How do you figure that works? Is this a cumulative damage or is it reversible? Where is the research that shows this type of forensic investigation has any merit and... how do you suppose you even expose the gates themselves to read the oxidation? Besides, unless I miss my guess, aren't modern IC chips basically sealed without oxygen once the heat sink cover is put on, rendering the capacity to oxidize kind of minimal?
What happens on the day that you become homeless and no longer have an address to register with to vote? What happens on that day if the reason you're homeless is because the government abused their position and usurped your land for whatever eminent domain project they had in mind, and failed or significantly delayed your relocation? Would you not want the ability to have a say on whether or not the government officials should remain in office?
I know that's a very poor example, but in your black-or-white spin on who should be able to vote and who shouldn't, frankly, I'm of the mind that we're a nation of people. Property, places, and all that can be adjusted and changed. Without the people, you have no one to govern and no one to support your government. Besides, we can have a nation of 'fair legal rules' that is assisted by 'the benevolence of other people'. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, despite your commentary.
I know that I personally understand the need for funding to fix and build roads. However, my philosophy would state that being environmentally friendly is first and foremost a thing to be. I would consider using biofuels too, but (pay close attention here) despite the capability to make and use a green fuel (biodiesel), there is no supply for it. Fortunately, this supply can be had on a personal level. Is the State set up well to tax me my use of the roads and allow me to make my own fuel in the lack of a commercial fuel source? Is the State doing anything to further this cause, that will see results within my lifetime?
The taxation thing would be nice not to have to deal with, but it is more being environmentally friendly that seemed to matter to this guy. He didn't have a bumper sticker that said "I'm evading fuel taxes 100%" it said what kind of environmentally friendly fuel he was using.
The law makes a big deal about intent. The law should not punish people intending to do BETTER for our society and unknowingly skirting (or forgetting) taxation. It should only concern itself with those seeking to avoid their portion of responsibility for the community.
Why attempt recovery that may or may not be possible when you can have the pictures already saved elsewhere? Also, what happens if, by some stupid abuse of power, they simply take your camera to ensure it's deleted? You might not be able to recover anything after they get done with it.
is computerized monitoring of millions of phone calls as intrusive as a human agent listening to a particular person's phone calls? I think we'd all say no.
I think you're starting down a dangerous path when you say this. Why? Because you do not know the keywords they are looking for. So it's a computer monitoring you and not a person. That takes infrastructure and systems put in place to do the monitoring. Once they're in there, what's to say that they'll look for the word "terrorist"? Maybe they'll look for the word "President" and tag those too. The system is there, why not use it? Besides, if I talk on the phone to a friend stating something about terrorists, is there suddenly some reason that this conversation deserves monitoring? Is there any right for my conversation to be monitored? What did I do wrong?
Do not assume that, just because it seems innocuous at first, that such a system will be used properly. The Police have been granted the power to enforce speed limits, but sadly, in most cases I've seen, speed limits are unspoken taxes now, and far less about safety.
The one thing that draws my attention is, sadly, one thing I've groused about with XP. Having set up a samba domain at home, doing IT tech savvy stuff, I lament not being able to do the fast user switching. Even at work, I think that'd be awesome as hell, to be able to do admin work on a PC without having to log off the user or even wait for them to be around, as long as their machine is available. Sort of like a 'back end management console'.
That's the only inspiring thing, though. The rest is frosting, and some bitter tasting crap at that.
No offense, but do you think a 7 year old article lacking the findings reached in all the time between then and now is truly a good source of information? While it is a good starting point, it is not necessarily indicative of our current understanding of the global climate. Can we get something a bit more current in the argument, perhaps?
You do realize that once the sunlight reaches Earth, it is within the sphere of the greenhouse gases. Even if you reflect more light upward, true to its namesake, greenhouse gases will bounce that light right back down to be absorbed somewhere else. It doesn't matter WHERE it is absorbed once it's here, the net effect is still the same.
For any 'reflective' solution to have any effect on planetary temperatures, you would need to station the reflective material above the layer of greenhouse gases. Or, you know, just thin that layer of gases.
