It actually does and has repeatedly. Though it is unpopular with those that don't want to admit that there is a connection between raising taxes and reducing economic output.
Much of the difference between the productivity of the US economy over the last 30 years versus europe can be attributed to much higher taxes.
Still, a socialist is as likely to admit this as a creationist is to admit evolution. So I won't ask you to admit it. You'll just do the economic equivalent of saying radio carbon dating is fake.
You're proving my point. The central issue of which is that ideologies ignore what they don't like.
Democrats on economics for example... little things like the Laffer curve that they swear doesn't exist in one breath... and then in the next suggest we have an international minimum tax. Why? To keep other countries from offering a low tax and thus creating a situation remarkably like the Laffer curve.
So both parties do this... which one is more anti science is debatable and likely an accidential result of which ever one happens to have run randomly into more problems with their ideology.
Ideologies are always wrong just as any scientific theory is always incomplete. Perfection isn't something human beings create. And so far as I've seen every ideology is intolerant of changing core principles.
I'm about to get all sorts of flame messages now. So I'll just say this... Imagine if science proved that whatever you believed caused terrible damage... do you honestly think most of the people in your party would switch away from it? Do you think your party leaders would admit it?
Of course not. They'd try to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen. That's what ideologies do...
So... I'm mostly anti ideology. My core principle is the survival and continuing evolution of humanity. Everything else I believe is derived from that. If anyone can show me a value or principle I hold that harms that goal... then I'll change it.
That's still an ideology. But it's very general and vague one that should be very adaptable when I discover the mistakes we all make.
I can either say nothing thus leaving your insult in which you say you'll let me have the last word rot... Or I can mock you again for being a hilariously dense!
CHOICES!!!
You're a clown. You did nothing but repeat old tired philosophies from dead men you don't understand... and you call me a drone?
it no more sets up the fall of the species then the agricultural revolution set up the fall of the species.
you're trapped in an outmoded ideological framework and lack the creatively, flexibility, and basic cognitive resources to see beyond your myopic reprogrammed perspective.
The universe is bigger then your ideology. It's bigger then your narrow conception of things. The very idea of classes pre supposes that their must be classes or that classes are even meaningful.
Please peddle your crypo-marxist bullshit elsewhere. It was tired 60 years ago and today it's petrified horseshit.
Your "idea" leads to self destruction. Your primary source of employment will be soldiers fighting in wars and at some point it will go nuclear... which will mean millions of americans dead to say nothing of the billions that will die elsewhere. Of course you don't care about anyone but americans... so you don't care about those billions. But you should at least care about the millions of dead Americans right?
Automation can mean jobs for the US. They're just not going to be your old job. Your old job is gone the same way the blacksmith is gone. How many people did it take to harvest a crop of wheat 1000 years ago? Lots. farmers would typically help each other by pooling labor. Every farmer would help harvest someone else's crop with the understanding that everyone would help when he needed to harvest his crop. Today, one machine can harvest more wheat then a thousand men in a day. At one point, over sixty percent of ALL human labor went into agriculture. That was just to feed ourselves. Today it's less then five percent.
Do you want to go back to the days when you had to harvest wheat by hand? Does that sound "rational" to you? You'd have more jobs. Of course, they're bad, uncompetitive, jobs that no one wants.
The factory jobs you want in the US don't exist anymore. If you want to bring them back to the US without automation then you need to accept MUCH lower wages and much lower benifits. PERIOD. The labor isn't worth what it was once worth.
We can give people high paying jobs in those factories IF we automate. It won't be as many jobs but we can build a LOT of factories. We can move our factories from Asia to the US... even if every factory only employs 100 people where once 10,000 might have been employed... that's still 100 jobs you wouldn't have otherwise. The company stays in the US. The production is controlled by the US. And the profits stay in the US. Everyone wins.
Fight automation if you want... it's as stupid as fighting tractors in modern agriculture. It's the only way you're going to bring manufacturing back to the US and your trade war idea will lead to ACTUAL war.
I asked why the biofuel isn't an oil rather then a fermented sugar? Because they can obviously make oils from plants... and if we could get an oil based fuel from them it would fit into our existing industrial paradigm better.
THe whole modern economy would collapse and war would break out everywhere over everything. The international trade system amongst other things gives everyone a reason to be nice to each other. Take that away and the incentive for war increases and the disincentive decreases.
You say "but we have nukes, so screw em'!"? Well, at issue there is that these wars of conquest will rage throughout the world and at some point an ally or a resource we need will be threatened by a rival. At which point we'll become involved... and we'll be doing all that while our economy is getting starved of everything. We'll be better off then most for a lot of reasons but it will be bad.
Billions will die.
Up for some genocide? Sorry it leads there but it does. We need to beat the chinese at their own game... hte game that used to be ours.
We need to produce more, at a higher quality, for less.
We can do it. We have the technology. We merely need the will to use it. Automation. Real automation. The kind that makes the cheap labor of china irrelevant. We need to release the robots.
We'll just suffer until we do it. And if we never do it then someone else will do it long after we've choked on our own vomit. It is our best play. It isn't a panacea but it will solve certain problems.
I don't get why they keep fermenting it into alcohol when there exists many species that produce lots of oil and there are micros that will turn cellulose into oil. I don't get it.
Here's a wild and possibly half baked idea... I warned you... do we know of any insects that will eat just about anything and produce an oil? I don't know if that's a commercially viable process but if you gave big colonies of insects all our agro waste... maybe they could turn it into a fuel source?
