By the time an electric vehicle could charge so quickly as to be useful, we'll probably have self-driving cars. When self driving cars become a reality, we can throw the idea of car ownership out the window. As it stands, 99% of cars spend probably close to 99% of their time parked and unused. That is inefficient.
If self-driving cars become a thing, a company could purchase huge fleets of cars. Then, instead of letting your own car sit in the parking lot forever, you could just use an app on your smartphone to send a self-driving car in your direction. Or you could just schedule your car to arrive at your location at some specific time (for instance, schedule to be picked up before and after work at precisely 8:00am and 5:00pm). Who needs car ownership--with costs of insurance, maintenance, gas prices, etc--when you can call for a cheap robotic taxi wherever, whenever you want? Relatively few people, I'd wager. It could start with cities, but eventually there would be so many self-driving cars on the road that you could have a self-driving car pick you up to take you wherever you wanted within minutes. Want to go to a restaurant? Send a request for a robot car to pick you up. Fortunately, there's a car that just dropped somebody else off to go shopping a mile away.
Since these cars are self-driving, they could be electric and manage their power efficiently. If you call for a robotic taxi to take you to another state and it only has 50 miles left on its battery, the car could automatically schedule a car with a fresher battery for you to transfer to 50 miles down the road. The entire system would always make sure to minimize the number of transfers and recharge the cars whenever necessary.
With a system like this, even electric cars with 200 mile range would be reasonable. That is more than enough for 99% of one-way passenger commutes, and for those trips that are long, you just hop in a new car 200 miles down the road. Heck, with this kind of self-driving car system, the system could even have tour guides and whatever else programmed in. The more cars on the road, the better the service. The better the service, the better the adoption rate. The better the adoption rate, the more cars. The possibilities are endless.
For those that don't know, Sharp recently built their tenth-generation glass substrate and LCD factory in Sakai, Japan. This is, bar-none, the most advanced, efficient, and green LCD manufacturing facility in the world. To further lower costs, their main suppliers moved their factories just next door to the Sakai plant.
When Sharp first made this plant, it seemed like Japan would come to dominate the LCD industry, again. Sharp had deals with all the major LCD players to manufacture parts for them to use in their own brands. Notably, SONY was a huge investor in the Sakai facility. The Sakai plant was going to produce the best LCD TV components, and SONY has a long history of using top-of-the-line components in their products.
Sharp has fallen on hard times because of two primary issues: 1. The economy, stupid 2. The inexplicable and dramatic rise of the yen
When Sharp first made the facility, it made it big, and it expected big demand. BOOM! global economic meltdown. That seriously hurt Sharp, but at least they still had their deals with other companies to buy their industry-best components. Well, a consequence of the meltdown, quantitative easing, uncertainty, etc, is that the Japanese yen has skyrocketed in value.
I studied abroad in Japan from 2007-2008. At that time, I got about 121 yen per USD. Now the rate is half that. That means Made in Japan is 50% more expensive in the US (and most everywhere else) than it was, before. This is what is killing Sharp. This is what is killing all Japanese manufacturers. Modern Japan developed as an export economy, and with the yen as strong as it is, it is struggling to export. Many of their industries are diversified; for example, Honda has the ability to manufacture the same Honda Civic in Japan or the US, then ship it to whichever country it wants to sell it in depending on the exchange rates. Sharp has put all its eggs in the Made in Japan basket (not a bad decision at the time; I would certainly prefer a Made in Japan TV for a small premium, and I know others would, too), and now that basket is way too expensive to compete.
Unless the yen weakens, Sharp will fail. If they fail, somebody is going to take over the Sakai factory, because it is just too new, too advanced, and too efficient to let disappear.
I prefer ambidextrous mice. It probably has something to do with my mouse style--an extreme version of the fingertip grip--and I find that *-handed mice tend to want to rotate while I'm using them. I think that *-handed mice are really only good for people with the palm-grip style.
At my Geophysics institute, we have a guy who just finished his Ph.D. in his 40's. Another guy in his 60's has already retired from a full and exciting life and is working on his second Ph.D. in an entirely different subject matter.
Couldn't Kaspersky Labs just post a Gauss detection tool or instructions to determine if your computer has been compromised, then just ask people/companies with infected machines to come forward and contact them? I'm sure the people who Gauss is targeting are probably paranoid of CIA and Mossad plots against them, but if they're infected with Gauss, they probably are already a victim of a CIA or Mossad plot to get them. They're already screwed, so it certainly couldn't hurt much more to trust Kaspersky.
I do get a feeling that the government tax dollars will go straight to equipping a Chinese factory, however. Nearly all high tech industries are set up such that US does the research and Asia does the manufacturing and reaps the profits.