I don't advocate corn for Ethanol. As you say, and as the replies imply, there are better sources for Ethanol. A friend/coworker also was spreading about the idea of Poplar trees being a viable biostock for Ethanol production, with a much higher yield.
However, what I advocate is a closed-loop fuel production system. The waste products of the fuel burned for energy (motive power or electrical) need to be reused by the ecosystem, and the fuel needs to come out of that ecosystem. If this is Ethanol, then so be it. If it is not, the 'next gen' alternative fuel should have this mantra in mind.
As to the other thoughts you have, about the Ethanol have some merit. The formulas for combustion of Ethanol and Gasoline.
C2H5OH + 3 O2 --> 2 CO2 + 3 H2O
C8H18 + O2 --> CO2 + H2O
For the record, photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 12H2O + sunlight ---> 6O2 + C6H12O6 + 6H2O
And for the production of Ethanol (fermentation):
C6H12O6 --> 2 CH3CH2OH + 2 CO2
(It seems here that they notate Ethanol in 2 ways:P )
While, throughout this whole process, I can see where people get concerned (2 CO2 molecules when you make Ethanol and 2 when you burn it!), I think they miss the 6 absorbed through the plant, and the fact that, for every sugar molecule fermented, you get 2 molecules of Ethanol.
Plants thrive in CO2, as that's their foodstock. The other part to consider is that the CO2 produced by burning Gasoline has NOT been in our ecosystem in millions of years. If you have sufficient plants, and replenish them, to support our fuel needs, then they will leech out the CO2 produced by both the fermentation process and the combustion process, providing a balanced system (if making very much use of CO2 during the cycle). By contrast, burning Gasoline is reintroducing carbon from (effectively) outside the ecosystem, which can only produce a net increase in the atmospheric concentration.
The real question is more one of efficiency. Gasoline, as I understand, is not very efficient. I could not locate figures for Ethanol.
1) Ethanol is no better for the environment than oil
This is not technically true. The biggest problem with using fossil fuels is that we're taking a source of carbon that has effectively been outside of our ecosystem and burning it, returning it into our environment and, as we're seeing, prompting the Earth to seek a new equilibrium. When you make fuel, even combustible fuel, from plant matter, those plants are leeching carbon out of the atmosphere and ground, completing a cycle that can be run endlessly. We use plants to make Ethanol, we burn Ethanol, CO2 goes into the air, plants siphon back out the CO2, leaving our atmosphere with roughly the same concentration as it had when we started. Problem? I fail to see it.
2) nuclear fission -- a process that makes toxic waste that will have to kept locked up for at least 10,000 years or more depending on the material used
While I agree that the byproducts of nuclear fission are dangerous, but so is the fuel. We obviously had to get this fuel from somewhere, yes? Uranium ore, or similar ores, are mined from the planet and processed. The planet itself is perfectly happy with radioactive materials, as they've been around far longer than we have. What has an issue with it is the ecosystem. Want to make nuclear waste less dangerous? Capsulize it and/or disperse it back into an 'ore'-like substance, and bury it outside of our ecosystem. Heck, after mining for uranium ore, maybe just put it right back in the same place. The fear over nuclear power seems to me to be as much irrational as it is cautious. Just because coal doesn't kill you when you hold it doesn't mean that that isn't a bigger threat to our lifestyle than a warm rock.
When common citizens can get arrested and prosecuted in spite of ignorance of the law, then so can the enforcers of the law, the ones SPECIFICALLY in charge of enforcing and utilizing the law to safeguard the lives of the citizens. To say the FBI is ignorant of the law can be considered far worse than a citizen not being informed of it, simply because the FBI lives and breathes by what laws are currently enforceable.
No internet access is irrelevant. The fact that a system like that is vulnerable AT ALL to common viruses is a recipe for disaster. Consider: Someone who doesn't like the current direction the ship is going bringing in his USB pen drive and launching a virus across the ship, taking control of it or just disabling it. While this could potentially happen with a custom designed OS, without the specs, interface calls, and knowledge of the system and how to compile for it, you aren't going to be writing many viruses at all for it. Even the potential for ACCIDENTAL infection makes it highly undesirable to have a common OS at the core of your battleship.
