Someone upthread points out this isn't really about Wikipedia's financial need - they're using Wikimedia's most visible project to [stealthily] advertise for money to support other Wikimedia projects.
Wikipedia would have to pay a lot of people to edit it because a huge number of their volunteers would probably revolt and quit working on the site if there were ads on it.
There are ads on Slashdot though. We still come here and contribute./. even rewards our patience and contributions with the means to turn these ads off.
And Slashdot is far from the only such site. I use two such on a daily basis: Lumberjocks (a woodworking site), and The Fresh Loaf (a baking site). In fact, I suspect that sites that rely on user content contribution that don't rely on ad revenue to keep the lights on are more the exception than the rule, doubly so if the site is of any size/significance.
Heck, look at Wikia... An entire network of sites that rely on user contributions for content and ad revenue to keep the lights on.
But, sadly, Wikipedia is different as the 'no advertising' mantra is written into it's very DNA. But, I can't see how a Wikipedia dominated by those willing to play the game and accept ad revenue will be noticeably different in the long run from Wikipedia as it currently exists. It's been demonstrated that folks will contribute to sites run by ad revenue.
Look, PBS has ads now. They still require donations, but they have ads.
Though they've become a bit more overt of late, PBS has had ads for as long as I can remember - and my memories go back into the late 60's. They call them sponsorships and donations, but "this program made possible by" is advertisement pure and simple.
Since butanol can be produced (an on an industrial scale certainly would be) from farm raised biomass... One suspects it's just a wee bit more complex than that.
But, knee jerk blaming the corporations and lobbyists is easier than actually trying to understand the issues.
Supposedly these turbo gasohol vehicles are popular in Brazil, where they can actually grow and produce their cane sugar ethanol with a net positive energy output (whereas corn-based ethanol in the US costs more energy to make than you get from it in return...
That's because Brazil can slash-and-burn rainforest and raise cane on the fertile soil. It's a great business plan so long as you can slash-and-burn more rainforest after the old fields become exhausted after a year or two. Massive government subsidies and mandating the use of ethanol didn't hurt either.
Even if we could raise cane in significant quantities in the US (we can't), we lack the tropical rainforest to slash-and-burn.
We really haven't seen a lot of basic research labs where companies throw money into R&D and see what happens. That's the way it used to work back in the day with places like Bell Labs and even Xerox.
That's the "back in the good old days" version. The reality is that Bell Labs worked almost exclusively on research eventually intended to have commercial yield, any basic research was done in support of that goal.
[sigh the standard karma whoring response to posts about Facebook and Twitter.]
Maybe I'm too old (hey... get off my lawn! Sorry...) but I just don't get the appeal of Twitter.
It's more likely you don't comprehend the universe doesn't revolve around you and other people have other interests. (BTW, I'm 47, so how old is 'too old'?)
Billions of tweets per day of which maybe 7 aren't banal.
Let's check my twitter stream today... One tweet containing my daily photo shoot 'assignment' (from a site dedicated to sending out such to encourage creativity). One tweet from my local paper linking to an article about roads re-opening today after flooding over the weekend. Two tweets from a photographer I'm following letting me know about a place where has a guest article, and another to an eBay auction where he's selling some used gear. (Great deals too... but he shoots Nikon and I shoot Canon, so no soup for me.) One from a an online woodworking guild reminding me of this weeks meeting. One tweet from a cook/author I follow asking for help with some historical research... A pretty typical day, none of it 'banal'.
what's with these corporate assholes that always choose the one time of the year that everyone has the highest financial burden to start downsizing/firing/laying people off? Why can't they make these decisions in April? or August?
Because, with the tax year ending in a couple of weeks, it keeps the books neat. And frankly, if this is your highest financial burden time of the year, that's your own choice.
Its sad to see what's become of a once major internet company -- when their employees are kicked out and get picked up by Tucows (they still exist??), you know their glory days are long gone.
Let's wait and see if a significant number of employees are actually picked up. This smells more of publicity stunt that's gone viral - so everyone is getting on the bandwagon.
Or, less charitably, hoping to pick up a distressed former Yahoo employee or two at fire sale prices. If they actually were competitive in their hiring... they wouldn't need to advertise for former Yahoo employees.
Is Yahoo even relevant with anything anymore? They shut down their own search, they shut down geocities, no one really uses portal sites anymore and they don't make any hardware or provide services. The only thing I can think of is email, which is also is far away from popularity of gmail and hotmail.
