Two: If you don't even know what large objects are, why do you have a problem with this?
Perhaps he thinks he misread that as the direct english meaning: "something large". Slony can store and replicate big stuff, it just won't replicate things that aren't tuples. But tuples in PostgreSQL can be big and efficient.
PostgreSQL replication will force you to consider the real consequences of your choices in various situations. MySQL replication will say that it's working, but you won't really know what actually happens (i.e. where your data is, and what it means) in event X. I think he could benefit from learning about Slony-I.
How fast is it against MyISAM? (MySQL's main selling point for a lot of people)
Well, you should probably consider the planner too. After all, if it's using a dumb plan, or if it is lacking a "feature" that allows it to choose an efficient plan, even a "slow" database will be faster. Remember, optimizing the algorithm is usually much more important to performance than reducing the parsing time of a query.
Example: You need to go 15 places all over town today. Is it faster to take a Fararri and visit in a random order, or to plan the route to travel a shorter total distance and avoid traffic?
And you should probably consider a million other things, as well, but I don't think they'd fit in a/. post.
"Slony-I", but from what I could find it doesn't replicate schema changes to the slaves
That's a feature, not a bug. That means you can have DB1 be master for Table1 and slave (subscriber) for Table2, and DB2 be master for Table2 and slave (subscriber) for Table1. You can also chain subscriptions to make a hierarchy, which allows for very good scalability.
Oh, and if you want to replicate schema changes, use the Slony-I "execute script" command. It will lock down all the tables as necessary and synchronize the changes so that nothing gets out of order. Slony-I keeps everything transactionally consistent.
Slony also doesn't replicate "large objects"
Ignore that. A large object is basically an interface to a file over the PostgreSQL protocol. You don't need them to efficiently store large amounts of data. Put a GB into a text type if you want (or bytea type for binary data).
I encourage you to take a closer look at Slony-I. It's what the.org and.info registries use. It's good software. It's also great for an upgrade path when you have a lot of data and don't want to be down for a dump/reload.
However, shipping with that setting disabled doesn't do much to improve MySql's data integrity reputation.
Not only that, one of the major selling points of MySQL is that it has many applications. If you deviate from the standard configuration, many of those apps will break. That's one of the problems with the "configureware" mentality, just like in PHP, except that MySQL is lower on the stack so it's worse.
It's because MySQL runs like dogmeat on FreeBSD, no matter which threading libraries you use.
Well, PostgreSQL launches a process per connection, so I don't see how that could explain the difference. Or are you saying that threading is slower than using processes?
Why are you so sure it's the threading, when he gave no details? If he had consultants coming in, most likely he would have a connection pool if that would have helped. You appear to have latched onto this explanation because MySQL must always be faster, and if it's not, it must be the OS's fault, right?
Maybe he just had a lot of concurrent connections, which is one of many areas where PostgreSQL can show a major improvement over MySQL.
There are a bunch more with similar results at tweakers.net. It could also be the PostgreSQL planner, which has had major improvements recently. Or, it could be one of the myriad other amazing things about PostgreSQL (which are often written off as "unecessary features").
PostgreSQL does use bitmap indexes, just not on-disk (as nconway said, should be in 8.3).
PostgreSQL currently uses bitmap scans to combine indexes (which means fewer multi-column indexes are necessary), and also to reorder the results of an indexscan in disk block order so that it can get blocks in disk order with better cache behavior.
Your proposal simply forces those without the resources to have smaller houses and cheaper cars.
And how is that different from income tax?
You are now errecting a monetary wall, that is arbitrarily set.
Doesn't have to be.
a worse nightmare then the current scheme.
How so? You can get money from any source, and you only have to track what you actually spend. For most people, this would just be credit card statements and ATM withdrawls, and a monthly rent check (or mortgage). Add 'em up and pay the taxes. A lot of this could be automated.
Income tax is about as fair as you can get it.
The reason that this is more fair is because people can't get around it when they're living life large. There are many people who pay very low taxes and consume huge amounts of resources. This is because truly rich people usually already have all the money they need, and therefore pay little or no taxes.
