The issue I was highlighting is that more than half the bandwidth consumed is by video, and is definitely not essential. Neither netflix nor youtube, which contribute to more than half of ALL internet bandwidth usage, are essential. Cut off streaming video and your bandwidth requirements drop significantly.
And the issue I was highlightning is, is that you just stop where your convenience is not affected. This is as arbritrary as it is selfish. You don't care about it, so it is a good thing if it disappears. People actually use Youtube and other other data intensive services for usefull things, for many people it actually would be a bad thing if they couldn't use it anymore. In Hungary Orban is severely limiting independent Radio and TV. The internet provides the last ressort to stream media critical of the government. It might not be of the slightest interest to you, but there are people who have a quite different view on this whole affair.
I would ask the same question of you. Who are you to decide what is essential and what is not?
Well, I didn't.That's my whole point. Just because I don't have usage of something, I don't call it "non-essential". The other way round, just because I like something doesn't makes it essential per se. My parents never used the internet. For them private usage or the internet appears to be completely non essential. They couldn't care less if you and me couldn't use the internet tomorrow. Does it mean, private internet is non essential?
The internet existed before streaming video, and it will continue to exist if streaming video were to disappear,
Yes, and telephone lines and TV cable existed before the internet and will continue if streaming the internet were to disapear. Postal office and newspapers existed before telephone and TV cable and will continue to exist if electronic communication were to disappear. The whole point is: you don't have usage for video and you declare it non essential. I say, that your distinction is arbritrary and pointless.
People already limit how much video they watch on their cell plans when they're not near a wifi access point, because otherwise they can burn through their month's allotment in one day. Is this a "bad thing", or "unfair", or whatever? No. It just indicates that streaming video is not essential, and they can postpone it until they can get it cheaper when near a wifi.
People will also limit the usage of internet in general with their mobiles if it gets too expensive. With high roaming costs for Euopeans this is actually an issue when crossing borders (which happens quite easily with all those small countries). Following your line of argument the whole internet is not essential.
One could say as well food, water and shelter are essential. The rest is convenience. But making an arbritrary distinction between the essential "internet" and non-essential "video via internet" doesn't make too much sense.
Last time I looked, electricity was already taxed.
[...]
In effect we already do - vehicles use a lot more fuel in the first few kilometers before the engine gets to operating temperature, and car use is subject to a base tax rate (licensing) + taxes based on the amount of fuel used.
Well, it would be good for the environment if we used less electricity and fuel. So, yes, it is a good thing to encourage people to reduce their usage using taxes. And boy, do we have taxes on fuel in Europe! But what is the burden of video streaming? Which resources are depleted just because the existing grid is used to transport more information? Who would be interested in limiting information flow? Well, people like Viktor Orban would be very much interested in it. For him this is a very nice situation. If people continue using Youtube, his government will receive more money. If not - good for him as well. All those annoying people broadcasting unpleasent things about him via Youtube would lose viewers.
Streaming video isn't an essential part of the internet, any more than facebook is. [...] More than half of all bandwidth is now devoted to streaming videos. That doesn't mean it's essential.
The Turkish president Erdogan would agree full heartedly. Youtbue, Twitter - complete nonsense. Especially when people use those things to criticise his politics. So he shut those serivces down. Why whining - as it is non essential anyway?
What, stupid people in Hungary use Facebook and Youtube to criticise their government as independent newspapers, radio and TV have been shut down? Well, their bad if they use the same channel as those who just use them to distribute the latest news about their cats.
You do realize that before streaming video that there were other ways to do coursework online, right?
Sure, there was distant learning even before the internet using mail. Why stop with videos? Internet is not essential for private persons. They can go back to use the telephone and good old mail. And while we are at it: TV is also not essential, neither are Radio and lots and lots of other things. Just ask the Amish.
Who are you to decide what is essential and what is not? On Youtube one can watch cats falling from chairs, but as well online lectures about a wide range of topics, panel discussions, political and social comments, media critics and so on and so on. Just because you don't have a demand in videos doesn't mean that videos are in general something superfluous and something which is ok to get rid of.
