> an open source browser being developed for open source operating systems with zero emphasis on being a MS product
You mean Seamonkey? It's still available, even. OTOH given the user support *that* received it's clear that ship has sailed a long, long time ago.
Also, here's a point: it's easy to write a purist browser that does only standards-compliant markup, like Amaya. However, no one will use it in the real world, leading to a Metcalfe's Law-driven fall-off in user numbers. And having to deal with the tag soup that's there in the real world is a bitch because none of the rules you learnt in the Dragon Book apply with tag soup. (And no, life's not going to be easier with XHTML, hell, Atom and RSS suffer the same problem -- to the point where you now have 'liberal feed parsing libraries' available to deal with real world feeds.
> they're providing ads in a non-invasive manner to recoup some of the costs of their service being given away (or sold for dirt-cheap, as in a Hotmail Premium account.
If you have a Hotmail premium account, you don't see any ads on most MSN properties (and no ad footers on your email either). (ob. disclaimer: I do pay for a Hotmail account because they provide a pretty decent service, and because Gmail wouldn't take my money. Free web mail is for mugs.)
> Right, so can you please point us to some island that has been built up in the time when Lohachara island disappeared?
Yes, because Mother Nature operates on a no-profit-no-loss basis. Typical climate-change FUD artist, overstating his case in order to beat everyone on the head about how we're all sinful and we'll going to die (paraphrased from half the advocacy literature on climate change out there).
What I love about this is the sheer ignorance of what the Sunderbans area is. It is a very active ecosystem, similar to the Florida wetlands, except that it's actually in the tropics with soft alluvial soil churned by the Ganges since millenia -- and man-eating tigers (okay, maybe just tigers, but there were man-eating tigers here once) instead of gators. In this particular place erosive water action outdoes *anything* climate change can do.
Yeah, because we all know Bill's money is stained with ill-gotten gains from drugs, gun-running or carcinogenic products. Not. Sometimes you *can* carry a metaphor too far, but all I see it stained by is the egos of several Silicon Valley types who couldn't compete with hard-edged marketing. Frankly, I think the Silicon Valley types will survive the humiliation.
> Do these comapnies not have a management hierarchy? They dont have weekly meetings with other departments?
Yes, they have one, which is why they will (gasp!) support Vista when the OS is generally available to consumers (who are Zune's market, not the corporate-edition users). God forbid teams focus on things like getting products out of the door, instead of fulfilling/.-ers' "M$ is teh B0rg" everything-must-proceed-in-lockstep fantasies.
Also, you do realize that for Microsoft, under the terms of the antitrust settlement, "doing department meetings" with other application teams (and Zune's software is an application) is illegal? That there's supposed to be a "Chinese Wall" between MS OS and MS Apps? For MS OS teams, Zune is an app. So's Realplayer, so's iTunes. All of them get exactly the same level of access.
If Zune needs Windows source access to do their work, competitors get source access too (provided they ask) -- except that the myth of Microsoft Apps teams 'looking at Windows source' has been a myth -- the OS teams hate anyone (inside MS or out) who 'work around' the API because it means they have get to support those work arounds forever in the name of back compat. Unlike Linux, the Windows API is supposed to be sufficient for anyone to create a good Windows app -- and Microsoft is happy to train developers -- including Firefox developers -- on how to use the Windows API to create better apps.
Anyway, the point is-- it's often easier to wait until a beta OS is in RC1 (API freeze) before starting to target it -- especially when your own product is a v1.0.
But of course, explaining engineering trade-offs to the know-all script kiddies on/. is like casting perls before swine.
Actually, source code access is overrated. If you are developing compatibility based on source code access alone, you're almost guaranteed to come up with hacks, at least in your first pass. It's much better engineering to pay attention to things like frozen APIs (targeting a moving API adds to your development schedule).
Finally, here's a word on Vista support from someone actually working on Zune: "On Vista support: When Windows Vista (consumer edition)* is publicly available this January, it will work with Zune. This will include Vista 64bit support. I'm not sure if Zune software will run on a Mac running Windows."
Especially when Zune was developed by a team with very little connection with Microsoft's OS/Office side? Also, they've said they're going to have an app update for Vista users in time for its Jan 30 general release. This is a non-story.
