Re:The unintended benefits of pollution
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm no climate scientist, or climate engineer, but it seems to me that dark |= cold. A greenhouse can be dark but hot. The gasses keep in the heat, yet keep out the light. Venus springs to mind.
So I wouldn't see this as a benefit. I would think reducing pollution would increase light reaching the ground, but also help decrease how much heat is retained in the atmosphere.
I'm probably wrong, I suppose.
Re:Kind of emphasizes a major point.
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
The same thing goes for the business community. I'd say most business people, especially those involved in the energy business, or any business that results in some form of pollution, have a serious attitude problem.
You can never get anything out of those people other than results that support their position. They never want to change.
Business is always much more about ideology than realism. The difference is that the ideology is greed.
I see no reason not to change our habits and practices when it comes to pollution, especially mass pollution. Better safe than sorry is what I say.
If the topic is "Saddam's capture and its effects on Iraq", then I don't see how any of this other stuff isn't involved. When you view the world as a series of specific, unconnected issues, and try to deal with them one at a time, you just end up screwing things up worse and worse as time goes on.
But then, it could also be argued that Thomas Jefferson was no Thomas Jefferson, either, in so much as the way we think of many of our long-gone forefathers doesn't really bare much resemblance to who the actual people were.
Given that, Thomas Jefferson wouldn't do so well in 2004, I would imagine. They're products of different eras... Bush/Rove/Cheney/etc. would find some way to paint him as a spineless anti-patriot criminal of some kind...
And to everyone who says it's too expensive, you need to get a real job. I'm sick of all these high school and college kids saying "ooh, it's too expensive.. why would you spend $400 on a video card?" BECAUSE I CAN.
OK, "Because I can" is fine - it's a free country and you're free to spend as you wish for what you want. I also agree that it's silly to complain that anything like this is "too expensive" - but for a different reason: the company can charge whatever they think will be profitable to them. It's not like I deserve to be able to buy whatever I want.
However, I'm calling you on your blatant classism. As if only high school & college students are unable to get a high-paying job. As if there aren't millions of people struggling to get by in this country, let alone the rest of the world. Janitors, line workers, waitresses, telemarketers - heck, any job you or I or anyone else I can think of - these are all "real jobs", and pejoratively saying that people who are not skilled enough or lucky enough to have a job like yours "need to get a real job" is terrible.
You may not be rich, but just because you can afford the toys you want doesn't mean those who can't are somehow not working hard enough.
It's extremely silly for anyone to complain about the price of such obvious luxury items, but it's extremely rude to suggest that there's something wrong with people who can't afford such items.
The Dems main monetary support has always been and still is the unions. They have always been way ahead on "soft" money, which is why this election cycle is much more difficult, with the new campaign finance rules. This is all checks from individuals, on both sides, Dems & Repubs. The question is, what kind of individuals?
While I understand the desire to curtail donations from groups, I'm not sure what "the entertainment industry" is supposed to mean. I don't know Rob Reiner, but I believe he wrote a $2,000 check to Dean, and he probably got 40 of his friends to come to a dinner, where each friend wrote a check for $2,000.
The problem is, as usual, with the laws, and this tells us we need constant vigilance in our Campaign Finance Reform laws, and need to update them each year to keep up with all the loopholes.
Trial lawyers also shouldn't donate, I guess, and neither should individual union members, because a Democrat is favorable to their particular occupations.
My point here is that, yes, the Dems traditionally get more money from those who work in "entertainment" than the Repubs. To you that may mean the RIAA and the MPAA. To me that means hundreds of thousands of "starving artists". Probably neither of us is 100% correct. The fact remains that the wealthy and powerful favor the Republicans (and vice versa), while the Dems, though slipping in the past decade or so, remain the only viable voice for the poorer of us.
Let's not forget that Hatch is a Republican, and it was Republicans who generally let the FCC rules through. The Dems didn't respond very quickly, but they have been responding as their constituents have been letting them know how they feel.
As for Lieberman, who in their right mind would vote for him?
I just saw the shots of the video - man, those pics of Gates & Ballmer in trenchcoats have to be some of the saddest pics I've ever seen. I mean, sad like flames painted on a Geo Metro. What a sorry waste of good material those outfits were...
