I don't think that we treat them like scum; it's just that we have teenagers getting pregnant before they're fully grown.
Even then, they generally don't have major issues.
A major reason would actually be the opposite. We have a huge portion of the female population that waits. The chances of a 16 year old having complications with pregancy is orders of magnitude less than a 40 year old trying. Even a 30 year old with her first birth is much more at risk.
We also try a lot harder - we have one of the lower stillborn rates(baby born dead).
I suppose in that ideal world you mention the speed of light is infinite.
Just because I said 'eventually' and not 'a bloody long time'? There'll always be imbalances. Politics, natural disasters, etc...
So convergence takes a long while to happen, and I use "long while" rather loosely.
I should hope so, I don't see Africa or much of the middle east being dragged up in the next 500 years. Too much internal struggles to make it profitable. Still, there isn't enough population in those areas to have the effects than industrializing and modernizing China and India are having. Especially if China and India are up there to provide even more buffer population.
Still, there are signs that it's already happening in India - There's been so much outsourcing to there that the available labor pool has become constricted, and the extra money/resources has allowed the people in India to purchase more in the way of local resources - making them a bit more expensive, but also increasing supply, resulting in more service workers, tightening the labor market more.
Sounds right, thought it's not considered 'true arbitrage'.
In the most simple example, any good sold in one market should sell for the same price in another. Traders may, for example, find that the price of wheat is lower in agricultural regions than in cities, purchase the good, and transport it to another region to sell at a higher price. This type of price arbitrage is the most common, but this simple example ignores the cost of transport, storage, risk, and other factors. "True" arbitrage requires that there be no market risk involved. Where securities are traded on more than one exchange, arbitrage occurs by simultaneously buying in one and selling on the other.
Outsourcing involves quite a bit of risk, as well as startup and building times. So there's quite a bit of inertia.
My point is that due to globalization - US & European countries have a downward pressure on salaries while there's an upward pressure in developing nations such as China and India. There workers in 'insourced' work often receive multiples of what they'd otherwise earn - Of course subsidence farmers don't make much. So you get situations where workers might make $5/day rather than $1/day. Thing is, they then use that $4/day extra to purchase stuff - resulting in secondary effects, making the region more prosperous all round.
The problem tends to be the very basics, which most people from my graduating college class had in 1999.
It sounds like you're in a hiring position. Does your business sponsor/support the local schools? It sounds like your business might benefit long term by lobbying/sponsoring the local schools to get them back to teaching the basics you see lacking instead of things like klingon language courses.
Many of the applicants seem to be unable to show much curiosity in an interview, and state that their goal is to be running the department in a matter of 3 or 4 years.
You should of course hire the best you can get - as for running the department, tell them they'd have to prove that they're the best available - IE they'll have to be hot stuff to meet that goal; they'll have to earn it.
When it's hard to find talent for entry level positions, I can't imagine what it can be to have to replace someone with 10 years of experience. 5 people out of school and prayer?
Ideally you'd do it much like the military does. They still think in terms of careers and progression. IE they KNOW they're going to loose that guy with 10 yrs of experience sometime(though 20 is the standard). So they try to avoid having anything dependant upon one person. Indeed, they have a career progression track*. People come in, bottom of the pack, moving up through the years by talent, drive, and sheer inertia. The 20 year senior enlisted retires - they promote somebody a step to replace him.
So in your 10 years of experience case - there should be a guy with 8 to take over, somebody with 6 to replace the guy, 4,2, and you hire somebody new out of college.
Given that there is a finite amount of money in the world at any given time,
Not really. We start looking at deflation the feds can always print more. It's mostly bits anymore anyways. The amount that the stock market as a whole is 'worth' fluctuates wildly, though goes up over time.
I'd wager it is far more likely that everyone (except the executives, of course) ends up poor.
Take some economics classes - while there are going to be people rich even beyond Gates and the Oil Sheiks, the way everyone will end up 'poor' will be a vast change in the definition of 'poor'. Much like how if you look at who's poor today, look at their lifestyle, then move back 50 years and realize they're living better than the middle class.
Corporations hoard money. That is basically their goal. They aren't outsourcing to "share the wealth". Outsourcing allows a corporation to reduce the rate at which labor costs "bleed" money back into the economy.
Corporations can't hoard money. Their goal is to make money. Yes, they outsource to reduce costs, increasing their competitiveness.
My point is that they end up vitalizing a new economy in the area they outsource too.
Consider: If a corporation can get workers in country A to work for half what workers in country B cost, they can use that to negotiate lower wages/benefits in country B as well. (The implied threat being work for less, or don't work at all.)
Ah, a nugget of truth. Yes, the USA is experiencing a bit of this right now. However, we're merely stagnant in wages whereas wages in Asia are rising. It's going to be a while yet; they still have a lot of subsidence farmers.
Like I said, they rightly got slapped for false advertising.
I was just pointing out that having caps and limitations make a certain amount of sense for the service; Cell bandwidth isn't as unlimited as landlines can be. I mean, it's even more of a hub type system than cable, with a much lower overall bandwidth capability.
Ideally, all the labor would eventually be used up in Thailand, and competition will start driving wages up, resulting in it not being so profitable to outsource there.
Preferably the employees in countries losing jobs to outsourcing find alternate work, if for less money.
