You see a malicious and hate filled public attack, I see a non-violent protest that, truth be told, I find rather clever and funny. Stop and think wether you would not also see it this way if it was about someone you oppose politically.
See, the thing is, it's not: launch=> possible lives lost, not launch=> no consequences. Not launching means waiting for a new launch window, with the associated running costs, investors and superiors getting impatient,... There is an opportunity cost to those false positives. Does that mean in this case he was right not to listen? I don't think so. But that is in full possession of the facts as given in TFA, and with my 20/20 hindsight glasses on. Maybe the engineers didn't present their case very well at the time? Maybe the guy was under pressure from superiors/investors/government to get the launch going? Without his side of the story, you cannot simply decide he was wrong.
For what it's worth, I think he was wrong. I 've seen many similar cases were "management", due to only being trained to manage, was incapable of grasping what the engineers were blabbing about. But I also think you cannot categorically state he should be tried and convicted without knowing what happened from both sides.
True, but given that you can't be 100% accurate, would you rather they go too far into the false positives (take cases too seriously) or the false negatives (leave serious cases uninvestigated)?
The thing is, for all the hate they seem to engender, corporations have done a lot of good for those Homo sapiens (sapiens) you mention. I'm not asking you to weigh good vs. bad, since that would be subjective, but you can not say that corporations have not benefited mankind. The thing is, to provide these benefits, we need corporations, people working together to tackle big problems. And to get these people together, they need some assurances. Call those what you will, but they pretty much are the "rights" and "freedoms" of the corporation.
I'm talking about basic rights. Fair trials, protection against aggressors,... And yes, other rights too. For all the bad rep intellectual property rights get, they serve a purpose: they allow people to invest in research. Think about it, if everytime you had an idea someone else could just look at it and copy it, then also sell it, he would gain a lot more profit. After all, he would not need to put in all the research/design/marketing studies for the product, just reverse-engineer it and voila (maybe even make some small improvements to eliminate a few teething problems). So, immediately, every corporation would go from innovator straight to copycat mode, and we'd never see anything new.
So yes, corporations need to have rights. If a corporation had no rights, and you could just do whatever you wanted with them, they would not be formed. Hence, to get the benefits of corporations (and again, I do believe we have seen many of these, up to and including the machine you are currently reading this on), we need to grant them some rights. Now, some countries have given corporations a bit too many rights, and that is a problem, especially when they start a bidding war to get corporate attention, but that does not invalidate my basic point.
Also, where does it say corporations are servants of the people? Governments, yes. We pay them taxes, and in return they take care of "society" for us. They run the infrastructure, law enforcement, etc. Do you pay taxes to the corporations? They do not owe you a single thing, unless you've invested in them, at which point there are procedures to make your voice heard.
Corporations were not created by God to serve your interests, they were set up by people to make them money. Sometimes they also provide a benefit to society, sometimes they don't. The ones that don't tend to disappear due to lack of customers (after all, if someone buys their product, he must get some sense of value from them). That is all they are.
Well, at least according to me. I'd love to hear your views.
Re:Another politician with half a brain?
on
EU ACTA Chief Resigns
·
· Score: 4, Informative
EU decision making can be daunting, but I'm a Belgian, so it don't scare me.
Essentially, in the EU, a law has to be ratified by both the Council and the Parliament of the EU. The Council is made up of the relevant ministers from the member state governments. The Parliament is directly elected by the citizens of the member states in the European elections.
There is also the European Commission, who, in a very badly summarized nutshell, propose laws, define strategies, etc., but do not, themselves, have a vote on what gets passed or not (though they do have a lot of power in some cases).
As mentioned, the Council has given ACTA the OK, but the Parliament has not. Every issue to be discussed in the EP is discussed in one or more relevant Committees, and analyzed in a report by one MEP, the rapporteur. It's this guy who actually quit, after he had handed in his report. So no, he didn't help ACTA in any way, and has given a strong signal that he at least opposes it.
