Of course politicians should make those choices, that's what a representative democracy is all about. It's certainly not the job of millions of individuals to work out which detailed choices they have to make to reduce dependency on foreign oil and to individually implement the required policy.
Even if the majority were doing the right thing: the result would be a decrease in demand, leading to lower price. That in turn would allow the minority to burn more oil at the same cost - meaning the majority would have to accept a reduced living standard in order to let a minority reap the benefits. It's the prisoner's dilemma, and we know from game theory that this yields the worst total result for the players. The way out is to come to an agreement which moves to make and enforce that. The mechanism to implement that is composed of elections and government.
but what if I have a power adaptor and swiped your phone, can I now hack it?
No you would need my adapter as well as my phone. When you set the password, then a backdoor key is stored in the adapter. You could do the same thing with any USB stick - essentially the patent is just about putting the USB stick into the power supply.
A German house is typically not built in 6 weeks - make that 2 years or something. There is excavation, concrete and stones. No stick-frame buildings.
But if you want to build some modest wealth for yourself, consider building your own house. It's an option if you have some skills and are willing to learn and work hard until you are done with it. Particularly in Germany though: the ground you build on is a scarce resource, hence it's expensive. I don't think there is a way around that.
I agree on your general point regarding wealth distribution, though.
I really don't get this - is SOPA so important to US interests that it would risk a trade war with an EU country? I get that it's in the interests of some media companies, but they are puny in comparison with other US industries. Don't these industries have lobbies, too?
Skype is Freemium. You can make free calls from user to user, but if you want to call traditional phones you need to pay extra. If you want a traditional phone number you also pay. Seems to work.
Why would you believe anything until it has been proven to be so?
People generally believe what you tell them - evaluation of what you tell them only comes afterwards. There have been scientific studies investigating that - if you bombard people with statements and don't give them time to analyze them, they'll file them in the "true" category.
That behavior is basically a requirement - given that we start out knowing very little, we rely on our parent's telling us things which are true. As a result most children believe the religion they are brought up in - because they assume they are told the truth.
Of course their parents believe they tell them the truth, though statistically it has to be wrong in the majority of cases. (Most religious beliefs are mutually exclusive and there is no majority believing in a single religion.)
Anyway, you really need to make the effort to re-evaluate something if you had already accepted it as true.
It probably is, though. I suspect people borrow books, forget the due date or even that they have it, and the "librarians" are stuck with a large box of cards and no idea which refer to books that are due and which aren't. When someone returns a book they need to go through all the lending cards until you find the right one. If you can't find it - maybe the lender has forgotten to fill it in, or it was confused with one by another lender on return or..
Basically they don't have an accurate record which books are due, which are on loan and who has it. Fixing that paper-based is possible (using the card catalog), but difficult to teach people and error-prone.
If they had a scanner to scan the bar code of a book and the bar code of the library card - that should be easy for the lenders and help the librarians to locate overdue or missing books.
But is this really a problem? Do ATM's store easily recoverable data on a hard drive?
If they want to give out money even if there is no network connection, then they need to be able to store transactions and execute them later - even after a power-failure or after another type of system failure. Of course that data ought to be stored in an encrypted format with separate keys for encryption and decryption. The ATM ought to delete the decryption key from memory as soon as the network connection is lost, and retrieve it from the network with a separate secure protocol once connectivity is restored.
I don't think they are doing something as sophisticated as that, though. They probably assume that access to the machine is protected physically and store all transactions for debugging purpose.
If you have kids together and are worried about the issue of custody if one of the parent die, there are civil unions and contractual agreements for that.
I'm sure you could build a series of contractual agreements which would give you similar protections to marriage, but it would be an administrative nightmare. There is a lot to consider - visitation rights in the hospital for spouse and children, signing stuff for school, inheritance rights etc. In any case - the commitment to raise children together is a far greater one than the one to get married. If you are making it, then you might as well save yourself a lot of hassle and get married, too.
