It helps to quote your opponent's argument in full when countering. That way it doesn't look like you are ignoring portions.
So you've corrected me because I was an order of magnitude lower in my estimates, but failed to attack any of the main points and merely done a dismissal handwave. Classy.
Not at all. Renewable energy only produces a few percent of the power in this country.
Weren't you the one just ragging on me a short while ago about "cost per megawatt"? Now you're moving the goal posts. And what does the size of an industry have to do with its return on investment, public good, etc.? Nothing.
You can't just ignore facts and make up definitions.
Why? You're doing it. I've taken the position that we need to invest in alternative energy before the planet becomes uninhabitable, and you're making arguments about taxpayer dollars. Who's being more illogical here? The person who realizes you can't eat money, or the person who values only money?
Fuel was far less expensive, adjusted for inflation, with Standard Oil than it is today.
The modern automobile didn't exist until about the time Standard Oil was broken up. At that time, oil was mostly used for heating and limited industrial applications. Demand has gone up considerably; But I'm certain that they could have figured out how to go international and gain monopolies elsewhere as well. Oh wait... they were in the process of doing exactly that when we broke them up. We would have wound up with the next OPEC in our backyard if not for that.
The thing about taxpayer provided infrastructure is that everyone is supposed to be able to use it.
You use the roads. You use the gas stations. You indirectly make use of the pipelines, trucks, and other transportation equipment, etc. The government is involved in every aspect from the time it comes out of the ground until it hits your gas tank. And yet... you try to make the argument "everyone is supposed to be able to use it?"
When the Government gets involved and starts picking favored children to be spoiled with our money,
68,000,000,000 dollars per year goes to the "favored children" of the fossil fuel production industry. I just want to make sure we're clear on exactly how many zeros are in that: apparently billion isn't something you've wrapped your head around yet.
that violates the principles this country was founded on
Yes, so we should allow the industries that have profited from all that government investment before to continue to do so, without repayment... but give no alternatives equal access to funding, because of principles that you yourself only sometimes adhere too.
And because fossil fuels did this largely without the help of taxpayer subsidies, we have a mature profitable industry.
Did you miss the part where I pointed out there's about 68 billion in subsidies every year going to fossil fuel producers, and renewable energy gets about a sixth of that? And as long as we're talking about "taxpayer subsidies", how about we discuss the storied and terrible history of Standard Oil, which became the first modern monopoly in the world through predatory business practices, rampant exploitation of natural resources, workers, price manipulation, etc. It was the catalyst for the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act and its later dismantlement by the government at significant cost to taxpayers. Most of our domestic oil producers can still trace their roots back to this monolithic entity that at one point controlled over 90% of domestic production and 80% of sales.
See, the problem with your logic is that it's myopic: You think taxpayer dollars only come from government subsidies. But whether you're paying for it due to legislation, or due to malignant business practices, you're still paying for it. The delineation between the two is artificial and arbitrary. Standard Oil, if it existed today, would probably own close to a third of the country, and have an operating revenue of over a trillion USD. That trillion a year revenue would be coming out of our pockets.
In short, your logic is bullshit: Every major infrastructure industry in this country depended on the government to get up and running, or to expand to a societal level of influence. Every. Last. One.
You can physically block signals within your property by shielding it, but you cannot do that by emitting any signal without authorization.
Which neatly avoids the question: Do you have the right to do what you want with wireless transmissions occurring on your property? If not, what are the restrictions, and please justify your answers. Now I don't want you to actually answer that -- it's meant to illustrate that the concept of ownership is relevant here; Whether it's a private citizen, or the government; Anything that can be controlled is, by definition, owned. What I'm asking is... to what degree is ownership shared?
Things in the public domain (like airwaves) belong to the public and private businesses...
Private businesses own the spectrum in question. And other private businesses want to block access to those airwaves on their own property. What you're arguing for is that the government should have the ability to tell you what you can (and cannot) do on your own property with regards to wireless spectrum.
But here's the interesting flip -- if you receive transmissions from, say, DISH Network, and use a secret "pirate" decoder ring to watch the free transmissions coming onto your property, you're a criminal. If your neighbor decides to install a high powered hifi audio system that blocks out your wifi and makes it unusuable, you're told to suck it up. And if they don't encrypt it, you're in a legal gray area... etc., etc.
This isn't a clear-cut issue where either the government controls it, or it's public, or it's private sector. All three have legitimate reasons to want to allow or deny access to this resource on their own properties. Regardless of which side of the debate you're on though, it's clear the FCC is a failure as an administrative body -- their rulings are inconsistent, there is no democratic process or any feedback mechanism the public can use to contest it... it's this oblique governmental body that gets to do whatever the hell it wants with this most precious of resources... and as a result, it's become an oppressive regulatory body that infringes on private citizens' rights on a routine basis.
