If our society remains ultimatley ad hoc and individual driven then a chipped id system is not required. But if the government and our whole existence in society is determined by the government's impression of our personal identity then we'll likely need to be chipped.
Social security numbers, medicade, welfare, food stamps... it's very hard to keep track of all that and fraud increases exponentially with the profit in committing it which increases exponentially as you increase the benefits across an increasingly large population.
And of course, individuals feel no need to protect their id from fraud in these situations. If it's their bank account or their money then they care. But if it's the government's money no one cares. And that merely makes fraud easier.
as increased socialization is likely inevitable so too are increasingly invasive means of determining identity.
Region, type of piracy, frequency, demographics (age, gender, race, income level, religion... etc.), time period, etc.
Saying 57 percent pirate and that's up from last year isn't useful. That doesn't tell you WHO is pirating and why. We don't even get any correlative information out of that much less the actual cause.
There's no way to use these statistics in a productive way unless the numbers are broken down a bit.
I can only speak to my own experience. First version of windows I ever saw was 3.1 . Earlier versions could have been similar for all I know but I don't.
MS has no control over what OEMs put on machines in addition to the OS. And it would cost MS something to sit there and pay someone to remove the crap off the machine. Would the make a profit on this fee? Probably, but then they didn't put it on the machine and why should they care?
That said, many companies offer this service. It's not hard to do and there are even free programs you can download that will remove most of this stuff. I think there is a program called "decrapifier" or something like that. Anyway, MS can't release a program that explicitely removes things or it will piss off the people that paid the OEMs to put it on the machines. AND it will thus piss off hte OEMs that paid MS for the licenses. MS can't piss these people off. So they can't release a program. They have to train someone or use an internal program that does it. But if the program becomes public they have to explain to OEMs why their advertisers got screwed.
It's a troubling situation where there are a lot of conflicted interests. MS has to make the OEMs happy, the advertisers happy, and the end user happy. These groups don't have the same interests and it's impossible to make them all happy equally. Offering this service is a compromise.
I personally don't like it. I would instead foster an open source project loosely monitored by MS to create a decrapifier program that simply removed such programs automatically. In this way, MS would make end users happy by offering a simple and free means of removing such programs. While at the same time it could claim with some justification that they don't have control over what is and is not removed so they could possibly escape blame from the OEMs.
Ultimately, the advertisers won't be happy with this option especially if it is effective at removing their products from most machines. And this might mean losing a revenue stream from the OEMs. But it will be at the discretion of users and the OEMs could chide the advertisers that if their programs were less obnoxious that people wouldn't be so eager to remove them.
In the end, it's hard to blame MS for much. They really don't control most of what is wrong in this situation. The OEMs are responsible for the additional programs on the machine. If you're buying a cheap computer often one of the reasons it's cheap is because it has this crap on it. Also, many OEMs offer the ability to have these things not on the machine for either nothing or very little.
I personally build my machines, reinstall the OS on OEMs, or buy from small OEMs that pride themselves too much on customer service to install such things. But that's just me. I spend either less or no more then the average person on a given system. So if you're plagued by bloaty crapware then to a certain extent that's your own fault and paying someone 100 dollars to sit there and take it off is cheap.
Social media will remain but it's not that big a deal. There are a lot of things it doesn't do well and ultimately I don't see how it's a threat to the valley.
You like the new arrangement that forces you to use things that were never forced before? You think it's a good idea to take things out of the OS that have been there for over a decade.
Fine.
Use what you like.
I'm saying leave me the option to use it if I want. If you feel entitled to f' up my GUI just because it suits your own personal notion of design that's great. I won't use explorer anymore. As it stands there are a dozen explorer replacement programs on the market. None of them in my opinion are as good as the simple explorer from windows XP but that's just me. If people like you keep going into people's kitchen's and rearranging the mustard, then one of those explorer replacements will jump in and offer the services you've denied me. And at that point you can do whatever you want with the GUI since I'll be using a custom GUI that you can't touch anymore.
What I want is for them to give me the GUI I've been used to for the last 15 years at least. You can make it pretty without making it incomprehensible.