So what does MS give Nokia which they don't give other phone vendors? Quite apart from the fact that MS has other revenue streams. They are not dependent on Nokia, even if Nokia is useful for them.
Also Omnia 7 and Titan are available. If people want WP7 phones there is good hardware to chose from. Nokia just came out with their stuff, but Samsung and HTC are bound to have new phones in the pipe.
Apple is, finally, in trouble, but that's what happens when you're on top for so long.:)
Ok, back to reality: even if WP7 will eventually succeed - right now it's market share is puny. Apple is not in trouble, they are doing almost absurdly well - granted in terms of marketshare they've lost a lot, but they they lost that to Android. Maybe 2012 or 2013 will be the year of Windows on the mobile device? I won't completely dismiss that possibility - one of MS' primary strengths is persistence.
Well, with MeeGo they had a powerful partner who had a strong interest for Nokia to succeed. They also had a clear upgrade path from Symbian and developers to support that. The strategy was sound, they did fail to deliver on it in time, though. So granted they had a problem.
However Elop's approach was to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nokia is now completely depended on the strategy of another company - which in turn does not depend on Nokia at all. MS will happily supply WP7 to other vendors, and other vendors are happy to add a few WP7 phones to their offerings, even if the market is tiny.
Nokia could have supported Android and WP7 and kept their options open with their own OS. Neither HTC nor Samsung have all their eggs in one basket - they can all handle multiple systems. Nokia could have gone one further and just support all three OSes on one piece of hardware. That they are now using N9 parts to build a WP7 phone shows that it's possible.
So maybe Google didn't give them great conditions for Android - no big deal: Nokia could have taken Cyanogenmod and set up their own apps market. K9 mail would have been suitable as a mailtool - Nokia desperately needed a good one for their phones. They could have added Android-app compatibility to their own OS and give it access to a lot of application that way.
Even if eventually their own OS failed - they'd still have a nice stake in the Android market. As it is it looks like WP7 may well sink them - even if it eventually succeeds in the market, there is no guarantee Nokia will be along for that part of the ride.
The screen is too small and there is no full-sized keyboard, so phones are unsuitable to develop on. The barrier of entry to develop *for* Android is extremely low, all the tools are there for free and the quality is decent.
Well, I live in Germany. I own my phone, and have a prepaid contract (Tchibo in case anyone is interested) with a flat rate for data (500 MB max - after that speed drops). Costs me EU 10 / month plus whatever phone calls I actually make (not a lot, I suppose I could get it down to zero if I'd always use Skype). I can switch to another provider at any time, although taking the phone number with me is a hassle.
I use the phone to watch videos when I ride the subway to work, I have an app to get the public transport schedule, and another to buy rail tickets (I don't even need to print it, the conductor can scan it from the screen of the phone). I use the GPS, surf the internet, check my private mail (my employer can buy me a phone if they want me to check my company mail) keep my appointments, maintain my shopping list, check the weather forecast, listen to mp3s and there are a few games to keep my little daughter entertained when we are in a restaurant. (Mainly painting programs and "fruit slice" - she likes these.)
Occasionally I read books on it, too - but that's limited by my personal antipathy against DRM. Also I take photographs and videos sometimes.
A lot of fun and a lot of utility for the price. What's going on in the US these days?
Or alternatively, rather than making the wires twice as thick, you could implement the system twice and add some checker logic to find out if something has gone wrong. That's being used a lot on ICs for automotive applications, currently. (At least duplicated embedded CPUs and core logic - peripheral logic is checked with other means.)
Also for safety applications you have to consider other fault sources like radiation flipping bits which occurs a lot more often than IC wires breaking due to aging. These capsules don't help with that at all, but having duplicated checking systems would.
And then of course there is triple-voting (also frequently used in automotive safety for certain critical parts of the circuit).
The article states this technology is intended to automatically repair integrated circuits via "microcapsules, as small as 10 microns in diameter". Being charitable and going with 90 nm geometries (which we still used in our company last year - we are a bit slow) that's too large by a factor of 100. Interesting for PCBs, but not for integrated circuits.
