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Conservativism, by definition, is a preference for the current way of doing things, and a resistance to change.

That is a pretty basic definition helpful to 'the other side' to try and closet their opponents into a little definable box. It is also incorrect in general (though I daresay it fits some 'right' conservatives as well as some 'left' conservatives who really like some of the changes made by 'progressive' government programs and would fight to keep them.)

I have found Steven Den Beste's analysis here to be illuminating, and very helpful in analyzing the various positions and leanings of folks. Orthogonal, multi-axis, scatter-spaced positions, rather than a simple line, or a 'box' like the one you present.

They vilify the scrutiny while their supporters refuse to listen and those who value a polite, progressive society are unable or unwilling to shout them down. We are confident that our obvious correctness will stand up to them, but alas, all too often it does not.

I stand amazed at your clear openminded thinking and lack of any appreciable bias

Felt like doing my best at a mobile tech summary, and here seems as good a place as any:

One common mix-up is between air interfaces and complete cellular systems. CDMA and TDMA are both types of air interfaces - how the phone and the tower actually communicate with each other. CDMA is also used to refer to a complete cellular system which was originally based on the CDMA air interface. GSM also refers to a complete cellular system, whose original incarnation, usually known as 2G, was based on a TDMA air interface. Near as I can tell, it's pretty much universally known that CDMA air interfaces are vastly more efficient than TDMA, but the actual cellular systems have leapfrogged other a bunch of times.

I think GSM started out doing data on a separate TDMA frequency called GPRS, which worked, but was pretty slow and inefficient. CDMA started doing data over it's same frequencies, which was a bit faster and much more efficient. Then GSM came up with EDGE to improve speed, and then CDMA came up with CDMA2000, and then GSM switched to WCDMA/UTMS, which actually used a CDMA air interface, and CDMA switched to EVDO, reaching the peak of 3G. LTE is the next-gen air interface, using a OFDM air interface and otherwise is based on the GSM system, and as far as I can tell, everybody is switching to it. Hopefully, in 5-10 years or so, all the carriers worldwide will use LTE and all of the phones will have LTE basebands that cover all of the frequencies everybody is using, and you'll be able to take any device anywhere in the world and use it.

For various marketing reasons that don't make much objective sense, most of the world ended up standardizing on GSM long ago and only a few countries used systems based on the original CDMA technology, which is why if you have a CDMA phone, you're pretty much boned on international roaming.

And the AndroidFormums post that the AC below me posted is a rip-off of this USS Clueless post: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/GSM3G.shtml which does have a really good explanation of why CDMA is much better than TDMA.

I will admit that I don't understand the standards behind the cell phone industry, but why are cell phones so strongly coupled to the service providers and, well, not open?

Because way back in the mists of time, Qualcomm approached the US government and said "Hey, we shouldn't be using a European technology like GSM... We should be using American technology, CDMA, which is so much better! (And by the way, we have a stack of patents on it.)" Qualcomm were upset because Europe had decided that it made sense to have a single interoperable phone system, and had therefore mandated that only GSM be deployed.

The US government said "OK" and allocated the standard GSM frequencies to CDMA, and Verizon and Sprint rolled out CDMA services. And the undeniable technical advantages of CDMA turned out to be invisible to the end user.

Then VoiceStream (later T-Mobile) and Cingular (later AT&T) decided to try using European GSM service, but on different frequencies. It turned out that because of economies of scale (i.e. 2 billion GSM users vs 60 million CDMA users so manufacturers make GSM equipment first), they could offer cheaper service and a better selection of phones.

Then GSM circuitry got smaller, and it became plausible to offer multiple frequency bands on a single phone. So quad band phones became the norm, and it became possible to switch between AT&T and T-Mobile. But Verizon and Sprint were stuck with their US-only CDMA network. Next, Verizon are dropping CDMA in favor of LTE, the 4G sequel to GSM. So that'll just leave Sprint.

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies2.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/05/Warshippowersystems

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/10/Orbitalkineticweapons.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies2.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/05/Warshippowersystems

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/10/Orbitalkineticweapons.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies2.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/05/Warshippowersystems

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/10/Orbitalkineticweapons.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies2.shtml

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/05/Warshippowersystems

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/10/Orbitalkineticweapons.shtml

Things would have been better for the consumer if we'd adopted GSM at the outset like Europe ...

