I still use a 2012 Chronos 7, and it's been really great, except for one thing: the AMD GPU (6750M). I've never been able to get the official driver working in Linux (doesn't recognize it as a valid Radeon). The integrated Intel works fine, but doesn't cut it for most Steam games and such. In fact, I got so frustrated trying to get the AMD driver to work that I swore I would never again buy one of their cards. Some Samsung models also had the UEFI BIOS bug so, overall, I wouldn't consider Samsung to be particularly Linux friendly.

By the way, my Chronos 7 runs much better with the 4.x kernel (CentOS 7).

I used "racist" in too liberal a sense, apologies. What I meant to say is that framing this issue in terms of the moral and/or ethical "laxity" of a whole (rather large) group of people (and, by implication, the moral superiority of another) is dangerous, and I think it's also wrong. First, these kinds of arguments have often been used to discriminate and to justify discrimination (e.g. against the Roma [gypsies], and why not, against people from Eastern Europe - e.g. Romanians [note: Roma and Romanian are two very different things, although some people are both] in Italy or the UK). Second, I think you'll find that all human societies have a moral system, but that such systems often differ. I guess maybe it comes down to different definitions of kinship and in-group and out-group members, since humans apply different "moral" standards depending on the social/kinship proximity. In any case, what may be considered morally "lax" in one society may be totally acceptable, and even a cherished behaviour, in another, depending on the context in which such behaviour occurred.

My point is this: comparing systems of morality is difficult, and you cannot do it simply by comparing two groups in terms of one behaviour, at least not without understanding said behaviour in its systemic context. Taking one behaviour, such as lying or cheating, and using that, in a totally decontextualized manner, to say that one group is morally superior to another is simply wrong. In few, if any (none that I'm aware of), moral systems is lying considered universally wrong. Saying to a child that her pet went to "sleep", or "you'll be fine" to a terminal cancer patient... these are all, strictly speaking, lies. Does that make them morally wrong? To go back to the actual article, you should consider the fact that this "cheating" involved no harm to anyone, except perhaps to the researchers who apparently had to give more money out (I only skimmed TFA), but who had agreed from the beginning to let go of up to a specified sum; moreover, there was no penalty for "cheating". I can envision many situations in which such "cheating" would be considered a virtue (e.g. being smart).

Absolutely right, and ultimately doesn't have much to do with socialism per se, although socialism, as implemented in Eastern Europe, certainly created a climate in which one had to game the system in order to survive. Take the example of Romania today (obviously no longer "socialist"), where the minimum wage is somewhere around 200 euros, and the median wages are not too far off from that figure. The prices there are basically the same as in East Germany, so most of the people need to game the system somehow in order to make ends meet, since the math simply does not work otherwise (200 euros per month minus, say, 100 for rent, and you're left with 100 euros per month for groceries when a bottle of milk is ca. 1 euro, 1kg of chicken breast is about 4 euros, etc [http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Romania] - this, of course, doesn't include, shoes, transportation, etc). This forces pretty much everyone to be corrupt, to some extent, starting from the poorest of the poor and going all the way to the top. Until the wages/prices ratio reaches decent levels, there's always going to be corruption there.

I don't think you can phrase this issue in terms of "ethics" or "morality" - indeed, doing so has certain racist undertones. You can't expect people who grew up in a particular system to just change their worldview once that system is replaced, unless the new system is authoritarian. There's a book, called "Defending the Border", which really brings this issue into perspective; it talks about the effects of suddenly separating tight communities and families by an impenetrable border (the Iron Curtain).

It's direct evidence in the sense that they analyzed products of human digestion rather than archaeological materials presumably associated with diet. Examples of indirect evidence for diet would be, for example, stone tools presumably used to process a particular type of resource (e.g. meat), or animal bones found in archaeological assemblages. So, for example, if I find that 90% of the bones found in an assemblage belong to juvenile reindeer, I may argue based on this indirect evidence that the makers of said assemblage were specialized reindeer hunters (this may well be wrong though).

