They are already getting rid of anyone who could make the prosperity of china look bad - I'm sure that they will impose restrictions on who foreign reporters can talk to without losing some kind of privilege, on top of which anyone talking to wester reporters would have to be suicidal to say anything critical of the regime.
I think there are practical reasons for having space exploration - it serves much like war in stimulating a different kind of thinking, unusual problems to be solved, and that inspires a new wave of creativity. When nothing major is going on things become stagnant and civilisation doesn't progress. If we put a lot of focus on space we could find new opportunities that would force us to look into new directions.
As a side note the war in Iraq is doing wonders for the robotics industry - defence is putting a lot of funding into AI and robotics which will speed up progress by possibly a decade.
What is the problem that some Americans have with the ACLU? Its an organization dedicated to protecting the constitution... to me it would seem like hating it makes about as much sense as hating kittens.
While that might be true, it takes a while to build up an army, with a professional and experienced core to serve as the officers. You can expand an army to be 10 times the size fairly quickly but you need some core to start from and that can take up a generation to succeed. You need to train the pilots, design and acquire hardware all of which takes time in modern warfare.
As an aside, Sweden stayed out of the first and second war by NOT being important either strategically or resource-wise, rather than some kind of political strategy (they pissed off Hitler plenty but there was really no need to do anything about it). Belgium (in both world wars) and Netherlands + Denmark + Luxembourg + Norway (in second world war) were officially neutral yet got wiped because of strategic and resource reasons.
Well if someone proposed to use a incomplete metric to measure your progress at work would you be for it? Say you were a programmer, and your boss measured your performance by lines of code typed a day (Some places used to do this). Yes it will pick up the slack-asses that do nothing, but it will fail to differentiate between quality programmers and programmers who just enter shit.
The same deal is with teachers, their real duty is not so much to teach children specific facts (although this is, for some reason, where the most attention goes, prolly coz its easiest to measure) rather to teach children how to think critically and to 'learn to learn'. Both of which you cannot really measure in the test.
Now I agree with your point that some places are failing miserably, but how does this measure help them? If I understand it correctly (and I could be completely wrong) it takes funding away from the worst preforming places, and uses it as a reward for the best schools. This to me seems very much like a business approach - and completely unsuited to the problem of teaching children, as now the places that are preforming poorly have even less money to hire better teachers and equipment.
I think the problem is that having more tests in school does nothing to improve education. What happens is that people learn to pass the test and nothing else.
I don't think this conspiracy really needs to involve the government. ATMs and tellers are just expensive for the banks so they discourage its use by charging a high fee for its use.
There is also some interesting analysis done by the Federation of American Scientists that suggests this is just an excuse to test out some anti-satellite missiles. An interesting read.
Actually I did - greens & democrats - however at the end of the day when you vote for smaller left-wing parties, it usually ends up going to labour neway. (Note: Australian electoral system - Americans will not understand)
Actually the failed software was the previous government's idea. The new government suggested an ISP based filtering system - with opt outs for those that want unrestricted access - something that is far far worse. I voted for labour so that we wouldn't have this sort of idioticity, and looks like I came out the idiot as we now have even more of it! Good going Rudd - there is nothing like when the left is being more right than the right.
As an aside, I think finding extremophiles on Earth doesn't really support the notion that life could occur in extreme environments. All it says is that after life has originated it can adapt to extreme environments - the requirements for abiogenesis are likely to be much more stringent then for post abiogenesis-adaptation.
Hear Hear, My external hard-drive case has a massive light on the front that could be used as a torch. I had to disconnect the light so that I could get some sleep when its running overnight.
I'm sure that in the papers that are released along with these findings there are sorts of ifs buts and maybes - its usually the news reports that then add some "certainty" to the findings.
Just because they are not 100% sure it is exactly that year dosen't mean they shouldn't release the findings. They are important anyway as they build up our understanding of the universe.
I'm not sure if you have mistyped or you have confused the meaning of the article, but its got nothing to do with the age of the earth (which is estimated to be about 4 billion btw).
Young earth folk are a subset of creationists that are very popular in the US. They have their own pseudo-scientific literature on how exactly things got done in 6000 years - as well as a bizzare obsession with proving that noah's ark is possible.
High memory usage is different from memory leaks - every time you open a new tab it stores in ram some of the previous and next pages in ram. So if you do a lot of surfing on different tabs it very quickly goes up to 100MB in ram. You can disable that from the settings but you lose the ultra-quick back and forward capability.
I think its fairly obvious why its was a PR disaster and it has nothing to do with double standards if that is what you are getting at. The tobacco companies were making money from their product which was killing people, and the best they could come up with was "well by killing 'em early money is saved!"
That's a very good point - given that the simplest life forms we have found so far (in terms of the length of the dna) are ones that are evolved for normal (ie-non icy) conditions. However its interesting to note that for most bacteria being frozen is not lethal (although I'm not 100% sure on this), rather it just stops doing anything until it thaws and then continues on.
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They are already getting rid of anyone who could make the prosperity of china look bad - I'm sure that they will impose restrictions on who foreign reporters can talk to without losing some kind of privilege, on top of which anyone talking to wester reporters would have to be suicidal to say anything critical of the regime.
Actually the middle class has been the core of most revolutions in the last two centuries. You need educated people to lead a revolution.
