The scramjet research for civilian transportation is a poor cover up for weapon research program. I mean getting something about the size of air-to-air missile is not technically feasible at this stage. Getting a 767 size scramjet is at least decades away. I doubt if it is a rational strategy for any country which cannot make a sizable passenger jet at this moment to take on such a massive project right at start. Most are probably aiming to or tracking the technology that can allow them to develop the next generation of spy-plane/ air-to-air/ cruise missile. The military spending of Japanese government is second in the world. It is not at all as peace-loving country as perceived by many.
I think I know a bit about this subject because I often browse a news forum which is in the blacklist by Chinese government. The site is not about politics or religion. Many over there are oversea Chinese geeks in sci and tech. It was blocked ever since someone spam the forum with something the government does not like. While I am based overseas, many guys are from mainland China. They manage to get pass the ban through a number of tricks. For example, there are search programs that keep track on oversea proxy servers which are not blocked at this moment. Some more resourceful guys managed to use SSH tunneling type of technique to connect.
Many in the news forum often think the government ban is kind of a token effort. If they were really serious, they could have banned the encryption software usage and firewall all the non-web traffic ports for residential/net cafe users altogether (by letting the business run as usual, the disruption to economy should be minimal). The main intention is however preventing the crowd from accessing the information easily (eg no daily browsing of BBC) and makes unwanted news "unconfirmed".
I can observe some interesting patterns emerged from the forum during a couple of major events. 1) SARS 2) a large scale food poisoning event in one of the forum goer's univeristy. The info we got from the forum was first hand (at least half day faster than any mainland/overseas media). The first hand fact/rumour are then spread to friends and relatives over there by word-of-mouth/ SMS .
In addition, it is another "nobody will get fired by purchasing from IBM/Microsoft" argument. Just imagine you are working in some IT department and you recommended the department to buy IBM/HP/Toshiba/Sony laptop. Now, a few units broke down. No one will think twice except the typical yell and moan.
But, if you suggested the company to buy an Acer/ASUS/LG etc, then someone will say behind your back that you have no commerical sense because you tried to save a few bucks for cheap gear. Oh, if you suggested to buy from a Lenovo, they may have even more crap in their arsenal....
Having said that, the Thinkpads still rocks... I am in a university, in which the IT department is allowed to buy any laptop as long as the academic foots the bill from his own grant. AFAIK, nothing statistically significant has changed... At the end of the day, all these laptops are assembled in the same region with parts sourced by the few manufacturers... I see no point to switch just yet if your shop uses Thinkpad and finds that okay before.
Actually, the political spectrum in Taiwan is more extreme. In traditional Chinese society, which is preserved better in Taiwan, most people believe that "well educated man should rule the country". Apart from the notably exception of current president Chen Shui-Bian, all the major current and past party leaders (former president Lee Teng-hui, major oppression leaders Lien Chan, James Soong, Ma Ying Jeou) all have PhD (actually all from major universities in US).
In fact, I ran into a guy from Taiwan in my postgrad class. He was doing his PhD in electrical engineering at the time. I wondered why he made the decision because I knew he did not really enjoy engineering even for his masters. He told me that he had a strong interest in politics and had helped out the election campaign in the last Taiwan president election. His mentor suggested that the shortcut to enter politics was to get a PhD (any PhD preferrably in USA). This still gives crediblity to many people.
In the past (pre 20 century), educated man in China means proficient in literature, history and poetry. But, after the shock from interacting with the West, people started to worship "technology" (esp in mainland China). It is not a surprise to see engineer president, even if there is a real election in China today.
A friend of mine runs a small computer shop a few years ago and was in trouble (threatening lawyer's letter from MS). The reason being there is a "mismatch" between windows license that his customers bought and the number of computers he sold...
Some guys buy install linux/BSDs on their PC. For some other guys like me use windows. However, I don't need to buy a license for legitimate reason: mine is a work related computer (well, it may be souped up with kick ass video card, but hey, it is something between my boss and me to sort out), my employer's site license covers my installation.
