And the "wheel" came before patent #3, which was "A method and appararatus for creating regular rectangular subdivisions of a yeast byproduct-enhanced grain based matrix."
When I first read this I was really puzzled, because I was imagining rectangular beer cans...
Actually the way the Feynman story ends is pretty funny. The government advisor who had approached him got him to sign a contract selling his three patents to the government for $1 each; all of the other scientists signed the same contract. The government actually had no intention of actually paying the scientists any money; the $1 fee was just a legal formality. But Feynman insisted on getting his $3, and eventually the advisor paid him out of his own pocket. Feynman bought treats for all of the scientists with the money, and told them how he paid for it all. So then they all went to the advisor demanding their money!
One thing to investigate when you are setting this up is your school's policies on student privacy. At my university, at least, we have to be a little careful about letting students see other students' work. I often do (low-tech) peer review sessions; I will have students read drafts of each others' papers and give comments. It is all anonymous, because in my classes I never have students put their names on any assignment or exam; I do it all my grading by the last 4 digits of their ID numbers. And it is voluntary; I do this on the day papers are due, and those who choose to participate in the peer review get an extension to make corrections. If you choose not to participate, you simply turn in your final draft that day (and leave class early!). Still, my dean told me last term that I need to start having students sign a sheet in which they formally waive their right to privacy and agree to participate in the review.
I took the article to overstate the practical significance to a certain degree, and to ignore the downide. If I read it correctly, the point is that we might be able to gain certain savant abilities by turning off parts of our brains that are responsible for other very valuable abilities. It might be really valuable to be abale to do this to yourself for a short period when you have to do certain kinds of tasks, but it is not like we would want to go through our lives wearing a headband that would keep us in this kind of state. We don't want to become autistic, just so we can be "idiot savants."
While I think there is more similarity between a lingerie store and an adult novelty store than you apparently do, the real likeness has to do with the fact that both cases involve companies claiming their trademarks are infringed by other companies with soundalike names. And the point is that the Supreme Court ruled that in such a case the company suing must meet a very high standard of proof (at least under federal law): they must show that they have actually lost some non-trivial amount of money because of the similar names. Not that they might, but that they really and truly have.
As an adult novelty store, though, they aren't that far away from the lingerie biz. In fact, this CNN story refers to them selling "wild outfits" (the mind boggles). It is not like the Delta AIrlines/Delta faucets similarity that one of the justices mentioned.
I am not a lawyer, but on the surface this case looks similar to one the Supreme Court just decided recently in which Victoria's Secret sued a sex-toy company called Victor's Secret for trademark infringement because of the soundalike name. Victoria lost---the Court held that you must present strong evidence of serious harm before you can sue for trademark infringement over a similar-sounding name. The CBS news story is here.
It says here that Swedish law currently includes a meatier fair use exception to copyright law than, say, US law; anyone can make one copy of a copyrighted work for personal use (computer software excepted). If this is right, then this new proposal is maybe even more surprising than it appears at first glance.
The philosopher Amartya Sen has argued that the best way to prevent catastrophic famine is to have freedom of expression. When the world community sees that an area is moving toward serious famine, it is able to respond in time to keep the problem from becoming too severe. But when a government hides how bad things are getting until it is too late, you have mass starvation. SARS seems to illustrate that the same may hold in the case of epidemic. If China had told the outside world about SARS earlier, then its spread could probably have been slowed. And perhaps it at least was slowed some inside China through the spread of information by SMS (if ordinary citizens knew how to respond to the information properly).
I am not a lawyer, but if you are American then one issue you may want to investigate is whether ADHD is covered as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (At least Americans in your position may want to do this.) I have read things on the web that suggest it is, and if so then this may ease some of your career concerns a little. The ADA requires employers to make reasonable efforts to accommodate people with disabilities. ADD/ADHD sufferers in universities should get with the people in the "disability" office to see what kinds of accommodations the university is able to make. Usually I have 1-3 students a term who take their exams in the disability center because they have special needs, like more time, and while the students don't always tell me what is going on, when they do it is almost always ADD/ADHD. But the university stresses to instructors that they should not work out arrangements with students themselves; it all has to go through the disability office.
There is also a special kind of dispenser that Guinness (and now some other beers) use which has a spinning disk with a number of small holes in it. That, in conjunction with the nitrogen, helps to make the small bubbles that give you the creamier texture. I homebrew too, and I just purchased (haven't even received yet) the "tap a draft" system that stores beer in a PET bottle in your friedge and dispenses it with CO2 cartridges much like you use in an air gun. You can (and I have) order N2 cartridges to use with it instead. Although I've been warned that without that special type of dispensing head, and at least 25 psi, you won't get the kind of result you do with Guinness.
