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The US is still a powerhouse of an exporter. We export, on average, over 2 billion dollars a day (which I believe makes us the largest exporter in the world but I'd have to verify that.)

The trade deficit is not because the US labor force can't perform (it can and does) but because we import even more than we export.

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/pro duct/enduse/exports/c0000.html

People Polled In the various surveys:

Topic survey: 1003 (Give or take one or 2)
Stars on the flag: 1004
Branches: 215
Plants/Science: Not specified
No-Load funds: 1001
Earth/Sun: Not specified

Estimated US Population: 296,388,763
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

How does this translate to most, many, majority, all or half?

It depends on your perceptive. I can agree that a lot of large firms (the type with full IT staffs and in-house programmers/pseudo-programmers) use the "real" MS Office in the manner you describe. But a lot of people just need a word processor to /read/write letters and a spreadsheet to crunch numbers.

Seriously, go drive/walk to you town/city center and look around. You'll probably see banks, maybe an accounting firm or small engineering firm that needs VB/Access functionally. But keep looking. You'll also see things like barber shops, a Ma & Pa convenience store, maybe a store front for plumber, graphic artist, and so on. These people probably wouldn't know what a database or scripting language was if you hit them over the head with one.

As long as they can read whatever Office formats that are sent to them (and thankfully that may actually happen), the combo of Pages/Keynote/Numbers will be enough for the great majority of small businesses.

Given the number of small businesses in the U.S., I think the potential market is higher than one might expect, especially if you think business=megacorp

The goal is probably to put all of NASA's funding towards a big popular initiative, starve other programs, then cancel the initiative or allow it to be cancelled. It's a politically safe way of reducing funding.

Personally, I don't like to hear about people cutting funding for organizations like NASA, but on the other hand, I've always suspected that they were hemoraging money with an inadequate return on the investment. Maybe some of that 16.5 billion dollar budget could be spent on improving education for the approximately 80 million school aged kids in the country. Even better, fork over some of that $420+ billion dollar defense budget. Smarter kids = better science, better weapons, hopefully less need for war, and countless other benefits.

The business market is much bigger than the consumer market.

One thing to keep in mind with your statistics, however, is population growth; the numbers you cite were from 1990 surveys. Call me crazy, but I think the Mormon population may have grown since then.

In fact, just from the 1990 census to the 2000, the population of the state went up almost a third - from 1.7 million to 2.2. The census doesn't keep track of religion, apparently, since there's no government data on that. However, I would assume that a fair bit of that growth was within Mormon.

Your other stats may still be relevant in terms of proportions; that I cannot judge.

Quick Google search:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ us.html#Econ

GDP: $11.75 trillion
Imports: $1.476 trillion (13% GDP)
Exports: $795 billion (7% GDP)
Deficit: $-646.5 billion (5% GDP)

Trade with China:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700. html#2004
Export: $ 34 Billion (1% GDP)
Import: $ 196 Billion (2% GDP)
Deficit: $ -162 Billion (1% GDP)

It appears I was off a bit: Total foreign trade is 20%, I must have been looking at imports. That is still a number which would be possible to overcome given the desire to do so. The long term result of decreased Chinese industrial production would be increased production elsewhere, a situation which is good for everyone but china. Chinese imports account for less than 2% of GDP. I submit that since GDP grows annually by 3-4% lately, a total stoppage of trade with china would be missed for only a few months as the economy restructured and grew out of it. (The slack would be taken up either by American companies or more foreign trade.) China does not currently sell us a significant quanty of goods with inelastic demand, (like oil - notice how a small change in production results in huge swings in price) which would enhance the effect if it were the case.

Out of 211 projects, 55 are King County, 20 are Pierce, 32 are Snohomish. [...] which less than half of the population for Washington will benefit from.

Really? According to U.S. Census Bureau - Washington QuickFacts, 29% of WA lived in King County, 12% of WA lived in Pierce County, 10% of WA lived in Snohomish County in 2000. There's been some fluctuations, but approximately half the state's residents benefit directly from these projects and as we've previously covered, these counties are projected to pay for all of their transportation projects and provide additional funds for projects in other parts of the state.

The most obvious indirect benefit of improved transportation in the greater Seattle area, to those elsewhere in Washington, is in bringing goods to market, both as a heavily populated destination and as the second largest port complex in the United States. In 2002, Washington State was the fifth largest exporter in the United States, at $35 billion with agricultural crops and wood products coming in at #3 and #5, respectively. For those curious, here is the Port of Seattle 10 year history of cargo volumes handled: 1995 - 2004 Not surprizingly, the Port of Seattle put regional transportation as one of its most important strategic priorities. "The Freight Action Strategy for Seattle-Tacoma (FAST) Corridor Partnership was first established in 1998 to pursue funding for 15 high-priority projects for grade separation and port access. Seven projects will be completed by the end of 2003. In 2002, the FAST Corridor partnership identified FAST 2, 10 additional projects to bring benefit to the same corridor from Everett, through Seattle to Tacoma."

