It is you, sir, who is spouting rubbish. Over 70 million people get added to the world's population every year.
There is no sign of a population implosion, but there is plenty of evidence of population replacement.
The following populations have had below replacement levels of fertility for several decades and will eventually face
population declines (if they aren't occuring already):
Whites almost everywhere -- including in Europe, Russia, North America, Australia, and New
Zealand -- the only exception I'm aware of is Muslim Albania.
Chinese in China, due to a one child policy imposed by the government.
Japanese.
However, fertility rates are above (and often far above) replacement level in the following places:
Africa (AIDS or no AIDS, the population keeps climbing).
Every majority Muslim country.
Mexico, and most other Latin American countries.
India
So while there will be declines of certain groups, those declines will be more than compensated for by
the growth in other groups happy to take their places.
We see this in microcosm within the U.S. The (for the time being) majority white population has had
below replacement fertility rates since about 1970. So, surely, you might think, the U.S. population is
heading towards stabilization, if not already shrinking outright? Nope. In the decade of the 1990s the
U.S. population grew by 32 million, the largest one decade population increase in its history. How can
this be? First, the black American fertility rate is still above replacement level (blacks were 10% of the
U.S. population in 1960, 13% now, and black children are 15% of all American children, so in another couple of
generations, blacks will be 15% of the U.S. population). But, of far more significance demographically,
the population of Latinos has soared (it now exceeds the black population). This came about through massive
levels of immigration and a Latino fertility rate that is well above replacement level. Then of course,
there are the numerous other immigrant groups -- from India, China, the Middle East, and just about every
other place with a growing population. Back around 1970, before the floodgates of immigration opened up,
the Census Bureau projected that the U.S. population would stabilize at about 300 million within a decade
or so of the new millenium. The U.S. population will indeed hit 300 million within a year or so, but there is
no sign of stabilization in sight. The Census Bureaus' middle projection gives a population of about 410 million by 2050,
and there will be more after that.
Globally, population is expected to increase by at least another 50% before it stabilizes, assuming it ever does.
So, there's no hint of a population implosion, neither globally nor within the United States. There is ample
evidence that some groups will be replaced by others.
Actually, we are not "still coming out of the last ice age". Were this a "normal" interglacial period, we would be well into the cooling phase of the next ice age. By the early part of the 20th century we had modified the Earth's atmosphere sufficiently to prevent it from entering another glaciation. The substantial increase in CO2 since has moved us off the scale entirely.
There is now a wide spread thawing of Siberian lakes http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg187251 24.500 that may add billions of tons of methane to the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent green house gas than CO2. There are more such positive feedback loops to come -- if the ocean warms sufficiently, deep sea methane hydrates will thaw and release enormous quantities of methane into the atmosphere (trillions of tons of methane are locked up in such methane hydrates). Such a release of methane into the atmosphere will cause a catastrophic increase in temperatures. Some paleontologists believe that precisely such releases of methane were the final acts in processes of global warming that caused the marine mass extinction at the Paleocene/Eocene boundary and the much larger mass extinction at the end of the Permian.http://www.geotimes.org/nov04/feature_clim ate.html.
But of course all Bush lovers and libertarian ideologues know that the melting Arctic ice is just a socialist plot. After all, we know that government regulation is always bad, so if a problem requires government regulation to solve, that problem must not actually exist.
One thing that amazed me about Fortran 95 pointers is how big they are. On a 32 bit x86 machine, a pointer to an array in HP/Compaq/DEC's Fortran compiler is 32 bytes long (that's bytes, not bits).
With all that extra sludge in there, the compiler damn well better be able to optimize things.
Actually, the metric system is in wide use here in the U.S., to the point where the continued use of the imperial system is annoying. The only sockets, allen wrenches, etc. I need for my bicycle or my car are metric. But carpentry is still stuck in those English units that not even the English use anymore.
Also, any redefinition of the kilogram will have no practical effect on everyday measurements, as the difference will be in the parts per million. Nobody except a few metrologists will have to buy a new set of scales.
Use a custom hosts file A hosts file, if present, overrides any DNS
server in associating a particular URL with a particular IP address. If you
have a hosts file that takes known ad server URLs (e.g., ads.doubleclick.net)
and directs them to your own computer (127.0.0.1), those servers will never be
contacted and, thus, you'll never see their ads. A number of sites have
collected the URLs of known advertising servers and created downloadable hosts
files. For example, the Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file site provides a link to such a
file and instructions for installing it (scroll down to "Linux/Unix/Mac OSX").
By God, this works. I downloaded and installed that hosts file and now the banner ads on Slashdot don't appear any more!