It is ridiculous to force me to buy a separate windows license.... If that ever happens, I will start considering a mac mini....
There may exist a system or process technology but the machine described in this article has all the hallmark of a snake oil operation.
Tanaka claims the electrolysis treatment instantaneously breaks up water clusters in the wine, allowing the water to more thoroughly blend with the alcohol
It is the first time that I know ethanol does not mix well with water. Do I drink too much or the other way round?
Platinum electrodes provide the juice, driving negative ions - the cause of acidity - from the wine into the water
Sounds like the culprit for bad wine (or any alcohol) is due to acidity. It is really not the case. pH paper is cheap. It can tell the truth. Crap wine does not necessarily be very acidic.
If you have study the chemical of immature vs matured beer/ wine, you will notice the chemical changes are very pronounce. Not just simply the pH. For example, before aging the aldehyde level can be high. How can you deal with it? There are hundreds of favour compounds in wine. Any naive chemical tricks (like randomly adding extra oxidant/reductant will kill the favour and render the wine undrinkable-- not just bad). In addition, for some product like red wine, the storage material (the oak barrel) actually contributes to the favour... For those who are keen, find a copy of this: Chemistry of Wine Flavor Andrew L. Waterhouse and Susan E. Ebeler by Oxford University Press 1999.
The product sounds like snake oil to me. The aging of alcohol is a fairly complex chemical process. It is just very hard to preferentially remove one off-flavour by, say, increasing the storage temperature, adding some funny chemical without affect a whole matrix of other related compounds, even for relative simple product like beer... (Well, my info is really from beer brewery where I had worked for a major one before.)
But, for tasting, human taster are indispensable. In the brewery that I worked for, senior lab techs were trained to taste a certain chemical level in beer. We had controls (say add extra chemical in sub ppm level to beer), regular training (put just x ppm of that chemical to distilled water such that we learnt the difference between the minute changes) and followed standard scientific practice (blinded test). Human regularly outperform the modern $100,000 machines (GC/ HPLC) for compound like diacetyl.
However, I agree that a lot of the wine "connoisseurs" probably do not know what they are talking about... they just learnt to use big word to foil the crowd.
I don't to be a troll.... But, as a person with dysparxia, I guess many around here probably are not hard-wired for calculus.
But, on the other hand, many of us may have deep understanding in advanced maths. I guess it is literal meaning of "my maths only look good on paper":p
I don't play WoW. But, I doubt whether the perceived gold farmers are all Chinese. If I teamed up with some strangers and looted everything in the endgame raid, I would just type with broken English all the way through even if I were a native English speaker. If you want to believed I am Chinese, the favourite black sheep of the day, I will be fine with that esp if that is not the case. How often does an affected player do a reverse IP lookup when he gets upset by a fellow player?
Gold farming can be a profitable part time "job" for many net savvy people on lower income. The gold farmer may be a Chinese, an Indian or secondary school students in developed countries. Do you feel better if they farm but know a few more sentences of English? In addition, the so call literacy test is more like the infamous "cool people" test that most geeks tried to avoid in college when ran into the playground bullies. Now, someone tries to vent their frustration in the anonymous online game world... 'No worries mate, I've just kicked out a bunch of "Chinese"'.
I am not trying to blow this out of proportion. It is just a cultural observation for the wider society. Sinophobia has its cultural and historical context and is prevalent today. But, just as many other types of phobia: it makes no sense and is not a good thing. It is a dangerous signal whenever a society start blaming on whatever evil onto another group. Blaming the Jews for whatever things went wrong was the fashionable idea in pre WW2 Europe. We now agree the blames are largely based on stereotype, but it sounded pretty reasonable that time.
