The "Wardrop Equilibrium Principle": Under equilibrium conditions, traffic arranges itself in congested networks in such a way that no individual trip maker can reduce his path costs by switching routes.
If all trip makers perceive costs in the same way then the Wardrop Equilibrium Principle may be re-stated as follows: Under equilibrium conditions traffic arranges itself in congested networks such that all routes between any Origin / Destination pair have equal and minimum costs, while all unused routes have greater or equal costs.
Wardrop's Equilibrium Principle has caused many a graduate student taking a transportation engineering course in network optimization to take up drinking.
It is, in fact, like this in many European countries - voting is obligatory
Please expand on this and provide links. I am curious to know more. I think I first heard about this when I read Heinlens - StarShip Troopers. I am interested in ones that have actually been implemented (and wish we could get one here in the USA).
Australia has a "compulsory voting" law. But strictly speaking, Australians are not actually compelled to vote - they simply have to go to a polling place and check off their name on a roll.
One reason lots of other companies that emerged as PC makers in the 80s went on to massively outgrow Apple (think, Compaq...) is that they managed their transition from the 8/16 bit IBM PC through lots of architecture and CPU generations without suddenly dropping support for their existing customer base or alientating them completely.
That's one reason...but not the most significant one (or three). In fact, if you think about it, Apple's transition from 680x0 to PPC was very smooth (fat-binaries any one?)
Marketing. Compaq (and the rest of the PC crowd) grew because - MS advertised Windows, Intel advertised their "Intel Inside", and Compaq (or Dell, Gateway et al) advertised their PC. Meanwhile Apple hardly advertised Macs, or the OS, and no one had even heard of the Moto 680x0. You'd probably see 1 Apple ad for every 30 Wintel ads.
Scully and Amellio forgot that Apple was an innovation company, and lost its focus of building great software to go with a good hardware. Instead Apple was just producing ho...hum hardware (centras/performas/quadras and the rest of the junky lineup), and was stuck on OS 7 for, what, 6 years?
The decision not to license their OS (whether good or bad) cost them a lot of market share.
The best thing for Apple the *computer* company right now might be to spin off or float iPod as a separate division, much as 3Com spun off Palm. use the massive cash raised to do something exciting for the computer line like, I don't know, buy Sun or something! Apple would then be selling both low-end, mid-range, and high-end Unix products!
I would disagree. Computers have become a commodity item, and the market has changed. And it will change even more drastically in the coming years. What used to be just a geek toy is now found in practically every home. The distinction between a PC and home gadgets is blurring (almost every appliance now has an "embedded processor"). These will be used to control just about every aspect of our home in the near-to-mid future (if they are not already!)
Apple made its foray into music with iPod. As the recent discission about the Cringely articles would suggest, Apple is poised to make some big strides into the entertainment market. (Check out this video from the 2004 WWDC for some of the mind-bending stuff we'll see in Tiger that could affect the way we think of home entertainment for example. Do you think any of these advances in software would have happened at Apple if they were not interested in the photo/audio/video market?) Casting off the iPod at this stage of the game would be a mistake.
To continue to keep the personal computer market separate from the rest of the revolution in the home entertainment/automation/control would, IMHO, be a mistake, because that's where the "personal computer" is headed. Why do you think MS is putting so many of its resources into their brand of the "Home Media Center?"
Sure, there will always be a market for fast computers for specialized applications in engineering and science (heck, I am a primary client in one of those markets), but that's not where Apple needs to focus exclusively to grow and sell their brand of kool-aid! There is nothing wrong with a two-prong approach as long as both groups keep track of the big picture, and get an equal share of the wealth from Apple resources.
Digitimes had an interesting article about visual acuity and pixel density. This issue was further thrashed out over at ArsTechnica a while ago (I don't have a link - search there if you want to read the original discussion), but here are some of the salient points:
Digitimes claims that 0.23 mm is about the lower end of the sweet spot for pixel pitch and the upper end is about 0.28 mm for the average person. The ideal pixel pitch is about 0.25 mm for most people and current OSes. 200 ppi is the limit of visual acuity for most people at average working distances. 110 ppi is the upper limit that most people like, (BTW this value is increasing with time.) Although people do gravitate to higher pixel densities when looking at a spec sheet, the industry agrees that most would probably be happier (or as happy at least) with 110ish ppi and not higher.
