He, he, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say though that it had a lot in common with the communist block in that respect. The Soviets refrained from taking on the rest of the world in all out war, so their system lasted just a tad longer. But it also never reached self-sustaining critical mass, and it eventually imploded. That has to be said with all the credit being heaped upon the Big Gipper at the moment for having "won" the Cold War.
But then, that wouldn't have been the Nazis that we know and hate. The entire system was highly unstable because it was based foremost upon the inherently self-descructive foundation of the cult of personality. The Nazi regime couldn't have evolved any other way than it did because not the best and brightest made it to the top, but those who could espouse dogma the loudest. That there were also brilliant people amongst the Nazis was an accident rather than a consequence of the system.
Most of his arguments were ok, except the one again overpopulation. That was complete hand waving and dodging the issue. There is a big difference between removing factors that actively SHORTEN life (e.g. improving hygiene and lowering infant mortality) and letting it progress more "naturally" (by that let's mean the body's ability to renew itself without external obstacles), and majorly changing cell biology in order to artificially LENGTHEN life indefinitely. It's like comparing very large numbers to infinity. Even a very large number is still finite, and even a very long half-life will eventually decay the element, but throw in infinity and the game changes. Doubling or even trippling life expectancy might still be managable, but once you're talking about eternal life, or even thousands of years of life, all of a sudden overpopulation DOES become your MOST SERIOUS problem, and it stops resembling improved hygiene in any shape and form. The planet arguably couldn't support more than a few tens of billions of people, which means that we're extremely unlikely to develop practical interstellar travel prior to running out of space, provided such a thing is even possible. Without new worlds to colonize we have to resort to one of two things: population control or wars of extermination. China vs Nazi Germany, only on a planet-wide scale and for seriously real.
They're not really dead, they just haven't found their killer app yet. Judging by recent trends and the usage models of bleeding edge users, I'd say the killer app for handhelds is communications. That's what I find myself using my PDA most for lately (well, plus Virtual Pool Mobile, but that's another story). It's got both WiFi and Bluetooth. At home and where available I use WiFi, anywhere else (and I do mean just about anywhere) I use Bluetooth with T-Mobile's excellent GPRS service. All I need now is a higher resolution and larger screen, and maybe having the PDA and phone in one device (though that also has disadvantages).
The rest of the improvements just need to be refinements in usability. For example the Bluetooth link to the phone can be pretty flakey, requiring occasional resets of one or both devices. Additionally, phones seem to drift in and out of GPRS awareness too easily when leaving and entering service areas. Finally, PDAs should be able to automatically switch to the appropriate communications mode without all the manual fiddling, based on user preferences. I'd like mine to use WiFi when in range of known APs, and automatically dial out via BT otherwise. Currently this switching back and forth is a bit tedious.
More like: American consumer tries to eat mini-laptop, gets all kinds of internal bleeding and poisoning, and litigates manufacturer into extinction. At least judging by all the warnings not to eat contents on the most improbable products on the American market.
> you haven't witnessed the dominance of > Blackberries as of late. This is the future.
Maybe something LIKE Blackberries, but not actual Blackberries. The company is WAY too enterprise obsessed to give a damn about average consumers. If there's a "future" in communications devices, it's more something like the Treo, a combination PDA and cell phone with GPRS or equivalent. In particular, it's got to be an open platform that can take freely or cheaply developed third party software. That's the ONLY way a platform will get enough worthwhile software. Closed platforms that lock you in to the whims of a vendor and their communications price model always tend to be extremely software deficient. Witness current multimedia enabled camera cell phones with all this horsepower and capabilities, and yet they're mostly useless for anything but good old-fashioned talking because their manufacturers and network providers haven't got a clue regarding what YOU might want to use it for, and they're certainly not going to give you the benefit of having the imagination that they themselves are lacking.
> But I doubt the US has such a higher percentange > of people that are mentally challenged versus other > nations that we have many more criminals than most.
First, I want to make clear that failure to foresee consequences is an emotional issue, not an intellectual one.
