Picture a staving subsistence farmer holding one end of an Ethernet cable wondering WTH he is supposed to do with that. This will feed and clothe my family how?
Yeah, what are those savages going to do with better access to information? How are they going to plug into the knowledge economy? They don't have towns and cities in Africa, they only live in mud huts and small settlements. Those African doctors, lawyers, teachers and stuff? They don't exist, too busy eking out a living as subsistence farmers. It's white people working for charities who do all the clever work, you wouldn't expect anyone with dark skin to be able to do anything that requires a bit of intelligence, would you?
Good point. Although the English fought a civil war to establish the supremacy of Parliament over the crown, and when the monarchy was restored it was in a very limited capacity where it remains to this day.
The Church of England has shriveled to the point where it's smaller than some cults despite its official position. Just shows you the power of social attitudes over institutions.
The House of Lords has been slightly reformed IIRC.
I was just wondering how long it would take to hear from the "this isn't exactly what I want therefore I don't see why it would be of use to anyone" brigade.
I would have thought the applications for this were obvious. Someone with a short commute during the week sticks to electric. For the road trip to the mountains at the weekend he swaps in the petrol engine.
What were they thinking when they changed their name to the "New" Democratic Party? It's not the sort of name that stands the test of time, is it? 50 years from now will they still be "new"?
the United States is at least nominally a constitutional republic, whereas the UK is a theocratic monarchy
The day when an out-of-the-closet atheist becomes President will be the day when you can gloat about the superiority of the American system. Religion seems to be a big deal in all US Presidential campaigns. JFK had to reassure the people that he wasn't going to have his catholic strings pulled by Rome. Mitt Romney's mormonism is putting his campaign under serious pressure among evangelical voters. And don't get me started about the urban legends about Obama's supposed Islamist tendencies (personally I think he's a closet atheist who paid enough lip service to church to assure the bigoted voters that he's a believer and hence qualified to lead).
The UK had a Jewish Prime Minister as far back as 1874, and to this day nobody in the UK cares what religion the PM is as long as he's good at the job.
There is, by the way, not much Biblical support for the idea of scriptural inerrancy. Other Bible-based religions such as Judaism don't seem to have trouble with the idea that humans are the product of natural processes but still subject to divine law.
The Catholic church is another example, in fact they play down scripture and put more emphasis on tradition since they see themselves as the inheritors of St Peter. Pope John Paul II said that evolution is compatible with the faith.
Let's start teaching holocaust denial in history class then. It's a "controversy" too, right? And any lessons that touch on recent events should also teach the "controversy" about 9/11 being an inside job. Chemistry lessons should be augmented by alchemy.
If all alternative points of view (including the batshit insane ones) are equally valid, you have to.
Well there is a reason they were extinct. Teeth that sharp would 1. Either dull down quickly (depends on how long it lived) 2. Be fragile enough to break after catching prey.
Some species developed an ability to re-grow tooth material. Quoth TFA:
To overcome this, the animals seem to have been able to re-sharpen and repair worn teeth throughout their lives — a quality that other vertebrates have failed to evolve.
That's pretty much where it should go, at least when shareholders get their wish. They want money. They don't care whether the company creates software, hardware or rubber boots, or anything at all for that matter, what matters is whether they get as much money as they could possibly squeeze from the company.
Yes, that bleeds a company dry over time. But why would shareholders care? If the company folds, dump it and move on to the next.
But shareholders don't get their way. Shareholders don't buy shares in a company and then go to the shareholder's meeting and micromanage executive decisions. They see company x which sits on cash cows and company y which makes bold investments in pure research without a clear outcome. They have a choice as to which company they want to invest in. If they want a company that sits on cash cows, they invest in company x.
Everybody knows what Google does, everyone knows about the 20% time policy. If an investor doesn't like that policy then they'll just invest somewhere else. Investors who see the value of the 20% policy will invest in Google knowing that the risks are bigger, as are the potential rewards which may be further off in the future.
