Considering his upcoming book references "the anti-scientific left" in its title, gee, I wonder how "fair and balanced" this author for The American Spectator, The National Review, and RealClear____ is?
Any political movement that denies global warming and supports creationism has a few screws loose and should not be lecturing the rest of the country on its scientific literacy.
The best schools will still be brick and mortar, because the best teachers will still want to interact with their students in person. I might peg community colleges at being the first to take a hit from online competition, except that their low costs and geographic convenience make them just as easy to attend and more rewarding intellectually because of the face-to-face interaction. We are social animals; technology will not change that.
Online is probably a sensible option for professional degrees, continuing education, certifications, etc., but I really don't see the best and the brightest skipping four years of University just for the sake of convenience. There is a huge difference between a degree and an education. It's much harder to get an education when one is still immersed in one's own familiar world.
There's no question that bleeding edge medical research always sounds promising for curing many terminal conditions, but all of the new breakthroughs will result in egregiously expensive medical treatments. None but the extremely wealthy will be able to afford them. We in the US have serious issues right now allocating basic health care fairly among our citizens without considering who should get the latest and greatest treatments. (Don't say, "It's a free market!" It's not even close to a free market, despite what libertarians and conservatives say.)
The other issue you raise is the social cost of keeping people with terminal illnesses alive indefinitely. What could they bring to society that would justify the expense of storing them until they can be revived and cured? What if they're not working at the time they're preserved, or incapable of working? Do you want to have to keep working to fund your boss's retirement through your Social Security contributions when your boss lives to be 200, or 300, or longer? Death exists for a reason. We need to accept that.
I had heard once that there were two buttons the RSO had to use to blow up the shuttle, and that the first button activated an indicator in the cockpit that let the astronauts know what was about to happen. Perhaps the "Test" button also activated that light?
I had also heard that the astronauts would visit the RSO before their flights with pictures of their families, just to be sure he knows exactly whose lives he would be affecting if he had to destroy the shuttle.
For genetic genealogy purposes, the Genographic Project provides only the minimal information to identify your ultimate ethnic origins (12 markers for the paternal line and the HVR1 region for the maternal line). Family Tree DNA, which is in partnership with the Genographic Project, will expand the testing to 67 markers for the paternal line and the HVR2 region for the maternal line. All told, it's easily several hundred dollars to fully probe the markers commonly thought to be useful for genealogical purposes (like comparing DNA with someone who may share a common ancestor with you).
Now that at least two companies (23andme and decodeme) are offering much more extensive genome scans for $1k, these genetic genealogy companies are going to have to drop their prices to remain competitive. This could be a boon for genealogy geeks!
deCODEme's website shows the $985 price as "promotional". I haven't seen anyone mention that in the discussion yet. If they are offering analysis of roughly 2x the markers of 23andMe, they would be smart to hike the price later to bring it more in line with Navigenics'. That said, it's still a heck of a deal, and I welcome the competition between these three companies.
Well, unless the Canadians figure out how to get the hypothetical criminal DOWN from the station themselves, I'd say the US or Russia can "render" him/her wherever the heck they want, since they're the only ones with the space-worthy paddywagons!
"Events, Patterns, and Analysis: Forecasting International Conflict in the Twenty-First Century
[...]
Project Goals:
We believe that the proliferation of news in electronic form as well as a series of advances in information extraction, data mining, statistical machine learning and stochastic modeling have made it possible to predict the outbreak of a serious international conflict by analyzing event data extracted from a multitude of sources over an extended period of time. The goal of our project is to develop techniques to construct extensive event data sets and models necessary to make such predictions. We hope to be able to predict the onset of serious international conflicts four to eight weeks in advance. Specifically, the goals of our research are:
* To design information extraction techniques and build events data sets for use by the entire scientific community.
* To use these events data and develop the algorithmic base for making predictions about the onset of serious conflict.
* To construct explanatory models in the form of dynamic Bayesian networks, building on the existing findings from the scientific study of international relations.
Timely warning of the outbreak of serious conflict can be a key element in conflict resolution. Early warning can provide the time for state and non-state actors to intervene and prevent the outbreak. Thus, we feel our work can be of potential value to the conflict resolution process, even though the focus of our research is predicting the outbreak and evolution of conflict."
