Well, wasn't the solid-state transistor developed at Bell Labs, a business institution? I mean, sure, the transistor had practical application at the time - especially for miniaturizing amplifiers and the like, but it was still a fairly revolutionary discovery.
Anyway, just to elaborate on my earlier point: Most people don't make these kind of risky investments because they are afraid to lose their money. They have failed to realize that money has no intrinsic value and is only good for spending.
Its not just that. Its that people don't intuitively realize what John Maynard Keynes famously said, "In the long run, we are all dead." People try to maximize the long term growth of their wealth without realizing that its worthwhile to try, fail and learn.
The problem isn't so much lack of redaction tools as it is the volume and quality of data coming in. NHTSA probably gets thousands of documents a month, and, if the cited documents are any example, they're usually poorly scanned PDFs or JPEGs. To go through manually and redact all personal data from all those documents would be very expensive and time consuming. So, of course, no sensible manager is going to allocate personnel to the task until it becomes an actual problem. This isn't a government problem, nor is it a private industry problem. Its a problem with management in general.
Yes, but unfortunately, the drivers license has evolved from a simple "I'm licensed to operate a motor vehicle" document to a generalized proof of identity. The national ID card act proposed by the previous administration would have gone even farther in this direction.
In fact, the elderly, who often give up their driver's license, can have trouble proving their identity, because they no longer have access to the most readily accepted identity document in the US: a state drivers' license.
His complaint wasn't that the search warrant was posted online. I think you and I can both agree that greater transparency in government documents is a good thing. The complaint is that information that has no relevance to the matter at hand and which could be used to harm the person in question was posted. I mean, sure, its in the public interest to know that a search warrant was executed. Its not in the public interest to know the date of birth and social security number of the person it was posted against.
I totally agree. All I was saying is that, based on that admittedly limited data set, we had no reason to suspect that anything else was going on. Obviously, now we do.
Its a good point, but, ever since Galileo observed that there were sunspots, scientists have observed the sun to be on a fairly regular 11 year cycle of maxima and minima. So, until now, the scientific consensus was that the 11 year cycle was due to some kind of underlying fluctuation in the sun itself. Now that theory has to be revised (or maybe even rejected entirely) as this prolonged solar minimum continues.
We all know that something's up, but we have no idea what the underlying phenomena are, so we have not a clue as to why the sun is behaving the way it is.
Well, its good to see that there are still mysteries left in the universe.
Forget the Japanese and Koreans, we Americans had that reputation in the late 1800s. Many of our advances in the Industrial Revolution came from copying successful British designs.
Given that this is the first blowout that's occurred at these depths, its quite possible that this is the first time engineers at BP had encountered a problem like this. And, given that oil companies are notoriously secretive about their drilling procedures, its not likely that the engineers at BP had access to other oil companies' information about working at these depths.
They have to. The 'top-kill', isn't quite the permanent solution that the media is billing it as. Instead, its a rather durable semi-permanent solution that (hopefully) will hold until the relief well cuts off the source of the pressure.
Well, a government can't be too ineffective either. A lot of people forget that the Constitution wasn't the first government of the United States of America. The founders tried an even weaker form of government with the Articles of Confederation. That government was so weak that the newly independent colonies were almost separate countries. The chaos caused by that state of affairs is what prompted them to create the Constitution and lay out a form of government that could move boldly and decisively in times of crisis, but still have the checks and balances of a more deliberative system.
Their intended purpose is to be cheap solutions for basic video, including things like Aero.
Well, it depends on your definition of basic video, of course. I mean, I've seen Intel GMA chipsets struggle to display a 1080p Blu-Ray movie. Given that consumers increasingly are going to be hooking up their laptops to TVs and other larger displays, saying, "Oh, that's not basic video," isn't going to cut it.
Sure, the revolution that succeeded in driving out the British from India was a peaceful one (if you don't consider British actions or the religious rioting that occurred after partition). However, the unsuccessful Sepoy Mutiny that preceded it was quite violent.