That's because when everyone wins, it's not a competition.
In SASUKE, the trials are near-impossible. More often than not, nobody wins. It is not a competition against yourself, it is a competition against the challenge of the obstacle course. If multiple people win (never happened, but is always possible), it would be celebrated (and the next season's obstacles would probably be harder). If nobody wins, that's OK, too. But certainly there is never a time that everybody wins.
And I would argue that if everyone wins, it encourages people to be lazy. If one person wins, it gives that person an ego and makes the losers disinterested. If nobody wins (because it is hard), or if winning is equally available to all but is incredibly difficult (a la SASUKE), it encourages people to try harder. On that note, isn't that the American spirit? That everyone has an equal opportunity to rise to the top, proportional to your efforts, and there is no zero-sum game?
Piracy is a matter of cost and convenience. Piracy is always free, but sometimes it's incredibly inconvenient. Sometimes it's even risky. Purchasing should always have the advantage in quality and convenience. So in the long run, content providers should always win. But sometimes they screw it up and make piracy attractive. And it's often easier for content producers to blame piracy for their woes than to address the problem of piracy offering a better experience.
If purchasing the game is much easier than pirating and the cost isn't obscene, everyone, except for those who get a thrill out of "being bad" and pirating, will purchase the game.
If pirating the game is easier than purchasing it (e.g., cd-keys, DRM, online installation verification, limited copies in retail stores)--and it's free, well, few would pay for it.
For example, Steam is wildly successful because it's so, so easy, prices are good, and sales are frequent. You never have to worry about finding the game at your local retailer, prices are always competitive, and you can play your game wherever and on whatever computer you want at any time. The music industry has been wildly unsuccessful combating piracy because piracy is easy and gives you DRM-free music, whereas purchasing has often been expensive and/or gives you DRM-laden music. The anime industry is also one where in many cases fansubs are higher quality than the official product, and piracy is easy. Which would you choose: 1.) paying $20 for 4 episodes with a lower quality translation whitewashed for kids and old, unformatted DVD subtitles, or 2.) freely pirating an entire season with better-formatted subtitles, sing-a-long, bilingual, animated intro lyrics, a higher quality translation written by devoted fans, and cultural notes for those times when it is necessary?
I think the assumption is that, despite the religious fanaticism and/or grandiose visions of world conquest of some leaders, those in possession of nuclear weapons are actually motivated by self-interest and self-preservation.
I think a lot of our European friends continue to underestimate the size of the US. There are over 160 million utility poles in the US. The distance from Seattle to Miami is like the distance between London and Tehran. Changing all of those poles to steel or moving the lines underground is unnecessary. Powerlines are underground where they need to be--newer residential neighborhoods, newer towns, and downtowns of most cities--and they are above ground elsewhere. The reliability of power is already great. Big cities don't have power outages. Suburbs may have rare power outages from severe storms a couple times a year. It also depends on your area. Trees in Miami are stronger against wind than trees in Virginia, for instance. And though people in the US typically don't want powerlines running to their house (and most people don't have them unless they're in a 60 year old house), nobody cares if there are lines running down the road.
Additionally, to those saying that "Europe doesn't have power outages, even in storms," I think you fail to understand the power of storms in the US, and I think you glob the whole US together as a single place. There's not going to be a power outage in a city from gale-force winds, but there may be in the suburbs. I'm a grad student, and I see the international students routinely just sitting upstairs doing their work when the tornado sirens go off. No matter what I do, I cannot drive into their heads the power of severe storms, here. I've been told that they thought tornadoes were kind of like in the Wizard of Oz. They're not. Europe is no stranger to high winds and strong low pressure systems, but the US gets storms of these strength routinely. Hundreds, maybe thousands of supercell thunderstorms of these strength hit the US every year. They pop up along or in front of huge cold front systems that come through. It usually happens where the cold, Canadian air and the warm, moist Gulf of Mexico air meet--in the Midwest and South--and the Midwest and South are thusly well-equipped to handle them. The Gulf states are also well-equipped to handle hurricanes. The states on the east coast are not as equipped for handling these kinds of disasters because they do not need to be. Likewise, Alabama is not as well-equipped to handle snow as New York might be.
Almost the only way to immigrate (outside of political asylum) is through the arduous and exploitative higher education route.
Huh?
1. Get a job in a company that is willing to sponsor you for an H1-B. 2. Once in the country and working, apply for a green card as soon as possible. 3. Get your green card, wait 5 years, and apply for citizenship.
It's very lengthy, I agree; much more so than other countries that are lucrative from an immigration perspective (e.g. Canada and Australia). But not impossible.
