I only have a 10 gallon tank, and it's cosing me almost $30 a fill up. I'd be saving $7.50/fill, ~$780/year. Somebody with a truck or SUV would only save more.
You tell somebody that it'll save them $1k a year in fuel and many will go through the bother of keeping it filled. Or just let the oil change guy top it off along with the other fluids.
tverbeek: is a government subsidy to the electronics industry (among others)
Actually it's primarily intended as an expansion of the usefulness of the radio spectrum. Like it or not, it's the FCC's job to manage the radio spectrum and attempt to give the people the best benefit of it. For large chunks of the spectrum, it's assumed capitalism is the best method and the waves are sold. Some chunks are reserved for non-profit, educational use. Some are public and unlicensed, as long as the transmitting equipment follows certain rules (UNI bands, for example).
They can fit 6 digital stations of standard definition into the bandwidth taken up by 1 analoge one. This allows busy cities to have more broadcast channels, approaching analoge cable in capacity. Let's see, CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, public, education, spanish/chinese/indian/whatever plus all the local stations. Ability to broadcast dedicated news stations, even in markets large enough that 40 stations can broadcasting and still be profitable.
While expanding the possible number of stations broadcasting, you also free up spectrum that can possibly be used by emergency responders, wifi, cell phones, etc...
So the fact that that government is chipping in $40 on my behalf - restoring to me the basic broadcast television service they're taking away - seems appropriate to me.
The people they're worried about consider $100 'too expensive'.
As for digital, yeah, it scales it down. But then again, that's known tech, costs <$1 for the capability in bulk. After all, you're mostly just throwing data away.
Not to take away from your point, but the regular smaller, non-High def CRT TVs(IE the cheap ones) over at Walmart have had the digital tuners for about a year.
Still, I have a 32" TV. It works perfectly well, and is approaching 8 years old. If we go ahead and say that the digital tuners weren't put in until 2005, that's still only 4 years from availability of the new tuner until the cutoff of the old system. For my family(not obsessive TV watchers), TVs generally last around 12-15 years.
So only about a third of the TVs would be attritioned to the new tuner as of the cutoff. Still, if you add in new installs, and people replacing before necessary, I'll be generous and say 2/3rds of the TVs will have the tuner in 2009. That still leaves a massive amount of TVs with only the old tuner, rendered useless for one of it's major functions by what's essentially government fiat.
Now, in this case I AGREE with the fiat. This billion dollar handout can easily be paid for by simply selling a few of the freed channels. The radio spectrum has become that valuable. Digital can fit more into a given part of the spectrum than analog can.
Hmmm... 219 Million TVs in 1997. $990 million will provide for 24.75 million set-tops. Or about 10% of the televisons today.
Yeah, if the price of energy rose by 25%, absolutely nobody would start thinking about using less energy for a change.
Sure, people would use less energy. But here's a simple fact: We'd be poorer for it.
Let's look at the opposite: There are all sorts of processes that depend on energy that aren't economical right now. If the price of energy drops 20%. Recyclable Aluminum cans gain economy over plastic bottles. Ethanol and hydrogen become cheaper to produce. Desalination becomes economical in many areas, dropping the cost of food. Heck, hydroponics gain, fresh fruits and vegetables from North Dakota, in North Dakota, in the wintertime. The possibilites are enormous.
But then, there's all sorts of neat technologies out there that aren't practical because they're electricity/energy hungry.
When you're talking about an effect on our economy likely to cost $3-4 trillion annually, lobbying spending is pretty much ancillery.
In another sense, it makes no sense to spend $2 trillion this year on alternate power if regular power only costs $1 trillion; especially if they're forcasting the alternate power to be $1 trillion in 10 years and regular power $1.5 trillion. Make plans and do research, certainly. But in most cases alternate power makes no economic sense for an individual or corporation without massive subsidies.
This means that, in very real ways, we'd be poorer without much to show for it for investing in alternate power sources now.
On the OTHER hand, I do wish that we could count ecological damage in the costs, coal power being a prime example.
Actually, I think that rotational speed will actually have more of an effect than composition. At the levels we're looking at, density will matter more than composition, at least in the long run. Of course, anything big enough to have a significant atmosphere will count.
Of course, the whole 'problem' is that we have this desire for static. Used to be, we were happy to find new 'planets'. Now we want to keep the old planets and not add any more. I agree that we shouldn't water the definition down such that we have hundreds of 'planets', and if what I'm hearing is true, it may be difficult to come up with a definition that includes pluto without including dozens or hundreds of similar bodies.
From what I've heard, SCO has become pretty much a lawsuit machine, throwing it's resources into the suit to the detriment of it's software development.
Thus, SCO's products would be becoming outdated, supported by a company that doesn't appear to be in solid financial shape. The odds of me being able to maintain any SCO systems would look bleak.
Add in the anger at the company for it's frivolous and damaging lawsuit, I'd imagine that I'd be able to get rid of the systems.
That seems reasonable enough, though my definition list included binary planets vs. a planet/moon system. If the center of rotation is INSIDE one of the objects, the other object is a moon, if not, a binary planet.
The variance needed should be around a percentage point. Generally speaking, if it's massive enough to produce a significant atmosphere it's a planet.
