And the universe is like, made up of STRINGS! And they sort of like...vibrates and shit. (Takes another toke) And the subatomic particles have many flavors, man, weeeird. Whoah! And like there might be infinite manifestations of our universe out there in infinite other dimensions. And there are like DARK MATTER that we have never seen and it all began with a BIG BANG! Duuude...
Americans had always had a special place in their hearts for Gaddafi. They will jump at the opportunity if Gaddafi so much as sneeze on his civillians. So, please, spare us the propaganda and claims of high moral ground. The thing about being the world policeman is that you have to at least try to appear to be fair. Civil wars are the worst kind of wars because the rebels are usually indistinguishable from civillians and are often the same people.
"Powerful and emotional imagery can be communicated well."
Huh? How the hell did you figured this out? Did you talked to the dolphins yourself? The human language had allowed us to advance from cave dwellers all the way to the moon. It conveys knowledge, information, wisdom, horror, comedy, tragedy, drama etc. well. Your argument sounds fishy to me (hah!). It is like you are saying birds are superior to man because they have wings.
Somali pirates are not terrorists.Terrorists are individuals or organizations that use force to advance a political agenda. The Somali pirates are only in it for the money. In fact, they are not even proper pirates. They rarely plunder the goods on the captured ships, usually they take just the salary money in ship's safes. They also mostly hold the ships and crews to ransom since shipping companies always pay as a matter of convenience. So, stop applying the label terrorists to everything.
So, Mozilla can't win can they. IF they stick it to the Man, then it is because they coincidentally don't like this particular Man. If they bow down to the Man, then it is as expected. I wonder how you go through life with such a jaded and cynical outlook. Mozilla has done the right thing, morally and legalistically. They deserve to be praised.
True, the US sent men to the moon a few years after their first manned space flight. But, was it sustainable? Did the US followed through with a moon base and all that 2001 Space Odyssey dreams? Maybe the Chinese had studied the history of space exploration and decided not to repeat the US mistakes. Maybe they have a longer term and more sustainable plan for space exploration. You have to remember, the Chinese have more than 4000 years of advanced civilization behind them. This tends to make them more farsighted don't you think?
No, the real joke is on you. Why? Because the CIA and all other government and private (RIAA) acronyms can do today in plain sight and most importantly, legally what they had to do behind your back 50 years ago.
Eh...true but not in the way you think of "toxic". High sugar or salt concentrations have been used for many centuries to preserve foodstuffs. They act by producing what is called a hypertonic environment where the dissolved sugar or salts draws out water from inside a cell through the semi-permeable cell membrane. If left long enough, the cell cytoplasm will shrink and the bacteria dies or at least are inhibited from growing.
Some commenters in this thread wants to give Lustig the benefit of the doubt but I disagree. Sometimes, it is best to tar and feather cranks. Militancy has no place in science, however well intentioned because it has a tendency to blind the preacher from contradicting evidence.
I have a degree in Microbiology, a Masters in Biochemistry and Ph.D in Biotechnology. I am also in Malaysia and a University academic staff. Here in Malaysia, the hard sciences and engineering faculties get the lion share of government funding, fairly or not. Those of us in the life sciences feel that we are a privileged lot compared to the social sciences and are grateful for it. Our graduates generally get good jobs and a significant percentage secure research-related jobs in the many semi-government research bodies or universities. Many also become school teachers or lecturers or join the industry. Regarding maths and stats, remember, that to us, it is just another tool in the toolbox. We are not interested in the nitty gritty of the maths, only on the usability and validity of it for our purposes. There are of course situations where the maths become supremely important like in bioinformatics but we are content with collaborating with the maths and stats Professors. So, this bleak picture painted in the article might be true in the US, but not necessarily in the rest of the world.
Step 3: Say, "you will not get to use this again until you can prove to me that you are responsible with spending money."
