While I agree the pendulum has swung too much in favor of cable companies, you also don't want it swinging too far the other way. If communities start subsidizing their broadband service with taxes instead of paying for it solely by subscription fees, they'll undercut any private ISP, not just the corrupt ones which currently hold monopolies. And you'll end up with another monopoly.
"But the government would never do that - they're on my side!" Need I remind you it was the very same government which gave those evil cable companies their current monopolies? You want a system where everyone (companies and government) can compete on the basis of cost vs. service.
Fundamentally, it's an inesacpable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics.
So cancerous mutations represent a measurable delta-S that normal cellular processes do not? Do please, tell me more!
You're looking at it backwards. It's the same process as evolution. Cell lines which die out (high entropy) disappear from the body. Leaving behind cell lines which don't die out (low entropy), which thus become a larger fraction of the remaining body.
People who view these processes from the standpoint of an individual cell line or individual animal mistakenly conclude that the second law of thermodynamics favors the high entropy state (no evolution, inevitable death). But if you view it at the level of the population as a whole, by rapidly eliminating the high entropy solutions, the second law yields a universe with more and more low entropy solutions. That is, as entropy increases, a greater fraction of the remaining population has lower entropy (species become more complex, cancer is more prevalent).
The other companies don't implement a walled garden. apt-get lets you select from multiple repositories or even add your own. OS X doesn't even use a repository - move a program out of the Applications folder and it's uninstalled. Move it back in and it's installed. If you want to download some random OS X program off the web and drop it in your Applications folder, that's your business. Sure they push sales through iTunes. But they don't block you from installing via other means (unlike iOS).
But with Win 8, the only way you could install and purchase Metro apps was through their walled garden - the Store, where Microsoft got a 30% cut of every sale. That's why it didn't go over well. If they'd let you buy Metro apps at a retail store and install it just like you can desktop software, then I would've considered it a feature. A feature I didn't use, but a feature nevertheless. But because they made it a walled garden, I advised everyone I could not to buy anything from it.
It was the Los Angeles Unified School District which tried to give everyone iPads, not California. And the program was halted before it was completely rolled out because of problems with kids hacking the restrictive software controls (if you can call deleting the user and restarting the device "hacking").
Also, what the LAUSD tried was different from what South Africa is trying. LAUSD was trying to incorporate tablets into the teaching program. There is very little evidence that this has any beneficial effect on how well students learn the material.
It sounds like SA is trying to use tablets to replace textbooks. That actually has merit from the standpoint of portability and accessibility to a wide range of educational material in a tiny amount of space. I would question how cost-effective it is though. A typical textbook costs about $100 and will last 10-20 years. If a typical tablet costs $500, it would have to last 50-100 years to be as cost-effective as books. If you're able to get textbooks which aren't controlled by the textbook publishing cartel, the price drops to a few dollars, and the tablet would have to last thousands of years to be as cost-effective. (OTOH if they're able to use a cheap $50 e-ink reader, then it could succeed.)
This is a widespread misconception. The Federal income tax is graduated, so being in the 25% bracket doesn't mean you pay 25% income tax. It means you pay 0% on the first $6,200 (standard deduction), 10% on the next $9,075, 15% on the next $27,825, 25% on the next $52,450. This means if you make less than $56,937, even though you're solidly in the 25% tax bracket, your actual tax rate is less than 15%. Meaning the capital gains tax rate is higher than your regular Federal income tax rate.
If you itemize, the threshold income level is even higher. In fact if you look at IRS tax stats (2012, column T), the $100,000-$200,000 bracket pays just 12.7% of their gross income as taxes. The $200,000-$500,000 bracket pays 19.6% of their income as taxes. So on average you need to make somewhere around $200,000/yr to end up paying 15% in income taxes. If you make less than that and are paying more than 15%, you are atypical.
The 15% long-term capital gains tax rate is only "very low" relative to the income tax rate of people in the far upper tax brackets. Basically those making over $500,000 (24% of gross income paid as taxes). You'll see the 15% capital gains rate skewing things for people making $2 million or more. Their actual income tax rate is lower than people in the $1 million bracket-$2 million bracket, steadily declining to 19.8% by the time you're in the $10+ million bracket.
Basically, this says that the capital gains tax rate needs to be graduated just like regular income tax rates. It saves too much money for people making $2+ million, reducing their overall income tax rate to below that of people making $500,000-$2 million. And it actually discourages people making less than about $200,000 from investing - because the capital gains tax rate ends up being higher than their regular income tax rate.
[organization] had a weak twitter password and looks like idiots today
This is actually a serious problem I've encountered in business, with no real tools to address it. You can have the tightest security within your organization, but things like Twitter accounts are out of your control. You have to rely on the security of Twitter.
Unfortunately, most businesses rarely have a single person who needs access to that type of account. Generally they have an entire department which needs to use it. But companies like Twitter and Facebook don't support any sort of multi-user logins for a single account (Google sort of does with Google Apps for Domains). It's one account, so there's one password, and that password has to be shared with everyone who needs to access that one account. So it inevitably ends up posted on the refrigerator door, or stored on the server as a shared file, or even emailed around. Easily stolen by anyone who hacks in or even visits the premises and happens to glance at the refrigerator door.
The best solution I could think of was if a password manager like KeePass would support managed multi-user credentials. That is, each individual has their own KeePass keychain with their own personal passswords, but an administrative user can insert a special hook for a shared password. So the user could use their KeePass passphrase to login to the shared Twitter account, but they wouldn't actually know the Twitter password and it wouldn't be stored on their keychain. Any time they needed to login, their KeePass would authenticate itself with the admin KeePass, which would log them into Twitter for them. When the person quits or is fired, the admin can just revoke that person's access to the admin KeePass keychain. No need to change the password and email the new password to everyone (thus creating a potential security breach) because the person who left is a potential security breach.
That was my impression too just from reading the summary title. Google only "threw Microsoft under the bus" if Microsoft was standing in the middle of the street, Google told them for 3 months that they were standing in the middle of the street and they should get back on the sidewalk, then on the 91st day they told the public that hey this guy is standing in the middle of the street please try to drive around him, then a bus came and hit him and you somehow consider it to be Google's fault.
I'm sure there are many more reasons. The point is, there are good reasons to vote, and BAD reasons to not vote.