Ummm... Also, you're just spending energy to create a fuel that, when burned (producing less energy than you spent to produce it), will recreate the same CO2 that you tried to scrub from the air. The cycle would be better than fossi fuels, but wouldn't really help to reduce CO2 concentrations.
Well, you actually can't transfer yourself to a computer. The way I see it, you make a copy of yourself into the computer, then kill your meat self (which , I should add, still also has your conscience in it!), and the copy in the machine keeps on going. The question is, really, wether this counts as "you" transferring to the machine, or a copy of you continuing after you have killed yourself.
Is this copy still you? It'll think it is. But then, so will the meat body you.
So, to quote a movie that was worse in every way than its predecessor: "We've agreed the principle is sound, now we're just haggling over price".
I understand that piracy is wrong, and I definitely don't think it is legal or in any way morally right. Just because you cannot afford a product, or do not accept the way it is offered, does not give you the right to disobey the law to get what you want. What I disagree with is the huge losses the industry quotes, and that they use these to justify the "tough on piracy" stance. Though it would be imossible to accurately quantify the real effect, I feel that lots of people making word-of-mouth publicity about your product if they find it good also has a value (one recognized by businesses worldwide, judging by the amount of "free samples", "trial periods" etc. sent out. On the other side of the coin we have the cost generated by the anti-piracy efforts, expensive DRM, campaigns, customers driven away by the increased prices and decreased product quality this entails. To me, this begs the question: is it worth it to fight tooth and nail to preserve the old ways, or is it time to think about new ways to market products that would undercut piracy in whole new ways, thus avoiding the problem, instead of fighting it.
I'm sure the person who pirates the thing also has to get a copy first, so how exactly is this different? One copy gets sold, and used by many people over time. Same as when I borrow a DVD from my friend. The "one sale, one user" thing was an illusion long before the internet blew it out of proportion.
Make a good product, at a good price, and plenty of people will pay for it. How many will not should not be part of this equation.
Although I don't disagree with the posters before me that the price is too high, that's not what's at stake here, I think. Price fixing does not mean a company setting a price too high. It means multiple companies, together representing a large majority of the market, conspiring to all keep the prices high, thus eliminating the normally healthy effect of competition, with the prupose of making more money for all. If Amazon wants to sell its ebooks for more than the manufacturing costs plus some profit, that's perfectly fine and nothing wrong with it. However, if they make a secret arrangement with all other major ebook players, that is not, because then competition is bypassed, and customers are cheated by cartels.
Well, just like you, they use what information is available. Companies pay huge sums of money to ensure that the available info is theirs, or at least in line with their interest.
Actually, they likely base their decision on the basis of lobby work done by industry experts. After all, who better to trust than an expert, right? Problem is, these experts are usually employed by the industry selling the technology, and as such, rarely go into the downsides too much. Barring counter-lobbying from another source (NGO or public initiative), it's likely the politicians really are convinced they're doing the right thing, because clearly, there are no downsides, or they'd have heard about it.
Many of the big oil companies are shifting their focus from oil production to energy production in general (Shell is a well known example). Also, how do you figure that this technology evades oil? A lot of the electricity today is still produced from fossil fuels, including oil.
All this does is shift the delivery from the (many) refilling stations to the (fewer) power plants. I'm thinking the oil companies could gain a lot of money if they didn't have to deliver all that fuel to the filling stations. Might even be making a profit there, if they play their cards right and invest in the enrgy market.
Any burning of fossil fuels (or other organics) will result in carbon dioxide being produced, unavoidably (see the chemical reaction: CH + 02 -> C02 + H20). However, I must say the previous answer was right, and CO2 does not cause any direct deaths, but instead causes climate change, through the famous greenhouse effect. CO2 itself is totally nontoxic and harmless to people (and, to my knowledge, all other organisms). Nature itself is responsible for 95% of CO2 production on the globe, simply by the respiration of all living things.
