When I was studying computer science in University, we had an interesting subject on Computers and Society, that consisted basically of a load of guest-lectures by very different people to different aspects of the influence of computers on society.
One of these lectures was by Inger Marie Sunde, then chief of the Norwegian Special command on economical crime and computer-crime.
She said a lot that made sense, but ALSO made the (to me) incredible claim that in USA alone, 400 children are abducted every year after contact with pedophiles on the Internet. (this was 6 years ago, when internet-usage was much lower than today)
I found the claim hard to believe and asked for a reference for it, which she, offcourse, couldn't remember off-hand, but promised to send to me by email after returning to her office.
Turns out that 400 was right. But none of the rest was.
Unless, offcourse, you want to count "16 year old girls runs away from home together with her 18 year old boyfriend with whom she often chatted on the Internet" as a case of "child abducted after contact with pedophiles on the internet".
Extremely misleading, and it gets worse -- according to the source, many of the teenagers run away from home because of abuse at home of some kind. So actually, many of the cases are examples of children -escaping- from abuse rather than entering into it.
And this wasn't a run-of-the-mill cop either -- but the boss of the department responsible for computer crime. And it was in Norway, not USA. In general the pedophile-hysteria is somewhat more moderate here than over there.
You do it too, to some degree: assume that any sexual contact is abuse, or atleast you say there's a big difference between being attracted to someone and abusing them. This is true, offcourse, but actually, depending on your definition offcourse, many if not most adolescents have a sex life, and a tiny fraction of that (which is still too much, but let's keep a perspective, yes ?) is any kind of abuse.
Actually, no. If a significant part of the people buying such deals tended to max it out, the deals would rise in price, sharply.
But an individual can max the deal out for years and DreamHost are perfectly happy about it. Because it gives them marketing, like this very conversation we're having here and now.
You'll *want* to upgrade for other reasons though, if you're serving a million songs a month, then even if it's just adds, you're probably making 10K/month from the website, with that kind of income, it makes precisely zero sense to stick with the $6/month deal when you get better performance and more reliability with a $19/month $99/month or $599/month deal.
Actually, most people mess around with the labels. Including you it seems:-)
Someone who "messes around with" a 15-year old isn't an opportunistic rapist, not if the girl consents. Yes, I know that the law in some jurisdictions label such "rape" or "statutory rape", however keep the old joke in mind: "How many legs does a horse have if you call the tail a leg ?" -- answer: "4 -- calling it a leg doesn't *make* it a leg."
There is essentially -nothing- in common between the experience of a 15 year old girl who chooses to have sex with her 18 year old boyfriend on the one hand, and a similarily aged person who is -raped-. It may be the in some jurisdictions both are illegal. But both being illegal does -also- not make the two situations the same or even similar.
Laws also claim 15-year olds aren't "capable" of consenting, so thus coersion is assumed. There's fine reasons for keeping the law that way, but there's no reason to believe REALITY works that way. 15 year olds are infact perfectly capable of consenting or rejecting any number of ideas, including, but not limited to, having sex.
In sane jurisdictions there's exceptions for if the partners are similar in age or development. It makes precisely no sense at all to punish a 16-year old for sleeping with a 15-year old, it's essentially random chance who is the older one and in any case girls (mostly the younger part) tend to be more mature than boys in the 13-18 age-bracket anyway, perhaps due to the earlier puberty.
Actually, no. Pedophilia means the primary or exclusive sexual attraction towards prepubescent children.
A 15 year old doesn't fit the category, especially not if it's a girl since they tend to enter puberty earlier than the boys. Now, if someone primarily, or exclusively, thinks that 12 year olds are "hot", then that fits the description.
What makes it problematic is lack of an acceptable outlet. Sure, most people control their own sexuality to avoid doing stupid things most of the time. That's somewhat different from making it -all- of the time even when you've got no acceptable substitute available.
You say most people probably at some point or other saw a 15-year-old that they found attractive. True I guess, but most of those people -also- see attractive 17-year-old, 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds (depending on your own age and preferences I guess), so just because -SOME- people you find attractive are off-limits ain't much of a problem aslong as there's a large selection of people who are not off limits and which you also find attractive.
