Obtaining a multicast tunnel, these days, is an impossibility inside an absurdity
Actually, it is not (UUNET will gladly give you a DVMRP tunnel for a few hundred a month, if you're a customer). And there are reasons why you might want to do a DVMRP tunnel rather than MBGP.
Of course, you do want to run PIM-SM within your network.
The article is right, the British have no experience of totalitarian government
Uh, what about the Edict of Expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290? There has been plenty of totalitarian government in Britain (especially in occupied Wales and Scotland:) but it has been much better in the last few hundred years.
I get a chuckle when people are amazed that a government-mandated standard is going to cost businesses money.
The FCC should auction leases on spectrum. How you use the spectrum should be up to the auction winner. That way, you can provide whatever you want. So if PBS wants to stick with analog NTSC, they can do that. But if a sports channel wants digital HDTV, they can do that as well. What a concept! You know, we have analog cellular and digital cellular (CDMA, GSM, etc.) all existing at once, and I can go down to the local 7-11 with $40 and be on a cellphone in a few minutes.
But no, we wouldn't want to touch our glorious government-mandated TELEVISION! Heavens, the people deserve bread and circuses, uh, I mean digital gold-plated HDTV. I don't see how it is in the public interest to force people to purchase $3000 televisions (oh yeah, it will be cheaper down the road, but then again, so will normal television as well.)
Slashdot and a newly flush with cash Andover.net launch the Beanie Awards. After a mysterious process of nomination and voting, $100,000 is handed out for such awards as "Best Unix Eyecandy"...Video available here.
Hah, that was a hillarious night. Great quotes: "Is everyone drunk yet?" "Drink More" "IPO money needed to be spent" "Who here voted? Who lied?"
Building a market on advertising, when your customers are primarily people who are too cheap to pay for your content, seems to be the stupidest idea business has ever had.
This is BS! There are plenty of dot coms that brought in millions of dollars in advertising. The biggest problem ad-based dot coms had was 1) spending too much money and 2) expecting to always be able to raise more money.
Let's look at Digital Entertainment Network. They raised something like $100 million, and were blowing $50,000 per video episode, for a burn rate of something like $10 mil/month. The truth is, they could have spent $1000 per episode and gotten similar results using cheap cameras and cheap talent.
On the advertising side, DEN had a $10 million dollar advertising contract with people like Pepsi and Ford. Had they kept their burn rate to below their advertising pay-in, they would have been fine. And, I argue, that keeping it "real and small" ala early Slashdot would have lead to their content being more user-centric instead of more tv-esque.
iCast repeated the same mistake. Pseudo, which started in a much more controlled way, spiralled out of control in an attempt to go public (again, chasing the "easy money" that turned out not to be so).
Of course, I myself chased after the "easy VC money" after raising an initial angel round, so I understand why they did it...
Early Slashdot also had a big advantage - a highly targetted tech audience, which resulted in higher CPMs than a "consumer" site. Also a smart idea:)
We're spending billions of dollars (a big chunk of our GDP) on national defense. And we never even use it!
We did use it. The Strategic Defense Inititative (SDI aka Star Wars) finished off the USSR. Their military tried to match it, and spent itself into oblivion. Plus, SDI helped me get through college as well (defense jobs):)
So now we've got China to deal with. Funny how we're talking about missile defense again. It worked once....
We're in the situation where ILECs are going to underprice CLECs out of the DSL business, and form an actual monopoly (together with poorer performance).
This is thanks to everyone who believes in the concept of "natural monopoly," that lead to ILECs being granted monopoly franchises by local governments to wire up telephones.
If you think the DSL debacle is bad, wait for the other "regulated monopolies" like power and cable...
Interference with other users of the radio spectrum can result in a fine from the FCC. Story about a wireless ISP being investigated by the FCC.
This is hillarious. The story is about the FCC clamping down on a wireless Internet provider using 2.4 GHz devices in an apartment complex for interfering with amateur radio television.
While the Hams are clearly in the right legally, morally I cannot equate 2 guys doing ATV (probably a static image of their callsigns) with an entire apartment complex's high-speed Internet connectivity. If they really wanted to send video, why don't they get the 2.4 GHz Internet service and use Netmeeting???
How does this scheme reduce overall pollution? I reduce pollution and sell you the right to increase your pollution the earth sees no difference in it's pollution level.
It reduces overall pollution because some people will have a much harder time reducing pollution than others. For instance, a company with a very old coal burning powerplant might need to spend $100 million to retrofit to achieve CO2 reduction, while another company building a new coal burning powerplant may only need to spend $25 million to achieve the reduction by planning for it before the plant is built.
So we have two scenarios with the same CO2 output reduction. #1 has the old coal plant spend $100 million and the new plant spend $25 million to achieve 60% CO2 reduction.
Secnario #2 has the new plant spend $30 million to achieve 90% CO2 reduction, and sell a 30% reduction license to the old plant. The old plant spends about $50 million to add the additional 10% reduction it needs to achieve a 30% real and 30% licensed emmission.
In both cases, overall CO2 emmission reduction was 60%. The difference is that the new powerplant can afford to build in an extra 30% reduction beyond that, and sell the license to someone who needs it.
Actually, scenario #1 really goes like this - the company that needs to spend $100 million can't afford to, and instead spends millions on politicians to make sure that the law is never passed. Or, they go out of business, and you have a bunch of angry AFL/CIO members. Either way, it makes the political job of selling CO2 emmission more difficult.