You may not make money where you live, but you almost certainly consume resources where you live. That makes it harder to avoid taxes by making money one place, having a legal residence another, and actually living in a high-tax area.
If you think about it, income tax makes no sense at all. It's essentially saying that once you have money in the bank you're free and clear of taxation. So, you have no incentive to keep money there for investment, retirement, etc.
Also, what sense does it make as a society to take money out of one person's bank account through income tax versus some other account? Bank accounts represent the savings of the entire society until the owner of the account chooses to use that money to consume. Until they do that it's not even really "their" money, so society is just stealing from it's own savings by "taxing the rich". Taking their money may restrict their ability to consume and may not, but that's too indirect and pointless.
People think about money in entirely the wrong way. You don't "own" it, money is a marker that you can use to reallocate resources. You don't own any part of it until you decide to reallocate resources to yourself (i.e. consume). It doesn't matter whether rich people can "afford" to pay taxes or not, it matters how the resources that money represents are reallocated.
Suppose I dedicate my time to producing large amounts of weaponized anthrax, and buying as few consumer goods as possible.
Hahah. I think that's an example of "the exception proves the rule". Generally, productivity means you do something useful or create a useful product.
stimulating commerce for Apple
This is an example of visible benefits and invisible costs. The benefits are obvious: people get more jobs making iPods, and the newly-employed iPod makers buy other stuff. The cost is what other, more useful things may have been created and purchased if you didn't buy the iPods. For instance, maybe someone would use the flash memory for other products that are needed more urgently than your iPod collection. There is no free lunch, and you consuming those iPods has a negative overall effect on the rest of society.
You're thinking of things in terms of "Item X is taxed at rate Y". I am saying that maybe a cheap car isn't taxed at all, but an expensive one is. The first 500 sq ft. might not be taxed at all, but the next 500 might be. Someone who lives very cheaply and for some reason buys a plasma screen might not pay a dime in taxes. Someone with a 500 sq ft apartment in Manhattan might pay taxes, while someone with a 1000 sq ft apartment in Kansas might not.
This is my perspective: There are differences in consumption depending on how much money you have. Let's say you have no taxes on someone who is consuming less than $x, which might be based on someone living in about 500 sq ft. in a median-sized town somewhere, and eating basic food staples and taking the bus to work. If your income is high, you will consume more than that because you can, and you can't take your money with you when you die anyway. So, have progressive taxes going up from there. Want a 750 sq ft place closer to work, and a car? Pay a small amount in taxes. Want a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, a BMW, and steak every night? Pay a lot in taxes. Anything over $x you consume that year is taxed. Anything over 2*$x is taxed more heavily (for example). Progressive.
It's no more complicated than our current income tax, that's for sure. And this way it discourages debt, encourages savings, encourages production, discourages consumption.
most large charities have recognised this and publish breakdowns of their spending
Right. And I applaud charities who spend their money wisely. I'm just trying to show that the money you give to a charity doesn't really come from YOU, it comes from your bank account, which had the money invested in labor and capital elsewhere.
Now, I should have said, if you forego consumption and give to a charity instead, that is all good for society, and should be recognized as such.
Food is wasted at fast-food restaurants while people starve outside.
Of course businesses aren't 100% efficient. You could pick 1000 other examples. However, the point is that there IS negative feedback that limits how inefficient the business can be. If they sold one meal for every 1000 they threw away, that business would be liquidated by the shareholders and the shareholders would replace it with another more efficient business. That's called negative feedback, and it keeps businesses on the track of efficiency.
the real world is not the happy ideal world of the proof of capitalism's efficiency
The point of capitalism is not that it's perfectly efficient, but it allows correction when things become inefficient. Governments, schools, and foundations have much less in the way of feedback, and what feedback does happen is MUCH slower and MUCH less direct. If the government needs to move in a new direction, it takes YEARS to get new representatives, new bills, and new votes. By that time the correction is long overdue, and everyone's way off course. Also, by that time, the issue has been combined with so many other issues that a voter cannot logically separate the issues or determine causation as easily.
