Oh yes? Then I hope you have already sent your regards to your new Chinese and Indian overlords
The hope is that the USA can continue to ramp up its population while sustaining a good rate of growth, such that China and India don't ever really catch up. Check this out.. This is a Census department population forecast for the USA.
Notice that it was the high series had the US population at below 300,000,000 in 2006, and we've exceeded that. Thus, assuming the high series continues, the USA population will hit 500+ million by 2050. That's a population doubling time of 75 years. Assuming the same doubling time, we're talking about a billion Americans by 2125...
Remember when Great Britain ruled the world? Things change buster and the US will be the Canadians' future Mexico; demograpically as well as metaphorically.
The USA doesn't rule the world. The USA is the market of last resort. As the world economy expands, those forces that presently drain the USA will balance out, improving the overall USA position relative to the rest of the world. Even in these times, USA exports are now at a record high, and the trade gap is actually closing.
Canada isn't going to rule anything. Canadian birth rate dooms the nation. In the end, population wins, and the USA population is growing, and rather dramatically.
Except for the electronic ignition controlling the spark and the electronic power regulation keeping the alternator at 13.5v
Wasn't the ignition controlled by a distributor? I'm just trying to remember working on 79 Ford and my 73 Olds and I don't think they were all that different. I was never mechanically inclined though...
How effective would this be on a car without a fully computer controlled engine? Wouldn't the engine need significant electrically controlled systems for this to even work?
The two big things I can think of are fuel injection and electronic throttle control. If you have a carburator and a mechanical throttle, then I'd think you'd be good to go. A lot of the early electronics were more to do with emissions controls. Like there were O2 sensors or something like that, but many gen-x'ers remember ripping all that stuff off late 70s and early 80s clunkers in a desperate attempt to get more horsepower.
Once fuel injection happened, it got way more complicated. Then they added throttle by wire, and now they are on the verge of steering by wire. And, if you have an SMG tranny, then, you couldn't even shift gears, as those are all electronic.
Really, we should just bring back 1970s cars... except that they run best on leaded gasoline.
Hmm, I agree that people can/would do this, but do you suspect that ALL the vote counting officials would do this? And/or what solutions are we starting to have? You can't trust a computer, you can trust people, so where's the fairness/answer?
I think that in close elections we should not have recounts, re-examinations, and so forth. The fundamental problem is that in an evenly divided electorate, a handful of votes, or a very tiny percentage, make all the difference. So, any error is essentially catastrophic, and no counting method is error free.
To me, the pre-Al Gore Presidential election tradition was the best one. Yeah, there might be some shenanigans going on in some precincts (like all the dead people that routinely vote in Philadelphia or Chicago), but, all in all, its better for a country overall if both parties quit bitching about the dead people of the other sides voting.
its a bit harder to do something shady with 50 people staring you down to hold you accountable.
Not really. Magicians do this all the time.
Everyone knows at least one sleight of hand trick...
And, really, after watching thousands of ballots being counted, you are sure to miss one or two..per, and that's all you need, especially if you use an ambiguous motion... oh I was just grabbing the card... not my fault my thumb slipped and smeared the ink or knocked a chad off.
But still, I think we don't have the same highly-skilled labor pool that we used to have. Our output is the same because our productivity is so high. That isn't necessarily a problem, but it could be if ever we needed to ramp up production, for the same reason the military starts having major training issues when they lose a lot of NCOs
I agree. I think we need to have way more vocational education. We're too "in the mind" and not enough hands on. Even engineers can benefit from having to learn how to actually make things.
Let's look at some history. Back in the day, before Woodrow Wilson came along, the US Senate was completely dominated by industrial interests. They basically bottled up any imports into the United States and from there made mountains of money building up domestic industries. Wilson cracked things open a bit, and broke that old club, but by that time there was so much money floating around that the USA was able to not only easily tip the scales in World War I, dominate industry in World War II, but also finance a public education system including the best universities in the world, establish a string of hospitals and research centers, and, along the way, create a middle class.
