The networks run physical infrastructure across public lands. Furthermore, they hold natural monopolies at both local and state levels. The government - and citizens - have an interest in equal access to that infrastructure. Particularly since open communication access is crucial to a functioning market. These ISPs are engaging in restraint of trade, hobbling competition not just in their own market but across whole swaths of the economy with potential for vast damage to market competition.
Even Milton Friedman would recognize the danger here.
Carmack's keynote at the 2014 Oculus Connect conference said it would take several more generations before Samsung would have panels that could support seamless 120 fps. Apparently there's a problem with peripheral vision noticing 60fps with a significant number of people. Basically, Samsung is focused on developing panels for the phone market and Oculus piggypacks on that development line. They don't have the market penetration to drive display research.
The most interesting part of his discussion was proposing interlaced formats and variable refresh rates with G-sync to up the perceived refresh rate around peripheral vision.
The talk is about 90 minutes and - ironically - audio is not synced with video. Still, he doesn't talk much bullshit and it's an interesting listen.
I wonder how the group plans to stitch together multiple displays seamlessly. Removing the bezel is only part of the problem. There'd still be a noticeable seam between panels, never mind the problem of lining up pixels. I suppose one could argue that beyond a certain pixel density - +400dpi or something - lining up pixels exactly wouldn't be necessary. But then you'd have to offset by that difference, and the joined panel would have to test for and respond to that offset to compensate.
I think most would be rightly skeptical of this until seeing the tech work first hand.
On another subject, at the Techspot article there was a link to the Ars project. It's some kind of hot swappable modular phone in development.
According to that, you can't swap out CPU or display live but just about everything else would be hot swappable. It's got a nifty photo showing parts to some kind of mock up or beta device.
All I could think of when looking at this was Stringer Bell from The Wire swapping out sim cards in his phone and what a boon that might be for criminals. Or at least crime drama on TV.
He said the buildings that house the trans-oceanic data cables were designed from the ground up with small rooms, broom closet sized, that the primary data cables run through.... He said that all data traffic entering those rooms left them with a noticable amount of latency (at the time, late 80s he said it was about 10ms), but no hops. He claimed that the federal government had been monitoring internet activity in these data hubs since the dawn of the web.
Mark Klein, former tech from AT&T, claimed to have witnessed installation of one such room at a San Francisco POP in 2002. He gave a formal statement to attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was printed in this Wired Article. The money quote is below:
While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal. I saw this in a design document available to me, entitled "Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco" dated Dec. 10, 2002. I also saw design documents dated Jan. 13, 2004 and Jan. 24, 2003, which instructed technicians on connecting some of the already in-service circuits to the "splitter" cabinet, which diverts some of the light signal to the secret room. The circuits listed were the Peering Links, which connect Worldnet with other networks and hence the whole country, as well as the rest of the world.
One of the documents listed the equipment installed in the secret room, and this list included a Narus STA 6400, which is a "Semantic Traffic Analyzer". The Narus STA technology is known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets. The company's advertising boasts that its technology "captures comprehensive customer usage data... and transforms it into actionable information.... (It) provides complete visibility for all internet applications.
EFF proceeded to file a lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T) claiming infringement of privacy by the firm. Though no finding of fact was challenged, ultimately it was dismissed due to retroactive FISA legislation signed by Bush legalizing the process. On appeal, the Supreme Court refused to review the case.
Though many argued that Klein was just one person with a grudge against his employer, and thus dismissed his testimony as overblown or vindictive, in 2013 Edward Snowden's revelations "proved what he'd said was true. That the government did work with network service providers - including AT&T - to install monitoring systems throughout the Internet backbone.
Remember when Gilmore said, 'the internet routes around damage'?
Remember when it was commonly accepted that censorship on an open network was virtually impossible?
Remember then?
All that idealism crushed with buyouts and consolidation, money thrown at the problem of uppity citizens using disruptive new technology to assert their pesky rights. And it worked. The Internet is nothing like what I remember twenty years ago. A free thought and open platform for exchange of ideas and technology. Now it's a marketing platform at best, global surveillance mechanism at worst.
