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Google Project 10^100 Reaches Voting Phase
An anonymous reader writes "In autumn last year, Google announced Project 10 to the 100, through which it aimed to commit $10 million to implement the best philanthropic idea. The project was suspended indefinitely after receiving more than 150,000 submissions. Google has now announced sixteen finalists — each of which was inspired by many individual submissions — and issued a call for votes. The voting deadline is October 8 and the Project 10^100 advisory board will then select up to five ideas to be implemented."
Google's googol garnering a gaggle of generous gentlemen.
That's the best philanthropic idea I came up with.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
last night, I shaved my girlfriend's pussy. She was kind of mad about it this morning. I hope she doesn't cut my cock off!
Why not promote Scroogle to the world?
What a bunch of lame ideas. Sigh. Just burn the money for heat.
A lot of those images in the idea montage were blatant "green gadgets".
This sort of thing certainly attracts attention and will probably pull the votes. Unfortunately.
The tax option looks interesting, but a little too in line with typical ideas of the conservative right in the United States to win my vote. Eliminating income tax and taxing consumption directly through sales tax would severely detriment lower income brackets and reward the affluent. The research on sales tax being more detrimental to lower income groups is pretty solid. I was actually surprised Google passed this idea through given its obvious politics.
The transportation option, on the other hand, while somewhat far-fetched, would revolutionize commerce and local economies if it were widely adopted.
Since all of the ideas are a bit of a long shot, I voted for what I would like to see in an ideal world. In addition, the idea of riding blimps to work is just too cool to pass up.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
It's good to see that google actually cares about what they throw their money at. Hey everybody, give us ideas on how to look philanthropic. And hey everybody vote on which idea we should care about. Philanthropists have a passion for what they do, they don't just give money to look good to the world!
ten million is chump change
I made an entry last year when the contest was open. It concerned a neglected problem that is ripe for better research. I am disappointed that the voting will choose among rather bland and general ideas. My original entry is available from my homepage, http://www.jimworthey.com/ .
Really, Google? You'd think the use of at least a half-way decent voting system would be worthwhile when talking about $10m.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Criteria_in_evaluating_single_winner_voting_systems
There is not one single idea in that list that could have a significant global impact.
First of all, all the idea submitters are people that have internet access. Letâ(TM)s not forget that ONLY 24.7% of the WORLD has internet access. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
This means that the people that really need help isn't heard on this 10^100 Project (75.3%)
So I wonâ(TM)t vote for this. or maybe I was expecting something else.
Like
1. Develop an accessible not fossil fuel dependant vehicle
2. Create an organization for exchange guns for [insert exchange here]
3. Offer developing countries support, with technology and money to invest in agriculture related projects
4. Create a free technology exchange portal, where countries can access for free
5. Destroy de Guantanamo Base
i don't know but nothing on that list, what do you think?, what coulld really change this world for the better?
I mean. If that is what 150000 people submitted to make this world better, we are DOOMED..
Now we know why there were sixteen finalists. It's 10^100 in binary (a.k.a. 2^4 in decimal).
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Is "http://www.project10tothe100.com/" actually associated with Google? The site looks phony. The "about" page is an off-site link to Google. The code contains links to "appspot.com", so Google is hosting an application, but that doesn't mean Google is behind it. There's suspicious Javascript that constructs a domain name. There's no SSL cert. The "robots.txt" file blocks everybody.
The domain is registered to Google, though. And it's registered through MarkMonitor. (MarkMonitor is the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" domain registrar. They register domains like "gm.com", "google.com", "hp.com", and "ford.com".) That's the only indication of legitimacy on the site, though.
government transparency please. It kinda makes all the other options remotely possible
All these projects depend on the Make government more transparent. Without this one, the governments will limit all other projects. This is exactly the same reason why Lawrence Lessig is fighting corruption and not copyright problems. He was fighting people that couldn't hear him. So, I vote for it.
I consider Google a smart company.
But I don't think they have manage this project very well.
Instead of going trough 150000 suggestion and let the
public vote for 16 made-up projects.
They should have used the wisdom of the crowd to vote for the 150000 suggestions
and have the advisory board chose between the top 100.
