Germany has met it's obligations under the Kyoto protocol because the former East German economy collapsed. The East German economy was collapsing anyway and Germany was allowd to use the reduction in heavy industries in East Germany led to a reduction in C02 Emissions.
Many industries in Germany are exempt from the carbon tax. The Carbon tax is not universal. Such a tax favors large corporations at the expense of small and medium sized businesses which cannot afford lobbying of government etc.
I read the article which you linked to. There are all kinds of 'projections' about increased numbers of jobs. There are no actual reports of jobs being created.
If you give $10 Billion to people to dig holes then you have created a certain number of jobs. This is a very expensive and inefficient way of doing so and does not contribute to an overall increase in well-being etc.
The carbon tax will be regressive. People on lower incomes will pay a higher share of their income in such a plan than wealthier people as people on lower incomes spend a higher proportion of their income on energy which is what is effectively being taxed.
You have not presented 'any actual evidence' which supports your claims.
Mann claimed that the temperatures were the hottest in 1000 years.
Monckton claims that there was a Mideval Warm Period where temperatures were as high or higher than they are today.
The report claims there is less confidence that the current temperatures are unprecedented prior when records to 1600.
If you read the full NAS report then it largely confirms what Monckton claims.
See <URL:http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309102251/html>
Also from the report:
<blockquote> In summary, MM05 [McKitrick and McIntyre] show that the normalization employed by MBH98 [Mann] tends to bias results toward having a hockey-stick-like shape, but the scope of this bias is exaggerated by the choice of normalization and errors in the RE critical value estimate. Those biases truly present in the MBH98 temperature estimate remain important issues... </blockquote>
I would not call what Social Security provides a reasonable retirement income.
Whether you feel it is a reasonable retirement income, it is a significant component of many people's retirement income.
My parents are huge savers and don't need a dime from me or the government - and since they and I aren't particularly close, in all honesty I don't feel any obligation to them even if that wasn't the case.
I was addressing self-employed people because Slashdot has a large proportion of them, including myself less than a year ago. Believe me, I felt the horrendous pain of that 12.5% every year. That's why this is such a personal issue for me.
You didn't say that you were addressing the self employed in your posting.
If you are self-employed then what was your total income last year ?
You pay 12.5% up to a certain limit which is less than $70,000. The max contribution to Social Security is around $8,750. Wealthier individuals earning $70,000 dollars or more pay less than 12.5 % of their income in Social Security Taxes.
$100,000 -> 8.75 % of income
$200,000 -> 4.375 % of income
People earning $200,000 or more pay approximately 3-5% of their income in Social Security Taxes and the percentage decreases as they get wealthier.
I have absolutely zero faith that what I collect from Social Security, if anything, will be enough to pay for a meal in a half-decent restaurant, let alone be capable of sustaining human life.
Social Security is 100% ripoff. Simple as that. Nobody should be forced into an investment programme that takes more and gives less.
Social Security is a program that allows Seniors to live with dignity. I don't hear Bush proposing that it should be abolished or that benefits should be reduced. Bush has also promised that all current and future benefits will be paid. So social security benefits will have to be paid if Bush is elected and your contributions to Social Security will not decrease.
Reagan cut taxes across the board, increased defense spending in a manner that was very effective in intimidating the soviets, and definitely helped destroy the Soviet empire. He also changed our perception of government substantially; now almost nobody talks about going to the bad old high-spending days of the 70s.
I'd say that's enough for any President - it's certainly a lot more than Clinton can claim credit for.
Reagan reduced taxes while increasing spending thus generating a $4 Trillion debt which we are still paying off.
The Reagan increase in defense spending did not bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union would have collapsed in any case. The man most responsible for bringing about the fall of the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev.
The other achievements that you cite are just as questionable.
Do you think that if Social Security was abolished tomorrow that you would get a 6.25 % pay increase from your employer or would your employer keep the money ?
If not then you do not pay 12.5 %.
You pay 12.5% up to a certain limit which is less than $70,000. The max contribution to Social Security is around $8,750. Wealthier individuals earning $200,000 dollars or more pay approximately 3-5% of their income in Social Security Taxes and the percentage decreases as they get wealthier.
