The crowd that maintains that "all government is incompetent and all regulation is bad" are composed of liars and the people who swallow their lies. I, for one, am exceeding glad there's an EPA and an OSHA, because I've lived in a time when they didn't exist. You young people can disbelieve me if you want to, but workplaces are far safer thanks to OSHA meddling, and the air and water are far cleaner than they were before EPA meddling.
There is such a thing as too much regulation, and such a thing as too little regulation. In the case of net neutrality, the fact that most ISPs who offer high speed access are monopolies demands that they be tightly regulated. There is no free market in regards to any monopoly. Anyone who thinks monopolies should not be regulated shouldn't take so much oxycotin.
Is a free market one in which Comcast controls everything b/c the government keeps its hands off?
You've got it wrong. Comcast controls everything because they enter into contracts with local governments that forbid other cable providers from coming in.
Effectively in this example, Comcast controls everything because the government can't keep it's hands off.
Can you please stop propagating this red herring? Local governments had to promise cablecos a monopoly in order to get them to invest in the infrastructure. Even if local governments sunsetted the monopolies, what incentive would another company have for investing in redundant infrastructure? The obvious solution is for the local government to sunset the monopoly, buy back the infrastructure, and lease it to whomever wants to use it.
The free market could solve our problems, but given that ISP's are granted local monopolies by the fricking government, there is no free market.
The solution is to actually CREATE a free market, and let fair competition solve the issue.
Can you please stop propagating this red herring? Local governments had to promise cablecos a monopoly in order to get them to invest in the infrastructure. Even if local governments sunsetted the monopolies, what incentive would another company have for investing in redundant infrastructure? The obvious solution is for the local government to sunset the monopoly, buy back the infrastructure, and lease it to whomever wants to use it.
Oh, that's why you talked about the worldwide usage of Firefox declining. Because you personally were having a problem. You must be very important for so many millions of people to respect your personal opinion. Now you've got delusions of grandeur.
Yes, it's true. The masses adore me. They follow my every movement when it comes to technology. They can't wait to find out what the newest hotness is going to be.
Anyhow, to assume that the problems that I was seeing were not more widespread than just my case takes a fair bit of arrogance, now doesn't it? You claim to know the experience of every FF user in the world? That's pretty bold (and indecent really; you shouldn't be spying on people like that).
If there's a memory problem with Firefox, it should be trivial to trigger it with a synthetic benchmark, right?
I have no doubt that you saw resource utilization on your computer. That doesn't mean that's what others and seeing on their computers. I mean you must think when you have a problem starting your car in the morning that everyone else with the same make and model has exactly the same problem. Sigh.
I'm not "defending" Firefox. I'm just saying that you're making up lies. Well, maybe not completely fabricating stories, but wildly extrapolating your experience to the experience of all 350 million other users. Of course, you finally admit this in your last sentence. Welcome back to reality!
I'm not fabricating or lying or wildly extrapolating. If you go back to my original post you'll see that I said I was seeing problems and I switched. I then went on to say that Chrome and Safari were superior. If you made the inference that I was saying that my negative experience is a universal indictment of FF and that was the reason Chrome and Safari were superior, then that's really on you, not me. Perhaps this pointless little excursion could have been avoided with a carriage return.
Whatever. Yes, because we all know synthetic benchmarks accurately represent all use-cases, right? And, of course, the resource utilization I was seeing in task manager, etc, was completely delusional, right? I mean I must have been delusional because we all know that synthetic benchmarks are exhaustive and comprehensive. Sigh.
I'm not sure what your vested interest is in defending FF against reality but good luck with that... If you were serious about trying to defend FF you'd at least ask what version/os I was using but you didn't which leads me to believe you have an unreasoning belief in FF. I am happy to admit my experience is merely anecdotal and other people's experience may be different but I certainly know what my experience was with FF and it is much better with Chrome.
It's interesting that no one seems to be able to provide specific information on these supposed stability and resource issues. It's classic FUD.
I am sorry. I wish it were but the only FUD around here is your reply to my post. FF's problems are what are known as facts. I'd post screenshots of resource utilization, etc, but rebutting your comment is not worth the effort because it is patently false. FF's continual decline in market share speak for itself.
