So you don't quite understand the meaning of "median."
I love it when others point out my ignorance. It helps me to learn, although I would prefer an explanation of my ignorance rather than an unsupported assertion. So, the median commute time (albeit not median commute distance) I was referring to was data compiled from the US Census Bureau. I haven't personally verified the Census Bureaus's understanding of the term median, but I assume that they understand it.
The Volt is the lone exception to the plug in hybrids (okay the Honda Clarity PHEV can do what the Volt does), many of them have tiny batteries that carry them 20 miles or less. I swear some of the more luxury PHEV's are only there to get charger spaces because their batteries are good for something like 14 miles. It's pathetic.
I have a Honda Clarity PHEV. It is $33k before the $7.5k federal rebate and the $1.5k state rebate. It has a 50-mile battery and, in contrast to the Volt, the interior space of an Accord. I use it as my daily commute car and our family evening and weekend car. Over the last year, I've gone to the gas station four times, and two of those times were due to long day trips. I have a small garage, so my wife's minivan goes in the garage, leaving my PHEV outside. However, I can charge it fully with a regular outdoor socket and extension cord because the 17kWh battery is both small enough to not require installer a new electrical circuit and charger and larger enough to still take care of most of my driving. This cannot be done with any fully electric car.
Plug-in hybrids use no gas for normal day to day driving
Not really. The gas engine, more complex transmission, gas tank and so on mean you lose a ton of battery space. So in a car that could support a 200mi range battery pack, you get a 30mi range battery pack. Which means unless your commuting is particularly short, you're going to regularly use some gas.
Source: I own a Volt.
The 1st-en Volt battery was 38 miles, and the 2nd-gen battery was 53 miles. The current gen plug-in hybrids all get around 50 miles, as that happens to be the capacity to qualify for the full federal tax credit. Since the median US commute is around 26.5 minutes, most commuters will use no gas for their daily commutes. And since there is zero range anxiety, there is no need for a backup car for longer commutes.
For an equivalent group in the USA, we might look at people whose right to vote (and to hold a lot of jobs) has been revoked due to a previous felony conviction.
What we need is more information about what crimes were committed by the 23 million Chinese? Were they drug dealers or bank robbers? Were they convicted of felonies? How many of the crimes were related to "spreading false information"? It's this latter crime that is the crucial difference between the Chinese and American systems. There is no 1st Amendment in China, so there is no protection for thought or speech. The standard for defamation in the US is very high and for political defamation even higher.
Worse than that, some "facts" are impossible to establish.
That is true. In fact, the truthiness algorithms probably have some calculated level of confidence for all inputs. The practical use of the algorithm doesn't require raising an alarm for every input that is determined to have some level of untruthiness. Rather, the alarm can be raised for just a high level of untruthiness. Furthermore, since it's the oft repeated untruths that do the most harm on a societal basis, the alarms can be further restricted to those high-level of untruthiness statements that are often repeated.
The censorship issue in China is also exaggerated. For one, political topic is the one being censored. ordinary people have little interests in politics and need to talk about politics much. Most other discussions are allowed and quite open. Follow the actual news from real Chinese news site, you can read a lot of criticism on the various levels of government on variety of topics. Also read Quora on many of the answers on Chinese censorships and other Chinese issues; those give you a lot of in-depth analysis than most of the western outlet shows you.
While it's somewhat true that Chinese are culturally more prone to focus on economics and food than politics, it is not true that cultural Chinese do not discuss politics or do not passionately want to push for political change. Take a look at the difference between Hong Kong and Taiwan versus China. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, there is a very significant vocal portion of the population that openly criticizes and calls for changes in the current government. This does not exist in China except for those political prisoners who are willing to accept punishment. The difference is that in China, Chinese surveillance combined with the known extreme punishments result in extreme self-censorship. The self-censorship doesn't reflect a lack of intrinsic apathy about political change but rather an induced apathy trained by the state surveillance/punishment apparatus.
