own business plan- with resource costs (staff, office, etc.), and budget, and expected operating margin for the project as the resulting product/products are sold. Ideally inclide marketing and sales commission costs. This is a big deal to developer, but one of the benefits is that one can show to upper mgt. The effects of overstaffing on the margins. Also a good business plan would include the reason for all project roles, for all the people on the project (since their salaries all subtract from the profit margin).
Then with a formal plan its much harder for an inexperienced manager to pad the resources for some pointy haired reason of his/her own as he/she should need to justify the reduced margins, etc.
It's important to remember that Blackboard bought 2 of 52 Moodle Partners. Others, like the company I work for, are completely independent of this deal. The Partner program gives good insulation to customers - if they don't like the Partner they are contracting with, they can switch to another one, or bring their Moodle site in house.
Some of the other LMS companies have an open source option, however none have a Partner program, so you have to choose between DIY or the commercial company that also owns the code. With Moodle, Martin Dougiamas, Moodle's founder, focuses on core development and his team is funded by contributions from the Partners. This means there are many choices for Moodle customers and the purchase of one or several of the many hosting/support companies in the Moodle Partner program won't change that.
To improve Windows, MS should make it stabler, make it faster, and more exploit proof, and for goodness sake actually implement W3C standards in IE.
Otherwise the UI of XP/Win7 is adequate, thats not the problem - the problems are:
1. It crashes frequently (compared to other modern OSs like MacOS and Linux),
2. IE is a huge timesink because of lack of full standards support (though in my last big web project, IE8 was almost not a problem).
3. It is tragically vulnerable to exploits
4. It requires an incredible amount of processor and ram to run - and doesn't seem to really do much more with all that hardware than NT did with much less.
Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.
Rosetta Stone (my kid is using it right now through her school:-)) is a pretty simple application with some very good content. If you had the content you could do it as a SCORM or even a Lesson module in Moodle, but the content (and the marketing;-)) is mostly what you are paying $500 for.
The content, it would take some time to write/record and take/locate supporting images & audio, once you had that done, a few days to a few weeks to put it in Moodle (depending on how far you were taking the user in the second language).
Second language teaching is pretty big, some estimates run to 1 billion learning English alone, and the UK alone estimates that generates 1.3 billion pounds/year in revenue.
Basically it's open source software for creating an education institutions own 'Facebook' social networking site. It was created by a consortium of institutions in New Zealand - which by the way has made a national commitment to FOSS- with many of the island's Universities and Schools running Linux on the desktop, Moodle for their Learning Management System (online quizzes, discussions, assignments, gradebooks, etc.) and Mahara for their social networking/eportfolio.
When an institution installs Mahara, each user gets their own site where they can post files, have a blog, post photos, etc. and then invite people to view different parts of their site based on access roles, e.g. guest can see some things, teachers can see other things, employers can see yet other things, etc.
Students use it to build resumes, weblogs, create their own learner communities, etc. When it's integrated with an LMS like Moodle, assignments can be pushed from Moodle to Mahara - say a particularly good paper, photo, video, etc. and you can also send views from Mahara to Moodle for grading - say a blog assignment, etc.
Mahara, means 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Mori- overall its very cool software and a very cool project- nice to see it getting recognition!
Full Disclosure - my company provides commercial support for Mahara and contributes financial and code support as one of the network of Mahara partners- we have more information about it here.
It showed up after a software update, and for some reason doesn't have an entry in the Applications menu (where I can easily remove Google and other 3rd party apps if I want).
What is really interesting about Bing on the Blackberry anyway if I accidently select it it (after a long time) loads a screen asking me if I agree to the EULA. I click the "I do not agree" button.
It loads anyway.
It's like a shoe that fits so tightly that I can't get it off my foot (maybe that was what Jerry was talking to Bill about?).
Slashdot Mirror
Things get pretty big pretty fast when you do it that way.
Right, read your Constitution. Advise and consent is for Cabinet posts, not every freakin' job in the Govt.
In Mass. but the Netherlands uses a similar system also. They spend less, have lower mortality, and greater life expectancy than we do.
It's totally true that the ideas underlying the ACA have been hashed about since they were first proposed by the GOP in 1993's HEART act, tested in the real world, and proven.
The idea of making people register in order to view plans though, that was just bad web application design, no argument there. PHB wins that one.
Now thats a freaking good point. I've had UnitedHealthcare and BC/BS and their websites have always been horrible. Just suxors.
That pre 1963 Polio vaccine was contaminated with SV40 virus? CDC soon yanked the warning, and it only exists now on the Internet Archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20130522091608/http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer_factsheet.htm
Given that vaccines Drs want to give to kids have increased 3x since 1980, and many are for non-lethal diseases like rotavirus or for things like Hep B that a baby is highly unlikely to contract, and given that drug production is imperfect, I think many parents have legitimate concerns and being ordered to unquestionably follow their known-to-be-imperfect doctor's advice feed the backlash against vaccines.
Dr. Sears has good information for parents who want to take an informed, balanced approach:
http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/vaccines
Mod parent up please - that is a very good video:)
Most of the 'sensible' interplanetary war stories start with cheap, easy FTL and fewish habitable planets. In which case conflict is likely for species that can use the same planets. Of course its a HUGE leap to cheap easy FTL.
One I remember that didn't have cheap/easy FTL had a species flee their dying home planet on a slower than light colony ship, and end up here. They wanted to come down and party with us, and we didn't want them to.
"I wish (ha, and a pony) that those with a political agenda would not misrepresent science as being in anyone's 'interest' or misquoting scientific papers to show one thing when the full results show something completely different."
Yeah. Where did you see that happening?
