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I think the concept of "Third World" is a bit outdated, and can now be inferred to mean what they say the last paragraph of the link:

The concept of the "third world" still rings true as there are many nations with high infant mortality, high rates of poverty, and dependence on industrialized nations.

Comparing it to the USSR (as 2nd world) really makes no sense any longer, since they ... don't exist :-)

since they revolve around each other ... shouldn't we call earth/moon a two-planet system?

It is also more accurate to say that the earth and moon together revolve about their common center of mass, rather than saying that the moon revolves about the earth. This common center of mass lies beneath the earth's surface, about 3,000 mi (4800 km) from the earth's center.

>Yes, but nobody gives a flying fuck over a photocopy of the Mona Lisa, or even a pixel-perfect scan. Why? Because the value assigned to it is in that it's a single painting by some dead guy.

Uhhhh... I didn't say copy as in photocopy. Please don't put words in my mouth. If you require more detail on the matter (why, I don't know... the Mona Lisa is a well known popularly copied item) I mean copy as in expert artist makes a paint-by-numbers copy. This has been known to happen, many, many, many times.

>The value of software is that it performs a task. That task can be performed by a copy. The 'task' of the Mona Lisa cannot be transferred to a copy.

It sure as hell can. The 'task' of the Mona Lisa is to either look good, in which case a copy will do, or the 'task' is that its value increases, in which case the copy is no good.

So, yeah, I give a flying fuck about copies of the Mona Lisa, even if you don't seem to care about it.

That being said, it seems the art industry has survived without the original authors being informed whenever their paintings are being re-sold. FYI, there are even those who suspect the Mona Lisa in the Louvre we all call real could actually be a forgery itself. Yet the art industry continues to push ahead, unimpeded by Microsoft style authentication.

So, what do you have to say about that? Or do you just not give a flying fuck about art in general?

Don't be so quick to dismiss the copied car analogy. I have known mechanics that build their own cars, and there's no reason why they couldn't copy a car if they liked. The body parts that would make the difference (as far as most copyrights would go) are all easily available. Heck, there are third party companies that make their living by creating knock-off body parts.

So, pray tell me, what's the difference between a mechanic building their own IROC-Z and me copying MS-Windows? Is it just because it is easier to copy MS-Windows? Why don't we ask the mechanic if he'd rather learn the intricate details of using a computer and copying windows or if he'd rather build himself a kit replica of his favourite car?

You don't need Star Trek to see that copying most any physical item can be done. They have to come from somewhere, and I rarely hear of anything complicated that didn't have a human-built prototype preceed it.

Umm, no. :-P The word is Tennesseean.

(This link shows the proper nouns for residents of all 50 states)

I am now going to taunt you.

The land area of the United States is 9363130 square kilometers.

0.06 * 9363130 = 561787.8 square kilometers

or to use square miles:

0.06 * 3,794,083.06 = 227644.9836 square miles

Or the size of the *entire* states of Arizona and New Mexico together.

Sure. Yeah. Let's just go ahead and use about one sixteenth of our total land area for nothing but windmills. It'll be like a chipper-shredder for birds the likes of which the world has never seen. I like wind power just fine, but let's be sane about what kinds of quantities of power we can extract from it.

Besides, I'd be curious to know what kind of effects pulling this much energy out of the air would have on the weather. According to this, the U.S. generates about 3.6 billion kWh of power a year. What would happen if we sucked all that juice out of the air? No more tornadoes maybe, but what if no more thunder storms to dump rain on crops? I'm not sure if we could affect the weather this way, but I would imagine that there'd be *some* consequences.

