Didn't they also find more stars in galaxies recently, even lowing their dependence on "dark matter".
Well it means that we found a bunch of the 'normal' dark matter, as was expected to eventually happen, so in that sense yes we have less dependence on dark matter because some of it was only 'dark' as in 'unseen'.
For the "weird" dark matter, WIMPs or whatever this theory predicts, there are separate predictions on the amount of that which should exist. There were discrepancies in this prediction, though, in particular with elliptical galaxies where the observable mass and the estimated dark matter didn't add up to the observed gravity. Since it was in elliptical galaxies that all the extra stars were found, this will probably end up strengthening the dependence on dark matter.
Yes, it's because it doesn't emit (except for the Hawking radiation) but it's still a name of ignorance: the existance of the singularity proofs Einstein's general relativity as wrong but we still lack a better theory to substitute it.
Actually it's the opposite.
The existence of singularities was a major prediction of General Relativity, and the source of much skepticism towards the theory. People didn't believe a thing like that could exist in our universe. The discovery of Black Holes with many of the predicted properties was (more) proof that GR was a damn good theory.
Not that we don't need a better theory to address known flaws, or that you couldn't in some way say Black Hole is a 'name of ignorance'. Certainly, there is a lot we don't know about them. If there is any problem with relativity wrt black holes, it's that since we can't look past the event horizon, we can't tell if there really exists a mathematical discontinuity in the universe or if something else is happening.
They don't mean testable as in "the theory makes predictions that could hypothetically be distinguished via experiment" in this case. They mean in the sense of "we may be able to test it", like with existing technology.
The location of birth matters because it's tied to the requirements for the office of President.
It's not tied as in mandatory. It is a sufficient but not necessary condition.
Interestingly, doesn't McCain fail that one as well by being born in Panama? Note: Specifically not in military base i Panama, because a US military base is considered US soil.
No, because he specifically was born on a military base.
The real question is what defines "natural born"?
A natural born citizen is anyone who is a citizen as a fact of birth. If you are born on U.S. soil, or the child of a U.S. citizen, then that fact makes you a citizen. You are a natural born citizen.
Well, I think it's safe to assume they have limited ammo, and if they don't have a cool yellow-black interface that counts down in dramatic fashion then they damn well should.
And personally I think it'd be really useful to be able to switch off the image recognition and instead go into a "kill anything that moves" mode, just in case the thing you're trying to kill isn't human.
Sociopathy does not work in the long term. It provides short term gain and hence it is the fashion of the day.
In the long term not having empathy is a fatal flaw for a manager. If a manager does not have empathy he does not know how far to turn the screws before the workforce revolts. So he turns them too tight and the team fails to deliver, leaves or outright revolts and tries to lynch mob the management.
Does this work long enough for the manager to become filthy rich?
Does the inevitable failure of this model prevent the manager from finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew? Or prevent them from leaving before the chickens come home to roost, finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew?
We engineers and other practical-minded people often take to broad a view when discussing what "works", considering things like the long-term health of the company etc. This is why we are often caught off guard by the seemingly irrational actions of sociopaths that when considered from the viewpoint of who the sociopath actually cares about -- themselves and themselves alone -- the strategy is almost entirely upside.
They can't make that right off, though. Diablo is too MMO-ish. They first need to make Diablocraft, the RTS. Then they can make the MMO based on the RTS, World of Diablocraft.
I suppose in the grand scheme of the huge number of species out there you could say "one of the few", but on the other hand there are many species that do practice monogamy.
I'd say our problem isn't being out on a limb with this whole "monogamy" concept in the first place. I think it is more that monogamy as such is not hard-wired but is a social contract. Our primate relatives and thus presumably common ancestors, like us, do form strong pair bonds, but also readily engage in the illicit hanky-panky.
We -- and this gene -- evolved in a welfare-free environment. So you might want to check your assumptions that "irresponsible virility" is only a survival trait in this "historically unique" environment, and the assumption that once the environment changes, we'd be worse off for having everyone who had at some point been on welfare in the gene pool.
