The best idea of this nature I've heard was to use taxation to ensure a _minimum_ oil price.
As other posters have mentioned, each time the oil price increases, there is a justification to invest in alternative fuel sources / engines / distribution networks / etc. However, when it subsequently collapses again, such technologies are no longer cost-effective (lacking critical mass, or simply being more expensive than oil at its' lows). Investment in alternatives is therefore a bit of a mug's game.
With a minimum price for oil that is high enough to sustain the cost-effectiveness of alternatives, there's a justification to make the long-term large-scale private investments required to build alternative fuels to a critical mass at which they become economical.
Politically a little tricky, however.
There are a couple of comments like this here, saying it's in YouTube/Google/Flickr/etc.'s interest to fight against this kind of prioritisation. What makes you think that?
It seems to me that actually what we're talking about here is that content providers with deeper pockets will serve content faster to Virgin subscribers. That's yet another barrier to entry to any upstart competitors for these companies, and it's in the interest of the big boys to pay up and ensure they own the fast lane.
Net Neutrality as I understand it is precisely about restricting the ability of major players to squeeze out smaller, poorer cousins.
Actually, the "charge a fee per email" idea might not be so daft. Yes, spam is sent from compromised PCs, but why are those PCs compromised? Because the owners aren't bothered enough by the malware on their systems to remove it. I wonder how many people wouldn't bother to patch their PCs properly if they got big bills for all the spam they were sending out.
At the moment, the only person who suffers from spam is the person receiving it (and sysadmins, of course), and spam-filters are "good enough" to block most of it, so it's only a minor inconvenience. Things would change pretty rapidly if the senders had a financial incentive to keep their machines patched. Perhaps the anti-spam vendors could offer "spam insurance": if your PC gets used to send spam, we'll pay the charges?
Just been on the other side of this decision: planning our own office layout for our new office. We're currently in the big open plan space (no cubes) setup and the noise is deafening at times. You can just see people's heads swivel as soon as an interesting argument/discussion breaks out on the other side of the room. Of course, as many have said they then need ages to get back in the zone.
Cubes seemed too horrible to us and private offices seemed a bit lonely and isolated.
What we went for in the end was a set of 3-6 person rooms, some of which can be combined if required. The idea was to merge the benefits of each approach - you get a dedicated "project room" where ad-hoc conversations, whiteboad design discussions, etc. are encouraged. The team gets to personalise their space, as does each of the workers (for at least as long as the project lasts).
On the other hand if a team is in deadline mode, they can shut the door and agree between each other to be quiet. Similarly if a team wants to play music they don't disturb others, etc.
We'll see how it works out... Anyone else tried this sort of approach?
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The best idea of this nature I've heard was to use taxation to ensure a _minimum_ oil price. As other posters have mentioned, each time the oil price increases, there is a justification to invest in alternative fuel sources / engines / distribution networks / etc. However, when it subsequently collapses again, such technologies are no longer cost-effective (lacking critical mass, or simply being more expensive than oil at its' lows). Investment in alternatives is therefore a bit of a mug's game. With a minimum price for oil that is high enough to sustain the cost-effectiveness of alternatives, there's a justification to make the long-term large-scale private investments required to build alternative fuels to a critical mass at which they become economical. Politically a little tricky, however.
There are a couple of comments like this here, saying it's in YouTube/Google/Flickr/etc.'s interest to fight against this kind of prioritisation. What makes you think that? It seems to me that actually what we're talking about here is that content providers with deeper pockets will serve content faster to Virgin subscribers. That's yet another barrier to entry to any upstart competitors for these companies, and it's in the interest of the big boys to pay up and ensure they own the fast lane. Net Neutrality as I understand it is precisely about restricting the ability of major players to squeeze out smaller, poorer cousins.
Actually, the "charge a fee per email" idea might not be so daft. Yes, spam is sent from compromised PCs, but why are those PCs compromised? Because the owners aren't bothered enough by the malware on their systems to remove it. I wonder how many people wouldn't bother to patch their PCs properly if they got big bills for all the spam they were sending out.
At the moment, the only person who suffers from spam is the person receiving it (and sysadmins, of course), and spam-filters are "good enough" to block most of it, so it's only a minor inconvenience. Things would change pretty rapidly if the senders had a financial incentive to keep their machines patched. Perhaps the anti-spam vendors could offer "spam insurance": if your PC gets used to send spam, we'll pay the charges?
Just been on the other side of this decision: planning our own office layout for our new office. We're currently in the big open plan space (no cubes) setup and the noise is deafening at times. You can just see people's heads swivel as soon as an interesting argument/discussion breaks out on the other side of the room. Of course, as many have said they then need ages to get back in the zone.
Cubes seemed too horrible to us and private offices seemed a bit lonely and isolated.
What we went for in the end was a set of 3-6 person rooms, some of which can be combined if required. The idea was to merge the benefits of each approach - you get a dedicated "project room" where ad-hoc conversations, whiteboad design discussions, etc. are encouraged. The team gets to personalise their space, as does each of the workers (for at least as long as the project lasts).
On the other hand if a team is in deadline mode, they can shut the door and agree between each other to be quiet. Similarly if a team wants to play music they don't disturb others, etc.
We'll see how it works out... Anyone else tried this sort of approach?