Well, maybe it is. When you read the article you will see that one of the plane's selling points is greater fuel efficiency/lower operating costs. It is being aimed precisely at airlines that are being forced to become more efficient in order to stay afloat. And Boeing is expecting the first sales to be to Asian airlines anyway.
Re:Liberals and Conservatives
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 0
If you're curious about a 2 dimensional alternative, Google on the "Nolan chart." It separates out "economic" and "social" freedoms. Of course,my original point was just that for every set of political principles, you can find people who espouse those principles but aren't completely consistent about applying them.
Re:Liberals
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
But this game can be played both ways, can't it? For examnple, conservatives are all for getting government off of your back, unless:
1. You wish to use marijauna in the privacy of your own home (I don't, by the way).
2. You wish to engage in any kind of sexual activity other than hetrosexual sex between two partners in the missionary position with the lights off, in the privacy of your own home.
3. You want to control what happens inside your own body.
4. You want to send e-mail that no one except its intended recipient can read.
And so on ad nauseum.
It is probably too soon after Columbia for them to start talking publicly about this kind of project---confidence in NASA isn't exactly at a high now. Nuclear power has already been used for satellites, and there have been some scary moments when these satellites have come back down. This probe, at least, would not be designed to come back to the Earth. But while IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist), it seems like launch vehicles still have a dismaying tendency to blow up with some regularity, and if NASA scatters radioactive isotopes all over the place then that could set space exploration back decades. Oh, and kill a lot of stuff.
This all sounds right to me. I was responding to a post that said that we could take lessons from the Russians because they know how to do things more safely, however, and if your facts are right then that just suggests that their management is at least as screwed up as ours.
Are the Russians really a good model? Think of everything that was going wrong on Mir toward the end. And remember how long it took them to find the last capsule that landed? There may be a certain amount of luck in that "no fatalities" datum.
I don't think the idea would actually be to get the full amount owed from the spammers. It would be to make them owe so much that you could take everything they have. That would hopefully be enough to deter them.
Slashdot Mirror
And the "wheel" came before patent #3, which was "A method and appararatus for creating regular rectangular subdivisions of a yeast byproduct-enhanced grain based matrix." When I first read this I was really puzzled, because I was imagining rectangular beer cans...
Actually the way the Feynman story ends is pretty funny. The government advisor who had approached him got him to sign a contract selling his three patents to the government for $1 each; all of the other scientists signed the same contract. The government actually had no intention of actually paying the scientists any money; the $1 fee was just a legal formality. But Feynman insisted on getting his $3, and eventually the advisor paid him out of his own pocket. Feynman bought treats for all of the scientists with the money, and told them how he paid for it all. So then they all went to the advisor demanding their money!
One thing to investigate when you are setting this up is your school's policies on student privacy. At my university, at least, we have to be a little careful about letting students see other students' work. I often do (low-tech) peer review sessions; I will have students read drafts of each others' papers and give comments. It is all anonymous, because in my classes I never have students put their names on any assignment or exam; I do it all my grading by the last 4 digits of their ID numbers. And it is voluntary; I do this on the day papers are due, and those who choose to participate in the peer review get an extension to make corrections. If you choose not to participate, you simply turn in your final draft that day (and leave class early!). Still, my dean told me last term that I need to start having students sign a sheet in which they formally waive their right to privacy and agree to participate in the review.
This is Slashdot---you must be happy to see the OS X book.
Oh wait, it's Slashdot, you must be glad to see MY PocketPC.
I took the article to overstate the practical significance to a certain degree, and to ignore the downide. If I read it correctly, the point is that we might be able to gain certain savant abilities by turning off parts of our brains that are responsible for other very valuable abilities. It might be really valuable to be abale to do this to yourself for a short period when you have to do certain kinds of tasks, but it is not like we would want to go through our lives wearing a headband that would keep us in this kind of state. We don't want to become autistic, just so we can be "idiot savants."
While I think there is more similarity between a lingerie store and an adult novelty store than you apparently do, the real likeness has to do with the fact that both cases involve companies claiming their trademarks are infringed by other companies with soundalike names. And the point is that the Supreme Court ruled that in such a case the company suing must meet a very high standard of proof (at least under federal law): they must show that they have actually lost some non-trivial amount of money because of the similar names. Not that they might, but that they really and truly have.
As an adult novelty store, though, they aren't that far away from the lingerie biz. In fact, this CNN story refers to them selling "wild outfits" (the mind boggles). It is not like the Delta AIrlines/Delta faucets similarity that one of the justices mentioned.