I dumped FF for Chrome a few months ago and I am not looking back... To be honest, the JS performance wasn't the main problem. It had stability and resource issues. We owe a lot to FF for freeing us from the tyranny of IE but the future is with Chrome or Safari (and to a lesser degree Opera).
The era of objective journalism was a lot shorter than most people tend to think. The very idea that journalism was different from politics really only emerged around WWII.
Go look up some revolutionary era newspapers, some Jacksonian era newspapers, some antebellum newspapers, some reconstruction newspapers, some gilded age newspapers... you'll see bias not even fox news would stoop to.
Yup, completely aware and agreed, but the point was that the objectivity (or at least the effort to recount all of the facts as accurately as possible and form a narrative around them rather than selectively choosing facts that conform to a narrative) born of the experience of the wide disparity between official news and the facts on the ground during the wars is now long gone and we are poorer for it. Not only that, we are so jaded that even when someone is trying to be objective it's all too easy for people to dismiss the person's reporting as merely political. The well is truly and irrevocably poisoned.
Yet just this morning I heard a recap of the events where they left out those very important facts. Rewriting history by leaving out facts is morally and ethically wrong and yet that is what the Mainstream Media do all the time.
I'm not sure what you mean by mainstream media but I was aware of all of those facts. All too often the distinction between mainstream media and other media is a false one predicated on whether one agrees with the coverage and that's why I ask. For example, some people do not consider FOX News to be mainstream media but it's the most popular news station on television. Obviously that's absurd...
Your definition of human is based on a very modern set of Western, specifically European, ideas about human nature.
No. It is tautological and thus universal. Human nature is as humans do.
Humans obviously wish to speak or the government would not need to censor them.
There are several confusions here. I think you mean performative, not tautological. Tautologies are *not* universal. They are highly specific to a given formal system. If it were tautology, it would also be trivial.
In any case if the meaning of human is performative, as you suggest, then it would undercut the original point because the claim was that censorship is against human nature but humans also tolerate censorship and thus tolerating censorship must be a part of human nature; thus there is no reason to prefer one option over the other.
nor am I pleading cultural relativism (as I explicitly stated and you completely ignored)
Yeah, I saw that. I was pointing out the errors in the "that's a western viewpoint", not suggesting that you thought the opposite viewpoint was right.
As I said it's a matter of emphasis, not exclusivity.
I'm not trying to justify anything. So, get off your freakin' high horse and pay attention.
I know, chill. But you are legitimizing it by discussing it as being anything other than political spin.
I'm not legitimizing anything. I'm trying to show why the political spin works. The political spin wouldn't be deployed as political spin unless it works. Political spin serves internal as well as external purposes.
But "think of the children" works here. And I was describing why "the need for a harmonious society" works in China.
And I was saying that Think-of-the-Children does not work here - or at least while to does it's not because of any special liking for the children. It's not a magical phrase, it's the one were given endlessly in hope it'll become magic. It only works when people properly panic and stop thinking about the reason.
A Chinese person would have no trouble understanding our incredible TotC panic - just tell them the first person to stop pretending to panic gets blamed. It's just the hate-topic of the week.
I just don't buy it. That explanation seems far more artificial than the fact that naive and well-intentioned people are being exploited for their support because they do believe it will help preserve the innocence of children.
I'm trying to explain why people think what they think
You don't know "they" think what you say anymore than you know a North American is actually thinking of the children. To assume that there is a Chinese mindset is silly. To assume it's the one the government is pushing is sillier.
As far as I can tell, all of that is baseless assertion. I can certainly know that "think of the children" is the motivation for some Americans. All I need to do is ask them. Assuming that there is a Chinese mindset is hardly controversial. Every culture has norms. I'm not sure why you would assume otherwise.
because that's how you convince them to think otherwise.
That'd only be if you were debating them on the topic of "is family special". If you're discussing political issues you won't make any headway until you realize that the stated reason is not the real one.
The real one is of course about control. What I'm suggesting is why the fake one works. And you are wrong. You need to understand why the fake one works in order to start to diffuse it. The real reason is blatantly obvious and trivial.
If you are making the trivial point that censorship is *really* about control, well, that's hard to argue with but so wha
At the risk of feeding a troll I'll give you some brief answers.
