You too can make sonoluminescence happen. Try it with some deuterium and see if you can get fusion. Sound complicated, just use this easy to follow guide. It will give you step by step instructions for reproducing that special kind of magic that is sonoluminescence. All you need is:
sinus generator: (sounds a bit painful)any function generator working around 25kHz, adjustable to +/-1Hz
(+/-10Hz may work, too)
amplifier: nearly any kind of audio amplifier will do. If you're not sure, measure
the saturation voltage: 40V peak-to-peak should be enough.
flask:take a 100ml Pyrex/Duran spherical flask, diameter 65mm, with a small neck. An industrial one has poor optical quality, so better take a free blown one.
Pyrex/Duran Erlenmeyer flask (0.5 or 1l) and airtight stopper with pipe, rubber hose and clamp to close it or
aluminium/highgrade steel drinking bottle (0.5 or 1l) with screw cap; one of those found in camping stores, a bare one without varnish
a bubble;-)
oh, and it is nice to have:
second oscilloscope
vacuum pump
high-pass filter
laser
Go for it kids. By the way, my favourite part is this quote: "Increase the driving voltage until you hear a horrible screeching noise, which sounds like your flask is going to crack. Don't be surprised if it does".
I have to fill in some more text here, becasue slashdot sais I have too few characters per line. Well its just a bloody list of things. Of course there won't be much to each line, what do you expect?
More and more often I have to actually highlight the text in order to be able to read it. Very sad.
This is interesting, becasue I found myself saying this 5 years ago. At that time it seemed like the web was full of amature "web-designers", or rather teenagers who knew enough html to change background and foreground colours, somehow getting paid to slap together horrendous websites. I found wherever I went there would be websites with sickening backgroung images that made text almost unreadable.
In the last 5 years, I have only seen this improve, these sort of sites still exist in abundance, but they seem to be regulated to teenagers' personal homepages ("check out these cool gif animations, if I have taken this from your site let me know, I will put your name up here"), and warez sites. It seems to me that companies are not longer interested in hiring people to produce crap, just becasue it is on the web.
I personaly think that web design is imporving as it falls into the hands of actual experienced designers. There may be flash and big images around town, but I think that even this is becoming less obtrusive and more usefull. I have been working in web design for about 7 years now, and I see the industry only becomming more aware and more refined.
So, I don't know what sort of websites you are visiting to feel this way, but I would guess they are full of appz and gamez and cool gif anis! rather than sites that are designed for providing usefull information
There is a slight difference here, which is that Nintendo never actually owned the merchandise in the first place. This guy did not actually steal anything off them, he purchased goods with his own money. Nintendo never had the right to these goods, so its different. They are trying to ensure that the goods are destroyed. You could argue that the guy bought these good illegaly, but its not really nintendos place to confiscate them. I think that this is not nice at all, and it does come accross as blackmail. If he was selling GBA's that he stole of nintendo, and they demanded them back, that is closer to what you are talking about.
you realise, that as an independant contractor, you would be responsible for your own death during the destruction of the death star. Its your respondibility to research the likelyhood of such events and you take the risk in your own hands
Well I was talking about the us. (think I mentioned that in my post, maybe not obvious enough). But actually, I have read the same for europe, in that most R&D spending goes mostly to military. Do you have reference links for your claims?
This article (page 4, sorry, its a pdf) shows clearly that the US spend way more money than anyone else on defense, which supports your case. From this article:
Currently, the EU pumps about 2% of its gross domestic product, or some $205 billion, into the military, vs. the U.S.'s $343 billion, or some 3% of GDP.
A one percent difference does not seem that big. I am not sure how to take these figures. I mean the almost 1.5 billion difference is significant ... but, in terms of percentages it seems that there is not a huge difference in effort being spent on military. Dunno, do you have more info? or a better analysis of these statistics?
The reason that these sorts of projects are discussed in terms of military, is because that is the reason they are being created. Thats where the funding comes from. sure, an exoskeleton would be great for hundreds of civilian purposes. But who is going to put in the reasearch dollars to help factory workers lift things, or elderly people walk easier. I remember reading a few years back that 80% of US R&D dollars are spent on military purposes. So that is where all the big spending is happening.