I am not a lawyer, but on the surface this case looks similar to one the Supreme Court just decided recently in which Victoria's Secret sued a sex-toy company called Victor's Secret for trademark infringement because of the soundalike name. Victoria lost---the Court held that you must present strong evidence of serious harm before you can sue for trademark infringement over a similar-sounding name. The CBS news story is here.
Don't forget that CNBC is a venture between NBC and... Microsoft. Go to the CNBC page and see where you end up.
Fortunately, just this morning I received an e-mail offering me a product to help relieve that very problem. Actually, I received 27 of them.
It says here that Swedish law currently includes a meatier fair use exception to copyright law than, say, US law; anyone can make one copy of a copyrighted work for personal use (computer software excepted). If this is right, then this new proposal is maybe even more surprising than it appears at first glance.
The philosopher Amartya Sen has argued that the best way to prevent catastrophic famine is to have freedom of expression. When the world community sees that an area is moving toward serious famine, it is able to respond in time to keep the problem from becoming too severe. But when a government hides how bad things are getting until it is too late, you have mass starvation. SARS seems to illustrate that the same may hold in the case of epidemic. If China had told the outside world about SARS earlier, then its spread could probably have been slowed. And perhaps it at least was slowed some inside China through the spread of information by SMS (if ordinary citizens knew how to respond to the information properly).
I am not a lawyer, but if you are American then one issue you may want to investigate is whether ADHD is covered as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (At least Americans in your position may want to do this.) I have read things on the web that suggest it is, and if so then this may ease some of your career concerns a little. The ADA requires employers to make reasonable efforts to accommodate people with disabilities. ADD/ADHD sufferers in universities should get with the people in the "disability" office to see what kinds of accommodations the university is able to make. Usually I have 1-3 students a term who take their exams in the disability center because they have special needs, like more time, and while the students don't always tell me what is going on, when they do it is almost always ADD/ADHD. But the university stresses to instructors that they should not work out arrangements with students themselves; it all has to go through the disability office.
There is also a special kind of dispenser that Guinness (and now some other beers) use which has a spinning disk with a number of small holes in it. That, in conjunction with the nitrogen, helps to make the small bubbles that give you the creamier texture. I homebrew too, and I just purchased (haven't even received yet) the "tap a draft" system that stores beer in a PET bottle in your friedge and dispenses it with CO2 cartridges much like you use in an air gun. You can (and I have) order N2 cartridges to use with it instead. Although I've been warned that without that special type of dispensing head, and at least 25 psi, you won't get the kind of result you do with Guinness.
... that this would be a story about the worms that went into space on Columbia (and survived the tragedy).
Well, maybe it is. When you read the article you will see that one of the plane's selling points is greater fuel efficiency/lower operating costs. It is being aimed precisely at airlines that are being forced to become more efficient in order to stay afloat. And Boeing is expecting the first sales to be to Asian airlines anyway.
If you're curious about a 2 dimensional alternative, Google on the "Nolan chart." It separates out "economic" and "social" freedoms. Of course,my original point was just that for every set of political principles, you can find people who espouse those principles but aren't completely consistent about applying them.
But this game can be played both ways, can't it? For examnple, conservatives are all for getting government off of your back, unless: 1. You wish to use marijauna in the privacy of your own home (I don't, by the way). 2. You wish to engage in any kind of sexual activity other than hetrosexual sex between two partners in the missionary position with the lights off, in the privacy of your own home. 3. You want to control what happens inside your own body. 4. You want to send e-mail that no one except its intended recipient can read. And so on ad nauseum.
It is probably too soon after Columbia for them to start talking publicly about this kind of project---confidence in NASA isn't exactly at a high now. Nuclear power has already been used for satellites, and there have been some scary moments when these satellites have come back down. This probe, at least, would not be designed to come back to the Earth. But while IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist), it seems like launch vehicles still have a dismaying tendency to blow up with some regularity, and if NASA scatters radioactive isotopes all over the place then that could set space exploration back decades. Oh, and kill a lot of stuff.
This all sounds right to me. I was responding to a post that said that we could take lessons from the Russians because they know how to do things more safely, however, and if your facts are right then that just suggests that their management is at least as screwed up as ours.
Yeah, but that doesn't explain them crashing one of their capsules into it.
Are the Russians really a good model? Think of everything that was going wrong on Mir toward the end. And remember how long it took them to find the last capsule that landed? There may be a certain amount of luck in that "no fatalities" datum.
I don't think the idea would actually be to get the full amount owed from the spammers. It would be to make them owe so much that you could take everything they have. That would hopefully be enough to deter them.
... to hook a webcam up to a conventional flat screen monitor? Then you could forgo the mirror.