For example, Cap and trade does not stifle innovation. Quite the opposite, if a given industry normally produced a lot of CO2 then under a cap and trade system they have a lot of incentive to find ways to reduce that, more than they do in a general tax
No they don't. How do they have the incentive to do that when they have less and less working funds? If I have $50 million I can put into R&D for alternate energy without a carbon tax or cap and trade or $25 million I can put into R&D for alternate energy with cap and trade/carbon tax which do you think will get more work done?
In fact, cap and trade systems have been tried before.
Yes, regulating So2 has worked because Sulfur was pretty easy to catch and was really unnecessary in burning of fuels.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. In the most efficient burning of a fossil fuel, the result is CO2 and water. There's no way to make the CO2 not be there. There's no wasted energy. Moreover, added CO2 is an externality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality so individuals have no incentive to reduce the creation of CO2. This is true with pollutants in general. As with most difficult externalities, the impact of the pollution is not directly on the individual who created it, and it is diffuse enough that one cannot easily trace any specific bit of pollution back to any specific source. That's precisely why we have the government regulate the sources. Cap and trade is a very efficient system which takes advantage of market forces to more efficiently reduce pollution.
However, as a whole if an energy source pollutes its not that efficient. For example, one gram of coal yields a small amount of energy, one gram of nuclear fuel yields much more power.
Cap and trade will be like patents, perhaps a decent idea but with too many flaws in the implementation businesses will be paying protection money to carbon trolls, lobbyists will get rich, the environment will be more politicized, more expensive everything, lower standard of living and the environment doesn't even improve because falling energy prices in the developing world will lead to more US businesses moving to China and India. After all lets see here if this passes China/India will have:
A) Dirt-cheap educated labor
B) Dirt-cheap energy when compared to Europe/US
C) Lax IP enforcement allowing for better R&D cost to benefit ratios
D) A large population of consumers.
With jobs and businesses already making a mass immigration out of the US, why push them further out the door?
"they" don't do what you say they normally do, i.e. "spend the money faster than it comes in"
Hm, what is the national debt at the moment... About 12 trillion dollars? If we weren't spending money faster than it came in the national debt would be decreasing and wouldn't be at 12 trillion dollars.
If I don't spend money faster than it comes in, I have money left over and aren't in debt. If I spend money faster than it comes in than that is when I'm in debt.
People who disagree with abortion view it as murder. People who disagree with the Mohammed images at most can say its "blasphemy". If your going to go after someone, it makes a whole lot more sense to go after someone who you view is a murder than someone who is "defaming" someone who has been dead for centuries.
There is no comparison in this day and age between Islamic violence and violence from almost every other religion.
Cap and trade stifles innovation and encourages fraud/deceit. Every time the government tries to make something non-existent exist, we run into problems. For example patents, copyright, trademark issues, etc. What Cap and Trade would encourage is large businesses either A) Passing on the costs to consumers or B) Use hollywood-style accounting to either get more "credits" than needed and sell them or move their businesses overseas.
any tax on carbon is a stupid, stupid idea. Pollution is wasted energy, technology will eventually catch up with it and make great progress. When you use cap-and-trade the businesses that would be pumping money into R&D for alternate energy sources are instead paying "protection" money to carbon trolls in essence.
Why anyone would want to make yet another government-controlled non-existent commodity in this day and age must be crazy or have a ton of money to burn when energy prices soar higher meaning food and all other prices will go up and our standard of living goes way down. Oh but the polar bears are ok, nevermind the fact that our economy has gone downhill at least the animals are OK. Oh but wait, India, China and all the up-and-coming powers aren't going to do this which means that we pay for a lower standard of living while they have complete freedom and make even more money!
Do you for one welcome your developing nations overlords?
But there is a big difference. I'd like to think that humanity as a global race has changed and become much more enlightened over the years. This isn't the 1400s anymore, things have changed. We've realized things through the aid of science and exploration that humans with different beliefs are equally human and that the most prosperous countries are that with a diverse religious population.