The difference is that Bell Labs did pure research. While Google may be doing pure research, it isn't evident based upon the projects that are publicly visible. Pure research is what yields the long term society–changing breakthroughs, whereas R&D on fantasy projects often have higher capital expenses with nothing to show for it even if the project succeeds.
How do you differentiate between "pure research that yields long term society–changing breakthroughs" and "fantasy projects" before they've had a chance to prove themselves in the market for a decent length of time?
... pharmacological behavior modification to create an aversion to meat in people
Pharmacological behavior modification isn't necessary. Just post a ton of slaughterhouse videos online, let them go viral, and get the likes of Michael Moore to make more movies about the meat industry (above the admirable efforts that have already been made by others). Pressure groups could campaign to have graphic imagery from the meat industry made more visible through advertising campaigns. If people (in the USA in particular*) knew how their meat was made and how much cruelty was involved there'd be a whole lot more vegetarians.
*The USA has very slack food safety standards compared to the EU.
What if someone there was going around saying that there was no point in looking for life on other planets and aggressively fighting spending money on searching because life arose on earth through the random process of evolution and the chance of it happening twice in the same solar system is infinitesimally small?
Then I'd fire him for making assumptions about unknown conditions on other planets or moons.
You mean the individuals of species that live in large groups need to get on with each other and not attack and kill each other all the time?
Who knew?
(Well, almost all biologists and anthropologists for decades, but hey)
There are people out there who insist that without belief in the invisible man in the sky then we're all going to turn into murdering rapists, therefore according to them religion has to be enshrined in law. A bit of empirical research to debunk that little theory is no bad thing IMHO.
That's actually a good point. What does being anonymous do to the results of this study?
Are we now modding people 'insightful' for asking a question that could be answered by reading TFA? The relevant quote is here:
When a “lever” is added to the problem, and the person questioned can now drop the bystander onto the tracks without physically touching him, the result is flipped and 95% of people find it permissible.
It makes sense that this is how basic human morality evolved. Our species didn’t evolve with any long range weapons or fancy bystander-killing levers. Decisions about violence were always made face to face. And because our species thrived from cooperation, it’s no wonder that we’re programmed to avoid directly harming others.
Which brings me to the point about the undeclared drone war. As well as being an easy political sell because the only lives at risk are on the receiving end of the bombs, it's an easy psychological sell because the pilots are so far removed from the bombs they're dropping, even more so than being in the cockpit. It's a long way from hand-to-hand combat with swords and shields.
The problem with modern war reporting in the western world (on any channel except for Al Jazeera) is that you no longer get to see what happens when the bombs do their work. You don't see the civilians getting caught up in it, so the outrage that was produced by the groundbreaking reporting of photographer Nick Ut (google for Vietnam napalm girl) just doesn't happen anymore. If there were more modern equivalents of photos like Napalm Girl then the drumbeat for more war in Iran would be a lot bloody quieter.
Falling space junk, meteorites, and terrorist. Which one takes out the $60B elevator first?
Oh will you people give it a fucking rest about terr'sts? I see this "oh but the Jihadists might try to attack it" on almost every single major engineering post on/. these days and it's getting on my wick. Why don't you demolish the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam before they get to those landmarks, hmm? Why don't you sit in the house and don't move in case anything bad happens?
Christ, you'd think terrorism was invented in 2001 to listen to you. What do you think the people of Israel and Palestine have been living with since the 60s? What do you think the people of Northern Ireland and later Britain were putting up with during the Northern Ireland Troubles? What do you think Londoners had to put up with during the Blitz? They had a 9/11 scale death toll every week.
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh. . . people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over HERE in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children
With a parliamentary system people tend to vote on party lines rather than on the personality of whoever happens to be party leader at the time of the election. John Major's victory in the 1992 British general election is proof of that.
