Facebook DOES support multiple groups of friend -- you can create separate friend lists and subdivide what permissions different sets get.
It supports multiple groups of friends in terms of permission lists (though that's a recent feature, and may well not have been around at the time the research was done supporting this presentation), but it doesn't support them as separable silos. So, even if its somewhat less crude than the state presented in the presentation, it still has the same fundamental problem the presentation points to in terms of groups.
Of course, the presentation talks about more than just groups, it talks about important distinctions people make within groups regarding closeness, trust on/interest in particular issues, etc.
More correctly, any fiat currency (to clarify things... as opposed to a commodity-based currency such as a gold, silver, or grain backed currency) is based upon the faith of those who participate in and use that currency to buy goods and services with it in the future.
Even more correctly, any currency is based on that faith.
Fiat currencies obviously are.
Commodity-backed currencies (e.g., certificates backed by silver, gold, grain, or any other commodity of intrinsic utility) also are, because the currency itself is not of direct utility, even though it is backed by the promise of some party to redeem it for something which is presumed to have direct utility.
And even currency that takes the form of a commodity itself is backed by a similar faith. Pure commodity currencies are, after all, simply the same as investments in the commodity; to do any significant amount of trade usually means storing more than would ever be needed of that particular commodity for future use, and so amounts to speculation based on faith in the future value of the commodity -- that is, the willingness of others to give you things that you will want in exchange for it in the future.
This is, of course, the exact same faith that underlies commodity-backed currencies and fiat currencies.
Do you really think that one, even just one application of quality or merit will be created with this?
Yes, I'm sure lots of people will find this tool convenient to makes apps of "quality" and "merit" that were serve their own personal needs better than anything designed to serve a mass market would; beyond that, I think that it will provide lots of people -- particularly young people -- experience building apps for their own use that, even if they aren't better even for their own personal needs than they could get commercially, will help them develop skills and interest that will be of use to them.
I'm not as sure that anything with the kind of broad utility that would make it saleable will be created with it, but I don't think that's the point. The App Inventor web pages seem to emphasize the ability to create apps quickly and have them appear live on your phone as you build them, and the inspiration and application in constructivist education (the same model that inspired the OLPC project), not producing marketable apps.
Beyond trivialities, you can't model anything worth writing a program for with boxes.
Which explains why there are so many enterprise solutions being built around executable process diagrams (using BPMN, XPDL, and other related and similar technologies.)
Anyhow, that aside, this doesn't seem to be aimed at the kind of thing that you seem to think it is "worth writing a program for". By making development simpler and more accessible, the it makes it worth writing a program for things for which it previously would not be.
"In science, a theory is a hypothesis" that has not been proven wrong. That does not prove it right.
Nothing outside of pure logic is ever "proven right". Science is a process of observation, providing hypotheses with explain the observations and predict future observations in a manner which makes them falsifiable, attempting to falsify the hypotheses, and replacing or refining them when they conflict with observations.
We do not have a clue what a black hole really is.
We certainly have a very many clues, which are the vast array of observations that underlie the current theoretical model, both those that black hole theory was created to explain and those that have occurred since in the testing of the theory, the refinement of some parts of it, and the validation of others.
We do not know for a fact.
This is true of the nature of black holes in the exact same sense that it is true of the theories in the fields of materials science and fluid mechanics that are used in building planes. We have masses of observations, we have a model which we can and have used successfully to predict results that weren't used in coming up with the model, but we have no way -- as with everything in the physical universe -- of directly "knowing" the underlying truth, only making observations and hypothesizing relations between them and testing those hypotheses.
I love how people talk about black holes like they know how they work.
It always amazes me that both laymen and scientists as well talk about such things as if we KNOW whats going on.
We don't. We have theories.
In science, its important to remember that a "theory" is not the same thing as the loose definition of a theory in casual conversation, or some technical but non-scientific contexts (literary criticism, I'm looking at you.)
In science, a theory is a hypothesis whose predictions which make it falsifiable have withstood testing and which remains viable. The casual-conversation concept of "theory" as an plausible but unverified idea about the world is what in science would be a conjecture or a hypothesis, not a theory.
So, often, we talk about theories (as opposed to mere conjectures or hypotheses) as if they were known except in very particular contexts where there theoretical nature is particularly important (such as in the case of a conflict between two theories that have both withstood scrutiny but where the predictions each makes in conditions impractical to test conflict.) But there's a good reason for that: if it is a "theory" as the term is used in science, it has demonstrated it power in explaining behavior beyond that which was consulted to formulate it. It may need to be refined, but its known to be a useful model.
