Let see, you could get a heat pump water heater and put your fridge/freezer in the basement (yeah, I'm in a more northern climate) - your fridge will cool the interior and dump the waste heat into the basement, then your heat pump water heater will pull out that waste heat out and use it to heat the water (and act as a dehumidifier).
There is always solar water heaters to reduce the load on the heat pump - or even using dual tanks so one "warms up" with the ambient air temperature first.
Passive solar heating, rain barrels, green roofs (where your roof is actual green vegetation that helps soak up rain water and insulates your house), and so much more
However, when you talk about using outside air, I've always wondered why no one hasn't invented a method for doing this with data center servers. After all, the current method is to air condition the room while dumping CPU waste heat into that same room - surely if you co-located a hot house or hydroponics facility that could use all that waste heat it would be more efficient use of the energy input into the system.
Really, there are lots of good ideas out there - but it varies based on what individuals are willing to sacrifice.
You want to go extreme green but not buy an existing house? Try a truly modular home! I know it is extreme (styrofoam housing?!?), but imaging using a traditional home down payment to buy a small country plot and plop down a bachelor(ette) pad. No mortgage to pay, only property taxes - and then save up until you can build something as your needs grow. If I could do it here in the US, I'd seriously consider it (and if I didn't have a wife who wants a big house, of course).
Which is why you use an air exchanger. In and out ducts are overlapped, allowing for passive heat exchange to occur (hot air vented in the winter warms the incoming air, cold air in the summer warms the incoming hot air). This actually improves air quality as you are turning over more CFM in from your house than in a traditional construction, all while recouping some of that energy you spent in heating and cooling.
I would argue that there are private alternatives. There are tons of private investigators and private security forces, and there are companies like Blackwater that operate in the military sector (and have been contracted by the US government).
Furthermore, there are alternatives such as the so-called "citizen's arrest" power, the right to bear arms, and the right to form militias keeps the government from holding all the power. The nature of State governments vs Federal government also keeps a single state entity from monopolizing military or policing power.
However, you have brought up two of the prime examples I use when people say "yeah, but that would be communism". My argument is privatizing roads would have slowed commerce and development, and also we didn't always have such a fear of government run institutions. Why do we have it now? Cold war remnants. We need to get past it.
Oh, by the way, the Interstate system is actually designed as a military asset - and I am sure that is how they view all roads. Then need troop mobility and the ability to move larger assets (such as mobile missile launchers) easily. The interstate system was designed to allow the rapid ground deployment of these forces. It had an added benefit of helping out longer-range commerce (big business) at the cost of local economies, as the Interstate system is one of the chief culprits named in urban degradation and the rise of the suburb.
I agree with you also. In my idealistic mind, I would love to see heavy government investment into the university system. Then, in return, the universities would be bound to releasing all discoveries under automatically granted open-source patents and/or equivalent in copyright. This would allow all universities to build previous successes and companies to utilize this output for profit (as they are selling a tangible product made from the scientific discoveries and not the scientific discoveries themselves - ie, they are selling a pill containing a chemical compound, and not the scientific breakthroughs that are represented in the discovery of that chemical compound's structure).
Of course, this is not an ideal solution. Two arguments rise up to the top right away. The first is the exclamations of "COMMUNISM!!!" - as anything run by a state in the US is immediately considered evil communism, even if the benefits to society are far greater and foster an environment of discovery. The second is "politicizing science" - and, yes, it would be. A political entity would be giving out the grants (just as they do now to some extent), and so there would always be accusations that "liberals" are trying to "push their global warming (now extreme climate change) agenda" or that "conservatives" are trying to promote "capitalistic market philosophies". Unfortunately, in any condition of limited resources there will be politicization of that resources distribution... because that's what politics is for, a study of the social dynamics in which a collection of individuals come to a communal consensus.
Search for "The Best and Worst College Degrees by Salary" with Google. Would you be surprised to find Horticulture listed at #6, with a median starting salary of $37,200 and a median mid-career salary of $53,400. Engineering pays (and somewhat thus smart Physicists who understand engineering) and Computer Science pays, along with business degrees and professional graduate degrees (Doctor, Lawyer). Yeah, the sciences suck.
However, if you bought a Monsanto GMO and grew their plant, they would argue while you have the right to the natural genes of the seed you did not re-license the genetic modification for a second year. They did not sell you the seed for your own use, they only granted a license to use the product for that year to produce a plant. Thus, if you wish, you can pay them for the your own seed and then can use it - or you can just buy the seed again from them - whatever you find more profitable. Just like software - you don't buy it, you license it.
Most of us simple lay-folk call it something else. Renting.
Now the horticulturalist is using entirely natural processes. They don't take the gene of a deep-sea fish, stick it into a bacteria, culture it, then extract it to inject into a plant seed. A deep sea fish could never inject its DNA into an orange to act as a natural anti-freeze for the fruit. Thus what a horticulturalist does could easily happen by chance and thus was deemed unfit for patents. That is why he isn't an idiot for not making a lot by using selective breeding to create a new variety of apple.
One situation in Canada always comes to the forefront of my mind when discussing the patenting of genes that creates ownership of crop seeds:
There was a family that had been farming for generations (rapeseed I believe) who banked their own seed each year. Since they had the equipment and knowledge, they often helped others bank their seeds also (I assume for a fee). However, Monsanto frowns upon seed banks because people only license the gene in the seed (for such things as making plants Roundup Ready) and banking seeds means you are producing and using the gene without license. Thus they wanted his activity to stop even though, as long as he did not bank any seeds from plants grown from Monsanto's plants, he was doing nothing illegal.