The article also states that the technology would fix things "so fast that the user never knew there was a problem" and then explains that "a failure interrupts current for mere microseconds".
The summary corrupts that somewhat into the claim that "operation can continue without interruption". It's far too slow for that. Let's assume a rather slow 33 MHz bus - that gives us a clock period of 30 ns - so we'd miss at least 33 clock cycles in this scenario. This interruption might not be noticed by the user, if an error correcting protocol is used on the bus and the system retransmits. Otherwise you would get wrong data, and you have to assume that will be noticed sooner or later.
Interesting technology on PCBs or communication wires, I could see it being used in safety-critical applications. On integrated circuits it doesn't seem feasible. Basically you make the transistors and wires on ICs already as small as you can. To repair the wires on the IC you now need to insert capsules into the wires to do the automatic repair - so they would be way smaller than the wires. If you could manufacture these structures you'd make the wires smaller though and then you'd lose your ability to insert the microcapsules... there is no way to win that race.
Depends on the type of union. If you have to join a union in order to be able to do your job, then political donations by that union are not legitimate. If you have a choice whether to join that union and still be able to do your job, then they have the right to participate in the political process.
Having said that: this is an agreement in principle. I think it's completely justified to shoot a grizzly when there is a danger it would kill a human. I think the reasons for that are valid - they would also be valid if it was a frog which was about to kill a human. There are many companies in the US, which could on their own - if they were so inclined - outspend all of the unions in the US combined. The problems posed by one side are orders of magnitude bigger than those on the other side. To gloss over the dangers posed by frogs is entirely justified.
Still - if there was a decent chance to pass a law banning both unions and companies from political donations: I'm all for it, that's the right thing to do.
You still have freedom of association if you don't let companies make political donations. No company shareholder is banned from additionally joining or founding a political association and donating with their own money.
On the other hand, owning shares in a company does not mean you agree about politics with other shareholders, that would be a weird coincidence. Using your share of the company's profits in order to support a political party is therefore quite improper, as it's using your money against your interests. The only way a company can use company money for political purpose and reasonably assume that it acts in the interests of it's shareholders at the same time, is if those contributions are beneficial to the company's business interests. However that's exactly what companies should not be allowed to do. Now if a company has just a single owner, or if there are just a few owners and they happen to agree on politics, then there wouldn't be a problem with the company making donations. However in that case they could just as well donate with their private money, there is no legitimate reason why they have to do it as a company.
There are no rights being lost by not allowing companies to donate - just bribery would be reduced a little.
That's all very nice, but he is using it with a keyboard. He is not using the standard input methods for a tablet, and he is not using it as a handheld device. Neither the touchscreen nor the touchscreen-oriented software contributes to the way he is using this computer.
So you could just as well say that a tablet on it's own doesn't appear to be suitable for what he does.
His arguments for the setup make sense: he has everything he needs in a relatively compact package, has the connectivity he needs and good battery life.
I would see that as a challenge to laptop makers though: improve battery life, reduce weight (there really is no need for a DVD in most cases) and have built-in 4G. (Actually a recessed USB port might be the better option, so you can plug in the right USB stick without it interfering with the handling and style of the device.)
Not sure what you are trying to compare here - is it a relative reduction (per head) or an absolute amount?
For an absolute amount the US went from 20t to 17.5t meaning it's still one of the biggest polluters per capita. Or are you looking at the effort expend to reduce the problem? So the US went from 20t to 17.5t - which would be 12.5% - considerably less than the 20% reduction achieved in Germany. So the US put less effort in.
What you seem to be using for (some) of your comparisons is the absolute amount of the relative reductions. That's... imaginative.
On top of that - this is per head: the US also grew its population at the same time. The actual reduction is less then it appears while the population in Germany stayed roughly the same, so the 20% you see is what you get. The difference between what the US needs to accomplish and what it has actually done is huge.
In any case, given that we need to reach roughly a 55% reduction, even those countries which put the most effort in are well short of the goal.
