Please. EU is the biggest market in the world, bigger than the USA. If a company pulls out or looses its positions in the EU market, its competitors gain so huge benefit that they can take challenge and take over markets of rest of the world. And by the way, when a company holds 70% - 80% of the market then it has gained an natural monopoly, competition in this kind of market happens only into extend that the company holding monopoly position or rules of the market allows it.
Sell itself to Intel, doesn't work as the competition authorities, either from the US or EU will prevent it. There is also an possibility that if Intel would become the only sole provider of x86 chips and have a monopoly on the markets, competition authorities could brake up the company.
Won't work if they don't get Microsoft behind their backs. Essentially Microsoft would need to make Windows hardware independent, which would benefit them as it would decrease the relative power of Intel, but then again transforming Windows and making all the work would take too long and take up too much money.
Again, without Windows they are dead in the water.
My own estimate is that they will make a complaint to the competition authorities of both the EU and the US on Intel levering its intellectual property to gain a complete market dominance. The EU has previously already ordered Microsoft to openly licence its protocols thus it could be probable that they could order Intel to openly license their intellectual property concerning x86 with a fair price. That is something that probably both Intel and AMD won't want, having a duopoly is much more profitable.
HDSPA upgrade to 3G WCDMA network. Offers down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 Mbit/s to quote Wikipedia. In Europe several telecom providers have already upgraded their networks to support HDSPA and offer speeds up to 3.6 Mbit/s and some over it. So Sprint looses the edge when ATT and T-Mobile upgrade their networks to support HDSPA.
Geography dictates what are the far reaching borders of Europe, but culture and values dictate who is an European and who is not. The countries that you mentioned have chosen not to participate at the fullest speed to the building of common Europe and thus they have distanced themselves from the heart of the Europe. If we look at the countries you mentioned, by looking at them you can see that they are still behind and can't let go even partly from their stringent nationalism, thus they have left out themselves from ever evolving Europe. Europe is the de-facto trademark of the EU. When ever there is talk about EU its a talk about Europe as the EU dictates where the whole area is going, countries that are not part of the EU follow the decisions that the EU does: when 500 million people jump in to the air, it affects the rest.
Switzerland is not embracing European values and European integration at its fullest, thought they have integrated their economy with EU via bilateral treaties. However as they don't embrace Europe and its values and thus they have distanced from the Europe and thus are not as European as countries in EU. Remember Europe is about culture, values and shared destiny.
Russia is an Euroasian country, it hasn't been European country for a while. After communist took power and moved the capital to Moscow Russia as whole as has step by step become more distant to European values and European ways of doing things. Russia will join Europe once again when it will once again have a true reformer and modernizer on board that will elects to abandon current way of doing things and embrace Europe and European values. Of course it may take hundred years or come sooner, but sooner or later Russia will become a part of Europe, at least when EU has re-constructed whole eastern Europe and Ukraine to western standards, Russia will have to start changing its direction.
Well, Europe essentially is the trademark of European Union. Countries belonging to the European Union form the core of Europe culturally, socially, politically and economically. Countries that aren't members of EU are usually trying to become more European so that they can join the European Union. In this sense to me it makes sense use Europe and European Union as synonyms as after all eventually all countries in Europe that are not part of EU will become part of it.
PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity. PPP relies on a theory that identical goods should have the same price. In PPP what you are looking is the exchange rates of different countries purchasing power. These exchange rates are calculated by in example building baskets of different goods, items, etc.. and calculating price differences between countries. In example if you have 500k dollars, in China you get a mansion, in USA you get a McMansion and in Europe you get a villa: you have differences on what your money can buy. Now these differences, exchange rates, are used to adjust GDP, meaning that the GDP of China goes up relatively much, the GDP of US gets up too and the GDP of Europe goes down. The weak point of PPP is that there just aren't identical goods in the real world: you have different regulations on different things in every country, different workers legislations, etc.. In principle PPP is a sound thing, but in practice it just is horrible approximation.
Now, GDP nominal, is more or less the real money, the real value, that the economy is producing. GDP PPP tells more about the living standards of normal people, the GDP nominal tells the raw power of the economy as it is based on the actual value of production. When measuring the power of different countries, GDP nominal is the way to go.
