The US uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day. (first couple google hits, hope that is right).
Given that the oil companies are consistently the most profitable corporations on the planet, why don't we tax each barrel 5% (or stop subsidizing them over time). Take 5 dollars of that 100 dollar barrel and use it to build renewable energy sources, and subsidize energy producers and home owners who wish to build renewable energy sources. That would be a 36 billion dollar per year incentive to people and companies willing to take the money to build green.
And I'm not sure why people immediately think it is economically infeasible for energy producers to build clean plants. Wind farms are springing up all over the place in Oregon and along the Columbia Gorge. I'm pretty sure those companies decided it was worth the cost. Since renewable plants are, by definition, fuel cost free (a major incentive), with the right incentives (rebates, subsidizes, possibly penalties at some point), the country can move green without much economic hardship.
There were a couple ted talks that describe how moving away from oil won't necessarily be as painful as some people think: http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_hopkins_transition_to_a_world_without_oil.html
But it probably does mean that some "old big money" and politicians who take "big old money" are going to have to change. It really is mostly a social and political issue. Hopefully US citizens can start voting for people that will actually make a change. I don't have high hopes given the Citizens United scotus ruling though:(
There has been some speculation that if Jimmy Carter's policies had continued a few more presidencies, we'd already be off oil (probably just foreign oil, but a major reduction). http://millercenter.org/president/carter/essays/biography/4
The wind farms in Oregon and along the columbia gorge use turbines who cost 2 million each. http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Wind/FAQ_Wind.shtml
A complete solar panel setup on your roof costs 32k, 23k after rebates, and is expected to drop a lot more (12k) http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/environment/2009-01-12-solar-panels-glut_N.htm
I think you are correct that the extremes on either side do exaggerate (and some outright lie) in order to (optimistic) convince people of the truth or (pessimistic) make lots of money.
However, as has been pointed out by the Daily Show and others, many of the conservative commentors likely don't believe in what they are preaching. For instance, when Beck was on CNN he was very critical of our health care system. When he joined fox, he suddenly 'believed' that we had the best health care in the world.
For me it boils down to credibility. Take someone like Al Gore. He has a long history of being concerned about the environment. Does he exaggerate and gets facts wrong sometimes? Yup. But I'm fairly certain he isn't preaching just for money. If you look at his record, I'm fairly certain he actually believes that global warming is a problem and wants to raise awareness about it. He is business smart enough to make a living doing so, but it is likely not his main motive.
Someone like Beck is pretty obviously only preaching for money. And his messages have changed drastically over time. Someone like Rachel Maddow on the other hand, has been consistently liberal her whole life. She was saying the same sorts of things for very little money for a long time. Does she exaggerate and sometimes take things out of context? Yup. But I really think she believes in what she says, and honestly makes a good attempt at approaching the truth.
And then you can throw in other differences. Like O'Reilly's recent youtube videos showing you that he is pretty obviously an idiot when it comes to basic science (not knowing how tides work, then when confronted, daring people to prove how the moon go there....). There aren't many (any?) liberal commentors that I'm aware of who are that self-misinformed about the basics of science/logic.
There are real fundamental differences between left and right commentors. It might not be apparent due to their shows formats (for ratings), but it certainly seems apparent in the issues I described above (belief in the message, consistency of the message and history, basic logic/science).
VOTE BY EDUCATION 2006 TOTAL Democrat Republican No High School (3%) 64% 35% H.S. Graduate (21%) 55% 44% Some College (31%) 51% 47% College Graduate (27%) 49% 49% Postgraduate (18%) 58% 41%
And a different way of analyzing it was done by watchdog blog. http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2008/09/are-democrats-more-educated-than-republicans/
According to Watchblog.com:
* States that voted for Kerry in 2004 had 21 percent more college graduates than states that voted for Bush.
* The states that ranked the lowest for high school and college graduates were all red states.
* Eight out of 10 of the states that ranked the highest for high school college graduates were blue states. (The number one state, by far, is Colorado — technically a red state because it went for Bush by a small margin, but effectively a “purple” state because it’s become so politically mixed.)
he problem, however, is that socialist programs in the US usually end up with more people not willing to work and live off the system. We simply can't afford to allow people to do that here.
We are the richest nation on earth. If Europe can do that, surely we can. Of course, it would either require a tax rate like Europe, or major cuts to Defense, and neither are likely to happen.
