Aww, I scored a -1 Flamebait. That's cute in a way.
I wonder why, though. Was it the one where I was ironic about people in Scandinavia routinely referring to especialy Muslim immigrants as 'swarthy' and other niceties? Or was it because I suggested that people ought to have a bit more confidence in themselves - immigrants are not going to overrun the country, 'breeding like rats' and ransacking our culture just like that. They come, among other things, because they have heard about the way we live, the tolerance and freedom, and they like it. If we really believe our own culture is so good, should we not believe that newcomers would want to learn it and become part of it? You are only up in arms because you are scared - and that is largely because you lack confidence in your own values.
Revising my comments above, I can't see why they should be modded down - I wouldn't have done it myself, even if I disagreed. I think it is the kind of things people do when they can't think of a counter argument; IOW, when they know I'm right.
...Muslim immigrants. They hang onto a religiously-driven cultural conservatism and reject the more liberal cultural values of their host country...
As opposed to, say, Catholic immigrants from Poland coming to UK? Or Jewish and Italian immigrants that came to the States in the past? The first generation will very often cling on to the culture they grow up with, but as we have seen many times, their children, by and large, adapt to their new country - if they are not kept out. But if you are met with suspicion and hostility, like for example they Turkish immigrants in Denmark a couple of decades ago, or the refugees now, then it is quite hard to feel welcome, and as a reaction you keep out.
...abandon their cultural and religious practices that were incompatible with their host country or already had a culture and values similar to the host country.
Yeah, they are just not like us, with their murky skin and garlic-breath, is that what you are saying? Why would they have to abandon their identity? That is an absurd and shameful thing to demand, and it is designed solely to ensure that muslims understand that you think they are somehow lower than you. We in the West would hardly feel it was reasonable to have to abandon our culture and identity in a similar situation. You are simply being mean and rather despicable.
Immigrants are people just like us, except they are quite often in a desperate situation. Some may be criminals, sure, but most are fairly good people; they don't expect to be waited on, they just want a small chance to survive, but people like you would rather see them and their children drown in the Mediterranian than reach out and give them a hand, am I right?
Of course we shouldn't just throw open the doors and let them in just like that; but we can much better than we do at the moment. We could, for example, emphasize that a permit to settle is a contract - we let them in and help them get started, and in return they have to make serious efforts to integrate well into society. There is no need to abandon your culture - living in London I know that, at least; I wade knee-deep in mosques, Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, synagogues, etc, not to mention a large number of Christian churches. They don't seem to be plotting to kill me.
But even then what you're arguing for is that Scandinavia needs and wants is economic expansion via labor pool expansion, not that there's something missing from it socially and culturally that the contributions of conservative Islam.
One of the things I hear quite often in the news is that there is not going to be enough of working age to support the growing number of people in retirement. So, we either have to get used to working significantly longer before we retire, or we need more people of working age. Unless, of course, we start euthanising people of a certain age; I am not convinced that this would be popular. So, what do we choose? Do we all work until, say, 75, or do we invite people in, who are able and willing?
As for what may be missing in Scandinavian culture - who knows? Perhaps a bit more self-confidence? Or a wider horizon? Look to UK: they have had a huge influx of cultures and immigrants from all over the world, certainly since the days of the Empire. But there is no mistaking Britishness: it is very distinctive. Immigrants have come in, made their mark, and become British.
Thanks, alvinrod, this is the first, intelligent input to this discussion today; hopefully it won't be the last.
The question that always haunts me, is whether there is any objective reality to the feeling most have, that we are somehow something that is looking out through those eyes, so to speak; a soul or whatever. And by objective I don't mean anything deeply philosophical, but simply whether it is something that could be measured somehow; I suspect that is what most people would put in it. There is something not quite satisfying about the discoveries we've made so far; they explain the mechanisms involved, but still leave the question open, whether the "I" is simply the sum of those mechanisms, or whether the mechanisms are, in a sense, the lens through which something else perceives the world.
It isn't an easy question to answer - and before anybody accuses me of being religious, please check my postings in this forum to see that I'm not. I have no time for religion, but I try to keep an open mind, and I think it is important to know the limitations of our current, scientific understanding. Otherwise, how can we discover new, interesting mysteries to solve?
