magnetic field

[Bill Bowden]

I guess they don't keep their website updated. I found a
condenser mic element on their site which they didn't
have in the store. They asked for a part number, so I
looked it up on the store computer and showed them
the part number and the note indicating it was available
in the stores. The clerk checked his catalog and couldn't
find any listing and said the website was wrong, and it
wasn't available in any Radio Shack store. They still have
lots of components listed on their site: resistors, caps,
diodes, relays, bread boards, heat sinks, etc.

www.radioshack.com

-Bill

Tweetldee <dgmason99@att99.net> wrote in message
news:lLIMa.33222$3o3.2422419@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...

Well, I guess the death knell has sounded for the Shack as a source for
experimenter and hobbyist parts. I went into a relatively new store (open
less than a year) today to get a few resistors that I need in a hurry.
What
did I find? Not a resistor, capacitor, transistor, IC, switch, fuse, or
anything that would be considered an electronic component was to be found.
They had all kinds of TV coax, TV connectors, cell phones, home phones,
phone accessories, satellite TV equipment, expensive toys, and a few
stereo
"systems", but but not an electronic component in sight. They had wire,
solder, soldering irons, and such, but nothing to solder the wires to.
They
don't even carry the small project boxes any more.
They're looking more like the electronics section in WalMart every day.
Ooops, I take that back... the Shack's prices are 40-100% above what
you'll
pay for the same item at WalMart.

Adios Radio Shack !! RIP

--
Tweetldee
Tweetldee at att dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in
the
address)

Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.

 

[Si Ballenger]

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 22:10:25 GMT, "Tweetldee"
<dgmason99@att99.net> wrote:

Well, I guess the death knell has sounded for the Shack as a source for
experimenter and hobbyist parts. I went into a relatively new store (open
less than a year) today to get a few resistors that I need in a hurry. What
did I find? Not a resistor, capacitor, transistor, IC, switch, fuse, or
anything that would be considered an electronic component was to be found.
They had all kinds of TV coax, TV connectors, cell phones, home phones,
phone accessories, satellite TV equipment, expensive toys, and a few stereo
"systems", but but not an electronic component in sight. They had wire,
solder, soldering irons, and such, but nothing to solder the wires to. They
don't even carry the small project boxes any more.
They're looking more like the electronics section in WalMart every day.
Ooops, I take that back... the Shack's prices are 40-100% above what you'll
pay for the same item at WalMart.

Adios Radio Shack !! RIP

My local stores still have some basic parts, but recently I have
just left at times as the sales people are tied up making cell
phone sales to other customers (the sales guys smile when I
mention the $$$ from cell phone sales). On the flip side I can
now order on line from digikey or mouser with only ~$5 shipping
charge and a couple day wait for most any part I want. I still
look the stores for gizmos on closeout for hacking and tinkering.
Below is a webcam switcher setup I made from parts still
available at the local Radio Shack stores (AKA "The Rat Shack
Challange"). With free web pages available and the google search
engine, there is still a lot of DIY tinkering going on.

http://www.geocities.com/zoomkat/ppswitcher-demo.htm

 

[AtPCLogic]

From: "Ray L. Volts" raylvolts@SPAMRIDhotmail.com
Date: 7/3/03 2:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time

snip....

From what I've read and heard, it seems many parts houses are shutting down
across the country lately, putting a huge damper on the hobby, and forcing
service centers to rely exclusively on the biggest mail order firms. I'm in
the Houston, TX area and there are only 3 or 4 "general" parts houses now.
Yet another staple of the area, a wonderful supplier of oddball parts nobody
else stocked, has closed its doors in the last year.

Bid Kepro a fond farewell.... they are closing.

In Houston, was that City Electronic that just closed? They always had a
supply of odd ball stuff when I lived there.

Regards,
Brad
PC Logic

Schematic entry and PCB design software
http://www.pclogic.biz
http://members.aol.com/atpclogic/index.html

 

[Bill Sloman]

"ActualGeek" <ActualGeek@no.real.address> wrote in message
news:ActualGeek-27A1AF.21373502072003@corp.supernews.com...

In article <7c584d27.0307021625.1eaa0c11@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:


That Nobel prize was a scandal.

Which one? Just about every time the nobel prize goes to a
free-marketer.

That nitwit from Chicago, Milton Friedman

http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1976/

The most recent Nobel Prize in Economics went to a couple of guys who
actually looked at how markets worked, as as opposed to assuming that they
work perfectly. If you want to include them in the catagory of "free
marketer" along with Milton Friedman, your credibility goes down the tubes.

They work with an unrealistic theory which doesn't
predict worth a damn,

Except that history disagrees.

Come on, produce the historical example of a market where monetarist
economics could actually predict what was going to happen. You shouldn't
have to go back for more than a few hundred years.

Letting them loose on more or less modern industrial societies is
irresponsible. I'm painfully aware what Thatcher' irrational enthusiasm for
monetarism cost the British economy - I was there all the way through it.

They functioned as the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse in Chile - after the
U.S. had engineered the over-throw and assassination of the democratically
elected President Allende, they sent in monetarist economists to grind the
faces of the poor who had elected him. It cost the fat cat collaborators in
terms of the speed of economic recovery, but it did suit their ideological
prejudices.

They made a total mess of the economic reorganisation of East Europe and
Russia after the fall of communism. The bizarre idea that waving the
free-market magic wand over a bunch of ageing and under-capitalised
factories could bring them up to western standards "in a single bound"
worked exactly as well as any sensible person would expect - most of the
factories were shut down, the employees became un-employed and the
organisations became worthless.

In some exceptional cases, the factories were up-graded with western
capital, which allowed them to continue to exploit the expertise of the
workers, and of the existing distribution networks, effectively salvaging
most of the intellectual capital which had been built up in these
organisations.

If the monetarist economists hadn't been so ridiculously intellectually
lazy, they would have proposed a phased introduction of the free market,
behind the sort of tariff barriers the U.S.used to protect its early
industrialisation in the nineteenth century, (and which Japan, Korea and
China have used with considerable success since then) which would have given
many more factories the chance to up-grade to meet the standards of the
western free market.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

"ActualGeek" <ActualGeek@no.real.address> wrote in message
news:ActualGeek-2CE640.21253402072003@corp.supernews.com...

In article <7c584d27.0306290900.617c90be@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

ActualGeek <ActualGeek@no.real.address> wrote in message
news:<ActualGeek-4CF873.01551929062003@corp.supernews.com>...
In article <7c584d27.0306281505.24150f8@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

Precious Pup <barking@wrongtree.org> wrote in message
news:<3EFC791A.2B38A0A1@wrongtree.org>...
Bill Sloman wrote:


Go away and
try to learn what honest arguement involves.

Go away and try to learn.

Go away, I wasn't talking to you.

You need to learn how to construct some kind of sequential
arguement,
before we can get onto difficult concepts like "honest" and
"dishonest".

Actual Geek can more or less manage that (though his attention span
leaves something to be desired) and in this respect he leaves you
trailing in the dust.

-----
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Getting back on the point.

Bill, you have failed to show how there's an information problem in
capitalism, and you haven't even tried to explain why we need to solve
it.

I've just been reading Paul Krugman's "The Return of Depression
Economics" ISBN 0-14-028685-3 which fairly clearly indicates that
there is an information problem with modern more-or-less free market
capitalism, and that the people in the business of regulating the free
market economies of the world don't have enough information to be able
anticipate and smooth out the instabilities of the currency and
capital markets.

Well, if that's true then Paul Krugman is not an economist. The
instabilities in currency are due to these very same people who try to
"control" the market inflating the currency beyond all reason.

Currency speculators and the managers of hedge funds?

As to the instabilities in the market, they are due also to these people
trying to control the economy.

If you say so. Where is your evidence?

There is no reason to believe that the free market needs to be smoothed
out-- in fact the boom / bust cycle came from exactly this kind of
central planning... before it, the economy was much smoother.

And the Great Depression of the early 1930's never happened. It wasn't the
first of it's kind, but it was a good deal more dramatic than its
predecessors.

Once again, Government is a disease masquarading as its own cure.

Right wing clap-trap.

But whats' amasing is the slave mentality you have-- you just assume
that other people have the right to control your life. Why?

The choice is between a local protection racket and a democratically elected
representative government. I prefer the lesser of the two evils.

The information about the economy that these people are working with

Even if these people had perfect information about the state of things
at any given point, they would still fail because to do the job they are
trying to do they'd have to have perfect vision of the future and the
effects of the things they are considering.

The more-or-less free market system works reasonably well with very
imperfect information. A system that used a greater proportion of the data
that is now collected should be able to work better. Designing such a system
would be non-trivial.

History tells us that the only rational thing they can do is take a
hands off approach.

History tells you that - but you don't know enough history to be aware of
the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent depression. Those who don't
know history are condemned to repeat it.

But that's not popular with fascists like yourself, is it?

You will have to look fairly hard to find a fascist like me. The only extant
examples speak Italian, which I don't, and have the same sort of comical
political ideas as you do, which I don't share. The current premier of Italy
does seem to have neo-facist colleagues, but the man himself appears to be
just one more megalomaniac bribe-giving capitalist.

I follow Keynes in the opinion that the free-market economy is inherently
unstable, and observe that his preferred system of damping these
instabilities via the central banks did seem to work. This strikes me as a
reasonably hands-off control - there is no specific manipulation of the
prices of individual commodities. Despite your ideologically based
prejudices, this is not a facist position, and nobody with any grasp of
reality would think it was.

As a scheme, it works surprisingly well - better than anything else
that has been tried so far - but it is obviously sub-optimal.

Socialism, which is what you're advocating, works worse than everything
else that's been tried. Monarchies are more efficient!

You seem to have this binary picture of the world - everything that isn't
free-market capitalism is socialism and thus bad.

In fact there are lots of versions of modified free-market capitalism,
almost all of which work better than the totally hands-off scheme that gave
us the great depression, and there are a whole bunch of systems of
cooperation, some of them described - very misleadingly - as anarchism,
which might just work better than our current system, granting really good
information systems.

I don't. What I said was that we can now collect a lot more
information than just the cash transfer for every transaction, and if
we could find a way of making this information available outside the
firms who collect the data for their own use, we should be able to
devise a *distributed* control system that ought to be more stable,
and could run a lot closer to full capacity.

Impossible, because what you desire requires omniscience and the ability
to see the future.

The current modified free-market systems work reasonably well without these
advantages, and with only a restricted set of the information that is now
available within commercial organisations. Try and get your head around this
point - it one that I have been trying to get over to you for some time now,
but it looks as if you are a little too preprogrammed to be able to
accomodate the concept.

Is just the ludicrous excuse of those who want to enslave everyone.
Don't fall for such a patently obvious lie.

Er. Who wants to enslave everybody? How does setting up a more flexible and
more nearly optimal economic system make everybody slaves? Who is producing
patently ludicrous lies?

