Most companies would kill for a 45% profit margin. Even the oil companies and financial firms come in at only about 10%. Generally, only software companies or consulting firms make those high profit margins, and then only when market leaders.
I look around at Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Saab, Aston-Martin, and a host of other manufacturers, and I see things that look a lot like the cars and trucks from back then in their basic layout: two people in front, a driver to one side or the other, steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedals...
Even the smaller European models carry the same general form as the vehicles from 50-60 years ago. The format works, and different sizes have come about to handle different needs.
So no, you didn't fix anything. You just showed yourself to be wrong, and probably heavily biased against most things from the US.
Wings make sense when the vehicle is large enough. At some point, trips will routinely carry 100+ people, and the logistics of doing that as a capsule are daunting at best. Those craft will have wings, and there will be variants to return large masses from orbit for refurbishment.
Capsules and the shuttle were intended to perform two entirely different missions. At best, a capsule could only perform placement and perhaps repair of satellites; it cannot bring them back down. A shuttle-type system can do that, though the frequency of use was quite low.
The origins of the rating system were a desperate (yet successful) attempt to prevent the federal government from instituting its own rating system. The Hays Code dealt with the spread of local laws, and would eventually be replaced by Jack Valenti's letter-based rating system that provided film-makers with much more freedom in how to craft and tell the story.
Kind of amusing, I think, that an organization was once so desperate to keep government out of its business and now runs crying to the government to help it preserve the same.
Current cars and trucks bear more than a passing resemblance to cars and trucks from the 1950s and 1960s, in part because the format works well. However, one cannot honestly say that the underlying technology has not changed dramatically. We can now carry more cargo for longer distances on less fuel with greater comfort, safety, and convenience.
Just because it's an older concept does not mean it cannot work in the present (or near future).
Back when Civ III came out, I did just that: scheduled vacation time and told my boss straight out why I was taking the time off. He laughed and signed the approval form.
I tried to do that this time. My current boss laughed it off. No vacation time approved. I do plan, within the next weekend or two, to sit down with a family-sized bag of Doritos and a 2L bottle of Dr Pepper for a 24-hour Civ session, just like I used to do.
There are several Russian companies that suck even more. After them... Well, there aren't a lot of companies putting really new designs in the air, lot like there were 30 years ago when just the US manufacturers included Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, and Lockheed. Europe had its own set, and the Soviets had a few more. Kind of a shame that the competition isn't like that anymore.
Kerio's firewall was picked up by Sunbelt, which has been promising a 64-bit version for some time but has yet to deliver.
Actually, looking at their forums, they just posted a couple of days ago that the new 64-bit version of VIPRE (their AV software) includes a firewall. VIPRE is pretty good and has low resource utilization. I've got Nod32 at home, and it was a toss-up on which to go with, but Nod32 had a slightly higher percentage of malware caught in a test at the time, so I went with that. (Nod32 has a 64-bit version, despite the name, and it also includes a firewall.)
Checkpoint isn't bad, actually. It's just the ZA line that you really need to avoid. Checkpoint itself does well if you don't need advanced features (at least with high performance).
Hacksaw blades with duct tape around one end are much easier to hide than bolt cutters, and it only takes under a minute to go through a steering wheel.
I stopped recommending ZA a few years back, when they had that stream of critical vulnerabilities. Only recently had I thought about adding them back into the recommendations list since I hadn't seen many major problems in a while. This knocks them back off the list for a couple more years at least.
The earth is made up of (in order of occurrence in the crust) oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and everything else (each of which constitutes under 1% of the crust). All of those are at or under the atomic number of iron, so all of them are the products of fusion, not necessarily from supernovae. They could have been blasted off from red giants, for example, which don't have to go supernova.
I just realized that I mixed some of my thoughts there. NPR interviewed workers from smaller oil companies; the interviews with employees of Exxon, which is in no way a small company, were conducted another time, though I don't recall if it was by NPR.
NPR interviewed some oil workers at various smaller companies a little while back. They basically said that they were angry with BP, because while the record in the US since the Exxon Valdez has not been perfect, it has substantially improved. BP's experience -- accident or dangerous indifference -- has tarnished the entire industry. Exxon employees especially were furious because that company basically overhauled its entire safety mindset in the years after the Exxon Valdez, and most of what gets brought up about Exxon is a disaster from 20+ years ago, like nothing has changed since.