Now, a Matrix spoof staring Tux as Neo and Linus as Morpheus... now you're talking!;)
Oh, I didn't say this only happened in Europe, although I understand how one could think I meant that since that's what the discussion was about. I was just rephrasing the parent's statement.
If people choose to sell their time more readily in the US than in Europe, of course that doesn't necessarily mean that the concentrations of wealth in the US are somehow worse than those abroad. There are many reasons people make the choices they do - perhaps we in the US just have a different cultural heritage which prods us throughout our lives to work hard because we'll be rewarded for it. Some might call a variation of this the "work ethic".
My comment was only intended to point out that there are other forces at work than the "rational worker" presumed by the parent. I've seen that sort of statement bandied about too much, and I can't let it pass. It sounds nice and tidy to say that we choose to sell our time, but there are many, many choices we make in life without realizing their full extent, or even that we are making them. Making these "Devil's bargains" more apparent is, I think, very important.
Hahahaha! You're kidding us, right? You're describing corporations to a T. When will people learn that Corps & Governments are one and the same unruly beasts people let them get large?
When it comes to human organizations, it's the size of the beast, not its name, that determines its nature.
BTW, it's not the job of private enterprise to provide high speed internet service, either. Their job is to rake in the bucks for their shareholders. The government's job (at least in theory) is to serve the people. Unfortunately corruption (& in America, collusion with Corps & the military) tends to cancel that out.
Now, a cooperative effort of the people themselves serving themselves, that would be a nice experiment to see for once.
What's your problem? Does "begs the question" not make sense to you? It makes perfect sense to me. The phrase is internally consistent within its context. Just like words, phrases can have multiple meanings. It can have your obscure meaning that few use or know about, and it can have the popularly accepted and used meaning. Relax.
Or is it more important to you that other people be thought of as idiots compared to you?
Still, there is the point about a person choosing to sell their time for the money.
Or, to put it another way, the point about those who have the wealth and power to do so choosing to create the conditions under which most of us have little choice but to sell more time for less money than we would prefer to.;-)
You're right, reasonable people can argue over what "quality of life" means. I would argue that "purchasing power" is only a small part of it. I would gladly give up a third of my purchasing power to gain back a third of my time. My time has more value to me than the things I could buy with that money. Particularly since those things are mostly just going to sit around at home gathering dust whilst I'm slaving away to earn more money to buy more.
Another thought - the USA purchasing power parity may only be higher because some of the richest people in the world reside here, thus bringing up the average. It doesn't mean the average person actually has a higher purchasing power... Your average working-class US citizen probably has a purchasing power closer to the UK.
I am getting tired of hearing people say this sort of excuse. As if the proposition that the USA could be worse makes its current state perfectly fine.
I say, if there is any room for improvement, let's do it! Yes, I am going to continue to complain, along with everyone else who can see problems with our country, because the US is not as good as it could be. Sure, America is better than China, but there are other countries in the world that we could learn a thing or two from (not that they're prefect, either), like Germany, England, France, Australia, Switzerland...
We have to take the best ideas from around the world, and our own ideas, and make the US better. I don't care if you're satisfied, if it's "good enough" for you. For many, many people, it's not.
Sure, I'd rather live in America than China, but that's no kind of proof of America's greatness. I'd also rather step in dog piss than dog shit, but that doesn't make the dog piss equivalent to a clean sidewalk.
I was about to respond with pretty much the same points. What the parent's parent said about Dems being beholden to greens just doesn't add up, since greens have by and large been asking for just what he said he wanted.
people that seek nothing less than the complete failure of our modern society and who are willing to fight to death for it.
Sounds to me like the people in power in my own US of A, if you ask me. Except for the part of "willing to fight to death for it"... they're more "willing to send others to fight to death for it."
At some point, I think public relations companies and the companies that purchase their services have to hold at least some small part of the repsonsibility for their behaviors and the negative things the promote in the name of profits. I don't think it makes sense for individuals to sue individual companies for "making them fat", but there is a larger issue here that begs to be dealt with, a la the states battling the tobacco companies and their dacades of anti-science P.R.