Amen. I pay roughly $80/month for my cable TV for more than 80 channels, so that's less than a dollar per channel per month. That's a great deal when you consider a lot of people pay about that for their mobile phone plans. If I bought only the channels I wanted under an a la carte scheme (and I've watched maybe half of those 80 channels at some point over the past year), I'm sure I would be paying more than $80 per month, probably a lot more. That would be at least a doubling of the price I pay. The current scheme keeps prices down.
Also, I don't want to lock myself out of channels I may find interesting in the future. I like being able to channel-surf a wide variety of programs. I don't like subsidizing the religious channels, but I'd bet that Congress would allow them an exemption or force the cable providers to carry their shows for free as a public service, like they did with broadcast TV. (However, I have also heard that religious broadcasters have been wary of the a la carte scheme because they are afraid of getting shut out by the viewers, and this was even when the Congress was rabidly conservative, so perhaps they don't have the allies there to force that through after all.)
The folks who push the a la carte scheme would be better off pushing the content providers to make the individual shows available either for free from their websites (like NBC) or for a fee through services like iTunes. If people will pay two dollars to watch a half-hour sitcom (or a 3-minute music video), then there's clearly a lot of money to be made with a truly a la carte scheme (by the show and not just by the channel) outside of the cable channels. That route is clearly much more lucrative for the content providers to pursue.
Better yet, if the consumers are unhappy with the cable TV pricing structure, they just shouldn't buy cable. The market should react to what the consumers want. I don't like having a contract forced upon me by my mobile phone provider, but I buy the service because it's worth more to me to pay the money and have a mobile phone than not having the phone service at all.
The best way to sort out the sensible ones from the nutcases is to ask them when they think Jesus will return. The nutcases always say...soon!
Sometimes I pity our overseas brethren...what colorful lunatics we Americans have in our politics! But then I realize that half the country has supported them, and then I pity America.
What the hell does being a member of the AMA have to do with the price of health care? It ain't a union, you libertarian troll.
The real culprits driving up the cost of healthcare are the for-profit HMOs (altruism, which health care is, should never be for-profit; read about the Knights Hospitallers who had the idea of the hospital) and the ambulance chasers that drive up the cost of doctors doing business. You might be able to make an argument about Medicare, granted, but it's the folks who look at your illness with dollars in their eyes that should be thrown off the boat.
If the Chinese and Indians are smart enough to deliver the quality of R&D American companies are expecting, they're also probably smart enough to set up their own companies and keep the profits for themselves. This could be a good thing, though, since it would lead to the extinction of the American executive dinosaurs who plan to outsource every job but their own.
I can knock a few holes in this specious argument without even breaking a sweat...
1. The editorial does not specify which Hummer model of the five currently listed on the Hummer website (The H1 Alpha? The H2? The H2 SUT? The H3? The H3^X?) is the basis for the comparison to the Prius (one model only). So how is it possible to validate its claims for the idealized "Hummer" that's mentioned if the specific model is not stated?
2. The analysis also assumes gas prices will remain static for five years to recoup the higher cost of the hybrid for lower fuel expenses. Gas prices do not remain static. The folks with hybrids were doing quite well after Katrina while all the SUV drivers were complaining about $80 tanks of gas. Are you willing to bet we won't have another Katrina or yet another war in the Middle East in the next five years?
3. The authors of the study assumed the Hummer would last 300k miles and the Prius only 100k. Uh, how about we do an apples to apples comparison here? On what basis was this number chosen, apart from the fact that the fudge factor of 3 allows the Hummer to win this straw man argument? And does the typical Hummer driver even drive his Hummer for 300k miles? How about you pick one set of criteria and apply it for both cars.
4. None of the many arguments offered in this editorial addresses the issue that, despite the premium one must pay for a Prius over a non-hybrid car, they still cost less to purchase than a Hummer (whichever model you pick).
This was bad analysis when it was published on July 19, 2006 (NINE MONTHS AGO!) by the auto industry shills at the Reason Foundation (see http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060719 .shtml), and it's still bad analysis after being regurgitated on the op-ed page of a college newspaper.
