The slave trade was a free market, from what I can remember, and the government had to shut it down because it was still enormously profitable to capture and breed humans.
If the free market had no rules, there would still be segregated restaurants and buses in the south. That's a big difference between democracy and fascism. One the people can change, the other only the business elite can change. Without a bloody revolution, of course...
The editor in chief has a say on what's published. Do you think he'd allow some writer to expose his biggest advertiser for running a sweatshop or poisoning the groundwater in some rural state?
Pretending that the editor won't protect their advertising revenue at all costs is simply dumb. That's why the BBC is still one of the best places to get news. It's publicly funded, so they don't care who they piss off. If an editor knows a story will break somewhere soon, he or she will run the story. But they're not going to go out of their way to allow anyone to dig up dirt on the hands that feed them.
Similarly, the truth always comes out the day after an election. Plenty of people knew about Palin's childish antics, but they wouldn't dare publish that truth until they knew who the loser was going to be. To news media, access to power is far more important than the truth.
They are anti-abortion, pro war. They believe violence is alright, as long as it's directed at people who "deserve" it. When innocent people die in the wars they start, it's called an unfortunate reality. They defend torture. They pervert Christianity to be exclusive instead of inclusive. They go out of their way to harm the environment to protect their "lifestyle." They promote brutal mythology, and try to discredit science, but only when it's used to heal people. When it's making weaponry, it's never questioned.
And they do all of this for money. It really is pathetic, and they really are monsters.
10-15% is an average gross margin for non-boutique retail. After overhead, making any money is good, and 3% isn't terrible when your sales number begins with a b.
Back when there were smaller stores, the margin was typically 40%. But those days are over, and why I chuckle every time I hear someone complain about the service at a Best Buy or whatever. America traded in knowledgeable electronics dealers for cheap, plastic, slave-labor constructed garbage that are a tenth of the price and last about as long. That is, if you don't break the connectors that are glued to the pcb instead of screwed to plates, as they used to be. Now those same stores employing kids are charging three hundred dollars to fix the crappy electronics they sold them in the first place.
Ah well. There is no free lunch. But there are a lot of people who aren't smart with their money. What were we talking about again?
Society crippling conservation would only push the problem off on to our grandchildren instead of making our children deal with it.
You've confused materialism with life. Brazilians and Costa Ricans live rich lives, have less things, and use far less energy than the average American. That's doesn't mean their society is crippled, and last I checked, they were alive and not dead. They may not all lead our lifestyle, but who said sitting in traffic and working yourself to death was a high note in human development?
New energy sources need to be found, but if we had some sane zoning regulations and nationalized our transportation system, we would need far less of it. If more people recycled and checked their tire pressure and kept their air conditioner maintained, we would need less of it. If more people reduced the amount of meat they ate, bought organic and local food when they could, and stopped covering their lawns with grass instead of local plants that required zero water and zero maintenance, we would need less of it. Conservation is about planning and about feeling good, because you're doing something now to actually help the planet, instead of banking on a technological breakthrough that may not happen as soon as we need it.
I read somewhere that the world would need to be six times larger if every person ate as much beef as an American. Our lifestyle is simply unsustainable. If you want to keep ignoring this reality, you're welcome to, but your children and grandchildren won't have the luxury. They'll probably think of you, and how you complained about water restrictions, or smaller flush toilets, or hippie locavores, and think: what a jackass.
In the wind alley, they do a lot of farming, right? Why not create two level reservoirs, one a hundred and fifty feet higher than the other, and then when there is excess production, you pump the lower reservoir into the higher one. Even better, find some underground features that would make it easy to create underground reservoirs with different elevations. And if you hit a hot spot of granite, even better - redirect the steam so it spins some turbines.
Drought presents problems to open air reservoirs. It may actually be cheaper to use superconducting transmission lines to somewhere with better natural features.
If WalMart and Sams Club covered all of the parking lots with solar panels, not only would they reduce localized heat effects, it would probably be enough to power all air conditioning in the south during those hot sunny days. I don't know why any sprawl areas are looking for huge plots of lands to stick solar powered plants on. They have hundreds of square miles of parking lots already, they just need to be leased from the malls and stores.
But, as always, the best way to save energy is still conservation. It's 100% effective and free. Unfortunately there's no profit in efficiency, and thus it's not a political option.
The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy in which streetcar systems throughout the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943). National, which had been in operation since 1920, was reorganized into a holding company. General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack, and Federal Engineering Corporation made investments in the City Lines companies in return for exclusive supply contracts.
See, in the real world, corporations are bent on destroying efficient infrastructure and government run public services, because they can't possibly compete with them. That is, here in America, where corruption is far less of a problem than elsewhere.
This is why privatized medicare companies are subsidized by the government so they can charge the same price as the government. They simply can't compete on efficiency.
Trains and trolleys are low maintenance, use far less fuel per passenger, and are more reliable than buses. That's why they were eliminated from mass transit and replaced with buses, which use more fuel, require more maintenance, and are less reliable. The other reason car, car parts, and fuel companies wanted to destroy urban mass transit is so everyone would buy a car.
Remember, the more inefficient a company can force people to be, the more profit they can make on the excess. That's why we're the most "productive," worst polluting, and one of the least satisfied populaces in the western world.
