Have you considered making recording a part of the program, and soliciting volunteers to do some of the endless driving around? Enough volunteers, spread around enough, and you could probably get a pretty good database.
Yes, definitely. That was actually my idea and the app already can record tracks. Have people record their tracks and send them in. But it'd be a little more complicated than that, especially within cities. If someone sends me a track it's going to be almost useless if they don't tell me the names of streets, etc.
A central map repository would be great--and I have thought of that--but I wonder how many people would actually take the time to contribute--i.e., name the various legs of the GPS tracks. And then hope they named the legs right because if you've looked at a pure GPS track it's not entirely intuitive what is what since you don't have any context.
But something along those lines does make sense. An open source map repository would be damn cool and useful. And if it's worldwide that much better!
Man, I want the job of those that just drive around with a GPS and record their track and what's out there. Especially on those nice long interstate hauls. Road trip!
Seriously, this is both interesting and disappointing. I've been working, as a hobby, on a Palm-based GPS mapping program. The reason I'm not making much progress is because even when I'm done it's not going to be very useful without map data which is probably not available for free. I had hoped there was some hi-tech way to snag decent map data (at least the roads themselves) perhaps by digitally analyzing satellite photos, etc. But this is a low-tech approach which certainly suggests to me that there's no realistic way I could come up with nationwide road data for my Palm app.
Through the miracle of statistics, it's possible (within a certain margin of error) to extrapolate information on the behavior of a large group of people by analyzing the behavior of a small (but representative) group of people.
True, but as others have said, I seriously doubt the population of people that willingly and honestly allow an outside organization to monitor the files they have or delete is representative of the overall filesharing population. It's kind of like going into a prison and asking how many people have comitted murder and then extrapolating that to the general non-prison population. Your results are going to be grossly skewed to the point of not being useful.
Most people don't bother to write and say "Your banner ads annoy me." They simply stop visiting.
Perhaps most people on most sites. My site has only increased from a few hundred users to nearly 10,000. Many of the users on the website have been participating in the forum since the day it was opened.
If they are unobtrusive, then fine, but most advertising is FAR from unobtrusive and stick out like sore thumbs on ANY webpage.
So it seems to me your qualm is with obtrusive, distractive advertising more than it is with banner ads.
I'd personally prefer an easy-to-ignore banner at the top of the page than to find even a text ad buried in the middle of the content as I scroll down.
Like the huge one on the right hand side of Slashdot I noticed when I came here without my proxy on yesterday.
I agree with you 100%. I don't use any ad-blocking software and just have pop-ups disabled in Mozilla. I don't bother to block ads but when they are as annoying as that long skinny thing on the right-hand side of Slashdot I immediately clicked "Don't load images from this server."
So I agree. You have to maintain a balance. But I don't think there is anything wrong with a moderate and well-planned use of banner ads.
So basically your argument is that you want to be rich at any cost to the environment, and you can't understand any connection between your wealth and others poverty, or your wealth and others environmental concerns?
You misstate my argument.
My argument is that if the environment is as deadly critical as environmentalists suggest then the same rules should apply to all. Just as being poor isn't an excuse to accept a thousand bucks to kill someone, nor is being poor an excuse to pollute the world--IF we are to believe the environmentalists that the threat of our pollution is so grave. Plus most of the pollution in developing countries isn't from poor people--it's from the factories of the rich and/or factories that belong to companies based in developed countries. By exempting pollution controls in developing countries you are giving a handout to the rich in those countries or the rich in developed countries at the expense of even worse health for the poor in those developing countries.
More likely than not the threat is NOT that grave. In that case I resent the environment being used as an excuse to justify worldwide wealth redistribution. If they want handouts for the poor they should say so and let us debate that on the economic or ethical merits.
You have, what, 1/24th the world population and you use 25% the world's energy.
The GWP (Gross World Product) was 45.9 trillion in 2001. The US GDP was 10.4 trillion in 2002 (sorry for the one year difference in stats). So the US generates 22.7% of the world's wealth. And the U.S. produces
23.3% of CO2. Are you seeing the similarity? 22.7% of the wealth and 23.3% of the CO2. We produce an amount of CO2 proportional to what we contribute to the world economy.
Further, the U.S. growth in CO2 production was 9.9% from 1990 through 1996. In the same period, China grew by 40%, India grew by 47.7%, and South Korea by 69.2%. Is it of no concern to you that the two most populous countries in the world are increasing their CO2 production at the rate of over 40% per year?
And all those goods are not flowing to other countries, either, they are mostly going to be used by you at home.
Irrelevant. Wealth is wealth. Even if most products are consumed at home the wealth enters the U.S. banking system and the effects are worldwide. If U.S. wealth goes down by 50% believe me everyone in the world will feel the pinch big time.