The forced conversion from analog to digital TV netted the FCC a couple hundred billion in spectrum auctioning to large private businesses while the consumers were forced to upgrade to digital televisions that were later determined to have been significantly marked up as a result of collusion by manufacturers to inflate the price. And where was the FCC when the public was getting raped over a barrel on the costs of a new TV? Busy bundling their analog-to-digital converter program so badly that there should be a permanent monument erected outside their offices entitled "Institutional Incompetence" and showing a consumer having a flatscreen TV shoved sideways into their unmentionables.
That said... people shouldn't be jamming the airwaves... but their interests in restricting the use of certain electronic devices (and by extension, wireless spectrum) on their own property, is something the FCC needs to address.
So what? It costs more, if you're spending Other Peoples' Money. Also existing development is a sunk cost. Sure, maybe some renewable alternative would cost less to research than has been spent on a fossil fuel rival. But the latter exists now and doesn't require you to spend more to make it work. That's a powerful advantage.
Okay, so short version is... after you spend a trillion dollars to make something work, getting something else to work at a fraction of that cost is wrong because of [bullshit political reason]. Meanwhile, oil supplies continue to dwindle, and our planet is heating up so fast that by some estimates, in another 20 years we won't have ice in antarctica. Clearly, us all roasting to death as most of the planet becomes an inhospitable desert is preferable to violating the tenets of (mumble mumble) other people's money (mumble).
409 billion to 66 billion? Why don't you look at dollars per megawatt generated.
Well, that's a really good question. I suppose it has something to do with the difference between maintaining an existing technology and infrastructure that depends on a dwindling and non-replaceable natural resource, as opposed to developing new technologies and infrastructure that rely on one or more natural resources which are neither. So "dollars per megawatt" is the wrong metric to be using in this case.
Now, if we were to compare renewable energy over the entire developmental history of fossil fuels... we'd see that it cost a lot of money to make small, incremental improvements. You're making an apples to oranges comparison.
PS, I kind of like the TN law, its not instant, theres a process to go though to improve student performance, if you and your child DO NOT choose to actually work for their education, why the fuck should we be paying both of you to sit on your ass all day for yet ANOTHER generation?
Hey, I've got a great idea! How about we take Little Timmy here, who's poor and hungry, and make him poorer and tell him it's his fault! I bet that'll encourage him to bust a nut on the next standardized test. Meanwhile, other kids, who are also doing crappy on standardized tests but aren't poor... they still get government assistance in the form of, I don't know... police service, roads, fire department, etc.
How exactly is it moral or ethical to deny only poor children access to food unless they perform well academically? Please, I really want to know.
I've been sitting here for ten minutes and I got nothin'.
A planned for wind farm near Nantucket Risked the view of a rich tourist's junket So a judge stepped on in Said, "give safety a spin" "To test the idea, then I'll flunk it."... Okay, maybe it's not dirty... but better than nothing.:D
Parent apparently didn't read the article, where it said, amongst other things, "politics and ghastly bureaucracies have thwarted efforts to adopt offshore wind farms in the US," "While the US is still waiting for its first offshore wind farm, much of the developed world has already," "everything from 'visual pollution' to the 'desecration of Indian burial grounds' have been thrown at Cape Wind"... Yeah. Sure sounds like money is the problem there.
But since you don't know where to start "with all the money dumped into failed energy projects", here is as good a place as any. "According to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuels received $409 billion in subsidies globally in 2010, compared with $66 billion for renewable power." So how come a mature and developed industry needs six TIMES the amount of subsidies that research and development does? Is fossil fuel not profitable or something?
If we want to talk about wasting money on "failed energy projects", I can think of no better example than our wasteful spending on fossil fuel subsidies. Probably not what you had in mind though when you made your off the cuff remark though, eh?
Meanwhile, in the United States... research and development cut. NASA budget shrunk. Science and engineering degrees from new graduates at all time lows. And at least one state (Tennessee) has recently tried to pass a law to make our educational system an actual Hunger Games by witholding food assistance from poor families with students who do poorly on state-administered exams.
Thank you, Japan, for investing in us... because we sure as hell aren't.
If you ran an open relay you were on the right end of a blacklisting.
Right, because although we're after the content of these e-mails, guilt by association is a perfectly valid technique for eliminating spam. Just like bombing a city to get rid of the army in it is totally okay... nevermind the civilians.
