The environmental regs are a small part of the problem. Deregulation dragged on for so long and was such a a half-assed mess that nobody would have built a power plant out here even if they could have belched coal smoke all over a wildlife refuge. Why risk a few hundred million bucks if you have no idea what your ROI will be?
There is some evidence that power generators in California (and other recently de-regulated states) may actually be decreasing output to increase the wholesale price of electricity.
That is a clear evidence of a market with difficult entry requirements (because if they could cut supply to increase profit, someone else would come in and build more plants to make money). It is my understanding that there have been no large power plants built in California in the last twenty years, which given the increase in power demand, boggles the mind.
While there is additional government power regulation risk, I think the expense of environmental regulations (particularly the impact statements) are keeping new plants from being built.
Because of this, even if power distribution companies in CA could pass on the true wholesale price of power to ratepayers (which they can't by regulation today, and why they are going broke), the power generating companies themselves could continue to decrease supply and keep raising prices.
Significant environmental de-regulation of power plants is the only real solution. Better do it carefully though.
Don't take a moral stand; just decide whether you'd rather the continent of Africa to collapse into complete anarchy, and much of east Asia, and perhaps Latin America too (oh no! where will we get our cheap processors and jeans?).
Communism, dictatorship, and despotism dominate Africa. That's why it remains such a poor continent. That's also why Africa doesn't have drug companies developing their own AIDS drugs.
Latin America has finally rejected communism and despotism, and is improving rapidly (as long as spoiled american children don't protest away free trade). Dicussion of Catholocism's morals vs. scarcity of condoms aside, AIDS is no where as bad in Latin America compared to Africa.
In principle you could use a 50bps (or even slower) signal to do GPS work, but in practice it would be too hard and expensive to nail down bit transitions accurately enough
In the early 1960's, scientists at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in beautiful Laurel, Maryland, determined the orbit of Sputnik from listening to the doppler shift of the radio signal as it passed. APL's chairman came up with the neat concept that if you knew the orbit of the satellite, you could determine the position of the receiver from the doppler shift as well.
This was the birth of TRANSIT, the first satellite based navigation system. It transmitted orbit ephemeris every 2 minutes, and the receivers used the doppler shift curve to figure out location.
TRANSIT also had satellites called "Oscar" long before OSCAR (i.e. Orbiting Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio), which lead to many confusing conversations when I first worked at Johns Hopkins APL.
The current attitude towards nuclear power is ridiculous.
The truth is that nuclear power is much more expensive than oil, coal, or gas power. If nuclear power suddenly became cheaper than coal, I'm sure the NIMBY/enviro factor could be overcome.
It is my belief that over the next 50 years, there will not be a significant (inflation adusted) increase in the price of oil, and this will be a significant confounding factor to attempts to reduce CO2 emissions. Crude oil only costs $1-$2 per barrel to pump from middle east countries right now, so theoretically the price of refined oil could be as low as $5-$10 per barrel and still be profitable for them.
Our only hope is a fuel cell mechanism to extract energy from oil and that does not produce CO2 gas.
Networks are moving from paying affiliates to carry programs, to having the affiliates pay them.
Eventually, networks will avoid local broadcast affiliates completely and go direct to the consumer over cable, DSL, and satellite
70% of U.S. residents already get their TV from wire-based services, 10% from DBS satellites
So while DTV and HDTV will probably find use over digital wirelines services, the quagmire known as broadcast TV will only adopt any DTV services in the 10 largest metropolitan areas. Station owners are going to have to start paying TV networks for programming, and there is no coherent business plan for local broadcasters to recover the costs of switching to DTV (no viewers either due to expensive sets).
I think that it is nuts that the FCC determines what modulation modes should be used. Technological change happens rapidly now. Broadcast stations wasting precious bandwidth with analog transmissions should not be catered to. Spectrum use (rental) should be auctioned, and the winner can do whatever he or she wants with it. Look at the unregulated 900 MHz spectrum, used by everything from baby monitors to Ricochet micro-cellular data networks. We could have G3 wireless technology now instead of channel 5.