Regarding info about Chinese censorship, surveillance, and punishment available on the internet, I believe what Abraham Lincoln said about trusting information on the internet. The western press has reported on Chinese security attacks across the internet. However, there is much less reporting about the push for Chinese propaganda intended to influence western countries. For example, in Time magazine, there are occasionally multi-page sections that are labeled as guest excepts from a Chinese publication. However, it's obvious that these sections are advertisements that tout the economic, cultural, and political prosperity of China. Other countries also advertise in Time, albeit mostly from a tourism and commercial investment angle. However, in contrast to other national advertisements, the Chinese sections are not labeled as paid advertisements. Instead, the Chinese pages are presented to appear as news similar to the other sections in Time. This is just one example of the Chinese propaganda machine for western audiences.
While China's legal system is not independent, it does not mean ordinary people are not protected most of the time
This is actually true most of the time for most of the people. However, a large part of the reason it's true is that most of the people have enough sense to self-censor to avoid problems with the government. This type of self-censorship doesn't exist in the US and most western countries.
And finally, it is unclear why this discussion of foreign country spy or surveillance (by China) accusations have much to do with the human rights or democracy situations in China. But the US, which is supposedly/on paper a democracy respecting human rights, is still spying around the world. So whether China respects human rights or is a democracy has nothing to do with whether China will spy or not. Apparently, the actual accusations don't hold any water and American nationalists have to divert the focus.
The reason why surveillance and human rights is pertinent to this discussion is that surveillance by the US government on its own citizens is not used to control political speech and such surveillance never results in punishment by the government for political speech. In contrast, in China surveillance by the Chinese government on its own citizens for political speech can result in severe punishment and constitutes major human rights violations, at least by western standards. The vast majority of Chinese value their freedom and economic prosperity enough to self-censor, and those that are careless or cannot muzzle themselves are punished. I believe that the NSA/FBI/etc. monitor a great deal of communication on the internet and other communications media, but I don't censor myself at all because I have no fear of retribution based on that surveillance. This would not be true in China. The surveillance apparatus in China exists to protect the party and the supreme leader and is used to punish and squash communication that are viewed as threatening to the party or the supreme leader. One example of the difference between US and Chinese surveillance is that an explicit, credible threat to the safety of the US president is needed to trigger police action, while in China comparing the supreme leader to Winnie the Pooh is enough to get in trouble.
There are well over 1 million ethnic Uighurs being detained for no actual crime in China.
Most estimates are that there are less than a million detained in the Xinjiang camps.
This is not correct. There are some estimates that are less than one million. Most are at least one million. Several are several million. But, of course, these estimates don't really matter. Would attitudes or policy change if the real number were 950,000 instead of 2 million?
America incarcerates over 2 million people, roughly four times as many as China per capita. Many are in pre-trial confinement, having been convicted of nothing. Many others are in prison based on plea bargains rather than evidence. America has one of the world's highest false conviction rates.
There is plenty to criticize about China's prison system. There is much more to criticize about America's.
Comparing the American justice system to the Chinese system is really hard, mainly due to the extreme opacity of the Chinese system. Yes, some of the per capita numbers for China are somewhat lower due to the big denominator. However, there are several significant factors that would favor facing the US system instead of the Chinese system:
(1) Many laws in China would be considered to be unacceptable by most Americans. For example, texting or posting offensive words like Tibet, Taiwan, or Winne the Pooh. Criticizing the president, his party, and existing laws. Possessing a beard or a Koran at home. Arguing certain viewpoints on Slashdot. The concept of "law" in China is very different in China, and most Americans would find it unacceptable.
(2) The judicial system in China does not protect the rights of the accused. Extra-judicial punishments, no effective right of appeal or even representation, no due process, no limits on cruel and unusual punishments.
On paper, China is the world's largest democracy and an exemplary protector of the rights of the people. In reality, the application of law in China is far inferior to the US system. This is not to say that the US system is great, good, or even satisfactory. It's only to show how truly bad the China system is.
Americans can banter about the philosophical differences between US and Chinese surveillance and law because they have the first-world problem of stating whatever they want within the insulating cocoon of American rights. Where are the corresponding Chinese discussions of Chinese surveillance and law? I'll give you a hint. It's not because the Chinese system is so perfect that there's nothing to criticize.
The audience score is the only aspect of Rotten Tomatoes I find to be of value. The scores from movie critics just don't seem to have a strong relationship with whether or not I'm going to enjoy a movie.