1600x1200 on a 15" laptop works out to 133 ppi which is far too high for most people (0.196 mm pixel pitch)
1600x1200 on a 14.1" screen works out to 142 ppi which is just insane (0.179 mm pixel pitch)
1680x1050 for a 17" screen, may still be just a little too high for most folks at 117 ppi (0.217 mm pixel pitch)
Apple's current laptop offerings tend to be between 0.24 and 0.254 mm pixel pitch (which is within the limits or the Digitime numbers of 0.23 and 0.28):
12.1: 1024x768 (106 ppi) or (0.24 mm pixel pitch)
14.1: 1152x864 (102 ppi) or (0.249 mm pixel pitch)
15.0: 1280x800 (101 ppi widescreen) or (0.251 mm pixel pitch)
15.2: 1280x854 (101 ppi widescreen) or (0.251 mm pixel pitch)
15.4: 1366x768 (102 ppi widescreen) or (0.249 mm pixel pitch)
17.0: 1400x900 (100 ppi widescreen) or (0.254 mm pixel pitch)
YMMV with what you like (young eyes, glasses, work environment, work applications {graphics, spreadsheat, text}...)
Even though you are in the cookie jar, that's no excuse not to get with the program, man. Apple used to sell 1-button mouse. If you look at their current mouse, it doesn't even have one button.
Tiger's core video will require 64mb to operate but Apple's releasing systems with a paltry 32mb of vram.
Just a clarification. Some of the new eye-candy needs 64 Mb VRAM to work (Droplet works with 32Mb, Burn and Flash don't; and this is on Panther 10.3.7)
Tiger will need 64MB VRAM for CI/CV to be crunched in the GPU. However, if the GPU does not have the requisite memory/power, Tiger will be smart enough to direct the CI/CV crunching to be done by the CPU (unlike Panther, which just sends the eye-candy to the GPU, regardless of whether or not the GPU can do it).
I believe there were 35 original signatories destined for the original Mac case (artists who signed their creation.) The group included hardware, software, industrial design, documentation,...
The most well known in that bunch were: Steve Jobs, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Burrel Smith, Bud Tribble, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn, Jef Raskin,...
Woz was not on the Mac team, and Raskin left a couple of years before the Mac made it to the market. Atkinson, Capps, and Hertzfeld were probably the best known on the software side 'cos their names were also on things like MacPaint, Finder, etc...
There is no "safest" place a priori. We'll only know about it after the fact.
Having said that, try the southern hemisphere. Some place currently classified as temperate (to cool). Away from the coast. At least 1,000 meters above MSL. Not too close to a fault-line. With a high water table flowing from a pristine catchment basin.
Remember that doing this doesn't guarantee you'll be "safe", it is just, kinda sorta, increasing your odds. Or not.
At the very least, move away from the coast. Europe is probably in for a rough ride this century. Summers are getting warmer, melting the Arctic ice-packs.
Winter in Western Europe is probably going to get colder because the warm current of the Gulf Stream is being stopped in the North Sea by the fresh-waters coming from the melting ice. Expect lots more extreme weather patterns. Expect higher variances in temperature and rainfall. Severe 50-year events will pop up every 8-10 years.
If you're going to compare to the EU, let's go all the way. The EU has a declining birthrate and a large number of people on the verge of retirement. Their socialist systems will implode under their own weight.
The same is being said about our Social Security system, which btw, is the largest socialist program that is not identified as a socialist program. Socialism in the US?! Never!!
Let's also mention military might. The EU spends about $0.35/year on their military budget, and that's why when some asshole in Absurdistan starts massacring people, the EU sends a platoon of potato peelers and the US sends 20 battallions of armed and trained Marines.