Yeah, they're far away from the popularity of Gmail's 15% of the market with Yahoo Mail's 55%. Yahoo also owns one of the biggest and busiest photo storage and sharing service on the 'net - Flickr. Their fantasy sports leagues are among the busiest and biggest, and their real life sports pages the most trafficked on the 'net. From what I see around the 'net Yahoo Groups outruns Google Groups a hundred to none. (No, that's not a typo.) Not to mention their individual games (Scrabble and the like), Yahoo Answers, etc... etc...
Even though Google is popular among the Slashdot/techie crowd - that's a pretty narrow demographic. The reality is that people *do* still use portal sites (having a single login is very convienent). The reality is that outside of search, most of Google's offerings are a struggling second or a distant third (with MSN and Yahoo filling the top two).
If Google ever obtains an attention span and an actual plan (more than 'throw stuff out there and hope it sticks')... They might all might change, but not before. Google's biggest roadblock in actual dominance of the 'net is largely itself. They've spent so much time being cool, they've failed to realize that to most people functionality is more important than trendiness and bling.
Yahoo's strategy over the last decade has largely been to offer solid service to the masses rather than flash to their investors. By and large, it's been working.
The funny part is, you were so busy being bigoted you failed to notice that the translation you used inserted commas where you needed decimal points - making it look like you needed office spaces the size of football fields per individual back in the 1970's.
That was my first though when I read the summary too... "duh, how obvious" - as we move closer and closer to being truly paperless, officer workers need less and less space to spread out papers or to store files.
I hate to invoke 'kids these days' - but it really does apply here. Anyone under thirty or so has almost certainly never experienced an 'old style' office - when PC's became ubiquitous in the 90's, things changed radically.
My wife is an accountant and CFO for a local business and keeps a set of the ledgers from the 1980's in her office - they fill a shelf three feet long. (She says when she's frustrated because the server is slow or down, looking at that shelf reminds her of how good she actually has it.) She also points out all she has is the ledgers, the ancillary material like invoices, timesheets, sales tickets, etc... would take up even more space. If she wasn't required to keep a physical paper trail of some things for legal and tax reasons, she wouldn't even have a filing cabinet in her office. The old storage room for such stuff is now an employee break room. The refrigerator in the break room is bigger than the annual amount of paper she has to store nowadays.
She also points out that in the 1980's the business required an accountant, two full time bookkeepers, and a full time filing clerk. Today, despite the business being ten times larger, there's just her and a full time data entry clerk. The phone girl files in her spare time.
For another example: In my book collection, I have a book on office organization intended for professional engineers, draftsmen, and architects from the 1950's - it dedicates three entire chapters (almost half the book) to the theory and practice of laying out work spaces for engineers and draftsmen. You lay it out one way for buildings, another for ships, a different way for airplanes... All trying to solve the problem of mapping a 3D physical object onto/into a 2D drafting room such that guys (and it was all guys back then) working on adjacent parts/rooms/spaces/systems were close enough to each other to collaborate. (When something like the working drawings for the engine room of a ship could stretch thirty feet or an entire deck could stretch a hundred or more if laid end-to-end this was a real problem.) The offices were open plan because they had to be, because there was no other way to collaborate but to physically transport yourself or the drawing to the individual(s) you needed to communicate with.
Or maybe you're confusing cause and effect... When I first read the summary, my thought was "duh, how obvious" - as we move closer and closer to being truly paperless, officer workers need less and less space to spread out papers or to store files.
That sound you heard is the OP's point whooshing over your head... He's not comparing Zuckerberg to Hitler, he's correcting the common misconception that Time's "Man/Person of the Year" is awarded only for positive reasons - when in fact it's awarded for being most influential for weal or for woe.
Seriously...comparisons to Hitler and Stalin? You really need to get some perspective, mate.
Seriously, more reading and thinking and less kneejerking just because Hitler is mentioned mate.
That sound you heard is the OP's point whooshing over your head... He's not comparing Zuckerberg to Hitler, he's correcting the common misconception that Time's "Man/Person of the Year" is awarded only for positive reasons - when in fact it's awarded for being most influential for weal or for woe.
We only had to wait 28 years for the second installment of "Tron"
Well, if you consider spending the last 28 years more or less forgetting that such a forgettable movie even existed... yeah.
