So let me see, current cells have 15% efficiency or so , the best stuff ( I.e GaAs ) can reach 30% - 40% , and this tech will increase output power by more than an order of magnitude, meaning they should output at least 150% of the energy they receive?
If the numbers are to add up then what they are doing is a concentrating solar power plant and it should be compared to the values for such instalations. Heck, using their way to do the counting I could design a power plant which outputs 100 times the power of existing state of the art solar cells, by using a 100m array of mirrors and a stirling engine. In fact, this has been done.
For proper comparison they should compare their technology with other concentrating solar technologies, in which case I'm suspecting they get their ass kicked by solar thermal installations that have superior conversion efficiencies.
You jest , but your coment should actually be moderated insightful. While radioactive the chemical effects from uranium and lead alike outdo the radioactive ones from uranium by orders of magnitude. In terms of toxicity lead is probably a lot worse than uranium. The concern with DU as used by military is mostly when it is used in armor piercing rounds, where the bullets are propelled to sufficient velocities to powderise them on impact. The concerns is that finely powderised uranium may get stuck in people's lungs, greatly increasing exposure. While there are varying opinions about the extent to which this is a problem, the concern is almost completely down to the uranium powderising. Had regular lead been used in a similar way ( it is not because it is far too soft for an armor piercing material ) the effects would likely have been worse than with uranium, since lead is significantly more toxic.
..simply because I've had a boyfriend, I don't think this is particularily surprising. It is a supressive theocracy. Like other theocracies it has no qualms with torturing and even killing innocent people in order to silence criticism. This is common in dictatorships religious or not. The fundamental problem is the dictatorial rule and the regime's complete lack of limits in terms of what lengths it will go to in order to protect its own survival. Soviet was the same. Zimbabwe is the same. The only difference is what excuse these regimes use to justify their crimes. In soviet it was political ideology. In Iran it is religion. In Zimbabwe it is skin colour. What they have in common is that they kill and torture people in order to make the public afraid of organising opposition, their official reasons (religion,economics,race,culture) for doing so have little to do with their actual objectives. It's all about supressing dissidents, all other reasons is smoke and mirrors trying to obscure the true nature of the regime.
Not quite. It was found that for certain types of goods and services ( healthcare, education, defense etc... )it worked rather well. In fact, it works so well that even the USA is considering to finance healthcare through a centrally planned system rather than the free market. They don't say it too loudly, and obscure what it really is by calling it other things, but that is essentially what is being done.
The flaw of comunism was not that it recognised that SOME goods and services were better provided throughc entral planning, the flaw was that it assumed that the best way to provide one type of good would necessarily be the best way for ALL goods. In reality central planning works well when goods have large positive externalities, and especially so for public goods. Conversely a free market works well for goods that have no, or minor , externalities, and fails horribly in other cases ( pollution, health care, etc.. ).
The flaw of capitalism is the same as the flaw of communism. It is based on an assumption that all goods and services are equivalent. In reality the extent to which suplier and consumer in a private market pay and benefit from all the effects of a good ( positive as well as negative ) depend greatly upon how much third parties are affected by the goods production and use. For some goods the costs and benefits are accounted for almost completely by the market , for these goods capitalism works well. For other goods there are large external costs and benefits that the market doesn't care about. For these goods capitalism fails horribly.
If you knew your economics you would be well aware that capitalism as well as comunisms are naive generalisations of principles that only hold true under very specific conditions.
There isn't any good reason why the javascript engine should run with the same privileges as the browser, and there certainly isn't any good reason why plugins like flash should have as many privileges as they do. Sandboxing those bits should help a lot.
Meh, once you study some philosophy you can screw up the notion of ranking diciplines rather easily. Observe:
The laws governing mathematics is merely a consequence of the way our world works, making them essentially a matter of the laws of physics. Mathematics is thus applied physics.
On the other hand, the laws of physics are not fully understood, and you could very well argue that the present understanding is merely a consequence of our tendency to make extrapolations of observed trends. Hence our tendency to believe there is a fundamental set of physical laws is a matter of psychology. Physics is merely applied psychology.
Of coruse, psychology only makes sense if you assume there are other conscious beings in the world, and this is a belief that cannot be tested experimentally. One could therefore question if assuming that there is a real world is any less irrational than assuming there is a god, and depending on how you answer that question you may well argue that all knowledge is merely religious beliefs that we adhere to with various levels of conviction.
Of course, at this point I have to destroy the entire basis for my argument by questioning the properties of logic that allowed me to make this argument in the first place.
Bullshit, there are essentially 3 ways in which drugs cause addiction.
