What shocked me indeed was the headline of the posting. We have seen enough of these "This will shock you" in tabloids and lately even on CNN. I am shocked to see this at Slashdot on consecutive two days. Yesterday there was some other headline about how some rubber band shapes shocked scientists.
Let me read the headline and let me decide whether I want to be shocked or not. Why are you telling me that I will be shocked? Pathetic!! Real pathetic!! Nothing turns me off more than the following three types of headlines.
"What this person said will shock you" "XXX did what to stop XXX ?" "The five things every should..."
Slashdot is turning into tabloid. Instead of printing about trashy reality shows and gossip about royal families, they somehow find things related to technology. That's the only difference. Slashdot, this had been a major turnoff.
I agree that the peak power will be available only on peak summer on fine days. But disagree that the difference between peak power and average day power will be that much (4000 MW to 700 MW). The location they are talking about is desert with average annual rainfall . I would say 95% days in a year there are full sunshine with almost none or very little cloud. The summer is so hot that if you hang up soaking wet clothes, they will be dry in two hours. So without any data, I am going to venture and say the plant will operate at or close to peak efficiency for good amount of the year.
There is one stark difference between how all other groups immigrated to USA and how blacks immigrated. All other ethnic groups immigrated by their own will. Blacks were brought here forcibly for slavery (excluding the blacks that immigrated here in last few decades).
That immigration was demeaning and traumatic.
This is not to say they should not work on going forward and focusing on progress instead of victimization. I am just pointing out a big difference that makes that harder.
Indian here. I was in India when the newspapers were brimming with the news of how USA denied the technology to India. Ironically the desire in India grew exponentially when the technology was denied. Suddenly everyone from politicians, scientists, engineers, and even the street food vendors and Bollywood actors were interested in India developing cryogenic engine technology. Many of them couldn't pronounce cryogenic correctly. 99.99% of them didn't have a clue what it really was or what would it mean to their life if India were to develop cryogenic engines.
This psychological effect is extremely powerful. An Iranian friend told me once "I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons in general. But if USA and Israel do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, then I want Iran to have nuclear weapons." It's all about sticking it to the big bully, proving yourself. Suddenly it gives a point to the people to rally around.
And the resentment it causes when people realize that someone else is controlling them is so powerful and pervasive that I think it needs consideration in foreign policy design.
I am not saying go on handing over technologies to nations. But Americans vastly underestimate this type of resentment. The future potential cost of such resentment should be adequately considered while deciding what is in the best interest of USA. If you really have to do it, then at least launch adequate PR effort.
Why build a exorbitantly costly structure that needs to never fail, to fight a battle against an enemy that will never give up? Why not just make a plan to move away?
It's not like you have run out of land. There is plenty of land in California that's barren.
No matter how big all these companies are and how big cash they have, they are there to make profit using their product. They need to remain focused on the product and not get into construction business.
Very interesting argument. I agree that men and women are different. But still I think we need to have these arguments. Here is why.
My roots are in India. I am in US for a while now and can speak on both cultures. I see some stark differences in the way these cultures treat women.
I am in no delusion about the status of women in India. There are bunch of problems and overall woman's life in USA is better. I agree that.
But there is one major difference in the ways these cultures treat women. In India, a woman can be respected with all her feminine values. In USA, a woman can be respected only if she fits well in the male values. I know that in India a woman can shed a few tears, display emotions in public and still be respected as a strong leader in her field. Good luck to women in USA doing that. This is why India and even Pakistan have had a female chief of the country before USA. because to get to the top, women don't have to be what they are not.
Where does that difference come from? Because Indians have as many gods as goddesses and Americans have only one male god? I don't know. But we must have arguments to explore differences like this. Can you respect a woman only if she can become a man without a penis? Or can you respect woman even if she modifies the role of a CEO / President to suit her feminine nature and value? That's the question needs to be answered.
I don't understand insightful rating of the above post. Just painting a giant worldwide organization in one broad stroke - corrupt. The picture is more complex and less sensational than that.
