Solar isn't competing against oil unless you a solar powered car.
Yes, it is. Oil is used for energy outside of cars. Further, since electric vehicles that are driven directly by or charged from electricity generated by large-scale systems (both personal vehicles and mass transit) compete with vehicles using other power sources, all large-scale electrical generation alternatives compete with vehicle power source alternatives.
Solar power is competing against coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear for electricity generation.
agree though, I can't see for the life of me why they don't use Diesel engines in hybrids (other than, as you said, the US regulations).
Diesel-electric hybrids have, IIRC, similar cost premiums to gas-electric hybrids, and less efficiency increase over plain diesels, because diesels have inherently less of some of the efficiency problems that hybrid systems reduce in gas-electric hybrids. So there is less return to diesel-electric hybrids.
That being said, there are diesel-electric hybrids, used mostly in commercial vehicles like busses and trucks in the U.S.
IIRC (it's been a while that I had a passing interest in funky calender systems, you should see the persian system for leap years... that's freaky. But insanely accurate!) the mayan calender says that this "era" ends and the next one starts, and that there is likely going to be some sort of heavy turmoil, but not end of the world itself.
Something like that; at most of the cycle rollovers, the Maya apparently believed that there would be some degree of change and renewal, and the 2012 rollover is a rollover in the largest cycle in commonly-recorded dates, so it would, presumably, be viewed as significant; what is unsubstantiated is the belief ascribed to the Maya by certain people in the New Age movement that the particular rollover from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0 is supposed to be the end of the present creation, rather than just a change of the same significance as the rollover to 12.0.0.0.0 from 11.19.19.17.19.
The reality is that for better or worse, cultural boundaries can often be drawn right alongside racial boundries. There's generally a long set of historical circumstances that have created those conditions.
This is perhaps especially true in the US between "White" and "Black" culture (moreso than other lines of combined race and culture), as a direct consequence of the legacy of first slavery and then the de jure segregation that followed it in a substantial portion of the country until past the middle of last century.
The Mayans never claimed the world would end. They only claimed their funky calendar would run out of days.
Actually, they didn't do that, either. A rollover of a particular long cycle in the Long Count calendar occurs then, and its one that has correspondence to an end of a previous creation recorded in their myth (the last 5 numbers of the date are the same, and only those last 5 numbers are recorded, which was apparently fairly common practice), from which various New Age folks invented the idea that Maya Calendar prediced the end of the world on December 21, 2012. There are, in fact, specific predictions made in some Maya writings of predicted future events clearly within this creation on dates in the Long Count that would post-date December 21, 2012, so its pretty clear that if such a belief in the end of the creation on 12.19.19.17.19 existed (for which there is, AFAIK, not one bit of evidence), it certainly wasn't universal.
Where as non-caucasian males would, customarily, just walk away with no guilt and no feelings of any responsibility?
More likely, for reasons only covariant with, rather than caused by, race (note that these types of patterns are normally identified within the US, not globally), non-caucasian males are more likely (amont other things) to be: 1) Not the immediate support of their family (a consequence of the higher incidence of broken homes in, e.g., the African-American community), or 2) From a background wherein financial misfortune is seen as more normal and expected and less a sign of personal failure (a consequence of the higher incidence of poverty in many non-Caucasian groups).
These types of factors in the social context would, if the explanation given by GP were the major motivation for this type of suicide (which seems plausible and I've seen some things that support, but I'm not real familiar with the specifics), be things that would reasonably expected to make these kinds of murder-suicides less prevalent among non-Caucasian males.
Sounds pretty racist, any way you want to try to advance that argument.
Observing factual patterns in behavior that differ by race is not "racist". Assuming, without (or, a fortiori, contrary to) evidence that any such factually observed patterns must be inherent in differences between the races rather than, e.g., a product of social experiences whose distributions are, for whatever reason, different among racial groups, OTOH, is racist. Noticing the differences in behavior patterns is the first step to looking for the explanation of the differences and seeing what lies beneath them. Deliberately ignoring the patterns would have a racist impact/
Bush has claimed that warrant-less wiretapping was authorized by congress as part of the war effort
No, Bush has claimed many justifications for warrantless wiretapping; he has argued, among them, that it is based on inherent Presidential powers over foreign affairs and security over which Congress has no authority whether or not there is a war; he has also claimed that if he had needed authorization for it, which he did not, the authorization for the use of military force also implicitly authorized it. He has never said that the warrantless wiretapping policy would ever end, and he has made arguments which suggest that the War on Terror can't ever end anyway, so saying that something would end when it did would have been meaningless.
