Solar panels make sense there where bringing in the grid would be too expensive... I want solar panels and efficient wind power as much as any other slashdot troll, but, the same way it happens with holographic displays and voice controlled computers, we have a hell of a long way to go until we get there. The tread is about TED and what technologies it should talk about to help make the world a better place usw. My take is that before technology we have to get rid of the WWI mindset (food security policies -- farming subsidies were introduced during the WWI and kept afterwards to ensure that countries did not have to rely on imports to provide the food they needed, just in case another war broke out --, trade restrictions, locked borders), which would make a difference a lot sooner and at a lower price.
Buying a lot of solar panels does not really make sense, since most of the money, I think, come from the state, and you could just put the same amount of money into research.
I am afraid there might be a problem with finding enough space for all those solar panels, and then you'll have to import a lot of guestarbeiters to keep them clean.
Funny thing is, "poor countries" are enacting their own tariffs, if they get a chance (nobody financing a civil war) or don't care about getting loans from development agencies.
I don't think I'll ever become a "localvore"... there is only so much cabbage and potatoes I can eat... or I'll have to become a nomad, to be a 'localvore' in a more than one climate zone.
"What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets." -- if they don't grow crops for export, how are they going to buy computers ( and iPods:-P ) ?
Well, dropping the farm subsidies would take about two hours: one hour to count the votes and one hour to type and spellcheck the law.
"They make this sort of power use possible because they don't require any infrastructure."... Have you ever operated a solar panel ? Did you find it does not require "infrastructure" ? It might not require poles and wires, but requires a lot of cleaning and maintenance, unless you live somewhere in a desert on the top of a mountain (to escape rain and dust).
Well, I don't have to worry about trade subsidies, since my country does not give any worth to be called that. We haven't had a easy ride with EU so close: had to surrender and join in order to escape being eligible for "export compensations", and it looks like we're going to hold on even without EU subsidies (which seem to be scheduled to arrive sometimes during the next century).
You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears?
These (solar powered heater, charcoal from dung or solar smelters etc.) are no innovations or inventions. They are gadgets, and expensive gadgets too ( you can probably boil beans with a "solar smelter", but you won't smelt anything unless you can get some really large mirrors). If they are distributed they will make the "beneficiaries" become more dependent on aid and handouts because they will kill whatever industry supplied those people with the same services as the "innovations and inventions" pushed by TED.
TED and the folk behind it are no better than the Victorian ladies that went slumming and giving handouts to the polite paupers. It did not help the paupers much, but it made those ladies feel a lot better about themselves.
Those "poor third world people" are not helpless dopes. If they can't export wine or grain, they will export cocaine or opium, since it's a lot easier to sneak in a 5kg package than to sneak it's equivalent in grain or frozen meat. This was done by Europeans, too, when they were themselves third world countries (Opium Wars happened only because the Chinese taxed imports to death when not forbidding them outright, and opium was the only thing that had a high enough mark up to justify the trouble of fitting a ship).
Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
"evolutionary technological advances" ? Have you watched the TED movies ? Dung or corn stalk charcoal is a technological innovation ? "improve the lives of billions of people" ? Can anybody pay for solar panels to improve the lives of billions ? Last time I heard there were not enough money to pay for solar panels to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands: in my area a 40W (peak power) solar panel costs 380 Euro. At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year.
Want to help the poor ? Then stop sending aid, and give them a chance to build their economies. Or, if you are into churches and going on missions, send English language teachers and set up Internet Cafes besides talking about Jeesus H. Christ and handing out used clothes.
Don't worry about "farm subsidies" right now: worry about "quality standards", "sanitary regulations" etc.... yes, about the Bumpers Amendment, too, if you do care about "foreign aid".
The sad part is that the whole trade lockup is not directed against the "third world countries", but is set up against the other "first world countries". The 'poor aborigines' are just innocent bystanders that get slugged down when US and EU and the other big guys fire trade regulations and taxes at each other.
Instead of reinventing charcoal and charity and niceness and pink unicorns, how about giving those "poor third world people" a chance and removing the trade barriers that keep them poor and allow you to import only what you want to import, and to export whatever they can afford to buy ?
I find TED nauseous and fake: it peddles "appropriate" technology that only a junior-high-school-dropout housewife would find interesting.
"The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel" -- for God's sake, do you know how many times the income of the people that are the target of this shit do those solar panels cost ?
How about dropping farm subsidies and giving them a chance to sell their food ?