Then, when everybody has more or less first world purchasing power, and it's not generally worth it to outsource stuff except for regional produce like coffee, we enter utopia*.
*Well, not quite, but we'd be able to afford all the oil alternatives.
Also, the distributor's costs in another country may be lower (lower wages for the wage slaves, etc.) so the distributor may mark the wholesale price up less.
This probably has quite a bit to do with why items tend to be sold in Britain for the same number of pounds as what they want in dollars in the USA.
From everything I've heard, Britain tends to be a bureaucratic nightmare, with extra helpings of taxes. So expenses for selling something in Britain is higher all round.
Bingo - How do you think that people get experience? The WoW fairy?
Eventually wages will rise to the point that american businesses realize something they should of been thinking about years ago - You need people of all skill levels. Apprentices are necessary.
Heck, I was shocked to see that the USAF is finally acknowledging that - they would ramp up tech school training, give huge bonuses to keep people in(and get them in), then proceed to force people out when they went over their requirements. Result: Fields were unbalanced, with either too many higher ups or too many juniors. Now they're finally accepting that while things might be a little more 'unbalanced' in the short term, plotting further into the future is a good thing. Because then they can adjust course with a tap instead of a sledge.
Businesses need to realize this as well - while you might loose 80% of your apprentices to other jobs, you should keep at least some of them. Provide the right benefits and treat them right, and you might keep over half of those you want - making the program worth it as you collect talent from the beginning.
Which is the reason I worded it the way I did - I'd much rather have a cell phone that can only be used for 911 for a week than a $300 bill.
If nothing else, I can change my plan to one with more minutes for ~$10. At.20/minute, it takes less than an hour over to make the more expensive plan worth it.
Even better - don't cut them off completely, just turn their data access off until the beginning of the next billing period. If they wish, move them up to a higher plan.(10GB for 50-75% more, for example).
Which part of FALSE ADVERTISING don't you understand?
Ahem:
What they rightly got slapped for is false advertising
So instead of either 1) admitting that they are lying in their commercials or 2) investing in more infrastructure to improve congestion on the network, they decide to use "traffic shaping", packet sabotage (if Comcast can do it I'm sure Verizon can), download limits etc WITHOUT informing the customer. That's not right.
Again: Heck, draconian firewalls and QOS settings wouldn't meet my 'unlimited' standard.
So, you post saying you disagree with me while making statements that agree with what I said. You might want to read posts a bit more carefully.
I'm looking for a new cell phone company. Is there one out there that is reletively sleaze-free? I was happy with Cingular for years, never went over my minutes (always had rollover minutes) and the bill was always the same, under $50. Then AT&T bought them out, and all of a sudden I got hit with a $150 bill. I didn't pay it. The next month they tacked on another $450 on top of the $150, and shut off my service. After shutting off my service, they tacked ANOTHER $150 for the month I was without service, including taxes on the service they never provided.
Did you protest the bills, preferably by certified mail?
There are numerous ways to fight this stuff - to include small claims court.
Businesses are not allowed to change the terms of the contract without notifying you and giving you the chance to decline - though this generally means 'your service ends at the end of this billing period'.
On the other hand, there is some assumption that you have to be pro-active before going to the court system. You need to be able to show that you attempted to work with them.
Not to detract from your statement, but that's fairly unlikely
20 songs a day, assuming five minutes per song, is 1 hour 40 minutes. Not undoable. However, assuming $3/song, is $1.8k, which is quite a lot of money.
Now, if it's a service where you can redownload previously purchased music, now you have a point.
Customer X, for whatever reason, has over 2k songs in his account. He lost his computer, replaced it, so he's redownloading his music. There goes that 5gig limit.
Although you'd run into their 'not to replace a dedicated data line' rule.
Is it necessarily right or good to allow unlimited usage of a limited resource(cell spectrum bandwidth)?
Somebody using more than 5 GB is at the high end of the curve, likely costing verizon more than what they're paying; increasing costs for other users of the service.
Yes, a business has a right to at least attempt to make a profit. They shouldn't be required to sell money-losing products.
What they rightly got slapped for is false advertising - A service with a 5GB cap isn't 'unlimited' by any standard definition. Heck, draconian firewalls and QOS settings wouldn't meet my 'unlimited' standard. I'll bend enough to say that it's reasonable to bill a service as unlimited and still restrict illegal activities and have restrictions to prevent the spread of viruses/worms/spam.
Given how much longer vehicles can last today, I don't see that as a bad option - the rich buy a new expensive vehicle every ~3 years, the middle class buy them and drive them for the next 5(or purchase a more reasonable new vehicle, and keep it for ~5 years).
Then the poor get the decade old vehicle at a very reasonable price.
As for the second, that's only because people are unwilling to move further than Eagle's Creek, Deer Run, Craggy Highlands, or any number of other 2nd rate housing developments in the suburbs. I think you'll find that there are quite a few places in the US that offer the white picket fence at a reasonable price. And considering the ability to telecommute for those of us in the IT business, the only real reason to stay where the prices are high is vanity and the desire to live there.
Besides work, there's also the concern of services. Living in a small town(1 bar/restraunt, no gas station), I batch my trips to somewhere larger for shopping. For example, there's no good chinese restraunt in at least four hours drive. Schools are pretty good, but a good distance away. Going to the store is a fairly major expidition, not something jumping on a bicycle for something forgotten for dinner is an option(did that as a kid quite a bit, two grocery stores within 3 miles).