However, when organic material (i.e. fossil fuels) is burned in the absence of sufficient oxygen, carbon monoxyde can be formed, which is indeed a toxic substance (it binds to the molecules that transport oxygen through the blood, thus making those molecules unable to transport oxygen), but only in sufficient quantities and after longer exposure times.
Also, I think it's important to note that energy conversions of 99.999% from solar energy are pretty darn impossible. Solar energy consists of heat, which is the lowest form of energy, and we want to convert it to electricity (which is a pretty high form of energy). Physics teaches us that there is a maximum efficiency, dependent on the temperature, that can be reached, and it is much lower than 99.999% (somewhere around 40-50%, if I recall correctly). This is the maximum physically possible, not due to less than perfect materials, losses, etc. Incorporate all the other factors, and you end up with a pretty low efficiency that's still humanly possible.
While I agree that alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and hydrodynamic power have an important role to play in the future, their effectiveness must not be overestimated. Each of them also has a limited capacity, and while people may be all for the environmental benefits they offer, they will also be vehemently protesting the installing of ugly windmills in their back yards, or the price increase of electricity when more solar power is introduced (solar power is not currently able to compete with fossil fuel power from an economic perspective).
While I must admit I don't watch Fox news (being a Belgian, it's not my preferred source for news), I feel I must suggest that it might be better to get your facts on science from some more... scientific sources.
I think a friend of mine summed it up excellently. We were discussing MMORPG's at the time, and we had just gone from World of Warcraft to more esoteric things like ideas for Call of Ctulhu Online (just make a digital Arkham and surroundings, and let players live there and occasionally have something weird happen). We really like that idea, and even thought the Cthulhu system is pretty well suited for the purpose, if you could find a way to force players to play mad (lots of ideas there too, but that would lead us too far...). Anyway, after about an hour of talking, he said: "you know, it sounds great, but we're forgetting the first law of MMO's: It may sound great, but it will go down the drain as soon as it hits players."
Slashdot Mirror
Mod Parent Up! At least he read the book before quoting. The entire joke makes so much more sense when told correctly.
You see a malicious and hate filled public attack, I see a non-violent protest that, truth be told, I find rather clever and funny. Stop and think wether you would not also see it this way if it was about someone you oppose politically.
See, the thing is, it's not: launch=> possible lives lost, not launch=> no consequences. Not launching means waiting for a new launch window, with the associated running costs, investors and superiors getting impatient,... There is an opportunity cost to those false positives. Does that mean in this case he was right not to listen? I don't think so. But that is in full possession of the facts as given in TFA, and with my 20/20 hindsight glasses on. Maybe the engineers didn't present their case very well at the time? Maybe the guy was under pressure from superiors/investors/government to get the launch going? Without his side of the story, you cannot simply decide he was wrong.
For what it's worth, I think he was wrong. I 've seen many similar cases were "management", due to only being trained to manage, was incapable of grasping what the engineers were blabbing about. But I also think you cannot categorically state he should be tried and convicted without knowing what happened from both sides.
True, but given that you can't be 100% accurate, would you rather they go too far into the false positives (take cases too seriously) or the false negatives (leave serious cases uninvestigated)?
When you put it like that, canoodling sounds painful...
Okay, I admit it. I clicked it. So what did I win/infect my pc with?
The thing is, for all the hate they seem to engender, corporations have done a lot of good for those Homo sapiens (sapiens) you mention. I'm not asking you to weigh good vs. bad, since that would be subjective, but you can not say that corporations have not benefited mankind. The thing is, to provide these benefits, we need corporations, people working together to tackle big problems. And to get these people together, they need some assurances. Call those what you will, but they pretty much are the "rights" and "freedoms" of the corporation.
... And yes, other rights too. For all the bad rep intellectual property rights get, they serve a purpose: they allow people to invest in research. Think about it, if everytime you had an idea someone else could just look at it and copy it, then also sell it, he would gain a lot more profit. After all, he would not need to put in all the research/design/marketing studies for the product, just reverse-engineer it and voila (maybe even make some small improvements to eliminate a few teething problems). So, immediately, every corporation would go from innovator straight to copycat mode, and we'd never see anything new.