Income inequality is a real concern but I think the more relevant statistic is the poverty rate. America has one of the lowest in the world. Should poverty even exist in a country as wealthy as the United States? Absolutely not. But it's not as bad as income inequality may lead you to believe.
So essentially, you choose the statistic that justifies your cause?
No, I chose the one that was the most relevant. It's not obvious why everyone should have the same income (in fact it makes no sense what-so-ever) but it is obvious to me that everyone who does a day's honest work should not be poor.
By the way, the poverty level in United States is about as equal as poverty rate in Iran! (UN estimate from 2000 - 2006) Shocking, isn't it?
I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
While I agree with you you do realize that this is a very Western viewpoint, right?
No, it's a very non-relative truth.
One mind wishing to silence another. True. China's denial of what it means to be human. True - they wouldn't be censoring if people weren't choosing to talk. "Cannot work." True - if only because we need to stop them to keep it from working.
Your definition of human is based on a very modern set of Western, specifically European, ideas about human nature. It's certainly not "relative" where relative means any set of ideas are legitimate because all ideas are equal and arbitrary but it is "relative" in the sense that emphasis is placed on certain ideas because of their historical trajectory. I'm not suggesting the ideas are wrong, nor am I pleading cultural relativism (as I explicitly stated and you completely ignored). I'm trying to suggest why there is such a difference between the cultures and suggesting that bridging that gap will be more helpful than some muscular assertiveness about the absolute truth of individual liberty (that while true is not helpful and just leads to a cultural pissing contest).
justify many things including censorship.
Bringing up their justifications would be like someone trying to explain "think of the kids" based censorship as partly reasonable - if only to us - because we hold children in high regard. Not that we don't, but it's totally unrelated to the power grab it's used to justify.
Agreed. But "think of the children" works here. And I was describing why "the need for a harmonious society" works in China.
I'm trying to explain why people think what they think because that's how you convince them to think otherwise. I'm not trying to justify anything. So, get off your freakin' high horse and pay attention.
Murder rate in the USA is 42.8 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech and right to bear arms) Murder rate in the UK 14.0 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech) Murder rate in Hong Kong is 5.5 per 1,000,000 people (some limits on freedom)
I agree that the US isn't perfect but those statistics are kind of meaningless without context. The high murder rate isn't necessarily due to freedom of speech and right to bear arms. It may in fact go back to gang warfare and our inability to fully integrate certain aspects of our society. Obviously that's a problem but it's not due to freedoms.
I would like to draw attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States which states quite clearly "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."
Income inequality is a real concern but I think the more relevant statistic is the poverty rate. America has one of the lowest in the world. Should poverty even exist in a country as wealthy as the United States? Absolutely not. But it's not as bad as income inequality may lead you to believe.
For China's government to assert that Facebook causes political unrest is nothing short of China's denial of what it means to be human. Every time I see censorship, I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
While I agree with you you do realize that this is a very Western viewpoint, right? I'm not pleading cultural relativism. I'm just saying that in some Eastern countries it is patently obvious that the family has more value than the individual (because it continues to persist long after the individual passes away) and by extension society as an uber-family also has more value than the individual. Now all of that being said it's not like individualism doesn't exist. It's just a matter of emphasis but that difference of emphasis can justify many things including censorship.
Given that the Chinese government pays people to do the very same thing on every Western media/blog site they come across. I seriously doubt the American government does the same. There is no need. Apparently the Chinese government can't tell the difference between real enthusiasm (even if implicit) for one's country and the enforced/coerced kind to which they are accustomed.
There's no info on how the chemical energy might be released. Iron shows significantly different behavior when electron flow is being used to galvanically protect a fence, versus when iron is participating in a thermite reaction. Both reactions are useful, but for different types of activities.
Not that I wouldn't find a thermite-powered watch to be interesting.
Right. Lots of hype and not a lot substance in that article.
I suspect it is completely useless to batteries, unfortunately. To 'charge' the material you need a diamond anvil cell capable of generating a million atmospheres.
It's not clear to me if they've even got a way of releasing the energy (is the compressed form stable?). If they have, then you're going to have to generate electricity from the mechanical expansion of a solid. The most obvious way we achieve that currently is a coiled spring, which probably won't work in this case.
As the article says, this is basic science.