What is almost always the case is that inovations like these are developed for military purposes, and then filter down to commercial uses.
It would be a nice world if all the big money was going into helping the elderly and limbless people out there. But we humans tend to find killing each other more interesting than helping each other (thats a big generalisation of course, but its pretty accurate, I think).
Re:But these were non hostile
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 1
When a bomb goes off to blow up munitions or soldiers, it will also kill the janitor who works at the munitions plant to feed his family.
Now, I agree with you here. This sort of thing is unavoidable. However what I do feel IS avaoidable is dropping cluster bombs in farms where no military presence exists. This sort of thing is avoidable, and the decision not to avoid is an evil one.
Well this is quite a conundrum. History shows that democracies almost never go into conflict with each other, yet you seem to be claiming that only people in a democracy can be legitimately held responsible for military attacks.
Well, yes I do actually. I think that all you need to do is take a look at the recent history of afghanistan to see that these people are in serious need of a break. Bombing them will acheive nothing at all. The country is already hammered by decades of war, oppresion and attempted occupations. All the US is doing is grinding them further into the ground.
And there is a bit of a contradiction in your thinking. On the one hand, you claim our attacks are terrorist -- meaning that we are trying to frighten civilians into acting a certain way solely to avoid being hurt. On the other hand, you claim that those civilians have no power, and that those who were in power care nothing for the civilians.
The official miltary definition of terrorism is:
the calculated use of violence against civilians to intimidate, induce fear, often to kill, for some political, religious, or other end.
The US military are using weapons with 50% accuracy, based on intelligence that they admit is not precise. What does this mean? Look at it in human terms, and it means that there is a good chance that at least half the deaths caused by these weapons will be civilian. This information is well known, however the actions are still carried out. I can't see then how this is not deliberately targeting civilians. It is premeditated slaughter of inoccent people. You may like to read this article, it explains things better than I can. These are acts of terror, perpertrated against inocents to send a message that the US is a bad ass muther, what take no shit from no one.
So then what would be the point? We're trying to frighten people on the other side of the planet who can't touch us into doing something they have no power to do? Or we're trying to make the taliban suffer by hurting people that they don't care about?
You are trying to frighten the entire world. Look what happens with you f**k with us. That is the message of terror that is being spread. Of course you won't hear about this on CNN, but be sure that the arab nations are reading it loud and clear.
Is it not possible that in fact we are dropping bombs where we think there is a legitimate target? And that the targetting of those weapons, and the weapons themselves, is simply less than perfect? Doesn't that seem more likely?
Thats the thing, the less than perfect nature of these weapons is well known. That means they are used with the express knowledge that may civilainas will be killed and injured. I can't justify this in any way. Sorry.
Re:But these were non hostile
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 1
Your attitude is unbelievable. What did the thousands of afgan citizens ever do against the US? the answer is nothing. The Al-Queda bimbed the US (supposedly), and the Taliban refused to surrender Bin-Laden. This had nothing to do with the people of afghanistan. The Taliban were not an elected government. They were a nasty bunch of religious extreemists who controlled the country by force. They waged their own cultural war on the people of afghanistan. Bombing villages would mean nothing to the Taliban. These people who had been the victims of the Taliban regime are now the victims of US aggression against the Taliban. There is not justice there. No logic to explain it. Nothing that can justify it in any way. these are acts of evil terrorism perpertrated by the US governement on an innocent population.
Not sure if I agree with you, especialy in regard to human-introduced species. but I think in the case of this article, your point is moot. they don't want to get rid of the sponge to save the ecology so much as they want to pretect their seafood industry. I am sure if there were indigenous sea creatures that were threatening their oyster farms they would be thinking of killing them off as well.
Yeah, well I am just a fan (hold that atic). I only read the book once, so give me a break.
I was going to say I actually have a life, but then I realised that I have been posting to the same thread on/. for a few hours, so that kinda cancels out that argument.:)
AHA! yes, that makes much more sense. I knew that they were both spider types. Got them confused as the same person(? or should I say evil entity). I would have grabbed a book, but I am at work, and I don't make a habit of carrying the silmarillion everywhere I go.