If a business gets a little off-course, people get fired, capital is liquidated, and people are laid off. Those resources are then free for use by another company. This can happen to even a large business in a quarter year, and a smaller business in a few days.
Also, under capitalism, generally the people with the most direct knowledge of a matter and the most interested parties are the ones making the decisions. That information is very valuable, and the processing of that information can't be done by a small group effectively. Capitalism works because the entire population is processing information around them constantly. A small fraction of the population simply can't collect and calculate the information quickly enough to be more efficient than capitalism. That's why socialism fails, and will continue to fail until they solve that problem.
As for producing rather then consuming, it's rather hard to justify useless work as being efficient.
Useless work is not production. Production is creating something that is demanded (by yourself or someone else).
Oh, and shouldn't we welcome high unemployment rates as proof that we all have time to spare and still make all the goods we need?
Nice try. You're using two different definitions of "unemployment". The economic definition is "people looking for work". If they are looking for work, that probably means that they are consuming without producing. That is undesirable because, as I said, we want people to produce more than they consume. In capitalism, there is negative feedback for not working, in specific, if you don't work you are eventually prevented from consuming.
I just think there should be some way to preserve it without complete dissolution being the best course of action.
"Should" is not a useful word in the real world, unfortunately. A foundation is insulated from all external pressures. This can be good in some cases, but it ultimately leads to uselessness of the foundation.
Everything is a tradeoff. When a foundation spends a dollar, that means the foundation is liquidating $1 worth of capital and labor in the marketplace. If they spend enough money, people lose their jobs, factories shut down, and new businesses are unable to find the resources (capital and labor) to start up.
Of course, that dollar is hopefully spent wisely. If it is spent wisely, the benefits will outweigh the aforementioned costs. With someone like Bill Gates in charge, I'm sure those dollars are spent wisely. After he dies, who will make sure the dollars continue to be spent wisely? There is no feedback cycle to correct the course when they start making bad choices. Businesses do have a feedback cycle: their resources are taken away from them when they become inefficient.
Donating to charity, although it makes you feel good, can actually be bad for society unless you make SURE your resources are used more wisely than where they were before.
The best economic thing a normal person can do for society is to produce as much as possible, and consume as little as possible. It's simple, but rarely said. However, here in the US (like most countries), we tax production and not consumption (or very little, anyway). There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.
(1) Being forced to use heating and cooking utilities that work perfectly fine, but are not your particular preference (2) Allowing foreigners to kill your fellow citizens at will without repercussions
#1 doesn't sound so bad, after all. I mean, heat is heat.
Building such a large foundation is no small task, it just seems like a waste to dissolve all the work that went into it just because the founders aren't alive.
But foundations have a tendency to lose their way quickly after the benefactors die. There are no reality checks when it comes to a foundation, there is no feedback cycle that keeps them healthy.
Look at the Nobel Prize. It's more of a political organization than anything else.
science can remain apolitical, as long as it rigidly adheres to the scientfic principles of reproducibility and transparency
You hit an important point: Forensics are not Science
Global warming is more like an applied science, like forensics, that is used to construct an explanation or a scenario. Science is all about testing hypotheses.
You can test only the most basic claims of global warming, that is, that the Earth is warming. That's pretty much where it ends. Once you start extrapolating, it is no longer science, it is more like forensics. Nobody can create their own Earth and install non-CO2-producing humans and see what happens.
Forensics uses well-tested scientific theories or laws to infer unknown details from known facts. That has all kinds of political and social implications, because you may change public policy or you may convict someone based on forensics. There's plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree.
In science, the only valid approaches are to develop new theories that fit the facts, and to test the implications of those theories. This can be quite apolitical, so long as people separate their data from their extrapolations. However, extrapolations are what sell newspapers and gain research funding. And global warming scientists are certainly not above saying "the sky is falling" to get a big grant (I'm sure some are, but we can't assume that).
Science: It has increased 10 degrees since this morning. Theory that has been successfully tested 5 times since 6am: The temperature increases 5 degrees per hour. Extrapolation: It will be 150 degrees by Thursday. News Headline: Scientists predict the hottest night in history!
