Which is a weird thing for someone to say about the UK university system. The RAE / REF count an average one paper per year. That is what counts towards the department's ranking (which determines its funding), and so that's what departments care about when hiring people for tenured positions. Will they have the four top-tier publications required for the top rank in the REF? (or fewer for universities that aren't aiming for the top rank). Someone who published 20 crappy papers will be far less attractive than someone who published four good papers, because they'll both have to nominate their four best papers for the assessment, and so the first person will look really bad in the next assessment.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the ranking of UK universities. The REF replaces the older Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which happened every four years. The last RAE was 4 years ago, and the current REF is just finishing. Established academics have to submit 4 research outputs since the last RAE / REF. These are usually papers, but can be other things (systems you've built and so on).

The REF is a really big deal in UK universities, because it directly impacts the availability of research grants. The CVs of individual researchers are taken into account, but the REF / RAE score of the department is the biggest factor. If you have 4 papers in top-tier publications (conferences or journals, depending on your field), then it's very easy to get hired in the run up to the REF, because a lot of second tier universities are looking to find people who will bump them up the rankings.

Conversely, if you don't have the 4 publications (or other impressive things), then it's very hard to get a tenured position, but if you're not averaging one good paper a year then there's probably something wrong with you as a researcher: part of the point of publicly funded research is that the results are communicated to the public, and if you're not doing this then you're not keeping up your end of the deal.

IMO, testing the null hypothesis shows that it is the idea of combining the religious text with the technical text that is the primary source of interest. To me, the Markov Chains seem to produce more lexically valid outputs, but does not seem to be the prime influence of the humor or revelation in unexpected aptness distribution. One use of the null hypothesis is to show the degree to which the researcher's methods are responsible for the results by providing different methods or explanations for the same or similar results.

There is no such thing as negative effort, only effort. Anti-productivity can be beneficial if properly harnessed. When anti-products collide with normal outputs of productivity the energy released is explosive! --even enough to bring entire businesses to their knees. Re-engineering of entire product lines can create jobs at a geometric rate when analysed in the single dimensional domain. Massive numbers of researchers have dedicated time to advances in product particle research; Especially in the field of advert entangled anti-productivity. This very post and Slashdot itself would not be possible were it not for discovery of the charged anti-product-ion. Indeed, this is why the energetic event resulting from a productive business interacting with an equal or greater anti-production has been dubbed, "The Slashdot Effect".

Unfortunately, due to the nature of quantum entanglement there is no known way to predict an increase or decrease in overall productions due to a business's slashdotting. There is much debate over the degree to which the anti-productivity particles can be deliberately harnessed due to quantum uncertainty: Observation of A.C. currents provide evidence that one can either know when and where the slashdotting will occur (deemed a slashvertizment), or the rate and direction of products, but not both at once.

But I CAN recommend watching "48 Hrs" over Lethal Weapon. It's the template.

It is the cause. It IS a social one.

It is because of corporate food production, factory farming and industrial "recipes" that make cheap and plentiful Soylent Soy or Corpulent Corn - with added glutimate to overstimulate appetite generation.

These are the product of an agribusiness that has made this production a part of public policy, through the US Farm Bill and other legislative manipulation.

If you are deliberately misinformed, marketed to death, and underpaid, the last thing you need to solve for the attendant health effects is more pills. It's like plugging your nostrils, because you have a cold.

But I bet the pharmaceutical and health-insurance rackets love the idea...

The man WHO PROVED that GOD lives inside a QUARK!??!

If you open source your code, you have fulfilled the intended purpose of the patent system to benefit society, without requiring patents. FLOSS should be immune to patent suits. Furthermore, there is zero evidence that patents themselves fulfill their intended purpose. Indeed, the automotive and fashion industries both innovate in design and sell heavily on design and are very profitable, and yet they are not allowed copyright or design patents. So, there is no evidence that patents are beneficial for society; In fact, I would say we need to prove they are not harmful to society before running the world's economy based on the economically untenable practice of selling ice to Eskimos: Selling ideas to thinking humans; Selling information to folks with computers. You can charge for an igloo to be built, but not the snow. You can charge for a program to be created, but not the bits. You can charge for research to be done, but not the discoveries.

That which is in infinite supply has zero price regardless of cost to create. Leverage your infinite monopoly over your ability to do work, afterwards you have no monopoly on the number of people who can benefit from the work. This is how mechanics, home builders, and every other labor market works: Agree on payment for work (bid), do the work, get paid once for the work. Mechanics don't change each person who drives a car for their benefit. You want more money? Do more work.

Artificial scarcity of information and ideas is counter to the progress of better information and ideas. Think. If you want more information and ideas then would not requiring people to create new works in order to get paid? All speculation such as, "Well if we didn't have patents then companies would X" are evidenced hypothetical bullshit. Those fearing sequestration of ideas are fools: Do not underestimate today's reverse engineers; They have scanning electron microscopes. Access to hardware is game over from a security perspective because the secrets can not be kept from us. Do the damn experiment otherwise we have no evidence to support the current hypothesis.

If you are an engineer or scientist and you are for patents and copyright, then you have rejected the tenets of your craft. There is no evidence to back the belief that patents or copyrights are beneficial. In fact, we know they can be unnecessary, and can be harmful: Engineers do not look for solutions in the patent database because they risk treble damages of foreknowledge of infringement, and risk of a competitor preventing their profit. If it costs less to re-invent the wheel than use established ideas, your patent system is not beneficial to society.

Nexus devices don't have them because somebody at Google doesn't seem to like them.

Unfortunately I get the impression sometimes that there are influential people at Google who think that the iPhone is popular because you can't insert an SD card, can't change the battery, and because the battery life is crap, rather than because it's user friendly.

Yes, that WAS my point. One of them, anyway. In order to override ANY U.S. law, it first has to be ratified by the Senate.

Technically true, but remember that a treaty is usually a combination of clauses, not just one, all of which need to be agreed to. If the Senate agrees that the good clauses are something they want then they have to decide whether the bad ones are something that can be tolerated or not.

Now, based upon this, and based upon the fact the Senate can't just pass amendments or similar in the usual way, and given the fact that SOPA is pretty much what the political establishment wants in this country, do you think we stand much of a chance of seeing this treaty go unratified?

When I saw spreadsheets for the first time I said the same thing:

Von Neumann would be proud.

Yeah, and in client side systems they're known as call-backs or event driven, etc. etc.

I don't know about you, but if it's old let's call it new!

As a scientist I always test the null hypothesis to quantify usefulness of my research. They did a bunch of work, but is it any better than a simple randomized selection of text?

As a quick test of the null hypothesis, below I have selected a random bible verse and inserted into the middle a random statement from SICP after the nearest to center semicolon, comma, period, and or or:

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, this takes two arguments, a symbol and a list, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

And we have seen and, evaluating this combination involves three subproblems, testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, However, if we allow mutators on list structure, sharing becomes significant, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me the machine repeatedly executes a controller loop, changing the contents of the registers, until some termination condition is satisfied, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Verses from: Random Bible Verse. I scrolled around the TOC with my eyes closed, clicked a link, then repeated the process waggling my mouse erratically to select sentences from SICP. YMMV.

I just measure things by comparing them to a few trusty old plancks.