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Since when does Moore's law apply to hard drives? Does fitting double the transistors in half the space make your hard drive have a higher capacity?

Obviously, nobody remembers the hard drive capacity lull that happened about `99 or so. Hard drives were quickly nearing their technological limits. Then, IBM got GMR heads working in hard drives, and everyone has been pushing that technology as fast as they could. Perhaps that technology, too, has reached it's limit.

You could be an optimist and say that another break-through will come along soon enough, but I'm not so optimistic. IBM's exit from the Hard Drive market is just another sign of what's happening. The trend is to cut costs down to nill, so you can sell your product a few cents cheaper than the competition. This results both in product development and manufacturing being outsourced, and in research unlikely to produce short-term results, being extensively cut, if not eliminated.

So, we may see a new technology comming along that will allow for increased storage capacity, but I think that's much less likely now than it was just a few years ago. What's more, this trend has more of a long-term impact. We might find something new this time around, but could still be in trouble, let's say, 5 years from now, when we need something new, and nothing is forthcomming due to lack of research.

I can already see the solid-state advocates scrambling to reply, so I'll also add that research is needed to improve the capacity and lower the price of memory chips as well.

The Economist actually endorsed Kerry, albeit with "a heavy heart". This is not a liberal publication either, folks. It is a conservative publication of the non 'neo' variety, though it is not surprisingly more concerned with the economic, rather than social, side of things. The President got points for his good intentions but in the end they conceded he "has never seemed truely up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it".

While it is published in England, the largest part of it's readership is American, and based on how they usually go, it was an endorsement Bush should have had in the bag. Most telling, they wrote that their confidence in him had been "shattered". The criticism was almost entirely foreign policy-based. The editors made it clear that a new approach abroad, as well as a greater distance between himself and the extremes of the religious right, were what they required from him to receive their blessing.

Kerry actually got praise for his voting record as a fiscal conservative and free trade advocate, though it wondered if his recent swing towards protectionism was for real or just politics. He is not without a few big spending projects, like health care, but they guess these probably wont get past a Republican congress anyway. No flying colors here but passing marks in the face of four more years of Bush foreign policy.

Interesting stuff.

http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?stor y_id=3329802

Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks.

* He's a politician (Bush is just a failed businessman).

Meaning Bush has some sense of reality

What evidence do you have that Bush is a "puppet"?

He is not only the most powerful vice-president in American history. He is also the most controversial, a man whose decisions have repeatedly given even loyal Republicans pause. Four more years of George W. means four more years of Bush-Cheney: the closest thing to a co-presidency America has ever seen.

For the past four years the two men have been inseparable. Most vice-presidents have to fight for time with their boss; Mr Cheney sees his several times a day. Most vice-presidents spend their days at state funerals; Mr Cheney, more than anyone else, picked the members of the current administration. Thereafter he helped to shape the administration's policies on everything from energy policy to the invasion of Iraq.

The Republicans have repeatedly reminded Americans this week that September 11th 2001 defined this administration. But who was in charge on that terrible day? It was Mr Cheney who took most of the key decisions--from hiding the president to authorising the shooting-down of suspicious aircraft--while Mr Bush was holed up in Nebraska.

Further, the idea that the President is solely responsible for his entire policy is a joke...he has experts in various narrow fields to advise him. Being President is a management job...

Let's keep a tally of sites with relevant information. Not sure if there's a bias in their reporting of news, but I've come to like Real Clear Politics as a way to keep track of the polls, etc.

Of course there's always non-US news sites like The Guardian and The Economist's articles regarding the election.

Breaking "news" also appears on Drudge Report. As far as blogs go, I don't really have any good ones. Any other ones you guys like?

I really hate the whole "subscription" content thing sometimes.

I read this from The Economist when it was new, now it's subscription only. Basically, they said the "gridlock is good" mantra is crap, that bad legislation tends to get passed either way, and that more bad legislation may pass during a "gridlock" session because the compromise tends to be "do both" instead of "do neither". They pointed to specific examples of bad and good legislation passed under "gridlock" and "non-gridlock" presidencies, specifically going back to the Carter and early Clinton years before the Republican Revolution in Congress (aka the "Contract with America").

I also read something from Charles Schwab that tends to agree with your point, but without any numbers or examples to back it up.

I'm not sure which way is the right way. Our Constitution is specifically built to make passing laws hard, because every law passed represents something taken away from people.

Look at both Clinton and Bush not being able to get judicial appointments confirmed, it didn't really matter who controlled the Senate, it was close enough that in effect neither party controls enough to get certain business done. The resulting gridlock has caused many trial/appellate dates to be pushed back, which I don't think helps the "fair and speedy trial" situation.

Reagan got a lot of interesting laws and appointments passed in a Democratic Congress, mostly by appealing directly to the people. Kerry doesn't have the charisma to pull that off though, so it's probably a bad example.

History hasn't really shown that either a gridlocked or non-gridlocked arrangement is better. Clinton had a straight-through majority on both side the first two years of his presidency and couldn't get anything passed on his agenda. Bush 2, on the other hand, has gotten some legislation passed on a post-9/11 bounce, but he hasn't gotten many judicial appointments through, he's had to make a lot of compromises in the legislation that did go through. Remember that Ashcroft wanted a lot more than what he got in the Patriot act, and the resulting bill was a lot milder than what could-have-been, which represents a great amount of compromise in a time of non-gridlock.

So, gridlock doesn't mandate compromise, and non-gridlock doesn't rule out compromise. So this really isn't a good voting issue.

* Approve of that candidate
* Endorse that candidate's position(s)
* Want that candidate to be the next President of the United States!