Language and transmission speed hindrances are now nearly gone, I don't have to rely on Marco Polo's journals to tell me what life is like in the far east, I can easily go to a Chinese website, open up Google translate and have a good idea of what its saying in an instant. Things need no longer be exaggerated to help fuel a cause, if I want to know what life is like in Israel I only need to hop on the internet and not listen to a local Bishop retelling what a person said that said what the Pope said who heard it from a traveler who heard it from a peasant.
Huh? No one did that over the South Park 'controversy' either. And the entirety of the 'controversy' was a single veiled threat made by a single poster on a pissant website that no one had even heard of before the news picked it up.
Then why was the car bomb placed in front of Viacom the parent of Comedy Central? Yes, it may have been pure coincidence, but since the motive according to the suspect was that "Islam was under attack" it falls into place.
So, death threats over misspent taxes are OK? Else what is your point?
No, the point is there is a big difference between speech that has no effect on you (Danish Cartoons, South Park) and speech that you helped fund (Piss Christ). There is no reason to be angry with speech that has no effect on you such as the Danish Cartoons or South Park, however you would be understandably a bit pissed (excuse the pun) if your tax dollars were used to help create speech you oppose.
Also, note the difference, was there any attempt on the artist of Piss Christ's life? No. Were there multiple attempts on the Danish cartoonist? Yes.
So? Oddly enough I consider myself civilized enough to realize that other people have their own opinions and are entitled to them as much as I am.
I agree with Voltaire
Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write
You know, I'd like it for everyone to have the same political views as me, yet I accept the fact that democrats and republicans have both the right to speech, even speech I disagree with very much.
Perhaps some of the uncivilized barbarian might rise up within me, but when you look at it rationally you will find that censorship is the destruction of basic human rights. That censorship leads to tyranny and oppression.
It offends their religious sensibilities. I'll never understand why respecting someone else's religious views (or lack there of) is such a bad thing?
Then why is it that every single other religion has grown out of these stupidities and don't resort to violence in the 21st century.
Why is it that I can make cartoons of Jesus all I want, make fun of Buddha, criticize Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), declare that the big bang was a myth, prove Zeus never existed, and any other religious symbol other than those related to Islam and various small, irrational cults and have nothing more than angry letters?
There is a difference between respect and cowardice. And my respect ends when a religion tramples over human rights to make a point.
Every other religion has earned the right to have respect other than Islam and a few small cults. They don't trample over human rights and don't resort to violence. Why Islam gets a free pass is only because of cowardice.
So they don't like caricatures of Mohammed, is it *REALLY* that important you somehow earn the right to be able to do it?
Yes. That is part of freedom of speech it isn't the freedom to say "lets all be happy in our current situation, the USA is the best and Obama/Bush are gods!" that isn't freedom, every country gives you the "freedom" to say good things. Freedom of speech means that I can say fuck Obama, Bush, the USA, the UN, Jesus, Moses, Mohamed, Buddha, The war on terror, communism, capitalism, socialism, etc. that is freedom of speech.
Why is it that Muslims get a free pass? You know what? I could draw a cartoon of Jesus screwing Moses and I doubt I'd get any thing more than a few laughs, a few angry e-mails and such. If I push it forth I/might/ get a death threat. I'm sure as hell not going to get a car laden with explosives parked outside my house though. I'm not going to get killed, I'm going to get perhaps a boycott of any further art I draw, etc.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/14/the-poet-versus-the-prophet is a very interesting article. Why is it that every, single, other religion has embraced tolerance other than Islam? If Islam is so tolerant then why aren't the Islamic leaders doing more to embrace it?
And how about if a group of Muslims in Afghanistan started posting cartoons on Facebook of injured American or British soldiers? Are you going to sit back and laugh about it because "It's their right" to do so?
I wouldn't laugh at it, I would respect their right to free speech and do nothing. I don't believe in censorship of any kind, they have their right to post what they want, I post what I want, if I don't like it -gasp- I don't have to look at it.