On the other hand, my house cost less than half a year's income for me, and it's quiet with no crime.
Life is tradeoffs.
Picket fence living is not ideal for everyone - some prefer not having to worry about a yard, like not having to drive to eat out, etc...
It could very easily be 'all of the above'. Leaded gasoline pushed many 'over the edge'. The advent of video games provided a new, safe, outlet for violence(or at least made people out of shape enough that they don't bother). Abortion eliminated many of the most at risk before birth.
When dealing with an entire society - even a.1% increase in something can be tracked.
The chances of losing a whole mission/crew are irrelevant when you've significantly increased the chances of a partial loss. (And significantly increased the chance of killing some of the crew, from 2% to 4%.)
Depends on the failure mode. RAID 0 array, yes, this would be bad. Raid 5 array, this would be good. Can at least some of the mission go on with the surviving astronaughts?
Besides, did I or did I not propose developing a better equivalent of the soyuz?
The Soyuz is currently sitting at about 2% chance of a complete loss per mission - how, precisely, is that better than the Shuttle? Especially considering the history of the Soyuz. Hell, it had a serious failure yesterday - the second in just ten missions!
Serious failure; not 'complete loss of craft to include all passangers'.
It doesn't matter which orbit you put your station into - 90-99% of satellites are going to be inaccessible from it without a large (and heavy and complex) OTV and tens of tons (if not hundreds of tons) of fuel. Period.
Time; solar panels; ion engines; light craft. Once you're off the ground you can afford to be creative with your thrusting. You're not restricted to chemical engines.
And I pointed out the problems with your fleet of cargo lifters and the use of a space station. Your proposal fails because you keep compating costs and ignoring capabilities.
As far as I'm concerned, you keep ignoring me when I address capabilities. I compare costs for comparable capabilities. Sure, I use more vehicles to do that - but you can save a lot of mass by using special use vehicles, and that's the most expensive thing in space.
It doesn't matter how long ago the accidents occurred - they still count in the statistics. (Especially considering the ongoing issues with Soyuz, issues you chose to ignore.)
I'm just pointing out the death rate. And yes, it does matter 'how long ago' the accidents occured - If you don't, it can become like saying cars are unsafe today by looking at Model T deaths; the state of art has progressed since then.
You don't forget about them, but it'd be perfectly valid to place a factor in the statistics that emphasises recent occurances.
Actually, no. Shuttle has killed a smaller percentage of it's passengers and crew that Soyuz. In addition, no matter how you count it (total bodies carried, or total individuals carried) Shuttle has transported either three times as many, or four times as many, people to orbit as Soyuz.
Again, I'm not married to the Soyuz. It's just the closest competitor for manned space flight the shuttle has today. We could ressurrect the apollo program. I'd like to see a US design based on the Soyuz. Get creative.
I'd just like to get away from the space bus vehicle we have now and go to dedicated systems. People are lifted in systems designed for people. Cargo is pre-launched via cargo rocket.
As part of looking at economical ways to have a space program - I look at various means of doing business. Doing without the space shuttle requires a large number of changes - thus it becomes a plan.
Sure, there's not much connection today between reality and my ideas(which have been proposed by many others). Oh well. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.
You still need a vehicle to boost the sattelite into orbit - which is what I was talking about.
You'd still be launching them about as frequently as we do the shuttle, so I don't see how that'd be a problem. Bonus - with the money saved by not bothering with the shuttle, we could send up even more launches.
So what happens when the lattice superstructure needs to be replaced? The cables, ducting, etc... that it will have to carry to support the ability to remove pieces in the middle will themselves wear out over time.
I figured the connections would all be in the modules, located around the airlock ends. Still, keep the lattice simple enough it won't wear out before it's time to replace the whole structure - after all, it's not that difficult to build a plug that can be used thousands of times, if not more.
Or you design a redundant lattice - you have A&B side lattices, and you just replace them one at a time.
That seems true - until you actually cost out the flights. The small (people carrying) rockets are expensive because they flight often. The large (cargo/station module carrying) rockets are very, very, very expensive because they fly so rarely. The Shuttle, by combining both roles, is a very expensive middle path.
Under my plan, both would fly frequently enough to drop costs a bit. You'd be launching 'big boosters' quite frequently, so the costs for them would drop as well.
Using existing vehicles, other than the Shuttle, to build an ISS equivalent - you save about 10%-15% on paper. In reality it comes up a wash, or even somewhat more expensive, when you consider all the extra weight and costs that the modules/parts will now need because they must support and navigate themselves rather than relying on the Shuttle to do it for them.
The shuttle is too big and heavy to be an economical tug. Launch station modules into an orbit, then send a space tug out to go get them and haul them back to the station. That way the space tug can be optimized for space - it doesn't have to worry about surviving reentry.
(And that extra weight causes problems down the road - as it means extra fuel is needed for reboost, though reboosts are needed slightly less often due to the increased density of the station.)
You could always make the thrusters reusable or removable.
Which means a vehicle which flys very rarely indeed - which means a vehicle that is incredibly expensive, a vehicle that makes Shuttle look like a Yugo. Worse yet, a vehicle that flys rarely is less reliable because the skills of the assembly and launch crews atrophy between launches, and fewer launches mean fewer chances to debug the vehicle.
