Unfettered capitalism is risky, because it means you're trusting people who are (by their own admission) out for themselves, to have the consumers' best interests at heart. That's an untenable situation which never ends well. Consequently, you do need the institution of government to enforce some standards, some limits, on what a pure capitalist economy would otherwise do to its citizens. Corporatism is when businesses begin to directly influence those government regulators that would otherwise try to keep said corporations in line. That actually ends up being worse than not having any regulation, because those corporations conscript the government to do their bidding, which makes them substantially more powerful than they would be on their own. Witness the media industry's ability to have the Justice Department "reprioritize" itself to go after copyright infringement. You cannot tell me that there aren't more pressing matters facing Justice... yet they divert considerable resources at the behest of a certain set of copyright holders. For that matter, just think of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, and others in that vein. Those are Acts born of pure corpratist influence, with little consideration for the people whom Congress nominally represents.
This is a truly dangerous state of affairs, and it's pretty much where America is right now.
Congress has to update the DMCA, taking into account the competing interests at stake.
"Update", in this context, being synonymous with "repeal", I'd say. I suppose that as a software developer with (ahem) "intellectual property" to protect I should be more sympathetic to the DMCA and those who invoke it but... I'm not. I've read as much of it as I can understand, and I can't say I like it. That's because I think that, while it's good for some people, it's bad for society as a whole. Congress was unusually irresponsible in passing that law, even for them.
Even so, as I understand copyright law (as much as a non-lawyer can, I suppose) the penalties for copyright infringement were centered around large-scale pirate operations (those who illegally mass-copy protected works for sale) and that when applied to individual infringement don't really don't fit the crime. You know, like using a.50 cal to swat a gnat.
Even if all I have is a time and IP address, shouldn't I be able to seek appropriate civil action against the infringing party?
No. Now, if you had me on camera downloading music and heard me listening to said tracks... that might be different. But if you're going to be throwing a lawsuit at someone that will cost both sides tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, you'd goddamn well better be required to have more than a server log. Otherwise what you're doing is not redress of grievance but... well, I'm sure there are a hundred legal and non-legal terms for what the RIAA is doing but justice isn't one of them.
Not at all. He died broke because he was as inept financially as he was brilliant scientifically. He tore up a contract that would probably have made him a billionaire because he didn't want to bankrupt Westinghouse. Capitalism has its faults but Tesla's financial state upon his death is not one of them.
That's not to say that Edison cheating Tesla out of tens of thousands of dollars was a good thing, but Tesla survived that and ultimately ended up working with George Westinghouse. You seem to forget that it was that partnership with Westinghouse which broke the impending Edison DC power monopoly and resulted in the modern power distribution system that we have today. Let's also not forget that it was Tesla who invented the polyphase induction motor, the workhorse of modern industry. Westinghouse recognized the value of that invention early on, and it's what originally brought them together.
All in all, a perfect example of a genius working hand-in-hand with a capitalist to bring something good into the world (although Westinghouse was something of an engineering genius in his own right, with some 360-odd patents to his name.) Edison was a jerk who screwed over one of the world's greatest minds for a few bucks, and who shortly before his death admitted that he was wrong about A.C., and the power system which Tesla had put within his grasp. However, he wasn't the reason that Tesla died broke... Tesla did that to himself.
Huh? You can't dispose of CO2... when you burn your fossil fuel the CO2 is released, along with a substantial thorium content if you're talking about coal. Once that material is dispersed it's infinitely harder to "dispose" of than a centralized pile of radioactive goo.
Look, what this is all about is an engineering tradeoff, on a global scale. What we're doing now (burning petroleum and coal for electric power) is shortsighted, stupid and dangerous. It kills people. Yes, my friend, more people have died because of the use of coal in power plants than were killed by Chernobyl. Everyone gets so worked up about a small release of radioactive gas from TMI, when our coal plants put mass quantities of combustion products, CO, CO2 and yes, radioactive thorium right up the stack.
