I have often wondered, how much climate explains the development of societies. In some climates it is easier to live without much infrastructure and planning ahead, because the climate allows farming around the year and you will survive living outdoors.
In countries with cold winter, you will have severe mortality, if you haven't planned and prepared well for the winter as the climate is quite unforgiving. For example, in Finland, about a third of the population died because of famine between 1695â"1697 and about 15 % of population died between 1866â"1868 . This has created an evolutionary pressure for development of society, because the alternative for deveploment has been quick death.
Luckily in some ways the climate in Finland is also forgiving. We don't usually have lack of rain and harsh climate has helped to keep many dangerous diseases away.
I know a case where two persons had an affair and they had been sending e-mails to each other. Then one of them managed to get a computer virus on the computer and the virus sent some of those private messages to the people on the address book and soon the affair was common knowledge.
If there is really wave after wave of drones, it would be probably unnecessary to go after F-22. There is only limited number of drones the F-22 can destroy and all other drones will get past it. And the drones could be used to target airfields, aircraft carriers and tanker air crafts and if this is done in large enough scale, F-22 cannot operate in the area anymore, because it won't be able to refuel.
And many of the drones could be (and probably should be, because otherwise it would be very expensive) very simple planes. Many of them could be even even fake ones (=without enough intelligence to attack), that are used only to make F-22 to waste missiles and increase the change of the real drones of getting through.
USA typically uses aircraft carries and attacks distant countries. Even though aircraft carrier has lots of things, it has still finite amount of weapons to defend itself. It doesn't really matter if the attack against it is done using quite simple and inexpensive weapons, as long as there is just enough of them. And if there is large enough salvo of simultaneous missiles, you will be able to hit the ship even if the ship doesn't run out of defensive weapons, because the defensive system has upper limit on how many incoming missiles it is able to handle.
Having said all that, having so many drones would be quite expensive and it is probably easier and cheaper to attack the aircraft carriers under water (ballistic missiles might also work). But who knows about the future wars, as drones are getting more popular.
In near future, there will probably be drones which are meant for dogfighting. And drones can have at least one advantage over traditional fighters: tolerating g-forces better than what human is ever able to do -- even with g-suit on.
On the other hand, traditional fighters have other advantages. Drones may be more vulnerable to all kinds of jamming -- and you are allowed to use laser to blind the cameras and other sensors of drones, but you are not allowed to use laser which are meant to (permanently) damage the eyes of a fighter pilot.
It can be difficult to know if person is serious or not, if according to his religion, wearing special adult diapers will protect him from the evils of world. To me it sounds as a sick joke, but for Mormons it is serious and important issue.
And even if soda would be otherwise safe, it still destroys your teeth because it is so acidic. At least I prefer to keep my teeth healthy and I recommend it to others as well.
I recommend the two drive approach. Put operating systems and software on SSD and replace DVD drive with a SSD on a caddy. SSD disks are still too small and rather expensive for running several large virtual machines, databases etc -- but affordable 256 GB SSD is big enough for dual boot system with some software. Just put large files, like large datebases and virtual machines, on a HDD (or hybrid) caddy.
It is worth remembering that SSDs tend to have more reliability issues than HDD, so having good backups is even more important than with HDDs. If you have enough free space on the HDD caddy, you can some of the backups of the SSD on the HDD caddy.
I think perseverance is also very useful in programming. I have seen many people to become "scared" and give up too easily, when they don't immediately understand something or have trouble doing something. And of course curiosity and willingness to make experiments helps a lot.
I think that being able to write very simple programs isn't really proof of programming skills. Programs like these don't really require any real programming skill:
print "My text here\n";
I similar way, being able to write your name, isn't proof that you can actually write in any meaningful way.
Being mentally retarted will make programming complex programs very unlikely. Some diseases will probably have similar effect. Paralysis of hands, being totally blind, some of serious mental illnesses etc will probably make it quite difficult for them to do more than very simple programs. This means that in practise, not all people can learn -- or at least do -- programming in any meaningful way.
