Actually, it does this too. By bypassing corrupt local officials, automating title searches, integrating maps, etc., countries with internet access have done much better than those without at reforming property ownership laws, and establishing clear title to land.
doesn't really remove barriers to entry to wealth-producing activities.
Actually, the internet helps a lot here too. Many localities have moved licenses for various wealth-producing activities online. Applying through a website is much faster, and less likely to be delayed by bribe seeking bureaucrats. Websites like ipaidabribe.com make reporting corruption much easier.
But what about the dirty tricks companies play, such as patenting a gene sequence?
Why is that a "dirty trick"? If the gene sequence is novel, or used in a novel way, then how is that different than patenting anything else?
Or writing contracts that forbid farmers from harvesting seed, forcing them to buy new seed each time?
That isn't a "dirty trick" either, since farmers can NOT SIGN THE CONTRACT and grow non-patented seeds instead.
Or deliberately modifying the genome so the plants are fine with respect to food, but don't produce viable seeds?
Two problems: 1. Nobody actually does this. The technology exists, but it is not in use. 2. It would be a GOOD THING if this technology was put to use, because it would prevent GMO pollen from spreading through the environment unintentionally.
The suicide seeds were shelved because of protests from anti-GMO activists that were worried about having less to protest about. Which shows they are more interested in protesting and activism than actually solving problems.
The only POSSIBLE reason you could have for not labeling is that you don't want people to have the ability to make an informed decision.
This is a non-problem, because it is already perfectly legal to label non-GMO food, and thousands of products are already labeled "GMO Free" or "Organic" (which implies non-GMO). Anyone who wants to avoid GMO foods already has the information available to do so.
... and have a history of lawsuits against independent farmers for allegedly stealing seeds.
The farmers that were sued openly, flagrantly and repeatedly violated IP laws. The most famous example is Perry Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer who was sued by Monsanto, after he intentionally and repeatedly used patented glyphosate resistant seed. He was the subject of the wildly inaccurate documentary "David versus Monsanto". The widely held belief that Monsanto has sued farmers for innocent and unintentional infringement due to pollen blowing in on the wind is baloney.
Note: Most patents for glyphosate (Roundup) resistant seeds have expired, and farmers can now grow and replant soybean and canola (rapeseed) license free.
Isn't something missing? For the first time ever? For the first time since....?
Nothing is missing. When "first time" is used without qualifcation, it means it is the first time. The only exception is when discussing sex, when "first time" refers to the first time with another person.
That is for the browsers of people using w3schools, which is a very non-representative sample. Developers are far more likely to avoid IE than normal people.
Worst of all it's random number generator... exactly how hard would it be to test it?
Random number generators are notoriously hard to test. You can run as many tests as you like, and find no pattern. But that doesn't mean no pattern is there.
I read it too, and I fail to see the breakthrough. There are plenty of pseudo random number generators, such as the Mersenne Twister, with very long periods, so just occassionally XORing even a poor quality random number into the feedback loop, is enough to make it completely unpredictable.
You call a company with decades of sustained Earnings growth a failure simply because it's rate of growth is slowing.
He didn't say it was a failure. He said its growth is slowing. If Apple has 0% growth, but profits don't actually decline, then at the current price Apple stock is a great investment. The market consensus is that Apple's profits will go down as their market share declines. If you think otherwise, buy their stock and get rich. If you want to get rich even faster, buy options. Good luck.
Indeed. Before Iran became an Islamic Republic, it was an enlightened American client state, ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a really great guy, who provided his people with the most modern instruments of torture, and housed his political prisoners in state of the art facilities. It is surprising how ungrateful the Iranian people are toward America, since we installed and unselfishly supported this wonderful regime for nearly three decades, and we gave them plenty of advice on how to build and run the prisons that kept all the troublemakers locked up. All we asked for in return was plenty of cheap oil.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just keep using mirrors, then?
The mirrors have blind spots, create a significant amount of drag, interfere with parking, and cost more than cameras once you include the cost of the adjustment motors and buttons.
This study already provides evidence that parents in progressive societies are better parents, because they are at least better at educating their daughters in math.
