If you want to make a difference in the cause of a greener economy and technology, then you need to be in the belly of the beast.
As our technology has grown, we have become aware of the problems our technology has caused. We now include environmental impact as a part of product development. We seek to minimize the harm to the rest of the world along with minizing the cost. The system is not 100%, because there are still people in the world who DO NOT CARE about the environment as much as they care about that extra nickle a pound.
Slowly, like generations turning, the attitudes change. Be apart of the changes in a positive manner by supporting green technologies when you can.
Just because a lot of dangerous chemicals are involved in the manufacture of computer chips does not mean that those chemicals are dumped into the enviroment. People go to jail for things like that.
But, then not always. The NY Times ran a series of articles on the McWane Cast Iron Pipe Empire and all of the atrocities they commit. Thousands of OSHA and EPA violations every year. They make the pipes that carry the water you drink. They make them cheaply by killing, maiming, and poluting, just like they did back in the early part of the 1900's. They're doing this in the USA not in some dingy, corrupt, third world country. (Sorry the article is in the archives and the NYT wants money for it)
If you're going to rethink you career based upon the adverse impact of technology on the environment, you'll be very surprised at what technologies harm the environment most.
Look at it this way: 14 songs (usually 10) at 4 minutes a song is 40 to 76 minutes of entertainment. Less if most of the songs stink. Signs, which I bought for 15 USD at Walmart was over 120 minutes of entertainment. A game, Diablo for example, I bought for 50 bucks and spend WEEKS playing it.
My experience with organized religion is that they tend to be social organizations with a common set of beliefs. These beliefs do not have to be based upon anything scientific for the individual members to derive some sort of benefits from belonging to the religion. A similar set of processes is involved in any social organization. (Professional societies, clubs, fraternities, etc.)
To imply that belonging to a religion makes one deluded is simply wrong. To say that members of a religious organization removes credibility is to toss many of the great scientists of the world upon the pyre of discredit. For all our technology, we are the same creatures we were 10,000 years ago.
Interestingly enough, there is a respected text book around my house that demonstrates that there is a specific place in the human brain that shows activity only when religion is involved. I'll have to dig it up as I don't remember the name of the book. It was used as a college text last year.
"As an individual I have had trouble repeatedly with Americans who when things are done in my nation in my nations way they complain how we are doing it wrong because it is not done the American way. Our way is merely different not wrong. Just as the American way is different not wrong. Being that it is done in my nation my way is the right way. Just as I would expect to have to do things in the U.S. the American way."
Examples of the "right way" in some countries...
Christmas trees are illegal in Saudi Arabia. (BBC Dec 2002)
Practicing a non moslim religion is illegal in Saudi Arabia. (BBC Dec 2002)
Sentencing a college professor to death for criticizing the current religion/government. (Iran, BBC Jan 2003)
Butchering thousands because they are not Serbian.
Butchering thousands because they are Serbian.
Organized rape of women as a form of military terrorism. (Various Balkan States, Japan during WWII)
Reduction of legal rights of a citizen based strictly on their sex. (Various countries, but Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, come to mind)
Just because you are doing something in your country does not make it right. If there is one thing that the founders of the United States taught the world is that there are certain inalieable rights that each person is granted simply by living. Violating those rights is never "Right" even if your country has been doing it for centuries.
I don't know about the trivial details of the cultures of many countries, but those things have never offended me when I traveled abroad. I have been interested in learning the local customs and culture. I have been respectful of other cultures, and tried hard to let my host know that I am ignorant of their ways so I would not intentionally offend them. Violations of the basic human rights do offend me.
It seems to me that the virulent hatred of America and all things "western" mirrors the rise in US military and economic power. The British were not very popular during their peak global power days. SO yes, I think that there is a great deal of truth to the concept that we are hated because we are sucessful.
As to American arrogance, that is a part of our culture. We had to be arrogant just to think that we could beat the Britsh in 1776. Then we took on the Barbary Pirates, something that the rest of Europe was not willing to do. Seems like we've always been this way and the rest of the world is just now realizing it. I really don't think that it is arrogance, if you can back it up.
I don't hate non-Americans, but I understand that we would all get along much better if we could learn to live with a common set of principles that respect our differences in religion and culture. The current set of American ideology, as practiced domestically, is slowly evolving into such an ideal system. This is often seen in less tolerant parts of the world as "anything goes immorallity," but that is a missunderstanding. Why should I tell you what to believe? Or how to dress? Or what music to listen to? Or what books to read? Why should any person dictate to any other person these things? I do not like the US policies that have encouraged despots and tyrany (US policies in Africa, Central, and South America during the cold war, for example). I have argued against these foolish and unprincipled policies in the past, and have not been heeded. But such is this republic.
Americans are American, and those basic human rights, spelled out so eloquently in the US Constitution, are tightly ingrained into our way of thinking. We don't think that you are doing it wrong, because you're doing it differently, but because you're DOING it WRONG if you're violating those basic human rights.
Of course, there are a lot of petty idiots in the US who act stupidly, but then, there are a lot of foreigners here who act stupidly. I'm not addressing common human stupidity in this comment.
Why not have a limit on the copyright that says that the copyright holder must keep the work available to the public for a reasonable fee or the copyright is void? If worded properly, this would eliminate the captivity of "unpopular" or "unprofitable" works. The holder would either lose their rights, or make the work available to the public.
Having the work in a library would not count as reasonably available.
