Yes, they steal ideas here and there and make a great product. Sure, they sue companies that steal their whole product. And yes, they make the best American consumer electronic products, ever.
Remember "smartphones" before the iPhone? It took years for any company to remotely match what the iPhone had when it LAUNCHED. To summarize, every slashdot thread about Apple: Haters going to hate.
Actually, Apple's biggest contribution to smartphones was in marketing and convincing everyone they actually needed one. I'm not an Apple hater, but really, almost everything in the iPhone, from a user perspective was already there in other products. What other vendors didn't have was a group of fanatics that would buy anything that Apple put out. The iPhone became an overnight success because of the Mac users who went out and had to have one. That's not a complaint, only an observation. With a loyal customer base, once can pull off anything.
Just allow the person receiving the call to hit *99 and have it charge a fee back to the robocaller. If the phone in question is on a do not call list, the caller gets assessed a fee for violating it. Nothing persuade a change in behavior more than having to pay money.
I've got a cheaper solution. Instead of adding technology to make the car steer itself because you don't have time to react to the obstacle in the road - lower (and enforce) speed limits. 60mph instead of 70 give you 15% more reaction time and 15% more distance to react. If this is truly about safety, slower speeds are the answer. However, if it is about trying to make it safe to be able to drive ultra-fast then the technology is probably a good idea. Then again, lower speed also has the benefit of reducing demand for gas and oil, less wear and tear to the vehicle and pavement and a number of other benefits.
Technically speaking yes, but casually speaking an image that's 10"x10" is generally regarded as being the "twice the size" of 5"x5", so it's that kind of thinking they're going with.
But that is the point, it's not 1/2 the size, but 1/4 (you can fit 4 5x5's in a 10x10).
I'm not a photographer, but I think: 1/4th the light, but 1/2 in terms of resolution. Light can be adjusted for, resolution cannot (well, sort of, there are tricks, but you'd rather use those on a higher resolution image to get better virtual resolution anyways).
Your thought is correct in that 1/4th the light, but the resolution remains constant (pixels are pixels). On the other hand, if there is not enough light to illuminate those pixels, they won't detect anything. Doesn't matter whether it is high resolution or not. Without photons, there is no image.
'If you fly twice as far away, your camera does half as well; if it's 10 times as far, it does one-tenth as well,' says Stern.
I was always taught that with optics it is the square of the distance, so twice as far away is 1/4 as well and 10 times further is 100th as well. But then, maybe when the changed the science that said Pluto wasn't a planet, it changed the physics, too.
Most people have dreadful upload rates anyway ; the asymmetric connections we receive are very much tailored for us to be consumers, not servers.
I'll lay dollars to donuts that it doesn't upload what you record - they just have a master server which records *everything* and your Boxee just sets a row in a database that tells it what you asked it to record. This way they can offer "unlimited" storage - they just retain a single copy of each program that users record, and look to see whether they should offer it to you based on what you "recorded".
No doubt they hope this gets around the legal limitations that have been cropping up recently with other parties offering store-and-forward services.
While that is definitely an efficient model, the paid advertisers to those programs might have something to say about it. Right now, if you DVR something, you still get commercials. If Boxee grabs the live feed without commercials that won't work, nor will it work if they grab a local feed that is different than your locale. Advertisers pay good money for those time slots, it is unlikely that they will simply let that go.
Not to prolong this anymore, but Darwin's Origin of the Species has severe problems now that we have DNA testing. Scientific knowledge does not depend on the word of anyone in a theoretical sense, but most certainly does in a practical sense. I am sure there are theists who would point out that their God also spoke directly to them and therefore religious belief doesn't depend on the word of anyone, either. Again, in a theoretical sense that may be true, too.
However, like you said, even in your own field, you are not going to repeat the work of every scientist. You are going to accept what you were taught and build from that. Even if you did repeat it, the fact that you had knowledge of previous works so as to be in a position to repeat it means that you were handed down the knowledge.
So, while you could rediscover everything from scratch, it would be a futile endeavor and unlikely to arrive at the same conclusions as those that came before us, because a lot of the science was based on accidents and unless you somehow made the same mistakes to cause the same accident, you won't come up with the same experience.
Everything we know, has been handed down to us. The problem is that so much of it we take for granted that we forget that.
Or makes the student's parents pay for it when it breaks, like they do with textbooks.
