So wait. Attempting to stop groups from directly influencing an election especially media outlets is undemocratic?
Except, which I keep pointing out, and which people keep ignoring, a) there is no way to practically stop people from "influencing" an election with information as information is the very currency of elections, b) banning certain forms of announcements only advantages those capable of others, c) if it was really about "fairness" the law, instead of censorship, would be concerned with providing the disadvantaged candidates with a platform to make rapid replies. And these are just the top reasons.
You simply fell into the trap which the creators of these laws want you in as they use words like "fairness" and "protecting democracy" to institute procedures that do exactly the opposite. Its positively Orwellian and a lot of people are apparently, as Orwell predicted, fair game for such tricks.
See I generally have a problem when a news outlet comes out a few hours before polls close and tries to influence an electoral outcome. To me that's undemocratic, and vote tampering.
So facts are undemocratic and suppressing them from the electorate is the democratic thing to do?
No dummy, the police will and the cps will prosecute.
How!? I keep asking this question and you keep replying "yea, they will!". Any broadcast from foreign soil is out of jurisdiction. By definition. Even more so if the idiotic law in question is not applicable in the country of origin. So unless they plan to invade, there is no way they can determine if the broadcast was by the party that is supposedly "set-up", in a false-flag operation, or by the actual opponents. None whatsoever.
And the Internet introduces a whole new level of impossibilities.
Yes it's absolutely to do with fairness. Perhaps in some paranoid other reality you think it's a-ok for politicians to be standing outside polling stations, tweeting, leafleting on polling day telling people their opponent is a kiddie fiddler or some other scare tactic. Back in reality most modern democracies recognize that elections require extra legislation to ensure everything is as fair as possible.
You keep using this word, "fair", and I don't think you have any clue what it means.
Fair is when small parties, with tiny budgets, can run ads right before the election because their impact diminishes rapidly over time and when there is a 2 week "cooling period" it greatly advantages the few top "establishment" parties. So it is yet another reason in a myriad of why laws like that are unfair. Always.
Fair is when speech of any non-establishment opponent is not muzzled during elections. Unfair is when laws are made to muzzle it in the name of "fairness" (to the establishment).
Fair is when laws are not made to be used as a witch hunt tool when some false-flag operator releases "smears" against a major incumbent party candidate on the Internet and which then causes the opposition to be accused of breaking this "holly law".
I could keep on going, for the list is long, but I am sure it will all be lost on you, authoritarian that you are.
Now you're just being stupid. Willfully stupid.
Thus I accept your inability to provide any reasonable counter-argument. I posted outrageous time frames for a reason: an idiotic premise has idiotic implications, and which implications the proponents of said idiotic premise usually refuse to face. You are no exception in this.
And if that's a problem in practice rather than theory, then it may be time to look at the rules again. In the UK it isn't. Thankfully there's no Fox News equivalent here. Deal with your own broken political process.
Except, as I keep pointing out, and which you keep studiously ignoring, these "rules" make no sense whatsoever in theory and practice both. You, nor any of the other posters here, provided a shred of evidence that these laws actually help democracy in any way, although you did engage in a lot of hand waving and "they made it a law so it must be right" type of authoritarian arguments.
Even though such rules are long standing.
No, they are not. At the earliest, they were introduced in the mid-20th century.
Your posts are neither reasonable nor well informed, and thus rather pointless.
Says the dude who is unable to offer any reasoned counter-argument whatsoever to the long list of reasons I posted of why such laws are undemocratic.
Except, of course, that any such censorship ideas are completely unworkable, not to mention inherently undemocratic.
The true solution is education of electorate but that would be rather inconvenient to far too many would-be "leaders". Censorship laws on the other hand are meant to empower establishment con-men and professional public opinion manipulators under the very pretense of "protecting fairness of the elections" from these same individuals. Truly Orwellian pieces of work they are.
That's like saying there's no point in making bank robbery illegal because people can still burgle houses.
No, its like saying there is no point to have Sharia law declare that all women have to wear burkas because they can escape to the West and wear skirts there...
See what I did here? Your "analogy" is as bullshit.
Because the media can still fact check the claim and report during the campaigning ban.