Perhaps I am. Not sure who Ungoliant is now, but the name seems farmiliar. I was pretty sure though, that when morgoth attacked the eternal realms and killed the trees, he had shelob along to help out. No? Do I need to lay off the chemicals?
No chance of that. The elves have mostly left and gone back into the eternal realms of the west where the Valar live.
Unless you have that large sider demon type to help you out (who is dead anyway thanks to sam and frodo), you aint gonna conquer the valar and their host of elf lords with a bunch of bombs and ground troups.
No unfortunately elf tech will be forever cut off from the mortal realms
Yes exactly, thank you Mr AC. The appendix in LOTR is much less detailed than the silmarillion, which tells the full story. Go and read that, and you will see I am right.
Man I am getting really sick of everyone saying that they couldn't stop identifying hugo weaving with the matrix and not LOTR. Its one freaking movie that the guy has made, and you have to brand him with it for life, eh? The guy is an actor, he has made heaps of quality movies other than the matrix, like "Pricila, Queen of the deser" which you should have seen even if you have never left the American continent. Just cause the guy hasn't played in lots of US lockbusters doens't mean he has only ever made one movie. In Australia he is well known. I wish some of you people would think a bit more.
Sorry, I just had to rant about this. Hugo is one of my favourite actors, and I hate seeing him typecast
I'm a little confused. Why did he/his ancestors abandon the throne to become a Ranger in the novels? Not refuting your point, I just can't remember.
They didn't really abandon the throne. See Aragorn was a decendant of the royal family of the the nothern kindom on numenorians. Gondor was the Southern Kindom. The northern kindom was basically ground down to nothing through centuries of war and disease and disaster etc, until its people were very few and could not maintain a kindom any longer. However they kept the histories and lore alive even though they lived as rangers, and still struggled to keep the nothern realms safe.
In Gondor the last king was killed without an heir, and the stewards took over. The rulers of the northern realms and the southern realms were both decended from the same family, therefore Aragorn was the only remaining decendant of both the northern and southern royal families, so the throne of gondor, and of the norhtern realms was his to claim.
Insane no? We Aussies have a long history of rooting the eco system. I can't believe kerry would suggest something like this. Its basicaly burnt into every Australians brain DO NOT INTRODUCE ANY MORE ANIMALS INTO THE COUNTRY.
I don't care how big and easy to kill they are, no one knows what could happen. The rabbit is probably the worst, cane toads are runners up I think. First they bring in sugar cane and farm it all through QLD and northern NSW, they find out that the cane beetle is ruining crops, so they bring in cane toads from Hawaii (I think). Turns out the cane toads eat the can bug and . . . everything else in sight, None of the native animals can compete with them, and they multiply in insane quantities . . . now you find them everywhere on the QLD coast, and in NSW as well. They are so abundant and hated that people have invented games that use cane toads (cricket anyone?). killing cane toads is almost a national past time. But there seems no way to get rid of them.
Mr Packer, you have done some ok things and some stupid things, but this is one of the stupidist
In Australia, when you study engineering (in my case I did civil engineering) in a course that has been recognised by the engineer's certification thingy, you are required to learn about ethics and safety and so fourth. This usualy takes the form of a one session course that is easy to pass and ignored once it is finished.
It would be possible to study engineering at university without learning this stuff, but your course would probably not be recognised by the engineer's authority, and so you would have trouble becoming a registered engineer.
I took Jon's comment to be aimed at the Taliban, not the afghan people. Think it was a poor choice of words though. I hope he did mean to say government. You could quite easily argue that the government is primitive, it is dictatorial and based on fanaticism, etc. There is no grounds though for calling the afghan culture primitive. They have a rich and diverse cultural history. Though most of it has been destroyed in recent times. Its so sad that they country has suffered for the actions political or religious zealots who lived there.
There is so much more to it than jst this. McDonalds (for example) have huge advertising budgets and marketing powers. Plus the capital that they controll buys them much more in less developed nations. McDonalds and other multinationals use this power to create a dream, an ideal that people will desire. Advertising can be an incredibaly powerful force in mass pursuasion. And these US companies build their image and promote their products as some kind of nirvana.
