Feeling a bit sore? America is neither our enemy nor our bestest friend ever. America is just a friendly nation; well, mostly friendly, and you guys have certainly always known how to look after your own interests, friendship or not. Which is why it makes sense for Europe not to be too dependent on America. We have our own interests to look after, and a closer relation with China ought to be very much in the cards for us. Being too dependent on America might be a hindrance.
I'm saying that portraying people who are financially successful as the root of our defecit problems is either dillusional or outright dishonest. I'm saying that focusing on that area of our economy is focusing on a pimple on the elephants butt.
Are you by any means one of those pimples? You sure sound like you have more than your fair share of wealth that you don't want to give up. I have little sympathy with the "plight" of the wealthy when there are people in real, desperate need.
The amount of waste in our goverment both through pet projects and inefficiency is unbelievable
I agree. And as others have pointed out many times, one of the biggest areas of waste is health care. The reason American health care is so obscenely expensive, when other countries - like most of Europe - are able to provide excellent health care for far less, is smiple: in America health care is business, whereas in Europe it isn't (or certainly not to the same extent).
What I have always found puzzling is that anyone can buy in to the argument that private companies would able to, or indeed willing to, provide the best for the least amount of money, when they have what in practice amounts to monopoly. It doesn't work that way in any other industry; when you have a monopoly, people get to pay through their noses for basic crap, and that is the situation you have in the US. And that is one of the reasons why the government can't keep the budget under control.
BUILD will show you that Windows 8 changes everything
I'm not surprised, considering Microsoft's history of always, bloody well changing everything, so you can't possibly guess your way through a new version. Hasn't this been one of the biggest complaints against using Windows and Office? Not the biggest, but still right up there. Every time there is a major change in the user interface, people have to waste time on learning how to do the same old thing again.
It is of course just a stupid slogan meant to wow the cool crowd; it just irks me, I suppose. The constant changes were one important factor in why I started using Linux - after 10+ years of development, it is still easy to manage the system - once learned, you don't have to re-learn.
I think it's time we stop letting companies off the hook for helping to subvert freedoms as a course of just doing business
Very true - and, I think, a sentiment that resonates strongly with the best in Socialism, much as I'm sure you'll hate me for saying so.
It has always been too simple to say that "So and so government oppresses whatever"; reality is far too complicated for that to be true. And it is worth remembering that whereas states are (at least in principle) sovereign withing their own borders, many multinational companies are in a position to flick their finger at most countries; which they routinely do.
And, just to repeat a well known fact: even a small country's government does not act in unison. There are no doubt large parts of China's government (in the wider sense) that are corrupt, practise torture, oppress freedom etc; but there are other parts - and prbably the larger part - who are against these things. Instead of condemning China as a whole, we should consider how we best support the part we like.
What I really can't understand - and believe me, I have tried - is why insist on the perfect veracity of the Bible at all? I mean, on one hand, unless even basic logic is false and all the evidence in the world is wrong, the text of the Bible just can't be true in any sense of the word; not taken in its entirety. And on the other hand, why does it matter? If you are looking for the truth, if God is truth and all that, then you should be keen on getting rid of untruths, even if it means giving up on the Bible.
If one is to believe the Bible, then God is treacherous, deceitful, anal-retentive,... need I continue? Why follow that sort of God?
Is there any good reason why one would want to use HTML5 at all? I mean, as a user? So far it all seems to be negative - a load of giving away user control and sovereignty over your own system, packaged as "Wow, cool new feature".
Why is him being blind mean he couldn't have still downloaded it?
Don't be so pig-headed - this is not about whether blind persons would be able to download stuff, of course they can, at least in principle. This is about two things: a) what motive could a person have to download a movie they can't possibly watch, and b) it doesn't look at all sympathetic going after a disabled person.
That said, though, "legally blind" does not mean that you can't see at all, only that your vision is sufficiently restricted to make you eligible to benifits.
If the Alarmists TRULY believe in what they are preaching, they would be advocating wildly for Nuclear power in whatever form. Thorium, molten salt, boiling water, whatever and further, be agitating for more research into smaller, better plants. Because nuclear is the ONLY viable replacement for base load requirements.
Hmm, I can't speak for "the Alarmists" - they must be a special American party whose agenda is mostly based on hype and willful misinterpretation; are they the ones that call themselves "the Tea Party"? Only joking, of course.
As for nuclear power - there is much to be said for using nuclear power if we can improve on the reactor design; they are still too wasteful and risky; a kind of steam engine with added radiation. As for whether it is the only viable replacement, I am not convinced; it will take real numbers and solid facts, not just arm-waving and loudness.
Just think of the progress we could have made by now if in the last 15 years there was a full court press on designing a safe and efficient nuclear plant instead of spending millions of dollars trying to gin up enough evidence to convince the majority of people to revert 100 years into the past.
What, you mean nobody has done any research in the last 15 years?
