> I live in China. I have always been amused reading about the "Great > Firewall of China" in the Western media. It really isn't that big > of a deal. Very little is blocked, other than porn. (!!!)
-and you call this "not a big deal"??? Damn man, you're missing out!
wow... i can't believe how fast my eyes glazed over when reading your post.
Thank you for the college lecture flash back... every once in a while I forget about all the negatives of being in college and I only remember positives.
when i took programming back in college an "int(a)" call would truncate the variable "a".
That means:
a=2.9
b=2.9
int(a) = 2
int(b) = 2
int(a+b) = int(5.8) = 5
d
So a great way to do this is to give the students the notes before hand and let them chicken-scratch their notes on each page. Give them a PDF file they can DL and use if they want... that way YOU as a teacher dont' end up footing their printing bill.
So the real interesting question is what is the exchange rate? How many foreign kids getting killed is it worth per american kid in terms of minutes of news coverage? 186 Russian school kids massacred how much airtime is that worth vs the shooting at Virgina tech? Now that would be an interesting statistic.
Then you could also get more detailed.... how much is an inner city kid worth vs a rich kid vs a kid in Texas vs a kid in Africa. Now that would be an interesting chart.
Everyone should be a little selfish... but we american's take it over the top. Just because you care the most about your own kids doesn't mean you shouldn't empathize with other people and their children too.
The percentage of people who actually use firefox and ACTUALLY click on stupid banner adds is very small. It's only the idiot users are using IE who see the banner adds and think "woohoo, I won something at this casino site! I should go there right away!"
If you define the "study" to be money gained from "stupid people who click on ad banners" then yes, firefox users are a very small percentage of the market. If you define said market to be all the money that people spend on the web (typically finding their online retailer of choise using google!) then you'd have to be a moron to think that firefox users spend LESS than your average IE user.
Who shops online? Mostly geeks. What browser do geeks use? Firefox. If you're marketing to a different crowd, then fine, by all means block firefox. If you're selling anything electronic you'd be the dumbass of all dumbasses to think that blocking firefox will help your business.
I think this is really a "teach a person to fish" type of thing. Sure it's a computer... how useful is a computer in an agriculture society... now add an internet connection and wow, how fucken useful is that!? I bet there are plenty of good websites that show you how to repair a two-stroke engine... I even bet the "internets" are pretty good darn good and educating you on many more basic and extremely useful things.
Of course we all know it'll probably be mostly used for pr0n, but that's just a good hook to get kids online and techno-literate. And it's not like you coculdn't say the same thing about us when we were kids....
Soundexchange and the RIAA both know that this will kill off 99% of net radio, so why are they doing it? IMHO the reason is that they want to keep independent bands in check. if indies had a good place to be heard and become known without going through their slimy hands then that's scary thing for them. If you can limit the amount of stations that play music then you can limit everyone's choices to a few classically popular bands that are already signed to the big labels.
That's the same behavior you get from radio broadcasting now a days. Time is valuable and so you can only play the bands that are "popular". if you can't aim at a niche audience then you have to be broad and boring. I'm sure the through of democratizing our listening habits scares the crap out of the big labels. This is just a means of using ancient laws to prop up the current paradigm that much longer.
How many times do we have to go over this? there are only three things in life that are certain: Death, taxes, and the guarantee that teen-age boys will find a way to DL their prOn.
Now that's a battle the government will NEVER win.
It has nothing to do with the technical hurdles with are significant to begin with it has everything to do with the owner's Michael J. Laine's personality. First off, I'm a design engineer by profession and I've led up a fair number of projects, however going 100% off of my interpersonal skills I don't think Mr Laine will succeed.
There are several things that a good entrepreneur needs in order to be successful on a project like this. The first of is he/she needs to be charismatic in person and in presenting the idea to other people. I mean, incredibly and unbelievably charismatic, so that only the most hard core doubters would walk away from a talk with him thinking "it can't be done". Frankly I didn't get that from Mr Laine. To me at least he came off as combative he didn't show me the "spark" that I would expect to see from a Steve Jobs or other figure who can really energize investors and employees.
Failing that, then they will need some hard core technical skills to work with the team of engineers who will eventually make the technical leaps required to do something revolutionary. This I certainly don't get from Mr Laine. His attitude of "I'll contract out innovation" doesn't strike me as someone who will make a small miracle happen in his woefully underfunded project.