For some comparitive purposes, the earth is 12,756.3 km in diameter. Mount Everest is about 8.3 km high, the Marianas Trench is 10.9 km deep. The difference is 19.2 km. This is a 0.15% difference, between the highest solid point and the lowest. Now, due to erosion factors the Earth is actually fairly low on the list. If you count liquid and gas, it'd shrink even more.
The diameter of Mars is 6,794 km, the highest point is 27km, the lowest point is 6 km. Difference is 33km, for a percentage of.49%
A 1% maximum average difference would probably be a good place to start, though you might want to put in a compensation for rotational bulge. What I mean by 'average' would be that we don't want to have to map a planet to the detail that we have earth and mars in order to declare whether it's a planet. I just wanted to point out that planets large enough are relatively uniform in their sphericality.
Hmm... My extent of satellite experience was working with 8" floppies and multiplexors at Schriever AFB years ago, and more recently training in how to configure slightly more modern multiplexors for field applications. Fun time: spending three hours troubleshooting while in chem gear only to have the instructors realize that their satellite simulator(couldn't get real sat time for the exercise) had been jarred out of position.
No, of course you dont want some random joe to take Hubble over. However, they could implement in which "packets" are signed. The data would be separate from the authenticated signature. Along with that, they would want to implement a proper timecode to prevent replay attacks.
I've learned that satellites tend to keep their control and data bands seperate, and the usage of multiplexing* is common, especially when you're talking about multiple instruments. And our demuxers run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for our stuff, much less NASA science stuff. Remember what I said about military private-key encryption being cheaper computationally? Timing is already part of the security, and the hubble was designed back in the '80s and would have to use a system cleared for space and capable of remaining secure through decades of operation. Public key infrastructure is too new, computationally expensive, and expaning of a field. After that, it's easier to encrypt the whole channel than to worry about packets.
Are you even sure that you were trying to listen in on a data channel? From my reading it looks like the hubble stores it's data and then transmits it down in batches.
*For the uninitiated, a multiplexor takes multiple data streams and merges it into one stream, which a demultiplexor then splits back into multiple streams. For example, something like 60 voice lines, two ip networks, a crash-net(think red phone), etc... I'm sure Creepy Crawler knows this, but other readers might not
I have no problems believing that the control data is encrypted for the hubble. For one thing, you don't want others taking it over.
As for the data, I'd imagine that it'd be compressed, encoded, and multiplexed to the point that you'd need special equipment that no normal HAM operator* would have, much less the settings needed to sort it all out and make sense of it.
For public key stuff - that's more computationally intense than private key military encryption methods. Remember, we're talking about systems where a 386 would be considered 'high end'.
*I'm not saying that you're a 'normal' Ham operator, Crawler, but we're talking the space industry here.
You failed to understand me. Thus, the rest of your post is pretty much wasted as I DO understand this.
You see, what I was trying to say is that there are a number of factors tending to push up the value of real estate. Some of these are sustainable, some are not. Due to the non-sustainable factors I see a leveling or even dropping in real home values in many areas.
In summary, demand drives the cost, not the supply. If you build a $1MM house and nobody is willing to pay $1MM, you're out of luck. Supply is the constraint and Demand is the actor. One point that I made is that our population is still rising - an increase in demand. Sure, homes are still being built, but the LAND that previous homes were built on tend to be nearer to the city center, thus are closer to services and working areas. This makes it more valueable. This will continue until we either have a leveling off of population level or a shift in housing style/technology, such as from single-family/duplex homes to condos. But again - there is a certain mythos to the single family home in the USA.
Now imagine that there are 11 identical mansions built. As time goes on, 10 are purchased by the 10 millionaires at $1MM a piece. Tell me: is the 11th house still worth 1MM? If nobody can PAY the $1MM, is that truly what the house is worth? The answer, of course, is no. After all, what good would a worth of $1MM be if it could only ever be sold for, say, $800k?
The appraiser, as part of the real estate market, has a vested interest in staying on the high side of home value, though real estate agents tend to be the worst. They've sold a mythos to the public just like the deBeers. Yes, a home w/land is a lot like stock; It's ultimately only worth what you can get somebody to pay for it. But I've seen it myself, real estate people constantly push the 'homes appreciate!' line. I say - Homes may depreciate at under inflation, but they don't improve in real value unless you improve them under normal conditions. A new bathroom, kitchen, flooring, deck, garage, etc...
Yes, creative financing has helped put people into more house, but aside from ARMS and no down payments, most represent a tiny fraction of home mortgages. But they also cut both ways. ARMS mean that when interest rates rise, it will pain many home owners. Demand will shrink, and home prices will drop.
ahem... from my first post: The problem is that many are getting into trouble now; repossessions are up. So I see it as leveling off.
9GB is entirely doable over even my 2mb connection. I just have to work on it overnight, or when I'm at work, or otherwise not using it.
Sure, it'd be slower than driving to the store and getting it, but it'd actually tie up less of my time, as once I have it in the que I merely have to wait for it to be delivered.
I was about to say this is a good thing because frankly the problem is that teachers don't freaking teach anything in class anymore.