The blame are the idiots that scream that we must all adopt a protocol that has done LITTLE TO NOTHING TO DROP EMISSIONS.
I don't know if Kyoto is the best way forward. Fact is, the US didn't join, Germany joined. Germany made a lot more progress than the US.
In fact, all I have seen is an outsourcing of jobs to 3rd world nations whose emissions then jump faster then the meager savings that were in the developed nations.
Well Kyoto didn't bankrupt Germany, and the outsourcing of jobs from the US to third world nations can't have been caused by Kyoto given that the US didn't join.
The blame will NOT be USA.
The blame should be on the US for being one of the biggest polluters per capita, and for being - among those free, wealthy and educated countries in the west - the one which makes one of the smallest contribution to solving the problem. You should compare yourself to the best, not to the worst.
That said: there is plenty of blame to go around for China and India - using the West's technology to jump ahead by a few hundred years means they have to act according to modern standards, too. There is plenty of blame to go around for the Europeans as well: overall their reductions are not much better than those in the US, and they fall well short of where they should be, even in the best cases.
So, quit being a fool and look at the facts. Even when you use something as irrational as emission per capitia, America comes up selling of roses in terms of turning things around, while others, esp. those under kyoto and fast growth nations, stink to high heaven.
Only with the help of vodoo mathematics, by any reasonable standard America is among those doing the least.
I agree with you: the biggest problem now are China and India. It's no longer correct to put the blame entirely on the US.
That said, if the US would get of their ass, then together the West could probably force China and India to move as well. They are both dependent on trade with the West. (And the other way round, to be sure - but that gives both sides some leverage, no side has to accept entirely what the other one wants.)
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Of course politicians should make those choices, that's what a representative democracy is all about. It's certainly not the job of millions of individuals to work out which detailed choices they have to make to reduce dependency on foreign oil and to individually implement the required policy.
Even if the majority were doing the right thing: the result would be a decrease in demand, leading to lower price. That in turn would allow the minority to burn more oil at the same cost - meaning the majority would have to accept a reduced living standard in order to let a minority reap the benefits. It's the prisoner's dilemma, and we know from game theory that this yields the worst total result for the players. The way out is to come to an agreement which moves to make and enforce that. The mechanism to implement that is composed of elections and government.
but what if I have a power adaptor and swiped your phone, can I now hack it?
No you would need my adapter as well as my phone. When you set the password, then a backdoor key is stored in the adapter. You could do the same thing with any USB stick - essentially the patent is just about putting the USB stick into the power supply.
A German house is typically not built in 6 weeks - make that 2 years or something. There is excavation, concrete and stones. No stick-frame buildings.
But if you want to build some modest wealth for yourself, consider building your own house. It's an option if you have some skills and are willing to learn and work hard until you are done with it. Particularly in Germany though: the ground you build on is a scarce resource, hence it's expensive. I don't think there is a way around that.
I agree on your general point regarding wealth distribution, though.
I really don't get this - is SOPA so important to US interests that it would risk a trade war with an EU country? I get that it's in the interests of some media companies, but they are puny in comparison with other US industries. Don't these industries have lobbies, too?
You are blaming the media for reporting the result of polls?
Skype is Freemium. You can make free calls from user to user, but if you want to call traditional phones you need to pay extra. If you want a traditional phone number you also pay. Seems to work.
Why would you believe anything until it has been proven to be so?
People generally believe what you tell them - evaluation of what you tell them only comes afterwards. There have been scientific studies investigating that - if you bombard people with statements and don't give them time to analyze them, they'll file them in the "true" category.
That behavior is basically a requirement - given that we start out knowing very little, we rely on our parent's telling us things which are true. As a result most children believe the religion they are brought up in - because they assume they are told the truth.
Of course their parents believe they tell them the truth, though statistically it has to be wrong in the majority of cases. (Most religious beliefs are mutually exclusive and there is no majority believing in a single religion.)
Anyway, you really need to make the effort to re-evaluate something if you had already accepted it as true.