And that's it. I don't even have to get into the technical issues in any depth and I'm already convinced that I should invest my money elsewhere. Sorry Mr. Laine, I bear no malice against you as a person, but you had your 5 min presentation and I came away unconvinced.
I'm sorry, but somehow you got the impression that I am ok with the japanese internment camps and I"m not. If bush did the same thing today the tone and statements in my post would not have been different. I would still be ranting about the removal of civil liberties and the breakdown of our rights by an out of control executive branch. I just see the Guantanamo situation as one step worse. I learned in school about the japanese internment camps and i was taught they were wrong and I still believe they were wrong. I believe that it was a mistake that our government made and here i am living through another one.
I am also at a loss as to what I can do as a citizen of the US to "fix" the current situation but that doesn't stop me from a sense of responsibility for the things that are being done in my name and with my tax dollars. In the end it's that sense of responsibility that causes so much frustration and outright hostility to people who still support the breakdown of our rights and the criminal acts that are being done in our name. Because truly if you allow a government to oppress you, they will. And for me at least, outrage is the first step toward action and toning down that outrage by saying "aw... governments have always done this" is the first step to talking yourself out of actually doing something that can make a difference. (....even though we've already agreed that there is very little that we can actually do to make a difference.....)
Ok, you're right in some areas and in my last post i overstated myself on some things because i was writing angry. Let me try to clarify a few things and do so in a more measured tone.
I was not trying to overly minimize the internment of japanese during WW2, however what i've read and seen and heard about the the internment camps has not been to the same level of inhumanity that I've heard from gitmo. The japanese-americans were taken away from their lives and homes, but I haven't heard of any organized abuses against them. That is quite the opposite at gitmo where the abuses appear to be systematic and very harsh. You tell me, which would you rather have happen to you?
the problem I have with your previous post that it pervades an attitude of "everyone does this so it's ok" that really rubs me the wrong way. By saying "we all do it" you minimize the outrage that should be rightfully placed on the actions of our government. I would be equally appalled if any of the other presidents on your list did any of these things but they either covered them up much better or didn't do them. There are a lot of outrageous things that have happened and are still happening and I think it's right to be outraged. We SHOULD be outraged about these things. If you're not outraged by things things then you really are giving the government a blank check to take away more and more of your rights and powers.
Please let me step back while you get all high and mighty. "What have [I] done?"
Vented on slashdot (hasn't changed anything), did it Went to political protests (hasn't changed anything), didn't do it Get arrested (hasn't changed anything), didn't do it Get locked in a pen (hasn't changed anything) didn't do it Vote (did change some stuff), do it Donate to opposing candidates, do it
Since when I was living in the US I was living in California, there isn't really much I can do without buying a plane ticket to DC... and protesting against bush in california is the definition of preaching to the choir.
Perhaps you can share with us what your attitude gets us? You seem to say "yeah, these things are bad, but we've always done them." Great, so that means you've always been protesting against them? You protest against them how? You're doing what now to keep the government from taking your rights away? Apathy is the true "blank check" and that's all i see your attitude getting us... but I'd love to be wrong so show me where i'm mistaken.
I am not and have never been a patrotic chest thumper. I don't want to fill myself up with pride over false things. However I did believe in some of the ideals that where instilled (brainwashed) into be growing up in the US.
"[Nixon and other presidents spied on the us too!]"
Nixon is the only "modern day" president on your list (sry, i'm only 30), and he got impeached by BOTH parties after a long and grueling coverup battle. Here bush is OPENLY spying on us and we don't seem to give a rats ass.
"How easily we forget that, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and confiscated all their property. What the Bush administration has done incarcerating people is pretty tame compared to that."
You know, I truely believe this is TAME compared to what bush is doing now. I'm sorry, but to compare taking away property with torture is just insane. There really is no comparison. Torture will scar you far longer than 4 or 5 years in prison.
The presidents that I've lived through... Regean, Bush I, Clinton, have all been pillors of virture compared to the current administration so you'll forgive me if I'm a bit more idealistic than I should be. But while I'm an idealist, I don't believe in wearing rose colored glasses. I've never "given the president a blank check" and I've never "cheered him on" so please remove me from your "we all did this to american" crap thank you very much. The blame should be place SQUARELY where it belongs and not diluted by saying "we've done this throughout history" or "the american people allowed this to happen". Aren't you a republican? (sry, assumption) Aren't republicans supposed to be the party that doesn't go for the "enabling" aregument when it comes to everyday criminals and yet somehow it's pulled up here in support of a yale-educated rich-kid president?
