You're comparing nameplate capacity - how much each technology can produce in the best case. That's not how much they produce in practical use. To be an apples-to-apples comparison, you have to compare actual power generated.
Nuclear plants have an average capacity factor of of 0.90. That is, after you take into account downtime due to maintenance, refueling, testing, etc, a 1 GW plant will over a year produce an average of 900 MW.
PV solar has an average capacity factor of 0.145 in the U.S. for fixed installations. That is, after you account for night, weather, movement of the sun, dirt accumulating on the panels, maintenance, etc, 1000 Watts of PV panels will over a year produce an average of 145 Watts.
So
A 1 GW nuclear plant costing $1 billion yields a cost of ($1 billion) / (0.9 * 1 GW) = $1.11 per Watt generated.
A 100 Watt PV panel costing $100 yields a cost of ($100) / (0.145 * 100 W) = $6.70 per Watt generated
I know you can turn them off if you're logged into YouTube, but I do most of my video watching while not logged in. I hate clicking on recommended videos even if they look interesting because I know clicking on them means "help us build a profile on your interests." Is there a way to just turn them off entirely?
Apple differentiates their products primarily through their software. If a Macintosh was sold with Windows they would be unable to command the profit margins they currently do because their hardware is nice but it's not that different or better than their best competition.
This theory ignores the fact that the primary attraction for many Mac users, especially web developers and science/engineering types, is the POSIX underpinnings and the GNU toolchain. Apple did not create POSIX or GNU and do not substantially contribute to the development to them. Their support of CUPS and Clang is welcome and appreciated, and they recently open-sourced FoundationDB, which is nice if Cassandra isn't small-batch-craft-beer-check-shirt enough for your hipster ass..... but.... what else do they do in this space? Almost 100% of people working in these fields could use Linux instead, but they choose macOS because of the well-polished hardware integration, especially the screens, keyboards (maybe less so now) and touchpad.
Those people probably represent like 5% or less of Mac sales (currently around 8% market share, so 5% of that would be 0.4%, which sounds about right for the number of linux/unix developers vs general user population). The vast majority of Mac buyers buy them because they're easy to use (software), or they're in the art/graphics/photo/video industry and need a calibrated screen (again, software). You can calibrate Windows laptop screens too, Microsoft just doesn't care (Win 10 still has a calibration bug which was introduced in Vista and has gone unfixed - it will dump the calibration profile whenever a UAC popup dims the screen), so companies making calibration software are forced to code work-arounds. Making Windows laptops sub-optimal for people working in those fields.
The only hardware Apple makes are the Ax processor and the fingerprint sensor (they bought the company who makes those). Everything else is made by ODMs who buy components from other companies and puts them together. An ODM is like an OEM, except they also design the product for you. Quanta is actually the company who makes the Macbooks, and they buy all the components (including the screen, keyboard, and touchpad you tout) from other suppliers. They also make laptops for just about every other major laptop brand, so there's nothing unique or unparalleled about Mac hardware. The secret sauce is all in the software.
The iPod is a good example. When it was released, CmdrTaco famously said "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." He scanned only the iPod's hardware specs compared to competitors', and correctly evaluated it as being inferior. What he didn't consider was the software. The Achilles heel of MP3 players up to that point was playlist synchronization between your computer and MP3 player, which back then only had enough storage capacity to hold a dozen or so hours of music so you couldn't just copy over your entire music collection. You had to plug it into your computer, then go through a proprietary interface to copy your songs from your computer to the MP3 player. A method which usually ignored existing playlists you had already created. The iPod introduced iTunes, which neatly solved that problem by storing your playlists within iTunes, so it was always synchronized between your computer and MP3 player. Again, software.
This argument has been around since the 1980s. The Mac's GUI vs WordPerfect's hotkeys. As TFA points out, the hotkeys are a lot quicker. As you point out, the GUI saves you from having to learn a bunch of abstract hotkeys.
Fortunately, you can have both. You can use the GUI to navigate in unfamiliar software, while using hotkeys to speed up frequent tasks. And curse the programmer/designer who tries to force everyone to use only one or the other. IMHO the biggest UI design fail in the last decade is this trend towards a mobile interface on desktop apps. An interface which is completely devoid of any standardized organization or hotkeys. You're left searching aimlessly in a bunch of random menus trying to find the function you want. It defeats the entire purpose of having a GUI - instead of having to memorize random keyboard shortcuts, you now have to memorize random menu arrangements. If you're gonna do that, we might as well just go back to hotkeys. At least they're faster.
Actually, it's to Lightfoot's discredit that he didn't say that. The only way Trump's request was in any way feasible would've been for a landing in his second term (assuming re-election).
