There is certainly utility to a good web-enabled phone with plenty of apps
But what you are describing there is not a phone, is it? It's more like a small networked computer, which incidentally can be used as a phone. That seems to be the way things are going at the moment, and I hope we one will see a device that is easily programmable (ie. is a generic standard computer) and has HW that will allow me to read book, play games, connect to networks, and of course, use VOIP.
However, it won't be a phone - the telephone is already a finished thing; the last great innovation was when they put the dial on it, so you could reach any number without having to talk to the operator. That is all there is to a telephone - it's like the keyboard or the mouse: you can add fancy glitter, but that is all it is; it doesn't give you any fundamentally new, necessary functionality.
The Discworld series is brilliant exactly because the stories weren't with humour as the primary goal. Terry Pratchett takes some serious subjects and treats them with depth and insight; and incidentally with a lot of brilliant humour along the way. The Hitchiker's Guide was never more than entertainment - it is not my impression that Adams considered the books as more than that; I think his other books, the ones about the Holistic Detective Agency, were far better literature, and probably closer to his heart.
Of course it does; it means a lot of things. It means that the rich can say "You have Freedom of Speech, so shut up", while they piss you up and down. It means that any idiot with a gob full of lies and nonsense can defend himself with "Freedom of Speech" and hope that people are suitably impressed. That is what "Freedom" usually means: the bastards can get away with anything, and the decent, fairminded people have no defence against them. Oh, and it also means that it isn't a crime in the legal sense to speak your mind; which is not the same as being safe from whoever is the biggest bully in the neighborhood.
What doesn't mean, but what it should mean is that ordinary, decent people are free to live their life the way they want and pursue the happiness they can find, without fear of losing their life or property. Freedom, at least in America, simply means that the rich and powerful are free to do as they please, and you have no right to stop them.
But back to this present case - although I find the caricature of Obama highly offensive and childish, whether we like it or not, this is what freedom of speech was actually meant to protect: the free expression of political opinion. On the other hand, what I don't like, and what I think should be punishable by law, is the constant use of outright lies and smear campaigns that seems to be all of American, political discourse.
If you want to be taken serious and not mistaken for a complete wanker, you should try to read the actual words of what other people post here. I know it is harsh demand to make, but that's what it's come to in this God-forsaken world.
Those who know me will know that I am not very prudish about the use f recreational drugs, an increase in the use of cocaine is something to be worried about. It means that has become more socially acceptable to use cocaine, and I think that has to be a bad thing all around. Along with the opiates, the central stimulants - especially cocain and meth - are the most objectively harmful on many levels.
I also think that instead of getting hysterical and slamming more restriction on and increasing penalties, it is now time to consider not just a sensible form of regulated legalisation, but also the active development, by competent scientists of recreational substances that are reasonably safe to use. At the moment the situation in many countries is absurd in that you can legally create a "new" drug by making a minor change to the chemical structure of a well-known, banned substance. What this means is that you can legally buy something that is very close to, say, Ecstasy, but which may be much more dangerous; and nobody knows what the hell it will do to your body and brain. That clearly is the wrong way around. It should be like it is for medicine: any new drug should have to pass strict tests, and then be legalized under some sort of regulation.
Oh no. Very few judges are bribed or corrupt these days. Politicians go so much cheaper and are more effective.
This is popular point of view, but not entirely accurate. Corruption is so much more than taking money under the table; in a political system where the views of all participants are polarized in the extreme, as is the case in America, politicians, judges and everybody ese in a position of power will tend to abandon the common good in favour of those that share their own view. Isn't that a form of corruption? I think it is.
Believe it or not, but in many places, such as Northern Europe, it is not uncommon that politicians in government choose not to favour only "their own kind"; they know that when you rule a country, you have to rule for all, and not ignore the large section of the population that didn't vote for you.
I am not sure why America has developed the way it has - there are too many things I don't know about your history, but I think a pretty good guess is that it has a lot to do with the almost complete lack of restrictions on moneymakers and religious charlatans.
What you replyto may have been uniformed and biased, but you are not much better, I think - you sound almost religious.
AFAIK carbohydrates in any form are not required nutrients. At least, there are plenty of documented cases of people living long, happy, healthy, productive lives without ever tasting them. The Inuit, for instance, used to regard plants as unfit for human consumption, and would never touch them unless they were starving. OTOH there is evidence that excessive carbohydrates (or possibly the wrong kind) can gradually bring about insulin resistance, obesity, and eventually diabetes.
You know wrong, then. Humans, being apes, basically, need a typical ape-diet: mostly fruits and other not too tough plant material supplied with some meat, most of which ought to be insects. Fruits contain lots of carbohydrates, and meat actually contains some too; it's not all protein. I don't know where you have that about the Inuit from, but I find it unlikely that they would shun any source of food, when they live in such harsh conditions. When you put forth such claims, you really need to give proper sources, otherwise they are simply not convincing.
What it is that brings on insulin resistance and diabetes is still very much open to debate. The only thing we are almost certain we know is that a varied diet and exercise is the best way to avoid it. The modern western diet is incredibly montonous in terms of its basic composition, and more so if you live on processed food, which is more or less made from industrial waste and additives (OK, I admit it, not 100% accurate, but still uncomfortably close).