I have never talked to a foreign national who has graduated and found a job that hasn't run into all of the following problems. 1. Small companies don't hire foreign nationals because the the paperwork and red tape for sponsoring them is arduous, and because H1-B visas are limited (and much of those are taken by technology and computer companies), they can't afford to invest time and money into somebody that may be rejected from getting a visa through no fault of their own. 2. Once you do get a job at a university or megacorporation (the most likely places to end up as a foreign national due to reason #1), you will be exploited. The process for a green card essentially restarts if you change jobs, and the employer knows that 1.) your job prospects are limited due to reason #1, 2.) you'll be deported if you can't find a job within a year, and 3.) you won't leave, anyways, because all your green card progress will have been for naught.
Rather than go through several years of being a peon working underpaid and overtime at a megacorp until you get your green card, many foreign nationals just choose to go home. They choose to go home not because they don't want to live and work in America, but because they don't want to go through all of #1 and #2 for 5 or 6 years just to get a green card.
And I, for one, do not appreciate my tax dollars going to educate foreigners which are then encouraged/forced to go back home after getting their American degree who then start companies that compete with us. IMO, when you are awarded your Masters or Ph.D. degree, they should staple a green card to it. "Here, you've been in the US long enough for us to know you're safe, you've been long enough to have a reasonable understanding of the culture, you've done enough science to have a reasonable command of the English language, and you've proven yourself to be a highly motivated and educated individual--have a Green Card, welcome to America."
Seriously, this is the biggest reason that most scientists use it, I believe. Also, it's pretty and I think that scientists like to look down on people (I am saying this as a grad student) and say, "Oh.. you're still using Windows? How do I use this, again... I forget, haha."
- There is no address bar in Finder, so I can't type where I want to go.
- No move command in Finder (at least up to Snow Leopard, which is what my research institute uses because Apple basically said "we don't care about long-term support" when it moved to Lion). I have to copy files, move deep into some other directory, paste, and then go all the way back to where I came from (which I can't use the "back" button for because I've gone up and down in directory trees) and delete the files from their old folder. Or I have to open up yet another window and drag the files over. The fact that I can't type a path into an address bar makes this even worse.
- You can't navigate via dragging. Sometimes I just want to move files up a directory. Sometimes I want to drag files into a second Finder window, but I forgot that the other Finder window is minimized. I can't just hover my mouse over the Finder icon and then over the minimized window.. I have to let go of all of my files, unminimize the second Finder window, and then select them all again and drag them over. (I heard that a long time ago some OS had a shelf where you could temporarily drag files to and from. That sounds like a good idea.)
- If you drag a folder into another folder with an equal name, it doesn't merge, it just deletes the old folder and totally replaces it with the new one. OK, it's a fairly logical behavior, but that means that I can't merge directory trees without the commandline. Worse, if I accidentally screw up and replace a folder I didn't want to, it permanently deletes it. And Command-Z or Undo doesn't work in this case. It should at least ask you twice or mention "WARNING: This will replace the previous folder and remove all files permanently."
- As others have said, the single menu bar behavior is stupid. If you like it on a single window, that's your opinion, but the whole concept goes to hell when you have multiple monitors. There should be a way to either duplicate the menu onto all monitors or make the menu appear on whichever monitor currently has an active program.
Immigration today is not like immigration in the 1980s. In 2012, it is very difficult, even for spouses of US citizens, to immigrate to the US. Look it up..
I challenge you--find an avenue for an educated, motivated, English-fluent Japanese citizen to come to America and work. Try it. See for yourself. It isn't possible. Hell, even if you marry a US citizen you are not allowed to be present in the US until your marriage green card is awarded, and the average wait time for that is more than FIVE YEARS!!!!
People will do what people want to do. You cannot stop people from doing what they will do, but you can regulate it. If you make it illegal, you will create criminals. Criminals benefit nobody (but the prison owners). You need to regulate it so that it benefits everyone.
People want alcohol. We banned it (the prohibition). People continued to drink, but they did so illegally, and crime flourished. People want drugs. We banned it (the drug war). People continue to do drugs, but they do so illegally, and crime flourishes. People want to immigrate to America. We made it nearly impossible over the past 30 years to do so legally. People continue to immigrate, but they do so illegally, and crime flourishes.
The bottom line is that people want to immigrate to America, and you, me, or the government be damned, they will continue to do it. You can make it illegal and create an environment for flourishing organized crime, or we can accept that there will be immigration and it cannot be stopped, and fashion laws and regulations to make that immigration positive for those of us already here (e.g., make legal immigration easy so we can get those people paying taxes).
Not all slaves were African. Slavery has existed for all people of all colors since the beginning of history. My great, great, grandparents were white, German, and slaves, for instance--in Auschwitz.
