Isn't hydrogen made from water always 'clean'? I'm not sure what the big deal is here considering that we can produce 'clean' hydrogen from electrolysis of water today...without all this zinc business.... Seems overly complicated to me...
I don't believe that CS majors typically learn a lot of controls and automation in their core curriculum . . . that's typically something that EE's see more of. And for that matter I ask, why Mechanical Engineering? If you want to design cars, ME might make sense, but in most alternative energy technologies you will likely be part of a multidisciplinary team . . . with material scientists (solar energy, automobiles, fuel cells), chemical engineers (fuel cells, combustion engineering), aerospace engineers (wind turbines), electrical engineers (all of the above). Mechanical engineering, though a key component of many teams, does not typically get to "ride point" on these teams. Mechanical engineers often take the requirements from the aforementioned disciplines and design a real and stable "container" or "device" that mechanically stabilizes and holds the alternative energy technology. If you actually want to design the "alternative energy technology" perhaps one of the more specific disciplines would make sense. . .
Note that I'm not belittling the role of mechanical engineers. ME's are absolutely critical to the development of a myriad of technologies . . . but mechanical engineering isn't the lead discipline that actually develops many of the "core" technologies that make the alternative energy technologies that you describe possible.
And lastly, I don't understand how ". . . mechanical engineering will give me a broad understanding of the more specific engineering disciplines." is true at all. I'm a chemical engineer . . . I don't know many mechanical engineers that know squat about the basics of Chem E. And for that matter I don't know Mechanical Engineering for squat either . . . I never even took a Statics and Dynamics course . . .
Actually I think that really depends on the music that you listen to. I like a lot of older jazz and classical music and personally, I haven't found many so called "CD quality" 128 kbps recordings of these genres of music that IMHO sound very good.
In fact I find the sound quality downright annoying compared with listening to a real CD and would rather listen to silence, because at least silence doesn't grate on my nerves as complex chords and countermelodies from a orchestra overwhelm the compression algorithm. 256kbps makes a huge difference to me.
And though the styles of music that I listen to may put me in a minority of music listeners in general, I don't think that I am in a minority of listeners of these particular genres. With all due respect I personally think that it is harder to hear small compression artifacts in distorted guitar music than in the sound of strings and flutes. I'm not claiming that any particular music is "better" than another, but when one claims "CD-quality sound" and it only applies to particular types of music, that should be specified. Or the "CD-quality sound" should be CD quality for at least the major genre's of music on the radio. But it clearly is not.
So many places say "CD-quality programming" and offer compressed audio . . . like CD-Quality MP3's etc. Typically this kind of audio isn't CD quality by definition of lossy compression and streaming rate. In fact last I checked the compression algorthim and bitstream rate for satellite talk radio is different from that of the same service's music stations (the talk radio stream has a lower bitrate and more compression) . . . because the audio frequency band and dynamic range are typically narrower in talk radio.
CD-quality should imply a real and quantifiable level of quality . . . not "it sounds like a CD to the casual listener (that doesn't know that analog FM radio music is typically compressed in dynamic range and frequency and that radio broadcasts are already equalized for cheap car stereos and boomboxes)."
Actually I think that this is inline with trademark law. Hormel did not act on the use of the word SPAM by the online community until well after the new meaning had become well established. One has to protect trademarks or show significant effort to do so, or the trademark may become public domain. One can argue that "Coke" or "McDonalds" or even "Mickey Mouse" may have more meanings than denoted by trademark, but I believe that these companies have more vigorously protected their trademarks.
We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE [Unsolicited Commercial Email), although we do object to the use of the word "spam" as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.
Hormel has chosen not to fight this as agressively as perhaps they should have . . . trademark dilution is a very slippery slope. As the new meaning that is endorsed by the compnay overwhelms the trademarked meaning, the trademark becomes more difficult to protect. While I am not advocating agressive trademark protection and defense, I am not surprised that Hormel is having difficulty.
One can't have it both ways . . . allowing people to misuse or use trademarks in a way that confuses or dilutes the popular meaning and expecting full protection of the trademark. In fact I may get flamebaited modded for this, but I am a bit surprised to see many of the posts from the/. community side with the government protected corporate controlled trademark people instead of the more populist spam definition that grew out the grassroots computer user community.
Perhaps this docile reaction from the/. community is because Hormel chose not to protect their trademark as aggressively as they could have . . . Unfortuately this would be a lesson to corporations. Trademark dilution is something that could happen . . . if they aren't agressive and vigilant.
Guess Transmeta is going after the biggest guy with the deepest pockets . . . seems a little hard to believe that AMD wouldn't be doing something similar to what Intel is doing (that Transmeta claims in infringing).
