I know that at my university (University of Toronto, Ontario), most of the computer labs for engineering and computer science people are linux based. And that Java is the preferred language for instruction (with C a distant second).
Mod me up for being redundant if you will, but if the recording industry can sell music CDs here in Asia for $9 and still make a profit, why can't they do the same in the US?
I'm no marketing monkey but I'm sure cost of living in SE Asia is significantly cheaper than in the US or Canada. There's the demand curve in economics in which at any price for a product, there is a certain number of people who are willing to pay that price. Obviously, if the price is ~ 19$ in SE Asia, then nobody would buy it. But that price would probably maximize profits in North America.
I've read somewhere (forget reference) that the simplest, self-replicating life-form has about 250,000 base pairs of DNA in information, which works out to be about 500,000 bits of info.
So, if the universe was composed of a big soup of DNA, what are the chances of a group of DNA coming together in just the right way?
It's about 1 in 2^500000 or 1 in 10^150000
For order of magnitude estimates, the universe has been around for about 10^17 seconds and there are about 10^79 electrons in the universe.
(I don't think the exponents on some of the 10s are exactly correct, but they are more or less in the right ball-park.)
The point is that you'd have to have on the order of 10^150000 attempts a second to have a chance of stumbling onto the right pattern.
Obviously, this ignores a lot of considerations which would take an exo-biologist or astro-physicist to properly address.
Kids these days have gotten accustomed to a torrent of information (internet, TV, computer games,...) to the point that ADD/ADHD is very common. I would think adding yet another channel for them to receive information would make kids these days would only make the situation worse.
Should the Saudi government be allowed to do this? Absolutely, there is no inalienable right to Internet access.
Actually, as one from that country, the whole firewalling is part of a greater picture. No offense intended, but western culture spreads like wildfire. As a means to preserving their own culture, Saudi Arabia has long had the policy of censoring content (be it movies, TV shows,...) that has explicit and cultural content to try to please all the American expatriot workers and yet preserve their own culture from being displaced. And that has now included electronic content.
I am personally of the opinion that any means to prevent cultural death, though in a sense honorable, is futile. (I've heard people say that >80% of the filtered traffic is still porn.) But you do what you can...
Slashdot Mirror
I know that at my university (University of Toronto, Ontario), most of the computer labs for engineering and computer science people are linux based. And that Java is the preferred language for instruction (with C a distant second).
300 ft? that's aweful far away, or unnecessarily prudent. I would think for like 3 ft or 10 ft would be more reasonable.
Mod me up for being redundant if you will, but if the recording industry can sell music CDs here in Asia for $9 and still make a profit, why can't they do the same in the US?
I'm no marketing monkey but I'm sure cost of living in SE Asia is significantly cheaper than in the US or Canada. There's the demand curve in economics in which at any price for a product, there is a certain number of people who are willing to pay that price. Obviously, if the price is ~ 19$ in SE Asia, then nobody would buy it. But that price would probably maximize profits in North America.
I don't know how relevant this is to anything.
I've read somewhere (forget reference) that the simplest, self-replicating life-form has about 250,000 base pairs of DNA in information, which works out to be about 500,000 bits of info.
So, if the universe was composed of a big soup of DNA, what are the chances of a group of DNA coming together in just the right way?
It's about 1 in 2^500000 or 1 in 10^150000
For order of magnitude estimates, the universe has been around for about 10^17 seconds and there are about 10^79 electrons in the universe.
(I don't think the exponents on some of the 10s are exactly correct, but they are more or less in the right ball-park.)
The point is that you'd have to have on the order of 10^150000 attempts a second to have a chance of stumbling onto the right pattern.
Obviously, this ignores a lot of considerations which would take an exo-biologist or astro-physicist to properly address.
Kids these days have gotten accustomed to a torrent of information (internet, TV, computer games, ...) to the point that ADD/ADHD is very common. I would think adding yet another channel for them to receive information would make kids these days would only make the situation worse.
maybe it's just me, but a lot of products, after they ship, have security flaws, despite best intentions and due diligence.
I wonder what AMD (or Intel) would do if the hardware the produce have flaws discovered after they ship.
to those who are interested, I stumbled on an interesting article from Stanford's philosophy pages:
t ]
Language of Thought Hypothesis
[ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-though
Should the Saudi government be allowed to do this? Absolutely, there is no inalienable right to Internet access.
Actually, as one from that country, the whole firewalling is part of a greater picture. No offense intended, but western culture spreads like wildfire. As a means to preserving their own culture, Saudi Arabia has long had the policy of censoring content (be it movies, TV shows, ...) that has explicit and cultural content to try to please all the American expatriot workers and yet preserve their own culture from being displaced. And that has now included electronic content.
I am personally of the opinion that any means to prevent cultural death, though in a sense honorable, is futile. (I've heard people say that >80% of the filtered traffic is still porn.) But you do what you can...
On a different note, this has everything to do with the movie AI (a most excellent movie, but a most stupid audience). The great question was:
If we can do it, should we?