Of course, that's just me, and who knows how a real jury would think?
It is likely that they would believe the prosecutor or at least be swayed by his "common sense" but fallacious arguments simply because they don't understand details in either the law or technology and tend to make decisions based upon emotion rather than logic in their everyday lives. They probably also don't like the defendant and want to see him locked up anyway 'just to be safe' because he is a sicko or presents a bad image in their eyes. The best bet for the defense in this case would be to make all of the objections possible and take note of all mistakes made by the prosecutor as technical grounds for future appeals where hopefully (and even that is a big if) there will be more fair minded and less emotional juries.
The model that the Cinemas need to pursue here in the United States is one where private rooms are rented out for private parties where you and a group of your friends can watch the movie in a high quality home theater away from home format. This has been big business in Asian countries (especially Japan) where the room typically also includes karaoke equipment and a dedicated hostess to bring and serve food and drinks.
The answer to that is very minimal government but neither side (reps or dems) really wants to consider that option so it is just swept under the rug and left to the Libertarians amongst us to say, "we told you so" when corporate welfare continues unabated, the national debt keeps going up like the odometer on the space shuttle, and high taxes, high inflation, and high unemployment continue to beat down the average citizen who is just trying to scratch out a living.
In fact, this a thought experiment which is often used as an example in economics textbooks of scarcity and how markets deal with it (in the hypothetical example the highly educated world is chosen to provide an extreme case that is not easily confused with other real world limitations because the example does not occur in the real world). The answer is quite simple really, the burger flipper or the garbage man or any other job which could not be easily automated would be done by a PhD who can do higher math and is literate in 3 languages and he would be amongst the highest paid people in the society (to induce him to give up a career in his field to haul garbage or flip burgers instead). Now of course, in reality the situation would never occur and even if it did, subsequent generations would elect the garbage man or burger flipping route (because of the high wages) before getting their PhD until eventually the number of PhDs came back in line with what the market actually demanded with many more garbage men and burger flippers (without PhDs) hauling trash and flipping burgers while the fewer remaining PhDs concentrated on the work that they are most suited to doing. The market would reach the equilibrium number of PhDs, garbage men, and burger flippers fairly quickly and wages would stabilize accordingly at the equilibrium rates.
Even if everyone switched to IPv6 overnight there would still be IPv6 NAT or something basically equivalent to outside observers simply because directly addressable public hosts are dangerous and should be limited to controlled gateways so that the attack surface exposed by a private network is limited to those hosts which really need to be on the front line. Besides, it really wouldn't be a private network if every host was publicly addressable to arbitrary incoming traffic now would it?
That depends upon your point of view. As the parent said (or at least alluded to), very few people have more than a handful of servers which need to be addressable from outside a private network and fewer still have more than 255 (class C). Indeed, large portions of the existing address space are being wasted or not used efficiently already so why should I spend a dime to upgrade my equipment simply because other people are wasting addresses or are deluded by the relative importance of their toaster compared to the rest of the hosts on the public Internet? There is also the convenience (from a security and filtering point of view) with heirarchical centralized control of traffic and routing into one's private network. I don't know about you, but I don't wan't just anyone to communicate directly with the hosts on my private network so for me (and a great many other people as the adoption rate of IPv6 shows) the NAT IPv4 Firewall Router fits the bill nicely.
And I'll keep on enjoying all the free services people provide for IPv6 enabled hosts.
You do that, but don't whine because you cannot connect directly to a toaster on my private network because I choose not to upgrade my equipment. When the upgrade will earn me more money then and only then will I consider it. Until then it is machts nichts.
I realize that I am probably just beating a dead horse here but most modern OSes simply boot too many services and other infrastructure (drivers, programs, libraries, or whatever else, etc) which most users simply are not going to use in an average desktop login session. It would be nice if the boot sequences in various OSes could be more configurable (Linux is better on this count than Windows) as to what needs to be loaded during boot and what can wait to be loaded as needed on demand. There is also the issue of what does and does not belong in the kernel (aka the Mach vs Monolithic kernel debate), but that is a separate (albeit related) problem. The other technology that would go a long way towards rendering the boot issues moot is the solid state hard drive, but that too still has a ways to go before it can match the number of write/rewrites before failure of the good old mechanical magnetic drives that most of us are still using right now. One solution, which could be interesting, would to have a solid state memory for the core OS so that the boot times are fast, but then load programs from the larger (and slower but cheaper and reliable) magnetic disk until solid state discs are roughly equal or superior to mechanical magnetic drives in expected service lifetime.
