The cookie program is probably your best bet on the grounds that you'll lose yourself a whole lot of legal hassle and gain yourself something more fulfilling community wise. There's just something nice about your neighbours bringing you dinner once a month or every couple of months. And there's something not nice about introducing money/legal agreements to friendships; or the calculator-fight that will break out when your connection goes down and they want re-imbursement or because you aren't there for tech support because you're on holiday, etc.
Saying you will provide this service on best-effort terms in return for cookies/lawn-mowing/kid-collecting etc is your best, friendliest, non-legally dangerous way of doing this. A great idea that I shall probably copy.
I would like to think as you do that bands will skip the middleman and go right to publishing their music online, but that wouldn't just be a radical shift for the music industry...it'd basically be blowing it up and starting it all over again. The promotion machine that is the music industry is what bands need to try to make money, not the selling outlet.
First off, I'd better explain the logic behind my conclusion:
There are a lot of good bands out there. That's obvious because big labels have to get them from somewhere. But they are as you say, promotion machines - they don't want to just sell a band's music for the sake of it, they want to maximise profits and that's usually just a case of pumping up a few artists as high as they can rather than signing a broad range of quality music. What I'm getting at is that there are quality artists who haven't been signed, who wait around a long time to get signed. They now have an alternative. Some of these quality artists will be around on services like this and like Magnatune. They may want to get signed by a big label, but who would wait even just a year in the hopes that it would happen when you don't lose anything by selling this way (you can always stop) and you can get more exposure through it, make some money through it and finally, use it as a flag to wave to the big labels to say that you're worth promoting.
These artists will get publicity one way or another. Gigs and touring will have an effect, increasing uptake of broadcasting over the Internet will have ever increasing effects. If a band is sufficiently good, then everyone who likes their music promotes it to their friends and that will have an effect. Club DJs will have an effect with relevant genres. It will only take one or two bands to achieve success through these sort of outlets to really shake things up. And it will only take one or two because they will make such money out of owning themselves, that two things will happen. Firstly, somebody will fill that niche market of selling promotion in various forms. After all, you get agents for other forms of creative work (acting, writing, comedy). Secondly, established and semi-established artists will look at it and say, "I want 75%!" Hell, they might just do it for creative control once they've done their contracted albums for the label. These people don't need the leg-up that the big labels promise to newcomers.
I think it is definitely coming. The only thing that would stop it would be if it really were less profitable for bands to do it this way than to sell their DRM'd music through the labels. That's a seperate argument, but I'd be relatively happy to make it.
The good stuff is all in the story - a music download service that provides Ogg format music without DRM and a Linux client.
The bad stuff is that there doesn't seem to be much support for big name music. It'll come, and it will only come through sites like this leading the way. But for now, it looks like I still have to get most of my music from iTunes.
On the plus side, things like this do help little known independent bands sell to a much larger audience. And a lot of these bands are really good. The major labels take ages to notice something good. Especially if it's original. We'll start seeing bands become successful through sites like this soon, and when they do and they keep 75% of the profits, that'll be it for the music industry as they know it.
What is wrong with revisiting an exsiting work? Why must the first version ever put out be the only one?
It needn't, there are many cases where an old film or song has been re-done to great effect. But it's pretty clear to me that the current slew of re-makes has nothing to do with the real artistic vision that is required to re-interpret something for the now. What it has to do with, is money.
Nobody dares risk money in the movie business. Risk is anathema. Risk is to do with innovation. If they've seen that something was successful the first time, then surely, the logic goes, it will be successful the second time.
However, that doesn't appear to stop people from losing sight of what made the original so good. I've seen the atrocious War of the Worlds film that you mention. It wasn't the first one however, it was the second that I'm aware of. Yes, they added a whole host of religious overtones that severely weakened the central theme of the story - that of mankind's helplessness and the cosmic randomness of their deliverance. If I remember, the film closed with people praying in a church and the war machines failing everywhere as the martians suddenly began to die. There was nothing subtle about it. This conflicted with Wells' "route of civilization" leaving a confusing melage of themes.
It's the same mindset that produces so many mediocre movies - you can't target anything other than the middle of the Bell Curve, or you're not maximising your profits. Of course, for people like myself who live on the extreme edges of the Bell Curve, it means most movies do not meet my standards in terms of originality, intelligence or moral depth.
I'm not saying that this is bad; it's not like they don't tell you up front.
I think that actually they don't. Obviously people with a brain think it through and can work out what is likely to happen, but the army recruiting ads I see on TV in the UK certainly don't give you any idea of what the army is like.
Examples I remember are fixing tanks, crossing ravines, saving crying children. I've never seen an advert that shows someone shot in the head, someone in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, someone being bullied to tears, someone being kept away from his family, partner, children and none of them knowing if he's coming back.
Basic training is conditioning people to obey orders and become capable of killing (something that most people could only do in self-defence). They use brain-washing techniques to turn you into someone else.
