The whole central problem behind the "carbon" tax is that with the lack of consensus over whether or not fossil fuel emissions are increasing the Greenhouse Effect and producing global average temperature rise
Or, the very fact that our oceans will become too acidic (more than 2 pH levels) to support life and dissolve all shells from shellfish and destroy all coral by 2020, might be of even greater concern than just the rise in temperature.
It's actually not the rise itself, but what it means - massive oscillations in temperatures, massive hurricanes as a daily occurrence, that kind of thing - that is the main issue.
The reality is that our system is bad at measuring externalities - a fancy economics word that means pollution, destruction, and all the other bad things that happen when you make something - but good at measuring what it does measure.
Why is it inevitable, though?
Well, quite frankly, California and Canada are already implementing carbon taxes. And, quite frankly, Oregon and Washington and at least ten other US states will join in with them.
Why?
Because it's already something you have to measure to do business with most international companies.
But why does this impact us?
Because, once the West and Northeast put it in place, you'll have no choice but to join in, as we represent (just CA, OR, and WA) more than 40 percent of the US economy, and the other states put us at more than 65 percent. Therefore, we'll get the economies of scale and our sheer market power will force you to go along with it.
It's called the market. Capitalism cares nothing for your political views, only what the market tells it to do, in a market economy.
don't remember the last time I threw away anything electronic.
Me either. I have an Apple II+ and a Mac SE (dual drive) in my basement/garage. But I did ditch an old VCR so some kids could take it apart at school (VHS, broken).
Well, I just checked at the local coffee shop - still everyone planning on either getting a Wii or more games for the Wii they already got.
There was one guy a week ago who wanted a PS3 - but he was going to wait until January when they're easier to get. Mind you, he had a 1080i HDTV, so maybe he could appreciate the difference.
Yeah, but if you install it on a PS3, Sony will lose anywhere from $240 to $306 on the console sale, and technically the PS3 has more power than the Wii - notice I didn't say it was as fun to play, just more powerful.
Think about it - install Linux on your PS3 (bought at retail) instead, and kill two birds with one cow tossing.
both have online reviews where they say that people did side by side game comparisons - one TV with a Wii, a similar size HDTV with a PS3 - and found that even though people thought the graphics were nice on the HDTV, they all clustered around the Wii and had more fun with it.
With all the games.
I haven't found any Wii game turkeys yet, personally, and I bought three - and I've talked to a lot of other dads and they all bought or are buying Wii consoles for their kids - ages from 3 (yeah) to 19.
In the end, only the market matters. And right now the market says Sony got a zero on lauch buzz.
Day 2 and Sony is in 3rd place. I believe I called this one months ago.
True, but the big question is - who's on Second?
Right now it's looking like the Wii is selling all it can ship from Nintendo, but will the larger current installed base of xBox360 added to the new Japan-style games allow it to pull a close second, or even edge out the Wii?
Will we have a repeat of the PS2 success, where the Wii pulls way ahead leaving the xBox360 and PS3 to battle it out for a distand second and third, or will we have a neck and neck first and second place struggle, with Sony so far back they end up being a laughingstock?
The earliest we can tell any of this will be January 15th when we get the end of year stats for post-Xmas sales worldwide. But in reality, we really need to give all three a year to get a real feel what's going on.
Not sure what the exact blog is, but I saw it on the Tech Tracks blog, saying that Sony had only about 125,000 to 175,000 PS3 units to sell last weekend while Nintendo sold about 425,000 to 475,000 Wii consoles at launch, with shipments of 1.5 million to 2 million units to North American stores this year.
FYI the weather and news don't work for anyone at this point. Those Wii channels officially launch on 12/20 and 1/27 respectively.
Ah. I wondered about that.
My Wii downloaded an update and then gave some kind of error - seemed to take about 45 minutes.
Is there anything special you should be doing if your wireless runs on WEP with 64-bit security on channel 6?
I can always run the hard line from the cable modem outport that my son's Mac Mini is on, but it would be nice to have it share the wireless that my laptop uses (WinXP).
You bought an extra nunchunk, but not an extra remote? What will you use it with?
The Wii-mote I'm picking up tonight. New stock should have come in by now. I'll do a drive by at Fred Meyer.
And how is Rayman? I've been trying to decide between that and Super Monkeyball for fun gaming with my wife.
