WeChat is a Tencent product, and Tencent is partially state-owned by the People's Republic of China. So I can guarantee you that anything you do in that program - in fact, probably anything you do in any device with that program installed, or any device linked to your WeChat profile with social media or other links - is going straight to a national surveillance agency. Just not an American one.
I know that - give me some credit, I am after all able to find the keys on my keyboard - and I didn't say I recommend it, only that I use it, as do most Chinese, apparently, or at least those that I know; and I used it as an example of what kind of functionality one should be able to find with little effort in a large number of apps. And as I did point out, it is not realistic to expect things like anonymity or security from a free tool that, for it function, relies fundamentally on all traffic passing through the servers of any business, whose main business is to mine the traffic. Seriously, you guys are out there, if you can't even read to the end of a comment before screaming in paranoia.
I don't fear WeChat any more - or less - than Skype or whatever else there is with similar functionality. There is no such thing as a free lunch - so if anybody gives you something for free, there is a catch. There always is, and you simply have to live with that knowledge, and choose your actions accordingly. Personally, I don't have the imagination to guess what the Chinese government would want to take a deep interest in the tsunamis of low-level trivia that roars through WeChat all the time - it is just not all that captivating, but it is handy to be able to make a free call to family and friends anywhere in the world.
Not to mention that while anti-matter/matter reactions do release an awful lot of energy, because it is in the form of gamma radiation, it will have little practical value, since gamma photons have a tendency to zip right through most things and offload all their energy in whatever they do manage to hit. Unless you make your rocket out of, I don't know, 100 meters of lead shielding or so, its passengers will simply evaporate. It might work, of course, if we could direct the radiation and hold on the whichever device is used to do so.
The rest are (and always have been) operating under the misapprehension that computers are electronic brains or oracles that you can converse with as you would another human being
Well, that is true - I have seen so many people trying to explain in great detail to Google what it is they are looking for, not understanding what a database search actually does. But given that the NSF probably contain quite a lot of well educated, highly intelligent and competent people, I would expect a project like this to have an aim that is somewhat intelligent; could it not be that somewhere on the journey from research to summary on/. the essence of the thing got somewhat muddled? Stranger things happen at sea, or so I'm told.
There are loads of alternatives to Skype, that offer similar (but not identical) functionality. The one I use is WeChat, not because it is better than the rest, but just because it is what the people I care about use it. It can do the usual things: chat (text etc) and calls (w or w/o video). No doubt there are many others. As for security: surely you are joking? How would these companies operate, if they couldn't get their cold, clammy hands on the info you send?
Star Trek is silly anyway, because it is unlikely that so many civilizations would reach nearly the exact same degree of development at exactly the same time.
I would say there may be argument for believing that conditions for life would become abundant about the sameish time everywhere and that life evolved from scratch would take about the same time it has taken on earth, before it evolves a technological evolution. But there may be many reasons why we don't hear from the others - space travel, for one thing, may never be something that becomes easy enough to do, travel time being the biggest obstacle. Or we humans may be far too optimistic about what kind of reception we might get, if we met another species out there - they may have thought better about this that we have and chosen not to risk it.
Yes, China and Japan have in history (up to very recent history in the case of China) copied, and stolen, plenty of stuff from the US.
Who, by the way, also "stole" quite a few things from Europe, back in the day. It's just what countries do, until they then take the lead and forget all that messy business. Annoying and probably wrong in some moral sense, but when has moral really been given a place in politics?
How is any of what you describe different from what went on in Christianity? Persecution of heretics in Christianity didn't stop with the Reformation - the followers of Luther, Calvin etc were even more intolerant of what they saw as heresy, than the Catholics. Except perhaps for the Quakers. Hell, if you go to some places in the US, where they take their version of the Gospel very serious indeed, then you won't meet much tolerance either, if you dissent from their "Truth". This is simply human nature - we create our Gods according our own pettyness, which is why we hear that "God hates gays" and so on.
The thing to note about Islam is that it's not a 'live & let live' religion: everybody is expected to make everybody else follow 'true Islam',...