I wonder what happens when hardware that was good gets pounded by a shell through the hull and becomes bad. Does Windows have the capacity to comprehend that it just lost a component and not crash? While it'd be silly for the design of a system to be dependent on hardware that is not physically attached to the computer controlling it (a missile launcher, for instance), I can't say as I would trust Microsoft to do the right thing and use proper modular programming techniques. Even on XP, with it's modularity for changing basic configurations, why do I have to restart to change the name of the machine? If it was so modular, simply shutting down that aspect and restarting it should be easy.
A trip to Alaska just last year granted me some information concerning the advance and retreat of some glaciers there. Most were retreating, some even catastrophically. A few (not many) were advancing. A local region of persisting cold and snowfall will insulate some glaciers from the affects of global warming, but those should be considered the 'final death knell' for all of them. This goes hand in hand with how this year we've had a pretty cold winter where we're at, unlike the previous winter, but it doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening.
Why can't you? A contract is a legal document, it doesn't not immediately mean "both sides must get something." If I signed over the title of my car to my child, does my child have to pay me for it, or can I simply put through the legal paperwork/transaction/contract and receive nothing? A contract simply specifies TERMS of an exchange. One side of those terms may be "We ask for nothing in return."
Imprisonment of a murderer is 'enforcing rules to prevent wrong [doing]' since, though it doesn't correct for the issues before, it prevents wrong from them doing it again. In the case of Microsoft, they have grown large enough that the punishments written into law are not sufficient in size to hamper them, and do not serve as a deterrent. In a case like this, they need to seek a non-monetary remedy that seeks to prevent future occurrences, much like putting a murderer in jail.
The Judicial system in the US is badly flawed for this notion. There is no notion of preventing repeat offenses, simply punishment for past acts done. If you just don't care, then the punishment will never be a deterrent, and you work that much harder not to be caught.
A lot of flaws in the legal system. Justice isn't, in most cases.
I've had a sum total of one (1) company refuse me service because I wrote only 'See Photo ID' on the back of the card, instead of my signature. Oddly, it was some artist supply store. Everywhere else accepts it and, on larger purchases, will check the photo ID in order to validate. I even went so far in my grumblings to call the issuing company and ask whether the 'See Photo ID' "signature" was valid. The representative I talked to saw no reason why it would not, since the whole purpose of doing so was to prevent fraud. You'd think a merchant, the one most likely to get screwed, would be more than pleased for a card owner to attempt to prevent fraud instead of hanging on some trivial minutiae in order to piss off a customer and send the message that this merchant is not worth dealing with.
Here's the killer aspect of this all. While a signature may be easy to forge, a photo is less easy, requiring either noticeable alteration made to the card or a forged card to be made. Why do these cards NOT have a photo already on them? I've only ever heard of one company doing it.
Re:That's not really the point
on
Who won?
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· Score: 1
It's not about making it cheap, it's about making sure it's done right. Often, doing something right is doing something costlier than it could be done, but that's the cost of doing it right.
Personally, an election for the President of the United States of America is an important enough event to spring for the cost to do it right. The cost of doing it wrong could mean at best trivial president and at worst, global war. Certainly worth doing things right.
what about CO2, the boogeyman of the global warming crowd? What if there is a self-regulating aspect to it at some level? What we know from the historical record is that warming is always followed by CO2 - what if that is because there is a strong self-regulator built in that we do not know about?
Oh, there most likely is a self-regulating aspect of atmospheric CO2 production. There are CO2 sinks into which atmospheric CO2 can be dumped. CO2 that would otherwise become atmospheric (decaying plant matter) can be frozen under ice or buried under silt in the ocean. Atmospheric CO2 can dissolve into the oceans, if the concentration is not sufficiently high (or forcibly pumped deep in order to liquefy it). The issue is which of these avenues are naturally occurring and how quickly does it operate?