Yes, there have been several cases of UN corruption. But UN has done some awesome things, especially UNICEF. It's completely crazy to see this whole discussion painting UN as useless dumb-asses. I am not defending bad things in UN. Just protesting clubbing good things with bad ones or insisting that there are not good things.
Totally agree with the NSA effect and the examples you gave. Let me add one more example similar effect of how a false media report can skew perception. The Prius recall due to accelerator getting stuck. I drove Prius for years before the recall news. But never felt any issue. After reading about it, I felt a couple of times my Prius was accelerating. Since I forgot about it, never been an issue.
Yet there is something different about Islam and other religions.
I would say it's not the existence of fanaticals, but the lack of liberals that separates Islam from rest of the religions.
In every other religion there is a strong liberal, self-critical voice. That voice always projects a different perspective, takes down the edge of extremist propoganda.
I log on regularly to Muslim forums and I see that there is no liberal voice there. They continuously post links that show how Muslims are targeted in non Muslim world. But they never hear about how non Muslims are targeted in Muslim world. If you try to make such argument, your credibility is already destroyed in their eyes. Many over there actually believe that 9/11 was orchestrated by US government.
The treatment of Muslims in non-Muslim world is distrusted and occasional discriminated. The treatment of non Muslims in Muslim world is horrible. It just never makes it to press.
In defense of founding fathers, the founding fathers may have been ok with things that are not accepted today. But what is more important is they set the country in the right direction. The direction where eventually as a society you figure out what's wrong and are empowered to take steps to correct it. Knowing what we know today, most likely the founding fathers would not have tolerated slavery.
I am not born in USA. Transplant here. But I am well familiar with American history and I think the founding fathers did a great job. Having said that the whole National security paranoia today scares me. This country is freaking separated by thousands of miles of sea from rest of the troublesome world. Only two neighbors up and down. They are pretty laid back and pose no danger. Can't you guys relax a bit?
I am a bit nervous as I am typing this as well. NSA, hello, if you are reading this, I am not your guy. I am rather interested in finding loose women on earth than virgins in heaven.
There might be a component of costs that is not in control of the universities. But a large part is.
I did my Masters in a US university and in the two years I was there, they destroyed two big dorms in perfectly good condition (I was living in one of them before they told me to leave and I had many friends living in the other and we were not aware of any problems or safety issues). Also they rebuilt a portion of the stadium and did some major renovation to another building. I was told the total construction budget was upwards of $800 mil over eight years or so.
Granted I didn't talk to the engineers behind those projects. But none of the students or faculty had heard of any problems with those structures. Those structures were in daily use and one day we just saw notices that they are going away. I could never figure out why those construction expenses took higher priority than giving scholarships to more students.
So how do you feel about this? Leaves bitter taste in your mouth? How can the world be so unfair?
Good. Stay with that feeling for a moment. Soak yourself in it.
Now you understand how I felt when I realized I was born in a much backward country and just by being born in a developed country I could have gotten much better life. That unfairness is how I have felt my entire life, since when I realized that fate handed me an unfair deal. That's how 80% of the world feels that lives in third world countries.
If you are trying to tell me that USA citizens deserve all the credit for making USA such a great country, I will beg to disagree. 50% of people don't even vote. Your ancestors discovered this millions of miles of pristine land which is safely separated from the rest of the world from thousands of miles of water bodies. They kicked out the original inhabitants and made it their own. They made great use of the resources and safety. I will grant you that.
But you can't say for sure my countrymen would not have done what you did if we were in your place.
There is one key difference in medical testing and NSA surveillance that no one seems to be talking about.
When I go to the doctor, it is politically and morally correct if the doctor looks at my race, age, gender, etc. and decides what is high risk to me and then narrow down the tests specifically for me. In short "discriminate" based on my age, sex, race, etc.
When a security enforcement person in a broad sense (NSA, cops, everyone combined), looks at you, they are not allowed to discriminate based on your age sex gender whether you should be monitored more or not, whether you should be kicked off the airplane or not. That makes them search needle in the haystack.
Don't get me wrong. I am not for all out surveillance. Merely pointing out a key difference between the medical and NSA world.
