I used the airforce in part because I saw an article regarding it, but in part because it's job - a government aeronautic agency - is probably as similar to NASA as any other government program. You are correct; they are not identical. But note that my goal was to examine the scope of what we're dealing with; you can't say that NASA isn't doing it's job when it gets, in the grand scheme of things, a pittance to do what it needs to do. There are other government agencies, though, whom we barely question when they ask for more money - such as the Air Force.
And, in regards to sophistication of task, I think NASA wins hands down. Yes, the Air Force has to deal with some pretty complex terrestrial obstacles, but NASA more or less has the entire universe worth of obstacles to overcome - and note that with their budget they are not only flying missions into orbit (and one hopes, eventually, beyond), but building up there, and doing research both terrestrial and beyond. Their scope is quite broad, along with being in the harshest environment we've yet come across.
Yet, NASA receives a mere $16.2B per year - and even with planned increases will not exceed the amount the Air Force is asking for in addition to what it already gets.
In short; I find it ridiculous that you can call anything "obsolete" that is barely funded, but has a much more sophisticated task to do. When NASA is as well funded as the Air Force, and can still not perform to par, then you can complain about it being obsolete.
I don't know what provoked your vitriol. I'm not a troll - but the moderators are welcome to disagree. Since they haven't yet, I'm currently disposed to thinking you're overreacting to my disagreement with your viewpoint. I'm as happy as you seem to be to let it lay, however.
I think that I spoke to the point you made, if not to the point you think you made. This 'discussion' - which I will leave vaguely defined, as it is - be it the design, the hype, or whatever, is taking place between people who are actively seeking this technology. It has really little to do with those people who due to some circumstance (of which age may be one) could care less until it's matured.
It is therefore a fallacy to use your grandfather as an example of why things are 'too confusing'. There IS a lot of confusion over what the semantic web is; people are straining for something that is poorly defined at present. But it is foolish to bring those people who aren't even remotely interested into it, and expecting that to somehow have a bearing on the subject at hand.
First of all, it's disingenuous to compare surgery with doing a web page, whether it's one page or an enterprise-level site. The former is taking life into your hands, the latter is a web page.
But perhaps more importantly, I find it reprehensible to suggest that people shouldn't attempt to do these things - even if they're not good at them, even if they suck really badly. If you have the interest, you should pursue it. It is a valid pursuit to look at and learn from other's products (and if you disagree with this, you might as well throw out all art ever). The only thing that is unethical is copying it and claiming it's yours, or benefiting from someone else's work.
I recognize that you object to people out of the box thinking they can do it 'just as well', but lets not be narrow.
I try to keep my 64 year old dad educated enough to buy coffee beans on ebay, check email, look at news, etc. Every time he sees 'symantic web' or 'web 2.0' in the media, it just confuses him, and I imagine, people like him who just use the net for basics like online bill pay, ebay, etc.
I'm afraid whenever I see this argument I immediately tend to discredit all the rest that I've read in that post. Designing technology for those who are least able to uptake it is a losing proposition at best; at worst a total disaster. Technology has always been utilized by those less set in their ways first, less invested in the capital and experience of doing it the 'old way', and is only more broadly adopted once it proves out as a better way to do things. Universal acceptance tends to only come after a generation; when those who are poorly situated to utilize it have passed on.
This speaks to your other concern rather tellingly. Fry's may not put their inventory online. But if Best Buy does, and reaps more rewards, then you can bet eventually all companies will do this as standard practice. Far more likely - a company that is smaller and more mobile will do it first, and then get bought out by a larger company that will adopt it's practices in order to stay potent in a changing marketplace.
But the successful online inventory app is not going to design for Best Buy first. They're going to design for Mom and Pop shop, and scale up to whatever customer they can find. When it proves out or doesn't there will be tangible evidence for others to act on - rather than meaningless hype.
Finally, I think the thing that the semantic web provides is more of the ability of the end user to control results. As we perfect our ability to parse machine language, we perfect our ability to hear clear signal amongst all the noise. I look forward to the day when we have this technology in more than a nascent stage, and think it's silly to dismiss it before then.
Also, I look forward to the day when people stop designing for me. Because presumably I'll be happy with what I have!
You're entirely right; I was being a condescending git, and you probably don't deserve that.
My reaction is entirely born from the fact that the common response to practical solutions - like carpooling, or mass transit - boil down to, 'but it won't work for me.' And I have about as much sympathy for that argument as I do whenever anyone wants to know what the impact on they and they alone will be. You're entirely right to believe that there are some situations in which carpooling won't work. But this is not true for everyone simply because it is true for some. It's not, I wager, even true for the majority.