Currently, based on scientific observation, the natural processes are not outstripping our production fast enough to keep the levels stable. What the observations do not tell us is how do the natural processes react to sudden surges in atmospheric CO2? Over the last 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels have not topped 300 parts per million (and this includes both periods of ice ages and warm spells). Within the span of human civilization, it has risen far beyond that mark. Nature just takes it's sweet time to catch up.
HOWEVER, once the analog channels are shut off, and once most ATSC channels are being broadcast in HD, they will be able to pump up those MPEG-2 bitrates, and things will improve in this area.
Ah, but the real question is... will they bump up the bitrates, or will they use the extra space they have to cram another channel or two in there? Companies are about producing products just barely above (in quality) what the market will tolerate. You make money typically on quantity, not quality.
The homeowner already owns the house before the painter ever sets foot on the property, so the situation isn't analogous to anything that gives a musician any claim to copyright on his own work. At best, his paint job would be a "derivative work."
A customer enjoying a musical recording often owns the 'house' in which that recording is played, be it a home stereo or portal MP3 player. What one buys is a way to make that device 'pretty' or otherwise functionally useful. That does have an analogy to the 'painter and house' example aforementioned as, when you buy a painter's services, you seek to make your home pretty and often times functionally useful.
I do not mind musicians being appropriately compensated for their works, but I do have a problem with the dichotomy presented. Why should one set of professions be treated with bend-over-backwards abuse of the customers in order to leech money for performances long past to fund their lives now? Work that I perform in my profession does not accord me the privilage of kicking back and earning royalties in perpetuity.
Copyright is not supposed to provide musicians and artists and writers with an income stream for their entire life. It is supposed to provide protection for the works they create, so that they may see income for the work they do produce, and to encourage the creation of those works by offering that protection. Copyright is out of hand and works protected under it, works that help define, describe, and shape our culture, should be permitted to be a part of that culture while that culture still exists and not long after it has changed.
Obviously, you were not meant to buy those DVDs. I recommend you return them to the place of purchase and ask for forgiveness for violating the will of the content creators.
Sure, because we can always trust that, once this system is in place, there will be no way for them to circumvent the 'We only record violent crimes' protection. All it takes is for the infrastructure to be put in place for innocent enough reasons and once there, those in power will attempt to expand it to cover things not originally intended nor desired. History has proven out this path of behavior for those in power.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you figure that works? Is this a cumulative damage or is it reversible? Where is the research that shows this type of forensic investigation has any merit and... how do you suppose you even expose the gates themselves to read the oxidation? Besides, unless I miss my guess, aren't modern IC chips basically sealed without oxygen once the heat sink cover is put on, rendering the capacity to oxidize kind of minimal?
Something smells fishy in your understanding.
What happens on the day that you become homeless and no longer have an address to register with to vote? What happens on that day if the reason you're homeless is because the government abused their position and usurped your land for whatever eminent domain project they had in mind, and failed or significantly delayed your relocation? Would you not want the ability to have a say on whether or not the government officials should remain in office?
I know that's a very poor example, but in your black-or-white spin on who should be able to vote and who shouldn't, frankly, I'm of the mind that we're a nation of people. Property, places, and all that can be adjusted and changed. Without the people, you have no one to govern and no one to support your government. Besides, we can have a nation of 'fair legal rules' that is assisted by 'the benevolence of other people'. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, despite your commentary.
I know that I personally understand the need for funding to fix and build roads. However, my philosophy would state that being environmentally friendly is first and foremost a thing to be. I would consider using biofuels too, but (pay close attention here) despite the capability to make and use a green fuel (biodiesel), there is no supply for it. Fortunately, this supply can be had on a personal level. Is the State set up well to tax me my use of the roads and allow me to make my own fuel in the lack of a commercial fuel source? Is the State doing anything to further this cause, that will see results within my lifetime?
The taxation thing would be nice not to have to deal with, but it is more being environmentally friendly that seemed to matter to this guy. He didn't have a bumper sticker that said "I'm evading fuel taxes 100%" it said what kind of environmentally friendly fuel he was using.
