I passed up mod points to comment on this. Aside from the fact that this deals explicitly with commerce across state lines, which is EXACTLY what the commerce clause states it is about, very, very clearly, the claim that this is 'Taxation without representation' is such a ridiculous amount of hyperbole and ignorance that I'm shocked, and a little ashamed, that none of the 8 comments preceding this have pointed out that this is being carried through BY YOUR LEGALLY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. Unless you live in a US territory or commonwealth, then you have NO claim, at all, that this is taxation without representation. None. Zip. Zilch. If you don't like it... Either contact your ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE and make your distaste known, or vote them out next election cycle, or both. But don't for a second pretend that this is in any way connected to the sloganeering and positions of the revolutionaries during the American Revolution.
I don't know if this was intentional, but I suspect it was: '“The nice thing about mathematics is doing mathematics,” Deligne said. “The prizes come in addition.”' Ha! Math humor is the best humor.
Really? Everybody know this? I would like to think that I fall under the umbrella of 'Everybody', and I had no idea this was even a thing until this story. Hell, I even like to believe that I am relatively well informed on the topic of climate change and the climate change debate, and I hadn't seen this argument anywhere before. I always used the term 'denier' to refer to someone that denies that climate change is real, or that it could be caused by humans, or that it could be dangerous to society, DESPITE any and all facts to the contrary. A skeptic is someone who's mind can be changed with reasonable argument and evidence. A denier is someone who's mind will never really be changed, no matter what. I actually find the idea that I'm choosing to use these words because they parallel the term 'holocaust denier' ludicrous at best. Who knows, maybe I'm just not as well informed as I thought I was... but somehow, I doubt that your argument encompasses 'everyone.' If I'm thinking like this, there's a lot of other people who are thinking the same way.
The problem with this argument is that it assumes that set THEORY is intuitive, which I do not agree with. While a SET is an intuitive concept, the ZF axioms of set theory and what they imply are NOT intuitive. There may be basic operations that are more intuitive, like the union of two sets or the intersection of two sets, but that intuition is almost entirely tied to the physical manifestation of the set. As soon as you introduce the formal idea of a set, especially as an abstract construct, I believe that, just like what I said about numbers, you remove a large amount of the basic intuition behind them. While a lot of the things that happen here seem intuitive to us, I feel like that is almost solely due to the fact that we are introduced to this abstraction at such an early age, and we deal with it so much, that we internalize it. Without that exposure, I'm not so sure the abstractions of sets and numbers is totally intuitive.
Numbers are not an intuitive concept. As I've learned more and more math, I've had numerous discussions about this topic. The conclusions that tend to be reached are that sets are intuitive. A set is very intuitive, it's just a bunch of objects that are grouped together. You may not THINK of these things as sets, but that's what they are. You have a pile of apples, or a herd of sheep, or a group of hunters. Those are all sets of objects (or some philosophers would argue that there's a difference between the set and the group of physical objects, but I don't think that this ruins the intuition here). You can also label those things however you want, or not label them at all. Very intuitive. But numbers are when intuition starts to get messed up. A number can be disassociated from a concrete set, and that can make it hard to deal with, if you're not used to it. What is 1? What does it mean? What does it even mean to talk about 1 sheep, if it's completely hypothetical? There's no concrete sheep there, so what does it MEAN to be talking about 1 sheep? It's not even like you're talking about a sheep that's going to be born, or that belongs to your neighbors. This sheep is basically just imaginary. That's really a huge jump in cognition, especially when you start to consider other crazy things about numbers, like what's the biggest number, and what's a negative number, and what if you can't divide your numbers evenly. Anyways, nothing scholarly to back this up, just my experience in mathematics:)
While I don't agree with the bill at all, you should consider two things before blaming it entirely on Obama. The first is that a veto not only would have been over ridden by both houses, but would have been EASILY over ridden. There was far more votes than the necessary 2/3 in both houses, so there wouldn't have even been a fight for the over ride. The second is that vetoes often expend political capital. When an administration has high approval ratings and is well liked by their own party, they can afford to throw out a symbolic veto or two, especially if it's on a bill that is widely and wildly unpopular. However, when an administration is already under attack from all sides, NOT throwing out a veto can save, or potentially even create, some of that much needed political capital. Now, you can always make the argument that it would have raised his standing among members of the public to veto it... but I'm not so sure. Considering the other provisions of the bill, it very easily could have been turned around and painted as 'not supporting our troops.' And that's pretty much political suicide. (One of my friends mistakenly thought that I was stumping for Obama when I pointed this all out, but the fact is I'm not. You would be hard pressed to find ANY administration that would have acted differently if faced with the exact same circumstances. I don't like that this is the way that the game is played... but it is.)
