... ethical people have the RIGHT to use force to oppose such religions
Ah, well, that is where it gets problematic, isn't it? There is no universal, objective standard for "good ethics", and in extreme cases we have people such as the terrorists of all denominations, who feel they have the ethical right to kill innocent bystanders "for a higher truth". Evil is evil, even if you use the excuse of a good cause.
Of course I understand the sentiment - it is galling to see a large organization like Scientology, that is considered a criminal organization in many countries, get any sort of victory, however small. But we are only as good as our deeds; and a crime is still crime, even if it is committed against criminals. This is the price you pay for being good.
And anyway - criminals like Scientology are always going to win if you play by their rules and fight them with their own dirty methods; they have much more experience in that game.
That such a load of inflammatory drivel got modded '+5 Insightful' is strongly suggestive of somebody tampering with the modding system.
Progress in open science is beneficial to us all; and this is about open science, as opposed to the research that goes on in private corporations or military establishments. You should be ashamed of yourself for spewing this sort of bitterness; China is doing what America used to do decades ago: they invest in science. They have every right to reap the benefits and should be applauded for giving the States some competition; perhaps the government will realize that they have to get the wallet out.
As for not wanting to live in a beehive; who cares where you want to live? Have you ever been near enough to China to have something to base an opinion? Or a beehive for that matter? I have: I own an apartment in Beijing; and I used to be a beekeeper. So there.
I wonder what a full-blown revolt in China would look like nowadays
Not to mention the US; in fact, it is much likely that we will see uprisings in the US. The difference being that the Chinese have for a long time experienced sustained improvements in their lives, whereas the Americans have seen thing get worse. Why should Chinese revolt against a government they can reasonably argue has improved their situation dramatically?
On the other hand, I have over the last several decades (yes, I'm that old) seen Americans complaining louder and louder, and the political situation now looks extreme to outside observers. It is, sadly, not unthinkable that there will be significant, social unrest in the US.
All this talk about "freedom" and "democracy" is only talk, by and large, and their meaning depend on the culture in which you live - they are not universal truths.
It sounds to me as if it may be too complicated to work with; or feels too intrusive.
In my job as systems manager those two issues are the ones that seem to be at the bottom of all circumventions of that kind of rules.
Simplicity: as the admin in chief, you have to listen to what the clients say; that is why I generally am against eg. "secure" passwords - they may be hard to crack, but the user will protest against them and do his damnedest to avoid them, which is only all too easy in most cases. It doesn't matter whether you feel that "nothing could be simpler" than whatever; if the user hates it, he will work against it. No amount of executive decisions and speaking in a thundery voice can make it happen if the users don't buy in to it whole-heartedly.
Too intrusive: I think most users feel rather possessive about their computer; in my experience even owners of UNIX accounts on a big server feels that way about their environment. What you describe sounds a bit like it is taking that away from them, which they will object to - and try to obstruct, ignore, circumvent. Again, it is not relevant that the company is the legal owner - theu user feels that way, and you have to work with them, not against them, to get them aboard any scheme.
All this may or may not be relevant to your situation, of course, but I have learned over the years that it is a lot easier if you get people to feel that they matter to the whole process. Especially if they are higher up in the hierarchy.
what more do FLOSS developers need from existing development tools?
Nothing, IMO. I have for years worked with only: xterm, vi, compiler, make. I am surrounded by good programmers, who use IDEs, mostly Visual Studio, but also Eclipse; I am still at least as productive as everybody else, and don't even spend as much time debugging. Am I genius? Of course not. The truth is that using an IDE doesn't actually make that much of a difference; whether people use it is no more than a matter of personal taste.
You know, I would have respect for - and sympathy with - Christianity if its proponents were at least telling a believable story. A health warning is appropriate at this point: You may in the following see things that you may not like. If your blood pressure tends to be volatile, you may want to look away now.
I don't have a problem with the existence of a god; I know well enough that there are many things I don't know about, the existence or non-existence of the Christian God being one. But I refuse to accept this sort of doctrine on so many levels that you wouldn't believe it:
1. The Bible, far from being a perfect book, written directly by God, is actually only a collection of old, literary fragments; it has little direct relevance to our present life. That is not to say that people can't be inspired by what they read there, but is true for a wide range of other things too. I am not willing to accept the Bible as an authority on anything - it is simply too inconsistent and illogical.
