So your beef with the EU is that the representatives of the nation states that form it are not powerful enough to control their nation's government? Maybe it's a problem with the nation states?
Yes, it's not fair. UK should have fewer seats. It was Lionel Penrose who proved that for a majority voting system to work fairly, every block should get a representation proportional to the square root of the number of inhabitants. Not proportional, square root. This to avoid the larger countries to completely dictate policy by teaming up against the small ones thereby completely annihilating the democratic rights of the inhabitants of the smaller countries. With larger than proportional blocks, smaller countries can form coalitions that give them power against larger countries. The optimal distribution happens to be the square root.
As the US was formed before this proof, they tried to solve this by giving every state two seats in the senate, regardless of size, and proportional representation in congress. Of course, in the EU the math was not followed and they gave the larger nations more power than they should. They do include a 'regressive proportionality' system, but not according to Penrose's method. So indeed, the EU has a problem in that the UK has 70 seats, while Malta and Luxembourg only have 5 and 6 respectively.
And in the Netherlands, it is not even a requirement that the PM was elected in parliament. He always is, but it's not mandatory. I guess we're ruled by unelected bureaucrats.
There's no king that assigns bureaucrats to the European commission. They're selected by elected representatives of the nations and vetted by the European parliament. According to your point, my country of the Netherlands is non-democratic as there is no requirement that the members of the government have a seat in parliament (it is actually forbidden that they have). There's not even a requirement that they belong to a party. They are selected by parliament on their capability to make appropriate laws (but more likely because they have political clout). So they're 'unelected bureaucrats'. The fact that they govern by virtue of acceptance by parliament doesn't make a difference I guess. The European Commission is the same thing. They can create laws, not pass them.
And yes, many people in my country complain that the process in which we form a government is fundamentally undemocratic as it doesn't concern itself with a direct vote. However, once government is formed it is pretty clearly democratic as it can only survive by virtue of having majority backing by parliament.
There are very good reasons to not elect the ones directly making the laws, as drafting good laws is a different skill than representing the people. It is equally important that the elected representatives have a final say in what becomes law. And that's the job of the European Parliament. If a law doesn't get passed by Parliament, it's not a law. This is all pretty standard stuff.
Short of it, the EU is not any more or less democratic than the nation states that form it, with the one exception that the nation states have a lot more power in the process than the typical province or region has in a nation due to the European council. The checks and balances are a bit different, but so is the process in each nation. Calling the EU undemocratic because it doesn't mirror your preferred nation-states process is, let's say, a bit myopic.
My guess is that Sturgeon is holding out until she gets some confirmation that Scotland would be fast-tracked into the EU if they decide to leave the UK. Then it could go fast.
If your big world is confined to the US, you have a point. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, we have better connectivity than Silicon Valley. Thanks to the free market & the governments that enable that market.
Atheism is a perfectly testable belief. I don't believe there's a God, to prove me wrong, show me one. Theism is not a testable belief as it is impossible to prove a negative.
Yup, the guy in the sky says "Thou shalt not kill", and then goes on to give justifications, reasons and lots of examples of when it's perfectly okay to kill others. Talking about bipolarity...
Why would oil and automotive executives think that? Do they hold all the patents to hydrogen cell technology so nobody can out-invest them in hydrogen? Are they sure that a solar plant created by not oil-executives would not be able to produce hydrogen?
Leaving the gas station distribution network in place however sounds like a great idea for me as *People*. No more waiting times until your electric vehicles charge, just simply go to some designated place and 5 mins later, you're ready for another few hundred miles. So I think it's a great idea. Unfortunately, hydrogen is not up for the task, but if it were, it would be the best idea to get to a new clean model of transportation.
Politicians indeed do what brings them to the next election. If the electing population asks them to only do things here and now, then yes, they will only get elected if they focus on the short term. However, if the electing population rewards vision, they can go for the long term. In the end, government is us, the people. If we're a short-sighted bunch that depends on the vision of a few guys like Elon Musk to save the world, then I guess we're doomed.
Government is uniquely positioned to take longer term bets that the corporate world will not take. They can take the longer term view as the US will still be around in decades, while the average corporation will look at things quarter by quarter, and where the max horizon is 3 years out.