If you want good examples, you could google for the Deepcut scandels at the moment, an army training camp where they've have multiple cases of suicide, rape and chronic bullying. I think any of the recruits their would tell you they had no idea what they were getting into.
Anyway, pray that a draft isn't re-instated at any point, because otherwise every young man will be put through this training/conditioning.
Be thankful you're not in the UK
Drifting very slightly off topic, but if you want to add one more liberty-crushing bill to your list, you could try the Civil Contingencies Amendments passed just last month.
In addition to granting the government the power to confiscate property (permanently), ban meetings of any group and put restrictions on people's movement within the country, all without judicial oversight or evidence required; it lets the incumbent government defer elections indefinitely.
It's strikingly similar to laws that Hitler passed to enable him to assume complete control.
Already, this lab has had problems with foreign collaborators who are not from Canada, Europe or Australia being denied entry to the country.
Not only are you losing those graduates who would like to collaborate in research in the US, but can't because of new restrictions and enforcement. The US is also losing those people who would have liked to study there five years ago but now simply don't want to because of it's international policies.
An interesting story I read recently was this, in which we find that applications at university in Britain for Middle Eastern studies are rising and applications for American Studies are plummeting as: "people shied away from courses that might label them pro-US in the wake of the war in Iraq."
And this is in Britain! I imaging most of the rest of the World feels even more strongly. The US simply isn't very inviting to anyone right now, regardless of how friendly individual citizens may be.
I fear that greed is a feeling as natural as hunger or love.
Greed is normally restrained by empathy. Would you take the food from your partner, or your children or your friends for yourself? Would you even steal money from casual acquaintances? Almost certainly not. In all these cases, these are people you can see and recieve feedback from.
In the business world, you seldom see your victims. In actuality, steps are taken to avoid it. Those who are rich often psychologically divorce the poor into a seperate category, denying they are people like themselves. It's a way of cutting off that feedback.
Sorry for the belated reply. I only have time to read/. on the weekends at the moment.
Assuming you're still out there and reading this, I'll just post my reply into your own.
If all the world's energy is coming through one "pipeline" however
Obviously that's never going to happen -- oil isn't going to disappear, hydro-electricity isn't, etc, etc.
Oil is dissappearing at an ever increasing rate. And long before it runs out, it will become extremely expensive. If Helium-3 is viable, then it will become the only alternative. Hydro-electric, windpower, solar chimneys, are not going to be economically viable options. Remember, we're not talking about last resorts, we're talking about remaining indutrially competitive. Everything else, including being able to spend vast amounts of your GDP on the military, follows from that.
Anyway, even discounting a military threat, space transport is going to be risky enough not trust a year's supply of an incredibly valuable resource to a single shipment.
Did I say anything about a single shipment? No, I did not. You don't imagine that any nation that invests massively in orbital-range weaponry is going to produce just one missile?
And surely there will be lost of other stuff worth mining and sending back (assuming a massdriver is set up on the Moon to launch) and so ther will be a stream of cargo, making it sensible to spread the He3 over many shipments along with metals, dilithium crystals, etc.
That's a big assumption. Helium-3 is light (it's helium). That makes it a lot more economical to ship than metals (or crystals).
You (or whoever I was replying to) was talking about "blowing up" the shuttle with He3. I was pointing out that this is no different to what could be done today; and the reason ICBM attacks haven't happened is the same that no one would attack a He3 shuttle, it would be an act of war and lead to massive retaliation.
You were talking about blowing up cities. That's not sound economics - it only makes sense in defensive wars, not wars of aggression (i.e. those waged for control of resources, such as Helium-3). I made it clear that this was what I was talking about. Blowing up shuttles however is clearly a different case - it is territory control. What makes it very different to today, very different to blowing up oil-tankers in your example, is that there are multiple sources of oil. There would not be multiple sources of Helium-3, just the one "pipeline" as I said.
Nevertheless, we do see warfare over control of the energy supply today, so I think it likely you could see the same over Helium-3. The invasion of Iraq is about Oil in two ways. Firstly, control of Iraq's oil reserves and a US base of operations in the Middle East to dominate other oil-producing states in the region. Secondly, opening up a land route to the old soviet oil fields. This allows the US to stymie the development of China. I don't see this as a good thing. Pearl Harbour happened because the US blocked off Japan's access to vitally needed oil supplies (they were at war at the time). And the US is trying to back China into the same corner? Very bad. Oil is running out and if Helium-3 becomes viable, then I would say the US has demonstrated its willingness to fight for monopoly of the energy supply.
I'm sure someone's throwing stones, bottles and molotov cocktails at YOU you won't protect yourself.
Molotov cocktails? I was talking about the UK (and probably applies in the USA also), where demonstrators are wielding nothing more dangerous (or illeagal) than placards. And yet you get the police emotionlessly filming each protestor, capturing everyone's face for their files. That is both an intimidation tactic and deeply suspicious. It implies that you are going on some sort of list of adversaries / suspects for doing something that is perfectly right, and often a very noble cause.
