I'm not going to ask what you do for a job, but I'm curious how you found the time for that opus.
I'm not giong to argue with the gist of what you're saying, because I can't. A lot of what you said I know to be true, and some of it I hadn't even considered before. Frankly I'm surprised I could be bothered to read the whole thing at all...
In my defense though, I really wasn't having a dig at the US in particular (at least, that wasn't my intention) except insofar as the parent was pointing out what a good little global player the US is. He/she seemed to have said as much without any apparent understanding of what was going on behind those figures and what the impact was. I won't bash the US (or any country) for the hell of it because it's unproductive and antisocial, but when someone smugly waves their flag without an understanding of the most basic background issues, I'll gleefully tear them down - nationalism is a palgue of every generation, and sadly it seems to be rampant in America of late (a gross generalisation, I know, but I doubt you'll have the heart to disagree).
Anyway, as you clearly have a better grasp of the subject than anyone else posting in this topic (and more time in which to research and explain it), the torch is well and truly yours!;-)
Okay, this may be slightly flamebaity but... aren't there far fewer roads and road-signs in Eire? I may be wrong, never having been there myself, but that's the impression I've received from other people and reading. If that's the case, I imagine it would cost far less.
As for the advantages, I don't know how significant they'd be. Has it really made much difference in Eire? How often do we have a use for scaling things from mm & m to national kilometric distances? Not all that often, I'll wager.
Wow, where to start. It's said that you can't win against fools, and you are the proof.
yeah sure, ~100 later than almost everyone else did it.. which of course proves they are not stubborn at all;)
You talk as though France and the rest of the world took metrication on board at the turn of the 19th century, and then the UK brought up the rear. Do even a little cursory research and you'll realise how wrong you are and how rocky the global adoption of metric measurements was.
that only proves lack of vision
How exactly? What disadvantage does the left-side-drive give to the UK? The only shred of possible contention is that it means left-hand-drive cars are more popular (though by no means necessary), but since car markets are internationally segregated anyway, and since this is no more expensive than right-side-drive, it makes no difference. So what is it you envisage that the UK hasn't and that my statement proved?
yes u do have a similar situation there.. because the japanese train system was built by the english and i dont have to tell u who build the australian one.
And? Doesn't change the fact, does it. They are island nations with left-side-drive, and because they are island nations this has not been a disadvantage for them. What difference does "who built it" make to whether it's a workable system?
it could be a monumental task now, it would have been a small one when the other countries did it... and at the time, UK had a single reason not to do it - stubborness
Nooo I think the reason they didn't do it was because it was an unnecessary upheaval and cost - no matter how small - so would have been a wasted effort. I think we've covered this.
the benefits of converting to EURO now are also obvious but the UK still doesnt do it, although almost everyone else in the EU did it.. stubborness again
Riiiight. If this were such a clear-cut debate, I don't think there would have be so much discussion of it in the European and British parliaments, do you? Joining the Euro (and EU) is of clear benefit to those nations whose economies and standards of living are below that of other member nations, but that's hardly the case with the UK. There are positive and negative aspects to the single currency, and different nations have different priorities. There are people better informed and wiser than I, and certainly than you, who have not come to a firm conclusion either way, so I don't consider your uncorroborated opinion to be gospel in this.
umm.. sorry.. i'm not making a Suggestion i am stating a Fact!
Uh-huh. Kind of losing the initiative of debate and recourse here, aren't you.
your "rational decisions" sound more like a bunch of kids on the playground with the good old "we just dont wanna do it"
...and this after you saying, one line earlier, "What I say is not opinion but fact" without backing it up with argument or, indeed, fact? How about children in a playground saying "why on earth should we?" - if there's no advantage in doing so, it's a wasted effort. I think I'll manage to live with your taunts...
yes there were a lot other attempts.. and even more, a lot of them succeeded.. like the french invasion from 1066 and so on
All such attempts were made at times when there either was no traffic-passing convention, or when the invading forces were using the Roman-instated left-side rule. All the successful invasions resulted in the island adopting any newly imposed systems... which included left-side drive at the time. So that kind of fucks your "stubbornness" argument over, doesn't it. There has never been an appreciable attempt by right-side-dr
Couldn't agree less. The UK has adopted the metric system in pretty much all things, the only notable exception being the reference to miles rather than kilometres in signage.