Seriously, Tron was more-or-less the prototype for the modern "wow 'em with state-of-the-art eye candy and hope they don't notice the other defects" movie. If I hadn't had the duty (and thus been required to stay on base) and hadn't been bored enough that the $1.00 matinee showing of any movie was the best entertainment available on base that Saturday... I'd probably never have seen it.
No, 99 times out of 100 these systems use some crap like "Where were you born", which is pretty damn trivial to find out for any attacker.
Only if you're stupid enough to use the most obvious answer. In my case I could use the name of the city like pretty much everyone else - but I use something else that is technically correct, easily remembered by me, and non-obvious to the random hacker. (I.E. something that can't be found by searching public records and isn't something like 'a hospital'.)
Well, we launched Deep Space 1 in 1998 for a grand total of about $150 million, which is a real victory considering how many untested technologies went into it.
Which is roughly - meaningless, since it's a fraction of the size and science goals of the proposed probe.
It had as many failures as successes, but I think it was well worth it for the price. We learned a metric f-ton and we got to Jupiter in just two or three years.
Which is roughly - meaningless. The whole goal of Deep Space 1 was an engineering testbed, any science gained was a bonus. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of the proposed probe.
Lumpy is correct, we very likely could build a more state-of-the-art system using ion propulsion that would pass the Voyager craft in a very short time frame.
You grossly over estimate the performance of ion engines on a large probe. Unsurprising, really given your demonstrated vast ignorance.
We spend far more on endeavors that are completely devoid of merit, scientific or otherwise.
Which is roughly, utterly and completely irrelevant. I'm guessing you're just the kind of moron who types just to hear himself type and who knows roughly zero about the topic at hand - and is fucking ignorant enough to think that knowing roughly zero equates to being a genius.
Wasn't that completely discredited as being entirely fake?
Yeah, by those people who choose to take her literally rather than attempting to understand the meaning of 'artistic license'. On the 'net, nitpicking is easier than understanding.
Voyager probes are frigging HUGE. why cant we launch the same thing twice, but have them assemble in orbit and give it a chemical kick in the ass to get the slingshotting down and then when it get's it's last slingshot around juipeter kick in the Ion engines to do a long hard burn for a few years to get the thing really hauling ass.
Because it's really, really, REALLY, REALLY freaking expensive. You're talking a big task considering the need to develop the technology both for the probe and for on-orbit assembly (and no, the ISS is not suitable, among other problems it's in the wrong orbit). Then you're talking multiple launches, which increases the programmatic risk because each launch is a chance to lose a component. Then you have the problem of keeping the components 'alive' during the assembly period (I.E. powered up and with environmental controls active) and of actually assembling the probe. (I.E. more risk, more chances to screw things up.)
To put it in terms of Slashdot's favorite form of analogy: It's like designing and building a car from scratch in Chicago, then shipping the components to Los Angeles for assembly by remote control with robots also developed from scratch in Chicago and shipped to Los Angeles. Then you drive it from Los Angeles to Miami Beach by remote control - just so you can measure the wind speed and air temperature on the South Beach.
It's not that we can't do it... It's that the expense (several billion dollars at least) and the chances of success (iffy at best given the number of risky steps and cutting edge technologies), aren't justified by the rather modest science goals.
No, I never raised the issue of the ability to print - that was a fucking given considering the topic. Nor did I raise the issue of costs you fucking moron. Learn to fucking read.
There's a lot of FUD out there about health insurance. So here's the facts:
Yes, there's a lot of FUD. No, you can't tell the difference between FUD and facts. (Protip: FUD and propoganda comes from those in favor in equal measure with those against.)
Country B: Health insurance is mandatory. So everyone pays premiums. The premiums are low, because only a small percentage of the insured population actually use the insurance.
That's a really nice fantasy world you live in. Too bad it bears no relation to the one the rest of us live in. Here in the real world, everyone gets sick.
And then there is the criticism of quality of healthcare between country A and country B. And it is true: crisis care in country A is superior to crisis care in country B. Why? Because crisis care, like heart attacks, is expensive, therefore generating revenues. See, country A is all about making money, not taking care of your health.
Here in the real world, non crisis care makes money too - hand over fist.