What I would like to see is a open funding network.
Where people can post ideas like this, vote on there favorite projects
and where funds can find and support this projects.
ps. yes, I did submit this idea to 10^100.
It would have been better if they
The problem with Scroogle is, it removes the main reason why I used Google, a clean homepage.
How about using a blank page or your own image. I use a search engine for searches. Scroogle IS google without all the tracking & evil.
Sales taxes (and other consumption taxes) are regressive taxes. However, not all policies involving sales taxes are regressive. The simplest (perhaps not the best...) example of such is the FairTax proposal. It uses a combination of a flat sales tax rate with a constant dollar rebate to each consumer. The combination means that with increasing spending, a larger net fraction of your spending is on taxes. That is, it's a progressive sales tax.
Of course, the Google proposal also talks about various incentive taxes. Whether these are good or bad seems to depend mostly on whether you're calling them sin taxes or a way to internalize externalities so that the market can actually optimize overall wealth. Markets optimize locally; external costs of production that are borne by people other than the producers (like pollution) will be undervalued in the optimization process. Transferring those costs back onto the producer through taxes internalizes that externality and lets the market optimize the thing it should actually be optimizing.
A tax system that was actually based on setting goals, and then looking at data and evidence about what tax systems would actually achieve those goals, would be perhaps the biggest advance in government technology in centuries. Of course, it's also spectacularly idealistic and difficult to make work. But then, so are all the other ideas they list, so...
(I haven't actually decided which to cast my vote for yet, but the taxes proposal is on the short list.)
This one is the only one that will have the ability to make a LARGE impact. The reason is that America, Canada, Australia, etc use roughly 1/5 to 1/3 of our energy on transportation, EU uses something like 1/6, and the developing world, such as China, is really starting to move to cars. China is already the worlds largest polluter (emits more pollutions than the entire western world due to inefficiency) and their CO2 emissions (I do not count this as pollution) has already overtaken America and several other western nations COMBINED. If we do not come up with more efficient transportation systems, then the world really is in for "a world of hurt".
Basically, transportation truly can change the world quickly. All the other ones required lots from governments and that is not likely to happen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My vote was for social entrepreneurship; my filter words were "petty magnates".
I was disappointed by a number of the options, primarily because they would essentially establish more NGOs that relied, ultimately, on governmental action to make a difference (better tax structure, genocide awareness, etc); the same governments who have shown time and time again that they simply will not react to these problems, no matter how blatant the evidence. I chose social entrepreneurship because it is an outwardly distributed system. Rather than collect distributed resources and narrowing them towards a single focus, it will hopefully take a singular resource and deliver it into the hands of the many. Call it socialism if you want; I call it pragmatism.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
So, you made the New innovators, eh? And you say that the google ideas are bad. OBVIOUSLY, you did not read it. NONE OF THEM, were truly ideas. They are classes of ideas lumped together. Had you actually read the site, you would have seen the suggestions underneath it.
Next time, please read the site PRIOR to boosting and critizing. As it is, the google guys HAD a great idea AND HAVE made a MAJOR IMPACT on the world. In addition, they did it in a RELATIVELY SHORT TIME. So, how does their work compare to yours?
BTW, a number of VC guys thought that Google's idea was well worth funding for much more than 1.5Million.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
my idea is there!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But the transportation revolution already happened. The Segway changed the world. Oh, and the Honda UX-3 is going to make it a Utopia.
Originally, Google planned to select 100 finalists to choose from... the people who actually submitted their ideas. Now, with just 16 broad categories, its like the project has lost some of its impact. While Google always said they would ultimately choose the organization best fit to handle the ideas that won, I was looking forward to seeing all of the neat ideas that others put forth, as well as the potential of small-scale/individual projects being launched to a whole new level.
Of course, my opinion is probably biased due to not seeing my idea - The Global Voting System - as one of the finalists.
In the end, it is still nice to see powerful corporations pursuing philanthropic endeavors.
couple of thoughts, http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/FairTax-Fundamentals_and_facts-070122.pdf, "The FairTax lowers the lifetime tax burden for most Americans" page 2 "The FairTax preserves the overall progressivity of the federal tax burden." page 5 "The FairTax dramatically improves the U.S. economy. " page 7 also considering the prebate that gets added in, the lower end of the incom spectrum looks pretty good.
