The problem is that the data isn't Google's. It's data the user has requested Google send them. From the ISPs' point of view, it's their customers' data. They want to charge Google for being the endpoint from which their customers request data.
As usual, there's a car analogy here. The ISPs are a tollway on which their customers are driving. The ISPs want to charge the toll to the car manufacturer as well as the driver, even though the driver already completed the transaction with the manufacturer and the manufacturer has no further interest in the car.
All ISPs sell bandwidth proportional to usage cycles. Your government doesn't build roads for everyone to drive the same mile of it at once. Your local restaurant doesn't cook all a day's meals at once. It's natural, considering not everyone uses their full service all the time, to sell proportional to usage patterns.
The problem is that most ISPs these days use a ratio that is well behind the actual usage patterns of their users. An ISP will likely never build out for the full burst bandwidth of all users combined exactly once. There's no need to do that. However, they should build out enough capacity to cover what their users are actually going to try to use, plus about 50% for news peaks when everyone is checking for headline updates.
That's not true at all. The local OTA broadcaster holds copyright to their broadcast. The cable company pays them a license to retransmit that data. The ISPs do not hold the copyright to the data being transmitted by someone else. This is more like the cable company (ISP, transferring someone else's data) demanding payment from the broadcaster (Google, the provider of the data).
ISPs are not common carriers in the US. I'm not sure the term even applies in the EU. Telephone companies in the US are common carriers. ISPs owned and operated by telephone companies still are not common carriers.
I'm not sure Adobe really likes Flash as a file specification. It's kind of what they inherited Flash as when they bought Macromedia. I'm sure they'd be just as happy to have Flash the application put out HTML 5 video in a codec with 100% penetration and do animation using canvas.
Right now, one reason not to upgrade Creative Suite or Flash by itself is that the target users mostly haven't updated their players yet. If Adobe can point out that there's no interversion compatibility problems for their proprietary plug-in because the output format is HTML with video and canvas instead of said proprietary plug-in, then they can sell newer versions of Flash (and Fireworks, After Effects, etc).
Remember, it's Adobe that released a spec for SWF. It's Adobe that is moving Flash CS5 from a binary memory dump for the FLA save files to an XML-based save file. It's Adobe that made Flash objects scriptable with ActionScript which is ECMA-compliant. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually get around to making Flash support more targets than just the Flash player, even if their best support remains with that.
It's the authoring application that makes them money, not the player.
The Wii, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3 all sport processors with ISAs derived from Power/PowerPC. I think those are relatively widely distributed, and often used for video-related purposes. (Yes, the Core is partially Power-based. Yes, it has extra processing elements used for specific things like media encoding and decoding, but the central processor core is Power-based.)
FreeScale makes dual-core PowerPC-based chips for the automotive market. Many FreeScale chips end up in the creature-comfort portions of the cars like in-dash navigation systems, back-seat entertainment systems, and such. Sync from Ford and Microsoft uses an ARM chip from FreeScale for multimedia. However, GM's OnStar uses a Power-based chip from FreeScale. That processor is also used for the in-dash displays and such in OnStar-equipped vehicles.
Various embedded video roles exist like CCTV security cameras and IPTV. Tigon uses AMCC PowerPC-based processors in at least some of its offerings.
IBM makes a DVR chipset called the STB04500 which is used in the DreamBox. It's PowerPC-based. Yet another embedded video device using PowerPC.
There are rumors of IBM bringing a PowerPC-based netbook processor on the market to compete with Atom and the ARM systems. If they push that through, you'd better believe they'd work out support for video on the systems by launch.
Also note that perfection is exceedingly rare and tends to be exorbitantly expensive when it is accomplished. Solutions that meet a need well enough for a reasonable cost are usually all that's necessary. A company could go broke or a person could die of old age looking for perfection because they refuse to release a "good enough" solution. Even when seeking perfection, releasing "good enough" early enough and improving from there tends to be much more useful than paralyzing yourself refusing to compromise anything from your perfect solution.
It can have to do with trying to displace a "good enough" solution that's already out. It doesn't have to. If that was the only reason or the saying, it would probably be worded "The enemy of the perfect is the good" instead. Too often, we never see a promising project because some minor drawback we could work around easily delays its launch.
