If you love Communism I think that's great, I love it too, as an idea. It's just that no one has yet done it right.
It's that "totalitarianism" phase of Marxism - the guys who start the revolution just can't quite seem to get through that phase in order to start the inevitable arrival at Utopia. Given enough historical trends, one might start to suspect that the "leaders" of the Revolution(tm) never really intended to get past the totalitarian phase.
Ah yes, somebody intimately involved with an intelligence agency of the executive says that the Constitution gives the executive infinite powers to spy on anyone. No agenda there.
I still don't think you're quite getting the scale of raw material that this process can potentially handle. Offal is just the tip of the iceberg.
Properly exploited, this process can turn just about ALL organic material into oil - including all of our non-metal/glass garbage, our sewage, and fields of plants grown just to capture energy from the sun. And the act of turning the plants into oil separates out many of the common minerals which are needed for fertilizer, so that they can be returned to the fields.
Assuming the overall cycle keeps receiving energy from the sun, it would be perfectly possible to create a sustainable situation.
We need people who believe in humanity, to help it become better then it is, not someone who pushes it down.
If you ignore the broad spectrum of human behavior when planning for the future, you _will_ end up being crushed under the heels of some bastard who values stealing your possessions more than they value your life. Any plans for the future need to take the actions of such bastards into account.
People who don't acknowledge that some bad apples can really screw over the rest of society are politely known as dreamers, and rudely known as morons.
If anyone's causing the problem, it's OPEC manipulating the supply.
Quite frequently recently, OPEC has been producing at 100% capacity and still not producing enough to keep the price of oil down. This is one of the oft-quoted symptoms of the "Peak Oil" theory.
If anything will solve the problem it's capitalism, the most efficient resource allocation system known to man, and still practiced nowhere better than the USA.
All that means is that what oil is left will be efficiently allocated by selling it at $20/gallon when it becomes scarce enough.
Also, if you think the U.S. is one of the best examples of a purely capitalistic system in the world, you're still living in the pre-Great Depression era. China's current economic policies make it _much_ more capitalistic than the U.S. (although not democratic) right now, including all the bad parts of capitalism like screwing over the poor people.
And when you can't compete on competence or skill or qualifications you have two choices a) pretend you are 'all that' anyway and keep sinking or b) get depressed about it, and maybe do something about it.
Or you can take the only thing effective that you have left, a military grown bloated by decades of massive military-industrial-complex spending, and use it in a vain attempt to bring back the "glory days", thereby ensuring collapse of a lot of global infrastructure.
Hey, if we can't beat them, then drag them back down to our level, right?
What do you say to scientists like these that say the Sun may be just as, if not more responsible for, Global Warming, if it exists, than CO2 emissions?
I'd say that it doesn't matter whether global warming is caused by the Sun or by CO2 emissions - the effects are going to be the same no matter how it's caused, and if we don't want the global civilization to undergo mass disruption, then we need to figure out a way to ameliorate or adapt to it.
Since we can't do anything about the Sun's output, we need to look at options like: 1) play with the balance of gases that we are outputting into the atmosphere to compensate for the extra heating, 2) put up big sun shields between the Earth & the Sun to control the amount of light reaching the Earth, 3) anticipate how climate change is going to screw over various parts of the planet & implement migration plans (or forestation plans) to make sure that most people will end up in a habitable zone, or 4) some mix of many plans.
I'm sure there'd be a few other interesting ideas if people brainstormed some, but I haven't heard policymakers proposing _anything_ effective - just tiny little adjustments in industrial output which aren't going to do squat against the magnitude of the effects which are being measured by climatologists.
Contrary to your final statement, a lot of the people who need to be doing something about the situation _are_ the ones who are sticking their heads in the sand. Unfortunately, they are probably well-off enough to adapt to a changing climate, while the bulk of the world's population is probably going to end up enduring quite a bit of hardship (if not death by wars & famines & such).
Some of our best art has come from starving, fearful, depressed maniacs. Further, some of our best code has come from starving, fearful, depressed maniacs *ahem*.
And a lot of the worst of both comes from the same. Putting yourself under stress _might_ make you more creative, but there's a much higher probability that you'll end up depressed and non-productive.
Perhaps ancient societies observed that monogamy seemed to reduce the occurrence of these diseases, and therefore changed their social norms to favor monogamy.