2. The logic in what you put forward is seriously flawed. God plants a tree in the middle of Eden and tells Adam and Eve that 1) these fruits are incredible attractive, and 2) Don't you bloody touch them; and then he is pissed off when they do. A perfect God? Who loves us soooo much? Really? And not only can't he forgive those two, he can't forgive any of their desendants; but then he sends his son down to be brutally slaughtered and suddenly he is able to forgive? How anyone can believe that, is beyond me.
Apart from that - what is this talk about sin and forgiveness? Not only don't I think that I have transgressed against any god, but I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of forgiveness. When somebody makes you angry, you feel bad until you are able to forgive; in other words, you are the one that needs to forgive - the other guy may not even care about whether you forgive or not. But is it reasonable to imagine that a perfect being like God needs to forgive?
To me it would seem much more likely if it went the other way: A&E ate the apple and suddenly understood their own mortality. This made them angry at God - why had he created us as mortal creatures? God tries anything to make us forgive him - he even sends his own son, but we want none of it. So, despite your pious non-faith, the big question is: Have you forgiven God?
Is Obama good or bad? I don't know, and I don't really care - I think, on balance, that he probably is, but that is not the real issue behind all these endless, and rather childish debates.
I wonder why it is that political debate in America is always so extreme and hateful? To me it seems exaggerated, like a cheap drama with bad actors; no wonder that people end up loathing politics. But then when I look at the discussions in places like slashdot, I can see people going on in the same, tired style. How can anyone hope to achieve real, positive progress in such a poisonous atmosphere?
I mean, take the discussions about this RIAA thing; of course most people agree that the RIAA are unreasonable, verging on criminal - but when everybody starts making howling noises, it actually precludes any meaningful discussion of the subject, which then plays into the hands of RIAA, because they then stand out as the only ones with something that sounds a little coherent.
Or that all-time favourite, the healthcare reform. Everybody, or at least most people know that the current situation is grossly unfair and that something has to be done. The current proposals may end up costing everybody a little bit more tax, but the ones that really fear this plan are the insurance companies. Again, because all you can hear from anywhere is desperate screaming and the sound of fighting, no change, positive or negative, can be achieved, which is exactly what the insurance companies want.
So, when are the American people going to take charge of their country, and take themselves serious? It seems to me that you guys missed out on the whole youth revolution thing, and only went through the motions back in the sixties. You know what - the hippies may look stupid to people now-a-days, but even as superficial and inefficient as they were, they actually took the power away, that politicians, big business and the religious industry felt were their birthright, and shook up the establishment. Just imagine how much more could be done in an age where people can communicate globally and easily, and where people have a much more realistic view of the world.
It certainly sounds dramatic, but I think there may be a positive note to add, because where a decade ago children engaged mostly in passively being entertained, the trend now is that they take part, ie are active. A recent study has shown that the main factor explaining why boys in particular don't seem to learn English very well, found that the trick is to get them write more; and that while writing essays is seen as boring and pointless, blogging is seen as cool and meaningful.
There is a growing islamic population in Europe and they might think, demographically they might be in charge of Euro in some 30 years
Good ol' islamophobia, here we go again.
That stupid lie, "the islamists will be in charge in 30 years" gets rolled again and again; that doesn't make it more true. It's no more valid than "the commies are out to get us" or "the Catholics breed like rats and will be in charge in, what was it - 30 years". To hell with that.
America plays by the rules, mostly, although there have been some serious breaches of trust from time to time, not least over the Iraq war. China is playing by the rules too and we have no reason to expect that they won't keep doing it; none except that "they are yellow", or are they "red"? Perhaps that makes them orange, then, but whichever colour, they seem to be no worse than the rest of the world.
We have seen how much china cares about UN's protests
About as much as anybody else, I'd say. Hasn't the US regularly ignored this kind of things in the past? The UN is not a global government or a police force, it is only a forum where national governments can go and rant about things; 'cause that's got to be better than starting a war.
... proportional fonts can be read 14% faster than fixed-width fonts
Does that really make any difference at all in programming? I doubt it; understanding source code does not hinge on how fast you could read the text, in my experience. What really helps is something else:
- Good indentation that follows the block structure of the code - Good symbol names that are neither too simple nor too rich in information - Good comments that explain why one has chosen an unusual algorithm and that sort of thing
I think when you read code, you don't read through each letter, you perceive each keyword as a whole. This process gets easier when you always use the same font in your editor, because the keywords then always have the same "shape". Personally I find the "grid-structure" of fixed-width font helpful when writing code, because I can relatively easily format the layout of things, which I occasionally do - eg. when I set up data in an array or table form.
