The tricky bit is that greenhouse gas emissions are a classic negative externality(arguably even more so than pollution generally, which more often stays comparatively close to the release site, rather than having minimial proximate effect but worldwide cumulative effect).

Negative externalities are not things that people tend to just stand up and volunteer to fix because they are nice guys like that, never mind getting all of them to do so, rather than some doing so and the rest taking advantage of the newly cheaper coal.

Pigovian taxation has the advantage of letting the private sector work out the details of the technology; but unless you internalize the externality you can expect to wait a long, long, time for anything to happen voluntarily.

It's a direct link; but God is the sort of important dude who deals with a lot of Sensitive Compartmentalized Information.

Unless God decides to read the Pope into a given program, it's purely need-to-know. In addition(as is likely in this case) God will sometimes 'preserve the integrity of privileged omniscience capabilities and/or techniques' by providing the data gathered by the non-public method through a 'parallel construction' that offers a plausible but fictitious origin for the information.

Here, investigative theologians and divine conspiracy theorists suggest that God's climate data are probably actually derived from his clandestine monitoring of the position and location of all particles in existence. Since this blatantly violates the reasonable expectations of privacy established for all particles by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this program does not officially exist. So far, none of the heavenly host have been willing to make any public statement on the matter, so it remains speculative.

I agree that moral posturing is a largely sterile exercise; but you are using the (possibly true) equivalent between two stances on 'what other people should do to solve this problem' to advance a false equivalence that those two proposals will work similarly well "no more unreasonable than any of the other proposed ways".

It's nice that there's an encyclical agreeing that listening to the experts on the matter is important, and noting that most predicted effects of climate change will not be blessings upon the already poor is pretty logical pope stuff; but there is a very, very, strong case to be made that the Catholic church is...a poor source of advice... when it comes to either population or to inducing social change.

Even when backed by violence, religious suasion has a lousy track record of keeping people from having sex, regardless of marital status, risk of disease transmission, willingness/unwillingness to deal with possible additional children, etc. It also doesn't have a terribly promising track record on motivating to abstain from various carbon-intensive goods and services if they are available.

We've had much better luck with technological solutions that try to avoid stepping in the quagmire of moral suasion; and simply mitigate some or all of the effects of what people are doing anyway. Whether it's prophylactics or non fossil fuel energy sources, it's always going to be easier to prevent STD spread, or generate electricity without burning dinosaurs than it will be to sell people on celibacy and sitting in the dark.

I agree that the music industry(barring the use of their impressive lobbying clout to simply start raiding the public purse and transferring the contents directly to one of the dreadful royalty collection entities) is pretty seriously screwed. I'm just not sure that Apple is a good company to get in bed with to try to solve that.

I'm thinking back to the sequence of events surrounding the the original ITMS, with track-based sales. Team music was largely enthusiastic, finally somebody actually competent to give those damned pirate kids an easier, relatively palatable, option for being paying customers again. And, in part, it worked. Unfortunately for Team Music, Apple proved to be a bit too competent, 'Playsforsure' and its planned ecosystem of interoperable devices and competing music stores basically crashed and burned, Real did something so pathetic that I'm hard pressed to remember it; and the upshot was that they ended up having to sanction the sale of MP3s through Amazon, often at 20 cents or so less, per track, than ITMS, just to keep Apple from being the ultimate gatekeeper.

With streaming services, I suspect that Apple will again be the competent guys(even if they are no more competent than their competitors, they have integration with ITMS billing, and a giant pile of customers with credit card information already punched in, and they have privileged access to iOS, so anything their streaming app needs to be better than everyone else's streaming app(whether it be more lenient treatment of the process when running in the background, special RIAA-and-major-studios-blessed 'secure' local storage for 'predictive caching' when bandwidth is cheap and abundant(ie. on wifi, also handy because Apple easily has enough reach and clout to realistically push some CDN/caching hardware to retail partners if that makes economic sense: Starbucks, say, already has some interaction with Apple in selling music, they'd probably be willing to plug some suitably-modified Time Capsule based local cache into their network, assuming Apple made it low hassle enough); as well as the general competence of Apple's consumer software development.