I'm sorry if this is a really dumb question, but how can a black hole emit much of anything? I thought they couldn't emit light, any anything else, not even information.
The dominant theoretical model of black holes has them emitting energy (Hawking radiation).
Though I don't think the effect here is really the black hole emitting anything (from within the event horizon), but an instead an effect that occurs because of gravitational compression outside the event horizon.
The absence of effective restraint by the government (the hypothetical proposed in GP) is not the same thing as doing it "by the laws", or all things called vigilanteism (which can only occur when the government fails to restrain them) would be "by the laws".
And if you are a big megacorp, and there is no government, then you are the government.
No, you aren't. If you are a big megacorp and there is no government (either in name, or in practice even if there is a government in name), that doesn't mean there aren't other megacorps around that are just as powerful as you are.
The cause of the vigilatteism was corrupt government and police that were not accountable to anyone and perverted democracy.
Vigilanteism, if not the name, predates government. It would be more accurate to say that the cause of law, government, and particularly the policing function of the latter in enforcing the former is largely the desire throughout society to contain vigilanteism.
I have always disagreed with this project. I think there is so much more to learn using books, paper, pencils and good teachers.
You are free to start your own effort to increase access to books, paper, pencils, and good teachers in the developing world. Its not like Nicholas Negroponte is going to stop you.
Although one might note that on the "books" front, that's one of the main purposes of the OLPC, and why an ereader mode was a key feature. Hardcopy texts have unavoidable per-unit production and distribution costs (and, in much of the developing world, distribution may be especially problematic.)
Delivering one laptop per child and then delivering content electronically in the long term may be more efficient than delivering books (and, of course, while it is a reader, an XO is more than just a reader.)
All you're going to teach those kids to do is use technology that the rest of their country can't afford anyway.
The purpose of the OLPC project is not to teach how to use technology, it is to deploy ubiquitous, easy-to-use technology to improve resources for teaching generally. And, given that the vast majority of XOs delivered are being purchased by the countries using them, and purchased on a very large scale, its quite unlikely that they represent technology that the country at large cannot afford.
Because you can't carry a desktop PC around like a book from home to class to wherever, and use it conveniently to read electronically delivered (and often free in both the libre and gratis senses) in place of hardcopy textbooks (which, whatever cost is associated with the content, have a much higher physical production and distribution cost per unit than electronic texts.)
Desktop PCs don't serve most of the purposes for which the OLPC was conceived.
If there are problems with getting a computer in these parents' home keep them in a lab at school where they can be better managed. That's where the learning is going on anyway.
If the learning is only going on in school, then the educational system is broken. (That may be the case in some places the OLPC is being deployed, but to the extent that it is, its one of the problems the OLPC is intend to address, not reinforce.)
All still present (the solar panel and hand crank are both, IIRC, accessories, mesh networking is built in.)
And all the kids in the small African Villages creating a huge network of knowledge?
Well, given that the overwhelming majority have gone to Latin America, that specific image is probably not realized. (Not that it was, as such, a stated goal of the program.)
And didn't they move to MS Windows for these things?
The XO-1 (and, I assume, -1.5) are dual bootable between Linux and WinXP. The -1.75, I would assume, would not be, since there is no WinXP for ARM.
Wouldn't it be better to focus on cheap production methods instead of adding the latest fad?
The XO-1.75 has a reduced price target compared to the XO-1.5. Improved performance (including reduced power consumption) and reduced price are goals that are in tension, but its still possible to pursue both at the same time.
I think we should send the third world some papers explaining why their constant violence and lack of everyone being held accountable by the law keeps them from being able to move up, no matter how much technology they get.
Many of the countries that are buying (note, "buying", which, not being given as charity, is the main way OLPCs are getting to countries) do not have "constant violence" and "lack of everyone being held accountable by the law".
Not all places outside of the most developed countries are alike, and mostly the kind of places where your complaints are valid are the kind of places the OLPC isn't going anyway.
However, when you start talking about denormalization, you are actually probably talking about use of fourth and sometimes fifth normal form instead of third normal form.
No, denormalization usually refers to the use of something that isn't 3NF (which rules out 4NF and higher normal forms, all of which are also 3NF), and often non-1NF schemas like star schemas.
