True: China's approach to population control has been a disaster. Fortunately for the world, there are other ideas for how to run a society.
For example, a less authoritarian approach would do it through incentives and disincentives. Start with free family-planning education and low-cost contraception. In places where couple have lots of children to work the farm, introduce mechanization to make that unnecessary. In places where they do so to ensure that they have someone to care for them when they get old, offer better geriatric care. In a nutshell: stop rewarding people for breeding like fruit flies, and start rewarding them for pulling out once in a while.
You'll still have certain religious leaders who forbid contraception (RCC) or encourage large families so that more souls can be baptized (LDS), but history has shown that in societies where lots of children are no longer an economic necessity (e.g. Europe, Can/US) the population growth rate drops off regardless. It is possible to control population growth, and even begin to reduce population in a slow, controlled trend. There are countries that (intentionally or not) are already doing it. World population is still going up, but the rate at which it's increasing has finally begun to go down in the last few decades. We just need to take what we've learned from countries that have done the job badly (e.g. PRC), and what we've learned from countries which are doing it better (e.g. Japan, Italy), and apply those lessons elsewhere.
In fact, "growth" has become something of a religion itself. In public discourse and political debate, no one ever talks about stability; the need to "grow the economy" is taken as a "given", a commandment from on high. If a company's sales are merely stable from one quarter or year to the next, they are considered unsuccessful (or would be if the economy as a whole weren't currently shrinking). If a country's or state's or city's population isn't increasing, that's considered a sign of problems. There will come a day when that trend stops, whether it's in 2030 or probably much later. The only question is whether we'll bring population growth to a "controlled landing" or to a crash.
I mean, nobody really thinks of aliens speaking separate languages when you read sci-fi.
That's a failure of most sci-fi authors. Or more to the point, it's a reflection of their view of the world, as something that should eventually be unified by some means (early sci-fi writers tended to think in terms of imperialism, later ones in terms of federalism based on the UN) into a single culture. So they present that as the norm for any other advanced civilization. I remain unconvinced. Diversity of culture –including religion, language, cuisine, government, economic policies, etc. –seems to me like a good thing, in the same way that biodiversity is.
I don't think it will be an alias for.IR, because the purpose of it is to ditch the Latin alphabet altogether, and there are truckloads of Latin domains registered there. Having URLs such as http://www.mfa/gov.#%23%23%23 wouldn't accomplish that.
But Iran currently maintains.####.IR (with the just-approved TLD as a second-level domain), which is used for domains spelled in the local alphabet, and this new TLD might be an alias of that.
When musicians try to teach geography, you're just asking for trouble. While A Flock Of Seagulls' "Iran so far away" is true in most of the English speaking world, there's no telling how much educational damage has been done by Simon and Garfunkel singing "I am Iraq; I am an island."
You're proposing a specific domain level for altitude*, but you want to go directly from planet to galaxy? A domain level for star system (the range at which lightspeed communication methods are possible) would be a bit more meaningful and useful. Think about it: How many planets there are in the Milky Way whose names start with E?) You're also going to have to give up on using 2-letter galaxy codes to differentiate between more than 100 billion galaxies. Something like GOOGLE.US.E.SOL.MILKYWAY would be more realistic.
*To distinguish surface dwellers from Atlanteans and the Mole Men, perhaps?
Frankly, a lot of his advice is bad. I use the same password for most of the discussion-only forums I visit because there's little reason not to. I have no reason to suspect that the operator of Forum A to know that I also participate in Forum B, and even less reason to suspect that they will use that information to impersonate me on Forum B. There is no confidential info in those profiles, either. And it makes it so much easier to remember (i.e. not write down) the password (singular) for those sites, especially ones I visit infrequently. It's a calculated, informed decision.
By far the most interesting supervillains are those who think of themselves as heroes. Lex Luthor is trying to save Earth from alien dependence/domination. Doctor Doom is the benevolent dictator of Latveria, protecting the poor country from western oppression.
I have too much fondness for the memories I have of my time with my boyfriend, to risk having them overlaid with an Adam Sandler performance. So I can't comment on how accurately that film depicts the condition.
The nature of any individual's disability after this kind of injury is going to vary a lot, so I'm not in a position to stand up and declare "it could never happen like that". But the character in Memento had a much better grasp of "what's going on right now" than Andy after his stroke. And the character's ability to assemble clues and reach conclusions from them also struck me as a rather bold exercise of dramatic license; Andy can barely carry on a conversation. For the film to work, you have to accept the premise that, despite his handicap, this one memory was traumatic enough to stick in his skull and motivate him to keep pursuing it. Which is possible, I suppose.
Although it wasn't clinically realistic, I think it was about as accurate a representation of the phenomenon as you could hope for in a film with a narrative storyline. It effectively conveyed the confusion that someone with anterograde amnesia would face in any novel situation. Except of course that most of us are able to put the pieces together and sort it out.
Slashdot Mirror
Netbooks are farther along on the tiny/crappy continuum, but the same OS and UI as a desktop.
Laptops are just desktops with a tiny screen and crappy keyboard. From a software perspective there's no difference. So the Desktop is alive and well.
"If we still have a long way to grow, then we'd best not put the brakes on now."
Why not? What would be bad about halting population growth before it was essential to do so?
I thought it was BSD that was dead?
The word you're looking for is "Lebensraum".
True: China's approach to population control has been a disaster. Fortunately for the world, there are other ideas for how to run a society.
