My prediction is that eventually History will look like this:
The Anglophone Empire existed from 1215 to -. It's primary form of Government was constitutional democracy, it's capital was at one point London, England but eventually transitioned to Washington D.C. USA around 1948 after a schism that started in 1776 ended around 1918. It existed as a tight alliance of English Speaking countries and a treaty bound alliance known as NATO. There are also various non-NATO client states such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and South Korea who are all under varying forms of control or influence of this Empire.
You are creating a false dichotomy here by assuming that the only way to buy a car is to buy new. Today, any used car that was built 4 years ago that has a clean crash history and under 50,000 miles is a better car that could have been purchased for the same inflation adjusted price in 1974. There are many reasons for this, improve quality, higher safety standards, ect.
The reason new cars cost comparably more than 1974 cars is that cars have become so reliable that it is no longer profitable to sell cars at that price point. Also, auto companies figured out that they could lease cars to people and then sell them after 2 years at a lower price. The net effect of this is that the average buyer can get a car that's cost was partially subsidized by someone who leased it if they are willing to not have the newest model. If I buy a used 2012 car that has 50k miles on it that costs less per mile in maintenance than 1974 car with 0 miles on it and the 2012 car will reasonably go at least 180K I come out ahead as a consumer vs the 1974 car at the same price point.
If we stopped using coal for power generation tomorrow we wouldn't stop using coal. What do you think they use to add carbon to iron to make steel?
The question is how much coal will we use not can we stop using it. And if we can make electricity cheap without coal then it will lower the price of steel. Allowing us to build more stuff. Coal will suffer short term but long term it will survive just a little less profitable I would bet.
The problem is, you still have to mine for it, and there's a finite supply of nuclear material.
And yet according to this article and this wikipage we won't run out of Uranium or Thorium for reactors any time soon (30,000 to 60,000 years) if we take the unnecessary measures to recycle as much of the fuel as possible. If we are not off this rock exploiting the solar systems resources by 30,000 years our species is doomed anyway. (i.e. a big dumb rock will hit us eventually.) So what's your point.
From a Military perspective how to do you keep someone from just shooting down your space based solar array. It's pretty hard to stop a high velocity missile from impacting and destroying a large stationary object this is pretty fragile. I guess you could arm the array with lasers, guns, missiles and such and hope to detect and change the vector of an approaching impactor but that sounds expensive and probably in violation of our no space based weapons treaties. Though the whole array could probably be turned into a weapon so it might be out just by itself. Not saying we shouldn't build one though just fun to think about that.
Exactly it's a lot harder and more expensive to "bribe" 50 different regulators. It's why things like this should be left to the States. But business and Washington bureaucrats would hate that. However, while there are departments that could be decentralized such as Education, or maybe to lesser extent FCC (Radio travels a good distance and the Military has a want to regulate it.) there are other regulators that you can't really do that with. I mean can you imagine how pissed Tennessee would be if we broke up the Nuclear Regulatory committee and then say Arkansas decides that it's OK to build a nuclear power plant with lax safety standards across the Mississippi from Memphis. Think about that one for a second, it sounds to me like it might clearly fall into the purview of the federal government at that point.
I'd vote for that since I never plan on working for the feds. However, how would this work for someone who works as a "contractor". What about retired military personnel. What's keeping congress from writing themselves out of the law. What about income from investments (i.e. dividends or capital gains.) vs earned income? Do benefits count for gross income in this law?
I feel like by the time congress is done "debating" such a law it will be toothless and full of pork. Why not just be blatant about this and let our elected representatives sack everyone and hire there own cronies at least they could set policy it would be obvious to everyone how corrupt everything really is. Just saying.
Really this has always been Apple's business model. When they first released the Apple Computer it was one of the first personal computers ever released for sale outside of a big corporate contract. That turned out to be very disruptive till IBM clones flooded the market. Then Apple floundered for a while till they grabbed onto a hit with the iPod. They have been riding the leading edge of the digitize and control the online distribution of most media since. Once the digitization of all media trend finishes they will have to move onto something else or die.
BTW the only things left to them in my opinion are:
1.) Live Television (Good luck with that. Its not so much that Apple can't make a good product here it's just that the cable companies/TV studios will never let them corner the market like they did with the music industry.)
2.) Replacing the iPod Mini with a watch that syncs to your iPhone. (That could be cool for a while but they will have to keep costs down IMHO. And with the Samsung Gear it's basically a me too at this point.)
