More like Ken Lay, Haliburton, etc. Not to mention a group of people who then transfer what little taxable income they have to the Cayman Islands to avoid paying for the military, police, and courts that help them when their business ventures go bad.
You need to get this through your head: the current administration doesn't give a rat's ass about space exploration. The only thing keeping any semblance of a program together is pure bureaucratic initiative. To think that cuts in NASA would be turned over for private investment in space technology, instead of used for other, non-space initiatives is the height of self-delusion.
Taking money away from NASA will result in moer human space exploration.
Bull. It will result in larger tax cuts to wealthy donors and no manned space program. Haven't you figured out how the game is played yet? The only way that your scenario would play out is if Haliburton decided to enter the space business.
If you don't like it, don't purchase the service, but please don't make this out to be a property rights issue. It isn't. It's a contract with terms you don't like. Ownership of the software is never transferred to you.
Your only recourse here is to not enter into the contract in the first place. Of course, this means that you will need to find another way to play Windows games, but that is possible.
In the U.K we're planning for increased capcity for 30- 40 years from now. What these planners dont seem to realise is that 30-40 years from now, Airline flight will be unsustainably expensive, due to oil costs.
Because, you know, you can't power a jet engine with anything other than petroleum. I've got a feeling that an ethanol or hydrogen engine will emerge when the price of oil gets high enough to fund the development costs. There's no new science to discover, just engineering.
The above mentioned services are nothing like the USPS. No FedEx man is required to go to every residence in the US six days a week. Heap that requirement upon them and stamps will be far more than a buck a piece, even without a unionized workforce.
Universal service is the kicker here. FedEx and UPS skim the cream off the shipping businesss, leaving the unprofitable dregs to the USPS. If they were required to produce the same level of service, they would fail.
When government contracts are involved, the overwhelming evidence is that private industry does as badly as the government. Without government contracts, there will not be a manned orbital space program for the next 50 years. It simply doesn't offer the return on investment to attract the investment capital. Remember that the Space Shuttle program is largely run by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, not NASA.
Just for kicks, can you find me a country that has successfully privatized its postal service and still has universal service with daily delivery?
Boeing's tanker deal? Diebold's voting machines? I think this happens more often than you expect.
As for Mr. Bigelow, I wish him luck, but that $200 million has gotten him how many hours in orbit? Zero. We'll see what the final pricetag is when he orbits a functional station (which I assume he will do. He isn't stupid or talentless.)
It does bother me that he claims that he hasn't accepted a "dime" of government money, which is only true in a limited sense. I note that the article states that Bigelow has taken possesion of NASA patents and technology to help make his station. What would his costs have been had he had to fund that research and development himself?
I believe it was Wally Shirra on one of his launches. I've never seen Armageddon.
If a private company were saddled with universal service, they wouldn't fair much better than the USPS for the same price for first class mail. In fact, we have one of the cheapest mail delivery services in the developed world.
In my career, I have worked for both the Federal Government and a very successful Fortune 50 company. The levels of bureaucracy and general incompentence were similar. That demolished my belief in the inherent benefits of private enterprise. Any large entity begins to become as efficient as the government, I'm afraid.
In fact, let me tell you a little story about that company. They needed a piece of equipment fabricated to test a new process. This was sent to the internal equipment manufacturing department. The raw material for the equipment was produced by another division of the company. It turned out that it was "cheaper" to go out to the local hardware store and buy the raw materials because the finance folks insisted that the inter-departmental transfer of the material be done at the retail price instead of at cost.
The kicker? The cheaper stuff we bought was made by our largest competitor! We still "saved" money, according to the bureaucrats, but if we'd been able to get the stuff we wanted at cost, we would have saved more and not sent money to the enemy. That's corporate efficiency for you. The scary thing is that my former employer is still kicking that competitor's ass, so the competitor must be even more screwed up. I never witnessed anything quite so stupid when I worked for the government, although several incidents did come rather close.
The bottom line is that privatization does not automatically equal efficiency and government programs do not automatically mean inefficiency. Each program needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. I'm having trouble seeing any real profit for private industry in space science, so the government will probably continue to be the major source of funding, as it is for most basic science. Unmanned launch vehicles are potentially profitable, but those have been mostly privatized already.
Finally, if you think the government should just hire a private company to handle things like this, I will offer Haliburton's performance in Iraq as a ready counterexample.
by some private industry who actually is trying to save a buck while getting the best service
Yeah, just like Microsoft saves a buck while producing the best software, or Ford saves a buck by producing the best car...
Private industry is no panacea. Particularly since the main client will continue to be the US Government and nobody has ever accused government contractors of producing the best product. As one astronaut once said "I try not to think about the fact that every part of the rocket underneath me was built by the lowest bidder."
Re:There are fewer corps! why does this surprise?
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The real way to lower taxes? Less gov't.
No problem. We'll zero out all of the government grants that directly benefit you as a start, since you put such a high priority on smaller government. Or do you mean less government for other people?
