That's crap... What the MPAA did was completely legitimate. Someone illegally downloaded their movie, and they informed them of the infringement. It would be no different than if a local government was pirating copies of MS Office, and MS demanded that they either removed the software or pay them for it.
A government that DOESN'T fear corporations and its constituents is what I consider scary. I'm not saying corporations are always in the right, and that the government doesn't have the right to smack them down when they misbehave... a corporation is BY LAW given many of the legal protections individuals are given. As such, the law applies to them, and they are protected by the law. It's a two way street. If corporations fear the government and the government does not fear the corporations, then there are no longer checks on what the government can do, as there IS no recourse that the companies have if the government wrongs them. I am not arguing that it's better to have corporations not fear the government and the government fearing the corporations, as that means the corporations are above the law, however there is plenty of middle ground, and this case falls squarely in it. While much of what the MPAA does is shady, this particular action was completely within the law, and was their appropriate response.
uh... actually those with ties to big oil would BENEFIT from the IEA overplaying peak oil, not from them downplaying it. If people think people oil is coming sooner, oil prices increase, big oil owns many of the current wells, and would profit handsomely if oil sold for more money. Think about it . . . everyone said it was an oil company conspiracy a few years ago that drove UP the price of oil... But somehow it would also be an oil company conspiracy to drive down the price of oil by downplaying peak oil...
This blaming everything on Bush seems very like a soviet tactic.. . blame everything on your predecessor.. it doesn't matter what. Sure plenty can be blamed on him, but of course he's responsible for a conspiracy to increase and decrease oil prices.... Go figure.
you forget the fact that there ARE already viable alternatives. The reason these alternatives aren't in use is because it's not economical to use them BECAUSE oil is so much cheaper right now. As the price of oil increases, these alternatives will become viable EVEN if no additional research is done in them. The transition will be slow as you have fixed and marginal costs involved, but forces tend to balance out, and a good equilibrium is reached.
This issue isn't that they're "forced" to teach. The real issue is that the Universities DON'T want them to spend too much time on their teaching. If you take a junior faculty member (pre tenure) at a tier-1 research university, the university will often penalize them if they spend too much effort on their teaching. They want them to work on research, and writing grants. Look at how they evaluate tenure for these professors. At many institutions the only "teaching" qualifications they require is that the professor taught a course. Little else is examined, but their research is critiqued in details. It's no wonder that professors spend their time avoiding classes and often do the minimum amount of work required for them. The professors are not to be blamed for this, it's the university that has TOLD them not to focus on teaching, and made clear that their job does not depend on teaching ability.
If EVERYTHING is in the slides, there are some major issues with the class. First off, including all the details in the slides means you either need long slides (that the professor will have to rush through), or each slide will be much busier, including more details than before. Either way, these are some of the worst types of presentations I've ever seen. Slides should give the basic idea, some of the details, but not every last analysis of the problem etc. Also, when teaching, effective professors will base how much time is spent on slides by the classes reaction etc. In addition, there are readings that are expected, and may not be fully covered in class. If that is too difficult for you to handle, you probably shouldn't be in college in the first place. The goal of college is for you to learn, and to learn for yourself. Not to illustrate that if spoonfed knowledge for 4 years that you can remember enough of it to pass the tests.
In addition, at least in engineering there are many example problems that would just be too difficult or awkward to do in powerpoint. Part of watching someone solve a problem, is watching the steps they go through to solve it. Sure this might be doable in powerpoint, but it would be a waste of a professor's time to spend a couple hours making the example in powerpoint when he could write it down on paper in 5 minutes. Plus many professors like to ask their students for input when solving example problems. At least in computer engineering there are often multiple solutions that are good, so having a powerpoint reduces you to a script that you can't violate. A good professor should be able to show examples that are targeted for the students, which often can only be done on the spot.
One last thing, part of why professors say "not everything will be covered in the slides" is because they want to make sure that after a test they don't have 10s of students coming up to them whining about how "this wasn't covered fully in the slides", or more likely "show me where we covered XYZ in the slides". Students can be whiny at times, and if you don't make these disclaimers, you'll be in trouble. Plus sometimes test questions are very similar to homework problems that weren't fully covered in the lectures. The ideas were likely covered, but not the exact type of problem due to time constraints.