It is too bad that more people did not contribute to the defense fund and that non-profit organizations, perhaps the Electronic Frontier Foundation or maybe another of the legal aid foundations, did not take up the case or do more to provide support to see the matter through given the important questions remaining to be litigated. I realize that the entire process was stressful and the decision of whether or not to settle must ultimately be hers and hers alone since she bears the burden of punishment if her case yields an unfavorable decision, but it is disappointing to see yet again the power of big money being used to prevent, or at least discourage, legal questions with substantial merit or public interest from being fully decided. Perhaps the courts need to increase the standing of the public at large, through groups like the EFF, to bring cases against the RIAA and its members when individuals cannot sustain the burden of long term litigation on important issues of copyright law to level the playing field with regard to copyright. I suppose that it might be possible, albeit risky, to setup a non-profit organization with honeypot computers in an attempt to tempt the RIAA into suing the non-profit organization, but they are unlikely to take the bait if they know the real purpose behind the organization.
Given that there are so many bad drivers on our roads these days one might reasonably conclude that there are no qualifications required to drive other than perhaps willingness to pay the licensing fees and some of them don't even bother with that.
Which makes it a non-issue since the condition will persist no matter what system is employed by society. The interesting question then becomes, given that people will lie, cheat, steal, and break the law to get what they want (or at least given enough incentive they will) which system delivers the best possible result under these unavoidable circumstances? People have written books and spent lifetimes debating the answer to that question so there is really no need to repeat the well known arguments here, but in response to your original point, bringing up the fact that people are self interested is not a dig against capitalism per se, but rather a lament over the inevitable state of the human condition which is ultimately futile and adds nothing to the debate.
but that was because it was vastly more interesting than English or history.
Humanities, english (or any other spoken language), and even history are merely the coincidental stories, records, and spoken artifacts of our particular culture whereas science and mathematics offers more fundamental and universal truths that would be understood by any intelligent being of sufficient sophistication living anywhere in our universe. While I cannot speak for everyone, that is the reason, at least for me, why science and mathematics are vastly more interesting than the coincidental records of events which occurred on a tiny blue speck orbiting an average star along with billions of others in a galaxy which is part of a larger galactic neighborhood which is part of a universe containing billions of other galaxies.
or you could run Firefox with AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and FlashBlock for a more comprehensive solution with a good user interface experience to boot. You might also want to add Customize Google for some extra Google specific functionality.
TFA did not mention that the hobby enjoyed by Mr. Deeb in the privacy of his own private home basement was in any way a public nuisance or somehow disturbing the peace of the neighborhood. If he is not causing undue disturbance to the neighborhood or the peace AND he is not using his laboratory to mix up illegal drugs or create explosives or other substances which pose an extreme hazard to the neighborhood (neither of which was the case, at least according to TFA) then it is really nobody's damn business (except Mr. Deeb's) which hobbies Mr. Deeb chooses to enjoy in the privacy of his own home. The zoning laws very often get used in this country to harass people who are unpopular or sanction people who are perhaps a bit unusual, but are not doing anything spectacularly dangerous or illegal. We should be careful about using the force of law to limit what hobbies a man can enjoy on his own private property or else how are we different than any other two bit authoritarian country where private property, privacy, and eventually basic rights and freedoms are neither protected nor respected? I swear, we are turning into a nation of ignorant busybodies and it is damned disturbing to follow that course through to its ultimate and logical conclusion.
Indeed, Ron Paul (for example) in his Revolution laments the loss of free thinking and Liberal (classically Liberal or what we now call Libertarian since the term Liberal has been hijacked by the far left in much the same way that Conservative has been hijacked by the neocons on the far right) citizens in the mold of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Patrick Henry who would be utterly appalled with the present state of affairs in the nation that they bequeathed to us. Unfortunately, for those of us Americans with an IQ greater than our shoe size, the vast majority of people want to be told how to live because they are too stupid, too ignorant, and too foolish to take care of themselves and the few intelligent politicians, almost without exception, use their gray matter advantage to manipulate rather than to educate the populace. Really, I am beginning to despair for the future outcome of our great American experiment because too few people now understand the true basis of American values or else they choose to ignore them as quaint anachronisms unfit for our modern times.
