harshpotatoes's comments

I don't like his method of measuring the curvature distance.

I think it will be very difficult to align a local to the local tangent of the earth's surface. Over a distance of 700m, the earth's surface deviates by about 4cm. This means we would have to align our laser to within 50 microradians in order to accurately measure the deviation of the earth's surface.

Further more, his two beam system is setup using two lasers spaced about 4m apart requires even greater accuracy. Let's imagine system 1 is aligned to the local tangent at one end of the terminal (x = 0m), system 2 is aligned to the local tangent 4 m away at x = 4m, and heights of the two beams are measured at the opposite end of the terminal (x = 700 m). The height difference between these two beams will be about 1 micron. If we assume that the beams are large enough that there is no spread in beam size, then each beam is about 3 cm in diameter. This means we need to measure the beam height to better 0.003% accuracy relative to the beam size. I think this will be a very difficult measurement.

I think there is a way you could very accurately measure the relative angle between two beams in a larger interferometer and two lasers, but I'll have to think about how it would look...

Regardless, it's always fun to think about this small corrections to our expectations. To be honest, I was a little surprised to think about it, 4cm of deviation over 700m is actually a bit larger than I expected.

I agree that things won't change instantaneously, but I also don't think change will happen or even could happen as quickly as most of the talk on the internet thinks it should.

These articles make the rounds on the internet every few months, which gives the impression change should happen quickly. But, given the enormous costs that exist to switch over, I think it's more likely we'll see a gradual change over our lifetime.

Could you imagine Boeing/lockheed/GM/some some oil company or any other manufacturer going up to their stockholders and saying: "This next year, profits will be significantly reduced as we replace every piece of equipment we own, replace every 1/4-20 screw with an M5, and redesign every aircraft/automobile/widget to meet new metric specifications"

I have a similar issue using Brighthouse in Florida. For the longest time I was able to stream HD quality from netflix through my roku, until recently. I always suspect that my ISP is somehow the cause, the only problem is I can't imagine how I would prove it, or what I could do even if I could prove it.

That makes sense. So i guess from the perspective of the regulators the options are now either prevent the uber cabs from being flagged down from the street to remove the incentive to roam the street and keep the limo/cab markets separate and ensure the streets remain clearish. Or, remove the regulations, find some way to appease the old cabbies (refund the large license fee), and hope the lack of regulation does not cause huge traffic problems (maybe ticket loitering or cruising, as done in some small towns).

So I understand that on of the main points of contention is that the paris cab drivers face steep regulation in the form of requiring an expensive license, while the Uber drivers require no such license, and that to counter this lack of regulation they require the Uber drivers to wait 15minutes before picking up their customer.

But there are still a few things I don't understand: Why do the Paris cab drivers require such regulations? How come the Uber drivers aren't required to have such a license? And maybe I don't completely understand the advantages of Uber (because I've never used a cab before), but at first glance, it seems the main reason uber is succeeding so well, is that there is an app to quickly summon a driver. So why doesn't such an app exist to call these licensed drivers who are so angry?

So, I don't understand. Why does bitcoin have such high deflation?

Is this just because there has been a constant stream of people switching their traditional currencies for bitcoins at a rate faster than bitcoins can be mined?

Presumably at some point bitcoin will stop being deflationary if it ever wants to be useful as a currency. When does that happen?

Why do people buy bitcoins if it isn't really useful as a currency yet? I mean, there are supposedly 3.5 billion USD worth of bitcoins in existence, but if I want to buy any sort of physical product or pay for utilities, I have to use a traditional currency.

Currently it appears that bitcoins are most popularly used for less than legal purposes (payment for drugs, payment for services to avoid taxes, payment for blackhat services). Does this mean that by buying into bitcoin, I'm essentially providing USD to these black market activities which might not have had USD to begin with?

Many questions I don't understand...

Even more unreasonable: His original reason for wanting the list of zipcodes was to correlate the zip codes of some health inspections in some county in Oregon to a specific location. Undoubtedly, these health inspections are older than one day, and therefore using two year old data from the census would probably provide the same accuracy as the zipcodes updated daily.

I feel like this legislature would be a huge cost to startups wishing to do business in Germany, and would likewise be a huge cost to already established businesses.

Of course, I suppose there is the added benefit that many companies would now be legally required to have a physical presence in Germany, requiring the creation of many more local data centers. Presumably this would boost the already high performing German economy.

I wonder how this would effect IRC servers. Would you have to forbid connections from Germany if there already was a user connected from Germany?

In that same line of questioning, wow would a teleconference work? Two german companies and two american companies are communicating in a group call via skype or something. The server is located in the US. Does this mean that the two German companies are communicating with each other and therefore the server must be located in Germany? If the US had the same laws, does this mean it is impossible for the group call to be made at all?

How much more difficult would it make telecommuting if multiple telecommuters are located within Germany?

What if user A located in germany wants to send an email or instant message to user B in germany, but is VPNed to a server in another country. Maybe User A is on a business trip to germnay and is VPNed to their work, or something. How could such a message be routed completely within the German borders? Would the VPN have to detect the nature of the message and reject it?