This is Parenting 101, whether it is conch shells, cocoa beans, pieces of eight or virtual dollars. Teach them to be mature humans, not depend on technology to babysit them.
Well, I'm offended by this. I am from South East Asia and I resent the author for implying that the markets in my geographical area is not as loud and boisterous. So are these hackers wearing fez and smoking shisha. Do they have towels wrapped around their heads and greet everyone with Salamalaikum? Seriously, this article reads like it is written for 70-80 year old retirees on AOL.
So this is what the mighty have come down to. When faced with competitors who are rapidly catching up, Americans choose to pooh-pooh them as copycats and inferior derivatives, all the while dumbing down your own science education and breeding your own ultra nationalists and religious nut jobs. You, see, it doesn't matter how Iran, or China or India got their technology. The fact that they have them, and more importantly, continuing to develop them, is enough. So, go ahead and sit on your laurel. Better yet, get into more unnecessary wars (with all this talk of nuking Iran) so that your economy will bleed dry and your people descend into barbarism. And to those who says Iran is unstable, I ask you to forecast what people like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party whackos will do if they get into power.
So what? Early adopters will always pay the price for essentially mass-beta testing a product. Furthermore, the iPads and their ilk are hardly essential. No trains are going to have brake failures and plough into a 10 storey building full of war orphans because of a technical issue of Android tablets. It is a mass produced toy, nothing more. If manufacturers of a disposable electronic toy waits until it is "perfect" it is probably already behind the curve. Market forces will whittle down the low quality offerings until only the reasonably good ones remain.
Sigh. Not this shit again. Is China the evil villain now? I wasn't paying attention to Faux News. I am still at EyeRaan as the Axis of Evil chapter. In my non-American view, the US is the short, medium and long term threat to freedom in the world. The last global economic meltdown originated from there. The most Draconian laws (copyright, intellectual property laws, RIAA etc.) emanates from America. America can and did invade any country it likes on any pretense and get away with it. It can kidnap, imprison without trial and torture anyone regardless of nationality and get away with it. It has nuclear, chemical and biological weapon stockpiles that at any moment could fall into the hands of Sarah Palins and their ilk. It has mercenary fanatical soldiers who will carry out any order, even shooting civilians in cold blood. And worst of all, Americans still believe that they are the good guys. This belief is what scares me. Historically, China on the other hand had not much interest in the outside world other than the buffer zones around it. China want to become a world player but from what I have seen, it does not want to become the world police, judge and executioner.
This. I find it puzzling why Americans (I assume you are one) have an overwhelming need to personalize their enemy. Don't they know that by doing so, they give power and recognition to the very people they don't like. Ahmedinejad, like your own Presidents is beholden to the real powers behind the curtain. He is there merely as the puppet and spokesperson. This is true in most democratic countries too and ironically, the only time when the head of government can really be said to speak for himself is when he is a tin-pot dictator for life or an absolute monarch. I also don't understand the need for many Americans to have a nemesis. First it was the Communists, then the Russians, then the Iranians, then the Arabs, and now the Chinese. I know the Chinese is now the the enemy du jour because new FPS games now have Chinese armies as the antagonists instead of Arab terrorists.
I had a conversation with an avowed American "patriot" railing against the draconian laws of countries like Iran where infidelity can get you stoned to death. My counter was similar to this example. You Westerners have even more draconian laws that don't even make sense. In the Western world, copying and idea will get you thrown into prison and bankrupted. And in a capitalistic society, being bankrupted is equivalent to an amputation of the limbs or even death. It seems, copyright infringements is the equivalent of religious heresy in secular capitalist countries.
What most people forget about scientists is that they are human beings like you and me. They are not angels, prophets or saints or robots. They are fallible and have their own beliefs and values that might not be compatible with yours but they are as entitled to it as you are. A Nobel laureate might be the leader of his field of expertise but might be useless at repairing his car, for example. So, do not automatically accept what they say when they are talking about stuff outside their field. Thisd does not however, reduce what they have contributed to the advancement of knowledge.
