The Chinese have spent about 20 times what Musk has (going on what my opponents say) and have come out with more than 20 times the value in terms of their results.
The amount spent by the Chinese is undoubtedly large, but no one outside the Chinese government may know the true cost. Given the secrecy surrounding the project as well as the government obfuscation (i.e. only announcing launches after they're successful), I'd suspect the number is a good deal higher than anything they've announced publicly.
Further, your claim that they're getting "20 times the value" is nebulous at best. You're guessing and reaching all at the same time. Do you have some kind of axe to grind that motivates you to so thoroughly abandon logic?
You can't even compare three man capsules and spacewalks to launching microsatellites on the same playing field.
Really? Why not? Both involve similar engineering and scientific feats. Both are fantastically expensive. The difference is in scale and efficiency only. China has the scale, Musk has the efficiency. It's as simple as that. Further, Musk isn't trying to reach the scale of China, Russia, or the U.S. His goal -- the one you're completely ignorant of -- is to make space access affordable.
It remains to be seen whether China can match Musk's efficiency or whether Musk can match China's -- or any other government-sponsored launch system's -- scale. However, in the sense that he's got a working launch platform that met all its design goals, it is huge success.
Why am I being so rough? Slashdotters seem more than willing to jump on Elon Musk's "entrepreneurial" cock but at the same time make racist statements when the Chinese government achieves a far more significant space milestone. Don't expect everyone to fall at the feet of this guy simply because he fits in with your ideological predispositions; he is quite far behind.
Vulgarity aside, you miss the point entirely. True, the Chinese have accomplished quite a bit. But they've had thousands of people working on it and spent hundreds of billions of yuan on it. Musk has only a few hundred and hasn't even spent a billion dollars. His project has accomplished a first for humanity -- a privately-financed launch platform. Praising him does not diminish the Chinese accomplishment, but Musk deserves credit for seeing this through to success. His objective was not to duplicate government launch abilities, it was to change the economics of launching. If his success continues, SpaceX -- and others like it -- will change all of humanity by vastly lowering the cost of getting into orbit.
If anything, you could apply your argument to the diminution of the Chinese. They've accomplished nothing that Apollo and Soyuz didn't already do forty years ago. Using your measuring stick, they have a tremendous amount of catching up to do. I don't subscribe to your measuring stick, mind you, but I thought you might easier see your argument's fallacies from a different perspective.
It appears that the media have decided that it's time for Obama to lose the election.
So did the media decide in 2000/2004 that it was Gore and Kerry's turn to lose as well? I thought Democrats believed the Supreme Court picked Presidents, not the media! My God, Hillary was right! It is a vast right-wing conspiracy! You're in on it, too!
When McCain chose Palin, he basically wrote off the urban and more educated voters to focus on the what has become the Republican base: rural and less educated voters.
And Democrats wonder why they've been labeled the "party of elitist snobbery." Don't you have some arugula you need to go buy at the nearest organically-grown, union-safe, handicap-equipped, rain-forest-protecting, recycling, non-offensive-to-vegans-if-they-happen-by grocery store you typically shop?
I mean, really! Do you honestly think that calling nearly half the American electorate "rural and less educated" is some kind of a winning strategy? Never mind that it's not even remotely true.
Here's a hint: you don't win by denigrating and insulting your political opponents. You win by converting them to your side with sound, convincing arguments. Somehow I think the you're-too-stupid-to-understand-my-nuance tactic doesn't fall into that camp.
Which more or less makes my point. If people had to pay the true cost of commuting by train (i.e. no gov't subsidies, no riding the coattails of freight) then it would die as a mode of transportation.
You do raise an interesting point that I did not address, namely that of for-profit rail competing against government-constructed highways. Unfortunately there is no way to test the theory of for-profit highways vs. for-profit rail. We pay taxes for highways whether we like it or not. However, I can make some assumptions.
I would say that if the gross per-person/per-mile costs of driving vs. rail were equal, people would undoubtedly take cars due to their greater flexibility in times and destinations. Freight would always go rail except for the final delivery leg due to more efficient use of delivery scheduling. But people on trains? I'd imagine the cost of driving would have to be at least 50%-100% higher than rail before people would consider it. I wonder if any objective studies (i.e. not by the railway and not by the auto industry) have been done on this subject in the States?
Uh-huh. Yup, nobody's riding those trains, yesirreebob.
Tell you what, smarty pants. When Amtrak can run and -- heavens forbid! -- turn a profit without government subsidies then you can be smarmy and smug. Until then, take your ill-advised posts elsewhere and hold your tongue.
Can anyone tell me why this situation has come about and when we can expect this sort of service to be enabled?
Answer to the first question: it's come about because the Chinese government hasn't figured out a way to control, filter, or monitor (or all three) SMS messages.
Answer to the second question: it'll be enabled when the Chinese government figures out an easy way to control, filter, or monitor (or all three) SMS messages.
By terming evolution as a matter of belief or non-belief and putting creationism, in anything but the strict deism sense, into the same camp you only reveals your ignorance of what science is and what is required to be considered "scientific".
