I get that it makes sense to be "concerned", but common sense provides that no panicking is required.
I'm glad we agree on this. The panicking so far hasn't been from the scientists, who have simply been pointing out that there are problems coming up and that we'd better look at them, especially since we can address them. Most of the furore has come from sensationalist media and different interest groups on both sides; those that want us to abandon all modern industry in the name of nostalgic (but misguided) environmentalism, and those that only care for their own, short term interests and don't give hoot for what happens to others. Such as the fossil fuel industry - they know perfectly well that it would benefit the world both environmentally and economically, if we seriously developed renewable energy, and it would even benefit the energy producers themselves in the long term; but they don't want that - it would cost investments up front, and they wouldn't see the profits from that for maybe decades. That's where all the panic and yelling comes from, not from the climate scientists.
However, at the end of all this, we DO have a problem, it is likely to become serious, even if to a lay-person a few millimeters or 5 degrees doesn't sound like much. And fortunately we can do something about it - a lot, in fact. But it is like all other 'repairs': at first you notice a mouldy spot on the wall paper in a corner, and you know that there is a small leak in the roof. If you fix it now, it will cost you a bit of sweat, standing on a ladder, maybe you have to spend a bit of money. Or you can wait until the whole roof is sagging, and you have to replace large parts of the structural timber and redecorate most of the house; and you will have call in a team of builders, you may have to move out for a couple of months and it will costs very serious money. I can't see why the choice is hard to make.
There are a few things that just plain will not run on Linux, that's why you have windows running in a VM!
I don't know if I'm just extremely lucky, but I never need anything that requires Windows. In fact, when my wife gets stuck in an office document, because she did something that turned out not to a good idea, I take it over to Linux and straighten out the edges in LibreOffice, so she can get on with her things. MS Office seems to have a number of features that many users can't quite handle, and which they have to learn to avoid, but that's another matter. I'm sure there are useful applications that are only available for Windows, I just can't think of any that are relevant to me.
Well, any way, I think Linux is the best argument for using Linux: the totality of its features, stability, useability, and I could go on. It may well be a matter of mostly taste; I dislike Windows for exactly the same reasons why others like it.
Well, there is Java, of course, which is undeniably mature and well supported by industry - and which runs on an astonishing number of platforms. And, you know, some of us are not into Windows and can't run Venereal Studio; but we can all run things like Eclipse, NetBeans and Android Studio.
It's called advertising. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", as Shakespeare put it, although perhaps he would have used another metaphor in this case. Hmm, "A cadaver by any other name..." - this clearly needs a bit of work.
- or is it just sloppy reporting (yes, I know, shocking, here on slashdot)? I haven't read the article, only skimmed the summary, and while the article points out that this is a study on US data, the summery here doesn't. The mention of the BMJ and Medicare in the same sentence appears incongruous, as Medicare does not exist in UK. This doesn't do much to boos my confidence in the quality of the conlusions of the report here on slashdot - statistical analysis is difficult any way, and I rather suspect that the point of the article in BMJ is not to say that older doctors are likely to kill their patients, but perhaps is more of a comment on other factors - like the reliance on Meicare as a substitute for proper, national health care.
Drones flying around are potentially dangerous, intrusive into privacy and are already being used in crime; I don't think anybody can dey that this is the case. I think it makes perfect sense to require them to be registered and sold under a license, and I think it is nonsense to talk about how "the government" is going to keep everybody under close surveillance that way - it is simply not practically possible, since the amount of investment in computer processing power required would far outstrip the rather infinitesimal benefits, not to mention the staggering manpower necessary to make sense of the data. The real benefits of a registration and licensing scheme is that it makes illegal operators stand out, just like it does for cars: the police can compare the registration with the identity of the owner, and if things don't add up, they will have the power to do something - confiscate the equipment, fine the operator, prosecute them etc.
Well, according to this: http://o.canada.com/business/i..., the a gram of cocaine is $480 in New Zealand, whereas a gram of marijuana is $10 - $15 in Canada. I hope this explains things for you.
Shouldn't nerds take an interest in things going on in the world? And is it not natural then to discuss these things in whichever forums attract many people like yourself? Despite the sort of comments you come across on/. from time to time, most of the readership is above average intelligent, and intelligent people are also interested in what happens in the world outside their narrow interest.
This is a pretty typical corporate strategy to reduce expenditures, and if it's based on things like wilful retirement bonuses and severance bonuses for those not eligible for retirement yet, then it's pretty benign and almost a non-story even in business circles. It's a way to reduce the number of top earners without generating a lot of ill-will, people get to retire early, they get some bonus for it, generally most employees aren't unhappy with the arrangement.
I don't think it is a good thing for society, pushing people into what is effectively early retirement. Those top-earners are often in their 50es, which is when most skilled employees are at the top of their game in terms of experience and understanding of their trade; because most companies don't want to hire older people, they will find it hard to find a job - they will either be considered too old or too overqualified. This means that companies are depleting their knowledge- and skills base, and society gets the burden of having a growing population of unproductive, highly skilled people, who could still be contributing to economic growth. IOW, companies that do this are hurting society's overall productivity and themselves in pursuit of short-term profit. Is that wise?