Why do so many people say that? In essence you're saying once is okay.
No, they're saying once is within the realm of reason to forgive someone that you really love and want to stay with.
They aren't saying cheating once is acceptable, they are saying forgiving once is acceptable. As in, they can accept someone forgiving their SO for cheating, once. And forgiving the great disrespect that cheating shows is not easy, and is not in any way saying it's "okay".
I've dumped women over once.... Screw that. I'm not that open-minded or forgiveness oriented.
You might feel differently if you weren't just dumping a girlfriend, but rather divorcing a wife and mother of your kids who you fully intended to spend the rest of time with and otherwise love with all your heart.
Or not. Maybe that's what you meant by 'dumped'. That's fine. But not everyone feels that way. Some people really do feel it's worth giving someone they love the chance to re-earn the lost trust and to show that they have changed.
And I can readily sympathize. But once the event repeats, and they demonstrate that they aren't going to change and once again violate trust before it is even re-earned, then it becomes quite hard to justify.
That clause doesn't necessarily mean symbolic, and it was a clause describing what wasn't done.
And really, you weren't trying to be pedantic when you said that "To be honest, it's not even integration in a formal sense"? Because that's pretty much a classic example of pedantry.
It also happens to be wrong. And now you're mad at me about it. Good for you. *fap fap fap*
To apply the rule for a polynomial term - "add one to the exponent of x, then divide by the new exponent",
Of course if you're talking about a numerical approximation to an integral it's different. But that isn't what rve said.
What rve said is irrelevant.
Before that rule existed, before the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus existed, "Tai's Method" was the way integration was done. And of course "Tai's Method" taken to the limit of zero-width trapezoids was fundamental to proving the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
Of course with non-zero width trapezoids it is merely an approximation... for a continuous function. For a function defined by discreet data points, and assuming you're linearly interpolating between data points, then this is as good as it gets.
Either way, the point is, this is anything but new or novel. It is how integrals were calculated literally hundreds of years ago, and it was never forgotten, at least not by anyone who took and remembers Calc I.
The whole idea of the "invisible hand" is that you don't need to inform them of why you aren't buying their product. Just as the Hawk doesn't have to tell the well camuflaged rodents why it eats them less than the bright orange ones. They will "get the message" - via the ones doing the "bad" thing going out of business/being eaten.
Of course you need a free market to start with.
And many 'generations'.. The camouflage did not evolve over night. Many rodents had to be born, and either be eaten or not for the genes to arise and dominate. And that's with direct and near instant feedback regarding their error -- one hawk to see them and catch them is all it takes. How many iterations of channels arising and then going out of business is it going to take for the "invisible hand" to actually fix this problem?
And it needs to be a significant selective pressure. How long will it take for a television channel to go out of business as a consequence of having too loud commercials? How likely is it that loud vs quiet commercials, and not say their type and quality of programming or any of the other factors that go into a channel, are going to dominate as a survival attribute?
And lastly it needs randomness. The rodent only evolved camouflage because random changes caused some to have a harder-to-see coat, and then they survived. That's the only reason why the rodent doesn't need to 'know' camouflage is what saved it -- because the rodent isn't choosing what genes to express. But television stations are not created at random. When people get together and decide to create one, they are going to make a conscious decision as to how that station will be run, so unless they know that loud commercials are causing other stations to fail, they won't decide to randomly allow only quiet ones.
So aside from completely missing two critical components that prevent the entire evolutionary methodology from working, and even if they were present it still taking many years to fix this, yeah, the "invisible hand" is amazing!
There are truly many situations where it works and works great. There are, however, many situations where the invisible hand is not effective, or at best can be said that it would probably be effective on evolutionary time scales. Which I do not consider to be a ringing endorsement.
How about adding 'Economic Responsibility, Saving and Budgeting' to our Elementary school's course curriculum? This would go a whole lot farther than a wallet that sends and electric shock every time you overdraw your account with a $5 latte.
LOL.
My elementary school had one. So did my Junior High.
