UNFAIR COMPARSION of space capsule & space shu
on
The Return of Apollo?
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· Score: 1
The current comparison between (1) the space capsule and (2) the space
shuttle is not fair. In case #1, we have a new space capsule and a
new rocket at each launch. In case #2, we have the old space
shuttle and the old boosters. The phrase "old space shuttle" means
that the vehicle has been used before, so the vehicle has
suffered wear and tear.
To strengthen the analog, consider the automobile. Suppose that
each time you drive to work, you enter a brand new car. This
situation corresponds to case #1. Case #2 is where you enter
the same car that you used previously. It is a used car. Clearly,
in case #2, your car is much more likely to breakdown due to
wear and tear. It is normal. An old car is simply more likely
to breakdown than a brand new car even if we closely adhere to the
recommended maintenance schedule.
So, of course, the space shuttle is more likely to suffer a
breakdown than the space capsule. The space shuttle suffers
normal wear and tear, but the space capsule is always brand new.
Also, the space shuttle suffering a breakdown is vastly more horrific
than your car suffering a breakdown. When the space shuttle is hurtling
down to earth at thousands of miles per hour and suffers a breakdown,
there is no nearby "gas station" to quickly patch things up.
In conclusion, switching from the space shuttle to the
space capsule will definitely reduce the number of fatal
mishaps in space but will not solve the central problem.
It is "How do we eliminate fatal mishaps in re-usable space
vehicles?" If we truly commercialize space and have manned space
colonies, we cannot afford to build a brand space vehicle
for every single trip to and from, say, Mars. Economics
requires us to use re-usable space vehicles, but we must
develop a way to maintain them so that they never breakdown.
Bill Joy contributed magnificently to the development of UNIX.
However, Dr. Joy has 1 notable failure. When Sun Microsystems was developing the first SPARC processor and had planned to migrate all its software and tools to the new chip, the engineers designing SPARC came to a critical juncture in their work. That juncture can be summarized in one question: "Should we build register windows into SPARC?".
At the time, Professor Patterson at Berkeley was championing the incorporation of register windows into microprocessors. According to his flawed studies, register windows supposedly give a significant performance boost to C-language code. Patterson was an inspiration for young Dr. Joy.
The SPARC engineers did their own studies but went far beyond what Patterson did. They actually looked at how to build register windows into high-performance circuits, and they concluded that building register windows would be too difficult. They also questioned the supposed performance benefits of register windows. Unfortunately, Dr. Joy overruled them and forced them to incorporate register windows into the first SPARC chip.
The rest is history. It proved that register windows give SPARC no significant performance advantage over other microprocessors. Indeed, register windows appears to reduce performance. Look at the results at the SPEC web site. Power4, Power5, Pentium 4, Athlon, etc. all crush the SPARC chip in performance. When the 80486 became the first 80x86 chip to exceed the performance of the SPARC chip on SPECint, Sun Microsystems should have gotten a clue and dropped register windows. On the contrary, Sun Microsystem stubbornly stuck with register windows. You might say that register windows killed the performance of the SPARC processors.
To this very day, SPARC processors are about 2 generations behind their peers in performance.
Even if Apple computers were to cost slightly more than Dell computers, we should consistly buy the former instead of the latter. Price is only 1 aspect of any product. There are also ethical considerations. They do not matter much outside of Western society, but they matter a great deal in Western society.
As an American company, Dell is a huge disgrace. Please read the "Environmental Report Card" produced by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Dell received a failing grade and is little better than Taiwanese companies, which are notorious for destroying the environment and the health of workers. Dell even resorted to prison labor to implement its pathetic recycling program.
To briefly summarize the tale of woe, Frank Rosenblatt invented the perceptron
in 1957. It had one layer of artificial neurons and sparked an entire field
of research in artificial learning. In 1969, Marvin Minsky at MIT wrote a
book called "Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry"; in it,
he mathematically proved that the perceptron could not solve certain
classes of problems. This book essentially decimated funding for
neural-network research for about 15 years.
In 1982, John Hopfield at Caltech revived the field with the invention of the
Hopfield Networks. Further, several researchers invented backpropagation as a way
to train neural networks with 2 or more layers
or artificial neurons and overcame the limitations that Minsky indicated. Now, the field of neural networks has plenty of money to do research.
So, there is a possibility that research into cold fusion will grow hot again.
Google and SEs: Positive Force for Western Society
on
Google Turns 5
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Google and other search engines (SEs) have ensured that people
can have timely access to key items of news. Merely
having an Internet is not enough. The Internet is huge, and
you can become lost in the jungles of useless information.
SEs provide a roadmap through the jungle
and show you the way to the information that you want.
Do you remember the "bad old days" before SEs
and the Internet? We often recall an article of news that
may be relevant to a discussion with friends and colleagues.
We want to retrieve the article, but we have already forgotten
the title (or worse) the source of the article. With a
SE, you can now find the article via the Internet. Many of the
relevant articles shall remain on the Internet for a long time.
In general, any reasonably educated person (i. e. a person who distinguishes reputable news sources from unreputable news sources) can now have ready
access to high-quality information about almost any subject
of interest. Just go to the SE and do a search. In this way,
SEs and the Internet benefit society greatly. Now, we can more
intelligently make decisions about the actions of governments
and whole societies since we can easily retrieve and review
the previously read information that is necessary for those decisions.
Agents of deception seeking to manipulate, for example, American
society and American government will be defeated. With the power of
the SEs and the Internet, we can more easily distinguish lies from truths.
A case in point is "Reality
of Taiwan". I was able to retrieve key information that
might have been lost in the "bad old days" before the SEs and the Internet.