I have heard of men in malaysia spending 2 weeks wages on a single coke rather than feeding their families. This is how powerful these companies campaignes are. The local culture does not stand a chance against this sort of thing, and there is the very real posibility of large parts of coutries cultures being wiped out.
It is easy to think that you are providing more choice by allowing US companies to move throughout the world seling theor products, but you have to look at the way these companies act in reality. They don't care about anyhting except making a profit, and whatever it takes to make their business profitable, they will do. This is leading to a world culture of consumerism. This is definately a bad thing. It is not giving them choices, it is manipulating a culture to force them into a consumeristic lifestyle
Re:lots out there
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I currently use Forte. This program definately requires some hardware thrown at it. It was just bearable on a 500mghz PII with 245MB RAM. I upgraded to a 1.7 Mghz P4 with 1GIG RAM, and it is very usable. I like forte becasue it is both simple and powerfull. It only does as much as you need it to do. I especially like the new method for creating.jar files in V3, two clicks and your jar file is recreated exactly the way you want. I also like how it can be used to browse the contents of a.properties file. And it's XML suport is cool as well. (XML files appear in the explorer as a node, and you expend the entire tree and change values from the propery window without ever editing the file directly). I use forte for programs that I am developing on my own. One drawback I have noticed with forte, is that since it lives on the JVM, if you crash the JVM while testing a program, you also take down forte, bummer.
For team projects, my company uses IBM Visual Age for Java. Still resource hungry (though it doesn't touch FORTE) it has the best team based development model that I have found. The IDE connects directly to a server-based reposititory in which all code is kept. Anyone can alter any code they want, but they then have to version their code for it to be available to others. Each class, package and project has a manager, who is able to meld the different versions together and then release the official version of the code. It works well in a heighrachical structure, but can get messy when there is no clear line of ownership in the project.
Slashdot Mirror
You too can make sonoluminescence happen. Try it with some deuterium and see if you can get fusion. Sound complicated, just use this easy to follow guide. It will give you step by step instructions for reproducing that special kind of magic that is sonoluminescence. All you need is:
- sinus generator: (sounds a bit painful)any function generator working around 25kHz, adjustable to +/-1Hz
(+/-10Hz may work, too)
- amplifier: nearly any kind of audio amplifier will do. If you're not sure, measure
the saturation voltage: 40V peak-to-peak should be enough.
- 2-trace oscilloscope
- 2 piezoceramic Transducers (drivers):around d=16mm in diameter, h=8mm thick
- piezoceramic pill-transducer (microphone):around 3mm in diameter, 1mm thick
- three finger clamp
- laboratory stand
- flask:take a 100ml Pyrex/Duran spherical flask, diameter 65mm, with a small neck. An industrial one has poor optical quality, so better take a free blown one.
- coil(s): around 20mH, see text
- resistors: 1M, 10k, 1R
- coaxial cable
- quick-drying epoxy glue
- an eyedropper or a syringe (one of those little do-it-yourself subcutaneous is very good)
- degassed distilled water:
- Pyrex/Duran Erlenmeyer flask (0.5 or 1l) and airtight stopper with pipe, rubber hose and clamp to close it
- aluminium/highgrade steel drinking bottle (0.5 or 1l) with screw cap; one of those found in camping stores, a bare one without varnish
- a bubble
;-)
oh, and it is nice to have:or
- second oscilloscope
- vacuum pump
- high-pass filter
- laser
Go for it kids. By the way, my favourite part is this quote: "Increase the driving voltage until you hear a horrible screeching noise, which sounds like your flask is going to crack. Don't be surprised if it does".I have to fill in some more text here, becasue slashdot sais I have too few characters per line. Well its just a bloody list of things. Of course there won't be much to each line, what do you expect?
Well, come on then . . . give me some examples of these unreadable sites.
This is interesting, becasue I found myself saying this 5 years ago. At that time it seemed like the web was full of amature "web-designers", or rather teenagers who knew enough html to change background and foreground colours, somehow getting paid to slap together horrendous websites. I found wherever I went there would be websites with sickening backgroung images that made text almost unreadable.
