I agree with you that Iraq war was unjust. But that is totally different topic. Million Iraqi deaths were not caused by America. America caused a few. Rest all Iraqis were killed by Iraqis (or by Muslim terrorists from other countries) by suicide bombing. And Iraqis bear responsibilities for those deaths.
If my boss fired me, and if I came home and killed my kids, can I blame my boss for that? Can I blame him for bringing out the worst in me? The same way no matter whether America attacked, Iraqis should not kill themselves. I am an Indian and no matter who attacks India, if Indians kill Indians, it's India's problem.
And if you want to blame even indirect deaths on USA, then should not give credit to USA for indirectly saved Muslim lives? Like Cholesterol lowering drugs were invented by USA and used allover the world. If this brings down deaths of Muslims, then should USA not be given credit for saving those lives? Does Middle East ever talk about that?
So yes, this bullshit sense of victimhood is the biggest problem. I will give you another example. In Fort Hood, Major Nadal killed his fellow armymen. Several Muslim leaders wanted to treat him as a single criminal and said that had nothing to do with religion. But his family never showed any remorse or guilt. Instead they chose to blame everyone and US Army for discriminating against him. Also a crazy student killed 32 students in Blacksburg. His family showed tremendous remorse and guilt. Even media in South Korea printed articles about feeling ashamed.
Why only one of these killer is being portrayed as victim by his family? What is your answer?
Would love to agree with your logic. Except that my experience strongly disagrees.
Trains, in every country worldwide, from Japan to Russia to Africa to Europe, have been a huge success. Environmentally very friendly as it mostly runs on electricity, fast, efficient, cheap. If you account for all the money given to car companies for electric vehicle research,money spent in keeping soldiers in middle east to keep oil supply safe, money saved in reduced freeway maintenance, money spent to make sure tires and lube oil disposing properly, money EARNED when empty parking lots are turned in houses and shops, the expense on train is a chum change. Yes, including all the extra expenses train brings in, still it is a huge plus.
About terrorists. Terrorist impact on average person's daily life is highly overrated. I come from India and still I would dare make that statement. India has very high casualties due to terrorism. Still people use train everyday. Same with Pakistan, China, Russia, Europe, Middle East, etc. Can you destroy a train bridge or track? Yes you can. But given the amount of media attention you get, you can bet that the law enforcement agencies will hunt you down to the end of the earth.
So how many people are smart enough to destroy a train track? A lot. But given the fact that you would most likely get death penalty or life in prison, how many people are crazy enough to do that? Very very very few.
What is the definition of whether a job "exists" or not?
If he was getting paid when the project was in exploratory phase, the job did exist, right?
I feel sorry for all this pain, but honestly it's not a company's responsibility to care for my career beyond a certain point. If I get a better job offer and hop away, do I need to care about company's business goals not being met? I hope not.
I have one more question. In traveling salesman problem, there is generally a condition that the salesman must visit all the cities. That makes the problem much harder. A bee is not operating under that constraint. It can visit as many flowers as it likes, then simply decide to fly away. It might have visited one of the most optimum paths for the flowers it touched. But there is no way to claim that that was the objective it was trying to achieve from the beginning. So it is not really a traveling salesman problem.
Nature is smart, but not because it can do complex things. It's because it keeps things simple.
Good sleepers might be at disadvantage for crawling predators. But when awake, they would feel fresh and will be able to focus better, run faster, have better reflexes, etc. giving them survival advantage.
And we have not talked about hundreds of other effects of bad sleep on body, like increased risk of heart disease, etc.
I was searching for the whole thread for a comment talking about how India should focus on hunger and poverty. While I almost could not find one and about to believe that the attitudes of US/Europe towards India (and developing world in general )are changing, I came across this one.
No one disagrees that hunger and poverty should be eliminated. The question is how. And Indian and other governments are doing this because they believe that this is the best way to eliminate poverty for long term.