Disclaimer: When my daughter was in elementary school, she placed 2nd in the district in the Math Olympiad, but now that she is a teenager, she thinks I am a terrible parent.
Do you also want to own your own elevator? Nearly everyone considers an elevator to be a shared resource, yet some people want to own a car. Why is horizontal travel so different from vertical travel?
Until the greedy owners figure it out and start charging $20 to park.
... and then another parking lot undercuts them by only charging $10, and then a bunch of homeowners undercut them by renting out space in their driveways for $5, and then...
Taxis don't patrol residential streets, nor do airport shuttles, rickshaws, or buses. It's not efficient. It's not profitable.
That is because 98% of the people are driving their own car. But once on-demand rides are used by many people, residential streets will be high demand areas. For an SDC, the cost of waiting is near zero.
The average American household has 2.3 cars. My family has 3. When on-demand SDCs are available, we will likely reduce that to 2, and maybe to 1. On demand SDC rides will almost certainly be cheaper than ownership. Ownership may not go away completely, but it will be drastically reduced.
Nobody wants to give up the MUCH higher convenience level of that.
You mean the convenience of walking 200 meters in the cold rain through a parking lot to get to your car, while the SDC-Uber customers are picked up at the curb, under an awning?
That's an awful primary solution. I don't want to wait 10 mins for a car, I want one in my driveway.
You won't wait 10 minutes. This is a trivial problem in queuing theory. You have an algorithm to predict demand, and you preemptively dispatch cars to meet that demand. So when you walk out of the mall, the next car will pull up a few seconds after you request it. If demand is under predicted, you may wait a few more seconds, but not 10 minutes. If demand is over-predicted, you just have a few cars loop back to the staging lot.
Same thing with commuting from neighborhoods: The car companies will know the approximate number of cars needed for each neighborhood, and when they will be needed. So cars will arrive on your street just in time for you to summon one to your driveway. The company with the best prediction algorithm will have the highest vehicle utilization rate and the highest profits.
Also, SDCs can park much closer together, since the door doesn't need to open to disgorge humans, so they can park with only inches between cars. If they can retract their mirrors (or if the mirrors are replaced with cameras), then they can park even closer. If they have car-to-car communication, then they can park head-to-tail as well as side-by-side, and cooperate to make room for a summoned car to leave. A typical parking lot could hold 2 or 3 times as many SDCs as HDCs.
the system only works so long as no-one actually achieves dominance.
Amazon has no lock on the market. If another site offers products 2% cheaper, people will switch. Amazon undercuts their competition through cost control and economy of scale, not through monopoly power.
Sounds like the book publishers and their complicit teachers merely didn't manage to plug the used book loophole in your particular case.
Usually, the only difference between textbook editions is that they shuffle and renumber the problems at the end of each chapter. So you borrow the latest edition from a friend, and photocopy the problem sets. Then you can use the old book for learning, and the photocopies for homework.
By platooning, SDCs can drive much closer together than HDCs, and they also help to smooth out the "accordion effect" in stop-and-go traffic. It is unlikely that they will increase congestion. It is far more likely that they will help relieve congestion.
Large fixed-route public buses will be replaced by small self-driving vans, with flexible on-demand routing. As public transit becomes faster and more convenient, more people will use it, reducing congestion even more.
Does United get the tax deduction for donating the miles, or do the hackers?
United can deduct the miles as a business expense once they are used, but only their actual costs of delivering the service, not the cash value of the miles. The hackers can deduct the charitable donation, but only if they also declare the receipt of the miles as income, so they would just cancel out. If the final recipients of the miles are 503c's, then they can use the miles tax-free as long as they use them for charitable purposes.
So the only net cost to the taxpayers would be United deducting the cost of the extra fuel from their taxable income, and even then, the fuel would still be subject to excise tax.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't directly increase manufacturing output
Actually, by automating supply chains, it does.
it doesn't fix broken property ownership laws
Actually, it does this too. By bypassing corrupt local officials, automating title searches, integrating maps, etc., countries with internet access have done much better than those without at reforming property ownership laws, and establishing clear title to land.
doesn't really remove barriers to entry to wealth-producing activities.