Bottom line, there have been times in history where a good bit of local cronyism, if coupled with solid workers rights and a bit protectionism, made a good recipe for economic growth. The deal was simple - really, the big industry guys could get rich and get the government to guard their markets, and in turn they would pay real wages and benefits to its workers. Over time, from Wilson, to Roosevelt, Democrats refined this idea into the New Deal, and as a result, America arguably got rich as all bloody hell.
Somewhere along the way, Dems got a bit too infatuated with socialism, and meanwhile, Republicans switched from being avante protectionist industrialists that made goods and jobs, to global traders and stock people that don't make anything, and that partially explains the mess we're in.
One wonders if the old formula could still work... It has before, and rather well.
Gaius Baltar, seen with an attractive blonde collegue, assured the Congress in a special Senate Session that the integrated network was completely safe from Cylon, er uh, Chinese attack...
But what do we export? Movies and Britney Spears. We don't exactly produce a lot of durable goods in this country anymore, and all of our excess farmland is being used to grow corn for f---- ethanol.
Actually, a couple of things.
a) the various farmers associations assert that the "running out of land to produce ethanol" is actually coming from groups ultimately funded by the oil industry. You don't exactly see Exxon rushing to put ethanol pumps in its service station for a reason. Remember, Exxon does have a good bit of US oil production, and that roughly costs them $20/bbl, which they sell on the world market, which, is now at around $100/bbl. So, keep in mind there is a bit of a racket to all of this.
b) the USA actually still has quite a bit of manufacturing left, although I certainly agree that we took a beating over the last decade because of China. For one thing, we still export aircraft, jets, jet engines, and yes, even cars (to Europe). We also make a lot of tool and die equipment, high end presses, CnC devices and other assorted big industrial machines. We sorta make the things that people manufacture with.
the US dollar goes down the tubes it's game over. The depression of the 30s would be as a minor blip. We're talking no more Fed and the individual states would be fighting each other rather than worrying about democracy in Taiwan. The US as it now is would no longer exist. Have you checked how the dollar is doing lately?
Not sure about this. With the falling dollar, US exports are at a record high.
I worked for a power company where I wrote my own database server for commodities. I told them all about it, wrote up screen shots, explained exactly how it would work, and they said I was crazy, but good luck.
Similarly, I've been above board with my recent gig as well. I actually wrote into my review that I was writing a bunch of stuff as part of my personal development goals.
I figure this much. If I write something that makes enough money to be worth suing for, then, I could also afford the lawyer to defend it.
But there is nothing impossible in developing a micro-submarine which has a small gasoline engine
Well, the gas engine would be a bad thing to put in a submarine. Our own Navy learned that lesson prior to World War I. Read about the Holland.
This thing could sail inertially, check GPS
Checking GPS in wartime would be an iffy proposition for an enemy. I imagine that the GPS, a US thing, could be something that we could theoretically turn off, or, worse, use to steer enemy combatants into the wrong direction.
It would be practically invulnerable to defensive weapons, containing no humans and being designed to withstand tens of G and huge water pressure (having no need to maintain an atmosphere
Well, here's the the thing. First off, what you are really talking about is essentially a mine, of which, plenty have existed. Secondly, your vision of an ultra deep submarine carries with it a two way street. You need your submarine to be able to detect the ships passing over it, and the same thermals and changes in ocean that make it hard for surface ships to hear submarines also work against the submarine. To be really effective, your submarine has to operate above the thermal layers and do so with extreme quiet.
A country like China would be very well positioned to design and deploy a few thousands of those, and it's hard to defeat them when they are rising from 10,000 ft right up, into your bottom
Ah, but remember that the USA right now is leading in robotic fighting machines and by a fairly wide margin. Sure, the Chinese could build these robot submarines and launch them, but, the USA will have its own robot submarines to go against them.
Ultimately, though, the Chinese are in a sticky spot. You see, the kinds of anti-US Aircraft carrier battles that we are talking about would be for an enemy to deny the oceans to American naval assets. But, the most hypothetical war with China (a Chinese invasion of Taiwan), only requires the USA to deny the ocean to the Chinese. There's no reason to put an aircraft carrier in harms way for that mission - you could leave the role of destroying Chinese ships to the Virgina class submarine.