The reason they haven't changed to kilometres is the same as the reason they haven't adopted right-hand-side driving - as an island nation there was no need to integrate their road systems with the rest of Europe - note that you'll find a similar situation in many island nations: see Japan, Australia. Modifying their entire road system, signage etc would be a monumentally expensive and disruptive task, with very little real benefit. The benefits of converting the imperial monetary and scientific measurement systems to metric are obvious, however, and the cost was not so outrageous, so they went ahead and converted.
To suggest that these decisions were made out of "stubbornness" is like suggesting that they maintained a large navy out of pride. It's just a matter of practicality, and attributable to geographic isolation. It's all a case of analysing the relative cost/benefits of any proposed change, and making rational decisions, which seems to have been the case in the UK.
They didn't refuse Napoleon's standard out of pride - they repelled any attempts of invasion, so no attempt to impose a standard has been made since Roman times. The original reason for adopting left-hand-side driving is irrelevant when deciding whether or not to adopt a different standard.
I know. I live there too. It was a joke. I don't think anybody really expects the fines to be funnelled directly into anti-proprietary avenues. Just imagine the PR stink...
Oddworld's a bit of an anomaly though. Abe's Oddyssey was fun, atmospheric and original (smacking of Prince of Persia though it did), Abe's Exoddus was more of the same, with some coolness on top, so it supported the "we love sequels" theory.
Then came the bloody third game with the psychic cripple toad, and they totally ditched the slick-platform style for some half-arsed semi-fps-puzzler. I couldn't bring myself to play more than a couple of hours before I wept bitterly into my shreddies.
I believe there's a fourth, but I can't summon the gumption to look into it after such a monumental disappointment.
Thanks for posting - it is a really interesting concept and I'm glad you're doing the work (though if you need another test-dummy, count me out please). I hope you'll post another article once you've got a shiny real-time working model that maps onto a monitor - this is slashdot after all:-P
I have a question though. Is the length of the whiskers pre-defined in constructing the image? Mammal whiskers are always growing, falling out, getting clipped (burned, in my cat's case - "ooh, that candle looks shiny..."), but they learn how to interpret and adapt to their whisker-sense. Presumably at this early stage it would be impossible to generate appropriate feedback for such learning, but do you intend to have similar learning algorithms going on with your whiskers at a later stage? With something as independent and unmaintainable as rovers, I would think it critical to account for whisker-damage in this way.
Another point that interests me is that of whisker-friction. If the whiskers could sense whether they were being "pulled" or not by friction on a surface, that might provide some useful (or at least interesting) information on the texture of an object, and wouldn't add significantly to the weight or complexity of the sensing apparatus, I suspect.
You're right, the French do adore standards - but if and only if they get to set them.
You'll notice there are two standards of Sea Mark (buoys) in existence globally. The reason? The french insisted on keeping their own standard when everyone else had a different one in place. So, everyone changed to the french standard. And when half the world had changed over, the french relented and went with the original standard...
I know, it's a bit silly to discuss "the french" as a generic collective, but this does rather smack of their culture. I love France personally, but sometimes they drive me mad too...
By the way, "My husband is a count...". I think you misspelled.
Oh I agree - we, they, whoever, are just as guilty, and it's just as bad. However, the "you" was in response to the parent poster, who was trying to point out what a good little exporter the US is without considering the context or impact of that fact. Had anyone else chosen to post on a similar tack with a similar culture of subisdy, they would have received a similar response from me. It wasn't a direct attack on the US, just an attempt to point out the parent's depth of misunderstanding of their own governments economic policies.
None of what you've said is untrue, but most of it misses the point.