Amongst other things... What MS did to Office 2007 was also very stupid. People that had mastered Excel for example for over a decade were suddenly confused by totally different menus where they couldn't find anything. If you're an excel pro then this is a huge problem because this is not a simple program. And you're frankly a professional that is getting paid good money to organize these things. Rearranging the menus to make them pretty in this context would be like changing what all the peddles do in a new version of industrial equipment and expecting the veteran crane operators to be happy about that.
Seriously... if you MUST for some pathological reason move everything around almost at random, then have the sense to provide a "classic" mode which everyone that used past versions will use pretty much without exception. Then you can feel innovative and we don't have to suffer the hubris.
you know how you can put icons where ever you want on the desktop? Well, you used to be able to do that in folders. You could arrange the folders into a happy face if you wanted. Or make a frame or put all of one type of folder at the top and all of another at the bottom.
You can't do this with windows 7 anymore because auto arrange is something you can't disable.
UNLESS you have an obscure registry hack. Then you can do it. It took me months to find it and even then it isn't quiet perfect. For one thing the icons have that big fat region around them that only matters in windows 7. In previous versions if you didn't click on the actual icon you didn't click on the actual icon. Now there is a big dead zone around icons that if you click on counts as clicking on the icon. This causes other problems I won't get into right now.
But the point is that I didn't appreciate these changes and while I'm sure someone likes them, I want there to be a way to disable all these "improvements" without resorting to registry hacks.
I've also installed several free programs to add other features back to the GUI removed by the new version of windows. The new search feature is horrible. I had to use a third party search program. The windows also don't report folder sizes if you highlight things. Windows XP did this... I had to install a program just fix that.
This annoys me. MS needs to stop doing this stuff. Stop making the OS worse and if before you change something that has been a standard for over 15 years maybe consider making your little improvement optional.
The windows OS was largely similar from Windows 3.1 to Vista. Stop toying with it. I think it's find to have these as optional or even the default GUI if people really want it. But some of us have been using the windows GUI for ages and it's frankly not appreciated when things are moved around.
We know where all the buttons and features are supposed to be guys. There is no other place you can put them that will be better.
Every new version of windows is like some guy randomly coming into your kitchen and reorganizing everything only to leave a little message behind saying "I fixed your kitchen, you're welcome.".... Well great... I can't find the maynanese... my spice rack is completely out of order... and there are about a hundred things that i have to patiently remove from whatever stupid location they were put and put them back where I want them.
What? I can't move it there because you outright removed cabinets and installed totally different appliances? I had that experience in Windows 7 where they took away the ability to sort folders manually. Happily I found a registry hack that added the feature back into the system.
This is obnoxious Microsoft. And beyond that, we've lost compatibilty with most of the old dos apps in the 64 bit version of windows. There's no good reason for that since dos was already being emulated. You can't tell me that you can't emulate a 16 bit environment in a 64 bit environment when there are a dozen dos emulators on the market that will do just that. Of course, most of them are designed for games and so don't work with networked printers or any of the other fun stuff that we've been counting on for YEARS.
Seriously Microsoft. You're killing it. Your selling point forever has been standards and backward compatibility.
I can over look a lot of nonsense if you just give me an updated version of the same thing. I don't use windows to be wowed by the GUI graphics. I use windows because that's how I launch the programs and manage the files that I ACTUALLY care about. Changing everything around randomly is not helpful. Stop doing it. At the very least, at least provide some buried Classic mode somewhere in the system.
I'm tired of New Coke Windows. No one stick with you because you're innovative. We stick with you because you're consistent.
Politics doesn't play by scientific rules. If you bring science into politics, then science has to play by politics rules.
Don't try and win a power game with politics. Politics is about power. It will win these games. Every. Single. Time.
We are taking about two year old baby versus T-Rex. ZERO contest.
Science's strength is in its objectivity and disinterest in opinion. Politics is all about subjectivity and bias.
The only way to win is not to play.
Don't get involved in these struggles as a scientist or your status as a scientist will be worthless. The political forces aren't going to respect your role if you use your position to claim power or influence. They'll find a way to destroy you and then they'll do it.
However, if you make it clear that you act for no side and are neutral then you're pawn that can be used by either side but are not taken for granted nor vilified by either side. You're a volley ball to be tossed back and forth between one side and the other. This will be confusing but it's how the process works. Ultimately, a compromise will be reached and that will be the result of your contribution.