But anyway, I imagine you just repeated his point, just in a different, even somewhat condescending, tone. While we're all thanking the people who spend so much on expensive, new stuff, so it becomes cheaper for the rest of us, let's not forget that most people buying those expensive things are buying on credit, which results in spiraling debt, which is only good for Banks, but really good for no one in the long term.
If everyone really only spent what they could afford, prices wouldn't come down so fast, but our economy might be healthier...
I'm sorry, but he's right. I don't agree with his tone, as I still quite like iTunes and never thought Ogg would be picked up by anyone, so it's not too important to me.
But still, he's right. That QT ogg component allows QuickTime to play Ogg Vorbis files, and iTunes can handle them then, too, but the support is marginal. First, for me, adding one or more ogg files to iTunes is much slower than mp3 or m4a files. It also doesn't fully handle tags, and in some of my ogg files, it can't read the tags at all. To top it off, for some reason, for some of my ogg files, it even plays them back badly. I don't know why, maybe they are older ones encoded before Vorbis went 1.0. Who knows?
Anyway, my point is that that QT component is not a great answer on Windows. And as for "it's in beta" - it hasn't been worked on since December of 2002. That's almost a year old. I doubt it'll ever be completed. For people who jumped into Ogg Vorbis, the QT component will not allow them to use iTunes, at least not at its peak capabilities and performance. They'd be better off re-ripping their collection to m4a or mp3 or trying to download non-vorbis versions. Otherwise, I'd say, if your collection is in ogg: avoid iTunes. Me, for the few oggs I have, I'm going for the re-ripping/re-downloading option. iTunes is much too enticing!
in the future, shows will probably be subscription based, so you can subscribe to just the shows you like.
Oh please G-d no! There aren't many things for which the "subscription" model actually works. I don't see it actually working for TV, either. Plus, if you think that will get rid of ads, you'd be in for disappointment. There aren't many no-ads magazines... I could talk more about the "inevitability" of advertisements, but that'd get Off-Topic very fast.
All I have to say is - as far as TV models go - I'd rather live in the UK instead of the USA.
If BBC-ing TV in the USA isn't an option, though, I wouldn't mind being able to pick-and-choose channels from my cable provider. I don't care about most of the channels, so I don't want to have them available. I don't want to subsidize them.
I can't imagine having to pick and choose every show I might want to watch, though. If the world does eventually go the way you want, with pay-per-show TV, each series better have 1 or 2 free episodes. Otherwise I'll never try a new show. The only reason I waste my time trying out new shows these days is that it only costs my time...
Be interesting to see what the verdict of the Slashdot code gurus is.
*jumps up and down with a chicken on his head*
Well, I'm trying to be interesting, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything to get the Slashdot code gurus to lay down their verdict. Perhaps you didn't mean that to be an imperative?
You could fit 6 billion people into Texas, and it would be less densly packed than Tokyo, Japan.
Assuming it's possible, the question still remains of whether we want to live in a world where the population density is like that everywhere. Would you? I wouldn't. Assuming I would even have any say in the matter (and why shouldn't I?), I'd vote no. I don't see any reason not to make efforts to preserve a limited population density on this planet.
Anybody who says we are going to run out of room in the US needs to leave the city for a weekend and go for a long drive.
I've done that. What I see when I get away from New York City is a lot of land that is already being used to support everyone in the city. Just because a bunch of people can physically fit in a small amount of land does not mean that they are only using that land to stay alive. Water, energy, food - most of these things come from outside the city. If we expanded such that all that "available space" had the same population density, from where would all the resources for all those people come?
You may be right about how many people this planet could support with current technology - since you didnt' cite your source I can't go check it out, and granted I'm too lazy at the moment to go Google for my own data. However, the question still remains - would we really want to live in a world at its max carrying capacity? My vote on that question goes to "NO." After that, the next obvious question is whether or not we have any choice in the matter, and I don't see any reason why not.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no climate scientist, or climate engineer, but it seems to me that dark |= cold. A greenhouse can be dark but hot. The gasses keep in the heat, yet keep out the light. Venus springs to mind.