If Transmeta scores a win against Intel, then maybe that could lead to licensing agreements with others that may be afraid that they would also lose in litigation. In the meantime, this is one time where AMD may be thankful that they don't have the largest marketshare and the deepest pockets in the CPU industry.
This project seems to be gathering a "Wild Type" sampling of submitted data. What if the data is not representative . . . for example, a bunch of people in China decide to submit english language files with the best of intentions, but the data is heavily accented (Or to be fair, if a bunch of native English speakers submitted a bunch of heavily accented recordings of Mandarin speech)?
Without controlling the data source or making sure that the data is valid, one could become a victim of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). In all fairness, this may not be a problem if the sample size is large enough to overwhelm any outlying data, but I'm not sure that this project has sufficiently addressed this concern . . .
More skeptical is the fact that the study only includes net exporters . . . what about the consumer demand in net consumer countries? Doesn't this affect price which drives exploration and technology development in the industry? Already the "dry" US oil wells are being given a second look with new technology to extract what was considered to be economically unprofitable oil only 5 years ago. Now at higher prices, this oil may be profitable to extract. That's not to say that we won't run out, but as demand in China and India ramps up, prices are likely to surge which will mean that all the assumptions that current rates of increase or decrease will remain constant are just plain silly assumptions.
The study, though academically interesting was pragmatically dead before it was even published. It doesn't even begin to look at the entire global market; just a subset of it. And based on this subset that leaves out some of the world's largest consumers, they make projections on the future world oil market.
The basics of simulation dictate that you can't make predictions if your model inputs with the most significant gains (ratio of input move size to output response size) are left out of the model. Otherwise disturbances in the variables with larger gain are going to overwhelm the smaller gain variables. Right now I would say that China and India are large gain inputs to any projection of world oil markets. And this guy left them out.
However that doesn't mean that there won't be bumps and starts are we continue down the tail . . .
Additionally I wouldn't say that the oil supply is terribly inelastic . . . unless one considers the time horizon. If we consider that it takes 5-10 years for extraction to go from on paper to production and about 5 years for a refinery to go from paper to grassroots startup, then the process really isn't terribly inelastic. However, compared with quarterly numbers, textile production, and agricultural cycles, then oil looks terribly inelastic.
Elasticity is the percent change in supply or demand per percent change in price. There is no time domain associated with elasticity . . . . saying something is inelastic because one is too impatient to wait for the entire settling time in the system is a fallacy. The elasticity is actually unknown.
It's really all relative . . . and saying that oil is inelastic is really an admission that one may not understand the scale size and requirements of the industry. If oil prices went to $100/barrel for 5 years straight, we would see that the oil industry is more elastic than economists currently observe.
Hard to make more than an incremental improvement?
on
Firefox 2.0 RC2 Review
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have to admit that when I first moved to Firefox from IE, the tabbed browsing was a feature that I didn't know that I needed until I tried it; and then I was hooked.
I don't really hear about any great new must have features in the RC2 version. Though I do acknowledge that coming up with great new features and ideas that most people appreciate but don't know that they need yet is no easy task, but I really don't see any key features in this version of Firefox to make me really want to upgrade. As I said before, great ideas in the browsing experience may be hard to come by since the idea of the browser and its application are mature. It's a bit like coming up with a great new feature for a word processor . . . a lot of the "low hanging fruit" is already taken.
What this means to me is that upgrading the browser is like upgrading the word processor; it's not a very high priority because there isn't a very compelling reason to do it (at least IMHO) . . .
If this guy's engineering and contracting skills are anything like his travel advice, it's no wonder that he wasn't well prepared for the challenges. He gives some silly travel advice . . .
I have been to China, Taiwan, Indonesia and a host of other countries executing projects. I can say from experience that:
Western style hotels purify their water. It is safe to drink. Silverware that has been washed properly doesn not need to be "sanitized with tea." Fruits and vegetables that have rinds or peels can be eaten uncooked if they are peeled first (e.g. bananas). You don't need a GPS to survive in a foreign country. Westerners have traveled to foreign countries and returned safely since well before the first GPS satellite was launched. In fact if your in a bad area of town a GPS may be just the thing to attract a snatch and grab thief. Same holds for mobile phones. Nice to have, but people have been going to China since well before mobile phones. Though some of the advice given is good, some of it is plain rubbish.
China is offically atheist, but expressions of religion are tolerated. And overstaying your visa is not a courtesy issue, its a legal issue. This kind of stuff sounds like the writings of someone that read an outdated travel guide for the xenophobic.