I don't remember any of our marines showing up when Pol Pot butchered a million (give or take a few hundred thousand) Cambodians. Or when Idi Amin "Dada" wiped out half a million of his subjects. Where exactly where our marines when Juvénal Habyarimana was waging a genocidal war against the Tutsis? (Of course, after his death another 800,000 were slaughtered, so can't directly credit him with every death.) BTW, it was the French who stepped in to bring a fragile "peace" (a little too late for all the dead), but our marines were quite conspicuous by their absence during all this turmoil. Did our marines show up when Augusto Pinochet was busy imprisoning, torturing and executing 30,000 Chileans?
So yes, we send our Marines only to the Absurdistans that happen to have oil. See how our marines took care of the "Butcher of Baghdad"; but let us not dampen our euphoria by also mentioning the 17,500 to 100,000 we have managed to wipe out in the process of deposing Saddam Hussein.
The EU socialist-lite system works because it depends on the charity of the American military.
For all the money we are pouring into the military complex, we'd better believe that we are doing it for charity, or we'll have to start asking some really disturbing questions. The EU may or may not collapse under the weight of their socialist systems. But one thing is certain - if current levels of military expenditures continue and 'boomers start to retire in 2010, then by 2015 the US budget will have little else to spend on other than the Defence, Soc. Sec, and medicare. No wriggle room.
This $500 Apple is still insanely overpriced.
GotApex? has a "headless Dell" on their site for $449.
The mini Mac is not for people who know the price of every thing but the value of nothing. If you think that getting a 32 db whisper-quite box with OSX and its bundled suite of iLife and Xcode is less attractive than getting a noisy XP box with its suite of trojans, viri, and spyware, then obviously this machine is not meant for you.
Here are the specs:
2.8Ghz P4 w/800Mhz bus
256MB DDR2 SDRAM
40GB S-ATA
2 year on site warranty
Its not the meat, but the motion, if you get what I mean, bubba.
Of course, if I don't get modded to hell, there will be a dozen replys from the Apple "amen corner" telling me that the Apple is a better deal, etc.
You seem to be more worried about mod points than actually making a point. But don't worry, I won't tell you the mini Mac is a better deal. For you, a $199 clunker from MalWart would be the better deal. The mini Mac is only a better value.
Starbucks is in the business of providing gourmet coffee bean derivatives in a seemingly up-scale environment. The fact that people decide to bring their laptops, jack in, and suck power, wasn't their choice.
Actually, Starbucks wants you to bring your laptop and surf using their store's wifi hotspot (courtsey T-mobile), all the while sipping on their $4 fraps.
I do know that it is a by-pass, and you correctly stated it as such. I am simply skeptical that it will make any difference to the traffic problems on I-35 in Austin. I am also skeptical that the folks comprising of the through traffic will use it much. Perhaps those who have to time their trip such that it passes through Austin during the am, noon, and pm peak hours will be willing to pay a toll. But few others will.
Keep in mind that SH-130 will add about 20 extra miles to the trip (say from downtown SA to Waco or DFW.) Further, even under uncongested conditions, SH-130 traffic will be limited to 55 mph (that's the design speed of the facility and it cannot be changed without costly vertical and horizontal realignments), whereas once past Austin, I-35 will be 65/70 mph all the way to Selma/Schertz.
So even if it takes you 30 minutes to negotiate the 5 miles through downtown Austin, you will still not save much (if any) time on SH-130. Would you pay $10-$15 to save, say, 10 minutes of travel time? How about 20 minutes of savings? Or how about no time savings at all?
Yes, the toll rate will be somewhere between $10-$15 (about $1.25 for every 10 miles). According to survey data, only about 5% of drivers are willing to pay even $5 for 20 minutes of time savings. (See this page. It is a toll pricing application under development for TxDOT. Scroll down to the table for "% SOV Users willing to pay Toll Price for Time Savings on Managed Lanes:". The default numbers in the table are from a survey conducted in the spring of 2004 of 800+ DFW drivers.)
Similar numbers are seen from all over Texas. Granted that these are for urban driving conditions, but in general, Texans don't like the idea of paying toll. Just recall what happened when toll was proposed for some parts of Mopac.
The problem with communism/socialism is not the people who are running it, it's people.
Corretomondo!
We just don't work that way in groups larger than a high school study group, and that's why it fails every time.
