We cannot test ID. ID is not falsifiable. ID is NOT science.
Evolution, on the otherhand, is a theory that was created to explain certain observations. That is to say, evolution is a theory that explains the data. The new data that we've found fits the theory well.
Can you quote instances where macro-evolution has been observed and tested? What data are you referring to that fits the macro-evolution theory well?
I am not trying to start a flamewar here, but some of these claims that you are making aren't quite true. Truth be told - macro-evolution has NEVER either been observed or tested because these are not expected to happen in anything less than a few millions of years. What we have seen so far are instances of evolution happening at a micro-scale. As for macro-evolution, all we have at the moment are assumptions as to what may have occurred in terms of evolutionary changes between two species where one is seen as older than the other.
Also, if one were to consider evolution as a process which a species will inevitably have to go through, how is that we have the so-called living fossils (eg: Chacoan peccary, Okapi, Coelacanth) which haven't evolved for millions of years?
The Coelacanth (a species considered about 400 million years old) was initially thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago! (compare this against dinosaurs which are thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago). Fact is, the Coelcanth was used as an index fossil - so if fossil findings were found along with the remains of a Coelcanth, these other fossils were also dated to be atleast 70 million years old! That was until a live specimen of the Coelcanth was found in 1938. Coelacanth is considered not to have evolved in 400 million years which is difficult to explain in evolutionary terms.
As for the Okapi - it was considered to be a parent in the evolutionary tree of the horse.. until a live specimen was found in 1901.
So this opens up the possibility that the scientists may be wrong about other evolutionary trees as well - it also opens up the possibility that many of these species may have been alive at the same time; that is, one may not have evolved from the other at all.
Scientists are, at the moment, trying to piece together the evolutionary tree of animals based on a whole range of criteria - and a generous dose of their own assumptions. Many of these assumptions have NEVER been proven to be true and many of these are difficult to prove false as well (irrefutable) because of the timelines involved.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. I think both should happen - that is Parents should spend time with their children and regulate what they do at the same time the government should regulate the sale of violent games to children.
You are probably right, but as in everything else this is a fine balance. On the one hand, you want the government to take care of the best interests of its citizens, but at the same time the citizens should be able to decide for themselves what is acceptable to them. I know a lot of people are probably going to jump at this post and say that government shouldn't regulate anything - but these people are wrong and will adopt a completely different standard when it comes to something else where they would want the government to regulate the actions of someone else / company / country.
Some amount of government regulation is necessary - which is why governments are voted into power in any case. But at the same time, citizens cannot stop regulating their own behaviour (as well as that of the minors) stating that it is the government's responsibility. It is also the citizens' responsibility to vote a government into power which knows what to regulate and what not to.. and this must be deligently controlled.
But yes, you are right. There are some really sick games out there. One must be fairly sick to play some of the games out there (eg: I don't see what is fun about using a chainsaw on people).. and the fact that these games are so popular is a cause for concern.
If the problem is that the laws are not uniformly applied, than that means the existing law must be modified.. not repealed. Laws (as does everything else) evolves, there is nothing wrong with that.
I am in full agreement with your point of view. It is only the very young or the very naive who can claim that it is ok to allow children to view porn, buy cigarettes and booze etc. The interesting this is - these very same will argue against a minor being tried as an adult for murder.
I don't think they can have this both ways - either you are a minor and expect to have some restrictions placed on you by society (on the assumption that you are incapable of making all these decisions yourself), or you agree that you are fully capable of making your own decisions and therefore also liable to be treated as an adult in court.
Why is the parent post marked as flamebait? Here is a parent explaining their point of view, and this is flamebait?! Not that I agree with everything he says, but notheless I think the moderators really messed up on this one.
Businesses do not automatically have the "right" to sell whatever they want to whomsover they want to.. which is why we have laws against trading in drugs, alcohol, guns,etc..
Just because a law does not resolve all problems 100% does not go to mean that the law is in itself unnecessary.
Also, this notion that if a law against selling tobacco to kids didn't exist that children would somehow stop smoking is silly to say the least. The same applies to alcohol, guns,... Get this right - NOT having laws against it has not worked in ANY country - nada. I have been to places where these laws were not enforced and I have seen the consequences of that.
If you still believe that not having these laws will suddenly (and magically) solve all these problems, I have a bridge to sell you.
I am not sure if such a setting exists in python.. someone perhaps more knowledgeable can comment. If such a setting does exist, it will definitely solve a lot of problems.
I concur. I have written a very large business application (> 100K LOC) used in American banks using Python. The problem we faced was primarily due to the dynamically typed nature of python when small typos weren't caught easily. Ruby doesn't solve this problem either.
