Now that their economies were strongly dependent on inefficient businesses that couldn't survive without continued protection, they were in a very tight spot. This led to massive amounts of borrowing,
See, their failure wasn't in protective tariffs, their failure was in bad management, if its failing, kick the can down the road someone in the future will pay off the borrowed money, since obviously they can't collapse (although they did collapse). The USA is currently in the middle of that processes, having borrowed staggering sums to keep failing banks in business, but we haven't collapsed yet. Give us time, we'll catch up to latin america...
If you can't make it even with protective tariffs (and how exactly do you screw up that badly?), borrowing is just going to make a big disaster in the future. If you can make it with tariffs, then by definition, either you don't need the loans, or can easily pay them off. Maybe they would have made it with tariffs at the proper (higher) level, assuming they were not totally mismanaged monopoly/oligopolies (you know, like the current day USA banks that own the USA government and are therefore hopelessly corrupt)
why are many logicians and scientists atheists, since they are so careful not to deny existence of other things that we don't even have evidence for; they simply understand that denying existence is a big logical step in that you have to disprove every possible existence first.
Easy, you don't have to disprove every possible existence first, because they are logically inconsistent with each other, based on the fact there are about 10000 distinct religions that all claim everyone who follows a different religion will be screwed/go to hell/reincarnated as a worm, etc Statistically, 99.99% of all religions simply must be false since only one of them can be true, because none of them are compatible. Following one of them, based on something random like your ancestors choice or whatever, will almost certainly doom you to failure. Therefore following none of them is merely an acceptable rounding error. If 9999 of data samples say no, regardless if the last sample says yes or no, you say overall the answer is no, because if the last one was yes, you'd toss the outlier data anyway.
Besides, odds are that almost everyone whom has ever lived will be in the one true religion's idea of hell anyway, so you may as well go along too, its not as if you'll be the only one there or something.
I have never seen an economist or "libertarian" give a convincing argument against protectionist tariffs.
OK I'm an amateur at both, I'll give it a try in support:
Suppose that an American sells cameras for $80 but a foreigner wants to sell cameras in America for $60 apiece.
OK, if it were a free market between equal players, you'd have a point. But it is not, because at least some players in the market are not free (the Chinese) and some players are kept ignorant thus cannot play the game fairly (the USA). The $80 camera was made in a facility that is at least semi-environmentally sound and respects at least some human rights, and the Chinese one is made by slaves working in an ecological disaster. We pretend that is unacceptable for humans to live like the Chinese, at least its unacceptable if they are Americans. So either its OK to save money by skipping all those human rights things, in which case we should do the same here (please don't be that stupid), or the Chinese are not humans like us (please don't be that stupid). Protectionist tariffs level the playing field at least partially, and are therefore critical economically for a free, libertarian market.
That you can check the professional driver's safety record before joining the train.
And his blood alcohol content? Which brings up a fascinating scenario. Could you bring an unopened booze bottle into a car and then join a train? Then chug the booze, with the plan that you'd sober up well before your 2 hour commute is over? But, something happens, and the train kicks you out? Now you're DWI, but its someone elses fault?
Or, even if no drinking was done in the car, if your digestion was slow enough that your BAC was below the limit BOTH before and after you joined the train, but while you were a passive passenger in the train, it was above the limit, is that still legally DWI even if you were not driving?
You're handing control over to another driver, who may very well decide not to brake and cause a five car pileup, or worse. Also, there's no way to know the mechanical status of the vehicle -- what if one of them blows a tire, or runs out of gas, or the engine seizes?
Seems the trial lawyers will make a lot of money. Or perhaps the end users get screwed. Or, most likely, both?
What if the "lead driver" rides the brakes, thus smoking my brakes/warping my disks?
What if something falls off / out of a car ahead of me (a more common occurrence than you'd think), can I quickly escape the train, and who is liable when by design I can not?
What if the guy in front of me is one of those smokers whom flicks ashes all over my car ventilation system? Bonus points if I'm allergic / asthmatic? Or an unmaintained beater pumping my car full of particulates, unburned hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide? I bet an unmaintained diesel could literally kill someone, maybe not the driver, maybe a passenger, maybe a sleeping baby... What if a driver in the train passes out from the CO fumes, or has a heart attack or whatever, is everyone in front of him just dead meat when he plows into them?
