US manufacturing production output was $1.8 trillion in 2007, the largest output of any country now or ever. Manufacturing in the US doesn't have too many jobs any more though because labor is being replaced with machines, and low-skill labor that can't be done by machines (such as sewing) is moving to poorer countries.
Of course, OS X was "manufactured" in the US but doesn't show up in those numbers. And the design for my MacBook was "manufactured" in the US even if its physical implementation was manufactured outside the US. But without the service jobs of software development and system design, the MacBook would not exist.
..what is actually a zero-sum game because manufacturers compete for consumers?
Sales is the process of voluntary exchange where one party has more utility for an item than another party, and money is exchanged to balance the transaction. This goes on everyday on EBay, where the utility for your wall pocket drops because you don't like it as much any more. Or because of the law of diminishing returns, everyone loves one bicycle, but if you manufacture a million of them, you would prefer to sell them instead of riding them.
Competition does encourage producers to be as efficient as possible in their efforts of value added by manufacturing (which I am throwing information manufacturing into) and sales. This value add means that the economy as a whole is continuously growing wealth. We may sometimes overstate out wealth (as in the housing bubble burst), but the long term growth is global wealth increase.
Nothing in the economy is "voluntary".
So you are forced, against your will, to purchase a latte at Starbucks? Are you in North Korea?
The only way left to continue the desired cycle and free up credit would be to take resources from the rich
The economy is not a zero-sum game. We create wealth everyday, through manufacturing (of the hardware and software variety) as well as sales (moving goods from places they are valued less to where they are valued more, enriching both sides of the voluntary exchange).
We don't need more credit. We need more people obtaining the skills to generate wealth. Let's make more wealth, and get wealthier!
1) Light. Yes, I use my iPhone as a flashlight more than I like to admit 2) i41CX+ RPN calculator 3) Files, which I often use to store reference PDFs for work, and I always keep an NYC subway map on it. 4) Shazam, which I've used to figure out what a huge number of songs on the radio were 5) The Weather Channel, when the Appleweather isn't enough (radar + NWS warnings)
Things I've used once or twice: Panolab - sure, its fun, three times maybe TouchTerm - interesting to try, painful to use Night Camera - not sure this does anything Ruler Phone - not much of a ruler AIM - more of a problem of me not liking IM
Your energy station is an absurd 36000 km away. Good luck focussing and aiming then.
Today's Ka-band (~30 GHz) satellite spot beam sizes can go down to around 1 degree (~600 km on the Earth's surface from geosynchronous orbit). This is about a 30cm dish on the satellite.
Discussions of non-rain-attenuated frequencies for solar power satellites (2.5-5.0 GHz) generally involve a transmitting antenna of ~1km or more in size to deliver to a receiving rectenna of similar size.
How you get a 1km size dish built in space to acceptable tolerances is an interesting question.
I think the real cost of solar power is the acquisition of and environmental impact statement of the land used. My impression is that most rectenna plans do not call for much more power per square meter than solar insolation (~1.5 kw/m^2 on a good day).
Which begs the question, maybe it would be better to just have solar panels on the same land rather than rectennas.
Of course, rectennas could be relatively see-through at non-rain attenuated frequencies. So you could also put solar panels underneath them...
And the use of 8VSB modulation means that stations *theoretically* can cover more distance with less power than COFDM, but it also means moving receivers are out of the question
ATSC-M/H has been developed to allow existing ATSC (8VSB) stations to also deliver signals to moving receivers (M/H means mobile/handheld). It basically throws a ton of FEC on the low-bitrate M/H signal.
This article has a good explanation of the difference between Orbital Angular Momentum and Polarization of EM waves.
If you look at the cross section of a "normal" polarized EM beam, the electric field amplitude and direction at every point of the cross section are in the same phase - although that direction may be up, down, or rotate over time depending on the polarization.
In an EM beam with orbital angular momentum, the electric field amplitude at different points on the cross section are in different phases - although it is my understanding they are usually all in the same polarization.
blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.
The other possibility was for the Japanese to bring their culture of quiet industry and octopode porn Manga to Australia...OK, maybe you chose the wrong side!
In this modern era of digital recording and projection, where any visual artifact may simply be a by-product of the video compression algorithm,
If you can see any artifacts in a DCI-compliant 250 Mbps 24 fps JPEG-2000, please report to Hollywood because your eyes are better than anyone in the digital cinema industry!