Grow up, boy. When you get to middle-age like me you begin to understand that life is about tolerating and making allowances for others and not letting insignificant bits of crap ruin your day.
So we should "tolerate" the fact that Islam can get a free pass of criticism but every other religion we can do whatever?
Join the real world, take your head out of your ass and looking around you - if you do that you'll see most Muslims are normal people like you and me just getting on with their day who don't give a toss about insignificant little bigots like you.
Yeah, most are. However, their leaders are advocating religious violence. I don't see the current Pope saying we should have a mass genocide of non-catholics but yet Islamic leaders are basically saying the same thing.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of religious violence, just how many gun-toting Christians are there in the US?
I don't see Christians making death threats and attempting to carry them out on cartoonists who make fun of Jesus or any other biblical figure.
In short, out of all the religions in the world at the present age, it is only Islam that advocates violence for such stupid, insignificant things as cartoons.
They are not comparable. There is a difference between receiving "death threats" from random lunatics and having an organization of lunatics out to kill you over art. Look at the South Park controversy, there is a big difference no one tried to put a car filled with explosives over Piss Christ.
And also, the main reason why Piss Christ was so controversial is because it received taxpayer funds, had it been purely funded by private means, there would be little to no controversy.
There is a big difference between a website (Revolution Muslim) advocating (in essence) murder of the cartoonists and a few mentally unstable people giving idle threats. There is a big difference between a few wasted drops of ink and a car appearing at your headquarters filled with explosives.
Hm, odd most of the major tech blogs have said something about Cherry Pal's products, but yeah, seems scam-like enough. Plus they have a crap site. If they really did ship those things on time they wouldn't be too bad for small robotic projects.
Right. Just like how "regular" porn is unprofitable because the internet is already full of it.
The difference is, everyone uses regular porn.
Right. Because CP doesn't exist in digital form with multiple copies floating around the world, and is therefore easily destroyed when it's found.
It is effectively destroyed when they raid servers, HDD, etc. Yeah, there might be a few copies floating around but they aren't generally hosted on the internet for fear of them being taken down.
Right. Which is why nobody is producing "regular" porn anymore, since there's more than enough of it available to satisfy everyone already.
The difference is the amount of CP produced because of the economy is disproportionate to the number of people who consume it which is directly caused by the fact it is illegal.
People are producing regular porn now because there is a -large- market for it that it hasn't hit its peak yet. CP is a -tiny- market, artificially exaggerated in economic worth due to it being illegal.
It would be like if BeOS was made illegal, there aren't many users or people who really want a copy of BeOS, but since it is illegal and has a dedicated fanbase however small, people would pay large amounts of money to continue to use BeOS if they were big enough fans.
Because think about it. If there is already free porn of it, why make even more of it for what is a fetish for a small amount of people. If it was free and unregulated it would fill the internet making it hard for people to turn a profit producing it on their own which would lead to any economic benefit being reduced or eliminated.
If you have an audience who wants something and there is no where else to get it (because it is illegal and actively destroyed) you can set a rather high price on it and run a business doing it. On the other hand, if there is so much free CP floating around because it isn't actively destroyed the few people with that fetish go to that and don't even bother to purchase CP destroying the economy of it.
There are lots of really, really strange fetishes out there but none are so financially successful as CP because of the presence of regulation. In order to fill the small number of people who like CP, more CP has to be produced because it isn't out there anymore which leads to more children being abused.
However, CP is easily planted and things forbidding it are generally destructive of free speech and harm more children.
If CP was not so regulated and forbidden, there would be a lot less children harmed in the making of it. Since it is though, it has created a large economy dedicated to the production of it.
which the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing and all manner of malicious Web content
That is the story today, but what about the story tomorrow?
While it could be true that this was an ISP where nothing of value was lost, could it have also hosted sites critical of the government and its policies?
Ogg Theora has had this problem for some time, yes it was open but there was no way of knowing if there were hidden patents so it didn't become popular.
It only takes a few whispered words about patents before everyone but a few dedicated people abandon the project or start paying "protection" money to trolls.