And since media is usually owned by one of the incumbents these days, or one of the moneyed challengers, it can also "report facts" that the other guy happens to be accused of child molestation, 3 hours before the polls close. Or the governing "authorities" are "sadly forced by the perfidy of their barbarian opponents" to "refute" "vicious claims", while the upstart rabble of course does not have that opportunity.
Laws like these were specifically invented to muzzle smaller parties and "dangerous rabble-rousers" and give unchallenged platform to "serious players" for the last few days of the election, lest the "voters" forget who is their boss.
Face it, your opinions are much bigger than you political knowledge.
My "political knowledge" encompasses small things like the knowledge that you (and all the other posters here) have so far failed to indicate how any of these laws work to protect democracy (that is anything beyond your unsubstantiated opinion and hand waving). I on the other hand pointed out a myriad ways in which they can be and are used to stifle democracy.
Furthermore, it is a sure sign that any "democracy" or "republic" which enacts such laws (which originate in the banana republics I mentioned) is in a steep decline and on its way to autocracy. See also under: UK, Australia etc. Even the US is likely to follow suit soon, but that's another story.
Another banana republic who is also fond of Internet censorship and the like. See other Slashdot stories.
Note that these ever more pro-establishment laws (since it is them who do not need to advertise, only small parties and upstarts of all sorts) are appearing only recently (in this case 1992) as the democracies and their principles crumble around the world.
No. 2 days before, people can only say that they think X will win. Two hours before the polls close, they can say that can say that according to ballots already counted, or according to exit polls, X ALREADY HAS won. Completely different thing.
No it isn't. In both cases it is mere conjecture. Since "people" do not get to count the votes.
Exit polls are wrong all the time too.
As I keep explaining, the true purpose of the law is to give the incumbents, or whomever controls the process, a stick with which to beat the upstart challengers.
Factual reporting is not campaigning, and thus isn't subject to the election period campaigning ban.
Says who?! "Reporting", out of mere "civic duty" and "concern for the public", that the other guy is a child-molester three hours before the polls close is merely "reporting facts", no?
Give it up. Any such laws are wholly arbitrary and intended to give more power to whomever happens to be in control of the election process at the moment, which in banana republics is usually the eternally "re-elected" (with 99% of the vote) junta.
They get to decide who "violated" the "sacred law" by speaking "unapproved words" "out of turn". The upstart peasants and their puppet do not get such perks.
So the cure to failure of democracy - which has, let's face it, failed completely in most of the West by being successfully tamed and defanged by the oligarchs, mindless consumerism, breakdown of social trust and the like - is censorship?
Well tell you what go read the UK's Representation of the People Act and see how these offences would be dealt with. I expect a judge would reasonably consider the time that people first receive & read the message than the actual time it was posted.
Right. And then the judge, by use of powers arcane and divine, and upon consultation of tarot cards and Ouija board, will determine which of the many factions did that.
Oh, you mean this works only for a two "party" system?
Well then, a clever guy could run a mildly disparaging "smear" campaign against himself and then the all-seeing judge would disqualify the other side! Elections won! What a great law!
Nonsense. Every democracy in existence puts laws in place to protect and ensure that elections are free and fair.
Except of course what you describe has nothing whatsoever to do with "fairness". The laws of this kind are meant to give advantage to the whomever is tightening his grip on power. They are positively Orwellian in that they do precisely the opposite of what they claim to. While everyone is effectively muzzled, the "protectors" get to "be sadly forced by the perfidy of the opposition" to "make a one time exception" to "refute" "outrageous claims" on the, usually national, TV. While the "upstart rabble" does not, of course.
Fairness my ass.
And in most countries that includes restrictions on what people may say or do while the vote is in progress or some period before.
Yes, right. Preferably 10 years before. Or is that too short? If not, why? An arbitrary ban is arbitrary. The "logic" applicable to a 1 day ban is exactly the same that applies to a 1 week ban, 1 month and so on.
Easily. Just tweet that your opponent came in to vote reeking of drink or was charged with touching a minor or some other slur.
And this will not work if you use anonymous posters put up at night by masked provocateurs on every street corner or if you broadcast this from a foreign radio station across the border because?