I can only imagine that some of the problems this guy had with his contract manufacturer were because he know what he was getting into either travel wise of contract manufacturing wise . . . For example, how come he didn't have another copy of his design drawings for the plastic case with him? That was poor preparation. Not having a spare copy can cost thousands of dollars when you're overseas. And did he really think that the CM woudln't want to redesign the case? Their engineers often try to redesign things to save costs of improve performance. It sounds to me like this guy's bread and butter is components in cameras . . . not plastics injection molding. Advice from the plastics company was probably good helpful advice. Why would he discount such advice? Why would he not put enough float in his schedule so that the manufacturers engineers could review his designs . . . after all, they are the manufacturing experts.
I think that this article would be better titled "A Newbie Goes to China"
From the linked article:
Al Mudrow's Tips For Traveling in China:
1. Plan a trip to China the same way you would plan an extended backpacking trip into the wilderness. Start with a backpacking checklist. Leave off the obvious items of tent, sleeping bag and sleeping pad. Pretty much everything else on your list is useful.
2. China is a cash-based economy. Credit cards can be used in high-end western hotels but nowhere else. You can get cash through your hotel, banks or "grey-market" foreign exchange shops.
3. China is mostly BYOTP (bring your own toilet paper). Always carry tissue paper with you when you venture out of the hotel.
4. Don't drink the tap water, no matter how fancy or western your hotel. Use provided bottled water. I carry water purification tablets if I want additional water.
5. Be very aware of traffic as you are walking around. Cars and motorcycles come in all directions. Motorcycles especially seem to obey no traffic rules. Vehicles commonly travel on sidewalks as well. Be especially careful of trucks made from converted farm roto-tillers. They don't have brakes.
6. Take a GPS receiver with you. Mark the important waypoints like your hotel, your CM factory and vendor locations. You can use it guide your way when your CM forgets to pick you up, or when guiding your taxi driver, who will inevitably get lost.
7. Always carry a mobile phone with you. Find out before you leave if your mobile phone will work in China.
8. Get a Skype account and purchase Skype-out minutes. Phone calls back to the U.S. and within China are about 3 cents a minute. Quality is better than both mobile phones and even local telephones.
9. In restaurants, use the tea they pour you to sanitize your eating utensils and dinnerware. Only eat food
fMRI is pretty primitive . . . just realtime video of where the blood goes in the brain. Using it to detect lies is like using Sherlock Holmes magnifying lens to scientifically examine the Moon from the Earth. The resolution and focus is horrible with respect to the density of information processing in the brain.
Additionally, research into decision making processes and incentives by psychologist and economists using fMRI is in its infancy. To believe that we could accurately detect lies with fMRI when we don't even know how people make decisions or react to incentives is impossibly optimistic. The promise of a reduced sentence for telling the truth could completely change the fMRI results. The fact that the Guantanamo guard that kicked the sh*t out of you last week is in the room could completely change the fMRI results. The color of the room may change the fMRI results. And so on . . .
We just don't have enough historical data to do this reliably.
Though the situation from the article happened in the UK, I think that US law differs in that fonts or typefaces have no legal protection. Because of this, in the US one would be able to copy fonts to their heart's content . . .
Ironic that the home of the MPAA and RIAA and DMCA has no protection for typefaces . . .
And in the US we have a term for the logical reaction. Sounds like this should be considered for class action lawsuit.
If you were sold a car with brake pads, drums, and shoes but no brake line, pedal, and master cylinder and the ads read "Comes with brakes!" . . . But you couldn't use the brakes because the system is incomplete, wouldn't you have potential for a lawsuit?
In other words, what is a brake? is it the shoes, the cylinders, or is it the complete and functioning system? What does HDCP support mean? If it means a functional and useful system then the given example may be false advertising. If it means extra transisters that don't add any tangible value or real functionality, then the next generation of video cards should include extra transistors and manufacturers should advertise "Makes Coffee Too!" When you realize that it doesn't come with the hardware (carafe, filter, water heater, etc.) to make coffee, then the video card people can just say . . . ohh, that's not what we meant; however, the processor logic of a coffee maker is included.
Some of them, especially the triangles (equilateral v/s isosceles) and the X's (perpendicular v/s otherwise) need the ability to think in terms of angles. And the last one requires you to see if the figures are clockwise or counter-clockwise. Its definitely not simple patterns recognition, all 6 images in each set are very similar in terms of "pattern".
But pattern recognition for two dimensional shapes requires an implicit understanding of angles. I think that the statement the ability of think in terms of angles represents a cultural bias. In other words the statement implies that because one learns that angles denote different kinds of triangles, then everyone differentiates different types of triangles by the angles.