Unfortunately, this is basic research, and unfortunately, in basic research it is very often not a matter of how many people are doing it, or how much money is available, because basic research depends so heavily on getting new ideas. My guess is that we would not have come much further than we already are. Personally, I would have liked to see more resources spent on fusion research, which I still think has the most potential.
But they don't. Instead, they do advocate strenuously for the transparent radical hippie Green Agenda, that says we should all live in communes and eat bug, twigs, and nuts. Or, if you want to be more ominous, AGW is the perfect vehicle to do what 40 years of cold war could not do , which is to bring Soviet style communism to the States. But only if you want to be ominous.
Mate, you've just disqualified yourself in my view. It is one thing referring to climate researchers as "alarmists", which in itself is rather insulting (but, alas, something we have grown used to), but when you start using words like "hippie", "green" and "communism" as if they were expletives, you are simply putting your abysmal ignorance and myopic bias on full, public display.
If what you are after is serious, fact-based policies and credible research, you have to do better than that; you can't calm down other people by screaming hysterical abuse on the top of your voice.
So until I see Hansen, et. al. before Congress advocating for nuclear power, I'll just assume they are a bunch of environmentalist control freaks looking to force others into living they way they deem is correct. Of course the radical environmentalist wackos won't live that way...see Al Gore.
You can of course see whoever as whatever, if that is what you want. But if you want to take part in the debate in a serious way, or even just understand what goes on, you have to realise - and accept - that when scientists put forward their opinions, they are only putting forward opinions: their interpretation of the data they have been working with. They, themselves, generally believe in their own conclusions, but they are also aware that they may have made mistakes - it is a fundamental part of scientific discourse that you present your data and conclusions to your colleagues, thereby inviting everybody to try to pick their logic apart. IOW, if you have solid, scientific arguments, please come forward and let everybody hear.
Otherwise, perhaps it would be more helpful if you kept your voice down? Not that I want to curb your right to express your views, but there are just too many noisemakers trying to drown any meaningful discussion about this uncomfortable subject; why contribute to that?
To turn this story on its head: I think it is quite encouraging to know that the almighty mega-corporations are not quite as strong as we all thought - the reason being that whereas a business, and especially a big one, is only accoutable to its investors, a government is accountable to its people. This is true even in countries without Western-style democracy; ultimately the power of the state does derive from the people. It is sad how often that is forgotten, not least by politicians and big business.
I'd prefer doctors who went into it thinking the material to be reviewed was at least probably bullshit
This is populist nonsense. First of all, you implicitly suggest that traditional peer review is carried out by a bunch of cronies who have a common, shameful agenda hidden away, and that it has to do with access to funding. But, believe it or not, most scientists are primarily interested in the surprisingly idealistic goal of discovering the scientific truth about something - the ones that are mostly after the money find jobs outside scientific research, because scientists are mostly paid modest salaries.
Secondly, peer review is only a small part of the scientific process - it is carried out to ensure that the articles published are not complete nonsense - even a scientific journal has a reputation to protect, and it is so infinitely easier to produce empty-headed nonsense rather than real, scientific data, so the real science would simpy drown if there were no peer review.
And of course, once you have published an article, the truth is that there is a whole world of scientists who are trying to pick your article, your data, your calculations and your conclusions apart - so where is the need to find somebody who are, a priori, prejudiced against your work, like you "would prefer"? No, I think your aim here is simply to discredit the sincere and trustworthy scientists who dare to reach conclusions you don't want to hear.
Really, what scientists have a severe resistance to is the thought of having to fend off the same, stupidly repeated falsehoods and misunderstandings over and over, which is what they have to deal with when it comes to creationism, just to mention one glaring example. And in climate research as well, of course.
Hmm, I think the pharmaceutical industry is the next one up for a News of the World scandal; they certainly work hard to earn it.
They have for many decades worked deliberately to make as much money out of as little actual investment as possible, and three important points in their strategy are 1) to misinform everybody about what a disease is, and 2) to give the false impression that their research is incredibly expensive and 3) can only be conducted by private companies.
The thing is that if they go about inventing drugs that actually cure diseases, they receive money once, and when the disease is eradicated, it is all over; which is why so little has been done to cure things like malaria, and so much is done to treat the symptoms of less serious, but incurable conditions.
And of course, it makes good business sense to get as many customers for your existing products, like Chlorprothixene (Cloxan, Taractan, Truxal) which is an old anti-psychotic drug - one of the notorious "chemical cosh" drugs, with serious side effects, like weight gain and addiction. Giving it for insomnia, or calling it "bipolar disorder" when you are sometimes a bit sad and sometimes quite glad is simply a cynical calculation to get you hooked on unnecessary drugs. Using cannabis would probably be much healthier, but of course nobody can claim to owh the patent for it.
As for how expensive it is to develop drugs - I'm sure they can "prove" it by showing us their accounts, but when the group of people who control the expenses are the very ones that would benefit from making it as expensive as possible, where is the incentive to make it cheap?