Actually, the internet helps a lot here too. Many localities have moved licenses for various wealth-producing activities online. Applying through a website is much faster, and less likely to be delayed by bribe seeking bureaucrats. Websites like ipaidabribe.com make reporting corruption much easier.
But what about the dirty tricks companies play, such as patenting a gene sequence?
Why is that a "dirty trick"? If the gene sequence is novel, or used in a novel way, then how is that different than patenting anything else?
Or writing contracts that forbid farmers from harvesting seed, forcing them to buy new seed each time?
That isn't a "dirty trick" either, since farmers can NOT SIGN THE CONTRACT and grow non-patented seeds instead.
Or deliberately modifying the genome so the plants are fine with respect to food, but don't produce viable seeds?
Two problems: 1. Nobody actually does this. The technology exists, but it is not in use. 2. It would be a GOOD THING if this technology was put to use, because it would prevent GMO pollen from spreading through the environment unintentionally.
The suicide seeds were shelved because of protests from anti-GMO activists that were worried about having less to protest about. Which shows they are more interested in protesting and activism than actually solving problems.
As I understand, it's pretty much consensus that more pesticides equals to less bees.... or am I totally wrong?
Many GMO crops, including BT-corn, use less pesticides than non-GMO crops.
The only POSSIBLE reason you could have for not labeling is that you don't want people to have the ability to make an informed decision.
This is a non-problem, because it is already perfectly legal to label non-GMO food, and thousands of products are already labeled "GMO Free" or "Organic" (which implies non-GMO). Anyone who wants to avoid GMO foods already has the information available to do so.
... and have a history of lawsuits against independent farmers for allegedly stealing seeds.
The farmers that were sued openly, flagrantly and repeatedly violated IP laws. The most famous example is Perry Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer who was sued by Monsanto, after he intentionally and repeatedly used patented glyphosate resistant seed. He was the subject of the wildly inaccurate documentary "David versus Monsanto". The widely held belief that Monsanto has sued farmers for innocent and unintentional infringement due to pollen blowing in on the wind is baloney.
Note: Most patents for glyphosate (Roundup) resistant seeds have expired, and farmers can now grow and replant soybean and canola (rapeseed) license free.
Isn't something missing? For the first time ever? For the first time since ....?
Nothing is missing. When "first time" is used without qualifcation, it means it is the first time. The only exception is when discussing sex, when "first time" refers to the first time with another person.
http://www.w3schools.com/brows...
Firefox used to beat IE in 2009 for example.
That is for the browsers of people using w3schools, which is a very non-representative sample. Developers are far more likely to avoid IE than normal people.
Worst of all it's random number generator... exactly how hard would it be to test it?
Random number generators are notoriously hard to test. You can run as many tests as you like, and find no pattern. But that doesn't mean no pattern is there.
I read it too, and I fail to see the breakthrough. There are plenty of pseudo random number generators, such as the Mersenne Twister, with very long periods, so just occassionally XORing even a poor quality random number into the feedback loop, is enough to make it completely unpredictable.
You call a company with decades of sustained Earnings growth a failure simply because it's rate of growth is slowing.
He didn't say it was a failure. He said its growth is slowing. If Apple has 0% growth, but profits don't actually decline, then at the current price Apple stock is a great investment. The market consensus is that Apple's profits will go down as their market share declines. If you think otherwise, buy their stock and get rich. If you want to get rich even faster, buy options. Good luck.
Iran wasn't so stuck in the past.
Indeed. Before Iran became an Islamic Republic, it was an enlightened American client state, ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a really great guy, who provided his people with the most modern instruments of torture, and housed his political prisoners in state of the art facilities. It is surprising how ungrateful the Iranian people are toward America, since we installed and unselfishly supported this wonderful regime for nearly three decades, and we gave them plenty of advice on how to build and run the prisons that kept all the troublemakers locked up. All we asked for in return was plenty of cheap oil.
Like Jeb Bush, Al-Qaeda has an excellent donor network to fund future activities.
Like Jeb Bush, Al-Queda is a has-been, and donors have moved on, to Trump and ISIS respectively.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just keep using mirrors, then?
The mirrors have blind spots, create a significant amount of drag, interfere with parking, and cost more than cameras once you include the cost of the adjustment motors and buttons.