I'd tend to say that this varies depending upon region, school, and even classroom. There are drastic differences in what we expect from students of the same age group in various locations. To the point that a 12th grader in Mississipi doesn't measure up to the average 9th grader in Nebraska academically. There are good schools and bad schools, good teachers and bad teachers.
It doesn't help that parental involvment is actually a better predictor of student success, rather than the school. Areas with poor student performance are strongly correlated with poor parental involvment(school as daycare).
Schools with active parents don't need homework because the parents are likely taking the time to teach the kids despite the lack of homework.
This is off the top of my head, but in 1980 the average CEO earned, i think, 20 times more than his average employee. Today that number is 400 times. These are the people that allow for the "top 3% pay top x% in taxes" arguments.
Yeah, but those CEO's are also the ones most capable of hiding their income. Much of it comes from capital gains(stock options) as well, which are taxed under a different system.
The truth is, it doesn't much make sense that property values would be outstripping the income increases. After all, property values are nothing more than what someone is willing to pay for your house. It simply doesn't make sense that property values would outpace income growth. That's just not how supply & demand works.
Actually it is. There are several reasons why property is going up faster than incomes. The first is that 'No more land is being created', combined with a still increasing population level. Sure, land can still be had for cheap; but what about a house close to your work and maybe a grocery store? That's harder and harder to get.
The Second would be the idea that houses always appreciate, as far as I'm concerned a myth pushed by real estate workers. I'll say that the LAND will appreciate if it's in a good location, but the house won't. Newer houses; properly built; are safer and nicer than old houses. Nasty old houses tend to have been torn down, so mostly only the nicer ones survived.
The Third would be the great expansion of credit. Low interest rates combined with interest only mortgages, Ballon mortgages, ARMS, no down payment mortgages, 50 year mortgages, and such have all increased the money available to people for buying a home. Many have taken the bank up on the offer. The problem is that many are getting into trouble now; repossessions are up. So I see it as leveling off.
Furthermore, it's noteworthy to me that the right wing only wants equality when it saves them money. They were against equality in voting rights, equality in civil rights, equality in gay rights, equality in health care, equality in compensation, equality in criminal justice, etc.
I'll note that the left wing/democrats were the main offenders when it came to voting and civil rights. Gay rights I'll give you as the religious nuts have mostly infested the republican party. As for Health care - Why should it be equal, and for what parties? Equality in compensation? I've read studies that say that once you account for the fact that men, on average, work more hours and have more seniority, women tend to make more. Now, I don't believe this, but I do believe that it's close enough now that major corrective actions would be counter productive. As for criminal justice, it's a sad fact in the USA that black men are statistically far more likely to be a criminal. A colorblind justice system would thus; in the USA; tend to convict more blacks, because they're a larger portion of the criminal class. Now, I personally believe this was due to discrimination resulting in poorer black families that were then effectivly destroyed by the housing projects and welfare. Welfare also destroyed the work ethic. Now, this is not purely a black problem(I 'poor white trash' relatives), but statistically only a small percent lift themselves out of that poverty and crime ridden situation each generation. It's become self sustaining, a cancer on our society. Unfortuantly, like many cancers, treating it will cause the situation to get uglier before it gets better.
bleh... Talk about off topic.
I agree that the tax code is esoteric and convoluted, but it doesn't mean that a progressive tax doesn't work. It just means that a bloated tax code with tons of special case clauses for oil companies or sheep sheerers or steel companies, etc, doesn't work.
Very much true; then there's the evil that is the AMT(Let's force people to figure out their taxes twice!). I tend to be fairly hostile to progressive taxes because it enables the government to be more wasteful without pissing off a majority of people to do something about it. With a flat percentage EVERYBODY would feel the pain equally and possibly find/harrass their representatives enough to actually practice some fiscal restraint.
And by the way, I don't think you _actually_ paid federal income tax on a minimum wage income. I suppose I don't know your specific tax details but someone earning nothing but a single minimum wage job for 40 hours a week shouldn't have any tax liability. It will be deducted from their paychecks but it should all be returned at the end of the year.
Mine was the standard minimum wage situation in my area: High school student, still living with his parents, working a part time job. My parents still claimed me as a dependent, so my standard deduction was something like $400, not $4000.
Don't forget FICA. There's a true regressive income tax. It has a cap just under $100k(goes up each year).
except in a few rare cases that hardly ever apply to large, publicly traded companies
Yeah, the case where the stockholder is also more active than choosing the board of directors. Still, when it comes to corporations, I believe that they can't be guilty of a crime. They aren't a person. Still, the employees, board of directors and CEO can all be held liable for criminal conduct as far as I'm concerned.
I live simply, make good money as an IT consultant, and would love not to pay taxes.
You'd still end up paying some taxes, unless you manage to live below the poverty level. You just wouldn't pay much as a reward for helping our economy grow by investing* in infrastructure.
The opposite's seemed true for most areas for a good while...
Still, Florida used to have an 'intangibles' tax. You'd have to pay a tax on the value of your stocks/bonds/etc.. each year. I understand it was a big pain in the butt.
And yeah, there is a very real difference between being 'rich' and having a large income. I could have a million bucks in the bank and only make $50k a year off of interest from it. By the time I get done with the deductions(Health care would be a big one, as I'd be effectivly self employed), I wouldn't have much taxable income at all.
