Today you can say that they were "brain dead obvious". When he made them they were considered seriously around the bend technical optimism. (And people are re-interpreting what he said in light of current expectations, too. When he said "broad band" he was comparing against (probably 9600 baud) modems. Today when we say broad-band we mean broad enough to do streaming video while we are downloading a new distro. Bit of a difference.
The reason the minor stock owners can rightfully disclaim liability are that they can't know what the company is doing. This doesn't apply to anyone owning more than 20% of the stock or anyone on the board of directors or in company management. Those people should be personally liable. And, I believe, technically they are. The laws are just never enforced.
(Caution: IANAL. I may well have some of the details wrong. But there are definitely legal provisions to make the directors and management liable, and those laws are rarely enforced. Never *may* be too strong a word.)
That's one scenario that's guaranteed to be false. We may be working to enable someone else to live luxuriously, but not for food (except as a motivator). The current population can't be supported by agricultural labor in the old pattern. Any transition in that direction would involve massive deaths that would probably destabilize the society to the point where most people died and most machinery became unmaintainable. The survivors would probably end up looking for caves to live in with no possessions that they couldn't carry...and they'd travel light. A steel ax would be a fortune, but there'd be nothing you could buy it with.
Avoiding that future is one of the things that I *hope* Obama can accomplish. I'm not certain, but I believe it is possible. (Of course the Yellowstone super-volcano could trump anything that we do, but that's a separate matter. It's only something that might happen, and if it does it might not be as bad this time as last time...i.e., some people in the country might live through it. [It could be considerably less bad, down to just oozing lava...but nobody knows.])
In this case there was a lot of word-for-word copying. So it was pretty clearly copying. And the chronology (dated) establishes who wrote the stuff first.
OTOH, this is from classes that I took decades ago, so I can't any longer quote sources. If you're interested enough it's reasonably easy to look up, but I can't even give you pointers as to where.
I also noticed that you didn't quote any particular amount as the amount that would be refunded. I can sort of understand why, but until you get very specific, were I your customer I would continue to be quite irate.
Unstable isn't a guarantee that it's the wrong design. Could be, could be not. Need more info.
Remember that most working designs are unstable during at least part of their operation. Consider a person standing up.
OTOH, being unstable means the need for a dynamic system to maintain the unstable equilibrium...and it can be energetically expensive. But the most recent walking robots have moved to an unstable system because it's much more energetically efficient.
OTOH, this doesn't speak directly to the design of the booster/rocket/payload. I can't. I don't know enough. But you need a better argument than just "it's unstable".
Bailouts should NEVER be just gifts of cash (as recently done). A quid-pro-quo should always be demanded. A space program as a bailout is not good (it should be done for itself), but it's far superior to a cash handout.
Similarly, the bailout of the finance sector should have resulted in massive government ownership and control of the sector. It should have then sold those things off as quickly as the market would bear, but a cash handout was extremely bad. It follows an extremely bad precedent and maintains it. The lesson is "It's ok to gamble recklessly with other peoples money. If you lose, someone else will pay."
Actually, if I remember my anthro correctly, Genesis is formed from the munging together of at least two other creation myths. One was Babylonian, and I don't remember where the other came from. Egypt, possibly. (Not the one about Ptah, though.)
Sorry, but most of the lung-fish have gone extinct. The teleosts use their thing that turned into a lung as a swim-bladder, to achieve neutral buoyancy. Not to say they couldn't evolve into air breathers. (Check with the Florida "Walking Catfish".) Just saying that the path taken would be very different, and thus the "air-breathing rapid runner with homeostatic thermal controls" would be very different from a horse. And probably wouldn't look *that* much like a horse. (Consider the difference between horses and kangaroos, both of which fill approximately similar ecological niches.)
Remember that evolution works by rejecting the most inferior of the available choices. As long as any of them are *good enough*, some will survive. Next time the land animals might end up as hexapods. Quadrupeds might be better, but if there aren't any available to choose, they won't be selected. (OTOH, apparently the original amphibians had a variable number of toes, and five ended up being selected as optimal. But this was a trimming down from a larger number. [Well, the toes are from the bones of an ancestral lungfish's fins, and so are all of the other tarsals. They weren't originally arranged in parallel.]) Still, I find it difficult to believe that four feet are sufficiently better than six that once six had become established, four would have been sufficiently better WHEN IT ORIGINALLY APPEARED to oust the six foot presence...or to even continue to persist. So now we could develop into centaurs and angels...of a sort. (For other reasons, the "angels" would need to be about the size of a bat.)
