Yes, I agree, NASA does cost a lot of money, however I disagree that it's a waste of my money.
Well, the NASA boss(!) doesn't
agree with you. He do think space is worth the effort, but NASA has been throwing money in the sea. A non-critical fanboy attitude will mean more money wasted.
(I think that link will sadly be relevant to every NASA discussion in the future.)
I'd love to use something with Open BSD's security focus on my desk.
What would really make me try it would be good support for virtual machines.
Then I could fall back to Linux if I got a problem and run the two programs where I still boot to Win. Easy transfer -- and I could transfer my parents' machines. Less questions.
[Walmart] will do well no matter how poor their customers become because they sell very cheaply. I never said they wouldn't be able to adapt to a richer consumer, what I said was that it's convenient for them for the poor to remain poor
Richer customers buy more.
My point was that if e.g. a big new resource opens up which allows lower prices, companies that doesn't use that resource will die. That is the reason competition works. No reason to blame the companies better at using the resource.
transferring well-paid jobs to sweatshops benefits neither us, who lose our disposable income, or the sweatshop workers who are exploited due to their desperation. ...
I also fail to see anything any less right-wing from your 'non-right' economist than I see everyday from the usual short termists that currently set world economic policy. Sweatshop jobs may be better than no jobs, but they certainly don't lead to economic growth
You claim that this is wrong? I am not an economist, but from what else I've read, it seems to be the prevalent opinion in their field.
Can you show that the argument is wrong? Or that it is unusual for economists? It contradicts your position.
Otherwise you are arguing that most economists are idiots or in a conspiracy, which is more or less what the creationists argue about palaentologists.
Yes, yes. I quoted a classical comment on economy. You understood what I meant.
The fall of the Soviet Union brought about a radical shift to the right around the world
Get real. Main difference here is that the communist party changed name.
My only point is that the local system isn't stable. If you want to discuss irrelevant theories of world politics, do it with someone else. You started a humongously long rah-rah speech because you didn't have answers?? (Do you really claim that Ford was big enough to be more than 10% of GDP? Never mind.)
If you want, I'll give examples re Sweden and what doesn't seem to work.
(And re USA, they are probably better to have around than the Chinese will be, unless they democratize...)
You need to motivate why Walmart would fail to sell a different product mix to target a bit richer audience? It is what retail businesses do.
I am not an economist, but I can tell you that if there shows up a gigantic new seller of very low cost resource used for production (work time), it will be a turbulent market for buying that resource for a while!
Companies compete with other companies that buy the cheaper resource (workers in China/India). If one company doesn't optimize enough, it will die. That is why capitalism is effective; constructive destruction.
In the end, it will drive up salaries in the whole world, and make it a better place for the poor countries. Unless it gets too unstable and we get an economic crash.
Walmart type companies and attitudes would repeal child labour and pollution regulation to drop prices and create jobs if they could.
Yes, yes. "Capitalism is the worst system ever, except for every other." Etc.
Companies are for optimization of economy. It is not their job to consider anything but profits. It is the state that sets the rules for how society works and makes it humane.
My point was that I couldn't see the west european system working in the US, since it is more of a continent than a country. Control problems don't scale linearily with the population. The last fifteen years, I've begun to doubt the w.e. system is stable at all.
pick a southern US state and take a poll of trailer park dwellers lifestyles
My point is that I doubt that the Swedish system is stable. Sure, for now it is probably better to be poor in Sweden. Note that if Sweden was a state in US, it would be the poorest. And the gap isn't closing.
Geniuses ARE strange. Fords personal politics aside.. you must be the one joking now.
Sigh, do I have to do this? You are quoting a good business leader on national economy. It is like quoting a physical chemist on biochemistry (sure, some metal enzyme functions or some membrane specifics, but the main questions are of a different scale).
Cradle to grave services and social security nets? Tough crowd to please.
Sigh, if the health care is bad and you can't afford private after paying taxes, you will complain. My specific example was that in private, even ministers of government didn't think it works (in that case, it was police).
I've heard Canada described by a couple of Swedes that lived there for a while as a Sweden that works. Might be your (or mine) cup of tea.
Walmart want the poor to stay poor since they will be unable to afford to shop anywhere else.
That was a joke? I doubt that Walmart wants the population to be poor. If the general population got richer, Walmart might change the exact product mix, but they'd still sell to the general population.