My parents generation from the 60s had their idealism crushed too. What with the assassination of a president, a civil rights leader, and that president's brother murdered on the campaign trail while running for President. No wonder in the '70s people turned their backs on civics danced away their troubles.
And if you look back to the Wobblie generation - my great grandparents - at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so too did it happen then as well. Utterly crushed under the boot of money and violence. People danced during the roaring twenties too.
At least not too many 'net idealists have been killed this time 'round. Though it doesn't seem like it's time to dance either. The mood has gotten too ugly to party the bad news off.
If I understand your comment correctly, you argue that all renewable subsidies ought to end. And in particular, argue that Net Metering laws are an especially pernicious subsidy that forces utility companies to buy energy from homeowners at inflated rates. You use the common 'buggy whip' metaphor for disruptive economic shifts due to technological advancement to explain this rationale, presenting the hypothetical: what would happen if government had subsidized buggy whips?
So I'll counter, there are two kinds of renewable subsidies at play here.
The first are manufacturing subsidies. China subsidized manufacturing buildout of solar assembly lines with the hope they would take a dominant position in the world market. They're betting solar will be a high growth high-tech market and these subsidies will have long term benefit to the Chinese economy. This is no different from the US betting big by subsidizing pharmaceuticals through medical research grants. Or the initial funding of computer science and packet switched networking (ARPANET), what we now enjoy as the Internet. Those subsidies funneled wealth toward industries each nation expected would show long term economic benefit.
From that perspective, fossil fuels receive significant subsidies today, even as solar manufacturing subsidies decline. See this BBC article:
But there's a second kind of solar subsidy. The one you argue is especially pernicious. That of Net Metering, whereby utilities buy back electric generation by rooftop solar. This subsidizes not the manufacture of panels but their purchase, deployment, and use. As utility companies complain, Net Metering essentially is forcing those companies to diminish the value of their investments in gas and coal fired power plants. Since they've put billions - half a trillion wordlwide - into these investments, a general popular shift to rooftop solar means that as local solar ownership increases so too does the value of central production decrease.
Why should laws force them to buy the knife that's slitting their own throats?
I argue because increased energy production - in aggregate - is a net good across the board. The solution is not to limit deployment of renewables, particularly since they're already cost effective, but to find alternative use for those gas and coal burning plants during this transition period. You won't get buy-in from utility investors unless they see some kind of ROI on prior investment. Otherwise, they'll fight this to the bitter end, which would delay renewable deployment longer than planning to maximizing use of current fossil fuel infrastructure anyway.
But let's get to your buggy whip argument. Because I think this is particularly flawed. Here, you conflate a manufactured good - the buggy whip - with an energy resource. It takes net energy to make buggy whips. If they're useless, regardless of subsidy, that's a net loss to the economy and society in general. The whip will sit unused until it decays and is thrown away. Energy production is different. This can be stored for use another day. Whether that's direct use in smelting and manufacturing, as I proposed, or in storage - say mass hydro by pumping water uphill, hydrogen gas production and storage, whatever - energy production can be converted and saved in ways that a useless manufactured object cannot.
The analogy fails because the two (subsidized energy production vs subsidized manufacturing) are not comparable at fundamental levels.
At least, that's the perspective I take. I look forward to your counter-argument. Best. -M
And yet it hasn't stopped solar deployments. Because even without subsidies, they're now cost competitive. Utility companies can't use the canard of government subsidized energy any longer. Yet they've invested - as the Economist notes - half a trillion in fossil fuel plants worldwide. I'm proposing a solution that at least prevents a utility meltdown during the transition period.
As the Economist notes, due to German and other European solar government incentives, European utilities face an existential threat to their investment future and business model. Utility giants the world over have seen this and decided to fight back against Net Metering and other means whereby homeowners can feed back into the electric grid excess energy production from rooftop solar. Barclays, the British multinational banking giant, agrees that rooftop solar and net metering represent a threat to centralized electric production utilities.
