If the average person makes $1500, then half of the people are making more than that. Don't want to get in discussion about mean and median, but you know what I mean. Basically that's a lot of people, almost 600 million, that's almost the populations of USA and Canada combined.

The average gets twisted a lot by the low end figures. And don't forget a lot of black money that never gets accounted for. That adds to income of lot of people.

So the point is there are a lot of people who can buy a $10,000 car. And if enough people buy it, the next generation of the car will be cheaper and then more people will buy it.

I honestly didn't see a lot of substance here.

Instead of saying ants use TCP, I would say ants and TCP both use common sense.

When I apply for jobs, I contact friends in my network. If someone gets back to me faster, I reply back faster and send my resume to them quickly. Does that mean I am following TCP/IP?

I agree to the parent.
I agree in exerting control in moderation. However, the difference between what anonymous is doing and what a big corporate team of developers is doing is between doing a hit and run and driving a car for a long distance over a long time. The second task definitely needs a lot more control and management infrastructure in place.

Actually you could argue that it was the education that he received in Brazil that allowed him to take benefit of the system and make money. And his genes which he got from Brazilian parents. Because if simply "system" were enough to make you billionaire, everyone in the system, i.e. every American would be a billionaire.

Thousands of immigrants (including myself and either you or your ancestors) come from rest of the world to US shores. We learn on taxpayer's money in our home countries. And when we are of age to really start producing, we come to USA, which is totally unfair to our home countries. That is hard choice, but nonetheless we make it. Because USA is good place to live. People in our home countries don't like it, but on some level they understand the choice and welcome us nonetheless when we go back.

Do we as immigrants benefit from USA as a country? Certainly yes. But USA also benefits from getting talented, educated people with new ideas having directly available for work, without spending a penny on their education and upbringing. If USA did not benefit, it would simply not allow us to immigrate. Try being a 60 year old and immigrating here.

That's why I don't understand the outrage. Are you complaining this renouncing citizenship thing as unfair? But then why didn't you complain when you were "in money" in this game? Why shout only when things are not in your favor? That just sends a bad signal.

I already did this a long while back. Not only the color displayed on the screen matters for power, but even contrast and brightness settings also make difference. Higher brightness setting of the monitor result in more power consumption.

The results are posted here.

http://kedarsoman.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/saving-energy-one-monitor-at-a-time/

Yes, there have been cases of attacks on churches and missionaries. But for the bigger picture over longer time, that is not the norm.

Conversion can be still a sticky issue. But that can be true for USA also. And conversion from Catholicism to Methodism is not real conversion. How would a countryside rural family react if their child were to convert to say Islam or Hinduism?

I agree with you that Iraq war was unjust. But that is totally different topic. Million Iraqi deaths were not caused by America. America caused a few. Rest all Iraqis were killed by Iraqis (or by Muslim terrorists from other countries) by suicide bombing. And Iraqis bear responsibilities for those deaths.

If my boss fired me, and if I came home and killed my kids, can I blame my boss for that? Can I blame him for bringing out the worst in me? The same way no matter whether America attacked, Iraqis should not kill themselves. I am an Indian and no matter who attacks India, if Indians kill Indians, it's India's problem.

And if you want to blame even indirect deaths on USA, then should not give credit to USA for indirectly saved Muslim lives? Like Cholesterol lowering drugs were invented by USA and used allover the world. If this brings down deaths of Muslims, then should USA not be given credit for saving those lives? Does Middle East ever talk about that?

So yes, this bullshit sense of victimhood is the biggest problem. I will give you another example. In Fort Hood, Major Nadal killed his fellow armymen. Several Muslim leaders wanted to treat him as a single criminal and said that had nothing to do with religion. But his family never showed any remorse or guilt. Instead they chose to blame everyone and US Army for discriminating against him. Also a crazy student killed 32 students in Blacksburg. His family showed tremendous remorse and guilt. Even media in South Korea printed articles about feeling ashamed.

Why only one of these killer is being portrayed as victim by his family? What is your answer?

Would love to agree with your logic. Except that my experience strongly disagrees.

Trains, in every country worldwide, from Japan to Russia to Africa to Europe, have been a huge success. Environmentally very friendly as it mostly runs on electricity, fast, efficient, cheap. If you account for all the money given to car companies for electric vehicle research,money spent in keeping soldiers in middle east to keep oil supply safe, money saved in reduced freeway maintenance, money spent to make sure tires and lube oil disposing properly, money EARNED when empty parking lots are turned in houses and shops, the expense on train is a chum change. Yes, including all the extra expenses train brings in, still it is a huge plus.

