The primary purpose of attending university is to get an education, not 24/7 Internet access. Depends how you define "education" as classes are far from the only thing it encompasses. The best use of a university is to create connections and to network. What you know doesn't matter as much in life as who you know and how you can leverage your knowledge.
I can and do restrict online access of the children at home. My house, my rules. So either your kids are idiots or young, well or you're an idiot/fool. Last I checked college students are adults and if you think 18 year old are kids and need to be babied I feel bad for your offspring (due to the horrible parenting they are receiving).
The fact that some spoiled brats are whining about it just affirms the reasonableness of the rule. Or that you're incapable of rationally understanding an issue. It's none of the universities business how I spend my free time, since it's just that my free time. I don't expect people to baby feed me for my whole life and so I take responsibility for my actions. I strive to be able to make rational choices and decisions on my own and not to be led on a leash by some idiot somewhere.
If you're going to pull an all night session it should be studying not gaming or web surfing. Unlike you some of us use the internet for actual work, reference material for example. My professors have websites and link to outside material. I don't go to a community college so some classes actually require extensive outside research, for example finding papers for a project (easily 5+ hours of simply searching online journals). Then there are side projects that people have (I worked on a couple of robots for example) or jobs, I did part time IT work and now do statistics. Both of these require VPN access, sometimes late at night if something went wrong or needs to be done asap.
1. Why, oh why, when I install an extension, it merges XML configuration with several other files? Do you know how hard it is to manually take all that crap out if the uninstall works (which it often does)? And still leave Firefox stable? Didn't they learn ANY lessons from Windows Registry Hell? What do you mean, most extensions seem mostly self contained in where they are stored. The only thing they may store in other places are preferences but those aren't that much of a problem. I have yet to see any problem with installing/uninstalling extensions.
2. To make this "your configuration is scattered and merged with other VERY IMPORTANT FILES" phenomenon worse, why are they linked with GUIDs? GUIDs?!?! So now, if I want to uninstall "Craptastic Extension 0.7", instead of searching for "Craptasic", I have to find out what its GUID first and then hunt down instances of the GUID. Thanks a lot. I'm assuming it was to prevent conflicts, they're allowing other ways of naming now so its a moot point for new extensions.
4. Inconsistency of layout structure across extensions. How is this possible? The too-open-endedness of RDF. When I first tried to learn how to develop a Firefox extension, I decompressed the archives of four of my favorite popular extensions. To my dismay, the severe differences in project layout structure from extension to extension didn't allow me to see any pattern. Because the RDF can make anything point to anything, the individual developers could just layout all the directories however they damned pleased. Constrast this a Java project organized by Ant and you'll want to scream. Part of this is that they change the format once in a while to make it easier but some extensions still use legacy formats. How exactly were they different, I've found most to have a generally similar structure.
* The university started winning almost every year in the recent years. It didn't do as well before - in the 80's and early 90's the CS program sucked big time due to lack of equipment, knowledge etc, so the imminent 'downfall' isn't really what's happening or will be. True, the education has gotten less strict, but the universities keep their standards.
I talked to people who went back in the 70s which probably explains it. Good to hear that its on the rise.
* You are confusing Poland and the Soviet Republic, regarding the jobs market for IT engineers. When the EU borders opened a couple of years ago, everybody estimated a lot of Polish programmers will 'escape' to Germany. They didn't, so they clearly have something to do here. There are a lot of big companies building software engineering centers in Poland - eg. Intel, Motorola, IBM, HP, Samsung, and recently Googl - many of those in low-level, high-profile, embedded software development. You might want to consider that one of the biggest STB providers, ADB, is actually a Polish company.
Interesting, I remember seeing a crappy IT market when I was there in the late 90s and I didn't hear good things in general the last time I went. Well it's good to hear that the economy is going up. I mean if the US finally goes off the deep end at least I can run away to a decent nation.
* The Polish government _is_ crappy, however that doesn't really harm it's economy, which is quite fine.
Depends how you define fine, I've heard some rather bad things about trying to run a small business. Apparently there is some horrid accounting mess and labor laws that make it not worth it to hire permanent staff.
I cannot comment on the newest recruitment system (which is weird) - never experienced it. Same goes for about 50% of the students of IT at Warsaw university, they get around the system being the finalist of IT Olympics. So we still get the best - don't worry;)
That's good to hear. I personally find it really scary when people praise the US system compared to their own which is what gave me the impression of large problems.
See I've actually talked to people who need to deal with the Polish system. Let me put it this way, a single type by someone entering your record in the central office and your college chances are fucked. Likewise everything is based on a single metric that is in some ways arbitrary.
How about scaling back exclusivity to access some of these fine universities for citizens of all social classes
Top universities provide very nice undergraduate financial aid packages. While admission will be harder for those without money, for various reasons including available activities during high school and knowing how to fill out the app, there are no massive barriers. Graduate school on the other hand likewise allows for anyone to access it and usually provides some form of financing for students (depends on the department of course).
