People in other countries often love American culture and American people while rejecting the US foreign policies. Really listen to people in the middle east. Read some Thomas Friedman columns. Don't just repeat verbal droppings from others.
"If you will check the seat pocket in front of you, you will find a gag contained in sanitized bag. You are require by regulation to wear the gag for the duration of the flight. Welcome to Freedom Air!"
Is a blathering idiot on a cell phone more annoying than a blathering idiot talking to his neighbor?
And it will all fit on a 1 terabyte harddrive.....
on
Why Vista Won't Suck
·
· Score: 1
and everything will HAVE to fit in the C: drive on the first partition.....
If people would RTFA instead of struting and pointing fingers, they would realize that the main purpose of this is to allow consumers/customers WITHIN China to access web contects of Chinese companies using Chinese ONLY.
Without this, even if you run Chiniese window and are using chinese text editors, you would still need to type in English in the URL of the browser. MOST CHINESES DON'T KNOW ENGLISH!
The Chinese economy will only gain from this as it can stimulate online transactions in the domestic Chinese economy. It's a simple thing for a Chinese company to get a purely Chinese characters domain AND an English one from ICANN to sell to English speakers. Thus, it's a no loss situation for the Chinese companies.
Sure, there're problem with censorhip and government control. BUT it has NOTHING to do with this move.
"in what sense is our protection of free speech in the West categorically superior to the prevailing Chinese attitude that censorship may sometimes be necessary in order to preserve culture and maintain social order(?)"
I wouldn't buy that coming from a western government and I wouldn't buy it from any Asian government either. However, you have displayed an appalling lack of knowledge and logic in the remainder of you arguments.
The tibetan and uighur regions of china have been under the political control of china for a couple of hundreds years under the Ching dynasty. One could argue that Tibet declared independence during the china civil war period at the turn of the century. However, only 1-2 countries recognized them (US was not one of them) and a Tibetan official did sign the Seventeen point agreement formalizing their relation with the Maoist government that came to power in 1949. All of this is at a minimum open for debate. It is not at like Germany sending an army to take over France which is a clear case of invasion.
It is true that the chinese government tried to suppress people advocating tibetan independence and control their religion. Undoubtedly it has been too heavy handed in many cases. At the same time, the govenment also funds school that teach in tibetan language. It exempts minority ethnic groups like tibetan and uighurs from the 1 child per family policy. They also have preferences for attendance at the most selective universities and selection for certain jobs. Thus, your facile comparison to the holocaust is not only inaccurate, but actually insulting to the jewish people.
"Should cultures which allow such things to take place be respected?"
The answer is emphatically YES. Just because you disagree with the policies of a particular government, you should not infer that the host culture would inherently endorse such policies. Otherwise, what are we to make of the culture that built and USED the atomic bomb and unleashing the real possibility of wiping out all human lives on the planet?
'But they do have a moral imperative and a duty not to promote dictatorship.'
THAT's a good one... considering how many dictatorship the US has propped up in the last half centuries.
Hot from the headline today, Rumsfeld is visiting Algeria to considering selling weapons to them.
From the CIA World Fact book in Algeria: "The army placed Abdelaziz BOUTEFLIKA in the presidency in 1999 in a fraudulent election but claimed neutrality in his 2004 landslide reelection victory." I don't know enough to say whether Algeria is a dictatorship or not. But this is clearly another case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend..."
Speech recognition might be marginally described as a technique for intelligent interface. Rule based programming is often used in AI systems. But the vast majority of the topics have NOTHING to do the field of AI. If one adverise falsely, one should expect to get flaks...
It IS a limitation that they keep going back to Rose's time on earth. However, the exploration of how the doctor deals with the repercussion of his actions is very interesting. That had been used to good effects in the Big Finish audios also. Overall, a great delight to see the Doctors with modern effects and good writing!
When the salesman on TV tells you that it's a once in a life time oppportunity to buy his slightly used automobile, do you rush down to his auto lot to check it out ?
The act of talking about issue A and not issue B can be deliberate. Some people want to talk about bringing democracy to the people, but don't want to talk about the cost (# of people killed in the process).
It's simple common sense to take into account the speaker's views and motivations in order to understand what IS said and what ISN'T being said.
So Turing Machine is your language of choice
on
Larry Wall on Perl 6
·
· Score: 1
right?
Fewer components is not necssarily better. I prefer a tool which best matches my problem domain. If the domain is complex, the tool should be complex.