I prefer dumb TVs with separate media player boxes (I have a Roku) but some people like one unit.
Perhaps that is so, but in the end it is about what you will be able to buy, which most likely will be only 'smart' TVs. To anybody with a little bit of knowledge, it is clear that there is no advantage to the consumer in buying a TV with a built-in computer, over which you have little to no influence in terms of what OS and applications you get; you can get the same functionality through any PC without the tie-in, and with the liberty to use your generic computer for whatever you like - and to replace or upgrade it when you wish.
It is a strategy many businesses have pursued quite deliberately for years - hasn't everybody had the experience of looking in the supermarket for some favourite product, only to find that it is no long available, because "There is no demand" - and as it turns out, there is no demand because they have decided to take it off the shelves; instead they want you to buy something else where they make a bigger profit and you get a poorer product. The same happens with all other products - consumers are usually not really interested in meaningless novelty features, but the producers want to ensure they have a rapid turn-over, and they want to tie you into buying their line of products to ensure a steady stream of inflated profits.
I see a lot of people confidently asserting opinions here without actually giving arguments refuting much of anything in the source article.
It is what post-truth is all about - saying stuff while sounding and looking confident is trying to replace careful observation, in-depth understanding, painstaking calculation and conscientious communication. All those are so difficult and demanding any way, and so often leads to conclusions you don't want, so must be discouraged; just look at how critical thinking has lead people to question the wisdom of just polluting with abandon and conduct meaningless wars in other countries.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it isn't hard to see how certain people with power would see their advantage in having the population in general mistrusting science. It isn't because evolution is "against God", but people with an understanding of science and scientific method tend to think critically: they ask uncomfortable questions and may inspire people to make demands that would take something away from those in power.
To be fair, and intellectually honest, the vast majority of terrorism is done by Muslims. Even though it is not politically correct, it is mathematically sound to give adherents to that specific faith greater scrutiny. The odds of a Muslim being a terrorist are greater, by almost two orders of magnitude, than they are for any other religion.
Your maths may be as sound as you like, but your conclusions will only be as good as the premises you start from, and I think your choice of starting conditions is naive, at best. First of all, do you actually know for a fact that most terrorism is committed by Muslims? And assuming that we're talking about averages, over how long a period is that average taken? Are we talking about individuals who have actually committed terrorisit offences, or people who are members of a terrorist organisation, or do we include people who support such organisations in different ways? This matters - I think it is a well known fact that many American of an Irish background used to support the IRA with money and in other ways - would you call them terrorists? And if not, is it reasonable to consider people that support Daesh and al Qaeda financially as terrorists? If you want to claim to be scientific, you have to justify how you chose your data, and be willing to subject to critical scrutiny.
And what do you count as Muslim vs Christian? I would say the IRA and ETA count as Christian, and arguably the very large drug gangs in Mexico and South America can be considered terrorist organisations and would count as Christian due to their culltural background. I don't think the picture is at all clear, and if you want to argue by means of mathematics, you will have to do better.
Apart from all that, is it sensible to target a whole, loosely defined culture based on what a tiny minority does? This kind of measures will only serve to alienate the vast majority of good Muslims who genuinely like America and hate terrorists; the terrorists themselves will simply find an easy way around. How hard would it be to change your name to 'Jens Olsen' from Denmark, get a false passport and fly in from Copenhagen?
It's possible to be intellectually honest. It isn't even difficult. You don't even have to work hard at it, I don't think.
I know - I'm a mathematician myself, with a passion for differential geometry and Lie groups, and it's applications in theoretical physics. And actually, it is a bit harder to be genuinely honest to yourself; we all have views and ideas that are dear to us, and it is difficult to give them up, even in the face of evidence. You should try it - it is rewarding.
Trivially related, what is your motivation? What prompts you to post the things you do? Somewhere, you made a choice to ignore the science and accept an appeal to emotion. Do you know where, or when, that happened? I am legitimately curious.
Are you, really? I don't believe that - I think you are simply trying to disarm my argument and appear superior by pretending to be warm and interested, but let me explain my motivations, all the same. I have an opinion about scientific matters - I am confident that I can hold a sensible argument about these things, and coming from a scientific background, I am also genuinely open to persuasion by sounds arguments; but they have to be very sound, not based on unfounded assumptions and fear. I am quite passionate about things like fairness and justice, and I feel strongly that privilege and status should be earned, so I hold fairly strong, political views - I'm not sure what you would call them, but I call them socialism. Not the fantasy "socialism" that Americans have been indoctrinated to believe is about taking away everything you own and love and force you to eat lentils, but the socialism that thinks it would be a good idea if everybody genuinely had a fair chance of making it in life, and the law applied equally to rich and poor (and did not depend on being able to
No, the economy not being a zero sum game is a key component to functioning markets.