By instituting a market for pollution, you make it far easier for companies with a higher marginal CO2 reduction price to be able to help achieve overall CO2 reduction.
Creating a market in pollution is the sickest most unethical thing I can think of. Creating commerce out of an activity which leads to suffering, horrible afflictions, and death is akin to legalizing child torture and pornography because some people want to do it.
I'm assuming that you don't emit any CO2, or else you are saying that you are the same as a child pornographer. I suggest you STOP BREATHING IMMEDIATELY!
IF YOU ARE IGNORANT OF ECONOMICS, we will all die, like the millions of Chinese killed due to communist farming techniques under Mao. Global warming is too dangerous for us to ignore economic and political realities.
The pollution quota system proposed by the US will help with the climate problem! Wrong selling liscences to pollute and produce greenhouse gasses won't help. Only an over all reduction of greenhouse gasses will help.
Yes, but without licenses, you will have a sub-optimal reduction in greenhouse gasses. Establishing a market for pollution licenses means that the people who can most afford to reduce their greenhouse gas production will do it.
Without licenses, the people who can most afford to reduce their greenhouse gas production will have no incentive to reduce it, and the people who can't afford to reduce their emissions will be a drain on economies, encouraging increased political backlash against emission reductions.
If rich people want to pay poor people for the right to pollute, and that leads to an overall emission reduction, why is that bad? It makes the poor people richer, and reduces emissions!
I just stayed at the Hampton Inn Oakland airport, and they had STSN with both Ethernet and USB. I didn't measure throughput, but the Ethernet was clearly was a lot better than the 56k dialup I've had to use at the Hyatt Regency! It just used DHCP, trivial to get operation, just plug and go. $9.95/day.
BTW, if you ever have to go to San Francisco, keep Oakland airport in mind. It is almost always cheaper to fly into than SFO, and Dollar and National rental cars are right there outside the terminal.
That said, a diet of refried beans and cheddar cheese in a tortilla wrap is not the best way to eat healthy.
I dunno, peasants around the world survive on the stuff. It has all the required amino acids. If you lost the cheese you probably lose half of the fat, but I'm not sure if the enjoyment decrease is worth the calorie savings. Same with the tortilla. I get 26g of protein per TB meal this way, combine with soy milk and Total raisin bran in the morning and sometimes a late snack, and I hit the RDA for everything, while staying below 2000 calories per day.
and try to do a light workout a few times a week.
Yes, I do that - recumbent bike allows for workout and reading Slashdot at the same time. I do weight training as well, but harder to web surf while lifting (correctly).
Did anybody else read this as if it implied that the researchers at Duke ate a few too many burritos from Taco Bell?
Taco Bell actually has some of the healthiest fast food available. I've been losing weight by eating lunch and dinner at Taco Bell. Now you can't eat just anything, the only healthy items are the bean and supreme buritos as well as pintos & cheese. Tell them to leave off the cheese for even healthier food. Compare these typical meals that satiate me:
Trust me, dropping 370 calories, 28g of fat, and gaining 13g of fiber per meal makes a serious difference in your life. I've gone from 220 lbs to 185 lbs...and still going down.
Big Oil has, up until recently, been against alternative power sources. Only now that it's becomming abundantly clear that the oil supply isn't going to last another 50-80 years do we see their tunes change. Now we find companies like BP having an increasing interest in developing solar power technology. Why? They know their number is up and are changing to fit with the times so they can survive.
I think that oil companies are far more concerned about environmental issues, both from a customer perception and a regulatory viewpoint. The amount of true alternative-energy research being done by these companies pales in comparison with the amount of oil they are selling. They are, however, tyring to "look green", since the next generation of oil consumers are the same enviro-nuts rioting in Seattle.
There also is the risk of severe carbon regulation if fear of global warming becomes significant. In which case, the oil companies will have to figure out how to make money without emitting CO2.
But in terms of oil running out, there is no indication that this will happen within a timeframe important to the oil companies right now.
Has there truly been a patent search to make sure that Ogg Vorbis does not infringe on existing patents?
For example, I just did a quick patent search for "MDCT" and "audio" and came up with 175 hits. There are plenty of patents out there covering all kinds of audio encoding mechanisms including MDCT (or whatever transform you happen to be fond of). While the transforms themselves usually are not patented, mechanisms of their practical use are.
But, a large majority of the 1% are born into huge inheritances, never having to work to have what they have, any more than the other 99% have had to work to become poor.... 99% of the 1% contribute NOTHING to society, just take from the others like overgrown playground bullies.
By investing, rich people can actually create wealth. Now some of that wealth goes back to them (NASDAQ goes up), some of it goes back to workers (jobs and better paying jobs), and some of it goes to consumers (faster computers, cheap televisions, microwave ovens, etc.)
It isn't fair that some people can choose to never have to work. But the truth is that human greed, inflation, and taxes tend to make even the richest do some "work" (careful investment) to create wealth for all kinds of people besides themselves.
You have masterfully proven the point: the people working in Kathy Lee's sweatshops and weaving rugs in Pakistan so that the latest.com millionaire may furnish his latest posh loft meet almost all if not all of your criteria for being a slave.
Oh my, send those sweatshop workers back into the fields! Why work all day making sneakers and money for your family when you can do back-breaking farm work under the hot sun to make LESS MONEY growing coffee beans for dot com workers.