Secondly, part of why the US seems to have so much more crime certainly must have to do with the many more things that are punishable by incarceration, and the much more severe and lengthy sentences. Personally I think it is absurd to physically lock up a white collar criminal, which to me seems quite analogous to the old debtor's prisons (unfortunately the Europeans are not all that much more enlightened in that respect). OTOH, while I haven't looked at the figures, I would be surprised if the numbers of non-violent crimes in Europe were all that much lower in Europe. I think the big difference is in violent and armed crime.
Real life is rarely plain and never simple. It is very convenient to categorize people, but the human character is a continuum, with most people having more than a fair share of all ends of the spectrum. Sometimes I scare myself with just how much ungliness and malevolence I discover in myself.
> The other 90% are just selfish assholes [...] who aren't stupid
Being emotionally stunted or incapable to see consequences has nothing to do with being stupid. I'm not implying that such people are stupid in an intellectual way.
Incidentally, being a "selfish asshole" and being unaware of consequences are more closely related than you would think. They've had some excellent programs for juvenile delinquents that forced offenders to work with the victims of violence that have led to life-changing experiences for the offenders. These would be typical of the types of people that you consider part of the 90% of selfish assholes.
> I think the most effective solution is to convince people > that if they break such-and-such a law, they will get caught
Understandable gut reaction, but it flies in the face of statistics and research. People in the trenches (social workers, psychologists etc.) will tell you that a recurrent theme in criminal offenders is the failure to consider the consequences of their actions. This extends much deeper than just the crime aspect into their every-day life. Such people have trouble recognizing and considering even positive consequences, such as that getting an education will lead to a job, having a job removes the need for begging and/or stealing, etc.
The easiest way to understand that is to think back to childhood, or to observe your own children. I look at my two five-year-olds and am amazed at their inability to consider the consequences of their actions PRIOR to riding that bike down a steep hill, or getting so focused in a chase that they completely ignore obstacles and other dangers, until they come running to you with a boo-boo. Many criminal offenders exhibit stunted mental development in areas such as this. These are people that usually also fail at rehabilitation without ongoing outside assistance precisely because they're incapable of planning, which is just another facet of considering consequences.
And yet, legislation completely ignores such established knowledge and understanding, perhaps because it is created by people that are unaware of it at best, or are merely out to satisfy the primordial need for punishment and revenge at worst. But recognizing that deterrence is ineffective for many types of offences and offenders would be a first step towards a more holistic, preventative and rehabilitative criminal justice system.
> I laughed at it, and I'm German. What's your problem?
Because you still don't make sense. What's a weak military got to do with being a Third World country? There's no connection there at all. Some Third World countries have some of today's largest military forces (think the old Iraq, India, Pakistan, etc.), and that still doesn't make them First World. The First World/Third world nomenclature refers entirely to economic matters. After WWII perhaps Germany could have been termed a Third World country for a decade or so, but it still woudn't really have fit the term. Methinks you find it funny because you WANT to find it funny, which hey, is fine, too.
How so? Something is funny if it's got a grain of truth to it. While there's little argument about the DDR, how exactly was West Germany a Third World country? Not by even the most generous stretch of the imagination. Hence only the ignorant would find that funny.
> What "very large percentage"? For a winner to be counted > as an American, he has to be a US citizen.
I started digging through www.nobel.se to do some checking, but it's quite a pain to get all the details of place of birth, citizenship, etc, too much in fact for winning an argument on/. Still, "large percentage" leaves quite some room for interpretation, and looking just at the Physics laureates of the last ten years, quite a few were born and educated abroad and received the award while at a US institution. You can bet those universities still claim those awards as "theirs". In fact you can find links to the most popular alma maters at http://almaz.com/nobel/alma.html.
> The fact is, if anything, Americans are over educated.
