He is probably a follower of the 'knowledge' economy. The idea that patent trolling, proprietary software, and financial derivatives are real tangible goods and you don't need anything else. Any conception of economics that disregards the fact that your economic agents will die after a couple of weeks without food, is simply a joke.
We are basically going to run out of energy. There is energy out in space provided by the Sun (solar energy is a completely different proposition out there) and there are also places with enough volatiles (Mars and pole of the moon for a start) that you can grow plants.
People make claims about the wane of western dominance in every U.S. recession. It makes them feel intellectual to go against the grain and naysay.
Ad hominem fallacy. Try again.
Besides, your point doesn't even make sense. 400 years ago, there wasn't a U.S. and there wasn't industry, so it's not a valid comparison. What does it matter if India and China had big economies in a time when the biggest economy was farming?
There wasn't modern industry, but there was economy. So your second point is as dribblingly retarded as your first.
Even if Constellation wasn't cancelled, there were no plans to launch people before 2016. I mean, come on, it was only announced in 2004. Nobody could possibly go from paper project to manned mission in 12 years! Its not possible!
You carry on spouting idiotic racist stereotypes about Indians, whilst they catch up with and overtake the US. If things made in the developed world were so bad, Americans wouldn't be buying them so readily in place of local products.
Do you know what the worlds two biggest economies were 400 years ago? India and China. Do you know what the worlds two biggest economies will be in 50 years?
Western dominance is an anomaly. We jumped ahead a touch with movable type and steam engines, maintained our lead by force rather than further innovation (the creative minority became simple a dominant minority) and now the historical status quo is being restored.
Why should there be a rationale for space flight, when there is no real rationale for most of what we already spend money on? 90% of defence spending has no rationale. Pumping money into the landfill economy has no rationale. Why is spaceflight singled out to justify its existence?
Did you just suggest people who agree with the scientific consensus on climate change "can't add"? I'm surprised someone who hates science so much would support NASA
The USSR had free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare when they put the worlds first satellite in orbit. France has also has healthcare AND a mature rocket program. You are disproven.
He didn't forget what he was going to say (it was impossible to get elected as President if you couldn't complete sentences, at least before 2000), it was an oratorical pause.
But hey, its the private sector the rescue! If you put your national space program in the hands of Elon Musk, you won't get any explosions or slipped schedules!
In a 'couple of hundred years' we won't have the material resources left for mass migration. Our technology is easily up to the task right now; we are simply too fixated on the bottom line to invest in our own future.
The impression I've got from reading this and other articles is of Chinese acceleration in science publication, not current Chinese superiority in it. I don't think anybody suggests they've achieved research parity with the west right now.
I think perhaps this wide-reaching notion of China kicking our arses at science in the near future is simply a well-meaning but misguided attempt to shock western governments into funding science properly. The situation in the UK is incredibly depressing right now: The STFC (Science and Technology Funding Council) is an easy target for government cuts because the general public don't know about it or don't care about it. There is also the venal notion of trying to introduce an 'internal marketplace' to university science departments which includes assessing having 'impacts' assessed with vague criteria by a board of people including non-scientists, and also the idiotic notion of citation accounting. This is likely to create the exact same kind of problem here that you say dogs the Chinese system.
A lot of laypeople have the notion that scientists need to be micromanaged - otherwise they will just go off and waste other peoples money just satisfying their curiosity, or worse actively cause harm to people, animals, and the environment. They also have the notion that scientists can be micromanaged. They think that if some untrained politician or businessman comes along and directs what scientists work on that science can be made to churn out products people want and nothing else. I personally find these ideas both ludicrous and offensive. Research by its nature needs to have an element of blind exploration, and it can't often be railroaded towards providing some distant social/economic goal.
I've read an article about this elsewhere (New Scientist I think) that strengthened the methodology by seeing how often Chinese work was cited by papers published in the 'established' scientific powers such as the US. You are correct to be skeptical, but in this case it seems that there is enough quality amongst this quantity to give the west something to worry about.
They are sending in *journalists* which makes its a pretty-poorly controlled study. They are using a group of people whose profession is threatened by these online services. Its like asking Encyclopedia Britannica employees to evaluate Wikipedia.
