Slashdot Mirror

Believe it or not... decades before the Soviet invasion of 1979, America and the Soviet Union competed to develop Afghanistan's infrastructure. Americans built roads, dams, irrigation, public buildings. They started industries, newspapers, held fashion shows...

The result was - well, it was the Afghanistan we see today. Read about it here.

Simplistic answers don't work.

While certain Christian idiots have done things like bomb abortion clinics (thereby killing both doctors and those seeking abortions), I ask if you've ever seen one try to poison a school full of children for being taught evolution? I thought not.

How about a Christian who shot and killed 77 people, mostly children, at a summer school, in what he calls a Knights Templar operation carried out to defend Christians, and who has today in court said that the deliberate killing of children was justified because they were not 'non-political children' ?

I doubt that it will happen so fast there will be a need for "scramble".

But we're already seeing some "scrambling". And what about poor countries where the majority of the populace can't go inside and huddle around an air conditioner in weeks or months of 100+ degree heat. And how about famine caused by mass crop failures...

There's an interesting article about that, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/freakwave.shtml
Apparently, there are two scientific models, linear, which says freak waves are impossible and Quantum physics which says they are possible.

Oh yeah, just found it. They found about 10 giant waves.

Silly man, he did not understand that globalisation is for corporates to exploit, it is not for individuals to benefit from.

Companies do this all the time: buy goods or get them made where ever in the world it is cheapest for them to do so. They then sell them at different prices in different countries: price it too high in India and you don't get sales, price it too low in Europe and you loose potential profit.

They can't possibly have customers doing the same thing - it would damage their profits and the CEO's bonus would have to be cut. So they adopt all manner of tactics to stop us from benefiting from globalisation in the way that they do: * region coding on DVDs, * refusal to service equipment if imported (even if identical ones are sold in the country), sue non approved importers, ... All designed to distort the free market

I would mind paying more for something that I buy in England if it were made with English labour paid English wages. What I object to is them paying third world people slave rates and charging me top dollar - I don't like the hypocrisy of it all.

Here they are

Some may disagree with you. Chinese lacquerware can last 2000 years and be worth an awful lot of money. If you're writing from the USA, give us a call in the year 3776 and let us know how you're getting on with your crockery...

...going for a walk. A good walk works wonders and is a little less extreme than electrodes in the brain. That said, my depression was a side effect of a long term illness and the walking may have had other health benefits that improved my mindset.

That said, walking might not be a great idea if you'd lost your job, sold your car, etc. etc...

$80k is pretty high compared to the rest of the world where coder jobs might be outsourced to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17543356

So seriously, people should stop encouraging women (or even men) in rich (expensive) countries to go into fields where most of the jobs are easily outsourced to people earning 1/3rd the wages. Especially when most women seem more interested in jobs that turn out to not be easily outsourced.

DO give them the opportunity and better information, but if they are not really interested, they are going to be mediocre. Bosses might as well pay someone 1/3rd their wages for mediocre. And if you're going to get "thedailyWTF", you might as well be paying 1/3rd for it - at least you can hire 3 and keep the least crap.

Some IT jobs won't be so easily outsourced - latency sensitive or need you around to talk to people, but a lot of it can actually be. How sure are you there'll be enough non-outsourceable jobs in the future?

If you want to encourage women to be coders, try the well-educated ones in poor countries. Earning $80K would make them very rich.

FWIW I live in a 3rd world country and earn less than 1/3rd of 80K. And I think I have better reading, writing and thinking skills than most here on Slashdot.

teach them to laugh at youtube or something

now they can collaborate with the chimps and ride the short term trading wave at Wall Street.

And of course I would be weirded out entirely based on the medical evidence that a significant number of people take on personality traits of the heart donor. Granted it's a long way off scientific proof, but there's enough there that I would reserve judgement until it was investigated thoroughly. Nothing at all to do with belief in 'magic', but rather understanding the limits of my and humanity's knowledge.

