But the frequency of large hurricanes is increasing, if the data is correct.
Wrong. Here is the data from the National Hurricane Center on number of major hurricane strikes to the U.S. mainland each decade. Please show me where in this data the number of large hurricanes is increasing?
Don't blindly buy into the "frequency of large hurricanes is increasing" myth being pushed by many so-called environmentalist. They have a political agenda, pure and simple.
In capitalism, the state tends to pick businesses to succeed via regulation, outsourcing, and favoritism.
This is crony capitalism as practiced in an imperfect world where special interests will try to obtain favoritism and such wherever they can. This is not a problem of capitalism as much as it is a problem that any system run by men can be corrupted. As far as capitalistic countries do pick businesses to succeed is more of a vestige from dalliances with socialism and central planning than an inherent flaw of capitalism. Such practices should be squelched.
In Germany, Italy, and Japan circa the 1930s, the fascists were aligned with large business interests, and very open about it.
These governments were attracted to control, as I believe what Lenin called, the "commanding heights" of industry so that they could control all other facets of the economy. A trend that started in these countries decades earlier under more moderate socialist governments. This is socialism at it's most fundamental, not capitalism.
Likewise, contemporary governments that tend to "go fascist" and increase police repression tend to be aligned with business.
Can you give specific examples of this? I can't think of any capitalistic first-world countries that have gone fascist or totalitarian -- not even close. On the other hand, the history has taught us that countries that embrace socialism tend to become totalitarian -- ie. Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union to pick a few examples from the 20th century. If you are thinking third-world countries that go fascist, I would argue they don't practice capitalism or have liberal democratic governments that protect the rights of the individuals.
Lastly, the idea that capitalism is somehow connected with the enlightenment idea of free thought is absurd. A factory isn't a place where you're supposed to have free thought. Not even "knowledge work" encourages free thought -- it's more like being paid to think and be rational.
Capitalism goes hand in hand with concepts of individual freedom, liberty and free thought. When I talk of freedom, I'm talking about the freedom of an individual to choose which trade he enters, where he lives or how he spends his time and money that is most suitable for himself. Capitalistic ideas. Socialism by definition must curtail and ration such freedoms to fit within a central plan.
With regards to debt, it is not a conspiracy by the rich to enslave the poor. Rather, it is simply the manifestation of people to freely enter into contracts they deem to be beneficial to themselves. You and I would likely agree that carrying a lot of debt is bad for the individual. I myself strive to live dept free (OK, I do have a mortgage), and I would encourage others to do so as well. However, I don't believe in a nanny state that would disallow people to enter into debt if they freely choose to do so.
To paraphrase the Wikipedia, the essence of capitalism is that most, if not all, means of production are privately owned and operated and where investments, production, distribution, income, and prices are determined by market forces, rather than by any other methods such as central planning. Under such as system, capital is merely the commodity of exchange, be it labor, currency or goods.
In my view, the mistake of socialist is to compare the power of the state to control an economy as being equal to the theoretical power of all capitalist combined. However, in practice, no individual or group of capitalist can wield even a small fraction of such power. Whereas under socialism a small group of people readily wield such power -- power that is easily corrupted in the hands of imperfect humans and by necessity must stifle liberty and freedom to maintain such power.
Personally I don't see any reason that socialism and free market should be mutually exclusive....and socialism doesn't regulate people's lives.
In as far as socialism is the central planning of the economy and the directing of individual choices and actions to meet the plan, socialism and free markets (or capitalism) are incompatible. Socialism implies that one group of people -- perhaps even democratically elected legislatures -- creates a plan and sets the agenda by which all others should follow within the economy. In as far as there are people who will refuse to follow such a plan, the strong arm of the government must be used to coerce dissenters to follow the central plan -- for the good over everyone. Thus, the first steps to the road to totalitarianism and fascism is followed. Socialism not only regulates people's lives from an economic point of view, but out of it's own necessity soon grows to squelch freedom and liberty outside the purely economic arena.
