With the US economy taking a bit of a downturn (that Bush is sure won't turn into a recession. Honest. Keep spending money please!) some government spending has got to go and whilst this is being billed as a 'change' it sounds like its actually a cut-back. Of course, nobody suggested cutting back on idiotic military campaigns. Your government has to focus on important stuff after all.
But don't worry. I'm sure the Russians or the Chinese will yet you tag along with their moon missions when yours are cancelled.
Taxation and economic policy is only a small part of it. A bigger part is that the U.S. still has the best research infrastructure in the world, and if you want to do state-of-the-art science, it is still where it's at. If you're in a scientific career, that's far more important to you than how much you'll pay in taxes.
Three words for you:
Large.
Hadron.
Collider.
Europe's latest and greatest particle accelerator will produce collisions with 14 times as much energy as the largest one in the US when it comes online in May. The US abandoned its plans to create a new collider, presumably when the government discovered you can't fry developing nations with that kind of particle beam. So, no, the US is not at the cutting edge in physics.
Nothing kills a society faster than broken error correction mechanisms. If you continue to believe you are superior to the rest of the world in science, you will continue to slip behind in science.
Took the words right out of my mouth, although I'd like to add a much broader historical point;
One of the notable characteristics of the twentieth century was the exponential increase in the cost of producing cutting edge media. You went from printing presses to radio transmitters to movie studios within a few short decades. The consequences of this were that the public discourse became dominated by those in society who controlled the resources, be it big business or government. Thus modern propaganda was born.
A reversal of this trend is very much welcome. As it stands, some people (usually the worst people) in society have a megaphone with which to shout down anyone who disagrees with them or their peers, leaving most of us effectively voiceless and apathetic. It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.
I'm not sure if its that common, and it doesn't bode well for such an adventurous technology. Remember the Ford Nucleon - ford designed a nuclear powered car based on certain promising developments in lightweight shielding materials and miniaturised reactors that never actually materialised. I can see how you might be able to get away with it when you are tweaking a well understood design (a standard, petrol driven car) but surely for something completely new you've got to be a bit more honest about the specs?
8kg is ridulously light for an exoskeleton that can increase the strength of its wearer significantly. The power source alone would have to be much heavier (its designed to work outdoors, so no wired power). For comparison, the Apollo space suits weighed about 80kg.
What IT managers consider reasonable pay in the UK would normally be associated with manual labour. I was paid £12,000 for web design and print work, and expected to do overtime, and that was typical of the job I had. I was eventually made redundant in favour of some retard who was still using table layouts and had left the back-end for one of his websites open to the public with no password (I can disclose this now as it seems to have been, finally after over a year, fixed).
The people who earn lots in web design are those with sales skills, networking skills (and I don't mean TCP/IP), generally the smarmy twats who traditionally lurked under stones in the marketing department.
I've gone back to university now, studying physics and I'm very happy. I'm participating in a cubesat project and hope that will lead on to work in the space industry where (I assume) there is a little more respect for knowledge.
When they started scanning your drivers licence when you drank. A little bit of vigilance could've seen this coming a mile away. Any time an institution has a new way to access personal data they will abuse it.
This is probably going to be coming over to the UK soon as well. They have become more tight on ID for clubs and bars to the point where only a specifically manufactured ID card, a drivers licence or a passport will do. Standardising ID is a precursor to this step.
I'm hoping that the introduction of very low cost PCs is going to open up computer usage, and more importantly the internet, for the developing world. Sometimes we like to think of the internet as a global community, but that really isn't the case. Most of the internet is still the anglophone countries and Europe.
Of course, cheap PCs alone aren't going to do it - there is still the question of the infrastructure to provide home internet connections to the world. However, that is more likely to occur in a situation of widespread computer ownership.
Recently there was a 'buy one give one' scheme where you got an XO and one was given to some impoverished child somewhere, and I'd really like to see that in the UK. I'd get a near indestructible linux laptop that never needs plugging in, along with a vague sense of moral smugness:)
We sat back, tactically voted for our labour MPs on some kind of nudge-wink understanding they weren't part of the New Labor (sic) project. And we got exactly what we deserved for our political apathy - war, shame, and commuters with C4.
...the government they deserve. And as an outside (from the UK) it looks as if that is about to apply to America.
It isn't like any of this is surprising. Everyone knows that Diebold machines are crooked, but they are still being used. Nobody did anything about it, that's why.
I know its a pain standing up for your civil liberties, but don't worry - if you ignore them, they will go away.
There is one of two ways you can get power wireless with RF radiation:
1. Send it out in all directions. Incredibly wasteful and, because of the inverse square law, has to be so powerful it will interfere with other stuff.
2. Send it out in a narrow beam. I really wouldn't want to be standing in between a laptop and an outlet if this were the method...