1: First of all many drugs are indeed very pleasant. In fact, some of them, like cocaine, cause such extreme releases of serotonin and dopamine that this effect will on its own make virtually everybody who use it addicted to it relatively quickly. We are hardwired to get somewhat addicted to things that are pleasant (like sex), the problem is that some drugs have so strong effects that this effect goes beyond everything else. It is not about having an addictive personality, because everybody have a tendency to feel some form of desire or need of things pleasant, and drugs like cocaine strikes strongly at this by preventing the reabsorption of signal substances in the brain, resulting in a massive spike in the levels of the hormones that make us feel well.
2:Many drugs cause pain when you try to stop using them. Nicotine and Alcohol are probably the most well known examples, but Heroin has similar effects. Because the body tries to adjust to the effects of the drug, ceasing to use it can mess you up fairly bad. Smokers tend to get a bad stomach when they stop, alcoholics experience headaches, and heroin abuses can literarely go mad trying to stop using the drug. There are a lot of further symptomes but what they have in common is that ceasing to use the drug creates unpleasant symptomes. These effects have been clearly demonstrated and are not merely psychological. Many drugs affect more parts of the body than just the brain and some of these side effects show up when you quit.
3:Some drugs prevent you from feeling pleasant from other things without the drug. Long time smokers can find it difficult to relax without nicotine as an example. As the body creates extra receptors to compensate for the effect of the drug, more of it is required to trigger the same response ( being one reason why smokers tend to smoke more and more the longer they have been addicted ) and other things that would normally make you feel pleasant may have a dimnished effect unless the drug is pressent simultaneously.
It is true that a number of authorities have inconsistent policies, but mostly this takes the form of having less stringent rules for nicotine and alcohol than for drugs like cannabis. It doesn't mean cocaine or heroin are harmless, and indeed the problem with people not trusting the authorities when it comes to advice on these drugs is one of the reasons why pretending that cannabis is way worse than alcohol or nicotine is retarded. By undermining their creidbility by greatly exagerating the dangers of cannabis, the authorities are causing a lot of people to underestimate the dangers of drugs like heroin. This is a major problem since the latter, unlike cannabis, will almost certainly destroy a person, and a heroin addiction makes nicotine look like a slight temptation in comparison.
The main reason Coal is being used to produce electricity rather than say Nuclear, Wind Power and Solar is price. Coal is cheap. If you impose a carbon tax , however, forcing companies that emit a lot of CO2 to pay for it, then that will make electricity generation from coal more expensive, and thus hopefully cause electric utility companies to build nuclear power plants, wind turbines, and solar panels, instead.
The idea is that you integrate the environmental cost of pollution into the market system, thus forcing supliers to take environmental concerns into consideration when making business decisions. Now, while flat out taxation is one way to achieve this, it is very difficult to determine how much to charge for a given amount fo environmental damage, and this is where tradeable emission permits comes into play. Rather than taxing companies directly, what you do is you decide how much of a certain pollutant we can emit without causing major trouble, and then you auction it off to highest bidder. That way you force the market to adapt to a lower emission scenario, and the price adjusts itself according to normal market principles. With time you can then reduce the "acceptable" level of emissions as technology improves, periodically reducing the amount of pollution.
The catch is of course that this WILL have negative effects on other aspects of the economy. The important thing to realize is that this is not some new negative effect the government has created, it is a price that we were previously paying in terms of environmental damage. What tradeable permits do is to limit the extent to which manufacturers can impose that cost on everybody, and instead put it right down where it belongs , with the consumers that use goods and services that generate pollution during their production. Yes, I said consumers, not companies. Manufacturers will on pass the cost to the consumers, in the form of higher prices, and this will in turn reduce demand.
"Oh but you can tax as much as you want people still want to drive their cars... blah blah blah...". This is why you use tradeable permits rather than direct taxation. Tradeable permits outright forces the market to adapt meaning prices will increasethe UNTIL they are high enough that demand drops. When it comes to goods that people consume a lot regardless of price ( such as gasoline ) this trabnslates into a large price increase. When it comes to things you can eaisly replace with other things, the increase in price will be smaller.
The real problem is that the cost of CO2 is really really large. Emitting it causes major damage to the planet, curtailing it causes huge costs to the environment. There isn't an easy solution to this, which is why a number of peopel prefer sticking their head in the sand and deny the whole thing. I am seriously very sceptical to weather the necessary measures will be taken. People won't put up with a 3 fold increase in energy prices ( which is where wind power is relative to coal and nuclear ) so if we hope to get rid of coal it would appear that unless we get a sudden breakthrough in solar, only Nuclear has a chance to save us. Somewhat ironically, the most hardline environmentalist groups oppose it almost religiously, and thus it woudl appear we will be stuck with coal for a long time.