Press-releases don't work like that, you have to listen to what they very spesifically -AVOID- saying.
Rumor: "Paramount will no longer be HD-DVD exclusive".
Press-release: "Our current plan is to continue supporting HD-DVD".
Notice what they are carefully NOT saying:
They don't say they are still planning to support HD-DVD *exclusively* (which they did up until now). They don't say that they won't be bringing future films out on Blu-ray. They don't say that the exclusive deal is still in effect. They don't say that they are not moving to Blu-Ray.
It's pretty likely that if they didn't spesifically avoid saying things, the sentence would be:
"Our current plan is to continue supporting HD-DVD until we've sold out or stock of HD-DVD movies and can manage to ramp up Blu-Ray production, thereafter we'll mostly be bringing out Blu-Ray releases".
Notice that this isn't contradicted by anything they actually said.
pennies per track is an overstatement even in low volume.
Let's see, cheap entry-level hosting let's say with DreamHost is $6/month, and that includes 5TB of bandwith. The average song is aproximately 5MB, so this works out to a million songs downloaded for $6. So not only does it not cost -pennies- per track, infact it doesn't even get close to a single penny for a track.
Instead, you can serve up 1500 tracks -- and pay a single penny for the bandwith consumed by all of them in sum.
Physical distribution over the internet is MINDBOGGLINGLY cheap.
There is a really simple reason this isn't done more:
Buying, installing and operating the solar powerplant costs MORE than you can expect to make back by selling the generated electricity. It's not profitable, plain and simple.
That may change: solar cells gets cheaper and better all the time, and electricity has an upwards price-trend. The minute the curves cross, people *will* do this.
Solar ain't that bad, if it could be made cheaper and higher efficiency.
Covering desert is one option, but probably better for the environment is having a lot of small plants. Like covering roofs with them. That won't cover your -entire- energyneed, but it'll help quite a bit, and the impact on nature is going to be much lower since the roof is there anyway, and it makes little difference what it's made of.
I already said it sucks if you're a -flat- country or one with little rainfall. Being big on the other hand is no disadvantage, if a country is ten times as big and has ten times the population, then it can (-duh-) invest in ten times as many hydroelecctric powerplants.
Some truth to that. A hydroelectric powerplant is essentially printing money after initial investments are paid off. Even when you factor those in, many hydroelectric powerplants have delivered back tenfold the money originally invested in them, or more.
Myself, I bougth some stock in one of them; Arendals Fossekompani some 3-4 years back, because I was annoyed at constantly rising energy-prices and figured I might as well arrange to -benefit- from that rather than be annoyed at that.
One of the best buys I ever made, now 3 years later the stock is up +230% in *addition* to having paid steady dividends in the 4-5% range every year, so in sum, my investment has aproximately quadrupled in 3 years. Side-benefit: It no longer annoys me when it rains, I just visualize it as pennies descending into my bank-account and feel a whole lot better about it. Recommended strategy !
Well, it's sort of nonsensical to spesifically critisize Australia for something that is true pretty much everywhere, no ?
You also said "What you have there in Australia" "sounds like a pretty awful place to live", which also makes no sense whatsoever if what you actually meant is: "What we have in pretty much all countries" and "sounds like a pretty average place to live".
*shrug* no solution will work for everyone. It's not quite as bad as you make it out to be though.
First, most mountaineous regions are infact not very densely populated, most cities tend to be at the coast, or failing that along bigger rivers in the valleys and on the plains. Supplying a large city in the high mountains was basically impossible until recently, so there just ain't all that many of them in reality.
(what is the largest US city above 1000 meters ? How many of you personally live above 1000m ?)
Second, you don't always have to build dams, there's these things known as lakes that will work. To be able to use them as magazines, you do need -either- to make them larger with a dam, -or- to enable tapping them below normal minimum waterlevel by for example drilling a tunnel from the powerplant to a point 15 meter under the normal watersurface. That will yield a lake that sometimes sinks deeper than it naturally would, which -IS- one of the negative impacts I mentioned in the GP.
