I find it quite amusing that one of the factions pushing for a la cart is the 'pro-family' social conservative lobby - they are opposed to bundling because it forces people to pay for content they may find morally objectionable*. Yet if they actually got their way, the first channels to collapse would be the religious ones.
* These are social conservatives, so they have a very low bar for 'objectionable.'
Yes. The longest wooden ship built was the Wyoming - the culmination of millenia of progressive development in wooden shipbuilding technology. 150m long. This is actually about the same as the claimed length of the ark*, 168m.
The Wyoming leaked like a sieve due to the continuous warping of the hull. The only thing stopping it from sinking even in calm seas was the operation of pumps to get water out of the ship as quickly as it got in. In heavy sees this proved insufficient when the waves picked up: The ship sank due to this extreme leakage.
It would be possible to make a ship that long out of wood - but only with the aid of modern design techniques and mechanical pumps. With a crew of six, it would also need a power source capable of operating those pumps like an engine - the Wyoming managed with a little steam engine. The claimed Ark was also considerably wider, which would mean a higher area for leakage to occur and less effective cross bracing to prevent warping - and thus even more leakage.
Oh, and the Wyoming used pitch. Shipbuilders by the 1900's knew a great deal about the use of pitch, as well as advanced woodworking and construction techniques far beyond anything that could have been known to a prehistoric society.
Anyone with access to the type of technology needed to make a ship that size out of wood would be able to make it better out of steel - this is why we don't build many wooden ships today. The only way that Ark could be capable of sustained floating would be if God zapped down a a 1900's guide to architectural shipbuilding and a diesel-powered pump.
The YEC explanation hinges on a single word: Genesis does specify which type of wood the ark was made from, but it's a lost word. Hebrew was a dead language for a long time - some words have been long lost. It was probably just the name for a local tree, but the untranslatability adds a touch of mystery and leads creationists to speculate that there must have been a super-tree existing before the flood with wood of such fantastic strength and stiffness as to make such a construction possible - which conveniently went extinct, thus destroying all evidence that could prove their claim.
*It's strange how the bible gives what seem like trivial details sometimes, while neglecting what should be key. It devotes words to the dimensions of the ark, yet doesn't actually say why God decided to flood the world.
You're right on that front - that's why the attraction gets a tax rebate. The state is just supporting businesses that draw in tourists (Expecting the direct loss of tax income to be counteracted by the boost to local businesses as tourists use hotels, shops, car rental, other attactions, etc.) The secular campaigners may be annoyed at the tax benefit going to a religious attraction, but I've not seen any argue that it's actually unconstitutional. The issue here is that Ham wishes to have it both ways: To run a for-profit, commercial entity as a tourist attraction, but at the same time to claim said attraction is exempt from non-discrimination laws because they have a religious objection to them.
He is far from the only case of such a thing. A good example would be Medi-Share. They are not a health insurance company. They simple accept from their members a monthly 'donation' or 'contribution' in return for a promise to cover medical expenses in the case of illness. This may sound a lot like a health insurance company, but they insist they are really a church carrying out a charitable mission, and as such are exempt not just from taxation but all other regulations that apply to health insurance companies like requiring legally-binding contracts, manditory areas of coverage, non-discrimination and so forth. This allows them to offer their not-insurance very cheaply (Though there are plenty of horror stories of people who fell ill only to be declared 'nonbelievers' and ineligable for financial support) - and yet, burried deep in the recent healthcare reform act is a clause that specifically states that medi-share and the like, while certainly not health insurance providers, are considered one for the purpose of the universal coverage mandate.
This is known as 'having your cake and eating it.' Organisations that flicker back and forth between commercial venture, charity and church according to legal convenience and expedience.
Creationism has a powerful advantage. The narrative is far more emotionally appealing. Humans are special, the whole universe exists for them, God is watching over everything in his love, there is justice in the universe and an order to it. A battle of Good vs Evil to fight. It's an attractive view of the world, and facts alone are hard-pressed to counteract that.
But when your state passes a law criminalising your church and making it a crime to criticise the governor, don't go crying 'first amendment' to anyone. You just declared that only applies to congress.