Stop the China bashing, mate. Space program is an ego-building exercise for the Chinese government, so as the US, Russian, EU and the Indian. Space program burns money. Everyone tries hard to arouse commerical interest once after the show case stage. But, satellite launching is a pretty politcally sensitive business. Don't you find it unusual that China actually seldom launch commerical satellite for foreign countries in recently, while they were much more active about 10 years ago? Don't tell me their technology was more advanced at that time.
Jokes aside. I am really curious about the internal of these green pigs. The scientists suggest that the pigs are green inside out. We know that the red meat is red because of hemoglobin. Its colour is pretty intense. I wonder if the jellyfish green pigment is actually an extra pigment included in the pigs' body and blood... If so, the pork should have some funny colour which is a mix between red and green. Amazing one way or the other.
3) Don't rely on the any news source before digesting it.
The 'How can I do my thesis now?' quote is paste-and-cut from a Chinese website. It can well be from a chatting forum way more causal than even slashdot. Then, the lazy report paste-and-cut that to Global-and-Mail and, now, a causal quote becomes news....
I think the problem we've got now is not some guys benefited personally when their stories get accepted by slashdot. In many geek circle, you can gain your fame of they day if your name is on the front page of slashdot. We can consider this as benefit... Perfectly fine for 99% of reader around here.
The problem is some submitters use slashdot as a leverage to, say, improve their own page ranking in google. The reason slashdot has a ranking factor is because of the fair large readership and the site itself, not the submitters' blog. Improving page ranking in this way is a syphon off the slashdot community. The nofollow tag is a pretty good way to separate the different commnunties (and the unauthorised fame grabbing). As long as the fame starts from slashdot and ends here, most will stop complaining about the Beatle or Roland or whoever that submit heaps.
How bad? Probably as bad as a similar vehicle the 1990s... And, it is probably the sort of vehicle most driver are with if they are in the budget sector. Check the link below for a comparison between different SUVs + the Landwind. The Volkswagen survive well, the Landwind fails miserably. But, the 2003 Ford Explorer and the Isuzu Rodeo are not much better off. Based on truck design, the protection of a lot of SUV are jsut not up to it. Before laughing out loud, most of us should realise that we are sitting on similarly dangerous vehicle day in and day out. It is an area money can solve the problem.
targeted to a different platform. Less obvious, but no less real, are the guys with physics, math, or other non-CS backgrounds who handle algorithms and performance issues on many software projects. Much of that work is platform-neutral, and you can even know a hell of a
This really hits the point. But, I am from the other camp (ie physics, maths, engineering, or other non-CS background). When dealing with complex simulation code, it is sometime quite frustrated to work with programmer having a CS background. They tend to care about the typical concern of ordinary software, without having a clue about numerical accuracy, the need for verfication/reproducibility of the result etc. So, it should be better to mark the territory clearly: I won't step inside the security/ package management side of the system and please respect our special need in software development.
they creating new Googles? big difference, I hope they are creating new Googles, but most likely the number of women doing that is still small. It is not such an advance for female-kind to do email and chatting online!
Who cares? Internet is just a media. Think about it as a telephone. People enjoy using it to chat with friend will continue to do so when using Internet. Many talk on the phone exclusively on business matter on the other hand. Some design to hack around (remember what's the origin of 2600?) the telephone network. We can find an analogue between the former phone commnunity to the Internet one (IM addicts/.com startup/hackers).
Nothing wrong/ primitive/ need to be fixed in terms of user activity profile. It is just a reflection of the society.
In 4000 B.C., Babylonians played a board game that was probably the ancestor of chess and checker
The MSN article mererly refers to the origin of board game in general. It may well be the case. Board game is more than just chess.