If you can't sell the service and cover the costs of providing the service then you are going out of business. Maybe you have deep pockets, but not infinite pockets. At some point you either change the costs of providing the service, raise the price, or go out of business. I have a hard time with this competition thing. None of the competitors for Internet where I live really compete. They all have their own monopoly territories and they do not overlap. (DSL and two cable companies)
The concept of "low cost leader" is nice if you are Walmart and can afford to offer widget 1 for less than cost to get everyone to buy other, profitable items. But this is a service with a contract. If you can't provide the service that I am paying for, you are in breech of contract. If you knew that before you signed the contract you have committed fraud.
Depending on the average consumer's lack of consumption to provide your profits is foolishly stupid.
I agree that the Ohio folks were not right in altering the cable company equipment to provide themselves with "free" extra bandwidth. I think that involving the FBI is grand case of overkill. This sure sounds to me like some of the other companies that went after hackers who allegedly stole "hundreds of thousands of dollars" of copyrighted manuals only to find during trial that the company had made the manuals available to the public for less than a hundred dollars all told. I doubt very seriously that the ISP lost that much money, and we will have wasted the time and resources of the FBI, when a competetent local law enforcement would have been sufficient.
Better yet. Why didn't they just bill them for the consumed band width?
I'm paying for a level of service. A level that I expect to recieve regardless of the time of day or the other activities on the internet. That is the service that I was sold by the nice sales person I talked to on the phone. I was told that I would have this level of service if I agreed to pay a certain sum of money. That sum of money is not trivial to my budget.
If I receive this level of service, but at some time in the future, the service provider decides that because I use the service "too much" that I should be paying more for it, then I will feel cheated. After all, the service advertised was X and now they say that because I used all of the X that I have paid for; I must now pay more! OR instead, they say that my connection must be regulated.
Lets put this in to perspective: The phone comany has gotten most customers to expect certain behavior. If I pay more, I get more service. NOT LESS. If I pay the same now as I did last month I get the SAME service; not LESS. The ISP, by suddenly stating that because a user is actually using the promised bandwidth, (See Note below), that they must now reduce the available service, is going to leave the customer feeling deceived. Imagine the outrage if the phone company that promises unlimited local calling suddenly puts a charge on your bill because you spent the entire billing cycle on the phone using every last bit of unlimted calling time.
The ethics of such things have been found wanting in many other forms of advertising: The Bait and Switch.
This is not a case of the customer being greedy with "his" connection, but the ISP being stupid in the levels of service provided for the dollar earned.
NOTE: That the ISP provides a contract that essentially promises to provide nothing to you including the attempt to come to your house and try to install a working connection to the internet, and that bandwidth may vary, and that they are not in any way shape or form liable for anything including providing the service that you are paying for at all is really boilerplate. Read the contracts on airline tickets, or fedex, or UPS, or the post office, and see what they promise to do for your dollar. If people expected that the company would only do what is listed in the contract, contracts would be very different.
Its called the Electoral College. The people do not vote for president. They choose electors who elect the president. The electors are free to cast their vote as they will. Therefore this whole Florida ballot thing is just plain stupid and does not in any way invalidate the election of Bush. Read up on US gov't BEFORE you speak.
I read all four of the Orignial Dune Series. Enjoyed the first and not the others. My standards for reading material has escallated as my library, and education has grown.
My time is precious and very little of it is spent on liesure, therefore when I set about reading a book I am looking for one of the caliber of Dune. Nothing less will do.
Sorry about Anderson, I've not bothered to buy anything he's written as I didn't spark any interest when I started to read the first page.
I've always thought that it was hypocritical that Greenpeace has a big, diesel guzzling boat, and that they all drive CARS to their protests; and they wear modern clothes...made by chemical companies and chemical company supported farmers. And they use all of the modern conviences that are provided by the very industries that they persecute.
Bitching on the one hand but feeding the monster with the other.
Precisely why I find the people who are upset still about the faulty popular vote in Florida to be inanely ignorant about how their government works.
The people don't VOTE for president. They vote to send an opinion to the electorial college. The electors are not required to vote according to the popular vote. This works nicely to legitimize a government when the elections are screwed up.
When the cable modem is out, we check to see that the cable is on. If not, call the TV folks. You can get them on the phone and they fix the problem quick.
When we've had to call tech support, anything that required a service crew took three weeks. But if the problem was with the cable box, the service crew took less than 48 hours even in December.
Examine the environmental cleanup that is underweigh in capitalist countries. Then go tour the former Soviet Union countries. Pay attention to the articles on the VAST amount of damage done to the environment by techniques in manufacturing, mining, and land use that make anything the "Decadent" Capitalist ever dreamed of pale in comparison.
Capitalism works best when there is a free flow of resources and information is a resource. No human wants to live in a dangerous, horrible place, and will strive to make it better or move. Only in totalitarian systems where the populace and other resources are controlled by a central authority (regardless of democratic pretensions) do the detrimental effects of human lfe continue to destroy the environment.
As to the shortsitedness of capitalism; that is not a systemic problem, but rather a lifespan problem. Were humans to live very long lives, our outlook would increase. Perhaps though, it would still seem shortsighted.
You pay for MS Office, and most offices have it. But in order to USE Excel, Word, Access, etc, you have to LEARN how to use it. Most of the current work force was educated before the advent of the PC and many more before WINDOWs and OFFICE became defacto standards.
