This cant stop "terrorists", they can go and buy a car for £1000 from any used car dealer whenever they like
Or, shock horror, they could use their own damn car! Didn't one of the London bombers drive his own car to Luton?
What the authorities don't seem to have grasped is that with suicide bombers, they tend to have no "history", as their first offence tends to be their last!
May I suggest UK people reading this visit Write To Them and fax their MP suggesting that this is perhaps, you know, a trifle off, don't you know, what.
How do you write a screenplay of a movie about only little kids, and make it appeal to adults?
Picking the right kids for the roles is going to be crucial. What we don't want, IMHO, is all the stage-school kids with their smiley faces, dance shoes, and jazz hands. That'd just kill it stone dead for me! Unfortunately, those tend to be the sorts of kids who apply (or are pushed by eager parents).
It would seem (again, IMHO) that the Harry Potter films managed to find a bunch of child actors who weren't quite so saccharin-infused, well certainly the lead roles, so I guess it must be possible.
I'm obviously going to get shot down in flames here for my lack of knowledge, but why can't the two systems be run together during the change over period (however long that may be).
Assign IPv6 Nos to all the IPv4 addresses and map them somehow. Limit the expansion into IPv6 to Nos that can be also assigned to the remainder of the IPv4 numbers so IPv4 and IPv6 "punters" can still see everything on the internet.
IPv6 Only Nos could also be available to people/corporations who don't necessarily want to be publicly available, indeed they should be encouraged to do so. Actually, there's maybe the opportunity for such groups to return old IPv4 Nos to the pool if they upgrade lock, stock and barrel to IPv6, thus keeping the IPv4 setup available for longer, which would help spread the changeover costs over a longer period of time.
How much breathing space do we have in IPv4? I guess if we really are up against the end-stop, then this won't work, but assuming we have a few years left, gradually change equipement over to IPv6 until it is all IPv6.
If we run out of IPv4 Nos too soon, then IPv4 "punters" will be only able to access a sub-set of the Internet, not being able to reach the non-IPv4-mapped IPv6 Nos. This might be sufficient incentive for them to upgrade their IPv4 kit to IPv6, or it may not, but it will be their choice.
The problem is, there's an actual underlying protocol that keeps RFID tags from interfering with each other. You could have 2, 20, or 200 tags all in the same LEGO box, and the scanner would read them all.
Oh great, so every LEGO brick will have it's own RFID tag... and roll on IPv6 and every LEGO brick can then have it's own IP address, and a website with a picture of itself.
I wondered about all the CCTV that the UK Police had to trawl through after the London Tube Bombings. If there was a method of sending out chunks of CCTV (maybe in 5 min chunks) and people could voluntier to watch and note down all salient points (eg, text in any road signs, descriptions of people and their clothing, etc) and submit.
The system would then colate the information for all the CCTV, with multiple viewers for each chunk allowing a reasonably accurate method of then searching for content.
EG they know the person they are looking for is carrying a backpack - eliminate all chunks of video where there are no backpacks.
I reckon this could be quite a powerful tool! The public could decide whether it was worth them helping the effort and it could massively speed up the catching of the people.
I moved over, and I like being able to do more worthwhile things with my spare cycles (climate/LHC/Einstein) but I also like keeping the Seti bunch ticking over too.
What I don't like is the way BOINC is so decentralised. Having to go through the registration process for each new BOINC Project is a right royal drag. BOINC itself should be looking after registration, and once registered there should be a dropdown menu on the Client with all the BOINC Projects - maybe later split into Medical/Science/Voodoo and whatever later on. There could even be an Alpha and Beta section for up and coming Projects who are looking for testers.
This would make the transition far easier, and the framework far more useful!
So I install it, it asks me to enter the Project URL.. odd. I enter the SETI@home URL, and a few seconds later I'm staring at the proxy configuration page - no explination of why. I double check that I'm online, all is working. So I try one of the other projects. It works a little better this time, it's asking me to create an account. So now I've registered it should start working! Nope... there's nothing happening. After a minute of looking around I notice some red messages in the log telling me I've no disk space to store the work unit! Right... I've got 2.5Gb free. Somewhere (can't remember exactly now) it tells me to increase the avaliable disk space for the project in the configuration. So I open up the options screen... nothing even close to disk space anywhere.