It's not a vehicle. It's like a manufactured home - it's only designed to be moved once, and it doesn't move itself - it's moved by a truck, not much different than any other oversized cargo, such as wind turbine blades.
You discover a problem with the design - you fix it in the next version of the module, or have them perform the retrofit while on station if it's critical.
Meanwhile it's launched as cargo, so it's no different than sending up a rocket of supplies to the station. Lots of experience there.
The trick to making spaceflight cheap is to make a versatile and reuseable design with minimal man-hours of maintenance between flights - and then fly the living hell out of it to amortize your fixed costs across as many flights as possible. (In other words, exactly the same methods used by every other form of transportation.)
What do you think I'm proposing? Well, except that with space design so far it's actually cheaper to build disposable than reusable. My philosophy is that launching stuff to space is generally so expensive and stressful that saving 50% of the weight by making it disposable is cheaper than refurbishing something for relaunch. If you're going to be using it for a while, launch it and leave it up there. Though now that I think about it, there's no reason we couldn't make the capsule reusable. Recharge it, check it out, spray a new ablative coating on the bottom, reload it onto a rocket. $10 million saved.
Meanwhile, you're frequently launching people to the space station to do work, launching supplies to said staion, launching modules and satellites for the station to install, etc...
Heck, now that I think about it, launch satellites with a hard point - have a robotic tug that has solar panels and some powerful ion engines. It latches onto the hard point, uses it's expensive but highly efficient engines(can be fairly heavy as well, as it only has to be launched once) to move the satellite to the correct final orbit, which it then releases and moves on to the next one. Can even be used to boost satellites's orbits to conserve the sat's fuel. Or have the tug be capable of orbital refueling through the hard point.
That's a great idea. Until you have to replace a module in
Why? If you can't trust a rocket with billion dollar one-of-a-kind payloads, why should you trust it with people? Conversely, if you can't trust a rocket with people - why would you trust it with billion dollar one-of-a-kind payloads?
Suitability for purpose. Cargo rocket, capsule for people. You can put the capsule on the same rocket you launch cargo with if it's reliable enough.
People take a lot of support equipment to exist up in space. A satellite shouldn't need any of that, so you simply shield it so it's safe during launch.
Think of it as the difference between a personnel car vs a cargo car on a train. The personnel car is going to have much more ventilation, heating, cooling, bathrooms, etc... Unless the cargo car is for something special, it's not going to have any of that.
It also means you triple the launch risk[1], since you are now launching three vehicles rather than one. You also double the re-entry risk[2], since you are now landing two space craft rather than one.
Statistically it's a wash though, as you're also less likely to loose the whole crew. The shuttle is currently sitting at ~2% chance of complete loss per mission. Soyuz capsules are doing better than that.
Then there is the problem of Soyuz's severely limited on-orbit duration, something a little over 100 odd hours (compared to 400 odd for Shuttle) - as Soyuz is a highly specialized space station taxi.
I'm argueing that a taxi is exactly what we need though.
you'll need to either modify the Soyuz or buy an additional launch (and module) for each and every non-station mission you use it for. (And niether will be cheap - either will wipe out your 'savings' and more.
Actually, in another post I suggested designing and deploying a space-only servicer, launched from a space station. The ISS isn't in a very good orbit for it, but it can be done. Supplies come up via the cheap cargo booster.
But there is no single vehicle capable of duplicating the capabilities of the Shuttle - at any price. And, as demonstrated above, you'll be hard pressed to do it cheaper with any existing vehicles.
Very true. What I'm arguing is that a fleet of dedicated vehicles can duplicate what the shuttle can do - ultimately cheaper and faster. I'm replacing an enourmous bus SUV with a couple of geo metros and a panel van.
I cannot claim that Shuttle is without problems - but your analysis of replacing the Shuttle with Soyuz fails when you actually compare capabilities directly rather than simplistically and naively compating raw costs.
And you seem to keep ignoring that I'm not proposing replacing the shuttle with just Soyuz - I'm including dedicated cargo lifters in there and extensive use of a space station.
You can't compare apples to oranges on price alone.
It's not such a comparison though. How many satellites other than Hubble has the shuttle serviced? Most of it's missions today are servicing the ISS.
The shuttle can carry X people, Y pounds into orbit for Z amount of time.
A couple soyuzs can carry X people, a cargo rocket makes the difference up for Y, and the ISS or any replacement handily beats Z.
Soyuz (the capsule), if you will recall, has had not one but _two_ fatal re-entry accidents.
Hmm... Two fatal accidents for soyuz, both occuring 30 years ago, whereas our accidents occured in the last two decades. In addition, if you look at the people launched and the fatality rate, the Soyuz has a slightly better safety record than the Shuttle.
I'm not talking about using the Soyuz platform exclusively. And updated, larger, more capable, and reliable capsule is desireable.
Great, it's a reusable space station. The point that I'd make is that it shouldn't be. For the cost of what we do with it, we could have an even larger permanent space station, just use smaller capsules(and large cargo rockets) to get there.
Design a space station that only has to survive being lifted once, and doesn't have to come down intact. Heck, make it modular - remove pieces as they wear out and let them drop back if you want to.