I'm sorry if I've misrepresented you here, but you sound an awful lot like my midwest relatives who scream about Big Government, but are quite happy to pocket their Department of Agriculture subsidy checks (which are back, despite being "eliminated" a few years back). It's made me of the opinion that unless someone can name a program cut that directly impacts them, they're full of it when they come to complain about the size of the government.
Do I believe that there is government waste? Sure! I'll tell you what, though. I've worked for both the Feds and a Fortune 50 manufacturing company. The levels of inefficiency and waste were no different in either organization, and the company in question's stock price is doing very well indeed.
Only if you enjoy editing your playlists with a text editor or anally arranging your directory structure prior to copying. Most people seem to prefer to organize their music in iTunes and have that carry over to the iPod. True, it's less 1337, but most people don't care about their Geek Purity Test score.
In other words, you want us to be like the old Soviet Union, and always be sure that we carry our internal passports. I would note that if "papers, please" becomes a regular part of travel in this country, then what this country special is dead.
As long as someone else is fiscally responsible for their technology problems, their customers/shareholders are happy.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but when has Microsoft ever taken fiscal responsibility for flaws in its software? Doesn't the EULA specifically exempt them from such liability? Who has successfully sued them for it?
If you already own a machine with a floppy drive, then the discussion is somewhat irrelevant. We're talking about buying new hardware here anyway, and whether or not a floppy drive is required anymore. Newer BIOSes do support booting from USB devices, and therefore do not require floppy drives.
None of my current boxes have floppies, and I can't say that I've missed them. I do have a USB external floppy drive, but I've never used it other than to prove that it works.
The point was that any city hit by a nuke is an uninhabitable wasteland for years. All evidence points to the contrary, unless the bomb is specifically designed as an area-denial weapon, which can be done as effectively with a large conventional bomb and persistent chemical, radiological, or biological agents. There are islands used for anthrax tests during the Second World War that are less safe to set foot on than Bikini Atoll, which has suffered multiple thermonuclear explosions.
but also implant radiation into the environment to cause a dead zone for years to come.
Yeah. Just like it still isn't safe to live in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And H-bombs are actually "cleaner" than the early A-bombs. You can create a bomb that would do what you described, but there's little evidence that either side ever seriously did so. They just aren't practical.
Scaled's vehicle isn't really a step toward an orbital ship. It's too flimsy to survive getting injected into orbit, much less coming back down. Armadillo's craft actually has a scale-up that would be orbital capable, on the other hand, so not all hope for a privately funded trip to LEO is forlorn.
On the other hand, only one entity has ever built a rocket capable of taking a manned craft to the surface of the moon, and it wasn't private industry. Too bad Nixon killed the Saturn boosters in favor of the Shuttle. We could really use a Big Dumb Rocket right now.
You are saying that the Bill of Rights specifically allows the government to ban consenting adults from viewing pornography? I've given it a once over and can't seem to find that amendment...
Idiots generally have poor reading comprehension. You seem to have missed the point of my post entirely.
There is a requirement that software following the "open source model" which is what I specified, incidentally, give away the source. If you refuse to install anything that isn't open source on your system, then my comment holds -- which was the point I was making that evidently missed you by a parsec or so. I specifically stated that viruses and trojans would be the same under both models.
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You need to get this through your head: the current administration doesn't give a rat's ass about space exploration. The only thing keeping any semblance of a program together is pure bureaucratic initiative. To think that cuts in NASA would be turned over for private investment in space technology, instead of used for other, non-space initiatives is the height of self-delusion.
Bull. It will result in larger tax cuts to wealthy donors and no manned space program. Haven't you figured out how the game is played yet? The only way that your scenario would play out is if Haliburton decided to enter the space business.
Your only recourse here is to not enter into the contract in the first place. Of course, this means that you will need to find another way to play Windows games, but that is possible.
Because, you know, you can't power a jet engine with anything other than petroleum. I've got a feeling that an ethanol or hydrogen engine will emerge when the price of oil gets high enough to fund the development costs. There's no new science to discover, just engineering.
That's rich from someone who theorizes that a private postal service would be profitable, without establishing the fact that it's ever been done.
Universal service is the kicker here. FedEx and UPS skim the cream off the shipping businesss, leaving the unprofitable dregs to the USPS. If they were required to produce the same level of service, they would fail.
Just for kicks, can you find me a country that has successfully privatized its postal service and still has universal service with daily delivery?
Boeing's tanker deal? Diebold's voting machines? I think this happens more often than you expect.
As for Mr. Bigelow, I wish him luck, but that $200 million has gotten him how many hours in orbit? Zero. We'll see what the final pricetag is when he orbits a functional station (which I assume he will do. He isn't stupid or talentless.)
It does bother me that he claims that he hasn't accepted a "dime" of government money, which is only true in a limited sense. I note that the article states that Bigelow has taken possesion of NASA patents and technology to help make his station. What would his costs have been had he had to fund that research and development himself?