That is only true if we can 'create value' indefinitely; but that isn't actually true, because we don't create value, we extract finite resources, and the thing about finite resources is that they are finite: they will run out, sooner or later, and probably a lot sooner than most think. It is a false argument to say that we won't run out in our lifetime - they said the same in the 60es and 70es about the oceans: it doesn't matter how much waste we put into the oceans, because they are so big; or there are so many fish, we can't possibly deplete the stocks - and so on. Yet we know better already - only 30 or 40 years later. Talking about 'creating value' is a stupid as claiming, that the fortune you inherited from your father allows you to 'create money' every time you make a withdrawal. It will run out, leaving you with no money and a skillset that is only useful if you have access to easy money.
The economy IS a zero-sum game, and it would be prudent to act accordingly.
He's a muslim, I'd rather they are careful now rather than sorry later.
OK - can we all assume that if, one day, you were traveling to somewhere, where they felt they had reasons to suspect Christians, it would be OK to demand all your passwords, strip search you and worse, and arrest you, because "Your name is obviously Christian". There are after all Chistian terrorists, operating in the US, for example, attacking abortion clinics, am I right? Guilt on suspicion was a guiding principle once - after all, if the Spanish Inquisition, annointed by God's infallible representative, were to suspect you, how could you not be guilty? You are treading a dangerous path here, and you never know if you would end up on the wrong side of that particular legal practise.
... uniting Japan, South Korean and the USA behind a threat of increasingly more punitive trade barriers against China. This would force China to take action and deliver North Korea in a silver platter.
Have you any idea what you are talking about? Good Heavens, this is just about the most idiotic idea I have heard aired for a long time. With tensions running ever higher in that area and leaders on both sides being half-witted narcissists itching to 'show us all', we absolutely do not need to play hard-ball. At the moment, the only major powers in possession of nuclear weapons that stand for common sense and restraint, are China, UK and France; and fortunately China don't appear to be ready to bow to Trump's bullying.
During the cold war, the so-called MAD principle worked, but only because both the US and USSR knew and feared the complete destruction that would follow a major, nuclear conflict. Since then, because the threat appeared to lessen, governments and military leaders have become complacent and imagine that they might get away with a limited nuclear strike. But how happy will China and Russia be, if Trump throws even one at North Korea, and the fall-out drifts over their territories? Or, Gods forbid, one of the missiles goes astray and ends up in China or Russia? I think they might well take exception to such a thing, and 'Whoops, sorry' from mr Trump isn't going to cut it, I think it is fair to say. Even if they would be prepared to accept the physical damage and the loss of life, I think it would be clear to the world, that a leader of any major power, who is as insanely reckless as that, would have to be removed by whatever means necessary.
The grotesque posturing and raving of the little, fat blob who runs North Korea, are harmless - unless they become action, in which case I think it wil take China a day or two to simply roll in and set things right. But neither South Korea, Japan nor the US want China to do so, as long as the fat boy sticks to big words, and I can't see China wanting to take over that territory unless they were forced to and felt that they had the backing of the rest of the world. So here we are; the real danger to the planet is not 'The Dear Leader' or whatever he calls himself, but those with immense power and too little self-confidence, who feel the needs to revenge even the smallest provocation.
I remember in the 80es or 90es, when there was yet another craze for the latest fad in 'efficiency', and some people had to clock in and -out to go to a break or the toilet. Imagine the surprise, when it turned out that people don't thrive when they feel they are not trusted to do their job well, and productivity fell. Perhaps this will catch on in management circles, for a while, but it will fizzle out in the end, because it will cost money and it will harm productivity.
Chicken shit. The terrorists have won...at least with your sorry ass.
The only way terrorists can win, is if we all roll over and go '"Shit, the terrorists have won". And even then, the most they can hope for is a Pyrrhic victory: all the most successful rulers, who based their dominance on the use of terror, have failed to establish anything more than a shortlived empire, and the reason is simple - a government that has to resort to oppression and violence, will fail if they don't keep up the oppression and violence. It's like balancing on a tightrope; you can do it for a while, but only if you concentrate all the time. A stable society is one where things find a natural balance - even if you give things a good kick, they just wobble a bit and then stabilise. All in all, terrorists cannot win permanently.
First you had claims about use of a time machine to get access to servers now there are claims that trump went back into the past and implemented restrictions that are not even in place now.
Investors are very sensitive to what they think is likely to happen in the near future - with Trump going on about 'taking on' China imposing enormous tariffs etc, what did anyone expect Chinese investors to do? Ladle the cash into the US until suddenly a tariff hits them? Just imagine how fast foreign companies would pull all their investments out of China, if their government started talking about stuff like that. It's probably called due diligence or something like that. Or common sense.
Hydroelectric isn't renewable. Sediment fills up the dams over time, and they are done.
That sounds to me like a problem that can be solved with good engineering and proper design, just like many of the other environmental problems. I have spent something like a minute thinking about it, and here is what I came up with: sediments settle in slow moving water, so perhaps if the dam had a few outlets near the bottom, it would create a fast moving bottom layer without compromising the overall power generation? And if I, with no expert knowledge, can think of what may well be a plausible way to address the issue, how much more could a proper team of engineers come up with, if they tried? I'm a bit fed up with people always rejecting things out of hand; there's a danger in that too - somebody else is going to find a solution and profit from it.