John Denver, American folk singer-songwriter, Poet Laureat of Colorado, author of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane"
John Denver is no better than those oil company heads. "Leaving on a Jet Plane"? Do you have *any* idea how much carbon that emits?
Real Greens *walk*. Okay, I take that back, *real* real Greens practice Tantric arts to breathe as little as possible, thus reducing their carbon footprint to the bare minimum.
I agree with you when you say international aid should stopped, especially since India herself doesn't want it (this business about accepting aid from 6 'select' countries is, well, silly).
Whether countries like Sweden choose to channel funds through NGOs is really upto them. IMO they shouldn't, but hey, it's their money.
However, if you think that cutting off [NGO] funding will make the Indian government spend more on basic sanitation, I'm afraid you're wrong. This is because you're projecting Western civic values onto India. Not that India is some kind of Stalinistic anti-poor nation or doesn't like the idea of sanitation (cue the dirty Indian jokes), but that the priorities are different: government waste and inefficiency is a bigger waste of money in India than defense and science expenditure (and the defense expenditure occurs because India is in what most sane people would consider a dangerous neighborhood) and borked social systems often ensure funds never quite reach the real needy (NGOs try hard to work around these systems). So Indians tend not too worry too much about "universal" health and sanitation, etc -- they figure the poor will get by and gradually improve their lives (which is actually happening today). Troubling yes, but not very surprising to anyone who's studied the evolution of democracies.
Far more interesting to me is the question why countries continue to give aid to a country building nukes and satellites. I think it is to assuage the Western conscience, which feels genuine pain (yeah, I joke about 'bleeding heart liberal crap', but it can be sincere crap) for human anguish -- and there is genuine poverty in parts of India.
> some of the taxes I do pay DO end up in Indian coffers via aid, so I don't give I flying fuck whether any Indians, or you, give a flying fuck what I think.
Unlike many recipients of aid who've gotten used to the handouts (which is a reason I am seriously opposed to things like Live8), Indians do have self-pride (this is the difference between a guy who panhandles for a living and a broke guy who goes to a soup kitchen swearing he'll pull himself out of the hole he's in). Given the choice between receiving your aid and having to put up with your nose in their affairs, I think they'll ask you to take their aid elsewhere. And most donors countries realize this, which is why aid isn't linked to other things -- hell, even after the nuke tests (in '98?) a livid Congress shut down a lot of trade ties and joint cooperation, but not governmental and NGO aid.
> for when I'm next in charge of outsourcing a project, it surely won't be going to India unless its social and physical infrastructure is improved.
PS. (and sorry about the double reply) You might want to check out the latest sectoral figures from India (here's a BBC summary): India's 8%+ growth rates aren't coming mainly from "outsourcing". In fact outsourcing is growing more slowly these days (5+% CAGR IIRC) and is expected to plateau. Manufacturing and old-style exports OTOH are growing at 11%. That is the real story that gets missed -- obviously, because in sheer numbers India is a ways behind China still. But the old image of India getting rich mumbling over the telephone is fading fast.
PPS. Are you from the EU? I hope you are, and I hope there are more of you who think the way you do. Because strings-attached capitalism is dead even though the EU can't see it because it controls all in the EU and thinks EU=Universe (which is why there's a good chance you are from the EU). A majority of Americans and a vast majority of Asians would look at you _very_ curiously for dictating how monies earned in an honest sale is spent -- especially when it's spent on a non-military science project. After all, when the US buys EU goods, it doesn't complain about how the money is wasted on the uber-specialized-job mill called Airbus when there are so many skill-less unemployed in gay Paree's rougher arrondissements. Which is why more of you thinking the same thing will quicken the day this bastard political union (as opposed to completely legitimate economic union) goes down.
> Most Indians don't pay taxes, its too easy to get out of them.
Just like all Germans are Nazis and Americans are gun-toting cowboys, right? I mean, those are about as valid as your broad statements about present-day India.
Re taxes: income tax collection -- and tax return filings -- are at record highs. Since a lot of the boom is coming from services (which hand out salaries tax-deductible at source) and manufacturing/software (which pay corporate tax), it's a lot easier to collect taxes and ensure compliance. Also, computerization has meant all this (and handing out refunds) is reasonably quick.
