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Hidden Obstacles For Delivery Drones
An anonymous reader writes: A few days ago we talked over some of the difficulties faced by makers of autonomous car software, like dealing with weather, construction, and parking garages. Today, the NY Times has a similar article about delivery drones, examining the safety and regulatory problems that must be solved in addition to getting the basic technology ready. "[R]researchers at NASA are working on ways to manage that menagerie of low-flying aircraft. At NASA's Moffett Field, about four miles from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., the agency has been developing a drone traffic management program that would in effect be a separate air traffic control system for things that fly low to the ground — around 400 to 500 feet for most drones. Much like the air traffic control system for conventional aircraft, the program would monitor the skies for weather and traffic. Wind is a particular hazard, because drones weigh so little compared with regular planes." Beyond that, the sheer scale of infrastructure necessary to get drone delivery up and running in cities across the U.S. is staggering. Commercial drones aren't going to have much range, particularly when carrying something heavy. They'll be noisy, and the products they're transporting will still need to be relatively close by. What other issues do Amazon, DHL, Google, and other need to solve?
How will the drones ensure that the recipient is the correct person? And how will they protect themselves against other people or drones stealing the cargo?
Target practice.
The main problem is the overall uneconomical and generally nonsensical idea of using delivery drones. Trucks are simple and work well in bad weather. There's a huge non-employed workforce of people who can easily be trained to deliver packages. Delivery trucks can be powered by natural gas, which is so abundant that many oil rigs simply burn it off rather than going to the trouble of capturing it.
in the general case, delivery drones don't work. Trucks do.
It's bad enough that someone can fly over your house at high altitude without you receiving any compensation, but, a bunch of drones added to the mix just undermines your own property rights.
This is my sig.
I doubt anyone living in a place like Manhattan would even notice, with all of the noise already present - especially from street traffic.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Wind is a particular hazard, because drones weigh so little compared with regular planes"
I'm not so sure about this one. A 747 in a 20 mph cross wind does 20 mph sideways. A drone in a 20 mph cross wind does 20 mph sideways.
When there is a gust (or any change in wind speed), there would be a difference. An object with a lot of mass will react more slowly to the same force. That said, once a 747 starts blowing sideways in the wind, making a correction is going to take more time and a larger force that it would for a light drone. In a big plane you do a lot more planning ahead for good reason. There are more "well, it depends on.." Even when mass is equal, a plane with a small tail (vertical stabilizer) close to the center of mass is going to react very differently than a plane with a large vertical stabilizer far from the center of mass. (Think lever arm/torque) In one you need a lot of skill to keep it from ground looping when landing in gusty cross winds.
The problem where people have to be paid to deliver items. Like your postman, or courier drivers. Especially those pesky bicycle couriers in cities.
But there would be less traffic if there were fewer delivery vehicles on the road. Especially those noisy diesel vans.
Drones seem un-necessary. Why the return trip? Why not make the delivery vehicle....a "smart-bomb". A delivery vehicle that could be dropped from a [very] large plane and that descends in a very controlled fall to its destination. Maybe homing in on GPS, or using a small camera.. It would have just enough smarts to control its descent and make adjustments, but be disposable otherwise. Or tough enough to ship back to Amazon by "ground" shipping.
people in apartments or yards of an inappropriately small size, or with too many overhanging trees, will be blacklisted as the things crash repeatedly, they'll default to truck delivery.
an equation of range vs weight will be used that ends up defaulting anything but a friggn' bottle opener to truck delivery.
during questionable weather, shipments will be heavily delayed until the weather clears, and they'll default to truck delivery.
bird flys into your shipment. kid throws a rock at it. whatever. re-shipments probably default to truck delivery.
people (including me) will order $5 packages, wait for them to arrive, then steal the 'copter for parts. no real way to prove it didn't just crash, right?
eventually it'll just become a cool novelty if some package lands successfully in your backyard instead of by truck, instead of a real utility.
Seems impossible. This would have to be some peer-to-peer/mesh network model of traffic control. I hope they aren't really planning on using ground-based radar for this. It would require too much infrastructure.