As many posters have noted, the California power problem has far more to do with government regulation of power than of Internet use. In a nutshell, California is the tip of the iceberg, there has been a nationwide slowdown in building large generation plants in the last 20 years, mostly for NIBMY and environmental reasons. Small plants and co-gens have been built, but they are not providing the increase in base power required. See:
The last article, written in 1998, suggested that as Congress look at electricity de-regulation, that it NOT follow the Californian model, for these reasons:
The short answer is that politicians rather than market forces designed the restructured California electricity system. Politicians, while paying lip service to deregulation and the magic of the market, could not bring themselves to simply let go of the industry. Reflecting the fear of both consumer activists and electric utilities that real markets would prove disastrous, the California legislature placed constraints on the restructured industry whose net effect was to stifle the very forces necessary to drive down California's utility rates. Consumer choice thus became a meaningless exercise.
A big problem for 3G in the US is the difficulty in getting rid of bandwidth-wasteful analog TV, especially in the UHF band. For instance, see this article.
It is my opinion that the FCC should auction ALL bandwidth in a "dark fiber" mode with no restrictions on modulation or protocol, as long as you stay within your band. For the more progressive minded, perhaps the FCC should only auction rental bandwidth, with a new auction every 1-5 years.
Canadian campaign finance reform has lead to the lowest voter turnout ever
The last Canadian election was most negative and disingenuous in memory because candidates don't have enough money to get out more expensive and polished positive messages.
Canadian campaign finance reform has become an "incumbent protection system" since challengers can't mount effective challenges to the free publicity that comes from being in office.
In the US, we've had all kinds of stupid campaign finance laws passed since the Nixon administration, and things have only gotten worse here. It doesn't work, nor is there any evidence in the world that it works.
Let's face it, it will be too dang cold to watch the Quadrantids. And most of us have seen a meteor shower before.
So instead, go LISTEN to them. NASA has set up a meteor-scatter detection system at Marshall Space Flight Center that listens in for the Ch. 4 television carrier. Every time a meteor leaves an ionized trail, a Ch. 4 carrier from beyond the horizon is reflected, and you can hear it.
You can hear something like 10 meteors for every one you can see. Amateur radio operators sometimes work meteor scatter using morse code, but you can see that you've got to send really fast to get anything out. There are also special packet radio protocols for using meteor scatter.
You get a modem -- think internet connection from your pocket. It's at least as useful as the OmniSky or Palm VII, both of which are very cool
OmniSky is far cooler than Palm VII because it is basically full Internet over CDPD, as opposed to email/web clipping.
Also I'm sure that if the Visor Phone is a cell modem, there are probably connection time charges (OmniSky uses a flat rate nationwide AT&T CDPD network.)
Of course, where you have 128kbps Ricochet, one would prefer that.
Coverage is going to suck in the US, and likely all of north America. It uses (only) GSM, whereas TDMA/CDMA is all the rage in the States, and Canada (I believe).
True - my "wunderPDA" would combine a Palm Vx with CDPD data (an AMPS service, I believe) and a TDMA or CDMA phone - preferably able to do both CDPD data (uses TCP) and CDMA voice (uses "Huh, what did you say?" for error correction:) at the same time.
I love my combination Palm Vx and OmniSky - can do Web browsing, telnet/ssh, email, etc. nationwide on AT&T CDPD network. (OK, Slashdot articles usually are too long to load into memory, I'll have to set up a separate account that only looks at 20 messages per page). But I have to carry a dang cellphone as well.
I understand that these people need to be reimbursed - but I think micropayment is a MUCH better option than intrusive, high-bandwidth ads.
By charging, you decrease the audience size. Thus you lose the power of mass viewing. Would Slashdot be what it is today if it charged $0.05 to view?
I've also never really understood this "wasted bandwidth" issue. I remember about text-worshippers complaining about "those wasteful images on the WWW" when the first graphical browsers came out. Hogwash, bandwidth "waste" leads to buildout of networks with higher capacities and lower cost of bandwidth transport.
I'll put forward that the limiting factor of broadband-to-the-home adoption is lack of content, and the lack of content is a combination of old-media fear and lack of new-media advertising sales.
I agree that flipping text into banners or popups are a big lose. Instead, advertising networks should be moving into audio and video ads in streaming media. That's going to be the only (halfway) reasonable way to present in-context advertising.
Would this work? There are lots of Sephardic and Yemeni Jews that lived centuries in contact with Arabs
Well, during the Crusades, the Europeans killed Arab Christians along with Muslims. I suppose they thought they were all the "infidel"!
A closer examination reveals that religion is often used as an excuse by the greedy to acquire property (see Salem Witch Trials, Spanish Inquisition, Holocaust, Crusades, current Israel occupied territories).
Human history is full of examples of unsustainable voyages of exploration. Vikings landed on the American continent before the Spanish, but they were unable to sustain a population there. The Spanish went in with a business plan.