The law makes a big deal about intent. The law should not punish people intending to do BETTER for our society and unknowingly skirting (or forgetting) taxation. It should only concern itself with those seeking to avoid their portion of responsibility for the community.
Why attempt recovery that may or may not be possible when you can have the pictures already saved elsewhere? Also, what happens if, by some stupid abuse of power, they simply take your camera to ensure it's deleted? You might not be able to recover anything after they get done with it.
I think you're starting down a dangerous path when you say this. Why? Because you do not know the keywords they are looking for. So it's a computer monitoring you and not a person. That takes infrastructure and systems put in place to do the monitoring. Once they're in there, what's to say that they'll look for the word "terrorist"? Maybe they'll look for the word "President" and tag those too. The system is there, why not use it? Besides, if I talk on the phone to a friend stating something about terrorists, is there suddenly some reason that this conversation deserves monitoring? Is there any right for my conversation to be monitored? What did I do wrong?
Do not assume that, just because it seems innocuous at first, that such a system will be used properly. The Police have been granted the power to enforce speed limits, but sadly, in most cases I've seen, speed limits are unspoken taxes now, and far less about safety.
A Terminal Server, where users use thin clients and run programs off the server? Hmmm.
The one thing that draws my attention is, sadly, one thing I've groused about with XP. Having set up a samba domain at home, doing IT tech savvy stuff, I lament not being able to do the fast user switching. Even at work, I think that'd be awesome as hell, to be able to do admin work on a PC without having to log off the user or even wait for them to be around, as long as their machine is available. Sort of like a 'back end management console'.
That's the only inspiring thing, though. The rest is frosting, and some bitter tasting crap at that.
No offense, but do you think a 7 year old article lacking the findings reached in all the time between then and now is truly a good source of information? While it is a good starting point, it is not necessarily indicative of our current understanding of the global climate. Can we get something a bit more current in the argument, perhaps?
You do realize that once the sunlight reaches Earth, it is within the sphere of the greenhouse gases. Even if you reflect more light upward, true to its namesake, greenhouse gases will bounce that light right back down to be absorbed somewhere else. It doesn't matter WHERE it is absorbed once it's here, the net effect is still the same.
For any 'reflective' solution to have any effect on planetary temperatures, you would need to station the reflective material above the layer of greenhouse gases. Or, you know, just thin that layer of gases.
I don't advocate corn for Ethanol. As you say, and as the replies imply, there are better sources for Ethanol. A friend/coworker also was spreading about the idea of Poplar trees being a viable biostock for Ethanol production, with a much higher yield.
:P )
However, what I advocate is a closed-loop fuel production system. The waste products of the fuel burned for energy (motive power or electrical) need to be reused by the ecosystem, and the fuel needs to come out of that ecosystem. If this is Ethanol, then so be it. If it is not, the 'next gen' alternative fuel should have this mantra in mind.
As to the other thoughts you have, about the Ethanol have some merit. The formulas for combustion of Ethanol and Gasoline.
C2H5OH + 3 O2 --> 2 CO2 + 3 H2O
C8H18 + O2 --> CO2 + H2O
For the record, photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 12H2O + sunlight ---> 6O2 + C6H12O6 + 6H2O
And for the production of Ethanol (fermentation):
C6H12O6 --> 2 CH3CH2OH + 2 CO2
(It seems here that they notate Ethanol in 2 ways
While, throughout this whole process, I can see where people get concerned (2 CO2 molecules when you make Ethanol and 2 when you burn it!), I think they miss the 6 absorbed through the plant, and the fact that, for every sugar molecule fermented, you get 2 molecules of Ethanol.
Plants thrive in CO2, as that's their foodstock. The other part to consider is that the CO2 produced by burning Gasoline has NOT been in our ecosystem in millions of years. If you have sufficient plants, and replenish them, to support our fuel needs, then they will leech out the CO2 produced by both the fermentation process and the combustion process, providing a balanced system (if making very much use of CO2 during the cycle). By contrast, burning Gasoline is reintroducing carbon from (effectively) outside the ecosystem, which can only produce a net increase in the atmospheric concentration.
