You forgot to mention that the asteroid looks like a breast, and will be visible to the naked eye (albeit for a couple milliseconds) before it hits. Then maybe the FCC would drop some of it's budget on the problem.
If we have craters on our planet & there are bones of things that shouldn't have died lying all around, I'm guessing they could place something like a 1% chance of a decent sized asteroid hitting us within a couple thousand years.
B-b-b-but those craters and bones were placed there in order to test our faith!
If an asteroid is going to hit the earth, obviously that is part of the end times, and the Rapture is nigh. Who are we to disrupt God's plan?
I jest. But the scary thing is that there are plenty of people out there who would think I'm serious -- and would agree with me -- and some of those people are sitting in the House of Representatives.
all NASA needs to do is present congress with a scientific statistic claim with percent confidence of global destruction
Erm, that's not quite how the Congressional budgeting procedure works. The responses NASA might get could be:
"Well, OK, but how much of that budget is going to be spent in my state?" or "But your budget is alreay over $16Bn. Surely you can cut some fat and some useless programs from your budget to cover this, if it is so important." or "Surely this should fall under the aegis of the Homeland Security Department. Maybe you should go talk to them." or "How's that moon landing coming, Bob?"
Your logic makes perfect sense. But getting money out of Congress for something seen as low-risk (even 1% over a couple thousand years) isn't so easy, particularly when tax cuts are all the rage and there is a looming federal budget crisis over the next two generations.
((Then again, that's in the US. Not sure about Australia))
Parent:
As you may or may not be aware, Australia is not a part of the US and has managed to avoid becoming subject to many US laws.
I don't know about you, but my vote is on the grandparent being aware that AUS is not part of the US, and that the legal code is different. Because, after all, he explicitly stated it for your benefit.
That said, Australian copyright law uses the concept of fair dealing, which is different than fair use in the US. From what I understand, it's less forgiving than fair use.
And that said, the US and Australia entered into agreement in 2004 (AUSFTA) that standardized the definitions of infringing behaviors between the two countries as part of the IP section of the treaty. What I'm not sure of is whether the standards apply only for international copyright issues, or purely domestic issues such as this one.
Generally, FTA treaties require that the agreeing nations, when standards are established, use those standards for purely domestic issues as well as international issues, since to do otherwise could create a difference in the business climate in the nations who've signed on to the Free Trade Agreement.
An example of this is the US anti-internet-gambling law, which is being disputed in the WTO since the US now has different standards for domestic and international gambling sites.
There are ways to reduce that. For example, make everyone pay, and then allow those who claim the vehicle as a work vehicle on their taxes take a credit against their taxes. The penalties for lying on a tax return are pretty stiff, and the audit system for taxes is fairly sharp. Do you think John Q. Officeworker is going to take the risk of huge penalties in order to claim that his F-150 gas guzzler is used primarily for work and is necessary to that work?
What is so magical about gasoline that it needs to be taxed?
Two reasons:
(1) Much of the infrastructure for gas distribution is publically subsidized; this cost should be recouped.
(2) Also from an economic standpoint, gas consumers get a free ride on the environmental impact of their gas consumption, which is a shared cost. The price consumers pay at the pump should reflect the true cost of the gas, not just the production cost.
Notice that I'm not even mentioning the positive impacts of discouraging excessive gas use, which might violate some libertarian principles so prevalent here on slashdot.
Every state I've ever lived in has had a gas tax, which certainly hits owners of fuel-inefficient vehicles harder.
Sure it does. But it doesn't provide an exception for those who need the vehicle for work (other than a slight increase in deductible expenses). It also isn't nearly high enough, IMO. And it's an inobvious tax on fuel economy -- people who buy gas-guzzlers don't see it directly at purchase time.
Hike the gas tax, and charge an assessment at time of registration for any low-fuel-economy vehicle not registered as a work vehicle.
Isn't the myriad the point? YOUtube, and not THEIRtube?
No, this is business. Maybe YOUtube used to be the point, but no longer -- I think perhaps "MYtube full o' money" has been the point all along.
Selling ads specifically on a given video is TV-era thinking. This is the mighty internet tube system, it doesn't work the same way.