Using the retrieved information (which comes from reputable Western
sources), I constructed an accurate image of Taiwan. This image is
the same one that senior government officials have contructed in the highest echelons of the American government. The image
is quite shocking to the general American public, which Taiwanese agents (including paid lobbyists, Taiwanese politicians, etc.)
have long manipulated.
Last month, Slashdot initiated a discussion topic about
introducing
a low-bandwidth Internet connection into
impoverished villages in India. Now, this month, Slashdot
initiates a discussion topic about using a global
positioning system (GPS) to prevent Indian trains
from crashing. Things appear as though Indian society cannot
function properly without high technology.
Please read "Trains
in Japan". Trains in Japan have been extremely reliable
and clean since the 1950s -- almost half a century. In 1960,
there was no GPS, no Internet, etc. Yet, the train system
in Japan worked fine.
What in Indian culture prevents Indian society from
developing into a modern society? Why does Indian society need
all this high-tech intervention in order to make it just barely
livable, yet Japan has been an adequately livable society
since the late 1960s?
Personally, while not be wealthy in the least,
I'd rather pay a little more for things NOT
made in China. [...]
The whole thing's very sad. The public has such
a short memory. Fuck Tiananman Square, eh?
We simply should suck up and not do business with
these people.
When we boycott products made in China, we should
and must boycott products made in Taiwan as well.
The Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion
into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland
China. Shortly after the Tienamen Square incident
in 1989, Westerners reduced or froze investments
into China. The Taiwanese seized this window of
opportunity and poured money and technology into China.
Since 1989, the Taiwanese investments in China
have accelerated to their present enormous level.
As for a specific example, the Chinese son of the chairman
of a powerful conglomerate in Taiwan has joined with the
son of Jiang Zemin, the butcher of Tibet, to build an
advanced silicon-wafer factory in Shanghai,
according to "Sons
of prominent Chinese team up on chip venture".
Taiwanese support for China does not merely stop there.
The Taiwanese support all the geopolitical objectives of
mainland China. Specifically, the Taiwanese constitution
says that Tibet is an integral part of China. While the
Taiwanese demand that Americans sell them weapons, the
Taiwanese insist on integrating Tibet into China. This
hypocrisy is disgusting.
In conclusion, boycott products made anywhere in
China. Specifically, boycott products made in Taiwan.
Let us in the Slashdot community petition the American
government to terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)
and to stop sales of all weapons to Taiwan. In exchange
for the termination of the TRA, Beijing should reciprocate
by granting autonomy to Tibet.
You would sell out the democratic people
of Taiwan to the murderers in Beijing.
You would allow to happen to Taiwan the
same thing that happens in Tibet.
The Taiwanese people support the "murderers in Beijing".
The Taiwanese constitution states explicitly that Tibet
belongs to China. Even though the Chinese People's
Liberation Army have beaten, tortured, and killed
scores of Tibetan women and children, the Taiwanese
still insist that Tibet is an integral part of China.
Look back at the Tienanmen Square incident in 1989. Americans
were shocked at the bloodshed and immediately curtailed or
froze investments into mainland China in an attempt
to punish the Beijing government. The Taiwanese people
exploited this situation and rapidly provided, to the
Beijing government, any money or technology that the
Americans refused to provide. From 1989, Taiwanese
investment into mainland China skyrocketed to the
present level of $50 billion in more than 50,000 businesses
in mainland China. In short, the Taiwanese completely
thwarted the Western economic sanctions against China.
The Chinese have been grateful to the Taiwanese and give
them preferential treatment when they conduct business in
China. Americans do not enjoy such preferential treatment.
Indeed, the Chinese government punishes American business
and destroys thousands of potential American jobs whenever
the American government sells weapons to Taiwan. While the
Taiwanese demand that the American government sell weapons to
them, those same Taiwanese (1) thwart American economic sanctions
promoting human rights in China and (2) support the integration
of Tibet into China. This behavior is absolutely disgusting.
Let us call an end to this nonsense known as Taiwan.
The American government should immediately
terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling
weapons to Taiwan. Every Taiwanese should be required to
produce a Beijing passport when they are applying for
a visa to the United States of America.
Everyone knows that the Chinese commit gross human-rights violations in
China. Amnesty International
and Tibet Online have documented these violations
well.
However, there is something that very few people know. Namely, the Taiwanese
constitution, the highest law of the land in Taiwan, supports the
geopolitical objectives of mainland China. Specifically, the constitution
states that Tibet is part of China. The Taiwanese education system
teaches children that Tibet is part of China.
While the Chinese army regularly beats, tortures, and kills Tibetan
nuns, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet should be integrated into China.
Meanwhile, the Taiwanese demand that the United States of America (USA)
sells weapons to them. This hypocrisy is disgusting.
Furthermore, after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, the USA and other
Western countries immediately curtailed or froze investments into mainland
China. The intent of these economic sanctions were thwarted by Taiwanese duplicity.
How? The Taiwanese seized this window of opportunity and provided any money
or technology that the Americans refused to provide. Starting from 1989,
the Taiwanese circumvented the sanctions and poured investments
into China. Taiwanese investments in China have grown at double digit rates
and have reached the level of $50 billion in more than 50,000 businesses
in mainland China.
The USA must immediately terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. The time has come to end the relationship of hypocrisy with Taiwan.
Personally a lot of the Chinese I know think
of the Taiwanese as people who can't speak
proper Mandarin...They also believe that Taiwan
should be part of China again.
85% of the Taiwanese consider themselves "Chinese" and also
support the idea that Taiwan is part of China. They also
support the idea that Tibet is part of China.
Remember Tibet? That place is where the Chinese People's Liberation
Army (PLA) have tortured and killed Tibetan nuns and priests.
