You have hit the nail on the head. IBM did this in the 60's with the main frames into the universities. The first computer I programmed on was an IBM for this reason.
We have to wake up and smell the coffee and get the openSource solution into the schools!!!
We have to start doing this NOW. And while we are doing this we have to become rather political and anal and demand explanations why the bearacracy is blocking us.
I called M$ and left a message for their Canadian director of corporate and legal affairs. The message amounts to this: I'd like to know how M$ purports to have formed a contract with my company. We have not negotiated a contract, we have not even been in contact with them, there has been no consideration...
Not one of the requirments for the existance of a binding contract has been met. I gave them my name and phone number. If they choose to sue us then we'll collect on abuse of process.
We may not have as many lawyers on our side but our lawyers are pretty damn good!
If you don't like this arrangement then consider this: If you run a web server in Australia then Telstra dings you mega bux per month. If you move it to the USA then Telstra pays a US carrier for the bandwidth required to move the content into Australia.
Since Telstra is willing to pay an American company for bandwidth required to provide content, then why isn't Telstra willing to pay an Australian company?
You know - if Telstra were to create a hospitable environment for Aussie content creators then US carriers wouldn't have the upper hand. Fix your own problems first!
This is simply selling content. No african ISP would be willing to spend any money if it weren't for the fact that they want access to the content we generate.
Thus the question becomes... since the content is generally copyright then how come the ISP's and Telco's aren't paying the copyright holders? That's right folks... if you run a web server and it happens to be popular then you ought to be paid!!!
This is what copyright law is all about! Its not the Africans who are being ripped off here...
hahahaha! What a hair brained scheme! Using quicklime to scrub CO2... then reheating (read roasting) the CaCO3 to release the CO2 and reform it back into quicklime.
And where perchance is this space cadet planning on obtaining the energy to make the quicklime? heh? perhaps from a "coal" source? Perhaps Nuclear? Or was he planning on using methane fired burners?
According to the information found in www.hubbertpeak.com oil production will start to decline within 5 years and there is evidence to suggest that it will be sooner.
I'm horrified by how insanely complicated it has all become in the past ten years.
I agree with you 100%. You have made some very very good points.
I'm a software developer and have more than 20 years experiance and have developed several products. In the past I used proprietary development environments. The vast majority of these have died which means that all the development work of their very brilliant creators was basically wasted.
Who amoung us wants to see the lifetime of work that we create just quietly pissed away?
With open source I can breath a breath of fresh air. Finally I can use the very brilliant work of others so that their dreams can live on forever and others can build on them. Finally I no longer have to convert from proprietary O/S to O/S or from compiler library to compiler library or from API to API. Finally there is something standard that is going to stay around!
For those who think Microsoft is going to simply last forever let me ask: How many of you programmed on a Bouroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, or Honeywell? How about an Eclipse, HP3000, TI990, PDP11, Prime, or Perkin Elmer?
For those a little younger, how many can remember how fast the VAX bit the dust? Hmm? Digital used to have the most successful mini in the world and they were the #2 manufacture. Upstart Compaq bought them and then Compaq was picked up by HP.
The point here is that NONE of those systems were compatible with each other and ALL of the software that made them go is now gone.
In a few years we'll have talking robots. I somehow don't think they will be running windoze. So my prediction is just as the VAX bit the dust so too will M$. And then we'll see that most of the software written for windoze will be useless unless the WINE project manages to salvage it... which I do think is likely.
The reason we have such a huge reservoir of knowledge for people to draw from, and indeed such a huge reservoir of music, is because the works of great people like Newton, Laplace, Hilbert, Mozart, etc. were not locked away in someone's private collection of "Intellectual Property".
IMHO open source is the ONLY way to go. It is the only way that people can be creative and create things of value and have them last.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the PTO is that it persists in granting patents for obvious ideas.
An example is the Mark Williams patent for a solution to the "endian" problem... you know - big endian machines store integers in a different order than little endian machines.
As it turns out I am able to provide prior art. But perhaps the most important fact is that the whole issue of a patent for this is bullshit. The simple observation is that if the order is different, then change it. Similarly one can convert between notations as well - IE. If the notation is different then change it to the best approximation.
Using this idea one can convert between IBM mainframe floating point and IEEE floating point as used in the PC or even to CDC floating point.
None of these conversions are worthy of a patent.
Similarly, suppose some bright engineer had decided way back when the computer was first developed to patent the "JUMP" instruction. Where would this have put the industry?
The harm that patents do is underestimated. But if one takes a longer view then it becomes clear that we're dealing with the criminalization of the art of computer programming.
What you don't understand about patents and the little guy is that if you do have a patent and a large corporation wants it then they will simply use it and declare that your patent (1) infringes or (2) is invalid for WHATEVER reasons.
Then you will get the opportunity to fight them in court and if they lose they will appeal and in the end you will be dead broke.
When you buy cable TV, you are buying a service to access the information, while paying for that information to be produced. When you subscribe to a magazine, you are doing the same thing.
Computer users dont mind paying AOL 20 dollars a month, I really dont think a user is going to mind paying $5 more a month for all the software they will ever need.
I will agree with this. So how much of the revenues that AOL collects from its 33 million odd users flows back in any form to the people who are producing the information and services which the AOL subscribers are enjoying?
Well, yes, on some florescents I actually can see them flickering. Its is damn annoying in fact and hard on the eyes. Interestingly enough I don't see the flicker in the fovial area.
I see the flicker in some monitors too and I wonder how other people can use them.
In fact, I would think that most people can see the flicker if they do the simple test of say looking at the monitor and then moving their hand between their eyes and the monitor. This is a simple enough strobe test.
If we turn off images, pop up windows, and java and java script and then run Opera so we don't need to worry about active-x, will those ads still show up? What is to stop people from running slashdot through an ad stripping proxy?
Hmmm.... why pay slashdot to remove the ads when browser controls will do the same thing?
Seriously, this is a real thorny problem and I for one take great exception to the idea that AOL/TM for instance make a HELL OF A LOT OF MONEY on the distribution of copyrighted internet content which they do not own while the owners of the content do not. Read some of my other posts on this to see how this happens.
We need an organisation put together ASAP to fight for webmaster's rights. If we fail to do this, first we will see say Slashdot form an ad free subscription site and it might work because slashdot is pretty big, next there will be a clubs of websites that join together and you've got the balkinization of the net underway.
This is NOT in anyone's interest. But to be frank IMHO it has already started with the convergance of certain media giants with content distributors such that they make money on _ALL_ content they distribute while contributing an incredibly small percentage of it.
Yes, those sites may be of interest to you. Unfortunatley I suspect that they also are losing money hand over fist. The people who have money to burn are the people trying to get you to switch to a different type of hairspray.
What this may mean is that in short order we will see the non-converged portion of the net poluted with ads which will create a rather large incentive for people to subscribe to converged internet sources like AOL.
I think a subscription service is likely to kill the net.
The steps I see happening are as follows:
0) sites start to switch to a subscriber model and the public shuns them and content starts to dry up to the point where people will start dropping services. ISP's and Telco's will start to panic.