Sorry, but courses cannot always, and should not cater to the students who don't want to go to lecture, skip homeworks etc. If you don't put an effort into it, it is not the professors fault if/when you struggle.
By your logic, no software company should be able to legally sell upgrades to their products... When you go to the store and buy a copy of snow leopard, you ARE NOT buying a full retail copy of the software. You are buying an upgrade to the previous version. Just because the software doesn't verify that you own a legal version of the software in the first place does not mean that it is legal to install it anywhere.
It is pretty well accepted in the software industry that they can sell upgrade versions of their product. It is also accepted that you CANNOT install an upgrade without having the original software installed. This is true EVEN if the software doesn't first verify that you own the original software. You can't tell me that because you have the upgrade software, that you're allowed to install the software anywhere you want.
also, there are other parts of license agreements that have been accepted. If you buy software, you are normally only allowed to install it on a single machine. Even if the software does nothing to prevent you from running it on multiple machines. Just because you have the software in your hand does not mean you can do whatever you want with it. If you want to say that no licensing is valid, you basically FORCE every software company that wants to stay in business to use the most intrusive form of DRM possible to prevent people from violating their "license".
Are they buying a full valid license of OSX? Does apple even sell full version of their OS that don't come bundled with their hardware? Buying snow leopard upgrades for $29.99 and installing that on a new machine doesn't sound like it makes it legal to me...
Higher education tends to do alright in this country... UNTIL you look at attempts to control costs. Universities have been increasing tuition FAR faster than the rate of inflation or even the rate of growth in this country. The only other industry with costs increasing at the same rate is health care. Shockingly enough, both the health care industry and the education industry are two industries strongly dominated by the government.
obviously, lengthening the school year is a matter of vital interstate commerce . . .
Of course, just like with the drinking age, the federal government is unlikely to actually mandate that states lengthen the school year, but rather they'll take more money from the states, lose a chunk of it due to the overall federal bureaucracy that will undoubtably be created, and then blackmail the states into changing their laws in order to get their money back (while redistributing more of the money to states/districts that support the political party currently in power). All the while the politicians can look like they're doing something productive, ignore the constitution, piss away money, and slowly chip away at the last remnants of sovereignty that individual states once had.
or maybe, a HUGE portion of their marketing dollars are spent acquiring these licenses with the different leagues. I think I read somewhere that half of Maddens profits go straight to the NFL . . . If those dollars are considered marketing, it would go a long way to explain this ratio.
20-lane roads won't really solve the problem, as now you end up with the left few lanes having the long-distance drivers, and the right lanes being a mess of cars trying to change lanes and get over to their exits. How many times have you seen cars fly across 3 lanes of traffic to get to an exit? Now imagine cars trying this across 5 or 10 or even 20 lanes. Now you need far more road to change lanes, and now you'll get stuck with multi-lane traffic accidents. I suppose traffic can still move around them fast, but the roads definitely wouldn't be safer (a side issue, but normally considered more important than how fast traffic flows).
I disagree with your premise that ecological awareness is always a good thing. And the reasons I say this have EVERYTHING to do with politics and economics. While it is good that people aren't out there wasting resources, normally they weren't going to do that out of their own self-interest. Wasting resources tends to be expensive. It's the same reason SUV sales dropped when gas reach $3.50/gallon. People didn't suddenly think they should be more environmentally aware, people realized that it was cheaper to drive something else.
But, the problem with global warming is that awareness breeds government involvement. The awareness (at least that I've seen) generally demands that something be done to stop it. The individuals demanding something be done aren't willing to cut back on their own. They don't want to hang clothes up to dry when they have a dryer, they don't want to ride their bikes to work when they're comfortable (and safer) in their car. They want things how they are, but things to magically change. At the same time, you get people in power who claim they can fix things. Unlike most everything else the government has ever done, the government is able to get this right somehow. And the politicians and those in power seize upon the people's fears and increase their own power. Has people become "aware", they panic and give up their freedom. Whether it's in the name of terrorism, the environment, etc the end result is saddly the same. Of course, as the end of the day, I'd consider the threat from terrorism far greater to peoples immediate future than the fear of global warming, and I see feasible ways to reduce it, unlike global warming, of course this is neither here nor there, as it isn't the issue at hand.