You're creating a self-fulfilling prophesy by looking at only those two reasons. There are also bad reasons to vote*, and good reasons to not vote. This last election happened just as I was in the middle of buying a house. Between that, work, packing to move, and a few other family issues that cropped up, I simply didn't have time to read the voter's pamphlet much less research the candidates. On top of that, the precinct I was registered to vote in was not where I would be living (the election was one week before escrow closed), and nearly all of the races in the election were local.
Given that I was blatantly ignorant about the candidates, and I would not be living in the area represented by the winners, I felt the right thing to do was simply not vote.
I'd say make voting mandatory, but add a category for no-vote and give a large list of reasons why you chose to not vote for a candidate/party/etc.
You can already do this (you don't have to give a reason why). You're not required to actually punch any holes in the ballot when you visit the polling station. And you do not have to vote in every single race. I could have voted in the governor's race and left everything else blank. But the polls had one candidate far ahead, so I didn't think it was worth my time to drop by the polling place just to vote in that one race. When they talk about voter turnout, that's the percentage of registered voters who went to their polling station (or mailed in ballots). Not a percentage based on the number of votes cast in a particular race. Check it out yourself - add up the number of votes cast in a governor's race and a senator's race for the same state. They are nearly always different.
* I'd say voting for one candidate simply to prevent another candidate from winning (which seems to be a common rationale among party voters) is a bad reason to vote. Given how much the Internet and social media have improved communication, I would think that with little organization, the write-in candidate is much more viable than in the past. You should always vote for someone. Never vote for an unknown merely to vote against someone else.
You can have an audit trail and anonymity so long as the source of the audit trail is known only to the originator.
Not that it's difficult to commit voter fraud right now, but the problem with one-way confirmation using virtual tokens to confirm votes is that it's trivial to sell your vote. Another comment mentioned being coerced into giving up your vote. But the far more likely scenario is someone offering $100 or $20 per token, so they can vote multiple times. In vote coercion, only one party has an interest in keeping the fraud secret. In vote selling, both parties have an interest in keeping the fraud secret.
There needs to be some way to do the reverse confirmation - that you were in fact the one who used your token. Currently it's done by crossing your name off a list of registered voters at the polling station, under the presumption that if someone else tried to vote in your stead, you would get there and find your name already crossed off and raise hell.
So voting confirmation has to be two-way, yet the vote itself has to be decoupled from the confirmation to preserve anonymity.
Are you under the dillusion that nothing of value exchanges between a lobbyist and a politician? No favors or future benefits? Bribery is giving something of value for a vote or action.
You've oversimplified the situation. Yes bribery results in future benefits for the lobbyist and the politician. But good policies also result in future benefits for both lobbyist and the politician. Your litmus test is incapable of distinguishing between bribery and good policy.
You need to evaluate three parties to determine if there's bribery going on. The lobbyist, politician, and public at large. If the policy being lobbied benefits the public at large, then there is no problem. If it benefits the lobbyist (and those he represents) while disadvantaging the public at large, then the politician has been swayed to abandon his duty to serve the public by a bribe.
Throw in the fact that sometimes it's as clear as mud which policy will actually benefit the public at large, and you get modern politics. I do believe though that prohibiting all lobbying (i.e. calling all lobbying corruption) is cutting off your nose to spite yourself. If you don't allow dissenting opinions to express themselves politically, then you end up with a static government where only general elections matter, and regular citizens cannot voice their opinions on specific issues. That type of environment breeds cronyism among politicians. In other words, lobbying may suck, but it's the lesser evil of the alternates.
The distinction here is the same as between discretionary and mandatory spending. The former needs to be reauthorized (every year since the budget is renewed every year). The latter continues until/unless the law is changed.
The tax prohibition is currently the former type - renewed every few years or it would disappear. Those opposed to the ban have to do nothing but use procedural tricks to block the renewal bill from ever getting to the floor to get the ban revoked. This proposal would make it the latter type - the ban continues until/unless the law is changed. More importantly, those opposed to the ban would have to specifically go on the record as drafting, submitting, and voting for legislation revoking the ban. And face the wrath of internet-using citizens come re-election.
Salt is radioactive (specifically the potassium in potassium chloride, which is a small component of natural salt). Heck, your body is radioactive. The quote was correctly trying to downplay the radioactivity danger, but unfortunately did so by propagating the misconception that the natural world is not radioactive.
Yes you want it. There are two things the humungous DSLR lenses give you: More light so you can capture images in dark situations with less noise. And shallow depth of field.
We''re finally reaching the point I predicted in the early 1990s when the first digital cameras with reduced sensor size came out. That spawned endless debates about what exactly the sensor size did to the depth of field. It turns out when you reduce sensor size, you increase depth of field. This results in photos that look like they were shot with a point and shoot modern digital cameras - everything in the photo is in sharp focus. This happens in the 35mm point and shoot because the lens has a small aperture (ratio of lens diameter to focal length). In digital cameras it happens because they use a tiny fingernail-sized sensor.
To generate creative effects like isolating the subject of a photo from the foreground and background using focus, you need a DSLR with a large lens and large sensor. Would the photo of the Afghan Girl been so striking if the dirty wall of the refugee camp behind her had been in sharp focus?
With a sensor which also captures 3D depth info, the sensor and lens size limitation is gone. You can perfectly blur the image in software to simulate any depth of field, from shallow, to deep. Even effects not possible with optical lenses, like non-linear depth of field, are possible. The only remaining reason to lug around huge DSLR lenses is for low-light photography with little noise.
Forgot the tl;dr: Basically this is a problem which will disappear on its own. Opportunity has only 256 MB of flash memory (which was quite a lot when it was launched in 2003 - I paid $100 for a 512 MB flash card in 2004). So each individual NAND cell is being used a lot. As you put in larger amounts of flash memory, each cell gets used less frequency, and the problem goes away on its own.
I've never been a big fan of flash memory, given that it has a finite number of write cycles before a memory bit fails (varying between 1 and 100million write cycles).
I'm a huge fan of FRAM. It has a lifecycle limit that is quoted at being 10 trillion write cycles (some mention at it being infinite). The memory density is lower, but is a lot more reliable. It's biggest issue is that the density is lower.