Eh, at $30/student/day, good luck competing with these numbers...
The article said one recent morning at Anson Jones, where 1,200 attend, the regular roll counted reported 71 students absent. The RFID system corrected that number, showing eight of the 71 were actually in school that day. The map showed several students were in the band hall where practice ran late, while others were near the office. The school would have lost $240 that day if the chips would not have been in effect.
Pascual Gonzalez, Northside's communications director told NBC that he estimates the district has been losing about $1.7 million a year because of underreported attendance. He also said the RFID cost was $261,000 and should pay for itself within one year.
A $1.7M loss because of under reporting means that 56,667 kids were not counted who were actually there. The problem is not that kids are missing school. It is because evidently in Texas, teachers can't count. No wonder why the US keeps falling behind other countries in math and science.
The 1% who decide these things for the other 99% don't send their kids to public schools, so their kids won't be exposed to forced government surveillance. They probably think the 99% should be grateful that they (the 1%) pay to educate their dumb kids in the first place.
I said that as part of the justification given for cash for clunkers, not that it actually works. I agree that better profit margins means more profit to the executives. Unfortunately, weaker profit margins usually mean fewer jobs and the executives still profit.
I heard the Museum of Transport in St. Louis had a large collection of bugs, ghias, busses, etc. Even some pretty early ones and in very good shape. But then their board decided only American vehicles and they had them all crushed and sold for scrap. What a shame.
Actually it was Mussolini who claimed to make the trains run on time, but didn't.
Subjugation of women, slavery, genocide, and infanticide are all approved and even required by easily found Bible verses. And there are plenty of examples of religious believers who followed the instructions.
Survival of the fittest on the other hand "would be prevalent"??? WTF? It's as universal today as ever. It's also not a result of adverse human action, nor does it have a moral dimension of any sort. The fact that organisms more suited to survival in their environment are more likely to reproduce isn't bad or good, it's just true. And stupidly obvious, IMO.
Actually, survival of the fittest is no longer the predominant theory. It is true that organisms more suited to survival in their environment are more likely to reproduce, but that is not the same as survival of the fittest. There is a good deal of luck involved in which species survive or not and it has nothing to do with how suited they were to their environment but everything to do with chaos theory. Just ask the dinosaurs, if the asteroid had been 1 hour later, they'd most likely still be roaming the planet.
And Aubrey was raised by a pack of wolves with no human interaction and determined his view out of the blue? Of course not. Assuming he was born like any human being and had to be taught the basic necessities of life, by definition that knowledge was passed on from somebody else's experience. Now he goes to university, where he first develops his desire to free from politics and religious influence, but wait, he is at a university where the sole purpose is to pass down what happened in the past and make it real in the future. Even the phrase itself is in Latin, was Aubrey born speaking Latin or did somebody else have to impart that knowledge?
Nullius in verba is possible only after one has already acquired the knowledge past down from others and therefore logically inconsistent.
rack and pinon steering, powered or not, can get you under 2 turns lock to lock. Again, at a complete stand still, it is difficult in a front wheel drive car, but once the tires barely begin to move, it is quite easy. The traditional steering box, on the other hand, that's a different story. I definitely empathize with your lady and the dump truck!
I was raising what I saw as a major flaw in the reasoning that "religion is OK, just dont bother anyone else with it"-- which is that if you believe your religion to be true, its hard to justify NOT telling someone about it.
Regarding portion of population and religion, I would recommend you check out the various gallup polls on "what people say they believe" versus polls that ask specifics ("do you believe in a personal god"; "whens the last time you opened your holy book", "whens the last time you gathered with others of your faith", etc). You might be shocked by how many claim to believe something but yet it oddly has no impact whatsoever on their life.
I have no doubt that what many "believers" say they believe and what they practice are two different things. However, I just let them and their god work out their consequences.:)
For instance, I have a 1996 Mazda B4000 pickup that gets horrible mileage (around 17mpg). It has around 210,000 miles on it. However, other than fuel, regular maintenance and insurance, there are no other regular payments. Granted, one day, it will need a major repair that will be cost prohibitive and it will get replaced. But, to replace it now, for the sake of better mileage is crazy. Currently, I user about 1,000 gallons of fuel, say at $4/gal or $4,000/yr. Say I could get 25.5 mpg (a 50% increase in fuel economy). I would only need 667 gallons of fuel or $2,668/yr at $4/gal. I would "save" $1,332. But then again, I would have to pay $3,600/yr in car payments, so I would actually pay out $2,268/yr more than keeping my existing vehicle (at least for the first five years). And that is assuming I could get a replacement truck that would actually average 25.5mpg in real life.