I'm talking about basic rights. Fair trials, protection against aggressors,
So yes, corporations need to have rights. If a corporation had no rights, and you could just do whatever you wanted with them, they would not be formed. Hence, to get the benefits of corporations (and again, I do believe we have seen many of these, up to and including the machine you are currently reading this on), we need to grant them some rights. Now, some countries have given corporations a bit too many rights, and that is a problem, especially when they start a bidding war to get corporate attention, but that does not invalidate my basic point.
Also, where does it say corporations are servants of the people? Governments, yes. We pay them taxes, and in return they take care of "society" for us. They run the infrastructure, law enforcement, etc. Do you pay taxes to the corporations? They do not owe you a single thing, unless you've invested in them, at which point there are procedures to make your voice heard.
Corporations were not created by God to serve your interests, they were set up by people to make them money. Sometimes they also provide a benefit to society, sometimes they don't. The ones that don't tend to disappear due to lack of customers (after all, if someone buys their product, he must get some sense of value from them). That is all they are.
Well, at least according to me. I'd love to hear your views.
EU decision making can be daunting, but I'm a Belgian, so it don't scare me. Essentially, in the EU, a law has to be ratified by both the Council and the Parliament of the EU. The Council is made up of the relevant ministers from the member state governments. The Parliament is directly elected by the citizens of the member states in the European elections. There is also the European Commission, who, in a very badly summarized nutshell, propose laws, define strategies, etc., but do not, themselves, have a vote on what gets passed or not (though they do have a lot of power in some cases). As mentioned, the Council has given ACTA the OK, but the Parliament has not. Every issue to be discussed in the EP is discussed in one or more relevant Committees, and analyzed in a report by one MEP, the rapporteur. It's this guy who actually quit, after he had handed in his report. So no, he didn't help ACTA in any way, and has given a strong signal that he at least opposes it.
Ummm... Also, you're just spending energy to create a fuel that, when burned (producing less energy than you spent to produce it), will recreate the same CO2 that you tried to scrub from the air. The cycle would be better than fossi fuels, but wouldn't really help to reduce CO2 concentrations.
Well, you actually can't transfer yourself to a computer. The way I see it, you make a copy of yourself into the computer, then kill your meat self (which , I should add, still also has your conscience in it!), and the copy in the machine keeps on going. The question is, really, wether this counts as "you" transferring to the machine, or a copy of you continuing after you have killed yourself. Is this copy still you? It'll think it is. But then, so will the meat body you.
So, to quote a movie that was worse in every way than its predecessor: "We've agreed the principle is sound, now we're just haggling over price". I understand that piracy is wrong, and I definitely don't think it is legal or in any way morally right. Just because you cannot afford a product, or do not accept the way it is offered, does not give you the right to disobey the law to get what you want. What I disagree with is the huge losses the industry quotes, and that they use these to justify the "tough on piracy" stance. Though it would be imossible to accurately quantify the real effect, I feel that lots of people making word-of-mouth publicity about your product if they find it good also has a value (one recognized by businesses worldwide, judging by the amount of "free samples", "trial periods" etc. sent out. On the other side of the coin we have the cost generated by the anti-piracy efforts, expensive DRM, campaigns, customers driven away by the increased prices and decreased product quality this entails. To me, this begs the question: is it worth it to fight tooth and nail to preserve the old ways, or is it time to think about new ways to market products that would undercut piracy in whole new ways, thus avoiding the problem, instead of fighting it.
I'm sure the person who pirates the thing also has to get a copy first, so how exactly is this different? One copy gets sold, and used by many people over time. Same as when I borrow a DVD from my friend. The "one sale, one user" thing was an illusion long before the internet blew it out of proportion. Make a good product, at a good price, and plenty of people will pay for it. How many will not should not be part of this equation.