I'm thinking something like termites or ants. Something that will gobble up any garbage we give them and output something useful. The chemical factories inside a colony are pretty impressive. I don't know how efficient the process is but you could use really low quality fuel to sustain it so it might not matter.
Possibly down the road with some genetic engineering.
The big issue with space combat is that to move you need to spend reaction mass. That means moving around a lot is prohibitive. Further, that same constraint is going to ensure that whatever is fighting is either going to be very light weight or very heavy and completely static.
The best defense since mobility is off the table will likely be stealth. Which means even less moving since thrust can probably be detected and any heat generation will also be detectable. All combatants will have to be thermally neutral and either radar invisible or camouflaged as debre or rock.
As to weapons, the method is less important then the nature of the attack. Because the best defense is stealth it stands to reason that any aggressive action will render the attacker visible and thus very vulnerable. Thus any attack must be instantly lethal so the craft or station can destroy it's enemy before a counter attack. Or in the case of multiple combatants... so it can fire before being destroyed by an enemy ally. There are a couple ways to survive the process of attacking. One might be to fire and then immediately relocate just enough to avoid a counter attack. If you're fairly stealthy to begin with they may only be able to detect you when you fire. A better method might be "throwing" stealthed missiles or disposable drones out of a carrier and then having them launch. The command ship remains stealthed and it's position is not given away by the activity of the drones/missiles.
An incoming missile would be very hard to hide. For one thing, we can assume it has some kind of compact high velocity engine and it's unlikely to be very stealthy since that tends to require mass and caution. There is no meaningful "air" resistance in space, so you could have a big thermal umbrella in front of the missile that obscures a heat trail from a single target if you bare directly on it.
Sensor systems will of course be predominately passive, distributed, networked, and likely will communicate through tight beam laser link. A fleet of ships should share their collective sensor return with every ship and all sensor drones should be added to that picture. As such hiding anything making a lot of heat or emitting radiation should be hard. I'm guessing drone weapons will be highly disposable and likely to not survive more then a couple shots before counter attacked and destroyed. In fact, most of the combat could be drones destroying other drones.
As to the actual weapon employed. I don't think lasers are a good weapon. Going into all the reasons is complicated but there are a lot of problems with them that are just physics. The two weapon ideas I like are some kind of kinetic weapon. Hitting things is a pretty reliable way of breaking them. And it makes Newton happy... so everyone gets an apple. That might mean a rail gun of some kind or a really fast missile. The other idea is some kind of plasma gun. This idea has some merit for a couple reasons. One, it's nearly as fast as a laser, you can't really block or deflect it hte same way you do with a laser. Maybe they could use a big magnetic field to basically create a shield? Anyway, plasma is fast and if you can actually focus it... then you should be able to melt nice little holes in just about anything. Also, it makes a crackerjack engine so you could have your own drive system double as the weapon system. Maybe have the plasma be diffuse when in drive mode and focused into a beam when in weapons mode. Anyway, either way the instant you start firing on the enemy they're going to fire back. So the question is how you survive the mutually assured destruction in that battle. Again, I'm guessing you keep your command ship stealthed and leave the killing and dying for the drones.
A major issue for space combat will be the logistics. Really, this is the biggest problem with space ANYTHING. Just getting things up there is hard and then moving them around is hard and then doing that without being able to resupply them and if anything goes wrong everyone dies.
Let me preface this by saying I'm not an expert. I'm at best a savvy novice as it regards these matters... but these are my thoughts.
All the cloud lets you do is offload processing and memory issues onto a server farm that constantly keeps the program in memory. That if anything will make bloat worse.
I know scripted languages are very popular with the open source community but they're always slower then old school compiled languages. I think java etc is fine for smaller programs but I've seen scripted languages applied to larger and larger programs with more demanding performance characteristics. That isn't going to work on anything but some cloud that has effectively unlimited processing power to WASTE. I recently saw it used on a fairly demanding stock trading platform. The memory issues alone are absurd. The C compiled version of the program eats up less then a tenth the memory and uses a tenth again of the CPU power. They do the exact same thing. Some of these machines have eight gigabytes of memory and they get low memory warnings all the time. Now maybe that program is made badly on top of everything else... always a danger when you make a specific example. But I've seen similar issues with a lot of large scripted programs.
I'm not saying we need to go back to assembly but most of these programs would be a lot faster and use a lot less memory if the programmers were a little more careful about how they put them together. For one thing, of course use a compiled language that doesn't have to be effectively compiled on the fly and then run. For another, find a way to condense these libraries into something more compact. Even much compiled code today calls remote code somewhere else or queries information that should be stored internally within the program itself. I'm not talking about variables or system settings but static functions of the program that not only do not change but cannot change or the program will error out.
If your program won't work until the user or system installs java or it won't work unless some library pack is installed... then you're not building a performance app. All that has to be recompiled and all information it needs has to be internal to the program. Worst case, if you absolutely need to have some library separate then at the very least make it a truncated library that only contains information that your program will call. Not any information that any program could possibly call from the generic version. The smaller and more specific it is the faster it will be queried. I know the file system experts have found amazing ways to make huge databases easily searchable with minimal processing power. That's great. But when you're talking about smartphones it really does pay dividends to keep it simple stupid.