Let me give you an example what tremendous revolution Internet and IT can bring to the life of the poor. In India there is an act called REGA. Rural Employment Guarantee Act. According to this act, if a rural person shows up at the doorsteps of REGA office and asks for job, he or she must be given a job for at least 15 days of the month. These jobs are usually day labor jobs on government construction projects, but still provide people some means to survive.
Unfortunately this law has become hotbed of corruption. Officers take your application, give you job for 15 days then tell you not to come on job. While you don't show up, the records still you are coming on job and are being paid cash. The money goes into officer's pocket.
With a recent initiative, Indian government streamlined this process. They made all these details computerized, identified by a persistent job card number, and made the data available online. Anyone, just by typing their jobcard number can see how much money was paid on their jobcard record. I know of an NGO that made arrangements with a cyber cafe in a adjacent town and arranged one printout of jobcard per person every month.
Previously people just knew that there is come corruption, but no one did anything about it. But now when you see your jobcard is been misused, and you see the money that should be paid to you is gone in someone else's pocket, suddenly it is personal. This resulted in people marching on local office with sticks and stones and literally beating up the corrupt officer.
Contrary to the popular belief, lack of money or lack of food or lack of water is not the issue. Management of these resources is the major issue. And Internet/ IT/Technology has huge role to play here.
What has happened to Slashdot? Who do you have to be a Guru in every subject to read Slashdot?
Looks like gone are the days when all you needed to good discussions on Slashdot was genuine curiosity and decent , not necessarily perfect, grasp of English language. And no, being a know-all, done-all master of the universe was not required either.
While I can perfectly understand saying "You are making a mistake" or "That's not what the article says", I have never really understood calling someone pathetic for not knowing something.
The range of topics covered here is very wide and I don't know abc of several things discussed here. Does that make me stupid and pathetic?
The problem with reality is that it does not issue one way ticket. Life always runs in circle. You cannot theorize something without assumptions. And rest assured there will be one day when your assumptions will not be true anymore.
Commercial paper or financial complexity is not the real problem. The real problem is reality. Let me explain.
There were three fishermen in a village. They were not able to do fishing because they lost their nets. One day one of them heard of a fishing net weaver in the neighboring village. So he went and rented a net from the weaver. To pay rent, he borrowed the money from the same weaver. He could go fishing now. The second one found out and he did the same thing. The third one went to rent a net as well. The weaver had only two nets. But he smartly figured out that the three fishermen never go fishing at the same time, so there will always be one net idle. He smartly figured out scheduling algorithm. So also started renting the two nets to three fishermen.
All four were happy. The fishermen always assumed that they will have net whenever required. The weaver was happy to be able to rent two nets to three people.
One fine day the assumptions made in weavers scheduling algorithm broke down and all three fishermen needed the net. They came to realize that there are not really enough nets and sometime they might end up not getting the net. So each fisherman started renting the net for more time than required to avoid the risk. This increased the net renting price (Inflation), also the nets started staying idle for long times (Dropped output). The fishermen could not pay their rent loan installment in time. The weaver started losing money and he could not maintain the nets. Ultimately everyone was poor again.
Nothing changed from start to beginning but everybody's risk perception. Originally, with the false perception of zero risk and abundance of resources was created by the weavers assumptions. This perception broke down and everybody started paying high insurance to avoid the risk and this left little money for investment.
In today's case, the net weaver is the bank and fishermen are consumers.
Do you know what is the biggest difference between developed countries and developing countries/third world? In developed countries people keep less for the rainy day and invest more. In third world, people stack up more for rainy day and invest less.
Medical expenses is one thing. But here is a list of things overweight people would incur extra cost due to their weight.
1. Flying in airplane. 2. Traveling in car. It takes more fuel to carry more weight. 3. In an elevator. 4. If an overweight person consumes more food, they are consuming all the energy that went into making the food. 5. Because overweight people get hot easily, air conditioner needs to be turned down.
Re:Interesting press coverage of this.
on
Water Ice On Mars
·
· Score: 1
Scientists have a known history of lying.
