Uh, we knew 5000 years ago the Earth was round. You think the Egyptians were morons?
There is no evidence that the Egyptians knew the earth was round. The Greeks figured it out by about 400BC, and also roughly calculated the size, but as far as we know, no one knew earlier than that.
Researchers don't need SSN for patient. Just assign each patient a number and refer to them that way.
A better solution would be to get rid of the idiotic notion that SSNs can be both widely known and secret. Their use for authentication (rather than identification) should be banned. They should be considered public information.
It is also an area where PDF shines. PDF is a license free open standard, and there are open source tools that can generate and manipulate the format. It isn't as easy to work with as HTML, but it isn't that hard either. TFA is just uninformed whining. PDF is a perfectly acceptable open format for the government to use, and it is a big improvement over requiring something that is actually proprietary, such as MS-Word.
Translation: quit optimizing for proprietary Intel technology
This is not targeted at Intel. It is targeted at NVidia. They are looking to the future when GPGPU is expected to be a bigger slice of the GPU market. NVidia currently dominates with their (proprietary) CUDA interface, while AMD relies on the less efficient OpenCL. More openness will help AMD (and Intel) while working against NVidia.
In almost all markets the dominant company will prefer to push their proprietary solution, while companies with smaller market shares will push openness.
maybe for some one is Uber and one is Lyft so they can pick and choose based on where they are.
My sister drives for Uber and Lyft. She has both on the same phone, and that has never been a problem. She started out just driving for Uber, but added Lyft for the extra business as soon as they stopped requiring that stupid pink mustache on the front of the car.
shareholders want ROI now or during the next quarter at the latest.
The average investor holds stocks for twice as long today as they did a decade ago. Because of rock bottom interest rates, much corporate finance has move to long term debt, rather than equities or short term notes. Companies are actually under less pressure for quarterly results.
And people who don't live in the place where food is grown should starve.
People should pay for their food at the grocery store. The cost of electricity should be covered by their electric bill. Neither should be paid for with taxes. That leads to inefficiency, waste, corruption, and rent seeking. Once the government starts paying a subsidy, the recipients quickly organize, bribe, and agitate to turn it into a permanent entitlement. In WW2, the US government subsidized the production of mohair (goat wool) for use in bomber pilot jackets. Those subsidies are still in place.
I've been on 25/5 and on 3/1 and really can't tell much difference...
You obviously don't have a teenage daughter. The formal definition of broadband is this: A man's wife and daughter can watch two different Netflix movies simultaneously, and he can still get work done.
we need some government programs to take care of those entrenched in society's last mile.
This is NOT a "last mile" issue. Long haul inter-state HVDC interconnects are the opposite of "last mile". These lines should pay for themselves by moving energy from where it is cheap and plentiful, to where it is expensive and scarce. But if no private investor can be convinced that this scheme will work, then it is silly to spend tax dollars on a boondoggle just because it is "infrastructure".
Btw, I don't understand why you think that the "last mile" should be subsidized. If you live in a rural area, where it is expensive to provide electricity/internet/whatever, then that is your choice, and you should not expect anyone else to subsidize your lifestyle.
Trains lose money, so they require a lot of government subsidies. This grid will (supposedly) save money, so it should require no subsidies. There is no reason for the government to "fund" it. If private investors are not willing to pay for it, then that is a sure sign that it is not going to generate an acceptable ROI, and shouldn't be built.
The lesson is that ANY cab-like co better be ready for an 8-mil zinger.
Or just incorporate overseas, and locate their servers outside the jurisdiction of the US. Taxi drivers almost always own their own cabs, and own their own medallions. So there is no reason for a "cab-like co" to have a physical presence in the cities where they operate.
There's only so many dollars available for advertising.
That is not necessarily true. If advertising is made more effective, because it is targeted or whatever, then it brings in more sales, and a profit optimizing company will do more of it. There is no reason an advertising budget should be zero-sum.
We in the US should adjust the tax law to say that...