(or something that makes identifying a university an illegal question in the workplace)?
Then you need to remove transcripts and GPAs as questions/requests which would cause lots of fun problems. I mean heck, there'd be no way to even check that you have a college degree. Anyway the university you went to says a lot, not alone per say but rather in combination with what you've done and your grades.
Of course mainly you're supposed to network and make connections at top schools, and those are the most important factor in getting a job imho.
thats the worst analogy ever, your not giving the Chinese the credit they deserve, its the typical macho american response the world expects these days - dont agree with america? your just wrong then. or we didnt win? we werent taking it seriously.
Huh? Just because it doesn't agree with your worldview doesn't make it false. It's quite true that American universities do not place emphasis on this competition although as I understand the students had practiced for a different competition. I mean we do place emphasis on a lot of other worthless garbage (the Math GRE being one imho).
The Asian and Eastern European method is based on mindless study and memorization, way beyond what is done in the US. Like the GP said, it is an accomplishment but that doesn't somehow mean they're good at other more important activities. The competition is in most senses of the word worthless in the US (at best a nice line on your resume) and likely only worthwhile in other nations due to social reasons (ie: that line on the resume carries a lot of weight). Instead of studying for it students could be studying for actual subjects, doing research or starting their own companies.
i think personally Poland have done very well, when you look at the numbers of chinese and american students, the fact that Poland can put together a world beating team shouldnt be overlooked, with all the extra resources, China and the USA should be looking ay Poland and wondering how they can match this.
Not really, like I said before it is a worthless competition as most competitions are. Please if you think otherwise then tell me why spending months studying for this competition is in any way a good use of time?
You don't need to compete if you don't need a boost in prestige which the US doesn't need much. Poland has a long history of placing emphasis on such competitions, back from the soviet days. It's an artificial measure; the equivalent of intellectual sport (being good at baseball isn't a practical skill baring being a baseball player for life) but "winning" is worth a lot to some people. Now Poland does have a decent system of education but as I hear it is going downhill. That they can get a bunch of intelligent people to waste that much time to do that well on this competition might say something about how skewed their priorities are. And for the record I'm Polish and visited a couple months back.
You miss the point, it's akin to you coming in second in a go-cart race that you spent all your time working on while the third place guy also got first in a nascar race (ie: the go-cart race was for fun).
It's an utterly artificial and in real life worthless measure, essentially its the Chinese not MIT that is wasting time on worthless "luxuries" (ie: the ability to say "we got second").
If all you can do is some narrow work based on months of repetitive learning then prepare to be unemployed when you hit 40. If you learn to be adaptable and multidisciplinary then it doesn't matter if your field goes down the craper as you can just change to another one (and likely already have your feet in 5 different ones).
The thing is that Poland has had time to develop their CS programs which is why they're so good, the soviets did not exactly skimp out on such things (you have lines for bread but free good education). They may actually be going downhill more than anything now, for various reasons. I've heard complaints from former students (ie: students back during the soviet years) of the CS program degrading now.
That's for example why you have so many hackers in the former soviet bloc, there is an infrastructure to educate people but for a good time (after the USSR collapsed) there were no jobs for them.
Poland is an industrialized/technological nation but simply has a horrid government and crappy economy (later is partially a result of the former).
Still as I understand it Warsaw University is one of the places to go to school in Poland and its free if you get in. Granted the entrance requirements/system is arsine (for many reasons) but that applies to all Polish public universities. I guess I'd call it SATs on crack and while they do catch a lot of the good students they also don't catch a lot of them.
How can medical insurance work if there is no unpredictability in when people get sick?
Very few genetic factors are certain to cause some disease, most just increase the odds. This is actually one of the odder ones given just how exactly they can link death time to repeats of the sequence (ie: have x repeats you will die at age y plus minus a year).
Yet that is interesting in itself, life insurance will cost significantly more but there is no reason for companies to not give it at all. At the same time you won't need to put as much into retirement so it probably evens out. Health insurance is more interesting, it wouldn't matter if you're years away from expected death but close to it you'll have problems. Still it's not much different from a lot of other disease that are almost surely fatal (certain cancers, AIDS back in the day, etc.). You just know when you'll get it. Some form of long term insurance were the company is betting on a cure might work.
Ah, but what isn't wasted time? In the end none of it matters, when the universe becomes a frozen wasteland in billions upon billions years the only effect you may have is where a infinitesimal amount of that frozen junk sits.
By some metrics having enjoyed life, whatever enjoyment is to you, is the best way to waste it.
(hint hint: Evolutionary theory doesn't explain where or what the root of life. In other words, how did the first cell that every living organism derived from come into being. It merely depicts organisms abilty to adapt to their ever changing habitat. Or did I miss something?