That article just oozes propaganda: it's the Russians, again, and everything they got was fake anyway. Trust us! We are way too smart to get hacked!
Well, I don't quite read it that way. first of all, not long agou we were all expected to believe that all attempts at hacking stuff in the US originated in China, just on the say-so of somebody more or less unspecified individual, and because it was China, people on/. were happy to take that as proof. So why not believe it about Russia? Just saying; and it doesn't seem implausible that the Russian government would be involved in this sort of thing. After all, we have good reasons to believe that the American government has programmes along those same lines, as will most other governments in the world, if they have technology. Another aspect of this, I suspect, is that the Russian government isn't simply a monolithic block, united in evil and malice. There are different factions, and whether it is Putin's faction or somebody else that is ultimately behind these activities is perhaps uncertain.
At that time, each tribe was having its own "one true God"
I don't think we have any reason to believe that the tribes of Israel believed in just one god at that time - there are indications, as far as I remember, of them admitting to the existence of other gods; the ten commandments start with 'you must not have other gods...' or something to that effect, which rather implies that although there were other gods, Yahwe would not tolerate playing second fiddle. Theology later retrofitted the monotheistic view onto the story. I think this is more plausible than imagining that they somehow, out of the blue, arrive at the notion of only one god from the very beginning.
But wont consumers get wise eventually and change their habits around this new system?
Of course they will - you are absolutely right, but this is the sort of things you get when you - once again - have managers that think they have understood the 'science' behind something; it is a kind of magical thinking. They don't realise just how complex a simple looking problem can be, when feedback has to be taken into account.
Something like this was tried for some years in Denmark; I remember driving there a few years ago, and I was amazed at how cheap diesel was, when I arrived in the evening - but next morning the price was sky-high. And of course, as soon as you realise this, you start buying only when it is cheap. The last I heard was that they have given up on it, because it just didn't make sense - fuel in particular is not something people buy spontaneously. You can see when you are getting close to needing a refill, so you buy a little bit before you have to, if the price is particularly good, of course you do.
I mean think about it - humans and animals in general have evolved over millions of years to cope with an environment that is constantly changing and often unpredictable; dealing with it is natural for us. AI can only try to guess from historical data, and even the much simpler proposition of predicting stock market prices has so far proven to be too hard. Does that strike you as a winning formula?
This summary does not mention how people from other nations fare in the same test, so it is impossible to tell whether the results are particularly bad - they could even be better than average, for all we know. Of course, the reason for bringing it up here is not to present a real, scientific result, but only to confirm people in their already well-established prejudices.
So think about the scenario - you have 60 minutes to produce a program that compiles and runs, and the test tries to evaluate "programming ability, programming practices, run-time complexity and test case coverage" - that certainly sets a minimum level for the complexity of the problem; this is well beyond the "hello world" type of programs. How long would it take a person to first understand a moderately complex problem, then decide how to design the code? This depends heavily on whether you have done something very similar before, but I know that I don't in general understand the complexities of any given problem straight away and then rattle off a good design - I prefer to think out the concepts, try to put it into a context and build a design that is open ended enough to be easy to extend etc. I would have spent 60 minutes before I even got ready to write a bit of code.
Then there is the writing of code - which language are we talking about? Most compiled languages that I have worked with - and I have worked with a lot - require more than just the code; to take C as an example, there's all the includes, for one thing. How many people remember off the top of their head exactly which header file to include for every function they use? I certainly don't, and I don't need to - I look it up in the man pages. I have been presented with some of these automated tests from time to time, and I have walked out of the interview every time, because I simply don't work like that, and I refuse to work for a company where the level of understanding of what code development is as crude as that.
So, all in all, is it right to judge the skills of any engineer based on this sort of test? I have lived on my skills for several decades, and I have proven over and over that I can produce compilable code - and very good code too - but I would certainly not do well in a test like that, and I doubt many American or European programmers would fare much better than the Indian ones in this sort of test. All it can test is whether you happen to have a ready cooked solution to the problem they present you with; if you don't, you fail. It is about as reliable as using a horoscope.
He described something akin to creeping political correctness arguments put forth by narrow interest groups were going to strangle all expression because everything offends somebody.
He had a point, of course, but the arguments can also be turned the other way - anti-PC has already become the new PC, where anyone who dares to criticise hate speech, anti-science stories or similar, is shouted down and bullied, and where every sober presentation of facts is met with a mindless repetition of falsehoods that have long since been disproved. Ironically, the self-same people who are anti-PC and anti-science, are also talking the loudest about 'freedom of speech' as if they knew or cared, completely disregarding that there is no freedom, unless you are willing to let others enjoy the same freedom as yourself. The oppressor is inevitably his own jailor.
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I get that it makes sense to be "concerned", but common sense provides that no panicking is required.
