Your idea only works if Y says: "Oh, we have enough profits as it is. Why would we follow the market and raise the prices too? "
First, that's ok: the goal of the carbon tax is not to reduce the price of whatever product. It's to reduce carbon emissions. This goal will already be reached when company Y takes some market share from polluting company X.
Second, you assume X and Y are the only companies able to provide whatever product. But this is what competition is about - if Y sells at too much of a mark-up, somebody will create company Z, selling the same or a similar thing at a lower mark-up, and still making a profit. Of course, there are all kinds of wrinkles: we can talk about monopolies, natural or not, about regulation, price caps, cabbages and kings, but that would be somewhat besides the point of the discussion about carbon taxes.
The punishing taxes are necessary because company X is externalizing costs: it's using polluting technologies and not investing to reduce carbon emissions, and, by doing so, they push the costs on everybody else, who have to pay for cleaning up company X's mess. This gives company X an unfair advantage over more responsible company Y.
The taxes are a means to get them to rebalance the sheet, and force company X to deal with their own garbage.
If what you say is true then solar power plants would be cheaper than coal power plants, electric cars would be cheaper that gasoline cars, and electric planes would be cheaper to fly than jet aircraft.
You're probably joking, but if you are, it's a rather poor joke. Unfortunately, on the Internet it isn't always easy to say, so, on the off-chance you're serious, I'll explain why this poor attempt to reductio ad absurdum is fallacious:
You're assuming that any gizmo to which a carbon tax is applied automatically becomes economically non-viable. This would however only happen if the cost of gasoline gizmo + carbon tax is higher than the cost of the equivalent electric gizmo. This doesn't follow in any way - because you don't know either the costs of the gizmos or the value of the carbon tax added on top.
Understand that the goal of a carbon tax isn't to switch everybody to electric. It's to reduce carbon emissions. If this is done via better efficiency in gasoline gizmos, via better capture of emitted carbon, or, indeed, by making the equivalent electric gizmo cheaper than the gasoline one with carbon tax, the effect is still a reduction in total carbon emissions.
Because the companies paying the carbon tax would just swallow the cost and not pass on the cost to the consumer.
Ah. I find this an excellent opportunity to let you know about those fancy new ideas named "market economy" and "competition". The way it works is: say company X, paying the carbon tax, decides to pass the extra cost to the customer. But another company, Y, who has better technology or better process, generates less or no carbon emissions, so it will not pay the same tax, and won't have any extra cost to pass to customers! And, here's the trick, customers will say "why should we pay the bigger price for company X, when we can get a similar product more cheaply from company Y?".
What do you think will happen next? Why, company X will have lower sales! So they'll cut their production, and therefore reduce their carbon emissions - which is what you wanted to begin with! It's like magic, isn't it?
I'm glad I was able to inform you about those bleeding edge concepts; I think they have a lot of potential - maybe we can even create a whole economic system based on some of that!
That doesn't seem true either. All the documents I saw are unanimous in stating Google neverhonored the flag, even when they were petitioned to do so. And they only came out publicly about it last year. So, if you can find any proof that Google used to honor DNT, but stopped doing so after it was enabled by default in IE, please post it.
No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.
Bullshit. It was absolutely not a reasonable solution, and it was not "sabotaged" by Microsoft. It was a publicity stunt by Google and Mozilla, and its goal was to block the pro-consumer design proposed to the W3C by Microsoft. Briefly, the MS proposal boiled down to something like uBlock/AdBlock built directly into the browser. Google couldn't abide this, so they forced the current DNT design through the W3C standardization committee instead. Here are a few reasons why this is not a reasonable, pro-consumer design:
- there is no way for a consumer to enforce their choice against a non-cooperating tracking site
- there isn't even a way to confirm whether your DNT request was honored or not
- there is no way to find out in advance whether a certain site will honor DNT at all
- it's designed as opt-out by default, which is a cynical ploy to profit from the fact that the majority of consumers aren't very technically knowledgeable. Any privacy-related settings should be opt-in by design By making the option default to on in IE, Microsoft exposed the uselessness of the "standard". The subsequent spat raised awareness about how much of a lie Google's DNT is. This is a good thing - lies need to be challenged. I previously posted some more details on how the alleged standard came to be, with links. I refer you to that post.