The cost of training people to work on computers isn't going away just because you bought COMMERCIAL software. In fact, Learning Linux is not any worse than learning some of the older and less user friend software packages that are still in use today. Linux is cheaper, unless it can be demonstrated that it will significantly increase the total cost of ownership. The total cost of ownership is expressed as: Cost per liscence, terms of liscence, hardware required, training required, and risk that the software will be obsoleted before its useful life is over.
Just because Linux doesn't look or work like WINDOWS doesn't mean that it will be that much harder to learn. Many people in computer intensive operations worked on mainframes and other systems that were hard to use. Training is always required.
I'll bite. One of the test locations is Louisiana by Charter Internet Services. I've been with Charter for two years now and my pricing scheme was two tiered based on connection speed.
They recently upgraded their service to bundle the cable TV and the internet into one billing and service package. Not bad, really because for about 100 USD I get EVERYTHING, reliable highspeed connection, router support for my LAN, and enough TV to gag a llama.
OK maybe not everything, but all the TV and internet bandwidth I can use for less than DSL costs out here.
There was a documentary on why country music was beginning to sound much like "pop." It was on TV and I was bored so I watched it. The conclusion of the documentary was that country music was becoming so much more like pop because the big music companies wanted to specialize in billion dollar records. They don't want to sell many different records, just hundreds of millions of copies of a handful.
The music industry specializes in a small demographic: the 14-22 year old. Not a huge fraction of the population of any country in the world. Listening to radio and cruising through the record stores will give good verification to that conclusion. I'd buy more music, if I could easily find music that I liked. But since I'm out of that demographic, I'm not a customer. The industry doesn't care if I buy another album or not--ever.
With Clear Channel having a near monopoly on the radio, the RIAA fixing prices, and a small target market, can there really be any surprise that Janis Ian hasn't been "popular" in a few years? The argument that just because an artist is not the latest thing equals "nobody will buy that crap" is vacuous.
What the RIAA is trying to crush is the small market record. Just as there are small grocery stores, mom and pop diners; family owned hardware stores, and chemical companies owned by one guy, there are records that have a small market. It is true that a multibillion dollar corporation with large fixed costs is not going to be interested in a small market product with a lower per unit profit than a high volume higher margin product.
But saying that nobody is buying that crap is wrong. In the case of Janis Ian, somebody IS buying her records. Other artists with a limited market should be allowed to operate without being squashed by the RIAA.
I don't like what the RIAA is doing because they have the monopoly mentality: All of the music must be sold by us or one of our agents and WE don't care if YOU don't like it because it's the only MUSIC in town.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002) May be used without persimmons.
I've GOT several of those thermometers and for the exact purpose that you are talking about, you would have to use tenths of a degree C to get a scale finer than degrees F. But then you have tenths of a degree F too, which are smaller than tenths of degree C, and so on and so forth until you get sick of dividing the stick into smaller and smaller pieces.
Unfortunately, the practical application of the thermometer would clearly demonstrate that one rapidly runs into a readibility problem with tenths of degree C. (and thus the rise of the digital thermometers) Now, the scale on a thermometer can be adjusted so that it is good for any range of measurements, with in the physical limitations of glass and mercury, but that still leaves you with Degrees F being smaller than degrees C and therefore Finer. This is really about the definition of "Finer" in relation to scale. Finer means smaller. In measurements, the smaller the unit of measure, the finer the scale. In sand paper the smaller the grains of sand glued to the paper, the Finer the sandpaper. Powdered sugar is finer grained than granulated sugar. So the amount of distance that the mecury travels is not related to "fineness" of the scale you measure it with.
And NO you do not have an unlimted number of significant digits. Go back to your chemistry textbook and look up the whole process of significant digits and then error propagation in scientific measurements. While the numbers to left and right of the decimal point are infinite in pure mathematics, they are limited in practical science by the precision of the device. For a thermometer the error lies in the estimated number. A scale in which single degrees F or C are listed could be read as XY.Z where Z is estimated to be some fraction between XY and XY+1. The number of significant digits in this example is 3, and not unlimited.
Sorry, but your comment seems to indicate that you've little practical application of both significant digits and temperature measurements. I do this every day.
The climate that created microsoft was one of ignorance about computers among the various business managers. The cry was "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Microsoft built on IBM's reputation.
Going to the much more technically knowledgable business people today and opening them up to vast leagal liabilities for using MS software is going to force these businesses to do something drastic. That something drastic is to find another OS.
Legal liability in this lawsuit crazy era is something that CEO's and management understands because they pay a lot of money to their lawyers to make them understand. And if Jack Lawyer says if you buy MS you could go to jail or be sued out of business for violating the law; Joe CEO is gonna tell the boys and girls to FIND ANOTHER SOLUTION.
The lack of security and MS's complete evasion of responsiblity for the functioning of the updates (or even the OS) is less of a worry, but there are many who look at the security of the data that runs the business who are not going to allow Automatic updates from MS or some unknown "Agent." Businessess have lawyers to help them protect their IP and if that IP is going out the gates of the Automatic Update, then guess what is going to happen.
Most business types are risk averse and a little bit of FUD will get MS out of the important areas. (Sure we can use MS, but then we'll have to let them look at our data. Nope, they don't sign secrecy agreements to protect our data from this process. Oh yeah, we have to let any "agent" that they hire into our computers as well.)
Hospitals and the medical field goes first, then banks.
