I think you're misreading what international law is. Basically nations decide its in their best interests to do/not do something. Like say torture POWs or reduce the number of nuclear weapons or whatever. So they sign a treaty saying "Let's not torture each other's POWs". Since no one wants POWs from their country tortured, they don't torture POWs they capture either.
George Bush Senior wanted to make it international law that no nation should engage in military action unless the UN authorised it. He went to great lengths to make sure that the first Gulf War was entirely sanctioned by the UN. From permission to attack Iraq to how to enforce the ceasefire it was all done through the UN. This set a huge precedent. Smaller Nations knew they didn't have to be worried about being bullied around by the bigger nations anymore. It wasn't about who had the biggest guns because now the guys with the biggest guns were going to work within a legal system. If a medium sized nation attacked a tiny nation the superpowers would crush the medium sized nation.
And life was good. Until Clinton wanted to intevene in Bosnia. The problem with Bosnia was that Russia would veto any action in the UN. So Clinton got NATO to ok the war saying that it was good enough that an international alliance oked it. This weakened Bush Sr's precident of action only through the UN. But it was still there I guess. Sort of.
But then Bush Jr. came along and totally destroyed all of his father's work in establishing an "action through the UN doctrine" that result in the relative stability in the world in the 90's. Bush Jr totally shat upon his father's legacy. Totally ignored the ceasefire that his father set up with Iraq through the UN. Said he didn't need the UN. He didn't have the support of the UN nor NATO in invading Iraq.
Bush Sr set out some decent rules for how military action should be taken post-Cold War. Clinton bent those rules. GWB totally destroyed all traces of those rules.
And this has changed everything. Iran was slowly becoming more moderate and more democratic. But now there is a very real threat of them being invaded by the US. Before there was international law and that law kept them reasonably safe. Now there is no law except who has the biggest gun. This climate has made Iran ripe to be taken over by a demagogue.
See how this works? US says, "hey guys, now that the Soviet Union is gone we're the most powerful guys on the planet. But don't worry we won't do nothing to you as long as you abide by the law." and what happens, everyone abides by the law. The US says "screw the UN we'll invade anyone we want when we want because we've got nukes." then everyone start building nukes. You say to Iran "hey you're breaking international law by building nukes" Iran says "international law won't protect us from the US, only nukes can protect us now".
Are you getting the problem now? The problem is if the US doesn't obey international law, no one else will out of fear of the US. If the US does obey international law, everyone else will start obeying international law too, out of fear of breaking a law backed by the US. Its very subtle, but that little subtlety is the difference between Iran and North Korea needing nukes to ensure their safety or needing to comply with the UN to ensure their safety.
I am not a fan of nuclear weapons anywhere, but this is a dangerous world with people who *literally* want to send us to hell or to see our redeemer.
And this is exactly why Iran and North Korea want them. Think about it. You have a superpower with a huge military and tens of thousands of nukes lead by a religious fundamentalist. The religious zealot has declared three nations to be EVIL. You are in charge of one of those nations. Then we went on to invade the first one, torturing its people by the thousands. Right now he is still busy with his Crusade against the first "evil" nation on his list so you have a brief window to prepare for his crusade against you.
Do you have a non-foxnews link to back that up. It seems pretty strange that saddam was covering up WMDs he didn't actually have, as admitted by the US administration.
I hope you're wrong because any country that is able to get into space in any significant way is also capable of building and delivering nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.
If we do go to war over space we'll go from space age to stone age very quickly.
So does this mean that the US has the right to disable Chinese "fishing" vessels outside the 12 mile limit on the open seas if the "fishing" vessels are covered with anttenae?
No. But the US does have a right to jam their radar. The boat is outside your territory, but the radar signals are entering your territory you can do whatever you want to those signals once they enter your territory.
Ok so now you have a satellite orbiting over my territory basically looking at light (or maybe infrared or whatever, but basically light). Now if I use a bright light source to "jam" your sattelite's passive light detection, is that illegal? Is a really bright spotlight illegal? How much am I allowed to focus a light beam? what direction am I not allowed to aim my light beam? Are spotloghts ok, but not lasers? How was I supposed to know you had a satellite where I was aiming my laser? If you don't like my shiny lights maybe you just shouldn't aim your cameras at my country.