Don't know if you folks remembers, when the LOTR books and movies came out, some people complained that it encouraged believes in magic and pagan religions. So are these people complaining about Narnia now? Or are they pushing it in their churches?
The double standard betrays a notable lack of imagination. Tolkien was a religious man too...
Center Director of Risk Communication David Ropeik and George Gray are authors of "RISK, A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around Us."
A terrific read. Bursted many of my preconceptions about risky choices when I read it.
One point we DO know, invading Iraq has costed 2000+ American lives and xxx(classified) # of civilian lives i Iraq so far. HOW MANY HAS IT SAVED? Remember that 911 costed us ~2700 lives. We have passed that point quite a ways back in terms of death toll.
You are entirely correct that such choices are not made rationally. But perhaps we can make more balanced choices if we are actually informed of all the costs of each option.
For example, by putting an amount into homeland security, we have less ability to accomplish other goals, such as medical research which can save lives. In other words, if the money for security went to medical research or making flu vaccines, undoubtedly more people's lives would be saved over 5-10 years. Fundamentally, security investment are nonproductive in the direct sense, similar to the armed forces. It is necessary to protect people and an existing system. But any choice will have a cost.
"Why must materialist philosophy be taught in science class?"
Because it works so well!
Without it, we would never have gone to the moon nor developed laser.
I do concure with you that the philosophical assumptions of science should be taught to students. That way they can bear in mind that there are diverse ways of knowing and perceiving the world. Each perspective need not invalidate other perspectives.
But what make ID a monstrosity is its obsession with literalness for the sake of clinging to certainty. Have you considered that may be Logos cannot be explained and should not be explained? Every religion around the world have developed mystical approaches. I see that as ongoing efforts to hold back man's obession with his own language and refocus him/her on the transcendent. I invite you to explore.
But if a majority or even a large % of the shareholders demanded such a cap. The board members will probably go along rather than risk being kicked out by the shareholders. The problem is that many shareholders still think that they have to pay the most for the best CEO for this company even though there is no evidence that higher paid CEOs correlates with better performing stock prices. Thus, we get stuck in the Red Queen's race with no effective braking mechanism.
When you grow bateria on a Petri dish, you may start with 1 cell and end up with thousands in a colony. You might say that the bateria colony is now more complex. However, the entropy of the entire petri disk including the bateria had also increased. In other words, the lower entropy of the bateria is more than compensated by the higher entropy of the feed medium over the same period.
Entropy is no help to you. check out some of Ilya Prigogine's work.
If you want to look to DNAs, tell me why a designer would put so much repetitive junk genes in there? Why are we carting around genes which do nothing to enhance our life? What's the point of keeping a separate set of genes in the mitochondria? Why not centralize them?
The other thing to keep in mind, nature had tens of millions of year to brew the prebiotic soup until something replicates. Once it replicates, it'll take off exponentially. When you flip a coin a hundred million times, the chance of it falling on it edge exactly is no longer infinitesimal, but quite thinkable.
supported educational program is what irks many people including myself.
It attacks a fundamental right of Americans to be FREE FROM religions. Is that not worth defending?
Before you say that ID is not religion, recall that many ID supporters used the same arguments with different terms in the past: "creation science", "creationism" which at least honestly declare the belief in a creator.
People who believe in the 'literal truth' of the bible have probably never read the bible or have a very low regard for logical consistency. The various books of the bible contain numerous inconsistency and sometimes contradictions. Isn't the most critical truth that Jesus has illuminated some transcendent truths about the human state of being? WHY do we have to project an imagined perfection on a compilation of translated writings about him and his god?
I believe most Christians don't insists on a literal interpretation. In fact, I recalled that many ministers used "The Life of Brian" to illustrated how different sects can fixate on minor details which actually obscured the critical truths. Perhaps the Kansis school board should view that movie again.
You need to read your history a bit more carefully. The last emperors of China were Manchurians who have largely assimilated within the Han culture. They stationed permanent imperial officlas in Lhasa. They also got involved in selection of reincarnations when there had been competing claims. When Tibet had de facto independence was from roughly 1911-1049 although they achived no international recognition. This is not insignificant, but certainly not overwhelming.
Britain were not interested in trading as much as their 'Great Game' of geopolitics against Russia.
I disapprove of the harsh methods the PRC government has deployed to suppress dissent and religions. However, there was never any systematic pogram to attack Tibetans as in Croatia. I find the term 'cultural genocide' more polemical than meaningful. You weaken your arguments when you based them on inaccuracies or spins.