Let's see if it worked. Are people my age generally thrifty and not up to their arsenecks in debt? Um... NOPE!
Perhaps, but I believe a few fishermen were actually helping to give out the free food.
"This sucks. Why are we handing out fish copies for free, again?" "I'm telling you, Isaac, it's great advertising! We hand out the fish, everyone loves them, and tomorrow once this Jesus guy is gone they'll want more. And they'll come to us!" "But we could be selling these fish, Jeremiah! Look at all the money we're losing." "We're not losing anything. We didn't have to catch these fish, and the whole point is these people were too poor to buy their own food anyway." "Oh, okay, so let me see if I have this straight: Today, they're too poor to buy fish, but tomorrow, they're magically going to have the money to pay for our fish? Is Jesus handing out coins too?" "..."
So does the production of regular cars, especially in transportation energy. The battery pack adds more (assuming it's a hybrid that also requires a traditional lead-acid battery), but that delta is easily made up for and then some by the advantages of centralized energy generation and pollution controls.
A "web log" is the log kept by a web server. It may also mean something else to other people, but IMNSHO that meaning is incorrect when applied in the context of a web service.
There are actually two different contexts with two different meanings. A "web log" is the log of accesses the web server keeps in the context of the mechanisms behind the service, as you say. A "web log" is a journal available via the web when talking about the content a service provides.
Livejournal is a website where users write web logs.
Livejournal's servers keep web logs so they can track what happens to the server.
Both usages are correct, in their particular contexts. Only one is abbreviated "blog" though. And the other would be better said just "logs" or "[relevant service, like apache or mysql] log" IMO, but that's fine, your usage is still correct.
The really funny part though is that no matter what you decide to call Slashdot, it is definitely not a web server's access logs. So when you decided to defend your opinion on the proper meaning of "web log", you were actually making a geeky and frankly pretty terrible pun. I don't know if you're just playing the straight man or not, but either way I like it.:)
The electricity has to come from somewhere, and the same tree huggers who like to see these 'friendly' vehicles are also the same tree huggers demanding that the filthy smoke belching evil coal burning plants be closed - with no real viable alternative methods of producing electricity for their electric cars.
Um, yes, because coal plants are nasty too. The awesome thing about electric cars is that you can have them powered by coal today for a modest improvement in environmental damage, and then if the coal plant is replaced with something better, then your car automagically becomes "greener". Without having to replace the entire vehicle fleet again.
And sure some tree huggers are against them, but this tree hugger thinks fission is a very viable method of producing electricity.
But even in the meantime, electric cars are better. And the tree huggers do not have the power to shut down coal plants if there is nothing to replace them. So I'm not sure why you're worried.
If you spend $1,000,000,000 developing a product that you sell for $50k then you will make a loss to start with - no matter what.
That's not what this is about. This is not about fixed or one-time costs. This is about gross margins on each item sold. That means the delta between what you can sell a given instance of the product for, and what it cost to make that particular instance above and beyond any expenses already incurred.
If you spend $1bil to develop a product and tool the factor etc, then prior to making or selling any product you are $1bil in the red. You have lost this amount of money even if you never sell a single product. So this cost alone cannot be used to say that you lose money on every item sold.
If, in addition to those costs, building an instance of the product costs $40k in labor, materials, and energy and you sell it for $50k, then you have a gross margin of $10k, and after the sale your total balance for the project is $999,990,000. You have made $10k on the sale. Sell enough product at this margin, and you'll eventually pay off the R&D expenses and the project as a whole will be in the black.
If, on the other hand, it costs $60k to build that product and you sell it for $50k, then your gross margin is $-10k, and your balance after the sale is $1,000,010,000. You have lost $10k on the sale. Every product you sell is actually costing you more money, not making you money. Unless costs are cut or prices raised, you can never pay back the expenses, because every sale simply costs you more money.
That is what it means to say "GM loses money on every Volt built".
However, TFA itself seems to be slightly confused on this distinction, and does not provide any link to the actual alleged quote. If Doug Park actually said that they are going to lose money on every Volt sold, then the 'gross margin' sense is what he meant. If he said that they don't expect the Volt (as in the project) to be profitable for several years, then that most likely means they are selling the Volt for a profit and hope to make back their expenses in several years.