If a private company were saddled with universal service, they wouldn't fair much better than the USPS for the same price for first class mail. In fact, we have one of the cheapest mail delivery services in the developed world.
In my career, I have worked for both the Federal Government and a very successful Fortune 50 company. The levels of bureaucracy and general incompentence were similar. That demolished my belief in the inherent benefits of private enterprise. Any large entity begins to become as efficient as the government, I'm afraid.
In fact, let me tell you a little story about that company. They needed a piece of equipment fabricated to test a new process. This was sent to the internal equipment manufacturing department. The raw material for the equipment was produced by another division of the company. It turned out that it was "cheaper" to go out to the local hardware store and buy the raw materials because the finance folks insisted that the inter-departmental transfer of the material be done at the retail price instead of at cost.
The kicker? The cheaper stuff we bought was made by our largest competitor! We still "saved" money, according to the bureaucrats, but if we'd been able to get the stuff we wanted at cost, we would have saved more and not sent money to the enemy. That's corporate efficiency for you. The scary thing is that my former employer is still kicking that competitor's ass, so the competitor must be even more screwed up. I never witnessed anything quite so stupid when I worked for the government, although several incidents did come rather close.
The bottom line is that privatization does not automatically equal efficiency and government programs do not automatically mean inefficiency. Each program needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. I'm having trouble seeing any real profit for private industry in space science, so the government will probably continue to be the major source of funding, as it is for most basic science. Unmanned launch vehicles are potentially profitable, but those have been mostly privatized already.
Finally, if you think the government should just hire a private company to handle things like this, I will offer Haliburton's performance in Iraq as a ready counterexample.
Yeah, just like Microsoft saves a buck while producing the best software, or Ford saves a buck by producing the best car...
Private industry is no panacea. Particularly since the main client will continue to be the US Government and nobody has ever accused government contractors of producing the best product. As one astronaut once said "I try not to think about the fact that every part of the rocket underneath me was built by the lowest bidder."
No problem. We'll zero out all of the government grants that directly benefit you as a start, since you put such a high priority on smaller government. Or do you mean less government for other people?
I'm sorry if I've misrepresented you here, but you sound an awful lot like my midwest relatives who scream about Big Government, but are quite happy to pocket their Department of Agriculture subsidy checks (which are back, despite being "eliminated" a few years back). It's made me of the opinion that unless someone can name a program cut that directly impacts them, they're full of it when they come to complain about the size of the government.
Do I believe that there is government waste? Sure! I'll tell you what, though. I've worked for both the Feds and a Fortune 50 manufacturing company. The levels of inefficiency and waste were no different in either organization, and the company in question's stock price is doing very well indeed.
Only if you enjoy editing your playlists with a text editor or anally arranging your directory structure prior to copying. Most people seem to prefer to organize their music in iTunes and have that carry over to the iPod. True, it's less 1337, but most people don't care about their Geek Purity Test score.
I would note that if "papers, please" becomes a regular part of travel in this country, then what makes this country special is dead.
I need to use the preview button more often. Oh, and more coffee, too.
In other words, you want us to be like the old Soviet Union, and always be sure that we carry our internal passports. I would note that if "papers, please" becomes a regular part of travel in this country, then what this country special is dead.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but when has Microsoft ever taken fiscal responsibility for flaws in its software? Doesn't the EULA specifically exempt them from such liability? Who has successfully sued them for it?
Actually, they'd probably shoot you for having any Mariah Carey to begin with. I'm pretty sure that's considered a WMD.
None of my current boxes have floppies, and I can't say that I've missed them. I do have a USB external floppy drive, but I've never used it other than to prove that it works.
It isn't as bad as the other pitch, where five gay Daleks arrive to remodel an unsuspecting planet.
Your Google is weak, grasshopper.
The point was that any city hit by a nuke is an uninhabitable wasteland for years. All evidence points to the contrary, unless the bomb is specifically designed as an area-denial weapon, which can be done as effectively with a large conventional bomb and persistent chemical, radiological, or biological agents. There are islands used for anthrax tests during the Second World War that are less safe to set foot on than Bikini Atoll, which has suffered multiple thermonuclear explosions.
Yeah. Just like it still isn't safe to live in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And H-bombs are actually "cleaner" than the early A-bombs. You can create a bomb that would do what you described, but there's little evidence that either side ever seriously did so. They just aren't practical.
On the other hand, only one entity has ever built a rocket capable of taking a manned craft to the surface of the moon, and it wasn't private industry. Too bad Nixon killed the Saturn boosters in favor of the Shuttle. We could really use a Big Dumb Rocket right now.
You are saying that the Bill of Rights specifically allows the government to ban consenting adults from viewing pornography? I've given it a once over and can't seem to find that amendment...
Do you have some citations to back that sweeping statement up, or are you talking out of your ass?
There is a requirement that software following the "open source model" which is what I specified, incidentally, give away the source. If you refuse to install anything that isn't open source on your system, then my comment holds -- which was the point I was making that evidently missed you by a parsec or so. I specifically stated that viruses and trojans would be the same under both models.