This has nothing to do with splash screens. It has everything to do with how long we're left staring at them.
I have a bunch of old windows programs from 95 and earlier. They all have splash screens and many of them are far more sophisticated then anything you'll find on a smartphone today. They've always loaded very fast. Even on a slow computer of the day the loading screen for these programs was about five to ten seconds at most. Run them now on a modern computer and they load in about one second. The programs on these smartphones could be a lot faster if they were written more efficiently. Possibly less emphasis on graphics and more emphasis on the UI. Old school UI's were very simple but had a LOT of functionality. If you want to give people the full graphical experience then maybe load the interface in stages or load the program as needed rather then loading the whole thing into memory. I'm not an expert. I just think the cloud idea is horrible. Not only does it not fix the problem but it makes the phone less reliable since now it doesn't even have the program stored on it. Rather, the whole thing has to be streamed from a server farm somewhere.
I know many companies are happy with the cloud but many others will never trust it... ever.
I addressed your argument directly. If your attempt to claim my direct rebuttal is off topic is your way of saying you have no idea what you're talking about... then I agreed with you two posts ago.
Yeah for consensus!
Google dementia medication and order yourself a box. And then do it again because you'll probably only imagine it the first time.
Lightsquared bought a disused satellite spectrum that was used to having weak satellite signals on it. That same spectrum sits next to the GPS spectrum. Because of this, the GPS system never had to deal with a strong signal sitting right next to their spectrum. Should they have done that? Yes. But they didn't because it was never an issue. Now lightsquared is trying to build a system that will create a LOT of noise just outside of their spectrum and many GPS systems will simply stop working.
Lightsquared should have seen this coming when they bought that spectrum. Is it their fault the GPS people are having a hard time? Not really. But they were aware of the issue from the start and they went ahead with their program anyway knowing it would be an issue. So even though the GPS people are being somewhat irresponsible with their GPS designs they're a totally vital system and we can't compromise them for any reason.
A compromise we could make is tell the GPS people their new system need to deal with noise outside their spectrum henceforth. Then wait ten years for the new systems to penetrate the market. Then let lightsquared or whomever blast away on that spectrum. Short of that, lightsquared is going to pound sand... right or wrong. They knew this was an issue.
So many of these companies just need to diversify manufacturing out of china so they're not so dependent. It would also give them leverage. China is in a great position to dictate terms and few companies have a means to respond.
Okay, do you know what the world looked like before patients? Apparently not.
Well, prior to patients the way you protected your intellectual property was through trade secrets. Basically you couldn't tell anyone how you were doing it and had to protect the nature of your invention or discovery in the same way you keep pictures of your genitals from getting on the internet. eg... not many people have access, it's on a need to know basis, and anyone that gets a copy without authorization is hunted down like an animal and killed.
That is what we had before patients. Alcoa could have done that with their refining technology just as the Chinese did it with their silk industry for... probably at least a thousand years. Don't believe me? Hop in a time machine and ask the chinese how to produce silk circa year 0. The most polite answer you'll get is "no, go away"... the more likely answer will be "please climb into this sack" followed by some rocks added to said sack... and the combination of parts A and B added to the local river bottom.
That is the world before patients.
What patients allowed for was inventors and intellectual property creators to be compensated for their works without having to resort to duct tape, box cutters, and various unmarked graves in the desert.
Did alcoa have a government backed monopoly through its patients for duration of the patient? Yes. But patients don't actually last that long. 14 years is how long they last. That's nothing in the scheme of things. If a company that invents something new gets a monopoly on it for 14 years what exactly is the beef there?
Would you honestly prefer what is behind door number two? Because if you think your anarchistic vision of no copyrights is going to lead to the land of milk, honey, and group sex... then you're clearly not a student of history... or very knowledgable... which is the nice way of saying uneducated... which is a nice way of saying stupid.. Sorry... I'm getting crabby because you're "talking" rather loudly out of your anus... and your "breath" frankly sinks. So... sorry about being short there.
I would suggest you be a little more humble about things you don't understand or... try one of these breath mints.
If it sounds like I'm not serious anymore, you've won a prize for deduction... I'm just trying to amuse myself now since it became clear this was only going to go to stupid places.
Sure, they're also very unstable, short lived, and result mostly from a technological innovation that no competitor can match. But after that is dealt with they always fade.
The best example remains the Alcoa Aluminum company. They invented or acquired a means of refining aluminum that was radically more efficient then anything that existed prior to that point. aluminum previously had been a precious metal simply because it was so expensive to refine. The imperial plates that Napoleon sat his guests at included a set of aluminum plates as well as gold, silver, and platinum. I believe the aluminum was regarded as more precious even then the platinum but I could be wrong there. In any case, Alcoa came up with a means of refining aluminum that was so efficient you could use it in aircraft airframes, soda cans, food cans, and aluminum foil. That is a natural monopoly.
Of course, once the patient expires anyone can build their own aluminum refinery thus ending the natural monopoly.
What you have with the telecoms is not a natural monopoly because it's government backed. It's a government sponsored monopoly. It is literally illegal to compete with them by law.
So a better question would be... Are you aware of the concept of a government backed monopoly? A rhetorical and somewhat insulting question. Of course you know... but then your question was more insulting since I had mad it quiet clear through previous posts that I knew what a natural monopoly was and furthermore you put no qualifiers in your question where as this very statement stands as an acknowledgment of that point.