What if the lead driver successfully goes thru a big puddle, flooding my intake and blowing my engine, and then I'm crashed into by the remainder of the train?
What if its typical winter weather conditions, with patches of ice/snow, my car is ordered to brake, but I spin out of control into other vehicles because my individual car was on a patch of snow/ice/sand at that instant? Or just simply plow into the vehicles in front of me, whom can't accelerate out of the way because they are now temporarily on an icy patch?
What if, being the ridiculously hyper-paranoid USA, the lead vehicle is a terrorist/rapist/pedo/filesharer (according to my TV, aren't they all the same?)
What if, the lead vehicle routes us thru an area that is ethnically incorrect, and the police pull me over (the crime of Driving While Black in a White Neighborhood, etc).
What if a vehicle is carjacked while in a train, is the lead vehicle liable? What if the lead vehicle was working with the carjackers?
What if the lead driver drives over a pothole fast enough to set off my airbag, but not his?
What if the lead vehicle makes a minor traffic error that results in no physical problems, but some legal problems? Like not slowing down for an unmarked speedtrap? Everyone gets a ticket, only the lead, maybe the system designer or manufacturer or dealership? Who pays for the higher insurance?
I would think adding this feature would result in a spectacular car insurance bill...
Similarly, while shoveling snow off your driveway kind of sucks, it sure beats having snow build up on your habidome until the whole mess comes crashing down.
If the outside surface temperature never drops below freezing, due to above square-cube law... Also it seems no great challenge at all, to design buildings, even domes, that don't collapse under heavy snow loads.
I'm sure you can have birds and insects inside the dome.
Why would you want them? I wouldn't. I have no need for black widow spiders and mosquitos. And if no birds crapped on my car, that would be OK with me.
Not trying to create flamebait... due to the hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running and the endless complaints from "she who must be obeyed" because MythTV box has once again died in the arse during her favourite POS drama show.
Not to create flamebait, but what are people doing that causes problems? Or what am I not doing, that I'm supposed to be doing, that has a side effect of ruining the system? I set up a terabyte-sized back end in the basement, back when a terabyte was several hundreds of dollars, and set up front ends on all my TVs and installed the front end software on all usable computers (like, 1GHz and faster CPU, etc), and it all "just works out of the box", hands off, no care needed, never the slightest problem. It actually requires less care and feeding than my cablemodem, which requires a reboot every couple months.
You must be a teenager. Pain in the knees from an extra 50 pounds is the same, no matter if its 50 pounds of biceps muscle, 50 pounds of pot belly fat, or 50 pounds of camping backpack...
I had the same feeling... actually ran the numbers, and I was eating considerably fewer calories. Like a thousand a day less.
Analyze your feelings a bit more... I found out I was feeling MUCH less hungry. Like every day was a thanksgiving pig out, even when I ate very little. Under a low carb diet, feeling less hungry no longer equals eating more calories.
I changed the amount of food I ate from large dishes to normal dishes and skipped any evening meals except vegetables. I also picked up daily one hour walks or swimming. During 4 months I lost somewhere close to 100 pounds and felt great.
So, 100 pounds times 3500 calories per pound, divided by (30 days times 4 months) equals a a net caloric deficit of 2917 calories PER DAY. Even climbing the side of Mt Everest, I don't think you can burn 1000 calories per hour... Given human thermodynamic efficiency, 1000 calories per hour would be near death heatstroke for someone not at the elite athlete level. That would also require a 2000 calorie delta in the dinner plate. 2000 cals plus your vegetables is a staggering quantity of food. At 50 calories per apple, that would be a mere 40 apples. Or about three 12 oz steaks (or one 36 oz steak). I call shenanigans.
Now if you meant 4 years, not 4 months, that is a realistic delta of 240 calories a day. The energy drink on my desk has 220 cals, so simply stop drinking it, and walk up and down the stairs two or three times, and I'd be there...
But you also need to transmit _a_ _lot_ of power over hundreds of kilometers. Which is not cheap and easy.