In Matth 28:19, all Christians are ordered to "go and make disciples of all nations,..." - something that is thankfully shrugged off by most followers of Christianity, but it has in the past been taken as a carte blanche to go out and subdue ther rest of the world, from the innumerable, religious wars or trivia, the Crusades (the Christian term for Jihad), the European imperialism ("We have a duty to civilise the Heathens") etc etc. It is also well known to anybody with a moderately open mind, that by far the most Muslims are completely relaxed about whether other people follow other religions.
What we can learn from this is that religion is not what drives people to commit violence, terrorism or other atrocities; religion is merely the excuse. A way of explaining away why you don't feel guilt - a lie, in other words. And here you are, trying to convince yourself and others that religion is an excuse for treating other humans badly, simply because you don't like their faith.
Given that the wholesale price being guaranteed by the government for each kWh was massively higher than even the price consumers are expected to be paying when it was due to open I see no reason to go ahead with it. Energy prices should be dropping not climbing as we have better renewables being developed.
I don't know if what you claim is factually true, and unfortunately I don't see any citations. And I don't think the numbers issue is important enough to engage me in a search, to be honest. But there are two things I think are incorrect:
- There are plenty of reasons why we should not just abandon a project of this magnitude at such a late stage. One would assume - or at least hope - that those involved over the years have done all the necessary research into all apsects of the project, before they reach the stage where everybody were going to sign the deal; it is absolutely mindblowing that somebody pulls out of such a huge deal in this way, and I think the responses from the French and the Chinese is very, very muted, to say the least. There must be some people in high places that are absolutely fuming, right now. But that aside, we do actually need to build good business relationships both with the French and the Chinese, especially since we have stupidly chosen to walk away from the EU. It is hardly a secret that one of the main attractions of UK for foreign investors was the fact that we had a very welcoming investment climate as well as A POSITION WITHIN THE EU (sorry for shouting); us leaving has already given China and others pause for thought, and suddenly abandoning such a huge project as the Hinkley Point reactor seems to confirm that the UK aren't a reliable partner any more.
- Another thing is, there is little reason to expect that energy must become cheaper in the future. Energy was cheap in the past because oil, gas and coal were easy to find, cheap to extract and because we burned them with no regard to the environment. Unless we build a working fusion reactor, energy prices will continue to rise; and even then it will make sense to keep the prices high through taxation, because we need to learn to economise with our resources. Perhaps at some point, when we have learned not to waste the larger part of everything we produce, we can start lowering energy prices, but I don't think we will return to the stupid energy orgy of the past.
Hmm, right. We are getting desperate now, that Mr Trump's narcissistic self-image is beginning to crack. But keep it coming - the wilder the accusations, the better, to be honest.
Is this based on real science or climate activism?
I think it is real - the reason I say this is because I think you can follow the logic and the methods: we have good data on most of these things, we have fairly reliable models for the productivity of ecosystems etc. What they do is basically to extrapolate from this - I suppose you can call that bit "activism", in as much as it is at best a very good, educated guess.
The ecological footprint is a relatively new concept; we have only recently got enough detail about supply chains etc to have a good idea about what it actually 'costs' in ecological terms to produce what we consume. The ecological footprint tries to sum up not just how much money the farmer spent on feed etc per egg produced, but tries to follow the chain all the way: what went into the farmer being there to produce the egg (ie. his consumption), to build the farm, transport the feedstuffs, produce the feeds, etc etc etc.If fishmeal was a components, how muc fish per gram, if soy beans, how much water was used, how much fuel for tractors, how much energy and raw materials was used to produce the fertiliser, insecticides etc, how many insects were killed or not produced, how many birds etc were not able to produce offspring as a consequence of less prey being available etc. Complicated, but the only limitation is the availability of data. This is clearly "real science", not "climate activism"; it is science, not because it is accurate or necessarily "right", but because it uses the scientific method - a method that over time automatically corrects any mistakes made.