With regards to your comments on unions, they do have a place in a capitalistic society. However, a big problem with unions is that they operate as a government sanctioned monopoly. A worker in a unionized trade typically has no option to choose from various unions that may better represent his/her interests or in many cases to even choose not to join a union.
Finally, capitalism is not "we fight each other". Rather, capitalism is the competition of ideas within an open market and allowing people the freedom to choose for themselves those ideas that best suit their particular needs -- something this article is about. Capitalism allows a person who sees an inefficiency in the market the freedom to bring forth their own solution to compete with the status quo. To paint capitalism with the words "fighting", "greed", "fear", "distrust" and other negative connotations indicates dogmatic bias rather than logical reasoning.
I don't see this happening because it would be a very bad idea. Government using it's heavy hand to direct energy R&D resources would only ensure such an effort becomes a giant cluster f**k. You are deluding yourself if you think scientists would direct funding instead of politicians looking to enrich their home districts with pork.
The best way to spur R&D to replace oil/gas would be to let market forces push oil prices to $200/barrel and gas to $10/gallon. The same forces would conspire very quickly to find new energy sources and mechanisms for propelling our planes, trains and automobiles.
Replacing oil is not like building the atomic bomb. Not only does research have to be translated to technology on a massive scale, but 120 years of energy infrastructure has to be replaced as well. Having the government preselecting the winners and losers in such a large endeavor rather than market forces is a losing proposition.
With one phone call they could have the world's media at their doorstep.
Very true. As this ABC Nightline story interviewing the mastermind behind last year's Beslan school massacre, even the most shameful butchers of 300 innocent children can spout their hatred and bile in our western media.
What amazes me is that ABC can track this SOB down for an interview, but Russian intelligence can't.
They especially did not want to pay the monies owed to Britain for finally dispatching the one true threat in North America to all of the colonies, that being the French, during the Seven Years War/French & Indian War.
The mistake made by the British government was to impose socially unpopular taxes (sugar, stamp, tea, etc...) on the colonist to raise money which undercut the authority of the colonial legislatures. They then sent corrupt (from the colonist point of view) tax collectors to enforce the taxes further undermining local governance. The issue wasn't so much as 'why' the taxes needed to be levied, but rather the 'how'. If the British government instead had relied on the colonial legislatures levy their own local taxes for continued protection of the British army and help pay off the war debt the revolutionary war would potentially have been avoided.
By most measurements, the 13 colonies had the highest standard of living in the world at the time and truly did prosper under protection of the British crown. However, the failure of the British to understand the sensitivities of the colonists planted the seeds of discontentment and revolution.
A lesson that may be appropriate as people on Earth attempt to govern colonies in space.
Perhaps those are his priorities. Rather than detecting stolen laptop, he will more likely detect his daughter using her laptop from her boyfriend's apartment at 2 am.
Also, "if the data is out there" even the best privacy policies won't protect it. As in this case, it takes only a single fool to ignore the policies for security of the data to tumble down like a house of cards.
As its been said: The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
try getting into B2B environments and work with integrators, high level support of enterprise software, etc.
I've worked in such a "professional" environment for 15 years, but rarely do I have the satisfaction I get from helping a relative, neighbor or friend with a problem on their home PCs. I don't charge for the help, but if I did it would only be a small fraction of what I make as a system architect. For obvious practical reasons I keep my day job which has its own financial rewards, but money isn't everything. If I could figure out a way of making a substantial portion of my current salary helping people with technology at personal level I would do it in a heartbeat.
If someone chooses to go into a "service" business because it's what they like to do, then more power to them. They'll probably be more happier, healthier and have a more interesting life than the cubicle drone who is simply chasing the buck.
Given the comments, it seems that cellular service may only a be a marginal improvement over a standard modem connection. If you have a buddy who lives within range of DSL service, could you set up a line-of-site directional 802.11b connection over the 4 to 6 miles required to get within range of DSL service?
What would North Dakota do with the millions of gallons of salt water? It seems that such a quantity of salt water would potentially be a hazardous waste if it couldn't be disposed of back in the ocean.
