I suppose one shouldn't be surprised that you talk about these things from a purely American point of view - however, I think it is relevant to give a viewpoint from the rest of the world. You see, where Americans tend to think that 'American' and 'Good' are one and the same concept, the rest of us don't see it that way; in fact, most of us don't equate our own nationality with some sort of higher 'Good'. To us, a more relevant question would be whether one or the other is better.
Also, you seem to think democracy is one thing, the same to all people. And on a basic level you could that it is: government by the people. But in practise this isn't as simple as that - if you ask the Chinese, most will say that they have democracy; perhaps you disagree, but that is not relevant - they think so. And to turn things around, some would say that America doesn't have real democracy, because in fact you don't get to choose a representative government, all you have to choose from is some guys from the upper class, who are more or less controlled by the wealthiest companies.
As you say, the American way is the American way - to an American (as far as I can tell) the most important thing is money, oh yes, and 'freedom', but I suspect that is more just a word than actual reality. The Chinese on the other hand have spent something like 4000 years cultivating a different view of the world - the concept 'filial piety' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety) is very fundamental, and to most Chinese I know freedom and democracy are not nearly as important.
I don't think China will ever embrace American style capitalism. For many reasons this is simply not feasible; one good reason is that the American capitalism is hugely wasteful, and resources are already getting sparser. China will by necessity choose a system that far more restricted than the American; and so will America, eventually. The system that China has today may well be close to what America will be in the future, not because they force it on you, but because the American people choose it.
Now, about this old, tired going on about censure in China - what about it? I can easily understand why they want to restrict these things, and it is not all to do with the government hating democracy. One major part has to do with China's historical experience with the West: colonialism, opium wars, America's extreme hatred towards anything to do with 'Communism', the way the West (in particular America) has done everything possible to exploit the World's weakest nations etc. They don't really trust us all that much, you see, and in many ways they don't want to become what we are.
Another part is that China is not a hugely well controlled nation - the state simply doesn't have enough resources for policing etc; the population is huge and far more diverse than America's or even Europe's. There are many areas where the central government doesn't have a lot of influence, and they know very well that America wouldn't mind China having more internal trouble. So they try to restrict the network access; not because they don't want the population to learn about the world outside, but because they don't want hostile nations (ie. America) to have too much influence.
Think about it a bit: China lets their students go abroad to study in their thousands, and they let foreigners visit the country - I have yet to come across any restrictions to where I am allowed to go. It is obviously not because they are afraid of people learning about 'freedom' and 'democracy' and all that - if a young student goes to America for 3 - 5 years, won't he be far more likely to pick up the 'wrong' kind of ideas than somebody stumbling across something in a blog somewhere? I think so.
The key to math is that the application of it is far more useful than the raw theory of it.
This is a common misconception. If you know pure mathematics, you can (and often will) become proficient in many of the apllications of you area of study; but if all you have learned is some sort of applied maths, you'll find it difficult going the other way. When you work with an application of maths, you tend to think in 'formulas' and will have difficulty learning even other, related areas of applied maths, simply because you have to learn it from scratch.
Here's another suggestion for extracting energy - or at least that's my hypothesis (not to be confused with THEORY, are you ID proponents listening?):
Due to lightenings etc, the ground in different areas hold an electrical potential that is different for different areas. This means that if we ram a metal rod into the ground in, say Texas and another in Massachusetts and connect them with an insulated cable, a current will flow in the cable. Am I right? And why not?
I don't deny that these things and worse happen or have happened in China. All countries in the world have things in their past and present that they should be ashamed of. For every Tiananmen atrocity performed by China there is a Mai Lai that the USA have executed, or a Falluja. We can keep slinging mud around all day if you like, but it won't lead to a better world; if you begin to perceive your enemy as less than human, then you've already given away your own humanity.
Turn it around for a moment: there's huge number of people in the world who criticize America. How do you feel about that? My guess is that you are proud of what your country is, and you feel it is the best place to live. Don't you think the Chinese feel that way? And as I say, for every person in China who feels oppressed you can find one in America who feels the same way about USA. Maybe in your view the ones in America that feel oppressed are just loonies; but then that is what the average Chinese feels about those in China who complain like that. As for a free press, weeellll, what is it you have in America? Fox News? Media controlled by ultra right wing groups?
Guilty till proven innocent? Or..?
on
Insider Threat
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· Score: 1
In my 30+ years of experience working in IT I've found that companies can be run in basically two way when it comes to the question of security. One is to be anal retentive and implement restrictions on everything so that you can't breathe; this creates a climate where nobody trusts each other, and of course it breeds resentment etc.
The other way is to trust everybody - that tends to make people feel responsibility for the company, the team, the project or whatever. This doesn't mean that everybody should have root access to every server, what I am talking about is the difference between armed guards/barbed wire and a polite notice saying 'Please don't walk in the flowerbeds'. I think about 99% of a company's employees want to do the right thing and don't want to mess around with things they shouldn't; and the 1% who want to mess around will do so no matter what security measures are in place.