640 square km is -huge- If your dam has that area, and is say 100m high, then you have 64 cubic km of water, or 64 billion cubic meters. If that magazine was at 1000 meters (I think Hoover is less, but these things vary), then the energy stored in the dam is 64 000 000 000 * 9.8 * 1000 J = 175 Gwh
Third, nothing is -perfect-. I think hydroelectric is pretty darn good. But yes, sure, there's disadvantages. Isn't there to -everything- ?
Some natural energy-sources (all energy-sources are "natural" by the way, why don't you use the standard terminology and refer to them as "renewable" energy-sources?) are very well able to accomodate fluctuations in demand and produce when we need the power, infact better than nuclear. (most of the cost in nuclear is constructing, safety and decommision, fuel is a pittance, which mean if you throttle down a nuclear powerplant you save essentially nothing. Yes you can do it, but the cost of producing at 25% is going to be 95% of the cost of producing at full-throttle)
For example, in Norway we produce much of our power using hydroelectric powerplants that run water coming from large magazines in our high mountains trough turbines attached to generators. Very nice:
The magazines are re-filled automagically by a process known as "rain" (solar-powered!)
The magazines store enough energy for like half a YEAR of use, so even longish periods of drougth are no problem.
The powerplants can be ramped up or down according to need inside of less than a minute. Significantly faster than most fossil-fuel-burning powerplants.
Efficiency is high, about 90% in a modern powerplant.
Low impact: some lakes have water-levels that vary more than is natural, a few dams, some rivers have less water in them then they would naturally have. That's about it, the powerplant itself is typically in a mountain-cave and neither visible nor hearable.
It's an excellent thing for combining with other renewables: When the sun shines, use that. When the wind blows, use that. When tides are strong, use those. When neither produces much, dial up a hydroelectric or two.
Better still:
With modest investment, the things can be used as batteries: If you've at any time got to -much- power from other sources, use excess power to pump water uphill to one of the magazines, where it can be stored safely for months until needed. (yeah, this pump-turbine cycle will waste like 40% of your power, but that's true for most other kinds of batteries too)
Sucks if you live somewhere -flat- with no or little rainfall, I guess.
Very VERY true, I put it differently: It is a voting-system that prohibits POLITICAL parties, in favor of GEOGRAPHIC parties, which is a bad thing.
Imagine 2 different parties in a country with 500 'first past the post' districts:
Party A is based on a political platform, be it "green" or "liberal" or whatever, they get aproximately 25% of the votes everywhere, and not a single representative.
Party B is a geographical party, let's call them the "Texan party", they get essentially zero votes everywhere, except in Texas, (let's say Texas has 10% of the total population) where they win with 50% of the votes (the rest of the votes are split among other contenders)
"Green party" has 25% of all votes and zero representation. "Texan party" has 5% of the votes (half of the 10% in Texas), and is represented by 10% of all the representatives.
This sound "fair" or "balanced" to anyone ?
In addition to this, one-man districts encourages few and big parties (mostly just 2) because being second-largest everywhere brings nothing at all.
We (Norway) has proportional voting from party list -- but you can make changes to the lists if you like, like rearranging the list, or striking one or more candidates on the list, or even add a candidate from another list.
Making such changes makes no difference to how -many- a party gets in, but it can (and has) change -who- gets in.
It's not perfect, not even close. But it's a lot better than many commonly used alternatives. It's succeeded in avoiding a two-party state, for starters, which seem to be the stable end-result in all-too-many voting-systems.
What if candidate A is -sligthly- prefered by 51% of the voters, but they really are very close to "don't care", while candidate B is -VERY- strongly prefered by 49% of the voters ?
Yeah, it's a matter of definition what is "fair" in such a case.
That being said, arguments about "perfect" elections is a distraction. Yes, nothing is perfect. This should however not take focus away from the main point: lots of systems (all of them basically) are MUCH better than the current US one.
Just because we can't get a -perfect- result is no reason not to go for a BETTER result than the one we have today.
That's why then, in USA you're -allowed- to grow your own marijuana and smoke it all you like -- aslong as you don't, for example, drive while intoxicated. (which would endanger others)
You're also allowed to drink beer at 18 (again, provided you do it in a way that won't endanger others), walk nude trough town, sell your left kidney, marry your sister provided you get sterilised or are infertile, live in polygamy (or polyandri), or, for that matter, paint your house bright pink.