Is your country that much better? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696 The problem isn't borrowing itself, but the interest rates. Countries that hold control over their currency (such as the USA) will try to solve any liquidity problem by printing money - that will increase the interest rate of future loans. The truth is, there is no country with real "excess of cash" - and that's exactly how the system works.

According to the Florida newspapers that have investigated the results of the laws, the rates of justified homicides have tripled. Most of those are cases that the prosecutors would have prosecuted as murder under the old laws, but didn't think they could convict under the new laws.
[snip]
So the result of the laws have been to convert violent crimes to justified homicides, and let people get away with what used to be murder.

Of course. It was considered that people were getting unjustly charged and convicted when defending themselves, so the law was changed with the intention of having exactly the effect you've described. People being allowed to defend themselves is a good thing. If it is possible to amend the law to make it more difficult for actual murderers to abuse, then good, let's do so. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and resume prosecuting genuine cases of self-defense.

Some of them involved people provoking a fight, getting beaten up, and killing the guy they originally attacked (which is what the prosecutor is charging Zimmerman with). A fair number of them involved drug dealers.

I have been unable to find an article in which drug dealers used these laws to escape justice, although I did find a couple of quotes from "Buddy Jacobs, general counsel of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association cited the Stand Your Ground law's unintended effects on cases involving drug killings in calling for its repeal during a task force hearing". It would be good if he gave an example, perhaps he has and I just can't find it. I did find on the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17693084 a case of a gang shootout although they didn't mention drugs.

There were rumors of a possible coup by a faction of PLA officers who allegedly supported Bo Xilai, a former Politburo candidate who was sacked on allegations of corruption and murder. No real evidence, but the central government was already uneasy because such a high profile scandal has introduced significant uncertainty to their succession planning. Therefore, the Chinese government did not appreciate such rumors and speculation spreading like wildfire on the Internet.

I was excited when I read the BBC's headline until I'd read the story. Ettore Majorana's disappearance is more interesting.

But in Europe, all cars have to have (by law) brakes that have enough stopping power to overcome the engine. The result is that hitting the brakes will slow you down despite full throttle. This will eventually lead to a stall of the engine and a complete stop. You will damage your car, but at the point you're using this lives are at stake. Does this not apply in the US?

Then again, I've only ever really driven manuals, where in such a situation (not that it ever happened to me) I can just lift the clutch and coast to the side. Can you not shift an automatic transmission from "D" to "N" when accelerating? I've never tried tbh, but I can't think of why that wouldn't work...

Also, what is wrong with turning off the engine? Turn the key so the ignition is off, and then turn it part way. This is usually enough to stop the steering lock engaging, while still not starting the engine again.

I've never heard of this being a problem in Europe, honestly. We have automatics here too, but I've yet to hear of any runaway cars. Is this a US specific problem? If so what would cause it to be so? (or have I just missed out on these events in Europe)

Also, the BBC provide a nice article on what to do if you are in a runaway car: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8498257.stm

Islamic ‘Adult Breastfeeding’ Fatwas Return in Egypt

How many countries has NK invaded in the last 100 years?

One (South Korea). There was this minor scuffle called the Korean War back in the fifties. Perhaps you might have heard of it.

How many people have they killed?

Lots.

If anything, they are much more peaceful

You tell that to the people who were kidnapped from Japan to train North Korean spies.

It's a small, poor country, they are not a real threat.

A small, poor country with nuclear weapons, spends over 30% of its GDP on the military, has a history of threats to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire,", not to mention torpedoing South Korean ships and shelling South Korea (only a few miles from Incheon International Airport, mind you) Just the kind of small, poor, safe neighbor you want to have in your backyard.

If need be NK could be crushed in a few days.

