The irony of that statement is that they burn the rain forest down because they're poor.
My burning oil has NOTHING to do with the rain forest. But if you impoverish this country then all your environmental issues will go right out the window because we'll have bigger priorities.
Grasp that. The best way to help the environment is to keep the country prosperous. Impoverish it and we'll slash and burn.
What do you want? Nature preserves and protection for endangered species or clear cutting and eating the same animals?
And again, burning oil has NOTHING to do with the rain forest.
Why is everyone so shocking ignorant and insufferably righteous.
If you do it intelligently and make a point of NOT enacting certain policies advocated by some of the more rabid enviros then we're fine. But if the line is crossed the whole movement is going to get damaged as it gets locked in a war it will LOSE with the rest of society.
in 2008 many people in the US were paying less then 2 dollars for gas.
Today the average price is creeping near four dollars.
If you REALLY think global supply just vanished in the last couple years then I don't know what to tell you. We can bring that number down to what it was in 2008 easily especially since consumption has fallen like a rock during this recession.
If demand drops and prices go up... that should tell you either that supply suddenly vanished or someone is playing with the market.
In this case, we know it isn't supply. It's market manipulation. Mostly by our friends in the federal government.
Your little example doesn't take into consideration several things.
1. We are developing alternative energy. 2. Alternative energy can be as much as 4000 times more expensive then current power generation methods. 3. Shifting will put us at an economic disadvantage and do nothing to help the CO2 issue. 4. We are in a serious economic recession right now.
I could go on. Long and short of it is that you must exploit the oil until there isn't any left. Doing anything else is irresponsible and damaging to our economy while accomplishing NOTHING.
It's everyone's commute. It makes EVERYONE"S commute more expensive.
It makes food more expensive. It makes fertilizer more expensive. It makes pesticide more expensive. It makes shipping more expensive. It makes everything in ALL our supply chains more expensive and all that cost has to be paid at point of sale.
Add it up.
The economics of this are crippling and it is not something we can shrug off and tell people to buck up about. we are at a serious competitive disadvantage already. It's an economic miracle that we're doing as well as we are doing.
He has a better chance of making it cheap then any of those ideas.
Half the problem with our gas prices is the refineries. An annoying issue is that many states have independent fuel standards that are different from the rest of the country. So gas sold in California often can't be shipped and sold elsewhere or vice versa. To make that worse these standards change by season so the gas you had a couple months ago can't be sold now because it doesn't meet the standards.
We could drop gas prices by at least 25 percent just by standardizing fuel. Beyond that, we have the gulf and Alaska to tap. We have to do it.
Not really. Obama is shutting down oil extraction out of the gulf and is complicating extraction throughout the country.
Furthermore, new EPA regulations are forcing a sizable percentage of US power generation to be shut down or upgraded for environmental reasons. And do I even need to cite this: http://youtu.be/HlTxGHn4sH4?t=30s
Yes yes... chicken little, we heard you the first time around 1910 when your ilk started squawking about it. Here we are 100 years BEYOND where they said we'd get and still going strong.
No one is sitting on their laurels. To the contrary, we're working very hard to keep the oil flowing unlike some people that just want to destroy our industry, economy, and financial system. Thanks guys. Way to ruin it for everyone else.
People have been saying that since 1920... well... they said it would run out in 1920... and then they said it would run out in 1950... and then they said it would run out in 1980... and then they said it would run out in 2000...
It's 2011... We're still here and oil is still WAAAAY cheaper then any solar option.
Here's a little eye opener for you. How many solar power factories produce their own power with solar power?
Try just about none of them. If you don't think about that then you won't break through the cognitive dissonance.
Gas prices have doubled. It's killing our economy. We really don't have the luxury of entertaining your zealotry at the moment.
Someone environmentalists need to grasp is that environmentalism is itself a luxury. In poor countries they don't worry about it because they have bigger problems like how they're going to eat tonight.
By assaulting the US economy, environmentalists in the US have forced a realignment of resources AWAY from all unnessary spending. That includes nearly everything they care about. Obviously environmentalists will argue that their issues are just as or even more important. But they don't control the money and what they think at that point doesn't matter.
If the environmental movement is to save itself it had been find a way to do its work without trashing the economy. Because on top of everything else if people come to associate environmental policy with a bad economy then that alone could kill the movement.
