So the recent attacks on civilians by mobs in Lhasa are acts of terrorism. And the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole is not.
Terrorism is whatever people want it to be. That's what makes the entire concept so dangerous. The concept of terrorism exists only as an abstract manifestation of fear. It is a sensationalist word, used to rile people up into action.
Such acts should have never been called terrorism. All things that are called "terrorism" should be considered--and are only--acts of violence. Violence can be defined clearly, and it has a diametrical opposite, which is non-violence or pacifism or peace. Terrorism cannot be defined, and thus has no firm grounding in reality.
Keys don't have to be so rigid. It is possible to make a key that would make typing more like pressing down on a cushion than on a button.
What I'd be interested in is an interface with true tactile feedback for handwriting, along with serious handwriting instruments (i.e. styli with.5 mm or.3 mm tips). Currently, unless I put a dent in the screen, it's hard to tell whether I'm successfully dragging or not. The issue itself could be remediated with lasers, but I'd rather have that tactile feedback.
Mental interfaces would be pretty cool too, but we have a long way to go before we can have our player jump as we jump, and turn left when we're thinking left.
Besides the UI for the blind though, the rest of these are about as innovative as going to a soft-touch keyboard from one of those old clicky IBM model M's. And quite frankly, I prefer the model M's.
I wouldn't lump the JFK conspiracy theorists in the same category as the young earth people or the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. There's a huge body of evidence that points to JFK being assassinated by multiple shooters. The suspicious chain of events could be coincidence, but JFK would have to be damn unlucky for his death to remain unresolved after allt hsi time. And the resulting cover-up by the government with the magic bullet theory is only more cause for suspicion.
Yes, we don't and probably won't know who was really behind the JFK assassination. However, it's common knowledge that the affair isn't so simple as to be Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.
JFK conspiracy theorists are more like the conspiracy theorists on the air quality of lower Manhattan after 9/11.
It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent.
Bullshit. If you open your storefront for business, there is an implied consent for entry into your business. You are allowed to kick people out, to ban them outright. But you cannot sue people for tresspassing the moment they enter. You need "no tresspassing" signs, and at least a damn door.
I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your post since it's just a rant about how you want the damn kids off your lawn.
And I must respectfully disagree. The university is a place of academics--academia. It is, and should not be the real world. In fact, the biggest problem facing academia is the intrusion of the real world and the real world valus into the academic world, probably by people who think the same as you. Making money, PR, etc. all belong outside the academic environment (which is why the division between professors and adminstrators exists, and is necessary).
It's certainly not for professors to train students for the real world, partly because the real academics don't live in the real world at all. It's for the real world to train people for the real world. That's why there are entry-level jobs, and nothing interesting happens without three to fives years of experience at the least.
Academia stands for knowledge, for the pursuit of knowledge and knowledge alone. It doesn't matter if the result is the atomic bomb or antibiotics. It only matters that it's knowledge, that advances human understanding of the world around, regardless of how miniscule or trivial the advancement might be. There are no rules in academia, only what's possible, and what's impossible, and how to make the impossible possible.
You're partly right that it's part of the college experience to learn to become an adult. But it's not the college's job to teach that. That comes about with extracurricular responsibilities like part time jobs, eating and doing laundry regularly, or managing a club or whatnot. It's not the professor's place to be teaching about the real world, unless it's in "learn how to succeed in the real world 101" or it's in the context of an extracurricular activity. You don't learn how to get a girlfriend and get her to marry you in class, and you probably don't want to either.
And regardless of that matter, expelling a student for failing to follow the rules doesn't teach anything. It's only a form of punishment for the sake of punishment. Now, failing the class, or docking points from the final grade may be more reasonable, but even that form of punishment doesn't serve to teach.
It's easy to catch the cheaters: if they cheat on homework, they have to cheat to pass on the exams as well.
