It is not common sense, just a feeble excuse to avoid leading by example.
Oh come off it. It's not our job to lead by example, and if we tried, we'd be criticized for that as well. Tell China to step up and start leading by example.
ok, let me rephrase; China and India need to be tied to Kyoto with no special exceptions. There is no tangible point in signing up to a treaty if you're not held accountable to do anything.
Sure there is. You get to look good and yet not have to actually do anything. India and especially China signed on to Kyoto as a public relations measure, after assuring themselves that they'd have no commitments to live up to. They also got to say, "See? The United States won't come on board, baaad United States." The fact that we saw no reason to shoot ourselves in the foot while giving them a free pass is lost on a lot of people. Kyoto wasn't balanced, fair or even reasonable and we'd have been idiots to sign it.
wasn't trying to diminish China's responsibilities
That is exactly what you were doing.
just making the point that America has them too and has failed to act on them.
Yes, we have, and to a greater degree that most other developed nations. What's your point? That we refused to ratify a Protocol that was a blatant attempt to limit America's economic capabilities while simultaneously giving the worst offenders a free pass?
If China and India really want to step up to the plate and take some responsibility, they can do it without any "exceptions". That, or give the U.S. those same exceptions. Otherwise it's just an attempt to damage the competition.
But then I'm pretty sure polution regulations and environmental work in general are more offensive here in Sweden than in the USA, even though I've understood that there are exceptions such as cars in california.
But I don't brag about it and bullshit everyone else for how bad they are, I guess sooner or later people in the US will recycle more, get more gasoline effecient cars, maybe say isolate their houses better or whatever they may not do in the best way.
China is poor, if they could afford to produce things cleaner they'd probably do. But their part of the industrial age are very new, and that's WHY you can compare them.
And currently they probably value a better economy higher than a cleaner environment.
And afaik most people values more items / more comfortable living /... over a cleaner environment as well.
Want to make a change? Then sell your car, never buy a new computer or TV and so on...
And there you go... doing exactly what I was complaining about. Making excuses.
The flares aren't small... that's why I used the phrase cubic miles of the stuff. They're huge. It's absolutely astonishes me how little awareness there is of Russia's behavior. It's really egregious, yet you'd all rather sit here and give China a free pass, and continue your fashionable U.S-bashing. Hell, what Russia is doing is turning an important natural resource (which they'll wish they still had someday) directly into pollution and greenhouse gas, simply because all they happen to want right now is oil. Shortsighted bastards... and you people complain about the United States? We burn natural gas too, but at least we get substantial benefit from it.
Most third-world (and Russia and China are, in many respects, still third-world) outfits have a terrible track record on environmental issues. There are no excuses permissible: they know better. They just don't give a damn, and why should they? Why would you expect governments with even worse records on human rights to care whether a few hundred thousand (or a few million) of their citizens are killed or compromised by a few pollutants? It's all for the greater good, right? The irony is, they're not necessarily wrong... but they will have to pay the piper sooner or later.
In the meantime, until you accept what is, you can all go soak your heads.
If that is true, they are responsible for the content they serve up. They should be nailed by the RIAA, MPAA, and FBI for child porn if they are exempt from Common Carrier status.
Yes, it's true. None of the major ISPs (including, I might, the incumbent Telcos) have common carrier status. They don't want it, and in the last Telecom act got their data services exempt from common carrier regulation. Phone service, yes, but not Internet access.
That's they way they wanted it. The damage from potential litigation was considered less expensive than living under the regulatory burden and quality-of-service standards of a Common Carrier.
For some reason, Slashdotters continually presume that ISPs are Common Carriers, and should be penalized for their misdeeds. I don't know why that is.
Not that I doubt China's industrial environmental standards are very lenient, but considering that much of their industrial output is willfully imported by the US and Europe, it's hard to criticize them without getting quite hypocritical.
Enough with the goddamn "H" word. Those businesses weren't "willfully imported" by the U.S. and Europe, they were deliberately wooed by Chinese government officials and industrialists (not that there's much difference there) hoping to get their mitts on all that lovely foreign high technology.
This was deliberate exploitation of foreign corporations by China. I've seen it over and over, "China big market... you make lots big bucks!" So you move your manufacturing to China, give them all your hard-won R&D and production techniques, and the next thing you know they're making your product and selling to your customers for less. This didn't happen by accident, they did it on purpose, with malice aforethought.
The depressing aspect of their plan is how well it worked on us, is still working. When are we going to wake up and realize that moving production to China is, at best, a pact with the Devil? Sure, the top echelon of a U.S. manufacturer that moves their production facilities to China will make out like gangbusters, the Chinese "partner" company will do great... but everyone else loses.
I remember two decades ago (and still ongoing) that the US is pumping pollution into the Red River (among others) which travels into Canada. We complained and they said tough. But, apparently it's a horror if it's done to them.