I would especially be interested in seeing a high quality, fast numerical library for complex arithmetic written entirely in Java. Both C++ and Java let you define a Complex type (C++ lets you get nicer syntactic sugar, but that's beside the point). The real difference is that C++ lets objects live on the stack, or as elements inside an array, whereas in Java *all* objects live on the heap. If in C++ I say
std::vector< Complex<double> > foo(10000);
I get a block of storage with 160,0000 bytes containing a consecutive sequence of 10,000 pairs of doubles representing complex numbers (just as I would get in Fortran). If in Java I say:
Complex[] foo = new Complex[10000];
I get an array of 10,000 references (i.e., pointers) to Complex objects, each of which must
be individually allocated on the heap:
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i) { foo[i] = new Complex(0d, 0d); }
Now which language do you think is going to do a faster complex Fourier transform?
C++ allowed you to do arbitrary casting, arbitrary adding of images and pointers, and converting them back and forth between pointers in a very, very unstructured way.
Note the use of the past tense, "allowed", rather than the present tense, "allow". The clear implication being that C++ and C are obselete languates that no one writes in anymore.
The response to the first statement is simply paranoia. If you do a careful study with data that implies that global warming is not happening, or that it's not caused by humans, there's no evidence you won't be able to get it published. You will of course need convincing data, that will be the hard part.
The religious zealots are the ones who insist that atmospheric C02 can increase forever without causing any global warming.
Say you don't like Nabisco (pick company of your choice). Pay a spammer to send out millions of spams advertising Nabisco. Now Lycos adds Nabisco to its list, and all those guys running its web server do a DDOS attack on Nabisco.
The "prior art" here comes from the Rennaissance, when cartesian coordinates were introduced and classical Greek geometry was reworked as algebra. It is obscene that the PO allows this sort of thing to be patented, but we all know that there are hundreds more like these. And Congress won't do a damn thing to fix it.
I would prefer to hire a C++ who did *not* know the answers to those questions. Why? Because a good C++ programmer would never write the sort of ugly code where it would even be necessary to know the anwers to those "language lawyer" type questions.
If you have a project that's going to become economically unviable if you have to pay for the QT license, then it's too marginal to commercialize anyway. People who insist that all libraries be LGPLed are saying, "I want to make money selling my proprietary software but I don't want you to make money providing the software I imbed in my proprietary software." Sounds pretty hypocritical to me.
I haven't heard Stallman's take on the dual licensing schemes used by QT and My SQL, but I suspect he'd prefer them to LGPLed libraries, at least if he's consistent. He has argued in favor of using the GPL for libraries rather than the LGPL (which he now calls the "lesser GPL") because LGPLed libraries give "software hoarders" (his term) the use of free software without requiring that they give anything back to the free software community.
You can think of an LGPLed library as being a dual licensed library in which the commerical license fee is $0.00, and a GPLed (only) library as being a dual licensed library in which the commercial license fee is infinite. So logically, the licensing scheme of QT and My SQL lies in between the LGPL and the GPL. Stallman should be happy with a licensing scheme that essentially puts a tax on "software hoarders".
Slashdot Mirror
I heard about that show (I haven't seen it). I presume the women were paid a great amount of money.
Electricity is almost always the most costly way to heat a home.
The following populations have had below replacement levels of fertility for several decades and will eventually face population declines (if they aren't occuring already):
Whites almost everywhere -- including in Europe, Russia, North America, Australia, and New Zealand -- the only exception I'm aware of is Muslim Albania.
Chinese in China, due to a one child policy imposed by the government.
Japanese.
However, fertility rates are above (and often far above) replacement level in the following places:
Africa (AIDS or no AIDS, the population keeps climbing).
Every majority Muslim country.
Mexico, and most other Latin American countries.
India
So while there will be declines of certain groups, those declines will be more than compensated for by the growth in other groups happy to take their places.
We see this in microcosm within the U.S. The (for the time being) majority white population has had below replacement fertility rates since about 1970. So, surely, you might think, the U.S. population is heading towards stabilization, if not already shrinking outright? Nope. In the decade of the 1990s the U.S. population grew by 32 million, the largest one decade population increase in its history. How can this be? First, the black American fertility rate is still above replacement level (blacks were 10% of the U.S. population in 1960, 13% now, and black children are 15% of all American children, so in another couple of generations, blacks will be 15% of the U.S. population). But, of far more significance demographically, the population of Latinos has soared (it now exceeds the black population). This came about through massive levels of immigration and a Latino fertility rate that is well above replacement level. Then of course, there are the numerous other immigrant groups -- from India, China, the Middle East, and just about every other place with a growing population. Back around 1970, before the floodgates of immigration opened up, the Census Bureau projected that the U.S. population would stabilize at about 300 million within a decade or so of the new millenium. The U.S. population will indeed hit 300 million within a year or so, but there is no sign of stabilization in sight. The Census Bureaus' middle projection gives a population of about 410 million by 2050, and there will be more after that.