With respect to a math and science class, homework isn't meant to be done in isolation, and it certainly isn't meant to be assigned the same ethically rigorous standards of conduct that tests demand. Fundamentally, the purpose of homework is to encourage collaboration, so that the students can collectively supplement the teachings in class. Doing homework together isn't cheating. Getting the answers from someone else for a piece of homework isn't cheating. Finding the questions online and copying the answers verbatim isn't cheating. It isn't even plagurism, because there are a limited number of ways of solving each problem, and there's no expectation that every individual turn in their assignment with a novel solution--well, unless nobody in class knows just what the hell is going on and everybody's trying to BS their way through the problem hoping to get a few lucky points.
On the other hand, the understanding (and purpose) of an exam is that of individual knowledge and achievement. And that's the time to catch the cheaters who copy homework from others verbatim.
Obviously, different standards apply to liberal arts classes, where exams do not usually produce meaningful information, and hence where there actually is an expectation of novelty for assignments. But the arts stand diametrically opposed to math and science, as unlike math and science, there are no "right" or "wrong" results, only defensible and indefensible results.
This chem prof must be one of those jackasses who, while still in school, did all of his work alone and refused to lend assistance to any of his fellow students, especially if there was no tutoring credit. And he's probably justifying his own selfishness by imposing the same standards that he idealized as a student upon his students.
It would be great if people respected driving as much as most gun owners respect their guns, but it's impossible. People view guns and cars completely differently. Cars are a means of transportation. Guns kill things.
And besides, some people just don't respect things. The difference is that there are far fewer gun owners than drivers, and because gun owners have the threat of gun control looming over their heads, they're tend to be more cautious.
...only to pass him as he's starting from a dead stop at the now green light. There are inherent dangers to doing that too. If someone else on the other road runs the red, you'll have no time to stop, or even to notice. It's a good idea to brake or at least stay on the brake when approaching the intersection when the light has just turned green.
Yes I know, many people are going to shout that DVD's are GOOD ENOUGH. Fine. VCR tapes were GOOD ENOUGH too. So are YouTube videos for some people. Big whoop. Watching low quality 720p on a 1080 display just doesn't look as good as a true 1080 picture with 25-35Mbit quality.
It depends on what the subject matter is, and the medium upon which the media is being viewed.
For most things like shorts, some TV shows (game shows, reality tv, etc.), etc. youtube quality is indeed good enough. It could be better, but most people don't care. They're not watching for how nice the cinematography is or trying to count how many needles are stuck up someone's ass. The viewer is concentrating on the point or purpose of the video.
For certain movies and big budget shows, most people will want to go to HD. The thing there is that one, they're not going to put money into things they already have, and two, the price to entry into HD is still too high to justify, especially when their DVD player and discs still work perfectly fine. If they don't have the ability to get the whole HD setup in one go, most people would rather just buy a DVD and get that instant gratification.
As for VHS, well, VHS is difficult to compare to. It loses quality on playback as well as on backup, its media is relatively fragile, and so the advantages of DVD over VHS were much greater than the advantages of HD over DVD.
Maybe that was a typo, and they actually meant, 'a' instead of 'so'? It would make more sense, and I mean, the keys are practically next to each other.
About the only country I think you might potentially get really interested in helping the world would be China - but they'd want to do it their way.
China looks out for China and only China. If helping the world is a part of keeping China stable, then so be it. But you'd have to have a hand in it as well. Otherwise, China would only do enough to ensure it remains stable, potentially screwing you over in doing so.
For example, China will appease North Korea to keep it stable, regardless of what the US wants. It will also try to stop North Korea from having nukes to keep the region stable. China will not stop sending in aide just because the US decides to sanction it, because that will destabilize North Korea, and hence the entire region. That's why China doesn't care about Iran having nukes; China doesn't see any threat to its stability if Iran acquires and uses their nukes.
China is not a country interested in being humanitarian.
If they're here illegally they can't have much respect for the law anyway, even if they have a clue what the laws actually are!
Some are. But the vast majority are just trying to make a better living, send some money home, etc. Staying under the radar is key, so doing things like blatantly breaking laws would be counterproductive. The ones who breaks laws are the citizens who run the operations that bring in the illegals. They're far more likely to disregard other laws, since they're always criminals for assisting illegal immigration. They're also more likely to assert their power over the illegals, and hence employ (force) illegals to take up illegal activities like prostitution and drug smuggling.