Just last week, I was in Shanghai and I can say that from the Magnetic Levitation train to the technology that runs and manages public transit, those folks are way ahead of us.
Just for the record: that train is made in Germany. The technology which is used there is roughly 30 years old. It is not used elsewhere because for must cases it is simply too epxensive.
It is remarkable in the fact that all of the previous attempts to mix Quantum-"anything" with Relativity have pretty much spectacularly failed.
Sorry, but this is complete and utter nonsense. The mixture of RT and QM is successfull since the 20s. That there is antimatter for instance could only be predicted by mixing RT and QM (Dirac equation). Quantum Electro Dynamics made some of the most accurate predictions in the whole field of science. The so called Standard Model, which is beeing tested at the different particle acceleraters (e.g. CERN) is based on RT *and* QM.
What amazes me, is that this comment was rated "insightful"...
I was not aware that there was a special permit you needed to poke fun at institutionalized stupidity.
The point is: it is only stupid because of your cultural bias.
Allowing these people to dictate laws, when they obviously display an inability to understand the reality of hidden cameras and the impossibility of preventing photography, does put a huge burden on the sane members of society.
You didn't get it. They don't want to dictate laws. The respect for privacy in resident areas is something the Japanese usually respect without laws. They don't use fences, hedges, or laws to prevent people from taking photographs or just take a curios look - they count on the good behavior of the people around. This is the point where your bias (and that of others in this discussion) shows up: in your opinion if they are in the open air, they have to be aware that they can be photographed, filmed or just looked at. This is simply not the case in Japanese culture, where you can count on the mutual agreement, that even if somebody is able to take pictures of you and your home - he simply doesn't do it. This is THEIR reality. And there is hardly anything stupid about it.
Imagine you witness an accident. A person is killed, the body is lying on the street. Would you take a photo and put in on the web? How would you react if you would see others avidly taking photos with their mobile phones? Well, I think most people would respect the privacy of the dead and don't take photos, even if they could, hidden camera or not, and even if they would face legal consequences. There is a silent agreement in our culture not to do such things. You regard this as silly as well, and as not facing reality?
But that doesn't mean that you freeze a society in time. Japan's culture evolved out of the realities it faced. Now they are being faced with a new challenge and one thing history has proven time and time again is that ignoring the problem and pretending it'll just go away is never the solution.
But it's the decision of the Japanese how they handle this change, not that of a US-company, nor are North-American or European readers of Slashdot asked to judge it.
Who are you to tell me that my culture of pointing out stupid superstitions and useless beliefs is a bad one? I have as much right to criticize stupid views as people do to hold them.
And who are you to decide what are "stupid superstitions and useless beliefs"?
It's not disregard for a strange culture though, it's an unwillingness to oblige stupid requests.
What you show here could server as a textbook example for disregard of foreign cultures. The thing is: most people who do so, are not aware of it.
Growing up in a specific culture one acquires countless "silent" assumptions, things which go without saying. They seem to be so basic, that one tends to regard them as global and attributes them as "realistic", "reasonable" or even "logical". Therefore if someone from another culture shows a behavior which goes against those assumptions and basic beliefs, one is likely to call them "stupid" or "useless". Whereas it just goes against the own assumptions and beliefs.
It'd just be pure insanity if we were to actually give these people what would be required to accommodate them.
This is probably one of the most arrogant and stupid remarks I have heard or read in a long time. "These people" are living in a different country than yours. They have all the right to ask for what accommodates them in their own country. And they absolutely don't have to ask some Americans for their allowance or acceptance.
Of course not. It should be clear, that infants are not able to commit any crime after German law and therefore can not be criminals. Germany has simply another definition of citizenhood than the US. While the US citizenship ist based on the principle of jus soli, which means by the place you are born, the German one is based on jus sanguinis, meaning it is mainly determined by your heritage. Citizenship is ruled differently over Europe. France for instance has a law more similar to that of the US: children born on French soil have the right to get French citizenship. The difference to the US-law is, that it is not granted automatically, one has to request it.