I'd like to address some of your points, but you've gone ahead and mentioned that you do take public transport, so I'm not exactly sure where your complaint is? You do find a way to reduce your load. Nevertheless, regarding the 20% question; assuming two people working in exactly the same place and living in exactly the same place were to carpool one day a week you'd reduce the number of cars on the road by 10% (not 20%, that was an error on my part). But lets say your total trip home to work is 10 miles, and you go 5 miles out of your way to pick someone else up who works with you. Your total trip is fifteen miles, and their total trip is ten, but the number of car-miles traveled is 15 instead of 20. Over the course of a week that means 95 car-miles rather than 100, meaning a five percent savings - which I argue is valuable. I think that having our overall congestion reduced by 5% would be a great thing.
That said, you mentioned local versus city congestion; a local increase of 5% for a city decrease of 10% is actually better than a 5% decrease overall. Local roads can handle it; that's load balancing.
Anyway, the formula is basically; (percentage savings) = 1 - (car miles out of the way + driving car)/[(car miles normally driven by driving car)+(car miles normally driven by staying-at-home car)]. You can then average it out for how many ever days a week you do it.
Do I put up Christmas lights? No, though if I did, I'd use LEDs. I do take longer showers, though less so than when I was young. I do use a low flow shower - I also have put rocks in my toilet. I always turn lights out, and turn of equipment - but that is as much because I hate having to replace that stuff sooner than I need to. I also use CFLs everywhere. I recycle everything I can, including setting aside stuff that is not normally recyclable. I have a mulch pile in my yard, and try to reduce whatever goes into the garbage by sorting it out. My house is not heat efficient, being quite old, but that is somewhat offset by the fact that it is near to where I work, and I do not therefore require a car - also that I live in a temperate enough climate that neither heating nor ac is very necessary. I do not use grey water productively, though in five years when I have enough saved up to build my own (straw bale) house, I have plans for how to do that.
I'm not perfect; doubtful anyone is, but I am drawing down the average, and that is what is needed. You seem to be dead set against trying to do this; maybe that's a misconception. But plastic bags are really damaging to the environment - enough so that China has banned them - and carrying around either ones you can reuse, or canvas or other sorts of bags is a really good idea. And I work in the energy industry; CFLs are hands down far more environmentally friendly than incandescents. Yes, LEDs are better, but their lumens output is not sufficient yet for general use. Give it five or ten years. These aren't false economies, they're actual problems being solved.
As for the guilt thing, I can only say that I think you should feel guilty. I think we all should. We're pretty pathetic when it comes to efficient resource utilization. It's a cultural thing; we aren't willing to do more than our share, or inconvenience ourselves. I am, I think justifiably, angered by this. Why is our 'lifestyle' sacrosanct? Especially when the opportunities you talk a
I've had five jobs since leaving college, and every single one of them has had an accessible shower on-site. Ask your HR department; you might be surprised. In any event, it's not an uncommon practice.
Apologies for my cheekiness; I think it stands, though. There is a significant percent of the population that could use, say, biking to get to work rather than a personal car. By saying that all of the population can't, therefore none of them should is bad logic.
"I don't see how asking people to do things that they find complicates their lives and impacts their lifestyle is going to help the environment at all"
I trust you're smarter than all that.
I'd challenge you to actually record the times that you leave work, and measure the variance by day of week to see if your claims are actually all that you claim - however, you seem intent on deciding that you can't possibly make it convenient to you. I base this primarily on your loose argument; for instance, the 20% carpool time example I provided assumed that any one given person carpooled with one and only one other person one day a week. You then suggest that to 'carpool' you have to fill the car with four people. You proceed to then suggest that 'errands' happen every single day - and stop right there, because I might suggest that if you're spending extra fuel every day for errands you might group into one night, well then you have a whole separate layer of waste.
But lets return to the main point; obviously in a carpool situation there would have to be some compromises. You'd have to, you know, at lunch or whenever call your carpool partner (or, if you're really gung ho, partners) and let them know whats up with you. You might also have to cancel on occasion because something came up. However, this is no different than working out a schedule with a spouse, other family or a friend you have a regular arrangement with. It's entirely within your skill set - or should be.
Further, to make carpooling effective you don't necessarily need to both live and work in the same area. The goal, after all, is to ameliorate the cost of driving and dissipate the congestion. Even if one person has to go a little out of their way to pick up or drop off someone, it can still be cost effective. I'll leave the mathematical proof of that as an exercise; it should be relatively simple to come up with a formula that lets you know if a given situation is workable.
Finally, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I think it beneath you to suggest that no complication to your life is worth the greater good of all. There are practical ways to do these things; many people have found them. You can choose not to join in that, but don't decide that it's the high ground.