... and then other countries retaliate with tit-for-tat trade restrictions of their own. In the end, everyone would lose. The solution to stupid tax policy, is not to make it even stupider. We should reform our tax laws so they don't encourage companies to move jobs overseas. America is the only country in the world that taxes companies when they repatriate capital to create domestic jobs.
This is not just about altruistism. There is a huge political aspect to these donations. Public employee unions are the biggest donors to the Democratic Party. The also provide thousands of campaign door knockers and phone dialers. When Obama was nominated, more than 20% of the delegates at the convention were members of either the NEA or the AFT. School reform, charter schools, and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling could weaken these unions, which will have a dramatic effect on American politics. I think this is a good thing, because the public employee unions have a corrupting influence, and push the Democratic Party away from their natural role of helping the dispossessed.
If that were true they wouldn't be building in America.
Yes they would. A data center is an expense, not a profit generator. You put your expenses in America, and take the write off at America's 39% corporate tax rate. Then you place your IP licensing profit center in Ireland, where you pay the corporate tax at 12.5%.
This sort of tax arbitrage is basic finance 101. Even small companies do it. My company employs less than a dozen people, but it is still worth it for us to rent a P.O. box in Dublin, where our trademarks, copyrights, and patents are legally domiciled. Another advantage of this, is that you can take a European vacation, and write it off as a business expense, as long as you spend a day or two on the Emerald Isle.
The SouthEast is actually fairly cloudy. The region also has solar panel ripping hurricanes and some of the world's most severe thunderstorms. If you want solar, you go to Arizona, not Alabama.
Strangely enough, the population of the US is suddenly only 4000 people!
4000 people is way more than enough to be statistically significant. The problem with this survey is not sample size, but randomness. Opt-in web surveys tend to be biased. I also question the impartiality of the researchers. They all come from organizations that tend to advocate big government solutions.
I would not buy a "smart gun". But I would not buy a dumb gun either. I have owned a rifle and a shotgun for 25 years. My dad gave me the shotgun. It is over 70 years old. Both the rifle and shotgun work as well as when they were new, and I don't expect to ever need to replace them. I have a hard time believing that a "smart gun" could ever be that reliable.
Guy with profit motive thinks his pricey programming environment is better than one that is free.
He also doesn't understand how Scratch is used. I help teach programming to 4th graders in an after school program, using Scratch. The kids go to the site, and start programming. With Wolfram's site, they can't do that, because they hit an immediate roadblock: An email address is required. Most 9 year old kids don't have an email address, and don't know how to get one.
I was unable to create an account, because it seems to be Slashdotted, but from looking at the demos, it seems to require a lot of typing, rather than the graphical interface that Scratch uses. So my impression is that this is something that is too hard for young kids, but too silly for adults. In my school district, after the kids learn Scratch, they move up to a "real" programming language (Python) in middle school, so I am not sure if this product has a niche.
It is unfair to blame the Guardian for a stupid Slashdot headline. The point of the study was not to show that overfishing caused fish stocks to decline (we already knew that), but to actually quantify the rate of decline. The Guardian's headline expresses that accurately, while the Slashdot headline is misleading.
Using exactly the same logic, just because Apple uses a manufacturer's service does not mean Apple approves of every aspect of the manufacturer's supply chain.
Except it is not the same logic. Apple has WAY more power over their suppliers than I have over Apple. If Apple threatened to take their business elsewhere, I believe that their battery supplier would be willing to switch to non-African cobalt. But I am not so sure that would benefit Africans.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, we knew 5000 years ago the Earth was round. You think the Egyptians were morons?
There is no evidence that the Egyptians knew the earth was round. The Greeks figured it out by about 400BC, and also roughly calculated the size, but as far as we know, no one knew earlier than that.
Researchers don't need SSN for patient. Just assign each patient a number and refer to them that way.
A better solution would be to get rid of the idiotic notion that SSNs can be both widely known and secret. Their use for authentication (rather than identification) should be banned. They should be considered public information.
Totalitarian regimes are actually orthogonal to the communist/capitalist spectrum.