The problem is that the current administration and their supporters have done a very good job of turning everything into "us vs them" and 1/3 of the american public has fallen for it. Politics becomes like a sports team where you always root for "your side" and while you think you're rooting or your side you're really screwing yourself and the country because politics becomes not about doing what your constituents want but about whipping your partisan crowd into a frenzy.
Look at what's happened... nearly everything that I would have listed as to why our country was great BEFORE bush came along has been tainted or flat out ruined. From not torturing "enemies", to due process, to "checks and balances", to freedom of the press, to NOT spying on your own damn citizens, to NOT doing wars of agression, and on and on and on.
If you would have asked a run of the mill republican before back in 1999 if these were good things I believe they would have said "no". But now inch by inch they've traded their ideals for support of their team . but at least 20% of them have had enough balls and intelligence to quit drinking bush's cool-ade. I personally don't think you can ever pry the cool-ade out of the fingers of the rest because they're in too deep and they can't face a reality beyond what Rush or Fox has told them.
As I see it, the original coders did their work out of a benelivent mindset, so that we could break out of the strict ownership - everybody has to start from scratch each time mentality. I always saw the open source/GPL/GNU group as writing code for for their own sake but sharing the results with everyone for the benefit of all. I've always seen them as a group of poeple who were putting their own hard work and effort into trying to make the world a better place.
It seems totally reasonable for them to say "hey, you want to use our piles of work - great! Please do! But while you're at it, and especially if you're going to make a buck off our free labor, you need to contribute to the community also."...but maybe that's just my own idealism and sense of fairness talking....
You don't know how much I *really* hate to say this becuase of how often that is used on youtube and I *dispise* the poeple who say that.
So wait! Bear with me here! I'm not a pre-pubesent kid who says that about every youtube video..
Watch the youtube video. At 0:50 seconds, the robot is walking forward and he stops and walks backward. ONLY AFTER he starts walking backward the user pulls back on the joystick.
If the joystick control is fake, what are the chances that there is someone inside that "robot" shell?
Isn't that exactly what happens? If i live in a rural area, the odds of me hitting anyone on my 100 acre farm are very low so it's perfectly legal for me to shoot a gun on my property. If I live in a city area where my back yard is 10,000 sqft if I'm lucky, the odds of hurting someone go way up. I do the same thing in both cases, but in one case I have a much lower chance of actually hurting anyone so it's legal.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. There is all sorts of fake scarcity all the time in our economy. What do you think a CD is? What do you think software is... or really copyrighted material on all levels? That's just agreed upon scarcity. And sure, while there is a lot of piracy in places like China, a factory is a little harder to hide than a CD duping operation.
The way we enforce that treaty is the same way we enforce almost all low level treaties that are for things like this, economic sanitations. A good treaty must have agreed upon punishments and benefits for all people involved. In this case there should be economic consequences for a country violating the rules. This is basically what the WTO does all the time.
I agree with the other comment on your post; it should not be rated "troll".
The big problem with your analysis is that you don't find any room for compromise. The reality is that that US doesn't want a "fair" compromise becuase the most "fair" method of measuring your greenhouse gas progress is on to do it on a per capita basis. That is a really crappy scale becuase it then means a US citizen must put out the same green house gasses as someone living in africa or china. We're currently putting out 4 or 5 times as much as the average citizen in China so THAT's not going to happen. So what's the solution?
Personally I liked the economic solution where the richer countries bought the greenhouse gas credits off the poor countries. That creates an economic motivation for all countries, rich and poor, to cut emissions. You show me a better system than that and I'll happily change my mind.
Yeah you can whine and bitch about economic disadvantages but in the end is acting like spoiled children and failing future generations becuase we can't play nice with others. The George W. option of stalling and doing nothing is not a solution. We can get the polititions in a room and work out a compromise. Find some middle ground. Give some polution credits for what polution we put out now and some credtis for how many people you have living in your country, and give some more credits for your GDP. This is not rocket science, there is a solution out there.
Truely failing is doing nothing and that's what we've done so far.
Slashdot Mirror
which reads "please do not copy this software/movie/music"
d
> I live in China. I have always been amused reading about the "Great
> Firewall of China" in the Western media. It really isn't that big
> of a deal. Very little is blocked, other than porn. (!!!)
-and you call this "not a big deal"??? Damn man, you're missing out!
d
That's what NZ is famous for...
d
wow... i can't believe how fast my eyes glazed over when reading your post.