I second to that. Exact same situation and solution. My parents, both born in 40s, have iPads with netflix installed. Yes, high cost one time. But that one device gives them all, weather, newspapers, TV, video chat, pictures of whole family, games. They were not that computer literate and were not fond of computers before. But now love their iPads.
I am a Hindu by birth and I would still disagree with your rant against Christianity.
There is a lot of good missionary work being done, all over the world, including my country. It may be motivated in part by desire to convert. Nonetheless schools are being run and medicines are being administered under the flag of Christianity. It's still better if a life is saved by a religiously motivated person than a life not saved at all.
It has become a fashion to point a finger at organized religion as root of all evil. But I have seen Hindu and Christian organizations do a lot of good things and their source of motivation is their religious believes. Unfortunately those people never make headlines. But Hare Krishna and Westboro Baptist Church does.
When Jesus says love thy neighbor, one can add the neighbor in the list of people they love, or one can take out everyone but neighbor from the list of people they love. Those two are paths going in opposite directions, but both people can claim to follow Jesus.
The whole thing seems to be again correlation = causation thing.
The question of why some places have genetic diversity and some others don't has one easy answer. Moderate and stable weather. If there is moderate and stable weather people from other places will eventually move there and economy will grow. Some areas in Africa once had that weather and prosperous civilizations grew there. When the weather changed, they left.
Vast lands of Africa today are desert or tropical climate which is hot and humid. That plays a major role in people moving to Africa and thus it affects genetic diversity of Africa.
If the average person makes $1500, then half of the people are making more than that. Don't want to get in discussion about mean and median, but you know what I mean. Basically that's a lot of people, almost 600 million, that's almost the populations of USA and Canada combined.
The average gets twisted a lot by the low end figures. And don't forget a lot of black money that never gets accounted for. That adds to income of lot of people.
So the point is there are a lot of people who can buy a $10,000 car. And if enough people buy it, the next generation of the car will be cheaper and then more people will buy it.
Instead of saying ants use TCP, I would say ants and TCP both use common sense.
When I apply for jobs, I contact friends in my network. If someone gets back to me faster, I reply back faster and send my resume to them quickly. Does that mean I am following TCP/IP?
I agree to the parent. I agree in exerting control in moderation. However, the difference between what anonymous is doing and what a big corporate team of developers is doing is between doing a hit and run and driving a car for a long distance over a long time. The second task definitely needs a lot more control and management infrastructure in place.
Actually you could argue that it was the education that he received in Brazil that allowed him to take benefit of the system and make money. And his genes which he got from Brazilian parents. Because if simply "system" were enough to make you billionaire, everyone in the system, i.e. every American would be a billionaire.
Thousands of immigrants (including myself and either you or your ancestors) come from rest of the world to US shores. We learn on taxpayer's money in our home countries. And when we are of age to really start producing, we come to USA, which is totally unfair to our home countries. That is hard choice, but nonetheless we make it. Because USA is good place to live. People in our home countries don't like it, but on some level they understand the choice and welcome us nonetheless when we go back.
Do we as immigrants benefit from USA as a country? Certainly yes. But USA also benefits from getting talented, educated people with new ideas having directly available for work, without spending a penny on their education and upbringing. If USA did not benefit, it would simply not allow us to immigrate. Try being a 60 year old and immigrating here.
That's why I don't understand the outrage. Are you complaining this renouncing citizenship thing as unfair? But then why didn't you complain when you were "in money" in this game? Why shout only when things are not in your favor? That just sends a bad signal.
I already did this a long while back. Not only the color displayed on the screen matters for power, but even contrast and brightness settings also make difference. Higher brightness setting of the monitor result in more power consumption.
Yes, there have been cases of attacks on churches and missionaries. But for the bigger picture over longer time, that is not the norm.
Conversion can be still a sticky issue. But that can be true for USA also. And conversion from Catholicism to Methodism is not real conversion. How would a countryside rural family react if their child were to convert to say Islam or Hinduism?
Slashdot Mirror
What shocked me indeed was the headline of the posting.
We have seen enough of these "This will shock you" in tabloids and lately even on CNN.
I am shocked to see this at Slashdot on consecutive two days.
Yesterday there was some other headline about how some rubber band shapes shocked scientists.