So GP's method would be effective for yet another reason.
But, if you're going to put them in jail and burden taxpayers with them, you might as well put them to work...picking fruit, for example.
It actually didn't work all that well. Certainly didn't keep invaders from invading. It would have been far more effective (and cheaper) to just have a better military.
Actually, it did, and you should up on it before you make such an assertion. Wikipedia is a good place to start.
The last (and arguably the only) invaders to get past the current great wall that was built by the Ming were the Manchurians, who then overthrew the Ming dynasty and became the Ching/Qing dynasty. However, this wasn't because the wall itself was ineffective, but because one of the Ming officials' father whom had successfully repelled the Manchurians was executed in the most gruesome manner for his services to the Emperor (bits and pieces of his flesh were slowly cut away until he was dead). This in turn caused him to betray his Emperor and quite literally open the gates for the Manchurians to enter.
The other successful invasions by outsiders did not involve walls, as previously built walls had already decayed to ruins due to neglect, or there never had been a wall where the invasion began, or someone let the invaders in.
Regardless, having a wall without someone patrolling it and upkeeping it would be moot. Both a wall and a human force is necessary. A wall alone would be ineffective in that it wouldn't actually prevent people from crossing. People alone would be ineffective in that there's simply not enough people to stop everyone from entering. And a wall of people, well that'd be best, but good luck finding enough people to do that. Not even the illegals would be willing to stand out there in the desert arm-linked for 8 hours at a time...
The cost of development of both drugs and mathematical concepts (software) can be extremely high. And if you don't give companies the options of patents to protect their developments, you can immediately say goodbye to all open standards and scientific sharing. It'll all instantly switch to undocumented and obfusticated binary-only code. And since reverse engineering is simply too easy, the only workable model will be to create a new product with the advent of each incremental improvement they come up with. The cost of developing something advanced like H.264 can't exactly be covered by selling support books... I don't know why you were modded insightful, because it's clear you have no clue as to how patents affect society. The whole, "innovation will stop without patents" is a bullshit argument, and for two main reasons.
First, most software patents cover ideas that are trivial to implement. They might be novel in the sense that nobody's ever thought of it before, but that just means that nobody's actually gone ahead and implemented the idea, as opposed to nobodying having the idea. So no, it doesn't difficult to come up with new ideas in software.
And open standards are only open because they're either not patent-encumbered, or the patent holders have a written agreement not to charge for using their patents in the context of the standard. Patents are detrimental to open anything.
Second, do you really think the world will stop innovating without patents? Do you seriously, honestly think people will stop trying to one-up the competition without patents? The abolishment of sofware patents will not change the software industry. People won't stop adding features to the next version of their software because they don't have a patent on the feature. Mathematical algorithms currently patentable will be hidden behind trade secrets. Which, if you pay attention, companies already do.
Even if we did away with patents (and I'm not saying we should), innovation won't stop. People will just hide behind trade secrets, which they do already. There might be less incentive to innovate, and at worst, progress may slow down. But that's negligable in the long run. On the other hand, an overly restrictive patent system like one where processes can be patented won't just slow down innovation, it can potentially stop it dead in its tracks.
As for the pharmaceutical industry, it can go screw itself. If companies won't do research once formulas are no longer patentable, then someone else will. For example, universities and academics, where the majority of medical research was originally done. And instead of the companies getting huge federal grants to do the research, the universities will. Better yet, because pharmaceutical companies are very selective about the medical maladies they research cures for, and they absolute refuse to put money into the rare diseases and disorders because it won't net them a profit, giving the universities the money and resources would result in treatments for even the most obscure problems, because somebody in academia will be interested in it, and that interest would be incentive enough to do the research.
How do you think the world would have been if the Wright brothers had patented the airplane? An airplane is an object, a novel invention. The assembly line is a process. You're comparing apples to oranges. Regardless of whether there might have been prior art or not, seriously consider if Ford had really patented the process of construction using an assembly line. They would've still been fighting WWII on horse and foot, because the infrastructure to quickly build and deploy machines would have only been in its infancy during the start of the war. Or, perhaps Germany would have ignored the patent during WWI, resulting in their victory due to being able to outproduce the rest of Europe. It may largely be speculation on my part, but such drastic social differences are what results when processes, methods, algorithms are patentable.