Yeah. He's correct that 'blog' is short for 'web log', but completely wrong in thinking 'web log' means the logs a web server keeps, in this context. A "blog" is not a log of web accesses, it's a log (as in a journal) on the web.
what in the world makes them think that random chance would be identical everywhere else in the universe? That assertion is just plain silly.
Okay, wow.
So, because you think it's possible that life on other planets could use vastly different biochemistry, you're not amazed to actually find proof that alternative biochemistries do in fact exist.
I guess because you presumably believe that life on other planets could exist, you wouldn't find it even remotely "amazing" to find actual extraterrestrial life. "*yawn* I expected this to happen."
FYI, they aren't assuming life everywhere must be exactly like ours. They are reasoning, correctly, that there is only a limited range of biochemistries known to be possible, and it only makes sense to start from there.
You can't validly say "I'm not going to assume arsenic-based life is impossible, therefore I can presume it is possible and exists." If you weren't making assumptions, then this would be something very new, and it would be amazing to you.
Random chance is just that....random. In regards to natural selection: nature would be vastly different in different places in the universe.
Random chance could bring some strange chemicals together on a planet with a 400 degree surface temperature, and "natural selection" could leave the life eventually looking a lot like mobile, or immobile, rocks feeding off chemicals floating around in the air.
What occurs is random, what actually works, and thus survives, is not. "Random chance" cannot make any arbitrary combination of chemicals become life. Yes there are certainly going to be more combinations that do work beyond what we currently know. And yet that observation, while correct, is not enough to say that a specific combination does. So... you should be amazed that we actually found one. Unless you'd just already assumed it to be true without evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't they also find more stars in galaxies recently, even lowing their dependence on "dark matter".
Well it means that we found a bunch of the 'normal' dark matter, as was expected to eventually happen, so in that sense yes we have less dependence on dark matter because some of it was only 'dark' as in 'unseen'.
For the "weird" dark matter, WIMPs or whatever this theory predicts, there are separate predictions on the amount of that which should exist. There were discrepancies in this prediction, though, in particular with elliptical galaxies where the observable mass and the estimated dark matter didn't add up to the observed gravity. Since it was in elliptical galaxies that all the extra stars were found, this will probably end up strengthening the dependence on dark matter.
Yes, it's because it doesn't emit (except for the Hawking radiation) but it's still a name of ignorance: the existance of the singularity proofs Einstein's general relativity as wrong but we still lack a better theory to substitute it.
Actually it's the opposite.
The existence of singularities was a major prediction of General Relativity, and the source of much skepticism towards the theory. People didn't believe a thing like that could exist in our universe. The discovery of Black Holes with many of the predicted properties was (more) proof that GR was a damn good theory.
Not that we don't need a better theory to address known flaws, or that you couldn't in some way say Black Hole is a 'name of ignorance'. Certainly, there is a lot we don't know about them. If there is any problem with relativity wrt black holes, it's that since we can't look past the event horizon, we can't tell if there really exists a mathematical discontinuity in the universe or if something else is happening.
They don't mean testable as in "the theory makes predictions that could hypothetically be distinguished via experiment" in this case. They mean in the sense of "we may be able to test it", like with existing technology.
The location of birth matters because it's tied to the requirements for the office of President.
It's not tied as in mandatory. It is a sufficient but not necessary condition.
Interestingly, doesn't McCain fail that one as well by being born in Panama? Note: Specifically not in military base i Panama, because a US military base is considered US soil.
No, because he specifically was born on a military base.
The real question is what defines "natural born"?
A natural born citizen is anyone who is a citizen as a fact of birth. If you are born on U.S. soil, or the child of a U.S. citizen, then that fact makes you a citizen. You are a natural born citizen.
Well, I think it's safe to assume they have limited ammo, and if they don't have a cool yellow-black interface that counts down in dramatic fashion then they damn well should.