If I were a slimy creationist in Ham's position, I'd be looking into a split corporate structure. Ark Experience Ltd owns the attraction, foots the bills for construction, gets the tax status and generally does all the heavy lifting with their management staff of about three people, abiding entirely by the non-discrimination requirement for tax rebate. They then contract the staffing to a seperate company, say Staff4Jesus, who then hire the staff and actually run the day-to-day operations. Staff4Jesus doesn't get any favorable tax status, and so isn't bound by the non-discrimination policy and can have an explicit religious test for applicants, and can also claim honestly to be a religious non-profit (As Ark Experience gets all the profits) and thus have a good chance of arguing that they should be exempt from any non-discrimination law anyway as churches generally are.
The bible doesn't say how long it took, and does describe Noah's family being involved too. It doesn't rule out the possibility that Noah was loaded and hired hundreds of workers to help out. It wouldn't matter though, as a wooden ship that size is structurally impossible.
I'm sure lots of people would want to. Few of them could afford it. You need people able and willing to throw a few million dollars away on a recreational experience - the number of people who fit those criteria is rather small.
Some estimates I've seen put the minimum cost at a quarter-million, but that's just for a brief suborbital flight in a single craft - no orbital hotels or zero-gravity baseball.
The problem appears to be a lack of profitability. There's just nothing to do for money in space beyond geostationary orbit. It's just a big empty nothing, in the most literal way possible. The only resource to be had is energy, which is cheaper to make down on earth. There are potentially valuable rocks far away, but no economically-viable means of getting at them. The ISS is doing some useful research, but it's not there to run a profit. The only reason any private enterprise would want to go into space is to run a satelite or because someone in government is footing the bill for science or military purposes.
Suborbital transport would be nice, but you're looking at a very limited market - the only advantage over first-class flights on a conventional aircraft is trip time, and who has enough money to pay that much extra to save a few hours? If that business model was viable, Concorde would have been updated and continued.
We do seem to have reached the point where computers no longer become obsolete. I remember back at the turn of the millenium - you'd buy the best computer around, and barely had time to get it out the box before a new one came along with a faster processor and twice the memory. These days most people can quite happily get along with an eight-year-old C2D, and the leading cause of replacement is hardware failure. Even on laptops - the keyboards start to fall apart before the processor speed becomes an issue.
Celerons still take thirty seconds to process a mouseclick though. That hasn''t changed.
The iPad isn't used for number-crunching. It's not a high-end gaming platform - it certainly has a lot of games, but few of them are graphically demanding. It's used for a little light content creation, but nothing more than timeline video editing - not real time effects composition or rendering. Mostly it's used for document viewing and web browsing. So long as it's got enough power to comfortably decode video (And it has hardware h264 acceleration anyway), why would you need to worry about just how much?
I think that's the idea. Microsoft has no desire to be a hardware manufacturer. The surface is a market-starter and technology-demonstrater - the plan is that Microsoft will invest the money and take the risk to open the new market for Windows tablets, but the real aim is in the classic business model of providing the software and services for hardware someone else builds.
It's called a natural monopoly. It occurs when the capital cost of entering a market is so high as to render doing to prohibitive for all but the first entry.
Verizon or another of the major ISPs comes first. That means they pay for laying cables, renting mast space, installing equipment and lobbying local government for the appropriate rights. It costs them a fortune, but they can be assured of a return because they'll have 100% of the market - there's no other option for potential customers.
When another ISP comes along, they'd have to pay just as much for cables, equipment and such - but they wouldn't get 100% of the market. They'd have to poach customers from an existing provider, which is a great deal harder than getting unaffiliated customers. There's no realistic way they would turn a profit as a second-comer, so they stay out of that area.
The US military currently has too many and too few recruits. Lots of people want in, because when the economy tanks the military is one of the few options left. But most of them fail the entry qualifications, so the number of qualifying recruits is still too low.
Every three weeks I buy a train ticket so I can go and walk around London with a bunch of prats in costumes. There are two options for my journey: I can buy a one-way ticket there for Saturday, and a one-way ticket back for Sunday, or I can buy a 'weekender' return ticket that spans both days. The weekender is substantially cheaper.