The incident happened in April 2017. The next launch window for an Earth-to-Mars trip was mid-2018 (InSight was launched May 2018). The launch window after that will be in late-2020 (for a Mars landing in early-2021) So there was no feasible way to get a project of this scale completed in a year.
I'm not sure why Lightfoot is characterized as nervous and hesitating. This is a limitation imposed by time and physics, not his or NASA's fault. There's nothing to fear in telling your boss that what they're asking for is physically impossible. Unless he didn't know the launch windows, in which case the problem was his incompetence.
Agreed, but IMHO this is pushback against companies taking punitive action against employees for doing stuff on their own time. e.g. You post pictures of yourself smoking weed and drinking beer at an evening party on your Facebook account, and your company fires you for it.
Either they're both wrong, or they're both right. Either you shouldn't do personal stuff on the company's time, and the company shouldn't care what you do during your non-work hours. Or the company can exert control over your behavior during non-work hours, and you can work on personal stuff during work hours.
Removing a rich person's car from traffic also improves traffic congestion for the people left behind. It's like opening a new checkout lane at the supermarket - the first people who get into the new lane get a substantial speed boost, but the long-term benefit is an equal speedup across all lanes. The areas with the worst traffic tend to be urban areas, making it unviable to solve by expanding the size of the road. So any solution to improving traffic there involves removing cars from the road. Whether that's done by carpooling (encouraged by carpool lanes), making the road a double-deck, or flying cars, it all results in the same thing. The first people who get to use the new lanes get a boost in their travel speed. Until more people get to use the new lanes, and their traffic speed lowers and eventually converges with that of regular lanes. (Once it converges there's no more incentive to use the new lanes vs the old - carpool lanes are running into this problem as in California they're typically 1/4 or 1/5 of the road area, and more than 1/5 or 1/4 of the cars now qualify to use the carpool lane).
I'm extremely skeptical of this idea. The additional energy loss of flight compared to wheels is enormous. Likewise, the risk of injury/death due to falling from altitude is substantially higher. But I can see the attraction of the idea. There's a lot more space in the air. And since there are no physical roads, any traffic flow is regulated by virtual boundaries which you can change on a whim, instead of having them fixed like they are on a road. It's like a zipper road taken to the extreme.
As you may have learned from the recent lunar eclipse, a shadow is composed of a penumbra and umbra. The light is completely occluded in the umbra, partially occluded in the penumbra. So if you consider any single point source of light from the hidden scene, certain parts of the wall receive light from it, other parts do not. The algorithm then works from that to back out the original scene (light sources). "Accounting for differing light sources" is exactly what it's doing to figure out the original scene.
Where your comment is relevant is that the object creating a shadow can be of arbitrary shape. In this case it was a fixed and known shape, which simplified computing the image. I dunno if this technique would work with an arbitrary scene and an arbitrary-shaped object blocking the light. If the object were close enough to cast an umbra, you could deduce its shape and refine the image over multiple iterations (basically guess small changes in the shadow object's shape to see if it results in the algorithm yielding a sharper picture). But if you're only getting a penumbral shadow, I'm not sure if there's an algorithmic solution that'll work for all scenes and all blocking shapes.
Rather than a blanket condemnation of the practice, can we agree that in some situations providing cash incentives to corporations creates jobs, while in other situations it does not?
The reason this is being discussed is that left wing congress folks like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who don't sell out have a hard time affording life in DC and back home at the same time. The pressure is there on purpose, it's to make them crack and sell out for the money needed for a decent living. $174k sounds like a lot of money until you're trying to maintain two households, one of them in an expensive city.
One of Newt Gingrich's core strategies for creating a Congress which couldn't work together was to discourage GOP members from fraternizing with the opposition.
This is pretty easy to disprove. The Washington Post used to keep a database of every Congresscritter's vote. You could then sort each member by how likely they were to vote with their own party. The general trend is for the party in power to have more members vote with their party, so looking at those who were most likely to vote with their party doesn't tell you much. But if you look at how often they voted against their own party:
102nd House - Speaker Tim Foley (D).
6 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 2 of them Democrats
35 voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 16 of them Democrats.
103rd House - Speaker Tim Foley (D).
9 members voted agianst their party a third of the time or more, 6 of them Democrats.