The point is that the theory of evolution (in the normal sense of it) deals with everything after the first cell, once the mechanisms for mutation and selection were in place. Creationists seem to not grasp that half the time, thinking that because evolution doesn't explain how life began (as it shouldn't) it must be wrong. It's like saying that all of geology is wrong because it doesn't explain how the earth formed; we have other theories and branches to deal with that.
Where that cell originated from, I think, is incomprehendable by your or my monkey brains.
Not really, various theories exist with varying degrees of observation backing them up. Usually some form of selection is used were complex life forms get built up from simple molecules (similar to evolution in some ways in that regard).
One theory (I'm probably butchering the details as I'm filling in blanks as I write) is that over time by pure chance a set of molecules was created inside an oil bubble that catalyzed the creation of more like molecules. The natural chemical reactions, as laboratory experiments show, would have led to a decent amount of precursor molecules from which to build such copies. Over time this led to nucleotides and then RNA by a long process of ever increasing complexity (errors happen, the good ones pass on). Now RNA can both perform functions and store information, its DNA and Proteins in one package. Over time these RNA based proto-cells would become more complex, forming amino acids and then proteins. DNA would replace RNA for information storage although RNA would still remain in certain basic pathways (ie: making proteins and copying DNA, essentially the functions needed for the described proto-cells to become modern cells).
Remember that this took tens of millions of years and occurred in large sections of the planet, only one needed to be successful. Furthermore it likely happened on billions of planets and so even a one in a billion chance makes life evolution likely (the galaxy doesn't seem to be overflowing with life so the odds of life don't seem massive).
Well given that he apparently, like most creationists, has absolutely no idea what evolution is (hint: its not about how life began) you really can't expect much from him.
No, it really isnt any different. You cannot just ignore local politics, they are there. Politics will always ensure unequal distribution of just about everything. If you only have 100% of the necessary food to feed a particular country, there will be starvation.
They'll always be problems with starvation due to transportation and poverty for example. Using that as a metric is silly.
You need 120%/130%/... of the necessary food in order to make it abundant enough that no warlord would be able to use food as a power source.
The warlords control everything in some regions, you can put twice as much food in and they'll still take control of it. More food does not solve these problems. Likewise warlords make sure that the people cannot grow enough of their own food either directly or indirectly (conflict, etc.). Lacking a local source and with no way to import food how do you expect it to even matter if the rest of the world have 2 times as much food? It's like saying that if we send all our food to North Korea then somehow the government there won't just keep it all by some magic diffusion of food.
I mean just the economics of shipping that much food into a region with very patchwork transportation infrastructure is absurd. Local food production and regional stability would solve a lot of these problems.
Yes, the western world does consume more than it needs. But it wont stop. People very rarely take the time to consider their impact on the world. They just go along eating 3000+ calories/day, throwing away another 2000+ calories/day in waste, and driving their full sized SUV to pick up their one child from school. And once the third world starts to get more food, their middle class will become more wasteful as well. It will still take twice as much food as "needed" to be able to feed their entire population.
That only applies if food is abundant and cheap, once that stops being the case people will change their ways as is always the case. Compare Europe and the US when it comes to say oil usage, the former hasn't had any increase in decades while the later has. By your logic both should be increasing, yet taxes have nicely kept Europeans in check. At worst sane nations will enact laws that limit such things, by taxes for example, which will keep their populations alive. Since food can in many place be grown locally, unlike oil, this would be an effective solution.
Once the third world starts to become more prosperous, the most wealthy of them will start eating more meat just like we do in the US. And again, you have the same problem.
As I said before, no I don't. You are assuming current conditions where food is abundant which by your own assumptions will not be the case. The US used to have oil shortages, now it'll be food rations and shortages. People are creative and politicians will find some solutions given time. Having too much of your population starving generally leads to annoying problems, even Rome knew this.
Currently there is about 4.7 million tonnes of known useable Uranium on Earth. Current nuclear production uses 68 thousand tonnes/yr, and produces about 7.6% of the world's energy. While we will find new sources of Uranium along the way, it is rediculous to think that nuclear energy will be such a major contributor to our lasting energy needs. We will run out of uranium in about 70 years even if our consumption never increases, not centuries as you claim.
There are 4.7m tons of at current prices economically extractable U-235 reserves (which is a very small percentage of total world Uranium, that's mostly U-238). Raising the price will not raise fuel costs that much while increasing the viable reserves. Reprocessing would also do so to some extent. Most importantly while U-235 is the easiest nuclear fuel to use it is far from the only one; reactors exist that use other fuels which are abundant.
The only people with the power to solve the problems are the ones who have no fear of starvation. I ha
The scarcity of food is what allows the warlords to use food as a source of control. If food was plentiful, they would have to use other methods such as controlling energy/electricity.