This really falls into a grey area. You are allowed to camouflage your secret stuff. You are allowed to shine lasers around in your own country. You are allowed to jam radar in your own country. And if you aren't damaging the satellite its not a weapon its really just the equivalent of radar jamming, but for light instead.
The end result will be that the superpowers will have to come up with a treaty to define what falls under camouflage and jamming, and what falls under "OMG!! you just shot my satellite with frickin LASER beams I'm gonna nuke you!!!!"
Odd it seems that every day I see people demanding that Iran abide by the rules IAEA. And I seem to recall there being a bunch of UN Inspectors in Iraq to ensure Iraq abide by international law as well. And those inspectors were successful in identifying and destroy Saddam's WMD arsenal. Up until the US invaded that is. Now many of the weapons marked by the UN and scheduled for destruction have gone missing.
Maybe people want the US to follow international law because it will make the world a safer place? You yourself admit some of the actions of the US were misguided. See that's the idea of international law: it tries to prevent nations from doing misguided things. You ignore international law at your own (and the world's) peril.
Well when you get right down to it all law is just a bunch of "lies". Because if some politician passes a law that the police don't want to enforce then people can go ahead and ignore the law. If the police decide to stop enforcing all the laws then we end up with no police and no legal system and that ultimately results in anarchy. And since no one wants anarchy we make sure that we pay police enough money and have the proper oversight to ensure they enforce the law.
The international community is similar. When there is a breakdown of international law, the result is WWII. Literally. After WWII we decided that international law was preferable to international anarchy (ie, World War) so the UN formed. And it worked. It had a major role in preventing WWIII.
International law prevents wars. It doesn't prevent all wars but it does prevent a lot of wars. Enough that its worth some effort to maintain.
International law is a thing, it doesn't fail or succeed. WE fail or succeed at maintaining international law. The last time we failed at maintaining international law, we had WWII. WWII was a result of the failure of the league of nations. What do you think would be the result of the United Nations failing?
Read some history and you'll understand why everyone wants to keep talking about international law. You'll also come to understand why Europeans are especially keen to keep talking about this subject.
Interestingly, one of the few peices of international law that survived from before WWII was the geneva convention. The Nazis realised that maintaining the geneva convention was worthwhile, yet somehow the Neocons are having a hard time doing that now. Shameful that the US finds it acceptible to cross a line the Nazis weren't willing to cross.
Well probably MS and Apple didn't want their OS associated with online porn so they refused to allow them to use it, musch less be willing to pay for product placement. So they got the prop guy to come up with something quick, and he probably just threw on linux (or maybe just brought in his own computer from home) and it was good enough, since everone would be watching the stripper anyway.
I think you forgot about a little something called the US Civil War. You see a bunch of states decided that they wanted no part in the United States anymore and wanted to form their own confederacy. If "STATES have the final word on the shape of the federal constitution" then that should have been the end of the story right there, right?
Realpolitick trumps states rights, the supreme court, congress, the constitution, and any other governmental apparatus you can come up with. The federal government has the biggest guns, so what they say goes. They might be magnamonious and allow the supreme court to make some decisions and the states to run some of their own affairs. But if states get too uppity the federal government can and has done everything from taking away highway funding to full out civil war.
How things look on paper is often very different to how things really work.
Didn't Clinton do this? I remember that they shut down the government for a while there over some disagreement between newt gingrich and clinton. Ultimately Clinton won that one, but it could have gone the other way. I think a lot of times the president will decide it isn't worth risking losing such a battle if its just going to prevent a small inconsequential piece of legislation.
So, you think it is ethical to tax people (take money by force) to hand it over to private entities, for political purposes, while not actually having to provide anything useful
That sums up every government in all human history.
Wait, did you just say that the oil industry is a free market? Yes, I think you did just say that. What rock have you been living under?
Ok now you just said that the oil companies could "just jump ship". JUST jump ship. Yep, they could just pack up their refineries and go somewhere else. Just. Like. That.
Generally speaking, you're right costs usually get passed on to the consumer. Unless there are regulations prohibiting it. Of course you could say that they'll find a way. But if the oil companies charge californians more than what they charge elsewhere in the US, well its pretty obvious whats going on. And if they jerk around people too much then california can simply regulate gas prices. Which they really should do regardless, since this has been done where I live gas prices are much lower than the price the oil companies set elsewhere and yet gas stations are still making a profit. Funny how that is.