As long as it makes the non-American feel beeter about themselves by putting down Americans, yes? Have you any idea what such subsidies cost the US? No, you probably don't.
If you'd bothered to read the rest of the thread, you'd see I quoted some figures - and pointed out how meaningless they are in context.
Do you have any idea what it cost the US to subsidize the military defense of Europe for so long? No, you probably don't.
Subsidise Europe's war effort??? Jesus, there's a spin I haven't heard before. You're right, I don't know how much. Do you? Nor do I think that's a relevant or helpful issue.
Or how about European subsidies? Oh dirty little truth there
Hardly. I'm as pissed off about them as I am about US subsidies. I'm pissed off about any subsidy that props up a first-world minor economy (agriculture is hardly our main export) at the drastic expense of third-world major economies. However, I wasn't on a moral high-horse about how the US is worse than anyone else. I was pointing out the fact that the massive food overproduction by the US is nothing to crow about, since it is supported artificially and to the detriment of most of the developing world.
Further, agricultrual exports account for less than 10% of US exports. The lion's share?
Yes, that's something I pointed out, if you'd read carefully. That's a key point, in fact. The food exports would be far lower if they weren't so heavily subsidised by the US tax dollar. My point? It is not nearly as important to the US economy to be exporting food as it is for most African nations, for whom it is in fact vital to their economic wellbeing. And yet, agriculture subsidies - US, EU and any other large player - artifically keep the exports high, the price of food low and thus cripple these third-world economies. You're just supporting my point, not debunking it.
But nonetheless, you entirely missed the point. The point is that the US is producing more key foodstuffs than it requires.
Did you even read my comment? That was exactly my point ffs! The US produces more than it needs, and (here's the bit you didn't get) does so only because it encourages its businesses to do so with subsidy, thereby artificially scuppering the world food market.
Most of what you've said displays only a basic understanding of world economics, ie from the pov of a consumer. I suggest you go and study some entry-level economics classes (that's economics, not business) and get your head around some of the more fundamental concepts before trying to bring anything else like this to the discussion table.
My original request for a figure was sarcastic, to point out that the original poster had given us lots of figures which really didn't amount to much in terms of discussion, but hadn't considered the facts surrounding the figures.
My argument was not constructed on the figures, but the subsidy policy of the US. Had the figure I originally gave you been half or double what it was, would it have made any difference? So few people have a clue what impact that kind of money has, economically, it would have only compounded the problem of providing data with no real relevant information. As the subsidy policy is an ongoing political stance of the US, I would think it unnecessary to trot out figures just to bolster the point as every Merkin or anyone interested in this particular debate should at least have an awareness of the politics involved.
Once again: the figures make no difference, and that WAS my argument (one of them, anyway), so giving figures to support my other argument would have been foolish, hypocritical and - since my argument was about the impact of policy and not hard figures - pointless.
Sorry? Losing their jobs to destitute Africans stuck in a war-torn province of a nowhere dustbowl? What exactly is your point?
Oh wait, did you mean the farmers, who have sacrificed lots of natural habitat etc to grow a massive excess of grain because the government gives them money to do so, that money being paid for by the American taxpayer?
Who said anything about having it both ways? I don't want it both ways. What I'd like is for the west - all of it, especially the IMF/WB - to stop imposing ridiculous sanctions, tariffs, subsidies and crushingly conditional development loans with chronic interest in order to maintain the status quo of the world economy, thereby preventing any impoverished or underdeveloped nation from getting on its own to feet and making a positive contribution to global production, and forcing them to rely on further loans and more restrictive conditions.
I think you get my point.
By the way, did it occur to you that blaming generic unemployment on globalisation is just a very PC way of saying "I don't care how tough it is on the other guys, I want my employability to be guaranteed"? If you want to be selfish then say so, but don't turn it into a fight-for-the-everyman. There are more everymen outside the US than inside.