You are conflating several things. As a radio technology, GSM isn't too bad but CDMA is a lot better especially in such a sparsely populated county. The whole SIM card thing is nice but could be done with any underlying radio technology. The FCC should have mandated interoperability of SIM cards, not of how radio stuff is done. As an analogy, it is better to legislate car emission outcomes (eg quantities of pollutants per 1000 miles driven) than how emissions are reduced (catalytic converters, injection systems etc).

As an example, I know a bright, competent woman who has started putting a lot of time an thought into Boone Pickens's plan for a big move into green energy. I asked her what the plan was for storage and she said (referring specifically to home-based solar production of electricity), "That's no problem, excess electricity gets sold to the power company, who stores it for you." I tried to explain that Georgia Power has no facilities for storing your power and that in fact your minuscule amount of unreliable, intermittent electrical energy was more of a nuisance for them than anything else--until everybody tries to do it, when it turns into a big problem. This wasn't something she wanted to hear.

I would love to hear some good solutions to the engineering (and economic) problems posed by adding wind and solar to the grid, but so far there seems to be a lot of magic involved. For the uninitiated, a quick overview of the difficulties we face can be found here.

Here is one guy's idea about what's *really* going on in the matrix...it addresses most of the comments/concerns I'm seeing in this thread...

In addition, Europe is slowly upgrading to a CDMA derivative ("3g") to replace their current TDMA-based GSM networks - technical details here.

You might want to check out this article written a few years ago by Steven Den Beste (a former Qualcomm engineer) on some of the differences between GSM and CDMA. GSM is just a form of TDMA. It actually looks like our track record is pretty good. Except for the part about old fashioned GSM dominating the US market now as well. Seems like another case of VHS winning over Betamax. But I think GSM will have to switch to some form of CDMA eventually anyway.

IMO these standards are red herrings anyway. What we need is for cell phones to drop back into the Mhz range again so that they can penetrate building walls. These microwave frequencies are not so good for that. It takes too much power to do it. People don't just use cellphones in their cars anymore.

And 60 Ghz is ridiculous. It will be bouncing off solid objects like a radar gun. You may as well use a modulated laser beam. It will take huge amounts of power to penetrate even the thinnest building walls.

> They are also using solar power to create the
> hydrogen - they have an experimental plant in the
> Mojave desert, here in California.
>
> The cool thing is that this is a functional,
> buildable product created by a major car
> manufacturer.

Interesting? Yes. Buildable? Yes. Scalable? Highly doubtful.

There's a great article at the now-defunct USS Clueless blog that examines exactly how much energy is avaialable from collecting and focusing sun rays and just how much area would be needed to significantly offset the usage of fossil fuels. (as well as a few others [1, 2] on the feasibility of some the pet projects of "sustainability" afficianadios.

> They are also using solar power to create the
> hydrogen - they have an experimental plant in the
> Mojave desert, here in California.
>
> The cool thing is that this is a functional,
> buildable product created by a major car
> manufacturer.

Interesting? Yes. Buildable? Yes. Scalable? Highly doubtful.

There's a great article at the now-defunct USS Clueless blog that examines exactly how much energy is avaialable from collecting and focusing sun rays and just how much area would be needed to significantly offset the usage of fossil fuels. (as well as a few others [1, 2] on the feasibility of some the pet projects of "sustainability" afficianadios.

> They are also using solar power to create the
> hydrogen - they have an experimental plant in the
> Mojave desert, here in California.
>
> The cool thing is that this is a functional,
> buildable product created by a major car
> manufacturer.

Interesting? Yes. Buildable? Yes. Scalable? Highly doubtful.

There's a great article at the now-defunct USS Clueless blog that examines exactly how much energy is avaialable from collecting and focusing sun rays and just how much area would be needed to significantly offset the usage of fossil fuels. (as well as a few others [1, 2] on the feasibility of some the pet projects of "sustainability" afficianadios.