It all really depends on how much competition there is in the oil industry. You see back in the days of Rockefeller and Standard Oil they had a monopoloy on the oil industry so they could charge whatever price they wanted. But even then they found an optimal price point that maximised their profits. If they charged more than that people would drive less, use alternate forms of transportation, etc. In a free market the price is decided by the costs of production vs. demand. In a monopoly price is determined by scarcity of the product vs. demand, with the monopoly deciding the scarcity. Although in this case it may be OPEC (or the fact that we're just running out) deciding the scarcity as well.
So a tax effectively increases the cost of production. In a free market this shifts the supply curve and the price increases. But in a monopoly the price is determined by the demand and the artiificial scarcity that the monopolist creates to gain profit. Niether of these are affected by the cost of production (unless the tax is so high that it takes away all the oil companies profits, of course).
To summarise, a tax on a competitive company will be paid by the consumer while a tax on a monopolist (or oligopolist) will be paid out of the monopolist's profits.
And regulating the oil industry is relatively simple. We know the cost of crude oil, we know the cost of refining it. It's very simple to calculate what the cost of gasoline should be.
Dude... that's pretty bleak. Why can't we use nuclear power? And hopefully by the time uranium starts to run out we'll have fusion. And yeah it's getting harder to mine copper and other resources, but the stuff we've already mined is still around. We just have to recycle it. And with the price of copper constantly rising, we are doing exactly that. And we can find alternatives. Hopefully someone will come up with a plastic pipe that doesn't suck so we won't have to use copper pipe any more.
Yes we are way to wasteful as a society. And if we refuse to stop wasting so much we'll go through some hardship. But we'll get through it and we'll likely end up stronger than before.
What is the "inherent cost" of music? Sure you have to rent a sund studio and pay a sound engineer and a band. But how much would that cost for a week long recording session? Probably a few tens of thousands maybe. If you want to get the best studio and the best sound engineers and producers lets say about $100,000.
Well the music and publishing industries are the same in that it sin't just a matter of someone writting down some stuff or someone strumming a guitar and singing a song. You have to be able to find people with talent. You have to promote them. And if they suck you have to be able eat the loss and not go out of business. Add to that you have to hanger ons and executives and marketing idiots and the costs start to rise.
Yeah maybe books could be cheaper. What surprising is that you question the price of books but not the price of music. Both industries are similar in many ways.
Actually a suspension bridge requires quite a bit of balance doesn't it? And the counterweight is an interesting problem. Some suggest moving an asteroid in place and others suggest simply building the cable twice as long. The advantage of the asteroid would be you'd have to produce less carbon nanotubes and you'll have an asteroid that you can build a space station on and mine for materials. The disadvantage is that you have ot move a giant rock around into a precise orbit.
I guess it all depends on how much we can drive down the price of the carbon nanotubes and how comfortable people will be with moving an asteroid close to the earth.
Actually it was a system to launch a retaliatory strike if they soviet union was decapitated. The US had a similar system.
An interesting note is that when the US was developing their "dead hand" system it was recommended that they give the technology to the Soviet Union so they could develop their own. The reasoning was that without a dead hand type system the Soviet Union would have to keep their forces ready to launch nuclear weapons within 40 minutes notice. With a dead hand system they could wait until after the first volley of american missiles arrived to launch a counter strike. The Soviets could be a little more relaxed and still maintain MAD.
Not sure if the US helped the Soviets build the dead hand system or not (that would be super top secret type stuff), but it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Stanislav Petrov knew that if they were real missiles being launched, the dead hand system would launch a counter attack even if he didn't. So it made his choice to wait for confirmation of the reported missile launches a hell of a lot easier.
Yes but do you clone you KDE configuration on each KDE system you use? That's the problem I have with it. Sure I can customise KDE to make it close to ideal. But then I go set up a new system I have to either reconfigure KDE on that new system or somehow copy my configuration files over.
Then there's the problem of what to recommend to new users. A new user is not going to want to spend a lot of time messing around with preferences to get a usable system. This is why the defaults are so important.
KDE's defaults are screwed up but you can change everything. Gnome's defaults are usable without any tinkering, but doesn't allow you to change as much. So what would you recommend t new users?
And f you are dealing with new users its pretty awkward to recommend Gnome and then have someone ask "what do you use?" and have to answer "KDE but you should use Gnome". Also if you want to walk someone through how to do something its nice to be able to be familiar with what they are using.