Here's another theory: America's rising standard of living has made it easier for families to break up, which has lead to greater illegitimacy and crime. Americans' rising wealth has also created a lackadaisical attitude towards petty theft and minor misdemeanors, which has also raised the crime rate. Throw in the War on Drugs (a folly which could only be truly done in a country as spoiled as the US), and you've got a flammable mixture.
Capitalism is unsustainable, and the incredible growth of homo sapiens...is due to "spending" a bank account that was accumulated over billions of years: fossil fuels (source Thom Hartmann: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight). We have reached the maximum rate of extraction, and this rate will begin to decline, while demand and human population continues to grow *expontentially* (source: Jay Hanson)
There have been gloomy talk about running out of oil for a long time:
1885, U.S. Geological Survey: "Little or no chance for oil in California."
1891, U. S. Geological Survey: Same prophecy by USGS for Kansas and Texas as in 1885 for California.
1914, U. S. Bureau of Mines: Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels, perhaps 10 years supply.
1939, Department of the Interior: Reserves to last only 13 years.
1951, Department of the Oil and Gas Division: Reserves to last 13 years.
The truth is that as oil reserves are continuing to increase because new technology is applied to new areas.
We don't actually know 100% how oil was formed (no one has ever been able to produce the equivalent of crude oil, yet we can make man-made diamonds). One particular theory claims that the lower crust of the planet is bathed in hydrocarbons from the time of planet formation, and the oil we see is only the little bits that get caught in traps near surface. In that case we'd never run out of oil. Who knows?
Nobody knows. Nobody knows how much oil is left, until a well runs dry. You can guess about it, but you are often wrong, because we can't count the drops of oil in every crack and crevice thousands of feet below the ground/ocean. Then once it "runs dry," you begin pumping in water to displace more oil, and you don't know how much more will come out. Nor do we know how much natural gas might be present, nor oil in oil shales.
Other interesting tidbits: The trends in energy costs and scarcity have been downward over the entire period for which we have data. These "high oil costs" Americans complain about today are, after adjusting for inflation, not much different than 20 years ago. Energy has become less and less important as measured by its share of GNP.
And let's say we do run out of oil. Well, we'll have to get by somehow, perhaps nuclear/fusion using batteries, hydrogen, or other chemical energy storage technique. Long before the oil really runs out, there will be an economic incentive to build these devices (well, there will be in capitalist countries anyway). Looking at the price of oil right now, I don't expect to see them much in the near future.
Capitalism encourages unsustainable population growth, depletion of natural resources, and the creation of waste products.
The first part of this is really wrong. Capitalism increases the supply and efficiency of use of mineral resources. It also increases the size of sustainable populations. You may also want to compare starvation rates of US versus Mao's farming policies that killed 30 million people by starvation.
Capitalism does increase the creation of waste products, but as you mentioned, it does produce a market incentive to deal with them in a halfway reasonable way. The greatest environmental problems exist in situations where there is not ownership (waterways and multipoint atmospheric pollution).
The research is pretty clear that there is a genetic component to many aspects of behavior. For example, twin studies have shown a genetic component to bipolar disorder. There is a 57% concordance of bipolar disorder in monozygotic twins, and a 14% concordance in dizygotic twins. Other behaviors linked to genetics include attention deficit, dyslexia, and male homosexuality.
However, most behavior is influenced significantly by non-genetic factors that we don't understand...the other 43% non-concordance of bipolar disorder in monozygotic twins, for instance. In addition to that, there are very few behaviors that are dependent on a single gene mutation alone (Huntington's disease is the only one I can think of).
For a good understanding of where we stand today with behavioral genetics, check out Toward Behavioral Genomics.
Many people link behavioural genomics with racism, but this is incredibly bogus. The strongly conserved genes that make up "racial identity" are limited to those evolved for survival in different environments (too much UV, not enough UV, etc.) Within the "races", there is plenty of genetic diversity and a wide range of different behaviors.
Two things are for sure: if government becomes involved in how parents determing the genetic makeup of their children, there will be trouble.
Secondly, there will be widespread access by parents to this kind of genetic behavioral information, and potentially mechanism to alter the genome of their child. Government won't be able to stop that, it will make the war on drugs look winnable. Reproduction is an exceedingly emotional subject, look at the abortion debate for example.
Project ELF looks pretty cool. It uses "tag routing," in that each ELF packet (encapsulated in TCP/IP) has a unique 6-byte tag. I assume that each client remembers the incoming IP address associated with each tag. File requests sent to a client are broadcast (i.e. sent out to all known IPs except the one the file request came in on), and search hits are reverse-path-forwarded using tag routing.
My main concern about Project Elf is its scaling issues using "broadcast" packets for searches...what happens if there are a million clients out there?
Ricochet might be useful to users of ricochet themselves, but other people trying to use the same radio bands as ricochet are SOL.
I have a little bit of sympathy for this (I used to be N3HAU), but let's face it, the unlicensed bands are the unlicensed band, whoever gets the most transmitters in there wins. One could even possibly argue that there is a bit of Darwinism involved, if homebrew equipment was really providing a service to humanity, then you'd be blowing out Ricochet...and of course, you can always purchase Ricochet transport to make up for the lost point-to-point link...and one could also argue that micro-cellular networks are more bandwidth efficient than long-haul point-to-point links...but then I'd have to duck!