Luckily, because of NIMBY, we have decades of experience doing it. No one "wants" the coal plant or nuke in their backyard, either. Actually I think it would be way cool to have a nuke plant in my backyard, but scared idiots freak out.
Unfortunately this sort of solution doesn't work because humans demand consistent energy not just a total or average.
Luckily, many industrial uses do not necessarily require constant energy, and can tolerate "total" or "average over certain intervals" power contracts.
For "total" or "very long term average" power contracts, we have copper refineries, and electrorefining in general. "Lights out manufacturing" style numerically controlled machine tools can toggle their motors on and off more or less as power is available (but never interrupt the control computers power...). Desalinization plants simply fill water tanks with excess capacity. Hydrogen electrolysis plants.
Large refrigerated storage/warehouse sites probably need a constant "daily average" but no finer resolution.
To handle very short term "wind gusts", cement plant clinker grinders, food plants like bakeries ovens, and aluminum refineries can handle a momentary power loss, as long as the "hourly average" or whatever is mostly constant.
This also works for high tech applications, I would imagine virtualized servers with hot-failover ability could simply migrate around the world, to where-ever the wind blows...
Now there are capital problems with the return on investment of building facilities that may only be used a fraction of the time. Then again, an electrical tariff that allows sheddable load for perhaps a penny per KWh... I imagine the contract would look something like, we'll sell you a GWh of electricity for a bargain basement mere mega-penny ($10K) but we tell you exactly when to draw the load and exactly how much you'll draw, or else you're paying the usual 10 cents/KWh.
For some highly automated, electricity intensive applications, "nearly free electricity" might outweigh the increased capital costs.
I know one guy who drives without a license. It wasn't revoked; he voluntarily turned it in. He claims that in his state (Arizona) liberated citizens don't need permission to drive, because the right to travel is a God-given right.the right to travel is a God-given right.
Has he tried small aircraft?
He is right that technically "God" (which one?) lets him travel, in that He/She/It/Them has not struck him with a lightning bolt while he drives around. If he thinks "God" will strike down the state trooper whom is issuing him a ticket, he will likely be most disappointed in his diety.
And what happens when you're in an accident in the middle of nowhere, trapped in your car, but can't make a phone call to 911 because the car blocks your signal?
Hmm. If the glass was broken, I'd have a signal. But if the glass was broken, I wouldn't be trapped in the car. And if I have no cell signal in my suburban neighborhood, why would I expect a cell signal in the "middle of nowhere"? Is that what is known as a false dilemma?
We've got those in Maine, they're called "rumble strips" and they are a grooved strip of pavement that runs just outside the white lines on either side of the pavement.
Being in Maine, I'm surprised you didn't mention how they help in the snow. When you can't quite see the road, or the lane paint, they help. This is actually no big deal, for people whom are used to it.
very close to zero cost primary education (where I live in Illinois, you pay about $150/year to send your child to school)
Everyone, and I mean everyone, pays property tax, which "mostly" goes to the schools. Doesn't matter if you write a check to the city treasurer, or write checks to the landlord whom pays the tax for the land you live on. Assuming you are not homeless, one way or another you pay about $2K/yr, directly or indirectly, to the local schools every year of your adult life.
Also, average property tax is usually a fraction of total per student educational cost... Local education is actually pay-as-you-go but if you think of it like paying back an educational loan, it might make more sense. I attended 13 years of school K-12 at about $10K per year, round to 1/8 mil for my education. (Note I did not get 1/8 mil worth of education, that is just what they spent on me) Then I pay about $2K per year of my property tax toward local schools for 60 years, which multiplies out, suspiciously, to about the same 1/8 mil. Plus or minus some federal funding here and there, etc.
darknet traffic would have an obvious signature -- lots of volume, and connectionless.
Exactly the same as a VPN... which is more or less what a darknet is, with a delicious frosting of anonymity on top. So, you'd have to ban all residential VPN access (very unlikely) or register all corporate VPN infrastructure so as to filter it out (very unlikely).
Darknets, much like linux on the desktop, or linux in general, always bring out the extremists... "I know its not the same as the internet, but NO ONE will use a darknet unless its EXACTLY THE SAME as the internet" and so on.