There is room at the table for both points of view if you stop being so (pardon the adjective) dogmatic about it. You must stop assuming the religious view utterly rejects evolution. While that may be true for some hardliners -- and I have nothing but contempt for such as them regardless of what side of the fence they sit on -- that is not true for the majority.
Denying evolutionary processes is absurd. The technical definition of evolution is that a species will, over time, adapt to its environment. The evidence of this is unmistakable. I like to use blind cave shrimp as an example. The shrimp evolved out of the need for eyes in a lightless environment, compensating with increased sensory perception from touch, smell, sound, and taste. It's also relatively straightforward to figure out the shrimp didn't start out that way, that they're the result of normal shrimp that got stuck in the cave millenia ago.
Where religion and science cross swords is not on evolution per se, but on the origin of the human species. Some scientists maintain we evolved from apes. There is evidence such a process could have occurred, but it is not unassailable evidence. Until someone either invents a time machine or finds all the "missing link" fossil records, the question may never be put fully to rest. To claim it already has been is the height of hubris.
In the meantime, creationists insist man's rise from the dust was orchestrated by a higher power. They believe the "spark" of man could not have arisen via natural, random genetic processes. They believe we are special in a way that breaks our evolutionary links to anything we can now observe. They are not denying evolution; they are denying that our humanity -- our "soul" if you will -- is the result of evolution.
This is a question that science has not answered because science has not and may never be able to address the concept of a soul. That you are a sentient being is undeniable, but what exactly makes you you? Is your brain you? What if a portion of your brain were removed or destroyed due to illness or injury? Are you no longer you? Are you less you than you were before? If your brain could be divided and half transplanted into another body, would there be two you's? Science has thus far been utterly unable to answer such philosophical questions. The very nature of science, that being hard fact, is unsuited to questions of a philosophical nature.
This is why I am not opposed to teaching alternative concepts such as those you oppose. It is not being taught as a science, it is being taught as a philosophical concept. Let both -- or all -- sides be presented. Let people make up their own minds on whether they go with one side, another side, or a completely new interpretation. The end result is people think about their choices. This is a Good Thing(tm).
I'll leave you with a final quote from one of the most amazing scientists to ever grace humanity:
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
I know your post was meant to be trite and clever sounding, but I'm going to respond logically to it: why not bring up Astrology in the classroom? Are you in terror that someone might accept it as genuine science? I know I'm not.
This cuts to the core of my argument: intelligent people have the capacity to filter out questionable information. If someone tried to teach me the book of Genesis as literal fact, I'd reject it because it's at odds with a vast, observable body of knowledge to the contrary. If someone similarly tries to teach that the moons, planets, and stars guide our destiny, I'd similarly reject it for the same reason. Why do you fear it even being brought up in school?
And let's not forget the Chinese are essentially building this line as a "hey, look at what we can do" exhibition similar to what just finished up with the Olympics. As you noted, they have none of the environmental and legal obstacles present in the States. Further, the Chinese have absolutely no incentive to care whether this line ever turns a profit. It's a demonstration of the renewed power of the Middle Kingdom. What other value it may have I don't know.
Here in the States, AMTRAK is in horrible shape due to mismanagement and a general public disuse of trains. Our highway system -- coupled with the ubiquity of personal automobiles -- makes cars preferable to trains for almost everyone who doesn't live and work in a dense urban area. China lacks a similar road/car combination, making rail more attractive.
Yeah, but Quayle want creationism taught in schools like Palin does [wired.com]?
Quit being disingenuous. If you want to try and pick apart someone, try using their entire comment, not just the part that serves your agenda. Palin's comments were:
"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."
"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesnâ(TM)t have to be part of the curriculum."
She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum.
Members of the state school board, which sets minimum requirements, are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature.
"I won't have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism," Palin said.
So there. She doesn't endorse creationism any more than evolutionary theory. God forbid (if you'll pardon the expression) we let open minds hear both sides of the debate and make up their own minds what they believe, right? I mean, it's so much easier if you just silence once side of the issue and put the other camp out of business. Then the kids believe just what you want them to believe without ever having had the choice. You seem to be in favor of censorship when it suits your agenda.
She's saying both sides deserve to be heard. You seem to be in favor of censoring one side because you don't agree with it. Somehow, if a creationist were advocating that evolution be banned, I have a funny feeling you'd be all lathered up about it. Yet you have no problem with the same being applied in the opposite direction. Back where I come from, that's called 'hypocrisy.'
And, for the record, I have this issue at home with my kids right now. My wife is religious, although not a zealot. She leans towards creationism. I'm not very religious and I lean towards evolution. I'm seeing to it that my daughters grow up hearing both points of view. They can then make up their own minds. As parents, we should have enough confidence in the upbringing we've given our children that they'll make the "right" choice, whatever that happens to be.
No, it doesn't. The user isn't paying Perl for support, he's paying RedHat. The value of the support he's receiving is not (in his opinion) equaling the cost of said support. This would apply whether it was OSS, FOSS, CSS, or any other variation. The fact that Perl is a FOSS project is irrelevant to a discussion about paid support from a third party no involved in creating Perl.