Simple equation: energy in == energy consumed
There is nothing wrong with this equation as such; it really underlies it all. Where the complications come in is in how to consistently eat less than we need for a prolonged period of time, when we are surrounded by easy calory-options all the time. Any one who has been on a diet knows how desperately hard it can be - and it is not even the feeling of hunger that is bad, it is the fact that your body plays all sorts of tricks to make you abandon your diet; suddenly your motivation is all gone, suddenly you don't feel fat at all and so on. No, it really is as simple as eating less than you need, and that really is so difficult.
Again, there is ample evidence to show that some people (as in many thousands) have consumed well under 2000 calories a month for decades, in the form of carbohydrates, while doing hard physical work - and wound up grossly obese. Just as others (usually much wealthier) have eaten far more than 2000 calories a day for years, while doing little or no physical work, and remained lean and fit.
Hard evidence, please? As you say, it is "ample", so it should be easy to produce. And I think you probably mean 2000 kcal a day; only dead people consume less than 2000 kcal a month, and they don't generally look fat too me.
Yes, that's right - join the bulk of the scientific, medical, and political establishments - and the big food manufacturers who fund them - and blame the victims. It might be possible to do as you suggest if they would tell us what constitutes a healthy diet. Most intelligent, open-minded people who have taken the trouble to inquire about the subject and researched it widely for years must be quite bewildered by now.
So, you don't include the medical scientists in those that have researched the subject for years? Interesting. Still, you are misrepresenting things here - what the scientists say has not varied wildly over the years; the fact that you have to eat less than you need if you want to lose weight has never changed; but as we learn more about why people eat and how the body reacts to it, we also have to change our opinion about how to manage the difficult task of losing weight in a healthy way. And of course it doesn't help a lot that every time a new scientific finding is published, it is taken away by some money grabbing idiot, who then trumpets it as the new, sensational diet of the moment.
Don't take your mouth too full - I think the current American government is way too bright to actively engage in that kind of nonsense. The Voice of America may be a broadcaster paid for by American public funds, but that hardly makes it "the government".
Another thing is - what is so remarkable about this? Is even as advanced as wrapping html packages in another protocol? The article is sparse on technical detail, and for all I know, it could be nothing more than sending HTML emails or attaching mp3 files. To me this looks more like yet another annoying, but trivial stunt to attract a bit of attention to a non-issue.
This party is, as far as I can see, yet another special interest party. They seem to pop up every now and again, and then they die out because they don't really have a policy about other things. That is why we still, after so many years of democracy, only have a small handful of political parties; there are only so many clearly defined, general ideologies out there - in fact, it is hard to really imagine more than two, isn't it?
So what is this Pirate Party about? Well, freedom of speech - or Freedom of Speech, but it doesn't really become any more general by capitalising the letters. What has Freedom of Speech to say about the financial crisis, unemployment, EU and the military budget? You have be more than a one-trick-pony to tackle real life; it is amazing just how irrelevant the right to make a copy of a DVD is, when you look at the big picture - just about anything is more important.
The importance of Freedom of Speech was perhaps a bit clearer at a time when you could be hanged for treason if you turned your stamp upside-down on a letter, or later, when you could go to prison for organising a strike against the horrenduous working conditions during the industrial revolution, or for talking about voting rights for women. I think talking about big, fundamental human rights, when it really is about nothing more than wanting to distribute copied games and CDs, serves only to devaluate the important of the fundamental rights.
- is the short answer. It is perfectly possible and maybe even desirable to work more than 40 hours a week/8 hours a day for a time, but on average it should work out as 8 hours per day and weekends off.
The reason is not even that "it is not fair" or something; it is simply the most sensible way to manage your workforce. A person can only do good quality work for so many hours a day - if you are on a roll, perhaps you can work through the night, or even several nights, but it will cost dearly in terms of quality for a long time after. We use our rest and sleep to process the things we've learned through our active hours; if we neglect sleep or rest, then we soon become unable to learn new things and see solutions.
I may not be a typical consumer of tv and radio - I hardly ever watch anything and I only listen to the radio when I drive - but as far as I can see, the traditional tv set is well on the way to being dead now. All the major stations offer access to at least some of their programs from their websites, and catching programs at the right time is mostly irrelevant. The other big advantage of getting programs from a website is that you can search for them - you don't have to suffer through progrmas that you have no interest in any more.
Another thing is this about HD - is that really that great a feature? High resolution is important in still photos, but much less so when you're watching a movie, since your eyes are simply not that fast and you don't have the time to analyse all the details anyway. A much more important aspect than image quality is program quality; when you can search for the programs, you are likely to be much more critical about what you watch.
I think at some point the tv will simply become an oversize computer monitor, and you will have whichever computer you like somewhere under it, and the remote will simply be a wireless keyboard/mouse combination; and all tv will come from the net. I also suspect that the public service broadcasters will grow in market share - they tend to make a larger part of the quality programs; since BBC introduced the iPlayer, I simply can't be bothered even looking at ITV et al.