A lot of the configuration for your installation of BOINC on your PC has to be done on each of the disperate BOINC Project websites, such as configuring how much of your disk space will be used by each Project. Also, what %age of your PC will be used by each Project. The %age thing is the real pain - rather than a simple screen in the BOINC GUI where you can twiddle the %ages for all connected Projects, you have to go to each Project website and login to find a configuration screen where you have to write a number into a box. If all the numbers for all your projects are the same, then the time is split equally among the Projects, raise one number and that project will get more time. This is truely painful!
Not to mention the registering process! If the BOINC website looked after the Users, with Registration to BOINC rather than having to register with each Project, it would be so much easier. Your BOINC client could then have an uptodate list of BOINC Projects and you could simply click on one to join!
All that said, I do have it installed and working on a number of PCs running a number of the Projects. It's painful, but it still works.
I'd still like to see GIMPS (Mersenne Prime) sign up to BOINC too!
Sure, I've seen a few (!) documentaries on the subject, including how trainloads destined for the concentration camps and ultimately death were routed through, I think even by the Swiss, from Italy, etc, so there would have been a lot of people with an idea that "something nasty" was happening, but there was always the fear that if you stood up you might be shipped out too, and I dare say many were!
I was trying not to point the finger at Germany in particular, and I have heard reports about the UK Government knowing about the gassings and all, but still I'd say the majority of people involved in the war - ie the public in the US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand/etc/etc didn't actually know about the attocities taking place. My guess is, that if they did know they would have wanted action taken.
Why the various governments decided to sit on it until the end of the war would be interesting.
You tell me how humanity is better by saying "what's moral is what we think is moral" -- give me some sort of reason based argument that isn't premised on "it makes us feel better."
First off, you seem to be implying that I think slavery is a good thing, so, to clarify, I think slavery is bad. Very Bad. OK... Moving on...
I'm not saying humanity is better because the "moral compass" gets positioned roughly by taking the averages of all the people's personal morals, I'm just saying that I think it is the case.
This "moral compass" is swinging all the time, and sometimes there are big swings, as with the stopping of slavery. Sometimes there are smaller swings, as with the legalising (or at least allowing) of drug use in Amsterdam, for example.
You have your moral compass, and I'm sure you are as against slavery as I am, but you can't sit there lambasting me for not using logic and reason, and then tell me that back at the start of slavery, people (as in "the people", or indeed "society") didn't think it was a good idea! This doesn't mean they were right, indeed, we can look back and say how bad it was, but at the time it was deemed acceptable. As people decided it wasn't such a nice thing to do to another human being, opionion changed, and eventually, what we currently think of as "right" prevailed.
It's like looking back at the flat-earthers and saying they new it was round. Er... No... they really thought it was flat!
The flat-earthers seems comical to us now, and slavery seems barbaric, but the underlying issue is the same. They simply didn't know any better!
Have a look around and think what the future might think about some of our actions today...
- I'm sure they'll laugh at our medicine
- Might be a back-lash at keeping pets (Guide Dogs vs animal slavery?)
- If computers become sentient, factories using robots might seem like slavery again?
I have to restate my belief that slavery is wrong, and was wrong, and always will be wrong, but that is my belief, and it wasn't necessarily the commonly held belief in the past, and it might not be the commonly held belief in the future!
Was slavery ethical? Was the holocaust ethical? A resounding "no" on both counts.
I think you are mixing your example a bit here...
Is slavery ethical... we currently don't think so. Was slavery deemed ethical back in the day, well I'm sad to say that I think it was! Gradually the idea of slavery became less and less acceptable until it was eventually outlawed, but it was obviously an accepted part of society for many years, not least in africa where the various tribes would take slaves from each other as a matter of course.
Now we get on to the holocaust. Obviously we can still look back and see this as a bad thing, but there the similarity ends, because the vast majority of opinion back then would also have been horrified by the concept. That a few people high up in the Nazi regime were able to fool and trick their population into helping perpetrate the attrocity is perhaps more interesting, but I'd say the majority of the population simply didn't know it was happening!
The point that I'm trying to make is that a popular belief is not always ethical, especially by my standards, which are the only ones that I care about anyway.