A 1996 Mazda B2300 gets almost 25mpg, and replacing your current truck for one would be more or less an even swap. (It may not be worth it because of the added maintenance unknowns, though.)
Exactly. I know the maintenance record of my vehicle. I don't know how well maintained a 1996 B2300 was. If my B4000 dies, that is most likely what I would replace it with, a used B2300.
Actually, I have a 72 daily driver. 1600dp, gets 27mpg around town and about 32 on the highway, depending if I go 70 or not. Got it to restore to show quality, but did the restore to daily driver instead - all stock except the radio. It's amazing that a 40 year old car based on an 80 year old design gets better mileage than many new cars. Even after all these years, it is still economical and practical.
The desktop search, which does must of the thrashing can be disabled in the settings. Nepomuk can be set not to start, but if you use something that requires it, it will still start up. It does however, cause a lot less problems than previously. Main things that use it, that I am aware of are kmail and kontact. I don't use those and I have it set to not auto-start. As such, it doesn't cause me any grief.
Try $11k mininium in my area in Florida! I want an 06 Elantra and I used to own one. It is maddening as a new accent is just $2k more and a new Elantra is $16k which is a much much better deal in the life of the car to spend $5k more.
If the priced of used cars will ever go down when the economy recovers it will return to normal. I know a lady who bought a POS car for $1,4k, got into an accident and put 40k more miles and is missing a seat and sold it for $2,400 and made $1000 profit?!
Used cars are appreciating in value due to the recession in my area. So yes in my case this car for $4,500 might not be the best but it sure as hell beats what these leeches are trying to sell me.
It's not because of the recession that they are appreciating. It is because cash for clunkers removed 700,000 used cars from the market. It is simply supply and demand. In the housing market, there are too many houses for sale and the price drops. In the used car market, there are too few available and the price soars. It's basic Econ 101.
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Yes, they steal ideas here and there and make a great product. Sure, they sue companies that steal their whole product. And yes, they make the best American consumer electronic products, ever.
Remember "smartphones" before the iPhone? It took years for any company to remotely match what the iPhone had when it LAUNCHED. To summarize, every slashdot thread about Apple: Haters going to hate.
Actually, Apple's biggest contribution to smartphones was in marketing and convincing everyone they actually needed one. I'm not an Apple hater, but really, almost everything in the iPhone, from a user perspective was already there in other products. What other vendors didn't have was a group of fanatics that would buy anything that Apple put out. The iPhone became an overnight success because of the Mac users who went out and had to have one. That's not a complaint, only an observation. With a loyal customer base, once can pull off anything.
That's what happens when you bite the hand that feeds you. Of course Apple will somehow spin this as a positive.
This is the same country that locked up Galileo.
Actually, it is not. That was the Holy Roman Empire, this is Italy. They are not one and the same.
I wonder what this means for the scientists and political leaders who dismiss global warming?
Just allow the person receiving the call to hit *99 and have it charge a fee back to the robocaller. If the phone in question is on a do not call list, the caller gets assessed a fee for violating it. Nothing persuade a change in behavior more than having to pay money.
I've got a cheaper solution. Instead of adding technology to make the car steer itself because you don't have time to react to the obstacle in the road - lower (and enforce) speed limits. 60mph instead of 70 give you 15% more reaction time and 15% more distance to react. If this is truly about safety, slower speeds are the answer. However, if it is about trying to make it safe to be able to drive ultra-fast then the technology is probably a good idea. Then again, lower speed also has the benefit of reducing demand for gas and oil, less wear and tear to the vehicle and pavement and a number of other benefits.
Technically speaking yes, but casually speaking an image that's 10"x10" is generally regarded as being the "twice the size" of 5"x5", so it's that kind of thinking they're going with.
But that is the point, it's not 1/2 the size, but 1/4 (you can fit 4 5x5's in a 10x10).