Funny how the administration stopped talking about finding the weapons eh? They even had the balls to say oh well NOW its about FREEDOM.

It's not and never was about either. It's about reforming the Middle East by eliminating fundamentalist Islam as a viable worldview, which nobody in the government can officially say for obvious reasons. See here.

Bush even said that if he knew Iraq had no weapons he would have invaded anyway.

Exactly, although I'm actually surprised he admitted that.

Not even close. Keep in mind that if it worked, someone would have attempted it. Getting rich is a strong motivator, and lots of people would love to become the "new oil barrens".

But this is one place where I really agree with them, and the parent poster. Coastlines are a very fragile area, and a lot happens there. Some lifeforms are ONLY found in these areas. Some live in the deep but come here to spawn or feed. This isn't some nebulous concept like "wetlands" that can be expanded to suit an agenda. Coast is coast. This isn't something nearly devoid of life, like artic tundra. This isn't something plentiful, like forests or (to a lesser extent) rain forests.

Building something along the coast like this would be a massive undertaking. (Think about it, how do you BUILD stuff in the sea? AFAIK, you can't pour concrete underwater, which means you'll have to build stuff elsewhere and then drag it into the ocean. Lots of ships will be churning up a lot of stuff moving massive chunks of block into place.

Building on land is easy compared to building out in the ocean because:

* you don't have anything solid to use for leverage

* your project might sink or people might drown (do NOT accept any help from Kevin Costner, if he offers!)

* You need a lot more than just concrete. Think about what a pain in the ass it is to run powerlines IN WATER

* When you build on land, a sudden thunderstorm means work stops and some materials may become drenched. You may lose some tarps. In the ocen, it can cause massive damage and / or drowning.

* Underground: hardhats and flashlights. Under the sea: Scuba gear.

Now, building along the coast has all of the problems outlined above, PLUS:

* Where will you put this? Everywhere? People who own beachfront property might take issue with your efforts. They paid millions to have a beautiful ocean view and not look at your tug boats and powerlines.

* Careful not to run aground! That can get expensive.

* As mentioned elsewhere: Tsunami

* Lots of business owners depend on people going to the beach. You can say "screw the surfers", but don't exect these folks to let you ruin their livelyhood for a single-digit percentage boost to our power grid.

Here is some of the bad news on why there are no magic-bullet solutions to our energy problems.

In 1998, the State of California consumed 13.496 billion gallons of gasoline. A gallon of gasoline yields about 130 million joules. So when you do all the math, you end up with about 1.755 * 1018 joules, which is an impressively large number.

One anti-solar-power advocacy site gives the "yearly average" solar power density in Albuquerque as 240 watts per m2. (That appears to be a 24-hour average; another site says that it's 700 watts in daylight.) Then presuming that southern California is similar, each square meter of mirrors would be struck by 7.573 billion joules per year.

So if you assume 100% conversion, you'd need 231.7 million square meters of collection mirrors to make this work. 231 square kilometers.

But it isn't going to be 100% efficient. That's impossible, and it isn't going to be remotely close to that. The mirrors won't reflect perfectly and some of the sunlight will heat the metal instead of reflecting. The conversion process into hydrogen will be extremely inefficient. If you get 10%, you'll be doing really well.

So we're talking about paving 2300 square kilometers of California desert with mirrors. That's a strip 13 kilometers wide stretching from San Diego to Los Angeles. It's an area twice the size of San Francisco.

That's a hell of a lot of metal! It ain't gonna be cheap. The capital expense involved would be mammoth. Just clearing an area that large would cost a fortune; paving it with manufactured goods will cost a fortune. And something that big would take decades to build.

Figure each mirror at 10 square meters, and you're talking about 23 million motor mounts. If you figure an average 5 year lifespan, then you're going to replace more than 4 million of them per year.

DO all arabs think alike no matter what country they live in? Do all muslims think alike no matter what country theylive in?

Bah. Of course not. That's a ridiculous question. But there's enough similarities to allow us to make generalizations.