Every centrally planned economy in the history of the world has
failed,
or been far less successful than less centrally planned economies of
similar conditions.

Since I'm not arguing for a centrally planned economy

Yes, you are. That is exactly what you're arguing for. You just claim
it isn't. Any economy which is controlled by the government or any
entity outside the owners of the companies in the economy is a centrally
planned economy.

Then you too live in a centrally planned economy, and all we are arguing
about is which centrally planned economy is least worst.

In fact I'm interested in decentrallised control mechanisms, analogous the
the decentrallised access control of the original Ethernet protocol. What
little I know about the "anarchist" social philosophy suggests that this is
their kind of thing.

that failed in the USSR. In so far as China, Japan and Korea have more
central planning than India, and grew their economies twice as fast
during the catch-up phase, some central planning would seem to be a
good idea.

You have been reading a bunch of lies, and now you are repeating the m
to me! Hell, you act as if korea were one country.

South Korea is one country. North Korea hasn't got an economy worthy of the
name. I've worked for companies that sold equipment to South Korea, and we
always understood South Korea when anybody spoke of Korea - only the
diplomats and the military have to pay any atention to North Korea.

Just look at what's happened in India in the last 20 years since they
gave up central planning and curtailed government interference-- they
have doubled the incomes, on average, of a billion people.

Doubling over 20 years is a growth rate of 3.5% per year - respectable
for a third world economy catching-up, but half the rate achieved by
Japan, Korea and China during their catch-up phases.

Now you're just flat out lying. I didn't say the economy doubled, I
said the INCOME of the average person doubled.

I didn't say anything about the economy doubling, I just said that the
growth rate (by implication in average income) was respectable, but about
half than that achieved by Japan, (South) Korea and China, when their
economies were catching up.

So where is this "flat out lie"? Find your own numbers via google as I did
if you think I'm making a false claim.

Frankly, capitalism is the cure for poverty, and it works every time.

If so, why does it work so poorly in the U.S.A., where the poorest 30
or 40 million have been slipping back since Regan started dismantling
welfare?

A lie based on a lie.

And your counter-evidence is? I was directly quoting Paul Krugman, but I've
seen similar figures in Scientific American.
Who is your authority. Bob Jones?

The poor have been doing better since Reagan.

According to?

And it has generally done well in America, with the exception of the
fact that the government takes half of everyone's income and essentially
destroys it.

Since it spends large chunk of the tax income on a fatuously oversized
military machine, this is a difficult proposition to entirely disagree with.
But some of the money spent on the military is justifiable - you need
defence forces, as well as police forces, diplomatic services, highways,
air-traffic control, the FDA, the NBS and a whole long list of services
which depend on your tax dollars.

The right wing enthusiasm for privatisation ignores (as usual) the lessons
of history. In the U.K. Thatcher privatised a whole lot of stuff which had
started off as private companies in Victorian times and been taken over by
the municipalities and later the central government because the commercial
services didn't work very well. And -guess what - they don't work very well
now that they have been re-privatised a hundred years later. The railways
are a particularly salient case in point.

Hard to have the benefits of capitalism when the govenrment destroys
half the value.

Or, put another way, since 1913 this country as been increasingly a
socialist country.

But you've done very well, even so.

The European version of the capitalist economy includes a rather
better welfare system, which pays off in better educated and
eventually more productive workers. Will Hutton's "The World We're In"

And yet their economies are growing much slower.

At which particular instant? Name your date and the corresponding growth
figures.

other subjects, and paints a picture of the U.S.A. that doesn't fit
with what you were taught in civics in primary school (which is now
long out of date).

Again, by definition you tell a lie-- you don't know what I was taught
in primary school or how long ago it was.

I don't know when you were in primary school, but you can't have got the
over-simplified clap-trap that you peddle any later in your academic career,
and what you peddle is clearly way past its sell-by date.

I don't think that what I wrote can be characterised as a lie. You do tend
to to mis-parse sentences and describe your misintepretation as a lie, which
is not a nice way to behave.

If you line up companies in a row based on the standard of living of the
poorest 10% of the country, you'll find that the more socialist they
are, the lower the poors standard of living, and the more capitalist,
the higher.

That's the fact, jack.

That is an opinion, jack, unsupported by any facts. Go find some. You'll
misinterpret them, and I'll have a great deal of fun revealing your
intellectual inadequacies. You still do better than Precious Pup, but you
could with more factual knowledge.

-----
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Ray L. Volts]

"AtPCLogic" <atpclogic@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030703034253.05184.00000055@mb-m14.aol.com...

From: "Ray L. Volts" raylvolts@SPAMRIDhotmail.com
Date: 7/3/03 2:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time


Bid Kepro a fond farewell.... they are closing.

In Houston, was that City Electronic that just closed? They always had a
supply of odd ball stuff when I lived there.

Yep, that's the one. He had items I couldn't even find online or in print,
especially the older inventory. A TV shop in H-town bought him out but when
I visited the shop, the owner told me he was going to get rid of it for tax
reasons. I've checked the other stores (EPO, ACE, etc.) to see if they
picked the stuff up. Apparently they didn't, so I have no idea where all
those goodies ended up.

Lamentingly,
Ray

 

[idlemuse]

bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote in message news:<7c584d27.0307021625.1eaa0c11@posting.google.com>...

jasligon@msn.com (idlemuse) wrote in message news:<82463628.0307020539.5e93798f@posting.google.com>...
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote in message news:<7c584d27.0307011544.22327540@posting.google.com>...
jasligon@msn.com (idlemuse) wrote in message news:<82463628.0307010715.2b61548e@posting.google.com>...
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote in message news:<7c584d27.0306290900.617c90be@posting.google.com>...
ActualGeek <ActualGeek@no.real.address> wrote in message news:<ActualGeek-4CF873.01551929062003@corp.supernews.com>...
In article <7c584d27.0306281505.24150f8@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

Precious Pup <barking@wrongtree.org> wrote in message
news:<3EFC791A.2B38A0A1@wrongtree.org>...
Bill Sloman wrote:


Go away and
try to learn what honest arguement involves.

Go away and try to learn.

Go away, I wasn't talking to you.

You need to learn how to construct some kind of sequential
arguement, before we can get onto difficult concepts like "honest" > > > > > > and "dishonest".

Actual Geek can more or less manage that (though his attention span
leaves something to be desired) and in this respect he leaves you
trailing in the dust.

-----
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Getting back on the point.

Bill, you have failed to show how there's an information problem in
capitalism, and you haven't even tried to explain why we need to
solve it.

I've just been reading Paul Krugman's "The Return of Depression
Economics" ISBN 0-14-028685-3 which fairly clearly indicates that
there is an information problem with modern more-or-less free market
capitalism, and that the people in the business of regulating the free
market economies of the world don't have enough information to be able
anticipate and smooth out the instabilities of the currency and
capital markets.

Krugman has been hoping for a return of depression economics for
decades. Any problem faced by the economy at large will be faced by
the regulators of the economy. There is hubris in pretending that you
know what the market is supposed to be doing, and Krugman just can't
shake that control fetish. Let the decentralized decisions of market
participants act on the information they have and regulate to the
least extent possible, and you might avoid a catastrophic unintended
consequence of regulations that affect all market participants.

Go read your Keynes. The decentralised decisions of the market
participants is what makes pure free market economies unstable, and
Krugman identifies the "decentralised decisions" of the currency
speculators and the hedge funds as major contributors to the Asian
crashes of the late 1990's (which is what he was actually writing
about).


I've read Keynes. While it may come as a shock to many in your neck
of the woods, there are numerous perfectly respectable economists with
Nobel bona fides since Keynes who would tend to disagree.

That Nobel prize was a scandal. The economists involved aren't
respectable. They work with an unrealistic theory which doesn't
predict worth a damn, but has the singular advantageof producing the
sort of predictions and advice that the short-sighted rich want to
hear. The Republican party loves them, and they gets loads of support.
They aren't economists, merely flatterers.

We aren't talking about a single Nobel here. We are, at a minimum,
talking about Friedman on one occasion, James Buchanan on another,
Vernon Smith on another, and George Stigler on another. You are
dealing with counter arguments to Keynes from at least three schools
these days; the monetarists, the public choice theorists, and the
Austrian inclined neo-classicists.

As a matter of fact, Keynes, Galbraith, and their cheerleader Krugman are the
minority view holders these days.

Hutton is another of these voices in the wilderness. I first started
reading his stuff when he had a weekly column in the Guardian
newspaper in the U.K. in the later 1980's. One of his habits was
second-guessing U.K. treasury decisions - when they did anything he'd
explain why, what they intended to achieve, and predict what they
would actually achieve. Six months later he'd write an "I told you so"
paragraph.

I'd be content to put Friedman's historical record of prediction in
competition with Galbraith's. There is a reason the whole enterprize
is known as the dismal science - predictive power isn't its strong
suit. The difference between the view holders is that one group
acknowledges their inability to predict, much less control, an entity
as complex as a modern economy. The other group is in denial.

Because the U.K. Treasury was full of "respectable" economists at that
time, hand-picked for ideological purity by Margaret Thatcher herself,
this was to some extent shooting sitting ducks, but it made the point
about the predictive power of monetarist economics.

I wonder what they would have to say about the state of Japan's
economy, which is the most Keynesian in existence.

So why aren't they printing money to spend their way out of the
deflationary spiral? Because the central bank isn't anythihg like
Keynesian enough ...

You mean like Argentina? That part of Keynes has always struck me as
lunatic. His notion that 'in the long run, we're all dead anyway' is
the only possible justification for devaluing your currency to give
people more money to spend. It violates the first law of free
lunches, which is that they ain't free.

Protectionism leads to inefficient companies that can't compete.

So why is Dubbya protecting your inefficient steel producers?

No argument from me on that one. I'll one up you. The farm subsidies
are even worse than the steel tariffs, and both policies utterly
ignore Ricardo's lessons. Bush was stupid for signing both bills, and
I wrote to tell him so. Of course, we have a long way to go before we
can compare with EU style farm subsidies.

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb051403.shtml

Yes, that's right. Each cow in Europe gets a subsidy of some US$2.20
per day, which doesn't even begin to cut into the greatest trade
barrier ever erected - the labeling of GM food (and that only becuase
they couldn't maintain an outright ban).

Comparative advantage works. Public spending projects result most often not > in fantastic growth, but in boondoggles that flush hard earned money down the
toilet.

So why is Dubbya spending so disporportionately much on defence?

Our level of military spending and global military involvement are
higher than I would prefer, as well. It would help if Europe could
pull anything remotely approaching their own weight militarily
speaking.

On the other hand, the current US administration is not speding on
tanks for Keynesian reasons.