It will always be cheaper to make water than go to war for it.
That is probably too simplistic a view. Those who will be worst hit by drought tend to be in the poorest nations; they will choose to migrate away from those areas, creating a refugee crisis. The refugees will quite naturally want to go to the places where life is a lot better - ie. mostly Europe and the US. We will say "we can't receive so many, because that will affect our lavish lifestyles", and thus, the war is on. Whichever way we go about it, we will all have to make sacrificaes in the end.
Even from the very bried summary, it is clear that this does not suggest that "being lazy is a sign of high intelligence"; it only says that intelligent people get bored less easily, which makes sense, since they are more likely to think of something interesting. If layness was a sign of high intelligence, then the brightest people would be the ones sitting on their sofas gobbling snacks and watching soap operas.
I've heard about it, and what I've heard doesn't sound attractive, even compared to Windows in general. Maybe I shouldn't contribute any comments, since I am a Linux user (as well as -developer, -adminstrator) of some 20 years or how ever long it has been since version 0.9 of the kernel; but even if you, like me, always avoid using Windows, you can't avoid forming an opinion from seeing how it affects people around you. Plus, of course, absurd at it may seem, I still get called on regularly to sort out problems that Windows users have with their systems, because at the end of the day, most problems with computers are or a generic nature - the difference is just that in Windows you are isolated from gaining an understanding of what a computer system is and does, and in Linux you are not, so I often have an edge there.
There are many people who seem to genuinely love Windows, and they often get up in arms when you criticise Windows, but I'm not trying to slag off Windows; I'm just putting my observations into words. Apart from that, I think I would be somewhat justified in being scornful; over the years, I have been at the receiving end of endless scorn (like the whole Linux community), especially from Windows users, the mildest being things like "You get what you pay for". My prediction from the start has always been that since the development of Linux does not depend on commercial success in the same way that Windows does, how could it fail to win in the end? FOSS developers may just be a bunch of amateurs and not professionals - but then what do these terms mean? "Amateur" means that you do this because you love to do it enough that you don't seek a profit; "professional" simply means you take payment for what you do, quite possibly implying that you don't actually like your job. In the beginning, an amateur may be less skilled, but amateurs keep learning simply by doing, and because they are not in it for the money, they can take the time to learn in depth, whereas professionals have to make ends meet - if the choice is between really perfecting something and getting on to the next money maker, it is the money that wins every time. The amateur ends up being the better craftsman and produces better things.
Since they said specifically that there seemed to be no differences in cognitive performance between the skinny subjects and the fat ones, this is unlikely to be the cause of the difference.
I think you may have mis-read my comments. I am not saying that "fat people are dumb", which is what several seem to taken offence by. But there is research (look it up, if you doubt me) which suggests that several ingredients in our modern diet have a negative impact on our brain function. Like for example studies that seem to show a connection between the risk of developing Alzheimer and consumption of a suger-rich diet. You have to keep in mind that these effects are subtle; it's not like eating a Mars bar or a hamburger gives instant brain damage. However, it is interesting that it is possible to find a measurable effect that appears to caused by consuming certain fats and sugars that are common in our modern diet; it is something that perhaps should inspire us to avoid those substances. Or not, considering all the other, unhealthy things we do to ourselves.
About the cognitive performance - the explanation for the lack of difference may well be simply because the amount of white matter is not strongly correlated with cognitive performance in the group of subjects studied. The brain is amazingly good at compensating for loss of function, which is why people can quite often recover so relatively well from a serious stroke, so perhaps we can lose a lot of white matter without losing much function; but then there is likely to be a threshold, so once a certain critical amount is lost, a marked decline will be noticeable.
I'm skinny and eat fat food. My metabolic rate is very high, I eat a lot but can't gain weight. Where does that put me?
Who knows? I used to be the same, but as I grew older, my metabolic rate fell, and I now have to eat far less, to avoid putting on weight. On the plus side, it is not all that difficult to change one's eating habits - I have gone from eating lots of meat and hating vegetables, to actually preferring vegetables and finding meat somewhat off-putting. It's just what you get used to, I guess.