Not that I'm against these things on principle, but it seems a bit ironic that people here on/. are up in arms against government monitoring, while gleefully doing their own spying when it comes to it;-)
As soon as you have a helicopter you are standing out as a VIP like a polar bear in a kindergarten.
A polar bear in kindergarten would not so much stand out as tuck in, you know.
To my mind, a platform like yours ought to be well suited to offer a very wide range of courses in niche subjects. I tried, just for the heck of it, to search for things like Inuit Language, Bobbin Lace and K-Theory, none of which turned up results (as expected). I understand that it takes time, of course, to make these things, but my question is - will there ever be that kind of courses which may only attract small audiences, or is this going to yet another 'profit first' educator, like so many others?
Oh Ghod, this is terribly! Just imagine what would happen to my nerd-creds if it was widely known that I don't watch any porn to speak of, that I sometimes approve of government control, when I feel it makes sense, and I'm not all that keen on having the latest, bleeding edge gadgets?
I, as a Dane - well, ex-Dane now - feel deeply saddened by the continuing trend in Scandinavia towards this narrow-minded duck-pondism (read The Ugly Duckling if you don't know what that means). We used to be the bleeding edge in liberal-mindedness and tolerance, and now we become ever more xenophobic and try to blame 'the others', 'the foreigners' for what is basically down to poor management and lack of foresight by consecutive governments.
Firstly, the myth that immigration costs us too much: in the short term, yes, it can be a burden to integrate newcomers into society, no one's denying it. In the long term, though, these people become strong contributors to society, at least if we allow them. So, what we spend on integration is actually an investment that pays off - and their contribution will help us maintain care for the elderly, which we can't really do, if we rely only on our current populations. The thing is, the people who up their sticks and move abroad in search of a better future are by and large the best people: the ones who are bright enough and have ambitions - we should welcome them, because they will help us make our society better.
Secondly, cutting funding to education is possibly the most idiotic thing we can possibly do; in Scandinavia, it is only really Sweden that has any significant, natural resources, I believe, the rest of us have to rely on being good in the knowledge industry. Less education means less competitiveness in the future; meanwhile emerging economies like China, India etc produce ever more, very highly qualified academics. We should invest massively in education to keep up, and preferably at the front of the race, but we don't. We just blame the poor people, who are forced to flee their homes. If we continue like this, then there will come a time, perhaps in a decade or two, when Scandinavia is back to being the stale backwater it used to be centuries ago, and China or India will be THE place to be.
I think what often goes wrong is that the story no longer persuades you to take part. A good story should invite you in, in some way, by making you identify with the characters, or by being plausible or otherwise. When the effects become the main act and the actual story is sidelined, or if the acting or the instruction is poorly executed, it no longer engages people. I haven't seen all the Star Wars - far from it - but I did see the latest. I enjoyed much of the scenery, but the story was a bit weak - the Evil Guys come up with a pretty hare-brained scheme and the Good Ones come up with an equally hare-brained plan? It just doesn't engage my mental capacities, modest as they are. But what annoyed me - which always annoys me - is the overuse of "shock and awe effects": the rumbling, thunderous sub-bass for everything to make it seem convincing, for example, and the inappropriate use of sounds (like the famous Lancaster bomber sound in space in one early episode, or the sound of running water under water - how would that work?). If a story is good enough to make a movie that costs hundreds of millions, it ought to be good enough to stand on its own merits.
And that is the thing with Star Wars in many ways: the first ones persuaded you to take part; you really wanted the good ones to win and all that, and you were willing to forgive the sometimes strange disconnects, like when the Emperor had this incredible, magical power, but on the other hand, Darth Vader could just grab him and throw him down a shaft and he could do nothing about it. This latest one - I really didn't care who won, whether it was the supersized Gollum or the hapless good ones.
What? People go to Amazon, click a button, thereby performing unpaid advertising work for the company, and that counts as 'speech'? Certainly not speech by the customer; nor indeed thought. It is advertising, carried out by Amazon and sent out unsolicited. It is clearly SPAM, and the involvement of a customer's click is merely a new way of finding addressees. Odious. Underhanded. Not speech.