It's true that India had a thriving underground economy in the bad old socialist days. In fact, the underground economy thrived _because_ of the socialism, where throwing money around meant the government would come sniffing. (I am told this still happens in Pakistan.) Today, the government is happy to let Indians spend as much money as they like, as long as they get something in tax. And so folk are buying Louis Vuitton bags and Maseratis: they no longer have to hide their wealth. Today, the mainstream economy offers a higher rate of return than the black economy; it no longer makes sense to hide money and evade tax.
> Right now it seems almost impossible to fix the rampant corruption in India
Your logic is ridiculous. Fixing corruption, you say, is 'almost impossible'. By contrast, going to the moon is hard but possible. So we should discard a hard-but-possible goal for an almost impossible one? Especially when the two don't conflict? By presenting tax-evasion and corruption as alternative challenges to moon-missions, you're painting a classic example of False Dilemma.
Corruption is actually down (albeit only a little) in India. Check out the newest Transparency International Report. That said, if you think spending more money will root out corruption in India, then you're (no way to sugarcoat this) an idiot. Corruption needs systemic fixes because India's public services are managed unprofessionally: there is no accountability and (the flip side) people don't get paid enough. The solution is not to pay the goof-offs more, the solution is to shed staff to a rational level (and maybe train the excess to do other things, India has shortages in many public service areas) and pay people enough to lead a life of dignity. And ensure tough compliance.
Ironically, with all the talk of how 'corruption is inevitable' in India, one frequently misses out that the private sector is largely corruption-free. It's not a coincidence: the government and its braindead style of running things isn't present in the private sector.
> or when I'm next in charge of outsourcing a project, it surely won't be going to India unless its social and physical infrastructure is improved.
LOL. Now I know why they call/. a wankfest. If you really owned a company and had that kind of decision-making power, you wouldn't care what your outsourcees spend their honestly-earned cash on (and frankly, IMO India spending it on moon missions is a LOT better than China spending it on jailing journalists or building giant Cisco firewalls -- what, you're boycotting Chinese-origin goods too?)
And if you're a middle manager tasked with picking a vendor, I'd kiss your job goodbye the day your bosses learnt your bleeding heart liberal views are affecting business decisions.
And if you're in none of these categories, I suspect India would blow you an air kiss and ask you to piss off, I suspect they wouldn't be very interested in your business. Hell, they aren't very interested in Walmart's business because they think Walmart hurts small shopkeepers (how's that for bleeding heart liberalism), so I think they can safely do without your money.
Agree, good post. However we'll have to see whether the Dems spend more time on issues than on vendetta against the Rove/Rumsfeld/Cheney types. I'm guessing they're smart enough to do the former, especially since many incoming Democrats seem to be fairly balanced folk rather than the hysterical far-left Ned Lamont-type.
> Pumping billlions of dollars into a moonshot while you have millions of people without access to clean water is, quite frankly, offensive to me.
Nice troll. Do you pay taxes in India? If you do, speak to your MP. If you don't, I'm sure Indians don't really gives a flying fuck about whether this offends you.
India's problems are systemic and will not change with massive infusions of money (as Africa is finding out -- all that aid money does not equal prosperity), it will require a change in mindset (as happened in portions of urban India in the 1990s, because of which they're able to enjoy 8% growth rates today). BHAGs like moon missions do help instill confidence in a population: one can easily argue things like moon missions will further the cause of encourage science and technology in a land whose primarily problems where physical problems (like clean water) are actually dwarfed by mental ones (superstition, illiteracy and ignorance).
> OK, I just thought that the effort involved is non-standard (mileage varies).
Oh please. The authors' method -- meta-analysis -- is a very kind way to say they data-mined the literature and did statistical jiggery-pokery with it. Not that there's anything wrong with statistics, but there are are margins of error in each experiment he referenced. Now, the conclusions drawn -- that there is a trended loss of biodiversity -- is statistically supportable, but to go from here to a 'no fish by 2050' (or indeed no fish by fill-in-the-blanks-with-your-favorite-year) hypothesis -- something their press release encourages -- is irresponsible science, because small discrepancies in conditions in complex systems lead to wildly different results, and you can't make specific predictions of complex behavior based on statistical analyses of experimental data all of which have margins of error hidden in them.