Again, if you're talking about EX-scientists joining politics, that's a different story. Just remember, we've had a few doctors in the US congress and most of them get the political crap kicked out of them on a regular basis.
More FORMER scientists in public office is great. But don't start politicizing science. For the same reason you don't want to politicize the military... it has serious negative consequences.
If you're a company that CAN do something and you fire all your workers that do that thing and then outsource that function your company now can't do that anymore and you must outsource indifferent to the economics. Of course you could rehire those people and build that department up from scratch but that will take years to get right so you lose a lot if you outsource ALL of a given department.
If you outsource half of everything across the board you retain a little more flexibility. Your company hasn't lost any core skills this way you've just reduced overhead.
It's all well and good to call what is being outsourced monkey work but often that is monkey work that people in other parts of the company aren't good at doing. Monkey work might not be that hard but it often requires a certain stamina and precision. Sure, it's the same thing over and over. But you have to do a lot of it and you have to do it right. That isn't something people in other more cognitive departments are used to managing.
There are also major problems with outsourcing in that you are limited to the capabilities of the outsourcing companies.
Look at AMD versus Intel as an example here. AMD and Intel are both pretty good CPU makers. The biggest difference between the two companies is that AMD outsources manufacturing and Intel does it in house. And that makes a huge difference when CPU makers are always using brand new manufacturing methods to produce CPUs. AMD can't make the CPUs Intel makes no because they can't design them but because AMD doesn't have access to the Fabs Intel has built from the ground up and doesn't share with anyone. AMD has to use whatever they can find on the market and at least now that is all inferior to what Intel has built. So even if AMD designed a superior CPU they couldn't build it.
Outsourcing can be great. It's a great way of controlling costs. It's a great way of dealing with new ventures by putting some of the risk off on the outsourcing agent. It's a great of way capitalizing things by becoming a smaller project withing a much larger organization. Don't let me say outsourcing is bad. It's just not always good. You have to be careful with it.
Many companies have almost or actually destroyed themselves with outsourcing. Dell famously almost annhilated themselves with it. They went outsource crazy and not only did they build their biggest competitors up from scratch, but they also ruined their image as a company that would provide reasonable IT support. No one likes talking to a guy in India if you bought the computer in the US. If you tell them your name is "Adam" and they want you to spell it, you are in trouble. Dell nearly killed themselves with that.
So be careful. There is good outsourcing and bad outsourcing.
Here is the best general guideline I can make up on the spot. Does the outsourcing make your company more valuable or less valuable? If you're reducing the core value of your company then the outsourcing is probably bad. Do your customers like or notice the outsourcing? If an attraction of your company is that people get to talk to you, then redirecting customers to a third party they didn't contract with is not good.
It's fine for anything people get enthusiastic about and want to form social communities around. So bands, books, movies, various clubs, and other things that people form human attachments around are a good target for facebook. But a car even if you really love your car isn't the basis to form a relationship with someone else that might happen to have the same brand much less model of car.
Who knows the name of their mechanic let alone the name of the every guy in town with the same make of car? If you're a band then having a facebook page makes a lot of sense.
I'm sure there are car buying websites... sites that specialize in reviews for cars. That's where I'd put the money. If someone goes online to figure out which car to spend money on, they're likely going to wind up on one of those sites. Facebook is a waste of time for that sort of thing.
Every company from fabric softeners to mattress companies wants a facebook page. Utterly useless. Unless you're in a business that people form human attachments around don't waste your time with facebook.
I know, it doesn't matter... you can hedge against a rise or fall in a commodity. If you need silicon to be expensive, then you could hedge against it going down.
it goes without saying that we should use the best material and process.
I'm not suggesting we use a bad system just because it's new. I was suggesting that someone in the industry had claimed to have figured out how to make these sorts of parts using additive manufacturing.
Maybe they only mean some parts and not others.
But additive manufacturing if we can get it to have the same strength as forged metal gives us a great deal more flexibility in shape and composition.
You could use different types of metal in the same part. Possibly the core is one type and the shell is another.
The point is supposed to be that this is better. If it isn't, then f' it. I like to think I live in the 21st century and so I'm biased towards things that make me feel that way. But I'm not so pigheaded as to side with technology that doesn't work just because it has that new car smell.