I'm actually a bit of a believer in radio anarchy. If there never was any radio regulation, I bet we would have had spread spectrum as standard issue in the 1940's. This feels more fair to me than the other options (government acting as God decides who uses what frequencies, or government acting as God-for-hire auctions frequencies to the highest bidder).
Instead, we have a situation where goverment can impede the novel uses of radio by setting up arbitrary standards and bands, and impeding who can transmit. (See HDTV). But I doubt the powers that be would ever allow this to occur.
For an example, why hasn't Ricochet (the first widespread consumer-level wireless mobile Internet system, now the first broadband consumer-level wireless mobile Internet system) been developed using the licensed bands? The answer is that it would be impossible for a small company to get the licenses to make it possible. Sure, the FCC will eventually auction 3G licenses (someday!), but then you're stuck into a particular standard that may or may not be responsive to the market.
OmniSky and Ricochet are not in the same category - OmniSky uses the existing CDPD network of AT&T, cranking along at a good 10kbps Internet throughput on a good day. Yes, I have OmniSky for my Palm Vx, but I really could use another 20-30 kbps!!!
Ricochet, on the other hand, has built out its own network. They sneaked into the consumer market by first selling remote monitoring services to power companies, who in turn let them mount the units on the light poles (where the repeaters can get power from as well). I used Ricochet's first service, that delivered ~20 kbps Internet throughput. I abandoned it for the slower Verizon CDPD because it was available in a NIC version as a PC card instead of a separate modem that seemed to disconnect every micro cell hop as I drove. (Actually, the separate modem part is cool in that you have an extra battery, and can mount it farther from your PC without cable loss. OmniSky's Minstrel modem has its own battery, but form-fits around the Palm.)
I've been waiting to try out Ricochet's "128kbps" service, that does seem to provide 50-100kbps of Internet throughput from what I've heard. However, it hasn't made it to the Washington, DC metro area yet. There are PCMCIA cards for the new Ricochet now, and I believe there is a NIC version as well.
Probably the best use for Ricochet is not with a laptop, but with a WinCE/Linux PDA running a reasonable Web browser, email client, etc. At the Ricochet 128kbps level, you can imagine sourcing/receiving streaming video, webcams, streamed MP3s, etc., going well beyond the world of Palms. Also, there is the concept of "Social ASPs", instant messaging and other mechanism to help organize groups of people for both recreational and business reasons in the mobile (club-going, bar-hopping, sales show) environment.
I don't buy that any homebuilt 802.11b networks will be able to compete with a network that is built out as large as Ricochet. There are a bunch of issues - for one, it isn't enough just to have repeaters, you need connection to the Internet. The question of who gets billed for this is the major problem.
However, there is something to be said for local Ricochet gateways. I know in the olden days, Ricochet would work with a University to set up a micro-cell campus network. I think that those deals have to be put aside for now until the major Metro area buildouts are done, but in the future companies and Universities should be sold local Ricochet gateways.
BTW, check out the CarlaZone, my fiance who has a Webcam powered by Verizon CDPD. We take it along in the car sometimes.
1) The US doesn't have the largest percentage of people online (I believe that is Sweden)
2) 98% of American households own a color TV. 91% own a car. 84% have a VCR. 74% have cable TV. 66% own two color TVs. 44% own a computer.
3) PeoplePC sells a brand-name computer, on-site service, unlimited Internet access and a home page for $24.95 per-month over three years. If you can afford cable TV, you can afford a computer.
4) But if you can't afford a computer, you can browse the Net at most libraries, or pay-per-use at Kinkos.
I know a Salvadoran familiy in Washington, DC, that makes most of its money from making plantain empanadas for a local pupusaria. They have purchased a 486 computer for their daughter, and she uses AOL. They also have a large TV with surround-sound speakers. Probably the worst thing about their lives is the crime around where they live, but they prefer to be living around other Salvadorans, and they can't afford to move into a suburban McMansion yet.
The "Digital Divide" is much more about individual priorities than economics in the US.
Got some evidence for this? The deregulation battle dragged on for years. Several new power plants have been approved since deregulation was finally settled, and except for one recent approval for a peaker plant near SFO, I'm not aware of a case where they lowered environmental regs. But since they take years to build, I don't think any of them have come on line.
An article from EEI in November claims: "In fact, virtually no new large powerplants have been built in California or New York for nearly two decades--at a time when the economy has surged and new demands have been imposed on the electric grid." Another article from the San Jose Business Journal in 1998 claimes: "In Northern California, the newest utility thermal unit began operating 26 years ago."
I think the key here is large powerplants. I know there are two Northern California powerplants being built to provide about 500 MW each, but I think the definition of "large" EEI is talking about is 1000 MW and up.
To get an idea of scale, today's forecast peak demand in California is around 30,000 MW. During the summer, it can be as high as 45,000 MW. If California has a problem now, wait until this summer which is supposed to be hot (i.e. air conditioning loads) and dry (i.e. less hydroelectric from the Northwest).
If it was easy to build large powerplants, someone would have done so, since the wholesale electricity prices in California have been high for quite a while now, and it has been obvious to many for years that demand was outpacing supply.
Slashdot Mirror
Obtaining a multicast tunnel, these days, is an impossibility inside an absurdity
Actually, it is not (UUNET will gladly give you a DVMRP tunnel for a few hundred a month, if you're a customer). And there are reasons why you might want to do a DVMRP tunnel rather than MBGP.
Of course, you do want to run PIM-SM within your network.