They've done a fine job too: Bhopal, US tobacco industry, Pinkertons, South Africa, Love Canal...
It's most ironic that you were researching for a human rights project. Do read some Upton Sinclair and Dickens. Without other moderating cultural influences, capitalism have run rough shod over human rights for centuries. The benefit of capitalism is economical, not the promotion of a more humane society. Historically, corporate interests attempt to use governmental influences to gain benefits for themselves as often as they want to be left alone. Look at trade tariffs, agricultural subsidies, the East India Company (Is that a company or an arm of the government?) !
There has never been pure lassiz faire capitalism and there probably never will be. If it comes to be, it's not obvious that you would want to live there.
has a decent collection of audiobooks in MP3 format. Free at low bitrates, reasonable at higher bitrates. Many are simply read, not performed. Though the Jeeves series are quite good. There are a few SF also, but mostly classics.
Big Finish production makes an amazing series of audio books for fans of Dr. Who. These are true audio plays with most of the original cast of the TV series. Many stories are better than what was on the TV shows (until the recent Incarnation in '05, that is). This is truely a worthy continuation of the saga that was not possible using printed word alone.
is what the best audio books present. Even the unabridged one, the narrator makes a great deal of difference. For example, the "Rumpole of the Bailey" series and "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" had excellent performances which added to the enjoyment of the written words. In contrast, the "Xenocide" performance was marred by fake Chinese accents that was entirely irrelevant and sterotypical.
"American God" was fine on audio tape. THe lenth was not a problem to me at all, but I do drive a great deal!
There are surprising gems as well. The essay "Stickeen" by John Muir totally 'blew me away'. The recital of a journey over the glaciers that manages to be plain yet exalts in the glories of Life. It is by far, the best I've heard in years.
I liked the Mirrormask art works, but the story is just too weak. Not as good as Coraline, closer to Neverwhere. There was not enough emotional connections, in terms of peril or empathy. Doesn't reach the wonder and polish of "City of Lost Children".
Slashdot Mirror
Don't propagate this self-aggrandizing meme.
People in other countries often love American culture and
American people while rejecting the US foreign policies.
Really listen to people in the middle east.
Read some Thomas Friedman columns.
Don't just repeat verbal droppings from others.
"If you will check the seat pocket in front of you, you will find a gag contained in sanitized bag. You are require by regulation to wear the gag for the duration of the flight. Welcome to Freedom Air!"
Is a blathering idiot on a cell phone more annoying than a blathering idiot
talking to his neighbor?
and everything will HAVE to fit in the C: drive on the first partition.....
If people would RTFA instead of struting and pointing fingers,
they would realize that the main purpose of
this is to allow consumers/customers WITHIN China to access web
contects of Chinese companies using Chinese ONLY.
Without this, even if you run Chiniese window and are using chinese
text editors, you would still need to type in English in the URL of the
browser. MOST CHINESES DON'T KNOW ENGLISH!
The Chinese economy will only gain from this as it can stimulate online
transactions in the domestic Chinese economy. It's a simple thing for a Chinese company to get a purely Chinese characters domain AND an English one from ICANN
to sell to English speakers. Thus, it's a no loss situation
for the Chinese companies.
Sure, there're problem with censorhip and government control.
BUT it has NOTHING to do with this move.
"in what sense is our protection of free speech in the West categorically superior to the prevailing Chinese attitude that censorship may sometimes be necessary in order to preserve culture and maintain social order(?)"
I wouldn't buy that coming from a western government and I wouldn't buy it from any Asian government either. However, you have displayed an appalling lack of knowledge and logic in the remainder of you arguments.
The tibetan and uighur regions of china have been under the political control of china for a couple of hundreds years under the Ching dynasty. One could argue that Tibet declared independence during the china civil war period at the turn of the century. However, only 1-2 countries recognized them (US was not one of them)
and a Tibetan official did sign the Seventeen point agreement formalizing their
relation with the Maoist government that came to power in 1949. All of this is
at a minimum open for debate. It is not at like Germany sending an army to take
over France which is a clear case of invasion.
It is true that the chinese government tried to suppress people advocating tibetan independence and control their religion. Undoubtedly it has been too heavy handed in many cases. At the same time, the govenment also funds school that teach in tibetan language. It exempts minority ethnic groups like tibetan and uighurs from the 1 child per family policy. They also have preferences for attendance at the most selective universities and selection for certain jobs. Thus, your facile comparison to the holocaust is not only inaccurate, but actually insulting to the jewish people.