The obvious difference here is that, while the Fed manipulates currencies, there is an international effect due to that manipulation, ie the price of the dollar rises or falls against other currencies. There may even be intentional manipulation to try to force an outcome, but the fact remains that value in monetary markets is NOT set by the Fed, it is set by what money market buyers believe the real value of the dollar to be. China, however, has pegged the yuan to the US dollar, and artificially lowered it's value in order to obtain a more competitive stance in international markets. It's estimated that the yuan may be undervalued by as much as 37% when compared to its actual purchasing power. And yet the US is the biggest currency manipulator? I think that's a bit of hyperbole that we're better off without.
Unfortunately, in Colorado at lest, you can't take the GED exam until you are 17. I was actually talking with someone about this the other day. Both of us are very smart students in pure math programs, ranked at the top of our class. However, both of us almost failed out of high school because it was so worthless. We both considered dropping out after freshman year and getting GEDs, then going directly to college. Unfortunately, that was not an option, and since you're there till halfway through your senior year anyways, you might as well just stay the extra semester, since spring admissions at a lot of schools don't really happen as far as I can tell.
To store data, the PCM chips switch the alloy between a crystalline and amorphous state based on the application of heat through an electrical current.
That seems like probably not a very good idea, and I'm sure it will end up being one of the major hurdles to this technology really getting off the ground. What happens when the memory is heavily used (leading to buildups of heat in the memory that could cause unintentional bit changes)? Obviously the heat used to flip the bits must be dissipated very, very quickly, and that's a pretty challenging problem in its own right. Also, what happens to system temps when you use this memory? Many systems are already difficult to keep cooled, and adding another source of heat could be a particularly bad idea. Heck, what if the increase in system temps leads to memory faults? After looking over the Wiki, the last question seems unlikely to be a problem, but heating something to >600C seems like it could make it very hard to use this tech in heavy use situations.
This is what the problem has been for me. I WANT to switch our home network over to run off IPv6 primarily and IPv4 as the secondary protocol, but I have no idea what consumer routers support IPv6, or how good that support is. It appears that our current router, a Linksys WRT610N, may support IPv6, but if it does so everything about it is invisible to the router admin. (I say it may because my ISP is Comcast, and we live in the area where Comcast has rolled out their IPv6 solutions, and I am able to reach the big IPv6 test sites. However, that may just be a 6to4 conversion.) So anyways, if I knew anything about good consumer grade solutions, I would almost certainly have set up IPv6 already... but I'm severely hampered by a seemingly total lack of information.
They must have some pretty strict rules to stop people from taking classes outside their major, as well. Otherwise I would go there with the cheapest possible major declared, and then just take the classes that I need for a more expensive major, only to change majors to my REAL intended major at the last second. I think this also implies that tuition costs on even the cheap majors are unlikely to drop, while expensive majors will only rise, otherwise everyone will just take their general requirements classes under the cheaper majors, and the school won't be making as much money.
Agree 100%. When I see all these things coming out about increased capabilities and better prosthetics and computer/brain interfaces, it makes me so excited. I mean, a lot of this tech is at the place where, in 10-15 years it's going to be BETTER than what we have now. Now, I might not go out and replace ALL my parts... but better eyes and better ears, better memory and learning capabilities... those are all things that I wouldn't even have to think about.
I would just like to point out something that I heard recently:
Most of those pensions and benefits are the results of unions bargaining in good faith with the government. Employees generally are taking those options instead of a short term pay raise, or in lieu of any raises at all. It's not like they were getting the same pay as the private sector AND these fabulous benefits. Instead they are told that there are financial difficulties or money is tight or some other excuse, and they are promised compensation LATER for lower wages NOW.
Top Gear did a really interesting segment awhile ago where they talked (a little) about Finnish drivers. One of the interesting things that they talk about is how Finland produces some of the best drivers in the world. The reason for that is that the Finns take driving very very seriously, and they basically learn to rally drive when they learn to drive. When you consider the conditions that they typically have to drive in, this makes perfect sense. So I would say yes, driving a rally car on a track makes you a better driver. Note, however, that better driver does NOT mean that you follow the law, it just means that you are better at handling your car.