1) "You are not an economist" 2) "You are not a political scientist or expert in public choice theory" 3) "You are not a businessperson" 4) "You are not a pick-up artist"
Banks are still lending to people with good credit (they've learned their lesson). But few people want to borrow right now because of the economic uncertainty.
The market will restructure industries. We need fewer people working in finance (they are being laid off right now), more people working in health care where there is more demand, for example. This process will involve higher than normal unemployment rates for a while, but eventually people and companies will determine ways to profitably employ people.
Government can't really legislate economies, any more than they can legislate morality (well, OK, they can legislate an economy out-of-existence, like North Korea or Zimbabwe).
One can only spend so much; just look at the bank accounts of the multi-millionaires for proof.
Most multi-millionaires I know have much of their money invested, i.e. it is the capital that allows businesses to operate and hire people.
The money that is actually "in savings accounts" is the capitalization of banks, and right now most of the banks are under-capitalized because of the real-estate bubble implosion. You can argue that the banks were stupid in loaning money, but do you really want people to pull their money out of savings now and force all of the banks to go out of business?
I'll admit Treasury bonds are a waste of money - that is the funding for debt-financed Federal overspending.
"I suggest a 100% payroll tax cut for the bottom 40% of household incomes, paid for by a a carbon tax of $0.50/gallon on gasoline and a $5/short ton on coal."
Are you kidding! that will throttle business at *best* it will offset the savings in payroll with more energy costs.
The good news is that it is testable. We can look over the last few years and see that we have survived gasoline and coal price changes over this approximate amount and did fairly well during that time.
I suspect the elasticity of demand for dropping labor costs is more than the elasticity of gasoline sales. Plus a carbon tax would spur new technology, and if you believe in Global Warming, that is a good thing as well.
On the other, the Federal debt as a percent of GDP is reaching levels not seen since the paydown of WWII debt during the 1950's, and we are not paying it down. It is not out of the picture that we will see a global lack of confidence in US debt is on the horizon, which could be exceedingly costly. Blowing another $trillion through debt may not be a hot idea. We'll have to pay for it somehow down the road anyway. Based on tax incidence, I suspect my household will have to pay $50,000 net present value for the stimulus bills.
Or we could blow off the stimulus and take an extra 1% of unemployment for 2.5 years according to Obama economic advisors Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein. Frankly I'd take that over the current stimulus bills.
The Interstate highway system doesn't turn a profit either, what's your point?
I think it could if Federal gasoline taxes rose with inflation (they haven't changed since 1993).
On the other hand, I doubt Amtrak could turn a profit at any ticket price level, because Amtrak can barely compete with airline prices even on short legs.
Natural experiments have shown that most people continue to drive even at $4/gallon.
The Tax cuts, if any, should be limited to people within 15% of the poverty line.
You realize that if you make 15% over the poverty line that you don't pay any income taxes. Many people in that region have a negative income tax due to EITC.
Now they do pay payroll taxes, but that is for Social Security, right?;) Of course we all know that is baloney.
I suggest a 100% payroll tax cut for the bottom 40% of household incomes, paid for by a a carbon tax of $0.50/gallon on gasoline and a $5/short ton on coal.
The payroll tax cut will enable companies to hire more workers. One of the biggest problems in a recession is "sticky wages", the payroll tax cut allows businesses to reduce labor costs while not reducing worker take home pay.
The carbon tax is probably something we need anyway, we should not be financing the stimulus from deficit given the current global credit challenge.
Take the trackbeds, fix them up for a new rail system.
Would you like to do the environmental impact study? We're talking years.
The other challenge is that the few places that actually have high-quality rails for Amtrak barely breaks even. Amtrak as a whole has never turned a profit. It is likely that even an improved passenger rail system would need a larger permanent subsidy to survive.
This is not precisely true. While some major network VHF will move to UHF, many will not. In Las Vegas, for example the final post-transition DTV channel for all major networks will remain VHF. In Washington, DC, NBC and FOX are moving form analog VHF to UHF, but ABC and CBS will remain on VHF for DTV post-transition.
What is definitely happening with regards to frequencies is that all UHF channels above 51 will be vacated for spectrum auction winners.
So clearly if you have been a VHF-only receive antenna, you will probably also need a UHF capability to continue to receive the same stations.
What I don't understand is why it has to be done all at once? Why not do a rolling switchover?