Indeed, particularly linguistically. The extent to which you elaborated (i.e. needing a degree for data entry) is quite flimsy and doesn't prove anything. I finished high school in Australia and did the final 2.5 years of my CS degree in the US, and frankly the only math above and beyond what I learned in high school were differential equations and a teensey bit of extra linear algebra. In English I was regressed back to grade 11 level or so, and in the sciences I can't say I learned significantly much beyond high school level in Australia. What does that mean? Mostly that Americans are futzing around in high school doing who knows what, deferring a lot of vital learning till college. Too bad for those who never end up going to college, I guess they can make up the idiot masses. So especially for someone with a "liberal arts" degree, requiring a college degree essentially means requiring the equivalent of a high school degree of many other countries. Your "over education" mileage may vary depending on the frame of reference.
> The onus is on the licence authority to prove you do have a TV
I assume they have these vans with big antennas on the roof then, "war" driving through neighborhoods trying to nab TV "pirates"? They do in Germany, and there's a big stink about that.
Then it's YOUR turn to bitch at YOUR school for obviously not giving a damn about its own tax base. Instead you bitch at others for having the temerity to complain. You have some warped logic there. What do you care where those Chinese students are getting their money from, as long as it's not YOUR money?! Perhaps you should bitch at your government for not giving you the same free ride. Where does all YOUR tax money go?
I really don't know too many foreigners who are getting a free ride at a US university. Perhaps I'm in the wrong circles, who knows. Most European foreign students I know are here on a combination of a scholarship from home and their own dime.
You could take it one step further. If you look at Nobels as an indicator of leadership, the US are clearly ahead. Yet a very large percentage of the scientists winning those Nobels for the US are actually foreigners doing only their doctoral or post-doctoral studies and research in the US. The secondary and tertiary education that layed the foundation for their critical thinking was usually acquired in their home countries. So you have to wonder what was more important: their foundation education, or the money that enabled the research? Ideally both, but looking at the list of US Nobel Prize winners, I'm wondering if China, Germany and Russia would not be better off financing a bit more research at home to stop this brain drain to the US. Germany in particular has the resources but has been loath to put money into high-risk research with questionable ROI.
Regarding national dominance, given the globalization of the market place it's hard to pin down a particular nationality on any of the large players anymore. In particular in the high-tech field you get ingredients from all over the place. If you look at high-profile products like airplanes and cars, they're a standardized grab bag of components from all over the world. Even traditionally national brands don't really indicate country of origin anymore. If you buy Siemens or Bosch components in the US, they were most likely manufactured in the US, using components designed in Europe by engineers educated in the US--or vice versa, who knows.
> Got to love the foriegn students who come here > and use our education system, but bitch about > the US the whole time they are here
Well, they pay handsomely for this education, so that money should also buy them some bitching rights, no? International students don't get to go to that state university for the same $2000 a semester as you do.
> but they're less interested in serving the country that helped them > than they are in furthering their careers (by moving abroad etc)
I'm sorry but I just don't see that. I've lived in the US for twelve years now and I don't know anybody who moved out of the US for their career's sake. This criticism could easily be addressed at western Europeans though, such as Germans or Brits, who often take a US job at the drop of a hat. This leads to their (on average) better public school and university system benefitting the US.
> Wait till your boss asks you to "dumb it down" [...] because > others are having trouble understanding/maintaining your code
The boss is right, and sadly because his is a largely self-fulfilling prophecy. He doesn't place any value in experience, so he hires any old kid out of college (because they're cheap and not for any other reason!!!). This in turn sends the message to the market that experience and skills aren't important, so new programmers (and I use the term VERY loosely) are less likely to pursue advanced concepts, effectively dumbing down the market. This of course makes it harder for the boss to find people with advanced skills, thus reinforcing his original opinion that experience isn't important anyway.
I see this happening on a daily basis, it's not a matter of debate, it's a fact.
Slashdot Mirror
> Sweden, like Switzerland, believes that having a strong
> military was a way to ensure its neutrality in war.
And if that fails, they also believe in placating the bully. Hey, it worked with the Nazis.
> Sounds awfully familiar right now...
He, he, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say though that it had a lot in common with the communist block in that respect. The Soviets refrained from taking on the rest of the world in all out war, so their system lasted just a tad longer. But it also never reached self-sustaining critical mass, and it eventually imploded. That has to be said with all the credit being heaped upon the Big Gipper at the moment for having "won" the Cold War.