I'm glad we agree on this. The panicking so far hasn't been from the scientists, who have simply been pointing out that there are problems coming up and that we'd better look at them, especially since we can address them. Most of the furore has come from sensationalist media and different interest groups on both sides; those that want us to abandon all modern industry in the name of nostalgic (but misguided) environmentalism, and those that only care for their own, short term interests and don't give hoot for what happens to others. Such as the fossil fuel industry - they know perfectly well that it would benefit the world both environmentally and economically, if we seriously developed renewable energy, and it would even benefit the energy producers themselves in the long term; but they don't want that - it would cost investments up front, and they wouldn't see the profits from that for maybe decades. That's where all the panic and yelling comes from, not from the climate scientists.
However, at the end of all this, we DO have a problem, it is likely to become serious, even if to a lay-person a few millimeters or 5 degrees doesn't sound like much. And fortunately we can do something about it - a lot, in fact. But it is like all other 'repairs': at first you notice a mouldy spot on the wall paper in a corner, and you know that there is a small leak in the roof. If you fix it now, it will cost you a bit of sweat, standing on a ladder, maybe you have to spend a bit of money. Or you can wait until the whole roof is sagging, and you have to replace large parts of the structural timber and redecorate most of the house; and you will have call in a team of builders, you may have to move out for a couple of months and it will costs very serious money. I can't see why the choice is hard to make.
There are a few things that just plain will not run on Linux, that's why you have windows running in a VM!
I don't know if I'm just extremely lucky, but I never need anything that requires Windows. In fact, when my wife gets stuck in an office document, because she did something that turned out not to a good idea, I take it over to Linux and straighten out the edges in LibreOffice, so she can get on with her things. MS Office seems to have a number of features that many users can't quite handle, and which they have to learn to avoid, but that's another matter. I'm sure there are useful applications that are only available for Windows, I just can't think of any that are relevant to me.
Well, any way, I think Linux is the best argument for using Linux: the totality of its features, stability, useability, and I could go on. It may well be a matter of mostly taste; I dislike Windows for exactly the same reasons why others like it.
Well, there is Java, of course, which is undeniably mature and well supported by industry - and which runs on an astonishing number of platforms. And, you know, some of us are not into Windows and can't run Venereal Studio; but we can all run things like Eclipse, NetBeans and Android Studio.
It's called advertising. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", as Shakespeare put it, although perhaps he would have used another metaphor in this case. Hmm, "A cadaver by any other name..." - this clearly needs a bit of work.
- or is it just sloppy reporting (yes, I know, shocking, here on slashdot)? I haven't read the article, only skimmed the summary, and while the article points out that this is a study on US data, the summery here doesn't. The mention of the BMJ and Medicare in the same sentence appears incongruous, as Medicare does not exist in UK. This doesn't do much to boos my confidence in the quality of the conlusions of the report here on slashdot - statistical analysis is difficult any way, and I rather suspect that the point of the article in BMJ is not to say that older doctors are likely to kill their patients, but perhaps is more of a comment on other factors - like the reliance on Meicare as a substitute for proper, national health care.
Drones flying around are potentially dangerous, intrusive into privacy and are already being used in crime; I don't think anybody can dey that this is the case. I think it makes perfect sense to require them to be registered and sold under a license, and I think it is nonsense to talk about how "the government" is going to keep everybody under close surveillance that way - it is simply not practically possible, since the amount of investment in computer processing power required would far outstrip the rather infinitesimal benefits, not to mention the staggering manpower necessary to make sense of the data. The real benefits of a registration and licensing scheme is that it makes illegal operators stand out, just like it does for cars: the police can compare the registration with the identity of the owner, and if things don't add up, they will have the power to do something - confiscate the equipment, fine the operator, prosecute them etc.
Well, according to this: http://o.canada.com/business/i..., the a gram of cocaine is $480 in New Zealand, whereas a gram of marijuana is $10 - $15 in Canada. I hope this explains things for you.
I'm not exactly sure how this is nerd news.
Shouldn't nerds take an interest in things going on in the world? And is it not natural then to discuss these things in whichever forums attract many people like yourself? Despite the sort of comments you come across on /. from time to time, most of the readership is above average intelligent, and intelligent people are also interested in what happens in the world outside their narrow interest.
This is a pretty typical corporate strategy to reduce expenditures, and if it's based on things like wilful retirement bonuses and severance bonuses for those not eligible for retirement yet, then it's pretty benign and almost a non-story even in business circles. It's a way to reduce the number of top earners without generating a lot of ill-will, people get to retire early, they get some bonus for it, generally most employees aren't unhappy with the arrangement.
I don't think it is a good thing for society, pushing people into what is effectively early retirement. Those top-earners are often in their 50es, which is when most skilled employees are at the top of their game in terms of experience and understanding of their trade; because most companies don't want to hire older people, they will find it hard to find a job - they will either be considered too old or too overqualified. This means that companies are depleting their knowledge- and skills base, and society gets the burden of having a growing population of unproductive, highly skilled people, who could still be contributing to economic growth. IOW, companies that do this are hurting society's overall productivity and themselves in pursuit of short-term profit. Is that wise?