When you make stupid insults you just make yourself sound stupid. Just fyi... no offense intended.
There are plenty of telecommunications companies that would love to run a second set of fiber lines throughout New York or San Francisco. Claiming otherwise is just silly. They can't. The density is there. The market is there. The money is there.
It's illegal.
Make it legal and then tell me you told me so when nothing happens. I find it very unlikely that this product is different from every other product in human history and every other service. that it uniquely is the only thing that does not benefit from competition or that this is the only thing that no one will even try to compete in given the opportunity.
You would have to establish why this product is unique. I don't think you can because I don't think it is... and proving that it is would be almost impossible.
Ultimately, while I'm happy to hear you theory it sounds offensively obtuse.
That lack of competition stifles innovation and it removes all fear a company might have that it will lose customers to someone else in the same territory.
New competitors could offer a better service by offering it differently or using different technology. Furthermore, it is a myth that the customer pays for this business expense. The business expense is an investment by the company made in hopes of getting the customer's business.
Many examples of this exist. For example, the space pen... the story is often told incorrectly in that the US spent millions developing a ballpoint pen that would work in space. Where as the Russians just used a pencil. Early US astronauts used pencils just like the Russians. However, they had problems. Pencil shavings and other pencil related debre floats around in zero g. It's a hazard. it gets in the eyes, it can get into electronics... it makes a big mess. So an American enterperner using his own money developed the "space pen"... and then sold it to NASA. The US government never paid more then the price he was selling the pens for... and that price wasn't much more then you'd pay for a good fountain pen.
Enterprise is full of stories like that. Competition yields a benefit more then the sum of it's parts. It is spurious to look at the cost of laying multiple cables and conclude that it is less efficient. That implies that the single cable will be managed properly and will be upgraded and will be innovated upon and will be expanded. None of that happens with a monopoly because there is no impedance for proper management, upgrades, or innovation. What motivates a company with a monopoly to do anything better? Their customers are captives.
Look at ATT as a cell phone company... easily one of the worse cellphone operators in the US and because of there is some competition in the cell phone industry ATT pays for that weakness. Imagine if they didn't. Imagine if cellphones worked the same way landlines worked. ATT would have no incentive to improve its network because customers would have no choice.
All government backed monopolies and even many municipal monopolies have the exact same problem. Public schools are similar in that you can't vote with your feet. You're stuck with the school you're issued even if it's filled with failure. Every one of these systems would improve radically if subjected to continuous competition.
There is a Darwinian purity to capitalism and competition. Let the game play out and you get something better over time.
I disagree and in any case it's very hard to make your argument until the market is free and your point is proven. If and when that happens it will make sense to take some steps to make sure the market is competitive. However, it is silly to expect a rational market place when we have government backed monopolies everywhere.
I read it... you're arguing big companies can squeeze out smaller competitors. That's true though that doesn't justify the government backed monopoly.
Why don't you remove the restrictions and lets see what happens? I suspect many small companies will try to offer better service at a lower price.
Some will fail because they're bad at their job. Some will fail because the big companies kill them. But killing a smaller company takes money. You have to lower your prices and you sometimes have to buy them out. You can't do that repeatedly without it showing up on the balance sheet.
Eventually we'll get more diversity in the market place. Big cities especially should have lots of different options while smaller towns and rural areas should have specialized companies that tailored for their market. The big telecoms will be mostly relighted to managing the backbone and even then there should be some competition to offer cheaper trunk lines.
you could make the same argument about shoe companies.
Should there only be one shoe company? it would be more efficient if there were only one that only made one type of shoe.
Losses in efficiency by laying multiple cable is made up through increased competition, innovation, and consumer choice. Furthermore, the inefficiency is paid for by the corporation and NOT passed on to the consumer because of the competition.
Will it be hard even without monopoly protection to compete with the big telecom companies that have grown fat on it for a long time? Yes. But now it won't be illegal to compete with them. And little by little areas will have additional choices. In 100 years the market should be diversified which is about how long it took for the telecoms to get this deeply rooted.
You don't need to for the same reason someone using Verizon can talk to someone using time warner cable.
The networks are connected.
So build a small network and then connect it to the national backbone. People in the area you built your network will have the option of using your cable and then they use the backbone after they've left your network.
I suppose you'll be boned if you have to use Verizon's trunk line but you could also build your own bypass. You don't need to build everything at once. Just part of the network.
Right now it's illegal for anyone to run phone cable in ATT or verizon's territory. they have government backed monopolies of these areas. Sure, they are forced to share bandwidth with other providers but those providers have no control over the cable or the prices charged for using it.
Open it up so that other companies are allowed to run cable. They might now run cable... no one will be forcing them to do it. But they'll have the option and maybe if ATT acts badly that will give a rival company an incentive to step in and offer a superior service at a lower price.
All these old grandfathered monopolies need to die. Throw holy water in their eyes, jam a fist full of garlic in their mouths, and drive a wooden stake through their hearts.
If they competed without these rules they'd never even consider this sort of nonsense. Their competitors would eat them alive... probably with fave beans
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It actually does and has repeatedly. Though it is unpopular with those that don't want to admit that there is a connection between raising taxes and reducing economic output.
Much of the difference between the productivity of the US economy over the last 30 years versus europe can be attributed to much higher taxes.
Still, a socialist is as likely to admit this as a creationist is to admit evolution. So I won't ask you to admit it. You'll just do the economic equivalent of saying radio carbon dating is fake.