So I wouldn't see this as a benefit. I would think reducing pollution would increase light reaching the ground, but also help decrease how much heat is retained in the atmosphere.
I'm probably wrong, I suppose.
The same thing goes for the business community. I'd say most business people, especially those involved in the energy business, or any business that results in some form of pollution, have a serious attitude problem.
You can never get anything out of those people other than results that support their position. They never want to change.
Business is always much more about ideology than realism. The difference is that the ideology is greed.
I see no reason not to change our habits and practices when it comes to pollution, especially mass pollution. Better safe than sorry is what I say.
If the topic is "Saddam's capture and its effects on Iraq", then I don't see how any of this other stuff isn't involved. When you view the world as a series of specific, unconnected issues, and try to deal with them one at a time, you just end up screwing things up worse and worse as time goes on.
He's no Thomas Jefferson
But then, it could also be argued that Thomas Jefferson was no Thomas Jefferson, either, in so much as the way we think of many of our long-gone forefathers doesn't really bare much resemblance to who the actual people were.
Given that, Thomas Jefferson wouldn't do so well in 2004, I would imagine. They're products of different eras... Bush/Rove/Cheney/etc. would find some way to paint him as a spineless anti-patriot criminal of some kind...
That being said, go Dean!
And to everyone who says it's too expensive, you need to get a real job. I'm sick of all these high school and college kids saying "ooh, it's too expensive.. why would you spend $400 on a video card?" BECAUSE I CAN.
OK, "Because I can" is fine - it's a free country and you're free to spend as you wish for what you want. I also agree that it's silly to complain that anything like this is "too expensive" - but for a different reason: the company can charge whatever they think will be profitable to them. It's not like I deserve to be able to buy whatever I want.
However, I'm calling you on your blatant classism. As if only high school & college students are unable to get a high-paying job. As if there aren't millions of people struggling to get by in this country, let alone the rest of the world. Janitors, line workers, waitresses, telemarketers - heck, any job you or I or anyone else I can think of - these are all "real jobs", and pejoratively saying that people who are not skilled enough or lucky enough to have a job like yours "need to get a real job" is terrible.
You may not be rich, but just because you can afford the toys you want doesn't mean those who can't are somehow not working hard enough.
It's extremely silly for anyone to complain about the price of such obvious luxury items, but it's extremely rude to suggest that there's something wrong with people who can't afford such items.
The Dems main monetary support has always been and still is the unions. They have always been way ahead on "soft" money, which is why this election cycle is much more difficult, with the new campaign finance rules. This is all checks from individuals, on both sides, Dems & Repubs. The question is, what kind of individuals?
While I understand the desire to curtail donations from groups, I'm not sure what "the entertainment industry" is supposed to mean. I don't know Rob Reiner, but I believe he wrote a $2,000 check to Dean, and he probably got 40 of his friends to come to a dinner, where each friend wrote a check for $2,000.
The problem is, as usual, with the laws, and this tells us we need constant vigilance in our Campaign Finance Reform laws, and need to update them each year to keep up with all the loopholes.
Trial lawyers also shouldn't donate, I guess, and neither should individual union members, because a Democrat is favorable to their particular occupations.
My point here is that, yes, the Dems traditionally get more money from those who work in "entertainment" than the Repubs. To you that may mean the RIAA and the MPAA. To me that means hundreds of thousands of "starving artists". Probably neither of us is 100% correct. The fact remains that the wealthy and powerful favor the Republicans (and vice versa), while the Dems, though slipping in the past decade or so, remain the only viable voice for the poorer of us.
Let's not forget that Hatch is a Republican, and it was Republicans who generally let the FCC rules through. The Dems didn't respond very quickly, but they have been responding as their constituents have been letting them know how they feel.
As for Lieberman, who in their right mind would vote for him?
Meanwhile, Our Annointed Leader just raised himself another $3 million . I wonder how anyone can question which economic base Republicans speak for when they can get that kind of money that easily?
I just saw the shots of the video - man, those pics of Gates & Ballmer in trenchcoats have to be some of the saddest pics I've ever seen. I mean, sad like flames painted on a Geo Metro. What a sorry waste of good material those outfits were...