And the effect will be different if you do it at 11:59pm of the day before the ban how exactly?
Lots of countries put specific regulation around an election to stop this kind of shit and remedies for when it does happen.
All of which countries have highly... err... colorful history surrounding elections, such as missing ballot boxes and bodies of candidates found in the river.
Face it, the only places that have such laws are banana "republics" and fake "democracies" run by military juntas and God-appointed "kings". Like, say, Thailand.
Only of course the same will happen if the "whispering campaign" happens 2 days before, 5 days before etc. What then? Ban on all media appearances and all political communications 2 months before elections? Where does this end?
This is a common procedure for democratic elections.
It is nowhere near "common" in established democracies. It is also highly dubious. There is no substantive difference if a "dirty secret" is released at 11:59pm on the day prior to the ban or 1 minute before the polls open or one minute before they close. In none of these cases there is a chance to reply since all banned "campaigning" also includes "replies". Of course "replies" of the friends of the ruling junta are usually "special" and thus "exempt".
Thus it is all bullshit instigated by people in shaky fake "democracies" (like Thailand) who are afraid that elections will "heat up" (i.e. the patsies... err... "voters" of the crook facing an imminent loss will be prompted to resort to violence at the polls).
I already pointed out that for many the amount of energy required will be many times greater then their household needs.
But let's look at it in another way: the US consumes about 19 million of oil barrels per day. Each barrel of oil contains about 1.7MWh of energy. About 50% of each barrel is used for gasoline.
This gives us 19*10^6*1.7*10^3kWh*0.5=16*10^9kWh per day energy required to be produced to replace current consumption.
The US grid is at present capable of generating of around 3.6*10^12 kWh per year, which comes to 9.9*10^9 kWh per day. 50% of it comes from oil, coal, gas and other fossil fuels. Even excluding just oil leaves only about 6*10^9 kWh.
That is an increase in demand of nearly 300% while capacity drops.
Then there is heating. Heating oil accounts for another, nearly 100%, increase (20% of what's remaining in the barrel after gasoline is produced) since many houses now heated by oil will have to be heated by electricity. Then there is another 10% for jet fuel, petroleum gas etc all which will require replacements. The remaining 20% or so is used for plastic.
And now for the bad news: many forms of transport are far, far less efficient using electric energy than they are using oil. The expected inefficiencies due to such are in the area of 80%. This for example involves delivery of goods via truck, whereby long-range electric trucks are hugely inefficient but because due to decades of stupidity no other transport mode is feasible and they must be used (until whole communities collapse). Then there is a massive change in demand for ground transport due to collapse of the airline industry.
These now add another multiplier, which varies depending on who's guessing in range between 3 to 20.
I simply quoted the worst case.
Even in the best case however, we are still royally screwed.
Oh and the current grid is near collapse as it is (due to age and neglect) and most of it would have to be ripped out and outright replaced to provide any significant capacity gain, with all the attendant fun with land rights and the like.
Elections Canada was widely criticized for this but at least they had a particular objection which was restricted to posting premature or false election results, rather then "campaigning", "inciting to vote" and the like, which is what the Thai elites are worried about.
In Canada this action was a direct consequence of a law intended to stop poll manipulation by mass media during the election. The idea itself is very controversial (i.e. the idea that people are influenced by such data and change their votes to suit the media) and attempts at killing this law were made repeatedly and will likely succeed in not so remote future since the technological progress has completely outpaced the notions upon which the law was based.
You will also recall that Elections Canada was laughed into promising that they won't prosecute anyone for this.
How does one "cheat" elections using Twitter or Facebook? Could you elaborate?
... or try last minute mass campaigning...
You mean the military junta and royalty-approved stooges or enemies of a renegade billionaire would be put at a further disadvantage yet?
Isn't "campaigning" what politicians do (many of them sadly even stopping at campaigning altogether)?
Aren't you a bit fuzzy on that whole election idea thing?
Hell, the headline made it sound like some China thing where they banned Facebook and Twitter completely.
It is only a matter of degree. In both countries vicious and entrenched power structures live in terror of their subjects communicating with each other in "unapproved" ways. In both they block, censor and monitor the subjects of their tyranny and abuse their peons in a myriad other ways.