I hate to nitpick, but 2% of $1M dollars is $20K -- a substantial difference from $200K. It would be pretty tough to live on that anywhere in the United States unless you became a mountain man living in the backwoods of Montana or something.
Well, that all good and fine, but I for one am just glad we don't live on planet Psychlo where a nuclear bomb causes their entire atmosphere to catch on fire -- at least in the movie.
The article states that "In the latest work, the gene was corrected in 18% of the cells treated, enough to finally make the method therapeutically viable." This would seem to actually alter the recipient cells' genetic code, but it is not completely effective over all the cells. Perhaps with time the technique will grow to the 80%, 90% or perhaps even 100% effective.
The issue at heart is that there are now so many venues to surreptitously flog political viewpoints disguised as something else......so this is really less about free speech and more about truth in advertising.
People like you truly scare me. If this issue isn't about free speech (exactly the kind of speech addressed in the first amendment) then I don't know what is.
The U.S. founding fathers gave citizens some credit for using being able to use their own brain's to figure out and form their own political opinions. However, two centuries later we seem to have reached a point where a substantial segment of our society believe's that raw political opinions are too dangerous and must to be vetted and sanitized through a nanny-state machine before they are fit for the masses. Laws such this are just a start.
People who support these types of laws must remember they are a double edge sword that can and will cut both ways. Your particular political opinions may be supported for the time being with such laws and those you disagree with suppressed. However, there will come a time when the tables are turned and the same laws you support to silence your foes are used against you and your political allies.
Our founding fathers had it right. Keep your and governments grubby hands off my free speech. For both my sake and yours.
As you indicate, prefetching links that may or may not actually be clicked will drive down click-through rates for the sponsored links that appear on prefetched pages. Once a sponsored link's click-through rate falls below a certain level that link is deemed non-relevant can be removed from the pool of sponsored links shown for certain keywords.
I'm not sure why Google would think that this is a good thing. They are very particular about making sure sponsored links requested from their system are actually shown in browsers as the click-through number is an important part of their ad relevancy algorithms. From an advertisers perspective, ad impression rates will be inflated because of prefetching, thus making it even more difficult to determine which ad keywords are performing well.
Bandwidth and other issues aside, I find it very difficult to understand why Google thinks prefetching is a good idea. Particularly if the prefetched pages have sponsored links on them -- as many do.
If you are into space related science you may wish to listen to MP3s of the SETI Radio Network broadcasts. The topics are generally much broader than just SETI and the interviews with scientists and researchers are actually pretty good. They only produce an hour a week, but it will at least cover one of your commutes to work.
This article smells of Sensationalism. Note the lack of detail in the article.
I agree. Such a system would be a technical nightmare to actually implement, not to mention the cost it would impose on consumers, auto manufacturers and gas station owners. I'm not a big time supporter of raising taxes, but if we need to increase the funding of our roads in California, surely there is a better solution than this crap.
I wouldn't be surprised if the article orginated as part of a PR compaign from some organization/company that would reap a windfall if such a cockamamy scheme were to go through.
If NASA can robotically attach rocket to the Hubble to bring it down in controlled manner into the Ocean, couldn't it use the same rocket to simply boost the Hubble into an orbit more friendly to a shuttle service mission? The crew of the shuttle can then evacuate to the ISS if needed during the service mission.
Perhaps the orbit of the ISS is less desireable from scientific standpoint for the Hubble, but it's a whole lot better than a hunk of twisted metal below 10,000 feet of water.
Just a guess on my part, but the object in the crater looks more like dunes of sand blown into and protected by the crater than an intact blob of something that fell from orbit. Regardless, it would be interesting to see a higher resolution picture.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what is funnier, the parent post or the responses taking it seriously.
But the frequency of large hurricanes is increasing, if the data is correct.
Wrong. Here is the data from the National Hurricane Center on number of major hurricane strikes to the U.S. mainland each decade. Please show me where in this data the number of large hurricanes is increasing?