This implies that there is only one arab mind and that's it's knowable. the premise of the book itself is racist.
Look, maybe you haven't been paying attention, but different cultures are, in fact, DIFFERENT. No one gives a shit when we say asians are hardworkers, and the work ethic is rather dominant in most asian countries. It's a common joke that the Irish are heavy drinkers, Brits are reserved, etc, etc. Cultures have definate, identifiable traits that seperate them from others. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp? No? Then why do you toss around the term 'racist' when we start saying bad stuff about one culture, one that happens to involve many countries in the middle east?

For a small glimpse, with details, into the 'Arab mind', check out this: Why Arabs Lose wars. It should have enough frontline observations to get even a multiculturilist like you doubting your usual lines.

I'll even give you a few opening paragraphs:
False starts

Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the U.S. Army in the 1930s evaluated the Japanese national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that that country would be permanently disadvantaged in technology. Hitler dismissed the United States as a mongrel society and consequently underestimated the impact of America's entry into the war. American strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the North Vietnamese approximated our own and that the air bombardment of the North would bring it to its knees. Three days of aerial attacks were thought to be all the Serbs could withstand; in fact, seventy-eight days were needed.

As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one's own cultural norms. ....

Culture is difficult to pin down. It is not synonymous with an individual's race nor ethnic identity. The history of warfare makes a mockery of attempts to assign rigid cultural attributes to individuals -- as the military histories of the Ottoman and Roman empires illustrate. In both cases it was training, discipline, esprit, and élan which made the difference, not the individual soldiers' origin. The highly disciplined and effective Roman legions, for example, recruited from throughout the Roman Empire, and the elite Ottoman Janissaries (slave soldiers) were Christians forcibly recruited as boys from the Balkans. ...

These problems notwithstanding, culture does need to be taken into account. Indeed, awareness of prior mistakes should make it possible to assess the role of cultural factors in warfare...

Reading this article should wash any thoughts of cultural equivalency out of your head- you can hem and haw all day about quality of life, consumerism, etc when comparing cultures, but you can't on war. One side wins.... and one side dies. Demonstratable superiority.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php

http://realclearpolitics.com/

http://althouse.blogspot.com/

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

http://www.intel-dump.com/

http://denbeste.nu/indexlofi.shtml

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevoluti on/

http://www.parapundit.com/

http://www.allahpundit.com/

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/

http://www.jihadwatch.org/

http://www.radicalmiddle.com/

It is a two party system because of emergent effects from the voting system (about 1/3rd of the way in to that piece). I also think that link is the best defense of the current system. I used to think our voting system was flawed for the usual reasons trotted out on Slashdot but now I think not many people understand how well our system works; voting between "two evils" is actually something of a feature.

Also note that today's Republican Party is a third party. They killed off the Whig party a long time ago. It is not impossible for that to happen again. If the Democrats don't shed their radical leftists*, it may happen again really soon.

(Bi-Partisan note: Part of the reason the Republicans are doing so well is that they analysed their failures during the Clinton era and marginalized some groups like the Christian Right that were detrimental to them. (Criticisms that the Republicans are controlled by them are now out of date.) Hopefully, after Kerry tanks the Democrats will do some housecleaning and re-align with the center a little better. I could never vote for Kerry, but if they put forth someone who doesn't have to pander to the loony left, I might consider it. (Bi-Partison note the second: Yes, I would say the Republicans shook off their loony right. "Loonies" here are people who consider a person or position 100% evil with no chance of facts changing their mind.))

There were lots of reasons given by the administration and others for going into Iraq. The media largely focused on WMD because it was simpler, although there was some limited coverage of the other issues. It's a straw man argument to claim that WMDs were the only reason given. I personally was mostly convinced by various bloggers, especially the Uss Clueless. WMD were only made a primary issue because the administration seemed to believe they could use existing resolutions to get the UN behind it. Iraq's failure to comply fully with the requirements of the cease-fire from GWI were well documented. This strategy failed, largely because Chirac said France would never authorize force.