In hindsight, I think I should have settled on either J2EE or.NET as the development environment. My only problem with J2EE is that it is heavily over engineered; the designers came up with an inordinately complex architecture and completely lost sight of the fact that simplicity is in itself a worthwhile goal.
And exactly how does this prove macro evolution? All it proves is that if there is sufficient genetic difference between two species, even if reproduction is possible, the offspring may be unfertile.
So unless there is evidence to indicate that these two sub-species of squirrels acquired these genetic differences that prevent successful inter-breeding in recent recorded history, this does not prove macro-evolution.
Man has been inter-breeding animals between different species for thousands of years (Eg: mules). Hybrid varieties of plants have been used for thousands of years as well.
Also, the fact that even within a single species there can be wide difference in physical attributes has been known for eons. Take humans; the Caucassians, Africans and Orientals all look very different from each other - different eye colours, skin colours, hair colours, the average build and height etc. But humans are considered a single species.
No one is disputing micro-evolution - there is sufficient evidence to indicate that, but macro-evolution is still debateable.
Where did you get this idea that ID supporters do not believe in micro-evolution? What ID supporters do not believe is macro evolution such as reptiles gaining wings to become birds, ape becoming man etc.
Micro-evolution, hybrids etc are all considered perfectly valid by IDers.
Based on what food is available locally animals will adapt themselves to feed on that food - for instance, if only rodents are available in a specific area, dogs in that area may start to feed on rodents. This change in the food habits will no doubt affect its lifespan, possibly cause changes in the rate of maturity etc. But this is just adaptation and not speciation. The dogs have not become a new species, they have just changed their food habits to survive. If the situation changes and the rodents become rare and are replaced by chicken or other fowl, perhaps the dogs will modify their behaviour to feed on chicken instead.
For animals/insects with very short lifespans such as fruitflies, any change in the speed of maturity between any two fruitflies will ofcourse result in reduced inter-breeding. Butu again, this is not because these two fruit flies have become two separate species altogether.
Adaptation is not necessarily the same as speciation. If both these so-called species of fruitflies are fed the same diet, it is entirely likely that in a generation of two that the maturity levels will become the same.
Example: It is fairly well documented that people in the mediteranean suffer less from heart disease because of traditional use of olive oil and wine in their cooking. Does that mean that people in the mediteranean are a different species of humans altogether?
The claims of speciation of these fruit flies is questionable. It is highly unlikely that this is a case of macro-evolution. I am not saying that macro-evolution does not occur, I am just questioning this particular case of the fruit flies being quoted as an example of that occuring.
You do realize that you are benefitting from knowledge which has been passed down to you over the generations, from your grand-parents to your parents and then to you. don't you? One of the best signs of an intelligent animal species is its ability to pass on knowledge to the young. Only highly advanced animal species pass on cumalative knowledge from generation to generation and as this information is passed down, it gets refined.
This provides a giant headstart for the young of the species.
Coming back to your post - a Parent's responsibility does not stop with just providing a house, food, clothes and some form of schooling for the children. It goes way beyond that. It is a parent's responsibility to teach the child values, beliefs etc.. anything that will help the kid have an advantage.
To illustrate - lets say it is my "point of view" that one needs to work hard and make a living for themselves and not rely on fortune tellers / Gurus / etc to get ahead in life. Am I allowed to share this "point of view" with my child who is only 10 years old or is that violating his fundamental right?
Ofcourse, my belief may be wrong, but it is still my responsibility to:
1. Process the information passed down to me over the generations 2. Discover for myself new stuff 3. Communicate what I have seen work to my child.
I want my child to have all the advantage he can get in this cruel world. Why would I cripple him by NOT teaching what I think could be of use to him? When he is older, he is free to change his mind/beliefs, but it is still my responsibility to teach him what I know NOW. It would be grave negligence on my part if I didn't do it.
So in summary - though your post sounds smart, it really isn't.
Each culture has its negatives and the positives. One of the positives of India is that fact that we endure a lot of suffering without complaining and not just that.. we are able to do that with reasonable cheer. This is seen very clearly when we look at the poor in India; they maintain a sense of happiness though they suffer so much. If you are referring to this, yes - then I am in complete agreement with you.
But your reference point was with respect to the value of human life from the point of view of conflict/war. I know that you are referring to US as a collective and not personally for each Indian - but you also did make an assertion that Indians value human life more than the Americans. Speaking from that reference point, I have to maintain that not valuing human life enough is one of the negative aspects of being Indian. I stated an example of road accidents; your claim that this is an isolated case is baffling because that clearly is not the case. There are thousands who die in India each year because we the people are completely callous to their plight as they lie critically injured on the road. I am sure you have heard many instance of this happenning.