I suspect it is completely useless to batteries, unfortunately. To 'charge' the material you need a diamond anvil cell capable of generating a million atmospheres.
It's not clear to me if they've even got a way of releasing the energy (is the compressed form stable?). If they have, then you're going to have to generate electricity from the mechanical expansion of a solid. The most obvious way we achieve that currently is a coiled spring, which probably won't work in this case.
As the article says, this is basic science.
Not that it's explained but the article says the mechanical energy is stored as chemical energy. Presumably a chemical process could release it but I also assume the material would be consumed. In short it's a fuel not a battery. But there is not enough info to tell.
The first thing companies will do is spin off "Offshore Labor, Inc" to a separate corporation headquartered in the Cayman Islands or wherever, then import the products for sale here. No offshored labor here!
I agree but it's not hard to figure out who's doing it and just tax their goods.
He may be humble, he may be selfless. But he also dances to the beat of his own drum. For instance, when he came up with his solution, instead submitting it for review, he posted it online. And when he returned from America after meeting with a number of people and wowing them with his intellect, he dropped of the face of the Earth for a good portion of time. He quit his teaching job, is unemployed and living with his mother, refusing to even see anyone.
He has 'issues'. They may be minor issues where he is still functional and simply has switched his focus from math to something else, or they may be major issues where we'll be calling him the next Bobby Fisher in a decade. But regardless, he has them.
Uh, if you provided a proof for one of the most famous conjectures in the history of mathematics you might be smart enough to know that it would create a great deal of publicity and public scrutiny. Both of which can be anathema to certain kinds of thinkers.
It's an amazing demonstration of intellectual honesty. I'm in no way denigrating his contribution but the essential breakthrough was made by Hamilton's use of the Ricci Flow. However he's no doubt brilliant and the beauty of his solution seems to be enough for him.
Slashdot Mirror
The crowd that maintains that "all government is incompetent and all regulation is bad" are composed of liars and the people who swallow their lies. I, for one, am exceeding glad there's an EPA and an OSHA, because I've lived in a time when they didn't exist. You young people can disbelieve me if you want to, but workplaces are far safer thanks to OSHA meddling, and the air and water are far cleaner than they were before EPA meddling.
There is such a thing as too much regulation, and such a thing as too little regulation. In the case of net neutrality, the fact that most ISPs who offer high speed access are monopolies demands that they be tightly regulated. There is no free market in regards to any monopoly. Anyone who thinks monopolies should not be regulated shouldn't take so much oxycotin.
++
You've got it wrong. Comcast controls everything because they enter into contracts with local governments that forbid other cable providers from coming in.
Effectively in this example, Comcast controls everything because the government can't keep it's hands off.
Can you please stop propagating this red herring? Local governments had to promise cablecos a monopoly in order to get them to invest in the infrastructure. Even if local governments sunsetted the monopolies, what incentive would another company have for investing in redundant infrastructure? The obvious solution is for the local government to sunset the monopoly, buy back the infrastructure, and lease it to whomever wants to use it.
The free market could solve our problems, but given that ISP's are granted local monopolies by the fricking government, there is no free market.
The solution is to actually CREATE a free market, and let fair competition solve the issue.
Can you please stop propagating this red herring? Local governments had to promise cablecos a monopoly in order to get them to invest in the infrastructure. Even if local governments sunsetted the monopolies, what incentive would another company have for investing in redundant infrastructure? The obvious solution is for the local government to sunset the monopoly, buy back the infrastructure, and lease it to whomever wants to use it.
Sorry, I think we are too far apart in our understanding of the world to have a useful conversation.
Oh, that's why you talked about the worldwide usage of Firefox declining. Because you personally were having a problem. You must be very important for so many millions of people to respect your personal opinion. Now you've got delusions of grandeur.
Yes, it's true. The masses adore me. They follow my every movement when it comes to technology. They can't wait to find out what the newest hotness is going to be.
Anyhow, to assume that the problems that I was seeing were not more widespread than just my case takes a fair bit of arrogance, now doesn't it? You claim to know the experience of every FF user in the world? That's pretty bold (and indecent really; you shouldn't be spying on people like that).
If there's a memory problem with Firefox, it should be trivial to trigger it with a synthetic benchmark, right?