And back when I used KDE I would configure things in this way: I'd have a taskbar at the bottom, and at the top I'd have my system tray or notification area or whatever, and icons for my most used programs and a clock. And that's pretty much how gnome is configured by default. So you're right that I'm used to this configuration, but thats because I was using it since before gnome started using it as their default. When I was using KDE I sat down and set up what I thought would be the most efficent interface. The gnome people, when developing gnome 2 did the same. Our conlusions were very similar.
And another nice thing about using gnome is that sometimes they think of things that I didn't. Like the Places menu for example. I never thought of that one at all, but as soon as I heard about it, it was like a little light bulb turned on in my head. It was a great idea, and has made things much easier for me. Now thinking of KDE, how would I get that feature? Well someone would make an applet or something and I'd have to install it. Now this is something I never even thought of so how would I know to go looking for a feature that I never even thought of? And even if I did, to add that feature to my customised desktop environment, wouldn't that require, you know, a little tinkering? With gnome I get interface improvements when I update my system. With KDE the only way to get interface improvements requires tinkering.
If it was exactly the same then it would work, wouldn't it? There are different hardware revisions of that model. At the time you tried it the particular revision you had didn't work with ivtv. It is highly likely that that revision was made after the driver was written for linux. You can't really expect the developers to be able to see the future can you? And before you revision of the card was released PVR-250 was supported. The manufacturer released a different revision that wouldn't work with the linux driver.
And of course it worked under windows. They would have made changes to the windows driver before release to make sure they it wwould work. The manufacturer did not do the same with the linux driver. Again the fault lies with the manufacturer for not giving you the support you needed.
And as far as I can tell the PVR-250 appears to be fully supported by ivtv now. Yes there is a lag between when a new piece of hardware is released. You have to realise that the manufacturer isn't writing the drivers, often times it is a group of volunteers that are writing it from specs (if they're lucky) or by reverse engineering (if they aren't). Now it would be nice if on the package it said PVR-250c so that if you asked around, people would tell you that PVR-250a and PVR-250b are supported while PVR-250c is not. It is so easy for the manufacturer to do this, just a simply little change of packaging. But they didn't do that so you end up with PVR-250 and unless you're psychic there is no way to know if its rev a, b, or c. If the manufacturer doesn't mark it on the package, then the only way is to try it out and see if it works.
Now yeah maybe someone should have told you the situation with the different revisions and the poorly marked packaging. But it is likely that the person you spoke to wasn't aware of the existence of the different hardware revisions. All the dude knew was that he knew some people that had the PVR-250 working under linux and he just relayed it to you. I seriously doubt that someone knew that your PVR card wouldn't work and lied to you about it. What would motivate someone to do that?
It isn't going to reverse if CO2 levels keep rising. The point scientists are trying to make isn't that its they end of the world, its that we gotta make some changes.
Remember when SCO sent letters to all of IBM's clients demanding $699 per copy of linux. Rember how we all laughed at that? Well IBM wasn't laughing. You can sue IBM and that's ok, all part of being a big corporation. But make a legal threat against IBM's customers? That's a whole other story. IBM wants to crush SCO and then desecrate their corpses now. You just don't mess with their customers.
And where's the central repository of knowledge that tells me what's the best text editor of the 9,000 available for Linux.
Ubuntu Forums.
Actually, its really no different from windows in discovering what software is best for you. The main advantage of using a repository is that iif your friend recommends a P2P app, and your friend happens to be a complete idiot, the worst case scenario is that you have go into your package manager. With windows the worst case scenario, is, well, much worse.
It seems the biggest complaint about linux is that its different. I'm not sure how you expect Linux to change this. They can't just name the CD burning program "Nero" so that windows users will know what to use, since Nero is trademarked. The default action when I put in a CD-R is that it will ask if I want to burn a Audio CD or a Data CD and then it opens the suggested program for that. Applications->Accessories->Text Editor opens the suggested text editor. If the suggested apps don't have the features you need, well then the prcess is similar to when Nero or Notepad doesn't support a feature you need. You just ask around (online and offline).
I guess your problem is that you have all this knowledge about what programs do what in windows and that knowledge doesn't apply to linux. It will never apply to linux because linux isn't windows. If you can get past this, then you will find that linux is as good, if not better, than windows. But you have to let go of that windows-specific knowledge and be willing to learn the things that are linux-specific.