I can assure you that increases in wealth of one parts of Earth's population are rapidly transferred to others, although international market barriers often keep this from happening. If you look at Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you'll understand that it is actually economically most efficient for producers to produce what they can best make. Advanced countries should design computers, not make tennis shoes. Less advanced countries should produce tennis shoes. Over time, the sale of cheap tennis shoes will bring wealth into the country (above subsistance farming, for example). The population will become better educated, and wealth flows will allow entrepreneurism (a great uncle of mine started a plastic bag factory in his native El Salvador, for example). Of course, the US still imposes protectionist tarriffs on Salvadoran textiles, because we're greedy and don't want Salvadoran peasants to have jobs...but that's why we have spoiled rich college students protesting the WTO and such.
Another example, 50 years ago, Korea was at the level of subsistance farming, now (at least the southern part) has a modern economy. Every impoverished country on the planet has a combination of a lack of democracy or a lack of enforcement of rights to personal property or both.
If we are to truly be in space, it will have to be in an economically sustainable manner. I'm not totally again socialized space science, but I know it alone will not keep us in space.
You're overlooking the obvious. If you want to do analog computing in silicon, you build an analog computer.
This sounds smart, but as someone who has designed analog neurosystems in silicon, I'd say that in this day and age you can get far more bang for your buck using digital simulations of analog circuitry. The reasons for this include the power of digital design tools (VHDL, etc.), digital testing suites, regularity of digital circuits, and the generality of digital machines (no application-specific silicon required).
See airplane flight vs. bird flight on this one...
Voted for Browne here as well...I don't get why the Greens are all excited about the 5% and matching funds, it didn't seem to do the Reform Party any good. But I suppose pseudo-socialists are always looking for taxpayer money;)
Strangely enough, Nader is far more mainstream and less socialist than the Green Party (compare his issue points with the Green Party platform). I think he sees the Green Party as an easy way to get ballot access, rather than something he really believes in.
I thought it was funny when Nader was stating last night what Harry Browne has been saying for a long time ("what if Bush and Gore were put in jail for their drug use when they were young?") Nader is actually very libertarian on many issues (drug war, military, etc.) His concept of letting citizens sue the government for waste would basically shut down the government. I'm not sure think he realizes this.
We've been with several banner ad networks, and well, if you're getting more than $1.50 CPM (cost per thousand impressions), you're incredibly lucky.
I was recently speaking with a company who advertised on our site through a network. They were spending $25 CPM for the ads, and we saw about $1 CPM by the time it made it our way (due to advertising agency and network costs, which seem to be much larger than stated).
My suggestion to content sites: learn how to sell your own ads. Even if you sell just a handful of your impressions, you'll probably make more than any network could bring you. Keep the sales in house.
I don't see why you have to have censorship. PACs and corporations can spend all the money they want on commercials for their favorite candidates as long as "PAID FOR BY XXXXX" is plastered all over it
That's great, but the "XXXXX" can ostensibly be a lie. Like "Committee for Responsible Drinking" could be an organization backed by hard liquor companies. Or it could be backed by the "Drinking Safe" organization, itself backed by the liquor companies. You can't believe everything you read.
At the end of the day, common sense is the only reasonable campaign finance reform.
I think you're confused if you think special interest groups are something new. They've been around for hundreds of years, and they are only slightly more influential now than then, and that is due to the increase in the size of government bureacracy (where paid-off decisions can hide better).
Don't listen to the campaign finance reformers - so far, the reform has done nothing but make it more difficult for newcomers to run for and win office. It throws up enough hoops that you have to get a lawyer to go over all donations and expenditures. It leads the taxpayers to spend $60 million on Al Gore and George Bush, LIKE THEY NEED THE MONEY! Oh yeah, $10 million to those Reform guys, that evens up the score! Actually the $10 million lead the Natural Law Party to infiltrate and try to take over the Reform Party (i.e. John Hagelin), but that's another story.
Policians will only craft campaign finance reform laws to work in their own interest. Public financing will be public financing for the incumbent politicans and parties (not polling over 15%? Sorry, no money for you, hahaha!)
Even public donation reporting is a problem. Why do we have a secret ballot? To keep the winning politician from attacking you for voting for the wrong person. So why should making a donation to a politican be public? It is the same logic, infact a corrupt politician is more likely to attack someone who gave money to the other side rather than just a vote.