Talking about the other issue about the British - I agree that the British rule did impoverish India but please do not live under the illussion that the common man lived in luxury before the British arrived. That aside, in 2 years from now, we would have been free of the British for 60 years. We cannot still continue to use the British rule of India as an excuse for India's backwardness and the corruption that exists. Also, what does that have to do with the Americans?
Besides, these people don't have much use in society or a future, especially in India's caste society. This is an excellent opportunity for them to contribute something to better mankind and benefit the rest of us. We should be applauding and congratulating them for their sacrifice. We shouldn't try to take this away from them.
Some people will be angry with this, but if not them, then who's going to do this?
Since you seem to have all the altruistic motives, may I suggest that you do this yourself? and surely you are altruistic enough not to want to profit in anyway from this and so you will perhaps want to volunteer your services free for humanity.
Who are you to decide if these people are "useful" or not? The Indian society (I am an Indian) has perpetrated such injustices against these poor for so long, and I can assuredly tell you this - it was not because these people did not "contribute" positively to the society. They were just plain exploited. These people are just as useful as you and I, the difference is that idiots like you would like to believe that you had something to do with the fact that you were born to wealthy parents in a rich nation. In your stupidity, you probably also assume that you are in someway contributing towards the improvement of this world, while the people in the developing world and the poor all over the world are taking away from the world.
What makes this whole thing stand out for me is the complete callousness of not just your post, but also that of the people quoted in the article. This is exploitation of the worst kind - pure and simple. I am shocked also at the appalling attitude of the Indian government.
I am an Indian and I disagree with most things you said - please do not make this an "India" vs "USA" contest. Also, please do not say that Indians value human life more than Americans. In my experience, I have seen the opposite to be true. I agree that USA has been far more aggressive and has indulged in many more wars than India and this despite the fact that USA has been surrounded on all sides by friendly nations unlike India which is surrounded on all sides by nations with varying levels of hostility towards India.
This is perhaps because Americans are far more aggressive as a people while Indians tend to be either passive or indifferent.
Neither of these are positive attributes. This is reflected even at a micro scale if you look at smaller communities of Indians. The average Indian is very indifferent to everything around him and is intent only on getting his selfish needs met. We can see this indifferent attitude in the way Indians treat the poor, the disabled, women's issues, crime against children, child labour, civic resposibilities, the wide scale corruption etc.
If someone has an accident on the road in India and requires immediate medical attention to save their lives, it is likely that most Indians will not do anything and just walk on by because we don't want the inconvenience of having to spend an hour or so answering questions from the cops if they need any clarifications. I have witnessed this callousness first-hand and when I helped the injured person, I was actually told by others not to bother.
Also, I am sick and tired of this stupid victim complex many Indians have where they feel that we deserve everything because we had the British who ruled us for a couple of centuries. One of the reasons we were ruled by so few Britishers is because of the corrupt and callous nature of the Indian ruling class which basically sold out Indians to the British. Unfortunately this self-serving, disgusting attitudes have still not gone away.
So before we start throwing stones at anyone, lets first look at our glass house.
A correction there - IIT does not graduate anywhere near the 50,000 graduates that you refer to. It may be closer to 5000 each year (could be lesser) and of them most will never get into programming. CS is not the only subject IIT teaches. IIT short for Indian Institute of Technology has only a few colleges spread across India.
For more details, you can check out the web pages of IIT. I have posted a link to IIT Madras - http://www.iitm.ac.in/
IIT is also the top-tier engineering college in India and very, very few people actually get admitted into IIT.
But yes, there are a lot of other colleges in India which do also conduct CS and other engineering courses and a lot of graduates come from those colleges every year - far more than the 50,000 graduates you refer to.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The ability to disagree amicably is a wonderful skill and is somewhat lacking these days. Regarding my post, when I said that one shouldn't strive to be a "yes" man, it was not to mean that one should try and be as difficult as possible. I think people listen to your views/assessments/opinion as long as you seem sincere, have your head tightly screwed on and are not a jerk and you convey your opinion/view/assessment in a respectful fashion.
Also, in my experience, it helps tremendously if you convey your views directly to the concerned person rather than to someone else because then it would be gossip.
10 individual tracks sold in itunes cannot be equated to just a single CD album.
An average CD album will not contain more than two or three good tracks while the rest will be useless. When people buy individual tracks from itunes, they will only go for the better ones and the rest will just not sell. So instead of considering 10 tracks as being equivalent to a single album sale, WSJ should consider 2 or 3 tracks sold on itunes as being equivalent to a single album sale.
I am an Indian and I don't agree with the GP's broad assertion that Indians are "Yes" men when they land in the US. I worked and lived in San Jose. I decided to come back to India after my contract ended even though my employer granted me full-time employment. One of the reasons I was offerred this employment is because I am not a "Yes" man.