The problem utilities face is that solar tends to maximize output at mid-afternoon, exactly the same time spot prices have traditionally been at maximum. So their solution is to lobby government the world over to reverse net metering laws and end solar subsidies.
OK, time for me to get on a soapbox. I think this is shortsighted. The real problem here is that government and electric utilities have agreed on a price structure and investment plan to build out gas powered and coal powered plants that now appear to be unsustainable due to disruptive shifts in the market from technical innovation in the renewable field. As is noted in TFA, solar is - or will soon be - already cost competitive even without government subsidy.
Market fundamentalists would argue, 'let the utilities die. Their investors bought into a dying technology, the market will decide their fate.' Except that they have an endless stream of money to buy lobbyists and legislators to warp law in their favor. Further, they have a good argument that intermittent renewables will only meet partial demand. You still need baseline generation capacity from central utilities. So the problem - from their perspective - is excess production by renewables.
Except: when has excess energy production ever been a problem?
The real problem is twofold: We want to move off of fossil fuels due to global climate change and they want to maximize their vast infrastructure investments. A real policy solution would meet both needs.
Rooftop solar should be maximized. During periods of excess, gas powered plants should funnel their energy to local raw materials ore processing facilities and manufacturing. This has the benefit of distributing labor where it's needed near mining sites, rather than shipping raw materials where labor is cheapest for exploitation as well. And it keeps utilities running for the next thirty years to generate a viable expected ROI. And government policymakers could then plan a rational transition period away from fossil fuels without the economic dislocation of utility giants imploding worldwide.
You don't need to punish every infraction - in fact doing so is counterproductive. Humans (and most other animals) respond far more strongly to semi-random reinforcement (negative or positive) than to consistent responses.
It's not possible to punish every infraction. A point I made in the previous comment. But let's be clear on what you mean by 'semi-random reinforcement)'. Because to punish without regard to infraction confirmation does not lead to compliance. It leads to psychosis. But to punish confirmed infractions publicly - to make an example - that's a different matter. Which leads us back to surveillance, the Panopticon, and Foucault's essay on the subject.
There is another fascinating benefit- if someone tries to sit in the middle of the photon stream and determine photon polarization, their eavesdropping will be evident- by checking the polarization of a photon in transit, they change the value of the polarization.
I think there's a problem with this. What you describe is similar to a BB84 quantum key distribution scheme. But I think you're missing a quantum no-cloning mechanism here.
According to quantum mechanics (particularly quantum indeterminacy), no possible measurement distinguishes between the 4 different polarization states, as they are not all orthogonal. The only possible measurement is between any two orthogonal states (an orthonormal basis). So, for example, measuring in the rectilinear basis gives a result of horizontal or vertical. If the photon was created as horizontal or vertical (as a rectilinear eigenstate) then this measures the correct state, but if it was created as 45 or 135 (diagonal eigenstates) then the rectilinear measurement instead returns either horizontal or vertical at random. Furthermore, after this measurement the photon is polarized in the state it was measured in (horizontal or vertical), with all information about its initial polarization lost.
But I think in your scheme the detector wouldn't know how many photons had been emitted or what polarization any arbitrary photon should be, therefore it couldn't determine if a photon had been emitted by your source of a man-in-the-middle device. And by transmitting that information from emitter to detector classically, you'd negate any security gained.
You'd need to establish a stream of entangled photon pairs:
By using quantum superpositions or quantum entanglement and transmitting information in quantum states, a communication system can be implemented which detects eavesdropping. If the level of eavesdropping is below a certain threshold, a key can be produced that is guaranteed to be secure (i.e. the eavesdropper has no information about it), otherwise no secure key is possible and communication is aborted.
Now: big caveat, this is not my field and I am no expert in qcomputing or qcryptography. Corrections are most welcome.
The prisoners are afraid of what the guards will do when caught, not the surveillance itself.