Oh no, you are using PPP values! You! You! Gah!...Why don't people learn!? You use GDP nominal, as in real money, to measure the economic power of different countries.
With GDP nominal the figures are:
USA: 13,84 trillion
China: 3,25 trillion
In real money terms China has the economic power equaling Germany that has GDP nominal of 3,32 trillion.
I have wondered the same thing many times. I think it's more about perceptions that the public and the decision makers have. Soviet Union was a super power with more or less first class space program. It seems that many Americans still think that after the USA the next best space program is ran by Russians because previously they had first class space program. The reality however is that after NASA the best space program can be found from ESA. I think that the American public and decision makers still don't understand that Europe isn't anymore full of disconnected small countries with ancient backwater industries and technologies, but that the European countries have pooled their resources together in many projects ranging from the European Union to ESA and CERN, thus forming collectives and collaborations that are in many areas first class in the world and can match anything that is produced in other blocks.
Of course it makes more dramatic headlines when you speak about USA and Russia collaborating than USA and EU collaborating. Usually the only headlines that you hear about USA and EU are about trade negotiations including which third world countries can import bananas to EU and with what import taxes.
Actually no. Official language has to be used by the businesses when offering products or services to their customers including minimal documentation and warnings. In example here in Finland we have two official languages, Finland that is spoken approx. 90% as a native language and Sweden that is spoke approx. by 5 - 7% of population, that both must be used by both the government and businesses. Also as the country has two official languages it is obligatory for all students to study both languages. It should also be noted that also in other European countries you can't just in example start a restaurant and put your items on English, usage of official language/languages are required.
You are wrong in few points. In almost every non-English speaking country the government has rules on using the local official language/languages. Governments also regulate local language/languages, having official rules on what words are accepted and what the grammar is. English maybe a de-facto world language, but that doesn't mean that other languages wouldn't and shouldn't be used: in example European Union has 23 official languages and every single official document is translated to every language. So, Quebec using French and rest of the Canada using English is not so unique or even troublesome situation. Also as Canada is a federal state and one of your states is French speaking, it's natural that the state of Quebec has the right and freedom to use their own language and embrace its usage as they like it. I would also like to make a note that French is very useful language to learn. If you are going to make business in France or Europe in general, its always a step up if you can speak some other language than English. Or if you are ever going to make business with European Union then knowing how to speak French is almost mandatory.
You have to pick your battles, not every fight is worth the cost. If I would be in your shoes I would quickly embrace your boss on seeing the wiseness of patenting the stuff you did, you both should hype it to the senior management and in the same turn negotiate with you having pre-IPO shares of the company. If all goes well your net worth will increase and in the best case scenario you get promotion and increase in your pay. With the added money you can either contribute it to political candidates and foundations that are against software patents or you can start writing articles about need for patent reform and posting them here on Slashdot.
True. I have to say that I really don't care anymore about Pandora or other Internet radio stations after I found Deezer. The thing I liked about both Pandora and Last.fm was that I could listen songs freely which lead into a habit of skipping songs or creating a new radio station just to listen the song again. I think that many people used Pandora and Last.fm this way. Now with Deezer I have the freedom to play whatever songs whenever I like to, that's the way I like it, so there is no need for Pandora or Last.fm anymore for me. In addition now Deezer caters decent radio stations based on more or less on their own selection. Pandora's and Last.fm's idea about having smart radio stations wasn't bad, but having your own customized playlists allow more freedom to you and pre-selected radio stations offer better and more coherent content than any smart selection.
I disagree with you on regards that samples make Finland separated on the map. To me the result of this study really doesn't come as an surprise. If we look at Finland's geographical location and it's history it would be a surprise if we would be genetically closer to our European neighbors. Geographically we have been isolated by other nations and people, yes other people have traded and had impact with Fins but that interaction have been very small compared as people have had to travel with boat to hear. Notable feature of Finland's geographical location in periferia of Europe was that Mongols didn't invade it. Also after Fins were converted to Catholicism the eastern regions of Finland were more or less in constant war/conflict with their eastern relatives that were converted to Orthodox faith. In addition we should also note the kingdom of Sweden had severe restrictions on who could come and locate to Finland. In example after the Lutheran reformation it was forbidden and punished by death for other than reformed to come or locate to the kingdom. Another example is that Jews were completely forbidden on locating to Finland, only after Finland became a part of Russia were Jews allowed to locate to Finland. In this sense its not a surprise that we are in the edge of the map separated from others.