And my google-fu appears broken today, but I am pretty sure I recall reading several studies that showed that the higher unemployment benefits in European countries don't lead to higher unemployment rates. Rather, they are good enough supports so that people can re-educate themselves, and get back into the workforce.
If for some reason it is different here in the US, then there are probably another set of root causes that need to be addressed. Not the unemployment benefits themselves, but more likely, how the benefits are structured, and what goal the benefits are designed to reach. I don't know all the poverty programs out there, but if all we give folks is medicaid and foodstamps, that is obviously not going to help as many people as some support system with job training, community college vouchers, or other more complete packages designed to get someone working again.
It seems like what is missing from gun control laws, is any effort to establish a system to periodically check on the mental health of the gun owner. Canada requires you to apply for a gun license, which must be renewed every 5 years, and I believe requires letters of recommendation from some number of people.
I think if you had to get a couple/few real people to vouch for you every year or so to renew a license, it would drastically cut down on the number of incidents where a gun owner is mentally deteriorating over time and snaps.
But even that isn't addressing the root cause(s) of US gun crime rates. We have astronomically higher gun crime rates than Canada, Switzerland, and other high gun owning Nations. I bet if someone did an honest study of the situation, they'd discover that the major factors are caused by our extreme income disparities, lack of social safety nets, and other socio-economic issues that Europe in generally is more "socialistic" about.
In a previous slashdot debate about gun control, one guy described Canada's gun sales system, and it sounded pretty solid. They have more guns than we do, yet way less gun crime. There are probably many factors contributing to their lower gun crimes, but the the process for obtaining a gun must be one of the major ones.
There was some amount of wait time, some sort of background check, and you had to have your wife sign a letter saying it was OK! (I'm assuming there is a list of people close to you that they would consider acceptable for the letter, father, mother, etc..).
There were other provisions also. I think you had to have a gun license of some sort. I would assume that the license would require some periodic maintenance by turning in another family letter, and/or another background check.
"It's good time management and it shows they know how to budget their energy for things that matter. "
It also shows me that those computer/engineering folks, once hired, may also do things like:
Skip the team building exercise because it is a waste of time. Not attend the company Christmas party because its filled with dumb people. Approach problems that may require a multi-disciplinary approach from only one narrow angle. Likely unwilling to consider or take advice from anyone without a similar background. Is slow to evolve as technology evolves. Has very few interests outside of work and is probably somewhat unhappy. Finds it difficult to have conversations about anything except work. Probably won't be promoted very high.
Of course there are exceptions, but it has been my experience that well rounded people, people who have studied some art, literature, other cultures, etc.... are people who can approach any problem from many angles. They also tend to be easier to work with, pickup unfamiliar subjects faster, come in on Monday way more refreshed because of a fun weekend (filled with non-work stuff), etc..
I think you could say that they visually look similar, but the interfaces are no where near as complex as interfaces of PC games designed only for PC's. You mentioned RPG's on consoles looking like MMO's. They may look similar, but the control and flexibility, precision and options, are entirely different. Can you imagine trying to play something like Everquest on a console? That would be horrible.
Even something like WoW, which I consider dumbed down in comparison to EQ (I may have just not played enough WoW), had lots of customizations, and I recall having to hit way more keys and key combinations than any console could every handle.
Consolits will always exist until consoles develop ways for the player to provide as much input as a you can with a computer keyboard.
"$50 million from the government because there is no profit potential in private industry. Like every other green energy initiative."
I guess the businesses behind the massive amounts of Columbia Gorge Wind Farms are too stupid to realize that there is no money to be made from wind energy.....
Well, we still have Al Franken and Bernie Sanders in the Senate to hopefully raise enough awareness to stop any crazy house bills from passing. (Not likely, but one can hope).
Well, I don't deal with the networking or hardware very often, but I can recall meetings with the server admins and network talking about the setup of applications I manage/program. The firewall did many things beyond ACL-like duties.
For one, it is set to stop responding to IP's that send too many requests per second. It also has packet inspection that looks for known packet tricks that ddos'ers and other black hats use and will reject those. I don't remember everything, but I seem to recall it was a pretty long list of benefits. I suppose one could argue that that list of benefits isn't "firewalling", and I suppose you'd be correct. But most modern expensive firewalls come with all those features, and should probably be classified as 'network security devices' over the old name 'firewall'.
