I don't want to see your GMOs in Europe. We're well off without them. Period.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Europe already has GMOs (58 varieties covering maize, cotton, soybean, oilseed rape, sugar beet). One of them in particular
MON810 corn, (from your favorite company) is planted in over 150,000 hectares since its approval in 1998 because of its resistance to the European corn borer.
AFAIK, most of the GMOs imported into the EU are feedstock from south american soybean crop (not the US).
Exactly. GMO labeling laws are analogous to labeling table salt as "NOTICE: HAS CHEMICALS!".
FWIW, in California, every supermarket has this posted near the fresh produce section, but not associated with any particular product.
Proposition 65 WARNING: Products contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
This clearly conveys the real and important information to the consumer about the fresh produce for sale at every supermarket in California
Micron is likely going to be the target of precise attacks (be it network wise, or even "boots on the ground"), and a no-name competitor will sprout up offering the same products Micron does for less than it costs to normally produce them.
Micron already has the problem of someone offering the same products for less than it costs to normally produce them. It's coming from a no-name competitor called Samsung. It's because Samsung is already on a more advanced production node than Micron (smaller chips, similar cost per wafer, hard to compete)...
The DRAM game is mostly about getting yields on advanced production nodes (e.g., 30nm vs 20nm) and financial games to fully depreciate/amortize the cost of constructing multi-billion dollar fabs. Currently on SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are real players in this game (they have 90% of the market) and Micron is the smallest of the 3 (although to be fair, it's probably the only that could theoretically be purchased by a Chinese company).
If Tsinghua wanted to "attack" someone for memory technology, they would probably have better luck attacking Hynix as they already have a fab in Wuxi (china).
FWIW, here's more info about one of the main imaging cameras (LORRI).
Short story:1Kx1K** CCD sensor w/ 350 nm to 850 nm panchromatic sensor. To compensate for the low light levels, the primary mirror is 20.8cm in diameter, the field of view is only 0.29 and the integration times are pretty long (100-150ms or so).
AFAIK, the images they have posted so far are generally the CCD images only processed to remove CCD bias, read-out smearing, and fixed-pattern non-uniformity effects.
**The sensor also support a 2x2 pixel binning mode to reduce smear for really long exposure times or high sensitivity shots.
Most contractors work within strict location and time restrictions set by the clients.
I would love to be a contractor working on your kitchen upgrade; I'll get it done when I damn well feel like it and if I get bored at 2am, don't be surprised if I head over the your house to start work on the marble countertops.
On the other hand, most contractors are allowed to subcontract. Say if you are a kitchen contractor on the upgrade and you can't get all your work done (because you took too long on your previous job), you can hire your buddy to help you start this new job. Uber doesn't generally allow you to sub-contract your piecework to your buddy (say your buddy that has a commercial licence and occasionally works for Lyft, so has essentially equivalent qualifications to you). This would fail one of the more common tests for being a contractor vs an employee.
In any case, the IRS has provided reasonably clear guidance in the area of limousine service. If the employing company is a pure dispatch company (e.g., it doesn't control how the drivers drive and the driver is not accountable to the company), then drivers can be considered contractors. If however, the employing company is a transport service (e.g., the company provides detailed instructions to its drivers
and monitors their daily performance and the driver doesn't maintain business like doing advertising or keeping logs), then the drivers must be considered employees.
And both of these languages are almost, but not entirely completely different from Greek.
You mean languages that you don't know aren't *greek* to you
Short story, some people just have bad tastes and marketing people should keep this in mind.
Summary. Results limited to repeat purchasing of consumer products. With total sales held constant, as the percentage of sales identified from these so-called harbinger-of-failure customers rises from 25% to 50%, the probability of success of that product decreases about 31%. If these customers have repeat purchase, the relative probability of success decrease even more (2 repeat purchases: success decrease 37%; 3 or more purchases: success decreases 56%).
Longer story? The paper describes their data set as follows:
This paper uses two datasets: a sample of individual customer transaction data, and a sample of aggregate store-level transaction data. Both datasets come from a large chain of convenience stores with many branches across the United States. The store sells products in the beauty, consumer healthcare, edibles and general merchandise categories. Customers visit the store frequently (on average almost weekly), and purchase approximately four items per trip at an average price of approximately $4 per item. The store level transaction data includes aggregate weekly transactions for every item in a sample of 111 stores spread across 14 different states in the Midwestern and Southwestern portions of the US. The data period extends from January 2003 through October 2009. We use the store-level transaction data to define new product survival, and to construct product covariates for our
multivariate analysis. We exclude seasonal products that are designed to have a short shelf life, such as Christmas decorations and Valentine's Day candy.
The individual-customer data covers over ten million transactions made using the retailer’s frequent shopping card between November 2003 and November 2005 for a sample of 127,925 customers.
The analysis defines a successful product as one that continues sales after 3 years (and a flop otherwise) based on aggregate sales. But they use data from loyalty card scans to identify groups of customers to test their hypothesis, and they limited their analysis to products that survived at least 1 year to avoid the "noise" associated with no chance to purchase products. FWIW, they do level some suspicion that the use/non-use of loyalty cards bias the data somewhat, however, the analysis was based on the following methodology...