I don't really give a damn about your personal comfort, it's still inequitable.
Bingo! So we're talking about what is fair and wealth redistribution. Then let's make that the topic and stop making the environment a scape-goat to achieve economic rather than environmental goals.
People know ad revenue is needed to run sites, but a lot of them I know won't tolerate annoying banner ads
So what kind of ads will they tolerate? I run one ad-sponsored site. It's used standard banner ads since it went online in 1998. I've never received any complaints. They aren't obtrusive and aren't excessive in size or quantity. A single 468x60 up top and a few 100x100 on the left sidebar.
I agree that annoying, flashy animations that distract are annoying. So are pop-ups and pop-unders. So are flash (although those just appear as a "plugin missing" icon for me!). But what exactly is wrong with non-obtrusive, non-distracting banner ads?
To people in the developing world, being able to pollute might well be the difference between life and death. To people in developed world, being able to pollute makes very little difference to our quality of life.
If it's wrong, it's wrong. Applying two different standards based on "need" to what affects everyone globally is wrong. That's the main reason why the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 against Kyoto back in, what, 1999?
I live in a rich country, and I'd be more than happy for our economy to grow a bit slower because we had to make larger cuts in pollution, if that meant some people in the developing world could lift themselves out of abject poverty.
Uhm... then donate some of your money to the cause. But instituting CO2 limits on American companies isn't going to raise anyone in the developing world out of poverty. It's just going to reduce OUR standard of living. We may decrease our pollution a bit, but those in the developing countries will more than make up for it. Plus companies in developed countries will just move high-polluting industries to developing countries which will 1) Cause more pollution in those countries that already are in bad shape. 2) Cause domestic jobs to be moved overseas where the workers will probably be significantly underpayed. 3) Result in no net decrease in global pollution.
Creating a system where countries can pollute according to how much "stuff" they produce is overlooking the fact that some people are dieing because they don't have enough stuff, whereas some people already have more than enough.
So who gets to decide who has enough stuff? Suggesting that some people have too much and others have too little is essentially communism. I don't mean that as an insult to you, but communism doesn't work and is not the economic system that we employ in most of the world.
So are you saying that if you produce 10 million gallons of say PVC (this is based off a real situation here) and in doing so you kill several hundred workers, irreversible the water supply of a town, cause irreversible health effects for the town and the majority of your workers, etc etc then that's ok since the bum probably burned some plastic in his steel drum?
No, but I'm saying that if the same operation in another country produces 5 millions gallons of PVC and kills off half as many workers as I do but in the process only produces 30% as much production then the world would be better served by me doing it than my competitor since when the amount of production is considered my efficiency--both in pollutants and employees killed--is much more desirable.
I understand efficiency, but efficiency isn't an excuse to cause environmental damage.
Sure it is, to an extent. We ALL cause environmental damage. The question is how much is acceptable for a given contribution to the world economy. In your above example, the world would come out ahead and with less pollution if I simply increased my production by 30% and my competitor went out of business. Yes, they are producing less pollution but are producing even less widgets.
This is mine too and you don't have the right to mess it up for me.
As I said, we weren't really discussing that aspect of pollution. We were discussing the fact that the US isn't the worst polluter when you consider how much wealth we product for the world economy compared to how much pollution.
It must be accepted that pollution to some extent is unavoidable, but using the excuse of efficiency to allow unlimited pollution or to justify ridiculously high levels is unacceptable.
I'm not using it as an excuse, I'm using it as a metric to measure whether or not we (US) is producing "rediculously high levels" of pollution.
Example, if Nicaragua produces 1000 units of pollution and China produces 2000 units of pollution, who is the worse polluter? China because it pollutes more? Of course not, because its population is about 250 times as large but the pollution is only twice as large.
Now lets consider two countries of identical population. Country A produces 2000 units of wealth for the world economy and 1000 units of pollution while Country B produces 10,000 units of wealth for the world economy and produces 2000 units of pollution. Is Country B the worse polluter? No... Because even though it produces twice as much pollution it's producing 5 times as much wealth. What should be done? Country A should improve its processes so it can be as efficient as Country B.
There are ways for companies to continue to be profitable while reducing their pollution significantly. They just have to try and of course pay. There just aren't many companies out there that see that as an important investment.
I think it really depends on what "pollutants" we are talking about and what kind of decrease in pollutants. Would I want to double my electric bill so we can reduce human CO2 production by 20%? No. I'm not even convinced CO2 should be considered a pollutant and even if it is it seems like a 20% decrease isn't worth a 50% increase in cost.
If we're talking about lead or some other *poison*, or we're talking about not filling rivers with raw sewage, etc. then I'll be more willing to pay to keep it clean.