I prefer dumb TVs with separate media player boxes (I have a Roku) but some people like one unit.
Perhaps that is so, but in the end it is about what you will be able to buy, which most likely will be only 'smart' TVs. To anybody with a little bit of knowledge, it is clear that there is no advantage to the consumer in buying a TV with a built-in computer, over which you have little to no influence in terms of what OS and applications you get; you can get the same functionality through any PC without the tie-in, and with the liberty to use your generic computer for whatever you like - and to replace or upgrade it when you wish.
It is a strategy many businesses have pursued quite deliberately for years - hasn't everybody had the experience of looking in the supermarket for some favourite product, only to find that it is no long available, because "There is no demand" - and as it turns out, there is no demand because they have decided to take it off the shelves; instead they want you to buy something else where they make a bigger profit and you get a poorer product. The same happens with all other products - consumers are usually not really interested in meaningless novelty features, but the producers want to ensure they have a rapid turn-over, and they want to tie you into buying their line of products to ensure a steady stream of inflated profits.
I see a lot of people confidently asserting opinions here without actually giving arguments refuting much of anything in the source article.
It is what post-truth is all about - saying stuff while sounding and looking confident is trying to replace careful observation, in-depth understanding, painstaking calculation and conscientious communication. All those are so difficult and demanding any way, and so often leads to conclusions you don't want, so must be discouraged; just look at how critical thinking has lead people to question the wisdom of just polluting with abandon and conduct meaningless wars in other countries.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it isn't hard to see how certain people with power would see their advantage in having the population in general mistrusting science. It isn't because evolution is "against God", but people with an understanding of science and scientific method tend to think critically: they ask uncomfortable questions and may inspire people to make demands that would take something away from those in power.
To be fair, and intellectually honest, the vast majority of terrorism is done by Muslims. Even though it is not politically correct, it is mathematically sound to give adherents to that specific faith greater scrutiny. The odds of a Muslim being a terrorist are greater, by almost two orders of magnitude, than they are for any other religion.
Your maths may be as sound as you like, but your conclusions will only be as good as the premises you start from, and I think your choice of starting conditions is naive, at best. First of all, do you actually know for a fact that most terrorism is committed by Muslims? And assuming that we're talking about averages, over how long a period is that average taken? Are we talking about individuals who have actually committed terrorisit offences, or people who are members of a terrorist organisation, or do we include people who support such organisations in different ways? This matters - I think it is a well known fact that many American of an Irish background used to support the IRA with money and in other ways - would you call them terrorists? And if not, is it reasonable to consider people that support Daesh and al Qaeda financially as terrorists? If you want to claim to be scientific, you have to justify how you chose your data, and be willing to subject to critical scrutiny.
And what do you count as Muslim vs Christian? I would say the IRA and ETA count as Christian, and arguably the very large drug gangs in Mexico and South America can be considered terrorist organisations and would count as Christian due to their culltural background. I don't think the picture is at all clear, and if you want to argue by means of mathematics, you will have to do better.
Apart from all that, is it sensible to target a whole, loosely defined culture based on what a tiny minority does? This kind of measures will only serve to alienate the vast majority of good Muslims who genuinely like America and hate terrorists; the terrorists themselves will simply find an easy way around. How hard would it be to change your name to 'Jens Olsen' from Denmark, get a false passport and fly in from Copenhagen?
It's possible to be intellectually honest. It isn't even difficult. You don't even have to work hard at it, I don't think.
I know - I'm a mathematician myself, with a passion for differential geometry and Lie groups, and it's applications in theoretical physics. And actually, it is a bit harder to be genuinely honest to yourself; we all have views and ideas that are dear to us, and it is difficult to give them up, even in the face of evidence. You should try it - it is rewarding.
Trivially related, what is your motivation? What prompts you to post the things you do? Somewhere, you made a choice to ignore the science and accept an appeal to emotion. Do you know where, or when, that happened? I am legitimately curious.
Are you, really? I don't believe that - I think you are simply trying to disarm my argument and appear superior by pretending to be warm and interested, but let me explain my motivations, all the same. I have an opinion about scientific matters - I am confident that I can hold a sensible argument about these things, and coming from a scientific background, I am also genuinely open to persuasion by sounds arguments; but they have to be very sound, not based on unfounded assumptions and fear. I am quite passionate about things like fairness and justice, and I feel strongly that privilege and status should be earned, so I hold fairly strong, political views - I'm not sure what you would call them, but I call them socialism. Not the fantasy "socialism" that Americans have been indoctrinated to believe is about taking away everything you own and love and force you to eat lentils, but the socialism that thinks it would be a good idea if everybody genuinely had a fair chance of making it in life, and the law applied equally to rich and poor (and did not depend on being able to
No, the economy not being a zero sum game is a key component to functioning markets.