USA is too big and has too open borders with poor countries. It wouldn't work with a West European style of welfare state. (It is debatable if it works even here, in the long run.:-( )
Henry Ford was a bit strange and a fanatical anti-semite. Don't take him as an example of anything you want to support!:-)
The advantage with Sweden is that there are very few really desperate people around. The main problems stems from that not even the world's highest taxes makes the social system work well (which even ministers in the government says, if they believe no one listens).
You can't transplant political opinions from one place to another, because they doesn't map exactly. And I don't know that much about the US political scene. That said -- IMHO, the US right seems at least as crazy as the US left. I just hate true believers which, IMO, are the main fault with humanity.
Note that It was an international news item when a journalist in NY Times made up stories!
(I haven't seen the accusations of racism from NY Times? References?)
Something similar happened to a Swedish journalist (Jesús Alcalá) while he was writing for the largest morning paper (DN) in Sweden. It was a truly gigantic scandal -- he was also the local Amnesty boss and the whole cultural/political etablissement supported him.
It was not that surprising, though. The other big morning paper had a series about him a year or two before, where they noted his changes in opinion, shamelessly following the wind's direction. The big morning paper (DN) only answered by accusing them of racism! (-: It is an effective personal attack in the west today, only pederast is worse.:-)
That scandal, the largest I've seen in public Sweden, didn't exactly surprise anyone. And hardly made an international news splash. Sweden has roughly 1/30th the population of US, but it is still a bit of a difference.
From what I've seen, NY Times is the golden standard which other newspapers compares themselves. Lots of articles in local media seems to have been copied from it.
It is the same all over the world, just more hidden in other countries. Let me give an example from Sweden, which is among the top "corruption free" countries in the world. I argue it is as bad here as in many other countries -- the difference is that the politicians are more group oriented, since the parties are harder knit together. The collective leadership makes it harder to do more that get a low price on the summer house or fix good jobs for friends and relatives.
There was an oligopoly on food distribution for decades, with much higher prices than south, in the EU. One of the two big chains even had their own exception from monopoly laws! This was officially complained about by the politicians (but not too loudly), but nothing ever happened.
Despite that food costs is a larger part of low income people's expenses, something claimed to be close to the heart of the usual government party.
A few years after joining the EU, a low-price German food distribution chain started to open shops. They had a really hard time to get permits, since the towns decided that they wouldn't allow any more business centers outside the central cities (despite that those have been built for decades!). The central politicial parties didn't exactly intervene on the local political agenda, either.
All the bad press that the German shop got is besides the point -- we are talking about state/country level politicians here. (Swedish press isn't exactly NY Times in integrity.)
Sure, it might just be total incompetence. But since this hit low income people disproportionally, left wing politicians, always talking about the poor man's lot and "solidarity", should at least have talked seriously about doing something in the 70s.
I don't know if/what kind of lobbying was behind all this. I just note that 10% of the total cost for food in a year is a lot of money. And that left wingers love talking about the evil corporations, but never mention the big distribution companies that really stole the poor people's money.
IMHO, the win with the EU membership, is serious laws against monopolies.
You are wrong, this is not silly. It is hilarously funny. Made my day!
If Microsoft do this, consider a PHB motivating a Microsoft strategy to his bosses:
We can safely standardize on Windows, as long as our government doesn't expect all companies to follow the monopoly laws. Otherwise, we could import English-language versions of Office and change company language. Some extra costs for language lessons, of course...
Talk about losing credibility in the market place all over the world!
The author claims to be able to fix aging, but doesn't go into much detail how to do it.
Check the web site for details. He goes over what he claims are the damaging changes found -- and argues that there probably aren't that many more of those on the cell level, since they should be known by now.
I have done a bit of biochem courses for fun and can't see any obvious errors in the description.
There might be changes in the brain coming from age, of course. (The obvious answer would probably be that if the biochem problems are solved, there is ample time to nail anything like that. Sounds probable to me.)
In my country someone that is 50 years old is considered "old" and here in US someone who is 50 can still be in their prime.
The social definitions of aging is quite obviously irrelevant here, since the article discuss the kind of aging that destroys your health and increases the death risks by age.
The technical challenges are quite... formidable. But it is a research program to reach a target.