Your posting contains a number of distortions and fallacies.
You don't pay 12.5% of your income in Social Security Taxes if you are not self employed.
You pay Social Security to ensure that your parents or people like your parents have a reasonable retirement income.
You will have to pay for the benefits somehow if Bush is elected because he has stated he will not cut Social Security benefits. He has also stated that he will reduce contributions to Social Security so Social Security will go bankrupt much faster.
You will eventually collect Social Security so you will get something back.
Bush's tax cuts including the elimination of the Estate tax will reduce the amount of tax paid by the wealthiest Americans and will lead to increases in taxation for lower and middle income families.
As the projections for the surplus do not include increases in spending even under a Republican controlled congress, Bush's tax cuts, will lead to deficits, interest rate increases and an economic slowdown which will lead to lower revenues, bigger deficits, higher interest rates etc
Bush has not been successful in administering a large state. He has a minor role in Texas where the Governor has little power under the state constitution. He has built coalitions in a state which is more conservative than almost any other state in the US. He is not that popular in Texas as the level of voter turnout and support that he received in Texas were low. He would not be able to build consensus at a national level as the nation is on the whole more liberal than Texas.
He is succesful in claiming credit for the success of policies in the field of Education which were introduced before he was elected and which he opposed while running for Governor. Texas has among the worst records in child healthcare and environmental issues in the US. On the other hand, if you consider subsidising oil companies success then he has been successful.
Reagan didn't manage to do a whole lot more than Clinton. Name 5 major domestic policy initiatives that improved the lives of ordinary Americans for which Reagan was responsible or which Reagan initiated.
What Reagan managed to do was run up a $4 Trillion debt which currently consumes 14% of Federal Spending and which if Bush is elected will consume $300 Billion more in interest than if Gore is elected. This leaves less room for real affordable tax cuts for working and middle income families.
Gore has published fairly detailed policy documents in a number of areas. He hasn't radically altered any of his positions during the course of the campaign. He has varied his rhetorical style and presentation but the substance of his policies have not changed over the course of the campaign.
The only issues that Bush and the rest of the Republicans care about are
huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans
changes to enviromental, personal injury and other laws which will please their corporate backers and protect polluters, HMOs, the tobacco companies and Microsoft.
Gore will be a much better leader than Bush. He is much smarter, more responsible and focused on issues that will improve the lives of most Americans.
Saying that inteligence doesn't matter is kind of dumb.
Mindshare and Open Source Some people involved in this discussion are arguing that KDE will be marginalised because big corporations such as Sun et al are adopting, deploying and supporting GNOME. If the world worked that way Linux would not be as successful as it is. Large corporations came late to the open source movement which was based from the beginning on leadership by developers, technical excellence and a volunteer ethos rather than leadership by CEOs, marketing excellence and a commercial ethos.
Licensing Many comments have been posted stating that large corporations refused to support KDE because they do not want to pay TrollTech for QT. Trolltech have released QT under the QPL free of charge for Free software development under X11. The QPL is an open source license and is compatible with the GPL and LGPL. So you only have to pay for QT for X11 if you are developing closed source software under X11. If GNOME has been selected by the corporations because they do not want to pay Trolltech then the implication is that these corporations are planning to develop closed source applications for X11. So GNOME allows corporations to deploy closed source applications under X11 which undermines to a certain extent the proclaimed aim of the GNOME movement, the development of an Open Source desktop.
In the light of these points, I think it is fair to say that KDE is now the Open Source Desktop as it conforms more to the Open Source Desktop ethos and promotes the goals of the Open Source movement more than GNOME does at the moment.
First thing is that in IMHO you have selectively quoted from the statement in a way that somewhat distorts it's tone.
It is widely acknowledged Object-Oriented development using an Object-Oriented langauge such as Smalltalk, Delphi, Java, Python or C++ offers a lot of benefits when developing GUI components or applications that use a GUI. These technologies are widely used in the development of GUI applications across all platforms.