Sure, there are a lot of jobs in Florida. But there are a LOT of jobs in NYC alone. Any massive movement would be able to swamp the jobs available in Florida and Alaska combined. That was what I was talking about. Heck, one of my sets of granparents moved to Florida from NY, and, while both sets are retired now, they're considerably better off than the set who stayed. This is two sets of grandparents who started out ~50 miles apart from each other, have comparable education levels, etc... One set stayed, the other moved. Inertia can play a large role in this stuff. The set who stayed are also not able to 'game the system' very well.
And yes, NY has a high unemployment rate. That's partially caused by the relativly high tax rate and a generous welfare system. The combination creates a situation where the benefits of being employed compared to unemployed is less in NY than many other areas.
Should have known this would come up. For the record, I support the fairtax idea. It's also progressive, though maybe not as much as currently. Sure, there are some issues with it, but I believe those issues to be less than the issues with the current system, which is massive fraud, complexity, and inefficiency. I happen to believe that it shouldn't take more than an hour for the average family to calculate their taxes.
In summary, the only people that want a sales tax are those that don't understand it's implications and those that could pay less taxes by shifting the tax burden more on the lower & middle classes.
I'd likely pay more in taxes under the new system than what's currently the case. Still, I firmly believe that I'd ultimately come out ahead due to increases in the economy.
The notion that there is tax injustice because the top minority of Americans pays the majority of taxes is absurd. The people at the top of the food chain reap the highest rewards of our society. Without our national infrastructure, they wouldn't be able to make and horde millions or billions of dollars. They SHOULD pay a tax burden that more closely resembles their share of the US pie, not necessarily their share of the US Population.
I'd argue that the wealthy tend to be some of the cheapest for the government to support - It's the poor that consume the majority of the government's resources. Rich neighborhoods place less stress on pretty much every government resource going. There's less crime for the police to pursue, fewer fires as their buildings tend to be up to code, and not really getting much welfare. They do tend to get assistance, because like in other matters - they're rich because they know how to game the system.
Despite this all, the truly rich tend to pay less in taxes as a percentage than the middle class. Why? Because they've managed to game the system. Even when the top rates were much higher, research shows that the truly wealthy tended to pay about the same percentage in taxes. They simply diverted from making money to hiding money. Hired more accountants rather than more engineers.
As for them not investing money instead of spending it - That's the best way to grow the economy.
And I'm not too sympathetic for the 'poor' either. I happen to like the idea of charging a flat $4k or whatever per adult to fund our country. That way the largest portion of our population would be trying to get them to spend less.
I've paid income taxes even as a minimum wage earner. I think that's for the best.
I remember an issue like this coming up somewhere, I think it was California. So they set up a system where you could pay *extra* taxes if you felt that you weren't paying enough.
The year's take for that system was under $1k. $23 keeps coming into my head.
*Everybody* pays the minimum tax they can. The only cases where they don't is some people will only take some of their more questionable deductions as a form of insurance. That way they have something to fight back with in case an audit happens and disallows some of their deductions.
Of course, the whole system's screwy. I mean, the various tax preparers and IRS agents can't agree on the return of a 'typical' family with 2 kids, 2 jobs, a mortgage and some savings.
There are benefits to living in NY* and NYC that aren't enjoyed elsewhere. For one, there's not enough jobs in Florida/Alaska. For another, there aren't the services. I bemoan the lack of a good chinese restraunt in my area, for example. Still, my property taxes are only $120/year. It's a trade-off.
The biggest problem for the people in NY is that they can't take their job with them. Corporations, not being individuals, can be in multiple locations at once. Moving where they pay taxes from one location to another is mostly a matter of bookkeeping.
Personally, I believe that the best answer in many of these cases are to stop trying to tax people's incomes, but to tax their spending with a sales tax. It's easy to administer and audit, very visible. There's very little way to avoid it without not spending money. It avoids the double taxation that is corporate income tax. First they tax the corp's income, then they tax the dividends paid to the owners of the stock.
*Note: I'm not a NY resident, though a set of my grandparents are. On the whole I think that it's a net negative for them, but they've always lived there, and aren't about to move out of their town, much less the state. The set of grandparents that DID move out of NY ended up in Florida.
But that would be unstable. You bump the wall and half of it falls off. I see no reason not to build a more solid structure built out of plug-in modular units. Inflatable does not get you anything over solid units.
I noted earlier that the wall would end up very stiff. You hitting the wall wouldn't cause much vibration outside to begin with. As for it falling off, all you need to do to prevent that is to have some structure outside to prevent it. On earth we use sandbags. On the moon a net might be sufficient, though sandbags would work as well. Worst case you double-wall the shelter. Best case you simply pile up more soil along the sides to help support the soil higher up. Even if it ends up being sixteen feet along the sides instead of four, that simply gives you a more gradual slope to carry the soil to put up top.
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I only have a 10 gallon tank, and it's cosing me almost $30 a fill up. I'd be saving $7.50/fill, ~$780/year. Somebody with a truck or SUV would only save more.
