And yet you don't include any estimates of the externalities. But "trust us, they're huge".
Because they're a pain in the ass to find and they're still not entirely complete to my satisfaction. ExternE did a good study of external costs and I would also recommend Internalization of the external costs of global environmental damage in an integrated assessment model. The glaring omissions that I see with these studies benefit fossil fuels by being omitted. Costs such as security of energy supply still have not been properly quantified or internalized, and these costs are inarguably huge. Studies that attempt to include climate change costs are remarkably conservative to avoid criticism. If the moderate concerns about climate change turn out to be well-founded, we'll be facing astronomical costs associated with that problem. And that's ignoring the suffering of over a billion people.
"And so, therefore, we'll be forcing you to buy higher-priced, inferior energy from politically-connected rent seeking alternative energy companies. Our self-serving estimates for externalities of our favored energy companies are low."
Or, if you bothered to read the studies, lower-priced energy. Where in the world did you get "inferior energy" from? I must have missed that in my high school physics class. Was it right between chemical and kinetic? Or were you trying to argue a straw man and claim that my argument is that we don't need base load power? That's utter bollocks. I'm a big fan of nuclear power, as well as ongoing research into energy storage. In the end, we desperately need better storage mechanisms, and it'd be awesome to see things like Power Tower able to provide base load power from solar alone.
I also find it pretty amusing that you're trying to accuse the environmental movement of favoring big, evil corporations. Seriously? Who's rent-seeking? The companies that manufacture windmills, all the companies manufacturing and researching solar tech? Are it those evil people who make double-paned windows? Maybe it's the evil bastards who retrofit homes with better insulation. Yeah, must be them. Gold-digging bastards will stop at nothing to conserve energy and make a profit!
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to use unlimited, unsupported, variable fudge factors. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to ignore all external costs simply because they're difficult to quantify. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
Now we've gotten the mudslinging out of the way, perhaps we can get back to having an intellectually honest discussion.
---
Do you at least acknowledge that we don't have an infinite supply of fossil fuels? If so, then surely we agree that at some point in the future we will have to switch to a renewable/sustainable model. The only serious disagreement we should be having, then, is over when that point is, and whether we should try to make the switch before we get there.
Sorry, I think I was interpreting local with a different meaning than you intended, and my use of London Fog as an example only further confused things.
I was pointing to reduced particulate emissions and ozone layer recovery as global, rather than local, improvements. Some other areas we're globally improving in: carbon monoxide emissions, toxic release into environment, and recycling. I would say that, globally, environmental awareness has greatly increased, and that could be seen as another non-local step in the right direction.
Many states are also making significant steps to properly address water consumption, prevent further cropland erosion, stabilize their populations, and switch to renewable (or at least cleaner) energy.
I think it's obvious that, overall, we've made some tremendous strides on a global level. Sure, 3/4 of the areas are still in decline, but we need to celebrate our victories and make them known. A defeatist attitude will just get us a chair at the table next to the guy who's waiting for the second coming.
We are seriously stressing every part of our biosphere.
I agree with you entirely on this, and I'm aware of many of the problems we're creating. My only disagreement was that I don't consider all our successes to be merely local. Perhaps "limited" and "offset by further losses in other areas" would be more precise?
Thanks for your reply! I was actually thinking of LAUSD - my memory tells me they were trying to give Foreign Language credit for it. I can't seem to find anything on the subject, so I'll assume I was wrong on that.
I also did not know that they were able to improve scores with this approach. That is quite interesting. Were there any differences between this approach and California's ESL approach? My own anecdotal experience with ESL was that it created an underclass with poor English skills even into high school.
Your data really doesn't mean much. It's not even real data. How much do you think Coca Cola or GM puts into R&D in comparison? How much do you think they pay back to the government in the cost of trials of their products? The pharmaceutical industry pays big big bucks to the government pass or fail. You don't see that too much outside of the medical industry as a whole.
And the fact is that the industry is spending three times as much in R&D in the last 20 years with no real increase in products to market and costs from the government to the industry are also on the rise. There's a lot more going on there than meet the eye.
If what you say is true, then we can quickly go check stock prices, balance sheets, and dividends to see that most of the big pharmaceutical companies are consistently losing money.
Oh, wait, they're not? Pharma companies have been consistently profiting, even during major economic declines? And the insurance companies are the only sector of the economy seeing 10% annual price inflation in the middle of a major recession? Oh, well then, it seems your argument is utter bollocks.
