True, but generally I think that simple formulas that reflect laws of nature (or economics or whatever) tend to still make sense when you plug in a one or a zero, if they are valid to begin with.
(Aside from the fact that 2^n and n^2 are both absurd in any kind of network I can think of), n log(n) has the advantage over all the other models mentioned in that it correctly gives a zero value for a network of one, which is not a network at all and obviously adds no value. Or if you want the combined value of the network and the networked, maybe it would be n + n log(n).
After untold decades, I finally started developing significant finger, hand and wrist pain. I tried moving to a logitech thumb-operated trackball, and while it causes some stress as well, I've found that having multiple mice to switch between makes a lot of difference, as each causes different stress -- so by switching between devices you can spread the stress around so that no one group of ligaments/joints/nerves or whatever get a chance to get overstressed. FYI, I've never had a problem having multiple USB mice operational simultaneously.
Probably even more effective for me is the following: Every mouse I have, I've opened up, and removed various springs or plastic bits which cause the mouse buttons and scroll wheels to have more tension. With the circuit-mounted button switches, simply by over-depressing them using a small screwdriver, you can change the internal spring to supply less resistence force. On my more expensive mouse, the plastic that makes the buttons is continuous with the body of the mouse. I had to actually cut those off, and then epoxy them back on to provide for more independent movement. I have yet to lose a mouse on the operating table. And it's made a great difference to me.
I have a plan to one day make mouse pedals, which (unlike the version posted in this discussion) would have two single axis pedals, so that one dimension of mouse position is precisely controlled by each foot. And a software driver would map the mouse buttons to the keyboard. I think this would be the most natural interface. The one-axis-per-foot control may seem like it would be confusing, but after a few days, I think it would become the most natural thing in the world -- that's what those neural networks in the brain are for.
Isn't "questioning laws of nature" by definition what scientists do?
Right, either that or they are questioning the existence of laws of nature. So in one case the title is essentially, "Scientists Do Science" and in the other case it's "Scientists Find New Careers in Existential Philosophy".
I'm sure you're right. But still the recent trend in India has been towards free trade (and the prosperity that comes from it). It seems reasonable to expect that trend to continue in the future.
Couldn't a conservative person exercise their morality on their own without forcing other people to exercise it with them? I mean, if a conservative person is against abortion than the answer is simple: don't get an abortion. But that doesn't mean conservatives should make it law that you can't. Not everyone believes the same way.
True, not everyone believes the same way. A bunch of folks in this country recently believed that it was ok to own people as property as long as those people were black. A bunch of folks in this country now believe that it's ok to arbitrarily kill a person, as long as that person is still in utero and it's ok with the mother. I personally believe that I can safely drive a car at 95 MPH on the freeway. But the point of civil government is to define the limits of behavior necessary for a sane and functional society. An essential part of that is to protect the innocent who can't protect themselves. But even regardless of the government's role, if someone is trying to kill an innocent child, every sane and moral person has a moral responsibility to that child -- regardless of what beliefs the would-be killer is entertaining.
But the broader question, regardless of the specific legality of killing, is who should make the decision. Any supporter of the republican form of government (aka democracy) would say that the people should decide through their legislative representatives. Those who dislike totalitarian regimes, and yet support the arbitrary and unlimited accumulation of power by an unaccountable political body because the decisions have been going their way recently, are shortsighted beyond my ability to even comprehend.
Furthermore if I created a work of art I would find it supremely offensive to have some clensing squad go over it and take out the stuff that might offend people, chances are if it offends someone it was put there for that reason.
So say you make a movie with an extended gory scene, and some little old lady watching it gets grossed out and covers her eyes so she doesn't see the rest of it. What are you going to do -- go kick the crap out of her?
I'm going to start a company which sells DVDs containing *only* the naughty bits from movies... it'll be called Holy Donut Entertainment. I mean, sometimes you just don't have the time to fast forward through the boring bits, right?
Interesting... I'll buy out both you and CleanFlicks, then I can buy one copy of a film, give you all the frames that CleanFlicks cuts out, and sell it twice. Mwwahhahhahhahh.
Making that illegal is silly. People enjoy modified works...why are we trying to restrict this?
Why? The same reason that "we" (i.e. some judges in Washington) decided in the 70's that rape isn't all that bad a crime (i.e. it's much less bad than murder, so it's wrong to put people to death for it), and that abortion isn't a crime at all. It's called "culture war." It's the making a law that no representatives of the people can ever repeal, that makes it harder for conservative people to exercise their morality.