You're proving my point. The central issue of which is that ideologies ignore what they don't like.
Democrats on economics for example... little things like the Laffer curve that they swear doesn't exist in one breath... and then in the next suggest we have an international minimum tax. Why? To keep other countries from offering a low tax and thus creating a situation remarkably like the Laffer curve.
So both parties do this... which one is more anti science is debatable and likely an accidential result of which ever one happens to have run randomly into more problems with their ideology.
Ideologies are always wrong just as any scientific theory is always incomplete. Perfection isn't something human beings create. And so far as I've seen every ideology is intolerant of changing core principles.
I'm about to get all sorts of flame messages now. So I'll just say this... Imagine if science proved that whatever you believed caused terrible damage... do you honestly think most of the people in your party would switch away from it? Do you think your party leaders would admit it?
Of course not. They'd try to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen. That's what ideologies do...
So... I'm mostly anti ideology. My core principle is the survival and continuing evolution of humanity. Everything else I believe is derived from that. If anyone can show me a value or principle I hold that harms that goal... then I'll change it.
That's still an ideology. But it's very general and vague one that should be very adaptable when I discover the mistakes we all make.
Hmmm.. What to do?!
I can either say nothing thus leaving your insult in which you say you'll let me have the last word rot... Or I can mock you again for being a hilariously dense!
CHOICES!!!
You're a clown. You did nothing but repeat old tired philosophies from dead men you don't understand... and you call me a drone?
Get an actual education and try again.
I make a rational comment you reply with an infantile insult.
Game set match... better luck next time.
I'm the drone because I'm thinking for myself? I'm the drone because I'm having my own thoughts based on my own values?
While you spout predigested crypto-Marxist bullcrap that was spoon fed to you? And you call me the drone?
lolcats.
The day you actually have an original thought is the day you get to even begin whether someone else might be a drone.
it no more sets up the fall of the species then the agricultural revolution set up the fall of the species.
you're trapped in an outmoded ideological framework and lack the creatively, flexibility, and basic cognitive resources to see beyond your myopic reprogrammed perspective.
The universe is bigger then your ideology. It's bigger then your narrow conception of things. The very idea of classes pre supposes that their must be classes or that classes are even meaningful.
Please peddle your crypo-marxist bullshit elsewhere. It was tired 60 years ago and today it's petrified horseshit.
Your "idea" leads to self destruction. Your primary source of employment will be soldiers fighting in wars and at some point it will go nuclear... which will mean millions of americans dead to say nothing of the billions that will die elsewhere. Of course you don't care about anyone but americans... so you don't care about those billions. But you should at least care about the millions of dead Americans right?
Automation can mean jobs for the US. They're just not going to be your old job. Your old job is gone the same way the blacksmith is gone. How many people did it take to harvest a crop of wheat 1000 years ago? Lots. farmers would typically help each other by pooling labor. Every farmer would help harvest someone else's crop with the understanding that everyone would help when he needed to harvest his crop. Today, one machine can harvest more wheat then a thousand men in a day. At one point, over sixty percent of ALL human labor went into agriculture. That was just to feed ourselves. Today it's less then five percent.
Do you want to go back to the days when you had to harvest wheat by hand? Does that sound "rational" to you? You'd have more jobs. Of course, they're bad, uncompetitive, jobs that no one wants.
The factory jobs you want in the US don't exist anymore. If you want to bring them back to the US without automation then you need to accept MUCH lower wages and much lower benifits. PERIOD. The labor isn't worth what it was once worth.
We can give people high paying jobs in those factories IF we automate. It won't be as many jobs but we can build a LOT of factories. We can move our factories from Asia to the US... even if every factory only employs 100 people where once 10,000 might have been employed... that's still 100 jobs you wouldn't have otherwise. The company stays in the US. The production is controlled by the US. And the profits stay in the US. Everyone wins.
Fight automation if you want... it's as stupid as fighting tractors in modern agriculture. It's the only way you're going to bring manufacturing back to the US and your trade war idea will lead to ACTUAL war.
I'm not sure if we're having the same question.
I asked why the biofuel isn't an oil rather then a fermented sugar? Because they can obviously make oils from plants... and if we could get an oil based fuel from them it would fit into our existing industrial paradigm better.
Enjoy partying like it's 1599, chaps.
THe whole modern economy would collapse and war would break out everywhere over everything. The international trade system amongst other things gives everyone a reason to be nice to each other. Take that away and the incentive for war increases and the disincentive decreases.
You say "but we have nukes, so screw em'!"? Well, at issue there is that these wars of conquest will rage throughout the world and at some point an ally or a resource we need will be threatened by a rival. At which point we'll become involved... and we'll be doing all that while our economy is getting starved of everything. We'll be better off then most for a lot of reasons but it will be bad.
Billions will die.
Up for some genocide? Sorry it leads there but it does. We need to beat the chinese at their own game... hte game that used to be ours.
We need to produce more, at a higher quality, for less.
We can do it. We have the technology. We merely need the will to use it. Automation. Real automation. The kind that makes the cheap labor of china irrelevant. We need to release the robots.
We'll just suffer until we do it. And if we never do it then someone else will do it long after we've choked on our own vomit. It is our best play. It isn't a panacea but it will solve certain problems.
I don't get why they keep fermenting it into alcohol when there exists many species that produce lots of oil and there are micros that will turn cellulose into oil. I don't get it.