If we go heavily nuclear, well, the air will be a hell of a lot cleaner. That's on the plus side. Yes, we'll have nuclear waste. That's on the minus side. We'll have fewer deaths due to radiation-induced cancer and other diseases from atmospheric contaminants. That's on the plus side. Everyone seems to have the idea that we can have some kind of magic, perfect energy source that will supply all our needs with no downsides. That's just not fucking possible. Nor is it possible for us to continue the way we're going. So give it up and realize that atomic power is, like it or not, the current best tradeoff that we can manage. That may change in the future, in fact I have no doubt that it will... but for now, this is it.
The fuel cycle for power production does not result in weapons grade material, they are entirely different processes. It is possible to create special plants that do produce material that can then be turned into weapons, but this requires deliberate intent to do so.
Hence the controversy over Iran's enrichment program. It would have taken the GP about ten seconds to Google the difference in the two processes... but then he would have undermined his position. Enrichment is also an expensive process, and my understanding is that we monitor supplies of the necessary equipment very closely.
You know what the problem is? Well, I'll tell you what it is. You need to explain to people like the GP what a terawatt is (there may be too many zeroes in it for rapid comprehension, though) as well as how costly it is to generate that much energy with windmills, tide motors and other forms of "alternate energy." I suspect that when the rolling blackouts come for real, these self-proclaimed environmentalists will be the first ones crying out "Why isn't my refrigerator running? My soy-milk popsicles are melting!" To which the answer will be, "Well, dipstick, we're out of coal and oil, and thanks to the likes of you we didn't implement the one technology that could have saved us."
I find it helps to put people like that on an exercycle connected to an alternator, and have them try to light a hundred watt incandescent light bulb. Just one. The effect is, from their perspective, often highly illuminating, although most at first don't believe it (no way it takes this much work for one lousy light bulb!) Then {ding!} another (much smaller) bulb goes off in their heads. Yes, Virginia, it's not bloody magic, the energy does have to come from somewhere, and we use one HELL OF A LOT OF IT.
Look, I know some true environmentalists, and I respect them, and I find that, while they may not be technical people, they bend every effort to educate themselves as the implications of the technologies involved in order to do their jobs better. I try to help out there whenever I can. These are also the people that try to work within the system to effect positive change, and I respect them even more for that. There are actually a good number of such individuals, but you never hear about them on the 5 o'clock news because they're busy working with business leaders and politicians to get them to invest money in less-wasteful manufacturing processes, better regulation, etc., rather than trying to get their faces on TV.
Then there are the knee-jerk reactionary types (and that's where I class most so-called "environmentalists") whose only goal is to oppose, as loudly and publicly as possible, and preferably with donations involved. They're what you might call "Jesse Jackson Environmentalists" because they generate lots of hot air and waste considerable quantities of broadcast airtime. They usually haven't got a clue what they're talking about either, but unfortunately neither do most of the people that listen to them.
The reality is unpleasant: we don't have a lot of options when it comes to large scale power production, and we don't have a lot of time left to implement them.
Or really, pending a breakthrough in power generation... it
Re:Worthless without a cooling fan...
on
Lap Desks
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· Score: 1
Another problem is ACPI... XP on some machines just doesn't bother to turn the damn fan on! I had a Toshiba (Satellite or Tecra, I can't remember) that would run very hot until I figured out that the fan never spun up. I mean, sure, I guess that saves some battery power but there's a reason they put fans in those things. I found a little program called "SpeedFan" from some Italian guy that let me control the fan directly and set temp limits and gee, the machine ran nice and cool after that.
Remember what gave America the most reliable phone system on the planet for almost a century? That is, a heavily regulated private sector organization that lived under strict quality-of-service standards with severe penalties for failure. The problem with any such endeavor, as I see it, is that our government is probably too corruptible nowadays to reliably enforce such standards, and as far as the corporate world is concerned... well.
Heck, we can't even maintain the rest of our infrastructure properly anymore... would we really be able to handle a network of atomic power plants? Don't misunderstand me: it's plain that we're not going to be able to keep the lights indefinitely if we don't make a move to nuclear, in a big way, and fairly soon. I'm just asking the question of whether or not we're truly up to the task of building the things and then running them with a reasonable degree of safety.
We can only hope that environmental concerns will not again, stifle our progress.
We can only hope that a bunch of ignorant, loud-mouthed assholes won't stifle our progress. That same level of idiocy is still present in large measure in our population, of course. The difference is that today we are much more aware of the limitations and liabilities of our existing power generation technology than we were forty-odd years ago. People are starting to understand that burning coal and oil for power is not a benign activity, and that, while nuclear power has risks so does what we're doing now.
