The May issue of scientific american had an interesting article about the slow loss of atmospheric gasses into space...
how-planets-lose-their-atmospheres...which suggests that the early earth had a lot more water and a denser atmosphere. It also, obviously, had a lot more CO2, vast quantities of which are now locked up in the form of rock (limestone) and organic matter.
In the country where I currently live, a high profile politician tried an online suggestion box, specifically stating they would base their party program on it.
Predictably, the suggestion box was rapidly filled with exactly the populist crap you expect to be posted on an unmoderated, anonymous political forum: insults, trolling, racist and xenophobic rants, spam, flame wars and advertisements.
Politicians: do not go online just for the sake of looking modern, hip and in touch, you just end up showing just how much out of touch you really are.
I don't want my politicians to be modern, hip and in touch, I prefer them to be more mature than I am.
Whether or not the elections were stolen, it seems that in Iran there is a significant difference in political views between the major cities and rural areas. Maybe there was a selection bias in the media?
In 2004, to outsiders it looked as if everybody but an insignificant few right wing nut jobs hated George Bush, and he didn't have any chance of being reelected. After his fairly comfortable victory, it turned out that people in the major urban districts more likely to be interviewed on TV or in the papers indeed voted against Bush, but the rest of the country had supported him.
Could a similar effect have happened in Iran? Iran is one of the few places in the region where women and minorities have the right to vote, and where a president normally steps down after losing an election. The only major difference between the Iranian and western democracies seems to be that their version of the senate is not elected by the people, but by a religious council.
Of course it's possible the elections were stolen, but maybe this is another example of people voting for a politician for entirely local reasons, without really caring what the rest of the world thinks of him? In fact, has there ever been a democratic election anywhere, where foreign opinion played a significant role?
Well, it doesn't have to be designed from raw nucleotides. Just put a mix of a few existing strains into eggs, cultivate, check for mutations/reassortments and proceed with those. Easy as cake (made from the remaining eggs:)
Think about it: vaccine makers are already cultivating the virus. It's a very small step from there.
Yeah, easy as cake, especially the lengthy double blind human trials to test the various strains for virulence and deadliness to humans.
A conspiracy theory, no matter how far fetched, will always be the most credible explanation because after all history has shown that new strains of influenza never ever just spontaneously form in nature. The government HAS to be behind it. Or North Korea. I suspect the Illuminati myself though, because ultimately they are pulling the strings.
with all the hype surrounding this, one might be tempted to start considering the possibility that some big pharma in search of the next blockbuster could have designed the virus, the vaccine, the initial test release in a remote village and subsequent dispersal in airports, and the fud campaign together.
Not feasible. Although it has been a popular theme in both Sci-fi and conspiracy theories, technology is still not advanced enough to design a virus. It is unthinkable that a laboratory would have advanced this far ahead of the rest of the scientific community in complete isolation and without ever publishing or filing for patents.
It will almost certainly be possible one day, but not any time soon.
Can anyone explain why this virus is so different from all the others floating around? Why the panic?
The case fatality rate (CFR) of the pandemic strain is estimated at 0.4% (range 0.3%-1.5%)
We've all had worse diseases than this.
It seems to be more infectious that seasonal flu, or people have less resistance to it. In a normal flu epidemic, only a few percent of the population gets infected. Most people either never catch a flu, or have it once every couple of years. The Spanish flu of 1918 had a total infection rate of up to 40%. If 40% of the population gets the Mexican flu, and the death rate remains at about 0.5%, it will be more deadly than the American civil war.
That's not how it works. The paltry amount the vast majority of American expats owe after filing their taxes doesn't come close to covering the cost of processing their tax returns. It's all about the assumption that if you live and work abroad, it's probably not for a woman, for adventure or for work, but to get away from your responsibilities to the IRS or to escape justice.
Why does the US government feel it has the right to a cut of the foreign earnings of a company doing business globally?
If a US citizen lives in France, works in France, does business in France, why does he need to file tax returns and (if his income exceeds a certain limit) pay taxes in the US, despite living in a foreign country, not using any of the facilities paid for by US taxes, and already having paid taxes in said foreign country. As far as I know this, the USA is the only country in the world that does this.
Why would a multinational company based in Taiwan have to pay corporate taxes over its earnings all over the world, not just its earnings inside the USA, if it also wants to do business in the USA? This is the gist of the proposed tax plan. As far as I know, the USA would be the only country in the world to try this. Of course the USA is powerful and influential enough to pull this off. A company like Microsoft earns such a large share of its earnings inside the USA, that pulling out would probably be impossible, but said hypothetical Taiwanese multinational might consider it. Good riddance, don't let the door hit you on the way out an all that, but if hundreds or thousands of companies draw the same conclusion, it might start to add up.