At the end of the day, instead of campaign finance reform, please consider opening up ballot access. At least you can vote for a Libertarian, Green, or Reformer who you know the AFL-CIO didn't give money to:)
One more thought, these "special interest" are often "actual interests." In truth, it isn't like the tobacco settlement is actually helping anyone. I'm the NRA, along with millions of others. And no one would be happy if the government did something to make all the car manufacturers go bankrupt. And wow, we see what $2/gallon gas does to spoiled Americans, better let those oil companies drill where they want or we'll have a riot on hand (only a half smiley on that one!)
The US has entered a culture of significant social isolation. This has been lead by the suburban dream, a flight from the class mixed cities, and enough land to stay away from your neighbor. It has also been catalyzed by technology such as television, personal audio, and other mechanisms that keep people from interacting with one another. And it has been further strengthened by two-parent working families and the workaholism of the last 20 years.
Of course, it helps that there really is little for most people to worry about. The government has provided a fairly stable money supply to avoid inflation/deflation cycles since the early 80's, and the real problems of the US are of a social nature and not really solvable by the government.
The two party duopoly on power (held by ballot access that in many states is worse than in Russia) dramatically limits the political players. The US is so media-flooded that millions of dollars are needed to mount any serious campaign even for statewide officials. Campaign finance laws are rigged to work only for the incumbent politicians of major parties. Add this on to a governmental structure that makes it the most difficult for any new laws to pass, and it isn't suprising that there isn't much interest in politics, since there isn't much an individual can do.
That's probably good in many ways - governments that can do things fast and efficiently tend to end up oppressing or killing people fast and efficiently. It's bad enough we have the War on some Drugs.
What we need is for people to stop thining politicans can solve our problems. No social problem has ever been eliminated by government. Government has a mixed record on the economy, but Alan Greenspan does seem to be doing OK recently anyway.
We all need to turn around, and look at how we can improve our fellow person without government.
There is no excuse why an IT worker making $60K can't spend one night a week teaching an underpriveleged person how to use a computer. There will be almost no labor jobs soon (they will be outsourced to foreign countries), and service jobs will only pay enough for those without children (young people, theoretically). Go help people get better jobs, teach them.
Face it folks, JenniCam is the most downloaded woman on the Internet. There is simply no comparison between people spamming USENET (who the heck reads that anymore?;) and someone who has hundreds of thousands of users per DAY grabbing images every five minutes.
Besides, she runs Linux on Alpha with Apache...and uses a Mac to snag images.
Amateur and quasi-amateur aircraft played a vital role in the early development of flight. Barnstormers carried the first paying passengers.
Look at organizations such as JP Aerospace, who is using balloons to get the rockets above most of the atmosphere before launch (rockoon), and then using techniques of advanced high-power rocketry to take it from there. By the way, you can donate to the cause on their web site as well. For $8000, you can have your own flight!
Small businesses are also working on microsat launchers, include High Altitude Research Corporation who use sea launched rockoons with hybrid rocket motors (solid rockets with gas oxidizers).
It is my belief that low space access costs (for microsat payloads anyway) will come from mass production of cheap, small balloon-launched boosters.
Perhaps it is time for someone with first hand experience with computers in Latin America to make a statement.
My fiance has family in El Salvador. They are part of the middle class there, something that had been very small in prior years, but is growing rapidly now that the US and USSR have stop paying people to kill each other in El Salvador.
One of her cousins works at Xerox in San Salvador, selling copiers, printers, faxes, all the equipment you need to run a modern business. Another cousin in El Salvador works for Teleglobe, and sells telecom and Internet. Soon there will be fiber optic running into El Salvador to replace the aging satellite Net infrastructure.
My fiance's mother uses Internet email to communicate with her family in El Salvador. It is much cheaper than voice telecom costs (which can be as high as $1/minute).
Driving down the streets of San Salvador, you can see roadside advertisements for various computer training classes.
And this is important, during the civil war, many poor people left the fields because of the danger, and went to the capital (San Salvador) to find jobs. At the time, the government was concerned with the war, and there were all kinds of nutty restrictions on industry. My fiance's mothers cousin who runs a plastic bag factory couldn't sell bags outside of El Salvador.
Now that the war is over, industry of all kinds are flourishing in El Salvador. Trade barriers set up by the government are coming down, and trade barriers erected by the US against El Salvador are (slowly) coming down as well.
Life expectancy at birth in 1999 was 70 years in El Salvador, and literacy is up to 71.5%. There is a long way to go there, but the Internet can help in many ways, ranging from education (such as Net connectivity at the Universidad de El Salvador) to helping industry. Even the government is using it.