Software development teams often use continuous integration, time boxing, iterative development, and many of those other agile buzzwords to prevent the exact problem this saying codifies. The whole point of "agile" development (as well as lean manufacturing and many other modern productivity boosting systems across industries) is that you pay attention to the quality of the pieces as you build them and put the pieces together rapidly into a quality whole that doesn't necessarily have more than the most essential features. Then you release, then refine both the pieces and the whole, then release again with more features and any bug fixes.
"Agile" methods are opposed to top-down methods like waterfall which involve specifying and developing whole fully-featured projects before release, often with little feedback from the target users between specification and release. A good development team can do good work under a strict release-once mentality, but it's much easier to miss your mark with one big go at it rather than a bunch of refinements.
No bin-packing problem could ever present itself in trying to make even-sized stacks of randomly-sized and randomly-shaped pieces of wood. Getting the logs from various trees to the splitter and the split wood to the various stacks efficiently couldn't possibly resemble the travelling salesman problem.
Sharpening an axe, swinging an axe, figuring out when to switch from axe to wedge and hammer, swinging the hammer, and all the sensory/motion coordination involved couldn't be difficult computational problems.
Why, I do believe splitting and stacking wood efficiently and safely was mechanized decades before the Jacquard loom or the adding machine.
It's cheaper to buy four $10 bin games that are less than a year old, obviously. Try that with a PS3.;-) That's not to mention Nexuiz, Sauerbrauten, TuxKart, Quake 3, Wormux, Pingus, Commander Stalin, TORCS, ManiaDrive, and lots of other free stuff that doesn't run on consoles. Consoles have their place, but so do PCs. Board and card games do, too.
Of my older motherboards and cheap add-in video cards, about three quarters have had composite TV out or SVideo, and sometimes both. Most of the SVideo ones included an SVideo to composite adapter.
My current motherboard uses an AMD chipset, but the motherboard itself is an ECS Black Series. It cost a whopping $70 or so. That's less than half what I paid for memory for it and less than a third of what I paid for a processor. The only components in the whole system that are cheaper by list price are the optical drive and the case fans. I got the case itself cheaper on clearance because ThermalTake quit making the model.
Most of my games that do single-computer multi-player do in fact support multiple game pads, and even multiple separate mice and keyboards. Many PC games for Windows or Linux aren't multi-player on a single system, though, which is where the consoles really shine.
On consoles, there are some single-player games (even the Wii, known as a party system, has some single-player only titles), but those are the exceptions. Most console titles are multi-player even with just one console.
The biggest difference doesn't seem to me to be support for the peripherals, but the initial decision of how many systems are needed for multi-player. Granted, most quite modern PC systems (from the last two years or so) can run two and sometimes more separate installations of games from just a few years ago in separate virtual machines on the same actual hardware, each player with a separate monitor.
My wife and I have a console collection which includes Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, NES, Super Nintendo, Wii, PSP, and DS. We also have a few of the specialty ones, like the Cadaco at-home Buzztime trivia system and a couple of the plug-in controllers with knock-offs of retro games. We'll probably pick up a Flashback or something sometime. We have the PSP (mostly for me) and the DS (mostly for her) because they are portable. We have the Wii because the developers have really pulled off some great party games for it and some really good uses of the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk. The Wii, Super Nintendo, and the NES are the three that are always hooked up. My wife plays her DS about as often as not when she's ready for bed and doesn't want to get wrapped up too deeply in a book before going to sleep.
Our non-console computers that still work include C64, Atari 600XL, Amiga 2000, a G3 iMac, a G4 PowerMac, a Palm 3 for my wife, an iPaq for me, PC laptops (386, Celeron, and a Pentium M), and desktops from 386 through Phenom II x4. We have two XP systems and a Win7 system on the switch along with an OSX, two Mandriva boxes (one a laptop), and a Fedora box. Most of the others just sit unplugged most of the time. There's still room on the switch and on the AP for friends to bring systems over. We really don't care how many people can be on the same PC to play most games. Most games we play can play on at least three of those systems.