Here's a wild and possibly half baked idea... I warned you... do we know of any insects that will eat just about anything and produce an oil? I don't know if that's a commercially viable process but if you gave big colonies of insects all our agro waste... maybe they could turn it into a fuel source?
I'm thinking something like termites or ants. Something that will gobble up any garbage we give them and output something useful. The chemical factories inside a colony are pretty impressive. I don't know how efficient the process is but you could use really low quality fuel to sustain it so it might not matter.
Possibly down the road with some genetic engineering.
The big issue with space combat is that to move you need to spend reaction mass. That means moving around a lot is prohibitive. Further, that same constraint is going to ensure that whatever is fighting is either going to be very light weight or very heavy and completely static.
The best defense since mobility is off the table will likely be stealth. Which means even less moving since thrust can probably be detected and any heat generation will also be detectable. All combatants will have to be thermally neutral and either radar invisible or camouflaged as debre or rock.
As to weapons, the method is less important then the nature of the attack. Because the best defense is stealth it stands to reason that any aggressive action will render the attacker visible and thus very vulnerable. Thus any attack must be instantly lethal so the craft or station can destroy it's enemy before a counter attack. Or in the case of multiple combatants... so it can fire before being destroyed by an enemy ally. There are a couple ways to survive the process of attacking. One might be to fire and then immediately relocate just enough to avoid a counter attack. If you're fairly stealthy to begin with they may only be able to detect you when you fire. A better method might be "throwing" stealthed missiles or disposable drones out of a carrier and then having them launch. The command ship remains stealthed and it's position is not given away by the activity of the drones/missiles.
An incoming missile would be very hard to hide. For one thing, we can assume it has some kind of compact high velocity engine and it's unlikely to be very stealthy since that tends to require mass and caution. There is no meaningful "air" resistance in space, so you could have a big thermal umbrella in front of the missile that obscures a heat trail from a single target if you bare directly on it.
Sensor systems will of course be predominately passive, distributed, networked, and likely will communicate through tight beam laser link. A fleet of ships should share their collective sensor return with every ship and all sensor drones should be added to that picture. As such hiding anything making a lot of heat or emitting radiation should be hard. I'm guessing drone weapons will be highly disposable and likely to not survive more then a couple shots before counter attacked and destroyed. In fact, most of the combat could be drones destroying other drones.
As to the actual weapon employed. I don't think lasers are a good weapon. Going into all the reasons is complicated but there are a lot of problems with them that are just physics. The two weapon ideas I like are some kind of kinetic weapon. Hitting things is a pretty reliable way of breaking them. And it makes Newton happy... so everyone gets an apple. That might mean a rail gun of some kind or a really fast missile. The other idea is some kind of plasma gun. This idea has some merit for a couple reasons. One, it's nearly as fast as a laser, you can't really block or deflect it hte same way you do with a laser. Maybe they could use a big magnetic field to basically create a shield? Anyway, plasma is fast and if you can actually focus it... then you should be able to melt nice little holes in just about anything. Also, it makes a crackerjack engine so you could have your own drive system double as the weapon system. Maybe have the plasma be diffuse when in drive mode and focused into a beam when in weapons mode. Anyway, either way the instant you start firing on the enemy they're going to fire back. So the question is how you survive the mutually assured destruction in that battle. Again, I'm guessing you keep your command ship stealthed and leave the killing and dying for the drones.
A major issue for space combat will be the logistics. Really, this is the biggest problem with space ANYTHING. Just getting things up there is hard and then moving them around is hard and then doing that without being able to resupply them and if anything goes wrong everyone dies.
I'm going to gue
Let me preface this by saying I'm not an expert. I'm at best a savvy novice as it regards these matters... but these are my thoughts.
All the cloud lets you do is offload processing and memory issues onto a server farm that constantly keeps the program in memory. That if anything will make bloat worse.
I know scripted languages are very popular with the open source community but they're always slower then old school compiled languages. I think java etc is fine for smaller programs but I've seen scripted languages applied to larger and larger programs with more demanding performance characteristics. That isn't going to work on anything but some cloud that has effectively unlimited processing power to WASTE. I recently saw it used on a fairly demanding stock trading platform. The memory issues alone are absurd. The C compiled version of the program eats up less then a tenth the memory and uses a tenth again of the CPU power. They do the exact same thing. Some of these machines have eight gigabytes of memory and they get low memory warnings all the time. Now maybe that program is made badly on top of everything else... always a danger when you make a specific example. But I've seen similar issues with a lot of large scripted programs.
I'm not saying we need to go back to assembly but most of these programs would be a lot faster and use a lot less memory if the programmers were a little more careful about how they put them together. For one thing, of course use a compiled language that doesn't have to be effectively compiled on the fly and then run. For another, find a way to condense these libraries into something more compact. Even much compiled code today calls remote code somewhere else or queries information that should be stored internally within the program itself. I'm not talking about variables or system settings but static functions of the program that not only do not change but cannot change or the program will error out.
If your program won't work until the user or system installs java or it won't work unless some library pack is installed... then you're not building a performance app. All that has to be recompiled and all information it needs has to be internal to the program. Worst case, if you absolutely need to have some library separate then at the very least make it a truncated library that only contains information that your program will call. Not any information that any program could possibly call from the generic version. The smaller and more specific it is the faster it will be queried. I know the file system experts have found amazing ways to make huge databases easily searchable with minimal processing power. That's great. But when you're talking about smartphones it really does pay dividends to keep it simple stupid.
