And regarding food... it's a largely undeserved reputation. There's a lot of great places to eat (like pubs).
If the complaint were coming from a Frenchman, Italian or Spaniard, I'd have some respect. But people who live in a country whose major culinary export is the Big Mac and who have some of the highest rates of heart disease in the world should take a look in the mirror.
In every one of these movie/video game/internet/heavy metal/junk food (select appropriate ill of modern society) murders that I've seen, once you scratch below the surface, you find that the kid had a broken home or an alcoholic mother or an abusive father or the like.
But no, the movie/video game/internet/heavy metal/junk food did it.
One can look at what happened to the US car industry when the oil crisis occurred. Apart from being better built, the Japanese had been making small, fuel efficient cars for years, and the US car makers were at a disadvantage in terms of their experience.
It's not just about innovation in terms of patents either. It's about things like infrastructure.
I work with said scientists, and the consensus is about nil. Those who's funding requires that they find emissions to be the root of rising temperatures find just that.
Thing is, pollution issues are often about more localised, rather than global issues.
It's like using diesel - it can make your city smell and create particulates that IIRC can increase localised risk of asthma. However, it also has similar carbon emissions to petrol, but delivers more MPG, meaning less CO2 overall.
The two issues are like someone keeping their house untidy vs dumping their rubbish in the road.
Kyoto isn't about countries screwing themselves up, it's about countries screwing up the rest.
It may not make as much difference as you imagine. Here's an example:-
Let's say that you have the option to buy your widgets from 2 companies.
Company A is 500 miles away, and produces cheaper widgets because they are in an area away from pretty coastline and therefore have lower staff costs.
Company B is 50 miles away and produces more expensive widgets.
You get a quote for 1000 widgets. The quote from company A is $495 and the quote from company B is $500.
At the time of quoting, the fuel cost works out at about $50 from company A and $5 from company B.
Now, you decide not to order, and in the meantime, the price of fuel goes crazy and doubles. You phone to place an order but company A tells you that due to fuel prices, they'll have to requote.
Company A's new price is $495 + $50 for the additional fuel surcharge. You get a requote from Company B who also requote. They tell you that it's $500 + $5 for an additional fuel surcharge.
Company A's price to transport has gone up by $50, which will be passed onto you. Except, it doesn't, because now, their offering doesn't look as good as Company B's.
Now, your company will be paying more for the products because of the extra fuel surcharge, but it's not $50 - it's $10.
The point is, the cost of transportation through extra fuel prices doesn't get passed on in as simple a way as people imagine, because market forces kick in.
A lot of products are shifted massive distances, often at fractional savings over that of someone closer.
In the end, if we screw up the planet in the next 48 years, how pleasurable are those extra 3 years going to be? So, great, we got that bit richer that we can all afford the 2050 equivalent of an iPod Photo instead of a normal iPod. And in the meantime, we cause a few million more people in Africa to suffer from famines (and probably end up donating a wad of cash each to help them).
The lifestyle impact of cutting fuel use (probably by raising tax) is less significant than you might imagine, because market forces start to kick in.
Let's imagine that the UK government doubled fuel duty, taking a gallon to something like $10 per gallon at the pump.
The effect of that is that it starts to cost people a lot more money to travel in their existing vehicles and to transport goods. Some of the following are likely to occur:-
People do the sums and work out that it's cheaper to replace their car with a more fuel efficient one than run at the high price, or when they consider changing, go for a more fuel efficient one. So, it may cost them more than before, but it's not fully the effect of the doubling of price.
Engine manufacturers have upward consumer pressure to produce better and more efficient engines, because the cost of fuel becomes more significant.
Goods get bought more locally, causing a very slight rise in price. Often, goods are bought from producers further away because they can marginally beat someone local. This margin can sometimes be very small. Add in the fuel cost, and the goods are transported locally instead. It doesn't mean that the goods have a tax of the additional amount of fuel on them, it just shifts the scales slightly.
People will choose to do less journeys. Maybe people will work closer to where they live.
In fact, in the last two examples, there are probably more societal benefits. Instead of driving miles to buy something, you'll use your local shops that will stay in business. Maybe you'll see better communities for people to live in. Maybe more footpaths will get built for people to walk, and reduce the rate of heart disease in the USA.