So "researchers" have determined that this was in fact perpetrated by "the Chinese government"? Why is it that one should have confidence in an article that refers to unspecified "researchers" and "sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community"? As far as I can see, the article makes largely unsubstantiated claims, such as:
The source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof
Why don't they tell us what that "single, foreign entity" is? Apart from the fact that you can spoof your IP address very easily; something I think we can assume a Chinese agent would take advantage of. In fact, if the IP addresses used are so easily traced back to China, could it not be because somebody wants to point a finger in that direction? Nah, I'm probably just too suspicious.
It is not that I can't believe that an agency in the Chinese state would engage in undercover activity, even if the execution seems a bit amateurish; I just hate it when people insult my intelligence like this.
I can see that the usual knee-jerk reactions are already rolling in in the comments, Any question touching on free speech and human rights always gets people up in arms, and rightly so, but I think there is a lot more to it than simply screaming "Free Speech!!!!" and foaming at the corners of the mouth.
I fear that I have already lost contact with the larger part of/. readers by saying so, but I think it is necessary that at least one stands up for the more calmly thoughtful approach. Lets attempt to analyse the problem:
There is a large number of groups that advocate something irrational - not just conspiracy theories, but extreme, religious viewpoints etc. They sometimes have a large influence on society, in some cases much larger than their numbers justify, and they do arguably exert a harmful influence on society.
Would it be right if those who are meant to protect us were to just ignore them? Of course not; in my opinion the state has a clear duty to do what it can, within the law, to protect its citizens. And I can see some good arguments in favour of infiltrating and influencing those groups; just as I can see that there are some inherent dangers in such a scheme.
We all know that when the government comes out and issues a statement that is meant to correct some misunderstanding or misinformation, it is generally met with skepticism by the public, to say the least, not to mention the more blinkered opinionators. The government would have no chance at all reaching the members of conpiracy theory groups and the like, if all they try is to issue factual statements; the only way is to meet them at their home turf, ie infiltration.
The fear is of course that it can be misused to "control opinion", but I think that fear is exaggerated - even in East Germany, where the government controlled all media, they still couldn't control public opinion. To my mind, this kind of scheme is no different from the schemes where the police or social services engage in a dialog with youth gangs in order to change their attitudes and get them away from crime.
Ok, ok, I admit it: I am stupid. However, "from fools and babes...", as they say.
So he explains gravity away with information density, which to me looks just like another model saying more or less the same as the one we had, except that it feels less intuitive. I mean, explaining the force of gravity as somehow related to - or even equivalent to - the shape of space, that is something you can feel comfortable about; but talking about "information" as a fundamental property just seems like advanced gibberish. It certainly doesn't give me feeling of deeper understanding. Well, I have already pointed out a potential explanation for that.
What I don't like about this theory, though, is something more fundamental - it seems to accept the assumtion that "reality is fundamentally quantized" (intuitively, broken up in small, discontinuous bits). Let me expand a bit on that; we have two theories that are both hugely successful, but seem incompatible, General Relativity (GR) and quantum Mechanics (QM).
- GR makes a few fundamental assumptions, most notably that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference; everything follows from that, more or less. - QM makes a large number of fundamental assumtions, which leaves us with a large number of loose ends.
I for one would feel a lot happier if we could derive QM from GR; but for almost a century now, physicists have tried to hammer GR into QM with a sledge hammer, while there have been very few attempts at going the other. Far be it from to advance any stupid conspiracy theory, but as far as I can see, that situation stems mostly from Bohr and Heisenberg having fallen into a sort of quasi-religion about things.
What I hope is that somebody will begin to explore the derivation of QM from GR seriously; it isn't about "winning", it is about improving on our understanding of the physical reality. The theories are after all only tools, and we should be pragmatic about it.
I don't agree - although I think I understand what you mean. Maths is, loosely speaking, the study of logically true statements; so if the maths work, then the conclusions are true - within the limitations of the given assumptions. We don't know, of course, whether those assumptions describe the physical reality we live in, that is always the problem in theoretical physics.
Indeed you could; I have no doubt about it. But reality doesn't change, however much BS you let out.
Infrastructure problems? Equipment shortages? Have you ever been there? I have - my wife was a university teacher in Beijing (now retired) and we have traveled extensively in the whole country. China has excellent infrastructure from Ican tell, and there seems to be no equipment shortages either.