People need to educate the voting public that the 12 year old next to them on the laughing and bragging about how he shot a rifle through someone's head yesterday and made it explode isn't a deraged lunatic.
That is definitely not the kind of game a 12 yr old should be allowed to play.
Anyway, the root cause of moral panic like this is the fact that most people can't wrap their head around the concept of someone who is not a socially inept adolescent boy playing computer games. Their gut feeling is that games are targeted at 12 yr old boys, and the content of many of these games is not suitable for 12 yr old boys.
While the latter is true, the former is not. Most gamers are over 18, according to Ars Technica.
Noone is suggesting a ban on all activities that are unsafe for 12 yr old boys. Driving isn't considered safe for 12 yr old boys, shooting firearms isn't considered safe, drinking beer isn't considered safe, sex isn't considered safe, but for adults we still have a place for these dangerous activities in our societies.
Just because their great great great grandfather might have killed people for a living doesn't mean that the person applying for a job now is strange in some way.
That's right! Unless they have blood type O, of course.
The purpose of any government policy should be to maximize freedom and autonomy of the individual. Capitalism is the economic manifestation of this principle. It is the idea that anyone may select their own destiny based on their abilities, effort, values, and the resources that are voluntarily given to them by others.
Capitalism is just an economic model, there have been terribly repressive dictatorships with a very capitalist, even laissez-faire economy. There are social democracies with a large government stake in the economy, where citizens enjoy great personal and political freedom. I don't think freedom and capitalism are connected, unless one has a very cold, business oriented definition of freedom.
To my mind it's that the EU has a different view of how monopolies should be regulated than the U.S. government does - at this time.
Maybe it has more to do with monopolies playing by the rules when doing business inside the USA, but until recently having very little incentive to do so in other parts of the world ?
The 'anti-american' card you guys keep playing is getting old.
Was the AT&T breakup anti-American? Was the United States v. Microsoft case anti-American?
There is a selection bias here. If a Belgian supermarket chain or a Dutch bank gets slapped by the EU anti-trust commissioner, it doesn't make the headlines on Slashdot, so you will never hear about it.
Fact is, Slashdot reports mainly on technology related things that might interest American readers. The technology monopolies and near-monopolies in the last few decades have mostly been American, so if one abuses its monopoly, it's likely to be an American based company.
The European market is actually a patchwork of independently grown and recently connected markets. Some companies you have never heard of have local (near) monopolies, and face severe anti trust restrictions in those markets. None of this would be news that belongs on Slashdot.
If there are eyes on the page you can sell ads. If they're searching for TVs (your example) show them ads for TV. Show them ads for nearby stores that have offers on TVs. Show them ads for sites that have information about which TV is better and why. Show them ads for DVD rentals that they'll want to use with their new TV.
That's just the example you came up with... there is a lot of scope to advertising.
...but all these things are based on data that a search engine like Google would have, and Wolfram, if I understand it correctly, would not.
The OP should be getting relevant work experience while working on a masters.
A 25 yr old colleague will be expected to have about 4 years of work experience in the field. Whether they will be expected also to have a masters depends on the position. A programmer probably doesn't need a masters, but for a more responsible job, you'll need a lot of work experience to compensate for the lack of one.
How are they going to sell advertisements on this? How is this going to get funded?
Google makes money by selling search keywords and banners with random ads that their software thinks have something to do with the reason why you're viewing a page. I don't see this business model working for Wolfram; not unless a lot of people are interested in graphs and a statistical analysis on which TV set is the best value for money.
I'm not a marketing guy, maybe someone who is can think of something, anything?
The only thing I can think of is a subscription model, and I believe there is too much free stuff on the internet that I suppose is 'good enough' to leave room for subscription based content.
I was merely trying to point out that the wikipedia entry on the carrot is frequently vandalized. What is funny and at the same time difficult to understand is that every time I mention this on slashdot, the problem seems to get worse. I don't get it.
Studies have shown wikipedia to be, in general, nearly as accurate as more established encyclopedias.
But the vandalism! The situation in TFA is not unique.
A journalist writing a story about carrots may at any one time find information that's either not relevant or not entirely truthful, or even raise unwarranted fear about the subject.
Journalists citing wikipedia on more controversial topics may at any point in time have read one iteration in an edit-revert war. Which of the two versions is correct?
Slashdot Mirror
The May issue of scientific american had an interesting article about the slow loss of atmospheric gasses into space...
how-planets-lose-their-atmospheres ...which suggests that the early earth had a lot more water and a denser atmosphere. It also, obviously, had a lot more CO2, vast quantities of which are now locked up in the form of rock (limestone) and organic matter.
Dreamweaver, Word, etc all make some dang ugly HTML.
So what? HTML is not meant for pleasing the human eye anyway, it's for the browser's HTML rendering engine.