If it were that easy, it'd have been done already. Even if all of their missiles fail (leaving them unable to attack Japan), they can still easily decimate Seoul, as it's within artillery range of the North Korean border. NK also happens to have an unholy relationship to China, which is fed up with NK's antics, but is still geopolitically wedded to that nation. China will most likely be forced to intervene against any Western efforts to dislodge the Dear Leader.

Last time I checked launching satellites doesn't goes against any treaty signed by NK

They broke their agreement over nuclear development. That's why no one trusts them.

no nation has the right to tell another sovereign nation it can't research rocketry or launch rockets into the ground.

When that same nation comes begging for food which it can't buy because it spent all of its lunch money on rockets, we sure as hell do have the right to tell them how not to spend their money! And that is true even if the same nation doesn't keep threatening to take military action against the very same people offering aid.

Yes. For example a world-wide effort to eradicate polio is stymied by Islamic fundamentalists in Nigeria who spreading a rumor that the shots are really intended to sterilize male children.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15819797

Ignorance spread intentionally for political reasons has to be the most evil of all human activities.

Slightly OT, but you know how Iran complained how the London 2012 Olympics logo spells the word "Zion", and you know how Iran has just recently blocked the London 2012 Olympic website... well, I'm wondering if using a company called Interxion might just be taking the piss out of Iran a little bit?!

Yes, over half of university students in Iran, are women:

...
Well over half of university students in Iran are now women. In the applied physics department of Azad University 70% of the graduates are women - a statistic which would make many universities in the West proud.
...

Like Iran? If you read there are more female university students than males, ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5359672.stm ) I think they won't do too badly.

the company might be installing them just to get this kind of "look how much we care about your data" type of publicity

Do you think? Seeing as this has now made the BBC news, complete with image showing the interxion logo, I'd say the pods have paid for themselves already :-)

Remember the injunction against takeover sale of Liverpool FC 19 months ago after Tom Hicks lost his High Court case in the UK (which incidentally was lifted the next day)? This is yet another example of US granting injunctions in a blatant attempt to subvert other countries' rule of law.

Malaysia car thieves steal finger

Why wouldn't they? It's pretty cool when it happens:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9139000/9139971.stm
http://www.livescience.com/7585-shark-pregnant-males-required.html

(although, not so much in insects ... those happen all the time)

this is mentioned. In the UK this has been available for as long as i have been using some form of mobile phone

Perhaps you can shed some light on the degree to which this helps prevent phone theft in the UK.

The BBC seems to think the problem of stolen phones is still rampant.

Possibly not. In Bristol, UK, there was a City Councillor (herself of African descent, and oddly, spending most of her time in Florida) who accused another councillor of being a "coconut", which is a racist slur meaning someone who is "black/brown on the outside, and white on the inside". This happened in session (on the official public record). After having several firings of caucasians over implicit racist slurs, this one was practically ignored. It took a big backlash in the public to get the politicians to even begin an investigation. The councillor herself stated "I can't be racist, because I'm black.".
In the end, she got a slap on the wrist.

Actually she was convicted and now has a criminal record, and basically forced not to stand for re-election.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10443860

I can't find a single reliable source for the quote you have, so I'm calling bullshit. If there is one thing we are actually pretty good at it, it is punishing people for racism. Arguably too good if you support free speech.

That's why most startups don't do real business anymore: their model is to hype an idea and be bought up early, by a large corporation with its own protective patent portfolio.

Topical case in point: Facebook buys Instagram photo sharing network for $1bn. Instagram was launched in 2010, has 13 employees and has just been bought out at a minimum rate of around $30 million per employee per year. That's an astonishing yield and all without actually taking the business to the full term.

I'm a bit late to this thread, but anyway: multiple replies to your post, talk about electro-magnetic field frequencies. Multiple replies also talk about "I didn't hear anything while standing right next to the turbine". As far as I know, the concern is very loud, low-frequency sound, that can travel many kilometers in the ground and can' be heard by human ears. As such all those replies are completely off-topic.