The fish that had descendants that were some fish and some amphibians were very different from both sets of their descendants. (This isn't required, but that's how it happened.)
During the evolution of amphibians into reptiles, there existed many intermediate species, that if they still survived today would cause classification problems. That one was a transition with lots of intermediate steps. Lots of the transition species still survive, but they tend to get grouped into "amphibian". Salamanders aren't that similar to frogs... But then consider the Axotyl, which is almost an intermediate between an amphibian and a fish. (It generally never passes from the "tadpole" stage to the adult stage...but instead becomes a sexually active "child". So it never turns into an air-breather, even though it looks more like a lizard.)
If you doubt evolution, then you are merely displaying your evidence unless you have a different explanation for millions of disparate pieces of evidence. You could be displaying skepticism, but only if you also doubt all competing theories.
I think you read too many fantasies, and not enough history.
In an anarchistic situation, "Strong men" gather gangs of supporters, each armed, and claim territory. The territory they want and think they can hold. Individual inhabitants already present have the choice of serfdom, exile, or termination.
Additionally, such a social structure won't support a dense population. Figure at least a 90% die-off. Within a decade (and that's optimistic). Who controls the water supply? Who fights fires? Etc. (Peasants are cowards because they don't have much to gain by risking their lives. They aren't properly trained to fight. [That would make them more dangerous in normal times.] And they don't generally have much in the way of weaponry. Peasant uprisings are nearly always driven by desperation.)
The only survivalists that make any sense are the ones that locate themselves in a rural setting with very difficult access. Most such groups are, you will notice, centered around some central strong man.
Newspapers used to be investigative. I know of none that are. (Admittedly, I don't read many.)
When the newspapers became parts of a chain, and had their operating expenses cut by people only vaguely related to the news part of the organization, then newspapers stopped serving the function of investigative reporting. This is probably somewhere around 1980, but it didn't all happen in one instant, it's a progressive pattern that's still continuing. Local papers still occasionally investigate local news. And we heard recently (last year or two) about a London paper that was upset because one of it's Middle East stringers had been sending it photoshopped photos, which implies a certain amount of investigative reporting. But they didn't have anyone on the ground themselves. And news "reporters" embedded in a military group have to be considered PR rather than reporters. They can only transmit what the military group approves of. Papers of the 1950's or 60's would have scoffed at such "news", and considered it only worthy of "scandal sheets".
FWIW, remember that we are on the edge of being able to coax discarded skin cells into growing into a new human being. (Naturally, it would require the cooperation of a host mother, but...)
Also remember that what today counts as "extensive genetic manipulation" will in a few years count as "minor electrical/chemical treatment". And a few years after that will be simply routine. (The process is currently being worked on as a means of growing organs...currently only very simple ones, naturally.)
OTOH, it's worth remembering that Federal Banks are allowed to lend more money than they have on deposit. Don't remember the details, whether, e.g., it's 1/3 more or 1/4 more, but it *is* magically creating money out of thin air (and statistics...that not all the depositors will ask for their money back at the same time).
It always feels like cheating to me, but really no more so than the Fed printing up as much money as it decides to print.
OTOH, governments ALWAYS debase their currency. The gold standard isn't a solution, Rome was on the gold standard, and they just started decreasing the amount of gold in their official minting. It's essentially an invisible way of raising taxes.
There was an interesting article I read recently about a genetically modified e-coli that produced an eight carbon long alcohol. (I'm not sure how long gasoline is.)
Now this is probably the wrong starter organism, but according to the article they only tried with e-coli because the genome was so thoroughly studied, and in principle they could do the same thing with a large number of other hosts. Say, something that lived on sewage...
The advantages of a long chain alcohol are supposed to be: 1) It separates easily and relatively completely from water 2) Each molecule carries a lot more energy.
I doubt that any one source would suffice, but sewage + waste dumps + algae ponds might suffice to power a large fraction of the vehicles. (Or it might not. I've no idea how efficient this process would be.)
P.S.: I don't disapprove of this project because I'm jealous. If I were there I'd probably never go to the beach anyway. I disapprove of it because it adds carbon to the atmosphere. (They don't say, but I presume so. If they're using solar then I withdraw all my objections.)
