Dig it.

The problem with alternative car fuels is that they're a solution to the wrong problem: the real issue is that it's not sustainable for every person on the planet to transport himself and two tons of metal an average distance of sixteen miles one-way as part of a daily commute.

So, if Schmidt works for the federal government as a technical advisor and retains his Google stock, that's a conflict of interest, right? (I don't know whether he'll be allowed to retain his Google stock, but I haven't read anything to the contrary yet.) I mean, I'm all for trusting someone, but clearly that's led us into disaster as regarding the financial industries.

From what I understand, the patients were merely given pills labeled 'placebo'. Do we know that all patients could read and knew what 'placebo' meant?

Question: in general, is there a significant difference in the cognitive effort required to memorize a new ideogram versus memorize a new latin root? (Assuming that you can't derive the meaning from radicals / sub-ideograms within the ideograms or similar words.) The only serious problem I see in using technological interfaces and consequently forgetting how to write characters is when people have to take a test (be it college entrance examinations or job tests, etc.) and are forced to complete a writing section by hand. A big problem I see in suggesting that the Chinese and Japanese romanize or hangul-ize their alphabets is what other people have suggested: there's a shitton of human culture and history that will be lost. It would be awful. Also, as others have pointed out, once you're fluent in Japanese or Chinese, it's possible to absorb a lot of information very quickly when you look at ideograms. Some linguist or psychologist should do some tests to verify or test that hypothesis.

We're assuming the Chinese government sponsored these cyber attacks toward China-involved human rights activists.

However, do we have sufficient information to make that assumption? For all we know it could actually have been human rights activists setting up attacks to look like they were caused by the Chinese government.

Perhaps the role of the government is to regulate the free market when it's in the interest of citizens and the free market is unable to regulate itself. Obviously the current U.S. government dropped the ball on that one, likely starting with deregulation in the Reagan era.

What would make Google's censoring worse would be if Indians did not know Google was censoring. Do they know? Can they read slashdot?

And, signal-to-noise-ratio is a problem, as is any other denial-of-service type attack on our ability to express our thoughts. People shouldn't feel threatened for speaking their minds, nor should they be placed in a muzzle and unable to speak - literally or allegorically.

Japan used to invest money or donate heavily toward Chinese infrastructure. As I recall the motivation for somehow monetarily aiding China was political, and giving that money for infrastructure was the only thing the Japanese could justify.

However, when Chinese came into its economic own, that means of political sway become pointless. The point is that China should indeed have infrastructure, though certainly I've never seen it with my own eyes.

I would mod you up if I could. You provides a good counterexample to those who argue (rightly) that maybe just some middle manager got nervous and had the security guard knock down and remove the poster. Really it could be any combination of UN policy being enforced or some individual(s) acting alone, but what's important is that censorship happened. Obviously we don't know what the poster said, whether it was factually valid or appropriate, and having those situational details would make this article and video better. As it is, it's more off-topic "he-said, she-said" bullshit. Give me facts, presented in a non-biased way!

The cell phone industry in the U.S. is an oligopoly. (And presumably everywhere else, too, due to the obstacles of getting permission for and setting up infrastructure.) As far as I know, unlike basic utilities (i.e. water and electric), the cell phone industry is nowhere near as heavily regulated by the Federal government. And though I think having a cell phone is a social necessity, the customer-contracting part of the industry seems wholly unregulated. I don't believe this is in any way a good thing for the consumer.


Here are some things that leave me with a bad taste in my mouth:

1) We all take it for granted that cell-phone contracts are for two years. Why is it two years? Presumably because that's the price consumers have been willing to pay. Furthermore, it's not like you can fulfil the two year contract and then go month-to-month; instead, you have to enter into ANOTHER two-year contract, so that every two years you have exactly ONE MONTH to avoid paying a cancellation fee. Imagine if your water bill had this "price-structuring."

2) Because of piggybacking on voice signals, it costs cell phone companies essentially nothing to transmit SMS messages. Yet, for the longest time, to send an SMS text in the U.S. was ludicrously expensive. Paying $10/month for a service that costs my carrier literally nothing makes me feel used.

3) List of fees when I last signed up:
a) $30 sign-up fee (would be $45 if instead I wanted to pay the sign-up fee in cash or be sent a bill in the mail, but it was only $30 if I wanted the fee drawn from a credit card. However, paying the sign-up fee by credit card automatically set up my monthly billing to draw from that credit card, and I couldn't change this until several months down the line.)

b) $30 labor charge (i.e. another $30 sign-up fee)

c) $10 plan add-ons which you have to sign-up for but can cancel starting the next month. Note that by the time you get your first bill and go to cancel this fee, it generally takes another two months of bills to take effect.


I think that the cell phone industry is of significant utility to U.S. citizens that we deserve to have our government step in and help regulate its pricing and scheming because we are sufficiently unable to do restrain ourselves long enough to have effect in the free market.

I'm 25. After two years in the industry (and about four years of college), I became really disillusioned with computer science. I attempted to quit my job and go hike around Japan. Ultimately, my company gave me a quite generous leave of absence (which I'm still on). I'm still in Japan, now teaching at an elementary school. It's tiring work, but I feel loved and appreciated. My salary is roughly half of what it was before, but my rent has also been halved, I have no car or car insurance, etc., so I live well. As the guy above spoke, you can probably arrange with your company to take a leave of absence. It takes courage, but you can leap blindly and still land on your feet.

Exactly. The pronation-'correcting,' cushiony soles of the modern age are a response to the horrific places where we run, on non-giving surfaces like concrete and asphalt.

If you look back in time, why would man create shoes in the first place? I'd imagine in response to extreme cold and heat, and low-to-the-ground threats like snake bites. Hell, even Johnny Appleseed went barefoot a few hundred years ago. But since then, we've done a terrific job of makes the earth a dangerous place to walk. For starters, think of all the sharp metallic junk on the streets and sidewalks.

That should have absolutely no implications on the legality of the pirate bay, in the same way that my calling a police officer a fat pig shouldn't affect the severity of a speeding ticket I'm about to get.

I was going to throw my Windows XP laptop in the trash until I installed ubuntu and revived the ailing beast. I don't think "one case fits all" applies for criticisms of speed or battery life on notebooks.

I support the journalist for downloading the movie. Would it be as scandalous to read a draft of a novel or hear a music demo? Rupert Murdoch doesn't give a shit about art, he's about $-dolla!!billz-$, and like the RIAA he'll try to make an example of every poor sap that he can.

Gathered, I can't say I support the guy for being a critic or working FOR fox, but the latter problem may have just solved itself... And there is a certain amount of brazenness or buffoonery required to openly admit to 'pirating,' but...