Rayman is the BEST! My son got the World High Score for the game (on Sunday). Love it!
Haven't seen Super Monkeyball - but so far no lousy games for the Wii on my end - all are good - kind of surprising... Check online for reviews, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut.
Think it was the hourly NPR news report, maybe Maura Liason (sp?)
All I know is what I see and hear.
Stats won't be published until after Black Friday (this Friday), and those don't normally come out until Dec. 15th (you can get advance numbers on 12/12 I think, but you have to pay for them).
The scary thing here is the following question: If you add power generated by 'clean' sources to the grid, will people stop using 'dirty' power, or just use more power?
That was why I said remove the subsidies for oil research and exploration.
Do you have a source for that 20-40 year figure? I see it bandied around occasionally, and I have a hard time believing the useful service life of a goddamn fusion reactor is only 20 years. My -car- has a longer service life than that.
Based on scientific papers I've read online at the UW. It's possible this exact form of fusion and the exact reactor technology may vary from that number. I don't read all of them, but I don't recall it's changed much over time.
But, compared to fission - or even coal - it's way better.
Also, we need to consider something that no fusion proponent will say.
In reality, after running the reactor for 20-40 years, you have a radioactive shell. You also get a small amount of radioactivity leakage in the nearby environment.
It's miniscule compared to fission of course, but it does exist. The reactor and components need to be decommissioned and disposed of (which, were we smart, would involve putting them in the Marianas trench and folding them back into the earth's mantle to be reprocessed.
However, the cost of disposal over the entire lifetime of disposal must always be included in any comparisons of costs of fission and fusion projects. We normally treat these as externalities, but they should be dealt with as intrinsic costs, just as we add scubbing costs for emissions treatment for coal plants.
The problem is that we currently are putting a massive amount of investment dollars in an unproven technology - fusion power - which has no proven results, when the money could be spent today on actual projects such as tidal energy, solar energy, wind energy, etc that would deliver real change by reducing C02 emissions.
However, I think both arguments ignore the real problem, which is that the use of oil and natural gas are both subsidized very heavily (taxes, investment and exploration credits) when if they were not subsidized, the market would shift more money to such alternatives and let us do research and development on fusion power reactors.
If you look at the research and subsidy pie, more than 95 percent goes to oil and gas. Get rid of most of that and put that towards fusion, and the market itself will expand use of solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc due to market pressures.
Sometimes, you have to walk up to the elephant in the room (oil) and push it over with a large mallet.
Please. We had this same discussion in the 70's when people were playing D&D "too much". It was every much as much BS then as it is now.
I'd like to disagree, as you did.
Except, I happened to be an AD&D player in the late 70's and I did drop out (1980) from Simon Fraser University because I played too many games and didn't go to classes.
I eventually went to another college, went in the Army, got rapid promotions, got multiple degrees in college/uni, and now work in research at one of the top universities, but it was a problem.
Just because O'Reilly has more problems than the people he's hating on, doesn't mean there isn't a grain of truth to the problem.
But people who drank too much or did drugs had way more problems than gamers, even then.
I mean, seriously, the guy calls gamers out of touch and he was caught in some freaky phone sex harassing, thinks the War in Iraq is being won, and was convinced that the GOP would win the 2006 elections?
It's like saying Saddam is a winner cause Bush lost the war. In reality, they're both losers.
Now, I'll admit, gaming can be an addiction. There are some people who need to get out more.
But there are a lot more drugged-up drunken neocons that need a swift kick of reality to their heads than there are gamers who need to pull the plug.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole central problem behind the "carbon" tax is that with the lack of consensus over whether or not fossil fuel emissions are increasing the Greenhouse Effect and producing global average temperature rise
Or, the very fact that our oceans will become too acidic (more than 2 pH levels) to support life and dissolve all shells from shellfish and destroy all coral by 2020, might be of even greater concern than just the rise in temperature.
It's actually not the rise itself, but what it means - massive oscillations in temperatures, massive hurricanes as a daily occurrence, that kind of thing - that is the main issue.
The reality is that our system is bad at measuring externalities - a fancy economics word that means pollution, destruction, and all the other bad things that happen when you make something - but good at measuring what it does measure.
Why is it inevitable, though?