If a bum on the street that produces 100 units of wealth for the economy sits around and burns a fire every night that produces 100 units of pollution while I make widgets that the economy finds useful and thus produce 10,000 units of wealth for the economy and produce 500 uinits of pollution, is it a crime that I produce 5 times as much pollution? With 5 times as much pollution I'm producing 100 times as much wealth for the economy.
It's called efficiency and it IS desirable. And I think you'll find most people on the planet agree, even non-US citizens. Only those that are intent on US-bashing will close their eyes to this reality.
but if you are relying on the words on the box and advice from the BestBuy sales person to determine quality or capabilities, without doing even a 5 minute search on Google for reviews and potential problems, you get what you deserve on Windows or Linux.
It's called an "impulse purchase." If I just happen in there and see something I think is cool and am tempted to buy it'd be nice to know it's going to work on my Linux system. Despite your comment, I never purchased a device that said "Windows compatible" and then found that it didn't work for Windows. Whether it's a low quality piece of junk is another issue, but at least it DID work as advertised with Windows.
Would you walk into BestBuy blind and buy a motherboard or a video card for your machine?
No.
If not, why would you walk in there blind and buy a $200 digital camera or a $100 scanner without some research?
The fact is, I have to do the research if I use Linux. If I use Windows, yes, I may end up buying a piece of junk. But the issue won't be whether or not it works with my operating system, it'll just be whether or not it's a piece of junk. You can buy "Windows compatible" hardware and you don't have to research whether it really will work with Windows.
How about pollution per per capita GNP? Yes, we might consume more energy and/or pollute more than others but we also are the most productive economy on the face of the earth. It takes more to make more. That's a more accurate number.
Last I checked (and it has been awhile), the U.S. wasn't the worst polluter when the per capita GNP metric was used. And it's the only fair metric to use.
Digital Cameras/Scanners... you know it's going to work if you don't buy something that's a cheap piece of shit, which, believe it or not, will suck A WHOLE LOT compared to something 25% more expensive.
How do I know which is a cheap piece of shit, which costs 25% more because it's good quality, and which costs 50% more because it has a brand name on it?
This is the whole issue. You go in to Best Buy, you find the product you want with the specifications you want, it says "Windows compatible" and you buy it and it works. With Linux there's no clear "Linux compatible" marker, I don't know what is good and what is bad quality without doing research, and even then (as someone else in this thread wrote) it's mostly a matter of buying it, taking it home, and seeing if it works.
It's not that things don't work with Linux. It's just that you aren't really sure when you buy them whether they'll work or not. With Windows you know they will (give or take, taking into account the ineherent question of "Will Windows work today?").
All that said, let me stress I *DO* use Linux on the desktop. And it might actually be better for me economically since I probably buy fewer devices that I really don't need since I'm not sure they'll work. But sometimes I just feel like buying something and say to myself, "Nah... it'd be cool, but I'll probably have to recompile the kernel."
I still haven't got my Firewire working under RH9 with my Samsung video camera. Tried. Get lots of unresolved crap. Wasn't that important so I gave up.
But that's the kind of thing that needs to go away for it to be truly ready for the desktop. Yes, I'm sure I could do some Googling, read some more FAQs, download the latest source, update libraries, etc. and eventually get it working. But that's not what I'd consider "ready for the desktop" if the desktop is targetting 99% of consumers out there.
And the amount of money you paid for your Red Hat distributions was probably not enough to cover a box of pencils for the company. Which is why they don't care that they're dropping the desktop. They don't want you
If they don't want me then they're blind.
No, I haven't paid for RedHat ever. I was going to a few months ago instead of downloading the 6 ISOs for RH9, but they were no longer selling boxed sets at Best Buy. So I had no choice but to download it. It took me several days on my 256k DSL. I would have paid $50 or $60 in a heartbeat. Thanks, RedHat, for removing it from the shelves.
But even if I haven't paid a cent they suffer a lack of vision. I'm a user of theirs, but I'm also their main source of advertising. I'm the one who will mention it to others. I've had two people on airplanes ask me what I was using since my laptop wasn't a Mac but it didn't quite look like Windows. They were impressed. If I am asked by a company what OS to use I'd have recommended RedHat in a heartbeat.
Now I installed 9.0 about 3 months ago. I'm not going to change for awhile yet. But if/when it times for me to upgrade I won't be buying enterprise support so I won't be using RedHat. I'll be using another Linux distro, a Mac, or maybe (God forbid) go back to Windows. And I will no longer be a living and breathing RedHat advertisement. Their non-enterprise version wasn't making them money. That's why they are called promotional EXPENSES.
Any way you cut it it's a lack of vision and I *DO* think it's going to cause them problems in the future.
but let's face it: For Mr Joe Dummy, Linux is not comparable to Windows yet. Not as polished, not as finished.
