I do wonder how randomized the shutting down of lights were in that study. Did those towns shut off every light? Or, did they only shut off lights in low risk areas? And, does the study differentiate between dimmed lights and lights shut off completely?
The argument put forward by the Automobile Association is to not shut off the lights on roads where the speed limit is greater than 40 mph since the stopping distance for cars is much longer at high rates of speed and that lighting helps prevents deaths in those situations. This makes sense to me - shut off your lights based on risk analysis rather than a blanket shut them all off.
I find it rather strange that they would have only offered to send him to another hotel. If he truly did have a bed bug infestation, then likely his clothing, personal belongings, and even luggage were infested as well. Sending him to another hotel could have spread the infestation. My understanding is that many hotels, when confronted with this issue, offer to dry clean all of the guest's clothing, buy them new luggage, and then move them to another room/hotel. Worst case for the guest is that they bring the infestation home with them. Bed bugs can be very difficult to eradicate.
Actually, this is different. In the EU and US, names of food is controlled as trademarks. You can still produce sparking wine in the Napa Valley, but you can't claim it came from the Champagne region. What Malaysia is claiming is that they own the "copyright" to these food and that no one else is allowed to even produce it elsewhere.
Of course, the US and EU fight over their trademarks - the US considers "champagne" (little "c") to be a semi-generic term, thus "California champagne" is o.k. Same with terms like Cheddar. And, the EU failed to recognize US designations, such as Idaho potatoes or Vidalia onions until they lost a WTO case in 2004.
Actually, what you get to see is what other travelers are doing with their computers. In my experience, you don't see too many locals in the internet cafes, especially if you're in some backpackers' ghetto. I also don't agree that "seedy" = "character."
Of course they could do a removable battery. The point they made in the keynote was that a removable battery takes up a bunch of space. By making the battery non-removable, they gained 40% more room for a bigger, longer-lasting battery.
The design trade off here was removable battery for more battery life. The market will decide whether that was a good trade.
My AP Calculus teacher took this further. We had a quiz every day. On one day, he would teach a concept and give homework on that concept. The next day, we would review the homework in class; and, then he would move on to a new concept. The day after, first thing we did was take a quiz on what we were supposed to have learned on the previous two days (lecture plus homework). We leap frogged through the whole year this way. There would be major tests along the way at milestones, but since these tests were based on the quizzes, if you did well on the quizzes, you should do well on the tests. You had constant feedback in the form of the homework and quizzes as to how well you were keeping up.
So, you couldn't slack for most of the quarter and then be surprised when you had to take a test you were completely unprepared for. You knew you were unprepared and so did the teacher. If you fell really far behind, you had to consider whether AP Calculus was the right class for you and if you might be better off in a lower level class. With metrics that tell you where you are in learning the material at any given point, you are better prepared to take corrective action earlier.
I believe the tickets were "all-day" tickets, so you could go as often as you like for that day.
Also, without too much effort, you could get coupons for half-price tickets.
This has been in the news for a while. From previous articles (for which I don't have a link), Hasbro did offer to purchase Scrabulous, but the owners were asking for a fairly outrageous sum.
Given the strength of Hasbro's position, sounds like the owners of Scrabulous got too greedy.
> Farming isn't confined to land. Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats. Soylent Green is People!
What about the flip side to this? Increased connectivity from the internet, Blackberries, cell phones, etc. allow us to work more from anywhere. Americans already put in more working hours than any other nation, except maybe the Japanese, and we take less vacation than most. Hell, plenty of people lose vacation days because they fail to take them. When it comes to "slacking", Americans are amateurs - other countries have mandated 32 hour work weeks, 8 weeks of vacation per year, sabbaticals, etc.
Fine - no slacking off during my workshift, but I'm not doing any work during my leisureshift - no e-mail, no conference calls, no work, no "thinking" about work, etc. I think most employers would be willing to trade increased engagement that exceeds the traditional "workshift" and "workplace" for some cyberslacking at work.
I kind of miss hourly work. You clock in, do your work, and then clock out. And, that's that.
The problem with the site is that it only calculates based on your annual salary. It doesn't factor in income generated from investments or from other assets like homes. For most Americans, their homes are their major investment.
Once you get into annual salaries in the $100,000 per year range, you'll find people with lots of investment income that significantly augments their annual income.
The airport is not being prohibited from offering this service. They're just not allowed to prevent individual airlines from offering competitive services. In general, individual airlines are only going to offer their own internet service from within their own lounges. These lounges are usually reserved for their elite passengers and passengers that have paid for access. They tend to charge for internet access in these lounges.
