In the Los Angeles area, a light rail project intended to run a mere nine miles would have cost over $1 billion. This is because of mental retardation. Light rail is the most expensive way yet devise to transport people. Light aircraft and hiring everyone a personal driver is cheaper. It's also very slow. Why is light rail so expensive? It's quiet. Really, that's it.
REAL trains, like Caltrain, are cheap. The same project using conventional rail would cost only $50 million. But people bitch about how loud trains are. Back east they just stick everything underground, but you can't do that in California because of the earthquake risk (somehow this doesn't apply to underground parking structures).
The solution in LA and most everywhere else is ELECTRIC buses. They're cheap, clean, quiet, familiar, and easy to deploy. Since they're attached to the grid your power efficiency depends on your power generators. Basically, trolleys without the tracks.
That's the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in MJ per kg.
46.9
That's the energy density of gasoline, about 20X greater.
This is why electric cars suck. In order to achieve the same range you have to carry 20X as much fuel in weight. Even if the car was nothing but an engine, 4 wheels, and a pile of batteries you could NEVER achieve anything near the range of the biggest, least efficient, gas guzzler available.
None of this applies to electric trains and buses which draw their power directly from the grid, but require tracks. This is why we see such vehicles widely deployed. Electric trains and buses backed by nuclear power (or other alternative power sources) are a GREAT idea.
What people are upset about is that life is much less convenient when we're all not driving powerful vehicles than can carry 10 folks and tow a boat on a whim. Well, tough shit. You may have to carpool or take the bus. You may not be able to keep your own jetski in a garage a hundred miles from your lake house. These are privileges, not rights. I guess you're not running for office. If you actually expect this to happen in a democracy, you'll have to come up with something better than "tough shit". Very rarely do people WILLINGLY lower their own standard of living. They need a VERY compelling argument. The last time it happened on a large scale in the USA the argument was "The Nazis/Japanese are gonna get us!".
Electric motors often achieve 90% energy conversion efficiency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle#cite_note-22). There's no way you get any near this using internal combustion with hydrogen, much less with fossil fuels.
You're not reading those article very carefully, are you?
NOBODY is talking about burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines (there are compression issues, it's near-impossible). What they are talking about is fuel cells, for ELECTRIC ENGINES, that are about 90% efficient.
Electric MOTORS are very efficient, but electric BATTERIES are not. Do you intend to run the cars on tracks (like electric buses)? If not, you have to STORE the electricity somewhere. And conventional batteries are very inefficient. There is also the issue of charge time.
Basically, the idea of cars powered by conventional batteries is silly.
A person needs very little energy to move around. In fact, a burrito can get you at least fifteen miles on foot. As a civilization, we have to recognize that as the goal, and give up on the idea of cars as we know them. They're just not viable in the long run. So when are you overthrowing the government and installing a dictatorship? History has shown that is the ONLY way to get people to stop using cars. If they are available, people will use them. There are very, very, very few people that would vote for politicians that campaigns on eliminating automobiles.
You're talking about eliminating more than cars. You're also talking about eliminating suburbia, housing subdivisions, bedroom communities, etc. The problem is that people LOVE living in suburbia. The house in suburbia with the white picket fence is firmly fixed in the American Dream. You're not going to convince people to give up their backyards and retiring to the country.
For the record, I agree with you. I am against suburbia, sprawl and automobiles in general. But I recognize that I am in a very small minority in the USA (3%, maybe) and it will be impossible to convince most Americans to accept a lower standard of living.
Let me illustrate the problem (these numbers are approximate):
Grow sawgrass -> harvest sawgress -> haul sawgrass -> process sawgrass -> haul SwiftFuel -> store SwiftFuel 50% loss -> 20% loss -> 10% loss -> 50% loss -> 10% loss -> 0% loss = 4% efficiency.
solar power -> through existing electric infrastructure -> to the battery of your electric car/mower/series of tubes 90% loss -> 50% loss -> 50% loss = 2.5% efficiency.
Nuclear uses finite resources and requires a lot of investment and still presents many, many environmental concerns. Relative to oil, uranium is an unlimited resource. We have very, very, very large uranium reserves. Combined with fuel reprocessing this becomes a non-issue. There is no significant nuclear waste issue, so I don't understand what you mean by "environmental concerns". As for investment, nuclear power is cheaper than ALL energy production methods other than fossil fuels by a very wide margin (solar is roughly 10X as expensive).
Solar energy, whether directly converted to electricity with panels or used in a novel solar-powered plants, is decentralized, clean, uses existing infrastructure, and uses electricity as it's delivery medium which is the only transmission system which doesn't move even a single atom after the line is in place. And GROSSLY inefficient, just like biofuels. You're also ignoring the sea of toxic chemical required to produce solar cells. This isn't a major problem now, with relatively low production levels. If we start making orders of magnitude more solar panels it will a much more serious problems.