I'm not a photographer, but I think: 1/4th the light, but 1/2 in terms of resolution. Light can be adjusted for, resolution cannot (well, sort of, there are tricks, but you'd rather use those on a higher resolution image to get better virtual resolution anyways).
Your thought is correct in that 1/4th the light, but the resolution remains constant (pixels are pixels). On the other hand, if there is not enough light to illuminate those pixels, they won't detect anything. Doesn't matter whether it is high resolution or not. Without photons, there is no image.
'If you fly twice as far away, your camera does half as well; if it's 10 times as far, it does one-tenth as well,' says Stern.
I was always taught that with optics it is the square of the distance, so twice as far away is 1/4 as well and 10 times further is 100th as well. But then, maybe when the changed the science that said Pluto wasn't a planet, it changed the physics, too.
How is this different than any other cloud storage provider, with the exception that the DVR content remains "at Boxee" and can't be copied?
This is just like any other subscription service, IMO. Why does everything have to be some damned sinister all the time?
Because if the summary doesn't make it sound sinister, nobody will read the article.
Most people have dreadful upload rates anyway ; the asymmetric connections we receive are very much tailored for us to be consumers, not servers.
I'll lay dollars to donuts that it doesn't upload what you record - they just have a master server which records *everything* and your Boxee just sets a row in a database that tells it what you asked it to record. This way they can offer "unlimited" storage - they just retain a single copy of each program that users record, and look to see whether they should offer it to you based on what you "recorded".
No doubt they hope this gets around the legal limitations that have been cropping up recently with other parties offering store-and-forward services.
While that is definitely an efficient model, the paid advertisers to those programs might have something to say about it. Right now, if you DVR something, you still get commercials. If Boxee grabs the live feed without commercials that won't work, nor will it work if they grab a local feed that is different than your locale. Advertisers pay good money for those time slots, it is unlikely that they will simply let that go.
Not to prolong this anymore, but Darwin's Origin of the Species has severe problems now that we have DNA testing. Scientific knowledge does not depend on the word of anyone in a theoretical sense, but most certainly does in a practical sense. I am sure there are theists who would point out that their God also spoke directly to them and therefore religious belief doesn't depend on the word of anyone, either. Again, in a theoretical sense that may be true, too.
However, like you said, even in your own field, you are not going to repeat the work of every scientist. You are going to accept what you were taught and build from that. Even if you did repeat it, the fact that you had knowledge of previous works so as to be in a position to repeat it means that you were handed down the knowledge.
So, while you could rediscover everything from scratch, it would be a futile endeavor and unlikely to arrive at the same conclusions as those that came before us, because a lot of the science was based on accidents and unless you somehow made the same mistakes to cause the same accident, you won't come up with the same experience.
Everything we know, has been handed down to us. The problem is that so much of it we take for granted that we forget that.
Or makes the student's parents pay for it when it breaks, like they do with textbooks.
Eh, at $30/student/day, good luck competing with these numbers...
The article said one recent morning at Anson Jones, where 1,200 attend, the regular roll counted reported 71 students absent. The RFID system corrected that number, showing eight of the 71 were actually in school that day. The map showed several students were in the band hall where practice ran late, while others were near the office. The school would have lost $240 that day if the chips would not have been in effect.
Pascual Gonzalez, Northside's communications director told NBC that he estimates the district has been losing about $1.7 million a year because of underreported attendance. He also said the RFID cost was $261,000 and should pay for itself within one year.
A $1.7M loss because of under reporting means that 56,667 kids were not counted who were actually there. The problem is not that kids are missing school. It is because evidently in Texas, teachers can't count. No wonder why the US keeps falling behind other countries in math and science.
The 1% who decide these things for the other 99% don't send their kids to public schools, so their kids won't be exposed to forced government surveillance. They probably think the 99% should be grateful that they (the 1%) pay to educate their dumb kids in the first place.
"better profit margins means more jobs"
No, it means more profit to the executives.
I said that as part of the justification given for cash for clunkers, not that it actually works. I agree that better profit margins means more profit to the executives. Unfortunately, weaker profit margins usually mean fewer jobs and the executives still profit.
Doubt it. Sold perhaps.
I was told by the curator they were crushed on site and sold for scrap. I was there for a different event and inquired as to where they had gone.
I heard the Museum of Transport in St. Louis had a large collection of bugs, ghias, busses, etc. Even some pretty early ones and in very good shape. But then their board decided only American vehicles and they had them all crushed and sold for scrap. What a shame.