Keep in mind that string "theory" came about as an attempt to explain precisely the same phenomenon: this discrepancy in rotational velocities.
Who says this? To my knowledge string theory was invented to explain the existence of different elementary particles. That it might explain gravitation as well came only later. But it's definitely still far too general to explain something like the mentioned discrepancies. String theory doesn't play a role in explaining rotational anomalies of galaxies.
"Hey... if we just assume that entire galaxies are three times heavier than they should be, all these numbers work! Just invent invisible "stuff" with mass, and we can cancel out these inconvenient factors,
In a similar way people found for instance Neutrinos: "The Beta decay violates energy conservation - well, we might put in an invisible particle - which does not interact with matter as other particles, than it works again". Why should the things we can see be all there is in the universe? The thing is - once you put in such a hypothetical object, you have to look for the consequences, how to detect the existence of this. And that exactly happens. It is not that astrophysicists just put in dark matter and then went on with business as usual. They think about ways to find further evidence - be it in particle acceleraters or in some other cosmological observation.
According to the big bang theory, universe started from a singularity, that is zero radius.
This is not true. Big Bang theory starts a fraction of a second *after* the supposed beginning of the universe, when classical mechanics in form of Einstein equations are valid (that's why I asked for what you mean with "long time" - whether it extends to this moment). The standard theory makes no assumption about what happens at the beginning - exactly because the known limitations. What scientists are quite sure about is, that if they want to go nearer to the beginning, they have to incorporate quantum effects. And this changes the whole thing - including the fixed limitations of the Schwarzschild radius. An accepted try in this direction is the theory of the inflationary universe. But this theory as well goes nearer to the origin - but not fully. It even says, that it makes no sense to go to the very beginning, because the inflationary mechanism will wipe out all traces of information from the beginning, making it impossible to deduce anything.
You make the mistake to make a naive extrapolation - and then blame the theory for it.
My remark was not regarding String-Theory. I answered to the claim that current cosmological theories are based on faith. Current cosmological theories are not based on String Theory.
Any time is too long if you consider the current theory that nothing can escape the event horizon of black holes AND that everything inside will be squashed into a singularity within a finite, short time.
Ok, then please explain why the universe should have been inside a Schwarzschild-radius or point me to a source where this is explained. As I said: I never heard about this claim before.
This is simply not true. There is plenty of observational evidence that does not fit current (Big Bang) cosmological theories. They should have been rejected a long time ago.
Every theory has to fight with data which don't seem to fit. Theories are rejected, when the problems become overwhelming or if somebody comes up with an alternative, which has the at least the same power and can explain some of the difficultiers. Seems this didn't happen up to now.
I don't know who this guy is, but when reading this on his page (as criticism about the current explanation for gravity):
Even if there could be a dimple nothing would roll into it unless there was a previously existing pull of gravity.
it is quite obvious that this guy didn't understand even the basics of the General Theory of Relativity. I made a similar logical error - when I was fifteen, after reading some popular science books without understanding what exactly they were talking about. There are other parts in his text, where he clearly - and with no doubt left, shows that he has no clue about what Relativity is about. Although I am not an expert on it, I studied physics and had a course in General Theory of Relativitiy - and it is obvious that he made errors like somebody who never had a formal introduction into Relativity. And frankly, I don't care the least about people who criticize a theory when they have only a vague, layman's understanding of it - which in this case is even severely flawed.
And if that were not bad enough, there are other hypotheses, such as MoND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) that explains most if not all what is explained by the string hypothesis,
MoND explains why there are quarks, electrons etc.? It can explain why the proton has exactly the opposite charge of an electron? I must admit, I wasn't aware of the far reaching possiblities of MoND.
(OK, I know - "explaining" is a bit too much when talking about String theory, as not much of concrete information could be drawn from it up to now. But at least, that's what it is aiming at.)