The process can't be simple because spammers are endlessly creative with how they try to get past the filters. And if it was verifiable, that would mean published -- and once published, becomes useless. Spammers can simply test their latest creation against your filter, and now you effectively have given them a way to bypass your entire process, making it worthless.
and to compensate for any errors, you want your process to be transparent to the public
The administrative process can be transparent, but the technical process, as outlined above, cannot.
with clear points of contact and line of responsibility.
The problem here is; how do you tell the liars from the rest? Responsibility is fine, clear points of contact are fine, but what's the criterion for delineating between 'spam' and 'marketing'? How about between 'spam' and 'opt-in' that the user no longer wants? How about between... you get the idea. There is some grey here, and odds are good you're going to find someone doing something with a legitimate and ethical reason, that by all appearances... isn't. And then you're going to make a decision based on those appearances (because what else can you go on?) and then you're going to burn a bridge down.
These problems can't be solved with a handwave and a post on an internet forum.
but unless you can site some specific regulation or authority that provides and exception to low-altitude trespassing in general for any random flying craft, then I think you're just making some wrong assumptions.
Hot air balloon landings have plenty of legal precident. None of them end with "and you can shoot at them during landing." Now, while it's been established that in cases of emergency -- or because the aircraft simply lacks the ability to prevent landing on your property (or anyone else's for that matter), it doesn't become yours, nor do you get any rights to it, including the right to move it. The police have to do that. Yes, it's been to court. There have been assholes with guns that have tried to attack the balloonist and then keep the chase vehicle off the property. It didn't end well for them... and by not ending well, I mean they were led away in handcuffs, possibly unpleasantly depending on how they used their weapon.
But you know what? Amazingly, hot air balloon events happen every fall, all over the country, and both the balloonists and the property owners manage to settle their differences peacefully, without guns, debates about privacy, land ownership rights, etc. It goes a little like this, "Sorry I landed in your corn field. We can pay you for the damage." And the property owner responds with, "Hey, that's cool. Just sign here." And away they both go, satisfied and without any violence or involvement of the legal system.
Amazingly, this happens about 99.95% of the time. Of the remaining 0.05%, some fucker decided to be an unreaonable prick, and was punished accordingly for it. Very occasionally, said fucker causes death and/or destruction before said punishment is handed down... usually with some additional helpings on top.
99.95% of the laws on the books are to deal with that random crazy asshole. Laws aren't needed for reasonable people, and reasonable people don't need to concern themselves with the law. All this talk about regulating drones is silly, because none of the regulations discussed either in the original article, or any of these replies on slashdot, actually goes to answering the question -- what do you do with that 0.05%?
The legislator should know better than to try to write blanket legislation that has no precident -- you write laws based on things that are actual problems, not imaginary ones. When we actually have a case of some asshole flying a drone over some other asshole's property, and they (predictably) decide to be assholes to each other with escalating levels of assholery, then we'll have something to legislate. And the law should narrowly and only target the two assholes. The specific mechanics of it, I leave up to you, the reader, or the legislator who will never read this.
But that's the only reasonable way to deal with the law; reactively. We can't predict what the assholes of the world are going to come up with next as a punishment upon themselves and us... we just have to wait and see. Because they are endlessly resourceful and unreasonable; But there are thankfully not very many of them.
So we observe them, document the behavior, test the hypothesis, and then present a conclusion (ie, a new law). And thus the law moves incrementally forward, and we as reasonable people can get on with our reasonable lives, trusting that unreasonable people will be slowly, but inexorably, pushed to the periphery.
Because the conservatives will have raised a hefty charity pool among themselves and mailed it anonymously to the address, while a Prius full of liberals would have done nothing, smug in the satisfaction that the tax dollars from the truck full of conservatives kept the single mother in bondage to the liberal government?
You don't watch the news much, do you? They're trying to turn public education into an actual Hunger Games... do you really think they're into charity?
Don't vote for the 2 major parties. Vote for a 3rd party, write in a name or just put none of the above.
In closely-contested races, it's well-known that the opposing party will try to split the vote by trying to get more voters to endorse the third party, and thus the voting power of the opposition is reduced. Your suggestion here is criminally naive. That said, if a state is already "overwhelmingly" one thing or another, then odds are good there's an active minority party with similar affiliations to the dominant party; funded by the opposition.
If you want to change the two-party system, start by pushing for things like direct democracy; also known as the referendum vote. California is the most obvious example, but there are many others with it to varying degrees. This is what I tell everyone disaffected with the current system: Don't try to reform it, bypass it. The successful and viable third party will come through grass-roots issues like this. It's what Occupy should have done, instead of shooting itself in the head with petty infighting and disorganization, ultimately making it easy to destroy: Pick one issue, hammer it until you win, then pick a new one. You need votes, not picket lines.