OT, but for those claiming no link between 9/11 and Iraq, look at it this way. Bush was confronted on 9/11 with Islamic terrorism that had been building for years and was steadily getting worse. Although he was somewhat isolationist before this event, he had several members of his administration who had been suggesting that it would be necessary to fundamentally alter the current structure of the ME. 9/11 made them look a lot more credible than they had before. They already had a plan in place, which started with Iraq for a variety of reasons. (Centrally located, already pretty well beat down, easy to justify to the UN, would be a problem if they wen't anywhere else first... etc.)

He got congress to declare a war on terrorism, specifically including all terrorist supporting nations. It was NOT a war on Afghanistan in particular, although Afghanistan was a terrorist supporting nation. It did not specify only anti-us terrorist, but any group of terrorists. Remember, Bush initially tried to fit Iraq under the same criteria, but conceded the point and got a seperate authorization through congress.

The link between 9/11 and Iraq is not that Iraq was involved, but that the event changed our general stance on the ME.

See http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/07/Terr orism.shtml

Well, here's a critique of the idea from someone who can't in any way be fitted into those categories: USS Clueless

[...] When it comes to power generation, the job's not done until the energy reaches the end user. The challenge of energy delivery is particularly severe for solar satellite technology.

Generally speaking, every time energy is converted from one form to another a lot of it will be lost (because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics). All technologies which generate power and deliver it to end users involve such conversions. A coal-fired electrical generation plant burns coal to produce heat, converts heat to pressure by applying a lot of that heat to a boiler to produce steam, converts pressure into mechanical motion (with a turbine), converts mechanical motion into electricity (with a dynamo), and then delivers the electricity with long distance power lines, which usually requires multiple voltage/current conversions using transformers or motor-generators. Many of those conversions are very efficient but some of them involve pretty significant losses.

The efficiencies of every step have to be multiplied together to calculate the overall system efficiency. If you have five steps and each one wastes 20%, then each step has an efficiency of 0.8, and the overall system efficiency will be 0.8*0.8*0.8*0.8*0.8 == 0.328, meaning about 33% of the original energy would be delivered to end users, with the remaining 67% being lost. But if each of those five steps wasted 30% instead of 20%, the overall system would only deliver 17% of the original energy. The more conversions required, and the worse the efficiency on those conversions, then the lower the efficiency of the overall system.

Solar satellite power generation is particularly poor in this regard. Sunlight is concentrated using mirrors (with some losses) onto a boiler (with some of the light reflecting instead of being converted to heat, and some of the heat radiating away via black-box radiation). The next few steps are the same as for a coal plant: steam drives a turbine, which drives a dynamo, which generates electricity. At that point, all you have to do is to deliver it, but that is not easy with solar satellites.

The electric power would have to be converted to microwaves (with a lot of losses). That would be beamed down to earth (with losses from atmospheric reflection, scattering and absorption). Most of the beam would strike the receiver but some would not because of beam spreading. (Also, there beam would tend to wander a bit because of atmospheric refraction, which also makes stars "twinkle".) The receiver would have to capture the microwaves that struck it and somehow convert back into electricity, and every way I know to do this has dreadfully poor yields.

Microwaves are not the only approach to the downlink, but every approach I know of for the downlink either cannot handle the power levels involved, or is terribly inefficient. Compared to terrestrial electrical power generation technologies, solar satellites inherently require more conversions, many of which have poor efficiency, and the overall system efficiency will necessarily be far worse. I would be surprised if the system had a yield as high as 5%. I would tend to think it would be even lower.

On the other hand, the energy which would have to be expended to create a solar power satellite would be huge compared to the energy needed to build a terrestrial power generation facility. Would it break even before it reached the end of its operating life? Would it actually produce more energy than it cost? I'm not so sure it would.

The capital cost to create a solar satellite would also dwarf the cost of terrestrial power plants which delivered comparable amounts of power, but the satellites and terrestrial power generators would sell their power on the same market at the same price. Could a solar satellite produce enough revenue during its o

Those are the wrong reasons and the wrong conclusions. As a consumer, superiority is a combination of pricing, coverage and equipment in the areas where you use your phone. That is it, and will vary by person and even over time for the same person.

As a carrier, CDMA is way better for the simple reason tnat it is upgradeable using the same frequencies and is forwards and backwards compatible. You don't need expensive new spectrum nor do you need to supply new handsets. GSM/TDMA was a good design for its time, but lacks forward and backwards compatibility which means carriers had to buy new frequencies, or repurpose portions of existing frequency.