The U.S. Agricultural Department is required by law to subsidize over two dozen commodities. Between 1996 and 2002, an average of $16 billion/year was paid by programs authorized by federal legislation dating back to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, the Agricultural Act of 1949, and the Commodity Credit Corporation, among others. Between 1995 and 2005 we're talking a total of $143bn in subsidies.
There, you've got your figures. Can you honestly tell me that it made a huge difference to your understanding? Anyone who doesn't work in agribusiness or global economics would have serious difficulty resolving those figures into something meaningful. Again, I insist, the figures themselves contribute very little to the debate. The issue is the policies that give rise to these figures, and the impact those policies have on the disadvantaged.
Now how about you try contributing something worthwhile instead of blithely saying "that's no argument". It wouldn't have even occurred to you to ask for a figure if I hadn't already done so rhetorically, so stop trying to sound like someone with anything intelligent to contribute, and bloody well contribute. You could have found those figures just as easily as me, but you really didn't care what they were - only that I hadn't stated them.
God knows I don't get anything out of our meetings, so how some industrial spy is supposed to is beyond me. Serve them right if they absorb non-productivity osmotically...
Actually, this is dead wrong. You could be sending megatonnes of the stuff, for all the difference it would make.
The big problem in "starving Africa" is not food, but war, corrupt government and diverted distribution. Africa is materially capable of self-sufficiency, but corruption and fighting always prevent the aid and resources from reaching those who most need it. I have hear first-hand stories of how import shipments of good grain, after a mysterious week's delay somehow end up arriving in port half their expected size and full of vermin and rot - and, curiously, of the same variety that the importing country was supposed to be shipping out.
And one of the main reasons for constant war and corruption? Manipulation of the global market through subsidy, sanctions and ridiculous demands by the western-led IMF & World Bank. Like it or not, we as a culture are pretty much directly responsible for all of the shit that's going on in Africa.
I've seen whole essays on this, and it's too depressing for me to go into any more detail.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not going to ask what you do for a job, but I'm curious how you found the time for that opus.
I'm not giong to argue with the gist of what you're saying, because I can't. A lot of what you said I know to be true, and some of it I hadn't even considered before. Frankly I'm surprised I could be bothered to read the whole thing at all...
In my defense though, I really wasn't having a dig at the US in particular (at least, that wasn't my intention) except insofar as the parent was pointing out what a good little global player the US is. He/she seemed to have said as much without any apparent understanding of what was going on behind those figures and what the impact was. I won't bash the US (or any country) for the hell of it because it's unproductive and antisocial, but when someone smugly waves their flag without an understanding of the most basic background issues, I'll gleefully tear them down - nationalism is a palgue of every generation, and sadly it seems to be rampant in America of late (a gross generalisation, I know, but I doubt you'll have the heart to disagree).
Anyway, as you clearly have a better grasp of the subject than anyone else posting in this topic (and more time in which to research and explain it), the torch is well and truly yours! ;-)
As for the advantages, I don't know how significant they'd be. Has it really made much difference in Eire? How often do we have a use for scaling things from mm & m to national kilometric distances? Not all that often, I'll wager.
You talk as though France and the rest of the world took metrication on board at the turn of the 19th century, and then the UK brought up the rear. Do even a little cursory research and you'll realise how wrong you are and how rocky the global adoption of metric measurements was.
How exactly? What disadvantage does the left-side-drive give to the UK? The only shred of possible contention is that it means left-hand-drive cars are more popular (though by no means necessary), but since car markets are internationally segregated anyway, and since this is no more expensive than right-side-drive, it makes no difference. So what is it you envisage that the UK hasn't and that my statement proved?
And? Doesn't change the fact, does it. They are island nations with left-side-drive, and because they are island nations this has not been a disadvantage for them. What difference does "who built it" make to whether it's a workable system?
Nooo I think the reason they didn't do it was because it was an unnecessary upheaval and cost - no matter how small - so would have been a wasted effort. I think we've covered this.