In the last 5 years, I have only seen this improve, these sort of sites still exist in abundance, but they seem to be regulated to teenagers' personal homepages ("check out these cool gif animations, if I have taken this from your site let me know, I will put your name up here"), and warez sites. It seems to me that companies are not longer interested in hiring people to produce crap, just becasue it is on the web.
I personaly think that web design is imporving as it falls into the hands of actual experienced designers. There may be flash and big images around town, but I think that even this is becoming less obtrusive and more usefull. I have been working in web design for about 7 years now, and I see the industry only becomming more aware and more refined.
So, I don't know what sort of websites you are visiting to feel this way, but I would guess they are full of appz and gamez and cool gif anis! rather than sites that are designed for providing usefull information
There is a slight difference here, which is that Nintendo never actually owned the merchandise in the first place. This guy did not actually steal anything off them, he purchased goods with his own money. Nintendo never had the right to these goods, so its different. They are trying to ensure that the goods are destroyed. You could argue that the guy bought these good illegaly, but its not really nintendos place to confiscate them. I think that this is not nice at all, and it does come accross as blackmail. If he was selling GBA's that he stole of nintendo, and they demanded them back, that is closer to what you are talking about.
you realise, that as an independant contractor, you would be responsible for your own death during the destruction of the death star. Its your respondibility to research the likelyhood of such events and you take the risk in your own hands
Well I was talking about the us. (think I mentioned that in my post, maybe not obvious enough). But actually, I have read the same for europe, in that most R&D spending goes mostly to military. Do you have reference links for your claims?
This article (page 4, sorry, its a pdf) shows clearly that the US spend way more money than anyone else on defense, which supports your case. From this article:
A one percent difference does not seem that big. I am not sure how to take these figures. I mean the almost 1.5 billion difference is significant . .. but, in terms of percentages it seems that there is not a huge difference in effort being spent on military. Dunno, do you have more info? or a better analysis of these statistics?
The reason that these sorts of projects are discussed in terms of military, is because that is the reason they are being created. Thats where the funding comes from. sure, an exoskeleton would be great for hundreds of civilian purposes. But who is going to put in the reasearch dollars to help factory workers lift things, or elderly people walk easier. I remember reading a few years back that 80% of US R&D dollars are spent on military purposes. So that is where all the big spending is happening.
What is almost always the case is that inovations like these are developed for military purposes, and then filter down to commercial uses.
It would be a nice world if all the big money was going into helping the elderly and limbless people out there. But we humans tend to find killing each other more interesting than helping each other (thats a big generalisation of course, but its pretty accurate, I think).
When a bomb goes off to blow up munitions or soldiers, it will also kill the janitor who works at the munitions plant to feed his family.
Now, I agree with you here. This sort of thing is unavoidable. However what I do feel IS avaoidable is dropping cluster bombs in farms where no military presence exists. This sort of thing is avoidable, and the decision not to avoid is an evil one.
Well this is quite a conundrum. History shows that democracies almost never go into conflict with each other, yet you seem to be claiming that only people in a democracy can be legitimately held responsible for military attacks.
Well, yes I do actually. I think that all you need to do is take a look at the recent history of afghanistan to see that these people are in serious need of a break. Bombing them will acheive nothing at all. The country is already hammered by decades of war, oppresion and attempted occupations. All the US is doing is grinding them further into the ground.
And there is a bit of a contradiction in your thinking. On the one hand, you claim our attacks are terrorist -- meaning that we are trying to frighten civilians into acting a certain way solely to avoid being hurt. On the other hand, you claim that those civilians have no power, and that those who were in power care nothing for the civilians.
The official miltary definition of terrorism is:
The US military are using weapons with 50% accuracy, based on intelligence that they admit is not precise. What does this mean? Look at it in human terms, and it means that there is a good chance that at least half the deaths caused by these weapons will be civilian. This information is well known, however the actions are still carried out. I can't see then how this is not deliberately targeting civilians. It is premeditated slaughter of inoccent people. You may like to read this article, it explains things better than I can. These are acts of terror, perpertrated against inocents to send a message that the US is a bad ass muther, what take no shit from no one.