Your link says correctly that what heats glass greenhouses is not the greenhouse effect caused by carbon in the air.
The mythbusters demonstrated that containers with higher CO2/Methane levels grew warmer than a control. How exactly were they off-base?
"So hard that it has never been empirically tested,"
That is about as solid falsification as any lab experiment - if one had to put an entire system into a controlled experiment in order to test a hypothesis, most of what we call science would be impossible - we test hypotheses about gravity, gas pressure, genetics, etc. in controlled lab experiments, but for some reason we can't test the effect of carbon on infrared light??
If the lab experiments demonstrated that carbon had no effect on heat, we would need to re-examine the whole theory. But what is possible to reproduce in a lab does support the theory, as does historical data (insolation, global temperature, and atmospheric carbon levels from the Carboniferous period, etc) as does insolation vs. heat data from other planets (Mars, Venus, etc.).
If the Carboniferous was cold or Venus was cooler than it is, we'd have verifiable evidence that carbon and other greenhouse gasses do not have a the same effect on a planetary scale as they do in the lab, but all empirical evidence we can gather, both via observation and controlled experiment, supports the theory of the effect greenhouse gasses have of planetary temperature.
The PDF simply reports the results of a study - I don't see anything there that suggests that soil erosion is going to stop global warming in the short term, its just a cool study, IMO, that helps everyone learn more about the complexity of the total system.
Do you think science be put through a political lens before it's published or talked about?
Its not very hard to test the hypothesis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPRd5GT0v0I
And when that happens in the dry upper atmosphere where the planet's heat is radiated outwards, less heat is radiated outwards.
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/funding/nri/highlights/2007_no9.pdf
Cool.
If guns were not a better tool for killing people than knives, then....
We use Joyent - very happy with their service. http://joyent.com/
Then I separate the mediocre from the reliable in the interview process.
I want brilliant and reliable people, and I find them, and I hire them :-).
One could be much more purely efficient with a solar sail or the like, no conversion, but they don't accelerate very quickly and have some problems tacking.
I like large projects to have their own business plan- with resource costs (staff, office, etc.), and budget, and expected operating margin for the project as the resulting product/products are sold. Ideally inclide marketing and sales commission costs. This is a big deal to developer, but one of the benefits is that one can show to upper mgt. The effects of overstaffing on the margins. Also a good business plan would include the reason for all project roles, for all the people on the project (since their salaries all subtract from the profit margin). Then with a formal plan its much harder for an inexperienced manager to pad the resources for some pointy haired reason of his/her own as he/she should need to justify the reduced margins, etc.
It's important to remember that Blackboard bought 2 of 52 Moodle Partners. Others, like the company I work for, are completely independent of this deal. The Partner program gives good insulation to customers - if they don't like the Partner they are contracting with, they can switch to another one, or bring their Moodle site in house.
Some of the other LMS companies have an open source option, however none have a Partner program, so you have to choose between DIY or the commercial company that also owns the code. With Moodle, Martin Dougiamas, Moodle's founder, focuses on core development and his team is funded by contributions from the Partners. This means there are many choices for Moodle customers and the purchase of one or several of the many hosting/support companies in the Moodle Partner program won't change that.
More: http://info.remote-learner.net/blog-0/
To improve Windows, MS should make it stabler, make it faster, and more exploit proof, and for goodness sake actually implement W3C standards in IE.
Otherwise the UI of XP/Win7 is adequate, thats not the problem - the problems are:
1. It crashes frequently (compared to other modern OSs like MacOS and Linux),
2. IE is a huge timesink because of lack of full standards support (though in my last big web project, IE8 was almost not a problem).
3. It is tragically vulnerable to exploits
4. It requires an incredible amount of processor and ram to run - and doesn't seem to really do much more with all that hardware than NT did with much less.
I hope it doesn't make the cut. A simplified interface can be oversimplified.
Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.
It's also a good example of a successful FOSS project, with an active and growing user community, used by more than 38 million students in 212 countries, translated into 81 languages, and with thriving commercial support community.
Rosetta Stone (my kid is using it right now through her school:-)) is a pretty simple application with some very good content. If you had the content you could do it as a SCORM or even a Lesson module in Moodle, but the content (and the marketing;-)) is mostly what you are paying $500 for. The content, it would take some time to write/record and take/locate supporting images & audio, once you had that done, a few days to a few weeks to put it in Moodle (depending on how far you were taking the user in the second language).
Second language teaching is pretty big, some estimates run to 1 billion learning English alone, and the UK alone estimates that generates 1.3 billion pounds/year in revenue.
Moodle, is by most estimates the most widely used online learning software with 49,000 registered sites in 211 countries and is also an example of a successful open source project ecosystem with commercial support partners in many countries.
When an institution installs Mahara, each user gets their own site where they can post files, have a blog, post photos, etc. and then invite people to view different parts of their site based on access roles, e.g. guest can see some things, teachers can see other things, employers can see yet other things, etc.
Students use it to build resumes, weblogs, create their own learner communities, etc. When it's integrated with an LMS like Moodle, assignments can be pushed from Moodle to Mahara - say a particularly good paper, photo, video, etc. and you can also send views from Mahara to Moodle for grading - say a blog assignment, etc.
Mahara, means 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Mori- overall its very cool software and a very cool project- nice to see it getting recognition!
Full Disclosure - my company provides commercial support for Mahara and contributes financial and code support as one of the network of Mahara partners- we have more information about it here.
What is really interesting about Bing on the Blackberry anyway if I accidently select it it (after a long time) loads a screen asking me if I agree to the EULA. I click the "I do not agree" button.
It loads anyway.
It's like a shoe that fits so tightly that I can't get it off my foot (maybe that was what Jerry was talking to Bill about?).