Please provide us with the most recent scientific breakthrough not carried out by a government funded lab or subsidized university.
Don't worry. We'll wait.
You see, no corporation does anything beyond what's sensible to make a profit. And often that thing is actually detrimental to society without proper regulation, dependent on your definition of progress, and no company could survive the lawsuits if they focused on pure R&D instead of R&D designed to deliver a product for sale. Imagine a company formed for fusion reactor research, promising little to no chance of return for billions of dollars of investment. It wouldn't get off the ground, and would be the laughingstock of wall street. In this case, they are refining rocket technology, not inventing it.
Good science only happens when you throw huge amounts of money into pure research. Engineering happens trying to solve problems, but not advances in science. The government doesn't force people to research anything, but it does give out wads of cash for things it wants, like the technology found in Predator drones. This is because problems are now extraordinarily complicated and require huge investments to be solved. That's not to say there aren't rare exceptions... and definitely not to say that agencies like NASA aren't in need of serious restructuring. But for the most part, it's government funded research that provides modern technology.
Also, you're totally wrong about homeland security. It's funded billions of dollars for advanced aerospace research, but to large corporations instead of backyard enthusiasts.
When you don't tax capital, it moves too quickly, and causes too much boom and bust. That's why western countries have rules against capital flight, and some european countries have a token tax - a fraction of a percent - for every stock transaction to slow people's overreactions.
Personally, I have a somewhat libertarian ideal - eliminate corporations as they are known, and remove the corporate veil of protection for most companies, except for special charters given to insurance companies and other temporary projects - bridge building, mass transit, internet service, etc. There's no reason to grant a corporation special status unless it is doing something beneficial for the community.
I think it would keep companies small and healthy, and keep large, sensible corporations very well regulated. Just require total transparency, and you'll keep the crooks out. But while the crooks are still ruling the White House, the rich are still making the rules.
The bottom line is, you want to do something useful in any field, history has shown that the only places where a person is allowed to do real research is a university or government lab. By advising anyone to stay away from college, you are advising them to choose to have a disadvantage just because you didn't like college.
Stop giving out that bad advice, unless you can bring me some interesting counter examples to what I wrote above.
There are lots of important techs that were developed without government funds.
Here we go.
The steam engine
James Watt studied in London and settled at the University of Glasgow. He developed the steam engine at his leisure while at the University, which was founded at the request of King James II of Scotland.
the internal combustion engine
Credited to Benz. Who also studied mechanical engineering at a public University.
iron, steel
The refinement of iron manufacturing has been going on for thousands of years, mostly driven by warfare, which is usually paid for by the government.
Quite broad. The most difficult problems of firing naval guns were entirely solved by government investment, just like the development of early computers was entirely geared towards artillery math. The invention of the gun in China was probably done for war, paid by government. I hope you're seeing a pattern.
electric power transmission
Tesla studied at Technische Universitat Graz, a public university, though he didn't finish. You'll notice that almost everyone you read about in the history books went to some sort of university. The obvious exception would be art.
the light bulb
Humphrey Davy had the earliest lightbulb. He was a professor. Edison made it commercially viable.
most modern materials
NASA
most modern advances in computer hardware and software.
Really? Give me one. Be specific.
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a lot more.
I'm sure that you haven't studied the subject, and you're full of shit.
And furthermore, just because technologies were developed with government money doesn't mean they couldn't have been developed with different funding. Also, I can't think of a single major commercial airframe in use today that was originally designed for military use (not so say there isn't one
You would not have any modern commercial airframes today without government subsidy, period. It takes an incredible amount of money and time and man hours to perfect jet engines and subsonic flight, money that no private company would dare spend without being a welfare client of a state.
but certainly none of the Boeing 7X7 lines or the airbus A3X0 lines were
Totally and completely false. Check the article above.
Meeting people and getting your foot in the door does not require an education. You can meet people in the field.
Sure, sure. And I can win the lottery too, or get rear ended by a millionaire. You want our next generation to have a good chance of success, not a crap shoot, right?
Degrees serve primarily as a barrier to entry, since employers use them to weed out potential candidates. You will not be prepared for your job by your degree, and you will likely use less than 10% of what you learn (much less what you crammed before the test and promptly forgot afterward).
I believe a good education in the basics of your field are essential in addition to apprenticeship. We have no formal apprenteceship program in the US, but for every job where you can ruin someone's life - doctor, lawyer, plumber, electrician, architect - there is required apprenticeship and required degrees for very, very good reasons. I'm not saying you need an EE degree to wire a house. But you do need one to build a datacenter.
Please shut up. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's almost like you need an education. While education is part of the doctrinal system, the reality is that you have more chance of success at whatever you're doing whether the degree gets you a foot in the door or if you meet other people in your field and develop relationships. Even without all that, you typically make more money with a higher education. These facts escape you because you are too lazy to learn before speaking.
Almost every single technological breakthrough has occurred where? In government or university research labs funded by the state. You would not be typing on a computer and sending a message through the internet without it. The Human Genome Project was a government research program. Every time you take a flight you're riding in a modified bomber, researched with government funds.
So with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Really. Your ignorance is the problem, not spending money on education.
Please don't act like OO is a feasible alternative for these programs.
Why not? And please, be very specific.
Some stuff doesn't work exactly right, but they offer pretty robust file compatibility. If you have coded yourself into a corner and are dependent on their VBA platform, now is a good time to start getting off the junk.