In the UK a minority element cause some property damage, but not physical assault. Of course it could turn into that if the police start pursuing people with water cannon, riot shields and dogs.
Yes. But short of maintaining a military presence in any country you don't like, you can't stop them getting any energy. And look how difficult that is. The USA has by far the most heavily funded military in the world and it's really struggling to hold on to ONE country - Iraq - and the cost is staggering.
If all the world's energy is coming through one "pipeline" however - orbital Heilum-3 supplies - then control can be exerted through controling this one route. Much easier, less dangerous and with a greater area of influence (the World).
If you still see warfare as being about blowing each other up then you have a lot to learn. War is waged for profit or defence. If the US were the agressor then profit could be the only motive. Control of the energy supply is compatible with this purpose. Blowing up bits of other countries with ICBMs is not.
Yes, I've noticed that of course. But I've often had a look at the pattern when I'm sitting somewhere and tried to puzzle out a sequence that would be successful. The ones that swivel are easier and these ones I think can be done - it's sort of a logic puzzle.
The dark orb ones are harder though because you don't know where they're pointing. For these ones you'd have to wear a hat.;)
Can a laser burn out a video camera? Well, obviously a laser of sufficient power can, but I'm curious if cameras are especially sensitive to such technology, such that a fairly low-power device can ruin it?
I'm surprised more people don't paint bomb the CCTV cameras, actually. Would be fairly simple and a fun game for vandals who wanted to actually annoy those in power.
Seriously, are the cameras going to be set to raise an alert when someone walks down the street that they can't distinguish? Will police occasionally stop you and ask you to remove your stetson so that CCTV can calm down?
How reliable can this be? And if they can scan and recognize a face this effectively in the data, can we reproduce it in latex a la Mission Impossible... well enough to fool the system anyway?
And do we want the government to have this much data on people?
The moon isn't exactly a small place. What's to stop some other country from setting up a He3 mining base on some remote part of the moon?
I should have gone into more detail. I'm not suggesting soldiers in space suits marching along, lunar rovers with rail guns strapped to the top or whatever. In any case, it's too expensive to ship the marines into orbit - it's costing a fortune just to supply them in Iraq.
What I'm talking about is control of the supply route to and from the moon / elsewhere. You can mine all the Helium-3 you want but if someone has a missile system that can blow the crap out of the shuttle that brings it back then they have control. The issue is that in Space, there is no terrain to hide behind which for all its size, makes it no different to guarding a narrow pass if you have weapons with the range to cover it - which they could. Sun Tzu say: "When one tiger guard the ford, 10,000 deer cannot pass."
Sure, if someone gets complete control of the world's main energy source, this'll almost certainly be illegal (along with competing energy technologies, such as fission and dirty (H2-H3) fusion), but it's questionable whether terrestrial laws have any force outside the atmosphere.
As we've seen with Iraq, neither the US nor the UK have much compunction about violating international law in their efforts to control the World's energy sources, despite the UK's role in establishing such international law in the first place. There is a treaty preventing the militarization of Space. The US is currently ignoring it and researching ways to keep absolute control of Earth orbit.
Ultimately they'll fail and find it's a long way back down.
If 25 tons can power the US for a year... really... it's not that difficult to move 25 tons of anything from the moon to the earth for the billions we spend on electricity a year.
Assuming people aren't trying to shoot you down while you're doing this. The political reality may be that one country attempts to get a lock on this. After all, one country in particular is ploughing lots of money into space based warfare. Given recent belligerence I can see the US trying to get a lock on the World's energy supplies if we get to the stage of depending on lunar He3.
What I'm basically getting at is that however cheap it may be to ship 25 tons of material (don't forget mining and refining), the true cost may be determined by military power and commercial refinement rights (enforced by same).
That's if people don't manage to get their governments back under control by then.
Generally speaking, it's a clear sign of laziness or incompetence on the part of a half-assed programmer to think he needs root for everything.
Amen. The OP said that his company had a large IT infrastructure which means they are worth the vendors business. I urge him to apply whatever pressure he can on the vendors to change their ways.
That way, little places like where I currently work might get the same benefit!
First possibility: Someone can make money out of this. We therefore have an incentive for some parties to play up the supposed advantages of this technology.
Second possibility: Some people at "the top" aren't very tech savvy and are easy prey for the former group.
Third possibility: Some people at the top are under constant pressure to be doing something, even if we now have a system that works as well as can reasonably be expected (there comes a point when the resources required to achieve 100% are less than the damage 0.5% that get through). However, if you have to be "doing something" when there is nothing to be done, then you're going to start going backwards.
It may well be that there is a spike in consumption during "westernization." I'd be interested in seeing any demographics on this. But perhaps, in the same way that technology can be adopted by groups that didn't originate it themself, perhaps western lifestyles can be adopted by neighbouring groups - including some of those cultural traits that lower birth rate. I think you may find that the empowerment of women is really the key to it.