Let me read the headline and let me decide whether I want to be shocked or not. Why are you telling me that I will be shocked?
Pathetic!! Real pathetic!! Nothing turns me off more than the following three types of headlines.
"What this person said will shock you" ..."
"XXX did what to stop XXX ?"
"The five things every should
Slashdot is turning into tabloid. Instead of printing about trashy reality shows and gossip about royal families, they somehow find things related to technology. That's the only difference.
Slashdot, this had been a major turnoff.
Sigh!!
I agree that the peak power will be available only on peak summer on fine days. But disagree that the difference between peak power and average day power will be that much (4000 MW to 700 MW). The location they are talking about is desert with average annual rainfall . I would say 95% days in a year there are full sunshine with almost none or very little cloud. The summer is so hot that if you hang up soaking wet clothes, they will be dry in two hours. So without any data, I am going to venture and say the plant will operate at or close to peak efficiency for good amount of the year.
There is one stark difference between how all other groups immigrated to USA and how blacks immigrated. All other ethnic groups immigrated by their own will. Blacks were brought here forcibly for slavery (excluding the blacks that immigrated here in last few decades).
That immigration was demeaning and traumatic.
This is not to say they should not work on going forward and focusing on progress instead of victimization. I am just pointing out a big difference that makes that harder.
Indian here. I was in India when the newspapers were brimming with the news of how USA denied the technology to India. Ironically the desire in India grew exponentially when the technology was denied. Suddenly everyone from politicians, scientists, engineers, and even the street food vendors and Bollywood actors were interested in India developing cryogenic engine technology. Many of them couldn't pronounce cryogenic correctly. 99.99% of them didn't have a clue what it really was or what would it mean to their life if India were to develop cryogenic engines.
This psychological effect is extremely powerful. An Iranian friend told me once "I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons in general. But if USA and Israel do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, then I want Iran to have nuclear weapons." It's all about sticking it to the big bully, proving yourself. Suddenly it gives a point to the people to rally around.
And the resentment it causes when people realize that someone else is controlling them is so powerful and pervasive that I think it needs consideration in foreign policy design.
I am not saying go on handing over technologies to nations. But Americans vastly underestimate this type of resentment. The future potential cost of such resentment should be adequately considered while deciding what is in the best interest of USA. If you really have to do it, then at least launch adequate PR effort.
That's all.
Why build a exorbitantly costly structure that needs to never fail, to fight a battle against an enemy that will never give up?
Why not just make a plan to move away?
It's not like you have run out of land. There is plenty of land in California that's barren.
No matter how big all these companies are and how big cash they have, they are there to make profit using their product. They need to remain focused on the product and not get into construction business.
Very interesting argument. I agree that men and women are different. But still I think we need to have these arguments. Here is why.
My roots are in India. I am in US for a while now and can speak on both cultures. I see some stark differences in the way these cultures treat women.
I am in no delusion about the status of women in India. There are bunch of problems and overall woman's life in USA is better. I agree that.
But there is one major difference in the ways these cultures treat women. In India, a woman can be respected with all her feminine values. In USA, a woman can be respected only if she fits well in the male values. I know that in India a woman can shed a few tears, display emotions in public and still be respected as a strong leader in her field. Good luck to women in USA doing that. This is why India and even Pakistan have had a female chief of the country before USA. because to get to the top, women don't have to be what they are not.
Where does that difference come from? Because Indians have as many gods as goddesses and Americans have only one male god? I don't know. But we must have arguments to explore differences like this. Can you respect a woman only if she can become a man without a penis? Or can you respect woman even if she modifies the role of a CEO / President to suit her feminine nature and value? That's the question needs to be answered.
I don't understand insightful rating of the above post. Just painting a giant worldwide organization in one broad stroke - corrupt. The picture is more complex and less sensational than that.
Yes, there have been several cases of UN corruption. But UN has done some awesome things, especially UNICEF. It's completely crazy to see this whole discussion painting UN as useless dumb-asses. I am not defending bad things in UN. Just protesting clubbing good things with bad ones or insisting that there are not good things.