You say that you work in "a top-10 American university" and you boss is Chinese; so what? Even if this is true, there may be a number of reasons why your boss has no end of negative stories about China.
doesn't agree. Chinese science is in fact well up there with the rest of the world, and will overtake us soon. There is nothing strange in this - while we in the West have grown rather complacent about education, which is necessary for science, the Chinese have been ramping up their investments in education and science. This, by the way, is something their government have decided, so this jibe about ".. as well as government" seems particularly misplaced in this context.
When China was a closed country not long ago, you Americans couldn't shut up about how everything would be so much better if China would open up and become part of the global world. Now they have done that, and you whine because they turned out to be bloody clever; and all you have left is yesterday's cold-war rhetoric. The competition from China is good for us - it will make realise that we have to get our act together and sharpen up.
I can see from your choice of words that you little sympathy for the more unlucky of your fellow human beings.
There is of course little doubt that each individual holds a large part of the responsibility for making the decicion to borrow money. But - and this is a big "but" - they are not solely responsible:
- the education system has for many years failed to teach enough about economy; particularly about elements of modern economy, like credit cards. A lot of people are simply not equipped with enough knowledge to make decisions about borrowing money.
- the banks have pushed credit at people, whether they wanted or needed, in a way that can't be called responsible, even by the most relaxed proponents of laisse-faire.
It should not surprise anybody that this has turned out to be a deadly combination. BBC made a programme about his - just around the time when things were clearly falling apart, they asked a you student to go around to all the banks in the local high-street to open accounts. She managed, in one afternoon, to get something like 5 bank accounts with a total of several thousand GBP's worth of overdraught and credit cards - on nothing more than her bare face. Scary stuff; that kind of thing would not be possible if the banks were not near-criminally irresponsible.
A bit like Robin Hood, you mean? With things like social security, that is the way of things: you take from the rich and give to the poor; personally, I have always found the Robin Hood story very sympathetic for that reason.
But with your attitude, how dare you travel on public roads? They are paid for by the government, ie ultimately the tax-payers, ie a group of people of which you and your payment are a vanishingly small part. Aren't you a thief, then, if you drive more than the average person?
What gives you the right to enslave my production to unproductive people?
Just in case you haven't noticed: I am not claiming such a right, only arguing that if you want to be part of a society, any society, then you have to make a contribution to that society. And what is "your production" worth in the absense of a society? Any value apart from what is required for basic survival is meaningful only in relation to the surrounding society.
And society is, at the end of the day, an extension of the family group that most apes live in. Would you not reach out to help your family or friends if they are in need? This, I would claim, is part of our nature; we take care of people in need. Why else does anybody contribute to charity? So it is not a question of "what gives anybody the (legal) right", but "why is it (morally) right".
If the answer is their need, then you really are a communist despite what you believe otherwise.
You can call me a Communist if you like; I know what I am even if you don't. Some would call it Christian, Muslim or whatever - most religions have a lot of good to say about being charitable and help people, even when they seem undeserving.
The whole point of free trade was to unlink, fundamentally, resources from national ownership
I think you are wrong. Ownership doesn't enter into the question at all - free trade is simply a matter of making it easier to conduct business; there is nothing to say that national governments or state-owned enterprises can't take part in that.
I think your attitude is bizarre; it seems that you think that anything done or provided by society is by definition evil. I guess this is the sad result of the Cold-War conditioning that afflicts so many Americans - you have learned that government is a sort of Communist conspiracy that is only out to take your money and that tax is nothing short of state-sanctioned theft. Strangely, those who think this way don't seem to feel that using infra-structure, which has mostly been paid for by other tax-payers than themselves, is theft from their compatriots.
However, the real thieves in this picture are not ordinary tax-payers, but the big corporations, who are more than happy to use roads and other things paid for by the public, but who are rather reluctant when it comes to paying their taxes - ie they prefer to be free-loaders.
Nobody in their right mind... Tell that to the Discovery Channel (and pretty much any other television station).
Well, you said it, mate, but I tend to agree - they are simply not in their right mind. What I don't quite understand is, why is it that the most extremely prudish whiners have all the say? Somebody - ie the average American - has been letting them get away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
... ethical people have the RIGHT to use force to oppose such religions
Ah, well, that is where it gets problematic, isn't it? There is no universal, objective standard for "good ethics", and in extreme cases we have people such as the terrorists of all denominations, who feel they have the ethical right to kill innocent bystanders "for a higher truth". Evil is evil, even if you use the excuse of a good cause.