3.) Pull a M$ and try to merge there desktop class and tablet class together. (That seems silly for the most part but might not blow up in their faces.)
4.) Virtual Reality - If apple can break into this field with a breakaway product before anyone else that's affordable and amazing they could be set for awhile.
Don't be sorry. I'm actually quite happy I didn't get in. Not only did my education at Western Michigan University cost me less money (i.e. less debt) but I make more money than my brother now. Also I met my wife at WMU. Getting rejected worked out great!:)
Also, I'm not opposed to them getting rid of legacy status I just know that realistically it probably won't happen since a lot of U of M's donor's are Alumni. Also, as DRJlaw outlined below the effect of legacy is much lower than the affect of race or even grades.
I got some data for you that you won't like. I come from a family with 5 kids. All 5 of us went to top high schools in the Detroit area. All 5 of us had over a 3.4 GPA and scored over at least 23 on our ACT's. Both my mother and father are University of Michigan Alumni with Bachelor and Master degrees. All 5 of us applied to U of M. Only one of us got in. Let me repeat that for you. Only one of us got accepted. It wasn't me either, my brother got in because he had the highest grades of all of us with a 3.7 GPA and a 29 on his ACT's. I was only a little behind him 3.6 GPA 26 ACT. Clearly alumni status didn't count that much.
Having grown up in Michigan, particularly Detroit, I actually agree with you. Michigan is extremely racist on some issues. For example growing up it was very well known that if a hard working middle class black couple moved from inner city Detroit into your nice white suburb it wouldn't be long before half of the white population moved to the next town over or further away because "OH MY GOD MY NEIGHBORHOOD IS BEING INVADED! THE PROPERTY VALUES ARE GOING TO DROP" creating a self fulfilling prophecy and destroying what used to be good neighborhoods and the hopes of hard working Americans who lifted themselves out of the ghetto.
This "White Flight" destroyed the Suburb I grew up in (Redford Township) and at the beginning for no reason at all. My parents still live there because well they paid their house off and didn't want to move so screw the market values. But I have seen how the area around them has decayed as more and more people left the town for Novi, Canton, and Livonia. To make matters worse, no one seems to learn from this at all either or rather they learn the wrong lesson. Livonia is now going through the same thing that Redford did and even the Grosse Pointes are starting to see it. It's sad and pathetic.
It's not all White Racism in that area either, I have been personally on the receiving end of resentment, hatred and harassment because of the color of my skin. I'm not bitter about it it's just the way things were. Detroit is a city that has never recovered from the race riots of the 60's and it is the real reason it has been falling apart. The seeds of this racism go all the way back to Henry Ford's hiring practices and it will probably be after I'm long dead before this ever improves.
However, the supreme court still made the right decision in that they ruled that the federal government does not have the power to regulate a state's right to implement or outlaw affirmative action. If the people of Michigan want the law changed they shouldn't cry to the feds they should stand up and vote it down. Now if Michigan had made a law that said Asians can't enter the following colleges (Insert list of top universities) then they should have struck that down. But that isn't what affirmative action is.
Affirmative action is giving preferential treatment to a "disadvantaged" group. I have failed to see how this is not a form of racism even if it is well intentioned. Is not classic racism giving the majority preferential treatment because we identify with them more? How is affirmative action different from that just not backwards in reason not result. The Michigan Universities should accept applicants based on merit alone end of story. Now lets get a law removing alumni status passed.
"First of all, our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law," Putin said. "So how special forces can use this kind of special equipment as they intercept phone calls or follow someone online, you have to get court permission to stalk a particular person. We don't have a mass system of such interception. "
He never says that they don't collect blanket data explicitly just that they don't do it illegally and that they cannot match the abilities of the NSA.
To add to this the Wiki article on SORM states that the equipment was mandated by Law. So technically the surveillance is legal and transparent.
The only diffrence I'm seeing here is that 1. The Russians aren't as good as surveillance as the NSA. 2. They are totally open about the fact that everything you do on he internet or over a telephone is tracked. Color me shocked...
This is exactly it. My brother who is 6' 10" and built like a tank always pays to upgrade when he has to fly a long distance like to Europe. I however don't care I'm 5' 11" and pretty normally wide. (It's funny being normal sized in a big family BTW. I grew up thinking I was short.) I can suffer through coach just fine thank you very much. Though I have been known to jump on getting an exit row if the occupant doesn't want to/can't open the door.