Here are a few examples
1. Theory of evolution
2. Theory of global warming.
3. Theory of "not finding" aliens.
4. Theory of "a meteorite not colliding with earth next year"
5. Theory of "non existence of a bat boy"
Clearly when someone throws a strange news at you, supported by nothing but some mathematical crap, you need to take precaution.
Also what scientists find mostly kills gossip and makes this world more dull. What cops find usually add spice to normally dull life.
I have one similar story too. One time I was talking to a friend of mine who has Eastern European/ Russian accent.
While talking he said something about hacking and there was a noticeable change in the phone line. His voice sounded quieter and echoed a bit.
Both of us thought if some wiretapping is going on and we joked about it. We were not discussing anything troublesome, so there was no problem. But we remember it.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-new-oil-refineries-since-1976.html
Oil companies have not opened any new refinery since 1976. But they have continuously added small amounts of capacity to the existing refineries.
This is what you do when you are not finding any new oilfields, but you make minor discoveries in existing reserves / technological improvements or when some more of your oil becomes marketable because of price increase.
But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions?
Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.
Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/
It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.
Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.
Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.
The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars.
It says cost of electricity for 1250 miles EV drive is less than 20$.
Starbucks charges $40 per month for WiFi. So let us say if they drop charge for Wifi (since most other people offer it free) and offer $40 unlimited charging for one car on account, still they can make profit.
Every picture I take will contain somebody's product. Everything,Computers, electronics, houses, cars, clothes will have some trademarks and some copyrighted design.
Does it mean I can use my Olympus SLR only to take my own nude pics with mountains in background? I think I am sexy, but still I don't like the idea.
It is ironic that on one side people from USA/ Europe extol virtues of capitalism and free market, and on the other side, start this communist argument of getting everybody on the same page first before doing anything further.
This is free market in India, responding to the middle class which is bigger than size of entire USA population. And as somebody has argued correctly above, this kind of thing could mean millions of jobs.
Certainly Indians have not stopped working on poverty issues. Lots of things going on. But to say that nothing else should be done before every poor person is fed is ridiculous.
"OLPC" stands for "One Laptop Per Child", open or not.
If Negroponte said open, only because it made it easier to deliver the envisioned product. If it makes sense to go "Close" and get one laptop per child, then so be it.
You care about "Open" only when you have enough of "Closed". For those who have none, what matters is having something.
First, when they say cow, it is most likely because translation problem. In Hindi, there is one word that can be used interchangeably to mean cow or bull. So these guys probably meant bull.
Second, about using them to generate power. As late as 1985-1990, I have seen water pumps that are run by bull-power in Indian villages. Where bulls walk in circle, and the motion is transferred by a bevel gear sort of mechanism to a rotating drum, which works on a principle kind of similar to archimedes screw. So generating power using bulls is not too far from there.
I think if I go and mention to those villagers that in cold areas of the world, dogs pull cards instead of bulls, they would say the same thing you are saying here.
I don't have a TV for 7 years. Could not have been happier about it.
Just a couple of months back, this conversation took place.
"Hello sir, this is the cable company. blah..blah.. cheap cable.. blah blah... more channels than anybody.. blah blah... manager special discount only for today.." "Sorry, I don't have a TV." "You don't have what?" "I don't have a TV." (long pause at the other end) "Well, in that case I don't know how to sell you this cable package." "Good. Thank you."
Forget all the wonderful hours of my life that I spent living instead of watching, the sheer kick I got out of that long pause was worth seven years of abstinence.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that Iraq war was unjust. But that is totally different topic. Million Iraqi deaths were not caused by America. America caused a few. Rest all Iraqis were killed by Iraqis (or by Muslim terrorists from other countries) by suicide bombing. And Iraqis bear responsibilities for those deaths.
If my boss fired me, and if I came home and killed my kids, can I blame my boss for that? Can I blame him for bringing out the worst in me? The same way no matter whether America attacked, Iraqis should not kill themselves. I am an Indian and no matter who attacks India, if Indians kill Indians, it's India's problem.