For anyone interested, here's the segment in question.
Westerners believe that footage from The China Syndrome (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/) is passed off as actual working footage of the reactor. Ironically, the footage is real.
And how much of that is due to the fact that California has completely free and unencumbered trade with the rest of the US, along with the full benefit of whatever programs the federal government provides and the treaties/status that the federal government is due?
Many times these claims completely ignore that, while there are costs associated with being a part of the union, there are also massive benefits to state economies.
It can put up in-game benchmark scores between 30% and 50% faster than AMD's current flagship single-GPU, the Radeon HD 5870.
The 5970 is a dual GPU solution. TBH, it's no surprise that it's faster than a single GPU solution that is a year newer. I would expect the last gen card in a dual GPU setup (this, or SLI/Crossfire) to outperform the latest next gen card, especially when the new card is really just an iteration of the architecture used in the last gen. Nothing really surprising about it at all. And I bet you if you get two of the GTX 580's in SLI, they'll stomp the 5970. That's a bit more of an apples to apples comparison (although not 100%, since there are specific bottlenecks that tend to keep 2 GPU's on a card from performing as well as two discrete GPUs in SLI).
I've been lusting after a full copy of the OED since I was introduced to it in my Freshman year of High School. However, as a poor college student majoring in Math, I just can't justify the costs right now... However, once I'm able to, I know I will be purchasing the full set, and would almost certainly purchase the 3rd edition when it is finally ready. While I know that I'm part of a very small minority, I think my existence (as an average person, not a writer, with an education in the sciences and not language) as a soon to be customer shows that there IS a market for these in print, and that much of this market would be absolutely devastated if the OED did go online only.
Slashdot Mirror
I passed up mod points to comment on this. Aside from the fact that this deals explicitly with commerce across state lines, which is EXACTLY what the commerce clause states it is about, very, very clearly, the claim that this is 'Taxation without representation' is such a ridiculous amount of hyperbole and ignorance that I'm shocked, and a little ashamed, that none of the 8 comments preceding this have pointed out that this is being carried through BY YOUR LEGALLY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. Unless you live in a US territory or commonwealth, then you have NO claim, at all, that this is taxation without representation. None. Zip. Zilch. If you don't like it... Either contact your ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE and make your distaste known, or vote them out next election cycle, or both. But don't for a second pretend that this is in any way connected to the sloganeering and positions of the revolutionaries during the American Revolution.
I don't know about that. I often find it has the power to divide a room.
True, but you can't deny that minus the math haters, it provides several times the hilarity of boring, non-math humor!
I don't know if this was intentional, but I suspect it was: '“The nice thing about mathematics is doing mathematics,” Deligne said. “The prizes come in addition.”' Ha! Math humor is the best humor.
Really? Everybody know this? I would like to think that I fall under the umbrella of 'Everybody', and I had no idea this was even a thing until this story. Hell, I even like to believe that I am relatively well informed on the topic of climate change and the climate change debate, and I hadn't seen this argument anywhere before. I always used the term 'denier' to refer to someone that denies that climate change is real, or that it could be caused by humans, or that it could be dangerous to society, DESPITE any and all facts to the contrary. A skeptic is someone who's mind can be changed with reasonable argument and evidence. A denier is someone who's mind will never really be changed, no matter what. I actually find the idea that I'm choosing to use these words because they parallel the term 'holocaust denier' ludicrous at best. Who knows, maybe I'm just not as well informed as I thought I was... but somehow, I doubt that your argument encompasses 'everyone.' If I'm thinking like this, there's a lot of other people who are thinking the same way.
The problem with this argument is that it assumes that set THEORY is intuitive, which I do not agree with. While a SET is an intuitive concept, the ZF axioms of set theory and what they imply are NOT intuitive. There may be basic operations that are more intuitive, like the union of two sets or the intersection of two sets, but that intuition is almost entirely tied to the physical manifestation of the set. As soon as you introduce the formal idea of a set, especially as an abstract construct, I believe that, just like what I said about numbers, you remove a large amount of the basic intuition behind them. While a lot of the things that happen here seem intuitive to us, I feel like that is almost solely due to the fact that we are introduced to this abstraction at such an early age, and we deal with it so much, that we internalize it. Without that exposure, I'm not so sure the abstractions of sets and numbers is totally intuitive.