Well, even if it seems ludicrous now, we shouldn't be blind to the fact that even these things are getting easier. In the early 60es, who would have thought it remotely likely that even China or India would have a space program? Progress works that way, often; when I was at high school, owning a computer was an impossible dream, yet now you can't get away from them - they are everywhere and they seem trivial. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, people strive for decades to conquer a mountain, but a few years after it's been done, you'll have grannies strolling up there for a picnic. No doubt North Korea will manage to plant their flag on the moon; in today's context it is no longer an immodest proposition for a country.
...they don't know the cause. It might be down to genes causing both brain-shrinking and obesity, or it could be that changes occurring in the brain lead to overeating.
Or it could be that overconsumption, especially of certain nutrients like animal fats, processed meats or refined sugars, also leads to a decline in brain health and tissue-loss. There is in fact research which demonstrates that, eg eating animal fat has a direct impact on people's congnitive performance, and there is a large number of other studies that demonstrate similar effects. Sorry, no citations, but it should be easy enough to find these things on, say, https://www.sciencedaily.com/i.... As far as I can judge, the case is pretty clear.
Your option is to give up 50% of control or stay home.
And yet, the foreign companies still come to China; getting into the Chinese market is a wet dream for most, large companies. China is doing what most countries would do, if they were in a position to do so, so can we really blame them? Looking back at history, all countries in Europe exploited their superior power and countries like China and India, among others (not to mention certain nations in North America), have been at the receiving end of that - which they didn't like much, obviously. Then the US became powerful enough to do the same - which they did to the best of their abilities. Now China, and perhaps soon india, are coming into their own, and if they do the same, we can't really blame them; we can only hope that they will aspire to higher moral standards than ours.
TeX and LaTeX are brilliant, but I think it is somewhat unfair to compare LO to them, as the problems they solve are rather different. The TeX family are for top-end typesetting, particularly in science and technology publications, and it performs that task exceptionally well, whereas LO et al. are for use in an office. TeX is aimed at expert users, office applications are aimed at the average, user and have to take into account that many or most have little, real understanding of computers. And of course, since TeX is a suite of batch programs, it doesn't get mired down in the whole swamp of GUI and all the things that can and will go horribly wrong there.
OK, so this is news-worthy? As opposed to about a million items in technology and science that have more impact on our daily lives? Shall I post something about how I have grown a pumpkin in my garden by means of an amazing collection of technology called "garden tools"? It's bound to reverberate through the news media, no doubt about it.
You don't take well to criticism, do you? No matter - I don't need to get the last word; my self-respect doesn't depend on putting others down. But I do remember when I was young, full of fire, and afraid of letting my mind be changed by good arguments. You know, you are not actually a better person, even if you make somebody else feel bad - that only makes you a bully. And it is perfectly possible to disagree in a mature, well-thought out manner, where you respect the other person's view without agreeing to it. If you know that you are factually right, you just need to give the facts and state your interpretation of those facts - it doesn't really matter if you "win", reality stays the same. There is a lot of peace of mind in simply accepting this.
BTW, well done for looking up the dictionary definitions.
Not that I want to interrupt the flow of your psychotic and irrational ranting...but...
What you are saying in the main part of your post is not actually stupid, but you make a bad impression, starting out calling people psychotic, both because opponents are not psychotic simply because they don't agree with you, and of course, your usage demonstrates that you have no idea what "psychotic" actually means, it seems; you just hope it sounds sufficiently strong to be impressive.
It is easy to get a high score, if that is all you care about - in the present times you just need to howl abuse against Ms Clinton. But that is like keeping warm by pissing in your pants; the good feeling doesn't last long. It is much more satisfying - and worthy - to achieve a high score by arguing calmly, making sense and being respectful of your opponents.
Slashdot Mirror
WeChat is a Tencent product, and Tencent is partially state-owned by the People's Republic of China. So I can guarantee you that anything you do in that program - in fact, probably anything you do in any device with that program installed, or any device linked to your WeChat profile with social media or other links - is going straight to a national surveillance agency. Just not an American one.