And if you want to blame even indirect deaths on USA, then should not give credit to USA for indirectly saved Muslim lives? Like Cholesterol lowering drugs were invented by USA and used allover the world. If this brings down deaths of Muslims, then should USA not be given credit for saving those lives? Does Middle East ever talk about that?
So yes, this bullshit sense of victimhood is the biggest problem. I will give you another example. In Fort Hood, Major Nadal killed his fellow armymen. Several Muslim leaders wanted to treat him as a single criminal and said that had nothing to do with religion. But his family never showed any remorse or guilt. Instead they chose to blame everyone and US Army for discriminating against him. Also a crazy student killed 32 students in Blacksburg. His family showed tremendous remorse and guilt. Even media in South Korea printed articles about feeling ashamed.
Why only one of these killer is being portrayed as victim by his family? What is your answer?
Would love to agree with your logic. Except that my experience strongly disagrees.
Trains, in every country worldwide, from Japan to Russia to Africa to Europe, have been a huge success. Environmentally very friendly as it mostly runs on electricity, fast, efficient, cheap. If you account for all the money given to car companies for electric vehicle research,money spent in keeping soldiers in middle east to keep oil supply safe, money saved in reduced freeway maintenance, money spent to make sure tires and lube oil disposing properly, money EARNED when empty parking lots are turned in houses and shops, the expense on train is a chum change. Yes, including all the extra expenses train brings in, still it is a huge plus.
About terrorists. Terrorist impact on average person's daily life is highly overrated. I come from India and still I would dare make that statement. India has very high casualties due to terrorism. Still people use train everyday. Same with Pakistan, China, Russia, Europe, Middle East, etc. Can you destroy a train bridge or track? Yes you can. But given the amount of media attention you get, you can bet that the law enforcement agencies will hunt you down to the end of the earth.
So how many people are smart enough to destroy a train track? A lot. But given the fact that you would most likely get death penalty or life in prison, how many people are crazy enough to do that? Very very very few.
What is the definition of whether a job "exists" or not?
If he was getting paid when the project was in exploratory phase, the job did exist, right?
I feel sorry for all this pain, but honestly it's not a company's responsibility to care for my career beyond a certain point. If I get a better job offer and hop away, do I need to care about company's business goals not being met? I hope not.
I agree, we are overlooking something here.
I have one more question. In traveling salesman problem, there is generally a condition that the salesman must visit all the cities. That makes the problem much harder. A bee is not operating under that constraint. It can visit as many flowers as it likes, then simply decide to fly away. It might have visited one of the most optimum paths for the flowers it touched. But there is no way to claim that that was the objective it was trying to achieve from the beginning. So it is not really a traveling salesman problem.
Nature is smart, but not because it can do complex things. It's because it keeps things simple.
Not necessarily.
Good sleepers might be at disadvantage for crawling predators. But when awake, they would feel fresh and will be able to focus better, run faster, have better reflexes, etc. giving them survival advantage.
And we have not talked about hundreds of other effects of bad sleep on body, like increased risk of heart disease, etc.
http://kedarsoman.wordpress.com/
I was searching for the whole thread for a comment talking about how India should focus on hunger and poverty. While I almost could not find one and about to believe that the attitudes of US/Europe towards India (and developing world in general )are changing, I came across this one.
No one disagrees that hunger and poverty should be eliminated. The question is how. And Indian and other governments are doing this because they believe that this is the best way to eliminate poverty for long term.
Let me give you an example what tremendous revolution Internet and IT can bring to the life of the poor. In India there is an act called REGA. Rural Employment Guarantee Act. According to this act, if a rural person shows up at the doorsteps of REGA office and asks for job, he or she must be given a job for at least 15 days of the month. These jobs are usually day labor jobs on government construction projects, but still provide people some means to survive.
Unfortunately this law has become hotbed of corruption. Officers take your application, give you job for 15 days then tell you not to come on job. While you don't show up, the records still you are coming on job and are being paid cash. The money goes into officer's pocket.