Shame you found vegetarianism disatisfying. As with many other things, you need to go about it properly. It's no good just dropping something from your life and not filling the gap with anything. May I recommend this?
On the subject of vegetarianism and aggression:
My hypothesis is that vegetarians are not sufficiently aggressive personality types (focussing instead on nurturing and the elimination of suffering) to push back frontiers which often requires a person with a somewhat brutal "I don't care whose toes I step on" point of view.
Well, there was always Hitler. On the opposite end of the scale you could consider Ghandi whose methods may have been "peaceful" but he was a classic aggressive personality type - enjoyed confrontation and demolishing his opponents verbally very much. I myself have been vegetarian all my life and most people find me quite pushy. My experience, if anything, is that those who choose to be vegetarian are making a break with tradition and other people's values. It helps to be a pioneering "I don't care whose toes I step on" type person to do that. If anecdotal experience is valid at all, then I've actually found the vegetarians I know to be more able to stand up for themselves than anything else.
I can't help thinking of Ceasars lines in the play:
"Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look, such men as he are dangerous. Let me have men about me who are fat."
It ain't the hamburger stuffing ones you have to worry about.
If it is any consolation, it's my belief that children will learn primarily not from what they are or are not exposed to, but from how adults around them, especially their parent(s) deal with their environment. E.g. you can't shelter them from violence all their life, but you can show them how you behave when you encounter it.
I would explain to my children what was wrong with porn something like I presented here.
Regardless, humans are pretty resiliant things and they wont cripple themselves from being able to love someone through a few porn videos.
At least porn is honest about what it is and what it's for. I have more of a problem with the use of sex for selling products and in the media's obsession with how it should be and what is and isn't sexually attractive. People should be able to follow their own inclinations without having a magazine's definition thrust down their throats.
As to extra-marital sex being unnatural; I can't see how that belief can be sustained unless you believe that marriage has existed for as long as humans have. If so, you are entitled to believe that and I will leave it at a respectful disagreement as we are arguing from different frames of reference.
Good luck with the kid raising anyway. I'm sure they'll do alright.
Given the absence of international will to accomplish this, nature will take its course.
Strictly without implying any concious intention on the part of nature - it already does have an answer. The birthrate has been falling slowly but steadily throughout the developed West and sociologist place the cause quite firmly as increasing affluence and education. So if you'd like to reduce the world birth rate then the West should be encouraged to spread education and development through as many third world countries as possible as urgently as possible.
Quite simply put however, the greater proportion of the human race that are vegetarian, the higher you can set this sustainable limit. This goes for expanding life out to Mars or elsewhere. It'll only be vegetarians headed for the stars.;)
And aside from all this discussion of resource consumption - people who care about animal welfare tend to care about preventing wars, alleviating famines, and anything else that stops needless suffering. A planet full of vegetarians-by-choice would be a slightly more pleasant place to live I think.
The more important question is whether the US can sustain it.
An interesting question. For the US to be able to sustain such a lifestyle three things will be required. Firstly, that population remains stable. That's inclusive of all imigration. Secondly, that environmental damage can be sustained. Thirdly, that ways of preventing the outflux of capital to other countries are taken.
For the second point, a lot of rain forest is destroyed ever year to make way for cattle farming, to provide cheap beef to the US, China and Russia. As the ground does not replenish (due to soil erosion and nutrient depletion) this is an onging process. The estimate I heard was 200' per 1lb of steak, but it's the principle that's important. A valuable resource is being used up.
Regarding the third point - unfortunately for the non-business investing americans, the wealthy don't seem to be too concerned with keeping industry local. Which means that the global food market will make meat less financially viable for american citizens.
Anyway, my sole point was that a vegetarian society is more efficient. The question of whether the citizens of the US want to or can continue to tolerate that inefficiency in exchange for their burgers is something else entirely.
You're offering up the market cost of meat products as a check on its inefficiency?
You've just illustrated my point. A shift to vegetarian diets would free up more resource for other things because a vegetarian society makes better use of its environment. Less (much less) land would be consumed as farmland, less resources would be devoted to it as we would stop at the point of grain production instead of that just being an intial step in cattle farming and there would be considerably less environmental damage. I can expand on the environmental damage if you like. The world cannot sustain its people were they all to live on a the typical US diet. It's not a question of market forces. There aren't such resources.
Even today, the US meat industry is straining to satisfy demand in all sorts of damaging ways. For example, in order to produce the quantity of beef desired, cattle are no longer fed on hay and grass which is their natural diet, but on grain. This, in combination with massive quantities of hormones (so massive that the EU still wouldn not accept US beef) causes cattle to grow much faster. The downside is that such a rich diet would kill three quarters of the cattle with liver abcesses. The solution is to dose them with macro doses of antibiotics. I'm sure you're aware of the increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the health problems they cause. This practice is one of the major reasons.