Weren't those systems rather primitive in terms of hardware/touch/motion sensors/cameras/gps though? The set of hardware features that the iPhone made common is one of the driving forces behind all the cool new apps.
I remember the first iPhone owners wowing folks by pinching and zooming, or tilting the phone to drive a car game. I can't recall any well advertised product prior to the iPhone having those sorts of "neato" features that made apps much more engaging.
Java is still the number one language in the world. I find it a little hard to imagine that the language and SDK's are the primary reason for the lack of apps. If I had to think of another factor that was related to the staggered release date, it would be device fragmentation. For instance, here is a Netflix developer explaining why there is no Netflix app for Android yet Netflix Blog. The summary: no unified DRM system.
I don't play many games, just a handful of the 'silly ones' that iPhone friends point out, like the birds one. In browsing around, I see what you mean now. Many of the hardcore games aren't on android. If that is important to someone, that certainly is a major deal breaker. Myself, I don't like playing anything serious/complex on a tiny screen.
No netlfix is probably a bigger issue for more people. And it sounds like progress will be slow. At least a year away. netflix blog on android
Wouldn't the obvious answer be that since the iPhone came out well before Android, mobile developers got used to that environment, and are now resistant to change?
The iPhone in 2007 was a novelty. It was the first smartphone that 'mom and pop' bought. The concept of 'apps' for fun on a phone was new, and many people were buying lots of silly little apps.
Fast forward to 2008, with the release of the g1, with small'ish sales on t-mobile. The mass of 'average joes' who bought smartphones for the first time bought the iPhone, and were still locked by contract.
It isn't until now that HTC, verizon, and others have advertised, promoted, and released many flashy phones, that Android is becoming so popular. But for the masses that originally bought the iPhone, inertia and familiarity keeps them loyal to apple.
There is an american express app for android. Air video: I'm not as sure about that one, but threads suggest VLC stream and convert. http://traveldevel.com/vlc-stream-convert There isn't a good way to compare the amount of games in each app store, but I haven't yet found a popular game that wasn't also Android. PBS, ABC news, ted mobile, cnn and npr are on android. Sadly, no ABC Player or Netflix yet (although netflix and hulu plus are coming soon). There are a bunch of specialty camera apps.
Thanks for that post. I keep hearing "term limits, term limits!" (usually from people on the right) but I know that it won't fix the problem.
I am of the opinion that money needs to be excluded from our generous freedom of speech. Candidates would only get a set amount of campaign funds after getting enough people to sign a petition. That set amount of funds would come along with a set amount of TV time, a required number of televised debates, and rules prohibiting PACS or other 3rd parties from running any political issue ads.
3rd party rules would, necessarily, also need to infringe upon the ability of news organizations to be blatantly biased. The UK and other countries have much stricter libel and slander laws. Here is the US, when it comes to politics, you are basically immune to libel and slander laws. That needs to end. Propagating blatant falsehoods needs to stop. An uninformed electorate has no chance.
And while we can likely remove the most blatant bias in news with law, we won't get rid of it completely. That is why, like public funds for candidates would remove money incentives, the US needs a strong public news agency, that is run on one of the major TV stations. Those are public airways. We need to reclaim one station for public funded news (or rotate each year to a new station, abc, then nbc, then fox, etc..).
I know we Americans deeply value our freedom of speech, but until money is completed removed from the political process, we will continue to elect corporatists, not true republicans or true democrats (there are a few left).
Every watched SG1 and/or Atlantis? (And hundreds of other sci fi examples of ascent)
What if they spread out, evolved spiritually to pure energy, and now are all around us, but don't interact because we are (too young, unintelligent, barbaric, etc.. etc..) What if they spread out, wiped the universe of all life, died out themselves due to some massive disturbance in the galaxy, and a billion years has passed so no trace is left? What if they are spread out, living well, but with sufficient technology to hide their presence, and the presence of others from us? What if they created this universe for us, and live in many parallel universes? see biocosm (really interesting book)
For every "why can't I see them right now!" there are tons of reasons why we might not see them. Many of which, I bet we cannot even conceive of yet.
The only level of violence and reprisal sufficient to deter terrorism is at the level of what are called "war crimes", so only societies who are both powerful and ruthless can defeat (serious) terrorists.
