and you think that our likelihood of finding a star even closer to the Eddington limit is a slam-dunk?
The summary mentioned that this newly discovered star, observed at 265 solar masses, is much larger than the Eddinton limit, which is around 150 solar masses.
Nice try RIAA. You're telling gullible nerds to generate all possible melodies and publish them, only to come in and sue them for the melodies which are already copyrighted.
The best solution for individuals wanting to learn new music, inefficient in the short term but invaluable in the long run, is to learn how to play by ear and transcribe the music yourself. But I'm sure you've heard that before. Anyway here are some sheet music sites I know of, primarily piano.
In case anyone does not already know, IMSLP is a great site for public domain sheet music.
The world will start working with synthetic life in a quarter century, whereas without Venter and patents, the we would have synthetic life in <5 (at the rate of progress in molecular biology).
That's not quite correct. The US will start working with synthetic life in a quarter century, while those countries who do not recognize US patents will start much sooner.
And you know what, if you're not happy with the state of competition in the market, go start your own printer company. No one is stopping you. Since you think profits are so easy in that inefficient market, I'm sure plenty of people will wait in line to loan you money.
Patents are one thing that stops innovators from entering established markets. But of course it's always the evil market's fault when people don't get what they want.
I don't see how the free market is the problem. Public schools just value money more than proper textbooks. Plus, even if Texas is such a huge market, they only account for 8% of total population of the country.
Perhaps the root cause of the problem is parents sitting their in front of the television for hours every day, where they are exposed to these evil advertisements in the first place.
The only rational solution is not to "vote for the lesser evil," but change voting systems so more information is extracted by letting voters give a score to all candidates. This way, if a voter prefers Nader > Gore > Bush, it's reflected in the vote. The dilemma of "choosing the lesser evil over the sure-loser" is eliminated and society is better informed on how all the candidates are ranked by the populace.
An interesting history of voting systems and arguments for why scoring systems are best can be found in Gaming The Vote by William Poundstone.
I worked on a project with a different approach where you use crappy sensors but then a lot of them.
I heard on NPR that a group from UC Riverside and Stanford started Quake Catchers to take advantage of the accelerometers included in most new laptops. A sort of "quake@home." They distribute their sensor software to anyone who volunteers and then receive relevant quake data. They also have more accurate USB sensors that they sell, and provide at a discount to K-12 schools. If schools are willing to participate, it should create a geographically distributed source of data. And it doesn't hurt that kids get to learn a bit more about earthquakes too.
The guest on NPR also talked about the USGS testing early warning systems for earthquakes, using several forms of mass communication(sans the summary's laser-in-the-sky). XKCD is always relevant.
Don't worry, there's no foreseeable cure for poverty, so there will be plenty of people who can't afford to remove colorblindness.
I think it's more like this: he solved the conjecture, and that is prize enough for him.
A purity that cannot be achieved by normal men. If that is true, shouldn't he have submitted his solution anonymously?
All men are gay, it's just to what extent...
Hell, even RTS games are more twitch than planning these days.
All RTS games require some amount of speed and precision, giving an advantage to players who control their units skillfully and efficiently. If you expect otherwise, play turn based strategy games instead.
When courts mandate the use of patented or copyrighted or licencable technology
This shouldn't happen in the first place. Standards should not be defined by a particular technology, but by a level of safety, pollution, or whatever the concern may be. This way, companies are free to meet that standard with different technologies or designs.
It seems to me that in the case of table saws, no new regulation is needed because they are reasonably safe if proper precautions are taken and the device is operated in the way intended and explained in the manual. If consumers want a safer standard, they are free to pay more for it.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