Ok, my subject is hyperbole. But anyone who has ever tried to legally immigrate or help a foreign friend try to move to the US knows that it simply isn't possible for the vast majority of people.
I will be brief and concise.
There is no "line." Illegals cannot get in the back of the "line" because the "line" does not exist.
The Green Card lottery is biased against the best countries. Ok, that's not exactly how it works in theory, but that's kind of what happens. Example: In 2012, Japan was awarded 435 visas and Nigera 6,204.
You can't come to the US just because you want to. You can't come regardless of whether or not you have the means to support yourself. You can't come regardless of your education level or English-speaking ability. You can't even come if one of your family members is already here--you must be the direct blood relative of a US citizen, a non-citizen permanent resident sibling is, for instance, not good enough (and becoming a citizen takes decades).
Almost the only way to immigrate (outside of political asylum) is through the arduous and exploitative higher education route. We, the American people, will spend hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to educate foreign students at the best universities in the world. Upon graduation from a prestigious American school with American knowledge, they either must get a job immediately (not easy in these economic times) or get out. Often times, they do get out, and they start those companies which are now out-competing us on the world stage. For instance, I challenge you to find a foreign technology company whose CEO doesn't have a Ph.D. from a California university. Now, assuming that the student is really, really dedicated to staying in the US, there are still substantial roadblocks to them staying here. Firstly, the paperwork for hiring a foreigner is insane. It's insane enough that really the only places that foreign-born U.S. graduates can work are universities, oil companies, or huge technology companies. Any smaller companies can't afford to figure out the legal mess required to figure out the visas, nor can they accept the risk that they'll hire a foreigner and their visa will be denied. The other issue is that if the foreigner doesn't keep their job, they will be deported. They have limited job prospects in the first place due to the visa and legal regulations, and the employers know it. The employers almost universally abuse these people because they know that their only chance to get a green card is to stay employed, the green card process is restarted if they change jobs, and they know that the foreigner wants a green card. So they can overwork and underpay them because they know the foreigner won't quit until they get their green card.
I have tried to figure out legal avenues for some friends in Japan. They have college degrees, speak near-perfect English, and have a passion for America and its culture. Nevertheless, we could not find a route for them to work in the US, so they remain in Japan.
The US had plenty of good reasons for barring China from the ISS, the most conspicuous of these being that China would likely not contribute much, if anything, to the program and would end up trying to steal as much technology as they could for their own benefit.
Learning for their own benefit is fine. NASA is very open to helping others learn. The specific reason that China was not allowed into the project, though, is because there are laws in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre that prevent exporting military technology and arms to China. Space technology very much helps the military, and there are very good reasons why most western countries still do not arm China with the most advanced weapons and rocket technology on Earth.
I do mind. I seriously think China will get up there and stay before the US unless the US pimp it up as a face saver. China will do it for a tiny proportion of the budget with less fanfare and make it work. Eventually.
Really? Less fanfare? Everything is fanfare, there. Everything is face-saving. Much, much moreso than even American politics. There will be momentous fanfare from China when they land on the moon, and that will include everything from rants of the superiority of Chinese culture, government, and willpower to supplanting the US as the dominant superpower. Their moon-landing will be a godsend for their propaganda machine, especially as China will likely be facing some serious structural and cultural challenges in the coming years--right at the same time that they're going to be shooting for the moon.
The kid could also have problems. Maybe he has learning disabilities? Reading below his level might be better off than not being able to read at all if the local schools aren't capable of properly touching a special needs student.
It is also worth noting that there are tremendous amounts of affordable private options available to homeschoolers to get schooling by highly-qualified teachers/professors in hard-to-teach subjects like chemistry. Of course, the availability does depend on your state and your area, and because the submitter is asking Slashdot for help, I assume those options are not available for him.
Public schools are, for the most part, not always great place to send very abnormal children. Children who are far more intelligent, far more inquisitive, learn differently (e.g., learn through engagement, the opposite of America's typical rote learning style), or have much different needs (e.g., a mental disability or a physical malady bad enough that they will be socially outcast and/or bullied incessantly) than their peers are not well suited for the vast majority of public schools in America. Public schools are good for most, but they are bad for those children who are the outliers.
It is absolutely unnecessary and unhelpful to suggest to the submitter than the child be sent to public schools (or private, which may be financially unviable). Homeschooling is not an easy decision; it is not only a major decision to make for the child's life, but it is a significant undertaking by the parent, too. It should go without saying that if the submitter's grandchild is being homeschooled, they have already made the decision that it is better than their other school options for this particular individual.
