I think you are very wrong here. At present, the cost of lowering emissions on average is between 0.1% and 2% in the current emissions trading schemes going around.
Cap and trade is a horrible idea. It's socialism disguised as a free market to confuse people who don't know any better. Even the Wikipedia article starts out with "A central authority (usually a government or international body) sets a limit...". If an economic plan involves the government setting limits; distributing the products being bought and sold; and punishing people for buying or not buying the product, it is by definition *not* a free market.
Honestly, I'm a bit shocked to hear somebody on Slashdot advocate cap and trade. People here complain all the time that law makers are puppets for big corporations. But for some reason you trust those same law makers to set meaningful pollution limits for those same corporations? You don't think political contributions in exchange for pollution vouchers would be a gigantic problem?
Climate change denial has got to be the (second) largest example of cognitive dissonance and self-deception in history. Let's hope reason and logic come back into fashion soon.
Nobody says that climate change isn't happening. The temperature data is fact. It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue.
Any serious debate is over whether humans are causing the change, whether it's a problem, and whether we should try doing something about it.
The "problem" is that there are periods in history where it was warmer than it is now, without all of the man-made air pollution.
"Just start a business" is a moronic way to try to write people off. It's like if you were an unpopular geek in school and someone came up to you and said "just become a football player". Both are ridiculous assertions on how to "fix" things.
Those assertions are only ridiculouse if you're afraid to work hard and be patient. With an attitude like that you're always going to get the short end of the stick because you're afraid to even try changing your position.
What exactly are you whining about? True, some people can't just drop everything and start a business. Sucks to be them. For everybody else the OP has a good point.
"Cloud computing" is the "web 2.0" buzzword for "Internet". It's used primarily to confuse investors and venture capitalists who remember how poorly the "... on the internet" fad turned out in the late 90s.
The other words were made up to help solidify the illusion that "cloud computing" is something new.
If a large, non-corporate company did the same thing, would it make any difference? Sure, the people who owned it would be responsible, but what difference would it make? Nobody's done anything illegal. Nobody's getting sued or taken to court. They look silly, but they would look silly whether it's a corporation or not.
It's not illegal for him to solicit donations from out of state, but that doesn't make it moral.
There is LESS influence on policy by a non-constituent populist micro donation system, making it the true "lesser of two evils" in campaign funding.
That doesn't even make sense. According to the comic and the Pew Institute study it cites, the candidate that spends more on advertising wins. By letting this guy buy more advertising than his competitor, the external donations are directly affecting the outcome of the election.
Basically, his policies couldn't stand on their own, so he decided to cheat.
Here. AT&T wants to offer fiber, but the city won't let them.
Here's another one. AT&T gets to sell broadband in Denver for 10 years in exchange for meeting the city government's bandwidth requirements. Guess how much incentive there is to exceed that requirement?
And some more. If Verizon wants to offer FiOS, they need to get approval from local governments.
I don't know where you live, but there's a good chance you don't get to choose your broadband provider because the government chooses for you.
The telecom industry in the US has more government meddling than almost any other industry. It's so bad that in many cases local governments actually grant monopolies to specific companies. AT&T doesn't give you more than 16mbit because your local government told them 16 mbit is all you need. If Verizon wanted to sell you a 50 mbit symmetric connection for half the price, there's a good chance they couldn't legally do it, thanks to your government. But of course, big brother know's best, right?
The great irony of your post is that your whining how much you envy Japan. Well, so you know, Japan actually has a free market for broadband, and look where it's got them.
What? If I'm a band, and I agree to and sign a contract saying I get one cent of every CD sale, how am I being taken advantage of? If the artist and the record company both agree to the terms of the contract, it's a fair deal. Whether you think it's fair doesn't matter because you're not the one signing the contract.
The "think of the artists!" argument doesn't make any sense. If bands really thought they were getting screwed by the RIAA, they'd stop signing contracts with them. If they look around, see thousands of other bands getting screwed by the RIAA, and then sign an RIAA contract anyway, they're idiots getting what they deserve. I just can't feel bad for somebody in that situation.
In reality, the only people screwing the artists are the people pirating music. It's screwing them out of the already tiny fraction of CD sales they agreed in their contract was fair.
Oh, and the bands pretending to dislike the RIAA? They're doing it for the publicity.