22 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 14 of them Democrats
104th House - Speaker Newt Gingrich (R)
23 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 5 of them Republicans
43 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 7 of them Republicans
105th House - Speaker Newt Gingrich (R)
6 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
13 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 4 of them Republicans
106th House - Speaker Dennis Hastert (R)
8 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 4 of them Republicans
14 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 6 of them Republicans
107th House - Speaker Dennis Hastert (R)
3 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
8 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 2 of them Republicans
108th House - Speaker Dennis Hastert (R)
3 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 2 of them Republicans
5 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 3 of them Republicans
109th House - Speaker Dennis Hastert (R)
2 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
Same two members voted against their party a third of the time, 1 of them Republicans
110th House - Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D)
No members voted against their party a third of the time or more
2 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, none of the Democrats
111th House - Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D)
2 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Democrats
5 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 4 of them Democrats
112th House - Speaker John Boehner (R)
8 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
19 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 6 o
Debt and net worth are very different. 7 years ago I had no debt. Today I have several hundred thousand dollars in debt because I bought a house with a mortgage. But my net worth has increased because my home value has appreciated (by more than the amount of my mortgage) since I bought it.
If properly managed, debt isn't a bad thing, and can in fact be good. It allows you to buy things sooner than you would be able to otherwise. In my case if I had waited to save up enough to buy my house for cash, during the time I waited its price would've increased by more than the amount of debt I took on buying it immediately with a mortgage. So I actually saved money by going into debt. I only retain the debt because shedding it wold require me to liquidate the house, leaving me with no place to live, forcing me to buy a new house at today's prices and interest rates, which would actually be more expensive than keeping my current house.
In fact, the way credit ratings work, I would say the people with more debt are more likely to have more money. Banks won't lend to people with poor financial management skills and thus poor credit. So those people who tend to live paycheck-to-paycheck with little cash on hand end up having less debt. OTOH if someone has $10 million in debt, then his house is probably chock full of expensive items worth burgling. On the flip side, he is more likely to have security cameras and can hire a good lawyer to prosecute you if you're caught.
So maybe the small fish with little debt are indeed better targets for a thief.
This is probably a key question the court really should
1) take up
2) issue an expansive ruling on
Refusing to take on a case doesn't necessarily mean the Supreme Court agrees with the lower court's opinion. If the case brings up new issues (as this one seems to do), they will often refuse to take the case simply to allow more time for other courts in other districts to get similar cases. Unless it's a time-critical issue (e.g. the 2000 Florida recount in the Presidential election), the Supreme Court doesn't like to issue decisions from a vacuum. They like the issue to kick around and stew in lower courts for years if not decades, so lots of lawyers and judges can make and refine arguments pro and con. That way when they finally accept a case, the issue has been well-argued and well-thought-out, little risk of someone thinking up a new argument which suddenly turns it around. And all they have to do is decide which argument is best.
You have to understand that Supreme Court rulings are binding across the entire country, and frequently last for several decades if not forever. They're well aware of the near-permanence of their decisions, and wield that power very carefully. Even if they disagree with a lower court's decision, better to let it stand for a few years to give other courts more time to ruminate of the issue. Then when they finally take it up, they can make a better-informed lasting decision. It's their version of measure twice, cut once.
It's too easy to game the system using positive reviews. It's possible to game it using negative reviews (of your competitors' products), but it's harder to do. And if the reasons listed in the paid negative review are legitimate (e.g. restaurant's seating area is limited and crowded), then it's still useful information.
In Yelp's case, the negative reviews also make it relatively easy to tell when a company has paid Yelp to scrub its reviews. Yelp doesn't seem to be very discriminating and seems to just remove all the negative reviews. Everything picks up negative reviews no matter how good it is. So if a company's Yelp reviews seem strangely devoid of negative reviews, I know they've paid to have their Yelp profile scrubbed. And I can just disregard their Yelp rating and rely on other review sites.
Amazon seems to have picked up on this practice though. They've made it increasingly difficult to see only the negative reviews. You used to be able to do it by clicking on the "see all critical reviews" link on the product's main page at the top of the reviews. It was in the middle of the page, but easy to get to by clicking "customer reviews" at the very top. So page load, two clicks, and you got just the negative reviews.
Then they changed it so you first had to click "see all reviews" before you could filter to see only the negative reviews, but it was still located in the same spot you got to by clicking "customer reviews" at the top of the page. So it just added an extra click and page load.
About a month ago they changed it and moved the "see all reviews" link to the bottom of the reviews instead of at the top. So now you have to click "customer reviews", scroll to the bottom (or hit ctrl-end to go to the bottom of the page and scroll up), click "see all reviews", then click on "see all critical reviews" in order to get just the negative reviews. I'm starting to think it may actually be easier to just write an extension which does all this hoop-jumping for me.
I believe "studio" in this context = submits to the demands of the myriad guilds and unions which have a near-monopoly on employment in this industry. What we're seeing is the balkanization of the industry, driven by the ability of anyone with a cell phone now being able to create "movies" and distribute them via YouTube. Those people aren't going to check to make sure everyone performing in their video clip is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, or that they're a member of the Director's Guild. That broke the control monopoly those guilds and unions had over the entertainment industry. And now we're seeing more "official" production companies fleeing the barn.