For satellite repair design a space tug that can go out with some astronauts and the robotic arm to conduct repairs on satellites. It should be almost an order of magnitude lighter than the shuttle, so it shouldn't take much fuel. For longer repairs, consider hauling the satellite back to the station. Heck, have a bigalow structure you can haul larger cargo into and pressurize if you want.
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I don't think that we treat them like scum; it's just that we have teenagers getting pregnant before they're fully grown.
Even then, they generally don't have major issues.
A major reason would actually be the opposite. We have a huge portion of the female population that waits. The chances of a 16 year old having complications with pregancy is orders of magnitude less than a 40 year old trying. Even a 30 year old with her first birth is much more at risk.
We also try a lot harder - we have one of the lower stillborn rates(baby born dead).
I suppose in that ideal world you mention the speed of light is infinite.
Just because I said 'eventually' and not 'a bloody long time'? There'll always be imbalances. Politics, natural disasters, etc...
So convergence takes a long while to happen, and I use "long while" rather loosely.
I should hope so, I don't see Africa or much of the middle east being dragged up in the next 500 years. Too much internal struggles to make it profitable. Still, there isn't enough population in those areas to have the effects than industrializing and modernizing China and India are having. Especially if China and India are up there to provide even more buffer population.
Still, there are signs that it's already happening in India - There's been so much outsourcing to there that the available labor pool has become constricted, and the extra money/resources has allowed the people in India to purchase more in the way of local resources - making them a bit more expensive, but also increasing supply, resulting in more service workers, tightening the labor market more.
Outsourcing involves quite a bit of risk, as well as startup and building times. So there's quite a bit of inertia.
My point is that due to globalization - US & European countries have a downward pressure on salaries while there's an upward pressure in developing nations such as China and India. There workers in 'insourced' work often receive multiples of what they'd otherwise earn - Of course subsidence farmers don't make much. So you get situations where workers might make $5/day rather than $1/day. Thing is, they then use that $4/day extra to purchase stuff - resulting in secondary effects, making the region more prosperous all round.
The problem tends to be the very basics, which most people from my graduating college class had in 1999.
It sounds like you're in a hiring position. Does your business sponsor/support the local schools? It sounds like your business might benefit long term by lobbying/sponsoring the local schools to get them back to teaching the basics you see lacking instead of things like klingon language courses.
Many of the applicants seem to be unable to show much curiosity in an interview, and state that their goal is to be running the department in a matter of 3 or 4 years.
You should of course hire the best you can get - as for running the department, tell them they'd have to prove that they're the best available - IE they'll have to be hot stuff to meet that goal; they'll have to earn it.
When it's hard to find talent for entry level positions, I can't imagine what it can be to have to replace someone with 10 years of experience. 5 people out of school and prayer?
Ideally you'd do it much like the military does. They still think in terms of careers and progression. IE they KNOW they're going to loose that guy with 10 yrs of experience sometime(though 20 is the standard). So they try to avoid having anything dependant upon one person. Indeed, they have a career progression track*. People come in, bottom of the pack, moving up through the years by talent, drive, and sheer inertia. The 20 year senior enlisted retires - they promote somebody a step to replace him.
So in your 10 years of experience case - there should be a guy with 8 to take over, somebody with 6 to replace the guy, 4,2, and you hire somebody new out of college.
Does it still hurt? Yes - but it's planned for.
*I'm thinking enlisted
Given that there is a finite amount of money in the world at any given time,
Not really. We start looking at deflation the feds can always print more. It's mostly bits anymore anyways. The amount that the stock market as a whole is 'worth' fluctuates wildly, though goes up over time.
I'd wager it is far more likely that everyone (except the executives, of course) ends up poor.
Take some economics classes - while there are going to be people rich even beyond Gates and the Oil Sheiks, the way everyone will end up 'poor' will be a vast change in the definition of 'poor'. Much like how if you look at who's poor today, look at their lifestyle, then move back 50 years and realize they're living better than the middle class.
Corporations hoard money. That is basically their goal. They aren't outsourcing to "share the wealth". Outsourcing allows a corporation to reduce the rate at which labor costs "bleed" money back into the economy.
Corporations can't hoard money. Their goal is to make money. Yes, they outsource to reduce costs, increasing their competitiveness.
My point is that they end up vitalizing a new economy in the area they outsource too.
Consider: If a corporation can get workers in country A to work for half what workers in country B cost, they can use that to negotiate lower wages/benefits in country B as well. (The implied threat being work for less, or don't work at all.)
Ah, a nugget of truth. Yes, the USA is experiencing a bit of this right now. However, we're merely stagnant in wages whereas wages in Asia are rising. It's going to be a while yet; they still have a lot of subsidence farmers.
Like I said, they rightly got slapped for false advertising.
I was just pointing out that having caps and limitations make a certain amount of sense for the service; Cell bandwidth isn't as unlimited as landlines can be. I mean, it's even more of a hub type system than cable, with a much lower overall bandwidth capability.
Ideally, all the labor would eventually be used up in Thailand, and competition will start driving wages up, resulting in it not being so profitable to outsource there.
Preferably the employees in countries losing jobs to outsourcing find alternate work, if for less money.
Then, when everybody has more or less first world purchasing power, and it's not generally worth it to outsource stuff except for regional produce like coffee, we enter utopia*.
*Well, not quite, but we'd be able to afford all the oil alternatives.
Also, the distributor's costs in another country may be lower (lower wages for the wage slaves, etc.) so the distributor may mark the wholesale price up less.