Up to 48 megs. My guess is 10 megs came about because someone told a journalist, "its about as fast as old fashioned thinnet" whom thought to himself, thinnet is 10 megs, so the journalist says 10 megs.
And/or there may be a critical link in the path that is, literally, a piece of thinnet coax, or an old fashioned 10 meg only cat5 cable, so the overall path cannot exceed 10 megs.
Of course, you'd only have about 90 minutes of access as I recall; the ISS orbits too fast for much more access time.
The orbit is about 91 minutes long.. An ideal ground track is only a couple minutes... talk to the ham radio folks whom use a couple watts to a voice FM signal on an external antenna. The wifi is much faster (needs higher SNR) and has an inside antenna and have a zilionth of a watt, so unlikely.
What's next, a $1 million prize to the first company that can... construct a MOSFET (or something else the government did 50 years ago).
Exactly whom do you think constructs mosfets? Wisconsin Department of Transportation? USDA? BATF?
Now if the offered a $1M prize for the first mosfet that switches 200 KW yet fits in a SOT-23 package (surface mount, about one by three millimeters) for like electric cars and stuff, that would be interesting...
When making money from movies becomes difficult if not impossible, they'll just stop making them. That's what will stop it.
Movies exist because movie theaters exist.
Movie theaters exist because teenagers need a place to make out, place phone calls, text each other, whisper, eat, drink, and gossip. Sort of like an adult-free daycare for teenagers.
That explains a lot about the quality of modern movies, they are little more than silver-"screensavers" going on while the real activity is in the seats.
As long as the social concept of teenagers exist, it will be possible to make money from movies. The quality of the product and the money spent on them will drop until a profit is made. The bar is already low, and will soon be lower. So, no problem!
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Now that their economies were strongly dependent on inefficient businesses that couldn't survive without continued protection, they were in a very tight spot. This led to massive amounts of borrowing,
See, their failure wasn't in protective tariffs, their failure was in bad management, if its failing, kick the can down the road someone in the future will pay off the borrowed money, since obviously they can't collapse (although they did collapse). The USA is currently in the middle of that processes, having borrowed staggering sums to keep failing banks in business, but we haven't collapsed yet. Give us time, we'll catch up to latin america...
If you can't make it even with protective tariffs (and how exactly do you screw up that badly?), borrowing is just going to make a big disaster in the future. If you can make it with tariffs, then by definition, either you don't need the loans, or can easily pay them off. Maybe they would have made it with tariffs at the proper (higher) level, assuming they were not totally mismanaged monopoly/oligopolies (you know, like the current day USA banks that own the USA government and are therefore hopelessly corrupt)
why are many logicians and scientists atheists, since they are so careful not to deny existence of other things that we don't even have evidence for; they simply understand that denying existence is a big logical step in that you have to disprove every possible existence first.
Easy, you don't have to disprove every possible existence first, because they are logically inconsistent with each other, based on the fact there are about 10000 distinct religions that all claim everyone who follows a different religion will be screwed/go to hell/reincarnated as a worm, etc Statistically, 99.99% of all religions simply must be false since only one of them can be true, because none of them are compatible. Following one of them, based on something random like your ancestors choice or whatever, will almost certainly doom you to failure. Therefore following none of them is merely an acceptable rounding error. If 9999 of data samples say no, regardless if the last sample says yes or no, you say overall the answer is no, because if the last one was yes, you'd toss the outlier data anyway.
Besides, odds are that almost everyone whom has ever lived will be in the one true religion's idea of hell anyway, so you may as well go along too, its not as if you'll be the only one there or something.
I have never seen an economist or "libertarian" give a convincing argument against protectionist tariffs.
OK I'm an amateur at both, I'll give it a try in support:
Suppose that an American sells cameras for $80 but a foreigner wants to sell cameras in America for $60 apiece.
OK, if it were a free market between equal players, you'd have a point. But it is not, because at least some players in the market are not free (the Chinese) and some players are kept ignorant thus cannot play the game fairly (the USA). The $80 camera was made in a facility that is at least semi-environmentally sound and respects at least some human rights, and the Chinese one is made by slaves working in an ecological disaster. We pretend that is unacceptable for humans to live like the Chinese, at least its unacceptable if they are Americans. So either its OK to save money by skipping all those human rights things, in which case we should do the same here (please don't be that stupid), or the Chinese are not humans like us (please don't be that stupid). Protectionist tariffs level the playing field at least partially, and are therefore critical economically for a free, libertarian market.