You tell somebody that it'll save them $1k a year in fuel and many will go through the bother of keeping it filled. Or just let the oil change guy top it off along with the other fluids.
tverbeek: is a government subsidy to the electronics industry (among others)
Actually it's primarily intended as an expansion of the usefulness of the radio spectrum. Like it or not, it's the FCC's job to manage the radio spectrum and attempt to give the people the best benefit of it. For large chunks of the spectrum, it's assumed capitalism is the best method and the waves are sold. Some chunks are reserved for non-profit, educational use. Some are public and unlicensed, as long as the transmitting equipment follows certain rules (UNI bands, for example).
They can fit 6 digital stations of standard definition into the bandwidth taken up by 1 analoge one. This allows busy cities to have more broadcast channels, approaching analoge cable in capacity. Let's see, CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, public, education, spanish/chinese/indian/whatever plus all the local stations. Ability to broadcast dedicated news stations, even in markets large enough that 40 stations can broadcasting and still be profitable.
While expanding the possible number of stations broadcasting, you also free up spectrum that can possibly be used by emergency responders, wifi, cell phones, etc...
So the fact that that government is chipping in $40 on my behalf - restoring to me the basic broadcast television service they're taking away - seems appropriate to me.
I do agree with this.
The people they're worried about consider $100 'too expensive'.
As for digital, yeah, it scales it down. But then again, that's known tech, costs <$1 for the capability in bulk. After all, you're mostly just throwing data away.
Not to take away from your point, but the regular smaller, non-High def CRT TVs(IE the cheap ones) over at Walmart have had the digital tuners for about a year.
Still, I have a 32" TV. It works perfectly well, and is approaching 8 years old. If we go ahead and say that the digital tuners weren't put in until 2005, that's still only 4 years from availability of the new tuner until the cutoff of the old system. For my family(not obsessive TV watchers), TVs generally last around 12-15 years.
So only about a third of the TVs would be attritioned to the new tuner as of the cutoff. Still, if you add in new installs, and people replacing before necessary, I'll be generous and say 2/3rds of the TVs will have the tuner in 2009. That still leaves a massive amount of TVs with only the old tuner, rendered useless for one of it's major functions by what's essentially government fiat.
Now, in this case I AGREE with the fiat. This billion dollar handout can easily be paid for by simply selling a few of the freed channels. The radio spectrum has become that valuable. Digital can fit more into a given part of the spectrum than analog can.
Hmmm... 219 Million TVs in 1997. $990 million will provide for 24.75 million set-tops. Or about 10% of the televisons today.
Yeah, if the price of energy rose by 25%, absolutely nobody would start thinking about using less energy for a change.
Sure, people would use less energy. But here's a simple fact: We'd be poorer for it.
Let's look at the opposite: There are all sorts of processes that depend on energy that aren't economical right now. If the price of energy drops 20%. Recyclable Aluminum cans gain economy over plastic bottles. Ethanol and hydrogen become cheaper to produce. Desalination becomes economical in many areas, dropping the cost of food. Heck, hydroponics gain, fresh fruits and vegetables from North Dakota, in North Dakota, in the wintertime. The possibilites are enormous.
But then, there's all sorts of neat technologies out there that aren't practical because they're electricity/energy hungry.
When you're talking about an effect on our economy likely to cost $3-4 trillion annually, lobbying spending is pretty much ancillery.
In another sense, it makes no sense to spend $2 trillion this year on alternate power if regular power only costs $1 trillion; especially if they're forcasting the alternate power to be $1 trillion in 10 years and regular power $1.5 trillion. Make plans and do research, certainly. But in most cases alternate power makes no economic sense for an individual or corporation without massive subsidies.
This means that, in very real ways, we'd be poorer without much to show for it for investing in alternate power sources now.
On the OTHER hand, I do wish that we could count ecological damage in the costs, coal power being a prime example.
Bulges are going to depend upon rotational speed
Actually, I think that rotational speed will actually have more of an effect than composition. At the levels we're looking at, density will matter more than composition, at least in the long run. Of course, anything big enough to have a significant atmosphere will count.
Of course, the whole 'problem' is that we have this desire for static. Used to be, we were happy to find new 'planets'. Now we want to keep the old planets and not add any more. I agree that we shouldn't water the definition down such that we have hundreds of 'planets', and if what I'm hearing is true, it may be difficult to come up with a definition that includes pluto without including dozens or hundreds of similar bodies.
From what I've heard, SCO has become pretty much a lawsuit machine, throwing it's resources into the suit to the detriment of it's software development.
Thus, SCO's products would be becoming outdated, supported by a company that doesn't appear to be in solid financial shape. The odds of me being able to maintain any SCO systems would look bleak.
Add in the anger at the company for it's frivolous and damaging lawsuit, I'd imagine that I'd be able to get rid of the systems.
That seems reasonable enough, though my definition list included binary planets vs. a planet/moon system. If the center of rotation is INSIDE one of the objects, the other object is a moon, if not, a binary planet.
.49%
The variance needed should be around a percentage point. Generally speaking, if it's massive enough to produce a significant atmosphere it's a planet.
For some comparitive purposes, the earth is 12,756.3 km in diameter. Mount Everest is about 8.3 km high, the Marianas Trench is 10.9 km deep. The difference is 19.2 km. This is a 0.15% difference, between the highest solid point and the lowest. Now, due to erosion factors the Earth is actually fairly low on the list. If you count liquid and gas, it'd shrink even more.