Given that the streaming market already doesn't pay worth a damn, even with multiple competing entities who are trivial to switch between, all pretty similar to use, and live and die by their catalogs; I can't imagine that their cut of the action will get better if Apple comes in and crushes Pandora and friends and is now in position to dictate terms(extra fun if Apple decides that promotional visibility, and/or the privilege of being sold in the ITMS at all, will now be predicated on how cooperative you are with their streaming plans, and any other future developments).

Given that piracy is always attractively priced, and often surprisingly user friendly(sure, sleazytorrent.ru has more ads for sex chats and korean dating services; but 'click "Artist_Name_Complete_Discography_FLAC.torrent", receive complete discography of chosen artist' is pretty frictionless; team music can't afford to entirely spurn the more competent outfits looking to sell music; but if I were them I'd be very, very, nervous about Apple both being a bit too competent, and (since Apple makes basically zero on music sales; but uses them to enhance the value of the products that they do make money on) a 'partner' who really doesn't share your goals.

Companies that want to make money selling music, or access to music, will haggle with the artists and labels over the cut that goes to the artist and the cut that goes to them; but they are fundamentally interested, just like the artists, in the public spending more money on music. Apple or Microsoft or Google? They have the virtue of being able to build slicker-than-piracy products, since they all know something about UI/UX, and have privileged positions on the world's desktops, consoles, and mobiles; but none of them have any obvious reason to want increased public spending on music. Indeed, all of them have various non-music goods for sale, many directly competing for the same peoples' limited supplies of discretionary income. None of them would be dumb enough to actually risk a zillion infringement lawsuits; but all of them would view artists and labels as, like other OEMs and suppliers, necessary but unfortunate expenses to be reduced as much as possible.

Being the musical equivalent to Microsoft's subservient PC OEMs, or Apple's various tyrannized suppliers, or the companies that kiss Google's pinkie ring(precise terms unavailable in public) to ship 'real' Android, not AOSP, would not be a pleasant experience.

I have absolutely no clever theories about what Team Music should do to try to capture more of the available discretionary income(even without piracy, they have the problem that movies, video games, gadgets, cable bills, etc. are gunning for roughly the same slice of money that they are. Even people who wouldn't touch piracy still have more entertainment goods competing for their attention and cash); I just suspect that throwing in with a party as powerful as Apple, and one that is largely indifferent to music sales, so long as they can add "Music!" as a feature to the products that they actually care about, will end well for them.

I certainly wouldn't fancy their odds over the medium to long term(it isn't exactly getting easier, for anyone, to conduct most aspects of modern life without leaving a handy trail through a variety of databases; and explaining gaps in your employment history is enough fun if you actually were ill/unemployed/etc rather than 'in prison for murder' so your future options are kind of limited); but these two have done much better than average, especially when you consider that they apparently had to work without a getaway driver.

Upstate NY is fairly big, and has some heavily wooded and otherwise potentially helpful terrain; but they started with quite limited resources and a modest head start; while the authorities have numbers, hardware, and the likely cooperation of most of the residents of the area; this isn't exactly Robin Hood hiding out from the king's men.

On the other hand, if streaming is such a low-value activity for the artists streamed; and Apple is likely to view it more or less as a roughly revenue neutral promotion for their hardware and software; that is arguably an excellent incentive for artists to not play along.

Some of them dislike streaming services period, because of the very low pay and perceived reduction in music purchase by their users; even if they are willing to work with streaming services, they'll have a much better negotiating position when dealing with Pandora, Spotify, etc. who have no other lines of business and no special level of integration with people's devices or other advantages that keep them from being largely interchangeable.

Apple makes a lousy partner because their service almost certainly will be architecturally favored on the most common and lucrative mobile devices, making it harder to convince users to just move if the library is better elsewhere; but their primary interest will always be in maximizing the profit of their entire lineup, and treating the streaming service as something as close to 'iDevices come with free music' as they can manage.