1) In a move to rejuvinate content and reverse the drop out rate the ISP's and telco's will create subscription "channels" and they will remit money to these select few content creators based on their perception of what they want to be available on the net. You might call this "icing the cake". But in this case "icing people" get paid while "cake people" do not.
2) The surfing public will be told that websites outside of these "channels" are more expensive to support and hense we'll see webmasters costs driven up while the surfing public will be asked to pay higher monthly ISP charges for access to the "non-main-stream" content. Meanwhile the "icing people" will have a secure revenue source.
3) We'll find that probably everything that programmers and geeks do will fall into the "more expensive to support" category.
4) Just like with cable TV services, the "core bundle" that I personally never even wanted will be a necessary part of the bundle before I can get access to the "geek content" that I want.
5) In spite of popularization of the web and incredible technological advances in telecommunications, we'll be left in a WORSE position because we'll find that we first need to subsidize the web content that the general public wants before we can get access to what we want... which is open source development projects, linux/*BSD technical development and administration help groups, Wonderful websites like/., etc.
6) Microsoft might lend a hand in this transformation by adding new protocols into windows such that CNN, TW, MSNBC and close friends' content is carried in a somehow superior way that linux servers are not up to... Probably this will include some form of "security" and it will be claimed that any attempt to decode this content is a breach of the DMCA in just the same way that it is claimed that it is ok for WINDOZE people to watch DVD's on their computer but it is not ok for Linux people.
Is this a nightmare? Well, as vested interests seek to gain control of what the surfing public sees on the internet, what is to stop this draconian evolution?
AOL/TW makes money off the content they distribute through the net. Slashdot for instance does not because slashdot doesn't have a subscriber base of 33 million people each of whom is sending money to AOL/TW for a service which includes delivery + content.
Of course AOL/TW sees no reason to remit funds to anyone in cyberspace who's content they borrow heavily from in order to supply most of what their customer base is looking for.
If people agree with me on this then I think they should see why a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT is required literally as fast as it can be put together to establish FAIR TRADE PRACTICES and to ensure that the intellectual property rights of all webmasters is respected. In my mind this means that for instance AOL/TW does not have the right to use other people's intellectual property for their commencial gain without any compensation to the owners of this content. It also means that certain telephone operators and ISP's do not have the right to block port 80.
IMHO it works like this. If you are in the situation of delivering content for a profit, then it makes sense to add a little icing to the cake to give yourself a competitive advantage and meanwhile claim that their _is_ no money in content so it should be ok to fill the pipes with 95% OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK with no compensation to them.
If we were to create an apache mod that created AOL FREE FRIDAYS how long do you think that this situation would continue?
Let me put it this way. As a web master if I put up MY CONTENT then this is MINE and I have the exclusive right to decide who sees it and on what terms. This means that _I_ can choose to shut AOL/TW off. Since they don't pay me why should I continure to subsidize their business? If every other webmaster (or at least a sizable percentage) were to also shut them off then I expect that AOL would come knocking on our door asking how much we want for the content (which they previously took from us for free while "we" like idiots tried to subsidize the distribution costs).
I say it would take less than 1 or 2 months. But if it took more - big deal. We'd at least save money by doing this.
Yup. That is what monopolies do. Do you think this might be hurting NZ business? If so then why don't the Keewee's do something about it?
Uplinks do already pay some ppl for content
on
End of the Free Internet
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That is correct. Some are paid already. Consider... suppose you are a small telephone company. You wish to carry internet content so that you can support the ISP's that conntect through you and also you wish to deploy your own ADSL service as well as dial up network. Now - there is just no way any ISP's are going to be interested in buying those OCx services without content... right? So you organise a connection to the backbones through POP's.
Why would a backbone operator offer such a connection for free? Answer: they won't - as a small telephone company you get to pay these people for the bandwidth required to connect through those pop's. As your company grows and you start to carry more and more content you might find a smaller fish in the pond will ask to connect to you and you get to bill them.
Ok, generally speaking all the ISP's fall into the smaller fish category so they all in general pay their upstreams megabux per month for the content that comes into their systems. In order to minimise this all the ISP's will in general operating farms of caching proxies.
Now - suppose someone happens to operate a small webserver farm. Since they don't have much stroke they fall into the smaller fish category and they will be billed by whoever they connect through. Suppose this connection is through an ISP. Typically the ISP involved would not run this content through the caching proxies because doing this would reduce the traffic and thus reduce their billing to this small webserver farm... right?
Well of course other accesses outside of the local pool of websurfers that frequent this website will end up running through the caches - but that isn't the point. The point is that in this model - the ISP that provided the uplink will Bill on the basis of the bandwidth and will not run it through the cache.
Now suppose the little web server farm operator decides that a co-locate is in order. So they call some people who offer this service and who are located closer to a backbone. Well - now the feed into the ISP that was the former uplink no longer exists. Suddenly the same content that the ISP was charging for ends up comming from a source that the ISP must pay for.
So, in this one little switch from running your own servers to comming through a hosting service the identintial content ends up being distributed at a cost to the ISP instead of it being a revenue source to them. In a fair business model one would expect that if the ISP were willing to pay their uplink for content that they would be willing to pay ANY content source on a somewhat fair payscale. This is like a supermarket telling a chicken farmer that if the chicken farmer is big enough to handle all of their egg and milk supplies and of course if this same chicken farmer has managed to get a stranglehold on the distribution channels - that they will pay for the eggs. Otherwise they expect to bill the chicken farmer for the eggs because they are providing a service distributing his eggs to their customers!!! Of course the chicken farmer can attempt to set up accounts with those egg eaters if he can find them and if he can figure out how to make them pay!!!
Ok... one more step here... Suppose the web server operator calls up his local telephone company and asks them to be the uplink. In this case he will be quoted a connection rate. The telephone company - being a bigger fish wnats the smaller fish to pay. So the guy decides, Nope - We're going to use a hosting service.
Well - now the content will be comming from a channel controlled by a fish even bigger than the telephone company so AGAIN the telephone company will find itself in the situation of paying for the distribution of the content instead of being able to bill for it.
In all cases - the idea of a level playing feild and fair market practices have been abandoned in favour of the idea that big fish can force smaller fish to pay - so they do so. I would suggest that this is not within the current fair trade practices legislation of most nations but I will also suggest that it will take an organisation and a class action lawsuit to change this.
Now, suppose that the webserver's uplink remitted money to the server operator based on the amount of content these server feed into the net. Since in general all ISP's are already paying their uplinks for the delivery of content it would only seem reasonable that they should pay ANYONE who supplies content regardless how big a fish they are. In fact this is how the commodities markets work. It is a well established fact that if you sell 100 dozen eggs that you will recieve a cheque about 10 times bigger than the farmer that supplies 10 dozen eggs.
Well... if the webserver were actually receiving money for the service they provide to the telecommunications carriers - that is if they were paid for creating content for these guys to ship to their customer base, then one would expect that there might be a bit of screaming going on about whether the people (ISP's) who do NOT own any copyright to the material have a legal right to duplicate it in their caching proxies.
