They are 5000 years old. You think the public needs to continuously invest anything in them, to keep them existing?
Yes, in the case of Stonehenge you used to be able to rent a hammer in the village so you could go and chip away at the ancient monument and have a "souvenir". If you don't protect these sites, people will vandalize them. It's not like Stonehenge is the only English Heritage site either, there are plenty of castles, gardens monuments and what ever. It takes money to maintain them.
Just because they have an obvious need doesn't mean that they should go around and randomly charge photographers, though.
Theoretically you might want to keep something secret just because it's commercially valuable. I suspect they are more interested in the bomb-making side of things, though.
Especially in an oven, where is the alcohol gonna go?
Well, according to the wikipedia article you quoted - part of the alcohol does not stay in the food. If you'd bake something for an hour you'd have only 25% of the alcohol left. So where did the 75% go?
Furthermore Obama agreed with that view: he didn't think he'd didn't deserved to be in the compan" of past prize winners, didn't think it was recognition of his own accomplishments and didn't think the award was about his administration. All statements in his speech. Bloody good speech though.
Well they told him "It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now. [...] We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate." If you want to pick a fight with these thugs then call the ACLU - trying to piss them off might not be such a great idea.
Well it definitely isn't their problem. If the TSA would actually be retarded enough to detain a person merely because they have been added to a facebook group (and I'm not saying that's unlikely) - well that would be the TSAs fault. It would also be the fault of the politicians which allow to operate the TSA as it does. And of course that means it would b the fault of the citizens of the US who are willing to put up with that shit.
Hey that's not all they do. They also make a PDF reader which slows down even a relatively modern PC, they sell Framemaker with the consistently same set of features and bugs which it had 20 years ago, and so on.
Mergers are usually not the best way to grow - cultures of the merged companies clash, capable employees leave etc. However in this case, I'd say Adobe and Microsoft are an excellent match.
If a majority of the population decided bank robbery was okay, does that mean we should re-evaluate if robbing banks is really a bad thing? Of course not!
Let's say the majority of the population decides that taxation without representation isn't fair.
It's really not a milestone for anything if nobody can build on your results. It's certainly a great achievement to come up with an approach like that. However it contributes nothing to science if you don't publish it - the contribution was made by others. They weren't written out of history - they opted out.
I understand the problem with the free riders, and in principle not providing a service when the premium wasn't paid is fair.
The problem I have is this: I would help my neighbor if his house was on fire. I'm pretty sure my neighbor would do the same for any of his neighbors. That's just normal human decency. I don't get how you could be a fire fighter and then say "sorry, premium wasn't paid", in the same situation where any normal person would help.
Mainly politics I think. They want to show a response to the Chinese embargo threat. China is punching way above it's political weight, mainly on the assumption that one day they'll actually reach that weight and is becoming increasingly aggressive with (very dubious) territorial claims against many of it's neighbors. They either need to adapt a more cooperative stance, or Japan is better served by being less dependent on China.
GP: This however isn't at all like it used to be in the US. At one point their were as many as 5 parties all with equal chances of getting a candidate elected as president! I want those days!
P: What was different about either the US as a country or the rules for nomination then compared with now.
Well:
What the GP alleges never happened, see here - sometimes there were more viable candidates, but in those cases they didn't all belong to different parties.
By 1836 almost all states transitioned to a "winner takes all" system, so the system which allowed more candidates doesn't exist anymore.
It's not very surprising that once you have two big parties they would attempt to shape the system so that things would disadvantage 3rd parties. You may have a chance to change that, but not by ignoring the reality that it has been changed.
I think there is a question of freedom there. There is a considerable push from Muslims that their sensibilities should be applied to the western world, and that free speech in the West should find it's limit where the Koran defines them. That push takes the form of riots, flag burning, destruction of property (including houses of worship of other religions), death threats and actual murders. While this is not the action of mainstream Islam, it's nevertheless a strong and influential branch of Islam.