With a recent initiative, Indian government streamlined this process. They made all these details computerized, identified by a persistent job card number, and made the data available online. Anyone, just by typing their jobcard number can see how much money was paid on their jobcard record. I know of an NGO that made arrangements with a cyber cafe in a adjacent town and arranged one printout of jobcard per person every month.
Previously people just knew that there is come corruption, but no one did anything about it. But now when you see your jobcard is been misused, and you see the money that should be paid to you is gone in someone else's pocket, suddenly it is personal. This resulted in people marching on local office with sticks and stones and literally beating up the corrupt officer.
Contrary to the popular belief, lack of money or lack of food or lack of water is not the issue. Management of these resources is the major issue. And Internet/ IT/Technology has huge role to play here.
What has happened to Slashdot? Who do you have to be a Guru in every subject to read Slashdot?
Looks like gone are the days when all you needed to good discussions on Slashdot was genuine curiosity and decent , not necessarily perfect, grasp of English language. And no, being a know-all, done-all master of the universe was not required either.
While I can perfectly understand saying "You are making a mistake" or "That's not what the article says", I have never really understood calling someone pathetic for not knowing something.
The range of topics covered here is very wide and I don't know abc of several things discussed here. Does that make me stupid and pathetic?
Did you hear the latest?
They found the source code was just one file containing contained only the following lines
#include "federal_reserve.h"
int main ()
{
if (loss)
{
feds->bailout();
executives->pay_bonus();
}
else
{
stockholders->pay_dividend();
executives->pay_bonus();
}
}
I forgot to add last couple of lines.
The problem with reality is that it does not issue one way ticket. Life always runs in circle. You cannot theorize something without assumptions. And rest assured there will be one day when your assumptions will not be true anymore.
That's why reality is the problem.
Commercial paper or financial complexity is not the real problem. The real problem is reality. Let me explain.
There were three fishermen in a village. They were not able to do fishing because they lost their nets. One day one of them heard of a fishing net weaver in the neighboring village. So he went and rented a net from the weaver. To pay rent, he borrowed the money from the same weaver. He could go fishing now. The second one found out and he did the same thing. The third one went to rent a net as well. The weaver had only two nets. But he smartly figured out that the three fishermen never go fishing at the same time, so there will always be one net idle. He smartly figured out scheduling algorithm. So also started renting the two nets to three fishermen.
All four were happy. The fishermen always assumed that they will have net whenever required. The weaver was happy to be able to rent two nets to three people.
One fine day the assumptions made in weavers scheduling algorithm broke down and all three fishermen needed the net. They came to realize that there are not really enough nets and sometime they might end up not getting the net. So each fisherman started renting the net for more time than required to avoid the risk. This increased the net renting price (Inflation), also the nets started staying idle for long times (Dropped output). The fishermen could not pay their rent loan installment in time. The weaver started losing money and he could not maintain the nets. Ultimately everyone was poor again.
Nothing changed from start to beginning but everybody's risk perception. Originally, with the false perception of zero risk and abundance of resources was created by the weavers assumptions. This perception broke down and everybody started paying high insurance to avoid the risk and this left little money for investment.
In today's case, the net weaver is the bank and fishermen are consumers.
Do you know what is the biggest difference between developed countries and developing countries /third world? In developed countries people keep less for the rainy day and invest more. In third world, people stack up more for rainy day and invest less.
K
"This world has enough to meet everyone's need, but not enough to meet one man's greed." - Gandhi
There is a debate about how you define head and tail?
Medical expenses is one thing. But here is a list of things overweight people would incur extra cost due to their weight.
1. Flying in airplane.
2. Traveling in car. It takes more fuel to carry more weight.
3. In an elevator.
4. If an overweight person consumes more food, they are consuming all the energy that went into making the food.
5. Because overweight people get hot easily, air conditioner needs to be turned down.
Scientists have a known history of lying.