I also don't think that Finnish position in the edge of the map wouldn't change even if there had been samples from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Russia. The Baltic nations have been in constant touch with Germans, Polish and Russians, but not as much with Finnish or Swedish. It would be interesting to know how close related Fins are to Ukrainian and Russians, but I believe that both of them might be closer to central Europeans as Germanic tribes have originally come from east and more importantly all these nations have interacted quite much with each other, note in example Volga Germans, and of course have endured same invasions as in example Mongols.
It would be nice to have more data and more results from different areas, but then again in a big picture data about such a small populations like Sami people wouldn't really make difference. On a note about Sami people, I read from Helsingin Sanomat that Finland is divided to too genetically different populations, the genetic line goes from Oulu to Kotka. People living in western Finland are genetically more related to Swedish and people living in the eastern and northern section resemble more on original natives that came to Finland. This of course nicely proves that there is something different about those evil bastards from Savo;)
Except they were bought by Johnson & Johnson so they are effectively in American hands. Still as I said before I would bet that public health care services all over Europe would rather use a public tool non-commercial tool than one commercial offering.
Virco is a US company and as you mentioned they have a commercial offering. Those two facts are enough for EU to set their own research and development activities in the field as it sponsors European ability to research and compete and it gives national health care services an free non-commercial alternative to use. Just good use of EU money in my opinion.
No. You were using GDP PPP per capita and not GDP nominal per capita. That was the problem. GDP PPP is bullshit and biased way on comparing different economies. GDP nominal gives you better ground on comparison of economies as it gives you values based on raw real money. For futher info see List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita and List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.
My other comment tells more about why you should not use PPP values.
The great things about GPD nominal is that is measures what is really produced: how much does the economy produce in real terms. PPP doesn't tell about production, it's based on prices of goods and here it goes all wrong. Firstly there are no identical goods, even Big Mac tastes different on different countries as the ingredients and work on terms of quality may change quite much. Secondly comparing just burger prices doesn't take account social, environmental and health factors: how do you add increased risk of getting shot at McDonalds during a robbery or how do you add usage of trans-fats to the price of the burger? Or lets make an example of something like housing. If you just compare on how big apartments people are living then you are not taking into account location, quality of housing etc.. In regards of housing PPP skews quite much numbers between different countries and regions as it's based on certain value: bigger is better. When bigger is better it's no wonder that US with endless suburban housing get bigger numbers than Europe or Japan who are more urban and concentrated. However bigger is not always better, I and many others value such thing as location, enviroment, social context, available services and so on. PPP is useless on measuring anything even regards of standards of living.
Now, the GDP nominal as I said is great because it concentrates on production and its total value. In your examples you make the mistakes of not taking account the production. If USA or EU would have half the population that they now have, their GDP per capita wouldn't double, as they would have less workforce. Actually if USA or EU would loose half of their workforce the network effects and lossage of economies of scale would bring the GDP per capita lower than it would be with normal population. On the other hand if you have price inflation and let say all prices in USA would double it would probably also decrease your currency's worth and in the end you would be in same relative position against other economies as the exchange rates would change. What I like about GDP nominal is that as its based on production and the real money value of that production, it tells the raw truth about economy.
PPP is useless as a figure. It's mainly used by people as an PR figure to hide the state of their economy or make it look better. When talking about economies and their differences GDP nominal should be used as its based on something real: the total value of production.
No no no! You are basing your opinion on PPP, purchasing power parity, that is totally useless way to measure economies. The right way is to use raw money that is GDP nominal. So the right source that we should be looking is the list of countries by GDP (nominal)
Unfortunately some asshole has removed once again EU from the list and other idiots are using PPP figures in the article telling about the economy of the Europe. Fortunately GDP nominal per capita can be found from the article about the European Union.