Normally I would agree. But in this case we are doing an emergency apendectomy with the only tool available - a rusty penknife. If we do not remove the dangerous and incompetent regeme, the results will be disasterous.

I like the way The Economist put it: " The incompetent or the incoherent?"

Speaking of world respect, the Economist has no respect for Kerry either.

Uh, they endorsed him. Most economists oppose Bush's policies, and most Nobel prize-winning economists have endorsed Kerry.

Next, we have to look at the big picture in Iraq. The media is claiming that we're losing the peace. However, they said that about Afghanistain in 2002. They said that about France and Germany in 1946. The moral of the story: It may be a long and hard road, but we'll prevail. Iraq is slowly training Iraqis to enforce their on security. It'll take time, but eventually they'll be able to police themselves. Until that time, they need US troops there to prevent the situation from deteriorating even more.

Oh, the parade of irrelevant analogies! The media said we were losing the peace in Vietnam... and they were right. It means as much as any of your examples: very little. Though there is one further connection, which is that people like you were saying very similar things in Vietnam, like "I can see a light at the end of the tunnel!", "It's going to get better, just wait!" and "We're turning the corner!" Things like these can never be proven false. Maybe you do really see a "light at the end of a tunnel." But it's really just a polite way of saying that things are really shitty right now and maybe, in the absence of evidence, things will get better, somehow.

Well, excuse me if I don't buy that, and I don't trust the people who make the decisions for which people need to make those sorts of excuses.

As noted by the Economist's endorsement, and also as commented in my blog entries about the election, there's serious issues here, which are ignored by many Republicans.

Let's ignore the colosally expensive and useless war in Iraq for a minute. Do you like paying taxes? If not, did you know that Bush created an entirely new branch of government (the Department of Homeland Defence) that is costing us billions and is wildly overreaching its designated jurisdiction to the extent where it is using public money to enforce expired patents? A double whammy of idiocy, and once again Bush refuses to acknowledge this mistake or to do anything about it. Did you know that Bush's policies of giving tax cuts and simultaneously increasing spending to stimulate the economy may make things look great now, but will cost your children and your children's children hundreds of thousands of dollars EACH when you spread the deficit to each and every citizen? Basically if you are a fiscal conservative, voting for Bush is a far less desireable choice than Kerry, and don't just take my word for it. The Economist agrees too. As does these 10 nobel prize winning economists.

We are talking about voter verifiable paper trails. You enter your vote on the machine and it prints out what you voted in human and ideally machine readable form so you can verify the machine did what you told it to do and there is a record that is put in a box like an old fashioned paper ballot. There are two forks here.

In one fork the paper trail is machine readable and it gets fed into an optical scanner which actually counts it. In this scenario the electronic voting machine is of marginal value though it can reduce errors, double voting for example or not filling in the ovals properly for an optical scanner. But the main thing they do is provide electronic assistance to the blind so they can vote without assistance. We are blessed with these machines partially because the handicapped, especially the blind, are rightly complaining they are denied their right to anonymous voting by most/all non electronic voting machine.

In the other more likely fork the electronic machine does the count, but their is a paper receipt for every vote so you can:

A. randomly recount a subset of the machines to verify that the paper trail matches the machine count and catch fraud.

B. If the election is close or their is a dispute you can do a complete manual recount and disregard the machine count if it appears suspect.

Venezuela recently had a hotly contested recall electon for Hugo Chavez and they used all electronic machines, but with a paper trail unlike the U.S. which is sorely lacking paper trails. Here is a good writup on some of the issues the Carter foundation found in trying to monitor and audit the election.

36 papers that endorsed Bush in 2000 (including his hometown paper in Crawford, TX) endorsed Kerry this time around, while only 6 went vice-versa (link). The Economist switch surprised me, since they've been defending Bush pretty strongly (recently they ran a poll (PDF) and found that most economists didn't agree with that -- much less the Nobel Prize winners.)

At this stage in the game, however, I've heard that the news coverage that's really going to effect the election is national news coverage culled from wire services like the AP in small town papers in swing states. (The AP doesn't endorse anyone, BTW.)

36 papers that endorsed Bush in 2000 (including his hometown paper in Crawford, TX) endorsed Kerry this time around, while only 6 went vice-versa (link). The Economist switch surprised me, since they've been defending Bush pretty strongly (recently they ran a poll (PDF) and found that most economists didn't agree with that -- much less the Nobel Prize winners.)

At this stage in the game, however, I've heard that the news coverage that's really going to effect the election is national news coverage culled from wire services like the AP in small town papers in swing states. (The AP doesn't endorse anyone, BTW.)

You probably need to add a date/time check so that you only do this on election day when no one is testing the machines to see if they report correctly. Of course you would hope anyone testing these machines would set the date/time to the election day so they would catch this.

The Carter Foundation attempted to verify an all evoting election in the recent referendum to recall Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Here is an article by Jennifer McCoy who led the effort. Whether you like or dislike the Carter Foundation or Chavez it is kind of interesting piece on trying to verify evoting, and some of the problems they had. Of course Venezuela's machines all had printers and a paper trail, versus U.S. where any attempt to recount or audit the election is futile on all electronic machines with no paper trail. Kind of makes you wonder when Chavez, who the Bush administration brands a dictator and a thug who steals elections, has a paper trail on their electronic voting machines and the U.S. for the most part doesn't. Sure does make it easier to steal the U.S. election though Chavez wasn't entirely open his election to be fair.