And personally I think it'd be really useful to be able to switch off the image recognition and instead go into a "kill anything that moves" mode, just in case the thing you're trying to kill isn't human.
Sociopathy does not work in the long term. It provides short term gain and hence it is the fashion of the day.
In the long term not having empathy is a fatal flaw for a manager. If a manager does not have empathy he does not know how far to turn the screws before the workforce revolts. So he turns them too tight and the team fails to deliver, leaves or outright revolts and tries to lynch mob the management.
Does this work long enough for the manager to become filthy rich?
Does the inevitable failure of this model prevent the manager from finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew? Or prevent them from leaving before the chickens come home to roost, finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew?
We engineers and other practical-minded people often take to broad a view when discussing what "works", considering things like the long-term health of the company etc. This is why we are often caught off guard by the seemingly irrational actions of sociopaths that when considered from the viewpoint of who the sociopath actually cares about -- themselves and themselves alone -- the strategy is almost entirely upside.
World of Diablo. Heh.
They can't make that right off, though. Diablo is too MMO-ish. They first need to make Diablocraft, the RTS. Then they can make the MMO based on the RTS, World of Diablocraft.
I suppose in the grand scheme of the huge number of species out there you could say "one of the few", but on the other hand there are many species that do practice monogamy.
I'd say our problem isn't being out on a limb with this whole "monogamy" concept in the first place. I think it is more that monogamy as such is not hard-wired but is a social contract. Our primate relatives and thus presumably common ancestors, like us, do form strong pair bonds, but also readily engage in the illicit hanky-panky.
We -- and this gene -- evolved in a welfare-free environment. So you might want to check your assumptions that "irresponsible virility" is only a survival trait in this "historically unique" environment, and the assumption that once the environment changes, we'd be worse off for having everyone who had at some point been on welfare in the gene pool.
Why do so many people say that? In essence you're saying once is okay.
No, they're saying once is within the realm of reason to forgive someone that you really love and want to stay with.
They aren't saying cheating once is acceptable, they are saying forgiving once is acceptable. As in, they can accept someone forgiving their SO for cheating, once. And forgiving the great disrespect that cheating shows is not easy, and is not in any way saying it's "okay".
I've dumped women over once.... Screw that. I'm not that open-minded or forgiveness oriented.
You might feel differently if you weren't just dumping a girlfriend, but rather divorcing a wife and mother of your kids who you fully intended to spend the rest of time with and otherwise love with all your heart.
Or not. Maybe that's what you meant by 'dumped'. That's fine. But not everyone feels that way. Some people really do feel it's worth giving someone they love the chance to re-earn the lost trust and to show that they have changed.
And I can readily sympathize. But once the event repeats, and they demonstrate that they aren't going to change and once again violate trust before it is even re-earned, then it becomes quite hard to justify.
That clause doesn't necessarily mean symbolic, and it was a clause describing what wasn't done.
And really, you weren't trying to be pedantic when you said that "To be honest, it's not even integration in a formal sense"? Because that's pretty much a classic example of pedantry.
It also happens to be wrong. And now you're mad at me about it. Good for you. *fap fap fap*
Maybe the GP didn't care to type the word 'numeric', since it is obvious.
Never underestimate a /.ers ability to fail to note the obvious when they are trying to be pedantic.
To apply the rule for a polynomial term - "add one to the exponent of x, then divide by the new exponent",
Of course if you're talking about a numerical approximation to an integral it's different. But that isn't what rve said.
What rve said is irrelevant.
Before that rule existed, before the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus existed, "Tai's Method" was the way integration was done. And of course "Tai's Method" taken to the limit of zero-width trapezoids was fundamental to proving the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
Of course with non-zero width trapezoids it is merely an approximation... for a continuous function. For a function defined by discreet data points, and assuming you're linearly interpolating between data points, then this is as good as it gets.
Either way, the point is, this is anything but new or novel. It is how integrals were calculated literally hundreds of years ago, and it was never forgotten, at least not by anyone who took and remembers Calc I.