I realize we aren't the typical computer users. Having two or three PCs in the house is not that uncommon, though. People get a new system and keep the old one a while. They'll have a high-end desktop and a lower-end laptop for the road. A husband and wife often keep separate systems after they get married, because a PC really can be personal. People get PCs for their kids (or new ones for themselves and give the old ones to the kids).
You have to be fairly serious about games to have two XBoxes, two PS/3s, or two Wiis in the same house. I do know people who do, just like I know people who have all three of those consoles or who have dozens and dozens of role-playing game supplements. Still, I think two or more PCs in a house is more likely than two PS3s. Multi-user on the same system therefore isn't as big a selling point.
Sorry, but my motherboard has HDMI out and a Radeon HD 3400-series graphics system. My OS of choice considers a joystick to be just another USB device to be mapped.
The SPUs are fairly exotic I guess. All three concoles use Power/PPC-based main processors, though. So much for all the PC people saying PowerPC gaming is dead. Getting good performance out of the Cell is hard, but basic functionality shouldn't be any harder than the other consoles.
The architecture is different, but it has a similar roots and a similar central ISA. The general-purpose core is based on Power4. The PPE of the XBox 360 is actually a modified Cell PPE. The Wii uses a Broadway, which is a lower-end Power spinoff.
There's a reason the first Linux distros running on the PS3 were ports of Yellow Dog and Fedora PPC. The main central processor is very similar to what they were already targetting. The SPEs are the hard part.
Many would argue a government should be slow to change things. The less the government changes things, the more predictable your return on investments of time and money are. The fewer changes they make, the less time you need to invest in just catching up to the changes in the laws. The US Code rarely shrinks. Every time a roughly 2300 page bill like this gets shoved through, that's roughly 2300 more pages that control how you live your life.
Most "conservatives" want a government with fewer workers and a lower tax base. I want a government with fewer and simpler laws. For things with which I never asked the government for help, the government should just let me handle on my own.
The health-care fiasco passing at all even with a huge majority is a travesty.
26% of poll respondents call their attitude towards the legislation "anger". 65% of respondents say it creates too much more of a role for government in healthcare. 49% say they think overall healthcare will decline in quality. 55% say they'll spend too much more on healthcare personally. 64% say the government's tab for healthcare will be too large. 53% said the tricks used to pass it were an abuse of power. These are reported in The Christian Science Monitor, which is a paper primarily for people who don't even use the healthcare system. They are citing multiple polls by multiple other organizations.
I'd say that a body which has a roughly 10% approval rating which it takes as a mandate to pass partisan legislation against the protests of its own members and their constituents has a hard time doing so despite a large majority of one party is evidence that something is working, not broken. Things a vast majority find harmful to the well-being of the vast majority should be difficult to pass.
Sure we can devise a government based on logic and reason. The big questions are "how do we arm the computer to enforce the laws?" and "who gets to be the lead programmer?". Hopefully we don't make our new government too intelligent and tell it humans are ruining the planet, because it might just eliminate the root cause of anthropic anything.
Acting in your own self-interest is good. There are a lot of other people like you, after all. People who aren't at all like you will vote to protect their interests for their group, so you're not hurting anyone.
What's bad is acting only for the short term at the expense of the long term. Hell, many people seek short-term gains even without noticing medium-term losses.
A standard education really should include basic economics, health, basic statistics, and interpersonal skills. Lotteries, hard drugs, loan sharks, bottled water consumption, random violence, and unprotected sex with strangers would all go down if those were taught to everyone.
Apparently so. That's why you get people suggesting the masses would give up all their comforts and freedoms for some abstract concept like the future of life on Earth.
Why prevent the wars? If the strain of seven billion humans is causing the problem, the most sustainable thing to do is to lower the number of living humans. After all, we're talking about putting the environment before people's rights, aren't we?
What do you think will happen if democracy and republics are "suspended" world-wide? We'd see a lot of oil, coal, and nuclear fuel spent in a very short time, to the final condition of very many fewer humans bothering the climate. People will not go silently into a global theocracy or technocracy. Any attempt at a global totalitarian state would make World War II look like Grenada in 1983.