The second problem is that while I believe Linux is better, for most people it simply doesn't matter. If the computer does what you want it to do, why bother switching? What compelling reason are you going to give a Windows user to switch?
After a virus scare, and finding a crapload of spyware installed, a friend of mine became very interested in linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're misreading what international law is. Basically nations decide its in their best interests to do/not do something. Like say torture POWs or reduce the number of nuclear weapons or whatever. So they sign a treaty saying "Let's not torture each other's POWs". Since no one wants POWs from their country tortured, they don't torture POWs they capture either.
George Bush Senior wanted to make it international law that no nation should engage in military action unless the UN authorised it. He went to great lengths to make sure that the first Gulf War was entirely sanctioned by the UN. From permission to attack Iraq to how to enforce the ceasefire it was all done through the UN. This set a huge precedent. Smaller Nations knew they didn't have to be worried about being bullied around by the bigger nations anymore. It wasn't about who had the biggest guns because now the guys with the biggest guns were going to work within a legal system. If a medium sized nation attacked a tiny nation the superpowers would crush the medium sized nation.
And life was good. Until Clinton wanted to intevene in Bosnia. The problem with Bosnia was that Russia would veto any action in the UN. So Clinton got NATO to ok the war saying that it was good enough that an international alliance oked it. This weakened Bush Sr's precident of action only through the UN. But it was still there I guess. Sort of.
But then Bush Jr. came along and totally destroyed all of his father's work in establishing an "action through the UN doctrine" that result in the relative stability in the world in the 90's. Bush Jr totally shat upon his father's legacy. Totally ignored the ceasefire that his father set up with Iraq through the UN. Said he didn't need the UN. He didn't have the support of the UN nor NATO in invading Iraq.
Bush Sr set out some decent rules for how military action should be taken post-Cold War. Clinton bent those rules. GWB totally destroyed all traces of those rules.
And this has changed everything. Iran was slowly becoming more moderate and more democratic. But now there is a very real threat of them being invaded by the US. Before there was international law and that law kept them reasonably safe. Now there is no law except who has the biggest gun. This climate has made Iran ripe to be taken over by a demagogue.
See how this works? US says, "hey guys, now that the Soviet Union is gone we're the most powerful guys on the planet. But don't worry we won't do nothing to you as long as you abide by the law." and what happens, everyone abides by the law. The US says "screw the UN we'll invade anyone we want when we want because we've got nukes." then everyone start building nukes. You say to Iran "hey you're breaking international law by building nukes" Iran says "international law won't protect us from the US, only nukes can protect us now".
Are you getting the problem now? The problem is if the US doesn't obey international law, no one else will out of fear of the US. If the US does obey international law, everyone else will start obeying international law too, out of fear of breaking a law backed by the US. Its very subtle, but that little subtlety is the difference between Iran and North Korea needing nukes to ensure their safety or needing to comply with the UN to ensure their safety.
And this is exactly why Iran and North Korea want them. Think about it. You have a superpower with a huge military and tens of thousands of nukes lead by a religious fundamentalist. The religious zealot has declared three nations to be EVIL. You are in charge of one of those nations. Then we went on to invade the first one, torturing its people by the thousands. Right now he is still busy with his Crusade against the first "evil" nation on his list so you have a brief window to prepare for his crusade against you.
What would you do?
Do you have a non-foxnews link to back that up. It seems pretty strange that saddam was covering up WMDs he didn't actually have, as admitted by the US administration.
I hope you're wrong because any country that is able to get into space in any significant way is also capable of building and delivering nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.
If we do go to war over space we'll go from space age to stone age very quickly.
No. But the US does have a right to jam their radar. The boat is outside your territory, but the radar signals are entering your territory you can do whatever you want to those signals once they enter your territory.
Ok so now you have a satellite orbiting over my territory basically looking at light (or maybe infrared or whatever, but basically light). Now if I use a bright light source to "jam" your sattelite's passive light detection, is that illegal? Is a really bright spotlight illegal? How much am I allowed to focus a light beam? what direction am I not allowed to aim my light beam? Are spotloghts ok, but not lasers? How was I supposed to know you had a satellite where I was aiming my laser? If you don't like my shiny lights maybe you just shouldn't aim your cameras at my country.
This really falls into a grey area. You are allowed to camouflage your secret stuff. You are allowed to shine lasers around in your own country. You are allowed to jam radar in your own country. And if you aren't damaging the satellite its not a weapon its really just the equivalent of radar jamming, but for light instead.