The Seattle-area construction projects should be paid for by Seattle residents.

About 1% of Washington State's population lives in the City of Seattle and is a small percentage of those who work and drive in or through the city. Furthermore, as Seattleites are basically already there, you'd be putting the biggest burden on the ones who need it least. I live elsewhere in King County, but work in the City of Seattle, and wouldn't be paying for the large projects required to maintain the route I take when I drive in. Of course, if you mean the greater Seattle area, then residents are paying and then some, as we've covered.

who drives more, usually with less fuel efficient vehicles? Rural folks or King county folks?

I think you're failing to take into account that King County residents out number Eastern Washington rural residents, about 2 to 1, and the overall fuel efficiency of SUVs.

But how are the farmers going to make a profit if they pay $0.09 more a gallon of gas?

Here in the big city, we'd either jack up the price or get out of the market. YMMV.

I'm also irritated about the move in Seattle to reduce the required number of parking spaces per residency.

Really? Are you driving around Seattle often? Basically, the parking per residence requirement simply forces developers to put parking garages in as features to new buildings, primarilily high-rise condos. Naturally, this increases costs for the developers, who pass them on to the tenents. The concern is this increases housing costs both in and of itself and by slowing development. The thought is that removinging or reducing the requirement will allow the market to sort out how much parking is required.

I wouldn't be so bitter if they didn't already waste so much money with the monorail and the

Out of 211 projects, 55 are King County, 20 are Pierce, 32 are Snohomish. [...] which less than half of the population for Washington will benefit from.

Really? According to U.S. Census Bureau - Washington QuickFacts, 29% of WA lived in King County, 12% of WA lived in Pierce County, 10% of WA lived in Snohomish County in 2000. There's been some fluctuations, but approximately half the state's residents benefit directly from these projects and as we've previously covered, these counties are projected to pay for all of their transportation projects and provide additional funds for projects in other parts of the state.

The most obvious indirect benefit of improved transportation in the greater Seattle area, to those elsewhere in Washington, is in bringing goods to market, both as a heavily populated destination and as the second largest port complex in the United States. In 2002, Washington State was the fifth largest exporter in the United States, at $35 billion with agricultural crops and wood products coming in at #3 and #5, respectively. For those curious, here is the Port of Seattle 10 year history of cargo volumes handled: 1995 - 2004 Not surprizingly, the Port of Seattle put regional transportation as one of its most important strategic priorities. "The Freight Action Strategy for Seattle-Tacoma (FAST) Corridor Partnership was first established in 1998 to pursue funding for 15 high-priority projects for grade separation and port access. Seven projects will be completed by the end of 2003. In 2002, the FAST Corridor partnership identified FAST 2, 10 additional projects to bring benefit to the same corridor from Everett, through Seattle to Tacoma."

The Seattle-area construction projects should be paid for by Seattle residents.

About 1% of Washington State's population lives in the City of Seattle and is a small percentage of those who work and drive in or through the city. Furthermore, as Seattleites are basically already there, you'd be putting the biggest burden on the ones who need it least. I live elsewhere in King County, but work in the City of Seattle, and wouldn't be paying for the large projects required to maintain the route I take when I drive in. Of course, if you mean the greater Seattle area, then residents are paying and then some, as we've covered.

who drives more, usually with less fuel efficient vehicles? Rural folks or King county folks?

I think you're failing to take into account that King County residents out number Eastern Washington rural residents, about 2 to 1, and the overall fuel efficiency of SUVs.

But how are the farmers going to make a profit if they pay $0.09 more a gallon of gas?

Here in the big city, we'd either jack up the price or get out of the market. YMMV.

I'm also irritated about the move in Seattle to reduce the required number of parking spaces per residency.

Really? Are you driving around Seattle often? Basically, the parking per residence requirement simply forces developers to put parking garages in as features to new buildings, primarilily high-rise condos. Naturally, this increases costs for the developers, who pass them on to the tenents. The concern is this increases housing costs both in and of itself and by slowing development. The thought is that removinging or reducing the requirement will allow the market to sort out how much parking is required.

I wouldn't be so bitter if they didn't already waste so much money with the monorail and the

The main flaw here is that they assume that every pirated copy in a third/second world country is equivalent to its price in the US et al. Let's do some analogies. Let's look at the Ukraine and how much they make per month: http://www.ukraine-gateway.org.ua/gateway/gateway. nsf/basicv/0401020002?OpenDocument&Click= Its roughly $30 a month or 360 a month. The median US income is around 43000 dollars. http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income03/statemh i.html Let's assume that Win xp pro is THE item to pirate. It costs retail in the US 300 dollars. In the Ukraine that would be roughly 90 percent of their income before taxes. If MS thinks that they are really losing money on these people then they are mistaken because these people could not buy it anyway so those numbers are rocky at best. In the US on the other hand its more like 1 percent of family income after taxes so it's not quite as major a purchase and they could make an argument that they are losing money here, but as said the piracy rate is lower here.