• Very rapid urbanization from population migration;
• Rapid economic growth
• Poor banking & financials regulations & enforcement
• Poor government and corporate transparency (enables wise investments), leads to poor use of capital;
• poor court systems - rapid growth in new commercial lawsuits, no infrastructure;
• vast environmental damage that won't really hit for 20 years but when it does it will be very, very bad;
• poor roads and rails infrastructure (political not market driven locations/sizes);
• little democratic traditions on local levels (feeding county/state/federal governmental structures' elected officials)
• history of totalitarian regimes - "never underestimate the ability of a country to act the same as it has in the past";
• strong pressure to limit political change ("those that disallow little peaceful revolutions invite big violent revolutions")
• unstable authoritarian bordering regimes (North Korea and others);
• educational systems based on rote learning instead of independent questioning;
• increasing instability in currency markets from rapid growth & partial convertability of Won to Euro/Dollar/etc.
• Internet technolgies uncapping info wall keeping electorate in dark about bad government actions without allowing corresponding social networks of interested reformers to push for change legitimately

to tax oversees profits of its firms is the United States. This would put American companies operating oversees at a big disadvantage, and is one reason some companies have relocated to Bermuda, the Caymans, etc.

In order to level the playing field, the federal government allows companies to defer their taxes -- that is, they don't pay tax on those profits until that money is brought over to the US.

There are two ways to close this tax loop-hole. You could remove the deferment, but this encourages even more companies to offshore their corporate hq. Or you could remove the tax all together.

The Economist had a good summary of this a while ago.

Everything you've said so far is good except for the
Maybe in 3rd world nations were slave labour is fine

comment. Software Developers in India (including me) are paid 350 times the prevailing minimum wage in India. They aren't slaving away at all. That's the REAL reason outsourcing is working. Because the people in the 3rd-world companies are NOT being exploited. They're paid astronomical sums by their country's standard, but dirt cheap by American standards, so it works out just fine. This article may help. Eventually our salaries will rise (they've been rising about 6% every year for the past 5 years) and eventually the work will move elsewhere - or it might even move back to USA after y'all make a painful adjustment and decide to work for $30,000 instead of $40,000 At some point, it will no longer be worth the communication, distance and time lag problems to hire 50 Indian workers to do the work of 12 American developers. Yes the work might then be outsourced to the Philipines or China or some place but this is unlikely and I'll tell you why: The reason India is a chosen destination is population. There is just such a LARGE pool of english-speaking univeristy graduates relative to other developing nations. So philipines might take some of the work, but never as much as was shipped to India. China is unlikely, because its standard of living is already higher than India's. This means that Chinese workers are already more expensive than Indian ones (plus in terms of english-speaking people and IT China has some ways to go - by the time China catches up with India in this particular demographic its standard of living also be higher thus meaning that the price differentials between Chinese and American workers ain't too big so no outsourcing). In order for this to truly be a race to the bottom as all of you Slashdot panickers assume you would need another country of India/China's size in terms of population, with a standard of living lower than them and with a large percentage of young, university graduates that can speak the language of the western world. There is no other country. So this is what the future holds - American wages fall a little, Indian wages rise a LOT. It becomes financially unviable to outsource to India so some work comes BACK to the US, some work gets shipped to Sudan or the Philipines or Croatia or whatever and some other work stays in India. And now that India has higher wages, they start buying more developed world products, trade increases, your economy picks up again blah blah. But yes, if you're a software engineer, it'll be hard to find a job for the next 5 years or so - this all hinges on how fast Indian wages rise, and how fast American wages fall. If Americans are willing to work for less, then less jobs will be outsourced. I'm not saying you SHOULD be willing to work for less, I'm just stating the facts.

I appreciate your eloquent insights, but perhaps you should read up on Kerry's history in the Senate and his approach to fighting terrorism. Foreign policy is about more than just "defense". I don't agree with every aspect of the Kerry approach, but your generalizations are uninformed:

How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank describes how Senator Kerry dealt a huge blow to terrorist financing in the 1990s.

Kerry Would Fight Terrorism Better delineates the approach Kerry would take to try and not only fight terrorists but stop them from sprouting up in the first place.

Kerry Faces the World discusses how Kerry's foreign policy approach is very similar to that of the first President Bush.

On the one hand (and on the other) gives The Economist's view of Kerry's foreign policy approach.

Bluster and determination are not enough to fight terrorists. You have to be smarter and more flexible than they are. And you have to believe that a free and open society is inherently stronger than a society run by a closed, secretive government. In my opinion Bush believes that only by severely curtailing the very freedoms we are fighting to preserve and insisting on blind obedience can we beat terrorists. To me, that is playing right into their hands.

As seen here, Spitzer turns his guns on the insurance industry, this man is a hell of a bulldog. He seems to be taking on just about everyone this week.

We should write to him about the DMCA, Diabold voting machines, and software patents. The EFF needs to get him on their payroll.

Why are we not directing our massive GNP towards scientific exploration such as studying genetic therapies to cure the rift raft of ailiments that curse mankind instead of fighting petty wars against a minor enemy "aka terrorist".

I partially agree with you, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

1. There is a very real possibility of bio or nuclear terrorism, which would make 9/11 look like a minor accident. Take you pick of "nuke-Manhattan", smallpox or "San Fransisco Dirty Bomb" scenarios - all of these are (1) realistically achievable (technically and logistically) for a resourceful group of people and (2) the ultimate scoop for a number of groups. These kind of threats must be estimated beforehand and with incomplete information - we cannot wait for statistical evidence before engaging in prevention.

2. Comparing "number of deaths" is a crude and imprecise analysis. A better approach typically used is the concept of "disability-adjusted life-years". This takes into account the number of extra years lived by people saved (adjusted for lower quality of life due to disabilities, as the name suggests). From this perspective you would have to factor into the analysis that the average person killed at WTC probably had life expectancies many times higher than would the average patient saved by e.g. a cure for prostate cancer.