Fortune smiled on them one day when they found their gene in his crops. Did they have permission to enter his land and take plants to test? No, but how do you stop someone from trespassing on hundreds if not thousands of acres of farmland. They sued the farmer and forced him to destroy the seed bank his family had maintained for generations. If I recall correctly, it was not the farmer breaking their law that caused the incident - it was the neighboring farmer who used Monsanto's seeds (and did not bank his seed) that spilled a bunch of genetically modified seed on the road and into the farmer's field.
That is why I do not think they should be allowed even 7 years of protection. I am not saying the nightmare scenario of Monsanto going over an area and intentionally spraying seed to shut down these farmers will happen - but I find that kind of potential power to be frightening and easily abused. Yes, I believe more in social democracies than democratic republics or socialist states - as such I believe the State, through its university system, should be the one to be investigating such technologies for the benefit of the entire society and not a corporation for the profit of its shareholders
It is and it isn't. Minimal cost of living is not based on income. However, real-world cost of living is. A person who makes $500,000 a year is not expected to live in walking distance of their work in a small efficiency apartment and own a single set of work clothes they wash in the sink and air-dry each night. In fact, someone who made $500,000 and showed up with a $3000 auction-site junker car would be looked at askance.
So, yes, you are correct that the most basic human needs are not affected by income if we ignore the social dynamics and expectations of society.
The story was an illustration of a family that did suffer at paying even a modest amount of income tax. There were times where she could not buy food because she was already walking to work and needed to pay the rent. Had the meager tax withholding not have been taken out, she might of been able to grab a bag of potatoes and a few onions to fry up - but she could not.
I am sorry you found my argument stupid, but I hope this helps explain better the point I was trying to make.
I am not talking about living beyond their means - I am talking about a minimum cost of goods.
Basic shelter - lets say renting a single bedroom for a family of 3 (say a single mother and two kids who fled an abusive husband) - has a minimum cost. Buying flour, sugar, margarine, and other basic staples so you can live off of bread [or potatoes or rice] has a minimum cost to ensure all have approximately 1200 calories per day (which is still undernourished, but at least their metabolism won't shut down). Add in vitamins to mitigate malnutrition. You need to either live close to a job or have some form of public/private transportation. Even a bicycle has recurring costs for maintenance.
By saying "tuff shit" to people who's employment does not allow them to meet these minimal needs, you are saying "anyone who cannot find a better paying job deserves to be kicked out on the street, most likely loose their job, suffer exposure, and live life as a vagrant".
Sorry, I do not have such a cold heart. I honestly believe that a government has a duty to protect and care for its citizens - whether it be from a foreign invading power or extreme poverty that results in undernourishment, malnourishment, or homelessness. A government should do its best to ensure the most basic of Maslow's hierarchy of needs are fulfilled because these have a profound impact on the health and wealth of a nation.
I did not want to get this personal, but since this point was brought up I can only address it anecdotally.
My father did not seem like he'd be a worthless bum. He was a Chemical Engineering graduate from Cornell University. He took a job with Oscar Meyer and my parent owned a house with that pay. Then he set out on his own and the money stopped. The house was lost. The inheritance of $10k (from the mid-70s) was spent on furniture that he put into storage and then failed to pay on. It was all sold to cover a few hundred dollars in storage fees, as per the contract.
My mother came over from post-WWII Germany. She was from the region that is now Poland where the Germans were purged out of. Germany said they were Polish, Poland said they were German, so after years in a West German base as a nationless refugee she migrated to the USA. My father was 14 years older than her and "sweeped her off her feet". Now, she had no better than an 8th grade education at the time and came from a very different era. My father lied to her about proper usage of birth control, so she was surprised when she got pregnant with me. My father really wanted a male to carry on the line - but I have no intent of having kids myself for the precise reason you mentioned... I cannot adequately provide for them.
After the hell my mother went through when my dad left his job and lost the house, the cars, and so forth made her learn quickly. She self-educated herself in both real world and academic matters, and I am quite proud of her. My father I do not have any relationship with.
I cannot blame my mother for having children and going above and beyond to provide for them.
My point is this: while sometimes people are irresponsible when having sex and have children they cannot, there is also many cases where the children were born into a situation that soured. Anyone with a serious injury that resulted in the cancellation of their medical insurance and thus high medical bills can attest to that. In the USA, such a thing is not uncommon. The recent financial meltdown also shows that a good living can disappear in a short period of time. No matter what, the future is a risk and sometimes people get a bad deal.
I mean, seriously, what are you people - communists? You want the State to control the tax forms for its taxes instead of allowing the efficiency gains of a capitalistic system? Next you'll be saying you want them to have the authority to track sales, or gather information about its citizens on a periodic basis. For the last, someone already did it - they were called the Roman Empire and we all know how evil they were. The government shouldn't do anything that a "free market" corporation (who's primary purpose is to make profits for its shareholders) can do! Even the slightest thing the government does outside capitalism is outright socialism and should be killed.