No, the biggest issue is likely cost. A quick Google search says a 4 megabit (0.5 MB) FRAM module costs about $50. That's $100,000 per GB. You can load your spacecraft with a couple dozen extra reserve NAND memory banks at 1/1000th the price. As one bank wears out, bring the next bank online, and it'll last far past the life expectancy of other components on the spacecraft.
In embedded systems, you have to be really careful not to write to the flash too often out of risk of damaging the flash.
That's only an issue if you have very small amounts of flash memory. i.e. You're making a conscious decision to limit the amount of storage, at the cost of the memory wearing out quicker. The more storage you put in, the longer it takes to wear out.
I can see it being an issue in certain extreme applications. e.g. extremely low power embedded systems where it may have to last 10 years on a single battery, so you don't want something like a SSD wear leveling controller or an overabundance of NAND sucking up extra power. Or high frequency database storage, where having a large amount of storage can actually slow things down, but you still need good write endurance. But for most applications, it's cheaper just to throw more NAND at the problem.
Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings (of current or desired plan) -> Advanced
Scroll down to "Processor power management". Change "Maximum processor state" to 99%. You can go lower if you wish. I have a low-noise power plan which keeps the fans relatively quiet under load by capping the CPU at 75%.
The quad core 15" MBPs will hit 90+ C under load. That's no different from most quad core Windows laptops. A significant disadvantage of the MBPs in this use scenario is that the metal chassis transmits heat like nobody's business and makes it impossible to actually use the laptop like this on your lap. You have to use it on a desk.
According to Intel, the CPUs are designed to operate at these temperatures (100C is the failsafe, with throttling optional over 90C). And my 4 year old Nahalem laptop which hits 95C under load is still working fine. But OP seems to be looking for a quad core laptop which stays cooler than the 70-80 C he's currently getting at load. The MBP is substantially worse at meeting that requirement than his current laptop.
If OP absolutely needs to use laptops for this task and absolutely wants lower temps, I would suggest investing in some really good laptop cooling pads. The extra airflow through the grill holes at the bottom of the laptop (the MBP doesn't have these, though the better heat conductivity of the metal chassis may compensate - I've never tried it) can drop temps another 5-10 C. Also look for laptops whose dual fan designs channel heat from the CPU through both fans. Some designs dedicate one fan to the CPU, one fan to the GPU.
Samsung is able to boast speeds of 2,150MB/s read and 1,550MB/s write.
1. These are sequential speeds. They're only relevant when you're dealing with large files. Unless your job is working with video or disk images or other large files, the vast majority of your files are going to be small, and the IOPS matters more. 130k/100k IOPS is really good, but only about a 10%-20% improvement over SATA3 SSDs. It translates into 520/400 MB/s at queued 4k read/writes best case. Current SATA3 drives are already surpassing 400 MB/s queued 4k read/writes.
2. Like car MPG, the units here are inverted from what actually matters. You don't say "gee, I have 5 gallons in the tank I need to use today, how many miles can I drive with it?", which is what MPG tells you. You say "I need to drive 100 miles, how many gallons will it take?" which is gal/100 miles. Yes they're just a mathematical inverse, but using the wrong one means the scaling is not linear. If you've got a 100 mile trip:
A 12.5 MPG vehicle will use 8 gallons
A 25 MPG vehicle will use 4 gallons (a 4 gallon savings for a 12.5 MPG improvement)
A 50 MPG vehicle will use 2 gallons (a 2 gallon savings for a 25 MPG improvement)
A 100 MPG vehicle will use 1 gallon (a 1 gallon savings for a 50 MPG improvement)
See how the fuel saved is inversely proportional to the MPG gain? As you get higher and higher MPG, it matters less and less because MPG is the wrong unit. If you do it in gal/100 miles it's linear. (This is why the rest of the world uses liters / 100 km.)
An 8 gal/100 mile vehicle will use 8 gallons.
A 4 gal/100 mile vehicle uses 4 gallons (a 4 gallon savings for a 4 gal/100 mi improvement)
a 2 gal/100 mile vehicle uses 2 gallons (a 2 gallon savings for a 2 gal/100 mi improvement)
a 1 gal/100 mile vehicle uses 1 gallon (a 1 gallon savings for a 1 gal/100 mi improvement)
The same thing is true for disk speeds. Unless you've got a fixed amount of time and need to transfer as much data as you can in that time, MB/s is the inverse of what you want. The vast majority of use cases are a fixed amount of MB that needs to be read/written, and the time it takes to do that is what you're interested in because that's time you spend twiddling your thumbs. If a game needs to read 1 GB to start up:
A 100 MB/s HDD will read it in 10 sec
a 250 MB/s SATA2 SSD will read it in 4 sec (a 6 sec savings for a 150 MB/s improvement)
A 500 MB/s SATA3 SSD will read it in 2 sec (a 2 sec savings for a 250 MB/s improvement)
A 1 GB/s PCIe SSD will read it in 1 sec (a 1 sec savings for a 500 MB/s improvement)
This 2 GB/s PCIe SSD will read it in 0.5 sec (a 0.5 sec savings for a 1000 MB/s improvement
Again, the actual time savings is inverted from the units we're using to measure. We really should be benchmarking HDDs and SSDs by sec/MB.
A 10 sec/MB HDD will read 1 GB in 10 sec
A 4 sec/MB SATA2 SSD will read it in 4 sec (a 6 sec savings for a 6 sec/MB improvement)
A 2 sec/MB SATA3 SSD will read it in 2 sec (a 2 sec savings for a 2 sec/MB improvement)
A 1 sec/MB PCIe SSD will read it in 1 sec (a 1 sec savings for a 1 sec/MB improvement)
This 0.5 sec/MB PCIe SSD will read it in 0.5 sec (a 0.5 sec savings for a 0.5 sec/MB improvement)
That's nice and linear. You see that the vast majority of your speedup comes from switching from a HDD to a SSD - any SSD, even the old slow first gen ones. The next biggest savings is switching to a SATA3 SSD. Beyond that the extra speed is nice, but don't be mislead by the huge MB/s figures - the speedup from PCIe drives will never be as big as those first two steps from a HDD to a SATA SSD. Manufacturers just report performance in MB/s (instead of sec/MB) because it exaggerates the importance of tiny increases in time saved, and thus helps them sell new and improved (and more expensive) products. Review sites also report in MB/s because if you report in sec/MB, the benchmark graphs are boring and the speedup from these shiny new SSDs is barely perceptible.