> Zuse also developed the first multi-purpose computing language 'Plankalkul' too.
And he wrote a chess program in this language, before he actually had a machine to run it on.
But then, that wouldn't have been the Nazis that we know and hate. The entire system was highly unstable because it was based foremost upon the inherently self-descructive foundation of the cult of personality. The Nazi regime couldn't have evolved any other way than it did because not the best and brightest made it to the top, but those who could espouse dogma the loudest. That there were also brilliant people amongst the Nazis was an accident rather than a consequence of the system.
Most of his arguments were ok, except the one again overpopulation. That was complete hand waving and dodging the issue. There is a big difference between removing factors that actively SHORTEN life (e.g. improving hygiene and lowering infant mortality) and letting it progress more "naturally" (by that let's mean the body's ability to renew itself without external obstacles), and majorly changing cell biology in order to artificially LENGTHEN life indefinitely. It's like comparing very large numbers to infinity. Even a very large number is still finite, and even a very long half-life will eventually decay the element, but throw in infinity and the game changes. Doubling or even trippling life expectancy might still be managable, but once you're talking about eternal life, or even thousands of years of life, all of a sudden overpopulation DOES become your MOST SERIOUS problem, and it stops resembling improved hygiene in any shape and form. The planet arguably couldn't support more than a few tens of billions of people, which means that we're extremely unlikely to develop practical interstellar travel prior to running out of space, provided such a thing is even possible. Without new worlds to colonize we have to resort to one of two things: population control or wars of extermination. China vs Nazi Germany, only on a planet-wide scale and for seriously real.
Yes, but what if we discovered sufficient tricks to turn Him off?
They're not really dead, they just haven't found their killer app yet. Judging by recent trends and the usage models of bleeding edge users, I'd say the killer app for handhelds is communications. That's what I find myself using my PDA most for lately (well, plus Virtual Pool Mobile, but that's another story). It's got both WiFi and Bluetooth. At home and where available I use WiFi, anywhere else (and I do mean just about anywhere) I use Bluetooth with T-Mobile's excellent GPRS service. All I need now is a higher resolution and larger screen, and maybe having the PDA and phone in one device (though that also has disadvantages).
The rest of the improvements just need to be refinements in usability. For example the Bluetooth link to the phone can be pretty flakey, requiring occasional resets of one or both devices. Additionally, phones seem to drift in and out of GPRS awareness too easily when leaving and entering service areas. Finally, PDAs should be able to automatically switch to the appropriate communications mode without all the manual fiddling, based on user preferences. I'd like mine to use WiFi when in range of known APs, and automatically dial out via BT otherwise. Currently this switching back and forth is a bit tedious.
More like: American consumer tries to eat mini-laptop, gets all kinds of internal bleeding and poisoning, and litigates manufacturer into extinction. At least judging by all the warnings not to eat contents on the most improbable products on the American market.
> you haven't witnessed the dominance of
> Blackberries as of late. This is the future.
Maybe something LIKE Blackberries, but not actual Blackberries. The company is WAY too enterprise obsessed to give a damn about average consumers. If there's a "future" in communications devices, it's more something like the Treo, a combination PDA and cell phone with GPRS or equivalent. In particular, it's got to be an open platform that can take freely or cheaply developed third party software. That's the ONLY way a platform will get enough worthwhile software. Closed platforms that lock you in to the whims of a vendor and their communications price model always tend to be extremely software deficient. Witness current multimedia enabled camera cell phones with all this horsepower and capabilities, and yet they're mostly useless for anything but good old-fashioned talking because their manufacturers and network providers haven't got a clue regarding what YOU might want to use it for, and they're certainly not going to give you the benefit of having the imagination that they themselves are lacking.
> But I doubt the US has such a higher percentange
> of people that are mentally challenged versus other
> nations that we have many more criminals than most.
First, I want to make clear that failure to foresee consequences is an emotional issue, not an intellectual one.