You should also consider some of the other costs of a meat consuming society. For example, lower rates of cancer, lower rates of diabetes, congestive heart failure and others. Each of these has a knock on effect on the rest of society.
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The cookie program is probably your best bet on the grounds that you'll lose yourself a whole lot of legal hassle and gain yourself something more fulfilling community wise. There's just something nice about your neighbours bringing you dinner once a month or every couple of months. And there's something not nice about introducing money/legal agreements to friendships; or the calculator-fight that will break out when your connection goes down and they want re-imbursement or because you aren't there for tech support because you're on holiday, etc.
Saying you will provide this service on best-effort terms in return for cookies/lawn-mowing/kid-collecting etc is your best, friendliest, non-legally dangerous way of doing this. A great idea that I shall probably copy.
I'm unclear. Who get's the 2.6 million? The government they just chose?
I would like to think as you do that bands will skip the middleman and go right to publishing their music online, but that wouldn't just be a radical shift for the music industry...it'd basically be blowing it up and starting it all over again. The promotion machine that is the music industry is what bands need to try to make money, not the selling outlet.
First off, I'd better explain the logic behind my conclusion:
There are a lot of good bands out there. That's obvious because big labels have to get them from somewhere. But they are as you say, promotion machines - they don't want to just sell a band's music for the sake of it, they want to maximise profits and that's usually just a case of pumping up a few artists as high as they can rather than signing a broad range of quality music. What I'm getting at is that there are quality artists who haven't been signed, who wait around a long time to get signed. They now have an alternative. Some of these quality artists will be around on services like this and like Magnatune. They may want to get signed by a big label, but who would wait even just a year in the hopes that it would happen when you don't lose anything by selling this way (you can always stop) and you can get more exposure through it, make some money through it and finally, use it as a flag to wave to the big labels to say that you're worth promoting.
These artists will get publicity one way or another. Gigs and touring will have an effect, increasing uptake of broadcasting over the Internet will have ever increasing effects. If a band is sufficiently good, then everyone who likes their music promotes it to their friends and that will have an effect. Club DJs will have an effect with relevant genres. It will only take one or two bands to achieve success through these sort of outlets to really shake things up. And it will only take one or two because they will make such money out of owning themselves, that two things will happen. Firstly, somebody will fill that niche market of selling promotion in various forms. After all, you get agents for other forms of creative work (acting, writing, comedy). Secondly, established and semi-established artists will look at it and say, "I want 75%!" Hell, they might just do it for creative control once they've done their contracted albums for the label. These people don't need the leg-up that the big labels promise to newcomers.
I think it is definitely coming. The only thing that would stop it would be if it really were less profitable for bands to do it this way than to sell their DRM'd music through the labels. That's a seperate argument, but I'd be relatively happy to make it.
The good stuff is all in the story - a music download service that provides Ogg format music without DRM and a Linux client.
The bad stuff is that there doesn't seem to be much support for big name music. It'll come, and it will only come through sites like this leading the way. But for now, it looks like I still have to get most of my music from iTunes.
On the plus side, things like this do help little known independent bands sell to a much larger audience. And a lot of these bands are really good. The major labels take ages to notice something good. Especially if it's original. We'll start seeing bands become successful through sites like this soon, and when they do and they keep 75% of the profits, that'll be it for the music industry as they know it.
Mighty oaks, and all that...
What is wrong with revisiting an exsiting work? Why must the first version ever put out be the only one?
It needn't, there are many cases where an old film or song has been re-done to great effect. But it's pretty clear to me that the current slew of re-makes has nothing to do with the real artistic vision that is required to re-interpret something for the now. What it has to do with, is money.
Nobody dares risk money in the movie business. Risk is anathema. Risk is to do with innovation. If they've seen that something was successful the first time, then surely, the logic goes, it will be successful the second time.
However, that doesn't appear to stop people from losing sight of what made the original so good. I've seen the atrocious War of the Worlds film that you mention. It wasn't the first one however, it was the second that I'm aware of. Yes, they added a whole host of religious overtones that severely weakened the central theme of the story - that of mankind's helplessness and the cosmic randomness of their deliverance. If I remember, the film closed with people praying in a church and the war machines failing everywhere as the martians suddenly began to die. There was nothing subtle about it. This conflicted with Wells' "route of civilization" leaving a confusing melage of themes.
It's the same mindset that produces so many mediocre movies - you can't target anything other than the middle of the Bell Curve, or you're not maximising your profits. Of course, for people like myself who live on the extreme edges of the Bell Curve, it means most movies do not meet my standards in terms of originality, intelligence or moral depth.
I'm not saying that this is bad; it's not like they don't tell you up front.
I think that actually they don't. Obviously people with a brain think it through and can work out what is likely to happen, but the army recruiting ads I see on TV in the UK certainly don't give you any idea of what the army is like.