The real problem is that security fixes are not well communicated, and that sometimes abused as a way to get users to take user-hostile changes.
Yeah, for open source software the security fixes are usually only available via updating the software. It's like car manufacturers requiring you to get the newest model car (for free in the case of open source) instead of issuing recalls to fix problems.
Pay software usually issues security updates for older versions for a while, without requiring you update to a new version (that you have to pay for). But they seem to be trying to kill that model off, replacing it with a subscription model which forces everyone onto the same version.
It would be less of a problem if you could customize software and its installations. Often you only want a limited feature set (e.g. only Word and Excel) but the software insists on installing everything. That's the problem I've had with antivirus software. They all now include all sorts of web monitoring and active file inspection (tries to scan in real-time every file your computer tries to open) which just intolerably slows down the computer or browser. I have to shut those features off, but would rather not install them in the first place. Or things like the infamous ribbon interface in Office. I bet tens if not hundreds of millions of users would've killed for an option to disable it and go back to the previous interface. Instead, your only option is to continue using outdated software.
No, the findings highlight the fact that consumers don't want advertising. Anyone other than a marketing droid would see this as declining importance of ads. Talk about cognitive dissonnance.
False dichotomy. The comparison here isn't ads vs no ads. If you compare those two scenarios, of course nobody wants ads.
The correct relevant comparison is no ads but a higher cost, vs lower cost (or no cost) but with ads. And although I hate ads and am willing to pay to avoid them, the vast majority of people seem to disagree with me. They vote with their pocketbooks for lower cost with more ads.
So it works out. The reaction is exothermic and a net 291.5 kJ of energy is released per mole.
But as you point out, the wild card is the Na. The above assumes you can get elemental sodium at zero energy cost. Sodium is extremely reactive and you just don't find it in its elemental state in nature. Depending on how much energy you had to use to refine some sodium compound to create the elemental Na needed for this reaction, it could be a net energy loss.
These apps worked better together. In Hangouts, I could be texting someone, decide I'd rather talk to them and call them via my Google Voice account by tapping a single button. Later if I decided to switch that call from a voice call to a video call, I could do that with another video tap. If I then decided to add someone else to the video call, I just had to add the extra person. All from withing Hangouts. The only thing it didn't support was seamlessly transferring cellular calls to VoIP and vice versa.
Now if you want to do the above, it's a confusing hodgepodge of different apps. You have to text someone with Messages or Allo (I'm still not sure what the difference between the two is). If you decide you'd rather talk with them, you have to switch to the Google Voice app, look them up in your contacts, and initiate the call. If you then decide you want to change it to a video call, you have to hang up and call them again on the Duo app. And if you decide you want to add a third person to your video call, you have to end the Duo call, start the Meet app, and call everyone all over again.
I still don't understand why they're killing off Hangouts. The replacements are an app that does only messaging, an app that does only VoIP, an app that does only video calls, and an app that does only video conferencing. Hangouts was a communications app. Its closest analogue was Skype, where you could video conference between multiple people, or a single person, or disable the camera to get just a voice call, or just type messages to each other. It made sense to tie all of these into a single app, so all you had to do was pick what mode of communication you wanted at that moment - text, voice, video, or conference video.
The credit card companies got laws passed making it illegal for merchants to pass credit card fees on to customers. That means the person who decides which card to use is insulated from the cost associated with using that card, completely handcuffing market forces which would drive credit card processing fees down.
Get rid of those laws (regulations), and the credit card processors would be forced to compete head-to-head on price, driving their fees down.
i.e. Search engine crawlers should not index the site, unless the site owner explicitly allows it in the robots.txt file.
I mean I completely understand why it's set up the way it is. Setting the robots.txt to disallow crawling doesn't actually disallow crawling. It's just that the services which respect the file won't crawl your site if you have it set to disallow them. Inverting it gives the false sense that unless you explicitly allow crawlers, it is somehow impossible for them to index your site.
But that seems to be what the EU legal system wants. So maybe that's the way it should work, despite the false sense of security it may give the more clueless people.
Deviously clever of them to use sunlight in their analogy, since sunlight doesn't belong to anyone and is free for anyone to receive.
Data is more like fresh water. It's also renewable and free. But it pools up on certain private property. You cannot access it on someone else's property without trespassing or first getting their permission. Which is something these data mining companies hide from their "customers" inside dense EULA agreements. If they're so certain that their users have willingly given them permission, then they wouldn't object to a law which requires them to state in bold at the top of their sign-up page and EULA what data they collect and how they use it, right?