The assumption that people will throw you out on the street if you don't keep sucking up to the management is false in most places; any management worth its salt expects to hear the truth from the floor and once the management gets around to the understanding that the people on the floor are lying to them and basically kissing butt, they will rapidly lose any respect for the opinions of these minions. Even the management expects to hear the truth - believe it or not.
Running a business is not for everyone. In that I agree with you.
But it is worthwhile to give it a shot to see if it does really work out.
I will let you on a little secret - it is not a "revolutionary" idea which is going to make/break your company. Your success as a businessman/employee/sportsperson is defined by a three simple words - reliability, consistency and inexpensive. You can make it really big in anything if you are consistent, reliable and inexpensive.
The sad truth is very few businesses and indeed very few people are all three - consistent, reliable and inexpensive.
By inexpensive I don't mean cheap - I only mean that people do not think you are trying to rip them off. They consider you good value. There are highly successful businesses who offer very expensive services as well - but that is another story altogether; most of that is defined by yet another word "hype".
I am running a company. This is my second shot at it. I walked away from the last time since I had some unresolved issues with my partners and I felt that it is better to start from scratch than to waste all that bile. The first one I started about 4 years ago, the one I am currently running I started about 2 years ago.
I have funded myself for the most part - and only twice - both were low value loans to tide over a temporary cash flow problem. Once I borrowed some money to pay off some salaries when two of my clients didn't pay on time.
My advice on funding is this - just take funding for what you need; that is do not take funds to shore up your reserves. That is, if you need 50,000 dollars to pay off salaries for a month, take just 50,000 dollars - do not take 2 million dollars (which is the kind of money VCs will be willing to offer, if at all). Having too much money in reserve is dangerous - someone in the company is going to come up with an idea for spending that money quickly. It could be some corporate motivational training that you absolutely can do without, it could be that new spruced up reception, it could be two new "contingency" servers. Reserve money can tempt you to overspend. If the reserve money is yours (that is, you didn't borrow it), then there is perhaps not too many problems with spending it. But if the money is not yours (your borrowed it), then it is going to cause big problems.
And always have a plan to pay back - quickly. It is also best to take money from those who are willing to give it you as a loan which you can repay in monthly/quarterly installments. Borrow from friends or family (this does come at a cost - that is, you MUST have a good plan to pay them back.. and that too quickly).
There are several reasons I suggest friends and family. 1) Getting money from VCs and Banks is a long drawn out process. Friends and Family don't require you to fill out an application form and present a business plan with cooked up figures. 2) It forces you to borrow only small amounts of money. 3) It allows you to reward the lender by giving them a good interest which they wouldn't get from just having the money lying around in a bank account.
Now the point 3) is important. Ensure that you always repay with interest added in and make this higher than savings bank interest. Even though the percentage may be slightly higher, it is still worth it because of the time and the energy you would have saved from getting the money from them instead of from the VCs/Banks.
Also, when the lender gets back the money with the percentage added in quickly, they will be far more willing to lend you money again later if you need it. It makes business sense to them to lend the money to you rather than wasting it in a bank account. Always ensure that it is well worth their while to lend money to you.
If there is noone in your circle that you can borrow money from, only then should you consider going to a Bank for money. Avoid going to VCs. Between VCs and Banks, Banks are the lesser evil. When you go to a bank ask for a loan, do not offer stake. It is better to get a low value loan with no transfer of stake than a high value loan with a transfer of stake (in most cases).
If you absolutely must go to a VC, only go when you already have something which is ready for sale (that is, something more than just an idea / patent). You must be in a strong position to negotiate and unless you reach that stage, do not attempt to get VC funding. It is more trouble than it is worth. If the VC holds all the horses when you go in to negotiate a loan, you will lose.
It is my humble opinion that one of the problems with Java is that it is over-engineered. This is particularly true of J2EE.
For some strange reason the J2EE designers decided that XML is easier to work with than Java code and so we have all these XML descriptor files lying all over the place. The XML descriptors will describe everything from what classes to call, what actions to call when, configuration settings.. well pretty much anything that can be described. I can understand the need to store configuration settings like database connection settings, directory and file configurations etc in config files but why should the functionality of a site be described in an XML file? isn't that supposed to be done in code?
These XML descriptors are so big and complex now that we have tools to generate these XML descriptors.. but these tools are themselves configured using other XML config files, which may in turn be configured/written by yet another set of tools. Somehow all this doesn't make a lot of sense. The proliferation of additional tools which are required to develop in J2EE indicates the extent of this madness. But even then problems persist - These XML descriptors are not validated at compile time unlike code and so the errors may only show up at run-time.
If J2EE was designed keeping simplicity as one of its vital goals, it would have succeed far more than it has. One of the greatest advantages.NET has going for it is that it is far simpler to develop web apps in it than in J2EE.
If the functionality were just described in code instead of split across a zillion XML files as it is now, J2EE would have been fun to develop in.