Most of the EU countries are run under a socialist system. I'd hardly call them failures.
Every one focusses on money as a measure of the success (or failure) of capitalism/socialism/communism/**ism. IMHO, the systems should also be judged by the amount of leisure it affords its citizens. Leisure is the most ellusive of all wealths.
50 years ago in the US, a one-income household was sufficient to comfortably raise a family of five. The three kids in the household were not sporting $400 iPods nor wearing $100 Nikes. But their parents had more time to spend with them than money on them.
Today, the average middle-class family in the US out-earns their counterpart in the EU. (Given todays exchange rate, I should probably go back and check whether or not that's still true.) The US family also has a higher standard of living when measured wrt possessions. But the EU family lives in a less stressful environment (don't have to worry about childcare, education, healthcare, retirement, etc.). They also enjoy shorter work weeks (typically 35 hours as opposed to 40 in the US) and 4-6 weeks of vacation (typically 2 weeks in the US).
Yup, we in the US have more money to buy more toys. So if the rule of the game is "He who has the most toy wins", then we have won handily. But we hardly seem to have the time to play with our toys (let alone our kids).
BTW, none of my friends from EU countries (specifically, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland) who have been to the US want to live here. All have gone back to have "a better life back home".
Conversely, folks from third-world countries (Latin America, South Asia, Africa) are lining up for a chance to emigrate to the US. (They face a different problem at home - that of survival.)
So who is better off? Depends on the yardstick with which you measure "better". We have more money, but less time. We are "richer", yet we have lower savings and more debt than the average EU family. We are more powerful economically, yet the US$ which exchanged at $0.80 to 1.00 Euro a scant 5 years ago, is now trading at around $1.35 to 1.00 Euro. We are more technologically advanced, yet it is the EU consumer who has had the better wireless cellular voice and data network for years, while we in the US were stuck in the CDMA rut. We have the most advanced healthcare system on the planet, yet 60 million citizens cannot even afford to go see a doctor because they have no insurance.
The point is we cannot just consider only the good parts of our system and draw a hasty, but rosy generalization regarding everything else under said system.
This pissing match re. capitalism, socialism, communism etc. is rather passe. We still fail to realize that each has its strengths, and the success of any one not only depends on the leaders who implement the philosophy into laws, but also the social structure and civic sense that binds the folks who live under these laws.
Heck, I'd pick a benign and enlightened monarchy governing a civic-minded society, over a democratic confederacy (or republic) of dunces who cannot get past reciting the sacred hymn of the "free-market". Trouble is there are none of the former. I live in one of the latter (which is still much better than living in any of the banana-republics that dot our planet.)
That's why the first section of this is already under construction, as a bypass toll road around Austin.
That would be SH-130, which, (according to folks on the design team) has a design-speed of 55 mph. When the second phase is complete, it will hook up to I-10 just east of San Antonio.
Trucks to/from Mexico may not mind using it. But, except for those living at the northern edge of Georgetown (and the eastern edge of SA), it will not catch much (if any) of the Austin-SA traffic.
It is doubtful that Austinites are going to travel an extra ~20 miles (on 290 or 71), just so that they can drive on a 55 mph highway to get to outside the eastern edge of SA (and pay toll to boot!)
I-35 in Austin will not get less congested. SH-130 may take off 10% of that traffic (mostly the through traffic.) But I doubt whether it will make any real difference in travel time between Riverside and 290E in Austin.
I dread the day when TxDOT starts to demolish the upperdecks and build their 10-lane vision of I-35 through the heart of Austin (not to mention the 2 HOT/V lanes!) Now that is a white elephant that looks good at first glance, but makes no sense if the numbers are scrutinized.
It would be good to divert some of the traffic on I-35 (E and W through DFW, Austin, and San Antonio). But for the TTC to succeed, connection to current activity centers have to be provided. Here's why.
The TTC (TransTexas Corridor) was first proposed by Gov. "Good-hair" Rick Perry in the spring of 2002. Since then, TxDOT has funded a number of studies at TTI (the A&M transportation wing), CTR (the UT Austin transportation wing) and CTS (the UT Arlington transportation wing) re. the TTC. Here are some very interesting quotes from a document from one such study (the report is under review for publication?):
...