I think that it it is very possible that people can denote different types of triangles without any understanding of angles. If I can change the size of a shape in my mind and rotate the shape in my mind and superimpose it on another shape in my mind, then I can perform pattern recognition without an understanding of angles.
Now if I can take that same shape and flip it over in my mind (like flipping over a leaf, a turtle, flat rock, or any other fairly flat object existing in nature) then I can pattern match clockwise or counter-clockwise items also.
Again I think that the cultural construct of clockwise and counter-clockwise may make one believe that the concept requires cultural education, but if one reduces the concept to flipping over an assymetrical leaf, it doesn't seem like an unnatural expression of pattern matching.
come on . . . get off your high horse . . . any company willing to purchase time on the jumbotron in Times Square on New Year's Eve is looking for a BIG publicity stunt to launch them into the big times . . .
The fact that you think that this is merely a simple "thank you" from a happy company that is in touch with its customers speaks more of your naivete than it does of the strategies of Opera. Of course a big thank you is exactly what Opera's senior leadership want the userbase to think because they don't want to alienate their userbase.
But closer examination of their strategic intent indicates that they have bigger plans. Big jumbotron on New Year's Eve smells a lot like Monster.com buying commercial airtime during the superbowl. They are looking to kickstart an infective marketing campaign through a very prominent ad on a very prominent medium at a very prominent time.
Where is Opera compared with the other browsers? A niche player that serves as a focused differentiator (Read up on Classical Strategy (Michael Porter's five forces)). How can a niche player increase its market share? Only by becoming a differentiator or low cost leader . . . It's quite apparent that this marketing campaign is testing the waters to see how easy (or hard) it would be for Opera to shift gears.
If we consider the Boston consulting Group Matrix (BCG matrix), we can plot FireFox as a question mark (upper right quadrant) making moves to the upper left quadrant (star). It's logical to assume that Opera may be wondering if it can do the same thing . . . becuase it is likely that Opera currently hovers somewhere betweeb dog and star (between upper right and lower right quadrants).
In other words, Firefox has successfully broken Microsoft's stranglehold on the browser. Because customer's are now more likely to believe alternative browsers do possess adequate levels of Garvin's eight dimension of quality (Performance, Features, Conformance, Reliability, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality), it is likely that this creates an opportune time for another browser to test the waters to see if it can go mainstream. It is quite apparent to the casual observer with elementary understanding of classical business strategy that this is a marketing stunt to gain data on the receptiveness of the marketplace.
To think otherwise is to have bought into Opera's marketing agenda, to not uderstand classical strategic theory (I have intentionally ignored resource based systemic, and processual frameworks for strategies because I do not have the data to comment), or to simply be naive.
I couldn't agree more . . .
And to make matters worse, I just went to the
forum where you can see uploaded pictures for the contest. If the 7 (yes that's right . . . seven) people that uploaded pictures as of the time that I visited the forum are any representation of Opera users, then I think that this ad campaign isn't going to get the demographically perfect person . . . Or at least not the demographically perfect person from a marketing perspective (stereotypically youthful, saavy, successful, and of course good looking with a look that implies professional or student in a way that would inspire people to use opera). And I have to agree with the parent post that the winner will probably be female . . . except there were no female pictures when I checked.
Of course opening your eyes, smiling, and focusing the camera would have helped . . .
As is typical, the editors leave out crucial information in their first post so as to make the article more interesting and attempt to gain more posts (Which I assume is used as a metric for advertisement pricing).
Quoted from FP:
University, she has shown that, among other things, biometric security measures were fooled 90% of the time by simple attacks like Play-Doh molds.
Quoted from TFA:
Schuckers and her research team made casts from live fingers using dental materials and used Play-Doh to create molds. They also assembled a collection of cadaver fingers.
In the laboratory, the researchers then systematically tested more than 60 of the faked samples. The results were a 90 percent false verification rate.
The crucial piece of missing information: The need for dental materials; the same stuff used to make casting for denture, false teeth, etc. To do what the researchers did, one needs more than play-doh. But of course ignoring this makes the FP much more dramatic becuase it implies that a preschool toy is sufficent for fooling biometric scanners.
For the record the quote from the FP is the part written by the editors, not by the submitter (unitalicized portion of FP), so the error (or omission) was made by a/. editor, not by the submitter.
I find it frustrating that what I once thought was a useful and interesting source of infomation and lively discussion seems to have become what it once seemed to differentiate itself from. Slashdot editors seems to be adopting the playbook of big media and skewed news to drive up user posts.
