Comment Re:Corn Subsidies (Score 1) 186
all disappear if we reduce human population to < 100 million
OK, you go first.
Oh wait, it's only OTHER people who are the virus that need to be destroyed.
all disappear if we reduce human population to < 100 million
OK, you go first.
Oh wait, it's only OTHER people who are the virus that need to be destroyed.
Maybe 1.2 million would be more realistic.
Smartphone sales in India for 2014 alone will be around 225 million (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/13/smartphone-explosion-2014-india-us-china-firefoxos-android)
These people likely don't know what smartphones are
Wow, good to know stone-age ignorance is alive and well still. Are you trolling or genuinely 'that ignorant'?
"India Has Higher Smartphone Usage Than the US: Study"
"Smartphone users in the country have among the highest rates of smartphone usage daily globally, spending over three hours on an average on their devices" - http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobile...
"Smartphone explosion in 2014 will see ownership in India pass US "
But yeah, those primitive brown won't even know what a smartphone is hurr hurr
It does seem more "intuitive", however, scientific research continually reveals findings that run contrary to our intuition; we don't actually know enough about the mechanisms for the genesis of life to actually say one way or the other if this is true. What you have is a hypothesis - one that needs more research - this is actually an interesting area of active research. Perhaps "harsh" environments are exactly what's needed to create sufficient 'chemical turmoil' and the driving selection mechanisms.
I actually suspect that the majority of life - and intelligent life - in the universe is probably ocean-based. If ever space aliens visit us, unlike the movies, I suspect their spaceships may be more likely to be like sealed aquariums than an air-breathing setup. I've never seen this idea reflected in science fiction though.
I think it may also partly explain why we haven't seen evidence of other intelligent life (so-called Fermi paradox, though I place little stock in that "paradox") - it's probably more difficult for ocean-based alien civilizations to have space programs.
@"Think of it less as a way to avoid ads, more of a way for your favourite sites to stay in business."
The problem with this though is that, while in principle true, websites are struggling to 'stay in business' from ads because AdSense payouts are a tiny pittance, Google takes the lion's share for their greedy selves
@"I want my favorite websites to actually get money"
The reason our favorite websites are struggling to get by with advertising is that advertisers like Google - who are effectively just the "middlemen" between advertisers and publishers - take like 95% and a tiny percent only goes to the publisher, for most websites it's barely enough to even keep the lights on. Google are reaping massive profits from the advertisers, while the actual publishers who develop the content are struggling. It's the classic "monopoly middleman" business model.
Somehow I expect that with this Google Contributor thing, it's going to be equally disproportionate - Google again have an opportunity to reap a huge percent and give only scraps to the actual website/content developers whose backs they ride on.
I would happily pay $1-3 per month for an ad-free but publishers-making-money web
But I wonder how much of that would really go to the publisher? If it's like their advertising model, then if we're lucky maybe 10% and Google takes 90%?
This is just a fancy recruitment test
I don't think I've missed the point, as I'm saying the same thing - I just think it's a lousy way to do recruitment. Analogy time: Say you want to hire a sex worker. Here are two methods:
1. Go find one that looks reasonable, initiate a negotiation. If you can find a mutually agreeable rate, hire her, otherwise continue looking for another one.
2. Issue a "challenge" to all sex workers. Declare that every day for the next 30 days, every applicant must give you a free blow job. At the end of the 30 days you will declare a grand "winner", paying the best one $500.
The difference between this analogy and the programmer challenge is that no sex worker would fall for the latter scenario.
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.