For example, a less authoritarian approach would do it through incentives and disincentives. Start with free family-planning education and low-cost contraception. In places where couple have lots of children to work the farm, introduce mechanization to make that unnecessary. In places where they do so to ensure that they have someone to care for them when they get old, offer better geriatric care. In a nutshell: stop rewarding people for breeding like fruit flies, and start rewarding them for pulling out once in a while.
You'll still have certain religious leaders who forbid contraception (RCC) or encourage large families so that more souls can be baptized (LDS), but history has shown that in societies where lots of children are no longer an economic necessity (e.g. Europe, Can/US) the population growth rate drops off regardless. It is possible to control population growth, and even begin to reduce population in a slow, controlled trend. There are countries that (intentionally or not) are already doing it. World population is still going up, but the rate at which it's increasing has finally begun to go down in the last few decades. We just need to take what we've learned from countries that have done the job badly (e.g. PRC), and what we've learned from countries which are doing it better (e.g. Japan, Italy), and apply those lessons elsewhere.
In fact, "growth" has become something of a religion itself. In public discourse and political debate, no one ever talks about stability; the need to "grow the economy" is taken as a "given", a commandment from on high. If a company's sales are merely stable from one quarter or year to the next, they are considered unsuccessful (or would be if the economy as a whole weren't currently shrinking). If a country's or state's or city's population isn't increasing, that's considered a sign of problems. There will come a day when that trend stops, whether it's in 2030 or probably much later. The only question is whether we'll bring population growth to a "controlled landing" or to a crash.
The Batmobile was pretty quiet.
two words: why not?
Firewire would have worked, but there's the risk of charring, and it tends to set off the building's sprinkler system.
Does he have an electrical outlet at his desk? I hear they make cooking devices that use those.
There's nothing wrong with a pointless but look-what-I-did hardware hack. So there's no need to rationalize it.
"I'm assuming only a small number of galaxies will be populated and need internet communications"
Oh, well as long as you're being completely irrational about it, it doesn't matter.
So the guy who makes the joke gets modded Offtopic, then the AC who explains it gets modded Funny.
That's a failure of most sci-fi authors. Or more to the point, it's a reflection of their view of the world, as something that should eventually be unified by some means (early sci-fi writers tended to think in terms of imperialism, later ones in terms of federalism based on the UN) into a single culture. So they present that as the norm for any other advanced civilization. I remain unconvinced. Diversity of culture –including religion, language, cuisine, government, economic policies, etc. –seems to me like a good thing, in the same way that biodiversity is.
I don't think it will be an alias for .IR, because the purpose of it is to ditch the Latin alphabet altogether, and there are truckloads of Latin domains registered there. Having URLs such as http://www.mfa/gov.#%23%23%23 wouldn't accomplish that.
But Iran currently maintains .####.IR (with the just-approved TLD as a second-level domain), which is used for domains spelled in the local alphabet, and this new TLD might be an alias of that.
When musicians try to teach geography, you're just asking for trouble. While A Flock Of Seagulls' "Iran so far away" is true in most of the English speaking world, there's no telling how much educational damage has been done by Simon and Garfunkel singing "I am Iraq; I am an island."
You're proposing a specific domain level for altitude*, but you want to go directly from planet to galaxy? A domain level for star system (the range at which lightspeed communication methods are possible) would be a bit more meaningful and useful. Think about it: How many planets there are in the Milky Way whose names start with E?) You're also going to have to give up on using 2-letter galaxy codes to differentiate between more than 100 billion galaxies. Something like GOOGLE.US.E.SOL.MILKYWAY would be more realistic.
*To distinguish surface dwellers from Atlanteans and the Mole Men, perhaps?
Have they tried DBAN?
Only 25 years? When I was in college, we learned C. No "plus plus", no "objective", no "sharp"... just "C".
Aye, as a matter of fact, I am feeling than a wee bit like Scotty in the TNG episode "Relics".
Because the Pope shits in the woods. Q.E.D.
Yeah, I was afraid they might be pessimistic. :(
Frankly, a lot of his advice is bad. I use the same password for most of the discussion-only forums I visit because there's little reason not to. I have no reason to suspect that the operator of Forum A to know that I also participate in Forum B, and even less reason to suspect that they will use that information to impersonate me on Forum B. There is no confidential info in those profiles, either. And it makes it so much easier to remember (i.e. not write down) the password (singular) for those sites, especially ones I visit infrequently. It's a calculated, informed decision.
By far the most interesting supervillains are those who think of themselves as heroes. Lex Luthor is trying to save Earth from alien dependence/domination. Doctor Doom is the benevolent dictator of Latveria, protecting the poor country from western oppression.
I have too much fondness for the memories I have of my time with my boyfriend, to risk having them overlaid with an Adam Sandler performance. So I can't comment on how accurately that film depicts the condition.
The nature of any individual's disability after this kind of injury is going to vary a lot, so I'm not in a position to stand up and declare "it could never happen like that". But the character in Memento had a much better grasp of "what's going on right now" than Andy after his stroke. And the character's ability to assemble clues and reach conclusions from them also struck me as a rather bold exercise of dramatic license; Andy can barely carry on a conversation. For the film to work, you have to accept the premise that, despite his handicap, this one memory was traumatic enough to stick in his skull and motivate him to keep pursuing it. Which is possible, I suppose.
Although it wasn't clinically realistic, I think it was about as accurate a representation of the phenomenon as you could hope for in a film with a narrative storyline. It effectively conveyed the confusion that someone with anterograde amnesia would face in any novel situation. Except of course that most of us are able to put the pieces together and sort it out.