Multi-million dollar a year law firm, and it can be brought to its knees if one of our obscure applications goes down and needs support, and the one guy that can support it is out taking his kids to soccer practice.
If it was that important then why not simply negotiate a special agreement with the developer (which should be easy since he is a one man shop) whereby you receive a master copy that you can install as many times as you want and doesn't try to phone home all of the time (i.e. a special build just for your company) and you get to call his private cell number whenever you need support 24x7? It shouldn't be very hard for you guys to keep track of the contract either, since managing contracts and seeing that terms are met is what lawyers specialize in right?
awarding the games to China was *not* in keeping with the Olympic spirit.
So why not simply ban the Chinese and other countries that are widely disliked from the Olympics? Oh wait, then it really wouldn't be an international competition anymore, but rather the "Democracy Games" or the "Freedom Games" hosted by Dubya and his posse. The Olympics must engage with all nations, even those which are widely reviled, in the hopes that by including them in the spirit of peaceful international competition we will speed reforms and promote the spread of peace and the Olympic ideals. If we allow the entire movement to collapse because of our differences then what good will that do for us? There was also a bit of history involved in the choice of Beijing for the games in that the Chinese, by appearing at the 1984 Los Angeles games when the Soviet Union and many other countries had threatened to boycott, helped to prevent the games from collapsing permanently and giving voice to those who said that the peaceful international competition, with the games as its symbol, was an anachronism that had outlived its purpose. If China had honored the boycott and the Olympics had smothered then what good would that have done for the world? The government of China still has a long way to go in the areas of freedom and human rights, but they will not be very inclined to listen to the rest of us if we exclude them from every major international event. Even now, great international attention has been brought to the human rights record of China and plight of the people of Tibet which would not have occurred had the games not been awarded to China, so that in and of itself is a form of progress.
come to take away all your freedoms that you enjoy, such as your protection from unreasonable search or seizure...
Quiet you! move along...we don't allow unpatriotic trouble makers here! Sigh, unfortunately this is the type of response that we get from our government these days.
The IOC cannot allow unofficial use of the Olympic rings logo, it has nothing to do with supporting or opposing the right of people to protest their condition or the conditions endured by others around the world. The problem is that if they allow this use of the rings then it will encourage others to do the same without first asking permission until the eventual loss of control over the symbols and logos associated with the games occurs. The IOC cannot allow this to occur for the good of the Olympic games and the preservation of the spirit of peaceful international competition. They might have been a bit more tactful in their response, but this decision, despite the controversy, was correct.
but to make the point that there are hidden costs associated with CO2 emission that are currently ignored when people try to maximize profits.
Right, these are what economists call externalities (usually negative in practice although positive ones sometimes exist) and compensation for negative externalities (excessive CO2 emission being one possible example) is a legitimate issue. The difficulties lie in quantifying the cost of damages and thus the amount of compensation, who should receive it and how, and how best to enforce the rules. Although I am usually in favor of free market solutions, being sympathetic to the libertarian views, this is one of a very few good cases for the Governments, International treaties, and the courts.
I don't think Gore himself really advocates "all or nothing".
I don't believe that he does either, but that is certainly what it sounded like during the slide show (an error in delivery perhaps?). I any case I think that it is fair to say that Gore places a very high value on environmental quality. Indeed, probably much higher than the average person and is thus willing to pay more and possibly, although probably not him personally since he is fairly wealthy, give up more to get it. Not everyone is willing or able to do, pay, or give up as much as he (Gore) is to maximize environmental quality. This is a problem for Gore personally since he is wealthy enough to purchase carbon credits or pollution rights to continue living his present lifestyle relatively unchanged while the rest of us would be forced to cut back severely if his policies were implemented. This is and has been a persistent source of criticism for Gore: that he is able to buy his way out of sacrifices that people of lesser means will be required to make should his environmental policies become law and it is, despite the questionable sources (Sean Hannity for example), a legitimate criticism in principle (airplane travel and jet-setting, even with carbon credits purchased, is an oft cited example).