My point is a populace driven by fear (particularly if that fear is misplaced) is asking for trouble. The best of intentions normally end up with the worst outcomes. Good intentions (saving the planet for instance) can result in millions of people dying younger, and having substandard lives. But I suppose the ends justify the means...
You just can't separate politics from what people believe when you're living in a democracy like we do.
You have obviously missed the connection between understanding and conserving, versus the government stepping in, increasing their power even more, and FORCING people to do something that isn't necessarily in their own self-interest. Oh, also the impact of the government's interference is UNLIKELY to have ANY impact on the issue at hand, but will result in a poorer general population, and be helpful for the old growth businesses that keep the government running.
Individual people making an effort to conserve energy is not a bad thing. In fact, much of that is happening anyhow WITH NO regard toward environmentalism whatsoever. I personally care some about protecting the earth, but I didn't replace my lightbulbs with CFLs because it makes me feel good. I did it because they're cooler and cheaper to use. By the same logic, I haven't replaced my car with a hybrid. I may only get 32 mpg on the highway, but it's far cheaper for me to stick with what I have than to trade in. In fact, it's likely better for the environment that I don't trade it in seeing how little I drive, but that reasoning isn't why I'm sticking with my car, it's the price tag, and perceived value that do. Although, some people might make decisions to make sacrifices for the environment on their own, they tend to be in the minority. Most people make decisions by looking at what is best for them. The exception is the very rich (think hollywood actors/actresses etc) who get their own sense of self-satisfaction of being "green". The fact is, this is still in their self-interest, as their sense of satisfaction is worth far more than the cost of them becoming greener. For most working class families, the idea of spending a couple extra hundred or thousands of dollars a year just to be more "green" is absurd. They don't have that kind of money floating around. They're trying to make their monthly bill payments, possibly save a little for retirement (social security sure isn't going to save them), and maybe save for their kids to go to college. Other expenditures tend to be luxuries they can't afford, particularly in a time of government-inspired economic crisis. They can't risk spending money on this when they might not have a job next week or next month.
The government's solution to global warming tends to follow the government's "solution" to many problems. Lets use this problem to increase our power while doing little to really help the situation. Look at the cap and trade legislation. It will impose very large and very real costs on the average working family. The studies show anything between $175/year up to $3000/year. And remember, the government doesn't have a good track record on estimating costs of their programs. Look at their original estimate for the costs of Medicare, or even the war on Iraq. Economists are also very poor at their modeling (For instance, Obama used stats showing that with the stimulus, unemployment would level off at 8.5%, but without it, unemployment would creep all the way up to 9%! Despite this unemployment is rapidly approaching 10% and doesn't look like it's holding back). All this, and what benefits are to be made from it? We could stop our use of fossil fuels entirely, and it's unlikely to make more than the smallest of dents in overall usage of fossil fuels. This is because prices would fall, and consumption elsewhere would increase. China, India, and the third world are definitely NOT going to take this sort of hit to be greener, and they'll take advantage of cheaper prices to increase consumption and increase their economic prosperity.
So at the end of the day the government will have another huge bureaucracy, established businesses will increase the barriers to competition (by holding a monopoly on the usage of carbon), and little change will actually take place in the climate. All this while the middle class and poor get poorer, and fewer small businesses form to help lift them up. Not to mention we've tied up so much money in this waste that we can't actually make plans
Funny how your notion of trust sounds like self-interest to me. Both sides are better off by not trying to screw over the other... Doesn't take a genius to see that. The companies are trying to maintain their standing with another company. It's in their self interest to maintain themselves as being trust worthy. However, this isn't always the case. If the company wasn't worried about the repercussions of doing something, or the relationship no longer was economical to them, don't think the "trust" that you have in them means anything. It's purely self-interest that motivates them, and often trust is part of self-interest. In the words of Robert Heinlein: "Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage."
I don't know why you're being modded up for this comment... The parent poster never said that Obama was a socialist. Instead, he referred to this program as a socialist program. It's hard to argue that it isn't. It's definitely the government interfering with private enterprise for no good reason.
