Beside freedom people have also other rights, which you seem to have forgotten. Anyway, the people still living in Detroit do so, because they cannot just leave. Either these people have a job and not the prospect of getting one elsewhere or they have not the resources to move. So while the administration in Detroit messed up, the people still living their have to pay for it. On a side note, there is something called compassion. You cannot let them die, just because they are unable to solve their present crisis. This is pretty much inhuman.
And as the USA claim always to stay up for human rights: - Freedom (to go where you want, to work want you want, to pray to your favorite deity, own something, etc.) - Protection - Housing (you have the right to live somewhere) - Work (you have to right to be provided with work or something to do) - Education - Health http://www.un.org/en/documents...
So in essence, even if you have made a long list of wrong decisions and failed miserably, you still have these rights. And you deserve to be helped. If you are a criminal, your rights, especially freedom will be limited, because you are such a big disruption to other people rights.
Other studies have shown that impulse control is very important to be successful in any field. Especially when it comes to frustration tolerance. If you can stop yourself from procrastination, then you are more successful in the end. However, to much impulse control will make you a mentally sick person, which can result in any sort of lower fun in life for you and others.
I know this is an unfamiliar concept in the US, but the people in Detroit are in need and require help from the rest of the country. Their city structure is designed for a much larger population. Now the city must undergo a large transformation. First, it must be determined what the future for Detroit should be, otherwise it will end in chaos. Second, if the government and police are corrupt, this corruption must be ended. Third, initiatives to support start-ups and new businesses must be launched to support an initial growth impulse. To do all this, the state and the USA itself must support these steps. We had similar problems in North-Rhine-Westphalia and in East-Germany. In such situation you have two options: Let them solve their problem alone which will result in emigration of the skilled people to other regions or countries. The remaining people are mostly less skilled and educated, as their mobility is lower. Furthermore, women have a higher mobility than men, which will result in a men surplus, which often cause more violence.
From a civilizing view, this would be a catastrophe. It would also be disruptive to the state structure and therefor disruptive for any democratic society. As a state is a relevant construct for capitalism and the construction and coordination of a society, it is important to support Detroit.
The Jews in Germany were killed because they belonged to a specific group of people who had a reference to Jewish religion. All the accusations against them were wrong and just used to form a common enemy. This especially is true for the Reichsprogromnacht (Kristallnacht is Nazi vocabulary).
The attacks on Google employees is wrong, but they are triggered by a real impact these people have. Due to their high income they can pay more for houses, which triggers an increase in house prices. Therefore, other people are pushed out of the same area. The term for this is gentrification. This results in pressure on poorer people. So they get angry. A result of the gentrification in SF is also that the Google-people are destroying the very environment they want to join. Similar things happened in Germany's capital Berlin where the Prenzlauer Berg was former a by artists and other creative but poor people inhabited district, but is now occupied by richer "hip" people. There are also such conflicts in Hamburg.
The problem is a class based discrimination through money power. With the widening gap between low and middle/high class income, these problems increase. Cities have to cope with this by limiting the potential to squeeze out poor peoples of districts. The big money bubble presently floating around the world is also steering up house prices causing gentrification resulting in more violence in the end.
The 35 hours is not a fixed limit. As wikipedia states you can have up to 350 over hours a year without violating the criteria, which are approx 7 hours a week assuming that you have at least four week for vacation. Still it is better than what we have in Germany.
In Germany, France, Greece, and the Nederlands, there were work hour limits down to 35 hours (France), but in recent years, Germany for instance moved back to 40 hours for most jobs (there are exceptions in production). In France the 35 hour limit is not a hard limit, you may work longer, your company has then to pay "extra money". Furthermore 350 over hours per year are legal. With approx 48 work weeks, this is 7.3 hours per week overtime resulting in 42.3 hours. The funny thing is, the EU sets the upper limit at 48 hours http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
However, it is true that working conditions in (Western) Europe is better than in the US, which does not even have a working state-driven healthcare system.
