The complex issue is that often developing cyclones are destroyed because of high-level wind-shear. In other words, there may be lots of energy in the atmosphere, but if there is too much it may disperese the energy away from its concentrations in cyclones.
This is an example of the difficulty of fighting climate change - the atmosphere is complex, and it may be very difficult to make coherent plans based on emissions of CO2, Methane, and particulates (the latter involve cloud formation and snow darkening). I think limiting all those emissions would be a conservative long-term idea, but it could make things worse in the short-run (say by allowing those cyclones to have time to form).
On the other hand, we could ask "What would we do to limit the effect of the environment on people even if we had no control over global climate?"
The answer is to make people richer through global economic growth. Rich people can afford satellites and radios to warn them of storms, and have transportation to get them away from storms, rich people can afford to transport food and water from areas from remote areas of production, rich people have dependable heating and cooling systems in their homes to avoid temperature related health problems, etc.
While it is possible to cause these issues, if that statement were patently true then TV stations would cause interference with each other.
Indeed, it is very likely that there are lots of "hidden" intermodulation problems with the existing scheme for DTV channel packing. We may know a lot more after February, 2009, when more "eyes" will be looking at the problem.
The real problem with "whitespace" devices is intermodulation interference. Just because there isn't a signal in a "whitespace" doesn't mean that if you transmit there that your signal won't mix with other signals in receivers to create intermodulation noise.
Unlicensed signals on first adjacent channels next to DTV signals may generate third-order intermodulation product noise in DTV receivers.
There is nothing wrong with trying to set up "intelligent radio" unlicensed systems in their own band, but putting them adjacent to DTV channels is not a good idea.
Nicholas Negroponte: "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
If so, the OLPC should come with a e-textbook on economics, because that is what the developing world really needs to learn before it can fully utilize other knowledge.
That means there will be a new generation of millions 3rd world LISP-like hackers spread all throughout the world. This will be their first computer language. Not c, not BASIC, not visual basic. This, I predict, will lead to amazing new programs.
Like the world needs a billion more people saying "It would be much easier in Lisp, look:"
It's like the problem we had in the US of upgrading television stations to Hi-Def. In Europe, you only have to upgrade two or three transmitters per country. In the US you have hundreds of transmitters dotted throughout the country
There is no terrestrial Hi-Definition television in Europe. There is standard definition DVB-T, and there is limited hi-def on satellite and a bit on cable. Europe has generally decided to wait for 1080p and analog turn-off before pushing terrestrial HD.
On the other hand, there is HD on the air in almost every place in the US that you can pick up television.
overhead for private insurer = 15 to 30%; overhead for public universal healthcare: less than 2% (true of, for instance, Medicare of French Social Security).
This is a comparison of total costs to administrative costs. The calculation for Social Security doesn't take into account that Medicare costs more per covered patient than private health insurance (dramatically more, because more Medicare tends to cover people in end-of-life), and also doesn't take into account the larger amount of fraud in Medicare which is avoided by private health insurers administration.
Plus private insurers have things like HIPAA, Sarbox, etc.
Cost per capita isn't efficiency, it is cost. But I'll agree that US costs per health results do not appear to be efficient, although the exact definition is difficult to define because of the health risk due to genetic or lifestyle differences in the populations (not that many Native Americans living in Europe, for example, and there are significant dietary differences between Americans and Japanese)
Sorry, but it's blatantly clear to anyone paying attention that the US is *not* the best system in the world.
I do agree, health care in the U.S. is too expensive. De-regulate it to allow market forces to work.
We could socialize it and allow government rationing to work, but I'd prefer not having people who oppose embryonic stem cell research and don't believe in evolution running my health care.
Up until the 1950's, the US had the highest import duties of all the major countries.
This is an over-simplification. The US certainly did have high tarriffs during the Great Depression beginning with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which many economists feel deepened and further globalized the Great Depression. From 1913 until the end of World War I, the US had a low tarriff regime, and slightly higher one until Smoot-Hawley.
The US had nearly free trade with Canada because of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty from 1855 to 1866.
It is true that US tariff rates were very high around the time of the Civil War, they fell mainly upon the South, and they were a secondary cause of the War.
It is true that between 1950 and 1973 the annual real GDP growth of developed market economies averaged around 5% after the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed in 1947 which lead to dramatic reductions in global trade barriers.
It should also be noted that early 19th Century Britain had the "Corn Laws" and other high tariff barriers.