They also predicted that the US would lease Florida to China (much as Hong Kong was leased to Britain) for 50 years, to repay debt.... I don't think all of these predictions were made with the same level of sobriety.
Can I draw your attention to the illustrations again - do the suggest to you the presence of ANY sobriety?
Automation is replacing human labour, but its not free - the cost is being passed back onto the customer.
Which brings us to the question of what happens when all workers have been automated out of work? Who will the companies sell their products to? There probably is some sort of balance to be found. Companies don't make money unless they have customers, and people don't become customers unless they have money. Companies are in many ways like predators - or parasites - living off the population; if they exert too much pressure, the ecosystem collapses and the predators/parasites go down with their prey.
Is its following, community and wide range of available software.
Possibly; another important factor is that there seems to be a huge market for exactly what RaspberryPi is: a general purpose computer with low power consumption and sufficient capacity to make it useful as a small server. I'm just waiting for when it comes with 8 GB of RAM, so I can run an Java application server and MySQL.
...it would be greater if they could continue to do it with their economy growing.
From what I hear and read, China are very active in the development of environmentally friendly technologies, and according to some are amongst the world leaders in this area. This makes sense, of course - when your economy has been growing rapidly, and pollution levels are unsustainable, your mind focuses naturally on solving that problem. It could be that their slowdown allows them to catch up technologically and improve their industry, so that they are able to continue to cut emissions when their economy recovers.
The point of this article is not that it is amazing to find that people in the mesolithic waged war - it would be surprising if they didn't, as you pint out. The interesting thing is that we have found fossils that most likely are the remains of such a war - it may allow us to study what they did, what weapons were used etc. Just like when we found fossilised remains of raptor nests - we knew they must have existed in some form, but now we have data instead of speculations.
I enjoyed it, up to a point. The problem is, it is too soapy; it is far too easy to imagine this going on and on for decade after sickening decade, like Coronation Street. A good story reaches a conclusion and leaves the audience at some sort of rest - in "The Farce awakens", the cheese levels got uncomfortably high, as we learned about how Luke Skywalker had become heartbroken and depressed, and the new Jedi lady finally found him, at which point it ended, thankfully. There was too little real story - it was just a well oiled rehash of old stuff. Would I go and watch the next one? I don't know - perhaps if I starve myself for a month first.
I keep hoping for a rapid 3C increase. I want my northern canada property value to skyrocket!
You mean the ones that are built on melting permafrost? It is a bit naive to think that you simply go smoothly from arctic or sub-arctic climate to balmy temperate just like that. It seems more likely that there will be at least decades of environmental upheavals, with among other things the populations of midges and mosquitoes exploding, before things settle down. And of course, a lot of what now appears to be frozen ground may end up becoming swamp, lake or river. For a taste (literally) of what the insects would be like, come to the Scottish Highlands or Lapland in summer; if you go cycling up there, let's just say, you don't need to pack a lunch - just keep your mouth open for a while.
Every time I see a report about Stephen Hawking talking about the end of the human race because of this or that all I can picture is that he is now a senile old man bitching about kids these days and the world going to hell in a hand basket. It's just less apparent because of his physical situation / appearance.
Professor Hawking is somebody who has spent a lot of time thinking about things and has a very solid track record in doing it well, so I would say, on balance, that it is worth taking note of what he says. It doesn't mean that he is necessarily right, but compared to the words of the average AC on slashdot, I know whose opinions I am more likely to dismiss with a shrug.
I think the big problem here is reliance on any test intended to show off levels of intelligence. Many of the cheaper, simpler to administer tests vary wildly in both consistency and accuracy.
This is where it gets important to have large samples, I think - one of the uses of statistical analysis is to reduce the influence of noise due to poor quality data.
As far as the original story, I was a regular 'user' in my 20's and dabbled with it infrequently for 30 years. I don't think it reduced my intelligence but it sure does cut into motivation and aggression. One interesting metric I've seen was getting my social security statement a few years ago which showed my annual income since I was a teen. It goes up smoothly and sharply until about the time I started smoking pot. Then it flies level for about five years until I gave it up at which point the income numbers resume the same sharp upward line.