We Muslims have an interesting take on yaumul qiamat (doomsday). If my memory of religious schooling is correct, doomsday won't happen until everyone stops believing in the doomsday. So, as long as there are people believing that the doomsday will come in 2012 or whenever, then it will not happen. Of course there are all sorts of signs of the end times is nigh, but no one knows what "nigh" really means, whether it is 1 year, 50 years or 50000 years etc.We will only realize that it is coming when it is too late. And in Islam, doomsday means the end of the universe, not just the Earth.
So what if he wants to thank God for his abilities? What is it to you? Are you offended by this? If God is as useless as you claim to be, then of what harm is his belief? Presumably, he is a competent scientist and would produce the same output regardless whether you agree to his beliefs or not. We who believe in God (I'm a muslim microbiologist) thank God for allowing us the opportunity to become what we are, to achieve what we have set out in life. In Islam, a core belief is the belief of predestination (qada' and qadar) meaning what has happened, is happening and will happen is already written. As humans we are given the gift of "free will", but this free will is limited by events out of our control. A child may inherit genes that confer him the abilities of a mathematical genius for example, but if he was born say in the Gaza Strip, then such potential will probably never be reached. As such, when good things happens to us, we thank God, when bad things happens, we ask for his protection and we say "insyallah" (God Willing) when we plan for the future.
Did you just said the US tortured the soldier who leaked this information? Amazing! First Americans let the US torture some brown "people" because, hey, they're brown and wear funny towels on their heads. Then, you let the US government torture this American soldier because hey, Benedict Arnold and all that. What's next? I am also amazed that Americans appears to be mostly nonchalant about the human right abuses that your government commits openly. Maybe because you think that it will not happen to you. Guess again. I have put the US on my no fly-there list, the same way people before had put South American or African tin pot dictatorship countries on their never go there list. You never now when you could end tied-up naked with water dripping on your face.
Then, the solution is to have a Missile Switch Cover-type http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9278 thing over the Delete key. Makes my Nuclear General fantasy more believable too.
And your point being? If you didn't know, the US and Soviets carried out "rescue" operations at the end of WWII to catch as many German scientists as possible, especially those who worked with rockets and jets. Werner Von Braun is one of the most famous example of this. The US called it, Operation Paperclip. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip. Do you even have any proof that the Chinese copied Western designs other than the usual "the Chinese are inferior and primitive peoples, therefore they must have copied everything our superior Western World produced, durr!" racist shtick? I am getting really sick of the Sinophobia on Slashdot. I hope you guys don't buy into it and repeat the same things that you did after 9/11.
Chineeese! It's ALIVE! It's coming for YOU and your family! Hide in your bomb shelters! Wrap wet towels on your heads! Cover your bedrooms in tin foils. The Chineeese Terror is coming!!!
Seriously, what is wrong with you Americans? Can't you and your government live through life without manufacturing an enemy to hate? What is it in your national psyche that requires an opponent? Is it because you actually bought into your own "we're the Good Guys(TM)" propaganda that the only way to validate this absurd world view is to manufacture "bad guys". My theory is that you are so hung up on WWII, the last "good war" that you fought in, that you and your leaders are subconsciously trying to recreate it so that you can feel good about yourselves again. Hence, the Axis of evil, war on terror, and now a more traditional enemy, the Red Peril. Get over it.
Or Antarctica, which is practically uninhabited, save for a couple hundred transient scientists. Or the bottom of the ocean, or underground. All of which are still much easier to colonise than another planet. Let's face it. For many people, space is the equivalent of the promised land/heaven/nirvana/valhalla, which is fine by me since I think everyone should have a belief system, traditional or not. Just don't spend taxpayer's money on it. Also, most of the people I know who spouts the "for the future of mankind" shtick wouldn't give the time of day to the homeless man down the street. Make of that what you will.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's plain fascism, where workers are cattle and the government gets all the value they add."