Cosmological theories are currently not much better than intelligent design - you just have to take them on faith.
That's simply not true. A theory has to explain observations. This is what current cosmological theories do. It is an observation, that galaxies seem to fly away from us, the faster the farer away they are. The standard cosmological theory with its Big Bang can explain it. One of the predictions of this theory was, that there should be a background radiation. That radiation was found and its temperature is in accordance with the calcualations. The theory of inflationary universe, which is an extension to the standard theory can explain why the radiation is so homogenous, why the world is more or less flat and it even can explain to some level the observed distribution of galaxies.
Can the cosmological theories explain everything? No. Have they gaps? Definitely. But this is something nearly every theory has to live with. When Newton came up with his theory of gravitation he also could give absolutely no explanation for the source of gravitation, he himself was not happy with the fact that a body has an influence at a place where it is not present.
Certainly for long time after big bang the universe was inside its own Schwarzschild Radius.
I never heard about that. I am not an expert in cosmology, so I would be interested if you could point me to a source to read about this claim. And what do you mean with "long time"?
I really wish you would indicate it when you are paraphrasing me.
I don't understand - what besides putting your text in blockquote-tags would you prefer?
You present no evidence, keep getting modded up, this is fucking stupid.
Relax, I just got modded up due to my karma - nobody has spent mod-points on me.
How about this
OK, I was taking "heritable" too narrow. Of course there are genetic factors determining intelligence - according to those studies, they make up roughly for half of the differences in IQ. But this still is no evidence for what Watson has said. Take a simpler example: height. Height is partly determined by the genes - but also by environmental factors. If you look at the distribution of height in a population, one might determine how much of this was due to genetics (similar to those IQ-studies). But if you have different means in two different populations, you can not tell, whether this is due to genetic differences or not. The difference between Europeans and Pygmies is definitely due to genetics. But that the US-Americans have been taller than the Europeans in the mid 20th century, was due to a different nutrition. After the Europeans got wealthier, the difference in height disappeared, nowadays Europeans of different countries (especially the Netherlands) are even taller than the average US-American. In as similar way: Just because there is a difference in IQ between black and white people and even though intelligence is influenced by genetics, one can not conclude based on those facts, that the black are less intelligent due to their genetic attributes.
Which is precisely why tests are designed to try to eliminate these factors with questions that don't require western education or culture.
When I was talking about education, I didn't mean the content - but the pure fact, that there is education at all. Somebody who gets a rich education tends to use his brain more than somebody who gets nearly none.
Why do sub-Saharan Africans perform more poorly on the Raven's Progressive Matrices?
I don't know. All I say is: Watson doesn't know either.
Even if that were true, what caused the Africans to be vulnerable to colonialism in the first place?
You mean being colonialized is due to lack of intelligence?
I just explained how it is. Watson said that the testing showed that blacks were less intelligent.
It is not disputed, that there are tests showing a difference in average IQ. What is not based on scientific facts is that this difference is based on genetics.
I'm not the one who said that the differences are or aren't due to genetics because of the size of "genetic differences between humanoid populations".
But Watson was interpreted this way. Well, in the meantime he seemed to pull back. But if the quotes are right - that's what he said.
But intelligence is heritable, there is ample evidence of that.
Is it? I doubt it.
What, precisely, are the "social factors" that have lowered IQ so much in Africa?
Less education due to less possibilites is one factor. There are less higher schools and less libraries in Africa for the average child than in Europe or the States. This means there is less intellectual input to the brain. And this is for sure: if you don't exercise your brain it won't show up its possibilities. Even the idea itself, that people have lower intelligence - will result in lower intelligence. There have been experiments, that if you give somebody hints, that he or she is less intelligent - he or she will show up with inferior results in tasks requiring intelligence. Or with other words: if you convince somebody, that he is dumb, he will show up dumb. There are so many factors influencing the intelligence, that saying "it is due to genetics" is at least a premature assumption. And that's what Watson is accused of.
But they don't show, that this is due to genetic differences.