Heh. Okay, I'm going to start holding my breath... now.
The whole idea of the "invisible hand" is that you don't need to inform them of why you aren't buying their product. Just as the Hawk doesn't have to tell the well camuflaged rodents why it eats them less than the bright orange ones. They will "get the message" - via the ones doing the "bad" thing going out of business/being eaten.
Of course you need a free market to start with.
And many 'generations'.. The camouflage did not evolve over night. Many rodents had to be born, and either be eaten or not for the genes to arise and dominate. And that's with direct and near instant feedback regarding their error -- one hawk to see them and catch them is all it takes. How many iterations of channels arising and then going out of business is it going to take for the "invisible hand" to actually fix this problem?
And it needs to be a significant selective pressure. How long will it take for a television channel to go out of business as a consequence of having too loud commercials? How likely is it that loud vs quiet commercials, and not say their type and quality of programming or any of the other factors that go into a channel, are going to dominate as a survival attribute?
And lastly it needs randomness. The rodent only evolved camouflage because random changes caused some to have a harder-to-see coat, and then they survived. That's the only reason why the rodent doesn't need to 'know' camouflage is what saved it -- because the rodent isn't choosing what genes to express. But television stations are not created at random. When people get together and decide to create one, they are going to make a conscious decision as to how that station will be run, so unless they know that loud commercials are causing other stations to fail, they won't decide to randomly allow only quiet ones.
So aside from completely missing two critical components that prevent the entire evolutionary methodology from working, and even if they were present it still taking many years to fix this, yeah, the "invisible hand" is amazing!
There are truly many situations where it works and works great. There are, however, many situations where the invisible hand is not effective, or at best can be said that it would probably be effective on evolutionary time scales. Which I do not consider to be a ringing endorsement.
How about adding 'Economic Responsibility, Saving and Budgeting' to our Elementary school's course curriculum?
This would go a whole lot farther than a wallet that sends and electric shock every time you overdraw your account with a $5 latte.
LOL.
My elementary school had one. So did my Junior High.
Let's see if it worked. Are people my age generally thrifty and not up to their arsenecks in debt? Um... NOPE!
Perhaps, but I believe a few fishermen were actually helping to give out the free food.
"This sucks. Why are we handing out fish copies for free, again?"
"I'm telling you, Isaac, it's great advertising! We hand out the fish, everyone loves them, and tomorrow once this Jesus guy is gone they'll want more. And they'll come to us!"
"But we could be selling these fish, Jeremiah! Look at all the money we're losing."
"We're not losing anything. We didn't have to catch these fish, and the whole point is these people were too poor to buy their own food anyway."
"Oh, okay, so let me see if I have this straight: Today, they're too poor to buy fish, but tomorrow, they're magically going to have the money to pay for our fish? Is Jesus handing out coins too?"
"..."
So does the production of regular cars, especially in transportation energy. The battery pack adds more (assuming it's a hybrid that also requires a traditional lead-acid battery), but that delta is easily made up for and then some by the advantages of centralized energy generation and pollution controls.
A "web log" is the log kept by a web server. It may also mean something else to other people, but IMNSHO that meaning is incorrect when applied in the context of a web service.
There are actually two different contexts with two different meanings. A "web log" is the log of accesses the web server keeps in the context of the mechanisms behind the service, as you say. A "web log" is a journal available via the web when talking about the content a service provides.
Livejournal is a website where users write web logs.
Livejournal's servers keep web logs so they can track what happens to the server.
Both usages are correct, in their particular contexts. Only one is abbreviated "blog" though. And the other would be better said just "logs" or "[relevant service, like apache or mysql] log" IMO, but that's fine, your usage is still correct.
The really funny part though is that no matter what you decide to call Slashdot, it is definitely not a web server's access logs. So when you decided to defend your opinion on the proper meaning of "web log", you were actually making a geeky and frankly pretty terrible pun. I don't know if you're just playing the straight man or not, but either way I like it. :)
The electricity has to come from somewhere, and the same tree huggers who like to see these 'friendly' vehicles are also the same tree huggers demanding that the filthy smoke belching evil coal burning plants be closed - with no real viable alternative methods of producing electricity for their electric cars.