The only program for most businesses that's missing is a full featured and multi-user accounting package like Quickbooks. There are certain programs which have zero alternatives, like Final Cut, Photoshop (for serious CMYK), Autodesk products, etc. But the beauty of OOo is that those windows and mac users can be on the free office platform, and as soon as the vendor offers a Linux release or a viable alternative arises, you have one less thing to migrate.
Migration is painful, but if you choose the right platform to move to, it can be worth it. I recently moved a small office from SBS 2003 to an Ubuntu box. It was time consuming, and there were a lot of unforeseen problems the first few days, but now they have stopped obsessively checking the server to make sure it's still working, they receive far less spam, and when a free alternative to Quickbooks arrives, they will use all of the same programs - OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird - and only their OS will change.
Building the bridges to dumping Windows is key. In my opinion, the open source community should focus on releasing cross platform applications and frameworks. Once you make the choice of Windows or Linux trivial for application support, people will undoubtedly choose the cheaper operating system, especially during the next few years while the economy is suffering worldwide.
If my tax money is used to prop up other people's house prices, where's my fucking house?
And likewise, when tax money is used to subsidize private corporations, where's my fucking check?
The problem is that you see the helping individuals caught by the housing bubble as a negative, while the money your government spends every single year to help corporations isn't even on the radar. You've been fooled into thinking the problem is mainly irresponsible individuals, when it's mainly irresponsible subsidization of corporations.
Government's purpose is to help it's individual citizenry through crisis when necessary. That's the reason WWII was won. When it instead spends the community's wealth on enriching the already wealthy, you have a failed state.
If you just put a pile of money out in the street, sure, nothing will change, but your analogies are just that. History and reality are better barometers of effective policy.
If the government employs people to improve infrastructure, it lowers the cost of doing business and benefits the whole economy, while evening out the down cycle when other businesses are cutting back. The biggest reasons western countries do well as economies are their workers and their infrastructure and their reliance on government technology and protectionism. While America unfortunately does not see the benefit of having a well educated populace, it does see the benefit of having a reliable power grid, sewage system, telecommunications network, etc. Some societies see single payer health care as part of infrastructure, which is the main reason it's cheaper to build a car in Canada than it is in Detroit.
(Here's an article that discusses two facts unknown to most Americans: our car companies employ more people in Ontario than Michigan, and they do it because of their more efficient health care system and the canadian dollar.)
In fact, the computer you're typing on and the internet it travels over are all due to government research. Do you imagine we would be less prosperous if China had been the ones who were licensing technology for us to manufacture instead of the other way around? Government is capable of doing good things, but not in the hands of those who attend to the needs of corporations instead of people.
Do you trust the government? If you do, those numbers are fine. If you don't, take a look at real numbers. Social Security is paid in and paid out, so that's irrelevant. When you add discretionary spending, military research in non-DoD branches, like nuclear weapons research in the DoE, the budget looks quite different.
How much did 9/11 cost this country? Hundreds of billions.
You're off by an order of magnitude, and that's only if the only thing that you value is money. According to all insurance claims, it's 9.3 billion. The highest estimates I've seen for total economic impact that never recovered is forty or fifty billion. If you have to pretend for your argument that the stock market didn't recover, well... let us know when you come back to reality.
Personally, I mourn the loss of the casualties of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, of the right to an attorney, the right to be charged if I am held, the right to free association, and the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures much more than the money. And that figure is still a few trillion dollars less than the increase in war spending.
Bush prevented another attack during his Administration against all odds.
Yes, like the Chicago Seven:
An FBI informant infiltrated the group, the sources say, neutralizing the threat. They say it is not clear how much damage the group would have done on its own. They were making plans to purchase bomb-making materials, the officials add.
So, we stopped someone from possibly purchasing bomb making materials, possibly using that to make a bomb, and possibly using that to carry out an attack. Excuse me for saying so, but if this is making the front page, it looks like they are desperate to find anything that looks like a terrorist attack. If they could squeeze more political capital out of any foiled attack, they would do it.
The intelligence community failed to predict the collapse of the USSR, failed to prevent the WTC 93 attack, failed to prevent the Cole bombing, failed to prevent 9/11, and then claimed that Saddam had WMDs. What exactly have they done right in the past thirty years?
War costs will continue since Barry will be moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan/Pakistan.
We owe it to the Afghanis. When their secular government requested help from the Russians, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars organizing bin Laden and all of the muslim extremists we could find in order to embarrass Moscow. Afghanistan was completely destroyed, and we left the foundation of the Taliban to do whatever they wanted with the ashes. We also owe the same to the Iraqis, but we should be providing logistical support to the democratic side so they have the freedom to form their own government, instead of being forced at gunpoint to accept ours.
Your Democratic Congress has approved bailouts since coming into power that have eclipsed the war costs.
Whoa, cowboy. Let's try that hard math again. The bailouts will top out at 1.2 trillion, and we currently spend 1 trillion every year. Not that I favor the bailouts, but your premise is provably false to begin with.
So, how's that Democratic Congress for the last 2 years been working out for you?