The later aren't quite as essential as the former, my point being that while the rest of the world could feed many of those currently undernourished the politics of those regions prevents such food from getting to those who need it. That is very different from us being unable to grow enough food to feed those people.
We have trouble feeding 6 billion. The experts could be wrong, but what leads you to think that they are?
There is nothing I see that prevents us from, theoretically, feeding 6 billion people easily, much of it is just bad distribution and local politics. The western world consumes much more than it needs to for example. Africa used to have an excess of food, now those same nations are starving because their politicians were idiots (for example they replaced successful white farmers with uneducated black "farmers"). Africa may be beyond fixing right now due to just how much they've fucked their own environment (runoff from clear cutting removing topsoil, etc.) but hopefully that not the case. The agricultural methods in many third world nations are very sub standard which likewise is an area that will naturally improve (as those nations become developed).
We grow many crops that aren't strictly required and raise a lot of meat that isn't efficient use of land as well. Also if I remember the food distribution system is not exactly energy efficient as local food production would be better. We can easily produce a lot more food in many areas but those in charge of those areas simply have no incentive to.
We currently use alot of fossil fuels to drive our agriculture (from gas for machinery to natural gas based fertilizers), and with our energy resources already being streched its possible that our food output might start to decrease soon.
We have enough nuclear energy to last a few centuries, the only thing that can't be trivially made electric are planes and ships (the later can be made nuclear and some reactors can be run by idiots) but that doesn't effect food production much.
Of course new technologies could continue to make food production easier even with these problems, but its hard to be too optimistic about that.
Why? At the rate biology is advancing we'll be able to do a lot in a few decades. It's also amazing what people can do when they actually have incentive (like say fear of starvation), and starving poor people in some third world country are not an incentive for the western world. Granted my own bet is on us finally managing to kill ourselves off by some act of sheer idiocy.
Like I said, in the end we'll probably be eating processed vat grown algae/bacteria. For example we already now of one very nutritious algae but its taste apparently leaves much to be desired.
There is a good argument that there are simply too many people alive for the world to support, but to make that argument you have to be willing to just let people die.
Not really imho, a lot of malnutrition is caused by local political situations (ie: warlords and idiotic leaders) not the inability for the world to supply enough food. Also current estimates predict the world's population will level out at ~12 billion (birth rates are falling as more of the world become developed) which is likely well within the limits of a sustainable population.
The biggest drive will likely be to make more efficient crops to decrease the amount of land used for agriculture due to high population densities. In the really long term if we ever get fusion or another large energy source working we'll likely move onto "vat" grown foods that are better than pretty much anything we have now.
And thus people grew accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries.
Last I checked corn didn't grow all that long in Europe (and didn't make up enough of their diet to cause enough genetic shift in the time period it did) so unless you have 100% blood from corn eating Indians you apparently shouldn't ever eat it as your ancestors did not grow accustomed to it over time. Same for potatoes. If you do have 100% Indian blood then you shouldn't eat wheat.
When you modify something and it's vastly different than what the body can handle it can cause serious issues.
And amazingly enough GE crops aren't all that different.
That is why I'm eagerly awaiting a competitor to the big G that has a really strong privacy statement.
None ever will most likely, not enough people care and G will simply kick their ass due to having better data to model things with. Search isn't exactly an easy field to break into right now , there is possibility for more or less niche search engines but not at a google/yahoo/msn level. Sure someone could make a brilliant new algorithm but then it's very unlikely that they'd also have a strong privacy policy, it just doesn't make much business sense.
Like the other poster said, depending on what a data analyst is doing such information could be useful. IPs I may ad could be useful on their own to provide geo-location and ISP information for example.
For example, it is likely that google alters its search page with different setups to test various things in which case your long term reaction to such different ad methods could be useful. Likewise seasonal trends require long term data to find. There is a big difference between using data in production and using data for exploratory analysis, the later could very well use a lot of extra data just to check possible problems with the method.
Also the ad system is more complex than just showing ads to users, user search (and ad view) data could be used to help in whatever model is used for the bidding and ad ranking systems. Information on which ads were shown, how they were shown, who clicked on them and so on can be very useful even at long time periods.
Remember that this information once deleted cannot be restored and the possibility that someone may need it in the future for some yet unknown reason likely far outweighs the storage costs. You don't want to be told "well if I had 2 years of data I could get another 2% revenue out of this method but I guess I can't so thats a few million down the toilet."
Even if they weren't legally required it makes more business sense to keep as much data as possible as you never know when someone will need it for some project.
buy small parcel of land, rezone, and plop tower on it...
Most companies rent the land, a much much much more logical choice for many reasons. Granted not everyone wants a cell tower on their property so it does cost a decent amount to rent the land.
Do you want scientifically accurate or biology heavy/accurate? Sci-fi even when accuracy was a large point for the author simply does not age well, we learn so many new things and a lot of realistic sci-fi uses 'cutting edge science' (or parts of it) that it simply isn't accurate anymore (or in some cases stopped being accurate between getting sent to the publisher and getting published).