Quick little tid-bit not in the savior's bio: In the late nineties there was a tournament held in Cuba to honor Capablanca. Everyone who was anyone (at the time) was there to pay their respects to one of the greatest players ever, Kasparov included. This was the last known public siting of Fischer among and by chess players. Kasparov saw him enter the room in his (Fischer's) cotton shorts and shirt and wide brimmed straw hat and decided to offer a game and his hand for a shake. Fischer just looked at him, looked at his hand and walked on by to take in a game with his old buddy Spassky

All I'm saying is while he may seem like a hero to people of the world for having the "guts" to take on the machines people in the know realize it's his ego. If he was really the mane that could pull Chess out of the swell it's in (yes, that's including throughout Europe contrary to popular belief) he would play more instead of holding out for money and endorsements and play who's ready to play not who he thinks will bring in the bucks when he does.

It's worse than you think.

According to this, it was actually more like 25% that voted for GW Bush, ~26% voted for Gore, and 48.7% that DID NOT VOTE AT ALL. So 75% of voting-age population did not vote for the person who became president.

Hooray for democracy!

While it's all too chic right now to bag on the US and the UK for their positions on the upcoming war on Iraq, the Patriot Act, and other debatable topics, I hope everyone takes a deep breath and realizes that the very fact that we are debating these topics proves the openness of these societies.

And I ask, what are we talking about, Openness, ala Glasnost, or Authoritarinaism? Let's all go to the article for a definition:

When elections and legal opposition parties are present but elections are rigged, rules are manipulated, or power is wielded so that there is no real competition for elected office, the political regime is best described as semi-authoritarian...

I suppose the competition in the US and the UK between two eternal and indistiguishable parties makes a choice. In theory an elected person can make a difference too. All you have to do is convince people that you are correct by presenting proper facts to back your opinions. Hmmm, how to get past the government/industry controled mass media that can twist anything anyone ever said or did Could it be that the internet can provide that alternate less controled route of truth in public debate? Or will the internet just get bowled over by established interests and become another outlet of bullshit?

Let's see, using the Clinton sex scandal as an example. Do you remember anything more than the name Monica Lewenski? The name you should remember but will have a hard time finding in print is Paula Jones, the real story sunk under a cartoon of an old man screwing a willing but mentally unstable intern. I take an excellent serries of articles from Vanity Fair and the New York Times as my baseline of, "the truth.": Jones was assulted in a hotel shortly after taking a job , repeatedly harrased, denied promotion and bothered. Later, the American Spectator published and article claiming she had consentual sex with her accoster. She appeared in public presuring him for an appology and a retraction, which were never recieved. Her cause was taken up by others who wished to damage Clinton's political credibility and punish a real wrong. A case was built up showing a patern of behavior of Clinton towards women who worked for under his authority. Clinton's efforts to quash the investigation included payoffs and perjury. The purgury was caught on tape and the whole thing led to impechement which failed to remove Clinton from office. A little google searching finds mostly BS, much like the stuff shoveled out by the AP and networks at the time: the Lewinski Cartoon.

First the searches

• clinton sex scandal 91,400 hits of total crap topped off by an MSN cartoon site.
• Clinton sex scandal lewinsky 19,600 hits.
• Paula Jones 65,400 hits.
• "monica lewinsky" 188,000 hits. ("lewinky" alone had half a million)
  

Now what you see:

• Supportive site, short on details
  
• typical dismissive summary.
  
• The complaint Bing! lots of details, and at last, Jones's story.
  

While the details are there, it seems obvious that those details are still difficult to find, even for a relatively informed person. Despite the best efforts of Google and others to organize and present valid and useful information, it seems that the internet can be manipulated by simple flood. Other facts, which draw less public attention, are easier to obscure and burry.

The idea that internet will defeat tyrany is preffaced on the simple fact that tyranies support themselves with lies and lose all foundation and support when the truth is known and repeated. The internet may yet be able to provide the truth with a forum, but it can be discredited, drowned and otherwise removed even in relatively free situations. Here in the US, the internet is under attack and the attackers have the government's blessing. As you and my ability to connect to the internet as peers goes away, the likelyhood of impartial third party reporting goes. This is happening, despite the internet and few people care.