Furthermore, any assumption that homeschooling innately provides instruction of a lesser quality than that in public schooling is ignorant. Like all other schooling, the quality of the educator has much to do with the quality of the education. It's easy to point out the lunatics that homeschool and say that they are unqualified to teach their children, but you should not ignore the many thousands of parents who give their children a much better education at home (a misnomer, mind you--homeschooling doesn't need to be done at home, and, in fact, allows much more freedom for projects, exploration, and scientific field work) than they ever could hope to achieve at a "proper" school. Consider homeschooling like you would consider private tutoring/mentoring for privileged children, except instead of an expensive tutor there is a parent. In many cases, the parent is the better teacher.
Slashdot Mirror
By the time an electric vehicle could charge so quickly as to be useful, we'll probably have self-driving cars. When self driving cars become a reality, we can throw the idea of car ownership out the window. As it stands, 99% of cars spend probably close to 99% of their time parked and unused. That is inefficient.
If self-driving cars become a thing, a company could purchase huge fleets of cars. Then, instead of letting your own car sit in the parking lot forever, you could just use an app on your smartphone to send a self-driving car in your direction. Or you could just schedule your car to arrive at your location at some specific time (for instance, schedule to be picked up before and after work at precisely 8:00am and 5:00pm). Who needs car ownership--with costs of insurance, maintenance, gas prices, etc--when you can call for a cheap robotic taxi wherever, whenever you want? Relatively few people, I'd wager. It could start with cities, but eventually there would be so many self-driving cars on the road that you could have a self-driving car pick you up to take you wherever you wanted within minutes. Want to go to a restaurant? Send a request for a robot car to pick you up. Fortunately, there's a car that just dropped somebody else off to go shopping a mile away.
Since these cars are self-driving, they could be electric and manage their power efficiently. If you call for a robotic taxi to take you to another state and it only has 50 miles left on its battery, the car could automatically schedule a car with a fresher battery for you to transfer to 50 miles down the road. The entire system would always make sure to minimize the number of transfers and recharge the cars whenever necessary.
With a system like this, even electric cars with 200 mile range would be reasonable. That is more than enough for 99% of one-way passenger commutes, and for those trips that are long, you just hop in a new car 200 miles down the road. Heck, with this kind of self-driving car system, the system could even have tour guides and whatever else programmed in. The more cars on the road, the better the service. The better the service, the better the adoption rate. The better the adoption rate, the more cars. The possibilities are endless.
Does a country have to eliminate poverty to become great? Or does greatness help to eliminate poverty? Or is there a balance of the two?
Ultimately, that's probably the question I'd be asking if I was the Indian prime minister.
For those that don't know, Sharp recently built their tenth-generation glass substrate and LCD factory in Sakai, Japan. This is, bar-none, the most advanced, efficient, and green LCD manufacturing facility in the world. To further lower costs, their main suppliers moved their factories just next door to the Sakai plant.
When Sharp first made this plant, it seemed like Japan would come to dominate the LCD industry, again. Sharp had deals with all the major LCD players to manufacture parts for them to use in their own brands. Notably, SONY was a huge investor in the Sakai facility. The Sakai plant was going to produce the best LCD TV components, and SONY has a long history of using top-of-the-line components in their products.
Sharp has fallen on hard times because of two primary issues:
1. The economy, stupid
2. The inexplicable and dramatic rise of the yen
When Sharp first made the facility, it made it big, and it expected big demand. BOOM! global economic meltdown. That seriously hurt Sharp, but at least they still had their deals with other companies to buy their industry-best components. Well, a consequence of the meltdown, quantitative easing, uncertainty, etc, is that the Japanese yen has skyrocketed in value.
I studied abroad in Japan from 2007-2008. At that time, I got about 121 yen per USD. Now the rate is half that. That means Made in Japan is 50% more expensive in the US (and most everywhere else) than it was, before. This is what is killing Sharp. This is what is killing all Japanese manufacturers. Modern Japan developed as an export economy, and with the yen as strong as it is, it is struggling to export. Many of their industries are diversified; for example, Honda has the ability to manufacture the same Honda Civic in Japan or the US, then ship it to whichever country it wants to sell it in depending on the exchange rates. Sharp has put all its eggs in the Made in Japan basket (not a bad decision at the time; I would certainly prefer a Made in Japan TV for a small premium, and I know others would, too), and now that basket is way too expensive to compete.
Unless the yen weakens, Sharp will fail. If they fail, somebody is going to take over the Sakai factory, because it is just too new, too advanced, and too efficient to let disappear.
Dear EA CEO,
Do you play your company's own games? If not, you should be fired and replaced with somebody who does.
How can we expect a company to make good products and good business decisions about their products unless they are a fan, themselves? Well, we can't.