I think the parliamentary system is much maligned. It actually has a lot of advantages. The cabinet members are elected, since the executive branch is drawn from the legislative branch the government can actually get things done, and nobody becomes party leader and hence Prime Minister without years of experience as a lawmaker.
I think the parliamentary system is less prone to turning into popularity contests, although that seems to be changing in Britain where Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats was able to raise the profile of his party thanks to his impressive performance in TV debates. But still, it was a long way from the "I'll vote for him because I'd like to have a beer with him" syndrome that has infected US politics.
The development of Minitel spawned the creation of many start-up companies in a manner similar to the later dot-com bubble of Internet-related companies. Similarly, many of those small companies floundered and failed because of an overcrowded market or bad business practices (lack of infrastructure for online retailers). The messageries roses ("pink messages", adult chat services) and other pornographic sites were also criticized for their possible use by under-age children. The government chose not to enact coercive measures, however, stating that the regulation of the online activities of children was up to parents, not the government. The government also enacted a tax on pornographic online services.
- Something weird about the French understanding a little more on freedom than Americans.
Weird? Where do you think the Statue of Liberty came from? What navy was it that saved you from losing the revolutionary war at the crucial moment? In fact who was the first major western power to oust its monarchy and replace it with a republic (second if you count the English, although they restored a very limited monarchy afterwards), citing "liberté, egalité, fraternité" as its core principles? That's right. France.
I appreciate that French-bashing has become fashionable of late but that doesn't change the fact that you Americans did not invent the concept of freedom, no matter how much you like to think so.
Remember Oracle? It was a sad day when it was replaced by that was replaced by that stupid service with the unimaginative name Teletext. As a teen I was glued to the daily Buzz section for teenagers, particularly Debbie's Diary.
Slashdot Mirror
Picture a staving subsistence farmer holding one end of an Ethernet cable wondering WTH he is supposed to do with that. This will feed and clothe my family how?
Yeah, what are those savages going to do with better access to information? How are they going to plug into the knowledge economy? They don't have towns and cities in Africa, they only live in mud huts and small settlements. Those African doctors, lawyers, teachers and stuff? They don't exist, too busy eking out a living as subsistence farmers. It's white people working for charities who do all the clever work, you wouldn't expect anyone with dark skin to be able to do anything that requires a bit of intelligence, would you?
Mod parent troll please.
Good point. Although the English fought a civil war to establish the supremacy of Parliament over the crown, and when the monarchy was restored it was in a very limited capacity where it remains to this day.
The Church of England has shriveled to the point where it's smaller than some cults despite its official position. Just shows you the power of social attitudes over institutions.
The House of Lords has been slightly reformed IIRC.
This is quite a bigoted thing to say, that a system of election is superior if it can produce an atheist leader.
WTF? How is it bigoted to say that? Have you any idea what "bigoted" means?
I was just wondering how long it would take to hear from the "this isn't exactly what I want therefore I don't see why it would be of use to anyone" brigade.
I would have thought the applications for this were obvious. Someone with a short commute during the week sticks to electric. For the road trip to the mountains at the weekend he swaps in the petrol engine.
Not rocket science.
What were they thinking when they changed their name to the "New" Democratic Party? It's not the sort of name that stands the test of time, is it? 50 years from now will they still be "new"?
the United States is at least nominally a constitutional republic, whereas the UK is a theocratic monarchy
The day when an out-of-the-closet atheist becomes President will be the day when you can gloat about the superiority of the American system. Religion seems to be a big deal in all US Presidential campaigns. JFK had to reassure the people that he wasn't going to have his catholic strings pulled by Rome. Mitt Romney's mormonism is putting his campaign under serious pressure among evangelical voters. And don't get me started about the urban legends about Obama's supposed Islamist tendencies (personally I think he's a closet atheist who paid enough lip service to church to assure the bigoted voters that he's a believer and hence qualified to lead).