Well, this study was about intelligence, not motivation; intelligence is a 'passive' quality, I suppose - you have it, even if you don't use it. It isn't as simple as that, but still... Think of the Sherlock Holmes stories (the original ones, not the modern action man): both Sherlock and Mycroft are highly intelligent, but one is ambitious, the other is completely lacking in ambition.
Isn't knowing the definition of a prime number enough?
Enough - for what? The definition of prime numbers is deceptively simple, but we still don't know a general way to construct all prime numbers - we don't even know if there is one. The same can be said for many other classes of numbers, I suppose, but prime numbers have turned out to be useful for our understanding of numbers and other things.
Compare with vector spces: a vector space is, to put it simply, a space with 'dimension': every point in a vector space can be represented as a tuple of numbers: a = (a1, a2, a3,...., aN). The first thing you want to find in a vector space is the basis: a set of N vectors that point out the independent coordinate axes of the space think of R^2 or R^3, the 2- and 3-dimensional spaces we are familiar with. Every natural number has a slightly similar property: it can be written as a product of prime numbers - the prime factors. This can useful when you calculate things - if you know that 30030 = 2*3*5*7*11*13 and 136367 = 7*7*11*11*23, then it is easy to see that 136367/30030 = 2*3*5*13/7*11*23; sometimes it is easy to find prime factors, at least if you know what the prime numbers are.
Also, in the theory for finite groups, if p is a prime number, then any group with p elements is cyclic and any group with p^2 is Abelian (wikipedia is your friend, if you want to know more); cryptic, I know, but it has profound consequences.
It's problematic to do comparisons with older objects. The ones that lasted were the good ones. The ones with manufacturing defects have been replaced long ago.
True, but I think we've been focusing on the wrong thing here; the OP states it is if it was a question of China vs the US, which is nonsense. When we get cheap crap from China, it isn't because the Chinese can't make things properly, but because that is what the customers demand - no, not you and I, but the companies in the West, that are the customers of the Chinese factories. They are, unfortunately, not above ripping off the consumers with overpriced rubbish that breaks as soon as you use it; anybody who is competent with tools knows that a good wrench costs enough to make you stop and catch your breath. And, I'd say, you also know what a good quality tools looks and feels like; I have looked at enough cheap wrenches to know that they are often suspiciously light (ie. aluminium alloy) and the moveable parts wriggle around. You can find really good Chinese tools, but they are normally just as expensive as the ones from Sweden, Germany or the US.
If I had billions to lose, I would also cast doubt upon the scientific claims.
Well, in all fairness, as a scientist, one should always be skeptical about research results; checking the results of other scientists is not done to conrfirm their research, but to try to falsify it. If we fail in doing this, we call it 'confirming the results'. It is particularly important to be skeptical when results seem to be very convenient for either commerical or ideological interests, so I would say that research that claims GMO crops are harmful without coming up with a very plausible mechanism for how that could be the case, ought to be checked carefully. In the same spirit, when research shows that GMO crops can't possibly harm the environment in any way, then it is just a bit too convenient for the producers of said crops, and therefore has to be scrutinised carefully. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, as usual: GMO crops, grown competently and considerately, is unlikely to be harmful to the consumers and the environment. But how do we guarantee that all farmers everywhere grow their crops "competently and considerately" at all times? That is where I think we should focus our attention, because that is where the biggest potential for problems lie.
Not the only irony around here. When I grew up, everybody KNEW, they just KNEW, that those evil, Chinese Communists should open up their society, embrace Capitalism and take part in the international society, where we freedom-loving Westerners would welcome them and teach them how to think. So they did, and now they are being pummeled for that very thing, not least because they dare to make up teir own thinking. It's open source - you are supposed to be able to inspect the code, and in fact, one of the fundamental strong points of open source is that there will be hundreds of millions of eyes, all ogling at every last semicolon, right? And because this isn't just some hobby project, but a serious effort into something of commercial and academic interest, it will get a serious looking over by people who understand this kind of thing.
But if you don't like it, because it was thought up by somebody in China, then suit yourself. No-one's going to force you.
Slashdot Mirror
Aww, I scored a -1 Flamebait. That's cute in a way.