So then what would be the point? We're trying to frighten people on the other side of the planet who can't touch us into doing something they have no power to do? Or we're trying to make the taliban suffer by hurting people that they don't care about?
You are trying to frighten the entire world. Look what happens with you f**k with us. That is the message of terror that is being spread. Of course you won't hear about this on CNN, but be sure that the arab nations are reading it loud and clear.
Is it not possible that in fact we are dropping bombs where we think there is a legitimate target? And that the targetting of those weapons, and the weapons themselves, is simply less than perfect? Doesn't that seem more likely?
Thats the thing, the less than perfect nature of these weapons is well known. That means they are used with the express knowledge that may civilainas will be killed and injured. I can't justify this in any way. Sorry.
Your attitude is unbelievable. What did the thousands of afgan citizens ever do against the US? the answer is nothing. The Al-Queda bimbed the US (supposedly), and the Taliban refused to surrender Bin-Laden. This had nothing to do with the people of afghanistan. The Taliban were not an elected government. They were a nasty bunch of religious extreemists who controlled the country by force. They waged their own cultural war on the people of afghanistan. Bombing villages would mean nothing to the Taliban. These people who had been the victims of the Taliban regime are now the victims of US aggression against the Taliban. There is not justice there. No logic to explain it. Nothing that can justify it in any way. these are acts of evil terrorism perpertrated by the US governement on an innocent population.
What we need now is some wave files to be sent around the net:
"Hello my name is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce lin@x, lin@x"
That should settle any pronounciation disputes.
Not sure if I agree with you, especialy in regard to human-introduced species. but I think in the case of this article, your point is moot. they don't want to get rid of the sponge to save the ecology so much as they want to pretect their seafood industry. I am sure if there were indigenous sea creatures that were threatening their oyster farms they would be thinking of killing them off as well.
Yeah, well I am just a fan (hold that atic). I only read the book once, so give me a break.
I was going to say I actually have a life, but then I realised that I have been posting to the same thread on /. for a few hours, so that kinda cancels out that argument. :)
AHA! yes, that makes much more sense. I knew that they were both spider types. Got them confused as the same person(? or should I say evil entity). I would have grabbed a book, but I am at work, and I don't make a habit of carrying the silmarillion everywhere I go.
Perhaps I am. Not sure who Ungoliant is now, but the name seems farmiliar. I was pretty sure though, that when morgoth attacked the eternal realms and killed the trees, he had shelob along to help out. No? Do I need to lay off the chemicals?
No chance of that. The elves have mostly left and gone back into the eternal realms of the west where the Valar live.
Unless you have that large sider demon type to help you out (who is dead anyway thanks to sam and frodo), you aint gonna conquer the valar and their host of elf lords with a bunch of bombs and ground troups.
No unfortunately elf tech will be forever cut off from the mortal realms
But Wine Is Not and Emulator, silly.
Yes exactly, thank you Mr AC. The appendix in LOTR is much less detailed than the silmarillion, which tells the full story. Go and read that, and you will see I am right.
Man I am getting really sick of everyone saying that they couldn't stop identifying hugo weaving with the matrix and not LOTR. Its one freaking movie that the guy has made, and you have to brand him with it for life, eh? The guy is an actor, he has made heaps of quality movies other than the matrix, like "Pricila, Queen of the deser" which you should have seen even if you have never left the American continent. Just cause the guy hasn't played in lots of US lockbusters doens't mean he has only ever made one movie. In Australia he is well known. I wish some of you people would think a bit more.
Sorry, I just had to rant about this. Hugo is one of my favourite actors, and I hate seeing him typecast
I'm a little confused. Why did he/his ancestors abandon the throne to become a Ranger in the novels? Not refuting your point, I just can't remember.
They didn't really abandon the throne. See Aragorn was a decendant of the royal family of the the nothern kindom on numenorians. Gondor was the Southern Kindom. The northern kindom was basically ground down to nothing through centuries of war and disease and disaster etc, until its people were very few and could not maintain a kindom any longer. However they kept the histories and lore alive even though they lived as rangers, and still struggled to keep the nothern realms safe.