Um, how is/. NSFW? There was a video clearly demonstrating Pulp Fiction done with Google Wave which was clearly labeled as NSWF. Unless you click on the play button, everything is perfectly safe for work. Just don't click links where you don't want to go (stay away from any link with goat in its name...) and/. is perfectly work safe.
...Because there are really a lot of other providers offering this?
Being privacy conscious is a good thing, however there comes a time where you have to see the risk to benefit ratio at the moment leans heavily towards using Google's services.
If you want to be completely anonymous, don't use any services by any web provider and encrypt all traffic and use Tor and all that fun stuff, but you won't really experience the web and it won't make you productive.
If there are other super-private services that do all the things Google does, switch to them. Considering that there aren't, Google is your best bet.
Yeah, because we all will go buy our things from patent trolls...
Look at the VirnetX website and look at the products http://www.virnetx.com/products.php it has very little other than patent licensing! While they do have a few real products, VirnetX is more or less a patent troll.
Teachers are hired to teach, not to sit in the back of the classroom, print off worksheets from purchased curriculum, run a few scantrons and then give a final.
If a teacher refuses to actually -teach- fire the teacher. Simple. With all these education budget cuts, teachers are now a dime a dozen.
...Because we all know that everyone is going to get 3 TB of space?
Most people can't even fill a 500 GB disk even with all the music they love, their photos and a few movies. Granted, if you digitize -everything- torrent -massive- amounts of music and want lots and lots of HD movies, you might fill one of these disks, however, the number of people who would say "oh, I'm now switching to Windows 7" is low because most of the time people would either A) partition it and put it on a NAS box or B) upgrade to a different OS
Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously?
The internet is simply the means. Most sites are as biased as textbooks. However, it would be expensive to give every student a copy of The Federalist Papers when studying the constitution, with the internet it is there and free.
The teacher would still assign readings, it would just be using the real material. Imagine if rather than reading Shakespeare, Dante or any other great author, we would only read summaries by someone else. Rather than reading Romeo and Juliet (or watching it being performed) we would just have a small paragraph describing the plot. Such things would be disastrous and pointless. However, we do the same thing with textbooks.
There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.
Those are not primary sources though. What the internet could let you do though, is find a study done by a university somewhere linking Cleaner X to cancer.
I fail to see how having kids read the actual words said by our founding fathers with the internet as the medium is terrible.
I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources.
They are, however, they are less prone to misinterpretation and revisionism that is prevalent and more dangerous in our world. Look at the Bible, over the years it has been interpreted as being pro-slavery or anti-slavery depending on who is reading it. It has been interpreted as being pro-segregation and anti-segregation over the years, etc. Same thing with historical documents, today we like to think of the US as having the moral high ground in everything, after all Lincoln was the greatest president, the US civil war was fought over nothing but slavery and everything falls into the right side (the victors) and the wrong side (the losers).
Teaching thinking through primary sources though is key because they are A) Free/Cheap (it would cost a fortune to have 2 contradictory textbooks, it is free to show documents from the federalist side and anti-federalist side, the confederate side and the union side) B) encourages thinking and debate C) show how important sources are.
There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.
But they need to try because otherwise our society will fail. Any democratically run society depends on people who can think for themselves.
The problem is that yes, young kids might not be able to do this, but they are never taught to do things when they are older. Look at the primary 2 voters in the US:
A) The irrational liberal
B) The irrational conservative
No one seems to think for themselves. We've let editorials masquerade as news and we aren't teaching children how to think rationally. We live in an emotionally driven world, where logic is out and doing things to "feel good" is the only thing that matters.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, Cap and trade does not stifle innovation. Quite the opposite, if a given industry normally produced a lot of CO2 then under a cap and trade system they have a lot of incentive to find ways to reduce that, more than they do in a general tax
No they don't. How do they have the incentive to do that when they have less and less working funds? If I have $50 million I can put into R&D for alternate energy without a carbon tax or cap and trade or $25 million I can put into R&D for alternate energy with cap and trade/carbon tax which do you think will get more work done?
