Unfortunately no.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that this is legal.
225 karma · joined February 15, 2011
The Supreme Court has already ruled that this is legal.
If you're looking for a complete credit report, there is no reason to not use https://www.annualcreditreport.com/. It is the official site set up by the three reporting agencies, as mandated by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act.
http://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-Charles-Clarke/...
The customer service has been outstanding. I've never spent a minute on hold, and of the three disputes I've had (one identity theft, one double charge, one true merchant dispute) they've canceled the charge in seconds without question. I received a confirmation letter in the mail about a week later and that was the end of it each time. It's been a completely different experience than when I had a "free pizza" card.
The actual stories under each category were identical, other than a few were linked to different sources.
Imagine you want to encode something like y = 2 * sin(2 * x) + .1 * sin(10 * x) to save space.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sin%28x%29+%2B+.1*sin%2...
That is composed of two different sine waves added together - one low frequency, large amplitude and one high frequency low amplitude. That can be encoded two different ways - lossy or lossless.
A lossy encoder gets rid of unimportant data and keeps a "close enough" representation of the original. In this example, .1 * sin(10 * t) is a minor component of the overall signal (plot them separately if you need to compare the difference) so the encoder chooses to delete it and only save 2 * sin(2 * t). In a real world sound, this would be like throwing away noise that is so high pitched we can't hear it, or is so quiet we can't detect it. A real encoder has to decide what the "small enough it can be deleted" threshold is, and it's rarely black and white.
A lossless encoder looks at that signal and thinks "there has got to be a more efficient way to store that data". They are both sine functions, so that doesn't need to be repeated twice. "x" is completely unnecessary, because it knows the sine functions are dependent on some variable. So, it could write out something like "sin (2,2) (.1,10)". All of the original data is still there, if whoever receives the data (the decoder) knows how to interpret it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power...
Yes, all systems fail. Fukushima was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and a 10m tsunami, which is about the worst environment imaginable and it almost survived intact. Most newer technologies would have been unaffected, or at least shut down into a safe state.
And yes, you can come up with nightmare scenarios for every technology. Fukushima experienced one in a dilapidated state and just about came through unscathed. Add in another 30 or 40 years of science and engineering and the chances of a nuclear disaster effectively become zero.
Compared with the pollution and deaths associated with coal, I know which side I'd rather be on.
Looking at US numbers only, we would need to figure a way to store 51.69 TWh and supply over an 18 hour period. They are storing 233 MWh and distributing over 5 minutes.
For a pumping station, that works out to 379.4 cubic kilometers of water lifted 50 meters in the air. For comparison, that is 20 times the volume of the Great Salt Lake. About the volume of Lake Erie once inefficiencies are factored in.
I also ran the numbers a while back in a renewable energy class for lead acid batteries. That would require something like the entire lead production of the world for several years, just to handle the US.
Cellulosic/Algae Ethanol: About an order of magnitude off on cost, many orders away on capacity. They are still immature technologies but seem to have a lot of promise.
Photovoltaic Solar: Cost is almost there, but no one has a plan for what to do when the sun isn't shining. Solar systems can only produce energy for about 6 hours a day, which presents a problem when we need energy for 24 hours. It doesn't produce energy during peak demand (~5-9pm) to even help with load balancing. People can currently make a small profit selling back to the grid, but there's virtually no chance of it providing more than about 5% of demand.
Solar Thermal Collectors: Better than photovoltaic as they can generally produce power for about 8 hours, then molten salt batteries can provide energy for another couple; but still not a viable large scale solution.
Wind: Geographically limited, very high maintenance costs.
Hydrogen: Only an energy storage medium, not a means to produce energy. In most cases there are more efficient ways to use the energy directly without the additional loss of producing hydrogen.
Corn Ethanol: Energy storage medium, and a bad one. The most optimistic numbers I've found indicate it requires about .84 gallons of gasoline to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. Most numbers are significantly worse, in the 1.2-1.4 range. It sounds great if the lower numbers are accurate, but 1 gallon of ethanol contains ~2/3 the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline so it's still a net loss. (note: I haven't done any serious research on sugarcane ethanol, which at first glance appears somewhat better)
Hydroelectic: Great technology that is proven, cost effective, and viable; but is severely limited geographically and the dams can cause major environmental concerns.
After years of following the news, studying it, and taking classes in renewable energy; it always comes back to nuclear. If it wasn't for legislative bungling, lawsuits preventing new plants, and the occasional (comparatively) minor failure of 40 year old technology we wouldn't even be talking about a clean energy problem. I'd love for one of these technologies to prove me wrong but there is little indication they will in the near future.
"The crop rotations in the organic systems are more diverse than in the conventional systems, including up to seven crops in eight years (compared to two conventional crops in two years)."
Also, be sure to keep the source of this study in mind:
"Rodale Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach. For over sixty years, we’ve been researching the best practices of organic agriculture and sharing our findings with farmers and scientists throughout the world, advocating for policies that support farmers, and educating consumers about how going organic is the healthiest option for people and the planet."
For me, a poorly conducted experiment by a very biased source, who doesn't publish any details on said experiment, and which contradict most conventional wisdom should be met with great skepticism.
Two example from my career:
I spent two summers working construction on job sites. Running pipe, cutting beams, and building scaffolding are skills I likely will never use again professionally. However, it gave me insight into what people who are directly affected by my work experience. I am now extremely careful to consider what the end users experience. Maybe moving the bolt holes from position X to Y will add 4 hours to my workload, but it will save the installer 30 minutes on every one they put in.
I started in computer engineering. I didn't go very far but thanks to those 2 semesters, my programming skills are miles ahead of many of my peers (although they are still quite primitive). This gives me the ability to write scripts/programs to create functionality that is nonexistant it my field. Sometimes it allows me to work projects that would otherwise be impossible, sometimes it just saves myself or others hours or even days.
I hope this doesn't come across as boastful, my skillset is woefully inadequate in many areas which my peers do have experience.
Neither of those skills were touched on in my engineering curriculum, but learning them made me a much better engineer. I would imagine many of these items, while not "core computer science", would make a CS grad better and more marketable.