Perhaps, you should've, uhm, dare I suggest it, read the article?
I did. Klavan argues exactly as I described, and, beyond that, that the whole reason that the supposedly-Bush-praising Dark Knight and supposedly similar films have to be metaphorical (despite portraying supposedly more compelling, resonating political/moral values) while liberal films are literal (despite portraying supposedly less compelling political/moral values) is a supposed conspiracy of the "artistic community" that makes it so that "Hollywood conservatives" cannot "take off their masks and speak plainly in the light of day" and "pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror".
He ignores entirely that (1) literal, rather than metaphorical, conservative movies are made, all the time, and do, in general, no better and perhaps worse than equally literal liberal movies, and (2) moviegoers may be interested in films for entertainment value rather than as political polemic; enjoying movies about masked vigilantes doesn't endorse a political viewpoint any more than enjoying movies about supernatural slashers stalking teenagers. He seems desperate to deny that his own political values are not as overwhelmingly popular as he would like them to be, but are instead hugely popular, but having their expression suppressed by a vague conspiracy. And I think part of this is that Klavan wants to feel justified in interpreting his own respectable, though not earth-shattering, artistic success as the public's validation of his personal political views.
Has anybody else noticed that these reports of gross IT mis-management are almost always government related?
Internal government disputes are much more likely to become public, as (1) violations of policy are more likely to be subject to criminal prosecution and other legal sanction, and (2) public entities are frequently covered by policies that require or protect disclosure, whereas private entities typically have policies which restrict disclosure, and any settlement of a dispute will typically involve even stronger protections against disclosure. Additionally, public entities often have a diversity of people in positions to conduct at least some oversight functions, to whom disclosures are practically mandatory.
So, in short, you hear a lot more about this in government, because what goes on in government is, on the whole, and by design a lot more visible to outsiders than what goes on in businesses.
There is a convincing argument, that Batman is a paean to Bush [wsj.com] -- a right-wing movie, that's immensely popular, while the left-wing ones ("Stoploss," "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted") bombed
Uh, Klavan is comparing the box office success of a comic book-based action movie that can be read in a strained way as political allegory with the returns of overtly political films and trying to read into that that the political position that the former can be stretched into an endorsement of is more popular than the political position that the latter fairly overtly embrace? Really? And you find this worth repeating, why?
I've got a better, simpler explanation of the box office figures: big-budget films based on popular franchises with no overt political viewpoint tend to, on average, be bigger box office successes than smaller-budget films that overtly embrace a particular point of view on current political issues.
As to the current popularity of W., rather than trying to infer it by strained film analogies, we could look at current job approval poll numbers, where he is currently polling under 30% with a 40% disapproval-approval spread.
Email spammers are inherently and universally sociopaths. It is not unreasonable to consider that any given email spammer would, if it could be profitable, commit murder.
Granting, arguendo, that this is true (which is granting a lot), I don't see how it applies here. While murder could conceivably be undertaken for profit (e.g., murder for hire, murder as part of an insurance fraud scheme, etc.), its pretty hard to see how the murder part of a murder-suicide is "profitable".
It also says boys do 7% better in the maths portion of the SATs, but writes it off as a statistical illusion due to more girls doing the test (they don't know how averages work?).
No, they know how averages work; the basis is that there is a selection bias in taking the test (people taking the test tend to be on the high end of the ability distribution of the whole population of test takers and non-takers because they tend to be the ones planning to go to college), and a higher percentage of the females in the population taking the test (and therefore more girls taking the test) is likely to mean that the girls taking the test are, on average, not as high on the ability distribution of girls in population than boys taking the test are on the ability distribution of boys in the population.