Look: car insurance is mandatory in the USA. If you understand the logic behind that, you understand why health insurance should be mandatory
Car insurance is mandatory to insure that I can pay for damages I cause to others, not to ensure that I can repair damage to my own car that I otherwise could not afford. (In every state I've ever held car insurance in, it's quite legal not to insure one's own self and property.) So no, understanding why car insurance is mandatory has no connection that I can see with why health insurance 'should' be mandatory.
Sadly I think your joke just hit the nail on the head of one of the things that is seriously fucked up about this country. I mean here we are, factories shuttered all over the place, people losing their homes left and right, over 22,000 factories offshored since 2001, and debt climbing like there is no tomorrow and THIS, this is what we spend our non existent money on?
Right on Brother! Let's stop this research into a high tech endeavor with all kinds of useful civilian uses, put all the scientists, and engineers, and technicians working on it out of a job... and do what exactly? Put more people on the dole? Wait for China to develop this tech and it's civilian applications so we can buy it from them?
Seriously, what's your plan here and how does it actually leave us better off?
If we had ANY sense at all we'd cancel this crap, along with any new supercarriers being built (we already have 11 carriers for the love of Pete) and cancel that stupid F35 and just stick with the F15,16,18 combo.
Yeah, 11 carriers, all being used at full capacity and three of which are about worn out and ready for replacement. So let's cancel their replacements. Let's be worse off a few years down the road because only today matters. And we should never have replaced the F4 with the F18 either, the F4 was such awesome airplane. Hell, we could have saved even more money by staying with all those WWII airplanes we had.
Seriously, you're just about ready to be the CEO of a big corporation - it's all about this quarter, let the future handle itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone upthread points out this isn't really about Wikipedia's financial need - they're using Wikimedia's most visible project to [stealthily] advertise for money to support other Wikimedia projects.
And Slashdot is far from the only such site. I use two such on a daily basis: Lumberjocks (a woodworking site), and The Fresh Loaf (a baking site). In fact, I suspect that sites that rely on user content contribution that don't rely on ad revenue to keep the lights on are more the exception than the rule, doubly so if the site is of any size/significance.
Heck, look at Wikia... An entire network of sites that rely on user contributions for content and ad revenue to keep the lights on.
But, sadly, Wikipedia is different as the 'no advertising' mantra is written into it's very DNA. But, I can't see how a Wikipedia dominated by those willing to play the game and accept ad revenue will be noticeably different in the long run from Wikipedia as it currently exists. It's been demonstrated that folks will contribute to sites run by ad revenue.
Though they've become a bit more overt of late, PBS has had ads for as long as I can remember - and my memories go back into the late 60's. They call them sponsorships and donations, but "this program made possible by" is advertisement pure and simple.
Since butanol can be produced (an on an industrial scale certainly would be) from farm raised biomass... One suspects it's just a wee bit more complex than that.
But, knee jerk blaming the corporations and lobbyists is easier than actually trying to understand the issues.
That's because Brazil can slash-and-burn rainforest and raise cane on the fertile soil. It's a great business plan so long as you can slash-and-burn more rainforest after the old fields become exhausted after a year or two. Massive government subsidies and mandating the use of ethanol didn't hurt either.
Even if we could raise cane in significant quantities in the US (we can't), we lack the tropical rainforest to slash-and-burn.
That's the "back in the good old days" version. The reality is that Bell Labs worked almost exclusively on research eventually intended to have commercial yield, any basic research was done in support of that goal.
[sigh the standard karma whoring response to posts about Facebook and Twitter.]
It's more likely you don't comprehend the universe doesn't revolve around you and other people have other interests. (BTW, I'm 47, so how old is 'too old'?)
Let's check my twitter stream today... One tweet containing my daily photo shoot 'assignment' (from a site dedicated to sending out such to encourage creativity). One tweet from my local paper linking to an article about roads re-opening today after flooding over the weekend. Two tweets from a photographer I'm following letting me know about a place where has a guest article, and another to an eBay auction where he's selling some used gear. (Great deals too... but he shoots Nikon and I shoot Canon, so no soup for me.) One from a an online woodworking guild reminding me of this weeks meeting. One tweet from a cook/author I follow asking for help with some historical research... A pretty typical day, none of it 'banal'.
Because, with the tax year ending in a couple of weeks, it keeps the books neat. And frankly, if this is your highest financial burden time of the year, that's your own choice.