Thus I am in full agreement with Intuit - how dare the government expect to run free online tax filing services inefficiently when people can pay for the privilege of corporate efficiency. They can buy their baby infant formula next week... its not like malnutrition has been ever proven to cause harm to anyone.
DISCLAIMER: I am assuming most/.-ers are smart enough to recognize sarcasm. Um, well, at least I am really hoping they can.
Unfortunately, that is the name of the game - tack on totally unrelated legislation to critical legislation in order either
1) Prevent the legislation you don't want to pass from passing
2) Use the tack on in a later election campaign to smear your opponents record for supporting "bad legislation"
I've been thinking for a while of talking with some legislators to create a "legislation atomization bill" on both the state and federal level that would say any and all parts of a bill must be covering the main subject of the bill in question or be documented as having a strong tie to that subject. However, beyond being a lazy procrastination, I realize that such a bill would never pass.
Flat tax sounds like a good idea. You have two people, one makes $200,000 a month and one makes $1000 a month. Both should be taxed at a flat rate - let say 10% - so the first pays $20,000 in taxes while the other pays $100 in taxes. Fair, right?
Okay, let say the cost of living (minimal housing, basic food staples for cooking, basic transportation because in the USA there are very few total basic services walking communities, etc) comes out to about 20% of income with a minimum cost of living of $950. Thus the first individual he pays the greater of $40,000 or $950, while the second pays the greater of $200 or $950.
Thus, the first individual has a net income of $140,000 a month while the second has a net income of -$50 a month. This means something has to give - don't eat, don't have basic shelter, or don't have transportation for work. In other words, a flat tax is a detriment to those who are in poverty - and to say that those below a certain income threshold do not need to pay income tax is merely implementing a very simple progressive tax (0% up to the poverty line, 10% above the poverty line).
This is not some theoretical discussion either. When growing up my mother was our sole source of income, and as such she constantly had to make the decision between paying the rent, buying basic food staples, or having transportation to work. Even after she finally divorced my father and was able to cut out his useless spending she still faced this decision all the time. Pardon my graphic description but even with a slipped disk she would opt to walk what should have been a 30 minute bus commute because she wanted feed and shelter her children - despite the pain being so great that she'd soil herself and have her s**t running down by the time she'd get to work. Her friends said she could work miracles with flour, and I still remember going and picking wild berries and living off them for a week. Until she was divorced, evictions were a semi-annual to annual event because she needed to feed us.
However, despite our poverty, I realize we were far from the bottom of the heap. My mom still worked hard despite all the pain to feed and shelter us, so we never had to be exposed to the dangerous winter lows that caused her so much hardship or go without food for more than a couple of days at a time.
So, no, a simple percentage based tax income is something beyond silly - is is criminally inhumane
From what I am aware, PRE crime is already illegal. Since the P300 test is looking for a response to already encoded information, it means that it is looking for details of a planned crime -which is called "conspiracy" and already carries legal repercussions.
However, what does concern me is the CSI effect. You know, the one where juries acquit obviously guilty people because of a lack of DNA or other high-tech evidence. If this becomes a standard and legally admissible practice, juries might start requiring P300 tests that they saw on a show like 24 or otherwise they will assume there is insufficient evidence. Conversely, they may convict a false positive merely on the fact that the P300 test says they are guilty.
We are talking about registering for an online game. I see this as a debate of public vs private space, and unfortunately I see many people trying to impose their rights to privacy in public arenas.
For example, if you are walking down the street and a photographer snaps your photo, do you really have a right to expect privacy? When you walk into a store to buy your gimp outfit, do you really expect the cashier to not see your goods as you buy it or your name when you pass them the credit card?
Why are they talking about name registration? Protecting minors from unwholesome content is mentioned. So, yes, to a certain degree they want to impose censorship. You know, maybe to prevent minors from seeing explicit gestures or language like the USA's MPAA rating system does with movies.
Also, it could be used to track down those who are socially unacceptable or political dissidents. I don't know how many times I've overheard these times of conversations in Everquest when I use to play - you know, planning protest marches or talking about the injustice of the communist system while playing dark elf females dressed in all leather armor and using whips. Yeah, if I had a nickle for every time that happened, I'd still be as broke as I am now.
My wife states a good test from private space to anyone with a bit of modesty and manners that I have expanded to the most likely shameless crowd that visits the web - namely do you feel comfortable walking around totally naked, blowing your nose, and farting all while masturbating to your favorite fetish porn? You wouldn't do this in a store, on a public street, in your back yard, or on a video chat site (unless you're on chatroulette I guess - but then you're a criminal deviant who has no respect for public space).
An MMO is not a private space unless you develop the software, buy the server, build your own dedicated network lines, and restrict who can have access to it - it is a virtual RPG store holding events. You should not expect to have any privacy there.
The only issue I would have is if they required you to use your real name for your in-game name. That would defeat the purpose of a MMORPG. However, there is nothing unreasonable about using your real name to register for the game.
I am far more interested in seeing more refined details based at least by phone, if not carrier and plan.
After all, does it make a difference if you are on a web-capable phone with an app downloader and a special mobile phone web browser compared to a smartphone with a full web browser and flash 10.1 compatibility? Does it matter if your phone has a 240x80 LCD with a d-pad for navigation, a 2.7" touch screen with ink input and virtual keypad, or a 4.3" touch screen with virtual keypad? Does it matter if you can throw an app like Google Maps on it or use a proprietary navigator that has maps loaded onto the phone? Does it matter if you even signed up for a data plan or not when using a web capable phone? Does it matter if you tether your phone to a laptop or use a Cradlepoint PHS300 to make your tethered phone into a mobile hotspot to share internet in a van on a cross-country trip... maybe streaming Netflix for entertainment?