Still with an average increase in productivity in, for example Germany, of 2-3% over the last decades, work hours should be much lower or the salary much higher.;-)
I totally agree with you. However, in reality the economy moved away from it. I personally would vote for that the increase in productivity must be compensated by a reduction in work hours, a union's position, but the present constitution of our economic system does not favor the idea of less work hours for everyone, especially not at equal pay.
In theory the number of work hours could and should drop. In reality they did not. Most jobs are not available as part time jobs, and the laborers get low salaries, so they cannot go for less money per month. Experiments in Europe with 35 and 38 work hours failed and were rolled back to nearly 40 yours or even more. The average work hours is by the way very stable throughout human history. Therefore, I doubt that there will be a reduction at least not capitalism evolves to allow such careers and the people change accordingly so that they can exists that way.
Your second argument is that people will migrate to new jobs when machine take over production and other simple cognitive tasks. I doubt that too. First, in history capitalism and in its wake industrialization happened because of a labor shortage. Causing higher prices. Machines could be operated by anyone with some training at that time. However, since the beginning of the computer age, the operation of machinery became more complex. This required increased productivity per person, but also limited the potential of workers able to do that task. It is unlikely that the cognitive abilities of humans will advance in general in such a way that we all can go into science, education or exploration.
There are only a few things machines cannot perform: a) Being there for someone as a human (even though the Japanese experiment with that): Jobs like, nurses, doctors, teachers, etc. fall in that category b) Working with abstract symbols, like researchers, teachers, doctors, complex business situations, diplomacy etc. c) Arts
So in essence it is compassion and intuition which machines do not have in conjunction with a self which is required for progress. That means people who are not exceptional in these areas will not be able to get jobs.
NetworkManager and its frontends for Gnome, KDE and other desktops should be improved in a way that the data is stored in database which should be encrypted and only be accessible through a local service for those users who own the keys.
Why do you think Harvard students are smarter than students from other universities? Honestly, Harvard's advantage is it superb network of alumni in high ranking positions.
Yes. That means you must be rich or dedicated and intelligent to study there. However, even the most intelligent people make stupid things and he could also be from the first group. Beside that, I do not believe that Harvard graduates are better in general than graduates from a normal university. They are only better connected to influential people.
For an exam there are other solutions to skip out. a) Redo the exam next year. If you have a problem with exams in general, see a psychologist. If you were only lazy, learn the next time. b) If this is your last chance to get through. You could be sick, you could go to a doctor or psychologist who provides you with proper papers to skip the test. c) You could realize that the topic your studying is not the thing you are interested in and find something else which is interesting. d) You could throw a butyric acid into the hall of your university. Ok this would get you into real trouble, but not into prison for 5 years. e) You could have an accident with a car. It could also be helpful to support option (b). f) You could really try to go to the exam. What could possible happen bad? You fail. And? Your still alive. You could still find a way through live for yourself.
As an EU citizen you could try to change the institution. However, it is easier to whine about it. And honestly, in most cases things coming down from the EU are planted there by the governments of the member state, so the bad things you talk about are actually from your government.
BTW: France is part of the EU as much as Germany or the Netherlands, therefore it is only fair to summarize all these countries with the EU flag, just like US states are all summarized by the US flag. Yes we are not that one country as the US is, but it is very close.
If I understand that correctly, it can work like a selection expression from XPath, aspect languages or graph search terms to match on the right "locations" in a lifeform body or any other complicated mixture, like soil.
The truth is that there are no big advances in nuclear power plant technology. There are ideas from the 1960 and 1970, like thorium reactors, breeder reactors or the pepple-bed concept. They all have been tried out and failed for different reasons. Present reactor technology is still based on the same concepts from the 1960s. Improvements in safety have been made, but only in small steps issued after accidents in plants. This is the same principle as in aviation where every crash is analyzed and used to improve planes.
For the pebble-bed thing. Germany tried it and they failed (see wikipedia). The only one having one operational is China (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-10). While it is stated that the design is saver than present western reactors, it uses graphite for moderation. It cannot burn as cooling is done by a non-burnable gas. However, a leak might introduce O2 and that can reproduce Chernobyl all over again. So I am not really convinced that this is a better solution. Furthermore, it is not a solution to the nuclear waste problem. And it is not a solution as a long-time energy source.