Watson's statement is supported by fact.
No, it's not.
Given our current level of knowledge of genetics, saying that this difference in IQs is not genetic would be premature at best.
And assigning the difference to genetics is not premature?
There is no evidence that these strikingly large differences are due to social, political, or other environmental factors.
And there is even less evidence, that those differences can be explained by genetic factors. On the other hand it is a well known fact, that social factors have a huge impact on IQ.
Things are not clear. But to claim, that the differences *are* based on genetics is simply not supported by the scientific knowledge of today.
. Just take a serious look at how Watson is being treated over his comments about race and genetics. Even most scientists are unwilling to consider the possibility that *gasp* if evolution be true, not all races are created equal, and that some might be statistically inferior to others.
They don't attack Watson because they have a problem with evolution, but because there is simply no convincing scientific evidence, that what he says is true. According to most scientists the genetic differences between humanoid populations are far too small to explain such a crucial high level difference.
What is actually happening is that real, physical 'space' is constantly being created,
No, there is no space "created". But at least you are right, that the notion of "everything is moving away from everything else" is indeed a bit misleading - although not really wrong. What changes is the metric, which measures the space, which of course affects the measured distances between objects. The model is based on the General Theory of Relativity. As you might have heard, this theory describes gravitation as curvature of the space-time (curvature meaning: change in the metric). This curvature can be described by Einstein's field equations. There is a solution to those equations describing a world, where the metric changes in a way, that the distance between the objects constantly increases - due to the change of the metric, not based on some actual movement or "creation" of space - there was never something like an explosion where things are flying away from each other.
Starting end of 2005 the (complete) German version of Wikipedia is distributed as a DVD. They did it in cooperation with a company called Directmedia. This company runs the label "Digitale Bibliothek", which is quite common in Germany. It provides high quality digital works from different fields of the liberal arts, like anthologies, handbooks and collections of paintings. You can downlaod this DVD from Wikipedia but also buy it in a book shop or via Amazon (for about 10 Euro).
To browse this DVD a small web server will be installed on the machine. Unfortunately there is only a Windows version. It runs on Linux using Wine, but on Mac it seems not to be a smooth thing.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue I was highlighting is that more than half the bandwidth consumed is by video, and is definitely not essential. Neither netflix nor youtube, which contribute to more than half of ALL internet bandwidth usage, are essential. Cut off streaming video and your bandwidth requirements drop significantly.
And the issue I was highlightning is, is that you just stop where your convenience is not affected. This is as arbritrary as it is selfish. You don't care about it, so it is a good thing if it disappears. People actually use Youtube and other other data intensive services for usefull things, for many people it actually would be a bad thing if they couldn't use it anymore. In Hungary Orban is severely limiting independent Radio and TV. The internet provides the last ressort to stream media critical of the government. It might not be of the slightest interest to you, but there are people who have a quite different view on this whole affair.
I would ask the same question of you. Who are you to decide what is essential and what is not?
Well, I didn't.That's my whole point. Just because I don't have usage of something, I don't call it "non-essential". The other way round, just because I like something doesn't makes it essential per se. My parents never used the internet. For them private usage or the internet appears to be completely non essential. They couldn't care less if you and me couldn't use the internet tomorrow. Does it mean, private internet is non essential?
The internet existed before streaming video, and it will continue to exist if streaming video were to disappear,
Yes, and telephone lines and TV cable existed before the internet and will continue if streaming the internet were to disapear. Postal office and newspapers existed before telephone and TV cable and will continue to exist if electronic communication were to disappear. The whole point is: you don't have usage for video and you declare it non essential. I say, that your distinction is arbritrary and pointless.
People already limit how much video they watch on their cell plans when they're not near a wifi access point, because otherwise they can burn through their month's allotment in one day. Is this a "bad thing", or "unfair", or whatever? No. It just indicates that streaming video is not essential, and they can postpone it until they can get it cheaper when near a wifi.