Taking that idea further, it would be really helpful to know the opinions of other reviewers who have preferences like mine. There's a chance that the average of the entire reviewer population reflects my potential enjoyment of the movie, but there's also a chance that it doesn't. So, maybe something like the old Netflix recommendations.
The server costs are amortized across tens of thousands of users, which tips the scales significantly.
Yes, but the cost of one server is also orders of magnitude more expensive to manufacturer and transport. It's not clear which cost is greater per user.
It takes thousands of times more energy to transport a CD from manufacturer to distribution center to consumer on the UPS/Amazon truck... or even more to store to consumer.
And your CD player is hooked up to a big wifi system anyway. And often you are streaming on a portable device that uses a miniscule amount of electricity.
What kind of broken carbon math is this?
Yes, the CD has to be manufactured and transported, which takes substantial energy. But the streaming server also has to be manufactured and transported, which also takes substantial energy. It's not at all obvious that the CD manufacturing and transportation take less energy.
The playback for the CD requires a motor, unless the CD is ripped.
The streaming server requires power for the system itself and building cooling, plus direct power and cooling for the entire network between the server and the client.
The speaker system is mostly a wash, since it's the same either way, so that doesn't factor into the energy equation.
This power comparison is not often made, but doing the actual math may actually result in numbers that are not intuitive.
Perfect markets produce "cartel" like this when all participants have near equal production capacity - they'll all gauge the price to maximize profit and minimize output as that is the most optimal nash game. And they can do it with no direct collusion, just market ticker.
Perfect, working markets will use public prices as signals to adjust prices and capacity. This is the way supply and demand is supposed to work, and it can be done without direct collusion. However, there are situations where this dynamic adjustment of prices doesn't work, e.g., if there is a monopoly or if there are no disruptors (i.e., all vendors are willing to keep their market share without competing).
The problem with the robo-pricers is not the computer aspect. It's that there are no disruptors in the market, either because no one cares to be a disruptor or because the barriers to entry as a vendor are too great.
Debate doesn't have a clear winner. Like gymnastics, Miss America, and America's Got Talent, it's a popularity contest with voters. What would the results have been if the voters were AI programs instead of humans? The competition was rigged to be biased in favor of humans.
What would have been more interesting is a Turing Test-like method for judging, where the judges can only read transcripts of the debate. After all, a computer's elocution is dependent on the skill of a human proxy or reliant on clunky speech synthesis.
... if know that I have to see ads, I'd still rather see ads that actually are relevant to my own interests or needs than ones that aren't.
If I can't use software to block ads, then I will use personal control of my attention to block ads.
I don't see why "personally relevant" ads are better than generic ads. In either case, I usually receive information about something that I'm not interested in buying. The only time when I want personally relevant information is when I'm searching for that information, and then I want the information to be unbiased by ad money.
Of course that's not a reason to assume that there are none, but if you are concerned about such things whose hardware are you going to buy?
Obviously I would avoid buying from the country with which I am more likely to engage in a military war in the future.
Many of the concerns on slashdot concern civil liberties. It's entirely reasonable for people in the West to concern themselves exclusively with their own civil liberties to the exclusion of civil liberty injustices perpetrated on others. However, in contrast to individual citizens, Western governments also need to plan for future military defense and wars. And these Western governments need to be wary of China and Russia.
Capitalism does not require growth. Bullshit expectations of increased profit revenue requires growth.
This is very true. Unfortunately, stock-based corporations that reward executives based on short-term stock price appreciation require growth at all costs. The real problem is that growth is defined in terms of short-term metrics that do not value long-term company strength, employee well-being, or societal welfare. Capitalism does not mandate this. For example, small-business owners are often driven by different motivations.
It's worth pointing out that English is the second most spoken language in the world and arguably the most widely spoken language since the only one with more speakers is Mandarin Chinese which is predominantly only spoken in one country that has a less-than-open market.
English is actually the most spoken language in the world according to Wikipedia. There are more people in China than the total number of worldwide English speakers, but not everyone in China speaks Mandarin, with about 30% of people in China unable to speak Mandarin (Cantonese and Hokkien are prominent dialects).
The original Slashdot summary is also incorrect that English as a native language is not in the top-8 languages. It's actually third. This is obvious because the total population of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is close to half a billion people, the overwhelming majority of which speak English as a native language.