It probably is, though. I suspect people borrow books, forget the due date or even that they have it, and the "librarians" are stuck with a large box of cards and no idea which refer to books that are due and which aren't. When someone returns a book they need to go through all the lending cards until you find the right one. If you can't find it - maybe the lender has forgotten to fill it in, or it was confused with one by another lender on return or ..
Basically they don't have an accurate record which books are due, which are on loan and who has it. Fixing that paper-based is possible (using the card catalog), but difficult to teach people and error-prone.
If they had a scanner to scan the bar code of a book and the bar code of the library card - that should be easy for the lenders and help the librarians to locate overdue or missing books.
But is this really a problem? Do ATM's store easily recoverable data on a hard drive?
If they want to give out money even if there is no network connection, then they need to be able to store transactions and execute them later - even after a power-failure or after another type of system failure. Of course that data ought to be stored in an encrypted format with separate keys for encryption and decryption. The ATM ought to delete the decryption key from memory as soon as the network connection is lost, and retrieve it from the network with a separate secure protocol once connectivity is restored.
I don't think they are doing something as sophisticated as that, though. They probably assume that access to the machine is protected physically and store all transactions for debugging purpose.
If you have kids together and are worried about the issue of custody if one of the parent die, there are civil unions and contractual agreements for that.
I'm sure you could build a series of contractual agreements which would give you similar protections to marriage, but it would be an administrative nightmare. There is a lot to consider - visitation rights in the hospital for spouse and children, signing stuff for school, inheritance rights etc. In any case - the commitment to raise children together is a far greater one than the one to get married. If you are making it, then you might as well save yourself a lot of hassle and get married, too.
So what does MS give Nokia which they don't give other phone vendors? Quite apart from the fact that MS has other revenue streams. They are not dependent on Nokia, even if Nokia is useful for them.
Also Omnia 7 and Titan are available. If people want WP7 phones there is good hardware to chose from. Nokia just came out with their stuff, but Samsung and HTC are bound to have new phones in the pipe.
GPL3 licensed code in the Linux kernel would have made a huge difference to people building their own versions of android to install on phones.
While I wish we had that - a GPL3 licensed Linux kernel would not have been used in android. It probably would have been a BSD derivative.
Apple is, finally, in trouble, but that's what happens when you're on top for so long. :)
Ok, back to reality: even if WP7 will eventually succeed - right now it's market share is puny. Apple is not in trouble, they are doing almost absurdly well - granted in terms of marketshare they've lost a lot, but they they lost that to Android. Maybe 2012 or 2013 will be the year of Windows on the mobile device? I won't completely dismiss that possibility - one of MS' primary strengths is persistence.
Well, with MeeGo they had a powerful partner who had a strong interest for Nokia to succeed. They also had a clear upgrade path from Symbian and developers to support that. The strategy was sound, they did fail to deliver on it in time, though. So granted they had a problem.
However Elop's approach was to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nokia is now completely depended on the strategy of another company - which in turn does not depend on Nokia at all. MS will happily supply WP7 to other vendors, and other vendors are happy to add a few WP7 phones to their offerings, even if the market is tiny.
Nokia could have supported Android and WP7 and kept their options open with their own OS. Neither HTC nor Samsung have all their eggs in one basket - they can all handle multiple systems. Nokia could have gone one further and just support all three OSes on one piece of hardware. That they are now using N9 parts to build a WP7 phone shows that it's possible.
So maybe Google didn't give them great conditions for Android - no big deal: Nokia could have taken Cyanogenmod and set up their own apps market. K9 mail would have been suitable as a mailtool - Nokia desperately needed a good one for their phones. They could have added Android-app compatibility to their own OS and give it access to a lot of application that way. Even if eventually their own OS failed - they'd still have a nice stake in the Android market. As it is it looks like WP7 may well sink them - even if it eventually succeeds in the market, there is no guarantee Nokia will be along for that part of the ride.
