It is perfectly possible to maintain your standard of living while reducing consumption through efficiency increases. It's perfectly feasible to decrease your energy use by 50% or more without seriously affecting your standard of living.
Some people can, and others cannot. Let's look at my energy usage:
Home heating
Heating water
Cooking
Laundry
Lighting
Other electricity (electronics, etc)
Driving
I'm not counting indirect stuff like the energy used to grow the food I eat. Public transportation is not feasible for me, and I already drive vehicles that are pretty efficient for what they do. To do better, I would have to give something up - a vehicle less suitable for my needs, more expensive, or both. I don't have air conditioning in my home. I use some CFL bulbs, but many of my lights are on dimmers. I could give up the dimmers or pay a bunch more for dimmable CFL bulbs. I could turn the heat down even more in the winter and have my family have cold hands all the time. I could spend thousands of dollars on triple-pane windows for the house. I could possibly spend thousands of dollars for more efficient appliances, though they're already pretty new. I could stop using our laundry dryer and hang up clothes instead.
So you see, there are things I could do to conserve energy, but none of them are without cost, either in lifestyle or money. It's simplistic at best to say that we can all decrease our energy usage by half without affecting our standard of living.
By the way, has anyone noticed that despite our best efforts nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, as if they have lives of their own?
I find it disturbing that the US is designing new nuclear weapons. How are we supposed to convince other countries they don't need weapons of mass destruction when not only are we not getting rid of the ones we already have, but we're actively pursuing a program to develop new ones? It's crazy, and doubly so because it's not MAD. I like the pun, but seriously... either we're supposed to be deterring somebody with these, or we want to actually use them. The latter is too frightening to contemplate so I'll assume for my sanity it's the former. Who are we deterring? Not the terrorists certainly. So we're assuming that there will at some point be a government who could and would attack us with nuclear weapons, but only if we don't have them too. Wouldn't the consequences of launching a nuclear attack be severe enough anyway? Surely every other country would invade and occupy the aggressor to prevent it happening again. Would a nation willing to give up its sovereignty for a shot at the US be so concerned about getting wiped out entirely? I don't think it makes sense anymore.
A common problem with GNU/Linux for new users is not the operating system, but the switch in applications they must undertake to use it. Many who try to make the switch have little experience with the common open source applications available under GNU/Linux.
This is a ridiculous statement!
It's not ridiculous at all. If there were Linux versions of Outlook, Photoshop, Office, Taxcut/whatever financial software, and so on... how many people would have a problem using the same apps in Linux? Very few - the barrier to switching is not the OS, it's the application software. This is one reason you will never see MS making Linux versions of their big-name titles - it would weaken the OS monopoly their company is built on by making it easier for people to switch away from Windows. And no, an operating system is not a set of applications. The fact that billions of people don't know the difference doesn't mean there is no difference.
Wouldn't this apply to in-print books (and other materials) as well? What if the price cap for a work was lower than the market price? If it's just words then maybe (maybe) people would be willing to make their own copies for the capped price. What if it was a nice glossy photography book? The publisher might not be able to charge as much as the market would bear for the product. What if it's a sculpture? Why shouldn't the artist be able to charge as much as he wants for his art? Maybe I'm not understanding your plan correctly.
Affordability means the price is capped at some value relative to its intended purpose.
Thankfully, I think this will never happen. Artificial price ceilings (and floors) almost always, if not always, cause a net harm to the economy. A price cap can also cap supply, because once the actual price hits the price cap, increased demand doesn't affect the price. The producer doesn't have as much incentive to increase production capacity, rivals don't have as much incentive to enter the market, so you get artificial scarcity. This leads to people who are willing to pay more for the product than they're allowed to, and that generally leads to a black market with higher prices.
What about the right to not have parts of works used out of context in a disparaging and even slanderous way?
Speaking of reliability, I have family members with GM cars, specifically Buick and Pontiac, which have well over 200,000 miles and are still running well.
I know you said "well", but it reminds me of something I read: GM cars will run badly longer than most cars will run at all.:-)
Either that or automakers should start offering the same small displacement engines offered in Europe: 1 and 1.2 liter engines. The problem is that the American public is obsessed with the size of it's automotive penis. They need to drive around in vehicles putting out 300hp and more. God forbid a car feels a little sluggish.
I doubt Europeans are more excited about sluggish vehicles than we are, but their cars are much smaller and lighter. Combine far higher fuel prices with narrow streets and we would be a lot more into tiny cars with little engines too. With big roads, big parking garages, and cheap gas, Americans prefer big roomy cars and even bigger trucks. I guess I'm a combination of both, because I like little cars. With powerful engines.
