All The Significant Inventions/Discoveries Were Long Ago

China has "more brains" but do not enable all those brains for 2 reasons. The Chinese rulers (not leaders, but rulers) are more interested in controlling those brains than in enabling and the Chinese system is geared towards control. Only the obedient people get opportunities to go to college, work in labs, etc. Once you are labeled a troublemaker or threat to the system then you are gone.

Second, much of China is still very poor, uneducated, and almost living a subsistance level. And thats ok with the rulers. Think about what it takes to control billions of people in a geographically huge area. One way is to keep large far flung areas at a low level of existence.

India has a problem with poverty and over population. While India has an education system, it is not India wide and not open to all. Indis has a major problem in that once a person is educated they desperately want to leave India and many do - its a brain drain.

 

Seems like you understand it as well as just about anybody else does. What you describe does happen, particularly at the tips of centrifugal pump impellers if the NPSH is insufficient it is then called pump cavitation, but cavitation can happen exactly as you describe it on these wrinkle bends as well, hence my punctuation with the "!?" I thought that was an interesting catch. But since it leaked so rapidly I am guessing it was just a regular mechanical cracking mechanism on that old piece of gas pipeline.

 

According to WorldAtlas.com, China operates as a socialist market economy, which is characterized by state-owned enterprises and public ownership within a market economy. By definition, a market economy is one in which key decisions in the economy are controlled by supply and demand, which are the two key factors that influence prices.

As quoted in the NYT, "Private entrepreneurs are “a pillar of employment in China, and also a pillar of innovation,” Li Su, a business consultant in Beijing.

While China is a problem today in many ways, their economic organization has some strengths that I do NOT believe the USA has.

Their government participation means that their economic direction can be more forward looking than we have any capability of doing, and they can maintain focus on their vision of the future.

 

Yeah there's an innovation for you... I'm sure everything going on in China right now is all part of the well thought it vision for the future

 

Nobody can argue with their GDP growth. They lead in world manufacturing - with US second. They lead in clean energy patents, manufacturing, exports and installation - a national objective. New EV car registrations in China have reached 1.8M so far this year, while new EVs in Q1 here were 172k. Even with their greater population that leads us substantially. Anybody doubting China's economic power and focus is making a big mistake.

For the first time in 20 years we may actually lead them in economic growth by some number of tenths this year, but economists lay that to the levels of shutdown and limitations of movement they saw as required in their direction against COVID.

 

You are aware that Toy Story came out in 1995, and SGI was in business until 2009, right? 14 years later.

A lot changed during that time period, and during that time period the PC industry made huge leaps and bounds and caught up to them by 2005. Hell, just compare the systems in 1995. The best PC graphics was 1280x1024 256 colors, 8 MB RAM.

The SGI ran up to 32 graphics cards simultaneously, with 16 CPUs and 64+ GB RAM. There was no PC that could come anywhere close at that time. But by 2005, there were competing systems coming out that could come close to matching it, and were equal by 2007.

You somehow keep missing the point, I have no idea why.

 

In case you did not know. Pixar actually started in the hardware business. It was called the "Pixar Imaging Computer".



A lot of their earliest work (including that for Disney) were done on that system.

The original Pixar Computer was incredible, as well as incredibly expensive. Originally built for customers that could not afford them (they made even SGI systems look cheap), only around 300 were ever built. Lucas used a few, but at that time they started to move to other commercial platforms because of cost.

 

And how many 32 bit only programs were available prior to 1993?

The closest I think I ran in that era was DesqView. And that was not so much "32 bit code" as for full functionality you needed the Protected Mode of a 386 or higher.

 

That is because each was a "smart device", and once commands were given they could operate autonomously with little to no input from the computer. In many ways like the classic Commodore 1541 disk drives.

That autonomy was one of the interesting features of the 1541. It was so expensive because it actually had a full computer on board. An MOS 6502 and operating system, and part of the slowness many times was the handshaking the two (or more) had to do with each other. But give an order to copy from one drive to the other, the drives took over and only informed the computer when they were done.

There were some real kludges done back in the day to get systems working.

 

I don't know the Commodore computers, but that doesn't seem like a kludge. In the limited systems of those times it offloaded significant work from the cpu.

It's not like there were multiple processes to worry about. And, there could be other devices or duties that needed tending.

 

The Chinese govt is totalitarian. How is Hong Kong doing these days?

 

But having the commands and data going through 2 CPUs slowed the transfer process down. That is why there were multiple "Fast Load" options both hardware and software to get around some of that slowness. The only time the work was offloaded is if 2 drives were transferring data between each other. Then, much like SCSI they would just continue working, and not need to talk to the CPU again.

It was largely a kludge, because they did not install a "Drive Controller" on the system so they were all serial devices. That is why the drives are essentially computers as well, with a large and hot power supply and cost almost as much as the computer itself.

 

I disagree with you. Modern medicine has made leaps and bounds toward pushing human longevity far beyond anything even imaginable in the 1900s. People had large families back then because so many babies and kids died before reaching adulthood. Many women also died in childbirth.

The marriage of advancing technology and medicine eclipses every item on your list, IMO, as there wouldn't be as many people alive brainstorming how to make all those things happen.

 

Statistics are fun. You can pick the ones you like, and leave the ones you don't.

See how fun?

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Share_of_manufacturing/

It how about this?

https://www.statista.com/statistics...-added-in-manufacturing-of-leading-countries/

I'm sure it'll be a great leap forward.

 

I understand the advances that have been made but look at the outcome. People in the U.S. are a mess with the incidence of chronic diseases exploding. Yes, there is a small percentage of people who are in wonderful health, but the vast majority are not. Why do you believe this is the case?

How many people would like? A tiny fraction of the population does all the work, in any case.

Just the same, advances in medicine pales in comparison to anything on the list. Sorry.

 

The AMA is a business. Businesses need repeat customers.

No apologies needed. We can disagree. The sun will rise tomorrow. Promise.

 

Is there anybody in this group of people who post here that doesn't have some sort of attitude?

 

I don't know what you're calling an attitude so only you can assess that.

 

THAT attitude.

Would you say that to somebody you were having a conversation with in person? Talking down to people is not such a good people skill.

 

Sure would (and do and will continue to do so) if they apologized for something that required no apologies.

We don't have to agree. I'm cool with that. The world won't end. Promise.

In fairness, I just wrote the above to annoy you. Just stop apologizing for stuff that is beyond your control. That annoys me.

 

Humans, as a system, are anti-fragile. They grow stronger under strain. The stresses of modern life have changed so rapidly, that the biological system has not been able to keep pace.

Go look to places that aren't as advanced technologically, and you'll see a whole different set of medical needs...

Our chronic problems are due to our chronic activities.

 

My comments have been about China's economy.

There are many other serious issues in the far east.

 

Fun stats, but then you need to tie that to a question that was being asked or a point you want to make.

I'm wondering if the American public is ignoring the economic progress China is making, because nobody likes their political system, their religions, their treatment of minorities, their lack of freedom of speech, etc., etc.

There's lots to dislike, but that's not an excuse for ignoring their economic success, their progress with 3rd world countries, etc.

 

Uh uh.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jin...lism-hew-to-maos-socialist-vision-11632150725

Best way to ensure innovation is to make sure you reign it in.

I'm reminded of a passage..

It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-47236902

At least they have something to read while welded into their prisons, I mean apartments.