Women who are impressed by sports cars are called 'skanks'. If you buy a Porsche just get get laid then you need to figure antibiotics into your TCO.
Also, perhaps this is just crazy, but I don't think the notion that people should have to sell themselves or be left homeless and starving is something positive which should be encouraged or even tolerated.
Seems they are counting lines of code written and equating that directly to 'contribution'. This has several obvious problems:
1. I really hope he wasn't counting comments. Documentation is important, but is a separate task from coding./p>
2. Its possible to write the exact same code in a different number of lines (things like 'if' statements spring immediately to mind. Was he counting lines in the files, or being counting statements?
3. Not all lines of code are of equal value.
4. There are many ways to solve the same problem, some with more lines than others. This doesn't always correlate with speed of efficiency.
5. If the line managers of the people doing corporate Linux kernel contributions are using the same metric, then those contributors are going to make damn sure they produce the longest code possible that does the job they've been tasked with.
Precisely. What this 75% represent is still voluntary contributions - its just voluntary contributions by businesses instead of individuals. It's actually a sign that the principles behind Linux are catching on; people who aren't coders are seeing the benefits of putting into the community, and are hiring people with the skills to do it on their behalf.
Idiot. Teaching is not an 'easy' job. My wife teaches 9-10 year olds in the UK, and is normally working till 8 or 9 in the evening with marking, planning, and preparing materials. It might help to know something before you start typing.
Liquid rockets are already proven for interplanetary space flight (maybe you heard about something called project Apollo?) and the technology has matured since then. The major space powers (US, Russia, Europe maybe China with a lot more cash) could all construct a Saturn V booster if they so pleased. They don't for political rather than engineering reasons.
But hey, you go ahead and try to be glib instead of being right.
"pwned" gets more respect around here than being an AC, as far as I can see.
Also, nobody is suggesting these planes could be used to engage US planes in dogfights. Merely that they could enter part of the US which is unimportant enough to have lax air defence and not get noticed.
Contrary to your armchair general demeanor, I really don't think you can definitively exclude the possibility. Certainly the air force are foolish if they haven't anticipated it.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? You think economics began with the steam engine also? Retard.
He is probably a follower of the 'knowledge' economy. The idea that patent trolling, proprietary software, and financial derivatives are real tangible goods and you don't need anything else. Any conception of economics that disregards the fact that your economic agents will die after a couple of weeks without food, is simply a joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_%28PPP%29
Its sourced basically from one guys research, which some people disagree with. But with serious academic research that's practically a tautology.
We are basically going to run out of energy. There is energy out in space provided by the Sun (solar energy is a completely different proposition out there) and there are also places with enough volatiles (Mars and pole of the moon for a start) that you can grow plants.
Ad hominem fallacy. Try again.
There wasn't modern industry, but there was economy. So your second point is as dribblingly retarded as your first.
Even if Constellation wasn't cancelled, there were no plans to launch people before 2016. I mean, come on, it was only announced in 2004. Nobody could possibly go from paper project to manned mission in 12 years! Its not possible!
You carry on spouting idiotic racist stereotypes about Indians, whilst they catch up with and overtake the US. If things made in the developed world were so bad, Americans wouldn't be buying them so readily in place of local products.
Do you know what the worlds two biggest economies were 400 years ago? India and China. Do you know what the worlds two biggest economies will be in 50 years?
Western dominance is an anomaly. We jumped ahead a touch with movable type and steam engines, maintained our lead by force rather than further innovation (the creative minority became simple a dominant minority) and now the historical status quo is being restored.
Why should there be a rationale for space flight, when there is no real rationale for most of what we already spend money on? 90% of defence spending has no rationale. Pumping money into the landfill economy has no rationale. Why is spaceflight singled out to justify its existence?
Did you just suggest people who agree with the scientific consensus on climate change "can't add"? I'm surprised someone who hates science so much would support NASA
The USSR had free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare when they put the worlds first satellite in orbit. France has also has healthcare AND a mature rocket program. You are disproven.
He didn't forget what he was going to say (it was impossible to get elected as President if you couldn't complete sentences, at least before 2000), it was an oratorical pause.
But hey, its the private sector the rescue! If you put your national space program in the hands of Elon Musk, you won't get any explosions or slipped schedules!