That's basically a list of incidents that made the news. It doesn't include many of the GA incidents that make up the overwhelming majority of accidents, where almost 90% of accidents have pilot error as at least a contributing factor. GA pilots must be aware they they are far more likely to be the cause of an accident than is the plane.
You're absolutely correct about redundancy. There's a long chain of things that is supposed to happen before any flight. Here's what has to happen before I fly my little rental Cessna 172:
Annual inspection must be completed and signed off by an airframe & powerplant mechanic (A&P) with inspection authority (IA)
100-hour inspection must be completed and signed off by an A&P
I review the squawk sheets (basically a list of problems reported and actions taken by the A&P to address them)
Preflight planning, which includes:
Planning the route, ensuring that adequate fuel is available on the plane and/or en route
Making plans for alternate landing sites
Gathering and understanding the weather forecasts
Filing a flight plan if it's more than 50NM between airports
Getting current weather status along the route of flight just prior to preflight
Preflight inspection, which includes:
Visual check of oil and fuel levels and check for fuel contamination
Visual check of all aircraft surfaces, manual manipulation of ailerons, elevators, and rudder, and feeling the prop edges for excessive wear
Check of instruments prior to starting
Run-up check, which takes place after starting the engine and before taking off, includes:
More instrument checks, plus testing the autopilot
Elevator trim check
Magneto check (basically seeing if the engine runs rough on both magnetos and then one or the other magneto singly)
That isn't even all of it, and the list is more complete for a plane that actually has a black box. There are other things that happen along the way that aren't part of official checklists, including brake checks, validating compass and heading indicator accuracy, using the radio, and just paying attention for anything that doesn't feel right. There are checklists for take-off, climb, leveling, descent, landing, post-landing, and shut-down, not to mention all the emergency checklists. I've got a stall warning horn as well that is a function of the aerodynamics of the plane, and the autopilot lets me know if it's disabled. I fly a G1000 version of the C172 with two big displays, and it's got even more alerts, both visual and audio, to let me know when something is amiss, including when traffic is close (gotta love TCAS). I usually fly with flight following anyway, so ATC can help me avoid other planes (and vice versa). I'm still always on the lookout for other traffic, though.
If something goes wrong, it's almost certainly my fault that I didn't notice something, planned poorly, or flew beyond my skills (pilot error), with a small chance that the A&P and/or IA missed something (still human error), a very, very tiny chance that there was a mechanical issue that was not addressable with inspections, and an almost infinitesimal chance of simple bad luck.
They've bought WebOS and then suggested that they're going to stuff it in printers, so forget about tablets for now.
They've already confirmed the WebOS tablet for Q1 2011 (once in an all-hands meeting and once in the quarterly results conference call), and have said a couple of times that the Win7 tablet is not dead.
There's no legal authority for the courts to order such actions. Even execution orders are authorized by the legislative body, approved by the chief executive, and carried out by subordinates to the executive (subject to the lack of intervention by the judicial body). Any offensive action against spammers/hackers would require a similar path.
Every city has its character, and sometimes it's easy to get overwhelmed by it. Finding something eminently recognizable and comfortable can be of huge psychological benefit, even if it's just a place where you know what you can get to eat.
I've been to a number of major cities around the US: Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, New York, Newark, and Miami are but a few. (I know some of them are major more in a regional context than a national one.) On occasion, I've found myself looking for a burger place I recognize from somewhere I've been. This applies also (and sometimes more strongly) to smaller locations, like the North Carolina Outer Banks or Virginia Beach, where sometimes very little is familiar. Grabbing onto some small factor can provide something to ground oneself, and then be able to figure out the next steps from there.
It's a lot more complex than just dirt. There are also one or more layers of gravel, clay, sand, and plastic sheeting (not in that order) that must be placed over the landfill. Methane capture systems are also frequently added.
You have some good points, but they still don't explain why it takes 11 hours to get to Oakland.
For serious rail to work, it should be set up as someone here suggested when comparing it to DSL: a lot of smaller feeder lines going to trunk lines at some point. A run from San Diego to San Francisco should have stops in Los Angeles and maybe somewhere around Monterrey, and everyone else would use feeder lines to get to those stops. (This would include me, as I live in Orange County, so I'd take a feeder train up to Union Station.) The same concept would improve rail in Florida.
Unfortunately, the political situation in California wouldn't allow it. I think it would be difficult in other states as well, as politicians from smaller towns hold up funding until it stops in their districts.