Don't call this slavery. There is real slavery still go around in the world. This isn't it. You might not like, but it is not slavery.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/slavery1.html


http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005F 83 9-CC90-1CC6-B4A8809EC588EEDF

...you are a Lunatic... :)

Ample references to the moon can be found in Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Chinese writings. How old is the oldest reference? Probably about as old as the oldest reference to anything.

More mysterious is the Blue Moon.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107947.html

Wow that's old information! I'm not saying that you're wrong, but quoting 12 year old stats for Saudi Arabia and 22 year old stats for the US is not a very convincing argument.

"THIRD WORLD -- the economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, considered as an entity with common characteristics, such as poverty, high birthrates, and economic dependence on the advanced countries. The French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the expression ("tiers monde" in French) in 1952 by analogy with the "third estate," the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution-as opposed to priests and nobles, comprising the first and second estates respectively. Like the third estate, wrote Sauvy, the third world is nothing, and it "wants to be something." The term therefore implies that the third world is exploited, much as the third estate was exploited, and that, like the third estate its destiny is a revolutionary one. It conveys as well a second idea, also discussed by Sauvy, that of non-alignment, for the third world belongs neither to the industrialized capitalist world nor to the industrialized Communist bloc. The expression third world was used at the 1955 conference of Afro-Asian countries held in Bandung, Indonesia. In 1956 a group of social scientists associated with Sauvy's National Institute of Demographic Studies, in Paris, published a book called Le Tiers-Monde. Three years later, the French economist Francois Perroux launched a new journal, on problems of underdevelopment, with the same title. By the end of the 1950's the term was frequently employed in the French media to refer to the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America."

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/ThirdWor ld_def.html

See also:
http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/11-27-01askeds.ht ml

http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/oncwg.htm (slightly different take on the term)

I'm the author of the article at Wired.com. I'll try to answer belately some of the questions raised by the story.

Not least of which being, yes, there were Nigerian spam scams galore in the inbox.

I was the person who correctly guessed -- on the first try -- the password to the Press account at UrukLink.net.

FWIW, when I signed in, the account had apparently been abandoned for several months. (It was over quota and rejecting new messages since Aug. 17). What caught by eye first was the message from an ATT.net account offering wireless technology to Iraq, as reported in the article.

Besides contemplating the potential illegality of my unauthorized access, I have also thought hard about the ethics of publishing the material I obtained.

Password cracking is not a generally accepted journalistic practice, as a reporter for another news organization pointed out to me today. I was also notified that the material contained in Saddam's public inbox is not exactly the Pentagon Papers. Nor is my report on the e-mails anywhere near the caliber of the Chiquita expose'.

Nonetheless, I believe, and Wired News's editors backed me on this, that the contents of the inbox were of significant public interest considering the current conflict between the USA and Iraq.

Some readers have dismissed the messages as unimportant because so many came from ordinary Internet users and small businesses (and not from heads of state or major corporations). But I think that's what makes the inbox such an interesting, if unscientific, survey of public opinion.

To minimize the harm cause by the report, we removed the names of individuals and companies who wrote to Saddam -- even those of people from whom we had obtained comments.

Brian

The US has a bad reputation for all things environmental for a good reason! The fact that George W. Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol and pushed for oil drilling in Alaska as two of his first acts in office doesn't inspire confidence.

What makes you think that the US Government will legislate the use of biomass fuels? The influence of the oil companies in US politics is too great.

After all, why do you think the US is so keen to invade Iraq? I won't deny that Saddam Hussein is unstable, but I reckon the 112 bn barrels of oil Iraq is sitting on provides the ultimate motive. IMHO, The US will push for a US-friendly leader to ensure US oil companies receive drilling rights to continue the cycle of money.

PBS created the first reality show "An American Family" in 1973.

They aren't following anyone. You should also see "Frontier House," another PBS reality show. Nothing like the network stuff.