Well, here goes; From my limited political knowledge(I don't really follow my own canadian politics very closely, but the ware in Iraq, ect can't really be avoided in the news) But the way the US is spending more and more money trying to police the world, it's only a matter of time before they run out. At which point all those people pissed off by being 'policed' will start causing problems. This is when China will be sitting and chuckeling, and breaking out the champagne.

Besides, I don't really think the Chinese gov would have much to worry about in a war-time scenario: the ratio of Chinese to Americans is about 4.5:1 But what do I know? china population US population

Hmm, where have I heard that number before...? Oh, right, that's just about exactly the current population of the US!

So, you say these are your "users" ?

[...] and have data associated with each user.

Ok, well, I don't think I'm going to sue you, and I really don't care who you work for, but I do think I'm going to go find my tinfoil hat RIGHT NOW...!

>Correlation isn't necessarily correlation, but I found it rather funny that they were the same counties.

According to the 2000 census, there are only 34 US counties with over 1 million people (in only 14 states).

9,519,338: Los Angeles County, California
5,376,741: Cook County, Illinois
3,400,578: Harris County, Texas
3,072,149: Maricopa County, Arizona
2,846,289: Orange County, California
2,813,833: San Diego County, California
2,465,326: Kings County, New York
2,253,362: Miami-Dade County, Florida
2,229,379: Queens County, New York
2,218,899: Dallas County, Texas
2,061,162: Wayne County, Michigan
1,737,034: King County, Washington
1,709,434: San Bernardino County, California
1,682,585: Santa Clara County, California
1,623,018: Broward County, Florida
1,545,387: Riverside County, California
1,537,195: New York County, New York
1,517,550: Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
1,465,396: Middlesex County, Massachusetts
1,446,219: Tarrant County, Texas
1,443,741: Alameda County, California
1,419,369: Suffolk County, New York
1,393,978: Cuyahoga County, Ohio
1,392,931: Bexar County, Texas
1,375,765: Clark County, Nevada
1,334,544: Nassau County, New York
1,332,650: Bronx County, New York
1,281,666: Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
1,223,499: Sacramento County, California
1,194,156: Oakland County, Michigan
1,131,184: Palm Beach County, Florida
1,116,200: Hennepin County, Minnesota
1,068,978: Franklin County, Ohio
1,016,315: St. Louis County, Missouri

Note that if we consider metro areas instead of counties, the above list above shrinks considerably (e.g. in California, the four biggest counties are part the LA metro; in New York, all of the counties listed are part of the NYC metro). I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to show that the list can be cut in half if you only consider metro areas.

Anyway, back on topic: the top 3 counties in Florida make up more than 31.3% of the total population of the state (with only about 7.5% of the total area). Thus, if you know that someone lives in Florida, there's a 31.3% chance they live in one of those the top 3 counties. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that these three counties would be listed together in various press releases. It's akin to grouping LA, Orange and San Diego counties together in a press release about something in California.

The only curious part is: why is this happening in the Miami area and not NY, LA, Chicago, DC, San Fran, Philly, Boston, Detroit or DFW?

>Correlation isn't necessarily correlation, but I found it rather funny that they were the same counties.

According to the 2000 census, there are only 34 US counties with over 1 million people (in only 14 states).

9,519,338: Los Angeles County, California
5,376,741: Cook County, Illinois
3,400,578: Harris County, Texas
3,072,149: Maricopa County, Arizona
2,846,289: Orange County, California
2,813,833: San Diego County, California
2,465,326: Kings County, New York
2,253,362: Miami-Dade County, Florida
2,229,379: Queens County, New York
2,218,899: Dallas County, Texas
2,061,162: Wayne County, Michigan
1,737,034: King County, Washington
1,709,434: San Bernardino County, California
1,682,585: Santa Clara County, California
1,623,018: Broward County, Florida
1,545,387: Riverside County, California
1,537,195: New York County, New York
1,517,550: Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
1,465,396: Middlesex County, Massachusetts
1,446,219: Tarrant County, Texas
1,443,741: Alameda County, California
1,419,369: Suffolk County, New York
1,393,978: Cuyahoga County, Ohio
1,392,931: Bexar County, Texas
1,375,765: Clark County, Nevada
1,334,544: Nassau County, New York
1,332,650: Bronx County, New York
1,281,666: Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
1,223,499: Sacramento County, California
1,194,156: Oakland County, Michigan
1,131,184: Palm Beach County, Florida
1,116,200: Hennepin County, Minnesota
1,068,978: Franklin County, Ohio
1,016,315: St. Louis County, Missouri

Note that if we consider metro areas instead of counties, the above list above shrinks considerably (e.g. in California, the four biggest counties are part the LA metro; in New York, all of the counties listed are part of the NYC metro). I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to show that the list can be cut in half if you only consider metro areas.