If there was ever a clear, concise, demonstration that MS is still acting like an unrepentant monopoly, then this is it. No serious business in a competitive market would require its current customers to chose between violating Federal Laws and Regulations or violating a software liscence. The fact that this choice is being forced upon those customers to PROTECT Microsoft's interest in preventing piracy of its software is a crystal clear indication of Microsoft's nature.
Microsoft NEEDS to be busted into a billion little companies. But, I guess that they'll have to do that to themselves.
No, I don't hate Microsoft, I happen to like Office. I just don't like the monopoly: bad service, poor quality, and god only knows how many lost manhours arguing with windows.
Creatively spelled words are copyrighted (2002) May be used without persimmons.
How do you figure that Celsius is exactly as fine grained as Fahrenheit? Degrees Kelvin and Degrees Celsius are exactly the same size, but 1 degree F is smaller than one degree C.
Example: Freezing to Boiling on water is 32F to 212 F and 0 C to 100 C or 273 K to 373 K. Therefore, by simple math, there are 180 degrees F between the boiling and freezing of water, and only 100 degrees C or K for the same measurements. It would seem to me that the finer temperature scale is degrees F.
Oh what utter tripe. The famines in Africa are well publicised in the West. I've spent my entire life seeing those starving African children. I read the BBC reports, and the ones from the UN and anything else I can get my hands on. Why can't we solve this problem?
Because the problems are military and political. Not economic. The people living there that are causing the problems want it to be that way. The starving children are the victims of other, horrible people, who are to blame for squandering their resources and forcing others to live in hell because of their own selfish interests. (How many dictators stole much of the foreign aid that was supposed to help those starving impoverished folks?)
The middle east is no different. Those in power don't want to share even the slightest opportunity with anyone else. A recent report stated some alraming facts about the middle east: That unless the situation improved with regards to the rights of women, education, and employment, countries like Egypt and Saudia Arabia were due for major internal strife. As it is the unemployment of people under 25 is approaching 40%.
As for combating the problems of starvation and poverty, you picked the right word. The US went to Somolia to help out a bunch of starving people. Look how well that turned out. This poverty serves the interests of the political powers in those regions. Combating the starvation and poverty would require bloodshed. Sorry, I'm not willing to send my 18 year old to die so that those people can have a bit more to eat.
IF and ONLY IF the window washer actually owned the business. Lots of them don't. I know one who fell several stories to his death. Wife and daughter got . . . The FUNERAL bill.
And perhaps the expense of the never ending litigation involved in getting just compensation.
Indeed, the era of the US revolutionary war is long gone. But human nature has not one wit changed in the intervening decades.
If the English had not been armed then they would not have become American.
The US civil war was fought with many home-owned guns on both sides. The thought that an armed populace threatens a government with popular revolution is true. IF it is not then why have so many totalitarian goverments throughout history restricted the ownership of weapons? Or in some cases encouraged the populace to take up arms and practice with them to maintain proficiency? (Example: the requirement that English men over a certain age practice one time per week with the long bow?)
The government has control of its arsenal. And the people have their own arsenal. That is the barbaric foundation of peace among humans: we all recognize that we are all equally dangerous and therefore uneasily oppressed. Now we have to make nice and oppress using rules, and due process, and politicians. But in the end, the major arguments are solved with the death and destruction of combat. (Remember that the US Civil war was fought not over Slavery, as popular Union Propaganda stated, but over the rather dry question of the rights of the states verses the rights of Federal government. This was a political, governance question that ultimately had to be settled according the dictates of human behavior--war.)
The use of force has settled most of the major conflits in the world, one way or the other, through out history. Until human beings cease being human beings and evolve into something less violent, we will always need to be armed. Those less armed are enslaved by those more armed.
It's okay if you don't believe me; go read the tomes of history from the Hittites on up throught the modern era.
"Most americans do not know how to set their own boundaries. We eat whatever size steak the resteraunt serves, no matter how obsurdly huge. We pay for our Schooling, no matter how obsurdly expensive. We gun our engines at a green light, and bitch loudly about having to stop again in 40 feet, and what crappy gas mileage we get."
What part of the US are you from? This statement is very far from the observed truth as I have experienced form living and working in the US for many years. Your portrayal of the American as the stupid greedy pig with no self control is as wrong as it gets. The logical economic results of such behavior have not been observed by the majority of Americans in all the decades that this country has seen. It sure sounds like you're living in that tiny fraction of America: the American Male between 16 and 20 years old. Big stereo in trunk, guns engine, no real understanding of the VALUE of purchased things. The majority of the USA is not in that fraction, and most grow out of it.
"Face it, an automated traffic monitoring system may finally convince people that there are laws to obey beyond the laws of physics! Innocent people may occasionally get a speeding ticket, but it sure beats innocent people being taken out by some car crossing the median after losing control from driving to fast!"
You didn't read the article or the links. Speed isn't the killer. Drunk driving is. And we have due process from keeping the government from trampling all over your freedom to travel by illegally enforcing fines against you. Automated does not equal uncorruptable. As human politics have demonstrated for millenia, where there is money to be had, there are theives. Governments and private enforcement companies are no different.
But it must be nice to live in one of the few places where your job, groceries, and entertainment are all with a short walk from your residence. That is not the case for most places in the USA.
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If you want to make a difference in the cause of a greener economy and technology, then you need to be in the belly of the beast.
As our technology has grown, we have become aware of the problems our technology has caused. We now include environmental impact as a part of product development. We seek to minimize the harm to the rest of the world along with minizing the cost. The system is not 100%, because there are still people in the world who DO NOT CARE about the environment as much as they care about that extra nickle a pound.