One only has to look at the history of web standards. Microsoft may have won the browser wars, but largely, they actually haven't won the standards wars on the web.
I visit the odd site that doesn't deal with Firefox properly, and then move on to a vendor that does. It's actually very rare. Anyone of any size considers looking after 5% of their customers properly - it's worth the cost.
Small sites are hosted more and more on off-the-shelf engines, whether content management (like TextPattern or a blogging tool) or a shopping cart. These tools are often built around supporting both IE and Netscape, because the small extra cost (or limiting functionality to what was common) is worth it.
I can think of a couple of MS Proprietary technologies and I don't see much trace of either - Passport and Frontpage. I literally haven't come across a Frontpage site for a couple of years now, or certainly not an obviously "built with Frontpage" one. I'm convinced that such people are using Geeklog or something for the purpose now. Is anyone left using Passport for financial transactions? I could also say Word documents on the web. I hardly ever see a Word document, but see tons and tons of PDFs.
The big thing that hurts Microsoft is that most hosting for sale is Linux hosting. Also, a lot of small companies doing development of sites for other small companies are doing LAMP solutions because it undercuts (or is at least perceived as cheaper) than Microsoft. These people aren't going to get switching.
I think that some intranets may use XAML, but that's about it.
I'm not expecting any extra standards support from Microsoft in their release.
One thing I'm wondering - I thought that I heard somewhere that IE7 was a longhorn only thing because it was a major rewrite and required the new architecture of longhorn, and hence why it wasn't being put on XP.
I've written a search engine add-in for Firefox (to allow people to search a networking web site) and loads of people have downloaded it and the feedback has been tremendous.
Those people now have that feature, and I doubt that IE is going to have that.
Incidentally, I don't think they'll do a thing about standards.
I actually think that XAML is going to sink, because it's not going to be big enough.
How many companies out there are running on Linux hosts right now doing their little shopping cart applications? They aren't going to spend thousands redeveloping for XAML.
Most hosting companies are pretty happy with Linux, so for them, XAML doesn't make sense.
For most giant companies, supporting both old and new won't be that much of a cost, particularly considering that 5% of their customer base could still be worth millions.
The one place I can see it having some ground is intranet applications.
Very hard to destroy either OSS projects or sites. With sites, it's much more of a level playing field. You can try and lock people in (and yes, there's a lot of people ignorantly using the hideous MSN page), but it's much easier to break someone out than with a software install.
With OSS, where's the share price that's going to collapse? The code is out there. Microsoft can make a competitor, but the OSS project won't go out of business. They can't buy the OSS project, either.
I've heard (I think) Steve Ballmer say "we saw off companies a,b,c and Linux is nothing new". You keep thinking that, Steve....
It's just not that important, because it's not like someone's technical specifications for their company's computer systems.
It's gaming, and people will switch as and when it pleases them, and backwards or sideways compatibility just don't matter.
Live gaming is the biggest lock-in factor, but I think it's way behind the games they can play (alone or with pals round) or how cool a console is. It's not the same parallel as desktop.
I'd bet on a major marketing assault by Sony at the time that Xbox 2 is released, and most people will wait for PS3.
Sounds a bit like she took no risk. If she pre-sold 9,000, even at $12 a go, she broke even.
What people forget is that thousands of artists either take the risk, or get a record company to cover the risk for them (and then pay it back big time).
Every CD she now sells, she's going to get a massive share of it.
It's about how the word is spread, particularly when you consider what effect technlogies like weblogging has.
This never existed before the internet - the industry knew the magazines, the TV and radio stations. Getting one of those started was a very hard thing to do.
Writing a blog involves switching on a PC and getting on the web. It mostly involves talent.
Let's say you are an a-list weblogger with thousands of subscribers and you tell people about a great new piece of music. Now, watch that fly from weblog to weblog. That's something that's hard for industries to control - because once people think you've become an industry whore or just a plain idiot, they'll drop you from you their list of blogs very fast.
Actually, there's a sort of follow-on question... what did the accountants do, though?
If you sign up for a 5 year contract (with no termination clauses), it's my understanding that you can put the whole of the money you will receive for 5 years as sales in the company accounts for the 1st year if you wish.