I have no doubt that you saw resource utilization on your computer. That doesn't mean that's what others and seeing on their computers. I mean you must think when you have a problem starting your car in the morning that everyone else with the same make and model has exactly the same problem. Sigh.
I'm not "defending" Firefox. I'm just saying that you're making up lies. Well, maybe not completely fabricating stories, but wildly extrapolating your experience to the experience of all 350 million other users. Of course, you finally admit this in your last sentence. Welcome back to reality!
I'm not fabricating or lying or wildly extrapolating. If you go back to my original post you'll see that I said I was seeing problems and I switched. I then went on to say that Chrome and Safari were superior. If you made the inference that I was saying that my negative experience is a universal indictment of FF and that was the reason Chrome and Safari were superior, then that's really on you, not me. Perhaps this pointless little excursion could have been avoided with a carriage return.
Exactly! Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More. Thank you for demonstrating the effect so clearly. And remember to play next time on What's Your FUD!
Whatever. Yes, because we all know synthetic benchmarks accurately represent all use-cases, right? And, of course, the resource utilization I was seeing in task manager, etc, was completely delusional, right? I mean I must have been delusional because we all know that synthetic benchmarks are exhaustive and comprehensive. Sigh.
I'm not sure what your vested interest is in defending FF against reality but good luck with that... If you were serious about trying to defend FF you'd at least ask what version/os I was using but you didn't which leads me to believe you have an unreasoning belief in FF. I am happy to admit my experience is merely anecdotal and other people's experience may be different but I certainly know what my experience was with FF and it is much better with Chrome.
Sorry, it's clear you're making it all up. Many tests show Firefox uses less memory than other browsers, and Firefox's usage has never significantly declined. Your post is purely fabrications.
Ok, have fun in fairy tale land... I'll stick with Chrome.
It's interesting that no one seems to be able to provide specific information on these supposed stability and resource issues. It's classic FUD.
I am sorry. I wish it were but the only FUD around here is your reply to my post. FF's problems are what are known as facts. I'd post screenshots of resource utilization, etc, but rebutting your comment is not worth the effort because it is patently false. FF's continual decline in market share speak for itself.
I dumped FF for Chrome a few months ago and I am not looking back... To be honest, the JS performance wasn't the main problem. It had stability and resource issues. We owe a lot to FF for freeing us from the tyranny of IE but the future is with Chrome or Safari (and to a lesser degree Opera).
The era of objective journalism was a lot shorter than most people tend to think. The very idea that journalism was different from politics really only emerged around WWII.
Go look up some revolutionary era newspapers, some Jacksonian era newspapers, some antebellum newspapers, some reconstruction newspapers, some gilded age newspapers ... you'll see bias not even fox news would stoop to.
Yup, completely aware and agreed, but the point was that the objectivity (or at least the effort to recount all of the facts as accurately as possible and form a narrative around them rather than selectively choosing facts that conform to a narrative) born of the experience of the wide disparity between official news and the facts on the ground during the wars is now long gone and we are poorer for it. Not only that, we are so jaded that even when someone is trying to be objective it's all too easy for people to dismiss the person's reporting as merely political. The well is truly and irrevocably poisoned.
Yet just this morning I heard a recap of the events where they left out those very important facts. Rewriting history by leaving out facts is morally and ethically wrong and yet that is what the Mainstream Media do all the time.
I'm not sure what you mean by mainstream media but I was aware of all of those facts. All too often the distinction between mainstream media and other media is a false one predicated on whether one agrees with the coverage and that's why I ask. For example, some people do not consider FOX News to be mainstream media but it's the most popular news station on television. Obviously that's absurd...
... when exposed to corrected facts in news stories.
Perhaps because we have learned to distrust the news providers?
Agreed. One of the greatest coups of big business is the co-opting of journalism. Now, nobody believes in objectivity. Everything is just politics.
Your definition of human is based on a very modern set of Western, specifically European, ideas about human nature.
No. It is tautological and thus universal. Human nature is as humans do.
Humans obviously wish to speak or the government would not need to censor them.
There are several confusions here. I think you mean performative, not tautological. Tautologies are *not* universal. They are highly specific to a given formal system. If it were tautology, it would also be trivial.