There is no doubt that we can already now construct machines that mimic the human brain's functioning and has the same or greater capacity in all areas; but intelligence is perhaps not a good word to use, as it is a very vague term. This is from Wikipedia:
[About intelligence:] A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.
Things like reasoning, planning and solving problems can all be learned; I'm not even sure how to define "comprehend" in a logically sound manner. Learning and abstraction, on the other hand, are innate to neural networks - one of the common applications of a neural net is feeding a large number of datasets into it, by which process it learns to recognise other datasets that possess the same properties as were common to the learning sample; which in essence describes the process of "abstraction".
Apart from the potential vagueness in the definition of intelligence, isn't it "consciousness" that people actually mean in this context? But we don't really know what that is, yet. "Self-awareness" simply isn't adequate, IMO - all it means is that you are able to distinguish yourself as an object apart from the rest or the world; I find it hard to imagine anything with even a simple brain not being self-aware.
This isn't news. This is China. Do you expect differently?
From you? Not really. From people like you, I expect braindead nonsense whenever the subject contains the word "China" or other related subjects.
For the rest of us - I think it is worth noting that TFA mentions that "a police officer" states that "We are investigating a case where a high school student was beaten to death by his camp supervisors. The case is still under investigation" - IOW, a representative of the local officialdom talks openly about this case to a newsagency, in much the same way as a London police officer would, and refuses to give further details because they are still investigating, just like elsewhere in the world.
The reason I feel the need to draw attention to this is, that it seems to escape the attention of some. Do I need to spell it out any further? There is no "Government Coverup" here; no reasons to hate the Chinese for being Chinese.
It does seem to make sense - psychopaths are characteristic by having difficulty attaching "emotional value" to their actions; but I think it raises some interesting philosophical questions. I think most people would agree that the term "crime" implies that the perpetrator knows what is right and wrong, but chooses to do the wrong thing, to sum it it up; but this implies a value judgement that in itself is based on being able to attach emotional flavour to one's actions in some sense. Again, this is of course only a crude summary of the essence - but if true, can we really call psychopaths criminals in the ordinary sense?
After all, we don't call lions and tigers evil, even though they kill, often cruelly; we understand that they can't act any other way - it is their nature. Of course, we don't let tigers and lions roam freely amongst us either, and I'm not suggesting that we just let psychopaths free.
The other thing is - when we know the cause, we might think up a cure. Would it be right of us to do so? In many, if not most, cases it would have to be done against the individual's will; and if it is right to make adjustments in the fundamental personality of a psychopath, would it be OK in other cases? How many gays and religious/ political dissidents would we see "cured" of their mantal problems with a little snip in the right place? And remember, it was in the US that frontal lobotomy was practised most vigorously for exactly this sort of reason.
MS Word may be about to die - one can only hope - but I don't think it is because it isn't useful; it may not be objectively useful (whatever that means), but there is a lot of people that think it is. Now a days it seems that when you look for work, you need to download an application form written in Word; so obviously the employers thought it was a good idea.
But this situation perhaps highlights the inadequacies of Word more than anything else - because in my experience something like most of those application forms turn out to be unreadable in whatever version of Word I use; and the newest version only augments the problem. I don't know why anybody has put up with it, and for so long. If I ever broke the compatibility that badly of any program I make, I'd be out on my ear in a trice.
I suspect that perhaps people are getting wise to this now that Ooo is a serious alternative; why pay stupidly for something that is really hindering rather than helping?
Not much though went into that one, eh? So, by the same token, if you are too feeble to stand getting mugged or raped, just don't on the high street after dark.
I'm not saying that I want censorship all over the network. But I think it is pretty clear that the majority of people in many if not most countries are more than willing to give up a little freedom in order to avoid the torrent of shite that meets you all too often on the internet. And being democratically minded, I don't think one can justify saying that this is fundamentally wrong; if the people (ie the majority) wants it, is it not reasonable that they get it? And don't start hairsplitting about "the 50.01% majority that oppresses 49.99%" or there abouts - you know it doesn't work like that, and in any case, I think it is a very significant majority that are in favour.
The internet in much of the world is paid for by public funds, at least to some extent; universities and telecoms have traditionally been state owned in much of Europe, and they are the one supplying much of the infrastructure. Is it right that something paid for by the public should be a no-go area for much of the public?
For the record, I have nothing against child porn filters
On the other hand, you felt the need to state so. Yes, I know, I'm just being obnoxious.
It does, on first sight, seem rather invasive. On the other hand, so is jailing people; we are after all not talking about families that are bit out of the ordinary - we are talking about families that are a serious problem and causing major grief to all round them. And I imagine the way it will work is that if you are one of those families, you can get extra benefits, but only if you accept surveillance; I suppose it makes sense from a certain angle - society doesn't want to pour money directly down the drain, so they want to try to make sure that it doesn't get spent on drugs and booze, but actually ends up benefitting those that need it.