Don't blindly buy into the "frequency of large hurricanes is increasing" myth being pushed by many so-called environmentalist. They have a political agenda, pure and simple.
Here is a link to some good information on the IT related aspects of relief being provided by the Red Cross to the New Orleans area.
In capitalism, the state tends to pick businesses to succeed via regulation, outsourcing, and favoritism.
This is crony capitalism as practiced in an imperfect world where special interests will try to obtain favoritism and such wherever they can. This is not a problem of capitalism as much as it is a problem that any system run by men can be corrupted. As far as capitalistic countries do pick businesses to succeed is more of a vestige from dalliances with socialism and central planning than an inherent flaw of capitalism. Such practices should be squelched.
In Germany, Italy, and Japan circa the 1930s, the fascists were aligned with large business interests, and very open about it.
These governments were attracted to control, as I believe what Lenin called, the "commanding heights" of industry so that they could control all other facets of the economy. A trend that started in these countries decades earlier under more moderate socialist governments. This is socialism at it's most fundamental, not capitalism.
Likewise, contemporary governments that tend to "go fascist" and increase police repression tend to be aligned with business.
Can you give specific examples of this? I can't think of any capitalistic first-world countries that have gone fascist or totalitarian -- not even close. On the other hand, the history has taught us that countries that embrace socialism tend to become totalitarian -- ie. Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union to pick a few examples from the 20th century. If you are thinking third-world countries that go fascist, I would argue they don't practice capitalism or have liberal democratic governments that protect the rights of the individuals.
Lastly, the idea that capitalism is somehow connected with the enlightenment idea of free thought is absurd. A factory isn't a place where you're supposed to have free thought. Not even "knowledge work" encourages free thought -- it's more like being paid to think and be rational.
Capitalism goes hand in hand with concepts of individual freedom, liberty and free thought. When I talk of freedom, I'm talking about the freedom of an individual to choose which trade he enters, where he lives or how he spends his time and money that is most suitable for himself. Capitalistic ideas. Socialism by definition must curtail and ration such freedoms to fit within a central plan.
With regards to debt, it is not a conspiracy by the rich to enslave the poor. Rather, it is simply the manifestation of people to freely enter into contracts they deem to be beneficial to themselves. You and I would likely agree that carrying a lot of debt is bad for the individual. I myself strive to live dept free (OK, I do have a mortgage), and I would encourage others to do so as well. However, I don't believe in a nanny state that would disallow people to enter into debt if they freely choose to do so.
To paraphrase the Wikipedia, the essence of capitalism is that most, if not all, means of production are privately owned and operated and where investments, production, distribution, income, and prices are determined by market forces, rather than by any other methods such as central planning. Under such as system, capital is merely the commodity of exchange, be it labor, currency or goods.
In my view, the mistake of socialist is to compare the power of the state to control an economy as being equal to the theoretical power of all capitalist combined. However, in practice, no individual or group of capitalist can wield even a small fraction of such power. Whereas under socialism a small group of people readily wield such power -- power that is easily corrupted in the hands of imperfect humans and by necessity must stifle liberty and freedom to maintain such power.
Personally I don't see any reason that socialism and free market should be mutually exclusive. ...and socialism doesn't regulate people's lives.
In as far as socialism is the central planning of the economy and the directing of individual choices and actions to meet the plan, socialism and free markets (or capitalism) are incompatible. Socialism implies that one group of people -- perhaps even democratically elected legislatures -- creates a plan and sets the agenda by which all others should follow within the economy. In as far as there are people who will refuse to follow such a plan, the strong arm of the government must be used to coerce dissenters to follow the central plan -- for the good over everyone. Thus, the first steps to the road to totalitarianism and fascism is followed. Socialism not only regulates people's lives from an economic point of view, but out of it's own necessity soon grows to squelch freedom and liberty outside the purely economic arena.