I prefer ambidextrous mice. It probably has something to do with my mouse style--an extreme version of the fingertip grip--and I find that *-handed mice tend to want to rotate while I'm using them. I think that *-handed mice are really only good for people with the palm-grip style.
At my Geophysics institute, we have a guy who just finished his Ph.D. in his 40's. Another guy in his 60's has already retired from a full and exciting life and is working on his second Ph.D. in an entirely different subject matter.
Age does not matter in my line of Ph.D. work.
Couldn't Kaspersky Labs just post a Gauss detection tool or instructions to determine if your computer has been compromised, then just ask people/companies with infected machines to come forward and contact them? I'm sure the people who Gauss is targeting are probably paranoid of CIA and Mossad plots against them, but if they're infected with Gauss, they probably are already a victim of a CIA or Mossad plot to get them. They're already screwed, so it certainly couldn't hurt much more to trust Kaspersky.
I do get a feeling that the government tax dollars will go straight to equipping a Chinese factory, however. Nearly all high tech industries are set up such that US does the research and Asia does the manufacturing and reaps the profits.
That's because when everyone wins, it's not a competition.
In SASUKE, the trials are near-impossible. More often than not, nobody wins. It is not a competition against yourself, it is a competition against the challenge of the obstacle course. If multiple people win (never happened, but is always possible), it would be celebrated (and the next season's obstacles would probably be harder). If nobody wins, that's OK, too. But certainly there is never a time that everybody wins.
And I would argue that if everyone wins, it encourages people to be lazy. If one person wins, it gives that person an ego and makes the losers disinterested. If nobody wins (because it is hard), or if winning is equally available to all but is incredibly difficult (a la SASUKE), it encourages people to try harder. On that note, isn't that the American spirit? That everyone has an equal opportunity to rise to the top, proportional to your efforts, and there is no zero-sum game?
Piracy is a matter of cost and convenience. Piracy is always free, but sometimes it's incredibly inconvenient. Sometimes it's even risky. Purchasing should always have the advantage in quality and convenience. So in the long run, content providers should always win. But sometimes they screw it up and make piracy attractive. And it's often easier for content producers to blame piracy for their woes than to address the problem of piracy offering a better experience.
If purchasing the game is much easier than pirating and the cost isn't obscene, everyone, except for those who get a thrill out of "being bad" and pirating, will purchase the game.
If pirating the game is easier than purchasing it (e.g., cd-keys, DRM, online installation verification, limited copies in retail stores)--and it's free, well, few would pay for it.
For example, Steam is wildly successful because it's so, so easy, prices are good, and sales are frequent. You never have to worry about finding the game at your local retailer, prices are always competitive, and you can play your game wherever and on whatever computer you want at any time. The music industry has been wildly unsuccessful combating piracy because piracy is easy and gives you DRM-free music, whereas purchasing has often been expensive and/or gives you DRM-laden music. The anime industry is also one where in many cases fansubs are higher quality than the official product, and piracy is easy. Which would you choose: 1.) paying $20 for 4 episodes with a lower quality translation whitewashed for kids and old, unformatted DVD subtitles, or 2.) freely pirating an entire season with better-formatted subtitles, sing-a-long, bilingual, animated intro lyrics, a higher quality translation written by devoted fans, and cultural notes for those times when it is necessary?
I think the assumption is that, despite the religious fanaticism and/or grandiose visions of world conquest of some leaders, those in possession of nuclear weapons are actually motivated by self-interest and self-preservation.
I think a lot of our European friends continue to underestimate the size of the US. There are over 160 million utility poles in the US. The distance from Seattle to Miami is like the distance between London and Tehran. Changing all of those poles to steel or moving the lines underground is unnecessary. Powerlines are underground where they need to be--newer residential neighborhoods, newer towns, and downtowns of most cities--and they are above ground elsewhere. The reliability of power is already great. Big cities don't have power outages. Suburbs may have rare power outages from severe storms a couple times a year. It also depends on your area. Trees in Miami are stronger against wind than trees in Virginia, for instance. And though people in the US typically don't want powerlines running to their house (and most people don't have them unless they're in a 60 year old house), nobody cares if there are lines running down the road.
Additionally, to those saying that "Europe doesn't have power outages, even in storms," I think you fail to understand the power of storms in the US, and I think you glob the whole US together as a single place. There's not going to be a power outage in a city from gale-force winds, but there may be in the suburbs. I'm a grad student, and I see the international students routinely just sitting upstairs doing their work when the tornado sirens go off. No matter what I do, I cannot drive into their heads the power of severe storms, here. I've been told that they thought tornadoes were kind of like in the Wizard of Oz. They're not. Europe is no stranger to high winds and strong low pressure systems, but the US gets storms of these strength routinely. Hundreds, maybe thousands of supercell thunderstorms of these strength hit the US every year. They pop up along or in front of huge cold front systems that come through. It usually happens where the cold, Canadian air and the warm, moist Gulf of Mexico air meet--in the Midwest and South--and the Midwest and South are thusly well-equipped to handle them. The Gulf states are also well-equipped to handle hurricanes. The states on the east coast are not as equipped for handling these kinds of disasters because they do not need to be. Likewise, Alabama is not as well-equipped to handle snow as New York might be.