I have mixed feelings on that. If someone just needs email, browser, and word processing, Linux is a fine alternative. And that's a lot of computer users right there. Especially if Linux came pre-loaded on hardware that was known to work I think it would certainly have more potential for home users--especially if the price tag were a few hundred bucks cheaper than those versions paying the Microsoft tax.
I've been using Linux on my laptop since March--first Redhat 7.3 and now 9.0. My main complaints are:
USB drivers. Yes, my USB keyboard and mouse work. But if I want to buy a digital camera or scanner with USB I have to be very careful and investigate to make sure it's going to work. With Windows you really have no doubt.
Laptop screen energy saver. When my laptop goes into screensaver I just have a black screen. But it doesn't turn off the backlight, it just goes black. I've found no way to make this work. Not saying there isn't a way, but this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy... let alone someone who just expects everything to work.
That's really it. If my screen would turn off when it should and I could buy USB devices without worry about them working, I'd be a 100% happy camper. Even so I'm a 99% happy camper since digital cameras are not a huge part of my life, but those are the kinds of things that will bother a normal end-user.
The NDIS-driver compatability layer recently mentioned on Slashdot is cool, but it seems Linux already supports pretty much every network adapter I throw at it--including those internal to laptops. I think a much more useful compatability layer would be a way to somehow use Windows USB drivers. That would really make things slick.
Of course now that RedHat is going to abandon non-enterprise users I'm left wondering where I should go from here. I could try FreeBSD, I could try another Linux distro, I could buy some Mac-based laptop that's been looking rather attractive... or I could even slap my old WinXP hard drive back in my laptop and just go with that.
But over the last 8 months I've become so accustomed to not being under Microsoft's control or whims that it'd really suck to go back.
I'll probably get flamed for this, but who cares? Do/did you buy albums for their musical content or for some artwork? If the latter, wouldn't a museum or a piece of artwork be a better investment?
No kidding. Only wacky environmentalists would be surprised that the planet's temperature could be most significantly affected by (drum roll) the SUN. Followed by (drum roll) CLOUDS. Yet their models generally don't take these into account.
I'll do my part to reduce my production of CO2 as soon as the sun does its part to stop counteracting my efforts.:)
It was unprecedented to have a second one. And now it's unprecedented to have a whole flurry of them within a week. At what point does unprecedented become something to worry about?
It might be something to worry about when we have the means of evacuating the solar system, or at least the planet. Even if someone knows the sun is going to explode in a week, is there any reason for us to worry? We can't do anything to stop it nor can we save ourselves, so why worry?
The thing is, all that tax money used to get spent too.
Yes, the Federal Government spends the taxes it collects. But the government doesn't produce anything. So the people that the government employs are being paid to consume taxes rather than do something that would increase real economic activity. So it costs us twice: It costs us what we spend in taxes, and there is an opportunity cost to the economy in terms of the wealth and value these government workers could have produced if they had been doing something truly productive.
In short, IMO, all this business about tax cuts is just a shell game intended to confuse the public about what's going on (and obscure the less savory parts of it).
IMO, a tax cut is a tax cut. If they lower taxes then consumers will have more money to spend. And it's better for consumers to spend money than the federal government. Obviously if states or local governments increase other fees such that the federal tax cuts are eaten up then the net effect may not be that helpful... but the negative effect would've been worse had there been no tax cut AND the states increased their fees.
The bottom line is that the government should collect the absolute minimum necessary to function. If there's something that's not really necessary, the government should not spend on it nor tax to pay for it. Money is always best spent by the citizens, not the government.
It posts like this that make we want to turn on my moderating option again. I'd give you +1 Insightful.
The more people have available to spend, the more money they will spend and that will add fire to the economy. The more you take away in taxes, the less they have and the economy will not accelarate as much.
Yes, there are natural business cycles. I'm the first to admit that. But those that say "We'd be having this increase in the economy even if it weren't for the Bush tax cuts" ignore economic reality as well as economic history. There will be economic cycles, but if you have a stalled economy then letting people keep as much of their money as possible is just simple economics.
And, of course, the logic follows... if an x% tax cut helps the economy this much, why not a x+10% tax cut and help the economy even more? I'll leave that as an excercise to the reader... although with the concentration of liberals at Slashdot that's probably running the risk of skewed conclusions.:)
What? "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be ingringed." The word RIGHT is specifically mentioned in the second amendment of the Bill of RIGHTS. The word "priviledge" is nowhere to be seen.
It takes liberal activist courts, or the ACLU, to "interpret" that simple sentence any other way.
If they want to try to pass a Constitutional amendment to cancel the 2nd amendment, let them try. But to suggest that the above sentence from the Constitution means anything other than what it obviously says is just an attempt at judicial activism by non-elected officials.