I was a systems programmer in one place with ultra high security: 3 levels of security zones, even system programmers couldn't go to the 3rd level (but all the bosses, of course, althought they didn't know a thing about the systems). This was a mainframe shop with VM at the bottom and a number of MVS systems on top of that, a fairly common setup I believe; as I said I couldn't get access to important datasets without written permission from somebody higher up. On the other hand, I had the VM console on my desk and could access everything without even being logged anywhere; that just goes to show how fragile these security measures are. They are generally thought up by incompetents in the financial departments, and you can often walk right through them.
And at the end of the day, you still have to trust somebody; so why not do it properly and make a climate where trustworthyness is a natural thing?
This kind of comment only serves to display your ignorance (as well as scoring easy points on/.)
First of all - have you actually read any Chinese laws? No? You can get them in translation, and they are not really all that draconian; in fact I suspect the average American could subscribe to them with no problems at all. But just like in USA, it is the way that the law is practised that matters. Is the police heavyhanded? Are the judges fair etc? And perhaps the Chinese are no worse off than the Americans in that respect either.
Secondly, what do you actually know about whether the Chinese feel free to speak their mind? I suspect you've never actually been there and spoken to ordinary Chinese. I have, many times, and I can testify that they are not in the least afraid of having an opinion or speaking it in public. I suspect a lot of the American ideas about this come from the time of the cultural revolution, where people were widely persecuted, not only for having the wrong opinions, but also for lots of other things, more or less at random. China has moved on from that - this is a common thing in the world: societies change over time; well, maybe not America, what so I know, but certainly China - how could anyone doubt that? Also, are you absolutely sure that you can get away with having the wrong opinions in America?
Thirdly, it sounds grand, all this drivel about 'ignore immoral laws'; just you try to do that in America. Or perhaps you don't fancy an unlimited holiday at Hotel Gitmo?
A very sound rule of thumb is, if a society is stable over time, then the population is by and large happy with the way things are. This is true not only for USA and Europe, but also for China and many other countries. The ordinary feel quite happy with the way their country is run, and if you actually believe in freedom, you should leave it to them to decide whether they like it.
I think a lot of you Americans need to revise your prejudices. As far as I can see your attitudes towards other countries, and in this particular case China, is caused by a combination of ignorance and simple jealousy - China is doing better and better, while America is going the opposite way, so they are simply 'evil communists' who persecute pious religious practitioners like Falun Gong, American style 'evangelicals' and other representatives of the worst in mankind.
Don't you think we would have heard about it at least in university science education if this was even remotely possible? A discovery that we could generate gravity fields as easily as that would be the biggest scientific and technological leap forward we could imagine. Just imagine the everyday consequences of being able to switch off/on gravity locally.
Apart from that - a sufficiently strong magnetic field will affect a person's body chemistry to say the least; my guess is that this would quickly be fatal.
ADA may be 'out' for all I know, but FORTRAN isn't; it still has a place in numerical computing such as physics and chemistry. Just because the average PC amateur can't be bothered with doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Both FORTRAN and C are still relevant because they are concise and to the point; FORTRAN as a FORmula TRANslator, C as a generalized assembler.
C++ on the other hand is far too complex and overengineered; it was so from the very beginning. I think it began as an attempt at keeping the good things in C while amending the features that were seen as 'the reasons why programmers make errors'. IOW, C++ tries to force you to write correctly. I think there are meny good ideas in C++, but the problem it tries to solve is one that should be solved by the programmer being able to think without moving his lips. The result has been that far too much C++ code is a conceptual spaghetti, where you can't easily follow the logical flow of the program simply by reading the code (I have worked on a number of that kind of projects).
No, the best way would be to add a few useful features to C - say exceptions - and stop at that. And then teach programmers to write code properly.
There really should be a threshold to what kind of articles one could see, like there is for replies.
So here we have yet another article about somebody's narrowminded concept of what the future is going to be like. Who bloody cares about 'video internet'? Yes, the big Hollywood factories that produce entertainment on assembly lines are keen to have all that on the internet so they can roll out their anal-retentive DRM and pay=per-view schemes, and that's all. We on the consumer side will get no real benefits from this 'video internet', on the contrary.
I'm not too sure about this - I think it is great that there will an entry level computer that is so affordable, but I have my doubts about what it will achieve. It's a bit like giving a starving child a year pass to the theme park; perhaps it is fun to be able to go there every day and try the rides, but wouldn't it be more relevant to address that child's real needs?
There is a difference between giving gifts that are nice to give and gifts that are nice to receive. I don't think a laptop is much use if you live in an area where the necessary infrastructure is missing; without reliable electricity and net connections it would simply be a doorstop. And as for learning from the internet - it's no replacement for a school and a teacher.
Apart from that, when a person like Negroponte talks about 'freedom' and 'free speech' it sort of churns my stomach. All he means is 'free according to what suits me'.
I don't think I've ever seen any porn that I didn't simply find dull, to be honest. It's so obviously an industrialized, mechanical product; there's no storyline and the 'acting' seems as authentic as when your friend says 'Wow, what a lovely, shit-brown sixties Lada you've got yourself' - watching a plank of wood would be more captivating. If porn is all you know about sex, then you have a serious learning curve ahead of you.