This probably has quite a bit to do with why items tend to be sold in Britain for the same number of pounds as what they want in dollars in the USA.
From everything I've heard, Britain tends to be a bureaucratic nightmare, with extra helpings of taxes. So expenses for selling something in Britain is higher all round.
Bingo - How do you think that people get experience? The WoW fairy?
Eventually wages will rise to the point that american businesses realize something they should of been thinking about years ago - You need people of all skill levels. Apprentices are necessary.
Heck, I was shocked to see that the USAF is finally acknowledging that - they would ramp up tech school training, give huge bonuses to keep people in(and get them in), then proceed to force people out when they went over their requirements. Result: Fields were unbalanced, with either too many higher ups or too many juniors. Now they're finally accepting that while things might be a little more 'unbalanced' in the short term, plotting further into the future is a good thing. Because then they can adjust course with a tap instead of a sledge.
Businesses need to realize this as well - while you might loose 80% of your apprentices to other jobs, you should keep at least some of them. Provide the right benefits and treat them right, and you might keep over half of those you want - making the program worth it as you collect talent from the beginning.
Which is the reason I worded it the way I did - I'd much rather have a cell phone that can only be used for 911 for a week than a $300 bill.
.20/minute, it takes less than an hour over to make the more expensive plan worth it.
If nothing else, I can change my plan to one with more minutes for ~$10. At
The only one that died was one I dropped from 300 feet up while rock climbing.
I'm surprised you found it at all.
I wonder if the only reason you couldn't access it was because the interface was damaged - IE you fix the USB port and it'd work again.
Stuff as small as thumb drives tend to have a pretty low terminal velocity - 20 ft and 300 ft end up being pretty much the same.
Even better - don't cut them off completely, just turn their data access off until the beginning of the next billing period. If they wish, move them up to a higher plan.(10GB for 50-75% more, for example).
Ahem:
What they rightly got slapped for is false advertising
Again:
Heck, draconian firewalls and QOS settings wouldn't meet my 'unlimited' standard.
So, you post saying you disagree with me while making statements that agree with what I said. You might want to read posts a bit more carefully.
I'm looking for a new cell phone company. Is there one out there that is reletively sleaze-free? I was happy with Cingular for years, never went over my minutes (always had rollover minutes) and the bill was always the same, under $50. Then AT&T bought them out, and all of a sudden I got hit with a $150 bill. I didn't pay it. The next month they tacked on another $450 on top of the $150, and shut off my service. After shutting off my service, they tacked ANOTHER $150 for the month I was without service, including taxes on the service they never provided.
Did you protest the bills, preferably by certified mail?
There are numerous ways to fight this stuff - to include small claims court.
Businesses are not allowed to change the terms of the contract without notifying you and giving you the chance to decline - though this generally means 'your service ends at the end of this billing period'.
On the other hand, there is some assumption that you have to be pro-active before going to the court system. You need to be able to show that you attempted to work with them.
Not to detract from your statement, but that's fairly unlikely
20 songs a day, assuming five minutes per song, is 1 hour 40 minutes. Not undoable.
However, assuming $3/song, is $1.8k, which is quite a lot of money.
Now, if it's a service where you can redownload previously purchased music, now you have a point.
Customer X, for whatever reason, has over 2k songs in his account. He lost his computer, replaced it, so he's redownloading his music. There goes that 5gig limit.
Although you'd run into their 'not to replace a dedicated data line' rule.
Is it necessarily right or good to allow unlimited usage of a limited resource(cell spectrum bandwidth)?
Somebody using more than 5 GB is at the high end of the curve, likely costing verizon more than what they're paying; increasing costs for other users of the service.
Yes, a business has a right to at least attempt to make a profit. They shouldn't be required to sell money-losing products.
What they rightly got slapped for is false advertising - A service with a 5GB cap isn't 'unlimited' by any standard definition. Heck, draconian firewalls and QOS settings wouldn't meet my 'unlimited' standard. I'll bend enough to say that it's reasonable to bill a service as unlimited and still restrict illegal activities and have restrictions to prevent the spread of viruses/worms/spam.
Given how much longer vehicles can last today, I don't see that as a bad option - the rich buy a new expensive vehicle every ~3 years, the middle class buy them and drive them for the next 5(or purchase a more reasonable new vehicle, and keep it for ~5 years).
Then the poor get the decade old vehicle at a very reasonable price.
As for the second, that's only because people are unwilling to move further than Eagle's Creek, Deer Run, Craggy Highlands, or any number of other 2nd rate housing developments in the suburbs. I think you'll find that there are quite a few places in the US that offer the white picket fence at a reasonable price. And considering the ability to telecommute for those of us in the IT business, the only real reason to stay where the prices are high is vanity and the desire to live there.
Besides work, there's also the concern of services. Living in a small town(1 bar/restraunt, no gas station), I batch my trips to somewhere larger for shopping. For example, there's no good chinese restraunt in at least four hours drive. Schools are pretty good, but a good distance away. Going to the store is a fairly major expidition, not something jumping on a bicycle for something forgotten for dinner is an option(did that as a kid quite a bit, two grocery stores within 3 miles).
On the other hand, my house cost less than half a year's income for me, and it's quiet with no crime.
Life is tradeoffs.