The "Do Not Track" setting has no legal authority. It was a marketing scheme (scam) by Microsoft
You are either extremely misinformed, or intentionally lying. The current scammy DNT protocol was proposed by Google and Mozilla, with the express purpose of blocking the competing Microsoft design. Microsoft's design (proposed as a W3C standard) did not rely on the benevolence of the tracking sites. Here's a relevant quote from the article cited above:
Microsoft uses a third method. Known as Tracking Protection Lists, it relies on predefined lists of domains known to track your behavior via ad technologies.
Basically, Microsoft's proposal was AdBlock/uBlock built in every browser. Trackers were blocked on the client, without any request being even sent to tracker sites. Control and choice belonged with customers.
Google wouldn't however accept the pro-consumer solution, so they forced their scammy design through the standard committee. This blocked the much better Microsoft proposal. And, after sabotaging the standardization of DNT, Google doesn't even honor their own protocol.
If the rapee consents (and is competent to consent; of legal age, of sound mind, etc.)... it does make it okay.
But that's not Google's modus operandi. A customer (competent, of legal age, of sound mind, with up to date vaccinations and a document from the neighborhood association certifying he's a good guy) who explicitly disables location tracking, still gets tracked. It's more like
"I'm a rapist - do you want to be raped?" "No, please" "OK, I won't" - proceeds to rape you.
>I wonder if we'll end up with an online version of Spy vs. Spy
All the better, says I. I'd rather have both sides' secrets public, than either only one's, or, even worse, none at all. Quoting Erasmus: Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
99.9999999999% of people invest for the sole reason of making money. Period.
You really shouldn't make such categorical statements without having any clue about the subject in discussion. You're wrong by at least 19.9999999999%.
From this study, published in 2017: more than 20% of the assets under professional investment management in the U.S. are in SRI (Socially Responsible Investing ) assets. People who put their money in those vehicles care both about making money, and about the ethics thereof.
I find it disappointing that people expect "free" services like Gmail, YouTube and Google Search and somehow expect it to be free when in reality systems like that cost millions of dollars to run / maintain and upgrade.
You only find it "disappointing" because your understanding of the issue is incorrect and your information incomplete. This is absolutely not a fair exchange, where people choose to use Google's services and pay with their privacy. People aren't snooped on as a result of them using the free services - that would imply a choice, and with Google there is no choice. Google collects data on everybody, all the time, including people who don't use any of their services. Nobody can choose to not use GMail or whatever, and stop the tracking. All you can do as a normal person is fight a rear-guard action to maintain some privacy here and there, by rooting your phone, avoiding all of Google's services, blocking their sites, paying cash at stores (because Google collects your credit card purchases too, even though you don't use any of their services to make a payment). But there is no opt out from the snooping - online or offline.
If your goal is to avoid the smart TV's snooping, isn't replacing its smarts with an Android device rather self-defeating? You still get the Google snoop-ware, just in another box. Or is there some device running a de-Googled Android available?
I care about whether the product made with the code can be modified or not. THAT is what freedom means.
No, that's not what freedom means. You're playing the redefinition game. There is too much of that going around, from people redefining "pro-life" to allow for shooting of doctors to people redefining "racism" so it only applies to whites. Also, you're trying to pull a fast one, by sneakily changing the subject of the discussion from the original code (whose freedom is in question) to new code, written by users of the original code. Neither tactic is nice.
You should really pick a different hill to stand on. Say that the GPL is better for the economy, because it makes more code available to the public, or that it provides better security, because you can examine the code an enterprise uses in the devices it sells you, or that it forms an ideological framework that may be beneficial to society. Those points are all better arguable, and probably true. But don't insist it provides more freedom. This is doublethink. Look at your own posts, see the tortured logic and low semantic games you're forced to use to argue your position, and draw the inevitable conclusion.
Indeed it is (and it doesn't even need AirPlay for this). I posted this before, but here's how you can disable some spyware - until they change this in the next mandatory update (for your own good, of course).
Note that even the most restrictive settings won't disable all snooping - if your TV is connected to the Internet it will report on you.
Sometimes people will not move to something better until they have no other choice.
Yup, people should really shut up about "choice" and do what their betters tell them to.And if they're still reluctant, then choice needs to be forcefully taken away from them, so they get on with the program, dammit.