I think you didn't read the article. What this guy is saying is, you can get more of anybody in office by simply lying about their answers after having them take a survey. If you hire a whole bunch of people to do this before an election, maybe you can swing it your way. It's certainly no less ethical than how candidates buy,er, I mean, win elections today.
The rest of your comment was such an attention-whoring grab to support your own idiosyncratic beliefs and annoyingly full of logic fail that you should probably stay away from hospitals, nuclear reactors, or anything else that has digital components, at least for a few days until the fail has time to boil off.
This study is pretty obviously not statistically relevant
That's a really great statement there, and I'mma let you finish, but statistical relevance has no relevance here. It's a intellectual-sounding mean-nothing. What you meant was probably statistical significance. And the test of significance is met if the result is unlikely to have happened by chance alone.
You're going to have a hard time justifying a position that this guy's results were just a statistical fluke. You may disagree with the results. You may disagree with the method. You may even disagree with the hypothesis. But you can't say it is a "belief". The only belief here is your own: Specifically, that you believe people's political orientations can't be easily changed because you believe your political orientation is less malleable than what the author has demonstrated.
Sorry but us Americans are stubborn assholes who dont care about the issues all we care about is what the party says on the issue.
Hi. I'm an American too. We aren't all stubborn assholes. Case in point, I tracked down this poster and told a truck full of passing conservatives that a single mother lived at the poster's home address and was collecting welfare. I don't think we'll be seeing him after tonight.
Somewhat more seriously though, to the international community: We're sick of the two-party system too. It's a joke; Nobody really feels their interests are well-represented by either party. As a result, we've taken to discussing politics like it's a sporting event -- we bet on which team will win, scream and dance around in our underwear in front of the TV during the national debates, and get drunk and then either cry, or riot, when our team wins. Because while our political system is shit, we still really, really enjoy watching people we don't like fail. Take Romney for example -- his epic failure kept me happy (and warm!) through most of the frigid Midwestern winter.
And then Mark Zuckerberg formed a new polical lobby for Snow Flake Preservation.
Zynga then promptly released a game where you can buy virtual snowflakes to drop on your farms, but was sued by Apple for patent infringment over it's slide-to-drop snowflake technology. Microsoft released a snowflake player called 'Snune', but was widely panned by critics as being inferior to all other offers. A few weeks later, it quietly disappeared. Regular slashdot readers blamed stagnancy in cloud technologies for the lack of high performance snow, and girlintraining continued to snark the crap out of everything she comes across...
The reported reasoning for making Wayland support Android GPU drivers was difficulty in ODM vendors not wishing to offer driver support for platforms aside from Android."
Why support yesterday's phone when you can just tell your users to buy tomorrow's? This kind of progressive thinking hurts profits. Profits are people. Therefore, you should be arrested.:/
And that's the problem. He's right and it goes against every dumb thing you were taught in grade school. You're taught American Exceptionalism and how scary the commies and their governments were. But fact is that small governments get picked apart by corporations. Divide and conquer. Remember that picture of the snake cut to bits? Seriously, there's a reason we have a Federal gov't, and the power your average multi-national wields today would make the British empire run for the hills.
American Exceptionalism? I'm sure that nobody's national anthem starts off with "We're Number Two." Lay off on the culture-bash. I don't assume that the British are a bunch of incompetent sods just because that's what most of your sitcoms and popular media is based off of, notably Top Gear. I take it for what it is: Entertainment. Likewise, take what you see on our popular media with the same large grain of salt.
But fact is that small governments get picked apart by corporations. Divide and conquer. Remember that picture of the snake cut to bits? Seriously, there's a reason we have a Federal gov't, and the power your average multi-national wields today would make the British empire run for the hills.
You're kidding, right? They sell to you guys too. And our multi-national corporations are more skittish about EU and UK law than US law... which has about as much teeth in it as a room full of octogenarians. EU and UK law actually respects you, as the individual. It doesn't say you're a "consumer", but a "citizen", and UK citizenship is something taken seriously in your country. It means something. Over here, the only thing it means is that the conservatives can't bitch you don't pay taxes.
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It helps to quote your opponent's argument in full when countering. That way it doesn't look like you are ignoring portions.
So you've corrected me because I was an order of magnitude lower in my estimates, but failed to attack any of the main points and merely done a dismissal handwave. Classy.
Not at all. Renewable energy only produces a few percent of the power in this country.