There are a couple of reasons why high-speed freight systems may be non-starters for the TTC.
First, the current generation of high-speed rail and maglev systems are not designed to handle bulky freight (the tracks are not designed to sustain the forces created by heavy freight without deviating from their strict tolerance, and the power requirements to move heavy freight at high speeds makes the system prohibitively expensive.)
Second, new markets may emerge in the future that would stimulate the demand for high-speed freight service, but currently in Texas there does not appear to be a mass market for such a service. Significantly, both BNSF and UP currently seem to prefer to "wait-and-evaluate" before venturing into the high-speed freight business.
...
The TransTexas Corridor (TTC) is a timely initiative that can help alleviate mobility, and congestion issues of the future. However, the planning, alignment and design of such a system has to be approached with caution. If certain underlying principles are ignored, and future interactions of the existing transportation system with the new system not incorporated at the planning stage, the new system will create more problems than it is likely to solve.
First, if the TTC does not provide direct and fast connections between existing centers of activities, there will be very few initial users who would be willing to pay a toll and travel along the TTC. After all, why would a user pay a toll to travel to and from places where there are no trip attractions or productions? This will likely result in much lower initial revenues from tolls, and impede the development of new activity centers along the TTC.
Second, when the new centers of activity do eventually develop along the TTC, they will certainly start to interact with the old (existing) centers of activity in our urban areas. If there are no proactively planned connections between the new and old centers of activities, it is highly likely that the existing transportation infrastructure will not be able to serve the future demands placed on it, leading to unintended congestion and loss of mobility.
....
One of the philosophical goals of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) was to end the modal fragmentation of transportation in the US. The practical goal was to provide seamless connectivity between different modes. This was the vision of intermodal transportation. ISTEA also introduced the concept of multimodal transportation, which required that travelers be provided a choice between at least two modes of transportation to get to their destination.
With its combination of high-speed mass transportation (rail or maglev) and highway corridors, the TTC does well in terms of multimodalism.
However, by not providing direct links to the hubs of other modes of transportation, i.e., connections to airports and urban transit services, the current proposed alignment of the TTC gets a failing grade on the intermodal scorecard.
The airline industry (particularly American, Continental, and Southwest Airlines) should be encouraged to become partners in the high-speed mass transportation of passen
The target is a language that will mimic a subset of English...
That would be cool (uber-cool if it can be extended to an OO framework.) AppleScript does a pretty good job of using a subset of English for vocab and syntax, but it remains a scripting language, not quite suited for number crunching.
Slashdot Mirror
The "Wardrop Equilibrium Principle": Under equilibrium conditions, traffic arranges itself in congested networks in such a way that no individual trip maker can reduce his path costs by switching routes.
If all trip makers perceive costs in the same way then the Wardrop Equilibrium Principle may be re-stated as follows: Under equilibrium conditions traffic arranges itself in congested networks such that all routes between any Origin / Destination pair have equal and minimum costs, while all unused routes have greater or equal costs.
Wardrop's Equilibrium Principle has caused many a graduate student taking a transportation engineering course in network optimization to take up drinking.
Marketing. Compaq (and the rest of the PC crowd) grew because - MS advertised Windows, Intel advertised their "Intel Inside", and Compaq (or Dell, Gateway et al) advertised their PC. Meanwhile Apple hardly advertised Macs, or the OS, and no one had even heard of the Moto 680x0. You'd probably see 1 Apple ad for every 30 Wintel ads.
Scully and Amellio forgot that Apple was an innovation company, and lost its focus of building great software to go with a good hardware. Instead Apple was just producing ho...hum hardware (centras/performas/quadras and the rest of the junky lineup), and was stuck on OS 7 for, what, 6 years?
The decision not to license their OS (whether good or bad) cost them a lot of market share.