As much as I am against the wiretapping, it isn't actually wrong to make the telcos immune to something the government required them to do. The problem is that you can't realistically punish those in government who were responsible, but that isn't a reason to go after the telcos. Does anybody actually think they had much choice in the matter? You are talking about a government which has empowered itself with the ability to request sensitive information from people and then order them to stfu about it under the threat of persecution. The telcos may be bastards, but holding them responsible for something the Government most likely strong armed them into doing makes no more sense than denying somebody his right to a fair trial "because he deserves it".
In this particular case the blame rests with the government, the problem is that they are already untouchable, which is why people are going after the telcos. Somebody ought to pay, and because it isn't possible to make the ones ultimately responsible pay, people have picked the telcos as the scapegoat. Problem is "they are bastards and deserve it" isn't a good reason to sue the wrong institution.
Bullshit conclusion. I have not had many partners during the last couple of years, but it wasn't because nobody was attracted to me, rather it was because I was in a relationship that lasted more than 3 years. The findings in the study could just as well be explained by suggesting women don't stay in a relationship with an asshole, or that the assholes don't bother with long term relationships, resulting in "bad guys" having multiple short relationships while the "nice" guys have fewer longer ones. You really can't conclude much about women's preferences from this.
Seriously tho, if you find a sweater more interesting than whoever is inside it, there is either something wrong with you or you've found some damn cool sweater ( Was it made of carbon nanotubes perhaps ? ).
Of course, the other way to look at it is that catching stupid criminals IS a good argument in favor of a law like this. Don't get me wrong, there needs to be checks and balances on how wiretaps are used and not, and one of the main objections I have to this law is that it is very vague about what the data can and cannot be used for, who can and cannot see it, etc... , but I don't object to some degree of surveillance in principle. Yes, it can be used to attack whistle blowers and political dissidents, but it may also help prevent people intimidating political opponents through the use of violence and threats.
The real question when it comes to laws like this is not as much "what will this system be able to do" but rather "how do you ensure this system will not be abused". With technological advances I really do think it is somewhat inevitable for these things to become commonplace, it can be delayed at best. Therefore what we should really be campaigning for is not an end to wiretaps, CCTV cameras etc... but for checks and balances that prevent the techs from being used for nefarious purposes. If we could indeed know that these systems would only be used to deal with threats from terrorism, solve murder cases and robberies, etc... then I doubt many people would oppose it. The problem is that many of these things are being implemented without convincing plans or ways for preventing corrupt officials or government agencies from abusing them.
What i would really want to see is not an end to the FRA or a law banning internet traffic analysis by the police or the military. What I would like to see is the implementation of a REAL institution to "watch the watchers", and I don't mean the kind of stooge committee that is vaguely mentioned in this law proposal, and other ones like it. I'm talking about an actual branch of government with the sole purpose of dealing with corruption amongst police and military. It is obvious to everybody in Sweden that SKI , the organization inspecting our nuclear power plants, is to be independent of the operators of said plants, yet our police force is supposed to be self-regulating even tho it time and time again fails at it.
I think you have understood my point perfectly, thou you didn't attribute it to me. Claiming "the solution" is as simple as the parent of my post did is naive at best. It doesn't matter if you are arguing in favor of anti trust laws or against them, pretending that the issue is merely a matter of "if you don't like it, don't take part in it" is naive at best. This applies just as well to customers at the mercy of a supplier as it applies to companies that are at the mercy of the local laws. My point was simply that if you are going to expect customers to grin and bear it without complaining, then companies should expect the same treatment from the government. As any sane person would be able to rapidly deduce, this is not really a practical way to do things, and thus the "if you don't like it don't use it" argument is nonsense. There is no reason why customers should "just not use it" if they are unhappy with a product, the same way there is no reason why a company should "just not do business there" if they dislike the local laws. The important thing is to realize that you either accept both of these claims or neither. What Microsoft is doing is claiming they should be allowed to use whatever shady business practices they want, while simultaneously arguing that governments have some moral obligation to not interfere. They seem to have this idea that they are entitled to stronger legal protections than the customers that buy their software.
If you don't like the rules in the country you try to do business in, then don't do business there, and don't whine when their courts fine you for breaking them. Or perhaps this issue is a little bit more complex than a one sentence argument?