Anyway, back on topic: the top 3 counties in Florida make up more than 31.3% of the total population of the state (with only about 7.5% of the total area). Thus, if you know that someone lives in Florida, there's a 31.3% chance they live in one of those the top 3 counties. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that these three counties would be listed together in various press releases. It's akin to grouping LA, Orange and San Diego counties together in a press release about something in California.

The only curious part is: why is this happening in the Miami area and not NY, LA, Chicago, DC, San Fran, Philly, Boston, Detroit or DFW?

>Correlation isn't necessarily correlation, but I found it rather funny that they were the same counties.

According to the 2000 census, there are only 34 US counties with over 1 million people (in only 14 states).

9,519,338: Los Angeles County, California
5,376,741: Cook County, Illinois
3,400,578: Harris County, Texas
3,072,149: Maricopa County, Arizona
2,846,289: Orange County, California
2,813,833: San Diego County, California
2,465,326: Kings County, New York
2,253,362: Miami-Dade County, Florida
2,229,379: Queens County, New York
2,218,899: Dallas County, Texas
2,061,162: Wayne County, Michigan
1,737,034: King County, Washington
1,709,434: San Bernardino County, California
1,682,585: Santa Clara County, California
1,623,018: Broward County, Florida
1,545,387: Riverside County, California
1,537,195: New York County, New York
1,517,550: Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
1,465,396: Middlesex County, Massachusetts
1,446,219: Tarrant County, Texas
1,443,741: Alameda County, California
1,419,369: Suffolk County, New York
1,393,978: Cuyahoga County, Ohio
1,392,931: Bexar County, Texas
1,375,765: Clark County, Nevada
1,334,544: Nassau County, New York
1,332,650: Bronx County, New York
1,281,666: Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
1,223,499: Sacramento County, California
1,194,156: Oakland County, Michigan
1,131,184: Palm Beach County, Florida
1,116,200: Hennepin County, Minnesota
1,068,978: Franklin County, Ohio
1,016,315: St. Louis County, Missouri

Note that if we consider metro areas instead of counties, the above list above shrinks considerably (e.g. in California, the four biggest counties are part the LA metro; in New York, all of the counties listed are part of the NYC metro). I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to show that the list can be cut in half if you only consider metro areas.

Anyway, back on topic: the top 3 counties in Florida make up more than 31.3% of the total population of the state (with only about 7.5% of the total area). Thus, if you know that someone lives in Florida, there's a 31.3% chance they live in one of those the top 3 counties. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that these three counties would be listed together in various press releases. It's akin to grouping LA, Orange and San Diego counties together in a press release about something in California.

The only curious part is: why is this happening in the Miami area and not NY, LA, Chicago, DC, San Fran, Philly, Boston, Detroit or DFW?

Actually, according to the population clock, we're up to about 296 million people now.

Official China Population Clock and Official US Population Clock.

Of course for China, that's 2.9% while for the US, it's 13.5%.

Check for yourself: http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp02/tabA-04.pdf

Hooray for manipulating statistics!

So if anyone would prevail, it would be the Census Bureau, after all they are part of the US Department of Commerce and Commerce runs/owns the Patent and Trademark office. Maybe we should get Census to beat up Tiger direct?

According to a quick googling, Tempe is the fifth-largest city in Arizona with a population of 160,000. It's considered part of the Phoenix metro area by the Census administration http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/ta b03.txt, but if it were its own, it would only rank, say around 180 or so (giving it some credit for a metro area).

Wake me when something important happens, like Peoria (#118 at about 350,000), or Shreveport (#105 at just under 400,000).

Sorry, I know it's only a minor point in your comment, but an article I read yesterday (here?) said they did register "Tiger" as well as "TigerDirect".

Actually the US Government themselves own a registered trademark on the word "TIGER"

The Tiger Direct vs. Apple Computer lawsuit is an almost completely baseless suit designed for one purpose: advertising. Tiger Direct is attempting to catch a ride on the back of Apple's Tiger marketing campaign. They don't have any intention to stop Apple from using the Tiger name.

If Apple were renaming all of their Apple Stores to Tiger Stores, they might have some grounds. As it is, Tiger Direct is a computer hardware reseller, and Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger is an operating system. It's only slightly more related than the US Census Bureau's registered trademark on TIGER for its GIS data.