You are missing his point. The world's ethics are not set by you, or me, or any individual. They are the current mood of the population. Sure, now the whole concept of slavery seems barbaric, but back in the day, slavery was deemed acceptable/ethical. That's the whole point!
We can look back and wag our fingers about how awful our ancestors were, and not just slavery, but witch burning, any number of religion-based attrocities (nobody expects...), animal welfare, treatment of indigenous people, the list is probably endless, but at the time, most of the actions were deemed acceptable. As I understand it, if we burnt someone at the stake, we thought we were saving their soul!
I'd say that by definition, the popular vote defines the popular ethical values. Just be thankfull that we have moved on from the time when having different ethical values from the norm might mean you were burnt at the stake for heresy!
I would love it if sensors on the road could detect tailgating and send tickets for that
It can't really be beyond the wit of man to have cameras on bridges that can measure the gap between vehicles, and be able to send the tailgaters tickets. This would actually be excellent. On an empty motorway, you can go as fast as you like (I guess there should be some upper limit?), but if it is crowded you need to be, say, 4 seconds from the vehicle in front.
From my extensive research (having been driving for 20 years - and boy am I tired!), I'd say this would actually improve traffic flow too when the motorways are busy - much like the M25 variable speed limit does!
So, there's a way to actually make the motorways safer, to increase traffic flow at busy times (probably), and ticket the morons who tailgate. Surely everyone would be happy about that - er, except less revenue generated!
Obviously, there'd need to be some safeguards for people who have someone hop in front in their lane just before the camera, etc, but it can't be that hard!
The problem with speed cameras (other than speed not actually being the problem) is that the speed limits are wrong. Some are too high, and some are too low. Most should change depending on the time of day - 10 MPH outside a school at school start/stop time, say 20 during the rest of the day, probably 30 when the school is shut! Because MOST speed limits are STUPID people ignore them. Set them sensibly, and there's a chance people might start to adhere to them!
don't think his rights outweigh the lives of all the people who die of the disease yearly.
So... when do we start rounding people up for compulsory blood donations and testing to be put on the Bone Marrow Register then? Also, no question about not donating your body parts when you die.
Yep, yours is certainly the World I want to live in!
I wouldn't do it unless there was an explicit royalty agreement that any drugs made from a "cure" in my blood would give me 20% of profits.
It would indeed be nice to have some royalties but I reckon he'd be safer to go for a suitable lump sum up front, as there's a good chance they'll find diddly-squat and he'd end up with 20% of zilch!
Since his theory has not predicted an outcome, his theory is not supported by evidence.
I'm not sure I support this view. If you have a theory that predicts a set of results from some events, for example a formula into which you can plug the event "values", then you can run the experiment on old data to confirm your findings against known results. Indeed, weather predicting models are run backwards in time to try and "predict" what the weather was like a week or month ago.
I admit, that the next test is to see, in the case of my example, what the weather might be like next week, but running tests on existing data will still add wieght to a theory, just not as much as actually predicting something.
I'll hcoose a gnu with a fwe shots if at lla possible... it'll give me tmie to scramble into a lcoked closet and hdie while the geek hreos come to the rsecue... eventually.
If it was either or, I'd take the increased fuel efficiency over drilling in Alaska. But if it can be both/and, I'll take a chance on despoiling Alaskan scenery to keep dollars out of the Middle East.
OK... slightly worrying, but OK.
What if you could reasonably increase fuel efficency to a point where you didn't need to get at the Alaskan oil, for the time being (it being a possibility that oil will at some point run out, so all oil reserves would therefore become economically viable at some point in the future)?
I think the people who produced the 3 MPG improvement figures weren't suggesting them to stop the West paying the Middle East for oil. I suspect they had perhaps a higher motive that you appear to be failing to grasp.
It obviously makes sense to be self-sufficient in as many areas as possible, but it would indeed be nice to be the last continent/country/ideology on the planet to have oil reserves. Why dig them up at all if we (OK,... you) don't need to right now. The longer you leave it there, the more it will be worth, and you might even end up selling some of it back to the Middle East at vastly inflated prices.
For my money, I'd say leave the Alaskan oil where it is for now, and just try and use less oil. If you can improved the efficiency of the vehicles then surely everyone wins. You're not paying money to the Middle East, you're pulluting less and personally paying less.