Irrelevant: the assertion was made that, in the event that patent was invalidated, Google could rely on the fact that the patent did not disclose the details necessary to implement the algorithm to prevent other people from using it. Since the description is part of the publicly available patent material (regardless of what weight it is given by the PTO and the courts), and does provide that detail, this argument fails.
We have a government agency applying a set of rules for decades, and then arguing to the courts that they were wrong, and those individuals and businesses who have invested large sums of money based in the trust that the agency was acting with competence and in good faith are left high and dry.
You seem to have missed the part where the agency was in the past operating based on court rulings issued by the Federal Circuit, and is now arguing that the past practice is wrong based on decisions of the Supreme Court which are more recent.
While the PTO may be wrong in how it has interpreted the more recent Supreme Court decisions, its the PTO's job to apply the patent law based on current law, including binding case law. It is not their job to provide stability for business by never changing the way they do business.
You must have a different definition of "run-of-the-mill" than I have.
If you want the course credit, you have to agree to let the proctor watch you take the test.
That isn't spying. It's school.
At Caltech, at least in 1990, pretty much everything, including finals, was taken home, drop off, and on the honor system. Apparently, Caltech is not a "school" by your standard.
Trusting people isn't going to cut it - would you go to a doctor that was 100% educated online?
No, because essential pieces of medical education require in person training, practice, and direct supervision.
This has nothing to do with trust issues, though.
Sure, for an MBA or an English degree is probably doesn't matter and nobody cares what sort of program you went through.
Yeah, actually, for an MBA it matters a lot, though "distance" vs. "brick-and-mortar" isn't the main thing, the particular institution is.
And I suspect if you want, say, a professorial posting at a top school, where you get your graduate degree in English probably matters, too.
Would you want a lawyer from University of Phoenix? No? Why not?
I personally would be suspicious of a University of Phoenix lawyer, because the University of Phoenix doesn't have a law school.
OTOH, Kaplan's Concord Law School, well, I go there, so I'm not really an unbiased observer.
How about people here actually think for a change and come up with a foolproof, reliable way to ensure the exam-taker is the enrolled person?
Given that people cheat on in person exams, I'll just say there is no such thing as "foolproof, reliable way" to do that; nor is one necessary for most purposes in education, which is many physical institutions don't do much in this regard, either. For particularly high-stakes exams, like licensing exams, you require people to register in advance, be physically present, present multiple forms of ID, etc., etc.
Students don't sign up for the universities -- they would if they could because they think it is an easy degree, but parents generally pay the bills and they research this stuff.
One of the biggest draws of online institutions is for people who are already in the workforce, as they present scheduling flexibility and the ability to work from home that can be very appealing to people who already have a full-time job and don't want to also have to have to go to some inconveniently-located physical institution for education to advance their career.
So, yeah, its usually the student who is making the decision.
I haven't read the entire bill, but I'm betting that this requirement is only if they pay for the education with federal moneys through a loan or a grant too.
Usually, the requirement on the school in order to be eligible to, e.g., participate in federally subsidized loan programs. Without the actual text of the bill, its not clear how much verification is required; while clearly some vendors and schools are looking at a variety of intrusive measures, its not really clear from TFA that anything that intrusive would be mandatory under the law.
How will they work it for Dialup and sat internet where they don't have the bandwidth / ping times for this to work good?
Low bandwidth and high latency aren't all that good for online schools, in general, since things like streaming lectures and online audio chats (or text chats with one-way audio from the instructor) are often important tools in the curriculum.
For any "online" institution I've known, the tests need to be done at an approved institute under supervision, and after presenting proper ID, etc.
Certainly this is not universally true; Concord Law School, for instance (part of Kaplan University) does not do this; pretty much everything in most classes can be done online through a secure web site. J.D. (bar track) students have to comply with CA Bar requirements for non-ABA schools, which include a proctored First Year Law Students exam and must, of course, pass the bar exam before being admitted to practice law, and those exams, naturally, are quite concerned about verifying ID.
You might be able to fob off assignments on somebody else, but in a real school institution you could do this anyhow after classes.