That you can check the professional driver's safety record before joining the train.
And his blood alcohol content? Which brings up a fascinating scenario. Could you bring an unopened booze bottle into a car and then join a train? Then chug the booze, with the plan that you'd sober up well before your 2 hour commute is over? But, something happens, and the train kicks you out? Now you're DWI, but its someone elses fault?
Or, even if no drinking was done in the car, if your digestion was slow enough that your BAC was below the limit BOTH before and after you joined the train, but while you were a passive passenger in the train, it was above the limit, is that still legally DWI even if you were not driving?
You're handing control over to another driver, who may very well decide not to brake and cause a five car pileup, or worse. Also, there's no way to know the mechanical status of the vehicle -- what if one of them blows a tire, or runs out of gas, or the engine seizes?
Seems the trial lawyers will make a lot of money. Or perhaps the end users get screwed. Or, most likely, both?
What if the "lead driver" rides the brakes, thus smoking my brakes/warping my disks?
What if something falls off / out of a car ahead of me (a more common occurrence than you'd think), can I quickly escape the train, and who is liable when by design I can not?
What if the guy in front of me is one of those smokers whom flicks ashes all over my car ventilation system? Bonus points if I'm allergic / asthmatic? Or an unmaintained beater pumping my car full of particulates, unburned hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide? I bet an unmaintained diesel could literally kill someone, maybe not the driver, maybe a passenger, maybe a sleeping baby... What if a driver in the train passes out from the CO fumes, or has a heart attack or whatever, is everyone in front of him just dead meat when he plows into them?
What if the lead driver successfully goes thru a big puddle, flooding my intake and blowing my engine, and then I'm crashed into by the remainder of the train?
What if its typical winter weather conditions, with patches of ice/snow, my car is ordered to brake, but I spin out of control into other vehicles because my individual car was on a patch of snow/ice/sand at that instant? Or just simply plow into the vehicles in front of me, whom can't accelerate out of the way because they are now temporarily on an icy patch?
What if, being the ridiculously hyper-paranoid USA, the lead vehicle is a terrorist/rapist/pedo/filesharer (according to my TV, aren't they all the same?)
What if, the lead vehicle routes us thru an area that is ethnically incorrect, and the police pull me over (the crime of Driving While Black in a White Neighborhood, etc).
What if a vehicle is carjacked while in a train, is the lead vehicle liable? What if the lead vehicle was working with the carjackers?
What if the lead driver drives over a pothole fast enough to set off my airbag, but not his?
What if the lead vehicle makes a minor traffic error that results in no physical problems, but some legal problems? Like not slowing down for an unmarked speedtrap? Everyone gets a ticket, only the lead, maybe the system designer or manufacturer or dealership? Who pays for the higher insurance?
I would think adding this feature would result in a spectacular car insurance bill...
It's a shame this game has no coop or multiplayer.
Multiplayer DA:O would be as bad as multiplayer coop solitaire.
I'm not sure that going from heating a few thousand little boxes to heating one giant dome really qualifies as "no heating bills".
Study up on the square-cube law and get back to us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law
Similarly, while shoveling snow off your driveway kind of sucks, it sure beats having snow build up on your habidome until the whole mess comes crashing down.
If the outside surface temperature never drops below freezing, due to above square-cube law... Also it seems no great challenge at all, to design buildings, even domes, that don't collapse under heavy snow loads.
I'm sure you can have birds and insects inside the dome.
Why would you want them? I wouldn't. I have no need for black widow spiders and mosquitos. And if no birds crapped on my car, that would be OK with me.
Not trying to create flamebait ... due to the hideous complexities in keeping the damn thing running and the endless complaints from "she who must be obeyed" because MythTV box has once again died in the arse during her favourite POS drama show.