I think Foucault would have argued that your point conflates surveillance with punishment. But punishment is only a meaningful deterrent when accurately administered. Therefore, surveillance crucial to determining what violations of policy have occurred. Furthermore, you ignores a crucial aspect about punishment - it doesn't scale. That is, one cannot punish every violation for there are not enough guards nor enough whips to strike at every instance. The panopticon resolves this by inculcating self-discipline through constant fear by constant surveillance. Therefore, surveillance crucial to determining what violations of policy have occurred.
Never mind the underlying question of who determines policy.
What freedoms you have and are allowed to exercise is the central thing here, not surveillance. If you want to talk about freedoms then do that instead of surveillance.
What a fascinating response. One built upon the notions of "allowed freedoms" combined with the directive to focus on these allowed freedoms rather than the mechanisms inherent in imposing order. It seems self-contradictory at its face.
Even knowing this is happening will change how many people behave. Warnings like this are part of the problem, real security experts will be working to block the watching, not adding to the chilling effects.
I'd like to quote from Michel Foucault's essay "Panopticon" from his book _Discipline and Punish_. Here's a link to the a pdf of the text:
But first an explanation of the term is in order. In the late 18th century Bentham designed a prison where all the cells pointed to a central guard station. Thus, inmates were always being watched. The guard house design incorporated venetian blinds and obtuse corners so that inmates would know that at any time they could be under the watchful eye of guards, but never know exactly _when_. The intent of this was to impose self-restraint upon the inmate community by fear of potential surveillance. That is, self-censorship imposed by an architectural design. Here's what wikipedia has to say on the matter:
Foucault took this idea and extended it to surveillance by authorities as a kind of 'social panopticon'.
[...] The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.
It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up. The ceremonies, the rituals, the marks by which the sovereign's surplus power was manifested are useless. There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants (Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed.
[...]
[Panopticism] is regarded as not much more than a bizarre little utopia, a perverse dream - rather as though Bentham had been the Fourier of a police society, and the Phalanstery had taken on the form of the Panopticon. And yet this represented the abstract formula of a very real technology, that of individuals. There were many reasons why it received little praise; the most obvious is that the discourses to which it gave rise rarely acquired, except in the academic classifications, the status of sciences; but the real reason is no doubt that the power that it operates and which it augments is a direct, physical power that men exercise upon one another. An inglorious culmination had an origin that could be only grudgingly acknowledged. But it would be unjust to compare the disciplinary techniques with such inventions as the steam engine or Amici's microscope. They are much less; and yet, in a way, they are much more. If a historical equivalent or at least a point of comparison had to be found for them, it would be rather in the inquisitorial' technique.
Foucault extended the idea of the social panopticon throughout all institutions of society, drawing parallels between hierarchical structures in church, state, and corporate spheres where a authority used the possibility of surveillance and the tr
You're right about my error with the definition and I'm no physician so I'll defer. But it was certainly a death sentence in my family. Still, if survival is possible I wouldn't wish death on anyone who suffers from it to prove my point.
It was bad. He became dependent on prednisone and inhalers to breath. And, well, if you've ever seen bloating and weight gain from prednisone you'd know what he went through. And the prednisone caused secondary infections from impaired immune function. He was dependent on an oxygen concentrator, which required bottled oxygen to be available in the event of a power failure. And a trip to the ER if the bottle emptied.
He described COPD as like downing in slow motion.
Any doc whose seen this before would know the story.
Anyway, of course, none of this I'd wish on Nimoy or anyone else.
If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble.
This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam.
First, any employee who leaves IBM’s employment prior to December 15 for any reason other than a formal retirement will not receive any company match to his or her own 401(k) contributions for the entire year. Nada. IBM executives could fire someone on December 14 and the company would not have to pay out.
Second, all employees lose an entire year of the IBM match working for them in the investment sense....
As for 'harassment' I think you made the point for me:
In terms of dissuading potential employees, it's pretty clear at this point IBM has stopped caring about hiring *new* talent. In fact, their overall strategy could just as likely be about making people *want* to quit because that's cheaper than laying them off.
What conduct in the workplace constitutes 'making people want to quit'?