The flipside of selective enforcement is that someone with an axe to grind against you specifically, or thinks your downfall will lift them up, can throw the book at you even if your actions were moral and didn't contradict the spirit of the law. Do you want your fate to rest on "I know it when I see it?"
If the courts are functional and have sufficient safeguards for the rights of the accused, then the system works. If such courts don't exist and there is no common assumption of judicial fairness, then it doesn't matter what the law is or what the police or prosecutors do. This is one of the keys differences between the US and China. It's not so much how the law is written but how the underlying police, prosecutors, and judges function.
A PhD or Masters is not a course. Its a research program.
For master's programs, it depends. It's possible to obtain an MS degree without a thesis by just passing courses. No research is required for those degrees.
I hate to break it to you, but US Universities are not generally the highest categories. There are some, but the stats aren't great. 1.7% of US universities fit in the "Top 100", versus UK with 2.5% and Australia with 3.1% I should observe US figures are highly tainted by the proliferation of bogus universities (Liberty University, and other dodgy thinktank feeders). Sure you have things like Caltech or Stanford , but for every Caltech, you've got a hundred busted ass rural universities or "Praeger mail order university where you get a doctorate for declaring the world is flat" type places.
Don't be so arogant, and consider traveling.
The percentage of US universities in the "Top 100", whatever that means, is somewhat low due to the large number of universities. It's an advantage of the US system that there are so many universities. In contrast to many other countries, getting into a US university is not that hard but matriculation into a school, whatever reputation it may have, guarantees nothing, and hard work is still required. This proliferation of universities grants opportunities to disadvantaged demographic groups that don't exist in many other countries.
Make no mistake though this is a corrupt corporate law, it should only be a civil matter because virtually anything under that law could be claimed as a crime with a ten year prison sentence.
If an employee steals a physical item, like a computer, it should obviously be a criminal act, no different than stealing a physical item from a private home. Why should the penalty be less serious for corporate intellectual property that has a higher value and the theft of which more seriously impacts a company?
Yes, there are many US laws that are overly general in their descriptions of crimes. The only reason the US legal system seems to work is that in most cases, the prosecution and adjudication of those alleged crimes is carried out with some measure of common sense, i.e., in a way that most people would agree is reasonable.
Is the use of the FBI as a private police force for Corporate America on civil matters.
This is exactly what a police force should be used for. Local police are called to arrest thieves that steal from local stores. The FBI is called to arrest thieves that steal from national companies. It just happens that the shoplifter in this case was headed for China.
in the USA many companies are required to hand over your data.. and have done so...
In the US, there do exist avenues for companies to fight such government requests and pressure, including court fights and fights in the public media. There are also avenues for individuals to fight such requests, including leaks and sabotage. We have seen examples of such in the US, but this does not happen in China.
Although it is very likely that both the US and China put pressure on their companies to aid in international spying, the big difference is that avenues to fight or even express private disapproval do not exist in China. Companies, much like top government officials, exist because the government allows them to exist, and as seen over the last few years, that approval to exist can be canceled very quickly, with dire consequences for those individuals and their families.
Isn't that true everywhere? In fact, doesn't the US currently have a policy where agents are allowed to access everything on any device that you bring into or out of the US without even any reason for suspicion?
Yes, but only at the border. Elsewhere, there are more restrictions on government access.
The problem is not that the Chinese police may access your device it is that they are looking extremely hard for any, even trivial, violation of their laws so they can arrest you to try and get leverage against the US just like they have been doing with Canada.
Yes, privacy is part of the problem, in that the Chinese are looking for more details. However, the real problem is what they are willing to do with that data. Even seemingly innocent statements that might be viewed by the Chinese need to be self-censored, whereas in the US, people are free to openly, loudly, and repeatedly criticize the President and call for his removal or to directly call for the overthrow of the US government.
To learn Chinese requires memorization of characters and a separate memorization of pronunciation
As if in English you can infer pronunciation from spelling. In Spanish or German or Russian - you can. In English - you can't. You have to memorize
English is a psuedo-phonetic language. That's why it's possible to teach phonics to kids to help them learn how to read. There are rules with lots of exceptions. In contrast, Chinese has a few patterns with no phonetic rules.
Slashdot Mirror
So you don't quite understand the meaning of "median."