I wonder why, though. Was it the one where I was ironic about people in Scandinavia routinely referring to especialy Muslim immigrants as 'swarthy' and other niceties? Or was it because I suggested that people ought to have a bit more confidence in themselves - immigrants are not going to overrun the country, 'breeding like rats' and ransacking our culture just like that. They come, among other things, because they have heard about the way we live, the tolerance and freedom, and they like it. If we really believe our own culture is so good, should we not believe that newcomers would want to learn it and become part of it? You are only up in arms because you are scared - and that is largely because you lack confidence in your own values.
Revising my comments above, I can't see why they should be modded down - I wouldn't have done it myself, even if I disagreed. I think it is the kind of things people do when they can't think of a counter argument; IOW, when they know I'm right.
...Muslim immigrants. They hang onto a religiously-driven cultural conservatism and reject the more liberal cultural values of their host country...
As opposed to, say, Catholic immigrants from Poland coming to UK? Or Jewish and Italian immigrants that came to the States in the past? The first generation will very often cling on to the culture they grow up with, but as we have seen many times, their children, by and large, adapt to their new country - if they are not kept out. But if you are met with suspicion and hostility, like for example they Turkish immigrants in Denmark a couple of decades ago, or the refugees now, then it is quite hard to feel welcome, and as a reaction you keep out.
...abandon their cultural and religious practices that were incompatible with their host country or already had a culture and values similar to the host country.
Yeah, they are just not like us, with their murky skin and garlic-breath, is that what you are saying? Why would they have to abandon their identity? That is an absurd and shameful thing to demand, and it is designed solely to ensure that muslims understand that you think they are somehow lower than you. We in the West would hardly feel it was reasonable to have to abandon our culture and identity in a similar situation. You are simply being mean and rather despicable.
Immigrants are people just like us, except they are quite often in a desperate situation. Some may be criminals, sure, but most are fairly good people; they don't expect to be waited on, they just want a small chance to survive, but people like you would rather see them and their children drown in the Mediterranian than reach out and give them a hand, am I right?
Of course we shouldn't just throw open the doors and let them in just like that; but we can much better than we do at the moment. We could, for example, emphasize that a permit to settle is a contract - we let them in and help them get started, and in return they have to make serious efforts to integrate well into society. There is no need to abandon your culture - living in London I know that, at least; I wade knee-deep in mosques, Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, synagogues, etc, not to mention a large number of Christian churches. They don't seem to be plotting to kill me.
But even then what you're arguing for is that Scandinavia needs and wants is economic expansion via labor pool expansion, not that there's something missing from it socially and culturally that the contributions of conservative Islam.
One of the things I hear quite often in the news is that there is not going to be enough of working age to support the growing number of people in retirement. So, we either have to get used to working significantly longer before we retire, or we need more people of working age. Unless, of course, we start euthanising people of a certain age; I am not convinced that this would be popular. So, what do we choose? Do we all work until, say, 75, or do we invite people in, who are able and willing?
As for what may be missing in Scandinavian culture - who knows? Perhaps a bit more self-confidence? Or a wider horizon? Look to UK: they have had a huge influx of cultures and immigrants from all over the world, certainly since the days of the Empire. But there is no mistaking Britishness: it is very distinctive. Immigrants have come in, made their mark, and become British.
Thanks, alvinrod, this is the first, intelligent input to this discussion today; hopefully it won't be the last.
The question that always haunts me, is whether there is any objective reality to the feeling most have, that we are somehow something that is looking out through those eyes, so to speak; a soul or whatever. And by objective I don't mean anything deeply philosophical, but simply whether it is something that could be measured somehow; I suspect that is what most people would put in it. There is something not quite satisfying about the discoveries we've made so far; they explain the mechanisms involved, but still leave the question open, whether the "I" is simply the sum of those mechanisms, or whether the mechanisms are, in a sense, the lens through which something else perceives the world.
It isn't an easy question to answer - and before anybody accuses me of being religious, please check my postings in this forum to see that I'm not. I have no time for religion, but I try to keep an open mind, and I think it is important to know the limitations of our current, scientific understanding. Otherwise, how can we discover new, interesting mysteries to solve?
Not that I'm against these things on principle, but it seems a bit ironic that people here on /. are up in arms against government monitoring, while gleefully doing their own spying when it comes to it ;-)
As soon as you have a helicopter you are standing out as a VIP like a polar bear in a kindergarten.