Mainly a lot of biology in sci-fi has not aged well at all as bio is a quickly expanding field. A few that deal more with the more general chemistry part of things/life (Hal Clement for example) I think have aged better as that doesn't change as much. This holds for physics as well in some cases but a lot of the problems aren't usually as massive (ie: mercury having parts that never get sunlight, etc.) or bad as with biology.
More physics based would be Tau Zero but it does fuck physics a bit and very much so at the end (might be an interesting book to ask students 'what is wrong with it'). Clarke has a few, Rendezvous with Rama for example. A World Out of Time and Integral Trees by Nevin is likewise decent but the bio in them hasn't aged well.
Most things by Hal Clement are heavy on science (biology and chemistry quite often actually) but as a result everything else in his stories/books suffers.
There was also a short story about a murder which had a black hole get dropped into Mars (now with invalid science by Hawking's radiation btw), anyone remember the name of it?
Don't claim it's everyone when all you have is likely some small selection of students or schools. Some schools are crap and some students are lazy/idiots. If all someone takes are the "easy A" courses that a monkey could do then why do you expect them to be more than a monkey?
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Get a laptop that supports a docking bay.
* The university started winning almost every year in the recent years. It didn't do as well before - in the 80's and early 90's the CS program sucked big time due to lack of equipment, knowledge etc, so the imminent 'downfall' isn't really what's happening or will be. True, the education has gotten less strict, but the universities keep their standards.
;)
I talked to people who went back in the 70s which probably explains it. Good to hear that its on the rise.
* You are confusing Poland and the Soviet Republic, regarding the jobs market for IT engineers. When the EU borders opened a couple of years ago, everybody estimated a lot of Polish programmers will 'escape' to Germany. They didn't, so they clearly have something to do here. There are a lot of big companies building software engineering centers in Poland - eg. Intel, Motorola, IBM, HP, Samsung, and recently Googl - many of those in low-level, high-profile, embedded software development. You might want to consider that one of the biggest STB providers, ADB, is actually a Polish company.
Interesting, I remember seeing a crappy IT market when I was there in the late 90s and I didn't hear good things in general the last time I went. Well it's good to hear that the economy is going up. I mean if the US finally goes off the deep end at least I can run away to a decent nation.
* The Polish government _is_ crappy, however that doesn't really harm it's economy, which is quite fine.
Depends how you define fine, I've heard some rather bad things about trying to run a small business. Apparently there is some horrid accounting mess and labor laws that make it not worth it to hire permanent staff.
I cannot comment on the newest recruitment system (which is weird) - never experienced it. Same goes for about 50% of the students of IT at Warsaw university, they get around the system being the finalist of IT Olympics. So we still get the best - don't worry
That's good to hear. I personally find it really scary when people praise the US system compared to their own which is what gave me the impression of large problems.
See I've actually talked to people who need to deal with the Polish system. Let me put it this way, a single type by someone entering your record in the central office and your college chances are fucked. Likewise everything is based on a single metric that is in some ways arbitrary.
How about scaling back exclusivity to access some of these fine universities for citizens of all social classes
Top universities provide very nice undergraduate financial aid packages. While admission will be harder for those without money, for various reasons including available activities during high school and knowing how to fill out the app, there are no massive barriers. Graduate school on the other hand likewise allows for anyone to access it and usually provides some form of financing for students (depends on the department of course).
(or something that makes identifying a university an illegal question in the workplace)?
Then you need to remove transcripts and GPAs as questions/requests which would cause lots of fun problems. I mean heck, there'd be no way to even check that you have a college degree. Anyway the university you went to says a lot, not alone per say but rather in combination with what you've done and your grades.
Of course mainly you're supposed to network and make connections at top schools, and those are the most important factor in getting a job imho.
thats the worst analogy ever, your not giving the Chinese the credit they deserve, its the typical macho american response the world expects these days - dont agree with america? your just wrong then. or we didnt win? we werent taking it seriously.
Huh? Just because it doesn't agree with your worldview doesn't make it false. It's quite true that American universities do not place emphasis on this competition although as I understand the students had practiced for a different competition. I mean we do place emphasis on a lot of other worthless garbage (the Math GRE being one imho).
The Asian and Eastern European method is based on mindless study and memorization, way beyond what is done in the US. Like the GP said, it is an accomplishment but that doesn't somehow mean they're good at other more important activities. The competition is in most senses of the word worthless in the US (at best a nice line on your resume) and likely only worthwhile in other nations due to social reasons (ie: that line on the resume carries a lot of weight). Instead of studying for it students could be studying for actual subjects, doing research or starting their own companies.
i think personally Poland have done very well, when you look at the numbers of chinese and american students, the fact that Poland can put together a world beating team shouldnt be overlooked, with all the extra resources, China and the USA should be looking ay Poland and wondering how they can match this.