The fact is that solar panels are simply not efficent enough for large-scale power generation. And even if they were 90% efficient, it probably wouldn't be enough because of atmospheric loss. Most serious large-scale solar power plans involve massive solar power generation satellites that beam power back to Earth with microwaves or lasers. And while giant space lasers are cool, it seems a little far-fetched at the moment.
I believe that many environmentalists are afraid that someone may make money off of it. This is the core of MY objections to drilling in ANWR. All of the proposals and bills I've seen consist of the following:
Step 1) Give the oil companies millions of cash dollars, FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. A straight cash gift. Step 2) Grant oil companies oil exploration rights wherever they want in ANWR and (CRUCIALLY) the Federal government will pay for, in cash, every last dollar of that exploration without limit. The oil companies hand us a bill and we pay whatever it says without audit. Step 3) Assuming they find something through exploration, we grant unlimited extraction rights to the oil companies FOR FREE. Step 4) We give the oil companies a massive tax break excluding and revenue from oil in ANWR from all taxes.
It's difficult for me to see how giving millions of dollars in CASH MONEY to the oil companies will reduce oil prices one iota.
Nothing else is feasible despite all the fairy farts, adamant denials, and heartfelt praying that might be offered. Option 1: Liquid hydrogen or liquid oxygen. Use nuclear power plants to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen, bottle it, and stick it in cars. Liquid hydrogen is marginally safer than gasoline, and marginally more energy efficent (in terms of cost to generate) than alcohol and is burns FAR cleaner.
Option 2: Straight nuclear powered cars. I am convinced that this is far safer than people seem to think it is. Nuclear waste would be a non-trivial issue in this model. Most people bring up the maintainable problem. My solution: don't. Sell the car with 5 years of fuel and then require the buyer to return it and buy a new car after 5 years. Make aftermarket sales of cars or parts a felony.
# They might price themselves out of the market that way -- but it's their own fault. # They might alienate customers that way -- but it's their own fault.
Since we're talking about music: You do understand that the big labels actively conspire to block any significant grown in indie music, right? This goes down to the level of bribing local police to shut down nightclubs that are playing independent music. They constantly sue indie labels for trivial nonsense, to drive them out of business through legal expenses. They engage in massive bribery and other corruption. The labels do not play fair. The do not follow the law. It is in the best interests of consumers if they go completely out of business.
In fact, I'll go out and say it: If you pay for major label music, YOU are evil. You are harming countless artists by aiding the people that are screwing them over. If you steal major label music, and more importantly you encourage OTHERS to do so, you are helping artists because you are hurting the bottom line of the big labels, which may drive them out of business, which is good for everyone (except major label officers and investors).
They should not, by law be allowed to do that. Now do you understand the sort of laws I'm talking about? Ones that mandate interoperability guidelines, for example? But the current law does not work that way. Why should people follow the current law if it is anti-competitive, screws retailers, screws customers, etc.? Your arguing in favor of hypothetical laws, not reality.
I suggest that you have a misplaced sense of entitlement. You feel the whole business world should bend over backwards to provide everything to you for free, The business world needs to come up with a justification for why people should pay for what they can get for free. I suggest that many of these companies have a misplaced sense of entitlement and are manipulating the legal system at the expense of all Americans. They are no more "right" than companies who dodge taxes by using overseas tax shelters. "Legal" and "morally correct" are completely different concepts and never the twain shall meet. I refuse to do immoral things simply because they're "legal".
Zero-DRM protects our rights at their cost. There is no evidence that not including DRM on your software increases piracy. There is very strong evidence that piracy increases software sales in general. Not necessarily YOUR software sales, but the grown of the industry in general. What is the most pirated software application in the world, by a very wide margin? Microsoft Windows. This doesn't seem to have hurt MS' bottom line much. I could easily argue that without piracy of Windows 95 MS would be VASTLY less successful than they are today. The same holds true for lots of other popular software, notably AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max.
But let's narrow the discussion to game piracy. Most games (In the United States. The situation is completely different in, say, China. But we're talking about US laws here.) are pirated by 13-20 year old boys/men. All of these guys have something in common: they have a lot more free time than cash money because all of their cash money is eaten up with school expenses. These people are simply not capable of spending the money on the games because they don't have it. The need their money for beer and weed. So they're going to pirate much of the media they use. This has been true for at least the past 40 years.
Let's talk about these boys a bit more. 13-20 year old boys tend to be anti-authoritarian, so to some extent cracking DRM is seen as "going against The Man". Trying to defeat pointless teenage anti-authoritarianism is a fool's errand. These same kids try to hack into the Pentagon for fun, do you really think that DRM or the vague legal threats of the SPA's goons are going to deter them? As someone else pointed out, for some of these kids beating the DRM is the REAL game.
