If the goal is 'saving the Earth' Europe's carbon tax isn't working very well. But if the goal is raising taxes and growing government control then it is a success.
The problem with the cap and trade system is it presupposes an economy where we are above the cap. If however you're in, say, a global economic slowdown and you're not even going to come near the cap it's mostly ineffectual and, perversely, might actually be encouraging more inefficiency.
The flaw in your argument is that you are not considering the fact that similar enterprises have similar costs and when imposing a tax across the board on these costs, to protect profit, they can easily just pass the costs to the consumer. It's not like they have to compete with some company not paying the tax because the tax is supposed to bring the change around by punishing companies who have done nothing wrong.
But companies that can reduce their output significantly can lower their costs equally well. Any company that can cut that fat in a competitive market will do so, which is the entire idea.
Here's a little question. Does anyone here not see the market working? Toyota Prius? Everyone seems to be doing plugin hybrids by 2010.
When the prius first came out it was a rarity. Governments put out all sorts of benefits for driving hybrids (even as their lower environmental impact is still a subject of debate). The prius (and the market for hybrids) is now a lot more profitable than it otherwise would have been, because of government money.
So if I might ask... what the hell is the problem? There's no shortage of research or money in the field. If technology can solve this problem, it will.
What you don't seem to realise is new technology has a very long ramp-up time. All the technology you mention is getting (at least in the EU) huge amounts of government money poured into it already, to make sure it arrives to market and develops quicker. If the government wasn't stepping in right now we would be years behind in general interest and deployment. Why? Because the market can optimize well for the short-term best solution, which right now is oil. It's cheap, the infrastructure is there and the externalities usually get paid by society.
Any tax now would hurt the poor the most.
Stop reading so much Milton Friedman, it's not good for you.
I feel like there is a huge groupthink happening here. Do we all really dislike Blu-Ray? Is there no one else that finds the quality unbeatable and worth the price?
Strangely this has not been mentioned before, but... I care about being actually able to play the damn discs. (I run linux) So do many people. I didn't start buying DVDs until that particular encryption was so easy to circumvent I could pop it in my PC no worries and just play the content. I'm not willing to go through all of that hassle with Blu-Ray yet, till it gets well and truly broken.
I can imagine most people not having this problem. Most people never even watch scenes of any DVDs on their computer (a TV set etc is nicer, of course) and many probably never would feel the need to. So I might be in the minority, but perhaps not on slashdot...
Any customer is free to do this. Any customer is also free to buy video games 30% cheaper from the UK, yet you don't see those sales numbers collapsing in the rest of the EU either. Because although everybody can, realistically most people still won't.
I think right now most people still don't really see this as an option, simply because it's all fairly new. Tech savvy people are doing this more and more though, I read a lot of (programming related) english language books so a bunch of my stuff comes off the english amazon. I've also bought hardware abroad (netherlands) and I know plenty other people who do this. Of course this opens up a new source of problems, for instance returning stuff. While I believe the legislation is partly harmonized I think sufficient details are still different enough to make it a head-ache. But for a copy of windows? I wouldn't hesitate. (if you were to buy it)
A legitimate question (not a set-up): Have you investigated protectivist measures your government may have enacted against "cheap" imports to favor your domestic goods during this period of relatively weak currency?
The EU is part of the WTO, so this would be a good way to get an international ass-raping. Import levies do apply though (both ways), I'm just not entirely sure what they are.
I think it is interesting that you are so threatened by somebody associating your beloved company with dollars that you INSTANTLY respond with the "Oh if you put a $ next to an M you are a CHILD! A CHILD, I TELL YOU, A LITTLE LITTLE CHILD! BECAUSE I SAY SO! YOU ARE A CHILD!!!!! CHILD!! CHILD!! You are a child, because I say so! WAHHH!"
*sigh* It's annoying because it precontextualizes any conversation on the subject. The first 400 posts always end up being the microsoft sucks against the microsoft alright crowd in any case, but this just makes it worse. That's why we oppose it. It's akin to the whole Obama/Osama thing, designed at weeding out anyone interested in an intelligent conversation and going straight for the name calling.
Until now Debian has been clearly in the pure camp. Debian, moe RMS Pure than RMS over the GNU FDL. Debian, endless wanking over whether firmware blobs have to get yanked for two major releases. And so on. Now suddenly they are taking the Novell "Mono is just another managed code environment licensed under the GPL, nothing to fear here" position. when everyone else DOES see something to fear even if they ship Mono/Tomboy. Fedora is planning on tossing Mono out of the standard install and RH has never shipped it in RHEL because their lawyers are uneasy.
