Likewise, the GEM windowing system was stable, faster, more visually appealing, and just as capable as Windows 1.0. The PC version of GEM came with Ventura Publisher (Xerox) or it could be purchased from Digital Research. GEM also ran on Atari and other platforms.
Definitely not "simple." As grossly inefficient as it is, the system is not permitted to go down for a week or two for upgrades. Laws REQUIRE certain procedures to be followed (no "let's just skip that check because it's not economical"). Other laws may REQUIRE that certain procedure steps be done in a certain way (physical signatures, work to be done in a particular location chosen by a once-powerful Senator, etc). Yet other laws REQUIRE use of certain software (originally intended to force efficiency on some part of the process).
So the technological solution needs to be paired with a legislative overhaul.
Now let's say someone crafts a perfect law which would make the process better for everyone. Every congressman wants to vote for it. So then somebody will attach an amendment about a bridge, and somebody else will insert a gun control measure. Because everybody likes this law, right? And the whole process grinds to a halt.
There's a critical shortage of nuclear engineers. Very few engineers have joined the industry in recent decades, and those who joined during the industry's heyday are retiring.
Schools including MIT are spinning up their programs, but however talented the students, they'll be inexperienced. These fine young men and women may know how to optimize a reaction, but will they know that valve X in location Y needs to be easily replaceable because it tends to corrode after 5 years? Do you want the plant in your town to be designed by a recent grad? Likewise, even the experienced engineers have been maintaining old plants, not designing new ones using the latest technology.
Add in time for siting battles and regulatory approvals, and I wouldn't expect to see too many new plants open until 10-20 years from now.
Cheaters, lazy bums that they are, tend to do everything together, including shopping and walking to class. Hence the old teacher's trick: require hardcopies to be placed in folders or envelopes and turned in via a drop box. 90% of the time, the cheaters' assignments will be turned in together, one right on top of the other, using identical folders/envelopes. Just be careful not to shuffle the pile when grading. A clever prof can probably figure out an equivalent scheme for the virtual classroom.
The surprising dark side of automatic failure/expulsion: it can discourage the institution from investigating accusations of widespread cheating.
True story 1: TA'ing at an institution with a mandatory-failure policy, I noticed two students copying each others' assignments. Thing was, they were mid-career professionals married to one another. What to do?
True story 2: Friends taking an "introduction to computers for business majors" class came to me for tutoring. The assignments were something like "Week 1: Write a gradebook program using file I/O and arrays; Week 2: Write a solitaire game using linked lists; Week 3: Write a tree sort using recursion; Week 4: Add a column of 5 numbers using Excel." Remember, this was for folks who were at the "What is a text file and why would I want to save one?" stage (as evidenced by the Week 4 assignment)! The assignments were identical from semester to semester, and the majority of students--especially the Greeks--were getting A's on these assignments.
It was obvious to me that there was only one way for students to succeed in the course: widespread cheating. Visiting the computer lab, it was easy to visually observe the cheating. So I went to the dean. Accepting my story would have meant a big investigation and ultimately the automatic expulsion of a large fraction of the student body, so I was abruptly informed that they would not tolerate baseless allegations of "such a serious nature." Action would be taken only if I could supply incontrovertible proof, including specific names and dates, and only if I would personally testify against each accused student at the hearings. (They did, however, change the assignments the next semester.)
Most math, physics, and engineering textbooks leave important equations as an "exercise for the reader." The tradition is surprisingly pervasive--I've had to search through as many as a dozen books trying to find certain formulae. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to find key information if one hasn't taken notes in class, or when coming back to the text for reference or review.
Plea to instructors and department chairs: Please choose textbooks that can serve as reference resources to your students as they study and after graduation. Plea to authors and publishers: Please include all of the central equations, and use formatting to make it clear which equations are "universal" and which are example or special-case equations.
Maybe CARB's action will encourage cell phone manufacturers to start including antenna plugs again (and thus resulting in great jubilation among farmers and other rural dwellers).