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I made this argument to a systems admin who runs caching proxies. His retort was that without caching proxies webservers would be hard pressed to handle the demand from the surfers in cyberspace. Well, I do agree. It isn't a question of caching - its a question of the compensation and who gets the cash so to speak.
But here is a direct analogy. Somebody makes a sitcom for prime time TV. These people are in the same situation as the websurfers. They do not own enough equipment to be able to fully distribute the signal to all the customers of the networks and cable TV operators.
Just like in the case of TV, a cable TV operator will simply connect and pick up and distribute other people's copyrighted material and they do this so that they can bill their customers for cable TV services.
But now - the customer can choose to watch a sitcom or to use his time to surf the net. In both cases copyrighted materials are being fed into this person's electronic communications equipment.
In the case of a TV signal, the cable operator pays a sum of money into a pool which is allocated back to the producers of the TV show. But if the end user decides to surf instead, then no money is paid back to the producers of the web content and furthermore the intellectual property rights of the owners of this material are totally ignored.
To conclude, I would suggest that people stand way back and think about how for instance streaming video content supplied via TCP/IP as really any different to an end user than an NTSC signal that comes over the same wire. Does anyone think the general public knows the difference or even cares? No - surfers just want good interesting content and this is why they pay for the cable TV channels and pay for the cable modems or xDSL services or dial up lines for that matter.
Furthermore, as far as they are conserned - once they have paid for the connection they expect to get a bundled service that includes both a connection as well as content on this connection.
People in general understand there are pay TV channels just as they understand there are pay websites. What they don't understand is the distinction that the producers of TV content get paid while the producers of web content do not.
Frankly, I have trouble understanding this distinction too!
Hmmm - this logic would mean that when an ISP copies a web site into its caching proxy for later distribution to their customers that this _also_ could be considered unathorized copying.
So just where and when did all the ISP's of the world obtain the right to copy websites indescriminantly in order to provide access to same to their customer base?
If the ISP's of the world did not obtain this right, then perhaps they should start paying the webmasters that create the content the surfing public wants to see. If this were the case then cyberspace might become a healthy environment full of excellent constantly updated content... web masters would not have to try to resort to advertising in order to support their websites... and people would not have to try to outwit the advertisers who are trying to stuff this advertising down our throats. In short, everyone including the ISP's would win.
I just checked basic h/w on an X-box. Seems to me that it has just about everything anyone would need to turn it into a full blown Linux PC.
8GB HDD, Nic, PIII cpu and ram. Does anyone know if the video will drive a monitor? Seems all we would need is a tiny box to hook the KB and mouse into in order to network in to the thing. Alternatively it might be possible to interface KB and mouse some other way.
I read that M$ was losing money on each X-box. Wouldn't it be wonderful to just re-flash the bios and load in Linux? .
A licence can restrict you to using said game only while you are sitting on the toilet in the bathroom!!! A license is a legal agreement that _YOU_ make with a vendor and when you make this agreement you are bound by its terms.
Just as the vendor is not under any obligation to change the terms he wishes to impose upon you, you also are not required to agree the the vendor's terms. You can walk away from the deal.
Channel Technology probably _can_ relocate to another country and Brits _can_ if they wish import the chip. They will each run the risk of being caught mind you - but I doubt any judge can throw 20 million kids in gaol. So, if it a big issue, work around it.
I don't entirely agree but you make an excellent point.
There has been a proposal in Canada to place a TARRIFF on the content that users download. I think this idea has a lot of merit and it can solve a lot of problems.
Generally speaking, content providers have much less market clout than the businesses they deal with. In many respects, a natural monopoly exists and the only realistic way to get website content available is to deal with a telco.
Also, in general (but not in all cases), the telco side of this equation, as you point out, charges $5/GB. And since advertising is not going to cover this in most case, not only is additional bandwidth wasted, the content is slowly drying up.
A solution to this is a tarriff paid back to those who provide internet content. This tarriff does not have to be particularly high and certainly will not be a financial burden.
Now... I doubt anyone will argue that content is not valuable. It is more valuable than the delivery system. AOL/TW is a prime example of this. In this case, we have an alignment of the delivery system and the content creation. The content creation side of this equation makes money and thus produces content. Since they _also_ decide who to deliver this to, IE their own customer base, they make money from the delivery side as well.
ISP's who rely on HOSTING are not going to be able to compete. The reason is that these ISP's customers will desert them in droves.
IMHO, correct me if I'm wrong, the @home people bought excite because they wanted to play the AOL/TM game. So AOL/TM grabbed the excite content. The @home people found they really didn't have much competitive advantage... certainly not enough to justify the support of excite. So Excite was dumped. But in the middle of this the carriers that were running the delivery systems that the @home/excite content steamed over found that really, @home wasn't providing much either. So that whole house of cards came crashing down.
Meanwhile, AOL/TW ticks along just fine. By controlling the content AOL/TW provides to their customer base they gain a competitive advantage over most non-vertially integrated competitors.
United they stand and divided we will fall.
The solution is to apply a tarriff to the content delivered in the same way that tarriffs are applied to TV signals. In TV land, broadcasters generally have the right to distribute whatever they want, and a pool is created of a certain percent (I heard 6%) of the advertising revenues. The Neilson ratings then are employed to distribute this money to the producers.
In the ISP world, apply a tax - perhaps based on volume downloaded - but the formula certainly can be more sophisticated than this - and remit it back to the content creation sector.
This will create a revenue pool that will actually support the $5/GB upload fees the ISP/Telco side of the equation likes to bill.
It also neatly solves the "duplication" issue. Presently duplicating compyrighted material for distribution is ILLEGAL regardless what tecgnology is used for the duplication. AOL sends in their caching proxies into webservers and rips them clean whenever they choose - adn then delivers this "cached" content to their 20 million odd customers. IMHO, this is illegal. But - place a tarriff at the point of delivery which remits back to the people who own this intellectual property, and who cares how they deliver it...
What is at issue is that at present, there is no revenue source for the content creation sector except in the occational situation where a large ISP interest has decided to "team up". One example of this is the Convergence of publishers with ISP's as in the case of Thompson Newspapers and Sympatico in Canada. Another example is the AOL/TW combination.
It is simply not fair for these groups to expect to obtain +90% of their content from website developers who naively think they can make a buck while subsidzing what they develop, and what the surfing public wants, while being barred 100% from the revenue side of the equation. I'll go farther, not only is this unfair, it is illegal as well. It breaches copyright law. It breaches fair trade practices.
It also is not in the general public's interest because as you say, It may become a very boring internet soon.
I live in Alberta Canada and we're in the process of dropping about a billion bux a year into tar sands development. Now along comes Lovins telling us we don't know what we're doing.
If you read the website you may note about 1/2 way through that Lovins is suggesting that methane be used via a reformer as the hydrogen source.
Here in Alberta it turns out that we also supply huge quantities of methane.
For those who are interested, visit the HubbertPeak website where you can read up on how North America will reach maximum methane "Production" maybe this year or next. Then please realise that the word "production" really means "depleation".
Gas well declining production rates for wells drilled today are between 30% and 50% per year. 10 years ago the decline rates were under 20% per year because bigger gas pockets were drilled.