Ehm, fedora and RH don't quite count as "everyone". Perhaps you'd do better to put a little faith in the Debian leadership, who have tangled with such complex issues in the past and have as of yet shown better judgement than the average/. 'tard you just dubbed "everyone". I know bashing Debian is popular and all, but now you're just being silly.
I've never used Banshee myself, but I've heard some good stuff about it, at least. I guess we'll see how it turns out once Canonical is done optimizing it for Ubuntu for the next release.
See this is a great reason not to develop in mono (if you care about not having C#3.0 the day it's released), but it's not a good reason not to bundle it in the distributions or not to run mono-based software (which seems to run just fine, tyvm).
but recent gcc can't be removed with future patent or other legal claims restricting use or rights that exist now. GPL 3 license forbids it
People take ridiculous patents out on existing technology all the time. Hell you could probably take out some patents right now and sue the hell out of the main gcc developers or the gnu project. That doesn't mean you will though. It's not because it's Microsoft that they've suddenly completely lost all common sense.
This has to be one of the most moronic things I've heard. SD doesn't control the opinions posted here. Your opinion is yours. Grow up. There seems to be a lot of butt hurt kiddies here. For the adults here that mean sore ass adolescents.
Agreed. But then this is/. and it's always been like that. Maybe a bit less in the past.
Stallman, though unpopular, is right. He is saying don't get trapped into producing products for a closed architecture. He's saying it is just more of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Open and free is the key. And, for goodness sake, there's no need for tomboy to be included in any distro or repository. It doesn't have a crucial role in anything we do in Linux.
Look if you're gonna invent conspiracy theories all over the place at least make it an intricate one. Preferably fifty pages long with unscientific rambling and involving at least two secret government agencies. Let us know when you're ready to come back into the real world where idiots like you are trying to turn developers away from developing open software on an open, standardised platform because of unspecified fears of anything open source.
Don't even get me started on dismissing a desktop app out of hand because it doesn't "play a crucial role". By that reasoning we better just drop everything and anything that somehow includes a GUI.
I totally agree. I'd go as far as say that if you really think it's this bad you have the moral duty to stay as long as you can do so safely. Try to change things whichever way you can (within reason, of course). Simply saying "well fuck this" and moving out of the country is IMHO taking the easy way out, fleeing the battlefield before the fight has even really begun.
In gnome I'm using banshee atm. I guess the interface could be reminiscent to itunes to some, but I don't use itunes so I wouldn't really know. It's always been tons better than rhythmbox tho.
I for one would like to suggest they move to Belgium. Our politicians are only slightly less crazy but they're so busy fighting each other over language issues they'll never get around to banning violent games.
The tax rate might be a bit of a problem though, but less so if you're from Germany I'm sure.
Despite your 4 digit UID, I think you're only a pre-pubescent kid,
In denial much? To have worked on CP/M you'd have to have been around 20 years or older in the 80s, that would make anyone under 40 unlikely to have ever worked with it. Now I think a lot of people have heard of CP/M just because of its importance, but Micro-Focus? Nah.
It is called bootstrapping. The logic is this. If you make improvements in the compiler then you make improvements in your own product. Let's say you create a better code generator. When you recompile your own compiler it will run faster since it is being compiled with that improved code generator. It also helps you find bugs since you are using your own compiler everyday to write your compiler.
It can also simply be easier code to write. If C compilers were still written in assembly doing code optimisation wouldn't be nearly as easy.
Economics have a factor as well- well off people tend to be educated, and thus see value in education. Those who aren't educated tend to be poorer and don't value it for their children either. Without that stress in the home, the children don't put the effort in.
Ehm, no. Poorer children often experience more stress when young and have worse self images. They are outperformed by the richer, happier kids, whose parents often hardly care about their kids' education but do manage to provide a somewhat stable environment.
Being a nurse is like being a technician or mechanic -- follow the manual step-by-step because a lot of work has gone into delineating the SOP and best practices. . The last thing I want in a hospital in a nurse engaged in some critical thinking instead of doing the clinically-approved thing. Evidence-based medicine and all that.
I know some nurses regularly have to calculate how much they need to dilute a substance to give patients the correct dosage though. I wouldn't want them to have trouble with fractions...
I could go on and on like this. This is how funds are spent without any real gain, not even new concept evolution.
Andy, give the EU taxpayers money back!