When I was phone shopping last week, Verizon carried only two phones with external antenna connectors, and I didn't see either of them at the VZW retail store. And that's for the company with the best rural coverage around here.
More precisely, Nielsen's audience is the decision-makers in the boardrooms of the advertisers. Nielsen, along with other companies, have been experimenting with better audience measurement methods for decades. Nielsen has shelves full of people-meters and other tools which measure who is ACTUALLY in the room and what channel the TV is ACTUALLY tuned to. I've had such devices in my house. But these better methods have been consistently rejected by the advertisers. The person running an ad campaign needs a simple number they can shove in front of a PHB to show that they're earning their salary. Complex stats that ultimately show that people change the channel when ads come on, or that the TV is just on as background noise, don't serve that purpose.
Madison Avenue would have us believe that high-sodium, high-fat chips are an "inexpensive food." Mom would argue that a baked potato is even less expensive and much more nutritious. Grandpa would argue that a home-grown potato is even less expensive than that.
Home-made pizza may be more expensive than cheap frozen pizza, but some canned vegetables from the food bank, day-old bread, and peanut butter is cheaper than either. It boils down to being willing to plan menus to maximize nutritional value rather than tastiness. And a good cook can achieve both.
Since becoming unemployed (physicist/computer scientist/linguist/tech writer for hire!), I've been eating quite well on $2/day. It's only when I go out that I've eaten expensive (healthy or unhealthy) food.
Due to the correlation between low income and poor education, it is unfortunately true that healthy food can be hard to obtain in some low-income areas of the US. But healthy food is not necessarily expensive.
"You can walk on it" is an understatement. If this is the same stuff I've seen being tested at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they had rolls laid down the main hallways. Boots, high heels, kindergartners, you name it--it kept on working. Outdoors, they were shooting it with shotguns and driving over it. They were seriously contemplating the possibility of harnessing the surface area not only of roofs, but of ROADS to generate electricity.
One network which does have global coverage is Al Jazeera. Surprisingly, their coverage is pretty well balanced (except that Western officials refuse to be interviewed by them).
Of course, the best chair is whatever fits him best.
The more adjustments the better. Many highly-adjustable "ergonomic" chairs lack the ability to remove the arm rests. For coding, it's nice to be able to cozy the chair up under the table or keyboard tray, and arms interfere with that. Arms can also invite leaning, which puts pressure on nerves in the arm.
See if you can find out how reliable the height-adjustment piston is. That's usually the first thing to give out.
Using social networks to filter or rank search results is an idea truly worth exploring. But TFA refers to a push model where we don't even conduct searches.
The Faceboogle concept assumes that I want to search just for those things which already match my existing online footprint.
When I search, however, it's usually because I want to find information on something NEW.
Can it possibly be true that most searching is just for the same old topics--teenagers looking for the latest gossip on their favorite celebrity? Perhaps. But that sure doesn't describe how I--and most of the folks I know--use search.
The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices Section 4D.10 specifies "The duration of a yellow change interval shall be predetermined.
Guidance:
A yellow change interval should have a duration of approximately 3 to 6
seconds. The longer intervals
should be reserved for use on approaches with higher speeds."
Meanwhile, there's http://emergencyeamil.org/, which is opt-in. It works pretty well, though they've been slow to update their warning zones when the government (NWS, actually) shifts the boundaries around. They're a public-private partnership, and a significant percentage of states and counties in the U.S. are already signed up.
During peak hours, sometimes I've had emergency warning text messages delayed by over 10 minutes.
If the cellular infrastructure is tweaked for the new system, it'll be a good thing: emergency messages can be broadcast to everyone at once, and with a high priority.
The jamming will also easily be defeated by an entirely new branch of coding theory using the BBC algorithm (http://crisp.cs.du.edu/frisc/baird.pdf). Error correction is distributed throughout the data stream, so even if the jammer completely obliterates parts of the signal--to the point that the original signal is unintelligible--the coded message will still get through.