Let's wait and see if a significant number of employees are actually picked up. This smells more of publicity stunt that's gone viral - so everyone is getting on the bandwagon.
Or, less charitably, hoping to pick up a distressed former Yahoo employee or two at fire sale prices. If they actually were competitive in their hiring... they wouldn't need to advertise for former Yahoo employees.
Yeah, they're far away from the popularity of Gmail's 15% of the market with Yahoo Mail's 55%. Yahoo also owns one of the biggest and busiest photo storage and sharing service on the 'net - Flickr. Their fantasy sports leagues are among the busiest and biggest, and their real life sports pages the most trafficked on the 'net. From what I see around the 'net Yahoo Groups outruns Google Groups a hundred to none. (No, that's not a typo.) Not to mention their individual games (Scrabble and the like), Yahoo Answers, etc... etc...
Even though Google is popular among the Slashdot/techie crowd - that's a pretty narrow demographic. The reality is that people *do* still use portal sites (having a single login is very convienent). The reality is that outside of search, most of Google's offerings are a struggling second or a distant third (with MSN and Yahoo filling the top two).
If Google ever obtains an attention span and an actual plan (more than 'throw stuff out there and hope it sticks')... They might all might change, but not before. Google's biggest roadblock in actual dominance of the 'net is largely itself. They've spent so much time being cool, they've failed to realize that to most people functionality is more important than trendiness and bling.
Yahoo's strategy over the last decade has largely been to offer solid service to the masses rather than flash to their investors. By and large, it's been working.
The funny part is, you were so busy being bigoted you failed to notice that the translation you used inserted commas where you needed decimal points - making it look like you needed office spaces the size of football fields per individual back in the 1970's.
That was my first though when I read the summary too... "duh, how obvious" - as we move closer and closer to being truly paperless, officer workers need less and less space to spread out papers or to store files.
I hate to invoke 'kids these days' - but it really does apply here. Anyone under thirty or so has almost certainly never experienced an 'old style' office - when PC's became ubiquitous in the 90's, things changed radically.
My wife is an accountant and CFO for a local business and keeps a set of the ledgers from the 1980's in her office - they fill a shelf three feet long. (She says when she's frustrated because the server is slow or down, looking at that shelf reminds her of how good she actually has it.) She also points out all she has is the ledgers, the ancillary material like invoices, timesheets, sales tickets, etc... would take up even more space. If she wasn't required to keep a physical paper trail of some things for legal and tax reasons, she wouldn't even have a filing cabinet in her office. The old storage room for such stuff is now an employee break room. The refrigerator in the break room is bigger than the annual amount of paper she has to store nowadays.
She also points out that in the 1980's the business required an accountant, two full time bookkeepers, and a full time filing clerk. Today, despite the business being ten times larger, there's just her and a full time data entry clerk. The phone girl files in her spare time.
For another example: In my book collection, I have a book on office organization intended for professional engineers, draftsmen, and architects from the 1950's - it dedicates three entire chapters (almost half the book) to the theory and practice of laying out work spaces for engineers and draftsmen. You lay it out one way for buildings, another for ships, a different way for airplanes... All trying to solve the problem of mapping a 3D physical object onto/into a 2D drafting room such that guys (and it was all guys back then) working on adjacent parts/rooms/spaces/systems were close enough to each other to collaborate. (When something like the working drawings for the engine room of a ship could stretch thirty feet or an entire deck could stretch a hundred or more if laid end-to-end this was a real problem.) The offices were open plan because they had to be, because there was no other way to collaborate but to physically transport yourself or the drawing to the individual(s) you needed to communicate with.
Or maybe you're confusing cause and effect... When I first read the summary, my thought was "duh, how obvious" - as we move closer and closer to being truly paperless, officer workers need less and less space to spread out papers or to store files.
Maybe you should understand the meaning of the word nomination - it means 'submitted for consideration'.
You and others keep harping on the voting results as if this was a popularity poll or an election where the results were binding. It wasn't.
That sound you heard is the OP's point whooshing over your head... He's not comparing Zuckerberg to Hitler, he's correcting the common misconception that Time's "Man/Person of the Year" is awarded only for positive reasons - when in fact it's awarded for being most influential for weal or for woe.
Seriously, more reading and thinking and less kneejerking just because Hitler is mentioned mate.