Still, the first sentence in the abstract is wrong. The evidence they presented is no more "direct" than the evidence provided by stable isotope analyses of bone collagen, and I'd argue that at this point is less reliable.

Dental records are not as relevant for a species that uses tools to process food; tools/food processing technologies can make any food item suitable for any dentition.

The thing with Neanderthals is that _direct_ evidence (c.f. article) from the isotopic composition of bone collagen indicates they obtained most of their _protein_ from meat. This doesn't mean they didn't eat veggies - low protein fruits, for example, would be more or less invisible isotopically. What the isotope data tells us is that they relied on meat to a greater extent than anatomically modern humans (AMHs), to the point that their nitrogen stable isotope ratios, which are enriched with each trophic level, are as high as those of carnivores. Such high values (or even higher) can be observed in AMHs whose diet includes a significant portion of fish, because the trophic chain in aquatic systems is longer and more complex, but the carbon stable isotope values do not show evidence for significant consumption of such aquatic resources with Neanderthals. So, basically, the isotopic evidence we have so far suggests that Neanderthals obtained much more of their protein from terrestrial animals than was/is the case with anatomically modern humans.

An important point to remember is that the isotopic values from bone collagen represent the _average_ diet over a long time span (it depends on the bone - e.g. a rib vs a femur - but it's several years). Dental calculus, and much more so poop, records the diet over a much shorter timespan, and are therefore not necessarily representative of overall diets. Dental calculus is particularly problematic in this regard because we don't understand all that well what gets preserved in it and what doesn't - a single meal of grains may leave a strong marker that will last years. Sure, you can look at dental calculus and say they ate grains, but the more interesting and/or important questions is: how often?

It's not just about easy courses versus difficult ones (and hard programs/universities versus easy ones). There's also an issue with the assumption of a particular distribution of student "talent" across classes, even for the same course year over year. Although for big first and second year courses this is less of a problem, there are several factors which can influence which students will end up in which class; for example, entrance requirements may change from one year to the next, a group of students (e.g. friends) with a special interest in a topic may decide to take a particular course together, etc... The result is that at least in some cases a disproportionate number of students in a class may be exceptional (good or bad), and I think in those cases it's unfair to grade based on a Gaussian distribution. In some cases, yes, almost everyone deserves an A. There's also the possibility that a class may contain two (or more) different populations, such as a group of students taking the course as an elective, and a group of students taking the course as a "requirement". As an anecdote, I once took a hard-core archaeological theory course, pretty small (~10 or so students), and a couple of my classmates were actually chemistry majors (or something along those lines) taking it as an elective... needless to say, they did pretty poorly.

Then there's also the issue of teaching talent... some people can get the message across more efficiently than others, meaning that one group of students may -learn- more than another group of students taking the exact same course. Is it fair to grade the two groups according to the same curve?

I think you need flexibility in the system - forcing a particular distribution of grades is often unfair. If you want to be all scientific about it, fine, but then do it properly and check the assumptions.

My wife regularly gets Word documents from work containing schedules for the week, etc. I have yet to see one that actually renders 100% correctly in LibreOffice (I can't check the version now, but she downloaded it in September 2013 I think). The main problem seems to be with the placement of tables, which sometimes get overlaid on top of text that should be placed before or next to them. I can't link to those docs for obvious reasons, but trust me, compatibility is an issue, both for my wife, and for me (I need to exchange revisions, which may include formatting changes, with co-authors).