This coding theory is handy for all sorts of stuff, from military comms to cell phones to MIMO access points. And unlike most crypto stuff, it's rather simple to understand and implement.
The following press release is available on Sequoia's web site. How thorough are the hand-picked "independent" reviewers they claim to use?
Sequoia Voting Systems supports third party reviews and testing of its election equipment
March 18, 2008 (DENVER, CO) - In response to some recent media reports, Sequoia is issuing this statement to educate individuals on the third party review mechanisms already in place in the election industry as well as our company's business practices regarding third party reviews and testing of its election equipment.
Sequoia Voting Systems is committed to maintaining voter confidence in the electoral process. Our company is dedicated to working with our customers in this regard and has done so over our century of serving state and local election jurisdictions throughout the United States.
Sequoia's products - and those of all election equipment manufacturers - go through a complete and independent review as part of the Election Assistance Commission's (EAC's) federal voting system certification process including rigorous testing and a line-by-line review of the voting system's source code by EAC accredited Voting System Test Labs (VSTLs).
Prior to the EAC's certification program which was initiated in 2007, voting systems were qualified at a federal level by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) after testing by NASED-approved Independent Test Labs (ITAs). The ITAs also performed a line-by-line review of voting system source code.
In addition to the federal certification program, individual states have their own state certification programs which vary state-by-state but most often entail additional testing and review by qualified third party experts. Many states also require voting system manufacturers to submit their source code to be kept in escrow, should there be a need to access this code by the state in the case of some type of unanticipated situation or problem.
Sequoia also voluntarily submits its voting system source code to the National Software Reference Library (NSRL) which operates under the umbrella of the federal government's National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). The purpose of this is so that Sequoia customers can check the hash codes of their product, as installed, against the certified copies at the NSRL.
Additional independent reviews of Sequoia products have most recently taken place in the State of California (Secretary Bowen's Top to Bottom Review of Voting Systems), the State of Colorado and The City of Chicago/ Cook County, Illinois. In addition, the New Jersey Institute of Technology is also completing a review of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) adaptation for Sequoia's AVC Advantage at the request of the state of New Jersey. As recognized by the Election Technology Council (ETC), the election industry trade association of which Sequoia is a founding member company, such an independent review is a complex and interdisciplinary process involving a broad knowledge of election law, public administration and technical matters (see the ETC's Guidelines for States conducting "Top-to-Bottom" Reviews found on the organization's website at http://www.electiontech.org/resource.html ). These independent reviews, and many others, have been successfully conducted within the framework of Sequoia's license rights pursuant to appropriate and mutually agreeable arrangements between Sequoia and governmental agencies charged by law with the authority to conduct such reviews. Sequoia welcomes all such responsibly executed review activities.
Sequoia does not support any and all unauthorized activities that violate or circumvent our product licensing agreements. Licensing agreements are standard practice in the technology industry, including the elections industry and have been for decades. Sequoia will vigorously protect and defend its intellectual property and enforcement of established licensing agreements.
Of course that assumes that all available relevant high-quality information is the formally published literature you are reviewing. This is true for the case mentioned in your wiki link - medical research, clinical studies, etc;
No, not even in that case. In anticipation of this very Slashdot discussion, a new study on exactly this topic is in the news headlines today. An article in this week's New England Journal of Medicine shows how much important information doesn't get published in the journals (though it may get published on the Web or in hard-to-access databases).
Summary from the Wall Street Journal:
A total of 74 studies involving a dozen antidepressants and 12,564 patients were registered with the FDA from 1987 through 2004. The FDA considered 38 of the studies to be positive. All but one of those studies was published, the researchers said.
The other 36 were found to have negative or questionable results by the FDA. Most of those studies -- 22 out of 36 -- weren't published, the researchers found. Of the 14 that were published, the researchers said at least 11 of those studies mischaracterized the results and presented a negative study as positive.