In any case if the meaning of human is performative, as you suggest, then it would undercut the original point because the claim was that censorship is against human nature but humans also tolerate censorship and thus tolerating censorship must be a part of human nature; thus there is no reason to prefer one option over the other.
nor am I pleading cultural relativism (as I explicitly stated and you completely ignored)
Yeah, I saw that. I was pointing out the errors in the "that's a western viewpoint", not suggesting that you thought the opposite viewpoint was right.
As I said it's a matter of emphasis, not exclusivity.
I'm not trying to justify anything. So, get off your freakin' high horse and pay attention.
I know, chill. But you are legitimizing it by discussing it as being anything other than political spin.
I'm not legitimizing anything. I'm trying to show why the political spin works. The political spin wouldn't be deployed as political spin unless it works. Political spin serves internal as well as external purposes.
But "think of the children" works here. And I was describing why "the need for a harmonious society" works in China.
And I was saying that Think-of-the-Children does not work here - or at least while to does it's not because of any special liking for the children. It's not a magical phrase, it's the one were given endlessly in hope it'll become magic. It only works when people properly panic and stop thinking about the reason.
A Chinese person would have no trouble understanding our incredible TotC panic - just tell them the first person to stop pretending to panic gets blamed. It's just the hate-topic of the week.
I just don't buy it. That explanation seems far more artificial than the fact that naive and well-intentioned people are being exploited for their support because they do believe it will help preserve the innocence of children.
I'm trying to explain why people think what they think
You don't know "they" think what you say anymore than you know a North American is actually thinking of the children. To assume that there is a Chinese mindset is silly. To assume it's the one the government is pushing is sillier.
As far as I can tell, all of that is baseless assertion. I can certainly know that "think of the children" is the motivation for some Americans. All I need to do is ask them. Assuming that there is a Chinese mindset is hardly controversial. Every culture has norms. I'm not sure why you would assume otherwise.
because that's how you convince them to think otherwise.
That'd only be if you were debating them on the topic of "is family special". If you're discussing political issues you won't make any headway until you realize that the stated reason is not the real one.
The real one is of course about control. What I'm suggesting is why the fake one works. And you are wrong. You need to understand why the fake one works in order to start to diffuse it. The real reason is blatantly obvious and trivial.
If you are making the trivial point that censorship is *really* about control, well, that's hard to argue with but so wha
At the risk of feeding a troll I'll give you some brief answers.
Income inequality is a real concern but I think the more relevant statistic is the poverty rate. America has one of the lowest in the world. Should poverty even exist in a country as wealthy as the United States? Absolutely not. But it's not as bad as income inequality may lead you to believe.
So essentially, you choose the statistic that justifies your cause?
No, I chose the one that was the most relevant. It's not obvious why everyone should have the same income (in fact it makes no sense what-so-ever) but it is obvious to me that everyone who does a day's honest work should not be poor.
By the way, the poverty level in United States is about as equal as poverty rate in Iran! (UN estimate from 2000 - 2006) Shocking, isn't it?
Why would that be shocking?
I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
While I agree with you you do realize that this is a very Western viewpoint, right?
No, it's a very non-relative truth.
One mind wishing to silence another. True.
China's denial of what it means to be human. True - they wouldn't be censoring if people weren't choosing to talk.
"Cannot work." True - if only because we need to stop them to keep it from working.
Your definition of human is based on a very modern set of Western, specifically European, ideas about human nature. It's certainly not "relative" where relative means any set of ideas are legitimate because all ideas are equal and arbitrary but it is "relative" in the sense that emphasis is placed on certain ideas because of their historical trajectory. I'm not suggesting the ideas are wrong, nor am I pleading cultural relativism (as I explicitly stated and you completely ignored). I'm trying to suggest why there is such a difference between the cultures and suggesting that bridging that gap will be more helpful than some muscular assertiveness about the absolute truth of individual liberty (that while true is not helpful and just leads to a cultural pissing contest).
justify many things including censorship.
Bringing up their justifications would be like someone trying to explain "think of the kids" based censorship as partly reasonable - if only to us - because we hold children in high regard. Not that we don't, but it's totally unrelated to the power grab it's used to justify.
Agreed. But "think of the children" works here. And I was describing why "the need for a harmonious society" works in China.
I'm trying to explain why people think what they think because that's how you convince them to think otherwise. I'm not trying to justify anything. So, get off your freakin' high horse and pay attention.