The information about the economy that these people are working with
is what is manifest on the stock and currency markets from day-to-day,
and what governements reveal about their current and expected incomes
and expenditures. Everything is denoted in terms of its monetary
value, and the purchase of a single 747 which took nearly a year to
build and is expected to keep flying for twenty to thirty years could
be equated with the sale of ten million Harry Potter books.

As a scheme, it works surprisingly well - better than anything else
that has been tried so far - but it is obviously sub-optimal.

It works surprisingly well because people make continual adjustments
every second of every day. Check the price of ten million Harry Potter
books the day after they are bought and compare it to the price of a
747 the day after it is bought. Interference in the incentives of the
market lead to perverse choices on the part of market participants,
who no longer can trust the information that prices were supposed to
be giving them.

This is arrant "perfect free market" propaganda. Go read Keynes.

Keynes was incorrect about the benevolent effects of interference. Go
read any of the monetarists, or any public choice economist, or any of
the Austrians to see why.

The monetarists tell the story that the rich want to hear. Put them in
charge of an economy - as Thatcher did in the U.K. and watch your GDP
per head fall behind that of comparable economies with less
ideologically blinkered policies.

Yes, yes; and Keynes and Galbraith tell the story you want to hear.
The news of the day is that no economist is in charge of the economy.
Thatcher's weren't and Blair's aren't.

Finally, you would then need to explain how a centralized economy
would be able to do a better job than a distributed one... given
that distributed economies are successful because decisions get made
at the place where the people with the most understanding of the
situation can make the decision.

I don't. What I said was that we can now collect a lot more
information than just the cash transfer for every transaction, and if
we could find a way of making this information available outside the
firms who collect the data for their own use, we should be able to
devise a *distributed* control system that ought to be more stable,
and could run a lot closer to full capacity.

The price, at least theoretically, contains all of the information you
might be interested in, doesn't it?

No. Because the price reflects the pressures of the moment. If the
price of 747's goes through the floor, Boeing still has about a year's
production stacked up in the factory in various states of completion.
Harry Potter books can be reprinted and distributed a lot more
quickly.

This is less true than it used to be, as most production facilities
use 'just in time' tactics to minimize the amount of warehousing they
have to do.

747's are built "just in time" and it still takes about a year. Big,
complicated systems rpodcued in relatively small volumes are always
going to be difficult.

Agreed.

The question isn't whether the price as it currently
exists isn't distorted by inefficiencies, the question is whether the
price becomes more or less distorted when some self interested
political body tells everyone what the price 'should' be. To address
the problems you raise here, we should be focusing on a reduction of
interference with pricing signals and let technology and the self
interest of companies work to improve each of their contributions to
the price of a good.

The problem with manufacturing goods is not just price, but also
volume. The rule of thumb is that if you can increse the volume by a
factor of ten, you can halve the price. Tooling up to do this takes
time and demands investment.

Keynes wasn't in the least interested in telling the market what the
price ought to be. He was interested in manipulating the expectations
of the people who were in the process of making their minds up about
making this sort of investment, and his preferred method involved
using the central banks to manipulate the money supply.

And to heck with the consequences of unstable currency and all of the
other unintended joy that goes along with dumping devalued cash on
people's heads.

Monetarists postulate a perfect market, so they don't believe in
investor expectations, and find this sort of manipulation heretical.

No. Monetarists don't believe that when you attempt to modify
investor expectations that you are doing what you think you are doing,
and certainly not ONLY what you think you are doing.

This suites the central bankers down to the ground - they can keep on
behaving as if they were running a bank,rather than an economy. Both
groups effectively stick their heads in the sand.

You don't want a group of central bankers attempting to run the whole
economy. They don't know what demand is supposed to be for zucchini,
so they don't need to be manipulating demand up or down.

The metal markets are unstable for the same sort of reason - is the
price of a metal creeps up, the owners of various more or less
marginal mines are persuaded to invest the money to pump out the
mine-shafts again and get the machinery running so they can extract
the relevant mineral, all of which takes time. When they finally start
shipping ore, the market is suddenly over-supplied, and the price
crashes.

I'm surprised that companies haven't figured this out yet.

They have, but eventually the potential profits get too tempting, and
away we go again. Commoditiy markets are horribly cyclic.

I would think that this would only occur when the price of metal shoots up
rather than when it creeps. What you are calling instability is the
market working to meet demand. It just isn't happening as quickly as
you would like for it to. Again I ask, why on earth would you prefer
for a bureaucrat to tell everyone what the price of metal should be?

No. With better information, it should be possible for the producers
to make realistic predictions of demand, and negotiate where the extra
capacity should come from and when it should come on line. This is -
in principle - agreement in restrain of trade, and not permissible in
the current free market environment, which clearly needs to be made
more flexible.

Commodities should all be handled like OPEC? Should all commodities
cheat on the deal like OPEC members do, which is the only reason
supply is even approximated by price at the pump?

Every centrally planned economy in the history of the world has
failed, or been far less successful than less centrally planned
economies of similar conditions.

Since I'm not arguing for a centrally planned economy this is
irrelevant, though a centrally planned economy with modern data
collection and processing ought to be more efficient than the system
that failed in the USSR. In so far as China, Japan and Korea have more
central planning than India, and grew their economies twice as fast
during the catch-up phase, some central planning would seem to be a
good idea.

That is a murky issue. I don't know that I'd hold up India as an
example of notably less government interference than most other
developing countries, it only has less government interference than it
used to have. Its reduction in regulation allowed it to grow at all,
which was not the case before. To compare across countries would be a
much larger task.

Why do you think that it was "the reduction in regulation that allowed
it to grow at all"?

The central planning approach produced 0 growth. A few decades ago,
markets were liberalized to some small extent and growth occurred.
Coincidence, maybe?

Quite possibly. Technology has changed a lot over the past few
decades.

Just look at what's happened in India in the last 20 years since
they gave up central planning and curtailed government interference--> > > > > they have doubled the incomes, on average, of a billion people.

Doubling over 20 years is a growth rate of 3.5% per year - respectable
for a third world economy catching-up, but half the rate achieved by
Japan, Korea and China during their catch-up phases. Neither Japan,
Korea nor China gave up central planning and government interference,
though this has been used more to direct capitalist investment than to
control it.

Japan, for example, flung open the export doors right out of the gate.
A good portion of their growth had to do with the extent to which they
adopted market friendly policies. We will never know exactly, of
course. Krugman would argue one way and P.T. Bauer would argue the
other looking at the same cases.

Japan is almost as good as the U.S.A. at using non-tariff barriers to
trade to protect the domestic market while exporting furiously.

Japan is much, much better at protecting inefficient domestic
businesses than is the US.

It may look like that to you, but sitting in the U.K. and exporting to
both in the 1980's there wasn't a lot to choose between the two.

Of course, the more people who do this, the less effective it is, even in
the short run. Over the long run, you have a bunch of crippled,
uncompetitive companies.

Not necessarily. Within-country competition ought to weed out the
cripples.

Like in Japan? Most of those folks haven't figured out how to put on
their 'big boy pants' yet, and they have to run to mommy to save them
from anything that looks like a competitive threat.

Why the arbitrary line? Shouldn't each locality institute
protectionist measures to save their local businesses from having to
compete with the town on the other side of the hill?

If only someone had protected vacuum tube manufacturers, the world
would be a better place.

The volumes aren't as high as you'd get selling successfully into the
world market, but large domestic markets, as in the U.S. and Japan,
mean that the extra volume of exports doesn't give you any dramatic
economies of scale.

Since this sort of protectionism was exactly what was used by the
U.S.A. to protect and develop its own industries in the nineteenth
century, you would seem to be argueing that the U.S. is afflicted with
a bunch of crippled, uncompetitive companies - over and above the
steel mills that Dubbya protected from the predatory Europeans earlier
in his administration.

US companies are robust to the extent that they have a history of
having to compete. They are uncompetitive to the extent that they
have been protected.

don't know exactly what you meant to say with "flung open the export
doors right out of the gate" but they certainly protected their
domestic market, and they still do.

I mean that the Japanese dedication to exporting their way to growth
worked, but their dedication to domestic protectionism didn't.

In what way?

Have you taken a look at their economy in the last decade?

snip for later reply

 

[MNQ]

I guess your gona have to use your initiative.

naveed


"Dave" <dbeane@genie.idt.net> wrote in message
news:be19r9$tck@library1.airnews.net...

Ray L. Volts <raylvolts@SPAMRIDhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:be13bh$kt5@library2.airnews.net...

"AtPCLogic" <atpclogic@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030703034253.05184.00000055@mb-m14.aol.com...
From: "Ray L. Volts" raylvolts@SPAMRIDhotmail.com
Date: 7/3/03 2:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time


Bid Kepro a fond farewell.... they are closing.

In Houston, was that City Electronic that just closed? They always
had
a
supply of odd ball stuff when I lived there.


Yep, that's the one. He had items I couldn't even find online or in
print,
especially the older inventory. A TV shop in H-town bought him out but
when
I visited the shop, the owner told me he was going to get rid of it for
tax
reasons. I've checked the other stores (EPO, ACE, etc.) to see if they
picked the stuff up. Apparently they didn't, so I have no idea where
all
those goodies ended up.

Lamentingly,
Ray



If you find out where all those goodies went, please post it. I am also
in
the Houston area. I am still in shock over the news that Electrotex
closed
it's doors. The times, they are a-changing.

Luckily, the RS down the street from my house still has some parts. Don't
know what I'm going to do when they run out and EPO shuts down.

Dave
db5151@hotmail.com

 

[ChadMan]

"A E" <aeisenhut@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:3F03B19C.D3618FFB@videotron.ca...

Neil wrote:

You certainly lasted a lot longer than most. The beginning of the end
started about 5 years ago, when I noticed that parts stocks where no
longer
being replenished. The Manager confided to me that the electronics
department was to be phased out as quickly as possible, as it had become
a
money loosing part of the business.
So long RS....but I still have the 65 in one kit that I received when I
was
10, that started it all with me.

It's not really RS's fault, the days of electronics as a hobby for the
average
guy are over.

Yep! Throw away goods. That's why! Costs more to fix that
to replace. That is the real cause. In the future they will
mine landfills to recover metals and other materials

ChadMan



"And in the beginning there were many Wal-marts and the CEO's saw this
and it was good...

I say unto you 'Go you forth and make more landfills for you will need them
to place the cheap sauder furniture and broken Nintendos...'

And they made more landfills and the CEO's saw this and it was good...

The CEO's saw this and said 'Now you must go forth and buy more sauder
furniture and Nintendos...'

And the CEO's said 'Now I will make more Wal-mart and landfill
jobs for you, so that you can rent Blockbuster movies, play Nintendo and eat
frozen pizzas from your sauder furniture'...

And te CEO's saw this and all was good,"

 

[The Technical Manager]

Dbowey wrote:

Up to around 1984 or so the ABC (USA) television network was
delivered by such cables to the TV station where I work. There was
also a local run from the station to a local university basketball
court so we could telecast games from there.