Slowly, like generations turning, the attitudes change. Be apart of the changes in a positive manner by supporting green technologies when you can.
Just because a lot of dangerous chemicals are involved in the manufacture of computer chips does not mean that those chemicals are dumped into the enviroment. People go to jail for things like that.
But, then not always. The NY Times ran a series of articles on the McWane Cast Iron Pipe Empire and all of the atrocities they commit. Thousands of OSHA and EPA violations every year. They make the pipes that carry the water you drink. They make them cheaply by killing, maiming, and poluting, just like they did back in the early part of the 1900's. They're doing this in the USA not in some dingy, corrupt, third world country. (Sorry the article is in the archives and the NYT wants money for it)
If you're going to rethink you career based upon the adverse impact of technology on the environment, you'll be very surprised at what technologies harm the environment most.
Look at it this way: 14 songs (usually 10) at 4 minutes a song is 40 to 76 minutes of entertainment. Less if most of the songs stink. Signs, which I bought for 15 USD at Walmart was over 120 minutes of entertainment. A game, Diablo for example, I bought for 50 bucks and spend WEEKS playing it.
Dollars per hour of entertainment: Games win.
My experience with organized religion is that they tend to be social organizations with a common set of beliefs. These beliefs do not have to be based upon anything scientific for the individual members to derive some sort of benefits from belonging to the religion. A similar set of processes is involved in any social organization. (Professional societies, clubs, fraternities, etc.)
To imply that belonging to a religion makes one deluded is simply wrong. To say that members of a religious organization removes credibility is to toss many of the great scientists of the world upon the pyre of discredit. For all our technology, we are the same creatures we were 10,000 years ago.
Interestingly enough, there is a respected text book around my house that demonstrates that there is a specific place in the human brain that shows activity only when religion is involved. I'll have to dig it up as I don't remember the name of the book. It was used as a college text last year.
"As an individual I have had trouble repeatedly with Americans who when things are done in my nation in my nations way they complain how we are doing it wrong because it is not done the American way. Our way is merely different not wrong. Just as the American way is different not wrong. Being that it is done in my nation my way is the right way. Just as I would expect to have to do things in the U.S. the American way."
Examples of the "right way" in some countries...
Christmas trees are illegal in Saudi Arabia. (BBC Dec 2002)
Practicing a non moslim religion is illegal in Saudi Arabia. (BBC Dec 2002)
Sentencing a college professor to death for criticizing the current religion/government. (Iran, BBC Jan 2003)
Butchering thousands because they are not Serbian.
Butchering thousands because they are Serbian.
Organized rape of women as a form of military terrorism. (Various Balkan States, Japan during WWII)
Reduction of legal rights of a citizen based strictly on their sex. (Various countries, but Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, come to mind)
Just because you are doing something in your country does not make it right. If there is one thing that the founders of the United States taught the world is that there are certain inalieable rights that each person is granted simply by living. Violating those rights is never "Right" even if your country has been doing it for centuries.
I don't know about the trivial details of the cultures of many countries, but those things have never offended me when I traveled abroad. I have been interested in learning the local customs and culture. I have been respectful of other cultures, and tried hard to let my host know that I am ignorant of their ways so I would not intentionally offend them. Violations of the basic human rights do offend me.
It seems to me that the virulent hatred of America and all things "western" mirrors the rise in US military and economic power. The British were not very popular during their peak global power days. SO yes, I think that there is a great deal of truth to the concept that we are hated because we are sucessful.
As to American arrogance, that is a part of our culture. We had to be arrogant just to think that we could beat the Britsh in 1776. Then we took on the Barbary Pirates, something that the rest of Europe was not willing to do. Seems like we've always been this way and the rest of the world is just now realizing it. I really don't think that it is arrogance, if you can back it up.
I don't hate non-Americans, but I understand that we would all get along much better if we could learn to live with a common set of principles that respect our differences in religion and culture. The current set of American ideology, as practiced domestically, is slowly evolving into such an ideal system. This is often seen in less tolerant parts of the world as "anything goes immorallity," but that is a missunderstanding. Why should I tell you what to believe? Or how to dress? Or what music to listen to? Or what books to read? Why should any person dictate to any other person these things? I do not like the US policies that have encouraged despots and tyrany (US policies in Africa, Central, and South America during the cold war, for example). I have argued against these foolish and unprincipled policies in the past, and have not been heeded. But such is this republic.
Americans are American, and those basic human rights, spelled out so eloquently in the US Constitution, are tightly ingrained into our way of thinking. We don't think that you are doing it wrong, because you're doing it differently, but because you're DOING it WRONG if you're violating those basic human rights.
Of course, there are a lot of petty idiots in the US who act stupidly, but then, there are a lot of foreigners here who act stupidly. I'm not addressing common human stupidity in this comment.
Was it not a Jewish, Israeli extremist that killed a prime minister deeply involved with bring the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to peace?
Seems to me that there is an awful lot of hate on BOTH sides. I am not optimistic about any lingering peace in the middle east. Too much hatred.
Why not have a limit on the copyright that says that the copyright holder must keep the work available to the public for a reasonable fee or the copyright is void? If worded properly, this would eliminate the captivity of "unpopular" or "unprofitable" works. The holder would either lose their rights, or make the work available to the public.
Having the work in a library would not count as reasonably available.
Well then you are doomed.