And I should know, as I live here, have a thai wife and many thai friends.
The terms you are looking for are "lack of perspective", "being corrupted by local corruption", "ignorant of the precepts of democracy", etc.
We could have met needs from both - why they don't just create this feature set suggests that they don't want to meet the needs of both kinds users..
That is because Microsoft was never a research or technology or engineering driven company. They were always strictly marketing-driven with the "technology" people always relegated to meekly subservient status. And marketing is the domain of people who love the ribbon and hate structure or logic and thus the traditional menu systems. They find them "uncool" and "ugly", etc.
The ribbon on the other hand is, to them, "trendy", "classy", "aesthetic" etc.
They are vehemently against adding the traditional menu structure back because it "spoils the look" of their creation. Amongst some of the more ego-maniacal and arrogant Microsoft "design" people It would also be an equivalent of admitting to failure.
So no, ribbon is not only here to stay, but any last vestiges of support for people who prefer access by logic, categories, function and similar will be actively stamped out. The "artsy" people have finally triumphed (something they could not achieve before because the traditional menu systems were too entrenched and mainstream and attacking them was deemed too risky - probably because of too many actual computer science people still in IT in the past) and will waste no time to destroy their sworn enemy who "oppressed" them with logic and reason for so long.
According to this each car would be the equivalent of about a third of a house.
That calculation is way off.
Consider this: an average car has an engine of 200hp (some less and some more), which translates to about 150kW. An average commute/shopping/what-not round-trips are around 2h daily. That's 150kW*2h*0.3=100kWh (at 30% utilization) per day.
A typical US house-hold consumes anywhere from 500kW to 1000kW per month.
A car of a small house owner will in just 5 days exceed the power use of his whole house in that month.
And that's just small-time commuters at the low end of the scale. This does not include any long trips, commercial vehicles which consume much, much more energy per day and a myriad of other factors like scalability of power grids, etc etc.
The amounts of energy required for an electric "commuter" car infrastructure will require an electric grid that is at least 500 times the capacity of the current one and the current one is at near capacity.
Electric cars are a red herring because they only "work" if a tiny percentage of car users is using them.
Any mass switch to electric cars will destroy the grid and the time to build (even if practical - which is highly doubtful) a new grid capable of handling the load (not to mention power stations capable of supplying it) is far longer and costly then people expect.
The only solution is abandonment of individual cars and replacing them with mass transport.
Which is also near impossible because of the way cities in North America have been built for the last 50 years.
The dynamics might be more advantageous in Europe where urban density is much higher and where individual cars never became the insane craze they are in North America, although even now many European cities (specially formerly Warsaw Pact countries) define the words "permanent gridlock" already.
In short: the switch from oil is going to be far more painful then you think.
The "drop down menu" system was a result of many years of academic research by places like Xerox Palo Alto center (where they also came up with ideas such as GUI, mouse, object-oriented programming etc) and places like IBM research labs. The end result was a compromise that catered equally to people who are capable of remembering complex, multi-level structures and those who were impaired in this capacity but instead could remember things by location/position.
That is why the system reigned supreme for many decades in both text terminal environments and GUI ones.
The ribbon breaks this premise by favouring people with better visual memory over those who are more adept to remembering things by categories, function and similar classifications. That is why "artsy" people love the ribbon and many deeply technical people can never get used to it and hate with a passion.
The old system was a compromise meant to address needs of most people by offering multiple ways of getting to the various functions, by "class/function", by visual memory (which was enhanced further by use of icons in front of menu items) and by direct command (shortcuts). The ribbon penalizes the first type in favour of visuals and thus alienates a whole class of people but it pleases an another group far more then the old system.
Hence the endless love/hate warfare, which in my opinion will never end since it is neigh impossible for many people to change the way their minds work and so they will be always relegated to a "second class citizen" status by systems that cater to those whose memory is positional/visual.
I think the Mozilla team, like many other major successful OSS project teams, has become a victim of their own success. Once the project became famous and large enough, it started to attract ever more flamboyant and opinionated "management", "high level design", "idea men", "customer relations" and similar types whose programming skills are not very impressive (to be charitable) and whose main objective is in fact stroking their own egos and whose efforts revolve around using the project as a catapult to boost their personal publicity.
