Unfortunately, our government and a large part of its electorate might not give a damn about what happens to the environment. The Christian fundamentalists believe that whatever environmental damage we do doesn't matter a bit because of the imminent Rapture and Armageddon. Read this recent article by Bill Moyers, he puts the current state of America into a new perspective... http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5211218.ht ml
Robert Cringely has been talking about this for quite some time, that MBAs running today's businesses were trained only to worry about the bottom-line and short-term investor enthusiasm. Today's companies trade their own futures (i.e. their research and development departments which frustratingly list only on the liability side of the balance sheet) so that their execs can have the biggest salaries and the most golden of parachutes.
But you're forgetting the entire reason for considering legislation like this. What happens the day when lots of cars don't use gasoline? How will higher gasoline taxes help? And please don't bring up bring up hydrogen, electric, fuel cells, etc. because they don't have taxes attached to them yet either. The GPS solution is based on the idea of charging "fair use" for driving down Oregon roads.
I can't help but get extremely nervous about what has been happening here in America the last ten years or so. Please take a moment to consider the bigger picture -- the future of this country and the histories of societies and countries whose time has come and gone.
The thing that made this country great was that anyone could take someone else's ideas/products and make incremental improvements to them seemingly without any sort of legal suppression of those improvements. Please correct me if I am wrong, but, for example, when Edison improved the electric filament in light bulbs, their was an explosion in the lighting and power industries because anyone with any motivation could ticker to make even better lightbulbs and people ended up using more electricity, which led to greater efficiencies and more uses for electricity.
Now take that idea and look at the computer/software/entertainment industries. The computer hardware/software industries have completely changed the world. Billions of dollars have been spent creating chips and OSes that run everything from your car to your toaster. Now those hardware/software companies are running up against basic limits to the architectures they've been cashing in on for years. Now tell me, what is the fundamental difference between today's Intel chips and they ones they were making fifteen years ago? I'm betting not much since the language the chips speak is the same. Intel is probably chomping at the bit waiting for it's next great innovation to come along, meantime they have to protect their investments.
Now comes along Big Hollywood which won't make a movie unless the movie can make huge returns at the box office in the first two weeks after release. Hollywood used to make movies that lasted at the box office for months because they had strong stories. Now Hollywood has the MTV philosophy that every new thing has to be shinier and have more flash than last week's great thing, story doesn't matter as long as it satisfies everybody's self-perpetuating ADD.
Now Hollywood and Silicon Valley is crapping their collective pants because they can't keep up with the technologies that the computer hardware/software industry is feeding, so they've got Congress and the Patent Office working overtime to solve a problem that Hollywood/Silicon Valley can't fix in two weeks or can't be bothered to bite the bullet to figure out a way to make money in the new economy they've created.
With all the legal suppression they're creating for any new technology or innovation that would naturally occur, how can our economy, our society, and our nation grow and evolve?
Meantime, the Chinese are building fast plans to put a man in space and build an actual moon-base while our aging space shuttle and over-budget space station become more and more pointless.
Hollywood and corporate America are the new Caligula who has his fist up everyone's backside while his empire slides into ruin.
goatse.cx's mailhost and ns server are at IP 24.45.159.3, which is ARIN says belongs to
Cablevision Systems Corp
111 New South Road
Hicksville, NY 11801
US
(Cablevision Systems ran into problems with the FTC a few years ago... http://www.ftc.gov/os/1998/9804/9710095.cmp.htm) So goatse.cx looks like it's run on a cablemodem.
I think you're missing the point of Evolution -- it's is GROUPWARE -- which Outlook Express is not. I personally cannot wait for Evolution to be finished, it looks like it will be one helluva groupware client. Now, what about a free, more-powerful alternative to the crappy Exchange 5.5 groupware server I'm running at work?...
According to yesterday's status report, NASA is thinking the Pioneer 10 signal might be re-acquired in December when Earth is again within Pioneer's one degree look angle.
Go here: http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html
This sort of video-paper tech and video-enabled clothing has been promised for several years now and hopefully will be delivered very soon. But, frankly, I'm bored with the idea -- it just makes one more piece of stuff that I have to carry around with me. How about using technology like this to create tattooes that will display video? I would think that the tech for doing it would essentially be the same -- this video-paper tech uses ink-jet printer technology, so why not "print" circuits just under the skin? I would never wear clothing again. I would probably have pr0n MPGs running 24/7 in wide-screen format across my backside...