Not really, like I said before it is a worthless competition as most competitions are. Please if you think otherwise then tell me why spending months studying for this competition is in any way a good use of time?
You don't need to compete if you don't need a boost in prestige which the US doesn't need much. Poland has a long history of placing emphasis on such competitions, back from the soviet days. It's an artificial measure; the equivalent of intellectual sport (being good at baseball isn't a practical skill baring being a baseball player for life) but "winning" is worth a lot to some people. Now Poland does have a decent system of education but as I hear it is going downhill. That they can get a bunch of intelligent people to waste that much time to do that well on this competition might say something about how skewed their priorities are. And for the record I'm Polish and visited a couple months back.
You miss the point, it's akin to you coming in second in a go-cart race that you spent all your time working on while the third place guy also got first in a nascar race (ie: the go-cart race was for fun).
It's an utterly artificial and in real life worthless measure, essentially its the Chinese not MIT that is wasting time on worthless "luxuries" (ie: the ability to say "we got second").
If all you can do is some narrow work based on months of repetitive learning then prepare to be unemployed when you hit 40. If you learn to be adaptable and multidisciplinary then it doesn't matter if your field goes down the craper as you can just change to another one (and likely already have your feet in 5 different ones).
The thing is that Poland has had time to develop their CS programs which is why they're so good, the soviets did not exactly skimp out on such things (you have lines for bread but free good education). They may actually be going downhill more than anything now, for various reasons. I've heard complaints from former students (ie: students back during the soviet years) of the CS program degrading now.
That's for example why you have so many hackers in the former soviet bloc, there is an infrastructure to educate people but for a good time (after the USSR collapsed) there were no jobs for them.
Poland is an industrialized/technological nation but simply has a horrid government and crappy economy (later is partially a result of the former).
Still as I understand it Warsaw University is one of the places to go to school in Poland and its free if you get in. Granted the entrance requirements/system is arsine (for many reasons) but that applies to all Polish public universities. I guess I'd call it SATs on crack and while they do catch a lot of the good students they also don't catch a lot of them.
How can medical insurance work if there is no unpredictability in when people get sick?
Very few genetic factors are certain to cause some disease, most just increase the odds. This is actually one of the odder ones given just how exactly they can link death time to repeats of the sequence (ie: have x repeats you will die at age y plus minus a year).
Yet that is interesting in itself, life insurance will cost significantly more but there is no reason for companies to not give it at all. At the same time you won't need to put as much into retirement so it probably evens out. Health insurance is more interesting, it wouldn't matter if you're years away from expected death but close to it you'll have problems. Still it's not much different from a lot of other disease that are almost surely fatal (certain cancers, AIDS back in the day, etc.). You just know when you'll get it. Some form of long term insurance were the company is betting on a cure might work.
Ah, but what isn't wasted time? In the end none of it matters, when the universe becomes a frozen wasteland in billions upon billions years the only effect you may have is where a infinitesimal amount of that frozen junk sits.
By some metrics having enjoyed life, whatever enjoyment is to you, is the best way to waste it.
(hint hint: Evolutionary theory doesn't explain where or what the root of life. In other words, how did the first cell that every living organism derived from come into being. It merely depicts organisms abilty to adapt to their ever changing habitat. Or did I miss something?
The point is that the theory of evolution (in the normal sense of it) deals with everything after the first cell, once the mechanisms for mutation and selection were in place. Creationists seem to not grasp that half the time, thinking that because evolution doesn't explain how life began (as it shouldn't) it must be wrong. It's like saying that all of geology is wrong because it doesn't explain how the earth formed; we have other theories and branches to deal with that.
Where that cell originated from, I think, is incomprehendable by your or my monkey brains.
Not really, various theories exist with varying degrees of observation backing them up. Usually some form of selection is used were complex life forms get built up from simple molecules (similar to evolution in some ways in that regard).
One theory (I'm probably butchering the details as I'm filling in blanks as I write) is that over time by pure chance a set of molecules was created inside an oil bubble that catalyzed the creation of more like molecules. The natural chemical reactions, as laboratory experiments show, would have led to a decent amount of precursor molecules from which to build such copies. Over time this led to nucleotides and then RNA by a long process of ever increasing complexity (errors happen, the good ones pass on). Now RNA can both perform functions and store information, its DNA and Proteins in one package. Over time these RNA based proto-cells would become more complex, forming amino acids and then proteins. DNA would replace RNA for information storage although RNA would still remain in certain basic pathways (ie: making proteins and copying DNA, essentially the functions needed for the described proto-cells to become modern cells).
Remember that this took tens of millions of years and occurred in large sections of the planet, only one needed to be successful. Furthermore it likely happened on billions of planets and so even a one in a billion chance makes life evolution likely (the galaxy doesn't seem to be overflowing with life so the odds of life don't seem massive).