When I followed the link, it lead to an external USB hard disk. There was no indication that such hard disk was an SSD, and my expectation was that it was an ordinary hard disk with some fancy electronics that allowed it to be mounted via a USB. (Like some others I've bought. A good deal, if it's a good product, but not the same thing at all.)
It had it's points. But I only LOLed at the "Visual Basic is like Satanism... except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist". But then I've had to *use* Visual Basic.
Yes, but isn't *most* of the thermal noise auto-suppressed. Which should mean that you only get a statistical outlier now and again. And isn't this why they need to cool really sensitive cameras with liquid hydrogen to just a few Kelvins? (I'm not sure of this, as it may be that it's because they need to camera to be cool enough to not significantly emit in the wavelength being photographed.)
But the thing is that thermal noise is *noise*. Which means that it follows a statistical distribution. Which means that you can't filter it perfectly, without filtering out what you're trying to capture. But you may be able to do a "good enough" job that it won't usually be significant. However if you take a timed exposure with no incoming signal, then it wouldn't be surprising if you got a certain amount of noise / time-interval that wasn't filtered. And the same filter that's suppressing most thermal noise is suppressing cosmic radiation (again, imperfectly). So what I'm proposing is that most of the "signal" detected with the lens cap on is from thermal noise. (P.S.: Thermal noise *also* degrades memories...so this isn't a really significant argument, except that perhaps it argues for storing the stuff in a cold dry place...at which point one needs to worry about static electricity, though that can usually be handled.)
I think a lot of what you're seeing is thermal noise. Not certain, though. This doesn't mean that radiation isn't a problem over longer spans of time, it's just that I don't trust your example.
Wrong, I think. MSWind95 wouldn't install on recent hardware in 2002. It couldn't handle the CD drive. There are ways around it, but the only ones that I have seen proof of are illegal.
One *OUGHT* to be able to run MSWind95 under an emulator, but the emulators I'm familiar with don't emulate an old enough CD drive.
If a person can't switch from MSWind to Linux without a problem, then that person hasn't learned ANYTHING about computers.
OTOH, my wife uses a graphics program for writing letters, because "Word processors are too complicated". She's learned to use a graphics program. That's not learning computers.
It's true that I fought for 6 months to get Linux working right before I finally switched, but I did this in 1998. It's no longer the same process at all. And I had to install the system. (Well, of course, that's a lot easier too.)
The question "How many are you directly supervising?" is a very important one. If it's more than about four, you may be in trouble. (I'm assuming that the department also has a secretary, and that you are directly supervising the secretary.)
One way to handle this is to structure supervision so that you aren't *directly* supervising too many people. You also need to be able to delegate tasks with a due date. (Here I'm assuming that this isn't just one large project. If it is, see if you can refactor it.)
Get to know your people. This can be difficult, but is important. You need to know who you can trust in which situation, and different people are very different. It's got to be OK for people to say that they don't want to do that part, they'd rather do the other, but they also have to be willing to accept that somebody's got to do the unpleasant stuff, and this time it's your turn.
There's lots of places where that's practical, but...
Well, the thing is that multi-dimensional arrays in C are quite slow compared to the same thing in Fortran. For lots of math applications, this means that C is seen as a slow cousin to Fortran. When you add on the Python interface... you'd best not be going back an forth very much.
What's really needed is a better interface between Fortran and C, This is a really tricky thin, and no language manages that kind of interface well. (OTOH, it's possible that Ada is as good at multiple dimensions as Fortran. I don't know. But it, also, doesn't have a good interface with C. Python probably has the best, via Pyrex, but that adds a third language with a third set of rules. UGH!)
What would be really nifty would be if Pyrex would put more effort into being a complete implementation of Python. It couldn't ever really do it, since it's compiled to native code with a C interface, but it could come close. As it is Pyrex was designed as an easy interface from Python to C. For such a purpose it's hard to beat. What I'd like to see is Pyrex expanded into a full implementation of Python. Admittedly this would involve a large run-time library, but using only the "statically compilable" features in a module would execute as fast as equivalent C code, and it would link seamlessly to code that used the run-time features. Unfortunately, I think this might require a basic rewrite of the language. The current implementation is full of PyStrings and PyObjects. (I may have gotten the name slightly wrong.) Only small pieces run at full C speed, and they use a syntax incompatible with standard Python. But "there ought to be a way!".
A huge change from would possibly be correct. I haven't heard anything from anyone except you that would make me think it an improvement...though doubtless there is some group of people who do. Change is less arguable.