I think transporting your office needs can easily be done in a backpack, or failing that any of a thousand variety of bike packs that are out there. There are even solutions for keeping your work clothes well pressed, if that is an issue. As for showering - easily done at most workplaces, and you mention having a gym you go to. The thing is, these problems have always existed, and they're well-solved... if you're willing to put in the effort.
As I mention elsewhere, though, there are a wide variety of possibilities. Buses are one, bikes another, walking, carpooling, trains, and so on. Your area may not allow more than a few to be feasible, but I bet that more than 'me, alone, in my car' is open to you if you try. Whether that is worth it to you is entirely a personal evaluation - but I don't think that anyone should be aghast when society starts charging more for those methods that carry more burden, such as the solitary automobile commuter. I also think that using some of these solutions some of the time will go a long way both to your personal satisfaction and to solving the overall problem. You don't use a hard disk swap all the time, but it's useful if you're running thin on RAM.
I have to admit, I find it fascinating that in the discussion of an article on a technology that applies a variable solution to a variable problem, the naysayers all waffle between two points; all or nothing.
You're absolutely right, sometimes carpooling is inefficient. Sometimes it will only work if you go it alone. But you fail to ask the question, "How often can I get away with it?" Are you and your buddies so inflexible that you can't communicate about what would be a good compromise time for leaving? Surely they have end-of-the-day tasks, too? And maybe, just maybe you can put in the extra effort to not have to stay late?
My point is that generally speaking you could, if you put an ounce of effort into it, find a workable carpool solution. Lots of people do, who recognize that resources aren't infinite - their's or the world's. And if everyone carpooled even 20% of the time that they commute, that's a big difference - a 10% decrease in cars on the road. So why is it that it's such an impossible thing? Is it really that un-doable, or does it just necessitate a change and the acceptance that to-date you haven't been doing it the optimal way?
8 miles? 13 minute commute? I doubt that the high-congestion areas that will benefit from variable rate tolling find such a commute anything but laughable. Do you even hit a toll road? When you have areas like NYC or LA or DC that have multi-hour commutes due to overwhelming congestion it's beyond a question of whether the load needs to be reduced, but rather how.
That said, with an 8 mile commute why aren't you riding your bike, at least on some days? It will take you a bit longer, at least at first, but I guarantee that bike maintenance is cheaper than a car. If you're actually in that range of your work, the environmentally friendly option is getting their on your own power.
I'd note, though, that having used Portland, OR's light rail, Boston's T and DC's Metro to get to work all of them work perfectly fine, and anyone who complains otherwise is probably a curmudgeon looking for something wrong.
You should give it up because it's a disproportionate waste of the commons. Of course, with variable rate tolls they can charge you an appropriate fee, which you will pay if it's truly of value to you. I'm guessing, however, if you have a 20 minute commute you don't fall into one of the areas that is going to be tolled first.
"On the one hand... on the other hand..." I see this comment all over this post; there will be less censorship and more DMCA! This is a double-edged sword! Yes, but there is also a knife in the gut.
What I think people are failing to note is that right now you're picking the issues that will be publicized by the PAC, and the political organizations that support or oppose it. Do you support the PAC because you hate censorship? Or do you support someone else because you hate the DMCA? Either way, the rest of the industry and the rules and regulations that are affecting it will be totally ignored.
Why? Because they're not going to have anything to do with gaming, per se. Tax cuts for the major game studios (we can't, after all, have them decide to hire game developers for way less than other industries would pay the same talent in another country), regulatory breaks for those same companies, and a million other little things that save large companies their bottom line at the expense of a thousand less wealthy individuals.
PACs are about the centralization of power and keeping the flow of influence and power through the hands of a few. This will help the 'game industry' if you consider the measure of health to be the economic well-being of that industry. However, do not expect it to either increase the quality of games nor the health and wealth of the common worker in that industry. Personally, I see this as a bad thing, because they're going to use the few major issues (Censorship, DMCA) that have little actual impact on their money to make a thousand far more insidious changes that will negatively impact everyone else who are too busy paying attention to only those selected issues that the politicos are fighting about.
No it doesn't! More important than having a cool UI is adhering to current UI standards and doing things the way users expect them.
Doing things the way the user expects is good UI. But finding the 'intuitive' interface is not always as straightforward as it seems - and often isn't the 'orderly' layout.
Because the whole concept of "limited supply" goes out the window. Any other questions?
Your argument regarding the pre-eminence of fiat currency would be more convincing if the sole source (the government) of the currency was not capable of borrowing against it's future. The situation as it stands now is that the government can say, "Look, I'll promise to pay you back in the future" when they buy something - a government bond. That bond is a claim on air, however, as there is no gold (or other fungible resource) backing it. If the government needs to pay it back, it simply prints more money, reducing the overall value.