The proper remedy would've been for Scott Adams to ask Twitter to revoke the account, or at least get them to change the picture. You have a right to control how your own likeness is used. That twitter account was clearly violating it by using a photoshopped picture of him.
Google had nothing to do with it, and was in fact instrumental in helping him locate this violation of his personality rights. Unfortunately he then tried to shoot the messenger instead of tackling the root of the problem.
That's really the fundamental problem with the way this right to be forgotten is being implemented. Search engines like Google are merely the messenger. Forcing them to remove search results doesn't remove the bad information from the web. Unless you go after the source of the bad info and force them to fix it (or get the host to remove the site/account), you're just just trying to make the problem go away by sticking everyone's head in the sand.. Next up, we will solve world hunger by banning the press from reporting on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear plants have an average capacity factor of of 0.90. That is, after you take into account downtime due to maintenance, refueling, testing, etc, a 1 GW plant will over a year produce an average of 900 MW.
PV solar has an average capacity factor of 0.145 in the U.S. for fixed installations. That is, after you account for night, weather, movement of the sun, dirt accumulating on the panels, maintenance, etc, 1000 Watts of PV panels will over a year produce an average of 145 Watts.
So
Or so we can dream.
I know you can turn them off if you're logged into YouTube, but I do most of my video watching while not logged in. I hate clicking on recommended videos even if they look interesting because I know clicking on them means "help us build a profile on your interests." Is there a way to just turn them off entirely?
Those people probably represent like 5% or less of Mac sales (currently around 8% market share, so 5% of that would be 0.4%, which sounds about right for the number of linux/unix developers vs general user population). The vast majority of Mac buyers buy them because they're easy to use (software), or they're in the art/graphics/photo/video industry and need a calibrated screen (again, software). You can calibrate Windows laptop screens too, Microsoft just doesn't care (Win 10 still has a calibration bug which was introduced in Vista and has gone unfixed - it will dump the calibration profile whenever a UAC popup dims the screen), so companies making calibration software are forced to code work-arounds. Making Windows laptops sub-optimal for people working in those fields.
The only hardware Apple makes are the Ax processor and the fingerprint sensor (they bought the company who makes those). Everything else is made by ODMs who buy components from other companies and puts them together. An ODM is like an OEM, except they also design the product for you. Quanta is actually the company who makes the Macbooks, and they buy all the components (including the screen, keyboard, and touchpad you tout) from other suppliers. They also make laptops for just about every other major laptop brand, so there's nothing unique or unparalleled about Mac hardware. The secret sauce is all in the software.
The iPod is a good example. When it was released, CmdrTaco famously said "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." He scanned only the iPod's hardware specs compared to competitors', and correctly evaluated it as being inferior. What he didn't consider was the software. The Achilles heel of MP3 players up to that point was playlist synchronization between your computer and MP3 player, which back then only had enough storage capacity to hold a dozen or so hours of music so you couldn't just copy over your entire music collection. You had to plug it into your computer, then go through a proprietary interface to copy your songs from your computer to the MP3 player. A method which usually ignored existing playlists you had already created. The iPod introduced iTunes, which neatly solved that problem by storing your playlists within iTunes, so it was always synchronized between your computer and MP3 player. Again, software.
This argument has been around since the 1980s. The Mac's GUI vs WordPerfect's hotkeys. As TFA points out, the hotkeys are a lot quicker. As you point out, the GUI saves you from having to learn a bunch of abstract hotkeys.
Fortunately, you can have both. You can use the GUI to navigate in unfamiliar software, while using hotkeys to speed up frequent tasks. And curse the programmer/designer who tries to force everyone to use only one or the other. IMHO the biggest UI design fail in the last decade is this trend towards a mobile interface on desktop apps. An interface which is completely devoid of any standardized organization or hotkeys. You're left searching aimlessly in a bunch of random menus trying to find the function you want. It defeats the entire purpose of having a GUI - instead of having to memorize random keyboard shortcuts, you now have to memorize random menu arrangements. If you're gonna do that, we might as well just go back to hotkeys. At least they're faster.
Actually, it's to Lightfoot's discredit that he didn't say that. The only way Trump's request was in any way feasible would've been for a landing in his second term (assuming re-election). The incident happened in April 2017. The next launch window for an Earth-to-Mars trip was mid-2018 (InSight was launched May 2018). The launch window after that will be in late-2020 (for a Mars landing in early-2021) So there was no feasible way to get a project of this scale completed in a year.