Heck, even for exams in physical institutions, particularly with large class sizes, at most institutions I've experienced there was no serious effort to verify identity (with small class sizes with mandatory attendance, a ringer would be obvious). I suspect that this provision was pushed by the vendors of security devices; I can't see any other interest that would be served by making these devices mandatory.
That's where Google's pal "Trade Secret" comes in, after all, it's not like they list the algorithm they use to rank pages on their front page. Their patent [...]
As you would be aware if you read your own link past the Abstract and down to the part marked Assignee, its not "their" patent, but that of "The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford, CA)".
reads more like "PageRank exists and we use it to order results from most relevant to least relevant and then display those results with links to the user, doing so is hereby patented", i.e. business process at its finest, with not a word that can be used to actually implement PageRank.
No, you seem to have merely read the Abstract and mistook it for the patent; I suggest you read the Description which is rather more detailed as to the algorithm used (Though to really get all the detail, you really should refer to the page images, since the equations are omitted from the text version.)
You seem to think this is run-of-the-mill. Just another day at the office. It's not.
Yeah, actually, it is.
It's fine for government to change the rules when they need improving. Retroactive change, however, is not fine, and that appears to be what the PTO is attempting to do.
The PTO is making an argument about what is within the scope of patentability under the statute. Any court decision on that (unless unusual restrictions were placed by the court on its applicability) would apply to existing patents. It would not be "retroactive", but it would affect any future legal action, even regarding existing patents.
This is run-of-the-mill. This is how disputes about the meaning of the law almost invariably work in our legal system.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is. Oil is used for energy outside of cars. Further, since electric vehicles that are driven directly by or charged from electricity generated by large-scale systems (both personal vehicles and mass transit) compete with vehicles using other power sources, all large-scale electrical generation alternatives compete with vehicle power source alternatives.
Also, oil.
Indeed.
Diesel-electric hybrids have, IIRC, similar cost premiums to gas-electric hybrids, and less efficiency increase over plain diesels, because diesels have inherently less of some of the efficiency problems that hybrid systems reduce in gas-electric hybrids. So there is less return to diesel-electric hybrids.
That being said, there are diesel-electric hybrids, used mostly in commercial vehicles like busses and trucks in the U.S.
The past history of Apple without Steve Jobs suggests that, while Apple is not Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs is an important asset for Apple.
Something like that; at most of the cycle rollovers, the Maya apparently believed that there would be some degree of change and renewal, and the 2012 rollover is a rollover in the largest cycle in commonly-recorded dates, so it would, presumably, be viewed as significant; what is unsubstantiated is the belief ascribed to the Maya by certain people in the New Age movement that the particular rollover from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0 is supposed to be the end of the present creation, rather than just a change of the same significance as the rollover to 12.0.0.0.0 from 11.19.19.17.19.
This is perhaps especially true in the US between "White" and "Black" culture (moreso than other lines of combined race and culture), as a direct consequence of the legacy of first slavery and then the de jure segregation that followed it in a substantial portion of the country until past the middle of last century.
Its interesting to see a federal prosecutor equate murder with the death penalty.
Actually, they didn't do that, either. A rollover of a particular long cycle in the Long Count calendar occurs then, and its one that has correspondence to an end of a previous creation recorded in their myth (the last 5 numbers of the date are the same, and only those last 5 numbers are recorded, which was apparently fairly common practice), from which various New Age folks invented the idea that Maya Calendar prediced the end of the world on December 21, 2012. There are, in fact, specific predictions made in some Maya writings of predicted future events clearly within this creation on dates in the Long Count that would post-date December 21, 2012, so its pretty clear that if such a belief in the end of the creation on 12.19.19.17.19 existed (for which there is, AFAIK, not one bit of evidence), it certainly wasn't universal.
More likely, for reasons only covariant with, rather than caused by, race (note that these types of patterns are normally identified within the US, not globally), non-caucasian males are more likely (amont other things) to be:
1) Not the immediate support of their family (a consequence of the higher incidence of broken homes in, e.g., the African-American community), or
2) From a background wherein financial misfortune is seen as more normal and expected and less a sign of personal failure (a consequence of the higher incidence of poverty in many non-Caucasian groups).