As for shifting the Overton window, It is difficult to envision the American public at large accepting any policy that will put a substantial dent in their pocket books (as restrictive emissions controls almost certainly will if they are implemented in the foreseeable future). The present oil drilling debate in California is a good example where a substantial number of people have changed their position (to be in favor of more drilling) on a political policy when it became clear that maintaining a particular position (a ban on offshore drilling) was a luxury that they could no longer afford. In the case of more oil drilling, the average voter knows or at least strongly suspects, despite what sophisticated pundits try to tell him, that more drilling lowers prices at the gas pump even if they cannot explain why.
It doesn't matter if global warming is true or not. We all want cleaner air.
Yes, but not everyone on the planet values clean air equally, especially in light of trade-offs required to achieve particular standards of cleanliness, and therein lies the real problem. In fact, environmental quality is a luxury good (according to the strict economic definition) since we tend to value it more, in a non-linear fashion, the better off that we are. Incidentally, this is also my primary quibble with the argument presented by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth that choosing between gold (as he puts it, but really goods and services produced by polluting economic activities) and the environment is a "false choice" when in fact there are many positions along the spectrum that result in varying amounts of trade-off and, as Keynes put it bluntly, in the long run we are all dead anyway. Gore was right to suggest that there are moral implications associated with these choices, but it is disingenous at best to present the argument as "all or nothing" with respect to the trade off between production of goods and services and the environment (since many people would not be living today anyway if not for our modern polluting economies). The problem with Gore and other public intellectuals is that they sometimes overplay their hands, often diminishing the value of their good points when they do, in attempt(s) to win argument(s) with their opponents.
Even the most cursory examination of humanity at any time in human history would very quickly debase one of that notion. So the early Russian communists were either naive, dishonest, or both.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, that's just me, and who knows how a real jury would think?
It is likely that they would believe the prosecutor or at least be swayed by his "common sense" but fallacious arguments simply because they don't understand details in either the law or technology and tend to make decisions based upon emotion rather than logic in their everyday lives. They probably also don't like the defendant and want to see him locked up anyway 'just to be safe' because he is a sicko or presents a bad image in their eyes. The best bet for the defense in this case would be to make all of the objections possible and take note of all mistakes made by the prosecutor as technical grounds for future appeals where hopefully (and even that is a big if) there will be more fair minded and less emotional juries.
The model that the Cinemas need to pursue here in the United States is one where private rooms are rented out for private parties where you and a group of your friends can watch the movie in a high quality home theater away from home format. This has been big business in Asian countries (especially Japan) where the room typically also includes karaoke equipment and a dedicated hostess to bring and serve food and drinks.
The answer to that is very minimal government but neither side (reps or dems) really wants to consider that option so it is just swept under the rug and left to the Libertarians amongst us to say, "we told you so" when corporate welfare continues unabated, the national debt keeps going up like the odometer on the space shuttle, and high taxes, high inflation, and high unemployment continue to beat down the average citizen who is just trying to scratch out a living.
Perhaps he was referring to the grilled cheese sandwiches that he sometimes prepares in his college dorm using an iron for lack of a stove.
In fact, this a thought experiment which is often used as an example in economics textbooks of scarcity and how markets deal with it (in the hypothetical example the highly educated world is chosen to provide an extreme case that is not easily confused with other real world limitations because the example does not occur in the real world). The answer is quite simple really, the burger flipper or the garbage man or any other job which could not be easily automated would be done by a PhD who can do higher math and is literate in 3 languages and he would be amongst the highest paid people in the society (to induce him to give up a career in his field to haul garbage or flip burgers instead). Now of course, in reality the situation would never occur and even if it did, subsequent generations would elect the garbage man or burger flipping route (because of the high wages) before getting their PhD until eventually the number of PhDs came back in line with what the market actually demanded with many more garbage men and burger flippers (without PhDs) hauling trash and flipping burgers while the fewer remaining PhDs concentrated on the work that they are most suited to doing. The market would reach the equilibrium number of PhDs, garbage men, and burger flippers fairly quickly and wages would stabilize accordingly at the equilibrium rates.