In fact, cap and trade systems have been tried before.
Yeah in Europe. And what happened? Oh yeah, massive fraud and less innovation. I don't see Europe suddenly having all these great solutions. Look at this http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/europes-cap-and-trade-model-loses-billions-to-fraud/19274092
Yes, regulating So2 has worked because Sulfur was pretty easy to catch and was really unnecessary in burning of fuels.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. In the most efficient burning of a fossil fuel, the result is CO2 and water. There's no way to make the CO2 not be there. There's no wasted energy. Moreover, added CO2 is an externality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality so individuals have no incentive to reduce the creation of CO2. This is true with pollutants in general. As with most difficult externalities, the impact of the pollution is not directly on the individual who created it, and it is diffuse enough that one cannot easily trace any specific bit of pollution back to any specific source. That's precisely why we have the government regulate the sources. Cap and trade is a very efficient system which takes advantage of market forces to more efficiently reduce pollution.
However, as a whole if an energy source pollutes its not that efficient. For example, one gram of coal yields a small amount of energy, one gram of nuclear fuel yields much more power.
Cap and trade will be like patents, perhaps a decent idea but with too many flaws in the implementation businesses will be paying protection money to carbon trolls, lobbyists will get rich, the environment will be more politicized, more expensive everything, lower standard of living and the environment doesn't even improve because falling energy prices in the developing world will lead to more US businesses moving to China and India. After all lets see here if this passes China/India will have:
A) Dirt-cheap educated labor
B) Dirt-cheap energy when compared to Europe/US
C) Lax IP enforcement allowing for better R&D cost to benefit ratios
D) A large population of consumers.
With jobs and businesses already making a mass immigration out of the US, why push them further out the door?
"they" don't do what you say they normally do, i.e. "spend the money faster than it comes in"
Hm, what is the national debt at the moment... About 12 trillion dollars? If we weren't spending money faster than it came in the national debt would be decreasing and wouldn't be at 12 trillion dollars.
If I don't spend money faster than it comes in, I have money left over and aren't in debt. If I spend money faster than it comes in than that is when I'm in debt.
Again, there is still a difference.
People who disagree with abortion view it as murder. People who disagree with the Mohammed images at most can say its "blasphemy". If your going to go after someone, it makes a whole lot more sense to go after someone who you view is a murder than someone who is "defaming" someone who has been dead for centuries.
There is no comparison in this day and age between Islamic violence and violence from almost every other religion.
If you thought patent trolls were bad, wait till we now have carbon trolls for cap and trade.
Cap and trade stifles innovation and encourages fraud/deceit. Every time the government tries to make something non-existent exist, we run into problems. For example patents, copyright, trademark issues, etc. What Cap and Trade would encourage is large businesses either A) Passing on the costs to consumers or B) Use hollywood-style accounting to either get more "credits" than needed and sell them or move their businesses overseas.
any tax on carbon is a stupid, stupid idea. Pollution is wasted energy, technology will eventually catch up with it and make great progress. When you use cap-and-trade the businesses that would be pumping money into R&D for alternate energy sources are instead paying "protection" money to carbon trolls in essence.
Why anyone would want to make yet another government-controlled non-existent commodity in this day and age must be crazy or have a ton of money to burn when energy prices soar higher meaning food and all other prices will go up and our standard of living goes way down. Oh but the polar bears are ok, nevermind the fact that our economy has gone downhill at least the animals are OK. Oh but wait, India, China and all the up-and-coming powers aren't going to do this which means that we pay for a lower standard of living while they have complete freedom and make even more money!
Do you for one welcome your developing nations overlords?
But there is a big difference. I'd like to think that humanity as a global race has changed and become much more enlightened over the years. This isn't the 1400s anymore, things have changed. We've realized things through the aid of science and exploration that humans with different beliefs are equally human and that the most prosperous countries are that with a diverse religious population.