Or better still the government could spend a few billion on it instead of Trident missiles or something.
Yes, let's be sure and work an anti-military angle in on your argument while you're at it. After all, what good is all that fiber in the ground if you don't have an oppressive Communist Empire controlling what you can see, hear, and say. Those Trident missiles made it possible for you to be smug and self-assured. Not that you're ever likely to recognize that fact.
Ah, the old "I've never seen it, but I know it's there and it's abhorrent!" argument. You might want to take off your class warfare glasses for just a minute and join the rest of us in reality land.
No one has said there isn't someone, somewhere, somehow suffering from "crushing poverty" in the U.S. I'm sure there's some downtrodden soul out there that is in just as hideous shape as the lowest of the low in India or Africa. But that would be an extreme corner case of "poverty" in America. By and large, nobody in "poverty" in a developed nation starves to death or dies of a treatable disease -- unless, of course, they choose to ignore food and healthcare as a chosen lifestyle (i.e. alcoholic or drug addict).
If you have to use an absurdly extreme case in order to "prove" your point, you have no point. You're just frothing with typical liberal envy of those who have more than other people, never stopping to think that sometimes, in this country of opportunity everywhere, people are in bad shape because they made bad decisions. Your current place in life is, like everyone else, determined by the choices you have made up to this point. If you don't like where you are, you have nobody but yourself to blame. It's more comforting for you to blame those with flashy cars drinking cafe lattes, though, isn't it? The sad part is, you think it's a virtue.
Not the old "but America is rural!" chestnut again. Scandinavian countries have lower population densities than we do yet have much better access.
They also have government-subsidized Internet access and taxes roughly double what we have in the States. If you like their way so much, I suggest you write a fat check to the IRS immediately. If it's all the same, I'd far rather it be your money for your "power to the people" scheme and not my money for your scheme. That way, you get the opportunity to show what an upstanding defender of the broadband-challenged you are by making the first substantial sacrifice. Go ahead. We're all waiting. We'll be patient while you find a pen.
I'll give you a hint -- US broadband sucks not because of different population densities. Instead, it's all about the profit margins.
You're entirely correct. Business must make a profit or they cease to stay in business. Places like Japan and Finland support broadband with government subsidies, which are obtained by higher tax rates than anything we have in the States.
Now, dear sir, if you think their method is better, I strongly suggest you whip our your checkbook and write a large check to the IRS as soon as possible. You seem to be rather free with spending so long as it's not your money you're spending. I'd rather your decision be based on what it would cost you rather than what it would cost me, if it's all the same to you.
I don't live in the sticks. I live in Los Angeles. Specifically the San Fernando Valley.
Another bit of broadband-related irony is that some city dwellers find themselves in the same I-can't-get-broadband problem as rural folks. The reason behind it is completely different, though. While rural areas cost too much to service due to low density, high density city areas can cost too much because of the disruption of tearing up the streets, diverting traffic, interrupting other services (phones, electricity, gas lines, etc.). It's ironic, but it makes sense.
The best place you can be for broadband is near to -- but not inside -- a large city. You're close enough for low deployment costs but far enough away to avoid dealing with 100+ years of buried city infrastructure.
Why can't (won't) they provide better than 16mbit/512kbit ADSL to subscribers who are literally across the street from their switch? Because they don't have to. We don't have the regulation to make them.
Why oh why does everyone here think it's the government's job to fix all their ills?
Look, if 16/0.5 is all you've got, it could be because everybody else in your area is happy with that and wouldn't pay extra to get more. There's more to rolling out broadband than physical distance, you know (although that is a big part of it). Your ISP would likely have to replace the switches in their CO's to give you faster speeds. They'd have to upgrade the uplinks from the CO's back to the main NOC. Heck, maybe even their backbone is insufficient to support a few thousand new subscribers with symmetric 100mbit. All that upgrading costs money. Would you pay double or triple your current monthly ISP fee for 100mbit service? Would your neighbors? Would everyone in your town?
The answer to most of these questions is "no" and that's why you have what you have. It's not nefarious. It's not the ISP trying to screw you. There is no vast low-bandwidth conspiracy. It's plain and simple economics: when it's profitable for an ISP to offer you a service and there are enough people like you who want it, they'll offer it. Expecting them to do it without meeting these conditions is just wishful stupidity.
As individual consumers there is nothing we can do, only the government can speed things up.
Wrong! As an individual consumer, you can pony up and pay the true cost of deployment of the services you wish to acquire. Fiber doesn't magically appear underground, you know. It costs money. Somebody somewhere must pay that cost, be it a consumer paying for services or a taxpayer paying to subsidize the deployment and/or operation of the service.
If you're so all-fired ready to have government solve the problem, I strongly suggest you kick in an extra $10,000 or so to the IRS the next time your taxes are due. Might as well put your money where your mouth is. I know I'm damned tired of other people putting my money where their mouth is while I don't get jack shit for it.
Poverty is not an indicator of economic health. The US has its share of the homeless and destitute which is disproportionately high given it's national income.
Define "poverty" when you say that. Our "homeless" and "destitute" are very likely eating regular meals. Most have cells phones, and any can walk into the ER of a hospital and receive medical care without ever being billed.