Numbers are not an intuitive concept. As I've learned more and more math, I've had numerous discussions about this topic. The conclusions that tend to be reached are that sets are intuitive. A set is very intuitive, it's just a bunch of objects that are grouped together. You may not THINK of these things as sets, but that's what they are. You have a pile of apples, or a herd of sheep, or a group of hunters. Those are all sets of objects (or some philosophers would argue that there's a difference between the set and the group of physical objects, but I don't think that this ruins the intuition here). You can also label those things however you want, or not label them at all. Very intuitive. But numbers are when intuition starts to get messed up. A number can be disassociated from a concrete set, and that can make it hard to deal with, if you're not used to it. What is 1? What does it mean? What does it even mean to talk about 1 sheep, if it's completely hypothetical? There's no concrete sheep there, so what does it MEAN to be talking about 1 sheep? It's not even like you're talking about a sheep that's going to be born, or that belongs to your neighbors. This sheep is basically just imaginary. That's really a huge jump in cognition, especially when you start to consider other crazy things about numbers, like what's the biggest number, and what's a negative number, and what if you can't divide your numbers evenly. Anyways, nothing scholarly to back this up, just my experience in mathematics :)
Posting to erase incorrectly given mod points... Sometimes I hate laptop mouse pads :
While I don't agree with the bill at all, you should consider two things before blaming it entirely on Obama. The first is that a veto not only would have been over ridden by both houses, but would have been EASILY over ridden. There was far more votes than the necessary 2/3 in both houses, so there wouldn't have even been a fight for the over ride. The second is that vetoes often expend political capital. When an administration has high approval ratings and is well liked by their own party, they can afford to throw out a symbolic veto or two, especially if it's on a bill that is widely and wildly unpopular. However, when an administration is already under attack from all sides, NOT throwing out a veto can save, or potentially even create, some of that much needed political capital. Now, you can always make the argument that it would have raised his standing among members of the public to veto it... but I'm not so sure. Considering the other provisions of the bill, it very easily could have been turned around and painted as 'not supporting our troops.' And that's pretty much political suicide. (One of my friends mistakenly thought that I was stumping for Obama when I pointed this all out, but the fact is I'm not. You would be hard pressed to find ANY administration that would have acted differently if faced with the exact same circumstances. I don't like that this is the way that the game is played... but it is.)
The obvious difference here is that, while the Fed manipulates currencies, there is an international effect due to that manipulation, ie the price of the dollar rises or falls against other currencies. There may even be intentional manipulation to try to force an outcome, but the fact remains that value in monetary markets is NOT set by the Fed, it is set by what money market buyers believe the real value of the dollar to be. China, however, has pegged the yuan to the US dollar, and artificially lowered it's value in order to obtain a more competitive stance in international markets. It's estimated that the yuan may be undervalued by as much as 37% when compared to its actual purchasing power. And yet the US is the biggest currency manipulator? I think that's a bit of hyperbole that we're better off without.
Unfortunately, in Colorado at lest, you can't take the GED exam until you are 17. I was actually talking with someone about this the other day. Both of us are very smart students in pure math programs, ranked at the top of our class. However, both of us almost failed out of high school because it was so worthless. We both considered dropping out after freshman year and getting GEDs, then going directly to college. Unfortunately, that was not an option, and since you're there till halfway through your senior year anyways, you might as well just stay the extra semester, since spring admissions at a lot of schools don't really happen as far as I can tell.
I'm sure they'll be in huge demand. At least, they'll be in demand till Apple hears about the 'iPhone-Style' touch and sues them out of existence!
To store data, the PCM chips switch the alloy between a crystalline and amorphous state based on the application of heat through an electrical current.
That seems like probably not a very good idea, and I'm sure it will end up being one of the major hurdles to this technology really getting off the ground. What happens when the memory is heavily used (leading to buildups of heat in the memory that could cause unintentional bit changes)? Obviously the heat used to flip the bits must be dissipated very, very quickly, and that's a pretty challenging problem in its own right. Also, what happens to system temps when you use this memory? Many systems are already difficult to keep cooled, and adding another source of heat could be a particularly bad idea. Heck, what if the increase in system temps leads to memory faults? After looking over the Wiki, the last question seems unlikely to be a problem, but heating something to >600C seems like it could make it very hard to use this tech in heavy use situations.
