I work for an engineering / science firm that does a lot of small contracts with billable hours. Most of the technical employees manage a contract or two. We need to know hourly salaries at proposal time to bid hours and determine budgets, and if anyone charges to the contract (peers, management, etc.) the person managing the contract can determine the salary.
There's no point in building a heavy lift vehicle to build a lunar base that's going to use the water if we can't access the water. NASA is doing it right...It's a lot cheaper to send a robot to check out the water, see how easy it is to extract the water, and even return a sample to Earth than it is to send people there. And NASA would look really stupid if they get congress to fund a multi-billion dollar lunar base program only to discover that they don't have access to the water that they had counted on.
It's also known as ALAC. I don't believe that it's an option for the iTunes store, but if you own a CD and want to get it into your iDevice environment, it's a good option.
We're talking about Stephen Wolfram here. His brain is capable of filtering and analyzing an infinite amount of information. For mere mortals, your mileage may vary.
Bell Labs won a Nobel prize for the transistor for work that they did before anybody knew whether it was anything more than a cute electronics trick. I don't see anything of that level coming out of Microsoft Research.
The beauty of the old Bell Labs was that to a certain extent, basic research was OK and appreciated. I couldn't imagine any corporate lab today producing anything close to the quality and quantity of fantastic work that came out of Bell Labs. Google certainly has the resources to do it, but the big question is would the shareholders appreciate the long-term value of such an asset?
"Kissenger is a robot with highly-sensitive and motor-actuated lips, which you can use to transmit a kiss to another Kissenger."
Did anyone else get the image of making out with a robot with the appearance of Henry Kissinger? Or am I the crazy one here...
You're not crazy, you're just showing your age. Most of the people developing social media technology these days have no idea what Henry Kissinger looks or sounds like, and they totally don't get the Monty Python tune...
You have better legs than Hitler and bigger tits than Cher
Does this mean we (and whoever created our HR software) have to sue IBM? Or can we just ask for a cut when they start collecting license fees on this patent?
No. It's a valid US patent. It means that IBM can sue whoever created your HR software and get an injunction to stop its sale in the US. Whoever makes your HR software would then need to fight IBM and a team of wicked sharp lawyers in court, and convince a bunch of dumb-fucks in East Texas, who have nothing better to do for three months than sit in a jury for $12 / day, that the patent isn't valid do to prior art or obviousness.
Welcome to the giant cluster fuck that is the US patent system.
My big concern is that the world is full of dumbasses. A dumbass cop will try to force some stubborn dumbass to move. The stubborn dumbass will sit there with the beam in his eye until the damage is permanent while the dumbass cop will keeps on pointing the beam. I believe that the technical term for this phenomenon is dumbass positive feedback.
Unless the laser is a tightly focused dot(in which case it won't be much use against a crowd) its intensity will vary rapidly with distance. In order to not be a complete toy at operationally useful ranges, it will very likely be downright dangerous at closer ones. Luckily, cops are technical experts and models of restraint, so that won't prove to be a problem.
The parent is technically wrong. The parent doesn't understand Gaussian beams. If a laser is tightly focused, the far-field divergence is large. The larger the focus, the less the divergence. A visible beam collimated to 5 cm diameter or so will stay collimated for over a kilometer.
That's the roadmap summary. Here's the detailed roadmap:
1. Adopt a plan. 2. Make the plan more ambitious at the insistence of the President and Congress. 3. Receive 30% of the required funding from congress, 25% of which is non mission-critical pork. 4. Overrun lowball funding by a factor of 3. 5. Congress cuts off funding before real accomplishments can be met. 6. Repeat
It has nothing to do with climate change. Satellites in Earth orbit that study climate change can get plenty of power from solar panels and will eventually de-orbit. Nobody wants to release Pu when these satellites de-orbit. The Pu is reserved for missions to the outer planets where there is not enough sunlight to power the spacecraft.
I agree with your premise that China would hurt itself as much as it hurts us if they try to screw with their T-bond holdings. A default would be extreme. If the Chinese wanted to "teach us a lesson" they could dump a bunch of treasuries on the market. This would cause bond prices to go down, interest rates to go up, and if they dumped enough bonds, the dollar would also drop. In order for them to really make a painful impact, they would need to sell a lot of bonds into a market that's already depressed by previous sales, causing them to loose a lot of money. Furthermore, they wouldn't benefit from the higher interest rates since they wouldn't be holding near as many T-bonds. Finally, their economy is driven by cheap exports. If the dollar tanks, their economy goes down the tubes.
The only scenario where we come close to a default is armed conflict. In that case, we would probably pay interest into an escrow account in order to provide leverage for eventual peace negotiations and secure our credit rating.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like the USPO.
I work for an engineering / science firm that does a lot of small contracts with billable hours. Most of the technical employees manage a contract or two. We need to know hourly salaries at proposal time to bid hours and determine budgets, and if anyone charges to the contract (peers, management, etc.) the person managing the contract can determine the salary.
after first thinking the article was about Romulan fortune tellers.