And yes, by taking a longer term view they will quite regularly waste money. But, if you think R&D is expensive, try ignorance. We now know much better how to (not) run a solar plant. Live and Learn. Directly harvesting solar energy is a long-term inevitability, and arguing that the big bad gubmint has no reason to involve itself in the development of the capability is quite short-sighted.
Right, so if raw data is used, it cannot be used to measure temperature because the data is contaminated by nearby heat-sinks. And when the data is adjusted to remove that effect, it cannot be used because the people doing the adjustments have some kind of agenda. All of them.
So in short, your position is that there is no way to asses the earth average temperature, and we should just follow our gut.
The number 5 would be hard to copyright, but any long enough number will do. Essentially that's all a digital file is: a large number. And these can be copyrighted.
You're making one big mistake, and that's equating software development with construction. It's not. Software has achieved automation of construction of final artifacts based upon detailed specs: it's called compilation. What programmers do is much closer to creating specs than to construction according to specs. People writing recipes are not cooking.
No, it's not. The law for burglary and grand theft auto are actually in the same set of laws, namely theft law. There are a few states where larcency is treated differently from theft, and yes, there you could argue that the law's are different wrt larcency and burglary. However, burglary and grand theft are the same set of laws everywhere, and even larcency will fall under criminal law. Not so with copyright. Depending on the type of infringement, copyright is prosecuted under either criminal law or civil law (in particular wrt the scale and monetary objective of the infringement). Copyright law (a wholly separate set of law books) handles that distinction.
I think the only point you can make is that because both theft and copyright infringement are deemed illegal according to the law, they are similar. But so is jaywalking.
They are not afforded the same protections under the law. You have one set of laws for physical property, and another set for copyright. Completely different laws with completely different protections, clauses, penalties and enforcement.
Slashdot Mirror
So your beef with the EU is that the representatives of the nation states that form it are not powerful enough to control their nation's government? Maybe it's a problem with the nation states?
Yes, it's not fair. UK should have fewer seats. It was Lionel Penrose who proved that for a majority voting system to work fairly, every block should get a representation proportional to the square root of the number of inhabitants. Not proportional, square root. This to avoid the larger countries to completely dictate policy by teaming up against the small ones thereby completely annihilating the democratic rights of the inhabitants of the smaller countries. With larger than proportional blocks, smaller countries can form coalitions that give them power against larger countries. The optimal distribution happens to be the square root.
As the US was formed before this proof, they tried to solve this by giving every state two seats in the senate, regardless of size, and proportional representation in congress. Of course, in the EU the math was not followed and they gave the larger nations more power than they should. They do include a 'regressive proportionality' system, but not according to Penrose's method. So indeed, the EU has a problem in that the UK has 70 seats, while Malta and Luxembourg only have 5 and 6 respectively.
And in the Netherlands, it is not even a requirement that the PM was elected in parliament. He always is, but it's not mandatory. I guess we're ruled by unelected bureaucrats.
There's no king that assigns bureaucrats to the European commission. They're selected by elected representatives of the nations and vetted by the European parliament. According to your point, my country of the Netherlands is non-democratic as there is no requirement that the members of the government have a seat in parliament (it is actually forbidden that they have). There's not even a requirement that they belong to a party. They are selected by parliament on their capability to make appropriate laws (but more likely because they have political clout). So they're 'unelected bureaucrats'. The fact that they govern by virtue of acceptance by parliament doesn't make a difference I guess. The European Commission is the same thing. They can create laws, not pass them.
And yes, many people in my country complain that the process in which we form a government is fundamentally undemocratic as it doesn't concern itself with a direct vote. However, once government is formed it is pretty clearly democratic as it can only survive by virtue of having majority backing by parliament.
There are very good reasons to not elect the ones directly making the laws, as drafting good laws is a different skill than representing the people. It is equally important that the elected representatives have a final say in what becomes law. And that's the job of the European Parliament. If a law doesn't get passed by Parliament, it's not a law. This is all pretty standard stuff.