For sufficiently vacuous definitions of Microsoft Word compatibility, and versions of reader software that bend over backwards to be purely read-only, the two are compatible. However, as an empirical matter, incompatibilities are frequently observed.
Well, according to the article, there were two valuations - one for the preferred shares, and one for common shares. The valuation of the settlement was made on the basis of the value of preferred shares, whereas the settlement itself was conducted in common shares. As far as I can tell, that's the basis for the plaintiffs' case - they were promised one thing (preferred shares) but were given something else (common shares).
I've never actually done any research into the guy, but from all the stories up here I can pretty much tell he's a douche.
That's true, but, most highly successful people are no better. Look at Steve Jobs. Or Steve Ballmer. Or Larry Ellison. I think it takes a special form of ambition to take an idea and turn it into a successful business. Unfortunately, for many people that drive warps other aspects of their personality and turns them into douches.
So instead of comparing Facebook to Microsoft, compare it to Apple. Both companies made themselves by creating and expanding new markets rather than dominating existing ones. It doesn't mean less work was involved. In fact, it was probably more work, since they couldn't pick apart others' accomplishments to see what they did wrong.
It's like Yahoo, ebay or craigslist. Someone was going to do it. One lucky bacteria got there first.
First mover advantage (especially in information technology) is never as powerful as one thinks it is. I mean, look at IBM. Sure, they invented the x86 personal computer, but they quickly lost the market to companies like Compaq and Dell, who looked and saw the mistakes that IBM made. Given that, the way Facebook has managed to stay in the lead against all its competition (e.g. MySpace, Friendster, and even newer competitors, like Google Buzz) is truly impressive.
All that is true, but, as replies above have pointed out, our best heuristic so far is water. Without water, we have no criteria to narrow the search.
Re:Really good design takes skill, not talent
on
The Design of Design
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· Score: 1
Good design takes skill, which is different from talent in that skills can be honed through practice, whereas talent is one's ability to perform a task without any prior experience at it. If your natural hand-eye coordination is good enough, you can juggle without ever really practicing or learning technique. But, with practice, most everyone can learn to juggle, no matter what their starting ability is. Design is the same. Some people have a better natural ability to partition a system into subsystems. However, with practice, everyone can learn that skill.
This is going to come off as a troll, and I don't mean to say that European societies are perfect in any way; but frankly on the whole, Europeans run their countries, societies and economies a lot better than Americans do.
So that 25% youth unemployment rate in France is just ideal? Or how about the Greek government's near bankruptcy and subsequent bailout by Germany?
But one thing is certain; as a self governing society America is more dysfunctional than any of its peers.
In my experience, all societies are dysfunctional, but in different ways. Europe is dysfunctional in that they've put so much into making the lives of the old comfortable that they've made the lives of the young hellish. America, if anything, has chosen the opposite road - youth and energy are valued here, not experience and wisdom.
Yes there are many problems across the European continent, but the notion that American society and government is superior to European version is incredibly outdated.
Europe isn't inferior to America, but neither is it superior. Europe has its own share of problems and issues. If you want to look at the next set of world superpowers, look at China and India, not Europe.
America is a country in need of deep and comprehensive reform of almost all of its institutions, and the first step in that reform will be to realise just how badly it is needed.
Space, even high orbit, is not a true vacuum. There is atmosphere up there, just a very very small amount. Nevertheless, even that tiny amount of drag will bring down orbiting objects unless they are boosted on a regular basis.
That would be pretty bad, but its still better than scattering a debris field across an entire set of orbital trajectories. At least with this, they can maneuver satellites out of the way until a deorbit strategy can be made. If you blow it up in place, you'll have to wait until the pieces fall out due to the minuscule drag that exists in high orbit.
Oh, that's definitely true. I will not want to see the day that the bond market decides to lose faith in US treasuries. I mean, given politician's qualms about Medicare and Social Security, it'd take quite the jolt for them to cut benefits on those two programs.