Also, Tiger Direct is complaining about search rankings, but a quick google for "tiger" shows Apple at a distant 4th to Tiger Direct's 2nd place ranking (behind a page on, surprise, actual tigers).

From http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/a rchives/miscellaneous/003136.html "The number of cell phone subscribers in the United States reached approximately 159 million in 2003, up from 34 million in 1995." This would account for quite a lot of the increase in wiretaps.

Interesting, the term TIGER is also trademarked by the US Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/overview.html

The TIGER® Trademark
The Census Bureau has trademarks on a number of our TIGER-related product names*. The purpose of trademarking these terms is so that customers buying products with those names can be confident in identifying the origin (the Census Bureau in this case) of the products (data) being sold. That shouldn't dissuade anyone from creating products using the TIGER/Line data or even citing our original products as the source of all or part of their product. In fact, many of our products are resold or redistributed by others. Vendors take the basic product, add value to it (snazzier interface, more data, etc.) and resell it. Sometimes they just resell exact copies of the data. That's all perfectly legal and we are happy to see the data redistributed and get wider usage.

The existence of the trademark means, basically, that you shouldn't name your product with one of our trademarked terms, i.e., either calling your product "TIGER", "TIGER/Line", etc. or use a Census Bureau trademark within the name of the product or service. You may refer to the Census trademark in describing the Bureau's component of your product or service. For example, you could say in a product description or advertisement something like this: "Acme Map Data, based on Census Bureau TIGER/Line® files". Ideally, we would also appreciate a statement to the effect that the referenced trademark is a registered trademark of the U.S. Census Bureau. The above discussion is not intended to be a legal brief on trademark law but just a quick summary of the general trademark issues relating to our products.

The Geography Division of the U.S. Census Bureau will consent to license one of its trademarks only under the following conditions. The potential licensee must be a government agency, either domestic or foreign, with whom we have an established working arrangement for common products or cooperative programs. Such an authority is not granted automatically by the preexisting working arrangements but must be requested in writing of the Geography Division. The trademark or trademarks that would be eligible for such licensing would be those directly related to these program activities. The license would last only as long as the working arrangements are in effect. This determination would be the sole purview of the Geography Division. The licensee would not have the authority to "sublicense" to another organization the use of any Geography Division trademark that would be part of the agreement.

Thing is, I'm not scared by this article. There are 290 million people living in the United States, and a 19% increase amounts to around 273 extra wiretaps across the country. Not scary. In fact, I'm surprised that the number is 10 times larger, given that it appears to be a small fraction of the number of crimes investigated every year that should have been wiretapped.

Furthermore, it may interest you to know that the legal standard for getting a wiretap is rather high (which is why there are so few of them).

Before issuing a Title III wiretap warrant, a judge must find that: (1) "normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed or reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous"; and (2) there is probable cause for believing "that an individual is committing, has committed, or is about to commit" one of a list of specifically enumerated crimes, that the wiretap will intercept particular communications about the enumerated offense, and that the communications facilities to be tapped are either being used in the commission of the crime or are commonly used by the suspect.

Simple. It's not like the police officers are going "Hey Judge, we need a wire-tap on this guy Frank 'cuz I think he's doing "crimes" -- and we need it yesterday!" What actually happens is the police officer goes to government lawyer. The government lawyer -- who does this all the time -- then tells the police officer 9 times out of 10 that they haven't met the standard. Even that 1 time out of 10, the government lawyer approaches the judge ex parte (i.e. not in a court proceeding) which allows the judge to indicate through subtle nods and grunts that the wiretap request is half-cooked, and to come back later. So you just don't get denied applications. By the way -- denied applications are the last thing the police want, because then -- dollars to donuts (hehe) when it comes time to the criminal trial, the wiretap evidence will be considered inadmissible even if the police eventually did get their wiretap.

What Devlin Barrett, the reporter who wrote the article, should have mentioned, is how many wiretap requests were officially turned down over the last few years. But the reporter omitted this information, most likely because very few requests have been officially denied within the last decade. So the alarmist language used in the article makes it, IMHO, FUD.

Regards,

Moiche

The average annual growth seems to be ~1%, according to this, at least up to 1999.

That being said - sure you havn't met many people leaving - they are not longer there! duh.

1. U.S. Census Bureau Maps and Cartographic Resources
2. Tailored Interactive Guidance on Employment Rights - TIGER Home Page
3. U.S.Census Bureau - TIGER/Line®
4. Abilene Reporter News: Tiger Woods
5. Official Website for Tiger Woods
6. Apple - Mac OS X - Overview
   
   Tiger Direct aren't in the first 10 pages of results. Maybe they should sue the census bureau and while they're at it Microsoft for conspiring to wipe them off the face of the internet :)

1. U.S. Census Bureau Maps and Cartographic Resources
2. Tailored Interactive Guidance on Employment Rights - TIGER Home Page
3. U.S.Census Bureau - TIGER/Line®
4. Abilene Reporter News: Tiger Woods
5. Official Website for Tiger Woods
6. Apple - Mac OS X - Overview
   
   Tiger Direct aren't in the first 10 pages of results. Maybe they should sue the census bureau and while they're at it Microsoft for conspiring to wipe them off the face of the internet :)

Are trademarks case-sensitive?

