Actually, many of the former satellites are much better than "3rd World".
For example, the Czech Republic has a per capita GDP of $11,700, while U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has a per capita GDP of $9,800, EU member Greece is at $13,900, and South Korea is $13,300.
To compare, Russia is at $4,200, the Dominican Republic is at $5,400, Turkey is $6,200, and China is $3,800.
59% of households have computers. 100% of households would merely means a minnimum of 1 computer for every 3.4ish people (IIRC), because that's the size of the average household. 59% of 1/3.4 equals 17%.
So 20% of the population owns computers; 60% of the population lives in a household where somebody owns a computer.
Yes, sales growth in the U.S. will start to trend toward zero compared to the '90s average of 15-20% oer year. After all, auto sales growth in the U.S. in the long run pegs pretty closely to per capita income increases and population growth; it's otherwise basically static.
No, we're not to that point in the U.S. We're looking at a era where sales growth will seriously decline in dollar terms, and growth in units decline somewhat. Sub-$300 computers (including monitor and printer, with no gimick rebates) are the future of sales growth in the remaining 41% of computerless households. (To switch analogies -- in the mid '80s VCRs were in the $1,500 range, and today they're $99.)
Well, other than your argument from authority (a logical fallacy that you should have learned about by now, oh fast learner)...
How do you know that everybody starts at a slower learning rate than what you have finally achieved?
If you're 40 and I'm 20, and you were learning at a rate of 4 units at birth, which accelerated and compounded at 2% a year, while I started at 8 units which accelerated and compounded at 4% a year, guess what? I not only know as much as you, but I'll be ahead of you next year and for the entire future.
Since it is known that humans do have wide variances in learning capacity, apparently "wisdom" is lack of knowledge of reality, ignorance of mathematics, or hubris.
A 1-in-a-million risk of 120 people dying over 50 years? So a 1-in-2,500,000,000,000,000 increase in the chance of any one individual dying in each of the next 50 years. Sounds like "no risk" to me.
Re:Is anyone else worried about this?
on
China Aims At Moon
·
· Score: 1
Your sarcasm marks you as an irrational religous hypocrite.
Aesthetic environmentalism is one of the stupidest ideologies in human history. It simultaneously requires humans to be considered separate from nature (scientifically irrational) and inferior to nature (a religious doctrine). And its believers are all hypocrites, since the only way to practice it is to kill as many humans as possible, including oneself, so that one ceases contaminating nature.
Too bad you weren't bold enough to post logged in.
"[D]riving responsibly, parking sensibly, spitting carefully" are not civic duties; they are basic respect for the rights of others. Civic duties are things like compulsory jury duty, compulsory military service, and compulsory voting.
Three theories of the legitimate grounds for the power of the State were propounded in 18th Century England. The first was Hobbes, who held that the State was inherently good and had a right to inflict whatever it wished on its people. The second was Blackstone, who argued that the State should act as an agent of God in forcing people to act as they should, while respecting certain rights granted to them by God. The third was Locke, who claimed that the state had merely the right to prevent people from violating the natural rights of others.
There are two distinguishing features of American law and politics from those of Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand is that the United States. First, while Blackstonian thought became a purely agnostic "society-based" variety in the Commonwealth, religious Blackstonians are still prominent in the United States (in the Republican Party). Second, while Lockean thought was never more than a passing fancy in the Commonwealth, it became rooted in the United States, undergirded our founding documents, and still has political currency.
Frankly, I wish the Big Two Parties would try to impose compulsory voting in the U.S.; the Libertarians would have 30% of the vote and capture 100 Congressional seats in the next election.
NeXT bought Apple in december 1996 for -400M$ (fell free to change the order of the words and the sign of the price for the official version), but it took them *4* years to get to OSX beta. And they probably took their fastest path.
NeXT bought Apple? Interesting, All this time I thought it was the other way around.
You missed his subtle "-" in front of the "400M$". Nominally, Apple bought NeXT; however, the upper levels of executives in the combined entity are dominated by NeXT personnel.
Buy from Chapters.ca if you're willing to wait a few weeks and pay a buck or two more for shipping. They have the British editions, which is how I got my copies of Mort, Guards! Guards!, Moving Pictures, and Pyramids.
Re:Americans and British Humour
on
The Truth
·
· Score: 2
Making multihundred square meter curved mirrors out of lunar material in a zero-G environment is not understood.
On solar, I did say "(at most thrice)". The numbers work that avoiding the atmosphere gives you a factor of about 1.5, and 24-h days plus tracking gives you a factor of 4 -- that is, x6 generation, which then suffers about a 50% loss in microwave transmission, to x3 generation vs. a fixed Earth-based solar plant. Make the Earth-based arrays track the Sun, and the Earth output almost doubles, giving the space sats a mere 2x to 1.5x advantage per unit area than Earth-based solar power generation.