Well given that he apparently, like most creationists, has absolutely no idea what evolution is (hint: its not about how life began) you really can't expect much from him.
No, it really isnt any different. You cannot just ignore local politics, they are there. Politics will always ensure unequal distribution of just about everything. If you only have 100% of the necessary food to feed a particular country, there will be starvation.
They'll always be problems with starvation due to transportation and poverty for example. Using that as a metric is silly.
You need 120%/130%/... of the necessary food in order to make it abundant enough that no warlord would be able to use food as a power source.
The warlords control everything in some regions, you can put twice as much food in and they'll still take control of it. More food does not solve these problems. Likewise warlords make sure that the people cannot grow enough of their own food either directly or indirectly (conflict, etc.). Lacking a local source and with no way to import food how do you expect it to even matter if the rest of the world have 2 times as much food? It's like saying that if we send all our food to North Korea then somehow the government there won't just keep it all by some magic diffusion of food.
I mean just the economics of shipping that much food into a region with very patchwork transportation infrastructure is absurd. Local food production and regional stability would solve a lot of these problems.
Yes, the western world does consume more than it needs. But it wont stop. People very rarely take the time to consider their impact on the world. They just go along eating 3000+ calories/day, throwing away another 2000+ calories/day in waste, and driving their full sized SUV to pick up their one child from school. And once the third world starts to get more food, their middle class will become more wasteful as well. It will still take twice as much food as "needed" to be able to feed their entire population.
That only applies if food is abundant and cheap, once that stops being the case people will change their ways as is always the case. Compare Europe and the US when it comes to say oil usage, the former hasn't had any increase in decades while the later has. By your logic both should be increasing, yet taxes have nicely kept Europeans in check. At worst sane nations will enact laws that limit such things, by taxes for example, which will keep their populations alive. Since food can in many place be grown locally, unlike oil, this would be an effective solution.
Once the third world starts to become more prosperous, the most wealthy of them will start eating more meat just like we do in the US. And again, you have the same problem.
As I said before, no I don't. You are assuming current conditions where food is abundant which by your own assumptions will not be the case. The US used to have oil shortages, now it'll be food rations and shortages. People are creative and politicians will find some solutions given time. Having too much of your population starving generally leads to annoying problems, even Rome knew this.
Currently there is about 4.7 million tonnes of known useable Uranium on Earth. Current nuclear production uses 68 thousand tonnes/yr, and produces about 7.6% of the world's energy. While we will find new sources of Uranium along the way, it is rediculous to think that nuclear energy will be such a major contributor to our lasting energy needs. We will run out of uranium in about 70 years even if our consumption never increases, not centuries as you claim.
There are 4.7m tons of at current prices economically extractable U-235 reserves (which is a very small percentage of total world Uranium, that's mostly U-238). Raising the price will not raise fuel costs that much while increasing the viable reserves. Reprocessing would also do so to some extent. Most importantly while U-235 is the easiest nuclear fuel to use it is far from the only one; reactors exist that use other fuels which are abundant.
The only people with the power to solve the problems are the ones who have no fear of starvation. I ha
The scarcity of food is what allows the warlords to use food as a source of control. If food was plentiful, they would have to use other methods such as controlling energy/electricity.
The later aren't quite as essential as the former, my point being that while the rest of the world could feed many of those currently undernourished the politics of those regions prevents such food from getting to those who need it. That is very different from us being unable to grow enough food to feed those people.
We have trouble feeding 6 billion. The experts could be wrong, but what leads you to think that they are?
There is nothing I see that prevents us from, theoretically, feeding 6 billion people easily, much of it is just bad distribution and local politics. The western world consumes much more than it needs to for example. Africa used to have an excess of food, now those same nations are starving because their politicians were idiots (for example they replaced successful white farmers with uneducated black "farmers"). Africa may be beyond fixing right now due to just how much they've fucked their own environment (runoff from clear cutting removing topsoil, etc.) but hopefully that not the case. The agricultural methods in many third world nations are very sub standard which likewise is an area that will naturally improve (as those nations become developed).
We grow many crops that aren't strictly required and raise a lot of meat that isn't efficient use of land as well. Also if I remember the food distribution system is not exactly energy efficient as local food production would be better. We can easily produce a lot more food in many areas but those in charge of those areas simply have no incentive to.
We currently use alot of fossil fuels to drive our agriculture (from gas for machinery to natural gas based fertilizers), and with our energy resources already being streched its possible that our food output might start to decrease soon.
We have enough nuclear energy to last a few centuries, the only thing that can't be trivially made electric are planes and ships (the later can be made nuclear and some reactors can be run by idiots) but that doesn't effect food production much.
Of course new technologies could continue to make food production easier even with these problems, but its hard to be too optimistic about that.