Not being huge has other advantages as well. For example I have no problem driving a Mazda 3 with manual transmission. My brother has trouble getting his knee to fit under the dash while bringing his foot up to hit the clutch. Also in my sister's Chevy Cruz his head hits the ceiling every time you hit a bump. As a result he drives an Impala which he knows gets terrible gas millage compared to my Mazda but at least he's comfortable.
This is one of the few times I think that there might actually be a justification for a national security classification. Just because I don't think we should give what is arguably one of the longest range missiles ever proven to work to every country that can hire an engineer who can read English. I mean do you really want to give Iran the the ability to nuke the moon.
It's pretty ambitious when the country you are taking territory from has specifically signed a treaty with you in the past where you agreed to respect it's boarders if they disarmed all their nuclear weapons. Then to top it off the only other large nuclear power signed on the treaty backing the move. Yeah that's pretty ballsy. Source I don't think any other country will be dumb enough to give up there nukes any time soon.
They didn't beat the US. The US got a sample back first with a maned mission. However, they would have beat the US had the first Luna probe they send not crashed. Like a lot of things with the space race it was all pretty close. Also, the USSR could have beat the US to the moon had the N1 not failed it's first test launch. They were ahead of the Apollo program in terms of the command module and lunar lander testing. But without a rocket to get to the moon it didn't matter.
Yeah the guy who backed those films is a nut job. I read a few of his "papers" from his website and he is totally off the wall. He was using Jews as an excuse for NASA covering up the "truth".
Another one of his "articles" was arguing that the Catholic church is in league with the Atheist's and Jews because they came out at said that there is no conflict between the Catholic faith and evolution. He just seems fixated on one issue. I stopped reading once I had a clear picture that the guy was crazy and more inclined to present personal attacks then actual science.
Since the navy already runs nuclear reactors on ships I don't think they are that worried about them. However, the capacitor bank exploding could be interesting. I guess they would have to put it somewhere armored on the ship. I would also think that they might have trouble providing cooling for all the electrical equipment as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly he's search engine trolling.
My prediction is that eventually History will look like this:
The Anglophone Empire existed from 1215 to -. It's primary form of Government was constitutional democracy, it's capital was at one point London, England but eventually transitioned to Washington D.C. USA around 1948 after a schism that started in 1776 ended around 1918. It existed as a tight alliance of English Speaking countries and a treaty bound alliance known as NATO. There are also various non-NATO client states such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and South Korea who are all under varying forms of control or influence of this Empire.
You are creating a false dichotomy here by assuming that the only way to buy a car is to buy new. Today, any used car that was built 4 years ago that has a clean crash history and under 50,000 miles is a better car that could have been purchased for the same inflation adjusted price in 1974. There are many reasons for this, improve quality, higher safety standards, ect.
The reason new cars cost comparably more than 1974 cars is that cars have become so reliable that it is no longer profitable to sell cars at that price point. Also, auto companies figured out that they could lease cars to people and then sell them after 2 years at a lower price. The net effect of this is that the average buyer can get a car that's cost was partially subsidized by someone who leased it if they are willing to not have the newest model. If I buy a used 2012 car that has 50k miles on it that costs less per mile in maintenance than 1974 car with 0 miles on it and the 2012 car will reasonably go at least 180K I come out ahead as a consumer vs the 1974 car at the same price point.
If we stopped using coal for power generation tomorrow we wouldn't stop using coal. What do you think they use to add carbon to iron to make steel?
The question is how much coal will we use not can we stop using it. And if we can make electricity cheap without coal then it will lower the price of steel. Allowing us to build more stuff. Coal will suffer short term but long term it will survive just a little less profitable I would bet.
Ever heard of nuclear?
The problem is, you still have to mine for it, and there's a finite supply of nuclear material.
And yet according to this article and this wikipage we won't run out of Uranium or Thorium for reactors any time soon (30,000 to 60,000 years) if we take the unnecessary measures to recycle as much of the fuel as possible. If we are not off this rock exploiting the solar systems resources by 30,000 years our species is doomed anyway. (i.e. a big dumb rock will hit us eventually.) So what's your point.
Oh crap!
From a Military perspective how to do you keep someone from just shooting down your space based solar array. It's pretty hard to stop a high velocity missile from impacting and destroying a large stationary object this is pretty fragile. I guess you could arm the array with lasers, guns, missiles and such and hope to detect and change the vector of an approaching impactor but that sounds expensive and probably in violation of our no space based weapons treaties. Though the whole array could probably be turned into a weapon so it might be out just by itself. Not saying we shouldn't build one though just fun to think about that.