Bad smell argument is, of course, a good heuristic -- but some people sold travel through the air with control -- and then built helicopters. Someone will be first.
OK, I won't find any real biochemists on this site.
Neurogenesis seems to be well documented for songbird neocortex, though.
Since the argument we're discussing assumes working genetic engineering in the body, it seems like a smaller problem to extend the functioning from the speech center of birds to mammal brains...:-)
Re mitochondria, there is a quite new paper with getting an enzyme transported into mitochondia that handled H2O2 -- it increased the length of life for rats, I think. Google.
Hmm... ok, that was a good argument. But higher level system features like brain reactions?
To just look at biochemistry is like looking only at the metabolical level for obesity. Hunger/appetite reactions is the deciding factor there. (Or maybe even psychology!)
We don't know much about age changes that aren't purely physical. (I think I'm copying a common point here.) Ah well, when they are reached -- we can probably solve them.
If the basic techniques are implemented.
I'd love to be around to read about the results from the next few generations of space telescopes!
If it works and Grey manages to kickstart it, he would be like an Anti-Hitler or Anti-Stalin, who saved at least hundreds of millions from death.
Ah well, how long will serious genetic engineering take?
But who's to say that there are not even more aging effects that will only become apparent after 150 or 200 years?
That is quite likely.
The argument is that the known list of problems can be solved in a few decades. The next bunch of problems will be solved faster, when there is functioning gene therapy on living humans(!). (-: There might be continous attrition amongst the oldest people living...:-)
I haven't read too carefully (one of the previous times it was posted), but I think that is the "official" argument. Read the web site, most obvious counter arguments are answered.
you don't grow new [Neurons]
Sigh. The brain do grew new ones. Quite old knowledge. If the brains stop doing them, you get a depression. Exercise increases the rate. Google, or something.
The biochemists I studied with had lives, so I guess they have no/. where we can ask?:-)
If ageing is really to be solved, I think it will be done from the inside, by understanding and altering the functions of harmful genes. That's a long ways in the future, though.
See previous argument -- new, unknown effects will be found after a while and cured faster than the previous ones. (Sure, a generation or two might die before something new thing is cured.)
The whole thing seems to hang on (a) if the list of magical solutions are possible and (b) if there are unknown aging changes that can't be fixed.
If it is garbage (and YOU aren't full of it yourself!) what are the errors in the arguments??
Just that something hasn't been done is not a serious answer; there has been literally hundreds of "firsts" the last 150 years.
Some of the proposed solutions aren't exactly trivial -- e.g. "simply" moving genes from the mitochondria and then move back finished proteins would be a large change! (Sure, some proteins are made in the cell kernel and moved to the mitochondrias already, but to get the right levels of manufacturing, etc, etc. Not easy.)
To do that modification in living bodies seem... well, a factor of ten harder still!
But is should be doable theoretically. And probably practically. I haven't read that much biochemistry, but I can't say that any of the points strike me as theoretically impossible.
So what is wrong?? Is the list of needed fixes incomplete?
A serious answer would be appreciated. I'm curious and you seem to be certain in your opinion. You should know, yes?
I'd like to use eMule without having to boot Windows, so I can watch Rome and Weeds. (*) (-: Yes, yes, no need to tell me that it would have been less embarassing to admit to d/l animal p.rn, or something!:-)
I would prefer not to have to learn anything about the registry.
It almost seems as though the patent examiners don't actually do anything but stamp it.
Let me tell you a local story, that might just be a coincidence.
I stopped reading newspapers' advice regarding fixed/floating interest for home loans quite a few years ago.
Consider, you have some big banks earning billions if the population makes the wrong move and some non-economist journalists in general papers writing advice... strange that the recommendations were bad (if you looked back later) ten years in a row! Now, the economy and market were changing, but...
Now consider the underpaid patent workers, where you don't get any good insight into their approval process, letting totally obvious "inventions" through, like the patents for Microsoft's XML data formats...
It is certainly just a coincidence, but I wouldn't bet money it will stop without external influence.
(I think US journalists have a bit better integrity than Swedish. Yes, really.)
Bring it on! (BTW, Burt Rutan _is_ on our side, right?)
But so is NASA; maybe the worst money sink history has known.:-(
(At least the
new director went out and said that the shuttle and the space station cost at $250 billion were huge wastes of resources that should have had better uses. There might be hope, yet.)
any time a slashdot article talks about a programming language, there's a concerted effort by the language's detractors to say things like, [...] But of course we do this.