The article is right, the British have no experience of totalitarian government
:) but it has been much better in the last few hundred years.
Uh, what about the Edict of Expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290? There has been plenty of totalitarian government in Britain (especially in occupied Wales and Scotland
I get a chuckle when people are amazed that a government-mandated standard is going to cost businesses money. The FCC should auction leases on spectrum. How you use the spectrum should be up to the auction winner. That way, you can provide whatever you want. So if PBS wants to stick with analog NTSC, they can do that. But if a sports channel wants digital HDTV, they can do that as well. What a concept! You know, we have analog cellular and digital cellular (CDMA, GSM, etc.) all existing at once, and I can go down to the local 7-11 with $40 and be on a cellphone in a few minutes. But no, we wouldn't want to touch our glorious government-mandated TELEVISION! Heavens, the people deserve bread and circuses, uh, I mean digital gold-plated HDTV. I don't see how it is in the public interest to force people to purchase $3000 televisions (oh yeah, it will be cheaper down the road, but then again, so will normal television as well.)
Slashdot and a newly flush with cash Andover.net launch the Beanie Awards. After a mysterious process of nomination and voting, $100,000 is handed out for such awards as "Best Unix Eyecandy"...Video available here.
Hah, that was a hillarious night. Great quotes: "Is everyone drunk yet?" "Drink More" "IPO money needed to be spent" "Who here voted? Who lied?"
Building a market on advertising, when your customers are primarily people who are too cheap to pay for your content, seems to be the stupidest idea business has ever had.
:)
This is BS! There are plenty of dot coms that brought in millions of dollars in advertising. The biggest problem ad-based dot coms had was 1) spending too much money and 2) expecting to always be able to raise more money.
Let's look at Digital Entertainment Network. They raised something like $100 million, and were blowing $50,000 per video episode, for a burn rate of something like $10 mil/month. The truth is, they could have spent $1000 per episode and gotten similar results using cheap cameras and cheap talent.
On the advertising side, DEN had a $10 million dollar advertising contract with people like Pepsi and Ford. Had they kept their burn rate to below their advertising pay-in, they would have been fine. And, I argue, that keeping it "real and small" ala early Slashdot would have lead to their content being more user-centric instead of more tv-esque.
iCast repeated the same mistake. Pseudo, which started in a much more controlled way, spiralled out of control in an attempt to go public (again, chasing the "easy money" that turned out not to be so).
Of course, I myself chased after the "easy VC money" after raising an initial angel round, so I understand why they did it...
Early Slashdot also had a big advantage - a highly targetted tech audience, which resulted in higher CPMs than a "consumer" site. Also a smart idea
We're spending billions of dollars (a big chunk of our GDP) on national defense. And we never even use it!
:)
We did use it. The Strategic Defense Inititative (SDI aka Star Wars) finished off the USSR. Their military tried to match it, and spent itself into oblivion. Plus, SDI helped me get through college as well (defense jobs)
So now we've got China to deal with. Funny how we're talking about missile defense again. It worked once....
We're in the situation where ILECs are going to underprice CLECs out of the DSL business, and form an actual monopoly (together with poorer performance).
This is thanks to everyone who believes in the concept of "natural monopoly," that lead to ILECs being granted monopoly franchises by local governments to wire up telephones.
If you think the DSL debacle is bad, wait for the other "regulated monopolies" like power and cable...
Interference with other users of the radio spectrum can result in a fine from the FCC. Story about a wireless ISP being investigated by the FCC.
This is hillarious. The story is about the FCC clamping down on a wireless Internet provider using 2.4 GHz devices in an apartment complex for interfering with amateur radio television.
While the Hams are clearly in the right legally, morally I cannot equate 2 guys doing ATV (probably a static image of their callsigns) with an entire apartment complex's high-speed Internet connectivity. If they really wanted to send video, why don't they get the 2.4 GHz Internet service and use Netmeeting???
-ex N3HAU
How does this scheme reduce overall pollution? I reduce pollution and sell you the right to increase your pollution the earth sees no difference in it's pollution level.
It reduces overall pollution because some people will have a much harder time reducing pollution than others. For instance, a company with a very old coal burning powerplant might need to spend $100 million to retrofit to achieve CO2 reduction, while another company building a new coal burning powerplant may only need to spend $25 million to achieve the reduction by planning for it before the plant is built.
So we have two scenarios with the same CO2 output reduction. #1 has the old coal plant spend $100 million and the new plant spend $25 million to achieve 60% CO2 reduction.
Secnario #2 has the new plant spend $30 million to achieve 90% CO2 reduction, and sell a 30% reduction license to the old plant. The old plant spends about $50 million to add the additional 10% reduction it needs to achieve a 30% real and 30% licensed emmission.
In both cases, overall CO2 emmission reduction was 60%. The difference is that the new powerplant can afford to build in an extra 30% reduction beyond that, and sell the license to someone who needs it.
Actually, scenario #1 really goes like this - the company that needs to spend $100 million can't afford to, and instead spends millions on politicians to make sure that the law is never passed. Or, they go out of business, and you have a bunch of angry AFL/CIO members. Either way, it makes the political job of selling CO2 emmission more difficult.
By instituting a market for pollution, you make it far easier for companies with a higher marginal CO2 reduction price to be able to help achieve overall CO2 reduction.