Totally agree with the NSA effect and the examples you gave. Let me add one more example similar effect of how a false media report can skew perception. The Prius recall due to accelerator getting stuck. I drove Prius for years before the recall news. But never felt any issue. After reading about it, I felt a couple of times my Prius was accelerating. Since I forgot about it, never been an issue.
Yet there is something different about Islam and other religions.
I would say it's not the existence of fanaticals, but the lack of liberals that separates Islam from rest of the religions.
In every other religion there is a strong liberal, self-critical voice. That voice always projects a different perspective, takes down the edge of extremist propoganda.
I log on regularly to Muslim forums and I see that there is no liberal voice there. They continuously post links that show how Muslims are targeted in non Muslim world. But they never hear about how non Muslims are targeted in Muslim world. If you try to make such argument, your credibility is already destroyed in their eyes. Many over there actually believe that 9/11 was orchestrated by US government.
The treatment of Muslims in non-Muslim world is distrusted and occasional discriminated. The treatment of non Muslims in Muslim world is horrible. It just never makes it to press.
In defense of founding fathers, the founding fathers may have been ok with things that are not accepted today. But what is more important is they set the country in the right direction. The direction where eventually as a society you figure out what's wrong and are empowered to take steps to correct it. Knowing what we know today, most likely the founding fathers would not have tolerated slavery.
I am not born in USA. Transplant here. But I am well familiar with American history and I think the founding fathers did a great job. Having said that the whole National security paranoia today scares me. This country is freaking separated by thousands of miles of sea from rest of the troublesome world. Only two neighbors up and down. They are pretty laid back and pose no danger. Can't you guys relax a bit?
I am a bit nervous as I am typing this as well. NSA, hello, if you are reading this, I am not your guy. I am rather interested in finding loose women on earth than virgins in heaven.
There might be a component of costs that is not in control of the universities. But a large part is.
I did my Masters in a US university and in the two years I was there, they destroyed two big dorms in perfectly good condition (I was living in one of them before they told me to leave and I had many friends living in the other and we were not aware of any problems or safety issues). Also they rebuilt a portion of the stadium and did some major renovation to another building. I was told the total construction budget was upwards of $800 mil over eight years or so.
Granted I didn't talk to the engineers behind those projects. But none of the students or faculty had heard of any problems with those structures. Those structures were in daily use and one day we just saw notices that they are going away. I could never figure out why those construction expenses took higher priority than giving scholarships to more students.
While this can possibly explain the tunnel and the white light, how can this explain people seeing things even when their eyes were closed?
So how do you feel about this? Leaves bitter taste in your mouth? How can the world be so unfair?
Good. Stay with that feeling for a moment. Soak yourself in it.
Now you understand how I felt when I realized I was born in a much backward country and just by being born in a developed country I could have gotten much better life. That unfairness is how I have felt my entire life, since when I realized that fate handed me an unfair deal. That's how 80% of the world feels that lives in third world countries.
If you are trying to tell me that USA citizens deserve all the credit for making USA such a great country, I will beg to disagree. 50% of people don't even vote. Your ancestors discovered this millions of miles of pristine land which is safely separated from the rest of the world from thousands of miles of water bodies. They kicked out the original inhabitants and made it their own. They made great use of the resources and safety. I will grant you that.
But you can't say for sure my countrymen would not have done what you did if we were in your place.
I have a strong suspicion that it's not 1 in 100 visit that proves fruitful. Most likely the false alarm rate is more than that.
If it is, then it scares me more than the terrorist attacks. I worry that the national debt will kill this country before terrorists.
There is one key difference in medical testing and NSA surveillance that no one seems to be talking about.
When I go to the doctor, it is politically and morally correct if the doctor looks at my race, age, gender, etc. and decides what is high risk to me and then narrow down the tests specifically for me. In short "discriminate" based on my age, sex, race, etc.
When a security enforcement person in a broad sense (NSA, cops, everyone combined), looks at you, they are not allowed to discriminate based on your age sex gender whether you should be monitored more or not, whether you should be kicked off the airplane or not. That makes them search needle in the haystack.
Don't get me wrong. I am not for all out surveillance. Merely pointing out a key difference between the medical and NSA world.