> I thought (American English) this is an adverb and thus deserves a "-ly". But I am not about to indeed discuss this until you demonstrate equivalent aptitude in my mother tongue
That's funny, English isn't my first language either, it just happens to be one of the three I know. And I do make mistakes, however when my mistakes are pointed out I don't adopt a John Kerry-esque "I'm too smart to admit making a mistake" mentality, I learn from them: in this case, "Ironically, Worm was correct" is a reasonable use of an adverb, your use ("I am trying hard to not even sound ironically") isn't. Deal with it.
The paper tries to find statistical correlations between different factors in a complex system to to extrapolate future performance of that system, while admitting to limitations in the data collected. Yup, and I'm being ironic here, that's really different from what we see in the journals everyday.
Indeed, the only thing exceptional about this paper is the publicity. Worm has a press releases dolled up right next to the PDF -- which we all know no sane journalist would read -- and you criticize the Slashdot crowd for not RTFA! And oh look, the press release comes with the fetching subtitle of "Current trend projects collapse of all currently fished seafoods before 2050", which of course in journalist-speak becomes the very headline-friendly 'no fish by 2050'. This dude sure knows how to milk this for all its worth so when the next funding round comes he's at the head of the queue.
> and I am trying hard to not even sound ironically
For Christmas you're going to turn your friends' computing lives upside down ("why the f*** is 'Expense report.sxw' different from 'Expense Report.sxw'?"), you also have really no clue how to do it since you're begging for answers on/., and your friends probably have _no_ idea what's coming their way if they play games or run Windows-specific apps you don't know about. Wow, what could go wrong?
Convering friends and family to Linux *is* worthwhile advocacy. I've done it myself. Doing it in a blanket all-my-friends manner, over the holiday season when your friends are probably not thinking much about computers is *stupid* advocacy.
Nice snark, except that pointing out what real scientists do does *not* require one to be a real scientist oneself, or (even if one is a real scientist). I was also responding to a point made in a parent post (which I quoted). You, in other words, are being a dick.
In *this* particular case, a quick browse of his paper shows a fairly routine research paper. To go from there to "no fish by 2048" is a stretch, which does not go away whether I'm a intellectual dwarf, pygmy or midget. I wrote I'm not sure if this is the scientist's own words or the journalist's -- it's bad science, whoever's mouth it's coming from, and I stand by it... in this case whoever's peddling the 'no fish by 2048' line is doing this scientist a disservice by painting him a pollyanna.
> Paraphrased: "Some people have been wrong at some things, so nobody can ever be right!"
The problem is, *most* of the doom-and-gloom chaps have been basing their predictions on one amongst a few scenarios the models come up with (for example, the recent Stern Report submitted to the UK government is a reading based off one of the most pessimistic IPCC estimates). It isn't easy being "right" when your underlying prediction platform is a bunch of models that can give very different scenarios based on what assumptions you feed into it-- it's more like playing the lottery, except that here there is no guaranteed winner because your models have not considered every possibility.
*Real* scientists who write for the record (e.g., the ones who write the IPCC reports) hedge their predictions as a result-- they write things like, 'on balance, we are likely to see more extreme weather' because they have trended evidence for this observation; however these observations are quite useless for telling us whether the Maldives will be washed out by a freak wave tomorrow because they cannot predict specifics either of the weather or the effects of our corrections (e.g., will Kyoto reduce the immediate risk to the Maldives? probably not, although 'on balance' over 100-200 years it will).
A parent poster noted that the article says something like "if the current trend continues we will see drastic consequences in our own lifetime." I'm not sure if this is the scientist's own words or the journalist's -- it's bad science, whoever's mouth it's coming from. Current trends don't continue in complex ecosystems, especially one as large as the oceans. Deriving linear extrapolations on complex systems is so lame it's not even funny. It's the non-science equivalent of saying 'if an ant were 100x larger it could lift up a train' (it couldn't, it'd collapse under its own weight).
I have a good mind to go to longbets with whoever wrote this claptrap that, 60 years on, we'd still be enjoying seafood.
Slashdot Mirror
> an open source browser being developed for open source operating systems with zero emphasis on being a MS product
You mean Seamonkey? It's still available, even. OTOH given the user support *that* received it's clear that ship has sailed a long, long time ago.
