Here is a hint from the Guardian: it is not Snowden, and it may be the UK government that is leaking stuff that can be considered harmful, in order to suggest it is from Snowden, and call Snowden's discolsure harmful. Hmmmm...
my respect for a chemical that can oxidize all sorts of materials that you think of as already about as oxidized as they get
But if you turn CO2 into CF4, the carbon atom oxidation level does not change. You probably oxidize oxygen in that reaction. Our imagination is without limit, therefore we could dream of oxidizing further by stealing the orbital 1s electrons of the carbon atom, but I am not sure it can ever happen in a chemical reaction with fluorine. Even fluoride has its limits:-)
CO2 is carbon at its maximum oxydation level (you cannot burn it anymore). Limestone is made of calcium carbonate (and magnesium carbonate in a lesser extent), it is also carbon at its maximum oxydation level. The transformation seems smart, but it requires water (easy part) and calcium. Where will that calcium come from? The usual source is limestone...
Right, they are aware of privacy concerns when it comes to mobile. But what about cloud services like Gmail? Are theses kids paying attention to who is handling their communications and documents, and what is done here?
Good question, but difficult to answer, since you have to consider some french higher education system oddities.
First, there are Universities, and there are Grandes Ecoles, which are smaller structures but highly subsided, and obvious first choices for students to get engineering or management degrees. Management can be expensive, but engineering remains very affordable, which means it is heavily subsided. The latter is especially true for the ones that manage to get into the top students of the top schools, where they can become civil servants while being student. Here government subsidies are at maximum level since the student gets paid a full wage (and has a mandatory 10 years as civil servant in return).
Universities degrees tend to be less expensive that Grandes ecoles, while they are less subsided at the same time. This is explained because student/teacher ratio is much higher, and the bulk of higher education costs are wages.
Another pitfall when trying to compare France to other countries is that a huge part of research is done by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which employs 11k researcher without teaching duties and 14k engineers, technicians and administrative persons to support research. These are deployed in universities and other institutions, but are not on universities payrolls.
.
But things are changing, as former president Sarkozy introduced University financial autonomy (they were previously largely handled by the government), while reducing their budget at the same time. President Hollande keeps walking on his predecessor tracks here, and just cut budgets more. This will force university degrees to get more expensive. Grandes Ecoles are less impacted by this trend, but we are assured that their time will come if the austerity fad keeps going on.
The social security problem is not about how many people pay, and how many people consume. It is about how much wealth working people produce, and how much wealth insured people consume.
Thanks to productivity gains, there is an easy solution to the problem: less working people produce more, and are therefore able to support more insured people.
But thanks to greedy capitalists, we do not move in that direction. Instead, productivity gains go to shareholders, who will reinvest them in financial bubbles.
Competition and free markets are what have elevated human standard of living to the point it is today
It helped, so did cooperation. Nation-states were built to allow cooperation to trump competition in some areas, and they played a huge role in human development.
One can therefore get a Master's degree (in 5 years) for about €750-3,500.
And this includes health insurance. The bulk of the educational cost is socialized through taxes. Education (K12 to university) accounts for 1/3 of the state expenses, IIRC.
It is nice when science brings us facts that looked obvious to crowd wisdom: nature is good for our moods, work is not. (yes, I know some of us have interesting jobs, but we are minority).
There are two approaches to big projects. First is central plan from the government, second is competition that let emerge the best solution.
Some countries are fond of the first approach (China and France for instance), some others like USA find it inefficient and usually prefer the second approach. Truth is that both way of doing big projects have merits and issues, and both have successes and failures.
However, the competition approach seems to have a big issue when the barrier to enter the project is a few billion dollars. That means that failed project will have wasted billions, which put a very high price on the succeeding project.
While it is true that a government-planned big project can also be a failure, at least there is only one billion-worth failure, not several.
The power plant comes with power lines that reach houses. If that is replaced by distributed fuel cells, unless there is a municipal pipeline network, the fuel has to be carried by vehicles, and I have trouble to understand how it could be more efficient in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it me that is not very well awoken this morning, or is this summary just a pile of buzzword without actual news?
Here is a hint from the Guardian: it is not Snowden, and it may be the UK government that is leaking stuff that can be considered harmful, in order to suggest it is from Snowden, and call Snowden's discolsure harmful. Hmmmm...
How do they interconnect their local GSM network with the other operators? Anyone can inject calls into mobile operator networks?
my respect for a chemical that can oxidize all sorts of materials that you think of as already about as oxidized as they get
But if you turn CO2 into CF4, the carbon atom oxidation level does not change. You probably oxidize oxygen in that reaction. Our imagination is without limit, therefore we could dream of oxidizing further by stealing the orbital 1s electrons of the carbon atom, but I am not sure it can ever happen in a chemical reaction with fluorine. Even fluoride has its limits :-)
CO2 is a problem. PFC are worse. It is not a good idea to burn CO2 further into CF4, if that was your idea.