Russian supersonic sea-skimming missiles can take one out, and they've been selling them to China, Iran, etc.
I'm not worried as much about the Sizzlers, as, theoretically, all the missile defense research we're doing suggests that we'll be able to intercept those too. air is fairly permeable to electromagnetic radiation and so we can "see" the target at least. In the ocean, its a lot worse... sound bounces all over the place, there's ghost images, light doesn't get through it. So, there's a lot more theoretical limits on detecting things under the ocean.
Really, submarines basically mean that no single side will be able to have control of the ocean surface.. and they are the threat. The only thing I can think of is a continuously operating flight of actively pinging ASW helicopters, and, that will give away our own ships in the battle group as much as find theirs. The other thing is to have a heck of a magnetometer, but, what if the enemy sub's hull isn't made out of a magnetic material? I've heard of satellites attempting to measure the bulge in the ocean surface to find a sub... but that seems aweful dodgy if the sub is really deep.
The problem with Venus's atmosphere is that there is so damned much of it. In order to get rid of Venus's atmosphere, you need get rid of the mass of something the size of asteroid Vesta. Basically, you need either calcium or something the size of the asteroid Vesta, and gently put it on Venus, and that will precipate the carbon out as calcium carbonate. Or, you could try and find a Vesta sized chunk of hydrogen, and via some chemical wizardry, that will get rid of the carbon dioxide as well and leave water. But even that amount of water wouldn't be nearly as much as in earth's oceans. The Earth has -a lot- of water.
It seems like submarines are outpacing the ability of anti-submarine warfare to keep up with them. While it is somewhat surprising that the Chinese have evolved a quiet submarine, the threat of modern hybrid electric submarines is not new.
Indeed, there are numerous and famous stories of Dutch and German sailors sending back pictures of various US Aircraft carriers through their periscopes. This indicates that they successfully penetrated the US Navy ASW screen, made it to periscope depth, snapped a picture, and then got back out, all undetected. In response to this, the US Navy has actually asked NATO allies equipped with such submarines to drill with the American teams, in order to bolster the US ASW capability. This incident, then, suggests that the US Navy has a lot more to do.
In general, rumours abound that submarines are now operating at close to the ambient noise level of the ocean. If genuinely operated so quietly, and given the difficult acoustic environment of the underwater world, it remains difficult to understand just how one might actually detect a submarine. Certainly, passive detection is difficult, and active detection only gives your own position away.
What's really troubling about all of this is that, doctrinally, the US Navy does not have much in passive armor against weapons at all. Aircraft carriers, destroyers, and more are generally not armoured as doctrinally, the idea is to keep the enemy from engaging your assets to begin with by forming a screen around the capital ships. Thus, we are operating a Navy that has a reduced ability to absorb damage from an enemy increasingly able to inflict it.
If the US does not adjust, then, it is very likely setting itself up for an enormous defeat in a naval engagement against a determined opponent.
I am still at a loss to wonder why a PC does not have a white noise generator built into it yet. Even the best random number algorithms are pseudo random, so blasting Microsoft for their algorithm is a little like blasting the kid for not carrying enough of a bucket when the dam is the thing that broke.
Put white noise hardware and real random number hardware on PCs, and this whole problem goes away.
the sooner we'll stop electing fascists (yes, look it up) like GW Bush simply because of his party. "I've always voted Republican" is not a reason to do so again.
Have you even read the original post? It's not George Bush that is totally getting blown by the recording industry. It's not George Bush that introduced legislation to tie student loans to anti-piracy?
Hey, I guess some people really do believe that slavery is freedom (aka known as socialism).
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes? Then I hope you have already sent your regards to your new Chinese and Indian overlords
The hope is that the USA can continue to ramp up its population while sustaining a good rate of growth, such that China and India don't ever really catch up. Check this out.. This is a Census department population forecast for the USA.
Census Population Projections 1998
Notice that it was the high series had the US population at below 300,000,000 in 2006, and we've exceeded that. Thus, assuming the high series continues, the USA population will hit 500+ million by 2050. That's a population doubling time of 75 years. Assuming the same doubling time, we're talking about a billion Americans by 2125...