You can look around the world and see that the more repressed and brutalized a population is, the more they turn to guerrilla tactics and civilian bombings. Look at the rate of domestic terrorism in the US. Tim McVeigh and a few others. It is so low, because in general, life is good for the average US citizen (educated, fairly high standard of living, feeling that their voice is heard and considered, etc..). Likewise with our neighbors. There aren't any canadians bombing the US, nor mexicans. The standard of living in each of those countries is fairly good, the society is fairly stable, the people generally feel that their government is somewhat fair, and the US, their neighbor, doesn't impose any harsh policies.
When people are economically comfortable, and they feel that their society's voice is being heard, they tend to not bomb things. Irrational voices (like calls to stone women) are best countered by education, economic development, international pressure, and other factors. Bombing them will only create another generation who hate those that bombed them.
Your car analogy doesn't quite work. In the case of Tesla, if his beaming free energy theory was right, there would be no way to charge any money for the power freely floating through the air. In your Ford car analogy, sure, the buggy makers are out of business, but JP Morgan would still be making money selling buggies 2.0 (cars).
No one would finance him if there was no way to sell the resulting product.
The FCC isn't making "laws", they are regulating. Congress passed statutes giving them the authority to regulate. First sentence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission
I'm guessing similar laws give power to agencies like the TSA. The TSA can make decisions with huge economic impacts, no congressional input needed.
I like all your ideas except hydro damns. Having lived in the Northwest US all my life, I can tell you that they are very destructive to river life. I'd much rather have a nuke plant along the banks of our rivers, or more wind turbines, like they are doing along our Columbia Gorge now, pic of the gorge
I wish I hadn't commented previously. I would have modded you up further. Now I'm generally curious: was this merger largely outside of the scope of the FCC's power, once certain licensing and certain consumer protection items in place?
With the natural and granted monopolies (for example, ast mile lines and over the air bandwidth), I don't think you can escape some sort of agency, who is outside of the market, regulating those monopolies.
Slashdot Mirror
The US uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day. (first couple google hits, hope that is right).
Given that the oil companies are consistently the most profitable corporations on the planet, why don't we tax each barrel 5% (or stop subsidizing them over time). Take 5 dollars of that 100 dollar barrel and use it to build renewable energy sources, and subsidize energy producers and home owners who wish to build renewable energy sources. That would be a 36 billion dollar per year incentive to people and companies willing to take the money to build green.
And I'm not sure why people immediately think it is economically infeasible for energy producers to build clean plants. Wind farms are springing up all over the place in Oregon and along the Columbia Gorge. I'm pretty sure those companies decided it was worth the cost. Since renewable plants are, by definition, fuel cost free (a major incentive), with the right incentives (rebates, subsidizes, possibly penalties at some point), the country can move green without much economic hardship.
There were a couple ted talks that describe how moving away from oil won't necessarily be as painful as some people think:
http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_hopkins_transition_to_a_world_without_oil.html
But it probably does mean that some "old big money" and politicians who take "big old money" are going to have to change. It really is mostly a social and political issue. Hopefully US citizens can start voting for people that will actually make a change. I don't have high hopes given the Citizens United scotus ruling though:(
There has been some speculation that if Jimmy Carter's policies had continued a few more presidencies, we'd already be off oil (probably just foreign oil, but a major reduction). http://millercenter.org/president/carter/essays/biography/4
The wind farms in Oregon and along the columbia gorge use turbines who cost 2 million each.
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Wind/FAQ_Wind.shtml
A complete solar panel setup on your roof costs 32k, 23k after rebates, and is expected to drop a lot more (12k)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/environment/2009-01-12-solar-panels-glut_N.htm
I think you are correct that the extremes on either side do exaggerate (and some outright lie) in order to (optimistic) convince people of the truth or (pessimistic) make lots of money.
However, as has been pointed out by the Daily Show and others, many of the conservative commentors likely don't believe in what they are preaching. For instance, when Beck was on CNN he was very critical of our health care system. When he joined fox, he suddenly 'believed' that we had the best health care in the world.
For me it boils down to credibility. Take someone like Al Gore. He has a long history of being concerned about the environment. Does he exaggerate and gets facts wrong sometimes? Yup. But I'm fairly certain he isn't preaching just for money. If you look at his record, I'm fairly certain he actually believes that global warming is a problem and wants to raise awareness about it. He is business smart enough to make a living doing so, but it is likely not his main motive.