If you want to consider "poverty" to mean "people who have less stuff than other people" then yes, we have a lot of poverty in this nation. However, if you want to see real poverty, go to India, or rural China, or Africa. People routinely starve, they have no electricity or clean water, and disease is rampant. These people would kill to be in "poverty" American-style.
China's economy is not precarious, their budget surpluses are enormous and their cash reserve is so large that they are the largest holders of US government debt.
True, yet their export market is fantastically dependent upon us being able to buy the stuff they're making. Go look around you sometime. Notice how many things you see labeled "Made in China." Now imagine the factories in China producing those things. Now imagine those factories idle, the people out of work, because their biggest customer in the world is suffering an economic downturn. If our economy is precarious, theirs is, too.
And your claim of them being able to run for a while with everything stopped is pure silliness. You obviously have no grasp whatsoever of the amounts of money involved in your hypothetical situation.
Unless the government forces companies to roll out broadband everywhere, the companies are going to show little to no interest for people outside of major cities. You don't deserve clean air and broadband.
Yes, let's all step up and demand that government fix all our ills! I want broadband, so pass a law! I want free healthcare! I want my retirement planning done for me! I want, I want, I want! My God, it sounds like a nation of three-year-olds.
Dear sir, while I can respect your motives for wanting government to force companies to roll out broadband, precisely how would you like to pay for such a deployment? Fiber isn't free, you know. The people who dig the ditches to lay it in don't work for free. The people who man the massive NOC's full of telco switchgear do not work for free. Where, pray tell, will you get the funding to make this happen? And before you volunteer to spend someone else's money for your project, why not set an example by opening your wallet to Uncle Sam and say "Here! Take all you want in the name of Broadband to the Masses!" You'd be such a saint!
I have a better idea: if people want broadband, let them pay what it costs for them to obtain it. What a novel idea! Costs of services being tied to costs of providing those services! Imagine that!
Now that I've had my fun with a bit of sarcasm, let's return to reality for the closing lesson. If it costs $250,000 to pull a piece of fiber to a rural farm where the farmer doesn't give two damns about broadband, government has no business mandating that fiber to be pulled. Any suggestion otherwise is lunacy cloaked in ignorance of basic economic principles.
Maybe you're right. I still don't exclude cynical greed as a profit motive... to some people, enough is never enough...
Being a few billion short of a billionaire myself, I offer the following as speculation:
Wealth is a means to acquire luxury, but once you can afford a lifetime ofluxury, what good is more wealth? Once someone reaches a wealth level where (a) they need never work again in their lives unless they want to and (b) they can afford any luxury available in the entire world, I think it fundamentally alters their basis for wants. Dollars no longer matter -- literally -- so something else takes that place. For some it's status, for others it's power, or recognition, or revenge, or any of the other baser motivations for having the most, the biggest, or the best.
George loves making movies. That is not a crime, and it would be a good thing if either (a) he were any good at it or (b) he kept them to himself. Unfortunately neither (a) nor (b) apply, and that's why Star Wars has gone downhill -- and at increasing speed -- since Empire Strikes Back.
I know exactly what's driving Lucas on this. Cash. Period. Whatever motivations he may have once had for this story and this franchise, his sole concern now seems to be the bank account.
I disagree. According to Forbes, George's personal fortune is immense. He's worth $3.5 billion, making him #61 on the list of the 400 Richest people in America. He could buy a new Ferrari every day for the rest of his life and still have billions left over. Ditto for yachts, mansions, and jets. What possible motivation would he have to try and amass more wealth? As Bill Gates once said, at some point, no matter how much you're able to pay for a hamburger, does it taste any better?
What's driving Lucas here is that he thinks his films are the highest art in the land. He truly thinks he can write good dialogue (he can't), touching love scenes (dear God, no), and witty humor (for a three-year-old, maybe). He puts out this execrable dreck because, in his mind, it's all the other films that are execrable dreck. His wealth allows him to live in his own world, and I'm quite sure all those around him -- who are dependent upon him for a paycheck -- nod respectfully and praise his work as that of a master even when they'd probably rather wipe their asses with it.
No, it's not greed that drives Lucas to destroy our cherished childhood memories of one of the most seminal films ever made. It's his pride. He simply refuses to believe he's as awful of a filmmaker as he really is, and stuff like Clone Wars is the result.
While I'm inclined to go with your explanation due to Intel's past history of dirty tricks, it could be something slightly less nefarious. If Futuremark used Intel's compiler to produce their benchmark code, it's likely inserting optimizations for Intel CPU's...optimizations it conveniently leaves out for competing CPU's.
This kind of thing has cropped up in the past with Intel's compiler vs. GCC or Microsoft's compiler, and the output of Intel's compiler always seems to make Intel CPU's look especially good and non-Intel chips look especially bad. You can bet that's not accidental, which is why I said this is "slightly" less nefarious.
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$7.9 million? MASA [aol.com] will launch any payload and successfully land it on the moon for two hundred dollars [wikipedia.org].
And how much in taxes does the average taxpayer have to pay to subsidize that $200 launch cost?