I have the feeling that the set of people, who cannot learn/do programming even if you try to teach them, is probably much larger. But I have also noticed that only minority of people seem to be able to rational discussion of ordinary subjects. They seem to lack general knowledge, they make awfully lot of logical fallacies etc. Human stupidity never stops depressing me.
When I said: "You can expect wars like the Russian war with Georgia, but without any justification" I meant that in case of war with Georgia, there was at least some kind justification for military action by Russia, but in future wars there wouldn't be need for even that kind of justification.
In the Georgian / South Ossetian case there has also been some talk that South Ossetia would become a part of Russia. But I think, that the current disputed status is just fine with Russia. It will make it difficult for Georgia to become a NATO member, when large of the country has disputed status and is not under control of rest of Georgia. Understandably Russia has not liked NATO expansion near its borders, so this could give Russia yet another motive to start wars with neighbours and lock them in similar disputes, which would prevent the countries joining NATO.
It is true that in Syria the naval base of Russia is important factor, but I am not so sure about China.
Without UNSC decision, an attack will be unlawful, although at the moment ICC don't have jurisdiction to convict over unlawful wars. However, any unlawful wars will give very bad example, especially if they aren't strongly condemned by other countries. They will lower the threshold for countries like Russia and China to have their own unlawful wars against minor opponents. You can expect wars like the Russian war with Georgia, but without any justification.
Muslims can be problematic, but constantly attacking Muslim countries and being the only country that seems to support Israel no mater what it does, will get enemies in Muslim countries. There are huge differences between countries how hated they are in Muslim countries. And usually even non-Muslims don't like get attacked, bombed to stone age etc.
After all this, I doubt that China and Russia will support similar UN security council decisions in some other countries. In my opinion western countries acted in a short sighted way by bending the UN security council decision.
I think castle outside city (center) with mainly defensive weapons, would result in less aggression and would be easier to handle than the current embassy in Libya. Massive, but mostly passive defences, enable to control the situation with less aggression and with better safety than too lightly fortified embassy. And if it is necessary to use weapons for self defence, if there is bomb attack against embassy etc -- the risk for innocent civilians would be much lower, if the embassy is outside city (center).
Most countries would not need so fortified embassies, but let's be real -- US isn't exactly liked in many parts of world. Constant military attacks to other countries, supporting in a completely one-sided way Israel -- no matter what it does and many similar foreign policy issues don't really win friends.
However, building a huge castle inside expensive central areas of city, like in Iraq - is wrong idea even for image, but also for many practical reasons as well.
At least in Iraq, the ousting of Saddam made the situation worse for women and especially for gays. Now gays are being routinely hunted and tortured to death. Human right record of Saddam was poor, but for gays it was still much better than the current situation.
Because US is so hated in many countries, I think they should build the embassies outside city (centers). Then it would be easier to have good fortifications, like double fences, with land mines, machine gun towers, over meter thick walls like in Iraq (although the Iraqi plan included thousands of soldiers, I don't think you really need thousands of soldiers with propertly fortified embassy) etc.
As a Finn, I don't think the this law is very good one. Few years ago, there was a lot of criticism against it as people though that it was unfair. It more or less prevented collecting money in certain situations -- like if a home gets burned down and the family don't have home insurance, you cannot collect money to help them build a new home (although you are free to donate, but you cannot organize collection of donations -- if I remember correctly).
I cannot remember if some details of the law has been modified since, but IMHO, it is still a bad law. Many associations, like boy scouts, have managed to break this law by mistake, when they haven't remembered to get neccesary permits.
I guess that burning people on stakes wasn't called fundamentalism as it happened before that. Maybe the correct would have been mainstream Christianity and others were called heretics and tortured to death (of course many mainstream Christians were also tortured until they "confessed" and then they were burned at stake).
