Go back and read the post, especially this bit - "In most civilized countries people do not think that violence can be used to solve all kinds of problems (but some have to be). "
The way to fix this particular problem is to levy the tax at the point of sale, what we call the GST here in Oz, or VAT in the UK. When you put one wheel of the tax system back on track another one will fall off. The root cause of the problem is that governments compete to attract multinationals into one country rather than cooperate to make sure they pay their fair share in all countries. You can also see the same thing on a state level in some countries, eg: the US and (to a lesser degree) Australia. There is no magic bullet to fix this stuff, our tribal nature doesn't always produce the best outcome in the modern world, OTOH maybe it does and this is "as good as it gets"?
Not that I'm advocating any particular solution but when you have global merchants, local tax rules simply will not work as intended. The closest thing we have to cooperation on this issue is the WTO, and it's basic principle is "no trade barriers between nations". Trade has boomed under that "free trade" principle, secure jobs and tax revenue are part of the costs of that ":freedom". It's also produced the absurd situation where someone can bounce a physical good through a half a dozen nations around the globe and still sell it cheaper than the guy who makes the same thing down in your city.
Clinton claims he left office with a large personal debt, however when your at that level of influence money is just a bunch of numbers that someone will sort out for you. One thing I do like about most about politicians is that they revert to being interesting and thoughtful people after they retire.
Up until the 70's-80's Australia had similar gun laws to those of the US but not the same "gun culture", few people possessed hand guns and it wasn't because of any law of the land, it's just that the "self defense" argument hasn't been a popular view since at least WW1. There was one assassination of an MP in the 20th century*, but it was just a common case of extortion gone wrong, not some ideological nut case. Our PM's famously go for jogs in the morning without a small army following them around. Admittedly there are less people, but nut jobs are far from extinct down here. American's can no more get their head around the typically British/Aussie attitude toward hand guns anymore than we can get our heads around yours. Having said that, removing hand guns from a population where the vast majority don't want them removed is fraught with danger. I'm in my 50's, I like the gun laws and culture we have down here, it gives the place a "small town" feel.
* - There was another assassination but I'm not sure if it was early 20th or late 19th century.
Yep, all the "for policy maker" reports are passed around the donating nations where they get to have a say. They don't have a say in the scientific report they are based on. There's nothing to leak because it's not a secret.
First and foremost, what do you think a free market is?
"Market" - A set of rules governing trade. Property law being the most fundamental rule, without that there is no trading.
"Free" - Anyone can play. For example the alcohol market in the US is restricted to people over 21.
The source is FF lobbyists, TFA is a A grade bullshit, the author has a track record. The usual suspects in opinion columns around the world will all point to it (or more commonly each other) for the next year. When the report is published they will either ignore the fact they were wrong or insist it was a in "a draft"
The very notion of a secret draft plays into peoples biases, it also depends on people's ignorance of basic facts. Some easily verifiable facts:
The IPCC conducts it's business in the open and are more than happy to respond to a layman who spots a trivial typo in a draft (as I did circa 2001).
They're expecting ~100K review comments this time around.
The thousands of scientists and others involved do not get a dime from the IPCC, all work is donated (aside from 3-4 permanent office staff).
The IPCC's accounts can also be found via that link.
Their $5-6M annual budget comes from donations by the governments of over 100 countries of all political stripes. Somewhat ironically the bulk of it is spent on airline tickets..
The political construct is unraveling
The headline hit the nail on the head, but I'm pretty sure it's not the nail the GP was aiming at.
The USA's actions are often indefensible, it has nothing to do with Christians.
The old USSR's actions were often indefensible, it had nothing to do with Athiests.
Israel's actions are often indefensible, it has nothing to do with Judasim.
Can you see a pattern now, or do you still want to be part of the problem?
Actually do the research, most American military aid comes in the form of loan gaurentees. Last time I checked Israel was getting around $10B worth of loan gaurentees so that they could raise the money and spend it on US miltary goods. In other words what the US government do is provide a kind of insurance to the American companies in the case that whoever buys their stuff decides not to pay up. This is the "military industrial complex" that FDR warned you about before you were born.
As an Aussie, I don't think we want our kanagaroos back, unless it's an extremely rare species such as the yellow-footed wallaby. There are more Bengal tigers in the US than there are in Asia, most are in private hands. Up until the 60's you could buy any kind of animal you wanted from Harrods in London, the US were just a bit slow to ban such practices. The kangaroo in the picture is most likely a common red kangaroo and probably originated from stock that existed before the trafficing laws came into effect. The "big red" can be quite dangerous up close, a full grown male stands at least 6 foot tall.
Something similar to the original Kyoto Treaty might have a chance of passing
Do Americans actually have a clue what there government does? The reason the US congress rejected Kyoto is exactly the same as the reason they will reject this, compensation to developing nations. Are some nations more interested in cash than solutions? - Sure, the US is just one of them.