Again, I can't even begin to know what I'm talking about beyond saying that I watched a Boeing presentation on the subject where they claimed to solved the problem. They're saying the technology can be used in airframes.
But I do know you don't stay on top by doing the same thing over and over. You have to innovate. I thought additive manufacturing was the future? If so, push into it. It means all the old equipment has to be replaced or retooled which is an opportunity. It means everyone is starting over. It means old skills in the last technology don't matter so much. It means you can bring in new people, build new factories, and get a fresh start on the whole thing.
As to Boeing saying they can do additive manufacturing while maintaining strength... That's an advantage too. Everyone and their mother seems to have this press technology figured out. If we have something that no one else has and they can't easily emulate then that gives us an edge. Something to exploit ruthlessly. God knows we need it.
I don't know why all the people think they're sparing themselves by going through the scanner... It's a bigger violation on many levels.
At least with the pat down, I know there are no records of my naked body on a government server. The only momento is the uncomfortable expression on the TSA agent's face. Every time. Only way to fly.
Boeing was talking about using it to make airframe parts.
They described a similar problem in that the metal is at different temperatures during the creation. They said they managed that by somehow controlling that temperature throughout to certain tolerances.
Maybe they exaggerated. But they seemed to imply they had it.
They had some interesting technology they just made a lot of mistakes.
They built in california... should have done it in a state that likes manufacturing. They allowed their company to get political. Never a good idea. And they didn't hedge against the price of silicon.
Big airlines buy oil futures to hedge against rises in jet fuel prices. It's just good business. if your business model is controlled by the price of silicon, then buy some insurance against that price going down. It's very easy to do this... I don't think you can buy silicon as a commodity but there are many businesses that track it's value. There are ways to hedge.
Anyway, very sad. I had hopes for those guys. Hopefully someone will buy their tech and implement it. It would be very sad if it just died on the factory floor.
Slashdot Mirror
If our society remains ultimatley ad hoc and individual driven then a chipped id system is not required. But if the government and our whole existence in society is determined by the government's impression of our personal identity then we'll likely need to be chipped.
Social security numbers, medicade, welfare, food stamps... it's very hard to keep track of all that and fraud increases exponentially with the profit in committing it which increases exponentially as you increase the benefits across an increasingly large population.
And of course, individuals feel no need to protect their id from fraud in these situations. If it's their bank account or their money then they care. But if it's the government's money no one cares. And that merely makes fraud easier.
as increased socialization is likely inevitable so too are increasingly invasive means of determining identity.
Region, type of piracy, frequency, demographics (age, gender, race, income level, religion... etc.), time period, etc.
Saying 57 percent pirate and that's up from last year isn't useful. That doesn't tell you WHO is pirating and why. We don't even get any correlative information out of that much less the actual cause.
There's no way to use these statistics in a productive way unless the numbers are broken down a bit.
Remember those gloves he wore?... well, we don't need them. Amazing technology.
I wonder if it will kill the mouse.
I can only speak to my own experience. First version of windows I ever saw was 3.1 . Earlier versions could have been similar for all I know but I don't.
WAIT HEAR ME OUT!
MS has no control over what OEMs put on machines in addition to the OS. And it would cost MS something to sit there and pay someone to remove the crap off the machine. Would the make a profit on this fee? Probably, but then they didn't put it on the machine and why should they care?
That said, many companies offer this service. It's not hard to do and there are even free programs you can download that will remove most of this stuff. I think there is a program called "decrapifier" or something like that. Anyway, MS can't release a program that explicitely removes things or it will piss off the people that paid the OEMs to put it on the machines. AND it will thus piss off hte OEMs that paid MS for the licenses. MS can't piss these people off. So they can't release a program. They have to train someone or use an internal program that does it. But if the program becomes public they have to explain to OEMs why their advertisers got screwed.
It's a troubling situation where there are a lot of conflicted interests. MS has to make the OEMs happy, the advertisers happy, and the end user happy. These groups don't have the same interests and it's impossible to make them all happy equally. Offering this service is a compromise.
I personally don't like it. I would instead foster an open source project loosely monitored by MS to create a decrapifier program that simply removed such programs automatically. In this way, MS would make end users happy by offering a simple and free means of removing such programs. While at the same time it could claim with some justification that they don't have control over what is and is not removed so they could possibly escape blame from the OEMs.