Perhaps it is this that forces the US to realise that the world map doesn't end at its borders.
Let me be the first to point out that whatever China is doing to the United States... it's doing to you.
It is hypocritical to point to China where US pollute per inhabitant a lot more.
A worthless argument. Hypocrisy is irrelevant, pollution per inhabitant is irrelevant... total levels of pollutants by category are relevant. That's the only measure that is of consequence: anything else just allows countries to play statistical games and weasel out of doing anything about their mismanagement.
You want hypocrisy? Go talk to Russia about all the natural gas they're just flaring off because they're too damned cheap to buy the requisite cryogenics equipment. It's hypocritical because they complain about everyone else's emissions.
Dude, have you seen the size of cars Americans are driving vs Europeans?
At four bucks a gallon that's already changing. The resale market for used compact cars is on a rather meteoric rise, and SUV sales are down, way down. Too bad for the Big Three... those are some of the most profitable vehicles they've ever made. Not that I feel sorry for those assholes, exactly.
Fuel costs are making a lot of people reconsider what they're buying, automobile-wise, and given that we'll probably never see cheap gas again, I suspect that the trend towards smaller vehicles will continue.
Also, I would think that Europeans drive smaller cars because they've always had higher fuel prices relative to the U.S.
Indeed. The US would have far more influence in the world by simply not being so embarrassingly hypocritical.
Okay, I'll bite.
Here's some information for you. Did you know that American petroleum companies are required to capture and store all natural gas received from oil wells? Probably you didn't since you're convinced the the United States Federal Government has a monopoly on hypocrisy.
Here's some more information. Russia doesn't store the natural gas they get from their domestic oil wells. No sir. They flare it off. That's right, they just burn it... cubic miles of the stuff. And then, just when you think matters couldn't get any worse, they complain about our carbon and greenhouse-gas emissions.
This is part of a bigger plan whose objective is to make people more acceptable and tolerable towards a future attack on China.
A future attack on China? My God, where do you people come up with this stuff? The odds of America ever initiating a direct military conflict with China is zero, or so close as makes no difference. The converse may or may not be true, I don't know... China's leadership is pretty damn inscrutable. But the reality is that we have one way, and one way only, to attack China and "win". That's with atomic weapons. Forgetting for the moment our no-first-strike doctrine, realize that our economy is too closely tied to China's for us to risk any sort of confrontation. By the time we manage to extricate ourselves from the mess our government and corporate leaders got us into (if we ever do) China will be capable of a nuclear response. Mutual Assured Destruction will keep us, at least, from ever launching a first strike against China.
I don't know what's going to happen between Russia and China though: Russia has vast oil and mineral reserves and China definitely has its eye on them. They also happen to share an enormous border, and from an offensive military perspective they go waaay back. If they ever decide to go at it for real, I hope we don't get drawn into it.
And conventional warfare? Forget it... China is no Iraq, and Iraq has stretched our military and the public's patience to the limit. Say we did attack China: there aren't enough Americans in existence to occupy that country, all we could do would be to bomb it back to the Stone Age, and considering that most of China is still there, I don't see the point.
Furthermore, we've reduced our military capability dramatically from its Cold War peak (don't believe me? Google it.) We could probably crush China's current naval, air and submarine forces (for the time being), but if we did, what then?
What do you do when a section is tagged as "Format like Word 95"?!
Pull out that old WIndows 95 laptop, scrounge around for a copy of some old version of Office, see what happens, and implement it that way.
Yeah, I know... hardly a "standard" worth bothering with. Now, ultimately, here's what's going to happen with OOXML. Okay, so Microsoft managed to get their format declared an official ISO standard. That's fine and dandy, has great marketing potential in the near-term (which is all Microsoft cares about) but ultimately, it's going to be a foot-in-self-shoot situation. When it turns out that nobody can effectively implement this standard, it's going to die.
Hell, I'd say that the Open Office folks have done a better job reverse-engineering the old Microsoft formats than anyone will ever be able to do with OOXML. The real tragedy of this whole affair is that Microsoft managed to corrupt a major standards outfit: I'd say that other such bodies bear watching. It worked once, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Microsoft tries it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I consider Facebook to be a malicious app.
Then there will be no new music for anyone! And it's your fault!
That's cool. My 200 Gb. music collection will see me through the dark times.
It is not common sense, just a feeble excuse to avoid leading by example.
Oh come off it. It's not our job to lead by example, and if we tried, we'd be criticized for that as well. Tell China to step up and start leading by example.
ok, let me rephrase; China and India need to be tied to Kyoto with no special exceptions. There is no tangible point in signing up to a treaty if you're not held accountable to do anything.