Actually, not all forms of FGM involve removal of clitoris. And some forms of FGM, like making just a needleprick, are actually less harmfull than circumcision of boys.
Btw, there are also some studies that seem to show that sorme forms of FGM lower the risk of getting HIV...
Here is part of it translated using Google Translate:... Therefore turned to the police for the so-called PKU biobank, a blood bank at Huddinge hospital with samples from three million Swedes. The police wanted Mijailovics blood test data and also got these, according to Current.... His Vallin, head doctor at Huddinge Hospital, was on Friday very secretive about the hospital had left out Mijailovics blood:... Blood samples taken since 1975 on all newborns to detect if the child has an inherited metabolic disorder, which without treatment can cause brain damage. Nowadays However guardians permission to take the test. Even when the Daily News a decade ago first told me about PKU register, said chief prosecutor in Stockholm that if the police are told that there is an interesting blood anywhere, so the police can take it seized. But so simple, it is not, but this would be against the law. Today, the police very coy.
I think that the third condition should be extended by prohibiting also the use of the sample against your relatives, except in this specific crime.
Who knows what happens in future. I or some of my relatives might send money in envelope to help Assange. If the wich hunt gets tougher, the donaters might also be in risk of getting shipped to Guantanamo to enjoy torture for the rest of their lifes. And even if you don't put your name on the envelope or letter, your DNA might be found on it.
Would you be willing to have a camera in you bedroom and all you telephone calls recorded? If all people would have that kind of monitoring, it is quite likely that some murders wouldn't happen. And I think that prevention of murders is even more important than solving a murder case, because even solving a murder case will not bring the victim alive.
I wouldn't be too happy to have so close monitoring of my life, even if that would save some lifes. I think that having priavy is one of the freedoms and I am not willing to give away my freedoms that lightly.
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I have often wondered, how much climate explains the development of societies. In some climates it is easier to live without much infrastructure and planning ahead, because the climate allows farming around the year and you will survive living outdoors.
In countries with cold winter, you will have severe mortality, if you haven't planned and prepared well for the winter as the climate is quite unforgiving. For example, in Finland, about a third of the population died because of famine between 1695â"1697 and about 15 % of population died between 1866â"1868 . This has created an evolutionary pressure for development of society, because the alternative for deveploment has been quick death.
Luckily in some ways the climate in Finland is also forgiving. We don't usually have lack of rain and harsh climate has helped to keep many dangerous diseases away.
I know a case where two persons had an affair and they had been sending e-mails to each other. Then one of them managed to get a computer virus on the computer and the virus sent some of those private messages to the people on the address book and soon the affair was common knowledge.
If there is really wave after wave of drones, it would be probably unnecessary to go after F-22. There is only limited number of drones the F-22 can destroy and all other drones will get past it. And the drones could be used to target airfields, aircraft carriers and tanker air crafts and if this is done in large enough scale, F-22 cannot operate in the area anymore, because it won't be able to refuel.
And many of the drones could be (and probably should be, because otherwise it would be very expensive) very simple planes. Many of them could be even even fake ones (=without enough intelligence to attack), that are used only to make F-22 to waste missiles and increase the change of the real drones of getting through.
USA typically uses aircraft carries and attacks distant countries. Even though aircraft carrier has lots of things, it has still finite amount of weapons to defend itself. It doesn't really matter if the attack against it is done using quite simple and inexpensive weapons, as long as there is just enough of them. And if there is large enough salvo of simultaneous missiles, you will be able to hit the ship even if the ship doesn't run out of defensive weapons, because the defensive system has upper limit on how many incoming missiles it is able to handle.
Having said all that, having so many drones would be quite expensive and it is probably easier and cheaper to attack the aircraft carriers under water (ballistic missiles might also work). But who knows about the future wars, as drones are getting more popular.