"to usurp traditional biological protective mechanisms" ??
More likely "to avoid", or "to disable"... I call this BS. There is a lot of "nanomaterials" that is very natural: it's called dust. We're still alive.
'round here the former Propaganda runs the Finances... though it's to be noted that those in charge right now were had execution, not political, positions before 1989, which would be a rather good recommendation: if they managed to run a centralized economy for more than a day and not have it collapsing on their head, they must be real good.
I looked once over our "Top 500" list... quite a lot of them used to work in Foreign Trade.
In case I got your point right: nobody is using depleted uranium for the side effects. DU is heavy. So is lead: that's why lead was used for projectiles. DU shells do kinetic damage first, then thermal damage: the shell shatters and takes fire. Pretty effective against armored vehicles, if the shell manages to pierce the armor.
If you are concerned about radioactivity in depleted uranium, you should be concerned about breathing natural air or drinking spring water, too, since the natural abundance of O18 (the radioactive isotope of Oxygen) is about 0.2%, which is a mite more than how much U235 is found in depleted Uranium.
Still, according to Der Spiegel, US intelligence officers were allowed to talk with the guy only in 2004. Put it in another way: US intelligence officers were not allowed to talk with the guy until US was already committed in Iraq.
On one hand, I would rely much on anything BBC has to say... they were caught fabricating news (with paid actors and built setups etc.), quote the Gaia person quite often as a "scientific authority" etc.... On the other hand, I have no idea what this "Der Spiegel" journal is, though it looks kind of reliable... could be a tabloid like the "Daily Mail", or a partisan newspaper looking to sabotage the parties that were in charge in 2001-2004.
Or get a Trabant, or a Lastun and a good life insurance. Trabant has the advantage it will run on anything even remotely flammable, and the Lastun has the advantage that is so light that you can push it with one hand when you run out of gas, or you can use it as a shopping basket. Both cars can carry 4 people.
I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up and get the blame... think about France not recognizing that Ho Chi Minh won the elections in Vietnam and forcing him to side with the Chinese, or some other European countries supporting unilateral declarations of independence in Yugoslavia...
Funny, though, when it's about depleted Uranium everybody gets paranoid, even if depleted uranium is obtained when the radioactive uranium is taken out of "the yellow cake". When it's yellow cake only, it's nothing...
RMS is no communist: he's an anarcho-capitalist from the school of Robert Heinlein. Free software works much like Heinlein's family communes: property is used in common, but everybody owns shares and has a say according to his or her contribution. Everybody can become a user of free software, but this does not make everybody an owner, since the the software is owned by those that wrote it, and every contributor can have his or her own private stuff that was not pooled.
RMS's "free software" could not be more un-communistic. Basically it's a weird form cartel whose members decide the price for the information they share among themselves is zero, and will compete in services. It's a weird form of cartel because it's not anti-competitive, since everybody can join and use that information for free. Information sharing is voluntary, while any brand of communism would make that mandatory.
Think about free software as you would think about language: if you invent a word or a turn of phrase, everybody would be allowed to use it as long as they don't claim to have invented it, but nobody can be forced to speak for free.
Member States shall ensure, subject to paragraphs 2 and 3, that no mandatory requirements for specific technical features, including, without limitation, for the purpose of detecting,intercepting or preventing infringement of intellectual property rights by users, are imposed
and the paragraph 2 requires the member states to only inform the Commission , while the paragraph 3 says:
Where required, measures may be adopted to ensure that terminal equipment is constructed in a way that is compatible with the right of users to protect and control the use of their personal data...
It seems that the amendments are aimed at preventing abuses resulting from attempts to block copyright infringement, and that DRM devices should not be mandatory, and if there are DRM devices/software, it should not interfere with somebody's personal data or use that personal data... though my Legalese could be defective and I might misread
It is also true that the texts quoted by laquadrature.net do not forbid DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
sorry to have worked you up this way ... my point was that there is not enough space anywhere on earth to install enough solar panels to make a difference. According to Wikipedia, Germany Analysts estimate that solar cells in Germany now generate about 2 TWh of electricity per year, or about one-half of one percent of German electricity consumption. This is neat, how much of that never gets used, since most of the power is generated during the day ? How many coal power stations have to be kept on stand-by to cover for cloudy days ?