One the scale of idiocy and ignorance, I prefer the less idiotic and less ignorant. Clinton may have been a corrupt politician, but at least he knew not to shit where he ate, at least when it came to balancing the eco
Yes, you are a sucker. But because you believe that welfare and the bailout are the main reason the government is taking your money.
Military spending eclipses any other program by 2 to 1. So, first, you should be complaining about the defense shield program, which won't work, the Iraq war, which didn't work, and all of the other investments in destruction that enrich corporations and their owners, and do nothing for the people that pay those taxes. To put it in perspective, you'd have to have a 500 billion dollar bailout every single year added together with health care, welfare, and other social services in order to match military spending. If we paid the average per capita that other nations do, we'd spend around 180 billion instead of 1000 billion.
If you didn't want higher taxes, I hope you didn't support the war. Taxes will go back to normal levels, because someone has to pay for the three billion dollars that are flushed down the toilet in Iraq every week, on top of all of the other idiotic military spending programs that are never criticized. Even talking about military spending is anti-American, but criticizing taxes that improve the lives of the taxed is considered patriotic. How's that for some cognitive dissonance.
So, in conclusion, I'll repeat something I heard quite a bit in 2003. If you don't want your taxes spent on programs that you don't want, just remember, this is America: love it or leave it.
If you can't figure out for yourself that taking money by force is immoral, I really don't think I can help you.
-jcr
If you don't think you will have to compromise to live in any modern society, I don't think you can be helped, either.
In another thread you state, "Taxation is moral only to the extent that the revenues raised are used to secure our rights. As soon as government steps beyond the powers that we have granted to it, it is immoral." In more civilized societies, people believe that all of it's citizens have a right to health care, education, as well as equal protection under the law. If you live out on a country road that serves only your family, I am paying for it. Likewise if I live in a city being choked by pollution, you pay for studies on how to lower that pollution. This is why all modern nation states are doing so well - they operate on the very fact that free markets do not work, because the free market lives in a fantasy land that begins and ends with the phrase, "all else being equal." Libertarianism and communism have good ideas, but like all ideals, they are more or less useless in reality.
In this case, a private company is seeking public money to develop technology, and I actually agree with you that it is immoral, but only because any company that receives public subsidies should be transparent and owned by the people who subsidized it. If we want to publicly fund the development of an electric car, since no private corporation is willing or able, I don't see a problem with it.
The reason the US transportation system is so bad is because our mass transit systems, which were unfairly efficient in the eyes of auto companies, were destroyed. A single rule from CARB, decried as impossible by those same auto companies, produced electric vehicles ten years ago that were viable options then and still are today. Once the board was filled with business friendly and socially unconscionable interests, the rules were repealed, the cars were destroyed, and the battery technology from the EV1 was bought and buried by Exxon Mobil.
Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.
So, a rich man knows what to do with your money, but you do not. That's individualism and freedom according to Carnegie, and not coincidentally, everyone who is sitting at the top of the caste instead of the bottom.
Well, you can stick that kind of freedom up your ass, for all I care. If the wealth belongs to the community, let the community decide how to spend it. What Carnegie describes is tyranny exerted by corporate power instead of state power, which is better in some ways, but still not good.
Please, don't take this personally. I know you're just making a post on Slashdot. But why can't you even read one article about this before you make useless guesses?
After two minutes of Googling, I found this diamond in the rough, a patent application secretively titled "STIRLING ENGINE THERMAL SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS", submitted by Dean Kamen. Though you may dislike the Segway, and I can't blame you for it, the technology came from his iBot wheel chair, which is the closest thing I've seen to offering someone who doesn't have use of their legs a chance at full mobility. This has improved the lives of thousands of people. Unless you're an aid worker or another genius inventor, your comparable contributions to society are far less, without even touching his more traditional medical inventions.
So, with all due respect, before you pat yourself on the back for shooting down an idea you are totally ignorant of, stop typing and read about the idea first. Then, if you have something useful to say, the world will be glad to read about your idea, and then reply.
Right now, everyone in America is breaking a law. Whether they are punished for the breach depends on how much money they have, who they know, who they have cheated, and if the public is aware of the crime or not.
They are there so if you get in the way of the powerful, they can throw the book at you. In this case, it's a good thing, since this person, for no other reason than malice, emotionally abused someone just for the "fun" of it. Other times, victimless crimes like possession are used to keep the prison population high and the ghettos under control.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Just like most of the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline is not converted into forward motion, most of the energy passing by a wind turbine is not converted into electricity. It's the "low hanging fruit" in energy research. It sounds like their idea is to use more but smaller and more efficient generators that are adapted to input from variable wind speeds rather than constant input from another source, like hydroelectric dams or steam powered turbines from nuclear plants. It also says they are electronically controlled, which may eliminate the need for wasteful transfers of energy, like varying the blade pitch, mechanical clutches, etc.
Still not as effective as conservation, but unfortunately, conservation can't have an IPO, and doesn't get a lot of business press.
Slashdot Mirror
The slave trade was a free market, from what I can remember, and the government had to shut it down because it was still enormously profitable to capture and breed humans.
If the free market had no rules, there would still be segregated restaurants and buses in the south. That's a big difference between democracy and fascism. One the people can change, the other only the business elite can change. Without a bloody revolution, of course...
The editor in chief has a say on what's published. Do you think he'd allow some writer to expose his biggest advertiser for running a sweatshop or poisoning the groundwater in some rural state?