I wonder if Jay Leno would be willing to promote this on his new show at 10 o clock. I submitted a link to the program on thejaylenoshow.com/contact
Hopefully they decide it's a worthy cause.
A progressive sales tax would just mean that rich people make poor people buy them things by giving them an incentive that is less than the difference.
Um, what? The sales tax portion is flat. Everyone who goes into the store is charged the same rate. The sales tax itself is neither progressive nor regressive. There are other pieces added on that make the system as a whole progressive (the rebates, specifically, in the case of FairTax).
Although all the ideas Google groups would somewhat change the world and bring some benefit to people I think Google has highly regretted the competition and finally chose ideas which donâ(TM)t disturb capitalism. The ideas that would really make an impact must be political and Google has not even created such a group. I believe my idea troubled Google. You may find it here http://www.sarovic.com/google_project.htm.
Even if my idea is wrong which it is not, it could still open the door to the new way of thinking. In todayâ(TM)s world, NOT ONE idea exists about what comes after capitalism. My idea clearly presents what will come next. One day it will change the world and make it a wonderful place to be. Google still likes capitalism much more than a good world.
Aleksandar Sarovic
www.sarovic.com
The research on sales tax being more detrimental to lower income groups is pretty solid.
I find it rather doubtful that among the wide array of possible implementations of this idea that all are correlated to a negative impact on the poor, or that anyone has even attempted to offer research which would show this.
If you exempt food (my state already does), utilities, maybe a few other things (pointing out, too, that second hand goods are already tax free) I don't see how you can get any more "progressive" without explicitly paying people to be below the poverty line. Which, by the way, if you really wanted to do you could--adopting a more economy-friendly tax collection policy does not in any way prevent you from spending the proceeds on socialists programs.
I also wonder what it means when we talk about detrimenting the poor and rewarding the rich. The first half might be a concern, but I don't deduct points because someone else will benefit too, even if it's grossly disproportionate. If overall the poor get richer then that's progressive.
The tax option looks interesting, but a little too in line with typical ideas of the conservative right in the United States to win my vote.
Would you really consider not implementing an idea which would help the poor simply because you don't like who it originated from?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
It still doesn't make it progressive, nor flat either - it's almost worse than just making a straight sales tax, because it masks the problem with sales tax and causes people who don't think closely about the numbers (no offense) to say "see, it's progressive!" thus slowing the coming revolution. :)
The thing people who like this idea don't understand is that the wealthy have more money than they spend. It seems obvious when said like that, but you have to understand the converse as well:
People without a lot of income MUST spend all (or nearly all) of it just to survive and to eke out what pleasures they can.
Thus when you tax expenditure, you harm the lower and middle classes. Rebates don't change matters, they only raise the bar (a bit). But the larger fraction by far of the upper classes' money is not spent, therefore not taxed under this system, whereas the lower class bears the burden as though the beasts that the upper class sees them for and uses them as.
Whatever happened to Google's second Android contest?
Well there's always the Caesar IV model... sales tax only for the plebs and equites (lower and middle classes) and income + sales tax for the patricians :D
A collection of inspirational clichés. Made me think of the Miss America interviews.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Please think things through before you become yet another Fair Tax shill :(
The shorthand argument against it is, basically, that it's intuitively a bad idea. The rich aren't suffering now, under the current income tax system which taxes them at a higher rate than the rest; they're thriving, even while the middle class is arguably not doing that great. But obviously, under a flat tax, that means the currently "overtaxed" rich getting taxed less, and everyone else would get taxed more to balance it out. It's pretty intuitively a rich-get-richer/poor-get-poorer kinda scheme, and actually if you compare the charts for effective total tax rates today to the fairtax ones, the entire middle class would be taking a hit under fairtax too.