Of course I understand the sentiment - it is galling to see a large organization like Scientology, that is considered a criminal organization in many countries, get any sort of victory, however small. But we are only as good as our deeds; and a crime is still crime, even if it is committed against criminals. This is the price you pay for being good.
And anyway - criminals like Scientology are always going to win if you play by their rules and fight them with their own dirty methods; they have much more experience in that game.
Beehives and ant colonies are efficient too
But I wouldn't want to live in either.
That such a load of inflammatory drivel got modded '+5 Insightful' is strongly suggestive of somebody tampering with the modding system.
Progress in open science is beneficial to us all; and this is about open science, as opposed to the research that goes on in private corporations or military establishments. You should be ashamed of yourself for spewing this sort of bitterness; China is doing what America used to do decades ago: they invest in science. They have every right to reap the benefits and should be applauded for giving the States some competition; perhaps the government will realize that they have to get the wallet out.
As for not wanting to live in a beehive; who cares where you want to live? Have you ever been near enough to China to have something to base an opinion? Or a beehive for that matter? I have: I own an apartment in Beijing; and I used to be a beekeeper. So there.
I wonder what a full-blown revolt in China would look like nowadays
Not to mention the US; in fact, it is much likely that we will see uprisings in the US. The difference being that the Chinese have for a long time experienced sustained improvements in their lives, whereas the Americans have seen thing get worse. Why should Chinese revolt against a government they can reasonably argue has improved their situation dramatically?
On the other hand, I have over the last several decades (yes, I'm that old) seen Americans complaining louder and louder, and the political situation now looks extreme to outside observers. It is, sadly, not unthinkable that there will be significant, social unrest in the US.
All this talk about "freedom" and "democracy" is only talk, by and large, and their meaning depend on the culture in which you live - they are not universal truths.
It sounds to me as if it may be too complicated to work with; or feels too intrusive.
In my job as systems manager those two issues are the ones that seem to be at the bottom of all circumventions of that kind of rules.
Simplicity: as the admin in chief, you have to listen to what the clients say; that is why I generally am against eg. "secure" passwords - they may be hard to crack, but the user will protest against them and do his damnedest to avoid them, which is only all too easy in most cases. It doesn't matter whether you feel that "nothing could be simpler" than whatever; if the user hates it, he will work against it. No amount of executive decisions and speaking in a thundery voice can make it happen if the users don't buy in to it whole-heartedly.
Too intrusive: I think most users feel rather possessive about their computer; in my experience even owners of UNIX accounts on a big server feels that way about their environment. What you describe sounds a bit like it is taking that away from them, which they will object to - and try to obstruct, ignore, circumvent. Again, it is not relevant that the company is the legal owner - theu user feels that way, and you have to work with them, not against them, to get them aboard any scheme.
All this may or may not be relevant to your situation, of course, but I have learned over the years that it is a lot easier if you get people to feel that they matter to the whole process. Especially if they are higher up in the hierarchy.
what more do FLOSS developers need from existing development tools?
Nothing, IMO. I have for years worked with only: xterm, vi, compiler, make. I am surrounded by good programmers, who use IDEs, mostly Visual Studio, but also Eclipse; I am still at least as productive as everybody else, and don't even spend as much time debugging. Am I genius? Of course not. The truth is that using an IDE doesn't actually make that much of a difference; whether people use it is no more than a matter of personal taste.
You know, I would have respect for - and sympathy with - Christianity if its proponents were at least telling a believable story. A health warning is appropriate at this point: You may in the following see things that you may not like. If your blood pressure tends to be volatile, you may want to look away now.
I don't have a problem with the existence of a god; I know well enough that there are many things I don't know about, the existence or non-existence of the Christian God being one. But I refuse to accept this sort of doctrine on so many levels that you wouldn't believe it:
1. The Bible, far from being a perfect book, written directly by God, is actually only a collection of old, literary fragments; it has little direct relevance to our present life. That is not to say that people can't be inspired by what they read there, but is true for a wide range of other things too. I am not willing to accept the Bible as an authority on anything - it is simply too inconsistent and illogical.
2. The logic in what you put forward is seriously flawed. God plants a tree in the middle of Eden and tells Adam and Eve that 1) these fruits are incredible attractive, and 2) Don't you bloody touch them; and then he is pissed off when they do. A perfect God? Who loves us soooo much? Really? And not only can't he forgive those two, he can't forgive any of their desendants; but then he sends his son down to be brutally slaughtered and suddenly he is able to forgive? How anyone can believe that, is beyond me.