Do you have any ideas on what the cable was called ?

I'm not sure if the impedance was the same, but IBM was fond of using
a similar cable to connect terminals to their computers. It is still
available - look for "twinax"

I have tracked down Twinax.

 

[Precious Pup]

Bill Sloman wrote:

"ActualGeek" <ActualGeek@no.real.address> wrote in message
news:ActualGeek-27A1AF.21373502072003@corp.supernews.com...
In article <7c584d27.0307021625.1eaa0c11@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:


That Nobel prize was a scandal.

Which one? Just about every time the nobel prize goes to a
free-marketer.

That nitwit from Chicago, Milton Friedman

Imagine that. Sloman is brighter than Friedman and could teach him a lesson or two handed straight down from
that voice from the wilderness Will Hutton.

The most recent Nobel Prize in Economics went to a couple of guys who
actually looked at how markets worked, as as opposed to assuming that they
work perfectly.

Retard, Friedman didn't/doesn't assume markets work perfectly -- you'd know that if you weren't afraid of
actually reading something that might challenge your cherished belief system. You've been told countless
times that no one is saying markets are perfect. But you are one dense motherfucker.

If you want to include them in the catagory of "free
marketer" along with Milton Friedman, your credibility goes down the tubes.

Retard, that isn't what was being questioned.

They work with an unrealistic theory which doesn't
predict worth a damn,

Except that history disagrees.

Come on, produce the historical example of a market where monetarist
economics could actually predict what was going to happen. You shouldn't
have to go back for more than a few hundred years.

You're right; you don't have to go back that far. For a decent example, you need only go back to stagflation
and the recipe of tight money. Volker invoked the medicine and voilŕ. You don't need to believe usenet
postings or Friedman, you need only listen to your buddy Krugman in "Peddling..."

 

[FEerguy9]

FEerguy9 <feerguy9@cs.com> wrote in message

I think he's talking about losses in terms of dollars and cents and damage
to
the environment.

No I am not.

There are no dollars and no cents in the ocean wind.


There is if you stop enough of it. What if you block enough ocean wind to
pervent the clouds from moving over the land and we don't get any rain? Think

of the lost revenue

to the ski resorts with no snow. And we would have to drink imported bottled
water 6 times a day. That's a lot of dollars and cents.

<----Not the SLIGHTEST idea what you are talking about!

Labor and materials and maintenanc aren't free you know.
How do you compete with an oil well that delivers 10 times more
power at half the cost?

With a collection device that changes the very meaning of economics.

eer is not a collection device. It's an empty storage device

True - my mistake.

that doesn't contain much when filled.

Only enough to run uour EV.


Frank

 

[FEerguy9]

"FEerguy9" <feerguy9@cs.com> wrote in message
news:20030630200253.18833.00002245@mb-m20.news.cs.com...

Nope, you're not even close. You've given no clue of any practical or
even
possible means of achieving what you propose, especially since it's
already
been pointed out that your notions of what
is basically ultrafine etching don't get you anywhere.

The general idea is still good.

Not until you show WHY you think it's still good.

I cannot rewrite my text for every question, so I will add the text to this
send.

I can't help it if you don't understand this.

I can't help it if you have no vision.

Vision, I've got plenty of. What I also have, though, that you seem to lack,
is the ability to back up my statements with evidence and reasoning.

Hahaha

No, no, no no. I do not believe this to be irrelevant or ignorable - I
believe
this to be the central point of eer. Eer would collect and store ALL the
energy we wanted, from ANY source.

No, it wouldn't. Show me I'm wrong.

Read the text.

But you're not even at the point of actually HAVING a valid opinion on
this,

Say YOU!

Yes, says me. Again, SHOW that I'm wrong.

Read the text.

Or here's an even better check on exactly how valid your
opinions are - simply answer the following question:

What are the DISadvantages of "EER"?

Hmmmm Had to really THINK about this one!

A car accident releasing all that energy at once?

The fact that it is ME proposing it?

Would leave a lot of ex-rich oil barrons pissed off - and perhaps meaner than
before?

Would, necessarily, cause an upheaval in our oil-based economy.

Lots of money to retool for electricity to run everything.

Money to tear down all gas stations.

Think very carefully before responding with "there aren't
any!". Do you REALLY want to be claiming that there is such
a thing as a perfect system? To do so involves certain very
interesting contradictions, and will only demonstrate that you
don't understand what you're proposing very well at all. A
person who REALLY understands their proposal knows both
its good points and its bad points - so what are the bad points
in yours?

Above are all I can think of now.

so the above statement is irrelevant. Come back with an informed
opinion,
and we'll talk further.

You are just stupid.

Yup, that's me. Stupid, not to believe in crackpot "free
energy" ideas that violate the most basic concepts in physics.

NAME one!

Just ONE!

But perhaps I can still be educated - it would be nice if SOMEONE would come
along and explain just how these things are supposed to work, to achieve this

energy utopia of yours.

It is not how *I* can explain it, it is how the MATH explains it.

The math (energy density math) told us that we could duplicate the energy
density of coal and oil with electronics. For some reason, this was
misinterpreted to hold the energy density much lower.

Donno why.

Suppose we WOULD somehow manage to capture all of the solar energy
that
strikes the Earth, and that feeds a system that is so inefficient that
only
1% of that energy actually winds up as usable in the end. You would say
"no
problem - we have a big enough energy source that even that 1% is more
than
enough, and the energy we
put into the system at the start is so cheap that that 1% is still
practically 'free'!" That's fine - but what do you think happened to the
99%
that DIDN'T make it "out the end of the
pipe"?

Who CARES, actually!

You do - you just are so ignorant of anything relevant to this field that
you
don't realize it yet.

A long time ago, I realized that there was a blindness in here.

And yet you persist. You know, one of the more common simple definitions of
"insanity" is repeating the same action over
and over again, and hoping for a different outcome....

REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY?

Well, you could easily move "EER" into a different category than Mr.
Claus
through one simple step: show an example.

Eer is it's OWN category.

Yes - it's still nonsense, while at least Santa Claus is charming, traditional
nonsense.


Until you do that, you're just blowing hot air. And come to think of it,
that's the only energy source you've REALLY contributed since you started
all
this nonsense.

It is the only one we NEED!

Hot air? Apparently....

Let's see if I can get this on one page......
Electronic electricity repository is an energy concept that aims to accumulate
and store electrical energy from any source. The storage would be intended to
accommodate such things as electric vehicles, home heating, etc. The best
example is the EV - an electric car that would run on an ever-accumulating
power source. That is to say, any and all sources of electrical energy --
including diffuse sources -- would be collected, combined and stored in the
form of capacitance. But, wouldn't the capacitor plates be bigger than the
vehicle? Well, yes they would, unless a way to increase the surface area of
the plates *within a small perimeter* could be fashioned. The plates (and the
dielectric) *must* match exactly, to gain optimum charge. I suggest that
Scanning Tunneling Microscope Technology, or possibly even nanotechnology be
used to accomplish this -- whatever could configure roughly halfway to the
molecular level. Doing this -- configuring massive surface area within a small
perimeter -- is the heart of eer. It could involve steps, or grooves to 'tuck'
the surface areas away. BTW, this would necessarily require a *much* stronger
dielectric, which admittedly is taken on faith - but it could be many years
away.
The object is to configure the plates and dielectric so they all fit like
Jell-O in a mold, and to make these all small in perimeter -- while yielding
enormous surface area. That way, it is hoped, enough charge could be stored to
run an EV. Further, it is expected that about 15 sources of renewable energy
(solar, wind, wave, etc.) would be able to contribute to the 'eer pool' of
stored electrical energy. In time, renewable energy stored in this way could
effectively replace fossil fuels and batteries for vehicles.
The renewable sources need not necessarily have a device actually *on* the
vehicle; it is anticipated that such renewable devices could be located, say,
in or on a garage, and the electric charge transferred to the vehicle when
required.
I ask you -- with the advent of electric cars, might not this concept (if it
worked) pretty much end our dependence on oil?

NOTE: This idea absolutely, in no way, breaks the Second Law! No more than a
12v car battery does.




Frank Lincoln
FEerguy9@cs.com
eerguy9@aol.com
eerguy2000@yahoo.com

PS: In case you hadn't noticed, I am VERY weak with computers.



More, if you like..........

This is no more than a guess from a novice




Extra crispy revised edition......there are some mistakes in here

In one sentence, I am saying that a very, very advanced capacitor is possible,
and would accommodate most of the energy problems we have today -- basically it
would do the job that the energy function of oil now does.


An energy concept


Yes, there is a 21st Law of Thermodynamics. That is no knock on Faraday, just
a reference to the 21st century, and the new technology it has brought.

Simply stated, it is, "No energy concept involving renewables shall ever be
considered unless the word 'diffuse' is used, understood, and taken into
consideration."

Faraday could not have seen this coming. In his day, there was not the
multitude of diffuse renewable energy sources available, which can be converted
to electricity.

If human beings are ever to use renewable, natural energy sources, they will
have to take into consideration the diffuse nature of sunlight, wind, wave,
etc. I was actually surprised to find that Faraday, himself, used the word
"diffuse" in his writings. But, this was in reference to the spread of charge
on capacitor plates, and not the UN-concentrated free energy that is available
today for conversion to electricity.

There is NO way around this Law. By that, I mean that there in no way around
solving the "diffuse problem," before we are able to put renewable energy
sources to work in any effective way.



A goal......an idea......a prediction.......energy is easy........ there is no
crises.

We don't need oil.
We don't need batteries.
We don't need internal combustion engines.
We don't need fusion.
We don't need hybrids.
We don't need hydrogen-powered cars.
We don't need ethanol.
We don't need natural gas.
We don't need methane.
We don't even need efficiency.
We don't even need conservation.

All we need are the renewable energy sources that God - in His infinite wisdom
-- provided us.

Some could be used, some not. For a while. Eventually renewable energy
sources would be all we would need to power our EV's, and heat our homes. We
would have the luxury of choice, while at the same time powering our EV's with
them. All of them. Any of them. As long as they are able to generate any
amount of electricity.

To those who have read this before, and may have rejected it out of hand, let
me say that it is my strong belief that two major companies may be engaged in
pretty much the basic idea presented here. They have patents - I do not. In no
way do I - nor will I - attempt to claim any right whatsoever to this idea --
even though all my writing on it came from my own independent thinking for over
12 years. I wish them well. But, in case I am wrong about that effort being
made, I surely wish some interested party would help me connect this to the
people in government who say they want an energy solution. What they are
looking for is contained on this letter. I am THAT confident.

Note: I can see EER powering an automobile. That is almost a lock, in my mind.
Further applications are, perhaps, a little harder to deal with. Once a car
IS powered by EER, then all the entrepreneurs will take the rest to the logical
conclusion. For the most part, EER will be discussed in terms of an electric
vehicle.


