An attack is something you do to another, not something you do to yourself. Are you really implying that it is OK to blind equipment and therefore people? What if I blind the pilot of a 747 by knocking out his radio, radar, and guidance? The plane won't crash, so why is that bad?
On a different front, I'm not clear what principle of international law China is supposed to have violated in this particular case. The "no stopping us from spying on you rule"?
I believe the legal term is "Interference to chattel".
They made our high tech device not function right. That is as illegal as if we mad their low tech spy boats not function right.
OK, so what if the US responds by pointing lasers at (and temporarily blinding) Chinese "fishing boats" out in international waters just outside of Pearl Harbor? If that would be an attack, then this is an attack.
The fact is, people are allowed to watch you from outside your territory. The propper way for China to test its wartime anti-spy measures is on its own sattelites, just like the US does.
When a carrier can throw a plane off the deck at above mach, let me know. Besides, that is actually an easier problem (a large caliber gun does that, for example). What we are talking about is that the plane stays still and the carrier is thrown forward above mach.
New rule: No throwing of aircraft carriers is allowed by international law...
oh god, that's funny. yeah, that's why we invade countries with no evidence at all, completely ignore the geneva conventions, torture prisoners, etc. because international law totally applies to us. we've been bucking international law for years with no consequence.
My point is not that we obey the "international law", my point is that no one seems to expect anyone to except the US. Did Iraq? Does Iran? Does China? No one obeys international law, because no one enforces international law. But if the US breaks international law to in an (misguided) attempt prevent terrorist attacks it is evil, while when China does breaks international law it is justified to prevent spying...
This is the real truth, as long as they don't damage the satelite. Otherwise, you are saying that the US can sink all those Chinese Trawlers just outside Pearl Harbor...
So, what about listening to messages transmitted in China from a listening post in the US? Are you saying that we have to not listen? Or do they have the right to bomb us if we listen?
International law (you know, the thing that applies to the US but no one else) says that a nation owns only 100 miles up, and beyond that they can lay no claims. So, if this is to be believed, a the Chinese military just attacked the US military while the US military was in international waters. That is an act of war. If the US acknowleges it, we have to acknowlege it as an act of war.
My guess is that this was some Chinese general stroking his manhood, and that the US is going to use back channels to force China to remove that general. Better than admitting that we are at war with one of our largest trading partners...
Well, wound healing has already been shown to work in space - even in vaccuum!
On one of the missions, a small defect in an astronaut's glove eventually chaffed a hole in his skin and in the glove - his blood was leaking out into space. It was a minor injury, and the gloves are so uncomfortable anyway, so the astronaut didn't even notice until he came back inside. It turns out that the blood boils when it leaves the skin, but the platelet action is not effected so a clot forms anyway. Good thing too, since otherwise he may very well have bled to death during that spacewalk!
Anyway, at least minor healing is known to be no problem. (I can't seem to find any references to this occurance on the web - I hope I am not passing on bad data!)
Yeah, but if you do that you end up putting juk on the cable - which really doesn't work, because the cable has to lift its own wieght, including all the extra junk. For example, if you spaced out a 100 gram winding (rediculously light) spaced at 1 meter intervals (rediculously spread out), you would have 36,000,000 of them - for a total mass of 3,6000 tons. That's almost certainly more than a 100 gram winding could possibly lift, most likely by a huge multiple. So now your cable needs to be far thicker / stronger than originally. Shielding is even worse.
Hey, I hope it works out - but I'm not holding my breath!
The problem with using a solenoid based system is that a solenoid's pull is based on the "cable" part of it not being symetrical from the solenoid's point of view. (That's probably hard to follow - basically there has to be a part in the field and a part out of the field, and the solenoid pulls both into the field equally). Some kind of no-touch system would be desireable, but those either require help from the cable (which weighs too much because of the necessary cable changes) or operate very slowly (a kind of eddy current device could probably be made to work at lower speeds).
As for the wheel idea, I think that is what every is looking at right now. But the wheels have to pull (or attach to, if you will) the cable with a force of several tons (or else the cargo container would fall), and that is extremely hard at high speed.