Almost the only way to immigrate (outside of political asylum) is through the arduous and exploitative higher education route.
Huh?
1. Get a job in a company that is willing to sponsor you for an H1-B.
2. Once in the country and working, apply for a green card as soon as possible.
3. Get your green card, wait 5 years, and apply for citizenship.
It's very lengthy, I agree; much more so than other countries that are lucrative from an immigration perspective (e.g. Canada and Australia). But not impossible.
I have never talked to a foreign national who has graduated and found a job that hasn't run into all of the following problems.
1. Small companies don't hire foreign nationals because the the paperwork and red tape for sponsoring them is arduous, and because H1-B visas are limited (and much of those are taken by technology and computer companies), they can't afford to invest time and money into somebody that may be rejected from getting a visa through no fault of their own.
2. Once you do get a job at a university or megacorporation (the most likely places to end up as a foreign national due to reason #1), you will be exploited. The process for a green card essentially restarts if you change jobs, and the employer knows that 1.) your job prospects are limited due to reason #1, 2.) you'll be deported if you can't find a job within a year, and 3.) you won't leave, anyways, because all your green card progress will have been for naught.
Rather than go through several years of being a peon working underpaid and overtime at a megacorp until you get your green card, many foreign nationals just choose to go home. They choose to go home not because they don't want to live and work in America, but because they don't want to go through all of #1 and #2 for 5 or 6 years just to get a green card.
And I, for one, do not appreciate my tax dollars going to educate foreigners which are then encouraged/forced to go back home after getting their American degree who then start companies that compete with us. IMO, when you are awarded your Masters or Ph.D. degree, they should staple a green card to it. "Here, you've been in the US long enough for us to know you're safe, you've been long enough to have a reasonable understanding of the culture, you've done enough science to have a reasonable command of the English language, and you've proven yourself to be a highly motivated and educated individual--have a Green Card, welcome to America."
The Adobe Suite and Microsoft Office.
Seriously, this is the biggest reason that most scientists use it, I believe. Also, it's pretty and I think that scientists like to look down on people (I am saying this as a grad student) and say, "Oh.. you're still using Windows? How do I use this, again... I forget, haha."
Things I very much do not like about OSX.
Immigration today is not like immigration in the 1980s. In 2012, it is very difficult, even for spouses of US citizens, to immigrate to the US. Look it up..
I challenge you--find an avenue for an educated, motivated, English-fluent Japanese citizen to come to America and work. Try it. See for yourself. It isn't possible. Hell, even if you marry a US citizen you are not allowed to be present in the US until your marriage green card is awarded, and the average wait time for that is more than FIVE YEARS !!!!
More people need to understand this view.
People will do what people want to do. You cannot stop people from doing what they will do, but you can regulate it. If you make it illegal, you will create criminals. Criminals benefit nobody (but the prison owners). You need to regulate it so that it benefits everyone.
People want alcohol. We banned it (the prohibition). People continued to drink, but they did so illegally, and crime flourished.
People want drugs. We banned it (the drug war). People continue to do drugs, but they do so illegally, and crime flourishes.
People want to immigrate to America. We made it nearly impossible over the past 30 years to do so legally. People continue to immigrate, but they do so illegally, and crime flourishes.
The bottom line is that people want to immigrate to America, and you, me, or the government be damned, they will continue to do it. You can make it illegal and create an environment for flourishing organized crime, or we can accept that there will be immigration and it cannot be stopped, and fashion laws and regulations to make that immigration positive for those of us already here (e.g., make legal immigration easy so we can get those people paying taxes).
Not all slaves were African. Slavery has existed for all people of all colors since the beginning of history. My great, great, grandparents were white, German, and slaves, for instance--in Auschwitz.
Ok, my subject is hyperbole. But anyone who has ever tried to legally immigrate or help a foreign friend try to move to the US knows that it simply isn't possible for the vast majority of people.
I will be brief and concise.
There is no "line." Illegals cannot get in the back of the "line" because the "line" does not exist.
The Green Card lottery is biased against the best countries. Ok, that's not exactly how it works in theory, but that's kind of what happens. Example: In 2012, Japan was awarded 435 visas and Nigera 6,204.