Please visit the websites for Amnesty International
and Tibet Online.
While the Chinese PLA is committing gross violations of human rights
in Tibet, the Taiwanese support a Taiwanese constitution that insists
on integrating Tibet into China. Furthermore, the Taiwanese education
system teaches Taiwanese children that Tibet is part of China.
In the United States of America (USA), the majority of spies who steal
American technology to give to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan.
Another unusual aspect of these spies is that the majority help Beijing
for no financial gain whatsoever. They help Beijing simply because
they consider themselves Chinese and because, according to the spies,
China is the motherland.
The time has come to end the hypocrisy and the nonsense from Taiwan. Americans should cancel the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and should stop selling weapons to Taiwan.
Western ideas are not meaningless notions. They
simply mean nothing to corrupt communist officials.
Western ideals have been adopted by South Koreans,
Japanese and Taiwanese. If these ideas were meaningless,
all of these countries would remain dictatorships.
Japan is a Western Nation. Korea is not a Western
nation.
Taiwan is not a nation; rather, it is a
province of China. About 15% of the people in Taiwan
are descended from the folks who went to the island
after 1949. The remaining 85% of the people in Taiwan
are descended from the folks who resided on the island
before 1949. Historians label the first group
"Chinese" and label the latter group "Taiwanese".
However, in terms self-identification, 85% of the
people in Taiwan consider themselves "Chinese". They
support (eventual or immediate) unification with China.
15% of the people in Taiwan reject calling themselves "Chinese";
they consider themselves strictly "Taiwanese" and
support (eventual or immediate) independence.
The key issue here is that the future of Taiwan is determined
by the majority: i.e. the 85% who support the notion of
"One China". Hence, the constitution of Taiwan clearly
states that both Taiwan and Tibet are part of China.
The Taiwanese support nearly all the geopolitical objectives
of China.
What we have here is that there are 2 governments claiming
to be the true government of "One China". One government is
in Taipei. The other government is in Beijing. Without
question, the joke is the government in Taipei. The majority
of the Chinese people in China (which includes Hong Kong and
Taiwan) expelled the Taiwanese government in 1949.
Shortly after the Korean government became democratic in the
early 1990s, the Korean people recognized the joke in Taipei and
immediately terminated relations with Taiwan and
recognized the government in Beijing as the proper government
of China.
The Taiwanese have made a mockery of Americans by manipulating
them for more than 40 years. Please read the "Reality
of Taiwan".
While the Chinese army beats and kills
Tibetan nuns, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of
"One China". The Taiwanese constitution states so, and the
Taiwanese education system teaches children so. At the same
time, the Taiwanese government demands that the United States
of America (USA) sell weapons to it. Meanwhile mid-ranking officers
retired from the Taiwanese military travel to Beijing to secure
lucrative jobs in exchange for revealing the secrets of American
weapons sold to Taiwan.
Enough is enough.
The time has come to end the nonsense. Let us follow the lead
of the South Koreans and terminate relations with Taiwan
immediately. Cancel the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and
stop selling weapons to Taiwan. Require all Taiwanese nationals
to present a Beijing passport.
The reality is that the Taiwanese are more mercenary-like than the
Americans. Please read "Reality
of Taiwan".
Remember the incident at Tienanmen Square in 1989. After it happened,
the Americans and other Westerners froze or curtailed investments into
mainland China. Even the Japanese followed suit, and for the first
time after 1945, the Japanese condemned China. Western nations
like Japan and the USA immediately slapped economic sanctions against
China.
What did the Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong do? The Taiwanese immediately
seized this window of opportunity and accelerated financial and technological
investments into China. The Taiwanese provided any money or technology that
the Westerners refused to provide. Since 1989, Taiwanese investment
into mainland China has grown at double-digit rates. As of 2003,
the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000
businesses into mainland China.
Furthermore, the Taiwanese request and receive preferential treatment
when they invest in China. By contrast, American companies do not
receive preferential treatment. The Chinese government occasionally
punishes American companies because the American government sells
weapons to Taiwan. While the Taiwanese demand that Americans sell them weapons, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of China: the Taiwanese constitution says that Tibet is part of China.
The time has come to stop this nonsense. The Americans should cancel
the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. The
Taiwanese have exploited American generosity and naiveness. Americans should
not allow Taiwanese hypocrisy to hurt American business opportunities in
China.
There's no need for Beijing to break into the databases on Taiwan. Why? Numerous Taiwanese have already given secrets about American weapons (sold to Taiwan) to Beijing. Please read "Reality of Taiwan". The majority of spies who stole American technology to give to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan.
The government on Taiwan is not the legitimate government of China. The majority of Chinese expelled the Taiwanese government out of China in 1949. The Taiwanese government ransacked China and stole all the national treasures of China during the flight to Taiwan.
However, the government of Taiwan does support nearly all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. While the Taiwanese demand that the Americans sell weapons to them, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of China. Meanwhile, the Chinese soldiers are beating and killing Tibetan nuns. Taiwanese hypocrisy is disgusting. (The Taiwanese constitution states explicitly that Tibet is part of China.)
Instead of supporting the Taiwanese government, the Americans should terminate their relationship with Taiwan. The American government should end the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and require all Taiwanese nationals to produce a Beijing passport if they wish to apply for a visa to the USA.
The report given by the U.S. Department of State in regards to Taiwan is accurate. However, that report does not contradict the fact that the Taiwanese support nearly all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. The Taiwanese support integrating Tibet into mainland China. The majority of spies arrested for stealing American technology to give to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan.
Yes. The Taiwanese support the concept of voting for their president. However, the Taiwanese also support the geopolitical objectives of Beijing. The Taiwanese have told both Japan and the Philippines to back off from the Senkaku Islands and the Spratly Islands, repectively, because they are Chinese territory.