Granted, the passengers most likely to pay for internet access in an airport are going to be the same guys in the lounge, so this group does represent most of the market. However, the airport is still in control of most of the airport in terms of offering wireless internet access, so they do have an opportunity to make money.
If they really wanted to stick it to business travelers, the airports would charge for access to power outlets. I often see passengers with their laptops clustered around the few available outlets near the gates.
Actually, it's not the same as yelling at somebody. It's the same as printing up a bunch of flyers with defamatory information and handing them out to all of your friends and anybody else who happens to be walking by - maybe printing up some posters and putting them up in public places.
The effect is much more persistent and widespread than simply yelling at somebody in a crowded room.
Google is scanning the books and using the full-text for searching purposes. You'll be able to view the full-text of works that are in the public domain, and click on a "buy this book" link for all others.
From Google's press release:
"Users searching with Google will see links in their search results page when there are books relevant to their query. Clicking on a title delivers a Google Print page where users can browse the full text of public domain works and brief excerpts and/or bibliographic data of copyrighted material. Library content will be displayed in keeping with copyright law. "
Wasn't it Eisenhower who said we really only needed one American soldier in Germany? The only real purpose of the forces in Germany was to die in the initial assault from the Soviets. They might be able to slow them down a bit, but those forces only really existed as a "trip wire" to bring the U.S. into the conflict.
The same is true of the American forces in South Korea. There isn't nearly enough to stop the million plus army of North Korea - really, they're there to slow down the assault and die. Their deaths would require the U.S. to enter the conflict.
If Europe is serious about maintaining a force that can ensure the sovereignty of EU nations, what they really need is heavy lift capability. Being able to get the constituent forces large enough to repel an invasion to the battlefield requires them to have an infrastructure and vehicles to move massive amounts of soldiers and equipment. He who gets there first with the most usually wins.
NATO understands this. The major contribution from the U.S. will be heavy lift capability. I remember reading a story of how the allied commanders met with the German commanders after WWII to discuss the various battles and campaigns they were involved with. The Americans looked at the battle plan for Barbarossa, and their first question was, "Where are the trucks?" The American commanders were amazed that the Germans would plan such an attack using horse-drawn carts as a means of moving men and material.
As it is, Europe depends mainly on the U.S. as a guarantor of their sovereignty. (I don't think the Poles will depend on the French as guarantors of their sovereignty ever again!) Aside from the use of nuclear weapons, I don't think any EU nation aside from Great Britain has sufficient armed forces on its own to ensure their own sovereignty. As has been mentioned, the need for this "guarantee" is considerably less nowadays with the dismantling of the Soviet threat.
When I read this, I stared thinking that this would be excellent as portable storage for digital photography. I shoot with a Canon 10D digital SLR, and when I'm in the field, I'll shoot about a gig a day, more if I'm photographing wildlife. For trips into the wilderness where I can't carry too much gear, this sounds ideal. I could carry a PDA with WiFi and a compact flash card reader. I just dump the flash card into the PDA, and move my files over to the hard drive in my pack. The drive could be kept in a protective case so that I would never have to expose it to the elements.
I've tried a number of different solutions: an iPaq with dual sleeves and PCMCIA hard drives, a dedicated portable storage device (40 Gb Tripper), and a laptop. I liked the PDA solution a lot since I already owned one and could view the pics. However, getting enough storage was not as cost efficient as getting the storage device. And, most PDAs can't host USB/Firewire hard drives - though there have been some successes. The laptop, while the best solution, is simply too heavy and power hungry.
This would also be good for watching movies or listening to MP3's on my PDA. Having a lightweight, large capacity, rechargeable storage device that can be easily accessed by my PDA would be great.
What I want to know is, what determines which French musicians get paid? Does every French musician get paid equally? Does it depend on how many songs they've published? How popular those songs are? How likely the songs are to be pirated?
I mean, could anybody record a crappy song in French, issue a CD, join whatever French music association they have, and receive a cut of these levies?
Is this even a problem? Is there lots of pirated French music floating around? Shouldn't musicians of other nationalities get a cut for the pirated songs that get downloaded in France?
In the SF Bay Area, we've been using the Fast Trak system for a while. These are wireless transponders that allows you to drive through toll booths for the bridges around the bay without having to stop to pay. The transponder identifies your car as you pass through, and they just bill your credit card.
They recently expanded this program by embedding sensors around various highways. The sensors track people with the Fastrak transponders as they drive by. What they use this for is for tracking how fast people are going. You can then log onto a website that shows the average speeds of people traveling at different points along the highway. This tells you not only if there's traffic, but how bad the traffic is.