Someone like Beck is pretty obviously only preaching for money. And his messages have changed drastically over time. Someone like Rachel Maddow on the other hand, has been consistently liberal her whole life. She was saying the same sorts of things for very little money for a long time. Does she exaggerate and sometimes take things out of context? Yup. But I really think she believes in what she says, and honestly makes a good attempt at approaching the truth.
And then you can throw in other differences. Like O'Reilly's recent youtube videos showing you that he is pretty obviously an idiot when it comes to basic science (not knowing how tides work, then when confronted, daring people to prove how the moon go there....). There aren't many (any?) liberal commentors that I'm aware of who are that self-misinformed about the basics of science/logic.
There are real fundamental differences between left and right commentors. It might not be apparent due to their shows formats (for ratings), but it certainly seems apparent in the issues I described above (belief in the message, consistency of the message and history, basic logic/science).
Links?
Quick google and I found 2 sources that contradict what you say.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/US/H/00/epolls.0.html
VOTE BY EDUCATION 2006
TOTAL Democrat Republican
No High School (3%) 64% 35%
H.S. Graduate (21%) 55% 44%
Some College (31%) 51% 47%
College Graduate (27%) 49% 49%
Postgraduate (18%) 58% 41%
And a different way of analyzing it was done by watchdog blog.
http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2008/09/are-democrats-more-educated-than-republicans/
According to Watchblog.com:
* States that voted for Kerry in 2004 had 21 percent more college graduates than states that voted for Bush.
* The states that ranked the lowest for high school and college graduates were all red states.
* Eight out of 10 of the states that ranked the highest for high school college graduates were blue states. (The number one state, by far, is Colorado — technically a red state because it went for Bush by a small margin, but effectively a “purple” state because it’s become so politically mixed.)
he problem, however, is that socialist programs in the US usually end up with more people not willing to work and live off the system. We simply can't afford to allow people to do that here.
We are the richest nation on earth. If Europe can do that, surely we can. Of course, it would either require a tax rate like Europe, or major cuts to Defense, and neither are likely to happen.
And my google-fu appears broken today, but I am pretty sure I recall reading several studies that showed that the higher unemployment benefits in European countries don't lead to higher unemployment rates. Rather, they are good enough supports so that people can re-educate themselves, and get back into the workforce.
If for some reason it is different here in the US, then there are probably another set of root causes that need to be addressed. Not the unemployment benefits themselves, but more likely, how the benefits are structured, and what goal the benefits are designed to reach. I don't know all the poverty programs out there, but if all we give folks is medicaid and foodstamps, that is obviously not going to help as many people as some support system with job training, community college vouchers, or other more complete packages designed to get someone working again.
It seems like what is missing from gun control laws, is any effort to establish a system to periodically check on the mental health of the gun owner. Canada requires you to apply for a gun license, which must be renewed every 5 years, and I believe requires letters of recommendation from some number of people.
I think if you had to get a couple/few real people to vouch for you every year or so to renew a license, it would drastically cut down on the number of incidents where a gun owner is mentally deteriorating over time and snaps.
But even that isn't addressing the root cause(s) of US gun crime rates. We have astronomically higher gun crime rates than Canada, Switzerland, and other high gun owning Nations. I bet if someone did an honest study of the situation, they'd discover that the major factors are caused by our extreme income disparities, lack of social safety nets, and other socio-economic issues that Europe in generally is more "socialistic" about.
In a previous slashdot debate about gun control, one guy described Canada's gun sales system, and it sounded pretty solid. They have more guns than we do, yet way less gun crime. There are probably many factors contributing to their lower gun crimes, but the the process for obtaining a gun must be one of the major ones.
There was some amount of wait time, some sort of background check, and you had to have your wife sign a letter saying it was OK! (I'm assuming there is a list of people close to you that they would consider acceptable for the letter, father, mother, etc..).
There were other provisions also. I think you had to have a gun license of some sort. I would assume that the license would require some periodic maintenance by turning in another family letter, and/or another background check.
I may have gotten some details wrong. Read more on wikipedia if you want
"It's good time management and it shows they know how to budget their energy for things that matter. "
It also shows me that those computer/engineering folks, once hired, may also do things like:
Skip the team building exercise because it is a waste of time.