Doubt is good. Doubt is a healthy part of critical thinking. Combined with research and possibly experimentation (although mostly research in evolution's case), this makes for good science. Unfortunately, people don't like doubt. They like certainties. And they don't like to think critically, or to do a lot of work to get to their certain, absolute answers.
That's where religion comes into play, and the fallacies that propogate from it as scripture. Actually, I could substitute "religion" for "superstition" and the pervious sentence would work the same. The only difference between religion and superstition in the western world is that superstition isn't written down. It gets a little murkier in the east, where major religions lean towards philosophy and superstition is regarded exactly as such.
Because as much as it sucks, including an appeal to authority is the only way most people will listen to an argument, logical or otherwise. Remember that 98% of this world appeals to some form of authority when looking for guidance or otherwise.
Essentially, fitting the founding fathers' idea of America gets equated with legitimacy in the minds of most Americans. The part that makes it acceptable is that arguments that fall on the side of the founding fathers usually aren't wrong; it's just so much easier and (more importantly) much more successful to bring up the founding fathers than to try to persuade with truly logical and coherent arguments.
Threads add a whole new dimension of complexity to the engine. The "right" way to do it may not even exist.
Extensions definitely should not have direct access to the threads. It would be an absolutely terrible idea. In fact, extensions shouldn't even know that there's multithreading going on behind the scenes. At best, extensions would be able to indirectly spawn threads and manipulate the spawned threads in a roundabout manner through that context using a thread-safe API.
That's there's someone working in Microsoft who's geeky and dorky enough to come up with this recursive acronym makes me wonder if there's hope yet for the company.
Actually, the more likely mindset is, "I'm so sad, but nobody pays any attention to me, so now I'm even more sad."
For the people who are always mad at themselves, emotion (depression, anger, etc.) does nothing to solve the problem. It's a response. Stop getting tripped up by the response, and start focusing on what needs to be done to be successful. Sometimes, it's seeing a shrink and getting professional help.
The placebo effect, while often startlingly effective, is only temporary, it always wears off. This is why people need regular treatments at chiropractors and acupuncturists.
I think you have a few things mixed up. Chiropractors tend to provide temporary relief to misaligned structure (which causes pain). They don't necessarily attack the underlying cause of the misalignment, which is why the pain returns. Sometimes, it is the fault of the chiropractor, sometimes, that's just the nature of the injury that it can't be fixed.
Acupuncture is retarded in the western world. It's not a form of pain therapy. It's a way to promote self-healing. I've see acupuncture bring patches of what's equal to severe frostbite back to life in a matter of three months. That's not temporary, and it's not pain relief (one feels no pain from the parts of their body that's died). It's not a miracle worker; it can't regrow toes or anything, but it can change body chemistry (for better or worse), and encourage things that normally wouldn't happen to happen.
You can't decide out of the blue not to be depressed. You can recognize the depression, and actively fight to counteract it and its effects. It's not easy--nothing worthwhile ever is. But it's doable.
What is usually most difficult and nearly impossible for some people is accepting their true mental state. Denial is the mind's worst enemy.
Some tips:
Have a crew. Depression can be overwhelming enough even in the company of friends, it's far worse alone.
Have a consistent schedule with said crew. It makes the time in between worthwhile.
Smile more. People who smile more tend to make the people around them happier. That elevates the happiness of the whole group of people.
Think the glass is half full. Or at least recognize the idea. Being able to see the other side, or the silver lining, is a big step to getting out of the depressed mentality.
Forgive and forget. Try not to get too hung up on anything, especially the negative things. Let go.
At the end of the day, resignation to being unable to do something is as good as not being able to do it. Never resign, never give up, always believe it is possible. It's not just about believing though. There needs to be substance behind the belief in oneself. So where there is failure, it just means there is a lacking, and that which is merely lacking can always be remedied.
You are absolutely correct. Conditioning in martial arts does this over a long period of time. It doesn't kill the nerve endings, but it does make the brain "used to" the signals.