Many believe the Indian board game, Chaturanga, is the origin of international chess. However, Chaturanga is only one board game evolved along the timeline of board game development. It appeared at around 600 A.D. (c.f. Chinese chess at around 200 B.C.). The intermediate ancestor of international chess is from Persia. In fact, the term "checkmate" means "the king is finished" in Persian. Sometimes it is really difficult to figure which is the actual origin, as influence from multiple sources is likely. Read more from the following wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Historyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_early_litera ture
there are ethical implications here... the haves vs. the have-nots... those who can afford to increase their muscle mass using the products would perhaps become a superior segment of the human race. imagine a scenario where western countries and their super-citizens gain a distinct physical advantage over the less wealthy countries
We don't even need to wait that long for the super muscle enhancer to come. Heightism is in fact a closely related present day problem, esp. for a community which is rapidly developing (like big city in developing country with sizable migrant population). You will find that height is quite strongly correlated to the nutrient intake of a particular person. The taller ones are much more likely to be brought up in city by middle class family, while the shorter one tend to be from the rural/ brought up by uneducated relative/ suffer from malnutrition etc at some stage during growth... Without a collective social conscious that people are equal and a fierce competitive environment, tacit discrimination can become the norm.
That depends on the type of software really. There are two sorts of software which has found an equibrium point that benefits from illegal copies.
Game (esp those with multiplayer component) is one of them. I am not a gamer. But, I find quite a few of my friends who never buy any software before have change habit. First, they are now working and have decent income. More importantly, once they enjoy the copied game and notice there is a multiplayer they will just pop to the game shop to buy the game. They at the end find it worthwhile.
The other sort of software targets corporates which has little scope for personal use (numerical package, design tools etc). At work, people do occasionally use "trial" software. But, once the guy tests that out and finds that useful, boss usually will have no hesitation to buy it. The reason is simple: if the IT dept roll out a project, the user may or may not want it... but, "tried out" software is a bottom-up process. If the engineers at the bottom find that useful, why don't just go ahead.
For other softwares, the winning formula has yet to be found.
ummmmm.... "James Bond may use the fanciest, most expensive and high-tech devices to thwart would-be eavesdroppers"
Are you talking about pistol? I know it is probably the most effective technology against the weakest link in any security applications. Not sure about whether the Texas A&M guy can come up with something simpler:)
I am also a firm believer that legal system is crucial to the development of a modern country. It is a bit political incorrect. But, I have to say the importance for the respect of the legal system (ie, rule by the laws, everyone is equal in front of law) is probably way higher than that of a democratic government structure. Let's do the exercise: which one of the major industrialised nation (France, Germany, Japan, UK, US) has universal suffrage at the stage when the economy took off? Check wikipedia... basically none. Which one has a fully working legal system by that time? Every single one.
On the other hand, the acutal legal system does not really matter (as long as it is fair to everyone). I can see no reason why, say civil law, is fundamentally worse than common law.
It is a bit OT... But, check if your Toyota is assembled in Japan (or import from Japan). Here in New Zealand, (well, when I was still there), the Toyotas can either be built for the Australia/ New Zealand market, or imported from Japan directly.
The Japanese import has a chip built-in to limit the maximium speed by cutting the petrol supply. You can feel the sudden lost of acceleration at that point. If I recall correctly, it is right at 100mph (160kmh). It is included to comply with a Japanese domestic law. Your local garage should know how to fix the problem.
If the project targets the under-priviledged segment of the developed world, the existing players (Dell, Apple, Intel, AMD etc) won't be too happy about that.
We may argue that the unfortunately kids cannot afford to buy a new computer at this moment anyway. But, it is actually difficult to draw a line to say, who can and who can't. It is actually a difficult decision to make... Say, the cheap laptop is only available for the poor kids. The labelling effect will be very bad. If the cheap laptop is available for every one at say $150, but free for the kids in families receiving social benefit, then the plan will effectively knock out the whole home computer market....
In slashdot, we talk about stuff that matters, like whether this electric toilet seat can run Linux, is the recent act of MS/SCO/Sony/RIAA/Google.... violates the privacy of the user... It is fine to about that here. I understand what you mean, concern and worries... But, if one day slashdot becomes so powerful that it runs a cable tech news network and start interviewing some random guy in the local mall about the same issue, you can expect they will answer huh!?! It does not really mean privacy, online security etc are unimportant. It just means a large segment of the society has no interest in this in their daily life.