The UK had a Jewish Prime Minister as far back as 1874, and to this day nobody in the UK cares what religion the PM is as long as he's good at the job.
There is, by the way, not much Biblical support for the idea of scriptural inerrancy. Other Bible-based religions such as Judaism don't seem to have trouble with the idea that humans are the product of natural processes but still subject to divine law.
The Catholic church is another example, in fact they play down scripture and put more emphasis on tradition since they see themselves as the inheritors of St Peter. Pope John Paul II said that evolution is compatible with the faith.
Let's start teaching holocaust denial in history class then. It's a "controversy" too, right? And any lessons that touch on recent events should also teach the "controversy" about 9/11 being an inside job. Chemistry lessons should be augmented by alchemy.
If all alternative points of view (including the batshit insane ones) are equally valid, you have to.
Well there is a reason they were extinct. Teeth that sharp would 1. Either dull down quickly (depends on how long it lived) 2. Be fragile enough to break after catching prey.
Some species developed an ability to re-grow tooth material. Quoth TFA:
To overcome this, the animals seem to have been able to re-sharpen and repair worn teeth throughout their lives — a quality that other vertebrates have failed to evolve.
"Sun Finally Sets on Britannica Empire."
Boom! Boom!
Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much.
That's pretty much where it should go, at least when shareholders get their wish. They want money. They don't care whether the company creates software, hardware or rubber boots, or anything at all for that matter, what matters is whether they get as much money as they could possibly squeeze from the company.
Yes, that bleeds a company dry over time. But why would shareholders care? If the company folds, dump it and move on to the next.
But shareholders don't get their way. Shareholders don't buy shares in a company and then go to the shareholder's meeting and micromanage executive decisions. They see company x which sits on cash cows and company y which makes bold investments in pure research without a clear outcome. They have a choice as to which company they want to invest in. If they want a company that sits on cash cows, they invest in company x.
Everybody knows what Google does, everyone knows about the 20% time policy. If an investor doesn't like that policy then they'll just invest somewhere else. Investors who see the value of the 20% policy will invest in Google knowing that the risks are bigger, as are the potential rewards which may be further off in the future.
The difference is that Bell Labs did pure research. While Google may be doing pure research, it isn't evident based upon the projects that are publicly visible. Pure research is what yields the long term society–changing breakthroughs, whereas R&D on fantasy projects often have higher capital expenses with nothing to show for it even if the project succeeds.
How do you differentiate between "pure research that yields long term society–changing breakthroughs" and "fantasy projects" before they've had a chance to prove themselves in the market for a decent length of time?
... pharmacological behavior modification to create an aversion to meat in people
Pharmacological behavior modification isn't necessary. Just post a ton of slaughterhouse videos online, let them go viral, and get the likes of Michael Moore to make more movies about the meat industry (above the admirable efforts that have already been made by others). Pressure groups could campaign to have graphic imagery from the meat industry made more visible through advertising campaigns. If people (in the USA in particular*) knew how their meat was made and how much cruelty was involved there'd be a whole lot more vegetarians.
*The USA has very slack food safety standards compared to the EU.
What if someone there was going around saying that there was no point in looking for life on other planets and aggressively fighting spending money on searching because life arose on earth through the random process of evolution and the chance of it happening twice in the same solar system is infinitesimally small?
Then I'd fire him for making assumptions about unknown conditions on other planets or moons.
Oh please! Did you think the Basque sepratists were going to attack this thing?
It's your duty!
You mean the individuals of species that live in large groups need to get on with each other and not attack and kill each other all the time?
Who knew?
(Well, almost all biologists and anthropologists for decades, but hey)
There are people out there who insist that without belief in the invisible man in the sky then we're all going to turn into murdering rapists, therefore according to them religion has to be enshrined in law. A bit of empirical research to debunk that little theory is no bad thing IMHO.
That's actually a good point. What does being anonymous do to the results of this study?