The diameter of Mars is 6,794 km, the highest point is 27km, the lowest point is 6 km. Difference is 33km, for a percentage of
A 1% maximum average difference would probably be a good place to start, though you might want to put in a compensation for rotational bulge. What I mean by 'average' would be that we don't want to have to map a planet to the detail that we have earth and mars in order to declare whether it's a planet. I just wanted to point out that planets large enough are relatively uniform in their sphericality.
Hmm... My extent of satellite experience was working with 8" floppies and multiplexors at Schriever AFB years ago, and more recently training in how to configure slightly more modern multiplexors for field applications. Fun time: spending three hours troubleshooting while in chem gear only to have the instructors realize that their satellite simulator(couldn't get real sat time for the exercise) had been jarred out of position.
No, of course you dont want some random joe to take Hubble over. However, they could implement in which "packets" are signed. The data would be separate from the authenticated signature. Along with that, they would want to implement a proper timecode to prevent replay attacks.
I've learned that satellites tend to keep their control and data bands seperate, and the usage of multiplexing* is common, especially when you're talking about multiple instruments. And our demuxers run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for our stuff, much less NASA science stuff. Remember what I said about military private-key encryption being cheaper computationally? Timing is already part of the security, and the hubble was designed back in the '80s and would have to use a system cleared for space and capable of remaining secure through decades of operation. Public key infrastructure is too new, computationally expensive, and expaning of a field. After that, it's easier to encrypt the whole channel than to worry about packets.
Are you even sure that you were trying to listen in on a data channel? From my reading it looks like the hubble stores it's data and then transmits it down in batches.
*For the uninitiated, a multiplexor takes multiple data streams and merges it into one stream, which a demultiplexor then splits back into multiple streams. For example, something like 60 voice lines, two ip networks, a crash-net(think red phone), etc... I'm sure Creepy Crawler knows this, but other readers might not
I have no problems believing that the control data is encrypted for the hubble. For one thing, you don't want others taking it over.
As for the data, I'd imagine that it'd be compressed, encoded, and multiplexed to the point that you'd need special equipment that no normal HAM operator* would have, much less the settings needed to sort it all out and make sense of it.
For public key stuff - that's more computationally intense than private key military encryption methods. Remember, we're talking about systems where a 386 would be considered 'high end'.
*I'm not saying that you're a 'normal' Ham operator, Crawler, but we're talking the space industry here.
You fail to grasp the true definition of "Value."
You failed to understand me. Thus, the rest of your post is pretty much wasted as I DO understand this.
You see, what I was trying to say is that there are a number of factors tending to push up the value of real estate. Some of these are sustainable, some are not. Due to the non-sustainable factors I see a leveling or even dropping in real home values in many areas.
In summary, demand drives the cost, not the supply. If you build a $1MM house and nobody is willing to pay $1MM, you're out of luck. Supply is the constraint and Demand is the actor.
One point that I made is that our population is still rising - an increase in demand. Sure, homes are still being built, but the LAND that previous homes were built on tend to be nearer to the city center, thus are closer to services and working areas. This makes it more valueable. This will continue until we either have a leveling off of population level or a shift in housing style/technology, such as from single-family/duplex homes to condos. But again - there is a certain mythos to the single family home in the USA.
Now imagine that there are 11 identical mansions built. As time goes on, 10 are purchased by the 10 millionaires at $1MM a piece. Tell me: is the 11th house still worth 1MM? If nobody can PAY the $1MM, is that truly what the house is worth? The answer, of course, is no. After all, what good would a worth of $1MM be if it could only ever be sold for, say, $800k?
The appraiser, as part of the real estate market, has a vested interest in staying on the high side of home value, though real estate agents tend to be the worst. They've sold a mythos to the public just like the deBeers. Yes, a home w/land is a lot like stock; It's ultimately only worth what you can get somebody to pay for it. But I've seen it myself, real estate people constantly push the 'homes appreciate!' line. I say - Homes may depreciate at under inflation, but they don't improve in real value unless you improve them under normal conditions. A new bathroom, kitchen, flooring, deck, garage, etc...
Yes, creative financing has helped put people into more house, but aside from ARMS and no down payments, most represent a tiny fraction of home mortgages. But they also cut both ways. ARMS mean that when interest rates rise, it will pain many home owners. Demand will shrink, and home prices will drop.
ahem... from my first post: The problem is that many are getting into trouble now; repossessions are up. So I see it as leveling off.
But it would allow a much larger movie selection to be fitted into a given area of shelf/floor space, which does cost money in stores.
It'd answer many of the problems with finding movies that the store doesn't happen to have in stock.
9GB is entirely doable over even my 2mb connection. I just have to work on it overnight, or when I'm at work, or otherwise not using it.
Sure, it'd be slower than driving to the store and getting it, but it'd actually tie up less of my time, as once I have it in the que I merely have to wait for it to be delivered.
I was about to say this is a good thing because frankly the problem is that teachers don't freaking teach anything in class anymore.