It's interesting how this move followed a round of discoveries which claim harm of global warming is worse and more urgent than first claimed,
This "move" was a key part of the Kyoto treaty and was the stated reason why the USA didn't join, that makes it at least 15yrs old, the yearly conferences have only been going for 18yrs in total so it's a pretty good bet this "move" started before the talking. The rest of your post is just an irrational anti-science rant that does not belong on a geek site.
Did you know there is something called "sulfur credits", they are part of the cap and trade system placed on sulfur emissions to reduce acid rain. The international system has been very successful in it's aim to cut acid rain and it's a credit to the US and RONALD REAGAN who personally pushed for it. Thatcher read Chemistry at Oxford before becoming a politician and was one (if not the) first world leader to call for emission controls on CO2, she was right behind Reagan's enthusiasm to curb acid rain. Shame today's Republican leaders make Reagan and Thatcher look like a pair of radical tree-huggers.
because of the magical use of the meaningless term "Scientific consensus" by virtually all of the scientists and journalists writing about the field.
"Republic of science" is the tradition term for the same thing, if you want to complain about the idea itself then the person you're looking for is Karl Popper, who by an odd coincidence is often considered the "philosophical father of the modern scientific method".
An exception mechanism is absolutely necessary to being able to contruct sane error reporting and recovery in a nontrivial code base, without unduly obfuscating the code
The one thing that exceptions offer that return values don't is they allow the programmer to forget about the stack unwind and assume someone else will catch it higher up the chain.
Useful yes, "absolutely necessary" no. I can't think of a faster way to kill a non-trivial code base than to try and convert it from one error handling method to the other. The stack trace problem is one reason many commercial source trees avoid exceptions (particularly C/C++) code. There is nothing worse than finding a tree with thousands of files and the only error handling is a try/catch around the main loop. The only real difference between the two is how they unwind the stack. My personal preference is the return code method since the writer is forced to think about the stack unwind at the time of writing.
No matter which way you do it, handling errors adds time to writing the code. Not handling errors adds even more time to maintaining the code. Also in a commercial setting error handling is often insufficient when there is a real bug in a complex production environment, you also want fine grained tracing that the customer can turn on and then send you the logs. Again this takes an investment of time, but IMHO, good trace logs that are easy for the customer to configure are far more useful for debugging problems than error messages.
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Go back and read the post, especially this bit - "In most civilized countries people do not think that violence can be used to solve all kinds of problems (but some have to be). "
I'm old enough to remeber that! It happened near where we used to go fishing as kids.
The way to fix this particular problem is to levy the tax at the point of sale, what we call the GST here in Oz, or VAT in the UK. When you put one wheel of the tax system back on track another one will fall off. The root cause of the problem is that governments compete to attract multinationals into one country rather than cooperate to make sure they pay their fair share in all countries. You can also see the same thing on a state level in some countries, eg: the US and (to a lesser degree) Australia. There is no magic bullet to fix this stuff, our tribal nature doesn't always produce the best outcome in the modern world, OTOH maybe it does and this is "as good as it gets"?
Not that I'm advocating any particular solution but when you have global merchants, local tax rules simply will not work as intended. The closest thing we have to cooperation on this issue is the WTO, and it's basic principle is "no trade barriers between nations". Trade has boomed under that "free trade" principle, secure jobs and tax revenue are part of the costs of that ":freedom". It's also produced the absurd situation where someone can bounce a physical good through a half a dozen nations around the globe and still sell it cheaper than the guy who makes the same thing down in your city.
Clinton claims he left office with a large personal debt, however when your at that level of influence money is just a bunch of numbers that someone will sort out for you. One thing I do like about most about politicians is that they revert to being interesting and thoughtful people after they retire.
Up until the 70's-80's Australia had similar gun laws to those of the US but not the same "gun culture", few people possessed hand guns and it wasn't because of any law of the land, it's just that the "self defense" argument hasn't been a popular view since at least WW1. There was one assassination of an MP in the 20th century*, but it was just a common case of extortion gone wrong, not some ideological nut case. Our PM's famously go for jogs in the morning without a small army following them around. Admittedly there are less people, but nut jobs are far from extinct down here. American's can no more get their head around the typically British/Aussie attitude toward hand guns anymore than we can get our heads around yours. Having said that, removing hand guns from a population where the vast majority don't want them removed is fraught with danger. I'm in my 50's, I like the gun laws and culture we have down here, it gives the place a "small town" feel.
* - There was another assassination but I'm not sure if it was early 20th or late 19th century.
"sheeple" - If you think the government is bad now, it would be a lot worse if people who use that term had any real power.
Don't people sell everything they own before they kill themselves?
No, that would indicate they still think there is something worth living for.
I searched and found the draft is "in confidence and not available to the general public".
Did you get your $0.50 for that post? If so, did you save it or spend it all at once?
Yep, all the "for policy maker" reports are passed around the donating nations where they get to have a say. They don't have a say in the scientific report they are based on. There's nothing to leak because it's not a secret.
First and foremost, what do you think a free market is?
