I think above poster's point is, that if you start learning a foreign language, getting your skill up to the level where you can read a foreign journal will take a very long time (maybe 6+ years.) You might reach that level faster for European langauges (e.g. German/French/Spanish), because they are closer to English, but that would certainly be the case for Chinese and Japanese.
But don't let that deter you. Even though there may be little direct application to your research, learning a new language will dramaticaly broaden your mind and open up opportunities. It will make you realise there are other ways of thinking than just the English-centric world we are stuck in.
The difference is what, precisely? Other than that "republic" is a more precise term than "democracy" which is somewhat vague about the exact mechanism, nothing relevant.
For one, Australia has pretty damned close to 100% literacy... from what I've seen of else-where it still translates into a population massively more informed than (for example) the US.
I'm not sure about that. Case in point: Australia's two highest rating "current affairs" programs are running stories about "cannibal" tribes. Yeah... Australians are so much smarter than Americans.
Considering that these ships are intended to be used by the coast guard in the gulf of Mexico, I don't see the problem.
Even if operating in the waters off Alaska, an operating temparature of -5 F (-20 C) should be fine. The freezing poing of the sea is -2 C (29 F). The air above the sea is warmed by the sea. I just checked the weather records of a Bering Sea weather station, and for example in 2005 the temperature never dropped below -8 C (18 F).
This is why national ID cards are scary (no matter what Newspeak euphemism it is called.) The government has a database of every citizen. Initially the database contains just basic details, such as name, date of birth, address, etc and maybe tax information. Over time more and more pieces of information become linked with this database, for example passports, travel history, perhaps even police records, medical records and transaction history.
This gives extreme power to the government in two ways. Firstly, whenever you present your ID card to a governemnt official, he/she can instantly bring up an incredible amount of personal information about you. i.e. The government now knows more about you than many of your friends. Secondly, the government security agencies (i.e. the secret police) can now easily generate lists of people that match any given profile. For example I've noticed that a lot of the recent terrorist bombings were carried out by engineers. Bring up the complete list of all single male engineers aged 18-35 with an ethnic background. Bam! I've got a list of 50,000 potential terrorists, better keep a closer eye on those guys.
My grandparents lived in Holland during the second world war. Holland had a very detailed and complete national registry of its citizens, which included personal details such as religion. The Dutch government had used this registry to assist in social planning, etc. However, when the Nazis took power, they of course used it to identify all the Jews to be rounded up and killed. Dutch Jews had the lowest survival rate of any occupied country, and this was because the national registry provided them with the complete list of Jews.
This piece of history illustrates that a national registry containing personal details is a very powerful and dangerous tool. While it can of course be used to benefit the population, it fundamentally entrusts the government with a lot of power over its citizens. The citizens must trust not only the current governemnt, but also all future governments, (and we don't know who they will be) to never abuse that power.
The article you link to misrepresents the statistics. They have deliberately chosen 1998 as their starting point, because it was an abnormally hot year, i.e. a statistical outlier, and then noted that no year has been hotter since 1998. But they have ignored that the trend in global temperature has continued to rise since then.
In terms of the overall global warming debate, these are the facts: fact 1 The mean global temperature has increased by almost 1 degree celsius in the last 100 years. And the global temperature is clearly trending up. fact 2 Since the industrial revolution, human activity has significantly altered the composition of the atmosphere. "Green house gases" have dramatically increased. Carbon dioxide has increased by 30%, methane by 230% and nitrous oxide by 20%. The increasing rate of emissions has accerelated their growth in recent years.
Other studies (of ice cores and tree xylon rings) point to the current rise in tempartures as being more rapid than anything else that has occured in the last 1000 years. This contradicts people who argue that the current phenomenon is just part of a natural long term climate cycle.
We have sound scientific theories explaining how greenhouse gases retain heat in the atmosphere. (The extreme case of a greenhouse atmosphere being Venus.) There are many models projecting that the temperature will continue to increase as a result of the greenhouse gases.
That said, everyone recognises that it is an extremely complex system. For example, small variations on the sun can have a large impact on the Earth's temperature. It has not been proven that human activity has caused global warming. However, it does seem highly probable that human activity is at least contributing to global warming. Furthermore, we are significantly changing the atmosphere. That is going to change the system, although the exact nature of these changes is hard to predict.
The fundamental problem is that movies have become too expensive to make. When you spend 100 million bucks to make a movie, you have to be confident to get at least that back in box office receipts. Which means that the studios can't afford to take a risk. Which means they rely on marketing drones to analyse what "consumers want." The result is the boring predictable movies that we have.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of talented and creative script writers in Hollywood. But their most creative ideas would be considered too risky to make into a movie.