Privatization of the state controlled telecom company will also accelerate the improvement of El Salvador's telecom infrastructure that was badly damaged during the civil war.
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The environmental regs are a small part of the problem. Deregulation dragged on for so long and was such a a half-assed mess that nobody would have built a power plant out here even if they could have belched coal smoke all over a wildlife refuge. Why risk a few hundred million bucks if you have no idea what your ROI will be?
There is some evidence that power generators in California (and other recently de-regulated states) may actually be decreasing output to increase the wholesale price of electricity.
That is a clear evidence of a market with difficult entry requirements (because if they could cut supply to increase profit, someone else would come in and build more plants to make money). It is my understanding that there have been no large power plants built in California in the last twenty years, which given the increase in power demand, boggles the mind.
While there is additional government power regulation risk, I think the expense of environmental regulations (particularly the impact statements) are keeping new plants from being built.
Because of this, even if power distribution companies in CA could pass on the true wholesale price of power to ratepayers (which they can't by regulation today, and why they are going broke), the power generating companies themselves could continue to decrease supply and keep raising prices.
Significant environmental de-regulation of power plants is the only real solution. Better do it carefully though.
Don't take a moral stand; just decide whether you'd rather the continent of Africa to collapse into complete anarchy, and much of east Asia, and perhaps Latin America too (oh no! where will we get our cheap processors and jeans?).
Communism, dictatorship, and despotism dominate Africa. That's why it remains such a poor continent. That's also why Africa doesn't have drug companies developing their own AIDS drugs.
Latin America has finally rejected communism and despotism, and is improving rapidly (as long as spoiled american children don't protest away free trade). Dicussion of Catholocism's morals vs. scarcity of condoms aside, AIDS is no where as bad in Latin America compared to Africa.
In principle you could use a 50bps (or even slower) signal to do GPS work, but in practice it would be too hard and expensive to nail down bit transitions accurately enough
In the early 1960's, scientists at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in beautiful Laurel, Maryland, determined the orbit of Sputnik from listening to the doppler shift of the radio signal as it passed. APL's chairman came up with the neat concept that if you knew the orbit of the satellite, you could determine the position of the receiver from the doppler shift as well.
This was the birth of TRANSIT, the first satellite based navigation system. It transmitted orbit ephemeris every 2 minutes, and the receivers used the doppler shift curve to figure out location.
TRANSIT also had satellites called "Oscar" long before OSCAR (i.e. Orbiting Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio), which lead to many confusing conversations when I first worked at Johns Hopkins APL.
The current attitude towards nuclear power is ridiculous.
The truth is that nuclear power is much more expensive than oil, coal, or gas power. If nuclear power suddenly became cheaper than coal, I'm sure the NIMBY/enviro factor could be overcome.
It is my belief that over the next 50 years, there will not be a significant (inflation adusted) increase in the price of oil, and this will be a significant confounding factor to attempts to reduce CO2 emissions. Crude oil only costs $1-$2 per barrel to pump from middle east countries right now, so theoretically the price of refined oil could be as low as $5-$10 per barrel and still be profitable for them.
Our only hope is a fuel cell mechanism to extract energy from oil and that does not produce CO2 gas.
Has anyone tried playing iPaq Quake over a Ricochet 128kbps wireless link? (picture of iPaq with Ricochet)
- Networks are moving from paying affiliates to carry programs, to having the affiliates pay them.
- Eventually, networks will avoid local broadcast affiliates completely and go direct to the consumer over cable, DSL, and satellite
- 70% of U.S. residents already get their TV from wire-based services, 10% from DBS satellites
So while DTV and HDTV will probably find use over digital wirelines services, the quagmire known as broadcast TV will only adopt any DTV services in the 10 largest metropolitan areas. Station owners are going to have to start paying TV networks for programming, and there is no coherent business plan for local broadcasters to recover the costs of switching to DTV (no viewers either due to expensive sets). I think that it is nuts that the FCC determines what modulation modes should be used. Technological change happens rapidly now. Broadcast stations wasting precious bandwidth with analog transmissions should not be catered to. Spectrum use (rental) should be auctioned, and the winner can do whatever he or she wants with it. Look at the unregulated 900 MHz spectrum, used by everything from baby monitors to Ricochet micro-cellular data networks. We could have G3 wireless technology now instead of channel 5.The Electricity Blame Game
The Deregulation of the Electricity Industry: A Primer
Congress and Electricity
The last article, written in 1998, suggested that as Congress look at electricity de-regulation, that it NOT follow the Californian model, for these reasons:
The short answer is that politicians rather than market forces designed the restructured California electricity system. Politicians, while paying lip service to deregulation and the magic of the market, could not bring themselves to simply let go of the industry. Reflecting the fear of both consumer activists and electric utilities that real markets would prove disastrous, the California legislature placed constraints on the restructured industry whose net effect was to stifle the very forces necessary to drive down California's utility rates. Consumer choice thus became a meaningless exercise.