Not to create flamebait, but what are people doing that causes problems? Or what am I not doing, that I'm supposed to be doing, that has a side effect of ruining the system? I set up a terabyte-sized back end in the basement, back when a terabyte was several hundreds of dollars, and set up front ends on all my TVs and installed the front end software on all usable computers (like, 1GHz and faster CPU, etc), and it all "just works out of the box", hands off, no care needed, never the slightest problem. It actually requires less care and feeding than my cablemodem, which requires a reboot every couple months.
I don't understand the obsession with weight.
You must be a teenager. Pain in the knees from an extra 50 pounds is the same, no matter if its 50 pounds of biceps muscle, 50 pounds of pot belly fat, or 50 pounds of camping backpack...
I feel that I am eating more calories now
I had the same feeling... actually ran the numbers, and I was eating considerably fewer calories. Like a thousand a day less.
Analyze your feelings a bit more... I found out I was feeling MUCH less hungry. Like every day was a thanksgiving pig out, even when I ate very little. Under a low carb diet, feeling less hungry no longer equals eating more calories.
I changed the amount of food I ate from large dishes to normal dishes and skipped any evening meals except vegetables. I also picked up daily one hour walks or swimming. During 4 months I lost somewhere close to 100 pounds and felt great.
So, 100 pounds times 3500 calories per pound, divided by (30 days times 4 months) equals a a net caloric deficit of 2917 calories PER DAY. Even climbing the side of Mt Everest, I don't think you can burn 1000 calories per hour... Given human thermodynamic efficiency, 1000 calories per hour would be near death heatstroke for someone not at the elite athlete level. That would also require a 2000 calorie delta in the dinner plate. 2000 cals plus your vegetables is a staggering quantity of food. At 50 calories per apple, that would be a mere 40 apples. Or about three 12 oz steaks (or one 36 oz steak). I call shenanigans.
Now if you meant 4 years, not 4 months, that is a realistic delta of 240 calories a day. The energy drink on my desk has 220 cals, so simply stop drinking it, and walk up and down the stairs two or three times, and I'd be there...
But you also need to transmit _a_ _lot_ of power over hundreds of kilometers. Which is not cheap and easy.
Luckily, because of NIMBY, we have decades of experience doing it. No one "wants" the coal plant or nuke in their backyard, either. Actually I think it would be way cool to have a nuke plant in my backyard, but scared idiots freak out.
Unfortunately this sort of solution doesn't work because humans demand consistent energy not just a total or average.
Luckily, many industrial uses do not necessarily require constant energy, and can tolerate "total" or "average over certain intervals" power contracts.
For "total" or "very long term average" power contracts, we have copper refineries, and electrorefining in general. "Lights out manufacturing" style numerically controlled machine tools can toggle their motors on and off more or less as power is available (but never interrupt the control computers power...). Desalinization plants simply fill water tanks with excess capacity. Hydrogen electrolysis plants.
Large refrigerated storage/warehouse sites probably need a constant "daily average" but no finer resolution.
To handle very short term "wind gusts", cement plant clinker grinders, food plants like bakeries ovens, and aluminum refineries can handle a momentary power loss, as long as the "hourly average" or whatever is mostly constant.
This also works for high tech applications, I would imagine virtualized servers with hot-failover ability could simply migrate around the world, to where-ever the wind blows...
Now there are capital problems with the return on investment of building facilities that may only be used a fraction of the time. Then again, an electrical tariff that allows sheddable load for perhaps a penny per KWh... I imagine the contract would look something like, we'll sell you a GWh of electricity for a bargain basement mere mega-penny ($10K) but we tell you exactly when to draw the load and exactly how much you'll draw, or else you're paying the usual 10 cents/KWh.
For some highly automated, electricity intensive applications, "nearly free electricity" might outweigh the increased capital costs.
I know one guy who drives without a license. It wasn't revoked; he voluntarily turned it in. He claims that in his state (Arizona) liberated citizens don't need permission to drive, because the right to travel is a God-given right.the right to travel is a God-given right.
Has he tried small aircraft?
He is right that technically "God" (which one?) lets him travel, in that He/She/It/Them has not struck him with a lightning bolt while he drives around. If he thinks "God" will strike down the state trooper whom is issuing him a ticket, he will likely be most disappointed in his diety.