Subsequently ever more questionable but very, very visible and radical changes are made, the purpose of which is mainly to attract attention, because attention and publicity has become the main goal in itself.
By the same token the "regular" developers are thrown into ever increasing chaos and conflict because creating conflict (otherwise known as the "divide-and-conquer" strategy) is a standard procedure for the social ladder climbers who have targeted the project for takeover and control to further their own parasitic needs.
The only consolation (of sorts) being that this fate befalls successful non-OSS projects even more frequently, including whole companies.
I believe I did mention a "hardware write-protect switch", didn't I?
Actually, many motherboards already feature a "dual BIOS" setup with this exact need in mind (in addition to corruption or failed update process). The second copy of BIOS can only be overwritten if a jumper is in a proper position. Otherwise the first copy is simply replaced with the second, "read only" copy in case of corruption or malicious software attack.
Slashdot Mirror
Except, which I keep pointing out, and which people keep ignoring, a) there is no way to practically stop people from "influencing" an election with information as information is the very currency of elections, b) banning certain forms of announcements only advantages those capable of others, c) if it was really about "fairness" the law, instead of censorship, would be concerned with providing the disadvantaged candidates with a platform to make rapid replies. And these are just the top reasons.
You simply fell into the trap which the creators of these laws want you in as they use words like "fairness" and "protecting democracy" to institute procedures that do exactly the opposite. Its positively Orwellian and a lot of people are apparently, as Orwell predicted, fair game for such tricks.
So facts are undemocratic and suppressing them from the electorate is the democratic thing to do?
How!? I keep asking this question and you keep replying "yea, they will!". Any broadcast from foreign soil is out of jurisdiction. By definition. Even more so if the idiotic law in question is not applicable in the country of origin. So unless they plan to invade, there is no way they can determine if the broadcast was by the party that is supposedly "set-up", in a false-flag operation, or by the actual opponents. None whatsoever.
And the Internet introduces a whole new level of impossibilities.
You keep using this word, "fair", and I don't think you have any clue what it means.
Fair is when small parties, with tiny budgets, can run ads right before the election because their impact diminishes rapidly over time and when there is a 2 week "cooling period" it greatly advantages the few top "establishment" parties. So it is yet another reason in a myriad of why laws like that are unfair. Always.
Fair is when speech of any non-establishment opponent is not muzzled during elections. Unfair is when laws are made to muzzle it in the name of "fairness" (to the establishment).
Fair is when laws are not made to be used as a witch hunt tool when some false-flag operator releases "smears" against a major incumbent party candidate on the Internet and which then causes the opposition to be accused of breaking this "holly law".
I could keep on going, for the list is long, but I am sure it will all be lost on you, authoritarian that you are.
Thus I accept your inability to provide any reasonable counter-argument. I posted outrageous time frames for a reason: an idiotic premise has idiotic implications, and which implications the proponents of said idiotic premise usually refuse to face. You are no exception in this.
Except, as I keep pointing out, and which you keep studiously ignoring, these "rules" make no sense whatsoever in theory and practice both. You, nor any of the other posters here, provided a shred of evidence that these laws actually help democracy in any way, although you did engage in a lot of hand waving and "they made it a law so it must be right" type of authoritarian arguments.
No, they are not. At the earliest, they were introduced in the mid-20th century.
Says the dude who is unable to offer any reasoned counter-argument whatsoever to the long list of reasons I posted of why such laws are undemocratic.
Except, of course, that any such censorship ideas are completely unworkable, not to mention inherently undemocratic.
The true solution is education of electorate but that would be rather inconvenient to far too many would-be "leaders". Censorship laws on the other hand are meant to empower establishment con-men and professional public opinion manipulators under the very pretense of "protecting fairness of the elections" from these same individuals. Truly Orwellian pieces of work they are.
No, its like saying there is no point to have Sharia law declare that all women have to wear burkas because they can escape to the West and wear skirts there...
See what I did here? Your "analogy" is as bullshit.