Pretending that the editor won't protect their advertising revenue at all costs is simply dumb. That's why the BBC is still one of the best places to get news. It's publicly funded, so they don't care who they piss off. If an editor knows a story will break somewhere soon, he or she will run the story. But they're not going to go out of their way to allow anyone to dig up dirt on the hands that feed them.
Similarly, the truth always comes out the day after an election. Plenty of people knew about Palin's childish antics, but they wouldn't dare publish that truth until they knew who the loser was going to be. To news media, access to power is far more important than the truth.
To me, neo-conservative people are monsters.
They are anti-abortion, pro war. They believe violence is alright, as long as it's directed at people who "deserve" it. When innocent people die in the wars they start, it's called an unfortunate reality. They defend torture. They pervert Christianity to be exclusive instead of inclusive. They go out of their way to harm the environment to protect their "lifestyle." They promote brutal mythology, and try to discredit science, but only when it's used to heal people. When it's making weaponry, it's never questioned.
And they do all of this for money. It really is pathetic, and they really are monsters.
10-15% is an average gross margin for non-boutique retail. After overhead, making any money is good, and 3% isn't terrible when your sales number begins with a b.
Back when there were smaller stores, the margin was typically 40%. But those days are over, and why I chuckle every time I hear someone complain about the service at a Best Buy or whatever. America traded in knowledgeable electronics dealers for cheap, plastic, slave-labor constructed garbage that are a tenth of the price and last about as long. That is, if you don't break the connectors that are glued to the pcb instead of screwed to plates, as they used to be. Now those same stores employing kids are charging three hundred dollars to fix the crappy electronics they sold them in the first place.
Ah well. There is no free lunch. But there are a lot of people who aren't smart with their money. What were we talking about again?
Society crippling conservation would only push the problem off on to our grandchildren instead of making our children deal with it.
You've confused materialism with life. Brazilians and Costa Ricans live rich lives, have less things, and use far less energy than the average American. That's doesn't mean their society is crippled, and last I checked, they were alive and not dead. They may not all lead our lifestyle, but who said sitting in traffic and working yourself to death was a high note in human development?
New energy sources need to be found, but if we had some sane zoning regulations and nationalized our transportation system, we would need far less of it. If more people recycled and checked their tire pressure and kept their air conditioner maintained, we would need less of it. If more people reduced the amount of meat they ate, bought organic and local food when they could, and stopped covering their lawns with grass instead of local plants that required zero water and zero maintenance, we would need less of it. Conservation is about planning and about feeling good, because you're doing something now to actually help the planet, instead of banking on a technological breakthrough that may not happen as soon as we need it.
I read somewhere that the world would need to be six times larger if every person ate as much beef as an American. Our lifestyle is simply unsustainable. If you want to keep ignoring this reality, you're welcome to, but your children and grandchildren won't have the luxury. They'll probably think of you, and how you complained about water restrictions, or smaller flush toilets, or hippie locavores, and think: what a jackass.
In the wind alley, they do a lot of farming, right? Why not create two level reservoirs, one a hundred and fifty feet higher than the other, and then when there is excess production, you pump the lower reservoir into the higher one. Even better, find some underground features that would make it easy to create underground reservoirs with different elevations. And if you hit a hot spot of granite, even better - redirect the steam so it spins some turbines.
Drought presents problems to open air reservoirs. It may actually be cheaper to use superconducting transmission lines to somewhere with better natural features.
If WalMart and Sams Club covered all of the parking lots with solar panels, not only would they reduce localized heat effects, it would probably be enough to power all air conditioning in the south during those hot sunny days. I don't know why any sprawl areas are looking for huge plots of lands to stick solar powered plants on. They have hundreds of square miles of parking lots already, they just need to be leased from the malls and stores.
But, as always, the best way to save energy is still conservation. It's 100% effective and free. Unfortunately there's no profit in efficiency, and thus it's not a political option.
The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy in which streetcar systems throughout the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943). National, which had been in operation since 1920, was reorganized into a holding company. General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack, and Federal Engineering Corporation made investments in the City Lines companies in return for exclusive supply contracts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Streetcar_Scandal
See, in the real world, corporations are bent on destroying efficient infrastructure and government run public services, because they can't possibly compete with them. That is, here in America, where corruption is far less of a problem than elsewhere.
This is why privatized medicare companies are subsidized by the government so they can charge the same price as the government. They simply can't compete on efficiency.
Trains and trolleys are low maintenance, use far less fuel per passenger, and are more reliable than buses. That's why they were eliminated from mass transit and replaced with buses, which use more fuel, require more maintenance, and are less reliable. The other reason car, car parts, and fuel companies wanted to destroy urban mass transit is so everyone would buy a car.
Remember, the more inefficient a company can force people to be, the more profit they can make on the excess. That's why we're the most "productive," worst polluting, and one of the least satisfied populaces in the western world.
Please provide us with the most recent scientific breakthrough not carried out by a government funded lab or subsidized university.
Don't worry. We'll wait.
You see, no corporation does anything beyond what's sensible to make a profit. And often that thing is actually detrimental to society without proper regulation, dependent on your definition of progress, and no company could survive the lawsuits if they focused on pure R&D instead of R&D designed to deliver a product for sale. Imagine a company formed for fusion reactor research, promising little to no chance of return for billions of dollars of investment. It wouldn't get off the ground, and would be the laughingstock of wall street. In this case, they are refining rocket technology, not inventing it.