An '-ism' is a belief. Beliefs make you blind to anything which disagrees with your belief. This guy's belief is an idealized fervor for the ecosystem. It's his dogma to help the environment at personal cost. He's blind to the fact that others won't do that.
As pointed out in, of all places the Kevin Smith movie Dogma, "I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant."
People often think only religions that talk about supernatural beings foster beliefs and blindness to the differences of others. I think any kind of unquestioning blind faith is bad, even if very smart people promote their own variety.
State-sanctioned political parties make sure you have even less say. Your votes are rarely for issues, but for people to represent you. The parties in power, when they can, use the state to strengthen their own hold on the state and marginalize those outside the parties in power. In some "democratic" countries, you have only one party. In some countries, you have two or three parties that are willing to lose an election or two to one another so long as no further parties or independents get much of a chance to say anything, let alone actually win a large number of offices.
Challenge your representatives to allow smaller parties in debates. Challenge them to stop helping to finance the parties in power over other groups (the US federal government actually helps finance the campaigns of candidates for president from certain parties if those parties received a minimum percentage of the vote in the previous election). Challenge them to start talking about what's best for their constituents and mean it, rather than talking about how to beat the other parties.
Well, that is a bit of disagreement, but not a big one. Your programmers have to be comfortable enough with math to implement it in code, and your company's other departments by giving you the formulas are actually helping write the software a little. I imagine your coders can at least double-check the results once they have the formula to make sure the values make sense before giving the report output to management. If not, then your statistics experts are really helping test, too.
I'm glad to hear you enjoy your work. I wish more people enjoyed what they do for a living. Still, even when you save the company all that money, I'm betting any articles about the system that get written are published in business rather than technology circles. I think that's the kind of distinction the author meant by "truly interesting work". I wouldn't say saving a company lots of money is boring. I'm just not sure that's the particular kind of interesting some others programmers are discussing.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that the data isn't Google's. It's data the user has requested Google send them. From the ISPs' point of view, it's their customers' data. They want to charge Google for being the endpoint from which their customers request data.
As usual, there's a car analogy here. The ISPs are a tollway on which their customers are driving. The ISPs want to charge the toll to the car manufacturer as well as the driver, even though the driver already completed the transaction with the manufacturer and the manufacturer has no further interest in the car.
All ISPs sell bandwidth proportional to usage cycles. Your government doesn't build roads for everyone to drive the same mile of it at once. Your local restaurant doesn't cook all a day's meals at once. It's natural, considering not everyone uses their full service all the time, to sell proportional to usage patterns.
The problem is that most ISPs these days use a ratio that is well behind the actual usage patterns of their users. An ISP will likely never build out for the full burst bandwidth of all users combined exactly once. There's no need to do that. However, they should build out enough capacity to cover what their users are actually going to try to use, plus about 50% for news peaks when everyone is checking for headline updates.
That's not true at all. The local OTA broadcaster holds copyright to their broadcast. The cable company pays them a license to retransmit that data. The ISPs do not hold the copyright to the data being transmitted by someone else. This is more like the cable company (ISP, transferring someone else's data) demanding payment from the broadcaster (Google, the provider of the data).
I guess when you build out fiber and peering stations you get that for free. Here I come, top 5 network providers!
ISPs are not common carriers in the US. I'm not sure the term even applies in the EU. Telephone companies in the US are common carriers. ISPs owned and operated by telephone companies still are not common carriers.
I'm not sure Adobe really likes Flash as a file specification. It's kind of what they inherited Flash as when they bought Macromedia. I'm sure they'd be just as happy to have Flash the application put out HTML 5 video in a codec with 100% penetration and do animation using canvas.
Right now, one reason not to upgrade Creative Suite or Flash by itself is that the target users mostly haven't updated their players yet. If Adobe can point out that there's no interversion compatibility problems for their proprietary plug-in because the output format is HTML with video and canvas instead of said proprietary plug-in, then they can sell newer versions of Flash (and Fireworks, After Effects, etc).