No, if they send you the same spam with the same subject (or mostly the same words in the subject) 700 times then Bayesian will only get more accurate.
The spammers have yet to come up with a single approach that consistently gets past Bayesian filters. They're trying, but what they're trying makes it clear they truly don't understand how it works. Sending the same message over and over only increases the chance of the messages being caught by Bayesian. Inserting random words has no effect since they are virtually always neutral (i.e. 10% - 50% spam probability). Same with inserting paragraphs from the Constitution.
For a spammer to get through a Bayesian filter they need to use truly INNOCENT words--we're talking words with 1% or below spam probability. Otherwise, they're going to get filtered. Even the latest tactic (Spelling Viagra as V I A G R A or whatever) is silly. Turns out that normal mails don't usually include the word "V" and "G" and "R" so by breaking up the word they actually just created 3 words with very high spam probabilities.
It really is a lost cause for the spammers. Bayesian filters are their enemy and they will not win. Of course, pity those that don't use Bayesian filters because they WILL be overrun with spam.
In March of this year I received 1638 spam. In September I received 5073, and in October alone it increased over 50% to 7704.
The good news is that with Bayesian filtering I only saw 13 of them in October.
Interestingly, my Bayesian filter continues to increase in accuracy. In October I was up to 99.8%. My guess is that they're increasing the number of times they do each spam run and that only makes Bayesian that much more accurate. That's the explanation I have for seeing such an increase in the volume of spam but at the same time seeing Bayesian getting ever more accurate.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, definitely. That was actually my idea and the app already can record tracks. Have people record their tracks and send them in. But it'd be a little more complicated than that, especially within cities. If someone sends me a track it's going to be almost useless if they don't tell me the names of streets, etc.
A central map repository would be great--and I have thought of that--but I wonder how many people would actually take the time to contribute--i.e., name the various legs of the GPS tracks. And then hope they named the legs right because if you've looked at a pure GPS track it's not entirely intuitive what is what since you don't have any context.
But something along those lines does make sense. An open source map repository would be damn cool and useful. And if it's worldwide that much better!
Seriously, this is both interesting and disappointing. I've been working, as a hobby, on a Palm-based GPS mapping program. The reason I'm not making much progress is because even when I'm done it's not going to be very useful without map data which is probably not available for free. I had hoped there was some hi-tech way to snag decent map data (at least the roads themselves) perhaps by digitally analyzing satellite photos, etc. But this is a low-tech approach which certainly suggests to me that there's no realistic way I could come up with nationwide road data for my Palm app.
Oh well.
True, but as others have said, I seriously doubt the population of people that willingly and honestly allow an outside organization to monitor the files they have or delete is representative of the overall filesharing population. It's kind of like going into a prison and asking how many people have comitted murder and then extrapolating that to the general non-prison population. Your results are going to be grossly skewed to the point of not being useful.
Perhaps most people on most sites. My site has only increased from a few hundred users to nearly 10,000. Many of the users on the website have been participating in the forum since the day it was opened.
If they are unobtrusive, then fine, but most advertising is FAR from unobtrusive and stick out like sore thumbs on ANY webpage.
So it seems to me your qualm is with obtrusive, distractive advertising more than it is with banner ads.
I'd personally prefer an easy-to-ignore banner at the top of the page than to find even a text ad buried in the middle of the content as I scroll down.
Like the huge one on the right hand side of Slashdot I noticed when I came here without my proxy on yesterday.
I agree with you 100%. I don't use any ad-blocking software and just have pop-ups disabled in Mozilla. I don't bother to block ads but when they are as annoying as that long skinny thing on the right-hand side of Slashdot I immediately clicked "Don't load images from this server."
So I agree. You have to maintain a balance. But I don't think there is anything wrong with a moderate and well-planned use of banner ads.
You misstate my argument.
My argument is that if the environment is as deadly critical as environmentalists suggest then the same rules should apply to all. Just as being poor isn't an excuse to accept a thousand bucks to kill someone, nor is being poor an excuse to pollute the world--IF we are to believe the environmentalists that the threat of our pollution is so grave. Plus most of the pollution in developing countries isn't from poor people--it's from the factories of the rich and/or factories that belong to companies based in developed countries. By exempting pollution controls in developing countries you are giving a handout to the rich in those countries or the rich in developed countries at the expense of even worse health for the poor in those developing countries.
More likely than not the threat is NOT that grave. In that case I resent the environment being used as an excuse to justify worldwide wealth redistribution. If they want handouts for the poor they should say so and let us debate that on the economic or ethical merits.
You have, what, 1/24th the world population and you use 25% the world's energy.
