Just want to make a point about ethanol vs butanol as fuels - Butanol is better than ethanol a direct gasoline replacement since its stoichiometric A/F ratio is close enough to gasoline that most EFI systems can adjust for it. As for a fuel, that really is debatable. Butanol has a relatively low octane rating compared to other alcohol fuels. An engine properly designed to run on a high octane alcohol fuel like ethanol is going to be far, far more efficient than a gasoline or butanol engine. Such engines can be so much more efficient that the 'ethanol has ~40% less energy per volume' argument is completely moot. You can use a smaller engine that will make more power, burn less fuel, and run cooler than its gasoline/butanol counter-part. Personally, I would rather use the fuel that can be used more efficiently than the fuel that is easier to immediately implement. In the end this would mean less alcohol would get us further.
In any case, making any fuel from food stock is a bad idea. I don't think anyone really considers doing that on the truly large scale other than to make fuel in the short term as a proof of concept. Innovations like this that would allow us to make fuel from cellulose are really promising as a long term fuel source.
EVs do seem to be the ideal solution, but they're no where near providing the convenience or energy density of liquid fueled vehicles so I really wouldn't expect to see a viable total replacement for some time.
No one is denied life saving health care in the US if they can't afford it - you are guaranteed health care for life, limb and eyesight. Granted, you will probably be paying the health care provider back for the rest of your life. Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with that seeing as they're the reason you have the rest of your life to live. And seeing how much you are able to produce over the course of your life, a few 10s or even 100s of thousands of dollars is a cheap cost to be able to produce it.
As per your link - $40k for a life saving procedure is cheap if you ask me - wouldn't you agree your life is worth more to you than $40k? Or is your life just so worthless to you that you don't want to pay that much? I'd bet you'd gladly pay $40k for a brand new car if you could swing it.
And you're missing one key problem with your plan - limited resources. There are only so many doctors, and so many hospitals that even with all the money in the world we couldn't reliably provide health care to everyone for every little thing in a timely manner. Sure, you could just bang out more doctors and more hospitals, but pushes for quantity over quality is not something you want in health care. Just look at Canada - sure they're given socialized health care, but people regularly DIE on waiting lists. The result is the rich come to the US and pay out of pocket for prompt health care, while the poor and middle class have to wait in line to die.
I think what everyone is missing with the fast food regulation argument is that the argument isn't saying that will happen, rather that it can happen. It's a slippery slope argument - if you give the government the power to regulate health care as required to socialize it, you are a single court decision away from government regulation on what we eat. No legislature involvement needed. That is what people need to wake up and understand; when you give the government one power, they'll gladly use it as a stepping stone to take another. It happens time and time again. Don't think it can't happen? What do you think the legal basis of the 'war on drugs' is?
And personally, I don't really care what Europeans or Canadians have to say about it. They don't have the same level of freedoms we do in the US, and the sad thing is most Americans don't even realize it. Most of these countries don't even have a protected freedom of speech - you can get thrown in jail for so-called 'hate speech'. For a poster above to suggest freedom and regulation are not opposed, just shows how such people have no clue what freedom is. The mindset that safety and security for all is more important than liberty is just un-American.
Yeah I thought the same thing as I sit here looking at the JTAG sitting in front of me...
I'm a computer engineer and use RS-232 ALL the time for programming and debugging embedded devices. RS-232 is a staple to many of us; it's only a legacy device to the laymen.
I find it interesting how your little website fails to point out that the majority of said NSA surveillance was monitoring satellite phones knowingly provided by the US government. The people who were supplied with these phones were even told they would be monitored. Granted, there are some 4th amendment questions about this practice, but it's not as sneaky as you make it seem.
That said, I agree the US government is getting a little too big for its britches in this regard and is certainly heading down a very slippery slope. Is it as bad as the UK? No, not yet at least, but I'm sure the US government will work hard to play catch-up to keep us all safe from them 'terrorists'
It's really sad if you think the lives of some 50 odd people (or 500, or 5000) are more important than the freedom of an entire nation. Giving up your freedom for some perceived level of security is just wrong. People today just have zero appreciation for their rights and freedoms - it sickens me.