There are many many pockets yet to find and drill, but the combined output of all of these increasingly small pockets will not make up for the declines from the large pockets found in the past. However we look at it - we are going over the top and in very short order.
When this happens there will be a rude awakening. The population is presently quite ignorant of the amount of methane that can be supplied. Within 2 years I expect that the economists will be telling the exploration geologists and engineers that they better get busy "producting" more fuel at which point I expect the response will be "and from where would you guys like us to get it?" The warnings are being ignored.
For those who are interested, please review this artical on the declining production rates from the North Sea.
Pages 6 and 7 contain the shortest summary of why. On page 6 you can see the cumulative production rates of the various fields plotted by year. What these plots show is that the first 13 feilds collectively produced more oil that all of the remaining 100's of fields combined. On page 7 you can see the cummulation of all fields in one graph.
If one looks only at the top of the curve - the combined production rate - then one would probably conclude there is no problem. Production generally has been increasing from the North Sea for the last 25 years.
However if one looks at the individual field production rates the picture looks a LOT DIFFERENT. North Sea prodution has peaked and the production will drop by probably over 7% per year henseforth. This represents about 1/2 of European oil production.
The giant Ghwar field in Saudi Arabia will peak very shortly and when it does the Middle east will not be able to sustain its production rates either.
North American Natural gas production is probably already at peak. There is a minor decline in demand presently which explains the lowered prices.
Please understand that gas wells depleat faster than oil wells. Its like the air in the tires of your car.
A tire will "whosh" for a while if you take out the valve stem - then suddenly it stops "whosing" and the tire is flat. Same with a gas well. If you have a really big tire and a relatively small hole in it, then the tire may "whosh" for a long while. But it eventually will go flat. When a gas well goes flat there is nothing to fill it up again.
IMHO the only alternative is Nuclear. However I'll be very happy to see all usable alternative energy sources tapped first.
Of courese, nuclear is not politically correct. Natural gas is. This is why companies like Calpine (CPN - NYSE) are planning on building so many natural gas fired power stations that they alone will burn up all the natural gas that can be "produced" in North America by the time their plants are built.
Free enterprise is a wonderful economic system and I suppose it has pursued its insanities in the past.
A few years from now I wonder who will be questioning the wisdom of building all those gas fired power plants?
I did a rough estimate of the number of drilling rigs that would need to be active in 3-4 years in order to grow the gas production. Some stats can be found from the Baker Hughes (BHI - NYSE) rig counts. In order to increase the prodcution rates and supply the increased gas that Calpine alone wants - the Gas and Oil drilling industry will need to probably more than double in size.
But only AFTER it has been designed. I've been a developer for over 20 years and far too often what is done is that development estimates are demanded before the project has even been designed.
In traditional development projects, typically people KNOW what they need to do before it is undertaken. The contractor starts with a blueprint. It is actally possible to count the number of 2x6's that a house will need. One can make an estimate on the time required to nail one 2x6 to another and then multiply by the number in the house in order to estimate how long it will take.
I've had ignornant management ask on far too many occasions how long it will take to develope such and such a project. Best answer is how long is a string?
Management that has no feel for the problem is the problem. How long does it take to write a book?
Well - I suppose it depends on the book. Just because you can not estimate how long it will take does not mean that books will not be written or that they are not valuable.
I can write a book in a day... It will just be a simple book and quite short... but then did anyone define how many pages a book must contain in order to quailify as a book?
I can write a programming project in a day also. But it won't contain over 1/2 million lines of code. For a complex project... well, when we start to see light at the end of the tunnel, then we'll be able to make an estimate how long the tunnel was.
Sure he makes a good point. Ask yourself why they spend their money on weapons and not food? Shall we make guns or butter is the high school economics question.
The amount of oil money flowing into the Middle East is unbeleivable. How much is being spent on the well being of the people?
In an ironic way Bin Laden is correct that "we" are taking their wealth. First we give them money for oil. Next we give them old weapons for money. In the end we have their oil and they have our discarded weapons. Of course they wanted these weapons so they could fight their endless wars. And we wanted the oil. The deal was struck.
Here's a question? Which country is the world's biggest supplier of land mines into Afghanistan? How many think it is immoral to supply weapons? How many think it is immoral to blow off children's feet? If the weapon "we" manufacture ends up killing or maiming someone - should we bear some responsibility?
Maybe we should ask whether we should be willing to supply them with the tools of war. Afghanistan is a very poor country. The last I looked is that the Afghanis currancy traded $4750:1 (usd). That would place their currancy at about 1/50 of a penny. Given this - how is it that they can amass Hundreds of thousands in foreign currancy to support terrorist activities?
The only answer I can think of is that there is a horrible misappropriation of their resources. Furthermore we accomodate them because we supply them. Its blood money all right. But its their people's blood and we look the other way.
Yup - I already paid for the content and so has everyone else.
I paid a monthly fee to my ISP. My ISP has paid a HUGE monthly fee to the Telephone company and my Telephone company has paid an even larger fee to each backbone carrier they connect to.
If some of that money is not making it into the hands of those who create web content - then perhaps we should ask why. It is my pet peeve of course.
In economic terms - the flow of money is opposite the flow of goods and services. But in the net we have this situation.
It isn't the backbone who is the culprit here. It is the system where the telephone carrier is willing to pay the backbone operators for the connection because they need content and have no choice... but these same companies are typically unwilling to pay the websites that supply the same commodity. What difference does it make to a telephone company where the content comes from? If they are willing to pay say Sprintlink for bandwidth which supplies content - then why not the website operator in their neck of the woods? If the local webmaster's content weren't valuable then people wouldn't click on his website!
This creates the situation where Telstra (an Australian telco) pays for Australian content being delivered off USA hosting companies but at the same time Telstra is unwilling to pay an Australian company to provide content. Why an Australian company would be willing to pay Americans but not Australians is a good question to ask.
Of course - were Telstra to pay Australians for the content they create - then the question remains whether Americans or anyone else would be willing to pay Telstra for the opportunity to connect for the Australian content that Telstra thusly makes available.
Classic monopoly/oligopoly IMHO. Sometimes terribly unfair things get entrenched. It can be changed and there are questions in my mind how many laws are being broken. (1) copyright. Caching proxies dupicate content and this is specifically against copyright law. (2) Fair trade practices. Sometimes deals are offered to some content suppliers.. Microsoft? Yahoo? Thompson newspapers in Canada? but not to anyone else. (3) Anti competitive trade practices. IE - if we can trade shares then we can do business... Otherwise forget it. (that was the "convergance" theme wasn't it - between the telecomunication industry and the newspaper industry).
If the chicken farming industry worked the same way then every egg farmer would have to sign a contract with a retailer in order to get his eggs on the market. If retailers were given this much market clout then (1) there would be a shortage of eggs and (2) they would be a lot more expensive. Finally (3) Barriers to entering the chicken farming business would be way to steep for most chicken farmers.
Slashdot Mirror
You have hit the nail on the head. IBM did this in the 60's with the main frames into the universities. The first computer I programmed on was an IBM for this reason.
We have to wake up and smell the coffee and get the openSource solution into the schools!!!