That is only true if we can 'create value' indefinitely; but that isn't actually true, because we don't create value, we extract finite resources, and the thing about finite resources is that they are finite: they will run out, sooner or later, and probably a lot sooner than most think. It is a false argument to say that we won't run out in our lifetime - they said the same in the 60es and 70es about the oceans: it doesn't matter how much waste we put into the oceans, because they are so big; or there are so many fish, we can't possibly deplete the stocks - and so on. Yet we know better already - only 30 or 40 years later. Talking about 'creating value' is a stupid as claiming, that the fortune you inherited from your father allows you to 'create money' every time you make a withdrawal. It will run out, leaving you with no money and a skillset that is only useful if you have access to easy money.
The economy IS a zero-sum game, and it would be prudent to act accordingly.
He's a muslim, I'd rather they are careful now rather than sorry later.
OK - can we all assume that if, one day, you were traveling to somewhere, where they felt they had reasons to suspect Christians, it would be OK to demand all your passwords, strip search you and worse, and arrest you, because "Your name is obviously Christian". There are after all Chistian terrorists, operating in the US, for example, attacking abortion clinics, am I right? Guilt on suspicion was a guiding principle once - after all, if the Spanish Inquisition, annointed by God's infallible representative, were to suspect you, how could you not be guilty? You are treading a dangerous path here, and you never know if you would end up on the wrong side of that particular legal practise.
... uniting Japan, South Korean and the USA behind a threat of increasingly more punitive trade barriers against China. This would force China to take action and deliver North Korea in a silver platter.
Have you any idea what you are talking about? Good Heavens, this is just about the most idiotic idea I have heard aired for a long time. With tensions running ever higher in that area and leaders on both sides being half-witted narcissists itching to 'show us all', we absolutely do not need to play hard-ball. At the moment, the only major powers in possession of nuclear weapons that stand for common sense and restraint, are China, UK and France; and fortunately China don't appear to be ready to bow to Trump's bullying.
During the cold war, the so-called MAD principle worked, but only because both the US and USSR knew and feared the complete destruction that would follow a major, nuclear conflict. Since then, because the threat appeared to lessen, governments and military leaders have become complacent and imagine that they might get away with a limited nuclear strike. But how happy will China and Russia be, if Trump throws even one at North Korea, and the fall-out drifts over their territories? Or, Gods forbid, one of the missiles goes astray and ends up in China or Russia? I think they might well take exception to such a thing, and 'Whoops, sorry' from mr Trump isn't going to cut it, I think it is fair to say. Even if they would be prepared to accept the physical damage and the loss of life, I think it would be clear to the world, that a leader of any major power, who is as insanely reckless as that, would have to be removed by whatever means necessary.
The grotesque posturing and raving of the little, fat blob who runs North Korea, are harmless - unless they become action, in which case I think it wil take China a day or two to simply roll in and set things right. But neither South Korea, Japan nor the US want China to do so, as long as the fat boy sticks to big words, and I can't see China wanting to take over that territory unless they were forced to and felt that they had the backing of the rest of the world. So here we are; the real danger to the planet is not 'The Dear Leader' or whatever he calls himself, but those with immense power and too little self-confidence, who feel the needs to revenge even the smallest provocation.
I remember in the 80es or 90es, when there was yet another craze for the latest fad in 'efficiency', and some people had to clock in and -out to go to a break or the toilet. Imagine the surprise, when it turned out that people don't thrive when they feel they are not trusted to do their job well, and productivity fell. Perhaps this will catch on in management circles, for a while, but it will fizzle out in the end, because it will cost money and it will harm productivity.
Chicken shit. The terrorists have won...at least with your sorry ass.
The only way terrorists can win, is if we all roll over and go '"Shit, the terrorists have won". And even then, the most they can hope for is a Pyrrhic victory: all the most successful rulers, who based their dominance on the use of terror, have failed to establish anything more than a shortlived empire, and the reason is simple - a government that has to resort to oppression and violence, will fail if they don't keep up the oppression and violence. It's like balancing on a tightrope; you can do it for a while, but only if you concentrate all the time. A stable society is one where things find a natural balance - even if you give things a good kick, they just wobble a bit and then stabilise. All in all, terrorists cannot win permanently.
First you had claims about use of a time machine to get access to servers now there are claims that trump went back into the past and implemented restrictions that are not even in place now.
Investors are very sensitive to what they think is likely to happen in the near future - with Trump going on about 'taking on' China imposing enormous tariffs etc, what did anyone expect Chinese investors to do? Ladle the cash into the US until suddenly a tariff hits them? Just imagine how fast foreign companies would pull all their investments out of China, if their government started talking about stuff like that. It's probably called due diligence or something like that. Or common sense.
Hydroelectric isn't renewable. Sediment fills up the dams over time, and they are done.
That sounds to me like a problem that can be solved with good engineering and proper design, just like many of the other environmental problems. I have spent something like a minute thinking about it, and here is what I came up with: sediments settle in slow moving water, so perhaps if the dam had a few outlets near the bottom, it would create a fast moving bottom layer without compromising the overall power generation? And if I, with no expert knowledge, can think of what may well be a plausible way to address the issue, how much more could a proper team of engineers come up with, if they tried? I'm a bit fed up with people always rejecting things out of hand; there's a danger in that too - somebody else is going to find a solution and profit from it.
