End to end encrypted communications and the concept of circle of trust. The original creator of PGP is involved, but this product seems to be much easier to operate (although they still haven't fixed the problem of me convincing friends or family to also want one, therefor justifying my purchase as a personal device. They are therefor the BlackBerry of the Android world)

...Man, you're past jaded.
Necessary information: It has most of it.
Variable conditions: You do what you can.
No incentive to do the right thing: Says you. I'm not saying it'll be perfect, but collecting tax money is done rather routinely.
Job seeking after EPA duty: Meh. Like I said earlier, a fairly simple fee structure is harder to mess up.

You're still committing a fallacy - do nothing unless the solution is 'perfect'. I don't demand perfect.

Actually no. I'm actually advocating loosening control by changing the way the EPA does business. Currently it works on a basis of dictating the AMOUNT of pollution an industry, down to specific industrial facilities, can produce through a system of permits. If you violate your permit, you may or may not be charged substantial penalties. If it doesn't want a particular industry inside the USA, it simply has to set the permitted levels of pollution low enough, require expensive enough remediation, to render the business uneconomical. Meanwhile it preserves current players through grandfathering, often allowing orders of magnitude more pollution from older facilities.

Correct. Though 'their air' and 'their water' gets rather complicated because it's constantly moving.

Which is what I proposed, so why are you complaining?

Which is what I was complaining about... 'Grandfathering' = 'free license'. Blanket standards being too strict in some areas and too lenient in others is probably always going to be an issue, which is why I simply said 'use the best available science'. Then add an administrative fee on top because you're probably underestimating it.

'You're overcharging for sulfor dioxide and undercharging for nitrogen dioxide' isn't, to me, a condemnation of my system, it results in a shrug and me updating the fee schedule.

Okay, read the pollution section from the ebook. I'll summarize my thoughts:
1. Just who do you propose to sell the rivers to, where they can still be used for trade, wildlife preservation, and such without massive, massive issues with negotiating with, potentially, thousands of owners?
2. How do you arrange it so that companies are liable for their pollution when it's basically impossible to point your finger at a specific factory having caused you harm, or making it so easy that anybody who gets a cough is suing everybody and clogging the courts up?

What I'm getting at is that my 'solution' is to make the government the overseer - the union, if you will(still not a good comparison, but I can't think of better at the moment). It then charges the industries for their pollution, so we can still have industry, but charges enough that it can then spend that money(through lowered taxes, if nothing else) to remediate the harm caused by remaining pollution, and industries, because they have to pay for what they emit, are 'encouraged' to prevent said emissions.

Just to let you know, you've been arguing with a self-described moderate libertarian. You may be closer to the anarchy scale.

I'll summarize:
1. We need a policy that is 'simple' enough for businesses to be able to work with it.
2. It needs to be as non-intrusive as possible.
3. It needs to render external cost(pollution) internal in as efficient of a method as possible. Lawsuits aren't efficient. Negotiating with potentially thousands or tens of thousands of people isn't efficient.
3a. By rendering the cost internal, companies are encouraged to not pollute.
3b. By avoiding lawsuits as much as possible, we can still have industry.

That's where you use CPVC. It's stronger than straight PVC as well as resistant to higher temperatures. My old house was plumbed in CPVC.

It's generally a tan color as opposed to white for PVC. The GP probably either didn't know or care about the 'minor' difference - it's still PVC. ;)

Yep, tweekers are pretty much a lost cause.

It's not just copper piping they can steal; they'll also steal electrical wiring. Nothing's too small or low-value for them.

Also, I don't think you can replace copper with PVC; you can use some other stuff, like PEX, but PVC isn't used for high-pressure supply piping as far as I know, at least not inside walls. I have seen it used for irrigation systems though. I think the problem is that you can't use PVC for hot water supply lines.

If they're "high-prestige" why aren't you willing to move? It's not like you own that apartment you're renting. Move out when your lease comes up and make sure you tell management why you're doing it. Good tenants are hard to find, if you complain infrequently and pay your rent on time (less common than you'd think) they'll be sorry to see you go and will listen to your reasons for doing so.

Doesn't solve your problem in the short term but it's more effective for long term change than griping about the problem on Slashdot.

Because corporations bad, mmm'kay?