Even if everyone switched to IPv6 overnight there would still be IPv6 NAT or something basically equivalent to outside observers simply because directly addressable public hosts are dangerous and should be limited to controlled gateways so that the attack surface exposed by a private network is limited to those hosts which really need to be on the front line. Besides, it really wouldn't be a private network if every host was publicly addressable to arbitrary incoming traffic now would it?
And NAT is a problem masquerading as a solution.
That depends upon your point of view. As the parent said (or at least alluded to), very few people have more than a handful of servers which need to be addressable from outside a private network and fewer still have more than 255 (class C). Indeed, large portions of the existing address space are being wasted or not used efficiently already so why should I spend a dime to upgrade my equipment simply because other people are wasting addresses or are deluded by the relative importance of their toaster compared to the rest of the hosts on the public Internet? There is also the convenience (from a security and filtering point of view) with heirarchical centralized control of traffic and routing into one's private network. I don't know about you, but I don't wan't just anyone to communicate directly with the hosts on my private network so for me (and a great many other people as the adoption rate of IPv6 shows) the NAT IPv4 Firewall Router fits the bill nicely.
And I'll keep on enjoying all the free services people provide for IPv6 enabled hosts.
You do that, but don't whine because you cannot connect directly to a toaster on my private network because I choose not to upgrade my equipment. When the upgrade will earn me more money then and only then will I consider it. Until then it is machts nichts.
I realize that I am probably just beating a dead horse here but most modern OSes simply boot too many services and other infrastructure (drivers, programs, libraries, or whatever else, etc) which most users simply are not going to use in an average desktop login session. It would be nice if the boot sequences in various OSes could be more configurable (Linux is better on this count than Windows) as to what needs to be loaded during boot and what can wait to be loaded as needed on demand. There is also the issue of what does and does not belong in the kernel (aka the Mach vs Monolithic kernel debate), but that is a separate (albeit related) problem. The other technology that would go a long way towards rendering the boot issues moot is the solid state hard drive, but that too still has a ways to go before it can match the number of write/rewrites before failure of the good old mechanical magnetic drives that most of us are still using right now. One solution, which could be interesting, would to have a solid state memory for the core OS so that the boot times are fast, but then load programs from the larger (and slower but cheaper and reliable) magnetic disk until solid state discs are roughly equal or superior to mechanical magnetic drives in expected service lifetime.
It is too bad that more people did not contribute to the defense fund and that non-profit organizations, perhaps the Electronic Frontier Foundation or maybe another of the legal aid foundations, did not take up the case or do more to provide support to see the matter through given the important questions remaining to be litigated. I realize that the entire process was stressful and the decision of whether or not to settle must ultimately be hers and hers alone since she bears the burden of punishment if her case yields an unfavorable decision, but it is disappointing to see yet again the power of big money being used to prevent, or at least discourage, legal questions with substantial merit or public interest from being fully decided. Perhaps the courts need to increase the standing of the public at large, through groups like the EFF, to bring cases against the RIAA and its members when individuals cannot sustain the burden of long term litigation on important issues of copyright law to level the playing field with regard to copyright. I suppose that it might be possible, albeit risky, to setup a non-profit organization with honeypot computers in an attempt to tempt the RIAA into suing the non-profit organization, but they are unlikely to take the bait if they know the real purpose behind the organization.
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
- Cardinal Richelieu
What if driving required no qualifications?
Given that there are so many bad drivers on our roads these days one might reasonably conclude that there are no qualifications required to drive other than perhaps willingness to pay the licensing fees and some of them don't even bother with that.
In the end that's all it is.
Which makes it a non-issue since the condition will persist no matter what system is employed by society. The interesting question then becomes, given that people will lie, cheat, steal, and break the law to get what they want (or at least given enough incentive they will) which system delivers the best possible result under these unavoidable circumstances? People have written books and spent lifetimes debating the answer to that question so there is really no need to repeat the well known arguments here, but in response to your original point, bringing up the fact that people are self interested is not a dig against capitalism per se, but rather a lament over the inevitable state of the human condition which is ultimately futile and adds nothing to the debate.
but that was because it was vastly more interesting than English or history.