...did they find Geraldo Rivera

I'm still extatic they cancelled The Secret Life of Desmond Pfeiffer. Made an excellent, obscure reference for another short lived show, Clerks: The Animated Series. With Farscape and Battlebots gone, all they have to do is get rid of Junkyard Wars, Monk, Stargate SG-1, and most of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, and I'm getting rid of cable... Oh, and by the way. So no more Farscape, and SG-1 is wrapping up in a year, maybe two... So I guess Sci-Fi channels whole flagship "Sci-Friday" is just going to be what? The Dead Zone? Maybe they can bring back that really crappy Twilight Zone rip-off they used to have before Dead Zone... Grrr... Nevermind me, I'm still pissed from when Sci-Fi canned Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Weird. You two talking to each other sounds like a conversation between Deagol garcia, which sounds like Diego Garcia where U.S. warplanes tank up.

So your conversation sounds like the island is having a serious talk with itself.

If you look here you'll see that the center of gravity is 1000 miles below the surface, not 100 miles.

Only if you speak American English (as many people in the UK seem to be going!)

See this
And this

They both echo the Oxford English dictionary! (ie a US billion = thousand million , UK billion = million million)

As I said, it gets very confusing in the UK. Esp when accountants (who deal with trendy things and small numbers + always seem to talk in US billions) start talking to us Physics types (who use big numbers all the time and therefore always use UK billions)

Actually all presidents have used the power of the Executive Order. It bypasses congress and allows the president to a law. For example, Bill Clinton executed an executive order lowering the allowed level of arsenic in drinking water. Bush changed that order. President Bush issued an executive order that contradicted the 1978 Presidential Records Act, a law passed by congress. The law would have required records of the Reagan White House to be released 12 years after that president left office. Bush also used an executive order to establish the office of homeland security. So parts of Bush's "anti-terrorism" package were enacted through what amounts to presidential fiat, the executive order. The next president will obviously be able to undo any and all presidential orders, just each congress can repeal the laws passed by the previous congress. I believe executive orders can also be ruled unconsitutional.

I am sure Clinton signed some executive orders I disagree with and I'm sure Bush must have signed some I agree with, but these examples were both in the news at the time and they are the ones I remember.

For more information about the checks and balances of the American government, check out your local library or go on-line and visit:

• http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa121897 .htm
• http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0431503.html
• http://www.loc.gov/law/guide/usexec.html
• http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/gvcon5.html - for a view opposing the executive order power

And that's One to Grow On.

Citizens of the "United States of Mexico" are commonly called "Mexicans" just as citizens of the United States of America are commonly called Americans.

Someone who lives in North America may be called "North American" and someone who lives in South America may be called "South American."

There is no continent called "America", although North and South America are often referred to collectively as "The Americas."

References:

1. World Atlas
2. World Atlas 2000
3. The Continents
4. Continents of the World
5. World Facts and Figures

Get over it.

No, most people realized that Nader had no chance of winning, and so a vote for Nader was really a vote for Bush. Such "strategic voting" doesn't reflect what the American people want, only what they had to settle for.

And when you live in a democracy what most people want is what you get.

More American voters voted for Al Gore than for any other candidate. That is an undisputed fact. And yet, Mr. Gore is not in office. So let's correct that sentence to read, "in a flawed, unrepresentative faux democracy, what most people want may or may not be what you get".

I again recommend this book for more info on how our elections have been essentially "r00ted" by political interests, to the degree that they can no longer be said to represent the will of the American people.

How about letting the heads of corporations (and their bootlickers in Congress) portray themselves.

I can't figure out if they are evil or stupid. It's hard to be manipulative & devious if you were shortchanged at the neuron dispenser. I'm drifting towards the opinion that it's all an act to ingratiate know-nothings who are suspicious of technology.

You're right, I'm wrong. See above. Marsupials only have breasts (presumably we all know what breasts are, provide you own link for those) and they don't have placentas which connect unborn offspring to their mother for nourishment. And speaking of placental nourishment, here are some yummy recipes. Score some brownie points with your wife/girlfriend/significant other about the fate of the placenta when you two have kids, she will find you SO sensitive and romantic...