Solar panels make sense there where bringing in the grid would be too expensive ... I want solar panels and efficient wind power as much as any other slashdot troll, but, the same way it happens with holographic displays and voice controlled computers, we have a hell of a long way to go until we get there. The tread is about TED and what technologies it should talk about to help make the world a better place usw. My take is that before technology we have to get rid of the WWI mindset (food security policies -- farming subsidies were introduced during the WWI and kept afterwards to ensure that countries did not have to rely on imports to provide the food they needed, just in case another war broke out --, trade restrictions, locked borders), which would make a difference a lot sooner and at a lower price.
Buying a lot of solar panels does not really make sense, since most of the money, I think, come from the state, and you could just put the same amount of money into research.
You were not ? Oh, how wrong of me, unless I was talking about the solar panels installed in Germany.
I am afraid there might be a problem with finding enough space for all those solar panels, and then you'll have to import a lot of guestarbeiters to keep them clean.
Funny thing is, "poor countries" are enacting their own tariffs, if they get a chance (nobody financing a civil war) or don't care about getting loans from development agencies.
I don't think I'll ever become a "localvore" ... there is only so much cabbage and potatoes I can eat ... or I'll have to become a nomad, to be a 'localvore' in a more than one climate zone.
"What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets." -- if they don't grow crops for export, how are they going to buy computers ( and iPods :-P ) ?
Well, dropping the farm subsidies would take about two hours: one hour to count the votes and one hour to type and spellcheck the law.
"They make this sort of power use possible because they don't require any infrastructure." ... Have you ever operated a solar panel ? Did you find it does not require "infrastructure" ? It might not require poles and wires, but requires a lot of cleaning and maintenance, unless you live somewhere in a desert on the top of a mountain (to escape rain and dust).
Well, I don't have to worry about trade subsidies, since my country does not give any worth to be called that. We haven't had a easy ride with EU so close: had to surrender and join in order to escape being eligible for "export compensations", and it looks like we're going to hold on even without EU subsidies (which seem to be scheduled to arrive sometimes during the next century).
You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears?
These (solar powered heater, charcoal from dung or solar smelters etc.) are no innovations or inventions. They are gadgets, and expensive gadgets too ( you can probably boil beans with a "solar smelter", but you won't smelt anything unless you can get some really large mirrors). If they are distributed they will make the "beneficiaries" become more dependent on aid and handouts because they will kill whatever industry supplied those people with the same services as the "innovations and inventions" pushed by TED.
TED and the folk behind it are no better than the Victorian ladies that went slumming and giving handouts to the polite paupers. It did not help the paupers much, but it made those ladies feel a lot better about themselves.
Those "poor third world people" are not helpless dopes. If they can't export wine or grain, they will export cocaine or opium, since it's a lot easier to sneak in a 5kg package than to sneak it's equivalent in grain or frozen meat. This was done by Europeans, too, when they were themselves third world countries (Opium Wars happened only because the Chinese taxed imports to death when not forbidding them outright, and opium was the only thing that had a high enough mark up to justify the trouble of fitting a ship).
Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
"evolutionary technological advances" ? Have you watched the TED movies ? Dung or corn stalk charcoal is a technological innovation ? "improve the lives of billions of people" ? Can anybody pay for solar panels to improve the lives of billions ? Last time I heard there were not enough money to pay for solar panels to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands: in my area a 40W (peak power) solar panel costs 380 Euro. At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year.
Want to help the poor ? Then stop sending aid, and give them a chance to build their economies. Or, if you are into churches and going on missions, send English language teachers and set up Internet Cafes besides talking about Jeesus H. Christ and handing out used clothes.
Don't worry about "farm subsidies" right now: worry about "quality standards", "sanitary regulations" etc. ... yes, about the Bumpers Amendment, too, if you do care about "foreign aid".
The sad part is that the whole trade lockup is not directed against the "third world countries", but is set up against the other "first world countries". The 'poor aborigines' are just innocent bystanders that get slugged down when US and EU and the other big guys fire trade regulations and taxes at each other.
Instead of reinventing charcoal and charity and niceness and pink unicorns, how about giving those "poor third world people" a chance and removing the trade barriers that keep them poor and allow you to import only what you want to import, and to export whatever they can afford to buy ?
I find TED nauseous and fake: it peddles "appropriate" technology that only a junior-high-school-dropout housewife would find interesting.
"The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel" -- for God's sake, do you know how many times the income of the people that are the target of this shit do those solar panels cost ?
How about dropping farm subsidies and giving them a chance to sell their food ?
"to usurp traditional biological protective mechanisms" ??