The main issue here is not weather companies double charge for bandwidth or if they charge per use or don't offer this or that service, the issue is that if you allow a situation where a company like AT&T can make a deal with Microsoft to prioritize their traffic, then it will eventually end up in a situation where you get a cartel of companies controlling that keep competing smaller ISPs and content providers out of the market by artificially degrading their connections.
Furthermore because the communications infrastructure is partially government funded, and as the radio frequencies are government controlled through the FCC , the "free market" argument doesn't hold water. There are numerous barriers to entry into the ISP market, both government imposed as well as technical ones, and thus coercive monopolies will be able to form unless actively restrained by the government.
This doesn't necessarily say much about HOW you should regulate the market, but it pretty much implies that simply leaving ISPs to screw over customers and smaller competitors is a big no-no. Completely free unregulated markets only work when there are low barriers to entry, many suppliers, no external costs or benefits, perfect customer insight into the market, completely homogeneous and equivalent services being offered, zero cost of switching supplier, and no barriers to trade. The number of markets in which that applies can be counted on fewer hands than most people have.
And gosh, some clever truck manufacturer will find a way to claim the design out of a GPLed car to fit into his truck,
Yes, that is the idea, IT IS PRECISELY THE IDEA. The GPL is not intended to let you limit your software patents to only some subset of all GPL software. It is intended to keep GPL software, any GPL software, safe from patent threats. Thus if the truck manufacturer licenses his trucks under the GPL, he will be allowed to use the patent that covered the car. This is not a flaw, IT IS WORKING AS INTENDED. To be safe from the patent he will have to put the truck under the GPL, which means he will be forced to give the operating manual and blueprints of the truck to anybody who buys it from him. Thus either he will be blocked from implementing the patent, or the community gains information about how to build trucks. This is only a problem if your goal was to use some GPL code that implements your patent (i.e the cars ) while simultaneously threatening OTHER GPL products which implement your patents (i.e the trucks). The GPL seeks to prevent you from doing this. Thus while you have given a very good example of how the GPL achieves this, you incorrectly described it as a problem when it is in fact the very point of the GPL.
License the patent to all software that is licensed under GPLv2 or latter, problem solved. The GPLv3 doesn't actually ban you from patenting anything, it just says that if you implement those patents in a GPLv3 covered work, you must grant downstream developers the right to implement those patents in their modified versions of the software. Similarly the paragraph which demands you do not sign certain types of patent deals only applies to deals which gives protection to only a subset of the receivers of derivative works. Nothing stops you from making such a deal which provides a license to anybody who uses a GPL compatible license for works that implement it.
I've never quite understood why this conflicts with GR
It doesn't (there are other points where GR and QM conflict, but entanglement is not one of them ). Einstein thought it did because he assumed that any such interaction would be deterministic and could hence be used for communication (THAT would break GR ). Essentially Einstein never liked the idea that the universe was based on randomness, hence the famous "god does not throw dice with the universe" quote. As a consequence he repeatedly tried to disprove quantum mechanics by inventing scenarios in which the random nature of QM would conflict with GR. The surprising, and somewhat ironic, outcome of his attempts was however new insights into quantum mechanical interactions that just seem to confirm the random nature of QM.
Also, to be pedantic about it, entanglement doesn't in principle imply that an interaction is quicker than the speed of light. You could alternatively claim that the interaction occurs with the speed of light, but the ENTIRE UNIVERSE ends up in an indeterminate state similar to that of Schrödinger's cat until you receive Alice's message. Thus you can keep interactions restricted to the speed of light ( locality ) but in order to do so you would have to throw out the notion that Alice exist when you do not hear from her ( realism ).
In practice throwing away realism would force you into a rather solipsist interpretation of reality which I think even Kant would have issues trying to accept, and thus most of the time we just stick with the much more comfortable notion of having a reality with instantaneous long distance interactions. If nothing else this is a lot easier to visualize than imagining the entire world entering a superposition of states until you receive Alice's message. From a purely physical point of view the two cases are indistinguishable however, so it doesn't really matter either way.
Stuff that the *Swedish* government doesn't want leaked.
Ok, let me put it this way, all those cases of the English losing sensitive data, it pales in comparison with the leaks in sieve that is the Swedish government. Seriously, the Swedish government is about as competent and good at keeping secrets as a fork is useful for eating soup. Last election the most popular party managed to leak their entire election strategy by putting it all online and being careless with the password.
Slashdot Mirror
So let me see, current cells have 15% efficiency or so , the best stuff ( I.e GaAs ) can reach 30% - 40% , and this tech will increase output power by more than an order of magnitude, meaning they should output at least 150% of the energy they receive?