The Chinese bloggers being interviewed by BBC must be feeling the same as the joe sixpack in the local mall being interviewed by CowboyNeal. First, if that guy is a political activist, he or she probably won't have time hang around blogging for unrelated stuff. The other bloggers probably has an interest of travel, career, music, movie and porn. Asking them topics about politics is kind of out of context.
Second, sometimes, the journalists tend to ask questions which has an information content of close to zero. For example, ask if you can freely express about your opinion freely about some banned groups. Okay there are three scenarios. 1) that person answers along the line of "I don't want to talk about this/ I have no interest about this". The reporter reads that the blogger cannot express his opinion freely. 2) that person says no. The reporter reads that the blogger is controlled by the state. 3) that person says yes. The reporter says "yeah. I know the censorship is everywhere"...
While we all know censorship still prevalent in China, conducting such kind of interview is kind of meaningless. Many western reporters tend to have a mindset that there are only two groups of people in China: democratic activists and evil communists... The fact is the China has changed a lot. Most people just don't care about anything, or have an opinion quite different from the stereotype, just like anywhere in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
The scramjet research for civilian transportation is a poor cover up for weapon research program. I mean getting something about the size of air-to-air missile is not technically feasible at this stage. Getting a 767 size scramjet is at least decades away. I doubt if it is a rational strategy for any country which cannot make a sizable passenger jet at this moment to take on such a massive project right at start. Most are probably aiming to or tracking the technology that can allow them to develop the next generation of spy-plane/ air-to-air/ cruise missile. The military spending of Japanese government is second in the world. It is not at all as peace-loving country as perceived by many.
I think I know a bit about this subject because I often browse a news forum which is in the blacklist by Chinese government. The site is not about politics or religion. Many over there are oversea Chinese geeks in sci and tech. It was blocked ever since someone spam the forum with something the government does not like. While I am based overseas, many guys are from mainland China. They manage to get pass the ban through a number of tricks. For example, there are search programs that keep track on oversea proxy servers which are not blocked at this moment. Some more resourceful guys managed to use SSH tunneling type of technique to connect.
Many in the news forum often think the government ban is kind of a token effort. If they were really serious, they could have banned the encryption software usage and firewall all the non-web traffic ports for residential/net cafe users altogether (by letting the business run as usual, the disruption to economy should be minimal). The main intention is however preventing the crowd from accessing the information easily (eg no daily browsing of BBC) and makes unwanted news "unconfirmed".
I can observe some interesting patterns emerged from the forum during a couple of major events. 1) SARS 2) a large scale food poisoning event in one of the forum goer's univeristy. The info we got from the forum was first hand (at least half day faster than any mainland/overseas media). The first hand fact/rumour are then spread to friends and relatives over there by word-of-mouth/ SMS .
In addition, it is another "nobody will get fired by purchasing from IBM/Microsoft" argument. Just imagine you are working in some IT department and you recommended the department to buy IBM/HP/Toshiba/Sony laptop. Now, a few units broke down. No one will think twice except the typical yell and moan.
But, if you suggested the company to buy an Acer/ASUS/LG etc, then someone will say behind your back that you have no commerical sense because you tried to save a few bucks for cheap gear. Oh, if you suggested to buy from a Lenovo, they may have even more crap in their arsenal....
Having said that, the Thinkpads still rocks... I am in a university, in which the IT department is allowed to buy any laptop as long as the academic foots the bill from his own grant. AFAIK, nothing statistically significant has changed... At the end of the day, all these laptops are assembled in the same region with parts sourced by the few manufacturers... I see no point to switch just yet if your shop uses Thinkpad and finds that okay before.
Actually, the political spectrum in Taiwan is more extreme. In traditional Chinese society, which is preserved better in Taiwan, most people believe that "well educated man should rule the country". Apart from the notably exception of current president Chen Shui-Bian, all the major current and past party leaders (former president Lee Teng-hui, major oppression leaders Lien Chan, James Soong, Ma Ying Jeou) all have PhD (actually all from major universities in US).