Also, here's a point: it's easy to write a purist browser that does only standards-compliant markup, like Amaya. However, no one will use it in the real world, leading to a Metcalfe's Law-driven fall-off in user numbers. And having to deal with the tag soup that's there in the real world is a bitch because none of the rules you learnt in the Dragon Book apply with tag soup. (And no, life's not going to be easier with XHTML, hell, Atom and RSS suffer the same problem -- to the point where you now have 'liberal feed parsing libraries' available to deal with real world feeds.
> they're providing ads in a non-invasive manner to recoup some of the costs of their service being given away (or sold for dirt-cheap, as in a Hotmail Premium account.
If you have a Hotmail premium account, you don't see any ads on most MSN properties (and no ad footers on your email either). (ob. disclaimer: I do pay for a Hotmail account because they provide a pretty decent service, and because Gmail wouldn't take my money. Free web mail is for mugs.)
> Right, so can you please point us to some island that has been built up in the time when Lohachara island disappeared?
Yes, because Mother Nature operates on a no-profit-no-loss basis. Typical climate-change FUD artist, overstating his case in order to beat everyone on the head about how we're all sinful and we'll going to die (paraphrased from half the advocacy literature on climate change out there).
What I love about this is the sheer ignorance of what the Sunderbans area is. It is a very active ecosystem, similar to the Florida wetlands, except that it's actually in the tropics with soft alluvial soil churned by the Ganges since millenia -- and man-eating tigers (okay, maybe just tigers, but there were man-eating tigers here once) instead of gators. In this particular place erosive water action outdoes *anything* climate change can do.
> There's also an appeal in having a piece of technology that's functional, isn't prone to errors, and works using age old technology.
... sort of like running Linux, then?
Ah
OT, but in case anyone listens to Ron Moore's BSG podcasts, you'll be astonished at how many times he's called the Galactica the 'Enterprise' so far.
Yeah, because we all know Bill's money is stained with ill-gotten gains from drugs, gun-running or carcinogenic products. Not. Sometimes you *can* carry a metaphor too far, but all I see it stained by is the egos of several Silicon Valley types who couldn't compete with hard-edged marketing. Frankly, I think the Silicon Valley types will survive the humiliation.
> Do these comapnies not have a management hierarchy? They dont have weekly meetings with other departments?
/.-ers' "M$ is teh B0rg" everything-must-proceed-in-lockstep fantasies.
/. is like casting perls before swine.
Yes, they have one, which is why they will (gasp!) support Vista when the OS is generally available to consumers (who are Zune's market, not the corporate-edition users). God forbid teams focus on things like getting products out of the door, instead of fulfilling
Also, you do realize that for Microsoft, under the terms of the antitrust settlement, "doing department meetings" with other application teams (and Zune's software is an application) is illegal? That there's supposed to be a "Chinese Wall" between MS OS and MS Apps? For MS OS teams, Zune is an app. So's Realplayer, so's iTunes. All of them get exactly the same level of access.
If Zune needs Windows source access to do their work, competitors get source access too (provided they ask) -- except that the myth of Microsoft Apps teams 'looking at Windows source' has been a myth -- the OS teams hate anyone (inside MS or out) who 'work around' the API because it means they have get to support those work arounds forever in the name of back compat. Unlike Linux, the Windows API is supposed to be sufficient for anyone to create a good Windows app -- and Microsoft is happy to train developers -- including Firefox developers -- on how to use the Windows API to create better apps.
Anyway, the point is-- it's often easier to wait until a beta OS is in RC1 (API freeze) before starting to target it -- especially when your own product is a v1.0.
But of course, explaining engineering trade-offs to the know-all script kiddies on
Actually, source code access is overrated. If you are developing compatibility based on source code access alone, you're almost guaranteed to come up with hacks, at least in your first pass. It's much better engineering to pay attention to things like frozen APIs (targeting a moving API adds to your development schedule).
Finally, here's a word on Vista support from someone actually working on Zune: "On Vista support: When Windows Vista (consumer edition)* is publicly available this January, it will work with Zune. This will include Vista 64bit support. I'm not sure if Zune software will run on a Mac running Windows."
Especially when Zune was developed by a team with very little connection with Microsoft's OS/Office side? Also, they've said they're going to have an app update for Vista users in time for its Jan 30 general release. This is a non-story.
John Denver, American folk singer-songwriter, Poet Laureat of Colorado, author of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane"
John Denver is no better than those oil company heads. "Leaving on a Jet Plane"? Do you have *any* idea how much carbon that emits?