Imagine the chaos if the skies are full of these delivery drones - carrying shit everywhere - and for some reason they start dropping like flies. The random stuff dropping from the skies pelleting, in addition to the drones themselves.. surely this scene would fit into a sci-fi 'sharknado'-bad low-budget film as a surprisingly amusing scene.
I want to see it happen either way.
And how exactly is a drone supposed to make a delivery to my apartment on the 56th floor in the middle of Manhattan? Drone delivery may be good for a farm out in the country where we don't want to waste time sending a truck and driver to the only order in fifty miles. But densely populated cities? A truck and driver will be much more efficient for that environment.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Diaper services. The worst time to have a midair malfunction.
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
People plinking a drone when it flies over their yard (or any public field) and getting a free Xbox or whatever it was carrying.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
If a drone malfunctions at 500ft, it's going to hurt when it lands on someone.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Very much so. And it is basically not solvable in an efficient way anyways. This "drone delivery" is a pure PR stunt that will not materialize in this decade or the next one.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The main problem with traffic is not delivery vehicles, but single-person private cars. For them, more efficient transport options (car sharing, public transport, bikes) exist. For delivery, the truck is often the most efficient solution already.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1. Patent all possible methods of delivery for packages so that you drive down the stock prices of every courier company including FedEx that could deliver packages cheaper and safer.
2. Buy them all up with the money you have stockpiled not paying US taxes and hiring H-1B workers.
3. Buy enough congressmen and senators to shut down the US Postal Service.
4. Profit from forcing consumers to use your inferior, more expensive service.
Driverless cars and drone deliveries are good examples of the old saying, "just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD."
The drone delivery thing seems like a proxy for the fact that the regular postal system desperately needs a revamp to include more standardization. Basically, we need some system which acknowledges that parcel and package delivery is an increasingly important part of the process, and we want to receive things unattended.
You can only sometimes get this now.
If we had a system where we standardized mailbox sizes to some specification, and then licensed out some NFC/smart card system to let postal workers/delivery companies open them, then we might be getting somewhere. Sure, it's not perfect and it wouldn't be everywhere at once, but if you could simply buy the relevant thing at Home Depot and then delivery companies could be expected to use it, it'd be progress. Then the free-market innovates from there: various multi-tiered security products or the like.
New York City used to have a pneumatic tube system. It's a shame there's nothing similar today.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
This a thousand times. Watching the videos, I can't shake the feeling about how inefficient these things are and how much more efficient a delivery truck is. Sparsely populated countryside is really the only place where delivery drones make any sense at all.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Driverless cars and drone deliveries are good examples of the old saying, "just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD."
Or they could use the driverless cars to do the deliveries.
Correct. Using delivery services in Canada, in my experience, were much more of a hassle and much more costly than they are in China. There is no chance drone delivery would be considered in China considering:
I can order something from jd.com this morning and it arrives this afternoon COD.
I can ship documents from the middle of China to Hong Kong within a business day or two for, in USD, a few dollars.
I can ensure everything I arrives promptly and get automatic updates when items I'm shipping are either picked up by delivery people, sorted at delivery centres, arrive at delivery centres, or any other significant milestone in the process.
US Postal System. Yes, rain, snow, wind, sleet, good luck with that.
The main problem with traffic is not delivery vehicles, but single-person private cars..
But if deliveries are faster and cheaper there will be fewer single-person private cars on the road. Many car trips are to fetch a few items from the grocery or hardware store, or to fetch some documents that you left at work. If on-demand drone delivery was available, these trips could be avoided.
And how exactly is a drone supposed to make a delivery to my apartment on the 56th floor in the middle of Manhattan?
It could deliver to the roof. Then you could go up and get it, or a robot could bring it to your apartment.
There aren't enough isolated people getting frequent deliveries for it to make economic sense to deploy drones. Why spend millions of dollars developing a new technology to avoid a few trips a year?
Also, a drone that could carry a package 50 miles and return would have to carry a lot of additional weight in fuel. A driverless "car" big enough to carry a package would probably be able to make the delivery for a fraction of the cost.