Here is short list of countries. It includes besides USA, EU and Japan notable EU countries below US GDP per capita and EU countries over the US. What can be seen from this list is that European countries in general have been gaining against both USA and Japan and some small countries have leaped over them. If we would have more recent figures that would take into account the decline of US dollar the numbers would favor even more European countries. So all in all, by GDP per capita nominal, we can conclude that all the countries in the list are more or less first world countries.
Dude, you are being ripped. In Finland, with normal plans and with pre-paid, sending SMS costs 0.069e and it's the same price to all networks. I myself have an packet plan that includes 500min and 100SMS to all networks costing me 19,90e per month. It's pretty decent thought I still feel that the telcos are ripping me.
Has anybody thought that this project might be, at least partly, about building SDI defense to cities? If you want to take ballistic missiles with laser then that laser needs enormous amounts of energy. Having an superconducting power grid would allow routing of the needed energy to the laser system... and hey, if this world would be a game of Civilization, New York along with Washington, would be the first places to have the SDI defense city improvement:)
This is not a post against or for abortion, leave that at the door. This is about genetically choosing what embreyo will develop based on a genetic profile that will match a template free of deases and pestilence... I think they tried this in Germany once, but it was rather low-tech at the time, but towards the same results. Populace without blemish. A Supier Race of humans to lead into the future. Think about that...
Actually eugenics was conducted on whole western world and the reason for it was more or less the concern that lower classes would breed more faster and lead to a devolution of the human race. In example the book Time machine tells at least partly about this underlying worry. To sort this problem out almost every country in western world had some kind of eugenics program that made restrictions on people producing offspring. However what happened in Germany under the Nazi regime and in Nazi occupied regions wasn't eugenics on a large scale but culture war in extreme where eugenics just played as an excuse. Nazis thought and saw that the reason great nations and empires in previous times were destroyed was that inferior cultures had corrupted them and thus destroyed cultural core that spanned the nations and empires achievements. This same idea can be seen in Soviet Union where ever continuing communist revolution would create Soviet human. The only difference between the Nazis and Soviet Union was that in Soviet Union there wasn't a eugenicist element and thus the ever continuing revolution with its eternal purges would make sure that old culture elements wouldn't make a return and Homo Sovieticus would prosper. So in essence we should drop references to Nazi Germany when we talk about embryo selection or intervening genetics as it really has nothing to do with it.
I also would like to add that currently if we compare people of our age to people in previous times we are more or less super humans at least as nations because we have more food, more medicines, better practices on caring and fostering children and free public schooling system that all contribute to people becoming taller, healthier, having larger life spans and being more intelligent than in previous times. So super humans, what is so bad with being a super human? Really? I would say that the fear of super human is the fear of a class society and the possible purge of its lower classes. I think that we shouldn't mix super humans in discussion with class society and to purges as having super humans in this day and age as the techniques and treatments required are available more or less to all.
Look, Here's the background: My wife and I got married and had a kid. (on/., right....) He had some "issues" but we worked with the doctors to figure things out. We still don't have a 100% match for the syndrome he has, but it is close to a few that usually are pretty bad with a whole host of bad things. At 4 years of age, he's been through a lot. Surgeries, etc.. Someone with genetic testing would of thrown his cells away or aborted him.
Oh, did I mention that he just recently had an IQ test as part of followup from his cranial surgery. It seems he is IQ'd at 131 and may have to be refered to special schools because he's genious range.
So, I put forth that genetic testings is not worth squat. It may tell you what could happen, but it cannot predict in any way how smart the end person would be. I'll take my son who will know more than I ever will, but be challenged vs. a "normal" kid with a "normal" IQ. It makes you wonder how many Einsteins, have been flushed down labatory sinks because they didn't have perfect genetic matches to some profile.
How do you know that your children wouldn't be as intelligent as they are now if they wouldn't have had any defects? How do you know? The answer is you don't know. I also would like to add that your children are as valuable and as human as every other human
Santa lives in Lapland Finland everybody knows that. For crying it out loud, why would Santa live in some god forsaken place like North pole, there are no liqueur stores in the North pole! Santa loves booze that's why he lives in Finland...