I would disagree. Computers have become a commodity item, and the market has changed. And it will change even more drastically in the coming years. What used to be just a geek toy is now found in practically every home. The distinction between a PC and home gadgets is blurring (almost every appliance now has an "embedded processor"). These will be used to control just about every aspect of our home in the near-to-mid future (if they are not already!)Apple made its foray into music with iPod. As the recent discission about the Cringely articles would suggest, Apple is poised to make some big strides into the entertainment market. (Check out this video from the 2004 WWDC for some of the mind-bending stuff we'll see in Tiger that could affect the way we think of home entertainment for example. Do you think any of these advances in software would have happened at Apple if they were not interested in the photo/audio/video market?) Casting off the iPod at this stage of the game would be a mistake.
To continue to keep the personal computer market separate from the rest of the revolution in the home entertainment/automation/control would, IMHO, be a mistake, because that's where the "personal computer" is headed. Why do you think MS is putting so many of its resources into their brand of the "Home Media Center?"
Sure, there will always be a market for fast computers for specialized applications in engineering and science (heck, I am a primary client in one of those markets), but that's not where Apple needs to focus exclusively to grow and sell their brand of kool-aid! There is nothing wrong with a two-prong approach as long as both groups keep track of the big picture, and get an equal share of the wealth from Apple resources.
See this post.
Digitimes claims that 0.23 mm is about the lower end of the sweet spot for pixel pitch and the upper end is about 0.28 mm for the average person. The ideal pixel pitch is about 0.25 mm for most people and current OSes. 200 ppi is the limit of visual acuity for most people at average working distances. 110 ppi is the upper limit that most people like, (BTW this value is increasing with time.) Although people do gravitate to higher pixel densities when looking at a spec sheet, the industry agrees that most would probably be happier (or as happy at least) with 110ish ppi and not higher.
1600x1200 on a 15" laptop works out to 133 ppi which is far too high for most people (0.196 mm pixel pitch)
1600x1200 on a 14.1" screen works out to 142 ppi which is just insane (0.179 mm pixel pitch)
1680x1050 for a 17" screen, may still be just a little too high for most folks at 117 ppi (0.217 mm pixel pitch)
Apple's current laptop offerings tend to be between 0.24 and 0.254 mm pixel pitch (which is within the limits or the Digitime numbers of 0.23 and 0.28):
12.1: 1024x768 (106 ppi) or (0.24 mm pixel pitch)
14.1: 1152x864 (102 ppi) or (0.249 mm pixel pitch)
15.0: 1280x800 (101 ppi widescreen) or (0.251 mm pixel pitch)
15.2: 1280x854 (101 ppi widescreen) or (0.251 mm pixel pitch)
15.4: 1366x768 (102 ppi widescreen) or (0.249 mm pixel pitch)
17.0: 1400x900 (100 ppi widescreen) or (0.254 mm pixel pitch)
YMMV with what you like (young eyes, glasses, work environment, work applications {graphics, spreadsheat, text} ...)
Even though you are in the cookie jar, that's no excuse not to get with the program, man. Apple used to sell 1-button mouse. If you look at their current mouse, it doesn't even have one button.
Tiger will need 64MB VRAM for CI/CV to be crunched in the GPU. However, if the GPU does not have the requisite memory/power, Tiger will be smart enough to direct the CI/CV crunching to be done by the CPU (unlike Panther, which just sends the eye-candy to the GPU, regardless of whether or not the GPU can do it).
The most well known in that bunch were: Steve Jobs, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Burrel Smith, Bud Tribble, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn, Jef Raskin, ...
Woz was not on the Mac team, and Raskin left a couple of years before the Mac made it to the market. Atkinson, Capps, and Hertzfeld were probably the best known on the software side 'cos their names were also on things like MacPaint, Finder, etc...
Read all about it at Folklore.org.
Omega-man: Look, I got you this PC. It should do for you.
Later that night....
Omega-man: Say hon, I want some cutie-pie.
Wifey: Look, I got you this doll. It should do for you.
Caution: Linky NSFW.
10 million iPods sold.
230 million tracks sold at iTMS
Averages out to a whopping 23 tracks per iPod.
BTW, I have a 1st gen 5 Gb iPod. My SO has an iPod mini. Both are about 80% full. All tracks are from CDs we own.