In near future, there will probably be drones which are meant for dogfighting. And drones can have at least one advantage over traditional fighters: tolerating g-forces better than what human is ever able to do -- even with g-suit on.
On the other hand, traditional fighters have other advantages. Drones may be more vulnerable to all kinds of jamming -- and you are allowed to use laser to blind the cameras and other sensors of drones, but you are not allowed to use laser which are meant to (permanently) damage the eyes of a fighter pilot.
It can be difficult to know if person is serious or not, if according to his religion, wearing special adult diapers will protect him from the evils of world. To me it sounds as a sick joke, but for Mormons it is serious and important issue.
And even if soda would be otherwise safe, it still destroys your teeth because it is so acidic. At least I prefer to keep my teeth healthy and I recommend it to others as well.
I recommend the two drive approach. Put operating systems and software on SSD and replace DVD drive with a SSD on a caddy. SSD disks are still too small and rather expensive for running several large virtual machines, databases etc -- but affordable 256 GB SSD is big enough for dual boot system with some software. Just put large files, like large datebases and virtual machines, on a HDD (or hybrid) caddy.
It is worth remembering that SSDs tend to have more reliability issues than HDD, so having good backups is even more important than with HDDs. If you have enough free space on the HDD caddy, you can some of the backups of the SSD on the HDD caddy.
I think perseverance is also very useful in programming. I have seen many people to become "scared" and give up too easily, when they don't immediately understand something or have trouble doing something. And of course curiosity and willingness to make experiments helps a lot.
I think that being able to write very simple programs isn't really proof of programming skills. Programs like these don't really require any real programming skill:
print "My text here\n";
I similar way, being able to write your name, isn't proof that you can actually write in any meaningful way.
Being mentally retarted will make programming complex programs very unlikely. Some diseases will probably have similar effect. Paralysis of hands, being totally blind, some of serious mental illnesses etc will probably make it quite difficult for them to do more than very simple programs. This means that in practise, not all people can learn -- or at least do -- programming in any meaningful way.
I have the feeling that the set of people, who cannot learn/do programming even if you try to teach them, is probably much larger. But I have also noticed that only minority of people seem to be able to rational discussion of ordinary subjects. They seem to lack general knowledge, they make awfully lot of logical fallacies etc. Human stupidity never stops depressing me.
When I said: "You can expect wars like the Russian war with Georgia, but without any justification" I meant that in case of war with Georgia, there was at least some kind justification for military action by Russia, but in future wars there wouldn't be need for even that kind of justification.
In the Georgian / South Ossetian case there has also been some talk that South Ossetia would become a part of Russia. But I think, that the current disputed status is just fine with Russia. It will make it difficult for Georgia to become a NATO member, when large of the country has disputed status and is not under control of rest of Georgia. Understandably Russia has not liked NATO expansion near its borders, so this could give Russia yet another motive to start wars with neighbours and lock them in similar disputes, which would prevent the countries joining NATO.
It is true that in Syria the naval base of Russia is important factor, but I am not so sure about China.
Without UNSC decision, an attack will be unlawful, although at the moment ICC don't have jurisdiction to convict over unlawful wars. However, any unlawful wars will give very bad example, especially if they aren't strongly condemned by other countries. They will lower the threshold for countries like Russia and China to have their own unlawful wars against minor opponents. You can expect wars like the Russian war with Georgia, but without any justification.
Muslims can be problematic, but constantly attacking Muslim countries and being the only country that seems to support Israel no mater what it does, will get enemies in Muslim countries. There are huge differences between countries how hated they are in Muslim countries. And usually even non-Muslims don't like get attacked, bombed to stone age etc.
After all this, I doubt that China and Russia will support similar UN security council decisions in some other countries. In my opinion western countries acted in a short sighted way by bending the UN security council decision.