People will also limit the usage of internet in general with their mobiles if it gets too expensive. With high roaming costs for Euopeans this is actually an issue when crossing borders (which happens quite easily with all those small countries). Following your line of argument the whole internet is not essential.
One could say as well food, water and shelter are essential. The rest is convenience. But making an arbritrary distinction between the essential "internet" and non-essential "video via internet" doesn't make too much sense.
Last time I looked, electricity was already taxed. [...]
In effect we already do - vehicles use a lot more fuel in the first few kilometers before the engine gets to operating temperature, and car use is subject to a base tax rate (licensing) + taxes based on the amount of fuel used.
Well, it would be good for the environment if we used less electricity and fuel. So, yes, it is a good thing to encourage people to reduce their usage using taxes. And boy, do we have taxes on fuel in Europe! But what is the burden of video streaming? Which resources are depleted just because the existing grid is used to transport more information? Who would be interested in limiting information flow? Well, people like Viktor Orban would be very much interested in it. For him this is a very nice situation. If people continue using Youtube, his government will receive more money. If not - good for him as well. All those annoying people broadcasting unpleasent things about him via Youtube would lose viewers.
Streaming video isn't an essential part of the internet, any more than facebook is. [...] More than half of all bandwidth is now devoted to streaming videos. That doesn't mean it's essential.
The Turkish president Erdogan would agree full heartedly. Youtbue, Twitter - complete nonsense. Especially when people use those things to criticise his politics. So he shut those serivces down. Why whining - as it is non essential anyway?
What, stupid people in Hungary use Facebook and Youtube to criticise their government as independent newspapers, radio and TV have been shut down? Well, their bad if they use the same channel as those who just use them to distribute the latest news about their cats.
You do realize that before streaming video that there were other ways to do coursework online, right?
Sure, there was distant learning even before the internet using mail. Why stop with videos? Internet is not essential for private persons. They can go back to use the telephone and good old mail. And while we are at it: TV is also not essential, neither are Radio and lots and lots of other things. Just ask the Amish.
Who are you to decide what is essential and what is not? On Youtube one can watch cats falling from chairs, but as well online lectures about a wide range of topics, panel discussions, political and social comments, media critics and so on and so on. Just because you don't have a demand in videos doesn't mean that videos are in general something superfluous and something which is ok to get rid of.
Just last week, I was in Shanghai and I can say that from the Magnetic Levitation train to the technology that runs and manages public transit, those folks are way ahead of us.
Just for the record: that train is made in Germany. The technology which is used there is roughly 30 years old. It is not used elsewhere because for must cases it is simply too epxensive.
It is remarkable in the fact that all of the previous attempts to mix Quantum-"anything" with Relativity have pretty much spectacularly failed.
Sorry, but this is complete and utter nonsense. The mixture of RT and QM is successfull since the 20s. That there is antimatter for instance could only be predicted by mixing RT and QM (Dirac equation). Quantum Electro Dynamics made some of the most accurate predictions in the whole field of science. The so called Standard Model, which is beeing tested at the different particle acceleraters (e.g. CERN) is based on RT *and* QM.
What amazes me, is that this comment was rated "insightful"...
I was not aware that there was a special permit you needed to poke fun at institutionalized stupidity.
The point is: it is only stupid because of your cultural bias.
Allowing these people to dictate laws, when they obviously display an inability to understand the reality of hidden cameras and the impossibility of preventing photography, does put a huge burden on the sane members of society.
You didn't get it. They don't want to dictate laws. The respect for privacy in resident areas is something the Japanese usually respect without laws. They don't use fences, hedges, or laws to prevent people from taking photographs or just take a curios look - they count on the good behavior of the people around. This is the point where your bias (and that of others in this discussion) shows up: in your opinion if they are in the open air, they have to be aware that they can be photographed, filmed or just looked at. This is simply not the case in Japanese culture, where you can count on the mutual agreement, that even if somebody is able to take pictures of you and your home - he simply doesn't do it. This is THEIR reality. And there is hardly anything stupid about it.