You're right, except that my guess is that many people are unaware that they are getting a distorted version. Well at least I was. For example, I orginally watched the dubbed versions of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. I just assumed that having someone act out the translation is better than reading subtitles at the bottom of the screen, which distracts you from looking at the pictures. It wasn't until I watched the subtitled version that I realised there were significant differences.
So maybe Disney should have a community announcement at the beginning of their screenings: "Warning: the English language soundtrack dialogue may not reflect the sentiments of the original movie."
There are heaps of differences between the correctly translated subtitles and the dubbed version in Princess Mononoke as well. For example when Moro is speaking of the attack of the boars, in the dubbed version Moro says something like: "It's a trap. And a stupid one. But Okkoto won't listen. None of them will." Whereas the correct translation is: "It's a foolish trap. But Okkoto is no fool. He knows its a trap. But he will attack anyway." Furthermore, the Japanese version has many silent scenes which are blabbered over in the dubbed version. These and many other seemingly subtle differences give quite a different feel to the movie.
I acknowledge that dubbing is not an easy task. A direct translation would give very unnatural sounding dialogue. But my suspicion is that Disney's dumbing down on Miyazaki's movies is driven by the arrogant assumption that the audience is stupid and the story needs to be Americanised to make it accessible (and profitable.) They don't imagine that people may enjoy the story in its unaltered form, or that we may be interested in the perspectives on another culture. Yet its Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, which puts creative integrity first (before profit) that is successful, while Disney is in a downward spiral.
Speed cameras in Perth (West Coast for the punters) are a real bitch... snapping drivers going just 4-5km/h over the speed limit.
Bah... you guys live in a utopia. Over here in the state of Victoria we get just 2 km/h grace. My dear old mother got a fine for doing 63 in a 60 zone.
Good thing then that they're going to be liberated soon (Note the author: Scott Ritter - American ex-UN weapons inspector.) Is anyone else noticing the steady stream of Iran-is-bad articles in the press lately? Very deja vuish to 2002.
Except that the ratio of gases dissolved in the ocean is different to that of gases in the air. Oxygen makes up about 35% of the gas dissolved in the surface water of the ocean. So given that Oxygen toxicity kicks in at about 1.6 atm partial pressure, that would be at about 35 metres underwater.
The three major dissolved gases in the surface waters of the ocean are oxygen, nitrogen, and argon. The ratio that they exist dissolved in the ocean is not the same as is the ratio existing in the atmosphere. The ratio of O2:N2:Ar in the surface waters is approximately 20:36:1 [5b]. The atmospheric ratio of 21:78:1 shows that more oxygen gas dissolves in the sea than does nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas is not as soluble as oxygen and argon, so when water releases its dissolved atmospheric gases, the air becomes relatively enriched in oxygen.
Actually, human activity is almost certainly to blame.
Volcanic eruptions change the atmosphere by adding significant quantities of sulphur oxides. This causes a global cooling but the changes are temporary and only last a few years. Volcanoes don't emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. Human activity has substantially changed the composition of the atmosphere. The observed changes in temperature of the 20th century were in excess of natural variations, such as what can be accounted for by changes in the sun's irradiance.
But don't take my word for it, this is according to a
paper published in Science today.
Fred Shapiro once gave a talk explaining that this story is a myth. According to him the word "bug" was already in use as a word for defect in engineering during the 19th century. He cites this as a more likely origin of the word as it is used today.
Ironically Shapiro's article is sometimes cited as a source for the moth story. Hey, that's what he gets for trying to spoil a good story.
For anyone interested here's a reference to the paper: "Entomology of the Computer Bug: History and Folklore", American Speech 62(4):376-378, 1987, by Fred R. Shapiro
I doubt this will take off any time soon. Even if diamond is a much better semi-conductor. There's just too much investment in silicon to change. For example gallium arsenic is a much better semi-conductor than silicon, and this has been known for years. But to quote the industry saying: "Gallium-arsenic is and always will be the technology of the future."
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Treat people like criminals and they will act like criminals.
I think above poster's point is, that if you start learning a foreign language, getting your skill up to the level where you can read a foreign journal will take a very long time (maybe 6+ years.) You might reach that level faster for European langauges (e.g. German/French/Spanish), because they are closer to English, but that would certainly be the case for Chinese and Japanese.
But don't let that deter you. Even though there may be little direct application to your research, learning a new language will dramaticaly broaden your mind and open up opportunities. It will make you realise there are other ways of thinking than just the English-centric world we are stuck in.
Yeah, Malaysian Airlines is another one that uses Linux for their inflight entertainment.