About terrorists. Terrorist impact on average person's daily life is highly overrated. I come from India and still I would dare make that statement. India has very high casualties due to terrorism. Still people use train everyday. Same with Pakistan, China, Russia, Europe, Middle East, etc. Can you destroy a train bridge or track? Yes you can. But given the amount of media attention you get, you can bet that the law enforcement agencies will hunt you down to the end of the earth.

So how many people are smart enough to destroy a train track? A lot. But given the fact that you would most likely get death penalty or life in prison, how many people are crazy enough to do that? Very very very few.

What is the definition of whether a job "exists" or not?

If he was getting paid when the project was in exploratory phase, the job did exist, right?

I feel sorry for all this pain, but honestly it's not a company's responsibility to care for my career beyond a certain point. If I get a better job offer and hop away, do I need to care about company's business goals not being met? I hope not.

I agree, we are overlooking something here.

I have one more question. In traveling salesman problem, there is generally a condition that the salesman must visit all the cities. That makes the problem much harder. A bee is not operating under that constraint. It can visit as many flowers as it likes, then simply decide to fly away. It might have visited one of the most optimum paths for the flowers it touched. But there is no way to claim that that was the objective it was trying to achieve from the beginning. So it is not really a traveling salesman problem.

Nature is smart, but not because it can do complex things. It's because it keeps things simple.

Not necessarily.

Good sleepers might be at disadvantage for crawling predators. But when awake, they would feel fresh and will be able to focus better, run faster, have better reflexes, etc. giving them survival advantage.

And we have not talked about hundreds of other effects of bad sleep on body, like increased risk of heart disease, etc.

http://kedarsoman.wordpress.com/

I was searching for the whole thread for a comment talking about how India should focus on hunger and poverty. While I almost could not find one and about to believe that the attitudes of US/Europe towards India (and developing world in general )are changing, I came across this one.

No one disagrees that hunger and poverty should be eliminated. The question is how. And Indian and other governments are doing this because they believe that this is the best way to eliminate poverty for long term.

Let me give you an example what tremendous revolution Internet and IT can bring to the life of the poor. In India there is an act called REGA. Rural Employment Guarantee Act. According to this act, if a rural person shows up at the doorsteps of REGA office and asks for job, he or she must be given a job for at least 15 days of the month. These jobs are usually day labor jobs on government construction projects, but still provide people some means to survive.

Unfortunately this law has become hotbed of corruption. Officers take your application, give you job for 15 days then tell you not to come on job. While you don't show up, the records still you are coming on job and are being paid cash. The money goes into officer's pocket.

With a recent initiative, Indian government streamlined this process. They made all these details computerized, identified by a persistent job card number, and made the data available online. Anyone, just by typing their jobcard number can see how much money was paid on their jobcard record. I know of an NGO that made arrangements with a cyber cafe in a adjacent town and arranged one printout of jobcard per person every month.

Previously people just knew that there is come corruption, but no one did anything about it. But now when you see your jobcard is been misused, and you see the money that should be paid to you is gone in someone else's pocket, suddenly it is personal. This resulted in people marching on local office with sticks and stones and literally beating up the corrupt officer.

Contrary to the popular belief, lack of money or lack of food or lack of water is not the issue. Management of these resources is the major issue. And Internet/ IT/Technology has huge role to play here.

What has happened to Slashdot? Who do you have to be a Guru in every subject to read Slashdot?

Looks like gone are the days when all you needed to good discussions on Slashdot was genuine curiosity and decent , not necessarily perfect, grasp of English language. And no, being a know-all, done-all master of the universe was not required either.

While I can perfectly understand saying "You are making a mistake" or "That's not what the article says", I have never really understood calling someone pathetic for not knowing something.

The range of topics covered here is very wide and I don't know abc of several things discussed here. Does that make me stupid and pathetic?

Did you hear the latest?

They found the source code was just one file containing contained only the following lines

#include "federal_reserve.h"

int main ()
{
    if (loss)
        {
              feds->bailout();
              executives->pay_bonus();
        }
      else
        {
              stockholders->pay_dividend();
              executives->pay_bonus();
          }
}

I forgot to add last couple of lines.

The problem with reality is that it does not issue one way ticket. Life always runs in circle. You cannot theorize something without assumptions. And rest assured there will be one day when your assumptions will not be true anymore.

That's why reality is the problem.