We have to start doing this NOW. And while we are doing this we have to become rather political and anal and demand explanations why the bearacracy is blocking us.
I called M$ and left a message for their Canadian director of corporate and legal affairs. The message amounts to this: I'd like to know how M$ purports to have formed a contract with my company. We have not negotiated a contract, we have not even been in contact with them, there has been no consideration...
Not one of the requirments for the existance of a binding contract has been met. I gave them my name and phone number. If they choose to sue us then we'll collect on abuse of process.
We may not have as many lawyers on our side but our lawyers are pretty damn good!
So fuck off m$!
If you don't like this arrangement then consider this: If you run a web server in Australia then Telstra dings you mega bux per month. If you move it to the USA then Telstra pays a US carrier for the bandwidth required to move the content into Australia.
Since Telstra is willing to pay an American company for bandwidth required to provide content, then why isn't Telstra willing to pay an Australian company?
You know - if Telstra were to create a hospitable environment for Aussie content creators then US carriers wouldn't have the upper hand. Fix your own problems first!
This is simply selling content. No african ISP would be willing to spend any money if it weren't for the fact that they want access to the content we generate.
Thus the question becomes... since the content is generally copyright then how come the ISP's and Telco's aren't paying the copyright holders? That's right folks... if you run a web server and it happens to be popular then you ought to be paid!!!
This is what copyright law is all about! Its not the Africans who are being ripped off here...
hahahaha! What a hair brained scheme! Using quicklime to scrub CO2... then reheating (read roasting) the CaCO3 to release the CO2 and reform it back into quicklime.
And where perchance is this space cadet planning on obtaining the energy to make the quicklime? heh? perhaps from a "coal" source? Perhaps Nuclear? Or was he planning on using methane fired burners?
According to the information found in www.hubbertpeak.com oil production will start to decline within 5 years and there is evidence to suggest that it will be sooner.
For example, I wrote an intranet application that uses the address bar, back & forward buttons, etc. You can't tell that IE is part of it, but it is.
You are an idiot to do this. The next version of IE will probably break your app!
I'm horrified by how insanely complicated it has all become in the past ten years.
I agree with you 100%. You have made some very very good points.
I'm a software developer and have more than 20 years experiance and have developed several products. In the past I used proprietary development environments. The vast majority of these have died which means that all the development work of their very brilliant creators was basically wasted.
Who amoung us wants to see the lifetime of work that we create just quietly pissed away?
With open source I can breath a breath of fresh air. Finally I can use the very brilliant work of others so that their dreams can live on forever and others can build on them. Finally I no longer have to convert from proprietary O/S to O/S or from compiler library to compiler library or from API to API. Finally there is something standard that is going to stay around!
For those who think Microsoft is going to simply last forever let me ask: How many of you programmed on a Bouroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, or Honeywell? How about an Eclipse, HP3000, TI990, PDP11, Prime, or Perkin Elmer?
For those a little younger, how many can remember how fast the VAX bit the dust? Hmm? Digital used to have the most successful mini in the world and they were the #2 manufacture. Upstart Compaq bought them and then Compaq was picked up by HP.
The point here is that NONE of those systems were compatible with each other and ALL of the software that made them go is now gone.
In a few years we'll have talking robots. I somehow don't think they will be running windoze. So my prediction is just as the VAX bit the dust so too will M$. And then we'll see that most of the software written for windoze will be useless unless the WINE project manages to salvage it... which I do think is likely.
The reason we have such a huge reservoir of knowledge for people to draw from, and indeed such a huge reservoir of music, is because the works of great people like Newton, Laplace, Hilbert, Mozart, etc. were not locked away in someone's private collection of "Intellectual Property".
IMHO open source is the ONLY way to go. It is the only way that people can be creative and create things of value and have them last.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the PTO is that it persists in granting patents for obvious ideas.
An example is the Mark Williams patent for a solution to the "endian" problem... you know - big endian machines store integers in a different order than little endian machines.
As it turns out I am able to provide prior art. But perhaps the most important fact is that the whole issue of a patent for this is bullshit. The simple observation is that if the order is different, then change it. Similarly one can convert between notations as well - IE. If the notation is different then change it to the best approximation.
Using this idea one can convert between IBM mainframe floating point and IEEE floating point as used in the PC or even to CDC floating point.
None of these conversions are worthy of a patent.
Similarly, suppose some bright engineer had decided way back when the computer was first developed to patent the "JUMP" instruction. Where would this have put the industry?
The harm that patents do is underestimated. But if one takes a longer view then it becomes clear that we're dealing with the criminalization of the art of computer programming.
What you don't understand about patents and the little guy is that if you do have a patent and a large corporation wants it then they will simply use it and declare that your patent (1) infringes or (2) is invalid for WHATEVER reasons.
Then you will get the opportunity to fight them in court and if they lose they will appeal and in the end you will be dead broke.
The earth has been in a warming trend for a couple million years. This is quite expected. Scotese has paleocimatology for over a billion years.
His is a really good web site to study.
You said:
When you buy cable TV, you are buying a service to access the information, while paying for that information to be produced.
When you subscribe to a magazine, you are doing the same thing.
Computer users dont mind paying AOL 20 dollars a month, I really dont think a user is going to mind paying $5 more a month for all the software they will ever need.
I will agree with this. So how much of the revenues that AOL collects from its 33 million odd users flows back in any form to the people who are producing the information and services which the AOL subscribers are enjoying?
Well, yes, on some florescents I actually can see them flickering. Its is damn annoying in fact and hard on the eyes. Interestingly enough I don't see the flicker in the fovial area.
I see the flicker in some monitors too and I wonder how other people can use them.
In fact, I would think that most people can see the flicker if they do the simple test of say looking at the monitor and then moving their hand between their eyes and the monitor. This is a simple enough strobe test.
If we turn off images, pop up windows, and java and java script and then run Opera so we don't need to worry about active-x, will those ads still show up? What is to stop people from running slashdot through an ad stripping proxy?
Hmmm.... why pay slashdot to remove the ads when browser controls will do the same thing?
Seriously, this is a real thorny problem and I for one take great exception to the idea that AOL/TM for instance make a HELL OF A LOT OF MONEY on the distribution of copyrighted internet content which they do not own while the owners of the content do not. Read some of my other posts on this to see how this happens.
We need an organisation put together ASAP to fight for webmaster's rights. If we fail to do this, first we will see say Slashdot form an ad free subscription site and it might work because slashdot is pretty big, next there will be a clubs of websites that join together and you've got the balkinization of the net underway.
This is NOT in anyone's interest. But to be frank IMHO it has already started with the convergance of certain media giants with content distributors such that they make money on _ALL_ content they distribute while contributing an incredibly small percentage of it.
Yes, those sites may be of interest to you. Unfortunatley I suspect that they also are losing money hand over fist. The people who have money to burn are the people trying to get you to switch to a different type of hairspray.
What this may mean is that in short order we will see the non-converged portion of the net poluted with ads which will create a rather large incentive for people to subscribe to converged internet sources like AOL.
I think a subscription service is likely to kill the net.
/., etc.
The steps I see happening are as follows:
0) sites start to switch to a subscriber model and the public shuns them and content starts to dry up to the point where people will start dropping services. ISP's and Telco's will start to panic.