If you want the technical details, there is an excellent read on how TDMA/GSM and CDMA work, as well as the politics behind it at Stephen DenBeste's site.

The system of single plurality (one vote, one candidate), is mathematically a very unfair, almost undemocratic way to run an election whenever there are 3 or more candidates.

Outraged, the constituents decide that enough is enough and step into the electioneering process en masse. Each of the 400 or so people have a specific idea in mind to solve the region's water crisis; all of them agree that the only way it can be solved is to bring waters from the nearby River Krishna to the district.

Especially note upgrade paths and what the original designs allowed for.

GSM was the very best propeller-driven fighter money could buy, but CDMA was a jet engine

The author predicts that while computers will one day defeat even the greatest chess Grand Masters, they will probably never be able to master the Chinese game of "Go".

It is my firm belief that terrorism is less of a threat than tyranny.

Since terrorism (in the 9-11 sense) is a response to U.S. tyranny elsewhere, ending the tyranny would end the terrorism. Thus "fighting terrorism" is pointless salve for the symptom -- not a cure for the problem.

I suggest this blog article by Steven Den Beste (and all the rest at USS Clueless, this guy is amazing). It doesn't start off by addressing your root cause response but it gets there.

Also, you don't respond to Moofie's statement that you quote, instead using it as a springboard for your own agenda. You guys might actually be in agreement politically.

It is my firm belief that terrorism is less of a threat than tyranny.

Since terrorism (in the 9-11 sense) is a response to U.S. tyranny elsewhere, ending the tyranny would end the terrorism. Thus "fighting terrorism" is pointless salve for the symptom -- not a cure for the problem.

I suggest this blog article by Steven Den Beste (and all the rest at USS Clueless, this guy is amazing). It doesn't start off by addressing your root cause response but it gets there.

Also, you don't respond to Moofie's statement that you quote, instead using it as a springboard for your own agenda. You guys might actually be in agreement politically.

Has anyone else ever noticed how much blogs just reference eachother and talk about how amazing blogs are, while not really doing anything all that insightful or significant? Most of the time they just keep posting the same old thing you saw on that other guy's blog, while offering nothing new.

Some blogs, yes. Others, absolutely not. For example:

Healing Iraq A 24-year-old dentist with a digital camera has repeatedly given thousands an inside look at post-Saddam Iraq, from an Iraqi's perspective. The MASSIVE anti-terror demonstations in Iraq last year were only covered in depth here, not on any international news source.

Steven den Beste A retired engineer who writes quite thorough articles. Many I don't agree with but are usually an interesting read.

In a more extreme case, there's no doubt in my mind Scott Koenig lost Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney her re-election due to exposing her unusual support base after September 11.

There's also at least 20-30 Iranian blogs that give a perspecitve simply not present anywhere else. There's the CaribPundit in the Carribbean, Chief Wiggles in Iraq who started a toy drive for Iraqi children and Homelss Guy Blog who is indeed, a homeless man utilizating the public library.
Some, like Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennesee law professor, merely provides short commentary and links. I don't see how this is bad in any way. All most syndicated columnists do is pick a topic du jour and write about it with minimalist research anyway.
At least with blogs, you can get first-hand accounts of events and cultures, with no illusion that the source is not biased.

Uberblogger Stephen Den Beste has a post in which he raises doubts that Apple's high margins on hardware (thus, high profits) can continue. He thinks there will be a WinIBM platform in the near future. (WinNT is already running on G5s as an XBox dev platform.) Apple, in his estimation, will be forced to cut margins to compete.

I don't entirely agree with him. Apple has always commanded a premium because its software was good, not its hardware. Plus, I think he underappreciates OSX's BSD underbelly (odd, for an engineer.) But a WinG5 computer would provide an alternative to people who might otherwise make the switch.