I love it when others point out my ignorance. It helps me to learn, although I would prefer an explanation of my ignorance rather than an unsupported assertion. So, the median commute time (albeit not median commute distance) I was referring to was data compiled from the US Census Bureau. I haven't personally verified the Census Bureaus's understanding of the term median, but I assume that they understand it.
The Volt is the lone exception to the plug in hybrids (okay the Honda Clarity PHEV can do what the Volt does), many of them have tiny batteries that carry them 20 miles or less. I swear some of the more luxury PHEV's are only there to get charger spaces because their batteries are good for something like 14 miles. It's pathetic.
I have a Honda Clarity PHEV. It is $33k before the $7.5k federal rebate and the $1.5k state rebate. It has a 50-mile battery and, in contrast to the Volt, the interior space of an Accord. I use it as my daily commute car and our family evening and weekend car. Over the last year, I've gone to the gas station four times, and two of those times were due to long day trips. I have a small garage, so my wife's minivan goes in the garage, leaving my PHEV outside. However, I can charge it fully with a regular outdoor socket and extension cord because the 17kWh battery is both small enough to not require installer a new electrical circuit and charger and larger enough to still take care of most of my driving. This cannot be done with any fully electric car.
Plug-in hybrids use no gas for normal day to day driving
Not really. The gas engine, more complex transmission, gas tank and so on mean you lose a ton of battery space. So in a car that could support a 200mi range battery pack, you get a 30mi range battery pack. Which means unless your commuting is particularly short, you're going to regularly use some gas.
Source: I own a Volt.
The 1st-en Volt battery was 38 miles, and the 2nd-gen battery was 53 miles. The current gen plug-in hybrids all get around 50 miles, as that happens to be the capacity to qualify for the full federal tax credit. Since the median US commute is around 26.5 minutes, most commuters will use no gas for their daily commutes. And since there is zero range anxiety, there is no need for a backup car for longer commutes.
For an equivalent group in the USA, we might look at people whose right to vote (and to hold a lot of jobs) has been revoked due to a previous felony conviction.
What we need is more information about what crimes were committed by the 23 million Chinese? Were they drug dealers or bank robbers? Were they convicted of felonies? How many of the crimes were related to "spreading false information"? It's this latter crime that is the crucial difference between the Chinese and American systems. There is no 1st Amendment in China, so there is no protection for thought or speech. The standard for defamation in the US is very high and for political defamation even higher.
Worse than that, some "facts" are impossible to establish.
That is true. In fact, the truthiness algorithms probably have some calculated level of confidence for all inputs. The practical use of the algorithm doesn't require raising an alarm for every input that is determined to have some level of untruthiness. Rather, the alarm can be raised for just a high level of untruthiness. Furthermore, since it's the oft repeated untruths that do the most harm on a societal basis, the alarms can be further restricted to those high-level of untruthiness statements that are often repeated.
The censorship issue in China is also exaggerated. For one, political topic is the one being censored. ordinary people have little interests in politics and need to talk about politics much. Most other discussions are allowed and quite open. Follow the actual news from real Chinese news site, you can read a lot of criticism on the various levels of government on variety of topics. Also read Quora on many of the answers on Chinese censorships and other Chinese issues; those give you a lot of in-depth analysis than most of the western outlet shows you.
While it's somewhat true that Chinese are culturally more prone to focus on economics and food than politics, it is not true that cultural Chinese do not discuss politics or do not passionately want to push for political change. Take a look at the difference between Hong Kong and Taiwan versus China. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, there is a very significant vocal portion of the population that openly criticizes and calls for changes in the current government. This does not exist in China except for those political prisoners who are willing to accept punishment. The difference is that in China, Chinese surveillance combined with the known extreme punishments result in extreme self-censorship. The self-censorship doesn't reflect a lack of intrinsic apathy about political change but rather an induced apathy trained by the state surveillance/punishment apparatus.