In the meantime, you'll have invested trillions in making the sats, which means a multicentury period before a profit can be made at current electrical rates. Meaning the sats will only be economically viable when all other current electricity generation methods are insufficient. And at current rates of increase in use in power, that'll be over 150 years, if fusion fails.
Actually, colonization of the Americas followed three patterns. The first was soldiers looting the remains of wealthy Indian empires. The second was trappers looting the wilderness with the help of Indians.
The third, and the only one not fundamentally dependent on already existing human societies in the Americas, was upper-middle-class members of society liquidating their personal wealth to travel to a land where they didn't have to fear persecution for their religion and were free to persecute others for the others' religion.
Later these colonies were supplemented by convicts transported from overseas as punishment and poorer people hired or bought by the wealthy descendants of previous settlers. Only after they developed into wealthy countries connected by fast, cheap transport to Europe did the tired and poor huddled masses travel to those colonies.
Technologically, this is entirely possible, with one exception -- we do not know how to make the mirrors which his colonies would be dependent on for food, and have virtually no experience with any form of space-based refining and manufacturing.
Economically, the costs in supplying the construction from Earth with food and "tools to build the tools" and temporary habits and other essentials would run into the trillions before the first solar power sat started beaming power back to Earth. And the sat would only produce a little (at most thrice) more Earth-usable power for the Earth than Earth-based solar collectors with tracking motors.
The result is that one would have to bet trillions on unproven technology to sell power for marginally less than Earth-based solar power can sell for. Which means any return is dependent on nuclear fusion failing, our running out of both fosssil fuels and uranium, and no cheaper-than-space-solar energy technologies being developed on Earth.
As a social vision, The High Frontier is a great book. But it won't be a viable plan in any of our lifetimes, even with tellomere treatments.
No, it's not security through obscurity. Security through obscurity is reliance on the fact that the encryption method is secret to keep the data from being read. It's dismissed because a poor encryption method is vulnerable to mathematical attack no matter how secret it is, and a good encryption method is relatively invulnerable even if the method is known.
But encryption is not the end-all and be-all of security. While it hides the data you're sending, it doesn't hide the fact that you're sending a message, and is thus absolutely worthless against signals intelligence. For example, if a spy in Beijing is sending encrypted letters adressed to CIA headquarters every day from his home's mailbox, then no matter how well encrypted the message he sends, it's still obvious that he's sending information to the CIA. If he's posting pictures of his kids that have an encrypted message hidden in them to a photos newsgroup, it isn't as obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, many of the former satellites are much better than "3rd World".
For example, the Czech Republic has a per capita GDP of $11,700, while U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has a per capita GDP of $9,800, EU member Greece is at $13,900, and South Korea is $13,300.
To compare, Russia is at $4,200, the Dominican Republic is at $5,400, Turkey is $6,200, and China is $3,800.
59% of households have computers. 100% of households would merely means a minnimum of 1 computer for every 3.4ish people (IIRC), because that's the size of the average household. 59% of 1/3.4 equals 17%.
So 20% of the population owns computers; 60% of the population lives in a household where somebody owns a computer.
Er, it said there'd be a end to sales growth
Well, guess what? Average car sales growth is essentially zero after accounting for population increase and per capita income increase.
Yes, sales growth in the U.S. will start to trend toward zero compared to the '90s average of 15-20% oer year. After all, auto sales growth in the U.S. in the long run pegs pretty closely to per capita income increases and population growth; it's otherwise basically static.
No, we're not to that point in the U.S. We're looking at a era where sales growth will seriously decline in dollar terms, and growth in units decline somewhat. Sub-$300 computers (including monitor and printer, with no gimick rebates) are the future of sales growth in the remaining 41% of computerless households. (To switch analogies -- in the mid '80s VCRs were in the $1,500 range, and today they're $99.)
Well, other than your argument from authority (a logical fallacy that you should have learned about by now, oh fast learner)...
How do you know that everybody starts at a slower learning rate than what you have finally achieved?
If you're 40 and I'm 20, and you were learning at a rate of 4 units at birth, which accelerated and compounded at 2% a year, while I started at 8 units which accelerated and compounded at 4% a year, guess what? I not only know as much as you, but I'll be ahead of you next year and for the entire future.
Since it is known that humans do have wide variances in learning capacity, apparently "wisdom" is lack of knowledge of reality, ignorance of mathematics, or hubris.
A 1-in-a-million risk of 120 people dying over 50 years? So a 1-in-2,500,000,000,000,000 increase in the chance of any one individual dying in each of the next 50 years. Sounds like "no risk" to me.
Your sarcasm marks you as an irrational religous hypocrite.
Aesthetic environmentalism is one of the stupidest ideologies in human history. It simultaneously requires humans to be considered separate from nature (scientifically irrational) and inferior to nature (a religious doctrine). And its believers are all hypocrites, since the only way to practice it is to kill as many humans as possible, including oneself, so that one ceases contaminating nature.
Too bad you weren't bold enough to post logged in.