Secondly, part of why the US seems to have so much more crime certainly must have to do with the many more things that are punishable by incarceration, and the much more severe and lengthy sentences. Personally I think it is absurd to physically lock up a white collar criminal, which to me seems quite analogous to the old debtor's prisons (unfortunately the Europeans are not all that much more enlightened in that respect). OTOH, while I haven't looked at the figures, I would be surprised if the numbers of non-violent crimes in Europe were all that much lower in Europe. I think the big difference is in violent and armed crime.
> That's the story, plain and simple.
Real life is rarely plain and never simple. It is very convenient to categorize people, but the human character is a continuum, with most people having more than a fair share of all ends of the spectrum. Sometimes I scare myself with just how much ungliness and malevolence I discover in myself.
> The other 90% are just selfish assholes [...] who aren't stupid
Being emotionally stunted or incapable to see consequences has nothing to do with being stupid. I'm not implying that such people are stupid in an intellectual way.
Incidentally, being a "selfish asshole" and being unaware of consequences are more closely related than you would think. They've had some excellent programs for juvenile delinquents that forced offenders to work with the victims of violence that have led to life-changing experiences for the offenders. These would be typical of the types of people that you consider part of the 90% of selfish assholes.
> State-sponsored maiming would be both a more effective deterrent
Well, you're only a couple of hundred years or so late for that.
> I think the most effective solution is to convince people
> that if they break such-and-such a law, they will get caught
Understandable gut reaction, but it flies in the face of statistics and research. People in the trenches (social workers, psychologists etc.) will tell you that a recurrent theme in criminal offenders is the failure to consider the consequences of their actions. This extends much deeper than just the crime aspect into their every-day life. Such people have trouble recognizing and considering even positive consequences, such as that getting an education will lead to a job, having a job removes the need for begging and/or stealing, etc.
The easiest way to understand that is to think back to childhood, or to observe your own children. I look at my two five-year-olds and am amazed at their inability to consider the consequences of their actions PRIOR to riding that bike down a steep hill, or getting so focused in a chase that they completely ignore obstacles and other dangers, until they come running to you with a boo-boo. Many criminal offenders exhibit stunted mental development in areas such as this. These are people that usually also fail at rehabilitation without ongoing outside assistance precisely because they're incapable of planning, which is just another facet of considering consequences.
And yet, legislation completely ignores such established knowledge and understanding, perhaps because it is created by people that are unaware of it at best, or are merely out to satisfy the primordial need for punishment and revenge at worst. But recognizing that deterrence is ineffective for many types of offences and offenders would be a first step towards a more holistic, preventative and rehabilitative criminal justice system.
> I laughed at it, and I'm German. What's your problem?
Because you still don't make sense. What's a weak military got to do with being a Third World country? There's no connection there at all. Some Third World countries have some of today's largest military forces (think the old Iraq, India, Pakistan, etc.), and that still doesn't make them First World. The First World/Third world nomenclature refers entirely to economic matters. After WWII perhaps Germany could have been termed a Third World country for a decade or so, but it still woudn't really have fit the term. Methinks you find it funny because you WANT to find it funny, which hey, is fine, too.
> But less funny.
How so? Something is funny if it's got a grain of truth to it. While there's little argument about the DDR, how exactly was West Germany a Third World country? Not by even the most generous stretch of the imagination. Hence only the ignorant would find that funny.
> What "very large percentage"? For a winner to be counted
/. Still, "large percentage" leaves quite some room for interpretation, and looking just at the Physics laureates of the last ten years, quite a few were born and educated abroad and received the award while at a US institution. You can bet those universities still claim those awards as "theirs". In fact you can find links to the most popular alma maters at http://almaz.com/nobel/alma.html.
> as an American, he has to be a US citizen.
I started digging through www.nobel.se to do some checking, but it's quite a pain to get all the details of place of birth, citizenship, etc, too much in fact for winning an argument on
> The fact is, if anything, Americans are over educated.