That being said - while the problem is real enough, I don't think the cure is the right one; it doesn't really address the root causes of the problems, it is merely trying to treat the symptoms. IMO a significant part of the problem is social inequality; if the parents are at the bottom of the ladder, then they don't have to resources necessary to provide good conditions for their children to grow up in, so they end up in the worst schools, they get into gangs and trouble, and when they grow up, they will become parents to whom this is just the way the world is, and who expect their children to go the same way.
Freedom means different to different people. To a lot of people in the world "freedom" is not a religion, but just something that is nice to have, sometimes. I don't expect the Freedom Fanatics to understand this, let alone accept it, but it is true none the less. I also expect to get modded down for saying so - by those very "Freedom Fighters".
So, to a majority of Germans it makes sense - it seems very clear that the internet has indeed already become a cesspit with a very few gems floating around in it. To a lot of people the rather abstract benefits of "freedom of speech" are simply not important enough to outweigh more mundane concerns, like not being harrassed by the idiots that seem to dominate everything on the internet.
The internet is indeed a powerful tool for communication and it can be used to promote freedom and bring valuable information to everybody and so on. But there is a huge difference between the freedom you enjoy in a society where people treat each other with respect and dignity, and the freedom you have in a lawless wilderness, where you can expect every person you meet to be an enemy. I know which one I'd choose.
Hey, look. Another dorm room political expert who puts dollar signs in proper names, because corruption only occurs in the U.S.! What was all that stuff about the U.N.'s oil for food program? I only criticize the U$!
It is right to criticise the things that are wrong, even if it annoys you. The fact that others are bad too doesn't really mean that the US is good through and through. Criticism, after all, means that people care - adn that they regard you highly enough to expect better of you.
The way big business more or less owns the political scene in America is something that objectively hurts us all, and Americans more than anybody else; the fact that so many Americans either don't see it or actively want it that way is a cause for great concern, in my view; it is certainly hard to explain to a non-American.
So, the Chinese government has just stated to the world that they are not confident that their people are capable of discerning the difference between things that are real, and things that are not real?
Repeating the same, stupid fallacy over and over may be enough to convince you, but it doesn't make it more true.
Another possible interpretation could be that the majority of the Chinese people want it this way and that the government simply follows their wishes. It is not impossible - even the most oppressive government wouldn't be in power unless they had the support of a considerable part of the population, and China is far from the most oppressive regime in the world.
In fact, knowing China and Chinese culture, I'd say that my interpretation is a lot more likely; Chinese culture focuses a lot more on the value of things like education, self-control and morality, and the typically American admiration for notorious criminals such as Billy the Kid, Al Capone and the Mafia is not something they share. Being married to a Chinese, I know just how much revulsion that kind of things generate.
It seems absurd to me that some (almost) equate freedom, privacy and anonymity. Surely if you believe that you have freedom, you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind? And if you speak in a public forum, then you have voluntarily given up your claim to privacy, as far as your opinions go, don't you agree? I can't help feeling that the people who keep propangandising for the right to anonymity in everything they do, have reasons to be ashamed of themselves.
Looked at objectively, anonymity helps criminals enormously, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference to ordinary people. If you go shopping it may be annoying that you are recorded on CCTV, but it is a lot more than annoying if you are burgling a house - it could get you caught.
So, what about img.4chan.org - is it right or wrong to block them? I don't know - and I don't care, to be honest; there are so many web-sites and forums in the world and I only access a few any way. If this one served an important purpose for us all, I'm fairly confident I would have known by now. But I am getting a bit fed up with some people's whining over having to speaking out in the open - I just can't respect that kind of attitude. We in the western world have got political and religious freedoms to excess, but it has always been and will always be a freedom with responsibility attached; because freedom will always be abused by those who feel they are entitled to get more than they have earned.
who cares what languages they learn? If they enjoy it and it allows them to learn how to program why should it matter what language they start out with?
No, I don't agree with that. True, it is important that you enjoy what you are doing, but being a good programmer means, more than anything, that you are good at solving computer problems. And that is something you have to learn; the only way to learn that particulr set of skills is by exposing yourself to problems and overcoming them. Also, a good programmer should know pretty by intuition what happens inside a computer.
That is why I would always say that the first language you really learn should be C - not because it is the best or most pedagogical language of all time, but exactly because it is so close to the HW and allows you the freedom to commit stupid errors. Remember, the most important thing to learn is not to be productive - that's just what an employer wants from you - but to be good at understanding what you are doing to the computer and good at solving problems. All these languages that protect the programmer from making mistakes are tryin to address the wrong problem - they try to make bad programmers productive. It would be better to try to make good programmers; and it is a lot better that you make your mistakes before you get into a proper career.
All out of print books in the public domain should automatically be scanned and made available CHEAPLY for the public (and probably BY the public as well, ie. by the state); the price should only cover the actual cost of scanning and storing - and for printed version, the print costs.
And, I think books in general should either be kept in print or go into the public domain after 5 years.
Slashdot Mirror
There is certainly utility to a good web-enabled phone with plenty of apps
But what you are describing there is not a phone, is it? It's more like a small networked computer, which incidentally can be used as a phone. That seems to be the way things are going at the moment, and I hope we one will see a device that is easily programmable (ie. is a generic standard computer) and has HW that will allow me to read book, play games, connect to networks, and of course, use VOIP.