The number of UAVs it would take to replace a single FedEx or UPS truck would certainly be several orders of magnitude noisier.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If we had a system where we standardized mailbox sizes to some specification
Done, been that way all my life (I'm almost 40).
and then licensed out some NFC/smart card system to let postal workers/delivery companies open them, then we might be getting somewhere
You mean some sort of key ... Again, done, group boxes have had keys all my life.
but if you could simply buy the relevant thing at Home Depot
Home Depot sales mailboxes, all of which meet all sorts of standard requirements for US Postal Service deliveries.
You do realize that everything you've said has been around for, what, a century?
There are even standards for positioning of the mailbox, not just size.
I'm guessing you're not real observant and haven't noticed that all mailboxes are already the same size, basic shape and location.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
What other issues do Amazon, DHL, Google, and other need to solve?
People. Bored, often too intelligent for their own good, people.
How long before trolls figure out they can drive their cars close enough and in such a manner that self driving cars execute lane changes to avoid accidents and pull off the freeway? Or until someone realizes they can jam the car's sensors and the poor passenger, with no access to a steering wheel, can't convince the car to pull out of the open parking spot it's convinced it's barricaded in?
How long before an Amazon delivery drone comes in to a house that's observed to regularly get deliveries and gets a blanket tossed over it before being purloined by nerds who just got a sweet free drone to try hacking?
Wind gusts happen. You can factor in for a typical wind gust, a severe wind gust, a once in a century wind gust. You can factor in for different types of hardware failure, for power loss, etc. You can factor in for trees, for tall buildings, for cables... They're finite problem sets.
But bored people? They're infinite.
And you have missed all the subtlety of the problem. For one thing, there's no way anyone's fitting an iPad package into a mailbox, or even through a mailslot.
There's no way to distribute or update keys rapidly enough to make them general use for delivery companies and the post.
Which is the entire point: the century of mail was for mail with packages considered the exception. Special case enough to warrant needing to be physically present to receive them, or simply gambling nobody steals them when left on the front porch.
Basically you might want to take your last line there and apply it to yourself.
Perhaps you should read what you referenced. High cost and low capacity killed it. It may not be viable for non-paper items as thay may be damaged. Also the tubes were only 7-8 inches in diameter. Letters bend while parcels don't.
In Belgium we've got this: https://www.bpack247.be/. Part of the normal postal service. Basically you get a card with a barcode (to be scanned at the machine) and a pin code. A growing number of online stores will ship to these. Convenient if you're never at home during normal delivery hours. Since I pass through a train station equipped with one of these every evening, my problem's solved.
I keep getting a naggy feeling that these anonymous posts with over-the-top claims are some kind of coded communication.
Think about it - in today's times when all communication is tapped, saved, processed and filtered by supercomputers, what better way to convey coded information or pass instructions than to post in the open, on public boards, buried in posts adopting the same manner and tone as thousands of other crack-pot posts?
And if the secret is in danger of being let loose, to immediately flood the forum with derisive posts decrying the "conspiracy" -after all, nobody likes looking stupid or gullible.
Or maybe I need more sleep.
If the drone is flying in my backyard without permission, isn't it trespassing on my premises? Am I therefore not allowed to defend the sanctity and privacy of my home by shooting it out of the sky with extreme prejudice? For all I know, it could be carrying a camera... or a bomb... or a firearm (unlikely I'll grant you, but sadly in today's climate not impossible).
Or to use a clearer example, if I observe that the drone is in danger of crashing into my 4-year-old son and I shoot it out of the sky, I am confident that it would not be held a crime.
My point being that the legal position of drones is far from clear.
Weird this got modded 'Interesting'.
Sure, we pay people to have those goods delivered to our door; it's called a service and the people providing it need to feed their families too. That said, if you eliminate those costs by 'automating delivery by way of drones', you'll add the price for buying/training/maintaining these and the whole infrastructure that comes with it; hence, you eliminate known costs by adding new guesstimated (bigger?) costs. TCO is mostly a buzzword in my vocabulary, but in this case it probably is worth having a look at. On top of that you'll probably need to keep a backup 'manual service' at hand anyway because these things won't be able to do their job when it rains/snows/storms/... heck, a bit of wind and you're finished. Nobody cares if the postman wears shorts or a scarf, we 'know' he'll come through.