Furhermore, mid-ranking officers retired from Taiwan's military have gone to Beijing to obtain lucrative jobs in exchange for revealing the performance characteristics of American weapons sold to Beijing. The report by the U. S. Department of State does not mention this fact because the purpose of that report is only to describe the state of human rights in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese do indeed support integrating Tibet into mainland China. The Taiwanese education system teaches Taiwanese children that Tibet is part of China. It is hypocritical, and it is disgusting.
Finally, the report by the U. S. Department of State does not mention the fact that the Justice Department has placed Taiwan on a list of nations that are hostile intelligence threats. That list includes Syria and Libya.
If there were a war between China and Taiwan, the USA should not intervene. The Taiwanese have supported mainland China at the expense of the United States of America for a long time. Please read "Understanding
Taiwan: Security Threat to USA".
Numerous military officials retired from Taiwan's armed forces have gone to Beijing to give secrets about American weapons sold to Taiwan. In fact, Beijing now knows the performance characteristics of the F-16 fighter.
We in the West should not intervene on behalf of Taiwan. Rather, the United States should terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. The Taiwanese support mainland China. To what extent? Consider this. The Taiwanese education system teaches Taiwanese children that Tibet is part of China. The Taiwanese constitution states that Tibet is part of China. The Taiwanese support all of the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reports that the majority of spies arrested for stealing American technology to give to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan. Please read "Understanding
Taiwan: Security Threat to USA".
However, the Taiwanese actually support mainland China to the tune of $50 billion of investment. The Taiwanese, via the Taiwanese constitution, also insist that Tibet is part of China. The majority of spies arrested in the USA for stealing sensitive technology to give to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan.
Please read "Understanding
Taiwan: Security Threat to USA".
We have a lot of big, scary numbers [from the Taiwanese
government]... but no hard information about the programs,
the companies, or the government agencies.
In fact, the "23 different Trojans" makes me think
that the government cabinet member is talking out
of his butt. More likely, nobody's been running
virus protection, and those 24 Trojans are simply
members of F-Secure's wildlist.
You are correct. The Taiwanese government is manipulating the
Western media in order to garner support from Western audiences.
Please read "Understanding
Taiwan: Security Threat to USA".
Agreed. China is a threat to American security.
However, Taiwan is also a threat. The Taiwanese actually support all the geopolitical objectives of China. Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to USA"
The Taiwanese have one of the highest rates of software piracy in the world.
This piracy is what causes Taiwanese computers to be especially succeptible
to Trojan horses, worms, etc. Pirated software is far more likely to be
contaminated with viruses and the like. So, when you download pirated software,
you run the risk of your computer being violated by an intruder. The Taiwanese got what they deserved; anyone who uses pirated software should be penalized.
Also, please read "Reality
of Taiwan". The Taiwanese support all the geopolitical objectives of mainland
China; the Taiwanese constitution explicitly states that Tibet is an integral
part of China (while Chinese soldiers regularly torture and kill Tibetan nuns).
In short, we should ignore all Taiwanese complaints about China.
Taiwan is a security threat to the United States of America (USA). Would we in
the West be concerned about Trojan horses being spread to computers in
North Korea or Libya? No. So, we should not be concerned about Trojan horses
being spread to computers in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese government reporting (to the "Taipei Times") the spread of Trojan horses to
Taiwan from China is just political spin for manipulating a Western audience. This
spin is intended to garner support for Taiwan. Let us not be stupid. We must see
Taiwan for what it is: it is a security threat to the USA. The majority of spies
arrested in the USA for stealing sensitive American military technology and giving
it to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan. Please read "Reality
of Taiwan".
Finally, when the USA and other Western countries like Japan slowed or curtailed investments
in mainland China in order to punish Beijing for the Tienanmen Square incident of 1989,
the Taiwanese seized this window of "opportunity" and
immediately sent financial and technological investments into China. The Taiwanese
completely thwarted the American economic sanctions against China. Taiwan is a
strong supporter of China. Starting from 1989, Taiwanese
investments into mainland China have skyrocketed; the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion dollars into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China.
Let us ignore Taiwanese complaints about Trojan horses from
China.
The idea of using electronic voting systems became popular
after the conclusion of the last presidential election in 2000.
At that time, the election hung on the results of some paper voting
ballots submitted in Florida. Apparently, hundreds of thousands
of Americans in Florida are so ignorant that they cannot
follow simple instructions on properly completing the voting
ballots. As a result, some ballots indicated a vote for multiple
candidates. Other ballots indicated a selected political candidate that the voters did not actually want to select: the voters punched the wrong chad.
Electronic voting systems were flaunted as a way to avoid these
problems.
Unfortunately, electronic systems cannot fix these problems because
they all stem from the stupidity of some Americans. If they are so
stupid as to be unable to follow simple instructions on completing
a paper ballot, then their opinion on the "best candidate" is likely
to be irrelevant. They are unlikely to be able to pick the "best
candidate".
Further, these ignorant Americans will be unlikely to
follow the simple instructions for completing an electronic ballot as well.
The electronic system might prevent them from selecting multiple
political candidates, but they will still, somehow, end up in being
unable to select the candidate that they want.
There is a serious typographical error in the parent article. The sentence "At the same time, non-Westerners like the Koreans and the Chinese simply do the care about the environment or the health of employees." should be "At the same time, non-Westerners like the Koreans and the Chinese simply do _NOT_ the care about the environment or the health of employees."