The end result will be that the superpowers will have to come up with a treaty to define what falls under camouflage and jamming, and what falls under "OMG!! you just shot my satellite with frickin LASER beams I'm gonna nuke you!!!!"
Odd it seems that every day I see people demanding that Iran abide by the rules IAEA. And I seem to recall there being a bunch of UN Inspectors in Iraq to ensure Iraq abide by international law as well. And those inspectors were successful in identifying and destroy Saddam's WMD arsenal. Up until the US invaded that is. Now many of the weapons marked by the UN and scheduled for destruction have gone missing.
Maybe people want the US to follow international law because it will make the world a safer place? You yourself admit some of the actions of the US were misguided. See that's the idea of international law: it tries to prevent nations from doing misguided things. You ignore international law at your own (and the world's) peril.
Well when you get right down to it all law is just a bunch of "lies". Because if some politician passes a law that the police don't want to enforce then people can go ahead and ignore the law. If the police decide to stop enforcing all the laws then we end up with no police and no legal system and that ultimately results in anarchy. And since no one wants anarchy we make sure that we pay police enough money and have the proper oversight to ensure they enforce the law.
The international community is similar. When there is a breakdown of international law, the result is WWII. Literally. After WWII we decided that international law was preferable to international anarchy (ie, World War) so the UN formed. And it worked. It had a major role in preventing WWIII.
International law prevents wars. It doesn't prevent all wars but it does prevent a lot of wars. Enough that its worth some effort to maintain. International law is a thing, it doesn't fail or succeed. WE fail or succeed at maintaining international law. The last time we failed at maintaining international law, we had WWII. WWII was a result of the failure of the league of nations. What do you think would be the result of the United Nations failing?
Read some history and you'll understand why everyone wants to keep talking about international law. You'll also come to understand why Europeans are especially keen to keep talking about this subject.
Interestingly, one of the few peices of international law that survived from before WWII was the geneva convention. The Nazis realised that maintaining the geneva convention was worthwhile, yet somehow the Neocons are having a hard time doing that now. Shameful that the US finds it acceptible to cross a line the Nazis weren't willing to cross.
Well probably MS and Apple didn't want their OS associated with online porn so they refused to allow them to use it, musch less be willing to pay for product placement. So they got the prop guy to come up with something quick, and he probably just threw on linux (or maybe just brought in his own computer from home) and it was good enough, since everone would be watching the stripper anyway.
I watched that show and I remember that scene. But for some reason I never noticed what DE the computer was using.
I think you forgot about a little something called the US Civil War. You see a bunch of states decided that they wanted no part in the United States anymore and wanted to form their own confederacy. If "STATES have the final word on the shape of the federal constitution" then that should have been the end of the story right there, right?
Realpolitick trumps states rights, the supreme court, congress, the constitution, and any other governmental apparatus you can come up with. The federal government has the biggest guns, so what they say goes. They might be magnamonious and allow the supreme court to make some decisions and the states to run some of their own affairs. But if states get too uppity the federal government can and has done everything from taking away highway funding to full out civil war.
How things look on paper is often very different to how things really work.
Didn't Clinton do this? I remember that they shut down the government for a while there over some disagreement between newt gingrich and clinton. Ultimately Clinton won that one, but it could have gone the other way. I think a lot of times the president will decide it isn't worth risking losing such a battle if its just going to prevent a small inconsequential piece of legislation.
Well yeah obviously. The whole space elevator project depends on our ability to produce massive quantities of carbon nanotubes.
That sums up every government in all human history.
Ok now you just said that the oil companies could "just jump ship". JUST jump ship. Yep, they could just pack up their refineries and go somewhere else. Just. Like. That.
You really don't have a clue, do you?
Ah, so its just like slashdot then?
Generally speaking, you're right costs usually get passed on to the consumer. Unless there are regulations prohibiting it. Of course you could say that they'll find a way. But if the oil companies charge californians more than what they charge elsewhere in the US, well its pretty obvious whats going on. And if they jerk around people too much then california can simply regulate gas prices. Which they really should do regardless, since this has been done where I live gas prices are much lower than the price the oil companies set elsewhere and yet gas stations are still making a profit. Funny how that is.
