The relationship between Belarus and Russia is similar to the relationship among the members of the European Union. The governments of the 2 nations occasionally talk about Belarus' becoming a province of Russia. Both governments have similar oppressive laws, and both nations are run, for all intents and purposes, by dictators.
The imminent suppression of free speech on the Internet likely foreshadows the same sort of suppression in Russia.
The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated. The Internet-capable folks in both countries are the only people who have access to uncensored news from the West. These people know the horrible state of their countries. Knowledge is power. Only these knowledgeable poeple can change both countries into liberal, Western democracies.
If the government censors the Internet, then both nations will become Chinese-style states. We Westerners will not see any political improvements in both Belarus and Russia within our lifetimes.
The Norwegian model may not work well in the USA. The USA has an open-border policy with regards to immigration: e. g., Barack Hussein Obama lifted the ban on admitting foreigners who are HIV-positive. Immigration is a powerful vector for injecting diseases into the country receiving the immigrant. Persons who harbor colonies of MRSA bacteria without symptoms bring the problem to the shores of America, replenishing the supply of the critters.
If the USA adopts the same restrictive immigation policy that Norway has, then the Norwegian model for controlling MRSA will work well.
What is ultimately killing Americans is not MRSA but rather is politics. Nothing -- not even deaths from MRSA -- can restrict the flow of immigration.
Not being a leader in some field of scientific endeavor is okay. That the Germans produce better machine tools than the Americans is okay. They do what they can do well. We do what we can do well. Free trade between 2 free markets -- USA and Germany -- gives each country access to the products of the other country and enriches both countries in the process. That situation is the very basis of the economic law of comparative advantage.
However, that law is never mentioned when American companies demand that Washington open the floodgates to foreign engineers begging to come to the USA. The CEO of, say, Intel says that the American economy will collapse unless we Americans admit foreign engineers. Professor David Patterson (of UC-Berkeley) promotes the idea that we must admit foreign engineers so that we can be #1 in all fields. (Patterson is president of ACM and has promoted the H-1B program.)
These advocates of foreign engineers are wrong.
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
Here is the irony. Despite a massive influx of foreign engineers, the USA is actually declining in scientific achievement according to the lead news article in this discussion. Yet, Japan, which has severe restrictions on hiring foreigners, remains a technological powerhouse. Here is the conclusion: H-1B engineers were never necessary to the American economy.
In this fox experiment, genes determined both behavior and physical appearance. Intelligence is clearly an element of behavior. We should not shy away from the obvious implications for human evolution.
Humankind would necessarily undergo the same sort of evolutionary changes. We can expect differences in behavior among the different races and ethnic groups. Evolution changed both the color of the skin and the type of behavior. Intelligence is one form of behavior.
The belief that all races and all ethnic groups have identical intelligence and identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior is simply an assumption -- without proof.
Eccentric people are people who think in ways that are not constrained by societal norms. Such people are the source of geniuses who, unconstrained by conventional thinking, discover breakthrough technology or scientific principles that ultimately improve the human condition.
Albert Einstein is the most well-known example of an eccentric genius. Grigory Perelman is another example. So is Claude Shannon, the "father" of communications theory.
Yet another example will likely be Burkhard Heim. He formulated the mathematics for warp-drive, and the Department of Defense is actively studying his work in an attempt to build a prototype of a warp-drive engine.
Near-Death Experience of Saab
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
In the middle of this decade, General Motors (GM) owned part of both Saab and Subaru and attempted to save some money by re-badging a Subaru as a Saab and calling the finished product "Saab 9-2X". This single act signaled the end of Saab. Though Subaru has acceptable quality, the re-badging destroys the Saab mystique. You would encounter the same problem if Ford had re-badged the Mazda RX-8 as a "Mustang".
Nonetheless, you need not cry for Saab. It will live again. According to a news report just issued by the "Wall Street Journal", Spyker has made another offer to buy Saab. This time, we have the real deal.
Instead of focusing only on capability, Google's management should also consider the style (of the netbook): the user interface and the aesthetics.
We can easily find a generic x86 notebook that has more capability than a MacBook Pro, but the profit margin of the latter is much higher than the profit margin of the former. The reason is that the MacBook Pro has appealing style. The user interface is comfortable, and the MacBook's case and keyboard are attractive.
A brand-new MacBook Pro does not sell for less than (approximately) $900.
The MacBook Pro is one of those uncommon products which is extremely successful because its touchy-feely features are more compelling than its techy features. The MacBook Pro is a triumph of the business major over the engineering major. Would Apple, in its early days, have been successful if Steve Wozniak (techy guy who designed the product) and Steve Jobs (touchy-feely guy who set design goals on how the product should appeal to consumers) had switched roles?