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Well, wasn't the solid-state transistor developed at Bell Labs, a business institution? I mean, sure, the transistor had practical application at the time - especially for miniaturizing amplifiers and the like, but it was still a fairly revolutionary discovery.
Anyway, just to elaborate on my earlier point: Most people don't make these kind of risky investments because they are afraid to lose their money. They have failed to realize that money has no intrinsic value and is only good for spending.
Its not just that. Its that people don't intuitively realize what John Maynard Keynes famously said, "In the long run, we are all dead." People try to maximize the long term growth of their wealth without realizing that its worthwhile to try, fail and learn.
The problem isn't so much lack of redaction tools as it is the volume and quality of data coming in. NHTSA probably gets thousands of documents a month, and, if the cited documents are any example, they're usually poorly scanned PDFs or JPEGs. To go through manually and redact all personal data from all those documents would be very expensive and time consuming. So, of course, no sensible manager is going to allocate personnel to the task until it becomes an actual problem. This isn't a government problem, nor is it a private industry problem. Its a problem with management in general.
Yes, but unfortunately, the drivers license has evolved from a simple "I'm licensed to operate a motor vehicle" document to a generalized proof of identity. The national ID card act proposed by the previous administration would have gone even farther in this direction.
In fact, the elderly, who often give up their driver's license, can have trouble proving their identity, because they no longer have access to the most readily accepted identity document in the US: a state drivers' license.
His complaint wasn't that the search warrant was posted online. I think you and I can both agree that greater transparency in government documents is a good thing. The complaint is that information that has no relevance to the matter at hand and which could be used to harm the person in question was posted. I mean, sure, its in the public interest to know that a search warrant was executed. Its not in the public interest to know the date of birth and social security number of the person it was posted against.
I totally agree. All I was saying is that, based on that admittedly limited data set, we had no reason to suspect that anything else was going on. Obviously, now we do.
Its a good point, but, ever since Galileo observed that there were sunspots, scientists have observed the sun to be on a fairly regular 11 year cycle of maxima and minima. So, until now, the scientific consensus was that the 11 year cycle was due to some kind of underlying fluctuation in the sun itself. Now that theory has to be revised (or maybe even rejected entirely) as this prolonged solar minimum continues.
We all know that something's up, but we have no idea what the underlying phenomena are, so we have not a clue as to why the sun is behaving the way it is.
Well, its good to see that there are still mysteries left in the universe.
Forget the Japanese and Koreans, we Americans had that reputation in the late 1800s. Many of our advances in the Industrial Revolution came from copying successful British designs.
Given that this is the first blowout that's occurred at these depths, its quite possible that this is the first time engineers at BP had encountered a problem like this. And, given that oil companies are notoriously secretive about their drilling procedures, its not likely that the engineers at BP had access to other oil companies' information about working at these depths.
They have to. The 'top-kill', isn't quite the permanent solution that the media is billing it as. Instead, its a rather durable semi-permanent solution that (hopefully) will hold until the relief well cuts off the source of the pressure.
Well, a government can't be too ineffective either. A lot of people forget that the Constitution wasn't the first government of the United States of America. The founders tried an even weaker form of government with the Articles of Confederation. That government was so weak that the newly independent colonies were almost separate countries. The chaos caused by that state of affairs is what prompted them to create the Constitution and lay out a form of government that could move boldly and decisively in times of crisis, but still have the checks and balances of a more deliberative system.
Their intended purpose is to be cheap solutions for basic video, including things like Aero.
Well, it depends on your definition of basic video, of course. I mean, I've seen Intel GMA chipsets struggle to display a 1080p Blu-Ray movie. Given that consumers increasingly are going to be hooking up their laptops to TVs and other larger displays, saying, "Oh, that's not basic video," isn't going to cut it.