When they started this program, they sent me a letter telling me that they wouldn't use the information for any other purposes than traffic monitoring. They also included a foil pouch into which I could put the transponder if I didn't want them to track me.
It's actually pretty cool. I log onto the website and check the commute before I leave home or work - and I know the rate of speed at different points along the highway I'm traveling.
Slashdot Mirror
I do wonder how randomized the shutting down of lights were in that study. Did those towns shut off every light? Or, did they only shut off lights in low risk areas? And, does the study differentiate between dimmed lights and lights shut off completely? The argument put forward by the Automobile Association is to not shut off the lights on roads where the speed limit is greater than 40 mph since the stopping distance for cars is much longer at high rates of speed and that lighting helps prevents deaths in those situations. This makes sense to me - shut off your lights based on risk analysis rather than a blanket shut them all off.
I find it rather strange that they would have only offered to send him to another hotel. If he truly did have a bed bug infestation, then likely his clothing, personal belongings, and even luggage were infested as well. Sending him to another hotel could have spread the infestation. My understanding is that many hotels, when confronted with this issue, offer to dry clean all of the guest's clothing, buy them new luggage, and then move them to another room/hotel. Worst case for the guest is that they bring the infestation home with them. Bed bugs can be very difficult to eradicate.
Actually, this is different. In the EU and US, names of food is controlled as trademarks. You can still produce sparking wine in the Napa Valley, but you can't claim it came from the Champagne region. What Malaysia is claiming is that they own the "copyright" to these food and that no one else is allowed to even produce it elsewhere. Of course, the US and EU fight over their trademarks - the US considers "champagne" (little "c") to be a semi-generic term, thus "California champagne" is o.k. Same with terms like Cheddar. And, the EU failed to recognize US designations, such as Idaho potatoes or Vidalia onions until they lost a WTO case in 2004.
Actually, what you get to see is what other travelers are doing with their computers. In my experience, you don't see too many locals in the internet cafes, especially if you're in some backpackers' ghetto. I also don't agree that "seedy" = "character."
Of course they could do a removable battery. The point they made in the keynote was that a removable battery takes up a bunch of space. By making the battery non-removable, they gained 40% more room for a bigger, longer-lasting battery. The design trade off here was removable battery for more battery life. The market will decide whether that was a good trade.
My AP Calculus teacher took this further. We had a quiz every day. On one day, he would teach a concept and give homework on that concept. The next day, we would review the homework in class; and, then he would move on to a new concept. The day after, first thing we did was take a quiz on what we were supposed to have learned on the previous two days (lecture plus homework). We leap frogged through the whole year this way. There would be major tests along the way at milestones, but since these tests were based on the quizzes, if you did well on the quizzes, you should do well on the tests. You had constant feedback in the form of the homework and quizzes as to how well you were keeping up. So, you couldn't slack for most of the quarter and then be surprised when you had to take a test you were completely unprepared for. You knew you were unprepared and so did the teacher. If you fell really far behind, you had to consider whether AP Calculus was the right class for you and if you might be better off in a lower level class. With metrics that tell you where you are in learning the material at any given point, you are better prepared to take corrective action earlier.
I believe the tickets were "all-day" tickets, so you could go as often as you like for that day. Also, without too much effort, you could get coupons for half-price tickets.
Finally found a link: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/the_scrabulous_snag__money
This has been in the news for a while. From previous articles (for which I don't have a link), Hasbro did offer to purchase Scrabulous, but the owners were asking for a fairly outrageous sum. Given the strength of Hasbro's position, sounds like the owners of Scrabulous got too greedy.
Soylent Green is People!
What about the flip side to this? Increased connectivity from the internet, Blackberries, cell phones, etc. allow us to work more from anywhere. Americans already put in more working hours than any other nation, except maybe the Japanese, and we take less vacation than most. Hell, plenty of people lose vacation days because they fail to take them. When it comes to "slacking", Americans are amateurs - other countries have mandated 32 hour work weeks, 8 weeks of vacation per year, sabbaticals, etc. Fine - no slacking off during my workshift, but I'm not doing any work during my leisureshift - no e-mail, no conference calls, no work, no "thinking" about work, etc. I think most employers would be willing to trade increased engagement that exceeds the traditional "workshift" and "workplace" for some cyberslacking at work. I kind of miss hourly work. You clock in, do your work, and then clock out. And, that's that.
