eInfiniti

Do Black Holes exist? Well, it seems they do as so many people who appear to know at least a little about the subject say they do. I have not really learnt about them in school classes. I have only read and heard about them. The question is too technical or specialized. The knowledge base of human beings is so huge today. Most people have to depend on the opinions of professionals specialized in the relevant area. It seems to me that at this point the majority of professionals believe Black Holes do exist. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many people who say that they do.But, as far as I know, scientists debate a lot of things in the frontiers of many fields. New evidence that shows up some time down the road may prove or disprove a theory or offers a different explanation for a natural phenomenon.For the time being, most ordinary people will just have to go with the belief that Black Holes exist. Whether they do or they don't probably do not make a whole lot of difference in everyday life.

What is wrong with our country - the United States? I think you ought to look at the big picture. The main problem is that we have trouble competing with the developing countries. The US is in a pretty good position to compete with Western European countries. Simply look at the GDP growth rates of the last 10 years or so. Then, you know. But, if you look at the growth rates of some of the developing countries. You'll notice a fairly big difference between those countries and the US. That primarily has to do with the difference in labor cost. The low cost of labor of the developing countries gives them a big edge when competing with us. I don't think their products have great quality. But, a lot of times, people prefer to spend less money on things that have acceptable quality. The business men in those developing countries have strong desires to growth their businesses. They are rewarded greatly if they succede. They are very aggressive.The businesses are typically fairly young and have been growing quickly. They don't have enough qualified employees. They are not well organized. Those also contribute to their low cost of labor.I think that is the main problem with the US. folks.

How to obtain college or graduate education from abroad? Generally speaking, the procedure is as easy as 1-2-3 today with the help of internet. Step 1: Determine which country you would like to go to pursue further education. This really has to do with your own background, your plan for the future, and your knowledge about other countries. If you are not sure, I would suggest to look on the internet, especially regarding other countries.Step 2: Choose which schools you would like to apply. You can look for a list of colleges and universities of the country you would like to study on the internet. Or, search for terms like "most popular schools" or ask a friend to help you choose. Step 3: Apply for admission to the schools of interest. Go to the websites of the schools that you have already picked. Look at what is required to apply for admission. For US schools, it is normally TOEFL, SAT, GRE, GMAT if applicable, completed application forms with application fees, letters of recommendation, transcripts, application for financial aids or scholarships, and so on. Sometimes, interviews may be required.Step 4: Wait for your letters of admission from the schools. Good luck!Step 5: Decide which school to go to. You likely will receive letters of admission and "no-admission" from all the schools you have applied. If you do receive letters of admission, it is a good practice to reply to all those letters no matter whether you decide to go to those schools or not. Step 6: Get ready to go to the school of your choice. Once you choose which school to go to, you should check to see whether you need a visa. Normally, if you do need a visa, the school will let you know that, especially if you let the school know you intend to go. You can also find out about that by visiting the foreign embassy's website. Either the school will mail you a copy of the visa application or you can download from embassy's website. You will also need to show proof of financial means if you have to apply for a visa. Good luck with your new adventure!

This is an interesting topic. Arrival of bipolar world? A bipolar world is nothing new at all. Most people will probably say that the last one (US and USSR) ended in the 1990s. In that world, the two camps pretty much dominated the world affairs. It was like a line was drawn between the two camps. There was order within each camp, but there was a lot of competition between the two camps. A bipolar world is nothing new. After that, the US became the only superpower. But, how much can the US do? Bush became the president after Clinton. He really wanted to do something different. He wanted the US to do it alone. But, the Europeans did not always follow, and the world did not always follow. The US hasn't ended the war in Afghanistan. It hasn't ended the war in Iraq. It found it difficult to deal with North Korea. The last 15 years or so demonstrated that the US cannot do it alone. It needs help from a lot of the major powers and the smaller countries. Depending on how you look at it, you can think of today's world has a single pole or it has multiple poles. But, the reality is it is really in between the two states; it is a mixture of one superpower plus multiple major powers.Is the next bipolar world going to arrive in 2020 or 2050? I doubt it. I think the current state is going to continue with pole of the superpower being more prominent at times and less prominent at other times. Is India going to become a superpower by 2050? Is China going to become a superpower by 2050? Is the US going to lose its superpower status by 2050? It is unlikely for any one of the three to happen. It is practically impossible for all three of them to happen. The US just had a moderate financial crisis. It is going to be weaker than before. But, it is a long way for India or China to become a superpower. Both India and China have enough of their own problems. The financial crisis also hit them fairly hard. Their main competitive advantage is the low-cost labor. But, as the economy develops, that advantage will become less and less powerful. The developed world has a system that is comprehensive and covers almost all areas of a society. That is their advantage. That is what the developed world has to compete with the developing world. The problem with the developing world is that their system does not function very well when all the parts are added together. It can take a long time for a society to upgrade its system. Once a developing country becomes somewhat developed, it will find that its labor cost is no longer low, and it will have trouble competing with the developed world. India, China and all similar developing countries need to focus on developing their economy, upgrading their system and close the gap with the developed world. The US and all the developed countries should improve their system to better compete with the lower cost economies.Superpower is not only symbolized by GDP, Olympic gold medals and the like. It is the whole system.