Then there are replies that correctly identify the concern, but dismiss it as bogus. Well, I don't know. We are talking about exposing humans to almost constant loud low-frequency sounds (I don't think that anybody is trying to refute the existence of that) for years. In my opinion the topic hasn't been researched very well and so NIMBY steps in.

Finally there is one concern that I didn't see discussed: namely that the wind turbines are a threat to birds and bats

I'm generally of the opinion that the "PirateTV" story is something of a fabrication, only historic links I've found referring to the parties involved are:

http://www.hackmeeting.org/hackit98/LYNX/webzine.htm#thoic

and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1879859.stm

That last link screams scapegoating and reeks of the complete lack of understanding of technology so typical of the Beeb back in 02. The first suggests thoic was more or less a non enitity.

It's kind of weird that they didn't go to Wikileaks.

Therefore it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they didn't go to wikileaks precisely because they wanted to take it down before anyone took a closer look. As much as I hate newscorp, they really aren't any different than the beeb - and this all just sounds like an effort by the Crown to turn the current duopoly between Sky and the BBC into a monopoly consisting solely of the Beeb, which would be an absolute disaster.

I'd wager you would fall into one of those believe-anything groups, tmosley. Every comment you make bets on a world of endless oil and no climate change. Let me make some verifiable predictions about you based on your commentary:

1) You drive a big, gass-guzzling pickup or SUV
2) You live in a predominantly rural state like Texas or Montana -- definitely not East Coast or West Coast
3) You believe Obama is a socalist and suspect he's secretly a muslim
4) You generally vote Republican or for whoever's right of them (e.g., David Duke)
5) You ardently believe that predictions of climate change are just a fraudulent racket so people like Al Gore can make money

Do you ever given any though to the geopolitical ramifications of oil addiction? Or the fact that the Chinese demand for oil has grown so much that PetroChina now produces more oil than Exxon? Just so you know, if those tree-hugging, pinko liberals do manage to get their electric cars and alternative energy sources working, it means that the price of oil and electricity will be that much lower for you because they won't be buying any. However, you will still be funneling money straight to terrorists and camel jockeys in saudi arabia. As a liberal, I applaud your generosity for helping those poor arabs. Without your petro dollars, their nations would collapse and then they would likely mobilize for war against us infidels. Lord knows we can't have that. Fighting a Billion muslims is way more expensive than fighting 20 million here and 20 million there. It's cheaper just to pay them off.

Unlike this one then. I also like the renewable energy experts apparently describing it as a freak occurence, completely unlike a large earthquake and tsunami which should have been predicted...

You comment about "water marking" has shown that you KNOW people will pay nothing if the can, and you want to have a method to force them to pay.

Some people may pay nothing if they can. I recall Radiohead's album In Rainbows was released under a "pay what you want" program. In this case, "what you want" includes free. According to the band, most people paid normal retail price for it.

Scientists are not always honest when it comes to furthering their careers and getting that lovely new research grant............. Some scientists are even wondering why the public has little faith in what scientists say and the so-called science going on now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql. It's a little worrying when a geneticist has seemingly little idea of the far reaching future ethical questions posed in his own field.

That's mostly why I never donate to charities touting cancer research. It all goes into one black hole, never to be seen again. There are people who have cancer now who need help and I donate to charities that look after those people. Cynically, why would anyone try and 'cure' cancer when you can keep the gravy train of research papers and expensive drugs going?

Apparently, a reactor not too far along the coast had just finished building far higher sea walls and substantially better safety features as demanded by the engineers. Fukushima might have stopped working even with the add-ons, but it wouldn't have catastrophically failed. Ultimately, it did so because those running it were cheap. Nor were reactors the only places with adequate sea defenses.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-25/tsunami-risk-well-known-to-nuclear-engineers-regulators-who-failed-to-act.html
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/05/japanese-mayor-built-a-huge-sea-wall-and-saved-his-village-from-the-tsunami/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12923699

I conclude that the reactor being taken out was probably unavoidable but that the meltdown and explosions were.