People make this artificial distinction between public (government) and private. Elected officials and employees of the government are not some different species with different behavior from regular people. They are regular people. Just like all corporation owners and employees are people. There is no public vs private, corporate vs. individual. It's all just people. If private individuals can do corrupt things, then so can a government - because a government is just a collection of private individuals. And vice versa. There are good people, and there are bad people. If bad people get control of a HOA, they can do bad things. Just like if bad people get control of a corporation or government, they can do bad things.
The libertarian vs socialist argument is merely one of degree - what is the optimal amount of organization? Some people believe little is best. Others believe a lot is best. IMHO, both groups make self-serving arguments. Libertarians point out the failures of large-scale organization while ignoring the successes. Socialists point out the success of large-scale organization while ignoring the failures. I'm of the opinion that it's irrational ideology to believe there is some one-size-fits-all optimal level of organization for everything. Each different task has a different optimal level. Some things are best solved by letting individuals or small groups decide for themselves. Other things are best solved by the country or world as a unified whole.
If you don't control your own production and aren't willing to pay more for it than anyone else, don't be surprised when you have to wait in line.
FTFY. nVidia and AMD could easily jump ahead of Apple and Samsung in TSMC's queue - they just have to offer to pay more than Apple and Samsung are willing to pay. All that's happening is that they've made a conscious decision that it's more cost-effective to pay less and have their 16nm/20nm products come out later and deal with unhappy customers, than to pay more to make their customers happier.
This is a reactivated fault line -- not something that was due to go off. Every single time this topic comes up, some cadre upvotes this trash...
This is basic high school physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is conserved. If the amount of energy the fracking put into the ground was less than the amount of energy released from the earthquake, then clearly there was another source of that excess energy. Mainly, tectonic movements had built up stresses into the ground, which would have eventually been released as a natural earthquake if there had been no fracking.
Active fault lines are good. It means tectonic stresses are being regularly released. Inactive fault lines can be good or bad. If there are no more tectonic stresses being built up, then the fault can't cause an earthquake, and it's good. But if there are tectonic stresses being built up, then it's bad because it means that energy isn't being released at regular intervals. We just think it's inactive when it's really not, and it's going to cause a big doozy of an earthquake in the future.
Since the fracking triggered an earthquake, clearly there were stresses in the "inactive" fault, and the fault was of the latter type and thus not truly inactive, and the fracking merely relieved the stress. Basically, if a fault line can be "reactivated", then it was never really an inactive fault line in the first place.
There are some macro (continental-scale) arguments that can be made about plate movements and whether the overall rate at which the plates move (and thus build up stresses in the rocks) can be affected by deliberately relieving some of those stresses (e.g. fracking). And thus fracking could be bad because it increases the rate at which the plates move, and thus increase the rate at which stress builds up and earthquakes happen. But on the local level, the basic jist of the argument that fracking merely triggers earthquakes which were going to eventually happen anyway is correct. Anybody who understands high school level physics can see that.
But it's just as possible that the fracking is breaking a strong section of rock, putting more stress on a weaker section of rock. It's conjecture. It can't really be tested in a controlled environment.
It's not conjecture. It's the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is conserved. If fracking were the source of the energy released in these quakes, then the fracking process must have put as much energy into the ground as was released in the quake. Clearly the fracking put nowhere near as much energy in as was released. So that energy must have already been there in the rocks before the fracking ever started. All the fracking did was precipitate the early release of energy which had already built up in the ground from other (natural) sources.
Blaming fracking for these quakes is literally blaming the straw that broke the camel's back. It's not the straw that broke the camel's back - it's the weight of everything else it was carrying, the straw just put the weight over some threshold level. Likewise, fracking can trigger a quake earlier than it would have happened if there had been no fracking. But it cannot cause a quake because it simply doesn't put enough energy into the ground. I mean the whole point of fracking is to try to extract energy. It'd be self-defeating for the process to inject earthquake-levels of energy into the ground. (In fact, in the future some creative engineering may allow us to capture the energy stored as stresses in fault lines and use it as an energy source.)
Exactly this. The payback in scientific knowledge per dollar spent on manned space exploration is paltry compared to unmanned exploration. First - you can throw robots away. The return trip requirement alone for a manned mission doubles your trip cost; more if you're positing another liftoff from atmosphere like from Mars. The additional weight of supplies needed to sustain life multiplies the cost even more, compared to robots which can survive merely on sunlight or the atomic decay of radioactive pellets. Yes there are questions about human physiology in long-term exposure to zero-g which need to be studied, but most of those were already answered aboard Skylab and Mir. At this point there's very little to be gained from manned space travel except for the gee whiz factor of there being a person hurtling 100 km over our heads at 28,000 km/h.
Manned space travel is like Google Glass, or the Apple Newton, or flying cars. It's a cool idea that everyone wants to work, but the actual implementation given the level of technology at the time simply makes the price point impractical. We all want there to be people in spaceships traveling to other planets and stars. But simply wanting it isn't enough to justify its cost. The Space Shuttle cost about $1.6 billion per flight, which typically carried a crew of ~8 for a 2 week mission. That's $200 million per person. The average American will earn about $2 million in their lifetime. Was it really worth spending the productivity of 100 lifetimes to send a single person into space for 2 weeks? Granted the Shuttle was ridiculously overpriced even for a launch vehicle, but only by about 3x. (For comparison, the cost to build, launch, and operate both Mars Exploration Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity - for their original 90 day mission was just $820 million. Half the cost of a single Shuttle mission. We seem to get one big unmanned mission every few years, while the shuttle went up six times a year.)
As much as we want people in space, the technology just isn't ready for it. Yeah we can spend outlandish sums of money to forcibly put people into space. That's what we did in the 1960s with Apollo. We spent roughly a half percent of the country's GDP for 8 years on Apollo. What did it get us? A few hundred kilos of moon rocks, Tang, freeze dried ice cream? The program actually was more justified in the ancillary R&D which came out of it than its direct scientific return, but trying to justify it that way is the broken window fallacy. We would've been even better off if we'd spent that money directly on those other R&D projects.