And since media is usually owned by one of the incumbents these days, or one of the moneyed challengers, it can also "report facts" that the other guy happens to be accused of child molestation, 3 hours before the polls close. Or the governing "authorities" are "sadly forced by the perfidy of their barbarian opponents" to "refute" "vicious claims", while the upstart rabble of course does not have that opportunity.
Laws like these were specifically invented to muzzle smaller parties and "dangerous rabble-rousers" and give unchallenged platform to "serious players" for the last few days of the election, lest the "voters" forget who is their boss.
My "political knowledge" encompasses small things like the knowledge that you (and all the other posters here) have so far failed to indicate how any of these laws work to protect democracy (that is anything beyond your unsubstantiated opinion and hand waving). I on the other hand pointed out a myriad ways in which they can be and are used to stifle democracy.
Furthermore, it is a sure sign that any "democracy" or "republic" which enacts such laws (which originate in the banana republics I mentioned) is in a steep decline and on its way to autocracy. See also under: UK, Australia etc. Even the US is likely to follow suit soon, but that's another story.
See my other reply. Laws like these are a sure sign of a decaying democracy.
Another banana republic who is also fond of Internet censorship and the like. See other Slashdot stories.
Note that these ever more pro-establishment laws (since it is them who do not need to advertise, only small parties and upstarts of all sorts) are appearing only recently (in this case 1992) as the democracies and their principles crumble around the world.
No it isn't. In both cases it is mere conjecture. Since "people" do not get to count the votes.
Exit polls are wrong all the time too.
As I keep explaining, the true purpose of the law is to give the incumbents, or whomever controls the process, a stick with which to beat the upstart challengers.
Says who?! "Reporting", out of mere "civic duty" and "concern for the public", that the other guy is a child-molester three hours before the polls close is merely "reporting facts", no?
Give it up. Any such laws are wholly arbitrary and intended to give more power to whomever happens to be in control of the election process at the moment, which in banana republics is usually the eternally "re-elected" (with 99% of the vote) junta.
They get to decide who "violated" the "sacred law" by speaking "unapproved words" "out of turn". The upstart peasants and their puppet do not get such perks.
So the cure to failure of democracy - which has, let's face it, failed completely in most of the West by being successfully tamed and defanged by the oligarchs, mindless consumerism, breakdown of social trust and the like - is censorship?
"Fucking for virginity", that's what it is.
Right. And then the judge, by use of powers arcane and divine, and upon consultation of tarot cards and Ouija board, will determine which of the many factions did that.
Oh, you mean this works only for a two "party" system?
Well then, a clever guy could run a mildly disparaging "smear" campaign against himself and then the all-seeing judge would disqualify the other side! Elections won! What a great law!
Except of course what you describe has nothing whatsoever to do with "fairness". The laws of this kind are meant to give advantage to the whomever is tightening his grip on power. They are positively Orwellian in that they do precisely the opposite of what they claim to. While everyone is effectively muzzled, the "protectors" get to "be sadly forced by the perfidy of the opposition" to "make a one time exception" to "refute" "outrageous claims" on the, usually national, TV. While the "upstart rabble" does not, of course.
Fairness my ass.
Yes, right. Preferably 10 years before. Or is that too short? If not, why? An arbitrary ban is arbitrary. The "logic" applicable to a 1 day ban is exactly the same that applies to a 1 week ban, 1 month and so on.
And this will not work if you use anonymous posters put up at night by masked provocateurs on every street corner or if you broadcast this from a foreign radio station across the border because?
And the effect will be different if you do it at 11:59pm of the day before the ban how exactly?
All of which countries have highly ... err ... colorful history surrounding elections, such as missing ballot boxes and bodies of candidates found in the river.
Face it, the only places that have such laws are banana "republics" and fake "democracies" run by military juntas and God-appointed "kings". Like, say, Thailand.
List any that are not a running joke when it comes to credibility of their vote counting process.
What logical reason?
Only of course the same will happen if the "whispering campaign" happens 2 days before, 5 days before etc. What then? Ban on all media appearances and all political communications 2 months before elections? Where does this end?