Sure, the revolution that succeeded in driving out the British from India was a peaceful one (if you don't consider British actions or the religious rioting that occurred after partition). However, the unsuccessful Sepoy Mutiny that preceded it was quite violent.
See, it is a format war!
Well, according to the article, there were two valuations - one for the preferred shares, and one for common shares. The valuation of the settlement was made on the basis of the value of preferred shares, whereas the settlement itself was conducted in common shares. As far as I can tell, that's the basis for the plaintiffs' case - they were promised one thing (preferred shares) but were given something else (common shares).
I've never actually done any research into the guy, but from all the stories up here I can pretty much tell he's a douche.
That's true, but, most highly successful people are no better. Look at Steve Jobs. Or Steve Ballmer. Or Larry Ellison. I think it takes a special form of ambition to take an idea and turn it into a successful business. Unfortunately, for many people that drive warps other aspects of their personality and turns them into douches.
So instead of comparing Facebook to Microsoft, compare it to Apple. Both companies made themselves by creating and expanding new markets rather than dominating existing ones. It doesn't mean less work was involved. In fact, it was probably more work, since they couldn't pick apart others' accomplishments to see what they did wrong.
It's like Yahoo, ebay or craigslist. Someone was going to do it. One lucky bacteria got there first.
First mover advantage (especially in information technology) is never as powerful as one thinks it is. I mean, look at IBM. Sure, they invented the x86 personal computer, but they quickly lost the market to companies like Compaq and Dell, who looked and saw the mistakes that IBM made. Given that, the way Facebook has managed to stay in the lead against all its competition (e.g. MySpace, Friendster, and even newer competitors, like Google Buzz) is truly impressive.
All that is true, but, as replies above have pointed out, our best heuristic so far is water. Without water, we have no criteria to narrow the search.
Good design takes skill, which is different from talent in that skills can be honed through practice, whereas talent is one's ability to perform a task without any prior experience at it. If your natural hand-eye coordination is good enough, you can juggle without ever really practicing or learning technique. But, with practice, most everyone can learn to juggle, no matter what their starting ability is. Design is the same. Some people have a better natural ability to partition a system into subsystems. However, with practice, everyone can learn that skill.
This is going to come off as a troll, and I don't mean to say that European societies are perfect in any way; but frankly on the whole, Europeans run their countries, societies and economies a lot better than Americans do.
So that 25% youth unemployment rate in France is just ideal? Or how about the Greek government's near bankruptcy and subsequent bailout by Germany?
But one thing is certain; as a self governing society America is more dysfunctional than any of its peers.
In my experience, all societies are dysfunctional, but in different ways. Europe is dysfunctional in that they've put so much into making the lives of the old comfortable that they've made the lives of the young hellish. America, if anything, has chosen the opposite road - youth and energy are valued here, not experience and wisdom.
Yes there are many problems across the European continent, but the notion that American society and government is superior to European version is incredibly outdated.
Europe isn't inferior to America, but neither is it superior. Europe has its own share of problems and issues. If you want to look at the next set of world superpowers, look at China and India, not Europe.
America is a country in need of deep and comprehensive reform of almost all of its institutions, and the first step in that reform will be to realise just how badly it is needed.
And Europe is no different.
Space, even high orbit, is not a true vacuum. There is atmosphere up there, just a very very small amount. Nevertheless, even that tiny amount of drag will bring down orbiting objects unless they are boosted on a regular basis.
SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) is the primary NASA mission for observing the sun and solar flares.
That would be pretty bad, but its still better than scattering a debris field across an entire set of orbital trajectories. At least with this, they can maneuver satellites out of the way until a deorbit strategy can be made. If you blow it up in place, you'll have to wait until the pieces fall out due to the minuscule drag that exists in high orbit.
Oh, that's definitely true. I will not want to see the day that the bond market decides to lose faith in US treasuries. I mean, given politician's qualms about Medicare and Social Security, it'd take quite the jolt for them to cut benefits on those two programs.