There are no clean sources of power. Every form of power generation has an environmental cost when you actually try to scale it out.
Windmills interfere with nature by killing birds, requiring lots of power cabling going to a bunch of different locations, and in general just take up a lot of space that could otherwise be more natural. Same with tidal power and solar (how "clean" is the process of producing/destroying photovoltaic cells?). Hydoelectric power is fairly effective, but has environmental costs as well.
Everything looks great when you build one. The fact is, we need power that SCALES. We have a huge (and increasing) population that needs a huge (and increasing) amount of power. If 10% of that power was generated with wave energy, believe me, there would be a much larger environmental cost than a few radioactive elements that we can bury.
In fact, for the scale this world operates on, power wise, oil is one of the cleanest ways to get power. The only thing with a real potential to beat it is fission and fusion. So let's get working on it!
Therefore, a project geared specifically towards producing alternate fuel sources would definitely be more productive by design.
It would certainly be nice. However, on either front, the Manhattan Project is hard to beat. I think in today's dollars it would be about $100B in total funding.
I would not be opposed to building a project on that scale to develop better energy policies, even if it was all U.S. dollars. Just, please, do not ask U.S. citizens to give $100B to Kofi Annan. It would be so grossly misappropriated it would make Enron look like nothing. It's sad that the U.N. is that worthless, but they are.
Let's just make a few treaties to get some joint research projects going or something. ANYTHING but the U.N.
Sex crimes are the only crimes punishable with open-ended sentences and are the only ones where sentences can be extended after the fact.
You're probably talking about NY, and that policy received much criticism. They should do like Florida and just put the person away for 25 years on the first offense, no parole, no judicial leeway. Then the person can't commit as many crimes, because they'll be in prison. Problem solved.
I don't know of any state where that's considered being a sexual predator. That's statutory rape, which is still a felony, but not punished as severely.
What do you know? The laws actually make sense. They have multiple lines with varying degrees of enforcement and punishment.
an infinitely small amount of time
In order to live in a society of laws, we need lines. Age is one of those lines. What if Germany moves their army "just a little bit" into Poland?
But pedophiles go to Jail
Only if they act on it. That's because they know what they do is illegal, and they do it anyway. Schizophrenics might never even commit any crimes.
Maybe he was a "victim" of a pedophile when he was a kid.
So, what? Punish his abuser. Being a victim in a previous crime doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions. If you were robbed, that doesn't entitle you to rob someone else to "get even".
Don't get me wrong, I have very little love for the UN, but who else would you put in charge of billions in funding from dozens of modern nations?
Well, pretty much all scientific research benefits everyone, so it seems tempting to try to collaborate research dollars. However, there's no organization really capable of that, and certainly none capable of compelling the funds required.
What really works is to get the projects going with whoever is willing to fund them. I don't see any benefit to involving the U.N. The U.S. (and many other countries) already funds a lot of research, and will surely fund more. Why not just say that we should all increase our research budgets for these things rather than trying to get Kofi Annan to manage a gigantic research effort?
So we need to invest more in hydrogen research, or better yet on developing better batteries, in order to switch to electric motors instead of internal combustion.
I couldn't agree more. I just thought it was funny that you said "the more productive version of the Manhattan project", when really we're building on top of one of the best research projects in history.
Hell, since the UN is pretty good at administration (if nothing else)
After the oil for food scandel, you want to give them more money?
The modern (and more productive) version of the Manhattan project.
I find that ironic since the most promising way to get the most energy for the lowest cost (including environmental cost) is nuclear power.
The solution is right in front of our face. Nuclear is the way to go. Things like solar and wave energy are a joke that may be economical only in very specific situations.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. These days you can easily run databases with tens of millions of records on consumer hardware.
[ ignoring some of the unnecessary rudeness ]
Two: If you don't even know what large objects are, why do you have a problem with this?
Perhaps he thinks he misread that as the direct english meaning: "something large". Slony can store and replicate big stuff, it just won't replicate things that aren't tuples. But tuples in PostgreSQL can be big and efficient.