Ultimately, the advertisers won't be happy with this option especially if it is effective at removing their products from most machines. And this might mean losing a revenue stream from the OEMs. But it will be at the discretion of users and the OEMs could chide the advertisers that if their programs were less obnoxious that people wouldn't be so eager to remove them.
In the end, it's hard to blame MS for much. They really don't control most of what is wrong in this situation. The OEMs are responsible for the additional programs on the machine. If you're buying a cheap computer often one of the reasons it's cheap is because it has this crap on it. Also, many OEMs offer the ability to have these things not on the machine for either nothing or very little.
I personally build my machines, reinstall the OS on OEMs, or buy from small OEMs that pride themselves too much on customer service to install such things. But that's just me. I spend either less or no more then the average person on a given system. So if you're plagued by bloaty crapware then to a certain extent that's your own fault and paying someone 100 dollars to sit there and take it off is cheap.
Social media will remain but it's not that big a deal. There are a lot of things it doesn't do well and ultimately I don't see how it's a threat to the valley.
The space program needs a win.
You like the new arrangement that forces you to use things that were never forced before? You think it's a good idea to take things out of the OS that have been there for over a decade.
Fine.
Use what you like.
I'm saying leave me the option to use it if I want. If you feel entitled to f' up my GUI just because it suits your own personal notion of design that's great. I won't use explorer anymore. As it stands there are a dozen explorer replacement programs on the market. None of them in my opinion are as good as the simple explorer from windows XP but that's just me. If people like you keep going into people's kitchen's and rearranging the mustard, then one of those explorer replacements will jump in and offer the services you've denied me. And at that point you can do whatever you want with the GUI since I'll be using a custom GUI that you can't touch anymore.
Good day, sir.
What I want is for them to give me the GUI I've been used to for the last 15 years at least. You can make it pretty without making it incomprehensible.
Amongst other things... What MS did to Office 2007 was also very stupid. People that had mastered Excel for example for over a decade were suddenly confused by totally different menus where they couldn't find anything. If you're an excel pro then this is a huge problem because this is not a simple program. And you're frankly a professional that is getting paid good money to organize these things. Rearranging the menus to make them pretty in this context would be like changing what all the peddles do in a new version of industrial equipment and expecting the veteran crane operators to be happy about that.
Seriously... if you MUST for some pathological reason move everything around almost at random, then have the sense to provide a "classic" mode which everyone that used past versions will use pretty much without exception. Then you can feel innovative and we don't have to suffer the hubris.
you know how you can put icons where ever you want on the desktop? Well, you used to be able to do that in folders. You could arrange the folders into a happy face if you wanted. Or make a frame or put all of one type of folder at the top and all of another at the bottom.
You can't do this with windows 7 anymore because auto arrange is something you can't disable.
UNLESS you have an obscure registry hack. Then you can do it. It took me months to find it and even then it isn't quiet perfect. For one thing the icons have that big fat region around them that only matters in windows 7. In previous versions if you didn't click on the actual icon you didn't click on the actual icon. Now there is a big dead zone around icons that if you click on counts as clicking on the icon. This causes other problems I won't get into right now.
But the point is that I didn't appreciate these changes and while I'm sure someone likes them, I want there to be a way to disable all these "improvements" without resorting to registry hacks.
I've also installed several free programs to add other features back to the GUI removed by the new version of windows. The new search feature is horrible. I had to use a third party search program. The windows also don't report folder sizes if you highlight things. Windows XP did this... I had to install a program just fix that.
This annoys me. MS needs to stop doing this stuff. Stop making the OS worse and if before you change something that has been a standard for over 15 years maybe consider making your little improvement optional.
The windows OS was largely similar from Windows 3.1 to Vista. Stop toying with it. I think it's find to have these as optional or even the default GUI if people really want it. But some of us have been using the windows GUI for ages and it's frankly not appreciated when things are moved around.
We know where all the buttons and features are supposed to be guys. There is no other place you can put them that will be better.
Every new version of windows is like some guy randomly coming into your kitchen and reorganizing everything only to leave a little message behind saying "I fixed your kitchen, you're welcome.".... Well great... I can't find the maynanese... my spice rack is completely out of order... and there are about a hundred things that i have to patiently remove from whatever stupid location they were put and put them back where I want them.