I'm not sure why Lightfoot is characterized as nervous and hesitating. This is a limitation imposed by time and physics, not his or NASA's fault. There's nothing to fear in telling your boss that what they're asking for is physically impossible. Unless he didn't know the launch windows, in which case the problem was his incompetence.
Agreed, but IMHO this is pushback against companies taking punitive action against employees for doing stuff on their own time. e.g. You post pictures of yourself smoking weed and drinking beer at an evening party on your Facebook account, and your company fires you for it.
Either they're both wrong, or they're both right. Either you shouldn't do personal stuff on the company's time, and the company shouldn't care what you do during your non-work hours. Or the company can exert control over your behavior during non-work hours, and you can work on personal stuff during work hours.
Removing a rich person's car from traffic also improves traffic congestion for the people left behind. It's like opening a new checkout lane at the supermarket - the first people who get into the new lane get a substantial speed boost, but the long-term benefit is an equal speedup across all lanes. The areas with the worst traffic tend to be urban areas, making it unviable to solve by expanding the size of the road. So any solution to improving traffic there involves removing cars from the road. Whether that's done by carpooling (encouraged by carpool lanes), making the road a double-deck, or flying cars, it all results in the same thing. The first people who get to use the new lanes get a boost in their travel speed. Until more people get to use the new lanes, and their traffic speed lowers and eventually converges with that of regular lanes. (Once it converges there's no more incentive to use the new lanes vs the old - carpool lanes are running into this problem as in California they're typically 1/4 or 1/5 of the road area, and more than 1/5 or 1/4 of the cars now qualify to use the carpool lane).
I'm extremely skeptical of this idea. The additional energy loss of flight compared to wheels is enormous. Likewise, the risk of injury/death due to falling from altitude is substantially higher. But I can see the attraction of the idea. There's a lot more space in the air. And since there are no physical roads, any traffic flow is regulated by virtual boundaries which you can change on a whim, instead of having them fixed like they are on a road. It's like a zipper road taken to the extreme.
As you may have learned from the recent lunar eclipse, a shadow is composed of a penumbra and umbra. The light is completely occluded in the umbra, partially occluded in the penumbra. So if you consider any single point source of light from the hidden scene, certain parts of the wall receive light from it, other parts do not. The algorithm then works from that to back out the original scene (light sources). "Accounting for differing light sources" is exactly what it's doing to figure out the original scene.
Where your comment is relevant is that the object creating a shadow can be of arbitrary shape. In this case it was a fixed and known shape, which simplified computing the image. I dunno if this technique would work with an arbitrary scene and an arbitrary-shaped object blocking the light. If the object were close enough to cast an umbra, you could deduce its shape and refine the image over multiple iterations (basically guess small changes in the shadow object's shape to see if it results in the algorithm yielding a sharper picture). But if you're only getting a penumbral shadow, I'm not sure if there's an algorithmic solution that'll work for all scenes and all blocking shapes.
There must be. Obama spent $831 billion on exactly that.
Rather than a blanket condemnation of the practice, can we agree that in some situations providing cash incentives to corporations creates jobs, while in other situations it does not?
$174k is almost exactly the median household income of the DC zip code closest to the Capitol plus the median household income of Queens. If half the people in both zip codes can figure out how to live there on less income than she receives, so can she.
This is pretty easy to disprove. The Washington Post used to keep a database of every Congresscritter's vote. You could then sort each member by how likely they were to vote with their own party. The general trend is for the party in power to have more members vote with their party, so looking at those who were most likely to vote with their party doesn't tell you much. But if you look at how often they voted against their own party:
6 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 2 of them Democrats
35 voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 16 of them Democrats
9 members voted agianst their party a third of the time or more, 6 of them Democrats.
22 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 14 of them Democrats
23 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 5 of them Republicans
43 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 7 of them Republicans
6 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
13 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 4 of them Republicans
8 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 4 of them Republicans
14 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 6 of them Republicans
3 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
8 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 2 of them Republicans
3 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 2 of them Republicans
5 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 3 of them Republicans
2 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
Same two members voted against their party a third of the time, 1 of them Republicans
No members voted against their party a third of the time or more
2 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, none of the Democrats
2 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Democrats
5 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 4 of them Democrats
8 members voted against their party a third of the time or more, 1 of them Republicans
19 members voted against their party a quarter of the time or more, 6 o
Debt and net worth are very different. 7 years ago I had no debt. Today I have several hundred thousand dollars in debt because I bought a house with a mortgage. But my net worth has increased because my home value has appreciated (by more than the amount of my mortgage) since I bought it.