While this can have a 'stabilizing' effect on the economy, it also means that the real goods and services - the real value - has been transferred to the government and away from the private economy. One of the primary problems with government - in particular tyrannies - is that they take wealth away from being held by private individuals. Without any way of demanding real, tangible, fungible and valuable goods in exchange for currency the private individual is at a gross disadvantage.
I am not saying there are not real benefits to fiat currency, but there are real benefits to a backed standard as well. One of the major drawbacks with fiat currency is heightened when the government in question is allowed to deficit spend - spend against it's future. I don't see supporting a fiat currency without that check in the government.
You apparently aren't familiar with the relevant parts of our history.
This seems doubtful to me, but then you utterly fail to explain what you're talking about, so I'm not too broken up by it.
Since you seem to be incapable of understanding rhetorical devices, let me spell it out for you: it is inappropriate to refer to Guantanamo as "taking a vacation in Cuba". The issue here is that you associate Cuba with an American problem.
Even assuming that referring to Guantanamo as I did is "inappropriate", you still have to support that the inappropriate reference is not a rhetorical device. It, however, totally is a rhetorical device. I recognize that you may be offended by my generalization regarding Cuba - surely Cuba deserves better, even I agree with that - but the fact of the matter is that everyone - including yourself - knew what I was talking about.
And while we're at it, Cuba is associated with an American problem. But the definitions of 'Cuba' and 'associated' and 'an American problem' are so large that it's hard for that statement not to be true. Personally, if you have a real objection, I would love it if you actually cited that objection so it could be discussed, rather than saying, "Nyah, you're wrong!".
No, it's merely a sign of our history and experience.
Yes, our history is such that our current generations have had the rudiments of democracy very easy. I don't object to this, but it's foolish to believe that the threat of buying votes is the biggest worry because it's the most present worry for us, in this culture, now.
Do you understand the difference?
You have got to be kidding me.
I am going to go ahead and trust that you simply missed my use of colorful language as a rhetorical device rather than believe you're trolling.
I don't think you understand... anonymous voting is our protection from these threats, because it completely and single-handedly prevents all of them. Why risk your government even needing to be fixed if you can prevent that corruption entirely? We should be able to live without that sort of threat, but what gives us our safety is the anonymous vote. An ounce of prevention is, after all, worth a pound of cure; do you really want to pay for all the additional investigations, lawyering and incarceration?
You should also not underestimate how easy it is for people to create a culture of fear if they're given certain basic tools. Yes, your company might stand to lose money for singling out voters of a particular political persuasion. But, as we saw before the Civil Rights movement, there are plenty of companies willing to lose all sorts of money given a certain social atmosphere.
The anonymous vote prevents the sort of culture that at all supports or encourages such behavior. Why would you choose any other method that did not give you the same sort of individual freedom and security? There is no other posited method that comes close.
You do not, in fact, have to be a registered member of that party in most states. In fact, the recent 'upset' in New Hampshire is a result of there being a large block of 'swing' or independent voters that could have influenced either side.
There is some support amongst the parties to have to register with a party in order to vote in their primaries - but I think it's commonly seen as a corruption of the system, and so it does not have widespread support.
Most polling locations use simple methods to prevent taking pictures or videos. In particular, it's banned, and you're not actually in a full changing-room-esque booth, but rather simply have a shield that can cover the ballot/screen you're touching. It is rather obvious if you're taking a picture, but not what you're voting.
It is a sign of our easy position in the world that we think that 'vote buying' is the worst possible outcome of non-anonymous voting. As another poster said, the real reason to prevent votes from being connected to the voter is that then voters can be extorted.
On the most basic level you have people who physically threaten you; vote this way or we hurt you, your family, your business. Moving up in sophistication, though, you can stand to lose all sorts of things; you didn't vote the company line? No job for you. Worst is that it allows the government that gets elected to single out and quash people who did not vote for it. Oh, you didn't vote for Bush? Well, I hope you want a vacation to Cuba...
In the end the anonymous vote allows us to vote secure in our liberty. This has always been everyone's first priority. It is only a second priority that the vote be accurate and the result a representation of the public will. We are working on how to achieve this second without sacrificing the first.
I think it is generally agreed that there are some almost-complete but not foolproof solutions to voting based on computer technology. What I wonder is why we haven't pursued a non single-point-of-failure solution? Inevitably it comes down to the fact that the people in control of the voting are unsupervised, and their process is non-transparent. There is no second, verifying agency. Having multiple agencies counting a single vote would not necessarily fix all problems, but it would greatly increase confidence, I think, because you would not know if an election needed a recount; a big enough discrepancy and it becomes obvious.