On another level, there are meditations that will allow the brain to ignore "pain" signals. The most well-known of these meditation methods is the high level chi gung that top falun gung members practice, but it actually comes from a much older Chen Buddhist tradition.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like an anti-trust lawsuit waiting to happen, as soon as someone figures out what percentage marketshare they have.
So the recent attacks on civilians by mobs in Lhasa are acts of terrorism. And the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole is not.
Terrorism is whatever people want it to be. That's what makes the entire concept so dangerous. The concept of terrorism exists only as an abstract manifestation of fear. It is a sensationalist word, used to rile people up into action.
Such acts should have never been called terrorism. All things that are called "terrorism" should be considered--and are only--acts of violence. Violence can be defined clearly, and it has a diametrical opposite, which is non-violence or pacifism or peace. Terrorism cannot be defined, and thus has no firm grounding in reality.
Keys don't have to be so rigid. It is possible to make a key that would make typing more like pressing down on a cushion than on a button.
.5 mm or .3 mm tips). Currently, unless I put a dent in the screen, it's hard to tell whether I'm successfully dragging or not. The issue itself could be remediated with lasers, but I'd rather have that tactile feedback.
What I'd be interested in is an interface with true tactile feedback for handwriting, along with serious handwriting instruments (i.e. styli with
Mental interfaces would be pretty cool too, but we have a long way to go before we can have our player jump as we jump, and turn left when we're thinking left.
Besides the UI for the blind though, the rest of these are about as innovative as going to a soft-touch keyboard from one of those old clicky IBM model M's. And quite frankly, I prefer the model M's.
Kind of like...JFK conspiracy theorists.
I wouldn't lump the JFK conspiracy theorists in the same category as the young earth people or the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. There's a huge body of evidence that points to JFK being assassinated by multiple shooters. The suspicious chain of events could be coincidence, but JFK would have to be damn unlucky for his death to remain unresolved after allt hsi time. And the resulting cover-up by the government with the magic bullet theory is only more cause for suspicion.
Yes, we don't and probably won't know who was really behind the JFK assassination. However, it's common knowledge that the affair isn't so simple as to be Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.
JFK conspiracy theorists are more like the conspiracy theorists on the air quality of lower Manhattan after 9/11.
It has never been legally permissible to enter a building without the owners consent.
Bullshit. If you open your storefront for business, there is an implied consent for entry into your business. You are allowed to kick people out, to ban them outright. But you cannot sue people for tresspassing the moment they enter. You need "no tresspassing" signs, and at least a damn door.
I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your post since it's just a rant about how you want the damn kids off your lawn.
And I must respectfully disagree. The university is a place of academics--academia. It is, and should not be the real world. In fact, the biggest problem facing academia is the intrusion of the real world and the real world valus into the academic world, probably by people who think the same as you. Making money, PR, etc. all belong outside the academic environment (which is why the division between professors and adminstrators exists, and is necessary).
It's certainly not for professors to train students for the real world, partly because the real academics don't live in the real world at all. It's for the real world to train people for the real world. That's why there are entry-level jobs, and nothing interesting happens without three to fives years of experience at the least.
Academia stands for knowledge, for the pursuit of knowledge and knowledge alone. It doesn't matter if the result is the atomic bomb or antibiotics. It only matters that it's knowledge, that advances human understanding of the world around, regardless of how miniscule or trivial the advancement might be. There are no rules in academia, only what's possible, and what's impossible, and how to make the impossible possible.
You're partly right that it's part of the college experience to learn to become an adult. But it's not the college's job to teach that. That comes about with extracurricular responsibilities like part time jobs, eating and doing laundry regularly, or managing a club or whatnot. It's not the professor's place to be teaching about the real world, unless it's in "learn how to succeed in the real world 101" or it's in the context of an extracurricular activity. You don't learn how to get a girlfriend and get her to marry you in class, and you probably don't want to either.
And regardless of that matter, expelling a student for failing to follow the rules doesn't teach anything. It's only a form of punishment for the sake of punishment. Now, failing the class, or docking points from the final grade may be more reasonable, but even that form of punishment doesn't serve to teach.