A big problem for 3G in the US is the difficulty in getting rid of bandwidth-wasteful analog TV, especially in the UHF band. For instance, see this article.
It is my opinion that the FCC should auction ALL bandwidth in a "dark fiber" mode with no restrictions on modulation or protocol, as long as you stay within your band. For the more progressive minded, perhaps the FCC should only auction rental bandwidth, with a new auction every 1-5 years.
In the US, we've had all kinds of stupid campaign finance laws passed since the Nixon administration, and things have only gotten worse here. It doesn't work, nor is there any evidence in the world that it works.
Let's face it, it will be too dang cold to watch the Quadrantids. And most of us have seen a meteor shower before.
So instead, go LISTEN to them. NASA has set up a meteor-scatter detection system at Marshall Space Flight Center that listens in for the Ch. 4 television carrier. Every time a meteor leaves an ionized trail, a Ch. 4 carrier from beyond the horizon is reflected, and you can hear it.
You can hear something like 10 meteors for every one you can see. Amateur radio operators sometimes work meteor scatter using morse code, but you can see that you've got to send really fast to get anything out. There are also special packet radio protocols for using meteor scatter.
You get a modem -- think internet connection from your pocket. It's at least as useful as the OmniSky or Palm VII, both of which are very cool
OmniSky is far cooler than Palm VII because it is basically full Internet over CDPD, as opposed to email/web clipping.
Also I'm sure that if the Visor Phone is a cell modem, there are probably connection time charges (OmniSky uses a flat rate nationwide AT&T CDPD network.)
Of course, where you have 128kbps Ricochet, one would prefer that.
Coverage is going to suck in the US, and likely all of north America. It uses (only) GSM, whereas TDMA/CDMA is all the rage in the States, and Canada (I believe).
:) at the same time.
True - my "wunderPDA" would combine a Palm Vx with CDPD data (an AMPS service, I believe) and a TDMA or CDMA phone - preferably able to do both CDPD data (uses TCP) and CDMA voice (uses "Huh, what did you say?" for error correction
I love my combination Palm Vx and OmniSky - can do Web browsing, telnet/ssh, email, etc. nationwide on AT&T CDPD network. (OK, Slashdot articles usually are too long to load into memory, I'll have to set up a separate account that only looks at 20 messages per page). But I have to carry a dang cellphone as well.
I understand that these people need to be reimbursed - but I think micropayment is a MUCH better option than intrusive, high-bandwidth ads.
By charging, you decrease the audience size. Thus you lose the power of mass viewing. Would Slashdot be what it is today if it charged $0.05 to view?
I've also never really understood this "wasted bandwidth" issue. I remember about text-worshippers complaining about "those wasteful images on the WWW" when the first graphical browsers came out. Hogwash, bandwidth "waste" leads to buildout of networks with higher capacities and lower cost of bandwidth transport.
I'll put forward that the limiting factor of broadband-to-the-home adoption is lack of content, and the lack of content is a combination of old-media fear and lack of new-media advertising sales.
I agree that flipping text into banners or popups are a big lose. Instead, advertising networks should be moving into audio and video ads in streaming media. That's going to be the only (halfway) reasonable way to present in-context advertising.
Would this work? There are lots of Sephardic and Yemeni Jews that lived centuries in contact with Arabs
Well, during the Crusades, the Europeans killed Arab Christians along with Muslims. I suppose they thought they were all the "infidel"!
A closer examination reveals that religion is often used as an excuse by the greedy to acquire property (see Salem Witch Trials, Spanish Inquisition, Holocaust, Crusades, current Israel occupied territories).
Human history is full of examples of unsustainable voyages of exploration. Vikings landed on the American continent before the Spanish, but they were unable to sustain a population there. The Spanish went in with a business plan.