This smells like over engineering. The real problem is that there isn't enough power generation capacity and transmissions lines in place. Even if you make the network 'smarter', you don't fix these things. Actually I really can't understand why this is even a problem that should be addressed this way. You have 300 million people in US and you can statistically calculate when and where you need power, all you need after that is enough production and transmission capacity, balanced with a billing that has simple, but powerful enough schema to shape energy consuming. In example here in Finland many homes use seasonal pricing where there is one price for winter weekdays in 07-22, and one price for rest of the time. This scheme allows homes to warm water and houses at night, and power companies to lower load at business hours and keep the load higher at night.
The real question that should be asked, what does this tell about electricity companies and the environment they are working where they can't or want to use the simplest and efficient way to solve the energy problem? And no, this is not about carbon emissions, as new power generation capacity in form of nuclear, hydro and renewable energy solve that problem together very neatly.
Slashdot Mirror
Please. EU is the biggest market in the world, bigger than the USA. If a company pulls out or looses its positions in the EU market, its competitors gain so huge benefit that they can take challenge and take over markets of rest of the world. And by the way, when a company holds 70% - 80% of the market then it has gained an natural monopoly, competition in this kind of market happens only into extend that the company holding monopoly position or rules of the market allows it.
Few notes about the options in hand...
My own estimate is that they will make a complaint to the competition authorities of both the EU and the US on Intel levering its intellectual property to gain a complete market dominance. The EU has previously already ordered Microsoft to openly licence its protocols thus it could be probable that they could order Intel to openly license their intellectual property concerning x86 with a fair price. That is something that probably both Intel and AMD won't want, having a duopoly is much more profitable.
HDSPA upgrade to 3G WCDMA network. Offers down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 Mbit/s to quote Wikipedia. In Europe several telecom providers have already upgraded their networks to support HDSPA and offer speeds up to 3.6 Mbit/s and some over it. So Sprint looses the edge when ATT and T-Mobile upgrade their networks to support HDSPA.
Touché
Geography dictates what are the far reaching borders of Europe, but culture and values dictate who is an European and who is not. The countries that you mentioned have chosen not to participate at the fullest speed to the building of common Europe and thus they have distanced themselves from the heart of the Europe. If we look at the countries you mentioned, by looking at them you can see that they are still behind and can't let go even partly from their stringent nationalism, thus they have left out themselves from ever evolving Europe. Europe is the de-facto trademark of the EU. When ever there is talk about EU its a talk about Europe as the EU dictates where the whole area is going, countries that are not part of the EU follow the decisions that the EU does: when 500 million people jump in to the air, it affects the rest.
Switzerland is not embracing European values and European integration at its fullest, thought they have integrated their economy with EU via bilateral treaties. However as they don't embrace Europe and its values and thus they have distanced from the Europe and thus are not as European as countries in EU. Remember Europe is about culture, values and shared destiny.
Russia is an Euroasian country, it hasn't been European country for a while. After communist took power and moved the capital to Moscow Russia as whole as has step by step become more distant to European values and European ways of doing things. Russia will join Europe once again when it will once again have a true reformer and modernizer on board that will elects to abandon current way of doing things and embrace Europe and European values. Of course it may take hundred years or come sooner, but sooner or later Russia will become a part of Europe, at least when EU has re-constructed whole eastern Europe and Ukraine to western standards, Russia will have to start changing its direction.
Well, Europe essentially is the trademark of European Union. Countries belonging to the European Union form the core of Europe culturally, socially, politically and economically. Countries that aren't members of EU are usually trying to become more European so that they can join the European Union. In this sense to me it makes sense use Europe and European Union as synonyms as after all eventually all countries in Europe that are not part of EU will become part of it.
Yes you would! :)
PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity. PPP relies on a theory that identical goods should have the same price. In PPP what you are looking is the exchange rates of different countries purchasing power. These exchange rates are calculated by in example building baskets of different goods, items, etc.. and calculating price differences between countries. In example if you have 500k dollars, in China you get a mansion, in USA you get a McMansion and in Europe you get a villa: you have differences on what your money can buy. Now these differences, exchange rates, are used to adjust GDP, meaning that the GDP of China goes up relatively much, the GDP of US gets up too and the GDP of Europe goes down. The weak point of PPP is that there just aren't identical goods in the real world: you have different regulations on different things in every country, different workers legislations, etc.. In principle PPP is a sound thing, but in practice it just is horrible approximation.