How so? This isn't about the internet "routing around" videos with ads appended -- this is about getting advertisers to pay Google top dollar for getting their content out there. Advertisers like to target a market, and your solution doesn't allow for that -- which, in the eyes of advertisers, means that a portion of their budget is wasted on people who won't buy their goods anyway.
And from a user standpoint, this would be a good thing -- you can still get plenty of content without ads. I wouldn't bother watching crappy home video clips if I knew I'd have to watch an ad just for the privilege of possibly being entertained by some clip. Yet when I want to seek out a specific clip recommended to me by a friend, I would likely watch an ad first.
Selling ads on everything is failed-content-provider-thinking. If you do it, people will migrate to another source.
I'm in favour of the principle of the free market, but if some people lie starving in the street because they have no job or skills, I'm against that.
Meh, you should stick to your principles. Those people lying starving in the street could serve a useful purpose very easily, if they chose only to lie down in potholes.
See, the free market does provide a solution to everything -- and rather than businesses choosing to pay to fix potholes because it's in their best interest to have good streets (which I always felt was unlikely to occur anyway), there is a far simpler solution that you, sir, should be proud of coming up with.
Oops. My html-fu and typo-avoidance-fu are weak this morning, I need my caffeine. Let me repost that little more cleanly:
While I agree with all your points, I think they address the stated purpose of vice taxes, not the true purpose.
Vice taxes exist as a source of revenue that is acceptable to the public. Raise the general income tax, and you'll be voted out. Raise a vice tax, and the complaints are minor.
As I see it, vice taxes are just a means of raising revenues that lead to an inequitable tax distribution -- and troubling to me is that they are disproportionately levied on the uneducated and the poor.
If we are going to use vice taxes for revenue, it's a shame we don't levy a vice tax on low fuel-economy vehicles not needed for work.
While I agree with all your points, I think they address the stated purpose of vic e taxes, not the true purpose. Vice taxes exist as a source of revenue that is acceptable to the public. Raise the general income tax, and you'll be voted out. Raise a vice tax, and the complaints are minor.
As I see it, vice taxes are just a means of raising revenues that lead to an inequitable tax distribution -- and troubling to me is that they are disproportionately levied on the uneductaed and the poor.
If we are going to use vice taxes for revenue, it's a shame we don't levy a vice tax on low fuel-economy vehicles not needed for work.
The article also discusses how to configure Windows Vista to utilize its power-saving options
You are attempting to power down Vista. Cancel or Allow? Allow I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
Any more cliches we can apply here?
I, for one, welcome our power-saving-bleeding-heart-liberal overlords.
In Korea, only old people conserve power.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these low-power-draw PCs! (kinda defeats the purpose, huh?)
1. Design low-power PC. 2. Turn on power-saving options in Vista 3. ??? 4. Profit! (actually, there is no 3. lowering power consumption is the profit-making step)
The best way to reduce power consumption in Vista is to allow chairs to be thrown at your PC until it stops working.
Disclaimer: I once worked for a PC manufacturer The demand of the free market will cause PC manufacturers to make low-power PCs. Any regulations mandating low power consumption are doomed to fail and will inversely lead to market inequalities resulting in increased power consumption and fewer low-power alternatives for individuals who want to be free like their information. This is why I created my philospophy of lawlessoprofiteeringism.
Sorry, I'm a bit... frustrated with inagile companies right now. Management won't let me automate a recurring project that requires each incremental change (around 70/month) to be recorded 6 (!) times in separate Excel and Word files. I'm bangin my head against the wall, since it'd be trivial to do, but "no one here would be able to understand what you did".
So what would scare Microsoft more? The fact that a government department isn't using it or the fact that many companies like mine are still writing stuff for the old software hence forcing our customers to stick with IE6 or any version of Firefox?
Or maybe all the DOT contractors who now won't be using Vista and IE7? It's not just a government department, it's all the companies that provide services to that department. Never mind the role government plays as an example for many businesses to follow wrt implementation.
E.g., if the not-so-adept[1] US government knows better than to install Vista and IE7, wtf would my company do so? What is the compelling case for implementing?
Did I mention I write web applications and I can only test them in IE6 and Firefox?
Sounds like your company doesn't know it's ass from a hole in the ground. Have you considered finding an employer who isn't shooting themselves in the foot?