What? I can't move it there because you outright removed cabinets and installed totally different appliances? I had that experience in Windows 7 where they took away the ability to sort folders manually. Happily I found a registry hack that added the feature back into the system.
This is obnoxious Microsoft. And beyond that, we've lost compatibilty with most of the old dos apps in the 64 bit version of windows. There's no good reason for that since dos was already being emulated. You can't tell me that you can't emulate a 16 bit environment in a 64 bit environment when there are a dozen dos emulators on the market that will do just that. Of course, most of them are designed for games and so don't work with networked printers or any of the other fun stuff that we've been counting on for YEARS.
Seriously Microsoft. You're killing it. Your selling point forever has been standards and backward compatibility.
I can over look a lot of nonsense if you just give me an updated version of the same thing. I don't use windows to be wowed by the GUI graphics. I use windows because that's how I launch the programs and manage the files that I ACTUALLY care about. Changing everything around randomly is not helpful. Stop doing it. At the very least, at least provide some buried Classic mode somewhere in the system.
I'm tired of New Coke Windows. No one stick with you because you're innovative. We stick with you because you're consistent.
You can't.
Politics doesn't play by scientific rules. If you bring science into politics, then science has to play by politics rules.
Don't try and win a power game with politics. Politics is about power. It will win these games. Every. Single. Time.
We are taking about two year old baby versus T-Rex. ZERO contest.
Science's strength is in its objectivity and disinterest in opinion. Politics is all about subjectivity and bias.
The only way to win is not to play.
Don't get involved in these struggles as a scientist or your status as a scientist will be worthless. The political forces aren't going to respect your role if you use your position to claim power or influence. They'll find a way to destroy you and then they'll do it.
However, if you make it clear that you act for no side and are neutral then you're pawn that can be used by either side but are not taken for granted nor vilified by either side. You're a volley ball to be tossed back and forth between one side and the other. This will be confusing but it's how the process works. Ultimately, a compromise will be reached and that will be the result of your contribution.
Again, if you're talking about EX-scientists joining politics, that's a different story. Just remember, we've had a few doctors in the US congress and most of them get the political crap kicked out of them on a regular basis.
More FORMER scientists in public office is great. But don't start politicizing science. For the same reason you don't want to politicize the military... it has serious negative consequences.
Ultimately it doesn't matter. States around Vermont will frack so what little is trapped in vermont probably won't amount to anything.
What are they afraid of? That people are going to call it the Israeli gulf?
Get a grip, psychos.
Your statement insults your own intelligence more then anyone else's.
If you're a company that CAN do something and you fire all your workers that do that thing and then outsource that function your company now can't do that anymore and you must outsource indifferent to the economics. Of course you could rehire those people and build that department up from scratch but that will take years to get right so you lose a lot if you outsource ALL of a given department.
If you outsource half of everything across the board you retain a little more flexibility. Your company hasn't lost any core skills this way you've just reduced overhead.
It's all well and good to call what is being outsourced monkey work but often that is monkey work that people in other parts of the company aren't good at doing. Monkey work might not be that hard but it often requires a certain stamina and precision. Sure, it's the same thing over and over. But you have to do a lot of it and you have to do it right. That isn't something people in other more cognitive departments are used to managing.
There are also major problems with outsourcing in that you are limited to the capabilities of the outsourcing companies.
Look at AMD versus Intel as an example here. AMD and Intel are both pretty good CPU makers. The biggest difference between the two companies is that AMD outsources manufacturing and Intel does it in house. And that makes a huge difference when CPU makers are always using brand new manufacturing methods to produce CPUs. AMD can't make the CPUs Intel makes no because they can't design them but because AMD doesn't have access to the Fabs Intel has built from the ground up and doesn't share with anyone. AMD has to use whatever they can find on the market and at least now that is all inferior to what Intel has built. So even if AMD designed a superior CPU they couldn't build it.
Outsourcing can be great. It's a great way of controlling costs. It's a great way of dealing with new ventures by putting some of the risk off on the outsourcing agent. It's a great of way capitalizing things by becoming a smaller project withing a much larger organization. Don't let me say outsourcing is bad. It's just not always good. You have to be careful with it.