1) In a move to rejuvinate content and reverse the drop out rate the ISP's and telco's will create subscription "channels" and they will remit money to these select few content creators based on their perception of what they want to be available on the net. You might call this "icing the cake". But in this case "icing people" get paid while "cake people" do not.
2) The surfing public will be told that websites outside of these "channels" are more expensive to support and hense we'll see webmasters costs driven up while the surfing public will be asked to pay higher monthly ISP charges for access to the "non-main-stream" content. Meanwhile the "icing people" will have a secure revenue source.
3) We'll find that probably everything that programmers and geeks do will fall into the "more expensive to support" category.
4) Just like with cable TV services, the "core bundle" that I personally never even wanted will be a necessary part of the bundle before I can get access to the "geek content" that I want.
5) In spite of popularization of the web and incredible technological advances in telecommunications, we'll be left in a WORSE position because we'll find that we first need to subsidize the web content that the general public wants before we can get access to what we want... which is open source development projects, linux/*BSD technical development and administration help groups, Wonderful websites like
6) Microsoft might lend a hand in this transformation by adding new protocols into windows such that CNN, TW, MSNBC and close friends' content is carried in a somehow superior way that linux servers are not up to... Probably this will include some form of "security" and it will be claimed that any attempt to decode this content is a breach of the DMCA in just the same way that it is claimed that it is ok for WINDOZE people to watch DVD's on their computer but it is not ok for Linux people.
Is this a nightmare? Well, as vested interests seek to gain control of what the surfing public sees on the internet, what is to stop this draconian evolution?
AOL/TW makes money off the content they distribute through the net. Slashdot for instance does not because slashdot doesn't have a subscriber base of 33 million people each of whom is sending money to AOL/TW for a service which includes delivery + content.
Of course AOL/TW sees no reason to remit funds to anyone in cyberspace who's content they borrow heavily from in order to supply most of what their customer base is looking for.
If people agree with me on this then I think they should see why a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT is required literally as fast as it can be put together to establish FAIR TRADE PRACTICES and to ensure that the intellectual property rights of all webmasters is respected. In my mind this means that for instance AOL/TW does not have the right to use other people's intellectual property for their commencial gain without any compensation to the owners of this content. It also means that certain telephone operators and ISP's do not have the right to block port 80.
IMHO it works like this. If you are in the situation of delivering content for a profit, then it makes sense to add a little icing to the cake to give yourself a competitive advantage and meanwhile claim that their _is_ no money in content so it should be ok to fill the pipes with 95% OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK with no compensation to them.
If we were to create an apache mod that created AOL FREE FRIDAYS how long do you think that this situation would continue?
Let me put it this way. As a web master if I put up MY CONTENT then this is MINE and I have the exclusive right to decide who sees it and on what terms. This means that _I_ can choose to shut AOL/TW off. Since they don't pay me why should I continure to subsidize their business? If every other webmaster (or at least a sizable percentage) were to also shut them off then I expect that AOL would come knocking on our door asking how much we want for the content (which they previously took from us for free while "we" like idiots tried to subsidize the distribution costs).
I say it would take less than 1 or 2 months. But if it took more - big deal. We'd at least save money by doing this.
Yup. That is what monopolies do. Do you think this might be hurting NZ business? If so then why don't the Keewee's do something about it?
That is correct. Some are paid already. Consider... suppose you are a small telephone company. You wish to carry internet content so that you can support the ISP's that conntect through you and also you wish to deploy your own ADSL service as well as dial up network. Now - there is just no way any ISP's are going to be interested in buying those OCx services without content... right? So you organise a connection to the backbones through POP's.
Why would a backbone operator offer such a connection for free? Answer: they won't - as a small telephone company you get to pay these people for the bandwidth required to connect through those pop's. As your company grows and you start to carry more and more content you might find a smaller fish in the pond will ask to connect to you and you get to bill them.
Ok, generally speaking all the ISP's fall into the smaller fish category so they all in general pay their upstreams megabux per month for the content that comes into their systems. In order to minimise this all the ISP's will in general operating farms of caching proxies.
Now - suppose someone happens to operate a small webserver farm. Since they don't have much stroke they fall into the smaller fish category and they will be billed by whoever they connect through. Suppose this connection is through an ISP. Typically the ISP involved would not run this content through the caching proxies because doing this would reduce the traffic and thus reduce their billing to this small webserver farm... right?
Well of course other accesses outside of the local pool of websurfers that frequent this website will end up running through the caches - but that isn't the point. The point is that in this model - the ISP that provided the uplink will Bill on the basis of the bandwidth and will not run it through the cache.
Now suppose the little web server farm operator decides that a co-locate is in order. So they call some people who offer this service and who are located closer to a backbone. Well - now the feed into the ISP that was the former uplink no longer exists. Suddenly the same content that the ISP was charging for ends up comming from a source that the ISP must pay for.
So, in this one little switch from running your own servers to comming through a hosting service the identintial content ends up being distributed at a cost to the ISP instead of it being a revenue source to them. In a fair business model one would expect that if the ISP were willing to pay their uplink for content that they would be willing to pay ANY content source on a somewhat fair payscale. This is like a supermarket telling a chicken farmer that if the chicken farmer is big enough to handle all of their egg and milk supplies and of course if this same chicken farmer has managed to get a stranglehold on the distribution channels - that they will pay for the eggs. Otherwise they expect to bill the chicken farmer for the eggs because they are providing a service distributing his eggs to their customers!!! Of course the chicken farmer can attempt to set up accounts with those egg eaters if he can find them and if he can figure out how to make them pay!!!
Ok... one more step here... Suppose the web server operator calls up his local telephone company and asks them to be the uplink. In this case he will be quoted a connection rate. The telephone company - being a bigger fish wnats the smaller fish to pay. So the guy decides, Nope - We're going to use a hosting service.
Well - now the content will be comming from a channel controlled by a fish even bigger than the telephone company so AGAIN the telephone company will find itself in the situation of paying for the distribution of the content instead of being able to bill for it.
In all cases - the idea of a level playing feild and fair market practices have been abandoned in favour of the idea that big fish can force smaller fish to pay - so they do so. I would suggest that this is not within the current fair trade practices legislation of most nations but I will also suggest that it will take an organisation and a class action lawsuit to change this.
Now, suppose that the webserver's uplink remitted money to the server operator based on the amount of content these server feed into the net. Since in general all ISP's are already paying their uplinks for the delivery of content it would only seem reasonable that they should pay ANYONE who supplies content regardless how big a fish they are. In fact this is how the commodities markets work. It is a well established fact that if you sell 100 dozen eggs that you will recieve a cheque about 10 times bigger than the farmer that supplies 10 dozen eggs.
Well... if the webserver were actually receiving money for the service they provide to the telecommunications carriers - that is if they were paid for creating content for these guys to ship to their customer base, then one would expect that there might be a bit of screaming going on about whether the people (ISP's) who do NOT own any copyright to the material have a legal right to duplicate it in their caching proxies.