Regarding info about Chinese censorship, surveillance, and punishment available on the internet, I believe what Abraham Lincoln said about trusting information on the internet. The western press has reported on Chinese security attacks across the internet. However, there is much less reporting about the push for Chinese propaganda intended to influence western countries. For example, in Time magazine, there are occasionally multi-page sections that are labeled as guest excepts from a Chinese publication. However, it's obvious that these sections are advertisements that tout the economic, cultural, and political prosperity of China. Other countries also advertise in Time, albeit mostly from a tourism and commercial investment angle. However, in contrast to other national advertisements, the Chinese sections are not labeled as paid advertisements. Instead, the Chinese pages are presented to appear as news similar to the other sections in Time. This is just one example of the Chinese propaganda machine for western audiences.
While China's legal system is not independent, it does not mean ordinary people are not protected most of the time
This is actually true most of the time for most of the people. However, a large part of the reason it's true is that most of the people have enough sense to self-censor to avoid problems with the government. This type of self-censorship doesn't exist in the US and most western countries.
And finally, it is unclear why this discussion of foreign country spy or surveillance (by China) accusations have much to do with the human rights or democracy situations in China. But the US, which is supposedly/on paper a democracy respecting human rights, is still spying around the world. So whether China respects human rights or is a democracy has nothing to do with whether China will spy or not. Apparently, the actual accusations don't hold any water and American nationalists have to divert the focus.
The reason why surveillance and human rights is pertinent to this discussion is that surveillance by the US government on its own citizens is not used to control political speech and such surveillance never results in punishment by the government for political speech. In contrast, in China surveillance by the Chinese government on its own citizens for political speech can result in severe punishment and constitutes major human rights violations, at least by western standards. The vast majority of Chinese value their freedom and economic prosperity enough to self-censor, and those that are careless or cannot muzzle themselves are punished. I believe that the NSA/FBI/etc. monitor a great deal of communication on the internet and other communications media, but I don't censor myself at all because I have no fear of retribution based on that surveillance. This would not be true in China. The surveillance apparatus in China exists to protect the party and the supreme leader and is used to punish and squash communication that are viewed as threatening to the party or the supreme leader. One example of the difference between US and Chinese surveillance is that an explicit, credible threat to the safety of the US president is needed to trigger police action, while in China comparing the supreme leader to Winnie the Pooh is enough to get in trouble.
There are well over 1 million ethnic Uighurs being detained for no actual crime in China.
Most estimates are that there are less than a million detained in the Xinjiang camps.
This is not correct. There are some estimates that are less than one million. Most are at least one million. Several are several million. But, of course, these estimates don't really matter. Would attitudes or policy change if the real number were 950,000 instead of 2 million?
America incarcerates over 2 million people, roughly four times as many as China per capita. Many are in pre-trial confinement, having been convicted of nothing. Many others are in prison based on plea bargains rather than evidence. America has one of the world's highest false conviction rates.
There is plenty to criticize about China's prison system. There is much more to criticize about America's.
Comparing the American justice system to the Chinese system is really hard, mainly due to the extreme opacity of the Chinese system. Yes, some of the per capita numbers for China are somewhat lower due to the big denominator. However, there are several significant factors that would favor facing the US system instead of the Chinese system:
(1) Many laws in China would be considered to be unacceptable by most Americans. For example, texting or posting offensive words like Tibet, Taiwan, or Winne the Pooh. Criticizing the president, his party, and existing laws. Possessing a beard or a Koran at home. Arguing certain viewpoints on Slashdot. The concept of "law" in China is very different in China, and most Americans would find it unacceptable.
(2) The judicial system in China does not protect the rights of the accused. Extra-judicial punishments, no effective right of appeal or even representation, no due process, no limits on cruel and unusual punishments.
On paper, China is the world's largest democracy and an exemplary protector of the rights of the people. In reality, the application of law in China is far inferior to the US system. This is not to say that the US system is great, good, or even satisfactory. It's only to show how truly bad the China system is.
Americans can banter about the philosophical differences between US and Chinese surveillance and law because they have the first-world problem of stating whatever they want within the insulating cocoon of American rights. Where are the corresponding Chinese discussions of Chinese surveillance and law? I'll give you a hint. It's not because the Chinese system is so perfect that there's nothing to criticize.
The audience score is the only aspect of Rotten Tomatoes I find to be of value. The scores from movie critics just don't seem to have a strong relationship with whether or not I'm going to enjoy a movie.
Taking that idea further, it would be really helpful to know the opinions of other reviewers who have preferences like mine. There's a chance that the average of the entire reviewer population reflects my potential enjoyment of the movie, but there's also a chance that it doesn't. So, maybe something like the old Netflix recommendations.