The KDE developers believe that a C++ toolkit, as opposed to a C based toolkit, is the way to go when developing GUI code. C++ is much more widely used in GUI development across all platforms than C.
There are many people who post on Slashdot saying that they use C rather than C++ to develop their GUI code. This is fine but it doesn't change the fact that most people who develop GUI applications regard an OO based approach as the way to go for GUI application development.
It is therefore not irrational to argue that GTK is inferior to Qt for GUI development as GTK is C based whereas Qt is C++ based.
Your points about the comparison between Mozilla and Konqueror have already been addressed.
Here is the statement from Matthias...
Mathias Ettrich: KDE is a true open source project that consists mainly of voluntary work.
You can't compare this to commercial open source projects like Mozilla or the Eazel file manager. KDE gets written because its authors want to write it, while those commercial open source projects get written because somebody senses business and pays programmers to do the job. Don't get me wrong, that's a perfectly sane thing to do, but it also has an influence on the choice of tools. While you can easily make programmers work with inferior technologies and let them reinvent everything from scratch by giving them enough money, you cannot do that in a free project like KDE. Free programmers work for fun. Better tools promise more fun. Programming with Qt is extreme fun, as it lets you concentrate on what you really wanted to do: writing an application, not fighting a toolkit or a programming language. If Netscape used Qt, they would have release a modern cross-platform browser two years ago. Now we are still waiting for a final release of Mozilla and what we will get ships with its own middleware, a new component system and yet another widget set. Compare Mozilla with Konqueror, compare the sizes of the development teams, the time they used and the results. Then judge for yourself.
What do you think is unrealistic or irrational about these comments ?
I never claimed that the amount of fossil fuels in the Earth's crust was infinite. I simply claimed that there are lot of fossil fuels available and that other forms of energy will be developed before all supplies of fossil fuels have been exhausted. Do you have any evidence that contradicts this view ?
Unsupported assertions and highly qualified hypothetical statements about possible exhaustion of resources such as: There is quite a lot of coal in the world, but still, known reserves are limited. One reason they may seem like a lot is that the industrialised countres burn petroleum instead. If petroleum resources run short, coal may not last as long.
are not evidence
Why is oil not being produced in Bavaria or Romania ? Is is because the reserves have been completely exhausted in these areas or is it because it is cheaper to produce it elsewhere e.g. the Middle East and transport it to Bavaria and Romania ?
I see that you admit that new oil fields are being discovered and that natural gas is so plentiful and cheap that it is used in huge quantities to replenish oil wells.
In the event of a major man made catastrophe such as a War or the introduction of Communism then the standard of living will fall. Such falls in living standards are not the result of overpopulation or overconsumption of resources but are the result of human stupidity.
In the liberal western capitalist democracies standards of living have been rising since the start of the industrial age with setbacks caused by war or revolution. There has never been a fall in living standards in any such society that is attributable to overpopulation or overconsumption of resources. Do you have a counterexample ?
Income has not fallen sharply for 40% of the population of the US. Their incomes may not have risen but have they fallen in absolute terms ? Besides what about the other 60% of the US population. The US population being higher today (273M) than in 1970 (203M).
I restate my understanding of Julian Simon's position and my question:
Julian Simon's position is that the quality of life or standard of living of the human race is better now than it ever has been in the past and that all available evidence shows that the standard of living of the human race as a whole will continue to rise.
Do you dispute this and do you have any real evidence that there is a shortage of resources ?
In practical terms the energy supply is non-finite. We have enough coal, oil and natural gas to last quite a long time and it is quite probable that cheaper, more efficient alternatives will be developed before these are exhausted.
This is true of most natural resources.
Simon's argument is not that any past trend will continue indefinitely. His argument is that the quality of life or standard of living of the human race is better now than it ever has been and that all available evidence shows that the standard of living of the human race will continue to rise.
Java Interfaces describe common behaviour or capabilities that may be found in a number of classes throughout a framework. C++ blurs the distinction between shared functionality & implementation and shared behaviour. If you want to avoid writing the same implementation in Java over and over then use an adapter class to provide a default implementation and extend this class. Many of the AWT classes use this pattern to reduce the amount of redundant code written to support interfaces.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi,
Germany has met it's obligations under the Kyoto protocol because the former East German economy collapsed. The East German economy was collapsing anyway and Germany was allowd to use the reduction in heavy industries in East Germany led to a reduction in C02 Emissions.