I too had New Zealand in mind when I wrote my post. But you seem to have narrowed it down rather well!
Having said that, try the southern hemisphere. Some place currently classified as temperate (to cool). Away from the coast. At least 1,000 meters above MSL. Not too close to a fault-line. With a high water table flowing from a pristine catchment basin.
Remember that doing this doesn't guarantee you'll be "safe", it is just, kinda sorta, increasing your odds. Or not.
At the very least, move away from the coast. Europe is probably in for a rough ride this century. Summers are getting warmer, melting the Arctic ice-packs. Winter in Western Europe is probably going to get colder because the warm current of the Gulf Stream is being stopped in the North Sea by the fresh-waters coming from the melting ice. Expect lots more extreme weather patterns. Expect higher variances in temperature and rainfall. Severe 50-year events will pop up every 8-10 years.
Hope I have cheered you up.
The same is being said about our Social Security system, which btw, is the largest socialist program that is not identified as a socialist program. Socialism in the US?! Never!!
I'd rather we followed the prime directive. We don't. But despite spending almost as much as the rest of the world does on military, we don't have a stellar record of policing the world.
I don't remember any of our marines showing up when Pol Pot butchered a million (give or take a few hundred thousand) Cambodians. Or when Idi Amin "Dada" wiped out half a million of his subjects. Where exactly where our marines when Juvénal Habyarimana was waging a genocidal war against the Tutsis? (Of course, after his death another 800,000 were slaughtered, so can't directly credit him with every death.) BTW, it was the French who stepped in to bring a fragile "peace" (a little too late for all the dead), but our marines were quite conspicuous by their absence during all this turmoil. Did our marines show up when Augusto Pinochet was busy imprisoning, torturing and executing 30,000 Chileans?
So yes, we send our Marines only to the Absurdistans that happen to have oil. See how our marines took care of the "Butcher of Baghdad"; but let us not dampen our euphoria by also mentioning the 17,500 to 100,000 we have managed to wipe out in the process of deposing Saddam Hussein.
BTW, it is not as if the EU is stingy when it comes to spending money on their military. France, Germany, the UK, and Italy are 4 of the top 7 countries when it comes to the military expenditures. France, Norway, Greece, UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, all make it to the top 25 Military Expenditures per capita.
For all the money we are pouring into the military complex, we'd better believe that we are doing it for charity, or we'll have to start asking some really disturbing questions. The EU may or may not collapse under the weight of their socialist systems. But one thing is certain - if current levels of military expenditures continue and 'boomers start to retire in 2010, then by 2015 the US budget will have little else to spend on other than the Defence, Soc. Sec, and medicare. No wriggle room.
By 2025 the proverbial shit will hit the fan. Don't take my or anyone else's word for it (such as the NYTimes, WashingtonPost or for that matter
Keep in mind that SH-130 will add about 20 extra miles to the trip (say from downtown SA to Waco or DFW.) Further, even under uncongested conditions, SH-130 traffic will be limited to 55 mph (that's the design speed of the facility and it cannot be changed without costly vertical and horizontal realignments), whereas once past Austin, I-35 will be 65/70 mph all the way to Selma/Schertz.
So even if it takes you 30 minutes to negotiate the 5 miles through downtown Austin, you will still not save much (if any) time on SH-130. Would you pay $10-$15 to save, say, 10 minutes of travel time? How about 20 minutes of savings? Or how about no time savings at all?
Yes, the toll rate will be somewhere between $10-$15 (about $1.25 for every 10 miles). According to survey data, only about 5% of drivers are willing to pay even $5 for 20 minutes of time savings. (See this page. It is a toll pricing application under development for TxDOT. Scroll down to the table for "% SOV Users willing to pay Toll Price for Time Savings on Managed Lanes:". The default numbers in the table are from a survey conducted in the spring of 2004 of 800+ DFW drivers.)
Similar numbers are seen from all over Texas. Granted that these are for urban driving conditions, but in general, Texans don't like the idea of paying toll. Just recall what happened when toll was proposed for some parts of Mopac.