Besides, I could care less whether or not the leader of the socialist party considers Obama a socialist or not. Many of his policies are in line with socialist viewpoints (for that matter, many of McCain's and Bush's policies were in line with socialist views). He is expanding the government's reach in industry, and this is being done at a remarkably fast pace. It's no wonder the deficit is growing by leaps and bounds and other countries are threatening to stop loaning the US government money. We're on a quick path to either bankrupt the government, or reexamine double digit inflation (there just aren't enough rich people to soak up all the increased pork spending being proposed). Of course it's all good because in 10 years we'll have greener engines that no one can afford to buy. Have fun with that.
I complained to Dell recently about the optical drive on my new laptop. If you put in a DVD with the slightest scratch on it the whole system would hard lock. (Yes, Vista allows the drivers the privilege of taking down the whole OS
You apparently know NOTHING about device drivers if you think that the OS could "disallow" the driver from taking down the whole OS. It's up to the device driver itself to be written to not take down the whole system if something goes wrong. The device driver, by its very nature is run as root, it has access to the hardware, it could tell the hardware to shutdown if it wanted to. It could also spin in an infinite loop that the OS can't preempt (device drivers can execute in critical sections, or block interrupts so that the OS is not allowed to preempt). I can do the same thing in Linux or *name your favorite OS*.
Funny, according to wikipedia, the price of kerosene fell by 80% during Rockefeller's monopoly that supposedly "inflated" oil prices. Seems to me that someone should google their facts before making mindless assertions.
This problem was pretty much fixed in OSX 10.5. Now connections to other servers use a separate thread, so that an unresponsive server doesn't halt your finder. I noticed this regularly in the past, as I would often mount my samba and/or NFS shares on my laptop when I was at home, and forget to disconnect them before taking my machine to lab. Now if this happens finder still works, but will pop up an error eventually offering me the chance to disconnect my mounted drives.
This WILL NOT survive a reinstall of the system. It does NOT overwrite your bios. It overwrites values in cache. However, when you reboot the machine, the cache is cleared so any code must be reloaded into the cache to be exploitable. What this does do is makes the attacking program undetectable from the running OS.
Most people don't care what format their youtube videos are encoded in, but that doesn't mean google doesn't. It also doesn't mean they like to wait while a youtube video stalls. If google wants to increase the resolution and quality of videos significantly, it just can't deliver the content to many peoples broadband in realtime without changing the codec. h.264 is more efficient for bandwidth, and will be used (also, google has good reason to want to save money on their own bandwidth costs). If home bandwidth increases enough, then the question goes, what about netbooks using cell service etc. All these things want higher quality data, but also want to limit their bandwidth usage.
Ever hear of nuclear power? What about hydroelectric? Both are relatively green, and are economically viable. Also they don't have the problem of failing to generate electricity at night, or when there are too many clouds out, and can be used to generate the power grids base load.
While the final compact disc standard is not american, the underlying principles are. I got my information from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_inventions . It looks like the underlying principles are were developed by an american in the 1960s, and he later sold the rights to many of his patents to Philips and Sony to use in the compact disc.
Of course, as with most all sufficiently complex technology, no single person, company, or country is responsible for everything that goes into it. Too much work is built off the work of others, but there are generally key portions of a technology that can be related back. As it stands, this is mostly a pissing contest, but it exists for a reason, in outlining the effect of economic policies on innovation.
Integrated circuits - how many new designs have come out from Intel, IBM, AMD, etc. The major software industries - Like it or not, Microsoft is important to how our world operates. Not to forget products released by IBM, Sun, Oracle, Adobe, and countless other productivity software like spreadsheets Modern Pharmaceuticals - This is a HUGE industry in the US. I won't even try to list what drugs were developed in the US in the past 50 years, but needless to say it was a lot GPS Credit Cards video tapes weather satellites kevlar cordless telephones (also many of the ideas behind the cell phone systems were developed at bell labs) Compact Discs laser printer wireless lans smoke detectors C/Unix digital cameras ethernet the internet many crypto-graphical problems google (the countless innovations they've made)
I'm sure I could go on, but these are some of the major advancements made in the US. Not to mention countless discoveries invented elsewhere, but first made commercial by US companies etc (of course a lot of US inventions were first made commercial by foreign companies as well, although many of those were Japanese companies).
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That's crap... What the MPAA did was completely legitimate. Someone illegally downloaded their movie, and they informed them of the infringement. It would be no different than if a local government was pirating copies of MS Office, and MS demanded that they either removed the software or pay them for it.