Repeat purchase rates may therefore provide a more accurate predictor of new product success than initial adoption rates. For this reason, we use both initial adoption and repeat purchases to classify customers. Specifically, we ask whether customers who repeatedly purchase new products that fail provide a more accurate signal of new product failure than customers who only purchase the new product once...
First, we use a sample of new products to group customers according to how many flops they purchased in the weeks after the product is introduced. We then investigate whether purchases in the first 15 weeks by each group of customers can predict the success of a second sample of new products.
Note they don't attempt to predict out-of-the-gate flop products (like the Zune), they merely note that it seems like some people's tastes for consumer items that are subject to repeat purchase are likely not indicative of ultimate retail success and for some reason this is unexpectedly correlated across different products. Their conclusion is that the preferences of these harbingers-of-failure customers for items are indicative of a negative preference in the greater population and that will likely limit the ultimate growth potential of a product, and stores shouldn't waste precious shelf space on such items favored by these people.
Not flooding the markets with counterfeit goods, but with goods that have a known superior quality.
I'm all those folks collecting baseball cards, comic books and antique collectibles would have something to say about this attitude. Also, wasn't this similar to the rationale used to suppress labeling requirements for irradiated strawberries and GM foods (e.g., they were superior to their counterparts and otherwise nutritionally the same)?
Sometimes people just want what they want and feel deceived if they get something else (even if it is "superior" in some way).
So after all this complaining about how counterfeit food and medicine from china is morally repugnant, we decide to turn the tables...
At least we are attempting to save the rhinos, I guess, but seems to me that it's a slippery slope to agree that flooding a market with counterfeit goods is actually a good idea...
The tail suspension test (TST) was developed as a rodent screening test for potential (human) antidepressant drugs. It is based on the assumption that an animal will actively try to escape an aversive (stressful) stimulus. If escape is impossible, the animal will eventually stop trying ("give up"). In the TST a mouse is suspended by the tail so that its body dangles in the air, facing downward. The test lasts for six or more minutes and may be repeated multiple times. Mice initially struggle to face upward and climb to a solid surface. When the animal stops struggling and hangs immobile it is considered to have “given up”. Longer periods of immobility are characteristic of a depressive-like state. The validity of this test stems from the finding that treatment with an antidepressant drug will decrease the time the animal spends immobile.
I imagine if the drug made the mouse more insane (i.e., struggling more against the impossible). Conversely, I imagine if the drug made the mouse smart enough to know it was impossible, it would appear depressed.
Reminds me of a scene in the Bruce Lee film Enter The Dragon where he realizes he finds himself in a trap and just sits down and waits to make his move.
France's history of welcoming immigrants and its egalitarian nature...
I assume you mean just in the last few years.
The previous administrations headed by Chirac and Sarkozy weren't really known for being "welcoming" to immigrants... According to OECD statistics, during that time, France recorded one of the lowest rates of immigration among top European countries, and the number of naturalizations fell precipitously (~50%) due to more stringent language skills and culture testing requirements. I believe the average time for naturalization is still hovering about 15 years in France (which no doubt is biased by the fact if you are born in France, you can apply for naturalization at 18). In most other countries, time for naturalization (if allowed by visa) is generally around 5-10 years...
Of course once you become a citizen, it may indeed have an egalitarian nature, but I've heard that prior to naturalization status, it isn't quite as egalitarian as one might expect...
Oh yeah and sadly I *did* listen to it quite a bit. When the Darkside of the moon album dropped from Billboard's list of top albums back in 1988, the person in the dorm room next to me played a 24 hour/day, 7 day/week vigil on his stereo system until the housing department finally had him shut it down for keeping people up at night (esp time and money)...
Although I still have the album myself, I haven't listened to it since '88 because of this incident (and I freely admit to destroying several cassette tapes of Darkside during that 7 day/week vigil/torture)...
FTFY. Don't make the pink floyd mistake...
Maybe you weren't listening hard enough:
"There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark."
AFAIK, that comes from a set of interviews recorded by Roger Waters to create background voice ambiance for the album (and was enshrined in the final mastering) was actually made by Jerry Driscoll.
The full quote was apparently, "There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun." I'm guessing Jerry made that statement to illustrate the mistake that Pink Floyd made, but I could be wrong...
There was a time I did computer repair as an Independent Contractor for a Repair Business. I filed as a 1099. That was my only income at the time. I was not an employee. I was not entitled to benefits. My job there evaporated at a pre-determined end of contract date (which happened to coincide with the start of the next school year). Try again.
The company that paid you *decided* you were not an employee and gave you a 1099 (presumably after requesting you fill out a W-9 form).
The company could have decided you were an employee, gave you a W-4 and a W-2 at the end of the year.
The company could have done it wrong. It is not up to them, nor is it up to you. The final decision is made by the employment department of the state in which you did the work and it depends on many factors (including if you were restricted in any way to work for only that company and not a competitor at the same time).
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