It's easy to catch the cheaters: if they cheat on homework, they have to cheat to pass on the exams as well.
With respect to a math and science class, homework isn't meant to be done in isolation, and it certainly isn't meant to be assigned the same ethically rigorous standards of conduct that tests demand. Fundamentally, the purpose of homework is to encourage collaboration, so that the students can collectively supplement the teachings in class. Doing homework together isn't cheating. Getting the answers from someone else for a piece of homework isn't cheating. Finding the questions online and copying the answers verbatim isn't cheating. It isn't even plagurism, because there are a limited number of ways of solving each problem, and there's no expectation that every individual turn in their assignment with a novel solution--well, unless nobody in class knows just what the hell is going on and everybody's trying to BS their way through the problem hoping to get a few lucky points.
On the other hand, the understanding (and purpose) of an exam is that of individual knowledge and achievement. And that's the time to catch the cheaters who copy homework from others verbatim.
Obviously, different standards apply to liberal arts classes, where exams do not usually produce meaningful information, and hence where there actually is an expectation of novelty for assignments. But the arts stand diametrically opposed to math and science, as unlike math and science, there are no "right" or "wrong" results, only defensible and indefensible results.
This chem prof must be one of those jackasses who, while still in school, did all of his work alone and refused to lend assistance to any of his fellow students, especially if there was no tutoring credit. And he's probably justifying his own selfishness by imposing the same standards that he idealized as a student upon his students.
I dunno about you, but I certainly wouldn't use wikipedia as a source for this particular argument if I wanted to be taken seriously.
It would be great if people respected driving as much as most gun owners respect their guns, but it's impossible. People view guns and cars completely differently. Cars are a means of transportation. Guns kill things.
And besides, some people just don't respect things. The difference is that there are far fewer gun owners than drivers, and because gun owners have the threat of gun control looming over their heads, they're tend to be more cautious.
...only to pass him as he's starting from a dead stop at the now green light.
There are inherent dangers to doing that too. If someone else on the other road runs the red, you'll have no time to stop, or even to notice. It's a good idea to brake or at least stay on the brake when approaching the intersection when the light has just turned green.
Yes I know, many people are going to shout that DVD's are GOOD ENOUGH. Fine. VCR tapes were GOOD ENOUGH too. So are YouTube videos for some people. Big whoop. Watching low quality 720p on a 1080 display just doesn't look as good as a true 1080 picture with 25-35Mbit quality.
It depends on what the subject matter is, and the medium upon which the media is being viewed.
For most things like shorts, some TV shows (game shows, reality tv, etc.), etc. youtube quality is indeed good enough. It could be better, but most people don't care. They're not watching for how nice the cinematography is or trying to count how many needles are stuck up someone's ass. The viewer is concentrating on the point or purpose of the video.
For certain movies and big budget shows, most people will want to go to HD. The thing there is that one, they're not going to put money into things they already have, and two, the price to entry into HD is still too high to justify, especially when their DVD player and discs still work perfectly fine. If they don't have the ability to get the whole HD setup in one go, most people would rather just buy a DVD and get that instant gratification.
As for VHS, well, VHS is difficult to compare to. It loses quality on playback as well as on backup, its media is relatively fragile, and so the advantages of DVD over VHS were much greater than the advantages of HD over DVD.
Maybe that was a typo, and they actually meant, 'a' instead of 'so'? It would make more sense, and I mean, the keys are practically next to each other.
About the only country I think you might potentially get really interested in helping the world would be China - but they'd want to do it their way.
China looks out for China and only China. If helping the world is a part of keeping China stable, then so be it. But you'd have to have a hand in it as well. Otherwise, China would only do enough to ensure it remains stable, potentially screwing you over in doing so.
For example, China will appease North Korea to keep it stable, regardless of what the US wants. It will also try to stop North Korea from having nukes to keep the region stable. China will not stop sending in aide just because the US decides to sanction it, because that will destabilize North Korea, and hence the entire region. That's why China doesn't care about Iran having nukes; China doesn't see any threat to its stability if Iran acquires and uses their nukes.