I know that - give me some credit, I am after all able to find the keys on my keyboard - and I didn't say I recommend it, only that I use it, as do most Chinese, apparently, or at least those that I know; and I used it as an example of what kind of functionality one should be able to find with little effort in a large number of apps. And as I did point out, it is not realistic to expect things like anonymity or security from a free tool that, for it function, relies fundamentally on all traffic passing through the servers of any business, whose main business is to mine the traffic. Seriously, you guys are out there, if you can't even read to the end of a comment before screaming in paranoia.
I don't fear WeChat any more - or less - than Skype or whatever else there is with similar functionality. There is no such thing as a free lunch - so if anybody gives you something for free, there is a catch. There always is, and you simply have to live with that knowledge, and choose your actions accordingly. Personally, I don't have the imagination to guess what the Chinese government would want to take a deep interest in the tsunamis of low-level trivia that roars through WeChat all the time - it is just not all that captivating, but it is handy to be able to make a free call to family and friends anywhere in the world.
Not to mention that while anti-matter/matter reactions do release an awful lot of energy, because it is in the form of gamma radiation, it will have little practical value, since gamma photons have a tendency to zip right through most things and offload all their energy in whatever they do manage to hit. Unless you make your rocket out of, I don't know, 100 meters of lead shielding or so, its passengers will simply evaporate. It might work, of course, if we could direct the radiation and hold on the whichever device is used to do so.
The rest are (and always have been) operating under the misapprehension that computers are electronic brains or oracles that you can converse with as you would another human being
Well, that is true - I have seen so many people trying to explain in great detail to Google what it is they are looking for, not understanding what a database search actually does. But given that the NSF probably contain quite a lot of well educated, highly intelligent and competent people, I would expect a project like this to have an aim that is somewhat intelligent; could it not be that somewhere on the journey from research to summary on /. the essence of the thing got somewhat muddled? Stranger things happen at sea, or so I'm told.
I don't give a f*** about FreeBSD.
Some of us do give an f*** about the BSDs.
I second that. Not a BSD user myself, but I'm glad to see they are still going strong - diversity is great!
There are loads of alternatives to Skype, that offer similar (but not identical) functionality. The one I use is WeChat, not because it is better than the rest, but just because it is what the people I care about use it. It can do the usual things: chat (text etc) and calls (w or w/o video). No doubt there are many others. As for security: surely you are joking? How would these companies operate, if they couldn't get their cold, clammy hands on the info you send?
Star Trek is silly anyway, because it is unlikely that so many civilizations would reach nearly the exact same degree of development at exactly the same time.
I would say there may be argument for believing that conditions for life would become abundant about the sameish time everywhere and that life evolved from scratch would take about the same time it has taken on earth, before it evolves a technological evolution. But there may be many reasons why we don't hear from the others - space travel, for one thing, may never be something that becomes easy enough to do, travel time being the biggest obstacle. Or we humans may be far too optimistic about what kind of reception we might get, if we met another species out there - they may have thought better about this that we have and chosen not to risk it.
Yes, China and Japan have in history (up to very recent history in the case of China) copied, and stolen, plenty of stuff from the US.
Who, by the way, also "stole" quite a few things from Europe, back in the day. It's just what countries do, until they then take the lead and forget all that messy business. Annoying and probably wrong in some moral sense, but when has moral really been given a place in politics?
How is any of what you describe different from what went on in Christianity? Persecution of heretics in Christianity didn't stop with the Reformation - the followers of Luther, Calvin etc were even more intolerant of what they saw as heresy, than the Catholics. Except perhaps for the Quakers. Hell, if you go to some places in the US, where they take their version of the Gospel very serious indeed, then you won't meet much tolerance either, if you dissent from their "Truth". This is simply human nature - we create our Gods according our own pettyness, which is why we hear that "God hates gays" and so on.