Now, GDP nominal, is more or less the real money, the real value, that the economy is producing. GDP PPP tells more about the living standards of normal people, the GDP nominal tells the raw power of the economy as it is based on the actual value of production. When measuring the power of different countries, GDP nominal is the way to go.
Oh no, you are using PPP values! You! You! Gah! ...Why don't people learn!? You use GDP nominal, as in real money, to measure the economic power of different countries.
With GDP nominal the figures are:
In real money terms China has the economic power equaling Germany that has GDP nominal of 3,32 trillion.
I have wondered the same thing many times. I think it's more about perceptions that the public and the decision makers have. Soviet Union was a super power with more or less first class space program. It seems that many Americans still think that after the USA the next best space program is ran by Russians because previously they had first class space program. The reality however is that after NASA the best space program can be found from ESA. I think that the American public and decision makers still don't understand that Europe isn't anymore full of disconnected small countries with ancient backwater industries and technologies, but that the European countries have pooled their resources together in many projects ranging from the European Union to ESA and CERN, thus forming collectives and collaborations that are in many areas first class in the world and can match anything that is produced in other blocks.
Of course it makes more dramatic headlines when you speak about USA and Russia collaborating than USA and EU collaborating. Usually the only headlines that you hear about USA and EU are about trade negotiations including which third world countries can import bananas to EU and with what import taxes.
Actually no. Official language has to be used by the businesses when offering products or services to their customers including minimal documentation and warnings. In example here in Finland we have two official languages, Finland that is spoken approx. 90% as a native language and Sweden that is spoke approx. by 5 - 7% of population, that both must be used by both the government and businesses. Also as the country has two official languages it is obligatory for all students to study both languages. It should also be noted that also in other European countries you can't just in example start a restaurant and put your items on English, usage of official language/languages are required.
You are wrong in few points. In almost every non-English speaking country the government has rules on using the local official language/languages. Governments also regulate local language/languages, having official rules on what words are accepted and what the grammar is. English maybe a de-facto world language, but that doesn't mean that other languages wouldn't and shouldn't be used: in example European Union has 23 official languages and every single official document is translated to every language. So, Quebec using French and rest of the Canada using English is not so unique or even troublesome situation. Also as Canada is a federal state and one of your states is French speaking, it's natural that the state of Quebec has the right and freedom to use their own language and embrace its usage as they like it. I would also like to make a note that French is very useful language to learn. If you are going to make business in France or Europe in general, its always a step up if you can speak some other language than English. Or if you are ever going to make business with European Union then knowing how to speak French is almost mandatory.
You have to pick your battles, not every fight is worth the cost. If I would be in your shoes I would quickly embrace your boss on seeing the wiseness of patenting the stuff you did, you both should hype it to the senior management and in the same turn negotiate with you having pre-IPO shares of the company. If all goes well your net worth will increase and in the best case scenario you get promotion and increase in your pay. With the added money you can either contribute it to political candidates and foundations that are against software patents or you can start writing articles about need for patent reform and posting them here on Slashdot.
True. I have to say that I really don't care anymore about Pandora or other Internet radio stations after I found Deezer. The thing I liked about both Pandora and Last.fm was that I could listen songs freely which lead into a habit of skipping songs or creating a new radio station just to listen the song again. I think that many people used Pandora and Last.fm this way. Now with Deezer I have the freedom to play whatever songs whenever I like to, that's the way I like it, so there is no need for Pandora or Last.fm anymore for me. In addition now Deezer caters decent radio stations based on more or less on their own selection. Pandora's and Last.fm's idea about having smart radio stations wasn't bad, but having your own customized playlists allow more freedom to you and pre-selected radio stations offer better and more coherent content than any smart selection.