I find this sad because I thought that Slashdot was a site with an alternative playbook, that treated its readers as more saavy. Now it seems to be on the slippery slope to USA Today style reporting. I can only assume that this change is an attempt to drive up ad revenue. But I am afraid it will alienate many of the readers.
This so called "review" is exactly why I've fallen away from posting on/.
This isn't a review. Its an opinion . . . and it seems to have been posted by someone that thinks the movie is "great" but really cannot or chooses not to explain what made the movie great (a single actress alone does not make a good movie). He attacks other reviewers for not understanding the plot and attacks those that aren't captivated by the film for having no imagination . . . but he offers very little of his own opinion. He attacks others . . . but fails offer a convincing opinion of his own . . . except that it was an "awesome" film. I finshed reading the article and I was unconvinced . . . there is very little substance to the review . . . except that other reviewers are wrong . . . and this one is right . . . like the logic of a six year old.
Is it just me or has slashdot been posting a lot more lame articles like this? I'm not sure but I get the opinion that the editors have changed tack and are going for a more inflammatory style. The rhetorical questions that they post at the end of their first posts are often poorly thought out and sometimes just plain illogical or indicative that they failed to read the article or pay attention when they read the article.
I can only assume that inflammatory opinions posted as reviews or illogical rhetorical questions serve as flamebait to drive up the number of posts on/. As circumstantial evidence of competitive pressures I submit ancedotally that/.'s competitors such as Digg and other sites have been getting more press lately.
I don't know whether the editors will read this comment or take it into account . . . . but I have to say that I have been highly underwhelmed with the recent content of slashdot. This inflammatory attack on other movie reviewers that is thinly disguised as a movie review is more evidence that Slashdot is using a strategy of posting material that might otherwise be considered flamebait to drive up the number of posts.
Inkjets are good for home use only or in LARGE format photo quality printing.
Do lasers get the same color fidelity as inkjets as small format photo quality inkjets? My understanding is that they do not. That's the main reason I've avoided color lasers.
Last I heard color laser printers were ok for color charts and graphs, but photo leave quite a bit to be desired. Of course, things could have changed since I last looked at color lasers . ..
I'm seeing a lot of recommendations on this thread pushing color laser printers . . .
However, my understanding has been that color lasers are worse that color injets for photo printing. Additionally, it is my understanding that most pros use inkjets, not lasers to print their photos (Even in the not so large format 13" wide Epson 2100/2200 realm). Is this still true, or has color laser printing taken some siginficant leaps forward in the realm of digital photos?
liken the EPCglobal Network as a whole to the Internet, with RFID tags acting as URLs, and the tags' associated data being the Web site for that tag
This sounds like a press release from the.com glory days . . . mindless banter that uses some fancy buzzwords (Internet, RFID, URLs, Website) in hopes that unsuspecting folks won't realize that this analogy is poor at best, blatantly wrong at worst.
I could use the same analogy for my house. The house is the internet, each power outlet is a URL and each appliance's use of electrical current is the associated data for that website. Now with a bunch of multimeters, I have an "internet."
Analogies in the hands on the misinformed are a very dangerous thing.
liken the EPCglobal Network as a whole to the Internet, with RFID tags acting as URLs, and the tags' associated data being the Web site for that tag
This sounds like a press release from the.com glory days . . . mindless banter that uses some fancy buzzwords (Internet, RFID, URLs, Website) in hopes that unsuspecting folks won't realize that this analogy is poor at best, blatantly wrong at worst.
I could use the same analogy for my house. The house is the internet, each power outlet is a URL and each appliance's use of electrical current is the associated data for that website. Now with a bunch of multimeters, I have an "internet."
Analogies in the hands on the misinformed are a very dangerous thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't hydrogen made from water always 'clean'? I'm not sure what the big deal is here considering that we can produce 'clean' hydrogen from electrolysis of water today...without all this zinc business.... Seems overly complicated to me...
I don't believe that CS majors typically learn a lot of controls and automation in their core curriculum . . . that's typically something that EE's see more of. And for that matter I ask, why Mechanical Engineering? If you want to design cars, ME might make sense, but in most alternative energy technologies you will likely be part of a multidisciplinary team . . . with material scientists (solar energy, automobiles, fuel cells), chemical engineers (fuel cells, combustion engineering), aerospace engineers (wind turbines), electrical engineers (all of the above). Mechanical engineering, though a key component of many teams, does not typically get to "ride point" on these teams. Mechanical engineers often take the requirements from the aforementioned disciplines and design a real and stable "container" or "device" that mechanically stabilizes and holds the alternative energy technology. If you actually want to design the "alternative energy technology" perhaps one of the more specific disciplines would make sense. . .