This is what the problem has been for me. I WANT to switch our home network over to run off IPv6 primarily and IPv4 as the secondary protocol, but I have no idea what consumer routers support IPv6, or how good that support is. It appears that our current router, a Linksys WRT610N, may support IPv6, but if it does so everything about it is invisible to the router admin. (I say it may because my ISP is Comcast, and we live in the area where Comcast has rolled out their IPv6 solutions, and I am able to reach the big IPv6 test sites. However, that may just be a 6to4 conversion.) So anyways, if I knew anything about good consumer grade solutions, I would almost certainly have set up IPv6 already... but I'm severely hampered by a seemingly total lack of information.
They must have some pretty strict rules to stop people from taking classes outside their major, as well. Otherwise I would go there with the cheapest possible major declared, and then just take the classes that I need for a more expensive major, only to change majors to my REAL intended major at the last second. I think this also implies that tuition costs on even the cheap majors are unlikely to drop, while expensive majors will only rise, otherwise everyone will just take their general requirements classes under the cheaper majors, and the school won't be making as much money.
Agree 100%. When I see all these things coming out about increased capabilities and better prosthetics and computer/brain interfaces, it makes me so excited. I mean, a lot of this tech is at the place where, in 10-15 years it's going to be BETTER than what we have now. Now, I might not go out and replace ALL my parts... but better eyes and better ears, better memory and learning capabilities... those are all things that I wouldn't even have to think about.
I would think that having a story posted to Slashdot is a pretty good way to go about doing that... .
I would just like to point out something that I heard recently:
Most of those pensions and benefits are the results of unions bargaining in good faith with the government. Employees generally are taking those options instead of a short term pay raise, or in lieu of any raises at all. It's not like they were getting the same pay as the private sector AND these fabulous benefits. Instead they are told that there are financial difficulties or money is tight or some other excuse, and they are promised compensation LATER for lower wages NOW.
Top Gear did a really interesting segment awhile ago where they talked (a little) about Finnish drivers. One of the interesting things that they talk about is how Finland produces some of the best drivers in the world. The reason for that is that the Finns take driving very very seriously, and they basically learn to rally drive when they learn to drive. When you consider the conditions that they typically have to drive in, this makes perfect sense. So I would say yes, driving a rally car on a track makes you a better driver. Note, however, that better driver does NOT mean that you follow the law, it just means that you are better at handling your car. For anyone interested, here's the segment in question.
Westerners believe that footage from The China Syndrome (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/) is passed off as actual working footage of the reactor. Ironically, the footage is real.
And how much of that is due to the fact that California has completely free and unencumbered trade with the rest of the US, along with the full benefit of whatever programs the federal government provides and the treaties/status that the federal government is due? Many times these claims completely ignore that, while there are costs associated with being a part of the union, there are also massive benefits to state economies.
It can put up in-game benchmark scores between 30% and 50% faster than AMD's current flagship single-GPU, the Radeon HD 5870.
The 5970 is a dual GPU solution. TBH, it's no surprise that it's faster than a single GPU solution that is a year newer. I would expect the last gen card in a dual GPU setup (this, or SLI/Crossfire) to outperform the latest next gen card, especially when the new card is really just an iteration of the architecture used in the last gen. Nothing really surprising about it at all. And I bet you if you get two of the GTX 580's in SLI, they'll stomp the 5970. That's a bit more of an apples to apples comparison (although not 100%, since there are specific bottlenecks that tend to keep 2 GPU's on a card from performing as well as two discrete GPUs in SLI).
TWO textbooks?! Do you know much those things cost? Damn man, those guys hit the jackpot. I'm so sorry for you.
Maybe it couldn't decide between learns and leers... I thought the latter was particularly suited for an internet learning machine .
This must be why we see so few 4 digiters posting anymore... they've all burned out!
I've been lusting after a full copy of the OED since I was introduced to it in my Freshman year of High School. However, as a poor college student majoring in Math, I just can't justify the costs right now... However, once I'm able to, I know I will be purchasing the full set, and would almost certainly purchase the 3rd edition when it is finally ready. While I know that I'm part of a very small minority, I think my existence (as an average person, not a writer, with an education in the sciences and not language) as a soon to be customer shows that there IS a market for these in print, and that much of this market would be absolutely devastated if the OED did go online only.