Every one focusses on money as a measure of the success (or failure) of capitalism/socialism/communism/**ism. IMHO, the systems should also be judged by the amount of leisure it affords its citizens. Leisure is the most ellusive of all wealths.
50 years ago in the US, a one-income household was sufficient to comfortably raise a family of five. The three kids in the household were not sporting $400 iPods nor wearing $100 Nikes. But their parents had more time to spend with them than money on them.
Today, the average middle-class family in the US out-earns their counterpart in the EU. (Given todays exchange rate, I should probably go back and check whether or not that's still true.) The US family also has a higher standard of living when measured wrt possessions. But the EU family lives in a less stressful environment (don't have to worry about childcare, education, healthcare, retirement, etc.). They also enjoy shorter work weeks (typically 35 hours as opposed to 40 in the US) and 4-6 weeks of vacation (typically 2 weeks in the US).
Yup, we in the US have more money to buy more toys. So if the rule of the game is "He who has the most toy wins", then we have won handily. But we hardly seem to have the time to play with our toys (let alone our kids).
BTW, none of my friends from EU countries (specifically, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland) who have been to the US want to live here. All have gone back to have "a better life back home".
Conversely, folks from third-world countries (Latin America, South Asia, Africa) are lining up for a chance to emigrate to the US. (They face a different problem at home - that of survival.)
So who is better off? Depends on the yardstick with which you measure "better". We have more money, but less time. We are "richer", yet we have lower savings and more debt than the average EU family. We are more powerful economically, yet the US$ which exchanged at $0.80 to 1.00 Euro a scant 5 years ago, is now trading at around $1.35 to 1.00 Euro. We are more technologically advanced, yet it is the EU consumer who has had the better wireless cellular voice and data network for years, while we in the US were stuck in the CDMA rut. We have the most advanced healthcare system on the planet, yet 60 million citizens cannot even afford to go see a doctor because they have no insurance.
The point is we cannot just consider only the good parts of our system and draw a hasty, but rosy generalization regarding everything else under said system.
This pissing match re. capitalism, socialism, communism etc. is rather passe. We still fail to realize that each has its strengths, and the success of any one not only depends on the leaders who implement the philosophy into laws, but also the social structure and civic sense that binds the folks who live under these laws.
Heck, I'd pick a benign and enlightened monarchy governing a civic-minded society, over a democratic confederacy (or republic) of dunces who cannot get past reciting the sacred hymn of the "free-market". Trouble is there are none of the former. I live in one of the latter (which is still much better than living in any of the banana-republics that dot our planet.)
Trucks to/from Mexico may not mind using it. But, except for those living at the northern edge of Georgetown (and the eastern edge of SA), it will not catch much (if any) of the Austin-SA traffic.
It is doubtful that Austinites are going to travel an extra ~20 miles (on 290 or 71), just so that they can drive on a 55 mph highway to get to outside the eastern edge of SA (and pay toll to boot!)
I-35 in Austin will not get less congested. SH-130 may take off 10% of that traffic (mostly the through traffic.) But I doubt whether it will make any real difference in travel time between Riverside and 290E in Austin.
I dread the day when TxDOT starts to demolish the upperdecks and build their 10-lane vision of I-35 through the heart of Austin (not to mention the 2 HOT/V lanes!) Now that is a white elephant that looks good at first glance, but makes no sense if the numbers are scrutinized.
It would be good to divert some of the traffic on I-35 (E and W through DFW, Austin, and San Antonio). But for the TTC to succeed, connection to current activity centers have to be provided. Here's why.
The TTC (TransTexas Corridor) was first proposed by Gov. "Good-hair" Rick Perry in the spring of 2002. Since then, TxDOT has funded a number of studies at TTI (the A&M transportation wing), CTR (the UT Austin transportation wing) and CTS (the UT Arlington transportation wing) re. the TTC. Here are some very interesting quotes from a document from one such study (the report is under review for publication?):
Ummm...they aren't having enough children because they are smart and educated.
That would be cool (uber-cool if it can be extended to an OO framework.) AppleScript does a pretty good job of using a subset of English for vocab and syntax, but it remains a scripting language, not quite suited for number crunching.
Good luck with your project!