Stop wasting money putting people into space, start spending it researching better (cheaper) ways to put people into space. Use robotic missions in the interim to satiate our curiosity.
The original Walkman cost $150 in 1979. Toss that into a handy inflation calculator and you get $487.92 in 2014 dollars. So this high-end audiophile device is priced about 2.5x what the first mass-market portable music player. Not really outlandish if you think of it that way. Even less so if you factor in that it has 128GB of built-in storage - other companies charge $300 for that much flash alone.
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While I agree the pendulum has swung too much in favor of cable companies, you also don't want it swinging too far the other way. If communities start subsidizing their broadband service with taxes instead of paying for it solely by subscription fees, they'll undercut any private ISP, not just the corrupt ones which currently hold monopolies. And you'll end up with another monopoly.
"But the government would never do that - they're on my side!" Need I remind you it was the very same government which gave those evil cable companies their current monopolies? You want a system where everyone (companies and government) can compete on the basis of cost vs. service.
There are already four immortal people. If they could talk, I'm sure they'd say immortality is not all it's cracked up to be.
You're looking at it backwards. It's the same process as evolution. Cell lines which die out (high entropy) disappear from the body. Leaving behind cell lines which don't die out (low entropy), which thus become a larger fraction of the remaining body.
People who view these processes from the standpoint of an individual cell line or individual animal mistakenly conclude that the second law of thermodynamics favors the high entropy state (no evolution, inevitable death). But if you view it at the level of the population as a whole, by rapidly eliminating the high entropy solutions, the second law yields a universe with more and more low entropy solutions. That is, as entropy increases, a greater fraction of the remaining population has lower entropy (species become more complex, cancer is more prevalent).
The other companies don't implement a walled garden. apt-get lets you select from multiple repositories or even add your own. OS X doesn't even use a repository - move a program out of the Applications folder and it's uninstalled. Move it back in and it's installed. If you want to download some random OS X program off the web and drop it in your Applications folder, that's your business. Sure they push sales through iTunes. But they don't block you from installing via other means (unlike iOS).
But with Win 8, the only way you could install and purchase Metro apps was through their walled garden - the Store, where Microsoft got a 30% cut of every sale. That's why it didn't go over well. If they'd let you buy Metro apps at a retail store and install it just like you can desktop software, then I would've considered it a feature. A feature I didn't use, but a feature nevertheless. But because they made it a walled garden, I advised everyone I could not to buy anything from it.
It was the Los Angeles Unified School District which tried to give everyone iPads, not California. And the program was halted before it was completely rolled out because of problems with kids hacking the restrictive software controls (if you can call deleting the user and restarting the device "hacking").
Also, what the LAUSD tried was different from what South Africa is trying. LAUSD was trying to incorporate tablets into the teaching program. There is very little evidence that this has any beneficial effect on how well students learn the material.
It sounds like SA is trying to use tablets to replace textbooks. That actually has merit from the standpoint of portability and accessibility to a wide range of educational material in a tiny amount of space. I would question how cost-effective it is though. A typical textbook costs about $100 and will last 10-20 years. If a typical tablet costs $500, it would have to last 50-100 years to be as cost-effective as books. If you're able to get textbooks which aren't controlled by the textbook publishing cartel, the price drops to a few dollars, and the tablet would have to last thousands of years to be as cost-effective. (OTOH if they're able to use a cheap $50 e-ink reader, then it could succeed.)
This is a widespread misconception. The Federal income tax is graduated, so being in the 25% bracket doesn't mean you pay 25% income tax. It means you pay 0% on the first $6,200 (standard deduction), 10% on the next $9,075, 15% on the next $27,825, 25% on the next $52,450. This means if you make less than $56,937, even though you're solidly in the 25% tax bracket, your actual tax rate is less than 15%. Meaning the capital gains tax rate is higher than your regular Federal income tax rate.
If you itemize, the threshold income level is even higher. In fact if you look at IRS tax stats (2012, column T), the $100,000-$200,000 bracket pays just 12.7% of their gross income as taxes. The $200,000-$500,000 bracket pays 19.6% of their income as taxes. So on average you need to make somewhere around $200,000/yr to end up paying 15% in income taxes. If you make less than that and are paying more than 15%, you are atypical.
The 15% long-term capital gains tax rate is only "very low" relative to the income tax rate of people in the far upper tax brackets. Basically those making over $500,000 (24% of gross income paid as taxes). You'll see the 15% capital gains rate skewing things for people making $2 million or more. Their actual income tax rate is lower than people in the $1 million bracket-$2 million bracket, steadily declining to 19.8% by the time you're in the $10+ million bracket.
Basically, this says that the capital gains tax rate needs to be graduated just like regular income tax rates. It saves too much money for people making $2+ million, reducing their overall income tax rate to below that of people making $500,000-$2 million. And it actually discourages people making less than about $200,000 from investing - because the capital gains tax rate ends up being higher than their regular income tax rate.
This is actually a serious problem I've encountered in business, with no real tools to address it. You can have the tightest security within your organization, but things like Twitter accounts are out of your control. You have to rely on the security of Twitter.
Unfortunately, most businesses rarely have a single person who needs access to that type of account. Generally they have an entire department which needs to use it. But companies like Twitter and Facebook don't support any sort of multi-user logins for a single account (Google sort of does with Google Apps for Domains). It's one account, so there's one password, and that password has to be shared with everyone who needs to access that one account. So it inevitably ends up posted on the refrigerator door, or stored on the server as a shared file, or even emailed around. Easily stolen by anyone who hacks in or even visits the premises and happens to glance at the refrigerator door.
The best solution I could think of was if a password manager like KeePass would support managed multi-user credentials. That is, each individual has their own KeePass keychain with their own personal passswords, but an administrative user can insert a special hook for a shared password. So the user could use their KeePass passphrase to login to the shared Twitter account, but they wouldn't actually know the Twitter password and it wouldn't be stored on their keychain. Any time they needed to login, their KeePass would authenticate itself with the admin KeePass, which would log them into Twitter for them. When the person quits or is fired, the admin can just revoke that person's access to the admin KeePass keychain. No need to change the password and email the new password to everyone (thus creating a potential security breach) because the person who left is a potential security breach.