The weekender is also available only from the manner ticket desk. You can't get them from the automated dispenser. That means a longer queue, and the inconvenience of dealing with the ticket desk which takes longer than the machine does. There's no technical reason for this, it'd be a simple configuration task - but someone is thinking in business terms. They've made it possible for those who are willing to spare the time - ie, those on a tight budget - to get the cheaper ticket. While those who don't have to worry about their spending will take the quick, less economical route and use the machine.
You overlook two factors: 1. The higher skilled workers will also see their pay fall, as the excess labor pool in general grows. You end up with that most dreaded of situations: Skilled graduates on minimum wage. 2. If there aren't enough jobs to go around, it's not just those lacking motivation that end up unemployed. Employers get to be really picky, and make whatever demands they want. Are you willing to be on call 24/7 in case of a sudden surge in demand? Accept a zero-hours contract? Stay quiet when you are given twelve-hour shifts and accept the manager's hints not to take any breaks? Take the hint and purchase your own stationary to save the company money? Then you are not dedicated enough, you're fired. When there are a hundred applicants eager for a shot at your job, management doesn't have to worry about driving their staff away or burning them out through overwork.
I thought that might be the case. The article doesn't make it clear - it says there is space for six, but not if all six are required. It's the name again - tanks aren't usually considered as a means of transporting people around, but this isn't really a tank.
The article is so full of errors, I'm not even going to bother pointing them all out.
You can't fry a tank with a portable EMP system. The most you could do would be to jam the radio with an old-fashioned transmitter - certainly a concern, but not a new one,
Tracked vehicle, rotating turrent with big gun on it. It may not actually be a tank by the technical definition, but the mistake is understandable.
It looks from the pictures like the turret is optional.
I don't know why it has space for a crew of six. I'd have thought one of the big advantages of the digital control system would be allowing a reduction in crew size. Maybe they want it to double as a very-armored personel carrier?
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I find it quite amusing that one of the factions pushing for a la cart is the 'pro-family' social conservative lobby - they are opposed to bundling because it forces people to pay for content they may find morally objectionable*. Yet if they actually got their way, the first channels to collapse would be the religious ones.
* These are social conservatives, so they have a very low bar for 'objectionable.'
They are pro-campaign-contribution.
Yes. The longest wooden ship built was the Wyoming - the culmination of millenia of progressive development in wooden shipbuilding technology. 150m long. This is actually about the same as the claimed length of the ark*, 168m.
The Wyoming leaked like a sieve due to the continuous warping of the hull. The only thing stopping it from sinking even in calm seas was the operation of pumps to get water out of the ship as quickly as it got in. In heavy sees this proved insufficient when the waves picked up: The ship sank due to this extreme leakage.
It would be possible to make a ship that long out of wood - but only with the aid of modern design techniques and mechanical pumps. With a crew of six, it would also need a power source capable of operating those pumps like an engine - the Wyoming managed with a little steam engine. The claimed Ark was also considerably wider, which would mean a higher area for leakage to occur and less effective cross bracing to prevent warping - and thus even more leakage.
Oh, and the Wyoming used pitch. Shipbuilders by the 1900's knew a great deal about the use of pitch, as well as advanced woodworking and construction techniques far beyond anything that could have been known to a prehistoric society.
Anyone with access to the type of technology needed to make a ship that size out of wood would be able to make it better out of steel - this is why we don't build many wooden ships today. The only way that Ark could be capable of sustained floating would be if God zapped down a a 1900's guide to architectural shipbuilding and a diesel-powered pump.
The YEC explanation hinges on a single word: Genesis does specify which type of wood the ark was made from, but it's a lost word. Hebrew was a dead language for a long time - some words have been long lost. It was probably just the name for a local tree, but the untranslatability adds a touch of mystery and leads creationists to speculate that there must have been a super-tree existing before the flood with wood of such fantastic strength and stiffness as to make such a construction possible - which conveniently went extinct, thus destroying all evidence that could prove their claim.
*It's strange how the bible gives what seem like trivial details sometimes, while neglecting what should be key. It devotes words to the dimensions of the ark, yet doesn't actually say why God decided to flood the world.