I disagree with you on regards that samples make Finland separated on the map. To me the result of this study really doesn't come as an surprise. If we look at Finland's geographical location and it's history it would be a surprise if we would be genetically closer to our European neighbors. Geographically we have been isolated by other nations and people, yes other people have traded and had impact with Fins but that interaction have been very small compared as people have had to travel with boat to hear. Notable feature of Finland's geographical location in periferia of Europe was that Mongols didn't invade it. Also after Fins were converted to Catholicism the eastern regions of Finland were more or less in constant war/conflict with their eastern relatives that were converted to Orthodox faith. In addition we should also note the kingdom of Sweden had severe restrictions on who could come and locate to Finland. In example after the Lutheran reformation it was forbidden and punished by death for other than reformed to come or locate to the kingdom. Another example is that Jews were completely forbidden on locating to Finland, only after Finland became a part of Russia were Jews allowed to locate to Finland. In this sense its not a surprise that we are in the edge of the map separated from others.
I also don't think that Finnish position in the edge of the map wouldn't change even if there had been samples from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Russia. The Baltic nations have been in constant touch with Germans, Polish and Russians, but not as much with Finnish or Swedish. It would be interesting to know how close related Fins are to Ukrainian and Russians, but I believe that both of them might be closer to central Europeans as Germanic tribes have originally come from east and more importantly all these nations have interacted quite much with each other, note in example Volga Germans, and of course have endured same invasions as in example Mongols.
It would be nice to have more data and more results from different areas, but then again in a big picture data about such a small populations like Sami people wouldn't really make difference. On a note about Sami people, I read from Helsingin Sanomat that Finland is divided to too genetically different populations, the genetic line goes from Oulu to Kotka. People living in western Finland are genetically more related to Swedish and people living in the eastern and northern section resemble more on original natives that came to Finland. This of course nicely proves that there is something different about those evil bastards from Savo ;)
Except they were bought by Johnson & Johnson so they are effectively in American hands. Still as I said before I would bet that public health care services all over Europe would rather use a public tool non-commercial tool than one commercial offering.
Virco is a US company and as you mentioned they have a commercial offering. Those two facts are enough for EU to set their own research and development activities in the field as it sponsors European ability to research and compete and it gives national health care services an free non-commercial alternative to use. Just good use of EU money in my opinion.
No. You were using GDP PPP per capita and not GDP nominal per capita. That was the problem. GDP PPP is bullshit and biased way on comparing different economies. GDP nominal gives you better ground on comparison of economies as it gives you values based on raw real money. For futher info see List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita and List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.
My other comment tells more about why you should not use PPP values.
No no no. *Sight*
The great things about GPD nominal is that is measures what is really produced: how much does the economy produce in real terms. PPP doesn't tell about production, it's based on prices of goods and here it goes all wrong. Firstly there are no identical goods, even Big Mac tastes different on different countries as the ingredients and work on terms of quality may change quite much. Secondly comparing just burger prices doesn't take account social, environmental and health factors: how do you add increased risk of getting shot at McDonalds during a robbery or how do you add usage of trans-fats to the price of the burger? Or lets make an example of something like housing. If you just compare on how big apartments people are living then you are not taking into account location, quality of housing etc.. In regards of housing PPP skews quite much numbers between different countries and regions as it's based on certain value: bigger is better. When bigger is better it's no wonder that US with endless suburban housing get bigger numbers than Europe or Japan who are more urban and concentrated. However bigger is not always better, I and many others value such thing as location, enviroment, social context, available services and so on. PPP is useless on measuring anything even regards of standards of living.
Now, the GDP nominal as I said is great because it concentrates on production and its total value. In your examples you make the mistakes of not taking account the production. If USA or EU would have half the population that they now have, their GDP per capita wouldn't double, as they would have less workforce. Actually if USA or EU would loose half of their workforce the network effects and lossage of economies of scale would bring the GDP per capita lower than it would be with normal population. On the other hand if you have price inflation and let say all prices in USA would double it would probably also decrease your currency's worth and in the end you would be in same relative position against other economies as the exchange rates would change. What I like about GDP nominal is that as its based on production and the real money value of that production, it tells the raw truth about economy.
PPP is useless as a figure. It's mainly used by people as an PR figure to hide the state of their economy or make it look better. When talking about economies and their differences GDP nominal should be used as its based on something real: the total value of production.