In Gondor the last king was killed without an heir, and the stewards took over. The rulers of the northern realms and the southern realms were both decended from the same family, therefore Aragorn was the only remaining decendant of both the northern and southern royal families, so the throne of gondor, and of the norhtern realms was his to claim.
We Aussies are still part of the empire. We all voted to remain so a coupla years ago. Woo hoo, god save the queen.
That was sarcastic by the way
Insane no? We Aussies have a long history of rooting the eco system. I can't believe kerry would suggest something like this. Its basicaly burnt into every Australians brain DO NOT INTRODUCE ANY MORE ANIMALS INTO THE COUNTRY.
I don't care how big and easy to kill they are, no one knows what could happen. The rabbit is probably the worst, cane toads are runners up I think. First they bring in sugar cane and farm it all through QLD and northern NSW, they find out that the cane beetle is ruining crops, so they bring in cane toads from Hawaii (I think). Turns out the cane toads eat the can bug and . . . everything else in sight, None of the native animals can compete with them, and they multiply in insane quantities . . . now you find them everywhere on the QLD coast, and in NSW as well. They are so abundant and hated that people have invented games that use cane toads (cricket anyone?). killing cane toads is almost a national past time. But there seems no way to get rid of them.Mr Packer, you have done some ok things and some stupid things, but this is one of the stupidist
In Australia, when you study engineering (in my case I did civil engineering) in a course that has been recognised by the engineer's certification thingy, you are required to learn about ethics and safety and so fourth. This usualy takes the form of a one session course that is easy to pass and ignored once it is finished.
It would be possible to study engineering at university without learning this stuff, but your course would probably not be recognised by the engineer's authority, and so you would have trouble becoming a registered engineer.
I took Jon's comment to be aimed at the Taliban, not the afghan people. Think it was a poor choice of words though. I hope he did mean to say government. You could quite easily argue that the government is primitive, it is dictatorial and based on fanaticism, etc. There is no grounds though for calling the afghan culture primitive. They have a rich and diverse cultural history. Though most of it has been destroyed in recent times. Its so sad that they country has suffered for the actions political or religious zealots who lived there.
There is so much more to it than jst this. McDonalds (for example) have huge advertising budgets and marketing powers. Plus the capital that they controll buys them much more in less developed nations. McDonalds and other multinationals use this power to create a dream, an ideal that people will desire. Advertising can be an incredibaly powerful force in mass pursuasion. And these US companies build their image and promote their products as some kind of nirvana.
I have heard of men in malaysia spending 2 weeks wages on a single coke rather than feeding their families. This is how powerful these companies campaignes are. The local culture does not stand a chance against this sort of thing, and there is the very real posibility of large parts of coutries cultures being wiped out.
It is easy to think that you are providing more choice by allowing US companies to move throughout the world seling theor products, but you have to look at the way these companies act in reality. They don't care about anyhting except making a profit, and whatever it takes to make their business profitable, they will do. This is leading to a world culture of consumerism. This is definately a bad thing. It is not giving them choices, it is manipulating a culture to force them into a consumeristic lifestyle
I currently use Forte. This program definately requires some hardware thrown at it. It was just bearable on a 500mghz PII with 245MB RAM. I upgraded to a 1.7 Mghz P4 with 1GIG RAM, and it is very usable. I like forte becasue it is both simple and powerfull. It only does as much as you need it to do. I especially like the new method for creating .jar files in V3, two clicks and your jar file is recreated exactly the way you want. I also like how it can be used to browse the contents of a .properties file. And it's XML suport is cool as well. (XML files appear in the explorer as a node, and you expend the entire tree and change values from the propery window without ever editing the file directly). I use forte for programs that I am developing on my own. One drawback I have noticed with forte, is that since it lives on the JVM, if you crash the JVM while testing a program, you also take down forte, bummer.
For team projects, my company uses IBM Visual Age for Java. Still resource hungry (though it doesn't touch FORTE) it has the best team based development model that I have found. The IDE connects directly to a server-based reposititory in which all code is kept. Anyone can alter any code they want, but they then have to version their code for it to be available to others. Each class, package and project has a manager, who is able to meld the different versions together and then release the official version of the code. It works well in a heighrachical structure, but can get messy when there is no clear line of ownership in the project.