Um, yes, because coal plants are nasty too. The awesome thing about electric cars is that you can have them powered by coal today for a modest improvement in environmental damage, and then if the coal plant is replaced with something better, then your car automagically becomes "greener". Without having to replace the entire vehicle fleet again.
And sure some tree huggers are against them, but this tree hugger thinks fission is a very viable method of producing electricity.
But even in the meantime, electric cars are better. And the tree huggers do not have the power to shut down coal plants if there is nothing to replace them. So I'm not sure why you're worried.
If you spend $1,000,000,000 developing a product that you sell for $50k then you will make a loss to start with - no matter what.
That's not what this is about. This is not about fixed or one-time costs. This is about gross margins on each item sold. That means the delta between what you can sell a given instance of the product for, and what it cost to make that particular instance above and beyond any expenses already incurred.
If you spend $1bil to develop a product and tool the factor etc, then prior to making or selling any product you are $1bil in the red. You have lost this amount of money even if you never sell a single product. So this cost alone cannot be used to say that you lose money on every item sold.
If, in addition to those costs, building an instance of the product costs $40k in labor, materials, and energy and you sell it for $50k, then you have a gross margin of $10k, and after the sale your total balance for the project is $999,990,000. You have made $10k on the sale. Sell enough product at this margin, and you'll eventually pay off the R&D expenses and the project as a whole will be in the black.
If, on the other hand, it costs $60k to build that product and you sell it for $50k, then your gross margin is $-10k, and your balance after the sale is $1,000,010,000. You have lost $10k on the sale. Every product you sell is actually costing you more money, not making you money. Unless costs are cut or prices raised, you can never pay back the expenses, because every sale simply costs you more money.
That is what it means to say "GM loses money on every Volt built".
However, TFA itself seems to be slightly confused on this distinction, and does not provide any link to the actual alleged quote. If Doug Park actually said that they are going to lose money on every Volt sold, then the 'gross margin' sense is what he meant. If he said that they don't expect the Volt (as in the project) to be profitable for several years, then that most likely means they are selling the Volt for a profit and hope to make back their expenses in several years.
Yeah. He's correct that 'blog' is short for 'web log', but completely wrong in thinking 'web log' means the logs a web server keeps, in this context. A "blog" is not a log of web accesses, it's a log (as in a journal) on the web.
Frankly, i don't find it even remotely "amazing."
what in the world makes them think that random chance would be identical everywhere else in the universe? That assertion is just plain silly.
Okay, wow.
So, because you think it's possible that life on other planets could use vastly different biochemistry, you're not amazed to actually find proof that alternative biochemistries do in fact exist.
I guess because you presumably believe that life on other planets could exist, you wouldn't find it even remotely "amazing" to find actual extraterrestrial life. "*yawn* I expected this to happen."
FYI, they aren't assuming life everywhere must be exactly like ours. They are reasoning, correctly, that there is only a limited range of biochemistries known to be possible, and it only makes sense to start from there.
You can't validly say "I'm not going to assume arsenic-based life is impossible, therefore I can presume it is possible and exists." If you weren't making assumptions, then this would be something very new, and it would be amazing to you.
Random chance is just that....random. In regards to natural selection: nature would be vastly different in different places in the universe.
Random chance could bring some strange chemicals together on a planet with a 400 degree surface temperature, and "natural selection" could leave the life eventually looking a lot like mobile, or immobile, rocks feeding off chemicals floating around in the air.
What occurs is random, what actually works, and thus survives, is not. "Random chance" cannot make any arbitrary combination of chemicals become life. Yes there are certainly going to be more combinations that do work beyond what we currently know. And yet that observation, while correct, is not enough to say that a specific combination does. So... you should be amazed that we actually found one. Unless you'd just already assumed it to be true without evidence.
Sounds like that toy pissed off the Toy Mafia.
Why do you think they call it freefall?
*scratches chin* Because they're Tom Petty fans?