If Google's management expects to succeed in the market for netbooks, then the management should consider style in addition to capability.
A big market for this chip is the computer-science department of 2nd-tier universities like the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Unlike Stanford University, UCSB lacks the money to build a full-blown multiprocessor system. If UCSB had such a system back in the 1990s, then UCSB would likely have produced as much multiprocessor research as Stanford University.
This 48-core processor chip, due to the fact that it will eventually be a commercial product mass-produced by the millions of units, will be economically cheap. This chip will enable UCSB to build or buy a cheap multiprocessor system.
A bunch of graduate students is already salivating at the prospect. They are drooling.
If you know anyone who is trapped -- physically or mentally -- inside a cult like the Church of Scientology, then please contact Rick Ross. The life of the victim may depend on your getting Ross' help as soon as possible.
If I commandeered a shipping vessel and if I had a choice between (1) some flying rope that can be shot out of an air cannon and (2) on-board artillery like a machine gun (or something that can blast a hole in an on-coming vessel), I would rather choose the artillery. The problem with this flying rope is that it might enrage the pirate, and he might aim his artillery at you and also signal for assistance. If his comrades arrive at the scene, then your flying rope will not stop the thugs from putting a bullet in your head.
Also, this flying rope reminds me of the spider wires that the air force dropped onto the electrical-power plants of Serbia during the NATO action against that country in 1999. The spider wires short-circuited the power plants and cut off power to the parts of the city for hours. The aim was to avoid hurting the civilians (because NATO wants their support) and, specifically, to avoid damaging the civilian infrastructure.
Sometimes, being nice works (e. g., in the case of the NATO action against Serbia), but sometimes being nice does not work. The pirates are not innocent civilians but are hardened criminals. Pirates should be killed , not protected from a military assault by the French Navy.
Not surprisingly, this flying rope appears to be the product of British engineering. The French military, under President Nicolas Sarkozy, is not likely to develop such a "nice", "let-us-be-friends" weapon: Sarkozy is the toughest, most pro-Western leader to appear in Old Europe in the last 50 years.
If global warming is, by some remote possibility, neither real nor caused by human activities, then the current convulsions about who should do what to save the planet will be much noise about nothing.
On the other hand, suppose that global warming is real and is caused by human activities. Then, who shall be responsible for the oceans flooding nations like Great Britain and Japan, shrinking their territories to one-tenth of the original size?
Common sense tells us that if a nation -- e. g. , China -- pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with wild abandon and if such an act causes global warming which greatly enlarges the oceans, thus flooding much of Great Britain and Japan, then such an act is essentially an act of war against the British and the Japanese. The British and the Japanese then have the moral right to initiate war against China in order to seize Chinese territory for settlement by the Japanese and the British.
Losing 90% of Japanese (or British) territory due to Chinese thoughtlessness is not a laughing matter and is an act of war. Military force is a legitimate way to eradicate Chinese thoughtlessness and to compel the Chinese to protect the environment.
Physicist Tim Garret is correct when he observes "that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use". That is another way of saying that society grows and expands up to the constraints of the system.
When we conserve energy, we can and do use the saved energy for other activities. "conservation" is not really conservation if we promptly use the saved energy for another activity.
Consider the food supply. The population has now reached a size at which the current amount of food is not sufficient for everyone to eat well. So, scientists at ADM and other companies are trying to invent new ways to increase food production. Suppose that the scientists succeed and that we increase food production by 20%. The population, enjoying this additional food, now grows by an additonal 20%: we return to the original problem.
In the long run, the 4 horsemen will eventually impose their own solution on humankind. Many people will die in the process.
Inevitably, some Slashdotter will claim that yet-to-be discovered technology will always provide a fix for the problem. Believing that yet-to-be discovered technology will be discovered (and will be the salvation) is exactly equivalent to believing the numerous claims of religion. Often, the same Slashdotter who is atheist does not hestitate to believe in yet-to-be discovered technology. A hypocrite, a fool, or both?
The price for the laptop made by Kohjinsha (based in Japan) is $900. The price for a laptop having similar features and made by Lenovo (based in China) is $2000. This pricing is quite surprising.
All Lenovo laptops are made in China, and the Kohjinsha laptop is made in Japan. How can a Japanese product be cheaper than a Chinese product, given that the cost of labor in Japan is much higher than the cost of labor in China?
The Kohjinsha product is the 2nd instance of such unusual pricing.
In 2008, a quick scan at Frys (the local electronics store) shows that all Fujitsu laptops are made in Japan. Most Sony laptops are made in China. (Only Sony laptops costing more than $2200 are made in Japan). What is interesting is that the made-in-Japan Fujitsu laptops have prices and features that are similar to the prices and the features of the made-in-China Sony laptops.