[1] on an institutional level. Plenty of individuals are quite adept, but the LCD factor is pretty high in the US Gov.
Unfortunately, crematoriums burn at an extremely high temperature requiring lots of extraneous fuel. Not sure this is cost-effective.
I suggest grinding the cadavers into cow feed, then capturing the methane released during digestion, which we should be doing anyway.
Either that or cannibalism, which would reduce the fuel needed for food production, and have the nice side effect of reducing the human population both through 'harvesting' and through the spread of prionic diseases.
It makes me wonder about how much original thought there is on Slashdot, versus how many comments are just clueless people using technical terms in a syntactically-correct fashion without really understanding what they're saying.
You must be new here.
If I went back into the Slashdot archives for around 1999, I wouldn't be surprised if I could find a ton of comments to the effect of "only stupid people write down their passwords".
That's because obvious truths == positive moderation. Inobvious truths and original thought aren't recognized by most moderators.
This is a product of the moderation system, which rewards both groupthink and stating the obvious. That said, I've yet to see anything nearly as good as the slashdot system for moderation.
Oh, and browsing at +4 certainly helps a lot -- really increases the signal to noise ratio.
Since the person using the wrongly-obtained validation key is aware that use of it will deny the rightful owner of it access, it is morally equivalent to theft.
I'd just make one change to your post:
Not so much ironic as subscribing to a different value system.
Should be: Not so much ironic as subscribing to a value system not based purely on personal gain and convenience.
I think that decentralization of power is what's necessary. More home rule, so to speak, where those making important decisions are accountable to their neighbors, to the people they see at the grocery store and the post office. It means shifting authority to local governments, I guess -- if you add too many more reps, a deliberative body of what, 20,000 people is what you'd get... hardly conducive to getting anything done.
I don't think we need more PE's, we need a patent system not tweaked for big-money interests.
What about our current Constitution? It's over 200 years old and a proven system. Would you replace it and start from scratch as well?
Yes, yes I would. The Constitution is no longer a living document, and it doesn't reflect the current (in)capacity of Americans to govern ourselves. It is designed for less than 30,000:1 federal governance ratio -- it's the lack of accountability due to massive accretion of power in a few hands that has destroyed any semblance of non-corporate control.
What we need to do is rebuild the system from scratch, forcing the huge government bureaucracy and the corporate masters it serves to re-entrench itself whilst under REAL citizen oversight*.
*I know, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But I still think that a ratio of 6.*10^5 people to 1 representative is phenomenally oversized. Let alone an average of 3*10^6 : 1 for the Senate.
Moving research off shore to keep others from doing similar work is a delay tactic at best.
It's not to keep others from doing similar work, it's to keep costs down.
If the company you're offshoring to has weak IP laws (and lack of an IP treaty with the US) then you don't want to offshore there. Countries want their IP laws to be similar to US law so that US firms (or multinationals with a big US presence) will consider them for product development/manufacturing, as well as a product market.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot to mention that the asteroid looks like a breast, and will be visible to the naked eye (albeit for a couple milliseconds) before it hits. Then maybe the FCC would drop some of it's budget on the problem.
B-b-b-but those craters and bones were placed there in order to test our faith!
If an asteroid is going to hit the earth, obviously that is part of the end times, and the Rapture is nigh. Who are we to disrupt God's plan?
I jest. But the scary thing is that there are plenty of people out there who would think I'm serious -- and would agree with me -- and some of those people are sitting in the House of Representatives.
Erm, that's not quite how the Congressional budgeting procedure works. The responses NASA might get could be:
"Well, OK, but how much of that budget is going to be spent in my state?" or
"But your budget is alreay over $16Bn. Surely you can cut some fat and some useless programs from your budget to cover this, if it is so important." or
"Surely this should fall under the aegis of the Homeland Security Department. Maybe you should go talk to them." or
"How's that moon landing coming, Bob?"
Your logic makes perfect sense. But getting money out of Congress for something seen as low-risk (even 1% over a couple thousand years) isn't so easy, particularly when tax cuts are all the rage and there is a looming federal budget crisis over the next two generations.
You're == you are.
QED.
Parent:
I don't know about you, but my vote is on the grandparent being aware that AUS is not part of the US, and that the legal code is different. Because, after all, he explicitly stated it for your benefit.