Either way, I prefer living in a home that isn't a microwave oven.
That would be the democratic ideal, but the fact us none of us live in democratic countries. We will in representative 'democracies' where you vote for some arsehole who will lie to you, and then he ignores what he promised as he gets to be pretty much a dictator for the rest of his term.
Voting someone out of office is difficult as all our current systems favour incumbency, and in any case the other guy is just as bad because they receive money from the same contributors probably.
But that goes against the market orthodoxy of our times. Remember, public services exist only to be privatised, piece by piece. Socialised medicine doesn't work! That's why the UK has a lower infant mortality rate and higher life expectancy than the US!
The Russian government is quite openly murdering critics of the government, both at home and in foreign countries. Sneakily playing with TLDs to censor the internet doesn't seem like their style. If they want to clamp down on the internet, there won't be much doubt what they are doing. The fucking psychos will probably just bomb uncooperative ISPs or something.
I can easily picture that many of the parents in favour of vaccinating their children against cocaine would happily feed them Ritalin if they misbehaved, which does pretty much the same damn thing.
If you want to assess how realistic its being used as part of a thorough rehab programme is, replace 'rehab' with 'therapy' and 'cocaine' with 'prozac'. GPs will be handing these things out like paracetamol to druggies and hysterical parents alike.
Used as an involuntary jab to fight the idiotic 'war on drugs' it is a clear violation of civil and cognitive liberty (I'm using that phrase more and more these days, not something I'm happy about). Used as part of a rehab programme, it kills the drug use without addressing the underlying weakness of character that created the addict. They are likely to fuck themselves up in some other way.
There isn't always, and shouldn't always be, a quick fix.
Thats a fair point actually. If the UK is the sixth country on the list, not sixth supercomputer, we are doing OK. I'd still like to see a comparison of total computing power though.
I'm working on the assumption that the computing power of the newest supercomputers dwarves that which has gone before, and that's not an unreasonable assumption. Do you have any numbers for total computing power by country?
I'm studying physics at Leicester, its a good university. Don't be too pessimistic about the US though, a lot of the research done in our department is in collaboration with the US. I myself am involved with the Leicester cubesat project and we are currently looking to work with the University of Florida.
Slashdot Mirror
With the US economy taking a bit of a downturn (that Bush is sure won't turn into a recession. Honest. Keep spending money please!) some government spending has got to go and whilst this is being billed as a 'change' it sounds like its actually a cut-back. Of course, nobody suggested cutting back on idiotic military campaigns. Your government has to focus on important stuff after all.
But don't worry. I'm sure the Russians or the Chinese will yet you tag along with their moon missions when yours are cancelled.
Three words for you:
Large.
Hadron.
Collider.
Europe's latest and greatest particle accelerator will produce collisions with 14 times as much energy as the largest one in the US when it comes online in May. The US abandoned its plans to create a new collider, presumably when the government discovered you can't fry developing nations with that kind of particle beam. So, no, the US is not at the cutting edge in physics.
Nothing kills a society faster than broken error correction mechanisms. If you continue to believe you are superior to the rest of the world in science, you will continue to slip behind in science.
Took the words right out of my mouth, although I'd like to add a much broader historical point;
One of the notable characteristics of the twentieth century was the exponential increase in the cost of producing cutting edge media. You went from printing presses to radio transmitters to movie studios within a few short decades. The consequences of this were that the public discourse became dominated by those in society who controlled the resources, be it big business or government. Thus modern propaganda was born.
A reversal of this trend is very much welcome. As it stands, some people (usually the worst people) in society have a megaphone with which to shout down anyone who disagrees with them or their peers, leaving most of us effectively voiceless and apathetic. It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.
I'm not sure if its that common, and it doesn't bode well for such an adventurous technology. Remember the Ford Nucleon - ford designed a nuclear powered car based on certain promising developments in lightweight shielding materials and miniaturised reactors that never actually materialised. I can see how you might be able to get away with it when you are tweaking a well understood design (a standard, petrol driven car) but surely for something completely new you've got to be a bit more honest about the specs?
It isn't a non sequitur; An exoskeleton and a space suit actually have some similarities.
8kg is ridulously light for an exoskeleton that can increase the strength of its wearer significantly. The power source alone would have to be much heavier (its designed to work outdoors, so no wired power). For comparison, the Apollo space suits weighed about 80kg.
Or it could be an indication this is BS...