Which USA is this again ? Certainly not the one over in North-America, there people regularily get punished for all of these, and a million other crimes which hurt nobody other than possibly themselves. (unless you adopt an extremely silly definition of "hurt")
All governments aer "nannies" to larger or smaller degree. Overall I'm not convinced the US one is all that much less nannyistic than say the Australian or many European ones.
True, blimps will -certainly- use more fuel than ships, and they're -much- more weather-dependant, for a blimp, 20mph head-wind means 20mph slower progress, simple as that. For a ship it also makes a difference, but much less so.
Blimps can move fster than ships, and they're not limited to places with maneuvrable water. Cargolifter in Germany (which went spectacularily bankrupt, by the way) had a business-plan that mostly involved heavy-lifting away-from-water. If you've got something heavy that you want to put somewhere, and it's too heavy for a helicopter, blimps could be it.
Nobody knows if the plan would've worked -- they went bankrupt long before even -starting- construction on even a prototype blimp. The only blimps they ever had was one or two small used ones they bougth and flew around in for marketing. (don't get me started on the ineptitude of that firm.... Blowing trough 100 million or so, without even having -started- building a prototype is downrigth hard to believe, though they -did- build a major-ass hangar that today serves as a "tropical paradise" near Berlin)
So, how exactly does retroactively extending terms for works created 50 years ago, partially by people now dead, create an increased economic incentive for anything ? (answer: it doesn't, relevant for the creation of new works is only the incentives offered for -new- works)
For that matters, in economical terms, what is the difference between X for the next 50 years and X forever, if we assume 5% yearly deprecation ? (answer: in economical terms, 50 years is 95% of forever, at that deprecation-rate)
Given your answer to the last question, how much of an increased incentive is extensions to copyrigth likely to create at this point ? (answer: effectively zero, atleast significantly less than 5% of a economical boost)
Won't make much difference, we had -several- revolutions like this, and never did it cause religion to "go away", allthough it has, I guess, played a role in diminishing the power of religion.
People used to think that the earth was the centre of the universe, somehow religion didn't evaporate when, as it turns out, earth is merely one planet among a dozen orbiting one star out of billions in one galaxy out of billions.
People used to think human beings where "special" created in the image of God. As it turns out we're just smarter primates, sharing ancestors not only with the rest of the primates, but also with all other mammals, all other things with a spine, and indeed, probably every other living thing on this planet. Still, religion was shocked, still is in some parts of the world I hear, but somehow they got over it.
If, as it turns out, we're -ALSO- no special in being intelligent, -ALSO- no special in being a planet with life on it, frankly, that'd just be more stones to the existing wall.
The more interesting question is what's the horse and what's the cart ? Copyrights are being extended everywhere, oft with reference to "international agreements", but if countries can agree to strengthen and lengthen terms, what stops them from doing the oposite ?
That's different. No single person is the right person for -every- job. That's flat-out impossible. Given that bosses often are not experts in every field where their employees are, it is a given that oftentimes the boss is incapable of judging the difficulty of a task, or if the employee is capable of performing it or not.
Learning is investment, so thats also different. If I say: I'm not really familiar with this library, I'll probably spend a week doing this assignment and I find it quite likely someone familiar with the library could perform it in a day. Then it's perfectly OK for the boss to say: "That's fine, you spend the week, I expect we'll be using this library a lot so its worth the time-investment for you to become familiar with it."
It assumes that culture is something static, external to us, that we at best leave alone, lest we inadvertently damage it somehow.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Culture is what we do and why we do it. If everyone acted like you -- careful not to work for change, then we'd still be living in caves and still perform whatever cultural rituals our ancestors did back then, in the caves.
No, a living culture needs the oposite: People who are creative. People who are passionate. People who figth for what they believe in. People who create something NEW. People who critisize old habits that they find faults with. People who use their voice.
The fact that you're living as a minority makes no difference whatsoever, cultures where *always* formed in no small part trough influences from travellers and immigrants. More variation, new impulses, a fresh look on things is a strong -plus- for a culture, not a minus. Even though yes it often leads to increased friction in the short term. (all change comes with friction so this is non-surprising).