Of course the real problems we haven't even gotten to yet - maintainence. In LEO, at least, a cable does not last very long because of micrometerite abrasion/erosion. This is not a problem with larger objects, but every time you are hit by one of the quadrillions of micrometeorites you lose an area of the cable a couple 100 microns cubed. It doesn't sound like much (and to normal objects, it isn't much), but to a thin cable the cumalative damage actually cuts it pretty quickly, on the order of days for a cable as long as a space elevator. (That said, we don't know if the micrometorites become less of a problem further out - but even so this will be a major headache)
Of course, take my analysis with a grain of salt - I am getting close to launching my own orbital launch vehicle, so these guys are ostensibly my competition! (On another note, would you pay $30,000 to go to orbit for a few days?)
Well - its not as simple as that. Think about the problem - you need to pull on a cable most likely with a force of several tons. Now you are saying that you want to do that at 1/3 mach - tricky. Probably can be done, but not a whole lot faster than that using current technology (remember - you can't add anything to the cable, not even paint because it would weigh too much). You also want to avoid wearing out the cable - and the faster you go, the more wear you cause.
So you really are talking about several days to get to geo - personally, I don't think that will be competitive with a normal rocket made with the same bucktubes, but whatever. (What makes rockets hard to do is essentially the whole "must be 99% fuel" thing. Buckytube fuel tanks would make rockets simple.)
Actually, this is probably not the accurate way to look at it. The only government flying paying space travelers is doing so after bankruptcy essentially - and it is typical for an after-bankruptcy bussiness to sell close to marginal cost.
Sunk costs, and all that... trust me, the former soviets are not flying rich Americans with a government subsidy!
More to the point, if you look at the real complaint the terrorists have, it is cultural invasion. But we don't even do the cultural invasion: We are merely successful. That makes people is other countries emulated us - in general raising their success level. But they are seen as traitors to the original culture, and as selling out to the US. (You can also see this happen inside the US in various social groups to a more limited extent.)
So, without us doing anything except minding our own business and succeeding, we become the bad guy - because we are destroying their culture. And that's why a detectable percentage of the world wants to kill us. In reality there are few other cultures more self centered and isolationist than the US, even now. We just don't care that much what the rest of the world wants to do, we think they are free to choose whatever they want.
Of course this is often simplified to: they hate us because they hate freedom, etc.
But surely one must base the center on the data from the election? So Bush was more central than Kerry, and Clinton was more central than the other Bush?
Not that I really care about classification - I know that I am further right than most, but the center seems to be further right than most on Slashdot if you compare the desries expressed here with the election results.
Personally, I would have voted for a Democrat the last time if there had been a reasonable option. Sometimes I worry that the internet is empowering extremists, and moving the Democrat party away from the center (case in point Senator Lieberman's relection debacle). If the Democrat party goes away from the center then we end up being a 1 party country - and those don't seem to work out so well. I may want the Republican party to win most of the time, but I certainly don't want them to win uncontested!
As the other commenter replied, it is all relative. For me, Clinton is left (not as far as some others, certainly, but for me he was far from center). For virtually everyone on Earth Bush is right - but I'm sure their is someone that thinks he is left leaning. Just look at the internet wackos.
And it is an interesting political statement to mod me down for pointing out that left and right are subjective rather than objective...
If you believe that Clinton was moving towards the center, all that tells us is that you are far left of the US version of center. Every man's center is different - I think that the US went too far left and is merely correcting.
Since you aren't from the US, I'll help you out on some history here. Since we are a very old democracy, obviously we have had our share of voter fraud in the past - enough that here in Chicago there is a joke about the Democrats getting to keep voting after they die...
The situation has improved greatly since the beginning (where candidates literally bought votes from people), but still has room to grow. These instances of fraud of dispicable (and as much as possible are acted upon), but the people that do the fraud tend to be well connected locals. That makes it very hard to get a case brought against them.