The thing to note about Islam is that it's not a 'live & let live' religion: everybody is expected to make everybody else follow 'true Islam', ...
In Matth 28:19, all Christians are ordered to "go and make disciples of all nations, ..." - something that is thankfully shrugged off by most followers of Christianity, but it has in the past been taken as a carte blanche to go out and subdue ther rest of the world, from the innumerable, religious wars or trivia, the Crusades (the Christian term for Jihad), the European imperialism ("We have a duty to civilise the Heathens") etc etc. It is also well known to anybody with a moderately open mind, that by far the most Muslims are completely relaxed about whether other people follow other religions.
What we can learn from this is that religion is not what drives people to commit violence, terrorism or other atrocities; religion is merely the excuse. A way of explaining away why you don't feel guilt - a lie, in other words. And here you are, trying to convince yourself and others that religion is an excuse for treating other humans badly, simply because you don't like their faith.
Given that the wholesale price being guaranteed by the government for each kWh was massively higher than even the price consumers are expected to be paying when it was due to open I see no reason to go ahead with it. Energy prices should be dropping not climbing as we have better renewables being developed.
I don't know if what you claim is factually true, and unfortunately I don't see any citations. And I don't think the numbers issue is important enough to engage me in a search, to be honest. But there are two things I think are incorrect:
- There are plenty of reasons why we should not just abandon a project of this magnitude at such a late stage. One would assume - or at least hope - that those involved over the years have done all the necessary research into all apsects of the project, before they reach the stage where everybody were going to sign the deal; it is absolutely mindblowing that somebody pulls out of such a huge deal in this way, and I think the responses from the French and the Chinese is very, very muted, to say the least. There must be some people in high places that are absolutely fuming, right now. But that aside, we do actually need to build good business relationships both with the French and the Chinese, especially since we have stupidly chosen to walk away from the EU. It is hardly a secret that one of the main attractions of UK for foreign investors was the fact that we had a very welcoming investment climate as well as A POSITION WITHIN THE EU (sorry for shouting); us leaving has already given China and others pause for thought, and suddenly abandoning such a huge project as the Hinkley Point reactor seems to confirm that the UK aren't a reliable partner any more.
- Another thing is, there is little reason to expect that energy must become cheaper in the future. Energy was cheap in the past because oil, gas and coal were easy to find, cheap to extract and because we burned them with no regard to the environment. Unless we build a working fusion reactor, energy prices will continue to rise; and even then it will make sense to keep the prices high through taxation, because we need to learn to economise with our resources. Perhaps at some point, when we have learned not to waste the larger part of everything we produce, we can start lowering energy prices, but I don't think we will return to the stupid energy orgy of the past.
Hmm, right. We are getting desperate now, that Mr Trump's narcissistic self-image is beginning to crack. But keep it coming - the wilder the accusations, the better, to be honest.
Is this based on real science or climate activism?
I think it is real - the reason I say this is because I think you can follow the logic and the methods: we have good data on most of these things, we have fairly reliable models for the productivity of ecosystems etc. What they do is basically to extrapolate from this - I suppose you can call that bit "activism", in as much as it is at best a very good, educated guess.
The ecological footprint is a relatively new concept; we have only recently got enough detail about supply chains etc to have a good idea about what it actually 'costs' in ecological terms to produce what we consume. The ecological footprint tries to sum up not just how much money the farmer spent on feed etc per egg produced, but tries to follow the chain all the way: what went into the farmer being there to produce the egg (ie. his consumption), to build the farm, transport the feedstuffs, produce the feeds, etc etc etc.If fishmeal was a components, how muc fish per gram, if soy beans, how much water was used, how much fuel for tractors, how much energy and raw materials was used to produce the fertiliser, insecticides etc, how many insects were killed or not produced, how many birds etc were not able to produce offspring as a consequence of less prey being available etc. Complicated, but the only limitation is the availability of data. This is clearly "real science", not "climate activism"; it is science, not because it is accurate or necessarily "right", but because it uses the scientific method - a method that over time automatically corrects any mistakes made.