A government that DOESN'T fear corporations and its constituents is what I consider scary. I'm not saying corporations are always in the right, and that the government doesn't have the right to smack them down when they misbehave... a corporation is BY LAW given many of the legal protections individuals are given. As such, the law applies to them, and they are protected by the law. It's a two way street. If corporations fear the government and the government does not fear the corporations, then there are no longer checks on what the government can do, as there IS no recourse that the companies have if the government wrongs them. I am not arguing that it's better to have corporations not fear the government and the government fearing the corporations, as that means the corporations are above the law, however there is plenty of middle ground, and this case falls squarely in it. While much of what the MPAA does is shady, this particular action was completely within the law, and was their appropriate response.
Phil
uh... actually those with ties to big oil would BENEFIT from the IEA overplaying peak oil, not from them downplaying it. If people think people oil is coming sooner, oil prices increase, big oil owns many of the current wells, and would profit handsomely if oil sold for more money. Think about it . . . everyone said it was an oil company conspiracy a few years ago that drove UP the price of oil... But somehow it would also be an oil company conspiracy to drive down the price of oil by downplaying peak oil...
.. . blame everything on your predecessor.. it doesn't matter what. Sure plenty can be blamed on him, but of course he's responsible for a conspiracy to increase and decrease oil prices.... Go figure.
This blaming everything on Bush seems very like a soviet tactic
Phil
you forget the fact that there ARE already viable alternatives. The reason these alternatives aren't in use is because it's not economical to use them BECAUSE oil is so much cheaper right now. As the price of oil increases, these alternatives will become viable EVEN if no additional research is done in them. The transition will be slow as you have fixed and marginal costs involved, but forces tend to balance out, and a good equilibrium is reached.
Phil
This issue isn't that they're "forced" to teach. The real issue is that the Universities DON'T want them to spend too much time on their teaching. If you take a junior faculty member (pre tenure) at a tier-1 research university, the university will often penalize them if they spend too much effort on their teaching. They want them to work on research, and writing grants. Look at how they evaluate tenure for these professors. At many institutions the only "teaching" qualifications they require is that the professor taught a course. Little else is examined, but their research is critiqued in details. It's no wonder that professors spend their time avoiding classes and often do the minimum amount of work required for them. The professors are not to be blamed for this, it's the university that has TOLD them not to focus on teaching, and made clear that their job does not depend on teaching ability.
Phil
If EVERYTHING is in the slides, there are some major issues with the class. First off, including all the details in the slides means you either need long slides (that the professor will have to rush through), or each slide will be much busier, including more details than before. Either way, these are some of the worst types of presentations I've ever seen. Slides should give the basic idea, some of the details, but not every last analysis of the problem etc. Also, when teaching, effective professors will base how much time is spent on slides by the classes reaction etc. In addition, there are readings that are expected, and may not be fully covered in class. If that is too difficult for you to handle, you probably shouldn't be in college in the first place. The goal of college is for you to learn, and to learn for yourself. Not to illustrate that if spoonfed knowledge for 4 years that you can remember enough of it to pass the tests.
In addition, at least in engineering there are many example problems that would just be too difficult or awkward to do in powerpoint. Part of watching someone solve a problem, is watching the steps they go through to solve it. Sure this might be doable in powerpoint, but it would be a waste of a professor's time to spend a couple hours making the example in powerpoint when he could write it down on paper in 5 minutes. Plus many professors like to ask their students for input when solving example problems. At least in computer engineering there are often multiple solutions that are good, so having a powerpoint reduces you to a script that you can't violate. A good professor should be able to show examples that are targeted for the students, which often can only be done on the spot.
One last thing, part of why professors say "not everything will be covered in the slides" is because they want to make sure that after a test they don't have 10s of students coming up to them whining about how "this wasn't covered fully in the slides", or more likely "show me where we covered XYZ in the slides". Students can be whiny at times, and if you don't make these disclaimers, you'll be in trouble. Plus sometimes test questions are very similar to homework problems that weren't fully covered in the lectures. The ideas were likely covered, but not the exact type of problem due to time constraints.