The GWP (Gross World Product) was 45.9 trillion in 2001. The US GDP was 10.4 trillion in 2002 (sorry for the one year difference in stats). So the US generates 22.7% of the world's wealth. And the U.S. produces 23.3% of CO2. Are you seeing the similarity? 22.7% of the wealth and 23.3% of the CO2. We produce an amount of CO2 proportional to what we contribute to the world economy.
Further, the U.S. growth in CO2 production was 9.9% from 1990 through 1996. In the same period, China grew by 40%, India grew by 47.7%, and South Korea by 69.2%. Is it of no concern to you that the two most populous countries in the world are increasing their CO2 production at the rate of over 40% per year?
And all those goods are not flowing to other countries, either, they are mostly going to be used by you at home.
Irrelevant. Wealth is wealth. Even if most products are consumed at home the wealth enters the U.S. banking system and the effects are worldwide. If U.S. wealth goes down by 50% believe me everyone in the world will feel the pinch big time.
I don't really give a damn about your personal comfort, it's still inequitable.
Bingo! So we're talking about what is fair and wealth redistribution. Then let's make that the topic and stop making the environment a scape-goat to achieve economic rather than environmental goals.
So what kind of ads will they tolerate? I run one ad-sponsored site. It's used standard banner ads since it went online in 1998. I've never received any complaints. They aren't obtrusive and aren't excessive in size or quantity. A single 468x60 up top and a few 100x100 on the left sidebar.
I agree that annoying, flashy animations that distract are annoying. So are pop-ups and pop-unders. So are flash (although those just appear as a "plugin missing" icon for me!). But what exactly is wrong with non-obtrusive, non-distracting banner ads?
If it's wrong, it's wrong. Applying two different standards based on "need" to what affects everyone globally is wrong. That's the main reason why the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 against Kyoto back in, what, 1999?
I live in a rich country, and I'd be more than happy for our economy to grow a bit slower because we had to make larger cuts in pollution, if that meant some people in the developing world could lift themselves out of abject poverty.
Uhm... then donate some of your money to the cause. But instituting CO2 limits on American companies isn't going to raise anyone in the developing world out of poverty. It's just going to reduce OUR standard of living. We may decrease our pollution a bit, but those in the developing countries will more than make up for it. Plus companies in developed countries will just move high-polluting industries to developing countries which will 1) Cause more pollution in those countries that already are in bad shape. 2) Cause domestic jobs to be moved overseas where the workers will probably be significantly underpayed. 3) Result in no net decrease in global pollution.
Creating a system where countries can pollute according to how much "stuff" they produce is overlooking the fact that some people are dieing because they don't have enough stuff, whereas some people already have more than enough.
So who gets to decide who has enough stuff? Suggesting that some people have too much and others have too little is essentially communism. I don't mean that as an insult to you, but communism doesn't work and is not the economic system that we employ in most of the world.
No, but I'm saying that if the same operation in another country produces 5 millions gallons of PVC and kills off half as many workers as I do but in the process only produces 30% as much production then the world would be better served by me doing it than my competitor since when the amount of production is considered my efficiency--both in pollutants and employees killed--is much more desirable.
I understand efficiency, but efficiency isn't an excuse to cause environmental damage.
Sure it is, to an extent. We ALL cause environmental damage. The question is how much is acceptable for a given contribution to the world economy. In your above example, the world would come out ahead and with less pollution if I simply increased my production by 30% and my competitor went out of business. Yes, they are producing less pollution but are producing even less widgets.
This is mine too and you don't have the right to mess it up for me.
As I said, we weren't really discussing that aspect of pollution. We were discussing the fact that the US isn't the worst polluter when you consider how much wealth we product for the world economy compared to how much pollution.
It must be accepted that pollution to some extent is unavoidable, but using the excuse of efficiency to allow unlimited pollution or to justify ridiculously high levels is unacceptable.
I'm not using it as an excuse, I'm using it as a metric to measure whether or not we (US) is producing "rediculously high levels" of pollution.
Example, if Nicaragua produces 1000 units of pollution and China produces 2000 units of pollution, who is the worse polluter? China because it pollutes more? Of course not, because its population is about 250 times as large but the pollution is only twice as large.
Now lets consider two countries of identical population. Country A produces 2000 units of wealth for the world economy and 1000 units of pollution while Country B produces 10,000 units of wealth for the world economy and produces 2000 units of pollution. Is Country B the worse polluter? No... Because even though it produces twice as much pollution it's producing 5 times as much wealth. What should be done? Country A should improve its processes so it can be as efficient as Country B.
There are ways for companies to continue to be profitable while reducing their pollution significantly. They just have to try and of course pay. There just aren't many companies out there that see that as an important investment.
I think it really depends on what "pollutants" we are talking about and what kind of decrease in pollutants. Would I want to double my electric bill so we can reduce human CO2 production by 20%? No. I'm not even convinced CO2 should be considered a pollutant and even if it is it seems like a 20% decrease isn't worth a 50% increase in cost.