That was my impression too just from reading the summary title. Google only "threw Microsoft under the bus" if Microsoft was standing in the middle of the street, Google told them for 3 months that they were standing in the middle of the street and they should get back on the sidewalk, then on the 91st day they told the public that hey this guy is standing in the middle of the street please try to drive around him, then a bus came and hit him and you somehow consider it to be Google's fault.
You're creating a self-fulfilling prophesy by looking at only those two reasons. There are also bad reasons to vote*, and good reasons to not vote. This last election happened just as I was in the middle of buying a house. Between that, work, packing to move, and a few other family issues that cropped up, I simply didn't have time to read the voter's pamphlet much less research the candidates. On top of that, the precinct I was registered to vote in was not where I would be living (the election was one week before escrow closed), and nearly all of the races in the election were local.
Given that I was blatantly ignorant about the candidates, and I would not be living in the area represented by the winners, I felt the right thing to do was simply not vote.
You can already do this (you don't have to give a reason why). You're not required to actually punch any holes in the ballot when you visit the polling station. And you do not have to vote in every single race. I could have voted in the governor's race and left everything else blank. But the polls had one candidate far ahead, so I didn't think it was worth my time to drop by the polling place just to vote in that one race. When they talk about voter turnout, that's the percentage of registered voters who went to their polling station (or mailed in ballots). Not a percentage based on the number of votes cast in a particular race. Check it out yourself - add up the number of votes cast in a governor's race and a senator's race for the same state. They are nearly always different.
* I'd say voting for one candidate simply to prevent another candidate from winning (which seems to be a common rationale among party voters) is a bad reason to vote. Given how much the Internet and social media have improved communication, I would think that with little organization, the write-in candidate is much more viable than in the past. You should always vote for someone. Never vote for an unknown merely to vote against someone else.
Not that it's difficult to commit voter fraud right now, but the problem with one-way confirmation using virtual tokens to confirm votes is that it's trivial to sell your vote. Another comment mentioned being coerced into giving up your vote. But the far more likely scenario is someone offering $100 or $20 per token, so they can vote multiple times. In vote coercion, only one party has an interest in keeping the fraud secret. In vote selling, both parties have an interest in keeping the fraud secret.
There needs to be some way to do the reverse confirmation - that you were in fact the one who used your token. Currently it's done by crossing your name off a list of registered voters at the polling station, under the presumption that if someone else tried to vote in your stead, you would get there and find your name already crossed off and raise hell.
So voting confirmation has to be two-way, yet the vote itself has to be decoupled from the confirmation to preserve anonymity.
You've oversimplified the situation. Yes bribery results in future benefits for the lobbyist and the politician. But good policies also result in future benefits for both lobbyist and the politician. Your litmus test is incapable of distinguishing between bribery and good policy.
You need to evaluate three parties to determine if there's bribery going on. The lobbyist, politician, and public at large. If the policy being lobbied benefits the public at large, then there is no problem. If it benefits the lobbyist (and those he represents) while disadvantaging the public at large, then the politician has been swayed to abandon his duty to serve the public by a bribe.
Throw in the fact that sometimes it's as clear as mud which policy will actually benefit the public at large, and you get modern politics. I do believe though that prohibiting all lobbying (i.e. calling all lobbying corruption) is cutting off your nose to spite yourself. If you don't allow dissenting opinions to express themselves politically, then you end up with a static government where only general elections matter, and regular citizens cannot voice their opinions on specific issues. That type of environment breeds cronyism among politicians. In other words, lobbying may suck, but it's the lesser evil of the alternates.
The distinction here is the same as between discretionary and mandatory spending. The former needs to be reauthorized (every year since the budget is renewed every year). The latter continues until/unless the law is changed.
The tax prohibition is currently the former type - renewed every few years or it would disappear. Those opposed to the ban have to do nothing but use procedural tricks to block the renewal bill from ever getting to the floor to get the ban revoked. This proposal would make it the latter type - the ban continues until/unless the law is changed. More importantly, those opposed to the ban would have to specifically go on the record as drafting, submitting, and voting for legislation revoking the ban. And face the wrath of internet-using citizens come re-election.
It's hardly meaningless drivel.
Salt is radioactive (specifically the potassium in potassium chloride, which is a small component of natural salt). Heck, your body is radioactive. The quote was correctly trying to downplay the radioactivity danger, but unfortunately did so by propagating the misconception that the natural world is not radioactive.
Yes you want it. There are two things the humungous DSLR lenses give you: More light so you can capture images in dark situations with less noise. And shallow depth of field.
We''re finally reaching the point I predicted in the early 1990s when the first digital cameras with reduced sensor size came out. That spawned endless debates about what exactly the sensor size did to the depth of field. It turns out when you reduce sensor size, you increase depth of field. This results in photos that look like they were shot with a point and shoot modern digital cameras - everything in the photo is in sharp focus. This happens in the 35mm point and shoot because the lens has a small aperture (ratio of lens diameter to focal length). In digital cameras it happens because they use a tiny fingernail-sized sensor.
To generate creative effects like isolating the subject of a photo from the foreground and background using focus, you need a DSLR with a large lens and large sensor. Would the photo of the Afghan Girl been so striking if the dirty wall of the refugee camp behind her had been in sharp focus?
You can simulate shallow depth of field in software by blurring portions of the photo. But this is usually just a guess based on location in the photo. e.g. Blur the bottom and top third, leave the middle third in focus. It ends up looking rather fake, which is bad unless fake is the effect you're trying to achieve. (That last one's a real scene, it just looks like a miniature because shallow depth of field is also characteristic of photographic miniatures. Your brain has seen it so often that it associates extreme shallow depth of field with miniatures.)
With a sensor which also captures 3D depth info, the sensor and lens size limitation is gone. You can perfectly blur the image in software to simulate any depth of field, from shallow, to deep. Even effects not possible with optical lenses, like non-linear depth of field, are possible. The only remaining reason to lug around huge DSLR lenses is for low-light photography with little noise.
Forgot the tl;dr: Basically this is a problem which will disappear on its own. Opportunity has only 256 MB of flash memory (which was quite a lot when it was launched in 2003 - I paid $100 for a 512 MB flash card in 2004). So each individual NAND cell is being used a lot. As you put in larger amounts of flash memory, each cell gets used less frequency, and the problem goes away on its own.