The way to counter that, is not to provide individual targets - if Fatwas are placed on the heads of millions of people, than those Fatwas become meaningless. So it's important to offend, to offend regularly, and to offend often.
The Koran is an evil book. Fine it's probably not more evil than the Bible or the Torah, but frankly I find the worship of books condoning genocide rather offensive. Burning any one of them will offend people, many of them perfectly nice people who either don't know what's actually written in those books, or have found ways to rationalize the absurdities and read around the evil. I don't particularly like to hurt these people's feeling, because I know they genuinely are nice people. I don't want to lose my right to tell the truth, though. The Koran is an evil book. We need to be free to say that.
I think we'll need more people who are willing to act like Terry Jones, otherwise we'll lose our freedom to say what we think is evil. And that's too much freedom to lose.
No she doesn't. Like many conservatives she thinks that there is enough doubt about causes of warming and the effects, if any, that the proposed policies would have on it not to proceed with measures that could seriously damage the economy.
Yes, and there is no scientific basis for these doubts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change: [...] no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.
US roads are typically not designed for that, quite frequently you encounter highways where you need to merge or exit on the left lane. With the German system something like this would be deadly.
To add to my German roads experience - I drove a lot of small country roads as well. Two lane roads that are about as wide as one and a half US lanes. No speed limits.
If nothing else is posted, the speed limit on German roads is 100 km/h (~ 62 mph), 50 km/h in built-up areas. The Autobahns have no general speed limit, country roads do. See: Zeichen 393.
No, a printed version wouldn't have been good enough. The judge wanted an expert witness. It wouldn't have sufficed if the attorney had checked the sources for the wikipedia article, either - this still wouldn't have made them an expert of the field. Even if the information is readily available it can take an expert to make sense of it or to put it into context. (E.g. to know that the book was already out of date.)
Yes, language is always part of the culture, but the writing system is viewed by most of the rest of the world as a tool for recording the language.
Yeah, but that doesn't work with "Chinese" - there is one written language, multiple spoken languages using the same writing system. That the rest of the world views things differently, is because things work differenly in different places.
If your tool is woefully inefficient and takes a lifetime of studying to use it correctly, well, I suspect those are pretty good indications that you should change it.
Yeah, "if". But it isn't and it doesn't. The "lifetime" claim is a ridiculous exaggeration. It looks overwhelming to someone from a different culture, but it's not all that difficult to learn, and it's damn fast to read for the trained person.
The Chinese script has also served to shape spoken language - that's why so many things are easy and straightforward in Chinese which are absurdly complex in other languages. For example: "wo = I, ni = you, ta=he/she/it" - ok three random words to learn - but now try the plural: "women = we, nimen = you, tamen = they" - or indicate possesion: "wode = mine, tade = yours... tamende = theirs". Chinese characters don't allow you to change the word endings all the time, so as a result logical structures abound. You could just as well make the argument that switching to an alphabetic script will (in time) lead to an overly complicated spoken language like English or French. Imagine some Chinese person suggesting we should all drop the alphabetic script because of that...
I think there is basically no chance of that working. For one you could argue that "Chinese" is a written language only - there is no standardized pronunciation. The same character will have very different pronunciations depending on the region - people who can currently communicate via the same written language will no longer be able to do so if you were to replace that with e.g. Pinyin.
Then - just like in English - there are many words which sound the same but have different meanings (like "there"/"their"/"they're" to use a simple example). Those have different characters in written language. You might think people can easily infer that from context in spoken language, but that's not true - if someone speaks with a strong accent or not very clearly, then meaning will get lost. When I'm watching TV in Taiwan, there are always Chinese subtitles on the Chinese-language soap opera programs.
You also have to consider the enormous significance of the Chinese script for Chinese culture. One way to get an insight into that, is to visit the Palace Museum in Taipei (well worth the visit) and see how much of the exhibits are either calligraphy or at least strongly tied to the Chinese script. Even the painting styles are closely linked to the style of writing. Abandoning the writing system would be akin to a second cultural revolution - just much worse.