There is no free -- or even cheap -- lunch when it comes to any government-sponsored program.
The Chinese have spent about 20 times what Musk has (going on what my opponents say) and have come out with more than 20 times the value in terms of their results.
The amount spent by the Chinese is undoubtedly large, but no one outside the Chinese government may know the true cost. Given the secrecy surrounding the project as well as the government obfuscation (i.e. only announcing launches after they're successful), I'd suspect the number is a good deal higher than anything they've announced publicly.
Further, your claim that they're getting "20 times the value" is nebulous at best. You're guessing and reaching all at the same time. Do you have some kind of axe to grind that motivates you to so thoroughly abandon logic?
You can't even compare three man capsules and spacewalks to launching microsatellites on the same playing field.
Really? Why not? Both involve similar engineering and scientific feats. Both are fantastically expensive. The difference is in scale and efficiency only. China has the scale, Musk has the efficiency. It's as simple as that. Further, Musk isn't trying to reach the scale of China, Russia, or the U.S. His goal -- the one you're completely ignorant of -- is to make space access affordable.
It remains to be seen whether China can match Musk's efficiency or whether Musk can match China's -- or any other government-sponsored launch system's -- scale. However, in the sense that he's got a working launch platform that met all its design goals, it is huge success.
Why am I being so rough? Slashdotters seem more than willing to jump on Elon Musk's "entrepreneurial" cock but at the same time make racist statements when the Chinese government achieves a far more significant space milestone. Don't expect everyone to fall at the feet of this guy simply because he fits in with your ideological predispositions; he is quite far behind.
Vulgarity aside, you miss the point entirely. True, the Chinese have accomplished quite a bit. But they've had thousands of people working on it and spent hundreds of billions of yuan on it. Musk has only a few hundred and hasn't even spent a billion dollars. His project has accomplished a first for humanity -- a privately-financed launch platform. Praising him does not diminish the Chinese accomplishment, but Musk deserves credit for seeing this through to success. His objective was not to duplicate government launch abilities, it was to change the economics of launching. If his success continues, SpaceX -- and others like it -- will change all of humanity by vastly lowering the cost of getting into orbit.
If anything, you could apply your argument to the diminution of the Chinese. They've accomplished nothing that Apollo and Soyuz didn't already do forty years ago. Using your measuring stick, they have a tremendous amount of catching up to do. I don't subscribe to your measuring stick, mind you, but I thought you might easier see your argument's fallacies from a different perspective.
It appears that the media have decided that it's time for Obama to lose the election.
So did the media decide in 2000/2004 that it was Gore and Kerry's turn to lose as well? I thought Democrats believed the Supreme Court picked Presidents, not the media! My God, Hillary was right! It is a vast right-wing conspiracy! You're in on it, too!
When McCain chose Palin, he basically wrote off the urban and more educated voters to focus on the what has become the Republican base: rural and less educated voters.
And Democrats wonder why they've been labeled the "party of elitist snobbery." Don't you have some arugula you need to go buy at the nearest organically-grown, union-safe, handicap-equipped, rain-forest-protecting, recycling, non-offensive-to-vegans-if-they-happen-by grocery store you typically shop?
I mean, really! Do you honestly think that calling nearly half the American electorate "rural and less educated" is some kind of a winning strategy? Never mind that it's not even remotely true.
Here's a hint: you don't win by denigrating and insulting your political opponents. You win by converting them to your side with sound, convincing arguments. Somehow I think the you're-too-stupid-to-understand-my-nuance tactic doesn't fall into that camp.
No passenger rail network makes a profit.
Which more or less makes my point. If people had to pay the true cost of commuting by train (i.e. no gov't subsidies, no riding the coattails of freight) then it would die as a mode of transportation.
You do raise an interesting point that I did not address, namely that of for-profit rail competing against government-constructed highways. Unfortunately there is no way to test the theory of for-profit highways vs. for-profit rail. We pay taxes for highways whether we like it or not. However, I can make some assumptions.
I would say that if the gross per-person/per-mile costs of driving vs. rail were equal, people would undoubtedly take cars due to their greater flexibility in times and destinations. Freight would always go rail except for the final delivery leg due to more efficient use of delivery scheduling. But people on trains? I'd imagine the cost of driving would have to be at least 50%-100% higher than rail before people would consider it. I wonder if any objective studies (i.e. not by the railway and not by the auto industry) have been done on this subject in the States?
Uh-huh. Yup, nobody's riding those trains, yesirreebob.
Tell you what, smarty pants. When Amtrak can run and -- heavens forbid! -- turn a profit without government subsidies then you can be smarmy and smug. Until then, take your ill-advised posts elsewhere and hold your tongue.
Can anyone tell me why this situation has come about and when we can expect this sort of service to be enabled?
Answer to the first question: it's come about because the Chinese government hasn't figured out a way to control, filter, or monitor (or all three) SMS messages.
Answer to the second question: it'll be enabled when the Chinese government figures out an easy way to control, filter, or monitor (or all three) SMS messages.
Sometimes, the simple answers are the best ones.