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I made this argument to a systems admin who runs caching proxies. His retort was that without caching proxies webservers would be hard pressed to handle the demand from the surfers in cyberspace. Well, I do agree. It isn't a question of caching - its a question of the compensation and who gets the cash so to speak.
But here is a direct analogy. Somebody makes a sitcom for prime time TV. These people are in the same situation as the websurfers. They do not own enough equipment to be able to fully distribute the signal to all the customers of the networks and cable TV operators.
Just like in the case of TV, a cable TV operator will simply connect and pick up and distribute other people's copyrighted material and they do this so that they can bill their customers for cable TV services.
But now - the customer can choose to watch a sitcom or to use his time to surf the net. In both cases copyrighted materials are being fed into this person's electronic communications equipment.
In the case of a TV signal, the cable operator pays a sum of money into a pool which is allocated back to the producers of the TV show. But if the end user decides to surf instead, then no money is paid back to the producers of the web content and furthermore the intellectual property rights of the owners of this material are totally ignored.
To conclude, I would suggest that people stand way back and think about how for instance streaming video content supplied via TCP/IP as really any different to an end user than an NTSC signal that comes over the same wire. Does anyone think the general public knows the difference or even cares? No - surfers just want good interesting content and this is why they pay for the cable TV channels and pay for the cable modems or xDSL services or dial up lines for that matter.
Furthermore, as far as they are conserned - once they have paid for the connection they expect to get a bundled service that includes both a connection as well as content on this connection.
People in general understand there are pay TV channels just as they understand there are pay websites. What they don't understand is the distinction that the producers of TV content get paid while the producers of web content do not.
Frankly, I have trouble understanding this distinction too!
Hmmm - this logic would mean that when an ISP copies a web site into its caching proxy for later distribution to their customers that this _also_ could be considered unathorized copying.
So just where and when did all the ISP's of the world obtain the right to copy websites indescriminantly in order to provide access to same to their customer base?
If the ISP's of the world did not obtain this right, then perhaps they should start paying the webmasters that create the content the surfing public wants to see. If this were the case then cyberspace might become a healthy environment full of excellent constantly updated content... web masters would not have to try to resort to advertising in order to support their websites... and people would not have to try to outwit the advertisers who are trying to stuff this advertising down our throats. In short, everyone including the ISP's would win.
I just checked basic h/w on an X-box. Seems to me that it has just about everything anyone would need to turn it into a full blown Linux PC.
8GB HDD, Nic, PIII cpu and ram. Does anyone know if the video will drive a monitor? Seems all we would need is a tiny box to hook the KB and mouse into in order to network in to the thing. Alternatively it might be possible to interface KB and mouse some other way.
I read that M$ was losing money on each X-box. Wouldn't it be wonderful to just re-flash the bios and load in Linux? .
You don't understand licenses.
A licence can restrict you to using said game only while you are sitting on the toilet in the bathroom!!! A license is a legal agreement that _YOU_ make with a vendor and when you make this agreement you are bound by its terms.
Just as the vendor is not under any obligation to change the terms he wishes to impose upon you, you also are not required to agree the the vendor's terms. You can walk away from the deal.
Channel Technology probably _can_ relocate to another country and Brits _can_ if they wish import the chip. They will each run the risk of being caught mind you - but I doubt any judge can throw 20 million kids in gaol. So, if it a big issue, work around it.
I don't entirely agree but you make an excellent point.
There has been a proposal in Canada to place a TARRIFF on the content that users download. I think this idea has a lot of merit and it can solve a lot of problems.
Generally speaking, content providers have much less market clout than the businesses they deal with. In many respects, a natural monopoly exists and the only realistic way to get website content available is to deal with a telco.
Also, in general (but not in all cases), the telco side of this equation, as you point out, charges $5/GB. And since advertising is not going to cover this in most case, not only is additional bandwidth wasted, the content is slowly drying up.
A solution to this is a tarriff paid back to those who provide internet content. This tarriff does not have to be particularly high and certainly will not be a financial burden.
Now... I doubt anyone will argue that content is not valuable. It is more valuable than the delivery system. AOL/TW is a prime example of this. In this case, we have an alignment of the delivery system and the content creation. The content creation side of this equation makes money and thus produces content. Since they _also_ decide who to deliver this to, IE their own customer base, they make money from the delivery side as well.
ISP's who rely on HOSTING are not going to be able to compete. The reason is that these ISP's customers will desert them in droves.
IMHO, correct me if I'm wrong, the @home people bought excite because they wanted to play the AOL/TM game. So AOL/TM grabbed the excite content. The @home people found they really didn't have much competitive advantage... certainly not enough to justify the support of excite. So Excite was dumped. But in the middle of this the carriers that were running the delivery systems that the @home/excite content steamed over found that really, @home wasn't providing much either. So that whole house of cards came crashing down.
Meanwhile, AOL/TW ticks along just fine. By controlling the content AOL/TW provides to their customer base they gain a competitive advantage over most non-vertially integrated competitors.
United they stand and divided we will fall.
The solution is to apply a tarriff to the content delivered in the same way that tarriffs are applied to TV signals. In TV land, broadcasters generally have the right to distribute whatever they want, and a pool is created of a certain percent (I heard 6%) of the advertising revenues. The Neilson ratings then are employed to distribute this money to the producers.
In the ISP world, apply a tax - perhaps based on volume downloaded - but the formula certainly can be more sophisticated than this - and remit it back to the content creation sector.
This will create a revenue pool that will actually support the $5/GB upload fees the ISP/Telco side of the equation likes to bill.
It also neatly solves the "duplication" issue. Presently duplicating compyrighted material for distribution is ILLEGAL regardless what tecgnology is used for the duplication. AOL sends in their caching proxies into webservers and rips them clean whenever they choose - adn then delivers this "cached" content to their 20 million odd customers. IMHO, this is illegal. But - place a tarriff at the point of delivery which remits back to the people who own this intellectual property, and who cares how they deliver it...
What is at issue is that at present, there is no revenue source for the content creation sector except in the occational situation where a large ISP interest has decided to "team up". One example of this is the Convergence of publishers with ISP's as in the case of Thompson Newspapers and Sympatico in Canada. Another example is the AOL/TW combination.
It is simply not fair for these groups to expect to obtain +90% of their content from website developers who naively think they can make a buck while subsidzing what they develop, and what the surfing public wants, while being barred 100% from the revenue side of the equation. I'll go farther, not only is this unfair, it is illegal as well. It breaches copyright law. It breaches fair trade practices.
It also is not in the general public's interest because as you say, It may become a very boring internet soon.
I live in Alberta Canada and we're in the process of dropping about a billion bux a year into tar sands development. Now along comes Lovins telling us we don't know what we're doing.
If you read the website you may note about 1/2 way through that Lovins is suggesting that methane be used via a reformer as the hydrogen source.
Here in Alberta it turns out that we also supply huge quantities of methane.
For those who are interested, visit the HubbertPeak website where you can read up on how North America will reach maximum methane "Production" maybe this year or next. Then please realise that the word "production" really means "depleation".
Gas well declining production rates for wells drilled today are between 30% and 50% per year. 10 years ago the decline rates were under 20% per year because bigger gas pockets were drilled.