Now, to the second and more important point, you cannot show me a single study published in the last thirty years that demonstrates that any part of our ecosystem is healthier than it was the year before. Maybe in some extremely local cases there has been progress, but on the whole, every year the earth becomes less capable of supporting life.
While I agree entirely with the rest of your post, I do have to point out that this is incorrect. If you'd like, I can get you some examples and studies later, but there are still a few areas we're doing better in, and many of them are directly due to environmentalist initiatives. London fog, for instance, is a thing of the past. We've had some serious success with the Clean Air act, and many major metropolitan areas have had increasing air quality simply because we're not polluting as badly as we did before.
Other than that, I'll agree that overall we're reducing the Earth's carrying capacity while simultaneously increasing the number of people.
The current price of anything fails to include all of the associated externalities.
To some people, that means "we'll just use the numbers we have". To others, it means "therefore, we can make up any economic argument we want and use externalities as FUD when someone points out how the numbers don't add up".
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you managed to attack a slight miswording. You're glossing over the fact that the externalities are a huge portion of the costs of fossil fuels, and the externalities are a much smaller portion of the cost of renewable energy. You may not be able to ever know, calculate, or include all externalities, but you can surely include all known external costs to the best of your ability.
If we attempt to factor in all of the externalities we know about, fossil fuels end up being pretty damned expensive. Further, they become obviously unsustainable as long-term solutions. The only remaining question, then, is how much more money can be squeezed out of a fossil fuel-based energy economy before we screw ourselves over.
While you are likely correct, one should question if there is any reason for the wealthy to want the U.S. to do well in the future.
If one could make millions in the U.S. by getting the nation into debt, then retire to another country that is benefiting from the debt, they win. It is only the poor, who can not leave, that are dependent on the nation in which they live to be successful.
The rich don't even need to leave. They already have world-class medical care, high-end prostitutes, ready access to recreational drugs, first class or private jets, and large gated communities. They don't have to interact with the poor at all, and they certainly don't have to go anywhere to maintain their lifestyles.
If anything, worsening conditions in the US give them more opportunities to feel good about themselves by tithing to churches or charities.
I agree with that, which is precisely why I think attacking News Corp. for it in the public sphere, not legislative changes, is the right course of action. Publishing false news, even knowingly, is legal. But companies that do so should also be widely exposed as doing so, so nobody takes them seriously as news providers.
While we both agree with the courts that knowingly publishing false news is legal, why does that mean we shouldn't make it illegal? Isn't it, at the very least, misleading/false advertising? I'm fine with people publishing lies, but not with them claiming they're non-fiction. Make them rename it to "Fox Entertainment" or "Fox Fictional News", and they can say whatever they want... just so long as everybody's clear that Fox is intentionally falsifying their news.
You fail miserably at understanding the psychological power of a default option. Even if the step was as simple as a pop-up asking if you wanted to change to Google, many people would not do it. This is for the same reason that people don't cancel subscriptions that are automatically renewed, don't enroll in retirement plans, don't opt-out of direct mailing and marketing, and don't change the default installation options on their software.
And yes, I said "people", not engineers, programmers, or slashdotters. If you're the kind of person who consciously goes out of your way to change the default option, or to research your options, you're not the one they're targeting with default options.
Nor, in many cases, are you free to deliberately collude with other companies for purposes such as fixing prices
This may be relevant here, but, as I understand, in those cases it's not the speech that is restricted, it's the action (of fixing prices).
It's the collusion to fix prices, not just fixing prices. What I mean by that, is that both companies can match each others' prices and not try to compete on price. That in and of itself is not illegal. But if they get together and agree to not compete and to maintain a certain price, then it's price fixing/collusion, which is typically actionable. Without any communication, there can be no charge of collusion.
I've noticed that the quality of this website has slowly decreased to the point it's not my first look anymore. After reading all of the armchair scientists instantly shooting down an experiment with I'm sure they have an inversely proportional knowledge of the subject and hand, I've think I've finally figured out. The AOLers are ruling the roost.
Clearly you don't remember the early days of AOL. If AOLers were ruling the roost, this place would be pretty much entirely dedicated to pedo-related activity.
Driving around on glass solar panels isn't silly?..
We have vast dry lake beds, salt flats, and plain old deserts out in the western US. Let's fill those up before we start replacing roads.