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Can you quote instances where macro-evolution has been observed and tested? What data are you referring to that fits the macro-evolution theory well?
I am not trying to start a flamewar here, but some of these claims that you are making aren't quite true. Truth be told - macro-evolution has NEVER either been observed or tested because these are not expected to happen in anything less than a few millions of years. What we have seen so far are instances of evolution happening at a micro-scale. As for macro-evolution, all we have at the moment are assumptions as to what may have occurred in terms of evolutionary changes between two species where one is seen as older than the other.
Also, if one were to consider evolution as a process which a species will inevitably have to go through, how is that we have the so-called living fossils (eg: Chacoan peccary, Okapi, Coelacanth) which haven't evolved for millions of years?
Some references:
Coelacanth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth/
Okapi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi/
Chacoan Peccary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacoan_peccary/
The Coelacanth (a species considered about 400 million years old) was initially thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago! (compare this against dinosaurs which are thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago). Fact is, the Coelcanth was used as an index fossil - so if fossil findings were found along with the remains of a Coelcanth, these other fossils were also dated to be atleast 70 million years old! That was until a live specimen of the Coelcanth was found in 1938. Coelacanth is considered not to have evolved in 400 million years which is difficult to explain in evolutionary terms.
As for the Okapi - it was considered to be a parent in the evolutionary tree of the horse.. until a live specimen was found in 1901.
So this opens up the possibility that the scientists may be wrong about other evolutionary trees as well - it also opens up the possibility that many of these species may have been alive at the same time; that is, one may not have evolved from the other at all.
Scientists are, at the moment, trying to piece together the evolutionary tree of animals based on a whole range of criteria - and a generous dose of their own assumptions. Many of these assumptions have NEVER been proven to be true and many of these are difficult to prove false as well (irrefutable) because of the timelines involved.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. I think both should happen - that is Parents should spend time with their children and regulate what they do at the same time the government should regulate the sale of violent games to children.
You are probably right, but as in everything else this is a fine balance. On the one hand, you want the government to take care of the best interests of its citizens, but at the same time the citizens should be able to decide for themselves what is acceptable to them. I know a lot of people are probably going to jump at this post and say that government shouldn't regulate anything - but these people are wrong and will adopt a completely different standard when it comes to something else where they would want the government to regulate the actions of someone else / company / country.
Some amount of government regulation is necessary - which is why governments are voted into power in any case. But at the same time, citizens cannot stop regulating their own behaviour (as well as that of the minors) stating that it is the government's responsibility. It is also the citizens' responsibility to vote a government into power which knows what to regulate and what not to.. and this must be deligently controlled.
But yes, you are right. There are some really sick games out there. One must be fairly sick to play some of the games out there (eg: I don't see what is fun about using a chainsaw on people).. and the fact that these games are so popular is a cause for concern.
If the problem is that the laws are not uniformly applied, than that means the existing law must be modified.. not repealed. Laws (as does everything else) evolves, there is nothing wrong with that.
I am in full agreement with your point of view. It is only the very young or the very naive who can claim that it is ok to allow children to view porn, buy cigarettes and booze etc. The interesting this is - these very same will argue against a minor being tried as an adult for murder.
I don't think they can have this both ways - either you are a minor and expect to have some restrictions placed on you by society (on the assumption that you are incapable of making all these decisions yourself), or you agree that you are fully capable of making your own decisions and therefore also liable to be treated as an adult in court.
Why is the parent post marked as flamebait? Here is a parent explaining their point of view, and this is flamebait?! Not that I agree with everything he says, but notheless I think the moderators really messed up on this one.
Businesses do not automatically have the "right" to sell whatever they want to whomsover they want to.. which is why we have laws against trading in drugs, alcohol, guns,etc..
... Get this right - NOT having laws against it has not worked in ANY country - nada. I have been to places where these laws were not enforced and I have seen the consequences of that.
Just because a law does not resolve all problems 100% does not go to mean that the law is in itself unnecessary.
Also, this notion that if a law against selling tobacco to kids didn't exist that children would somehow stop smoking is silly to say the least. The same applies to alcohol, guns,
If you still believe that not having these laws will suddenly (and magically) solve all these problems, I have a bridge to sell you.
So what do you suggest - that we remove any such limitations? allow tobacco companies to target children?
We have laws against murder - that is not working too well either. Shall we go ahead and repeal those as well?
Exactly how your comment got modded as "Interesting" baffles me!
Thank you. I appreciate that. That is useful.
I am not sure if such a setting exists in python.. someone perhaps more knowledgeable can comment. If such a setting does exist, it will definitely solve a lot of problems.
I concur. I have written a very large business application (> 100K LOC) used in American banks using Python. The problem we faced was primarily due to the dynamically typed nature of python when small typos weren't caught easily. Ruby doesn't solve this problem either.