Real Greens *walk*. Okay, I take that back, *real* real Greens practice Tantric arts to breathe as little as possible, thus reducing their carbon footprint to the bare minimum.
I agree with you when you say international aid should stopped, especially since India herself doesn't want it (this business about accepting aid from 6 'select' countries is, well, silly).
Whether countries like Sweden choose to channel funds through NGOs is really upto them. IMO they shouldn't, but hey, it's their money.
However, if you think that cutting off [NGO] funding will make the Indian government spend more on basic sanitation, I'm afraid you're wrong. This is because you're projecting Western civic values onto India. Not that India is some kind of Stalinistic anti-poor nation or doesn't like the idea of sanitation (cue the dirty Indian jokes), but that the priorities are different: government waste and inefficiency is a bigger waste of money in India than defense and science expenditure (and the defense expenditure occurs because India is in what most sane people would consider a dangerous neighborhood) and borked social systems often ensure funds never quite reach the real needy (NGOs try hard to work around these systems). So Indians tend not too worry too much about "universal" health and sanitation, etc -- they figure the poor will get by and gradually improve their lives (which is actually happening today). Troubling yes, but not very surprising to anyone who's studied the evolution of democracies.
Far more interesting to me is the question why countries continue to give aid to a country building nukes and satellites. I think it is to assuage the Western conscience, which feels genuine pain (yeah, I joke about 'bleeding heart liberal crap', but it can be sincere crap) for human anguish -- and there is genuine poverty in parts of India.
> some of the taxes I do pay DO end up in Indian coffers via aid, so I don't give I flying fuck whether any Indians, or you, give a flying fuck what I think.
Unlike many recipients of aid who've gotten used to the handouts (which is a reason I am seriously opposed to things like Live8), Indians do have self-pride (this is the difference between a guy who panhandles for a living and a broke guy who goes to a soup kitchen swearing he'll pull himself out of the hole he's in). Given the choice between receiving your aid and having to put up with your nose in their affairs, I think they'll ask you to take their aid elsewhere. And most donors countries realize this, which is why aid isn't linked to other things -- hell, even after the nuke tests (in '98?) a livid Congress shut down a lot of trade ties and joint cooperation, but not governmental and NGO aid.
> for when I'm next in charge of outsourcing a project, it surely won't be going to India unless its social and physical infrastructure is improved.
PS. (and sorry about the double reply) You might want to check out the latest sectoral figures from India (here's a BBC summary): India's 8%+ growth rates aren't coming mainly from "outsourcing". In fact outsourcing is growing more slowly these days (5+% CAGR IIRC) and is expected to plateau. Manufacturing and old-style exports OTOH are growing at 11%. That is the real story that gets missed -- obviously, because in sheer numbers India is a ways behind China still. But the old image of India getting rich mumbling over the telephone is fading fast.
PPS. Are you from the EU? I hope you are, and I hope there are more of you who think the way you do. Because strings-attached capitalism is dead even though the EU can't see it because it controls all in the EU and thinks EU=Universe (which is why there's a good chance you are from the EU). A majority of Americans and a vast majority of Asians would look at you _very_ curiously for dictating how monies earned in an honest sale is spent -- especially when it's spent on a non-military science project. After all, when the US buys EU goods, it doesn't complain about how the money is wasted on the uber-specialized-job mill called Airbus when there are so many skill-less unemployed in gay Paree's rougher arrondissements. Which is why more of you thinking the same thing will quicken the day this bastard political union (as opposed to completely legitimate economic union) goes down.
> Most Indians don't pay taxes, its too easy to get out of them.
Just like all Germans are Nazis and Americans are gun-toting cowboys, right? I mean, those are about as valid as your broad statements about present-day India.
Re taxes: income tax collection -- and tax return filings -- are at record highs. Since a lot of the boom is coming from services (which hand out salaries tax-deductible at source) and manufacturing/software (which pay corporate tax), it's a lot easier to collect taxes and ensure compliance. Also, computerization has meant all this (and handing out refunds) is reasonably quick.