By terming evolution as a matter of belief or non-belief and putting creationism, in anything but the strict deism sense, into the same camp you only reveals your ignorance of what science is and what is required to be considered "scientific".
There is room at the table for both points of view if you stop being so (pardon the adjective) dogmatic about it. You must stop assuming the religious view utterly rejects evolution. While that may be true for some hardliners -- and I have nothing but contempt for such as them regardless of what side of the fence they sit on -- that is not true for the majority.
Denying evolutionary processes is absurd. The technical definition of evolution is that a species will, over time, adapt to its environment. The evidence of this is unmistakable. I like to use blind cave shrimp as an example. The shrimp evolved out of the need for eyes in a lightless environment, compensating with increased sensory perception from touch, smell, sound, and taste. It's also relatively straightforward to figure out the shrimp didn't start out that way, that they're the result of normal shrimp that got stuck in the cave millenia ago.
Where religion and science cross swords is not on evolution per se, but on the origin of the human species. Some scientists maintain we evolved from apes. There is evidence such a process could have occurred, but it is not unassailable evidence. Until someone either invents a time machine or finds all the "missing link" fossil records, the question may never be put fully to rest. To claim it already has been is the height of hubris.
In the meantime, creationists insist man's rise from the dust was orchestrated by a higher power. They believe the "spark" of man could not have arisen via natural, random genetic processes. They believe we are special in a way that breaks our evolutionary links to anything we can now observe. They are not denying evolution; they are denying that our humanity -- our "soul" if you will -- is the result of evolution.
This is a question that science has not answered because science has not and may never be able to address the concept of a soul. That you are a sentient being is undeniable, but what exactly makes you you? Is your brain you? What if a portion of your brain were removed or destroyed due to illness or injury? Are you no longer you? Are you less you than you were before? If your brain could be divided and half transplanted into another body, would there be two you's? Science has thus far been utterly unable to answer such philosophical questions. The very nature of science, that being hard fact, is unsuited to questions of a philosophical nature.
This is why I am not opposed to teaching alternative concepts such as those you oppose. It is not being taught as a science, it is being taught as a philosophical concept. Let both -- or all -- sides be presented. Let people make up their own minds on whether they go with one side, another side, or a completely new interpretation. The end result is people think about their choices. This is a Good Thing(tm).
I'll leave you with a final quote from one of the most amazing scientists to ever grace humanity:
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
Should they teach Astrology too?
I know your post was meant to be trite and clever sounding, but I'm going to respond logically to it: why not bring up Astrology in the classroom? Are you in terror that someone might accept it as genuine science? I know I'm not.
This cuts to the core of my argument: intelligent people have the capacity to filter out questionable information. If someone tried to teach me the book of Genesis as literal fact, I'd reject it because it's at odds with a vast, observable body of knowledge to the contrary. If someone similarly tries to teach that the moons, planets, and stars guide our destiny, I'd similarly reject it for the same reason. Why do you fear it even being brought up in school?
And let's not forget the Chinese are essentially building this line as a "hey, look at what we can do" exhibition similar to what just finished up with the Olympics. As you noted, they have none of the environmental and legal obstacles present in the States. Further, the Chinese have absolutely no incentive to care whether this line ever turns a profit. It's a demonstration of the renewed power of the Middle Kingdom. What other value it may have I don't know.
Here in the States, AMTRAK is in horrible shape due to mismanagement and a general public disuse of trains. Our highway system -- coupled with the ubiquity of personal automobiles -- makes cars preferable to trains for almost everyone who doesn't live and work in a dense urban area. China lacks a similar road/car combination, making rail more attractive.
Yeah, but Quayle want creationism taught in schools like Palin does [wired.com]?
Quit being disingenuous. If you want to try and pick apart someone, try using their entire comment, not just the part that serves your agenda. Palin's comments were:
"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."
"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesnâ(TM)t have to be part of the curriculum."
She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum.
Members of the state school board, which sets minimum requirements, are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature.
"I won't have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism," Palin said.
So there. She doesn't endorse creationism any more than evolutionary theory. God forbid (if you'll pardon the expression) we let open minds hear both sides of the debate and make up their own minds what they believe, right? I mean, it's so much easier if you just silence once side of the issue and put the other camp out of business. Then the kids believe just what you want them to believe without ever having had the choice. You seem to be in favor of censorship when it suits your agenda.
She's saying both sides deserve to be heard. You seem to be in favor of censoring one side because you don't agree with it. Somehow, if a creationist were advocating that evolution be banned, I have a funny feeling you'd be all lathered up about it. Yet you have no problem with the same being applied in the opposite direction. Back where I come from, that's called 'hypocrisy.'
And, for the record, I have this issue at home with my kids right now. My wife is religious, although not a zealot. She leans towards creationism. I'm not very religious and I lean towards evolution. I'm seeing to it that my daughters grow up hearing both points of view. They can then make up their own minds. As parents, we should have enough confidence in the upbringing we've given our children that they'll make the "right" choice, whatever that happens to be.