If we're talking about lead or some other *poison*, or we're talking about not filling rivers with raw sewage, etc. then I'll be more willing to pay to keep it clean.
If a bum on the street that produces 100 units of wealth for the economy sits around and burns a fire every night that produces 100 units of pollution while I make widgets that the economy finds useful and thus produce 10,000 units of wealth for the economy and produce 500 uinits of pollution, is it a crime that I produce 5 times as much pollution? With 5 times as much pollution I'm producing 100 times as much wealth for the economy.
It's called efficiency and it IS desirable. And I think you'll find most people on the planet agree, even non-US citizens. Only those that are intent on US-bashing will close their eyes to this reality.
It's called an "impulse purchase." If I just happen in there and see something I think is cool and am tempted to buy it'd be nice to know it's going to work on my Linux system. Despite your comment, I never purchased a device that said "Windows compatible" and then found that it didn't work for Windows. Whether it's a low quality piece of junk is another issue, but at least it DID work as advertised with Windows.
Would you walk into BestBuy blind and buy a motherboard or a video card for your machine?
No.
If not, why would you walk in there blind and buy a $200 digital camera or a $100 scanner without some research?
The fact is, I have to do the research if I use Linux. If I use Windows, yes, I may end up buying a piece of junk. But the issue won't be whether or not it works with my operating system, it'll just be whether or not it's a piece of junk. You can buy "Windows compatible" hardware and you don't have to research whether it really will work with Windows.
That's the difference.
Last I checked (and it has been awhile), the U.S. wasn't the worst polluter when the per capita GNP metric was used. And it's the only fair metric to use.
How do I know which is a cheap piece of shit, which costs 25% more because it's good quality, and which costs 50% more because it has a brand name on it?
This is the whole issue. You go in to Best Buy, you find the product you want with the specifications you want, it says "Windows compatible" and you buy it and it works. With Linux there's no clear "Linux compatible" marker, I don't know what is good and what is bad quality without doing research, and even then (as someone else in this thread wrote) it's mostly a matter of buying it, taking it home, and seeing if it works.
It's not that things don't work with Linux. It's just that you aren't really sure when you buy them whether they'll work or not. With Windows you know they will (give or take, taking into account the ineherent question of "Will Windows work today?").
All that said, let me stress I *DO* use Linux on the desktop. And it might actually be better for me economically since I probably buy fewer devices that I really don't need since I'm not sure they'll work. But sometimes I just feel like buying something and say to myself, "Nah... it'd be cool, but I'll probably have to recompile the kernel."
But that's the kind of thing that needs to go away for it to be truly ready for the desktop. Yes, I'm sure I could do some Googling, read some more FAQs, download the latest source, update libraries, etc. and eventually get it working. But that's not what I'd consider "ready for the desktop" if the desktop is targetting 99% of consumers out there.
If they don't want me then they're blind.
No, I haven't paid for RedHat ever. I was going to a few months ago instead of downloading the 6 ISOs for RH9, but they were no longer selling boxed sets at Best Buy. So I had no choice but to download it. It took me several days on my 256k DSL. I would have paid $50 or $60 in a heartbeat. Thanks, RedHat, for removing it from the shelves.
But even if I haven't paid a cent they suffer a lack of vision. I'm a user of theirs, but I'm also their main source of advertising. I'm the one who will mention it to others. I've had two people on airplanes ask me what I was using since my laptop wasn't a Mac but it didn't quite look like Windows. They were impressed. If I am asked by a company what OS to use I'd have recommended RedHat in a heartbeat.
Now I installed 9.0 about 3 months ago. I'm not going to change for awhile yet. But if/when it times for me to upgrade I won't be buying enterprise support so I won't be using RedHat. I'll be using another Linux distro, a Mac, or maybe (God forbid) go back to Windows. And I will no longer be a living and breathing RedHat advertisement. Their non-enterprise version wasn't making them money. That's why they are called promotional EXPENSES.
Any way you cut it it's a lack of vision and I *DO* think it's going to cause them problems in the future.
I have mixed feelings on that. If someone just needs email, browser, and word processing, Linux is a fine alternative. And that's a lot of computer users right there. Especially if Linux came pre-loaded on hardware that was known to work I think it would certainly have more potential for home users--especially if the price tag were a few hundred bucks cheaper than those versions paying the Microsoft tax.
I've been using Linux on my laptop since March--first Redhat 7.3 and now 9.0. My main complaints are:
- USB drivers. Yes, my USB keyboard and mouse work. But if I want to buy a digital camera or scanner with USB I have to be very careful and investigate to make sure it's going to work. With Windows you really have no doubt.