Life is unbelievably complex, and for all our recent results and new insights in biology and genetics, we are still only just scratching the surface. A living organism, even the simplest prokaryote, isn't just a set of genes. The truth is, we only have a very rough idea about what genes go into any organism; on top of that we don't know what the functions are of the supposedly non-coding parts of the DNA, we hardly know anything yet about the epi-genetics side of things, and we have no idea about how to set up eg. a cell that would actually function even if we had all the necessary knowledge about which genes are necessary.
All we will be able to do in any foreseable future is try to synthesize a new gene, insert it into a cell and see if we can get it to work. I think the ability to build a cell from acratch is at the very least a thousand years away. It's the beginning of these things that is difficult - if you look at the timeline of life it seems that the very first stages of life, the first necessary molecules, were created even before Earth was formed 4 or 5 billion years ago; from this beginning it took something like 4 billion years for the first living cells to emerge, and only in the last 500 million years (since the Cambrian explosion) have we had life more complex than prokaryotes. This ought to tell everybody that we are not at all likely to be able to 'create life' in the near future.
I use Yahoo and have done for a long time. The thing is, I have for a long time had the feeling that the results you get on Google aren't 'honest': I tend to search for rather specialized things, and strikes me as odd that the first several hits are always from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with the search term. And I don't believe it is because those sites have my particular search term embedded - they are that special; that leaves only the conclusion that Google gets paid for serving up sponsored searches on a very dubious basis.
Yahoo does the same, but at least they seem to be honest enough to tell you, as opposed to Google. And I must say, much as I hate adverts, I hate being deceived even more.
"the USA doesn't want Indian companies to hurt the sales of US-American companies"
That, I think is one of the fundamental differences between USA and much of the rest of the world, in particular Europe. Yes, I know that the EU seems to work almost exclusively for business interests, but that is the purpose of EU - and the reason why many Europeans don't like EU. If you look closer you will find that there are many examples of European governments going squarely against big business interests; not at many as it used to be, unfortunately, but still many more than in the US, where the government is exclusively for big business.
What are they afraid of, you ask, and with good reason. Ever since the Soviet Union we've been told in so many ways that 'Socialism is just a naive dream, and see how it has utterly failed' etc. In fact, it is totally toothless, is what we're told; funny how this came so abruptly just after years of 'The Danger of Communism', but that's another story. So, if socialism is so harmless, why do the American government fear it to such an extent?
I think it is reasonable to believe that the following hyposthesis explains it: It is well established that USA is governedn not so much by 'the people', but by the big, ultrarich corporations and business interests. They don't care one bit about things like 'freedom' or 'fairness', let alone justice. Rules and laws are for the proletariat - that's you and me - but they are aristocrats, an altogether different breed. What they really hate about socialism is this talk about redistributing wealth. Anybody knows that no single person has a real need for billions of $ as their personal fortune; hell, I think I would find it difficult to actually spend a million per year in any meaningful way.
Now, you and I may not be entirely convinced that a purely socialist society is the best way, but I think most reasonable people will agree that many of the ideas are quite sympathetic: it doesn't seem reasonable that one lazy and ignorant twit can waltz through life always having loads of money and all the opportunity in the world (say, eg. GW Bush), whereas millions of people just never seems to get a chance no matter how hard they work.
And doesn't it seem good and right that even poor people should have access to healthcare, shelter and education? Of course it does; only a heartless person wouldn't agree. These ideas are part of what one believes as a socialist; and the ones in power are very scared that ordinary people begin to realize that this kind of ideas exist and are actually better than what you have now in America. The people in power doesn't want ordinary people to think or know about this, because than perhaps people will begin to demand just a little more fairness, a bit more sharing; and the rulers don't want to share, not at all, not one tiny bit.
I can't imagine that this kind of situation will not end in some sort of 'revolution' - something where a large enough segment of society stands up and demand a change; in a democracy this could be expected to happen through voting, but is America a true democracy anymore?
It's a funny thing that on one hand the people who determine America's politics, ie. the 'Christian' extremists and the big businesses (and not, as would have been the case in a real democracy the people), have been pushing the largely invalid propaganda that 'China/Russia/... are SO evil' - to the extent that most people in America actually believe this to true; and on the other hand those same people are pushing for increased dependency on and trade with China.
I don't know how, but you guys - the American people - seriously need to open your eyes. I mean, for years you've all agreed that politicians, lawyers, news services and big businesses are totally amoral and will constantly lie to you about anything as long as it serves their purpose; so why do you keep taking that crap? And not only that, you lap it up as if it was the very Gospel itself, and you let it go on and on. How can a country be a democracy if people are not allowed to see enough of the truth to make up their own minds?
Personally I think the basic problem is your extreme, paranoid version of 'capitalism' - it would do all of you good to incorporate some of the ideas of socialism in your society. Look at countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden - perhaps not the most brilliant stars in the sky, but there's a lot of good there that you simply don't have. You could, however.