This has nothing to do with splash screens. It has everything to do with how long we're left staring at them.
I have a bunch of old windows programs from 95 and earlier. They all have splash screens and many of them are far more sophisticated then anything you'll find on a smartphone today. They've always loaded very fast. Even on a slow computer of the day the loading screen for these programs was about five to ten seconds at most. Run them now on a modern computer and they load in about one second. The programs on these smartphones could be a lot faster if they were written more efficiently. Possibly less emphasis on graphics and more emphasis on the UI. Old school UI's were very simple but had a LOT of functionality. If you want to give people the full graphical experience then maybe load the interface in stages or load the program as needed rather then loading the whole thing into memory. I'm not an expert. I just think the cloud idea is horrible. Not only does it not fix the problem but it makes the phone less reliable since now it doesn't even have the program stored on it. Rather, the whole thing has to be streamed from a server farm somewhere.
I know many companies are happy with the cloud but many others will never trust it... ever.
I addressed your argument directly. If your attempt to claim my direct rebuttal is off topic is your way of saying you have no idea what you're talking about... then I agreed with you two posts ago.
Yeah for consensus!
Google dementia medication and order yourself a box. And then do it again because you'll probably only imagine it the first time.
Lightsquared bought a disused satellite spectrum that was used to having weak satellite signals on it. That same spectrum sits next to the GPS spectrum. Because of this, the GPS system never had to deal with a strong signal sitting right next to their spectrum. Should they have done that? Yes. But they didn't because it was never an issue. Now lightsquared is trying to build a system that will create a LOT of noise just outside of their spectrum and many GPS systems will simply stop working.
Lightsquared should have seen this coming when they bought that spectrum. Is it their fault the GPS people are having a hard time? Not really. But they were aware of the issue from the start and they went ahead with their program anyway knowing it would be an issue. So even though the GPS people are being somewhat irresponsible with their GPS designs they're a totally vital system and we can't compromise them for any reason.
A compromise we could make is tell the GPS people their new system need to deal with noise outside their spectrum henceforth. Then wait ten years for the new systems to penetrate the market. Then let lightsquared or whomever blast away on that spectrum. Short of that, lightsquared is going to pound sand... right or wrong. They knew this was an issue.
So many of these companies just need to diversify manufacturing out of china so they're not so dependent. It would also give them leverage. China is in a great position to dictate terms and few companies have a means to respond.
... wow.
Okay, do you know what the world looked like before patients? Apparently not.
Well, prior to patients the way you protected your intellectual property was through trade secrets. Basically you couldn't tell anyone how you were doing it and had to protect the nature of your invention or discovery in the same way you keep pictures of your genitals from getting on the internet. eg... not many people have access, it's on a need to know basis, and anyone that gets a copy without authorization is hunted down like an animal and killed.
That is what we had before patients. Alcoa could have done that with their refining technology just as the Chinese did it with their silk industry for... probably at least a thousand years. Don't believe me? Hop in a time machine and ask the chinese how to produce silk circa year 0. The most polite answer you'll get is "no, go away"... the more likely answer will be "please climb into this sack" followed by some rocks added to said sack... and the combination of parts A and B added to the local river bottom.
That is the world before patients.
What patients allowed for was inventors and intellectual property creators to be compensated for their works without having to resort to duct tape, box cutters, and various unmarked graves in the desert.
Did alcoa have a government backed monopoly through its patients for duration of the patient? Yes. But patients don't actually last that long. 14 years is how long they last. That's nothing in the scheme of things. If a company that invents something new gets a monopoly on it for 14 years what exactly is the beef there?
Would you honestly prefer what is behind door number two? Because if you think your anarchistic vision of no copyrights is going to lead to the land of milk, honey, and group sex... then you're clearly not a student of history... or very knowledgable... which is the nice way of saying uneducated... which is a nice way of saying stupid.. Sorry... I'm getting crabby because you're "talking" rather loudly out of your anus... and your "breath" frankly sinks. So... sorry about being short there.
I would suggest you be a little more humble about things you don't understand or... try one of these breath mints.
If it sounds like I'm not serious anymore, you've won a prize for deduction... I'm just trying to amuse myself now since it became clear this was only going to go to stupid places.
Sure, they're also very unstable, short lived, and result mostly from a technological innovation that no competitor can match. But after that is dealt with they always fade.
The best example remains the Alcoa Aluminum company. They invented or acquired a means of refining aluminum that was radically more efficient then anything that existed prior to that point. aluminum previously had been a precious metal simply because it was so expensive to refine. The imperial plates that Napoleon sat his guests at included a set of aluminum plates as well as gold, silver, and platinum. I believe the aluminum was regarded as more precious even then the platinum but I could be wrong there. In any case, Alcoa came up with a means of refining aluminum that was so efficient you could use it in aircraft airframes, soda cans, food cans, and aluminum foil. That is a natural monopoly.
Of course, once the patient expires anyone can build their own aluminum refinery thus ending the natural monopoly.
What you have with the telecoms is not a natural monopoly because it's government backed. It's a government sponsored monopoly. It is literally illegal to compete with them by law.