Also, you may consider bicycle couriers a nuisance, having these things whizz around everywhere sounds (!) much more annoying to me. Might look 'cool' in Sci-Fi movies, it would get on my nerves quite fast in reality I think.
The part I'm I think will be the big show-stopper is the likelihood of people 'catching goodies from the sky'. Given the technical restrictions of these drones it seems fair to assume they'll be used mostly for 'small but expensive' goods. What's to stop people from building a microwave-gun to fry the electronics and run of with the cargo ? Heck, a decent slingshot could probably bring them down. I realize one could rob any courier service, but with drones it's going to be dead-simple unless they start building in all kinds of security measures but thus limiting the capacity/range/... of the machine.
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
There is already one full size helicopter, drone, making a daily repeat run from The US to Mexico. It is able to fly at any altitude that a human piloted helicopter can fly. For that matter the average commercial aircraft flying passengers is effectively a drone with a pilot only as backup these days. We will need a new label for low flying drones to distinguish them from larger drones. We also need to gain knowledge on items like fuel consumption for heavy lifter type drones. For example my super market gets a tractor trailer load a day or more from a central warehouse about 50 miles away. A drone lifting the same weight and bulk just might be fuel efficient due to slow highway traffic. Cost may determine use more than legal issues. Other items need to be considered as well. If i order a bulldozer to a job site there is a huge issue with parking the tractor and lowboy that transports the dozer. A flying drone could deposit the dozer and wait nearby in many cases where a large truck and trailer could not fit in well. Or we may see the air ambulance effect ruin it all. It seems that a rescue helicopter for a trauma victim ads about 5K per mile over a car type ambulance.
You could (and perhaps should) have self-driving road delivery drones. Those even may not have to be full-car-sized - lower material use, less fuel consumption, more flexibility, and still no driver. One would need a smart package dispenser, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
Obama runs a baby-Stalin dictatorial regime.
Does the baby Stalin sport a magnificent mustache? If not, I demand a refund!
Ezekiel 23:20
"But there would be less traffic if there were fewer delivery vehicles on the road. Especially those noisy diesel vans."
I was in Amsterdam last week and the ugly brown UPS trucks were electric, I was almost run over by one because I couldn't hear it coming.
It's just a regulation thingie, if they get forced to make no noise inside city limits, they don't.
Jobs machines do are incredibly cheaper than humans doing those same jobs in nearly all cases. Humans are insanely expensive, even mostly untrained ones. A $10,000 drone, especially one purchased quantities in the tens or hundreds of thousands, seems like expensive kit for just doing deliveries. But you could throw it away every 4 months instead of maintaining it and it would still be cheaper than hiring a human.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That will be one more gun-toting idiot either financially destitute or behind bars. $100,000 and 20 years is the maximum federal penalty for firing on a commercial aircraft. Lock and load, baby!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Try $100,000 and 20 years in federal PMITA prison.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For 3-5% of gross vehicle weight, each drone can have a safety parachute which activates automatically in the event of any stability failure or rapid drop in altitude. Failsafe systems can be engineered to protect the life of anyone who might be on the ground to several nines reliability. A decent drone recovery reward will get the equipment back - either for re-use or for evaluation of failure mechanism - and onboard camera(s) and real-time flight recording will ensure that sabotage is prosecuted ($100k and 20 years in federal prison, currently).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
No, it didn't say rresearchers anywhere in TFA.
Do it right, at least.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
You've got your political speechifying down pat!
In classic political style speech, you repeat "Obama" over and over when a single mention of his name and one sentence would have been adequate to state all your "Obama" points. Listen to any preacher, politician, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Jesse Jackson (who likes to throw in a lot of rhymes bcause it makes it easy to remember) or other professional blow-hard- this is exactly how they speak publicly. I believe it is based on the principle that if you repeat a lie loudly and often enough it becomes equivalent to truth in the minds of the listeners.