Regardless of whether one thinks that the "Mars ban" is a good idea, would it be good for NASA to get a reputation of using loopholes and subverting the intent of Congress? Even if NASA complied, space enthusiasts could inadvertently build such a reputation in the public mind.
Then what? Would Congress get more strict the next year, resulting in dozens of started-but-never completed projects? Would the public say, "Those NASA dudes can't be trusted! See how they handled the Mars ban? Let's use that money to subsidize professional football instead!"
Building 20 was nice because it was so old that if you needed to rip out a wall, feel free. There's a great discussion of Building 20 in Stewart Brand's book, How Buildings Learn. This is one of those few books that I enjoy rereading every couple of years because of how it helps me see the world in a new way. Brand's ideas are simple and (in hindsight) obvious: Architects should look at how buildings are used and modified over time, and design accordingly. Unfortunately, architects tend to be rewarded more for the appearance of a building before it is occupied, than they are for the usability of the building after it is occupied.
A quick google turns up 1.1 million links [google.com] for the phrase "chinese exploited workers"
Minor correction: a Google search for the phrase "chinese exploited workers" turns up one link.
A Google search for documents containing the words "chinese," "exploited," and "workers" turns up 1.1 million links, including ones from China talking about the exploited workers in capitalist countries. (I'll ignore the fact that the link count tends to be quite inaccurate once the count gets to 500K or so).
Can you get the company nurse (or whoever is in charge of ergonomic audits or workers compensation) to endorse your setup? Your second monitor is greatly reducing the amount of mousing you need to do to switch between applications, and that, in turn, reduces the probability that the company will ever need to pay for expensive medical treatment. When my dual CRTs started wearing out, the way I got dual LCDs was by asking the company nurse to "prescribe" them.
Keep in mind, too, that a dual monitor setup is mainstream--it's only in your company that you're an early adopter. Nearly all of the 100+ engineers where I work now have had dual 19" LCDs for a few years now.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as amazing, Ortiz found at least two other assemblymen to agree with him. From the bill:
SPONSOR Ortiz (MS)
COSPNSR Markey
MLTSPNSR Perry
I'd think it would be poor politics to sign on to cosponsoring bills I didn't understand. Naive me.
Likewise, the GEM windowing system was stable, faster, more visually appealing, and just as capable as Windows 1.0. The PC version of GEM came with Ventura Publisher (Xerox) or it could be purchased from Digital Research. GEM also ran on Atari and other platforms.
Definitely not "simple." As grossly inefficient as it is, the system is not permitted to go down for a week or two for upgrades. Laws REQUIRE certain procedures to be followed (no "let's just skip that check because it's not economical"). Other laws may REQUIRE that certain procedure steps be done in a certain way (physical signatures, work to be done in a particular location chosen by a once-powerful Senator, etc). Yet other laws REQUIRE use of certain software (originally intended to force efficiency on some part of the process).
So the technological solution needs to be paired with a legislative overhaul.
Now let's say someone crafts a perfect law which would make the process better for everyone. Every congressman wants to vote for it. So then somebody will attach an amendment about a bridge, and somebody else will insert a gun control measure. Because everybody likes this law, right? And the whole process grinds to a halt.
There's a critical shortage of nuclear engineers. Very few engineers have joined the industry in recent decades, and those who joined during the industry's heyday are retiring.
Schools including MIT are spinning up their programs, but however talented the students, they'll be inexperienced. These fine young men and women may know how to optimize a reaction, but will they know that valve X in location Y needs to be easily replaceable because it tends to corrode after 5 years? Do you want the plant in your town to be designed by a recent grad? Likewise, even the experienced engineers have been maintaining old plants, not designing new ones using the latest technology.
Add in time for siting battles and regulatory approvals, and I wouldn't expect to see too many new plants open until 10-20 years from now.