Ratings. If you are suddenly the only non-analog station in your market, you may end up looking very bad in comparison to the other stations.
Many stations have already applied to the FCC for early analog turn-off, and some have even turned off analog already, but not major commercial network stations in major DMAs.
"Deserve" is a pretty subjective concept. However it is possible that many poor people in countries with widespread malaria voted for leaders whose policies have reduced economic growth in their country (or outright destroyed their economy such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe).
Malaria was endemic in the US until the late 1940's. It was eliminated by 1949 through wetland drainage and insecticide spraying. Of course, by the 1940's, the US had an economy to support this.
By 1949, US GDP per capita was about $10,000 in current dollars. Most malaria-endemic countries still have not acheived that level of GDP per capita today.
However, looking at their Tuscon channel lineups, it appears that the porn is only offered on their digital packages nowdays. I don't know much about the innards of a cable system, but it seems like that would make it difficult for a regular analog-tier customer to "accidentally" recieve porn.
The thing is there is no "ordinary" head-end these days. Some MSOs want just MPEG-2 transport streams over UDP out of satellite radios, others want NTSC analog baseband SD out, and some want serial digital baseband video. If all their SD was taken to baseband video (both porn and network), it could have been mixed at that level, regardless of whether it was modulated for the analog tier or encoded/muxed/modulated for the digital tier.
It could be simple as taking "source 92 to destination 63", oops I meant "take source 29 to destination 63" on the video crosspoint router control panel.
Space Track lists two new objects in orbit with a 56 degree inclination: 2009-004A and 2009-004B (catalog numbers 33506 and 33507, respectively). AFSK telemetry supposedly from Omid are on Wikipedia.
Slashdot Mirror
Will it be in HD like the Simpsons or SD like Family Guy?
All FOX regular network programs are HD, 720p60 now. Whether they are 4:3 or 16:9 is a show-by-show issue for animation though.
Also many programs syndicated by 20th Television are SD.
"The economy is not a zero-sum game."
It is when you don't make anything useful.
US manufacturing production output was $1.8 trillion in 2007, the largest output of any country now or ever. Manufacturing in the US doesn't have too many jobs any more though because labor is being replaced with machines, and low-skill labor that can't be done by machines (such as sewing) is moving to poorer countries.
Of course, OS X was "manufactured" in the US but doesn't show up in those numbers. And the design for my MacBook was "manufactured" in the US even if its physical implementation was manufactured outside the US. But without the service jobs of software development and system design, the MacBook would not exist.
Sales is the process of voluntary exchange where one party has more utility for an item than another party, and money is exchanged to balance the transaction. This goes on everyday on EBay, where the utility for your wall pocket drops because you don't like it as much any more. Or because of the law of diminishing returns, everyone loves one bicycle, but if you manufacture a million of them, you would prefer to sell them instead of riding them.
Competition does encourage producers to be as efficient as possible in their efforts of value added by manufacturing (which I am throwing information manufacturing into) and sales. This value add means that the economy as a whole is continuously growing wealth. We may sometimes overstate out wealth (as in the housing bubble burst), but the long term growth is global wealth increase.
Nothing in the economy is "voluntary".
So you are forced, against your will, to purchase a latte at Starbucks? Are you in North Korea?
The only way left to continue the desired cycle and free up credit would be to take resources from the rich
The economy is not a zero-sum game. We create wealth everyday, through manufacturing (of the hardware and software variety) as well as sales (moving goods from places they are valued less to where they are valued more, enriching both sides of the voluntary exchange).
We don't need more credit. We need more people obtaining the skills to generate wealth. Let's make more wealth, and get wealthier!
Here are iPhone apps I use almost every day:
1) Light. Yes, I use my iPhone as a flashlight more than I like to admit
2) i41CX+ RPN calculator
3) Files, which I often use to store reference PDFs for work, and I always keep an NYC subway map on it.
4) Shazam, which I've used to figure out what a huge number of songs on the radio were
5) The Weather Channel, when the Appleweather isn't enough (radar + NWS warnings)
Things I've used once or twice:
Panolab - sure, its fun, three times maybe
TouchTerm - interesting to try, painful to use
Night Camera - not sure this does anything
Ruler Phone - not much of a ruler
AIM - more of a problem of me not liking IM
Your energy station is an absurd 36000 km away. Good luck focussing and aiming then.