Fast forward a bit: These 13-20 year old are now 21-35 year olds with jobs (probably well-paying jobs given their technical skills). They now have a lot more money than time. Do you think they are going to:
A) Stop playing videogames.
or
B) Start paying for videogames.
DRM allowed to roam free, protects their rights at the cost of ours. The purpose of DRM is not to "protect publisher's rights". It is explicitly to "fuck consumers, and fuck them hard". I've heard this straight from the horse's mouth. The goal is to eventually get everything to a "pay per use" model which is perceived as generating maximum revenue. Every time you play a song, you're billed. Watch a movie, billed. They actually want to charge gamers by hours of gameplay, if you can believe it. Feel like spending $500 on your next RPG? THAT is the goal of game publishers. They've been drooling over the revenue WoW is raking in with their "pay per use" model.
DRM, with proper legislative oversight/guidelines can protect the rights of both parties. No it doesn't. DRM does not allow for software entering the public domain, which is massive attack on the rights of all Americans.
And again, you're talking about magical hypothetical DRM. Not reality. I am talking about the reality of DRM, which is viciously anti-consumer.
The only other alternative would be a locked down OS (far moreso than Vista) with some sort of anti-modding hardware and a hypervisor. This doesn't seem to work for game consoles. They are loaded with anti-circumvention features which have been circumvented. Most famously Microsoft claimed the original XBOX was impossible to mod and it ended up being the most moddable game console in history. There were mod chips for the wii even before it launched.
On average, YES, it leads to crime, via a multi step process in which there are other factors.... Is there no personal responsibility involved at all here? Brain damage is fundamentally different from peer pressure. Brain damage REMOVES the ability to think independently, therefore decreases personal responsibility. While we're delving into philosophy a bit, the simple reality is that humans DO NOT have free will. At all. As a society we choose to cling to the illusion of free will and that fine, right up to the point where innocent people are punished/tortured/killed due to dogmatic (aka RELIGIOUS) insistence on absolute free will that does not exist.
... are you willing to say that being black leads to increased criminal behavior? In the US, yes. Obviously. While racism plays a large part, the fact is that per capita black Americans DO commit more crimes than other poor Americans (white, latino, asian, etc.). I'm not going to speculate as to the reasons.
Also, you need to look up the legal definition of the insanity defense. Which I believe is too narrow and not properly applied. The threshold for the insanity defense is that the defendant must not be capable of understanding that SOMEONE ELSE thinks he committed a crime. So if the defendant thinks he's Jesus and attacked someone because he thought they were the Antichrist, if the defendant can understand that SOMEONE ELSE disagrees with that, he's considered "sane" even though HE thinks he's Jesus and his victim was the Antichrist. If he refuses to answer, he's also considered "sane". The only way to get an insanity defense is to literally be incapable of understanding the speech of others, i.e. extremely severe schizophrenia in which you say one thing to the schizophrenic and he "hears" something completely different. ALL THE TIME.
By definition they decided--having taken reasonable time to cool off and think things through--that they could take away someone else's right to live.... And once someone has shown they are capable of such an act, it is society's responsibility to ensure they do not get another chance. Like soldiers, right? They spend YEARS training to kill people. Clearly, we can't allow ex-soldiers back into society, they're deranged. I suggest island colonies (don't laugh, I just described Australia).
Let's be clear about your reasoning: You are saying that execution (implied in your post) is NECESSARY to prevent recidivism. Not because of moral outrage over the specific crime. You are NOT saying that "murder is bad and we should kill murderers" but "Criminals can not EVER be trusted not to re-offend, so we should kill them."
Your reasoning could be extended to any crime: armed robbery, rape, shoplifting, etc. Why not kill all the shoplifters? As I said earlier, why not kill EVERYONE? EVERYONE is a "potential criminal".
This is a premeditated act. So? If your children were being taken away to Russia forever and you would never see them again, how would you react? That was pretty clearly Reiser's motivation. Simply because you lack the imagination to come up with a scenario under which you would commit murder, doesn't mean that "reasonable" people cannot come up with such an scenario. What if someone raped and murdered your wife/mother/sister, was not punished by the law (for whatever reason), and you then stalked and killed the rapist (obvious 1st degree murder)? Should you be executed?
Even IF what you say is true (and I dispute that--feel free to provide some backing evidence), for what you say to have any relevance at all, there would have to be collusion between all lawyers (defense+prosecuting), judges, police, and Big Prison Co. Is that really what you're claiming? You're disputing the existence of private for-profit prisons in the USA? Yes, they exist. No, I'm not going to give you a link. Use Google. Is your question whether or not they lobby the government? The answer again, is yes. Look up donor lists.Are prosecutors, police and prison industry colluding? Yes. The police and prison guard unions lobby heavily for longer sentences, more prisons, etc. in part because the private prison industry generally pays guards better and give the unions money. For many DAs their largest campaign donors are the police unions and prison industry. Are defense attorneys and judges collaborating with the prison industry? NO! They have generally lobbied against such laws, usually represented by the local Bar. Are you disputing that prisons make more money the longer a person is locked up? That's obvious.