Whoa! Who the frig thinks that CMU isn't a good EE school for an undergrad?! Dude (i.e., original poster), you're already way ahead of a lot of folks in your position if you've been accepted to CMU. Be happy with what you have so far. I used to be hung up on school names like you seem to be, but then I met a lot of folks at grad school who went to small schools I'd never heard of and yet who kicked my prestigious-school ass. In the real world, long term, it all comes down to what you can do as an engineer, not a line on your resume.
Trust me: If you stop your education at the undergraduate level, you are much more likely to meet people from Big State U who won't care that you went to CMU (they may not even perceive the difference between your education and theirs). And if you go on to grad school, where you go for that is 10x more important in terms of educating you for your profession. And even then it can be a crapshoot on how much it accomplishes for you. I know that, as a high school senior, every decision about your education seems like a choice between guaranteed success and absolute failure -- I was there once too and I remember it well -- but twenty years later, you'll look back on this time in your life and realize that your school choice wasn't nearly as important as you thought it was.
If you're really good, you'll do well wherever you go. If you expect to be ashamed that you went to CMU instead of Caltech or MIT for undergrad, well, best of luck to you. Plan to have a miserable life.
Uh, Bill Gates didn't drop out of Harvard because he couldn't handle it, as you seem to imply. He just had bigger fish to fry than getting a sheepskin. You can say what you want about the guy's business practices,but he clearly made the right choice by starting Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
...only the one I saw had an Oscillation Overthruster.
I'm worried that they're selling a product they didn't even test on prisoners!
You nailed it.
Considering his upcoming book references "the anti-scientific left" in its title, gee, I wonder how "fair and balanced" this author for The American Spectator, The National Review, and RealClear____ is?
Any political movement that denies global warming and supports creationism has a few screws loose and should not be lecturing the rest of the country on its scientific literacy.
Save it for FoxNews, Alex.
The best schools will still be brick and mortar, because the best teachers will still want to interact with their students in person. I might peg community colleges at being the first to take a hit from online competition, except that their low costs and geographic convenience make them just as easy to attend and more rewarding intellectually because of the face-to-face interaction. We are social animals; technology will not change that.
Online is probably a sensible option for professional degrees, continuing education, certifications, etc., but I really don't see the best and the brightest skipping four years of University just for the sake of convenience. There is a huge difference between a degree and an education. It's much harder to get an education when one is still immersed in one's own familiar world.
There's no question that bleeding edge medical research always sounds promising for curing many terminal conditions, but all of the new breakthroughs will result in egregiously expensive medical treatments. None but the extremely wealthy will be able to afford them. We in the US have serious issues right now allocating basic health care fairly among our citizens without considering who should get the latest and greatest treatments. (Don't say, "It's a free market!" It's not even close to a free market, despite what libertarians and conservatives say.)
The other issue you raise is the social cost of keeping people with terminal illnesses alive indefinitely. What could they bring to society that would justify the expense of storing them until they can be revived and cured? What if they're not working at the time they're preserved, or incapable of working? Do you want to have to keep working to fund your boss's retirement through your Social Security contributions when your boss lives to be 200, or 300, or longer? Death exists for a reason. We need to accept that.
Also good is "The Secret History" by Procopius, particularly the part about the empress Theodora. She makes Madonna look like a prude....
I had heard once that there were two buttons the RSO had to use to blow up the shuttle, and that the first button activated an indicator in the cockpit that let the astronauts know what was about to happen. Perhaps the "Test" button also activated that light?
I had also heard that the astronauts would visit the RSO before their flights with pictures of their families, just to be sure he knows exactly whose lives he would be affecting if he had to destroy the shuttle.
People were buying by mail before 1808?
For genetic genealogy purposes, the Genographic Project provides only the minimal information to identify your ultimate ethnic origins (12 markers for the paternal line and the HVR1 region for the maternal line). Family Tree DNA, which is in partnership with the Genographic Project, will expand the testing to 67 markers for the paternal line and the HVR2 region for the maternal line. All told, it's easily several hundred dollars to fully probe the markers commonly thought to be useful for genealogical purposes (like comparing DNA with someone who may share a common ancestor with you).