Since a lot of the STDs seem to involve cold sores, warts, rashes, discharges of disgusting fluids (perhaps blood) from the genital region, if not outright death, I suspect that would tend to encourage finding a mate who had none of these symptoms & trying to stay with them, i.e., otherwise known as monogamy.
Last I checked there is a sizable portion of Christians that do not subscribe to having a lack of reason. Maybe you could try not bundling us all in the same package?
When you so-called "rational" Christians speak up LOUDLY & denounce the idiots who are claiming to represent you, then I'll stop bundling you all in the same package. If you don't speak up against them, then I have to assume that silence is assent.
I have been confidently informed by people with the utmost faith & authority that the Bible is Divinely-Inspired(tm), and nothing in it can be wrong. They get a little confused when I ask them whether it were possible that the translation was incorrect, though - apparently they hadn't thought that it was necessary to translate the Bible from its original English.
I'm not a patent proponent, but all you're doing is giving a few examples which may or may not be related to whether patents help society or not.
Patent proponents pretty much do the same thing though: list a set of examples like you did, and then state that this "proves" that patents are good for society.
IMO, unless patent proponents can dig up a solid set of studies which show that patents provide a net benefit to society, then the laws should revert back to "normal market" behavior (i.e., no government-enforced monopolies on ideas).
We've got such a humongous vested interest in the current system, however, I'm not even remotely optimistic that anything short of a revolution will change it significantly.
Are there any cases of patents actually helping people/companies?
That's the wrong question. Obviously, the people/companies who have made a lot of money from patents are going to say that they were helped greatly by them.
The correct question is: has it been demonstrated that enforcing patents provide a net benefit to society?
What else would an economy be based on, stagnation?
Like any large system, almost by definition the only sustainable behavior is "balance". To keep stagnation from occurring, you need the system to be regularly "perturbed" so that it doesn't get stuck in a particular state, but overall production & consumption have to balance for long-term sustainabiilty.
The US has never failed to repay a bond. Why would you think it ever would?
Because it won't be able to afford to.
Why would you think it would ever need to?
Because the debtholders might want to be paid back.
Those debts are payable in dollars, and the US can print all the dollars it needs.
And if it tries to use the dollar-printing power on the scale necessary to pay off all its debts, the resultant inflation will make all those dollars worth less than used toilet paper (at least that would be useful for fertilizer). While this might technically pay back the debts, it would also destroy the economy as surely as if they refused to pay back anything in the first place.
If you're trying to defend current U.S. economic policy, you might want to pick another defense - this one wouldn't make it past the opening chapter in an Economics 101 textbook.
Slashdot Mirror
It's that "totalitarianism" phase of Marxism - the guys who start the revolution just can't quite seem to get through that phase in order to start the inevitable arrival at Utopia. Given enough historical trends, one might start to suspect that the "leaders" of the Revolution(tm) never really intended to get past the totalitarian phase.
Sadly, that's an actual job description at some ranches (how else do you think they get that frozen stud sperm?).
I'm sorry, there aren't many politicians I'd like to see nude.
Ouch, that sarcasm's gotta hurt.
Isn't this pretty much what mesh networking is supposed to do?
Ah yes, somebody intimately involved with an intelligence agency of the executive says that the Constitution gives the executive infinite powers to spy on anyone. No agenda there.
If they get the right laws passed, sure they can.
I still don't think you're quite getting the scale of raw material that this process can potentially handle. Offal is just the tip of the iceberg.
Properly exploited, this process can turn just about ALL organic material into oil - including all of our non-metal/glass garbage, our sewage, and fields of plants grown just to capture energy from the sun. And the act of turning the plants into oil separates out many of the common minerals which are needed for fertilizer, so that they can be returned to the fields.
Assuming the overall cycle keeps receiving energy from the sun, it would be perfectly possible to create a sustainable situation.
Not sure what you think TD is.
Basically, TD will turn organic waste into oil. This is about as sustainable as it gets. How will TD "run out"?
If you ignore the broad spectrum of human behavior when planning for the future, you _will_ end up being crushed under the heels of some bastard who values stealing your possessions more than they value your life. Any plans for the future need to take the actions of such bastards into account.
People who don't acknowledge that some bad apples can really screw over the rest of society are politely known as dreamers, and rudely known as morons.
Quite frequently recently, OPEC has been producing at 100% capacity and still not producing enough to keep the price of oil down. This is one of the oft-quoted symptoms of the "Peak Oil" theory.