- Laptop screen energy saver. When my laptop goes into screensaver I just have a black screen. But it doesn't turn off the backlight, it just goes black. I've found no way to make this work. Not saying there isn't a way, but this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy... let alone someone who just expects everything to work.
That's really it. If my screen would turn off when it should and I could buy USB devices without worry about them working, I'd be a 100% happy camper. Even so I'm a 99% happy camper since digital cameras are not a huge part of my life, but those are the kinds of things that will bother a normal end-user.The NDIS-driver compatability layer recently mentioned on Slashdot is cool, but it seems Linux already supports pretty much every network adapter I throw at it--including those internal to laptops. I think a much more useful compatability layer would be a way to somehow use Windows USB drivers. That would really make things slick.
Of course now that RedHat is going to abandon non-enterprise users I'm left wondering where I should go from here. I could try FreeBSD, I could try another Linux distro, I could buy some Mac-based laptop that's been looking rather attractive... or I could even slap my old WinXP hard drive back in my laptop and just go with that.
But over the last 8 months I've become so accustomed to not being under Microsoft's control or whims that it'd really suck to go back.
I'll do my part to reduce my production of CO2 as soon as the sun does its part to stop counteracting my efforts. :)
Go ahead and forward me your credit card number, I'll charge you the buck. :)
It might be something to worry about when we have the means of evacuating the solar system, or at least the planet. Even if someone knows the sun is going to explode in a week, is there any reason for us to worry? We can't do anything to stop it nor can we save ourselves, so why worry?
Don't worry... be happy. :)
Yes, the Federal Government spends the taxes it collects. But the government doesn't produce anything. So the people that the government employs are being paid to consume taxes rather than do something that would increase real economic activity. So it costs us twice: It costs us what we spend in taxes, and there is an opportunity cost to the economy in terms of the wealth and value these government workers could have produced if they had been doing something truly productive.
In short, IMO, all this business about tax cuts is just a shell game intended to confuse the public about what's going on (and obscure the less savory parts of it).
IMO, a tax cut is a tax cut. If they lower taxes then consumers will have more money to spend. And it's better for consumers to spend money than the federal government. Obviously if states or local governments increase other fees such that the federal tax cuts are eaten up then the net effect may not be that helpful... but the negative effect would've been worse had there been no tax cut AND the states increased their fees.
The bottom line is that the government should collect the absolute minimum necessary to function. If there's something that's not really necessary, the government should not spend on it nor tax to pay for it. Money is always best spent by the citizens, not the government.
The more people have available to spend, the more money they will spend and that will add fire to the economy. The more you take away in taxes, the less they have and the economy will not accelarate as much.
Yes, there are natural business cycles. I'm the first to admit that. But those that say "We'd be having this increase in the economy even if it weren't for the Bush tax cuts" ignore economic reality as well as economic history. There will be economic cycles, but if you have a stalled economy then letting people keep as much of their money as possible is just simple economics.
And, of course, the logic follows... if an x% tax cut helps the economy this much, why not a x+10% tax cut and help the economy even more? I'll leave that as an excercise to the reader... although with the concentration of liberals at Slashdot that's probably running the risk of skewed conclusions. :)
I believe they get the fee whether the patent is granted or not... don't they?
It takes liberal activist courts, or the ACLU, to "interpret" that simple sentence any other way.
If they want to try to pass a Constitutional amendment to cancel the 2nd amendment, let them try. But to suggest that the above sentence from the Constitution means anything other than what it obviously says is just an attempt at judicial activism by non-elected officials.
The spammers have yet to come up with a single approach that consistently gets past Bayesian filters. They're trying, but what they're trying makes it clear they truly don't understand how it works. Sending the same message over and over only increases the chance of the messages being caught by Bayesian. Inserting random words has no effect since they are virtually always neutral (i.e. 10% - 50% spam probability). Same with inserting paragraphs from the Constitution.
For a spammer to get through a Bayesian filter they need to use truly INNOCENT words--we're talking words with 1% or below spam probability. Otherwise, they're going to get filtered. Even the latest tactic (Spelling Viagra as V I A G R A or whatever) is silly. Turns out that normal mails don't usually include the word "V" and "G" and "R" so by breaking up the word they actually just created 3 words with very high spam probabilities.
It really is a lost cause for the spammers. Bayesian filters are their enemy and they will not win. Of course, pity those that don't use Bayesian filters because they WILL be overrun with spam.
The good news is that with Bayesian filtering I only saw 13 of them in October.
Interestingly, my Bayesian filter continues to increase in accuracy. In October I was up to 99.8%. My guess is that they're increasing the number of times they do each spam run and that only makes Bayesian that much more accurate. That's the explanation I have for seeing such an increase in the volume of spam but at the same time seeing Bayesian getting ever more accurate.