Genghis Khan. Granted that was almost 800 years ago, bu it has happened before.
Er, China was the one conquered by Genghis Khan, says our friend Wikipedia:
Genghis Khan, also Chingiz Khan, born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise.
If China was at all involved in the conquests of Genghis Khan, it would be like the British Empire conscripting Indian soldiers to fight for it in World War II.
Most of the examples you've cited support or at least don't contradict my premise, that China doesn't project its military power well beyond its borders. It invades or bullies only its neighbors.
At worst China will be a regional threat in our generation. Vietnam, Korea, Russia, and Mongolia are neighbors. China's only great war with a single nation was with Vietnam, a months-long war which pales in comparison to the havoc the US wrought during its Vietnam War. The Korean War was a mini-world war. China picked the wrong side.
As for exploiting Africa, China at least doesn't export slaves (China has enough homegrown people to work its sweatshops). Yes, China is expansionist, but expands gradually if at all.
The market needs some uncertainty injected into it since the Nexus 7 is soon to be released, and Apple certainly doesn't want anyone to buy that when they could have an iPad in a few short months.
If this is indeed a mere "marketing ploy" by Apple, then it's more likely a shot against the Surface rather than the anemic-looking Nexus 7. Surface might turn out to be vaporware, which saves Apple the expense of manufacturing a lower-cost device to compete with whatever Microsoft is offering.
China has not had a history of projecting its occupation forces well beyond its borders. Sure, China has invaded Tibet and is threatening to do the same with Taiwan and some puny islands near the Philippines. But unlike the US and the old European empires, China has not sent its armed forces across continents to conquer people of vastly different cultures. And you can't talk about China's "100 years of humiliation" without taking into account fiercely pro-American Taiwan, political heirs to the government that the Communist Party kicked out of the mainland. The Communists have been in power only since 1949, well short of 100 years.
I emailed App Review less than an hour after the update went live and yelled about it on Twitter. About two hours after the update went live, a correct, functional version of it started being distributed on reinstalls. As far as I know, the problem hasn't recurred since then.
I haven't yet received a response from App Review, so I don't know whether the fix was because I made noise, or simply because time passed, which may, for instance, expire a cache with the bad data.
He now just wants Apple to acknowledge that there was a problem.
1. It would be crazy to try to solve disease by creating research facilities in Africa, when there isn't the infrastructure or educational standard to support to work. Cures will develop much faster in developed nations.
It's not so crazy as you think. When your research facility is in the target country you can test the drug faster since you don't have to fly in your drug or researchers from another continent or country to do the necessary field tests. You are also able to account for local variables. For example, some drugs might lose their efficacy or simply fail to work because of external factors like humidity, heat, etc or because of subtle genetic differences in the target population.
2. Ditto with American drug companies - which African ones are large and stable enough to handle the work?
Probably none, as far as bleeding-edge research is concerned. But it should be a simpler matter to set up manufacturing facilities in Africa for the most essential drugs.
I'm assuming that there are subatomic particles, but wondering what gives physicists the confidence that there are so-and-so types of particles. To continue with my analogy, what makes them assert there are five pieces of broken glass and not four or six?
Do subatomic particles exist in the same way that atoms or a grain of sand exist? What if the Higgs and other subatomic particles exist only as the product of the LHC and other particle smashers.
Or put it this way: Imagine I have created, in my disgust at Apple's patent practices, the Gimongous Apple Smasher. (Apple fans can use my other invention, the Android+ Smasher.)
Because of the way it's constructed, whenever I use the iSmasher, I wind up with five pieces of broken glass. Am I justified then in proclaiming that the iPhone screen consists of five pieces of glass cleverly joined together (subatomic particles) rather than a single sheet of glass (an atom)?
Could the relatively recent electoral successes of the various Pirate Parties convinced the MEPs to vote against the treaty, perhaps as an attempt to head off a backlash at the ballot box? The near triumph of the various anarchist and radical left factions in Greece might have also served as a sobering reminder of what could happen when government decides to act against public opinion. This is not necessarily a good thing but should be considered as a political fact of life that comes with the rise of the socially networked voter.
I'd put the mapping of the Human Genome (2003), or creating new organs from stem cells (2008), or Synthetic Biology creating a cell with a fully artificial genome (2010) all up there as well. Don't forget faster than light neutrino's (confirmed a second time), or a vaccine for HIV. That's in the last 10 years, much less 20.
Except for the supposedly FTL neutrinos, I wouldn't exactly call these things discoveries. "Creating" organs and cells and vaccines would qualify as inventions. You don't find these things in nature. The mapping of the human genome is best described not as a single discovery but as the foundation or springboard for discovery. From examining the information, a researcher might make a discovery about, say, the origin of certain genetic disorders. As it is, the data from the Human Genome Project is simply a data dump no different from the TB's that the CERN computer spit out (otherwise the discovery of the Higgs would have been mechanically announced months ago and not just now after careful vetting by physicists).