(I thought I posted this earlier, but it doesn't seem to be showing up. Sorry if this winds up being a repeat post.)

alert! geek pie in the sky (from the poster's blog):

The basic technology is already available, and if the money was available a space elevator could be built with minimal R&D. Total cost for a working space elevator - about $20 billion.

there are serious technical hurdles with being able to just construct a space elevator - not to mention one that could function day-in and day-out as a workhorse. Check out Den Beste's post from USS Clueless for just some of the issues that his "minimal R&D" isn't going to cover (especially not for a measley $20billion).

The posts on this site are written by a longtime techie Stephen Den Beste, but are not the usual techie subjects. I also like his Strategic Overview of the US war on terror in general, and Iraq in specific.

Also, more techie oriented, this discussion is about the creation of a Super-human Intelligence that's probably not what you'd think it is.

I read USS Clueless pretty much every day now.

The posts on this site are written by a longtime techie Stephen Den Beste, but are not the usual techie subjects. I also like his Strategic Overview of the US war on terror in general, and Iraq in specific.

Also, more techie oriented, this discussion is about the creation of a Super-human Intelligence that's probably not what you'd think it is.

I read USS Clueless pretty much every day now.

The posts on this site are written by a longtime techie Stephen Den Beste, but are not the usual techie subjects. I also like his Strategic Overview of the US war on terror in general, and Iraq in specific.

Also, more techie oriented, this discussion is about the creation of a Super-human Intelligence that's probably not what you'd think it is.

I read USS Clueless pretty much every day now.

....All academics face the problem of "publish or perish"; in addition to any duties they may have in teaching, they're expected to do "research" in their field. But if their field of study is not rigorous, and not really subject to real-world test, and has no practical application anyway, then there's really nothing to keep it from spinning out of control, as errors and mistakes accumulate and compound within the field. It ultimately doesn't matter whether your paper was right or wrong, if indeed it even makes sense to talk about whether it was right/wrong.

...The worst thing you can do to a proud man is to ignore him; and increasingly the "men of letters" found themselves being ignored or treated as curiosities.

Increasingly isolated, frustrated, useless on a practical level, and with prestige declining, they became intellectually inbred. Since no one else respected them, they "respected" each other and decided no one else's opinion really mattered. The swelling spiral of comment-on-comment continued, divorced from reality. Over the course of maybe thirty years, a form of intellectual "pseudoscience" developed.

...This is the question of equality in its starkest terms. In an academic environment, equality of opportunity" had previously been represented by the freedom for any academic to propose ideas, and for others in turn to criticize those ideas if they didn't stand up to the light of day. That's how it was generally done in mathematics and science and engineering. But for those dedicated to equality of result, that was intolerable. Sensing that their own ideas could not survive such scrutiny, they denied that such scrutiny was even a valid way to evaluate ideas.

It was not enough to permit everyone to say what they thought. All of them had to be given equal respect afterwards and all the ideas had to be treated as if they were equally valid. To say to someone that their idea was nonsense was censorship, one of many words that they redefined in strange and wonderful ways.

This article makes a good argument that Tony Blair is the "good cop" to George W Bush's "bad cop."

You have two options. You can join civilization or you can be wiped out by an unstoppable wave of cultural imperialism. You have left us with no other means of dealing with you short of genocide.

Right. The problem is, cultural imperialism takes time, which we may not have since the barbarians are figuring out ways they can achieve their goals of mass death and destruction (by using technologies they're incapable of developing themselves). While I hope it doesn't come to this, we may very well have to kill large numbers of them in defense of civilization and our own lives.

This is why the conquest of Iraq was necessary. Even more important than the medium-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein, it is vital to reform radical Islamic fundamentalist culture, and we need a staging area to do so. See Steven Den Beste's excellent analysis.

People seem to have high opinions of themselves and their precious egos. Try reading some court decisions about libel and the net - there's a darned high threshold that must be passed for it to be considered libel. Denbeste had a great comment about this - scan down to the entry labelled "Stardate 20031027.0423" to read it.

Oj, yes, the obligatory IANAL, just in case anybody was wondering.

They certainly don't care what KIND of fuel they have to sell you. What doesn't exist, however, is any incentive for them to encourage efficiency. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The more efficient stuff gets, the less people have to buy their products.

Can be found here.