Like I said earlier, why aren't the private pharmaceutical firms and big investors putting their own money into embryonic stem cell research, instead of waiting for a government development grant?
Most of the basic R&D in the US is really carried out by government funded researchers. Applied companies just pick up the basic results for free and then specialize them into patentable intellectual property.
I'm not 100% sure if this is an issue of socialist R&D pushing out private R&D, or an issue that basic R&D is too far ahead of useful applications in time to be effectively covered by I.P. laws, or simply an issue (like surface roads) of too many transaction fees to effectively do basic R&D privately on a massive scale.
The traditional argument for this response is to say: "Putting a value on the tissue of the unborn will create a black market for said tissue and encourage commercialization leading to fetus farms where young women are paid for their eggs for use in treating the elderly and the sick"
And the problem with this is what anyway? Last time I checked, it was embryonic stem cells (from a mass of undifferentiated tissue without a nervous system or anything, which is the definition of stem cells), not fetal stem cells (which is a different subject).
Plus how is collecting eggs going to be cheaper than keeping cell lines going?
Besides, wouldn't it be better for IVF patients to make money on their unused embryos rather than have the economic waste of throwing them away?
it is now widely recognized that prescribing solutions and throwing wads of money hasn't helped
1) The prescriptions (economic deregulation and respect for private property rights) have not been followed. Most countries in Africa remain economically "Mostly Unfree" by the Index of Economic Freedom
2) Indeed, the aid money mostly ended up in the hands of the friends of the same incompetent governments that didn't follow the prescriptions. The West wasn't able to bribe African governments into obeying economic reality.
What if poor farmers could learn new agricultural techniques using the internet?
Does their government allow them to own their land? (For example, all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state; there is no private land ownership...try getting a loan to purchase fertilizer when you don't own your own land).
The problems of Africa can be put into two camps: Over-regulation, which leads directly to Corruption (because the regulations need to be broken, for a price, if any business is going to happen).
Now of course some countries have it far worse than others (compare Botswana versus Zimbabwe), but no countries in Africa are rated "Free" or "Mostly Free" by the Index of Economic Freedom, and most countries in Africa are rated "Mostly Unfree".
To build a telecommunications sector (and make no mistake about it, if you put in cable and connections you're building the sector) you need effective government regulation.
Actually you'd be better off with NO government regulation, getting rid of all bribe opportunities in one fell swoop.
public healthcare in the US is actually *more* efficient than private healthcare.
US private healthcare is over-regulated. Every state has different regulations (imagine if your computer had to have 512MB of RAM in Maryland and 256MB of RAM in New York). There are too many state requirements for what health insurance covers to provide affordable coverage for most people. These regulations can add as much as $2000 to health care premiums.
And there is the WWII era Federal Tax laws that make employer-provided health care tax deductible, while non-employer-provided health care is not. This leads to onlyh 3.6% of Americans having non-employer provided health insurance.
Of course there is no real definition of "health care efficiency." There has been some examination of administrative costs of Medicare versus private insurance, for example. Medicare describes administrative costs as a ratio of processing costs divided by claims.
The claim is that "Medicare administrative costs are about 2 percent of claims costs, while private insurance companies' administrative costs are in the 20 to 25 percent range." The problem is that the average medical cost for a Medicare beneficiary per year is $6,600, while the average medical cost for someone with employer-sponsored health insurance was $2,700. Thus the "administrative cost ratio" is comparing apples to oranges. It also is unclear if the full cost of Medicare fraud investigations and prosecutions is worked into the ratio (private insurance is usually more pro-active in avoiding fraud, which may raise administrative costs, but probably saves overall costs by not paying out fraudulent claims.)
Anyway, I suggest that before we create a fully-socialist healthcare system (as opposed to one that is just ~50% socialized in temrs of health care dollars from Medicare and Medicaid) that we actually de-regulate private healthcare on a nationwide basis.
That's a load of Republican propaganda (i.e. bullshit). Taxes build the infrastructure (roads, schools, firehouses) that allow the markets to exist.
Actually the market has been around a lot longer than socialist schools and firehouses.
Roads, well, you got me there. There really are too many transaction costs for roads to be generally private (with the only a few notable exceptions, and those are usually short highways). Even the Roman government built roads.
Of course most US tax dollars go to Social Security outlays (a Ponzi scheme that funnels money from the poor to the rich), the military (as if we needed another war), and the existing socialized medicine of Medicare (often for rich retirees) and Medicaid (medicine for actually poor people who may actually need some help).