Riiiight. If this were such a clear-cut debate, I don't think there would have be so much discussion of it in the European and British parliaments, do you? Joining the Euro (and EU) is of clear benefit to those nations whose economies and standards of living are below that of other member nations, but that's hardly the case with the UK. There are positive and negative aspects to the single currency, and different nations have different priorities. There are people better informed and wiser than I, and certainly than you, who have not come to a firm conclusion either way, so I don't consider your uncorroborated opinion to be gospel in this.
Uh-huh. Kind of losing the initiative of debate and recourse here, aren't you.
All such attempts were made at times when there either was no traffic-passing convention, or when the invading forces were using the Roman-instated left-side rule. All the successful invasions resulted in the island adopting any newly imposed systems... which included left-side drive at the time. So that kind of fucks your "stubbornness" argument over, doesn't it. There has never been an appreciable attempt by right-side-dr
*sob*
Yeah, but you couldn't fit any tobacco in there - they're all full of internets!
The reason they haven't changed to kilometres is the same as the reason they haven't adopted right-hand-side driving - as an island nation there was no need to integrate their road systems with the rest of Europe - note that you'll find a similar situation in many island nations: see Japan, Australia. Modifying their entire road system, signage etc would be a monumentally expensive and disruptive task, with very little real benefit. The benefits of converting the imperial monetary and scientific measurement systems to metric are obvious, however, and the cost was not so outrageous, so they went ahead and converted.
To suggest that these decisions were made out of "stubbornness" is like suggesting that they maintained a large navy out of pride. It's just a matter of practicality, and attributable to geographic isolation. It's all a case of analysing the relative cost/benefits of any proposed change, and making rational decisions, which seems to have been the case in the UK.
They didn't refuse Napoleon's standard out of pride - they repelled any attempts of invasion, so no attempt to impose a standard has been made since Roman times. The original reason for adopting left-hand-side driving is irrelevant when deciding whether or not to adopt a different standard.
It's silly really, everyone knows Greenwich is not the centre of the world... it's the centre of the Universe!
I know. I live there too. It was a joke. I don't think anybody really expects the fines to be funnelled directly into anti-proprietary avenues. Just imagine the PR stink...
Half Life. You know it's true. (Episode One aside - I've yet to play them)
Give it time... this is Slashdot, man!
Then came the bloody third game with the psychic cripple toad, and they totally ditched the slick-platform style for some half-arsed semi-fps-puzzler. I couldn't bring myself to play more than a couple of hours before I wept bitterly into my shreddies.
I believe there's a fourth, but I can't summon the gumption to look into it after such a monumental disappointment.
I can't wait to see how quickly this tech is misunderstood by politicians and eco-warriors!
Thanks for posting - it is a really interesting concept and I'm glad you're doing the work (though if you need another test-dummy, count me out please). I hope you'll post another article once you've got a shiny real-time working model that maps onto a monitor - this is slashdot after all :-P
I have a question though. Is the length of the whiskers pre-defined in constructing the image? Mammal whiskers are always growing, falling out, getting clipped (burned, in my cat's case - "ooh, that candle looks shiny..."), but they learn how to interpret and adapt to their whisker-sense. Presumably at this early stage it would be impossible to generate appropriate feedback for such learning, but do you intend to have similar learning algorithms going on with your whiskers at a later stage? With something as independent and unmaintainable as rovers, I would think it critical to account for whisker-damage in this way.
Another point that interests me is that of whisker-friction. If the whiskers could sense whether they were being "pulled" or not by friction on a surface, that might provide some useful (or at least interesting) information on the texture of an object, and wouldn't add significantly to the weight or complexity of the sensing apparatus, I suspect.
I'd be really interested to hear what you think.
Excellent - when can we expect the FODder WP app? Wonderfully appropriate, in a government context :-)
You'll notice there are two standards of Sea Mark (buoys) in existence globally. The reason? The french insisted on keeping their own standard when everyone else had a different one in place. So, everyone changed to the french standard. And when half the world had changed over, the french relented and went with the original standard...
I know, it's a bit silly to discuss "the french" as a generic collective, but this does rather smack of their culture. I love France personally, but sometimes they drive me mad too...