Excellent discussion of this idea on den beste's blog. More indepth than your average slashdot commentary (pretty graphs and everything)...

Summing it up, there seem to be all sort of issues (that i mostly don't understand) about letting large quantities of people spin the dials backwards...

why not just give HUGE taxbreaks on home generators, to allow people to overbackup their houses, so that the overflow can be pumped into the net?

why not just give HUGE taxbreaks on home generators, to allow people to overbackup their houses, so that the overflow can be pumped into the net?

Jacksonian America performs an additional service: it makes a major, if unheralded, contribution to America's vaunted "soft power." It is not simply the Jeffersonian commitment to liberty and equality, the Wilsonian record of benevolence, anti-colonialism and support for democracy, or even the commercial success resulting from Hamiltonian policies that attracts people to the United States. Perhaps beyond all these it is the spectacle of a country that is good for average people to live in: where ordinary people can and do express themselves culturally, economically and spiritually without any inhibition. The consumer lifestyle of the United States--and the consequences of federal policy to enrich the middle class and make it a class of homeowners and automobile drivers--wins the country many admirers abroad. For the first time in human history, millions of ordinary people have enough money in their pockets and time on their hands to support a popular culture that has more resources than the high culture of the aristocracy and elite. This culture is what hundreds of millions of foreigners love most about the United States, and its dissemination makes scores of millions of foreigners feel somehow connected to or even part of the United States. The cultural, social and religious vibrancy and unorthodoxy of Jacksonian America--not excluding such pastimes as professional wrestling--are among the country's most important foreign policy assets.

-- http://denbeste.nu/external/Mead01.html

Please. If you haven't noticed, the "federal policy" to enrich the middle class is on hold. Huge federal deficits are pushing up interest rates, and the finance system has, since the stock market bubble burst, come to depend on interest rates being very low. A few points on the prime rate, and all hell breaks loose. The rich are most certainly getting richer, and the poor are becomming homeless. The middle class is shrinking, and just as sure as there were riots in L.A. twelve years ago, there will be riots in the U.S. again unless the rich stop soaking the poor.

If you want to see a government tax structure committed to growing their middle class, have a look at Sweden. They have a two-bracket, very steeply progressive system under which most people pay no taxes, but, everyone making more than 10% over the mean salary pays about 57% of that portion. That means more than being able to deduct mortgage interest ever will.

And don't get me started about free time.

Steven DenBeste goes into great detail here.

Here's some of my thoughts on the matter:
1. No one disputes Saddam was a brutal dictator to his own people. For that reason alone, the war was justified. It's true that we don't go around killing every brutal dictator in the world, even though we could- but Saddam made the mistake of getting our attention.

2. He funded palestinian and al-qaieda terrorists. We don't take kindly to those who fund our enemies, or the enemies of our friends.

3. We had to finish what we started in the first gulf war. Bush Sr. was idiotic for humilating Saddam but leaving him in power. Moreover, we owed a moral debt to the Iraqi's who rose up in Rebellion at our request in the dying days of the war, only to abandon them by stopping at the border. But perhaps you think that Saddam was justified invading Kuwait?

There's a few, go read the USS clueless website linked to above for many, many more. If you can seriously refute any of DenBeste's points, do let me know.

Why do the French, paragons on internationalism that they be, seek to root out invading foreign words, while the parochial Americans just absorb it all and keep on going? If French people really didn't want to use English words, it wouldn't be necessary for the government to tell them to stop. I think this demonstrates what den Beste talks about from time to time: the French have never gotten over their belief that common people are simply unable to govern themselves and must be told what to do.

An interesting side-effect would be that the people who left, assuming equal opportunity for all, would overwhelmingly be from poor countries like India and Nigeria.

We've seen this happen before; the US was formed from the outcasts of Europe, and Australia from the actual criminals. With the resources of space, the impetus to stay alive prompting more and better tech, and the fact that being poor brings out good work habits rather more then being rich does on the average, I think the space society would outclass the Earth-bound one in every significant way in about a generation or two.

And see what's happening to Europe... their elite is now so disconnected from reality they're preparing to trash the whole continent... I suspect that all Earth would look like that.