But yeah, I'd say 'firecrackers' is a good comparison seeing how relatively few lives were lost compared to how much freedom you're willing to give up.
I seriously hope you are joking because you couldn't be any more wrong.
First of all, just about any modern electronic fuel injected car will drop the fuel injector pulse width to zero (turn off the injectors) when the throttle is closed and the RPMs are a few ticks over idle. This means coasting down hill with the engine engaged consumes ZERO fuel. Compared to running the engine at idle which actually consumes a considerable amount of fuel (idle typically runs a little rich) Don't believe me, go borrow a scan tool from an Advanced Auto or other such chain auto store and scope your injector pulse widths while going down hill - $100 says they drop to zero.
And what is wrong with engine braking? Honestly, people who ride their brakes down hills are retarded. Not only do you burn through you brakes, but you also have less control of the vehicle and you're more likely to overheat your brakes. You know what vapor lock is? Don't change your brake fluid and keep riding your brakes and you'll probably find out.
Now I'm no McCain fan or anything, but could you please point to this mysterious 'de-regulation' that is responsible for the collapse of our financial markets? By blaming deregulation, you are totally forgetting about the HUGE roll of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in all of this. You are especially forgetting the large amount of pressure a certain Democratic administration put on these organizations to lighten mortgage requirements for poor and minority families - you know, the families who bought houses they couldn't afford. Not saying regulation is the cause of the problem, because it isn't, but blaming it on either end of the spectrum is just ignorant.
Oh, and you do realize NN is a solution to a hypothetical problem that doesn't even exist right? You are accusing the evil telecom companies of something they don't even do. Basically you're supporting the expansion of government just for the sake of expanding government and to prevent a 'what if' situation. Do you honestly trust the government to decide what is and is not 'neutral'? NN would just give the telecom companies one more thing to lobby about - and whoever pays off the politicians the most will be more neutral than others. It wouldn't make the internet neutral at all - it would usher in an era where the government decided what was on the interwebs. Perhaps China would be a better fit for you. Personally, I stick with the evil telecom companies deciding - that way I can at least vote with my wallet.
Ummm, yeah - because things like the economy, health care, and national security are a matter of life or death - net neutrality is a matter of how fast you can download your porn. Heck, lets not forget NN is a solution to a purely hypothetical problem while the other 'key' issues are very much a reality. I think it's pretty obvious why NN is a poor issue to be a deciding factor - but hey, it is your vote.
I disagree. I actually find the applications I've made using 2.0, spending hours and hours on hand coding SQL statements, are actually SLOWER than the 3.5 applications that I spent minutes and minutes writing LINQ statements. Granted, it probably has nothing to do with the use of LINQ, but I do find the SQL statements it generates are typically sound.
Oh, and I'm the guy who codes in assembly to avoid the performance hit of C because C is for lazy programmers. There, it actually makes a difference - with Windows apps, there's already so much abstraction, added laziness isn't going to effect anything.
Any change that leads to higher temperatures in areas that are already subject to ice and snow is good news for agriculture and will cause less disease.
There, fixed it for ya. Seems to be a trade off to me.
I think you missed the 'REAL Republican' part. I don't know too many Republicans who consider the Bush administration to be real Republicans, but rather a 'lesser of two evils.' He was referring to the 133 House Republicans who voted against this downright socialist (READ: not classic Republican) bill.
Those type of people are in the vast minority - most cellular broadband customers use it for mobile business purposes where 5G is more than enough. In most carrier's contracts it actually says you can NOT use it as a primary (or even as a backup) site internet connection. They are intended solely for mobile connectivity purposes.