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Today you can say that they were "brain dead obvious". When he made them they were considered seriously around the bend technical optimism. (And people are re-interpreting what he said in light of current expectations, too. When he said "broad band" he was comparing against (probably 9600 baud) modems. Today when we say broad-band we mean broad enough to do streaming video while we are downloading a new distro. Bit of a difference.
The reason the minor stock owners can rightfully disclaim liability are that they can't know what the company is doing. This doesn't apply to anyone owning more than 20% of the stock or anyone on the board of directors or in company management. Those people should be personally liable. And, I believe, technically they are. The laws are just never enforced.
(Caution: IANAL. I may well have some of the details wrong. But there are definitely legal provisions to make the directors and management liable, and those laws are rarely enforced. Never *may* be too strong a word.)
That's one scenario that's guaranteed to be false. We may be working to enable someone else to live luxuriously, but not for food (except as a motivator). The current population can't be supported by agricultural labor in the old pattern. Any transition in that direction would involve massive deaths that would probably destabilize the society to the point where most people died and most machinery became unmaintainable. The survivors would probably end up looking for caves to live in with no possessions that they couldn't carry...and they'd travel light. A steel ax would be a fortune, but there'd be nothing you could buy it with.
Avoiding that future is one of the things that I *hope* Obama can accomplish. I'm not certain, but I believe it is possible. (Of course the Yellowstone super-volcano could trump anything that we do, but that's a separate matter. It's only something that might happen, and if it does it might not be as bad this time as last time...i.e., some people in the country might live through it. [It could be considerably less bad, down to just oozing lava...but nobody knows.])
In this case there was a lot of word-for-word copying. So it was pretty clearly copying. And the chronology (dated) establishes who wrote the stuff first.
OTOH, this is from classes that I took decades ago, so I can't any longer quote sources. If you're interested enough it's reasonably easy to look up, but I can't even give you pointers as to where.
I also noticed that you didn't quote any particular amount as the amount that would be refunded. I can sort of understand why, but until you get very specific, were I your customer I would continue to be quite irate.
Unstable isn't a guarantee that it's the wrong design. Could be, could be not. Need more info.
Remember that most working designs are unstable during at least part of their operation. Consider a person standing up.
OTOH, being unstable means the need for a dynamic system to maintain the unstable equilibrium...and it can be energetically expensive. But the most recent walking robots have moved to an unstable system because it's much more energetically efficient.
OTOH, this doesn't speak directly to the design of the booster/rocket/payload. I can't. I don't know enough. But you need a better argument than just "it's unstable".
Bailouts should NEVER be just gifts of cash (as recently done). A quid-pro-quo should always be demanded. A space program as a bailout is not good (it should be done for itself), but it's far superior to a cash handout.
Similarly, the bailout of the finance sector should have resulted in massive government ownership and control of the sector. It should have then sold those things off as quickly as the market would bear, but a cash handout was extremely bad. It follows an extremely bad precedent and maintains it. The lesson is "It's ok to gamble recklessly with other peoples money. If you lose, someone else will pay."
Actually, if I remember my anthro correctly, Genesis is formed from the munging together of at least two other creation myths. One was Babylonian, and I don't remember where the other came from. Egypt, possibly. (Not the one about Ptah, though.)
Sorry, but most of the lung-fish have gone extinct. The teleosts use their thing that turned into a lung as a swim-bladder, to achieve neutral buoyancy. Not to say they couldn't evolve into air breathers. (Check with the Florida "Walking Catfish".) Just saying that the path taken would be very different, and thus the "air-breathing rapid runner with homeostatic thermal controls" would be very different from a horse. And probably wouldn't look *that* much like a horse. (Consider the difference between horses and kangaroos, both of which fill approximately similar ecological niches.)
Remember that evolution works by rejecting the most inferior of the available choices. As long as any of them are *good enough*, some will survive. Next time the land animals might end up as hexapods. Quadrupeds might be better, but if there aren't any available to choose, they won't be selected. (OTOH, apparently the original amphibians had a variable number of toes, and five ended up being selected as optimal. But this was a trimming down from a larger number. [Well, the toes are from the bones of an ancestral lungfish's fins, and so are all of the other tarsals. They weren't originally arranged in parallel.]) Still, I find it difficult to believe that four feet are sufficiently better than six that once six had become established, four would have been sufficiently better WHEN IT ORIGINALLY APPEARED to oust the six foot presence...or to even continue to persist. So now we could develop into centaurs and angels...of a sort. (For other reasons, the "angels" would need to be about the size of a bat.)