Short of it, the EU is not any more or less democratic than the nation states that form it, with the one exception that the nation states have a lot more power in the process than the typical province or region has in a nation due to the European council. The checks and balances are a bit different, but so is the process in each nation. Calling the EU undemocratic because it doesn't mirror your preferred nation-states process is, let's say, a bit myopic.
My guess is that Sturgeon is holding out until she gets some confirmation that Scotland would be fast-tracked into the EU if they decide to leave the UK. Then it could go fast.
The EU has a bit of a better track record than the UK wrt the rights of small countries. So I can see the allure.
If your big world is confined to the US, you have a point. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, we have better connectivity than Silicon Valley. Thanks to the free market & the governments that enable that market.
Atheism is a perfectly testable belief. I don't believe there's a God, to prove me wrong, show me one. Theism is not a testable belief as it is impossible to prove a negative.
My honest answer to the question of god(s) is: "Bloody unlikely".
Yup, the guy in the sky says "Thou shalt not kill", and then goes on to give justifications, reasons and lots of examples of when it's perfectly okay to kill others. Talking about bipolarity ...
Trump's not on record for anything. He'll deny when it suits him.
Fox is not merely biased. It's outright lying.
At a humidity rate of 57% there's 10g of watervapor in a cubic meter. We inhale about 11,000 liters of air a day , which is 11 cubic meters. So on a bit humid day, you inhale a little over 100 grams of water a day. At 15 grams of water per tablespoon, I think we should all panic right now!
Why would oil and automotive executives think that? Do they hold all the patents to hydrogen cell technology so nobody can out-invest them in hydrogen? Are they sure that a solar plant created by not oil-executives would not be able to produce hydrogen?
Leaving the gas station distribution network in place however sounds like a great idea for me as *People*. No more waiting times until your electric vehicles charge, just simply go to some designated place and 5 mins later, you're ready for another few hundred miles. So I think it's a great idea. Unfortunately, hydrogen is not up for the task, but if it were, it would be the best idea to get to a new clean model of transportation.
Politicians indeed do what brings them to the next election. If the electing population asks them to only do things here and now, then yes, they will only get elected if they focus on the short term. However, if the electing population rewards vision, they can go for the long term. In the end, government is us, the people. If we're a short-sighted bunch that depends on the vision of a few guys like Elon Musk to save the world, then I guess we're doomed.
Government is uniquely positioned to take longer term bets that the corporate world will not take. They can take the longer term view as the US will still be around in decades, while the average corporation will look at things quarter by quarter, and where the max horizon is 3 years out.
And yes, by taking a longer term view they will quite regularly waste money. But, if you think R&D is expensive, try ignorance. We now know much better how to (not) run a solar plant. Live and Learn. Directly harvesting solar energy is a long-term inevitability, and arguing that the big bad gubmint has no reason to involve itself in the development of the capability is quite short-sighted.
Right, so if raw data is used, it cannot be used to measure temperature because the data is contaminated by nearby heat-sinks. And when the data is adjusted to remove that effect, it cannot be used because the people doing the adjustments have some kind of agenda. All of them.
So in short, your position is that there is no way to asses the earth average temperature, and we should just follow our gut.
Are the Iraqi's seriously shutting down .iq to improve school exams?
Mods, why is this marked troll? It seems to be an honest position all the way to the end. Nothing really outrageous about it.
The number 5 would be hard to copyright, but any long enough number will do. Essentially that's all a digital file is: a large number. And these can be copyrighted.
You seem to be pretty focussed on your precious bodily fluids. I guess you only drink distilled water and pure grain alcohol.
You're making one big mistake, and that's equating software development with construction. It's not. Software has achieved automation of construction of final artifacts based upon detailed specs: it's called compilation. What programmers do is much closer to creating specs than to construction according to specs. People writing recipes are not cooking.
In a country where money is speech, politics is commerce.
I think the only point you can make is that because both theft and copyright infringement are deemed illegal according to the law, they are similar. But so is jaywalking.
They are not afforded the same protections under the law. You have one set of laws for physical property, and another set for copyright. Completely different laws with completely different protections, clauses, penalties and enforcement.