4NF, 5NF, DKNF, 6NF are further normalizations beyond/within 3NF, not denormalizations.
Shouldn't be making up titles that don't fit an IT department size of 2 or 3.
If the person has similar budgetary independence and authority within the organization, e.g., over cross-cutting concerns as other "Directors" within the organization, the title is appropriate even if the person has no subordinate staff.
Because the hypertext transfer protocol was designed to transfer hypertext documents. It was not designed to be a remote application protocol.
That's true, if at all, only of the original, GET-only version of the HTTP protocol as supported by the first WWW prototype implementation ("HTTP 0.9".)
Its certainly not true of HTTP/1.1 which is a generic distributed object-manipulation-and-access protocol following REST principles.
There's a great chance that the article poster isn't like that. But I'm worried, because Ask Slashdot isn't who he should be asking... he should be asking the coders he manages how to design and/or restructure the database.
Why assume that there are any coders that OP manages? He's "Director of IT" for a "small/medium" company that isn't a software (or even technology) company. It's quite possible that OP manages, if anyone, a handful of desktop support technicians that aren't programmers.
In fact, I would hope that something like that is the case, as that's really the only explanation for a Director of IT that, as OP describes, personally "writes the code" (note: not "writes some of the code") for a company's applications, since otherwise he is managing coders that don't actually write any code, which would be unimaginably wasteful.
Certainly, I've known of small companies in non-computing fields where the "Director of IT" was also the whole IT department.
The reason people hate nuclear energy is because of fear and misinformation.
Is it "fear and misinformation" that makes the nuclear industry unwilling to build new plants without both direct subsidies and special shields from liability for actual harm in the case of accidents that other power generating industries don't get, or is it, you know, that they've done the math on the actual costs and risks and want to make sure other people are paying both part of the upfront costs and assuming all of the catastrophic risk?
Existing organizations capable of implementing the ideas selected by Google (which were inspired by the submissions, not necessarily the submissions themselves), which organizations will be identified by Google's board of directors (if any of the submitters end up getting the money, its because they happen to submitting ideas on behalf of organization that could implement them, and got lucky that Google actually picked their organization to do so.)
And what's to stop people from pocketing it, rather than use it to implement the idea?
Presumably, the vetting process wherein Google decides who gets the money once the idea to implement is selected, and quite possibly the contract that Google offers that goes with the money specifying what they expect to get for it.
Or was Google planning on implementing the ideas themselves?
No, Google was planning on giving the money to other organizations, but it wasn't planning on giving it to the submitters of the ideas. What the submitters get out of it is primarily a chance to provide input into what goals the money is spent to advance, not a chance to a get a cut of the money.
But there is still a case for saying the European Cup is harder.
Perhaps, but not based on rankings, Elo or FIFA.
Croatia, Sweden, Ukraine and Russia DNQ'd for FIFA 2010, whereas Cameroon, New Zealand and Nigeria (and of course South Africa) did.
And teams ranked higher -- in both the Elo and FIFA rankings -- than Croatia, Sweden, Ukrain, and Russia qualified for FIFA 2010 (and the only reason the European teams you point to didn't qualify is that they didn't do well enough against lower-rated European teams.)
So, again, I don't think looking at rankings, Elo or FIFA, supports an argument that the European Cup is stronger than the FIFA World Cup (and, of course, the format differences -- since the European Cup isn't a cup of national teams but of club teams -- mean that the rankings would be largely irrelevant to the comparison even if they would support the case if the UEFA Cup was a contest of national teams in Europe.)
Okay, if you're making that many calls to Twitter then there might be an inherent flaw with their RESTful interfaces. I think for a long time, the "web" as we know it has suffered from the lack of the Event/Listener paradigm. This is a pretty simple design concept that I'm going to refer to as the Observer [wikipedia.org].
For messaging architectures (like, say, the internet), the pattern is usually described as "Publish/Subscribe". All serious messaging protocols support it (XMPP, AMQP, etc.) and some are dedicated to it (PubSubHubbub). The basic problem with using it the whole way to the client is that many clients are run in environments where it is impractical to run a server which makes recieving inbound connections difficult.
There are fairly good solutions to that, mostly involving using a proxy for the client somewhere that can run a server which holds messages, and then having the client call the proxy (rather than the message sources) to get all the pending messages together.