And the thing about "only private companies" - where does that come from, do you think? That whole ideology is yet another lie that big money and their cronies have fostered, and it has been easy. Why is it that public projects are always seen to god so badly over budget? Well, for one thing, all big projects tend to do so, private or not, but you never hear that "IBM has spent ten times as much as planned on X"; only the failures of public enterprises are plastered all over the news. And of course, a big, private enterprise that does work for the government has little incentive for delivering on time and within budget - the longer it takes and the bigger the budget overrun, the more profit, so why would they be efficient? However, if you look to China, where the big entrpreneurs ARE state owned, they bloody well do deliver on time and budget. Shouldn't that make you think?
There was a time, not so long ago, when being a government employee was considered something honourable and a degree better than other jobs; but we have let the big money run the show, and now we have news media that cynically fabricate twisted lies, big companies that consider it immoral to show social responsibility, politicians who wouldn't dare fart in private without getting the written approval of Fox News, and churches that tell us that taking care of the weakest and poorest is against God's will because it might hurt the profits of the church.
So, somebody out there is going to tell me I'm a bloody communist, and that he would rather trust his health, savings and morals to a private company that letting the state do things to the benefit of all. Strange, considering that while the government is at least in principle elected by the people and the state is answerable to us, the public has little influence on who is in charge of private companies, and they answer only to their investors. Call it Communism is you like, but the people should take the power back that rightfully belongs to them.
As for the "holy mantra of The Market", I have to ask: don't you think a Snickers bar is delicious? Is it some kind of religious nuttery to suggest that people enjoy eating candy, and thus will pay for it?
Snickers: Funny you should mention it; I actually find Snickers quite disgusting, but of course, there's no accounting for taste.
"Nuttery": Was that a deliberate pun? A good one, I have to say. I was commenting on the tedious repetition of the phrase "unnecessary restrictions on the market" - we have heard it over and over, although perhaps it is now wearing a bit thin; about time too.
I thin you are twisting the issue here - by suggesting that I am somehow arguing against something that is trivially true ("people will pay for what they enjoy"), you try to derail my argument. A bit stupid, I think, since I talking about something different, namely the blinkered, almost religious fervour displayed by certain people, who insist that "The Market" will somehow make everything right as long as we don't try to regulate things.
As an example, take Murdoch's claim, that somehow the banking crisis and consequential financial nightmare was not caused by lack of regulation, but because there was too much. Does that not require an almost super human ability to ignore obvious facts? Which is what I would call "religious" - although to be honest, that is a slander on good, religious people.
Once again, somebody invoking the holy mantra of The Market. Words like "freedom" and "choice" have been prostituted into being meaningless catchwords that gloss over otherwise glaring nonsense.
One of the things people tend to overlook is the "poverty paradox": If you are rich, you can afford to buy good quality that is expensive, but lasts for ages, whereas if you are poor, you are forced to buy cheap crap that wears out in an instant; poor people end up spending more money on goods than the rich.
Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25?
No - the only reasonable meaning one can put into it is that they went through the data for a number of accidents and found that gadget use was involved in 25% of them.
Not sure - it depends on what you call government. If you mean government in the narrow sense - the central administration in Beijing - I think corruption is fairly limited. If you mean government in the widest sense, including provincial, municipal etc, I am sure there is plenty of corruption, but I don't think that is specific for China as such. I mean, take a local council in rural England, where the members are likely to be the same people who do contract work for the council - how can there not be corruption in some form?
In my opinion, the central government is about as good as you get them, these days. We may not agree with their ideology and choices, but on the other hand, we don't don't know all the factors they have had to take into consideration, and nobody can deny that what they do has been to the advantage of their country, which is the best one can expect of any government.
But then there are also power-point specific issues
I don't think the brevity that PowerPoint encourages is bad - the best presentations will do exactly that: present something that aptly sums up the spirit in what you are talking about. The worst presentations are always the ones where the presenter simply reads from the screen.
I think the worst problem is that you tend to get these canned presentations with little or no room for improvisation. Keeping it brief helps, though - one should probably not consume more than 4 - 6 slides per 15 minutes.
Depending on how you shoose to interpret it, this is either a very deep question - or a daft and superficial one.
If we take the extremely superficial line and look back over just the last 50 years, then perhaps, yes, there is a "hit formula", but I am not sure that the poster get close to it. Each decade has had its own style, and I think the most important common trait has been the alternation between a "revolution phase", where a new style has found resonance with something in the time: Rock'n'Roll and the 50es was about the "rough diamond" young male a la James Dean, and so on.
But looking further back, it seems clear that there is no simple formula for what became popular - one has to realise that what we call "classic", "renaissance" etc was the pop-music of that time.
