In Europe, you won't have to commute more than a few kilometers on average, and there is very good or at least present public transport. Ammentities are scattered and close rather than centralized and far.
In North America, people need personal vehicles due to the design of the infastructure, and the placement of essential services. This is particularly true for rural areas, and small cities to a lesser extent.
Gas prices have a greater direct effect on the average American or Canadian consumer than their counterparts in Europe.
What you fail to understand is that if we COLLECTIVLY stopped fucking around we'd be a lot better off. Think matter - energy - matter conversion, we wouldn't have to work, ever. Starships and planetary colonization could be had within 50 friggen years if we gave up our ridiculous notions of ethnicity and national right.
We've convinced ourselves so ardently that we are something specific that we have an incredible amount of trouble overcoming that perception.
There's a lot of evidence to link large scale climate change with periods of heightend and lowered activity in the Sun.
Taken From "http://www.exploratorium.edu/sunspots/"
From 1645 to 1715, there was a drastically reduced number of sunspots. This period of reduced solar activity, which was first noticed by G. Sporer and was later investigated by E.W. Maunder, is now called the Maunder Minimum. This period of time was also unusually cold on earth, and it has been referred to as the "Little Ice Age." This has led to some speculation that sunspot activity may affect the earth's climate. Similar periods of low solar activity seem to have occurred during the Spoerer Minimum (1420-1530), the Wolf Minimum (1280-1340), and the Oort minimum (1010-1050). Solar astronomers label solar cycles from one minimum to the next, and assign them numbers, starting at one, with the 1755-1766 cycle.
Personally, I've always found it rather arrogant to believe we are the greatest cause of climate change on Earth. Lol, it could be that the Sun is literally causing us to use more energy...but thats taking the butterfly effect a little too literally - maybe.
I recently read this paper on the net, it's a theory based on symmetry and grouping in the universe, as well as the absolute of zero.
Thought provoking at the very least.
http://macrocosmicsymmetry.com/bpaper1.html
"But you're not thinking 4th Dimensionally"
Lol, sorry to say but it's true.
The idea is that broadband will be able to move so much more data, that the quality achievable in disks is easy to send over the net - fast. And you won't have to carry around anything, or store anything.
That's the idea
The real reasons it's not practical aren't the one's you mentioned. It's entirely possible that the network could be so streamlined that none of these current ENGINEERING issues are a problem.
However, the simple facts of psychology killed this marketing ploy dead in the water.
http://www.alcatel.com/http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_02/b3865705.htm
*ahem*
I don't think this really needs discussing any further. People have interests, these interests are financial - people will say things to support these financial interests.
Obviously the CEO of a NETWORK company would like to convince people that physical storage of data is a thing of the past.
Don't you think this might be just a little bit dramatic?
Interstellar radiation comes in many different flavours - most of them much more deadly and pervasive than weak radio waves. Cosmic rays and gamma radiation as an example.
Pumping the same old crap that we've been pumping up their indirectly for decades (and thousands of millenia - in the case of stars...), hardly seems like something that's hardly comparable to all of mankinds REAL fuckups.
That people, and even parents would be disturbed by children being literally treated like cattle.
Part of growing up is doing things wrong, and getting away with it. If kids couldn't get in a bit of trouble, if they didn't think they could break the rules just a LITTLE, we would have a generation perfectly suited for doing EXACTLY what they are told, by anyone in power.
Thats bad - very bad. Kids have to know they can break some rules and it's ok, and that people in power are not gods. If we all learned that leaving the library 10 minutes early for break is something we can't get away with, (see, word of god) we certainly wouldn't have the balls to tell our employer to F'off when they cut our lunchbreak down to 20 minutes.
Shouldn't it be the courts informing us of this?
on
LokiTorrent Shut Down
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· Score: 1
I don't know if I'm out of line here - but it seems to me that it isn't a private entity that should be disseminating information on a site shut down by a court order...
It's really sick to see private companies jamming this down our throats when its supported by our own government. If it's that important, they should be saying it themselves, otherwise, crap similar to what was on Lokitorrent.com should be STRICTLY prohibited if the courts are involved in any way.
It's like a little fly buzzing around...buzz...buzz...
Nations do not function as moral individuals.
There has not been a powerful nation in HISTORY that abides by your perverse view of pragmatic statecraft. Nations represent tribes, seperate, and competing. Only until VERY recently has this concept of soft hearted foreign policy been entertained.
It is not the responsibility of an individual nation state to ensure the well being of other nations or their citizens. However, it may well be in their best interests. If you think that standing up for utopian ideals is a legitimate interest for a nation to exercise, please elaborate. Until that time, I cannot see how the practice of giving competing nations an advantage is going to benefit the citizens of the United States, or ANY nation that chooses to do so.