So here's the question: Does the prison industry lobby specifically for longer sentences? YES. The prison industry here in California campaigned heavily for the so-called "3 strikes" law that drastically increased prison sentences and prison population in California.
So to be precise I am claiming that prison companies lobby state legislatures, Congress, and promote ballot initiatives that increase prison sentences. Not just in general, but also for specific crimes, like sex crimes. The only conceivable reason they are doing this is to make more money. You're the only person I've ever talked to that seriously questioned this.
Not just yet, when Intel releases the Atom it is basically designed to run Linux and not Windows. So I suppose that this and this are just fantasies? I'm not aware of any shipping Linux-based Atom product.
Basically Intel were screwed by MS last time round with their Origami platform How exactly? The problem was the cost of initial Origami devices. As soon as the price dropped, they became popular. And most of these devices are/were running AMD and Via CPUs, whch certainly isn't MS' fault. Intel simply didn't have a low-power x86 processor available at the time. Which is the void Atom was developed to fill. ASUS' eeePC and other "netbooks" are basically UMPCs with cost-reduction measures, like no touchscreen. But fundamentally they're very Origami-like.
Now suddenly, BOOM! UMPCs are all the rage. Yeah, it's not like Microsft was shipping Windows on these kinds of devices many years ago. Oh that's right, they ARE. Remember Oragami? MS had this idea years ago, Asus finally managed to do it cheaply. The triumph here is not that Ubuntu runs on another platform (it runs on my old XBOX, yay!) but Asus' innovative hardware.
It would take at least two years with all hands on deck to produce "XP Light" for UMPC's. It already exists. It's called "Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs". It looks to be what they ported to the OLPC. Or they could just run Windows XP. It came out in 2001, people. It runs fine on a 300mhz PC with 256MB of memory (assuming you run in Classic mode). It's a lot lighter than you seem to to think it is.
Besides, they've spent a gazillion dollars gambling on Vista and the trend towards more powerful computers. They don't want to admit they were wrong. {sarcasm} Computers getting more powerful? What a dangerous gamble that is! {/sarcasm}
For about 6 months after Vista's launch, many entry-level PCs could not reasonably run Vista/Aero. This was bad. RIGHT NOW however, most $300 systems you can buy at Wal-mart can run Vista/Aero just fine. I've talked about this before, but I blame the OEMs for not being ready despite YEARS of delays in shipping Vista. The bitching and whining from hardware vendors (you have to make actual new drivers instead of just hacking old Win98 drivers like you've been doing for 10 years) has been a big problem. Despite this Vista has better hardware support than ANY operating system. Yeah, even XP. XP has lousy support for SATA (for example).
I'm still waiting for that drop-in Active Directory/Exchange/Outlook/Office/Sharepoint that is so critical in most modern businesses today. Linux does not seem to be poised to replace Windows Server in the "LAN server" space, he way NT4 replaced Netware. And Netware was never as big as Windows Server is today. Given that the back-end server isn't going away, and that Linux has nothing like the manageability of Windows, it seems unlikely to me that most companies will be replacing their infrastructure soon. Of course, disruptive technology could change that, but I don't see the drop-in Active Directory/Exchange/Outlook/Office/Sharepoint replacement that Linux would need.
This requires more elaboration. It is really not enough that Linux has a drop-in Active Directory/Exchange/Outlook/Office/Sharepoint replacement. Nor is it enough if it's free (this is probably actually a bad thing). It must be DRAMATICALLY better than MS's solutions. It must offer far more features and be easier to use. That's exactly what Microsoft accomplished with NT4, and it's what Linux is going to have to replicate.
So if you want Linux to succeed on the desktop, start working on a groupware package with impressive new features, like "cloud syncing", built-in P2P sharing, built-in webmeetings, built-in PKI that works flawlessly, live document collaboration, out-of-the-box clustering, auto-configuration, easy GUI management tools, etc.
And don't tell me Linux can win the home desktop without wining the corporate desktop. Tell it to Apple. MS won all desktops because they won the corporate desktop. In large part people buy Windows at home for three main reasons:
1) First and foremost, it's what they use at work (and for most, at school) so it's what they know how to use and configure. 2) Any piece of random hardware you buy at Best Buy will work. 3) It's much easier to get support for Windows than MacOS or Linux, because they might be able to get support from their corporate IT guys. And if not, the guys at Geek Squad know Windows.