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I used the airforce in part because I saw an article regarding it, but in part because it's job - a government aeronautic agency - is probably as similar to NASA as any other government program. You are correct; they are not identical. But note that my goal was to examine the scope of what we're dealing with; you can't say that NASA isn't doing it's job when it gets, in the grand scheme of things, a pittance to do what it needs to do. There are other government agencies, though, whom we barely question when they ask for more money - such as the Air Force.
And, in regards to sophistication of task, I think NASA wins hands down. Yes, the Air Force has to deal with some pretty complex terrestrial obstacles, but NASA more or less has the entire universe worth of obstacles to overcome - and note that with their budget they are not only flying missions into orbit (and one hopes, eventually, beyond), but building up there, and doing research both terrestrial and beyond. Their scope is quite broad, along with being in the harshest environment we've yet come across.
I find it amusing that just this morning I read that the Air Force is in an uproar about needing $100B dollars over the next five years, just to prevent it's fleet from becoming anything less than cutting-edge.
Yet, NASA receives a mere $16.2B per year - and even with planned increases will not exceed the amount the Air Force is asking for in addition to what it already gets.
In short; I find it ridiculous that you can call anything "obsolete" that is barely funded, but has a much more sophisticated task to do. When NASA is as well funded as the Air Force, and can still not perform to par, then you can complain about it being obsolete.
I don't know what provoked your vitriol. I'm not a troll - but the moderators are welcome to disagree. Since they haven't yet, I'm currently disposed to thinking you're overreacting to my disagreement with your viewpoint. I'm as happy as you seem to be to let it lay, however.
I think that I spoke to the point you made, if not to the point you think you made. This 'discussion' - which I will leave vaguely defined, as it is - be it the design, the hype, or whatever, is taking place between people who are actively seeking this technology. It has really little to do with those people who due to some circumstance (of which age may be one) could care less until it's matured.
It is therefore a fallacy to use your grandfather as an example of why things are 'too confusing'. There IS a lot of confusion over what the semantic web is; people are straining for something that is poorly defined at present. But it is foolish to bring those people who aren't even remotely interested into it, and expecting that to somehow have a bearing on the subject at hand.
First of all, it's disingenuous to compare surgery with doing a web page, whether it's one page or an enterprise-level site. The former is taking life into your hands, the latter is a web page.
But perhaps more importantly, I find it reprehensible to suggest that people shouldn't attempt to do these things - even if they're not good at them, even if they suck really badly. If you have the interest, you should pursue it. It is a valid pursuit to look at and learn from other's products (and if you disagree with this, you might as well throw out all art ever). The only thing that is unethical is copying it and claiming it's yours, or benefiting from someone else's work.
I recognize that you object to people out of the box thinking they can do it 'just as well', but lets not be narrow.
I try to keep my 64 year old dad educated enough to buy coffee beans on ebay, check email, look at news, etc. Every time he sees 'symantic web' or 'web 2.0' in the media, it just confuses him, and I imagine, people like him who just use the net for basics like online bill pay, ebay, etc.
I'm afraid whenever I see this argument I immediately tend to discredit all the rest that I've read in that post. Designing technology for those who are least able to uptake it is a losing proposition at best; at worst a total disaster. Technology has always been utilized by those less set in their ways first, less invested in the capital and experience of doing it the 'old way', and is only more broadly adopted once it proves out as a better way to do things. Universal acceptance tends to only come after a generation; when those who are poorly situated to utilize it have passed on.
This speaks to your other concern rather tellingly. Fry's may not put their inventory online. But if Best Buy does, and reaps more rewards, then you can bet eventually all companies will do this as standard practice. Far more likely - a company that is smaller and more mobile will do it first, and then get bought out by a larger company that will adopt it's practices in order to stay potent in a changing marketplace.
But the successful online inventory app is not going to design for Best Buy first. They're going to design for Mom and Pop shop, and scale up to whatever customer they can find. When it proves out or doesn't there will be tangible evidence for others to act on - rather than meaningless hype.
Finally, I think the thing that the semantic web provides is more of the ability of the end user to control results. As we perfect our ability to parse machine language, we perfect our ability to hear clear signal amongst all the noise. I look forward to the day when we have this technology in more than a nascent stage, and think it's silly to dismiss it before then.
Also, I look forward to the day when people stop designing for me. Because presumably I'll be happy with what I have!
You're entirely right; I was being a condescending git, and you probably don't deserve that.
My reaction is entirely born from the fact that the common response to practical solutions - like carpooling, or mass transit - boil down to, 'but it won't work for me.' And I have about as much sympathy for that argument as I do whenever anyone wants to know what the impact on they and they alone will be. You're entirely right to believe that there are some situations in which carpooling won't work. But this is not true for everyone simply because it is true for some. It's not, I wager, even true for the majority.