EER in Brief


Electronic Electricity Repository (EER) is merely a concept at this time. There
is no business, no patent, and no money involved with this.

This involves solid state capacitors as a usable energy storage device for
electric vehicles, and other items. Conventional wisdom limits capacitors to
power surges, and the like. The full text of this concept will suggest a way to
make them fully competitive with the internal combustion engine, while not
violating the laws of energy density.

The easiest way to explain it is to use an electric vehicle as an
example. To power an EV with EER, an array of electronic devices --
perhaps solid-state capacitors, perhaps another device -- would
contain the electrical charge accumulated from a variety of sources
of electricity. Renewable energy sources are suggested, but *any*
source of electricity would work. With the questionable future of
battery-powered EV's, and fusion as an energy source, and the political debate
about fossil fuels, there are strong reasons to take a look at EER.

In fairness, many say it cannot be done. But, perhaps another war
-- or avoiding one -- could put the right minds to work on this concept. It
*would* provide a way to be independent of foreign oil, while providing a
structure for the transition to renewable forms of energy to power EV's - or
any other device powered by electricity.

This is merely a shell of an idea, but perhaps some further thought could help
bring it about.

Frank Lincoln....72430,2407......Feerguy9@cs.com
**************************************************************************
**************************



A TRIP TO THE STORE IN AN EER POWERED EV

Let's suppose that the EER concept is fully developed, and built
into an electric vehicle. Let's also suppose that the newest and best
technological devices -- some of which are now being used in EV's - are
integrated into the vehicle's design. What follows is a description
of what might possibly have happened during an everyday trip to the store
in such a vehicle. (This assumes the use of an *advanced* solid-state
capacitor).
Ms. Jones notices her "fuel gauge" as she starts her vehicle; it
tells her that her microchip capacitor battery is 85% full. This means
that of the vast number of microchip capacitors in her "battery," 85% are
charged with their very small electric capacitance.
She proceeds to the store, and returns home -- a quarter mile
trip. As she pulls in her driveway, she looks again at her gauge. It
reads 84%. She thinks that she used only 1% of her battery capacity for
her trip.
But, she is wrong.
She used 10% of her available charged capacitors for the quarter
mile trip. So, why didn't her gauge read 75% when she returned?
There were several devices built into her vehicle which were
replenishing used capacitors, almost as fast as she was using them. (All
figures below are guesses -- just to make the point.)

1. The advanced solar panel on the roof of her vehicle was, as
always during sunlight, continuously recharging at a slow, but
steady rate. Because she had happened to drive and park in
the sunlight, the solar panel recharged 5% of her capacitors.
2. The air scoops arranged in her vehicle's design -- although
accounting for some drag -- were directing the air through
small dynamos, which recharged another 2%.
3. The regenerative brakes on all four wheels replenished another
2% of the capacitors.

So, she did, in fact, use 10% of the available capacitor charges,
but 9% were replaced by the activity of her trip.
This is nothing like perpetual motion; it is merely taking
advantage of the natural surrounding energy to replenish the energy
spent on the trip.
It is even conceivable that her "fuel gauge" might have read a
higher percentage upon her return; a shorter trip on a windier and
sunnier day, in a more sunlit route and parking spot, and many more
occasions to use the brakes, might have made that possible. The Second
Law of Thermodynamics is not violated, because energy from outside the
vehicle was being absorbed along the way.
It is noted that a battery-powered EV could have done much the
same, but the weight difference would have changed the percentages, so
as to defeat the purpose.
Frank Lincoln CS# 72430,2407
**************************************************************************
**************************



It is understood that high energy density is something that has been sought for
many years -- the concept is nothing new. What is suggested here is the
possibility that modern technology may now be in the position to actually
attain it -- to a degree that could combine the many energy sources (new and
old) into a common pool.


GIVEN:
- Trench capacitors, at the present time, have nowhere near the capability to
deal with the degree of energy that would be required in Electronic Electricity
Repository.
- The area of the plates in a trench capacitor will, for the most part,
determine the capacitance -- not exclusively, but this is the factor that is
dealt with here as having the most potential for improvement. It is assumed
that progress in the other factors -- dielectric strength, dielectric
composition, etc., will continue, and will accommodate the supposition of
surface area increase made here.

HYPOTHESIS:
- The surface area of a trench capacitor plate can be greatly increased without
increasing the perimeter, or the space required to store the capacitor.
- Etching a groove on the plate surface will do this, to a small degree, and it
is done, to some extent, today. What is surmised, here, is that, as the
technology allows, many cross-grooves could be etched *within* the first
groove. Then, with increasing precision, these cross-grooves could, in turn, be
cross-grooved. And, then those cross-grooves cross-grooved. Each successive
cross-grooving would be progressively smaller - magnitudes smaller. This could
be repeated until the molecular level was reached -- each time increasing the
surface area of the plate, and thus the capacitance. An inexact estimate of the
number of times it could be repeated is 26. It is surmised that each groove,
cross-groove, and, etc., would be matched by a ridge, a cross-ridge, and, etc.,
on the opposite plate, with corresponding shapes for the dielectric. The
resulting configuration would yield a perfectly matching set of plates
(sandwiching an appropriately shaped, and expectedly advanced dielectric). Such
a configuration and material composition may not be possible at this time, but
the direction of efforts in their respective technologies may lead to their
development in the very near future. This concept is put forth in
*anticipation* of those developments.
- In theory, each successive etching would substantially increase the area of
the plates, and thus the capacitance *without increasing their size*, their
perimeter, or the volume of space needed for them. Again, the only barrier
seems to be at reaching the molecular level, after each groove is re-grooved,
perpendicularly, and then THAT groove is re-grooved, etc. This would take
advantage of all the "inner space" available between the plate surface, and the
molecular level. (Understand that in place of "etching," Scanning Tunneling
Microscope Technology might be applied -- or even nanotechnology, if that ever
becomes reality. The point is to configure the grooves -- by whatever method.)

BENEFITS:
- An almost endless storage system for electricity.
- A way to store electricity from *any* source, from renewables to a wall
socket.
- A possible solution to the search for a better power plant for electric
vehicles.
- A structure within which to make the conversion from fossil fuels to
renewables.
- A way to accumulate the "trickle" of the many forms of renewable energy, and
combine and store them in a practical way; a way that could give strength to
the many "weak" and diffuse renewable energy sources.
An attempt to generally suggest HOW to accomplish EER will be made; this will
be based on the feedback received so far on this concept. For the most part,
feedback has come from various forums in CompuServe. All major objections will
be mentioned, and a way around each one will be suggested.
ENERGY DENSITY - This appears to be the leading objection to EER. In the
strongest terms, it is postulated, here, that there is no sacred or permanent
universal limit to energy density -- there are only hurdles. There *are* limits
to present materials and there *are* limits to a given geometry, but no
universal scientific boundary that would stand forever and always. There are
certainly physical limits to the materials *now* being used, but, this concept
of EER does, indeed, depend upon progress in this area -- improvements in
materials are bound to happen. Unless human progress is at its maximum, there
is reason for such an expectation. Especially since -- many say -- technology
is doubling every day with computer technology, and since many of the best
resources in the world are focused on this type of science. (If anything like
this concept of EER ever happens, it will be as a natural development of such
materials -- and NOT a result of this effort; that is quite thoroughly
understood.)
It is suggest here that even without improvements in dieletrics, there may be
opportunity to vastly improve their capability with the one factor -- geography
of the plates.

Just as computers changed everything about information, some form of EER may
change the way energy is dealt with. The suggestion, above, regarding etching
grooves in trench capacitor plates, and then etching those grooves, etc., is
offered as a possible way to provide the structure that would enable a
monumentally higher energy density, than has ever been achieved. If the
geometry of the plates is configured as suggested here, and they are
identically wrinkled, it is expected that a very high energy density could be
achieved by taking advantage of the inner space. The accumulation of a massive
repelling force between plates is a problem for which no answer will be
attempted here. But, mechanics aside, it appears that developing technology
will, indeed, provide the tools necessary to configure the plates.

CAPACITOR LEAKAGE - Two points here: 1) Leakage in trench capacitors is not
nearly as big a problem as it was a few short years ago -- holding a charge for
an electric vehicle, for example, would be well within the cycle of usage. In
other words, an EV would be expected to be used often enough to use the charges
before they have time to leak. 2) The percentage of loss due to leakage could
logically be offset by overloading the capacitor bank by a like percentage.
This is somewhat of a built-in inefficiency, but in time, wouldn't the leakage
problem be expected to continue to improve?

ARCHING - The concern about electrical arching between the extremely small
dimensions created by the etching and re-etching can only be explained away by
a layman in this way: the extremely small dimensions would occur between parts
of the same plate - and *not* between the opposing plates. The surfaces of the
two plates would remain equidistant over the entire area. It is expected that
the extremely small dimensions would mainly occur between points on the same
plate, at the same potential -- and, thus, no arching would be anticipated.

ATOMIC LEVEL - In a pretty thorough analysis in the LEAP forum, it was
indicated that "the whole idea of a capacitor thus breaks down as we approach
atomic dimensions." (The following assumes abilities predicted by some as to
etching, Scanning Tunneling Microscope Technology, atomic force microscope,
lithography, or other methods.) If you make one groove (G1) in a capacitor
plate, that certainly does not approach atomic dimensions, yet it does increase
the surface area of the plate (without increasing its perimeter). Then, if you
go back and make another groove (G2) WITHIN G1's SURFACE, you are closer -- but
still not near the atomic level. Then if the surface of G2 is etched (or STM'd)
with G3, you are closer yet; closer -- but still a long way from the atomic
level. How far? Well, the number 26 seems to hold up as the number of times
you could re-etch grooves, before you hit bottom.
(Each successive etching step would be, say, a hundred times smaller than the
previous one. G3 is a hundred times smaller than G2. G2 is a hundred times
smaller than G1, and etc. G26 would be the smallest, and would begin to enter
atomic dimensions.)
Now, backing up, let's say you made a hundred tiny grooves on the surface of
the original plate -- so you have 100 G1's. Within each G1, you etch 100 much
smaller G2's. Within each G2 you etch 100 G3's, which are yet, again, much
smaller. This is a million grooves at the 3rd of 26 steps. If you could
continue on in this way for 26 re-groovings of the grooves, how many grooves
would you have at the 26th step? And, by how much would you have increased the
surface area of that plate? And how much more dipole moment effect would now
take place? And how much more ability to hold charge would you have? If the
number 26 makes you cranky, stop at 20, or 12.
The point is this: there is a tremendous amount of "inner space" available
*before* you reach atomic level. Perhaps an optimum number could be safely
reached. Even 12 would seem to provide a monumental increase in charge storage
ability. Subject to mathematicians' scrutiny, there may be 10^24 grooves, when
you are only halfway down to atomic level, and free of the terrible things that
happen there. At the halfway point, you have monumentally increased the surface
area, without threatening stability. Assuming that the dielectric follows the
shape of the plate exactly, have you not vastly increased the number of
molecules subject to polar realignment in the electric field? Could it be said
that, even though the individual dipole moments would stay at the same in
magnitude, there is an opportunity to create a tremendously larger number of
them, by taking advantage of the inner space available?