However, it won't be a phone - the telephone is already a finished thing; the last great innovation was when they put the dial on it, so you could reach any number without having to talk to the operator. That is all there is to a telephone - it's like the keyboard or the mouse: you can add fancy glitter, but that is all it is; it doesn't give you any fundamentally new, necessary functionality.
The Discworld series is brilliant exactly because the stories weren't with humour as the primary goal. Terry Pratchett takes some serious subjects and treats them with depth and insight; and incidentally with a lot of brilliant humour along the way. The Hitchiker's Guide was never more than entertainment - it is not my impression that Adams considered the books as more than that; I think his other books, the ones about the Holistic Detective Agency, were far better literature, and probably closer to his heart.
Does freedom of speech mean anything anymore?
Of course it does; it means a lot of things. It means that the rich can say "You have Freedom of Speech, so shut up", while they piss you up and down. It means that any idiot with a gob full of lies and nonsense can defend himself with "Freedom of Speech" and hope that people are suitably impressed. That is what "Freedom" usually means: the bastards can get away with anything, and the decent, fairminded people have no defence against them. Oh, and it also means that it isn't a crime in the legal sense to speak your mind; which is not the same as being safe from whoever is the biggest bully in the neighborhood.
What doesn't mean, but what it should mean is that ordinary, decent people are free to live their life the way they want and pursue the happiness they can find, without fear of losing their life or property. Freedom, at least in America, simply means that the rich and powerful are free to do as they please, and you have no right to stop them.
But back to this present case - although I find the caricature of Obama highly offensive and childish, whether we like it or not, this is what freedom of speech was actually meant to protect: the free expression of political opinion. On the other hand, what I don't like, and what I think should be punishable by law, is the constant use of outright lies and smear campaigns that seems to be all of American, political discourse.
Yes, of course, that is exactly what I'm saying.
If you want to be taken serious and not mistaken for a complete wanker, you should try to read the actual words of what other people post here. I know it is harsh demand to make, but that's what it's come to in this God-forsaken world.
Those who know me will know that I am not very prudish about the use f recreational drugs, an increase in the use of cocaine is something to be worried about. It means that has become more socially acceptable to use cocaine, and I think that has to be a bad thing all around. Along with the opiates, the central stimulants - especially cocain and meth - are the most objectively harmful on many levels.
I also think that instead of getting hysterical and slamming more restriction on and increasing penalties, it is now time to consider not just a sensible form of regulated legalisation, but also the active development, by competent scientists of recreational substances that are reasonably safe to use. At the moment the situation in many countries is absurd in that you can legally create a "new" drug by making a minor change to the chemical structure of a well-known, banned substance. What this means is that you can legally buy something that is very close to, say, Ecstasy, but which may be much more dangerous; and nobody knows what the hell it will do to your body and brain. That clearly is the wrong way around. It should be like it is for medicine: any new drug should have to pass strict tests, and then be legalized under some sort of regulation.
Oh no. Very few judges are bribed or corrupt these days. Politicians go so much cheaper and are more effective.
This is popular point of view, but not entirely accurate. Corruption is so much more than taking money under the table; in a political system where the views of all participants are polarized in the extreme, as is the case in America, politicians, judges and everybody ese in a position of power will tend to abandon the common good in favour of those that share their own view. Isn't that a form of corruption? I think it is.
Believe it or not, but in many places, such as Northern Europe, it is not uncommon that politicians in government choose not to favour only "their own kind"; they know that when you rule a country, you have to rule for all, and not ignore the large section of the population that didn't vote for you.
I am not sure why America has developed the way it has - there are too many things I don't know about your history, but I think a pretty good guess is that it has a lot to do with the almost complete lack of restrictions on moneymakers and religious charlatans.
What you replyto may have been uniformed and biased, but you are not much better, I think - you sound almost religious.
AFAIK carbohydrates in any form are not required nutrients. At least, there are plenty of documented cases of people living long, happy, healthy, productive lives without ever tasting them. The Inuit, for instance, used to regard plants as unfit for human consumption, and would never touch them unless they were starving. OTOH there is evidence that excessive carbohydrates (or possibly the wrong kind) can gradually bring about insulin resistance, obesity, and eventually diabetes.
You know wrong, then. Humans, being apes, basically, need a typical ape-diet: mostly fruits and other not too tough plant material supplied with some meat, most of which ought to be insects. Fruits contain lots of carbohydrates, and meat actually contains some too; it's not all protein. I don't know where you have that about the Inuit from, but I find it unlikely that they would shun any source of food, when they live in such harsh conditions. When you put forth such claims, you really need to give proper sources, otherwise they are simply not convincing.
What it is that brings on insulin resistance and diabetes is still very much open to debate. The only thing we are almost certain we know is that a varied diet and exercise is the best way to avoid it. The modern western diet is incredibly montonous in terms of its basic composition, and more so if you live on processed food, which is more or less made from industrial waste and additives (OK, I admit it, not 100% accurate, but still uncomfortably close).