PostgreSQL replication will force you to consider the real consequences of your choices in various situations. MySQL replication will say that it's working, but you won't really know what actually happens (i.e. where your data is, and what it means) in event X. I think he could benefit from learning about Slony-I.
How fast is it against MyISAM? (MySQL's main selling point for a lot of people)
/. post.
Well, you should probably consider the planner too. After all, if it's using a dumb plan, or if it is lacking a "feature" that allows it to choose an efficient plan, even a "slow" database will be faster. Remember, optimizing the algorithm is usually much more important to performance than reducing the parsing time of a query.
Example: You need to go 15 places all over town today. Is it faster to take a Fararri and visit in a random order, or to plan the route to travel a shorter total distance and avoid traffic?
And you should probably consider a million other things, as well, but I don't think they'd fit in a
Or get shell access and install it yourself. It works nicely without any special privileges.
"Slony-I", but from what I could find it doesn't replicate schema changes to the slaves
.org and .info registries use. It's good software. It's also great for an upgrade path when you have a lot of data and don't want to be down for a dump/reload.
That's a feature, not a bug. That means you can have DB1 be master for Table1 and slave (subscriber) for Table2, and DB2 be master for Table2 and slave (subscriber) for Table1. You can also chain subscriptions to make a hierarchy, which allows for very good scalability.
Oh, and if you want to replicate schema changes, use the Slony-I "execute script" command. It will lock down all the tables as necessary and synchronize the changes so that nothing gets out of order. Slony-I keeps everything transactionally consistent.
Slony also doesn't replicate "large objects"
Ignore that. A large object is basically an interface to a file over the PostgreSQL protocol. You don't need them to efficiently store large amounts of data. Put a GB into a text type if you want (or bytea type for binary data).
I encourage you to take a closer look at Slony-I. It's what the
However, shipping with that setting disabled doesn't do much to improve MySql's data integrity reputation.
Not only that, one of the major selling points of MySQL is that it has many applications. If you deviate from the standard configuration, many of those apps will break. That's one of the problems with the "configureware" mentality, just like in PHP, except that MySQL is lower on the stack so it's worse.
It's because MySQL runs like dogmeat on FreeBSD, no matter which threading libraries you use.
Well, PostgreSQL launches a process per connection, so I don't see how that could explain the difference. Or are you saying that threading is slower than using processes?
Why are you so sure it's the threading, when he gave no details? If he had consultants coming in, most likely he would have a connection pool if that would have helped. You appear to have latched onto this explanation because MySQL must always be faster, and if it's not, it must be the OS's fault, right?
Maybe he just had a lot of concurrent connections, which is one of many areas where PostgreSQL can show a major improvement over MySQL.
http://tweakers.net/reviews/657/6
There are a bunch more with similar results at tweakers.net. It could also be the PostgreSQL planner, which has had major improvements recently. Or, it could be one of the myriad other amazing things about PostgreSQL (which are often written off as "unecessary features").
A more detailed report, even if anonymous, would be helpful. Can you post your findings on the web, such as workload, hardware, etc?
PostgreSQL does use bitmap indexes, just not on-disk (as nconway said, should be in 8.3).
PostgreSQL currently uses bitmap scans to combine indexes (which means fewer multi-column indexes are necessary), and also to reorder the results of an indexscan in disk block order so that it can get blocks in disk order with better cache behavior.
Your proposal simply forces those without the resources to have smaller houses and cheaper cars.
And how is that different from income tax?
You are now errecting a monetary wall, that is arbitrarily set.
Doesn't have to be.
a worse nightmare then the current scheme.
How so? You can get money from any source, and you only have to track what you actually spend. For most people, this would just be credit card statements and ATM withdrawls, and a monthly rent check (or mortgage). Add 'em up and pay the taxes. A lot of this could be automated.
Income tax is about as fair as you can get it.
The reason that this is more fair is because people can't get around it when they're living life large. There are many people who pay very low taxes and consume huge amounts of resources. This is because truly rich people usually already have all the money they need, and therefore pay little or no taxes.