Excerpt from http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/overview.html
---
The term TIGER® comes from the acronym Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing which is the name for the system and digital database developed at the U.S. Census Bureau to support its mapping needs for the Decennial Census and other Bureau programs.
---

Unless trademarks are case-sensitive, sounds like TigerDirect's case vanishes into thin air.

More the framework than either of those. Really, the problem seems to be one of scaling to me. (as a computer person) We've got a system that was designed to elegantly run with approximately 10^ 7 or 10^8 users, and we're at 10^9 users + now.

Uhmmmm... as a computer person, you do realize that 10^9 is one billion, yes? The US population is nowhere near one billion people. It's 295,968,295 to be exact, or expressed in exponential notation: 2.95E+8

I fail to see what a state recognized marriage gets you.

The second person in a gay couple likely works too.

Actually, it could make sense. Start by assuming that all taxes collected are income taxes:

Assume that the average American starts working at 16 and retires at 55. This leaves 39 years of working. We can round up to 40 years of working years.

with an average of 40 hours wourked out of every 168 hours in a week, slightly less than 1 in 4 hours is spent working while employed.

Therefore the average person works for less than ten years of their life, which comes close to the number for how long you said a person would live.

Or to put it a different way: if one were to spend all of their working time meeting new people, they'd only get a second with each person if they were to meet everyone in the US. This doesn't even include the fact that there is a turnover in those that are employeed during the time that you work.

It is just by a fluke of population size that it works out to about one second. Whether or not the taxes paid out are in the form of income tax, sales tax or property tax really shouldn't matter, as in general a person will pay all of these taxes combined in a manner relative to the amount of money that they make. While there will be some outliers that end up with a much different distribution of tax structure, we're talking about the average person here.

To sum up a career in number of seconds: 60seconds/minute * 60minutes/hour * (40hours/workweek) * 52weeks/year * 40 years/career= 60*60*40*52*40 = 299,520,000 workseconds/career. This is really dang close to the current population of about 295 million people in the united states.

The US has 80.3 percent urban population

Canada has 79.6 percent urban

People clump around cities, it's an industrialized nation thing.

As another note, here in Canada almost everyone has cable or satalite TV. We don't have the population density to get more then a couple of channels.

US stats - see p32

Canadian stats

I want to know what Hostway's demographic was on this survey. 2,500 people is not enough to be an adequate sample of Americans. There are currently 295,877,596 Americans according to POPclocks. A sample of 2,500 people, some of whom might not even be Americans, is about .000084494% of the American population.

Take this "survey" with a grain of salt, but put on your rain boots, it's going to be a FUDdy day for the media.

Ah yes, nothing like an austrailian news organization (the writer not ZDNet), quoting a survey by some webhost (alot of people have probably never heard of) of 2500 people to tell what the 292 million Americans favor.

As for the other calculation:

The average American drives 8000 miles per year (I think car owners drive 17,000 mi/year, so this average includes non-drivers)
Let's say the average car gets 28 mpg
The US has 296M people.
Each barrel of oil yeilds about 20 gallons of fuel.
So we have 8,000 miles/year * (1/28) gallons/mile = 285 gallons used by each American per year, or 285/20 = 14.25 barrels per year.

14.25 * 256M = 3.648 billion barrels used by cars in the US per year.

Now the same calculation getting 29 mpg, we get 3.531 billion barrels used, saving us 117 million barrels of oil per year, or 320,500 barrels per day.

They way daylight saving reduces energy consumption is that: 1) Less lights are turned on during daylight than during night. 2) Less lights are turned on while people sleep than when awake. Therefore, minimizing the overlap between the two times decreases the overall number of usage of lights and the overall usage of electricty. Don't think it's much? Let's run some numbers.

Average lightbulb in a home: 100 watts. Let's say that at any given time when the lights are on, there are 2 lights turned on in a household. Over 1 hr that is 200 watt-hours or .2kWh There are 281421906 people in the US as of the 2000 census. The average family size was 2.57. That means there are ~109 millions households. 109E6 times .2kWh = nearly 22 gigawatt hours saved/day if everyone's lights are turned off an extra hour per day. Extending Daylight Saving Time to full year would theoretically save almost 4 terawatts per year.