But I think the US have let the chance pass them by - you guys had it all in the palm your hand 50 years ago, or so. Now it will be countries like China and India that will lead us into the future; and perhaps that is not so bad after all. Forget all the drivel about them not being 'democratic' or 'free' - people are not interested in that, at least not after the age of perhaps 25. What they want is that their world tomorrow is more or less like today.
As for moral leadership - I honestly don't think USA has ever had much to offer there. Yes, yours is the most Christian country in the world, no doubt; but morality does not spring from religion. All cultures in the world agree about what is right and wrong, and the fact that religious institutions have hijacked the concept ('embrace and extend'?) doesn't make it their invention. Apart from that, what is a religious institution other than a combination of delusions, bullying and a protection racket? 'You'd better pay your tithes/go to church/whatever; you don't want anything bad to happen'...
And to that guy who's about to ask 'Are you some kind of communist?': Yes!! And we are going to take away your guns and money; and then we'll tell you to turn over, so we can screw you from behind. You will enjoy it, because we tell you to.
You can't rely on the link to the article to be available; especially not if the article gets slashdotted. You can use abbreviations when you are in a context. You are not in the context of the article when you just copy a paragraph from the middle of it and create a link.
Why oh why do people, who feel they have somethin to tell that involves references to species ALWAYS abbreviate the generic name? How the hell is anybody to guess WTF things like 'E. coli', 'D. radiourans' or other phrases refer to? So what does the 'C' in 'C. hydrogenoformans' mean - assuming that 'hydrogenoformans' shouldn't have been 'hydrogeniformans' as well?
Names of biological species consist of two parts: the generic name and the specific epithet. Now, since there's significantly more than 1 genus of bacteria that begin with 'C', it is by no means self evident which one we are talking about; so if I want to look up what else is known about this bacteria, I am probably not going to be able to find anything useful, because the people in the scientific community who know about these things are going to use the full generic name. Which is one reason why it is important: when you post to a public newsservice, you either convey precise information or you are simply running with some stupid gossip. In my opinion, if you can't be bothered with looking up and checking the basic information, don't bother at all; I have no time for gossip.
I am very surprised to hear this. I personally have only seen a handful of adverts on the web in the last few months - this is because I use firefox and adblock as well as a few other tricks. And I help everybody I know to do the same.
The truth is - most people despise adverts because they are deceptive, annoying or irrelevant (and quite often all). When I buy things it is often despite having seen an advert for it; that is how I feel about the kind of advertising we are presented with, and I think many feel the same. When I want to buy anything more expensive than a bottle of milk, I first research what my options, find what I need and where it is cheapest - then I buy. Adverts don't enter into it, unless you count such things as catalogs that you pay for. And that illustrates the difference between reality and the fantasy if the advertisers: my research presents me with the information I want, whereas advertising is in your face, disruptive - and highly unwelcome.
What I find particularly strange is that what you would have thought was otherwise sensible businesses keep doing this when it so obviously alienates a lot of people.
Looking through the responses it seems that I am the only one that find it deeply disturbing that somebody wants to 'drive away teenagers'. Teenagers are our children - I can see how they may be annoying from time to time, but they shouldn't be driven away, they should be taken care of, integrated into society. I mean, why do you think teenagers in deprived areas end up in gangs, crime and drugs? It's certainly not because their parent have too much time or other resources for them.
Firstly, this kind of thing is based on the assumption that even a 'bad guy' will somehow feel bad about what their are about to do, and there will feel under emotional stress. Two of the most dangerous kinds of persons, psychopaths and suicide terrorists, are not likely to to fall into this category. Psychopaths don't care, simply, they will lie or contemplate atrocities like normal people would think about buying a bottle of milk. And a person who has decided to die has overcome the fear; it is a wellknown phenomenon that a person who wants to commit suicide often enters a phase of perfect calm and contentment when the decision has been made.
Secondly, as others point out, a lot of people feel very bad about small transgressions. I remember one lady who felt very nervous because she had bought 1 small bottle of alcohol over the limit and was afraid to get caught. So are we now going to catch all those who are under a bit of strain, but let through the really dangerous ones?
Thridly, wouldn't it perfectly possible to subvert the equipment - perhaps simply by eating Valium or similar?
1. Realize from the beginning that standards have to change regularly in order to fit the needs.
2. Allow people to decide for themselves what is the best way to code. Define a small set of minimum requirements, but keep it simple and easily achievable. Comments are good - but it is better to take the time to write proper code:
a. Proper code is well indented.
b. Proper code is simple - this means small functions, no macros and short symbol names.
c. Proper code is well abstracted: this is often the most difficult part of coding. Abstraction means that the code solves a whole class of problems rather than just one. Well abstracted means that it is not taken too far; there has to be a balance.
d. Proper code is easy to maintain.
3. Provide the proper tools - that is: tools, not toys. Some people will want an IDE like Visual C++, others prefer vi and make. Make sure the entire production system and the standards allow for this. For version control, use something that has both a CLI and a GUI etc etc.