.NET as the development environment. My only problem with J2EE is that it is heavily over engineered; the designers came up with an inordinately complex architecture and completely lost sight of the fact that simplicity is in itself a worthwhile goal.
In hindsight, I think I should have settled on either J2EE or
And exactly how does this prove macro evolution? All it proves is that if there is sufficient genetic difference between two species, even if reproduction is possible, the offspring may be unfertile.
So unless there is evidence to indicate that these two sub-species of squirrels acquired these genetic differences that prevent successful inter-breeding in recent recorded history, this does not prove macro-evolution.
Man has been inter-breeding animals between different species for thousands of years (Eg: mules). Hybrid varieties of plants have been used for thousands of years as well.
Also, the fact that even within a single species there can be wide difference in physical attributes has been known for eons. Take humans; the Caucassians, Africans and Orientals all look very different from each other - different eye colours, skin colours, hair colours, the average build and height etc. But humans are considered a single species.
No one is disputing micro-evolution - there is sufficient evidence to indicate that, but macro-evolution is still debateable.
Where did you get this idea that ID supporters do not believe in micro-evolution? What ID supporters do not believe is macro evolution such as reptiles gaining wings to become birds, ape becoming man etc.
Micro-evolution, hybrids etc are all considered perfectly valid by IDers.
Some of these claims of speciation are doubtful.
Based on what food is available locally animals will adapt themselves to feed on that food - for instance, if only rodents are available in a specific area, dogs in that area may start to feed on rodents. This change in the food habits will no doubt affect its lifespan, possibly cause changes in the rate of maturity etc. But this is just adaptation and not speciation. The dogs have not become a new species, they have just changed their food habits to survive. If the situation changes and the rodents become rare and are replaced by chicken or other fowl, perhaps the dogs will modify their behaviour to feed on chicken instead.
For animals/insects with very short lifespans such as fruitflies, any change in the speed of maturity between any two fruitflies will ofcourse result in reduced inter-breeding. Butu again, this is not because these two fruit flies have become two separate species altogether.
Adaptation is not necessarily the same as speciation. If both these so-called species of fruitflies are fed the same diet, it is entirely likely that in a generation of two that the maturity levels will become the same.
Example: It is fairly well documented that people in the mediteranean suffer less from heart disease because of traditional use of olive oil and wine in their cooking. Does that mean that people in the mediteranean are a different species of humans altogether?
The claims of speciation of these fruit flies is questionable. It is highly unlikely that this is a case of macro-evolution. I am not saying that macro-evolution does not occur, I am just questioning this particular case of the fruit flies being quoted as an example of that occuring.
You do realize that you are benefitting from knowledge which has been passed down to you over the generations, from your grand-parents to your parents and then to you. don't you?
One of the best signs of an intelligent animal species is its ability to pass on knowledge to the young. Only highly advanced animal species pass on cumalative knowledge from generation to generation and as this information is passed down, it gets refined.
This provides a giant headstart for the young of the species.
Coming back to your post - a Parent's responsibility does not stop with just providing a house, food, clothes and some form of schooling for the children. It goes way beyond that. It is a parent's responsibility to teach the child values, beliefs etc.. anything that will help the kid have an advantage.
To illustrate - lets say it is my "point of view" that one needs to work hard and make a living for themselves and not rely on fortune tellers / Gurus / etc to get ahead in life. Am I allowed to share this "point of view" with my child who is only 10 years old or is that violating his fundamental right?
Ofcourse, my belief may be wrong, but it is still my responsibility to:
1. Process the information passed down to me over the generations
2. Discover for myself new stuff
3. Communicate what I have seen work to my child.
I want my child to have all the advantage he can get in this cruel world. Why would I cripple him by NOT teaching what I think could be of use to him? When he is older, he is free to change his mind/beliefs, but it is still my responsibility to teach him what I know NOW. It would be grave negligence on my part if I didn't do it.
So in summary - though your post sounds smart, it really isn't.
Each culture has its negatives and the positives. One of the positives of India is that fact that we endure a lot of suffering without complaining and not just that.. we are able to do that with reasonable cheer. This is seen very clearly when we look at the poor in India; they maintain a sense of happiness though they suffer so much. If you are referring to this, yes - then I am in complete agreement with you.
But your reference point was with respect to the value of human life from the point of view of conflict/war. I know that you are referring to US as a collective and not personally for each Indian - but you also did make an assertion that Indians value human life more than the Americans. Speaking from that reference point, I have to maintain that not valuing human life enough is one of the negative aspects of being Indian. I stated an example of road accidents; your claim that this is an isolated case is baffling because that clearly is not the case. There are thousands who die in India each year because we the people are completely callous to their plight as they lie critically injured on the road. I am sure you have heard many instance of this happenning.