Imagine you witness an accident. A person is killed, the body is lying on the street. Would you take a photo and put in on the web? How would you react if you would see others avidly taking photos with their mobile phones? Well, I think most people would respect the privacy of the dead and don't take photos, even if they could, hidden camera or not, and even if they would face legal consequences. There is a silent agreement in our culture not to do such things. You regard this as silly as well, and as not facing reality?
But that doesn't mean that you freeze a society in time. Japan's culture evolved out of the realities it faced. Now they are being faced with a new challenge and one thing history has proven time and time again is that ignoring the problem and pretending it'll just go away is never the solution.
But it's the decision of the Japanese how they handle this change, not that of a US-company, nor are North-American or European readers of Slashdot asked to judge it.
Who are you to tell me that my culture of pointing out stupid superstitions and useless beliefs is a bad one? I have as much right to criticize stupid views as people do to hold them.
And who are you to decide what are "stupid superstitions and useless beliefs"?
It's not disregard for a strange culture though, it's an unwillingness to oblige stupid requests.
What you show here could server as a textbook example for disregard of foreign cultures. The thing is: most people who do so, are not aware of it.
Growing up in a specific culture one acquires countless "silent" assumptions, things which go without saying. They seem to be so basic, that one tends to regard them as global and attributes them as "realistic", "reasonable" or even "logical". Therefore if someone from another culture shows a behavior which goes against those assumptions and basic beliefs, one is likely to call them "stupid" or "useless". Whereas it just goes against the own assumptions and beliefs.
It'd just be pure insanity if we were to actually give these people what would be required to accommodate them.
This is probably one of the most arrogant and stupid remarks I have heard or read in a long time. "These people" are living in a different country than yours. They have all the right to ask for what accommodates them in their own country. And they absolutely don't have to ask some Americans for their allowance or acceptance.
Of course not. It should be clear, that infants are not able to commit any crime after German law and therefore can not be criminals. Germany has simply another definition of citizenhood than the US. While the US citizenship ist based on the principle of jus soli, which means by the place you are born, the German one is based on jus sanguinis, meaning it is mainly determined by your heritage. Citizenship is ruled differently over Europe. France for instance has a law more similar to that of the US: children born on French soil have the right to get French citizenship. The difference to the US-law is, that it is not granted automatically, one has to request it.
Who says this? To my knowledge string theory was invented to explain the existence of different elementary particles. That it might explain gravitation as well came only later. But it's definitely still far too general to explain something like the mentioned discrepancies. String theory doesn't play a role in explaining rotational anomalies of galaxies.
This is not true. Big Bang theory starts a fraction of a second *after* the supposed beginning of the universe, when classical mechanics in form of Einstein equations are valid (that's why I asked for what you mean with "long time" - whether it extends to this moment). The standard theory makes no assumption about what happens at the beginning - exactly because the known limitations. What scientists are quite sure about is, that if they want to go nearer to the beginning, they have to incorporate quantum effects. And this changes the whole thing - including the fixed limitations of the Schwarzschild radius. An accepted try in this direction is the theory of the inflationary universe. But this theory as well goes nearer to the origin - but not fully. It even says, that it makes no sense to go to the very beginning, because the inflationary mechanism will wipe out all traces of information from the beginning, making it impossible to deduce anything.
You make the mistake to make a naive extrapolation - and then blame the theory for it.
My remark was not regarding String-Theory. I answered to the claim that current cosmological theories are based on faith. Current cosmological theories are not based on String Theory.
Ok, then please explain why the universe should have been inside a Schwarzschild-radius or point me to a source where this is explained. As I said: I never heard about this claim before.
Every theory has to fight with data which don't seem to fit. Theories are rejected, when the problems become overwhelming or if somebody comes up with an alternative, which has the at least the same power and can explain some of the difficultiers. Seems this didn't happen up to now.