MASS PRODUCTION - Some of these techniques to reform very small structures are
very slow and very expensive. Some question was raised as to their adaptability
to a mass production situation. As with any change in technology, first efforts
are not usually efficient. But there seems to be enough advantages to EER so
that the forces of supply and demand would push the costs down. Once in the
competitive market, improvements in technique could be expected.

GROOVES TOO SMALL? - A statement made in one of the forums was, "There is a
limit to how small the grooves can be before they don't work any more." As this
was from a good source, it is taken seriously. If some of the logic, above,
doesn't account for this, there may be difficulty, here.

DISCHARGE TIME - Capacitors normally discharge very quickly, so wouldn't they
make a rather bad storage device? No detailed answer will be attempted, here,
but can't this be controlled with a very low discharge current, with a high
resistance?

Electricity is -- or can be -- the common denominator for all energy sources,
from solar to hydro. It is for exactly this reason that EER could employ each
and every energy source. All the new renewable technology could be "fed" into
EER - without exception. Yet, at the same time, conventional sources could
contribute to it -- every drop of oil and every lump of coal on this planet
could be used, purposely. Could this captured energy not then be put to use, as
needed, and when needed, by controlling the energy bursts to simulate
conventional electricity flow?

*******************

The technology that would be needed for EER *seems* to be within sight - with
some faith required, perhaps, for the materials. Basically, it is the ability
to sculpt materials at the molecular level which brought about this revised
approach to EER. I have never seen the etching process, nor STM; this whole
concept of extremely small sculpting to obtain extremely high surface area is
drawn from my imagination -- and the little I have read about these processes.
I am motivated by the extreme advantages that would come about, and the
apparent ability to accomplish this; if not on a production basis, then at
least on a prototype basis, to start. I'm certain there are still technical
errors in this effort -- it is hoped that the general idea was communicated
with some adequacy. This *seems* possible - or within reach - to me, and it
*seems* as though it would bring about profound benefits, and it *seems* to me
that it is a logical way to approach energy at this point in time.

But, I defer to the experts.
**************************************************************************
**************************

I have no patent on this idea. My motivation is not monetary.

I understand that this could not be done today, because of limits on existing
dieletrics, and perhaps other items. My position is that EER is not impossible,
given advances in some technologies.

Please respond by Email
or call at (248) 288-3459
Feerguy9@cs.com
Frank Lincoln

Please keep in mind that EER would allow energy from any and all sources to be
stored and combined in such a way that an electric vehicle could, at some later
time, be powered by it.





Separating a steel sample using a tensile tester could be useful in EER.

The jagged edges could be cut off, just past their breakpoint. Call these two
pieces of jagged metal our capacitor plates. The broken pieces are matched
molecular for molecule. If a dielectric is molded between the two jagged ends,
the fit could not be better. "d" is maintained. The area of the matching jagged
edges is much, much more than the cross section of the steel sample. We then
have matching capacitor plates without using STM to configure all the surfaces.



Note: EER may not solve all energy problems, but in my opinion, it could
certainly power personal vehicles.

Anyone who receives this is free to publish.




Feerguy9@cs.com
eerguy9@aol.com

 

[FEerguy9]

"Mark Fergerson" <mfergerson1@cox.net> wrote in message
news:3F03497A.5050103@cox.net...

I was wondering why you advised me to quit, but kept on
yourself. I kept going to help _me_ understand the
counterarguments, and get reality checks from the group.

Yeah, I've never claimed to be consistent, either. I recommended
that you quit during one of those periods when I'd basically
written Frank off as no longer having even entertainment value.
Then he later came back with Yet Another Round of the Same Old
Nonsense, and I found myself drawn back into it. Pretty soon
I'll get tired of him again, and round and round and round it goes...

You will be thrilled to know that I have started "eer III"

The thing is, Frank himself never seems to tire of it,

or learn anything new

<----here to TEACH!

, no matter how many times we go through this.
I guess it's sort of like going to the zoo; you can only spend
so much time watching the monkeys do the same thing over and
over on any given day, but you'll still come back to the monkey
house on your NEXT visit.

HUH?


Frank

 

[Dave]

Hello Tom,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I tried to find a Sams Photofact on this guy,
but they don't seem to do much with Uniden products. From what I can tell
the transistor that the local parts distributer recommended should fit
nicely. It is a 5W final RF output NPN transistor, TO220 style, and the
voltage parameters ought to work (I think). They had two and I bought them
both. Put one in and tried it out with my neighbor listening on his unit.
He said I came through loud and clear. Then I tried to hook it up to my
watttmeter and it only regisered about 150 mW. SWR's were HIGH. Suspecting
I blew the new transistor I pulled it out and replaced it with the second
spare. Will probably not mess with it much more if it seems to work again.
Or i may take it to the local shop just down I-10 and ask them to check it
out for me to see if it's putting out a decent signal. I still can't seem
to get any response to a radio check, but that might be due to my location,
don't know. Oh well, It never worked anyway.

Take it easy...

Dave
db5151@hotmail.com

Tom Biasi <tombiasi@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:exsMa.60411$2D1.20857220@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...

Well Dave,
You sound like you have a moderate amount of knowledge and I assume that
you
tried to locate a schematic.
Draw the circuit from the pc board traces. Look at the holes where the
transistor was and draw a circuit as you follow the traces. Will your
"guessed" transistor fit this circuit?
Good Luck,
Tom

"Dave" <dbeane@genie.idt.net> wrote in message
news:bdrqq0$klc@library1.airnews.net...
I hope this is the right group for the question I have to post. If not,
let
me know, and I will skeedaddle.

I am trying to repair a 20-year-old Uniden handheld CB transceiver,
which
I
*think* has the finals blown. My neighbor picks up no signal when I
transmit to him from about 50 feet away, but my shortwave radio picks up
the
transmission from only a few feet away. I can't find my wattmeter as
most
of my electronic stuff is still packed and in storage (we recently had
to
abandon house for two months.) I do have my oscilloscope and DMM, plus
a
few other odds and ends that never got packed. I *think* I have located
the
transistor that acts as the final amplifier and have removed it from the
circuit. It is a TO220 style, and the only markings on it are
"2029C/1".
Am I safe in assuming that this is basically a 2SC2029, or some other
compatible? My only clues to the identity of this puppy are its
physical
location on the board (near the antenna connection) and the fact that it
is
surrounded by several small (3/16" x 5/16") coils. I do*not* want to
just
stick another transistor in there in its place and try to transmit, but
I
am
not sure of where to start with my analysis (it's been a long time since
I've done anything quite like this.) Oh, one more thing, this CB has a
seven-inch long alluminum heatsink running the length of the PC board,
and
this transistor and one IC (at the other end) are the only things on it
(in
other words, there are no other power transistors in the circuit).

Should I proceed with a 2SC2029 or an equivelant? What do others think?
I
value your opinions, and any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave
db5151@hotmail.com

 

[Bill Sloman]

jasligon@msn.com (idlemuse) wrote in message news:<82463628.0307030604.e21f7f@posting.google.com>...

<snip>

I've read Keynes. While it may come as a shock to many in your neck
of the woods, there are numerous perfectly respectable economists with
Nobel bona fides since Keynes who would tend to disagree.

That Nobel prize was a scandal. The economists involved aren't
respectable. They work with an unrealistic theory which doesn't
predict worth a damn, but has the singular advantageof producing the
sort of predictions and advice that the short-sighted rich want to
hear. The Republican party loves them, and they gets loads of support.
They aren't economists, merely flatterers.

We aren't talking about a single Nobel here. We are, at a minimum,
talking about Friedman on one occasion, James Buchanan on another,
Vernon Smith on another, and George Stigler on another. You are
dealing with counter arguments to Keynes from at least three schools
these days; the monetarists, the public choice theorists, and the
Austrian inclined neo-classicists.


As a matter of fact, Keynes, Galbraith, and their cheerleader Krugman
are the minority view holders these days.

Hutton is another of these voices in the wilderness. I first started
reading his stuff when he had a weekly column in the Guardian
newspaper in the U.K. in the later 1980's. One of his habits was
second-guessing U.K. treasury decisions - when they did anything he'd
explain why, what they intended to achieve, and predict what they
would actually achieve. Six months later he'd write an "I told you so"
paragraph.

I'd be content to put Friedman's historical record of prediction in
competition with Galbraith's.

So do it.

There is a reason the whole enterprize is known as the dismal science -
predictive power isn't its strong suit.

My observation was that a single Keynesian journalist (with good
contacts in the academic community), predicting for the fun of it, did
a whole lot better than a Treasury-full of monetarist economists who
were being paid and supported as if the U.K. economy depended on their
expertise.

The difference between the view holders is that one group
acknowledges their inability to predict, much less control, an entity
as complex as a modern economy.

So why don't they go off and do something useful -like digging ditches
- rather than posing as advisors to the Republican Party.

The other group is in denial.

The Keynesians did pretty well at controlling the world economy
through the years after WWII, but they failed to play to the
prejudices of the rich, so now they are denied access to the levers of
power, which are now in the hands of crew that you claim to admit
their inability to predict, let alone control, the system for which
they are responsible.

Because the U.K. Treasury was full of "respectable" economists at that
time, hand-picked for ideological purity by Margaret Thatcher herself,
this was to some extent shooting sitting ducks, but it made the point
about the predictive power of monetarist economics.

I wonder what they would have to say about the state of Japan's
economy, which is the most Keynesian in existence.

So why aren't they printing money to spend their way out of the
deflationary spiral? Because the central bank isn't anything like
Keynesian enough ...

You mean like Argentina?

No, I don't mean like Argentina, or like Germany in 1924 - I mean like
most of Western Europe and the U.S. during the 1950's and 1960's.

That part of Keynes has always struck me as
lunatic.

An irrational prejudice you share with a lot monetarist economists. It
is on a par with Einstein's dislike of statistical mechanics "because
God doesn't play dice".

His notion that 'in the long run, we're all dead anyway' is
the only possible justification for devaluing your currency to give
people more money to spend. It violates the first law of free
lunches, which is that they ain't free.

As Krugman points out, the free lunch in this case is the
under-utilised plant that sits idle during a recession and can be
tricked into production by a little judicious pump-priming.

Protectionism leads to inefficient companies that can't compete.

So why is Dubbya protecting your inefficient steel producers?