Creating a market in pollution is the sickest most unethical thing I can think of. Creating commerce out of an activity which leads to suffering, horrible afflictions, and death is akin to legalizing child torture and pornography because some people want to do it.
I'm assuming that you don't emit any CO2, or else you are saying that you are the same as a child pornographer. I suggest you STOP BREATHING IMMEDIATELY!
IF YOU ARE IGNORANT OF ECONOMICS, we will all die, like the millions of Chinese killed due to communist farming techniques under Mao. Global warming is too dangerous for us to ignore economic and political realities.
The pollution quota system proposed by the US will help with the climate problem! Wrong selling liscences to pollute and produce greenhouse gasses won't help. Only an over all reduction of greenhouse gasses will help.
Yes, but without licenses, you will have a sub-optimal reduction in greenhouse gasses. Establishing a market for pollution licenses means that the people who can most afford to reduce their greenhouse gas production will do it.
Without licenses, the people who can most afford to reduce their greenhouse gas production will have no incentive to reduce it, and the people who can't afford to reduce their emissions will be a drain on economies, encouraging increased political backlash against emission reductions.
If rich people want to pay poor people for the right to pollute, and that leads to an overall emission reduction, why is that bad? It makes the poor people richer, and reduces emissions!
I just stayed at the Hampton Inn Oakland airport, and they had STSN with both Ethernet and USB. I didn't measure throughput, but the Ethernet was clearly was a lot better than the 56k dialup I've had to use at the Hyatt Regency! It just used DHCP, trivial to get operation, just plug and go. $9.95/day.
BTW, if you ever have to go to San Francisco, keep Oakland airport in mind. It is almost always cheaper to fly into than SFO, and Dollar and National rental cars are right there outside the terminal.
That said, a diet of refried beans and cheddar cheese in a tortilla wrap is not the best way to eat healthy.
I dunno, peasants around the world survive on the stuff. It has all the required amino acids. If you lost the cheese you probably lose half of the fat, but I'm not sure if the enjoyment decrease is worth the calorie savings. Same with the tortilla. I get 26g of protein per TB meal this way, combine with soy milk and Total raisin bran in the morning and sometimes a late snack, and I hit the RDA for everything, while staying below 2000 calories per day.
and try to do a light workout a few times a week.
Yes, I do that - recumbent bike allows for workout and reading Slashdot at the same time. I do weight training as well, but harder to web surf while lifting (correctly).
Did anybody else read this as if it implied that the researchers at Duke ate a few too many burritos from Taco Bell?
Taco Bell actually has some of the healthiest fast food available. I've been losing weight by eating lunch and dinner at Taco Bell. Now you can't eat just anything, the only healthy items are the bean and supreme buritos as well as pintos & cheese. Tell them to leave off the cheese for even healthier food. Compare these typical meals that satiate me:
Taco Bell
Beef Burito Supreme: 430 calories, 16g fat, 9g fiber
Pintos 'n Cheese: 180 calories, 8g fat, 10g fiber
Total: 610 calories, 24g fat, 19g fiber
McDonalds
Quarter Pounder w. Cheese: 530 calories, 30g fat, 2g fiber
Medium Fries: 450 calories, 22g fat, 4g fiber
Total: 980 calories, 52g fat, 6g fiber
Trust me, dropping 370 calories, 28g of fat, and gaining 13g of fiber per meal makes a serious difference in your life. I've gone from 220 lbs to 185 lbs...and still going down.
Big Oil has, up until recently, been against alternative power sources. Only now that it's becomming abundantly clear that the oil supply isn't going to last another 50-80 years do we see their tunes change. Now we find companies like BP having an increasing interest in developing solar power technology. Why? They know their number is up and are changing to fit with the times so they can survive.
I think that oil companies are far more concerned about environmental issues, both from a customer perception and a regulatory viewpoint. The amount of true alternative-energy research being done by these companies pales in comparison with the amount of oil they are selling. They are, however, tyring to "look green", since the next generation of oil consumers are the same enviro-nuts rioting in Seattle.
There also is the risk of severe carbon regulation if fear of global warming becomes significant. In which case, the oil companies will have to figure out how to make money without emitting CO2.
But in terms of oil running out, there is no indication that this will happen within a timeframe important to the oil companies right now.
Has there truly been a patent search to make sure that Ogg Vorbis does not infringe on existing patents?
For example, I just did a quick patent search for "MDCT" and "audio" and came up with 175 hits. There are plenty of patents out there covering all kinds of audio encoding mechanisms including MDCT (or whatever transform you happen to be fond of). While the transforms themselves usually are not patented, mechanisms of their practical use are.
But, a large majority of the 1% are born into huge inheritances, never having to work to have what they have, any more than the other 99% have had to work to become poor. ... 99% of the 1% contribute NOTHING to society, just take from the others like overgrown playground bullies.
By investing, rich people can actually create wealth. Now some of that wealth goes back to them (NASDAQ goes up), some of it goes back to workers (jobs and better paying jobs), and some of it goes to consumers (faster computers, cheap televisions, microwave ovens, etc.)
It isn't fair that some people can choose to never have to work. But the truth is that human greed, inflation, and taxes tend to make even the richest do some "work" (careful investment) to create wealth for all kinds of people besides themselves.
You have masterfully proven the point: the people working in Kathy Lee's sweatshops and weaving rugs in Pakistan so that the latest .com millionaire may furnish his latest posh loft meet almost all if not all of your criteria for being a slave.