I am sorry that no one has responded to your post for so long. I have been in Beijing enough to answer most of the questions asked and hope the following will still be found useful.Air quality is OK. It is only occasionally poor primarily because wind would blow pollutants into Beijing from the surrounding areas. Beijing is windy sometimes. Local companies generally work longer than 40 hours per week. Other companies don't. Since you are a foreigner, I am fairly certain you won't have to work long hours even for a local company.I don't think you need to worry about the cost of your room. If your pay is going to cover "maintainence", it should be enough for you to stay comfortably. I don't think you will have to commute a great deal. Because most people rely on public transportation, one can always find residential areas that are close to a certain commercial district. Public transportation in the city is pretty good. I would think it is better than almost all the cities in North America and Western Europe. That is because the car ownership level is still relatively low today. Public transportation is a must for most people's everyday lives. If the system stopped functioning even for an hour, I don't know what would happen. It would be like New York City that lost power a few years ago. I am not sure what made you think of curfews. Why would curfews be needed? I would guess most shops close between 9:00 and 11:00 at night. Some restaurants and bars stay open until much later because there are some many foreigners in the city nowadays. The facilities will generally be open every morning and each afternoon, 7 days per week. Their schedules really depend on whether there is enough business for them to stay open.Is the city violent? I suppose you meant to ask whether there are a lot of crimes. If so, crime levels are low; carrying/keeping weapons is not allowed. Police is not violent either. People in Beijing are very friendly to foreign visitors. Nowadays, not a small percentage of them can speak some English. English is used on most road signs and public transportation announcements. But, because the Chinese language is so different from English, it is probably difficult to read and understand the English signs if you know very little Chinese. I would think you have to deal with the language barrier. It won't be easy at the beginning. But, millions of foreigners have visited and lived in Beijing over the years. I believe you will be able to manage.Good luck with your adventure! I wouldn't blame you for your concerns.

Hi. I am trying to set up Tomcat JDBCRealm form-based security for a project. For some reason, a JSP/html file with CSS style sheets associated it won't work with the login form. Please help if you can. The login.jsp file is as follows. Without those 3 lines in blue color, the form-based security login works fine. But, with the blue lines, the login.jsp webpage will not show up as specified by the .css files; it will only display a plain webpage without any colors, graphics or the correct line-up. When I enter a correct combination of username and password in the form and hit the "Go" button, the browser will redirect to the SpryMenuBarHorizontal.css file rather than the correct page for login success. When I enter a wrong combination, nothing will go wrong and the next page will be the login failure page. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd;<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/;<head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /><%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=utf-8" pageEncoding="utf-8" %><title>Project 2</title>[color= #0000FF]<link href="project2.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="SpryAssets/SpryMenuBar.js" type="text/javascript"></script><link href="SpryAssets/SpryMenuBarHorizontal.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />[/color]</head><body><h1>Login to Project 2</h1><p>If you have been issued a username and password, key them in here now!</p><form method="POST" action="j_security_check"><table> <tr> <td colspan="2">Login to the Tomcat-Demo application:</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Name:</td> <td><input type="text" name="j_username" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Password:</td> <td><input type="password" name="j_password"/ ></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"><input type="submit" value="Go" /></td> </tr></table></form></body></html> After some observations, my intuition tells me that it is probably because the login file combination that is not specified correctly in web.xml. It seems that specifying the login.jsp file alone is not enough to have the colors, graphics and correct line-up displayed. Following is what is currently in web.xml with login.jsp alone specified as the form login page. It seems to me that the .css files also need to be specified somehow to make it work correctly. If I am correct, how should I specify the file combination in the form login page field? If not, how do I resolve the problem to allow form-based security to work with the CSS files. Thanks! <login-config> <auth-method>FORM</auth-method> <realm-name>Project 2 Protected Area</realm-name> <form-login-config> <form-login-page>/login.jsp</form-login-page> <form-error-page>/login_failure.html</form-error-page> </form-login-config></login-config> Notice from rvalkass: Please remember to use BBCodes around code.

Hello. For years, I haven't bothered to think about this subject, but now my eldest son is getting close to entering high school (in the States). Please help me to put together a strategy for him so that he can get into a prestigious university in the US after graduating from high school.My son is very smart. He is especiallly good at Math. He has studied at a few different school and has consistently ranked among the top students of his class. Everyday, he will finish his work as reqeusted relatively early so that he can play without worrying about work. He says he doesn't like going to school or studying because he doesn't get to play so much. But, he does like reading and always finishes his work in time. He doesn't feel comfortable talking to adults and speak in front of a group of people or a large audience. We hope he can get into one of best colleges in the States, Ivy League or the like.So, I am interested in your advice or opinion as to what we, as parents, should do for him to help him going through high school and into college. Should we send him to a public or private high school? Can we send him to a great public high school for the low cost? What does he need to do outside of course work? What can we do to help him improve on his leadership skills? Is there anything we need to do so he can get more scholarship for college? What else ... ?Thank you for your help!