Looking to the future, I think people are getting sick of always just more of the same old thing. Can anybody tell all those dance videos apart? It wouldn't surprise me at all if the next big thing came from either China, India or the Middle East - they have each their own distinct and very good music styles, just waiting to be discovered. And I don't mean the classical music styles - modern pop music. There is certainly something going on in China; in the last few years I have heard more and more Chinese pop that is really good - and different.
I love it when a judge thinks and makes the punishment fit the crime. Having his parents pay a fine would have been pointless. Gotta make the punishment hurt for it to have any effect.
I can understand your sentiment, certainly. On the other hand, this kind of thinking smacks of vindictiveness, not of a wish to teach the offender a lesson.
And then of course, it is always wise to give some thought to how you teach somebody anything - because what is learned is so often not what you thought you were teaching. For a punishment to teach an offender to change his ways, the offender must first understand and accept that he deserves the punishment; otherwise, what he learns is simply that "society" is unfair and harsh, so he becomes resentful - and in the end, antisocial. Psychopaths are not so much born as made.
The few potheads I've seen who have been smoking pot more-or-less on a daily basis for several years are themselves rather definite proof that smoking pot DOES affect your ability to, well, do almost anything.
There is no doubt that using any drug intensively for years harms your ability to live well, and affects your mind as well as your body. You don't need to go looking for cannibis users to see examples; tobacco addicts are deeply affected too, both physically and mentally, and then there are the alcoholics, the por sods that live on legally prescribed sedatives, painkillers, etc etc. Go to any carehome for the elderly to see the human wrecks produced by that sort of things.
I think what we need is a clear headed approach based on scientific facts, not superstition or fear. There is no reason to expect that legalising cannabis in a sensible way will lead to everybody tuning out of this world; it will work exactly as alcohol use does: a few will abuse it, but by far the most people will use cannabis in a very moderate way and will take into account their repsonsibilities etc.
... first, the government is not a legitimate entity unto itself.
I think possiby the word you are looking for is "legal entity" - to quote Wikipedia:
The term legal entity is used:
* to refer to a juristic person, an artificial entity that the law treats for some purposes as if it were a person, such as an incorporated organization.
* as a general term to describe all entities recognized by the law, including both juristic and natural persons.
As far as I can see, a government IS a "legal entity" - you can take the government to court, can't you?
I can't cheat the government,...
And thus you can, in fact, cheat the government.
I can only cheat my fellow citizens and myself out of some worthy use of those potential tax dollars
So that's OK then? If anything, I think it is worse to cheat your fellow citizens, since most individuals have less money than the government.
... you seriously choose the thirty billion?
"Only thirty billion"? Is that you, Mr Gates, Sir?
... making a more sensible personal and corporate income tax structure...
What? Make rich people and corporations actually pay taxes? How realistic is that in a world where multinationals somehow make all their money on the Isle of Jersey or other tax havens? Sadly, we have yet to solve that prblem - perhaps if we could agree on a world government. And back it up with real, political power, which as we all know, grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Forming a union is a very good idea, at least in principle, and it never ceases to surprise me how people - especially Americans - seem to be against the very thought without even considering its merits. Have you guys really been indoctrinated that heavily?
Unions don't have to be huge, monolithic and authoritarian; and there are other things of value to employees apart from more money, such as influence and respect. I suspect most engineers know and loathe the situation where a bunch of mindless sales-types make uninformed decisions about things without consulting their experts. Uniting can make you loud enough to be heard.
Isn't that exactly what we have done again and again in open source? And don't fob it off with "Open-source would be nothing without corporate funding" - it simply isn't true, nor is it relevant. I don't think RMS or Linus had corporate funding when they started out, just ideas and followers.
"China is more imperialist and capitalist than the US has ever been" "China actively oppresses its citizens" "China is a racist country where the Han chinese population has more privileges than other races" "China actively murders some of its populations, notably in Tibet and Mongolia"
and this is just a start!
Posting anonymously because, frankly, I'm a hypocritye and I'd like to see the oppression with my own eyes some day.
You're posting anonymously because you are an ignorant coward, and you know it.
"Imperialist and capitalist"? Capitalism - I don't think so, but who actually cares? Imperialism would imply that they went out their armies and established colonies like Europe did not so long ago. I am not convinced either China or USA fits the bill.
"Oppressing"? When is it "oppession of its citizens" and when is it "dealing with troublemakers to protect the vast majority"? I think it is a question of numbers; I can't see that a minority of troublemakers should be allowed to threaten the majority.
"Racist"? China gives more privileges to the 50 ethnic minority groups than to the Han majority; just for one thing, they are excempt from the 1 child per family policy.
"Murders"? You mean in the same sense that "The American Government actively murders some of its citizens"? Or as it is called in normal language, some states execute certain criminals.
You post anonymously because you are a liar and a coward.
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Feeling a bit sore? America is neither our enemy nor our bestest friend ever. America is just a friendly nation; well, mostly friendly, and you guys have certainly always known how to look after your own interests, friendship or not. Which is why it makes sense for Europe not to be too dependent on America. We have our own interests to look after, and a closer relation with China ought to be very much in the cards for us. Being too dependent on America might be a hindrance.