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, whose signing we celebrate today, was considered an expert in architecture, civil engineering, geography, mathematics, ethnology, anthropology, mechanics, and the sciences.
Not to take anything away from the Man, but being a polymath appears to be a necessary qualification to be a national hero, one of the Founding Fathers, or the Great Leader of a country. Why is it necessary to prove that a man is a larger-than-life expert in everything?
Ultimately, perhaps even within the next few centuries, we're going to see a situation where the abundant resources in our solar system are harvested and processed by mostly automated engines, providing an excellent (upper middle class) quality of life for everyone on earth. There is no physical reason why this should not be the case.
I think this is kind of the utopian version of the American dream. However, if history is any guide, this would be impossible to achieve without a drastic reduction in population or mastery of some form of terraforming that would extend the human biosphere. Certain populations on Earth are already living the utopia of earlier centuries. I can forsee the Bill Gates or Mark Shuttleworths of the future going on a holiday to Mars but not the sanitation engineer surpervising the robo-cleaners down the hall.
The poor of the future will (continue to) have their passive entertainment, perhaps jacking in (rather than off) to the latest direct-link fantasy. Or they would be living in shacks, outcasts from the tech society, no different from those living in the ghettoes or slums of today.
Choosing the USSR as an example of socialisim is like choosing Somalia as an example of capitalisim..
The invention of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is perhaps the biggest mistake committed by socialists of whatever stripe. Radical socialists of the Communist variety have taken what was intended to be a political figure of speech (perhaps equivalent to "war on poverty" if not "war on terror") to mean a literal dictatorship (or at most an oligarchy) that tolerates no dissent. Maybe the 20th century would be a vastly different place if Marx (or is it Engels?) used the term "democracy of the proletariat".
I think this is what you call a figure of speech. It encapsulates in a few words what will probably take a paragraph or more of explanation. Perhaps it's better phrased as "the PC is dying" or more prosaically: "The phenomenal growth in the market for personal computers is levelling off and is expected to go down. It's even possible that the total number of PCs will go down in the near future."
So is the PC dying? What we have are a few indisputable trends. There are now more cellphones in the planet than there are PCs. The percentage of cellphones that can somehow connect to the Net are increasing. Smartphones today are more powerful than the typical desktop from the Windows 95 era, arguably the turning point when the PC migrated from the office to colonize the home market.
The only thing missing for the smartphone to replace the PC is the consistent ability to connect to input-output devices that are taken for granted in the PC world. Support for keyboards and external pointing devices is iffy at best. Support for printers and large monitors is even more dismal. But these issues are being addressed (some of the pricier smartphones now have HDMI output).
Developers and hardcore gamers don't count in the post-PC world. Developers weren't a large breed to begin with. For them the PC will become a niche product, just like mainframes. Hardcore gamers will always have their consoles.
Yes, the tablet is no substitute for a real PC. But superior technology don't always win out. Microsoft should know this better than any other gigantic tech company.
Public support for patents appear to be premised on the idea that patents protect inventions. An invention is generally understood to be some useful thing like the lightbulb or the telephone. The reality, of course, is that most patents don't cover standalone objects but bits and pieces of them.
The file-sharing issue aside, I believe copyrights shouldn't be used like patents on ideas, where mere similarity in plot, character or overall design becomes grounds for suing the developer of another work. For instance, fanfiction should be legalised, where there's a clear distinction between the author of the original work and the author of the derivative.
Abuse of the word terrorism
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 5, Informative
TFA appears to be trolling for search engine hits with the use of "terror" or "terrorism" in the article and the title itself (California's Bioterror Mystery). Really, terrorism should be something that at the very least causes you to have qualms, if not outright fear, about your safety.
For example, you might have second thoughts about riding an airplane because of some extremist hijacking it and blowing it up. Ditto for visiting the mall or drinking tap water because somebody might have laced the water supply. But this one? The only terror I see is of the trees falling over and crushing the poor pedestrian standing right next to it. I'm not a koala, so I'm not going to be losing sleep over the loss of my favorite supply of mint.
To be sure, the title of the scientific paper on which the article is based sounds less sensationalistic (unfortunately, a subscription is necessary to read the paper itself):
After a long period of sitting on the findings, Paine finally published the paper, Accumulation of Pest Insects on Eucalyptus in California: Random Process or Smoking Gun, in the Journal of Economic Entomology.
Drinking decaffeinated coffee did not have the same benefit, pointing to caffeine as the protective agent. Indeed, caffeine from sources other than coffee like cola and chocolate was also linked to a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma, according to the study.