It is nowhere near "common" in established democracies. It is also highly dubious. There is no substantive difference if a "dirty secret" is released at 11:59pm on the day prior to the ban or 1 minute before the polls open or one minute before they close. In none of these cases there is a chance to reply since all banned "campaigning" also includes "replies". Of course "replies" of the friends of the ruling junta are usually "special" and thus "exempt".
Thus it is all bullshit instigated by people in shaky fake "democracies" (like Thailand) who are afraid that elections will "heat up" (i.e. the patsies ... err ... "voters" of the crook facing an imminent loss will be prompted to resort to violence at the polls).
I already pointed out that for many the amount of energy required will be many times greater then their household needs.
But let's look at it in another way: the US consumes about 19 million of oil barrels per day. Each barrel of oil contains about 1.7MWh of energy. About 50% of each barrel is used for gasoline.
This gives us 19*10^6*1.7*10^3kWh*0.5=16*10^9kWh per day energy required to be produced to replace current consumption.
The US grid is at present capable of generating of around 3.6*10^12 kWh per year, which comes to 9.9*10^9 kWh per day. 50% of it comes from oil, coal, gas and other fossil fuels. Even excluding just oil leaves only about 6*10^9 kWh.
That is an increase in demand of nearly 300% while capacity drops.
Then there is heating. Heating oil accounts for another, nearly 100%, increase (20% of what's remaining in the barrel after gasoline is produced) since many houses now heated by oil will have to be heated by electricity. Then there is another 10% for jet fuel, petroleum gas etc all which will require replacements. The remaining 20% or so is used for plastic.
And now for the bad news: many forms of transport are far, far less efficient using electric energy than they are using oil. The expected inefficiencies due to such are in the area of 80%. This for example involves delivery of goods via truck, whereby long-range electric trucks are hugely inefficient but because due to decades of stupidity no other transport mode is feasible and they must be used (until whole communities collapse). Then there is a massive change in demand for ground transport due to collapse of the airline industry.
These now add another multiplier, which varies depending on who's guessing in range between 3 to 20.
I simply quoted the worst case.
Even in the best case however, we are still royally screwed.
Oh and the current grid is near collapse as it is (due to age and neglect) and most of it would have to be ripped out and outright replaced to provide any significant capacity gain, with all the attendant fun with land rights and the like.
Elections Canada was widely criticized for this but at least they had a particular objection which was restricted to posting premature or false election results, rather then "campaigning", "inciting to vote" and the like, which is what the Thai elites are worried about.
In Canada this action was a direct consequence of a law intended to stop poll manipulation by mass media during the election. The idea itself is very controversial (i.e. the idea that people are influenced by such data and change their votes to suit the media) and attempts at killing this law were made repeatedly and will likely succeed in not so remote future since the technological progress has completely outpaced the notions upon which the law was based.
You will also recall that Elections Canada was laughed into promising that they won't prosecute anyone for this.
How does one "cheat" elections using Twitter or Facebook? Could you elaborate?
You mean the military junta and royalty-approved stooges or enemies of a renegade billionaire would be put at a further disadvantage yet?
Isn't "campaigning" what politicians do (many of them sadly even stopping at campaigning altogether)?
Aren't you a bit fuzzy on that whole election idea thing?
It is only a matter of degree. In both countries vicious and entrenched power structures live in terror of their subjects communicating with each other in "unapproved" ways. In both they block, censor and monitor the subjects of their tyranny and abuse their peons in a myriad other ways.
The terms you are looking for are "lack of perspective", "being corrupted by local corruption", "ignorant of the precepts of democracy", etc.
That is because Microsoft was never a research or technology or engineering driven company. They were always strictly marketing-driven with the "technology" people always relegated to meekly subservient status. And marketing is the domain of people who love the ribbon and hate structure or logic and thus the traditional menu systems. They find them "uncool" and "ugly", etc.
The ribbon on the other hand is, to them, "trendy", "classy", "aesthetic" etc.
They are vehemently against adding the traditional menu structure back because it "spoils the look" of their creation. Amongst some of the more ego-maniacal and arrogant Microsoft "design" people It would also be an equivalent of admitting to failure.