It's true that India had a thriving underground economy in the bad old socialist days. In fact, the underground economy thrived _because_ of the socialism, where throwing money around meant the government would come sniffing. (I am told this still happens in Pakistan.) Today, the government is happy to let Indians spend as much money as they like, as long as they get something in tax. And so folk are buying Louis Vuitton bags and Maseratis: they no longer have to hide their wealth. Today, the mainstream economy offers a higher rate of return than the black economy; it no longer makes sense to hide money and evade tax.
> Right now it seems almost impossible to fix the rampant corruption in India
Your logic is ridiculous. Fixing corruption, you say, is 'almost impossible'. By contrast, going to the moon is hard but possible. So we should discard a hard-but-possible goal for an almost impossible one? Especially when the two don't conflict? By presenting tax-evasion and corruption as alternative challenges to moon-missions, you're painting a classic example of False Dilemma.
Corruption is actually down (albeit only a little) in India. Check out the newest Transparency International Report. That said, if you think spending more money will root out corruption in India, then you're (no way to sugarcoat this) an idiot. Corruption needs systemic fixes because India's public services are managed unprofessionally: there is no accountability and (the flip side) people don't get paid enough. The solution is not to pay the goof-offs more, the solution is to shed staff to a rational level (and maybe train the excess to do other things, India has shortages in many public service areas) and pay people enough to lead a life of dignity. And ensure tough compliance.
Ironically, with all the talk of how 'corruption is inevitable' in India, one frequently misses out that the private sector is largely corruption-free. It's not a coincidence: the government and its braindead style of running things isn't present in the private sector.
> or when I'm next in charge of outsourcing a project, it surely won't be going to India unless its social and physical infrastructure is improved.
/. a wankfest. If you really owned a company and had that kind of decision-making power, you wouldn't care what your outsourcees spend their honestly-earned cash on (and frankly, IMO India spending it on moon missions is a LOT better than China spending it on jailing journalists or building giant Cisco firewalls -- what, you're boycotting Chinese-origin goods too?)
LOL. Now I know why they call
And if you're a middle manager tasked with picking a vendor, I'd kiss your job goodbye the day your bosses learnt your bleeding heart liberal views are affecting business decisions.
And if you're in none of these categories, I suspect India would blow you an air kiss and ask you to piss off, I suspect they wouldn't be very interested in your business. Hell, they aren't very interested in Walmart's business because they think Walmart hurts small shopkeepers (how's that for bleeding heart liberalism), so I think they can safely do without your money.
Agree, good post. However we'll have to see whether the Dems spend more time on issues than on vendetta against the Rove/Rumsfeld/Cheney types. I'm guessing they're smart enough to do the former, especially since many incoming Democrats seem to be fairly balanced folk rather than the hysterical far-left Ned Lamont-type.
I blame Rove!
> Pumping billlions of dollars into a moonshot while you have millions of people without access to clean water is, quite frankly, offensive to me.
Nice troll. Do you pay taxes in India? If you do, speak to your MP. If you don't, I'm sure Indians don't really gives a flying fuck about whether this offends you.
India's problems are systemic and will not change with massive infusions of money (as Africa is finding out -- all that aid money does not equal prosperity), it will require a change in mindset (as happened in portions of urban India in the 1990s, because of which they're able to enjoy 8% growth rates today). BHAGs like moon missions do help instill confidence in a population: one can easily argue things like moon missions will further the cause of encourage science and technology in a land whose primarily problems where physical problems (like clean water) are actually dwarfed by mental ones (superstition, illiteracy and ignorance).
> OK, I just thought that the effort involved is non-standard (mileage varies).
Oh please. The authors' method -- meta-analysis -- is a very kind way to say they data-mined the literature and did statistical jiggery-pokery with it. Not that there's anything wrong with statistics, but there are are margins of error in each experiment he referenced. Now, the conclusions drawn -- that there is a trended loss of biodiversity -- is statistically supportable, but to go from here to a 'no fish by 2050' (or indeed no fish by fill-in-the-blanks-with-your-favorite-year) hypothesis -- something their press release encourages -- is irresponsible science, because small discrepancies in conditions in complex systems lead to wildly different results, and you can't make specific predictions of complex behavior based on statistical analyses of experimental data all of which have margins of error hidden in them.