The artists' position might actually be best if Apple's service dies; because it is the streaming service with by far the strongest negotiating position, and likely the greatest ability to replace music purchase.

Apple doesn't do anything to their suppliers just because it's nice; but it is honestly a bit surprising to see them taking the gamble of attempting to shove all 100% of lost royalties onto the artist and/or their rightsholder overlord. If any significant number of artists say no, or offer only back-catalog stuff, there are going to be a lot of people spending their three month free trial learning that "Oh, Apple streaming is the one that doesn't have the songs I want." It will likely be the streaming service most conveniently integrated into your iDevice; but if the library sucks, that will only carry it so far.

Eating the cost of the royalties during the trial period would be costly; but it would also have made cooperation from anyone not specifically pledged to exclusivity somewhere else pretty much assured. Failing to do that(or even to offer partial payment) makes their ability to deliver a decent library on launch a great deal less certain.

Plutonium dioxide has an 88 year half life, and is water insoluble. When RTGs are used, they're heavily encased and designed to survive catastrophic launch failures, and have done so, only to be collected and reused on later launches. If they had put an RTG on Philae, your chances of being harmed by it would have been approximately equal to your chances of being devoured by an Indomitus Rex. Unless you're planning to break into the sealed casing, slice off a chunk PuO2, and put in in a sandwich, you'll probably be okay.

These guys would like to have a word with you.

Besides I'm unclear if the RTG was justified for this mission mass or duration wise.

It would have massed about 1/10th the solar panels and lasted longer. "Justified" doesn't enter the equation.

You would ban private ownership of armored vehicles, would you not?

i never said that and i would never do that you dumb fuck

maybe you can have a conversation with the moronic voices in your head by yourself. instead of trying to engage people by changing the subject and making believe they said things they never actually did and then expecting them to defend positions they never took

moronic thread over

the difference, moron, is that one is public and the other is private

http://civilrights.findlaw.com...

why don't you try respecting the founding principles of this country and stop trying to restrict the freedom and liberties of others. you are unamerican. genuinely

i doubt if you can find the ability to respect freedom and liberty though. you seem clearly malicious in your intent towards the basic rights of others and you obviously lack the intellectual capacity to understand simple concepts like public and private

you simply don't have the right to restrict people's freedoms in public you stupid asshole

if you whine "religious liberty" when you do that you are only announcing yourself as a dimwitted bigot who actually hates liberty

if you are in business and you deny someone on the basis of sexual orientation race religious affiliation etc you are denying someone the liberty of doing as they please in general society. you are standing against freedom. this is simple fucking common sense, nevermind the actual law of the land:

http://civilrights.findlaw.com...

this is different than denying someone in your own house, or a church: those are private places. a mosque can deny you the right to draw muhammad on those premises, but no muslim can deny you the right to walk around in public with muhammad on your t shirt

they may of course scream "religious liberty" but what they mean, like you, is that they are whining they don't get to limit someone else's freedoms in public. that's not liberty

i would ask if you understand the difference, but you obviously do not. your intent is clearly malicious and you clearly do not have the intellectual capacity to understand simple concepts like public and private.

you're a dimwitted bigot, and whether you admit it or not, your low intelligence "opinions" stand against freedom and liberty and the founding principles of this country

Why break it when you can install a 'multi-stakeholder-management module' to enable complimentary offsite telemetry monitoring and(only if necessary, of course) failover control from a US satellite management solutions provider?

That's the sort of gold-plated support your vendor would charge you through the nose for, provided free as a gesture of goodwill by your friends in McLean, VA!

oh sorry, i just noticed the user name

i'm sorry you grew up in a shit hole. how that shit hole treated you is not magically the valid reference point for how the world works

i'll save you some time: i won't read what you respond with, so you don't have to engage me. you really don't have much credibility in my eyes, you're just a useless crank whom i don't have much respect for

sorry for responding to you at all, i'll try not to do it again