"Market" - A set of rules governing trade. Property law being the most fundamental rule, without that there is no trading.
"Free" - Anyone can play. For example the alcohol market in the US is restricted to people over 21.
The very notion of a secret draft plays into peoples biases, it also depends on people's ignorance of basic facts. Some easily verifiable facts:
The IPCC conducts it's business in the open and are more than happy to respond to a layman who spots a trivial typo in a draft (as I did circa 2001).
They're expecting ~100K review comments this time around.
The thousands of scientists and others involved do not get a dime from the IPCC, all work is donated (aside from 3-4 permanent office staff).
The IPCC's accounts can also be found via that link.
Their $5-6M annual budget comes from donations by the governments of over 100 countries of all political stripes. Somewhat ironically the bulk of it is spent on airline tickets..
The political construct is unraveling
The headline hit the nail on the head, but I'm pretty sure it's not the nail the GP was aiming at.
Olaf Stampf.
The USA's actions are often indefensible, it has nothing to do with Christians.
The old USSR's actions were often indefensible, it had nothing to do with Athiests.
Israel's actions are often indefensible, it has nothing to do with Judasim.
Can you see a pattern now, or do you still want to be part of the problem?
Actually do the research, most American military aid comes in the form of loan gaurentees. Last time I checked Israel was getting around $10B worth of loan gaurentees so that they could raise the money and spend it on US miltary goods. In other words what the US government do is provide a kind of insurance to the American companies in the case that whoever buys their stuff decides not to pay up. This is the "military industrial complex" that FDR warned you about before you were born.
As an Aussie, I don't think we want our kanagaroos back, unless it's an extremely rare species such as the yellow-footed wallaby. There are more Bengal tigers in the US than there are in Asia, most are in private hands. Up until the 60's you could buy any kind of animal you wanted from Harrods in London, the US were just a bit slow to ban such practices. The kangaroo in the picture is most likely a common red kangaroo and probably originated from stock that existed before the trafficing laws came into effect. The "big red" can be quite dangerous up close, a full grown male stands at least 6 foot tall.
Something similar to the original Kyoto Treaty might have a chance of passing
Do Americans actually have a clue what there government does? The reason the US congress rejected Kyoto is exactly the same as the reason they will reject this, compensation to developing nations. Are some nations more interested in cash than solutions? - Sure, the US is just one of them.
It's interesting how this move followed a round of discoveries which claim harm of global warming is worse and more urgent than first claimed,
This "move" was a key part of the Kyoto treaty and was the stated reason why the USA didn't join, that makes it at least 15yrs old, the yearly conferences have only been going for 18yrs in total so it's a pretty good bet this "move" started before the talking. The rest of your post is just an irrational anti-science rant that does not belong on a geek site.
That's like asking someone to name one person killed by cigarette smoke, for obvious reasons it can't be done.
Consider the consensus on the directions of up and down for example. Is it scary that everyone agrees on those?
He lives in Australia, you insensitive clod.
Did you know there is something called "sulfur credits", they are part of the cap and trade system placed on sulfur emissions to reduce acid rain. The international system has been very successful in it's aim to cut acid rain and it's a credit to the US and RONALD REAGAN who personally pushed for it. Thatcher read Chemistry at Oxford before becoming a politician and was one (if not the) first world leader to call for emission controls on CO2, she was right behind Reagan's enthusiasm to curb acid rain. Shame today's Republican leaders make Reagan and Thatcher look like a pair of radical tree-huggers.
because of the magical use of the meaningless term "Scientific consensus" by virtually all of the scientists and journalists writing about the field.
"Republic of science" is the tradition term for the same thing, if you want to complain about the idea itself then the person you're looking for is Karl Popper, who by an odd coincidence is often considered the "philosophical father of the modern scientific method".
How come the 8% always get first post on any climate story?
An exception mechanism is absolutely necessary to being able to contruct sane error reporting and recovery in a nontrivial code base, without unduly obfuscating the code
The one thing that exceptions offer that return values don't is they allow the programmer to forget about the stack unwind and assume someone else will catch it higher up the chain.
Useful yes, "absolutely necessary" no. I can't think of a faster way to kill a non-trivial code base than to try and convert it from one error handling method to the other. The stack trace problem is one reason many commercial source trees avoid exceptions (particularly C/C++) code. There is nothing worse than finding a tree with thousands of files and the only error handling is a try/catch around the main loop. The only real difference between the two is how they unwind the stack. My personal preference is the return code method since the writer is forced to think about the stack unwind at the time of writing.
No matter which way you do it, handling errors adds time to writing the code. Not handling errors adds even more time to maintaining the code. Also in a commercial setting error handling is often insufficient when there is a real bug in a complex production environment, you also want fine grained tracing that the customer can turn on and then send you the logs. Again this takes an investment of time, but IMHO, good trace logs that are easy for the customer to configure are far more useful for debugging problems than error messages.
Simply put, the US won't put them in jail for exercising free speech.
Simply put, the US is in no position to lecture anyone about incarceration rates.