With regards to your comments on unions, they do have a place in a capitalistic society. However, a big problem with unions is that they operate as a government sanctioned monopoly. A worker in a unionized trade typically has no option to choose from various unions that may better represent his/her interests or in many cases to even choose not to join a union.
Finally, capitalism is not "we fight each other". Rather, capitalism is the competition of ideas within an open market and allowing people the freedom to choose for themselves those ideas that best suit their particular needs -- something this article is about. Capitalism allows a person who sees an inefficiency in the market the freedom to bring forth their own solution to compete with the status quo. To paint capitalism with the words "fighting", "greed", "fear", "distrust" and other negative connotations indicates dogmatic bias rather than logical reasoning.
Thank you. Finally a sane comment.
I don't see this happening because it would be a very bad idea. Government using it's heavy hand to direct energy R&D resources would only ensure such an effort becomes a giant cluster f**k. You are deluding yourself if you think scientists would direct funding instead of politicians looking to enrich their home districts with pork.
The best way to spur R&D to replace oil/gas would be to let market forces push oil prices to $200/barrel and gas to $10/gallon. The same forces would conspire very quickly to find new energy sources and mechanisms for propelling our planes, trains and automobiles.
Replacing oil is not like building the atomic bomb. Not only does research have to be translated to technology on a massive scale, but 120 years of energy infrastructure has to be replaced as well. Having the government preselecting the winners and losers in such a large endeavor rather than market forces is a losing proposition.
With one phone call they could have the world's media at their doorstep.
Very true. As this ABC Nightline story interviewing the mastermind behind last year's Beslan school massacre, even the most shameful butchers of 300 innocent children can spout their hatred and bile in our western media.
What amazes me is that ABC can track this SOB down for an interview, but Russian intelligence can't.
They especially did not want to pay the monies owed to Britain for finally dispatching the one true threat in North America to all of the colonies, that being the French, during the Seven Years War/French & Indian War.
The mistake made by the British government was to impose socially unpopular taxes (sugar, stamp, tea, etc...) on the colonist to raise money which undercut the authority of the colonial legislatures. They then sent corrupt (from the colonist point of view) tax collectors to enforce the taxes further undermining local governance. The issue wasn't so much as 'why' the taxes needed to be levied, but rather the 'how'. If the British government instead had relied on the colonial legislatures levy their own local taxes for continued protection of the British army and help pay off the war debt the revolutionary war would potentially have been avoided.
By most measurements, the 13 colonies had the highest standard of living in the world at the time and truly did prosper under protection of the British crown. However, the failure of the British to understand the sensitivities of the colonists planted the seeds of discontentment and revolution.
A lesson that may be appropriate as people on Earth attempt to govern colonies in space.
Perhaps those are his priorities. Rather than detecting stolen laptop, he will more likely detect his daughter using her laptop from her boyfriend's apartment at 2 am.
Unfortunately, a laser strapped to it's head might look cool but it won't do very much. Now a tazer powered teeth might be cool.
Aw, what a cute robot dog... ZAP!!! AHHHHH!!!
Also, "if the data is out there" even the best privacy policies won't protect it. As in this case, it takes only a single fool to ignore the policies for security of the data to tumble down like a house of cards.
As its been said: The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
try getting into B2B environments and work with integrators, high level support of enterprise software, etc.
I've worked in such a "professional" environment for 15 years, but rarely do I have the satisfaction I get from helping a relative, neighbor or friend with a problem on their home PCs. I don't charge for the help, but if I did it would only be a small fraction of what I make as a system architect. For obvious practical reasons I keep my day job which has its own financial rewards, but money isn't everything. If I could figure out a way of making a substantial portion of my current salary helping people with technology at personal level I would do it in a heartbeat.
If someone chooses to go into a "service" business because it's what they like to do, then more power to them. They'll probably be more happier, healthier and have a more interesting life than the cubicle drone who is simply chasing the buck.
Or, put another way,
A man is only as happy as his wife.
Given the comments, it seems that cellular service may only a be a marginal improvement over a standard modem connection. If you have a buddy who lives within range of DSL service, could you set up a line-of-site directional 802.11b connection over the 4 to 6 miles required to get within range of DSL service?