CO2 is carbon at its maximum oxydation level (you cannot burn it anymore). Limestone is made of calcium carbonate (and magnesium carbonate in a lesser extent), it is also carbon at its maximum oxydation level. The transformation seems smart, but it requires water (easy part) and calcium. Where will that calcium come from? The usual source is limestone...
What is the source of that information? Snowden leak? NSA PR? Other?
Right, they are aware of privacy concerns when it comes to mobile. But what about cloud services like Gmail? Are theses kids paying attention to who is handling their communications and documents, and what is done here?
Good question, but difficult to answer, since you have to consider some french higher education system oddities.
First, there are Universities, and there are Grandes Ecoles, which are smaller structures but highly subsided, and obvious first choices for students to get engineering or management degrees. Management can be expensive, but engineering remains very affordable, which means it is heavily subsided. The latter is especially true for the ones that manage to get into the top students of the top schools, where they can become civil servants while being student. Here government subsidies are at maximum level since the student gets paid a full wage (and has a mandatory 10 years as civil servant in return).
Universities degrees tend to be less expensive that Grandes ecoles, while they are less subsided at the same time. This is explained because student/teacher ratio is much higher, and the bulk of higher education costs are wages.
Another pitfall when trying to compare France to other countries is that a huge part of research is done by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which employs 11k researcher without teaching duties and 14k engineers, technicians and administrative persons to support research. These are deployed in universities and other institutions, but are not on universities payrolls.
.
But things are changing, as former president Sarkozy introduced University financial autonomy (they were previously largely handled by the government), while reducing their budget at the same time. President Hollande keeps walking on his predecessor tracks here, and just cut budgets more. This will force university degrees to get more expensive. Grandes Ecoles are less impacted by this trend, but we are assured that their time will come if the austerity fad keeps going on.
The social security problem is not about how many people pay, and how many people consume. It is about how much wealth working people produce, and how much wealth insured people consume.
Thanks to productivity gains, there is an easy solution to the problem: less working people produce more, and are therefore able to support more insured people.
But thanks to greedy capitalists, we do not move in that direction. Instead, productivity gains go to shareholders, who will reinvest them in financial bubbles.
This looks roughly unethical. There is no law against such Pygmalion's practice in the US?
Competition and free markets are what have elevated human standard of living to the point it is today
It helped, so did cooperation. Nation-states were built to allow cooperation to trump competition in some areas, and they played a huge role in human development.
Over here, a degree (not counting the really expensive ones like medicine) costs $15-30k and a masters $20-37k.
Here is an even more extreme example: France
One can therefore get a Master's degree (in 5 years) for about €750-3,500.
And this includes health insurance. The bulk of the educational cost is socialized through taxes. Education (K12 to university) accounts for 1/3 of the state expenses, IIRC.
I'm surprised you didn't know this.
It is just like PRISM: we knew it, but now we have proofs. That kind of disclosure has merit IMO
What country is it? We just have to look at where do most cables go. I bet on Egypt.
It is nice when science brings us facts that looked obvious to crowd wisdom: nature is good for our moods, work is not. (yes, I know some of us have interesting jobs, but we are minority).
Trying to go beyond the surrounding paranoia: I understand this to be a federated identity network, probably based on SAML. Is that right?
You are right if you use definitions 1 or 3, and wrong if you use definition 2.
But can you build it and use it in your OS X system?
I modded you down as troll by mistake. I am posting this just to undo moderation.
TFA says “Online, there’s no visa problem,”, which suggests the student will not have to attend for the exam.
How can they make sure a remote participant does not cheat during a test? Mandatory spyware?
There are two approaches to big projects. First is central plan from the government, second is competition that let emerge the best solution.
Some countries are fond of the first approach (China and France for instance), some others like USA find it inefficient and usually prefer the second approach. Truth is that both way of doing big projects have merits and issues, and both have successes and failures.
However, the competition approach seems to have a big issue when the barrier to enter the project is a few billion dollars. That means that failed project will have wasted billions, which put a very high price on the succeeding project.
While it is true that a government-planned big project can also be a failure, at least there is only one billion-worth failure, not several.
Is the municipal power plant on the way out?
The power plant comes with power lines that reach houses. If that is replaced by distributed fuel cells, unless there is a municipal pipeline network, the fuel has to be carried by vehicles, and I have trouble to understand how it could be more efficient in the end.
This makes sense, since we were told was boring, and that its work should be consumed as alternative media to remain entertaining.