Thank you! That is much more interesting. I wonder if they (or anyone else) has tested other gaming. Is it specifically driving games, or is it the excitement and aggression of various kinds of action-oriented games? I would guess the former. Maybe I should play Burnout before I leave in the morning and see what happens. Of course I already sometimes take my son to school "the fun way" on a curvy dirt road. The goal is to make the car slide without losing control.:-)
Ideally they would monitor both gaming and driving habits of a bunch of people, without telling them that they're looking for correlation between driving games and driving behavior. If they see the same people driving more aggressively after playing driving games versus other kinds of games or after not playing any games, that would be a pretty convincing result. As you said, they probably won't do this. Failing that, what you suggested is not bad, but until they do something further, they can't just say "it's too dangerous to test the real thing, so you should just believe us now." Or they can, but I won't believe it.:-)
The researchers then studied 68 men and found those who played even one racing game took more risks afterward in traffic situations on a computer simulator than those who played another type of game.
Not very compelling to me. They find correlation (which is useless without causation), then find that people who play a racing game then drive more aggressively in another car driving game. Yawn. I'm not saying they're definitely wrong, I'm saying they've failed to convince me. Until they can show causation with actual driving, or a correlation between "thoughts and feelings associated with risk-taking" and actual driving behavior, I don't think they're finished.
I'm not following you. Locutus said they get more than 60% of their profits from 2 products, and the rest of their products ("business ventures" in his words) lose money. So positive profits (60% of total) from 2 products, negative profits from all other products.... there's a whole bunch of profits not accounted for. Notice we're not talking about revenue, we're talking about profit. So costs have already been factored in.
My point is they have more than 2 profitable products.
Like, if they split the stock to match the shares outstanding of other companies, there'd be so many shares circulating that the price would drop, not only just because there'd be more shares as a result of the splits, but because there would actually enough to fill the demand.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because I'm not an investor or anything (other than 401(k)). But supply and demand says that if you double the supply and halve the price, it should have no effect. There's no rational reason why people would be willing to pay more for a given percentage ownership of a company just because it comes in larger chunks. That is, paying $400K for 1000 out of 10 million shares (making numbers up) is the same as paying $400K for 2000 out of 20 million shares. Likewise, nobody should be more willing to sell (or willing to sell at a lower price) after the split than before, either. Why would the price drop?
Microsoft, they've got two monopolies( one created from the other ) which bring in over 60% of their profits and all other business ventures lose money.
Then where does the other 40% of their profits come from?
But if you watch Top Gear, you know that if you drive fast enough, the speed camera won't see you at all! Unfortunately, "fast enough" is somewhere north of 150 mph. It was a very cool demonstration, though.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/37523/speed_camera _test/
In other words, they act like they own the entire market space, and can afford to treat small startups and competing projects with such disdain.
I'm reminded of a Scrubs episode. Dr. Cox is MS's rivals, and Turk is MS: "You got it all wrong, man. I don't disdain you! In fact, it's quite the opposite: I DAIN you."
I was wondering about the curious usage/redefinition of "even-handed". Even-handed now means "sufficiently critical of Microsoft"? I thought it meant fairly treating all sides of an issue. But I guess when MS and/. are involved, that's no longer the case.:-)
Why should those be our only choices? They're talking about making it illegal to sell a device that ignores their broadcast flags - ie doesn't revoke your fair use rights. If this all works out the way the broadcasters want, your choices will be exactly what you state: watch our stuff on our terms (including paying again for each time, place and method of watching it if that's what we choose) or don't watch it at all. I should be allowed to say "no thank you, I'll record your shows with my MythTV box and watch them when I want, and skip the parts I'm not interested in (commercials)". Broadcasters want to take away that choice, and I don't see why they should be allowed to do so. Laws to protect a business model endangered by new technology are a bad idea. The businesses need to adapt or die. If the studios cannot figure out some way to make money when people are time-shifting their TV shows and skipping commercials, then they'll stop making the TV shows. And we'll do something else with our time. My guess is they'll figure out some way to keep making money.
If you could... but I doubt you can. Most Treos and smart phones are heavily subsidized with a two-year contract.
Sure, but many (most?) are also available from the manufacturer or other sources with no contract or service at all. My understanding is that outside of the US that's almost exclusively how they're sold.
If the only way a PDA survives is by making it into a phone, then it's no longer a dedicated device, but a converged one like the Treo.