I'm not leveling the finger at Twitter, it's a widespread problem that even I have been a part of. Ruby makes coding RESTful interfaces so easy that it's very very tempting to just throw up a few controllers that are basically CRUD interfaces for databases and to call it a day.
Given what's been published about Twitter in the past (including them at one point building their own message queueing system because none of the existing ones that they tried seemed adequate), I don't think what they've done is as simplistic as that on the back-end, though they be forcing third-party apps through an API which makes it seem like that's what is going on (and produces inefficiencies in the process.)
That's if you go by population. If your aim is to include the best 32 teams in the world, you would have much _more_ teams for Europe.
By FIFA rankings, you'd have three more from Europe proper (considering Russia as in Europe but Turkey as in Asia, despite the fact that a small part of Turkey is an Europe, and a large -- but poorly populated -- part of Russia is in Asia), and four more from UEFA (since Israel, which is not in Europe, is nonetheless in UEFA.)
A better plan would be to look up the current world Elo rankings, where you'll see that only three of the world's top 16 teams are non-European. So yes, it is entirely plausible to say that the European Cup is a harder tournament.
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Egypt = 5
11 of the top 16 by Elo rankings are in Europe, 11 of the top 16 by FIFA rankings are in Europe (not the same 11), and almost all of those from Europe ranked in the top 16 by either ranking as well as all the non-Europeans ranked in the top 16 by either ranking made it into the FIFA World Cup. So I certainly don't see a really strong case to be made from the rankings (FIFA or Elo) that the European Cup provides tougher competition than the FIFA World Cup.
Slashdot Mirror
It supports multiple groups of friends in terms of permission lists (though that's a recent feature, and may well not have been around at the time the research was done supporting this presentation), but it doesn't support them as separable silos. So, even if its somewhat less crude than the state presented in the presentation, it still has the same fundamental problem the presentation points to in terms of groups.
Of course, the presentation talks about more than just groups, it talks about important distinctions people make within groups regarding closeness, trust on/interest in particular issues, etc.
Even more correctly, any currency is based on that faith.
Fiat currencies obviously are.
Commodity-backed currencies (e.g., certificates backed by silver, gold, grain, or any other commodity of intrinsic utility) also are, because the currency itself is not of direct utility, even though it is backed by the promise of some party to redeem it for something which is presumed to have direct utility.
And even currency that takes the form of a commodity itself is backed by a similar faith. Pure commodity currencies are, after all, simply the same as investments in the commodity; to do any significant amount of trade usually means storing more than would ever be needed of that particular commodity for future use, and so amounts to speculation based on faith in the future value of the commodity -- that is, the willingness of others to give you things that you will want in exchange for it in the future.
This is, of course, the exact same faith that underlies commodity-backed currencies and fiat currencies.
Yes, I'm sure lots of people will find this tool convenient to makes apps of "quality" and "merit" that were serve their own personal needs better than anything designed to serve a mass market would; beyond that, I think that it will provide lots of people -- particularly young people -- experience building apps for their own use that, even if they aren't better even for their own personal needs than they could get commercially, will help them develop skills and interest that will be of use to them.
I'm not as sure that anything with the kind of broad utility that would make it saleable will be created with it, but I don't think that's the point. The App Inventor web pages seem to emphasize the ability to create apps quickly and have them appear live on your phone as you build them, and the inspiration and application in constructivist education (the same model that inspired the OLPC project), not producing marketable apps.
Which explains why there are so many enterprise solutions being built around executable process diagrams (using BPMN, XPDL, and other related and similar technologies.)
Anyhow, that aside, this doesn't seem to be aimed at the kind of thing that you seem to think it is "worth writing a program for". By making development simpler and more accessible, the it makes it worth writing a program for things for which it previously would not be.
Nothing outside of pure logic is ever "proven right". Science is a process of observation, providing hypotheses with explain the observations and predict future observations in a manner which makes them falsifiable, attempting to falsify the hypotheses, and replacing or refining them when they conflict with observations.
We certainly have a very many clues, which are the vast array of observations that underlie the current theoretical model, both those that black hole theory was created to explain and those that have occurred since in the testing of the theory, the refinement of some parts of it, and the validation of others.
This is true of the nature of black holes in the exact same sense that it is true of the theories in the fields of materials science and fluid mechanics that are used in building planes. We have masses of observations, we have a model which we can and have used successfully to predict results that weren't used in coming up with the model, but we have no way -- as with everything in the physical universe -- of directly "knowing" the underlying truth, only making observations and hypothesizing relations between them and testing those hypotheses.