The fish that had descendants that were some fish and some amphibians were very different from both sets of their descendants. (This isn't required, but that's how it happened.)
During the evolution of amphibians into reptiles, there existed many intermediate species, that if they still survived today would cause classification problems. That one was a transition with lots of intermediate steps. Lots of the transition species still survive, but they tend to get grouped into "amphibian". Salamanders aren't that similar to frogs... But then consider the Axotyl, which is almost an intermediate between an amphibian and a fish. (It generally never passes from the "tadpole" stage to the adult stage...but instead becomes a sexually active "child". So it never turns into an air-breather, even though it looks more like a lizard.)
If you doubt evolution, then you are merely displaying your evidence unless you have a different explanation for millions of disparate pieces of evidence. You could be displaying skepticism, but only if you also doubt all competing theories.
I think you read too many fantasies, and not enough history.
In an anarchistic situation, "Strong men" gather gangs of supporters, each armed, and claim territory. The territory they want and think they can hold. Individual inhabitants already present have the choice of serfdom, exile, or termination.
Additionally, such a social structure won't support a dense population. Figure at least a 90% die-off. Within a decade (and that's optimistic). Who controls the water supply? Who fights fires? Etc. (Peasants are cowards because they don't have much to gain by risking their lives. They aren't properly trained to fight. [That would make them more dangerous in normal times.] And they don't generally have much in the way of weaponry. Peasant uprisings are nearly always driven by desperation.)
The only survivalists that make any sense are the ones that locate themselves in a rural setting with very difficult access. Most such groups are, you will notice, centered around some central strong man.
Newspapers used to be investigative. I know of none that are. (Admittedly, I don't read many.)
When the newspapers became parts of a chain, and had their operating expenses cut by people only vaguely related to the news part of the organization, then newspapers stopped serving the function of investigative reporting. This is probably somewhere around 1980, but it didn't all happen in one instant, it's a progressive pattern that's still continuing. Local papers still occasionally investigate local news. And we heard recently (last year or two) about a London paper that was upset because one of it's Middle East stringers had been sending it photoshopped photos, which implies a certain amount of investigative reporting. But they didn't have anyone on the ground themselves. And news "reporters" embedded in a military group have to be considered PR rather than reporters. They can only transmit what the military group approves of. Papers of the 1950's or 60's would have scoffed at such "news", and considered it only worthy of "scandal sheets".
FWIW, remember that we are on the edge of being able to coax discarded skin cells into growing into a new human being. (Naturally, it would require the cooperation of a host mother, but ...)
Also remember that what today counts as "extensive genetic manipulation" will in a few years count as "minor electrical/chemical treatment". And a few years after that will be simply routine. (The process is currently being worked on as a means of growing organs...currently only very simple ones, naturally.)
OTOH, it's worth remembering that Federal Banks are allowed to lend more money than they have on deposit. Don't remember the details, whether, e.g., it's 1/3 more or 1/4 more, but it *is* magically creating money out of thin air (and statistics...that not all the depositors will ask for their money back at the same time).
It always feels like cheating to me, but really no more so than the Fed printing up as much money as it decides to print.
OTOH, governments ALWAYS debase their currency. The gold standard isn't a solution, Rome was on the gold standard, and they just started decreasing the amount of gold in their official minting. It's essentially an invisible way of raising taxes.
There was an interesting article I read recently about a genetically modified e-coli that produced an eight carbon long alcohol. (I'm not sure how long gasoline is.)
Now this is probably the wrong starter organism, but according to the article they only tried with e-coli because the genome was so thoroughly studied, and in principle they could do the same thing with a large number of other hosts. Say, something that lived on sewage...
The advantages of a long chain alcohol are supposed to be:
1) It separates easily and relatively completely from water
2) Each molecule carries a lot more energy.
I doubt that any one source would suffice, but sewage + waste dumps + algae ponds might suffice to power a large fraction of the vehicles. (Or it might not. I've no idea how efficient this process would be.)
P.S.: I don't disapprove of this project because I'm jealous. If I were there I'd probably never go to the beach anyway. I disapprove of it because it adds carbon to the atmosphere. (They don't say, but I presume so. If they're using solar then I withdraw all my objections.)
When I followed the link, it lead to an external USB hard disk. There was no indication that such hard disk was an SSD, and my expectation was that it was an ordinary hard disk with some fancy electronics that allowed it to be mounted via a USB. (Like some others I've bought. A good deal, if it's a good product, but not the same thing at all.)