Many companies have almost or actually destroyed themselves with outsourcing. Dell famously almost annhilated themselves with it. They went outsource crazy and not only did they build their biggest competitors up from scratch, but they also ruined their image as a company that would provide reasonable IT support. No one likes talking to a guy in India if you bought the computer in the US. If you tell them your name is "Adam" and they want you to spell it, you are in trouble. Dell nearly killed themselves with that.
So be careful. There is good outsourcing and bad outsourcing.
Here is the best general guideline I can make up on the spot. Does the outsourcing make your company more valuable or less valuable? If you're reducing the core value of your company then the outsourcing is probably bad. Do your customers like or notice the outsourcing? If an attraction of your company is that people get to talk to you, then redirecting customers to a third party they didn't contract with is not good.
Good luck.
It's fine for anything people get enthusiastic about and want to form social communities around. So bands, books, movies, various clubs, and other things that people form human attachments around are a good target for facebook. But a car even if you really love your car isn't the basis to form a relationship with someone else that might happen to have the same brand much less model of car.
Who knows the name of their mechanic let alone the name of the every guy in town with the same make of car? If you're a band then having a facebook page makes a lot of sense.
I'm sure there are car buying websites... sites that specialize in reviews for cars. That's where I'd put the money. If someone goes online to figure out which car to spend money on, they're likely going to wind up on one of those sites. Facebook is a waste of time for that sort of thing.
Every company from fabric softeners to mattress companies wants a facebook page. Utterly useless. Unless you're in a business that people form human attachments around don't waste your time with facebook.
I know, it doesn't matter... you can hedge against a rise or fall in a commodity. If you need silicon to be expensive, then you could hedge against it going down.
it goes without saying that we should use the best material and process.
I'm not suggesting we use a bad system just because it's new. I was suggesting that someone in the industry had claimed to have figured out how to make these sorts of parts using additive manufacturing.
Maybe they only mean some parts and not others.
But additive manufacturing if we can get it to have the same strength as forged metal gives us a great deal more flexibility in shape and composition.
You could use different types of metal in the same part. Possibly the core is one type and the shell is another.
The point is supposed to be that this is better. If it isn't, then f' it. I like to think I live in the 21st century and so I'm biased towards things that make me feel that way. But I'm not so pigheaded as to side with technology that doesn't work just because it has that new car smell.
Again, I can't even begin to know what I'm talking about beyond saying that I watched a Boeing presentation on the subject where they claimed to solved the problem. They're saying the technology can be used in airframes.
But I do know you don't stay on top by doing the same thing over and over. You have to innovate. I thought additive manufacturing was the future? If so, push into it. It means all the old equipment has to be replaced or retooled which is an opportunity. It means everyone is starting over. It means old skills in the last technology don't matter so much. It means you can bring in new people, build new factories, and get a fresh start on the whole thing.
As to Boeing saying they can do additive manufacturing while maintaining strength... That's an advantage too. Everyone and their mother seems to have this press technology figured out. If we have something that no one else has and they can't easily emulate then that gives us an edge. Something to exploit ruthlessly. God knows we need it.
I don't know why all the people think they're sparing themselves by going through the scanner... It's a bigger violation on many levels.
At least with the pat down, I know there are no records of my naked body on a government server. The only momento is the uncomfortable expression on the TSA agent's face. Every time. Only way to fly.
Boeing was talking about using it to make airframe parts.
They described a similar problem in that the metal is at different temperatures during the creation. They said they managed that by somehow controlling that temperature throughout to certain tolerances.
Maybe they exaggerated. But they seemed to imply they had it.
They had some interesting technology they just made a lot of mistakes.
They built in california... should have done it in a state that likes manufacturing. They allowed their company to get political. Never a good idea. And they didn't hedge against the price of silicon.
Big airlines buy oil futures to hedge against rises in jet fuel prices. It's just good business. if your business model is controlled by the price of silicon, then buy some insurance against that price going down. It's very easy to do this... I don't think you can buy silicon as a commodity but there are many businesses that track it's value. There are ways to hedge.
Anyway, very sad. I had hopes for those guys. Hopefully someone will buy their tech and implement it. It would be very sad if it just died on the factory floor.