It's hardly an accident that so much new art, new music, new literary works, new architecture, new religions, whatever sprang up exactly where diverse people-groups rubbed up against eachother. It's no -accident- that islam, judaism and christianity arose where they did, to take one random example -- that *IS* where Africa, Asia and Europe rubs into eachother.
Slashdot Mirror
The police could disappoint you.
When I was studying computer science in University, we had an interesting subject on Computers and Society, that consisted basically of a load of guest-lectures by very different people to different aspects of the influence of computers on society.
One of these lectures was by Inger Marie Sunde, then chief of the Norwegian Special command on economical crime and computer-crime.
She said a lot that made sense, but ALSO made the (to me) incredible claim that in USA alone, 400 children are abducted every year after contact with pedophiles on the Internet. (this was 6 years ago, when internet-usage was much lower than today)
I found the claim hard to believe and asked for a reference for it, which she, offcourse, couldn't remember off-hand, but promised to send to me by email after returning to her office.
Turns out that 400 was right. But none of the rest was.
Unless, offcourse, you want to count "16 year old girls runs away from home together with her 18 year old boyfriend with whom she often chatted on the Internet" as a case of "child abducted after contact with pedophiles on the internet".
Extremely misleading, and it gets worse -- according to the source, many of the teenagers run away from home because of abuse at home of some kind. So actually, many of the cases are examples of children -escaping- from abuse rather than entering into it.
And this wasn't a run-of-the-mill cop either -- but the boss of the department responsible for computer crime. And it was in Norway, not USA. In general the pedophile-hysteria is somewhat more moderate here than over there.
You do it too, to some degree: assume that any sexual contact is abuse, or atleast you say there's a big difference between being attracted to someone and abusing them. This is true, offcourse, but actually, depending on your definition offcourse, many if not most adolescents have a sex life, and a tiny fraction of that (which is still too much, but let's keep a perspective, yes ?) is any kind of abuse.
Actually, no. If a significant part of the people buying such deals tended to max it out, the deals would rise in price, sharply.
But an individual can max the deal out for years and DreamHost are perfectly happy about it. Because it gives them marketing, like this very conversation we're having here and now.
You'll *want* to upgrade for other reasons though, if you're serving a million songs a month, then even if it's just adds, you're probably making 10K/month from the website, with that kind of income, it makes precisely zero sense to stick with the $6/month deal when you get better performance and more reliability with a $19/month $99/month or $599/month deal.
Actually, most people mess around with the labels. Including you it seems :-)
Someone who "messes around with" a 15-year old isn't an opportunistic rapist, not if the girl consents. Yes, I know that the law in some jurisdictions label such "rape" or "statutory rape", however keep the old joke in mind: "How many legs does a horse have if you call the tail a leg ?" -- answer: "4 -- calling it a leg doesn't *make* it a leg."
There is essentially -nothing- in common between the experience of a 15 year old girl who chooses to have sex with her 18 year old boyfriend on the one hand, and a similarily aged person who is -raped-. It may be the in some jurisdictions both are illegal. But both being illegal does -also- not make the two situations the same or even similar.
Laws also claim 15-year olds aren't "capable" of consenting, so thus coersion is assumed. There's fine reasons for keeping the law that way, but there's no reason to believe REALITY works that way. 15 year olds are infact perfectly capable of consenting or rejecting any number of ideas, including, but not limited to, having sex.
In sane jurisdictions there's exceptions for if the partners are similar in age or development. It makes precisely no sense at all to punish a 16-year old for sleeping with a 15-year old, it's essentially random chance who is the older one and in any case girls (mostly the younger part) tend to be more mature than boys in the 13-18 age-bracket anyway, perhaps due to the earlier puberty.
Actually, no. Pedophilia means the primary or exclusive sexual attraction towards prepubescent children.
A 15 year old doesn't fit the category, especially not if it's a girl since they tend to enter puberty earlier than the boys. Now, if someone primarily, or exclusively, thinks that 12 year olds are "hot", then that fits the description.