If the numbers are to add up then what they are doing is a concentrating solar power plant and it should be compared to the values for such instalations. Heck, using their way to do the counting I could design a power plant which outputs 100 times the power of existing state of the art solar cells, by using a 100m array of mirrors and a stirling engine. In fact, this has been done.
For proper comparison they should compare their technology with other concentrating solar technologies, in which case I'm suspecting they get their ass kicked by solar thermal installations that have superior conversion efficiencies.
You jest , but your coment should actually be moderated insightful. While radioactive the chemical effects from uranium and lead alike outdo the radioactive ones from uranium by orders of magnitude. In terms of toxicity lead is probably a lot worse than uranium. The concern with DU as used by military is mostly when it is used in armor piercing rounds, where the bullets are propelled to sufficient velocities to powderise them on impact. The concerns is that finely powderised uranium may get stuck in people's lungs, greatly increasing exposure. While there are varying opinions about the extent to which this is a problem, the concern is almost completely down to the uranium powderising. Had regular lead been used in a similar way ( it is not because it is far too soft for an armor piercing material ) the effects would likely have been worse than with uranium, since lead is significantly more toxic.
..simply because I've had a boyfriend, I don't think this is particularily surprising. It is a supressive theocracy. Like other theocracies it has no qualms with torturing and even killing innocent people in order to silence criticism. This is common in dictatorships religious or not. The fundamental problem is the dictatorial rule and the regime's complete lack of limits in terms of what lengths it will go to in order to protect its own survival. Soviet was the same. Zimbabwe is the same. The only difference is what excuse these regimes use to justify their crimes. In soviet it was political ideology. In Iran it is religion. In Zimbabwe it is skin colour. What they have in common is that they kill and torture people in order to make the public afraid of organising opposition, their official reasons (religion,economics,race,culture) for doing so have little to do with their actual objectives. It's all about supressing dissidents, all other reasons is smoke and mirrors trying to obscure the true nature of the regime.
Not quite. It was found that for certain types of goods and services ( healthcare, education, defense etc... )it worked rather well. In fact, it works so well that even the USA is considering to finance healthcare through a centrally planned system rather than the free market. They don't say it too loudly, and obscure what it really is by calling it other things, but that is essentially what is being done.
The flaw of comunism was not that it recognised that SOME goods and services were better provided throughc entral planning, the flaw was that it assumed that the best way to provide one type of good would necessarily be the best way for ALL goods. In reality central planning works well when goods have large positive externalities, and especially so for public goods. Conversely a free market works well for goods that have no, or minor , externalities, and fails horribly in other cases ( pollution, health care, etc.. ).
The flaw of capitalism is the same as the flaw of communism. It is based on an assumption that all goods and services are equivalent. In reality the extent to which suplier and consumer in a private market pay and benefit from all the effects of a good ( positive as well as negative ) depend greatly upon how much third parties are affected by the goods production and use. For some goods the costs and benefits are accounted for almost completely by the market , for these goods capitalism works well. For other goods there are large external costs and benefits that the market doesn't care about. For these goods capitalism fails horribly.
If you knew your economics you would be well aware that capitalism as well as comunisms are naive generalisations of principles that only hold true under very specific conditions.
There isn't any good reason why the javascript engine should run with the same privileges as the browser, and there certainly isn't any good reason why plugins like flash should have as many privileges as they do. Sandboxing those bits should help a lot.
Maybe where you live. I study in Sweden however... :-)
*Points at silicon*
Meh, once you study some philosophy you can screw up the notion of ranking diciplines rather easily. Observe:
The laws governing mathematics is merely a consequence of the way our world works, making them essentially a matter of the laws of physics. Mathematics is thus applied physics.
On the other hand, the laws of physics are not fully understood, and you could very well argue that the present understanding is merely a consequence of our tendency to make extrapolations of observed trends. Hence our tendency to believe there is a fundamental set of physical laws is a matter of psychology. Physics is merely applied psychology.
Of coruse, psychology only makes sense if you assume there are other conscious beings in the world, and this is a belief that cannot be tested experimentally. One could therefore question if assuming that there is a real world is any less irrational than assuming there is a god, and depending on how you answer that question you may well argue that all knowledge is merely religious beliefs that we adhere to with various levels of conviction.
Of course, at this point I have to destroy the entire basis for my argument by questioning the properties of logic that allowed me to make this argument in the first place.
So what do you do when it is cloudy for 5 days in a row? Transport electricity across the entire country ?
Bullshit, there are essentially 3 ways in which drugs cause addiction.