Weren't you the one just ragging on me a short while ago about "cost per megawatt"? Now you're moving the goal posts. And what does the size of an industry have to do with its return on investment, public good, etc.? Nothing.
You can't just ignore facts and make up definitions.
Why? You're doing it. I've taken the position that we need to invest in alternative energy before the planet becomes uninhabitable, and you're making arguments about taxpayer dollars. Who's being more illogical here? The person who realizes you can't eat money, or the person who values only money?
Fuel was far less expensive, adjusted for inflation, with Standard Oil than it is today.
The modern automobile didn't exist until about the time Standard Oil was broken up. At that time, oil was mostly used for heating and limited industrial applications. Demand has gone up considerably; But I'm certain that they could have figured out how to go international and gain monopolies elsewhere as well. Oh wait... they were in the process of doing exactly that when we broke them up. We would have wound up with the next OPEC in our backyard if not for that.
The thing about taxpayer provided infrastructure is that everyone is supposed to be able to use it.
You use the roads. You use the gas stations. You indirectly make use of the pipelines, trucks, and other transportation equipment, etc. The government is involved in every aspect from the time it comes out of the ground until it hits your gas tank. And yet... you try to make the argument "everyone is supposed to be able to use it?"
When the Government gets involved and starts picking favored children to be spoiled with our money,
68,000,000,000 dollars per year goes to the "favored children" of the fossil fuel production industry. I just want to make sure we're clear on exactly how many zeros are in that: apparently billion isn't something you've wrapped your head around yet.
that violates the principles this country was founded on
Yes, so we should allow the industries that have profited from all that government investment before to continue to do so, without repayment... but give no alternatives equal access to funding, because of principles that you yourself only sometimes adhere too.
And because fossil fuels did this largely without the help of taxpayer subsidies, we have a mature profitable industry.
Did you miss the part where I pointed out there's about 68 billion in subsidies every year going to fossil fuel producers, and renewable energy gets about a sixth of that? And as long as we're talking about "taxpayer subsidies", how about we discuss the storied and terrible history of Standard Oil, which became the first modern monopoly in the world through predatory business practices, rampant exploitation of natural resources, workers, price manipulation, etc. It was the catalyst for the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act and its later dismantlement by the government at significant cost to taxpayers. Most of our domestic oil producers can still trace their roots back to this monolithic entity that at one point controlled over 90% of domestic production and 80% of sales.
See, the problem with your logic is that it's myopic: You think taxpayer dollars only come from government subsidies. But whether you're paying for it due to legislation, or due to malignant business practices, you're still paying for it. The delineation between the two is artificial and arbitrary. Standard Oil, if it existed today, would probably own close to a third of the country, and have an operating revenue of over a trillion USD. That trillion a year revenue would be coming out of our pockets.
In short, your logic is bullshit: Every major infrastructure industry in this country depended on the government to get up and running, or to expand to a societal level of influence. Every. Last. One.
You can physically block signals within your property by shielding it, but you cannot do that by emitting any signal without authorization.
Which neatly avoids the question: Do you have the right to do what you want with wireless transmissions occurring on your property? If not, what are the restrictions, and please justify your answers. Now I don't want you to actually answer that -- it's meant to illustrate that the concept of ownership is relevant here; Whether it's a private citizen, or the government; Anything that can be controlled is, by definition, owned. What I'm asking is... to what degree is ownership shared?
Things in the public domain (like airwaves) belong to the public and private businesses...
Private businesses own the spectrum in question. And other private businesses want to block access to those airwaves on their own property. What you're arguing for is that the government should have the ability to tell you what you can (and cannot) do on your own property with regards to wireless spectrum.
But here's the interesting flip -- if you receive transmissions from, say, DISH Network, and use a secret "pirate" decoder ring to watch the free transmissions coming onto your property, you're a criminal. If your neighbor decides to install a high powered hifi audio system that blocks out your wifi and makes it unusuable, you're told to suck it up. And if they don't encrypt it, you're in a legal gray area... etc., etc.
This isn't a clear-cut issue where either the government controls it, or it's public, or it's private sector. All three have legitimate reasons to want to allow or deny access to this resource on their own properties. Regardless of which side of the debate you're on though, it's clear the FCC is a failure as an administrative body -- their rulings are inconsistent, there is no democratic process or any feedback mechanism the public can use to contest it... it's this oblique governmental body that gets to do whatever the hell it wants with this most precious of resources... and as a result, it's become an oppressive regulatory body that infringes on private citizens' rights on a routine basis.