No evidence at hand, but I suppose you could figure it out from the actuarial tables, etc.

In the US, given the current accident rates in the US, the average death life expectancy (based on accidents alone) would probably be about 1500 years. (based on the idea it would take 3000 plus years to kill off a population of 100,000)

Outside the US your milage may vary.

- This article from space.com about the flu virus is brought into the environment via space debris, space dust, etc.

- According to this story germs can survive and even thrive and mutate in outer space.

I'd say that someone should be concerned....

• the u.s. is the 3rd most populous country in the world, w/ a population of ~1/4 billion
• between 1/3 and 1/4 of the entire online population is from the u.s.

consider this flamebait if you like but don't bitch about "americacentrism" because some users are discussing a television show

As I cited in a reply farther up the page, Rackspace [rackspace.com] has few local customers here in Cowtown, USA (aka San Antonio TX) but that hasn't stopped them from prospering.

Come on, if you've EVER seen a western movie (and there are lots of good ones, so start renting), you know that Cowtown is Fort Worth, not San Antonio. It shouldn't take a Texan to point this out...

San Antonio, by the way, is hardly a "cowtown", anyway: It's the 9th largest city in the US, ahead of Detroit(10), San Jose(11), Indianapolis(12), and San Francisco(13), and it's the center of a lot of interesting telecom activity, including, unfortunately, telemarketing. (Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html)

Now compare this to the West, where standards of wealth for the average
citizen have been improving for over a century.

Actually, median income
of employed males in the United States has been stagnant since 1970. Any
rise in overall median income since 1970 is only due to increasing number
of women in the workforce. Although we are better off than people living
under the repressive Saudi regime, our increasingly repressive economic culture
is having problems as well. Blame this on corporate-sponsored rollback
of new deal and great society programs since 1970.

More disconcerting is a more complete analysis of where the overall majority of all proved oil reserves are located:
Greatest Oil Reserves by Country, 2001

Supposedly, Russia has about 60% of the world's unproved oil reserves; indeed Russia is home to nearly 50% of the world's unclaimed natural resources. But with their economy in tatters, it is unlikely that we'll have access to it anytime soon. Which, translates into a strangehold exercised by the mid-East indefinitely for the entire forseeable future.

Actually the first video game was a tennis game created by Willy Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It used an oscilloscope for the graphics output. Go here for a timeline on video games.

- pydron

In 1982, E.T. was nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture, but it won just one, for Best Visual Effects.

Being nominated is fine and such, but the real test will be on oscar night.

The big erosion in ad viewing is due to the increase in channels. If you have 3 networks, then you can be quite sure that a significant percentage of the viewing population would see your advert. With cable channels, the audience is on dozens of channels, and even the blockbusters aren't getting the share they used to. Here is the highest rated shows of all time. None of the top 50 have occured more recently than 1996. The most recent one excluding superbowls & olympics is 1993, and the last regular episode of a series was in 1964.

Maybe Canada has its own laws, but customs? The only uniquely Canadian custom I'm aware of is the inferiority complex which causes them to embark on wild goose chases to "prove" their country's superiority to other countries, especially the United States.

Speaking of which, remember when Canadians went around quoting the UN's Human Development Index (which said Canada was the most "livable" country on Earth) ad nauseam? I'm wondering what those folks think of the latest edition of that useless bureaucratic index, seeing as how Canada has dropped to third place behind Norway and Australia.

Kwanza is an African American holiday celebrated from December 26 to January 1. (It's not a religious holiday or meant to replace Xmas or anything, a mistake many people make.)
If you want more info, check out: infoplease.com

You want to fight with MS > Go ahead and create your own , superior file sharing protocols and beat them that way

MS has been ruled a monopolist, and guilty of abusing that monopoly power, by two federal courts. If not for that fact, your argument would be completely correct. But because MS is a monopoly, the rules are different for them, which IMHO is as it should be.

That's the whole point of the Sherman Act.