What makes it problematic is lack of an acceptable outlet. Sure, most people control their own sexuality to avoid doing stupid things most of the time. That's somewhat different from making it -all- of the time even when you've got no acceptable substitute available.
You say most people probably at some point or other saw a 15-year-old that they found attractive. True I guess, but most of those people -also- see attractive 17-year-old, 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds (depending on your own age and preferences I guess), so just because -SOME- people you find attractive are off-limits ain't much of a problem aslong as there's a large selection of people who are not off limits and which you also find attractive.
Press-releases don't work like that, you have to listen to what they very spesifically -AVOID- saying.
Rumor: "Paramount will no longer be HD-DVD exclusive".
Press-release: "Our current plan is to continue supporting HD-DVD".
Notice what they are carefully NOT saying:
They don't say they are still planning to support HD-DVD *exclusively* (which they did up until now). They don't say that they won't be bringing future films out on Blu-ray. They don't say that the exclusive deal is still in effect. They don't say that they are not moving to Blu-Ray.
It's pretty likely that if they didn't spesifically avoid saying things, the sentence would be:
"Our current plan is to continue supporting HD-DVD until we've sold out or stock of HD-DVD movies and can manage to ramp up Blu-Ray production, thereafter we'll mostly be bringing out Blu-Ray releases".
Notice that this isn't contradicted by anything they actually said.
pennies per track is an overstatement even in low volume.
Let's see, cheap entry-level hosting let's say with DreamHost is $6/month, and that includes 5TB of bandwith. The average song is aproximately 5MB, so this works out to a million songs downloaded for $6. So not only does it not cost -pennies- per track, infact it doesn't even get close to a single penny for a track.
Instead, you can serve up 1500 tracks -- and pay a single penny for the bandwith consumed by all of them in sum.
Physical distribution over the internet is MINDBOGGLINGLY cheap.
There is a really simple reason this isn't done more:
Buying, installing and operating the solar powerplant costs MORE than you can expect to make back by selling the generated electricity. It's not profitable, plain and simple.
That may change: solar cells gets cheaper and better all the time, and electricity has an upwards price-trend. The minute the curves cross, people *will* do this.
Solar ain't that bad, if it could be made cheaper and higher efficiency. Covering desert is one option, but probably better for the environment is having a lot of small plants. Like covering roofs with them. That won't cover your -entire- energyneed, but it'll help quite a bit, and the impact on nature is going to be much lower since the roof is there anyway, and it makes little difference what it's made of.
Your point being ?
I already said it sucks if you're a -flat- country or one with little rainfall. Being big on the other hand is no disadvantage, if a country is ten times as big and has ten times the population, then it can (-duh-) invest in ten times as many hydroelecctric powerplants.
Some truth to that. A hydroelectric powerplant is essentially printing money after initial investments are paid off. Even when you factor those in, many hydroelectric powerplants have delivered back tenfold the money originally invested in them, or more.
Myself, I bougth some stock in one of them; Arendals Fossekompani some 3-4 years back, because I was annoyed at constantly rising energy-prices and figured I might as well arrange to -benefit- from that rather than be annoyed at that.
One of the best buys I ever made, now 3 years later the stock is up +230% in *addition* to having paid steady dividends in the 4-5% range every year, so in sum, my investment has aproximately quadrupled in 3 years. Side-benefit: It no longer annoys me when it rains, I just visualize it as pennies descending into my bank-account and feel a whole lot better about it. Recommended strategy !
Well, it's sort of nonsensical to spesifically critisize Australia for something that is true pretty much everywhere, no ?
You also said "What you have there in Australia" "sounds like a pretty awful place to live", which also makes no sense whatsoever if what you actually meant is: "What we have in pretty much all countries" and "sounds like a pretty average place to live".
*shrug* no solution will work for everyone. It's not quite as bad as you make it out to be though.
First, most mountaineous regions are infact not very densely populated, most cities tend to be at the coast, or failing that along bigger rivers in the valleys and on the plains. Supplying a large city in the high mountains was basically impossible until recently, so there just ain't all that many of them in reality.
(what is the largest US city above 1000 meters ? How many of you personally live above 1000m ?)