The forced conversion from analog to digital TV netted the FCC a couple hundred billion in spectrum auctioning to large private businesses while the consumers were forced to upgrade to digital televisions that were later determined to have been significantly marked up as a result of collusion by manufacturers to inflate the price. And where was the FCC when the public was getting raped over a barrel on the costs of a new TV? Busy bundling their analog-to-digital converter program so badly that there should be a permanent monument erected outside their offices entitled "Institutional Incompetence" and showing a consumer having a flatscreen TV shoved sideways into their unmentionables.
That said... people shouldn't be jamming the airwaves... but their interests in restricting the use of certain electronic devices (and by extension, wireless spectrum) on their own property, is something the FCC needs to address.
So what? It costs more, if you're spending Other Peoples' Money. Also existing development is a sunk cost. Sure, maybe some renewable alternative would cost less to research than has been spent on a fossil fuel rival. But the latter exists now and doesn't require you to spend more to make it work. That's a powerful advantage.
Okay, so short version is... after you spend a trillion dollars to make something work, getting something else to work at a fraction of that cost is wrong because of [bullshit political reason]. Meanwhile, oil supplies continue to dwindle, and our planet is heating up so fast that by some estimates, in another 20 years we won't have ice in antarctica. Clearly, us all roasting to death as most of the planet becomes an inhospitable desert is preferable to violating the tenets of (mumble mumble) other people's money (mumble).
409 billion to 66 billion? Why don't you look at dollars per megawatt generated.
Well, that's a really good question. I suppose it has something to do with the difference between maintaining an existing technology and infrastructure that depends on a dwindling and non-replaceable natural resource, as opposed to developing new technologies and infrastructure that rely on one or more natural resources which are neither. So "dollars per megawatt" is the wrong metric to be using in this case.
Now, if we were to compare renewable energy over the entire developmental history of fossil fuels... we'd see that it cost a lot of money to make small, incremental improvements. You're making an apples to oranges comparison.
PS, I kind of like the TN law, its not instant, theres a process to go though to improve student performance, if you and your child DO NOT choose to actually work for their education, why the fuck should we be paying both of you to sit on your ass all day for yet ANOTHER generation?
Hey, I've got a great idea! How about we take Little Timmy here, who's poor and hungry, and make him poorer and tell him it's his fault! I bet that'll encourage him to bust a nut on the next standardized test. Meanwhile, other kids, who are also doing crappy on standardized tests but aren't poor... they still get government assistance in the form of, I don't know... police service, roads, fire department, etc.
How exactly is it moral or ethical to deny only poor children access to food unless they perform well academically? Please, I really want to know.
I've been sitting here for ten minutes and I got nothin'.
A planned for wind farm near Nantucket ... Okay, maybe it's not dirty... but better than nothing. :D
Risked the view of a rich tourist's junket
So a judge stepped on in
Said, "give safety a spin"
"To test the idea, then I'll flunk it."
Parent apparently didn't read the article, where it said, amongst other things, "politics and ghastly bureaucracies have thwarted efforts to adopt offshore wind farms in the US," "While the US is still waiting for its first offshore wind farm, much of the developed world has already," "everything from 'visual pollution' to the 'desecration of Indian burial grounds' have been thrown at Cape Wind"... Yeah. Sure sounds like money is the problem there.
But since you don't know where to start "with all the money dumped into failed energy projects", here is as good a place as any. "According to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuels received $409 billion in subsidies globally in 2010, compared with $66 billion for renewable power." So how come a mature and developed industry needs six TIMES the amount of subsidies that research and development does? Is fossil fuel not profitable or something?
If we want to talk about wasting money on "failed energy projects", I can think of no better example than our wasteful spending on fossil fuel subsidies. Probably not what you had in mind though when you made your off the cuff remark though, eh?
Meanwhile, in the United States... research and development cut. NASA budget shrunk. Science and engineering degrees from new graduates at all time lows. And at least one state (Tennessee) has recently tried to pass a law to make our educational system an actual Hunger Games by witholding food assistance from poor families with students who do poorly on state-administered exams.
Thank you, Japan, for investing in us... because we sure as hell aren't.
If you ran an open relay you were on the right end of a blacklisting.
Right, because although we're after the content of these e-mails, guilt by association is a perfectly valid technique for eliminating spam. Just like bombing a city to get rid of the army in it is totally okay... nevermind the civilians.
. Your process needs to be simple and verifiable,
The process can't be simple because spammers are endlessly creative with how they try to get past the filters. And if it was verifiable, that would mean published -- and once published, becomes useless. Spammers can simply test their latest creation against your filter, and now you effectively have given them a way to bypass your entire process, making it worthless.
and to compensate for any errors, you want your process to be transparent to the public
The administrative process can be transparent, but the technical process, as outlined above, cannot.
with clear points of contact and line of responsibility.