Chemical rockets are out of the question on this scale, but here are two realistic options, IMO:

• An equatorial ring of space elevators that is able to physically move bio-bodies w/ bio-brains offworld faster than they are being being born (~356,000 people/day if we assume the aging disease has been cured by then). SPS-powered.
• Transmitting your pattern of mind (aka: "you") to an offworld host reality and/or replacement body (bio or not) in reality. This option's too shockingly sci-fi for most to take seriously.

It's not really that misleading. According to this, the US total population is close to 295.823.632 individuals. According to the above study, 23.677.800 crimes. That's roughly 8% crime/person rate.

Take Portugal, with its population of nearly 12.000.000 inhabitants, and 363,294 felons, which amounts to about 3%.

Now, that's a pretty big difference. You'll find similar figures on other countries.

Crime stems from your problems with poverty and lack of socialist structures. It's a dog eat dog world.

If you put a quarter in the cup at mcdonalds each time you get a big Mac, chances are you're donating a larger fraction of your income to charity than Bill Gates does. Sure, it's better to donate something than nothing, but as the old saying goes, it's not what you give, it's what you sacrifice. The point of the comment was that Bill Gates can't make up for all the wrong he's done by giving away what is, to him, a pittance.

Not that I don't like a good rant, but let's run some numbers.
Assuming you eat 3 times a day at McDonalds, you end up giving 75 c a day, or less than $275 a year. Assuming you reached 49 years (as old as Bill Gates) despite your terrible dietary habits, and you started working at 20, you ended up donating less than $8000. Even if you're at poverty level, that is you make $9827/year, your total income over this period would be close to 285000 dollars; so you're giving about 2% of your total income. Bill Gates donated close to $27 billion, and has a net worth of about 47 billion, so that's about 36% of his net worth. Looks like Gates got you beat here too.

Supporting stats: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/top/dst/2004/1 2/balance.html

1. Jersey City, NJ PMSA
   
2. New Britain, CT PMSA
   
3. Bridgeport-Milford, CT PMSA
   
4. Stamford, CT PMSA
   
5. Trenton, NJ PMSA
   
6. Norwalk, CT PMSA
   
7. Brockton, MA PMSA
   
8. Lowell, MA-NH PMSA
   
9. Salem-Gloucester, MA PMSA
   
10. Bristol, CT PMSA
    
11. Fall River, MA-RI PMSA
    
12. Waterbury, CT MSA
    
13. New Bedford, MA MSA
    
14. Manchester, NH MSA
    
15. Wilmington, NC MSA
    
16. Fitchburg-Leominster, MA MSA
    
17. Middletown, CT PMSA
    
18. Lewiston-Auburn, ME MSA
    
19. Pittsfield, MA MSA
    

dum dum dum

"There are 43 million uninsured Americans - 4 million more than when the current administration took office. George W. Bush will reverse this trend by making health insurance affordable for hard-working, low-income families." Source:

Bush-Cheney 2000 website

Reality?

In the first two years Bush was in office, the number of uninsured American increased by nearly four million. Since Bush took office, health insurance premiums have risen by an average rate of 12.5 percent per year. According to a major study, "widespread adoption [of Bush's major health care plan] could drive up the annual deductible paid by workers." Source:

U.S. Census Bureau, 7/8/04; Kaiser Family Foundation, 4/04; USA Today, 4/25/04

Another Healthcare promise:

"George W. Bush will establish the 'Healthy Communities Innovation Fund' to provide $500 million in grants over five years to fund innovative projects addressing targeted health risks, such as childhood diabetes." [Source: Bush-Cheney 2000 website]

Reality?

Bush never established this fund. Source:

The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/20/04

Environmental promise:

George W. Bush "will also ensure that the federal government, which is the country's largest polluter, complies with all environmental laws." Source: Bush-Cheney 2000 website

Reality?

For the past three years, the Department of Defense has requested that Congress exempt it from environmental laws and regulations like the Clean Air Act of 1970. The exemptions were requested despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency has thus far declined to apply the policies to the military training facilities in question. Source:

Government Executive Magazine, 4/6/04

Education promise:

George W. Bush will "fully fund the Pell grant program for first-year students by increasing the maximum grant amount by more than 50 percent, to $5,100." Source:

Bush-Cheney 2000 - Education website

Reality?

President Bush has frozen the maximum Pell Grant at $4,050 in his FY 2005 education budget. This is the third year in a row that Bush has frozen or cut the maximum Pell Grant. Source:

House Committee on Education and the Work Force 2/2/04

Welfare promise:

"To encourage states to help families in crisis, Governor Bush will provide states an additional $1 billion over five years for preventative services to keep children in, or return them to, their homes whenever safely possible." Source:

Bush-Cheney 2000 - Child Welfare website

Reality?

Bush has proposed allowing states to use the federal funds currently earmarked for foster care room-and-board payments to be used for preventative services. In exchange, states must accept a spending cap on the amount of foster care funding they receive. Sour

" People executed in the US are disproportinately black.