I think most of us will say yes, it matters. Not all users are equal, and not all data plans result in equal behavior.
So, I say in the least show us by phone so we can see if their is greater usage or equal usage between older "web capable" cellphones and the newest breeds of almost netbook equivalent (in hardware power and software functionality) smartphones.
I can tell you this - my verizon data usage was very high with my Omnia and $30 data plan when I had cable because I used the slingbox mobile player app. Very hand for filling time while waiting for the wife to finish shopping or for the dentist's secretary to call "next". However, I dropped TV so my data usage went down.;)
As already stated, the manufacturer did not call it a light saber - blog sites did.
So what you are saying is if you create a web page that is your "home on the web" and I blog about it can call it your "iPad", then Apple could sue you for infringement and make you take down your web site?
If anything, they can try to prove the manufacturer intentionally made the object to look like a light saber from the movie in order to use the movie's popularity to sell the product. However, if that is the case, then there are a whole lot of products in violation.
I was thinking more along the lines of every single flip phone vs the original series communicators - especially the fancy clear top flip phones. Heck, I see tons of people with Boost mobile even using them like communicators (they don't put it to their ear, they crank up the volume and hold it in front of them).
No mining operations to provide feedstock (which require petroleum).
No transportation of feedstock (which require petroleum).
Use of electric cars.
Oops... I opened up a can of worms. Just so people understand, I get that battery manufacturers pollute quite a lot too. I also understand their ranges are limited. However, there are companies out there (globally) working on projects like quick-change battery stations (I believe Israel is going to pilot their installation).
This is what I call a "2 standard deviation" solution. There are situations where alternative solutions would be needed for long-distance transport. I think returning to a rail system for cargo would be a good idea, and that could be based off of electricity vs fossil fuels. However, when the majority of manufacturers are making electric vehicles, I think we will see some good technological advancements and economies of scale kick in.
Non-economical is critical, but it is unfair to compare solar to existing forms of power.
Nuclear was mentioned. To determine its economic viability, we need to factor in the cost of government subsidies for guaranteed waste disposal/storage as well as the military costs to prevent other nations from achieving this ideal energy solution (yes, that was meant to be sarcastic).
For our main power source, coal, we should factor in the cost of retrofitting ALL plant to "clean coal" standards and/or the cost of building new ones. We need to consider the cost of feedstock extraction and the transportation of feedstock. We need to consider the social cost of where we site these plants - which, unfortunately, often wind up in poorer neighborhoods and harming the health of their youth. Then there are other often overlooked costs, like water resources.
So we need to decide if we wish do a full life cycle analysis of cost, or we wish to bias our judgments by not including all costs in some to make them sound more favorable.
One side note when considering economic viability. Which do you think is better for the health of a community and nation - distributed local power generation interlinked across the nation, or a few key locations and a centralized top-down authority removed from the community administrating it.
True, but the $2B is actually a drop in the bucket in what our government had invested already in the fossil fuels industry.
Look into how alternative energy companies (wind/solar/etc) cycle in the US. There is a correlation between the collapse on these companies/alternative energy production and the lack of congress renewing of the production tax credit (PTC). What people like me want to see is a leveling of the playing field for these alternative energy companies.
While it is true that I dumped pay TV, they still get my internet business. $70/month (after all the taxes and fees) isn't a small chunk of change for flakey 5 meg charter service. Heck, I can't use the new DRM games from Ubisoft because it drops for a few seconds every few hours on me (thus I'd get booted from my game).
However, I do try to find legitimate sources for streaming online. There are some exceptions - archaic modes of media distribution means here in the states getting Doctor Who legally is pretty much a no-go. Then there was the Battlestar Galactica fiasco where they decided to delay the final episodes 8 days instead of 1, so at that point you look to get your fix any way so your friends don't spoil it
So, yeah, I sort of ditched cable. Now the telcomms say they need to start charging by speed and usage - I say bill me for one or the other, not both.
As for the ads? Yeah, the sites I use have all gone an ad explosion recently. Armor Games has added slide up from the bottom annoy ads and I rarely go there now. Pop ups fly everywhere. Tom's has ads that choke my system, so I go there less. Slashdot is nice and clean, I show up here more and more. I don't mind ads, they pay for it, but once companies start blocking their valuable content with pop-ups, slide-ups/downs, please take our survey stuff that washes across the screen, or those really annoying push down banner ads (where all the content gets shifted down and then up while you are trying to read it) then I start to flee. Put them on the side, on top, on bottom, and even as your background wallpaper - just don't despoil your content with it.
I guess what I am saying is I am thinking that TV is just an ad-box, and the internet is pretty much that too. I guess I'll have to go with paper books - so far they haven't figured out a way to put ads over the content on those.... yet. (And no, eBooks don't count.)
You can always go to Hulu and catch up. They have ALL episodes available for streaming right now. However, then you'll be sucked back in to that vicious cycle of "oh, I have to tune in next week because they might actually solve one of the mysteries".
However, with Lost it isn't so bad because the series is almost over. I didn't start watching until season 5, when I marathon watched 1-4.