Apart from that - what is this talk about sin and forgiveness? Not only don't I think that I have transgressed against any god, but I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of forgiveness. When somebody makes you angry, you feel bad until you are able to forgive; in other words, you are the one that needs to forgive - the other guy may not even care about whether you forgive or not. But is it reasonable to imagine that a perfect being like God needs to forgive?
To me it would seem much more likely if it went the other way: A&E ate the apple and suddenly understood their own mortality. This made them angry at God - why had he created us as mortal creatures? God tries anything to make us forgive him - he even sends his own son, but we want none of it. So, despite your pious non-faith, the big question is: Have you forgiven God?
Is Obama good or bad? I don't know, and I don't really care - I think, on balance, that he probably is, but that is not the real issue behind all these endless, and rather childish debates.
I wonder why it is that political debate in America is always so extreme and hateful? To me it seems exaggerated, like a cheap drama with bad actors; no wonder that people end up loathing politics. But then when I look at the discussions in places like slashdot, I can see people going on in the same, tired style. How can anyone hope to achieve real, positive progress in such a poisonous atmosphere?
I mean, take the discussions about this RIAA thing; of course most people agree that the RIAA are unreasonable, verging on criminal - but when everybody starts making howling noises, it actually precludes any meaningful discussion of the subject, which then plays into the hands of RIAA, because they then stand out as the only ones with something that sounds a little coherent.
Or that all-time favourite, the healthcare reform. Everybody, or at least most people know that the current situation is grossly unfair and that something has to be done. The current proposals may end up costing everybody a little bit more tax, but the ones that really fear this plan are the insurance companies. Again, because all you can hear from anywhere is desperate screaming and the sound of fighting, no change, positive or negative, can be achieved, which is exactly what the insurance companies want.
So, when are the American people going to take charge of their country, and take themselves serious? It seems to me that you guys missed out on the whole youth revolution thing, and only went through the motions back in the sixties. You know what - the hippies may look stupid to people now-a-days, but even as superficial and inefficient as they were, they actually took the power away, that politicians, big business and the religious industry felt were their birthright, and shook up the establishment. Just imagine how much more could be done in an age where people can communicate globally and easily, and where people have a much more realistic view of the world.
It is called aurochs, not "auroch", as one would realize by clicking the Wikipedia link provided. It is a German word and means "Ancient Ox".
It certainly sounds dramatic, but I think there may be a positive note to add, because where a decade ago children engaged mostly in passively being entertained, the trend now is that they take part, ie are active. A recent study has shown that the main factor explaining why boys in particular don't seem to learn English very well, found that the trick is to get them write more; and that while writing essays is seen as boring and pointless, blogging is seen as cool and meaningful.
There is a growing islamic population in Europe and they might think, demographically they might be in charge of Euro in some 30 years
Good ol' islamophobia, here we go again.
That stupid lie, "the islamists will be in charge in 30 years" gets rolled again and again; that doesn't make it more true. It's no more valid than "the commies are out to get us" or "the Catholics breed like rats and will be in charge in, what was it - 30 years". To hell with that.
America plays by the rules, mostly, although there have been some serious breaches of trust from time to time, not least over the Iraq war. China is playing by the rules too and we have no reason to expect that they won't keep doing it; none except that "they are yellow", or are they "red"? Perhaps that makes them orange, then, but whichever colour, they seem to be no worse than the rest of the world.
We have seen how much china cares about UN's protests
About as much as anybody else, I'd say. Hasn't the US regularly ignored this kind of things in the past? The UN is not a global government or a police force, it is only a forum where national governments can go and rant about things; 'cause that's got to be better than starting a war.
... proportional fonts can be read 14% faster than fixed-width fonts
Does that really make any difference at all in programming? I doubt it; understanding source code does not hinge on how fast you could read the text, in my experience. What really helps is something else:
- Good indentation that follows the block structure of the code
- Good symbol names that are neither too simple nor too rich in information
- Good comments that explain why one has chosen an unusual algorithm and that sort of thing
I think when you read code, you don't read through each letter, you perceive each keyword as a whole. This process gets easier when you always use the same font in your editor, because the keywords then always have the same "shape". Personally I find the "grid-structure" of fixed-width font helpful when writing code, because I can relatively easily format the layout of things, which I occasionally do - eg. when I set up data in an array or table form.