While you may have the style figured out, your content is very weak. I won't bother taking apart your "arguments" point by point- they're just silly. Keep practicing- you may eventually get good enough to be a live caller on Rush or Fox "News".
Does your caretaker know that you got on the internet again?
Drones make sense for very rural areas. Instead of sending a van out to a remote farm or town a drone could be sent. It would need some infrastructure and the drones would be fairly large, fixed wing aircraft (maybe 3-4m wing span) with VTOL, but it could work. They could fly fairly high, out of range of microwave guns and most rifles, and then do a vertical landing at the (attended) target area.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They are _a_ bottleneck.
lithium-ion batteries are quite adequate for 10 or 20 minute flights in a small drone.
3 minutes flight at 60km/h takes you 3km.
Taking for example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - this needs around 60 drone stations to cover the entirety of London.
Each drone can do 10 deliveries an hour - 180 a day, 65000/year.
The network can do 4 million deliveries per year.
The cost per drone is perhaps pessimistically, 1000 pounds.
They need to survive a week or so to easily recoup their losses.
I wasn't defending the practical aspect of the technology, just the noise non-issue.
But to answer your question, if you live in a 56-floor building you have a doorman. The same guy who takes deliveries of bulk items all day for 1000s of residents could handle the miniature drone deliveries as well.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
we all go to work, school, and shopping using our helicopter backpacks.
So stop writing about it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
To be fair, it seems that most of the high cost came from the government paying rent to private property owners. I don't think that would be an issue today.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Or how about a series of these things mixed with a system of really small (but obviously big enough for skateboard and package) tubes (like the banks use, but without the vacuum or clear tubing) probably underground. The main problem with flying items is their weight. As long as you are able to push the weight, then that solves a lot of problems. Remember, at least I think, we're trying to do away with problems that drones bring to the table, right?
But man the loss of jobs...
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
... for those idiots advocating shooting drones, check your local ordinances. It's illegal to discharge a weapon within city limits, subject to certain exceptions from which a drone is exempt.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If I remember correctly, there used to be pneumatic tube-systems in bigger cities in the past; but they got out of fashion. Wikipedia has some interesting bits on it.
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
I just don't want to have to listen to drones buzzing by for any reason. The convenience factor is not worth the loss of quality of life for everyone.
Power lines make communities much, much uglier if you actually stop to look at them. Convenience almost always trumps annoying the reticent.
The number of UAVs it would take to replace a single FedEx or UPS truck would certainly be several orders of magnitude noisier.
Not to mention, it seems like it would be far more expensive.
What do you suppose is the annual TCO on all the drones that would be in the aforementioned, hypothetical fleet? Not just cheap toys, but robust airframes capable of carrying 50 lbs+ loads over several miles of space? Figure that up, then compare it to how much it costs to pay 1 guy $12.50/hr, or $26,000/yr, to drive a truck that runs about $10,000/yr to own.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
And how exactly is a drone supposed to make a delivery to my apartment on the 56th floor in the middle of Manhattan?
It could deliver to the roof. Then you could go up and get it, or a robot could bring it to your apartment.
What happens when it's raining? Does the drone/robot just dump your shit in a puddle?
Anyway, this idea means building the infrastructure in to every single existing and new high-rise building, and passing the costs along to the residents.
How, again, is this supposed to be an improvement over the current method of paying some guy $12/hr to drive around dropping off boxes?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Drone delivery may be good for a farm out in the country where we don't want to waste time sending a truck and driver to the only order in fifty miles.
Well, except the fact that most figures I've seen show there is no efficient, cost-effective way to build a drone that can carry 50+ lbs and have over 100 miles of range.
At those rates, you'd be better off sending a dude in a truck.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Blackwater postal services delivering world-wide?
Oh, we used to have a large municipal pneumatic post network here in Prague, until it got destroyed in 2002 by severe floods. Which is a shame, because otherwise it would still be in use.
Ezekiel 23:20
Given these things are going to be noisy-- I live in a quiet neighborhood. If that ends up being disturbed by the buzzing of drones I won't be ordering products from companies that use them.