Except that there are plenty of examples of non-totalitarian capitalist countries, and zero examples of non-totalitarian communist countries.
This is one area where HTML shines
It is also an area where PDF shines. PDF is a license free open standard, and there are open source tools that can generate and manipulate the format. It isn't as easy to work with as HTML, but it isn't that hard either. TFA is just uninformed whining. PDF is a perfectly acceptable open format for the government to use, and it is a big improvement over requiring something that is actually proprietary, such as MS-Word.
Translation: quit optimizing for proprietary Intel technology
This is not targeted at Intel. It is targeted at NVidia. They are looking to the future when GPGPU is expected to be a bigger slice of the GPU market. NVidia currently dominates with their (proprietary) CUDA interface, while AMD relies on the less efficient OpenCL. More openness will help AMD (and Intel) while working against NVidia.
In almost all markets the dominant company will prefer to push their proprietary solution, while companies with smaller market shares will push openness.
Of course, nobody in the soviet bloc or even china has ever experienced communism. They experienced totalitarianism
Communism + Reality = Totalitarianism
maybe for some one is Uber and one is Lyft so they can pick and choose based on where they are.
My sister drives for Uber and Lyft. She has both on the same phone, and that has never been a problem. She started out just driving for Uber, but added Lyft for the extra business as soon as they stopped requiring that stupid pink mustache on the front of the car.
shareholders want ROI now or during the next quarter at the latest.
The average investor holds stocks for twice as long today as they did a decade ago. Because of rock bottom interest rates, much corporate finance has move to long term debt, rather than equities or short term notes. Companies are actually under less pressure for quarterly results.
And people who don't live in the place where food is grown should starve.
People should pay for their food at the grocery store. The cost of electricity should be covered by their electric bill. Neither should be paid for with taxes. That leads to inefficiency, waste, corruption, and rent seeking. Once the government starts paying a subsidy, the recipients quickly organize, bribe, and agitate to turn it into a permanent entitlement. In WW2, the US government subsidized the production of mohair (goat wool) for use in bomber pilot jackets. Those subsidies are still in place.
In this instance, it's the folks receiving electricity because of rural electrification programs.
TFA is about Long haul HVDC grid interconnects, which have nothing to do with rural electrification.
And it still wasn't done.
So there are rural people in America involuntarily living without electricity? Can you provide an example?
I've been on 25/5 and on 3/1 and really can't tell much difference ...
You obviously don't have a teenage daughter. The formal definition of broadband is this: A man's wife and daughter can watch two different Netflix movies simultaneously, and he can still get work done.
we need some government programs to take care of those entrenched in society's last mile.
This is NOT a "last mile" issue. Long haul inter-state HVDC interconnects are the opposite of "last mile". These lines should pay for themselves by moving energy from where it is cheap and plentiful, to where it is expensive and scarce. But if no private investor can be convinced that this scheme will work, then it is silly to spend tax dollars on a boondoggle just because it is "infrastructure".
Btw, I don't understand why you think that the "last mile" should be subsidized. If you live in a rural area, where it is expensive to provide electricity/internet/whatever, then that is your choice, and you should not expect anyone else to subsidize your lifestyle.
Or trains. (Forgot about them.)
Trains lose money, so they require a lot of government subsidies. This grid will (supposedly) save money, so it should require no subsidies. There is no reason for the government to "fund" it. If private investors are not willing to pay for it, then that is a sure sign that it is not going to generate an acceptable ROI, and shouldn't be built.
The lesson is that ANY cab-like co better be ready for an 8-mil zinger.
Or just incorporate overseas, and locate their servers outside the jurisdiction of the US. Taxi drivers almost always own their own cabs, and own their own medallions. So there is no reason for a "cab-like co" to have a physical presence in the cities where they operate.
There's only so many dollars available for advertising.
That is not necessarily true. If advertising is made more effective, because it is targeted or whatever, then it brings in more sales, and a profit optimizing company will do more of it. There is no reason an advertising budget should be zero-sum.