So... welcome to capitalism, China?
And the universe is like, made up of STRINGS! And they sort of like...vibrates and shit. (Takes another toke) And the subatomic particles have many flavors, man, weeeird. Whoah! And like there might be infinite manifestations of our universe out there in infinite other dimensions. And there are like DARK MATTER that we have never seen and it all began with a BIG BANG! Duuude...
Americans had always had a special place in their hearts for Gaddafi. They will jump at the opportunity if Gaddafi so much as sneeze on his civillians. So, please, spare us the propaganda and claims of high moral ground. The thing about being the world policeman is that you have to at least try to appear to be fair. Civil wars are the worst kind of wars because the rebels are usually indistinguishable from civillians and are often the same people.
"Powerful and emotional imagery can be communicated well."
Huh? How the hell did you figured this out? Did you talked to the dolphins yourself? The human language had allowed us to advance from cave dwellers all the way to the moon. It conveys knowledge, information, wisdom, horror, comedy, tragedy, drama etc. well. Your argument sounds fishy to me (hah!). It is like you are saying birds are superior to man because they have wings.
Somali pirates are not terrorists.Terrorists are individuals or organizations that use force to advance a political agenda. The Somali pirates are only in it for the money. In fact, they are not even proper pirates. They rarely plunder the goods on the captured ships, usually they take just the salary money in ship's safes. They also mostly hold the ships and crews to ransom since shipping companies always pay as a matter of convenience. So, stop applying the label terrorists to everything.
So, Mozilla can't win can they. IF they stick it to the Man, then it is because they coincidentally don't like this particular Man. If they bow down to the Man, then it is as expected. I wonder how you go through life with such a jaded and cynical outlook. Mozilla has done the right thing, morally and legalistically. They deserve to be praised.
True, the US sent men to the moon a few years after their first manned space flight. But, was it sustainable? Did the US followed through with a moon base and all that 2001 Space Odyssey dreams? Maybe the Chinese had studied the history of space exploration and decided not to repeat the US mistakes. Maybe they have a longer term and more sustainable plan for space exploration. You have to remember, the Chinese have more than 4000 years of advanced civilization behind them. This tends to make them more farsighted don't you think?
No, the real joke is on you. Why? Because the CIA and all other government and private (RIAA) acronyms can do today in plain sight and most importantly, legally what they had to do behind your back 50 years ago.
Eh...true but not in the way you think of "toxic". High sugar or salt concentrations have been used for many centuries to preserve foodstuffs. They act by producing what is called a hypertonic environment where the dissolved sugar or salts draws out water from inside a cell through the semi-permeable cell membrane. If left long enough, the cell cytoplasm will shrink and the bacteria dies or at least are inhibited from growing.
Some commenters in this thread wants to give Lustig the benefit of the doubt but I disagree. Sometimes, it is best to tar and feather cranks. Militancy has no place in science, however well intentioned because it has a tendency to blind the preacher from contradicting evidence.
I have a degree in Microbiology, a Masters in Biochemistry and Ph.D in Biotechnology. I am also in Malaysia and a University academic staff. Here in Malaysia, the hard sciences and engineering faculties get the lion share of government funding, fairly or not. Those of us in the life sciences feel that we are a privileged lot compared to the social sciences and are grateful for it. Our graduates generally get good jobs and a significant percentage secure research-related jobs in the many semi-government research bodies or universities. Many also become school teachers or lecturers or join the industry. Regarding maths and stats, remember, that to us, it is just another tool in the toolbox. We are not interested in the nitty gritty of the maths, only on the usability and validity of it for our purposes. There are of course situations where the maths become supremely important like in bioinformatics but we are content with collaborating with the maths and stats Professors. So, this bleak picture painted in the article might be true in the US, but not necessarily in the rest of the world.