Yes it's difficult to learn Chinese script, however there are advantages to it, as well. I'm always amazed with the speed with which my wife is able to read books - I think a trained reader can absorb written text in Chinese characters at much higher speed than someone using an alphabetic script.
Lastly - I think it's somewhat absurd to change something as significant as a written language, solely to accommodate technical solutions which in all likelihood won't last particularly long. Yes we use keyboard a lot, right now - but that's getting replaced by touch screens currently (not that I believe that's useful, but there you are). New input systems will come along, and they likely won't be as focused solely on the needs of the USA as they were in the past.
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Yes, in the case of Stonehenge you used to be able to rent a hammer in the village so you could go and chip away at the ancient monument and have a "souvenir". If you don't protect these sites, people will vandalize them. It's not like Stonehenge is the only English Heritage site either, there are plenty of castles, gardens monuments and what ever. It takes money to maintain them.
Just because they have an obvious need doesn't mean that they should go around and randomly charge photographers, though.
Theoretically you might want to keep something secret just because it's commercially valuable. I suspect they are more interested in the bomb-making side of things, though.
Well, according to the wikipedia article you quoted - part of the alcohol does not stay in the food. If you'd bake something for an hour you'd have only 25% of the alcohol left. So where did the 75% go?
Forgot about those, yes you are right they definitely deserve credit for that.
Furthermore Obama agreed with that view: he didn't think he'd didn't deserved to be in the compan" of past prize winners, didn't think it was recognition of his own accomplishments and didn't think the award was about his administration. All statements in his speech. Bloody good speech though.
Well Taiwanese have a lot of Chinese heritage, they like their democracy just fine and outperform China by a considerable margin.
John Kasich is the Republican nominee, running against Democratic incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland.
Well, you live here. You may remember this from Slashdot, too. You shouldn't have to live in fear of your law enforcement. Do you?
Well they told him "It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now. [...] We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate." If you want to pick a fight with these thugs then call the ACLU - trying to piss them off might not be such a great idea.
Well it definitely isn't their problem. If the TSA would actually be retarded enough to detain a person merely because they have been added to a facebook group (and I'm not saying that's unlikely) - well that would be the TSAs fault. It would also be the fault of the politicians which allow to operate the TSA as it does. And of course that means it would b the fault of the citizens of the US who are willing to put up with that shit.
What's this new class of malware called, facebook?
Hey that's not all they do. They also make a PDF reader which slows down even a relatively modern PC, they sell Framemaker with the consistently same set of features and bugs which it had 20 years ago, and so on.
Mergers are usually not the best way to grow - cultures of the merged companies clash, capable employees leave etc. However in this case, I'd say Adobe and Microsoft are an excellent match.
On the other hand if he succeeds in his endeavors, then climate change will just not happen saving us billions. Oh wait ...
Let's say the majority of the population decides that taxation without representation isn't fair.
It's really not a milestone for anything if nobody can build on your results. It's certainly a great achievement to come up with an approach like that. However it contributes nothing to science if you don't publish it - the contribution was made by others. They weren't written out of history - they opted out.
I understand the problem with the free riders, and in principle not providing a service when the premium wasn't paid is fair. The problem I have is this: I would help my neighbor if his house was on fire. I'm pretty sure my neighbor would do the same for any of his neighbors. That's just normal human decency. I don't get how you could be a fire fighter and then say "sorry, premium wasn't paid", in the same situation where any normal person would help.
Mainly politics I think. They want to show a response to the Chinese embargo threat. China is punching way above it's political weight, mainly on the assumption that one day they'll actually reach that weight and is becoming increasingly aggressive with (very dubious) territorial claims against many of it's neighbors. They either need to adapt a more cooperative stance, or Japan is better served by being less dependent on China.
P: What was different about either the US as a country or the rules for nomination then compared with now.
Well:
It's not very surprising that once you have two big parties they would attempt to shape the system so that things would disadvantage 3rd parties. You may have a chance to change that, but not by ignoring the reality that it has been changed.