Really? Which particular versions are you referring to? Anyway, Office != Word, and as much as I hate storing data in Excel files, a lot of basic things are just much easier in Excel ("real" data and complex manipulation are a different thing, obviously). Then there's Powerpoint, which is actually pretty good for group presentations, teaching, etc, as well as OneNote, another fantastic tool (the enterprise features of office, such as Outlook/Exchange, I'm not particularly impressed with, but I can see many scenarios in which they make perfect sense). Yes, you have alternatives for all these tools, some of which may work better, but you sacrifice compatibility, and that is a really big deal for collaboration, administrivia, etc. I'd gladly replace Windows with Linux on my personal computer (I worked as a Linux/Unix sysadmin for over a decade before starting grad school), but the truth is that I just can't afford to use something that's incompatible with the formats co-authors, administrative staff, etc use. Besides, most open-source tools are available for Windows now. It really is a shame, but what can you do? Using a Mac is not an option for me because, although I do like the OS and some aspects of their hardware, I strongly dislike Apple's attitude.

I don't think research and education can be easily separated, and Romania does need to invest a lot in education. How do you expect to get rid of corruption if people are uneducated? The thing is, people do worry about "a lot of other things"... and as things stand many will swallow whole whatever lies those running for office will tell them (e.g. that if elected, each Romanian will get xxxx amount of money from him [Diaconescu]). The current educational system discourages critical thinking and the exploration of novel approaches, partially because the professors are paid poorly (which encourages corruption, such as accepting money for a better mark), and partially because they are poorly trained themselves.

Actually I think this is one of the most interesting topics discussed on Slashdot lately. Romania is an interesting place in a lot of ways - in terms of archaeology, for example, it has produced the earliest anatomically modern human remains in Europe (Pestera cu Oase); it is also home to unique ecosystems, a very interesting place for cultural anthropologists, it has a lot of natural resources (including agricultural here), etc. In short, a lot of knowledge (and money) can be gained by studying a variety of things in Romania. And who is best suited to study Romania? An American or a well-trained Romanian scientist?

On a side note, Romania may be a small country by non-European standards, but quite a few notable intellectuals and scientists were born there over the last century or so.

Ah, what the hell happened to paragraph breaks?!

Hrrmm, minimum wages in Romania matter - averages mean nothing if the distribution is heavily skewed. You should also take a look at the level of unemployment. And all this EU talk and how much funds it has given to Romania... look at how many companies from "western" countries have benefited from cheap Romanian labour (although, not content, some are moving to places like Moldova, which is a bit ironic considering all the protectionist measures countries like France implement). Then you have foreign (EU) companies such as Orange which set their prices in Euros and are completely shielded from fluctuations in the local currency (RON) while a Romanian customer never knows just how much the next bill is actually going to cost. The thing is, even with the average wage you provide, it's very hard to argue that you can make a totally honest living. The math just doesn't add up. If you don't own a fully paid apartment in Bucharest, rent is going to cost you what? 200-300 euros? That leaves you with, say, 480 euros. The cost of living is only slightly below that of, for example, Leipzig (Germany), so I really have a hard time seeing how you can make ends meet - just food is going to cost you at least 250 Euros per month, and then you have all sorts of bills (electricity, gas, etc). The current wages are below what is required for living - honestly, if you told me I would have to work my ass off 10 hours a day to be able to barely make it to next month, I would either give up on work, move to a different country, or try to find a way to make money in dubious ways (stealing, cheating, etc). So this creates corruption at the lowest levels, which is the real problem... imagine a poor peasant who steals some scrap metal from unused infrastructure left over from communist times - the local police and/or mayor know about it, but let it pass... the catch is, when that mayor or police officer starts pocketing public money one way or another, the poor peasant can't really stand up and do anything about it, since he or she has a lot more to lose by being fined or going to jail than the (richer) mayor, who also has contacts that can get him out of sticky situations. I honestly think that the extremely low and unsustainable wages (in addition to the totally irresponsible media) are to blame for the corruption and the status of Romanian politics.

Searching by shape is a bit of a nutty idea, if you ask me... words can describe shapes quite well. What I'd really like to see though is a search engine for music, that lets the user sing/whistle and searches based on that. There are songs that I'd really like to hear again but I don't remember the name nor the lyrics.