So "researchers" have determined that this was in fact perpetrated by "the Chinese government"? Why is it that one should have confidence in an article that refers to unspecified "researchers" and "sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community"? As far as I can see, the article makes largely unsubstantiated claims, such as:
The source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof
Why don't they tell us what that "single, foreign entity" is? Apart from the fact that you can spoof your IP address very easily; something I think we can assume a Chinese agent would take advantage of. In fact, if the IP addresses used are so easily traced back to China, could it not be because somebody wants to point a finger in that direction? Nah, I'm probably just too suspicious.
It is not that I can't believe that an agency in the Chinese state would engage in undercover activity, even if the execution seems a bit amateurish; I just hate it when people insult my intelligence like this.
I can see that the usual knee-jerk reactions are already rolling in in the comments, Any question touching on free speech and human rights always gets people up in arms, and rightly so, but I think there is a lot more to it than simply screaming "Free Speech!!!!" and foaming at the corners of the mouth.
I fear that I have already lost contact with the larger part of /. readers by saying so, but I think it is necessary that at least one stands up for the more calmly thoughtful approach. Lets attempt to analyse the problem:
There is a large number of groups that advocate something irrational - not just conspiracy theories, but extreme, religious viewpoints etc. They sometimes have a large influence on society, in some cases much larger than their numbers justify, and they do arguably exert a harmful influence on society.
Would it be right if those who are meant to protect us were to just ignore them? Of course not; in my opinion the state has a clear duty to do what it can, within the law, to protect its citizens. And I can see some good arguments in favour of infiltrating and influencing those groups; just as I can see that there are some inherent dangers in such a scheme.
We all know that when the government comes out and issues a statement that is meant to correct some misunderstanding or misinformation, it is generally met with skepticism by the public, to say the least, not to mention the more blinkered opinionators. The government would have no chance at all reaching the members of conpiracy theory groups and the like, if all they try is to issue factual statements; the only way is to meet them at their home turf, ie infiltration.
The fear is of course that it can be misused to "control opinion", but I think that fear is exaggerated - even in East Germany, where the government controlled all media, they still couldn't control public opinion. To my mind, this kind of scheme is no different from the schemes where the police or social services engage in a dialog with youth gangs in order to change their attitudes and get them away from crime.
The average adult movie costs around $25,000 to $40,000 to make
Wow, do they actually spend that much? You wouldn't have thought so...
Ok, ok, I admit it: I am stupid. However, "from fools and babes ...", as they say.
So he explains gravity away with information density, which to me looks just like another model saying more or less the same as the one we had, except that it feels less intuitive. I mean, explaining the force of gravity as somehow related to - or even equivalent to - the shape of space, that is something you can feel comfortable about; but talking about "information" as a fundamental property just seems like advanced gibberish. It certainly doesn't give me feeling of deeper understanding. Well, I have already pointed out a potential explanation for that.
What I don't like about this theory, though, is something more fundamental - it seems to accept the assumtion that "reality is fundamentally quantized" (intuitively, broken up in small, discontinuous bits). Let me expand a bit on that; we have two theories that are both hugely successful, but seem incompatible, General Relativity (GR) and quantum Mechanics (QM).
- GR makes a few fundamental assumptions, most notably that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference; everything follows from that, more or less.
- QM makes a large number of fundamental assumtions, which leaves us with a large number of loose ends.
I for one would feel a lot happier if we could derive QM from GR; but for almost a century now, physicists have tried to hammer GR into QM with a sledge hammer, while there have been very few attempts at going the other. Far be it from to advance any stupid conspiracy theory, but as far as I can see, that situation stems mostly from Bohr and Heisenberg having fallen into a sort of quasi-religion about things.
What I hope is that somebody will begin to explore the derivation of QM from GR seriously; it isn't about "winning", it is about improving on our understanding of the physical reality. The theories are after all only tools, and we should be pragmatic about it.
I don't agree - although I think I understand what you mean. Maths is, loosely speaking, the study of logically true statements; so if the maths work, then the conclusions are true - within the limitations of the given assumptions. We don't know, of course, whether those assumptions describe the physical reality we live in, that is always the problem in theoretical physics.
I could go on, but here's the point:
Indeed you could; I have no doubt about it. But reality doesn't change, however much BS you let out.
Infrastructure problems? Equipment shortages? Have you ever been there? I have - my wife was a university teacher in Beijing (now retired) and we have traveled extensively in the whole country. China has excellent infrastructure from Ican tell, and there seems to be no equipment shortages either.
You say that you work in "a top-10 American university" and you boss is Chinese; so what? Even if this is true, there may be a number of reasons why your boss has no end of negative stories about China.