If you can't sell the service and cover the costs of providing the service then you are going out of business. Maybe you have deep pockets, but not infinite pockets. At some point you either change the costs of providing the service, raise the price, or go out of business. I have a hard time with this competition thing. None of the competitors for Internet where I live really compete. They all have their own monopoly territories and they do not overlap. (DSL and two cable companies)
The concept of "low cost leader" is nice if you are Walmart and can afford to offer widget 1 for less than cost to get everyone to buy other, profitable items. But this is a service with a contract. If you can't provide the service that I am paying for, you are in breech of contract. If you knew that before you signed the contract you have committed fraud.
Depending on the average consumer's lack of consumption to provide your profits is foolishly stupid.
I agree that the Ohio folks were not right in altering the cable company equipment to provide themselves with "free" extra bandwidth. I think that involving the FBI is grand case of overkill. This sure sounds to me like some of the other companies that went after hackers who allegedly stole "hundreds of thousands of dollars" of copyrighted manuals only to find during trial that the company had made the manuals available to the public for less than a hundred dollars all told. I doubt very seriously that the ISP lost that much money, and we will have wasted the time and resources of the FBI, when a competetent local law enforcement would have been sufficient.
Better yet. Why didn't they just bill them for the consumed band width?
The Berkowitz quote is not the issue.
I'm paying for a level of service. A level that I expect to recieve regardless of the time of day or the other activities on the internet. That is the service that I was sold by the nice sales person I talked to on the phone. I was told that I would have this level of service if I agreed to pay a certain sum of money. That sum of money is not trivial to my budget.
If I receive this level of service, but at some time in the future, the service provider decides that because I use the service "too much" that I should be paying more for it, then I will feel cheated. After all, the service advertised was X and now they say that because I used all of the X that I have paid for; I must now pay more! OR instead, they say that my connection must be regulated.
Lets put this in to perspective: The phone comany has gotten most customers to expect certain behavior. If I pay more, I get more service. NOT LESS. If I pay the same now as I did last month I get the SAME service; not LESS. The ISP, by suddenly stating that because a user is actually using the promised bandwidth, (See Note below), that they must now reduce the available service, is going to leave the customer feeling deceived. Imagine the outrage if the phone company that promises unlimited local calling suddenly puts a charge on your bill because you spent the entire billing cycle on the phone using every last bit of unlimted calling time.
The ethics of such things have been found wanting in many other forms of advertising: The Bait and Switch.
This is not a case of the customer being greedy with "his" connection, but the ISP being stupid in the levels of service provided for the dollar earned.
NOTE: That the ISP provides a contract that essentially promises to provide nothing to you including the attempt to come to your house and try to install a working connection to the internet, and that bandwidth may vary, and that they are not in any way shape or form liable for anything including providing the service that you are paying for at all is really boilerplate. Read the contracts on airline tickets, or fedex, or UPS, or the post office, and see what they promise to do for your dollar. If people expected that the company would only do what is listed in the contract, contracts would be very different.
Its called the Electoral College. The people do not vote for president. They choose electors who elect the president. The electors are free to cast their vote as they will. Therefore this whole Florida ballot thing is just plain stupid and does not in any way invalidate the election of Bush. Read up on US gov't BEFORE you speak.
I read all four of the Orignial Dune Series. Enjoyed the first and not the others. My standards for reading material has escallated as my library, and education has grown.
My time is precious and very little of it is spent on liesure, therefore when I set about reading a book I am looking for one of the caliber of Dune. Nothing less will do.
Sorry about Anderson, I've not bothered to buy anything he's written as I didn't spark any interest when I started to read the first page.
I've always thought that it was hypocritical that Greenpeace has a big, diesel guzzling boat, and that they all drive CARS to their protests; and they wear modern clothes...made by chemical companies and chemical company supported farmers. And they use all of the modern conviences that are provided by the very industries that they persecute.
Bitching on the one hand but feeding the monster with the other.
Go fig.
Precisely why I find the people who are upset still about the faulty popular vote in Florida to be inanely ignorant about how their government works.
The people don't VOTE for president. They vote to send an opinion to the electorial college. The electors are not required to vote according to the popular vote. This works nicely to legitimize a government when the elections are screwed up.
They can't require your SSN, as far as I know, because of a Federal Law against that sort of thing.
Doesn't stop them from asking for it though.
Amen!!!
When the cable modem is out, we check to see that the cable is on. If not, call the TV folks. You can get them on the phone and they fix the problem quick.
When we've had to call tech support, anything that required a service crew took three weeks. But if the problem was with the cable box, the service crew took less than 48 hours even in December.
ID10T
Examine the environmental cleanup that is underweigh in capitalist countries. Then go tour the former Soviet Union countries. Pay attention to the articles on the VAST amount of damage done to the environment by techniques in manufacturing, mining, and land use that make anything the "Decadent" Capitalist ever dreamed of pale in comparison.
Capitalism works best when there is a free flow of resources and information is a resource. No human wants to live in a dangerous, horrible place, and will strive to make it better or move. Only in totalitarian systems where the populace and other resources are controlled by a central authority (regardless of democratic pretensions) do the detrimental effects of human lfe continue to destroy the environment.
As to the shortsitedness of capitalism; that is not a systemic problem, but rather a lifespan problem. Were humans to live very long lives, our outlook would increase. Perhaps though, it would still seem shortsighted.