A polar bear in kindergarten would not so much stand out as tuck in, you know.
To my mind, a platform like yours ought to be well suited to offer a very wide range of courses in niche subjects. I tried, just for the heck of it, to search for things like Inuit Language, Bobbin Lace and K-Theory, none of which turned up results (as expected). I understand that it takes time, of course, to make these things, but my question is - will there ever be that kind of courses which may only attract small audiences, or is this going to yet another 'profit first' educator, like so many others?
Oh Ghod, this is terribly! Just imagine what would happen to my nerd-creds if it was widely known that I don't watch any porn to speak of, that I sometimes approve of government control, when I feel it makes sense, and I'm not all that keen on having the latest, bleeding edge gadgets?
I, as a Dane - well, ex-Dane now - feel deeply saddened by the continuing trend in Scandinavia towards this narrow-minded duck-pondism (read The Ugly Duckling if you don't know what that means). We used to be the bleeding edge in liberal-mindedness and tolerance, and now we become ever more xenophobic and try to blame 'the others', 'the foreigners' for what is basically down to poor management and lack of foresight by consecutive governments.
Firstly, the myth that immigration costs us too much: in the short term, yes, it can be a burden to integrate newcomers into society, no one's denying it. In the long term, though, these people become strong contributors to society, at least if we allow them. So, what we spend on integration is actually an investment that pays off - and their contribution will help us maintain care for the elderly, which we can't really do, if we rely only on our current populations. The thing is, the people who up their sticks and move abroad in search of a better future are by and large the best people: the ones who are bright enough and have ambitions - we should welcome them, because they will help us make our society better.
Secondly, cutting funding to education is possibly the most idiotic thing we can possibly do; in Scandinavia, it is only really Sweden that has any significant, natural resources, I believe, the rest of us have to rely on being good in the knowledge industry. Less education means less competitiveness in the future; meanwhile emerging economies like China, India etc produce ever more, very highly qualified academics. We should invest massively in education to keep up, and preferably at the front of the race, but we don't. We just blame the poor people, who are forced to flee their homes. If we continue like this, then there will come a time, perhaps in a decade or two, when Scandinavia is back to being the stale backwater it used to be centuries ago, and China or India will be THE place to be.
I think what often goes wrong is that the story no longer persuades you to take part. A good story should invite you in, in some way, by making you identify with the characters, or by being plausible or otherwise. When the effects become the main act and the actual story is sidelined, or if the acting or the instruction is poorly executed, it no longer engages people. I haven't seen all the Star Wars - far from it - but I did see the latest. I enjoyed much of the scenery, but the story was a bit weak - the Evil Guys come up with a pretty hare-brained scheme and the Good Ones come up with an equally hare-brained plan? It just doesn't engage my mental capacities, modest as they are. But what annoyed me - which always annoys me - is the overuse of "shock and awe effects": the rumbling, thunderous sub-bass for everything to make it seem convincing, for example, and the inappropriate use of sounds (like the famous Lancaster bomber sound in space in one early episode, or the sound of running water under water - how would that work?). If a story is good enough to make a movie that costs hundreds of millions, it ought to be good enough to stand on its own merits.
And that is the thing with Star Wars in many ways: the first ones persuaded you to take part; you really wanted the good ones to win and all that, and you were willing to forgive the sometimes strange disconnects, like when the Emperor had this incredible, magical power, but on the other hand, Darth Vader could just grab him and throw him down a shaft and he could do nothing about it. This latest one - I really didn't care who won, whether it was the supersized Gollum or the hapless good ones.
Seems like freedom of speech to me
What? People go to Amazon, click a button, thereby performing unpaid advertising work for the company, and that counts as 'speech'? Certainly not speech by the customer; nor indeed thought. It is advertising, carried out by Amazon and sent out unsolicited. It is clearly SPAM, and the involvement of a customer's click is merely a new way of finding addressees. Odious. Underhanded. Not speech.
They also predicted that the US would lease Florida to China (much as Hong Kong was leased to Britain) for 50 years, to repay debt. ... I don't think all of these predictions were made with the same level of sobriety.
Can I draw your attention to the illustrations again - do the suggest to you the presence of ANY sobriety?