Simple equation: energy in == energy consumed
There is nothing wrong with this equation as such; it really underlies it all. Where the complications come in is in how to consistently eat less than we need for a prolonged period of time, when we are surrounded by easy calory-options all the time. Any one who has been on a diet knows how desperately hard it can be - and it is not even the feeling of hunger that is bad, it is the fact that your body plays all sorts of tricks to make you abandon your diet; suddenly your motivation is all gone, suddenly you don't feel fat at all and so on. No, it really is as simple as eating less than you need, and that really is so difficult.
Again, there is ample evidence to show that some people (as in many thousands) have consumed well under 2000 calories a month for decades, in the form of carbohydrates, while doing hard physical work - and wound up grossly obese. Just as others (usually much wealthier) have eaten far more than 2000 calories a day for years, while doing little or no physical work, and remained lean and fit.
Hard evidence, please? As you say, it is "ample", so it should be easy to produce. And I think you probably mean 2000 kcal a day; only dead people consume less than 2000 kcal a month, and they don't generally look fat too me.
Yes, that's right - join the bulk of the scientific, medical, and political establishments - and the big food manufacturers who fund them - and blame the victims. It might be possible to do as you suggest if they would tell us what constitutes a healthy diet. Most intelligent, open-minded people who have taken the trouble to inquire about the subject and researched it widely for years must be quite bewildered by now.
So, you don't include the medical scientists in those that have researched the subject for years? Interesting. Still, you are misrepresenting things here - what the scientists say has not varied wildly over the years; the fact that you have to eat less than you need if you want to lose weight has never changed; but as we learn more about why people eat and how the body reacts to it, we also have to change our opinion about how to manage the difficult task of losing weight in a healthy way. And of course it doesn't help a lot that every time a new scientific finding is published, it is taken away by some money grabbing idiot, who then trumpets it as the new, sensational diet of the moment.
Don't take your mouth too full - I think the current American government is way too bright to actively engage in that kind of nonsense. The Voice of America may be a broadcaster paid for by American public funds, but that hardly makes it "the government".
Another thing is - what is so remarkable about this? Is even as advanced as wrapping html packages in another protocol? The article is sparse on technical detail, and for all I know, it could be nothing more than sending HTML emails or attaching mp3 files. To me this looks more like yet another annoying, but trivial stunt to attract a bit of attention to a non-issue.
This party is, as far as I can see, yet another special interest party. They seem to pop up every now and again, and then they die out because they don't really have a policy about other things. That is why we still, after so many years of democracy, only have a small handful of political parties; there are only so many clearly defined, general ideologies out there - in fact, it is hard to really imagine more than two, isn't it?
So what is this Pirate Party about? Well, freedom of speech - or Freedom of Speech, but it doesn't really become any more general by capitalising the letters. What has Freedom of Speech to say about the financial crisis, unemployment, EU and the military budget? You have be more than a one-trick-pony to tackle real life; it is amazing just how irrelevant the right to make a copy of a DVD is, when you look at the big picture - just about anything is more important.
The importance of Freedom of Speech was perhaps a bit clearer at a time when you could be hanged for treason if you turned your stamp upside-down on a letter, or later, when you could go to prison for organising a strike against the horrenduous working conditions during the industrial revolution, or for talking about voting rights for women. I think talking about big, fundamental human rights, when it really is about nothing more than wanting to distribute copied games and CDs, serves only to devaluate the important of the fundamental rights.
... has the right to indefinitely collect, process, store and share this information
Except that this is not legal in a number of countries; can we assume that they only collect info where it is legal to do so?
- is the short answer. It is perfectly possible and maybe even desirable to work more than 40 hours a week/8 hours a day for a time, but on average it should work out as 8 hours per day and weekends off.
The reason is not even that "it is not fair" or something; it is simply the most sensible way to manage your workforce. A person can only do good quality work for so many hours a day - if you are on a roll, perhaps you can work through the night, or even several nights, but it will cost dearly in terms of quality for a long time after. We use our rest and sleep to process the things we've learned through our active hours; if we neglect sleep or rest, then we soon become unable to learn new things and see solutions.
I may not be a typical consumer of tv and radio - I hardly ever watch anything and I only listen to the radio when I drive - but as far as I can see, the traditional tv set is well on the way to being dead now. All the major stations offer access to at least some of their programs from their websites, and catching programs at the right time is mostly irrelevant. The other big advantage of getting programs from a website is that you can search for them - you don't have to suffer through progrmas that you have no interest in any more.
Another thing is this about HD - is that really that great a feature? High resolution is important in still photos, but much less so when you're watching a movie, since your eyes are simply not that fast and you don't have the time to analyse all the details anyway. A much more important aspect than image quality is program quality; when you can search for the programs, you are likely to be much more critical about what you watch.
I think at some point the tv will simply become an oversize computer monitor, and you will have whichever computer you like somewhere under it, and the remote will simply be a wireless keyboard/mouse combination; and all tv will come from the net. I also suspect that the public service broadcasters will grow in market share - they tend to make a larger part of the quality programs; since BBC introduced the iPlayer, I simply can't be bothered even looking at ITV et al.