Examples I remember are fixing tanks, crossing ravines, saving crying children. I've never seen an advert that shows someone shot in the head, someone in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, someone being bullied to tears, someone being kept away from his family, partner, children and none of them knowing if he's coming back.
Basic training is conditioning people to obey orders and become capable of killing (something that most people could only do in self-defence). They use brain-washing techniques to turn you into someone else.
If you want good examples, you could google for the Deepcut scandels at the moment, an army training camp where they've have multiple cases of suicide, rape and chronic bullying. I think any of the recruits their would tell you they had no idea what they were getting into.
Anyway, pray that a draft isn't re-instated at any point, because otherwise every young man will be put through this training/conditioning.
Be thankful you're not in the UK
Drifting very slightly off topic, but if you want to add one more liberty-crushing bill to your list, you could try the Civil Contingencies Amendments passed just last month.
In addition to granting the government the power to confiscate property (permanently), ban meetings of any group and put restrictions on people's movement within the country, all without judicial oversight or evidence required; it lets the incumbent government defer elections indefinitely.
It's strikingly similar to laws that Hitler passed to enable him to assume complete control.
Already, this lab has had problems with foreign collaborators who are not from Canada, Europe or Australia being denied entry to the country.
Not only are you losing those graduates who would like to collaborate in research in the US, but can't because of new restrictions and enforcement. The US is also losing those people who would have liked to study there five years ago but now simply don't want to because of it's international policies.
An interesting story I read recently was this, in which we find that applications at university in Britain for Middle Eastern studies are rising and applications for American Studies are plummeting as: "people shied away from courses that might label them pro-US in the wake of the war in Iraq."
And this is in Britain! I imaging most of the rest of the World feels even more strongly. The US simply isn't very inviting to anyone right now, regardless of how friendly individual citizens may be.
I fear that greed is a feeling as natural as hunger or love.
Greed is normally restrained by empathy. Would you take the food from your partner, or your children or your friends for yourself? Would you even steal money from casual acquaintances? Almost certainly not. In all these cases, these are people you can see and recieve feedback from.
In the business world, you seldom see your victims. In actuality, steps are taken to avoid it. Those who are rich often psychologically divorce the poor into a seperate category, denying they are people like themselves. It's a way of cutting off that feedback.
Sorry for the belated reply. I only have time to read
Assuming you're still out there and reading this, I'll just post my reply into your own.
Oil is dissappearing at an ever increasing rate. And long before it runs out, it will become extremely expensive. If Helium-3 is viable, then it will become the only alternative. Hydro-electric, windpower, solar chimneys, are not going to be economically viable options. Remember, we're not talking about last resorts, we're talking about remaining indutrially competitive. Everything else, including being able to spend vast amounts of your GDP on the military, follows from that.
Did I say anything about a single shipment? No, I did not. You don't imagine that any nation that invests massively in orbital-range weaponry is going to produce just one missile?
That's a big assumption. Helium-3 is light (it's helium). That makes it a lot more economical to ship than metals (or crystals).
You were talking about blowing up cities. That's not sound economics - it only makes sense in defensive wars, not wars of aggression (i.e. those waged for control of resources, such as Helium-3). I made it clear that this was what I was talking about. Blowing up shuttles however is clearly a different case - it is territory control. What makes it very different to today, very different to blowing up oil-tankers in your example, is that there are multiple sources of oil. There would not be multiple sources of Helium-3, just the one "pipeline" as I said.
Nevertheless, we do see warfare over control of the energy supply today, so I think it likely you could see the same over Helium-3. The invasion of Iraq is about Oil in two ways. Firstly, control of Iraq's oil reserves and a US base of operations in the Middle East to dominate other oil-producing states in the region. Secondly, opening up a land route to the old soviet oil fields. This allows the US to stymie the development of China. I don't see this as a good thing. Pearl Harbour happened because the US blocked off Japan's access to vitally needed oil supplies (they were at war at the time). And the US is trying to back China into the same corner? Very bad. Oil is running out and if Helium-3 becomes viable, then I would say the US has demonstrated its willingness to fight for monopoly of the energy supply.
I'm sure someone's throwing stones, bottles and molotov cocktails at YOU you won't protect yourself.
Molotov cocktails? I was talking about the UK (and probably applies in the USA also), where demonstrators are wielding nothing more dangerous (or illeagal) than placards. And yet you get the police emotionlessly filming each protestor, capturing everyone's face for their files. That is both an intimidation tactic and deeply suspicious. It implies that you are going on some sort of list of adversaries / suspects for doing something that is perfectly right, and often a very noble cause.
In the UK a minority element cause some property damage, but not physical assault. Of course it could turn into that if the police start pursuing people with water cannon, riot shields and dogs.
Yes. But short of maintaining a military presence in any country you don't like, you can't stop them getting any energy. And look how difficult that is. The USA has by far the most heavily funded military in the world and it's really struggling to hold on to ONE country - Iraq - and the cost is staggering.