Remember, it's Adobe that released a spec for SWF. It's Adobe that is moving Flash CS5 from a binary memory dump for the FLA save files to an XML-based save file. It's Adobe that made Flash objects scriptable with ActionScript which is ECMA-compliant. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually get around to making Flash support more targets than just the Flash player, even if their best support remains with that.
It's the authoring application that makes them money, not the player.
The Wii, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3 all sport processors with ISAs derived from Power/PowerPC. I think those are relatively widely distributed, and often used for video-related purposes. (Yes, the Core is partially Power-based. Yes, it has extra processing elements used for specific things like media encoding and decoding, but the central processor core is Power-based.)
FreeScale makes dual-core PowerPC-based chips for the automotive market. Many FreeScale chips end up in the creature-comfort portions of the cars like in-dash navigation systems, back-seat entertainment systems, and such. Sync from Ford and Microsoft uses an ARM chip from FreeScale for multimedia. However, GM's OnStar uses a Power-based chip from FreeScale. That processor is also used for the in-dash displays and such in OnStar-equipped vehicles.
Various embedded video roles exist like CCTV security cameras and IPTV. Tigon uses AMCC PowerPC-based processors in at least some of its offerings.
IBM makes a DVR chipset called the STB04500 which is used in the DreamBox. It's PowerPC-based. Yet another embedded video device using PowerPC.
There are rumors of IBM bringing a PowerPC-based netbook processor on the market to compete with Atom and the ARM systems. If they push that through, you'd better believe they'd work out support for video on the systems by launch.
Also note that perfection is exceedingly rare and tends to be exorbitantly expensive when it is accomplished. Solutions that meet a need well enough for a reasonable cost are usually all that's necessary. A company could go broke or a person could die of old age looking for perfection because they refuse to release a "good enough" solution. Even when seeking perfection, releasing "good enough" early enough and improving from there tends to be much more useful than paralyzing yourself refusing to compromise anything from your perfect solution.
It can have to do with trying to displace a "good enough" solution that's already out. It doesn't have to. If that was the only reason or the saying, it would probably be worded "The enemy of the perfect is the good" instead. Too often, we never see a promising project because some minor drawback we could work around easily delays its launch.
Software development teams often use continuous integration, time boxing, iterative development, and many of those other agile buzzwords to prevent the exact problem this saying codifies. The whole point of "agile" development (as well as lean manufacturing and many other modern productivity boosting systems across industries) is that you pay attention to the quality of the pieces as you build them and put the pieces together rapidly into a quality whole that doesn't necessarily have more than the most essential features. Then you release, then refine both the pieces and the whole, then release again with more features and any bug fixes.
"Agile" methods are opposed to top-down methods like waterfall which involve specifying and developing whole fully-featured projects before release, often with little feedback from the target users between specification and release. A good development team can do good work under a strict release-once mentality, but it's much easier to miss your mark with one big go at it rather than a bunch of refinements.
No, not at all...
No bin-packing problem could ever present itself in trying to make even-sized stacks of randomly-sized and randomly-shaped pieces of wood. Getting the logs from various trees to the splitter and the split wood to the various stacks efficiently couldn't possibly resemble the travelling salesman problem.
Sharpening an axe, swinging an axe, figuring out when to switch from axe to wedge and hammer, swinging the hammer, and all the sensory/motion coordination involved couldn't be difficult computational problems.
Why, I do believe splitting and stacking wood efficiently and safely was mechanized decades before the Jacquard loom or the adding machine.
It's cheaper to buy four $10 bin games that are less than a year old, obviously. Try that with a PS3. ;-) That's not to mention Nexuiz, Sauerbrauten, TuxKart, Quake 3, Wormux, Pingus, Commander Stalin, TORCS, ManiaDrive, and lots of other free stuff that doesn't run on consoles. Consoles have their place, but so do PCs. Board and card games do, too.
Of my older motherboards and cheap add-in video cards, about three quarters have had composite TV out or SVideo, and sometimes both. Most of the SVideo ones included an SVideo to composite adapter.
My current motherboard uses an AMD chipset, but the motherboard itself is an ECS Black Series. It cost a whopping $70 or so. That's less than half what I paid for memory for it and less than a third of what I paid for a processor. The only components in the whole system that are cheaper by list price are the optical drive and the case fans. I got the case itself cheaper on clearance because ThermalTake quit making the model.