The screen is too small and there is no full-sized keyboard, so phones are unsuitable to develop on. The barrier of entry to develop *for* Android is extremely low, all the tools are there for free and the quality is decent.
Tropical fish are not a national currency either. National laws apply.
Well, I live in Germany. I own my phone, and have a prepaid contract (Tchibo in case anyone is interested) with a flat rate for data (500 MB max - after that speed drops). Costs me EU 10 / month plus whatever phone calls I actually make (not a lot, I suppose I could get it down to zero if I'd always use Skype). I can switch to another provider at any time, although taking the phone number with me is a hassle.
I use the phone to watch videos when I ride the subway to work, I have an app to get the public transport schedule, and another to buy rail tickets (I don't even need to print it, the conductor can scan it from the screen of the phone). I use the GPS, surf the internet, check my private mail (my employer can buy me a phone if they want me to check my company mail) keep my appointments, maintain my shopping list, check the weather forecast, listen to mp3s and there are a few games to keep my little daughter entertained when we are in a restaurant. (Mainly painting programs and "fruit slice" - she likes these.)
Occasionally I read books on it, too - but that's limited by my personal antipathy against DRM. Also I take photographs and videos sometimes.
A lot of fun and a lot of utility for the price. What's going on in the US these days?
Or alternatively, rather than making the wires twice as thick, you could implement the system twice and add some checker logic to find out if something has gone wrong. That's being used a lot on ICs for automotive applications, currently. (At least duplicated embedded CPUs and core logic - peripheral logic is checked with other means.)
Also for safety applications you have to consider other fault sources like radiation flipping bits which occurs a lot more often than IC wires breaking due to aging. These capsules don't help with that at all, but having duplicated checking systems would.
And then of course there is triple-voting (also frequently used in automotive safety for certain critical parts of the circuit).
The article states this technology is intended to automatically repair integrated circuits via "microcapsules, as small as 10 microns in diameter". Being charitable and going with 90 nm geometries (which we still used in our company last year - we are a bit slow) that's too large by a factor of 100. Interesting for PCBs, but not for integrated circuits.
The article also states that the technology would fix things "so fast that the user never knew there was a problem" and then explains that "a failure interrupts current for mere microseconds".
The summary corrupts that somewhat into the claim that "operation can continue without interruption". It's far too slow for that. Let's assume a rather slow 33 MHz bus - that gives us a clock period of 30 ns - so we'd miss at least 33 clock cycles in this scenario. This interruption might not be noticed by the user, if an error correcting protocol is used on the bus and the system retransmits. Otherwise you would get wrong data, and you have to assume that will be noticed sooner or later.
Interesting technology on PCBs or communication wires, I could see it being used in safety-critical applications. On integrated circuits it doesn't seem feasible. Basically you make the transistors and wires on ICs already as small as you can. To repair the wires on the IC you now need to insert capsules into the wires to do the automatic repair - so they would be way smaller than the wires. If you could manufacture these structures you'd make the wires smaller though and then you'd lose your ability to insert the microcapsules ... there is no way to win that race.
Depends on the type of union. If you have to join a union in order to be able to do your job, then political donations by that union are not legitimate. If you have a choice whether to join that union and still be able to do your job, then they have the right to participate in the political process.
Having said that: this is an agreement in principle. I think it's completely justified to shoot a grizzly when there is a danger it would kill a human. I think the reasons for that are valid - they would also be valid if it was a frog which was about to kill a human. There are many companies in the US, which could on their own - if they were so inclined - outspend all of the unions in the US combined. The problems posed by one side are orders of magnitude bigger than those on the other side. To gloss over the dangers posed by frogs is entirely justified.
Still - if there was a decent chance to pass a law banning both unions and companies from political donations: I'm all for it, that's the right thing to do.
You still have freedom of association if you don't let companies make political donations. No company shareholder is banned from additionally joining or founding a political association and donating with their own money.