Yeah you should definitely get some career related experience before you graduate and a help desk job isn't going to get that for you. I would suggest either an IT position that requires light in-house development or a QC position. Neither are great jobs but it puts you on the right track. The next trick is you don't want to stick with these jobs for the long term; take them with the intent of moving on, otherwise you'll be branded like this poor bastard. After you work somewhere for a few months, polish up your resume and start looking for a better job. If you have 2 or 3 related jobs under your belt by the time you graduate, you'll be golden and way ahead of the curve.
By the time I graduated, I already did the whole IT thing, 3rd level app support thing, and the.NET developer thing. I now have an awesome job and had a much easier time getting it than most of my friends who graduated at the same time.
I'm sorry, that's a bunch of crap. What you fail to realize is that employers want the best employees they can get and actively compete for them. If they are all busy screwing over their employees, they're not going to get a lot of talent and the whole business if going to suffer.
Ever been to a career fair? Employers go to these things for the sole purpose of selling themselves in order to recruit as much talent as they can. They literally compete with other companies for who can get the best of the best.
Take Google for example. They are widely regarded as the best employer to work for in the US. The result? A company that produces some of the best products in the industry and is consistently doing well on the business side of things. I can assure you this success has a lot to do with the talent they have been able to attract.
Personally, I see your type of mindset as an example of a lack of self esteem and self confidence. You have to realize the employers need you as much as you need them. Without their employees being happy and productive, they fail.
One key point I didn't see in the article is the willingness of US vs European companies to actually adopt open source software. At least in the US, software adoption decisions are typically made by the higher ups who really don't understand or really care about the inner workings of such products. Now I see nothing wrong with this fact alone; the higher ups don't need to know every detail, that's my job. The ones that do take the time the learn everything are usually the micro-managers and that in my mind is far, far worse.
I personally regularly experience the mindset of the business types not trusting software made by 'nobodies' and would much rather pay out the nose for a lower quality product made by a recognized and well supported manufacturer such as Microsoft. Basically, in their minds, if it's free, it must not be very good. To make the matters worse, there is always a Microsoft fan boy out there reinforcing that idea.
Being a big supporter of open source, it kills me a little every time I have to deal with this. I have successfully gotten my company to adopt open source products, but they were for all non-mission critical purposes and generally things they wouldn't have gotten anyway. In this case my argument has been 'well this tool would be great to have, and best of all it's free!' The higher ups usually go along at this point simply because there is nothing to lose..
I do understand why people are hesitant to adopt relatively unknown products; their company's success and thus their jobs are dependent on such decisions so these uncertainties are typically avoided. Whether these uncertainties are well founded is another story all together.
My point is, you can't conclude from this study that American companies are just cheap when it comes to software. They typically pay a lot of money for proprietary software simply because the public perception is open source != quality. Fortunately I do see this mindset changing quite rapidly as the old farts retire and we young techie types take over.
Gimme a break, that study has long been proven incorrect and filled with errors. It should tell you something when all of the anti-firearm groups depend so heavily on ignorance, misinformation, and just plain bad data to support their opinions. Unfortunately, in the real world that isn't filled with rainbows and unicorns, guns do serve a healthy purpose in society and the majority of data out there supports it.
The thing is, the United States of America is made up of a collection of independent, self governed, states that are governed by a single federal government. We do not directly elect members of our federal government, our states essentially do it for us. This is because the US is a republic, not a democracy as many falsely believe. Because of this, the states have the constitutionally protected right to choose how to pick their elected officials, thus creating the multitude of vote casting methods. If the federal government were to dictate how we'd choose our representatives, that would be a clear conflict of interest and an over reach of federal power.
While this may seem convoluted to you, it's not, it is a pivotal part in protecting the US from tyranny. Think of it this way - if candidate X were running for president where federal elections were governed by a single, 'standardized' body, candidate X would only have to corrupt that one body to ensure they win the election. In the US though, candidate X would have to corrupt 51 different election bodies (or significant number there of) to ensure the same result.