Humanities, english (or any other spoken language), and even history are merely the coincidental stories, records, and spoken artifacts of our particular culture whereas science and mathematics offers more fundamental and universal truths that would be understood by any intelligent being of sufficient sophistication living anywhere in our universe. While I cannot speak for everyone, that is the reason, at least for me, why science and mathematics are vastly more interesting than the coincidental records of events which occurred on a tiny blue speck orbiting an average star along with billions of others in a galaxy which is part of a larger galactic neighborhood which is part of a universe containing billions of other galaxies.
or you could run Firefox with AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and FlashBlock for a more comprehensive solution with a good user interface experience to boot. You might also want to add Customize Google for some extra Google specific functionality.
TFA did not mention that the hobby enjoyed by Mr. Deeb in the privacy of his own private home basement was in any way a public nuisance or somehow disturbing the peace of the neighborhood. If he is not causing undue disturbance to the neighborhood or the peace AND he is not using his laboratory to mix up illegal drugs or create explosives or other substances which pose an extreme hazard to the neighborhood (neither of which was the case, at least according to TFA) then it is really nobody's damn business (except Mr. Deeb's) which hobbies Mr. Deeb chooses to enjoy in the privacy of his own home. The zoning laws very often get used in this country to harass people who are unpopular or sanction people who are perhaps a bit unusual, but are not doing anything spectacularly dangerous or illegal. We should be careful about using the force of law to limit what hobbies a man can enjoy on his own private property or else how are we different than any other two bit authoritarian country where private property, privacy, and eventually basic rights and freedoms are neither protected nor respected? I swear, we are turning into a nation of ignorant busybodies and it is damned disturbing to follow that course through to its ultimate and logical conclusion.
Indeed, Ron Paul (for example) in his Revolution laments the loss of free thinking and Liberal (classically Liberal or what we now call Libertarian since the term Liberal has been hijacked by the far left in much the same way that Conservative has been hijacked by the neocons on the far right) citizens in the mold of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Patrick Henry who would be utterly appalled with the present state of affairs in the nation that they bequeathed to us. Unfortunately, for those of us Americans with an IQ greater than our shoe size, the vast majority of people want to be told how to live because they are too stupid, too ignorant, and too foolish to take care of themselves and the few intelligent politicians, almost without exception, use their gray matter advantage to manipulate rather than to educate the populace. Really, I am beginning to despair for the future outcome of our great American experiment because too few people now understand the true basis of American values or else they choose to ignore them as quaint anachronisms unfit for our modern times.
Multi-million dollar a year law firm, and it can be brought to its knees if one of our obscure applications goes down and needs support, and the one guy that can support it is out taking his kids to soccer practice.
If it was that important then why not simply negotiate a special agreement with the developer (which should be easy since he is a one man shop) whereby you receive a master copy that you can install as many times as you want and doesn't try to phone home all of the time (i.e. a special build just for your company) and you get to call his private cell number whenever you need support 24x7? It shouldn't be very hard for you guys to keep track of the contract either, since managing contracts and seeing that terms are met is what lawyers specialize in right?
The greens think that's a great thing though so they should all try it themselves.
which part? dirt poor or eating meat only once per month?
awarding the games to China was *not* in keeping with the Olympic spirit.
So why not simply ban the Chinese and other countries that are widely disliked from the Olympics? Oh wait, then it really wouldn't be an international competition anymore, but rather the "Democracy Games" or the "Freedom Games" hosted by Dubya and his posse. The Olympics must engage with all nations, even those which are widely reviled, in the hopes that by including them in the spirit of peaceful international competition we will speed reforms and promote the spread of peace and the Olympic ideals. If we allow the entire movement to collapse because of our differences then what good will that do for us? There was also a bit of history involved in the choice of Beijing for the games in that the Chinese, by appearing at the 1984 Los Angeles games when the Soviet Union and many other countries had threatened to boycott, helped to prevent the games from collapsing permanently and giving voice to those who said that the peaceful international competition, with the games as its symbol, was an anachronism that had outlived its purpose. If China had honored the boycott and the Olympics had smothered then what good would that have done for the world? The government of China still has a long way to go in the areas of freedom and human rights, but they will not be very inclined to listen to the rest of us if we exclude them from every major international event. Even now, great international attention has been brought to the human rights record of China and plight of the people of Tibet which would not have occurred had the games not been awarded to China, so that in and of itself is a form of progress.
come to take away all your freedoms that you enjoy, such as your protection from unreasonable search or seizure...