Language and transmission speed hindrances are now nearly gone, I don't have to rely on Marco Polo's journals to tell me what life is like in the far east, I can easily go to a Chinese website, open up Google translate and have a good idea of what its saying in an instant. Things need no longer be exaggerated to help fuel a cause, if I want to know what life is like in Israel I only need to hop on the internet and not listen to a local Bishop retelling what a person said that said what the Pope said who heard it from a traveler who heard it from a peasant.
What "organization of lunatics" are you referring to? Don't be so foolish to confuse accusations of blasphemy with death threats.
Oh, I don't know Al-Queda, the Muslim Brotherhood and its spin-offs, etc.
See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/6924522/Somali-axeman-who-tried-to-murder-Danish-cartoonist-linked-to-al-Qaeda.html .
Huh? No one did that over the South Park 'controversy' either. And the entirety of the 'controversy' was a single veiled threat made by a single poster on a pissant website that no one had even heard of before the news picked it up.
Then why was the car bomb placed in front of Viacom the parent of Comedy Central? Yes, it may have been pure coincidence, but since the motive according to the suspect was that "Islam was under attack" it falls into place.
So, death threats over misspent taxes are OK? Else what is your point?
No, the point is there is a big difference between speech that has no effect on you (Danish Cartoons, South Park) and speech that you helped fund (Piss Christ). There is no reason to be angry with speech that has no effect on you such as the Danish Cartoons or South Park, however you would be understandably a bit pissed (excuse the pun) if your tax dollars were used to help create speech you oppose.
Also, note the difference, was there any attempt on the artist of Piss Christ's life? No. Were there multiple attempts on the Danish cartoonist? Yes.
I agree with Voltaire
Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write
You know, I'd like it for everyone to have the same political views as me, yet I accept the fact that democrats and republicans have both the right to speech, even speech I disagree with very much.
Perhaps some of the uncivilized barbarian might rise up within me, but when you look at it rationally you will find that censorship is the destruction of basic human rights. That censorship leads to tyranny and oppression.
It offends their religious sensibilities. I'll never understand why respecting someone else's religious views (or lack there of) is such a bad thing?
Then why is it that every single other religion has grown out of these stupidities and don't resort to violence in the 21st century.
Why is it that I can make cartoons of Jesus all I want, make fun of Buddha, criticize Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), declare that the big bang was a myth, prove Zeus never existed, and any other religious symbol other than those related to Islam and various small, irrational cults and have nothing more than angry letters?
There is a difference between respect and cowardice. And my respect ends when a religion tramples over human rights to make a point.
Every other religion has earned the right to have respect other than Islam and a few small cults. They don't trample over human rights and don't resort to violence. Why Islam gets a free pass is only because of cowardice.
So they don't like caricatures of Mohammed, is it *REALLY* that important you somehow earn the right to be able to do it?
Yes. That is part of freedom of speech it isn't the freedom to say "lets all be happy in our current situation, the USA is the best and Obama/Bush are gods!" that isn't freedom, every country gives you the "freedom" to say good things. Freedom of speech means that I can say fuck Obama, Bush, the USA, the UN, Jesus, Moses, Mohamed, Buddha, The war on terror, communism, capitalism, socialism, etc. that is freedom of speech.
/might/ get a death threat. I'm sure as hell not going to get a car laden with explosives parked outside my house though. I'm not going to get killed, I'm going to get perhaps a boycott of any further art I draw, etc.
Why is it that Muslims get a free pass? You know what? I could draw a cartoon of Jesus screwing Moses and I doubt I'd get any thing more than a few laughs, a few angry e-mails and such. If I push it forth I
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/14/the-poet-versus-the-prophet is a very interesting article. Why is it that every, single, other religion has embraced tolerance other than Islam? If Islam is so tolerant then why aren't the Islamic leaders doing more to embrace it?
And how about if a group of Muslims in Afghanistan started posting cartoons on Facebook of injured American or British soldiers? Are you going to sit back and laugh about it because "It's their right" to do so?