The problem here is; how do you tell the liars from the rest? Responsibility is fine, clear points of contact are fine, but what's the criterion for delineating between 'spam' and 'marketing'? How about between 'spam' and 'opt-in' that the user no longer wants? How about between... you get the idea. There is some grey here, and odds are good you're going to find someone doing something with a legitimate and ethical reason, that by all appearances... isn't. And then you're going to make a decision based on those appearances (because what else can you go on?) and then you're going to burn a bridge down.
These problems can't be solved with a handwave and a post on an internet forum.
but unless you can site some specific regulation or authority that provides and exception to low-altitude trespassing in general for any random flying craft, then I think you're just making some wrong assumptions.
Hot air balloon landings have plenty of legal precident. None of them end with "and you can shoot at them during landing." Now, while it's been established that in cases of emergency -- or because the aircraft simply lacks the ability to prevent landing on your property (or anyone else's for that matter), it doesn't become yours, nor do you get any rights to it, including the right to move it. The police have to do that. Yes, it's been to court. There have been assholes with guns that have tried to attack the balloonist and then keep the chase vehicle off the property. It didn't end well for them... and by not ending well, I mean they were led away in handcuffs, possibly unpleasantly depending on how they used their weapon.
But you know what? Amazingly, hot air balloon events happen every fall, all over the country, and both the balloonists and the property owners manage to settle their differences peacefully, without guns, debates about privacy, land ownership rights, etc. It goes a little like this, "Sorry I landed in your corn field. We can pay you for the damage." And the property owner responds with, "Hey, that's cool. Just sign here." And away they both go, satisfied and without any violence or involvement of the legal system.
Amazingly, this happens about 99.95% of the time. Of the remaining 0.05%, some fucker decided to be an unreaonable prick, and was punished accordingly for it. Very occasionally, said fucker causes death and/or destruction before said punishment is handed down... usually with some additional helpings on top.
99.95% of the laws on the books are to deal with that random crazy asshole. Laws aren't needed for reasonable people, and reasonable people don't need to concern themselves with the law. All this talk about regulating drones is silly, because none of the regulations discussed either in the original article, or any of these replies on slashdot, actually goes to answering the question -- what do you do with that 0.05%?
The legislator should know better than to try to write blanket legislation that has no precident -- you write laws based on things that are actual problems, not imaginary ones. When we actually have a case of some asshole flying a drone over some other asshole's property, and they (predictably) decide to be assholes to each other with escalating levels of assholery, then we'll have something to legislate. And the law should narrowly and only target the two assholes. The specific mechanics of it, I leave up to you, the reader, or the legislator who will never read this.
But that's the only reasonable way to deal with the law; reactively. We can't predict what the assholes of the world are going to come up with next as a punishment upon themselves and us... we just have to wait and see. Because they are endlessly resourceful and unreasonable; But there are thankfully not very many of them.
So we observe them, document the behavior, test the hypothesis, and then present a conclusion (ie, a new law). And thus the law moves incrementally forward, and we as reasonable people can get on with our reasonable lives, trusting that unreasonable people will be slowly, but inexorably, pushed to the periphery.
Because the conservatives will have raised a hefty charity pool among themselves and mailed it anonymously to the address, while a Prius full of liberals would have done nothing, smug in the satisfaction that the tax dollars from the truck full of conservatives kept the single mother in bondage to the liberal government?
You don't watch the news much, do you? They're trying to turn public education into an actual Hunger Games... do you really think they're into charity?
Don't vote for the 2 major parties. Vote for a 3rd party, write in a name or just put none of the above.
In closely-contested races, it's well-known that the opposing party will try to split the vote by trying to get more voters to endorse the third party, and thus the voting power of the opposition is reduced. Your suggestion here is criminally naive. That said, if a state is already "overwhelmingly" one thing or another, then odds are good there's an active minority party with similar affiliations to the dominant party; funded by the opposition.
If you want to change the two-party system, start by pushing for things like direct democracy; also known as the referendum vote. California is the most obvious example, but there are many others with it to varying degrees. This is what I tell everyone disaffected with the current system: Don't try to reform it, bypass it. The successful and viable third party will come through grass-roots issues like this. It's what Occupy should have done, instead of shooting itself in the head with petty infighting and disorganization, ultimately making it easy to destroy: Pick one issue, hammer it until you win, then pick a new one. You need votes, not picket lines.