There is no doubt that we can already now construct machines that mimic the human brain's functioning and has the same or greater capacity in all areas; but intelligence is perhaps not a good word to use, as it is a very vague term. This is from Wikipedia:
[About intelligence:] A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.
Things like reasoning, planning and solving problems can all be learned; I'm not even sure how to define "comprehend" in a logically sound manner. Learning and abstraction, on the other hand, are innate to neural networks - one of the common applications of a neural net is feeding a large number of datasets into it, by which process it learns to recognise other datasets that possess the same properties as were common to the learning sample; which in essence describes the process of "abstraction".
Apart from the potential vagueness in the definition of intelligence, isn't it "consciousness" that people actually mean in this context? But we don't really know what that is, yet. "Self-awareness" simply isn't adequate, IMO - all it means is that you are able to distinguish yourself as an object apart from the rest or the world; I find it hard to imagine anything with even a simple brain not being self-aware.
This isn't news. This is China. Do you expect differently?
From you? Not really. From people like you, I expect braindead nonsense whenever the subject contains the word "China" or other related subjects.
For the rest of us - I think it is worth noting that TFA mentions that "a police officer" states that "We are investigating a case where a high school student was beaten to death by his camp supervisors. The case is still under investigation" - IOW, a representative of the local officialdom talks openly about this case to a newsagency, in much the same way as a London police officer would, and refuses to give further details because they are still investigating, just like elsewhere in the world.
The reason I feel the need to draw attention to this is, that it seems to escape the attention of some. Do I need to spell it out any further? There is no "Government Coverup" here; no reasons to hate the Chinese for being Chinese.
It does seem to make sense - psychopaths are characteristic by having difficulty attaching "emotional value" to their actions; but I think it raises some interesting philosophical questions. I think most people would agree that the term "crime" implies that the perpetrator knows what is right and wrong, but chooses to do the wrong thing, to sum it it up; but this implies a value judgement that in itself is based on being able to attach emotional flavour to one's actions in some sense. Again, this is of course only a crude summary of the essence - but if true, can we really call psychopaths criminals in the ordinary sense?
After all, we don't call lions and tigers evil, even though they kill, often cruelly; we understand that they can't act any other way - it is their nature. Of course, we don't let tigers and lions roam freely amongst us either, and I'm not suggesting that we just let psychopaths free.
The other thing is - when we know the cause, we might think up a cure. Would it be right of us to do so? In many, if not most, cases it would have to be done against the individual's will; and if it is right to make adjustments in the fundamental personality of a psychopath, would it be OK in other cases? How many gays and religious/ political dissidents would we see "cured" of their mantal problems with a little snip in the right place? And remember, it was in the US that frontal lobotomy was practised most vigorously for exactly this sort of reason.
MS Word may be about to die - one can only hope - but I don't think it is because it isn't useful; it may not be objectively useful (whatever that means), but there is a lot of people that think it is. Now a days it seems that when you look for work, you need to download an application form written in Word; so obviously the employers thought it was a good idea.
But this situation perhaps highlights the inadequacies of Word more than anything else - because in my experience something like most of those application forms turn out to be unreadable in whatever version of Word I use; and the newest version only augments the problem. I don't know why anybody has put up with it, and for so long. If I ever broke the compatibility that badly of any program I make, I'd be out on my ear in a trice.
I suspect that perhaps people are getting wise to this now that Ooo is a serious alternative; why pay stupidly for something that is really hindering rather than helping?
Here's a thought: Don't go there
Not much though went into that one, eh? So, by the same token, if you are too feeble to stand getting mugged or raped, just don't on the high street after dark.
I'm not saying that I want censorship all over the network. But I think it is pretty clear that the majority of people in many if not most countries are more than willing to give up a little freedom in order to avoid the torrent of shite that meets you all too often on the internet. And being democratically minded, I don't think one can justify saying that this is fundamentally wrong; if the people (ie the majority) wants it, is it not reasonable that they get it? And don't start hairsplitting about "the 50.01% majority that oppresses 49.99%" or there abouts - you know it doesn't work like that, and in any case, I think it is a very significant majority that are in favour.
The internet in much of the world is paid for by public funds, at least to some extent; universities and telecoms have traditionally been state owned in much of Europe, and they are the one supplying much of the infrastructure. Is it right that something paid for by the public should be a no-go area for much of the public?
For the record, I have nothing against child porn filters
On the other hand, you felt the need to state so. Yes, I know, I'm just being obnoxious.
It does, on first sight, seem rather invasive. On the other hand, so is jailing people; we are after all not talking about families that are bit out of the ordinary - we are talking about families that are a serious problem and causing major grief to all round them. And I imagine the way it will work is that if you are one of those families, you can get extra benefits, but only if you accept surveillance; I suppose it makes sense from a certain angle - society doesn't want to pour money directly down the drain, so they want to try to make sure that it doesn't get spent on drugs and booze, but actually ends up benefitting those that need it.