Slashdot Mirror
Let see, you could get a heat pump water heater and put your fridge/freezer in the basement (yeah, I'm in a more northern climate) - your fridge will cool the interior and dump the waste heat into the basement, then your heat pump water heater will pull out that waste heat out and use it to heat the water (and act as a dehumidifier).
There is always solar water heaters to reduce the load on the heat pump - or even using dual tanks so one "warms up" with the ambient air temperature first.
Passive solar heating, rain barrels, green roofs (where your roof is actual green vegetation that helps soak up rain water and insulates your house), and so much more
However, when you talk about using outside air, I've always wondered why no one hasn't invented a method for doing this with data center servers. After all, the current method is to air condition the room while dumping CPU waste heat into that same room - surely if you co-located a hot house or hydroponics facility that could use all that waste heat it would be more efficient use of the energy input into the system.
Really, there are lots of good ideas out there - but it varies based on what individuals are willing to sacrifice.
You want to go extreme green but not buy an existing house? Try a truly modular home! I know it is extreme (styrofoam housing?!?), but imaging using a traditional home down payment to buy a small country plot and plop down a bachelor(ette) pad. No mortgage to pay, only property taxes - and then save up until you can build something as your needs grow. If I could do it here in the US, I'd seriously consider it (and if I didn't have a wife who wants a big house, of course).
Which is why you use an air exchanger. In and out ducts are overlapped, allowing for passive heat exchange to occur (hot air vented in the winter warms the incoming air, cold air in the summer warms the incoming hot air). This actually improves air quality as you are turning over more CFM in from your house than in a traditional construction, all while recouping some of that energy you spent in heating and cooling.
Sorry, I'm in the Nutella camp. ;) (Mmmmmm... tasty sticks...)
I would argue that there are private alternatives. There are tons of private investigators and private security forces, and there are companies like Blackwater that operate in the military sector (and have been contracted by the US government).
Furthermore, there are alternatives such as the so-called "citizen's arrest" power, the right to bear arms, and the right to form militias keeps the government from holding all the power. The nature of State governments vs Federal government also keeps a single state entity from monopolizing military or policing power.
However, you have brought up two of the prime examples I use when people say "yeah, but that would be communism". My argument is privatizing roads would have slowed commerce and development, and also we didn't always have such a fear of government run institutions. Why do we have it now? Cold war remnants. We need to get past it.
Oh, by the way, the Interstate system is actually designed as a military asset - and I am sure that is how they view all roads. Then need troop mobility and the ability to move larger assets (such as mobile missile launchers) easily. The interstate system was designed to allow the rapid ground deployment of these forces. It had an added benefit of helping out longer-range commerce (big business) at the cost of local economies, as the Interstate system is one of the chief culprits named in urban degradation and the rise of the suburb.
I agree with you also. In my idealistic mind, I would love to see heavy government investment into the university system. Then, in return, the universities would be bound to releasing all discoveries under automatically granted open-source patents and/or equivalent in copyright. This would allow all universities to build previous successes and companies to utilize this output for profit (as they are selling a tangible product made from the scientific discoveries and not the scientific discoveries themselves - ie, they are selling a pill containing a chemical compound, and not the scientific breakthroughs that are represented in the discovery of that chemical compound's structure).
Of course, this is not an ideal solution. Two arguments rise up to the top right away. The first is the exclamations of "COMMUNISM!!!" - as anything run by a state in the US is immediately considered evil communism, even if the benefits to society are far greater and foster an environment of discovery. The second is "politicizing science" - and, yes, it would be. A political entity would be giving out the grants (just as they do now to some extent), and so there would always be accusations that "liberals" are trying to "push their global warming (now extreme climate change) agenda" or that "conservatives" are trying to promote "capitalistic market philosophies". Unfortunately, in any condition of limited resources there will be politicization of that resources distribution... because that's what politics is for, a study of the social dynamics in which a collection of individuals come to a communal consensus.
Search for "The Best and Worst College Degrees by Salary" with Google. Would you be surprised to find Horticulture listed at #6, with a median starting salary of $37,200 and a median mid-career salary of $53,400. Engineering pays (and somewhat thus smart Physicists who understand engineering) and Computer Science pays, along with business degrees and professional graduate degrees (Doctor, Lawyer). Yeah, the sciences suck.
However, if you bought a Monsanto GMO and grew their plant, they would argue while you have the right to the natural genes of the seed you did not re-license the genetic modification for a second year. They did not sell you the seed for your own use, they only granted a license to use the product for that year to produce a plant. Thus, if you wish, you can pay them for the your own seed and then can use it - or you can just buy the seed again from them - whatever you find more profitable. Just like software - you don't buy it, you license it.
Most of us simple lay-folk call it something else. Renting.
Now the horticulturalist is using entirely natural processes. They don't take the gene of a deep-sea fish, stick it into a bacteria, culture it, then extract it to inject into a plant seed. A deep sea fish could never inject its DNA into an orange to act as a natural anti-freeze for the fruit. Thus what a horticulturalist does could easily happen by chance and thus was deemed unfit for patents. That is why he isn't an idiot for not making a lot by using selective breeding to create a new variety of apple.