From the articles you linked to, lead levels are associated with aggressive behavior - not crimes in and of themselves. It is how the individual, families, and institutions deal with those tendencies that make criminals. You're being incredibly obtuse if you agree that lead levels cause brain damage, learning disabilities, and increased aggression, but somehow these side affects DON'T lead to (on average) increased criminal behavior. That's a crock. As the OP pointed out, it's easily proven that groups with increased lead levels commit street crime more frequently than groups who do not.
And yes, brain damage due to lead poisoning SHOULD be a legitimate insanity defense. The idea that brain damaged people are equally culpable for crimes is foolish, archaic and cruel.
Wikileaks HAS been shut down by the U.S. Federal Courts over supposed "copyright violations".
Most of the other things on the list are technologies, like Freenet or Tor. "The government" has no functional way of "shutting down" these technologies.
In the case of Freenet, I don't even know how you'd begin to go about doing this. Sure you can make Freenet illegal, but the people using it are probably using it to to lots of far more serious illegal stuff and are using Freenet to cover it up. Do you really think a possible fine or jail time for using Freenet would deter them, especially if they face life in prison (or death) for NOT using Freenet?
if you assumed reiser's innocence, take a good har dlook in the mirror Um, no. The spin I get from most of the posts is: "I don't trust the police, in general." Police tend to pick their suspects and run with them, statistics show that 90% of people are killed by close relatives, and Hans Reiser is a jerk. If you read most of the posts, most readers believed (rightly or wrongly) that the police quickly targeted Hans and didn't seriously consider any other suspects. Nor did they investigate the possibility that Nina was alive and well in Russia. Of course, there was no evidence that Nina had left the country or that anyone else was involved.
I don't know the details of the trial. Maybe these possibilities were throughly explored. In the case of Russia I very seriously doubt it.
The only way to make sure society is protected from such individuals is to ensure they do not have the opportunity to ever hurt anyone again. The only way to make sure society is protected from such individuals is to execute every last man, woman, and child in society. No people means no criminals.
Many people seem to be under the delusion that "criminals" are somehow fundamentally different from other people. People who commit crimes, even violent crimes, are fundamentally identical to you, me, and everyone else. The difference is that when confronted with an unusual situation they made a bad decision. That's it.
Take Hans Reiser. Assuming he was released in a few years, what is the ACTUAL chance he would re-offend? Approximately zero. He only murdered Nina because of a particular set of circumstances involving custody and divorce. These are extremely unlikely to occur again, and even if they do, it's not likely Reiser would react in the same way. OJ hasn't killed anyone else either.
So the main reason Reiser is getting life is revenge/deterrence, not to "protect society".
On a side note, whats with those extremely long terms in prison?
Two reasons:
1) The American prison system is based on the notion that it is mainly younger people, aged 18-45 who commit crimes. So the idea is to keep "criminal types" in prison until they hit age 45 (18 + 25 years is 43) whereupon they will commit few crimes upon release.
2) A large percentage of the prison (not jail) system is privatized. Prison corporations make more money the longer people are in jail due to economy of scale. A prisoner held for 25 years generates more revenue (proportionately) than one held for 5 years because the longer a prisoner is held (with exceptions) the LESS it costs to hold them per year. Private prisons actually want more life imprisonment because older (65+) prisoners aren't very violent, and generate more revenue for the prison company because they demand more money for elder care (which they basically don't provide).
And while we're at it. If you guys would come out with a light, fast, clean version of XP I'd actually buy that with real cash money. Here's what you're looking for, and it's free. nLite.
eBay specifically courts people to sell professionally using their service. It may be true that the eBay corporation wants people to sell professionally using their service. It doesn't change the fact the SYSTEM is best suited for private sellers. If you wish to sell professionally using eBay you must understand that you pay a hefty price for mooching off eBay's brand. If you don't like it go elsewhere. As I've made clear, I don't like most of the professional sellers on eBay and would like the lion's share of them to go away.
The majority of fraudulent transactions involve non-delivery of goods. I'll assume you actually meant "fraudulent transactions by buyers," a much, much smaller segment of eBay fraud. No, I meant seller fraud. Based on the people I talk to, the majority of fraud cases are non-delivered goods paid for by Visa and MasterCard processed by a handful of credit card processors that will essentially issue "disposable" merchant accounts to anybody. The accounts are used for fraud, but by the time eBay catches up the rogue merchant is gone and the processor shrugs their shoulders. Rinse, repeat.
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REAL trains, like Caltrain, are cheap. The same project using conventional rail would cost only $50 million. But people bitch about how loud trains are. Back east they just stick everything underground, but you can't do that in California because of the earthquake risk (somehow this doesn't apply to underground parking structures).