While after 50 years of nuclear energy, industry and research where not able to provide a complete solution, while the re-newable energy fraction have working machinery and also the energy storage problem is solvable, as we already have that technology even if it is not yet cheap, reliable or implementable everywhere. However, these issues are easier to fix than come up with totally new technology.
In summary he states that present nuclear technology is too dangerous, but that it is possible to create systems without the flaws. Well in that case we need prove. In addition we need a plan to do when we run out of what ever the source is for such nuclear technology. However, I cannot see how they can build a device which is able to recycle all waste.
Renewable sources are much easier to build, they allow to produce energy in a distributed matter reducing the risk of blackouts by plant failure. The only open issue is cheap and reliable energy storage. Presently, there exist technology to fill this gap, but they are not convenient enough due to their cost or their requirement (like pumped-storage power stations). Still this is much closer to a solution than the save and clean nuclear technology.
The problem is that the quality of a scientist is measured by the number of publications and the reputation of the journal or conference they published their work. However, both values do not measure quality. The first is just quantity and can be achieved by spreading results over different publications, which lowers the overall quality of every single publication. The second tries to correct this, by factoring in that good publication channels do quality checks with peer review. However, that fails when you look into peer review process. While in general it is a good idea, there are several problems with this. First, the review may miss the point of the publication especially when it is a new thought. Second, reviewer are more convinced of work which they know the author or the professor also listed in the author section. And third, even with good reviews, the program committee favors known and liked scientists over unknown scientists. So there is a lot of bias at work. Finally, the reputation of a publication channel is determined by its impact in the past. Even if it is crap right now, it is rated higher than a good publication just because of the history.
Beside these problems, the present system limits science and its potential outcome as scientists optimize for it. An alternative would allow for more think time. However, this is not possible with the present system. He does not propose a new one, but we should start thinking about a new one or lose our ability to innovate and increase our understanding of the universe.
There is a solution to this. It is called car rental. Also there is the concept of car sharing. If you live in a city there might already be such infrastructure available.
There are huge difference between the types of car buyers. People who buy trucks and use them for work, people who buy trucks and use them as ego compensation device, people living in cities who think they need small cars, people who think they need big family cars, like vans, etc. Not all of them would go for an electric car. I assume that electric car buyers (beside Teslas) live in cities, they are rather liberal, they reflect their behavior, at least sometimes, and they like to be trendsetters. However, the same people have also access to other means of transportation, because they live in cities. Cities come with buses, trams, underground and local trains, taxis, and lately rent a bike facilities. So these people have alternatives and they use it. If the self-owned electric car shall become the norm among typical car buyers, they have to address all buyer types, but that would require to improve the technology in many ways. The more people must chance to use a new product the higher is the risk that they do not buy it.
Honestly, we should not wait for the US to figure it out. Large lobby organisations and stupid backward politicians in conjunction with a not so well-informed (guess why) will hinder any green economy and renewable energy program. Instead the EU should just develop the guts to go renewable in the next 30 years. The only problem, we have to sack all the lobbyists... But still presently countries like Germany are ahead of the US. We will see if this is still true in 4 years.
It is time to stop using antibiotics in meet production at least to the extend we have to day. And it is time to invest money in antibiotics. Pharma companies have little interest in the research, as they cannot make a lot of money out of something which quickly cures you. It is more suitable for them to have chronic diseases.
While the population in Germany is strongly behind the renewable energy idea, the government never was, beside a short period of seven years including the German Green party. Since then, the renewable energy program has been attacked by the conservative party and the social-democratic party of certain federal states which are the base of large nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. So most of the achievements are based on the peoples persistence.