I'm saying that portraying people who are financially successful as the root of our defecit problems is either dillusional or outright dishonest. I'm saying that focusing on that area of our economy is focusing on a pimple on the elephants butt.
Are you by any means one of those pimples? You sure sound like you have more than your fair share of wealth that you don't want to give up. I have little sympathy with the "plight" of the wealthy when there are people in real, desperate need.
The amount of waste in our goverment both through pet projects and inefficiency is unbelievable
I agree. And as others have pointed out many times, one of the biggest areas of waste is health care. The reason American health care is so obscenely expensive, when other countries - like most of Europe - are able to provide excellent health care for far less, is smiple: in America health care is business, whereas in Europe it isn't (or certainly not to the same extent).
What I have always found puzzling is that anyone can buy in to the argument that private companies would able to, or indeed willing to, provide the best for the least amount of money, when they have what in practice amounts to monopoly. It doesn't work that way in any other industry; when you have a monopoly, people get to pay through their noses for basic crap, and that is the situation you have in the US. And that is one of the reasons why the government can't keep the budget under control.
BUILD will show you that Windows 8 changes everything
I'm not surprised, considering Microsoft's history of always, bloody well changing everything, so you can't possibly guess your way through a new version. Hasn't this been one of the biggest complaints against using Windows and Office? Not the biggest, but still right up there. Every time there is a major change in the user interface, people have to waste time on learning how to do the same old thing again.
It is of course just a stupid slogan meant to wow the cool crowd; it just irks me, I suppose. The constant changes were one important factor in why I started using Linux - after 10+ years of development, it is still easy to manage the system - once learned, you don't have to re-learn.
I think it's time we stop letting companies off the hook for helping to subvert freedoms as a course of just doing business
Very true - and, I think, a sentiment that resonates strongly with the best in Socialism, much as I'm sure you'll hate me for saying so.
It has always been too simple to say that "So and so government oppresses whatever"; reality is far too complicated for that to be true. And it is worth remembering that whereas states are (at least in principle) sovereign withing their own borders, many multinational companies are in a position to flick their finger at most countries; which they routinely do.
And, just to repeat a well known fact: even a small country's government does not act in unison. There are no doubt large parts of China's government (in the wider sense) that are corrupt, practise torture, oppress freedom etc; but there are other parts - and prbably the larger part - who are against these things. Instead of condemning China as a whole, we should consider how we best support the part we like.
What I really can't understand - and believe me, I have tried - is why insist on the perfect veracity of the Bible at all? I mean, on one hand, unless even basic logic is false and all the evidence in the world is wrong, the text of the Bible just can't be true in any sense of the word; not taken in its entirety. And on the other hand, why does it matter? If you are looking for the truth, if God is truth and all that, then you should be keen on getting rid of untruths, even if it means giving up on the Bible.
If one is to believe the Bible, then God is treacherous, deceitful, anal-retentive, ... need I continue? Why follow that sort of God?
Is there any good reason why one would want to use HTML5 at all? I mean, as a user? So far it all seems to be negative - a load of giving away user control and sovereignty over your own system, packaged as "Wow, cool new feature".
Why is him being blind mean he couldn't have still downloaded it?
Don't be so pig-headed - this is not about whether blind persons would be able to download stuff, of course they can, at least in principle. This is about two things: a) what motive could a person have to download a movie they can't possibly watch, and b) it doesn't look at all sympathetic going after a disabled person.
That said, though, "legally blind" does not mean that you can't see at all, only that your vision is sufficiently restricted to make you eligible to benifits.
If the Alarmists TRULY believe in what they are preaching, they would be advocating wildly for Nuclear power in whatever form. Thorium, molten salt, boiling water, whatever and further, be agitating for more research into smaller, better plants. Because nuclear is the ONLY viable replacement for base load requirements.
Hmm, I can't speak for "the Alarmists" - they must be a special American party whose agenda is mostly based on hype and willful misinterpretation; are they the ones that call themselves "the Tea Party"? Only joking, of course.
As for nuclear power - there is much to be said for using nuclear power if we can improve on the reactor design; they are still too wasteful and risky; a kind of steam engine with added radiation. As for whether it is the only viable replacement, I am not convinced; it will take real numbers and solid facts, not just arm-waving and loudness.
Just think of the progress we could have made by now if in the last 15 years there was a full court press on designing a safe and efficient nuclear plant instead of spending millions of dollars trying to gin up enough evidence to convince the majority of people to revert 100 years into the past.
What, you mean nobody has done any research in the last 15 years?
Unfortunately, this is basic research, and unfortunately, in basic research it is very often not a matter of how many people are doing it, or how much money is available, because basic research depends so heavily on getting new ideas. My guess is that we would not have come much further than we already are. Personally, I would have liked to see more resources spent on fusion research, which I still think has the most potential.