But note that by only disbursing matching funds on December 15th, IBM twists the arms of its employees to plan separation from the company at the most difficult time of transition. Right during the holidays and then a dead point for hiring in mid winter. They also incentivize employee harassment and unfair terminations prior to Dec 15th in order to cut costs by keeping what would have been 401k disbursements. And of course the funds are kept in an interest bearing or investment account controlled by the firm for a year, meaning those gains are lost to the employee.
I'd call that a terrible policy and one that any potential employee should carefully consider. Not only does it represent lost potential 401K gains, but much worse, it's an indication of how poorly management at the firm views its employees. Real 'company store' type stuff.
TFA says he has COPD - Cardio Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. This is essentially emphysema and congestive heart failure. The disease is terminal. My father died from this disorder, so I've seen it personally. Not a nice way to go (not that any of them are).
Still, Nimoy said that he'd quit smoking thirty years ago. While it's possible the smoking is a contributory factor, COPD is also commonly diagnosed in those who've never smoked. And Nimoy is an old man.
Of course I wish him well and hope he is cared for by the best doctors available.
The new software is a little borked and needs some fixing. But this community outrage is a bit overblown. I mean, you'd think it's Paris and the French had just lost the World Cup or something. The Bastille opened and tourists imprisoned, cars burning everywhere, lithe blond queens frogmarched up to the guillotine, French men drinking Portuguese wine.
Slashdot Mirror
The networks run physical infrastructure across public lands. Furthermore, they hold natural monopolies at both local and state levels. The government - and citizens - have an interest in equal access to that infrastructure. Particularly since open communication access is crucial to a functioning market. These ISPs are engaging in restraint of trade, hobbling competition not just in their own market but across whole swaths of the economy with potential for vast damage to market competition.
Even Milton Friedman would recognize the danger here.
Mirror Neurons.
drinkypoo - gee, I remember you. Nice to see some old timers 'round here.
I'm sure it will feature in Watch Dogs 2 or similar, but it's fairly irrelevant.
Way to let out a balloon. Comparing The Wire to Watch Dogs is like serving Chef Bloyardee and calling it Bolognese.
Carmack's keynote at the 2014 Oculus Connect conference said it would take several more generations before Samsung would have panels that could support seamless 120 fps. Apparently there's a problem with peripheral vision noticing 60fps with a significant number of people. Basically, Samsung is focused on developing panels for the phone market and Oculus piggypacks on that development line. They don't have the market penetration to drive display research.
The most interesting part of his discussion was proposing interlaced formats and variable refresh rates with G-sync to up the perceived refresh rate around peripheral vision.
The talk is about 90 minutes and - ironically - audio is not synced with video. Still, he doesn't talk much bullshit and it's an interesting listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I wonder how the group plans to stitch together multiple displays seamlessly. Removing the bezel is only part of the problem. There'd still be a noticeable seam between panels, never mind the problem of lining up pixels. I suppose one could argue that beyond a certain pixel density - +400dpi or something - lining up pixels exactly wouldn't be necessary. But then you'd have to offset by that difference, and the joined panel would have to test for and respond to that offset to compensate.
I think most would be rightly skeptical of this until seeing the tech work first hand.
On another subject, at the Techspot article there was a link to the Ars project. It's some kind of hot swappable modular phone in development.
http://www.techspot.com/news/5...
According to that, you can't swap out CPU or display live but just about everything else would be hot swappable. It's got a nifty photo showing parts to some kind of mock up or beta device.
All I could think of when looking at this was Stringer Bell from The Wire swapping out sim cards in his phone and what a boon that might be for criminals. Or at least crime drama on TV.
in 2013 Edward Snowden's revelations proved what he'd said was true.
sdguero wrote:
Mark Klein, former tech from AT&T, claimed to have witnessed installation of one such room at a San Francisco POP in 2002. He gave a formal statement to attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was printed in this Wired Article. The money quote is below:
EFF proceeded to file a lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T) claiming infringement of privacy by the firm. Though no finding of fact was challenged, ultimately it was dismissed due to retroactive FISA legislation signed by Bush legalizing the process. On appeal, the Supreme Court refused to review the case.