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I suppose one shouldn't be surprised that you talk about these things from a purely American point of view - however, I think it is relevant to give a viewpoint from the rest of the world. You see, where Americans tend to think that 'American' and 'Good' are one and the same concept, the rest of us don't see it that way; in fact, most of us don't equate our own nationality with some sort of higher 'Good'. To us, a more relevant question would be whether one or the other is better.
Also, you seem to think democracy is one thing, the same to all people. And on a basic level you could that it is: government by the people. But in practise this isn't as simple as that - if you ask the Chinese, most will say that they have democracy; perhaps you disagree, but that is not relevant - they think so. And to turn things around, some would say that America doesn't have real democracy, because in fact you don't get to choose a representative government, all you have to choose from is some guys from the upper class, who are more or less controlled by the wealthiest companies.
As you say, the American way is the American way - to an American (as far as I can tell) the most important thing is money, oh yes, and 'freedom', but I suspect that is more just a word than actual reality. The Chinese on the other hand have spent something like 4000 years cultivating a different view of the world - the concept 'filial piety' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety) is very fundamental, and to most Chinese I know freedom and democracy are not nearly as important.
I don't think China will ever embrace American style capitalism. For many reasons this is simply not feasible; one good reason is that the American capitalism is hugely wasteful, and resources are already getting sparser. China will by necessity choose a system that far more restricted than the American; and so will America, eventually. The system that China has today may well be close to what America will be in the future, not because they force it on you, but because the American people choose it.
Now, about this old, tired going on about censure in China - what about it? I can easily understand why they want to restrict these things, and it is not all to do with the government hating democracy. One major part has to do with China's historical experience with the West: colonialism, opium wars, America's extreme hatred towards anything to do with 'Communism', the way the West (in particular America) has done everything possible to exploit the World's weakest nations etc. They don't really trust us all that much, you see, and in many ways they don't want to become what we are.
Another part is that China is not a hugely well controlled nation - the state simply doesn't have enough resources for policing etc; the population is huge and far more diverse than America's or even Europe's. There are many areas where the central government doesn't have a lot of influence, and they know very well that America wouldn't mind China having more internal trouble. So they try to restrict the network access; not because they don't want the population to learn about the world outside, but because they don't want hostile nations (ie. America) to have too much influence.
Think about it a bit: China lets their students go abroad to study in their thousands, and they let foreigners visit the country - I have yet to come across any restrictions to where I am allowed to go. It is obviously not because they are afraid of people learning about 'freedom' and 'democracy' and all that - if a young student goes to America for 3 - 5 years, won't he be far more likely to pick up the 'wrong' kind of ideas than somebody stumbling across something in a blog somewhere? I think so.
The key to math is that the application of it is far more useful than the raw theory of it.
This is a common misconception. If you know pure mathematics, you can (and often will) become proficient in many of the apllications of you area of study; but if all you have learned is some sort of applied maths, you'll find it difficult going the other way. When you work with an application of maths, you tend to think in 'formulas' and will have difficulty learning even other, related areas of applied maths, simply because you have to learn it from scratch.
wouldn't that make treehugging dangerous?
Here's another suggestion for extracting energy - or at least that's my hypothesis (not to be confused with THEORY, are you ID proponents listening?):
Due to lightenings etc, the ground in different areas hold an electrical potential that is different for different areas. This means that if we ram a metal rod into the ground in, say Texas and another in Massachusetts and connect them with an insulated cable, a current will flow in the cable. Am I right? And why not?
I don't deny that these things and worse happen or have happened in China. All countries in the world have things in their past and present that they should be ashamed of. For every Tiananmen atrocity performed by China there is a Mai Lai that the USA have executed, or a Falluja. We can keep slinging mud around all day if you like, but it won't lead to a better world; if you begin to perceive your enemy as less than human, then you've already given away your own humanity.
Turn it around for a moment: there's huge number of people in the world who criticize America. How do you feel about that? My guess is that you are proud of what your country is, and you feel it is the best place to live. Don't you think the Chinese feel that way? And as I say, for every person in China who feels oppressed you can find one in America who feels the same way about USA. Maybe in your view the ones in America that feel oppressed are just loonies; but then that is what the average Chinese feels about those in China who complain like that. As for a free press, weeellll, what is it you have in America? Fox News? Media controlled by ultra right wing groups?
In my 30+ years of experience working in IT I've found that companies can be run in basically two way when it comes to the question of security. One is to be anal retentive and implement restrictions on everything so that you can't breathe; this creates a climate where nobody trusts each other, and of course it breeds resentment etc.
The other way is to trust everybody - that tends to make people feel responsibility for the company, the team, the project or whatever. This doesn't mean that everybody should have root access to every server, what I am talking about is the difference between armed guards/barbed wire and a polite notice saying 'Please don't walk in the flowerbeds'. I think about 99% of a company's employees want to do the right thing and don't want to mess around with things they shouldn't; and the 1% who want to mess around will do so no matter what security measures are in place.