Death Penalty Worldwide

To give an example, if I were to say the word "Fjornborgi" to a complete stranger (as most of you are) he would have no idea what I was talking about.

Actually, the US has been doing exactly this sort of thing for some time. Or have you forgotten about Manuel Noriega? The US actually sent in troops to arrest the leader of a foreign nation and bring him to trial in the US for violations of US law. He is still in prison. I doubt if Noriega's actions were legal in Panama, but he wasn't arrested for violations of Panamanian law.

• Increased consumption of substance (currently a third of Americans have used Marijuana)
  
• Expenditure on substance increases because a.) demand for it is inelastic and b.) it becomes more scarce.
  
• Violent gang wars over illicit profits.
  
• People criminalized for activity that harmed no one but themselves.

The only danger is sending out the wrong message. Drugs kill, and anyone advocating their use is little better than a killer.

Yet another person who is venomously opposed to drugs without getting the facts. I don't know about LSD but I know for a fact that after decades of study the health risks of marijuana are still debatable and there are few if any documented fatalities related to marijuana abuse.

The same goes for MDMA which is the primary ingredient of Ecstacy which has practically no ill after effects either in the short term or in the long term. Ecstacy is one place where regulation can help because the major problem with it is that most sellers cut it with harmful drugs to either enhance its effects or to short change buyers. Pure MDMA is thus hard to find so the Ecstacy consumed by most of the raver culture is actually more harmful than it has to be.

On the other hand, alcohol and cigarettes which are legal are amongst the leading causes of death in the U.S. either directly (lung and liver related diseases) or indirectly (drunk driving and second hand smoke).

Anyway, the War On Drugs is an acknowledged failure. As large a percentage of the U.S. population uses drugs as those in countries where the usage of certain drugs is not as frowned upon. The only successful thing about the war on drugs is that it has enabled the government to pass laws abridging due process (various seizure laws) and circumvent the 4th Ammendment.

This response is paraphrased from an earlier response on kuro5hin.

PS: If you want to read insightful discussion on the War On Drugs, I suggest reading one of the following articles and a few of the comments posted, Why Drugs Should Be Illegal or More Cluelessness In The War On Drugs.

--

First the United States is HUGE compared to England. 300 Million spent in England would be how much. US land area = 9,365,290 mi^2. UK land area = 94,247 mi^2. Infoplease

The US is almost 100 times bigger. So if the same % of cameras were placed in the US it would equal 300 * 100 = 30 Billion or 30,000 Million. I know UK billion and millions are different. I know the obvious comeback will bet that the US is not as densly populated so Let's be generous HALF of 30 Billion is STILL 15 Billion dollars. Try gettin that through Congress and watch them laugh at you.

The only problem still is local areas installing the cameras but those will get sued and be in the courts for years. We here in the US can relax a little for now.

Arathres


I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!

I will say that evolution is one of the better explanations we have today, but phlogiston was once the best explanation we had for combustion. Evolution is not falsifiable -- even if it were, no amount of science can disprove a mystical, revealed truth.

I guess I could also bring Nietzsche and Wittgenstein's views of "science as a religion, flawed like all the others" into the fray, but I fear I will catch enough heat for this.

In some ways, I do resent that somehow people who speak Spanish feel it is necessary to get Spanish spoken everywhere, that somehow Spanish is the only language that matters. Here in NYC, if you tell me that you are in fear of Spanish disappearing, I'd wack you in the head! About half (I exaggerate a little, but it sure seems that way) of the signs are in Spanish! If Spanish is disappearing, it must all be coming to New York!

Here's a link: The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World that gives you an idea of where things are. It doesn't show, of course, the language spoken by income or by technological level, but with Spanish being the number two language in the world, ahead of English, it is hardly in danger of disappearing. Methinks they are being a little alarmist. Personally, I think they should go to China and demand that half of the signs be in Spanish.

Actually, as you can see by this link, California gets 7% less in federal money than it pays in federal taxes, so your outrage is misdirected.