Indeed, particularly linguistically. The extent to which you elaborated (i.e. needing a degree for data entry) is quite flimsy and doesn't prove anything. I finished high school in Australia and did the final 2.5 years of my CS degree in the US, and frankly the only math above and beyond what I learned in high school were differential equations and a teensey bit of extra linear algebra. In English I was regressed back to grade 11 level or so, and in the sciences I can't say I learned significantly much beyond high school level in Australia. What does that mean? Mostly that Americans are futzing around in high school doing who knows what, deferring a lot of vital learning till college. Too bad for those who never end up going to college, I guess they can make up the idiot masses. So especially for someone with a "liberal arts" degree, requiring a college degree essentially means requiring the equivalent of a high school degree of many other countries. Your "over education" mileage may vary depending on the frame of reference.
> The onus is on the licence authority to prove you do have a TV
I assume they have these vans with big antennas on the roof then, "war" driving through neighborhoods trying to nab TV "pirates"? They do in Germany, and there's a big stink about that.
Then it's YOUR turn to bitch at YOUR school for obviously not giving a damn about its own tax base. Instead you bitch at others for having the temerity to complain. You have some warped logic there. What do you care where those Chinese students are getting their money from, as long as it's not YOUR money?! Perhaps you should bitch at your government for not giving you the same free ride. Where does all YOUR tax money go?
I really don't know too many foreigners who are getting a free ride at a US university. Perhaps I'm in the wrong circles, who knows. Most European foreign students I know are here on a combination of a scholarship from home and their own dime.
You could take it one step further. If you look at Nobels as an indicator of leadership, the US are clearly ahead. Yet a very large percentage of the scientists winning those Nobels for the US are actually foreigners doing only their doctoral or post-doctoral studies and research in the US. The secondary and tertiary education that layed the foundation for their critical thinking was usually acquired in their home countries. So you have to wonder what was more important: their foundation education, or the money that enabled the research? Ideally both, but looking at the list of US Nobel Prize winners, I'm wondering if China, Germany and Russia would not be better off financing a bit more research at home to stop this brain drain to the US. Germany in particular has the resources but has been loath to put money into high-risk research with questionable ROI.
Regarding national dominance, given the globalization of the market place it's hard to pin down a particular nationality on any of the large players anymore. In particular in the high-tech field you get ingredients from all over the place. If you look at high-profile products like airplanes and cars, they're a standardized grab bag of components from all over the world. Even traditionally national brands don't really indicate country of origin anymore. If you buy Siemens or Bosch components in the US, they were most likely manufactured in the US, using components designed in Europe by engineers educated in the US--or vice versa, who knows.
> Why is it so disturbing that other countries are doing
> well in scientifical-type stuff?
For the same reason we're praying for God to bless America. Have you ever seen "God bless our planet" or "God bless our Earth" bumper stickers?
> Got to love the foriegn students who come here
> and use our education system, but bitch about
> the US the whole time they are here
Well, they pay handsomely for this education, so that money should also buy them some bitching rights, no? International students don't get to go to that state university for the same $2000 a semester as you do.
> but they're less interested in serving the country that helped them
> than they are in furthering their careers (by moving abroad etc)
I'm sorry but I just don't see that. I've lived in the US for twelve years now and I don't know anybody who moved out of the US for their career's sake. This criticism could easily be addressed at western Europeans though, such as Germans or Brits, who often take a US job at the drop of a hat. This leads to their (on average) better public school and university system benefitting the US.
> Wait till your boss asks you to "dumb it down" [...] because
> others are having trouble understanding/maintaining your code
The boss is right, and sadly because his is a largely self-fulfilling prophecy. He doesn't place any value in experience, so he hires any old kid out of college (because they're cheap and not for any other reason!!!). This in turn sends the message to the market that experience and skills aren't important, so new programmers (and I use the term VERY loosely) are less likely to pursue advanced concepts, effectively dumbing down the market. This of course makes it harder for the boss to find people with advanced skills, thus reinforcing his original opinion that experience isn't important anyway.
I see this happening on a daily basis, it's not a matter of debate, it's a fact.