No this is why people like you shouldn't be in charge of allocating money to research projects (but they usually are). You're focusing way too much on the deliverables. If we keep doing that all over the place soon there won't be any room for fundamental research and nothing to build on. Instead, you get 50 different implementations of VM migration technologies because you know, virtualization is hot and all. Sometimes research will be "money down the drain" spent on evolutionary dead-ends and all. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea to throw some money around now and then, even if you can't see the immediate benefit.
with dastardly tenets like do unto others as you would have others do unto you
Read up on pope's comments about Islam or homosexuals and tell me how does he want catholics to be treated, especially in nations with another dominant religion?
I remember all that being a bit of a tempest in a teapot tbh. Don't believe anything you read in the media, or at least bother to read the follow-up stories so you know what was really going on...
obey your father and mother
Funny thing, I have never heard anything about that from Vatican, republican party, and other self-professed leaders of Christianity. I think they are too busy with making people obey their dogma instead.
Christianity != catholicism. The republican party has precious little to do with the catholic church, and only in the US. That being said, the ten commandments are sort of important in christian dogma and obeying your father and mother is one of them. So I don't know what you are getting at other than "it doesn't get reported on widely in the news". Which is logical, since it's not entirely controversial. In fact, I bet many publications in the US expect you knew this stuff. But meh.
thou shall not kill
I think this should include telling an HIV-infected african guy all the realistic ways he can reduce probability his "gun" will kill his wife and unborn (and, in the unfortunate reality, teenage) children.
Oh definitely. Though you have to admit the pope is right that if people would abstain before marriage, only marry one person and only ever have sex with that person, then HIV would never spread. Whether he's silly enough to believe he'll ever convince a sizable fraction of catholics in the area to live their lives this way is another matter.
Killing by negligence is not the same thing as premeditated murder of course. But I guess you knew that.
I'm not so sure if it's hard time really, it might be suspended prison sentences. Meaning it's still a big deal, but you won't be spending any time between hard criminals.
Slashdot Mirror
If the goal is 'saving the Earth' Europe's carbon tax isn't working very well. But if the goal is raising taxes and growing government control then it is a success.
The problem with the cap and trade system is it presupposes an economy where we are above the cap. If however you're in, say, a global economic slowdown and you're not even going to come near the cap it's mostly ineffectual and, perversely, might actually be encouraging more inefficiency.
The flaw in your argument is that you are not considering the fact that similar enterprises have similar costs and when imposing a tax across the board on these costs, to protect profit, they can easily just pass the costs to the consumer. It's not like they have to compete with some company not paying the tax because the tax is supposed to bring the change around by punishing companies who have done nothing wrong.
But companies that can reduce their output significantly can lower their costs equally well. Any company that can cut that fat in a competitive market will do so, which is the entire idea.
I don't really see your point here.
Here's a little question. Does anyone here not see the market working?
Toyota Prius?
Everyone seems to be doing plugin hybrids by 2010.
When the prius first came out it was a rarity. Governments put out all sorts of benefits for driving hybrids (even as their lower environmental impact is still a subject of debate). The prius (and the market for hybrids) is now a lot more profitable than it otherwise would have been, because of government money.
So if I might ask... what the hell is the problem? There's no shortage of research or money in the field. If technology can solve this problem, it will.
What you don't seem to realise is new technology has a very long ramp-up time. All the technology you mention is getting (at least in the EU) huge amounts of government money poured into it already, to make sure it arrives to market and develops quicker. If the government wasn't stepping in right now we would be years behind in general interest and deployment. Why? Because the market can optimize well for the short-term best solution, which right now is oil. It's cheap, the infrastructure is there and the externalities usually get paid by society.
Any tax now would hurt the poor the most.
Stop reading so much Milton Friedman, it's not good for you.
I feel like there is a huge groupthink happening here. Do we all really dislike Blu-Ray? Is there no one else that finds the quality unbeatable and worth the price?
Strangely this has not been mentioned before, but... I care about being actually able to play the damn discs. (I run linux) So do many people. I didn't start buying DVDs until that particular encryption was so easy to circumvent I could pop it in my PC no worries and just play the content. I'm not willing to go through all of that hassle with Blu-Ray yet, till it gets well and truly broken.
I can imagine most people not having this problem. Most people never even watch scenes of any DVDs on their computer (a TV set etc is nicer, of course) and many probably never would feel the need to. So I might be in the minority, but perhaps not on slashdot...
Any customer is free to do this. Any customer is also free to buy video games 30% cheaper from the UK, yet you don't see those sales numbers collapsing in the rest of the EU either. Because although everybody can, realistically most people still won't.