Hopefully the fear of living in the dark without blow driers will help more people see reason... I know California's power problems of a few years ago made a lot of folks I know very nervous (even though that was yet another manufactured crisis and not due to any lack of capacity.) We don't have a lot of ways to generate the kind of power a high-technology civilization requires, we really don't. We can continue to invest in the R&D (fusion perhaps, and other alternate energy sources) but if we want to keep the lights on we'd better start taking the proper steps now.
Still, to be fair, the anti-nuke crowd may have actually done us a favor, by forcing us to hold off on any significant investment in atomic energy. This time around, we'll have the advantage of nearly half a century's worth of development in nuclear technology. That's a very good thing.
CTSS, for example, continued to provide reasonable response to the other users even when a process went spinning in a tight loop. This is something that Windows still hasn't solved.
Windows hasn't solved it even when there are no other processes.
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to steal someone else's intellectual property! Would you like me to a. attribute it properly for you or b. adjust it so your theft isn't so blatantly obvious?"
I remember one of the cuts Clinton tried to make (or maybe did, I didn't follow it up) was the Navy engineering group responsible for designing silent valves, for use on nuclear submarines. Good call there, Bill. So far as our military is concerned, Clinton doesn't get half the bad rap he deserves, frankly. Not that George Bush is even the slightest bit of an improvement. How we ended up with two such useless people being granted the title of Commander in Chief is beyond me.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfettered capitalism is risky, because it means you're trusting people who are (by their own admission) out for themselves, to have the consumers' best interests at heart. That's an untenable situation which never ends well. Consequently, you do need the institution of government to enforce some standards, some limits, on what a pure capitalist economy would otherwise do to its citizens. Corporatism is when businesses begin to directly influence those government regulators that would otherwise try to keep said corporations in line. That actually ends up being worse than not having any regulation, because those corporations conscript the government to do their bidding, which makes them substantially more powerful than they would be on their own. Witness the media industry's ability to have the Justice Department "reprioritize" itself to go after copyright infringement. You cannot tell me that there aren't more pressing matters facing Justice ... yet they divert considerable resources at the behest of a certain set of copyright holders. For that matter, just think of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, and others in that vein. Those are Acts born of pure corpratist influence, with little consideration for the people whom Congress nominally represents.
This is a truly dangerous state of affairs, and it's pretty much where America is right now.
Since when did the RIAA actually makes music?
Well, I'm sure the sound of all those settlements rolling in is music to their ears. They probably copyrighted it too.
Congress has to update the DMCA, taking into account the competing interests at stake.
... I'm not. I've read as much of it as I can understand, and I can't say I like it. That's because I think that, while it's good for some people, it's bad for society as a whole. Congress was unusually irresponsible in passing that law, even for them.
.50 cal to swat a gnat.
"Update", in this context, being synonymous with "repeal", I'd say. I suppose that as a software developer with (ahem) "intellectual property" to protect I should be more sympathetic to the DMCA and those who invoke it but
Even so, as I understand copyright law (as much as a non-lawyer can, I suppose) the penalties for copyright infringement were centered around large-scale pirate operations (those who illegally mass-copy protected works for sale) and that when applied to individual infringement don't really don't fit the crime. You know, like using a
Could it be that the RIAA's reputation has preceeded it into this courtroom?
Even if all I have is a time and IP address, shouldn't I be able to seek appropriate civil action against the infringing party?
... that might be different. But if you're going to be throwing a lawsuit at someone that will cost both sides tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, you'd goddamn well better be required to have more than a server log. Otherwise what you're doing is not redress of grievance but ... well, I'm sure there are a hundred legal and non-legal terms for what the RIAA is doing but justice isn't one of them.
No. Now, if you had me on camera downloading music and heard me listening to said tracks
Not at all. He died broke because he was as inept financially as he was brilliant scientifically. He tore up a contract that would probably have made him a billionaire because he didn't want to bankrupt Westinghouse. Capitalism has its faults but Tesla's financial state upon his death is not one of them.
... Tesla did that to himself.