That sound you heard is the OP's point whooshing over your head... He's not comparing Zuckerberg to Hitler, he's correcting the common misconception that Time's "Man/Person of the Year" is awarded only for positive reasons - when in fact it's awarded for being most influential for weal or for woe.
We only had to wait 28 years for the second installment of "Tron"
Well, if you consider spending the last 28 years more or less forgetting that such a forgettable movie even existed... yeah.
Seriously, Tron was more-or-less the prototype for the modern "wow 'em with state-of-the-art eye candy and hope they don't notice the other defects" movie. If I hadn't had the duty (and thus been required to stay on base) and hadn't been bored enough that the $1.00 matinee showing of any movie was the best entertainment available on base that Saturday... I'd probably never have seen it.
Only if you're stupid enough to use the most obvious answer. In my case I could use the name of the city like pretty much everyone else - but I use something else that is technically correct, easily remembered by me, and non-obvious to the random hacker. (I.E. something that can't be found by searching public records and isn't something like 'a hospital'.)
Which is roughly - meaningless, since it's a fraction of the size and science goals of the proposed probe.
Which is roughly - meaningless. The whole goal of Deep Space 1 was an engineering testbed, any science gained was a bonus. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of the proposed probe.
You grossly over estimate the performance of ion engines on a large probe. Unsurprising, really given your demonstrated vast ignorance.
Which is roughly, utterly and completely irrelevant. I'm guessing you're just the kind of moron who types just to hear himself type and who knows roughly zero about the topic at hand - and is fucking ignorant enough to think that knowing roughly zero equates to being a genius.
Yeah, by those people who choose to take her literally rather than attempting to understand the meaning of 'artistic license'. On the 'net, nitpicking is easier than understanding.
Because it's really, really, REALLY, REALLY freaking expensive. You're talking a big task considering the need to develop the technology both for the probe and for on-orbit assembly (and no, the ISS is not suitable, among other problems it's in the wrong orbit). Then you're talking multiple launches, which increases the programmatic risk because each launch is a chance to lose a component. Then you have the problem of keeping the components 'alive' during the assembly period (I.E. powered up and with environmental controls active) and of actually assembling the probe. (I.E. more risk, more chances to screw things up.)
To put it in terms of Slashdot's favorite form of analogy: It's like designing and building a car from scratch in Chicago, then shipping the components to Los Angeles for assembly by remote control with robots also developed from scratch in Chicago and shipped to Los Angeles. Then you drive it from Los Angeles to Miami Beach by remote control - just so you can measure the wind speed and air temperature on the South Beach.
It's not that we can't do it... It's that the expense (several billion dollars at least) and the chances of success (iffy at best given the number of risky steps and cutting edge technologies), aren't justified by the rather modest science goals.
No, I never raised the issue of the ability to print - that was a fucking given considering the topic. Nor did I raise the issue of costs you fucking moron. Learn to fucking read.
Yes, there's a lot of FUD. No, you can't tell the difference between FUD and facts. (Protip: FUD and propoganda comes from those in favor in equal measure with those against.)
That's a really nice fantasy world you live in. Too bad it bears no relation to the one the rest of us live in. Here in the real world, everyone gets sick.
Here in the real world, non crisis care makes money too - hand over fist.
Car insurance is mandatory to insure that I can pay for damages I cause to others, not to ensure that I can repair damage to my own car that I otherwise could not afford. (In every state I've ever held car insurance in, it's quite legal not to insure one's own self and property.) So no, understanding why car insurance is mandatory has no connection that I can see with why health insurance 'should' be mandatory.
Which has pretty much exactly nothing to do with my comment - which addressed talent, not costs.
Right on Brother! Let's stop this research into a high tech endeavor with all kinds of useful civilian uses, put all the scientists, and engineers, and technicians working on it out of a job... and do what exactly? Put more people on the dole? Wait for China to develop this tech and it's civilian applications so we can buy it from them?
Seriously, what's your plan here and how does it actually leave us better off?
Yeah, 11 carriers, all being used at full capacity and three of which are about worn out and ready for replacement. So let's cancel their replacements. Let's be worse off a few years down the road because only today matters. And we should never have replaced the F4 with the F18 either, the F4 was such awesome airplane. Hell, we could have saved even more money by staying with all those WWII airplanes we had.
Seriously, you're just about ready to be the CEO of a big corporation - it's all about this quarter, let the future handle itself.