Cheaters, lazy bums that they are, tend to do everything together, including shopping and walking to class. Hence the old teacher's trick: require hardcopies to be placed in folders or envelopes and turned in via a drop box. 90% of the time, the cheaters' assignments will be turned in together, one right on top of the other, using identical folders/envelopes. Just be careful not to shuffle the pile when grading. A clever prof can probably figure out an equivalent scheme for the virtual classroom.
The surprising dark side of automatic failure/expulsion: it can discourage the institution from investigating accusations of widespread cheating.
True story 1: TA'ing at an institution with a mandatory-failure policy, I noticed two students copying each others' assignments. Thing was, they were mid-career professionals married to one another. What to do?
True story 2: Friends taking an "introduction to computers for business majors" class came to me for tutoring. The assignments were something like "Week 1: Write a gradebook program using file I/O and arrays; Week 2: Write a solitaire game using linked lists; Week 3: Write a tree sort using recursion; Week 4: Add a column of 5 numbers using Excel." Remember, this was for folks who were at the "What is a text file and why would I want to save one?" stage (as evidenced by the Week 4 assignment)! The assignments were identical from semester to semester, and the majority of students--especially the Greeks--were getting A's on these assignments.
It was obvious to me that there was only one way for students to succeed in the course: widespread cheating. Visiting the computer lab, it was easy to visually observe the cheating. So I went to the dean. Accepting my story would have meant a big investigation and ultimately the automatic expulsion of a large fraction of the student body, so I was abruptly informed that they would not tolerate baseless allegations of "such a serious nature." Action would be taken only if I could supply incontrovertible proof, including specific names and dates, and only if I would personally testify against each accused student at the hearings. (They did, however, change the assignments the next semester.)
Most math, physics, and engineering textbooks leave important equations as an "exercise for the reader." The tradition is surprisingly pervasive--I've had to search through as many as a dozen books trying to find certain formulae. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to find key information if one hasn't taken notes in class, or when coming back to the text for reference or review.
Plea to instructors and department chairs: Please choose textbooks that can serve as reference resources to your students as they study and after graduation. Plea to authors and publishers: Please include all of the central equations, and use formatting to make it clear which equations are "universal" and which are example or special-case equations.
Maybe CARB's action will encourage cell phone manufacturers to start including antenna plugs again (and thus resulting in great jubilation among farmers and other rural dwellers).
When I was phone shopping last week, Verizon carried only two phones with external antenna connectors, and I didn't see either of them at the VZW retail store. And that's for the company with the best rural coverage around here.
More precisely, Nielsen's audience is the decision-makers in the boardrooms of the advertisers. Nielsen, along with other companies, have been experimenting with better audience measurement methods for decades. Nielsen has shelves full of people-meters and other tools which measure who is ACTUALLY in the room and what channel the TV is ACTUALLY tuned to. I've had such devices in my house. But these better methods have been consistently rejected by the advertisers. The person running an ad campaign needs a simple number they can shove in front of a PHB to show that they're earning their salary. Complex stats that ultimately show that people change the channel when ads come on, or that the TV is just on as background noise, don't serve that purpose.
Madison Avenue would have us believe that high-sodium, high-fat chips are an "inexpensive food." Mom would argue that a baked potato is even less expensive and much more nutritious. Grandpa would argue that a home-grown potato is even less expensive than that.
Home-made pizza may be more expensive than cheap frozen pizza, but some canned vegetables from the food bank, day-old bread, and peanut butter is cheaper than either. It boils down to being willing to plan menus to maximize nutritional value rather than tastiness. And a good cook can achieve both.
Since becoming unemployed (physicist/computer scientist/linguist/tech writer for hire!), I've been eating quite well on $2/day. It's only when I go out that I've eaten expensive (healthy or unhealthy) food.
Due to the correlation between low income and poor education, it is unfortunately true that healthy food can be hard to obtain in some low-income areas of the US. But healthy food is not necessarily expensive.