Sure there is. You get to look good and yet not have to actually do anything. India and especially China signed on to Kyoto as a public relations measure, after assuring themselves that they'd have no commitments to live up to. They also got to say, "See? The United States won't come on board, baaad United States." The fact that we saw no reason to shoot ourselves in the foot while giving them a free pass is lost on a lot of people. Kyoto wasn't balanced, fair or even reasonable and we'd have been idiots to sign it.
wasn't trying to diminish China's responsibilities
That is exactly what you were doing.
just making the point that America has them too and has failed to act on them.
Yes, we have, and to a greater degree that most other developed nations. What's your point? That we refused to ratify a Protocol that was a blatant attempt to limit America's economic capabilities while simultaneously giving the worst offenders a free pass?
If China and India really want to step up to the plate and take some responsibility, they can do it without any "exceptions". That, or give the U.S. those same exceptions. Otherwise it's just an attempt to damage the competition.
But then I'm pretty sure polution regulations and environmental work in general are more offensive here in Sweden than in the USA, even though I've understood that there are exceptions such as cars in california.
But I don't brag about it and bullshit everyone else for how bad they are, I guess sooner or later people in the US will recycle more, get more gasoline effecient cars, maybe say isolate their houses better or whatever they may not do in the best way.
China is poor, if they could afford to produce things cleaner they'd probably do. But their part of the industrial age are very new, and that's WHY you can compare them.
And currently they probably value a better economy higher than a cleaner environment.
And afaik most people values more items / more comfortable living / ... over a cleaner environment as well.
Want to make a change? Then sell your car, never buy a new computer or TV and so on...
And there you go ... doing exactly what I was complaining about. Making excuses.
The flares aren't small ... that's why I used the phrase cubic miles of the stuff. They're huge. It's absolutely astonishes me how little awareness there is of Russia's behavior. It's really egregious, yet you'd all rather sit here and give China a free pass, and continue your fashionable U.S-bashing. Hell, what Russia is doing is turning an important natural resource (which they'll wish they still had someday) directly into pollution and greenhouse gas, simply because all they happen to want right now is oil. Shortsighted bastards ... and you people complain about the United States? We burn natural gas too, but at least we get substantial benefit from it.
... but they will have to pay the piper sooner or later.
Most third-world (and Russia and China are, in many respects, still third-world) outfits have a terrible track record on environmental issues. There are no excuses permissible: they know better. They just don't give a damn, and why should they? Why would you expect governments with even worse records on human rights to care whether a few hundred thousand (or a few million) of their citizens are killed or compromised by a few pollutants? It's all for the greater good, right? The irony is, they're not necessarily wrong
In the meantime, until you accept what is, you can all go soak your heads.
Or does ALWAYS seem to be Comcast that keeps incurring the wrath of FCC?
Plainly, they haven't supplied sufficient out-of-band contributions to the relevant Commissioners.
If that is true, they are responsible for the content they serve up. They should be nailed by the RIAA, MPAA, and FBI for child porn if they are exempt from Common Carrier status.
Yes, it's true. None of the major ISPs (including, I might, the incumbent Telcos) have common carrier status. They don't want it, and in the last Telecom act got their data services exempt from common carrier regulation. Phone service, yes, but not Internet access.
That's they way they wanted it. The damage from potential litigation was considered less expensive than living under the regulatory burden and quality-of-service standards of a Common Carrier.
For some reason, Slashdotters continually presume that ISPs are Common Carriers, and should be penalized for their misdeeds. I don't know why that is.
I didn't say we are, I said we were. It helps if you actually read the posts you disagree with.
Not that I doubt China's industrial environmental standards are very lenient, but considering that much of their industrial output is willfully imported by the US and Europe, it's hard to criticize them without getting quite hypocritical.
... you make lots big bucks!" So you move your manufacturing to China, give them all your hard-won R&D and production techniques, and the next thing you know they're making your product and selling to your customers for less. This didn't happen by accident, they did it on purpose, with malice aforethought.
... but everyone else loses.
Enough with the goddamn "H" word. Those businesses weren't "willfully imported" by the U.S. and Europe, they were deliberately wooed by Chinese government officials and industrialists (not that there's much difference there) hoping to get their mitts on all that lovely foreign high technology.
This was deliberate exploitation of foreign corporations by China. I've seen it over and over, "China big market
The depressing aspect of their plan is how well it worked on us, is still working. When are we going to wake up and realize that moving production to China is, at best, a pact with the Devil? Sure, the top echelon of a U.S. manufacturer that moves their production facilities to China will make out like gangbusters, the Chinese "partner" company will do great
I remember two decades ago (and still ongoing) that the US is pumping pollution into the Red River (among others) which travels into Canada. We complained and they said tough. But, apparently it's a horror if it's done to them.
Perhaps it is this that forces the US to realise that the world map doesn't end at its borders.
Let me be the first to point out that whatever China is doing to the United States ... it's doing to you.
It is hypocritical to point to China where US pollute per inhabitant a lot more.