In science, its important to remember that a "theory" is not the same thing as the loose definition of a theory in casual conversation, or some technical but non-scientific contexts (literary criticism, I'm looking at you.)
In science, a theory is a hypothesis whose predictions which make it falsifiable have withstood testing and which remains viable. The casual-conversation concept of "theory" as an plausible but unverified idea about the world is what in science would be a conjecture or a hypothesis, not a theory.
So, often, we talk about theories (as opposed to mere conjectures or hypotheses) as if they were known except in very particular contexts where there theoretical nature is particularly important (such as in the case of a conflict between two theories that have both withstood scrutiny but where the predictions each makes in conditions impractical to test conflict.) But there's a good reason for that: if it is a "theory" as the term is used in science, it has demonstrated it power in explaining behavior beyond that which was consulted to formulate it. It may need to be refined, but its known to be a useful model.
The dominant theoretical model of black holes has them emitting energy (Hawking radiation).
Though I don't think the effect here is really the black hole emitting anything (from within the event horizon), but an instead an effect that occurs because of gravitational compression outside the event horizon.
The absence of effective restraint by the government (the hypothetical proposed in GP) is not the same thing as doing it "by the laws", or all things called vigilanteism (which can only occur when the government fails to restrain them) would be "by the laws".
No, you aren't. If you are a big megacorp and there is no government (either in name, or in practice even if there is a government in name), that doesn't mean there aren't other megacorps around that are just as powerful as you are.
If you're a bigger megacorp (or a group of six such corps), and no one bigger (e.g., government) is restraining you, its pretty easy.
Vigilanteism, if not the name, predates government. It would be more accurate to say that the cause of law, government, and particularly the policing function of the latter in enforcing the former is largely the desire throughout society to contain vigilanteism.
You are free to start your own effort to increase access to books, paper, pencils, and good teachers in the developing world. Its not like Nicholas Negroponte is going to stop you.
Although one might note that on the "books" front, that's one of the main purposes of the OLPC, and why an ereader mode was a key feature. Hardcopy texts have unavoidable per-unit production and distribution costs (and, in much of the developing world, distribution may be especially problematic.)
Delivering one laptop per child and then delivering content electronically in the long term may be more efficient than delivering books (and, of course, while it is a reader, an XO is more than just a reader.)
The purpose of the OLPC project is not to teach how to use technology, it is to deploy ubiquitous, easy-to-use technology to improve resources for teaching generally. And, given that the vast majority of XOs delivered are being purchased by the countries using them, and purchased on a very large scale, its quite unlikely that they represent technology that the country at large cannot afford.
Because you can't carry a desktop PC around like a book from home to class to wherever, and use it conveniently to read electronically delivered (and often free in both the libre and gratis senses) in place of hardcopy textbooks (which, whatever cost is associated with the content, have a much higher physical production and distribution cost per unit than electronic texts.)
Desktop PCs don't serve most of the purposes for which the OLPC was conceived.
If the learning is only going on in school, then the educational system is broken. (That may be the case in some places the OLPC is being deployed, but to the extent that it is, its one of the problems the OLPC is intend to address, not reinforce.)
All still present (the solar panel and hand crank are both, IIRC, accessories, mesh networking is built in.)
Well, given that the overwhelming majority have gone to Latin America, that specific image is probably not realized. (Not that it was, as such, a stated goal of the program.)
The XO-1 (and, I assume, -1.5) are dual bootable between Linux and WinXP. The -1.75, I would assume, would not be, since there is no WinXP for ARM.
You thought wrong.
~1.5 million.
The XO-1.75 has a reduced price target compared to the XO-1.5. Improved performance (including reduced power consumption) and reduced price are goals that are in tension, but its still possible to pursue both at the same time.
Many of the countries that are buying (note, "buying", which, not being given as charity, is the main way OLPCs are getting to countries) do not have "constant violence" and "lack of everyone being held accountable by the law".
Not all places outside of the most developed countries are alike, and mostly the kind of places where your complaints are valid are the kind of places the OLPC isn't going anyway.
No, denormalization usually refers to the use of something that isn't 3NF (which rules out 4NF and higher normal forms, all of which are also 3NF), and often non-1NF schemas like star schemas.
4NF, 5NF, DKNF, 6NF are further normalizations beyond/within 3NF, not denormalizations.