So no, ribbon is not only here to stay, but any last vestiges of support for people who prefer access by logic, categories, function and similar will be actively stamped out. The "artsy" people have finally triumphed (something they could not achieve before because the traditional menu systems were too entrenched and mainstream and attacking them was deemed too risky - probably because of too many actual computer science people still in IT in the past) and will waste no time to destroy their sworn enemy who "oppressed" them with logic and reason for so long.
In my previous reply:
That was supposed to be in kWh of course, not kW. Sorry for that.
That calculation is way off.
Consider this: an average car has an engine of 200hp (some less and some more), which translates to about 150kW. An average commute/shopping/what-not round-trips are around 2h daily. That's 150kW*2h*0.3=100kWh (at 30% utilization) per day.
A typical US house-hold consumes anywhere from 500kW to 1000kW per month.
A car of a small house owner will in just 5 days exceed the power use of his whole house in that month.
And that's just small-time commuters at the low end of the scale. This does not include any long trips, commercial vehicles which consume much, much more energy per day and a myriad of other factors like scalability of power grids, etc etc.
Let me repeat again. This is not a solution.
The amounts of energy required for an electric "commuter" car infrastructure will require an electric grid that is at least 500 times the capacity of the current one and the current one is at near capacity.
Electric cars are a red herring because they only "work" if a tiny percentage of car users is using them.
Any mass switch to electric cars will destroy the grid and the time to build (even if practical - which is highly doubtful) a new grid capable of handling the load (not to mention power stations capable of supplying it) is far longer and costly then people expect.
The only solution is abandonment of individual cars and replacing them with mass transport.
Which is also near impossible because of the way cities in North America have been built for the last 50 years.
The dynamics might be more advantageous in Europe where urban density is much higher and where individual cars never became the insane craze they are in North America, although even now many European cities (specially formerly Warsaw Pact countries) define the words "permanent gridlock" already.
In short: the switch from oil is going to be far more painful then you think.
Let me explain.
The "drop down menu" system was a result of many years of academic research by places like Xerox Palo Alto center (where they also came up with ideas such as GUI, mouse, object-oriented programming etc) and places like IBM research labs. The end result was a compromise that catered equally to people who are capable of remembering complex, multi-level structures and those who were impaired in this capacity but instead could remember things by location/position.
That is why the system reigned supreme for many decades in both text terminal environments and GUI ones.
The ribbon breaks this premise by favouring people with better visual memory over those who are more adept to remembering things by categories, function and similar classifications. That is why "artsy" people love the ribbon and many deeply technical people can never get used to it and hate with a passion.
The old system was a compromise meant to address needs of most people by offering multiple ways of getting to the various functions, by "class/function", by visual memory (which was enhanced further by use of icons in front of menu items) and by direct command (shortcuts). The ribbon penalizes the first type in favour of visuals and thus alienates a whole class of people but it pleases an another group far more then the old system.
Hence the endless love/hate warfare, which in my opinion will never end since it is neigh impossible for many people to change the way their minds work and so they will be always relegated to a "second class citizen" status by systems that cater to those whose memory is positional/visual.
I think the Mozilla team, like many other major successful OSS project teams, has become a victim of their own success. Once the project became famous and large enough, it started to attract ever more flamboyant and opinionated "management", "high level design", "idea men", "customer relations" and similar types whose programming skills are not very impressive (to be charitable) and whose main objective is in fact stroking their own egos and whose efforts revolve around using the project as a catapult to boost their personal publicity.
Subsequently ever more questionable but very, very visible and radical changes are made, the purpose of which is mainly to attract attention, because attention and publicity has become the main goal in itself.
By the same token the "regular" developers are thrown into ever increasing chaos and conflict because creating conflict (otherwise known as the "divide-and-conquer" strategy) is a standard procedure for the social ladder climbers who have targeted the project for takeover and control to further their own parasitic needs.
The only consolation (of sorts) being that this fate befalls successful non-OSS projects even more frequently, including whole companies.
I believe I did mention a "hardware write-protect switch", didn't I?
Actually, many motherboards already feature a "dual BIOS" setup with this exact need in mind (in addition to corruption or failed update process). The second copy of BIOS can only be overwritten if a jumper is in a proper position. Otherwise the first copy is simply replaced with the second, "read only" copy in case of corruption or malicious software attack.