No, it doesn't. The user isn't paying Perl for support, he's paying RedHat. The value of the support he's receiving is not (in his opinion) equaling the cost of said support. This would apply whether it was OSS, FOSS, CSS, or any other variation. The fact that Perl is a FOSS project is irrelevant to a discussion about paid support from a third party no involved in creating Perl.
Or better still the government could spend a few billion on it instead of Trident missiles or something.
Yes, let's be sure and work an anti-military angle in on your argument while you're at it. After all, what good is all that fiber in the ground if you don't have an oppressive Communist Empire controlling what you can see, hear, and say. Those Trident missiles made it possible for you to be smug and self-assured. Not that you're ever likely to recognize that fact.
Ah, the old "I've never seen it, but I know it's there and it's abhorrent!" argument. You might want to take off your class warfare glasses for just a minute and join the rest of us in reality land.
No one has said there isn't someone, somewhere, somehow suffering from "crushing poverty" in the U.S. I'm sure there's some downtrodden soul out there that is in just as hideous shape as the lowest of the low in India or Africa. But that would be an extreme corner case of "poverty" in America. By and large, nobody in "poverty" in a developed nation starves to death or dies of a treatable disease -- unless, of course, they choose to ignore food and healthcare as a chosen lifestyle (i.e. alcoholic or drug addict).
If you have to use an absurdly extreme case in order to "prove" your point, you have no point. You're just frothing with typical liberal envy of those who have more than other people, never stopping to think that sometimes, in this country of opportunity everywhere, people are in bad shape because they made bad decisions. Your current place in life is, like everyone else, determined by the choices you have made up to this point. If you don't like where you are, you have nobody but yourself to blame. It's more comforting for you to blame those with flashy cars drinking cafe lattes, though, isn't it? The sad part is, you think it's a virtue.
Not the old "but America is rural!" chestnut again. Scandinavian countries have lower population densities than we do yet have much better access.
They also have government-subsidized Internet access and taxes roughly double what we have in the States. If you like their way so much, I suggest you write a fat check to the IRS immediately. If it's all the same, I'd far rather it be your money for your "power to the people" scheme and not my money for your scheme. That way, you get the opportunity to show what an upstanding defender of the broadband-challenged you are by making the first substantial sacrifice. Go ahead. We're all waiting. We'll be patient while you find a pen.
I'll give you a hint -- US broadband sucks not because of different population densities. Instead, it's all about the profit margins.
You're entirely correct. Business must make a profit or they cease to stay in business. Places like Japan and Finland support broadband with government subsidies, which are obtained by higher tax rates than anything we have in the States.
Now, dear sir, if you think their method is better, I strongly suggest you whip our your checkbook and write a large check to the IRS as soon as possible. You seem to be rather free with spending so long as it's not your money you're spending. I'd rather your decision be based on what it would cost you rather than what it would cost me, if it's all the same to you.
I don't live in the sticks. I live in Los Angeles. Specifically the San Fernando Valley.
Another bit of broadband-related irony is that some city dwellers find themselves in the same I-can't-get-broadband problem as rural folks. The reason behind it is completely different, though. While rural areas cost too much to service due to low density, high density city areas can cost too much because of the disruption of tearing up the streets, diverting traffic, interrupting other services (phones, electricity, gas lines, etc.). It's ironic, but it makes sense.
The best place you can be for broadband is near to -- but not inside -- a large city. You're close enough for low deployment costs but far enough away to avoid dealing with 100+ years of buried city infrastructure.
Why can't (won't) they provide better than 16mbit/512kbit ADSL to subscribers who are literally across the street from their switch? Because they don't have to. We don't have the regulation to make them.
Why oh why does everyone here think it's the government's job to fix all their ills?
Look, if 16/0.5 is all you've got, it could be because everybody else in your area is happy with that and wouldn't pay extra to get more. There's more to rolling out broadband than physical distance, you know (although that is a big part of it). Your ISP would likely have to replace the switches in their CO's to give you faster speeds. They'd have to upgrade the uplinks from the CO's back to the main NOC. Heck, maybe even their backbone is insufficient to support a few thousand new subscribers with symmetric 100mbit. All that upgrading costs money. Would you pay double or triple your current monthly ISP fee for 100mbit service? Would your neighbors? Would everyone in your town?
The answer to most of these questions is "no" and that's why you have what you have. It's not nefarious. It's not the ISP trying to screw you. There is no vast low-bandwidth conspiracy. It's plain and simple economics: when it's profitable for an ISP to offer you a service and there are enough people like you who want it, they'll offer it. Expecting them to do it without meeting these conditions is just wishful stupidity.
As individual consumers there is nothing we can do, only the government can speed things up.
Wrong! As an individual consumer, you can pony up and pay the true cost of deployment of the services you wish to acquire. Fiber doesn't magically appear underground, you know. It costs money. Somebody somewhere must pay that cost, be it a consumer paying for services or a taxpayer paying to subsidize the deployment and/or operation of the service.
If you're so all-fired ready to have government solve the problem, I strongly suggest you kick in an extra $10,000 or so to the IRS the next time your taxes are due. Might as well put your money where your mouth is. I know I'm damned tired of other people putting my money where their mouth is while I don't get jack shit for it.