These types of factors in the social context would, if the explanation given by GP were the major motivation for this
type of suicide (which seems plausible and I've seen some things that support, but I'm not real familiar with the specifics), be things that would reasonably expected to make these kinds of murder-suicides less prevalent among non-Caucasian males.
Observing factual patterns in behavior that differ by race is not "racist". Assuming, without (or, a fortiori, contrary to) evidence that any such factually observed patterns must be inherent in differences between the races rather than, e.g., a product of social experiences whose distributions are, for whatever reason, different among racial groups, OTOH, is racist. Noticing the differences in behavior patterns is the first step to looking for the explanation of the differences and seeing what lies beneath them. Deliberately ignoring the patterns would have a racist impact/
Is it possible that not every element of a Hollywood blockbuster (and perhaps not any elements of some) is intended as political/social advocacy?
No, Bush has claimed many justifications for warrantless wiretapping; he has argued, among them, that it is based on inherent Presidential powers over foreign affairs and security over which Congress has no authority whether or not there is a war; he has also claimed that if he had needed authorization for it, which he did not, the authorization for the use of military force also implicitly authorized it. He has never said that the warrantless wiretapping policy would ever end, and he has made arguments which suggest that the War on Terror can't ever end anyway, so saying that something would end when it did would have been meaningless.
I did. Klavan argues exactly as I described, and, beyond that, that the whole reason that the supposedly-Bush-praising Dark Knight and supposedly similar films have to be metaphorical (despite portraying supposedly more compelling, resonating political/moral values) while liberal films are literal (despite portraying supposedly less compelling political/moral values) is a supposed conspiracy of the "artistic community" that makes it so that "Hollywood conservatives" cannot "take off their masks and speak plainly in the light of day" and "pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror".
He ignores entirely that (1) literal, rather than metaphorical, conservative movies are made, all the time, and do, in general, no better and perhaps worse than equally literal liberal movies, and (2) moviegoers may be interested in films for entertainment value rather than as political polemic; enjoying movies about masked vigilantes doesn't endorse a political viewpoint any more than enjoying movies about supernatural slashers stalking teenagers. He seems desperate to deny that his own political values are not as overwhelmingly popular as he would like them to be, but are instead hugely popular, but having their expression suppressed by a vague conspiracy. And I think part of this is that Klavan wants to feel justified in interpreting his own respectable, though not earth-shattering, artistic success as the public's validation of his personal political views.
Internal government disputes are much more likely to become public, as (1) violations of policy are more likely to be subject to criminal prosecution and other legal sanction, and (2) public entities are frequently covered by policies that require or protect disclosure, whereas private entities typically have policies which restrict disclosure, and any settlement of a dispute will typically involve even stronger protections against disclosure. Additionally, public entities often have a diversity of people in positions to conduct at least some oversight functions, to whom disclosures are practically mandatory.
So, in short, you hear a lot more about this in government, because what goes on in government is, on the whole, and by design a lot more visible to outsiders than what goes on in businesses.
Uh, Klavan is comparing the box office success of a comic book-based action movie that can be read in a strained way as political allegory with the returns of overtly political films and trying to read into that that the political position that the former can be stretched into an endorsement of is more popular than the political position that the latter fairly overtly embrace? Really? And you find this worth repeating, why?
I've got a better, simpler explanation of the box office figures: big-budget films based on popular franchises with no overt political viewpoint tend to, on average, be bigger box office successes than smaller-budget films that overtly embrace a particular point of view on current political issues.
As to the current popularity of W., rather than trying to infer it by strained film analogies, we could look at current job approval poll numbers, where he is currently polling under 30% with a 40% disapproval-approval spread.
Granting, arguendo, that this is true (which is granting a lot), I don't see how it applies here. While murder could conceivably be undertaken for profit (e.g., murder for hire, murder as part of an insurance fraud scheme, etc.), its pretty hard to see how the murder part of a murder-suicide is "profitable".