Good science only happens when you throw huge amounts of money into pure research. Engineering happens trying to solve problems, but not advances in science. The government doesn't force people to research anything, but it does give out wads of cash for things it wants, like the technology found in Predator drones. This is because problems are now extraordinarily complicated and require huge investments to be solved. That's not to say there aren't rare exceptions... and definitely not to say that agencies like NASA aren't in need of serious restructuring. But for the most part, it's government funded research that provides modern technology.
Also, you're totally wrong about homeland security. It's funded billions of dollars for advanced aerospace research, but to large corporations instead of backyard enthusiasts.
When you don't tax capital, it moves too quickly, and causes too much boom and bust. That's why western countries have rules against capital flight, and some european countries have a token tax - a fraction of a percent - for every stock transaction to slow people's overreactions.
Personally, I have a somewhat libertarian ideal - eliminate corporations as they are known, and remove the corporate veil of protection for most companies, except for special charters given to insurance companies and other temporary projects - bridge building, mass transit, internet service, etc. There's no reason to grant a corporation special status unless it is doing something beneficial for the community.
I think it would keep companies small and healthy, and keep large, sensible corporations very well regulated. Just require total transparency, and you'll keep the crooks out. But while the crooks are still ruling the White House, the rich are still making the rules.
...you just make a little hole or two, yank everything around to where you want it, squirt in some bone juice...
This product will need some careful marketing.
The bottom line is, you want to do something useful in any field, history has shown that the only places where a person is allowed to do real research is a university or government lab. By advising anyone to stay away from college, you are advising them to choose to have a disadvantage just because you didn't like college.
Stop giving out that bad advice, unless you can bring me some interesting counter examples to what I wrote above.
There are lots of important techs that were developed without government funds.
Here we go.
The steam engine
James Watt studied in London and settled at the University of Glasgow. He developed the steam engine at his leisure while at the University, which was founded at the request of King James II of Scotland.
the internal combustion engine
Credited to Benz. Who also studied mechanical engineering at a public University.
iron, steel
The refinement of iron manufacturing has been going on for thousands of years, mostly driven by warfare, which is usually paid for by the government.
powered flight
One exception, though the money to fund further development since then and until today continues to be from government coffers.
guns
Quite broad. The most difficult problems of firing naval guns were entirely solved by government investment, just like the development of early computers was entirely geared towards artillery math. The invention of the gun in China was probably done for war, paid by government. I hope you're seeing a pattern.
electric power transmission
Tesla studied at Technische Universitat Graz, a public university, though he didn't finish. You'll notice that almost everyone you read about in the history books went to some sort of university. The obvious exception would be art.
the light bulb
Humphrey Davy had the earliest lightbulb. He was a professor. Edison made it commercially viable.
most modern materials
NASA
most modern advances in computer hardware and software.
Really? Give me one. Be specific.
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a lot more.
I'm sure that you haven't studied the subject, and you're full of shit.
And furthermore, just because technologies were developed with government money doesn't mean they couldn't have been developed with different funding. Also, I can't think of a single major commercial airframe in use today that was originally designed for military use (not so say there isn't one
You would not have any modern commercial airframes today without government subsidy, period. It takes an incredible amount of money and time and man hours to perfect jet engines and subsonic flight, money that no private company would dare spend without being a welfare client of a state.
but certainly none of the Boeing 7X7 lines or the airbus A3X0 lines were
Totally and completely false. Check the article above.
Meeting people and getting your foot in the door does not require an education. You can meet people in the field.
Sure, sure. And I can win the lottery too, or get rear ended by a millionaire. You want our next generation to have a good chance of success, not a crap shoot, right?
Degrees serve primarily as a barrier to entry, since employers use them to weed out potential candidates. You will not be prepared for your job by your degree, and you will likely use less than 10% of what you learn (much less what you crammed before the test and promptly forgot afterward).
I believe a good education in the basics of your field are essential in addition to apprenticeship. We have no formal apprenteceship program in the US, but for every job where you can ruin someone's life - doctor, lawyer, plumber, electrician, architect - there is required apprenticeship and required degrees for very, very good reasons. I'm not saying you need an EE degree to wire a house. But you do need one to build a datacenter.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883617.html
Please shut up. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's almost like you need an education. While education is part of the doctrinal system, the reality is that you have more chance of success at whatever you're doing whether the degree gets you a foot in the door or if you meet other people in your field and develop relationships. Even without all that, you typically make more money with a higher education. These facts escape you because you are too lazy to learn before speaking.
Almost every single technological breakthrough has occurred where? In government or university research labs funded by the state. You would not be typing on a computer and sending a message through the internet without it. The Human Genome Project was a government research program. Every time you take a flight you're riding in a modified bomber, researched with government funds.
So with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Really. Your ignorance is the problem, not spending money on education.
Please don't act like OO is a feasible alternative for these programs.
Why not? And please, be very specific.
Some stuff doesn't work exactly right, but they offer pretty robust file compatibility. If you have coded yourself into a corner and are dependent on their VBA platform, now is a good time to start getting off the junk.