Issues with driving on glass are the obvious problems that need to be solved. The point that makes this unsilly is that if they can manage to produce these for anything near the current cost of roads, it's a huge net savings. They already have to build new, replace, and resurface roads on a regular basis. If they can do it with power-producing roads for a marginal increase in road cost, it's a huge net money saver.
The obvious question, then, is whether they can actually overcome all of the challenges and do it for a decent price... which is pretty much the reason to build a prototype.
It's not an inherently stupid idea, but it does have some obvious challenges that would need to be overcome. We'll see if they can manage to do it.
I can remember reading about the publishing of an Ebonics bible (back in the '80s I think).
Except that Ebonics (more properly termed AAVE) is actually a well-formed dialect with a consistent (and different) grammar. The differences between AAVE and standard English are not arbitrary and not errors (in the sense that errors are unintentional and do not convey additional meaning, whereas the modifications of AAVE actually convey different meaning). AAVE seems like bad grammar to those who don't understand it, but it's not. It is DIFFERENT grammar, but it is equally consistent (and in some aspects MORE precise than) as standard English.
Right, but it was a bogus move for a school district to try to give "Foreign Language" credit for it. Likewise, native AAVE speakers should still be expected to learn proper [American] English.
Your definition of "qualified" is far different than mine. You obviously don't properly vet your sources, and you have no interest in allowing yourself to consider an opposing viewpoint. I'm done trying to talk to you.
If you honestly don't think that the green movement is full of socialists you haven;t been paying attention. Please explain where this historic CO2 release occurred? There is no scientific consensus or do you still believe the MSM? have you even watched the movie?
The green movement has socialists in it as that is the logical place for them to be. The conservative movement has white supremacists in it as that is the logical place for them to be. Neither movement is primarily characterized by, or run by, those fringe elements within it. You bring it up in a way that implies something else, and it's dishonest. You should know better than that.
This CO2 release I'm talking about is directly quoting what you wrote. Read your own posts next time.
By "MSM" I assume you mean everything other than "Fox: The Number One News Network". Mainstream media was years behind in actually reporting global warming properly, and has still failed to do so. They're erring on the side of pretending the Anti-AGW crowd has a valid point. They don't.
No, you just called environmentalists socialists, falsely implied that a historic CO2 release had anything to do with AGW models, accused everyone who believes the scientific consensus of being on psychotropic agents, and called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" a "great movie to watch".
Now you're just acting like Glen Beck. "I didn't say he was a racist! I just said he had deep-rooted racist tendencies!"
AGW is an outright lie and is a perfect example of why socialism disguised itself in green credentials decades ago - 'just think of the grand-children'.
GWD (Global Warming Denial) is an outright lie and a perfect example of why nazism disguised itself in conservative credentials decades ago - 'just think of the grand-children'.
Can we get a Socialism version of Godwin's Law? Please?
I'm not going to bother arguing your supposed scientific points. I assume you're a troll, but if you're not, I know you're not willing to be swayed by reason or facts.
This cannot be understated. The computer industry experienced exponential growth once it became open. It all started the day Compaq produced the first IBM PC clone. That day will only come for phones/PDAs when people can use any phone, with software from any company or individual, with any telephone service provider.
We need to treat phone technology openly, just like...well... almost every other piece of hardware on earth (TVs, CD players, vacuum cleaners, hammers, baseballs,...)
Right, which is precisely what Google is doing with Android. Or at least very, very close to it. If they were a hardware manufacturer allowing open firmware flashing, they'd be doing precisely what you suggest. I'm confident Google will win this battle for precisely these reasons.
Also, I've only been beta testing Google Voice for a month, but I'm going to buy the first Android phone I can that gets good coverage in my area (T-Mobile doesn't, and I refuse to buy AT&T) precisely because of how awesome Google Voice has been for me. I want it properly integrated with my phone, and I want my contacts properly updated, and I'm very upset about the way Apple abuses its customers.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet you don't include any estimates of the externalities. But "trust us, they're huge".
Because they're a pain in the ass to find and they're still not entirely complete to my satisfaction. ExternE did a good study of external costs and I would also recommend Internalization of the external costs of global environmental damage in an integrated assessment model. The glaring omissions that I see with these studies benefit fossil fuels by being omitted. Costs such as security of energy supply still have not been properly quantified or internalized, and these costs are inarguably huge. Studies that attempt to include climate change costs are remarkably conservative to avoid criticism. If the moderate concerns about climate change turn out to be well-founded, we'll be facing astronomical costs associated with that problem. And that's ignoring the suffering of over a billion people.