As alluded in the article, Chinese science remains far behind, especially because of rampant cronyism in academia as well as government
This article from New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.900-get-ready-for-chinas-domination-of-science.html
doesn't agree. Chinese science is in fact well up there with the rest of the world, and will overtake us soon. There is nothing strange in this - while we in the West have grown rather complacent about education, which is necessary for science, the Chinese have been ramping up their investments in education and science. This, by the way, is something their government have decided, so this jibe about ".. as well as government" seems particularly misplaced in this context.
When China was a closed country not long ago, you Americans couldn't shut up about how everything would be so much better if China would open up and become part of the global world. Now they have done that, and you whine because they turned out to be bloody clever; and all you have left is yesterday's cold-war rhetoric. The competition from China is good for us - it will make realise that we have to get our act together and sharpen up.
I can see from your choice of words that you little sympathy for the more unlucky of your fellow human beings.
There is of course little doubt that each individual holds a large part of the responsibility for making the decicion to borrow money. But - and this is a big "but" - they are not solely responsible:
- the education system has for many years failed to teach enough about economy; particularly about elements of modern economy, like credit cards. A lot of people are simply not equipped with enough knowledge to make decisions about borrowing money.
- the banks have pushed credit at people, whether they wanted or needed, in a way that can't be called responsible, even by the most relaxed proponents of laisse-faire.
It should not surprise anybody that this has turned out to be a deadly combination. BBC made a programme about his - just around the time when things were clearly falling apart, they asked a you student to go around to all the banks in the local high-street to open accounts. She managed, in one afternoon, to get something like 5 bank accounts with a total of several thousand GBP's worth of overdraught and credit cards - on nothing more than her bare face. Scary stuff; that kind of thing would not be possible if the banks were not near-criminally irresponsible.
Beyond my lack of comprehension for how he could possibly cover the payments on a startup salary
That's one thing, but somewhere in this story there is a bank that didn't care enough to see the problem.
They can tax the use of coal by utilities in their state, but not the importation of coal into their state.
But is this not simply a tax on the use of energy produced by burning coal? No problem there, then.
... take my money and give it to other people
A bit like Robin Hood, you mean? With things like social security, that is the way of things: you take from the rich and give to the poor; personally, I have always found the Robin Hood story very sympathetic for that reason.
But with your attitude, how dare you travel on public roads? They are paid for by the government, ie ultimately the tax-payers, ie a group of people of which you and your payment are a vanishingly small part. Aren't you a thief, then, if you drive more than the average person?
What gives you the right to enslave my production to unproductive people?
Just in case you haven't noticed: I am not claiming such a right, only arguing that if you want to be part of a society, any society, then you have to make a contribution to that society. And what is "your production" worth in the absense of a society? Any value apart from what is required for basic survival is meaningful only in relation to the surrounding society.
And society is, at the end of the day, an extension of the family group that most apes live in. Would you not reach out to help your family or friends if they are in need? This, I would claim, is part of our nature; we take care of people in need. Why else does anybody contribute to charity? So it is not a question of "what gives anybody the (legal) right", but "why is it (morally) right".
If the answer is their need, then you really are a communist despite what you believe otherwise.
You can call me a Communist if you like; I know what I am even if you don't. Some would call it Christian, Muslim or whatever - most religions have a lot of good to say about being charitable and help people, even when they seem undeserving.
The whole point of free trade was to unlink, fundamentally, resources from national ownership
I think you are wrong. Ownership doesn't enter into the question at all - free trade is simply a matter of making it easier to conduct business; there is nothing to say that national governments or state-owned enterprises can't take part in that.
I think your attitude is bizarre; it seems that you think that anything done or provided by society is by definition evil. I guess this is the sad result of the Cold-War conditioning that afflicts so many Americans - you have learned that government is a sort of Communist conspiracy that is only out to take your money and that tax is nothing short of state-sanctioned theft. Strangely, those who think this way don't seem to feel that using infra-structure, which has mostly been paid for by other tax-payers than themselves, is theft from their compatriots.
However, the real thieves in this picture are not ordinary tax-payers, but the big corporations, who are more than happy to use roads and other things paid for by the public, but who are rather reluctant when it comes to paying their taxes - ie they prefer to be free-loaders.
Nobody in their right mind...
Tell that to the Discovery Channel (and pretty much any other television station).
Well, you said it, mate, but I tend to agree - they are simply not in their right mind. What I don't quite understand is, why is it that the most extremely prudish whiners have all the say? Somebody - ie the average American - has been letting them get away with it.