The way to counter that, is not to provide individual targets - if Fatwas are placed on the heads of millions of people, than those Fatwas become meaningless. So it's important to offend, to offend regularly, and to offend often.
The Koran is an evil book. Fine it's probably not more evil than the Bible or the Torah, but frankly I find the worship of books condoning genocide rather offensive. Burning any one of them will offend people, many of them perfectly nice people who either don't know what's actually written in those books, or have found ways to rationalize the absurdities and read around the evil. I don't particularly like to hurt these people's feeling, because I know they genuinely are nice people. I don't want to lose my right to tell the truth, though. The Koran is an evil book. We need to be free to say that.
I think we'll need more people who are willing to act like Terry Jones, otherwise we'll lose our freedom to say what we think is evil. And that's too much freedom to lose.
Yes, and there is no scientific basis for these doubts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change:
[...] no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.
US roads are typically not designed for that, quite frequently you encounter highways where you need to merge or exit on the left lane. With the German system something like this would be deadly.
If nothing else is posted, the speed limit on German roads is 100 km/h (~ 62 mph), 50 km/h in built-up areas. The Autobahns have no general speed limit, country roads do. See: Zeichen 393.
No, a printed version wouldn't have been good enough. The judge wanted an expert witness. It wouldn't have sufficed if the attorney had checked the sources for the wikipedia article, either - this still wouldn't have made them an expert of the field. Even if the information is readily available it can take an expert to make sense of it or to put it into context. (E.g. to know that the book was already out of date.)
Yeah, but that doesn't work with "Chinese" - there is one written language, multiple spoken languages using the same writing system. That the rest of the world views things differently, is because things work differenly in different places.
If your tool is woefully inefficient and takes a lifetime of studying to use it correctly, well, I suspect those are pretty good indications that you should change it.
Yeah, "if". But it isn't and it doesn't. The "lifetime" claim is a ridiculous exaggeration. It looks overwhelming to someone from a different culture, but it's not all that difficult to learn, and it's damn fast to read for the trained person.
The Chinese script has also served to shape spoken language - that's why so many things are easy and straightforward in Chinese which are absurdly complex in other languages. For example: "wo = I, ni = you, ta=he/she/it" - ok three random words to learn - but now try the plural: "women = we, nimen = you, tamen = they" - or indicate possesion: "wode = mine, tade = yours ... tamende = theirs". Chinese characters don't allow you to change the word endings all the time, so as a result logical structures abound. You could just as well make the argument that switching to an alphabetic script will (in time) lead to an overly complicated spoken language like English or French. Imagine some Chinese person suggesting we should all drop the alphabetic script because of that...
Then - just like in English - there are many words which sound the same but have different meanings (like "there"/"their"/"they're" to use a simple example). Those have different characters in written language. You might think people can easily infer that from context in spoken language, but that's not true - if someone speaks with a strong accent or not very clearly, then meaning will get lost. When I'm watching TV in Taiwan, there are always Chinese subtitles on the Chinese-language soap opera programs.
You also have to consider the enormous significance of the Chinese script for Chinese culture. One way to get an insight into that, is to visit the Palace Museum in Taipei (well worth the visit) and see how much of the exhibits are either calligraphy or at least strongly tied to the Chinese script. Even the painting styles are closely linked to the style of writing. Abandoning the writing system would be akin to a second cultural revolution - just much worse.
Yes it's difficult to learn Chinese script, however there are advantages to it, as well. I'm always amazed with the speed with which my wife is able to read books - I think a trained reader can absorb written text in Chinese characters at much higher speed than someone using an alphabetic script.
Lastly - I think it's somewhat absurd to change something as significant as a written language, solely to accommodate technical solutions which in all likelihood won't last particularly long. Yes we use keyboard a lot, right now - but that's getting replaced by touch screens currently (not that I believe that's useful, but there you are). New input systems will come along, and they likely won't be as focused solely on the needs of the USA as they were in the past.