Note that I'm not belittling the role of mechanical engineers. ME's are absolutely critical to the development of a myriad of technologies . . . but mechanical engineering isn't the lead discipline that actually develops many of the "core" technologies that make the alternative energy technologies that you describe possible.
And lastly, I don't understand how ". . . mechanical engineering will give me a broad understanding of the more specific engineering disciplines." is true at all. I'm a chemical engineer . . . I don't know many mechanical engineers that know squat about the basics of Chem E. And for that matter I don't know Mechanical Engineering for squat either . . . I never even took a Statics and Dynamics course . . .
In fact I find the sound quality downright annoying compared with listening to a real CD and would rather listen to silence, because at least silence doesn't grate on my nerves as complex chords and countermelodies from a orchestra overwhelm the compression algorithm. 256kbps makes a huge difference to me.
And though the styles of music that I listen to may put me in a minority of music listeners in general, I don't think that I am in a minority of listeners of these particular genres. With all due respect I personally think that it is harder to hear small compression artifacts in distorted guitar music than in the sound of strings and flutes. I'm not claiming that any particular music is "better" than another, but when one claims "CD-quality sound" and it only applies to particular types of music, that should be specified. Or the "CD-quality sound" should be CD quality for at least the major genre's of music on the radio. But it clearly is not.
CD-quality should imply a real and quantifiable level of quality . . . not "it sounds like a CD to the casual listener (that doesn't know that analog FM radio music is typically compressed in dynamic range and frequency and that radio broadcasts are already equalized for cheap car stereos and boomboxes)."
Most telling from Hormel's spam site
Hormel has chosen not to fight this as agressively as perhaps they should have . . . trademark dilution is a very slippery slope. As the new meaning that is endorsed by the compnay overwhelms the trademarked meaning, the trademark becomes more difficult to protect. While I am not advocating agressive trademark protection and defense, I am not surprised that Hormel is having difficulty.One can't have it both ways . . . allowing people to misuse or use trademarks in a way that confuses or dilutes the popular meaning and expecting full protection of the trademark. In fact I may get flamebaited modded for this, but I am a bit surprised to see many of the posts from the /. community side with the government protected corporate controlled trademark people instead of the more populist spam definition that grew out the grassroots computer user community.
Perhaps this docile reaction from the /. community is because Hormel chose not to protect their trademark as aggressively as they could have . . . Unfortuately this would be a lesson to corporations. Trademark dilution is something that could happen . . . if they aren't agressive and vigilant.
If Transmeta scores a win against Intel, then maybe that could lead to licensing agreements with others that may be afraid that they would also lose in litigation. In the meantime, this is one time where AMD may be thankful that they don't have the largest marketshare and the deepest pockets in the CPU industry.
This project seems to be gathering a "Wild Type" sampling of submitted data. What if the data is not representative . . . for example, a bunch of people in China decide to submit english language files with the best of intentions, but the data is heavily accented (Or to be fair, if a bunch of native English speakers submitted a bunch of heavily accented recordings of Mandarin speech)?
Without controlling the data source or making sure that the data is valid, one could become a victim of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). In all fairness, this may not be a problem if the sample size is large enough to overwhelm any outlying data, but I'm not sure that this project has sufficiently addressed this concern . . .
The study, though academically interesting was pragmatically dead before it was even published. It doesn't even begin to look at the entire global market; just a subset of it. And based on this subset that leaves out some of the world's largest consumers, they make projections on the future world oil market.
The basics of simulation dictate that you can't make predictions if your model inputs with the most significant gains (ratio of input move size to output response size) are left out of the model. Otherwise disturbances in the variables with larger gain are going to overwhelm the smaller gain variables. Right now I would say that China and India are large gain inputs to any projection of world oil markets. And this guy left them out.
Additionally I wouldn't say that the oil supply is terribly inelastic . . . unless one considers the time horizon. If we consider that it takes 5-10 years for extraction to go from on paper to production and about 5 years for a refinery to go from paper to grassroots startup, then the process really isn't terribly inelastic. However, compared with quarterly numbers, textile production, and agricultural cycles, then oil looks terribly inelastic.
Elasticity is the percent change in supply or demand per percent change in price. There is no time domain associated with elasticity . . . . saying something is inelastic because one is too impatient to wait for the entire settling time in the system is a fallacy. The elasticity is actually unknown.
It's really all relative . . . and saying that oil is inelastic is really an admission that one may not understand the scale size and requirements of the industry. If oil prices went to $100/barrel for 5 years straight, we would see that the oil industry is more elastic than economists currently observe.