And what happens when you're in an accident in the middle of nowhere, trapped in your car, but can't make a phone call to 911 because the car blocks your signal?
Hmm. If the glass was broken, I'd have a signal. But if the glass was broken, I wouldn't be trapped in the car. And if I have no cell signal in my suburban neighborhood, why would I expect a cell signal in the "middle of nowhere"? Is that what is known as a false dilemma?
We've got those in Maine, they're called "rumble strips" and they are a grooved strip of pavement that runs just outside the white lines on either side of the pavement.
Being in Maine, I'm surprised you didn't mention how they help in the snow. When you can't quite see the road, or the lane paint, they help. This is actually no big deal, for people whom are used to it.
very close to zero cost primary education (where I live in Illinois, you pay about $150/year to send your child to school)
Everyone, and I mean everyone, pays property tax, which "mostly" goes to the schools. Doesn't matter if you write a check to the city treasurer, or write checks to the landlord whom pays the tax for the land you live on. Assuming you are not homeless, one way or another you pay about $2K/yr, directly or indirectly, to the local schools every year of your adult life.
Also, average property tax is usually a fraction of total per student educational cost... Local education is actually pay-as-you-go but if you think of it like paying back an educational loan, it might make more sense. I attended 13 years of school K-12 at about $10K per year, round to 1/8 mil for my education. (Note I did not get 1/8 mil worth of education, that is just what they spent on me) Then I pay about $2K per year of my property tax toward local schools for 60 years, which multiplies out, suspiciously, to about the same 1/8 mil. Plus or minus some federal funding here and there, etc.
Seriously, what is the rationale for a GFCI in a BEDroom?
Electric blanket in a possibly wet environment where the people may be damp from shower or
darknet traffic would have an obvious signature -- lots of volume, and connectionless.
Exactly the same as a VPN ... which is more or less what a darknet is, with a delicious frosting of anonymity on top. So, you'd have to ban all residential VPN access (very unlikely) or register all corporate VPN infrastructure so as to filter it out (very unlikely).
I guess this means a return to sneakernet? That might improve local communities, not a bad thing in itself...
Or, a move to darknets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_(file_sharing)
Darknets, much like linux on the desktop, or linux in general, always bring out the extremists... "I know its not the same as the internet, but NO ONE will use a darknet unless its EXACTLY THE SAME as the internet" and so on.
So is there a network of geosynchronous satellites that provides its 10 mbps link to the ground?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_and_Data_Relay_Satellite_System
Up to 48 megs. My guess is 10 megs came about because someone told a journalist, "its about as fast as old fashioned thinnet" whom thought to himself, thinnet is 10 megs, so the journalist says 10 megs.
And/or there may be a critical link in the path that is, literally, a piece of thinnet coax, or an old fashioned 10 meg only cat5 cable, so the overall path cannot exceed 10 megs.
Of course, you'd only have about 90 minutes of access as I recall; the ISS orbits too fast for much more access time.
The orbit is about 91 minutes long.. An ideal ground track is only a couple minutes... talk to the ham radio folks whom use a couple watts to a voice FM signal on an external antenna. The wifi is much faster (needs higher SNR) and has an inside antenna and have a zilionth of a watt, so unlikely.
What's next, a $1 million prize to the first company that can ... construct a MOSFET (or something else the government did 50 years ago).
Exactly whom do you think constructs mosfets? Wisconsin Department of Transportation? USDA? BATF?
Now if the offered a $1M prize for the first mosfet that switches 200 KW yet fits in a SOT-23 package (surface mount, about one by three millimeters) for like electric cars and stuff, that would be interesting ...
When making money from movies becomes difficult if not impossible, they'll just stop making them. That's what will stop it.
Movies exist because movie theaters exist.
Movie theaters exist because teenagers need a place to make out, place phone calls, text each other, whisper, eat, drink, and gossip. Sort of like an adult-free daycare for teenagers.
That explains a lot about the quality of modern movies, they are little more than silver-"screensavers" going on while the real activity is in the seats.
As long as the social concept of teenagers exist, it will be possible to make money from movies. The quality of the product and the money spent on them will drop until a profit is made. The bar is already low, and will soon be lower. So, no problem!