I think right now most people still don't really see this as an option, simply because it's all fairly new. Tech savvy people are doing this more and more though, I read a lot of (programming related) english language books so a bunch of my stuff comes off the english amazon. I've also bought hardware abroad (netherlands) and I know plenty other people who do this. Of course this opens up a new source of problems, for instance returning stuff. While I believe the legislation is partly harmonized I think sufficient details are still different enough to make it a head-ache. But for a copy of windows? I wouldn't hesitate. (if you were to buy it)
A legitimate question (not a set-up): Have you investigated protectivist measures your government may have enacted against "cheap" imports to favor your domestic goods during this period of relatively weak currency?
The EU is part of the WTO, so this would be a good way to get an international ass-raping. Import levies do apply though (both ways), I'm just not entirely sure what they are.
I think it is interesting that you are so threatened by somebody associating your beloved company with dollars that you INSTANTLY respond with the "Oh if you put a $ next to an M you are a CHILD! A CHILD, I TELL YOU, A LITTLE LITTLE CHILD! BECAUSE I SAY SO! YOU ARE A CHILD!!!!! CHILD!! CHILD!! You are a child, because I say so! WAHHH!"
*sigh* It's annoying because it precontextualizes any conversation on the subject. The first 400 posts always end up being the microsoft sucks against the microsoft alright crowd in any case, but this just makes it worse. That's why we oppose it. It's akin to the whole Obama/Osama thing, designed at weeding out anyone interested in an intelligent conversation and going straight for the name calling.
If you want I could write it in all caps tho.
Until now Debian has been clearly in the pure camp. Debian, moe RMS Pure than RMS over the GNU FDL. Debian, endless wanking over whether firmware blobs have to get yanked for two major releases. And so on. Now suddenly they are taking the Novell "Mono is just another managed code environment licensed under the GPL, nothing to fear here" position. when everyone else DOES see something to fear even if they ship Mono/Tomboy. Fedora is planning on tossing Mono out of the standard install and RH has never shipped it in RHEL because their lawyers are uneasy.
Ehm, fedora and RH don't quite count as "everyone". Perhaps you'd do better to put a little faith in the Debian leadership, who have tangled with such complex issues in the past and have as of yet shown better judgement than the average /. 'tard you just dubbed "everyone". I know bashing Debian is popular and all, but now you're just being silly.
I've never used Banshee myself, but I've heard some good stuff about it, at least. I guess we'll see how it turns out once Canonical is done optimizing it for Ubuntu for the next release.
It's already in universe. Works great.
Remind me again why this effort is not being put into Amarok 2?
Have you seen Amarok's UI?
The problem isn't with Tomboy. The problem is that parts of Mono might be patented, which makes it risky to build upon.
Pure FUD really. I'd hope we're above that as a community.
You cannot implement a GUI application without using APIs which are not ECMA spec.
You can, however, implement a GUI application without using Windows Forms. Use GTK# or QtSharp instead if you're worried.
Which is what all linux mono apps do anyway, AFAIK. (the winforms implementation is not really up to scratch)
See this is a great reason not to develop in mono (if you care about not having C#3.0 the day it's released), but it's not a good reason not to bundle it in the distributions or not to run mono-based software (which seems to run just fine, tyvm).
but recent gcc can't be removed with future patent or other legal claims restricting use or rights that exist now. GPL 3 license forbids it
People take ridiculous patents out on existing technology all the time. Hell you could probably take out some patents right now and sue the hell out of the main gcc developers or the gnu project. That doesn't mean you will though. It's not because it's Microsoft that they've suddenly completely lost all common sense.
This has to be one of the most moronic things I've heard. SD doesn't control the opinions posted here. Your opinion is yours. Grow up. There seems to be a lot of butt hurt kiddies here. For the adults here that mean sore ass adolescents.
Agreed. But then this is /. and it's always been like that. Maybe a bit less in the past.
Stallman, though unpopular, is right. He is saying don't get trapped into producing products for a closed architecture. He's saying it is just more of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Open and free is the key. And, for goodness sake, there's no need for tomboy to be included in any distro or repository. It doesn't have a crucial role in anything we do in Linux.
Look if you're gonna invent conspiracy theories all over the place at least make it an intricate one. Preferably fifty pages long with unscientific rambling and involving at least two secret government agencies. Let us know when you're ready to come back into the real world where idiots like you are trying to turn developers away from developing open software on an open, standardised platform because of unspecified fears of anything open source.