This study already provides evidence that parents in progressive societies are better parents, because they are at least better at educating their daughters in math.
Disclaimer: When my daughter was in elementary school, she placed 2nd in the district in the Math Olympiad, but now that she is a teenager, she thinks I am a terrible parent.
Do you also want to own your own elevator? Nearly everyone considers an elevator to be a shared resource, yet some people want to own a car. Why is horizontal travel so different from vertical travel?
Until the greedy owners figure it out and start charging $20 to park.
... and then another parking lot undercuts them by only charging $10, and then a bunch of homeowners undercut them by renting out space in their driveways for $5, and then ...
Taxis don't patrol residential streets, nor do airport shuttles, rickshaws, or buses. It's not efficient. It's not profitable.
That is because 98% of the people are driving their own car. But once on-demand rides are used by many people, residential streets will be high demand areas. For an SDC, the cost of waiting is near zero.
No, people will still own their own cars.
The average American household has 2.3 cars. My family has 3. When on-demand SDCs are available, we will likely reduce that to 2, and maybe to 1. On demand SDC rides will almost certainly be cheaper than ownership. Ownership may not go away completely, but it will be drastically reduced.
Nobody wants to give up the MUCH higher convenience level of that.
You mean the convenience of walking 200 meters in the cold rain through a parking lot to get to your car, while the SDC-Uber customers are picked up at the curb, under an awning?
That's an awful primary solution. I don't want to wait 10 mins for a car, I want one in my driveway.
You won't wait 10 minutes. This is a trivial problem in queuing theory. You have an algorithm to predict demand, and you preemptively dispatch cars to meet that demand. So when you walk out of the mall, the next car will pull up a few seconds after you request it. If demand is under predicted, you may wait a few more seconds, but not 10 minutes. If demand is over-predicted, you just have a few cars loop back to the staging lot.
Same thing with commuting from neighborhoods: The car companies will know the approximate number of cars needed for each neighborhood, and when they will be needed. So cars will arrive on your street just in time for you to summon one to your driveway. The company with the best prediction algorithm will have the highest vehicle utilization rate and the highest profits.
Also, SDCs can park much closer together, since the door doesn't need to open to disgorge humans, so they can park with only inches between cars. If they can retract their mirrors (or if the mirrors are replaced with cameras), then they can park even closer. If they have car-to-car communication, then they can park head-to-tail as well as side-by-side, and cooperate to make room for a summoned car to leave. A typical parking lot could hold 2 or 3 times as many SDCs as HDCs.
the system only works so long as no-one actually achieves dominance.
Amazon has no lock on the market. If another site offers products 2% cheaper, people will switch. Amazon undercuts their competition through cost control and economy of scale, not through monopoly power.
Sounds like the book publishers and their complicit teachers merely didn't manage to plug the used book loophole in your particular case.
Usually, the only difference between textbook editions is that they shuffle and renumber the problems at the end of each chapter. So you borrow the latest edition from a friend, and photocopy the problem sets. Then you can use the old book for learning, and the photocopies for homework.
By platooning, SDCs can drive much closer together than HDCs, and they also help to smooth out the "accordion effect" in stop-and-go traffic. It is unlikely that they will increase congestion. It is far more likely that they will help relieve congestion.
Large fixed-route public buses will be replaced by small self-driving vans, with flexible on-demand routing. As public transit becomes faster and more convenient, more people will use it, reducing congestion even more.
Can anyone knowledgable in the field give a yes/no on the sanity of their research?
If people knowledgeable in their field thought their approach was likely to succeed, they would already have plenty of funding.
Does United get the tax deduction for donating the miles, or do the hackers?
United can deduct the miles as a business expense once they are used, but only their actual costs of delivering the service, not the cash value of the miles. The hackers can deduct the charitable donation, but only if they also declare the receipt of the miles as income, so they would just cancel out. If the final recipients of the miles are 503c's, then they can use the miles tax-free as long as they use them for charitable purposes.
So the only net cost to the taxpayers would be United deducting the cost of the extra fuel from their taxable income, and even then, the fuel would still be subject to excise tax.
Or the scumbags at United could pay them in actual money.
Money is taxable. Also, FF miles can be exchanged for money (which is why they are taxable).