That being said - while the problem is real enough, I don't think the cure is the right one; it doesn't really address the root causes of the problems, it is merely trying to treat the symptoms. IMO a significant part of the problem is social inequality; if the parents are at the bottom of the ladder, then they don't have to resources necessary to provide good conditions for their children to grow up in, so they end up in the worst schools, they get into gangs and trouble, and when they grow up, they will become parents to whom this is just the way the world is, and who expect their children to go the same way.
Freedom means different to different people. To a lot of people in the world "freedom" is not a religion, but just something that is nice to have, sometimes. I don't expect the Freedom Fanatics to understand this, let alone accept it, but it is true none the less. I also expect to get modded down for saying so - by those very "Freedom Fighters".
So, to a majority of Germans it makes sense - it seems very clear that the internet has indeed already become a cesspit with a very few gems floating around in it. To a lot of people the rather abstract benefits of "freedom of speech" are simply not important enough to outweigh more mundane concerns, like not being harrassed by the idiots that seem to dominate everything on the internet.
The internet is indeed a powerful tool for communication and it can be used to promote freedom and bring valuable information to everybody and so on. But there is a huge difference between the freedom you enjoy in a society where people treat each other with respect and dignity, and the freedom you have in a lawless wilderness, where you can expect every person you meet to be an enemy. I know which one I'd choose.
Hey, look. Another dorm room political expert who puts dollar signs in proper names, because corruption only occurs in the U.S.! What was all that stuff about the U.N.'s oil for food program? I only criticize the U$!
It is right to criticise the things that are wrong, even if it annoys you. The fact that others are bad too doesn't really mean that the US is good through and through. Criticism, after all, means that people care - adn that they regard you highly enough to expect better of you.
The way big business more or less owns the political scene in America is something that objectively hurts us all, and Americans more than anybody else; the fact that so many Americans either don't see it or actively want it that way is a cause for great concern, in my view; it is certainly hard to explain to a non-American.
My gut says someone is already thinking of adding this device as part of a movie plot. sigh...
Really? Mine generally just growls.
So, the Chinese government has just stated to the world that they are not confident that their people are capable of discerning the difference between things that are real, and things that are not real?
Repeating the same, stupid fallacy over and over may be enough to convince you, but it doesn't make it more true.
Another possible interpretation could be that the majority of the Chinese people want it this way and that the government simply follows their wishes. It is not impossible - even the most oppressive government wouldn't be in power unless they had the support of a considerable part of the population, and China is far from the most oppressive regime in the world.
In fact, knowing China and Chinese culture, I'd say that my interpretation is a lot more likely; Chinese culture focuses a lot more on the value of things like education, self-control and morality, and the typically American admiration for notorious criminals such as Billy the Kid, Al Capone and the Mafia is not something they share. Being married to a Chinese, I know just how much revulsion that kind of things generate.
It seems absurd to me that some (almost) equate freedom, privacy and anonymity. Surely if you believe that you have freedom, you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind? And if you speak in a public forum, then you have voluntarily given up your claim to privacy, as far as your opinions go, don't you agree? I can't help feeling that the people who keep propangandising for the right to anonymity in everything they do, have reasons to be ashamed of themselves.
Looked at objectively, anonymity helps criminals enormously, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference to ordinary people. If you go shopping it may be annoying that you are recorded on CCTV, but it is a lot more than annoying if you are burgling a house - it could get you caught.
So, what about img.4chan.org - is it right or wrong to block them? I don't know - and I don't care, to be honest; there are so many web-sites and forums in the world and I only access a few any way. If this one served an important purpose for us all, I'm fairly confident I would have known by now. But I am getting a bit fed up with some people's whining over having to speaking out in the open - I just can't respect that kind of attitude. We in the western world have got political and religious freedoms to excess, but it has always been and will always be a freedom with responsibility attached; because freedom will always be abused by those who feel they are entitled to get more than they have earned.
who cares what languages they learn? If they enjoy it and it allows them to learn how to program why should it matter what language they start out with?
No, I don't agree with that. True, it is important that you enjoy what you are doing, but being a good programmer means, more than anything, that you are good at solving computer problems. And that is something you have to learn; the only way to learn that particulr set of skills is by exposing yourself to problems and overcoming them. Also, a good programmer should know pretty by intuition what happens inside a computer.
That is why I would always say that the first language you really learn should be C - not because it is the best or most pedagogical language of all time, but exactly because it is so close to the HW and allows you the freedom to commit stupid errors. Remember, the most important thing to learn is not to be productive - that's just what an employer wants from you - but to be good at understanding what you are doing to the computer and good at solving problems. All these languages that protect the programmer from making mistakes are tryin to address the wrong problem - they try to make bad programmers productive. It would be better to try to make good programmers; and it is a lot better that you make your mistakes before you get into a proper career.
All out of print books in the public domain should automatically be scanned and made available CHEAPLY for the public (and probably BY the public as well, ie. by the state); the price should only cover the actual cost of scanning and storing - and for printed version, the print costs.
And, I think books in general should either be kept in print or go into the public domain after 5 years.