I like Perl and I agree with you -- it is one of the best tools around, for quite a lot of problems.
I do language evangelism, but I really won't sink so low that I go around trolling discussions of other languages. I am not that much of a pathetic asshole that I sell my intellectual integrity for the possibility of money.
(-: I had allergy/stomach problems this last winter and lost 15 kg. I can tell you from firsthand experience that starving is no fun, but I'd rather do that than documentation. Money isn't everything.:-)
Why aren't you just extending Guile, which has been declared the official GNU scripting langauge by none other than RMS himself.
Why don't you go discuss Guile with the large development community around it instead of trolling discussions about other languages?
Oh, sorry, there are no other people. (-: Everyone left the Guile community after you started advocating it?:-)
When you look at the previous posts by you, you look quite serious. Here you seem to do trolls about language design choices (spaces as part of syntax) and dead scripting languages. Have you started doing drugs? Found a nice bridge to live beneath?
Slashdot Mirror
(I think that link will sadly be relevant to every NASA discussion in the future.)
I note that you haven't answered my question if you were arguing like a creationist or had some integrity?
What would really make me try it would be good support for virtual machines.
Then I could fall back to Linux if I got a problem and run the two programs where I still boot to Win. Easy transfer -- and I could transfer my parents' machines. Less questions.
My point was that if e.g. a big new resource opens up which allows lower prices, companies that doesn't use that resource will die. That is the reason competition works. No reason to blame the companies better at using the resource.
You claim that this is wrong? I am not an economist, but from what else I've read, it seems to be the prevalent opinion in their field.
Can you show that the argument is wrong? Or that it is unusual for economists? It contradicts your position.
Otherwise you are arguing that most economists are idiots or in a conspiracy, which is more or less what the creationists argue about palaentologists.
My only point is that the local system isn't stable. If you want to discuss irrelevant theories of world politics, do it with someone else. You started a humongously long rah-rah speech because you didn't have answers?? (Do you really claim that Ford was big enough to be more than 10% of GDP? Never mind.)
If you want, I'll give examples re Sweden and what doesn't seem to work.
(And re USA, they are probably better to have around than the Chinese will be, unless they democratize...)
You need to motivate why Walmart would fail to sell a different product mix to target a bit richer audience? It is what retail businesses do.
I am not an economist, but I can tell you that if there shows up a gigantic new seller of very low cost resource used for production (work time), it will be a turbulent market for buying that resource for a while!
Companies compete with other companies that buy the cheaper resource (workers in China/India). If one company doesn't optimize enough, it will die. That is why capitalism is effective; constructive destruction.
In the end, it will drive up salaries in the whole world, and make it a better place for the poor countries. Unless it gets too unstable and we get an economic crash.
This is from a non-right economist.
Companies are for optimization of economy. It is not their job to consider anything but profits. It is the state that sets the rules for how society works and makes it humane.
My point was that I couldn't see the west european system working in the US, since it is more of a continent than a country. Control problems don't scale linearily with the population. The last fifteen years, I've begun to doubt the w.e. system is stable at all.
My point is that I doubt that the Swedish system is stable. Sure, for now it is probably better to be poor in Sweden. Note that if Sweden was a state in US, it would be the poorest. And the gap isn't closing. Sigh, do I have to do this? You are quoting a good business leader on national economy. It is like quoting a physical chemist on biochemistry (sure, some metal enzyme functions or some membrane specifics, but the main questions are of a different scale). Sigh, if the health care is bad and you can't afford private after paying taxes, you will complain. My specific example was that in private, even ministers of government didn't think it works (in that case, it was police).I've heard Canada described by a couple of Swedes that lived there for a while as a Sweden that works. Might be your (or mine) cup of tea.
etc.
That was a joke? I doubt that Walmart wants the population to be poor. If the general population got richer, Walmart might change the exact product mix, but they'd still sell to the general population.
USA is too big and has too open borders with poor countries. It wouldn't work with a West European style of welfare state. (It is debatable if it works even here, in the long run. :-( )
Henry Ford was a bit strange and a fanatical anti-semite. Don't take him as an example of anything you want to support! :-)
The advantage with Sweden is that there are very few really desperate people around. The main problems stems from that not even the world's highest taxes makes the social system work well (which even ministers in the government says, if they believe no one listens).