I'd like to address some of your points, but you've gone ahead and mentioned that you do take public transport, so I'm not exactly sure where your complaint is? You do find a way to reduce your load. Nevertheless, regarding the 20% question; assuming two people working in exactly the same place and living in exactly the same place were to carpool one day a week you'd reduce the number of cars on the road by 10% (not 20%, that was an error on my part). But lets say your total trip home to work is 10 miles, and you go 5 miles out of your way to pick someone else up who works with you. Your total trip is fifteen miles, and their total trip is ten, but the number of car-miles traveled is 15 instead of 20. Over the course of a week that means 95 car-miles rather than 100, meaning a five percent savings - which I argue is valuable. I think that having our overall congestion reduced by 5% would be a great thing.
That said, you mentioned local versus city congestion; a local increase of 5% for a city decrease of 10% is actually better than a 5% decrease overall. Local roads can handle it; that's load balancing.
Anyway, the formula is basically; (percentage savings) = 1 - (car miles out of the way + driving car)/[(car miles normally driven by driving car)+(car miles normally driven by staying-at-home car)]. You can then average it out for how many ever days a week you do it.
Do I put up Christmas lights? No, though if I did, I'd use LEDs. I do take longer showers, though less so than when I was young. I do use a low flow shower - I also have put rocks in my toilet. I always turn lights out, and turn of equipment - but that is as much because I hate having to replace that stuff sooner than I need to. I also use CFLs everywhere. I recycle everything I can, including setting aside stuff that is not normally recyclable. I have a mulch pile in my yard, and try to reduce whatever goes into the garbage by sorting it out. My house is not heat efficient, being quite old, but that is somewhat offset by the fact that it is near to where I work, and I do not therefore require a car - also that I live in a temperate enough climate that neither heating nor ac is very necessary. I do not use grey water productively, though in five years when I have enough saved up to build my own (straw bale) house, I have plans for how to do that.
I'm not perfect; doubtful anyone is, but I am drawing down the average, and that is what is needed. You seem to be dead set against trying to do this; maybe that's a misconception. But plastic bags are really damaging to the environment - enough so that China has banned them - and carrying around either ones you can reuse, or canvas or other sorts of bags is a really good idea. And I work in the energy industry; CFLs are hands down far more environmentally friendly than incandescents. Yes, LEDs are better, but their lumens output is not sufficient yet for general use. Give it five or ten years. These aren't false economies, they're actual problems being solved.
As for the guilt thing, I can only say that I think you should feel guilty. I think we all should. We're pretty pathetic when it comes to efficient resource utilization. It's a cultural thing; we aren't willing to do more than our share, or inconvenience ourselves. I am, I think justifiably, angered by this. Why is our 'lifestyle' sacrosanct? Especially when the opportunities you talk a
I've had five jobs since leaving college, and every single one of them has had an accessible shower on-site. Ask your HR department; you might be surprised. In any event, it's not an uncommon practice.
Apologies for my cheekiness; I think it stands, though. There is a significant percent of the population that could use, say, biking to get to work rather than a personal car. By saying that all of the population can't, therefore none of them should is bad logic.
"I don't see how asking people to do things that they find complicates their lives and impacts their lifestyle is going to help the environment at all"
I trust you're smarter than all that.
I'd challenge you to actually record the times that you leave work, and measure the variance by day of week to see if your claims are actually all that you claim - however, you seem intent on deciding that you can't possibly make it convenient to you. I base this primarily on your loose argument; for instance, the 20% carpool time example I provided assumed that any one given person carpooled with one and only one other person one day a week. You then suggest that to 'carpool' you have to fill the car with four people. You proceed to then suggest that 'errands' happen every single day - and stop right there, because I might suggest that if you're spending extra fuel every day for errands you might group into one night, well then you have a whole separate layer of waste.
But lets return to the main point; obviously in a carpool situation there would have to be some compromises. You'd have to, you know, at lunch or whenever call your carpool partner (or, if you're really gung ho, partners) and let them know whats up with you. You might also have to cancel on occasion because something came up. However, this is no different than working out a schedule with a spouse, other family or a friend you have a regular arrangement with. It's entirely within your skill set - or should be.
Further, to make carpooling effective you don't necessarily need to both live and work in the same area. The goal, after all, is to ameliorate the cost of driving and dissipate the congestion. Even if one person has to go a little out of their way to pick up or drop off someone, it can still be cost effective. I'll leave the mathematical proof of that as an exercise; it should be relatively simple to come up with a formula that lets you know if a given situation is workable.
Finally, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I think it beneath you to suggest that no complication to your life is worth the greater good of all. There are practical ways to do these things; many people have found them. You can choose not to join in that, but don't decide that it's the high ground.