I think there are practical reasons for having space exploration - it serves much like war in stimulating a different kind of thinking, unusual problems to be solved, and that inspires a new wave of creativity. When nothing major is going on things become stagnant and civilisation doesn't progress. If we put a lot of focus on space we could find new opportunities that would force us to look into new directions.
As a side note the war in Iraq is doing wonders for the robotics industry - defence is putting a lot of funding into AI and robotics which will speed up progress by possibly a decade.
What is the problem that some Americans have with the ACLU? Its an organization dedicated to protecting the constitution... to me it would seem like hating it makes about as much sense as hating kittens.
You forgot to add:
terrorist
Same-sex marriages
Nader for president
Life is murder.
Well punitive damages are usually used against big corporations - in fact there is a business lobby to remove punitive damages. Or did I miss sarcasm?
In theory they can't, but in practice they could easily come up with an excuse, and after they found something its too late.
While that might be true, it takes a while to build up an army, with a professional and experienced core to serve as the officers. You can expand an army to be 10 times the size fairly quickly but you need some core to start from and that can take up a generation to succeed. You need to train the pilots, design and acquire hardware all of which takes time in modern warfare.
As an aside, Sweden stayed out of the first and second war by NOT being important either strategically or resource-wise, rather than some kind of political strategy (they pissed off Hitler plenty but there was really no need to do anything about it). Belgium (in both world wars) and Netherlands + Denmark + Luxembourg + Norway (in second world war) were officially neutral yet got wiped because of strategic and resource reasons.
Well if someone proposed to use a incomplete metric to measure your progress at work would you be for it? Say you were a programmer, and your boss measured your performance by lines of code typed a day (Some places used to do this). Yes it will pick up the slack-asses that do nothing, but it will fail to differentiate between quality programmers and programmers who just enter shit.
The same deal is with teachers, their real duty is not so much to teach children specific facts (although this is, for some reason, where the most attention goes, prolly coz its easiest to measure) rather to teach children how to think critically and to 'learn to learn'. Both of which you cannot really measure in the test.
Now I agree with your point that some places are failing miserably, but how does this measure help them? If I understand it correctly (and I could be completely wrong) it takes funding away from the worst preforming places, and uses it as a reward for the best schools. This to me seems very much like a business approach - and completely unsuited to the problem of teaching children, as now the places that are preforming poorly have even less money to hire better teachers and equipment.
I think the problem is that having more tests in school does nothing to improve education. What happens is that people learn to pass the test and nothing else.
I don't think this conspiracy really needs to involve the government. ATMs and tellers are just expensive for the banks so they discourage its use by charging a high fee for its use.
There is also some interesting analysis done by the Federation of American Scientists that suggests this is just an excuse to test out some anti-satellite missiles. An interesting read.
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/02/us_plans_test_of_anti-satellit.php
Wtf? Why would the robot ask the brain where the brain waves are? Its like ringing up a radio station to ask where their radio waves are!
Actually I did - greens & democrats - however at the end of the day when you vote for smaller left-wing parties, it usually ends up going to labour neway. (Note: Australian electoral system - Americans will not understand)
Actually the failed software was the previous government's idea. The new government suggested an ISP based filtering system - with opt outs for those that want unrestricted access - something that is far far worse. I voted for labour so that we wouldn't have this sort of idioticity, and looks like I came out the idiot as we now have even more of it! Good going Rudd - there is nothing like when the left is being more right than the right.
If you had actually read Mein Kampf you would have discovered Hitler wasn't a social democrat but a national socialist.
As an aside, I think finding extremophiles on Earth doesn't really support the notion that life could occur in extreme environments. All it says is that after life has originated it can adapt to extreme environments - the requirements for abiogenesis are likely to be much more stringent then for post abiogenesis-adaptation.
Hear Hear, My external hard-drive case has a massive light on the front that could be used as a torch. I had to disconnect the light so that I could get some sleep when its running overnight.
It was obviously a joke - but I'm not faulting you since you probably don't have any experience in humour.
I'm sure that in the papers that are released along with these findings there are sorts of ifs buts and maybes - its usually the news reports that then add some "certainty" to the findings.
Just because they are not 100% sure it is exactly that year dosen't mean they shouldn't release the findings. They are important anyway as they build up our understanding of the universe.
I'm not sure if you have mistyped or you have confused the meaning of the article, but its got nothing to do with the age of the earth (which is estimated to be about 4 billion btw).
Young earth folk are a subset of creationists that are very popular in the US. They have their own pseudo-scientific literature on how exactly things got done in 6000 years - as well as a bizzare obsession with proving that noah's ark is possible.
High memory usage is different from memory leaks - every time you open a new tab it stores in ram some of the previous and next pages in ram. So if you do a lot of surfing on different tabs it very quickly goes up to 100MB in ram. You can disable that from the settings but you lose the ultra-quick back and forward capability.
I think its fairly obvious why its was a PR disaster and it has nothing to do with double standards if that is what you are getting at. The tobacco companies were making money from their product which was killing people, and the best they could come up with was "well by killing 'em early money is saved!"
I was beginning to worry that I couldn't read slashdot from heaven
That's a very good point - given that the simplest life forms we have found so far (in terms of the length of the dna) are ones that are evolved for normal (ie-non icy) conditions. However its interesting to note that for most bacteria being frozen is not lethal (although I'm not 100% sure on this), rather it just stops doing anything until it thaws and then continues on.