Schools, firehouses, and roads are WAY down the list.
It's because of people like you that the US has no universal health care and most students spend half their lives paying of their loans.
Yey! I prefer to avoid government-run health care, and like the ability of poor people to be able to borrow to get a good private education at the best colleges in the world.
Extreme anti-protectionism protects only two classes: the multinational corporations and the extremely wealthy. If you are not in either of those two classes, you are arguing against your own best interests.
TheTheorem of Comparative Advantage proves that it is beneficial to both parties to specialize in production of the goods that each party is most productive at (even if one party is better at producing all goods).
It should also be noted that all taxes incur a deadweight loss to the economy.
The problem is who chooses which candidates are "real enough" to get the money.
Currently, state governments already work wonders to keep third parties off of the ballot...imagine if they also controlled the campaign funds of those third parties.
But what you are really saying is that 30 years of "campaign finance reform" haven't worked and have only lead to more bureacracy and lawyers and making it more difficult to run a campaign. Deregulate campaign finance.
The bigger problem in France is the 8.3% unemployment rate, although that has improved recently from a high of 12.6% in 1997 (the US unemployment rate is 4.5%). The unemployment falls mainly on the young, with 25% of the under 25 unemployed.
French GDP growth is also unimpressive at around 1% quarterly for a while (0.8% last quarter). This doesn't seem too bad compared with the recent US GDP gorwth of 1.3% last quarter, but until this year the US economy was typically growing much faster than France at rates between 2% and 3% per quarter.
The big difference is that we are comparing a large solar plant at 40MWe peaking power with a nuclear reactor of 1GWe continuous base power. Nuclear is tough to do, but it is an incredibly dense source of power.
Slashdot Mirror
The complex issue is that often developing cyclones are destroyed because of high-level wind-shear. In other words, there may be lots of energy in the atmosphere, but if there is too much it may disperese the energy away from its concentrations in cyclones.
This is an example of the difficulty of fighting climate change - the atmosphere is complex, and it may be very difficult to make coherent plans based on emissions of CO2, Methane, and particulates (the latter involve cloud formation and snow darkening). I think limiting all those emissions would be a conservative long-term idea, but it could make things worse in the short-run (say by allowing those cyclones to have time to form).
On the other hand, we could ask "What would we do to limit the effect of the environment on people even if we had no control over global climate?"
The answer is to make people richer through global economic growth. Rich people can afford satellites and radios to warn them of storms, and have transportation to get them away from storms, rich people can afford to transport food and water from areas from remote areas of production, rich people have dependable heating and cooling systems in their homes to avoid temperature related health problems, etc.
While it is possible to cause these issues, if that statement were patently true then TV stations would cause interference with each other.
Indeed, it is very likely that there are lots of "hidden" intermodulation problems with the existing scheme for DTV channel packing. We may know a lot more after February, 2009, when more "eyes" will be looking at the problem.
The real problem with "whitespace" devices is intermodulation interference. Just because there isn't a signal in a "whitespace" doesn't mean that if you transmit there that your signal won't mix with other signals in receivers to create intermodulation noise.
t mlt ml
Unlicensed signals on first adjacent channels next to DTV signals may generate third-order intermodulation product noise in DTV receivers.
There is nothing wrong with trying to set up "intelligent radio" unlicensed systems in their own band, but putting them adjacent to DTV channels is not a good idea.
More info:
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0072/t.1598.h
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0072/t.2005.h
Nicholas Negroponte: "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
If so, the OLPC should come with a e-textbook on economics, because that is what the developing world really needs to learn before it can fully utilize other knowledge.
That means there will be a new generation of millions 3rd world LISP-like hackers spread all throughout the world. This will be their first computer language. Not c, not BASIC, not visual basic. This, I predict, will lead to amazing new programs.
Like the world needs a billion more people saying "It would be much easier in Lisp, look:"
((((((((((CAR((MAPCAR '(LAMBDA(x) CDR(SETQ CAR(CDR(DEFUN BITEME CAR(CDR(CAR(CDR)))))))))))))))))))
It's like the problem we had in the US of upgrading television stations to Hi-Def. In Europe, you only have to upgrade two or three transmitters per country. In the US you have hundreds of transmitters dotted throughout the country
There is no terrestrial Hi-Definition television in Europe. There is standard definition DVB-T, and there is limited hi-def on satellite and a bit on cable. Europe has generally decided to wait for 1080p and analog turn-off before pushing terrestrial HD.