You're right on that front - that's why the attraction gets a tax rebate. The state is just supporting businesses that draw in tourists (Expecting the direct loss of tax income to be counteracted by the boost to local businesses as tourists use hotels, shops, car rental, other attactions, etc.) The secular campaigners may be annoyed at the tax benefit going to a religious attraction, but I've not seen any argue that it's actually unconstitutional. The issue here is that Ham wishes to have it both ways: To run a for-profit, commercial entity as a tourist attraction, but at the same time to claim said attraction is exempt from non-discrimination laws because they have a religious objection to them.
He is far from the only case of such a thing. A good example would be Medi-Share. They are not a health insurance company. They simple accept from their members a monthly 'donation' or 'contribution' in return for a promise to cover medical expenses in the case of illness. This may sound a lot like a health insurance company, but they insist they are really a church carrying out a charitable mission, and as such are exempt not just from taxation but all other regulations that apply to health insurance companies like requiring legally-binding contracts, manditory areas of coverage, non-discrimination and so forth. This allows them to offer their not-insurance very cheaply (Though there are plenty of horror stories of people who fell ill only to be declared 'nonbelievers' and ineligable for financial support) - and yet, burried deep in the recent healthcare reform act is a clause that specifically states that medi-share and the like, while certainly not health insurance providers, are considered one for the purpose of the universal coverage mandate.
This is known as 'having your cake and eating it.' Organisations that flicker back and forth between commercial venture, charity and church according to legal convenience and expedience.
The standard YEC excuse is that trees were bigger and stronger back then. They must have been, otherwise the ark would have been impossible to build.
Creationism has a powerful advantage. The narrative is far more emotionally appealing. Humans are special, the whole universe exists for them, God is watching over everything in his love, there is justice in the universe and an order to it. A battle of Good vs Evil to fight. It's an attractive view of the world, and facts alone are hard-pressed to counteract that.
Sure, argue that line.
But when your state passes a law criminalising your church and making it a crime to criticise the governor, don't go crying 'first amendment' to anyone. You just declared that only applies to congress.
If I were a slimy creationist in Ham's position, I'd be looking into a split corporate structure. Ark Experience Ltd owns the attraction, foots the bills for construction, gets the tax status and generally does all the heavy lifting with their management staff of about three people, abiding entirely by the non-discrimination requirement for tax rebate. They then contract the staffing to a seperate company, say Staff4Jesus, who then hire the staff and actually run the day-to-day operations. Staff4Jesus doesn't get any favorable tax status, and so isn't bound by the non-discrimination policy and can have an explicit religious test for applicants, and can also claim honestly to be a religious non-profit (As Ark Experience gets all the profits) and thus have a good chance of arguing that they should be exempt from any non-discrimination law anyway as churches generally are.
The bible doesn't say how long it took, and does describe Noah's family being involved too. It doesn't rule out the possibility that Noah was loaded and hired hundreds of workers to help out. It wouldn't matter though, as a wooden ship that size is structurally impossible.
I'm sure lots of people would want to. Few of them could afford it. You need people able and willing to throw a few million dollars away on a recreational experience - the number of people who fit those criteria is rather small.
Some estimates I've seen put the minimum cost at a quarter-million, but that's just for a brief suborbital flight in a single craft - no orbital hotels or zero-gravity baseball.
Sounds like a good grounds to reconsider and reject them to me. Give them a refund and tell them to go book a venue elsewhere.
The problem appears to be a lack of profitability. There's just nothing to do for money in space beyond geostationary orbit. It's just a big empty nothing, in the most literal way possible. The only resource to be had is energy, which is cheaper to make down on earth. There are potentially valuable rocks far away, but no economically-viable means of getting at them. The ISS is doing some useful research, but it's not there to run a profit. The only reason any private enterprise would want to go into space is to run a satelite or because someone in government is footing the bill for science or military purposes.
Suborbital transport would be nice, but you're looking at a very limited market - the only advantage over first-class flights on a conventional aircraft is trip time, and who has enough money to pay that much extra to save a few hours? If that business model was viable, Concorde would have been updated and continued.
We do seem to have reached the point where computers no longer become obsolete. I remember back at the turn of the millenium - you'd buy the best computer around, and barely had time to get it out the box before a new one came along with a faster processor and twice the memory. These days most people can quite happily get along with an eight-year-old C2D, and the leading cause of replacement is hardware failure. Even on laptops - the keyboards start to fall apart before the processor speed becomes an issue.