That's not to say that Edison cheating Tesla out of tens of thousands of dollars was a good thing, but Tesla survived that and ultimately ended up working with George Westinghouse. You seem to forget that it was that partnership with Westinghouse which broke the impending Edison DC power monopoly and resulted in the modern power distribution system that we have today. Let's also not forget that it was Tesla who invented the polyphase induction motor, the workhorse of modern industry. Westinghouse recognized the value of that invention early on, and it's what originally brought them together.
All in all, a perfect example of a genius working hand-in-hand with a capitalist to bring something good into the world (although Westinghouse was something of an engineering genius in his own right, with some 360-odd patents to his name.) Edison was a jerk who screwed over one of the world's greatest minds for a few bucks, and who shortly before his death admitted that he was wrong about A.C., and the power system which Tesla had put within his grasp. However, he wasn't the reason that Tesla died broke
Radioactive goo is harder to dispose than CO2.
... when you burn your fossil fuel the CO2 is released, along with a substantial thorium content if you're talking about coal. Once that material is dispersed it's infinitely harder to "dispose" of than a centralized pile of radioactive goo.
... but for now, this is it.
Huh? You can't dispose of CO2
Look, what this is all about is an engineering tradeoff, on a global scale. What we're doing now (burning petroleum and coal for electric power) is shortsighted, stupid and dangerous. It kills people. Yes, my friend, more people have died because of the use of coal in power plants than were killed by Chernobyl. Everyone gets so worked up about a small release of radioactive gas from TMI, when our coal plants put mass quantities of combustion products, CO, CO2 and yes, radioactive thorium right up the stack.
If we go heavily nuclear, well, the air will be a hell of a lot cleaner. That's on the plus side. Yes, we'll have nuclear waste. That's on the minus side. We'll have fewer deaths due to radiation-induced cancer and other diseases from atmospheric contaminants. That's on the plus side. Everyone seems to have the idea that we can have some kind of magic, perfect energy source that will supply all our needs with no downsides. That's just not fucking possible. Nor is it possible for us to continue the way we're going. So give it up and realize that atomic power is, like it or not, the current best tradeoff that we can manage. That may change in the future, in fact I have no doubt that it will
What's the opposite of an environmentalist?
Rational human being.
The bulk of residential power consumption in the United States is from refrigeration. Can you do without your refrigerator?
The fuel cycle for power production does not result in weapons grade material, they are entirely different processes. It is possible to create special plants that do produce material that can then be turned into weapons, but this requires deliberate intent to do so.
... but then he would have undermined his position. Enrichment is also an expensive process, and my understanding is that we monitor supplies of the necessary equipment very closely.
... it
Hence the controversy over Iran's enrichment program. It would have taken the GP about ten seconds to Google the difference in the two processes
You know what the problem is? Well, I'll tell you what it is. You need to explain to people like the GP what a terawatt is (there may be too many zeroes in it for rapid comprehension, though) as well as how costly it is to generate that much energy with windmills, tide motors and other forms of "alternate energy." I suspect that when the rolling blackouts come for real, these self-proclaimed environmentalists will be the first ones crying out "Why isn't my refrigerator running? My soy-milk popsicles are melting!" To which the answer will be, "Well, dipstick, we're out of coal and oil, and thanks to the likes of you we didn't implement the one technology that could have saved us."
I find it helps to put people like that on an exercycle connected to an alternator, and have them try to light a hundred watt incandescent light bulb. Just one. The effect is, from their perspective, often highly illuminating, although most at first don't believe it (no way it takes this much work for one lousy light bulb!) Then {ding!} another (much smaller) bulb goes off in their heads. Yes, Virginia, it's not bloody magic, the energy does have to come from somewhere, and we use one HELL OF A LOT OF IT.
Look, I know some true environmentalists, and I respect them, and I find that, while they may not be technical people, they bend every effort to educate themselves as the implications of the technologies involved in order to do their jobs better. I try to help out there whenever I can. These are also the people that try to work within the system to effect positive change, and I respect them even more for that. There are actually a good number of such individuals, but you never hear about them on the 5 o'clock news because they're busy working with business leaders and politicians to get them to invest money in less-wasteful manufacturing processes, better regulation, etc., rather than trying to get their faces on TV.