Now that at least two companies (23andme and decodeme) are offering much more extensive genome scans for $1k, these genetic genealogy companies are going to have to drop their prices to remain competitive. This could be a boon for genealogy geeks!
deCODEme's website shows the $985 price as "promotional". I haven't seen anyone mention that in the discussion yet. If they are offering analysis of roughly 2x the markers of 23andMe, they would be smart to hike the price later to bring it more in line with Navigenics'. That said, it's still a heck of a deal, and I welcome the competition between these three companies.
Well, unless the Canadians figure out how to get the hypothetical criminal DOWN from the station themselves, I'd say the US or Russia can "render" him/her wherever the heck they want, since they're the only ones with the space-worthy paddywagons!
"...he has trouble understanding why anyone would think he doesn't love Linux."
And O.J. Simpson had trouble understanding why people thought he didn't love Nicole.
From http://www.cs.rice.edu/~devika/projects/stoll.html:
"Events, Patterns, and Analysis: Forecasting International Conflict in the Twenty-First Century
[...]
Project Goals:
We believe that the proliferation of news in electronic form as well as a series of advances in information extraction, data mining, statistical machine learning and stochastic modeling have made it possible to predict the outbreak of a serious international conflict by analyzing event data extracted from a multitude of sources over an extended period of time. The goal of our project is to develop techniques to construct extensive event data sets and models necessary to make such predictions. We hope to be able to predict the onset of serious international conflicts four to eight weeks in advance. Specifically, the goals of our research are:
* To design information extraction techniques and build events data sets for use by the entire scientific community.
* To use these events data and develop the algorithmic base for making predictions about the onset of serious conflict.
* To construct explanatory models in the form of dynamic Bayesian networks, building on the existing findings from the scientific study of international relations.
Timely warning of the outbreak of serious conflict can be a key element in conflict resolution. Early warning can provide the time for state and non-state actors to intervene and prevent the outbreak. Thus, we feel our work can be of potential value to the conflict resolution process, even though the focus of our research is predicting the outbreak and evolution of conflict."
This project was funded 2003-2006 by the NSF.
Amen. I pay roughly $80/month for my cable TV for more than 80 channels, so that's less than a dollar per channel per month. That's a great deal when you consider a lot of people pay about that for their mobile phone plans. If I bought only the channels I wanted under an a la carte scheme (and I've watched maybe half of those 80 channels at some point over the past year), I'm sure I would be paying more than $80 per month, probably a lot more. That would be at least a doubling of the price I pay. The current scheme keeps prices down.
Also, I don't want to lock myself out of channels I may find interesting in the future. I like being able to channel-surf a wide variety of programs. I don't like subsidizing the religious channels, but I'd bet that Congress would allow them an exemption or force the cable providers to carry their shows for free as a public service, like they did with broadcast TV. (However, I have also heard that religious broadcasters have been wary of the a la carte scheme because they are afraid of getting shut out by the viewers, and this was even when the Congress was rabidly conservative, so perhaps they don't have the allies there to force that through after all.)
The folks who push the a la carte scheme would be better off pushing the content providers to make the individual shows available either for free from their websites (like NBC) or for a fee through services like iTunes. If people will pay two dollars to watch a half-hour sitcom (or a 3-minute music video), then there's clearly a lot of money to be made with a truly a la carte scheme (by the show and not just by the channel) outside of the cable channels. That route is clearly much more lucrative for the content providers to pursue.
Better yet, if the consumers are unhappy with the cable TV pricing structure, they just shouldn't buy cable. The market should react to what the consumers want. I don't like having a contract forced upon me by my mobile phone provider, but I buy the service because it's worth more to me to pay the money and have a mobile phone than not having the phone service at all.
The best way to sort out the sensible ones from the nutcases is to ask them when they think Jesus will return. The nutcases always say...soon!
Sometimes I pity our overseas brethren...what colorful lunatics we Americans have in our politics! But then I realize that half the country has supported them, and then I pity America.