In a 'couple of hundred years' we won't have the material resources left for mass migration. Our technology is easily up to the task right now; we are simply too fixated on the bottom line to invest in our own future.
The impression I've got from reading this and other articles is of Chinese acceleration in science publication, not current Chinese superiority in it. I don't think anybody suggests they've achieved research parity with the west right now.
I think perhaps this wide-reaching notion of China kicking our arses at science in the near future is simply a well-meaning but misguided attempt to shock western governments into funding science properly. The situation in the UK is incredibly depressing right now: The STFC (Science and Technology Funding Council) is an easy target for government cuts because the general public don't know about it or don't care about it. There is also the venal notion of trying to introduce an 'internal marketplace' to university science departments which includes assessing having 'impacts' assessed with vague criteria by a board of people including non-scientists, and also the idiotic notion of citation accounting. This is likely to create the exact same kind of problem here that you say dogs the Chinese system.
A lot of laypeople have the notion that scientists need to be micromanaged - otherwise they will just go off and waste other peoples money just satisfying their curiosity, or worse actively cause harm to people, animals, and the environment. They also have the notion that scientists can be micromanaged. They think that if some untrained politician or businessman comes along and directs what scientists work on that science can be made to churn out products people want and nothing else. I personally find these ideas both ludicrous and offensive. Research by its nature needs to have an element of blind exploration, and it can't often be railroaded towards providing some distant social/economic goal.
I've read an article about this elsewhere (New Scientist I think) that strengthened the methodology by seeing how often Chinese work was cited by papers published in the 'established' scientific powers such as the US. You are correct to be skeptical, but in this case it seems that there is enough quality amongst this quantity to give the west something to worry about.
I was very impressed when SpaceX invented the turbopump. Oh, wait a second...
They are sending in *journalists* which makes its a pretty-poorly controlled study. They are using a group of people whose profession is threatened by these online services. Its like asking Encyclopedia Britannica employees to evaluate Wikipedia.
Women who are impressed by sports cars are called 'skanks'. If you buy a Porsche just get get laid then you need to figure antibiotics into your TCO.
Also, perhaps this is just crazy, but I don't think the notion that people should have to sell themselves or be left homeless and starving is something positive which should be encouraged or even tolerated.
I question the metric they used for this.
Seems they are counting lines of code written and equating that directly to 'contribution'. This has several obvious problems:
1. I really hope he wasn't counting comments. Documentation is important, but is a separate task from coding./p>
2. Its possible to write the exact same code in a different number of lines (things like 'if' statements spring immediately to mind. Was he counting lines in the files, or being counting statements?
3. Not all lines of code are of equal value.
4. There are many ways to solve the same problem, some with more lines than others. This doesn't always correlate with speed of efficiency.
5. If the line managers of the people doing corporate Linux kernel contributions are using the same metric, then those contributors are going to make damn sure they produce the longest code possible that does the job they've been tasked with.
Precisely. What this 75% represent is still voluntary contributions - its just voluntary contributions by businesses instead of individuals. It's actually a sign that the principles behind Linux are catching on; people who aren't coders are seeing the benefits of putting into the community, and are hiring people with the skills to do it on their behalf.
Idiot. Teaching is not an 'easy' job. My wife teaches 9-10 year olds in the UK, and is normally working till 8 or 9 in the evening with marking, planning, and preparing materials. It might help to know something before you start typing.
I'm sure these people are devastated that a Random Slashdot Troll doesn't rate their intelligence...
Pisspoor analogy.
Liquid rockets are already proven for interplanetary space flight (maybe you heard about something called project Apollo?) and the technology has matured since then. The major space powers (US, Russia, Europe maybe China with a lot more cash) could all construct a Saturn V booster if they so pleased. They don't for political rather than engineering reasons.
But hey, you go ahead and try to be glib instead of being right.
"pwned" gets more respect around here than being an AC, as far as I can see.
Also, nobody is suggesting these planes could be used to engage US planes in dogfights. Merely that they could enter part of the US which is unimportant enough to have lax air defence and not get noticed.
Contrary to your armchair general demeanor, I really don't think you can definitively exclude the possibility. Certainly the air force are foolish if they haven't anticipated it.