I wouldn't laugh at it, I would respect their right to free speech and do nothing. I don't believe in censorship of any kind, they have their right to post what they want, I post what I want, if I don't like it -gasp- I don't have to look at it.
Grow up, boy. When you get to middle-age like me you begin to understand that life is about tolerating and making allowances for others and not letting insignificant bits of crap ruin your day.
So we should "tolerate" the fact that Islam can get a free pass of criticism but every other religion we can do whatever?
Join the real world, take your head out of your ass and looking around you - if you do that you'll see most Muslims are normal people like you and me just getting on with their day who don't give a toss about insignificant little bigots like you.
Yeah, most are. However, their leaders are advocating religious violence. I don't see the current Pope saying we should have a mass genocide of non-catholics but yet Islamic leaders are basically saying the same thing.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of religious violence, just how many gun-toting Christians are there in the US?
I don't see Christians making death threats and attempting to carry them out on cartoonists who make fun of Jesus or any other biblical figure.
In short, out of all the religions in the world at the present age, it is only Islam that advocates violence for such stupid, insignificant things as cartoons.
They are not comparable. There is a difference between receiving "death threats" from random lunatics and having an organization of lunatics out to kill you over art. Look at the South Park controversy, there is a big difference no one tried to put a car filled with explosives over Piss Christ.
And also, the main reason why Piss Christ was so controversial is because it received taxpayer funds, had it been purely funded by private means, there would be little to no controversy.
There is a big difference between a website (Revolution Muslim) advocating (in essence) murder of the cartoonists and a few mentally unstable people giving idle threats. There is a big difference between a few wasted drops of ink and a car appearing at your headquarters filled with explosives.
So, no, they are not comparable.
Hm, odd most of the major tech blogs have said something about Cherry Pal's products, but yeah, seems scam-like enough. Plus they have a crap site. If they really did ship those things on time they wouldn't be too bad for small robotic projects.
http://www.cherrypal.com/secure/index.php
Right there. Yeah, might be crap, but sure is cheap
Right. Just like how "regular" porn is unprofitable because the internet is already full of it.
The difference is, everyone uses regular porn.
Right. Because CP doesn't exist in digital form with multiple copies floating around the world, and is therefore easily destroyed when it's found.
It is effectively destroyed when they raid servers, HDD, etc. Yeah, there might be a few copies floating around but they aren't generally hosted on the internet for fear of them being taken down.
Right. Which is why nobody is producing "regular" porn anymore, since there's more than enough of it available to satisfy everyone already.
The difference is the amount of CP produced because of the economy is disproportionate to the number of people who consume it which is directly caused by the fact it is illegal.
People are producing regular porn now because there is a -large- market for it that it hasn't hit its peak yet. CP is a -tiny- market, artificially exaggerated in economic worth due to it being illegal.
It would be like if BeOS was made illegal, there aren't many users or people who really want a copy of BeOS, but since it is illegal and has a dedicated fanbase however small, people would pay large amounts of money to continue to use BeOS if they were big enough fans.
Because think about it. If there is already free porn of it, why make even more of it for what is a fetish for a small amount of people. If it was free and unregulated it would fill the internet making it hard for people to turn a profit producing it on their own which would lead to any economic benefit being reduced or eliminated.
If you have an audience who wants something and there is no where else to get it (because it is illegal and actively destroyed) you can set a rather high price on it and run a business doing it. On the other hand, if there is so much free CP floating around because it isn't actively destroyed the few people with that fetish go to that and don't even bother to purchase CP destroying the economy of it.
There are lots of really, really strange fetishes out there but none are so financially successful as CP because of the presence of regulation. In order to fill the small number of people who like CP, more CP has to be produced because it isn't out there anymore which leads to more children being abused.
However, CP is easily planted and things forbidding it are generally destructive of free speech and harm more children.
If CP was not so regulated and forbidden, there would be a lot less children harmed in the making of it. Since it is though, it has created a large economy dedicated to the production of it.
which the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing and all manner of malicious Web content
That is the story today, but what about the story tomorrow?