Talking about the other issue about the British - I agree that the British rule did impoverish India but please do not live under the illussion that the common man lived in luxury before the British arrived. That aside, in 2 years from now, we would have been free of the British for 60 years. We cannot still continue to use the British rule of India as an excuse for India's backwardness and the corruption that exists. Also, what does that have to do with the Americans?
Since you seem to have all the altruistic motives, may I suggest that you do this yourself? and surely you are altruistic enough not to want to profit in anyway from this and so you will perhaps want to volunteer your services free for humanity.
Who are you to decide if these people are "useful" or not? The Indian society (I am an Indian) has perpetrated such injustices against these poor for so long, and I can assuredly tell you this - it was not because these people did not "contribute" positively to the society. They were just plain exploited. These people are just as useful as you and I, the difference is that idiots like you would like to believe that you had something to do with the fact that you were born to wealthy parents in a rich nation. In your stupidity, you probably also assume that you are in someway contributing towards the improvement of this world, while the people in the developing world and the poor all over the world are taking away from the world.
What makes this whole thing stand out for me is the complete callousness of not just your post, but also that of the people quoted in the article. This is exploitation of the worst kind - pure and simple. I am shocked also at the appalling attitude of the Indian government.
I am an Indian and I disagree with most things you said - please do not make this an "India" vs "USA" contest. Also, please do not say that Indians value human life more than Americans. In my experience, I have seen the opposite to be true. I agree that USA has been far more aggressive and has indulged in many more wars than India and this despite the fact that USA has been surrounded on all sides by friendly nations unlike India which is surrounded on all sides by nations with varying levels of hostility towards India.
This is perhaps because Americans are far more aggressive as a people while Indians tend to be either passive or indifferent.
Neither of these are positive attributes. This is reflected even at a micro scale if you look at smaller communities of Indians. The average Indian is very indifferent to everything around him and is intent only on getting his selfish needs met. We can see this indifferent attitude in the way Indians treat the poor, the disabled, women's issues, crime against children, child labour, civic resposibilities, the wide scale corruption etc.
If someone has an accident on the road in India and requires immediate medical attention to save their lives, it is likely that most Indians will not do anything and just walk on by because we don't want the inconvenience of having to spend an hour or so answering questions from the cops if they need any clarifications. I have witnessed this callousness first-hand and when I helped the injured person, I was actually told by others not to bother.
Also, I am sick and tired of this stupid victim complex many Indians have where they feel that we deserve everything because we had the British who ruled us for a couple of centuries. One of the reasons we were ruled by so few Britishers is because of the corrupt and callous nature of the Indian ruling class which basically sold out Indians to the British. Unfortunately this self-serving, disgusting attitudes have still not gone away.
So before we start throwing stones at anyone, lets first look at our glass house.
A correction there - IIT does not graduate anywhere near the 50,000 graduates that you refer to. It may be closer to 5000 each year (could be lesser) and of them most will never get into programming. CS is not the only subject IIT teaches. IIT short for Indian Institute of Technology has only a few colleges spread across India.
For more details, you can check out the web pages of IIT. I have posted a link to IIT Madras - http://www.iitm.ac.in/
IIT is also the top-tier engineering college in India and very, very few people actually get admitted into IIT.
But yes, there are a lot of other colleges in India which do also conduct CS and other engineering courses and a lot of graduates come from those colleges every year - far more than the 50,000 graduates you refer to.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The ability to disagree amicably is a wonderful skill and is somewhat lacking these days. Regarding my post, when I said that one shouldn't strive to be a "yes" man, it was not to mean that one should try and be as difficult as possible. I think people listen to your views/assessments/opinion as long as you seem sincere, have your head tightly screwed on and are not a jerk and you convey your opinion/view/assessment in a respectful fashion.
Also, in my experience, it helps tremendously if you convey your views directly to the concerned person rather than to someone else because then it would be gossip.
10 individual tracks sold in itunes cannot be equated to just a single CD album.
An average CD album will not contain more than two or three good tracks while the rest will be useless. When people buy individual tracks from itunes, they will only go for the better ones and the rest will just not sell. So instead of considering 10 tracks as being equivalent to a single album sale, WSJ should consider 2 or 3 tracks sold on itunes as being equivalent to a single album sale.
I am an Indian and I don't agree with the GP's broad assertion that Indians are "Yes" men when they land in the US. I worked and lived in San Jose. I decided to come back to India after my contract ended even though my employer granted me full-time employment. One of the reasons I was offerred this employment is because I am not a "Yes" man.