On the other hand, there is HD on the air in almost every place in the US that you can pick up television.
overhead for private insurer = 15 to 30%; overhead for public universal healthcare: less than 2% (true of, for instance, Medicare of French Social Security).
This is a comparison of total costs to administrative costs. The calculation for Social Security doesn't take into account that Medicare costs more per covered patient than private health insurance (dramatically more, because more Medicare tends to cover people in end-of-life), and also doesn't take into account the larger amount of fraud in Medicare which is avoided by private health insurers administration.
Plus private insurers have things like HIPAA, Sarbox, etc.
Cost per capita isn't efficiency, it is cost. But I'll agree that US costs per health results do not appear to be efficient, although the exact definition is difficult to define because of the health risk due to genetic or lifestyle differences in the populations (not that many Native Americans living in Europe, for example, and there are significant dietary differences between Americans and Japanese)
Sorry, but it's blatantly clear to anyone paying attention that the US is *not* the best system in the world.
I do agree, health care in the U.S. is too expensive. De-regulate it to allow market forces to work.
We could socialize it and allow government rationing to work, but I'd prefer not having people who oppose embryonic stem cell research and don't believe in evolution running my health care.
Up until the 1950's, the US had the highest import duties of all the major countries.
This is an over-simplification. The US certainly did have high tarriffs during the Great Depression beginning with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which many economists feel deepened and further globalized the Great Depression. From 1913 until the end of World War I, the US had a low tarriff regime, and slightly higher one until Smoot-Hawley.
The US had nearly free trade with Canada because of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty from 1855 to 1866.
It is true that US tariff rates were very high around the time of the Civil War, they fell mainly upon the South, and they were a secondary cause of the War.
Average trade-weighted tariff rates in the US between 1821 and 1995.
It is true that between 1950 and 1973 the annual real GDP growth of developed market economies averaged around 5% after the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed in 1947 which lead to dramatic reductions in global trade barriers.
It should also be noted that early 19th Century Britain had the "Corn Laws" and other high tariff barriers.
Said European countries' health care system is an order of magnitude more efficient.
What is your source of this information?
Like I said earlier, why aren't the private pharmaceutical firms and big investors putting their own money into embryonic stem cell research, instead of waiting for a government development grant?
Most of the basic R&D in the US is really carried out by government funded researchers. Applied companies just pick up the basic results for free and then specialize them into patentable intellectual property.
I'm not 100% sure if this is an issue of socialist R&D pushing out private R&D, or an issue that basic R&D is too far ahead of useful applications in time to be effectively covered by I.P. laws, or simply an issue (like surface roads) of too many transaction fees to effectively do basic R&D privately on a massive scale.
The traditional argument for this response is to say: "Putting a value on the tissue of the unborn will create a black market for said tissue and encourage commercialization leading to fetus farms where young women are paid for their eggs for use in treating the elderly and the sick"
And the problem with this is what anyway? Last time I checked, it was embryonic stem cells (from a mass of undifferentiated tissue without a nervous system or anything, which is the definition of stem cells), not fetal stem cells (which is a different subject).
Plus how is collecting eggs going to be cheaper than keeping cell lines going?
Besides, wouldn't it be better for IVF patients to make money on their unused embryos rather than have the economic waste of throwing them away?
it is now widely recognized that prescribing solutions and throwing wads of money hasn't helped
1) The prescriptions (economic deregulation and respect for private property rights) have not been followed. Most countries in Africa remain economically "Mostly Unfree" by the Index of Economic Freedom
2) Indeed, the aid money mostly ended up in the hands of the friends of the same incompetent governments that didn't follow the prescriptions. The West wasn't able to bribe African governments into obeying economic reality.
Look at a country like the Zimbabwe where the press is completely regulated by the Government
Zimbabwe is probably the worst country in Africa economically right now.
Botswana's GDP per capita is $10,866. Zimbabwe's was $2,100 in 2006, probably even lower now.
What if poor farmers could learn new agricultural techniques using the internet?
Does their government allow them to own their land? (For example, all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state; there is no private land ownership...try getting a loan to purchase fertilizer when you don't own your own land).
The problems of Africa can be put into two camps: Over-regulation, which leads directly to Corruption (because the regulations need to be broken, for a price, if any business is going to happen).
Now of course some countries have it far worse than others (compare Botswana versus Zimbabwe), but no countries in Africa are rated "Free" or "Mostly Free" by the Index of Economic Freedom, and most countries in Africa are rated "Mostly Unfree".