I don't think it's a question of liability. As much as certain people may hate to admit it, the reason Walmart only sells the edited versions of explicit CDs is to attract customers. Their strategy is not to sell CDs to teenagers -- teenagers generally buy CDs as much for image as for music, so they're not going to go to Walmart to buy their CDs anyway. Overwhelmingly, Walmart's customers are parents, who more often than not shop with their younger kids. So, for a number of reasons which should be obvious, the absence of explicit versions of CDs is a significant attraction to their customer base.
Freedom of speech implies a freedom to read what you want.
Nice Orwellian logic. Ok, as a free American, protected by the 1st Amendment, I have the right to read your last bank statement. Hand it over, or I'll sue you for violating my civil rights. The next step would be, "Freedom of speech requires you to confess your crimes to us. I'm sorry, you cannot invoke the 5th amendment, as the 1st amendment takes precedence."
What would happen to sites like YouTube if they had to pay a premium to get their bandwidth seen?
What would happen to an ISP like Verizon broadband if they started lowering their customers' bandwidth when they viewed sites like YouTube?
What will happen to sites like YouTube, Craigslist, Slashdot, and Drudgereport, or any other site if the federal government starts regulating them and determining how they are to use Internet bandwidth and for what price?
What will happen to the thousands of independent ISPs if the federal government starts regulating them and dictating their pricing structures and the services and deals they can and can't offer?
...by having plenty of unprotected sex.
That should get us through the next hundred years easy. However, to get through another thousand years or two with any semblance of human civilization, we will need to rediscover God.
As for survival of the human species, barring a collision with something big enough to break the planet apart, or the explosion of the Sun, there is nothing that can wipe us out. The thing that can come closest is the next ice age, which will only kill 99% of us, leaving millions -- plenty for purposes of continuing the species.
This means that Google, Inc. has officially lost any claim to restrict the use of its "google" trademark. Which means that I could legally create my own search engine called SuperGoogle.com if I wanted. I guess they figured it would have undermined their corporate image to send out cease and desist letters to publications using their trademark as a verb.
Really, the only question is when will this become a problem. Because even if you eliminate mankind, the earth is in a warm cycle, and historically, those cycles tend to wipe out major organisms.
To clarify, it's not the warming that tends to wipe out major organisms, it's the cooling. And once this warm cycle is over (whether the cycles are due to solar output cycles or something else) we will have dramatic cooling. I would hazard a guess that with full glacial coverage, our planet could provide food and water for no more than 1% of the current human population. This would of course lead to some unpleasant effects, such as mass death by dehydration, anarchy, and war over food, water and land not covered in ice, etc. Of course, if the glaciers from the last ice age continue to melt, then Barbara Streisand's and Al Gore's ocean-front mansions may have to be moved to higher ground, so it's pretty bad either way. Personally, I'm going to continue to breath out CO2, burn stuff, and drive my car. But if I were I scientist, I'd figure out if it was theoretically possible to prevent the next ice age if we raised the atmospheric CO2 levels enough, and how high we'd need to get them to do it.
... under "Prior Restraint." (Which, I'm told, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected.)
The problem is that it's completely irrational and absurd to use the legal structure that defines the relationship between a free republican government and its people, to provide a model of the proper relationship between a school and it's students. A school which was as hands-off of its students as a government should be of its people, would have little or no value as a school. And a government which sets themselves up as teachers of the people, or in any other way took on the likeness of a school administration, would be due for a bloody revolution.
I don't know when the Supreme Court first started using this as an excuse for meddling in school policies, but it just proves that when a branch of government is lacking in checks and balances, there are no absurdities too great for it. But don't make the mistake of using the prior reasoning of the Supreme Court as a predictor of future decisions. The Court opinions and their reasonings are nothing but spin. The decisions are the arbitrary will of nine people.
The whole point of Ebay is that you're supposed to bid the maximum for which you would buy it. If someone bids more, you didn't want it that much anyway! The story is wrong. The best way to get something is not to bid at the last moment, but to bid the most money. It works for me.
The story is right. People on eBay rarely bid their maximum -- that's the difference between theory and reality. If there's an item ending in a day, currently at $20, with one other person interested, and you're willing to pay $40, then: A) You can Bid $40 now, in which case, if they're willing to pay more, you will be outbid. If they're not willing to pay that much, you will win, but you'll have to actually pay more than they were willing to pay. B) You can Bid $40 in the last 30 seconds of the auction, and most likely pay $21-$25, regardless of how high they may have been willing to go.