Gas prices have doubled since this insane crusade against energy started. It's killing our economy at a time when it doesn't really need any more help.
This might well give us the relief needed to weather the current political and ideological insanity that is making our energy policy self destructive.
We'll use other sources of power eventually. But right NOW... we need that oil.
An author should own their work for the duration of their life.
That is not negotiable. Because it would be unfair to have things go public domain simply because an author dies five seconds after publishing there should be a minimum length of copyright that gives the publisher a reasonable expectation of average copyright length.
I'm not sure if you're still advocating doing away with copyrights all together or whether you're in favor of much shorter durations. If you want it to not go much beyond 70 years then you'll find plenty of support for that beyond your cliche. But if you push for abolition or a drastic reduction below 70 years then you're going to go no where.
So... really I'm not terribly interested in your opinions on the issue unless you can come up with a compelling reason for them. That they elapse at all is a concession to your concerns and the life time of the author or 70 years seems entirely reasonable.
If that is deemed too much then I'm afraid you're pissing into the wind.
Copyright used to be the life time of the author or 70 years which ever is LONGER. So if you lived to be 20 and then died the length of the copy right would be 70 years after the copyright was filed. The ONLY way to make it last longer under the OLD system was to live more then 70 years AFTER you published the work. So if you published at 20 then you'd need to live past 90 to extend the copyright.
Do that math. It's very unlikely that anyone will carry the copyright beyond the 70 year term and even if they do it won't be for long and it will be so unlikely as to not matter.
I think patients are for 17 years or 14 years. I'll have to look it up. But they don't relate to the lifetime of the inventor.
That was the old system.
It's been messed up recently by companies trying to copyright stuff indefinitely and the patient trolls. But the system is still fundementally sound. It just needs to be reformed a little to counter the recent nonsense and update it for modern inventions like programming code.
You do NOT want to copyright programming code. You want to patient it. So the laws need to be rewritten such that programming code is patentable but not copyrightable. And then something needs to be put in to make it hard to troll it. And then something needs to be put in to have copyrights end no matter what after 70 years or the life time of the author.
IF people start living longer then maybe we can extend that to 80 years or whatever. But 70 seems as fair today as it was then.
You don't want the patronage system. It will not work.
What will work is shifting more of the profits from sales to the author. This shouldn't be a problem for distributors since their costs at this point are VERY low.
The problem is that we only have a few distributors that are competent in this field. Amazon dominates books and Apple is dominating music.
That needs to open up so there are many venders for both. That will create the price competition required to make this relevant.
First the law would only favor people that live more then 70 years past the time they created whatever it was... basically you'd have to live beyond 90.
Do the math, it's a silly complaint. The point is that if you create something like a book or a song you should own that for the rest of your life. You're not hurting anyone or retarding anyone's creativity by owning it. Your work can inspire other people to make similar stuff. Copyright doesn't stop anyone from making something similar. It just can't be exactly the same.
The only reason to want it to end sooner is because you want it for free... again... the looter mentality is impossible to condone.
As to why it shouldn't last longer then 20 years. Consult Mark Twain's opinion on the matter. He wrote extensively on copyright law in his day.
As to my proofreading, we're on a thread on slashdot... I'm not bothering with it beyond making sure it's comprehensible. You also really don't want to start condescending to me since I react badly to it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid not, cupcake. Trash the economy and it all goes away like frost in the summer sun.
Protect the economy or it all gets flagged as luxury and cut.
This is not a negotiation. This is what will happen. You want to stop it? Me too. Protect the economy.
A little bit of that but not that much.
Besides you can get them to drop the price just as fast as they raise it. You know they make money either way.
They make money if the price goes up, down, or stays flat.
It's complicated but they can make money either way.
You can get them to spike the price down really fast if it looks like supply is going up. So rather then complain about them. Use them.
We can use them to spike gas down again and again and again.
The irony of that statement is that they burn the rain forest down because they're poor.
My burning oil has NOTHING to do with the rain forest. But if you impoverish this country then all your environmental issues will go right out the window because we'll have bigger priorities.
Grasp that. The best way to help the environment is to keep the country prosperous. Impoverish it and we'll slash and burn.