In general, the voter fraud is down to the level where it does not effect the outcome - the only time this can really be argued about is when the polls are very close. And, in a democracy, if the polls are really close then throwing a dart at a wall is a reasonable way to elect the gevernment...
I know that in my city, every time we try to pass a law to prevent the dead from voting it is knocked down on the basis of discriminating against the poor or some such. No idea if that is true, or if it is a cover run by the dead guys voting coalition.
When Sharia does not involve killing those that convert away from Islam, let me know. Until then, Sharia is illegal - and wanting to impose Sharia on others (since you can't really impose such a thing on yourself - at least not more than once!) is extremely concerning.
True, those advantages exist - but parents always want to make things better for their children, which is a Good ThingTM. That is one of the perks of making it that far. The difference, as Warren Buffet says, is that you should leave your children enough money so that they can do anything, but not enough money so that they can do nothing. I totally agree with that sentiment. (Would you admit to anyone that Paris Hilton was your daughter? Yada!)
I do agree with you - I think the estate tax should be nearly 100%. I also think that if and when the US has an aristocracy the same people that made the US great are going to move on and make another place great.
My point is merely that they will still use a capitalistic economy in that new place.
Um - you realize both Buffet and Gates were in your rebuttable?
Anyway, as I have said elsewhere, who cares about billionaires - look at the multimillionaires around you, and see what they did. You can't emulate someones birthplace, so find someone else to emulate.
Actually, that is my number 2 - I think estate taxes are a little more important, but what I would propose is that all land/mineral rights/etc be owned by the state. Instead of taxes, you pay to use those rights (everyone would pay rent to the government, for example). Unfortunately, it has many of the same basic problems - those that have resources would expend those resources to bend the government to protect their resources. Well, that and you would never get buy in from everyone!
requires perfect information on the part of all actors to work efficiently.
Not totally true - it perfect information would give perfect results, presumably, but the key fact is that it gracefully degrades. Where the information is worst you are no worse off than any other system, and where the information is best you are much better off - excluding monopolies, as you rightfully point out. In general, though, even monopolies tend to be short lived - see Microsoft's impending doom (or if you don't believe that one, look at DeBiers, etc.). If abused successfully they can greatly extend their lives, but in the end they fail.
no negative feedback cycle to prevent a runaway accumulation of wealth by a few people
This is probably our biggest point of difference, in that I would say that this is a desirable feature in an economic system. If someone has been shown to be successfull at making stuff, make it easier for them to try to make even more stuff. This is going from the principle that you get money by making an output that society values more than the sum of the inputs - and then you haggle over how the difference will be split (and of course, long term society wins because you die and it doesn't!). As I have stated elsewhere, when Bill Gates makes another billion it doesn't really have a downside to society (because if that money were to be evenly distributed instead it would only cause inflation, not value creation) and it doesn't really have much upside to Bill Gates (he cannot buy anything now that he couldn't have bought yesterday). But it does drive Bill to create more value - and more importantly, it gives him the power needed to cause real changes (like his recent medical work). As I say, I see this as an important part of society.
the system gives free reign to screw over the naturally cooperative
Sounds like you work for big corps - I think that is a mistake for people that are hard working (with some exceptions). A large corporation exists to shield people from their mistakes. That means that people that make fewer mistakes on average (or that perform better, or whatever) have to suplement the efforts of the more marginal workers. I am a strong believer in small companies - I've started 8 now. The first couple failed, and failed badly - but the fourth one stayed up (and that's what you'll get son - the strongest castle in these isles!)... I'm too nice and too trusting, hmmm - do you need a job? Like rockets? Really, this depends a lot on who you work for. There are many sharks, but there are many nice people too.
Remember, your friends, relatives and acquantences are not a random sample of the population.
Too right! I had a professor once exclaim "You know what the worst place to do a market survey is? YOUR HEAD! You are not normal!" But hopefully talking with others can bridge the gulf of my lack of knowlege.
Slashdot Mirror
An attack is something you do to another, not something you do to yourself. Are you really implying that it is OK to blind equipment and therefore people? What if I blind the pilot of a 747 by knocking out his radio, radar, and guidance? The plane won't crash, so why is that bad?