In Japan, you can do just about everything on your mobile. i.e. not just banking, flight checkins, hotel reservations, email, etc.
The difference is what, precisely? Other than that "republic" is a more precise term than "democracy" which is somewhat vague about the exact mechanism, nothing relevant.
You've obviously never played Civilisation.
For one, Australia has pretty damned close to 100% literacy ... from what I've seen of else-where it still translates into a population massively more informed than (for example) the US.
... Australians are so much smarter than Americans.
I'm not sure about that. Case in point: Australia's two highest rating "current affairs" programs are running stories about "cannibal" tribes. Yeah
2. Equipment not working at -40.
Considering that these ships are intended to be used by the coast guard in the gulf of Mexico, I don't see the problem.
Even if operating in the waters off Alaska, an operating temparature of -5 F (-20 C) should be fine. The freezing poing of the sea is -2 C (29 F). The air above the sea is warmed by the sea. I just checked the weather records of a Bering Sea weather station, and for example in 2005 the temperature never dropped below -8 C (18 F).
We're about 12 hrs behind Australia time, the game hasn't even been aired here yet!
funny, except australia's actually 8 hours *ahead* of germany and 14 hours *ahead* of the states.
This is why national ID cards are scary (no matter what Newspeak euphemism it is called.) The government has a database of every citizen. Initially the database contains just basic details, such as name, date of birth, address, etc and maybe tax information. Over time more and more pieces of information become linked with this database, for example passports, travel history, perhaps even police records, medical records and transaction history.
This gives extreme power to the government in two ways. Firstly, whenever you present your ID card to a governemnt official, he/she can instantly bring up an incredible amount of personal information about you. i.e. The government now knows more about you than many of your friends. Secondly, the government security agencies (i.e. the secret police) can now easily generate lists of people that match any given profile. For example I've noticed that a lot of the recent terrorist bombings were carried out by engineers. Bring up the complete list of all single male engineers aged 18-35 with an ethnic background. Bam! I've got a list of 50,000 potential terrorists, better keep a closer eye on those guys.
My grandparents lived in Holland during the second world war. Holland had a very detailed and complete national registry of its citizens, which included personal details such as religion. The Dutch government had used this registry to assist in social planning, etc. However, when the Nazis took power, they of course used it to identify all the Jews to be rounded up and killed. Dutch Jews had the lowest survival rate of any occupied country, and this was because the national registry provided them with the complete list of Jews.
This piece of history illustrates that a national registry containing personal details is a very powerful and dangerous tool. While it can of course be used to benefit the population, it fundamentally entrusts the government with a lot of power over its citizens. The citizens must trust not only the current governemnt, but also all future governments, (and we don't know who they will be) to never abuse that power.
Apologies: my post contains an error. The concentraion of methane has increased by 150% (not 230%) since the industrial revolution.
The article you link to misrepresents the statistics. They have deliberately chosen 1998 as their starting point, because it was an abnormally hot year, i.e. a statistical outlier, and then noted that no year has been hotter since 1998. But they have ignored that the trend in global temperature has continued to rise since then.
In terms of the overall global warming debate, these are the facts:
fact 1 The mean global temperature has increased by almost 1 degree celsius in the last 100 years. And the global temperature is clearly trending up.
fact 2 Since the industrial revolution, human activity has significantly altered the composition of the atmosphere. "Green house gases" have dramatically increased. Carbon dioxide has increased by 30%, methane by 230% and nitrous oxide by 20%. The increasing rate of emissions has accerelated their growth in recent years.
Other studies (of ice cores and tree xylon rings) point to the current rise in tempartures as being more rapid than anything else that has occured in the last 1000 years. This contradicts people who argue that the current phenomenon is just part of a natural long term climate cycle.
We have sound scientific theories explaining how greenhouse gases retain heat in the atmosphere. (The extreme case of a greenhouse atmosphere being Venus.) There are many models projecting that the temperature will continue to increase as a result of the greenhouse gases.
That said, everyone recognises that it is an extremely complex system. For example, small variations on the sun can have a large impact on the Earth's temperature. It has not been proven that human activity has caused global warming. However, it does seem highly probable that human activity is at least contributing to global warming. Furthermore, we are significantly changing the atmosphere. That is going to change the system, although the exact nature of these changes is hard to predict.
Reference document: http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf
Here is a link to the original paper on which the article is based:
m e=&firstpage=&DOI=&author1=halloy&author2=&title=& andorexacttitle=and&titleabstract=&andorexacttitle abs=and&fulltext=&andorexactfulltext=and&fmonth=Ma r&fyear=2006&tmonth=Apr&tyear=2006&fdatedef=1+Janu ary+1915&tdatedef=4+April+2006&tocsectionid=all&RE SULTFORMAT=1&hits=10&hitsbrief=25&sortspec=relevan ce&sortspecbrief=relevance&sendit=Search
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/search?pubdate_year=&volu
Does anyone with a subscription to the National Academy of Sciences care to
post the complete text?