The rebate is a not relevant, btw, if you look into how little it would be. Heck, part of their argument is that the rebates would be LESS than the current income tax deductibles. And on top of that, they lie about the sales tax rate (they claim 23%, but that's not the way everyone is taught to do state sales tax in school... if they used the system everyone would assume they're using, it's actually 30%... and apparently having it that "low" would require either steep cuts in the budget or even higher deficits, so it's not even practical at that rate). Similarly, it's only progressive if you use some shady math that isn't the same as how we currently define the word. The more you make, the lower percentage of it you have to spend each year to survive. So if it's "this year's income lost to taxes", fairtax is regressive, and if it's "my total current wealth vs this year's loss to taxes" it's VERY regressive. On the bottom end, people still have to spend every penny just for basic food and shelter, including the rebate, so their taxes effectively go from very very low under income tax to a full 30% under fairtax.
And, economically speaking, it'd probably be bad too. I mean, we're talking a 30% sales tax at the same time as capital gains taxes drop to zero; that means any purchase has a hugely greater opportunity cost than before.
Since the Google 10^100 contest has descended into obvious bullshit and has turned out to be a waste of time (silly us, thinking they were serious about this effort), I hereby propose that we use up Slashdot's storage and bandwidth by posting our rejected ideas here. My idea isn't anything special, but the rules were that it had to be done with a modest grant (I loved the ones about using VTOL aircraft and passenger airships, yeah, that sounds cheap). Anyway here is my idea:
After a severe or prolonged disaster most people will not have access to phones or internet, especially in poor areas, so re-connecting with loved ones is nearly impossible (think about all the missing persons posters after 9/11 and Katrina!) I therefore propose that we develop free software for use by NGO's, the Red Cross, and other volunteers which will quickly scan handwritten information forms, and upload them to an OCR back-end index and portal, hosted by Google. The blank forms will have a bar code -- the refugee returns to any connected terminal and scans or types the code to receive any information the indexing technology can find about loved ones. Any form that cannot be OCR'd will be posted on the internet in a "Mechanical Turk" arrangement so that volunteers can help index the data. A single laptop and inexpensive scanner connected via HAM radio, SatPhone, or CellPhone can easily process thousands of requests per day, which would be impossible if each refugee had to use the keyboard and navigate through a search site.
Blank forms will have language-selection tick boxes which match the country, plus a few major languages like English. If forms are not available, the software should accept regular paper and issue a unique serial number to the refugee which can be written down. There can also be a few "standard responses" like the Red Cross "Safe and Well List" website has (note that this website is useless unless each refugee has unfettered access to the Internet which is why my idea will re-unite families much more effectively). We could also establish a phone bank connected to volunteers.
I think the first stage should be to create an extensible communications spec, then write the code for PC's, then perhaps later design a solar-powered ruggedized appliance.
Q: How many ideas can I vote for? A: You can vote for one idea.
What's with people always limiting public votes to only one choice? All that does is turn approval voting (a good system) into plurality voting (a known very bad system). What if I think two ideas are of equal merit? I have to vote for the one that is more likely to win; I'm forced to game the system. Bah. And I bet "implement better voting systems" was one of the ideas as well...
I didn't enter the contest, but I would have liked some entry that would involved altering world culture to promote a higher ethical code. This is such a vague concept but ever meet a kid who's parents constantly teach them what is right or wrong and why? This kinda of concept would encompass a culture change where societies would agree on common ethics and morals that transcend religions and cultures in the interest of advancing the spiritual state of mankind. Sounds goofy? Maybe it is.. but it can lead to many other ideas where there is common consensus and agreement and it can be backed by the beliefs of many instead of just a few. I do not mean any of this from a religious standpoint.. do you stop to help a fellow with a flat? Or do you just keep driving? Do you devote resources to feed a hungry city or do you just look the other way? Do you act with positive intent or do you act with anger and hate? Watching tv where every other show is about cops and violence.. its become obvious to me that the issues are in the culture.. (please note I did not include sex in that one, sex is gooooood very gooooood)
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
The participants had better be careful; if their entries - submitted to google, solicited by google - happen to redistribute trademarked Google property in any way such as names, logos, or interaction with google services, they'll just slap them with a Cease and Desist letter shortly after awarding the prize money.
Cherish. Live. Dream.
I've had my doubts about Google's ability to go corporate and public and still deliver on their "Don't be evil." slogan. But does the 10^100 project show they've gone around the bend?