That article just oozes propaganda: it's the Russians, again, and everything they got was fake anyway. Trust us! We are way too smart to get hacked!
Well, I don't quite read it that way. first of all, not long agou we were all expected to believe that all attempts at hacking stuff in the US originated in China, just on the say-so of somebody more or less unspecified individual, and because it was China, people on /. were happy to take that as proof. So why not believe it about Russia? Just saying; and it doesn't seem implausible that the Russian government would be involved in this sort of thing. After all, we have good reasons to believe that the American government has programmes along those same lines, as will most other governments in the world, if they have technology. Another aspect of this, I suspect, is that the Russian government isn't simply a monolithic block, united in evil and malice. There are different factions, and whether it is Putin's faction or somebody else that is ultimately behind these activities is perhaps uncertain.
You are a moron who is slinging around insults without regard for the truth.
Presumably you are aware of the irony of that exact statement?
At that time, each tribe was having its own "one true God"
I don't think we have any reason to believe that the tribes of Israel believed in just one god at that time - there are indications, as far as I remember, of them admitting to the existence of other gods; the ten commandments start with 'you must not have other gods ...' or something to that effect, which rather implies that although there were other gods, Yahwe would not tolerate playing second fiddle. Theology later retrofitted the monotheistic view onto the story. I think this is more plausible than imagining that they somehow, out of the blue, arrive at the notion of only one god from the very beginning.
But wont consumers get wise eventually and change their habits around this new system?
Of course they will - you are absolutely right, but this is the sort of things you get when you - once again - have managers that think they have understood the 'science' behind something; it is a kind of magical thinking. They don't realise just how complex a simple looking problem can be, when feedback has to be taken into account.
Something like this was tried for some years in Denmark; I remember driving there a few years ago, and I was amazed at how cheap diesel was, when I arrived in the evening - but next morning the price was sky-high. And of course, as soon as you realise this, you start buying only when it is cheap. The last I heard was that they have given up on it, because it just didn't make sense - fuel in particular is not something people buy spontaneously. You can see when you are getting close to needing a refill, so you buy a little bit before you have to, if the price is particularly good, of course you do.
I mean think about it - humans and animals in general have evolved over millions of years to cope with an environment that is constantly changing and often unpredictable; dealing with it is natural for us. AI can only try to guess from historical data, and even the much simpler proposition of predicting stock market prices has so far proven to be too hard. Does that strike you as a winning formula?
This summary does not mention how people from other nations fare in the same test, so it is impossible to tell whether the results are particularly bad - they could even be better than average, for all we know. Of course, the reason for bringing it up here is not to present a real, scientific result, but only to confirm people in their already well-established prejudices.
So think about the scenario - you have 60 minutes to produce a program that compiles and runs, and the test tries to evaluate "programming ability, programming practices, run-time complexity and test case coverage" - that certainly sets a minimum level for the complexity of the problem; this is well beyond the "hello world" type of programs. How long would it take a person to first understand a moderately complex problem, then decide how to design the code? This depends heavily on whether you have done something very similar before, but I know that I don't in general understand the complexities of any given problem straight away and then rattle off a good design - I prefer to think out the concepts, try to put it into a context and build a design that is open ended enough to be easy to extend etc. I would have spent 60 minutes before I even got ready to write a bit of code.
Then there is the writing of code - which language are we talking about? Most compiled languages that I have worked with - and I have worked with a lot - require more than just the code; to take C as an example, there's all the includes, for one thing. How many people remember off the top of their head exactly which header file to include for every function they use? I certainly don't, and I don't need to - I look it up in the man pages. I have been presented with some of these automated tests from time to time, and I have walked out of the interview every time, because I simply don't work like that, and I refuse to work for a company where the level of understanding of what code development is as crude as that.
So, all in all, is it right to judge the skills of any engineer based on this sort of test? I have lived on my skills for several decades, and I have proven over and over that I can produce compilable code - and very good code too - but I would certainly not do well in a test like that, and I doubt many American or European programmers would fare much better than the Indian ones in this sort of test. All it can test is whether you happen to have a ready cooked solution to the problem they present you with; if you don't, you fail. It is about as reliable as using a horoscope.
He described something akin to creeping political correctness arguments put forth by narrow interest groups were going to strangle all expression because everything offends somebody.
He had a point, of course, but the arguments can also be turned the other way - anti-PC has already become the new PC, where anyone who dares to criticise hate speech, anti-science stories or similar, is shouted down and bullied, and where every sober presentation of facts is met with a mindless repetition of falsehoods that have long since been disproved. Ironically, the self-same people who are anti-PC and anti-science, are also talking the loudest about 'freedom of speech' as if they knew or cared, completely disregarding that there is no freedom, unless you are willing to let others enjoy the same freedom as yourself. The oppressor is inevitably his own jailor.