I can assure you that increases in wealth of one parts of Earth's population are rapidly transferred to others, although international market barriers often keep this from happening. If you look at Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you'll understand that it is actually economically most efficient for producers to produce what they can best make. Advanced countries should design computers, not make tennis shoes. Less advanced countries should produce tennis shoes. Over time, the sale of cheap tennis shoes will bring wealth into the country (above subsistance farming, for example). The population will become better educated, and wealth flows will allow entrepreneurism (a great uncle of mine started a plastic bag factory in his native El Salvador, for example). Of course, the US still imposes protectionist tarriffs on Salvadoran textiles, because we're greedy and don't want Salvadoran peasants to have jobs...but that's why we have spoiled rich college students protesting the WTO and such.
Another example, 50 years ago, Korea was at the level of subsistance farming, now (at least the southern part) has a modern economy. Every impoverished country on the planet has a combination of a lack of democracy or a lack of enforcement of rights to personal property or both.
If we are to truly be in space, it will have to be in an economically sustainable manner. I'm not totally again socialized space science, but I know it alone will not keep us in space.
You're overlooking the obvious. If you want to do analog computing in silicon, you build an analog computer.
This sounds smart, but as someone who has designed analog neurosystems in silicon, I'd say that in this day and age you can get far more bang for your buck using digital simulations of analog circuitry. The reasons for this include the power of digital design tools (VHDL, etc.), digital testing suites, regularity of digital circuits, and the generality of digital machines (no application-specific silicon required).
See airplane flight vs. bird flight on this one...
Voted for Browne here as well...I don't get why the Greens are all excited about the 5% and matching funds, it didn't seem to do the Reform Party any good. But I suppose pseudo-socialists are always looking for taxpayer money ;)
Strangely enough, Nader is far more mainstream and less socialist than the Green Party (compare his issue points with the Green Party platform). I think he sees the Green Party as an easy way to get ballot access, rather than something he really believes in.
I thought it was funny when Nader was stating last night what Harry Browne has been saying for a long time ("what if Bush and Gore were put in jail for their drug use when they were young?") Nader is actually very libertarian on many issues (drug war, military, etc.) His concept of letting citizens sue the government for waste would basically shut down the government. I'm not sure think he realizes this.
We've been with several banner ad networks, and well, if you're getting more than $1.50 CPM (cost per thousand impressions), you're incredibly lucky.
I was recently speaking with a company who advertised on our site through a network. They were spending $25 CPM for the ads, and we saw about $1 CPM by the time it made it our way (due to advertising agency and network costs, which seem to be much larger than stated).
My suggestion to content sites: learn how to sell your own ads. Even if you sell just a handful of your impressions, you'll probably make more than any network could bring you. Keep the sales in house.
I don't see why you have to have censorship. PACs and corporations can spend all the money they want on commercials for their favorite candidates as long as "PAID FOR BY XXXXX" is plastered all over it
That's great, but the "XXXXX" can ostensibly be a lie. Like "Committee for Responsible Drinking" could be an organization backed by hard liquor companies. Or it could be backed by the "Drinking Safe" organization, itself backed by the liquor companies. You can't believe everything you read.
At the end of the day, common sense is the only reasonable campaign finance reform.
I think you're confused if you think special interest groups are something new. They've been around for hundreds of years, and they are only slightly more influential now than then, and that is due to the increase in the size of government bureacracy (where paid-off decisions can hide better).
:)
Don't listen to the campaign finance reformers - so far, the reform has done nothing but make it more difficult for newcomers to run for and win office. It throws up enough hoops that you have to get a lawyer to go over all donations and expenditures. It leads the taxpayers to spend $60 million on Al Gore and George Bush, LIKE THEY NEED THE MONEY! Oh yeah, $10 million to those Reform guys, that evens up the score! Actually the $10 million lead the Natural Law Party to infiltrate and try to take over the Reform Party (i.e. John Hagelin), but that's another story.
Policians will only craft campaign finance reform laws to work in their own interest. Public financing will be public financing for the incumbent politicans and parties (not polling over 15%? Sorry, no money for you, hahaha!)
Even public donation reporting is a problem. Why do we have a secret ballot? To keep the winning politician from attacking you for voting for the wrong person. So why should making a donation to a politican be public? It is the same logic, infact a corrupt politician is more likely to attack someone who gave money to the other side rather than just a vote.
At the end of the day, instead of campaign finance reform, please consider opening up ballot access. At least you can vote for a Libertarian, Green, or Reformer who you know the AFL-CIO didn't give money to
One more thought, these "special interest" are often "actual interests." In truth, it isn't like the tobacco settlement is actually helping anyone. I'm the NRA, along with millions of others. And no one would be happy if the government did something to make all the car manufacturers go bankrupt. And wow, we see what $2/gallon gas does to spoiled Americans, better let those oil companies drill where they want or we'll have a riot on hand (only a half smiley on that one!)