154,000 world-changing deas submitted --> 16 pithy, watered-down, unimplementable, vague paragraphs.
Seriously?
I understand they were overwhelmed by the number of responses, but doesn't the response rate actually increase their responsibility to do something worthwhile with the submissions... and we get "Make engineers and scientists look cool" and "Partner with banks..."
Umm... yeah, just in case we haven't pumped enough bailout funds into the banks yet, let's have Google dump its cash in there too.
At least the opportunity of voting on the top 100 would give a lot of good projects some exposure. Now, nobody gets the benefit of Google focusing people's attention here. In fact, given the kind of vague crap they're listing, it looks like nobody but the people receiving cash will benefit.
Frankly, since they're not publishing ANY of the submissions currently, it will be criminal if Google doesn't make the original submissions publicly available. It's taken them 9 months to write 16 crappy paragraphs.
The only reason they'd have to NOT make them publicly available is if they intend to use them for their own corporate competitive advantage. While many would argue "all's fair in war and business," it was definitely not the spirit of the project.
So if they're dangling $10M for social projects only to steal ideas and not fund any real projects, promote any of the top submissions, or let us vote on any actual projects (as the original 10^100 description outlined) then they've definitely gone 'round the bend. EVIL.
I suspect most of those in favour of Fair Tax and similar systems are the upper-middle class, who don't get benefits which the lower and lower-middle class get, but don't have enough to use income-hiding schemes or personal political favours.
If you consider the typical /.er, the person is likely to be under 30, have no children, and probably singe, with either a reasonably well-paid job or a good hope of getting one. This means that a good chunk of /.ers aren't going to get baby bonuses, joint-tax advantages, income support, and so on. This means that they aren't shilling, they're just acting in what they perceive to be their own benefit.
There is also perhaps a hope that a very simple tax system would make it harder for the top earners to avoid tax. For example, one common feature of flat tax schemes seems to be charging corporate and natural persons the same taxes, preventing the common (at least here) technique of having a one-man company contract out your services and then paying yourself a tiny fraction of that, dumping the rest into trusts or other tax-free structures. Whilst this is done by a large cross-section of society (it is common here for tradesmen to do this), knowing that there are multi-millionaires getting away with only paying 30% or so income tax is the sort of thing which leads to jealousy and resentment
Personally, I think that although these flat-tax schemes sound good for me personally, any actual implementation would probably be as bad or worse than the current system in practice, both for me and for society as a whole.
Would you really consider not implementing an idea which would help the poor simply because you don't like who it originated from?
Yes. NCLB was pushed from the right to help school children. Don't you want to help the school children? Well, it wasn't actually designed to help school children. It was designed to sabotage the public school system with unfunded mandates and lots of interference in local authority (the opposite of what Republicans claim they want, but when it comes to harming our children, they know no bounds). So yes, when they claim to do something that's the opposite of what they've done in the past, I will consider rejecting it because it's more likely, based on their past history, that they are lying in order to harm the very people they claim to be helping. After all, you know how to tell when a politician is lying...
Learn to love Alaska
These are about the lamest ideas I can imagine....I was expecting Google to fund unique, original and potentially game-changing ideas like alternative fuel research, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and breakthrough green energy technologies. Really game-changing ideas with the possibility to make a real difference. And I bet that in the submissions there are a lot of really good ideas like that, ideas that are forward-looking solution-oriented concepts that could really make a difference.
But instead the Mountain View ivory tower crew dug up a bunch of real stinkers, really lame and crappy ideas. What a let-down, Google has failed miserably!! What a joke: None of these ideas do anything to make a SOLUTION to any real problems, they are crappy PC feel-good junk that have zero potential to do anyting but send the money on a one-way trip to "waste".
Really...."genocide alert system". WTF? Hello, the CIA and the UN already do this. The major news reporting organizations already have this ability. And what good does it do? NONE! Just read the news, there is already so much genocide being reported, and absolutely nothing being done about any of it. So what good is some brainbank-in-the-sky that tells us how much more crap is happening that we cannot do anything about. Christ, what a lame-O idea, a real stinker.