To me, and maybe the "outside world" (ie people outside of the US) it just seems really lazy, and perhaps even a bit arrogant, to continue with such wastefull ways when there are well known, tried and tested, methods for improvement.
The national equivalent of millionaires using 100 dollar bills to light their cigars. Sure, it makes you look big, and your millionaire friends laugh, but how does it make the majority of the onlookers feel?
If you can't honestly see how this portrays the American people in the eyes of the rest of the world, then that, in a nutshell, is the problem!
I hope you can take this in the spirit it is intended, as I like the US because it has a great deal about it that is genuinely right, but it really is only your closest of friends and allies who will take you to one side and tell you "you have BO" (figuratively speaking, of course!).
Hey, after a heavy night on the sauce, rather than calling for a cab/taxi, stick on one of these headsets, type in your address, and have it walk you home! Perhaps make it stop off for a kebab on the way!
Gallons per day fewer we would need to import if SUVs' average fuel efficiency increased by 3 mgp AND drilling was approved for Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: 91,000,000.
How very "US-Centric" of you.
I'm not some tree-hugger, but even I can see that it simply must be better to improve the mpg of the vehicles rather than start drilling in Alaska. Have you been to Alaska? It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen! While I'm sure they could get at the oil without despoiling the landscape, why take the risk when for a measly average improvement of 6 MPG you'd get an reduction of 98,000,000 gallons a day!
Hi "Sorry..."
I was responding to you, although I can see how you might have felt somewhat under attack. You were asking (in your parent post, as I remember) why people kept harrassing you about driving an SUV. That's why I was emphasising the you bit... but I apologies for any inferred agression, as I really wasn't implying any.
If the US Government raised tax on gas and funnelled the money into research for alternate fuels (whether that be electricity, or natural gas, or making petrol from corn starch) that would seem like a good idea, at least to me.
IMHO, people are, in general, selfish, and given the choice between doing something easy/cheap, or doing something difficult/expensive, they will usually take the easy/cheap route. That is why Governments (whether local or national) have to legislate. For example, if there wasn't legislation to stop you parking right outside the shop, you'd do so, indeed, if someone else was there before you, you'd be annoyed at them for taking the space (I do realise that in the US there is usually ample parking, but I hope you can see the analogy).
Unfortunately, your Free Market has driven down the cost of SUVs and not appreciably affected their mpg. You say that better mpg would be a good thing, but given the choice between a more expensive and frugal (Smaller/Lighter) SUV or a cheap thirsty one when gas is so cheap... you (not personally you, but saying "one" seemed a bit 'royal'!) will pick the cheap thirsty one.
If the Free Market isn't driving the technology the right way then other measures probably should be taken. Obviously, you may disagree that improving the efficiency of the MPVs isn't the "right way", although having already agreed that mpg "matters" that may come across as a bit disingenuous.
I remember hearing about the amount of petrol that would be saved if cars in the US were on average 3 MPG more efficient [ aha... here's a reference http://www.harpers.org/Oil.html ]
Cut and pasted from that page:-
Gallons by which daily U.S. oil consumption would drop if SUVs' average fuel efficiency increased by 3 mpg: 49,000,000
Gallons per day that the proposed drilling of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is projected to yield: 42,000,000
Now tell me that your sick of people picking on SUV drivers! It really does matter. For those who haven't figured it out yet, the 3 mpg improvement would be like opening up the Alaskan oil reserves every year.
That is why we harp on about it. That is why you get picked on. That is why you should change.
And that is why your Government should put up the price of your gas!
Slashdot Mirror
Or, shock horror, they could use their own damn car! Didn't one of the London bombers drive his own car to Luton?
What the authorities don't seem to have grasped is that with suicide bombers, they tend to have no "history", as their first offence tends to be their last!
May I suggest UK people reading this visit Write To Them and fax their MP suggesting that this is perhaps, you know, a trifle off, don't you know, what.
Then : Keep reading... he's one of the, "Hate the sin, love the sinner," camp.
*cough*
Picking the right kids for the roles is going to be crucial. What we don't want, IMHO, is all the stage-school kids with their smiley faces, dance shoes, and jazz hands. That'd just kill it stone dead for me! Unfortunately, those tend to be the sorts of kids who apply (or are pushed by eager parents).