Caffeine in non-coffee substances was found equally effective.
Some sports drinks and (most?) soft drinks contain caffeine, products which are consumed by younger presumably more outgoing people that may have less chance to get skin cancer in the first place. So I don't know, having not read the actual journal article, how meaningful the correlations are. Maybe somebody should come up with a study linking Facebook to decreased/increased incidence of name-your-favorite-health-problem.
China protects its companies (many of which are at least partially state owned). The US does not. One of the reasons so much manufacturing is done in China is because that's the only way to sell there.
This I think reflects more the failure of laissez faire capitalism. Capitalism without controls or government intervention only works if everybody plays fair. And it's not just tariffs. China's labor laws are less strictly enforced than in most First World countries. Of course these two reasons by themselves cannot account for China's popularity over, say, India as a manufacturing hub. I suspect China's advantage is that it's easier for a corporation to do business with what is effectively another large corporation.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, China was the one conquered by Genghis Khan, says our friend Wikipedia:
If China was at all involved in the conquests of Genghis Khan, it would be like the British Empire conscripting Indian soldiers to fight for it in World War II.
Most of the examples you've cited support or at least don't contradict my premise, that China doesn't project its military power well beyond its borders. It invades or bullies only its neighbors.
At worst China will be a regional threat in our generation. Vietnam, Korea, Russia, and Mongolia are neighbors. China's only great war with a single nation was with Vietnam, a months-long war which pales in comparison to the havoc the US wrought during its Vietnam War. The Korean War was a mini-world war. China picked the wrong side.
As for exploiting Africa, China at least doesn't export slaves (China has enough homegrown people to work its sweatshops). Yes, China is expansionist, but expands gradually if at all.
Apple probably went metric. 20 centimeters = 7.87401575 in (copy pasted from Google), which is near enough 7.85
If this is indeed a mere "marketing ploy" by Apple, then it's more likely a shot against the Surface rather than the anemic-looking Nexus 7. Surface might turn out to be vaporware, which saves Apple the expense of manufacturing a lower-cost device to compete with whatever Microsoft is offering.
China has not had a history of projecting its occupation forces well beyond its borders. Sure, China has invaded Tibet and is threatening to do the same with Taiwan and some puny islands near the Philippines. But unlike the US and the old European empires, China has not sent its armed forces across continents to conquer people of vastly different cultures. And you can't talk about China's "100 years of humiliation" without taking into account fiercely pro-American Taiwan, political heirs to the government that the Communist Party kicked out of the mainland. The Communists have been in power only since 1949, well short of 100 years.
He now just wants Apple to acknowledge that there was a problem.
It's not so crazy as you think. When your research facility is in the target country you can test the drug faster since you don't have to fly in your drug or researchers from another continent or country to do the necessary field tests. You are also able to account for local variables. For example, some drugs might lose their efficacy or simply fail to work because of external factors like humidity, heat, etc or because of subtle genetic differences in the target population.
Probably none, as far as bleeding-edge research is concerned. But it should be a simpler matter to set up manufacturing facilities in Africa for the most essential drugs.
I'm assuming that there are subatomic particles, but wondering what gives physicists the confidence that there are so-and-so types of particles. To continue with my analogy, what makes them assert there are five pieces of broken glass and not four or six?
Do subatomic particles exist in the same way that atoms or a grain of sand exist? What if the Higgs and other subatomic particles exist only as the product of the LHC and other particle smashers.
Or put it this way: Imagine I have created, in my disgust at Apple's patent practices, the Gimongous Apple Smasher. (Apple fans can use my other invention, the Android+ Smasher.) Because of the way it's constructed, whenever I use the iSmasher, I wind up with five pieces of broken glass. Am I justified then in proclaiming that the iPhone screen consists of five pieces of glass cleverly joined together (subatomic particles) rather than a single sheet of glass (an atom)?
Could the relatively recent electoral successes of the various Pirate Parties convinced the MEPs to vote against the treaty, perhaps as an attempt to head off a backlash at the ballot box? The near triumph of the various anarchist and radical left factions in Greece might have also served as a sobering reminder of what could happen when government decides to act against public opinion. This is not necessarily a good thing but should be considered as a political fact of life that comes with the rise of the socially networked voter.
To be slightly pedantic, machines don't make discoveries. That, or the Higgs was discovered months ago.
Except for the supposedly FTL neutrinos, I wouldn't exactly call these things discoveries. "Creating" organs and cells and vaccines would qualify as inventions. You don't find these things in nature. The mapping of the human genome is best described not as a single discovery but as the foundation or springboard for discovery. From examining the information, a researcher might make a discovery about, say, the origin of certain genetic disorders. As it is, the data from the Human Genome Project is simply a data dump no different from the TB's that the CERN computer spit out (otherwise the discovery of the Higgs would have been mechanically announced months ago and not just now after careful vetting by physicists).