;)
Now, a Matrix spoof staring Tux as Neo and Linus as Morpheus... now you're talking!
Oh, I didn't say this only happened in Europe, although I understand how one could think I meant that since that's what the discussion was about. I was just rephrasing the parent's statement.
If people choose to sell their time more readily in the US than in Europe, of course that doesn't necessarily mean that the concentrations of wealth in the US are somehow worse than those abroad. There are many reasons people make the choices they do - perhaps we in the US just have a different cultural heritage which prods us throughout our lives to work hard because we'll be rewarded for it. Some might call a variation of this the "work ethic".
My comment was only intended to point out that there are other forces at work than the "rational worker" presumed by the parent. I've seen that sort of statement bandied about too much, and I can't let it pass. It sounds nice and tidy to say that we choose to sell our time, but there are many, many choices we make in life without realizing their full extent, or even that we are making them. Making these "Devil's bargains" more apparent is, I think, very important.
But Neo's connected to the Source, and I'd prefer to avoid him, thanks.
Hahahaha! You're kidding us, right? You're describing corporations to a T. When will people learn that Corps & Governments are one and the same unruly beasts people let them get large?
When it comes to human organizations, it's the size of the beast, not its name, that determines its nature.
BTW, it's not the job of private enterprise to provide high speed internet service, either. Their job is to rake in the bucks for their shareholders. The government's job (at least in theory) is to serve the people. Unfortunately corruption (& in America, collusion with Corps & the military) tends to cancel that out.
Now, a cooperative effort of the people themselves serving themselves, that would be a nice experiment to see for once.
What's your problem? Does "begs the question" not make sense to you? It makes perfect sense to me. The phrase is internally consistent within its context. Just like words, phrases can have multiple meanings. It can have your obscure meaning that few use or know about, and it can have the popularly accepted and used meaning. Relax.
Or is it more important to you that other people be thought of as idiots compared to you?
Still, there is the point about a person choosing to sell their time for the money.
;-)
Or, to put it another way, the point about those who have the wealth and power to do so choosing to create the conditions under which most of us have little choice but to sell more time for less money than we would prefer to.
But I won't go there.
You're right, reasonable people can argue over what "quality of life" means. I would argue that "purchasing power" is only a small part of it. I would gladly give up a third of my purchasing power to gain back a third of my time. My time has more value to me than the things I could buy with that money. Particularly since those things are mostly just going to sit around at home gathering dust whilst I'm slaving away to earn more money to buy more.
Another thought - the USA purchasing power parity may only be higher because some of the richest people in the world reside here, thus bringing up the average. It doesn't mean the average person actually has a higher purchasing power... Your average working-class US citizen probably has a purchasing power closer to the UK.
...man, this country isn't that bad.
I am getting tired of hearing people say this sort of excuse. As if the proposition that the USA could be worse makes its current state perfectly fine.
I say, if there is any room for improvement, let's do it! Yes, I am going to continue to complain, along with everyone else who can see problems with our country, because the US is not as good as it could be. Sure, America is better than China, but there are other countries in the world that we could learn a thing or two from (not that they're prefect, either), like Germany, England, France, Australia, Switzerland...
We have to take the best ideas from around the world, and our own ideas, and make the US better. I don't care if you're satisfied, if it's "good enough" for you. For many, many people, it's not.
Sure, I'd rather live in America than China, but that's no kind of proof of America's greatness. I'd also rather step in dog piss than dog shit, but that doesn't make the dog piss equivalent to a clean sidewalk.
It is obvious that you have not been exposed to the true hell of the world yet.
Who, Hitler?
Ooh, I win!
I was about to respond with pretty much the same points. What the parent's parent said about Dems being beholden to greens just doesn't add up, since greens have by and large been asking for just what he said he wanted.
people that seek nothing less than the complete failure of our modern society and who are willing to fight to death for it.
... they're more "willing to send others to fight to death for it."
Sounds to me like the people in power in my own US of A, if you ask me. Except for the part of "willing to fight to death for it"
And remove the subsidies we pay to our own farmers to *not* grow food...