The US has entered a culture of significant social isolation. This has been lead by the suburban dream, a flight from the class mixed cities, and enough land to stay away from your neighbor. It has also been catalyzed by technology such as television, personal audio, and other mechanisms that keep people from interacting with one another. And it has been further strengthened by two-parent working families and the workaholism of the last 20 years.
Of course, it helps that there really is little for most people to worry about. The government has provided a fairly stable money supply to avoid inflation/deflation cycles since the early 80's, and the real problems of the US are of a social nature and not really solvable by the government.
The two party duopoly on power (held by ballot access that in many states is worse than in Russia) dramatically limits the political players. The US is so media-flooded that millions of dollars are needed to mount any serious campaign even for statewide officials. Campaign finance laws are rigged to work only for the incumbent politicians of major parties. Add this on to a governmental structure that makes it the most difficult for any new laws to pass, and it isn't suprising that there isn't much interest in politics, since there isn't much an individual can do.
That's probably good in many ways - governments that can do things fast and efficiently tend to end up oppressing or killing people fast and efficiently. It's bad enough we have the War on some Drugs.
What we need is for people to stop thining politicans can solve our problems. No social problem has ever been eliminated by government. Government has a mixed record on the economy, but Alan Greenspan does seem to be doing OK recently anyway.
We all need to turn around, and look at how we can improve our fellow person without government.
There is no excuse why an IT worker making $60K can't spend one night a week teaching an underpriveleged person how to use a computer. There will be almost no labor jobs soon (they will be outsourced to foreign countries), and service jobs will only pay enough for those without children (young people, theoretically). Go help people get better jobs, teach them.
Face it folks, JenniCam is the most downloaded woman on the Internet. There is simply no comparison between people spamming USENET (who the heck reads that anymore? ;) and someone who has hundreds of thousands of users per DAY grabbing images every five minutes.
Besides, she runs Linux on Alpha with Apache...and uses a Mac to snag images.
Amateur and quasi-amateur aircraft played a vital role in the early development of flight. Barnstormers carried the first paying passengers.
Look at organizations such as JP Aerospace, who is using balloons to get the rockets above most of the atmosphere before launch (rockoon), and then using techniques of advanced high-power rocketry to take it from there. By the way, you can donate to the cause on their web site as well. For $8000, you can have your own flight!
Small businesses are also working on microsat launchers, include High Altitude Research Corporation who use sea launched rockoons with hybrid rocket motors (solid rockets with gas oxidizers).
It is my belief that low space access costs (for microsat payloads anyway) will come from mass production of cheap, small balloon-launched boosters.
Perhaps it is time for someone with first hand experience with computers in Latin America to make a statement.
My fiance has family in El Salvador. They are part of the middle class there, something that had been very small in prior years, but is growing rapidly now that the US and USSR have stop paying people to kill each other in El Salvador.
One of her cousins works at Xerox in San Salvador, selling copiers, printers, faxes, all the equipment you need to run a modern business. Another cousin in El Salvador works for Teleglobe, and sells telecom and Internet. Soon there will be fiber optic running into El Salvador to replace the aging satellite Net infrastructure.
My fiance's mother uses Internet email to communicate with her family in El Salvador. It is much cheaper than voice telecom costs (which can be as high as $1/minute).
Driving down the streets of San Salvador, you can see roadside advertisements for various computer training classes.
And this is important, during the civil war, many poor people left the fields because of the danger, and went to the capital (San Salvador) to find jobs. At the time, the government was concerned with the war, and there were all kinds of nutty restrictions on industry. My fiance's mothers cousin who runs a plastic bag factory couldn't sell bags outside of El Salvador.
Now that the war is over, industry of all kinds are flourishing in El Salvador. Trade barriers set up by the government are coming down, and trade barriers erected by the US against El Salvador are (slowly) coming down as well.
Life expectancy at birth in 1999 was 70 years in El Salvador, and literacy is up to 71.5%. There is a long way to go there, but the Internet can help in many ways, ranging from education (such as Net connectivity at the Universidad de El Salvador) to helping industry. Even the government is using it.
Privatization of the state controlled telecom company will also accelerate the improvement of El Salvador's telecom infrastructure that was badly damaged during the civil war.