The point of the matter is that there is a problem with some voting methodologies, but these things are on a state level and need to be addresses as such. If Americans want to fix these issues, they need to complain to their state and get their state to change how they tally votes. Don't complain about Diebold, dont complain about your least favorite party/politician, complain about your individual states as they're the only ones that have the power to fix it. And while it would make our lives easier to standardize everything by giving the federal government power to run elections, it would be nothing more than giving up our rights and protections for the sake of laziness.
Please inform me if you think that I'm mistaken, and there is some important cause being served by each person in Ohio having a vote as powerful as ten thousand people in New York or Alabama. If there is some important goal that this accomplishes, I would love to hear
The primary mistake in your logic is that the US is not a democracy, it's a democratic republic. If you want democracy, you'd have to seriously change the constitution (ie burn it and start anew). I understand some people aren't happy with this, but the world isn't filled with rainbows and unicorns and that's just the way it is. Perhaps we need to work on our public education system so voters better understand how the system works and thus aren't so shocked and disenfranchised when things operate as designed.
Anyway, the reason why certain people's votes are 'worth' more than others is that it allows fair representation of the entire demographic of the US. If it were a direct democracy where everyone's vote was equal, the inner-city folk would have far more representation because the majority of votes happen to live in cities. In that world, politicians would only pander to the major cities, and instead of them focusing on a few select states, they'd only be focusing on a few select cities. I don't know where you live, but I don't want my life to be governed by laws tailored for those who live in NYC, LA, Detroit, etc. I know it's annoying to hear about some of the pork the rural minority gets, but in reality it is only a fair balance to the huge amount of pork the city interests get; a fair balance that wouldn't exist if we were a true democracy.
I agree the electoral college isn't ideal, but it's there for a reason. While eliminating it would be fair for some, it would be a lot less fair to others and would cause an even greater divide in our country. I even dare to say that elimination of the electoral college is the kind of thing that would push less populated states to recede and possibly start a civil war (loss of federal representation like this, and not slavery, is exactly what caused the last one). Basically, its just not as simple as replacing it with modern technology.
There's still a clear bias but it seems you (and many others) are missing it: the 'evil' oil companies are now 'evil' energy companies. BP especially has been investing a good amount of capitol into clean energy technologies; it seems pretty obvious to me they're going to want to push their new products. These oil companies aren't dumb, they see the writing on the wall and have been making great strides to change their business models to work in the next generation of energy production. You can rest assured they will be at the forefront of CO2 cutting efforts and will being making bank every step of the way. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course, things only get done if there is someone who can make a dime off of it. The point is you shouldn't assume oil companies are against cutting CO2 emissions and have no bias in supporting AGW.
Yeah, I never quite understood how you could come to conclusions that are 'very likely' or with 'very high confidence' when you depend on a good amount of proxy measurements with significantly lower levels of confidence to reach those conclusions. Come on people, this is science 101; your conclusion can't have a higher level of confidence than the data you base it on. These are obviously purely political terms (especially seeing as they were used in a 'summary for policy makers' before the actual report was even completed)
Oh, and on a side note, I also don't understand why they would even use proxy CO2 measurements for the past 200 years when actual measurements exist. Wouldn't you want to use the best data possible?
Go look up the main source of research funding for all of those agencies and seriously try to tell me there is no bias involved. If you want to get government funding for research, your best bet is to relate it to global warming; they're practically giving the stuff away.
German is actually the second most communicated language, right after English. This directly translates to the fact that German is the second most common language on the internet. Granted, most of it is probably porn, but never the less it means more German speaking people would use IE8 than most other language speakers. Why is this? Because Germany has by far one of the strongest economies in the world (3rd behind the US and Japan) and thus can afford greater internet access. Actually, funny thing is the top four economies in the world are the US, Japan, Germany, and China; native speakers of the same four language released.
Spanish, on the other hand, while spoken by many in the real world, isn't nearly as common in the information world.