Slashdot Mirror
Beside freedom people have also other rights, which you seem to have forgotten. Anyway, the people still living in Detroit do so, because they cannot just leave. Either these people have a job and not the prospect of getting one elsewhere or they have not the resources to move. So while the administration in Detroit messed up, the people still living their have to pay for it. On a side note, there is something called compassion. You cannot let them die, just because they are unable to solve their present crisis. This is pretty much inhuman.
And as the USA claim always to stay up for human rights:
- Freedom (to go where you want, to work want you want, to pray to your favorite deity, own something, etc.)
- Protection
- Housing (you have the right to live somewhere)
- Work (you have to right to be provided with work or something to do)
- Education
- Health
http://www.un.org/en/documents...
So in essence, even if you have made a long list of wrong decisions and failed miserably, you still have these rights. And you deserve to be helped. If you are a criminal, your rights, especially freedom will be limited, because you are such a big disruption to other people rights.
Other studies have shown that impulse control is very important to be successful in any field. Especially when it comes to frustration tolerance. If you can stop yourself from procrastination, then you are more successful in the end. However, to much impulse control will make you a mentally sick person, which can result in any sort of lower fun in life for you and others.
I know this is an unfamiliar concept in the US, but the people in Detroit are in need and require help from the rest of the country. Their city structure is designed for a much larger population. Now the city must undergo a large transformation. First, it must be determined what the future for Detroit should be, otherwise it will end in chaos. Second, if the government and police are corrupt, this corruption must be ended. Third, initiatives to support start-ups and new businesses must be launched to support an initial growth impulse. To do all this, the state and the USA itself must support these steps. We had similar problems in North-Rhine-Westphalia and in East-Germany. In such situation you have two options: Let them solve their problem alone which will result in emigration of the skilled people to other regions or countries. The remaining people are mostly less skilled and educated, as their mobility is lower. Furthermore, women have a higher mobility than men, which will result in a men surplus, which often cause more violence.
From a civilizing view, this would be a catastrophe. It would also be disruptive to the state structure and therefor disruptive for any democratic society. As a state is a relevant construct for capitalism and the construction and coordination of a society, it is important to support Detroit.
The Jews in Germany were killed because they belonged to a specific group of people who had a reference to Jewish religion. All the accusations against them were wrong and just used to form a common enemy. This especially is true for the Reichsprogromnacht (Kristallnacht is Nazi vocabulary).
The attacks on Google employees is wrong, but they are triggered by a real impact these people have. Due to their high income they can pay more for houses, which triggers an increase in house prices. Therefore, other people are pushed out of the same area. The term for this is gentrification. This results in pressure on poorer people. So they get angry. A result of the gentrification in SF is also that the Google-people are destroying the very environment they want to join. Similar things happened in Germany's capital Berlin where the Prenzlauer Berg was former a by artists and other creative but poor people inhabited district, but is now occupied by richer "hip" people. There are also such conflicts in Hamburg.
The problem is a class based discrimination through money power. With the widening gap between low and middle/high class income, these problems increase. Cities have to cope with this by limiting the potential to squeeze out poor peoples of districts. The big money bubble presently floating around the world is also steering up house prices causing gentrification resulting in more violence in the end.
The 35 hours is not a fixed limit. As wikipedia states you can have up to 350 over hours a year without violating the criteria, which are approx 7 hours a week assuming that you have at least four week for vacation. Still it is better than what we have in Germany.
In Germany, France, Greece, and the Nederlands, there were work hour limits down to 35 hours (France), but in recent years, Germany for instance moved back to 40 hours for most jobs (there are exceptions in production). In France the 35 hour limit is not a hard limit, you may work longer, your company has then to pay "extra money". Furthermore 350 over hours per year are legal. With approx 48 work weeks, this is 7.3 hours per week overtime resulting in 42.3 hours. The funny thing is, the EU sets the upper limit at 48 hours http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
However, it is true that working conditions in (Western) Europe is better than in the US, which does not even have a working state-driven healthcare system.
Still with an average increase in productivity in, for example Germany, of 2-3% over the last decades, work hours should be much lower or the salary much higher. ;-)
I totally agree with you. However, in reality the economy moved away from it. I personally would vote for that the increase in productivity must be compensated by a reduction in work hours, a union's position, but the present constitution of our economic system does not favor the idea of less work hours for everyone, especially not at equal pay.