Well, I would recommend a Honda Fit. Its name suggests that it will fit anywhere. So, I would guess that it is the right size for your mom. Based on my personal experience, Honda builds very high quality vehicles. By that, I primarily mean reliability. It is a good idea to recommend to your mom with a few models with high reliability so that she will have the least possibility of not being able to go somewhere when she needs to or being stuck somewhere in the middle of a trip. I believe reliability is the most important quality of cars.

Based on what is told to ordinary people, I have to say that I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe. Chances are very slim if life only exists on earth since the universe is simply too huge. The probability that combinations of star-planets similar to the sun-earth combination exist have to be better than negligible. One also should not ignore the possibility that life exists somewhere else in an environment that is quite different from what is found on earth. Life is such a broad term. I would think it is likely that more intelligent species compared to humans exist somewhere else.Einstein's theories seem to be pretty far from ordinary people. In other words, it is almost impossible for ordinary people to judge whether black holes exist and whether time travel is possible. I have already read about a new theory that competes with Einstein's, presumably fairly plausible. For that part of physics, we are relying on the specialists to judge for the time being, which may be unfortunate, but that area is simply too far away from everyday life.

Hi. I haven't been to Australia, but did go through some of the posts in this thread. Based on what I read, Australia is like America in my opinion. This topic is interesting. It makes a good thread on Trap 17. I have always thought Australia is like America. If you are familiar with both countries, you can probably come up with numerous differences. It's a matter of opinions whether the two are alike or not. For me, I think they are alike for the time being. Sorry, Aussies!

World wealth distribution by region is as shown in the table below (2000 data). In relative terms, Africa owns and generates the least amount of wealth though its population is over 10% of world population. Middle East is much better than Africa per capita, but it only ranks #2 after Africa. Asia is home to over 50% of world population and it ranks #3. North America (US and Canada) and Europe are much wealthier than the other regions.

My personal experience tells me that there won't be a second superpower other than the United States within the next 50 years or so, maybe even 100+ years. In that time frame, China could become a great power; India could become a great power; Russia could become a great power; May be Germany? But, I don't see any of them has a good chance to become a superpower like today's United States (in the above time frame). Having a superior economic, military, and political influence requires an adequate system, the whole system rather than the political system alone. China is not close to having that. I would guess India doesn't have that either. Both countries are growing quickly today mainly because of low-cost labor on top of social/political stability. As the economy grows, low-cost labor will gradually disappear! An adequate system, the whole system, is required at that point to continue the growth. It is very difficult to predict which country can do that successfully before things unfold...Smaller countries might also have a chance, but probably a smaller chance.

Why do we continue to fear these numbers? I personally am not superstitious and afraid of the numbers. But, sometimes I have to pay attention to what other people think. For example, I took a job in China and had to look for a place to rent. One of the subdivisions I went to was decorated in traditional Chinese style. I didn't particularly like it, but it looked ok to me. I went to see the house. It looked good to me. As I was finishing the tour of the house, my friend who went with me said its street number is 4-4 and that's probably why it hasn't been rented out. It didn't bother me to rent as I'd hand it back to the landlord when I move out. But, it looks like others chose not to rent it because of 4-4. I found a better place later on. So, I ended up not renting 4-4.In China, it is quite common for people to buy housing units in a big building or community at a very early stage, meaning that sometimes one had no idea at all what number would be assigned to the unit in the first place. If the developer doesn't avoid 4's, one could end up getting 4-4, 44, 444, and so on. That is also why some developers will not use 4 at all.

Economic development brings good life to people, but it also creates certain issues in the mean time. One of them is environmental. For example, if where you live has relatively poor air quality, it is more or less harmful to your health and its long-term effect can be potentially large. Air pollutants can in general terms be classified as dusts and chemicals. Depending on where you live, the major pollutants can be either dusts or chemicals, and they also vary due to weather conditions and from one season to another. So, when you compare air pollution from area to area, pay attention to not only amount of pollution but also type of major pollutants and seasonality. Typically, an amount of 100 corresponds to the national standard for a pollutant. In the United States, AQI (air quality index) is used to represent the amount: Generally speaking, US cities have relatively low dust levels, but chemical pollution can sometimes become a problem, e.g., during hot weather when auto and lawn mower emission becomes major sources of pullution. Normally, air quality data is published by the government and can be found on the internet. I would encourage you to find the information for your hometown, understand it, and post it in this thread. So, it can be compared with similar information of other places. For 10/25/2009, the worst areas in the US are as follows:

How rich is your country compared to other countries in the world? How rich is your family compared to others in the world? You would probably love to know the answers? But, those are complex questions in that the answers have to do with how you compare income and wealth from one country to another and on what basis. This post will compare the per capita GDP (gross domestic product) by country on the basis of purchasing power parity. PPP takes into account the cost of living and is the amount of a certain basket of basic goods that can be bought in a given country with the money it generates. There can be significant differences between PPP and actual market exchange rates. Based on World Bank data, the per capita GDP on the basis of PPP for 2008 is as follows: Notice from jlhaslip: added quote tags as per Xisto readme