3. Life-years aren't even the only aspect of national well-being. Sense of security is an important aspect of quality of life, and thus there is a broader benefit to the nation feeling protected from terrorism. (On the other hand, the scare-mongering by the presidential candidates has the exact opposite effect).

4. The economic damage from terrorism is even much higher than a "life-years" analysis would suggest. This in turn has a feedback effect on the economic capacity for the country to undertake important tasks, such as, err..., cancer research (or weapons systems - take your pick).

That having been said, I agree that "big headline risks" get too much focus and priority in politics, media an popular opinion. Here is a very good Economist article on this issue.

"You are mistaken. The electoral council in Venezuela didn't allow the counting of the paper trail. In fact, there was at least a voting site where the operators (called table members in Venezuela) were arrested by the military just for opening the boxes with the votes in order to count them."

Could you provide a reputable source supporting this, ideally not one of the hatchet jobs like Thor Halversson's for the opposition. The odds are pretty slim of Chavez losing an election.

Here is a writeup from the Carter Foundation on their take on the Venezuelan election. If nothing else it gives you a taste of the issues trying to audit evoting when there are paper trails. The Venezualan recall wasn't great but the U.S. election with evoting is certain to be worse. At least they did have an audit trail and did do some audits in Venezuala. Audits aren't even an option with many U.S. electronic voting machines. There are also going to be very, very few independent observers doing the kinds of checks the Carter foundation did in Venezuela. States like Florida, last I heard had pretty much banned independent observers, presumably because they have to much to hide.

I'd agreee evoting should be done away with in general but if you are going to keep it you have to have a paper trail and do truly random audits.

We can't wait 3 to 7 thousand years. I never said that. I simply said that it's insane to even consider that we can continue pumping out CO2 indefinitely. We can't. No one could possibly suggest that we could. 10,000 years is still less than infinity. That's all that I meant.

I said, we can wait 3 to 7 thousand years before working on avoiding suffocation based on your figure of 10 thousand years before we begin to suffocate.

You are right, the problem can not be put off infinitely, but even 3 thousand years is about 10 times the history of these Colonies. An awful lot will change -- we may have cold fusion and interstellar travel by then.

If we don't do it soon, we're just putting it off, and we're going to make the rate at which we have to cut down on emissions much, much higher.

7 thousands years from now? Somehow, I'm not worried. Any attempts to predict, what is going to happen in 1 thousand years are solidly in the realm of fiction -- predominantly unscientific. I'm sorry, but your demands, start we start sacrificing now for the sake of our future great-great-....-grandchildren thousands of years from now are not at all convincing.

We're clearly approaching the peak of oil production in less than 100 years.

Aha, now we are switching the subject slightly from CO2 emissions to oil shortage. Let's look at this. For one, according to the past predictions expressed with the same vigor, we were supposed to run out of the stuff already. Or 10 years ago. Yet today's proven reserves world-wide are bigger than they were 30 years ago -- according to Economist.

Second, and most important, if we do start experiencing the oil shortage, the price will start climbing and the genuine market forces will make us switch to more economical technologies. No need for the "command and control" mandating, that you consider necessary somehow.

Why do you think people are talking about "reducing our dependency on foreign oil"?

Because they hope, it may get them elected.

Why don't we tackle both problems at once and reduce CO2 emissions as well?

Because both require very expensive solutions to something, that is not even problem. At least, not yet -- unlike, say, cancer, terrorism, AIDS, budget deficit, malaria, and obesity.

From The Economist, this drawing shows the air intake, combustion chamber and turbine. There is not much information about the generator anywhere..

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/PrinterFriendl y.cfm?Story_ID=1020811

A bewolf... never mind...

Just remember:

The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The Second Law of Economists: They're both wrong.

The article that goes with the poll.

shouldn't the link be to the actual letter; rather than an analysis by a former assistant of VP Cheney?

And who cares. A quick google search turned up a poll conducted by The Economist, where academics gave just the opposite opinion: low marks for Bush and high marks for Kerry.

let's look past the question of whether Badnarik should be allowed into the final debate. Let's ask ourselves what would happen if he were.

The final debate was, by the original agreement, to be on the subject of domestic and economic policy. This is so far a subject which has gone mostly uncovered in the debates. Only the first debate was meant to be explicitly on foreign policy, but both the vice presidential and townhall debates were dominated by discussion of foreign policy, and more specifically discussion of Iraq. Both of these debates began with discussion of Iraq, and all the most firey and attention-grabbing portions were during the Iraq portions. The domestic halves of these two debates were a bit more cursory and did not delve into the details of economic policy.

Meanwhile, economic policy is where the Kerry campaign's true strength is. It is easier to make the Bush campaign look bad over Iraq, but it is not in any way easy to make the Kerry campaign look good over Iraq. Economic policy, however, is an area where the Kerry campaign has a chance to make itself look actually good. Kerry can point to distinct policy differences and make a legitimate argument that these differences would result in real improvement. He just needs to grab the public's attention somehow. Since the last few weeks have been utterly dominated by discussion of Iraq both inside and outside Kerry's campaign, however, there has not been a chance for this to happen.

Kerry has a chance to swing the national debate over to domestic and economic policy at least for a little while in this debate. Since Kerry did not begin to heavily harp on Iraq until shortly before the foreign policy debate, it is likely Kerry will take this opportunity. The debate also offers Kerry a chance to convince the country to briefly sit down and listen to his economic views. Meanwhile, the domestic policy debate offers no positive opportunities to the Bush campaign. The best Bush can hope for is to ramble about marriage and small business owners enough that he can distract viewers from what Kerry is saying; he has no points of his own to score. The question is not whether Bush or Kerry will benefit from wednesday's debate. The question is how much of Kerry's benefit from Wednesday's debate Bush will be able to blunt.