On a different front, I'm not clear what principle of international law China is supposed to have violated in this particular case. The "no stopping us from spying on you rule"?
I believe the legal term is "Interference to chattel".
They made our high tech device not function right. That is as illegal as if we mad their low tech spy boats not function right.
OK, so what if the US responds by pointing lasers at (and temporarily blinding) Chinese "fishing boats" out in international waters just outside of Pearl Harbor? If that would be an attack, then this is an attack.
The fact is, people are allowed to watch you from outside your territory. The propper way for China to test its wartime anti-spy measures is on its own sattelites, just like the US does.
When a carrier can throw a plane off the deck at above mach, let me know. Besides, that is actually an easier problem (a large caliber gun does that, for example). What we are talking about is that the plane stays still and the carrier is thrown forward above mach.
New rule: No throwing of aircraft carriers is allowed by international law...
oh god, that's funny. yeah, that's why we invade countries with no evidence at all, completely ignore the geneva conventions, torture prisoners, etc. because international law totally applies to us. we've been bucking international law for years with no consequence.
My point is not that we obey the "international law", my point is that no one seems to expect anyone to except the US. Did Iraq? Does Iran? Does China? No one obeys international law, because no one enforces international law. But if the US breaks international law to in an (misguided) attempt prevent terrorist attacks it is evil, while when China does breaks international law it is justified to prevent spying...
Interesting world you people live in...
This is the real truth, as long as they don't damage the satelite. Otherwise, you are saying that the US can sink all those Chinese Trawlers just outside Pearl Harbor...
So, what about listening to messages transmitted in China from a listening post in the US? Are you saying that we have to not listen? Or do they have the right to bomb us if we listen?
International law (you know, the thing that applies to the US but no one else) says that a nation owns only 100 miles up, and beyond that they can lay no claims. So, if this is to be believed, a the Chinese military just attacked the US military while the US military was in international waters. That is an act of war. If the US acknowleges it, we have to acknowlege it as an act of war.
My guess is that this was some Chinese general stroking his manhood, and that the US is going to use back channels to force China to remove that general. Better than admitting that we are at war with one of our largest trading partners...
Well, wound healing has already been shown to work in space - even in vaccuum!
On one of the missions, a small defect in an astronaut's glove eventually chaffed a hole in his skin and in the glove - his blood was leaking out into space. It was a minor injury, and the gloves are so uncomfortable anyway, so the astronaut didn't even notice until he came back inside. It turns out that the blood boils when it leaves the skin, but the platelet action is not effected so a clot forms anyway. Good thing too, since otherwise he may very well have bled to death during that spacewalk!
Anyway, at least minor healing is known to be no problem. (I can't seem to find any references to this occurance on the web - I hope I am not passing on bad data!)
Yeah, but if you do that you end up putting juk on the cable - which really doesn't work, because the cable has to lift its own wieght, including all the extra junk. For example, if you spaced out a 100 gram winding (rediculously light) spaced at 1 meter intervals (rediculously spread out), you would have 36,000,000 of them - for a total mass of 3,6000 tons. That's almost certainly more than a 100 gram winding could possibly lift, most likely by a huge multiple. So now your cable needs to be far thicker / stronger than originally. Shielding is even worse.
Hey, I hope it works out - but I'm not holding my breath!
The problem with using a solenoid based system is that a solenoid's pull is based on the "cable" part of it not being symetrical from the solenoid's point of view. (That's probably hard to follow - basically there has to be a part in the field and a part out of the field, and the solenoid pulls both into the field equally). Some kind of no-touch system would be desireable, but those either require help from the cable (which weighs too much because of the necessary cable changes) or operate very slowly (a kind of eddy current device could probably be made to work at lower speeds).
As for the wheel idea, I think that is what every is looking at right now. But the wheels have to pull (or attach to, if you will) the cable with a force of several tons (or else the cargo container would fall), and that is extremely hard at high speed.