If properly managed, debt isn't a bad thing, and can in fact be good. It allows you to buy things sooner than you would be able to otherwise. In my case if I had waited to save up enough to buy my house for cash, during the time I waited its price would've increased by more than the amount of debt I took on buying it immediately with a mortgage. So I actually saved money by going into debt. I only retain the debt because shedding it wold require me to liquidate the house, leaving me with no place to live, forcing me to buy a new house at today's prices and interest rates, which would actually be more expensive than keeping my current house.
In fact, the way credit ratings work, I would say the people with more debt are more likely to have more money. Banks won't lend to people with poor financial management skills and thus poor credit. So those people who tend to live paycheck-to-paycheck with little cash on hand end up having less debt. OTOH if someone has $10 million in debt, then his house is probably chock full of expensive items worth burgling. On the flip side, he is more likely to have security cameras and can hire a good lawyer to prosecute you if you're caught. So maybe the small fish with little debt are indeed better targets for a thief.
Refusing to take on a case doesn't necessarily mean the Supreme Court agrees with the lower court's opinion. If the case brings up new issues (as this one seems to do), they will often refuse to take the case simply to allow more time for other courts in other districts to get similar cases. Unless it's a time-critical issue (e.g. the 2000 Florida recount in the Presidential election), the Supreme Court doesn't like to issue decisions from a vacuum. They like the issue to kick around and stew in lower courts for years if not decades, so lots of lawyers and judges can make and refine arguments pro and con. That way when they finally accept a case, the issue has been well-argued and well-thought-out, little risk of someone thinking up a new argument which suddenly turns it around. And all they have to do is decide which argument is best.
You have to understand that Supreme Court rulings are binding across the entire country, and frequently last for several decades if not forever. They're well aware of the near-permanence of their decisions, and wield that power very carefully. Even if they disagree with a lower court's decision, better to let it stand for a few years to give other courts more time to ruminate of the issue. Then when they finally take it up, they can make a better-informed lasting decision. It's their version of measure twice, cut once.
It's too easy to game the system using positive reviews. It's possible to game it using negative reviews (of your competitors' products), but it's harder to do. And if the reasons listed in the paid negative review are legitimate (e.g. restaurant's seating area is limited and crowded), then it's still useful information.
In Yelp's case, the negative reviews also make it relatively easy to tell when a company has paid Yelp to scrub its reviews. Yelp doesn't seem to be very discriminating and seems to just remove all the negative reviews. Everything picks up negative reviews no matter how good it is. So if a company's Yelp reviews seem strangely devoid of negative reviews, I know they've paid to have their Yelp profile scrubbed. And I can just disregard their Yelp rating and rely on other review sites.
Amazon seems to have picked up on this practice though. They've made it increasingly difficult to see only the negative reviews. You used to be able to do it by clicking on the "see all critical reviews" link on the product's main page at the top of the reviews. It was in the middle of the page, but easy to get to by clicking "customer reviews" at the very top. So page load, two clicks, and you got just the negative reviews.
Then they changed it so you first had to click "see all reviews" before you could filter to see only the negative reviews, but it was still located in the same spot you got to by clicking "customer reviews" at the top of the page. So it just added an extra click and page load.
About a month ago they changed it and moved the "see all reviews" link to the bottom of the reviews instead of at the top. So now you have to click "customer reviews", scroll to the bottom (or hit ctrl-end to go to the bottom of the page and scroll up), click "see all reviews", then click on "see all critical reviews" in order to get just the negative reviews. I'm starting to think it may actually be easier to just write an extension which does all this hoop-jumping for me.
I believe "studio" in this context = submits to the demands of the myriad guilds and unions which have a near-monopoly on employment in this industry. What we're seeing is the balkanization of the industry, driven by the ability of anyone with a cell phone now being able to create "movies" and distribute them via YouTube. Those people aren't going to check to make sure everyone performing in their video clip is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, or that they're a member of the Director's Guild. That broke the control monopoly those guilds and unions had over the entertainment industry. And now we're seeing more "official" production companies fleeing the barn.
Yeah, for open source software the security fixes are usually only available via updating the software. It's like car manufacturers requiring you to get the newest model car (for free in the case of open source) instead of issuing recalls to fix problems.
Pay software usually issues security updates for older versions for a while, without requiring you update to a new version (that you have to pay for). But they seem to be trying to kill that model off, replacing it with a subscription model which forces everyone onto the same version.
It would be less of a problem if you could customize software and its installations. Often you only want a limited feature set (e.g. only Word and Excel) but the software insists on installing everything. That's the problem I've had with antivirus software. They all now include all sorts of web monitoring and active file inspection (tries to scan in real-time every file your computer tries to open) which just intolerably slows down the computer or browser. I have to shut those features off, but would rather not install them in the first place. Or things like the infamous ribbon interface in Office. I bet tens if not hundreds of millions of users would've killed for an option to disable it and go back to the previous interface. Instead, your only option is to continue using outdated software.