Glad to see you subscribe to the courageous attitude that brought us such triumphs as the Office ribbon, the notch, Windows 8, no headphone jacks and New Coke!
Imagine a browser that converts certain sites into 1990s-style retinal-torture pastels, with flashing backgrounds and headlines on fire.
I fail to see the problem, as long as this is the user's choice. Maybe some people like 1990 style. Other people may choose to see black text on a white page, or green text on a dark background. Yet other people may have some eye problem and pick the combination of colors, fonts and sizes that let them see best. It's unclear to me why you'd think users having choices is bad.
Consider the reverse though: what if the page "artist" decides to use the "1990s-style retinal-torture pastels" etc., and users would be forced to suffer through it if they wanted to access the contents at all? How would this be in any way good?
ALL Mac indie software has (by necessity) followed Apple through architecture and pretty dramatic OS changes, especially in terms of frameworks
It would be more correct to say some indie software has followed Apple despite all the changes.
is Windows programming today really so different from older Win32 development)
I'm perplexed that you appear to think this is an issue. On the contrary, I see the concern for consistency and the care about backward compatibility as huge advantages of the Win32 platform over the Apple offering, both for programmers and for users.
the Orwellian model is more economically viable and therefore will out-compete the individualist model
I very much doubt that's the case, for any normal definition of "viable" - at least for the long term. The centralized nature of an authoritarian economy is advantageous for single large scale pharaonic projects, where a lot of resources can be focused on some goal, with no concern about costs. This is how Russia managed to get the hydrogen bomb so quickly, and how they launched the first satellite and sent the first man in space. But in an Orwellian economy there is no incentive to improve efficiency. The Orwellian state's goal is to maintain the status quo. As an inefficient economy reduces the standard of living of the people, the Orwellian state compensates by lying about it (see the passage in 1984 about Winston's chocolate ratio being "raised"), repressing complaints, and especially keeping ideological purity. War is often a choice, since it helps channel the population's anger outwards, it provides potential material gains from conquered territories and allows the state to suspend peacetime laws and mechanisms that control it. For a real life example, see all the former Communist countries; none of them could compete in productivity with the Western developed economies, even if some, like Russia, had lots of natural resources.
China is the same; they have managed to grow a lot over the last decades, by basically waging a relentless economic war on the West - plundering their know-how and inventions, using very asymmetrical tariffs and laws, using state intervention to help strategic companies in strategic areas of the economy, and ignoring international laws and regulations that disadvantaged them. But now this model is becoming unstable, because the rest of the world is starting to push back, and because, as Chinese people get better informed about the rest of the world, they're becoming unsatisfied with the status quo. The Chinese state reacts by becoming more and more Orwellian: thoughtcrime is a pretext to filter the information coming into China (see how Google is forbidden there); Big Brother tracks people via RFID and face recognition; thought police enforces conformity (for example, via social credit).
I don't think any of that will work longer term; my worry is that the Chinese state may emulate Oceania and resort to war as a means to keep the population under control.
I believe Samsung smart TVs both snoop on youand force ads on the menu screen. There'll be a cold day in hell before I buy a Samsung TV - even though they look ok from other points of view.
It's annoying that you can't find any large screen dumb TVs at a reasonable price point anymore.
Your rant completely fails to take into account the fact that Facebook was (is?) generating shadow profiles of non-Facebook users across the internet.
Even so, this doesn't make GP's points invalid. It just shows yet another way for Facebook to be sleazy.
However, the GP is right: Facebook (and Google) users ignore the huge privacy invasion they subject themselves to, and, in the process, they are spoiling the internet for the rest. Facebook and Google users happily leak other people's personal information to the data vampires, by putting their contact info online, by tagging them in photos, and via hundreds of other mechanisms. Moreover, the large mass of oblivious users lets the companies argue that whatever way they find to destroy your privacy is "industry standard" or "community accepted usage", and shouldn't be legislated against.
Slashdot Mirror
Your idea only works if Y says: "Oh, we have enough profits as it is. Why would we follow the market and raise the prices too? "
First, that's ok: the goal of the carbon tax is not to reduce the price of whatever product. It's to reduce carbon emissions. This goal will already be reached when company Y takes some market share from polluting company X.