Don't even get me started on dismissing a desktop app out of hand because it doesn't "play a crucial role". By that reasoning we better just drop everything and anything that somehow includes a GUI.
And I'm counting curses.
I totally agree. I'd go as far as say that if you really think it's this bad you have the moral duty to stay as long as you can do so safely. Try to change things whichever way you can (within reason, of course). Simply saying "well fuck this" and moving out of the country is IMHO taking the easy way out, fleeing the battlefield before the fight has even really begun.
In gnome I'm using banshee atm. I guess the interface could be reminiscent to itunes to some, but I don't use itunes so I wouldn't really know. It's always been tons better than rhythmbox tho.
I for one would like to suggest they move to Belgium. Our politicians are only slightly less crazy but they're so busy fighting each other over language issues they'll never get around to banning violent games.
The tax rate might be a bit of a problem though, but less so if you're from Germany I'm sure.
Despite your 4 digit UID, I think you're only a pre-pubescent kid,
In denial much? To have worked on CP/M you'd have to have been around 20 years or older in the 80s, that would make anyone under 40 unlikely to have ever worked with it. Now I think a lot of people have heard of CP/M just because of its importance, but Micro-Focus? Nah.
It is called bootstrapping.
The logic is this. If you make improvements in the compiler then you make improvements in your own product.
Let's say you create a better code generator. When you recompile your own compiler it will run faster since it is being compiled with that improved code generator.
It also helps you find bugs since you are using your own compiler everyday to write your compiler.
It can also simply be easier code to write. If C compilers were still written in assembly doing code optimisation wouldn't be nearly as easy.
Economics have a factor as well- well off people tend to be educated, and thus see value in education. Those who aren't educated tend to be poorer and don't value it for their children either. Without that stress in the home, the children don't put the effort in.
Ehm, no. Poorer children often experience more stress when young and have worse self images. They are outperformed by the richer, happier kids, whose parents often hardly care about their kids' education but do manage to provide a somewhat stable environment.
Being a nurse is like being a technician or mechanic -- follow the manual step-by-step because a lot of work has gone into delineating the SOP and best practices. . The last thing I want in a hospital in a nurse engaged in some critical thinking instead of doing the clinically-approved thing. Evidence-based medicine and all that.
I know some nurses regularly have to calculate how much they need to dilute a substance to give patients the correct dosage though. I wouldn't want them to have trouble with fractions...
I could go on and on like this. This is how funds are spent without any real gain, not even new concept evolution.
Andy, give the EU taxpayers money back!
No this is why people like you shouldn't be in charge of allocating money to research projects (but they usually are). You're focusing way too much on the deliverables. If we keep doing that all over the place soon there won't be any room for fundamental research and nothing to build on. Instead, you get 50 different implementations of VM migration technologies because you know, virtualization is hot and all. Sometimes research will be "money down the drain" spent on evolutionary dead-ends and all. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea to throw some money around now and then, even if you can't see the immediate benefit.
with dastardly tenets like do unto others as you would have others do unto you
Read up on pope's comments about Islam or homosexuals and tell me how does he want catholics to be treated, especially in nations with another dominant religion?
I remember all that being a bit of a tempest in a teapot tbh. Don't believe anything you read in the media, or at least bother to read the follow-up stories so you know what was really going on...
obey your father and mother
Funny thing, I have never heard anything about that from Vatican, republican party, and other self-professed leaders of Christianity. I think they are too busy with making people obey their dogma instead.
Christianity != catholicism. The republican party has precious little to do with the catholic church, and only in the US. That being said, the ten commandments are sort of important in christian dogma and obeying your father and mother is one of them. So I don't know what you are getting at other than "it doesn't get reported on widely in the news". Which is logical, since it's not entirely controversial. In fact, I bet many publications in the US expect you knew this stuff. But meh.
thou shall not kill
I think this should include telling an HIV-infected african guy all the realistic ways he can reduce probability his "gun" will kill his wife and unborn (and, in the unfortunate reality, teenage) children.
Oh definitely. Though you have to admit the pope is right that if people would abstain before marriage, only marry one person and only ever have sex with that person, then HIV would never spread. Whether he's silly enough to believe he'll ever convince a sizable fraction of catholics in the area to live their lives this way is another matter.
Killing by negligence is not the same thing as premeditated murder of course. But I guess you knew that.
I'm not so sure if it's hard time really, it might be suspended prison sentences. Meaning it's still a big deal, but you won't be spending any time between hard criminals.