OK, so according to this other article, the Da Vinci robot has been used in the UK already, meaning that this isn't the first laparoscopic surgery in the UK in 3D. It may have the novelty of letting the rest of the team view the procedure in 3D, but that's irrelevant because only the guy manipulating the instruments needs it.

The real difference compared to a Da Vinci is that the robotic arms are hand-held rather than held steady by a large robotic mounting. The advantage is simply that just having a couple robotic arms is much cheaper than a whole Da Vinci robot.

Note that this is not even the first use of 3D with this handheld robotic arm system. That was last year. It may have been the first use of this combination in the UK, though.

Also, I've never seen a Da Vinci used in a separate room from the console. In my experience they generally use it with the console and robot in the same room.

dom

First in the UK, according to the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17590363

What do critics say?

Nick Pickles, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, called the move "an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran". Conservative MP Dominic Raab said it was "a plan to privatise Big Brother surveillance" which "fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the state and the citizen" and turns every individual "into a suspect". Fellow Tory David Davis warned that until now anyone wishing to monitor communications had been required to gain permission from a magistrate, but the planned changes would remove that protection.

What do internet service providers say?

Trefor Davies, a board member at the UK's Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA), told the BBC that the technological challenge of collating and storing such vast levels of data would be huge. Although a large amount of data about us is already collected for billing and other purposes - such as who we call and when - ISPs do not currently store detailed data on what websites we visit, or details about the emails we send. Mr Davies said: "The email stuff isn't straight forward, and neither is the web. Those aren't bits of information that traditionally we keep. We don't keep backups of deleted emails. Think of all the spam people get," Mr Davies added. "We delete it, but under the new rules would we be allowed to?"

Christians believe first in the New Testament.

A lot of Christians also believe in the Old Testament.

the basis of our law system is ~90% Judaic law

No... The basis of U.S. law is English common law, which followed rulings made by the King's judges based English tradition and legal precedent. There was influence from some other legal systems, including the Roman one where Christianity was the state religion (as it was in England), but no direct link to Judaic law. Some laws developed that were heavily influenced by religious views - the death sentence for blasphemy and homosexuality being two obvious ones (see Thomas Aikenhead, John William Gott). Both of those were argued from Christian religious perspectives, primarily based on passages in the Bible.

Judaic law is far better than islamic law in that it's not racist

613 mitzvot: Wipe out the descendants of Amalek (every man, woman and child). Genocide of another ethnic group is inherently racist.

There are plenty of others, for example, there are explicit passages that mandate setting a Hebrew slave free after 7 years, whilst Canaanite slaves must work forever.

And more recent racist religous law:

Say no to rabbis’ racism: Back in 2010, some 50 of Israel’s most prominent rabbis issued a religious edict against Jews renting property to gentiles, "Leasing land to non-Jews blasphemous, anyone violating ban may be ostracized, rabbis say" Thirty-nine of those rabbis are on the government’s payroll, although their opinions vary drastically from the State of Israel’s official laws and ethos. After this incident, no rabbi was fired or brought to court for incitement.

Killing Non-Jewish Infants is Permitted: "There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”In a chapter entitled “Deliberate harm to innocents,” the book explains that war is directled mainly against the pursuers, but those who belong to the enemy nation are also considered the enemy because they are assisting murderers."

King's Torah splits Israel's religious and secular Jews: "Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King's Torah - written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It attempts to justify killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances."

does not have slavery

It does, it is even explicitly permitted for a father to sell his pre-pubescent daughters into slavery as a "last resort" to get money. Judaism and slavery: "Judaism's religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves."

I of course, sadly, know the justification given in islamic text. Because he won military battles and his tactics will supposedly give his followers military domination over everyone else.