You may not make money where you live, but you almost certainly consume resources where you live. That makes it harder to avoid taxes by making money one place, having a legal residence another, and actually living in a high-tax area.
If you think about it, income tax makes no sense at all. It's essentially saying that once you have money in the bank you're free and clear of taxation. So, you have no incentive to keep money there for investment, retirement, etc.
Also, what sense does it make as a society to take money out of one person's bank account through income tax versus some other account? Bank accounts represent the savings of the entire society until the owner of the account chooses to use that money to consume. Until they do that it's not even really "their" money, so society is just stealing from it's own savings by "taxing the rich". Taking their money may restrict their ability to consume and may not, but that's too indirect and pointless.
People think about money in entirely the wrong way. You don't "own" it, money is a marker that you can use to reallocate resources. You don't own any part of it until you decide to reallocate resources to yourself (i.e. consume). It doesn't matter whether rich people can "afford" to pay taxes or not, it matters how the resources that money represents are reallocated.
Suppose I dedicate my time to producing large amounts of weaponized anthrax, and buying as few consumer goods as possible.
Hahah. I think that's an example of "the exception proves the rule". Generally, productivity means you do something useful or create a useful product.
stimulating commerce for Apple
This is an example of visible benefits and invisible costs. The benefits are obvious: people get more jobs making iPods, and the newly-employed iPod makers buy other stuff. The cost is what other, more useful things may have been created and purchased if you didn't buy the iPods. For instance, maybe someone would use the flash memory for other products that are needed more urgently than your iPod collection. There is no free lunch, and you consuming those iPods has a negative overall effect on the rest of society.
Could you provide some sources
You're thinking of things in terms of "Item X is taxed at rate Y". I am saying that maybe a cheap car isn't taxed at all, but an expensive one is. The first 500 sq ft. might not be taxed at all, but the next 500 might be. Someone who lives very cheaply and for some reason buys a plasma screen might not pay a dime in taxes. Someone with a 500 sq ft apartment in Manhattan might pay taxes, while someone with a 1000 sq ft apartment in Kansas might not.
This is my perspective: There are differences in consumption depending on how much money you have. Let's say you have no taxes on someone who is consuming less than $x, which might be based on someone living in about 500 sq ft. in a median-sized town somewhere, and eating basic food staples and taking the bus to work. If your income is high, you will consume more than that because you can, and you can't take your money with you when you die anyway. So, have progressive taxes going up from there. Want a 750 sq ft place closer to work, and a car? Pay a small amount in taxes. Want a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, a BMW, and steak every night? Pay a lot in taxes. Anything over $x you consume that year is taxed. Anything over 2*$x is taxed more heavily (for example). Progressive.
It's no more complicated than our current income tax, that's for sure. And this way it discourages debt, encourages savings, encourages production, discourages consumption.
most large charities have recognised this and publish breakdowns of their spending
Right. And I applaud charities who spend their money wisely. I'm just trying to show that the money you give to a charity doesn't really come from YOU, it comes from your bank account, which had the money invested in labor and capital elsewhere.
Now, I should have said, if you forego consumption and give to a charity instead, that is all good for society, and should be recognized as such.
Food is wasted at fast-food restaurants while people starve outside.
Of course businesses aren't 100% efficient. You could pick 1000 other examples. However, the point is that there IS negative feedback that limits how inefficient the business can be. If they sold one meal for every 1000 they threw away, that business would be liquidated by the shareholders and the shareholders would replace it with another more efficient business. That's called negative feedback, and it keeps businesses on the track of efficiency.
the real world is not the happy ideal world of the proof of capitalism's efficiency
The point of capitalism is not that it's perfectly efficient, but it allows correction when things become inefficient. Governments, schools, and foundations have much less in the way of feedback, and what feedback does happen is MUCH slower and MUCH less direct. If the government needs to move in a new direction, it takes YEARS to get new representatives, new bills, and new votes. By that time the correction is long overdue, and everyone's way off course. Also, by that time, the issue has been combined with so many other issues that a voter cannot logically separate the issues or determine causation as easily.