The server costs are amortized across tens of thousands of users, which tips the scales significantly.
Yes, but the cost of one server is also orders of magnitude more expensive to manufacturer and transport. It's not clear which cost is greater per user.
Is this whole question a big troll?
It takes thousands of times more energy to transport a CD from manufacturer to distribution center to consumer on the UPS/Amazon truck... or even more to store to consumer.
And your CD player is hooked up to a big wifi system anyway. And often you are streaming on a portable device that uses a miniscule amount of electricity.
What kind of broken carbon math is this?
Yes, the CD has to be manufactured and transported, which takes substantial energy. But the streaming server also has to be manufactured and transported, which also takes substantial energy. It's not at all obvious that the CD manufacturing and transportation take less energy.
The playback for the CD requires a motor, unless the CD is ripped.
The streaming server requires power for the system itself and building cooling, plus direct power and cooling for the entire network between the server and the client.
The speaker system is mostly a wash, since it's the same either way, so that doesn't factor into the energy equation.
This power comparison is not often made, but doing the actual math may actually result in numbers that are not intuitive.
Perfect markets produce "cartel" like this when all participants have near equal production capacity - they'll all gauge the price to maximize profit and minimize output as that is the most optimal nash game. And they can do it with no direct collusion, just market ticker.
Perfect, working markets will use public prices as signals to adjust prices and capacity. This is the way supply and demand is supposed to work, and it can be done without direct collusion. However, there are situations where this dynamic adjustment of prices doesn't work, e.g., if there is a monopoly or if there are no disruptors (i.e., all vendors are willing to keep their market share without competing).
The problem with the robo-pricers is not the computer aspect. It's that there are no disruptors in the market, either because no one cares to be a disruptor or because the barriers to entry as a vendor are too great.
Debate doesn't have a clear winner. Like gymnastics, Miss America, and America's Got Talent, it's a popularity contest with voters. What would the results have been if the voters were AI programs instead of humans? The competition was rigged to be biased in favor of humans.
What would have been more interesting is a Turing Test-like method for judging, where the judges can only read transcripts of the debate. After all, a computer's elocution is dependent on the skill of a human proxy or reliant on clunky speech synthesis.
... if know that I have to see ads, I'd still rather see ads that actually are relevant to my own interests or needs than ones that aren't.
If I can't use software to block ads, then I will use personal control of my attention to block ads.
I don't see why "personally relevant" ads are better than generic ads. In either case, I usually receive information about something that I'm not interested in buying. The only time when I want personally relevant information is when I'm searching for that information, and then I want the information to be unbiased by ad money.
Of course that's not a reason to assume that there are none, but if you are concerned about such things whose hardware are you going to buy?
Obviously I would avoid buying from the country with which I am more likely to engage in a military war in the future.
Many of the concerns on slashdot concern civil liberties. It's entirely reasonable for people in the West to concern themselves exclusively with their own civil liberties to the exclusion of civil liberty injustices perpetrated on others. However, in contrast to individual citizens, Western governments also need to plan for future military defense and wars. And these Western governments need to be wary of China and Russia.
Capitalism does not require growth. Bullshit expectations of increased profit revenue requires growth.
This is very true. Unfortunately, stock-based corporations that reward executives based on short-term stock price appreciation require growth at all costs. The real problem is that growth is defined in terms of short-term metrics that do not value long-term company strength, employee well-being, or societal welfare. Capitalism does not mandate this. For example, small-business owners are often driven by different motivations.
It's worth pointing out that English is the second most spoken language in the world and arguably the most widely spoken language since the only one with more speakers is Mandarin Chinese which is predominantly only spoken in one country that has a less-than-open market.
English is actually the most spoken language in the world according to Wikipedia. There are more people in China than the total number of worldwide English speakers, but not everyone in China speaks Mandarin, with about 30% of people in China unable to speak Mandarin (Cantonese and Hokkien are prominent dialects).
The original Slashdot summary is also incorrect that English as a native language is not in the top-8 languages. It's actually third. This is obvious because the total population of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is close to half a billion people, the overwhelming majority of which speak English as a native language.