Ubuntu is a bad example largely because their fork features major changes. Mint basically just includes codecs. PCLinuxOS was originally largely just changing the defaults of the desktop. Then are hundreds of active distros, many of which offer minor changes at best, yet pull away tons of developer time to maintain different repos and such.
But there's nothing to pull away from. There's isn't a fixed pool of developers working on open source projects. By and large most new distros are created by people who have no interest in helping out with another distro or by people who's ideas had been rejected by other distros. If they weren't maintaining their own distro they wouldn't go get involved with a different project, they'd just stay uninvolved.
If they added their new features to the stock Debian, all Debian users benefit.
As far as I can tell, Ubuntu is nothing but a dumbed down version of Debian. If they had hijacked Debian I would have switch to something else. Some of us don't want to be treated like idiots by our computer.
The other point is that while a few people make major forks and make major new features, it seems we have tons and tons of distros with nothing really unique to offer. So why pull away all those package maintainers, devs, support people, etc. away from other distros?
The entire point of "Free Software" is that anybody with an itch to scratch can grab a copy of the code and make their own version. That's the benefit over proprietary software. If you take that away, what's the point?
The people working on obscure distros are working on those distros because they want to. If you told them, "Your needs and interests aren't important, get working on Ubuntu," they would probably laugh at you.
Well fine, if that's how the system works then why don't *WE* bribe our politicians too?
We don't have to bribe our politicians because they are our employees. We pay their salary with our tax money. We, the citizens, are supposed to "bribe" them with their jobs. If they want to keep their job, they protect our rights and look out for our interests.
The sad fact of the matter is, if enough people actually cared enough to implement a plan like yours, we wouldn't need it anyway because scumbag politicians would rarely get elected in the first place. As the saying goes, we're getting the democracy we deserve.
Yes. You seem to be parroting talk radio. There are lots of places the right is calling for more government. Abortion, war on drugs, war on terror, war on immigration, etc, etc. When the right stops asking for more government intervention in the areas they care about, then they might be able to creditably claim the government is always the problem, but until then STFU and stop dittoing stupidity.
You're putting words in my mouth. I'm as much against the government messing with all those things as I am against the government messing with education. IMO the government should do as little as possible above protecting the citizen's rights, and when they do more than that it should benefit everybody equally.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because we have a stupid drug policy doesn't mean we should have a stupid education policy, too.
And see, here I was thinking that it made a pretty strong argument for putting MORE money into the public schools, not less.
Clue: under a properly implemented school voucher system the total money spent on education remains the same or increases.
Also, if the government is screwing up this badly already, what makes you think adding *MORE* government is going to help anything? Has that ever worked?
Kind of pointless. Whether you acknowledge it or not, "Xeroxing" is part of our language. You can rant against that all you want. Apparently, instead of discussing it rationally, you just want to lobby personal attacks.
Can you even read? Not once have I said the word "Xerox" isn't "part of our language". As I've tried to explain twice already, the technical term is *NOT* Xerox, it's "xerography". Yes, "Xerox" has become synomomous with "making a copying", but that *doesn't* make it the technical term for the process involved. Both the dictionary and Wikipedia agree with me.
I would think the only exception is where a technical term actually gets created out of word that is already trademarked. Like "Xeroxing a paper". That did use to be a technical term in the past. I am sure there are others.
"Xeroxing" is not, and was never, a technical term. It's the name of a company, Xerox, that makes copy machines.
The whole reason Dell wants this patent
Sigh. Did you even RTFS? Dell is trying to *trademark* the term, which is something completely different than a patent. The difference is brought up in almost every single article on/. involving copyrights, trademarks or patents. How can anybody not know the difference by now?
That's a very simplistic viewpoint and runs counter to historical experience and the majority of accepted non-partisan political theory. It is a viewpoint that mostly goes along with governments that use Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) as weapons of political terrorism. The United States does an exceptional job at creating FUD. Indeed, every government created by violence or fear has perpetuated itself through violence and fear, whereas governments formed by peaceful consent almost never use either violence or fear, they survive by consent perfectly well.