... total levels of pollutants by category are relevant. That's the only measure that is of consequence: anything else just allows countries to play statistical games and weasel out of doing anything about their mismanagement.
A worthless argument. Hypocrisy is irrelevant, pollution per inhabitant is irrelevant
You want hypocrisy? Go talk to Russia about all the natural gas they're just flaring off because they're too damned cheap to buy the requisite cryogenics equipment. It's hypocritical because they complain about everyone else's emissions.
Here we go again, 10 billion POUNDS. I would say that I just farted, injecting nearly 10 gatrillion nano-ounces into the precious atmosphere.
Uh, what would that be in U.S. dollars?
One might consider this pollution to be a clear and present danger to the health of loyal Americans.
So what are you suggesting? A pre-emptive nuclear strike on China?
the USA IS the worst offender.
Do, uh, you know what you're talking about?
Dude, have you seen the size of cars Americans are driving vs Europeans?
... those are some of the most profitable vehicles they've ever made. Not that I feel sorry for those assholes, exactly.
At four bucks a gallon that's already changing. The resale market for used compact cars is on a rather meteoric rise, and SUV sales are down, way down. Too bad for the Big Three
Fuel costs are making a lot of people reconsider what they're buying, automobile-wise, and given that we'll probably never see cheap gas again, I suspect that the trend towards smaller vehicles will continue.
Also, I would think that Europeans drive smaller cars because they've always had higher fuel prices relative to the U.S.
Indeed. The US would have far more influence in the world by simply not being so embarrassingly hypocritical.
... cubic miles of the stuff. And then, just when you think matters couldn't get any worse, they complain about our carbon and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Okay, I'll bite.
Here's some information for you. Did you know that American petroleum companies are required to capture and store all natural gas received from oil wells? Probably you didn't since you're convinced the the United States Federal Government has a monopoly on hypocrisy.
Here's some more information. Russia doesn't store the natural gas they get from their domestic oil wells. No sir. They flare it off. That's right, they just burn it
There's some hypocrisy for you.
Well go ahead, with your overconsuming bullshit society.
And that, my friends, is the sound of sour grapes.
Well, they do call California the Land of Fruits and Nuts. I think we're dealing with the nuts in this case.
I guess it's just that some people perceive anything more than basic functionality as waste.
Oh, please. OSS was trying to compete on merits, and had Microsoft had any merits, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
This is part of a bigger plan whose objective is to make people more acceptable and tolerable towards a future attack on China.
... China's leadership is pretty damn inscrutable. But the reality is that we have one way, and one way only, to attack China and "win". That's with atomic weapons. Forgetting for the moment our no-first-strike doctrine, realize that our economy is too closely tied to China's for us to risk any sort of confrontation. By the time we manage to extricate ourselves from the mess our government and corporate leaders got us into (if we ever do) China will be capable of a nuclear response. Mutual Assured Destruction will keep us, at least, from ever launching a first strike against China.
... China is no Iraq, and Iraq has stretched our military and the public's patience to the limit. Say we did attack China: there aren't enough Americans in existence to occupy that country, all we could do would be to bomb it back to the Stone Age, and considering that most of China is still there, I don't see the point.
A future attack on China? My God, where do you people come up with this stuff? The odds of America ever initiating a direct military conflict with China is zero, or so close as makes no difference. The converse may or may not be true, I don't know
I don't know what's going to happen between Russia and China though: Russia has vast oil and mineral reserves and China definitely has its eye on them. They also happen to share an enormous border, and from an offensive military perspective they go waaay back. If they ever decide to go at it for real, I hope we don't get drawn into it.
And conventional warfare? Forget it
Furthermore, we've reduced our military capability dramatically from its Cold War peak (don't believe me? Google it.) We could probably crush China's current naval, air and submarine forces (for the time being), but if we did, what then?
Let me be bold.
Please don't.
What do you do when a section is tagged as "Format like Word 95"?!
... hardly a "standard" worth bothering with. Now, ultimately, here's what's going to happen with OOXML. Okay, so Microsoft managed to get their format declared an official ISO standard. That's fine and dandy, has great marketing potential in the near-term (which is all Microsoft cares about) but ultimately, it's going to be a foot-in-self-shoot situation. When it turns out that nobody can effectively implement this standard, it's going to die.
Pull out that old WIndows 95 laptop, scrounge around for a copy of some old version of Office, see what happens, and implement it that way.
Yeah, I know
Hell, I'd say that the Open Office folks have done a better job reverse-engineering the old Microsoft formats than anyone will ever be able to do with OOXML. The real tragedy of this whole affair is that Microsoft managed to corrupt a major standards outfit: I'd say that other such bodies bear watching. It worked once, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Microsoft tries it again.
All I know is, most of the Brazilian girls I've ever encountered were seriously hot.