Celerons still take thirty seconds to process a mouseclick though. That hasn''t changed.
The iPad isn't used for number-crunching. It's not a high-end gaming platform - it certainly has a lot of games, but few of them are graphically demanding. It's used for a little light content creation, but nothing more than timeline video editing - not real time effects composition or rendering. Mostly it's used for document viewing and web browsing. So long as it's got enough power to comfortably decode video (And it has hardware h264 acceleration anyway), why would you need to worry about just how much?
I think that's the idea. Microsoft has no desire to be a hardware manufacturer. The surface is a market-starter and technology-demonstrater - the plan is that Microsoft will invest the money and take the risk to open the new market for Windows tablets, but the real aim is in the classic business model of providing the software and services for hardware someone else builds.
It's called a natural monopoly. It occurs when the capital cost of entering a market is so high as to render doing to prohibitive for all but the first entry.
Verizon or another of the major ISPs comes first. That means they pay for laying cables, renting mast space, installing equipment and lobbying local government for the appropriate rights. It costs them a fortune, but they can be assured of a return because they'll have 100% of the market - there's no other option for potential customers.
When another ISP comes along, they'd have to pay just as much for cables, equipment and such - but they wouldn't get 100% of the market. They'd have to poach customers from an existing provider, which is a great deal harder than getting unaffiliated customers. There's no realistic way they would turn a profit as a second-comer, so they stay out of that area.
Thus one ISP gets a monopoly.
The US military currently has too many and too few recruits. Lots of people want in, because when the economy tanks the military is one of the few options left. But most of them fail the entry qualifications, so the number of qualifying recruits is still too low.
Also, if the cost of labor is cheap enough and there's no urgent need, it might be cheaper to just train up someone unskilled.
There's an obvious way.
Every three weeks I buy a train ticket so I can go and walk around London with a bunch of prats in costumes. There are two options for my journey: I can buy a one-way ticket there for Saturday, and a one-way ticket back for Sunday, or I can buy a 'weekender' return ticket that spans both days. The weekender is substantially cheaper.
The weekender is also available only from the manner ticket desk. You can't get them from the automated dispenser. That means a longer queue, and the inconvenience of dealing with the ticket desk which takes longer than the machine does. There's no technical reason for this, it'd be a simple configuration task - but someone is thinking in business terms. They've made it possible for those who are willing to spare the time - ie, those on a tight budget - to get the cheaper ticket. While those who don't have to worry about their spending will take the quick, less economical route and use the machine.
You overlook two factors:
1. The higher skilled workers will also see their pay fall, as the excess labor pool in general grows. You end up with that most dreaded of situations: Skilled graduates on minimum wage.
2. If there aren't enough jobs to go around, it's not just those lacking motivation that end up unemployed. Employers get to be really picky, and make whatever demands they want. Are you willing to be on call 24/7 in case of a sudden surge in demand? Accept a zero-hours contract? Stay quiet when you are given twelve-hour shifts and accept the manager's hints not to take any breaks? Take the hint and purchase your own stationary to save the company money? Then you are not dedicated enough, you're fired. When there are a hundred applicants eager for a shot at your job, management doesn't have to worry about driving their staff away or burning them out through overwork.
It's a nice idea, but there are practical difficulties. It'd be near-impossible to pay for, and it would cause serious trouble with inflation.
Not economical for now. Technology is always getting cheaper.
I thought that might be the case. The article doesn't make it clear - it says there is space for six, but not if all six are required. It's the name again - tanks aren't usually considered as a means of transporting people around, but this isn't really a tank.
The article is so full of errors, I'm not even going to bother pointing them all out.
You can't fry a tank with a portable EMP system. The most you could do would be to jam the radio with an old-fashioned transmitter - certainly a concern, but not a new one,
Tracked vehicle, rotating turrent with big gun on it. It may not actually be a tank by the technical definition, but the mistake is understandable.
It looks from the pictures like the turret is optional.
I don't know why it has space for a crew of six. I'd have thought one of the big advantages of the digital control system would be allowing a reduction in crew size. Maybe they want it to double as a very-armored personel carrier?