The assumption that people will throw you out on the street if you don't keep sucking up to the management is false in most places; any management worth its salt expects to hear the truth from the floor and once the management gets around to the understanding that the people on the floor are lying to them and basically kissing butt, they will rapidly lose any respect for the opinions of these minions. Even the management expects to hear the truth - believe it or not.
Running a business is not for everyone. In that I agree with you.
But it is worthwhile to give it a shot to see if it does really work out.
I will let you on a little secret - it is not a "revolutionary" idea which is going to make/break your company. Your success as a businessman/employee/sportsperson is defined by a three simple words - reliability, consistency and inexpensive. You can make it really big in anything if you are consistent, reliable and inexpensive.
The sad truth is very few businesses and indeed very few people are all three - consistent, reliable and inexpensive.
By inexpensive I don't mean cheap - I only mean that people do not think you are trying to rip them off. They consider you good value. There are highly successful businesses who offer very expensive services as well - but that is another story altogether; most of that is defined by yet another word "hype".
I am running a company. This is my second shot at it. I walked away from the last time since I had some unresolved issues with my partners and I felt that it is better to start from scratch than to waste all that bile. The first one I started about 4 years ago, the one I am currently running I started about 2 years ago.
I have funded myself for the most part - and only twice - both were low value loans to tide over a temporary cash flow problem. Once I borrowed some money to pay off some salaries when two of my clients didn't pay on time.
My advice on funding is this - just take funding for what you need; that is do not take funds to shore up your reserves. That is, if you need 50,000 dollars to pay off salaries for a month, take just 50,000 dollars - do not take 2 million dollars (which is the kind of money VCs will be willing to offer, if at all). Having too much money in reserve is dangerous - someone in the company is going to come up with an idea for spending that money quickly. It could be some corporate motivational training that you absolutely can do without, it could be that new spruced up reception, it could be two new "contingency" servers. Reserve money can tempt you to overspend. If the reserve money is yours (that is, you didn't borrow it), then there is perhaps not too many problems with spending it. But if the money is not yours (your borrowed it), then it is going to cause big problems.
And always have a plan to pay back - quickly. It is also best to take money from those who are willing to give it you as a loan which you can repay in monthly/quarterly installments. Borrow from friends or family (this does come at a cost - that is, you MUST have a good plan to pay them back.. and that too quickly).
There are several reasons I suggest friends and family.
1) Getting money from VCs and Banks is a long drawn out process. Friends and Family don't require you to fill out an application form and present a business plan with cooked up figures.
2) It forces you to borrow only small amounts of money.
3) It allows you to reward the lender by giving them a good interest which they wouldn't get from just having the money lying around in a bank account.
Now the point 3) is important. Ensure that you always repay with interest added in and make this higher than savings bank interest. Even though the percentage may be slightly higher, it is still worth it because of the time and the energy you would have saved from getting the money from them instead of from the VCs/Banks.
Also, when the lender gets back the money with the percentage added in quickly, they will be far more willing to lend you money again later if you need it. It makes business sense to them to lend the money to you rather than wasting it in a bank account. Always ensure that it is well worth their while to lend money to you.
If there is noone in your circle that you can borrow money from, only then should you consider going to a Bank for money. Avoid going to VCs. Between VCs and Banks, Banks are the lesser evil. When you go to a bank ask for a loan, do not offer stake. It is better to get a low value loan with no transfer of stake than a high value loan with a transfer of stake (in most cases).
If you absolutely must go to a VC, only go when you already have something which is ready for sale (that is, something more than just an idea / patent). You must be in a strong position to negotiate and unless you reach that stage, do not attempt to get VC funding. It is more trouble than it is worth. If the VC holds all the horses when you go in to negotiate a loan, you will lose.
It is my humble opinion that one of the problems with Java is that it is over-engineered. This is particularly true of J2EE.
.NET has going for it is that it is far simpler to develop web apps in it than in J2EE.
For some strange reason the J2EE designers decided that XML is easier to work with than Java code and so we have all these XML descriptor files lying all over the place. The XML descriptors will describe everything from what classes to call, what actions to call when, configuration settings.. well pretty much anything that can be described. I can understand the need to store configuration settings like database connection settings, directory and file configurations etc in config files but why should the functionality of a site be described in an XML file? isn't that supposed to be done in code?
These XML descriptors are so big and complex now that we have tools to generate these XML descriptors.. but these tools are themselves configured using other XML config files, which may in turn be configured/written by yet another set of tools. Somehow all this doesn't make a lot of sense. The proliferation of additional tools which are required to develop in J2EE indicates the extent of this madness. But even then problems persist - These XML descriptors are not validated at compile time unlike code and so the errors may only show up at run-time.
If J2EE was designed keeping simplicity as one of its vital goals, it would have succeed far more than it has. One of the greatest advantages
If the functionality were just described in code instead of split across a zillion XML files as it is now, J2EE would have been fun to develop in.