Automation is replacing human labour, but its not free - the cost is being passed back onto the customer.
Which brings us to the question of what happens when all workers have been automated out of work? Who will the companies sell their products to? There probably is some sort of balance to be found. Companies don't make money unless they have customers, and people don't become customers unless they have money. Companies are in many ways like predators - or parasites - living off the population; if they exert too much pressure, the ecosystem collapses and the predators/parasites go down with their prey.
We so need a corporate death penalty
- and there should be a mechanism for converting it to community service. Cruel and demeaning community service, for about 4 - 5 billion years.
Is its following, community and wide range of available software.
Possibly; another important factor is that there seems to be a huge market for exactly what RaspberryPi is: a general purpose computer with low power consumption and sufficient capacity to make it useful as a small server. I'm just waiting for when it comes with 8 GB of RAM, so I can run an Java application server and MySQL.
I can't see why it's an "outrageous prediction".
They are referring to the illustrations and the general colour scheme, I think.
...it would be greater if they could continue to do it with their economy growing.
From what I hear and read, China are very active in the development of environmentally friendly technologies, and according to some are amongst the world leaders in this area. This makes sense, of course - when your economy has been growing rapidly, and pollution levels are unsustainable, your mind focuses naturally on solving that problem. It could be that their slowdown allows them to catch up technologically and improve their industry, so that they are able to continue to cut emissions when their economy recovers.
The point of this article is not that it is amazing to find that people in the mesolithic waged war - it would be surprising if they didn't, as you pint out. The interesting thing is that we have found fossils that most likely are the remains of such a war - it may allow us to study what they did, what weapons were used etc. Just like when we found fossilised remains of raptor nests - we knew they must have existed in some form, but now we have data instead of speculations.
Don't be so negative - just think of all the money you are likely to make from fixing problems with these thingies going wrong.
Star Wars is a space opera
I enjoyed it, up to a point. The problem is, it is too soapy; it is far too easy to imagine this going on and on for decade after sickening decade, like Coronation Street. A good story reaches a conclusion and leaves the audience at some sort of rest - in "The Farce awakens", the cheese levels got uncomfortably high, as we learned about how Luke Skywalker had become heartbroken and depressed, and the new Jedi lady finally found him, at which point it ended, thankfully. There was too little real story - it was just a well oiled rehash of old stuff. Would I go and watch the next one? I don't know - perhaps if I starve myself for a month first.
I keep hoping for a rapid 3C increase. I want my northern canada property value to skyrocket!
You mean the ones that are built on melting permafrost? It is a bit naive to think that you simply go smoothly from arctic or sub-arctic climate to balmy temperate just like that. It seems more likely that there will be at least decades of environmental upheavals, with among other things the populations of midges and mosquitoes exploding, before things settle down. And of course, a lot of what now appears to be frozen ground may end up becoming swamp, lake or river. For a taste (literally) of what the insects would be like, come to the Scottish Highlands or Lapland in summer; if you go cycling up there, let's just say, you don't need to pack a lunch - just keep your mouth open for a while.
Every time I see a report about Stephen Hawking talking about the end of the human race because of this or that all I can picture is that he is now a senile old man bitching about kids these days and the world going to hell in a hand basket. It's just less apparent because of his physical situation / appearance.
Professor Hawking is somebody who has spent a lot of time thinking about things and has a very solid track record in doing it well, so I would say, on balance, that it is worth taking note of what he says. It doesn't mean that he is necessarily right, but compared to the words of the average AC on slashdot, I know whose opinions I am more likely to dismiss with a shrug.
I think the big problem here is reliance on any test intended to show off levels of intelligence. Many of the cheaper, simpler to administer tests vary wildly in both consistency and accuracy.
This is where it gets important to have large samples, I think - one of the uses of statistical analysis is to reduce the influence of noise due to poor quality data.
As far as the original story, I was a regular 'user' in my 20's and dabbled with it infrequently for 30 years. I don't think it reduced my intelligence but it sure does cut into motivation and aggression. One interesting metric I've seen was getting my social security statement a few years ago which showed my annual income since I was a teen. It goes up smoothly and sharply until about the time I started smoking pot. Then it flies level for about five years until I gave it up at which point the income numbers resume the same sharp upward line.