There's no point in building a heavy lift vehicle to build a lunar base that's going to use the water if we can't access the water. NASA is doing it right...It's a lot cheaper to send a robot to check out the water, see how easy it is to extract the water, and even return a sample to Earth than it is to send people there. And NASA would look really stupid if they get congress to fund a multi-billion dollar lunar base program only to discover that they don't have access to the water that they had counted on.
...but I'm sure it costs a bit more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ
By the way, we saw it first in Aliens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU
It's also known as ALAC. I don't believe that it's an option for the iTunes store, but if you own a CD and want to get it into your iDevice environment, it's a good option.
299,792,458 m /s. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
We're talking about Stephen Wolfram here. His brain is capable of filtering and analyzing an infinite amount of information. For mere mortals, your mileage may vary.
So do I
...try to get the kids to give us their money and twits too.
OMG! Unicorns!!! should get the job done.
need to work together. That's why we don't see obstruction prosecutions.
Bell Labs won a Nobel prize for the transistor for work that they did before anybody knew whether it was anything more than a cute electronics trick. I don't see anything of that level coming out of Microsoft Research.
The beauty of the old Bell Labs was that to a certain extent, basic research was OK and appreciated. I couldn't imagine any corporate lab today producing anything close to the quality and quantity of fantastic work that came out of Bell Labs. Google certainly has the resources to do it, but the big question is would the shareholders appreciate the long-term value of such an asset?
"Kissenger is a robot with highly-sensitive and motor-actuated lips, which you can use to transmit a kiss to another Kissenger."
Did anyone else get the image of making out with a robot with the appearance of Henry Kissinger? Or am I the crazy one here...
You're not crazy, you're just showing your age. Most of the people developing social media technology these days have no idea what Henry Kissinger looks or sounds like, and they totally don't get the Monty Python tune...
You have better legs than Hitler and bigger tits than Cher
I'm sorry, but pendantic flair is an example of an oxymoron, not irony.
Does this mean we (and whoever created our HR software) have to sue IBM? Or can we just ask for a cut when they start collecting license fees on this patent?
No. It's a valid US patent.
It means that IBM can sue whoever created your HR software and get an injunction to stop its sale in the US. Whoever makes your HR software would then need to fight IBM and a team of wicked sharp lawyers in court, and convince a bunch of dumb-fucks in East Texas, who have nothing better to do for three months than sit in a jury for $12 / day, that the patent isn't valid do to prior art or obviousness.
Welcome to the giant cluster fuck that is the US patent system.
OMG! It's just like Firefox!
And it makes our women AWESOME.
Not sure about awesome, but definitely scary. Case in point, Michele Bachmann.
My big concern is that the world is full of dumbasses. A dumbass cop will try to force some stubborn dumbass to move. The stubborn dumbass will sit there with the beam in his eye until the damage is permanent while the dumbass cop will keeps on pointing the beam. I believe that the technical term for this phenomenon is dumbass positive feedback.
Unless the laser is a tightly focused dot(in which case it won't be much use against a crowd) its intensity will vary rapidly with distance. In order to not be a complete toy at operationally useful ranges, it will very likely be downright dangerous at closer ones. Luckily, cops are technical experts and models of restraint, so that won't prove to be a problem.
The parent is technically wrong. The parent doesn't understand Gaussian beams. If a laser is tightly focused, the far-field divergence is large. The larger the focus, the less the divergence. A visible beam collimated to 5 cm diameter or so will stay collimated for over a kilometer.
That's the roadmap summary. Here's the detailed roadmap:
1. Adopt a plan.
2. Make the plan more ambitious at the insistence of the President and Congress.
3. Receive 30% of the required funding from congress, 25% of which is non mission-critical pork.
4. Overrun lowball funding by a factor of 3.
5. Congress cuts off funding before real accomplishments can be met.
6. Repeat
So they stole the plans from PG&E?
It has nothing to do with climate change. Satellites in Earth orbit that study climate change can get plenty of power from solar panels and will eventually de-orbit. Nobody wants to release Pu when these satellites de-orbit. The Pu is reserved for missions to the outer planets where there is not enough sunlight to power the spacecraft.
The summary clearly states that the power is generated by theoretical shoe inserts. Therefore one only need to walk in theory to generate power.
I agree with your premise that China would hurt itself as much as it hurts us if they try to screw with their T-bond holdings. A default would be extreme. If the Chinese wanted to "teach us a lesson" they could dump a bunch of treasuries on the market. This would cause bond prices to go down, interest rates to go up, and if they dumped enough bonds, the dollar would also drop. In order for them to really make a painful impact, they would need to sell a lot of bonds into a market that's already depressed by previous sales, causing them to loose a lot of money. Furthermore, they wouldn't benefit from the higher interest rates since they wouldn't be holding near as many T-bonds. Finally, their economy is driven by cheap exports. If the dollar tanks, their economy goes down the tubes.
The only scenario where we come close to a default is armed conflict. In that case, we would probably pay interest into an escrow account in order to provide leverage for eventual peace negotiations and secure our credit rating.