While it could be true that this was an ISP where nothing of value was lost, could it have also hosted sites critical of the government and its policies?
Something interesting to look into...
But is it really patent free?
Ogg Theora has had this problem for some time, yes it was open but there was no way of knowing if there were hidden patents so it didn't become popular.
It only takes a few whispered words about patents before everyone but a few dedicated people abandon the project or start paying "protection" money to trolls.
Open source doesn't mean anything when the codec can still be patented and then we get into patent messes.
Um, how is /. NSFW? There was a video clearly demonstrating Pulp Fiction done with Google Wave which was clearly labeled as NSWF. Unless you click on the play button, everything is perfectly safe for work. Just don't click links where you don't want to go (stay away from any link with goat in its name...) and /. is perfectly work safe.
...Because there are really a lot of other providers offering this?
Being privacy conscious is a good thing, however there comes a time where you have to see the risk to benefit ratio at the moment leans heavily towards using Google's services.
If you want to be completely anonymous, don't use any services by any web provider and encrypt all traffic and use Tor and all that fun stuff, but you won't really experience the web and it won't make you productive.
If there are other super-private services that do all the things Google does, switch to them. Considering that there aren't, Google is your best bet.
Yeah, because we all will go buy our things from patent trolls...
Look at the VirnetX website and look at the products http://www.virnetx.com/products.php it has very little other than patent licensing! While they do have a few real products, VirnetX is more or less a patent troll.
Teachers are hired to teach, not to sit in the back of the classroom, print off worksheets from purchased curriculum, run a few scantrons and then give a final.
If a teacher refuses to actually -teach- fire the teacher. Simple. With all these education budget cuts, teachers are now a dime a dozen.
...Because we all know that everyone is going to get 3 TB of space?
Most people can't even fill a 500 GB disk even with all the music they love, their photos and a few movies. Granted, if you digitize -everything- torrent -massive- amounts of music and want lots and lots of HD movies, you might fill one of these disks, however, the number of people who would say "oh, I'm now switching to Windows 7" is low because most of the time people would either A) partition it and put it on a NAS box or B) upgrade to a different OS
Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously?
The internet is simply the means. Most sites are as biased as textbooks. However, it would be expensive to give every student a copy of The Federalist Papers when studying the constitution, with the internet it is there and free.
The teacher would still assign readings, it would just be using the real material. Imagine if rather than reading Shakespeare, Dante or any other great author, we would only read summaries by someone else. Rather than reading Romeo and Juliet (or watching it being performed) we would just have a small paragraph describing the plot. Such things would be disastrous and pointless. However, we do the same thing with textbooks.
There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.
Those are not primary sources though. What the internet could let you do though, is find a study done by a university somewhere linking Cleaner X to cancer.
I fail to see how having kids read the actual words said by our founding fathers with the internet as the medium is terrible.
I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources.
They are, however, they are less prone to misinterpretation and revisionism that is prevalent and more dangerous in our world. Look at the Bible, over the years it has been interpreted as being pro-slavery or anti-slavery depending on who is reading it. It has been interpreted as being pro-segregation and anti-segregation over the years, etc. Same thing with historical documents, today we like to think of the US as having the moral high ground in everything, after all Lincoln was the greatest president, the US civil war was fought over nothing but slavery and everything falls into the right side (the victors) and the wrong side (the losers).
Teaching thinking through primary sources though is key because they are A) Free/Cheap (it would cost a fortune to have 2 contradictory textbooks, it is free to show documents from the federalist side and anti-federalist side, the confederate side and the union side) B) encourages thinking and debate C) show how important sources are.
There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.
But they need to try because otherwise our society will fail. Any democratically run society depends on people who can think for themselves.
The problem is that yes, young kids might not be able to do this, but they are never taught to do things when they are older. Look at the primary 2 voters in the US:
A) The irrational liberal
B) The irrational conservative
No one seems to think for themselves. We've let editorials masquerade as news and we aren't teaching children how to think rationally. We live in an emotionally driven world, where logic is out and doing things to "feel good" is the only thing that matters.