1: First of all many drugs are indeed very pleasant. In fact, some of them, like cocaine, cause such extreme releases of serotonin and dopamine that this effect will on its own make virtually everybody who use it addicted to it relatively quickly. We are hardwired to get somewhat addicted to things that are pleasant (like sex), the problem is that some drugs have so strong effects that this effect goes beyond everything else. It is not about having an addictive personality, because everybody have a tendency to feel some form of desire or need of things pleasant, and drugs like cocaine strikes strongly at this by preventing the reabsorption of signal substances in the brain, resulting in a massive spike in the levels of the hormones that make us feel well.
2:Many drugs cause pain when you try to stop using them. Nicotine and Alcohol are probably the most well known examples, but Heroin has similar effects. Because the body tries to adjust to the effects of the drug, ceasing to use it can mess you up fairly bad. Smokers tend to get a bad stomach when they stop, alcoholics experience headaches, and heroin abuses can literarely go mad trying to stop using the drug. There are a lot of further symptomes but what they have in common is that ceasing to use the drug creates unpleasant symptomes. These effects have been clearly demonstrated and are not merely psychological. Many drugs affect more parts of the body than just the brain and some of these side effects show up when you quit.
3:Some drugs prevent you from feeling pleasant from other things without the drug. Long time smokers can find it difficult to relax without nicotine as an example. As the body creates extra receptors to compensate for the effect of the drug, more of it is required to trigger the same response ( being one reason why smokers tend to smoke more and more the longer they have been addicted ) and other things that would normally make you feel pleasant may have a dimnished effect unless the drug is pressent simultaneously.
It is true that a number of authorities have inconsistent policies, but mostly this takes the form of having less stringent rules for nicotine and alcohol than for drugs like cannabis. It doesn't mean cocaine or heroin are harmless, and indeed the problem with people not trusting the authorities when it comes to advice on these drugs is one of the reasons why pretending that cannabis is way worse than alcohol or nicotine is retarded. By undermining their creidbility by greatly exagerating the dangers of cannabis, the authorities are causing a lot of people to underestimate the dangers of drugs like heroin. This is a major problem since the latter, unlike cannabis, will almost certainly destroy a person, and a heroin addiction makes nicotine look like a slight temptation in comparison.
It works like this:
The main reason Coal is being used to produce electricity rather than say Nuclear, Wind Power and Solar is price. Coal is cheap. If you impose a carbon tax , however, forcing companies that emit a lot of CO2 to pay for it, then that will make electricity generation from coal more expensive, and thus hopefully cause electric utility companies to build nuclear power plants, wind turbines, and solar panels, instead.
The idea is that you integrate the environmental cost of pollution into the market system, thus forcing supliers to take environmental concerns into consideration when making business decisions. Now, while flat out taxation is one way to achieve this, it is very difficult to determine how much to charge for a given amount fo environmental damage, and this is where tradeable emission permits comes into play. Rather than taxing companies directly, what you do is you decide how much of a certain pollutant we can emit without causing major trouble, and then you auction it off to highest bidder. That way you force the market to adapt to a lower emission scenario, and the price adjusts itself according to normal market principles. With time you can then reduce the "acceptable" level of emissions as technology improves, periodically reducing the amount of pollution.
The catch is of course that this WILL have negative effects on other aspects of the economy. The important thing to realize is that this is not some new negative effect the government has created, it is a price that we were previously paying in terms of environmental damage. What tradeable permits do is to limit the extent to which manufacturers can impose that cost on everybody, and instead put it right down where it belongs , with the consumers that use goods and services that generate pollution during their production. Yes, I said consumers, not companies. Manufacturers will on pass the cost to the consumers, in the form of higher prices, and this will in turn reduce demand.
"Oh but you can tax as much as you want people still want to drive their cars... blah blah blah...". This is why you use tradeable permits rather than direct taxation. Tradeable permits outright forces the market to adapt meaning prices will increasethe UNTIL they are high enough that demand drops. When it comes to goods that people consume a lot regardless of price ( such as gasoline ) this trabnslates into a large price increase. When it comes to things you can eaisly replace with other things, the increase in price will be smaller.
The real problem is that the cost of CO2 is really really large. Emitting it causes major damage to the planet, curtailing it causes huge costs to the environment. There isn't an easy solution to this, which is why a number of peopel prefer sticking their head in the sand and deny the whole thing. I am seriously very sceptical to weather the necessary measures will be taken. People won't put up with a 3 fold increase in energy prices ( which is where wind power is relative to coal and nuclear ) so if we hope to get rid of coal it would appear that unless we get a sudden breakthrough in solar, only Nuclear has a chance to save us. Somewhat ironically, the most hardline environmentalist groups oppose it almost religiously, and thus it woudl appear we will be stuck with coal for a long time.