I don't really hear about any great new must have features in the RC2 version. Though I do acknowledge that coming up with great new features and ideas that most people appreciate but don't know that they need yet is no easy task, but I really don't see any key features in this version of Firefox to make me really want to upgrade. As I said before, great ideas in the browsing experience may be hard to come by since the idea of the browser and its application are mature. It's a bit like coming up with a great new feature for a word processor . . . a lot of the "low hanging fruit" is already taken.
What this means to me is that upgrading the browser is like upgrading the word processor; it's not a very high priority because there isn't a very compelling reason to do it (at least IMHO) . . .
Additionally, research into decision making processes and incentives by psychologist and economists using fMRI is in its infancy. To believe that we could accurately detect lies with fMRI when we don't even know how people make decisions or react to incentives is impossibly optimistic. The promise of a reduced sentence for telling the truth could completely change the fMRI results. The fact that the Guantanamo guard that kicked the sh*t out of you last week is in the room could completely change the fMRI results. The color of the room may change the fMRI results. And so on . . .
We just don't have enough historical data to do this reliably.
Though the situation from the article happened in the UK, I think that US law differs in that fonts or typefaces have no legal protection. Because of this, in the US one would be able to copy fonts to their heart's content . . . Ironic that the home of the MPAA and RIAA and DMCA has no protection for typefaces . . .
I've often wondered where the term bog-standard comes from. My friends from South England use it all the time . . .
This was announced in November 2005 . . .
Apparently its just hitting the register now . . .
If you were sold a car with brake pads, drums, and shoes but no brake line, pedal, and master cylinder and the ads read "Comes with brakes!" . . . But you couldn't use the brakes because the system is incomplete, wouldn't you have potential for a lawsuit?
In other words, what is a brake? is it the shoes, the cylinders, or is it the complete and functioning system? What does HDCP support mean? If it means a functional and useful system then the given example may be false advertising. If it means extra transisters that don't add any tangible value or real functionality, then the next generation of video cards should include extra transistors and manufacturers should advertise "Makes Coffee Too!" When you realize that it doesn't come with the hardware (carafe, filter, water heater, etc.) to make coffee, then the video card people can just say . . . ohh, that's not what we meant; however, the processor logic of a coffee maker is included.
But pattern recognition for two dimensional shapes requires an implicit understanding of angles. I think that the statement the ability of think in terms of angles represents a cultural bias. In other words the statement implies that because one learns that angles denote different kinds of triangles, then everyone differentiates different types of triangles by the angles.
I think that it it is very possible that people can denote different types of triangles without any understanding of angles. If I can change the size of a shape in my mind and rotate the shape in my mind and superimpose it on another shape in my mind, then I can perform pattern recognition without an understanding of angles.
Now if I can take that same shape and flip it over in my mind (like flipping over a leaf, a turtle, flat rock, or any other fairly flat object existing in nature) then I can pattern match clockwise or counter-clockwise items also.
Again I think that the cultural construct of clockwise and counter-clockwise may make one believe that the concept requires cultural education, but if one reduces the concept to flipping over an assymetrical leaf, it doesn't seem like an unnatural expression of pattern matching.
But closer examination of their strategic intent indicates that they have bigger plans. Big jumbotron on New Year's Eve smells a lot like Monster.com buying commercial airtime during the superbowl. They are looking to kickstart an infective marketing campaign through a very prominent ad on a very prominent medium at a very prominent time.
Where is Opera compared with the other browsers? A niche player that serves as a focused differentiator (Read up on Classical Strategy (Michael Porter's five forces)). How can a niche player increase its market share? Only by becoming a differentiator or low cost leader . . . It's quite apparent that this marketing campaign is testing the waters to see how easy (or hard) it would be for Opera to shift gears.
If we consider the Boston consulting Group Matrix (BCG matrix), we can plot FireFox as a question mark (upper right quadrant) making moves to the upper left quadrant (star). It's logical to assume that Opera may be wondering if it can do the same thing . . . becuase it is likely that Opera currently hovers somewhere betweeb dog and star (between upper right and lower right quadrants).
In other words, Firefox has successfully broken Microsoft's stranglehold on the browser. Because customer's are now more likely to believe alternative browsers do possess adequate levels of Garvin's eight dimension of quality (Performance, Features, Conformance, Reliability, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality), it is likely that this creates an opportune time for another browser to test the waters to see if it can go mainstream. It is quite apparent to the casual observer with elementary understanding of classical business strategy that this is a marketing stunt to gain data on the receptiveness of the marketplace.