Slashdot Mirror
Just want to make a point about ethanol vs butanol as fuels - Butanol is better than ethanol a direct gasoline replacement since its stoichiometric A/F ratio is close enough to gasoline that most EFI systems can adjust for it. As for a fuel, that really is debatable. Butanol has a relatively low octane rating compared to other alcohol fuels. An engine properly designed to run on a high octane alcohol fuel like ethanol is going to be far, far more efficient than a gasoline or butanol engine. Such engines can be so much more efficient that the 'ethanol has ~40% less energy per volume' argument is completely moot. You can use a smaller engine that will make more power, burn less fuel, and run cooler than its gasoline/butanol counter-part. Personally, I would rather use the fuel that can be used more efficiently than the fuel that is easier to immediately implement. In the end this would mean less alcohol would get us further.
In any case, making any fuel from food stock is a bad idea. I don't think anyone really considers doing that on the truly large scale other than to make fuel in the short term as a proof of concept. Innovations like this that would allow us to make fuel from cellulose are really promising as a long term fuel source.
EVs do seem to be the ideal solution, but they're no where near providing the convenience or energy density of liquid fueled vehicles so I really wouldn't expect to see a viable total replacement for some time.
No one is denied life saving health care in the US if they can't afford it - you are guaranteed health care for life, limb and eyesight. Granted, you will probably be paying the health care provider back for the rest of your life. Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with that seeing as they're the reason you have the rest of your life to live. And seeing how much you are able to produce over the course of your life, a few 10s or even 100s of thousands of dollars is a cheap cost to be able to produce it.
As per your link - $40k for a life saving procedure is cheap if you ask me - wouldn't you agree your life is worth more to you than $40k? Or is your life just so worthless to you that you don't want to pay that much? I'd bet you'd gladly pay $40k for a brand new car if you could swing it.
And you're missing one key problem with your plan - limited resources. There are only so many doctors, and so many hospitals that even with all the money in the world we couldn't reliably provide health care to everyone for every little thing in a timely manner. Sure, you could just bang out more doctors and more hospitals, but pushes for quantity over quality is not something you want in health care. Just look at Canada - sure they're given socialized health care, but people regularly DIE on waiting lists. The result is the rich come to the US and pay out of pocket for prompt health care, while the poor and middle class have to wait in line to die.
I think what everyone is missing with the fast food regulation argument is that the argument isn't saying that will happen, rather that it can happen. It's a slippery slope argument - if you give the government the power to regulate health care as required to socialize it, you are a single court decision away from government regulation on what we eat. No legislature involvement needed. That is what people need to wake up and understand; when you give the government one power, they'll gladly use it as a stepping stone to take another. It happens time and time again. Don't think it can't happen? What do you think the legal basis of the 'war on drugs' is?
And personally, I don't really care what Europeans or Canadians have to say about it. They don't have the same level of freedoms we do in the US, and the sad thing is most Americans don't even realize it. Most of these countries don't even have a protected freedom of speech - you can get thrown in jail for so-called 'hate speech'. For a poster above to suggest freedom and regulation are not opposed, just shows how such people have no clue what freedom is. The mindset that safety and security for all is more important than liberty is just un-American.
Yeah I thought the same thing as I sit here looking at the JTAG sitting in front of me...
I'm a computer engineer and use RS-232 ALL the time for programming and debugging embedded devices. RS-232 is a staple to many of us; it's only a legacy device to the laymen.
I find it interesting how your little website fails to point out that the majority of said NSA surveillance was monitoring satellite phones knowingly provided by the US government. The people who were supplied with these phones were even told they would be monitored. Granted, there are some 4th amendment questions about this practice, but it's not as sneaky as you make it seem.
That said, I agree the US government is getting a little too big for its britches in this regard and is certainly heading down a very slippery slope. Is it as bad as the UK? No, not yet at least, but I'm sure the US government will work hard to play catch-up to keep us all safe from them 'terrorists'
It's really sad if you think the lives of some 50 odd people (or 500, or 5000) are more important than the freedom of an entire nation. Giving up your freedom for some perceived level of security is just wrong. People today just have zero appreciation for their rights and freedoms - it sickens me.