Remember when Great Britain ruled the world? Things change buster and the US will be the Canadians' future Mexico; demograpically as well as metaphorically.
The USA doesn't rule the world. The USA is the market of last resort. As the world economy expands, those forces that presently drain the USA will balance out, improving the overall USA position relative to the rest of the world. Even in these times, USA exports are now at a record high, and the trade gap is actually closing.
Canada isn't going to rule anything. Canadian birth rate dooms the nation. In the end, population wins, and the USA population is growing, and rather dramatically.
Except for the electronic ignition controlling the spark and the electronic power regulation keeping the alternator at 13.5v
Wasn't the ignition controlled by a distributor? I'm just trying to remember working on 79 Ford and my 73 Olds and I don't think they were all that different. I was never mechanically inclined though...
Not yet. But your kids will be trying to sneak to Canada, I can guarantee you that
More people have snuck into the United States in the last thirty years than live in Canada, I can guarantee you that!
you mean like:
Space Station
Space Shuttle
or
Las Vegas
or
Lincoln Financial Field
and... yeah, it is cool that the good old USA can muster up a few of these bad boys:
F-22
So I guess we're just totally broke?
How effective would this be on a car without a fully computer controlled engine? Wouldn't the engine need significant electrically controlled systems for this to even work?
The two big things I can think of are fuel injection and electronic throttle control. If you have a carburator and a mechanical throttle, then I'd think you'd be good to go. A lot of the early electronics were more to do with emissions controls. Like there were O2 sensors or something like that, but many gen-x'ers remember ripping all that stuff off late 70s and early 80s clunkers in a desperate attempt to get more horsepower.
Once fuel injection happened, it got way more complicated. Then they added throttle by wire, and now they are on the verge of steering by wire. And, if you have an SMG tranny, then, you couldn't even shift gears, as those are all electronic.
Really, we should just bring back 1970s cars... except that they run best on leaded gasoline.
woops.
No electronics to kill.
if (fuelInjection) {
electronicDisable();
} else {
cout
you have three people from different parties sit down and each count each ballot while keeping separate tallies
And, what do you do if the tallies do not agree?
Hmm, I agree that people can/would do this, but do you suspect that ALL the vote counting officials would do this? And/or what solutions are we starting to have? You can't trust a computer, you can trust people, so where's the fairness/answer?
I think that in close elections we should not have recounts, re-examinations, and so forth. The fundamental problem is that in an evenly divided electorate, a handful of votes, or a very tiny percentage, make all the difference. So, any error is essentially catastrophic, and no counting method is error free.
To me, the pre-Al Gore Presidential election tradition was the best one. Yeah, there might be some shenanigans going on in some precincts (like all the dead people that routinely vote in Philadelphia or Chicago), but, all in all, its better for a country overall if both parties quit bitching about the dead people of the other sides voting.
its a bit harder to do something shady with 50 people staring you down to hold you accountable.
Not really. Magicians do this all the time.
Everyone knows at least one sleight of hand trick...
And, really, after watching thousands of ballots being counted, you are sure to miss one or two..per, and that's all you need, especially if you use an ambiguous motion... oh I was just grabbing the card... not my fault my thumb slipped and smeared the ink or knocked a chad off.
You have handlers doing things like slightly damage ballots, so that they get invalidated... yeah, 1/1000, enough to swing a close election.
Computers count better than people do, otherwise, you would see calls for people to manually tally your bank balance...
But still, I think we don't have the same highly-skilled labor pool that we used to have. Our output is the same because our productivity is so high. That isn't necessarily a problem, but it could be if ever we needed to ramp up production, for the same reason the military starts having major training issues when they lose a lot of NCOs
I agree. I think we need to have way more vocational education. We're too "in the mind" and not enough hands on. Even engineers can benefit from having to learn how to actually make things.
Let's look at some history. Back in the day, before Woodrow Wilson came along, the US Senate was completely dominated by industrial interests. They basically bottled up any imports into the United States and from there made mountains of money building up domestic industries. Wilson cracked things open a bit, and broke that old club, but by that time there was so much money floating around that the USA was able to not only easily tip the scales in World War I, dominate industry in World War II, but also finance a public education system including the best universities in the world, establish a string of hospitals and research centers, and, along the way, create a middle class.