If the person has similar budgetary independence and authority within the organization, e.g., over cross-cutting concerns as other "Directors" within the organization, the title is appropriate even if the person has no subordinate staff.
That's true, if at all, only of the original, GET-only version of the HTTP protocol as supported by the first WWW prototype implementation ("HTTP 0.9".)
Its certainly not true of HTTP/1.1 which is a generic distributed object-manipulation-and-access protocol following REST principles.
Why assume that there are any coders that OP manages? He's "Director of IT" for a "small/medium" company that isn't a software (or even technology) company. It's quite possible that OP manages, if anyone, a handful of desktop support technicians that aren't programmers.
In fact, I would hope that something like that is the case, as that's really the only explanation for a Director of IT that, as OP describes, personally "writes the code" (note: not "writes some of the code") for a company's applications, since otherwise he is managing coders that don't actually write any code, which would be unimaginably wasteful.
Certainly, I've known of small companies in non-computing fields where the "Director of IT" was also the whole IT department.
Is it "fear and misinformation" that makes the nuclear industry unwilling to build new plants without both direct subsidies and special shields from liability for actual harm in the case of accidents that other power generating industries don't get, or is it, you know, that they've done the math on the actual costs and risks and want to make sure other people are paying both part of the upfront costs and assuming all of the catastrophic risk?
Existing organizations capable of implementing the ideas selected by Google (which were inspired by the submissions, not necessarily the submissions themselves), which organizations will be identified by Google's board of directors (if any of the submitters end up getting the money, its because they happen to submitting ideas on behalf of organization that could implement them, and got lucky that Google actually picked their organization to do so.)
Presumably, the vetting process wherein Google decides who gets the money once the idea to implement is selected, and quite possibly the contract that Google offers that goes with the money specifying what they expect to get for it.
No, Google was planning on giving the money to other organizations, but it wasn't planning on giving it to the submitters of the ideas. What the submitters get out of it is primarily a chance to provide input into what goals the money is spent to advance, not a chance to a get a cut of the money.
Perhaps, but not based on rankings, Elo or FIFA.
And teams ranked higher -- in both the Elo and FIFA rankings -- than Croatia, Sweden, Ukrain, and Russia qualified for FIFA 2010 (and the only reason the European teams you point to didn't qualify is that they didn't do well enough against lower-rated European teams.)
So, again, I don't think looking at rankings, Elo or FIFA, supports an argument that the European Cup is stronger than the FIFA World Cup (and, of course, the format differences -- since the European Cup isn't a cup of national teams but of club teams -- mean that the rankings would be largely irrelevant to the comparison even if they would support the case if the UEFA Cup was a contest of national teams in Europe.)
For messaging architectures (like, say, the internet), the pattern is usually described as "Publish/Subscribe". All serious messaging protocols support it (XMPP, AMQP, etc.) and some are dedicated to it (PubSubHubbub). The basic problem with using it the whole way to the client is that many clients are run in environments where it is impractical to run a server which makes recieving inbound connections difficult.
There are fairly good solutions to that, mostly involving using a proxy for the client somewhere that can run a server which holds messages, and then having the client call the proxy (rather than the message sources) to get all the pending messages together.
Given what's been published about Twitter in the past (including them at one point building their own message queueing system because none of the existing ones that they tried seemed adequate), I don't think what they've done is as simplistic as that on the back-end, though they be forcing third-party apps through an API which makes it seem like that's what is going on (and produces inefficiencies in the process.)
This would be a valid conclusion if football excellence was something that was randomly distributed throughout the world population.
That may, to say the least, be an unwarranted assumption.
By FIFA rankings, you'd have three more from Europe proper (considering Russia as in Europe but Turkey as in Asia, despite the fact that a small part of Turkey is an Europe, and a large -- but poorly populated -- part of Russia is in Asia), and four more from UEFA (since Israel, which is not in Europe, is nonetheless in UEFA.)
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Egypt = 5
11 of the top 16 by Elo rankings are in Europe, 11 of the top 16 by FIFA rankings are in Europe (not the same 11), and almost all of those from Europe ranked in the top 16 by either ranking as well as all the non-Europeans ranked in the top 16 by either ranking made it into the FIFA World Cup. So I certainly don't see a really strong case to be made from the rankings (FIFA or Elo) that the European Cup provides tougher competition than the FIFA World Cup.