Thank you for the college lecture flash back... every once in a while I forget about all the negatives of being in college and I only remember positives.
d
(sorry, return character's didn't come through... this is more readable.)
when i took programming back in college an "int(a)" call would truncate the variable "a".
That means:
a=2.9
b=2.9
int(a) = 2
int(b) = 2
int(a+b) = int(5.8) = 5
d
when i took programming back in college an "int(a)" call would truncate the variable "a". That means: a=2.9 b=2.9 int(a) = 2 int(b) = 2 int(a+b) = int(5.8) = 5 d
So a great way to do this is to give the students the notes before hand and let them chicken-scratch their notes on each page. Give them a PDF file they can DL and use if they want... that way YOU as a teacher dont' end up footing their printing bill.
d
So the real interesting question is what is the exchange rate? How many foreign kids getting killed is it worth per american kid in terms of minutes of news coverage? 186 Russian school kids massacred how much airtime is that worth vs the shooting at Virgina tech? Now that would be an interesting statistic.
Then you could also get more detailed.... how much is an inner city kid worth vs a rich kid vs a kid in Texas vs a kid in Africa. Now that would be an interesting chart.
Everyone should be a little selfish... but we american's take it over the top. Just because you care the most about your own kids doesn't mean you shouldn't empathize with other people and their children too.
d
I think that flame'n freeloading brit should have to pay back EVERY POUND that he stole from the owner of the wireless router!
... how much was that again?
um
The percentage of people who actually use firefox and ACTUALLY click on stupid banner adds is very small. It's only the idiot users are using IE who see the banner adds and think "woohoo, I won something at this casino site! I should go there right away!"
If you define the "study" to be money gained from "stupid people who click on ad banners" then yes, firefox users are a very small percentage of the market. If you define said market to be all the money that people spend on the web (typically finding their online retailer of choise using google!) then you'd have to be a moron to think that firefox users spend LESS than your average IE user.
Who shops online? Mostly geeks. What browser do geeks use? Firefox. If you're marketing to a different crowd, then fine, by all means block firefox. If you're selling anything electronic you'd be the dumbass of all dumbasses to think that blocking firefox will help your business.
d
I think this is really a "teach a person to fish" type of thing. Sure it's a computer... how useful is a computer in an agriculture society... now add an internet connection and wow, how fucken useful is that!? I bet there are plenty of good websites that show you how to repair a two-stroke engine... I even bet the "internets" are pretty good darn good and educating you on many more basic and extremely useful things.
Of course we all know it'll probably be mostly used for pr0n, but that's just a good hook to get kids online and techno-literate. And it's not like you coculdn't say the same thing about us when we were kids....
d
MS built lots of back doors into windows... oh, you mean intentionally?
d
So you have to ask the question "why?"
Soundexchange and the RIAA both know that this will kill off 99% of net radio, so why are they doing it? IMHO the reason is that they want to keep independent bands in check. if indies had a good place to be heard and become known without going through their slimy hands then that's scary thing for them. If you can limit the amount of stations that play music then you can limit everyone's choices to a few classically popular bands that are already signed to the big labels.
That's the same behavior you get from radio broadcasting now a days. Time is valuable and so you can only play the bands that are "popular". if you can't aim at a niche audience then you have to be broad and boring. I'm sure the through of democratizing our listening habits scares the crap out of the big labels. This is just a means of using ancient laws to prop up the current paradigm that much longer.
d
How many times do we have to go over this? there are only three things in life that are certain: Death, taxes, and the guarantee that teen-age boys will find a way to DL their prOn.
Now that's a battle the government will NEVER win.
d
It has nothing to do with the technical hurdles with are significant to begin with it has everything to do with the owner's Michael J. Laine's personality. First off, I'm a design engineer by profession and I've led up a fair number of projects, however going 100% off of my interpersonal skills I don't think Mr Laine will succeed.
There are several things that a good entrepreneur needs in order to be successful on a project like this. The first of is he/she needs to be charismatic in person and in presenting the idea to other people. I mean, incredibly and unbelievably charismatic, so that only the most hard core doubters would walk away from a talk with him thinking "it can't be done". Frankly I didn't get that from Mr Laine. To me at least he came off as combative he didn't show me the "spark" that I would expect to see from a Steve Jobs or other figure who can really energize investors and employees.
Failing that, then they will need some hard core technical skills to work with the team of engineers who will eventually make the technical leaps required to do something revolutionary. This I certainly don't get from Mr Laine. His attitude of "I'll contract out innovation" doesn't strike me as someone who will make a small miracle happen in his woefully underfunded project.