If Badnarik gets his order granted, this becomes moot. The final debate will suddenly have an unplanned random factor plunged into it enough to totally disrupt the debate. Not only would Badnarik's mere presence in the debate be a distraction from the two candidates there, but his input and any obligation on the part of the major-party candidates to respond to it would effectively prevent discussion on the subject of which of the two major-party candidates would offer a better economic policy. Kerry could still attempt to outline his economic policy. Viewers would not pick up on it. It would be lost in the chaos.

My conclusion: Allowing Badnarik into the debate would be a serious impairment to the Kerry campaign, and have little to no effect on the Bush campaign. The Kerry campaign would lose its one given opportunity to outline to the nation a major plank of its platform. The Bush campaign would neatly get to opt-out of a potentially embarrassing debate. This would be a disastrous result for Kerry's chances of winning and an extremely positive result for Bush's.

Also see The Economist's poll of academic economists, which puts Bush against Kerry and finds Kerry's policies by and large coming out on top. The article notes that while academia may rightly be considered leftist (heh), the poll isn't obviously biased against Bush in its assessment of the economy's recovery and of the president's role in it.

Highly recommended.

Well we can gain an idea of what professional economists think of Bush's econmic stewardship and Kerry's economic plans from the wonderful (and right wing) economist magazine report. Keep in mind that the economist is a supporter of parties of the right such as the GOP.

Well we can gain an idea of what professional economists think of Bush's econmic stewardship and Kerry's economic plans from the wonderful (and right wing) economist magazine report. Keep in mind that the economist is a supporter of parties of the right such as the GOP.

It seems that like mechanical microdevices, fluid devices could be resistant to such things as high radiation environments. Sometimes survivability is more important than speed. While I don't have a reference handy, it seems to me that fluid devices might even have an advantage over mechanical devices when mechanical shock resistance is important. While it may interrupt operations, the device wouldn't have any small gears to break off. I'd be interested in hearing about the vulnerabilities of these devices.

As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).

----

Coal-fired electricity

The future is clean

Sep 2nd 2004
From The Economist print edition

Coal is costly, but coming back into favour--and cleaner

MORE of the world's electric power comes from coal than from oil and gas together: a third of Britain's, half of Germany's or America's, three-quarters of India's or China's. And the fuel has one huge advantage: it does not come from the Middle East. But, thanks not least to China's rapid economic growth, the price of coal has doubled since January. No wonder the governments of coal-rich countries are content, the firms that dig it up are rubbing their hands, while the users are looking hard for more efficient ways of burning the stuff.

On the supply side, prospects have been transformed. Analysts foresee America's biggest coal-miner, Peabody Energy, trebling its profits between the first quarter of this year and the last. Europe's biggest miner, Poland's state-backed Kompania Weglowa, with 79,000 employees, was losing nearly $30m a month early last year; it is now making a monthly profit of $10m. Giant shippers such as Australia-based BHP Billiton and Xstrata, exporting from Australia and South Africa, have reported surging profits. China's big state-owned Shenhua group may sell some of its equity. Even in Britain, which once mined 280m tonnes of coal a year and now digs one-tenth of that, the main operator, UK Coal, can imagine a future for what until recently seemed to be a dying industry.

Users agree. American power companies are returning to coal. But everywhere there is one huge problem: the environment. Even the much-denounced Chinese in fact know that they must clean up power generation, and have begun to do so. The rules in western countries are tight. Getting permission for a coal-fired plant can take years. In 2000, only two such were planned in all of America. Today, there are dreams for nearly 100--but only a half-dozen are actually being built.

Yet coal need not be a filthy fuel. Apart from "scrubbing" emissions, modern combustion techniques can clean them before they start--and use less coal too. A century ago, power plants produced maybe 5% of what their coal could, in theory, deliver; today, about 35%. Pulverising the coal can make this 40-45% (unless it is moist, "sub-bituminous" coal, and Japanese scientists are working on that). With a high-temperature burn, over 50% may be possible. Less coal burned, fewer nasty emissions; an American version of this, given the go-ahead in 2000 but not yet built, would have cut some of them too. "Fluidised-bed" combustion--coal is burned on a bed of particles suspended in flowing air--also can exceed 40%, and prevent or capture most of the emissions as well. Developed since the 1960s, it is widely used.

Bolder techniques lie ahead. Coal can be burned with oxygen instead of air. It can be gasified (even, perhaps, in situ), the gas going to power a gas turbine, surplus heat to make steam for a conventional one; a big American generator, AEP, this week said it is to build such a plant. Noxious emissions can thereby be greatly reduced; even to zero, claims a California firm working on one version. America's Department of Energy is working on a hybrid of gasification and combustion.

There is a mass of research into such ideas, much of it, as in Canada and Australia, powered by a joint get-together of the big coal-users and government. Will it pay? And how soon? Much depends, now, on legislation. The Netherlands subsidises zero-emission electricity; Norway heavily taxes carbon-dioxide emissions

Oops, I actually meant to point you here.

Not that I'm supporting the grandparent post, but China isn't the world's "number one source for carbon dioxide emissions," by any stretch of the imagination--neither in absolute mass nor in tonnes per capita. This distinction belongs to the U.S. See here.

Here is a better assessment: 20 years from now, we'll thank the Russian government. Please read the latest news about Putin signing the Kyoto treaty. His signature means that the Kyoto treaty is activated.