You pay for MS Office, and most offices have it. But in order to USE Excel, Word, Access, etc, you have to LEARN how to use it. Most of the current work force was educated before the advent of the PC and many more before WINDOWs and OFFICE became defacto standards.
The cost of training people to work on computers isn't going away just because you bought COMMERCIAL software. In fact, Learning Linux is not any worse than learning some of the older and less user friend software packages that are still in use today. Linux is cheaper, unless it can be demonstrated that it will significantly increase the total cost of ownership. The total cost of ownership is expressed as: Cost per liscence, terms of liscence, hardware required, training required, and risk that the software will be obsoleted before its useful life is over.
Just because Linux doesn't look or work like WINDOWS doesn't mean that it will be that much harder to learn. Many people in computer intensive operations worked on mainframes and other systems that were hard to use. Training is always required.
I'll bite. One of the test locations is Louisiana by Charter Internet Services. I've been with Charter for two years now and my pricing scheme was two tiered based on connection speed.
They recently upgraded their service to bundle the cable TV and the internet into one billing and service package. Not bad, really because for about 100 USD I get EVERYTHING, reliable highspeed connection, router support for my LAN, and enough TV to gag a llama.
OK maybe not everything, but all the TV and internet bandwidth I can use for less than DSL costs out here.
Pay attention to the issue at large!
There was a documentary on why country music was beginning to sound much like "pop." It was on TV and I was bored so I watched it. The conclusion of the documentary was that country music was becoming so much more like pop because the big music companies wanted to specialize in billion dollar records. They don't want to sell many different records, just hundreds of millions of copies of a handful.
The music industry specializes in a small demographic: the 14-22 year old. Not a huge fraction of the population of any country in the world. Listening to radio and cruising through the record stores will give good verification to that conclusion. I'd buy more music, if I could easily find music that I liked. But since I'm out of that demographic, I'm not a customer. The industry doesn't care if I buy another album or not--ever.
With Clear Channel having a near monopoly on the radio, the RIAA fixing prices, and a small target market, can there really be any surprise that Janis Ian hasn't been "popular" in a few years? The argument that just because an artist is not the latest thing equals "nobody will buy that crap" is vacuous.
What the RIAA is trying to crush is the small market record. Just as there are small grocery stores, mom and pop diners; family owned hardware stores, and chemical companies owned by one guy, there are records that have a small market. It is true that a multibillion dollar corporation with large fixed costs is not going to be interested in a small market product with a lower per unit profit than a high volume higher margin product.
But saying that nobody is buying that crap is wrong. In the case of Janis Ian, somebody IS buying her records. Other artists with a limited market should be allowed to operate without being squashed by the RIAA.
I don't like what the RIAA is doing because they have the monopoly mentality: All of the music must be sold by us or one of our agents and WE don't care if YOU don't like it because it's the only MUSIC in town.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002) May be used without persimmons.
I've GOT several of those thermometers and for the exact purpose that you are talking about, you would have to use tenths of a degree C to get a scale finer than degrees F. But then you have tenths of a degree F too, which are smaller than tenths of degree C, and so on and so forth until you get sick of dividing the stick into smaller and smaller pieces.
Unfortunately, the practical application of the thermometer would clearly demonstrate that one rapidly runs into a readibility problem with tenths of degree C. (and thus the rise of the digital thermometers) Now, the scale on a thermometer can be adjusted so that it is good for any range of measurements, with in the physical limitations of glass and mercury, but that still leaves you with Degrees F being smaller than degrees C and therefore Finer. This is really about the definition of "Finer" in relation to scale. Finer means smaller. In measurements, the smaller the unit of measure, the finer the scale. In sand paper the smaller the grains of sand glued to the paper, the Finer the sandpaper. Powdered sugar is finer grained than granulated sugar. So the amount of distance that the mecury travels is not related to "fineness" of the scale you measure it with.
And NO you do not have an unlimted number of significant digits. Go back to your chemistry textbook and look up the whole process of significant digits and then error propagation in scientific measurements. While the numbers to left and right of the decimal point are infinite in pure mathematics, they are limited in practical science by the precision of the device. For a thermometer the error lies in the estimated number. A scale in which single degrees F or C are listed could be read as XY.Z where Z is estimated to be some fraction between XY and XY+1. The number of significant digits in this example is 3, and not unlimited.
Sorry, but your comment seems to indicate that you've little practical application of both significant digits and temperature measurements. I do this every day.
Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot.
The climate that created microsoft was one of ignorance about computers among the various business managers. The cry was "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Microsoft built on IBM's reputation.
Going to the much more technically knowledgable business people today and opening them up to vast leagal liabilities for using MS software is going to force these businesses to do something drastic. That something drastic is to find another OS.
Legal liability in this lawsuit crazy era is something that CEO's and management understands because they pay a lot of money to their lawyers to make them understand. And if Jack Lawyer says if you buy MS you could go to jail or be sued out of business for violating the law; Joe CEO is gonna tell the boys and girls to FIND ANOTHER SOLUTION.
The lack of security and MS's complete evasion of responsiblity for the functioning of the updates (or even the OS) is less of a worry, but there are many who look at the security of the data that runs the business who are not going to allow Automatic updates from MS or some unknown "Agent." Businessess have lawyers to help them protect their IP and if that IP is going out the gates of the Automatic Update, then guess what is going to happen.
Most business types are risk averse and a little bit of FUD will get MS out of the important areas. (Sure we can use MS, but then we'll have to let them look at our data. Nope, they don't sign secrecy agreements to protect our data from this process. Oh yeah, we have to let any "agent" that they hire into our computers as well.)