But they don't. Instead, they do advocate strenuously for the transparent radical hippie Green Agenda, that says we should all live in communes and eat bug, twigs, and nuts. Or, if you want to be more ominous, AGW is the perfect vehicle to do what 40 years of cold war could not do , which is to bring Soviet style communism to the States. But only if you want to be ominous.
Mate, you've just disqualified yourself in my view. It is one thing referring to climate researchers as "alarmists", which in itself is rather insulting (but, alas, something we have grown used to), but when you start using words like "hippie", "green" and "communism" as if they were expletives, you are simply putting your abysmal ignorance and myopic bias on full, public display.
If what you are after is serious, fact-based policies and credible research, you have to do better than that; you can't calm down other people by screaming hysterical abuse on the top of your voice.
So until I see Hansen, et. al. before Congress advocating for nuclear power, I'll just assume they are a bunch of environmentalist control freaks looking to force others into living they way they deem is correct. Of course the radical environmentalist wackos won't live that way...see Al Gore.
You can of course see whoever as whatever, if that is what you want. But if you want to take part in the debate in a serious way, or even just understand what goes on, you have to realise - and accept - that when scientists put forward their opinions, they are only putting forward opinions: their interpretation of the data they have been working with. They, themselves, generally believe in their own conclusions, but they are also aware that they may have made mistakes - it is a fundamental part of scientific discourse that you present your data and conclusions to your colleagues, thereby inviting everybody to try to pick their logic apart. IOW, if you have solid, scientific arguments, please come forward and let everybody hear.
Otherwise, perhaps it would be more helpful if you kept your voice down? Not that I want to curb your right to express your views, but there are just too many noisemakers trying to drown any meaningful discussion about this uncomfortable subject; why contribute to that?
It's just not in their interest to fight.
And the difference is?
To turn this story on its head: I think it is quite encouraging to know that the almighty mega-corporations are not quite as strong as we all thought - the reason being that whereas a business, and especially a big one, is only accoutable to its investors, a government is accountable to its people. This is true even in countries without Western-style democracy; ultimately the power of the state does derive from the people. It is sad how often that is forgotten, not least by politicians and big business.
I'd prefer doctors who went into it thinking the material to be reviewed was at least probably bullshit
This is populist nonsense. First of all, you implicitly suggest that traditional peer review is carried out by a bunch of cronies who have a common, shameful agenda hidden away, and that it has to do with access to funding. But, believe it or not, most scientists are primarily interested in the surprisingly idealistic goal of discovering the scientific truth about something - the ones that are mostly after the money find jobs outside scientific research, because scientists are mostly paid modest salaries.
Secondly, peer review is only a small part of the scientific process - it is carried out to ensure that the articles published are not complete nonsense - even a scientific journal has a reputation to protect, and it is so infinitely easier to produce empty-headed nonsense rather than real, scientific data, so the real science would simpy drown if there were no peer review.
And of course, once you have published an article, the truth is that there is a whole world of scientists who are trying to pick your article, your data, your calculations and your conclusions apart - so where is the need to find somebody who are, a priori, prejudiced against your work, like you "would prefer"? No, I think your aim here is simply to discredit the sincere and trustworthy scientists who dare to reach conclusions you don't want to hear.
Really, what scientists have a severe resistance to is the thought of having to fend off the same, stupidly repeated falsehoods and misunderstandings over and over, which is what they have to deal with when it comes to creationism, just to mention one glaring example. And in climate research as well, of course.
Hmm, I think the pharmaceutical industry is the next one up for a News of the World scandal; they certainly work hard to earn it.
They have for many decades worked deliberately to make as much money out of as little actual investment as possible, and three important points in their strategy are 1) to misinform everybody about what a disease is, and 2) to give the false impression that their research is incredibly expensive and 3) can only be conducted by private companies.
The thing is that if they go about inventing drugs that actually cure diseases, they receive money once, and when the disease is eradicated, it is all over; which is why so little has been done to cure things like malaria, and so much is done to treat the symptoms of less serious, but incurable conditions.
And of course, it makes good business sense to get as many customers for your existing products, like Chlorprothixene (Cloxan, Taractan, Truxal) which is an old anti-psychotic drug - one of the notorious "chemical cosh" drugs, with serious side effects, like weight gain and addiction. Giving it for insomnia, or calling it "bipolar disorder" when you are sometimes a bit sad and sometimes quite glad is simply a cynical calculation to get you hooked on unnecessary drugs. Using cannabis would probably be much healthier, but of course nobody can claim to owh the patent for it.
As for how expensive it is to develop drugs - I'm sure they can "prove" it by showing us their accounts, but when the group of people who control the expenses are the very ones that would benefit from making it as expensive as possible, where is the incentive to make it cheap?