One thing that distinguishes the United States of America (and other Western
countries) from non-Western countries is that Americans try their best to
seek justice even if the process of justice is not perfect. Clearly,
IBM and the manufacturers of dangerous chemicals used in processing
semiconducters have committed an injustice against some of the employees at
IBM. IBM should pay significant financial compensation to those
employees or to the surviving relatives of the deceased employees.
Justice does not stop there. Since we require American companies like IBM
to abide by stringent environmental and work regulations that protect
both the environment and American workers, we must also require foreign
companies like Acer from Taiwan province (located in China) to abide by
the same stringent environmental and work regulations. Otherwise, IBM
will be at a competitive disadvantage against companies like Acer. Acer
products are cheaper than IBM products simply because Acer does not pay
the cost of protecting the environment or the employees.
At the same time, non-Westerners like the Koreans and the Chinese simply do
the care about the environment or the health of employees. Please read the
environmental
report card produced by the Silicon Valley
Toxics Coalition. All the Taiwanese and Korean companies received a failing
grade on the issue of poisoning both the environment and their workers.
How can Westerners force non-Westerners like the Taiwanese and Koreans to enact
and to enforce the same stringent environmental and work regulations
that Westerners apply to Western companies like IBM? Simple. We boycott
products made by Taiwanese or Korean companies. Please remember that when
you buy products make in a particular country, you effectively support
the value system in that country. Do not buy products made in either China or
Korea.
The fundamental problem with nearly all audio compact discs (CDs) is the following.
The CD records more than 10 songs, and the music company charges the consumer for all the songs. Yet, the consumer wants only one song -- almost always, the most popular song.
So, merely reducing the price of the CD to $12.98 will not improve sales much.
The best solution is a build-to-order (BTO) CD. Specifically, the major music
companies band together and set up a BTO booth at Target or Walmart.
The consumer selects the songs that he or she wants, and the BTO booth burns
the songs into the CD at the time of purchase. Each song would be individually
priced. The neat thing about this approach is that it is essentially a just-in-time (JIT)
system. Neither Target nor Walmart needs to maintain a huge floor space just
to hold pre-recorded CDs. The store sells exactly what the consumer wants to
buy, and the store manager never needs to worry about returning unsold CDs
to the manufacturer. The financial savings to the store can be passed to
the consumer in the form of even lower CD prices.
Furthermore, the songs themselves would be stored in a central database at the headquarters of Walmart or Target. They would be downloaded by a high-speed intranet to the computer burning the CDs in the BTO booth in each individual store.
An alternative to the BTO booth is a BTO web site. The consumer selects the songs that she
wants. They are then burned into the CD, and the CD is shipped to the consumer.
The Apple G5 is powered by the PowerPC 970. It
has one unusual feature that is not shared by
the Athlon64 (AMD), the Pentium 4 (Intel), and
the Itanium 2 (Intel). Most of the engineers, technicians, and support people who worked on the PowerPC 970 were not H-1B employees. IBM has a strict policy of not employing H-1B employees except in positions that require a Ph. D.
The PowerPC 970 shatters the myth that you absolutely need H-1Bs because supposedly there is not enough talented American engineers to do the work. By nearly all metrics, the PowerPC 970 is competitive with the very best processors produced by H-1B-dominated companies like AMD and Athlon.
The Apple G5 may be slightly more expensive than an equivalent system based on an AMD/Intel microprocessor, but the Apple G5 is worth cost. Buying the Apple G5 supports the more traditional American work environment at IBM as opposed to the brutal, cutthroat environment at Intel.
Slashdot Mirror
To strengthen the analog, consider the automobile. Suppose that each time you drive to work, you enter a brand new car. This situation corresponds to case #1. Case #2 is where you enter the same car that you used previously. It is a used car. Clearly, in case #2, your car is much more likely to breakdown due to wear and tear. It is normal. An old car is simply more likely to breakdown than a brand new car even if we closely adhere to the recommended maintenance schedule.
So, of course, the space shuttle is more likely to suffer a breakdown than the space capsule. The space shuttle suffers normal wear and tear, but the space capsule is always brand new. Also, the space shuttle suffering a breakdown is vastly more horrific than your car suffering a breakdown. When the space shuttle is hurtling down to earth at thousands of miles per hour and suffers a breakdown, there is no nearby "gas station" to quickly patch things up.
In conclusion, switching from the space shuttle to the space capsule will definitely reduce the number of fatal mishaps in space but will not solve the central problem. It is "How do we eliminate fatal mishaps in re-usable space vehicles?" If we truly commercialize space and have manned space colonies, we cannot afford to build a brand space vehicle for every single trip to and from, say, Mars. Economics requires us to use re-usable space vehicles, but we must develop a way to maintain them so that they never breakdown.
However, Dr. Joy has 1 notable failure. When Sun Microsystems was developing the first SPARC processor and had planned to migrate all its software and tools to the new chip, the engineers designing SPARC came to a critical juncture in their work. That juncture can be summarized in one question: "Should we build register windows into SPARC?".
At the time, Professor Patterson at Berkeley was championing the incorporation of register windows into microprocessors. According to his flawed studies, register windows supposedly give a significant performance boost to C-language code. Patterson was an inspiration for young Dr. Joy.
The SPARC engineers did their own studies but went far beyond what Patterson did. They actually looked at how to build register windows into high-performance circuits, and they concluded that building register windows would be too difficult. They also questioned the supposed performance benefits of register windows. Unfortunately, Dr. Joy overruled them and forced them to incorporate register windows into the first SPARC chip.
The rest is history. It proved that register windows give SPARC no significant performance advantage over other microprocessors. Indeed, register windows appears to reduce performance. Look at the results at the SPEC web site. Power4, Power5, Pentium 4, Athlon, etc. all crush the SPARC chip in performance. When the 80486 became the first 80x86 chip to exceed the performance of the SPARC chip on SPECint, Sun Microsystems should have gotten a clue and dropped register windows. On the contrary, Sun Microsystem stubbornly stuck with register windows. You might say that register windows killed the performance of the SPARC processors.