Most of my games that do single-computer multi-player do in fact support multiple game pads, and even multiple separate mice and keyboards. Many PC games for Windows or Linux aren't multi-player on a single system, though, which is where the consoles really shine.
On consoles, there are some single-player games (even the Wii, known as a party system, has some single-player only titles), but those are the exceptions. Most console titles are multi-player even with just one console.
The biggest difference doesn't seem to me to be support for the peripherals, but the initial decision of how many systems are needed for multi-player. Granted, most quite modern PC systems (from the last two years or so) can run two and sometimes more separate installations of games from just a few years ago in separate virtual machines on the same actual hardware, each player with a separate monitor.
My wife and I have a console collection which includes Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, NES, Super Nintendo, Wii, PSP, and DS. We also have a few of the specialty ones, like the Cadaco at-home Buzztime trivia system and a couple of the plug-in controllers with knock-offs of retro games. We'll probably pick up a Flashback or something sometime. We have the PSP (mostly for me) and the DS (mostly for her) because they are portable. We have the Wii because the developers have really pulled off some great party games for it and some really good uses of the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk. The Wii, Super Nintendo, and the NES are the three that are always hooked up. My wife plays her DS about as often as not when she's ready for bed and doesn't want to get wrapped up too deeply in a book before going to sleep.
Our non-console computers that still work include C64, Atari 600XL, Amiga 2000, a G3 iMac, a G4 PowerMac, a Palm 3 for my wife, an iPaq for me, PC laptops (386, Celeron, and a Pentium M), and desktops from 386 through Phenom II x4. We have two XP systems and a Win7 system on the switch along with an OSX, two Mandriva boxes (one a laptop), and a Fedora box. Most of the others just sit unplugged most of the time. There's still room on the switch and on the AP for friends to bring systems over. We really don't care how many people can be on the same PC to play most games. Most games we play can play on at least three of those systems.
I realize we aren't the typical computer users. Having two or three PCs in the house is not that uncommon, though. People get a new system and keep the old one a while. They'll have a high-end desktop and a lower-end laptop for the road. A husband and wife often keep separate systems after they get married, because a PC really can be personal. People get PCs for their kids (or new ones for themselves and give the old ones to the kids).
You have to be fairly serious about games to have two XBoxes, two PS/3s, or two Wiis in the same house. I do know people who do, just like I know people who have all three of those consoles or who have dozens and dozens of role-playing game supplements. Still, I think two or more PCs in a house is more likely than two PS3s. Multi-user on the same system therefore isn't as big a selling point.
If you want something really open, try going with something open fromm the start. Perhaps OpenPandora?
Sorry, but my motherboard has HDMI out and a Radeon HD 3400-series graphics system. My OS of choice considers a joystick to be just another USB device to be mapped.
The SPUs are fairly exotic I guess. All three concoles use Power/PPC-based main processors, though. So much for all the PC people saying PowerPC gaming is dead. Getting good performance out of the Cell is hard, but basic functionality shouldn't be any harder than the other consoles.
The architecture is different, but it has a similar roots and a similar central ISA. The general-purpose core is based on Power4. The PPE of the XBox 360 is actually a modified Cell PPE. The Wii uses a Broadway, which is a lower-end Power spinoff.
There's a reason the first Linux distros running on the PS3 were ports of Yellow Dog and Fedora PPC. The main central processor is very similar to what they were already targetting. The SPEs are the hard part.
Many would argue a government should be slow to change things. The less the government changes things, the more predictable your return on investments of time and money are. The fewer changes they make, the less time you need to invest in just catching up to the changes in the laws. The US Code rarely shrinks. Every time a roughly 2300 page bill like this gets shoved through, that's roughly 2300 more pages that control how you live your life.
Most "conservatives" want a government with fewer workers and a lower tax base. I want a government with fewer and simpler laws. For things with which I never asked the government for help, the government should just let me handle on my own.
The health-care fiasco passing at all even with a huge majority is a travesty.