I was a systems programmer in one place with ultra high security: 3 levels of security zones, even system programmers couldn't go to the 3rd level (but all the bosses, of course, althought they didn't know a thing about the systems). This was a mainframe shop with VM at the bottom and a number of MVS systems on top of that, a fairly common setup I believe; as I said I couldn't get access to important datasets without written permission from somebody higher up. On the other hand, I had the VM console on my desk and could access everything without even being logged anywhere; that just goes to show how fragile these security measures are. They are generally thought up by incompetents in the financial departments, and you can often walk right through them.
And at the end of the day, you still have to trust somebody; so why not do it properly and make a climate where trustworthyness is a natural thing?
This kind of comment only serves to display your ignorance (as well as scoring easy points on /.)
First of all - have you actually read any Chinese laws? No? You can get them in translation, and they are not really all that draconian; in fact I suspect the average American could subscribe to them with no problems at all. But just like in USA, it is the way that the law is practised that matters. Is the police heavyhanded? Are the judges fair etc? And perhaps the Chinese are no worse off than the Americans in that respect either.
Secondly, what do you actually know about whether the Chinese feel free to speak their mind? I suspect you've never actually been there and spoken to ordinary Chinese. I have, many times, and I can testify that they are not in the least afraid of having an opinion or speaking it in public. I suspect a lot of the American ideas about this come from the time of the cultural revolution, where people were widely persecuted, not only for having the wrong opinions, but also for lots of other things, more or less at random. China has moved on from that - this is a common thing in the world: societies change over time; well, maybe not America, what so I know, but certainly China - how could anyone doubt that? Also, are you absolutely sure that you can get away with having the wrong opinions in America?
Thirdly, it sounds grand, all this drivel about 'ignore immoral laws'; just you try to do that in America. Or perhaps you don't fancy an unlimited holiday at Hotel Gitmo?
A very sound rule of thumb is, if a society is stable over time, then the population is by and large happy with the way things are. This is true not only for USA and Europe, but also for China and many other countries. The ordinary feel quite happy with the way their country is run, and if you actually believe in freedom, you should leave it to them to decide whether they like it.
I think a lot of you Americans need to revise your prejudices. As far as I can see your attitudes towards other countries, and in this particular case China, is caused by a combination of ignorance and simple jealousy - China is doing better and better, while America is going the opposite way, so they are simply 'evil communists' who persecute pious religious practitioners like Falun Gong, American style 'evangelicals' and other representatives of the worst in mankind.
Don't you think we would have heard about it at least in university science education if this was even remotely possible? A discovery that we could generate gravity fields as easily as that would be the biggest scientific and technological leap forward we could imagine. Just imagine the everyday consequences of being able to switch off/on gravity locally.
Apart from that - a sufficiently strong magnetic field will affect a person's body chemistry to say the least; my guess is that this would quickly be fatal.
ADA may be 'out' for all I know, but FORTRAN isn't; it still has a place in numerical computing such as physics and chemistry. Just because the average PC amateur can't be bothered with doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Both FORTRAN and C are still relevant because they are concise and to the point; FORTRAN as a FORmula TRANslator, C as a generalized assembler.
C++ on the other hand is far too complex and overengineered; it was so from the very beginning. I think it began as an attempt at keeping the good things in C while amending the features that were seen as 'the reasons why programmers make errors'. IOW, C++ tries to force you to write correctly. I think there are meny good ideas in C++, but the problem it tries to solve is one that should be solved by the programmer being able to think without moving his lips. The result has been that far too much C++ code is a conceptual spaghetti, where you can't easily follow the logical flow of the program simply by reading the code (I have worked on a number of that kind of projects).
No, the best way would be to add a few useful features to C - say exceptions - and stop at that. And then teach programmers to write code properly.
There really should be a threshold to what kind of articles one could see, like there is for replies.
So here we have yet another article about somebody's narrowminded concept of what the future is going to be like. Who bloody cares about 'video internet'? Yes, the big Hollywood factories that produce entertainment on assembly lines are keen to have all that on the internet so they can roll out their anal-retentive DRM and pay=per-view schemes, and that's all. We on the consumer side will get no real benefits from this 'video internet', on the contrary.
I'm not too sure about this - I think it is great that there will an entry level computer that is so affordable, but I have my doubts about what it will achieve. It's a bit like giving a starving child a year pass to the theme park; perhaps it is fun to be able to go there every day and try the rides, but wouldn't it be more relevant to address that child's real needs?
There is a difference between giving gifts that are nice to give and gifts that are nice to receive. I don't think a laptop is much use if you live in an area where the necessary infrastructure is missing; without reliable electricity and net connections it would simply be a doorstop. And as for learning from the internet - it's no replacement for a school and a teacher.
Apart from that, when a person like Negroponte talks about 'freedom' and 'free speech' it sort of churns my stomach. All he means is 'free according to what suits me'.
I don't think I've ever seen any porn that I didn't simply find dull, to be honest. It's so obviously an industrialized, mechanical product; there's no storyline and the 'acting' seems as authentic as when your friend says 'Wow, what a lovely, shit-brown sixties Lada you've got yourself' - watching a plank of wood would be more captivating. If porn is all you know about sex, then you have a serious learning curve ahead of you.