Second, you don't always have to build dams, there's these things known as lakes that will work. To be able to use them as magazines, you do need -either- to make them larger with a dam, -or- to enable tapping them below normal minimum waterlevel by for example drilling a tunnel from the powerplant to a point 15 meter under the normal watersurface. That will yield a lake that sometimes sinks deeper than it naturally would, which -IS- one of the negative impacts I mentioned in the GP.
640 square km is -huge- If your dam has that area, and is say 100m high, then you have 64 cubic km of water, or 64 billion cubic meters. If that magazine was at 1000 meters (I think Hoover is less, but these things vary), then the energy stored in the dam is 64 000 000 000 * 9.8 * 1000 J = 175 Gwh
Third, nothing is -perfect-. I think hydroelectric is pretty darn good. But yes, sure, there's disadvantages. Isn't there to -everything- ?
For example, in Norway we produce much of our power using hydroelectric powerplants that run water coming from large magazines in our high mountains trough turbines attached to generators. Very nice:
It's an excellent thing for combining with other renewables: When the sun shines, use that. When the wind blows, use that. When tides are strong, use those. When neither produces much, dial up a hydroelectric or two.
Better still:
With modest investment, the things can be used as batteries: If you've at any time got to -much- power from other sources, use excess power to pump water uphill to one of the magazines, where it can be stored safely for months until needed. (yeah, this pump-turbine cycle will waste like 40% of your power, but that's true for most other kinds of batteries too)
Sucks if you live somewhere -flat- with no or little rainfall, I guess.
Very VERY true, I put it differently: It is a voting-system that prohibits POLITICAL parties, in favor of GEOGRAPHIC parties, which is a bad thing.
Imagine 2 different parties in a country with 500 'first past the post' districts:
Party A is based on a political platform, be it "green" or "liberal" or whatever, they get aproximately 25% of the votes everywhere, and not a single representative.
Party B is a geographical party, let's call them the "Texan party", they get essentially zero votes everywhere, except in Texas, (let's say Texas has 10% of the total population) where they win with 50% of the votes (the rest of the votes are split among other contenders)
"Green party" has 25% of all votes and zero representation. "Texan party" has 5% of the votes (half of the 10% in Texas), and is represented by 10% of all the representatives.
This sound "fair" or "balanced" to anyone ?
In addition to this, one-man districts encourages few and big parties (mostly just 2) because being second-largest everywhere brings nothing at all.
We (Norway) has proportional voting from party list -- but you can make changes to the lists if you like, like rearranging the list, or striking one or more candidates on the list, or even add a candidate from another list.
Making such changes makes no difference to how -many- a party gets in, but it can (and has) change -who- gets in.
It's not perfect, not even close. But it's a lot better than many commonly used alternatives. It's succeeded in avoiding a two-party state, for starters, which seem to be the stable end-result in all-too-many voting-systems.
The 2-candidate one is arguable.
What if candidate A is -sligthly- prefered by 51% of the voters, but they really are very close to "don't care", while candidate B is -VERY- strongly prefered by 49% of the voters ?
Yeah, it's a matter of definition what is "fair" in such a case.
That being said, arguments about "perfect" elections is a distraction. Yes, nothing is perfect. This should however not take focus away from the main point: lots of systems (all of them basically) are MUCH better than the current US one.
Just because we can't get a -perfect- result is no reason not to go for a BETTER result than the one we have today.
That's why then, in USA you're -allowed- to grow your own marijuana and smoke it all you like -- aslong as you don't, for example, drive while intoxicated. (which would endanger others)
You're also allowed to drink beer at 18 (again, provided you do it in a way that won't endanger others), walk nude trough town, sell your left kidney, marry your sister provided you get sterilised or are infertile, live in polygamy (or polyandri), or, for that matter, paint your house bright pink.
Which USA is this again ? Certainly not the one over in North-America, there people regularily get punished for all of these, and a million other crimes which hurt nobody other than possibly themselves. (unless you adopt an extremely silly definition of "hurt")
All governments aer "nannies" to larger or smaller degree. Overall I'm not convinced the US one is all that much less nannyistic than say the Australian or many European ones.