The solution in LA and most everywhere else is ELECTRIC buses. They're cheap, clean, quiet, familiar, and easy to deploy. Since they're attached to the grid your power efficiency depends on your power generators. Basically, trolleys without the tracks.
Here's the key number:
0.23-0.28
That's the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in MJ per kg.
46.9
That's the energy density of gasoline, about 20X greater.
This is why electric cars suck. In order to achieve the same range you have to carry 20X as much fuel in weight. Even if the car was nothing but an engine, 4 wheels, and a pile of batteries you could NEVER achieve anything near the range of the biggest, least efficient, gas guzzler available.
None of this applies to electric trains and buses which draw their power directly from the grid, but require tracks. This is why we see such vehicles widely deployed. Electric trains and buses backed by nuclear power (or other alternative power sources) are a GREAT idea.
Electric motors often achieve 90% energy conversion efficiency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle#cite_note-22). There's no way you get any near this using internal combustion with hydrogen, much less with fossil fuels.
You're not reading those article very carefully, are you?
NOBODY is talking about burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines (there are compression issues, it's near-impossible). What they are talking about is fuel cells, for ELECTRIC ENGINES, that are about 90% efficient.
Electric MOTORS are very efficient, but electric BATTERIES are not. Do you intend to run the cars on tracks (like electric buses)? If not, you have to STORE the electricity somewhere. And conventional batteries are very inefficient. There is also the issue of charge time.
Basically, the idea of cars powered by conventional batteries is silly.
You're talking about eliminating more than cars. You're also talking about eliminating suburbia, housing subdivisions, bedroom communities, etc. The problem is that people LOVE living in suburbia. The house in suburbia with the white picket fence is firmly fixed in the American Dream. You're not going to convince people to give up their backyards and retiring to the country.
For the record, I agree with you. I am against suburbia, sprawl and automobiles in general. But I recognize that I am in a very small minority in the USA (3%, maybe) and it will be impossible to convince most Americans to accept a lower standard of living.
The fact is that solar panels are simply not efficent enough for large-scale power generation. And even if they were 90% efficient, it probably wouldn't be enough because of atmospheric loss. Most serious large-scale solar power plans involve massive solar power generation satellites that beam power back to Earth with microwaves or lasers. And while giant space lasers are cool, it seems a little far-fetched at the moment.
Step 1) Give the oil companies millions of cash dollars, FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. A straight cash gift.
Step 2) Grant oil companies oil exploration rights wherever they want in ANWR and (CRUCIALLY) the Federal government will pay for, in cash, every last dollar of that exploration without limit. The oil companies hand us a bill and we pay whatever it says without audit.
Step 3) Assuming they find something through exploration, we grant unlimited extraction rights to the oil companies FOR FREE.
Step 4) We give the oil companies a massive tax break excluding and revenue from oil in ANWR from all taxes.
It's difficult for me to see how giving millions of dollars in CASH MONEY to the oil companies will reduce oil prices one iota.
Option 2: Straight nuclear powered cars. I am convinced that this is far safer than people seem to think it is. Nuclear waste would be a non-trivial issue in this model. Most people bring up the maintainable problem. My solution: don't. Sell the car with 5 years of fuel and then require the buyer to return it and buy a new car after 5 years. Make aftermarket sales of cars or parts a felony.
# They might price themselves out of the market that way -- but it's their own fault.
# They might alienate customers that way -- but it's their own fault.
Since we're talking about music: You do understand that the big labels actively conspire to block any significant grown in indie music, right? This goes down to the level of bribing local police to shut down nightclubs that are playing independent music. They constantly sue indie labels for trivial nonsense, to drive them out of business through legal expenses. They engage in massive bribery and other corruption. The labels do not play fair. The do not follow the law. It is in the best interests of consumers if they go completely out of business.
In fact, I'll go out and say it: If you pay for major label music, YOU are evil. You are harming countless artists by aiding the people that are screwing them over. If you steal major label music, and more importantly you encourage OTHERS to do so, you are helping artists because you are hurting the bottom line of the big labels, which may drive them out of business, which is good for everyone (except major label officers and investors).
But let's narrow the discussion to game piracy. Most games (In the United States. The situation is completely different in, say, China. But we're talking about US laws here.) are pirated by 13-20 year old boys/men. All of these guys have something in common: they have a lot more free time than cash money because all of their cash money is eaten up with school expenses. These people are simply not capable of spending the money on the games because they don't have it. The need their money for beer and weed. So they're going to pirate much of the media they use. This has been true for at least the past 40 years.
Let's talk about these boys a bit more. 13-20 year old boys tend to be anti-authoritarian, so to some extent cracking DRM is seen as "going against The Man". Trying to defeat pointless teenage anti-authoritarianism is a fool's errand. These same kids try to hack into the Pentagon for fun, do you really think that DRM or the vague legal threats of the SPA's goons are going to deter them? As someone else pointed out, for some of these kids beating the DRM is the REAL game.