In fact, I ran into a guy from Taiwan in my postgrad class. He was doing his PhD in electrical engineering at the time. I wondered why he made the decision because I knew he did not really enjoy engineering even for his masters. He told me that he had a strong interest in politics and had helped out the election campaign in the last Taiwan president election. His mentor suggested that the shortcut to enter politics was to get a PhD (any PhD preferrably in USA). This still gives crediblity to many people.
In the past (pre 20 century), educated man in China means proficient in literature, history and poetry. But, after the shock from interacting with the West, people started to worship "technology" (esp in mainland China). It is not a surprise to see engineer president, even if there is a real election in China today.
A friend of mine runs a small computer shop a few years ago and was in trouble (threatening lawyer's letter from MS). The reason being there is a "mismatch" between windows license that his customers bought and the number of computers he sold...
Some guys buy install linux/BSDs on their PC. For some other guys like me use windows. However, I don't need to buy a license for legitimate reason: mine is a work related computer (well, it may be souped up with kick ass video card, but hey, it is something between my boss and me to sort out), my employer's site license covers my installation.
It is ridiculous to force me to buy a separate windows license.... If that ever happens, I will start considering a mac mini....
It is the first time that I know ethanol does not mix well with water. Do I drink too much or the other way round?
Sounds like the culprit for bad wine (or any alcohol) is due to acidity. It is really not the case. pH paper is cheap. It can tell the truth. Crap wine does not necessarily be very acidic.
If you have study the chemical of immature vs matured beer/ wine, you will notice the chemical changes are very pronounce. Not just simply the pH. For example, before aging the aldehyde level can be high. How can you deal with it? There are hundreds of favour compounds in wine. Any naive chemical tricks (like randomly adding extra oxidant/reductant will kill the favour and render the wine undrinkable-- not just bad).
In addition, for some product like red wine, the storage material (the oak barrel) actually contributes to the favour... For those who are keen, find a copy of this:
Chemistry of Wine Flavor
Andrew L. Waterhouse and Susan E. Ebeler
by Oxford University Press 1999.
The product sounds like snake oil to me. The aging of alcohol is a fairly complex chemical process. It is just very hard to preferentially remove one off-flavour by, say, increasing the storage temperature, adding some funny chemical without affect a whole matrix of other related compounds, even for relative simple product like beer... (Well, my info is really from beer brewery where I had worked for a major one before.)
But, for tasting, human taster are indispensable. In the brewery that I worked for, senior lab techs were trained to taste a certain chemical level in beer. We had controls (say add extra chemical in sub ppm level to beer), regular training (put just x ppm of that chemical to distilled water such that we learnt the difference between the minute changes) and followed standard scientific practice (blinded test). Human regularly outperform the modern $100,000 machines (GC/ HPLC) for compound like diacetyl.
However, I agree that a lot of the wine "connoisseurs" probably do not know what they are talking about... they just learnt to use big word to foil the crowd.
I don't to be a troll.... But, as a person with dysparxia, I guess many around here probably are not hard-wired for calculus.
:p
But, on the other hand, many of us may have deep understanding in advanced maths. I guess it is literal meaning of "my maths only look good on paper"
I observe this phenomenon all the time on top of my uncleaned plates in the kitchen sink :)
I don't play WoW. But, I doubt whether the perceived gold farmers are all Chinese. If I teamed up with some strangers and looted everything in the endgame raid, I would just type with broken English all the way through even if I were a native English speaker. If you want to believed I am Chinese, the favourite black sheep of the day, I will be fine with that esp if that is not the case. How often does an affected player do a reverse IP lookup when he gets upset by a fellow player?