Exactly it's a lot harder and more expensive to "bribe" 50 different regulators. It's why things like this should be left to the States. But business and Washington bureaucrats would hate that. However, while there are departments that could be decentralized such as Education, or maybe to lesser extent FCC (Radio travels a good distance and the Military has a want to regulate it.) there are other regulators that you can't really do that with. I mean can you imagine how pissed Tennessee would be if we broke up the Nuclear Regulatory committee and then say Arkansas decides that it's OK to build a nuclear power plant with lax safety standards across the Mississippi from Memphis. Think about that one for a second, it sounds to me like it might clearly fall into the purview of the federal government at that point.
I'd vote for that since I never plan on working for the feds. However, how would this work for someone who works as a "contractor". What about retired military personnel. What's keeping congress from writing themselves out of the law. What about income from investments (i.e. dividends or capital gains.) vs earned income? Do benefits count for gross income in this law?
I feel like by the time congress is done "debating" such a law it will be toothless and full of pork. Why not just be blatant about this and let our elected representatives sack everyone and hire there own cronies at least they could set policy it would be obvious to everyone how corrupt everything really is. Just saying.
Really this has always been Apple's business model. When they first released the Apple Computer it was one of the first personal computers ever released for sale outside of a big corporate contract. That turned out to be very disruptive till IBM clones flooded the market. Then Apple floundered for a while till they grabbed onto a hit with the iPod. They have been riding the leading edge of the digitize and control the online distribution of most media since. Once the digitization of all media trend finishes they will have to move onto something else or die.
BTW the only things left to them in my opinion are:
1.) Live Television (Good luck with that. Its not so much that Apple can't make a good product here it's just that the cable companies/TV studios will never let them corner the market like they did with the music industry.)
2.) Replacing the iPod Mini with a watch that syncs to your iPhone. (That could be cool for a while but they will have to keep costs down IMHO. And with the Samsung Gear it's basically a me too at this point.)
3.) Pull a M$ and try to merge there desktop class and tablet class together. (That seems silly for the most part but might not blow up in their faces.)
4.) Virtual Reality - If apple can break into this field with a breakaway product before anyone else that's affordable and amazing they could be set for awhile.
Don't be sorry. I'm actually quite happy I didn't get in. Not only did my education at Western Michigan University cost me less money (i.e. less debt) but I make more money than my brother now. Also I met my wife at WMU. Getting rejected worked out great! :)
Also, I'm not opposed to them getting rid of legacy status I just know that realistically it probably won't happen since a lot of U of M's donor's are Alumni. Also, as DRJlaw outlined below the effect of legacy is much lower than the affect of race or even grades.
I got some data for you that you won't like. I come from a family with 5 kids. All 5 of us went to top high schools in the Detroit area. All 5 of us had over a 3.4 GPA and scored over at least 23 on our ACT's. Both my mother and father are University of Michigan Alumni with Bachelor and Master degrees. All 5 of us applied to U of M. Only one of us got in. Let me repeat that for you. Only one of us got accepted. It wasn't me either, my brother got in because he had the highest grades of all of us with a 3.7 GPA and a 29 on his ACT's. I was only a little behind him 3.6 GPA 26 ACT. Clearly alumni status didn't count that much.
Having grown up in Michigan, particularly Detroit, I actually agree with you. Michigan is extremely racist on some issues. For example growing up it was very well known that if a hard working middle class black couple moved from inner city Detroit into your nice white suburb it wouldn't be long before half of the white population moved to the next town over or further away because "OH MY GOD MY NEIGHBORHOOD IS BEING INVADED! THE PROPERTY VALUES ARE GOING TO DROP" creating a self fulfilling prophecy and destroying what used to be good neighborhoods and the hopes of hard working Americans who lifted themselves out of the ghetto.
This "White Flight" destroyed the Suburb I grew up in (Redford Township) and at the beginning for no reason at all. My parents still live there because well they paid their house off and didn't want to move so screw the market values. But I have seen how the area around them has decayed as more and more people left the town for Novi, Canton, and Livonia. To make matters worse, no one seems to learn from this at all either or rather they learn the wrong lesson. Livonia is now going through the same thing that Redford did and even the Grosse Pointes are starting to see it. It's sad and pathetic.