What is happening here? How can certain Japanese manufacturers (like Kohjinsha and Fujitsu) possibly price their products so low, keep their high-value manufacturing in Japan, yet still be profitable? What is the secret formula?
The persistent reports of tantalizing evidence does not substitute for methodical research. It would involve going to Mars, collecting samples from various locations on the surface of the planet, and bringing the samples back to earth for analysis.
Under the present circumstances, such methodical research is not possible. A nuclear-powered spaceship, like the one proposed by Russia, would still take months to make the round-trip to and from Mars.
Humankind's only hope is the development of a hyper-drive (a. k. a. warp-drive) engine based on the science discovered by Burkhard Heim. The Pentagon is currently exploring the construction of such an engine.
The person who lead the research in using plasma to disinfect the human body is Gregor Morfill. Who is Gregor Morfill?
The Max Planck Institute has a Web page that tells us who he is. Below is a quote from his resume.
"Born on July 23, 1945 in Oberhausen. Study of physics, doctorate Imperial College of Science and Technology (1971), German Habilitation in physics Heidelberg Univ. (1977), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (since 1984)."
Below is a list of his awards.
Patten Prize of Indiana University
Science Award of the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanites in Germany
Honorary Professor Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Honorary Doctor Technical Univ. Berlin
Honorary Professor Univ. of Leeds, England
Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Dr. Morfill must be a brilliant scholar as the Russian Academy of Sciences rarely grants membership to scientists who are not Russian citizens.
Here is an interesting question. Why have Germans (like Dr. Morfill) accomplished so much in science and technology? Does culture, genetics, or a combination (of both) explain their scientific prowess? Note that Albert Einstein is a German (with a Jewish heritage).
This progression toward using English words and syntax to program a computer is less about dumbing down code and more about encouraging people to document their code.
Ideally, a programmer should document each section of code by writing a block of comments explaining (1) why the code is used and (2) how the code works -- in plain English. However, given the intense pressure to produce code by an unreasonable deadline (imposed by brutal managers risking a bullet through their head), the first thing that is sacrificed is comments. Not writing comments saves several minutes per section of code and -- in total -- saves days of work over the course of the project. In other words, not writing comments means that an impossible deadline becomes slightly more possible.
A programming language that uses mostly English words and syntax is essentially an environment for self-documentating code: the holy grail of brutal managers everywhere. However, this self-documentation addresses only "how the code works". The programmer must still write comments explaining "why the code is used". Still, getting half of a loaf is better than getting nothing at all.
In the above article, I made a serious typing error. The following statements in point 2
2. Massive importation of foreign engineers is vital to being competitive in engineering. (Japanese companies, which typically hire only native-born Japanese, hold the majority of patents in LCD displays.)
should be changed to the following.
2. Massive importation of foreign engineers is NOT vital to being competitive in engineering. (Japanese companies, which typically hire only native-born Japanese, hold the majority of patents in LCD displays.)
Most Japanese do not subscribe to the American idea that the only way to "fix" an aging population is to open the doors on immigration. So, despite the fact that the percentage of elderly people in the Japanese population continues to steadily increase, Tokyo has restricted immigration and demanded that those who do immigrate must assimilate into Western culture and, specifically, Japanese culture.
This muscle suit will fit the aging Japanese quite well. As a person progresses beyond 60 years of age, her mobility and strength decline rapidly. This suit will help to compensate for the declination.
On a side note, observe that Japan has long challenged conventional wisdom in the USA. In addition to proving that massive uncontrolled immigration is not the only answer to an aging population, the Japanese have proven the following.
1. Class size is not the prime determinant of academic success. Culture is the prime determinant. (The average number of pupils in a typical high-school class in Japan is much larger than the number in California.)
2. Massive importation of foreign engineers is vital to being competitive in engineering. (Japanese companies, which typically hire only native-born Japanese, hold the majority of patents in LCD displays.)
3. A military solution can transform a backward, ignorant society into a 1st-world society. (The Japanese military transformed Taiwan into a modern society. Under Japanese colonial rule, attendance in public school up to the 6th grade was mandatory; many Taiwanese eventually obtained postsecondary degrees from elite Japanese universities. The military solution was possible in Iraq; the Americans failed because they refused to enact a military draft supplying the 400,000 troops needed for a long-term military occupation and colonial rule.)
You may be shocked by point 3, but I challenge you to study the history of Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. If the Chinese army under Dictator Chiang-kai Shek had not seized Taiwan in the late 1940s and destroyed much of what the Japanese -- with cooperation from the Taiwanese -- had built, then Taiwan would have been the post-war economic and hi-tech superpower of the Pacific long before the Japanese economic titan appeared in the 1970s.