What IT managers consider reasonable pay in the UK would normally be associated with manual labour. I was paid £12,000 for web design and print work, and expected to do overtime, and that was typical of the job I had. I was eventually made redundant in favour of some retard who was still using table layouts and had left the back-end for one of his websites open to the public with no password (I can disclose this now as it seems to have been, finally after over a year, fixed). The people who earn lots in web design are those with sales skills, networking skills (and I don't mean TCP/IP), generally the smarmy twats who traditionally lurked under stones in the marketing department. I've gone back to university now, studying physics and I'm very happy. I'm participating in a cubesat project and hope that will lead on to work in the space industry where (I assume) there is a little more respect for knowledge.
Aside from the fact I've never even been to the US, it isn't just my perspective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_Digital_Divide1.png
The two countries I forgot to add are Japan and South Korea, must be because I'm a big nasty racist Englishman.
After all, when do politicians not listen to reasoned scientific argument? Oh, shit, wait...
When they started scanning your drivers licence when you drank. A little bit of vigilance could've seen this coming a mile away. Any time an institution has a new way to access personal data they will abuse it.
This is probably going to be coming over to the UK soon as well. They have become more tight on ID for clubs and bars to the point where only a specifically manufactured ID card, a drivers licence or a passport will do. Standardising ID is a precursor to this step.
I'm hoping that the introduction of very low cost PCs is going to open up computer usage, and more importantly the internet, for the developing world. Sometimes we like to think of the internet as a global community, but that really isn't the case. Most of the internet is still the anglophone countries and Europe.
Of course, cheap PCs alone aren't going to do it - there is still the question of the infrastructure to provide home internet connections to the world. However, that is more likely to occur in a situation of widespread computer ownership.
Recently there was a 'buy one give one' scheme where you got an XO and one was given to some impoverished child somewhere, and I'd really like to see that in the UK. I'd get a near indestructible linux laptop that never needs plugging in, along with a vague sense of moral smugness :)
We sat back, tactically voted for our labour MPs on some kind of nudge-wink understanding they weren't part of the New Labor (sic) project. And we got exactly what we deserved for our political apathy - war, shame, and commuters with C4.
...the government they deserve. And as an outside (from the UK) it looks as if that is about to apply to America.
It isn't like any of this is surprising. Everyone knows that Diebold machines are crooked, but they are still being used. Nobody did anything about it, that's why.
I know its a pain standing up for your civil liberties, but don't worry - if you ignore them, they will go away.
There is one of two ways you can get power wireless with RF radiation:
1. Send it out in all directions. Incredibly wasteful and, because of the inverse square law, has to be so powerful it will interfere with other stuff.
2. Send it out in a narrow beam. I really wouldn't want to be standing in between a laptop and an outlet if this were the method...
Either way, I prefer living in a home that isn't a microwave oven.
That would be the democratic ideal, but the fact us none of us live in democratic countries. We will in representative 'democracies' where you vote for some arsehole who will lie to you, and then he ignores what he promised as he gets to be pretty much a dictator for the rest of his term.
Voting someone out of office is difficult as all our current systems favour incumbency, and in any case the other guy is just as bad because they receive money from the same contributors probably.
But that goes against the market orthodoxy of our times. Remember, public services exist only to be privatised, piece by piece. Socialised medicine doesn't work! That's why the UK has a lower infant mortality rate and higher life expectancy than the US!
The Russian government is quite openly murdering critics of the government, both at home and in foreign countries. Sneakily playing with TLDs to censor the internet doesn't seem like their style. If they want to clamp down on the internet, there won't be much doubt what they are doing. The fucking psychos will probably just bomb uncooperative ISPs or something.
I can easily picture that many of the parents in favour of vaccinating their children against cocaine would happily feed them Ritalin if they misbehaved, which does pretty much the same damn thing.
If you want to assess how realistic its being used as part of a thorough rehab programme is, replace 'rehab' with 'therapy' and 'cocaine' with 'prozac'. GPs will be handing these things out like paracetamol to druggies and hysterical parents alike.
I'm deadly serious.
Used as an involuntary jab to fight the idiotic 'war on drugs' it is a clear violation of civil and cognitive liberty (I'm using that phrase more and more these days, not something I'm happy about). Used as part of a rehab programme, it kills the drug use without addressing the underlying weakness of character that created the addict. They are likely to fuck themselves up in some other way.
There isn't always, and shouldn't always be, a quick fix.
If it were then possible to determine what a person experienced while dreaming, would it not be possible to impart skills, Matrix-style?
Thats a fair point actually. If the UK is the sixth country on the list, not sixth supercomputer, we are doing OK. I'd still like to see a comparison of total computing power though.
I'm working on the assumption that the computing power of the newest supercomputers dwarves that which has gone before, and that's not an unreasonable assumption. Do you have any numbers for total computing power by country?
I'm studying physics at Leicester, its a good university. Don't be too pessimistic about the US though, a lot of the research done in our department is in collaboration with the US. I myself am involved with the Leicester cubesat project and we are currently looking to work with the University of Florida.