Not attend the company Christmas party because its filled with dumb people.
Approach problems that may require a multi-disciplinary approach from only one narrow angle.
Likely unwilling to consider or take advice from anyone without a similar background.
Is slow to evolve as technology evolves.
Has very few interests outside of work and is probably somewhat unhappy.
Finds it difficult to have conversations about anything except work.
Probably won't be promoted very high.
Of course there are exceptions, but it has been my experience that well rounded people, people who have studied some art, literature, other cultures, etc.... are people who can approach any problem from many angles. They also tend to be easier to work with, pickup unfamiliar subjects faster, come in on Monday way more refreshed because of a fun weekend (filled with non-work stuff), etc..
I think you could say that they visually look similar, but the interfaces are no where near as complex as interfaces of PC games designed only for PC's. You mentioned RPG's on consoles looking like MMO's. They may look similar, but the control and flexibility, precision and options, are entirely different. Can you imagine trying to play something like Everquest on a console? That would be horrible.
Even something like WoW, which I consider dumbed down in comparison to EQ (I may have just not played enough WoW), had lots of customizations, and I recall having to hit way more keys and key combinations than any console could every handle.
Consolits will always exist until consoles develop ways for the player to provide as much input as a you can with a computer keyboard.
"$50 million from the government because there is no profit potential in private industry. Like every other green energy initiative."
I guess the businesses behind the massive amounts of Columbia Gorge Wind Farms are too stupid to realize that there is no money to be made from wind energy.....
Well, we still have Al Franken and Bernie Sanders in the Senate to hopefully raise enough awareness to stop any crazy house bills from passing. (Not likely, but one can hope).
Oregon is pretty dark blue. He'll get re-elected.
It'd be better to fund a close race in some other state.
Well, I don't deal with the networking or hardware very often, but I can recall meetings with the server admins and network talking about the setup of applications I manage/program. The firewall did many things beyond ACL-like duties.
For one, it is set to stop responding to IP's that send too many requests per second. It also has packet inspection that looks for known packet tricks that ddos'ers and other black hats use and will reject those. I don't remember everything, but I seem to recall it was a pretty long list of benefits. I suppose one could argue that that list of benefits isn't "firewalling", and I suppose you'd be correct. But most modern expensive firewalls come with all those features, and should probably be classified as 'network security devices' over the old name 'firewall'.
Weren't those systems rather primitive in terms of hardware/touch/motion sensors/cameras/gps though? The set of hardware features that the iPhone made common is one of the driving forces behind all the cool new apps.
I remember the first iPhone owners wowing folks by pinching and zooming, or tilting the phone to drive a car game. I can't recall any well advertised product prior to the iPhone having those sorts of "neato" features that made apps much more engaging.
Java is still the number one language in the world. I find it a little hard to imagine that the language and SDK's are the primary reason for the lack of apps. If I had to think of another factor that was related to the staggered release date, it would be device fragmentation. For instance, here is a Netflix developer explaining why there is no Netflix app for Android yet Netflix Blog. The summary: no unified DRM system.
I don't play many games, just a handful of the 'silly ones' that iPhone friends point out, like the birds one. In browsing around, I see what you mean now. Many of the hardcore games aren't on android. If that is important to someone, that certainly is a major deal breaker. Myself, I don't like playing anything serious/complex on a tiny screen.
No netlfix is probably a bigger issue for more people. And it sounds like progress will be slow. At least a year away. netflix blog on android
Wouldn't the obvious answer be that since the iPhone came out well before Android, mobile developers got used to that environment, and are now resistant to change?
The iPhone in 2007 was a novelty. It was the first smartphone that 'mom and pop' bought. The concept of 'apps' for fun on a phone was new, and many people were buying lots of silly little apps.
Fast forward to 2008, with the release of the g1, with small'ish sales on t-mobile. The mass of 'average joes' who bought smartphones for the first time bought the iPhone, and were still locked by contract.
It isn't until now that HTC, verizon, and others have advertised, promoted, and released many flashy phones, that Android is becoming so popular. But for the masses that originally bought the iPhone, inertia and familiarity keeps them loyal to apple.
There is an american express app for android.
Air video: I'm not as sure about that one, but threads suggest VLC stream and convert. http://traveldevel.com/vlc-stream-convert
There isn't a good way to compare the amount of games in each app store, but I haven't yet found a popular game that wasn't also Android.