...if you guys are so freakin' smart at detecting espionage, why didn't you know about Robert Hanssen?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen?
What the hell does being a member of the AMA have to do with the price of health care? It ain't a union, you libertarian troll.
The real culprits driving up the cost of healthcare are the for-profit HMOs (altruism, which health care is, should never be for-profit; read about the Knights Hospitallers who had the idea of the hospital) and the ambulance chasers that drive up the cost of doctors doing business. You might be able to make an argument about Medicare, granted, but it's the folks who look at your illness with dollars in their eyes that should be thrown off the boat.
What about the masks that everyone was wearing during the SARS epidemic? I still see those in airports, so it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary.
...welcome our new internet-connected robotic overlords.
The fellow you're thinking of is John Lockwood of San Antonio, Texas. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070219.wnethunt0219/BNStory/Technology/home.
If the Chinese and Indians are smart enough to deliver the quality of R&D American companies are expecting, they're also probably smart enough to set up their own companies and keep the profits for themselves. This could be a good thing, though, since it would lead to the extinction of the American executive dinosaurs who plan to outsource every job but their own.
I can knock a few holes in this specious argument without even breaking a sweat...
9 .shtml), and it's still bad analysis after being regurgitated on the op-ed page of a college newspaper.
1. The editorial does not specify which Hummer model of the five currently listed on the Hummer website (The H1 Alpha? The H2? The H2 SUT? The H3? The H3^X?) is the basis for the comparison to the Prius (one model only). So how is it possible to validate its claims for the idealized "Hummer" that's mentioned if the specific model is not stated?
2. The analysis also assumes gas prices will remain static for five years to recoup the higher cost of the hybrid for lower fuel expenses. Gas prices do not remain static. The folks with hybrids were doing quite well after Katrina while all the SUV drivers were complaining about $80 tanks of gas. Are you willing to bet we won't have another Katrina or yet another war in the Middle East in the next five years?
3. The authors of the study assumed the Hummer would last 300k miles and the Prius only 100k. Uh, how about we do an apples to apples comparison here? On what basis was this number chosen, apart from the fact that the fudge factor of 3 allows the Hummer to win this straw man argument? And does the typical Hummer driver even drive his Hummer for 300k miles? How about you pick one set of criteria and apply it for both cars.
4. None of the many arguments offered in this editorial addresses the issue that, despite the premium one must pay for a Prius over a non-hybrid car, they still cost less to purchase than a Hummer (whichever model you pick).
This was bad analysis when it was published on July 19, 2006 (NINE MONTHS AGO!) by the auto industry shills at the Reason Foundation (see http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_2006071
Whoa! Who the frig thinks that CMU isn't a good EE school for an undergrad?! Dude (i.e., original poster), you're already way ahead of a lot of folks in your position if you've been accepted to CMU. Be happy with what you have so far. I used to be hung up on school names like you seem to be, but then I met a lot of folks at grad school who went to small schools I'd never heard of and yet who kicked my prestigious-school ass. In the real world, long term, it all comes down to what you can do as an engineer, not a line on your resume.
Trust me: If you stop your education at the undergraduate level, you are much more likely to meet people from Big State U who won't care that you went to CMU (they may not even perceive the difference between your education and theirs). And if you go on to grad school, where you go for that is 10x more important in terms of educating you for your profession. And even then it can be a crapshoot on how much it accomplishes for you. I know that, as a high school senior, every decision about your education seems like a choice between guaranteed success and absolute failure -- I was there once too and I remember it well -- but twenty years later, you'll look back on this time in your life and realize that your school choice wasn't nearly as important as you thought it was.
If you're really good, you'll do well wherever you go. If you expect to be ashamed that you went to CMU instead of Caltech or MIT for undergrad, well, best of luck to you. Plan to have a miserable life.
Uh, Bill Gates didn't drop out of Harvard because he couldn't handle it, as you seem to imply. He just had bigger fish to fry than getting a sheepskin. You can say what you want about the guy's business practices,but he clearly made the right choice by starting Microsoft.
This is actually a great idea, since Congress wants your ISP to retain all of that information anyway.9 30228/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/07/1