"You can walk on it" is an understatement. If this is the same stuff I've seen being tested at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they had rolls laid down the main hallways. Boots, high heels, kindergartners, you name it--it kept on working. Outdoors, they were shooting it with shotguns and driving over it. They were seriously contemplating the possibility of harnessing the surface area not only of roofs, but of ROADS to generate electricity.
One network which does have global coverage is Al Jazeera. Surprisingly, their coverage is pretty well balanced (except that Western officials refuse to be interviewed by them).
Of course, the best chair is whatever fits him best.
The more adjustments the better. Many highly-adjustable "ergonomic" chairs lack the ability to remove the arm rests. For coding, it's nice to be able to cozy the chair up under the table or keyboard tray, and arms interfere with that. Arms can also invite leaning, which puts pressure on nerves in the arm.
See if you can find out how reliable the height-adjustment piston is. That's usually the first thing to give out.
Using social networks to filter or rank search results is an idea truly worth exploring. But TFA refers to a push model where we don't even conduct searches.
The Faceboogle concept assumes that I want to search just for those things which already match my existing online footprint.
When I search, however, it's usually because I want to find information on something NEW.
Can it possibly be true that most searching is just for the same old topics--teenagers looking for the latest gossip on their favorite celebrity? Perhaps. But that sure doesn't describe how I--and most of the folks I know--use search.
The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices Section 4D.10 specifies "The duration of a yellow change interval shall be predetermined. Guidance: A yellow change interval should have a duration of approximately 3 to 6 seconds. The longer intervals should be reserved for use on approaches with higher speeds."
The standard formula seems to be the one shown at http://safety.transportation.org/htmlguides/sgn_int/app02.htm
There's also some information in the TFA^3 at http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
FTA: "The service could be in place by 2010."
Meanwhile, there's http://emergencyeamil.org/, which is opt-in. It works pretty well, though they've been slow to update their warning zones when the government (NWS, actually) shifts the boundaries around. They're a public-private partnership, and a significant percentage of states and counties in the U.S. are already signed up.
During peak hours, sometimes I've had emergency warning text messages delayed by over 10 minutes. If the cellular infrastructure is tweaked for the new system, it'll be a good thing: emergency messages can be broadcast to everyone at once, and with a high priority.
The jamming will also easily be defeated by an entirely new branch of coding theory using the BBC algorithm (http://crisp.cs.du.edu/frisc/baird.pdf). Error correction is distributed throughout the data stream, so even if the jammer completely obliterates parts of the signal--to the point that the original signal is unintelligible--the coded message will still get through.
This coding theory is handy for all sorts of stuff, from military comms to cell phones to MIMO access points. And unlike most crypto stuff, it's rather simple to understand and implement.
The following press release is available on Sequoia's web site. How thorough are the hand-picked "independent" reviewers they claim to use?
Sequoia Voting Systems supports third party reviews and testing of its election equipment
March 18, 2008 (DENVER, CO) - In response to some recent media reports, Sequoia is issuing this statement to educate individuals on the third party review mechanisms already in place in the election industry as well as our company's business practices regarding third party reviews and testing of its election equipment.
Sequoia Voting Systems is committed to maintaining voter confidence in the electoral process. Our company is dedicated to working with our customers in this regard and has done so over our century of serving state and local election jurisdictions throughout the United States.
Sequoia's products - and those of all election equipment manufacturers - go through a complete and independent review as part of the Election Assistance Commission's (EAC's) federal voting system certification process including rigorous testing and a line-by-line review of the voting system's source code by EAC accredited Voting System Test Labs (VSTLs).
Prior to the EAC's certification program which was initiated in 2007, voting systems were qualified at a federal level by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) after testing by NASED-approved Independent Test Labs (ITAs). The ITAs also performed a line-by-line review of voting system source code.
In addition to the federal certification program, individual states have their own state certification programs which vary state-by-state but most often entail additional testing and review by qualified third party experts. Many states also require voting system manufacturers to submit their source code to be kept in escrow, should there be a need to access this code by the state in the case of some type of unanticipated situation or problem.