It's not all White Racism in that area either, I have been personally on the receiving end of resentment, hatred and harassment because of the color of my skin. I'm not bitter about it it's just the way things were. Detroit is a city that has never recovered from the race riots of the 60's and it is the real reason it has been falling apart. The seeds of this racism go all the way back to Henry Ford's hiring practices and it will probably be after I'm long dead before this ever improves.
However, the supreme court still made the right decision in that they ruled that the federal government does not have the power to regulate a state's right to implement or outlaw affirmative action. If the people of Michigan want the law changed they shouldn't cry to the feds they should stand up and vote it down. Now if Michigan had made a law that said Asians can't enter the following colleges (Insert list of top universities) then they should have struck that down. But that isn't what affirmative action is.
Affirmative action is giving preferential treatment to a "disadvantaged" group. I have failed to see how this is not a form of racism even if it is well intentioned. Is not classic racism giving the majority preferential treatment because we identify with them more? How is affirmative action different from that just not backwards in reason not result. The Michigan Universities should accept applicants based on merit alone end of story. Now lets get a law removing alumni status passed.
Exactly it takes me 15 minutes at a fast pace to walk across downtown Chicago from the train station to my office and that's less than 2 miles.
Yes but if you read Putin's words...
"First of all, our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law," Putin said. "So how special forces can use this kind of special equipment as they intercept phone calls or follow someone online, you have to get court permission to stalk a particular person. We don't have a mass system of such interception. "
He never says that they don't collect blanket data explicitly just that they don't do it illegally and that they cannot match the abilities of the NSA.
To add to this the Wiki article on SORM states that the equipment was mandated by Law. So technically the surveillance is legal and transparent.
The only diffrence I'm seeing here is that 1. The Russians aren't as good as surveillance as the NSA. 2. They are totally open about the fact that everything you do on he internet or over a telephone is tracked. Color me shocked...
I stand corrected. Thank you for the article it was most informative.
This is exactly it. My brother who is 6' 10" and built like a tank always pays to upgrade when he has to fly a long distance like to Europe. I however don't care I'm 5' 11" and pretty normally wide. (It's funny being normal sized in a big family BTW. I grew up thinking I was short.) I can suffer through coach just fine thank you very much. Though I have been known to jump on getting an exit row if the occupant doesn't want to/can't open the door.
Not being huge has other advantages as well. For example I have no problem driving a Mazda 3 with manual transmission. My brother has trouble getting his knee to fit under the dash while bringing his foot up to hit the clutch. Also in my sister's Chevy Cruz his head hits the ceiling every time you hit a bump. As a result he drives an Impala which he knows gets terrible gas millage compared to my Mazda but at least he's comfortable.
I'll believe in this when the car flys.
This is one of the few times I think that there might actually be a justification for a national security classification. Just because I don't think we should give what is arguably one of the longest range missiles ever proven to work to every country that can hire an engineer who can read English. I mean do you really want to give Iran the the ability to nuke the moon.
It's pretty ambitious when the country you are taking territory from has specifically signed a treaty with you in the past where you agreed to respect it's boarders if they disarmed all their nuclear weapons. Then to top it off the only other large nuclear power signed on the treaty backing the move. Yeah that's pretty ballsy. Source I don't think any other country will be dumb enough to give up there nukes any time soon.
They didn't beat the US. The US got a sample back first with a maned mission. However, they would have beat the US had the first Luna probe they send not crashed. Like a lot of things with the space race it was all pretty close. Also, the USSR could have beat the US to the moon had the N1 not failed it's first test launch. They were ahead of the Apollo program in terms of the command module and lunar lander testing. But without a rocket to get to the moon it didn't matter.
If you can get the waste to break orbit why not just point it at the sun. Landing it on the moon seems unnecessary.
Yeah the guy who backed those films is a nut job. I read a few of his "papers" from his website and he is totally off the wall. He was using Jews as an excuse for NASA covering up the "truth".
Another one of his "articles" was arguing that the Catholic church is in league with the Atheist's and Jews because they came out at said that there is no conflict between the Catholic faith and evolution. He just seems fixated on one issue. I stopped reading once I had a clear picture that the guy was crazy and more inclined to present personal attacks then actual science.
This man should be ignored.
Why have a crew at all... we have self flying plains why not supply ships.
Since the navy already runs nuclear reactors on ships I don't think they are that worried about them. However, the capacitor bank exploding could be interesting. I guess they would have to put it somewhere armored on the ship. I would also think that they might have trouble providing cooling for all the electrical equipment as well.