No argument from me on that one. I'll one up you. The farm subsidies
are even worse than the steel tariffs, and both policies utterly
ignore Ricardo's lessons. Bush was stupid for signing both bills, and
I wrote to tell him so. Of course, we have a long way to go before we
can compare with EU style farm subsidies.

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb051403.shtml

Yes, that's right. Each cow in Europe gets a subsidy of some US$2.20
per day, which doesn't even begin to cut into the greatest trade
barrier ever erected - the labeling of GM food (and that only becuase
they couldn't maintain an outright ban).

The U.S. has it's own farm subsidies, and makes it very difficult for
Australian beef producers to sell their product into the American
market; they send out inspectors to make sure that the Australian
slaugher-houses conform to every last letter of the (ever-changing)
U.S. regulations, and the slaughter houses end up having to be rebuilt
every year of so.

Australian agriculture is a good deal more efficient than U.S.
agriculture - because it started later (the Australian rural
population peaked in the 1890's and has been declining every since) -
and both are more efficient than the much older European agricultural
system, but the EC subsidies are being scaled back over the years -
for one thing, they can't afford to subsidise the Polish and other
easter European peasants when the eastern european countries become
full members of the community - and large chunks of rural France are
being depopulated as inefficient producers are moved off the land, or
at least retire due to old age.

Comparative advantage works. Public spending projects result most often > > > not in fantastic growth, but in boondoggles that flush hard earned money > > > down the toilet.

So why is Dubbya spending so disporportionately much on defence?

Our level of military spending and global military involvement are
higher than I would prefer, as well. It would help if Europe could
pull anything remotely approaching their own weight militarily
speaking.

On the other hand, the current US administration is not spending on
tanks for Keynesian reasons.

No, they are repaying the financial support they got during the last
election.
It is called pork-barrel politics in the U.S., and corruption in other
countries.

The information about the economy that these people are working
with is what is manifest on the stock and currency markets from
day-to-day,and what governements reveal about their current and
expected incomes and expenditures. Everything is denoted in terms
of its monetary value, and the purchase of a single 747 which took
nearly a year to build and is expected to keep flying for twenty
to thirty years could be equated with the sale of ten million
Harry Potter books.

As a scheme, it works surprisingly well - better than anything else
that has been tried so far - but it is obviously sub-optimal.

It works surprisingly well because people make continual adjustments
every second of every day. Check the price of ten million Harry
Potter books the day after they are bought and compare it to the
price of a 747 the day after it is bought. Interference in the
incentives of the market lead to perverse choices on the part
of market participants, who no longer can trust the information that
prices were supposed to be giving them.

This is arrant "perfect free market" propaganda. Go read Keynes.

Keynes was incorrect about the benevolent effects of interference. Go
read any of the monetarists, or any public choice economist, or any of
the Austrians to see why.

The monetarists tell the story that the rich want to hear. Put them in
charge of an economy - as Thatcher did in the U.K. and watch your GDP
per head fall behind that of comparable economies with less
ideologically blinkered policies.

Yes, yes; and Keynes and Galbraith tell the story you want to hear.
The news of the day is that no economist is in charge of the economy.
Thatcher's weren't and Blair's aren't.

Thatcher's weren't, because because they didn't know what effects they
were going to have. Blair's aren't because Gordon Brown is in charge
of the U.K. economy, and it is his advisors who call the tune. They
aren't doing badly, as far as I can see from the Netherlands.

Finally, you would then need to explain how a centralized
economywould be able to do a better job than a distributed
one... given that distributed economies are successful because
decisions get made at the place where the people with the most
understanding of the situation can make the decision.

I don't. What I said was that we can now collect a lot more
information than just the cash transfer for every transaction, and
if we could find a way of making this information available
outside the firms who collect the data for their own use, we
should be able to devise a *distributed* control system that ought
to be more stable, and could run a lot closer to full capacity.

The price, at least theoretically, contains all of the information
you might be interested in, doesn't it?

No. Because the price reflects the pressures of the moment. If the
price of 747's goes through the floor, Boeing still has about a year's
production stacked up in the factory in various states of completion.
Harry Potter books can be reprinted and distributed a lot more
quickly.

This is less true than it used to be, as most production facilities
use 'just in time' tactics to minimize the amount of warehousing they
have to do.

747's are built "just in time" and it still takes about a year. Big,
complicated systems rpodcued in relatively small volumes are always
going to be difficult.

Agreed.


The question isn't whether the price as it currently
exists isn't distorted by inefficiencies, the question is whether the
price becomes more or less distorted when some self interested
political body tells everyone what the price 'should' be. To address
the problems you raise here, we should be focusing on a reduction of
interference with pricing signals and let technology and the self
interest of companies work to improve each of their contributions to
the price of a good.

The problem with manufacturing goods is not just price, but also
volume. The rule of thumb is that if you can increse the volume by a
factor of ten, you can halve the price. Tooling up to do this takes
time and demands investment.

Keynes wasn't in the least interested in telling the market what the
price ought to be. He was interested in manipulating the expectations
of the people who were in the process of making their minds up about
making this sort of investment, and his preferred method involved
using the central banks to manipulate the money supply.

And to heck with the consequences of unstable currency and all of the
other unintended joy that goes along with dumping devalued cash on
people's heads.

As opposed to the natural instabilities of the market that gave us the
Great Depression. Try to get it into your head that deflation is just
as serious a problem as inflation, as the Japanese have been proving
for some time now.

Hyper-inflation is another, and even more serious can of worms, but
judicious pump-priming does not lead to hyper-inflation.

Monetarists postulate a perfect market, so they don't believe in
investor expectations, and find this sort of manipulation heretical.

No. Monetarists don't believe that when you attempt to modify
investor expectations that you are doing what you think you are doing,
and certainly not ONLY what you think you are doing.

Because they believe in the perfection of the market. The perfect
market is a gorgeously simple model and give lovely predictions, which
don't have much to do with reality. The Keynesians are stuck with a
much less tractable model, but it is a lot more realistic.

This suites the central bankers down to the ground - they can keep on
behaving as if they were running a bank,rather than an economy. Both
groups effectively stick their heads in the sand.

You don't want a group of central bankers attempting to run the whole
economy. They don't know what demand is supposed to be for zucchini,
so they don't need to be manipulating demand up or down.

So fire them and hire a bunch of central bankers who can work work out
when there is too much consumer demand, and when there is too little.
Every economic journalist seems to be able to work out that little
sum, so there would seem to be a decent pool of potential candidates.
The banking community would have convulsions, not before time.

I was in vague contact with them at one point in my career, when I was
involved in a discussion about encrypted data transfer across
packet-switched networks, and the message I got was that the bankers
were the most complacent and inward-looking bunch of navel-gazers you
could hope to find.

At that point nobody had tapped their unencoded transmissions along
their leased telephone pairs, and they couldn't see why they should
anticipate such an event.

The metal markets are unstable for the same sort of reason - is the
price of a metal creeps up, the owners of various more or less
marginal mines are persuaded to invest the money to pump out the
mine-shafts again and get the machinery running so they can extract
the relevant mineral, all of which takes time. When they finally start
shipping ore, the market is suddenly over-supplied, and the price
crashes.

I'm surprised that companies haven't figured this out yet.

They have, but eventually the potential profits get too tempting, and
away we go again. Commoditiy markets are horribly cyclic.

I would think that this would only occur when the price of metal shoots
up rather than when it creeps. What you are calling instability is the
market working to meet demand. It just isn't happening as quickly as
you would like for it to. Again I ask, why on earth would you prefer
for a bureaucrat to tell everyone what the price of metal should be?

No. With better information, it should be possible for the producers
to make realistic predictions of demand, and negotiate where the extra
capacity should come from and when it should come on line. This is -
in principle - agreement in restrain of trade, and not permissible in
the current free market environment, which clearly needs to be made
more flexible.

Commodities should all be handled like OPEC? Should all commodities
cheat on the deal like OPEC members do, which is the only reason
supply is even approximated by price at the pump?

They don't cheat on a dramatic scale, and the system works reasonably
well; the price of oil is creeping up steadily as the amount left in
the ground creeps down, and it looks as if the Athabaska tar sands
will start coming on line any time now without driving the market
price down to the point where it isn't worth working those deposits.

Beats the hell out of the oil-prce crises we had when I was young,when
the wordl economy would go into recession while it coped with a
doubling of the price of oil.

Every centrally planned economy in the history of the world has
failed, or been far less successful than less centrally planned
economies of similar conditions.

Since I'm not arguing for a centrally planned economy this is
irrelevant, though a centrally planned economy with modern data
collection and processing ought to be more efficient than the
system that failed in the USSR. In so far as China, Japan and
Korea have more central planning than India, and grew their
economies twice as fast during the catch-up phase, some central
planning would seem to be a good idea.

That is a murky issue. I don't know that I'd hold up India as an
example of notably less government interference than most other
developing countries, it only has less government interference than > > > > > it used to have. Its reduction in regulation allowed it to grow at
all, which was not the case before. To compare across countries
would be a much larger task.

Why do you think that it was "the reduction in regulation that allowed
it to grow at all"?

The central planning approach produced 0 growth. A few decades ago,
markets were liberalized to some small extent and growth occurred.
Coincidence, maybe?

Quite possibly. Technology has changed a lot over the past few
decades.

Just look at what's happened in India in the last 20 years since
they gave up central planning and curtailed government
interference -- they have doubled the incomes, on average, of a > > > > > > > billion people.

Doubling over 20 years is a growth rate of 3.5% per year -
respectable for a third world economy catching-up, but half the
rate achieved by Japan, Korea and China during their catch-up
phases. Neither Japan,Korea nor China gave up central planning and
government interference, though this has been used more to direct
capitalist investment than to control it.

Japan, for example, flung open the export doors right out of the
gate. A good portion of their growth had to do with the extent to
which they adopted market friendly policies. We will never know
exactly, of course. Krugman would argue one way and P.T. Bauer
would argue the other looking at the same cases.

Japan is almost as good as the U.S.A. at using non-tariff barriers to
trade to protect the domestic market while exporting furiously.

Japan is much, much better at protecting inefficient domestic
businesses than is the US.

It may look like that to you, but sitting in the U.K. and exporting to
both in the 1980's there wasn't a lot to choose between the two.

Of course, the more people who do this, the less effective it is, even
in the short run. Over the long run, you have a bunch of crippled,
uncompetitive companies.

Not necessarily. Within-country competition ought to weed out the
cripples.

Like in Japan? Most of those folks haven't figured out how to put on
their 'big boy pants' yet, and they have to run to mommy to save them
from anything that looks like a competitive threat.

Which industries and which firms are you talking about? When I worked
for Cambridge Instruments on electron microscopes, the Japanese
manufacturer JOEL was number one in the world, and Hitachi was number
three, and both were damn good - much better than the crappy U.S. firm
who were number two due to the grip they had on the parochial U.S.
market. Cambridge Instruments were number four, and we sold half our
output into the U.S.