Second, you assume X and Y are the only companies able to provide whatever product. But this is what competition is about - if Y sells at too much of a mark-up, somebody will create company Z, selling the same or a similar thing at a lower mark-up, and still making a profit. Of course, there are all kinds of wrinkles: we can talk about monopolies, natural or not, about regulation, price caps, cabbages and kings, but that would be somewhat besides the point of the discussion about carbon taxes.
The punishing taxes are necessary because company X is externalizing costs: it's using polluting technologies and not investing to reduce carbon emissions, and, by doing so, they push the costs on everybody else, who have to pay for cleaning up company X's mess. This gives company X an unfair advantage over more responsible company Y.
The taxes are a means to get them to rebalance the sheet, and force company X to deal with their own garbage.
If what you say is true then solar power plants would be cheaper than coal power plants, electric cars would be cheaper that gasoline cars, and electric planes would be cheaper to fly than jet aircraft.
You're probably joking, but if you are, it's a rather poor joke. Unfortunately, on the Internet it isn't always easy to say, so, on the off-chance you're serious, I'll explain why this poor attempt to reductio ad absurdum is fallacious:
You're assuming that any gizmo to which a carbon tax is applied automatically becomes economically non-viable. This would however only happen if the cost of gasoline gizmo + carbon tax is higher than the cost of the equivalent electric gizmo. This doesn't follow in any way - because you don't know either the costs of the gizmos or the value of the carbon tax added on top.
Understand that the goal of a carbon tax isn't to switch everybody to electric. It's to reduce carbon emissions. If this is done via better efficiency in gasoline gizmos, via better capture of emitted carbon, or, indeed, by making the equivalent electric gizmo cheaper than the gasoline one with carbon tax, the effect is still a reduction in total carbon emissions.
Because the companies paying the carbon tax would just swallow the cost and not pass on the cost to the consumer.
Ah. I find this an excellent opportunity to let you know about those fancy new ideas named "market economy" and "competition".
The way it works is: say company X, paying the carbon tax, decides to pass the extra cost to the customer. But another company, Y, who has better technology or better process, generates less or no carbon emissions, so it will not pay the same tax, and won't have any extra cost to pass to customers! And, here's the trick, customers will say "why should we pay the bigger price for company X, when we can get a similar product more cheaply from company Y?".
What do you think will happen next? Why, company X will have lower sales! So they'll cut their production, and therefore reduce their carbon emissions - which is what you wanted to begin with! It's like magic, isn't it?
I'm glad I was able to inform you about those bleeding edge concepts; I think they have a lot of potential - maybe we can even create a whole economic system based on some of that!
Google, initially honored the flag
That doesn't seem true either. All the documents I saw are unanimous in stating Google never honored the flag, even when they were petitioned to do so. And they only came out publicly about it last year.
So, if you can find any proof that Google used to honor DNT, but stopped doing so after it was enabled by default in IE, please post it.
No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.
Bullshit. It was absolutely not a reasonable solution, and it was not "sabotaged" by Microsoft. It was a publicity stunt by Google and Mozilla, and its goal was to block the pro-consumer design proposed to the W3C by Microsoft. Briefly, the MS proposal boiled down to something like uBlock/AdBlock built directly into the browser. Google couldn't abide this, so they forced the current DNT design through the W3C standardization committee instead.
Here are a few reasons why this is not a reasonable, pro-consumer design:
- there is no way for a consumer to enforce their choice against a non-cooperating tracking site
- there isn't even a way to confirm whether your DNT request was honored or not
- there is no way to find out in advance whether a certain site will honor DNT at all
- it's designed as opt-out by default, which is a cynical ploy to profit from the fact that the majority of consumers aren't very technically knowledgeable. Any privacy-related settings should be opt-in by design
By making the option default to on in IE, Microsoft exposed the uselessness of the "standard". The subsequent spat raised awareness about how much of a lie Google's DNT is. This is a good thing - lies need to be challenged.
I previously posted some more details on how the alleged standard came to be, with links. I refer you to that post.
The "Do Not Track" setting has no legal authority. It was a marketing scheme (scam) by Microsoft
You are either extremely misinformed, or intentionally lying. The current scammy DNT protocol was proposed by Google and Mozilla, with the express purpose of blocking the competing Microsoft design.