Electricity is essentially the movement of electrons, not protons. Protons do not (normally) move from atom to atom. Electrons certainly DO NOT travel faster than the speed of light. Electrons have finite mass; if they traveled at the speed of light, the Lorentz transformation equations assert that they would infinite mass. I assure you that the electrons in your computer do not have infinite mass. In fact, electrons usually travel far slower than that. The conduction speed of copper wire is in the range of a few thousand meters per second at best. Light (well, actually photons) travels faster than anything else. The speed of light is an absolute speed limit in our universe and is a fundamental physical constraint.

OK, I'm nitpicking and somewhat offtopic, but...

As someone else pointed out, the speed of propagation of an electrical signal has little to do with electrons moving. In normal applications, electrons move pretty slowly. The electromagnetic forces from them move much faster, IIRC they propagate at the same speed as light.

The Lorentz equations do not assert that a particle with finite rest mass would have infinite mass at the speed of light - as it approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, at the speed of light it is undefined (division by zero, and the universe dumps core), and above the speed of light it is a complex number. I believe the factor is 1/(sqrt(c^2-v^2), but I may well be wrong.

The speed of light is not an absolute speed limit. The speed of light in a vacuum, as far as we know, is. there are applications where electrons will travel through some medium at a speed faster than the speed of light in that same medium, although slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. There are media through which the speed of light is very slow. (I recall somewhere recently I saw an article about researchers who had found a medium through which light travelled at something like 38 m/s.) This is the source of what is known as Cherenkov radiation. (you can find a small blurb about this here).

Well, no one likes a nitpicker, but I hate to see someone so close to being right.

This is definately a geek thing:

Keith Winstein, the third-place winner in the 1999 Intel Science Talent Search (see results here), developed a Perl script that stenographically encoded a message in some text. It relied on a big dictionary of words and their exact (or almost exact) synonyms, and encoded the information into the text by replacing a word in the text that had synonyms in this list by another word, and the choice of which word conveyed the information. It had some problems (for example, one hundred is a "synonym" for one thousand), and it could encode very little data in a small bit of text, but yes, it worked. Unfourtunately I can't find his web page. It's not on google, metacrawler, or any other sites I've tried :-(.

I met the guy at the fair in Washington DC. The thing looked pretty cool. I also downloaded it but lost it some time ago.

Kenneth

Antibiotics (particularly penicillin) and water purification have added 30 years of life expectancy from 1900-2000. I can't think of a bigger payoff.

(Read this article for more details. While the life expectancy improvements are partially due to a reduction in infant deaths, there's a demonstrable improvement in disease treatment affecting all age groups whose magnitude you can see by looking at the raw data of life expectancy by age in the US. Of course other factors did help besides antibiotics, such as nutrition and pollution reduction.)

--LP

I didn't know these definitions were so diluted, here is another source: "...For this reason socialism as a doctrine is ill defined, although its main purpose, the establishment of cooperation in place of competition remains fixed.". Here are the clear definitions from that source:

socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

communism: a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.

I think you're stretching it a bit to distinguish your definitions by "common" and "state", don't these words essentially mean the same thing in this context? It seems to me that both your definitions are interchangeable, mine too. Regardless, I don't think it's very useful to argue definitions, it's important to know what words mean, but I think we have a pretty clear picture of what someone generally means when they say "communism" or "capitalism" or "socialism".

What is important is that you somehow assume that communism must be an ideal society, whereas capitalism must not. Why should this necessarily be the case? Pure capitalism is probably as impractical as pure communism, there must always be a kind of compromise when you deal with people.

In your original post, you said that communism is an impractical political system, based on I assume what is happening in China. I replied that Sweden partially implements communism successfully, as a counter-example. You then say that Sweden is not a "real" communistic country because it does not implement it fully? By that reasoning, USA is not a "real" capitalism because the state owns property, pays welfare etc., no? I would like to hear why you think these two cases are different.