Although I don't disagree with the posters before me that the price is too high, that's not what's at stake here, I think. Price fixing does not mean a company setting a price too high. It means multiple companies, together representing a large majority of the market, conspiring to all keep the prices high, thus eliminating the normally healthy effect of competition, with the prupose of making more money for all. If Amazon wants to sell its ebooks for more than the manufacturing costs plus some profit, that's perfectly fine and nothing wrong with it. However, if they make a secret arrangement with all other major ebook players, that is not, because then competition is bypassed, and customers are cheated by cartels.
Well, just like you, they use what information is available. Companies pay huge sums of money to ensure that the available info is theirs, or at least in line with their interest.
Actually, they likely base their decision on the basis of lobby work done by industry experts. After all, who better to trust than an expert, right? Problem is, these experts are usually employed by the industry selling the technology, and as such, rarely go into the downsides too much. Barring counter-lobbying from another source (NGO or public initiative), it's likely the politicians really are convinced they're doing the right thing, because clearly, there are no downsides, or they'd have heard about it.
Many of the big oil companies are shifting their focus from oil production to energy production in general (Shell is a well known example). Also, how do you figure that this technology evades oil? A lot of the electricity today is still produced from fossil fuels, including oil.
All this does is shift the delivery from the (many) refilling stations to the (fewer) power plants. I'm thinking the oil companies could gain a lot of money if they didn't have to deliver all that fuel to the filling stations. Might even be making a profit there, if they play their cards right and invest in the enrgy market.
Any burning of fossil fuels (or other organics) will result in carbon dioxide being produced, unavoidably (see the chemical reaction: CH + 02 -> C02 + H20). However, I must say the previous answer was right, and CO2 does not cause any direct deaths, but instead causes climate change, through the famous greenhouse effect. CO2 itself is totally nontoxic and harmless to people (and, to my knowledge, all other organisms). Nature itself is responsible for 95% of CO2 production on the globe, simply by the respiration of all living things.
However, when organic material (i.e. fossil fuels) is burned in the absence of sufficient oxygen, carbon monoxyde can be formed, which is indeed a toxic substance (it binds to the molecules that transport oxygen through the blood, thus making those molecules unable to transport oxygen), but only in sufficient quantities and after longer exposure times.
Also, I think it's important to note that energy conversions of 99.999% from solar energy are pretty darn impossible. Solar energy consists of heat, which is the lowest form of energy, and we want to convert it to electricity (which is a pretty high form of energy). Physics teaches us that there is a maximum efficiency, dependent on the temperature, that can be reached, and it is much lower than 99.999% (somewhere around 40-50%, if I recall correctly). This is the maximum physically possible, not due to less than perfect materials, losses, etc. Incorporate all the other factors, and you end up with a pretty low efficiency that's still humanly possible.
While I agree that alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and hydrodynamic power have an important role to play in the future, their effectiveness must not be overestimated. Each of them also has a limited capacity, and while people may be all for the environmental benefits they offer, they will also be vehemently protesting the installing of ugly windmills in their back yards, or the price increase of electricity when more solar power is introduced (solar power is not currently able to compete with fossil fuel power from an economic perspective).
While I must admit I don't watch Fox news (being a Belgian, it's not my preferred source for news), I feel I must suggest that it might be better to get your facts on science from some more... scientific sources.
I think a friend of mine summed it up excellently. We were discussing MMORPG's at the time, and we had just gone from World of Warcraft to more esoteric things like ideas for Call of Ctulhu Online (just make a digital Arkham and surroundings, and let players live there and occasionally have something weird happen). We really like that idea, and even thought the Cthulhu system is pretty well suited for the purpose, if you could find a way to force players to play mad (lots of ideas there too, but that would lead us too far...). Anyway, after about an hour of talking, he said: "you know, it sounds great, but we're forgetting the first law of MMO's: It may sound great, but it will go down the drain as soon as it hits players."