Oh my, send those sweatshop workers back into the fields! Why work all day making sneakers and money for your family when you can do back-breaking farm work under the hot sun to make LESS MONEY growing coffee beans for dot com workers.
These sweatshop workers must be really stupid! Who would give up the hazards of working in the fields?
Here's another theory: America's rising standard of living has made it easier for families to break up, which has lead to greater illegitimacy and crime. Americans' rising wealth has also created a lackadaisical attitude towards petty theft and minor misdemeanors, which has also raised the crime rate. Throw in the War on Drugs (a folly which could only be truly done in a country as spoiled as the US), and you've got a flammable mixture.
Read Spoiled Rotten.
Capitalism is unsustainable, and the incredible growth of homo sapiens...is due to "spending" a bank account that was accumulated over billions of years: fossil fuels (source Thom Hartmann: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight). We have reached the maximum rate of extraction, and this rate will begin to decline, while demand and human population continues to grow *expontentially* (source: Jay Hanson)
There have been gloomy talk about running out of oil for a long time:
1885, U.S. Geological Survey: "Little or no chance for oil in California."
1891, U. S. Geological Survey: Same prophecy by USGS for Kansas and Texas as in 1885 for California.
1914, U. S. Bureau of Mines: Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels, perhaps 10 years supply.
1939, Department of the Interior: Reserves to last only 13 years.
1951, Department of the Oil and Gas Division: Reserves to last 13 years.
The truth is that as oil reserves are continuing to increase because new technology is applied to new areas.
We don't actually know 100% how oil was formed (no one has ever been able to produce the equivalent of crude oil, yet we can make man-made diamonds). One particular theory claims that the lower crust of the planet is bathed in hydrocarbons from the time of planet formation, and the oil we see is only the little bits that get caught in traps near surface. In that case we'd never run out of oil. Who knows?
Nobody knows. Nobody knows how much oil is left, until a well runs dry. You can guess about it, but you are often wrong, because we can't count the drops of oil in every crack and crevice thousands of feet below the ground/ocean. Then once it "runs dry," you begin pumping in water to displace more oil, and you don't know how much more will come out. Nor do we know how much natural gas might be present, nor oil in oil shales.
I suggest reading Julian Simon's When will we run out of oil? Never!.
Other interesting tidbits: The trends in energy costs and scarcity have been downward over the entire period for which we have data. These "high oil costs" Americans complain about today are, after adjusting for inflation, not much different than 20 years ago. Energy has become less and less important as measured by its share of GNP.
And let's say we do run out of oil. Well, we'll have to get by somehow, perhaps nuclear/fusion using batteries, hydrogen, or other chemical energy storage technique. Long before the oil really runs out, there will be an economic incentive to build these devices (well, there will be in capitalist countries anyway). Looking at the price of oil right now, I don't expect to see them much in the near future.
Capitalism encourages unsustainable population growth, depletion of natural resources, and the creation of waste products.
The first part of this is really wrong. Capitalism increases the supply and efficiency of use of mineral resources. It also increases the size of sustainable populations. You may also want to compare starvation rates of US versus Mao's farming policies that killed 30 million people by starvation.
Capitalism does increase the creation of waste products, but as you mentioned, it does produce a market incentive to deal with them in a halfway reasonable way. The greatest environmental problems exist in situations where there is not ownership (waterways and multipoint atmospheric pollution).
The research is pretty clear that there is a genetic component to many aspects of behavior. For example, twin studies have shown a genetic component to bipolar disorder. There is a 57% concordance of bipolar disorder in monozygotic twins, and a 14% concordance in dizygotic twins. Other behaviors linked to genetics include attention deficit, dyslexia, and male homosexuality.
However, most behavior is influenced significantly by non-genetic factors that we don't understand...the other 43% non-concordance of bipolar disorder in monozygotic twins, for instance. In addition to that, there are very few behaviors that are dependent on a single gene mutation alone (Huntington's disease is the only one I can think of).
For a good understanding of where we stand today with behavioral genetics, check out Toward Behavioral Genomics.
Many people link behavioural genomics with racism, but this is incredibly bogus. The strongly conserved genes that make up "racial identity" are limited to those evolved for survival in different environments (too much UV, not enough UV, etc.) Within the "races", there is plenty of genetic diversity and a wide range of different behaviors.
Two things are for sure: if government becomes involved in how parents determing the genetic makeup of their children, there will be trouble.
Secondly, there will be widespread access by parents to this kind of genetic behavioral information, and potentially mechanism to alter the genome of their child. Government won't be able to stop that, it will make the war on drugs look winnable. Reproduction is an exceedingly emotional subject, look at the abortion debate for example.
Project ELF looks pretty cool. It uses "tag routing," in that each ELF packet (encapsulated in TCP/IP) has a unique 6-byte tag. I assume that each client remembers the incoming IP address associated with each tag. File requests sent to a client are broadcast (i.e. sent out to all known IPs except the one the file request came in on), and search hits are reverse-path-forwarded using tag routing.
My main concern about Project Elf is its scaling issues using "broadcast" packets for searches...what happens if there are a million clients out there?
Ricochet might be useful to users of ricochet themselves, but other people trying to use the same radio bands as ricochet are SOL.