What do you want? Nature preserves and protection for endangered species or clear cutting and eating the same animals?
And again, burning oil has NOTHING to do with the rain forest.
Why is everyone so shocking ignorant and insufferably righteous.
And solar is more expensive.
Well, you're clearly part of the problem.
... Not all types. But certain types will.
If you do it intelligently and make a point of NOT enacting certain policies advocated by some of the more rabid enviros then we're fine. But if the line is crossed the whole movement is going to get damaged as it gets locked in a war it will LOSE with the rest of society.
in 2008 many people in the US were paying less then 2 dollars for gas.
Today the average price is creeping near four dollars.
If you REALLY think global supply just vanished in the last couple years then I don't know what to tell you. We can bring that number down to what it was in 2008 easily especially since consumption has fallen like a rock during this recession.
If demand drops and prices go up... that should tell you either that supply suddenly vanished or someone is playing with the market.
In this case, we know it isn't supply. It's market manipulation. Mostly by our friends in the federal government.
only their consumers pay that. Their industry doesn't.
And in any event nearly all of that is just absurd taxes.
Actually adjusted for inflation they haven't.
It isn't about my personal budget. This is a systemic issue.
It effects everything. It magnifies throughout the system.
Fix energy and prices for many things will fall in addition to your price at the pump.
It's hurting US exports. It's hurting US imports. It's hurting all levels of US commerce. We need cheaper fuel. Sorry. We must have it.
Of course I do... Do you? I doubt it.
Your little example doesn't take into consideration several things.
1. We are developing alternative energy.
2. Alternative energy can be as much as 4000 times more expensive then current power generation methods.
3. Shifting will put us at an economic disadvantage and do nothing to help the CO2 issue.
4. We are in a serious economic recession right now.
I could go on. Long and short of it is that you must exploit the oil until there isn't any left. Doing anything else is irresponsible and damaging to our economy while accomplishing NOTHING.
It's not just your commute.
It's everyone's commute. It makes EVERYONE"S commute more expensive.
It makes food more expensive.
It makes fertilizer more expensive.
It makes pesticide more expensive.
It makes shipping more expensive.
It makes everything in ALL our supply chains more expensive and all that cost has to be paid at point of sale.
Add it up.
The economics of this are crippling and it is not something we can shrug off and tell people to buck up about. we are at a serious competitive disadvantage already. It's an economic miracle that we're doing as well as we are doing.
He has a better chance of making it cheap then any of those ideas.
Half the problem with our gas prices is the refineries. An annoying issue is that many states have independent fuel standards that are different from the rest of the country. So gas sold in California often can't be shipped and sold elsewhere or vice versa. To make that worse these standards change by season so the gas you had a couple months ago can't be sold now because it doesn't meet the standards.
We could drop gas prices by at least 25 percent just by standardizing fuel. Beyond that, we have the gulf and Alaska to tap. We have to do it.
Not really. Obama is shutting down oil extraction out of the gulf and is complicating extraction throughout the country.
Furthermore, new EPA regulations are forcing a sizable percentage of US power generation to be shut down or upgraded for environmental reasons. And do I even need to cite this:
http://youtu.be/HlTxGHn4sH4?t=30s
Pay attention.
No one says it is solving a long term problem. Where I'm getting food tomorrow isn't a long term problem. It's a problem when you're hungry.
We're hungry now. We need the oil now.
It won't happen.
You might as well demand a law that has people wear purple pimp hats on alternating Tuesdays.
Will. Not. Happen.
And allow me to close with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrkwgTBrW78
Yes yes... chicken little, we heard you the first time around 1910 when your ilk started squawking about it. Here we are 100 years BEYOND where they said we'd get and still going strong.
No one is sitting on their laurels. To the contrary, we're working very hard to keep the oil flowing unlike some people that just want to destroy our industry, economy, and financial system. Thanks guys. Way to ruin it for everyone else.
People have been saying that since 1920... well... they said it would run out in 1920... and then they said it would run out in 1950... and then they said it would run out in 1980... and then they said it would run out in 2000...
It's 2011... We're still here and oil is still WAAAAY cheaper then any solar option.
Here's a little eye opener for you. How many solar power factories produce their own power with solar power?
Try just about none of them. If you don't think about that then you won't break through the cognitive dissonance.