You can't come to the US just because you want to. You can't come regardless of whether or not you have the means to support yourself. You can't come regardless of your education level or English-speaking ability. You can't even come if one of your family members is already here--you must be the direct blood relative of a US citizen, a non-citizen permanent resident sibling is, for instance, not good enough (and becoming a citizen takes decades).
Almost the only way to immigrate (outside of political asylum) is through the arduous and exploitative higher education route. We, the American people, will spend hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to educate foreign students at the best universities in the world. Upon graduation from a prestigious American school with American knowledge, they either must get a job immediately (not easy in these economic times) or get out. Often times, they do get out, and they start those companies which are now out-competing us on the world stage. For instance, I challenge you to find a foreign technology company whose CEO doesn't have a Ph.D. from a California university. Now, assuming that the student is really, really dedicated to staying in the US, there are still substantial roadblocks to them staying here. Firstly, the paperwork for hiring a foreigner is insane. It's insane enough that really the only places that foreign-born U.S. graduates can work are universities, oil companies, or huge technology companies. Any smaller companies can't afford to figure out the legal mess required to figure out the visas, nor can they accept the risk that they'll hire a foreigner and their visa will be denied. The other issue is that if the foreigner doesn't keep their job, they will be deported. They have limited job prospects in the first place due to the visa and legal regulations, and the employers know it. The employers almost universally abuse these people because they know that their only chance to get a green card is to stay employed, the green card process is restarted if they change jobs, and they know that the foreigner wants a green card. So they can overwork and underpay them because they know the foreigner won't quit until they get their green card.
I have tried to figure out legal avenues for some friends in Japan. They have college degrees, speak near-perfect English, and have a passion for America and its culture. Nevertheless, we could not find a route for them to work in the US, so they remain in Japan.
The US had plenty of good reasons for barring China from the ISS, the most conspicuous of these being that China would likely not contribute much, if anything, to the program and would end up trying to steal as much technology as they could for their own benefit.
Learning for their own benefit is fine. NASA is very open to helping others learn. The specific reason that China was not allowed into the project, though, is because there are laws in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre that prevent exporting military technology and arms to China. Space technology very much helps the military, and there are very good reasons why most western countries still do not arm China with the most advanced weapons and rocket technology on Earth.
I do mind. I seriously think China will get up there and stay before the US unless the US pimp it up as a face saver. China will do it for a tiny proportion of the budget with less fanfare and make it work. Eventually.
Really? Less fanfare? Everything is fanfare, there. Everything is face-saving. Much, much moreso than even American politics. There will be momentous fanfare from China when they land on the moon, and that will include everything from rants of the superiority of Chinese culture, government, and willpower to supplanting the US as the dominant superpower. Their moon-landing will be a godsend for their propaganda machine, especially as China will likely be facing some serious structural and cultural challenges in the coming years--right at the same time that they're going to be shooting for the moon.
The kid could also have problems. Maybe he has learning disabilities? Reading below his level might be better off than not being able to read at all if the local schools aren't capable of properly touching a special needs student.
It is also worth noting that there are tremendous amounts of affordable private options available to homeschoolers to get schooling by highly-qualified teachers/professors in hard-to-teach subjects like chemistry. Of course, the availability does depend on your state and your area, and because the submitter is asking Slashdot for help, I assume those options are not available for him.
Public schools are, for the most part, not always great place to send very abnormal children. Children who are far more intelligent, far more inquisitive, learn differently (e.g., learn through engagement, the opposite of America's typical rote learning style), or have much different needs (e.g., a mental disability or a physical malady bad enough that they will be socially outcast and/or bullied incessantly) than their peers are not well suited for the vast majority of public schools in America. Public schools are good for most, but they are bad for those children who are the outliers.
It is absolutely unnecessary and unhelpful to suggest to the submitter than the child be sent to public schools (or private, which may be financially unviable). Homeschooling is not an easy decision; it is not only a major decision to make for the child's life, but it is a significant undertaking by the parent, too. It should go without saying that if the submitter's grandchild is being homeschooled, they have already made the decision that it is better than their other school options for this particular individual.
Furthermore, any assumption that homeschooling innately provides instruction of a lesser quality than that in public schooling is ignorant. Like all other schooling, the quality of the educator has much to do with the quality of the education. It's easy to point out the lunatics that homeschool and say that they are unqualified to teach their children, but you should not ignore the many thousands of parents who give their children a much better education at home (a misnomer, mind you--homeschooling doesn't need to be done at home, and, in fact, allows much more freedom for projects, exploration, and scientific field work) than they ever could hope to achieve at a "proper" school. Consider homeschooling like you would consider private tutoring/mentoring for privileged children, except instead of an expensive tutor there is a parent. In many cases, the parent is the better teacher.