I think transporting your office needs can easily be done in a backpack, or failing that any of a thousand variety of bike packs that are out there. There are even solutions for keeping your work clothes well pressed, if that is an issue. As for showering - easily done at most workplaces, and you mention having a gym you go to. The thing is, these problems have always existed, and they're well-solved... if you're willing to put in the effort.
As I mention elsewhere, though, there are a wide variety of possibilities. Buses are one, bikes another, walking, carpooling, trains, and so on. Your area may not allow more than a few to be feasible, but I bet that more than 'me, alone, in my car' is open to you if you try. Whether that is worth it to you is entirely a personal evaluation - but I don't think that anyone should be aghast when society starts charging more for those methods that carry more burden, such as the solitary automobile commuter. I also think that using some of these solutions some of the time will go a long way both to your personal satisfaction and to solving the overall problem. You don't use a hard disk swap all the time, but it's useful if you're running thin on RAM.
I have to admit, I find it fascinating that in the discussion of an article on a technology that applies a variable solution to a variable problem, the naysayers all waffle between two points; all or nothing.
You're absolutely right, sometimes carpooling is inefficient. Sometimes it will only work if you go it alone. But you fail to ask the question, "How often can I get away with it?" Are you and your buddies so inflexible that you can't communicate about what would be a good compromise time for leaving? Surely they have end-of-the-day tasks, too? And maybe, just maybe you can put in the extra effort to not have to stay late?
My point is that generally speaking you could, if you put an ounce of effort into it, find a workable carpool solution. Lots of people do, who recognize that resources aren't infinite - their's or the world's. And if everyone carpooled even 20% of the time that they commute, that's a big difference - a 10% decrease in cars on the road. So why is it that it's such an impossible thing? Is it really that un-doable, or does it just necessitate a change and the acceptance that to-date you haven't been doing it the optimal way?
8 miles? 13 minute commute? I doubt that the high-congestion areas that will benefit from variable rate tolling find such a commute anything but laughable. Do you even hit a toll road? When you have areas like NYC or LA or DC that have multi-hour commutes due to overwhelming congestion it's beyond a question of whether the load needs to be reduced, but rather how.
That said, with an 8 mile commute why aren't you riding your bike, at least on some days? It will take you a bit longer, at least at first, but I guarantee that bike maintenance is cheaper than a car. If you're actually in that range of your work, the environmentally friendly option is getting their on your own power.
I'd note, though, that having used Portland, OR's light rail, Boston's T and DC's Metro to get to work all of them work perfectly fine, and anyone who complains otherwise is probably a curmudgeon looking for something wrong.
You should give it up because it's a disproportionate waste of the commons. Of course, with variable rate tolls they can charge you an appropriate fee, which you will pay if it's truly of value to you. I'm guessing, however, if you have a 20 minute commute you don't fall into one of the areas that is going to be tolled first.
"On the one hand... on the other hand..." I see this comment all over this post; there will be less censorship and more DMCA! This is a double-edged sword! Yes, but there is also a knife in the gut.
What I think people are failing to note is that right now you're picking the issues that will be publicized by the PAC, and the political organizations that support or oppose it. Do you support the PAC because you hate censorship? Or do you support someone else because you hate the DMCA? Either way, the rest of the industry and the rules and regulations that are affecting it will be totally ignored.
Why? Because they're not going to have anything to do with gaming, per se. Tax cuts for the major game studios (we can't, after all, have them decide to hire game developers for way less than other industries would pay the same talent in another country), regulatory breaks for those same companies, and a million other little things that save large companies their bottom line at the expense of a thousand less wealthy individuals.
PACs are about the centralization of power and keeping the flow of influence and power through the hands of a few. This will help the 'game industry' if you consider the measure of health to be the economic well-being of that industry. However, do not expect it to either increase the quality of games nor the health and wealth of the common worker in that industry. Personally, I see this as a bad thing, because they're going to use the few major issues (Censorship, DMCA) that have little actual impact on their money to make a thousand far more insidious changes that will negatively impact everyone else who are too busy paying attention to only those selected issues that the politicos are fighting about.
No it doesn't! More important than having a cool UI is adhering to current UI standards and doing things the way users expect them.
Doing things the way the user expects is good UI. But finding the 'intuitive' interface is not always as straightforward as it seems - and often isn't the 'orderly' layout.
Because the whole concept of "limited supply" goes out the window. Any other questions?
Your argument regarding the pre-eminence of fiat currency would be more convincing if the sole source (the government) of the currency was not capable of borrowing against it's future. The situation as it stands now is that the government can say, "Look, I'll promise to pay you back in the future" when they buy something - a government bond. That bond is a claim on air, however, as there is no gold (or other fungible resource) backing it. If the government needs to pay it back, it simply prints more money, reducing the overall value.