On the other hand, owning shares in a company does not mean you agree about politics with other shareholders, that would be a weird coincidence. Using your share of the company's profits in order to support a political party is therefore quite improper, as it's using your money against your interests. The only way a company can use company money for political purpose and reasonably assume that it acts in the interests of it's shareholders at the same time, is if those contributions are beneficial to the company's business interests. However that's exactly what companies should not be allowed to do. Now if a company has just a single owner, or if there are just a few owners and they happen to agree on politics, then there wouldn't be a problem with the company making donations. However in that case they could just as well donate with their private money, there is no legitimate reason why they have to do it as a company.
There are no rights being lost by not allowing companies to donate - just bribery would be reduced a little.
That's all very nice, but he is using it with a keyboard. He is not using the standard input methods for a tablet, and he is not using it as a handheld device. Neither the touchscreen nor the touchscreen-oriented software contributes to the way he is using this computer. So you could just as well say that a tablet on it's own doesn't appear to be suitable for what he does.
His arguments for the setup make sense: he has everything he needs in a relatively compact package, has the connectivity he needs and good battery life.
I would see that as a challenge to laptop makers though: improve battery life, reduce weight (there really is no need for a DVD in most cases) and have built-in 4G. (Actually a recessed USB port might be the better option, so you can plug in the right USB stick without it interfering with the handling and style of the device.)
We're going to threaten them with tariffs? They'll just go to the WTO and get us penalized.
That's just a mutual agreement. You can get out of that or replace it, if it's no longer mutual.
Or, even worse, just start selling US T-Bills till we change our minds about the tariffs....
And destroy their own foreign currency reserves... They are not that stupid.
Not sure what you are trying to compare here - is it a relative reduction (per head) or an absolute amount?
For an absolute amount the US went from 20t to 17.5t meaning it's still one of the biggest polluters per capita. Or are you looking at the effort expend to reduce the problem? So the US went from 20t to 17.5t - which would be 12.5% - considerably less than the 20% reduction achieved in Germany. So the US put less effort in.
What you seem to be using for (some) of your comparisons is the absolute amount of the relative reductions. That's ... imaginative.
On top of that - this is per head: the US also grew its population at the same time. The actual reduction is less then it appears while the population in Germany stayed roughly the same, so the 20% you see is what you get. The difference between what the US needs to accomplish and what it has actually done is huge.
In any case, given that we need to reach roughly a 55% reduction, even those countries which put the most effort in are well short of the goal.
The blame are the idiots that scream that we must all adopt a protocol that has done LITTLE TO NOTHING TO DROP EMISSIONS.
I don't know if Kyoto is the best way forward. Fact is, the US didn't join, Germany joined. Germany made a lot more progress than the US.
In fact, all I have seen is an outsourcing of jobs to 3rd world nations whose emissions then jump faster then the meager savings that were in the developed nations.
Well Kyoto didn't bankrupt Germany, and the outsourcing of jobs from the US to third world nations can't have been caused by Kyoto given that the US didn't join.
The blame will NOT be USA.
The blame should be on the US for being one of the biggest polluters per capita, and for being - among those free, wealthy and educated countries in the west - the one which makes one of the smallest contribution to solving the problem. You should compare yourself to the best, not to the worst.
That said: there is plenty of blame to go around for China and India - using the West's technology to jump ahead by a few hundred years means they have to act according to modern standards, too. There is plenty of blame to go around for the Europeans as well: overall their reductions are not much better than those in the US, and they fall well short of where they should be, even in the best cases.
So, quit being a fool and look at the facts. Even when you use something as irrational as emission per capitia, America comes up selling of roses in terms of turning things around, while others, esp. those under kyoto and fast growth nations, stink to high heaven.
Only with the help of vodoo mathematics, by any reasonable standard America is among those doing the least.
I agree with you: the biggest problem now are China and India. It's no longer correct to put the blame entirely on the US.
That said, if the US would get of their ass, then together the West could probably force China and India to move as well. They are both dependent on trade with the West. (And the other way round, to be sure - but that gives both sides some leverage, no side has to accept entirely what the other one wants.)