It will always be cheaper to make water than go to war for it.
That is probably too simplistic a view. Those who will be worst hit by drought tend to be in the poorest nations; they will choose to migrate away from those areas, creating a refugee crisis. The refugees will quite naturally want to go to the places where life is a lot better - ie. mostly Europe and the US. We will say "we can't receive so many, because that will affect our lavish lifestyles", and thus, the war is on. Whichever way we go about it, we will all have to make sacrificaes in the end.
Even from the very bried summary, it is clear that this does not suggest that "being lazy is a sign of high intelligence"; it only says that intelligent people get bored less easily, which makes sense, since they are more likely to think of something interesting. If layness was a sign of high intelligence, then the brightest people would be the ones sitting on their sofas gobbling snacks and watching soap operas.
I've heard about it, and what I've heard doesn't sound attractive, even compared to Windows in general. Maybe I shouldn't contribute any comments, since I am a Linux user (as well as -developer, -adminstrator) of some 20 years or how ever long it has been since version 0.9 of the kernel; but even if you, like me, always avoid using Windows, you can't avoid forming an opinion from seeing how it affects people around you. Plus, of course, absurd at it may seem, I still get called on regularly to sort out problems that Windows users have with their systems, because at the end of the day, most problems with computers are or a generic nature - the difference is just that in Windows you are isolated from gaining an understanding of what a computer system is and does, and in Linux you are not, so I often have an edge there.
There are many people who seem to genuinely love Windows, and they often get up in arms when you criticise Windows, but I'm not trying to slag off Windows; I'm just putting my observations into words. Apart from that, I think I would be somewhat justified in being scornful; over the years, I have been at the receiving end of endless scorn (like the whole Linux community), especially from Windows users, the mildest being things like "You get what you pay for". My prediction from the start has always been that since the development of Linux does not depend on commercial success in the same way that Windows does, how could it fail to win in the end? FOSS developers may just be a bunch of amateurs and not professionals - but then what do these terms mean? "Amateur" means that you do this because you love to do it enough that you don't seek a profit; "professional" simply means you take payment for what you do, quite possibly implying that you don't actually like your job. In the beginning, an amateur may be less skilled, but amateurs keep learning simply by doing, and because they are not in it for the money, they can take the time to learn in depth, whereas professionals have to make ends meet - if the choice is between really perfecting something and getting on to the next money maker, it is the money that wins every time. The amateur ends up being the better craftsman and produces better things.
Maybe it's because I am a SW developer, but I want to see errors, when they occur. Otherwise, how can anybody hope to correct them?
Since they said specifically that there seemed to be no differences in cognitive performance between the skinny subjects and the fat ones, this is unlikely to be the cause of the difference.
I think you may have mis-read my comments. I am not saying that "fat people are dumb", which is what several seem to taken offence by. But there is research (look it up, if you doubt me) which suggests that several ingredients in our modern diet have a negative impact on our brain function. Like for example studies that seem to show a connection between the risk of developing Alzheimer and consumption of a suger-rich diet. You have to keep in mind that these effects are subtle; it's not like eating a Mars bar or a hamburger gives instant brain damage. However, it is interesting that it is possible to find a measurable effect that appears to caused by consuming certain fats and sugars that are common in our modern diet; it is something that perhaps should inspire us to avoid those substances. Or not, considering all the other, unhealthy things we do to ourselves.
About the cognitive performance - the explanation for the lack of difference may well be simply because the amount of white matter is not strongly correlated with cognitive performance in the group of subjects studied. The brain is amazingly good at compensating for loss of function, which is why people can quite often recover so relatively well from a serious stroke, so perhaps we can lose a lot of white matter without losing much function; but then there is likely to be a threshold, so once a certain critical amount is lost, a marked decline will be noticeable.
I'm skinny and eat fat food. My metabolic rate is very high, I eat a lot but can't gain weight.
Where does that put me?