It had it's points. But I only LOLed at the "Visual Basic is like Satanism ... except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist". But then I've had to *use* Visual Basic.
Yes, but isn't *most* of the thermal noise auto-suppressed. Which should mean that you only get a statistical outlier now and again. And isn't this why they need to cool really sensitive cameras with liquid hydrogen to just a few Kelvins? (I'm not sure of this, as it may be that it's because they need to camera to be cool enough to not significantly emit in the wavelength being photographed.)
But the thing is that thermal noise is *noise*. Which means that it follows a statistical distribution. Which means that you can't filter it perfectly, without filtering out what you're trying to capture. But you may be able to do a "good enough" job that it won't usually be significant. However if you take a timed exposure with no incoming signal, then it wouldn't be surprising if you got a certain amount of noise / time-interval that wasn't filtered. And the same filter that's suppressing most thermal noise is suppressing cosmic radiation (again, imperfectly). So what I'm proposing is that most of the "signal" detected with the lens cap on is from thermal noise. (P.S.: Thermal noise *also* degrades memories...so this isn't a really significant argument, except that perhaps it argues for storing the stuff in a cold dry place...at which point one needs to worry about static electricity, though that can usually be handled.)
I think a lot of what you're seeing is thermal noise. Not certain, though. This doesn't mean that radiation isn't a problem over longer spans of time, it's just that I don't trust your example.
Wrong, I think. MSWind95 wouldn't install on recent hardware in 2002. It couldn't handle the CD drive. There are ways around it, but the only ones that I have seen proof of are illegal.
One *OUGHT* to be able to run MSWind95 under an emulator, but the emulators I'm familiar with don't emulate an old enough CD drive.
If a person can't switch from MSWind to Linux without a problem, then that person hasn't learned ANYTHING about computers.
OTOH, my wife uses a graphics program for writing letters, because "Word processors are too complicated". She's learned to use a graphics program. That's not learning computers.
It's true that I fought for 6 months to get Linux working right before I finally switched, but I did this in 1998. It's no longer the same process at all. And I had to install the system. (Well, of course, that's a lot easier too.)
The question "How many are you directly supervising?" is a very important one. If it's more than about four, you may be in trouble. (I'm assuming that the department also has a secretary, and that you are directly supervising the secretary.)
One way to handle this is to structure supervision so that you aren't *directly* supervising too many people. You also need to be able to delegate tasks with a due date. (Here I'm assuming that this isn't just one large project. If it is, see if you can refactor it.)
Get to know your people. This can be difficult, but is important. You need to know who you can trust in which situation, and different people are very different. It's got to be OK for people to say that they don't want to do that part, they'd rather do the other, but they also have to be willing to accept that somebody's got to do the unpleasant stuff, and this time it's your turn.
Is that still true? It was true in 1960, but it seems to me that their prices have risen and their costs have diminished.
There's lots of places where that's practical, but ...
Well, the thing is that multi-dimensional arrays in C are quite slow compared to the same thing in Fortran. For lots of math applications, this means that C is seen as a slow cousin to Fortran. When you add on the Python interface ... you'd best not be going back an forth very much.
What's really needed is a better interface between Fortran and C, This is a really tricky thin, and no language manages that kind of interface well. (OTOH, it's possible that Ada is as good at multiple dimensions as Fortran. I don't know. But it, also, doesn't have a good interface with C. Python probably has the best, via Pyrex, but that adds a third language with a third set of rules. UGH!)
What would be really nifty would be if Pyrex would put more effort into being a complete implementation of Python. It couldn't ever really do it, since it's compiled to native code with a C interface, but it could come close. As it is Pyrex was designed as an easy interface from Python to C. For such a purpose it's hard to beat. What I'd like to see is Pyrex expanded into a full implementation of Python. Admittedly this would involve a large run-time library, but using only the "statically compilable" features in a module would execute as fast as equivalent C code, and it would link seamlessly to code that used the run-time features. Unfortunately, I think this might require a basic rewrite of the language. The current implementation is full of PyStrings and PyObjects. (I may have gotten the name slightly wrong.) Only small pieces run at full C speed, and they use a syntax incompatible with standard Python. But "there ought to be a way!".
A huge change from would possibly be correct. I haven't heard anything from anyone except you that would make me think it an improvement...though doubtless there is some group of people who do. Change is less arguable.