China is not a country interested in being humanitarian.
If they're here illegally they can't have much respect for the law anyway, even if they have a clue what the laws actually are!
Some are. But the vast majority are just trying to make a better living, send some money home, etc. Staying under the radar is key, so doing things like blatantly breaking laws would be counterproductive. The ones who breaks laws are the citizens who run the operations that bring in the illegals. They're far more likely to disregard other laws, since they're always criminals for assisting illegal immigration. They're also more likely to assert their power over the illegals, and hence employ (force) illegals to take up illegal activities like prostitution and drug smuggling.
So GP's method would be effective for yet another reason.
But, if you're going to put them in jail and burden taxpayers with them, you might as well put them to work...picking fruit, for example.
It actually didn't work all that well. Certainly didn't keep invaders from invading. It would have been far more effective (and cheaper) to just have a better military.
Actually, it did, and you should up on it before you make such an assertion. Wikipedia is a good place to start.
The last (and arguably the only) invaders to get past the current great wall that was built by the Ming were the Manchurians, who then overthrew the Ming dynasty and became the Ching/Qing dynasty. However, this wasn't because the wall itself was ineffective, but because one of the Ming officials' father whom had successfully repelled the Manchurians was executed in the most gruesome manner for his services to the Emperor (bits and pieces of his flesh were slowly cut away until he was dead). This in turn caused him to betray his Emperor and quite literally open the gates for the Manchurians to enter.
The other successful invasions by outsiders did not involve walls, as previously built walls had already decayed to ruins due to neglect, or there never had been a wall where the invasion began, or someone let the invaders in.
Regardless, having a wall without someone patrolling it and upkeeping it would be moot. Both a wall and a human force is necessary. A wall alone would be ineffective in that it wouldn't actually prevent people from crossing. People alone would be ineffective in that there's simply not enough people to stop everyone from entering. And a wall of people, well that'd be best, but good luck finding enough people to do that. Not even the illegals would be willing to stand out there in the desert arm-linked for 8 hours at a time...
First, most software patents cover ideas that are trivial to implement. They might be novel in the sense that nobody's ever thought of it before, but that just means that nobody's actually gone ahead and implemented the idea, as opposed to nobodying having the idea. So no, it doesn't difficult to come up with new ideas in software.
And open standards are only open because they're either not patent-encumbered, or the patent holders have a written agreement not to charge for using their patents in the context of the standard. Patents are detrimental to open anything.
Second, do you really think the world will stop innovating without patents? Do you seriously, honestly think people will stop trying to one-up the competition without patents? The abolishment of sofware patents will not change the software industry. People won't stop adding features to the next version of their software because they don't have a patent on the feature. Mathematical algorithms currently patentable will be hidden behind trade secrets. Which, if you pay attention, companies already do.
Even if we did away with patents (and I'm not saying we should), innovation won't stop. People will just hide behind trade secrets, which they do already. There might be less incentive to innovate, and at worst, progress may slow down. But that's negligable in the long run. On the other hand, an overly restrictive patent system like one where processes can be patented won't just slow down innovation, it can potentially stop it dead in its tracks.
As for the pharmaceutical industry, it can go screw itself. If companies won't do research once formulas are no longer patentable, then someone else will. For example, universities and academics, where the majority of medical research was originally done. And instead of the companies getting huge federal grants to do the research, the universities will. Better yet, because pharmaceutical companies are very selective about the medical maladies they research cures for, and they absolute refuse to put money into the rare diseases and disorders because it won't net them a profit, giving the universities the money and resources would result in treatments for even the most obscure problems, because somebody in academia will be interested in it, and that interest would be incentive enough to do the research. How do you think the world would have been if the Wright brothers had patented the airplane? An airplane is an object, a novel invention. The assembly line is a process. You're comparing apples to oranges. Regardless of whether there might have been prior art or not, seriously consider if Ford had really patented the process of construction using an assembly line. They would've still been fighting WWII on horse and foot, because the infrastructure to quickly build and deploy machines would have only been in its infancy during the start of the war. Or, perhaps Germany would have ignored the patent during WWI, resulting in their victory due to being able to outproduce the rest of Europe. It may largely be speculation on my part, but such drastic social differences are what results when processes, methods, algorithms are patentable.