To think otherwise is to have bought into Opera's marketing agenda, to not uderstand classical strategic theory (I have intentionally ignored resource based systemic, and processual frameworks for strategies because I do not have the data to comment), or to simply be naive.
Of course opening your eyes, smiling, and focusing the camera would have helped . . .
Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
Quoted from FP:
University, she has shown that, among other things, biometric security measures were fooled 90% of the time by simple attacks like Play-Doh molds.
Quoted from TFA:
Schuckers and her research team made casts from live fingers using dental materials and used Play-Doh to create molds. They also assembled a collection of cadaver fingers. In the laboratory, the researchers then systematically tested more than 60 of the faked samples. The results were a 90 percent false verification rate.
The crucial piece of missing information: The need for dental materials; the same stuff used to make casting for denture, false teeth, etc. To do what the researchers did, one needs more than play-doh. But of course ignoring this makes the FP much more dramatic becuase it implies that a preschool toy is sufficent for fooling biometric scanners.
For the record the quote from the FP is the part written by the editors, not by the submitter (unitalicized portion of FP), so the error (or omission) was made by a /. editor, not by the submitter.
I find it frustrating that what I once thought was a useful and interesting source of infomation and lively discussion seems to have become what it once seemed to differentiate itself from. Slashdot editors seems to be adopting the playbook of big media and skewed news to drive up user posts.
I find this sad because I thought that Slashdot was a site with an alternative playbook, that treated its readers as more saavy. Now it seems to be on the slippery slope to USA Today style reporting. I can only assume that this change is an attempt to drive up ad revenue. But I am afraid it will alienate many of the readers.
This isn't a review. Its an opinion . . . and it seems to have been posted by someone that thinks the movie is "great" but really cannot or chooses not to explain what made the movie great (a single actress alone does not make a good movie). He attacks other reviewers for not understanding the plot and attacks those that aren't captivated by the film for having no imagination . . . but he offers very little of his own opinion. He attacks others . . . but fails offer a convincing opinion of his own . . . except that it was an "awesome" film. I finshed reading the article and I was unconvinced . . . there is very little substance to the review . . . except that other reviewers are wrong . . . and this one is right . . . like the logic of a six year old.
Is it just me or has slashdot been posting a lot more lame articles like this? I'm not sure but I get the opinion that the editors have changed tack and are going for a more inflammatory style. The rhetorical questions that they post at the end of their first posts are often poorly thought out and sometimes just plain illogical or indicative that they failed to read the article or pay attention when they read the article.
I can only assume that inflammatory opinions posted as reviews or illogical rhetorical questions serve as flamebait to drive up the number of posts on /. As circumstantial evidence of competitive pressures I submit ancedotally that /.'s competitors such as Digg and other sites have been getting more press lately.
I don't know whether the editors will read this comment or take it into account . . . . but I have to say that I have been highly underwhelmed with the recent content of slashdot. This inflammatory attack on other movie reviewers that is thinly disguised as a movie review is more evidence that Slashdot is using a strategy of posting material that might otherwise be considered flamebait to drive up the number of posts.
Do lasers get the same color fidelity as inkjets as small format photo quality inkjets? My understanding is that they do not. That's the main reason I've avoided color lasers.
Last I heard color laser printers were ok for color charts and graphs, but photo leave quite a bit to be desired. Of course, things could have changed since I last looked at color lasers . . .
However, my understanding has been that color lasers are worse that color injets for photo printing. Additionally, it is my understanding that most pros use inkjets, not lasers to print their photos (Even in the not so large format 13" wide Epson 2100/2200 realm). Is this still true, or has color laser printing taken some siginficant leaps forward in the realm of digital photos?
This sounds like a press release from the .com glory days . . . mindless banter that uses some fancy buzzwords (Internet, RFID, URLs, Website) in hopes that unsuspecting folks won't realize that this analogy is poor at best, blatantly wrong at worst.
I could use the same analogy for my house. The house is the internet, each power outlet is a URL and each appliance's use of electrical current is the associated data for that website. Now with a bunch of multimeters, I have an "internet."
Analogies in the hands on the misinformed are a very dangerous thing.
This sounds like a press release from the .com glory days . . . mindless banter that uses some fancy buzzwords (Internet, RFID, URLs, Website) in hopes that unsuspecting folks won't realize that this analogy is poor at best, blatantly wrong at worst.
I could use the same analogy for my house. The house is the internet, each power outlet is a URL and each appliance's use of electrical current is the associated data for that website. Now with a bunch of multimeters, I have an "internet."
Analogies in the hands on the misinformed are a very dangerous thing.