Though many argued that Klein was just one person with a grudge against his employer, and thus dismissed his testimony as overblown or vindictive, in 2013 Edward Snowden's revelations "proved what he'd said was true. That the government did work with network service providers - including AT&T - to install monitoring systems throughout the Internet backbone.
Remember when Gilmore said, 'the internet routes around damage'?
Remember when it was commonly accepted that censorship on an open network was virtually impossible?
Remember then?
All that idealism crushed with buyouts and consolidation, money thrown at the problem of uppity citizens using disruptive new technology to assert their pesky rights. And it worked. The Internet is nothing like what I remember twenty years ago. A free thought and open platform for exchange of ideas and technology. Now it's a marketing platform at best, global surveillance mechanism at worst.
My parents generation from the 60s had their idealism crushed too. What with the assassination of a president, a civil rights leader, and that president's brother murdered on the campaign trail while running for President. No wonder in the '70s people turned their backs on civics danced away their troubles.
And if you look back to the Wobblie generation - my great grandparents - at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so too did it happen then as well. Utterly crushed under the boot of money and violence. People danced during the roaring twenties too.
At least not too many 'net idealists have been killed this time 'round. Though it doesn't seem like it's time to dance either. The mood has gotten too ugly to party the bad news off.
Hi Ken,
If I understand your comment correctly, you argue that all renewable subsidies ought to end. And in particular, argue that Net Metering laws are an especially pernicious subsidy that forces utility companies to buy energy from homeowners at inflated rates. You use the common 'buggy whip' metaphor for disruptive economic shifts due to technological advancement to explain this rationale, presenting the hypothetical: what would happen if government had subsidized buggy whips?
So I'll counter, there are two kinds of renewable subsidies at play here.
The first are manufacturing subsidies. China subsidized manufacturing buildout of solar assembly lines with the hope they would take a dominant position in the world market. They're betting solar will be a high growth high-tech market and these subsidies will have long term benefit to the Chinese economy. This is no different from the US betting big by subsidizing pharmaceuticals through medical research grants. Or the initial funding of computer science and packet switched networking (ARPANET), what we now enjoy as the Internet. Those subsidies funneled wealth toward industries each nation expected would show long term economic benefit.
From that perspective, fossil fuels receive significant subsidies today, even as solar manufacturing subsidies decline. See this BBC article:
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
But there's a second kind of solar subsidy. The one you argue is especially pernicious. That of Net Metering, whereby utilities buy back electric generation by rooftop solar. This subsidizes not the manufacture of panels but their purchase, deployment, and use. As utility companies complain, Net Metering essentially is forcing those companies to diminish the value of their investments in gas and coal fired power plants. Since they've put billions - half a trillion wordlwide - into these investments, a general popular shift to rooftop solar means that as local solar ownership increases so too does the value of central production decrease.
Why should laws force them to buy the knife that's slitting their own throats?
I argue because increased energy production - in aggregate - is a net good across the board. The solution is not to limit deployment of renewables, particularly since they're already cost effective, but to find alternative use for those gas and coal burning plants during this transition period. You won't get buy-in from utility investors unless they see some kind of ROI on prior investment. Otherwise, they'll fight this to the bitter end, which would delay renewable deployment longer than planning to maximizing use of current fossil fuel infrastructure anyway.
But let's get to your buggy whip argument. Because I think this is particularly flawed. Here, you conflate a manufactured good - the buggy whip - with an energy resource. It takes net energy to make buggy whips. If they're useless, regardless of subsidy, that's a net loss to the economy and society in general. The whip will sit unused until it decays and is thrown away. Energy production is different. This can be stored for use another day. Whether that's direct use in smelting and manufacturing, as I proposed, or in storage - say mass hydro by pumping water uphill, hydrogen gas production and storage, whatever - energy production can be converted and saved in ways that a useless manufactured object cannot.