Actually it was Mussolini who claimed to make the trains run on time, but didn't.
Subjugation of women, slavery, genocide, and infanticide are all approved and even required by easily found Bible verses. And there are plenty of examples of religious believers who followed the instructions.
Survival of the fittest on the other hand "would be prevalent"??? WTF? It's as universal today as ever. It's also not a result of adverse human action, nor does it have a moral dimension of any sort. The fact that organisms more suited to survival in their environment are more likely to reproduce isn't bad or good, it's just true. And stupidly obvious, IMO.
Actually, survival of the fittest is no longer the predominant theory. It is true that organisms more suited to survival in their environment are more likely to reproduce, but that is not the same as survival of the fittest. There is a good deal of luck involved in which species survive or not and it has nothing to do with how suited they were to their environment but everything to do with chaos theory. Just ask the dinosaurs, if the asteroid had been 1 hour later, they'd most likely still be roaming the planet.
And Aubrey was raised by a pack of wolves with no human interaction and determined his view out of the blue? Of course not. Assuming he was born like any human being and had to be taught the basic necessities of life, by definition that knowledge was passed on from somebody else's experience. Now he goes to university, where he first develops his desire to free from politics and religious influence, but wait, he is at a university where the sole purpose is to pass down what happened in the past and make it real in the future. Even the phrase itself is in Latin, was Aubrey born speaking Latin or did somebody else have to impart that knowledge?
Nullius in verba is possible only after one has already acquired the knowledge past down from others and therefore logically inconsistent.
rack and pinon steering, powered or not, can get you under 2 turns lock to lock. Again, at a complete stand still, it is difficult in a front wheel drive car, but once the tires barely begin to move, it is quite easy. The traditional steering box, on the other hand, that's a different story. I definitely empathize with your lady and the dump truck!
I was raising what I saw as a major flaw in the reasoning that "religion is OK, just dont bother anyone else with it"-- which is that if you believe your religion to be true, its hard to justify NOT telling someone about it.
Regarding portion of population and religion, I would recommend you check out the various gallup polls on "what people say they believe" versus polls that ask specifics ("do you believe in a personal god"; "whens the last time you opened your holy book", "whens the last time you gathered with others of your faith", etc). You might be shocked by how many claim to believe something but yet it oddly has no impact whatsoever on their life.
I have no doubt that what many "believers" say they believe and what they practice are two different things. However, I just let them and their god work out their consequences. :)
A 1996 Mazda B2300 gets almost 25mpg, and replacing your current truck for one would be more or less an even swap. (It may not be worth it because of the added maintenance unknowns, though.)
Exactly. I know the maintenance record of my vehicle. I don't know how well maintained a 1996 B2300 was. If my B4000 dies, that is most likely what I would replace it with, a used B2300.
Actually, I have a 72 daily driver. 1600dp, gets 27mpg around town and about 32 on the highway, depending if I go 70 or not. Got it to restore to show quality, but did the restore to daily driver instead - all stock except the radio. It's amazing that a 40 year old car based on an 80 year old design gets better mileage than many new cars. Even after all these years, it is still economical and practical.
The desktop search, which does must of the thrashing can be disabled in the settings. Nepomuk can be set not to start, but if you use something that requires it, it will still start up. It does however, cause a lot less problems than previously. Main things that use it, that I am aware of are kmail and kontact. I don't use those and I have it set to not auto-start. As such, it doesn't cause me any grief.
Try $11k mininium in my area in Florida! I want an 06 Elantra and I used to own one. It is maddening as a new accent is just $2k more and a new Elantra is $16k which is a much much better deal in the life of the car to spend $5k more.
If the priced of used cars will ever go down when the economy recovers it will return to normal. I know a lady who bought a POS car for $1,4k, got into an accident and put 40k more miles and is missing a seat and sold it for $2,400 and made $1000 profit?!
Used cars are appreciating in value due to the recession in my area. So yes in my case this car for $4,500 might not be the best but it sure as hell beats what these leeches are trying to sell me.
It's not because of the recession that they are appreciating. It is because cash for clunkers removed 700,000 used cars from the market. It is simply supply and demand. In the housing market, there are too many houses for sale and the price drops. In the used car market, there are too few available and the price soars. It's basic Econ 101.