To this very day, SPARC processors are about 2 generations behind their peers in performance.
As an American company, Dell is a huge disgrace. Please read the "Environmental Report Card" produced by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Dell received a failing grade and is little better than Taiwanese companies, which are notorious for destroying the environment and the health of workers. Dell even resorted to prison labor to implement its pathetic recycling program.
To briefly summarize the tale of woe, Frank Rosenblatt invented the perceptron in 1957. It had one layer of artificial neurons and sparked an entire field of research in artificial learning. In 1969, Marvin Minsky at MIT wrote a book called "Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry"; in it, he mathematically proved that the perceptron could not solve certain classes of problems. This book essentially decimated funding for neural-network research for about 15 years.
In 1982, John Hopfield at Caltech revived the field with the invention of the Hopfield Networks. Further, several researchers invented backpropagation as a way to train neural networks with 2 or more layers or artificial neurons and overcame the limitations that Minsky indicated. Now, the field of neural networks has plenty of money to do research.
So, there is a possibility that research into cold fusion will grow hot again.
... from the desk of the reporter
Do you remember the "bad old days" before SEs and the Internet? We often recall an article of news that may be relevant to a discussion with friends and colleagues. We want to retrieve the article, but we have already forgotten the title (or worse) the source of the article. With a SE, you can now find the article via the Internet. Many of the relevant articles shall remain on the Internet for a long time.
In general, any reasonably educated person (i. e. a person who distinguishes reputable news sources from unreputable news sources) can now have ready access to high-quality information about almost any subject of interest. Just go to the SE and do a search. In this way, SEs and the Internet benefit society greatly. Now, we can more intelligently make decisions about the actions of governments and whole societies since we can easily retrieve and review the previously read information that is necessary for those decisions. Agents of deception seeking to manipulate, for example, American society and American government will be defeated. With the power of the SEs and the Internet, we can more easily distinguish lies from truths.
A case in point is "Reality of Taiwan". I was able to retrieve key information that might have been lost in the "bad old days" before the SEs and the Internet. Using the retrieved information (which comes from reputable Western sources), I constructed an accurate image of Taiwan. This image is the same one that senior government officials have contructed in the highest echelons of the American government. The image is quite shocking to the general American public, which Taiwanese agents (including paid lobbyists, Taiwanese politicians, etc.) have long manipulated.
Please read "Trains in Japan". Trains in Japan have been extremely reliable and clean since the 1950s -- almost half a century. In 1960, there was no GPS, no Internet, etc. Yet, the train system in Japan worked fine.
What in Indian culture prevents Indian society from developing into a modern society? Why does Indian society need all this high-tech intervention in order to make it just barely livable, yet Japan has been an adequately livable society since the late 1960s?
Please read "Reality of Taiwan".
As for a specific example, the Chinese son of the chairman of a powerful conglomerate in Taiwan has joined with the son of Jiang Zemin, the butcher of Tibet, to build an advanced silicon-wafer factory in Shanghai, according to "Sons of prominent Chinese team up on chip venture".
Taiwanese support for China does not merely stop there. The Taiwanese support all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. Specifically, the Taiwanese constitution says that Tibet is an integral part of China. While the Taiwanese demand that Americans sell them weapons, the Taiwanese insist on integrating Tibet into China. This hypocrisy is disgusting.
In conclusion, boycott products made anywhere in China. Specifically, boycott products made in Taiwan. Let us in the Slashdot community petition the American government to terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and to stop sales of all weapons to Taiwan. In exchange for the termination of the TRA, Beijing should reciprocate by granting autonomy to Tibet.
Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to the USA".
The Taiwanese people support the "murderers in Beijing". The Taiwanese constitution states explicitly that Tibet belongs to China. Even though the Chinese People's Liberation Army have beaten, tortured, and killed scores of Tibetan women and children, the Taiwanese still insist that Tibet is an integral part of China.
Look back at the Tienanmen Square incident in 1989. Americans were shocked at the bloodshed and immediately curtailed or froze investments into mainland China in an attempt to punish the Beijing government. The Taiwanese people exploited this situation and rapidly provided, to the Beijing government, any money or technology that the Americans refused to provide. From 1989, Taiwanese investment into mainland China skyrocketed to the present level of $50 billion in more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China. In short, the Taiwanese completely thwarted the Western economic sanctions against China.
Please read "Reality of Taiwan".
The Chinese have been grateful to the Taiwanese and give them preferential treatment when they conduct business in China. Americans do not enjoy such preferential treatment. Indeed, the Chinese government punishes American business and destroys thousands of potential American jobs whenever the American government sells weapons to Taiwan. While the Taiwanese demand that the American government sell weapons to them, those same Taiwanese (1) thwart American economic sanctions promoting human rights in China and (2) support the integration of Tibet into China. This behavior is absolutely disgusting.
Let us call an end to this nonsense known as Taiwan. The American government should immediately terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. Every Taiwanese should be required to produce a Beijing passport when they are applying for a visa to the United States of America.
Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to the USA".
However, there is something that very few people know. Namely, the Taiwanese constitution, the highest law of the land in Taiwan, supports the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. Specifically, the constitution states that Tibet is part of China. The Taiwanese education system teaches children that Tibet is part of China.
While the Chinese army regularly beats, tortures, and kills Tibetan nuns, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet should be integrated into China. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese demand that the United States of America (USA) sells weapons to them. This hypocrisy is disgusting.