As much as I am against the wiretapping, it isn't actually wrong to make the telcos immune to something the government required them to do. The problem is that you can't realistically punish those in government who were responsible, but that isn't a reason to go after the telcos. Does anybody actually think they had much choice in the matter? You are talking about a government which has empowered itself with the ability to request sensitive information from people and then order them to stfu about it under the threat of persecution. The telcos may be bastards, but holding them responsible for something the Government most likely strong armed them into doing makes no more sense than denying somebody his right to a fair trial "because he deserves it".
In this particular case the blame rests with the government, the problem is that they are already untouchable, which is why people are going after the telcos. Somebody ought to pay, and because it isn't possible to make the ones ultimately responsible pay, people have picked the telcos as the scapegoat. Problem is "they are bastards and deserve it" isn't a good reason to sue the wrong institution.
Bullshit conclusion. I have not had many partners during the last couple of years, but it wasn't because nobody was attracted to me, rather it was because I was in a relationship that lasted more than 3 years. The findings in the study could just as well be explained by suggesting women don't stay in a relationship with an asshole, or that the assholes don't bother with long term relationships, resulting in "bad guys" having multiple short relationships while the "nice" guys have fewer longer ones. You really can't conclude much about women's preferences from this.
I.e, he was above 5 years old?
Seriously tho, if you find a sweater more interesting than whoever is inside it, there is either something wrong with you or you've found some damn cool sweater ( Was it made of carbon nanotubes perhaps ? ).
A man got a prison sentence of 10 years for planned murder.
Yes, I know, different cultures, different system, but something somewhere is horribly broken (No, I'm not talking about the School's network setup ).
Man do I need to remember to set the alarm clock...
Of course, the other way to look at it is that catching stupid criminals IS a good argument in favor of a law like this. Don't get me wrong, there needs to be checks and balances on how wiretaps are used and not, and one of the main objections I have to this law is that it is very vague about what the data can and cannot be used for, who can and cannot see it, etc... , but I don't object to some degree of surveillance in principle. Yes, it can be used to attack whistle blowers and political dissidents, but it may also help prevent people intimidating political opponents through the use of violence and threats.
The real question when it comes to laws like this is not as much "what will this system be able to do" but rather "how do you ensure this system will not be abused". With technological advances I really do think it is somewhat inevitable for these things to become commonplace, it can be delayed at best. Therefore what we should really be campaigning for is not an end to wiretaps, CCTV cameras etc... but for checks and balances that prevent the techs from being used for nefarious purposes. If we could indeed know that these systems would only be used to deal with threats from terrorism, solve murder cases and robberies, etc... then I doubt many people would oppose it. The problem is that many of these things are being implemented without convincing plans or ways for preventing corrupt officials or government agencies from abusing them.
What i would really want to see is not an end to the FRA or a law banning internet traffic analysis by the police or the military. What I would like to see is the implementation of a REAL institution to "watch the watchers", and I don't mean the kind of stooge committee that is vaguely mentioned in this law proposal, and other ones like it. I'm talking about an actual branch of government with the sole purpose of dealing with corruption amongst police and military. It is obvious to everybody in Sweden that SKI , the organization inspecting our nuclear power plants, is to be independent of the operators of said plants, yet our police force is supposed to be self-regulating even tho it time and time again fails at it.
I think you have understood my point perfectly, thou you didn't attribute it to me. Claiming "the solution" is as simple as the parent of my post did is naive at best. It doesn't matter if you are arguing in favor of anti trust laws or against them, pretending that the issue is merely a matter of "if you don't like it, don't take part in it" is naive at best. This applies just as well to customers at the mercy of a supplier as it applies to companies that are at the mercy of the local laws. My point was simply that if you are going to expect customers to grin and bear it without complaining, then companies should expect the same treatment from the government. As any sane person would be able to rapidly deduce, this is not really a practical way to do things, and thus the "if you don't like it don't use it" argument is nonsense. There is no reason why customers should "just not use it" if they are unhappy with a product, the same way there is no reason why a company should "just not do business there" if they dislike the local laws. The important thing is to realize that you either accept both of these claims or neither. What Microsoft is doing is claiming they should be allowed to use whatever shady business practices they want, while simultaneously arguing that governments have some moral obligation to not interfere. They seem to have this idea that they are entitled to stronger legal protections than the customers that buy their software.