As opposed to the religious law that you apparently support, where the complete genocide of every living thing in a city is ok when "ordered by God"? Where followers are instructed to Wipe out the descendants of another tribe, To burn a city that has turned to idol worship, To destroy idols and their accessories (y

oh, but there is...

once upon a time, there was a TV comedy show called 'Allo 'Allo
This was set in occupied France, and to keep things amusing and simple for the viewers, it was decided that each character would speak english, but in a phoney accent of the country they were depicting.

So the French bartender "spook like zees", and the escaping British airmen "spoke jolly good proper English what"! etc.

It got sillier when the foreign characters spoke in english, ie the french resistance fighter woudl speak with "ze french accent" when talking 'french' to the other french characters, and then change to a pseudo-jolly-what accent when she spoke english to the English airmen. Of course, they had to add a English spy character who didn't speak french very well later on (like Peter Seller's Clouseau)

It was silly, and probably no-one except the Germans would get the joke (except it was never shown in Germany due to it being set during the war and thus illegal due to the German characters and symbols being in it). Shame, they'd have really liked it. For fairness, it did take the piss out of every European race.

Not really angry, more like depressed. The winters are long, cold, and dark

The winters in Scotland are about as long, almost as cold, about as dark and damp. (I've been in both countries in the winter. Sweden is nicer: lying snow at least makes things look brighter, I don't like the mist and mud in Scotland. I've only spent about two weeks in each (in winter), though.)

Yet, although Scotland currently has a higher suicide rate than England, this wasn't the case 50 years ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16950313

I think the other points you make are more important than the weather.

I see no difference. He can yell at people all day on a street corner here in the US to take up arms and kill all Chinese babies. You really think that's going to incite people to actually do that?

Actually yes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11701269

Slashdot-specific analogy: If a jock beats up another jock, it's just a fight. But if a jock beats up a nerd because he's a nerd then that will tend to intimidate not just the person he beat up, but all nerds.

This however is not really true. Hate crimes offer extra protection against specific ethnic or religious groups. Consider http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7291985.stm This girl was stamped to death by a crowed purely because she dressed as a goth. In the UK (with the notable exception of Scotland) this is not considered a hate crime despite repeated campaigns after the Miss Lancaster case to change this ruling.

Science isn't "just" that at all. Listen to this podcast on the history of the scientific method:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b1ljm

"We would like our stories about the world to be true, and to be as simple as possible... Scientific method is a set of rules governing down how those stories are created, in what settings and using what techniques -- and often what kinds of places and what kinds of tools. Presumably all great literate cultures have had these concerns with adequate accounts of the world, and the people and methods in which trust should be vested."

The thing is, it's not clear WHICH kind of logic or reason to apply to observations about the natural world, and there are lots of candidates which scientists have used (and are using). The first instance of what we'd recognize as scientific method was by Sir Francis Bacon in 1620. Newton came up with other versions. There were different approaches and philosophies. Today we're still debating what kind of scientific method to use, e.g. whether it counts as science if you can't do experiment (e.g. astronomy) or whether the subject has to be purely natural world or not (e.g. computer science).

There's been a huge rich intellectual history on the matter of which we as scientists can be justly proud. You miss out on this entirely when you say "just the application of logic and reason".

Reality has a well known liberal bias. Of course conservatives are going to distrust science.

Now remind me if it is liberals or conservatives that distrust science when it comes to the following beliefs.

Cell Phones cause cancer.
That all GMO crops are bad.
We can't replace coal power plants and aging nuclear power plaints with newer safer designs.

Just watch and wait: it'll be the kid who takes apart his iPod to replace the broken battery who gets charged.

That is entirely too cynical. The authorities seem perfectly capable of coming up with reasonable suspects:

'Lulzsec hackers' arrested in international swoop

FBI arrests 16 in Anonymous hacking investigation

This is an interesting article on whether or not the UK could still defend the Falklands against Argentina (assuming we take the position that the Falklands belongs to the UK): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17157373

Here are more examples from the bbc