I don't know who this guy is, but when reading this on his page (as criticism about the current explanation for gravity):
it is quite obvious that this guy didn't understand even the basics of the General Theory of Relativity. I made a similar logical error - when I was fifteen, after reading some popular science books without understanding what exactly they were talking about. There are other parts in his text, where he clearly - and with no doubt left, shows that he has no clue about what Relativity is about. Although I am not an expert on it, I studied physics and had a course in General Theory of Relativitiy - and it is obvious that he made errors like somebody who never had a formal introduction into Relativity. And frankly, I don't care the least about people who criticize a theory when they have only a vague, layman's understanding of it - which in this case is even severely flawed.
MoND explains why there are quarks, electrons etc.? It can explain why the proton has exactly the opposite charge of an electron? I must admit, I wasn't aware of the far reaching possiblities of MoND.
(OK, I know - "explaining" is a bit too much when talking about String theory, as not much of concrete information could be drawn from it up to now. But at least, that's what it is aiming at.)
That's simply not true. A theory has to explain observations. This is what current cosmological theories do. It is an observation, that galaxies seem to fly away from us, the faster the farer away they are. The standard cosmological theory with its Big Bang can explain it. One of the predictions of this theory was, that there should be a background radiation. That radiation was found and its temperature is in accordance with the calcualations. The theory of inflationary universe, which is an extension to the standard theory can explain why the radiation is so homogenous, why the world is more or less flat and it even can explain to some level the observed distribution of galaxies.
Can the cosmological theories explain everything? No. Have they gaps? Definitely. But this is something nearly every theory has to live with. When Newton came up with his theory of gravitation he also could give absolutely no explanation for the source of gravitation, he himself was not happy with the fact that a body has an influence at a place where it is not present.
I never heard about that. I am not an expert in cosmology, so I would be interested if you could point me to a source to read about this claim. And what do you mean with "long time"?
I don't understand - what besides putting your text in blockquote-tags would you prefer?
Relax, I just got modded up due to my karma - nobody has spent mod-points on me.
OK, I was taking "heritable" too narrow. Of course there are genetic factors determining intelligence - according to those studies, they make up roughly for half of the differences in IQ. But this still is no evidence for what Watson has said. Take a simpler example: height. Height is partly determined by the genes - but also by environmental factors. If you look at the distribution of height in a population, one might determine how much of this was due to genetics (similar to those IQ-studies). But if you have different means in two different populations, you can not tell, whether this is due to genetic differences or not. The difference between Europeans and Pygmies is definitely due to genetics. But that the US-Americans have been taller than the Europeans in the mid 20th century, was due to a different nutrition. After the Europeans got wealthier, the difference in height disappeared, nowadays Europeans of different countries (especially the Netherlands) are even taller than the average US-American. In as similar way: Just because there is a difference in IQ between black and white people and even though intelligence is influenced by genetics, one can not conclude based on those facts, that the black are less intelligent due to their genetic attributes.
When I was talking about education, I didn't mean the content - but the pure fact, that there is education at all. Somebody who gets a rich education tends to use his brain more than somebody who gets nearly none.
You mean being colonialized is due to lack of intelligence?
And there is even less evidence, that those differences can be explained by genetic factors. On the other hand it is a well known fact, that social factors have a huge impact on IQ.
Things are not clear. But to claim, that the differences *are* based on genetics is simply not supported by the scientific knowledge of today.
They don't attack Watson because they have a problem with evolution, but because there is simply no convincing scientific evidence, that what he says is true. According to most scientists the genetic differences between humanoid populations are far too small to explain such a crucial high level difference.
Starting end of 2005 the (complete) German version of Wikipedia is distributed as a DVD. They did it in cooperation with a company called Directmedia. This company runs the label "Digitale Bibliothek", which is quite common in Germany. It provides high quality digital works from different fields of the liberal arts, like anthologies, handbooks and collections of paintings. You can downlaod this DVD from Wikipedia but also buy it in a book shop or via Amazon (for about 10 Euro).
To browse this DVD a small web server will be installed on the machine. Unfortunately there is only a Windows version. It runs on Linux using Wine, but on Mac it seems not to be a smooth thing.