Quite right. My point is that it may not matter. If you can buy a cell phone/PDA at about the same price as a PDA used to cost, and without a voice/data plan, and there aren't any other hardware sacrifices such as screen size, battery life, etc - then what does it matter? You just have a chip in your PDA that you don't use.
If the market was growing, the converse would be true. It's not.
I never said it was growing, I said it's not gone.
But hey! If you like 'em so much
Whoa there! What makes you think I like 'em so much? I have a smartphone and I'm hoping to get a PDA-phone this year. Personally I like convergence. Sounds like you do too.
Regardless if this is the Cold War or not, there is no way our subs are broadcasting their position. We wouldn't be spending millions to develop anechoic coatings and other sound controlling materials for these boats just so we can tell the world where we are.
The fact that our military submarines are equipped with active sonar indicates that they probably use it sometimes. Navigating in and out of ports, for example. This would be one more use for those times when stealth is not important, plus as mentioned there are other vehicles in the ocean that might be able to make use of it.
I can see the ticker and two animations, one of which stops when I hit Disable. Firefox + Adblock + Flashblock is highly effective, you should check it out.
Slashdot Mirror
So you see, there are things I could do to conserve energy, but none of them are without cost, either in lifestyle or money. It's simplistic at best to say that we can all decrease our energy usage by half without affecting our standard of living.
Oh, OK. I didn't understand you meant a cap that's way, way, way above market value. Effectively no cap at all for normal transactions.
Wouldn't this apply to in-print books (and other materials) as well? What if the price cap for a work was lower than the market price? If it's just words then maybe (maybe) people would be willing to make their own copies for the capped price. What if it was a nice glossy photography book? The publisher might not be able to charge as much as the market would bear for the product. What if it's a sculpture? Why shouldn't the artist be able to charge as much as he wants for his art? Maybe I'm not understanding your plan correctly.
If you must go with the car analogy, it's more like losing your key and saying "zoinks! I just lost my $85,000 car key!"
Thank you! That is much more interesting. I wonder if they (or anyone else) has tested other gaming. Is it specifically driving games, or is it the excitement and aggression of various kinds of action-oriented games? I would guess the former. Maybe I should play Burnout before I leave in the morning and see what happens. Of course I already sometimes take my son to school "the fun way" on a curvy dirt road. The goal is to make the car slide without losing control. :-)
Ideally they would monitor both gaming and driving habits of a bunch of people, without telling them that they're looking for correlation between driving games and driving behavior. If they see the same people driving more aggressively after playing driving games versus other kinds of games or after not playing any games, that would be a pretty convincing result. As you said, they probably won't do this. Failing that, what you suggested is not bad, but until they do something further, they can't just say "it's too dangerous to test the real thing, so you should just believe us now." Or they can, but I won't believe it. :-)
I'm not following you. Locutus said they get more than 60% of their profits from 2 products, and the rest of their products ("business ventures" in his words) lose money. So positive profits (60% of total) from 2 products, negative profits from all other products.... there's a whole bunch of profits not accounted for. Notice we're not talking about revenue, we're talking about profit. So costs have already been factored in.
My point is they have more than 2 profitable products.
But if you watch Top Gear, you know that if you drive fast enough, the speed camera won't see you at all! Unfortunately, "fast enough" is somewhere north of 150 mph. It was a very cool demonstration, though.a _test/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/37523/speed_camer
I was wondering about the curious usage/redefinition of "even-handed". Even-handed now means "sufficiently critical of Microsoft"? I thought it meant fairly treating all sides of an issue. But I guess when MS and /. are involved, that's no longer the case. :-)
Why should those be our only choices? They're talking about making it illegal to sell a device that ignores their broadcast flags - ie doesn't revoke your fair use rights. If this all works out the way the broadcasters want, your choices will be exactly what you state: watch our stuff on our terms (including paying again for each time, place and method of watching it if that's what we choose) or don't watch it at all. I should be allowed to say "no thank you, I'll record your shows with my MythTV box and watch them when I want, and skip the parts I'm not interested in (commercials)". Broadcasters want to take away that choice, and I don't see why they should be allowed to do so. Laws to protect a business model endangered by new technology are a bad idea. The businesses need to adapt or die. If the studios cannot figure out some way to make money when people are time-shifting their TV shows and skipping commercials, then they'll stop making the TV shows. And we'll do something else with our time. My guess is they'll figure out some way to keep making money.
Glad I could help. :-)
I can see the ticker and two animations, one of which stops when I hit Disable. Firefox + Adblock + Flashblock is highly effective, you should check it out.