The flipside of selective enforcement is that someone with an axe to grind against you specifically, or thinks your downfall will lift them up, can throw the book at you even if your actions were moral and didn't contradict the spirit of the law. Do you want your fate to rest on "I know it when I see it?"
If the courts are functional and have sufficient safeguards for the rights of the accused, then the system works. If such courts don't exist and there is no common assumption of judicial fairness, then it doesn't matter what the law is or what the police or prosecutors do. This is one of the keys differences between the US and China. It's not so much how the law is written but how the underlying police, prosecutors, and judges function.
A PhD or Masters is not a course. Its a research program.
For master's programs, it depends. It's possible to obtain an MS degree without a thesis by just passing courses. No research is required for those degrees.
I hate to break it to you, but US Universities are not generally the highest categories. There are some, but the stats aren't great. 1.7% of US universities fit in the "Top 100", versus UK with 2.5% and Australia with 3.1% I should observe US figures are highly tainted by the proliferation of bogus universities (Liberty University, and other dodgy thinktank feeders). Sure you have things like Caltech or Stanford , but for every Caltech, you've got a hundred busted ass rural universities or "Praeger mail order university where you get a doctorate for declaring the world is flat" type places.
Don't be so arogant, and consider traveling.
The percentage of US universities in the "Top 100", whatever that means, is somewhat low due to the large number of universities. It's an advantage of the US system that there are so many universities. In contrast to many other countries, getting into a US university is not that hard but matriculation into a school, whatever reputation it may have, guarantees nothing, and hard work is still required. This proliferation of universities grants opportunities to disadvantaged demographic groups that don't exist in many other countries.
Make no mistake though this is a corrupt corporate law, it should only be a civil matter because virtually anything under that law could be claimed as a crime with a ten year prison sentence.
If an employee steals a physical item, like a computer, it should obviously be a criminal act, no different than stealing a physical item from a private home. Why should the penalty be less serious for corporate intellectual property that has a higher value and the theft of which more seriously impacts a company?
Yes, there are many US laws that are overly general in their descriptions of crimes. The only reason the US legal system seems to work is that in most cases, the prosecution and adjudication of those alleged crimes is carried out with some measure of common sense, i.e., in a way that most people would agree is reasonable.
Is the use of the FBI as a private police force for Corporate America on civil matters.
This is exactly what a police force should be used for. Local police are called to arrest thieves that steal from local stores. The FBI is called to arrest thieves that steal from national companies. It just happens that the shoplifter in this case was headed for China.
The only way to possibly win this game is to not play in the first place
Just like global thermonuclear warfare.
in the USA many companies are required to hand over your data.. and have done so ...
In the US, there do exist avenues for companies to fight such government requests and pressure, including court fights and fights in the public media. There are also avenues for individuals to fight such requests, including leaks and sabotage. We have seen examples of such in the US, but this does not happen in China.
Although it is very likely that both the US and China put pressure on their companies to aid in international spying, the big difference is that avenues to fight or even express private disapproval do not exist in China. Companies, much like top government officials, exist because the government allows them to exist, and as seen over the last few years, that approval to exist can be canceled very quickly, with dire consequences for those individuals and their families.
Isn't that true everywhere? In fact, doesn't the US currently have a policy where agents are allowed to access everything on any device that you bring into or out of the US without even any reason for suspicion?
Yes, but only at the border. Elsewhere, there are more restrictions on government access.
The problem is not that the Chinese police may access your device it is that they are looking extremely hard for any, even trivial, violation of their laws so they can arrest you to try and get leverage against the US just like they have been doing with Canada.
Yes, privacy is part of the problem, in that the Chinese are looking for more details. However, the real problem is what they are willing to do with that data. Even seemingly innocent statements that might be viewed by the Chinese need to be self-censored, whereas in the US, people are free to openly, loudly, and repeatedly criticize the President and call for his removal or to directly call for the overthrow of the US government.
To learn Chinese requires memorization of characters and a separate memorization of pronunciation
As if in English you can infer pronunciation from spelling. In Spanish or German or Russian - you can. In English - you can't. You have to memorize
English is a psuedo-phonetic language. That's why it's possible to teach phonics to kids to help them learn how to read. There are rules with lots of exceptions. In contrast, Chinese has a few patterns with no phonetic rules.