That's certainly one way to look at it, and for many big businesses that can afford to support their systems, you are right.
I'm thinking more along the lines of home and SOHO users who are fed up with the maintenance levels of their hardware and software and want to get someone else to look after it. I can already think of a few examples of services already delivering this.
Slashdot Mirror
If the complaint were coming from a Frenchman, Italian or Spaniard, I'd have some respect. But people who live in a country whose major culinary export is the Big Mac and who have some of the highest rates of heart disease in the world should take a look in the mirror.
But no, the movie/video game/internet/heavy metal/junk food did it.
One can look at what happened to the US car industry when the oil crisis occurred. Apart from being better built, the Japanese had been making small, fuel efficient cars for years, and the US car makers were at a disadvantage in terms of their experience.
It's not just about innovation in terms of patents either. It's about things like infrastructure.
OK, name them.
It's like using diesel - it can make your city smell and create particulates that IIRC can increase localised risk of asthma. However, it also has similar carbon emissions to petrol, but delivers more MPG, meaning less CO2 overall.
The two issues are like someone keeping their house untidy vs dumping their rubbish in the road.
Kyoto isn't about countries screwing themselves up, it's about countries screwing up the rest.
Thank you. Said it better than I would have.
Let's say that you have the option to buy your widgets from 2 companies.
Company A is 500 miles away, and produces cheaper widgets because they are in an area away from pretty coastline and therefore have lower staff costs.
Company B is 50 miles away and produces more expensive widgets.
You get a quote for 1000 widgets. The quote from company A is $495 and the quote from company B is $500.
At the time of quoting, the fuel cost works out at about $50 from company A and $5 from company B.
Now, you decide not to order, and in the meantime, the price of fuel goes crazy and doubles. You phone to place an order but company A tells you that due to fuel prices, they'll have to requote.
Company A's new price is $495 + $50 for the additional fuel surcharge. You get a requote from Company B who also requote. They tell you that it's $500 + $5 for an additional fuel surcharge.
Company A's price to transport has gone up by $50, which will be passed onto you. Except, it doesn't, because now, their offering doesn't look as good as Company B's.
Now, your company will be paying more for the products because of the extra fuel surcharge, but it's not $50 - it's $10.
The point is, the cost of transportation through extra fuel prices doesn't get passed on in as simple a way as people imagine, because market forces kick in.
A lot of products are shifted massive distances, often at fractional savings over that of someone closer.
So, because you can't predict a single coin flip, you can't predict approximately how many heads will flip in the next 1000 coins?
In the end, if we screw up the planet in the next 48 years, how pleasurable are those extra 3 years going to be? So, great, we got that bit richer that we can all afford the 2050 equivalent of an iPod Photo instead of a normal iPod. And in the meantime, we cause a few million more people in Africa to suffer from famines (and probably end up donating a wad of cash each to help them).
population of the USA
population of the EU
% of global CO2 produced by the USA
% of global CO2 produced by the EU.
I trust you've got the figures to back your assertion.
Let's imagine that the UK government doubled fuel duty, taking a gallon to something like $10 per gallon at the pump.
The effect of that is that it starts to cost people a lot more money to travel in their existing vehicles and to transport goods. Some of the following are likely to occur:-
People do the sums and work out that it's cheaper to replace their car with a more fuel efficient one than run at the high price, or when they consider changing, go for a more fuel efficient one. So, it may cost them more than before, but it's not fully the effect of the doubling of price.
Engine manufacturers have upward consumer pressure to produce better and more efficient engines, because the cost of fuel becomes more significant.
Goods get bought more locally, causing a very slight rise in price. Often, goods are bought from producers further away because they can marginally beat someone local. This margin can sometimes be very small. Add in the fuel cost, and the goods are transported locally instead. It doesn't mean that the goods have a tax of the additional amount of fuel on them, it just shifts the scales slightly.
People will choose to do less journeys. Maybe people will work closer to where they live.
In fact, in the last two examples, there are probably more societal benefits. Instead of driving miles to buy something, you'll use your local shops that will stay in business. Maybe you'll see better communities for people to live in. Maybe more footpaths will get built for people to walk, and reduce the rate of heart disease in the USA.