In theory the number of work hours could and should drop. In reality they did not. Most jobs are not available as part time jobs, and the laborers get low salaries, so they cannot go for less money per month. Experiments in Europe with 35 and 38 work hours failed and were rolled back to nearly 40 yours or even more. The average work hours is by the way very stable throughout human history. Therefore, I doubt that there will be a reduction at least not capitalism evolves to allow such careers and the people change accordingly so that they can exists that way.
Your second argument is that people will migrate to new jobs when machine take over production and other simple cognitive tasks. I doubt that too. First, in history capitalism and in its wake industrialization happened because of a labor shortage. Causing higher prices. Machines could be operated by anyone with some training at that time. However, since the beginning of the computer age, the operation of machinery became more complex. This required increased productivity per person, but also limited the potential of workers able to do that task. It is unlikely that the cognitive abilities of humans will advance in general in such a way that we all can go into science, education or exploration.
There are only a few things machines cannot perform:
a) Being there for someone as a human (even though the Japanese experiment with that): Jobs like, nurses, doctors, teachers, etc. fall in that category
b) Working with abstract symbols, like researchers, teachers, doctors, complex business situations, diplomacy etc.
c) Arts
So in essence it is compassion and intuition which machines do not have in conjunction with a self which is required for progress. That means people who are not exceptional in these areas will not be able to get jobs.
NetworkManager and its frontends for Gnome, KDE and other desktops should be improved in a way that the data is stored in database which should be encrypted and only be accessible through a local service for those users who own the keys.
Why do you think Harvard students are smarter than students from other universities? Honestly, Harvard's advantage is it superb network of alumni in high ranking positions.
Yes. That means you must be rich or dedicated and intelligent to study there. However, even the most intelligent people make stupid things and he could also be from the first group. Beside that, I do not believe that Harvard graduates are better in general than graduates from a normal university. They are only better connected to influential people.
For an exam there are other solutions to skip out.
a) Redo the exam next year. If you have a problem with exams in general, see a psychologist. If you were only lazy, learn the next time.
b) If this is your last chance to get through. You could be sick, you could go to a doctor or psychologist who provides you with proper papers to skip the test.
c) You could realize that the topic your studying is not the thing you are interested in and find something else which is interesting.
d) You could throw a butyric acid into the hall of your university. Ok this would get you into real trouble, but not into prison for 5 years.
e) You could have an accident with a car. It could also be helpful to support option (b).
f) You could really try to go to the exam. What could possible happen bad? You fail. And? Your still alive. You could still find a way through live for yourself.
As an EU citizen you could try to change the institution. However, it is easier to whine about it. And honestly, in most cases things coming down from the EU are planted there by the governments of the member state, so the bad things you talk about are actually from your government.
BTW: France is part of the EU as much as Germany or the Netherlands, therefore it is only fair to summarize all these countries with the EU flag, just like US states are all summarized by the US flag. Yes we are not that one country as the US is, but it is very close.
If I understand that correctly, it can work like a selection expression from XPath, aspect languages or graph search terms to match on the right "locations" in a lifeform body or any other complicated mixture, like soil.
The truth is that there are no big advances in nuclear power plant technology. There are ideas from the 1960 and 1970, like thorium reactors, breeder reactors or the pepple-bed concept. They all have been tried out and failed for different reasons. Present reactor technology is still based on the same concepts from the 1960s. Improvements in safety have been made, but only in small steps issued after accidents in plants. This is the same principle as in aviation where every crash is analyzed and used to improve planes.
For the pebble-bed thing. Germany tried it and they failed (see wikipedia). The only one having one operational is China (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-10). While it is stated that the design is saver than present western reactors, it uses graphite for moderation. It cannot burn as cooling is done by a non-burnable gas. However, a leak might introduce O2 and that can reproduce Chernobyl all over again. So I am not really convinced that this is a better solution. Furthermore, it is not a solution to the nuclear waste problem. And it is not a solution as a long-time energy source.