But yeah, I'd say 'firecrackers' is a good comparison seeing how relatively few lives were lost compared to how much freedom you're willing to give up.
I seriously hope you are joking because you couldn't be any more wrong.
First of all, just about any modern electronic fuel injected car will drop the fuel injector pulse width to zero (turn off the injectors) when the throttle is closed and the RPMs are a few ticks over idle. This means coasting down hill with the engine engaged consumes ZERO fuel. Compared to running the engine at idle which actually consumes a considerable amount of fuel (idle typically runs a little rich) Don't believe me, go borrow a scan tool from an Advanced Auto or other such chain auto store and scope your injector pulse widths while going down hill - $100 says they drop to zero.
And what is wrong with engine braking? Honestly, people who ride their brakes down hills are retarded. Not only do you burn through you brakes, but you also have less control of the vehicle and you're more likely to overheat your brakes. You know what vapor lock is? Don't change your brake fluid and keep riding your brakes and you'll probably find out.
Now I'm no McCain fan or anything, but could you please point to this mysterious 'de-regulation' that is responsible for the collapse of our financial markets? By blaming deregulation, you are totally forgetting about the HUGE roll of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in all of this. You are especially forgetting the large amount of pressure a certain Democratic administration put on these organizations to lighten mortgage requirements for poor and minority families - you know, the families who bought houses they couldn't afford. Not saying regulation is the cause of the problem, because it isn't, but blaming it on either end of the spectrum is just ignorant.
Oh, and you do realize NN is a solution to a hypothetical problem that doesn't even exist right? You are accusing the evil telecom companies of something they don't even do. Basically you're supporting the expansion of government just for the sake of expanding government and to prevent a 'what if' situation. Do you honestly trust the government to decide what is and is not 'neutral'? NN would just give the telecom companies one more thing to lobby about - and whoever pays off the politicians the most will be more neutral than others. It wouldn't make the internet neutral at all - it would usher in an era where the government decided what was on the interwebs. Perhaps China would be a better fit for you. Personally, I stick with the evil telecom companies deciding - that way I can at least vote with my wallet.
Ummm, yeah - because things like the economy, health care, and national security are a matter of life or death - net neutrality is a matter of how fast you can download your porn. Heck, lets not forget NN is a solution to a purely hypothetical problem while the other 'key' issues are very much a reality. I think it's pretty obvious why NN is a poor issue to be a deciding factor - but hey, it is your vote.
No, the interwebs are just filled with a bunch of political hacks who like to repeat baseless speculation to further their position.
I disagree. I actually find the applications I've made using 2.0, spending hours and hours on hand coding SQL statements, are actually SLOWER than the 3.5 applications that I spent minutes and minutes writing LINQ statements. Granted, it probably has nothing to do with the use of LINQ, but I do find the SQL statements it generates are typically sound.
Oh, and I'm the guy who codes in assembly to avoid the performance hit of C because C is for lazy programmers. There, it actually makes a difference - with Windows apps, there's already so much abstraction, added laziness isn't going to effect anything.
That is actually far less ridiculous than having us humans mess with the climate even more
Any change that leads to higher temperatures in areas that are already subject to ice and snow is good news for agriculture and will cause less disease.
There, fixed it for ya. Seems to be a trade off to me.
I think you missed the 'REAL Republican' part. I don't know too many Republicans who consider the Bush administration to be real Republicans, but rather a 'lesser of two evils.' He was referring to the 133 House Republicans who voted against this downright socialist (READ: not classic Republican) bill.
Those type of people are in the vast minority - most cellular broadband customers use it for mobile business purposes where 5G is more than enough. In most carrier's contracts it actually says you can NOT use it as a primary (or even as a backup) site internet connection. They are intended solely for mobile connectivity purposes.