Today's Ka-band (~30 GHz) satellite spot beam sizes can go down to around 1 degree (~600 km on the Earth's surface from geosynchronous orbit). This is about a 30cm dish on the satellite.
Discussions of non-rain-attenuated frequencies for solar power satellites (2.5-5.0 GHz) generally involve a transmitting antenna of ~1km or more in size to deliver to a receiving rectenna of similar size.
How you get a 1km size dish built in space to acceptable tolerances is an interesting question.
I think the real cost of solar power is the acquisition of and environmental impact statement of the land used. My impression is that most rectenna plans do not call for much more power per square meter than solar insolation (~1.5 kw/m^2 on a good day).
Which begs the question, maybe it would be better to just have solar panels on the same land rather than rectennas.
Of course, rectennas could be relatively see-through at non-rain attenuated frequencies. So you could also put solar panels underneath them...
And the use of 8VSB modulation means that stations *theoretically* can cover more distance with less power than COFDM, but it also means moving receivers are out of the question
ATSC-M/H has been developed to allow existing ATSC (8VSB) stations to also deliver signals to moving receivers (M/H means mobile/handheld). It basically throws a ton of FEC on the low-bitrate M/H signal.
This article has a good explanation of the difference between Orbital Angular Momentum and Polarization of EM waves.
If you look at the cross section of a "normal" polarized EM beam, the electric field amplitude and direction at every point of the cross section are in the same phase - although that direction may be up, down, or rotate over time depending on the polarization.
In an EM beam with orbital angular momentum, the electric field amplitude at different points on the cross section are in different phases - although it is my understanding they are usually all in the same polarization.
blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.
The other possibility was for the Japanese to bring their culture of quiet industry and octopode porn Manga to Australia...OK, maybe you chose the wrong side!
In this modern era of digital recording and projection, where any visual artifact may simply be a by-product of the video compression algorithm,
If you can see any artifacts in a DCI-compliant 250 Mbps 24 fps JPEG-2000, please report to Hollywood because your eyes are better than anyone in the digital cinema industry!
if perhaps they had decided to sell some of these models in the U.S.
The U.S. has tight crash, exhaust, and fuel mileage standards, as well as much richer consumers.
For example, frontal airbags requirements were only enforced in new Chinese cars in 2007.
1) "You are not an economist"
2) "You are not a political scientist or expert in public choice theory"
3) "You are not a businessperson"
4) "You are not a pick-up artist"
The obvious and unanswered question is, why do countries like Japan and France have more and better options for bandwidth?
I wonder if you have to file an environmental impact statement to trench fiber in Japan if the government is behind you?
but I have no idea how to get the banks lending.
Banks are still lending to people with good credit (they've learned their lesson). But few people want to borrow right now because of the economic uncertainty.
The market will restructure industries. We need fewer people working in finance (they are being laid off right now), more people working in health care where there is more demand, for example. This process will involve higher than normal unemployment rates for a while, but eventually people and companies will determine ways to profitably employ people.
Government can't really legislate economies, any more than they can legislate morality (well, OK, they can legislate an economy out-of-existence, like North Korea or Zimbabwe).
One can only spend so much; just look at the bank accounts of the multi-millionaires for proof.
Most multi-millionaires I know have much of their money invested, i.e. it is the capital that allows businesses to operate and hire people.
The money that is actually "in savings accounts" is the capitalization of banks, and right now most of the banks are under-capitalized because of the real-estate bubble implosion. You can argue that the banks were stupid in loaning money, but do you really want people to pull their money out of savings now and force all of the banks to go out of business?
I'll admit Treasury bonds are a waste of money - that is the funding for debt-financed Federal overspending.
"I suggest a 100% payroll tax cut for the bottom 40% of household incomes, paid for by a a carbon tax of $0.50/gallon on gasoline and a $5/short ton on coal."
Are you kidding! that will throttle business at *best* it will offset the savings in payroll with more energy costs.
The good news is that it is testable. We can look over the last few years and see that we have survived gasoline and coal price changes over this approximate amount and did fairly well during that time.
I suspect the elasticity of demand for dropping labor costs is more than the elasticity of gasoline sales. Plus a carbon tax would spur new technology, and if you believe in Global Warming, that is a good thing as well.
On the other, the Federal debt as a percent of GDP is reaching levels not seen since the paydown of WWII debt during the 1950's, and we are not paying it down. It is not out of the picture that we will see a global lack of confidence in US debt is on the horizon, which could be exceedingly costly. Blowing another $trillion through debt may not be a hot idea. We'll have to pay for it somehow down the road anyway. Based on tax incidence, I suspect my household will have to pay $50,000 net present value for the stimulus bills.