This story is surprising. Why does the military buy critical electronic components from minor distributors?
The military spends billions of dollars and has the money to buy directly from known, reputable firms like AMD, Siemens, Mitsubishi, NEC, Toshiba, etc. Doing so would ensure the quality of the electronic components.
Why is the military dealing with relatively unknown distributors of suspicious origin? This story is fishy.
The military probably did not intend to use anything "purchased" from unknown distributors. This "purchase", from the onset, was intended to be a honey pot attracting unscrupulous businesses connected to hostile governments like Beijing. The purchased components were never intended to be used. The aim was to find such unscrupulous businesses, to determine the network that Beijing has established in the USA, and to shutdown American traitors who participate in such a network.
In the United States, political correctness has concluded that all human behavior (in a "normal" person) is due to nurture and free will. To even hint that human behavior is due, in part, to genetics is taboo: it quickly leads to the conclusion that different races and ethnic groups can have different inclinations. This conclusion is forbidden.
So, brain scans of a criminal defendant will not carry any weight. If his environment (e. g., an abusive childhood) did not cause him to commit the crime, then he must have done it out of his own free will. Since he "freely and deliberately" committed the crime, then he shall be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
That is how American justice works. How does justice work in Europe?
Professor Petr Hoava has proposed a new theory of gravity; it is winning accolades from the physics community.
Yet, who is Petr Hoava? He maintains a Web page that offers the following biography.
"Petr Horava received his Ph.D. in 1991 at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He was awarded the Robert McCormick Research Fellowship at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, worked as a Research Associate at Princeton University, and won a Sherman Fairchild Senior Research Fellowship at Caltech, before joining the New High Energy Theory Center at Rutgers University in 2000 as an Associate Professor. In 1997, he was awarded the Junior Prize of the Czech Learned Society, and in 1999 he appeared on the list of top three scientists of the Czech Republic of the 90's. He joined the Physics Department at UC Berkeley in 2001."
The liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989 has unleashed an intellectual force that will advance human knowledge by leaps and bounds. 2009 is the 20th anniversary of that liberation.
Like other brick-and-mortar stores, Walmart has a distinct advantage over Amazon and other stores that have only an online presence.
Namely, products at Walmart can be sold through 2 channels: online visitors and in-store visitors. If a product cannot be sold online, then the product can remain on the shelf for an in-store visitor to buy.
If a product offered by Amazon cannot be sold online, the product sits in the warehouse. The product in the warehouse is a continuing drain on Amazon's finances since Amazon must pay the cost of maintaining the warehouse.
Amazon has been competitive against smaller retailers like Mervyns (which never survived bankruptcy) because the warehouses of Amazon are huge and offer much variety. If you cannot find a pair of pants with the right size, you can likely find the right size at Amazon.
However, this advantage is ineffective against Walmart. It is the largest retailer in the world. The variety that Walmart offers rivals Amazon.
Walmart will crush Amazon. The bell tolls for Amazon.
Gene Roddenberry was prescient. He foresaw the technology for universal translation when he incorporated the Universal Translator into his television series, "Star Trek", in the 1960s.
Nonetheless, he failed to identify IBM as the inventor of the precursor to the Universal Translator.
Still, he accurately predicted many techologies: communicator (i. e., cell phone), phasors (i. e., laser cannon, for which the Pentagon has already designated a prime contracror to build the device), and warp drive (hyperdrive, which the Pentagon is now attempting to build).
We should ask the obvious question, "Does Russia have enough helium-3 to sell to us?"
The Kremlin created a large arsenal of nuclear weapons and, even this year, mentioned that Russian scientists have perfected a new type of nuclear warhead.
As for why Washington was not prepared for this shortage of helium-3, we need not look further than the shooting at Fort Hood. A large number of government officials were aware that Major Nidal Malik Hasan had likely converted to radical Islam. He was monitored by the FBI, and his colleagues at the university had observed that he often turned class presentations into a tirade against the West.
Yet, no one questioned his allegiance to the United States of America. No one petitioned a military judge to order his arrest.
We Americans failed due to our stupidity, our laziness, and our misguided allegiance to political correctness. We saw all the symptoms of a problem and did nothing until a 100-percent preventable tragedy occurred.
The same will be true of smuggling a nuclear bomb into the USA. We knew, long ago, that we would deplete our reserves of helium-3, but we did nothing to remedy the problem. We will continue to do nothing until a horrible tragedy occurs. (Buddha, help us!)