This is Parenting 101, whether it is conch shells, cocoa beans, pieces of eight or virtual dollars. Teach them to be mature humans, not depend on technology to babysit them.
Well, I'm offended by this. I am from South East Asia and I resent the author for implying that the markets in my geographical area is not as loud and boisterous. So are these hackers wearing fez and smoking shisha. Do they have towels wrapped around their heads and greet everyone with Salamalaikum? Seriously, this article reads like it is written for 70-80 year old retirees on AOL.
So this is what the mighty have come down to. When faced with competitors who are rapidly catching up, Americans choose to pooh-pooh them as copycats and inferior derivatives, all the while dumbing down your own science education and breeding your own ultra nationalists and religious nut jobs. You, see, it doesn't matter how Iran, or China or India got their technology. The fact that they have them, and more importantly, continuing to develop them, is enough. So, go ahead and sit on your laurel. Better yet, get into more unnecessary wars (with all this talk of nuking Iran) so that your economy will bleed dry and your people descend into barbarism. And to those who says Iran is unstable, I ask you to forecast what people like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party whackos will do if they get into power.
So what? Early adopters will always pay the price for essentially mass-beta testing a product. Furthermore, the iPads and their ilk are hardly essential. No trains are going to have brake failures and plough into a 10 storey building full of war orphans because of a technical issue of Android tablets. It is a mass produced toy, nothing more. If manufacturers of a disposable electronic toy waits until it is "perfect" it is probably already behind the curve. Market forces will whittle down the low quality offerings until only the reasonably good ones remain.
Sigh. Not this shit again. Is China the evil villain now? I wasn't paying attention to Faux News. I am still at EyeRaan as the Axis of Evil chapter. In my non-American view, the US is the short, medium and long term threat to freedom in the world. The last global economic meltdown originated from there. The most Draconian laws (copyright, intellectual property laws, RIAA etc.) emanates from America. America can and did invade any country it likes on any pretense and get away with it. It can kidnap, imprison without trial and torture anyone regardless of nationality and get away with it. It has nuclear, chemical and biological weapon stockpiles that at any moment could fall into the hands of Sarah Palins and their ilk. It has mercenary fanatical soldiers who will carry out any order, even shooting civilians in cold blood. And worst of all, Americans still believe that they are the good guys. This belief is what scares me. Historically, China on the other hand had not much interest in the outside world other than the buffer zones around it. China want to become a world player but from what I have seen, it does not want to become the world police, judge and executioner.
This. I find it puzzling why Americans (I assume you are one) have an overwhelming need to personalize their enemy. Don't they know that by doing so, they give power and recognition to the very people they don't like. Ahmedinejad, like your own Presidents is beholden to the real powers behind the curtain. He is there merely as the puppet and spokesperson. This is true in most democratic countries too and ironically, the only time when the head of government can really be said to speak for himself is when he is a tin-pot dictator for life or an absolute monarch. I also don't understand the need for many Americans to have a nemesis. First it was the Communists, then the Russians, then the Iranians, then the Arabs, and now the Chinese. I know the Chinese is now the the enemy du jour because new FPS games now have Chinese armies as the antagonists instead of Arab terrorists.
I had a conversation with an avowed American "patriot" railing against the draconian laws of countries like Iran where infidelity can get you stoned to death. My counter was similar to this example. You Westerners have even more draconian laws that don't even make sense. In the Western world, copying and idea will get you thrown into prison and bankrupted. And in a capitalistic society, being bankrupted is equivalent to an amputation of the limbs or even death. It seems, copyright infringements is the equivalent of religious heresy in secular capitalist countries.
What most people forget about scientists is that they are human beings like you and me. They are not angels, prophets or saints or robots. They are fallible and have their own beliefs and values that might not be compatible with yours but they are as entitled to it as you are. A Nobel laureate might be the leader of his field of expertise but might be useless at repairing his car, for example. So, do not automatically accept what they say when they are talking about stuff outside their field. Thisd does not however, reduce what they have contributed to the advancement of knowledge.