Demonstrably false. More whites are executed in the US than blacks. Count 'em yourself: here's Texas' list. Since Jan 1, 2000, Texas has executed 73 whites, 52 blacks, and 17 hispanics. The irony is that you began your post with:"

Er.....

Number of Americans who voted for Bush (according to parent): 62,000,000
Current population of United States (according to US Census Bureau): 295,659,526
Percentage of Americans who voted for Bush: 62,000,000 / 295,659,526 = 20.97%

That's an interesting definition of "majority" you're using there.

The U.S. population is growing quickly.

This is a myth that is very untrue. While the population is still growing, it is not growing quickly. The growth rate peaked in the early 90's and has been slowing down ever since. If the trend continues, then growth will stop and start to reverse in about 5-7 years.

Think about it.. how many families do you know nowadays with more than two kids? Replacement birthrate for a western population is at least 2.2 children per couple. The numbers are offset a bit by immigration, but there is nowhere near enough immigrants to offset the rapidly decreasing native births. Over the next 10 years, as the elderly generation die off, you are going to see a remarkably fast population decrease.

See for yourself: check page 7, percentage change. You can see simmilar treands in most of the western world.

• Up for bid:
• 6,421,974,998 delectible morsels, sale in bulk or in packs of ten, for payment information contact S. Lent Green @ longitude X, Lattitude Y, elevation Z - 3rd planet from the star of the Galaxy in which you traced this signal to.

Oh yeah, all of this for around $50-60K a year.

Yawn. I was seriously expecting you to say $24-26k. Your mom is vastly overpaid, so you should stop listening when she whines that she's not paid enough. Nobody is paid enough, not even Bill Gates. Everybody always wants more. Just because the median income here in Plano is around $70k (*) doesn't mean you're underpaid when you're making twice the national median income.

(*: $70,835 according to the census)

p.s. I'm an unemployed software engineer living in plano.

I respectfully disagree with you on many issues I'm sure, but that's better than you disagreeing with yourself (and trying to make a political party out of that idea).

No problem there, I've met very many intelligent, articulate conservatives quite capable of having a respectful debate. Thus far, you certainly seem to fall into that category. I don't expect that the whole world would agree with me, that would be terribly boring.

Without health coverage does not mean without health care. Another interpretation of that statistic is that 40 million people think that they can manage their own health better than someone else managing it for them.

True, or that they are too young for anything to happen, or...

However, I would imagine that, if we did a survey of those people, we would find that at least the majority would have health coverage if they could afford it, and because they cannot, live without checkups, diagnostic screenings, and other basic health care services.

Some further information on this point:

"The proportion of children who were uninsured did not change, remaining at 11.6 percent of all children, or 8.5 million, in 2002."

Source: United States Census Bureau report. (PDF)

Children, of course, did not make that choice.

So far as adults?

"Even having to pay very small contributions to health insurance policies can deter workers from joining. In fact, about 20 percent of all uninsured people live in families where a worker has declined employer-sponsored insurance coverage, with two-thirds citing cost as the culprit. For many, the decision to purchase health insurance must compete with the need for food and housing."

Source: Urban Institute research paper.

You might be right in a few cases, but in the majority, cost of insurance is just not payable. Of course, those who cannot insurance can also not afford to pay directly for care. Therefore, lack of health insurance does, at least in a very significant number of cases, bear a causal relationship to a lack of health care. (Except in an emergency situation, where care must be provided regardless of ability to pay. Even in these circumstances, however, followup care is often inadequate.)

But there was substance there, consider:

I will indeed.

* no gay marriage

Not a substantive issue at all. It's one that raises the hair on a lot of people's necks, but no one's shown how government belongs involved in the issue in the first place. Also, he knew well that the proposed Constitutional amendment against gay marriage didn't have anywhere near the kind of support it needed in order to pass, that was pure window-dressing.

I have yet to hear any objection to gay marriage on non-religious grounds. Pursuant to the separation of church and state, religious reasons are not and cannot be a rationale for government prohibition of an activity. (I presume this to be well-known, I'll cite sources upon request.) The only other argument I've heard is that it's "not natural"-and by that rationale, we should ban cars.

* continue with war in Iraq on course

Certainly no denying that this was an issue of substance, but I would've been far more comfortable had the failures of intelligence, etc., been more thoroughly addressed by Bush, instead of glossed over with "Well he wasn't a very nice guy anyway, so it's alright in the end."

* hold Iraqi elections soon

Fair enough, but I never heard Kerry be against that one, so I'm not sure how Bush "won on" that issue-to my knowledge, it was never in dispute. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me. As to the fact that the elections were held on time, and went off overall quite well, I'm thrilled to see it, and I certainly hope that Iraq can stay on that course.