Why the arbitrary line? Shouldn't each locality institute
protectionist measures to save their local businesses from having to
compete with the town on the other side of the hill?

Economies of scale. A manufacturer selling to a whole country can
decisively under-cut a manufacturer who is only tooled up to supply a
single town.

In a highly urbanised country like Australia, where Sydney and
Melbourne account for about a third of the population this leads to a
fairly silly concentration of production into one or other of the two
major cities.

By the same token, Australia (and the Netherlands) should be able to
get all their manufacturered goods for half the price by importing
them from the U.S.A., where the domestic market is ten times larger,
leaving both countries without any manufacturing industry at all.

The aim is to build up some local industry to the level where it can
tool up to produce in volumes appropriate to the world market, and
this pretty much requires either subsidy or protection behind tariff
barriers

If only someone had protected vacuum tube manufacturers, the world
would be a better place.

IIRR there are now more vacuum tubes manufactured than when vacuum
tubes were the only active devices. This may include cathode ray
tubes.

The volumes aren't as high as you'd get selling successfully into the
world market, but large domestic markets, as in the U.S. and Japan,
mean that the extra volume of exports doesn't give you any dramatic
economies of scale.

Since this sort of protectionism was exactly what was used by the
U.S.A. to protect and develop its own industries in the nineteenth
century, you would seem to be argueing that the U.S. is afflicted with
a bunch of crippled, uncompetitive companies - over and above the
steel mills that Dubbya protected from the predatory Europeans earlier
in his administration.

US companies are robust to the extent that they have a history of
having to compete. They are uncompetitive to the extent that they
have been protected.

Being protected doesn't necessarily make them uncompetitive - the
U.S.domestic market is quite large enough to support manufacture on a
scale which allows them to compete on the world market.

Protection can allow an uncompetitive firm to survive, but it doesn't
stop a firm from tooling up to compete on the international market.

don't know exactly what you meant to say with "flung open the export
doors right out of the gate" but they certainly protected their
domestic market, and they still do.

I mean that the Japanese dedication to exporting their way to growth
worked, but their dedication to domestic protectionism didn't.

In what way?

Have you taken a look at their economy in the last decade?

Sure. They need some Keynsian liquidity injection to get their
domestic market consuming again. The problem doesn't seem to have
anything to do with the protection of the domestic market; the
Japanese consumer just isn't buying anything worth a damn.

-----
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Ray L. Volts]

"Dave" <dbeane@genie.idt.net> wrote in message
news:be19r9$tck@library1.airnews.net...

Ray L. Volts <raylvolts@SPAMRIDhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:be13bh$kt5@library2.airnews.net...
I've checked the other stores (EPO, ACE, etc.) to see if they
picked the stuff up. Apparently they didn't, so I have no idea where
all
those goodies ended up.

If you find out where all those goodies went, please post it. I am also
in
the Houston area. I am still in shock over the news that Electrotex
closed
it's doors. The times, they are a-changing.

Luckily, the RS down the street from my house still has some parts. Don't
know what I'm going to do when they run out and EPO shuts down.

Dave
db5151@hotmail.com

I was also floored when Electrotex called it quits. They had so many
commercial/industrial customers that I figured those alone would keep them
going.

And I lost a good source of repair parts and materials when ECD on Bissonnet
shifted their focus to satellite video and studio audio sales. At least we
still have O&E, for now.

Both of the EPO's are always full of people when I go in, so maybe they'll
stick around a while longer.

 

[Tweetldee]

"Bill Bowden" <**76606.611_@compuserve.com*> wrote in message
news:LlOMa.34239$0v4.2489933@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...

I guess they don't keep their website updated. I found a
condenser mic element on their site which they didn't
have in the store. They asked for a part number, so I
looked it up on the store computer and showed them
the part number and the note indicating it was available
in the stores. The clerk checked his catalog and couldn't
find any listing and said the website was wrong, and it
wasn't available in any Radio Shack store. They still have
lots of components listed on their site: resistors, caps,
diodes, relays, bread boards, heat sinks, etc.

www.radioshack.com

-Bill

Tweetldee <dgmason99@att99.net> wrote in message
news:lLIMa.33222$3o3.2422419@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Well, I guess the death knell has sounded for the Shack as a source for
experimenter and hobbyist parts. I went into a relatively new store
(open
less than a year) today to get a few resistors that I need in a hurry.
What
did I find? Not a resistor, capacitor, transistor, IC, switch, fuse, or
anything that would be considered an electronic component was to be
found.
They had all kinds of TV coax, TV connectors, cell phones, home phones,
phone accessories, satellite TV equipment, expensive toys, and a few
stereo
"systems", but but not an electronic component in sight. They had wire,
solder, soldering irons, and such, but nothing to solder the wires to.
They
don't even carry the small project boxes any more.
They're looking more like the electronics section in WalMart every day.
Ooops, I take that back... the Shack's prices are 40-100% above what
you'll
pay for the same item at WalMart.

Adios Radio Shack !! RIP

--
Tweetldee
Tweetldee at att dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in
the
address)

But why should I pay Shack's prices when I can get what I need, cheaper and
faster from Mouser and Digikey? I browsed through a few component listings
on RS website. They only had a handful of resistor values, and they wer
only available in packs of 5 for $0.99/pack. That's 20 cents apiece for
1/4W carbon film resistors. Less than a handful of transistors and only a
pitiful smattering of ICs. Why I should bother with RS if they can't even
begin to fill my needs.

Nahh, they're history. They should change the name on the stores to
something that fits better, like CellPhone and Toy Shack.
My $.02 worth...
--
Tweetldee
Tweetldee at att dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in the
address)

Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

ActualGeek wrote:

In article <7c584d27.0307011544.22327540@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

Go read your Keynes.

Keynes, like Marx, was a man with a lot of theories, and I believe even
Keynes realized he was wrong before he died.

To cite him as an authority here-- you might as well be citing Stalin.
-------------

Do you know nothing other than to invent scurrilous trash???
-Steve
--
-Steve Walz rstevew@armory.com ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

 

[Precious Pup]

Bill Sloman wrote:

jasligon@msn.com (idlemuse) wrote in message news:<82463628.0307030604.e21f7f@posting.google.com>...

As opposed to the natural instabilities of the market that gave us the
Great Depression.

Holy fucking shit!

Try to get it into your head that deflation is just
as serious a problem as inflation, as the Japanese have been proving
for some time now.

I'm a debtor. I love inflation.

Monetarists postulate a perfect market, so they don't believe in
investor expectations, and find this sort of manipulation heretical.

Man, you are as dense as Walz.

Because they believe in the perfection of the market. The perfect
market is a gorgeously simple model and give lovely predictions, which
don't have much to do with reality. The Keynesians are stuck with a
much less tractable model, but it is a lot more realistic.

Man, you are as dense as Walz.

So fire them and hire a bunch of central bankers who can work work out
when there is too much consumer demand, and when there is too little.
Every economic journalist seems to be able to work out that little
sum, ...

hah hah, "economic journalist" hah hah.

No. With better information, it should be possible for the producers
to make realistic predictions of demand, and negotiate where the extra
capacity should come from and when it should come on line. This is -
in principle - agreement in restrain of trade, and not permissible in
the current free market environment, which clearly needs to be made
more flexible.

You are full of shit. The "information" and its use is getting better. Dell's "just in time" inventory is a
case in point. They are putting the hurt on competitors because they are good at it -- consumers benefit.
Communications and data/information processing *are* continually growing industries (all by themselves) and
there will continue to be increased productivity due to these industries, and the consequent increased living
standards due to the increased productivity. No one needs a government program to do this.

Commodities should all be handled like OPEC? Should all commodities
cheat on the deal like OPEC members do, which is the only reason
supply is even approximated by price at the pump?

They don't cheat on a dramatic scale, and the system works reasonably
well;...

What do you mean "works well?" You mean overweight americans have plenty of low priced fuel for their big
SUVs? I guess it does "work well."

...the price of oil is creeping up steadily as the amount left in
the ground creeps down, and it looks as if the Athabaska tar sands
will start coming on line any time now without driving the market
price down to the point where it isn't worth working those deposits.

So much for running out. It gets left in the ground according to you.

Beats the hell out of the oil-prce crises we had when I was young,when
the wordl economy would go into recession while it coped with a
doubling of the price of oil.

Well, so much for the gloom and doom of those times.

Why the arbitrary line? Shouldn't each locality institute
protectionist measures to save their local businesses from having to
compete with the town on the other side of the hill?

Economies of scale.

Bullshit.

A manufacturer selling to a whole country can
decisively under-cut a manufacturer who is only
tooled up to supply a single town.

So what? I guess you don't know what an honest "arguement" is, since you avoided the question.

In a highly urbanised country like Australia, where Sydney and
Melbourne account for about a third of the population this leads to a
fairly silly concentration of production into one or other of the two
major cities.

Silly concentration? So what?

By the same token, Australia (and the Netherlands) should be able to
get all their manufacturered goods for half the price by importing
them from the U.S.A., where the domestic market is ten times larger,
leaving both countries without any manufacturing industry at all.

So what if there is no "manufacturing industry?" Sounds fine to me, with perhaps some national security
exceptions and uniquely valuable "insurance policies." Even that I would tend to question.

The aim is to build up some local industry to the level where it can
tool up to produce in volumes appropriate to the world market, and
this pretty much requires either subsidy or protection behind tariff
barriers

Why? Sounds pointless. Why "build up" when you can buy it cheaper, more simply, and essentially at a lower
opportunity cost? It's like, I never bake bread. I leave that to the folks who are good at baking bread. I
like bread and buy it often.

If only someone had protected vacuum tube manufacturers, the world
would be a better place.

IIRR there are now more vacuum tubes manufactured than when vacuum
tubes were the only active devices. This may include cathode ray
tubes.

Then exactly: case in point. _Don't protect_.

US companies are robust to the extent that they have a history of
having to compete. They are uncompetitive to the extent that they
have been protected.

Being protected doesn't necessarily make them uncompetitive ...

It sure as shit doesn't do the opposite.

...- the
U.S.domestic market is quite large enough to support manufacture on a
scale which allows them to compete on the world market.

Firms that can't compete straight up should be destroyed. If you want a meaningful social safety net for the
people, it would mean better worker retraining and relocation for the new industries that consequently pop up,
and other decent transistional/temporary support to soften the dislocations for those people. It really comes
down to the nuts and bolts of "how much" and "how to." We can't ever get to that with folks like you. For
you, it's all about heat, not about light.

Sure. They need some Keynsian liquidity injection to get their
domestic market consuming again. The problem doesn't seem to have
anything to do with the protection of the domestic market; the
Japanese consumer just isn't buying anything worth a damn.

So much for the money injection and massive public works projects.