The real question is more one of efficiency. Gasoline, as I understand, is not very efficient. I could not locate figures for Ethanol.
Two things.
1) Ethanol is no better for the environment than oil
This is not technically true. The biggest problem with using fossil fuels is that we're taking a source of carbon that has effectively been outside of our ecosystem and burning it, returning it into our environment and, as we're seeing, prompting the Earth to seek a new equilibrium. When you make fuel, even combustible fuel, from plant matter, those plants are leeching carbon out of the atmosphere and ground, completing a cycle that can be run endlessly. We use plants to make Ethanol, we burn Ethanol, CO2 goes into the air, plants siphon back out the CO2, leaving our atmosphere with roughly the same concentration as it had when we started. Problem? I fail to see it.
2) nuclear fission -- a process that makes toxic waste that will have to kept locked up for at least 10,000 years or more depending on the material used
While I agree that the byproducts of nuclear fission are dangerous, but so is the fuel. We obviously had to get this fuel from somewhere, yes? Uranium ore, or similar ores, are mined from the planet and processed. The planet itself is perfectly happy with radioactive materials, as they've been around far longer than we have. What has an issue with it is the ecosystem. Want to make nuclear waste less dangerous? Capsulize it and/or disperse it back into an 'ore'-like substance, and bury it outside of our ecosystem. Heck, after mining for uranium ore, maybe just put it right back in the same place. The fear over nuclear power seems to me to be as much irrational as it is cautious. Just because coal doesn't kill you when you hold it doesn't mean that that isn't a bigger threat to our lifestyle than a warm rock.
When common citizens can get arrested and prosecuted in spite of ignorance of the law, then so can the enforcers of the law, the ones SPECIFICALLY in charge of enforcing and utilizing the law to safeguard the lives of the citizens. To say the FBI is ignorant of the law can be considered far worse than a citizen not being informed of it, simply because the FBI lives and breathes by what laws are currently enforceable.
No internet access is irrelevant. The fact that a system like that is vulnerable AT ALL to common viruses is a recipe for disaster. Consider: Someone who doesn't like the current direction the ship is going bringing in his USB pen drive and launching a virus across the ship, taking control of it or just disabling it. While this could potentially happen with a custom designed OS, without the specs, interface calls, and knowledge of the system and how to compile for it, you aren't going to be writing many viruses at all for it. Even the potential for ACCIDENTAL infection makes it highly undesirable to have a common OS at the core of your battleship.
I wonder what happens when hardware that was good gets pounded by a shell through the hull and becomes bad. Does Windows have the capacity to comprehend that it just lost a component and not crash? While it'd be silly for the design of a system to be dependent on hardware that is not physically attached to the computer controlling it (a missile launcher, for instance), I can't say as I would trust Microsoft to do the right thing and use proper modular programming techniques. Even on XP, with it's modularity for changing basic configurations, why do I have to restart to change the name of the machine? If it was so modular, simply shutting down that aspect and restarting it should be easy.
A trip to Alaska just last year granted me some information concerning the advance and retreat of some glaciers there. Most were retreating, some even catastrophically. A few (not many) were advancing. A local region of persisting cold and snowfall will insulate some glaciers from the affects of global warming, but those should be considered the 'final death knell' for all of them. This goes hand in hand with how this year we've had a pretty cold winter where we're at, unlike the previous winter, but it doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening.
Why can't you? A contract is a legal document, it doesn't not immediately mean "both sides must get something." If I signed over the title of my car to my child, does my child have to pay me for it, or can I simply put through the legal paperwork/transaction/contract and receive nothing? A contract simply specifies TERMS of an exchange. One side of those terms may be "We ask for nothing in return."
Imprisonment of a murderer is 'enforcing rules to prevent wrong [doing]' since, though it doesn't correct for the issues before, it prevents wrong from them doing it again. In the case of Microsoft, they have grown large enough that the punishments written into law are not sufficient in size to hamper them, and do not serve as a deterrent. In a case like this, they need to seek a non-monetary remedy that seeks to prevent future occurrences, much like putting a murderer in jail.