All that means is that what oil is left will be efficiently allocated by selling it at $20/gallon when it becomes scarce enough.
Also, if you think the U.S. is one of the best examples of a purely capitalistic system in the world, you're still living in the pre-Great Depression era. China's current economic policies make it _much_ more capitalistic than the U.S. (although not democratic) right now, including all the bad parts of capitalism like screwing over the poor people.
Don't forget Thermal Depolymerization.
Hey, if we can't beat them, then drag them back down to our level, right?
(You think I'm cynical? Why do you say that? :P)
I'd say that it doesn't matter whether global warming is caused by the Sun or by CO2 emissions - the effects are going to be the same no matter how it's caused, and if we don't want the global civilization to undergo mass disruption, then we need to figure out a way to ameliorate or adapt to it.
Since we can't do anything about the Sun's output, we need to look at options like: 1) play with the balance of gases that we are outputting into the atmosphere to compensate for the extra heating, 2) put up big sun shields between the Earth & the Sun to control the amount of light reaching the Earth, 3) anticipate how climate change is going to screw over various parts of the planet & implement migration plans (or forestation plans) to make sure that most people will end up in a habitable zone, or 4) some mix of many plans.
I'm sure there'd be a few other interesting ideas if people brainstormed some, but I haven't heard policymakers proposing _anything_ effective - just tiny little adjustments in industrial output which aren't going to do squat against the magnitude of the effects which are being measured by climatologists.
Contrary to your final statement, a lot of the people who need to be doing something about the situation _are_ the ones who are sticking their heads in the sand. Unfortunately, they are probably well-off enough to adapt to a changing climate, while the bulk of the world's population is probably going to end up enduring quite a bit of hardship (if not death by wars & famines & such).
And a lot of the worst of both comes from the same. Putting yourself under stress _might_ make you more creative, but there's a much higher probability that you'll end up depressed and non-productive.
Since a lot of the STDs seem to involve cold sores, warts, rashes, discharges of disgusting fluids (perhaps blood) from the genital region, if not outright death, I suspect that would tend to encourage finding a mate who had none of these symptoms & trying to stay with them, i.e., otherwise known as monogamy.
So the non-spiral galaxies that are just big clusters of stars, those are the meatballs?
When you so-called "rational" Christians speak up LOUDLY & denounce the idiots who are claiming to represent you, then I'll stop bundling you all in the same package. If you don't speak up against them, then I have to assume that silence is assent.
I have been confidently informed by people with the utmost faith & authority that the Bible is Divinely-Inspired(tm), and nothing in it can be wrong. They get a little confused when I ask them whether it were possible that the translation was incorrect, though - apparently they hadn't thought that it was necessary to translate the Bible from its original English.
I'm not a patent proponent, but all you're doing is giving a few examples which may or may not be related to whether patents help society or not.
Patent proponents pretty much do the same thing though: list a set of examples like you did, and then state that this "proves" that patents are good for society.
IMO, unless patent proponents can dig up a solid set of studies which show that patents provide a net benefit to society, then the laws should revert back to "normal market" behavior (i.e., no government-enforced monopolies on ideas).
We've got such a humongous vested interest in the current system, however, I'm not even remotely optimistic that anything short of a revolution will change it significantly.
That's the wrong question. Obviously, the people/companies who have made a lot of money from patents are going to say that they were helped greatly by them.
The correct question is: has it been demonstrated that enforcing patents provide a net benefit to society?
Like any large system, almost by definition the only sustainable behavior is "balance". To keep stagnation from occurring, you need the system to be regularly "perturbed" so that it doesn't get stuck in a particular state, but overall production & consumption have to balance for long-term sustainabiilty.
Because it won't be able to afford to.
Because the debtholders might want to be paid back.
And if it tries to use the dollar-printing power on the scale necessary to pay off all its debts, the resultant inflation will make all those dollars worth less than used toilet paper (at least that would be useful for fertilizer). While this might technically pay back the debts, it would also destroy the economy as surely as if they refused to pay back anything in the first place.
If you're trying to defend current U.S. economic policy, you might want to pick another defense - this one wouldn't make it past the opening chapter in an Economics 101 textbook.
If this were actually true, then my mind is being d*mned uncooperative about how I want "reality" to become.
Every article that mentions science tends to trigger anti-moron posts.
The fact that a lot of the morons call themselves Christians is bad public-relations for the Christian faith.