It would seem (again, IMHO) that the Harry Potter films managed to find a bunch of child actors who weren't quite so saccharin-infused, well certainly the lead roles, so I guess it must be possible.
Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch about a newly discovered planet they were going to call Bumhole, but pronounced Boomholay!
I'm laughing now, and I every time I think about it!
Assign IPv6 Nos to all the IPv4 addresses and map them somehow. Limit the expansion into IPv6 to Nos that can be also assigned to the remainder of the IPv4 numbers so IPv4 and IPv6 "punters" can still see everything on the internet.
IPv6 Only Nos could also be available to people/corporations who don't necessarily want to be publicly available, indeed they should be encouraged to do so. Actually, there's maybe the opportunity for such groups to return old IPv4 Nos to the pool if they upgrade lock, stock and barrel to IPv6, thus keeping the IPv4 setup available for longer, which would help spread the changeover costs over a longer period of time.
How much breathing space do we have in IPv4? I guess if we really are up against the end-stop, then this won't work, but assuming we have a few years left, gradually change equipement over to IPv6 until it is all IPv6.
If we run out of IPv4 Nos too soon, then IPv4 "punters" will be only able to access a sub-set of the Internet, not being able to reach the non-IPv4-mapped IPv6 Nos. This might be sufficient incentive for them to upgrade their IPv4 kit to IPv6, or it may not, but it will be their choice.
Of is that just not possible?
Oh great, so every LEGO brick will have it's own RFID tag ... and roll on IPv6 and every LEGO brick can then have it's own IP address, and a website with a picture of itself.
Hey ... if this microwave doohicky can actually boil water, then there's at least an outside chance of getting a decent cup of tea in the US at last!
Now repeat after me ... Pour the BOILING water over the tea leaves!
The system would then colate the information for all the CCTV, with multiple viewers for each chunk allowing a reasonably accurate method of then searching for content.
EG they know the person they are looking for is carrying a backpack - eliminate all chunks of video where there are no backpacks.
I reckon this could be quite a powerful tool! The public could decide whether it was worth them helping the effort and it could massively speed up the catching of the people.
What I don't like is the way BOINC is so decentralised. Having to go through the registration process for each new BOINC Project is a right royal drag. BOINC itself should be looking after registration, and once registered there should be a dropdown menu on the Client with all the BOINC Projects - maybe later split into Medical/Science/Voodoo and whatever later on. There could even be an Alpha and Beta section for up and coming Projects who are looking for testers.
This would make the transition far easier, and the framework far more useful!
A lot of the configuration for your installation of BOINC on your PC has to be done on each of the disperate BOINC Project websites, such as configuring how much of your disk space will be used by each Project. Also, what %age of your PC will be used by each Project. The %age thing is the real pain - rather than a simple screen in the BOINC GUI where you can twiddle the %ages for all connected Projects, you have to go to each Project website and login to find a configuration screen where you have to write a number into a box. If all the numbers for all your projects are the same, then the time is split equally among the Projects, raise one number and that project will get more time. This is truely painful!
Not to mention the registering process! If the BOINC website looked after the Users, with Registration to BOINC rather than having to register with each Project, it would be so much easier. Your BOINC client could then have an uptodate list of BOINC Projects and you could simply click on one to join!
All that said, I do have it installed and working on a number of PCs running a number of the Projects. It's painful, but it still works.
I'd still like to see GIMPS (Mersenne Prime) sign up to BOINC too!
I was trying not to point the finger at Germany in particular, and I have heard reports about the UK Government knowing about the gassings and all, but still I'd say the majority of people involved in the war - ie the public in the US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand/etc/etc didn't actually know about the attocities taking place. My guess is, that if they did know they would have wanted action taken.
Why the various governments decided to sit on it until the end of the war would be interesting.
First off, you seem to be implying that I think slavery is a good thing, so, to clarify, I think slavery is bad. Very Bad. OK ... Moving on ...
I'm not saying humanity is better because the "moral compass" gets positioned roughly by taking the averages of all the people's personal morals, I'm just saying that I think it is the case.
This "moral compass" is swinging all the time, and sometimes there are big swings, as with the stopping of slavery. Sometimes there are smaller swings, as with the legalising (or at least allowing) of drug use in Amsterdam, for example.