I'd tend to say that this varies depending upon region, school, and even classroom. There are drastic differences in what we expect from students of the same age group in various locations. To the point that a 12th grader in Mississipi doesn't measure up to the average 9th grader in Nebraska academically. There are good schools and bad schools, good teachers and bad teachers.
It doesn't help that parental involvment is actually a better predictor of student success, rather than the school. Areas with poor student performance are strongly correlated with poor parental involvment(school as daycare).
Schools with active parents don't need homework because the parents are likely taking the time to teach the kids despite the lack of homework.
I wouldn't forget a suicide rate so high that their 'death by deliberate human action'(IE Murder and suicide combined) is higher than the USA's.
It's so bad that the train companies charge the family for clean-up after somebody jumps in front of a train...
This is off the top of my head, but in 1980 the average CEO earned, i think, 20 times more than his average employee. Today that number is 400 times. These are the people that allow for the "top 3% pay top x% in taxes" arguments.
Yeah, but those CEO's are also the ones most capable of hiding their income. Much of it comes from capital gains(stock options) as well, which are taxed under a different system.
The truth is, it doesn't much make sense that property values would be outstripping the income increases. After all, property values are nothing more than what someone is willing to pay for your house. It simply doesn't make sense that property values would outpace income growth. That's just not how supply & demand works.
Actually it is. There are several reasons why property is going up faster than incomes. The first is that 'No more land is being created', combined with a still increasing population level. Sure, land can still be had for cheap; but what about a house close to your work and maybe a grocery store? That's harder and harder to get.
The Second would be the idea that houses always appreciate, as far as I'm concerned a myth pushed by real estate workers. I'll say that the LAND will appreciate if it's in a good location, but the house won't. Newer houses; properly built; are safer and nicer than old houses. Nasty old houses tend to have been torn down, so mostly only the nicer ones survived.
The Third would be the great expansion of credit. Low interest rates combined with interest only mortgages, Ballon mortgages, ARMS, no down payment mortgages, 50 year mortgages, and such have all increased the money available to people for buying a home. Many have taken the bank up on the offer. The problem is that many are getting into trouble now; repossessions are up. So I see it as leveling off.
Ah great... The system ate my first reply.
Furthermore, it's noteworthy to me that the right wing only wants equality when it saves them money. They were against equality in voting rights, equality in civil rights, equality in gay rights, equality in health care, equality in compensation, equality in criminal justice, etc.
I'll note that the left wing/democrats were the main offenders when it came to voting and civil rights. Gay rights I'll give you as the religious nuts have mostly infested the republican party. As for Health care - Why should it be equal, and for what parties? Equality in compensation? I've read studies that say that once you account for the fact that men, on average, work more hours and have more seniority, women tend to make more. Now, I don't believe this, but I do believe that it's close enough now that major corrective actions would be counter productive. As for criminal justice, it's a sad fact in the USA that black men are statistically far more likely to be a criminal. A colorblind justice system would thus; in the USA; tend to convict more blacks, because they're a larger portion of the criminal class. Now, I personally believe this was due to discrimination resulting in poorer black families that were then effectivly destroyed by the housing projects and welfare. Welfare also destroyed the work ethic. Now, this is not purely a black problem(I 'poor white trash' relatives), but statistically only a small percent lift themselves out of that poverty and crime ridden situation each generation. It's become self sustaining, a cancer on our society. Unfortuantly, like many cancers, treating it will cause the situation to get uglier before it gets better.
bleh... Talk about off topic.
I agree that the tax code is esoteric and convoluted, but it doesn't mean that a progressive tax doesn't work. It just means that a bloated tax code with tons of special case clauses for oil companies or sheep sheerers or steel companies, etc, doesn't work.
Very much true; then there's the evil that is the AMT(Let's force people to figure out their taxes twice!). I tend to be fairly hostile to progressive taxes because it enables the government to be more wasteful without pissing off a majority of people to do something about it. With a flat percentage EVERYBODY would feel the pain equally and possibly find/harrass their representatives enough to actually practice some fiscal restraint.
And by the way, I don't think you _actually_ paid federal income tax on a minimum wage income. I suppose I don't know your specific tax details but someone earning nothing but a single minimum wage job for 40 hours a week shouldn't have any tax liability. It will be deducted from their paychecks but it should all be returned at the end of the year.
Mine was the standard minimum wage situation in my area: High school student, still living with his parents, working a part time job. My parents still claimed me as a dependent, so my standard deduction was something like $400, not $4000.
Don't forget FICA. There's a true regressive income tax. It has a cap just under $100k(goes up each year).
except in a few rare cases that hardly ever apply to large, publicly traded companies
Yeah, the case where the stockholder is also more active than choosing the board of directors. Still, when it comes to corporations, I believe that they can't be guilty of a crime. They aren't a person. Still, the employees, board of directors and CEO can all be held liable for criminal conduct as far as I'm concerned.
I live simply, make good money as an IT consultant, and would love not to pay taxes.
You'd still end up paying some taxes, unless you manage to live below the poverty level. You just wouldn't pay much as a reward for helping our economy grow by investing* in infrastructure.
*In a very abstract way, of course.
Incomes can grow faster than property values.
The opposite's seemed true for most areas for a good while...
Still, Florida used to have an 'intangibles' tax. You'd have to pay a tax on the value of your stocks/bonds/etc.. each year. I understand it was a big pain in the butt.