I agree. that's why we need more :snip:
I think you didn't read the article. What this guy is saying is, you can get more of anybody in office by simply lying about their answers after having them take a survey. If you hire a whole bunch of people to do this before an election, maybe you can swing it your way. It's certainly no less ethical than how candidates buy,er, I mean, win elections today.
The rest of your comment was such an attention-whoring grab to support your own idiosyncratic beliefs and annoyingly full of logic fail that you should probably stay away from hospitals, nuclear reactors, or anything else that has digital components, at least for a few days until the fail has time to boil off.
This study is pretty obviously not statistically relevant
That's a really great statement there, and I'mma let you finish, but statistical relevance has no relevance here. It's a intellectual-sounding mean-nothing. What you meant was probably statistical significance. And the test of significance is met if the result is unlikely to have happened by chance alone.
You're going to have a hard time justifying a position that this guy's results were just a statistical fluke. You may disagree with the results. You may disagree with the method. You may even disagree with the hypothesis. But you can't say it is a "belief". The only belief here is your own: Specifically, that you believe people's political orientations can't be easily changed because you believe your political orientation is less malleable than what the author has demonstrated.
Sorry but us Americans are stubborn assholes who dont care about the issues all we care about is what the party says on the issue.
Hi. I'm an American too. We aren't all stubborn assholes. Case in point, I tracked down this poster and told a truck full of passing conservatives that a single mother lived at the poster's home address and was collecting welfare. I don't think we'll be seeing him after tonight.
Somewhat more seriously though, to the international community: We're sick of the two-party system too. It's a joke; Nobody really feels their interests are well-represented by either party. As a result, we've taken to discussing politics like it's a sporting event -- we bet on which team will win, scream and dance around in our underwear in front of the TV during the national debates, and get drunk and then either cry, or riot, when our team wins. Because while our political system is shit, we still really, really enjoy watching people we don't like fail. Take Romney for example -- his epic failure kept me happy (and warm!) through most of the frigid Midwestern winter.
Seriously, you had an ex girlfriend named... Wayland? Did "she" have stubble too?
Google for "Susan Wayland" sometime, when you're not at work. When you're done wanking, come back and tell me about that 'stubble' she has.
And then Mark Zuckerberg formed a new polical lobby for Snow Flake Preservation.
Zynga then promptly released a game where you can buy virtual snowflakes to drop on your farms, but was sued by Apple for patent infringment over it's slide-to-drop snowflake technology. Microsoft released a snowflake player called 'Snune', but was widely panned by critics as being inferior to all other offers. A few weeks later, it quietly disappeared. Regular slashdot readers blamed stagnancy in cloud technologies for the lack of high performance snow, and girlintraining continued to snark the crap out of everything she comes across...
...Moments later, the pictures were uploaded to Instagram with a vintage filter, and ceased being cool.
a) Wayland is cool /. news for nerds story.
b) Sailfish is cool
c) Jolla is cool
So all around a classic
I really only have one question... why are all these open source projects named after ex-girlfriends?
The reported reasoning for making Wayland support Android GPU drivers was difficulty in ODM vendors not wishing to offer driver support for platforms aside from Android."
Why support yesterday's phone when you can just tell your users to buy tomorrow's? This kind of progressive thinking hurts profits. Profits are people. Therefore, you should be arrested. :/
And that's the problem. He's right and it goes against every dumb thing you were taught in grade school. You're taught American Exceptionalism and how scary the commies and their governments were. But fact is that small governments get picked apart by corporations. Divide and conquer. Remember that picture of the snake cut to bits? Seriously, there's a reason we have a Federal gov't, and the power your average multi-national wields today would make the British empire run for the hills.
American Exceptionalism? I'm sure that nobody's national anthem starts off with "We're Number Two." Lay off on the culture-bash. I don't assume that the British are a bunch of incompetent sods just because that's what most of your sitcoms and popular media is based off of, notably Top Gear. I take it for what it is: Entertainment. Likewise, take what you see on our popular media with the same large grain of salt.
But fact is that small governments get picked apart by corporations. Divide and conquer. Remember that picture of the snake cut to bits? Seriously, there's a reason we have a Federal gov't, and the power your average multi-national wields today would make the British empire run for the hills.
You're kidding, right? They sell to you guys too. And our multi-national corporations are more skittish about EU and UK law than US law... which has about as much teeth in it as a room full of octogenarians. EU and UK law actually respects you, as the individual. It doesn't say you're a "consumer", but a "citizen", and UK citizenship is something taken seriously in your country. It means something. Over here, the only thing it means is that the conservatives can't bitch you don't pay taxes.