Hospitals and the medical field goes first, then banks.
If there was ever a clear, concise, demonstration that MS is still acting like an unrepentant monopoly, then this is it. No serious business in a competitive market would require its current customers to chose between violating Federal Laws and Regulations or violating a software liscence. The fact that this choice is being forced upon those customers to PROTECT Microsoft's interest in preventing piracy of its software is a crystal clear indication of Microsoft's nature.
Microsoft NEEDS to be busted into a billion little companies. But, I guess that they'll have to do that to themselves.
No, I don't hate Microsoft, I happen to like Office. I just don't like the monopoly: bad service, poor quality, and god only knows how many lost manhours arguing with windows.
Creatively spelled words are copyrighted (2002) May be used without persimmons.
How do you figure that Celsius is exactly as fine grained as Fahrenheit? Degrees Kelvin and Degrees Celsius are exactly the same size, but 1 degree F is smaller than one degree C.
Example: Freezing to Boiling on water is 32F to 212 F and 0 C to 100 C or 273 K to 373 K. Therefore, by simple math, there are 180 degrees F between the boiling and freezing of water, and only 100 degrees C or K for the same measurements. It would seem to me that the finer temperature scale is degrees F.
Oh what utter tripe. The famines in Africa are well publicised in the West. I've spent my entire life seeing those starving African children. I read the BBC reports, and the ones from the UN and anything else I can get my hands on. Why can't we solve this problem?
Because the problems are military and political. Not economic. The people living there that are causing the problems want it to be that way. The starving children are the victims of other, horrible people, who are to blame for squandering their resources and forcing others to live in hell because of their own selfish interests. (How many dictators stole much of the foreign aid that was supposed to help those starving impoverished folks?)
The middle east is no different. Those in power don't want to share even the slightest opportunity with anyone else. A recent report stated some alraming facts about the middle east: That unless the situation improved with regards to the rights of women, education, and employment, countries like Egypt and Saudia Arabia were due for major internal strife. As it is the unemployment of people under 25 is approaching 40%.
As for combating the problems of starvation and poverty, you picked the right word. The US went to Somolia to help out a bunch of starving people. Look how well that turned out. This poverty serves the interests of the political powers in those regions. Combating the starvation and poverty would require bloodshed. Sorry, I'm not willing to send my 18 year old to die so that those people can have a bit more to eat.
IF and ONLY IF the window washer actually owned the business. Lots of them don't. I know one who fell several stories to his death. Wife and daughter got . . . The FUNERAL bill.
And perhaps the expense of the never ending litigation involved in getting just compensation.
Indeed, the era of the US revolutionary war is long gone. But human nature has not one wit changed in the intervening decades.
If the English had not been armed then they would not have become American.
The US civil war was fought with many home-owned guns on both sides. The thought that an armed populace threatens a government with popular revolution is true. IF it is not then why have so many totalitarian goverments throughout history restricted the ownership of weapons? Or in some cases encouraged the populace to take up arms and practice with them to maintain proficiency? (Example: the requirement that English men over a certain age practice one time per week with the long bow?)
The government has control of its arsenal. And the people have their own arsenal. That is the barbaric foundation of peace among humans: we all recognize that we are all equally dangerous and therefore uneasily oppressed. Now we have to make nice and oppress using rules, and due process, and politicians. But in the end, the major arguments are solved with the death and destruction of combat. (Remember that the US Civil war was fought not over Slavery, as popular Union Propaganda stated, but over the rather dry question of the rights of the states verses the rights of Federal government. This was a political, governance question that ultimately had to be settled according the dictates of human behavior--war.)
The use of force has settled most of the major conflits in the world, one way or the other, through out history. Until human beings cease being human beings and evolve into something less violent, we will always need to be armed. Those less armed are enslaved by those more armed.
It's okay if you don't believe me; go read the tomes of history from the Hittites on up throught the modern era.
"Most americans do not know how to set their own boundaries. We eat whatever size steak the resteraunt serves, no matter how obsurdly huge. We pay for our Schooling, no matter how obsurdly expensive. We gun our engines at a green light, and bitch loudly about having to stop again in 40 feet, and what crappy gas mileage we get."
What part of the US are you from? This statement is very far from the observed truth as I have experienced form living and working in the US for many years. Your portrayal of the American as the stupid greedy pig with no self control is as wrong as it gets. The logical economic results of such behavior have not been observed by the majority of Americans in all the decades that this country has seen. It sure sounds like you're living in that tiny fraction of America: the American Male between 16 and 20 years old. Big stereo in trunk, guns engine, no real understanding of the VALUE of purchased things. The majority of the USA is not in that fraction, and most grow out of it.
"Face it, an automated traffic monitoring system may finally convince people that there are laws to obey beyond the laws of physics! Innocent people may occasionally get a speeding ticket, but it sure beats innocent people being taken out by some car crossing the median after losing control from driving to fast!"
You didn't read the article or the links. Speed isn't the killer. Drunk driving is. And we have due process from keeping the government from trampling all over your freedom to travel by illegally enforcing fines against you. Automated does not equal uncorruptable. As human politics have demonstrated for millenia, where there is money to be had, there are theives. Governments and private enforcement companies are no different.
But it must be nice to live in one of the few places where your job, groceries, and entertainment are all with a short walk from your residence. That is not the case for most places in the USA.