A modem makes some dang ugly white noise
Zeeeendeeieren
No, no no, you don't understand at all how politics in Eurostan work.
If a committee proposes something, this means "The government wants it, it is law, reach for your guns!"
In the country where I currently live, a high profile politician tried an online suggestion box, specifically stating they would base their party program on it.
Predictably, the suggestion box was rapidly filled with exactly the populist crap you expect to be posted on an unmoderated, anonymous political forum: insults, trolling, racist and xenophobic rants, spam, flame wars and advertisements.
Politicians: do not go online just for the sake of looking modern, hip and in touch, you just end up showing just how much out of touch you really are.
I don't want my politicians to be modern, hip and in touch, I prefer them to be more mature than I am.
Whether or not the elections were stolen, it seems that in Iran there is a significant difference in political views between the major cities and rural areas. Maybe there was a selection bias in the media?
In 2004, to outsiders it looked as if everybody but an insignificant few right wing nut jobs hated George Bush, and he didn't have any chance of being reelected. After his fairly comfortable victory, it turned out that people in the major urban districts more likely to be interviewed on TV or in the papers indeed voted against Bush, but the rest of the country had supported him.
Could a similar effect have happened in Iran? Iran is one of the few places in the region where women and minorities have the right to vote, and where a president normally steps down after losing an election. The only major difference between the Iranian and western democracies seems to be that their version of the senate is not elected by the people, but by a religious council.
Of course it's possible the elections were stolen, but maybe this is another example of people voting for a politician for entirely local reasons, without really caring what the rest of the world thinks of him? In fact, has there ever been a democratic election anywhere, where foreign opinion played a significant role?
Well, it doesn't have to be designed from raw nucleotides. Just put a mix of a few existing strains into eggs, cultivate, check for mutations/reassortments and proceed with those. Easy as cake (made from the remaining eggs :)
Think about it: vaccine makers are already cultivating the virus. It's a very small step from there.
Yeah, easy as cake, especially the lengthy double blind human trials to test the various strains for virulence and deadliness to humans.
A conspiracy theory, no matter how far fetched, will always be the most credible explanation because after all history has shown that new strains of influenza never ever just spontaneously form in nature. The government HAS to be behind it. Or North Korea. I suspect the Illuminati myself though, because ultimately they are pulling the strings.
with all the hype surrounding this, one might be tempted to start considering the possibility that some big pharma in search of the next blockbuster could have designed the virus, the vaccine, the initial test release in a remote village and subsequent dispersal in airports, and the fud campaign together.
Not feasible. Although it has been a popular theme in both Sci-fi and conspiracy theories, technology is still not advanced enough to design a virus. It is unthinkable that a laboratory would have advanced this far ahead of the rest of the scientific community in complete isolation and without ever publishing or filing for patents.
It will almost certainly be possible one day, but not any time soon.
Can anyone explain why this virus is so different from all the others floating around? Why the panic?
The case fatality rate (CFR) of the pandemic strain is estimated at 0.4% (range 0.3%-1.5%)
We've all had worse diseases than this.
It seems to be more infectious that seasonal flu, or people have less resistance to it. In a normal flu epidemic, only a few percent of the population gets infected. Most people either never catch a flu, or have it once every couple of years. The Spanish flu of 1918 had a total infection rate of up to 40%. If 40% of the population gets the Mexican flu, and the death rate remains at about 0.5%, it will be more deadly than the American civil war.
That's not how it works. The paltry amount the vast majority of American expats owe after filing their taxes doesn't come close to covering the cost of processing their tax returns. It's all about the assumption that if you live and work abroad, it's probably not for a woman, for adventure or for work, but to get away from your responsibilities to the IRS or to escape justice.
Why does the US government feel it has the right to a cut of the foreign earnings of a company doing business globally?
If a US citizen lives in France, works in France, does business in France, why does he need to file tax returns and (if his income exceeds a certain limit) pay taxes in the US, despite living in a foreign country, not using any of the facilities paid for by US taxes, and already having paid taxes in said foreign country. As far as I know this, the USA is the only country in the world that does this.
Why would a multinational company based in Taiwan have to pay corporate taxes over its earnings all over the world, not just its earnings inside the USA, if it also wants to do business in the USA? This is the gist of the proposed tax plan. As far as I know, the USA would be the only country in the world to try this. Of course the USA is powerful and influential enough to pull this off. A company like Microsoft earns such a large share of its earnings inside the USA, that pulling out would probably be impossible, but said hypothetical Taiwanese multinational might consider it. Good riddance, don't let the door hit you on the way out an all that, but if hundreds or thousands of companies draw the same conclusion, it might start to add up.
People need to educate the voting public that the 12 year old next to them on the laughing and bragging about how he shot a rifle through someone's head yesterday and made it explode isn't a deraged lunatic.