Am I understanding everything correctly?

I don't understand, should the SEC only occaisionally enforce the laws? Would you prefer a situation where he was not prosecuted for insider trading, even though this is a crime he committed?

If I understand both you and the parent correctly, you are describing the same process. When you melt two fibers together, the cores aren't really becoming one. Really, they melt together such that light from one core partially evanescently couples into the core of the adjacent fiber.

http://www.goochandhousego.com/products/passive-fiber-optic-...

So the question becomes, to how young a person does this apply? How far back can be extrapolated? Is a slow 40something as meaningful a data point as a slow 70something year old?

Was it perfectly edible? My understanding of the fiasco is that it was not simply calling horsemeat beef or some other meat. My understanding is that the horsemeat found in packages originated from meat labeled as not for human consumption, meaning that particular horsemeat had not gone through the same safety inspection normally given to meat which is labeled as for human consumption. To me, this seems that the horsemeat might not be perfectly edible.

ErSo, there are a few things I don't quite understand. In the original study, Renhart had erroneously averaged 7 numbers together to get a slightly negative growth. The 'correct' result is obtained from averaging eight numbers together, resulting in slightly positive growth. What is unclear to me, is how are either of these numbers considered to be very significant? With so few samples in the average, I would draw the conclusion that both measurements agree with one another and the error bars for their measured result are quite a bit larger than they seem to be suggesting. Is this common in economics?

I dunno. Reservation seems very unemotional and bureaucratic, very disconnected from any soft and cuddly words. Nature reserves are land that has been set aside for nature purposes, Indian reservations are land set aside for the Native Americans, and nuclear reservation are land set aside for nuclear purposes. When you phone ahead to a restaurant/hotel/car rental agency and make a reservation, a table/room/car has been set aside for you.

Do you use a different word in the UK for these situations?

I thought silent hill was quite good, probably due to less rigid 'canon' allowing for flexibility in characters and story. Admittedly, this would make it the exception and not the rule. I also think this means that Half Life/Portal would not translate well into a movie.

Without further details from Coke, I believe you are absolutely correct. Oranges do not have constant flavor throughout the year, and the various species of oranges which mature at different points in the season have quite different flavors. For example, in Florida, Valencia oranges rippen after decemeber for a few months, and are probably the most delicious orange you will eat. This supply of oranges is not enough to last the whole year, so most of these oranges are squeezed, pasteurized and stored for later use. The rest of the year, you might squeeze naval orange (kinda shitty orange), early-mids, or other oranges. Even worse, oranges have varying flavor throughout the season. When Valencias first come into season, most are half ripe, or half green. Maybe only for a few weeks out of the year will you get that perfect tasting orange. And god help you if those oranges are oragnic, and half of them are covered in mold.

Rather than sell you an orange juice with varying flavor throughout the year, or even throughout the season, it is much less wasteful and much higher yield to blend the oranges together to produce some rather fine tasting juice. All of the companies receive these blends (and essentially the same blends), the only difference between the companies is in what they do with these blends. Some choose to produce a less bitter juice, or sweeter, or more pulp. etc.

Anyways, it's not clear how their algorithm is different from this advertisement.

As a 26 year old, I can agree with his conclusion (or at least want his conclusion to be true). With 40-60 hour work weeks for both my girlfriend and I, it can be difficult sometimes. Similarly, new friendships can be hard to come by. With current job dynamics, moving can be an almost certainty, increasing the difficulty of maintaining friendships.

However, I have to wonder, would 25 hour work weeks actually increase the length of our employ-ability, allowing us to work until the age of 80? I thought part of today's current long term unemployment problem (in the US), is that finding employment for older, more skilled, adults was difficult, due to perceived overqualifications or lack of training in newer technologies. I thought part of the point of work hard while you're young, was to save enough money to allow you to survive the possibility of permanent unemployment in old age (either due to health or over qualification in unused technologies).

There are many ways to present the data such that situation in the pacific northwest doesn't seem so bad."If you look at the total inches of rainfall in Seattle, we really don't get that much rain." "Oh sure, most days it rains, but by hour it really isn't so bad." "No, you can go outside. You just need to wait for a small break in the weather, and then you can do all your errands or go play outside briefly."

Well, I suppose this is all true, but it doesn't change how depressing this is. After living in the PNW for 22 years, and then moving to Florida, I understand a lot more about how bad it is. Sure, it rains a lot more in Florida. In fact, I'd be willing to be there are more rainy days here. But, you don't spend all day waiting for that small break. You go outside, enjoy the day, and then the sky dumps several inches of water over an hour. Afterwards, the clouds are gone and the sun is back.

Gone are the days of walking through the fine mist of rain, which just seems to hover in the air and somehow soak you to the bone despite your waterproof coat. No more constant drizzle which have lasted the entire week.

The pacific northwest is a wonderful area. Beautiful scenary, wonderful hiking, amazing summers, and for the most part interesting people. But there is just something just wrong about it. Maybe it's the rain, or the overcast, or something, but now that I don't live there, I am happy.

Ok, thats a good point. I'm not farmiliar enough with the globe to remember the great circle routes.