Picket fence living is not ideal for everyone - some prefer not having to worry about a yard, like not having to drive to eat out, etc...
It could very easily be 'all of the above'. Leaded gasoline pushed many 'over the edge'. The advent of video games provided a new, safe, outlet for violence(or at least made people out of shape enough that they don't bother). Abortion eliminated many of the most at risk before birth.
.1% increase in something can be tracked.
When dealing with an entire society - even a
The chances of losing a whole mission/crew are irrelevant when you've significantly increased the chances of a partial loss. (And significantly increased the chance of killing some of the crew, from 2% to 4%.)
Depends on the failure mode. RAID 0 array, yes, this would be bad. Raid 5 array, this would be good. Can at least some of the mission go on with the surviving astronaughts?
Besides, did I or did I not propose developing a better equivalent of the soyuz?
The Soyuz is currently sitting at about 2% chance of a complete loss per mission - how, precisely, is that better than the Shuttle? Especially considering the history of the Soyuz. Hell, it had a serious failure yesterday - the second in just ten missions!
Serious failure; not 'complete loss of craft to include all passangers'.
It doesn't matter which orbit you put your station into - 90-99% of satellites are going to be inaccessible from it without a large (and heavy and complex) OTV and tens of tons (if not hundreds of tons) of fuel. Period.
Time; solar panels; ion engines; light craft. Once you're off the ground you can afford to be creative with your thrusting. You're not restricted to chemical engines.
And I pointed out the problems with your fleet of cargo lifters and the use of a space station. Your proposal fails because you keep compating costs and ignoring capabilities.
As far as I'm concerned, you keep ignoring me when I address capabilities. I compare costs for comparable capabilities. Sure, I use more vehicles to do that - but you can save a lot of mass by using special use vehicles, and that's the most expensive thing in space.
It doesn't matter how long ago the accidents occurred - they still count in the statistics. (Especially considering the ongoing issues with Soyuz, issues you chose to ignore.)
I'm just pointing out the death rate. And yes, it does matter 'how long ago' the accidents occured - If you don't, it can become like saying cars are unsafe today by looking at Model T deaths; the state of art has progressed since then.
You don't forget about them, but it'd be perfectly valid to place a factor in the statistics that emphasises recent occurances.
Actually, no. Shuttle has killed a smaller percentage of it's passengers and crew that Soyuz. In addition, no matter how you count it (total bodies carried, or total individuals carried) Shuttle has transported either three times as many, or four times as many, people to orbit as Soyuz.
Again, I'm not married to the Soyuz. It's just the closest competitor for manned space flight the shuttle has today. We could ressurrect the apollo program. I'd like to see a US design based on the Soyuz. Get creative.
I'd just like to get away from the space bus vehicle we have now and go to dedicated systems. People are lifted in systems designed for people. Cargo is pre-launched via cargo rocket.
And I'm talking about better ways to do business.
As part of looking at economical ways to have a space program - I look at various means of doing business. Doing without the space shuttle requires a large number of changes - thus it becomes a plan.
Sure, there's not much connection today between reality and my ideas(which have been proposed by many others). Oh well. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.
You still need a vehicle to boost the sattelite into orbit - which is what I was talking about.
You'd still be launching them about as frequently as we do the shuttle, so I don't see how that'd be a problem. Bonus - with the money saved by not bothering with the shuttle, we could send up even more launches.
So what happens when the lattice superstructure needs to be replaced? The cables, ducting, etc... that it will have to carry to support the ability to remove pieces in the middle will themselves wear out over time.
I figured the connections would all be in the modules, located around the airlock ends. Still, keep the lattice simple enough it won't wear out before it's time to replace the whole structure - after all, it's not that difficult to build a plug that can be used thousands of times, if not more.
Or you design a redundant lattice - you have A&B side lattices, and you just replace them one at a time.
That seems true - until you actually cost out the flights. The small (people carrying) rockets are expensive because they flight often. The large (cargo/station module carrying) rockets are very, very, very expensive because they fly so rarely. The Shuttle, by combining both roles, is a very expensive middle path.
Under my plan, both would fly frequently enough to drop costs a bit. You'd be launching 'big boosters' quite frequently, so the costs for them would drop as well.
Using existing vehicles, other than the Shuttle, to build an ISS equivalent - you save about 10%-15% on paper. In reality it comes up a wash, or even somewhat more expensive, when you consider all the extra weight and costs that the modules/parts will now need because they must support and navigate themselves rather than relying on the Shuttle to do it for them.
The shuttle is too big and heavy to be an economical tug. Launch station modules into an orbit, then send a space tug out to go get them and haul them back to the station. That way the space tug can be optimized for space - it doesn't have to worry about surviving reentry.
(And that extra weight causes problems down the road - as it means extra fuel is needed for reboost, though reboosts are needed slightly less often due to the increased density of the station.)
You could always make the thrusters reusable or removable.
Which means a vehicle which flys very rarely indeed - which means a vehicle that is incredibly expensive, a vehicle that makes Shuttle look like a Yugo. Worse yet, a vehicle that flys rarely is less reliable because the skills of the assembly and launch crews atrophy between launches, and fewer launches mean fewer chances to debug the vehicle.
It's not a vehicle. It's like a manufactured home - it's only designed to be moved once, and it doesn't move itself - it's moved by a truck, not much different than any other oversized cargo, such as wind turbine blades.