Pragmatism and greed are what drives the machinations of the world, there is no room for idealistic humanism when the future of the nation is on the line. That's not to say there are practical limits, but it is still entirely a matter of cost vs benefit. Obviously another holocaust is not beneficial to anyone, including the antagonist nation.
Look at history for your sample. Speak of a time where nations, empires, or kingdoms ever practiced statecraft according to your standards. It has not happened, nor will it ever happen so long as we are divided into seperate economic and political entities. If you bring up unificiation as the answer to this problem, you'd be wrong. Environmental, cultural, and economic diversity prohibits a unified political system. Economic concerns above all eliminate this possibility, as currency would no longer be useful as a tool for adapting an economy to a particular market.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the greatest challenge I've ever heard.
In North America, people need personal vehicles due to the design of the infastructure, and the placement of essential services. This is particularly true for rural areas, and small cities to a lesser extent.
Gas prices have a greater direct effect on the average American or Canadian consumer than their counterparts in Europe.
What you fail to understand is that if we COLLECTIVLY stopped fucking around we'd be a lot better off. Think matter - energy - matter conversion, we wouldn't have to work, ever. Starships and planetary colonization could be had within 50 friggen years if we gave up our ridiculous notions of ethnicity and national right.
We've convinced ourselves so ardently that we are something specific that we have an incredible amount of trouble overcoming that perception.
Taken From "http://www.exploratorium.edu/sunspots/"
Personally, I've always found it rather arrogant to believe we are the greatest cause of climate change on Earth. Lol, it could be that the Sun is literally causing us to use more energy...but thats taking the butterfly effect a little too literally - maybe.
I recently read this paper on the net, it's a theory based on symmetry and grouping in the universe, as well as the absolute of zero. Thought provoking at the very least. http://macrocosmicsymmetry.com/bpaper1.html
That's the idea
The real reasons it's not practical aren't the one's you mentioned. It's entirely possible that the network could be so streamlined that none of these current ENGINEERING issues are a problem.
However, the simple facts of psychology killed this marketing ploy dead in the water.
http://www.alcatel.com/ http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_02 /b3865705.htm
*ahem*
I don't think this really needs discussing any further. People have interests, these interests are financial - people will say things to support these financial interests.
Obviously the CEO of a NETWORK company would like to convince people that physical storage of data is a thing of the past.
Don't you think this might be just a little bit dramatic? Interstellar radiation comes in many different flavours - most of them much more deadly and pervasive than weak radio waves. Cosmic rays and gamma radiation as an example. Pumping the same old crap that we've been pumping up their indirectly for decades (and thousands of millenia - in the case of stars...), hardly seems like something that's hardly comparable to all of mankinds REAL fuckups.
Part of growing up is doing things wrong, and getting away with it. If kids couldn't get in a bit of trouble, if they didn't think they could break the rules just a LITTLE, we would have a generation perfectly suited for doing EXACTLY what they are told, by anyone in power.
Thats bad - very bad. Kids have to know they can break some rules and it's ok, and that people in power are not gods. If we all learned that leaving the library 10 minutes early for break is something we can't get away with, (see, word of god) we certainly wouldn't have the balls to tell our employer to F'off when they cut our lunchbreak down to 20 minutes.
I don't know if I'm out of line here - but it seems to me that it isn't a private entity that should be disseminating information on a site shut down by a court order... It's really sick to see private companies jamming this down our throats when its supported by our own government. If it's that important, they should be saying it themselves, otherwise, crap similar to what was on Lokitorrent.com should be STRICTLY prohibited if the courts are involved in any way.
It's like a little fly buzzing around...buzz...buzz...
Nations do not function as moral individuals.
There has not been a powerful nation in HISTORY that abides by your perverse view of pragmatic statecraft. Nations represent tribes, seperate, and competing. Only until VERY recently has this concept of soft hearted foreign policy been entertained.
It is not the responsibility of an individual nation state to ensure the well being of other nations or their citizens. However, it may well be in their best interests. If you think that standing up for utopian ideals is a legitimate interest for a nation to exercise, please elaborate. Until that time, I cannot see how the practice of giving competing nations an advantage is going to benefit the citizens of the United States, or ANY nation that chooses to do so.
Pragmatism and greed are what drives the machinations of the world, there is no room for idealistic humanism when the future of the nation is on the line. That's not to say there are practical limits, but it is still entirely a matter of cost vs benefit. Obviously another holocaust is not beneficial to anyone, including the antagonist nation.
Look at history for your sample. Speak of a time where nations, empires, or kingdoms ever practiced statecraft according to your standards. It has not happened, nor will it ever happen so long as we are divided into seperate economic and political entities. If you bring up unificiation as the answer to this problem, you'd be wrong. Environmental, cultural, and economic diversity prohibits a unified political system. Economic concerns above all eliminate this possibility, as currency would no longer be useful as a tool for adapting an economy to a particular market.