You can't transplant political opinions from one place to another, because they doesn't map exactly. And I don't know that much about the US political scene. That said -- IMHO, the US right seems at least as crazy as the US left. I just hate true believers which, IMO, are the main fault with humanity.
(I haven't seen the accusations of racism from NY Times? References?)
Something similar happened to a Swedish journalist (Jesús Alcalá) while he was writing for the largest morning paper (DN) in Sweden. It was a truly gigantic scandal -- he was also the local Amnesty boss and the whole cultural/political etablissement supported him.
It was not that surprising, though. The other big morning paper had a series about him a year or two before, where they noted his changes in opinion, shamelessly following the wind's direction. The big morning paper (DN) only answered by accusing them of racism! (-: It is an effective personal attack in the west today, only pederast is worse. :-)
That scandal, the largest I've seen in public Sweden, didn't exactly surprise anyone. And hardly made an international news splash. Sweden has roughly 1/30th the population of US, but it is still a bit of a difference.
From what I've seen, NY Times is the golden standard which other newspapers compares themselves. Lots of articles in local media seems to have been copied from it.
There are no such notions for big barns in cities that more or less sell food directly from containers.
And was answered:
I was talking about markup, compared historically to the countries south of Sweden in the EU.I also meant the total amount of money paid for food, not by an individual. (It has varied, 10% is certainly much too low.)
So your post wasn't just irrelevant, it misunderstood my point. :-)
The point was:
The combination has a very bad smell. And doesn't count as corruption in international accounts.
There was an oligopoly on food distribution for decades, with much higher prices than south, in the EU. One of the two big chains even had their own exception from monopoly laws! This was officially complained about by the politicians (but not too loudly), but nothing ever happened.
Despite that food costs is a larger part of low income people's expenses, something claimed to be close to the heart of the usual government party.
A few years after joining the EU, a low-price German food distribution chain started to open shops. They had a really hard time to get permits, since the towns decided that they wouldn't allow any more business centers outside the central cities (despite that those have been built for decades!). The central politicial parties didn't exactly intervene on the local political agenda, either.
All the bad press that the German shop got is besides the point -- we are talking about state/country level politicians here. (Swedish press isn't exactly NY Times in integrity.)
Sure, it might just be total incompetence. But since this hit low income people disproportionally, left wing politicians, always talking about the poor man's lot and "solidarity", should at least have talked seriously about doing something in the 70s.
I don't know if/what kind of lobbying was behind all this. I just note that 10% of the total cost for food in a year is a lot of money. And that left wingers love talking about the evil corporations, but never mention the big distribution companies that really stole the poor people's money.
IMHO, the win with the EU membership, is serious laws against monopolies.
If Microsoft do this, consider a PHB motivating a Microsoft strategy to his bosses:
Talk about losing credibility in the market place all over the world!
I have done a bit of biochem courses for fun and can't see any obvious errors in the description.
There might be changes in the brain coming from age, of course. (The obvious answer would probably be that if the biochem problems are solved, there is ample time to nail anything like that. Sounds probable to me.)
The social definitions of aging is quite obviously irrelevant here, since the article discuss the kind of aging that destroys your health and increases the death risks by age.
The technical challenges are quite ... formidable. But it is a research program to reach a target.
Bad smell argument is, of course, a good heuristic -- but some people sold travel through the air with control -- and then built helicopters. Someone will be first.
OK, I won't find any real biochemists on this site.
But the jury is still out, anyway. :-)
Neurogenesis seems to be well documented for songbird neocortex, though.
Since the argument we're discussing assumes working genetic engineering in the body, it seems like a smaller problem to extend the functioning from the speech center of birds to mammal brains... :-)
Hmm... ok, that was a good argument. But higher level system features like brain reactions?
To just look at biochemistry is like looking only at the metabolical level for obesity. Hunger/appetite reactions is the deciding factor there. (Or maybe even psychology!)
We don't know much about age changes that aren't purely physical. (I think I'm copying a common point here.) Ah well, when they are reached -- we can probably solve them.
If the basic techniques are implemented.
I'd love to be around to read about the results from the next few generations of space telescopes!