Microsoft's design (proposed as a W3C standard) did not rely on the benevolence of the tracking sites. Here's a relevant quote from the article cited above:
Microsoft uses a third method. Known as Tracking Protection Lists, it relies on predefined lists of domains known to track your behavior via ad technologies.
Basically, Microsoft's proposal was AdBlock/uBlock built in every browser. Trackers were blocked on the client, without any request being even sent to tracker sites. Control and choice belonged with customers.
Google wouldn't however accept the pro-consumer solution, so they forced their scammy design through the standard committee. This blocked the much better Microsoft proposal. And, after sabotaging the standardization of DNT, Google doesn't even honor their own protocol.
If the rapee consents (and is competent to consent; of legal age, of sound mind, etc.)... it does make it okay.
But that's not Google's modus operandi. A customer (competent, of legal age, of sound mind, with up to date vaccinations and a document from the neighborhood association certifying he's a good guy) who explicitly disables location tracking, still gets tracked. It's more like
"I'm a rapist - do you want to be raped?"
"No, please"
"OK, I won't" - proceeds to rape you.
GP didn't say it has to be your balls.
>I wonder if we'll end up with an online version of Spy vs. Spy
All the better, says I. I'd rather have both sides' secrets public, than either only one's, or, even worse, none at all. Quoting Erasmus: Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
99.9999999999% of people invest for the sole reason of making money. Period.
You really shouldn't make such categorical statements without having any clue about the subject in discussion. You're wrong by at least 19.9999999999%.
From this study, published in 2017: more than 20% of the assets under professional investment management in the U.S. are in SRI (Socially Responsible Investing ) assets. People who put their money in those vehicles care both about making money, and about the ethics thereof.
Do you want World War Z?! Because that's how you get World War Z!
I find it disappointing that people expect "free" services like Gmail, YouTube and Google Search and somehow expect it to be free when in reality systems like that cost millions of dollars to run / maintain and upgrade.
You only find it "disappointing" because your understanding of the issue is incorrect and your information incomplete.
This is absolutely not a fair exchange, where people choose to use Google's services and pay with their privacy. People aren't snooped on as a result of them using the free services - that would imply a choice, and with Google there is no choice. Google collects data on everybody, all the time, including people who don't use any of their services. Nobody can choose to not use GMail or whatever, and stop the tracking. All you can do as a normal person is fight a rear-guard action to maintain some privacy here and there, by rooting your phone, avoiding all of Google's services, blocking their sites, paying cash at stores (because Google collects your credit card purchases too, even though you don't use any of their services to make a payment). But there is no opt out from the snooping - online or offline.
Or you could buy an Android box for $60.
If your goal is to avoid the smart TV's snooping, isn't replacing its smarts with an Android device rather self-defeating? You still get the Google snoop-ware, just in another box. Or is there some device running a de-Googled Android available?
I care about whether the product made with the code can be modified or not. THAT is what freedom means.
No, that's not what freedom means. You're playing the redefinition game. There is too much of that going around, from people redefining "pro-life" to allow for shooting of doctors to people redefining "racism" so it only applies to whites. Also, you're trying to pull a fast one, by sneakily changing the subject of the discussion from the original code (whose freedom is in question) to new code, written by users of the original code. Neither tactic is nice.
You should really pick a different hill to stand on. Say that the GPL is better for the economy, because it makes more code available to the public, or that it provides better security, because you can examine the code an enterprise uses in the devices it sells you, or that it forms an ideological framework that may be beneficial to society. Those points are all better arguable, and probably true. But don't insist it provides more freedom. This is doublethink. Look at your own posts, see the tortured logic and low semantic games you're forced to use to argue your position, and draw the inevitable conclusion.
Ron Wyden, a senator from Oregon, said in a statement, "This is a nightmare for national security and the personal safety of anyone with a phone."
So let's hurry up and do nothing about it!
Is it [Samsung smart TV] indeed listening?
Indeed it is (and it doesn't even need AirPlay for this). I posted this before, but here's how you can disable some spyware - until they change this in the next mandatory update (for your own good, of course).
Note that even the most restrictive settings won't disable all snooping - if your TV is connected to the Internet it will report on you.