Gold farming can be a profitable part time "job" for many net savvy people on lower income. The gold farmer may be a Chinese, an Indian or secondary school students in developed countries. Do you feel better if they farm but know a few more sentences of English? In addition, the so call literacy test is more like the infamous "cool people" test that most geeks tried to avoid in college when ran into the playground bullies. Now, someone tries to vent their frustration in the anonymous online game world... 'No worries mate, I've just kicked out a bunch of "Chinese"'.
I am not trying to blow this out of proportion. It is just a cultural observation for the wider society. Sinophobia has its cultural and historical context and is prevalent today. But, just as many other types of phobia: it makes no sense and is not a good thing. It is a dangerous signal whenever a society start blaming on whatever evil onto another group. Blaming the Jews for whatever things went wrong was the fashionable idea in pre WW2 Europe. We now agree the blames are largely based on stereotype, but it sounded pretty reasonable that time.
Stop the China bashing, mate. Space program is an ego-building exercise for the Chinese government, so as the US, Russian, EU and the Indian. Space program burns money. Everyone tries hard to arouse commerical interest once after the show case stage. But, satellite launching is a pretty politcally sensitive business. Don't you find it unusual that China actually seldom launch commerical satellite for foreign countries in recently, while they were much more active about 10 years ago? Don't tell me their technology was more advanced at that time.
Jokes aside. I am really curious about the internal of these green pigs. The scientists suggest that the pigs are green inside out. We know that the red meat is red because of hemoglobin. Its colour is pretty intense. I wonder if the jellyfish green pigment is actually an extra pigment included in the pigs' body and blood... If so, the pork should have some funny colour which is a mix between red and green. Amazing one way or the other.
3) Don't rely on the any news source before digesting it.
The 'How can I do my thesis now?' quote is paste-and-cut from a Chinese website. It can well be from a chatting forum way more causal than even slashdot. Then, the lazy report paste-and-cut that to Global-and-Mail and, now, a causal quote becomes news....
I think the problem we've got now is not some guys benefited personally when their stories get accepted by slashdot. In many geek circle, you can gain your fame of they day if your name is on the front page of slashdot. We can consider this as benefit... Perfectly fine for 99% of reader around here.
The problem is some submitters use slashdot as a leverage to, say, improve their own page ranking in google. The reason slashdot has a ranking factor is because of the fair large readership and the site itself, not the submitters' blog. Improving page ranking in this way is a syphon off the slashdot community. The nofollow tag is a pretty good way to separate the different commnunties (and the unauthorised fame grabbing). As long as the fame starts from slashdot and ends here, most will stop complaining about the Beatle or Roland or whoever that submit heaps.
How bad? Probably as bad as a similar vehicle the 1990s... And, it is probably the sort of vehicle most driver are with if they are in the budget sector. Check the link below for a comparison between different SUVs + the Landwind. The Volkswagen survive well, the Landwind fails miserably. But, the 2003 Ford Explorer and the Isuzu Rodeo are not much better off. Based on truck design, the protection of a lot of SUV are jsut not up to it. Before laughing out loud, most of us should realise that we are sitting on similarly dangerous vehicle day in and day out. It is an area money can solve the problem.
We don't even need to wait that long for the super muscle enhancer to come. Heightism is in fact a closely related present day problem, esp. for a community which is rapidly developing (like big city in developing country with sizable migrant population). You will find that height is quite strongly correlated to the nutrient intake of a particular person. The taller ones are much more likely to be brought up in city by middle class family, while the shorter one tend to be from the rural/ brought up by uneducated relative/ suffer from malnutrition etc at some stage during growth... Without a collective social conscious that people are equal and a fierce competitive environment, tacit discrimination can become the norm.
That depends on the type of software really. There are two sorts of software which has found an equibrium point that benefits from illegal copies.
Game (esp those with multiplayer component) is one of them. I am not a gamer. But, I find quite a few of my friends who never buy any software before have change habit. First, they are now working and have decent income. More importantly, once they enjoy the copied game and notice there is a multiplayer they will just pop to the game shop to buy the game. They at the end find it worthwhile.