"And so, therefore, we'll be forcing you to buy higher-priced, inferior energy from politically-connected rent seeking alternative energy companies. Our self-serving estimates for externalities of our favored energy companies are low."
Or, if you bothered to read the studies, lower-priced energy. Where in the world did you get "inferior energy" from? I must have missed that in my high school physics class. Was it right between chemical and kinetic? Or were you trying to argue a straw man and claim that my argument is that we don't need base load power? That's utter bollocks. I'm a big fan of nuclear power, as well as ongoing research into energy storage. In the end, we desperately need better storage mechanisms, and it'd be awesome to see things like Power Tower able to provide base load power from solar alone.
I also find it pretty amusing that you're trying to accuse the environmental movement of favoring big, evil corporations. Seriously? Who's rent-seeking? The companies that manufacture windmills, all the companies manufacturing and researching solar tech? Are it those evil people who make double-paned windows? Maybe it's the evil bastards who retrofit homes with better insulation. Yeah, must be them. Gold-digging bastards will stop at nothing to conserve energy and make a profit!
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to use unlimited, unsupported, variable fudge factors. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to ignore all external costs simply because they're difficult to quantify. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
Now we've gotten the mudslinging out of the way, perhaps we can get back to having an intellectually honest discussion.
---
Do you at least acknowledge that we don't have an infinite supply of fossil fuels? If so, then surely we agree that at some point in the future we will have to switch to a renewable/sustainable model. The only serious disagreement we should be having, then, is over when that point is, and whether we should try to make the switch before we get there.
Sorry, I think I was interpreting local with a different meaning than you intended, and my use of London Fog as an example only further confused things.
I was pointing to reduced particulate emissions and ozone layer recovery as global, rather than local, improvements. Some other areas we're globally improving in: carbon monoxide emissions, toxic release into environment, and recycling. I would say that, globally, environmental awareness has greatly increased, and that could be seen as another non-local step in the right direction.
Many states are also making significant steps to properly address water consumption, prevent further cropland erosion, stabilize their populations, and switch to renewable (or at least cleaner) energy.
I think it's obvious that, overall, we've made some tremendous strides on a global level. Sure, 3/4 of the areas are still in decline, but we need to celebrate our victories and make them known. A defeatist attitude will just get us a chair at the table next to the guy who's waiting for the second coming.
We are seriously stressing every part of our biosphere.
I agree with you entirely on this, and I'm aware of many of the problems we're creating. My only disagreement was that I don't consider all our successes to be merely local. Perhaps "limited" and "offset by further losses in other areas" would be more precise?
Thanks for your reply! I was actually thinking of LAUSD - my memory tells me they were trying to give Foreign Language credit for it. I can't seem to find anything on the subject, so I'll assume I was wrong on that.
I also did not know that they were able to improve scores with this approach. That is quite interesting. Were there any differences between this approach and California's ESL approach? My own anecdotal experience with ESL was that it created an underclass with poor English skills even into high school.
Lt. Gen Van Riper would care to disagree.
Your data really doesn't mean much. It's not even real data. How much do you think Coca Cola or GM puts into R&D in comparison? How much do you think they pay back to the government in the cost of trials of their products? The pharmaceutical industry pays big big bucks to the government pass or fail. You don't see that too much outside of the medical industry as a whole.
And the fact is that the industry is spending three times as much in R&D in the last 20 years with no real increase in products to market and costs from the government to the industry are also on the rise. There's a lot more going on there than meet the eye.
If what you say is true, then we can quickly go check stock prices, balance sheets, and dividends to see that most of the big pharmaceutical companies are consistently losing money.
Oh, wait, they're not? Pharma companies have been consistently profiting, even during major economic declines? And the insurance companies are the only sector of the economy seeing 10% annual price inflation in the middle of a major recession? Oh, well then, it seems your argument is utter bollocks.
Now, to the second and more important point, you cannot show me a single study published in the last thirty years that demonstrates that any part of our ecosystem is healthier than it was the year before. Maybe in some extremely local cases there has been progress, but on the whole, every year the earth becomes less capable of supporting life.