If it works and Grey manages to kickstart it, he would be like an Anti-Hitler or Anti-Stalin, who saved at least hundreds of millions from death.
Ah well, how long will serious genetic engineering take?
The argument is that the known list of problems can be solved in a few decades. The next bunch of problems will be solved faster, when there is functioning gene therapy on living humans(!). (-: There might be continous attrition amongst the oldest people living... :-)
I haven't read too carefully (one of the previous times it was posted), but I think that is the "official" argument. Read the web site, most obvious counter arguments are answered.
Sigh. The brain do grew new ones. Quite old knowledge. If the brains stop doing them, you get a depression. Exercise increases the rate. Google, or something.
The biochemists I studied with had lives, so I guess they have no /. where we can ask? :-)
See previous argument -- new, unknown effects will be found after a while and cured faster than the previous ones. (Sure, a generation or two might die before something new thing is cured.)
The whole thing seems to hang on (a) if the list of magical solutions are possible and (b) if there are unknown aging changes that can't be fixed.
If it is garbage (and YOU aren't full of it yourself!) what are the errors in the arguments??
Just that something hasn't been done is not a serious answer; there has been literally hundreds of "firsts" the last 150 years.
Some of the proposed solutions aren't exactly trivial -- e.g. "simply" moving genes from the mitochondria and then move back finished proteins would be a large change! (Sure, some proteins are made in the cell kernel and moved to the mitochondrias already, but to get the right levels of manufacturing, etc, etc. Not easy.)
To do that modification in living bodies seem ... well, a factor of ten harder still!
But is should be doable theoretically. And probably practically. I haven't read that much biochemistry, but I can't say that any of the points strike me as theoretically impossible.
So what is wrong?? Is the list of needed fixes incomplete?
A serious answer would be appreciated. I'm curious and you seem to be certain in your opinion. You should know, yes?
I'd like to use eMule without having to boot Windows, so I can watch Rome and Weeds. (*) (-: Yes, yes, no need to tell me that it would have been less embarassing to admit to d/l animal p.rn, or something! :-)
I would prefer not to have to learn anything about the registry.
(*)Is there a season 2 of Weeds coming?
At least the new NASA boss is making noises that he understands that the $250 billions into shuttle and space station weren't a good use of resources.
But Goldin did things like that, too, in the beginning, if I remember correctly and the old aerospace companies that made the shuttle gets more work.
Sigh, when thinking about it, you are right -- sounds like a newly "elected" banana republic president promising an end to corruption. :-(
What I find interesting is this story yesterday in the largest Swedish morning news paper and The Register. After a Dvorak column a few days earlier.
Is Dvorak (of all nitwits!) so much copied!? Is this some sort of campaign?
I remember reading at least a decade of rah rah articles about Microsoft, up to being declared guilty in their big trial. And quite a bit after.
(-: I mean, it is a well known phenomenon that big advertisers get terrible press. So of course Microsoft gets slaughtered in the press. :-)
I stopped reading newspapers' advice regarding fixed/floating interest for home loans quite a few years ago.
Consider, you have some big banks earning billions if the population makes the wrong move and some non-economist journalists in general papers writing advice... strange that the recommendations were bad (if you looked back later) ten years in a row! Now, the economy and market were changing, but...
Now consider the underpaid patent workers, where you don't get any good insight into their approval process, letting totally obvious "inventions" through, like the patents for Microsoft's XML data formats...
It is certainly just a coincidence, but I wouldn't bet money it will stop without external influence.
(I think US journalists have a bit better integrity than Swedish. Yes, really.)
(At least the new director went out and said that the shuttle and the space station cost at $250 billion were huge wastes of resources that should have had better uses. There might be hope, yet.)
I do language evangelism, but I really won't sink so low that I go around trolling discussions of other languages. I am not that much of a pathetic asshole that I sell my intellectual integrity for the possibility of money.
(-: I had allergy/stomach problems this last winter and lost 15 kg. I can tell you from firsthand experience that starving is no fun, but I'd rather do that than documentation. Money isn't everything. :-)
Oh, sorry, there are no other people. (-: Everyone left the Guile community after you started advocating it? :-)
When you look at the previous posts by you, you look quite serious. Here you seem to do trolls about language design choices (spaces as part of syntax) and dead scripting languages. Have you started doing drugs? Found a nice bridge to live beneath?