The other sort of software targets corporates which has little scope for personal use (numerical package, design tools etc). At work, people do occasionally use "trial" software. But, once the guy tests that out and finds that useful, boss usually will have no hesitation to buy it. The reason is simple: if the IT dept roll out a project, the user may or may not want it... but, "tried out" software is a bottom-up process. If the engineers at the bottom find that useful, why don't just go ahead.
For other softwares, the winning formula has yet to be found.
ummmmm.... "James Bond may use the fanciest, most expensive and high-tech devices to thwart would-be eavesdroppers"
:)
Are you talking about pistol? I know it is probably the most effective technology against the weakest link in any security applications. Not sure about whether the Texas A&M guy can come up with something simpler
I am also a firm believer that legal system is crucial to the development of a modern country. It is a bit political incorrect. But, I have to say the importance for the respect of the legal system (ie, rule by the laws, everyone is equal in front of law) is probably way higher than that of a democratic government structure. Let's do the exercise: which one of the major industrialised nation (France, Germany, Japan, UK, US) has universal suffrage at the stage when the economy took off? Check wikipedia... basically none. Which one has a fully working legal system by that time? Every single one. On the other hand, the acutal legal system does not really matter (as long as it is fair to everyone). I can see no reason why, say civil law, is fundamentally worse than common law.
It is a bit OT... But, check if your Toyota is assembled in Japan (or import from Japan). Here in New Zealand, (well, when I was still there), the Toyotas can either be built for the Australia/ New Zealand market, or imported from Japan directly.
The Japanese import has a chip built-in to limit the maximium speed by cutting the petrol supply. You can feel the sudden lost of acceleration at that point. If I recall correctly, it is right at 100mph (160kmh). It is included to comply with a Japanese domestic law. Your local garage should know how to fix the problem.
If the project targets the under-priviledged segment of the developed world, the existing players (Dell, Apple, Intel, AMD etc) won't be too happy about that.
We may argue that the unfortunately kids cannot afford to buy a new computer at this moment anyway. But, it is actually difficult to draw a line to say, who can and who can't. It is actually a difficult decision to make... Say, the cheap laptop is only available for the poor kids. The labelling effect will be very bad. If the cheap laptop is available for every one at say $150, but free for the kids in families receiving social benefit, then the plan will effectively knock out the whole home computer market....
In slashdot, we talk about stuff that matters, like whether this electric toilet seat can run Linux, is the recent act of MS/SCO/Sony/RIAA/Google.... violates the privacy of the user... It is fine to about that here. I understand what you mean, concern and worries... But, if one day slashdot becomes so powerful that it runs a cable tech news network and start interviewing some random guy in the local mall about the same issue, you can expect they will answer huh!?! It does not really mean privacy, online security etc are unimportant. It just means a large segment of the society has no interest in this in their daily life.
The Chinese bloggers being interviewed by BBC must be feeling the same as the joe sixpack in the local mall being interviewed by CowboyNeal. First, if that guy is a political activist, he or she probably won't have time hang around blogging for unrelated stuff. The other bloggers probably has an interest of travel, career, music, movie and porn. Asking them topics about politics is kind of out of context.
Second, sometimes, the journalists tend to ask questions which has an information content of close to zero. For example, ask if you can freely express about your opinion freely about some banned groups. Okay there are three scenarios. 1) that person answers along the line of "I don't want to talk about this/ I have no interest about this". The reporter reads that the blogger cannot express his opinion freely. 2) that person says no. The reporter reads that the blogger is controlled by the state. 3) that person says yes. The reporter says "yeah. I know the censorship is everywhere"...
While we all know censorship still prevalent in China, conducting such kind of interview is kind of meaningless. Many western reporters tend to have a mindset that there are only two groups of people in China: democratic activists and evil communists... The fact is the China has changed a lot. Most people just don't care about anything, or have an opinion quite different from the stereotype, just like anywhere in the world.