While I agree entirely with the rest of your post, I do have to point out that this is incorrect. If you'd like, I can get you some examples and studies later, but there are still a few areas we're doing better in, and many of them are directly due to environmentalist initiatives. London fog, for instance, is a thing of the past. We've had some serious success with the Clean Air act, and many major metropolitan areas have had increasing air quality simply because we're not polluting as badly as we did before.
Other than that, I'll agree that overall we're reducing the Earth's carrying capacity while simultaneously increasing the number of people.
The current price of anything fails to include all of the associated externalities.
To some people, that means "we'll just use the numbers we have". To others, it means "therefore, we can make up any economic argument we want and use externalities as FUD when someone points out how the numbers don't add up".
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you managed to attack a slight miswording. You're glossing over the fact that the externalities are a huge portion of the costs of fossil fuels, and the externalities are a much smaller portion of the cost of renewable energy. You may not be able to ever know, calculate, or include all externalities, but you can surely include all known external costs to the best of your ability.
If we attempt to factor in all of the externalities we know about, fossil fuels end up being pretty damned expensive. Further, they become obviously unsustainable as long-term solutions. The only remaining question, then, is how much more money can be squeezed out of a fossil fuel-based energy economy before we screw ourselves over.
While you are likely correct, one should question if there is any reason for the wealthy to want the U.S. to do well in the future.
If one could make millions in the U.S. by getting the nation into debt, then retire to another country that is benefiting from the debt, they win.
It is only the poor, who can not leave, that are dependent on the nation in which they live to be successful.
The rich don't even need to leave. They already have world-class medical care, high-end prostitutes, ready access to recreational drugs, first class or private jets, and large gated communities. They don't have to interact with the poor at all, and they certainly don't have to go anywhere to maintain their lifestyles.
If anything, worsening conditions in the US give them more opportunities to feel good about themselves by tithing to churches or charities.
Yes, clearly PBS has destroyed the free market for television in the US. Woe is us.
Well, Moyers Journal has certainly put the rest of the US news shows to shame.
3% == Americans who *want* health insurance but are not covered. A MINOR fix is needed not government monopoly takeover.
Your sig is hilarious. Where do you find this drivel?
I agree with that, which is precisely why I think attacking News Corp. for it in the public sphere, not legislative changes, is the right course of action. Publishing false news, even knowingly, is legal. But companies that do so should also be widely exposed as doing so, so nobody takes them seriously as news providers.
While we both agree with the courts that knowingly publishing false news is legal, why does that mean we shouldn't make it illegal? Isn't it, at the very least, misleading/false advertising? I'm fine with people publishing lies, but not with them claiming they're non-fiction. Make them rename it to "Fox Entertainment" or "Fox Fictional News", and they can say whatever they want... just so long as everybody's clear that Fox is intentionally falsifying their news.
You fail miserably at understanding the psychological power of a default option. Even if the step was as simple as a pop-up asking if you wanted to change to Google, many people would not do it. This is for the same reason that people don't cancel subscriptions that are automatically renewed, don't enroll in retirement plans, don't opt-out of direct mailing and marketing, and don't change the default installation options on their software.
And yes, I said "people", not engineers, programmers, or slashdotters. If you're the kind of person who consciously goes out of your way to change the default option, or to research your options, you're not the one they're targeting with default options.
Nor, in many cases, are you free to deliberately collude with other companies for purposes such as fixing prices
This may be relevant here, but, as I understand, in those cases it's not the speech that is restricted, it's the action (of fixing prices).
It's the collusion to fix prices, not just fixing prices. What I mean by that, is that both companies can match each others' prices and not try to compete on price. That in and of itself is not illegal. But if they get together and agree to not compete and to maintain a certain price, then it's price fixing/collusion, which is typically actionable. Without any communication, there can be no charge of collusion.
I've noticed that the quality of this website has slowly decreased to the point it's not my first look anymore. After reading all of the armchair scientists instantly shooting down an experiment with I'm sure they have an inversely proportional knowledge of the subject and hand, I've think I've finally figured out. The AOLers are ruling the roost.
Clearly you don't remember the early days of AOL. If AOLers were ruling the roost, this place would be pretty much entirely dedicated to pedo-related activity.
Driving around on glass solar panels isn't silly?..
We have vast dry lake beds, salt flats, and plain old deserts out in the western US. Let's fill those up before we start replacing roads.