The problem with the site is that it only calculates based on your annual salary. It doesn't factor in income generated from investments or from other assets like homes. For most Americans, their homes are their major investment. Once you get into annual salaries in the $100,000 per year range, you'll find people with lots of investment income that significantly augments their annual income.
The airport is not being prohibited from offering this service. They're just not allowed to prevent individual airlines from offering competitive services. In general, individual airlines are only going to offer their own internet service from within their own lounges. These lounges are usually reserved for their elite passengers and passengers that have paid for access. They tend to charge for internet access in these lounges. Granted, the passengers most likely to pay for internet access in an airport are going to be the same guys in the lounge, so this group does represent most of the market. However, the airport is still in control of most of the airport in terms of offering wireless internet access, so they do have an opportunity to make money. If they really wanted to stick it to business travelers, the airports would charge for access to power outlets. I often see passengers with their laptops clustered around the few available outlets near the gates.
Actually, it's not the same as yelling at somebody. It's the same as printing up a bunch of flyers with defamatory information and handing them out to all of your friends and anybody else who happens to be walking by - maybe printing up some posters and putting them up in public places.
The effect is much more persistent and widespread than simply yelling at somebody in a crowded room.
From Google's press release:
"Users searching with Google will see links in their search results page when there are books relevant to their query. Clicking on a title delivers a Google Print page where users can browse the full text of public domain works and brief excerpts and/or bibliographic data of copyrighted material. Library content will be displayed in keeping with copyright law. "
Here's the press release:
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/print_library .html
Geographic Systems - make those topos come alive
Simulations/Training
Gaming
And, of course the main driver - pornography
The same is true of the American forces in South Korea. There isn't nearly enough to stop the million plus army of North Korea - really, they're there to slow down the assault and die. Their deaths would require the U.S. to enter the conflict.
If Europe is serious about maintaining a force that can ensure the sovereignty of EU nations, what they really need is heavy lift capability. Being able to get the constituent forces large enough to repel an invasion to the battlefield requires them to have an infrastructure and vehicles to move massive amounts of soldiers and equipment. He who gets there first with the most usually wins.
NATO understands this. The major contribution from the U.S. will be heavy lift capability. I remember reading a story of how the allied commanders met with the German commanders after WWII to discuss the various battles and campaigns they were involved with. The Americans looked at the battle plan for Barbarossa, and their first question was, "Where are the trucks?" The American commanders were amazed that the Germans would plan such an attack using horse-drawn carts as a means of moving men and material.
As it is, Europe depends mainly on the U.S. as a guarantor of their sovereignty. (I don't think the Poles will depend on the French as guarantors of their sovereignty ever again!) Aside from the use of nuclear weapons, I don't think any EU nation aside from Great Britain has sufficient armed forces on its own to ensure their own sovereignty. As has been mentioned, the need for this "guarantee" is considerably less nowadays with the dismantling of the Soviet threat.
I've tried a number of different solutions: an iPaq with dual sleeves and PCMCIA hard drives, a dedicated portable storage device (40 Gb Tripper), and a laptop. I liked the PDA solution a lot since I already owned one and could view the pics. However, getting enough storage was not as cost efficient as getting the storage device. And, most PDAs can't host USB/Firewire hard drives - though there have been some successes. The laptop, while the best solution, is simply too heavy and power hungry.
This would also be good for watching movies or listening to MP3's on my PDA. Having a lightweight, large capacity, rechargeable storage device that can be easily accessed by my PDA would be great.
I mean, could anybody record a crappy song in French, issue a CD, join whatever French music association they have, and receive a cut of these levies?
Is this even a problem? Is there lots of pirated French music floating around? Shouldn't musicians of other nationalities get a cut for the pirated songs that get downloaded in France?
In the SF Bay Area, we've been using the Fast Trak system for a while. These are wireless transponders that allows you to drive through toll booths for the bridges around the bay without having to stop to pay. The transponder identifies your car as you pass through, and they just bill your credit card.
They recently expanded this program by embedding sensors around various highways. The sensors track people with the Fastrak transponders as they drive by. What they use this for is for tracking how fast people are going. You can then log onto a website that shows the average speeds of people traveling at different points along the highway. This tells you not only if there's traffic, but how bad the traffic is.
When they started this program, they sent me a letter telling me that they wouldn't use the information for any other purposes than traffic monitoring. They also included a foil pouch into which I could put the transponder if I didn't want them to track me.
It's actually pretty cool. I log onto the website and check the commute before I leave home or work - and I know the rate of speed at different points along the highway I'm traveling.