"Should cultures which allow such things to take place be respected?"
The answer is emphatically YES. Just because you disagree with the policies of a particular government, you should not infer that the host culture would inherently endorse such policies. Otherwise, what are we to make of the culture that built and USED the atomic bomb and unleashing the real possibility of wiping out all human lives on the planet?
'But they do have a moral imperative and a duty not to promote dictatorship.'
THAT's a good one...
considering how many dictatorship the US has propped up in the last half centuries.
Hot from the headline today, Rumsfeld is visiting Algeria to considering selling weapons to them.
From the CIA World Fact book in Algeria:
"The army placed Abdelaziz BOUTEFLIKA in the presidency in 1999 in a fraudulent election but claimed neutrality in his 2004 landslide reelection victory."
I don't know enough to say whether Algeria is a dictatorship or not.
But this is clearly another case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend..."
in the book.
Speech recognition might be marginally described as a technique for intelligent interface. Rule based programming is often used in AI systems. But the vast majority of the topics have NOTHING to do the
field of AI. If one adverise falsely, one should expect to get flaks...
It IS a limitation that they keep going back to Rose's time on earth. However, the exploration of how the doctor deals with the repercussion of his actions is very interesting. That had been used to good effects in the Big Finish audios also. Overall, a great delight to see the Doctors with modern effects and good writing!
When the salesman on TV tells you that it's a once in a life time
oppportunity to buy his slightly used automobile, do you rush
down to his auto lot to check it out ?
The act of talking about issue A and not issue B can be deliberate.
Some people want to talk about bringing democracy to the people,
but don't want to talk about the cost (# of people killed in the process).
It's simple common sense to take into account the speaker's
views and motivations in order to understand what IS said and
what ISN'T being said.
right?
Fewer components is not necssarily better.
I prefer a tool which best matches my problem domain. If the domain is complex, the tool should be complex.
Don't know if you folks remembers, when the LOTR books and movies came out, some people complained that it encouraged believes in magic and pagan religions. So are these people complaining about Narnia now? Or are they pushing it in their churches?
The double standard betrays a notable lack of imagination.
Tolkien was a religious man too...
all our children are above average...
http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/about.html
Center Director of Risk Communication David Ropeik and George Gray are authors of "RISK, A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around Us."
A terrific read. Bursted many of my preconceptions about risky choices when I read it.
One point we DO know, invading Iraq has costed 2000+ American lives and xxx(classified) # of civilian lives i Iraq so far. HOW MANY HAS IT SAVED?
Remember that 911 costed us ~2700 lives. We have passed that point quite a ways back in terms of death toll.
You are entirely correct that such choices are not made rationally.
But perhaps we can make more balanced choices if we are actually informed of all the costs of each option.
For example, by putting an amount into homeland security, we have less ability to accomplish other goals, such as medical research which can save lives. In other words, if the money for security went to medical research or making flu vaccines, undoubtedly more people's lives would be saved over 5-10 years. Fundamentally, security investment are nonproductive in the direct sense, similar to the armed forces. It is necessary to protect people and an existing system. But any choice will have a cost.
"Why must materialist philosophy be taught in science class?"
Because it works so well!
Without it, we would never have gone to the moon nor
developed laser.
I do concure with you that the philosophical assumptions of science should be taught to students. That way they can bear in mind that there are diverse ways of knowing and perceiving the world. Each perspective need not invalidate other perspectives.
But what make ID a monstrosity is its obsession with literalness for the sake of clinging to certainty. Have you considered that may be Logos cannot be explained and should not be explained? Every religion around the world have developed mystical approaches. I see that as ongoing efforts to hold back man's obession with his own language and refocus him/her on the transcendent. I invite you to explore.
How did you folks get started in the special effects industry? What trainings did you have at the start or on the way?
True enough.
But if a majority or even a large % of the shareholders demanded such a cap. The board members will probably go along rather than risk being kicked out by the shareholders. The problem is that many shareholders still think that they have to pay the most for the best CEO for this company even though there is no evidence that higher paid CEOs correlates with better performing stock prices. Thus, we get stuck in the Red Queen's race with no effective braking mechanism.
When you grow bateria on a Petri dish, you may start with 1 cell and end up with thousands in a colony. You might say that the bateria colony is now more complex. However, the entropy of the entire petri disk including the bateria had also increased. In other words, the lower entropy of the bateria is more than compensated by the higher entropy of the feed medium over the same period.