Well, quite frankly, California and Canada are already implementing carbon taxes. And, quite frankly, Oregon and Washington and at least ten other US states will join in with them.
Why?
Because it's already something you have to measure to do business with most international companies.
But why does this impact us?
Because, once the West and Northeast put it in place, you'll have no choice but to join in, as we represent (just CA, OR, and WA) more than 40 percent of the US economy, and the other states put us at more than 65 percent. Therefore, we'll get the economies of scale and our sheer market power will force you to go along with it.
It's called the market. Capitalism cares nothing for your political views, only what the market tells it to do, in a market economy.
don't remember the last time I threw away anything electronic.
Me either. I have an Apple II+ and a Mac SE (dual drive) in my basement/garage. But I did ditch an old VCR so some kids could take it apart at school (VHS, broken).
Well, I just checked at the local coffee shop - still everyone planning on either getting a Wii or more games for the Wii they already got.
There was one guy a week ago who wanted a PS3 - but he was going to wait until January when they're easier to get. Mind you, he had a 1080i HDTV, so maybe he could appreciate the difference.
I still haven't found any extra Wii controllers myself. Found a nunchuk at Sears, but still need the Wii-mote.
They sold out any they still had on Black Friday early on.
And the games are in such short supply that they can't even stock a full shelf, cause they keep selling out.
Same at many stores.
What about Hindi ones?
Or Aztec?
Or Celtic?
That said, good ruling.
I just want to install Linux on the wii...
Yeah, but if you install it on a PS3, Sony will lose anywhere from $240 to $306 on the console sale, and technically the PS3 has more power than the Wii - notice I didn't say it was as fun to play, just more powerful.
Think about it - install Linux on your PS3 (bought at retail) instead, and kill two birds with one cow tossing.
Bunnies don't have clues.
They have ears.
As to quality, it's hard to push out quality when you've been overrun by bunnies, as their Christmas/Noel video showed.
Funny. It's (Wii) all the buzz amongst middle class dads and moms around here.
...
I agree the 360 needs a price drop. But, then, so does Sony's PS3
And we're all buying Wii games, quite frankly.
That and snowsuits and hip waders here in Seattle.
But some of the DS games are cool, as are some of the PSP ones.
Nobody seems interested in the Zune here - my sister phoned from Cali to ask if it's any good, I told her it had decent hardware.
So, I'd look for more Apple iPods, lots of games for the Wii console, extra controllers for the Wii console, SD cards, that kind of thing.
And the fact that we got World Champion status on our Wii with Rayman's Raving Rabbids has nothing to do with that.
Quick, duck behind the cow!
both have online reviews where they say that people did side by side game comparisons - one TV with a Wii, a similar size HDTV with a PS3 - and found that even though people thought the graphics were nice on the HDTV, they all clustered around the Wii and had more fun with it.
With all the games.
I haven't found any Wii game turkeys yet, personally, and I bought three - and I've talked to a lot of other dads and they all bought or are buying Wii consoles for their kids - ages from 3 (yeah) to 19.
In the end, only the market matters. And right now the market says Sony got a zero on lauch buzz.
Given that the seas would be too acidic by 2050, causing the destruction of coral and shells worldwide.
Day 2 and Sony is in 3rd place. I believe I called this one months ago.
True, but the big question is - who's on Second?
Right now it's looking like the Wii is selling all it can ship from Nintendo, but will the larger current installed base of xBox360 added to the new Japan-style games allow it to pull a close second, or even edge out the Wii?
Will we have a repeat of the PS2 success, where the Wii pulls way ahead leaving the xBox360 and PS3 to battle it out for a distand second and third, or will we have a neck and neck first and second place struggle, with Sony so far back they end up being a laughingstock?
The earliest we can tell any of this will be January 15th when we get the end of year stats for post-Xmas sales worldwide. But in reality, we really need to give all three a year to get a real feel what's going on.
Not sure what the exact blog is, but I saw it on the
Tech Tracks blog, saying that Sony had only about 125,000 to 175,000 PS3 units to sell last weekend while Nintendo sold about 425,000 to 475,000 Wii consoles at launch, with shipments of 1.5 million to 2 million units to North American stores this year.
While medications can be used to alter some aspects of sleep, in the real world, you're far better off getting more sleep and taking less drugs.
Except for caffeine and chocolate. Those are good, yum!
FYI the weather and news don't work for anyone at this point.