That is definitely not the kind of game a 12 yr old should be allowed to play.
Anyway, the root cause of moral panic like this is the fact that most people can't wrap their head around the concept of someone who is not a socially inept adolescent boy playing computer games. Their gut feeling is that games are targeted at 12 yr old boys, and the content of many of these games is not suitable for 12 yr old boys.
While the latter is true, the former is not. Most gamers are over 18, according to Ars Technica.
Noone is suggesting a ban on all activities that are unsafe for 12 yr old boys. Driving isn't considered safe for 12 yr old boys, shooting firearms isn't considered safe, drinking beer isn't considered safe, sex isn't considered safe, but for adults we still have a place for these dangerous activities in our societies.
I'm sorry, sir. I'm anuspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctious to have
caused you such pericombobulations
Just because their great great great grandfather might have killed people for a living doesn't mean that the person applying for a job now is strange in some way.
That's right! Unless they have blood type O, of course.
The OP is not looking for an useful answer but just successfully using AskSlashdot to advertise their product to a large audience for free:
I have seen one solution that might work
Wikipedia revision wars will be a GOLDMINE for future archeologist.
Think about just how much they reveal about a certain topic.
Such as the difference of opinion about the color variations of the carrot !
Maybe future historians will consider this a dark age, whose intellectual production was lost.
Please don't say our treasured facebook, twitter, slashdot posts, wikipedia revision wars and v1agra spam may not be preserved for posterity.
I'm not yet convinced that information that today exists only on the internet is really meant for eternity :)
The purpose of any government policy should be to maximize freedom and autonomy of the individual. Capitalism is the economic manifestation of this principle. It is the idea that anyone may select their own destiny based on their abilities, effort, values, and the resources that are voluntarily given to them by others.
Capitalism is just an economic model, there have been terribly repressive dictatorships with a very capitalist, even laissez-faire economy. There are social democracies with a large government stake in the economy, where citizens enjoy great personal and political freedom. I don't think freedom and capitalism are connected, unless one has a very cold, business oriented definition of freedom.
To my mind it's that the EU has a different view of how monopolies should be regulated than the U.S. government does - at this time.
Maybe it has more to do with monopolies playing by the rules when doing business inside the USA, but until recently having very little incentive to do so in other parts of the world ?
3) The company is American
The 'anti-american' card you guys keep playing is getting old.
Was the AT&T breakup anti-American? Was the United States v. Microsoft case anti-American?
There is a selection bias here. If a Belgian supermarket chain or a Dutch bank gets slapped by the EU anti-trust commissioner, it doesn't make the headlines on Slashdot, so you will never hear about it.
Fact is, Slashdot reports mainly on technology related things that might interest American readers. The technology monopolies and near-monopolies in the last few decades have mostly been American, so if one abuses its monopoly, it's likely to be an American based company.
The European market is actually a patchwork of independently grown and recently connected markets. Some companies you have never heard of have local (near) monopolies, and face severe anti trust restrictions in those markets. None of this would be news that belongs on Slashdot.
If there are eyes on the page you can sell ads. If they're searching for TVs (your example) show them ads for TV. Show them ads for nearby stores that have offers on TVs. Show them ads for sites that have information about which TV is better and why. Show them ads for DVD rentals that they'll want to use with their new TV.
That's just the example you came up with... there is a lot of scope to advertising.
...but all these things are based on data that a search engine like Google would have, and Wolfram, if I understand it correctly, would not.
The OP should be getting relevant work experience while working on a masters.
A 25 yr old colleague will be expected to have about 4 years of work experience in the field. Whether they will be expected also to have a masters depends on the position. A programmer probably doesn't need a masters, but for a more responsible job, you'll need a lot of work experience to compensate for the lack of one.
How are they going to sell advertisements on this? How is this going to get funded?
Google makes money by selling search keywords and banners with random ads that their software thinks have something to do with the reason why you're viewing a page. I don't see this business model working for Wolfram; not unless a lot of people are interested in graphs and a statistical analysis on which TV set is the best value for money.
I'm not a marketing guy, maybe someone who is can think of something, anything?
The only thing I can think of is a subscription model, and I believe there is too much free stuff on the internet that I suppose is 'good enough' to leave room for subscription based content.
I was merely trying to point out that the wikipedia entry on the carrot is frequently vandalized. What is funny and at the same time difficult to understand is that every time I mention this on slashdot, the problem seems to get worse. I don't get it.
Studies have shown wikipedia to be, in general, nearly as accurate as more established encyclopedias.
But the vandalism! The situation in TFA is not unique.
A journalist writing a story about carrots may at any one time find information that's either not relevant or not entirely truthful, or even raise unwarranted fear about the subject.
Journalists citing wikipedia on more controversial topics may at any point in time have read one iteration in an edit-revert war. Which of the two versions is correct?