Bottom line, there have been times in history where a good bit of local cronyism, if coupled with solid workers rights and a bit protectionism, made a good recipe for economic growth. The deal was simple - really, the big industry guys could get rich and get the government to guard their markets, and in turn they would pay real wages and benefits to its workers. Over time, from Wilson, to Roosevelt, Democrats refined this idea into the New Deal, and as a result, America arguably got rich as all bloody hell.
Somewhere along the way, Dems got a bit too infatuated with socialism, and meanwhile, Republicans switched from being avante protectionist industrialists that made goods and jobs, to global traders and stock people that don't make anything, and that partially explains the mess we're in.
One wonders if the old formula could still work... It has before, and rather well.
Gaius Baltar, seen with an attractive blonde collegue, assured the Congress in a special Senate Session that the integrated network was completely safe from Cylon, er uh, Chinese attack...
But what do we export? Movies and Britney Spears. We don't exactly produce a lot of durable goods in this country anymore, and all of our excess farmland is being used to grow corn for f---- ethanol.
Actually, a couple of things.
a) the various farmers associations assert that the "running out of land to produce ethanol" is actually coming from groups ultimately funded by the oil industry. You don't exactly see Exxon rushing to put ethanol pumps in its service station for a reason. Remember, Exxon does have a good bit of US oil production, and that roughly costs them $20/bbl, which they sell on the world market, which, is now at around $100/bbl. So, keep in mind there is a bit of a racket to all of this.
b) the USA actually still has quite a bit of manufacturing left, although I certainly agree that we took a beating over the last decade because of China. For one thing, we still export aircraft, jets, jet engines, and yes, even cars (to Europe). We also make a lot of tool and die equipment, high end presses, CnC devices and other assorted big industrial machines. We sorta make the things that people manufacture with.
the US dollar goes down the tubes it's game over. The depression of the 30s would be as a minor blip. We're talking no more Fed and the individual states would be fighting each other rather than worrying about democracy in Taiwan. The US as it now is would no longer exist. Have you checked how the dollar is doing lately?
Not sure about this. With the falling dollar, US exports are at a record high.
I worked for a power company where I wrote my own database server for commodities. I told them all about it, wrote up screen shots, explained exactly how it would work, and they said I was crazy, but good luck.
Similarly, I've been above board with my recent gig as well. I actually wrote into my review that I was writing a bunch of stuff as part of my personal development goals.
I figure this much. If I write something that makes enough money to be worth suing for, then, I could also afford the lawyer to defend it.
But there is nothing impossible in developing a micro-submarine which has a small gasoline engine
Well, the gas engine would be a bad thing to put in a submarine. Our own Navy learned that lesson prior to World War I. Read about the Holland.
This thing could sail inertially, check GPS
Checking GPS in wartime would be an iffy proposition for an enemy. I imagine that the GPS, a US thing, could be something that we could theoretically turn off, or, worse, use to steer enemy combatants into the wrong direction.
It would be practically invulnerable to defensive weapons, containing no humans and being designed to withstand tens of G and huge water pressure (having no need to maintain an atmosphere
Well, here's the the thing. First off, what you are really talking about is essentially a mine, of which, plenty have existed. Secondly, your vision of an ultra deep submarine carries with it a two way street. You need your submarine to be able to detect the ships passing over it, and the same thermals and changes in ocean that make it hard for surface ships to hear submarines also work against the submarine. To be really effective, your submarine has to operate above the thermal layers and do so with extreme quiet.
A country like China would be very well positioned to design and deploy a few thousands of those, and it's hard to defeat them when they are rising from 10,000 ft right up, into your bottom
Ah, but remember that the USA right now is leading in robotic fighting machines and by a fairly wide margin. Sure, the Chinese could build these robot submarines and launch them, but, the USA will have its own robot submarines to go against them.