Of course the real problems we haven't even gotten to yet - maintainence. In LEO, at least, a cable does not last very long because of micrometerite abrasion/erosion. This is not a problem with larger objects, but every time you are hit by one of the quadrillions of micrometeorites you lose an area of the cable a couple 100 microns cubed. It doesn't sound like much (and to normal objects, it isn't much), but to a thin cable the cumalative damage actually cuts it pretty quickly, on the order of days for a cable as long as a space elevator. (That said, we don't know if the micrometorites become less of a problem further out - but even so this will be a major headache)
Of course, take my analysis with a grain of salt - I am getting close to launching my own orbital launch vehicle, so these guys are ostensibly my competition! (On another note, would you pay $30,000 to go to orbit for a few days?)
Well - its not as simple as that. Think about the problem - you need to pull on a cable most likely with a force of several tons. Now you are saying that you want to do that at 1/3 mach - tricky. Probably can be done, but not a whole lot faster than that using current technology (remember - you can't add anything to the cable, not even paint because it would weigh too much). You also want to avoid wearing out the cable - and the faster you go, the more wear you cause.
So you really are talking about several days to get to geo - personally, I don't think that will be competitive with a normal rocket made with the same bucktubes, but whatever. (What makes rockets hard to do is essentially the whole "must be 99% fuel" thing. Buckytube fuel tanks would make rockets simple.)
A good way to handle this type of thing is with a mesh - the hot gasses escape, but they don't take any hot solids with them.
So they actually travel on huge subsidies.
Actually, this is probably not the accurate way to look at it. The only government flying paying space travelers is doing so after bankruptcy essentially - and it is typical for an after-bankruptcy bussiness to sell close to marginal cost.
Sunk costs, and all that... trust me, the former soviets are not flying rich Americans with a government subsidy!
More to the point, if you look at the real complaint the terrorists have, it is cultural invasion. But we don't even do the cultural invasion: We are merely successful. That makes people is other countries emulated us - in general raising their success level. But they are seen as traitors to the original culture, and as selling out to the US. (You can also see this happen inside the US in various social groups to a more limited extent.)
So, without us doing anything except minding our own business and succeeding, we become the bad guy - because we are destroying their culture. And that's why a detectable percentage of the world wants to kill us. In reality there are few other cultures more self centered and isolationist than the US, even now. We just don't care that much what the rest of the world wants to do, we think they are free to choose whatever they want.
Of course this is often simplified to: they hate us because they hate freedom, etc.
But surely one must base the center on the data from the election? So Bush was more central than Kerry, and Clinton was more central than the other Bush?
Not that I really care about classification - I know that I am further right than most, but the center seems to be further right than most on Slashdot if you compare the desries expressed here with the election results.
Personally, I would have voted for a Democrat the last time if there had been a reasonable option. Sometimes I worry that the internet is empowering extremists, and moving the Democrat party away from the center (case in point Senator Lieberman's relection debacle). If the Democrat party goes away from the center then we end up being a 1 party country - and those don't seem to work out so well. I may want the Republican party to win most of the time, but I certainly don't want them to win uncontested!
As the other commenter replied, it is all relative. For me, Clinton is left (not as far as some others, certainly, but for me he was far from center). For virtually everyone on Earth Bush is right - but I'm sure their is someone that thinks he is left leaning. Just look at the internet wackos.
And it is an interesting political statement to mod me down for pointing out that left and right are subjective rather than objective...
Well, you are entitled to your opinion - and I was just trying to point out that different people have different opinions.
Of course, according to someone modding, my opinion must be surpressed...
OK, and who are you to protest an ad hominem response? I know that you failed latin, you son of a motherless pig!
If you believe that Clinton was moving towards the center, all that tells us is that you are far left of the US version of center. Every man's center is different - I think that the US went too far left and is merely correcting.
Since you aren't from the US, I'll help you out on some history here. Since we are a very old democracy, obviously we have had our share of voter fraud in the past - enough that here in Chicago there is a joke about the Democrats getting to keep voting after they die...
The situation has improved greatly since the beginning (where candidates literally bought votes from people), but still has room to grow. These instances of fraud of dispicable (and as much as possible are acted upon), but the people that do the fraud tend to be well connected locals. That makes it very hard to get a case brought against them.