Fast forward a bit: These 13-20 year old are now 21-35 year olds with jobs (probably well-paying jobs given their technical skills). They now have a lot more money than time. Do you think they are going to:
A) Stop playing videogames.
or
B) Start paying for videogames. DRM allowed to roam free, protects their rights at the cost of ours. The purpose of DRM is not to "protect publisher's rights". It is explicitly to "fuck consumers, and fuck them hard". I've heard this straight from the horse's mouth. The goal is to eventually get everything to a "pay per use" model which is perceived as generating maximum revenue. Every time you play a song, you're billed. Watch a movie, billed. They actually want to charge gamers by hours of gameplay, if you can believe it. Feel like spending $500 on your next RPG? THAT is the goal of game publishers. They've been drooling over the revenue WoW is raking in with their "pay per use" model. DRM, with proper legislative oversight/guidelines can protect the rights of both parties. No it doesn't. DRM does not allow for software entering the public domain, which is massive attack on the rights of all Americans.
And again, you're talking about magical hypothetical DRM. Not reality. I am talking about the reality of DRM, which is viciously anti-consumer.
... are you willing to say that being black leads to increased criminal behavior? In the US, yes. Obviously. While racism plays a large part, the fact is that per capita black Americans DO commit more crimes than other poor Americans (white, latino, asian, etc.). I'm not going to speculate as to the reasons. Also, you need to look up the legal definition of the insanity defense. Which I believe is too narrow and not properly applied. The threshold for the insanity defense is that the defendant must not be capable of understanding that SOMEONE ELSE thinks he committed a crime. So if the defendant thinks he's Jesus and attacked someone because he thought they were the Antichrist, if the defendant can understand that SOMEONE ELSE disagrees with that, he's considered "sane" even though HE thinks he's Jesus and his victim was the Antichrist. If he refuses to answer, he's also considered "sane". The only way to get an insanity defense is to literally be incapable of understanding the speech of others, i.e. extremely severe schizophrenia in which you say one thing to the schizophrenic and he "hears" something completely different. ALL THE TIME.Let's be clear about your reasoning: You are saying that execution (implied in your post) is NECESSARY to prevent recidivism. Not because of moral outrage over the specific crime. You are NOT saying that "murder is bad and we should kill murderers" but "Criminals can not EVER be trusted not to re-offend, so we should kill them."
Your reasoning could be extended to any crime: armed robbery, rape, shoplifting, etc. Why not kill all the shoplifters? As I said earlier, why not kill EVERYONE? EVERYONE is a "potential criminal". This is a premeditated act. So? If your children were being taken away to Russia forever and you would never see them again, how would you react? That was pretty clearly Reiser's motivation. Simply because you lack the imagination to come up with a scenario under which you would commit murder, doesn't mean that "reasonable" people cannot come up with such an scenario. What if someone raped and murdered your wife/mother/sister, was not punished by the law (for whatever reason), and you then stalked and killed the rapist (obvious 1st degree murder)? Should you be executed?
(defense+prosecuting), judges, police, and Big Prison Co. Is that really what you're claiming? You're disputing the existence of private for-profit prisons in the USA? Yes, they exist. No, I'm not going to give you a link. Use Google. Is your question whether or not they lobby the government? The answer again, is yes. Look up donor lists.Are prosecutors, police and prison industry colluding? Yes. The police and prison guard unions lobby heavily for longer sentences, more prisons, etc. in part because the private prison industry generally pays guards better and give the unions money. For many DAs their largest campaign donors are the police unions and prison industry. Are defense attorneys and judges collaborating with the prison industry? NO! They have generally lobbied against such laws, usually represented by the local Bar. Are you disputing that prisons make more money the longer a person is locked up? That's obvious.
So here's the question: Does the prison industry lobby specifically for longer sentences? YES. The prison industry here in California campaigned heavily for the so-called "3 strikes" law that drastically increased prison sentences and prison population in California.
So to be precise I am claiming that prison companies lobby state legislatures, Congress, and promote ballot initiatives that increase prison sentences. Not just in general, but also for specific crimes, like sex crimes. The only conceivable reason they are doing this is to make more money. You're the only person I've ever talked to that seriously questioned this.
The triumph here is not that Ubuntu runs on another platform (it runs on my old XBOX, yay!) but Asus' innovative hardware. It would take at least two years with all hands on deck to produce "XP Light" for UMPC's. It already exists. It's called "Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs". It looks to be what they ported to the OLPC. Or they could just run Windows XP. It came out in 2001, people. It runs fine on a 300mhz PC with 256MB of memory (assuming you run in Classic mode). It's a lot lighter than you seem to to think it is. Besides, they've spent a gazillion dollars gambling on Vista and the trend towards more powerful computers. They don't want to admit they were wrong. {sarcasm}
Computers getting more powerful? What a dangerous gamble that is!