And yeah, there is a very real difference between being 'rich' and having a large income. I could have a million bucks in the bank and only make $50k a year off of interest from it. By the time I get done with the deductions(Health care would be a big one, as I'd be effectivly self employed), I wouldn't have much taxable income at all.
Normally I don't answer AC's, but I will.
Sure, there are a lot of jobs in Florida. But there are a LOT of jobs in NYC alone. Any massive movement would be able to swamp the jobs available in Florida and Alaska combined. That was what I was talking about. Heck, one of my sets of granparents moved to Florida from NY, and, while both sets are retired now, they're considerably better off than the set who stayed. This is two sets of grandparents who started out ~50 miles apart from each other, have comparable education levels, etc... One set stayed, the other moved. Inertia can play a large role in this stuff. The set who stayed are also not able to 'game the system' very well.
And yes, NY has a high unemployment rate. That's partially caused by the relativly high tax rate and a generous welfare system. The combination creates a situation where the benefits of being employed compared to unemployed is less in NY than many other areas.
Sigh....
Should have known this would come up. For the record, I support the fairtax idea. It's also progressive, though maybe not as much as currently. Sure, there are some issues with it, but I believe those issues to be less than the issues with the current system, which is massive fraud, complexity, and inefficiency. I happen to believe that it shouldn't take more than an hour for the average family to calculate their taxes.
In summary, the only people that want a sales tax are those that don't understand it's implications and those that could pay less taxes by shifting the tax burden more on the lower & middle classes.
I'd likely pay more in taxes under the new system than what's currently the case. Still, I firmly believe that I'd ultimately come out ahead due to increases in the economy.
The notion that there is tax injustice because the top minority of Americans pays the majority of taxes is absurd. The people at the top of the food chain reap the highest rewards of our society. Without our national infrastructure, they wouldn't be able to make and horde millions or billions of dollars. They SHOULD pay a tax burden that more closely resembles their share of the US pie, not necessarily their share of the US Population.
I'd argue that the wealthy tend to be some of the cheapest for the government to support - It's the poor that consume the majority of the government's resources. Rich neighborhoods place less stress on pretty much every government resource going. There's less crime for the police to pursue, fewer fires as their buildings tend to be up to code, and not really getting much welfare. They do tend to get assistance, because like in other matters - they're rich because they know how to game the system.
Despite this all, the truly rich tend to pay less in taxes as a percentage than the middle class. Why? Because they've managed to game the system. Even when the top rates were much higher, research shows that the truly wealthy tended to pay about the same percentage in taxes. They simply diverted from making money to hiding money. Hired more accountants rather than more engineers.
As for them not investing money instead of spending it - That's the best way to grow the economy.
And I'm not too sympathetic for the 'poor' either. I happen to like the idea of charging a flat $4k or whatever per adult to fund our country. That way the largest portion of our population would be trying to get them to spend less.
I've paid income taxes even as a minimum wage earner. I think that's for the best.
I remember an issue like this coming up somewhere, I think it was California. So they set up a system where you could pay *extra* taxes if you felt that you weren't paying enough.
The year's take for that system was under $1k. $23 keeps coming into my head.
*Everybody* pays the minimum tax they can. The only cases where they don't is some people will only take some of their more questionable deductions as a form of insurance. That way they have something to fight back with in case an audit happens and disallows some of their deductions.
Of course, the whole system's screwy. I mean, the various tax preparers and IRS agents can't agree on the return of a 'typical' family with 2 kids, 2 jobs, a mortgage and some savings.
There are benefits to living in NY* and NYC that aren't enjoyed elsewhere. For one, there's not enough jobs in Florida/Alaska. For another, there aren't the services. I bemoan the lack of a good chinese restraunt in my area, for example. Still, my property taxes are only $120/year. It's a trade-off.
The biggest problem for the people in NY is that they can't take their job with them. Corporations, not being individuals, can be in multiple locations at once. Moving where they pay taxes from one location to another is mostly a matter of bookkeeping.
Personally, I believe that the best answer in many of these cases are to stop trying to tax people's incomes, but to tax their spending with a sales tax. It's easy to administer and audit, very visible. There's very little way to avoid it without not spending money. It avoids the double taxation that is corporate income tax. First they tax the corp's income, then they tax the dividends paid to the owners of the stock.
*Note: I'm not a NY resident, though a set of my grandparents are. On the whole I think that it's a net negative for them, but they've always lived there, and aren't about to move out of their town, much less the state. The set of grandparents that DID move out of NY ended up in Florida.
But that would be unstable. You bump the wall and half of it falls off. I see no reason not to build a more solid structure built out of plug-in modular units. Inflatable does not get you anything over solid units.
I noted earlier that the wall would end up very stiff. You hitting the wall wouldn't cause much vibration outside to begin with. As for it falling off, all you need to do to prevent that is to have some structure outside to prevent it. On earth we use sandbags. On the moon a net might be sufficient, though sandbags would work as well. Worst case you double-wall the shelter. Best case you simply pile up more soil along the sides to help support the soil higher up. Even if it ends up being sixteen feet along the sides instead of four, that simply gives you a more gradual slope to carry the soil to put up top.