You have your moral compass, and I'm sure you are as against slavery as I am, but you can't sit there lambasting me for not using logic and reason, and then tell me that back at the start of slavery, people (as in "the people", or indeed "society") didn't think it was a good idea! This doesn't mean they were right, indeed, we can look back and say how bad it was, but at the time it was deemed acceptable. As people decided it wasn't such a nice thing to do to another human being, opionion changed, and eventually, what we currently think of as "right" prevailed.
It's like looking back at the flat-earthers and saying they new it was round. Er ... No ... they really thought it was flat!
The flat-earthers seems comical to us now, and slavery seems barbaric, but the underlying issue is the same. They simply didn't know any better!
Have a look around and think what the future might think about some of our actions today ...
- I'm sure they'll laugh at our medicine
- Might be a back-lash at keeping pets (Guide Dogs vs animal slavery?)
- If computers become sentient, factories using robots might seem like slavery again?
I have to restate my belief that slavery is wrong, and was wrong, and always will be wrong, but that is my belief, and it wasn't necessarily the commonly held belief in the past, and it might not be the commonly held belief in the future!
I think you are mixing your example a bit here ...
Is slavery ethical ... we currently don't think so. Was slavery deemed ethical back in the day, well I'm sad to say that I think it was! Gradually the idea of slavery became less and less acceptable until it was eventually outlawed, but it was obviously an accepted part of society for many years, not least in africa where the various tribes would take slaves from each other as a matter of course.
Now we get on to the holocaust. Obviously we can still look back and see this as a bad thing, but there the similarity ends, because the vast majority of opinion back then would also have been horrified by the concept. That a few people high up in the Nazi regime were able to fool and trick their population into helping perpetrate the attrocity is perhaps more interesting, but I'd say the majority of the population simply didn't know it was happening!
You are missing his point. The world's ethics are not set by you, or me, or any individual. They are the current mood of the population. Sure, now the whole concept of slavery seems barbaric, but back in the day, slavery was deemed acceptable/ethical. That's the whole point!
We can look back and wag our fingers about how awful our ancestors were, and not just slavery, but witch burning, any number of religion-based attrocities (nobody expects ...), animal welfare, treatment of indigenous people, the list is probably endless, but at the time, most of the actions were deemed acceptable. As I understand it, if we burnt someone at the stake, we thought we were saving their soul!
I'd say that by definition, the popular vote defines the popular ethical values. Just be thankfull that we have moved on from the time when having different ethical values from the norm might mean you were burnt at the stake for heresy!
It can't really be beyond the wit of man to have cameras on bridges that can measure the gap between vehicles, and be able to send the tailgaters tickets. This would actually be excellent. On an empty motorway, you can go as fast as you like (I guess there should be some upper limit?), but if it is crowded you need to be, say, 4 seconds from the vehicle in front.
From my extensive research (having been driving for 20 years - and boy am I tired!), I'd say this would actually improve traffic flow too when the motorways are busy - much like the M25 variable speed limit does!
So, there's a way to actually make the motorways safer, to increase traffic flow at busy times (probably), and ticket the morons who tailgate. Surely everyone would be happy about that - er, except less revenue generated!
Obviously, there'd need to be some safeguards for people who have someone hop in front in their lane just before the camera, etc, but it can't be that hard!
The problem with speed cameras (other than speed not actually being the problem) is that the speed limits are wrong. Some are too high, and some are too low. Most should change depending on the time of day - 10 MPH outside a school at school start/stop time, say 20 during the rest of the day, probably 30 when the school is shut! Because MOST speed limits are STUPID people ignore them. Set them sensibly, and there's a chance people might start to adhere to them!
So ... when do we start rounding people up for compulsory blood donations and testing to be put on the Bone Marrow Register then? Also, no question about not donating your body parts when you die.
Yep, yours is certainly the World I want to live in!
It would indeed be nice to have some royalties but I reckon he'd be safer to go for a suitable lump sum up front, as there's a good chance they'll find diddly-squat and he'd end up with 20% of zilch!
You're not wrong there!
DOH!
I'm not sure I support this view. If you have a theory that predicts a set of results from some events, for example a formula into which you can plug the event "values", then you can run the experiment on old data to confirm your findings against known results. Indeed, weather predicting models are run backwards in time to try and "predict" what the weather was like a week or month ago.