At some point, I think public relations companies and the companies that purchase their services have to hold at least some small part of the repsonsibility for their behaviors and the negative things the promote in the name of profits. I don't think it makes sense for individuals to sue individual companies for "making them fat", but there is a larger issue here that begs to be dealt with, a la the states battling the tobacco companies and their dacades of anti-science P.R.
Man, if I could piss money...
But anyway, I imagine you just repeated his point, just in a different, even somewhat condescending, tone. While we're all thanking the people who spend so much on expensive, new stuff, so it becomes cheaper for the rest of us, let's not forget that most people buying those expensive things are buying on credit, which results in spiraling debt, which is only good for Banks, but really good for no one in the long term.
If everyone really only spent what they could afford, prices wouldn't come down so fast, but our economy might be healthier...
I'm sorry, but he's right. I don't agree with his tone, as I still quite like iTunes and never thought Ogg would be picked up by anyone, so it's not too important to me.
But still, he's right. That QT ogg component allows QuickTime to play Ogg Vorbis files, and iTunes can handle them then, too, but the support is marginal. First, for me, adding one or more ogg files to iTunes is much slower than mp3 or m4a files. It also doesn't fully handle tags, and in some of my ogg files, it can't read the tags at all. To top it off, for some reason, for some of my ogg files, it even plays them back badly. I don't know why, maybe they are older ones encoded before Vorbis went 1.0. Who knows?
Anyway, my point is that that QT component is not a great answer on Windows. And as for "it's in beta" - it hasn't been worked on since December of 2002. That's almost a year old. I doubt it'll ever be completed. For people who jumped into Ogg Vorbis, the QT component will not allow them to use iTunes, at least not at its peak capabilities and performance. They'd be better off re-ripping their collection to m4a or mp3 or trying to download non-vorbis versions. Otherwise, I'd say, if your collection is in ogg: avoid iTunes. Me, for the few oggs I have, I'm going for the re-ripping/re-downloading option. iTunes is much too enticing!
in the future, shows will probably be subscription based, so you can subscribe to just the shows you like.
Oh please G-d no! There aren't many things for which the "subscription" model actually works. I don't see it actually working for TV, either. Plus, if you think that will get rid of ads, you'd be in for disappointment. There aren't many no-ads magazines... I could talk more about the "inevitability" of advertisements, but that'd get Off-Topic very fast.
All I have to say is - as far as TV models go - I'd rather live in the UK instead of the USA.
If BBC-ing TV in the USA isn't an option, though, I wouldn't mind being able to pick-and-choose channels from my cable provider. I don't care about most of the channels, so I don't want to have them available. I don't want to subsidize them.
I can't imagine having to pick and choose every show I might want to watch, though. If the world does eventually go the way you want, with pay-per-show TV, each series better have 1 or 2 free episodes. Otherwise I'll never try a new show. The only reason I waste my time trying out new shows these days is that it only costs my time...
Be interesting to see what the verdict of the Slashdot code gurus is.
*jumps up and down with a chicken on his head*
Well, I'm trying to be interesting, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything to get the Slashdot code gurus to lay down their verdict. Perhaps you didn't mean that to be an imperative?
You could fit 6 billion people into Texas, and it would be less densly packed than Tokyo, Japan.
Assuming it's possible, the question still remains of whether we want to live in a world where the population density is like that everywhere. Would you? I wouldn't. Assuming I would even have any say in the matter (and why shouldn't I?), I'd vote no. I don't see any reason not to make efforts to preserve a limited population density on this planet.
Anybody who says we are going to run out of room in the US needs to leave the city for a weekend and go for a long drive.
I've done that. What I see when I get away from New York City is a lot of land that is already being used to support everyone in the city. Just because a bunch of people can physically fit in a small amount of land does not mean that they are only using that land to stay alive. Water, energy, food - most of these things come from outside the city. If we expanded such that all that "available space" had the same population density, from where would all the resources for all those people come?
You may be right about how many people this planet could support with current technology - since you didnt' cite your source I can't go check it out, and granted I'm too lazy at the moment to go Google for my own data. However, the question still remains - would we really want to live in a world at its max carrying capacity? My vote on that question goes to "NO." After that, the next obvious question is whether or not we have any choice in the matter, and I don't see any reason why not.