Why? At the rate biology is advancing we'll be able to do a lot in a few decades. It's also amazing what people can do when they actually have incentive (like say fear of starvation), and starving poor people in some third world country are not an incentive for the western world. Granted my own bet is on us finally managing to kill ourselves off by some act of sheer idiocy.
Like I said, in the end we'll probably be eating processed vat grown algae/bacteria. For example we already now of one very nutritious algae but its taste apparently leaves much to be desired.
There is a good argument that there are simply too many people alive for the world to support, but to make that argument you have to be willing to just let people die.
Not really imho, a lot of malnutrition is caused by local political situations (ie: warlords and idiotic leaders) not the inability for the world to supply enough food. Also current estimates predict the world's population will level out at ~12 billion (birth rates are falling as more of the world become developed) which is likely well within the limits of a sustainable population.
The biggest drive will likely be to make more efficient crops to decrease the amount of land used for agriculture due to high population densities. In the really long term if we ever get fusion or another large energy source working we'll likely move onto "vat" grown foods that are better than pretty much anything we have now.
And thus people grew accustomed to eating the variations over the centuries.
Last I checked corn didn't grow all that long in Europe (and didn't make up enough of their diet to cause enough genetic shift in the time period it did) so unless you have 100% blood from corn eating Indians you apparently shouldn't ever eat it as your ancestors did not grow accustomed to it over time. Same for potatoes. If you do have 100% Indian blood then you shouldn't eat wheat.
When you modify something and it's vastly different than what the body can handle it can cause serious issues.
And amazingly enough GE crops aren't all that different.
That is why I'm eagerly awaiting a competitor to the big G that has a really
strong privacy statement.
None ever will most likely, not enough people care and G will simply kick their ass due to having better data to model things with. Search isn't exactly an easy field to break into right now , there is possibility for more or less niche search engines but not at a google/yahoo/msn level. Sure someone could make a brilliant new algorithm but then it's very unlikely that they'd also have a strong privacy policy, it just doesn't make much business sense.
Like the other poster said, depending on what a data analyst is doing such information could be useful. IPs I may ad could be useful on their own to provide geo-location and ISP information for example.
For example, it is likely that google alters its search page with different setups to test various things in which case your long term reaction to such different ad methods could be useful. Likewise seasonal trends require long term data to find. There is a big difference between using data in production and using data for exploratory analysis, the later could very well use a lot of extra data just to check possible problems with the method.
Also the ad system is more complex than just showing ads to users, user search (and ad view) data could be used to help in whatever model is used for the bidding and ad ranking systems. Information on which ads were shown, how they were shown, who clicked on them and so on can be very useful even at long time periods.
Remember that this information once deleted cannot be restored and the possibility that someone may need it in the future for some yet unknown reason likely far outweighs the storage costs. You don't want to be told "well if I had 2 years of data I could get another 2% revenue out of this method but I guess I can't so thats a few million down the toilet."
Even if they weren't legally required it makes more business sense to keep as much data as possible as you never know when someone will need it for some project.
And anonymous proxies do not need to make money or provide much of a service unlike google, logs are very useful for such things.
buy small parcel of land, rezone, and plop tower on it...
Most companies rent the land, a much much much more logical choice for many reasons. Granted not everyone wants a cell tower on their property so it does cost a decent amount to rent the land.
Do you want scientifically accurate or biology heavy/accurate? Sci-fi even when accuracy was a large point for the author simply does not age well, we learn so many new things and a lot of realistic sci-fi uses 'cutting edge science' (or parts of it) that it simply isn't accurate anymore (or in some cases stopped being accurate between getting sent to the publisher and getting published).
Mainly a lot of biology in sci-fi has not aged well at all as bio is a quickly expanding field. A few that deal more with the more general chemistry part of things/life (Hal Clement for example) I think have aged better as that doesn't change as much. This holds for physics as well in some cases but a lot of the problems aren't usually as massive (ie: mercury having parts that never get sunlight, etc.) or bad as with biology.
More physics based would be Tau Zero but it does fuck physics a bit and very much so at the end (might be an interesting book to ask students 'what is wrong with it'). Clarke has a few, Rendezvous with Rama for example. A World Out of Time and Integral Trees by Nevin is likewise decent but the bio in them hasn't aged well.
Most things by Hal Clement are heavy on science (biology and chemistry quite often actually) but as a result everything else in his stories/books suffers.
There was also a short story about a murder which had a black hole get dropped into Mars (now with invalid science by Hawking's radiation btw), anyone remember the name of it?
Don't claim it's everyone when all you have is likely some small selection of students or schools. Some schools are crap and some students are lazy/idiots. If all someone takes are the "easy A" courses that a monkey could do then why do you expect them to be more than a monkey?
I mean I've heard about these sort of things years ago, I'm surprised that people don't expect this to happen when they use too much bandwidth.