Those Wii channels officially launch on 12/20 and 1/27 respectively.
Ah. I wondered about that.
My Wii downloaded an update and then gave some kind of error - seemed to take about 45 minutes.
Is there anything special you should be doing if your wireless runs on WEP with 64-bit security on channel 6?
I can always run the hard line from the cable modem outport that my son's Mac Mini is on, but it would be nice to have it share the wireless that my laptop uses (WinXP).
You bought an extra nunchunk, but not an extra remote? What will you use it with?
... Check online for reviews, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut.
The Wii-mote I'm picking up tonight. New stock should have come in by now. I'll do a drive by at Fred Meyer.
And how is Rayman? I've been trying to decide between that and Super Monkeyball for fun gaming with my wife.
Rayman is the BEST! My son got the World High Score for the game (on Sunday). Love it!
Haven't seen Super Monkeyball - but so far no lousy games for the Wii on my end - all are good - kind of surprising
Think it was the hourly NPR news report, maybe Maura Liason (sp?)
All I know is what I see and hear.
Stats won't be published until after Black Friday (this Friday), and those don't normally come out until Dec. 15th (you can get advance numbers on 12/12 I think, but you have to pay for them).
The scary thing here is the following question: If you add power generated by 'clean' sources to the grid, will people stop using 'dirty' power, or just use more power?
That was why I said remove the subsidies for oil research and exploration.
Stop incentiving that form.
Do you have a source for that 20-40 year figure? I see it bandied around occasionally, and I have a hard time believing the useful service life of a goddamn fusion reactor is only 20 years. My -car- has a longer service life than that.
Based on scientific papers I've read online at the UW. It's possible this exact form of fusion and the exact reactor technology may vary from that number. I don't read all of them, but I don't recall it's changed much over time.
But, compared to fission - or even coal - it's way better.
Also, we need to consider something that no fusion proponent will say.
In reality, after running the reactor for 20-40 years, you have a radioactive shell. You also get a small amount of radioactivity leakage in the nearby environment.
It's miniscule compared to fission of course, but it does exist. The reactor and components need to be decommissioned and disposed of (which, were we smart, would involve putting them in the Marianas trench and folding them back into the earth's mantle to be reprocessed.
However, the cost of disposal over the entire lifetime of disposal must always be included in any comparisons of costs of fission and fusion projects. We normally treat these as externalities, but they should be dealt with as intrinsic costs, just as we add scubbing costs for emissions treatment for coal plants.
I think I can speak to that.
The problem is that we currently are putting a massive amount of investment dollars in an unproven technology - fusion power - which has no proven results, when the money could be spent today on actual projects such as tidal energy, solar energy, wind energy, etc that would deliver real change by reducing C02 emissions.
However, I think both arguments ignore the real problem, which is that the use of oil and natural gas are both subsidized very heavily (taxes, investment and exploration credits) when if they were not subsidized, the market would shift more money to such alternatives and let us do research and development on fusion power reactors.
If you look at the research and subsidy pie, more than 95 percent goes to oil and gas. Get rid of most of that and put that towards fusion, and the market itself will expand use of solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc due to market pressures.
Sometimes, you have to walk up to the elephant in the room (oil) and push it over with a large mallet.
Please. We had this same discussion in the 70's when people were playing D&D "too much". It was every much as much BS then as it is now.
I'd like to disagree, as you did.
Except, I happened to be an AD&D player in the late 70's and I did drop out (1980) from Simon Fraser University because I played too many games and didn't go to classes.
I eventually went to another college, went in the Army, got rapid promotions, got multiple degrees in college/uni, and now work in research at one of the top universities, but it was a problem.
Just because O'Reilly has more problems than the people he's hating on, doesn't mean there isn't a grain of truth to the problem.
But people who drank too much or did drugs had way more problems than gamers, even then.
I mean, seriously, the guy calls gamers out of touch and he was caught in some freaky phone sex harassing, thinks the War in Iraq is being won, and was convinced that the GOP would win the 2006 elections?
It's like saying Saddam is a winner cause Bush lost the war. In reality, they're both losers.
Now, I'll admit, gaming can be an addiction. There are some people who need to get out more.
But there are a lot more drugged-up drunken neocons that need a swift kick of reality to their heads than there are gamers who need to pull the plug.