The only program for most businesses that's missing is a full featured and multi-user accounting package like Quickbooks. There are certain programs which have zero alternatives, like Final Cut, Photoshop (for serious CMYK), Autodesk products, etc. But the beauty of OOo is that those windows and mac users can be on the free office platform, and as soon as the vendor offers a Linux release or a viable alternative arises, you have one less thing to migrate.
Migration is painful, but if you choose the right platform to move to, it can be worth it. I recently moved a small office from SBS 2003 to an Ubuntu box. It was time consuming, and there were a lot of unforeseen problems the first few days, but now they have stopped obsessively checking the server to make sure it's still working, they receive far less spam, and when a free alternative to Quickbooks arrives, they will use all of the same programs - OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird - and only their OS will change.
Building the bridges to dumping Windows is key. In my opinion, the open source community should focus on releasing cross platform applications and frameworks. Once you make the choice of Windows or Linux trivial for application support, people will undoubtedly choose the cheaper operating system, especially during the next few years while the economy is suffering worldwide.
If my tax money is used to prop up other people's house prices, where's my fucking house?
And likewise, when tax money is used to subsidize private corporations, where's my fucking check?
The problem is that you see the helping individuals caught by the housing bubble as a negative, while the money your government spends every single year to help corporations isn't even on the radar. You've been fooled into thinking the problem is mainly irresponsible individuals, when it's mainly irresponsible subsidization of corporations.
Government's purpose is to help it's individual citizenry through crisis when necessary. That's the reason WWII was won. When it instead spends the community's wealth on enriching the already wealthy, you have a failed state.
If you just put a pile of money out in the street, sure, nothing will change, but your analogies are just that. History and reality are better barometers of effective policy.
If the government employs people to improve infrastructure, it lowers the cost of doing business and benefits the whole economy, while evening out the down cycle when other businesses are cutting back. The biggest reasons western countries do well as economies are their workers and their infrastructure and their reliance on government technology and protectionism. While America unfortunately does not see the benefit of having a well educated populace, it does see the benefit of having a reliable power grid, sewage system, telecommunications network, etc. Some societies see single payer health care as part of infrastructure, which is the main reason it's cheaper to build a car in Canada than it is in Detroit.
(Here's an article that discusses two facts unknown to most Americans: our car companies employ more people in Ontario than Michigan, and they do it because of their more efficient health care system and the canadian dollar.)
In fact, the computer you're typing on and the internet it travels over are all due to government research. Do you imagine we would be less prosperous if China had been the ones who were licensing technology for us to manufacture instead of the other way around? Government is capable of doing good things, but not in the hands of those who attend to the needs of corporations instead of people.
Your numbers are wacked. Defense spending is 20% of the federal budget. Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security take up over 40% of the budget. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
Do you trust the government? If you do, those numbers are fine. If you don't, take a look at real numbers. Social Security is paid in and paid out, so that's irrelevant. When you add discretionary spending, military research in non-DoD branches, like nuclear weapons research in the DoE, the budget looks quite different.
How much did 9/11 cost this country? Hundreds of billions.
You're off by an order of magnitude, and that's only if the only thing that you value is money. According to all insurance claims, it's 9.3 billion. The highest estimates I've seen for total economic impact that never recovered is forty or fifty billion. If you have to pretend for your argument that the stock market didn't recover, well... let us know when you come back to reality.
Personally, I mourn the loss of the casualties of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, of the right to an attorney, the right to be charged if I am held, the right to free association, and the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures much more than the money. And that figure is still a few trillion dollars less than the increase in war spending.
Bush prevented another attack during his Administration against all odds.
Yes, like the Chicago Seven:
An FBI informant infiltrated the group, the sources say, neutralizing the threat. They say it is not clear how much damage the group would have done on its own. They were making plans to purchase bomb-making materials, the officials add.
So, we stopped someone from possibly purchasing bomb making materials, possibly using that to make a bomb, and possibly using that to carry out an attack. Excuse me for saying so, but if this is making the front page, it looks like they are desperate to find anything that looks like a terrorist attack. If they could squeeze more political capital out of any foiled attack, they would do it.
The intelligence community failed to predict the collapse of the USSR, failed to prevent the WTC 93 attack, failed to prevent the Cole bombing, failed to prevent 9/11, and then claimed that Saddam had WMDs. What exactly have they done right in the past thirty years?
War costs will continue since Barry will be moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan/Pakistan.
We owe it to the Afghanis. When their secular government requested help from the Russians, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars organizing bin Laden and all of the muslim extremists we could find in order to embarrass Moscow. Afghanistan was completely destroyed, and we left the foundation of the Taliban to do whatever they wanted with the ashes. We also owe the same to the Iraqis, but we should be providing logistical support to the democratic side so they have the freedom to form their own government, instead of being forced at gunpoint to accept ours.
Your Democratic Congress has approved bailouts since coming into power that have eclipsed the war costs.
Whoa, cowboy. Let's try that hard math again. The bailouts will top out at 1.2 trillion, and we currently spend 1 trillion every year. Not that I favor the bailouts, but your premise is provably false to begin with.
So, how's that Democratic Congress for the last 2 years been working out for you?
One the scale of idiocy and ignorance, I prefer the less idiotic and less ignorant. Clinton may have been a corrupt politician, but at least he knew not to shit where he ate, at least when it came to balancing the eco
Yes, you are a sucker. But because you believe that welfare and the bailout are the main reason the government is taking your money.