I have an alternative interpretation.
If you don't like the rules in the country you try to do business in, then don't do business there, and don't whine when their courts fine you for breaking them. Or perhaps this issue is a little bit more complex than a one sentence argument?
The main issue here is not weather companies double charge for bandwidth or if they charge per use or don't offer this or that service, the issue is that if you allow a situation where a company like AT&T can make a deal with Microsoft to prioritize their traffic, then it will eventually end up in a situation where you get a cartel of companies controlling that keep competing smaller ISPs and content providers out of the market by artificially degrading their connections.
Furthermore because the communications infrastructure is partially government funded, and as the radio frequencies are government controlled through the FCC , the "free market" argument doesn't hold water. There are numerous barriers to entry into the ISP market, both government imposed as well as technical ones, and thus coercive monopolies will be able to form unless actively restrained by the government.
This doesn't necessarily say much about HOW you should regulate the market, but it pretty much implies that simply leaving ISPs to screw over customers and smaller competitors is a big no-no. Completely free unregulated markets only work when there are low barriers to entry, many suppliers, no external costs or benefits, perfect customer insight into the market, completely homogeneous and equivalent services being offered, zero cost of switching supplier, and no barriers to trade. The number of markets in which that applies can be counted on fewer hands than most people have.
Yes, that is the idea, IT IS PRECISELY THE IDEA. The GPL is not intended to let you limit your software patents to only some subset of all GPL software. It is intended to keep GPL software, any GPL software, safe from patent threats. Thus if the truck manufacturer licenses his trucks under the GPL, he will be allowed to use the patent that covered the car. This is not a flaw, IT IS WORKING AS INTENDED. To be safe from the patent he will have to put the truck under the GPL, which means he will be forced to give the operating manual and blueprints of the truck to anybody who buys it from him. Thus either he will be blocked from implementing the patent, or the community gains information about how to build trucks. This is only a problem if your goal was to use some GPL code that implements your patent (i.e the cars ) while simultaneously threatening OTHER GPL products which implement your patents (i.e the trucks). The GPL seeks to prevent you from doing this. Thus while you have given a very good example of how the GPL achieves this, you incorrectly described it as a problem when it is in fact the very point of the GPL.
License the patent to all software that is licensed under GPLv2 or latter, problem solved. The GPLv3 doesn't actually ban you from patenting anything, it just says that if you implement those patents in a GPLv3 covered work, you must grant downstream developers the right to implement those patents in their modified versions of the software. Similarly the paragraph which demands you do not sign certain types of patent deals only applies to deals which gives protection to only a subset of the receivers of derivative works. Nothing stops you from making such a deal which provides a license to anybody who uses a GPL compatible license for works that implement it.
Sadly you can remove "these days" from that claim. Your point would still be accurate and as a bonus it wouldn't come out as "Get of my lawn!".
It doesn't (there are other points where GR and QM conflict, but entanglement is not one of them ). Einstein thought it did because he assumed that any such interaction would be deterministic and could hence be used for communication (THAT would break GR ). Essentially Einstein never liked the idea that the universe was based on randomness, hence the famous "god does not throw dice with the universe" quote. As a consequence he repeatedly tried to disprove quantum mechanics by inventing scenarios in which the random nature of QM would conflict with GR. The surprising, and somewhat ironic, outcome of his attempts was however new insights into quantum mechanical interactions that just seem to confirm the random nature of QM.
Also, to be pedantic about it, entanglement doesn't in principle imply that an interaction is quicker than the speed of light. You could alternatively claim that the interaction occurs with the speed of light, but the ENTIRE UNIVERSE ends up in an indeterminate state similar to that of Schrödinger's cat until you receive Alice's message. Thus you can keep interactions restricted to the speed of light ( locality ) but in order to do so you would have to throw out the notion that Alice exist when you do not hear from her ( realism ).
In practice throwing away realism would force you into a rather solipsist interpretation of reality which I think even Kant would have issues trying to accept, and thus most of the time we just stick with the much more comfortable notion of having a reality with instantaneous long distance interactions. If nothing else this is a lot easier to visualize than imagining the entire world entering a superposition of states until you receive Alice's message. From a purely physical point of view the two cases are indistinguishable however, so it doesn't really matter either way.
Ok, let me put it this way, all those cases of the English losing sensitive data, it pales in comparison with the leaks in sieve that is the Swedish government. Seriously, the Swedish government is about as competent and good at keeping secrets as a fork is useful for eating soup. Last election the most popular party managed to leak their entire election strategy by putting it all online and being careless with the password.