Not to take anything away from the Man, but being a polymath appears to be a necessary qualification to be a national hero, one of the Founding Fathers, or the Great Leader of a country. Why is it necessary to prove that a man is a larger-than-life expert in everything?
I think this is kind of the utopian version of the American dream. However, if history is any guide, this would be impossible to achieve without a drastic reduction in population or mastery of some form of terraforming that would extend the human biosphere. Certain populations on Earth are already living the utopia of earlier centuries. I can forsee the Bill Gates or Mark Shuttleworths of the future going on a holiday to Mars but not the sanitation engineer surpervising the robo-cleaners down the hall.
The poor of the future will (continue to) have their passive entertainment, perhaps jacking in (rather than off) to the latest direct-link fantasy. Or they would be living in shacks, outcasts from the tech society, no different from those living in the ghettoes or slums of today.
iDon't know, maybe Google's simply replaced the i with a +?
The invention of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is perhaps the biggest mistake committed by socialists of whatever stripe. Radical socialists of the Communist variety have taken what was intended to be a political figure of speech (perhaps equivalent to "war on poverty" if not "war on terror") to mean a literal dictatorship (or at most an oligarchy) that tolerates no dissent. Maybe the 20th century would be a vastly different place if Marx (or is it Engels?) used the term "democracy of the proletariat".
I think this is what you call a figure of speech. It encapsulates in a few words what will probably take a paragraph or more of explanation. Perhaps it's better phrased as "the PC is dying" or more prosaically: "The phenomenal growth in the market for personal computers is levelling off and is expected to go down. It's even possible that the total number of PCs will go down in the near future."
So is the PC dying? What we have are a few indisputable trends. There are now more cellphones in the planet than there are PCs. The percentage of cellphones that can somehow connect to the Net are increasing. Smartphones today are more powerful than the typical desktop from the Windows 95 era, arguably the turning point when the PC migrated from the office to colonize the home market.
The only thing missing for the smartphone to replace the PC is the consistent ability to connect to input-output devices that are taken for granted in the PC world. Support for keyboards and external pointing devices is iffy at best. Support for printers and large monitors is even more dismal. But these issues are being addressed (some of the pricier smartphones now have HDMI output).
Developers and hardcore gamers don't count in the post-PC world. Developers weren't a large breed to begin with. For them the PC will become a niche product, just like mainframes. Hardcore gamers will always have their consoles.
Yes, the tablet is no substitute for a real PC. But superior technology don't always win out. Microsoft should know this better than any other gigantic tech company.
Mod parent up.
While I don't agree on all points, his or her 12-paragraph explanation made more sense than my one-paragraph rant. I quote:
Public support for patents appear to be premised on the idea that patents protect inventions. An invention is generally understood to be some useful thing like the lightbulb or the telephone. The reality, of course, is that most patents don't cover standalone objects but bits and pieces of them.
The file-sharing issue aside, I believe copyrights shouldn't be used like patents on ideas, where mere similarity in plot, character or overall design becomes grounds for suing the developer of another work. For instance, fanfiction should be legalised, where there's a clear distinction between the author of the original work and the author of the derivative.
TFA appears to be trolling for search engine hits with the use of "terror" or "terrorism" in the article and the title itself (California's Bioterror Mystery). Really, terrorism should be something that at the very least causes you to have qualms, if not outright fear, about your safety.
For example, you might have second thoughts about riding an airplane because of some extremist hijacking it and blowing it up. Ditto for visiting the mall or drinking tap water because somebody might have laced the water supply. But this one? The only terror I see is of the trees falling over and crushing the poor pedestrian standing right next to it. I'm not a koala, so I'm not going to be losing sleep over the loss of my favorite supply of mint.
To be sure, the title of the scientific paper on which the article is based sounds less sensationalistic (unfortunately, a subscription is necessary to read the paper itself):
Missed the chocolate.
Some sports drinks and (most?) soft drinks contain caffeine, products which are consumed by younger presumably more outgoing people that may have less chance to get skin cancer in the first place. So I don't know, having not read the actual journal article, how meaningful the correlations are. Maybe somebody should come up with a study linking Facebook to decreased/increased incidence of name-your-favorite-health-problem.
This I think reflects more the failure of laissez faire capitalism. Capitalism without controls or government intervention only works if everybody plays fair. And it's not just tariffs. China's labor laws are less strictly enforced than in most First World countries. Of course these two reasons by themselves cannot account for China's popularity over, say, India as a manufacturing hub. I suspect China's advantage is that it's easier for a corporation to do business with what is effectively another large corporation.
... can they be ruled unconstitutional? (Somebody corrrect my logical fallacy;)