What would North Dakota do with the millions of gallons of salt water? It seems that such a quantity of salt water would potentially be a hazardous waste if it couldn't be disposed of back in the ocean.
2% interest on 1 million dollars is 200K.
I hate to nitpick, but 2% of $1M dollars is $20K -- a substantial difference from $200K. It would be pretty tough to live on that anywhere in the United States unless you became a mountain man living in the backwoods of Montana or something.
Well, that all good and fine, but I for one am just glad we don't live on planet Psychlo where a nuclear bomb causes their entire atmosphere to catch on fire -- at least in the movie.
The article states that "In the latest work, the gene was corrected in 18% of the cells treated, enough to finally make the method therapeutically viable." This would seem to actually alter the recipient cells' genetic code, but it is not completely effective over all the cells. Perhaps with time the technique will grow to the 80%, 90% or perhaps even 100% effective.
The issue at heart is that there are now so many venues to surreptitously flog political viewpoints disguised as something else... ...so this is really less about free speech and more about truth in advertising.
People like you truly scare me. If this issue isn't about free speech (exactly the kind of speech addressed in the first amendment) then I don't know what is.
The U.S. founding fathers gave citizens some credit for using being able to use their own brain's to figure out and form their own political opinions. However, two centuries later we seem to have reached a point where a substantial segment of our society believe's that raw political opinions are too dangerous and must to be vetted and sanitized through a nanny-state machine before they are fit for the masses. Laws such this are just a start.
People who support these types of laws must remember they are a double edge sword that can and will cut both ways. Your particular political opinions may be supported for the time being with such laws and those you disagree with suppressed. However, there will come a time when the tables are turned and the same laws you support to silence your foes are used against you and your political allies.
Our founding fathers had it right. Keep your and governments grubby hands off my free speech. For both my sake and yours.
As you indicate, prefetching links that may or may not actually be clicked will drive down click-through rates for the sponsored links that appear on prefetched pages. Once a sponsored link's click-through rate falls below a certain level that link is deemed non-relevant can be removed from the pool of sponsored links shown for certain keywords.
I'm not sure why Google would think that this is a good thing. They are very particular about making sure sponsored links requested from their system are actually shown in browsers as the click-through number is an important part of their ad relevancy algorithms. From an advertisers perspective, ad impression rates will be inflated because of prefetching, thus making it even more difficult to determine which ad keywords are performing well.
Bandwidth and other issues aside, I find it very difficult to understand why Google thinks prefetching is a good idea. Particularly if the prefetched pages have sponsored links on them -- as many do.
If you are into space related science you may wish to listen to MP3s of the SETI Radio Network broadcasts. The topics are generally much broader than just SETI and the interviews with scientists and researchers are actually pretty good. They only produce an hour a week, but it will at least cover one of your commutes to work.
This article smells of Sensationalism. Note the lack of detail in the article.
I agree. Such a system would be a technical nightmare to actually implement, not to mention the cost it would impose on consumers, auto manufacturers and gas station owners. I'm not a big time supporter of raising taxes, but if we need to increase the funding of our roads in California, surely there is a better solution than this crap.
I wouldn't be surprised if the article orginated as part of a PR compaign from some organization/company that would reap a windfall if such a cockamamy scheme were to go through.
If NASA can robotically attach rocket to the Hubble to bring it down in controlled manner into the Ocean, couldn't it use the same rocket to simply boost the Hubble into an orbit more friendly to a shuttle service mission? The crew of the shuttle can then evacuate to the ISS if needed during the service mission.
Perhaps the orbit of the ISS is less desireable from scientific standpoint for the Hubble, but it's a whole lot better than a hunk of twisted metal below 10,000 feet of water.
Just a guess on my part, but the object in the crater looks more like dunes of sand blown into and protected by the crater than an intact blob of something that fell from orbit. Regardless, it would be interesting to see a higher resolution picture.