Yeah you should definitely get some career related experience before you graduate and a help desk job isn't going to get that for you. I would suggest either an IT position that requires light in-house development or a QC position. Neither are great jobs but it puts you on the right track. The next trick is you don't want to stick with these jobs for the long term; take them with the intent of moving on, otherwise you'll be branded like this poor bastard. After you work somewhere for a few months, polish up your resume and start looking for a better job. If you have 2 or 3 related jobs under your belt by the time you graduate, you'll be golden and way ahead of the curve.
By the time I graduated, I already did the whole IT thing, 3rd level app support thing, and the .NET developer thing. I now have an awesome job and had a much easier time getting it than most of my friends who graduated at the same time.
I'm sorry, that's a bunch of crap. What you fail to realize is that employers want the best employees they can get and actively compete for them. If they are all busy screwing over their employees, they're not going to get a lot of talent and the whole business if going to suffer.
Ever been to a career fair? Employers go to these things for the sole purpose of selling themselves in order to recruit as much talent as they can. They literally compete with other companies for who can get the best of the best.
Take Google for example. They are widely regarded as the best employer to work for in the US. The result? A company that produces some of the best products in the industry and is consistently doing well on the business side of things. I can assure you this success has a lot to do with the talent they have been able to attract.
Personally, I see your type of mindset as an example of a lack of self esteem and self confidence. You have to realize the employers need you as much as you need them. Without their employees being happy and productive, they fail.
One key point I didn't see in the article is the willingness of US vs European companies to actually adopt open source software. At least in the US, software adoption decisions are typically made by the higher ups who really don't understand or really care about the inner workings of such products. Now I see nothing wrong with this fact alone; the higher ups don't need to know every detail, that's my job. The ones that do take the time the learn everything are usually the micro-managers and that in my mind is far, far worse.
I personally regularly experience the mindset of the business types not trusting software made by 'nobodies' and would much rather pay out the nose for a lower quality product made by a recognized and well supported manufacturer such as Microsoft. Basically, in their minds, if it's free, it must not be very good. To make the matters worse, there is always a Microsoft fan boy out there reinforcing that idea.
Being a big supporter of open source, it kills me a little every time I have to deal with this. I have successfully gotten my company to adopt open source products, but they were for all non-mission critical purposes and generally things they wouldn't have gotten anyway. In this case my argument has been 'well this tool would be great to have, and best of all it's free!' The higher ups usually go along at this point simply because there is nothing to lose..
I do understand why people are hesitant to adopt relatively unknown products; their company's success and thus their jobs are dependent on such decisions so these uncertainties are typically avoided. Whether these uncertainties are well founded is another story all together.
My point is, you can't conclude from this study that American companies are just cheap when it comes to software. They typically pay a lot of money for proprietary software simply because the public perception is open source != quality. Fortunately I do see this mindset changing quite rapidly as the old farts retire and we young techie types take over.
Gimme a break, that study has long been proven incorrect and filled with errors. It should tell you something when all of the anti-firearm groups depend so heavily on ignorance, misinformation, and just plain bad data to support their opinions. Unfortunately, in the real world that isn't filled with rainbows and unicorns, guns do serve a healthy purpose in society and the majority of data out there supports it.
The thing is, the United States of America is made up of a collection of independent, self governed, states that are governed by a single federal government. We do not directly elect members of our federal government, our states essentially do it for us. This is because the US is a republic, not a democracy as many falsely believe. Because of this, the states have the constitutionally protected right to choose how to pick their elected officials, thus creating the multitude of vote casting methods. If the federal government were to dictate how we'd choose our representatives, that would be a clear conflict of interest and an over reach of federal power.
While this may seem convoluted to you, it's not, it is a pivotal part in protecting the US from tyranny. Think of it this way - if candidate X were running for president where federal elections were governed by a single, 'standardized' body, candidate X would only have to corrupt that one body to ensure they win the election. In the US though, candidate X would have to corrupt 51 different election bodies (or significant number there of) to ensure the same result.