I have a little bit of sympathy for this (I used to be N3HAU), but let's face it, the unlicensed bands are the unlicensed band, whoever gets the most transmitters in there wins. One could even possibly argue that there is a bit of Darwinism involved, if homebrew equipment was really providing a service to humanity, then you'd be blowing out Ricochet...and of course, you can always purchase Ricochet transport to make up for the lost point-to-point link...and one could also argue that micro-cellular networks are more bandwidth efficient than long-haul point-to-point links...but then I'd have to duck!
I'm actually a bit of a believer in radio anarchy. If there never was any radio regulation, I bet we would have had spread spectrum as standard issue in the 1940's. This feels more fair to me than the other options (government acting as God decides who uses what frequencies, or government acting as God-for-hire auctions frequencies to the highest bidder).
Instead, we have a situation where goverment can impede the novel uses of radio by setting up arbitrary standards and bands, and impeding who can transmit. (See HDTV). But I doubt the powers that be would ever allow this to occur.
For an example, why hasn't Ricochet (the first widespread consumer-level wireless mobile Internet system, now the first broadband consumer-level wireless mobile Internet system) been developed using the licensed bands? The answer is that it would be impossible for a small company to get the licenses to make it possible. Sure, the FCC will eventually auction 3G licenses (someday!), but then you're stuck into a particular standard that may or may not be responsive to the market.
OmniSky and Ricochet are not in the same category - OmniSky uses the existing CDPD network of AT&T, cranking along at a good 10kbps Internet throughput on a good day. Yes, I have OmniSky for my Palm Vx, but I really could use another 20-30 kbps!!!
Ricochet, on the other hand, has built out its own network. They sneaked into the consumer market by first selling remote monitoring services to power companies, who in turn let them mount the units on the light poles (where the repeaters can get power from as well). I used Ricochet's first service, that delivered ~20 kbps Internet throughput. I abandoned it for the slower Verizon CDPD because it was available in a NIC version as a PC card instead of a separate modem that seemed to disconnect every micro cell hop as I drove. (Actually, the separate modem part is cool in that you have an extra battery, and can mount it farther from your PC without cable loss. OmniSky's Minstrel modem has its own battery, but form-fits around the Palm.)
I've been waiting to try out Ricochet's "128kbps" service, that does seem to provide 50-100kbps of Internet throughput from what I've heard. However, it hasn't made it to the Washington, DC metro area yet. There are PCMCIA cards for the new Ricochet now, and I believe there is a NIC version as well.
Probably the best use for Ricochet is not with a laptop, but with a WinCE/Linux PDA running a reasonable Web browser, email client, etc. At the Ricochet 128kbps level, you can imagine sourcing/receiving streaming video, webcams, streamed MP3s, etc., going well beyond the world of Palms. Also, there is the concept of "Social ASPs", instant messaging and other mechanism to help organize groups of people for both recreational and business reasons in the mobile (club-going, bar-hopping, sales show) environment.
I don't buy that any homebuilt 802.11b networks will be able to compete with a network that is built out as large as Ricochet. There are a bunch of issues - for one, it isn't enough just to have repeaters, you need connection to the Internet. The question of who gets billed for this is the major problem.
However, there is something to be said for local Ricochet gateways. I know in the olden days, Ricochet would work with a University to set up a micro-cell campus network. I think that those deals have to be put aside for now until the major Metro area buildouts are done, but in the future companies and Universities should be sold local Ricochet gateways.
BTW, check out the CarlaZone, my fiance who has a Webcam powered by Verizon CDPD. We take it along in the car sometimes.
1) The US doesn't have the largest percentage of people online (I believe that is Sweden)
2) 98% of American households own a color TV. 91% own a car. 84% have a VCR. 74% have cable TV. 66% own two color TVs. 44% own a computer.
3) PeoplePC sells a brand-name computer, on-site service, unlimited Internet access and a home page for $24.95 per-month over three years. If you can afford cable TV, you can afford a computer.
4) But if you can't afford a computer, you can browse the Net at most libraries, or pay-per-use at Kinkos.
I know a Salvadoran familiy in Washington, DC, that makes most of its money from making plantain empanadas for a local pupusaria. They have purchased a 486 computer for their daughter, and she uses AOL. They also have a large TV with surround-sound speakers. Probably the worst thing about their lives is the crime around where they live, but they prefer to be living around other Salvadorans, and they can't afford to move into a suburban McMansion yet.
The "Digital Divide" is much more about individual priorities than economics in the US.
Got some evidence for this? The deregulation battle dragged on for years. Several new power plants have been approved since deregulation was finally settled, and except for one recent approval for a peaker plant near SFO, I'm not aware of a case where they lowered environmental regs. But since they take years to build, I don't think any of them have come on line.
An article from EEI in November claims: "In fact, virtually no new large powerplants have been built in California or New York for nearly two decades--at a time when the economy has surged and new demands have been imposed on the electric grid." Another article from the San Jose Business Journal in 1998 claimes: "In Northern California, the newest utility thermal unit began operating 26 years ago."
I think the key here is large powerplants. I know there are two Northern California powerplants being built to provide about 500 MW each, but I think the definition of "large" EEI is talking about is 1000 MW and up.
To get an idea of scale, today's forecast peak demand in California is around 30,000 MW. During the summer, it can be as high as 45,000 MW. If California has a problem now, wait until this summer which is supposed to be hot (i.e. air conditioning loads) and dry (i.e. less hydroelectric from the Northwest).
If it was easy to build large powerplants, someone would have done so, since the wholesale electricity prices in California have been high for quite a while now, and it has been obvious to many for years that demand was outpacing supply.