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Unfortunately, our government and a large part of its electorate might not give a damn about what happens to the environment. The Christian fundamentalists believe that whatever environmental damage we do doesn't matter a bit because of the imminent Rapture and Armageddon. Read this recent article by Bill Moyers, he puts the current state of America into a new perspective... http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5211218.ht ml
Robert Cringely has been talking about this for quite some time, that MBAs running today's businesses were trained only to worry about the bottom-line and short-term investor enthusiasm. Today's companies trade their own futures (i.e. their research and development departments which frustratingly list only on the liability side of the balance sheet) so that their execs can have the biggest salaries and the most golden of parachutes.
Catch Cringely's articles at:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/
But you're forgetting the entire reason for considering legislation like this. What happens the day when lots of cars don't use gasoline? How will higher gasoline taxes help? And please don't bring up bring up hydrogen, electric, fuel cells, etc. because they don't have taxes attached to them yet either. The GPS solution is based on the idea of charging "fair use" for driving down Oregon roads.
I can't help but get extremely nervous about what has been happening here in America the last ten years or so. Please take a moment to consider the bigger picture -- the future of this country and the histories of societies and countries whose time has come and gone.
The thing that made this country great was that anyone could take someone else's ideas/products and make incremental improvements to them seemingly without any sort of legal suppression of those improvements. Please correct me if I am wrong, but, for example, when Edison improved the electric filament in light bulbs, their was an explosion in the lighting and power industries because anyone with any motivation could ticker to make even better lightbulbs and people ended up using more electricity, which led to greater efficiencies and more uses for electricity.
Now take that idea and look at the computer/software/entertainment industries. The computer hardware/software industries have completely changed the world. Billions of dollars have been spent creating chips and OSes that run everything from your car to your toaster. Now those hardware/software companies are running up against basic limits to the architectures they've been cashing in on for years. Now tell me, what is the fundamental difference between today's Intel chips and they ones they were making fifteen years ago? I'm betting not much since the language the chips speak is the same. Intel is probably chomping at the bit waiting for it's next great innovation to come along, meantime they have to protect their investments.
Now comes along Big Hollywood which won't make a movie unless the movie can make huge returns at the box office in the first two weeks after release. Hollywood used to make movies that lasted at the box office for months because they had strong stories. Now Hollywood has the MTV philosophy that every new thing has to be shinier and have more flash than last week's great thing, story doesn't matter as long as it satisfies everybody's self-perpetuating ADD.
Now Hollywood and Silicon Valley is crapping their collective pants because they can't keep up with the technologies that the computer hardware/software industry is feeding, so they've got Congress and the Patent Office working overtime to solve a problem that Hollywood/Silicon Valley can't fix in two weeks or can't be bothered to bite the bullet to figure out a way to make money in the new economy they've created.
With all the legal suppression they're creating for any new technology or innovation that would naturally occur, how can our economy, our society, and our nation grow and evolve?
Meantime, the Chinese are building fast plans to put a man in space and build an actual moon-base while our aging space shuttle and over-budget space station become more and more pointless.
Hollywood and corporate America are the new Caligula who has his fist up everyone's backside while his empire slides into ruin.
goatse.cx's mailhost and ns server are at IP 24.45.159.3, which is ARIN says belongs to
Cablevision Systems Corp
111 New South Road
Hicksville, NY 11801
US
(Cablevision Systems ran into problems with the FTC a few years ago... http://www.ftc.gov/os/1998/9804/9710095.cmp.htm)
So goatse.cx looks like it's run on a cablemodem.
Will Windows running on 64-bit Itanium be any more stable than it is (or isn't) on a 32-bit CPU????
I think you're missing the point of Evolution -- it's is GROUPWARE -- which Outlook Express is not. I personally cannot wait for Evolution to be finished, it looks like it will be one helluva groupware client. Now, what about a free, more-powerful alternative to the crappy Exchange 5.5 groupware server I'm running at work?...
According to yesterday's status report, NASA is thinking the Pioneer 10 signal might be re-acquired in December when Earth is again within Pioneer's one degree look angle. Go here: http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html
This sort of video-paper tech and video-enabled clothing has been promised for several years now and hopefully will be delivered very soon. But, frankly, I'm bored with the idea -- it just makes one more piece of stuff that I have to carry around with me. How about using technology like this to create tattooes that will display video? I would think that the tech for doing it would essentially be the same -- this video-paper tech uses ink-jet printer technology, so why not "print" circuits just under the skin? I would never wear clothing again. I would probably have pr0n MPGs running 24/7 in wide-screen format across my backside...