Same with the totally lame "health monitoring system". We already know there is more disease in the world than can be realistically eradicated. The CDC already has early warning system, we can read in the reports about outbreaks and emerging diseases. Instead why doesn't Google fund vaccine research and infectious disease research?
"Improve science & engineering education"...Oh, now that is SO original!! Duh, there are several hundred projects and foundations doing that already, and all making very little decent progress. Hey, I will give you a hint: People in the US are caring less about science and engineering because it is getting really hard to make a decent living in those fields...until pay in the US for those jobs improves, nobody will care for that type of education.
And that part about "positive media depections of scientists and engineers"? There are plenty of stories like that already, but noting is going to change the fact that people want to see a good "mad scientist" flick on late nite TV. Sheesh, what a loser of an idea.
"Real World Issue Reporting System". To what purpose? You can already report such things like pot holes and environmental issues to the applicable level of government, and they generally do nothing. Unless they are losing real money fast, like water main breaks, they don't care about minor issues. Their repair budgets are very tight, so how is some fancy bug-tracking software supposed to make them any more responsive? Jesus, what a total waste of an idea! Lame-O!!
"Make Government More Transparent"....Ever heard of elections, and writing a letter to your congressman? What about joining one of the 1000's of issue-oriented groups? What about simply exercising your constitutional right to get a redress of grievances? I wonder how many people who picked this idea actually VOTED in the last elections? Another stinker, totally non-original, unlikely to have any lasting effect, about zero chance of making any kind of difference.
"Education to Africa"....Oh what junk, this is the most PC crap of all! What about quality education in America? Lots of communities in Appalachia in the good old US-of-A need help. But I guess it is more PC to put the emphasis on Africa. Hint: The Chinese capitalists are going to do much more for Africa than a bunch of lame wonks in Mountain View. And a lot more than America has ever done, since they will be putting Africa to work, rather than putting them on welfare.
Overall, we love Google, but this 10^100 thing has turned into a laughing stock.
Hint to Google: Go do what you do best, improve your search engine, work on some software, because outside your areas of comfort, you suck!
I like the real world bug tracker option.
What kind of ads could you put on that... We see you're submitting a report about an aggravated robbery, have you ever considered bodyguards from Blackwater? You found some insider trading, maybe you need a new accounting firm!
I just realized I'd wasted my vote (see below) and was going to try to change it. The second time I loaded the list, the entries came in a different order. As obvious as that might be to me and other people here, you don't see it very often on the net.
Anyway. How did I waste my vote? I had voted for "Create real-world issue reporting system". Entirely my fault, I thought they wanted to create a bug tracker / issue tracker for real world issues. Nice idea, but it was all in my head, I hadn't read the details :-/
Ah well, wouldn't have worked the way I'd dreamed it, anyway.
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
In which category does improve "pr0n classification" fit? It would help overall people satisfaction fo sho.
Eliminating income tax and taxing consumption directly through sales tax would severely detriment lower income brackets and reward the affluent. The research on sales tax being more detrimental to lower income groups is pretty solid.
The simplest fix for this is to make food-and-drink groceries exempt from sales taxes. Since the proportion of money spent by people (on average) on food as their income increases, this simple action makes the whole system far more progressive. It's also pretty simple (and hence cheap) to implement. Or you could make all food and drink exempt, which is even easier to do and reduces complexities from working out whether food sold for immediate consumption is a grocery but has the cost of reducing overall tax income. (No idea which is better; I'm not an economist.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I agree; most most of the ideas are worthy with some clearly appearing to be from existing lobbies. c.f. tax agenda.
In most cases the worthy causes have existing lobbies promoting them.
What we don't see is any body promoting a positive depiction and promotion of engineering and science, if anything what we see is a trend for dumbing down across society as a whole.
If most of the ideas are coming from existing lobbies with their own agenda perhaps the slashdot community should support our own agenda.
Most of the ideas are worthy, but I don't think any of them are truly inspired, you would think that with 150,000 people to choose from there would be 16 inspired & original ideas, but apparently not, unless the judges deliberately choose the least inspired.