Sequoia also voluntarily submits its voting system source code to the National Software Reference Library (NSRL) which operates under the umbrella of the federal government's National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). The purpose of this is so that Sequoia customers can check the hash codes of their product, as installed, against the certified copies at the NSRL.
Additional independent reviews of Sequoia products have most recently taken place in the State of California (Secretary Bowen's Top to Bottom Review of Voting Systems), the State of Colorado and The City of Chicago/ Cook County, Illinois. In addition, the New Jersey Institute of Technology is also completing a review of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) adaptation for Sequoia's AVC Advantage at the request of the state of New Jersey. As recognized by the Election Technology Council (ETC), the election industry trade association of which Sequoia is a founding member company, such an independent review is a complex and interdisciplinary process involving a broad knowledge of election law, public administration and technical matters (see the ETC's Guidelines for States conducting "Top-to-Bottom" Reviews found on the organization's website at http://www.electiontech.org/resource.html ). These independent reviews, and many others, have been successfully conducted within the framework of Sequoia's license rights pursuant to appropriate and mutually agreeable arrangements between Sequoia and governmental agencies charged by law with the authority to conduct such reviews. Sequoia welcomes all such responsibly executed review activities.
Sequoia does not support any and all unauthorized activities that violate or circumvent our product licensing agreements. Licensing agreements are standard practice in the technology industry, including the elections industry and have been for decades. Sequoia will vigorously protect and defend its intellectual property and enforcement of established licensing agreements.
About
There's also a recent book on this topic (which I just happened to be reading today):
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee http://www.amazon.com/Body-Has-Mind-Its-Own/dp/1400064694/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201716211&sr=8-1
It's a readable account of how our senses and our immediate environment map to specific regions of the brain.
No, not even in that case. In anticipation of this very Slashdot discussion, a new study on exactly this topic is in the news headlines today. An article in this week's New England Journal of Medicine shows how much important information doesn't get published in the journals (though it may get published on the Web or in hard-to-access databases).
Summary from the Wall Street Journal:
A total of 74 studies involving a dozen antidepressants and 12,564 patients were registered with the FDA from 1987 through 2004. The FDA considered 38 of the studies to be positive. All but one of those studies was published, the researchers said.The other 36 were found to have negative or questionable results by the FDA. Most of those studies -- 22 out of 36 -- weren't published, the researchers found. Of the 14 that were published, the researchers said at least 11 of those studies mischaracterized the results and presented a negative study as positive.
Regardless of whether one thinks that the "Mars ban" is a good idea, would it be good for NASA to get a reputation of using loopholes and subverting the intent of Congress? Even if NASA complied, space enthusiasts could inadvertently build such a reputation in the public mind.
Then what? Would Congress get more strict the next year, resulting in dozens of started-but-never completed projects? Would the public say, "Those NASA dudes can't be trusted! See how they handled the Mars ban? Let's use that money to subsidize professional football instead!"
Minor correction: a Google search for the phrase "chinese exploited workers" turns up one link.
A Google search for documents containing the words "chinese," "exploited," and "workers" turns up 1.1 million links, including ones from China talking about the exploited workers in capitalist countries. (I'll ignore the fact that the link count tends to be quite inaccurate once the count gets to 500K or so).
Can you get the company nurse (or whoever is in charge of ergonomic audits or workers compensation) to endorse your setup? Your second monitor is greatly reducing the amount of mousing you need to do to switch between applications, and that, in turn, reduces the probability that the company will ever need to pay for expensive medical treatment. When my dual CRTs started wearing out, the way I got dual LCDs was by asking the company nurse to "prescribe" them. Keep in mind, too, that a dual monitor setup is mainstream--it's only in your company that you're an early adopter. Nearly all of the 100+ engineers where I work now have had dual 19" LCDs for a few years now.