One situation in Canada always comes to the forefront of my mind when discussing the patenting of genes that creates ownership of crop seeds:
There was a family that had been farming for generations (rapeseed I believe) who banked their own seed each year. Since they had the equipment and knowledge, they often helped others bank their seeds also (I assume for a fee). However, Monsanto frowns upon seed banks because people only license the gene in the seed (for such things as making plants Roundup Ready) and banking seeds means you are producing and using the gene without license. Thus they wanted his activity to stop even though, as long as he did not bank any seeds from plants grown from Monsanto's plants, he was doing nothing illegal.
Fortune smiled on them one day when they found their gene in his crops. Did they have permission to enter his land and take plants to test? No, but how do you stop someone from trespassing on hundreds if not thousands of acres of farmland. They sued the farmer and forced him to destroy the seed bank his family had maintained for generations. If I recall correctly, it was not the farmer breaking their law that caused the incident - it was the neighboring farmer who used Monsanto's seeds (and did not bank his seed) that spilled a bunch of genetically modified seed on the road and into the farmer's field.
That is why I do not think they should be allowed even 7 years of protection. I am not saying the nightmare scenario of Monsanto going over an area and intentionally spraying seed to shut down these farmers will happen - but I find that kind of potential power to be frightening and easily abused. Yes, I believe more in social democracies than democratic republics or socialist states - as such I believe the State, through its university system, should be the one to be investigating such technologies for the benefit of the entire society and not a corporation for the profit of its shareholders
It is and it isn't. Minimal cost of living is not based on income. However, real-world cost of living is. A person who makes $500,000 a year is not expected to live in walking distance of their work in a small efficiency apartment and own a single set of work clothes they wash in the sink and air-dry each night. In fact, someone who made $500,000 and showed up with a $3000 auction-site junker car would be looked at askance.
So, yes, you are correct that the most basic human needs are not affected by income if we ignore the social dynamics and expectations of society.
The story was an illustration of a family that did suffer at paying even a modest amount of income tax. There were times where she could not buy food because she was already walking to work and needed to pay the rent. Had the meager tax withholding not have been taken out, she might of been able to grab a bag of potatoes and a few onions to fry up - but she could not.
I am sorry you found my argument stupid, but I hope this helps explain better the point I was trying to make.
I am not talking about living beyond their means - I am talking about a minimum cost of goods.
Basic shelter - lets say renting a single bedroom for a family of 3 (say a single mother and two kids who fled an abusive husband) - has a minimum cost. Buying flour, sugar, margarine, and other basic staples so you can live off of bread [or potatoes or rice] has a minimum cost to ensure all have approximately 1200 calories per day (which is still undernourished, but at least their metabolism won't shut down). Add in vitamins to mitigate malnutrition. You need to either live close to a job or have some form of public/private transportation. Even a bicycle has recurring costs for maintenance.
By saying "tuff shit" to people who's employment does not allow them to meet these minimal needs, you are saying "anyone who cannot find a better paying job deserves to be kicked out on the street, most likely loose their job, suffer exposure, and live life as a vagrant".
Sorry, I do not have such a cold heart. I honestly believe that a government has a duty to protect and care for its citizens - whether it be from a foreign invading power or extreme poverty that results in undernourishment, malnourishment, or homelessness. A government should do its best to ensure the most basic of Maslow's hierarchy of needs are fulfilled because these have a profound impact on the health and wealth of a nation.
I did not want to get this personal, but since this point was brought up I can only address it anecdotally.
My father did not seem like he'd be a worthless bum. He was a Chemical Engineering graduate from Cornell University. He took a job with Oscar Meyer and my parent owned a house with that pay. Then he set out on his own and the money stopped. The house was lost. The inheritance of $10k (from the mid-70s) was spent on furniture that he put into storage and then failed to pay on. It was all sold to cover a few hundred dollars in storage fees, as per the contract.
My mother came over from post-WWII Germany. She was from the region that is now Poland where the Germans were purged out of. Germany said they were Polish, Poland said they were German, so after years in a West German base as a nationless refugee she migrated to the USA. My father was 14 years older than her and "sweeped her off her feet". Now, she had no better than an 8th grade education at the time and came from a very different era. My father lied to her about proper usage of birth control, so she was surprised when she got pregnant with me. My father really wanted a male to carry on the line - but I have no intent of having kids myself for the precise reason you mentioned... I cannot adequately provide for them.
After the hell my mother went through when my dad left his job and lost the house, the cars, and so forth made her learn quickly. She self-educated herself in both real world and academic matters, and I am quite proud of her. My father I do not have any relationship with.
I cannot blame my mother for having children and going above and beyond to provide for them.
My point is this: while sometimes people are irresponsible when having sex and have children they cannot, there is also many cases where the children were born into a situation that soured. Anyone with a serious injury that resulted in the cancellation of their medical insurance and thus high medical bills can attest to that. In the USA, such a thing is not uncommon. The recent financial meltdown also shows that a good living can disappear in a short period of time. No matter what, the future is a risk and sometimes people get a bad deal.
I mean, seriously, what are you people - communists? You want the State to control the tax forms for its taxes instead of allowing the efficiency gains of a capitalistic system? Next you'll be saying you want them to have the authority to track sales, or gather information about its citizens on a periodic basis. For the last, someone already did it - they were called the Roman Empire and we all know how evil they were. The government shouldn't do anything that a "free market" corporation (who's primary purpose is to make profits for its shareholders) can do! Even the slightest thing the government does outside capitalism is outright socialism and should be killed.