Life is unbelievably complex, and for all our recent results and new insights in biology and genetics, we are still only just scratching the surface. A living organism, even the simplest prokaryote, isn't just a set of genes. The truth is, we only have a very rough idea about what genes go into any organism; on top of that we don't know what the functions are of the supposedly non-coding parts of the DNA, we hardly know anything yet about the epi-genetics side of things, and we have no idea about how to set up eg. a cell that would actually function even if we had all the necessary knowledge about which genes are necessary.
All we will be able to do in any foreseable future is try to synthesize a new gene, insert it into a cell and see if we can get it to work. I think the ability to build a cell from acratch is at the very least a thousand years away. It's the beginning of these things that is difficult - if you look at the timeline of life it seems that the very first stages of life, the first necessary molecules, were created even before Earth was formed 4 or 5 billion years ago; from this beginning it took something like 4 billion years for the first living cells to emerge, and only in the last 500 million years (since the Cambrian explosion) have we had life more complex than prokaryotes. This ought to tell everybody that we are not at all likely to be able to 'create life' in the near future.
So, Uranus is a gas giant? Makes sense, I suppose..
'See, I took a picture of Uranus; it's got brown rings around it'
I use Yahoo and have done for a long time. The thing is, I have for a long time had the feeling that the results you get on Google aren't 'honest': I tend to search for rather specialized things, and strikes me as odd that the first several hits are always from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with the search term. And I don't believe it is because those sites have my particular search term embedded - they are that special; that leaves only the conclusion that Google gets paid for serving up sponsored searches on a very dubious basis.
Yahoo does the same, but at least they seem to be honest enough to tell you, as opposed to Google. And I must say, much as I hate adverts, I hate being deceived even more.
"the USA doesn't want Indian companies to hurt the sales of US-American companies"
That, I think is one of the fundamental differences between USA and much of the rest of the world, in particular Europe. Yes, I know that the EU seems to work almost exclusively for business interests, but that is the purpose of EU - and the reason why many Europeans don't like EU. If you look closer you will find that there are many examples of European governments going squarely against big business interests; not at many as it used to be, unfortunately, but still many more than in the US, where the government is exclusively for big business.
What are they afraid of, you ask, and with good reason. Ever since the Soviet Union we've been told in so many ways that 'Socialism is just a naive dream, and see how it has utterly failed' etc. In fact, it is totally toothless, is what we're told; funny how this came so abruptly just after years of 'The Danger of Communism', but that's another story. So, if socialism is so harmless, why do the American government fear it to such an extent?
I think it is reasonable to believe that the following hyposthesis explains it: It is well established that USA is governedn not so much by 'the people', but by the big, ultrarich corporations and business interests. They don't care one bit about things like 'freedom' or 'fairness', let alone justice. Rules and laws are for the proletariat - that's you and me - but they are aristocrats, an altogether different breed. What they really hate about socialism is this talk about redistributing wealth. Anybody knows that no single person has a real need for billions of $ as their personal fortune; hell, I think I would find it difficult to actually spend a million per year in any meaningful way.
Now, you and I may not be entirely convinced that a purely socialist society is the best way, but I think most reasonable people will agree that many of the ideas are quite sympathetic: it doesn't seem reasonable that one lazy and ignorant twit can waltz through life always having loads of money and all the opportunity in the world (say, eg. GW Bush), whereas millions of people just never seems to get a chance no matter how hard they work.
And doesn't it seem good and right that even poor people should have access to healthcare, shelter and education? Of course it does; only a heartless person wouldn't agree. These ideas are part of what one believes as a socialist; and the ones in power are very scared that ordinary people begin to realize that this kind of ideas exist and are actually better than what you have now in America. The people in power doesn't want ordinary people to think or know about this, because than perhaps people will begin to demand just a little more fairness, a bit more sharing; and the rulers don't want to share, not at all, not one tiny bit.
I can't imagine that this kind of situation will not end in some sort of 'revolution' - something where a large enough segment of society stands up and demand a change; in a democracy this could be expected to happen through voting, but is America a true democracy anymore?
"I'm wondering, where is this "Land of the Free and home of the Brave" I have heard so much about?"
China?
It's a funny thing that on one hand the people who determine America's politics, ie. the 'Christian' extremists and the big businesses (and not, as would have been the case in a real democracy the people), have been pushing the largely invalid propaganda that 'China/Russia/... are SO evil' - to the extent that most people in America actually believe this to true; and on the other hand those same people are pushing for increased dependency on and trade with China.
I don't know how, but you guys - the American people - seriously need to open your eyes. I mean, for years you've all agreed that politicians, lawyers, news services and big businesses are totally amoral and will constantly lie to you about anything as long as it serves their purpose; so why do you keep taking that crap? And not only that, you lap it up as if it was the very Gospel itself, and you let it go on and on. How can a country be a democracy if people are not allowed to see enough of the truth to make up their own minds?
Personally I think the basic problem is your extreme, paranoid version of 'capitalism' - it would do all of you good to incorporate some of the ideas of socialism in your society. Look at countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden - perhaps not the most brilliant stars in the sky, but there's a lot of good there that you simply don't have. You could, however.