The most significant holdout is the USA.

This is bad for the welfare of humanity. The Copenhagen Consensus has ranked climate measures, especially Kyoto, as "bad", dead last behind AIDS, Malaria, malnutrition, free trade, clean water, economic freedom, and migration measures in ratio of social benefit to cost. The more climate research that is done the more evidence we find against human caused global warming. But once an environmental movement is started, no amount or reason can stop it.

Kyoto will help the environment by at most 0.02 Celsius by 2050. It will also be bad for the environment as more people worry more about CO2 and less about real air pollution that causes acid rain and other environmental damage, and less about more significant greenhouse gases like dihydrogen-monoxide and methane. Many Americans have already been completely ignoring the reductions in pollutants like NO2, O3, SO2, CO, and PM in the U.S. before and during the Bush administration when attacking him for not supporting CO2 reductions. Also Kyoto will increase energy prices in clean energy-efficient countries shifting more manufacturing to dirty inefficient energy-consuming developing countries like China, causing more global pollution.

I poked around a bit online.. I think the article you were referring to is this one.
Another good read along the same lines from The Economist is here .

I really hope the grandparent post gets submitted to the candidates, I don't recall ever hearing them directly confirm/deny their support for the drug war.

I poked around a bit online.. I think the article you were referring to is this one.
Another good read along the same lines from The Economist is here .

I really hope the grandparent post gets submitted to the candidates, I don't recall ever hearing them directly confirm/deny their support for the drug war.

This one? http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm? story_id=706591

For those interested, the current issue of The Economist has an article on voting technology. It does not, of course, discuss this latest development, but gives a good overview of the area, with a great deal of attention given to the issue of paper, paper trails, and making the whole system more transparent.

You have captured the essence of the problem.

Further, when you look closely at an LCD television, you notice that the image quality is no better than the image produced by a CRT television. So, why would anyone the premium price for the LCD television?

People do want the convenience of an LCD, which uses much less space than a CRT. Yet, they also want improved picture quality in order to justify the price.

The answer is just around the corner: optical interference displays (OIDs). They produce far sharper and brighter images than an LCD. The OID also consumes less power than an LCD.

As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues, particularly the "bang for the buck" of LCDs versus other display technologies. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).

----

RATIONAL CONSUMER

Televisions go flat

Sep 16th 2004
From The Economist print edition

Consumer electronics: TVs based on bulky cathode-ray tubes are giving way to flat-panel models. How will the market evolve?

[Image]

TELEVISIONS, it seems, can never be too wide or too thin--and increasingly, they are wide and thin at the same time, thanks to the growing popularity of flat-panel televisions based on plasma and liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology. Flat-panel TVs are stylish, do not take up much room, and do justice to the crystal-clear images produced by DVD players, digital-cable boxes and games consoles. Sales of LCD TVs in particular are expected to account for an ever larger portion of the market (see chart) as consumers embrace these new technologies at the expense of bulky models based on old-fashioned cathode-ray tubes (CRTs). LCD-based models are expected to account for 18% of televisions sold in 2008, up from just 2.2% in 2003, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm.

LCD TVs are the latest example of a technology from the computer industry causing a stir in consumer electronics. For years, anyone who wanted to buy a flat-panel television had to buy a plasma screen, a large and expensive (a 42-inch model costs around $3,500) option. LCD technology, already used in flat-panel computer monitors and laptop displays, makes possible smaller, more affordable flat-panel TVs: a 17-inch model costs around $800, for example.

The prospect of a much bigger market has prompted new entrants, including PC-makers such as Dell and HP, and established consumer-electronics firms, such as Motorola and Westinghouse (both of which stopped making TVs decades ago) to start selling televisions alongside the established television-set manufacturers. For PC-makers, which already sell flat-panel monitors, diversifying into TVs is no big leap. For consumer-electronics firms, the appeal of flat-panel TVs is that they offer much higher margins than conventional televisions. During the late-2003 holiday season, makers of flat-panel TVs, both LCD and plasma, succeeded in creating a tremendous buzz around their products, says Riddhi Patel, an analyst at iSuppli.

But it did not translate into sales to the extent that the manufacturers had hoped. Although more people are now aware of flat-panel TVs, many are still deterred by their high prices. The expense is difficult to justify, particularly since a 30-inch LCD television can cost up to four times as much as a comparable CRT-based model, with no real difference in picture quality.

Flat-panel TV-makers have now, says Ms Patel, begun to cut their prices. For one thing, they are sitting on a lot of unsold inventory: the panel-makers made too many panels, the TV-makers built too many TVs, and the retailers ordered more than they could sell.

Prices are also expected to fall as production capacity is stepped up. Sharp opened a new "sixth generation" LCD factory in January. In May, Matsushita, the Japanese firm behind the Panasonic brand, announced that it would build the world's biggest plasma-display factory. And in July, Sony and Samsung announced that their joint-venture, a "seventh-generation" LCD factory at Tangjung in South Korea, would start operating next year. There is concern that this year's record investment in LCD plants could lead to overcapacity next year. For consumers, however, this is all g

As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues, particularly the "bang for the buck" of LCDs versus other display technologies. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).

----

RATIONAL CONSUMER

Televisions go flat

Sep 16th 2004
From The Economist print edition

Consumer electronics: TVs based on bulky cathode-ray tubes are giving way to flat-panel models. How will the market evolve?