The Judicial system in the US is badly flawed for this notion. There is no notion of preventing repeat offenses, simply punishment for past acts done. If you just don't care, then the punishment will never be a deterrent, and you work that much harder not to be caught.
A lot of flaws in the legal system. Justice isn't, in most cases.
I've had a sum total of one (1) company refuse me service because I wrote only 'See Photo ID' on the back of the card, instead of my signature. Oddly, it was some artist supply store. Everywhere else accepts it and, on larger purchases, will check the photo ID in order to validate. I even went so far in my grumblings to call the issuing company and ask whether the 'See Photo ID' "signature" was valid. The representative I talked to saw no reason why it would not, since the whole purpose of doing so was to prevent fraud. You'd think a merchant, the one most likely to get screwed, would be more than pleased for a card owner to attempt to prevent fraud instead of hanging on some trivial minutiae in order to piss off a customer and send the message that this merchant is not worth dealing with.
Here's the killer aspect of this all. While a signature may be easy to forge, a photo is less easy, requiring either noticeable alteration made to the card or a forged card to be made. Why do these cards NOT have a photo already on them? I've only ever heard of one company doing it.
It's not about making it cheap, it's about making sure it's done right. Often, doing something right is doing something costlier than it could be done, but that's the cost of doing it right.
Personally, an election for the President of the United States of America is an important enough event to spring for the cost to do it right. The cost of doing it wrong could mean at best trivial president and at worst, global war. Certainly worth doing things right.
So could you, should you be a citizen of the United States.
Oh, there most likely is a self-regulating aspect of atmospheric CO2 production. There are CO2 sinks into which atmospheric CO2 can be dumped. CO2 that would otherwise become atmospheric (decaying plant matter) can be frozen under ice or buried under silt in the ocean. Atmospheric CO2 can dissolve into the oceans, if the concentration is not sufficiently high (or forcibly pumped deep in order to liquefy it). The issue is which of these avenues are naturally occurring and how quickly does it operate?
Currently, based on scientific observation, the natural processes are not outstripping our production fast enough to keep the levels stable. What the observations do not tell us is how do the natural processes react to sudden surges in atmospheric CO2? Over the last 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels have not topped 300 parts per million (and this includes both periods of ice ages and warm spells). Within the span of human civilization, it has risen far beyond that mark. Nature just takes it's sweet time to catch up.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_sink
Ah, but the real question is... will they bump up the bitrates, or will they use the extra space they have to cram another channel or two in there? Companies are about producing products just barely above (in quality) what the market will tolerate. You make money typically on quantity, not quality.
A customer enjoying a musical recording often owns the 'house' in which that recording is played, be it a home stereo or portal MP3 player. What one buys is a way to make that device 'pretty' or otherwise functionally useful. That does have an analogy to the 'painter and house' example aforementioned as, when you buy a painter's services, you seek to make your home pretty and often times functionally useful.
I do not mind musicians being appropriately compensated for their works, but I do have a problem with the dichotomy presented. Why should one set of professions be treated with bend-over-backwards abuse of the customers in order to leech money for performances long past to fund their lives now? Work that I perform in my profession does not accord me the privilage of kicking back and earning royalties in perpetuity.
Copyright is not supposed to provide musicians and artists and writers with an income stream for their entire life. It is supposed to provide protection for the works they create, so that they may see income for the work they do produce, and to encourage the creation of those works by offering that protection. Copyright is out of hand and works protected under it, works that help define, describe, and shape our culture, should be permitted to be a part of that culture while that culture still exists and not long after it has changed.
Obviously, you were not meant to buy those DVDs. I recommend you return them to the place of purchase and ask for forgiveness for violating the will of the content creators.
Sure, because we can always trust that, once this system is in place, there will be no way for them to circumvent the 'We only record violent crimes' protection. All it takes is for the infrastructure to be put in place for innocent enough reasons and once there, those in power will attempt to expand it to cover things not originally intended nor desired. History has proven out this path of behavior for those in power.