> I thought (American English) this is an adverb and thus deserves a "-ly". But I am not about to indeed discuss this until you demonstrate equivalent aptitude in my mother tongue
That's funny, English isn't my first language either, it just happens to be one of the three I know. And I do make mistakes, however when my mistakes are pointed out I don't adopt a John Kerry-esque "I'm too smart to admit making a mistake" mentality, I learn from them: in this case, "Ironically, Worm was correct" is a reasonable use of an adverb, your use ("I am trying hard to not even sound ironically") isn't. Deal with it.
The paper tries to find statistical correlations between different factors in a complex system to to extrapolate future performance of that system, while admitting to limitations in the data collected. Yup, and I'm being ironic here, that's really different from what we see in the journals everyday.
Indeed, the only thing exceptional about this paper is the publicity. Worm has a press releases dolled up right next to the PDF -- which we all know no sane journalist would read -- and you criticize the Slashdot crowd for not RTFA! And oh look, the press release comes with the fetching subtitle of "Current trend projects collapse of all currently fished seafoods before 2050", which of course in journalist-speak becomes the very headline-friendly 'no fish by 2050'. This dude sure knows how to milk this for all its worth so when the next funding round comes he's at the head of the queue.
> and I am trying hard to not even sound ironically
That's "ironic", not "ironically".
For Christmas you're going to turn your friends' computing lives upside down ("why the f*** is 'Expense report.sxw' different from 'Expense Report.sxw'?"), you also have really no clue how to do it since you're begging for answers on /., and your friends probably have _no_ idea what's coming their way if they play games or run Windows-specific apps you don't know about. Wow, what could go wrong?
Convering friends and family to Linux *is* worthwhile advocacy. I've done it myself. Doing it in a blanket all-my-friends manner, over the holiday season when your friends are probably not thinking much about computers is *stupid* advocacy.
Nice snark, except that pointing out what real scientists do does *not* require one to be a real scientist oneself, or (even if one is a real scientist). I was also responding to a point made in a parent post (which I quoted). You, in other words, are being a dick.
In *this* particular case, a quick browse of his paper shows a fairly routine research paper. To go from there to "no fish by 2048" is a stretch, which does not go away whether I'm a intellectual dwarf, pygmy or midget. I wrote I'm not sure if this is the scientist's own words or the journalist's -- it's bad science, whoever's mouth it's coming from, and I stand by it... in this case whoever's peddling the 'no fish by 2048' line is doing this scientist a disservice by painting him a pollyanna.
> Paraphrased: "Some people have been wrong at some things, so nobody can ever be right!"
The problem is, *most* of the doom-and-gloom chaps have been basing their predictions on one amongst a few scenarios the models come up with (for example, the recent Stern Report submitted to the UK government is a reading based off one of the most pessimistic IPCC estimates). It isn't easy being "right" when your underlying prediction platform is a bunch of models that can give very different scenarios based on what assumptions you feed into it-- it's more like playing the lottery, except that here there is no guaranteed winner because your models have not considered every possibility.
*Real* scientists who write for the record (e.g., the ones who write the IPCC reports) hedge their predictions as a result-- they write things like, 'on balance, we are likely to see more extreme weather' because they have trended evidence for this observation; however these observations are quite useless for telling us whether the Maldives will be washed out by a freak wave tomorrow because they cannot predict specifics either of the weather or the effects of our corrections (e.g., will Kyoto reduce the immediate risk to the Maldives? probably not, although 'on balance' over 100-200 years it will).
A parent poster noted that the article says something like "if the current trend continues we will see drastic consequences in our own lifetime." I'm not sure if this is the scientist's own words or the journalist's -- it's bad science, whoever's mouth it's coming from. Current trends don't continue in complex ecosystems, especially one as large as the oceans. Deriving linear extrapolations on complex systems is so lame it's not even funny. It's the non-science equivalent of saying 'if an ant were 100x larger it could lift up a train' (it couldn't, it'd collapse under its own weight).
I have a good mind to go to longbets with whoever wrote this claptrap that, 60 years on, we'd still be enjoying seafood.
> Unless there's a demonstratable reason for having to do it offshore, it shouldn't be.
The Pentagon can afford to pay $600 for a toilet seat. Can you?
> A new denial of service attack was discovered floating in the cyberspace, that can render any browser inoperable
Opera 9 is immune to this; every alert dialog has a [ ] Do not run scripts on this page checkbox.
Wow. 8 years for taking away a life that no one can restore? Way to go. I do hope there were extenuating circumstances.