Furthermore, after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, the USA and other Western countries immediately curtailed or froze investments into mainland China. The intent of these economic sanctions were thwarted by Taiwanese duplicity. How? The Taiwanese seized this window of opportunity and provided any money or technology that the Americans refused to provide. Starting from 1989, the Taiwanese circumvented the sanctions and poured investments into China. Taiwanese investments in China have grown at double digit rates and have reached the level of $50 billion in more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China.
Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to the USA".
The USA must immediately terminate the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. The time has come to end the relationship of hypocrisy with Taiwan.
85% of the Taiwanese consider themselves "Chinese" and also support the idea that Taiwan is part of China. They also support the idea that Tibet is part of China.
Remember Tibet? That place is where the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) have tortured and killed Tibetan nuns and priests. Please visit the websites for Amnesty International and Tibet Online.
While the Chinese PLA is committing gross violations of human rights in Tibet, the Taiwanese support a Taiwanese constitution that insists on integrating Tibet into China. Furthermore, the Taiwanese education system teaches Taiwanese children that Tibet is part of China.
In the United States of America (USA), the majority of spies who steal American technology to give to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan. Another unusual aspect of these spies is that the majority help Beijing for no financial gain whatsoever. They help Beijing simply because they consider themselves Chinese and because, according to the spies, China is the motherland.
Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to the USA".
The time has come to end the hypocrisy and the nonsense from Taiwan. Americans should cancel the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and should stop selling weapons to Taiwan.
Taiwan is not a nation; rather, it is a province of China. About 15% of the people in Taiwan are descended from the folks who went to the island after 1949. The remaining 85% of the people in Taiwan are descended from the folks who resided on the island before 1949. Historians label the first group "Chinese" and label the latter group "Taiwanese".
However, in terms self-identification, 85% of the people in Taiwan consider themselves "Chinese". They support (eventual or immediate) unification with China. 15% of the people in Taiwan reject calling themselves "Chinese"; they consider themselves strictly "Taiwanese" and support (eventual or immediate) independence.
The key issue here is that the future of Taiwan is determined by the majority: i.e. the 85% who support the notion of "One China". Hence, the constitution of Taiwan clearly states that both Taiwan and Tibet are part of China. The Taiwanese support nearly all the geopolitical objectives of China.
What we have here is that there are 2 governments claiming to be the true government of "One China". One government is in Taipei. The other government is in Beijing. Without question, the joke is the government in Taipei. The majority of the Chinese people in China (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) expelled the Taiwanese government in 1949.
Shortly after the Korean government became democratic in the early 1990s, the Korean people recognized the joke in Taipei and immediately terminated relations with Taiwan and recognized the government in Beijing as the proper government of China.
The Taiwanese have made a mockery of Americans by manipulating them for more than 40 years. Please read the "Reality of Taiwan". While the Chinese army beats and kills Tibetan nuns, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of "One China". The Taiwanese constitution states so, and the Taiwanese education system teaches children so. At the same time, the Taiwanese government demands that the United States of America (USA) sell weapons to it. Meanwhile mid-ranking officers retired from the Taiwanese military travel to Beijing to secure lucrative jobs in exchange for revealing the secrets of American weapons sold to Taiwan.
Enough is enough.
The time has come to end the nonsense. Let us follow the lead of the South Koreans and terminate relations with Taiwan immediately . Cancel the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. Require all Taiwanese nationals to present a Beijing passport.
Remember the incident at Tienanmen Square in 1989. After it happened, the Americans and other Westerners froze or curtailed investments into mainland China. Even the Japanese followed suit, and for the first time after 1945, the Japanese condemned China. Western nations like Japan and the USA immediately slapped economic sanctions against China.
What did the Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong do? The Taiwanese immediately seized this window of opportunity and accelerated financial and technological investments into China. The Taiwanese provided any money or technology that the Westerners refused to provide . Since 1989, Taiwanese investment into mainland China has grown at double-digit rates. As of 2003, the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000 businesses into mainland China.
Furthermore, the Taiwanese request and receive preferential treatment when they invest in China. By contrast, American companies do not receive preferential treatment. The Chinese government occasionally punishes American companies because the American government sells weapons to Taiwan. While the Taiwanese demand that Americans sell them weapons, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of China: the Taiwanese constitution says that Tibet is part of China.
The time has come to stop this nonsense. The Americans should cancel the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. The Taiwanese have exploited American generosity and naiveness. Americans should not allow Taiwanese hypocrisy to hurt American business opportunities in China.
The government on Taiwan is not the legitimate government of China. The majority of Chinese expelled the Taiwanese government out of China in 1949. The Taiwanese government ransacked China and stole all the national treasures of China during the flight to Taiwan.
However, the government of Taiwan does support nearly all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. While the Taiwanese demand that the Americans sell weapons to them, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of China. Meanwhile, the Chinese soldiers are beating and killing Tibetan nuns. Taiwanese hypocrisy is disgusting. (The Taiwanese constitution states explicitly that Tibet is part of China.)
Instead of supporting the Taiwanese government, the Americans should terminate their relationship with Taiwan. The American government should end the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and require all Taiwanese nationals to produce a Beijing passport if they wish to apply for a visa to the USA.
Yes. The Taiwanese support the concept of voting for their president. However, the Taiwanese also support the geopolitical objectives of Beijing. The Taiwanese have told both Japan and the Philippines to back off from the Senkaku Islands and the Spratly Islands, repectively, because they are Chinese territory.
Please read "Reality of Taiwan".