Well, this study was about intelligence, not motivation; intelligence is a 'passive' quality, I suppose - you have it, even if you don't use it. It isn't as simple as that, but still... Think of the Sherlock Holmes stories (the original ones, not the modern action man): both Sherlock and Mycroft are highly intelligent, but one is ambitious, the other is completely lacking in ambition.
Isn't knowing the definition of a prime number enough?
Enough - for what? The definition of prime numbers is deceptively simple, but we still don't know a general way to construct all prime numbers - we don't even know if there is one. The same can be said for many other classes of numbers, I suppose, but prime numbers have turned out to be useful for our understanding of numbers and other things.
Compare with vector spces: a vector space is, to put it simply, a space with 'dimension': every point in a vector space can be represented as a tuple of numbers: a = (a1, a2, a3, ...., aN). The first thing you want to find in a vector space is the basis: a set of N vectors that point out the independent coordinate axes of the space think of R^2 or R^3, the 2- and 3-dimensional spaces we are familiar with. Every natural number has a slightly similar property: it can be written as a product of prime numbers - the prime factors. This can useful when you calculate things - if you know that 30030 = 2*3*5*7*11*13 and 136367 = 7*7*11*11*23, then it is easy to see that 136367/30030 = 2*3*5*13/7*11*23; sometimes it is easy to find prime factors, at least if you know what the prime numbers are.
Also, in the theory for finite groups, if p is a prime number, then any group with p elements is cyclic and any group with p^2 is Abelian (wikipedia is your friend, if you want to know more); cryptic, I know, but it has profound consequences.
It's problematic to do comparisons with older objects. The ones that lasted were the good ones. The ones with manufacturing defects have been replaced long ago.
True, but I think we've been focusing on the wrong thing here; the OP states it is if it was a question of China vs the US, which is nonsense. When we get cheap crap from China, it isn't because the Chinese can't make things properly, but because that is what the customers demand - no, not you and I, but the companies in the West, that are the customers of the Chinese factories. They are, unfortunately, not above ripping off the consumers with overpriced rubbish that breaks as soon as you use it; anybody who is competent with tools knows that a good wrench costs enough to make you stop and catch your breath. And, I'd say, you also know what a good quality tools looks and feels like; I have looked at enough cheap wrenches to know that they are often suspiciously light (ie. aluminium alloy) and the moveable parts wriggle around. You can find really good Chinese tools, but they are normally just as expensive as the ones from Sweden, Germany or the US.
If I had billions to lose, I would also cast doubt upon the scientific claims.
Well, in all fairness, as a scientist, one should always be skeptical about research results; checking the results of other scientists is not done to conrfirm their research, but to try to falsify it. If we fail in doing this, we call it 'confirming the results'. It is particularly important to be skeptical when results seem to be very convenient for either commerical or ideological interests, so I would say that research that claims GMO crops are harmful without coming up with a very plausible mechanism for how that could be the case, ought to be checked carefully. In the same spirit, when research shows that GMO crops can't possibly harm the environment in any way, then it is just a bit too convenient for the producers of said crops, and therefore has to be scrutinised carefully. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, as usual: GMO crops, grown competently and considerately, is unlikely to be harmful to the consumers and the environment. But how do we guarantee that all farmers everywhere grow their crops "competently and considerately" at all times? That is where I think we should focus our attention, because that is where the biggest potential for problems lie.
The irony that this code is on GitHub is rich.
Not the only irony around here. When I grew up, everybody KNEW, they just KNEW, that those evil, Chinese Communists should open up their society, embrace Capitalism and take part in the international society, where we freedom-loving Westerners would welcome them and teach them how to think. So they did, and now they are being pummeled for that very thing, not least because they dare to make up teir own thinking. It's open source - you are supposed to be able to inspect the code, and in fact, one of the fundamental strong points of open source is that there will be hundreds of millions of eyes, all ogling at every last semicolon, right? And because this isn't just some hobby project, but a serious effort into something of commercial and academic interest, it will get a serious looking over by people who understand this kind of thing.
But if you don't like it, because it was thought up by somebody in China, then suit yourself. No-one's going to force you.