It all really depends on how much competition there is in the oil industry. You see back in the days of Rockefeller and Standard Oil they had a monopoloy on the oil industry so they could charge whatever price they wanted. But even then they found an optimal price point that maximised their profits. If they charged more than that people would drive less, use alternate forms of transportation, etc. In a free market the price is decided by the costs of production vs. demand. In a monopoly price is determined by scarcity of the product vs. demand, with the monopoly deciding the scarcity. Although in this case it may be OPEC (or the fact that we're just running out) deciding the scarcity as well.
So a tax effectively increases the cost of production. In a free market this shifts the supply curve and the price increases. But in a monopoly the price is determined by the demand and the artiificial scarcity that the monopolist creates to gain profit. Niether of these are affected by the cost of production (unless the tax is so high that it takes away all the oil companies profits, of course).
To summarise, a tax on a competitive company will be paid by the consumer while a tax on a monopolist (or oligopolist) will be paid out of the monopolist's profits.
And regulating the oil industry is relatively simple. We know the cost of crude oil, we know the cost of refining it. It's very simple to calculate what the cost of gasoline should be.
Dude... that's pretty bleak. Why can't we use nuclear power? And hopefully by the time uranium starts to run out we'll have fusion. And yeah it's getting harder to mine copper and other resources, but the stuff we've already mined is still around. We just have to recycle it. And with the price of copper constantly rising, we are doing exactly that. And we can find alternatives. Hopefully someone will come up with a plastic pipe that doesn't suck so we won't have to use copper pipe any more.
Yes we are way to wasteful as a society. And if we refuse to stop wasting so much we'll go through some hardship. But we'll get through it and we'll likely end up stronger than before.
What is the "inherent cost" of music? Sure you have to rent a sund studio and pay a sound engineer and a band. But how much would that cost for a week long recording session? Probably a few tens of thousands maybe. If you want to get the best studio and the best sound engineers and producers lets say about $100,000.
Well the music and publishing industries are the same in that it sin't just a matter of someone writting down some stuff or someone strumming a guitar and singing a song. You have to be able to find people with talent. You have to promote them. And if they suck you have to be able eat the loss and not go out of business. Add to that you have to hanger ons and executives and marketing idiots and the costs start to rise.
Yeah maybe books could be cheaper. What surprising is that you question the price of books but not the price of music. Both industries are similar in many ways.
Actually a suspension bridge requires quite a bit of balance doesn't it? And the counterweight is an interesting problem. Some suggest moving an asteroid in place and others suggest simply building the cable twice as long. The advantage of the asteroid would be you'd have to produce less carbon nanotubes and you'll have an asteroid that you can build a space station on and mine for materials. The disadvantage is that you have ot move a giant rock around into a precise orbit.
I guess it all depends on how much we can drive down the price of the carbon nanotubes and how comfortable people will be with moving an asteroid close to the earth.
Actually it was a system to launch a retaliatory strike if they soviet union was decapitated. The US had a similar system.
An interesting note is that when the US was developing their "dead hand" system it was recommended that they give the technology to the Soviet Union so they could develop their own. The reasoning was that without a dead hand type system the Soviet Union would have to keep their forces ready to launch nuclear weapons within 40 minutes notice. With a dead hand system they could wait until after the first volley of american missiles arrived to launch a counter strike. The Soviets could be a little more relaxed and still maintain MAD.
Not sure if the US helped the Soviets build the dead hand system or not (that would be super top secret type stuff), but it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Stanislav Petrov knew that if they were real missiles being launched, the dead hand system would launch a counter attack even if he didn't. So it made his choice to wait for confirmation of the reported missile launches a hell of a lot easier.
Yes but do you clone you KDE configuration on each KDE system you use? That's the problem I have with it. Sure I can customise KDE to make it close to ideal. But then I go set up a new system I have to either reconfigure KDE on that new system or somehow copy my configuration files over.
Then there's the problem of what to recommend to new users. A new user is not going to want to spend a lot of time messing around with preferences to get a usable system. This is why the defaults are so important.
KDE's defaults are screwed up but you can change everything. Gnome's defaults are usable without any tinkering, but doesn't allow you to change as much. So what would you recommend t new users?
And f you are dealing with new users its pretty awkward to recommend Gnome and then have someone ask "what do you use?" and have to answer "KDE but you should use Gnome". Also if you want to walk someone through how to do something its nice to be able to be familiar with what they are using.