The point of the matter is that there is a problem with some voting methodologies, but these things are on a state level and need to be addresses as such. If Americans want to fix these issues, they need to complain to their state and get their state to change how they tally votes. Don't complain about Diebold, dont complain about your least favorite party/politician, complain about your individual states as they're the only ones that have the power to fix it. And while it would make our lives easier to standardize everything by giving the federal government power to run elections, it would be nothing more than giving up our rights and protections for the sake of laziness.
Please inform me if you think that I'm mistaken, and there is some important cause being served by each person in Ohio having a vote as powerful as ten thousand people in New York or Alabama. If there is some important goal that this accomplishes, I would love to hear
The primary mistake in your logic is that the US is not a democracy, it's a democratic republic. If you want democracy, you'd have to seriously change the constitution (ie burn it and start anew). I understand some people aren't happy with this, but the world isn't filled with rainbows and unicorns and that's just the way it is. Perhaps we need to work on our public education system so voters better understand how the system works and thus aren't so shocked and disenfranchised when things operate as designed.
Anyway, the reason why certain people's votes are 'worth' more than others is that it allows fair representation of the entire demographic of the US. If it were a direct democracy where everyone's vote was equal, the inner-city folk would have far more representation because the majority of votes happen to live in cities. In that world, politicians would only pander to the major cities, and instead of them focusing on a few select states, they'd only be focusing on a few select cities. I don't know where you live, but I don't want my life to be governed by laws tailored for those who live in NYC, LA, Detroit, etc. I know it's annoying to hear about some of the pork the rural minority gets, but in reality it is only a fair balance to the huge amount of pork the city interests get; a fair balance that wouldn't exist if we were a true democracy.
I agree the electoral college isn't ideal, but it's there for a reason. While eliminating it would be fair for some, it would be a lot less fair to others and would cause an even greater divide in our country. I even dare to say that elimination of the electoral college is the kind of thing that would push less populated states to recede and possibly start a civil war (loss of federal representation like this, and not slavery, is exactly what caused the last one). Basically, its just not as simple as replacing it with modern technology.
There's still a clear bias but it seems you (and many others) are missing it: the 'evil' oil companies are now 'evil' energy companies. BP especially has been investing a good amount of capitol into clean energy technologies; it seems pretty obvious to me they're going to want to push their new products. These oil companies aren't dumb, they see the writing on the wall and have been making great strides to change their business models to work in the next generation of energy production. You can rest assured they will be at the forefront of CO2 cutting efforts and will being making bank every step of the way. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course, things only get done if there is someone who can make a dime off of it. The point is you shouldn't assume oil companies are against cutting CO2 emissions and have no bias in supporting AGW.
Yeah, I never quite understood how you could come to conclusions that are 'very likely' or with 'very high confidence' when you depend on a good amount of proxy measurements with significantly lower levels of confidence to reach those conclusions. Come on people, this is science 101; your conclusion can't have a higher level of confidence than the data you base it on. These are obviously purely political terms (especially seeing as they were used in a 'summary for policy makers' before the actual report was even completed)
Oh, and on a side note, I also don't understand why they would even use proxy CO2 measurements for the past 200 years when actual measurements exist. Wouldn't you want to use the best data possible?
Go look up the main source of research funding for all of those agencies and seriously try to tell me there is no bias involved. If you want to get government funding for research, your best bet is to relate it to global warming; they're practically giving the stuff away.
German is actually the second most communicated language, right after English. This directly translates to the fact that German is the second most common language on the internet. Granted, most of it is probably porn, but never the less it means more German speaking people would use IE8 than most other language speakers. Why is this? Because Germany has by far one of the strongest economies in the world (3rd behind the US and Japan) and thus can afford greater internet access. Actually, funny thing is the top four economies in the world are the US, Japan, Germany, and China; native speakers of the same four language released.
Spanish, on the other hand, while spoken by many in the real world, isn't nearly as common in the information world.