You honestly believe the United States got to be one ofthe richest, most powerful countries in the world by scaring its citizens with "political terrorism"? And you're sure it has nothing to do with our being one of the freest countries in the world? And you also have some explaination for why countries like Cuba, North Korea, Laos, East Germany, and the Soviet Union are/were shitholes, despite their massively invasive communist governments, right?
Unless you can provide any kind of evidence, I have to disagree. In fact, some people might say there's roughly an inverse relationship between goverment control and the well being of the people in a country. But hey, don't let facts and evidence get in the way of your bullshit.
Can you even name a single real life government based on "peaceful consent" that hasn't sucked? I agree it sounds great on paper, but it just wouldn't work in real life.
Unfortunately, many of the Native American Tribes have poor &/or corrupt governance,
Is tribal governance not handled by some kind of tribal government?
Government screws stuff up. Tribal government, local government, federal government, doesn't really matter. If there's government involved, something is probably being forced to work inefficiently.
Slashdot Mirror
Cap and trade is a horrible idea. It's socialism disguised as a free market to confuse people who don't know any better. Even the Wikipedia article starts out with "A central authority (usually a government or international body) sets a limit...". If an economic plan involves the government setting limits; distributing the products being bought and sold; and punishing people for buying or not buying the product, it is by definition *not* a free market.
Honestly, I'm a bit shocked to hear somebody on Slashdot advocate cap and trade. People here complain all the time that law makers are puppets for big corporations. But for some reason you trust those same law makers to set meaningful pollution limits for those same corporations? You don't think political contributions in exchange for pollution vouchers would be a gigantic problem?
Nobody says that climate change isn't happening. The temperature data is fact. It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue.
Any serious debate is over whether humans are causing the change, whether it's a problem, and whether we should try doing something about it.
The "problem" is that there are periods in history where it was warmer than it is now, without all of the man-made air pollution.
Those assertions are only ridiculouse if you're afraid to work hard and be patient. With an attitude like that you're always going to get the short end of the stick because you're afraid to even try changing your position.
So what was the GP's point, anyway? Starting a business won't work for people who can't start one? Well, DUH.
What exactly are you whining about? True, some people can't just drop everything and start a business. Sucks to be them. For everybody else the OP has a good point.
"Cloud computing" is the "web 2.0" buzzword for "Internet". It's used primarily to confuse investors and venture capitalists who remember how poorly the "... on the internet" fad turned out in the late 90s.
The other words were made up to help solidify the illusion that "cloud computing" is something new.
I'm running Opera on the AMD64 port of Debian unstable and Flash works great for me. If you're having a problem, you're doing it wrong.
Corporations can be sued for libel and slander just like a person or a non-corporate company.
If a large, non-corporate company did the same thing, would it make any difference? Sure, the people who owned it would be responsible, but what difference would it make? Nobody's done anything illegal. Nobody's getting sued or taken to court. They look silly, but they would look silly whether it's a corporation or not.
immoral != illegal
It's not illegal for him to solicit donations from out of state, but that doesn't make it moral.
That doesn't even make sense. According to the comic and the Pew Institute study it cites, the candidate that spends more on advertising wins. By letting this guy buy more advertising than his competitor, the external donations are directly affecting the outcome of the election.
Basically, his policies couldn't stand on their own, so he decided to cheat.
Here. AT&T wants to offer fiber, but the city won't let them.
Here's another one. AT&T gets to sell broadband in Denver for 10 years in exchange for meeting the city government's bandwidth requirements. Guess how much incentive there is to exceed that requirement?
And some more. If Verizon wants to offer FiOS, they need to get approval from local governments.
I don't know where you live, but there's a good chance you don't get to choose your broadband provider because the government chooses for you.
You're a moron.
The telecom industry in the US has more government meddling than almost any other industry. It's so bad that in many cases local governments actually grant monopolies to specific companies. AT&T doesn't give you more than 16mbit because your local government told them 16 mbit is all you need. If Verizon wanted to sell you a 50 mbit symmetric connection for half the price, there's a good chance they couldn't legally do it, thanks to your government. But of course, big brother know's best, right?
The great irony of your post is that your whining how much you envy Japan. Well, so you know, Japan actually has a free market for broadband, and look where it's got them.
What? If I'm a band, and I agree to and sign a contract saying I get one cent of every CD sale, how am I being taken advantage of? If the artist and the record company both agree to the terms of the contract, it's a fair deal. Whether you think it's fair doesn't matter because you're not the one signing the contract.
