One thing complicating this is BRAC. There are F-16 wings that are maneuvering to try to get F-15s right now, even though the 15 is older and more difficult to maintain. What the 15 gives a wing is more flexibility. No one wants to be "air superiority and patrol" anymore since there isn't much need for that these days. And since 16s are limited in ground support capabilities, some people see the 15 as the only way to stay in business. Note that this isn't as much of a concern for the regular air force, who will mostly just shuffle people around, but has a massive effect on the air national guard.

So having a single jet that can do it all (ground attack, air attack, stealth, vtol, carrier, you name it) means that you won't be considered obsolete.

So, in other words, not cut at all. Just a shell game then.

The Dept. of Ed typically runs and coordinates special programs, and the funding for them. They are called by their Title # relating to what part of the policy they are under. Like Title 1, better known as No Child Left Behind these days, which is tied to funding for schools with significant low SES students. (Little known: if you don't take title 1 money, then you can tell the feds and the state to fuck off as far as the penalties for not meeting the requirements. Not done often, but I was at a site where we made the choice to refuse the money). There are other decidedly less sexy titles as well. The reality is that most public school do not take much money from the feds, the money they do take usually has restrictions, and often there is some ideological influence that the feds are trying to influence (see NCLB, abstinence only sex ed, etc.).

This is misleading. The library keeps records of what you currently have checked out. My public and school libraries do not keep a record of what I have checked out in the past. Your library may differ, but the ALA officially vigorously defends individuals right to intellectual freedom, and that includes not tracking reading history.

Uh... what do you think the Dept. of Energy does?
Hint: The Nova laser and NIF are not about power generation.

No. Very different situations. The foldit players leveraged persistence and human pattern recognition for a solution to a relatively recent problem. Dr. Wiles aside (I jest...), 150 year old prominent open problems require more than persistence and ambition.

That's part of a report that is available to ALA members, but here's a more useful, but not comprehensive, guide with much of the info you would be interested in.

Robots, due to the initial investment, may not turn out to be as cost effective as imagined. When Toyota opened their first plant in Japan in the last 18 years, they went for low cost of building the factory, and fast manufacturing times instead of complex robotics to minimize wages/benefits.

In an age where things like company agility is valued, and start-up capital (including commercial lines of credit) is very limited, I'm not sure that robots are going to beat humans on price any time soon.

The air races have always been risky. Everyone knew that very well. Think about what would happen if every auto racing mishap resulted in sharp acceleration until collision with some other solid object. There have been crashes and deaths in the past, but this is really tragic as most mishaps happen far away from the grandstands.

It may be insensitive, but I'm actually most sad over losing another plane. For years there's been speculation that unlimited class racing's days were numbered. Not enough planes and parts, not enough pilots, not enough mechanics. But the unlimited class is what captures the imagination. Lefty in White Lightning, Hinton in the Red Baron, Tiger in Strega... I connected with the old warbirds and their pilots in ways that I kind of don't have words for right now.

I'm sad for the injured and dead, but I'm devastated over what feels like the end of an era.

As others have said, it's not a show, but a race. Also, unlimited class race planes are not normal planes. They chop the wings and boost the superchargers. Tiger Destifani once said that without a significant amount of thrust, the modified P51s have the aerodynamic capability of a cannonball. As they must for those speeds. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen was a P51 (I think it was the Red Baron, notable for having counter-rotating props) diving into the main straight to do a qualifying lap and see vapor trails coming off the wings at 1000ft. P51s aren't supposed go get anywhere near those speeds. The point being: these aren't normal planes, and they aren't doing normal activities, and they are always on the edge of the envelope.

I'm participating in the full course online, and am excited to do so. A large part of my motivation is for learning about the challenges that the instructors face, and their design solutions to meet their goals. I emailed Dr. Thrun asking if I could ask some questions, or if there were plans to present their experiences at the end. The response, as I expected for a very, very busy professor, was that they will probably report our generally at the end. Which I'm totally cool with. However, this seems like maybe more information is going to Know Labs to create a product, rather than to the world to create better distance education opportunities (which, I would argue, is more valuable than teaching the world about AI). Still not the worst thing in the world, and I'm not complaining about getting the chance to learn what I can, but private money in education rarely turns out for the better.

I really like it. There are many things that work very well for me, and where I developed an immediate and natural workflow that trips me up when I switch to a different computer. I love that it uses CSS for appearance settings.

That said... it is buggy. I had to make scripts to reset my customizations that get written over every time I update. I'm a Fedora person, so I work with a reasonable expectation of what comes when living in the area between cutting and bleeding edge changes, but it doesn't quite seem ready for primetime in all honesty. But I still like it.

...thanks. We don't have many allies these days outside the profession. I appreciate those who are.

I found it interesting who was on the list and who wasn't.
-Experian is but Fair Issac (who has a couple of offices near here) isn't.
-Amex is but Visa, one of the Bay Area's largest employers, isn't.
-Many insurance companies. I know past behavior is important to these companies, but web tracking? I don't know enough to see why this is worth fighting for on their end.
-California Assoc. of Licensed Investigators. Probably the only honest ones on the list. "We want to be able to track you, because, um, we track people. That's what we do."

So I wonder if some of the companies that aren't on here don't care, weren't asked, or actively don't want to be on a list with PR nightmares like the MPAA.

I believe this is on the right track. I don't know about these systems, but some radio-telescopes require liquid N for cooling the first stages of amplification circuitry. The early stages are super-high gain, and since you can't really change the bandwidth measured too much, and there are practical limits to the resistance of the components used (and you sure as hell can't change Boltzmann's constant) the easiest way to eliminate random noise is to get T as close to 0K as practicable.

Another issue can be calibration. Maybe if it's not active it's not being calibrated and for sensitive equipment, that can mean that it's no longer "trusted" even if it's later brought back within spec.