{/sarcasm}
For about 6 months after Vista's launch, many entry-level PCs could not reasonably run Vista/Aero. This was bad. RIGHT NOW however, most $300 systems you can buy at Wal-mart can run Vista/Aero just fine. I've talked about this before, but I blame the OEMs for not being ready despite YEARS of delays in shipping Vista. The bitching and whining from hardware vendors (you have to make actual new drivers instead of just hacking old Win98 drivers like you've been doing for 10 years) has been a big problem. Despite this Vista has better hardware support than ANY operating system. Yeah, even XP. XP has lousy support for SATA (for example).
I'm still waiting for that drop-in Active Directory/Exchange/Outlook/Office/Sharepoint that is so critical in most modern businesses today. Linux does not seem to be poised to replace Windows Server in the "LAN server" space, he way NT4 replaced Netware. And Netware was never as big as Windows Server is today. Given that the back-end server isn't going away, and that Linux has nothing like the manageability of Windows, it seems unlikely to me that most companies will be replacing their infrastructure soon. Of course, disruptive technology could change that, but I don't see the drop-in Active Directory/Exchange/Outlook/Office/Sharepoint replacement that Linux would need.
This requires more elaboration. It is really not enough that Linux has a drop-in Active Directory/Exchange/Outlook/Office/Sharepoint replacement. Nor is it enough if it's free (this is probably actually a bad thing). It must be DRAMATICALLY better than MS's solutions. It must offer far more features and be easier to use. That's exactly what Microsoft accomplished with NT4, and it's what Linux is going to have to replicate.
So if you want Linux to succeed on the desktop, start working on a groupware package with impressive new features, like "cloud syncing", built-in P2P sharing, built-in webmeetings, built-in PKI that works flawlessly, live document collaboration, out-of-the-box clustering, auto-configuration, easy GUI management tools, etc.
And don't tell me Linux can win the home desktop without wining the corporate desktop. Tell it to Apple. MS won all desktops because they won the corporate desktop. In large part people buy Windows at home for three main reasons:
1) First and foremost, it's what they use at work (and for most, at school) so it's what they know how to use and configure.
2) Any piece of random hardware you buy at Best Buy will work.
3) It's much easier to get support for Windows than MacOS or Linux, because they might be able to get support from their corporate IT guys. And if not, the guys at Geek Squad know Windows.
And yes, brain damage due to lead poisoning SHOULD be a legitimate insanity defense. The idea that brain damaged people are equally culpable for crimes is foolish, archaic and cruel.
Wikileaks HAS been shut down by the U.S. Federal Courts over supposed "copyright violations".
Most of the other things on the list are technologies, like Freenet or Tor. "The government" has no functional way of "shutting down" these technologies.
In the case of Freenet, I don't even know how you'd begin to go about doing this. Sure you can make Freenet illegal, but the people using it are probably using it to to lots of far more serious illegal stuff and are using Freenet to cover it up. Do you really think a possible fine or jail time for using Freenet would deter them, especially if they face life in prison (or death) for NOT using Freenet?
I don't know the details of the trial. Maybe these possibilities were throughly explored. In the case of Russia I very seriously doubt it.
Many people seem to be under the delusion that "criminals" are somehow fundamentally different from other people. People who commit crimes, even violent crimes, are fundamentally identical to you, me, and everyone else. The difference is that when confronted with an unusual situation they made a bad decision. That's it.
Take Hans Reiser. Assuming he was released in a few years, what is the ACTUAL chance he would re-offend? Approximately zero. He only murdered Nina because of a particular set of circumstances involving custody and divorce. These are extremely unlikely to occur again, and even if they do, it's not likely Reiser would react in the same way. OJ hasn't killed anyone else either.
So the main reason Reiser is getting life is revenge/deterrence, not to "protect society".
On a side note, whats with those extremely long terms in prison?
Two reasons:
1) The American prison system is based on the notion that it is mainly younger people, aged 18-45 who commit crimes. So the idea is to keep "criminal types" in prison until they hit age 45 (18 + 25 years is 43) whereupon they will commit few crimes upon release.
2) A large percentage of the prison (not jail) system is privatized. Prison corporations make more money the longer people are in jail due to economy of scale. A prisoner held for 25 years generates more revenue (proportionately) than one held for 5 years because the longer a prisoner is held (with exceptions) the LESS it costs to hold them per year. Private prisons actually want more life imprisonment because older (65+) prisoners aren't very violent, and generate more revenue for the prison company because they demand more money for elder care (which they basically don't provide).
The best space combat sim in recent years was 2006's Darkstar One. There was also last year's Spaceforce: Rogue Universe.