Who knows? I used to be the same, but as I grew older, my metabolic rate fell, and I now have to eat far less, to avoid putting on weight. On the plus side, it is not all that difficult to change one's eating habits - I have gone from eating lots of meat and hating vegetables, to actually preferring vegetables and finding meat somewhat off-putting. It's just what you get used to, I guess.
Well, even if it seems ludicrous now, we shouldn't be blind to the fact that even these things are getting easier. In the early 60es, who would have thought it remotely likely that even China or India would have a space program? Progress works that way, often; when I was at high school, owning a computer was an impossible dream, yet now you can't get away from them - they are everywhere and they seem trivial. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, people strive for decades to conquer a mountain, but a few years after it's been done, you'll have grannies strolling up there for a picnic. No doubt North Korea will manage to plant their flag on the moon; in today's context it is no longer an immodest proposition for a country.
...they don't know the cause. It might be down to genes causing both brain-shrinking and obesity, or it could be that changes occurring in the brain lead to overeating.
Or it could be that overconsumption, especially of certain nutrients like animal fats, processed meats or refined sugars, also leads to a decline in brain health and tissue-loss. There is in fact research which demonstrates that, eg eating animal fat has a direct impact on people's congnitive performance, and there is a large number of other studies that demonstrate similar effects. Sorry, no citations, but it should be easy enough to find these things on, say, https://www.sciencedaily.com/i.... As far as I can judge, the case is pretty clear.
Your option is to give up 50% of control or stay home.
And yet, the foreign companies still come to China; getting into the Chinese market is a wet dream for most, large companies. China is doing what most countries would do, if they were in a position to do so, so can we really blame them? Looking back at history, all countries in Europe exploited their superior power and countries like China and India, among others (not to mention certain nations in North America), have been at the receiving end of that - which they didn't like much, obviously. Then the US became powerful enough to do the same - which they did to the best of their abilities. Now China, and perhaps soon india, are coming into their own, and if they do the same, we can't really blame them; we can only hope that they will aspire to higher moral standards than ours.
TeX and LaTeX are brilliant, but I think it is somewhat unfair to compare LO to them, as the problems they solve are rather different. The TeX family are for top-end typesetting, particularly in science and technology publications, and it performs that task exceptionally well, whereas LO et al. are for use in an office. TeX is aimed at expert users, office applications are aimed at the average, user and have to take into account that many or most have little, real understanding of computers. And of course, since TeX is a suite of batch programs, it doesn't get mired down in the whole swamp of GUI and all the things that can and will go horribly wrong there.
OK, so this is news-worthy? As opposed to about a million items in technology and science that have more impact on our daily lives? Shall I post something about how I have grown a pumpkin in my garden by means of an amazing collection of technology called "garden tools"? It's bound to reverberate through the news media, no doubt about it.
You don't take well to criticism, do you? No matter - I don't need to get the last word; my self-respect doesn't depend on putting others down. But I do remember when I was young, full of fire, and afraid of letting my mind be changed by good arguments. You know, you are not actually a better person, even if you make somebody else feel bad - that only makes you a bully. And it is perfectly possible to disagree in a mature, well-thought out manner, where you respect the other person's view without agreeing to it. If you know that you are factually right, you just need to give the facts and state your interpretation of those facts - it doesn't really matter if you "win", reality stays the same. There is a lot of peace of mind in simply accepting this.
BTW, well done for looking up the dictionary definitions.
Not that I want to interrupt the flow of your psychotic and irrational ranting...but...
What you are saying in the main part of your post is not actually stupid, but you make a bad impression, starting out calling people psychotic, both because opponents are not psychotic simply because they don't agree with you, and of course, your usage demonstrates that you have no idea what "psychotic" actually means, it seems; you just hope it sounds sufficiently strong to be impressive.
It is easy to get a high score, if that is all you care about - in the present times you just need to howl abuse against Ms Clinton. But that is like keeping warm by pissing in your pants; the good feeling doesn't last long. It is much more satisfying - and worthy - to achieve a high score by arguing calmly, making sense and being respectful of your opponents.