Sorry, but courses cannot always, and should not cater to the students who don't want to go to lecture, skip homeworks etc. If you don't put an effort into it, it is not the professors fault if/when you struggle.
Phil
By your logic, no software company should be able to legally sell upgrades to their products... When you go to the store and buy a copy of snow leopard, you ARE NOT buying a full retail copy of the software. You are buying an upgrade to the previous version. Just because the software doesn't verify that you own a legal version of the software in the first place does not mean that it is legal to install it anywhere.
It is pretty well accepted in the software industry that they can sell upgrade versions of their product. It is also accepted that you CANNOT install an upgrade without having the original software installed. This is true EVEN if the software doesn't first verify that you own the original software. You can't tell me that because you have the upgrade software, that you're allowed to install the software anywhere you want.
also, there are other parts of license agreements that have been accepted. If you buy software, you are normally only allowed to install it on a single machine. Even if the software does nothing to prevent you from running it on multiple machines. Just because you have the software in your hand does not mean you can do whatever you want with it. If you want to say that no licensing is valid, you basically FORCE every software company that wants to stay in business to use the most intrusive form of DRM possible to prevent people from violating their "license".
Phil
Are they buying a full valid license of OSX? Does apple even sell full version of their OS that don't come bundled with their hardware? Buying snow leopard upgrades for $29.99 and installing that on a new machine doesn't sound like it makes it legal to me...
Phil
Higher education tends to do alright in this country... UNTIL you look at attempts to control costs. Universities have been increasing tuition FAR faster than the rate of inflation or even the rate of growth in this country. The only other industry with costs increasing at the same rate is health care. Shockingly enough, both the health care industry and the education industry are two industries strongly dominated by the government.
Phil
obviously, lengthening the school year is a matter of vital interstate commerce . . .
Of course, just like with the drinking age, the federal government is unlikely to actually mandate that states lengthen the school year, but rather they'll take more money from the states, lose a chunk of it due to the overall federal bureaucracy that will undoubtably be created, and then blackmail the states into changing their laws in order to get their money back (while redistributing more of the money to states/districts that support the political party currently in power). All the while the politicians can look like they're doing something productive, ignore the constitution, piss away money, and slowly chip away at the last remnants of sovereignty that individual states once had.
Phil
or maybe, a HUGE portion of their marketing dollars are spent acquiring these licenses with the different leagues. I think I read somewhere that half of Maddens profits go straight to the NFL . . . If those dollars are considered marketing, it would go a long way to explain this ratio.
Phil
20-lane roads won't really solve the problem, as now you end up with the left few lanes having the long-distance drivers, and the right lanes being a mess of cars trying to change lanes and get over to their exits. How many times have you seen cars fly across 3 lanes of traffic to get to an exit? Now imagine cars trying this across 5 or 10 or even 20 lanes. Now you need far more road to change lanes, and now you'll get stuck with multi-lane traffic accidents. I suppose traffic can still move around them fast, but the roads definitely wouldn't be safer (a side issue, but normally considered more important than how fast traffic flows).
Phil
I disagree with your premise that ecological awareness is always a good thing. And the reasons I say this have EVERYTHING to do with politics and economics. While it is good that people aren't out there wasting resources, normally they weren't going to do that out of their own self-interest. Wasting resources tends to be expensive. It's the same reason SUV sales dropped when gas reach $3.50/gallon. People didn't suddenly think they should be more environmentally aware, people realized that it was cheaper to drive something else.
But, the problem with global warming is that awareness breeds government involvement. The awareness (at least that I've seen) generally demands that something be done to stop it. The individuals demanding something be done aren't willing to cut back on their own. They don't want to hang clothes up to dry when they have a dryer, they don't want to ride their bikes to work when they're comfortable (and safer) in their car. They want things how they are, but things to magically change. At the same time, you get people in power who claim they can fix things. Unlike most everything else the government has ever done, the government is able to get this right somehow. And the politicians and those in power seize upon the people's fears and increase their own power. Has people become "aware", they panic and give up their freedom. Whether it's in the name of terrorism, the environment, etc the end result is saddly the same. Of course, as the end of the day, I'd consider the threat from terrorism far greater to peoples immediate future than the fear of global warming, and I see feasible ways to reduce it, unlike global warming, of course this is neither here nor there, as it isn't the issue at hand.