Then there are the knee-jerk reactionary types (and that's where I class most so-called "environmentalists") whose only goal is to oppose, as loudly and publicly as possible, and preferably with donations involved. They're what you might call "Jesse Jackson Environmentalists" because they generate lots of hot air and waste considerable quantities of broadcast airtime. They usually haven't got a clue what they're talking about either, but unfortunately neither do most of the people that listen to them.
The reality is unpleasant: we don't have a lot of options when it comes to large scale power production, and we don't have a lot of time left to implement them.
Or really, pending a breakthrough in power generation
Another problem is ACPI ... XP on some machines just doesn't bother to turn the damn fan on! I had a Toshiba (Satellite or Tecra, I can't remember) that would run very hot until I figured out that the fan never spun up. I mean, sure, I guess that saves some battery power but there's a reason they put fans in those things. I found a little program called "SpeedFan" from some Italian guy that let me control the fan directly and set temp limits and gee, the machine ran nice and cool after that.
Remember what gave America the most reliable phone system on the planet for almost a century? That is, a heavily regulated private sector organization that lived under strict quality-of-service standards with severe penalties for failure. The problem with any such endeavor, as I see it, is that our government is probably too corruptible nowadays to reliably enforce such standards, and as far as the corporate world is concerned ... well.
Heck, we can't even maintain the rest of our infrastructure properly anymore ... would we really be able to handle a network of atomic power plants? Don't misunderstand me: it's plain that we're not going to be able to keep the lights indefinitely if we don't make a move to nuclear, in a big way, and fairly soon. I'm just asking the question of whether or not we're truly up to the task of building the things and then running them with a reasonable degree of safety.
We can only hope that environmental concerns will not again, stifle our progress.
... I know California's power problems of a few years ago made a lot of folks I know very nervous (even though that was yet another manufactured crisis and not due to any lack of capacity.) We don't have a lot of ways to generate the kind of power a high-technology civilization requires, we really don't. We can continue to invest in the R&D (fusion perhaps, and other alternate energy sources) but if we want to keep the lights on we'd better start taking the proper steps now.
We can only hope that a bunch of ignorant, loud-mouthed assholes won't stifle our progress. That same level of idiocy is still present in large measure in our population, of course. The difference is that today we are much more aware of the limitations and liabilities of our existing power generation technology than we were forty-odd years ago. People are starting to understand that burning coal and oil for power is not a benign activity, and that, while nuclear power has risks so does what we're doing now.
Hopefully the fear of living in the dark without blow driers will help more people see reason
Still, to be fair, the anti-nuke crowd may have actually done us a favor, by forcing us to hold off on any significant investment in atomic energy. This time around, we'll have the advantage of nearly half a century's worth of development in nuclear technology. That's a very good thing.
You and the GP are both right. The problem is ... who decides?
What exactly is a "sporadic statistic"?
if you're depending entirely upon a perimeter defense you will get pwned.
CTSS, for example, continued to provide reasonable response to the other users even when a process went spinning in a tight loop. This is something that Windows still hasn't solved.
Windows hasn't solved it even when there are no other processes.
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to steal someone else's intellectual property! Would you like me to a. attribute it properly for you or b. adjust it so your theft isn't so blatantly obvious?"
If we're discussing psychopathic leaders, Stalin would be a good start.
strikes me as a foot-gun.
Podal pistol?
I suspect manipulation of reviews.
Yes. It's called "lying", and it's a popular pastime in the marketing world.
I hope these machines are good. I used to buy the $200 Fry's Great Quality machines, but Fry's is no longer selling those.
That's probably because they weren't making any money on them, as I imagine Wal-Mart isn't making on these $200 Linux things.
$200 for a 15"? Where are you buying your monitors? I just bought a nice 19" flat panel (1280x1024) from NewEgg for $168.
I remember one of the cuts Clinton tried to make (or maybe did, I didn't follow it up) was the Navy engineering group responsible for designing silent valves, for use on nuclear submarines. Good call there, Bill. So far as our military is concerned, Clinton doesn't get half the bad rap he deserves, frankly. Not that George Bush is even the slightest bit of an improvement. How we ended up with two such useless people being granted the title of Commander in Chief is beyond me.
China beats us to the moon
Uh, what?