You discover a problem with the design - you fix it in the next version of the module, or have them perform the retrofit while on station if it's critical.
Meanwhile it's launched as cargo, so it's no different than sending up a rocket of supplies to the station. Lots of experience there.
The trick to making spaceflight cheap is to make a versatile and reuseable design with minimal man-hours of maintenance between flights - and then fly the living hell out of it to amortize your fixed costs across as many flights as possible. (In other words, exactly the same methods used by every other form of transportation.)
What do you think I'm proposing? Well, except that with space design so far it's actually cheaper to build disposable than reusable. My philosophy is that launching stuff to space is generally so expensive and stressful that saving 50% of the weight by making it disposable is cheaper than refurbishing something for relaunch. If you're going to be using it for a while, launch it and leave it up there. Though now that I think about it, there's no reason we couldn't make the capsule reusable. Recharge it, check it out, spray a new ablative coating on the bottom, reload it onto a rocket. $10 million saved.
Meanwhile, you're frequently launching people to the space station to do work, launching supplies to said staion, launching modules and satellites for the station to install, etc...
Heck, now that I think about it, launch satellites with a hard point - have a robotic tug that has solar panels and some powerful ion engines. It latches onto the hard point, uses it's expensive but highly efficient engines(can be fairly heavy as well, as it only has to be launched once) to move the satellite to the correct final orbit, which it then releases and moves on to the next one. Can even be used to boost satellites's orbits to conserve the sat's fuel. Or have the tug be capable of orbital refueling through the hard point.
That's a great idea. Until you have to replace a module in
Why? If you can't trust a rocket with billion dollar one-of-a-kind payloads, why should you trust it with people? Conversely, if you can't trust a rocket with people - why would you trust it with billion dollar one-of-a-kind payloads?
Suitability for purpose. Cargo rocket, capsule for people. You can put the capsule on the same rocket you launch cargo with if it's reliable enough.
People take a lot of support equipment to exist up in space. A satellite shouldn't need any of that, so you simply shield it so it's safe during launch.
Think of it as the difference between a personnel car vs a cargo car on a train. The personnel car is going to have much more ventilation, heating, cooling, bathrooms, etc... Unless the cargo car is for something special, it's not going to have any of that.
It also means you triple the launch risk[1], since you are now launching three vehicles rather than one. You also double the re-entry risk[2], since you are now landing two space craft rather than one.
Statistically it's a wash though, as you're also less likely to loose the whole crew. The shuttle is currently sitting at ~2% chance of complete loss per mission. Soyuz capsules are doing better than that.
Then there is the problem of Soyuz's severely limited on-orbit duration, something a little over 100 odd hours (compared to 400 odd for Shuttle) - as Soyuz is a highly specialized space station taxi.
I'm argueing that a taxi is exactly what we need though.
you'll need to either modify the Soyuz or buy an additional launch (and module) for each and every non-station mission you use it for. (And niether will be cheap - either will wipe out your 'savings' and more.
Actually, in another post I suggested designing and deploying a space-only servicer, launched from a space station. The ISS isn't in a very good orbit for it, but it can be done. Supplies come up via the cheap cargo booster.
But there is no single vehicle capable of duplicating the capabilities of the Shuttle - at any price. And, as demonstrated above, you'll be hard pressed to do it cheaper with any existing vehicles.
Very true. What I'm arguing is that a fleet of dedicated vehicles can duplicate what the shuttle can do - ultimately cheaper and faster. I'm replacing an enourmous bus SUV with a couple of geo metros and a panel van.
I cannot claim that Shuttle is without problems - but your analysis of replacing the Shuttle with Soyuz fails when you actually compare capabilities directly rather than simplistically and naively compating raw costs.
And you seem to keep ignoring that I'm not proposing replacing the shuttle with just Soyuz - I'm including dedicated cargo lifters in there and extensive use of a space station.
You can't compare apples to oranges on price alone.
It's not such a comparison though. How many satellites other than Hubble has the shuttle serviced? Most of it's missions today are servicing the ISS.
The shuttle can carry X people, Y pounds into orbit for Z amount of time.
A couple soyuzs can carry X people, a cargo rocket makes the difference up for Y, and the ISS or any replacement handily beats Z.
Soyuz (the capsule), if you will recall, has had not one but _two_ fatal re-entry accidents.
Hmm... Two fatal accidents for soyuz, both occuring 30 years ago, whereas our accidents occured in the last two decades.
In addition, if you look at the people launched and the fatality rate, the Soyuz has a slightly better safety record than the Shuttle.
I'm not talking about using the Soyuz platform exclusively. And updated, larger, more capable, and reliable capsule is desireable.
Great, it's a reusable space station. The point that I'd make is that it shouldn't be. For the cost of what we do with it, we could have an even larger permanent space station, just use smaller capsules(and large cargo rockets) to get there.
Design a space station that only has to survive being lifted once, and doesn't have to come down intact. Heck, make it modular - remove pieces as they wear out and let them drop back if you want to.
For satellite repair design a space tug that can go out with some astronauts and the robotic arm to conduct repairs on satellites. It should be almost an order of magnitude lighter than the shuttle, so it shouldn't take much fuel. For longer repairs, consider hauling the satellite back to the station. Heck, have a bigalow structure you can haul larger cargo into and pressurize if you want.