One only has to look at the history of web standards. Microsoft may have won the browser wars, but largely, they actually haven't won the standards wars on the web.
I visit the odd site that doesn't deal with Firefox properly, and then move on to a vendor that does. It's actually very rare. Anyone of any size considers looking after 5% of their customers properly - it's worth the cost.
Small sites are hosted more and more on off-the-shelf engines, whether content management (like TextPattern or a blogging tool) or a shopping cart. These tools are often built around supporting both IE and Netscape, because the small extra cost (or limiting functionality to what was common) is worth it.
I can think of a couple of MS Proprietary technologies and I don't see much trace of either - Passport and Frontpage. I literally haven't come across a Frontpage site for a couple of years now, or certainly not an obviously "built with Frontpage" one. I'm convinced that such people are using Geeklog or something for the purpose now. Is anyone left using Passport for financial transactions? I could also say Word documents on the web. I hardly ever see a Word document, but see tons and tons of PDFs.
The big thing that hurts Microsoft is that most hosting for sale is Linux hosting. Also, a lot of small companies doing development of sites for other small companies are doing LAMP solutions because it undercuts (or is at least perceived as cheaper) than Microsoft. These people aren't going to get switching.
I think that some intranets may use XAML, but that's about it.
I wonder what's going to be in IE7 now.
One thing I'm wondering - I thought that I heard somewhere that IE7 was a longhorn only thing because it was a major rewrite and required the new architecture of longhorn, and hence why it wasn't being put on XP.
Those people now have that feature, and I doubt that IE is going to have that.
Incidentally, I don't think they'll do a thing about standards.
I actually think that XAML is going to sink, because it's not going to be big enough.
How many companies out there are running on Linux hosts right now doing their little shopping cart applications? They aren't going to spend thousands redeveloping for XAML.
Most hosting companies are pretty happy with Linux, so for them, XAML doesn't make sense.
For most giant companies, supporting both old and new won't be that much of a cost, particularly considering that 5% of their customer base could still be worth millions.
The one place I can see it having some ground is intranet applications.
Very hard to destroy either OSS projects or sites. With sites, it's much more of a level playing field. You can try and lock people in (and yes, there's a lot of people ignorantly using the hideous MSN page), but it's much easier to break someone out than with a software install.
With OSS, where's the share price that's going to collapse? The code is out there. Microsoft can make a competitor, but the OSS project won't go out of business. They can't buy the OSS project, either.
I've heard (I think) Steve Ballmer say "we saw off companies a,b,c and Linux is nothing new". You keep thinking that, Steve....
The problem is... what people are visiting W3Schools? Are they average Joes or people learning HTML (more tech-savvy as a rule).
IIRC European law doesn't much like NCOs because they act as a restraint of free trade.
It's gaming, and people will switch as and when it pleases them, and backwards or sideways compatibility just don't matter.
Live gaming is the biggest lock-in factor, but I think it's way behind the games they can play (alone or with pals round) or how cool a console is. It's not the same parallel as desktop.
I'd bet on a major marketing assault by Sony at the time that Xbox 2 is released, and most people will wait for PS3.
What people forget is that thousands of artists either take the risk, or get a record company to cover the risk for them (and then pay it back big time).
Every CD she now sells, she's going to get a massive share of it.
This never existed before the internet - the industry knew the magazines, the TV and radio stations. Getting one of those started was a very hard thing to do.
Writing a blog involves switching on a PC and getting on the web. It mostly involves talent.
Let's say you are an a-list weblogger with thousands of subscribers and you tell people about a great new piece of music. Now, watch that fly from weblog to weblog. That's something that's hard for industries to control - because once people think you've become an industry whore or just a plain idiot, they'll drop you from you their list of blogs very fast.
The whole thing is like trying to juggle sand.
So my bad too!
Guessing the fortunes of a company are hard, but I'd rather throw some dice than use company accounts.
If you sign up for a 5 year contract (with no termination clauses), it's my understanding that you can put the whole of the money you will receive for 5 years as sales in the company accounts for the 1st year if you wish.
I'm thinking more along the lines of home and SOHO users who are fed up with the maintenance levels of their hardware and software and want to get someone else to look after it. I can already think of a few examples of services already delivering this.