No, they know how averages work; the basis is that there is a selection bias in taking the test (people taking the test tend to be on the high end of the ability distribution of the whole population of test takers and non-takers because they tend to be the ones planning to go to college), and a higher percentage of the females in the population taking the test (and therefore more girls taking the test) is likely to mean that the girls taking the test are, on average, not as high on the ability distribution of girls in population than boys taking the test are on the ability distribution of boys in the population.
Irrelevant: the assertion was made that, in the event that patent was invalidated, Google could rely on the fact that the patent did not disclose the details necessary to implement the algorithm to prevent other people from using it. Since the description is part of the publicly available patent material (regardless of what weight it is given by the PTO and the courts), and does provide that detail, this argument fails.
You seem to have missed the part where the agency was in the past operating based on court rulings issued by the Federal Circuit, and is now arguing that the past practice is wrong based on decisions of the Supreme Court which are more recent.
While the PTO may be wrong in how it has interpreted the more recent Supreme Court decisions, its the PTO's job to apply the patent law based on current law, including binding case law. It is not their job to provide stability for business by never changing the way they do business.
Well, on that we certainly agree.
At Caltech, at least in 1990, pretty much everything, including finals, was taken home, drop off, and on the honor system. Apparently, Caltech is not a "school" by your standard.
No, because essential pieces of medical education require in person training, practice, and direct supervision.
This has nothing to do with trust issues, though.
Yeah, actually, for an MBA it matters a lot, though "distance" vs. "brick-and-mortar" isn't the main thing, the particular institution is.
And I suspect if you want, say, a professorial posting at a top school, where you get your graduate degree in English probably matters, too.
I personally would be suspicious of a University of Phoenix lawyer, because the University of Phoenix doesn't have a law school.
OTOH, Kaplan's Concord Law School, well, I go there, so I'm not really an unbiased observer.
Given that people cheat on in person exams, I'll just say there is no such thing as "foolproof, reliable way" to do that; nor is one necessary for most purposes in education, which is many physical institutions don't do much in this regard, either. For particularly high-stakes exams, like licensing exams, you require people to register in advance, be physically present, present multiple forms of ID, etc., etc.
One of the biggest draws of online institutions is for people who are already in the workforce, as they present scheduling flexibility and the ability to work from home that can be very appealing to people who already have a full-time job and don't want to also have to have to go to some inconveniently-located physical institution for education to advance their career.
So, yeah, its usually the student who is making the decision.
Usually, the requirement on the school in order to be eligible to, e.g., participate in federally subsidized loan programs. Without the actual text of the bill, its not clear how much verification is required; while clearly some vendors and schools are looking at a variety of intrusive measures, its not really clear from TFA that anything that intrusive would be mandatory under the law.
Low bandwidth and high latency aren't all that good for online schools, in general, since things like streaming lectures and online audio chats (or text chats with one-way audio from the instructor) are often important tools in the curriculum.
Certainly this is not universally true; Concord Law School, for instance (part of Kaplan University) does not do this; pretty much everything in most classes can be done online through a secure web site. J.D. (bar track) students have to comply with CA Bar requirements for non-ABA schools, which include a proctored First Year Law Students exam and must, of course, pass the bar exam before being admitted to practice law, and those exams, naturally, are quite concerned about verifying ID.
Heck, even for exams in physical institutions, particularly with large class sizes, at most institutions I've experienced there was no serious effort to verify identity (with small class sizes with mandatory attendance, a ringer would be obvious). I suspect that this provision was pushed by the vendors of security devices; I can't see any other interest that would be served by making these devices mandatory.
As you would be aware if you read your own link past the Abstract and down to the part marked Assignee, its not "their" patent, but that of "The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford, CA)".
No, you seem to have merely read the Abstract and mistook it for the patent; I suggest you read the Description which is rather more detailed as to the algorithm used (Though to really get all the detail, you really should refer to the page images, since the equations are omitted from the text version.)
Yeah, actually, it is.
The PTO is making an argument about what is within the scope of patentability under the statute. Any court decision on that (unless unusual restrictions were placed by the court on its applicability) would apply to existing patents. It would not be "retroactive", but it would affect any future legal action, even regarding existing patents.
This is run-of-the-mill. This is how disputes about the meaning of the law almost invariably work in our legal system.