I wouldn't even look to the defense budget. Look at the cost of the stimulus and unemployment extension packages. Take the money out of those for these kinds of projects, validate the SSNs to make sure it's only legal workers getting it, and put people to work. A significant portion of it (more than in the case of unemployment) comes back in taxes to both the state and federal governments.
Much better way of doing things if you have to spend the money.
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Thanks for this post. I was looking for information on this topic about a week ago, but couldn't remember the term.
Most companies would kill for a 45% profit margin. Even the oil companies and financial firms come in at only about 10%. Generally, only software companies or consulting firms make those high profit margins, and then only when market leaders.
I look around at Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Saab, Aston-Martin, and a host of other manufacturers, and I see things that look a lot like the cars and trucks from back then in their basic layout: two people in front, a driver to one side or the other, steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedals...
Even the smaller European models carry the same general form as the vehicles from 50-60 years ago. The format works, and different sizes have come about to handle different needs.
So no, you didn't fix anything. You just showed yourself to be wrong, and probably heavily biased against most things from the US.
Wings make sense when the vehicle is large enough. At some point, trips will routinely carry 100+ people, and the logistics of doing that as a capsule are daunting at best. Those craft will have wings, and there will be variants to return large masses from orbit for refurbishment.
Capsules and the shuttle were intended to perform two entirely different missions. At best, a capsule could only perform placement and perhaps repair of satellites; it cannot bring them back down. A shuttle-type system can do that, though the frequency of use was quite low.
The origins of the rating system were a desperate (yet successful) attempt to prevent the federal government from instituting its own rating system. The Hays Code dealt with the spread of local laws, and would eventually be replaced by Jack Valenti's letter-based rating system that provided film-makers with much more freedom in how to craft and tell the story.
Kind of amusing, I think, that an organization was once so desperate to keep government out of its business and now runs crying to the government to help it preserve the same.
Current cars and trucks bear more than a passing resemblance to cars and trucks from the 1950s and 1960s, in part because the format works well. However, one cannot honestly say that the underlying technology has not changed dramatically. We can now carry more cargo for longer distances on less fuel with greater comfort, safety, and convenience.
Just because it's an older concept does not mean it cannot work in the present (or near future).
Back when Civ III came out, I did just that: scheduled vacation time and told my boss straight out why I was taking the time off. He laughed and signed the approval form.
I tried to do that this time. My current boss laughed it off. No vacation time approved. I do plan, within the next weekend or two, to sit down with a family-sized bag of Doritos and a 2L bottle of Dr Pepper for a 24-hour Civ session, just like I used to do.
There are several Russian companies that suck even more. After them... Well, there aren't a lot of companies putting really new designs in the air, lot like there were 30 years ago when just the US manufacturers included Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, and Lockheed. Europe had its own set, and the Soviets had a few more. Kind of a shame that the competition isn't like that anymore.
Kerio's firewall was picked up by Sunbelt, which has been promising a 64-bit version for some time but has yet to deliver.
Actually, looking at their forums, they just posted a couple of days ago that the new 64-bit version of VIPRE (their AV software) includes a firewall. VIPRE is pretty good and has low resource utilization. I've got Nod32 at home, and it was a toss-up on which to go with, but Nod32 had a slightly higher percentage of malware caught in a test at the time, so I went with that. (Nod32 has a 64-bit version, despite the name, and it also includes a firewall.)
Checkpoint isn't bad, actually. It's just the ZA line that you really need to avoid. Checkpoint itself does well if you don't need advanced features (at least with high performance).
Hacksaw blades with duct tape around one end are much easier to hide than bolt cutters, and it only takes under a minute to go through a steering wheel.
I stopped recommending ZA a few years back, when they had that stream of critical vulnerabilities. Only recently had I thought about adding them back into the recommendations list since I hadn't seen many major problems in a while. This knocks them back off the list for a couple more years at least.
The earth is made up of (in order of occurrence in the crust) oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and everything else (each of which constitutes under 1% of the crust). All of those are at or under the atomic number of iron, so all of them are the products of fusion, not necessarily from supernovae. They could have been blasted off from red giants, for example, which don't have to go supernova.
Have you contacted Michael Bay with this idea? It sounds like you have the script completed. It just needs another 103 minutes of special effects.
I just realized that I mixed some of my thoughts there. NPR interviewed workers from smaller oil companies; the interviews with employees of Exxon, which is in no way a small company, were conducted another time, though I don't recall if it was by NPR.