Thus I am in full agreement with Intuit - how dare the government expect to run free online tax filing services inefficiently when people can pay for the privilege of corporate efficiency. They can buy their baby infant formula next week... its not like malnutrition has been ever proven to cause harm to anyone.
DISCLAIMER: I am assuming most /.-ers are smart enough to recognize sarcasm. Um, well, at least I am really hoping they can.
Unfortunately, that is the name of the game - tack on totally unrelated legislation to critical legislation in order either
I've been thinking for a while of talking with some legislators to create a "legislation atomization bill" on both the state and federal level that would say any and all parts of a bill must be covering the main subject of the bill in question or be documented as having a strong tie to that subject. However, beyond being a lazy procrastination, I realize that such a bill would never pass.
Flat tax sounds like a good idea. You have two people, one makes $200,000 a month and one makes $1000 a month. Both should be taxed at a flat rate - let say 10% - so the first pays $20,000 in taxes while the other pays $100 in taxes. Fair, right?
Okay, let say the cost of living (minimal housing, basic food staples for cooking, basic transportation because in the USA there are very few total basic services walking communities, etc) comes out to about 20% of income with a minimum cost of living of $950. Thus the first individual he pays the greater of $40,000 or $950, while the second pays the greater of $200 or $950.
Thus, the first individual has a net income of $140,000 a month while the second has a net income of -$50 a month. This means something has to give - don't eat, don't have basic shelter, or don't have transportation for work. In other words, a flat tax is a detriment to those who are in poverty - and to say that those below a certain income threshold do not need to pay income tax is merely implementing a very simple progressive tax (0% up to the poverty line, 10% above the poverty line).
This is not some theoretical discussion either. When growing up my mother was our sole source of income, and as such she constantly had to make the decision between paying the rent, buying basic food staples, or having transportation to work. Even after she finally divorced my father and was able to cut out his useless spending she still faced this decision all the time. Pardon my graphic description but even with a slipped disk she would opt to walk what should have been a 30 minute bus commute because she wanted feed and shelter her children - despite the pain being so great that she'd soil herself and have her s**t running down by the time she'd get to work. Her friends said she could work miracles with flour, and I still remember going and picking wild berries and living off them for a week. Until she was divorced, evictions were a semi-annual to annual event because she needed to feed us.
However, despite our poverty, I realize we were far from the bottom of the heap. My mom still worked hard despite all the pain to feed and shelter us, so we never had to be exposed to the dangerous winter lows that caused her so much hardship or go without food for more than a couple of days at a time.
So, no, a simple percentage based tax income is something beyond silly - is is criminally inhumane
From what I am aware, PRE crime is already illegal. Since the P300 test is looking for a response to already encoded information, it means that it is looking for details of a planned crime -which is called "conspiracy" and already carries legal repercussions.
However, what does concern me is the CSI effect. You know, the one where juries acquit obviously guilty people because of a lack of DNA or other high-tech evidence. If this becomes a standard and legally admissible practice, juries might start requiring P300 tests that they saw on a show like 24 or otherwise they will assume there is insufficient evidence. Conversely, they may convict a false positive merely on the fact that the P300 test says they are guilty.
We are talking about registering for an online game. I see this as a debate of public vs private space, and unfortunately I see many people trying to impose their rights to privacy in public arenas.
For example, if you are walking down the street and a photographer snaps your photo, do you really have a right to expect privacy? When you walk into a store to buy your gimp outfit, do you really expect the cashier to not see your goods as you buy it or your name when you pass them the credit card?
Why are they talking about name registration? Protecting minors from unwholesome content is mentioned. So, yes, to a certain degree they want to impose censorship. You know, maybe to prevent minors from seeing explicit gestures or language like the USA's MPAA rating system does with movies.
Also, it could be used to track down those who are socially unacceptable or political dissidents. I don't know how many times I've overheard these times of conversations in Everquest when I use to play - you know, planning protest marches or talking about the injustice of the communist system while playing dark elf females dressed in all leather armor and using whips. Yeah, if I had a nickle for every time that happened, I'd still be as broke as I am now.
My wife states a good test from private space to anyone with a bit of modesty and manners that I have expanded to the most likely shameless crowd that visits the web - namely do you feel comfortable walking around totally naked, blowing your nose, and farting all while masturbating to your favorite fetish porn? You wouldn't do this in a store, on a public street, in your back yard, or on a video chat site (unless you're on chatroulette I guess - but then you're a criminal deviant who has no respect for public space).
An MMO is not a private space unless you develop the software, buy the server, build your own dedicated network lines, and restrict who can have access to it - it is a virtual RPG store holding events. You should not expect to have any privacy there.
The only issue I would have is if they required you to use your real name for your in-game name. That would defeat the purpose of a MMORPG. However, there is nothing unreasonable about using your real name to register for the game.
I am far more interested in seeing more refined details based at least by phone, if not carrier and plan.
After all, does it make a difference if you are on a web-capable phone with an app downloader and a special mobile phone web browser compared to a smartphone with a full web browser and flash 10.1 compatibility? Does it matter if your phone has a 240x80 LCD with a d-pad for navigation, a 2.7" touch screen with ink input and virtual keypad, or a 4.3" touch screen with virtual keypad? Does it matter if you can throw an app like Google Maps on it or use a proprietary navigator that has maps loaded onto the phone? Does it matter if you even signed up for a data plan or not when using a web capable phone? Does it matter if you tether your phone to a laptop or use a Cradlepoint PHS300 to make your tethered phone into a mobile hotspot to share internet in a van on a cross-country trip... maybe streaming Netflix for entertainment?