Poverty is not an indicator of economic health. The US has its share of the homeless and destitute which is disproportionately high given it's national income.
Define "poverty" when you say that. Our "homeless" and "destitute" are very likely eating regular meals. Most have cells phones, and any can walk into the ER of a hospital and receive medical care without ever being billed.
If you want to consider "poverty" to mean "people who have less stuff than other people" then yes, we have a lot of poverty in this nation. However, if you want to see real poverty, go to India, or rural China, or Africa. People routinely starve, they have no electricity or clean water, and disease is rampant. These people would kill to be in "poverty" American-style.
China's economy is not precarious, their budget surpluses are enormous and their cash reserve is so large that they are the largest holders of US government debt.
True, yet their export market is fantastically dependent upon us being able to buy the stuff they're making. Go look around you sometime. Notice how many things you see labeled "Made in China." Now imagine the factories in China producing those things. Now imagine those factories idle, the people out of work, because their biggest customer in the world is suffering an economic downturn. If our economy is precarious, theirs is, too.
And your claim of them being able to run for a while with everything stopped is pure silliness. You obviously have no grasp whatsoever of the amounts of money involved in your hypothetical situation.
Unless the government forces companies to roll out broadband everywhere, the companies are going to show little to no interest for people outside of major cities. You don't deserve clean air and broadband.
Yes, let's all step up and demand that government fix all our ills! I want broadband, so pass a law! I want free healthcare! I want my retirement planning done for me! I want, I want, I want! My God, it sounds like a nation of three-year-olds.
Dear sir, while I can respect your motives for wanting government to force companies to roll out broadband, precisely how would you like to pay for such a deployment? Fiber isn't free, you know. The people who dig the ditches to lay it in don't work for free. The people who man the massive NOC's full of telco switchgear do not work for free. Where, pray tell, will you get the funding to make this happen? And before you volunteer to spend someone else's money for your project, why not set an example by opening your wallet to Uncle Sam and say "Here! Take all you want in the name of Broadband to the Masses!" You'd be such a saint!
I have a better idea: if people want broadband, let them pay what it costs for them to obtain it. What a novel idea! Costs of services being tied to costs of providing those services! Imagine that!
Now that I've had my fun with a bit of sarcasm, let's return to reality for the closing lesson. If it costs $250,000 to pull a piece of fiber to a rural farm where the farmer doesn't give two damns about broadband, government has no business mandating that fiber to be pulled. Any suggestion otherwise is lunacy cloaked in ignorance of basic economic principles.
Maybe you're right. I still don't exclude cynical greed as a profit motive... to some people, enough is never enough...
Being a few billion short of a billionaire myself, I offer the following as speculation:
Wealth is a means to acquire luxury, but once you can afford a lifetime ofluxury, what good is more wealth? Once someone reaches a wealth level where (a) they need never work again in their lives unless they want to and (b) they can afford any luxury available in the entire world, I think it fundamentally alters their basis for wants. Dollars no longer matter -- literally -- so something else takes that place. For some it's status, for others it's power, or recognition, or revenge, or any of the other baser motivations for having the most, the biggest, or the best.
George loves making movies. That is not a crime, and it would be a good thing if either (a) he were any good at it or (b) he kept them to himself. Unfortunately neither (a) nor (b) apply, and that's why Star Wars has gone downhill -- and at increasing speed -- since Empire Strikes Back.
I know exactly what's driving Lucas on this. Cash. Period. Whatever motivations he may have once had for this story and this franchise, his sole concern now seems to be the bank account.
I disagree. According to Forbes, George's personal fortune is immense. He's worth $3.5 billion, making him #61 on the list of the 400 Richest people in America. He could buy a new Ferrari every day for the rest of his life and still have billions left over. Ditto for yachts, mansions, and jets. What possible motivation would he have to try and amass more wealth? As Bill Gates once said, at some point, no matter how much you're able to pay for a hamburger, does it taste any better?
What's driving Lucas here is that he thinks his films are the highest art in the land. He truly thinks he can write good dialogue (he can't), touching love scenes (dear God, no), and witty humor (for a three-year-old, maybe). He puts out this execrable dreck because, in his mind, it's all the other films that are execrable dreck. His wealth allows him to live in his own world, and I'm quite sure all those around him -- who are dependent upon him for a paycheck -- nod respectfully and praise his work as that of a master even when they'd probably rather wipe their asses with it.
No, it's not greed that drives Lucas to destroy our cherished childhood memories of one of the most seminal films ever made. It's his pride. He simply refuses to believe he's as awful of a filmmaker as he really is, and stuff like Clone Wars is the result.
While I'm inclined to go with your explanation due to Intel's past history of dirty tricks, it could be something slightly less nefarious. If Futuremark used Intel's compiler to produce their benchmark code, it's likely inserting optimizations for Intel CPU's...optimizations it conveniently leaves out for competing CPU's.
This kind of thing has cropped up in the past with Intel's compiler vs. GCC or Microsoft's compiler, and the output of Intel's compiler always seems to make Intel CPU's look especially good and non-Intel chips look especially bad. You can bet that's not accidental, which is why I said this is "slightly" less nefarious.