Ultimately, though, the Chinese are in a sticky spot. You see, the kinds of anti-US Aircraft carrier battles that we are talking about would be for an enemy to deny the oceans to American naval assets. But, the most hypothetical war with China (a Chinese invasion of Taiwan), only requires the USA to deny the ocean to the Chinese. There's no reason to put an aircraft carrier in harms way for that mission - you could leave the role of destroying Chinese ships to the Virgina class submarine.
Russian supersonic sea-skimming missiles can take one out, and they've been selling them to China, Iran, etc.
I'm not worried as much about the Sizzlers, as, theoretically, all the missile defense research we're doing suggests that we'll be able to intercept those too. air is fairly permeable to electromagnetic radiation and so we can "see" the target at least. In the ocean, its a lot worse... sound bounces all over the place, there's ghost images, light doesn't get through it. So, there's a lot more theoretical limits on detecting things under the ocean.
Really, submarines basically mean that no single side will be able to have control of the ocean surface.. and they are the threat. The only thing I can think of is a continuously operating flight of actively pinging ASW helicopters, and, that will give away our own ships in the battle group as much as find theirs. The other thing is to have a heck of a magnetometer, but, what if the enemy sub's hull isn't made out of a magnetic material? I've heard of satellites attempting to measure the bulge in the ocean surface to find a sub... but that seems aweful dodgy if the sub is really deep.
The problem with Venus's atmosphere is that there is so damned much of it. In order to get rid of Venus's atmosphere, you need get rid of the mass of something the size of asteroid Vesta. Basically, you need either calcium or something the size of the asteroid Vesta, and gently put it on Venus, and that will precipate the carbon out as calcium carbonate. Or, you could try and find a Vesta sized chunk of hydrogen, and via some chemical wizardry, that will get rid of the carbon dioxide as well and leave water. But even that amount of water wouldn't be nearly as much as in earth's oceans. The Earth has -a lot- of water.
It seems like submarines are outpacing the ability of anti-submarine warfare to keep up with them. While it is somewhat surprising that the Chinese have evolved a quiet submarine, the threat of modern hybrid electric submarines is not new.
Indeed, there are numerous and famous stories of Dutch and German sailors sending back pictures of various US Aircraft carriers through their periscopes. This indicates that they successfully penetrated the US Navy ASW screen, made it to periscope depth, snapped a picture, and then got back out, all undetected. In response to this, the US Navy has actually asked NATO allies equipped with such submarines to drill with the American teams, in order to bolster the US ASW capability. This incident, then, suggests that the US Navy has a lot more to do.
In general, rumours abound that submarines are now operating at close to the ambient noise level of the ocean. If genuinely operated so quietly, and given the difficult acoustic environment of the underwater world, it remains difficult to understand just how one might actually detect a submarine. Certainly, passive detection is difficult, and active detection only gives your own position away.
What's really troubling about all of this is that, doctrinally, the US Navy does not have much in passive armor against weapons at all. Aircraft carriers, destroyers, and more are generally not armoured as doctrinally, the idea is to keep the enemy from engaging your assets to begin with by forming a screen around the capital ships. Thus, we are operating a Navy that has a reduced ability to absorb damage from an enemy increasingly able to inflict it.
If the US does not adjust, then, it is very likely setting itself up for an enormous defeat in a naval engagement against a determined opponent.
I am still at a loss to wonder why a PC does not have a white noise generator built into it yet. Even the best random number algorithms are pseudo random, so blasting Microsoft for their algorithm is a little like blasting the kid for not carrying enough of a bucket when the dam is the thing that broke.
Put white noise hardware and real random number hardware on PCs, and this whole problem goes away.
Bullshit. You might want to learn a few things about the rest of the world
We saw everything we needed to know about the history of Europe from 1914 to 1945.
the sooner we'll stop electing fascists (yes, look it up) like GW Bush simply because of his party. "I've always voted Republican" is not a reason to do so again.
Have you even read the original post? It's not George Bush that is totally getting blown by the recording industry. It's not George Bush that introduced legislation to tie student loans to anti-piracy?
Hey, I guess some people really do believe that slavery is freedom (aka known as socialism).
There's nothing worse than going to a web site, and all of a sudden, some jingle pops out.