I think most of us will say yes, it matters. Not all users are equal, and not all data plans result in equal behavior.
So, I say in the least show us by phone so we can see if their is greater usage or equal usage between older "web capable" cellphones and the newest breeds of almost netbook equivalent (in hardware power and software functionality) smartphones.
I can tell you this - my verizon data usage was very high with my Omnia and $30 data plan when I had cable because I used the slingbox mobile player app. Very hand for filling time while waiting for the wife to finish shopping or for the dentist's secretary to call "next". However, I dropped TV so my data usage went down. ;)
Older games? My solution - VMWare and an old OS install to help remove conflicts.
As already stated, the manufacturer did not call it a light saber - blog sites did. So what you are saying is if you create a web page that is your "home on the web" and I blog about it can call it your "iPad", then Apple could sue you for infringement and make you take down your web site? If anything, they can try to prove the manufacturer intentionally made the object to look like a light saber from the movie in order to use the movie's popularity to sell the product. However, if that is the case, then there are a whole lot of products in violation.
I was thinking more along the lines of every single flip phone vs the original series communicators - especially the fancy clear top flip phones. Heck, I see tons of people with Boost mobile even using them like communicators (they don't put it to their ear, they crank up the volume and hold it in front of them).
Oops... I opened up a can of worms. Just so people understand, I get that battery manufacturers pollute quite a lot too. I also understand their ranges are limited. However, there are companies out there (globally) working on projects like quick-change battery stations (I believe Israel is going to pilot their installation).
This is what I call a "2 standard deviation" solution. There are situations where alternative solutions would be needed for long-distance transport. I think returning to a rail system for cargo would be a good idea, and that could be based off of electricity vs fossil fuels. However, when the majority of manufacturers are making electric vehicles, I think we will see some good technological advancements and economies of scale kick in.
Non-economical is critical, but it is unfair to compare solar to existing forms of power.
Nuclear was mentioned. To determine its economic viability, we need to factor in the cost of government subsidies for guaranteed waste disposal/storage as well as the military costs to prevent other nations from achieving this ideal energy solution (yes, that was meant to be sarcastic).
For our main power source, coal, we should factor in the cost of retrofitting ALL plant to "clean coal" standards and/or the cost of building new ones. We need to consider the cost of feedstock extraction and the transportation of feedstock. We need to consider the social cost of where we site these plants - which, unfortunately, often wind up in poorer neighborhoods and harming the health of their youth. Then there are other often overlooked costs, like water resources.
So we need to decide if we wish do a full life cycle analysis of cost, or we wish to bias our judgments by not including all costs in some to make them sound more favorable.
One side note when considering economic viability. Which do you think is better for the health of a community and nation - distributed local power generation interlinked across the nation, or a few key locations and a centralized top-down authority removed from the community administrating it.
True, but the $2B is actually a drop in the bucket in what our government had invested already in the fossil fuels industry. Look into how alternative energy companies (wind/solar/etc) cycle in the US. There is a correlation between the collapse on these companies/alternative energy production and the lack of congress renewing of the production tax credit (PTC). What people like me want to see is a leveling of the playing field for these alternative energy companies.
While it is true that I dumped pay TV, they still get my internet business. $70/month (after all the taxes and fees) isn't a small chunk of change for flakey 5 meg charter service. Heck, I can't use the new DRM games from Ubisoft because it drops for a few seconds every few hours on me (thus I'd get booted from my game).
However, I do try to find legitimate sources for streaming online. There are some exceptions - archaic modes of media distribution means here in the states getting Doctor Who legally is pretty much a no-go. Then there was the Battlestar Galactica fiasco where they decided to delay the final episodes 8 days instead of 1, so at that point you look to get your fix any way so your friends don't spoil it
So, yeah, I sort of ditched cable. Now the telcomms say they need to start charging by speed and usage - I say bill me for one or the other, not both.
As for the ads? Yeah, the sites I use have all gone an ad explosion recently. Armor Games has added slide up from the bottom annoy ads and I rarely go there now. Pop ups fly everywhere. Tom's has ads that choke my system, so I go there less. Slashdot is nice and clean, I show up here more and more. I don't mind ads, they pay for it, but once companies start blocking their valuable content with pop-ups, slide-ups/downs, please take our survey stuff that washes across the screen, or those really annoying push down banner ads (where all the content gets shifted down and then up while you are trying to read it) then I start to flee. Put them on the side, on top, on bottom, and even as your background wallpaper - just don't despoil your content with it.
I guess what I am saying is I am thinking that TV is just an ad-box, and the internet is pretty much that too. I guess I'll have to go with paper books - so far they haven't figured out a way to put ads over the content on those.... yet. (And no, eBooks don't count.)
You can always go to Hulu and catch up. They have ALL episodes available for streaming right now. However, then you'll be sucked back in to that vicious cycle of "oh, I have to tune in next week because they might actually solve one of the mysteries". However, with Lost it isn't so bad because the series is almost over. I didn't start watching until season 5, when I marathon watched 1-4.