And the thing about "only private companies" - where does that come from, do you think? That whole ideology is yet another lie that big money and their cronies have fostered, and it has been easy. Why is it that public projects are always seen to god so badly over budget? Well, for one thing, all big projects tend to do so, private or not, but you never hear that "IBM has spent ten times as much as planned on X"; only the failures of public enterprises are plastered all over the news. And of course, a big, private enterprise that does work for the government has little incentive for delivering on time and within budget - the longer it takes and the bigger the budget overrun, the more profit, so why would they be efficient? However, if you look to China, where the big entrpreneurs ARE state owned, they bloody well do deliver on time and budget. Shouldn't that make you think?
There was a time, not so long ago, when being a government employee was considered something honourable and a degree better than other jobs; but we have let the big money run the show, and now we have news media that cynically fabricate twisted lies, big companies that consider it immoral to show social responsibility, politicians who wouldn't dare fart in private without getting the written approval of Fox News, and churches that tell us that taking care of the weakest and poorest is against God's will because it might hurt the profits of the church.
So, somebody out there is going to tell me I'm a bloody communist, and that he would rather trust his health, savings and morals to a private company that letting the state do things to the benefit of all. Strange, considering that while the government is at least in principle elected by the people and the state is answerable to us, the public has little influence on who is in charge of private companies, and they answer only to their investors. Call it Communism is you like, but the people should take the power back that rightfully belongs to them.
As for the "holy mantra of The Market", I have to ask: don't you think a Snickers bar is delicious? Is it some kind of religious nuttery to suggest that people enjoy eating candy, and thus will pay for it?
Snickers: Funny you should mention it; I actually find Snickers quite disgusting, but of course, there's no accounting for taste.
"Nuttery": Was that a deliberate pun? A good one, I have to say. I was commenting on the tedious repetition of the phrase "unnecessary restrictions on the market" - we have heard it over and over, although perhaps it is now wearing a bit thin; about time too.
I thin you are twisting the issue here - by suggesting that I am somehow arguing against something that is trivially true ("people will pay for what they enjoy"), you try to derail my argument. A bit stupid, I think, since I talking about something different, namely the blinkered, almost religious fervour displayed by certain people, who insist that "The Market" will somehow make everything right as long as we don't try to regulate things.
As an example, take Murdoch's claim, that somehow the banking crisis and consequential financial nightmare was not caused by lack of regulation, but because there was too much. Does that not require an almost super human ability to ignore obvious facts? Which is what I would call "religious" - although to be honest, that is a slander on good, religious people.
Once again, somebody invoking the holy mantra of The Market. Words like "freedom" and "choice" have been prostituted into being meaningless catchwords that gloss over otherwise glaring nonsense.
One of the things people tend to overlook is the "poverty paradox": If you are rich, you can afford to buy good quality that is expensive, but lasts for ages, whereas if you are poor, you are forced to buy cheap crap that wears out in an instant; poor people end up spending more money on goods than the rich.
Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25?
No - the only reasonable meaning one can put into it is that they went through the data for a number of accidents and found that gadget use was involved in 25% of them.
Not sure - it depends on what you call government. If you mean government in the narrow sense - the central administration in Beijing - I think corruption is fairly limited. If you mean government in the widest sense, including provincial, municipal etc, I am sure there is plenty of corruption, but I don't think that is specific for China as such. I mean, take a local council in rural England, where the members are likely to be the same people who do contract work for the council - how can there not be corruption in some form?
In my opinion, the central government is about as good as you get them, these days. We may not agree with their ideology and choices, but on the other hand, we don't don't know all the factors they have had to take into consideration, and nobody can deny that what they do has been to the advantage of their country, which is the best one can expect of any government.
- and this government are really cosy with Murdoch too. Why can't we execute people for corruption like they do in China, instead of rewarding it?
But then there are also power-point specific issues
I don't think the brevity that PowerPoint encourages is bad - the best presentations will do exactly that: present something that aptly sums up the spirit in what you are talking about. The worst presentations are always the ones where the presenter simply reads from the screen.
I think the worst problem is that you tend to get these canned presentations with little or no room for improvisation. Keeping it brief helps, though - one should probably not consume more than 4 - 6 slides per 15 minutes.
Depending on how you shoose to interpret it, this is either a very deep question - or a daft and superficial one.
If we take the extremely superficial line and look back over just the last 50 years, then perhaps, yes, there is a "hit formula", but I am not sure that the poster get close to it. Each decade has had its own style, and I think the most important common trait has been the alternation between a "revolution phase", where a new style has found resonance with something in the time: Rock'n'Roll and the 50es was about the "rough diamond" young male a la James Dean, and so on.
But looking further back, it seems clear that there is no simple formula for what became popular - one has to realise that what we call "classic", "renaissance" etc was the pop-music of that time.
Looking to the future, I think people are getting sick of always just more of the same old thing. Can anybody tell all those dance videos apart? It wouldn't surprise me at all if the next big thing came from either China, India or the Middle East - they have each their own distinct and very good music styles, just waiting to be discovered. And I don't mean the classical music styles - modern pop music. There is certainly something going on in China; in the last few years I have heard more and more Chinese pop that is really good - and different.
