Did this guy just reinvent spreadsheets? There's something to be said for this, but having written in Prolog, which works that way, the 'reactive programming' people have to make a better case than the article does.

On the other hand, one of the big problems in databases is change notification. Microsoft at one point had a research project on this. The concept was that you could make a request to be notified when something of interest changed in the database. This was expressed as an SQL SELECT statement. When some change was made that would affect the output of your pending SELECT, you'd be notified. The problem was to figure out some efficient way to do this with thousands or millions of pending SELECT statements.

Finance people use notifications like that all the time. Limits on stocks, limits on combinations of stocks, changes in key ratios, that sort of thing. But the systems for that are specialized, a special case of a more general problem. The most general form of the problem is that B wants to know when something has changed at A. Most of the solutions for this have problems. Polling is either inefficient or slow. B relying on A to message them on a change has a failure problem. Both approaches can result in overloading A with checks for events that aren't happening.

I wonder if this is really aimed at academia.edu rather than the authors. As far as I can tell, Elsevier hasn't (yet, at least) gone after academics posting their own papers on their own website in the traditional manner, i.e. as a PDF at www.university.edu/~jsmith/papers/smith2013bigresult.pdf.

Just last month, a friends kids class had 8 become infected with measles, but they were all vaccinated.

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

Really? I'd be shocked. This is Saturn not Uranus.

Its a chicken and egg problem. People won't submit their best papers to you until you have a top reputation. You don't get a top reputation until you get enough high quality papers.

I think some public journals have managed it, but its difficult. Optics Express is one excellent example.

I work at a big national laboratory that is funded by the US government.

Naturally the government needs to allocate limited funds among their various laboratories, each of which has more ideas for things to do than there is funding.

In order to avoid corruption / favoritism (remember total we are talking billions of dollars), the government wants a quantifiable way to evaluate the performance of the laboratories in order to help determine how to best distribute the available funds.

One of the metrics they have picked is number of publications in "high impact" journals. (its not easy to think of better quantifiable metrics).

Most of the high impact journals are the old private journals like Physical Review, or Nature.

So, if the scientists refuse to publish in these journals, the laboratory looks worse, and will tend to lose funds. This will direct money away from the best labs.

Of course publishing in high impact journals also helps the scientists' careers - and the same sort of arguments apply.

The journals of course are businesses and quite reasonably want to stay in business and make a profit.

Sadly I don't have a good idea for a solution.

Indeed. I could agree to leave such important things to old troglodytes as long as they were also scientists: "Let us apply the law in this manner provisionally, and re-examine to test the hypothesis of its benefit after N years; We must test a decision to see, and also consider the null hypothesis, for laws that provide no benefit only tax our legal system. Let us rely not on case-law, but on observational evidence of intent to do malice or good."

Sadly no such individuals exist in this reality. The quantum waveform has collapsed into the worst possible configuration: Scientists beg for funds while stodgy old farts rule the world. Note that there is ZERO evidence that patents and copyrights are actually "beneficial for society", we have only evidence that such protections are not required for innovation and profit in the markets that have no copyright or design patents: The automotive and fashion industries. Software Patents? HA! Prove Patents themselves aren't harmful first. It seems we need a medicine that not even The Doctor can prescribe.

The point to take away here is that you can generally avoid being charged with "bad faith" by not doing specific bad things. The standard in the bill is much more ambiguous.

On the other side, an infinger can be charged triple damages for "willful infringement". A recent court decision raised that standard to "willful and reckless", which is almost impossible to prove.

You are wasting a shit ton of money on Terrorism protections, meanwhile falling down in the bathtub is a greater risk to American lives.

Every year: Heart disease and accidents cause Four Hundred Times more deaths than a 9/11 scale attack. We will fight you to the death for the freedom to drive fast cars to fast food restaurants. We do not need protection from the pathetic "terrorist threat". Stand terrorism next to ANY other threat and you will see why our HUGE budget to fight it is ridiculous and proponents of spending such should be fired on sight. They say Terrorism is nothing to sneeze at, but EVERY YEAR the Flu kills SIX TIMES more people than a 9/11 scale attack. They pay for submarines to tap into under sea cables to prevent terrorism? Body scanners and gropers at transportation hubs? No longer.

The public needs proportional protection from proportional risk. The budget for terrorist protection should be less than that of the Flu prevention, and less than what we spend to preventing you from braining yourself on the bathtub faucet by accident. It has become clear that our protection is not the government's agenda. It seems that the agenda is to funnel as much money possible into the pockets of those who benefit by increasing the size and reach of the Military Industrial Complex.

You have made Eisenhower's Nightmare come true.

If you had a structural defect, like a broken arm, and I prescribed yoghurt... You'd be pretty pissed off that I didn't tell you it was just calcium you needed and that I didn't mend your arm. You should be equally upset if you had a mental structural defect and I told you to go eat shit.

relevant link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-NMfp13Uug

You can identify an autistic mouse the same way as an autistic human, or any other mammal: Look inside its brain.

Seriously? Gut bacteria... For neurological structural issues? I mean, that's like blaming a fever on a nasal drip, or blaming a warp core breach on a tachyon emitter malfunction.

Look, we need to just ditch psychology. That's just confirmation bias: "Autism like", fucking please stop. Let the folks like neurologists and cyberneticians, who study how behaviours actually occur via observable evidence and testable models, come up with the distinctions. Remember how the DSM is basically just bullshit? Remember how Autism Spectrum Disorder was punted because there was no observable link to reality thus the term doesn't mean a damn thing? Thus taking Asperger's syndrome out too? No? Then shut the fuck up and go educate yourself. Psychology isn't a science, its confirmation bias that doesn't hold up to the null hypothesis: the hypothesis that similarities of a group are nothing more than self selected hogwash. Science requires the null hypothesis to be disproved before you write a damn prescription. How does that make you feel?

There's a 12-volt lead-acid battery in the thing to power the auxiliary systems. It's the same size as a regular automotive battery, but apparently is a sealed type, intended to last the life of the vehicle. Since it doesn't need to provide cranking power, a high-current battery isn't necessary.

Tesla owners have been reporting 12 volt battery failures for months. Usually the charging system reports "12 volt battery failure", but apparently a partial failure is possible, where the aux battery is an energy drain but still functional.

That's 4.5 kilowatt-hours per day. I.e. in a day, it draws 4.5 kWh of energy.

A watt is a unit of power. A watt-hour is a unit of energy. 1 Wh = 1 W x 1 h. Similarly, 1 kWh = 1 kW x 1h. A 200-watt motor left on for an hour will draw 200 Wh of energy. A 200-watt motor left on all thetime will draw 200 W x 24 h = 4.8 kWh of energy per day.