More likely "to avoid", or "to disable" ... I call this BS. There is a lot of "nanomaterials" that is very natural: it's called dust. We're still alive.
'round here the former Propaganda runs the Finances ... though it's to be noted that those in charge right now were had execution, not political, positions before 1989, which would be a rather good recommendation: if they managed to run a centralized economy for more than a day and not have it collapsing on their head, they must be real good.
I looked once over our "Top 500" list ... quite a lot of them used to work in Foreign Trade.
they'll have some tiny, almost invisible needles in those screens. You will also get an electric shock when making spelling errors.
In case I got your point right: nobody is using depleted uranium for the side effects. DU is heavy. So is lead: that's why lead was used for projectiles. DU shells do kinetic damage first, then thermal damage: the shell shatters and takes fire. Pretty effective against armored vehicles, if the shell manages to pierce the armor.
If you are concerned about radioactivity in depleted uranium, you should be concerned about breathing natural air or drinking spring water, too, since the natural abundance of O18 (the radioactive isotope of Oxygen) is about 0.2%, which is a mite more than how much U235 is found in depleted Uranium.
Still, according to Der Spiegel, US intelligence officers were allowed to talk with the guy only in 2004. Put it in another way: US intelligence officers were not allowed to talk with the guy until US was already committed in Iraq.
On one hand, I would rely much on anything BBC has to say ... they were caught fabricating news (with paid actors and built setups etc.), quote the Gaia person quite often as a "scientific authority" etc. ... On the other hand, I have no idea what this "Der Spiegel" journal is, though it looks kind of reliable ... could be a tabloid like the "Daily Mail", or a partisan newspaper looking to sabotage the parties that were in charge in 2001-2004.
sorry, you lost me here . What is "DU" ?
Or get a Trabant, or a Lastun and a good life insurance. Trabant has the advantage it will run on anything even remotely flammable, and the Lastun has the advantage that is so light that you can push it with one hand when you run out of gas, or you can use it as a shopping basket. Both cars can carry 4 people.
come on, the "Little Boy" had 64kg of uranium ...
even so, only one would be more than enough ...
how about this: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq, though the article reads more like "How German intelligence sent the US intelligence on a wild goose chase". More here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542708,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,558224,00.html .
I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up and get the blame ... think about France not recognizing that Ho Chi Minh won the elections in Vietnam and forcing him to side with the Chinese, or some other European countries supporting unilateral declarations of independence in Yugoslavia ...
so, 550 tons of yellowcake would give ... how much ? 2 metric tons of weapon grade uranium ? And how many bombs can be made out of that ?
You're Quebecois enough, or well versed in the moeurs du Quebec, otherwise that would have been "tabernacle".
Funny, though, when it's about depleted Uranium everybody gets paranoid, even if depleted uranium is obtained when the radioactive uranium is taken out of "the yellow cake". When it's yellow cake only, it's nothing ...
RMS is no communist: he's an anarcho-capitalist from the school of Robert Heinlein. Free software works much like Heinlein's family communes: property is used in common, but everybody owns shares and has a say according to his or her contribution. Everybody can become a user of free software, but this does not make everybody an owner, since the the software is owned by those that wrote it, and every contributor can have his or her own private stuff that was not pooled.
RMS's "free software" could not be more un-communistic. Basically it's a weird form cartel whose members decide the price for the information they share among themselves is zero, and will compete in services. It's a weird form of cartel because it's not anti-competitive, since everybody can join and use that information for free. Information sharing is voluntary, while any brand of communism would make that mandatory.
Think about free software as you would think about language: if you invent a word or a turn of phrase, everybody would be allowed to use it as long as they don't claim to have invented it, but nobody can be forced to speak for free.
I'm afraid you might be right ...
and the paragraph 2 requires the member states to only inform the Commission , while the paragraph 3 says:
It seems that the amendments are aimed at preventing abuses resulting from attempts to block copyright infringement, and that DRM devices should not be mandatory, and if there are DRM devices/software, it should not interfere with somebody's personal data or use that personal data ... though my Legalese could be defective and I might misread
It is also true that the texts quoted by laquadrature.net do not forbid DRM.
the updated client is, in case your upgrades don't go smoothly.
no matter ... if it will be for defeating this dumb law, probably CCP will keep my account running and training until the end of the universe :-P
.
Bruxelles is very real. It's in Belgium system, in EU controlled territory. EU is a real life alliance of real life corporations.