No, the biggest issue is likely cost. A quick Google search says a 4 megabit (0.5 MB) FRAM module costs about $50. That's $100,000 per GB. You can load your spacecraft with a couple dozen extra reserve NAND memory banks at 1/1000th the price. As one bank wears out, bring the next bank online, and it'll last far past the life expectancy of other components on the spacecraft.
That's only an issue if you have very small amounts of flash memory. i.e. You're making a conscious decision to limit the amount of storage, at the cost of the memory wearing out quicker. The more storage you put in, the longer it takes to wear out.
I can see it being an issue in certain extreme applications. e.g. extremely low power embedded systems where it may have to last 10 years on a single battery, so you don't want something like a SSD wear leveling controller or an overabundance of NAND sucking up extra power. Or high frequency database storage, where having a large amount of storage can actually slow things down, but you still need good write endurance. But for most applications, it's cheaper just to throw more NAND at the problem.
Easy way to disable turbo boost in Windows:
Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings (of current or desired plan) -> Advanced
Scroll down to "Processor power management". Change "Maximum processor state" to 99%. You can go lower if you wish. I have a low-noise power plan which keeps the fans relatively quiet under load by capping the CPU at 75%.
The quad core 15" MBPs will hit 90+ C under load. That's no different from most quad core Windows laptops. A significant disadvantage of the MBPs in this use scenario is that the metal chassis transmits heat like nobody's business and makes it impossible to actually use the laptop like this on your lap. You have to use it on a desk.
According to Intel, the CPUs are designed to operate at these temperatures (100C is the failsafe, with throttling optional over 90C). And my 4 year old Nahalem laptop which hits 95C under load is still working fine. But OP seems to be looking for a quad core laptop which stays cooler than the 70-80 C he's currently getting at load. The MBP is substantially worse at meeting that requirement than his current laptop.
If OP absolutely needs to use laptops for this task and absolutely wants lower temps, I would suggest investing in some really good laptop cooling pads. The extra airflow through the grill holes at the bottom of the laptop (the MBP doesn't have these, though the better heat conductivity of the metal chassis may compensate - I've never tried it) can drop temps another 5-10 C. Also look for laptops whose dual fan designs channel heat from the CPU through both fans. Some designs dedicate one fan to the CPU, one fan to the GPU.
1. These are sequential speeds. They're only relevant when you're dealing with large files. Unless your job is working with video or disk images or other large files, the vast majority of your files are going to be small, and the IOPS matters more. 130k/100k IOPS is really good, but only about a 10%-20% improvement over SATA3 SSDs. It translates into 520/400 MB/s at queued 4k read/writes best case. Current SATA3 drives are already surpassing 400 MB/s queued 4k read/writes.
2. Like car MPG, the units here are inverted from what actually matters. You don't say "gee, I have 5 gallons in the tank I need to use today, how many miles can I drive with it?", which is what MPG tells you. You say "I need to drive 100 miles, how many gallons will it take?" which is gal/100 miles. Yes they're just a mathematical inverse, but using the wrong one means the scaling is not linear. If you've got a 100 mile trip:
A 12.5 MPG vehicle will use 8 gallons
A 25 MPG vehicle will use 4 gallons (a 4 gallon savings for a 12.5 MPG improvement)
A 50 MPG vehicle will use 2 gallons (a 2 gallon savings for a 25 MPG improvement)
A 100 MPG vehicle will use 1 gallon (a 1 gallon savings for a 50 MPG improvement)
See how the fuel saved is inversely proportional to the MPG gain? As you get higher and higher MPG, it matters less and less because MPG is the wrong unit. If you do it in gal/100 miles it's linear. (This is why the rest of the world uses liters / 100 km.)
An 8 gal/100 mile vehicle will use 8 gallons.
A 4 gal/100 mile vehicle uses 4 gallons (a 4 gallon savings for a 4 gal/100 mi improvement)
a 2 gal/100 mile vehicle uses 2 gallons (a 2 gallon savings for a 2 gal/100 mi improvement)
a 1 gal/100 mile vehicle uses 1 gallon (a 1 gallon savings for a 1 gal/100 mi improvement)
The same thing is true for disk speeds. Unless you've got a fixed amount of time and need to transfer as much data as you can in that time, MB/s is the inverse of what you want. The vast majority of use cases are a fixed amount of MB that needs to be read/written, and the time it takes to do that is what you're interested in because that's time you spend twiddling your thumbs. If a game needs to read 1 GB to start up:
A 100 MB/s HDD will read it in 10 sec
a 250 MB/s SATA2 SSD will read it in 4 sec (a 6 sec savings for a 150 MB/s improvement)
A 500 MB/s SATA3 SSD will read it in 2 sec (a 2 sec savings for a 250 MB/s improvement)
A 1 GB/s PCIe SSD will read it in 1 sec (a 1 sec savings for a 500 MB/s improvement)
This 2 GB/s PCIe SSD will read it in 0.5 sec (a 0.5 sec savings for a 1000 MB/s improvement
Again, the actual time savings is inverted from the units we're using to measure. We really should be benchmarking HDDs and SSDs by sec/MB.
A 10 sec/MB HDD will read 1 GB in 10 sec
A 4 sec/MB SATA2 SSD will read it in 4 sec (a 6 sec savings for a 6 sec/MB improvement)
A 2 sec/MB SATA3 SSD will read it in 2 sec (a 2 sec savings for a 2 sec/MB improvement)
A 1 sec/MB PCIe SSD will read it in 1 sec (a 1 sec savings for a 1 sec/MB improvement)
This 0.5 sec/MB PCIe SSD will read it in 0.5 sec (a 0.5 sec savings for a 0.5 sec/MB improvement)
That's nice and linear. You see that the vast majority of your speedup comes from switching from a HDD to a SSD - any SSD, even the old slow first gen ones. The next biggest savings is switching to a SATA3 SSD. Beyond that the extra speed is nice, but don't be mislead by the huge MB/s figures - the speedup from PCIe drives will never be as big as those first two steps from a HDD to a SATA SSD. Manufacturers just report performance in MB/s (instead of sec/MB) because it exaggerates the importance of tiny increases in time saved, and thus helps them sell new and improved (and more expensive) products. Review sites also report in MB/s because if you report in sec/MB, the benchmark graphs are boring and the speedup from these shiny new SSDs is barely perceptible.