My point is a populace driven by fear (particularly if that fear is misplaced) is asking for trouble. The best of intentions normally end up with the worst outcomes. Good intentions (saving the planet for instance) can result in millions of people dying younger, and having substandard lives. But I suppose the ends justify the means...
You just can't separate politics from what people believe when you're living in a democracy like we do.
Phil
You have obviously missed the connection between understanding and conserving, versus the government stepping in, increasing their power even more, and FORCING people to do something that isn't necessarily in their own self-interest. Oh, also the impact of the government's interference is UNLIKELY to have ANY impact on the issue at hand, but will result in a poorer general population, and be helpful for the old growth businesses that keep the government running.
Individual people making an effort to conserve energy is not a bad thing. In fact, much of that is happening anyhow WITH NO regard toward environmentalism whatsoever. I personally care some about protecting the earth, but I didn't replace my lightbulbs with CFLs because it makes me feel good. I did it because they're cooler and cheaper to use. By the same logic, I haven't replaced my car with a hybrid. I may only get 32 mpg on the highway, but it's far cheaper for me to stick with what I have than to trade in. In fact, it's likely better for the environment that I don't trade it in seeing how little I drive, but that reasoning isn't why I'm sticking with my car, it's the price tag, and perceived value that do. Although, some people might make decisions to make sacrifices for the environment on their own, they tend to be in the minority. Most people make decisions by looking at what is best for them. The exception is the very rich (think hollywood actors/actresses etc) who get their own sense of self-satisfaction of being "green". The fact is, this is still in their self-interest, as their sense of satisfaction is worth far more than the cost of them becoming greener. For most working class families, the idea of spending a couple extra hundred or thousands of dollars a year just to be more "green" is absurd. They don't have that kind of money floating around. They're trying to make their monthly bill payments, possibly save a little for retirement (social security sure isn't going to save them), and maybe save for their kids to go to college. Other expenditures tend to be luxuries they can't afford, particularly in a time of government-inspired economic crisis. They can't risk spending money on this when they might not have a job next week or next month.
The government's solution to global warming tends to follow the government's "solution" to many problems. Lets use this problem to increase our power while doing little to really help the situation. Look at the cap and trade legislation. It will impose very large and very real costs on the average working family. The studies show anything between $175/year up to $3000/year. And remember, the government doesn't have a good track record on estimating costs of their programs. Look at their original estimate for the costs of Medicare, or even the war on Iraq. Economists are also very poor at their modeling (For instance, Obama used stats showing that with the stimulus, unemployment would level off at 8.5%, but without it, unemployment would creep all the way up to 9%! Despite this unemployment is rapidly approaching 10% and doesn't look like it's holding back). All this, and what benefits are to be made from it? We could stop our use of fossil fuels entirely, and it's unlikely to make more than the smallest of dents in overall usage of fossil fuels. This is because prices would fall, and consumption elsewhere would increase. China, India, and the third world are definitely NOT going to take this sort of hit to be greener, and they'll take advantage of cheaper prices to increase consumption and increase their economic prosperity.
So at the end of the day the government will have another huge bureaucracy, established businesses will increase the barriers to competition (by holding a monopoly on the usage of carbon), and little change will actually take place in the climate. All this while the middle class and poor get poorer, and fewer small businesses form to help lift them up. Not to mention we've tied up so much money in this waste that we can't actually make plans
Funny how your notion of trust sounds like self-interest to me. Both sides are better off by not trying to screw over the other... Doesn't take a genius to see that. The companies are trying to maintain their standing with another company. It's in their self interest to maintain themselves as being trust worthy. However, this isn't always the case. If the company wasn't worried about the repercussions of doing something, or the relationship no longer was economical to them, don't think the "trust" that you have in them means anything. It's purely self-interest that motivates them, and often trust is part of self-interest. In the words of Robert Heinlein: "Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage."
Phil
the last part is true for plain latex, however I think more and more people have switched to using pdflatex, where the output IS a pdf file...
Phil
I don't know why you're being modded up for this comment... The parent poster never said that Obama was a socialist. Instead, he referred to this program as a socialist program. It's hard to argue that it isn't. It's definitely the government interfering with private enterprise for no good reason.
