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Europe's Got Talent For Geeks
fiannaFailMan writes "Teams of scientists from across the continent are vying for a funding bonanza that could see two of them receive up to $1.33 billion over 10 years to keep Europe at the cutting edge of technology. The contest began with 26 proposals that were whittled down to six last year. Just four have made it to the final round. They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm; a massive data-crunching machine to simulate social, economic and technological change on our planet; an effort to craft the most accurate computer model of the human brain to date; and a team working to find better ways to produce and employ graphene — an ultra-thin material that could revolutionize manufacturing of everything from airplanes to computer chips."
The Graphene one. The others are just the usual BS from people clueless about how computers work and what they can and cannot do. Oh, and of course researchers that will sell their soul and integrity for just a bit of grant money.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Which will then be called Simulacron-3?
Let's go with the first 3, they sound awesome. Graphene? Bah! Everyone's working on graphene. By 2023 I want a working simulation of the human brain damn it! The first program it runs should of course be "Hello Dave"
A minor nitpick. It's very flattering to read all that praise about us, but we hungarians are easily one of the most pessimistic people you can meet in Europe, so I'd question the delightful part. I mean, we rank near the bottom charts of every poll regarding happiness and were #1 leader in suicides world-wide for a while (now we are #5 or something). Just saying. ;)
its the prejudice and racial discrimination. european countries, while appearing to act all modern and chic, are still too steeped in their centuries-old hatred of one-another (especially former powers acting like they still have power) and indoctrinated biases. if you are from eastern europe you are still treated like shit
Really? I work in a university research lab in the UK. The people I work with regularly (in no particular order) include, English, Scottish, Romanian, Russian, Indian, Iranian, Chinese, French, American, Canadian, Lithuania and Germany. I might have missed some out there, as there are some people who have never mentioned where they're from in my presence. There aren't any Hungarians on that list, but given that no nationality is represented by more than 3 people it's not because of discrimination, it's simply that there aren't enough people for every nationality to be represented.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Cool story, bro'!
Are you serious? You think you can go work in America and be treated right if you don't speak English, but only Spanish? Immigrants need to learn the language wherever they go, but if you don't want to do that, the place to go is Europe, not America. Not by a long shot. Europe is way more of a cultural melting pot than the US. You have to become an American to stay in the US. In Europe you can be whoever. That's the main reason I came back to Europe after living in the US for a while.
"european nations working together on something technology related? please."
You obviously never heard of the fucking LARGE HADRON COLLIDER then.
Maybe it's because you can't write a coherent sentence.
They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm
So in other words... Track everyone everywhere at any given time and keep informed on what they and the ones around them are up to? Given the track record of past human governments implementations of similar projects and more specifically what they do with the information I'd rather opt out of this one, even if it meant that, you know, I was responsible for me staying out of harms way.
The anti-European sentiment expressed by americans here is really sickening. Why is it every time there is a story about something positive in Europe, americans innate sense of cultural inferiority comes to the fore expressed as hate.
This scientist X-Factor style competition sure beats the hell out of Honey Booboo. So good luck with that you yanks.
In my experience, once you discover, that no matter where you go, roughly 90% of the people are complete and utter idiots, you're forgetting all the racial or nationalistic stereotypes you were brought up with.
At least in my case, misanthropy cured nationalism.
when people complain about Europe, they usually don't include UK in it :)
I am speaking from an American born Chinese working in London, and while I can't speak about other European nations, the UK is pretty good with diversity. I have not experienced any overt discrimination, and it's comparable to the environment for when I worked in the US.
Like most countries, cities are better with diversity than rural areas. In fact, one third of Londoners were born outside of Britain, and the last census indicated that white Brits are a minority in London, (this excludes British people of different ethnicities as well as white people from other countries).
You mean that thing built with the cooperation of 10,000 scientists from over 1 hundred countries? The fact that it sits on European soil is incidental because there were a lot of people that poured their labor into it that were not Europeans.
The fact that it sits on European soil is no doubt due to the fact that CERN is almost completely funded by European nations. Incontrovertibly, this is a case of European nations working together on something technology related.
Another example off the top of my head is the European Space Agency. Obviously not a patch on NASA, but still an example of European cooperation on technology.
Racist jingoistic fucktard
I think I see where this is coming from.
This. Do people really think bigotry, racism and nationalism doesnt exist outside Europe and the UK? Try to apply for a lowly programming job in Bangalore or Beijing if you're pink-skinned. Don't forget all the eurohaters in the US, who think all of Europe is starving on the streets/rioting like the media image of Greece and Spain right now.
i'm sure you are a very happy person /sarcasm
just ignore that idiot. instead of wasting your time, go the the small flag in the right lower corner and click it.
Oh, you have to learn the local language??? the horror.
cry baby, don't post as AC if you want someone to take that shit seriously.
"I am speaking from an American born Chinese working in London"
Let me guess, you're a tapeworm? A brain parasite? A cybernetic implant?
please, all of the best scientists and engineers from here are still heading to north america. want to know why? its not because life is better over there, or the culture is better, or theres more vacation days.
its the prejudice and racial discrimination. european countries, while appearing to act all modern and chic, are still too steeped in their centuries-old hatred of one-another (especially former powers acting like they still have power) and indoctrinated biases. if you are from eastern europe you are still treated like shit (especially from hungary, and the hungarians are a delightful, highly intelligent nation, political situation nonwithstanding). if you want to immigrate to europe, like i have, learning the language is a must (in my case, german) or else, because of some superiority complex by the host nation, you will be constantly shitted on no matter how good your skill is. its no wonder im considering moving back to canada, where i can actually be judged on my talent.
america has its own problems, but at the bare minimum people are more or less judged on what they can do/what they can bring to the table. its why you STILL have the best sports leagues, best research programs, best schools, best websites (all the websites that matter are american built), best technology, best software and ultimately the best ideas. european nations working together on something technology related? please.
I'm a European. I just looked out the window and, WOW!!!! this place is just cawling with racists, the disgusting critters are all over the place, climbing the walls, on the rooves of houses and they are falling out of the trees. I never noticed that before!?! Somebody should really be doing something about this... like spraying pesticides or something. Mind you they'd have to be careful not to spray the column of scientists, engineers, students, athletes and web-devlopers running for the airport waving greencards and yelling USA! USA! Mr Coward, thank you! Reading your post has been a real eye-opener.... now where did I put my passport? Do you think they'll give me a green card? I'm not a web-developer but I know a whole bunch of stone-age languages like C and C++.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
When you take your fellow Europeans to task for doing the same thing in reverse, get back to me.
Until then, you're just howling because now it's *your* turn in the barrel and you somehow think that's unfair.
When I think of a geek "Europe's got talent" contest, the best thing that comes to mind is TELEVISED DEMO SCENE PARTY. W00T!
-B
Glancing through the projects, I just don't see what they're going to sink that money into. Three of them are relatively ambitious data collecting and model building for society, the human brain, and particular human bodies. One is just a modest bit of materials science (graphene development). And the remaining two are just a bit of systems development (a electronic system for holistic monitoring of the human body and creating robotic "companions").
If I took that original amount of funds, divided it by ten, and then distributed it among all six of the projects, that seems an appropriate level of funding. These projects seem at most something that could be worked on effective with a small team and millions to a few tens of millions of euros, not many hundreds of millions of euros. I just don't see sufficient additional gain from the greater expenditure to justify it.
The science side seems remarkably unambitious given the funds being put into use.
What are you doing out of the cotton field, nig nog