Murder rate in the USA is 42.8 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech and right to bear arms)
Murder rate in the UK 14.0 per 1,000,000 people (freedom of speech)
Murder rate in Hong Kong is 5.5 per 1,000,000 people (some limits on freedom)
I agree that the US isn't perfect but those statistics are kind of meaningless without context. The high murder rate isn't necessarily due to freedom of speech and right to bear arms. It may in fact go back to gang warfare and our inability to fully integrate certain aspects of our society. Obviously that's a problem but it's not due to freedoms.
I would like to draw attention to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States which states quite clearly "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."
Income inequality is a real concern but I think the more relevant statistic is the poverty rate. America has one of the lowest in the world. Should poverty even exist in a country as wealthy as the United States? Absolutely not. But it's not as bad as income inequality may lead you to believe.
For China's government to assert that Facebook causes political unrest is nothing short of China's denial of what it means to be human. Every time I see censorship, I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
While I agree with you you do realize that this is a very Western viewpoint, right? I'm not pleading cultural relativism. I'm just saying that in some Eastern countries it is patently obvious that the family has more value than the individual (because it continues to persist long after the individual passes away) and by extension society as an uber-family also has more value than the individual. Now all of that being said it's not like individualism doesn't exist. It's just a matter of emphasis but that difference of emphasis can justify many things including censorship.
Given that the Chinese government pays people to do the very same thing on every Western media/blog site they come across. I seriously doubt the American government does the same. There is no need. Apparently the Chinese government can't tell the difference between real enthusiasm (even if implicit) for one's country and the enforced/coerced kind to which they are accustomed.
There's no info on how the chemical energy might be released. Iron shows significantly different behavior when electron flow is being used to galvanically protect a fence, versus when iron is participating in a thermite reaction. Both reactions are useful, but for different types of activities.
Not that I wouldn't find a thermite-powered watch to be interesting.
Right. Lots of hype and not a lot substance in that article.
I suspect it is completely useless to batteries, unfortunately. To 'charge' the material you need a diamond anvil cell capable of generating a million atmospheres.
It's not clear to me if they've even got a way of releasing the energy (is the compressed form stable?). If they have, then you're going to have to generate electricity from the mechanical expansion of a solid. The most obvious way we achieve that currently is a coiled spring, which probably won't work in this case.
As the article says, this is basic science.
I suspect it is completely useless to batteries, unfortunately. To 'charge' the material you need a diamond anvil cell capable of generating a million atmospheres.
It's not clear to me if they've even got a way of releasing the energy (is the compressed form stable?). If they have, then you're going to have to generate electricity from the mechanical expansion of a solid. The most obvious way we achieve that currently is a coiled spring, which probably won't work in this case.
As the article says, this is basic science.
Not that it's explained but the article says the mechanical energy is stored as chemical energy. Presumably a chemical process could release it but I also assume the material would be consumed. In short it's a fuel not a battery. But there is not enough info to tell.
Somebody rated this post flamebait. I think we need an IQ test before people are allowed to moderate.
The first thing companies will do is spin off "Offshore Labor, Inc" to a separate corporation headquartered in the Cayman Islands or wherever, then import the products for sale here. No offshored labor here!
I agree but it's not hard to figure out who's doing it and just tax their goods.
He may be humble, he may be selfless. But he also dances to the beat of his own drum. For instance, when he came up with his solution, instead submitting it for review, he posted it online. And when he returned from America after meeting with a number of people and wowing them with his intellect, he dropped of the face of the Earth for a good portion of time. He quit his teaching job, is unemployed and living with his mother, refusing to even see anyone.
He has 'issues'. They may be minor issues where he is still functional and simply has switched his focus from math to something else, or they may be major issues where we'll be calling him the next Bobby Fisher in a decade. But regardless, he has them.
Uh, if you provided a proof for one of the most famous conjectures in the history of mathematics you might be smart enough to know that it would create a great deal of publicity and public scrutiny. Both of which can be anathema to certain kinds of thinkers.
It's an amazing demonstration of intellectual honesty. I'm in no way denigrating his contribution but the essential breakthrough was made by Hamilton's use of the Ricci Flow. However he's no doubt brilliant and the beauty of his solution seems to be enough for him.