While after 50 years of nuclear energy, industry and research where not able to provide a complete solution, while the re-newable energy fraction have working machinery and also the energy storage problem is solvable, as we already have that technology even if it is not yet cheap, reliable or implementable everywhere. However, these issues are easier to fix than come up with totally new technology.
In summary he states that present nuclear technology is too dangerous, but that it is possible to create systems without the flaws. Well in that case we need prove. In addition we need a plan to do when we run out of what ever the source is for such nuclear technology. However, I cannot see how they can build a device which is able to recycle all waste.
Renewable sources are much easier to build, they allow to produce energy in a distributed matter reducing the risk of blackouts by plant failure. The only open issue is cheap and reliable energy storage. Presently, there exist technology to fill this gap, but they are not convenient enough due to their cost or their requirement (like pumped-storage power stations). Still this is much closer to a solution than the save and clean nuclear technology.
The problem is that the quality of a scientist is measured by the number of publications and the reputation of the journal or conference they published their work. However, both values do not measure quality. The first is just quantity and can be achieved by spreading results over different publications, which lowers the overall quality of every single publication. The second tries to correct this, by factoring in that good publication channels do quality checks with peer review. However, that fails when you look into peer review process. While in general it is a good idea, there are several problems with this. First, the review may miss the point of the publication especially when it is a new thought. Second, reviewer are more convinced of work which they know the author or the professor also listed in the author section. And third, even with good reviews, the program committee favors known and liked scientists over unknown scientists. So there is a lot of bias at work. Finally, the reputation of a publication channel is determined by its impact in the past. Even if it is crap right now, it is rated higher than a good publication just because of the history.
Beside these problems, the present system limits science and its potential outcome as scientists optimize for it. An alternative would allow for more think time. However, this is not possible with the present system. He does not propose a new one, but we should start thinking about a new one or lose our ability to innovate and increase our understanding of the universe.
I doubt that Amazon has to handle a similar amount of data than the LHC. However, the rest of your statement is correct.
There is a solution to this. It is called car rental. Also there is the concept of car sharing. If you live in a city there might already be such infrastructure available.
There are huge difference between the types of car buyers. People who buy trucks and use them for work, people who buy trucks and use them as ego compensation device, people living in cities who think they need small cars, people who think they need big family cars, like vans, etc. Not all of them would go for an electric car. I assume that electric car buyers (beside Teslas) live in cities, they are rather liberal, they reflect their behavior, at least sometimes, and they like to be trendsetters. However, the same people have also access to other means of transportation, because they live in cities. Cities come with buses, trams, underground and local trains, taxis, and lately rent a bike facilities. So these people have alternatives and they use it. If the self-owned electric car shall become the norm among typical car buyers, they have to address all buyer types, but that would require to improve the technology in many ways. The more people must chance to use a new product the higher is the risk that they do not buy it.
Honestly, we should not wait for the US to figure it out. Large lobby organisations and stupid backward politicians in conjunction with a not so well-informed (guess why) will hinder any green economy and renewable energy program. Instead the EU should just develop the guts to go renewable in the next 30 years. The only problem, we have to sack all the lobbyists ... But still presently countries like Germany are ahead of the US. We will see if this is still true in 4 years.
It is time to stop using antibiotics in meet production at least to the extend we have to day. And it is time to invest money in antibiotics. Pharma companies have little interest in the research, as they cannot make a lot of money out of something which quickly cures you. It is more suitable for them to have chronic diseases.
I thought we are the descendants of phone disinfectors, advertisement agents, and someone searching for a soap mine.
Antarctica is not a single point on the south pole. Have a look at a globe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Antarctica
While the population in Germany is strongly behind the renewable energy idea, the government never was, beside a short period of seven years including the German Green party. Since then, the renewable energy program has been attacked by the conservative party and the social-democratic party of certain federal states which are the base of large nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. So most of the achievements are based on the peoples persistence.