PBS, ABC news, ted mobile, cnn and npr are on android. Sadly, no ABC Player or Netflix yet (although netflix and hulu plus are coming soon).
There are a bunch of specialty camera apps.
Thanks for that post. I keep hearing "term limits, term limits!" (usually from people on the right) but I know that it won't fix the problem.
I am of the opinion that money needs to be excluded from our generous freedom of speech. Candidates would only get a set amount of campaign funds after getting enough people to sign a petition. That set amount of funds would come along with a set amount of TV time, a required number of televised debates, and rules prohibiting PACS or other 3rd parties from running any political issue ads.
3rd party rules would, necessarily, also need to infringe upon the ability of news organizations to be blatantly biased. The UK and other countries have much stricter libel and slander laws. Here is the US, when it comes to politics, you are basically immune to libel and slander laws. That needs to end. Propagating blatant falsehoods needs to stop. An uninformed electorate has no chance.
And while we can likely remove the most blatant bias in news with law, we won't get rid of it completely. That is why, like public funds for candidates would remove money incentives, the US needs a strong public news agency, that is run on one of the major TV stations. Those are public airways. We need to reclaim one station for public funded news (or rotate each year to a new station, abc, then nbc, then fox, etc..).
I know we Americans deeply value our freedom of speech, but until money is completed removed from the political process, we will continue to elect corporatists, not true republicans or true democrats (there are a few left).
Every watched SG1 and/or Atlantis? (And hundreds of other sci fi examples of ascent)
What if they spread out, evolved spiritually to pure energy, and now are all around us, but don't interact because we are (too young, unintelligent, barbaric, etc.. etc..)
What if they spread out, wiped the universe of all life, died out themselves due to some massive disturbance in the galaxy, and a billion years has passed so no trace is left?
What if they are spread out, living well, but with sufficient technology to hide their presence, and the presence of others from us?
What if they created this universe for us, and live in many parallel universes? see biocosm (really interesting book)
For every "why can't I see them right now!" there are tons of reasons why we might not see them. Many of which, I bet we cannot even conceive of yet.
The only level of violence and reprisal sufficient to deter terrorism is at the level of what are called "war crimes", so only societies who are both powerful and ruthless can defeat (serious) terrorists.
You can look around the world and see that the more repressed and brutalized a population is, the more they turn to guerrilla tactics and civilian bombings. Look at the rate of domestic terrorism in the US. Tim McVeigh and a few others. It is so low, because in general, life is good for the average US citizen (educated, fairly high standard of living, feeling that their voice is heard and considered, etc..). Likewise with our neighbors. There aren't any canadians bombing the US, nor mexicans. The standard of living in each of those countries is fairly good, the society is fairly stable, the people generally feel that their government is somewhat fair, and the US, their neighbor, doesn't impose any harsh policies.
When people are economically comfortable, and they feel that their society's voice is being heard, they tend to not bomb things. Irrational voices (like calls to stone women) are best countered by education, economic development, international pressure, and other factors. Bombing them will only create another generation who hate those that bombed them.
Your car analogy doesn't quite work. In the case of Tesla, if his beaming free energy theory was right, there would be no way to charge any money for the power freely floating through the air. In your Ford car analogy, sure, the buggy makers are out of business, but JP Morgan would still be making money selling buggies 2.0 (cars).
No one would finance him if there was no way to sell the resulting product.
The FCC isn't making "laws", they are regulating. Congress passed statutes giving them the authority to regulate. First sentence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission
I'm guessing similar laws give power to agencies like the TSA. The TSA can make decisions with huge economic impacts, no congressional input needed.
I like all your ideas except hydro damns. Having lived in the Northwest US all my life, I can tell you that they are very destructive to river life. I'd much rather have a nuke plant along the banks of our rivers, or more wind turbines, like they are doing along our Columbia Gorge now, pic of the gorge
I wish I hadn't commented previously. I would have modded you up further. Now I'm generally curious: was this merger largely outside of the scope of the FCC's power, once certain licensing and certain consumer protection items in place?
What would you replace the FCC with?
With the natural and granted monopolies (for example, ast mile lines and over the air bandwidth), I don't think you can escape some sort of agency, who is outside of the market, regulating those monopolies.