Here are a few examples
1. Theory of evolution
2. Theory of global warming.
3. Theory of "not finding" aliens.
4. Theory of "a meteorite not colliding with earth next year"
5. Theory of "non existence of a bat boy"
Clearly when someone throws a strange news at you, supported by nothing but some mathematical crap, you need to take precaution.
Also what scientists find mostly kills gossip and makes this world more dull. What cops find usually add spice to normally dull life.
I have one similar story too. One time I was talking to a friend of mine who has Eastern European/ Russian accent.
While talking he said something about hacking and there was a noticeable change in the phone line. His voice sounded quieter and echoed a bit. Both of us thought if some wiretapping is going on and we joked about it. We were not discussing anything troublesome, so there was no problem. But we remember it.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-new-oil-refineries-since-1976.html
Oil companies have not opened any new refinery since 1976. But they have continuously added small amounts of capacity to the existing refineries.
This is what you do when you are not finding any new oilfields, but you make minor discoveries in existing reserves / technological improvements or when some more of your oil becomes marketable because of price increase.
Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.
Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/
It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.
Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.
Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.
The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars.
You might be closer to reality than you think.
Check out this site
http://www.squidoo.com/cheap-electric-car
It says cost of electricity for 1250 miles EV drive is less than 20$.
Starbucks charges $40 per month for WiFi. So let us say if they drop charge for Wifi (since most other people offer it free) and offer $40 unlimited charging for one car on account, still they can make profit.
http://savingenergy.wordpress.com/
K
A simple fact lot of people ignore is if you can't shut down the computer power, still you can shut down the monitor and achieve significant savings.
http://savingenergy.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/saving-energy-one-monitor-at-a-time/
K
So where does this stop?
,Computers, electronics, houses, cars, clothes will have some trademarks and some copyrighted design.
Every picture I take will contain somebody's product. Everything
Does it mean I can use my Olympus SLR only to take my own nude pics with mountains in background?
I think I am sexy, but still I don't like the idea.
K
It is ironic that on one side people from USA/ Europe extol virtues of capitalism and free market, and on the other side, start this communist argument of getting everybody on the same page first before doing anything further.
This is free market in India, responding to the middle class which is bigger than size of entire USA population. And as somebody has argued correctly above, this kind of thing could mean millions of jobs.
Certainly Indians have not stopped working on poverty issues. Lots of things going on. But to say that nothing else should be done before every poor person is fed is ridiculous.
K
The possibilities in an experts mind are few, but in a beginners mind, infinite. -A Zen saying
"OLPC" stands for "One Laptop Per Child", open or not.
If Negroponte said open, only because it made it easier to deliver the envisioned product. If it makes sense to go "Close" and get one laptop per child, then so be it.
You care about "Open" only when you have enough of "Closed". For those who have none, what matters is having something.
K
This can be totally true.
First, when they say cow, it is most likely because translation problem. In Hindi, there is one word that can be used interchangeably to mean cow or bull. So these guys probably meant bull.
Second, about using them to generate power. As late as 1985-1990, I have seen water pumps that are run by bull-power in Indian villages. Where bulls walk in circle, and the motion is transferred by a bevel gear sort of mechanism to a rotating drum, which works on a principle kind of similar to archimedes screw. So generating power using bulls is not too far from there.
I think if I go and mention to those villagers that in cold areas of the world, dogs pull cards instead of bulls, they would say the same thing you are saying here.
K
Could not agree more with you.
... more channels than anybody.. blah blah... manager special discount only for today.."
I don't have a TV for 7 years. Could not have been happier about it.
Just a couple of months back, this conversation took place.
"Hello sir, this is the cable company. blah..blah.. cheap cable.. blah blah
"Sorry, I don't have a TV."
"You don't have what?"
"I don't have a TV."
(long pause at the other end)
"Well, in that case I don't know how to sell you this cable package."
"Good. Thank you."
Forget all the wonderful hours of my life that I spent living instead of watching, the sheer kick I got out of that long pause was worth seven years of abstinence.