Are we now modding people 'insightful' for asking a question that could be answered by reading TFA? The relevant quote is here:
When a “lever” is added to the problem, and the person questioned can now drop the bystander onto the tracks without physically touching him, the result is flipped and 95% of people find it permissible.
It makes sense that this is how basic human morality evolved. Our species didn’t evolve with any long range weapons or fancy bystander-killing levers. Decisions about violence were always made face to face. And because our species thrived from cooperation, it’s no wonder that we’re programmed to avoid directly harming others.
Which brings me to the point about the undeclared drone war. As well as being an easy political sell because the only lives at risk are on the receiving end of the bombs, it's an easy psychological sell because the pilots are so far removed from the bombs they're dropping, even more so than being in the cockpit. It's a long way from hand-to-hand combat with swords and shields.
The problem with modern war reporting in the western world (on any channel except for Al Jazeera) is that you no longer get to see what happens when the bombs do their work. You don't see the civilians getting caught up in it, so the outrage that was produced by the groundbreaking reporting of photographer Nick Ut (google for Vietnam napalm girl) just doesn't happen anymore. If there were more modern equivalents of photos like Napalm Girl then the drumbeat for more war in Iran would be a lot bloody quieter.
Falling space junk, meteorites, and terrorist. Which one takes out the $60B elevator first?
Oh will you people give it a fucking rest about terr'sts? I see this "oh but the Jihadists might try to attack it" on almost every single major engineering post on /. these days and it's getting on my wick. Why don't you demolish the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam before they get to those landmarks, hmm? Why don't you sit in the house and don't move in case anything bad happens?
Christ, you'd think terrorism was invented in 2001 to listen to you. What do you think the people of Israel and Palestine have been living with since the 60s? What do you think the people of Northern Ireland and later Britain were putting up with during the Northern Ireland Troubles? What do you think Londoners had to put up with during the Blitz? They had a 9/11 scale death toll every week.
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh. . . people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over HERE in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children
Like a jury then. Interesting.
With a parliamentary system people tend to vote on party lines rather than on the personality of whoever happens to be party leader at the time of the election. John Major's victory in the 1992 British general election is proof of that.
I think the parliamentary system is much maligned. It actually has a lot of advantages. The cabinet members are elected, since the executive branch is drawn from the legislative branch the government can actually get things done, and nobody becomes party leader and hence Prime Minister without years of experience as a lawmaker.
I think the parliamentary system is less prone to turning into popularity contests, although that seems to be changing in Britain where Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats was able to raise the profile of his party thanks to his impressive performance in TV debates. But still, it was a long way from the "I'll vote for him because I'd like to have a beer with him" syndrome that has infected US politics.
Google wasn't much help. What is "sortocracy"?
The development of Minitel spawned the creation of many start-up companies in a manner similar to the later dot-com bubble of Internet-related companies. Similarly, many of those small companies floundered and failed because of an overcrowded market or bad business practices (lack of infrastructure for online retailers). The messageries roses ("pink messages", adult chat services) and other pornographic sites were also criticized for their possible use by under-age children. The government chose not to enact coercive measures, however, stating that the regulation of the online activities of children was up to parents, not the government. The government also enacted a tax on pornographic online services.
- Something weird about the French understanding a little more on freedom than Americans.
Weird? Where do you think the Statue of Liberty came from? What navy was it that saved you from losing the revolutionary war at the crucial moment? In fact who was the first major western power to oust its monarchy and replace it with a republic (second if you count the English, although they restored a very limited monarchy afterwards), citing "liberté, egalité, fraternité" as its core principles? That's right. France.
I appreciate that French-bashing has become fashionable of late but that doesn't change the fact that you Americans did not invent the concept of freedom, no matter how much you like to think so.
Remember Oracle? It was a sad day when it was replaced by that was replaced by that stupid service with the unimaginative name Teletext. As a teen I was glued to the daily Buzz section for teenagers, particularly Debbie's Diary.