The "think of the artists!" argument doesn't make any sense. If bands really thought they were getting screwed by the RIAA, they'd stop signing contracts with them. If they look around, see thousands of other bands getting screwed by the RIAA, and then sign an RIAA contract anyway, they're idiots getting what they deserve. I just can't feel bad for somebody in that situation.
In reality, the only people screwing the artists are the people pirating music. It's screwing them out of the already tiny fraction of CD sales they agreed in their contract was fair.
Oh, and the bands pretending to dislike the RIAA? They're doing it for the publicity.
But there's nothing to pull away from. There's isn't a fixed pool of developers working on open source projects. By and large most new distros are created by people who have no interest in helping out with another distro or by people who's ideas had been rejected by other distros. If they weren't maintaining their own distro they wouldn't go get involved with a different project, they'd just stay uninvolved.
As far as I can tell, Ubuntu is nothing but a dumbed down version of Debian. If they had hijacked Debian I would have switch to something else. Some of us don't want to be treated like idiots by our computer.
The entire point of "Free Software" is that anybody with an itch to scratch can grab a copy of the code and make their own version. That's the benefit over proprietary software. If you take that away, what's the point?
The people working on obscure distros are working on those distros because they want to. If you told them, "Your needs and interests aren't important, get working on Ubuntu," they would probably laugh at you.
We don't have to bribe our politicians because they are our employees. We pay their salary with our tax money. We, the citizens, are supposed to "bribe" them with their jobs. If they want to keep their job, they protect our rights and look out for our interests.
The sad fact of the matter is, if enough people actually cared enough to implement a plan like yours, we wouldn't need it anyway because scumbag politicians would rarely get elected in the first place. As the saying goes, we're getting the democracy we deserve.
You're putting words in my mouth. I'm as much against the government messing with all those things as I am against the government messing with education. IMO the government should do as little as possible above protecting the citizen's rights, and when they do more than that it should benefit everybody equally.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because we have a stupid drug policy doesn't mean we should have a stupid education policy, too.
Right now in the US, adding more school *is* adding more government.
Clue: under a properly implemented school voucher system the total money spent on education remains the same or increases.
Also, if the government is screwing up this badly already, what makes you think adding *MORE* government is going to help anything? Has that ever worked?
Can you even read? Not once have I said the word "Xerox" isn't "part of our language". As I've tried to explain twice already, the technical term is *NOT* Xerox, it's "xerography". Yes, "Xerox" has become synomomous with "making a copying", but that *doesn't* make it the technical term for the process involved. Both the dictionary and Wikipedia agree with me.
No, it's not. "Xerography" is the technical term. "Xerox" is a meaningless, made up company name.
I didn't agree or disagree with your argument because you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
"Xeroxing" is not, and was never, a technical term. It's the name of a company, Xerox, that makes copy machines.
Sigh. Did you even RTFS? Dell is trying to *trademark* the term, which is something completely different than a patent. The difference is brought up in almost every single article on /. involving copyrights, trademarks or patents. How can anybody not know the difference by now?
You honestly believe the United States got to be one ofthe richest, most powerful countries in the world by scaring its citizens with "political terrorism"? And you're sure it has nothing to do with our being one of the freest countries in the world? And you also have some explaination for why countries like Cuba, North Korea, Laos, East Germany, and the Soviet Union are/were shitholes, despite their massively invasive communist governments, right?
Unless you can provide any kind of evidence, I have to disagree. In fact, some people might say there's roughly an inverse relationship between goverment control and the well being of the people in a country. But hey, don't let facts and evidence get in the way of your bullshit.
Can you even name a single real life government based on "peaceful consent" that hasn't sucked? I agree it sounds great on paper, but it just wouldn't work in real life.
Is tribal governance not handled by some kind of tribal government?
Government screws stuff up. Tribal government, local government, federal government, doesn't really matter. If there's government involved, something is probably being forced to work inefficiently.
So we're paying them each $170k a year to act like immature asshats? I guess I'd be in a hurry to start a month long vacation too.
The sad thing is, we citizens actually chose these people.
Sometimes I think America is going straight to hell. And when I think about it a little more, I'm pretty sure we deserve it.