That's really the crux of it. Any argument against this ruling is immediately shouted down. I posited this question on another forum and received the equivalent of -1, Troll: Why is everybody cheering a ruling that attacks hypothetical problems (the oft discussed "fast lane" has yet to actually happen) while ignoring the actual problems that are impeding innovation? The "killer app" that started this whole argument is streaming video, so ask yourself which of these two things are a greater threat to that: The data caps that are currently being imposed or the fast lane that only exists on paper?

No, it was most likely metal thieves. There's tons and tons of them in Phoenix, since that city is chock full of meth-heads and illegal aliens, both of whom steal any metal they can get their hands on so they can take them to the metal recyclers in South Phoenix and get a few bucks. They've had all kinds of problems with metal theft there for a long time; not only are new-home construction sites frequently burgled of their wire and copper pipe, they've even resorted to stealing catalytic converters from vehicles in parking lots (using a portable reciprocating saw).

There's been lots of cases of metal thieves trying to steal electric wire from high-voltage installations and being killed in the process.

Google has to get special permission to come into a community and put down lines. Just the community. Comcast, AT&T, etc can't say squat about it.

Now, with these new rules, these jokers actually has a mechanism to inhibit Google through the FCC. the FCC will be able to 3place conditions on Google too.

Nice.

Super-genius executive: Maybe we should promise not to do stuff like that any more, but exempt "security software and Lenovo applications". That way we can continue getting paid by McAfee and others to continue loading their stuff, as long as they don't mind us slapping our logo on it.

If that happens you should complain. Customer complaints aren't addressed quite as strongly as accidents, but getting many complaints is pretty bad for a driver.

No, you haven't suggested an alternative. I already said it's not the politicians and lobbyists who are setting the values, but bureaucrats and analysts. You ignored that.

Okay, build a coherent plan and/or example of how your system will work. Because it's sounding a bit like you're proposing to sell the air to private concerns. I think I'd rather see your actual view on a solution/plan before I speculate further.

Get out of your ivory tower. The government 'forces a single policy on everybody' more or less because it's a blunt instrument and exceptions tend to lead to more corruption and waste than keeping it simple. For all that government is bad, it's the least bad solution for the problem that we've found. 'proto-fascist' means you either are completely misunderstanding me, deliberately or not, or don't realize what fascist means. I had to look up ochlocratic, and that's not something I have to commonly do, and my response to that, given that I read the first paragraph of the wiki on it, is that again, you're off somewhere attacking a strawman.

I'll repeat: We ALREADY have a government agency with power over industry, and people, in the name of protecting the environment. In the name of preventing stuff like rivers that are dead and regularly catch fire, rain that dissolves stone along with other things that cause harm to health like drastically increasing the incidents of lung cancer, not to mention other illnesses, we created the EPA.

I'm not talking about some drastic reform like the creation of the EPA was. I'm talking about reforming the EPA in ways that I believe will actually INCREASE freedom, REDUCE regulation, encourage lowering pollution more(via eliminating grandfathering), while encouraging new construction because the EPA isn't setting ridiculous rules about pollution.

Just because something isn't perfect shouldn't prevent us from doing it in the ultimately vain hope something better will come along. I happen to believe that my scheme would be beneficial.

Or are you so convinced that corrupt politicians are so evil that they would value human lives at something ridiculously low like $100k each? Because by my research, so long as they hit somewhere between $5M and $10M, it wouldn't make much difference.

Okay, how do you propose to work this? I decide to heat my home using an open coal fire. The smoke can be seen for miles, everybody is hacking, but it's my decision, right? How do you impose the cost of everybody else's sickness on my decision?

Or are you saying that the public will simply boycott an industry that's polluting?

Last Halloween I got suckered into running a 13k in costume; since the only costume I own is a TNG uniform and one of my friends wore a TOS redshirt it wasn't much of a leap to get smashed afterwards on Romulan Ale. Alas, I found out the hard way that my Playmates Type II Phaser doesn't work on the bouncer at our local pub. He's a big guy, so maybe I just needed to bump it up to maximum stun....

I've seen a lot of recipes over the years; the one that comes the closest to the effects of the "real" thing is equal parts Everclear, Bacardi 151, and Blue Curacao. It kind of tastes like gasoline but that's part of the appeal, along with pretending it was smuggled across the neutral zone after you've consumed too much of it.... ;)

Human beings are one of the few (the only?) species on this blue marble that can override their baser instincts in favor of reason. I personally know several people who quit smoking cold turkey after many years. It's simply a matter of will power. Don't whine about the "tobacco" companies if you can't summon it even when you know the consequences.