In general, the voter fraud is down to the level where it does not effect the outcome - the only time this can really be argued about is when the polls are very close. And, in a democracy, if the polls are really close then throwing a dart at a wall is a reasonable way to elect the gevernment...
I know that in my city, every time we try to pass a law to prevent the dead from voting it is knocked down on the basis of discriminating against the poor or some such. No idea if that is true, or if it is a cover run by the dead guys voting coalition.
When Sharia does not involve killing those that convert away from Islam, let me know. Until then, Sharia is illegal - and wanting to impose Sharia on others (since you can't really impose such a thing on yourself - at least not more than once!) is extremely concerning.
True, those advantages exist - but parents always want to make things better for their children, which is a Good ThingTM. That is one of the perks of making it that far. The difference, as Warren Buffet says, is that you should leave your children enough money so that they can do anything, but not enough money so that they can do nothing. I totally agree with that sentiment. (Would you admit to anyone that Paris Hilton was your daughter? Yada!)
I do agree with you - I think the estate tax should be nearly 100%. I also think that if and when the US has an aristocracy the same people that made the US great are going to move on and make another place great.
My point is merely that they will still use a capitalistic economy in that new place.
Um - you realize both Buffet and Gates were in your rebuttable?
Anyway, as I have said elsewhere, who cares about billionaires - look at the multimillionaires around you, and see what they did. You can't emulate someones birthplace, so find someone else to emulate.
but natural resources
Actually, that is my number 2 - I think estate taxes are a little more important, but what I would propose is that all land/mineral rights/etc be owned by the state. Instead of taxes, you pay to use those rights (everyone would pay rent to the government, for example). Unfortunately, it has many of the same basic problems - those that have resources would expend those resources to bend the government to protect their resources. Well, that and you would never get buy in from everyone!
requires perfect information on the part of all actors to work efficiently.
Not totally true - it perfect information would give perfect results, presumably, but the key fact is that it gracefully degrades. Where the information is worst you are no worse off than any other system, and where the information is best you are much better off - excluding monopolies, as you rightfully point out. In general, though, even monopolies tend to be short lived - see Microsoft's impending doom (or if you don't believe that one, look at DeBiers, etc.). If abused successfully they can greatly extend their lives, but in the end they fail.
no negative feedback cycle to prevent a runaway accumulation of wealth by a few people
This is probably our biggest point of difference, in that I would say that this is a desirable feature in an economic system. If someone has been shown to be successfull at making stuff, make it easier for them to try to make even more stuff. This is going from the principle that you get money by making an output that society values more than the sum of the inputs - and then you haggle over how the difference will be split (and of course, long term society wins because you die and it doesn't!). As I have stated elsewhere, when Bill Gates makes another billion it doesn't really have a downside to society (because if that money were to be evenly distributed instead it would only cause inflation, not value creation) and it doesn't really have much upside to Bill Gates (he cannot buy anything now that he couldn't have bought yesterday). But it does drive Bill to create more value - and more importantly, it gives him the power needed to cause real changes (like his recent medical work). As I say, I see this as an important part of society.
the system gives free reign to screw over the naturally cooperative
Sounds like you work for big corps - I think that is a mistake for people that are hard working (with some exceptions). A large corporation exists to shield people from their mistakes. That means that people that make fewer mistakes on average (or that perform better, or whatever) have to suplement the efforts of the more marginal workers. I am a strong believer in small companies - I've started 8 now. The first couple failed, and failed badly - but the fourth one stayed up (and that's what you'll get son - the strongest castle in these isles!)... I'm too nice and too trusting, hmmm - do you need a job? Like rockets? Really, this depends a lot on who you work for. There are many sharks, but there are many nice people too.
Remember, your friends, relatives and acquantences are not a random sample of the population.
Too right! I had a professor once exclaim "You know what the worst place to do a market survey is? YOUR HEAD! You are not normal!" But hopefully talking with others can bridge the gulf of my lack of knowlege.