And back when I used KDE I would configure things in this way: I'd have a taskbar at the bottom, and at the top I'd have my system tray or notification area or whatever, and icons for my most used programs and a clock. And that's pretty much how gnome is configured by default. So you're right that I'm used to this configuration, but thats because I was using it since before gnome started using it as their default. When I was using KDE I sat down and set up what I thought would be the most efficent interface. The gnome people, when developing gnome 2 did the same. Our conlusions were very similar.
And another nice thing about using gnome is that sometimes they think of things that I didn't. Like the Places menu for example. I never thought of that one at all, but as soon as I heard about it, it was like a little light bulb turned on in my head. It was a great idea, and has made things much easier for me. Now thinking of KDE, how would I get that feature? Well someone would make an applet or something and I'd have to install it. Now this is something I never even thought of so how would I know to go looking for a feature that I never even thought of? And even if I did, to add that feature to my customised desktop environment, wouldn't that require, you know, a little tinkering? With gnome I get interface improvements when I update my system. With KDE the only way to get interface improvements requires tinkering.
If it was exactly the same then it would work, wouldn't it? There are different hardware revisions of that model. At the time you tried it the particular revision you had didn't work with ivtv. It is highly likely that that revision was made after the driver was written for linux. You can't really expect the developers to be able to see the future can you? And before you revision of the card was released PVR-250 was supported. The manufacturer released a different revision that wouldn't work with the linux driver.
And of course it worked under windows. They would have made changes to the windows driver before release to make sure they it wwould work. The manufacturer did not do the same with the linux driver. Again the fault lies with the manufacturer for not giving you the support you needed.
And as far as I can tell the PVR-250 appears to be fully supported by ivtv now. Yes there is a lag between when a new piece of hardware is released. You have to realise that the manufacturer isn't writing the drivers, often times it is a group of volunteers that are writing it from specs (if they're lucky) or by reverse engineering (if they aren't). Now it would be nice if on the package it said PVR-250c so that if you asked around, people would tell you that PVR-250a and PVR-250b are supported while PVR-250c is not. It is so easy for the manufacturer to do this, just a simply little change of packaging. But they didn't do that so you end up with PVR-250 and unless you're psychic there is no way to know if its rev a, b, or c. If the manufacturer doesn't mark it on the package, then the only way is to try it out and see if it works.
Now yeah maybe someone should have told you the situation with the different revisions and the poorly marked packaging. But it is likely that the person you spoke to wasn't aware of the existence of the different hardware revisions. All the dude knew was that he knew some people that had the PVR-250 working under linux and he just relayed it to you. I seriously doubt that someone knew that your PVR card wouldn't work and lied to you about it. What would motivate someone to do that?
It isn't going to reverse if CO2 levels keep rising. The point scientists are trying to make isn't that its they end of the world, its that we gotta make some changes.
Remember when SCO sent letters to all of IBM's clients demanding $699 per copy of linux. Rember how we all laughed at that? Well IBM wasn't laughing. You can sue IBM and that's ok, all part of being a big corporation. But make a legal threat against IBM's customers? That's a whole other story. IBM wants to crush SCO and then desecrate their corpses now. You just don't mess with their customers.
Ubuntu Forums.
Actually, its really no different from windows in discovering what software is best for you. The main advantage of using a repository is that iif your friend recommends a P2P app, and your friend happens to be a complete idiot, the worst case scenario is that you have go into your package manager. With windows the worst case scenario, is, well, much worse.
It seems the biggest complaint about linux is that its different. I'm not sure how you expect Linux to change this. They can't just name the CD burning program "Nero" so that windows users will know what to use, since Nero is trademarked. The default action when I put in a CD-R is that it will ask if I want to burn a Audio CD or a Data CD and then it opens the suggested program for that. Applications->Accessories->Text Editor opens the suggested text editor. If the suggested apps don't have the features you need, well then the prcess is similar to when Nero or Notepad doesn't support a feature you need. You just ask around (online and offline).
I guess your problem is that you have all this knowledge about what programs do what in windows and that knowledge doesn't apply to linux. It will never apply to linux because linux isn't windows. If you can get past this, then you will find that linux is as good, if not better, than windows. But you have to let go of that windows-specific knowledge and be willing to learn the things that are linux-specific.
After a virus scare, and finding a crapload of spyware installed, a friend of mine became very interested in linux.