The analogy fails because the two (subsidized energy production vs subsidized manufacturing) are not comparable at fundamental levels.
At least, that's the perspective I take. I look forward to your counter-argument. Best. -M
For the most part, they already have.
US Solar subsidies in decline:
http://www.pv-magazine.com/new...
Australian subsidies in decline:
http://www.theaustralian.com.a...
China cuts solar subsidies:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
And yet it hasn't stopped solar deployments. Because even without subsidies, they're now cost competitive. Utility companies can't use the canard of government subsidized energy any longer. Yet they've invested - as the Economist notes - half a trillion in fossil fuel plants worldwide. I'm proposing a solution that at least prevents a utility meltdown during the transition period.
As the Economist notes, due to German and other European solar government incentives, European utilities face an existential threat to their investment future and business model. Utility giants the world over have seen this and decided to fight back against Net Metering and other means whereby homeowners can feed back into the electric grid excess energy production from rooftop solar. Barclays, the British multinational banking giant, agrees that rooftop solar and net metering represent a threat to centralized electric production utilities.
The problem utilities face is that solar tends to maximize output at mid-afternoon, exactly the same time spot prices have traditionally been at maximum. So their solution is to lobby government the world over to reverse net metering laws and end solar subsidies.
OK, time for me to get on a soapbox. I think this is shortsighted. The real problem here is that government and electric utilities have agreed on a price structure and investment plan to build out gas powered and coal powered plants that now appear to be unsustainable due to disruptive shifts in the market from technical innovation in the renewable field. As is noted in TFA, solar is - or will soon be - already cost competitive even without government subsidy.
Market fundamentalists would argue, 'let the utilities die. Their investors bought into a dying technology, the market will decide their fate.' Except that they have an endless stream of money to buy lobbyists and legislators to warp law in their favor. Further, they have a good argument that intermittent renewables will only meet partial demand. You still need baseline generation capacity from central utilities. So the problem - from their perspective - is excess production by renewables.
Except: when has excess energy production ever been a problem?
The real problem is twofold: We want to move off of fossil fuels due to global climate change and they want to maximize their vast infrastructure investments. A real policy solution would meet both needs.
Rooftop solar should be maximized. During periods of excess, gas powered plants should funnel their energy to local raw materials ore processing facilities and manufacturing. This has the benefit of distributing labor where it's needed near mining sites, rather than shipping raw materials where labor is cheapest for exploitation as well. And it keeps utilities running for the next thirty years to generate a viable expected ROI. And government policymakers could then plan a rational transition period away from fossil fuels without the economic dislocation of utility giants imploding worldwide.
Thoughts?
Some guy posting pictures and commenting on an event
Nice pictures though. And a direct report from someone who attended rather than filtered news.
Works for me.
It's not possible to punish every infraction. A point I made in the previous comment. But let's be clear on what you mean by 'semi-random reinforcement)'. Because to punish without regard to infraction confirmation does not lead to compliance. It leads to psychosis. But to punish confirmed infractions publicly - to make an example - that's a different matter. Which leads us back to surveillance, the Panopticon, and Foucault's essay on the subject.
I think there's a problem with this. What you describe is similar to a BB84 quantum key distribution scheme. But I think you're missing a quantum no-cloning mechanism here.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
In BB84 photon polarization is used to encode qubit data, much like what you propose. Here's Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...
But I think in your scheme the detector wouldn't know how many photons had been emitted or what polarization any arbitrary photon should be, therefore it couldn't determine if a photon had been emitted by your source of a man-in-the-middle device. And by transmitting that information from emitter to detector classically, you'd negate any security gained.
You'd need to establish a stream of entangled photon pairs:
Now: big caveat, this is not my field and I am no expert in qcomputing or qcryptography. Corrections are most welcome.
I think Foucault would have argued that your point conflates surveillance with punishment. But punishment is only a meaningful deterrent when accurately administered. Therefore, surveillance crucial to determining what violations of policy have occurred. Furthermore, you ignores a crucial aspect about punishment - it doesn't scale. That is, one cannot punish every violation for there are not enough guards nor enough whips to strike at every instance. The panopticon resolves this by inculcating self-discipline through constant fear by constant surveillance. Therefore, surveillance crucial to determining what violations of policy have occurred.