Furhermore, mid-ranking officers retired from Taiwan's military have gone to Beijing to obtain lucrative jobs in exchange for revealing the performance characteristics of American weapons sold to Beijing. The report by the U. S. Department of State does not mention this fact because the purpose of that report is only to describe the state of human rights in Taiwan. The Taiwanese do indeed support integrating Tibet into mainland China. The Taiwanese education system teaches Taiwanese children that Tibet is part of China. It is hypocritical, and it is disgusting.
Finally, the report by the U. S. Department of State does not mention the fact that the Justice Department has placed Taiwan on a list of nations that are hostile intelligence threats. That list includes Syria and Libya.
Numerous military officials retired from Taiwan's armed forces have gone to Beijing to give secrets about American weapons sold to Taiwan. In fact, Beijing now knows the performance characteristics of the F-16 fighter.
You are correct. The Taiwanese government is manipulating the Western media in order to garner support from Western audiences. Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to USA".
Agreed. China is a threat to American security. However, Taiwan is also a threat. The Taiwanese actually support all the geopolitical objectives of China. Please read "Understanding Taiwan: Security Threat to USA"
The Taiwanese have one of the highest rates of software piracy in the world. This piracy is what causes Taiwanese computers to be especially succeptible to Trojan horses, worms, etc. Pirated software is far more likely to be contaminated with viruses and the like. So, when you download pirated software, you run the risk of your computer being violated by an intruder. The Taiwanese got what they deserved; anyone who uses pirated software should be penalized.
Also, please read "Reality of Taiwan". The Taiwanese support all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China; the Taiwanese constitution explicitly states that Tibet is an integral part of China (while Chinese soldiers regularly torture and kill Tibetan nuns). In short, we should ignore all Taiwanese complaints about China.
Taiwan is a security threat to the United States of America (USA). Would we in the West be concerned about Trojan horses being spread to computers in North Korea or Libya? No. So, we should not be concerned about Trojan horses being spread to computers in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese government reporting (to the "Taipei Times") the spread of Trojan horses to Taiwan from China is just political spin for manipulating a Western audience. This spin is intended to garner support for Taiwan. Let us not be stupid. We must see Taiwan for what it is: it is a security threat to the USA. The majority of spies arrested in the USA for stealing sensitive American military technology and giving it to Beijing were born or grew up in Taiwan. Please read "Reality of Taiwan".
Finally, when the USA and other Western countries like Japan slowed or curtailed investments in mainland China in order to punish Beijing for the Tienanmen Square incident of 1989, the Taiwanese seized this window of "opportunity" and immediately sent financial and technological investments into China. The Taiwanese completely thwarted the American economic sanctions against China. Taiwan is a strong supporter of China . Starting from 1989, Taiwanese investments into mainland China have skyrocketed; the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion dollars into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China.
Let us ignore Taiwanese complaints about Trojan horses from China.
Electronic voting systems were flaunted as a way to avoid these problems.
Unfortunately, electronic systems cannot fix these problems because they all stem from the stupidity of some Americans. If they are so stupid as to be unable to follow simple instructions on completing a paper ballot, then their opinion on the "best candidate" is likely to be irrelevant. They are unlikely to be able to pick the "best candidate".
Further, these ignorant Americans will be unlikely to follow the simple instructions for completing an electronic ballot as well. The electronic system might prevent them from selecting multiple political candidates, but they will still, somehow, end up in being unable to select the candidate that they want.
Sorry.
Justice does not stop there. Since we require American companies like IBM to abide by stringent environmental and work regulations that protect both the environment and American workers, we must also require foreign companies like Acer from Taiwan province (located in China) to abide by the same stringent environmental and work regulations. Otherwise, IBM will be at a competitive disadvantage against companies like Acer. Acer products are cheaper than IBM products simply because Acer does not pay the cost of protecting the environment or the employees.
At the same time, non-Westerners like the Koreans and the Chinese simply do the care about the environment or the health of employees. Please read the environmental report card produced by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. All the Taiwanese and Korean companies received a failing grade on the issue of poisoning both the environment and their workers.
How can Westerners force non-Westerners like the Taiwanese and Koreans to enact and to enforce the same stringent environmental and work regulations that Westerners apply to Western companies like IBM? Simple. We boycott products made by Taiwanese or Korean companies. Please remember that when you buy products make in a particular country, you effectively support the value system in that country. Do not buy products made in either China or Korea.
If you have qualms about this boycott, please re-read the environmental report card produced by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
The best solution is a build-to-order (BTO) CD. Specifically, the major music companies band together and set up a BTO booth at Target or Walmart. The consumer selects the songs that he or she wants, and the BTO booth burns the songs into the CD at the time of purchase. Each song would be individually priced. The neat thing about this approach is that it is essentially a just-in-time (JIT) system. Neither Target nor Walmart needs to maintain a huge floor space just to hold pre-recorded CDs. The store sells exactly what the consumer wants to buy, and the store manager never needs to worry about returning unsold CDs to the manufacturer. The financial savings to the store can be passed to the consumer in the form of even lower CD prices.
Furthermore, the songs themselves would be stored in a central database at the headquarters of Walmart or Target. They would be downloaded by a high-speed intranet to the computer burning the CDs in the BTO booth in each individual store.
An alternative to the BTO booth is a BTO web site. The consumer selects the songs that she wants. They are then burned into the CD, and the CD is shipped to the consumer.
The PowerPC 970 shatters the myth that you absolutely need H-1Bs because supposedly there is not enough talented American engineers to do the work. By nearly all metrics, the PowerPC 970 is competitive with the very best processors produced by H-1B-dominated companies like AMD and Athlon.
The Apple G5 may be slightly more expensive than an equivalent system based on an AMD/Intel microprocessor, but the Apple G5 is worth cost. Buying the Apple G5 supports the more traditional American work environment at IBM as opposed to the brutal, cutthroat environment at Intel.