An HOA is basically a local government.
People make this artificial distinction between public (government) and private. Elected officials and employees of the government are not some different species with different behavior from regular people. They are regular people. Just like all corporation owners and employees are people. There is no public vs private, corporate vs. individual. It's all just people. If private individuals can do corrupt things, then so can a government - because a government is just a collection of private individuals. And vice versa. There are good people, and there are bad people. If bad people get control of a HOA, they can do bad things. Just like if bad people get control of a corporation or government, they can do bad things.
The libertarian vs socialist argument is merely one of degree - what is the optimal amount of organization? Some people believe little is best. Others believe a lot is best. IMHO, both groups make self-serving arguments. Libertarians point out the failures of large-scale organization while ignoring the successes. Socialists point out the success of large-scale organization while ignoring the failures. I'm of the opinion that it's irrational ideology to believe there is some one-size-fits-all optimal level of organization for everything. Each different task has a different optimal level. Some things are best solved by letting individuals or small groups decide for themselves. Other things are best solved by the country or world as a unified whole.
FTFY. nVidia and AMD could easily jump ahead of Apple and Samsung in TSMC's queue - they just have to offer to pay more than Apple and Samsung are willing to pay. All that's happening is that they've made a conscious decision that it's more cost-effective to pay less and have their 16nm/20nm products come out later and deal with unhappy customers, than to pay more to make their customers happier.
This is basic high school physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is conserved. If the amount of energy the fracking put into the ground was less than the amount of energy released from the earthquake, then clearly there was another source of that excess energy. Mainly, tectonic movements had built up stresses into the ground, which would have eventually been released as a natural earthquake if there had been no fracking.
Active fault lines are good. It means tectonic stresses are being regularly released. Inactive fault lines can be good or bad. If there are no more tectonic stresses being built up, then the fault can't cause an earthquake, and it's good. But if there are tectonic stresses being built up, then it's bad because it means that energy isn't being released at regular intervals. We just think it's inactive when it's really not, and it's going to cause a big doozy of an earthquake in the future.
Since the fracking triggered an earthquake, clearly there were stresses in the "inactive" fault, and the fault was of the latter type and thus not truly inactive, and the fracking merely relieved the stress. Basically, if a fault line can be "reactivated", then it was never really an inactive fault line in the first place.
There are some macro (continental-scale) arguments that can be made about plate movements and whether the overall rate at which the plates move (and thus build up stresses in the rocks) can be affected by deliberately relieving some of those stresses (e.g. fracking). And thus fracking could be bad because it increases the rate at which the plates move, and thus increase the rate at which stress builds up and earthquakes happen. But on the local level, the basic jist of the argument that fracking merely triggers earthquakes which were going to eventually happen anyway is correct. Anybody who understands high school level physics can see that.
It's not conjecture. It's the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is conserved. If fracking were the source of the energy released in these quakes, then the fracking process must have put as much energy into the ground as was released in the quake. Clearly the fracking put nowhere near as much energy in as was released. So that energy must have already been there in the rocks before the fracking ever started. All the fracking did was precipitate the early release of energy which had already built up in the ground from other (natural) sources.
Blaming fracking for these quakes is literally blaming the straw that broke the camel's back. It's not the straw that broke the camel's back - it's the weight of everything else it was carrying, the straw just put the weight over some threshold level. Likewise, fracking can trigger a quake earlier than it would have happened if there had been no fracking. But it cannot cause a quake because it simply doesn't put enough energy into the ground. I mean the whole point of fracking is to try to extract energy. It'd be self-defeating for the process to inject earthquake-levels of energy into the ground. (In fact, in the future some creative engineering may allow us to capture the energy stored as stresses in fault lines and use it as an energy source.)
Exactly this. The payback in scientific knowledge per dollar spent on manned space exploration is paltry compared to unmanned exploration. First - you can throw robots away. The return trip requirement alone for a manned mission doubles your trip cost; more if you're positing another liftoff from atmosphere like from Mars. The additional weight of supplies needed to sustain life multiplies the cost even more, compared to robots which can survive merely on sunlight or the atomic decay of radioactive pellets. Yes there are questions about human physiology in long-term exposure to zero-g which need to be studied, but most of those were already answered aboard Skylab and Mir. At this point there's very little to be gained from manned space travel except for the gee whiz factor of there being a person hurtling 100 km over our heads at 28,000 km/h.
Manned space travel is like Google Glass, or the Apple Newton, or flying cars. It's a cool idea that everyone wants to work, but the actual implementation given the level of technology at the time simply makes the price point impractical. We all want there to be people in spaceships traveling to other planets and stars. But simply wanting it isn't enough to justify its cost. The Space Shuttle cost about $1.6 billion per flight, which typically carried a crew of ~8 for a 2 week mission. That's $200 million per person. The average American will earn about $2 million in their lifetime. Was it really worth spending the productivity of 100 lifetimes to send a single person into space for 2 weeks? Granted the Shuttle was ridiculously overpriced even for a launch vehicle, but only by about 3x. (For comparison, the cost to build, launch, and operate both Mars Exploration Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity - for their original 90 day mission was just $820 million. Half the cost of a single Shuttle mission. We seem to get one big unmanned mission every few years, while the shuttle went up six times a year.)
As much as we want people in space, the technology just isn't ready for it. Yeah we can spend outlandish sums of money to forcibly put people into space. That's what we did in the 1960s with Apollo. We spent roughly a half percent of the country's GDP for 8 years on Apollo. What did it get us? A few hundred kilos of moon rocks, Tang, freeze dried ice cream? The program actually was more justified in the ancillary R&D which came out of it than its direct scientific return, but trying to justify it that way is the broken window fallacy. We would've been even better off if we'd spent that money directly on those other R&D projects.
Stop wasting money putting people into space, start spending it researching better (cheaper) ways to put people into space. Use robotic missions in the interim to satiate our curiosity.
The original Walkman cost $150 in 1979. Toss that into a handy inflation calculator and you get $487.92 in 2014 dollars. So this high-end audiophile device is priced about 2.5x what the first mass-market portable music player. Not really outlandish if you think of it that way. Even less so if you factor in that it has 128GB of built-in storage - other companies charge $300 for that much flash alone.