The part I'm I think will be the big show-stopper is the likelihood of people 'catching goodies from the sky'. Given the technical restrictions of these drones it seems fair to assume they'll be used mostly for 'small but expensive' goods. What's to stop people from building a microwave-gun to fry the electronics and run of with the cargo ? Heck, a decent slingshot could probably bring them down. I realize one could rob any courier service, but with drones it's going to be dead-simple unless they start building in all kinds of security measures but thus limiting the capacity/range/... of the machine.
Yes, I was thinking "shotgun", but your ideas are better. Let's run with it a bit. How about a good old fashioned barrage balloon? Or use it to loft a fishing net, or why not a kite? "Honest officer, here I was just flying my kite, minding my own business and all these drones started to fall all around me, not my fault really..."
Or, for the ultimate thrill. Your own drone/RPV. There have been "dog fighting" competitions between RC-planes for ages, trying to cut someone else's streamer with your propeller. Now you could actually make that game worth your time.
Then there's good old fashioned GPS-spoofing that can be done for cheap. Make the drone land/drop thinking it has reached its destination? It's manna from heaven all over again, only this time courtesy of Amazon... :-)
Stefan Axelsson
Other than a driver, what's the difference between your high tech drone (with support costs) and some twenty something in a UPS truck? Sure, you can zip a roll of toilet paper or a dozen cans of shaving cream on the drone, but Mr. and Ms. Rural also want their dog food delivered so you need the truck anyway.
I can sort of see this in NYC where you can create a spurious business plan consisting of getting workers their Post-It notes quickly, out in the boonies, not so much.
Come to think of it, a driverless UPS truck makes more sense. As long as it dispenses dog treats (which is yet another weak link for a rural drone - this would just be too much fun for the neighborhood dogs - mine would have retrieved the package in seconds and attempted to shred it for the lulz).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
TCO isn't almost a buzzword everywhere...
In most places, it's an acronym.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Umm driverless cars are definetly something that we should do. Humans frankly suck at driving and countless lives could be saved if human drivers were replaced with more reliable machines.
Actually, the number of fatalities isn't countless.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Does that system go to every hamlet and village in China? Actually curious. That's just one of the lead weights that the USPS is saddled with. They have to send stuff to Five Fingers, Alaska, pop 300, as well as to Los Angeles.
I'd also venture to bet that the system in China hasn't funded pension liabilities out for 100 years.
Apples to Apples and all that.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...
Problem solved. :-)
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"Does that system go to every hamlet and village in China?" I can't answer this definitively, but from what I gather, the answer is close to yes.. what I mean is, they operate in a quantity/batch mode. Actually one of my company's largest domestic (China) clients is SF, one of the two largest courier companies in China - they don't limit their business to just delivery but are expanding into so many other sort of related markets - like selling imported goods over the net.. I guess I could find out how 'distant' they ship, but I would put my money on *as distant as people want to receive*, keep in mind China is an extremely highly populated country, and even the most remote inhabited mountain regions have groupings of people growing and drying their corn who need stuff delivered. :D
"I'd also venture to bet that the system in China hasn't funded pension liabilities out for 100 years." absolutely true. That isn't really an argument against the fact that the USPS is a dogged pile of shit that will either end up debilitated to the point of uselessness or needs a massive overhaul in how it operates, though, is it? That's essentially saying the way they operated and the length of time they operated warrants them a pass for becoming essentially irrelevant, so lets keep funding it just because. I don't follow that logic...
I really, really miss our doorman. When the last guy retired, the building did not replace him. Now we get keys to the package drop box in our mailbox if USPS delivers, or notes if there is no free drop box or the delivery is handled by UPS/FedEx otherwise. There are a whole host of other reasons why I miss the doorman and would bring one back in a heartbeat, but not every building in Manhattan has a doorman. Management seems to believe a doorman can be replaced with a web site and a security monitoring company, but that's very shortsighted from my experience.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Wow, things sure have changed in NYC if a building that large is no longer hiring doormen, or at least someone manning the reception area. I left in 2009.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.