It's open source. If enough people don't like it, they'll just fork Chromium and create a new ad-block-friendly browser without this "feature.".
Need I point out that Firefox is based on a version of Netscape that was made open source?
False dichotomy. The comparison here isn't ads vs no ads. If you compare those two scenarios, of course nobody wants ads.
The correct relevant comparison is no ads but a higher cost, vs lower cost (or no cost) but with ads. And although I hate ads and am willing to pay to avoid them, the vast majority of people seem to disagree with me. They vote with their pocketbooks for lower cost with more ads.
So the energy balance becomes
Na + H2O + CO2 => NaCO3 + H2
0 - 237.1 kJ/mol - 394.4 kJ/mol => -851.0 kJ/mol + 0
-631.5 kJ/mol => -851 kJ/mol
So it works out. The reaction is exothermic and a net 291.5 kJ of energy is released per mole.
But as you point out, the wild card is the Na. The above assumes you can get elemental sodium at zero energy cost. Sodium is extremely reactive and you just don't find it in its elemental state in nature. Depending on how much energy you had to use to refine some sodium compound to create the elemental Na needed for this reaction, it could be a net energy loss.
These apps worked better together. In Hangouts, I could be texting someone, decide I'd rather talk to them and call them via my Google Voice account by tapping a single button. Later if I decided to switch that call from a voice call to a video call, I could do that with another video tap. If I then decided to add someone else to the video call, I just had to add the extra person. All from withing Hangouts. The only thing it didn't support was seamlessly transferring cellular calls to VoIP and vice versa.
Now if you want to do the above, it's a confusing hodgepodge of different apps. You have to text someone with Messages or Allo (I'm still not sure what the difference between the two is). If you decide you'd rather talk with them, you have to switch to the Google Voice app, look them up in your contacts, and initiate the call. If you then decide you want to change it to a video call, you have to hang up and call them again on the Duo app. And if you decide you want to add a third person to your video call, you have to end the Duo call, start the Meet app, and call everyone all over again.
I still don't understand why they're killing off Hangouts. The replacements are an app that does only messaging, an app that does only VoIP, an app that does only video calls, and an app that does only video conferencing. Hangouts was a communications app. Its closest analogue was Skype, where you could video conference between multiple people, or a single person, or disable the camera to get just a voice call, or just type messages to each other. It made sense to tie all of these into a single app, so all you had to do was pick what mode of communication you wanted at that moment - text, voice, video, or conference video.
The credit card companies got laws passed making it illegal for merchants to pass credit card fees on to customers. That means the person who decides which card to use is insulated from the cost associated with using that card, completely handcuffing market forces which would drive credit card processing fees down.
Get rid of those laws (regulations), and the credit card processors would be forced to compete head-to-head on price, driving their fees down.
i.e. Search engine crawlers should not index the site, unless the site owner explicitly allows it in the robots.txt file.
I mean I completely understand why it's set up the way it is. Setting the robots.txt to disallow crawling doesn't actually disallow crawling. It's just that the services which respect the file won't crawl your site if you have it set to disallow them. Inverting it gives the false sense that unless you explicitly allow crawlers, it is somehow impossible for them to index your site.
But that seems to be what the EU legal system wants. So maybe that's the way it should work, despite the false sense of security it may give the more clueless people.
Deviously clever of them to use sunlight in their analogy, since sunlight doesn't belong to anyone and is free for anyone to receive.
Data is more like fresh water. It's also renewable and free. But it pools up on certain private property. You cannot access it on someone else's property without trespassing or first getting their permission. Which is something these data mining companies hide from their "customers" inside dense EULA agreements. If they're so certain that their users have willingly given them permission, then they wouldn't object to a law which requires them to state in bold at the top of their sign-up page and EULA what data they collect and how they use it, right?
The proper remedy would've been for Scott Adams to ask Twitter to revoke the account, or at least get them to change the picture. You have a right to control how your own likeness is used. That twitter account was clearly violating it by using a photoshopped picture of him.
Google had nothing to do with it, and was in fact instrumental in helping him locate this violation of his personality rights. Unfortunately he then tried to shoot the messenger instead of tackling the root of the problem.
That's really the fundamental problem with the way this right to be forgotten is being implemented. Search engines like Google are merely the messenger. Forcing them to remove search results doesn't remove the bad information from the web. Unless you go after the source of the bad info and force them to fix it (or get the host to remove the site/account), you're just just trying to make the problem go away by sticking everyone's head in the sand.. Next up, we will solve world hunger by banning the press from reporting on it.