Or we could blow off the stimulus and take an extra 1% of unemployment for 2.5 years according to Obama economic advisors Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein. Frankly I'd take that over the current stimulus bills.
It is all cost versus benefit.
The Interstate highway system doesn't turn a profit either, what's your point?
I think it could if Federal gasoline taxes rose with inflation (they haven't changed since 1993).
On the other hand, I doubt Amtrak could turn a profit at any ticket price level, because Amtrak can barely compete with airline prices even on short legs.
Natural experiments have shown that most people continue to drive even at $4/gallon.
The Tax cuts, if any, should be limited to people within 15% of the poverty line.
You realize that if you make 15% over the poverty line that you don't pay any income taxes. Many people in that region have a negative income tax due to EITC.
Now they do pay payroll taxes, but that is for Social Security, right? ;) Of course we all know that is baloney.
I suggest a 100% payroll tax cut for the bottom 40% of household incomes, paid for by a a carbon tax of $0.50/gallon on gasoline and a $5/short ton on coal.
The payroll tax cut will enable companies to hire more workers. One of the biggest problems in a recession is "sticky wages", the payroll tax cut allows businesses to reduce labor costs while not reducing worker take home pay.
The carbon tax is probably something we need anyway, we should not be financing the stimulus from deficit given the current global credit challenge.
Take the trackbeds, fix them up for a new rail system.
Would you like to do the environmental impact study? We're talking years.
The other challenge is that the few places that actually have high-quality rails for Amtrak barely breaks even. Amtrak as a whole has never turned a profit. It is likely that even an improved passenger rail system would need a larger permanent subsidy to survive.
The DTV switch moves the signal to the UHF bands
This is not precisely true. While some major network VHF will move to UHF, many will not. In Las Vegas, for example the final post-transition DTV channel for all major networks will remain VHF. In Washington, DC, NBC and FOX are moving form analog VHF to UHF, but ABC and CBS will remain on VHF for DTV post-transition.
What is definitely happening with regards to frequencies is that all UHF channels above 51 will be vacated for spectrum auction winners.
So clearly if you have been a VHF-only receive antenna, you will probably also need a UHF capability to continue to receive the same stations.
More info final DTV channels here.
What I don't understand is why it has to be done all at once? Why not do a rolling switchover?
Ratings. If you are suddenly the only non-analog station in your market, you may end up looking very bad in comparison to the other stations.
Many stations have already applied to the FCC for early analog turn-off, and some have even turned off analog already, but not major commercial network stations in major DMAs.
Poor people did nothing to deserve being infected
"Deserve" is a pretty subjective concept. However it is possible that many poor people in countries with widespread malaria voted for leaders whose policies have reduced economic growth in their country (or outright destroyed their economy such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe).
Malaria was endemic in the US until the late 1940's. It was eliminated by 1949 through wetland drainage and insecticide spraying. Of course, by the 1940's, the US had an economy to support this.
By 1949, US GDP per capita was about $10,000 in current dollars. Most malaria-endemic countries still have not acheived that level of GDP per capita today.
However, looking at their Tuscon channel lineups, it appears that the porn is only offered on their digital packages nowdays. I don't know much about the innards of a cable system, but it seems like that would make it difficult for a regular analog-tier customer to "accidentally" recieve porn.
The thing is there is no "ordinary" head-end these days. Some MSOs want just MPEG-2 transport streams over UDP out of satellite radios, others want NTSC analog baseband SD out, and some want serial digital baseband video. If all their SD was taken to baseband video (both porn and network), it could have been mixed at that level, regardless of whether it was modulated for the analog tier or encoded/muxed/modulated for the digital tier.
It could be simple as taking "source 92 to destination 63", oops I meant "take source 29 to destination 63" on the video crosspoint router control panel.
Space Track lists two new objects in orbit with a 56 degree inclination: 2009-004A and 2009-004B (catalog numbers 33506 and 33507, respectively). AFSK telemetry supposedly from Omid are on Wikipedia.
Here is a picture of Omid, it isn't very large.
Does anyone have the Keplerian orbital elements?
How about what frequencies it is transmitting on? (Isn't is supposed to be some kind of kids' satellite or something?)