That's where religion comes into play, and the fallacies that propogate from it as scripture. Actually, I could substitute "religion" for "superstition" and the pervious sentence would work the same. The only difference between religion and superstition in the western world is that superstition isn't written down. It gets a little murkier in the east, where major religions lean towards philosophy and superstition is regarded exactly as such.
Because as much as it sucks, including an appeal to authority is the only way most people will listen to an argument, logical or otherwise. Remember that 98% of this world appeals to some form of authority when looking for guidance or otherwise.
Essentially, fitting the founding fathers' idea of America gets equated with legitimacy in the minds of most Americans. The part that makes it acceptable is that arguments that fall on the side of the founding fathers usually aren't wrong; it's just so much easier and (more importantly) much more successful to bring up the founding fathers than to try to persuade with truly logical and coherent arguments.
Threads add a whole new dimension of complexity to the engine. The "right" way to do it may not even exist.
Extensions definitely should not have direct access to the threads. It would be an absolutely terrible idea. In fact, extensions shouldn't even know that there's multithreading going on behind the scenes. At best, extensions would be able to indirectly spawn threads and manipulate the spawned threads in a roundabout manner through that context using a thread-safe API.
That's there's someone working in Microsoft who's geeky and dorky enough to come up with this recursive acronym makes me wonder if there's hope yet for the company.
It was five reactors that shut down in Florida today.
Actually, the more likely mindset is, "I'm so sad, but nobody pays any attention to me, so now I'm even more sad."
For the people who are always mad at themselves, emotion (depression, anger, etc.) does nothing to solve the problem. It's a response. Stop getting tripped up by the response, and start focusing on what needs to be done to be successful. Sometimes, it's seeing a shrink and getting professional help.
The placebo effect, while often startlingly effective, is only temporary, it always wears off. This is why people need regular treatments at chiropractors and acupuncturists.
I think you have a few things mixed up. Chiropractors tend to provide temporary relief to misaligned structure (which causes pain). They don't necessarily attack the underlying cause of the misalignment, which is why the pain returns. Sometimes, it is the fault of the chiropractor, sometimes, that's just the nature of the injury that it can't be fixed.
Acupuncture is retarded in the western world. It's not a form of pain therapy. It's a way to promote self-healing. I've see acupuncture bring patches of what's equal to severe frostbite back to life in a matter of three months. That's not temporary, and it's not pain relief (one feels no pain from the parts of their body that's died). It's not a miracle worker; it can't regrow toes or anything, but it can change body chemistry (for better or worse), and encourage things that normally wouldn't happen to happen.
You can't decide out of the blue not to be depressed. You can recognize the depression, and actively fight to counteract it and its effects. It's not easy--nothing worthwhile ever is. But it's doable.
What is usually most difficult and nearly impossible for some people is accepting their true mental state. Denial is the mind's worst enemy.
Some tips:
Have a crew. Depression can be overwhelming enough even in the company of friends, it's far worse alone.
Have a consistent schedule with said crew. It makes the time in between worthwhile.
Smile more. People who smile more tend to make the people around them happier. That elevates the happiness of the whole group of people.
Think the glass is half full. Or at least recognize the idea. Being able to see the other side, or the silver lining, is a big step to getting out of the depressed mentality.
Forgive and forget. Try not to get too hung up on anything, especially the negative things. Let go.
At the end of the day, resignation to being unable to do something is as good as not being able to do it. Never resign, never give up, always believe it is possible. It's not just about believing though. There needs to be substance behind the belief in oneself. So where there is failure, it just means there is a lacking, and that which is merely lacking can always be remedied.
You are absolutely correct. Conditioning in martial arts does this over a long period of time. It doesn't kill the nerve endings, but it does make the brain "used to" the signals.
On another level, there are meditations that will allow the brain to ignore "pain" signals. The most well-known of these meditation methods is the high level chi gung that top falun gung members practice, but it actually comes from a much older Chen Buddhist tradition.