If all the world's energy is coming through one "pipeline" however - orbital Heilum-3 supplies - then control can be exerted through controling this one route. Much easier, less dangerous and with a greater area of influence (the World).
If you still see warfare as being about blowing each other up then you have a lot to learn. War is waged for profit or defence. If the US were the agressor then profit could be the only motive. Control of the energy supply is compatible with this purpose. Blowing up bits of other countries with ICBMs is not.
Too late. It is already against the law to, say, wear a balaclava at a protest.
Yes. Doens't seem to stop the coppers wearing concealing face gear or getting vicious when someone points a video camera back at THEM.
Yes, I've noticed that of course. But I've often had a look at the pattern when I'm sitting somewhere and tried to puzzle out a sequence that would be successful. The ones that swivel are easier and these ones I think can be done - it's sort of a logic puzzle.
The dark orb ones are harder though because you don't know where they're pointing. For these ones you'd have to wear a hat.
Can a laser burn out a video camera? Well, obviously a laser of sufficient power can, but I'm curious if cameras are especially sensitive to such technology, such that a fairly low-power device can ruin it?
I'm surprised more people don't paint bomb the CCTV cameras, actually. Would be fairly simple and a fun game for vandals who wanted to actually annoy those in power.
Seriously, are the cameras going to be set to raise an alert when someone walks down the street that they can't distinguish? Will police occasionally stop you and ask you to remove your stetson so that CCTV can calm down?
How reliable can this be? And if they can scan and recognize a face this effectively in the data, can we reproduce it in latex a la Mission Impossible... well enough to fool the system anyway?
And do we want the government to have this much data on people?
I can certainly answer the last question.
The moon isn't exactly a small place. What's to stop some other country from setting up a He3 mining base on some remote part of the moon?
I should have gone into more detail. I'm not suggesting soldiers in space suits marching along, lunar rovers with rail guns strapped to the top or whatever. In any case, it's too expensive to ship the marines into orbit - it's costing a fortune just to supply them in Iraq.
What I'm talking about is control of the supply route to and from the moon / elsewhere. You can mine all the Helium-3 you want but if someone has a missile system that can blow the crap out of the shuttle that brings it back then they have control. The issue is that in Space, there is no terrain to hide behind which for all its size, makes it no different to guarding a narrow pass if you have weapons with the range to cover it - which they could. Sun Tzu say: "When one tiger guard the ford, 10,000 deer cannot pass."
Sure, if someone gets complete control of the world's main energy source, this'll almost certainly be illegal (along with competing energy technologies, such as fission and dirty (H2-H3) fusion), but it's questionable whether terrestrial laws have any force outside the atmosphere.
As we've seen with Iraq, neither the US nor the UK have much compunction about violating international law in their efforts to control the World's energy sources, despite the UK's role in establishing such international law in the first place. There is a treaty preventing the militarization of Space. The US is currently ignoring it and researching ways to keep absolute control of Earth orbit.
Ultimately they'll fail and find it's a long way back down.
If 25 tons can power the US for a year... really... it's not that difficult to move 25 tons of anything from the moon to the earth for the billions we spend on electricity a year.
Assuming people aren't trying to shoot you down while you're doing this. The political reality may be that one country attempts to get a lock on this. After all, one country in particular is ploughing lots of money into space based warfare. Given recent belligerence I can see the US trying to get a lock on the World's energy supplies if we get to the stage of depending on lunar He3.
What I'm basically getting at is that however cheap it may be to ship 25 tons of material (don't forget mining and refining), the true cost may be determined by military power and commercial refinement rights (enforced by same).
That's if people don't manage to get their governments back under control by then.
Generally speaking, it's a clear sign of laziness or incompetence on the part of a half-assed programmer to think he needs root for everything.
Amen. The OP said that his company had a large IT infrastructure which means they are worth the vendors business. I urge him to apply whatever pressure he can on the vendors to change their ways.
That way, little places like where I currently work might get the same benefit!
I'm also totally baffled by this RFID craze.
I'll offer two non-mutually exclusive reasons.
First possibility: Someone can make money out of this. We therefore have an incentive for some parties to play up the supposed advantages of this technology.
Second possibility: Some people at "the top" aren't very tech savvy and are easy prey for the former group.
Third possibility: Some people at the top are under constant pressure to be doing something, even if we now have a system that works as well as can reasonably be expected (there comes a point when the resources required to achieve 100% are less than the damage 0.5% that get through). However, if you have to be "doing something" when there is nothing to be done, then you're going to start going backwards.
It may well be that there is a spike in consumption during "westernization." I'd be interested in seeing any demographics on this. But perhaps, in the same way that technology can be adopted by groups that didn't originate it themself, perhaps western lifestyles can be adopted by neighbouring groups - including some of those cultural traits that lower birth rate. I think you may find that the empowerment of women is really the key to it.
Shame you found vegetarianism disatisfying. As with many other things, you need to go about it properly. It's no good just dropping something from your life and not filling the gap with anything. May I recommend this?