If a business gets a little off-course, people get fired, capital is liquidated, and people are laid off. Those resources are then free for use by another company. This can happen to even a large business in a quarter year, and a smaller business in a few days.
Also, under capitalism, generally the people with the most direct knowledge of a matter and the most interested parties are the ones making the decisions. That information is very valuable, and the processing of that information can't be done by a small group effectively. Capitalism works because the entire population is processing information around them constantly. A small fraction of the population simply can't collect and calculate the information quickly enough to be more efficient than capitalism. That's why socialism fails, and will continue to fail until they solve that problem.
As for producing rather then consuming, it's rather hard to justify useless work as being efficient.
Useless work is not production. Production is creating something that is demanded (by yourself or someone else).
Oh, and shouldn't we welcome high unemployment rates as proof that we all have time to spare and still make all the goods we need?
Nice try. You're using two different definitions of "unemployment". The economic definition is "people looking for work". If they are looking for work, that probably means that they are consuming without producing. That is undesirable because, as I said, we want people to produce more than they consume. In capitalism, there is negative feedback for not working, in specific, if you don't work you are eventually prevented from consuming.
I just think there should be some way to preserve it without complete dissolution being the best course of action.
"Should" is not a useful word in the real world, unfortunately. A foundation is insulated from all external pressures. This can be good in some cases, but it ultimately leads to uselessness of the foundation.
Everything is a tradeoff. When a foundation spends a dollar, that means the foundation is liquidating $1 worth of capital and labor in the marketplace. If they spend enough money, people lose their jobs, factories shut down, and new businesses are unable to find the resources (capital and labor) to start up.
Of course, that dollar is hopefully spent wisely. If it is spent wisely, the benefits will outweigh the aforementioned costs. With someone like Bill Gates in charge, I'm sure those dollars are spent wisely. After he dies, who will make sure the dollars continue to be spent wisely? There is no feedback cycle to correct the course when they start making bad choices. Businesses do have a feedback cycle: their resources are taken away from them when they become inefficient.
Donating to charity, although it makes you feel good, can actually be bad for society unless you make SURE your resources are used more wisely than where they were before.
The best economic thing a normal person can do for society is to produce as much as possible, and consume as little as possible. It's simple, but rarely said. However, here in the US (like most countries), we tax production and not consumption (or very little, anyway). There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.
You have two choices:
(1) Being forced to use heating and cooking utilities that work perfectly fine, but are not your particular preference
(2) Allowing foreigners to kill your fellow citizens at will without repercussions
#1 doesn't sound so bad, after all. I mean, heat is heat.
Building such a large foundation is no small task, it just seems like a waste to dissolve all the work that went into it just because the founders aren't alive.
But foundations have a tendency to lose their way quickly after the benefactors die. There are no reality checks when it comes to a foundation, there is no feedback cycle that keeps them healthy.
Look at the Nobel Prize. It's more of a political organization than anything else.
science can remain apolitical, as long as it rigidly adheres to the scientfic principles of reproducibility and transparency
You hit an important point: Forensics are not Science
Global warming is more like an applied science, like forensics, that is used to construct an explanation or a scenario. Science is all about testing hypotheses.
You can test only the most basic claims of global warming, that is, that the Earth is warming. That's pretty much where it ends. Once you start extrapolating, it is no longer science, it is more like forensics. Nobody can create their own Earth and install non-CO2-producing humans and see what happens.
Forensics uses well-tested scientific theories or laws to infer unknown details from known facts. That has all kinds of political and social implications, because you may change public policy or you may convict someone based on forensics. There's plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree.
In science, the only valid approaches are to develop new theories that fit the facts, and to test the implications of those theories. This can be quite apolitical, so long as people separate their data from their extrapolations. However, extrapolations are what sell newspapers and gain research funding. And global warming scientists are certainly not above saying "the sky is falling" to get a big grant (I'm sure some are, but we can't assume that).
Science: It has increased 10 degrees since this morning.
Theory that has been successfully tested 5 times since 6am: The temperature increases 5 degrees per hour.
Extrapolation: It will be 150 degrees by Thursday.