By the way, "My husband is a count...". I think you misspelled.
Oh I agree - we, they, whoever, are just as guilty, and it's just as bad. However, the "you" was in response to the parent poster, who was trying to point out what a good little exporter the US is without considering the context or impact of that fact. Had anyone else chosen to post on a similar tack with a similar culture of subisdy, they would have received a similar response from me. It wasn't a direct attack on the US, just an attempt to point out the parent's depth of misunderstanding of their own governments economic policies.
Most of what you've said displays only a basic understanding of world economics, ie from the pov of a consumer. I suggest you go and study some entry-level economics classes (that's economics, not business) and get your head around some of the more fundamental concepts before trying to bring anything else like this to the discussion table.
Still thanks for that. Try again later.
Touche...
Where will the EU get the money for such a centre of innovation? They're already putting money into fining M$, so... ooooh, I see.
...but nobody said anything about complacency!
My argument was not constructed on the figures, but the subsidy policy of the US. Had the figure I originally gave you been half or double what it was, would it have made any difference? So few people have a clue what impact that kind of money has, economically, it would have only compounded the problem of providing data with no real relevant information. As the subsidy policy is an ongoing political stance of the US, I would think it unnecessary to trot out figures just to bolster the point as every Merkin or anyone interested in this particular debate should at least have an awareness of the politics involved.
Once again: the figures make no difference, and that WAS my argument (one of them, anyway), so giving figures to support my other argument would have been foolish, hypocritical and - since my argument was about the impact of policy and not hard figures - pointless.
Oh wait, did you mean the farmers, who have sacrificed lots of natural habitat etc to grow a massive excess of grain because the government gives them money to do so, that money being paid for by the American taxpayer?
Who said anything about having it both ways? I don't want it both ways. What I'd like is for the west - all of it, especially the IMF/WB - to stop imposing ridiculous sanctions, tariffs, subsidies and crushingly conditional development loans with chronic interest in order to maintain the status quo of the world economy, thereby preventing any impoverished or underdeveloped nation from getting on its own to feet and making a positive contribution to global production, and forcing them to rely on further loans and more restrictive conditions.
I think you get my point.
By the way, did it occur to you that blaming generic unemployment on globalisation is just a very PC way of saying "I don't care how tough it is on the other guys, I want my employability to be guaranteed"? If you want to be selfish then say so, but don't turn it into a fight-for-the-everyman. There are more everymen outside the US than inside.
There, you've got your figures. Can you honestly tell me that it made a huge difference to your understanding? Anyone who doesn't work in agribusiness or global economics would have serious difficulty resolving those figures into something meaningful. Again, I insist, the figures themselves contribute very little to the debate. The issue is the policies that give rise to these figures, and the impact those policies have on the disadvantaged.
Now how about you try contributing something worthwhile instead of blithely saying "that's no argument". It wouldn't have even occurred to you to ask for a figure if I hadn't already done so rhetorically, so stop trying to sound like someone with anything intelligent to contribute, and bloody well contribute. You could have found those figures just as easily as me, but you really didn't care what they were - only that I hadn't stated them.
Dick.
God knows I don't get anything out of our meetings, so how some industrial spy is supposed to is beyond me. Serve them right if they absorb non-productivity osmotically...
The big problem in "starving Africa" is not food, but war, corrupt government and diverted distribution. Africa is materially capable of self-sufficiency, but corruption and fighting always prevent the aid and resources from reaching those who most need it. I have hear first-hand stories of how import shipments of good grain, after a mysterious week's delay somehow end up arriving in port half their expected size and full of vermin and rot - and, curiously, of the same variety that the importing country was supposed to be shipping out.
And one of the main reasons for constant war and corruption? Manipulation of the global market through subsidy, sanctions and ridiculous demands by the western-led IMF & World Bank. Like it or not, we as a culture are pretty much directly responsible for all of the shit that's going on in Africa.
I've seen whole essays on this, and it's too depressing for me to go into any more detail.