There are many many pockets yet to find and drill, but the combined output of all of these increasingly small pockets will not make up for the declines from the large pockets found in the past. However we look at it - we are going over the top and in very short order.
When this happens there will be a rude awakening. The population is presently quite ignorant of the amount of methane that can be supplied. Within 2 years I expect that the economists will be telling the exploration geologists and engineers that they better get busy "producting" more fuel at which point I expect the response will be "and from where would you guys like us to get it?" The warnings are being ignored.
For those who are interested, please review this artical on the declining production rates from the North Sea.
Pages 6 and 7 contain the shortest summary of why. On page 6 you can see the cumulative production rates of the various fields plotted by year. What these plots show is that the first 13 feilds collectively produced more oil that all of the remaining 100's of fields combined. On page 7 you can see the cummulation of all fields in one graph.
If one looks only at the top of the curve - the combined production rate - then one would probably conclude there is no problem. Production generally has been increasing from the North Sea for the last 25 years.
However if one looks at the individual field production rates the picture looks a LOT DIFFERENT. North Sea prodution has peaked and the production will drop by probably over 7% per year henseforth. This represents about 1/2 of European oil production.
The giant Ghwar field in Saudi Arabia will peak very shortly and when it does the Middle east will not be able to sustain its production rates either.
North American Natural gas production is probably already at peak. There is a minor decline in demand presently which explains the lowered prices.
Please understand that gas wells depleat faster than oil wells. Its like the air in the tires of your car.
A tire will "whosh" for a while if you take out the valve stem - then suddenly it stops "whosing" and the tire is flat. Same with a gas well. If you have a really big tire and a relatively small hole in it, then the tire may "whosh" for a long while. But it eventually will go flat. When a gas well goes flat there is nothing to fill it up again.
IMHO the only alternative is Nuclear. However I'll be very happy to see all usable alternative energy sources tapped first.
Of courese, nuclear is not politically correct. Natural gas is. This is why companies like Calpine (CPN - NYSE) are planning on building so many natural gas fired power stations that they alone will burn up all the natural gas that can be "produced" in North America by the time their plants are built.
Free enterprise is a wonderful economic system and I suppose it has pursued its insanities in the past.
A few years from now I wonder who will be questioning the wisdom of building all those gas fired power plants?
I did a rough estimate of the number of drilling rigs that would need to be active in 3-4 years in order to grow the gas production. Some stats can be found from the Baker Hughes (BHI - NYSE) rig counts. In order to increase the prodcution rates and supply the increased gas that Calpine alone wants - the Gas and Oil drilling industry will need to probably more than double in size.
Most likely this will not be possible.
But only AFTER it has been designed. I've been a developer for over 20 years and far too often what is done is that development estimates are demanded before the project has even been designed.
In traditional development projects, typically people KNOW what they need to do before it is undertaken. The contractor starts with a blueprint. It is actally possible to count the number of 2x6's that a house will need. One can make an estimate on the time required to nail one 2x6 to another and then multiply by the number in the house in order to estimate how long it will take.
I've had ignornant management ask on far too many occasions how long it will take to develope such and such a project. Best answer is how long is a string?
Management that has no feel for the problem is the problem. How long does it take to write a book?
Well - I suppose it depends on the book. Just because you can not estimate how long it will take does not mean that books will not be written or that they are not valuable.
I can write a book in a day... It will just be a simple book and quite short... but then did anyone define how many pages a book must contain in order to quailify as a book?
I can write a programming project in a day also. But it won't contain over 1/2 million lines of code. For a complex project... well, when we start to see light at the end of the tunnel, then we'll be able to make an estimate how long the tunnel was.
That is the best answer I can give.
Sure he makes a good point. Ask yourself why they spend their money on weapons and not food? Shall we make guns or butter is the high school economics question.
The amount of oil money flowing into the Middle East is unbeleivable. How much is being spent on the well being of the people?
In an ironic way Bin Laden is correct that "we" are taking their wealth. First we give them money for oil. Next we give them old weapons for money. In the end we have their oil and they have our discarded weapons. Of course they wanted these weapons so they could fight their endless wars. And we wanted the oil. The deal was struck.
Here's a question? Which country is the world's biggest supplier of land mines into Afghanistan? How many think it is immoral to supply weapons? How many think it is immoral to blow off children's feet? If the weapon "we" manufacture ends up killing or maiming someone - should we bear some responsibility?
Maybe we should ask whether we should be willing to supply them with the tools of war. Afghanistan is a very poor country. The last I looked is that the Afghanis currancy traded $4750:1 (usd). That would place their currancy at about 1/50 of a penny. Given this - how is it that they can amass Hundreds of thousands in foreign currancy to support terrorist activities?
The only answer I can think of is that there is a horrible misappropriation of their resources. Furthermore we accomodate them because we supply them. Its blood money all right. But its their people's blood and we look the other way.
Yup - I already paid for the content and so has everyone else.
I paid a monthly fee to my ISP. My ISP has paid a HUGE monthly fee to the Telephone company and my Telephone company has paid an even larger fee to each backbone carrier they connect to.
If some of that money is not making it into the hands of those who create web content - then perhaps we should ask why. It is my pet peeve of course.
In economic terms - the flow of money is opposite the flow of goods and services. But in the net we have this situation.
Content:
website -> uplink -> backbone -> downlink -> ISP -> websurfer
Money:
website -> uplink ? backbone -< downlink -> ISP -> websurfer
It isn't the backbone who is the culprit here. It is the system where the telephone carrier is willing to pay the backbone operators for the connection because they need content and have no choice... but these same companies are typically unwilling to pay the websites that supply the same commodity. What difference does it make to a telephone company where the content comes from? If they are willing to pay say Sprintlink for bandwidth which supplies content - then why not the website operator in their neck of the woods? If the local webmaster's content weren't valuable then people wouldn't click on his website!
This creates the situation where Telstra (an Australian telco) pays for Australian content being delivered off USA hosting companies but at the same time Telstra is unwilling to pay an Australian company to provide content. Why an Australian company would be willing to pay Americans but not Australians is a good question to ask.
Of course - were Telstra to pay Australians for the content they create - then the question remains whether Americans or anyone else would be willing to pay Telstra for the opportunity to connect for the Australian content that Telstra thusly makes available.
Classic monopoly/oligopoly IMHO. Sometimes terribly unfair things get entrenched. It can be changed and there are questions in my mind how many laws are being broken. (1) copyright. Caching proxies dupicate content and this is specifically against copyright law. (2) Fair trade practices. Sometimes deals are offered to some content suppliers.. Microsoft? Yahoo? Thompson newspapers in Canada? but not to anyone else. (3) Anti competitive trade practices. IE - if we can trade shares then we can do business... Otherwise forget it. (that was the "convergance" theme wasn't it - between the telecomunication industry and the newspaper industry).
If the chicken farming industry worked the same way then every egg farmer would have to sign a contract with a retailer in order to get his eggs on the market. If retailers were given this much market clout then (1) there would be a shortage of eggs and (2) they would be a lot more expensive. Finally (3) Barriers to entering the chicken farming business would be way to steep for most chicken farmers.