The very Christian fundamentalists who violently oppose biomedical research are ensuring the Darwinian survival of the fittest they themselves deny exists.
1) No Christian fundamentalist I've ever heard of denies the existence of survival of the fittest, or opposes biomedical research.
2) From a Darwinian perspective, the growing influence of Christian fundamentalists is attributable to the ("more fit") beliefs which enable them to reproduce at much higher rates than the population at large.
3) Also from a Darwinian perspective, the availability of fetal cell treatments to atheists but not to fundamentalists could not concievably alter their general comparitive reproductive rates. But it would increase the probability of reproduction of an afflicted person in the athiest group, and the passing on of the genetic basis for the disease. Given enough generations, the atheist group could become dependent on the fetal cells for survival.
From the article: "A computer expert told KATU News there is no way to know if someone is using your wireless connection without permission. The way to protect yourself is to change your wireless router settings to only allow the computers in your home to access your airwaves."
How does the router figure out which computers are in your home? Their other expert, not quoted, recommend lining all the walls of the house with aluminum foil.
About one out of every five people in the U.S. do not have any real choices.
You don't get it. Not everyone needs choices for the free market to work! You're saying that 4 out of every 5 people in the US have a choice. But let's say only half the people have a choice, and that besides that everyone has a 2-year contract with their ISP. STILL, there would be more than enough market pressure to put an ISP out of business from doing something to provoke their existing and potential customers. Comcast and Verizon spend fortunes on marketing to get new signups. The chance that they would make a technological decision that they know would cause a public backlash, undermine their marketing expenditures, and hand half their new business to their competitor is ZERO.
OTOH, if the government gets its stink on this, it's Game Over. I can see now the new rules for "community service" web content, and equal time. And universal bandwidth and latency throttling so that everyone feels like they have a 1200 baud modem. That way it will be an Internet of the People, not just for the super rich. Minorities will of course get bandwidth bonuses, for justice for years of oppression. FINALLY, a fair, just, and progressive Internet. This is what America is all about! Seriously though, it's not cool to be a commie.
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True, but generally I think that simple formulas that reflect laws of nature (or economics or whatever) tend to still make sense when you plug in a one or a zero, if they are valid to begin with.
(Aside from the fact that 2^n and n^2 are both absurd in any kind of network I can think of), n log(n) has the advantage over all the other models mentioned in that it correctly gives a zero value for a network of one, which is not a network at all and obviously adds no value. Or if you want the combined value of the network and the networked, maybe it would be n + n log(n).
After untold decades, I finally started developing significant finger, hand and wrist pain. I tried moving to a logitech thumb-operated trackball, and while it causes some stress as well, I've found that having multiple mice to switch between makes a lot of difference, as each causes different stress -- so by switching between devices you can spread the stress around so that no one group of ligaments/joints/nerves or whatever get a chance to get overstressed. FYI, I've never had a problem having multiple USB mice operational simultaneously.
Probably even more effective for me is the following: Every mouse I have, I've opened up, and removed various springs or plastic bits which cause the mouse buttons and scroll wheels to have more tension. With the circuit-mounted button switches, simply by over-depressing them using a small screwdriver, you can change the internal spring to supply less resistence force. On my more expensive mouse, the plastic that makes the buttons is continuous with the body of the mouse. I had to actually cut those off, and then epoxy them back on to provide for more independent movement. I have yet to lose a mouse on the operating table. And it's made a great difference to me.
I have a plan to one day make mouse pedals, which (unlike the version posted in this discussion) would have two single axis pedals, so that one dimension of mouse position is precisely controlled by each foot. And a software driver would map the mouse buttons to the keyboard. I think this would be the most natural interface. The one-axis-per-foot control may seem like it would be confusing, but after a few days, I think it would become the most natural thing in the world -- that's what those neural networks in the brain are for.
Right, either that or they are questioning the existence of laws of nature. So in one case the title is essentially, "Scientists Do Science" and in the other case it's "Scientists Find New Careers in Existential Philosophy".
You mean we don't have a perfect understanding of the universe? Holy crap!
Seriously, why would we assume that the ratio between the mass of an electron and a proton would be a constant anyway?
I'm sure you're right. But still the recent trend in India has been towards free trade (and the prosperity that comes from it). It seems reasonable to expect that trend to continue in the future.
It's all part of God's plan to move all successful business to India.