I admit, that the next test is to see, in the case of my example, what the weather might be like next week, but running tests on existing data will still add wieght to a theory, just not as much as actually predicting something.
WFT?
OK ... slightly worrying, but OK.
What if you could reasonably increase fuel efficency to a point where you didn't need to get at the Alaskan oil, for the time being (it being a possibility that oil will at some point run out, so all oil reserves would therefore become economically viable at some point in the future)?
I think the people who produced the 3 MPG improvement figures weren't suggesting them to stop the West paying the Middle East for oil. I suspect they had perhaps a higher motive that you appear to be failing to grasp.
It obviously makes sense to be self-sufficient in as many areas as possible, but it would indeed be nice to be the last continent/country/ideology on the planet to have oil reserves. Why dig them up at all if we (OK, ... you) don't need to right now. The longer you leave it there, the more it will be worth, and you might even end up selling some of it back to the Middle East at vastly inflated prices.
For my money, I'd say leave the Alaskan oil where it is for now, and just try and use less oil. If you can improved the efficiency of the vehicles then surely everyone wins. You're not paying money to the Middle East, you're pulluting less and personally paying less.
To me, and maybe the "outside world" (ie people outside of the US) it just seems really lazy, and perhaps even a bit arrogant, to continue with such wastefull ways when there are well known, tried and tested, methods for improvement.
The national equivalent of millionaires using 100 dollar bills to light their cigars. Sure, it makes you look big, and your millionaire friends laugh, but how does it make the majority of the onlookers feel?
If you can't honestly see how this portrays the American people in the eyes of the rest of the world, then that, in a nutshell, is the problem!
I hope you can take this in the spirit it is intended, as I like the US because it has a great deal about it that is genuinely right, but it really is only your closest of friends and allies who will take you to one side and tell you "you have BO" (figuratively speaking, of course!).
Hey, after a heavy night on the sauce, rather than calling for a cab/taxi, stick on one of these headsets, type in your address, and have it walk you home! Perhaps make it stop off for a kebab on the way!
Ain't technology grand!
How very "US-Centric" of you.
I'm not some tree-hugger, but even I can see that it simply must be better to improve the mpg of the vehicles rather than start drilling in Alaska. Have you been to Alaska? It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen! While I'm sure they could get at the oil without despoiling the landscape, why take the risk when for a measly average improvement of 6 MPG you'd get an reduction of 98,000,000 gallons a day!
Regards
I was responding to you, although I can see how you might have felt somewhat under attack. You were asking (in your parent post, as I remember) why people kept harrassing you about driving an SUV. That's why I was emphasising the you bit
If the US Government raised tax on gas and funnelled the money into research for alternate fuels (whether that be electricity, or natural gas, or making petrol from corn starch) that would seem like a good idea, at least to me.
IMHO, people are, in general, selfish, and given the choice between doing something easy/cheap, or doing something difficult/expensive, they will usually take the easy/cheap route. That is why Governments (whether local or national) have to legislate. For example, if there wasn't legislation to stop you parking right outside the shop, you'd do so, indeed, if someone else was there before you, you'd be annoyed at them for taking the space (I do realise that in the US there is usually ample parking, but I hope you can see the analogy).
Unfortunately, your Free Market has driven down the cost of SUVs and not appreciably affected their mpg. You say that better mpg would be a good thing, but given the choice between a more expensive and frugal (Smaller/Lighter) SUV or a cheap thirsty one when gas is so cheap ... you (not personally you, but saying "one" seemed a bit 'royal'!) will pick the cheap thirsty one.
If the Free Market isn't driving the technology the right way then other measures probably should be taken. Obviously, you may disagree that improving the efficiency of the MPVs isn't the "right way", although having already agreed that mpg "matters" that may come across as a bit disingenuous.
Regards
Cut and pasted from that page :-
Gallons by which daily U.S. oil consumption would drop if SUVs' average fuel efficiency increased by 3 mpg: 49,000,000
Gallons per day that the proposed drilling of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is projected to yield: 42,000,000
Now tell me that your sick of people picking on SUV drivers! It really does matter. For those who haven't figured it out yet, the 3 mpg improvement would be like opening up the Alaskan oil reserves every year.
That is why we harp on about it. That is why you get picked on. That is why you should change. And that is why your Government should put up the price of your gas!