True, blimps will -certainly- use more fuel than ships, and they're -much- more weather-dependant, for a blimp, 20mph head-wind means 20mph slower progress, simple as that. For a ship it also makes a difference, but much less so.
Blimps can move fster than ships, and they're not limited to places with maneuvrable water. Cargolifter in Germany (which went spectacularily bankrupt, by the way) had a business-plan that mostly involved heavy-lifting away-from-water. If you've got something heavy that you want to put somewhere, and it's too heavy for a helicopter, blimps could be it.
Nobody knows if the plan would've worked -- they went bankrupt long before even -starting- construction on even a prototype blimp. The only blimps they ever had was one or two small used ones they bougth and flew around in for marketing. (don't get me started on the ineptitude of that firm.... Blowing trough 100 million or so, without even having -started- building a prototype is downrigth hard to believe, though they -did- build a major-ass hangar that today serves as a "tropical paradise" near Berlin)
So, how exactly does retroactively extending terms for works created 50 years ago, partially by people now dead, create an increased economic incentive for anything ? (answer: it doesn't, relevant for the creation of new works is only the incentives offered for -new- works)
For that matters, in economical terms, what is the difference between X for the next 50 years and X forever, if we assume 5% yearly deprecation ? (answer: in economical terms, 50 years is 95% of forever, at that deprecation-rate)
Given your answer to the last question, how much of an increased incentive is extensions to copyrigth likely to create at this point ?
(answer: effectively zero, atleast significantly less than 5% of a economical boost)
Won't make much difference, we had -several- revolutions like this, and never did it cause religion to "go away", allthough it has, I guess, played a role in diminishing the power of religion.
People used to think that the earth was the centre of the universe, somehow religion didn't evaporate when, as it turns out, earth is merely one planet among a dozen orbiting one star out of billions in one galaxy out of billions.
People used to think human beings where "special" created in the image of God. As it turns out we're just smarter primates, sharing ancestors not only with the rest of the primates, but also with all other mammals, all other things with a spine, and indeed, probably every other living thing on this planet. Still, religion was shocked, still is in some parts of the world I hear, but somehow they got over it.
If, as it turns out, we're -ALSO- no special in being intelligent, -ALSO- no special in being a planet with life on it, frankly, that'd just be more stones to the existing wall.
That would however not prevent them from chaning copyright on -new- works.
The more interesting question is what's the horse and what's the cart ? Copyrights are being extended everywhere, oft with reference to "international agreements", but if countries can agree to strengthen and lengthen terms, what stops them from doing the oposite ?
That's different. No single person is the right person for -every- job. That's flat-out impossible. Given that bosses often are not experts in every field where their employees are, it is a given that oftentimes the boss is incapable of judging the difficulty of a task, or if the employee is capable of performing it or not.
Learning is investment, so thats also different. If I say: I'm not really familiar with this library, I'll probably spend a week doing this assignment and I find it quite likely someone familiar with the library could perform it in a day. Then it's perfectly OK for the boss to say: "That's fine, you spend the week, I expect we'll be using this library a lot so its worth the time-investment for you to become familiar with it."
That is a really REALLY silly point of view.
It assumes that culture is something static, external to us, that we at best leave alone, lest we inadvertently damage it somehow.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Culture is what we do and why we do it. If everyone acted like you -- careful not to work for change, then we'd still be living in caves and still perform whatever cultural rituals our ancestors did back then, in the caves.
No, a living culture needs the oposite: People who are creative. People who are passionate. People who figth for what they believe in. People who create something NEW. People who critisize old habits that they find faults with. People who use their voice.
The fact that you're living as a minority makes no difference whatsoever, cultures where *always* formed in no small part trough influences from travellers and immigrants. More variation, new impulses, a fresh look on things is a strong -plus- for a culture, not a minus. Even though yes it often leads to increased friction in the short term. (all change comes with friction so this is non-surprising).
It's hardly an accident that so much new art, new music, new literary works, new architecture, new religions, whatever sprang up exactly where diverse people-groups rubbed up against eachother. It's no -accident- that islam, judaism and christianity arose where they did, to take one random example -- that *IS* where Africa, Asia and Europe rubs into eachother.