[Image]

TELEVISIONS, it seems, can never be too wide or too thin--and increasingly, they are wide and thin at the same time, thanks to the growing popularity of flat-panel televisions based on plasma and liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology. Flat-panel TVs are stylish, do not take up much room, and do justice to the crystal-clear images produced by DVD players, digital-cable boxes and games consoles. Sales of LCD TVs in particular are expected to account for an ever larger portion of the market (see chart) as consumers embrace these new technologies at the expense of bulky models based on old-fashioned cathode-ray tubes (CRTs). LCD-based models are expected to account for 18% of televisions sold in 2008, up from just 2.2% in 2003, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm.

LCD TVs are the latest example of a technology from the computer industry causing a stir in consumer electronics. For years, anyone who wanted to buy a flat-panel television had to buy a plasma screen, a large and expensive (a 42-inch model costs around $3,500) option. LCD technology, already used in flat-panel computer monitors and laptop displays, makes possible smaller, more affordable flat-panel TVs: a 17-inch model costs around $800, for example.

The prospect of a much bigger market has prompted new entrants, including PC-makers such as Dell and HP, and established consumer-electronics firms, such as Motorola and Westinghouse (both of which stopped making TVs decades ago) to start selling televisions alongside the established television-set manufacturers. For PC-makers, which already sell flat-panel monitors, diversifying into TVs is no big leap. For consumer-electronics firms, the appeal of flat-panel TVs is that they offer much higher margins than conventional televisions. During the late-2003 holiday season, makers of flat-panel TVs, both LCD and plasma, succeeded in creating a tremendous buzz around their products, says Riddhi Patel, an analyst at iSuppli.

But it did not translate into sales to the extent that the manufacturers had hoped. Although more people are now aware of flat-panel TVs, many are still deterred by their high prices. The expense is difficult to justify, particularly since a 30-inch LCD television can cost up to four times as much as a comparable CRT-based model, with no real difference in picture quality.

Flat-panel TV-makers have now, says Ms Patel, begun to cut their prices. For one thing, they are sitting on a lot of unsold inventory: the panel-makers made too many panels, the TV-makers built too many TVs, and the retailers ordered more than they could sell.

Prices are also expected to fall as production capacity is stepped up. Sharp opened a new "sixth generation" LCD factory in January. In May, Matsushita, the Japanese firm behind the Panasonic brand, announced that it would build the world's biggest plasma-display factory. And in July, Sony and Samsung announced that their joint-venture, a "seventh-generation" LCD factory at Tangjung in South Korea, would start operating next year. There is concern that this year's record investment in LCD plants could lead to overcapacity next year. For consumers, however, this is all g

Well I don't believe that most people outside of the US are in a good position to understand US politics.

Yeah, that's nearly as crazy an idea as some Frenchman writing an enduring classic about American democracy. There's plenty of good foreign-press coverage of the US. A prime example is The Economist.

Might I suggest you take a look at the Economist? That British mag actually supported the Iraq War and GWB's handling of it (not that it matters, but for the record, I am opposed to the war). And, they've been covering the election rather well. They cover the battleground states one at a time and discuss the regional, generational and economic voting trends in each of the battleground states.

They are also the only magazine I know of that covers every region of the world in detail. They first ran articles on Darfur back in January and really started covering it back in May.

As you can guess by the title of the magazine, they are Fiscal conservatives. They do occasionally jump to the other side of the fence on social issues.

Agreed. The BBC and The Economist. Of course, I can't wouldn't refer to myself as elitist by having the BBC as my primary news source. After all, the BBC tends to spend alot of time covering the Posh Spice marriage to Beckham.

I peronally avoid blogs as much as I possibly can. What makes the bloggers any better than the idiots that run network news? Better to hit a few major sites and then draw your own conclusions.

And my point is that if the end is evil, the means don't matter. The end is not justified by the means, no matter how much you want it to be.

What's evil? Selling an idea? Buying an idea? What's your problem?

But don't even attempt to pretend that the current market is anything more than a Lenin-esque atempt to steal money from the poor and give it to the rich.

I don't see, how "the current market" is stealing anything from anyone. Lenin-esque or not. May be, the little piece of the sky right above you fell down, but I don't see it.

how is having a multinational corporation charging people for water and stealing their land to put their farmers out of business

You are changing the subject and I will not bite. Here is some reading for you, though. And here is some more.

Just as you overvalue the use of finances as a tax on human labor and ideas -- how very Imperialist of you.

Your last sentence makes no sense to me. I "overvalue the use of finances as a tax"? Sorry, that's gibberish. But you seem to dislike Imperialism, so I'll defend it a little.

Capitalism (Imperialism? Nyah, its globalisation now) survives and prospers. The most efficient way to organize millions and billions of people currently known.

And my point is that if the end is evil, the means don't matter. The end is not justified by the means, no matter how much you want it to be.

What's evil? Selling an idea? Buying an idea? What's your problem?

But don't even attempt to pretend that the current market is anything more than a Lenin-esque atempt to steal money from the poor and give it to the rich.

I don't see, how "the current market" is stealing anything from anyone. Lenin-esque or not. May be, the little piece of the sky right above you fell down, but I don't see it.

how is having a multinational corporation charging people for water and stealing their land to put their farmers out of business

You are changing the subject and I will not bite. Here is some reading for you, though. And here is some more.

Just as you overvalue the use of finances as a tax on human labor and ideas -- how very Imperialist of you.

Your last sentence makes no sense to me. I "overvalue the use of finances as a tax"? Sorry, that's gibberish. But you seem to dislike Imperialism, so I'll defend it a little.

Capitalism (Imperialism? Nyah, its globalisation now) survives and prospers. The most efficient way to organize millions and billions of people currently known.

As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).

----

MONITOR

Deus ex machinima?