News Headline: Scientists predict the hottest night in history!
What kind of experiment might I perform to test the accuracy of a global warming doomsday theory?
And I'm not just talking about "the Earth is getting warmer". We all know that.
more interest in pushing their political agenda than teaching science
If I read that out of context, I would guess you were talking about the environmentalists.
Pot, meet Kettle.
clean sources
There are no clean sources of power. Every form of power generation has an environmental cost when you actually try to scale it out.
Windmills interfere with nature by killing birds, requiring lots of power cabling going to a bunch of different locations, and in general just take up a lot of space that could otherwise be more natural. Same with tidal power and solar (how "clean" is the process of producing/destroying photovoltaic cells?). Hydoelectric power is fairly effective, but has environmental costs as well.
Everything looks great when you build one. The fact is, we need power that SCALES. We have a huge (and increasing) population that needs a huge (and increasing) amount of power. If 10% of that power was generated with wave energy, believe me, there would be a much larger environmental cost than a few radioactive elements that we can bury.
In fact, for the scale this world operates on, power wise, oil is one of the cleanest ways to get power. The only thing with a real potential to beat it is fission and fusion. So let's get working on it!
Therefore, a project geared specifically towards producing alternate fuel sources would definitely be more productive by design.
It would certainly be nice. However, on either front, the Manhattan Project is hard to beat. I think in today's dollars it would be about $100B in total funding.
I would not be opposed to building a project on that scale to develop better energy policies, even if it was all U.S. dollars. Just, please, do not ask U.S. citizens to give $100B to Kofi Annan. It would be so grossly misappropriated it would make Enron look like nothing. It's sad that the U.N. is that worthless, but they are.
Let's just make a few treaties to get some joint research projects going or something. ANYTHING but the U.N.
Sex crimes are the only crimes punishable with open-ended sentences and are the only ones where sentences can be extended after the fact.
You're probably talking about NY, and that policy received much criticism. They should do like Florida and just put the person away for 25 years on the first offense, no parole, no judicial leeway. Then the person can't commit as many crimes, because they'll be in prison. Problem solved.
you are 35 and screwing a 17 year old
I don't know of any state where that's considered being a sexual predator. That's statutory rape, which is still a felony, but not punished as severely.
What do you know? The laws actually make sense. They have multiple lines with varying degrees of enforcement and punishment.
an infinitely small amount of time
In order to live in a society of laws, we need lines. Age is one of those lines. What if Germany moves their army "just a little bit" into Poland?
But pedophiles go to Jail
Only if they act on it. That's because they know what they do is illegal, and they do it anyway. Schizophrenics might never even commit any crimes.
Maybe he was a "victim" of a pedophile when he was a kid.
So, what? Punish his abuser. Being a victim in a previous crime doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions. If you were robbed, that doesn't entitle you to rob someone else to "get even".
Don't get me wrong, I have very little love for the UN, but who else would you put in charge of billions in funding from dozens of modern nations?
Well, pretty much all scientific research benefits everyone, so it seems tempting to try to collaborate research dollars. However, there's no organization really capable of that, and certainly none capable of compelling the funds required.
What really works is to get the projects going with whoever is willing to fund them. I don't see any benefit to involving the U.N. The U.S. (and many other countries) already funds a lot of research, and will surely fund more. Why not just say that we should all increase our research budgets for these things rather than trying to get Kofi Annan to manage a gigantic research effort?
So we need to invest more in hydrogen research, or better yet on developing better batteries, in order to switch to electric motors instead of internal combustion.
I couldn't agree more. I just thought it was funny that you said "the more productive version of the Manhattan project", when really we're building on top of one of the best research projects in history.
Hell, since the UN is pretty good at administration (if nothing else)
After the oil for food scandel, you want to give them more money?
The modern (and more productive) version of the Manhattan project.
I find that ironic since the most promising way to get the most energy for the lowest cost (including environmental cost) is nuclear power.
The solution is right in front of our face. Nuclear is the way to go. Things like solar and wave energy are a joke that may be economical only in very specific situations.