That said, Australian copyright law uses the concept of fair dealing, which is different than fair use in the US. From what I understand, it's less forgiving than fair use.
And that said, the US and Australia entered into agreement in 2004 (AUSFTA) that standardized the definitions of infringing behaviors between the two countries as part of the IP section of the treaty. What I'm not sure of is whether the standards apply only for international copyright issues, or purely domestic issues such as this one.
Generally, FTA treaties require that the agreeing nations, when standards are established, use those standards for purely domestic issues as well as international issues, since to do otherwise could create a difference in the business climate in the nations who've signed on to the Free Trade Agreement.
An example of this is the US anti-internet-gambling law, which is being disputed in the WTO since the US now has different standards for domestic and international gambling sites.
There are ways to reduce that. For example, make everyone pay, and then allow those who claim the vehicle as a work vehicle on their taxes take a credit against their taxes. The penalties for lying on a tax return are pretty stiff, and the audit system for taxes is fairly sharp. Do you think John Q. Officeworker is going to take the risk of huge penalties in order to claim that his F-150 gas guzzler is used primarily for work and is necessary to that work?
Two reasons:
(1) Much of the infrastructure for gas distribution is publically subsidized; this cost should be recouped.
(2) Also from an economic standpoint, gas consumers get a free ride on the environmental impact of their gas consumption, which is a shared cost. The price consumers pay at the pump should reflect the true cost of the gas, not just the production cost.
Notice that I'm not even mentioning the positive impacts of discouraging excessive gas use, which might violate some libertarian principles so prevalent here on slashdot.
Well that's exactly the point of TFA, that so many posters seem to be missing. Will the GDC become more like E3 due to E3 being kaput?
Are the GDC organizers making sure that GDC sticks to what it should be?
Hike the gas tax, and charge an assessment at time of registration for any low-fuel-economy vehicle not registered as a work vehicle.
How so? This isn't about the internet "routing around" videos with ads appended -- this is about getting advertisers to pay Google top dollar for getting their content out there. Advertisers like to target a market, and your solution doesn't allow for that -- which, in the eyes of advertisers, means that a portion of their budget is wasted on people who won't buy their goods anyway.
And from a user standpoint, this would be a good thing -- you can still get plenty of content without ads. I wouldn't bother watching crappy home video clips if I knew I'd have to watch an ad just for the privilege of possibly being entertained by some clip. Yet when I want to seek out a specific clip recommended to me by a friend, I would likely watch an ad first.
Selling ads on everything is failed-content-provider-thinking. If you do it, people will migrate to another source.
Meh, you should stick to your principles. Those people lying starving in the street could serve a useful purpose very easily, if they chose only to lie down in potholes.
See, the free market does provide a solution to everything -- and rather than businesses choosing to pay to fix potholes because it's in their best interest to have good streets (which I always felt was unlikely to occur anyway), there is a far simpler solution that you, sir, should be proud of coming up with.
Oops. My html-fu and typo-avoidance-fu are weak this morning, I need my caffeine. Let me repost that little more cleanly:
While I agree with all your points, I think they address the stated purpose of vice taxes, not the true purpose.
Vice taxes exist as a source of revenue that is acceptable to the public. Raise the general income tax, and you'll be voted out. Raise a vice tax, and the complaints are minor.
As I see it, vice taxes are just a means of raising revenues that lead to an inequitable tax distribution -- and troubling to me is that they are disproportionately levied on the uneducated and the poor.
If we are going to use vice taxes for revenue, it's a shame we don't levy a vice tax on low fuel-economy vehicles not needed for work.
While I agree with all your points, I think they address the stated purpose of vic e taxes, not the true purpose.
Vice taxes exist as a source of revenue that is acceptable to the public. Raise the general income tax, and you'll be voted out. Raise a vice tax, and the complaints are minor.
As I see it, vice taxes are just a means of raising revenues that lead to an inequitable tax distribution -- and troubling to me is that they are disproportionately levied on the uneductaed and the poor.
If we are going to use vice taxes for revenue, it's a shame we don't levy a vice tax on low fuel-economy vehicles not needed for work.
There are two questions still open for debate --
Are humans a significant cause of the increase in temperature?