26% of poll respondents call their attitude towards the legislation "anger". 65% of respondents say it creates too much more of a role for government in healthcare. 49% say they think overall healthcare will decline in quality. 55% say they'll spend too much more on healthcare personally. 64% say the government's tab for healthcare will be too large. 53% said the tricks used to pass it were an abuse of power. These are reported in The Christian Science Monitor, which is a paper primarily for people who don't even use the healthcare system. They are citing multiple polls by multiple other organizations.
I'd say that a body which has a roughly 10% approval rating which it takes as a mandate to pass partisan legislation against the protests of its own members and their constituents has a hard time doing so despite a large majority of one party is evidence that something is working, not broken. Things a vast majority find harmful to the well-being of the vast majority should be difficult to pass.
Communism on a small scale among willing participants tends to work pretty well. It scales horribly, though.
Sure we can devise a government based on logic and reason. The big questions are "how do we arm the computer to enforce the laws?" and "who gets to be the lead programmer?". Hopefully we don't make our new government too intelligent and tell it humans are ruining the planet, because it might just eliminate the root cause of anthropic anything.
The War of 1812. It was part of the Napoleonic Wars. OR maybe you thought the British burned the White House in Brussels?
Acting in your own self-interest is good. There are a lot of other people like you, after all. People who aren't at all like you will vote to protect their interests for their group, so you're not hurting anyone.
What's bad is acting only for the short term at the expense of the long term. Hell, many people seek short-term gains even without noticing medium-term losses.
A standard education really should include basic economics, health, basic statistics, and interpersonal skills. Lotteries, hard drugs, loan sharks, bottled water consumption, random violence, and unprotected sex with strangers would all go down if those were taught to everyone.
Apparently so. That's why you get people suggesting the masses would give up all their comforts and freedoms for some abstract concept like the future of life on Earth.
Why prevent the wars? If the strain of seven billion humans is causing the problem, the most sustainable thing to do is to lower the number of living humans. After all, we're talking about putting the environment before people's rights, aren't we?
What do you think will happen if democracy and republics are "suspended" world-wide? We'd see a lot of oil, coal, and nuclear fuel spent in a very short time, to the final condition of very many fewer humans bothering the climate. People will not go silently into a global theocracy or technocracy. Any attempt at a global totalitarian state would make World War II look like Grenada in 1983.
An '-ism' is a belief. Beliefs make you blind to anything which disagrees with your belief. This guy's belief is an idealized fervor for the ecosystem. It's his dogma to help the environment at personal cost. He's blind to the fact that others won't do that.
As pointed out in, of all places the Kevin Smith movie Dogma, "I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant."
People often think only religions that talk about supernatural beings foster beliefs and blindness to the differences of others. I think any kind of unquestioning blind faith is bad, even if very smart people promote their own variety.
State-sanctioned political parties make sure you have even less say. Your votes are rarely for issues, but for people to represent you. The parties in power, when they can, use the state to strengthen their own hold on the state and marginalize those outside the parties in power. In some "democratic" countries, you have only one party. In some countries, you have two or three parties that are willing to lose an election or two to one another so long as no further parties or independents get much of a chance to say anything, let alone actually win a large number of offices.
Challenge your representatives to allow smaller parties in debates. Challenge them to stop helping to finance the parties in power over other groups (the US federal government actually helps finance the campaigns of candidates for president from certain parties if those parties received a minimum percentage of the vote in the previous election). Challenge them to start talking about what's best for their constituents and mean it, rather than talking about how to beat the other parties.
Well, that is a bit of disagreement, but not a big one. Your programmers have to be comfortable enough with math to implement it in code, and your company's other departments by giving you the formulas are actually helping write the software a little. I imagine your coders can at least double-check the results once they have the formula to make sure the values make sense before giving the report output to management. If not, then your statistics experts are really helping test, too.
I'm glad to hear you enjoy your work. I wish more people enjoyed what they do for a living. Still, even when you save the company all that money, I'm betting any articles about the system that get written are published in business rather than technology circles. I think that's the kind of distinction the author meant by "truly interesting work". I wouldn't say saving a company lots of money is boring. I'm just not sure that's the particular kind of interesting some others programmers are discussing.