And that's it. I don't even have to get into the technical issues in any depth and I'm already convinced that I should invest my money elsewhere. Sorry Mr. Laine, I bear no malice against you as a person, but you had your 5 min presentation and I came away unconvinced.
d
I'm sorry, but somehow you got the impression that I am ok with the japanese internment camps and I"m not. If bush did the same thing today the tone and statements in my post would not have been different. I would still be ranting about the removal of civil liberties and the breakdown of our rights by an out of control executive branch. I just see the Guantanamo situation as one step worse. I learned in school about the japanese internment camps and i was taught they were wrong and I still believe they were wrong. I believe that it was a mistake that our government made and here i am living through another one.
I am also at a loss as to what I can do as a citizen of the US to "fix" the current situation but that doesn't stop me from a sense of responsibility for the things that are being done in my name and with my tax dollars. In the end it's that sense of responsibility that causes so much frustration and outright hostility to people who still support the breakdown of our rights and the criminal acts that are being done in our name. Because truly if you allow a government to oppress you, they will. And for me at least, outrage is the first step toward action and toning down that outrage by saying "aw... governments have always done this" is the first step to talking yourself out of actually doing something that can make a difference. (....even though we've already agreed that there is very little that we can actually do to make a difference.....)
d
Ok, you're right in some areas and in my last post i overstated myself on some things because i was writing angry. Let me try to clarify a few things and do so in a more measured tone.
I was not trying to overly minimize the internment of japanese during WW2, however what i've read and seen and heard about the the internment camps has not been to the same level of inhumanity that I've heard from gitmo. The japanese-americans were taken away from their lives and homes, but I haven't heard of any organized abuses against them. That is quite the opposite at gitmo where the abuses appear to be systematic and very harsh. You tell me, which would you rather have happen to you?
the problem I have with your previous post that it pervades an attitude of "everyone does this so it's ok" that really rubs me the wrong way. By saying "we all do it" you minimize the outrage that should be rightfully placed on the actions of our government. I would be equally appalled if any of the other presidents on your list did any of these things but they either covered them up much better or didn't do them. There are a lot of outrageous things that have happened and are still happening and I think it's right to be outraged. We SHOULD be outraged about these things. If you're not outraged by things things then you really are giving the government a blank check to take away more and more of your rights and powers.
Please let me step back while you get all high and mighty. "What have [I] done?"
Vented on slashdot (hasn't changed anything), did it
Went to political protests (hasn't changed anything), didn't do it
Get arrested (hasn't changed anything), didn't do it
Get locked in a pen (hasn't changed anything) didn't do it
Vote (did change some stuff), do it
Donate to opposing candidates, do it
Since when I was living in the US I was living in California, there isn't really much I can do without buying a plane ticket to DC... and protesting against bush in california is the definition of preaching to the choir.
Perhaps you can share with us what your attitude gets us? You seem to say "yeah, these things are bad, but we've always done them." Great, so that means you've always been protesting against them? You protest against them how? You're doing what now to keep the government from taking your rights away? Apathy is the true "blank check" and that's all i see your attitude getting us... but I'd love to be wrong so show me where i'm mistaken.
d
I am not and have never been a patrotic chest thumper. I don't want to fill myself up with pride over false things. However I did believe in some of the ideals that where instilled (brainwashed) into be growing up in the US.
"[Nixon and other presidents spied on the us too!]"
Nixon is the only "modern day" president on your list (sry, i'm only 30), and he got impeached by BOTH parties after a long and grueling coverup battle. Here bush is OPENLY spying on us and we don't seem to give a rats ass.
"How easily we forget that, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and confiscated all their property. What the Bush administration has done incarcerating people is pretty tame compared to that."
You know, I truely believe this is TAME compared to what bush is doing now. I'm sorry, but to compare taking away property with torture is just insane. There really is no comparison. Torture will scar you far longer than 4 or 5 years in prison.
The presidents that I've lived through... Regean, Bush I, Clinton, have all been pillors of virture compared to the current administration so you'll forgive me if I'm a bit more idealistic than I should be. But while I'm an idealist, I don't believe in wearing rose colored glasses. I've never "given the president a blank check" and I've never "cheered him on" so please remove me from your "we all did this to american" crap thank you very much. The blame should be place SQUARELY where it belongs and not diluted by saying "we've done this throughout history" or "the american people allowed this to happen". Aren't you a republican? (sry, assumption) Aren't republicans supposed to be the party that doesn't go for the "enabling" aregument when it comes to everyday criminals and yet somehow it's pulled up here in support of a yale-educated rich-kid president?
d
The problem is that the current administration and their supporters have done a very good job of turning everything into "us vs them" and 1/3 of the american public has fallen for it. Politics becomes like a sports team where you always root for "your side" and while you think you're rooting or your side you're really screwing yourself and the country because politics becomes not about doing what your constituents want but about whipping your partisan crowd into a frenzy.