Sometimes people will not move to something better until they have no other choice.
Yup, people should really shut up about "choice" and do what their betters tell them to.And if they're still reluctant, then choice needs to be forcefully taken away from them, so they get on with the program, dammit.
Glad to see you subscribe to the courageous attitude that brought us such triumphs as the Office ribbon, the notch, Windows 8, no headphone jacks and New Coke!
Imagine a browser that converts certain sites into 1990s-style retinal-torture pastels, with flashing backgrounds and headlines on fire.
I fail to see the problem, as long as this is the user's choice. Maybe some people like 1990 style. Other people may choose to see black text on a white page, or green text on a dark background. Yet other people may have some eye problem and pick the combination of colors, fonts and sizes that let them see best. It's unclear to me why you'd think users having choices is bad.
Consider the reverse though: what if the page "artist" decides to use the "1990s-style retinal-torture pastels" etc., and users would be forced to suffer through it if they wanted to access the contents at all? How would this be in any way good?
ALL Mac indie software has (by necessity) followed Apple through architecture and pretty dramatic OS changes, especially in terms of frameworks
It would be more correct to say some indie software has followed Apple despite all the changes.
is Windows programming today really so different from older Win32 development)
I'm perplexed that you appear to think this is an issue. On the contrary, I see the concern for consistency and the care about backward compatibility as huge advantages of the Win32 platform over the Apple offering, both for programmers and for users.
the Orwellian model is more economically viable and therefore will out-compete the individualist model
I very much doubt that's the case, for any normal definition of "viable" - at least for the long term. The centralized nature of an authoritarian economy is advantageous for single large scale pharaonic projects, where a lot of resources can be focused on some goal, with no concern about costs. This is how Russia managed to get the hydrogen bomb so quickly, and how they launched the first satellite and sent the first man in space. But in an Orwellian economy there is no incentive to improve efficiency. The Orwellian state's goal is to maintain the status quo. As an inefficient economy reduces the standard of living of the people, the Orwellian state compensates by lying about it (see the passage in 1984 about Winston's chocolate ratio being "raised"), repressing complaints, and especially keeping ideological purity. War is often a choice, since it helps channel the population's anger outwards, it provides potential material gains from conquered territories and allows the state to suspend peacetime laws and mechanisms that control it. For a real life example, see all the former Communist countries; none of them could compete in productivity with the Western developed economies, even if some, like Russia, had lots of natural resources.
China is the same; they have managed to grow a lot over the last decades, by basically waging a relentless economic war on the West - plundering their know-how and inventions, using very asymmetrical tariffs and laws, using state intervention to help strategic companies in strategic areas of the economy, and ignoring international laws and regulations that disadvantaged them. But now this model is becoming unstable, because the rest of the world is starting to push back, and because, as Chinese people get better informed about the rest of the world, they're becoming unsatisfied with the status quo. The Chinese state reacts by becoming more and more Orwellian: thoughtcrime is a pretext to filter the information coming into China (see how Google is forbidden there); Big Brother tracks people via RFID and face recognition; thought police enforces conformity (for example, via social credit).
I don't think any of that will work longer term; my worry is that the Chinese state may emulate Oceania and resort to war as a means to keep the population under control.
I believe Samsung smart TVs both snoop on you and force ads on the menu screen. There'll be a cold day in hell before I buy a Samsung TV - even though they look ok from other points of view.
It's annoying that you can't find any large screen dumb TVs at a reasonable price point anymore.
Your rant completely fails to take into account the fact that Facebook was (is?) generating shadow profiles of non-Facebook users across the internet.
Even so, this doesn't make GP's points invalid. It just shows yet another way for Facebook to be sleazy.
However, the GP is right: Facebook (and Google) users ignore the huge privacy invasion they subject themselves to, and, in the process, they are spoiling the internet for the rest. Facebook and Google users happily leak other people's personal information to the data vampires, by putting their contact info online, by tagging them in photos, and via hundreds of other mechanisms. Moreover, the large mass of oblivious users lets the companies argue that whatever way they find to destroy your privacy is "industry standard" or "community accepted usage", and shouldn't be legislated against.
...I can't believe she hasn't closed her account yet...
Don't follow leaders, a-watch the parking meters.