Well said.
But I think the US have let the chance pass them by - you guys had it all in the palm your hand 50 years ago, or so. Now it will be countries like China and India that will lead us into the future; and perhaps that is not so bad after all. Forget all the drivel about them not being 'democratic' or 'free' - people are not interested in that, at least not after the age of perhaps 25. What they want is that their world tomorrow is more or less like today.
As for moral leadership - I honestly don't think USA has ever had much to offer there. Yes, yours is the most Christian country in the world, no doubt; but morality does not spring from religion. All cultures in the world agree about what is right and wrong, and the fact that religious institutions have hijacked the concept ('embrace and extend'?) doesn't make it their invention. Apart from that, what is a religious institution other than a combination of delusions, bullying and a protection racket? 'You'd better pay your tithes/go to church/whatever; you don't want anything bad to happen'...
And to that guy who's about to ask 'Are you some kind of communist?': Yes!! And we are going to take away your guns and money; and then we'll tell you to turn over, so we can screw you from behind. You will enjoy it, because we tell you to.
I did - that is not the point.
You can't rely on the link to the article to be available; especially not if the article gets slashdotted. You can use abbreviations when you are in a context. You are not in the context of the article when you just copy a paragraph from the middle of it and create a link.
Why oh why do people, who feel they have somethin to tell that involves references to species ALWAYS abbreviate the generic name? How the hell is anybody to guess WTF things like 'E. coli', 'D. radiourans' or other phrases refer to? So what does the 'C' in 'C. hydrogenoformans' mean - assuming that 'hydrogenoformans' shouldn't have been 'hydrogeniformans' as well?
Names of biological species consist of two parts: the generic name and the specific epithet. Now, since there's significantly more than 1 genus of bacteria that begin with 'C', it is by no means self evident which one we are talking about; so if I want to look up what else is known about this bacteria, I am probably not going to be able to find anything useful, because the people in the scientific community who know about these things are going to use the full generic name. Which is one reason why it is important: when you post to a public newsservice, you either convey precise information or you are simply running with some stupid gossip. In my opinion, if you can't be bothered with looking up and checking the basic information, don't bother at all; I have no time for gossip.
I am very surprised to hear this. I personally have only seen a handful of adverts on the web in the last few months - this is because I use firefox and adblock as well as a few other tricks. And I help everybody I know to do the same.
The truth is - most people despise adverts because they are deceptive, annoying or irrelevant (and quite often all). When I buy things it is often despite having seen an advert for it; that is how I feel about the kind of advertising we are presented with, and I think many feel the same. When I want to buy anything more expensive than a bottle of milk, I first research what my options, find what I need and where it is cheapest - then I buy. Adverts don't enter into it, unless you count such things as catalogs that you pay for. And that illustrates the difference between reality and the fantasy if the advertisers: my research presents me with the information I want, whereas advertising is in your face, disruptive - and highly unwelcome.
What I find particularly strange is that what you would have thought was otherwise sensible businesses keep doing this when it so obviously alienates a lot of people.
Looking through the responses it seems that I am the only one that find it deeply disturbing that somebody wants to 'drive away teenagers'. Teenagers are our children - I can see how they may be annoying from time to time, but they shouldn't be driven away, they should be taken care of, integrated into society. I mean, why do you think teenagers in deprived areas end up in gangs, crime and drugs? It's certainly not because their parent have too much time or other resources for them.
What a stupid concept, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, this kind of thing is based on the assumption that even a 'bad guy' will somehow feel bad about what their are about to do, and there will feel under emotional stress. Two of the most dangerous kinds of persons, psychopaths and suicide terrorists, are not likely to to fall into this category. Psychopaths don't care, simply, they will lie or contemplate atrocities like normal people would think about buying a bottle of milk. And a person who has decided to die has overcome the fear; it is a wellknown phenomenon that a person who wants to commit suicide often enters a phase of perfect calm and contentment when the decision has been made.
Secondly, as others point out, a lot of people feel very bad about small transgressions. I remember one lady who felt very nervous because she had bought 1 small bottle of alcohol over the limit and was afraid to get caught. So are we now going to catch all those who are under a bit of strain, but let through the really dangerous ones?
Thridly, wouldn't it perfectly possible to subvert the equipment - perhaps simply by eating Valium or similar?
1. Realize from the beginning that standards have to change regularly in order to fit the needs.
2. Allow people to decide for themselves what is the best way to code. Define a small set of minimum requirements, but keep it simple and easily achievable. Comments are good - but it is better to take the time to write proper code:
a. Proper code is well indented.
b. Proper code is simple - this means small functions, no macros and short symbol names.
c. Proper code is well abstracted: this is often the most difficult part of coding. Abstraction means that the code solves a whole class of problems rather than just one. Well abstracted means that it is not taken too far; there has to be a balance.
d. Proper code is easy to maintain.
3. Provide the proper tools - that is: tools, not toys. Some people will want an IDE like Visual C++, others prefer vi and make. Make sure the entire production system and the standards allow for this. For version control, use something that has both a CLI and a GUI etc etc.