NPR interviewed some oil workers at various smaller companies a little while back. They basically said that they were angry with BP, because while the record in the US since the Exxon Valdez has not been perfect, it has substantially improved. BP's experience -- accident or dangerous indifference -- has tarnished the entire industry. Exxon employees especially were furious because that company basically overhauled its entire safety mindset in the years after the Exxon Valdez, and most of what gets brought up about Exxon is a disaster from 20+ years ago, like nothing has changed since.
That's basically a list of incidents that made the news. It doesn't include many of the GA incidents that make up the overwhelming majority of accidents, where almost 90% of accidents have pilot error as at least a contributing factor. GA pilots must be aware they they are far more likely to be the cause of an accident than is the plane.
And yes, I do have my pilot's license, too.
I would love to see this (on the ground, of course). :)
You're absolutely correct about redundancy. There's a long chain of things that is supposed to happen before any flight. Here's what has to happen before I fly my little rental Cessna 172:
That isn't even all of it, and the list is more complete for a plane that actually has a black box. There are other things that happen along the way that aren't part of official checklists, including brake checks, validating compass and heading indicator accuracy, using the radio, and just paying attention for anything that doesn't feel right. There are checklists for take-off, climb, leveling, descent, landing, post-landing, and shut-down, not to mention all the emergency checklists. I've got a stall warning horn as well that is a function of the aerodynamics of the plane, and the autopilot lets me know if it's disabled. I fly a G1000 version of the C172 with two big displays, and it's got even more alerts, both visual and audio, to let me know when something is amiss, including when traffic is close (gotta love TCAS). I usually fly with flight following anyway, so ATC can help me avoid other planes (and vice versa). I'm still always on the lookout for other traffic, though.
If something goes wrong, it's almost certainly my fault that I didn't notice something, planned poorly, or flew beyond my skills (pilot error), with a small chance that the A&P and/or IA missed something (still human error), a very, very tiny chance that there was a mechanical issue that was not addressable with inspections, and an almost infinitesimal chance of simple bad luck.
They've bought WebOS and then suggested that they're going to stuff it in printers, so forget about tablets for now.
They've already confirmed the WebOS tablet for Q1 2011 (once in an all-hands meeting and once in the quarterly results conference call), and have said a couple of times that the Win7 tablet is not dead.
There's no legal authority for the courts to order such actions. Even execution orders are authorized by the legislative body, approved by the chief executive, and carried out by subordinates to the executive (subject to the lack of intervention by the judicial body). Any offensive action against spammers/hackers would require a similar path.
Every city has its character, and sometimes it's easy to get overwhelmed by it. Finding something eminently recognizable and comfortable can be of huge psychological benefit, even if it's just a place where you know what you can get to eat.
I've been to a number of major cities around the US: Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, New York, Newark, and Miami are but a few. (I know some of them are major more in a regional context than a national one.) On occasion, I've found myself looking for a burger place I recognize from somewhere I've been. This applies also (and sometimes more strongly) to smaller locations, like the North Carolina Outer Banks or Virginia Beach, where sometimes very little is familiar. Grabbing onto some small factor can provide something to ground oneself, and then be able to figure out the next steps from there.
It's a lot more complex than just dirt. There are also one or more layers of gravel, clay, sand, and plastic sheeting (not in that order) that must be placed over the landfill. Methane capture systems are also frequently added.
You have some good points, but they still don't explain why it takes 11 hours to get to Oakland.
For serious rail to work, it should be set up as someone here suggested when comparing it to DSL: a lot of smaller feeder lines going to trunk lines at some point. A run from San Diego to San Francisco should have stops in Los Angeles and maybe somewhere around Monterrey, and everyone else would use feeder lines to get to those stops. (This would include me, as I live in Orange County, so I'd take a feeder train up to Union Station.) The same concept would improve rail in Florida.
Unfortunately, the political situation in California wouldn't allow it. I think it would be difficult in other states as well, as politicians from smaller towns hold up funding until it stops in their districts.
I wouldn't even look to the defense budget. Look at the cost of the stimulus and unemployment extension packages. Take the money out of those for these kinds of projects, validate the SSNs to make sure it's only legal workers getting it, and put people to work. A significant portion of it (more than in the case of unemployment) comes back in taxes to both the state and federal governments.
Much better way of doing things if you have to spend the money.