Are steps to mitigate the human effect on temperature worth taking?
I believe the answers are yes and yes, but we don't have to be the primary cause to make it worthwhile to reduce our carbon emissions.
No, he's suggesting we continue to listen to debunked hogwash paid for by the fossil fuel industry.
You are attempting to power down Vista.
Cancel or Allow?
Allow
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
Any more cliches we can apply here?
I, for one, welcome our power-saving-bleeding-heart-liberal overlords.
In Korea, only old people conserve power.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these low-power-draw PCs! (kinda defeats the purpose, huh?)
1. Design low-power PC.
2. Turn on power-saving options in Vista
3. ???
4. Profit! (actually, there is no 3. lowering power consumption is the profit-making step)
The best way to reduce power consumption in Vista is to allow chairs to be thrown at your PC until it stops working.
Disclaimer: I once worked for a PC manufacturer
The demand of the free market will cause PC manufacturers to make low-power PCs. Any regulations mandating low power consumption are doomed to fail and will inversely lead to market inequalities resulting in increased power consumption and fewer low-power alternatives for individuals who want to be free like their information. This is why I created my philospophy of lawlessoprofiteeringism.
Sorry, 5 PM on Friday, couldn't resist.
Sorry, I'm a bit... frustrated with inagile companies right now. Management won't let me automate a recurring project that requires each incremental change (around 70/month) to be recorded 6 (!) times in separate Excel and Word files. I'm bangin my head against the wall, since it'd be trivial to do, but "no one here would be able to understand what you did".
That's what I get for consulting.
E.g., if the not-so-adept[1] US government knows better than to install Vista and IE7, wtf would my company do so? What is the compelling case for implementing?
Sounds like your company doesn't know it's ass from a hole in the ground. Have you considered finding an employer who isn't shooting themselves in the foot?
[1] on an institutional level. Plenty of individuals are quite adept, but the LCD factor is pretty high in the US Gov.
Soylent fuel is People !?
Unfortunately, crematoriums burn at an extremely high temperature requiring lots of extraneous fuel. Not sure this is cost-effective.
I suggest grinding the cadavers into cow feed, then capturing the methane released during digestion, which we should be doing anyway.
Either that or cannibalism, which would reduce the fuel needed for food production, and have the nice side effect of reducing the human population both through 'harvesting' and through the spread of prionic diseases.
You must be new here.
That's because obvious truths == positive moderation. Inobvious truths and original thought aren't recognized by most moderators.
This is a product of the moderation system, which rewards both groupthink and stating the obvious. That said, I've yet to see anything nearly as good as the slashdot system for moderation.
Oh, and browsing at +4 certainly helps a lot -- really increases the signal to noise ratio.
At any rate, let him link-whore like so many others. Fore-warned is fore-armed, and nothing is making you click his link.
Since the person using the wrongly-obtained validation key is aware that use of it will deny the rightful owner of it access, it is morally equivalent to theft.
I'd just make one change to your post:
Should be: Not so much ironic as subscribing to a value system not based purely on personal gain and convenience.
I think that decentralization of power is what's necessary. More home rule, so to speak, where those making important decisions are accountable to their neighbors, to the people they see at the grocery store and the post office. It means shifting authority to local governments, I guess -- if you add too many more reps, a deliberative body of what, 20,000 people is what you'd get... hardly conducive to getting anything done.
I don't think we need more PE's, we need a patent system not tweaked for big-money interests.
Less of an incentive to keep your research in the US, where, due to IP laws, you have a greater assurance of being able to monetize your inventions.
This is from the perspective of a huge company (the ones who write the laws), not a small one.
What we need to do is rebuild the system from scratch, forcing the huge government bureaucracy and the corporate masters it serves to re-entrench itself whilst under REAL citizen oversight*.
*I know, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But I still think that a ratio of 6.*10^5 people to 1 representative is phenomenally oversized. Let alone an average of 3*10^6 : 1 for the Senate.
If the company you're offshoring to has weak IP laws (and lack of an IP treaty with the US) then you don't want to offshore there. Countries want their IP laws to be similar to US law so that US firms (or multinationals with a big US presence) will consider them for product development/manufacturing, as well as a product market.
Loose IP laws == lack of foreign investment.