Many industries in Germany are exempt from the carbon tax. The Carbon tax is not universal. Such a tax favors large corporations at the expense of small and medium sized businesses which cannot afford lobbying of government etc.
I read the article which you linked to. There are all kinds of 'projections' about increased numbers of jobs. There are no actual reports of jobs being created.
If you give $10 Billion to people to dig holes then you have created a certain number of jobs. This is a very expensive and inefficient way of doing so and does not contribute to an overall increase in well-being etc.
The carbon tax will be regressive. People on lower incomes will pay a higher share of their income in such a plan than wealthier people as people on lower incomes spend a higher proportion of their income on energy which is what is effectively being taxed.
You have not presented 'any actual evidence' which supports your claims.
Regards
Shaughran
Hi,
Mann claimed that the temperatures were the hottest in 1000 years.
Monckton claims that there was a Mideval Warm Period where temperatures were as high or higher than they are today.
The report claims there is less confidence that the current temperatures are unprecedented prior when records to 1600.
If you read the full NAS report then it largely confirms what Monckton claims.
See <URL:http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309102251/html>
Also from the report:
<blockquote>
In summary, MM05 [McKitrick and McIntyre] show that the normalization employed by MBH98 [Mann] tends to bias results toward having a hockey-stick-like shape, but the scope of this bias is exaggerated by the choice of normalization and errors in the RE critical value estimate. Those biases truly present in the MBH98 temperature estimate remain important issues...
</blockquote>
Whether you feel it is a reasonable retirement income, it is a significant component of many people's retirement income.
My parents are huge savers and don't need a dime from me or the government - and since they and I aren't particularly close, in all honesty I don't feel any obligation to them even if that wasn't the case.
I was addressing self-employed people because Slashdot has a large proportion of them, including myself less than a year ago. Believe me, I felt the horrendous pain of that 12.5% every year. That's why this is such a personal issue for me.
You didn't say that you were addressing the self employed in your posting.
If you are self-employed then what was your total income last year ?
You pay 12.5% up to a certain limit which is less than $70,000. The max contribution to Social Security is around $8,750. Wealthier individuals earning $70,000 dollars or more pay less than 12.5 % of their income in Social Security Taxes.
$100,000 -> 8.75 % of income
$200,000 -> 4.375 % of income
People earning $200,000 or more pay approximately 3-5% of their income in Social Security Taxes and the percentage decreases as they get wealthier.
I have absolutely zero faith that what I collect from Social Security, if anything, will be enough to pay for a meal in a half-decent restaurant, let alone be capable of sustaining human life.
Social Security is 100% ripoff. Simple as that. Nobody should be forced into an investment programme that takes more and gives less.
Social Security is a program that allows Seniors to live with dignity. I don't hear Bush proposing that it should be abolished or that benefits should be reduced. Bush has also promised that all current and future benefits will be paid. So social security benefits will have to be paid if Bush is elected and your contributions to Social Security will not decrease.
Reagan cut taxes across the board, increased defense spending in a manner that was very effective in intimidating the soviets, and definitely helped destroy the Soviet empire. He also changed our perception of government substantially; now almost nobody talks about going to the bad old high-spending days of the 70s.
I'd say that's enough for any President - it's certainly a lot more than Clinton can claim credit for.
Reagan reduced taxes while increasing spending thus generating a $4 Trillion debt which we are still paying off.
The Reagan increase in defense spending did not bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union would have collapsed in any case. The man most responsible for bringing about the fall of the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev.
The other achievements that you cite are just as questionable.
Do you think that if Social Security was abolished tomorrow that you would get a 6.25 % pay increase from your employer or would your employer keep the money ?
If not then you do not pay 12.5 %.
You pay 12.5% up to a certain limit which is less than $70,000. The max contribution to Social Security is around $8,750. Wealthier individuals earning $200,000 dollars or more pay approximately 3-5% of their income in Social Security Taxes and the percentage decreases as they get wealthier.