Entropy is no help to you. check out some of Ilya Prigogine's work.
If you want to look to DNAs, tell me why a designer would put so much repetitive junk genes in there? Why are we carting around genes which do nothing to enhance our life? What's the point of keeping a separate set of genes in the mitochondria? Why not centralize them?
The other thing to keep in mind, nature had tens of millions of year to brew the prebiotic soup until something replicates. Once it replicates, it'll take off exponentially. When you flip a coin a hundred million times, the chance of it falling on it edge exactly is no longer infinitesimal, but quite thinkable.
supported educational program is what irks many people including myself.
It attacks a fundamental right of Americans to be FREE FROM religions.
Is that not worth defending?
Before you say that ID is not religion, recall that many ID supporters used the same arguments with different terms in the past: "creation science", "creationism" which at least honestly declare the belief in a creator.
People who believe in the 'literal truth' of the bible have probably never read the bible or have a very low regard for logical consistency. The various books of the bible contain numerous inconsistency and sometimes contradictions. Isn't the most critical truth that Jesus has illuminated some transcendent truths about the human state of being? WHY do we have to project an imagined perfection on a compilation of translated writings about him and his god?
I believe most Christians don't insists on a literal interpretation. In fact, I recalled that many ministers used "The Life of Brian" to illustrated how different sects can fixate on minor details which actually obscured the critical truths. Perhaps the Kansis school board should view that movie again.
by means of share-holder's resolution. Check out this article below.
o rporate_governance/MediaMen
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/c
tions/WSJ_Winning_Apr.11.2005.pdf
If ALL sharesholders demand this of their CEOs, then there would be no excuse about needing to pay up for talents.
It seems that most people reiterated their opinions without RTFA.
The parent post is actually infomative. Wish I had mod points...
You need to read your history a bit more carefully. The last emperors of China were Manchurians who have largely assimilated within the Han culture. They stationed permanent imperial officlas in Lhasa. They also got involved in selection of reincarnations when there had been competing claims.
When Tibet had de facto independence was from roughly 1911-1049 although they achived no international recognition. This is not insignificant, but certainly not overwhelming.
Britain were not interested in trading as much as their 'Great Game' of geopolitics against Russia.
I disapprove of the harsh methods the PRC government has deployed to suppress dissent and religions. However, there was never any systematic pogram to attack Tibetans as in Croatia. I find the term 'cultural genocide' more polemical than meaningful.
You weaken your arguments when you based them on inaccuracies or spins.
They've done a fine job too: Bhopal, US tobacco industry, Pinkertons, South Africa, Love Canal...
It's most ironic that you were researching for a human rights project.
Do read some Upton Sinclair and Dickens. Without other moderating
cultural influences, capitalism have run rough shod over human rights for centuries. The benefit of capitalism is economical, not the promotion of a more humane society.
Historically, corporate interests attempt to use governmental influences to gain benefits for themselves as often as they want to be left alone. Look at trade tariffs, agricultural subsidies, the East India Company (Is that a company or an arm of the government?) !
There has never been pure lassiz faire capitalism and there probably never will be. If it comes to be, it's not obvious that you would want to live there.
has a decent collection of audiobooks in MP3 format. Free at low bitrates, reasonable at higher bitrates. Many are simply read, not performed. Though the Jeeves series are quite good. There are a few SF also, but mostly classics.
Big Finish production makes an amazing series of audio books for fans of Dr. Who. These are true audio plays with most of the original cast of the TV series. Many stories are better than what was on the TV shows (until the recent Incarnation in '05, that is). This is truely a worthy continuation of the saga that was not possible using printed word alone.
is what the best audio books present. Even the unabridged one, the narrator makes a great deal of difference. For example, the "Rumpole of the Bailey" series and "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" had excellent performances which added to the enjoyment of the written words. In contrast, the "Xenocide" performance was marred by fake Chinese accents that was entirely irrelevant and sterotypical.
"American God" was fine on audio tape. THe lenth was not a problem to me at all, but I do drive a great deal!
There are surprising gems as well. The essay "Stickeen" by John Muir totally 'blew me away'. The recital of a journey over the glaciers that manages to be plain yet exalts in the glories of Life. It is by far, the best I've heard in years.
I liked the Mirrormask art works, but the story is just too weak. Not as good as Coraline, closer to Neverwhere. There was not enough emotional connections, in terms of peril or empathy. Doesn't reach the wonder and polish of "City of Lost Children".