We in the US should adjust the tax law to say that ...
... and then other countries retaliate with tit-for-tat trade restrictions of their own. In the end, everyone would lose. The solution to stupid tax policy, is not to make it even stupider. We should reform our tax laws so they don't encourage companies to move jobs overseas. America is the only country in the world that taxes companies when they repatriate capital to create domestic jobs.
This is not just about altruistism. There is a huge political aspect to these donations. Public employee unions are the biggest donors to the Democratic Party. The also provide thousands of campaign door knockers and phone dialers. When Obama was nominated, more than 20% of the delegates at the convention were members of either the NEA or the AFT. School reform, charter schools, and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling could weaken these unions, which will have a dramatic effect on American politics. I think this is a good thing, because the public employee unions have a corrupting influence, and push the Democratic Party away from their natural role of helping the dispossessed.
If that were true they wouldn't be building in America.
Yes they would. A data center is an expense, not a profit generator. You put your expenses in America, and take the write off at America's 39% corporate tax rate. Then you place your IP licensing profit center in Ireland, where you pay the corporate tax at 12.5%.
This sort of tax arbitrage is basic finance 101. Even small companies do it. My company employs less than a dozen people, but it is still worth it for us to rent a P.O. box in Dublin, where our trademarks, copyrights, and patents are legally domiciled. Another advantage of this, is that you can take a European vacation, and write it off as a business expense, as long as you spend a day or two on the Emerald Isle.
Lots of sun means lots of solar power potential.
The SouthEast is actually fairly cloudy. The region also has solar panel ripping hurricanes and some of the world's most severe thunderstorms. If you want solar, you go to Arizona, not Alabama.
Strangely enough, the population of the US is suddenly only 4000 people!
4000 people is way more than enough to be statistically significant. The problem with this survey is not sample size, but randomness. Opt-in web surveys tend to be biased. I also question the impartiality of the researchers. They all come from organizations that tend to advocate big government solutions.
I would not buy a "smart gun". But I would not buy a dumb gun either. I have owned a rifle and a shotgun for 25 years. My dad gave me the shotgun. It is over 70 years old. Both the rifle and shotgun work as well as when they were new, and I don't expect to ever need to replace them. I have a hard time believing that a "smart gun" could ever be that reliable.
Guy with profit motive thinks his pricey programming environment is better than one that is free.
He also doesn't understand how Scratch is used. I help teach programming to 4th graders in an after school program, using Scratch. The kids go to the site, and start programming. With Wolfram's site, they can't do that, because they hit an immediate roadblock: An email address is required. Most 9 year old kids don't have an email address, and don't know how to get one.
I was unable to create an account, because it seems to be Slashdotted, but from looking at the demos, it seems to require a lot of typing, rather than the graphical interface that Scratch uses. So my impression is that this is something that is too hard for young kids, but too silly for adults. In my school district, after the kids learn Scratch, they move up to a "real" programming language (Python) in middle school, so I am not sure if this product has a niche.
The argument goes that cattle produce a lot more methane than does average human.
Yes, they do, by a factor of over 100. Most of it comes from burps, not farts.
However, when humans become vegans, they also see a massive increase in passing gas
It would be more accurate to say they see a slight increase in passing gas.
You didn't think vegetables caused less pollution than certain livestock, did you?
Yes, a vegan diet, which is based mostly on legumes and grains, produces much less pollution than a meat based diet.
It is unfair to blame the Guardian for a stupid Slashdot headline. The point of the study was not to show that overfishing caused fish stocks to decline (we already knew that), but to actually quantify the rate of decline. The Guardian's headline expresses that accurately, while the Slashdot headline is misleading.
Using exactly the same logic, just because Apple uses a manufacturer's service does not mean Apple approves of every aspect of the manufacturer's supply chain.
Except it is not the same logic. Apple has WAY more power over their suppliers than I have over Apple. If Apple threatened to take their business elsewhere, I believe that their battery supplier would be willing to switch to non-African cobalt. But I am not so sure that would benefit Africans.