K
I second to that. Exact same situation and solution. My parents, both born in 40s, have iPads with netflix installed. Yes, high cost one time. But that one device gives them all, weather, newspapers, TV, video chat, pictures of whole family, games. They were not that computer literate and were not fond of computers before. But now love their iPads.
I am a Hindu by birth and I would still disagree with your rant against Christianity.
There is a lot of good missionary work being done, all over the world, including my country. It may be motivated in part by desire to convert. Nonetheless schools are being run and medicines are being administered under the flag of Christianity. It's still better if a life is saved by a religiously motivated person than a life not saved at all.
It has become a fashion to point a finger at organized religion as root of all evil. But I have seen Hindu and Christian organizations do a lot of good things and their source of motivation is their religious believes. Unfortunately those people never make headlines. But Hare Krishna and Westboro Baptist Church does.
When Jesus says love thy neighbor, one can add the neighbor in the list of people they love, or one can take out everyone but neighbor from the list of people they love. Those two are paths going in opposite directions, but both people can claim to follow Jesus.
The whole thing seems to be again correlation = causation thing.
The question of why some places have genetic diversity and some others don't has one easy answer. Moderate and stable weather. If there is moderate and stable weather people from other places will eventually move there and economy will grow. Some areas in Africa once had that weather and prosperous civilizations grew there. When the weather changed, they left.
Vast lands of Africa today are desert or tropical climate which is hot and humid. That plays a major role in people moving to Africa and thus it affects genetic diversity of Africa.
If the average person makes $1500, then half of the people are making more than that. Don't want to get in discussion about mean and median, but you know what I mean. Basically that's a lot of people, almost 600 million, that's almost the populations of USA and Canada combined.
The average gets twisted a lot by the low end figures. And don't forget a lot of black money that never gets accounted for. That adds to income of lot of people.
So the point is there are a lot of people who can buy a $10,000 car. And if enough people buy it, the next generation of the car will be cheaper and then more people will buy it.
I honestly didn't see a lot of substance here.
Instead of saying ants use TCP, I would say ants and TCP both use common sense.
When I apply for jobs, I contact friends in my network. If someone gets back to me faster, I reply back faster and send my resume to them quickly. Does that mean I am following TCP/IP?
I agree to the parent.
I agree in exerting control in moderation. However, the difference between what anonymous is doing and what a big corporate team of developers is doing is between doing a hit and run and driving a car for a long distance over a long time. The second task definitely needs a lot more control and management infrastructure in place.
Actually you could argue that it was the education that he received in Brazil that allowed him to take benefit of the system and make money. And his genes which he got from Brazilian parents. Because if simply "system" were enough to make you billionaire, everyone in the system, i.e. every American would be a billionaire.
Thousands of immigrants (including myself and either you or your ancestors) come from rest of the world to US shores. We learn on taxpayer's money in our home countries. And when we are of age to really start producing, we come to USA, which is totally unfair to our home countries. That is hard choice, but nonetheless we make it. Because USA is good place to live. People in our home countries don't like it, but on some level they understand the choice and welcome us nonetheless when we go back.
Do we as immigrants benefit from USA as a country? Certainly yes. But USA also benefits from getting talented, educated people with new ideas having directly available for work, without spending a penny on their education and upbringing. If USA did not benefit, it would simply not allow us to immigrate. Try being a 60 year old and immigrating here.
That's why I don't understand the outrage. Are you complaining this renouncing citizenship thing as unfair? But then why didn't you complain when you were "in money" in this game? Why shout only when things are not in your favor? That just sends a bad signal.
I already did this a long while back. Not only the color displayed on the screen matters for power, but even contrast and brightness settings also make difference. Higher brightness setting of the monitor result in more power consumption.
The results are posted here.
http://kedarsoman.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/saving-energy-one-monitor-at-a-time/
Yes, there have been cases of attacks on churches and missionaries. But for the bigger picture over longer time, that is not the norm.
Conversion can be still a sticky issue. But that can be true for USA also. And conversion from Catholicism to Methodism is not real conversion. How would a countryside rural family react if their child were to convert to say Islam or Hinduism?