Besides, I could care less whether or not the leader of the socialist party considers Obama a socialist or not. Many of his policies are in line with socialist viewpoints (for that matter, many of McCain's and Bush's policies were in line with socialist views). He is expanding the government's reach in industry, and this is being done at a remarkably fast pace. It's no wonder the deficit is growing by leaps and bounds and other countries are threatening to stop loaning the US government money. We're on a quick path to either bankrupt the government, or reexamine double digit inflation (there just aren't enough rich people to soak up all the increased pork spending being proposed). Of course it's all good because in 10 years we'll have greener engines that no one can afford to buy. Have fun with that.
Phil
You apparently know NOTHING about device drivers if you think that the OS could "disallow" the driver from taking down the whole OS. It's up to the device driver itself to be written to not take down the whole system if something goes wrong. The device driver, by its very nature is run as root, it has access to the hardware, it could tell the hardware to shutdown if it wanted to. It could also spin in an infinite loop that the OS can't preempt (device drivers can execute in critical sections, or block interrupts so that the OS is not allowed to preempt). I can do the same thing in Linux or *name your favorite OS*.
Phil
you've apparently never been to south bethlehem...
Funny, according to wikipedia, the price of kerosene fell by 80% during Rockefeller's monopoly that supposedly "inflated" oil prices. Seems to me that someone should google their facts before making mindless assertions.
Phil
This problem was pretty much fixed in OSX 10.5. Now connections to other servers use a separate thread, so that an unresponsive server doesn't halt your finder. I noticed this regularly in the past, as I would often mount my samba and/or NFS shares on my laptop when I was at home, and forget to disconnect them before taking my machine to lab. Now if this happens finder still works, but will pop up an error eventually offering me the chance to disconnect my mounted drives.
Phil
This WILL NOT survive a reinstall of the system. It does NOT overwrite your bios. It overwrites values in cache. However, when you reboot the machine, the cache is cleared so any code must be reloaded into the cache to be exploitable. What this does do is makes the attacking program undetectable from the running OS.
Phil
Most people don't care what format their youtube videos are encoded in, but that doesn't mean google doesn't. It also doesn't mean they like to wait while a youtube video stalls. If google wants to increase the resolution and quality of videos significantly, it just can't deliver the content to many peoples broadband in realtime without changing the codec. h.264 is more efficient for bandwidth, and will be used (also, google has good reason to want to save money on their own bandwidth costs). If home bandwidth increases enough, then the question goes, what about netbooks using cell service etc. All these things want higher quality data, but also want to limit their bandwidth usage.
Phil
Ever hear of nuclear power? What about hydroelectric? Both are relatively green, and are economically viable. Also they don't have the problem of failing to generate electricity at night, or when there are too many clouds out, and can be used to generate the power grids base load.
Phil
While the final compact disc standard is not american, the underlying principles are. I got my information from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_inventions . It looks like the underlying principles are were developed by an american in the 1960s, and he later sold the rights to many of his patents to Philips and Sony to use in the compact disc.
Of course, as with most all sufficiently complex technology, no single person, company, or country is responsible for everything that goes into it. Too much work is built off the work of others, but there are generally key portions of a technology that can be related back. As it stands, this is mostly a pissing contest, but it exists for a reason, in outlining the effect of economic policies on innovation.
Phil
I'll bite on this one:
Integrated circuits - how many new designs have come out from Intel, IBM, AMD, etc.
The major software industries - Like it or not, Microsoft is important to how our world operates. Not to forget products released by IBM, Sun, Oracle, Adobe, and countless other productivity software like spreadsheets
Modern Pharmaceuticals - This is a HUGE industry in the US. I won't even try to list what drugs were developed in the US in the past 50 years, but needless to say it was a lot
GPS
Credit Cards
video tapes
weather satellites
kevlar
cordless telephones (also many of the ideas behind the cell phone systems were developed at bell labs)
Compact Discs
laser printer
wireless lans
smoke detectors
C/Unix
digital cameras
ethernet
the internet
many crypto-graphical problems
google (the countless innovations they've made)
I'm sure I could go on, but these are some of the major advancements made in the US. Not to mention countless discoveries invented elsewhere, but first made commercial by US companies etc (of course a lot of US inventions were first made commercial by foreign companies as well, although many of those were Japanese companies).
Phil