Military spending eclipses any other program by 2 to 1. So, first, you should be complaining about the defense shield program, which won't work, the Iraq war, which didn't work, and all of the other investments in destruction that enrich corporations and their owners, and do nothing for the people that pay those taxes. To put it in perspective, you'd have to have a 500 billion dollar bailout every single year added together with health care, welfare, and other social services in order to match military spending. If we paid the average per capita that other nations do, we'd spend around 180 billion instead of 1000 billion.
If you didn't want higher taxes, I hope you didn't support the war. Taxes will go back to normal levels, because someone has to pay for the three billion dollars that are flushed down the toilet in Iraq every week, on top of all of the other idiotic military spending programs that are never criticized. Even talking about military spending is anti-American, but criticizing taxes that improve the lives of the taxed is considered patriotic. How's that for some cognitive dissonance.
So, in conclusion, I'll repeat something I heard quite a bit in 2003. If you don't want your taxes spent on programs that you don't want, just remember, this is America: love it or leave it.
Government run mass transit systems that are far more efficient than any other mode of transportation: problem.
Destroying efficient transit systems and replacing with inefficient road systems, finite and domestically unavailable energy sources: solution!
Government development of electric vehicles to salvage the free market's mistake of investing in road infrastructure: problem.
Free market solution of continuing to produce technology that is destroying the environment and our economy: solution!
Ask any of his Somalian friends... government is a problem masquerading as a solution.
If you can't figure out for yourself that taking money by force is immoral, I really don't think I can help you.
-jcr
If you don't think you will have to compromise to live in any modern society, I don't think you can be helped, either.
In another thread you state, "Taxation is moral only to the extent that the revenues raised are used to secure our rights. As soon as government steps beyond the powers that we have granted to it, it is immoral." In more civilized societies, people believe that all of it's citizens have a right to health care, education, as well as equal protection under the law. If you live out on a country road that serves only your family, I am paying for it. Likewise if I live in a city being choked by pollution, you pay for studies on how to lower that pollution. This is why all modern nation states are doing so well - they operate on the very fact that free markets do not work, because the free market lives in a fantasy land that begins and ends with the phrase, "all else being equal." Libertarianism and communism have good ideas, but like all ideals, they are more or less useless in reality.
In this case, a private company is seeking public money to develop technology, and I actually agree with you that it is immoral, but only because any company that receives public subsidies should be transparent and owned by the people who subsidized it. If we want to publicly fund the development of an electric car, since no private corporation is willing or able, I don't see a problem with it.
The reason the US transportation system is so bad is because our mass transit systems, which were unfairly efficient in the eyes of auto companies, were destroyed. A single rule from CARB, decried as impossible by those same auto companies, produced electric vehicles ten years ago that were viable options then and still are today. Once the board was filled with business friendly and socially unconscionable interests, the rules were repealed, the cars were destroyed, and the battery technology from the EV1 was bought and buried by Exxon Mobil.
Carnegie at his best:
Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.
So, a rich man knows what to do with your money, but you do not. That's individualism and freedom according to Carnegie, and not coincidentally, everyone who is sitting at the top of the caste instead of the bottom.
Well, you can stick that kind of freedom up your ass, for all I care. If the wealth belongs to the community, let the community decide how to spend it. What Carnegie describes is tyranny exerted by corporate power instead of state power, which is better in some ways, but still not good.
Please, don't take this personally. I know you're just making a post on Slashdot. But why can't you even read one article about this before you make useless guesses?
After two minutes of Googling, I found this diamond in the rough, a patent application secretively titled "STIRLING ENGINE THERMAL SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS", submitted by Dean Kamen. Though you may dislike the Segway, and I can't blame you for it, the technology came from his iBot wheel chair, which is the closest thing I've seen to offering someone who doesn't have use of their legs a chance at full mobility. This has improved the lives of thousands of people. Unless you're an aid worker or another genius inventor, your comparable contributions to society are far less, without even touching his more traditional medical inventions.
So, with all due respect, before you pat yourself on the back for shooting down an idea you are totally ignorant of, stop typing and read about the idea first. Then, if you have something useful to say, the world will be glad to read about your idea, and then reply.
Unless you have some sources contrary to what's found here, you haven't done anything but give your opinion.
Right now, everyone in America is breaking a law. Whether they are punished for the breach depends on how much money they have, who they know, who they have cheated, and if the public is aware of the crime or not.
They are there so if you get in the way of the powerful, they can throw the book at you. In this case, it's a good thing, since this person, for no other reason than malice, emotionally abused someone just for the "fun" of it. Other times, victimless crimes like possession are used to keep the prison population high and the ghettos under control.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Just like most of the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline is not converted into forward motion, most of the energy passing by a wind turbine is not converted into electricity. It's the "low hanging fruit" in energy research. It sounds like their idea is to use more but smaller and more efficient generators that are adapted to input from variable wind speeds rather than constant input from another source, like hydroelectric dams or steam powered turbines from nuclear plants. It also says they are electronically controlled, which may eliminate the need for wasteful transfers of energy, like varying the blade pitch, mechanical clutches, etc.
Still not as effective as conservation, but unfortunately, conservation can't have an IPO, and doesn't get a lot of business press.