On the subject of vegetarianism and aggression:
My hypothesis is that vegetarians are not sufficiently aggressive personality types (focussing instead on nurturing and the elimination of suffering) to push back frontiers which often requires a person with a somewhat brutal "I don't care whose toes I step on" point of view.
Well, there was always Hitler. On the opposite end of the scale you could consider Ghandi whose methods may have been "peaceful" but he was a classic aggressive personality type - enjoyed confrontation and demolishing his opponents verbally very much. I myself have been vegetarian all my life and most people find me quite pushy. My experience, if anything, is that those who choose to be vegetarian are making a break with tradition and other people's values. It helps to be a pioneering "I don't care whose toes I step on" type person to do that. If anecdotal experience is valid at all, then I've actually found the vegetarians I know to be more able to stand up for themselves than anything else.
I can't help thinking of Ceasars lines in the play:
"Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look, such men as he are dangerous. Let me have men about me who are fat."
It ain't the hamburger stuffing ones you have to worry about.
If it is any consolation, it's my belief that children will learn primarily not from what they are or are not exposed to, but from how adults around them, especially their parent(s) deal with their environment. E.g. you can't shelter them from violence all their life, but you can show them how you behave when you encounter it.
I would explain to my children what was wrong with porn something like I presented here.
Regardless, humans are pretty resiliant things and they wont cripple themselves from being able to love someone through a few porn videos.
At least porn is honest about what it is and what it's for. I have more of a problem with the use of sex for selling products and in the media's obsession with how it should be and what is and isn't sexually attractive. People should be able to follow their own inclinations without having a magazine's definition thrust down their throats.
As to extra-marital sex being unnatural; I can't see how that belief can be sustained unless you believe that marriage has existed for as long as humans have. If so, you are entitled to believe that and I will leave it at a respectful disagreement as we are arguing from different frames of reference.
Good luck with the kid raising anyway. I'm sure they'll do alright.
Given the absence of international will to accomplish this, nature will take its course.
Strictly without implying any concious intention on the part of nature - it already does have an answer. The birthrate has been falling slowly but steadily throughout the developed West and sociologist place the cause quite firmly as increasing affluence and education. So if you'd like to reduce the world birth rate then the West should be encouraged to spread education and development through as many third world countries as possible as urgently as possible.
Quite simply put however, the greater proportion of the human race that are vegetarian, the higher you can set this sustainable limit. This goes for expanding life out to Mars or elsewhere. It'll only be vegetarians headed for the stars.
And aside from all this discussion of resource consumption - people who care about animal welfare tend to care about preventing wars, alleviating famines, and anything else that stops needless suffering. A planet full of vegetarians-by-choice would be a slightly more pleasant place to live I think.
The more important question is whether the US can sustain it.
An interesting question. For the US to be able to sustain such a lifestyle three things will be required. Firstly, that population remains stable. That's inclusive of all imigration. Secondly, that environmental damage can be sustained. Thirdly, that ways of preventing the outflux of capital to other countries are taken.
For the second point, a lot of rain forest is destroyed ever year to make way for cattle farming, to provide cheap beef to the US, China and Russia. As the ground does not replenish (due to soil erosion and nutrient depletion) this is an onging process. The estimate I heard was 200' per 1lb of steak, but it's the principle that's important. A valuable resource is being used up.
Regarding the third point - unfortunately for the non-business investing americans, the wealthy don't seem to be too concerned with keeping industry local. Which means that the global food market will make meat less financially viable for american citizens.
Anyway, my sole point was that a vegetarian society is more efficient. The question of whether the citizens of the US want to or can continue to tolerate that inefficiency in exchange for their burgers is something else entirely.
Incidentally - link . Recommend it!
You're offering up the market cost of meat products as a check on its inefficiency?
You've just illustrated my point. A shift to vegetarian diets would free up more resource for other things because a vegetarian society makes better use of its environment. Less (much less) land would be consumed as farmland, less resources would be devoted to it as we would stop at the point of grain production instead of that just being an intial step in cattle farming and there would be considerably less environmental damage. I can expand on the environmental damage if you like. The world cannot sustain its people were they all to live on a the typical US diet. It's not a question of market forces. There aren't such resources.
Even today, the US meat industry is straining to satisfy demand in all sorts of damaging ways. For example, in order to produce the quantity of beef desired, cattle are no longer fed on hay and grass which is their natural diet, but on grain. This, in combination with massive quantities of hormones (so massive that the EU still wouldn not accept US beef) causes cattle to grow much faster. The downside is that such a rich diet would kill three quarters of the cattle with liver abcesses. The solution is to dose them with macro doses of antibiotics. I'm sure you're aware of the increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the health problems they cause. This practice is one of the major reasons.
You should also consider some of the other costs of a meat consuming society. For example, lower rates of cancer, lower rates of diabetes, congestive heart failure and others. Each of these has a knock on effect on the rest of society.