Look at what's happened... nearly everything that I would have listed as to why our country was great BEFORE bush came along has been tainted or flat out ruined. From not torturing "enemies", to due process, to "checks and balances", to freedom of the press, to NOT spying on your own damn citizens, to NOT doing wars of agression, and on and on and on.
If you would have asked a run of the mill republican before back in 1999 if these were good things I believe they would have said "no". But now inch by inch they've traded their ideals for support of their team . but at least 20% of them have had enough balls and intelligence to quit drinking bush's cool-ade. I personally don't think you can ever pry the cool-ade out of the fingers of the rest because they're in too deep and they can't face a reality beyond what Rush or Fox has told them.
d
you laugh... but how many of those guys are millionaires right now?
As I see it, the original coders did their work out of a benelivent mindset, so that we could break out of the strict ownership - everybody has to start from scratch each time mentality. I always saw the open source/GPL/GNU group as writing code for for their own sake but sharing the results with everyone for the benefit of all. I've always seen them as a group of poeple who were putting their own hard work and effort into trying to make the world a better place.
...but maybe that's just my own idealism and sense of fairness talking....
It seems totally reasonable for them to say "hey, you want to use our piles of work - great! Please do! But while you're at it, and especially if you're going to make a buck off our free labor, you need to contribute to the community also."
don
You don't know how much I *really* hate to say this becuase of how often that is used on youtube and I *dispise* the poeple who say that.
t tp%3A%2F%2Fwww.newlaunches.com%2Farchives%2Fhubo_f x1_chair_bot.php
So wait! Bear with me here! I'm not a pre-pubesent kid who says that about every youtube video..
Watch the youtube video. At 0:50 seconds, the robot is walking forward and he stops and walks backward. ONLY AFTER he starts walking backward the user pulls back on the joystick.
If the joystick control is fake, what are the chances that there is someone inside that "robot" shell?
Don't trust me, watch it yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyqQ9B8_jIs&eurl=h
don
Isn't that exactly what happens? If i live in a rural area, the odds of me hitting anyone on my 100 acre farm are very low so it's perfectly legal for me to shoot a gun on my property. If I live in a city area where my back yard is 10,000 sqft if I'm lucky, the odds of hurting someone go way up. I do the same thing in both cases, but in one case I have a much lower chance of actually hurting anyone so it's legal.
don
I'm not sure what you're talking about. There is all sorts of fake scarcity all the time in our economy. What do you think a CD is? What do you think software is ... or really copyrighted material on all levels? That's just agreed upon scarcity. And sure, while there is a lot of piracy in places like China, a factory is a little harder to hide than a CD duping operation.
The way we enforce that treaty is the same way we enforce almost all low level treaties that are for things like this, economic sanitations. A good treaty must have agreed upon punishments and benefits for all people involved. In this case there should be economic consequences for a country violating the rules. This is basically what the WTO does all the time.
don
I agree with the other comment on your post; it should not be rated "troll".
The big problem with your analysis is that you don't find any room for compromise. The reality is that that US doesn't want a "fair" compromise becuase the most "fair" method of measuring your greenhouse gas progress is on to do it on a per capita basis. That is a really crappy scale becuase it then means a US citizen must put out the same green house gasses as someone living in africa or china. We're currently putting out 4 or 5 times as much as the average citizen in China so THAT's not going to happen. So what's the solution?
Personally I liked the economic solution where the richer countries bought the greenhouse gas credits off the poor countries. That creates an economic motivation for all countries, rich and poor, to cut emissions. You show me a better system than that and I'll happily change my mind.
Yeah you can whine and bitch about economic disadvantages but in the end is acting like spoiled children and failing future generations becuase we can't play nice with others. The George W. option of stalling and doing nothing is not a solution. We can get the polititions in a room and work out a compromise. Find some middle ground. Give some polution credits for what polution we put out now and some credtis for how many people you have living in your country, and give some more credits for your GDP. This is not rocket science, there is a solution out there.
Truely failing is doing nothing and that's what we've done so far.
don