It isn't ready yet.
The oil is going to get burned one way or another.
Resign yourself to that.
Consider some of the Geo-engineering options. Short of that you might as well play a fiddle because this is going to happen.
Gas prices have doubled. It's killing our economy. We really don't have the luxury of entertaining your zealotry at the moment.
Someone environmentalists need to grasp is that environmentalism is itself a luxury. In poor countries they don't worry about it because they have bigger problems like how they're going to eat tonight.
By assaulting the US economy, environmentalists in the US have forced a realignment of resources AWAY from all unnessary spending. That includes nearly everything they care about. Obviously environmentalists will argue that their issues are just as or even more important. But they don't control the money and what they think at that point doesn't matter.
If the environmental movement is to save itself it had been find a way to do its work without trashing the economy. Because on top of everything else if people come to associate environmental policy with a bad economy then that alone could kill the movement.
This is survival time here guys. Time to adapt.
Gas prices have doubled since this insane crusade against energy started. It's killing our economy at a time when it doesn't really need any more help.
This might well give us the relief needed to weather the current political and ideological insanity that is making our energy policy self destructive.
We'll use other sources of power eventually. But right NOW... we need that oil.
An author should own their work for the duration of their life.
That is not negotiable. Because it would be unfair to have things go public domain simply because an author dies five seconds after publishing there should be a minimum length of copyright that gives the publisher a reasonable expectation of average copyright length.
I'm not sure if you're still advocating doing away with copyrights all together or whether you're in favor of much shorter durations. If you want it to not go much beyond 70 years then you'll find plenty of support for that beyond your cliche. But if you push for abolition or a drastic reduction below 70 years then you're going to go no where.
So... really I'm not terribly interested in your opinions on the issue unless you can come up with a compelling reason for them. That they elapse at all is a concession to your concerns and the life time of the author or 70 years seems entirely reasonable.
If that is deemed too much then I'm afraid you're pissing into the wind.
Regards.
no they don't.
Copyright used to be the life time of the author or 70 years which ever is LONGER. So if you lived to be 20 and then died the length of the copy right would be 70 years after the copyright was filed. The ONLY way to make it last longer under the OLD system was to live more then 70 years AFTER you published the work. So if you published at 20 then you'd need to live past 90 to extend the copyright.
Do that math. It's very unlikely that anyone will carry the copyright beyond the 70 year term and even if they do it won't be for long and it will be so unlikely as to not matter.
I think patients are for 17 years or 14 years. I'll have to look it up. But they don't relate to the lifetime of the inventor.
That was the old system.
It's been messed up recently by companies trying to copyright stuff indefinitely and the patient trolls. But the system is still fundementally sound. It just needs to be reformed a little to counter the recent nonsense and update it for modern inventions like programming code.
You do NOT want to copyright programming code. You want to patient it. So the laws need to be rewritten such that programming code is patentable but not copyrightable. And then something needs to be put in to make it hard to troll it. And then something needs to be put in to have copyrights end no matter what after 70 years or the life time of the author.
IF people start living longer then maybe we can extend that to 80 years or whatever. But 70 seems as fair today as it was then.
You don't want the patronage system. It will not work.
What will work is shifting more of the profits from sales to the author. This shouldn't be a problem for distributors since their costs at this point are VERY low.
The problem is that we only have a few distributors that are competent in this field. Amazon dominates books and Apple is dominating music.
That needs to open up so there are many venders for both. That will create the price competition required to make this relevant.
First the law would only favor people that live more then 70 years past the time they created whatever it was... basically you'd have to live beyond 90.
Do the math, it's a silly complaint. The point is that if you create something like a book or a song you should own that for the rest of your life. You're not hurting anyone or retarding anyone's creativity by owning it. Your work can inspire other people to make similar stuff. Copyright doesn't stop anyone from making something similar. It just can't be exactly the same.
The only reason to want it to end sooner is because you want it for free... again... the looter mentality is impossible to condone.
As to why it shouldn't last longer then 20 years. Consult Mark Twain's opinion on the matter. He wrote extensively on copyright law in his day.
As to my proofreading, we're on a thread on slashdot... I'm not bothering with it beyond making sure it's comprehensible. You also really don't want to start condescending to me since I react badly to it.