To build a telecommunications sector (and make no mistake about it, if you put in cable and connections you're building the sector) you need effective government regulation.
Actually you'd be better off with NO government regulation, getting rid of all bribe opportunities in one fell swoop.
public healthcare in the US is actually *more* efficient than private healthcare.
US private healthcare is over-regulated. Every state has different regulations (imagine if your computer had to have 512MB of RAM in Maryland and 256MB of RAM in New York). There are too many state requirements for what health insurance covers to provide affordable coverage for most people. These regulations can add as much as $2000 to health care premiums.
And there is the WWII era Federal Tax laws that make employer-provided health care tax deductible, while non-employer-provided health care is not. This leads to onlyh 3.6% of Americans having non-employer provided health insurance.
Of course there is no real definition of "health care efficiency." There has been some examination of administrative costs of Medicare versus private insurance, for example. Medicare describes administrative costs as a ratio of processing costs divided by claims.
The claim is that "Medicare administrative costs are about 2 percent of claims costs, while private insurance companies' administrative costs are in the 20 to 25 percent range." The problem is that the average medical cost for a Medicare beneficiary per year is $6,600, while the average medical cost for someone with employer-sponsored health insurance was $2,700. Thus the "administrative cost ratio" is comparing apples to oranges. It also is unclear if the full cost of Medicare fraud investigations and prosecutions is worked into the ratio (private insurance is usually more pro-active in avoiding fraud, which may raise administrative costs, but probably saves overall costs by not paying out fraudulent claims.)
Anyway, I suggest that before we create a fully-socialist healthcare system (as opposed to one that is just ~50% socialized in temrs of health care dollars from Medicare and Medicaid) that we actually de-regulate private healthcare on a nationwide basis.
That's a load of Republican propaganda (i.e. bullshit). Taxes build the infrastructure (roads, schools, firehouses) that allow the markets to exist.
Actually the market has been around a lot longer than socialist schools and firehouses.
Roads, well, you got me there. There really are too many transaction costs for roads to be generally private (with the only a few notable exceptions, and those are usually short highways). Even the Roman government built roads.
Of course most US tax dollars go to Social Security outlays (a Ponzi scheme that funnels money from the poor to the rich), the military (as if we needed another war), and the existing socialized medicine of Medicare (often for rich retirees) and Medicaid (medicine for actually poor people who may actually need some help).
Schools, firehouses, and roads are WAY down the list.
It's because of people like you that the US has no universal health care and most students spend half their lives paying of their loans.
Yey! I prefer to avoid government-run health care, and like the ability of poor people to be able to borrow to get a good private education at the best colleges in the world.
Extreme anti-protectionism protects only two classes: the multinational corporations and the extremely wealthy. If you are not in either of those two classes, you are arguing against your own best interests.
TheTheorem of Comparative Advantage proves that it is beneficial to both parties to specialize in production of the goods that each party is most productive at (even if one party is better at producing all goods).
It should also be noted that all taxes incur a deadweight loss to the economy.
They're trying not to make the mistake the US did, of losing manufacturing to low-wage countries.
Right, the EU prefers high unemployment rates and slow economic growth (outside of the UK anyway).
OLPC and this are feel good ideas when too much of this world does have clean drinking water and adequate medicine or food for the day.
OLPC is a feel good idea because poor countries are poor because of their laws leading to low levels of economic freedom.
The problem is who chooses which candidates are "real enough" to get the money.
Currently, state governments already work wonders to keep third parties off of the ballot...imagine if they also controlled the campaign funds of those third parties.
But what you are really saying is that 30 years of "campaign finance reform" haven't worked and have only lead to more bureacracy and lawyers and making it more difficult to run a campaign. Deregulate campaign finance.
The bigger problem in France is the 8.3% unemployment rate, although that has improved recently from a high of 12.6% in 1997 (the US unemployment rate is 4.5%). The unemployment falls mainly on the young, with 25% of the under 25 unemployed.
French GDP growth is also unimpressive at around 1% quarterly for a while (0.8% last quarter). This doesn't seem too bad compared with the recent US GDP gorwth of 1.3% last quarter, but until this year the US economy was typically growing much faster than France at rates between 2% and 3% per quarter.
The big difference is that we are comparing a large solar plant at 40MWe peaking power with a nuclear reactor of 1GWe continuous base power. Nuclear is tough to do, but it is an incredibly dense source of power.