Quiet you! move along...we don't allow unpatriotic trouble makers here! Sigh, unfortunately this is the type of response that we get from our government these days.
The IOC cannot allow unofficial use of the Olympic rings logo, it has nothing to do with supporting or opposing the right of people to protest their condition or the conditions endured by others around the world. The problem is that if they allow this use of the rings then it will encourage others to do the same without first asking permission until the eventual loss of control over the symbols and logos associated with the games occurs. The IOC cannot allow this to occur for the good of the Olympic games and the preservation of the spirit of peaceful international competition. They might have been a bit more tactful in their response, but this decision, despite the controversy, was correct.
but to make the point that there are hidden costs associated with CO2 emission that are currently ignored when people try to maximize profits.
Right, these are what economists call externalities (usually negative in practice although positive ones sometimes exist) and compensation for negative externalities (excessive CO2 emission being one possible example) is a legitimate issue. The difficulties lie in quantifying the cost of damages and thus the amount of compensation, who should receive it and how, and how best to enforce the rules. Although I am usually in favor of free market solutions, being sympathetic to the libertarian views, this is one of a very few good cases for the Governments, International treaties, and the courts.
I don't think Gore himself really advocates "all or nothing".
I don't believe that he does either, but that is certainly what it sounded like during the slide show (an error in delivery perhaps?). I any case I think that it is fair to say that Gore places a very high value on environmental quality. Indeed, probably much higher than the average person and is thus willing to pay more and possibly, although probably not him personally since he is fairly wealthy, give up more to get it. Not everyone is willing or able to do, pay, or give up as much as he (Gore) is to maximize environmental quality. This is a problem for Gore personally since he is wealthy enough to purchase carbon credits or pollution rights to continue living his present lifestyle relatively unchanged while the rest of us would be forced to cut back severely if his policies were implemented. This is and has been a persistent source of criticism for Gore: that he is able to buy his way out of sacrifices that people of lesser means will be required to make should his environmental policies become law and it is, despite the questionable sources (Sean Hannity for example), a legitimate criticism in principle (airplane travel and jet-setting, even with carbon credits purchased, is an oft cited example).
As for shifting the Overton window, It is difficult to envision the American public at large accepting any policy that will put a substantial dent in their pocket books (as restrictive emissions controls almost certainly will if they are implemented in the foreseeable future). The present oil drilling debate in California is a good example where a substantial number of people have changed their position (to be in favor of more drilling) on a political policy when it became clear that maintaining a particular position (a ban on offshore drilling) was a luxury that they could no longer afford. In the case of more oil drilling, the average voter knows or at least strongly suspects, despite what sophisticated pundits try to tell him, that more drilling lowers prices at the gas pump even if they cannot explain why.
It doesn't matter if global warming is true or not. We all want cleaner air.
Yes, but not everyone on the planet values clean air equally, especially in light of trade-offs required to achieve particular standards of cleanliness, and therein lies the real problem. In fact, environmental quality is a luxury good (according to the strict economic definition) since we tend to value it more, in a non-linear fashion, the better off that we are. Incidentally, this is also my primary quibble with the argument presented by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth that choosing between gold (as he puts it, but really goods and services produced by polluting economic activities) and the environment is a "false choice" when in fact there are many positions along the spectrum that result in varying amounts of trade-off and, as Keynes put it bluntly, in the long run we are all dead anyway. Gore was right to suggest that there are moral implications associated with these choices, but it is disingenous at best to present the argument as "all or nothing" with respect to the trade off between production of goods and services and the environment (since many people would not be living today anyway if not for our modern polluting economies). The problem with Gore and other public intellectuals is that they sometimes overplay their hands, often diminishing the value of their good points when they do, in attempt(s) to win argument(s) with their opponents.
Even the most cursory examination of humanity at any time in human history would very quickly debase one of that notion. So the early Russian communists were either naive, dishonest, or both.
did you wave to the tourists?