I think castle outside city (center) with mainly defensive weapons, would result in less aggression and would be easier to handle than the current embassy in Libya. Massive, but mostly passive defences, enable to control the situation with less aggression and with better safety than too lightly fortified embassy. And if it is necessary to use weapons for self defence, if there is bomb attack against embassy etc -- the risk for innocent civilians would be much lower, if the embassy is outside city (center).
Most countries would not need so fortified embassies, but let's be real -- US isn't exactly liked in many parts of world. Constant military attacks to other countries, supporting in a completely one-sided way Israel -- no matter what it does and many similar foreign policy issues don't really win friends.
However, building a huge castle inside expensive central areas of city, like in Iraq - is wrong idea even for image, but also for many practical reasons as well.
At least in Iraq, the ousting of Saddam made the situation worse for women and especially for gays. Now gays are being routinely hunted and tortured to death. Human right record of Saddam was poor, but for gays it was still much better than the current situation.
Because US is so hated in many countries, I think they should build the embassies outside city (centers). Then it would be easier to have good fortifications, like double fences, with land mines, machine gun towers, over meter thick walls like in Iraq (although the Iraqi plan included thousands of soldiers, I don't think you really need thousands of soldiers with propertly fortified embassy) etc.
As a Finn, I don't think the this law is very good one. Few years ago, there was a lot of criticism against it as people though that it was unfair. It more or less prevented collecting money in certain situations -- like if a home gets burned down and the family don't have home insurance, you cannot collect money to help them build a new home (although you are free to donate, but you cannot organize collection of donations -- if I remember correctly).
I cannot remember if some details of the law has been modified since, but IMHO, it is still a bad law. Many associations, like boy scouts, have managed to break this law by mistake, when they haven't remembered to get neccesary permits.
I guess that burning people on stakes wasn't called fundamentalism as it happened before that. Maybe the correct would have been mainstream Christianity and others were called heretics and tortured to death (of course many mainstream Christians were also tortured until they "confessed" and then they were burned at stake).
You are wrong. Only some forms of FGM have removal of clitoris.
Actually, not all forms of FGM involve removal of clitoris. And some forms of FGM, like making just a needleprick, are actually less harmfull than circumcision of boys.
Btw, there are also some studies that seem to show that sorme forms of FGM lower the risk of getting HIV...
I didn't manage to find an English news article, but here is news article in Swedish:
Polisen fick blodprov fran skyddat register
Here is part of it translated using Google Translate: ... ... ...
Therefore turned to the police for the so-called PKU biobank, a blood bank at Huddinge hospital with samples from three million Swedes. The police wanted Mijailovics blood test data and also got these, according to Current.
His Vallin, head doctor at Huddinge Hospital, was on Friday very secretive about the hospital had left out Mijailovics blood:
Blood samples taken since 1975 on all newborns to detect if the child has an inherited metabolic disorder, which without treatment can cause brain damage. Nowadays However guardians permission to take the test.
Even when the Daily News a decade ago first told me about PKU register, said chief prosecutor in Stockholm that if the police are told that there is an interesting blood anywhere, so the police can take it seized. But so simple, it is not, but this would be against the law. Today, the police very coy.
I think that the third condition should be extended by prohibiting also the use of the sample against your relatives, except in this specific crime.
Who knows what happens in future. I or some of my relatives might send money in envelope to help Assange. If the wich hunt gets tougher, the donaters might also be in risk of getting shipped to Guantanamo to enjoy torture for the rest of their lifes. And even if you don't put your name on the envelope or letter, your DNA might be found on it.
Would you be willing to have a camera in you bedroom and all you telephone calls recorded? If all people would have that kind of monitoring, it is quite likely that some murders wouldn't happen. And I think that prevention of murders is even more important than solving a murder case, because even solving a murder case will not bring the victim alive.
I wouldn't be too happy to have so close monitoring of my life, even if that would save some lifes. I think that having priavy is one of the freedoms and I am not willing to give away my freedoms that lightly.
However, in Anna Lindh murder case, the medical records/samples were given to police.