So a better question would be... Are you aware of the concept of a government backed monopoly? A rhetorical and somewhat insulting question. Of course you know... but then your question was more insulting since I had mad it quiet clear through previous posts that I knew what a natural monopoly was and furthermore you put no qualifiers in your question where as this very statement stands as an acknowledgment of that point.
When you make stupid insults you just make yourself sound stupid. Just fyi... no offense intended.
There are plenty of telecommunications companies that would love to run a second set of fiber lines throughout New York or San Francisco. Claiming otherwise is just silly. They can't. The density is there. The market is there. The money is there.
It's illegal.
Make it legal and then tell me you told me so when nothing happens. I find it very unlikely that this product is different from every other product in human history and every other service. that it uniquely is the only thing that does not benefit from competition or that this is the only thing that no one will even try to compete in given the opportunity.
You would have to establish why this product is unique. I don't think you can because I don't think it is... and proving that it is would be almost impossible.
Ultimately, while I'm happy to hear you theory it sounds offensively obtuse.
any major cities or is the intersection the middle of nowhere?
because if it's the middle of no where then that's like wondering why there isn't an agriculture boom in the middle of Antarctica.
That lack of competition stifles innovation and it removes all fear a company might have that it will lose customers to someone else in the same territory.
New competitors could offer a better service by offering it differently or using different technology. Furthermore, it is a myth that the customer pays for this business expense. The business expense is an investment by the company made in hopes of getting the customer's business.
Many examples of this exist. For example, the space pen... the story is often told incorrectly in that the US spent millions developing a ballpoint pen that would work in space. Where as the Russians just used a pencil. Early US astronauts used pencils just like the Russians. However, they had problems. Pencil shavings and other pencil related debre floats around in zero g. It's a hazard. it gets in the eyes, it can get into electronics... it makes a big mess. So an American enterperner using his own money developed the "space pen"... and then sold it to NASA. The US government never paid more then the price he was selling the pens for... and that price wasn't much more then you'd pay for a good fountain pen.
Enterprise is full of stories like that. Competition yields a benefit more then the sum of it's parts. It is spurious to look at the cost of laying multiple cables and conclude that it is less efficient. That implies that the single cable will be managed properly and will be upgraded and will be innovated upon and will be expanded. None of that happens with a monopoly because there is no impedance for proper management, upgrades, or innovation. What motivates a company with a monopoly to do anything better? Their customers are captives.
Look at ATT as a cell phone company... easily one of the worse cellphone operators in the US and because of there is some competition in the cell phone industry ATT pays for that weakness. Imagine if they didn't. Imagine if cellphones worked the same way landlines worked. ATT would have no incentive to improve its network because customers would have no choice.
All government backed monopolies and even many municipal monopolies have the exact same problem. Public schools are similar in that you can't vote with your feet. You're stuck with the school you're issued even if it's filled with failure. Every one of these systems would improve radically if subjected to continuous competition.
There is a Darwinian purity to capitalism and competition. Let the game play out and you get something better over time.
I disagree and in any case it's very hard to make your argument until the market is free and your point is proven. If and when that happens it will make sense to take some steps to make sure the market is competitive. However, it is silly to expect a rational market place when we have government backed monopolies everywhere.
I read it... you're arguing big companies can squeeze out smaller competitors. That's true though that doesn't justify the government backed monopoly.
Why don't you remove the restrictions and lets see what happens? I suspect many small companies will try to offer better service at a lower price.
Some will fail because they're bad at their job.
Some will fail because the big companies kill them. But killing a smaller company takes money. You have to lower your prices and you sometimes have to buy them out. You can't do that repeatedly without it showing up on the balance sheet.
Eventually we'll get more diversity in the market place. Big cities especially should have lots of different options while smaller towns and rural areas should have specialized companies that tailored for their market. The big telecoms will be mostly relighted to managing the backbone and even then there should be some competition to offer cheaper trunk lines.
you could make the same argument about shoe companies.
Should there only be one shoe company? it would be more efficient if there were only one that only made one type of shoe.
Losses in efficiency by laying multiple cable is made up through increased competition, innovation, and consumer choice. Furthermore, the inefficiency is paid for by the corporation and NOT passed on to the consumer because of the competition.
Will it be hard even without monopoly protection to compete with the big telecom companies that have grown fat on it for a long time? Yes. But now it won't be illegal to compete with them. And little by little areas will have additional choices. In 100 years the market should be diversified which is about how long it took for the telecoms to get this deeply rooted.
You don't need to for the same reason someone using Verizon can talk to someone using time warner cable.
The networks are connected.
So build a small network and then connect it to the national backbone. People in the area you built your network will have the option of using your cable and then they use the backbone after they've left your network.
I suppose you'll be boned if you have to use Verizon's trunk line but you could also build your own bypass. You don't need to build everything at once. Just part of the network.
Right now it's illegal for anyone to run phone cable in ATT or verizon's territory. they have government backed monopolies of these areas. Sure, they are forced to share bandwidth with other providers but those providers have no control over the cable or the prices charged for using it.
Open it up so that other companies are allowed to run cable. They might now run cable... no one will be forcing them to do it. But they'll have the option and maybe if ATT acts badly that will give a rival company an incentive to step in and offer a superior service at a lower price.
All these old grandfathered monopolies need to die. Throw holy water in their eyes, jam a fist full of garlic in their mouths, and drive a wooden stake through their hearts.
If they competed without these rules they'd never even consider this sort of nonsense. Their competitors would eat them alive... probably with fave beans