The fundamental problem is that movies have become too expensive to make. When you spend 100 million bucks to make a movie, you have to be confident to get at least that back in box office receipts. Which means that the studios can't afford to take a risk. Which means they rely on marketing drones to analyse what "consumers want." The result is the boring predictable movies that we have.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of talented and creative script writers in Hollywood. But their most creative ideas would be considered too risky to make into a movie.
You're right, except that my guess is that many people are unaware that they are getting a distorted version. Well at least I was. For example, I orginally watched the dubbed versions of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. I just assumed that having someone act out the translation is better than reading subtitles at the bottom of the screen, which distracts you from looking at the pictures. It wasn't until I watched the subtitled version that I realised there were significant differences.
So maybe Disney should have a community announcement at the beginning of their screenings: "Warning: the English language soundtrack dialogue may not reflect the sentiments of the original movie."
I totally agree with you.
There are heaps of differences between the correctly translated subtitles and the dubbed version in Princess Mononoke as well. For example when Moro is speaking of the attack of the boars, in the dubbed version Moro says something like:
"It's a trap. And a stupid one. But Okkoto won't listen. None of them will."
Whereas the correct translation is:
"It's a foolish trap. But Okkoto is no fool. He knows its a trap. But he will attack anyway."
Furthermore, the Japanese version has many silent scenes which are blabbered over in the dubbed version.
These and many other seemingly subtle differences give quite a different feel to the movie.
I acknowledge that dubbing is not an easy task. A direct translation would give very unnatural sounding dialogue. But my suspicion is that Disney's dumbing down on Miyazaki's movies is driven by the arrogant assumption that the audience is stupid and the story needs to be Americanised to make it accessible (and profitable.) They don't imagine that people may enjoy the story in its unaltered form, or that we may be interested in the perspectives on another culture. Yet its Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, which puts creative integrity first (before profit) that is successful, while Disney is in a downward spiral.
... Noone cares.
I care.
Speed cameras in Perth (West Coast for the punters) are a real bitch ... snapping drivers going just 4-5km/h over the speed limit.
... you guys live in a utopia. Over here in the state of Victoria we get just 2 km/h grace. My dear old mother got a fine for doing 63 in a 60 zone.
Bah
And who the heck has ever heard of "Steve the Linux Super Villain Guy?"
http://www.ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54
Check it out, it's pretty funny.
Good thing then that they're going to be liberated soon (Note the author: Scott Ritter - American ex-UN weapons inspector.) Is anyone else noticing the steady stream of Iran-is-bad articles in the press lately? Very deja vuish to 2002.
Except that the ratio of gases dissolved in the ocean is different to that of gases in the air. Oxygen makes up about 35% of the gas dissolved in the surface water of the ocean. So given that Oxygen toxicity kicks in at about 1.6 atm partial pressure, that would be at about 35 metres underwater.
l
From http://seis.natsci.csulb.edu/rmorris/oxy/oxy4.htm
The three major dissolved gases in the surface waters of the ocean are oxygen, nitrogen, and argon. The ratio that they exist dissolved in the ocean is not the same as is the ratio existing in the atmosphere. The ratio of O2:N2:Ar in the surface waters is approximately 20:36:1 [5b]. The atmospheric ratio of 21:78:1 shows that more oxygen gas dissolves in the sea than does nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas is not as soluble as oxygen and argon, so when water releases its dissolved atmospheric gases, the air becomes relatively enriched in oxygen.
But don't take my word for it, this is according to a paper published in Science today.
And I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords.
Fred Shapiro once gave a talk explaining that this story is a myth. According to him the word "bug" was already in use as a word for defect in engineering during the 19th century. He cites this as a more likely origin of the word as it is used today.
Ironically Shapiro's article is sometimes cited as a source for the moth story. Hey, that's what he gets for trying to spoil a good story.
For anyone interested here's a reference to the paper:
"Entomology of the Computer Bug: History and Folklore", American Speech 62(4):376-378, 1987, by Fred R. Shapiro
So is /. going to be DMCAed now because everyone is posting links to Kazaa Lite?
I doubt this will take off any time soon. Even if diamond is a much better semi-conductor. There's just too much investment in silicon to change.
For example gallium arsenic is a much better semi-conductor than silicon, and this has been known for years. But to quote the industry saying: "Gallium-arsenic is and always will be the technology of the future."