Barack Hussein Obama, as leader of the United States, personally rejects the idea that a radical Muslim will detonate a thermonuclear warhead in America. He believes that radical Muslims are the victims of Western oppression, so he does not see the need to enhance protection (of our cities) against radical Islam. That he holds such a view is evidenced by the fact that he attended an anti-Western church promoting exactly such a view.
Wafa Sultan, a former Muslim who eyewitnessed the brutality radical Muslims, has repeatedly warned, "[...] because of its multicultural relativism, the Western establishment is still reluctant to openly challenge the dangerous Islamic political ideology." She, not Obama, wholeheartedly embraces Western culture and believes that the West is the victim of Islamic brutality. Read the full text of her speech in Denmark.
This theft of sensitive data by terminated employees is an act of survival. Is it morally right?
To answer that question, we should understand the theft in the total context of labor ethics. The current economic recession differs from the previous recession (during the dotcom bust) in 2 important ways. One difference is that it was caused by a failure of the banking system, which had placed financial bets on bad mortgages.
A second difference is that the "normal" lag between declining gross-domestic product (GDP) and rising unemployment was very short. In all previous recessions, the lag was at least 6 months. During this recession, the lag was much shorter. Once the typical employer saw declining orders for products or services, he immediately fired workers. This high-speed termination of workers was once the hallmark of the Silicon-Valley employer's mentality but has now spread to the rest of the nation.
The national unemployment rate exceeds 10 percent. In some states, the rate exceeds 12%.
By contrast, Japanese companies (for cultural reasons) and European companies (for both cultural reasons and legal reasons) make every effort to avoid firing workers during an economic recession. Although Americans once laughed at Europeans for favoring kinder, gentler labor policies that "hindered" economic growth, the Europeans now have the last laugh: the unemployment rate in America now exceeds the rate in several European countries.
The Americans favor a Darwinian system of employment: survival of the fittest. If you are "weak" and if you do not have the right political connections (e. g., being the beer-drinking buddy of the department head), then you will be fired. If you lose your home, your family, and commit suicide, then the Darwinian system gives only 1 reply: "Too bad, loser!"
In this context, we should not judge the morality of stealing sensitive data from your previous employer. If he fired you in response to the recession, then you should do whatever you need to do to survive. You should live by Darwinian rules. You do whatever you need to do and whenever you need to do "it".
Slashdot Mirror
The imminent suppression of free speech on the Internet likely foreshadows the same sort of suppression in Russia.
The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated. The Internet-capable folks in both countries are the only people who have access to uncensored news from the West. These people know the horrible state of their countries. Knowledge is power. Only these knowledgeable poeple can change both countries into liberal, Western democracies.
If the government censors the Internet, then both nations will become Chinese-style states. We Westerners will not see any political improvements in both Belarus and Russia within our lifetimes.
If the USA adopts the same restrictive immigation policy that Norway has, then the Norwegian model for controlling MRSA will work well.
What is ultimately killing Americans is not MRSA but rather is politics. Nothing -- not even deaths from MRSA -- can restrict the flow of immigration.
However, that law is never mentioned when American companies demand that Washington open the floodgates to foreign engineers begging to come to the USA. The CEO of, say, Intel says that the American economy will collapse unless we Americans admit foreign engineers. Professor David Patterson (of UC-Berkeley) promotes the idea that we must admit foreign engineers so that we can be #1 in all fields. (Patterson is president of ACM and has promoted the H-1B program.)
These advocates of foreign engineers are wrong.
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
Here is the irony. Despite a massive influx of foreign engineers, the USA is actually declining in scientific achievement according to the lead news article in this discussion. Yet, Japan, which has severe restrictions on hiring foreigners, remains a technological powerhouse. Here is the conclusion: H-1B engineers were never necessary to the American economy.
Humankind would necessarily undergo the same sort of evolutionary changes. We can expect differences in behavior among the different races and ethnic groups. Evolution changed both the color of the skin and the type of behavior. Intelligence is one form of behavior.
The belief that all races and all ethnic groups have identical intelligence and identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior is simply an assumption -- without proof.
Albert Einstein is the most well-known example of an eccentric genius. Grigory Perelman is another example. So is Claude Shannon, the "father" of communications theory.
Yet another example will likely be Burkhard Heim. He formulated the mathematics for warp-drive, and the Department of Defense is actively studying his work in an attempt to build a prototype of a warp-drive engine.
Nonetheless, you need not cry for Saab. It will live again. According to a news report just issued by the "Wall Street Journal", Spyker has made another offer to buy Saab. This time, we have the real deal.
We can easily find a generic x86 notebook that has more capability than a MacBook Pro, but the profit margin of the latter is much higher than the profit margin of the former. The reason is that the MacBook Pro has appealing style. The user interface is comfortable, and the MacBook's case and keyboard are attractive.