No no no! You are basing your opinion on PPP, purchasing power parity, that is totally useless way to measure economies. The right way is to use raw money that is GDP nominal. So the right source that we should be looking is the list of countries by GDP (nominal)
Unfortunately some asshole has removed once again EU from the list and other idiots are using PPP figures in the article telling about the economy of the Europe. Fortunately GDP nominal per capita can be found from the article about the European Union.
Here is short list of countries. It includes besides USA, EU and Japan notable EU countries below US GDP per capita and EU countries over the US. What can be seen from this list is that European countries in general have been gaining against both USA and Japan and some small countries have leaped over them. If we would have more recent figures that would take into account the decline of US dollar the numbers would favor even more European countries. So all in all, by GDP per capita nominal, we can conclude that all the countries in the list are more or less first world countries.
Dude, you are being ripped. In Finland, with normal plans and with pre-paid, sending SMS costs 0.069e and it's the same price to all networks. I myself have an packet plan that includes 500min and 100SMS to all networks costing me 19,90e per month. It's pretty decent thought I still feel that the telcos are ripping me.
Has anybody thought that this project might be, at least partly, about building SDI defense to cities? If you want to take ballistic missiles with laser then that laser needs enormous amounts of energy. Having an superconducting power grid would allow routing of the needed energy to the laser system... and hey, if this world would be a game of Civilization, New York along with Washington, would be the first places to have the SDI defense city improvement :)
Actually eugenics was conducted on whole western world and the reason for it was more or less the concern that lower classes would breed more faster and lead to a devolution of the human race. In example the book Time machine tells at least partly about this underlying worry. To sort this problem out almost every country in western world had some kind of eugenics program that made restrictions on people producing offspring. However what happened in Germany under the Nazi regime and in Nazi occupied regions wasn't eugenics on a large scale but culture war in extreme where eugenics just played as an excuse. Nazis thought and saw that the reason great nations and empires in previous times were destroyed was that inferior cultures had corrupted them and thus destroyed cultural core that spanned the nations and empires achievements. This same idea can be seen in Soviet Union where ever continuing communist revolution would create Soviet human. The only difference between the Nazis and Soviet Union was that in Soviet Union there wasn't a eugenicist element and thus the ever continuing revolution with its eternal purges would make sure that old culture elements wouldn't make a return and Homo Sovieticus would prosper. So in essence we should drop references to Nazi Germany when we talk about embryo selection or intervening genetics as it really has nothing to do with it.
I also would like to add that currently if we compare people of our age to people in previous times we are more or less super humans at least as nations because we have more food, more medicines, better practices on caring and fostering children and free public schooling system that all contribute to people becoming taller, healthier, having larger life spans and being more intelligent than in previous times. So super humans, what is so bad with being a super human? Really? I would say that the fear of super human is the fear of a class society and the possible purge of its lower classes. I think that we shouldn't mix super humans in discussion with class society and to purges as having super humans in this day and age as the techniques and treatments required are available more or less to all.
How do you know that your children wouldn't be as intelligent as they are now if they wouldn't have had any defects? How do you know? The answer is you don't know. I also would like to add that your children are as valuable and as human as every other human
Santa lives in Lapland Finland everybody knows that. For crying it out loud, why would Santa live in some god forsaken place like North pole, there are no liqueur stores in the North pole! Santa loves booze that's why he lives in Finland...
This smells like over engineering. The real problem is that there isn't enough power generation capacity and transmissions lines in place. Even if you make the network 'smarter', you don't fix these things. Actually I really can't understand why this is even a problem that should be addressed this way. You have 300 million people in US and you can statistically calculate when and where you need power, all you need after that is enough production and transmission capacity, balanced with a billing that has simple, but powerful enough schema to shape energy consuming. In example here in Finland many homes use seasonal pricing where there is one price for winter weekdays in 07-22, and one price for rest of the time. This scheme allows homes to warm water and houses at night, and power companies to lower load at business hours and keep the load higher at night.
The real question that should be asked, what does this tell about electricity companies and the environment they are working where they can't or want to use the simplest and efficient way to solve the energy problem? And no, this is not about carbon emissions, as new power generation capacity in form of nuclear, hydro and renewable energy solve that problem together very neatly.