Issues with driving on glass are the obvious problems that need to be solved. The point that makes this unsilly is that if they can manage to produce these for anything near the current cost of roads, it's a huge net savings. They already have to build new, replace, and resurface roads on a regular basis. If they can do it with power-producing roads for a marginal increase in road cost, it's a huge net money saver.
The obvious question, then, is whether they can actually overcome all of the challenges and do it for a decent price... which is pretty much the reason to build a prototype.
It's not an inherently stupid idea, but it does have some obvious challenges that would need to be overcome. We'll see if they can manage to do it.
I can remember reading about the publishing of an Ebonics bible (back in the '80s I think).
Except that Ebonics (more properly termed AAVE) is actually a well-formed dialect with a consistent (and different) grammar. The differences between AAVE and standard English are not arbitrary and not errors (in the sense that errors are unintentional and do not convey additional meaning, whereas the modifications of AAVE actually convey different meaning). AAVE seems like bad grammar to those who don't understand it, but it's not. It is DIFFERENT grammar, but it is equally consistent (and in some aspects MORE precise than) as standard English.
Right, but it was a bogus move for a school district to try to give "Foreign Language" credit for it. Likewise, native AAVE speakers should still be expected to learn proper [American] English.
How much did you pay for your knives? Mine were $300 on sale (henckels 4 star) and still work fine 10 years later.
For quite a lot of people, $300 is half a paycheck.
http://www.petitionproject.org/review_article.php
Your definition of "qualified" is far different than mine. You obviously don't properly vet your sources, and you have no interest in allowing yourself to consider an opposing viewpoint. I'm done trying to talk to you.
If you honestly don't think that the green movement is full of socialists you haven;t been paying attention.
Please explain where this historic CO2 release occurred?
There is no scientific consensus or do you still believe the MSM?
have you even watched the movie?
The green movement has socialists in it as that is the logical place for them to be. The conservative movement has white supremacists in it as that is the logical place for them to be. Neither movement is primarily characterized by, or run by, those fringe elements within it. You bring it up in a way that implies something else, and it's dishonest. You should know better than that.
This CO2 release I'm talking about is directly quoting what you wrote. Read your own posts next time.
By "MSM" I assume you mean everything other than "Fox: The Number One News Network". Mainstream media was years behind in actually reporting global warming properly, and has still failed to do so. They're erring on the side of pretending the Anti-AGW crowd has a valid point. They don't.
Did I deny global warming?
No, you just called environmentalists socialists, falsely implied that a historic CO2 release had anything to do with AGW models, accused everyone who believes the scientific consensus of being on psychotropic agents, and called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" a "great movie to watch".
Now you're just acting like Glen Beck. "I didn't say he was a racist! I just said he had deep-rooted racist tendencies!"
AGW is an outright lie and is a perfect example of why socialism disguised itself in green credentials decades ago - 'just think of the grand-children'.
GWD (Global Warming Denial) is an outright lie and a perfect example of why nazism disguised itself in conservative credentials decades ago - 'just think of the grand-children'.
Can we get a Socialism version of Godwin's Law? Please?
I'm not going to bother arguing your supposed scientific points. I assume you're a troll, but if you're not, I know you're not willing to be swayed by reason or facts.
Wish I had mod points for this one more.
Thanks, Alsee. I wish I still had my mod points!
This cannot be understated. The computer industry experienced exponential growth once it became open. It all started the day Compaq produced the first IBM PC clone. That day will only come for phones/PDAs when people can use any phone, with software from any company or individual, with any telephone service provider.
We need to treat phone technology openly, just like...well... almost every other piece of hardware on earth (TVs, CD players, vacuum cleaners, hammers, baseballs, ...)
Right, which is precisely what Google is doing with Android. Or at least very, very close to it. If they were a hardware manufacturer allowing open firmware flashing, they'd be doing precisely what you suggest. I'm confident Google will win this battle for precisely these reasons.
Also, I've only been beta testing Google Voice for a month, but I'm going to buy the first Android phone I can that gets good coverage in my area (T-Mobile doesn't, and I refuse to buy AT&T) precisely because of how awesome Google Voice has been for me. I want it properly integrated with my phone, and I want my contacts properly updated, and I'm very upset about the way Apple abuses its customers.
We should build a facility which costs billions of dollars, employs thousands of scientists for decades, and produces absolutely nothing.
Owait, they already have that, it's called 'Tokamok fusion research'.
I really thought you were going to say "Internet Porn"...