A brand-new MacBook Pro does not sell for less than (approximately) $900.
The MacBook Pro is one of those uncommon products which is extremely successful because its touchy-feely features are more compelling than its techy features. The MacBook Pro is a triumph of the business major over the engineering major. Would Apple, in its early days, have been successful if Steve Wozniak (techy guy who designed the product) and Steve Jobs (touchy-feely guy who set design goals on how the product should appeal to consumers) had switched roles?
If Google's management expects to succeed in the market for netbooks, then the management should consider style in addition to capability.
Unlike Stanford University, UCSB lacks the money to build a full-blown multiprocessor system. If UCSB had such a system back in the 1990s, then UCSB would likely have produced as much multiprocessor research as Stanford University.
This 48-core processor chip, due to the fact that it will eventually be a commercial product mass-produced by the millions of units, will be economically cheap. This chip will enable UCSB to build or buy a cheap multiprocessor system.
A bunch of graduate students is already salivating at the prospect. They are drooling.
If you know anyone who is trapped -- physically or mentally -- inside a cult like the Church of Scientology, then please contact Rick Ross. The life of the victim may depend on your getting Ross' help as soon as possible.
Also, this flying rope reminds me of the spider wires that the air force dropped onto the electrical-power plants of Serbia during the NATO action against that country in 1999. The spider wires short-circuited the power plants and cut off power to the parts of the city for hours. The aim was to avoid hurting the civilians (because NATO wants their support) and, specifically, to avoid damaging the civilian infrastructure.
Sometimes, being nice works (e. g., in the case of the NATO action against Serbia), but sometimes being nice does not work. The pirates are not innocent civilians but are hardened criminals. Pirates should be killed , not protected from a military assault by the French Navy.
Not surprisingly, this flying rope appears to be the product of British engineering. The French military, under President Nicolas Sarkozy, is not likely to develop such a "nice", "let-us-be-friends" weapon: Sarkozy is the toughest, most pro-Western leader to appear in Old Europe in the last 50 years.
On the other hand, suppose that global warming is real and is caused by human activities. Then, who shall be responsible for the oceans flooding nations like Great Britain and Japan, shrinking their territories to one-tenth of the original size?
Common sense tells us that if a nation -- e. g. , China -- pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with wild abandon and if such an act causes global warming which greatly enlarges the oceans, thus flooding much of Great Britain and Japan, then such an act is essentially an act of war against the British and the Japanese. The British and the Japanese then have the moral right to initiate war against China in order to seize Chinese territory for settlement by the Japanese and the British.
Losing 90% of Japanese (or British) territory due to Chinese thoughtlessness is not a laughing matter and is an act of war. Military force is a legitimate way to eradicate Chinese thoughtlessness and to compel the Chinese to protect the environment.
When we conserve energy, we can and do use the saved energy for other activities. "conservation" is not really conservation if we promptly use the saved energy for another activity.
Consider the food supply. The population has now reached a size at which the current amount of food is not sufficient for everyone to eat well. So, scientists at ADM and other companies are trying to invent new ways to increase food production. Suppose that the scientists succeed and that we increase food production by 20%. The population, enjoying this additional food, now grows by an additonal 20%: we return to the original problem.
In the long run, the 4 horsemen will eventually impose their own solution on humankind. Many people will die in the process.
Inevitably, some Slashdotter will claim that yet-to-be discovered technology will always provide a fix for the problem. Believing that yet-to-be discovered technology will be discovered (and will be the salvation) is exactly equivalent to believing the numerous claims of religion. Often, the same Slashdotter who is atheist does not hestitate to believe in yet-to-be discovered technology. A hypocrite, a fool, or both?
All Lenovo laptops are made in China, and the Kohjinsha laptop is made in Japan. How can a Japanese product be cheaper than a Chinese product, given that the cost of labor in Japan is much higher than the cost of labor in China?
The Kohjinsha product is the 2nd instance of such unusual pricing.
In 2008, a quick scan at Frys (the local electronics store) shows that all Fujitsu laptops are made in Japan. Most Sony laptops are made in China. (Only Sony laptops costing more than $2200 are made in Japan). What is interesting is that the made-in-Japan Fujitsu laptops have prices and features that are similar to the prices and the features of the made-in-China Sony laptops.
What is happening here? How can certain Japanese manufacturers (like Kohjinsha and Fujitsu) possibly price their products so low, keep their high-value manufacturing in Japan, yet still be profitable? What is the secret formula?
Under the present circumstances, such methodical research is not possible. A nuclear-powered spaceship, like the one proposed by Russia, would still take months to make the round-trip to and from Mars.