Oh, come on. The so-called reviews on Amazon are there to sell more books; have you ever seen a completely honest advert?
I love it when a judge thinks and makes the punishment fit the crime. Having his parents pay a fine would have been pointless. Gotta make the punishment hurt for it to have any effect.
I can understand your sentiment, certainly. On the other hand, this kind of thinking smacks of vindictiveness, not of a wish to teach the offender a lesson.
And then of course, it is always wise to give some thought to how you teach somebody anything - because what is learned is so often not what you thought you were teaching. For a punishment to teach an offender to change his ways, the offender must first understand and accept that he deserves the punishment; otherwise, what he learns is simply that "society" is unfair and harsh, so he becomes resentful - and in the end, antisocial. Psychopaths are not so much born as made.
The few potheads I've seen who have been smoking pot more-or-less on a daily basis for several years are themselves rather definite proof that smoking pot DOES affect your ability to, well, do almost anything.
There is no doubt that using any drug intensively for years harms your ability to live well, and affects your mind as well as your body. You don't need to go looking for cannibis users to see examples; tobacco addicts are deeply affected too, both physically and mentally, and then there are the alcoholics, the por sods that live on legally prescribed sedatives, painkillers, etc etc. Go to any carehome for the elderly to see the human wrecks produced by that sort of things.
I think what we need is a clear headed approach based on scientific facts, not superstition or fear. There is no reason to expect that legalising cannabis in a sensible way will lead to everybody tuning out of this world; it will work exactly as alcohol use does: a few will abuse it, but by far the most people will use cannabis in a very moderate way and will take into account their repsonsibilities etc.
... first, the government is not a legitimate entity unto itself.
I think possiby the word you are looking for is "legal entity" - to quote Wikipedia:
The term legal entity is used:
* to refer to a juristic person, an artificial entity that the law treats for some purposes as if it were a person, such as an incorporated organization.
* as a general term to describe all entities recognized by the law, including both juristic and natural persons.
As far as I can see, a government IS a "legal entity" - you can take the government to court, can't you?
I can't cheat the government, ...
And thus you can, in fact, cheat the government.
I can only cheat my fellow citizens and myself out of some worthy use of those potential tax dollars
So that's OK then? If anything, I think it is worse to cheat your fellow citizens, since most individuals have less money than the government.
... you seriously choose the thirty billion?
"Only thirty billion"? Is that you, Mr Gates, Sir?
... making a more sensible personal and corporate income tax structure ...
What? Make rich people and corporations actually pay taxes? How realistic is that in a world where multinationals somehow make all their money on the Isle of Jersey or other tax havens? Sadly, we have yet to solve that prblem - perhaps if we could agree on a world government. And back it up with real, political power, which as we all know, grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Has it been stitced together from badly matching parts, equipped with the brain of a psychotic killer and brought to life with a bolt of lightning?
Disclaimer: I didn't read TFA, so I am jusr exercising my inalienable right to shoot off my mouth without checking facts.
Forming a union is a very good idea, at least in principle, and it never ceases to surprise me how people - especially Americans - seem to be against the very thought without even considering its merits. Have you guys really been indoctrinated that heavily?
Unions don't have to be huge, monolithic and authoritarian; and there are other things of value to employees apart from more money, such as influence and respect. I suspect most engineers know and loathe the situation where a bunch of mindless sales-types make uninformed decisions about things without consulting their experts. Uniting can make you loud enough to be heard.
Isn't that exactly what we have done again and again in open source? And don't fob it off with "Open-source would be nothing without corporate funding" - it simply isn't true, nor is it relevant. I don't think RMS or Linus had corporate funding when they started out, just ideas and followers.
How about..
"China is more imperialist and capitalist than the US has ever been"
"China actively oppresses its citizens"
"China is a racist country where the Han chinese population has more privileges than other races"
"China actively murders some of its populations, notably in Tibet and Mongolia"
and this is just a start!
Posting anonymously because, frankly, I'm a hypocritye and I'd like to see the oppression with my own eyes some day.
You're posting anonymously because you are an ignorant coward, and you know it.
"Imperialist and capitalist"? Capitalism - I don't think so, but who actually cares? Imperialism would imply that they went out their armies and established colonies like Europe did not so long ago. I am not convinced either China or USA fits the bill.
"Oppressing"? When is it "oppession of its citizens" and when is it "dealing with troublemakers to protect the vast majority"? I think it is a question of numbers; I can't see that a minority of troublemakers should be allowed to threaten the majority.
"Racist"? China gives more privileges to the 50 ethnic minority groups than to the Han majority; just for one thing, they are excempt from the 1 child per family policy.
"Murders"? You mean in the same sense that "The American Government actively murders some of its citizens"? Or as it is called in normal language, some states execute certain criminals.
You post anonymously because you are a liar and a coward.