Please feel free to address my other points..
You don't pay 12.5% of your income in Social Security Taxes if you are not self employed.
You pay Social Security to ensure that your parents or people like your parents have a reasonable retirement income.
You will have to pay for the benefits somehow if Bush is elected because he has stated he will not cut Social Security benefits. He has also stated that he will reduce contributions to Social Security so Social Security will go bankrupt much faster.
You will eventually collect Social Security so you will get something back.
Bush's tax cuts including the elimination of the Estate tax will reduce the amount of tax paid by the wealthiest Americans and will lead to increases in taxation for lower and middle income families.
As the projections for the surplus do not include increases in spending even under a Republican controlled congress, Bush's tax cuts, will lead to deficits, interest rate increases and an economic slowdown which will lead to lower revenues, bigger deficits, higher interest rates etc
Bush has not been successful in administering a large state. He has a minor role in Texas where the Governor has little power under the state constitution. He has built coalitions in a state which is more conservative than almost any other state in the US. He is not that popular in Texas as the level of voter turnout and support that he received in Texas were low. He would not be able to build consensus at a national level as the nation is on the whole more liberal than Texas.
He is succesful in claiming credit for the success of policies in the field of Education which were introduced before he was elected and which he opposed while running for Governor. Texas has among the worst records in child healthcare and environmental issues in the US. On the other hand, if you consider subsidising oil companies success then he has been successful.
Reagan didn't manage to do a whole lot more than Clinton. Name 5 major domestic policy initiatives that improved the lives of ordinary Americans for which Reagan was responsible or which Reagan initiated.
What Reagan managed to do was run up a $4 Trillion debt which currently consumes 14% of Federal Spending and which if Bush is elected will consume $300 Billion more in interest than if Gore is elected. This leaves less room for real affordable tax cuts for working and middle income families.
Gore has published fairly detailed policy documents in a number of areas. He hasn't radically altered any of his positions during the course of the campaign. He has varied his rhetorical style and presentation but the substance of his policies have not changed over the course of the campaign.
The only issues that Bush and the rest of the Republicans care about are
Gore will be a much better leader than Bush. He is much smarter, more responsible and focused on issues that will improve the lives of most Americans.
Saying that inteligence doesn't matter is kind of dumb.
Shaughran
Some people involved in this discussion are arguing that KDE will be marginalised because big corporations such as Sun et al are adopting, deploying and supporting GNOME. If the world worked that way Linux would not be as successful as it is. Large corporations came late to the open source movement which was based from the beginning on leadership by developers, technical excellence and a volunteer ethos rather than leadership by CEOs, marketing excellence and a commercial ethos.
Licensing
Many comments have been posted stating that large corporations refused to support KDE because they do not want to pay TrollTech for QT. Trolltech have released QT under the QPL free of charge for Free software development under X11. The QPL is an open source license and is compatible with the GPL and LGPL. So you only have to pay for QT for X11 if you are developing closed source software under X11. If GNOME has been selected by the corporations because they do not want to pay Trolltech then the implication is that these corporations are planning to develop closed source applications for X11. So GNOME allows corporations to deploy closed source applications under X11 which undermines to a certain extent the proclaimed aim of the GNOME movement, the development of an Open Source desktop.
In the light of these points, I think it is fair to say that KDE is now the Open Source Desktop as it conforms more to the Open Source Desktop ethos and promotes the goals of the Open Source movement more than GNOME does at the moment.
These are all my personal opinions..
Shaughran
First thing is that in IMHO you have selectively quoted from the statement in a way that somewhat distorts it's tone.
It is widely acknowledged Object-Oriented development using an Object-Oriented langauge such as Smalltalk, Delphi, Java, Python or C++ offers a lot of benefits when developing GUI components or applications that use a GUI. These technologies are widely used in the development of GUI applications across all platforms.
The KDE developers believe that a C++ toolkit, as opposed to a C based toolkit, is the way to go when developing GUI code. C++ is much more widely used in GUI development across all platforms than C.