Never mind the underlying question of who determines policy.
What a fascinating response. One built upon the notions of "allowed freedoms" combined with the directive to focus on these allowed freedoms rather than the mechanisms inherent in imposing order. It seems self-contradictory at its face.
I'd like to quote from Michel Foucault's essay "Panopticon" from his book _Discipline and Punish_. Here's a link to the a pdf of the text:
http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/courseblog...
But first an explanation of the term is in order. In the late 18th century Bentham designed a prison where all the cells pointed to a central guard station. Thus, inmates were always being watched. The guard house design incorporated venetian blinds and obtuse corners so that inmates would know that at any time they could be under the watchful eye of guards, but never know exactly _when_. The intent of this was to impose self-restraint upon the inmate community by fear of potential surveillance. That is, self-censorship imposed by an architectural design. Here's what wikipedia has to say on the matter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Foucault took this idea and extended it to surveillance by authorities as a kind of 'social panopticon'.
Foucault extended the idea of the social panopticon throughout all institutions of society, drawing parallels between hierarchical structures in church, state, and corporate spheres where a authority used the possibility of surveillance and the tr
You're right about my error with the definition and I'm no physician so I'll defer. But it was certainly a death sentence in my family. Still, if survival is possible I wouldn't wish death on anyone who suffers from it to prove my point.
It was bad. He became dependent on prednisone and inhalers to breath. And, well, if you've ever seen bloating and weight gain from prednisone you'd know what he went through. And the prednisone caused secondary infections from impaired immune function. He was dependent on an oxygen concentrator, which required bottled oxygen to be available in the event of a power failure. And a trip to the ER if the bottle emptied.
He described COPD as like downing in slow motion.
Any doc whose seen this before would know the story.
Anyway, of course, none of this I'd wish on Nimoy or anyone else.
http://wallstreetonparade.com/...
Documentary here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...
Here's someone else who made many similar points to what I posted:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/he...
As for 'harassment' I think you made the point for me:
What conduct in the workplace constitutes 'making people want to quit'?
Allow me to point you back to my comment here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
There are some who argue that the 401k is a bad investment option.
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/the...
But note that by only disbursing matching funds on December 15th, IBM twists the arms of its employees to plan separation from the company at the most difficult time of transition. Right during the holidays and then a dead point for hiring in mid winter. They also incentivize employee harassment and unfair terminations prior to Dec 15th in order to cut costs by keeping what would have been 401k disbursements. And of course the funds are kept in an interest bearing or investment account controlled by the firm for a year, meaning those gains are lost to the employee.
I'd call that a terrible policy and one that any potential employee should carefully consider. Not only does it represent lost potential 401K gains, but much worse, it's an indication of how poorly management at the firm views its employees. Real 'company store' type stuff.
Yeah. OK. So what's wrong with what they want to do?
TFA says he has COPD - Cardio Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. This is essentially emphysema and congestive heart failure. The disease is terminal. My father died from this disorder, so I've seen it personally. Not a nice way to go (not that any of them are).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Still, Nimoy said that he'd quit smoking thirty years ago. While it's possible the smoking is a contributory factor, COPD is also commonly diagnosed in those who've never smoked. And Nimoy is an old man.
Of course I wish him well and hope he is cared for by the best doctors available.
The new boss not same as the old boss then.
All I see is some buggy software and a few too many PR releases. From where I stand, things really aren't that bad.
I have fond memories of Slashdot.
The new software is a little borked and needs some fixing. But this community outrage is a bit overblown. I mean, you'd think it's Paris and the French had just lost the World Cup or something. The Bastille opened and tourists imprisoned, cars burning everywhere, lithe blond queens frogmarched up to the guillotine, French men drinking Portuguese wine.
It's bad here. Real 'Reign of Terror' like.