As it happened I submitted an idea, which I though was cheap and potentially useful, though it never appeared it is at least original, simple and potential useful. When ever there are natural or man-made disasters you get notice boards where people post pictures of lost or found family members. It doesn't matter if the place was New Orleans or Mogadishu. Survivors trek around multiple random locations searching for family and friends. A simple Wiki like platform pre-installed, some ruggedised laptops with integral camera and satellite link up for use by aid workers during disaster relief operations. A few preprepared templates, lost person, found person, supplies needed, supplies available, mashed up with Google Maps. Search features.
where "no evil" = ("evil done" - "good done") 0
All pretty useless.
Living in Africa, one of the biggest problems is corruption.
Corruption removes funds from coffers that assist people and businesses. Corruption destroys the free market and prevents the most effective or efficient businesses from succeeding.
One of the keys to Africa will be sustainable living. With such huge divides between the "haves" and "have nots", corruption grows through envy and family preservation.
Logic might follow that today we are rich, tomorrow and tomorrow we might not have a job, therefore take as much as we can because - we can.
When society is balanced and prosperous, all boats rise. I cannot say that any of the ideas tackle sustainable living for the "current government employees".
The closest is "better education".
Basically, that sums up half the ideas.
Too bad people can't realize what Africa needs are better thinkers, philosophers and politicians, or ways to prevent those from fleeing elsewhere.
Google 10^100 Project turns out to be a sham
I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Google 10 ^100 project, but in a nutshell, Google had a contest to pick the 10 best ideas to make the world a better place. They received 150,000 entries. They said they would pick 100 ideas to put to a vote last year. They missed the dates again and again until finally last week they put up 16 general ideas for a vote. These weren't even ideas but rather general categories like:
Better education in Africa
Socially conscious tax policies etc.
http://www.project10tothe100.com/vote.html
What a sham. There was no transparency back to the original ideas, no recognition of submitters and they completely ignored the original terms that they published. In the end, Google got a huge amount of publicity and they just ignored what 150,000 people did.
Pathetic.
I'm stunned there's not a single entry concerned with peace and love.
Half the clips in that video dealt with alternative energy sources (wave, wind, etc), yet there is no such category to vote on??
And thus we learn that the root cause of partisan bickering is noneother than . . . NIH Syndrome.
Um what, indeed.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/103213_taxstudy08.shtml
Sales taxes are regressive because there is a minimum amount of consumption everyone must do to live, and it affects a higher percentage of a poor person's income than a rich person's.
Consider: a person making $1000 a month who pays $100 in sales tax on groceries, clothes, and other living necessities versus a person making $8000 a month buying the same groceries and clothes.
Alternately, consider the whole policy, rather than simply the tax half of it. The rebate half of it matters too, which is the point of the proposal and what I've been trying to say.
Consider a person making $1000/mo who pays $100/mo in taxes and receives a $100/mo rebate, for a net tax rate of 0%. Now consider someone making $8000/mo who pays $400/mo in taxes (it's unreasonable to assume they don't spend *any* more; feel free to adjust that $400 number up or down a bit, though) and receives the same $100/mo rebate. They pay a net $300/$8000 = 3.75% tax rate. The overall tax policy is progressive with respect to spending, and also income (though less so, because spending doesn't rise quite as rapidly as income). You can adjust the rate and rebate values to match your desired total revenue and level of progressiveness / regressiveness.
Unfortunately, with only two degrees of freedom, you can't also adjust the curvature of the system; that's the basis for the argument that FairTax disproportionately hurts the middle class. We can adjust the numbers to get the line in the right place at the ends, but what we really wanted was a curve. That's where the various credits and exemptions come in; choose them carefully, and they have a different impact variation with income, and the result curves about the way you want too. Of course, this step is much harder and prone to pet projects and political agendas.
Hi friends, :)
My idea "Virtual World" is selected.
Please vote for it to make it real!
http://googleproject10tothe100th.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-project-10100-idea-virtual-world.html
Thank you
Hi Friends,
My idea "Virtual World" is selected in Google - Project 10^100.
Please vote for it to make it real!
http://googleproject10tothe100th.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-project-10100-idea-virtual-world.html
Thank you.. :)