But the broader question, regardless of the specific legality of killing, is who should make the decision. Any supporter of the republican form of government (aka democracy) would say that the people should decide through their legislative representatives. Those who dislike totalitarian regimes, and yet support the arbitrary and unlimited accumulation of power by an unaccountable political body because the decisions have been going their way recently, are shortsighted beyond my ability to even comprehend.
I don't think it's a question of liability. As much as certain people may hate to admit it, the reason Walmart only sells the edited versions of explicit CDs is to attract customers. Their strategy is not to sell CDs to teenagers -- teenagers generally buy CDs as much for image as for music, so they're not going to go to Walmart to buy their CDs anyway. Overwhelmingly, Walmart's customers are parents, who more often than not shop with their younger kids. So, for a number of reasons which should be obvious, the absence of explicit versions of CDs is a significant attraction to their customer base.
What will happen to sites like YouTube, Craigslist, Slashdot, and Drudgereport, or any other site if the federal government starts regulating them and determining how they are to use Internet bandwidth and for what price?
What will happen to the thousands of independent ISPs if the federal government starts regulating them and dictating their pricing structures and the services and deals they can and can't offer?
...by having plenty of unprotected sex. That should get us through the next hundred years easy. However, to get through another thousand years or two with any semblance of human civilization, we will need to rediscover God.
As for survival of the human species, barring a collision with something big enough to break the planet apart, or the explosion of the Sun, there is nothing that can wipe us out. The thing that can come closest is the next ice age, which will only kill 99% of us, leaving millions -- plenty for purposes of continuing the species.
The problem is that it's completely irrational and absurd to use the legal structure that defines the relationship between a free republican government and its people, to provide a model of the proper relationship between a school and it's students. A school which was as hands-off of its students as a government should be of its people, would have little or no value as a school. And a government which sets themselves up as teachers of the people, or in any other way took on the likeness of a school administration, would be due for a bloody revolution.
I don't know when the Supreme Court first started using this as an excuse for meddling in school policies, but it just proves that when a branch of government is lacking in checks and balances, there are no absurdities too great for it. But don't make the mistake of using the prior reasoning of the Supreme Court as a predictor of future decisions. The Court opinions and their reasonings are nothing but spin. The decisions are the arbitrary will of nine people.
The story is right. People on eBay rarely bid their maximum -- that's the difference between theory and reality. If there's an item ending in a day, currently at $20, with one other person interested, and you're willing to pay $40, then:
A) You can Bid $40 now, in which case, if they're willing to pay more, you will be outbid. If they're not willing to pay that much, you will win, but you'll have to actually pay more than they were willing to pay.
B) You can Bid $40 in the last 30 seconds of the auction, and most likely pay $21-$25, regardless of how high they may have been willing to go.
2) From a Darwinian perspective, the growing influence of Christian fundamentalists is attributable to the ("more fit") beliefs which enable them to reproduce at much higher rates than the population at large.
3) Also from a Darwinian perspective, the availability of fetal cell treatments to atheists but not to fundamentalists could not concievably alter their general comparitive reproductive rates. But it would increase the probability of reproduction of an afflicted person in the athiest group, and the passing on of the genetic basis for the disease. Given enough generations, the atheist group could become dependent on the fetal cells for survival.
From the article: "A computer expert told KATU News there is no way to know if someone is using your wireless connection without permission. The way to protect yourself is to change your wireless router settings to only allow the computers in your home to access your airwaves."
How does the router figure out which computers are in your home? Their other expert, not quoted, recommend lining all the walls of the house with aluminum foil.
You don't get it. Not everyone needs choices for the free market to work! You're saying that 4 out of every 5 people in the US have a choice. But let's say only half the people have a choice, and that besides that everyone has a 2-year contract with their ISP. STILL, there would be more than enough market pressure to put an ISP out of business from doing something to provoke their existing and potential customers. Comcast and Verizon spend fortunes on marketing to get new signups. The chance that they would make a technological decision that they know would cause a public backlash, undermine their marketing expenditures, and hand half their new business to their competitor is ZERO.
OTOH, if the government gets its stink on this, it's Game Over. I can see now the new rules for "community service" web content, and equal time. And universal bandwidth and latency throttling so that everyone feels like they have a 1200 baud modem. That way it will be an Internet of the People, not just for the super rich. Minorities will of course get bandwidth bonuses, for justice for years of oppression. FINALLY, a fair, just, and progressive Internet. This is what America is all about! Seriously though, it's not cool to be a commie.