There are many people who post on Slashdot saying that they use C rather than C++ to develop their GUI code. This is fine but it doesn't change the fact that most people who develop GUI applications regard an OO based approach as the way to go for GUI application development.
It is therefore not irrational to argue that GTK is inferior to Qt for GUI development as GTK is C based whereas Qt is C++ based.
Your points about the comparison between Mozilla and Konqueror have already been addressed.
Shaughran
Mathias Ettrich: KDE is a true open source project that consists mainly of voluntary work.
You can't compare this to commercial open source projects like Mozilla or the Eazel file manager. KDE gets written because its authors want to write it, while those commercial open source projects get written because somebody senses business and pays programmers to do the job. Don't get me wrong, that's a perfectly sane thing to do, but it also has an influence on the choice of tools. While you can easily make programmers work with inferior technologies and let them reinvent everything from scratch by giving them enough money, you cannot do that in a free project like KDE. Free programmers work for fun. Better tools promise more fun. Programming with Qt is extreme fun, as it lets you concentrate on what you really wanted to do: writing an application, not fighting a toolkit or a programming language. If Netscape used Qt, they would have release a modern cross-platform browser two years ago. Now we are still waiting for a final release of Mozilla and what we will get ships with its own middleware, a new component system and yet another widget set. Compare Mozilla with Konqueror, compare the sizes of the development teams, the time they used and the results. Then judge for yourself.
What do you think is unrealistic or irrational about these comments ?
Shaughran
I never claimed that the amount of fossil fuels in the Earth's crust was infinite. I simply claimed that there are lot of fossil fuels available and that other forms of energy will be developed before all supplies of fossil fuels have been exhausted. Do you have any evidence that contradicts this view ?
Unsupported assertions and highly qualified hypothetical statements about possible exhaustion of resources such as:
There is quite a lot of coal in the world, but still, known reserves are limited. One reason they may seem like a lot is that the industrialised countres burn petroleum instead. If petroleum resources run short, coal may not last as long.
are not evidence
Why is oil not being produced in Bavaria or Romania ? Is is because the reserves have been completely exhausted in these areas or is it because it is cheaper to produce it elsewhere e.g. the Middle East and transport it to Bavaria and Romania ?
I see that you admit that new oil fields are being discovered and that natural gas is so plentiful and cheap that it is used in huge quantities to replenish oil wells.
In the event of a major man made catastrophe such as a War or the introduction of Communism then the standard of living will fall. Such falls in living standards are not the result of overpopulation or overconsumption of resources but are the result of human stupidity.
In the liberal western capitalist democracies standards of living have been rising since the start of the industrial age with setbacks caused by war or revolution. There has never been a fall in living standards in any such society that is attributable to overpopulation or overconsumption of resources. Do you have a counterexample ?
Income has not fallen sharply for 40% of the population of the US. Their incomes may not have risen but have they fallen in absolute terms ? Besides what about the other 60% of the US population. The US population being higher today (273M) than in 1970 (203M).
I restate my understanding of Julian Simon's position and my question:
Julian Simon's position is that the quality of life or standard of living of the human race is better now than it ever has been in the past and that all available evidence shows that the standard of living of the human race as a whole will continue to rise.
Do you dispute this and do you have any real evidence that there is a shortage of resources ?
Please explain the fallacy in this argument.
In practical terms the energy supply is non-finite. We have enough coal, oil and natural gas to last quite a long time and it is quite probable that cheaper, more efficient alternatives will be developed before these are exhausted.
This is true of most natural resources.
Simon's argument is not that any past trend will continue indefinitely. His argument is that the
quality of life or standard of living of the human race is better now than it ever has been and that all available evidence shows that the standard of living of the human race will continue to rise.
Do you dispute this ?
Java Interfaces describe common behaviour or capabilities that may be found in a number of classes throughout a framework. C++ blurs the distinction between shared functionality & implementation and shared behaviour. If you want to avoid writing the same implementation in Java over and over then use an adapter class to provide a default implementation and extend this class. Many of the AWT classes use this pattern to reduce the amount of redundant code written to support interfaces.