"[D]riving responsibly, parking sensibly, spitting carefully" are not civic duties; they are basic respect for the rights of others. Civic duties are things like compulsory jury duty, compulsory military service, and compulsory voting.
Three theories of the legitimate grounds for the power of the State were propounded in 18th Century England. The first was Hobbes, who held that the State was inherently good and had a right to inflict whatever it wished on its people. The second was Blackstone, who argued that the State should act as an agent of God in forcing people to act as they should, while respecting certain rights granted to them by God. The third was Locke, who claimed that the state had merely the right to prevent people from violating the natural rights of others.
There are two distinguishing features of American law and politics from those of Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand is that the United States. First, while Blackstonian thought became a purely agnostic "society-based" variety in the Commonwealth, religious Blackstonians are still prominent in the United States (in the Republican Party). Second, while Lockean thought was never more than a passing fancy in the Commonwealth, it became rooted in the United States, undergirded our founding documents, and still has political currency.
Frankly, I wish the Big Two Parties would try to impose compulsory voting in the U.S.; the Libertarians would have 30% of the vote and capture 100 Congressional seats in the next election.
Red Hat because IBM already has a buisness relationship with Red Hat.
NeXT bought Apple in december 1996 for -400M$ (fell free to change the order of the words and the sign of the price for the official version), but it took them *4* years to get to OSX beta. And they probably took their fastest path.
NeXT bought Apple? Interesting, All this time I thought it was the other way around.
You missed his subtle "-" in front of the "400M$". Nominally, Apple bought NeXT; however, the upper levels of executives in the combined entity are dominated by NeXT personnel.
Buy from Chapters.ca if you're willing to wait a few weeks and pay a buck or two more for shipping. They have the British editions, which is how I got my copies of Mort, Guards! Guards!, Moving Pictures, and Pyramids.
Er, um, I seem to have missed it. What was it?
Making multihundred square meter curved mirrors out of lunar material in a zero-G environment is not understood.
On solar, I did say "(at most thrice)". The numbers work that avoiding the atmosphere gives you a factor of about 1.5, and 24-h days plus tracking gives you a factor of 4 -- that is, x6 generation, which then suffers about a 50% loss in microwave transmission, to x3 generation vs. a fixed Earth-based solar plant. Make the Earth-based arrays track the Sun, and the Earth output almost doubles, giving the space sats a mere 2x to 1.5x advantage per unit area than Earth-based solar power generation.
In the meantime, you'll have invested trillions in making the sats, which means a multicentury period before a profit can be made at current electrical rates. Meaning the sats will only be economically viable when all other current electricity generation methods are insufficient. And at current rates of increase in use in power, that'll be over 150 years, if fusion fails.
Actually, colonization of the Americas followed three patterns. The first was soldiers looting the remains of wealthy Indian empires. The second was trappers looting the wilderness with the help of Indians.
The third, and the only one not fundamentally dependent on already existing human societies in the Americas, was upper-middle-class members of society liquidating their personal wealth to travel to a land where they didn't have to fear persecution for their religion and were free to persecute others for the others' religion.
Later these colonies were supplemented by convicts transported from overseas as punishment and poorer people hired or bought by the wealthy descendants of previous settlers. Only after they developed into wealthy countries connected by fast, cheap transport to Europe did the tired and poor huddled masses travel to those colonies.
Technologically, this is entirely possible, with one exception -- we do not know how to make the mirrors which his colonies would be dependent on for food, and have virtually no experience with any form of space-based refining and manufacturing.
Economically, the costs in supplying the construction from Earth with food and "tools to build the tools" and temporary habits and other essentials would run into the trillions before the first solar power sat started beaming power back to Earth. And the sat would only produce a little (at most thrice) more Earth-usable power for the Earth than Earth-based solar collectors with tracking motors.
The result is that one would have to bet trillions on unproven technology to sell power for marginally less than Earth-based solar power can sell for. Which means any return is dependent on nuclear fusion failing, our running out of both fosssil fuels and uranium, and no cheaper-than-space-solar energy technologies being developed on Earth.
As a social vision, The High Frontier is a great book. But it won't be a viable plan in any of our lifetimes, even with tellomere treatments.
No, it's not security through obscurity. Security through obscurity is reliance on the fact that the encryption method is secret to keep the data from being read. It's dismissed because a poor encryption method is vulnerable to mathematical attack no matter how secret it is, and a good encryption method is relatively invulnerable even if the method is known.
But encryption is not the end-all and be-all of security. While it hides the data you're sending, it doesn't hide the fact that you're sending a message, and is thus absolutely worthless against signals intelligence. For example, if a spy in Beijing is sending encrypted letters adressed to CIA headquarters every day from his home's mailbox, then no matter how well encrypted the message he sends, it's still obvious that he's sending information to the CIA. If he's posting pictures of his kids that have an encrypted message hidden in them to a photos newsgroup, it isn't as obvious.