Globally, population is expected to increase by at least another 50% before it stabilizes, assuming it ever does.
So, there's no hint of a population implosion, neither globally nor within the United States. There is ample evidence that some groups will be replaced by others.
Actually, we are not "still coming out of the last ice age". Were this a "normal" interglacial period, we would be well into the cooling phase of the next ice age. By the early part of the 20th century we had modified the Earth's atmosphere sufficiently to prevent it from entering another glaciation. The substantial increase in CO2 since has moved us off the scale entirely.
There is now a wide spread thawing of Siberian lakes http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg187251 24.500 that may add billions of tons of methane to the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent green house gas than CO2. There are more such positive feedback loops to come -- if the ocean warms sufficiently, deep sea methane hydrates will thaw and release enormous quantities of methane into the atmosphere (trillions of tons of methane are locked up in such methane hydrates). Such a release of methane into the atmosphere will cause a catastrophic increase in temperatures. Some paleontologists believe that precisely such releases of methane were the final acts in processes of global warming that caused the marine mass extinction at the Paleocene/Eocene boundary and the much larger mass extinction at the end of the Permian.http://www.geotimes.org/nov04/feature_clim ate.html.
But of course all Bush lovers and libertarian ideologues know that the melting Arctic ice is just a socialist plot. After all, we know that government regulation is always bad, so if a problem requires government regulation to solve, that problem must not actually exist.
One thing that amazed me about Fortran 95 pointers is how big they are. On a 32 bit x86 machine, a pointer to an array in HP/Compaq/DEC's Fortran compiler is 32 bytes long (that's bytes, not bits). With all that extra sludge in there, the compiler damn well better be able to optimize things.
Actually, the metric system is in wide use here in the U.S., to the point where the continued use of the imperial system is annoying. The only sockets, allen wrenches, etc. I need for my bicycle or my car are metric. But carpentry is still stuck in those English units that not even the English use anymore.
Also, any redefinition of the kilogram will have no practical effect on everyday measurements, as the difference will be in the parts per million. Nobody except a few metrologists will have to buy a new set of scales.
By God, this works. I downloaded and installed that hosts file and now the banner ads on Slashdot don't appear any more!
I would especially be interested in seeing a high quality, fast numerical library for complex arithmetic written entirely in Java. Both C++ and Java let you define a Complex type (C++ lets you get nicer syntactic sugar, but that's beside the point). The real difference is that C++ lets objects live on the stack, or as elements inside an array, whereas in Java *all* objects live on the heap. If in C++ I say
I get a block of storage with 160,0000 bytes containing a consecutive sequence of 10,000 pairs of doubles representing complex numbers (just as I would get in Fortran). If in Java I say:
I get an array of 10,000 references (i.e., pointers) to Complex objects, each of which must be individually allocated on the heap:
Now which language do you think is going to do a faster complex Fourier transform?
Note the use of the past tense, "allowed", rather than the present tense, "allow". The clear implication being that C++ and C are obselete languates that no one writes in anymore.
Who the hell modded that +5, Insightful?!
The response to the first statement is simply paranoia. If you do a careful study with data that implies that global warming is not happening, or that it's not caused by humans, there's no evidence you won't be able to get it published. You will of course need convincing data, that will be the hard part.
The religious zealots are the ones who insist that atmospheric C02 can increase forever without causing any global warming.
Say you don't like Nabisco (pick company of your choice). Pay a spammer to send out millions of spams advertising Nabisco. Now Lycos adds Nabisco to its list, and all those guys running its web server do a DDOS attack on Nabisco.
is by the Dead Kennedys, I presume?
The "prior art" here comes from the Rennaissance, when cartesian coordinates were introduced and classical Greek geometry was reworked as algebra. It is obscene that the PO allows this sort of thing to be patented, but we all know that there are hundreds more like these. And Congress won't do a damn thing to fix it.
I would prefer to hire a C++ who did *not* know the answers to those questions. Why? Because a good C++ programmer would never write the sort of ugly code where it would even be necessary to know the anwers to those "language lawyer" type questions.
I haven't heard Stallman's take on the dual licensing schemes used by QT and My SQL, but I suspect he'd prefer them to LGPLed libraries, at least if he's consistent. He has argued in favor of using the GPL for libraries rather than the LGPL (which he now calls the "lesser GPL") because LGPLed libraries give "software hoarders" (his term) the use of free software without requiring that they give anything back to the free software community. You can think of an LGPLed library as being a dual licensed library in which the commerical license fee is $0.00, and a GPLed (only) library as being a dual licensed library in which the commercial license fee is infinite. So logically, the licensing scheme of QT and My SQL lies in between the LGPL and the GPL. Stallman should be happy with a licensing scheme that essentially puts a tax on "software hoarders".