Sep 16th 2004
From The Economist print edition

Computer graphics: Hollywood movies increasingly resemble computer games. Now a growing band of enthusiasts is using games to make films

PAUL MARINO vividly recalls the first time he watched an animated film made from a video game. It was 1996, and Mr Marino, an Emmy award-winning computer animator and self-described video-game addict, was playing "Quake"--a popular shoot-'em-up--on the internet with a handful of friends. They heard that a rival group of Quake players, known as the Rangers, had posted a film online. Nasty, brutish and short, the 90-second clip, "Diary of a Camper", was a watershed. It made ingenious use of Quake's "demo-record" feature, which enabled users to capture games and then e-mail them to their friends. (That way, gamers could share their fiercest battles, or show how they had successfully completed a level.) The Rangers took things a step further by choreographing the action: they had plotted out a game, recorded it, and keyed in dialogue that appeared as running text. Pretty soon, Mr Marino and others began posting their own "Quake movies", and a new medium was born.

[Image: Is it a game or a film?]

Eight years on, this new medium--known as "machinima" ("machine" crossed with "cinema")--could be on the verge of revolutionising animation. Around the world, growing legions of would-be digital Disneys are using the powerful graphical capabilities of popular video games such as "Quake", "Half-Life" and "Unreal Tournament" to create films at a fraction of the cost of "Shrek" or "Finding Nemo". There is an annual machinima film festival in New York, and the genre has seen its first full-length feature, "Anachronox". Spike TV, an American cable channel, hired machinima artists to create shorts for its 2003 video game awards, and Steven Spielberg used the technique to storyboard parts of his film "A.I." At machinima.com, hobbyists have posted short animated films with dialogue, music and special effects.

All of this is possible because of the compact way in which multi-player games encode information about different players' movements and actions. Without an efficient means of transmitting this information to other players across the internet, multi-player games would suffer from jerky motion and time lags. Machinima exploits the same notation to describe and manipulate the movements of characters and camera viewpoints. The same games also allow virtual environments to be created quickly and easily, which allows for elaborate sets and props.

Games publishers have now begun to incorporate machinima into their products. Epic Games has built a movie-making tool into its spectacularly successful "Unreal Tournament" series, for example, and many games include level-design software that both gamers and machinima artists can exploit. Later this year, Valve Software plans to release "Half-Life 2", a long-awaited game that will include tools specifically geared toward machinima: in-game characters will have realistic facial expressions with 40 different controllable muscles, and eyes that glint. Conversely, machinima creators have built movie-making tools on the foundations of games. Fountainhead Entertainment licensed "Quake III" to create a point-and-click software package called Machinimation, which it used to produce "In the Waiting Line" by the British band Zero 7. It became the first machinima music video to be widely shown on MTV last year.

As it happens, The Economist recently ran an article addressing some of these issues. The article also provides context and perspective that should be of interest to those participating in this discussion. For convenience, the full text is reproduced below; it is also accessible online (may require paid subscription).

----

MONITOR

Deus ex machinima?

Sep 16th 2004
From The Economist print edition

Computer graphics: Hollywood movies increasingly resemble computer games. Now a growing band of enthusiasts is using games to make films

PAUL MARINO vividly recalls the first time he watched an animated film made from a video game. It was 1996, and Mr Marino, an Emmy award-winning computer animator and self-described video-game addict, was playing "Quake"--a popular shoot-'em-up--on the internet with a handful of friends. They heard that a rival group of Quake players, known as the Rangers, had posted a film online. Nasty, brutish and short, the 90-second clip, "Diary of a Camper", was a watershed. It made ingenious use of Quake's "demo-record" feature, which enabled users to capture games and then e-mail them to their friends. (That way, gamers could share their fiercest battles, or show how they had successfully completed a level.) The Rangers took things a step further by choreographing the action: they had plotted out a game, recorded it, and keyed in dialogue that appeared as running text. Pretty soon, Mr Marino and others began posting their own "Quake movies", and a new medium was born.

[Image: Is it a game or a film?]

Eight years on, this new medium--known as "machinima" ("machine" crossed with "cinema")--could be on the verge of revolutionising animation. Around the world, growing legions of would-be digital Disneys are using the powerful graphical capabilities of popular video games such as "Quake", "Half-Life" and "Unreal Tournament" to create films at a fraction of the cost of "Shrek" or "Finding Nemo". There is an annual machinima film festival in New York, and the genre has seen its first full-length feature, "Anachronox". Spike TV, an American cable channel, hired machinima artists to create shorts for its 2003 video game awards, and Steven Spielberg used the technique to storyboard parts of his film "A.I." At machinima.com, hobbyists have posted short animated films with dialogue, music and special effects.

All of this is possible because of the compact way in which multi-player games encode information about different players' movements and actions. Without an efficient means of transmitting this information to other players across the internet, multi-player games would suffer from jerky motion and time lags. Machinima exploits the same notation to describe and manipulate the movements of characters and camera viewpoints. The same games also allow virtual environments to be created quickly and easily, which allows for elaborate sets and props.

Games publishers have now begun to incorporate machinima into their products. Epic Games has built a movie-making tool into its spectacularly successful "Unreal Tournament" series, for example, and many games include level-design software that both gamers and machinima artists can exploit. Later this year, Valve Software plans to release "Half-Life 2", a long-awaited game that will include tools specifically geared toward machinima: in-game characters will have realistic facial expressions with 40 different controllable muscles, and eyes that glint. Conversely, machinima creators have built movie-making tools on the foundations of games. Fountainhead Entertainment licensed "Quake III" to create a point-and-click software package called Machinimation, which it used to produce "In the Waiting Line" by the British band Zero 7. It became the first machinima music video to be widely shown on MTV last year.