Humankind's only hope is the development of a hyper-drive (a. k. a. warp-drive) engine based on the science discovered by Burkhard Heim. The Pentagon is currently exploring the construction of such an engine.
The Max Planck Institute has a Web page that tells us who he is. Below is a quote from his resume.
"Born on July 23, 1945 in Oberhausen. Study of physics, doctorate Imperial College of Science and Technology (1971), German Habilitation in physics Heidelberg Univ. (1977), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (since 1984)."
Below is a list of his awards.
Patten Prize of Indiana University
Science Award of the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanites in Germany
Honorary Professor Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Honorary Doctor Technical Univ. Berlin
Honorary Professor Univ. of Leeds, England
Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Dr. Morfill must be a brilliant scholar as the Russian Academy of Sciences rarely grants membership to scientists who are not Russian citizens.
Here is an interesting question. Why have Germans (like Dr. Morfill) accomplished so much in science and technology? Does culture, genetics, or a combination (of both) explain their scientific prowess? Note that Albert Einstein is a German (with a Jewish heritage).
Ideally, a programmer should document each section of code by writing a block of comments explaining (1) why the code is used and (2) how the code works -- in plain English. However, given the intense pressure to produce code by an unreasonable deadline (imposed by brutal managers risking a bullet through their head), the first thing that is sacrificed is comments. Not writing comments saves several minutes per section of code and -- in total -- saves days of work over the course of the project. In other words, not writing comments means that an impossible deadline becomes slightly more possible.
A programming language that uses mostly English words and syntax is essentially an environment for self-documentating code: the holy grail of brutal managers everywhere. However, this self-documentation addresses only "how the code works". The programmer must still write comments explaining "why the code is used". Still, getting half of a loaf is better than getting nothing at all.
should be changed to the following.
2. Massive importation of foreign engineers is NOT vital to being competitive in engineering. (Japanese companies, which typically hire only native-born Japanese, hold the majority of patents in LCD displays.)This muscle suit will fit the aging Japanese quite well. As a person progresses beyond 60 years of age, her mobility and strength decline rapidly. This suit will help to compensate for the declination.
On a side note, observe that Japan has long challenged conventional wisdom in the USA. In addition to proving that massive uncontrolled immigration is not the only answer to an aging population, the Japanese have proven the following.
1. Class size is not the prime determinant of academic success. Culture is the prime determinant. (The average number of pupils in a typical high-school class in Japan is much larger than the number in California.)
2. Massive importation of foreign engineers is vital to being competitive in engineering. (Japanese companies, which typically hire only native-born Japanese, hold the majority of patents in LCD displays.)
3. A military solution can transform a backward, ignorant society into a 1st-world society. (The Japanese military transformed Taiwan into a modern society. Under Japanese colonial rule, attendance in public school up to the 6th grade was mandatory; many Taiwanese eventually obtained postsecondary degrees from elite Japanese universities. The military solution was possible in Iraq; the Americans failed because they refused to enact a military draft supplying the 400,000 troops needed for a long-term military occupation and colonial rule.)
You may be shocked by point 3, but I challenge you to study the history of Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. If the Chinese army under Dictator Chiang-kai Shek had not seized Taiwan in the late 1940s and destroyed much of what the Japanese -- with cooperation from the Taiwanese -- had built, then Taiwan would have been the post-war economic and hi-tech superpower of the Pacific long before the Japanese economic titan appeared in the 1970s.
The military spends billions of dollars and has the money to buy directly from known, reputable firms like AMD, Siemens, Mitsubishi, NEC, Toshiba, etc. Doing so would ensure the quality of the electronic components.
Why is the military dealing with relatively unknown distributors of suspicious origin? This story is fishy.
The military probably did not intend to use anything "purchased" from unknown distributors. This "purchase", from the onset, was intended to be a honey pot attracting unscrupulous businesses connected to hostile governments like Beijing. The purchased components were never intended to be used. The aim was to find such unscrupulous businesses, to determine the network that Beijing has established in the USA, and to shutdown American traitors who participate in such a network.
So, brain scans of a criminal defendant will not carry any weight. If his environment (e. g., an abusive childhood) did not cause him to commit the crime, then he must have done it out of his own free will. Since he "freely and deliberately" committed the crime, then he shall be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
That is how American justice works. How does justice work in Europe?
Yet, who is Petr Hoava? He maintains a Web page that offers the following biography.
"Petr Horava received his Ph.D. in 1991 at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He was awarded the Robert McCormick Research Fellowship at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, worked as a Research Associate at Princeton University, and won a Sherman Fairchild Senior Research Fellowship at Caltech, before joining the New High Energy Theory Center at Rutgers University in 2000 as an Associate Professor. In 1997, he was awarded the Junior Prize of the Czech Learned Society, and in 1999 he appeared on the list of top three scientists of the Czech Republic of the 90's. He joined the Physics Department at UC Berkeley in 2001."
The liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989 has unleashed an intellectual force that will advance human knowledge by leaps and bounds. 2009 is the 20th anniversary of that liberation.
Buddha bless the Eastern Europeans.
Namely, products at Walmart can be sold through 2 channels: online visitors and in-store visitors. If a product cannot be sold online, then the product can remain on the shelf for an in-store visitor to buy.
If a product offered by Amazon cannot be sold online, the product sits in the warehouse. The product in the warehouse is a continuing drain on Amazon's finances since Amazon must pay the cost of maintaining the warehouse.
Amazon has been competitive against smaller retailers like Mervyns (which never survived bankruptcy) because the warehouses of Amazon are huge and offer much variety. If you cannot find a pair of pants with the right size, you can likely find the right size at Amazon.
However, this advantage is ineffective against Walmart. It is the largest retailer in the world. The variety that Walmart offers rivals Amazon.
Walmart will crush Amazon. The bell tolls for Amazon.
Nonetheless, he failed to identify IBM as the inventor of the precursor to the Universal Translator.
Still, he accurately predicted many techologies: communicator (i. e., cell phone), phasors (i. e., laser cannon, for which the Pentagon has already designated a prime contracror to build the device), and warp drive (hyperdrive, which the Pentagon is now attempting to build).
The Kremlin created a large arsenal of nuclear weapons and, even this year, mentioned that Russian scientists have perfected a new type of nuclear warhead.
As for why Washington was not prepared for this shortage of helium-3, we need not look further than the shooting at Fort Hood. A large number of government officials were aware that Major Nidal Malik Hasan had likely converted to radical Islam. He was monitored by the FBI, and his colleagues at the university had observed that he often turned class presentations into a tirade against the West.
Yet, no one questioned his allegiance to the United States of America. No one petitioned a military judge to order his arrest.
We Americans failed due to our stupidity, our laziness, and our misguided allegiance to political correctness. We saw all the symptoms of a problem and did nothing until a 100-percent preventable tragedy occurred.
The same will be true of smuggling a nuclear bomb into the USA. We knew, long ago, that we would deplete our reserves of helium-3, but we did nothing to remedy the problem. We will continue to do nothing until a horrible tragedy occurs. (Buddha, help us!)
Barack Hussein Obama, as leader of the United States, personally rejects the idea that a radical Muslim will detonate a thermonuclear warhead in America. He believes that radical Muslims are the victims of Western oppression, so he does not see the need to enhance protection (of our cities) against radical Islam. That he holds such a view is evidenced by the fact that he attended an anti-Western church promoting exactly such a view.
Wafa Sultan, a former Muslim who eyewitnessed the brutality radical Muslims, has repeatedly warned, "[...] because of its multicultural relativism, the Western establishment is still reluctant to openly challenge the dangerous Islamic political ideology." She, not Obama, wholeheartedly embraces Western culture and believes that the West is the victim of Islamic brutality. Read the full text of her speech in Denmark.
To answer that question, we should understand the theft in the total context of labor ethics. The current economic recession differs from the previous recession (during the dotcom bust) in 2 important ways. One difference is that it was caused by a failure of the banking system, which had placed financial bets on bad mortgages.
A second difference is that the "normal" lag between declining gross-domestic product (GDP) and rising unemployment was very short. In all previous recessions, the lag was at least 6 months. During this recession, the lag was much shorter. Once the typical employer saw declining orders for products or services, he immediately fired workers. This high-speed termination of workers was once the hallmark of the Silicon-Valley employer's mentality but has now spread to the rest of the nation.
The national unemployment rate exceeds 10 percent. In some states, the rate exceeds 12%.
By contrast, Japanese companies (for cultural reasons) and European companies (for both cultural reasons and legal reasons) make every effort to avoid firing workers during an economic recession. Although Americans once laughed at Europeans for favoring kinder, gentler labor policies that "hindered" economic growth, the Europeans now have the last laugh: the unemployment rate in America now exceeds the rate in several European countries.
The Americans favor a Darwinian system of employment: survival of the fittest. If you are "weak" and if you do not have the right political connections (e. g., being the beer-drinking buddy of the department head), then you will be fired. If you lose your home, your family, and commit suicide, then the Darwinian system gives only 1 reply: "Too bad, loser!"
In this context, we should not judge the morality of stealing sensitive data from your previous employer. If he fired you in response to the recession, then you should do whatever you need to do to survive. You should live by Darwinian rules. You do whatever you need to do and whenever you need to do "it".