We Muslims have an interesting take on yaumul qiamat (doomsday). If my memory of religious schooling is correct, doomsday won't happen until everyone stops believing in the doomsday. So, as long as there are people believing that the doomsday will come in 2012 or whenever, then it will not happen. Of course there are all sorts of signs of the end times is nigh, but no one knows what "nigh" really means, whether it is 1 year, 50 years or 50000 years etc.We will only realize that it is coming when it is too late. And in Islam, doomsday means the end of the universe, not just the Earth.
So what if he wants to thank God for his abilities? What is it to you? Are you offended by this? If God is as useless as you claim to be, then of what harm is his belief? Presumably, he is a competent scientist and would produce the same output regardless whether you agree to his beliefs or not. We who believe in God (I'm a muslim microbiologist) thank God for allowing us the opportunity to become what we are, to achieve what we have set out in life. In Islam, a core belief is the belief of predestination (qada' and qadar) meaning what has happened, is happening and will happen is already written. As humans we are given the gift of "free will", but this free will is limited by events out of our control. A child may inherit genes that confer him the abilities of a mathematical genius for example, but if he was born say in the Gaza Strip, then such potential will probably never be reached. As such, when good things happens to us, we thank God, when bad things happens, we ask for his protection and we say "insyallah" (God Willing) when we plan for the future.
Did you just said the US tortured the soldier who leaked this information? Amazing! First Americans let the US torture some brown "people" because, hey, they're brown and wear funny towels on their heads. Then, you let the US government torture this American soldier because hey, Benedict Arnold and all that. What's next? I am also amazed that Americans appears to be mostly nonchalant about the human right abuses that your government commits openly. Maybe because you think that it will not happen to you. Guess again. I have put the US on my no fly-there list, the same way people before had put South American or African tin pot dictatorship countries on their never go there list. You never now when you could end tied-up naked with water dripping on your face.
Then, the solution is to have a Missile Switch Cover-type http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9278 thing over the Delete key. Makes my Nuclear General fantasy more believable too.
And your point being? If you didn't know, the US and Soviets carried out "rescue" operations at the end of WWII to catch as many German scientists as possible, especially those who worked with rockets and jets. Werner Von Braun is one of the most famous example of this. The US called it, Operation Paperclip. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip. Do you even have any proof that the Chinese copied Western designs other than the usual "the Chinese are inferior and primitive peoples, therefore they must have copied everything our superior Western World produced, durr!" racist shtick? I am getting really sick of the Sinophobia on Slashdot. I hope you guys don't buy into it and repeat the same things that you did after 9/11.
Chineeese! It's ALIVE! It's coming for YOU and your family! Hide in your bomb shelters! Wrap wet towels on your heads! Cover your bedrooms in tin foils. The Chineeese Terror is coming!!!
Seriously, what is wrong with you Americans? Can't you and your government live through life without manufacturing an enemy to hate? What is it in your national psyche that requires an opponent? Is it because you actually bought into your own "we're the Good Guys(TM)" propaganda that the only way to validate this absurd world view is to manufacture "bad guys". My theory is that you are so hung up on WWII, the last "good war" that you fought in, that you and your leaders are subconsciously trying to recreate it so that you can feel good about yourselves again. Hence, the Axis of evil, war on terror, and now a more traditional enemy, the Red Peril. Get over it.
Or Antarctica, which is practically uninhabited, save for a couple hundred transient scientists. Or the bottom of the ocean, or underground. All of which are still much easier to colonise than another planet. Let's face it. For many people, space is the equivalent of the promised land/heaven/nirvana/valhalla, which is fine by me since I think everyone should have a belief system, traditional or not. Just don't spend taxpayer's money on it. Also, most of the people I know who spouts the "for the future of mankind" shtick wouldn't give the time of day to the homeless man down the street. Make of that what you will.