While this can have a 'stabilizing' effect on the economy, it also means that the real goods and services - the real value - has been transferred to the government and away from the private economy. One of the primary problems with government - in particular tyrannies - is that they take wealth away from being held by private individuals. Without any way of demanding real, tangible, fungible and valuable goods in exchange for currency the private individual is at a gross disadvantage.
I am not saying there are not real benefits to fiat currency, but there are real benefits to a backed standard as well. One of the major drawbacks with fiat currency is heightened when the government in question is allowed to deficit spend - spend against it's future. I don't see supporting a fiat currency without that check in the government.
You apparently aren't familiar with the relevant parts of our history.
This seems doubtful to me, but then you utterly fail to explain what you're talking about, so I'm not too broken up by it.
Since you seem to be incapable of understanding rhetorical devices, let me spell it out for you: it is inappropriate to refer to Guantanamo as "taking a vacation in Cuba". The issue here is that you associate Cuba with an American problem.
Even assuming that referring to Guantanamo as I did is "inappropriate", you still have to support that the inappropriate reference is not a rhetorical device. It, however, totally is a rhetorical device. I recognize that you may be offended by my generalization regarding Cuba - surely Cuba deserves better, even I agree with that - but the fact of the matter is that everyone - including yourself - knew what I was talking about.
And while we're at it, Cuba is associated with an American problem. But the definitions of 'Cuba' and 'associated' and 'an American problem' are so large that it's hard for that statement not to be true. Personally, if you have a real objection, I would love it if you actually cited that objection so it could be discussed, rather than saying, "Nyah, you're wrong!".
No, it's merely a sign of our history and experience.
Yes, our history is such that our current generations have had the rudiments of democracy very easy. I don't object to this, but it's foolish to believe that the threat of buying votes is the biggest worry because it's the most present worry for us, in this culture, now.
Do you understand the difference?
You have got to be kidding me.
I am going to go ahead and trust that you simply missed my use of colorful language as a rhetorical device rather than believe you're trolling.
I don't think you understand... anonymous voting is our protection from these threats, because it completely and single-handedly prevents all of them. Why risk your government even needing to be fixed if you can prevent that corruption entirely? We should be able to live without that sort of threat, but what gives us our safety is the anonymous vote. An ounce of prevention is, after all, worth a pound of cure; do you really want to pay for all the additional investigations, lawyering and incarceration?
You should also not underestimate how easy it is for people to create a culture of fear if they're given certain basic tools. Yes, your company might stand to lose money for singling out voters of a particular political persuasion. But, as we saw before the Civil Rights movement, there are plenty of companies willing to lose all sorts of money given a certain social atmosphere.
The anonymous vote prevents the sort of culture that at all supports or encourages such behavior. Why would you choose any other method that did not give you the same sort of individual freedom and security? There is no other posited method that comes close.
You do not, in fact, have to be a registered member of that party in most states. In fact, the recent 'upset' in New Hampshire is a result of there being a large block of 'swing' or independent voters that could have influenced either side.
There is some support amongst the parties to have to register with a party in order to vote in their primaries - but I think it's commonly seen as a corruption of the system, and so it does not have widespread support.
No, no. This is America! They're going to make you buy it back, fair and square!
Most polling locations use simple methods to prevent taking pictures or videos. In particular, it's banned, and you're not actually in a full changing-room-esque booth, but rather simply have a shield that can cover the ballot/screen you're touching. It is rather obvious if you're taking a picture, but not what you're voting.
It is a sign of our easy position in the world that we think that 'vote buying' is the worst possible outcome of non-anonymous voting. As another poster said, the real reason to prevent votes from being connected to the voter is that then voters can be extorted.
On the most basic level you have people who physically threaten you; vote this way or we hurt you, your family, your business. Moving up in sophistication, though, you can stand to lose all sorts of things; you didn't vote the company line? No job for you. Worst is that it allows the government that gets elected to single out and quash people who did not vote for it. Oh, you didn't vote for Bush? Well, I hope you want a vacation to Cuba...
In the end the anonymous vote allows us to vote secure in our liberty. This has always been everyone's first priority. It is only a second priority that the vote be accurate and the result a representation of the public will. We are working on how to achieve this second without sacrificing the first.
I think it is generally agreed that there are some almost-complete but not foolproof solutions to voting based on computer technology. What I wonder is why we haven't pursued a non single-point-of-failure solution? Inevitably it comes down to the fact that the people in control of the voting are unsupervised, and their process is non-transparent. There is no second, verifying agency. Having multiple agencies counting a single vote would not necessarily fix all problems, but it would greatly increase confidence, I think, because you would not know if an election needed a recount; a big enough discrepancy and it becomes obvious.