And, remember, as Mater said, And then I remembered what they say about old British engines: "If there ain't no oil under 'em, there ain't no oil in 'em."
This fixes that.
Yup. If you rebuild it it'll just leak clean oil for awhile.
great way to ruin your investment by making the car near worthless.
it will only be worth its money if it is in its original state.
Maybe not. This isn't someone doing a backyard conversion; it's Aston Martin engineering a solution so it's still an Aston Martin and not some cobbled up Frankenmartin. In addition, they are doing a limited run per TFA so each conversion will be a rare variant. Plus, the whole thing is reversible:
Given the historical significance of these collectors cars it’s vital any EV conversion is sympathetic to the integrity of the original car. The cassette system offers the perfect solution, offering owners the reassurance of knowing their car is future-proofed and socially responsible, yet still an authentic Aston Martin with the ability to reinstate its original powertrain if desired.
Giving all of that they may wind up being more valuable to a collector.
You may not be paying for it when you use it, but it's being paid for though taxation. It's not free, far from it.
But let's be real. "Public transportation" is ALWAYS taxpayer funded in some way. Why? Because there is no way it would be possible for the private sector to do this kind of thing at a "reasonable" cost for the average user. The business model is unworkable. The only option is to throw taxpayer funds into it.
Very true. It comes down to, once you provide the service, how to best fund it. Doing all of it via taxation means some people will pay for it but never use it; however there are many government services that do the same thing so it balances out. People also benefit from externalities even if they never use a service they help fund via taxes. The challenge is, once it has no fare costs, is how to deal with a sudden increase in demand if it occurred? Such a change, in some cases, could overwhelm the existing supply of space at some times of the day; driving up the costs as demand is met. In addition, what happnes to underserved areas who all of a sudden aren't getting a "free service?" I would guess first class will go away as rolling stock is replaced or refurbished as it no longer makes sense to use space that isn't generating incremental revenue.
Unless of course that is their plan and they simply won't be updating their platforms anymore but continue selling them for as long as possible. Sort of how the Crown Vic soldiered on with the same platform for a quarter century.
Exactly. A platform can last a long time as it is the base on which vehicles are built. One platform can be used in a variety of vehicles, and the vehicle's shell redesigned as need in periodic refreshes. Car manufacturers do that toady with vehicles undergoing mid-production life face lifts to update the design, add new features, etc. The basic platform can soldier on for years even though the vehicles do not look similar. More telling is VW's comment:
“We’re gradually fading out combustion engines to the absolute minimum.”
The "gradually" tells me not to expect to see VW being all electric anytime soon. Which makes sense since it will take time to build up infrastructure, work out design and engineering issues, gain public acceptance of EVs as an ICE alternative, etc.
"Absolute minimum" means to me "Keep enough around to have a steady cash cow while we do the switch."
The other thing is that the cost of these things is going to keep going down. I see another trend on the horizon which will be battery replacements. I expect that once there are enough old electric cars with poor batteries, someone will start making replacement packs enmass. These will be cheap (as batteries have gotten cheaper) or have better capacity. So you can probably keep the same car for much longer and just keep changing the tyres and upgrading the pack as required.
I agree replaceable packs will be eventually part of an EV's design. However, I think there will be some issues with them:
1. I would be willing to bet manufacturers will do everything the can to prevent 3rd party packs from becoming widely available. DRM to detect and not 3rd party packs, non-standard designs along with specialized mounting hardware to make it less economical for 3rd parties to manufacture or refurbish, design patents, etc. With less maintenance work they will look to ways to replace the lost revenue to dealers and to them for parts.
2. Even if 3rd party packs are readily available they could require reprogramming of the car's engine control system to recognize a new pack and properly charge it. BMW already does that with IC cars, where replacing the battery with an aftermarket one at 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of one with a BMW sticker still requires a trip to the dealer to reset the computer so it charges properly. Granted, you can buy a 3rd party reset tool but most owners won't or can't do the swap themselves, thus an expensive (I know, redundant when saying BMW) trip to the dealer.Some dealers may not even do a reset for non-BMW batteries to avoid complaints later if there is a problem with the battery.
3. It will be interesting to see how battery degradation as it ages is handled. You can live with a phone that holds 80% of a charge without too much impact on its usefulness but when a car's mileage goes from say 400 miles to 320 per charge the impact is more noticeable, especially for drivers who typically drive longer distances. While I think the impact will be more psychological for most owners, given most don't do 400 miles all at once, seeing your car start reporting less and less range would be upsetting. A vacation trip could become problematic, especially near EOL for the battery. Building in spare cells that cut in as the battery degrades could address the degradation issues, as well as give the manufacturer a way to build in special electronics that a 3rd party can't replicate.
4. Even refurbishing batteries, similar printer cartridges know, could be thwarted by tying a pack to a specific VIN so when it is pulled the electronics will not work in another vehicle
5. Manufacturers could also not sell you the battery, instead lease it to you for a small monthly fee and when it reaches a certain capacity simply swap it out with a new one and recycle the old one. That may be attractive to regulators since it would ensure the batteries are properly disposed of and recycled and let manufacturers design packs for recycling and reuse; plus they could build in a desired profit margin in the lease costs.
I think EV's are the future, and will offer the same variety and performance options as we have today. In some ways they'll be even more fun given the capabilities of an electric motor, such as gobs of torque, as well as much greater flexibility in the design and placement of electric motors vs IC engines.Four wheel drive with one motor driving each wheel? Try that with an ICE. Sealed drivetrain that can ford a river without worrying about water lock? Sure. Running electronic devices in a camper without a generator? Just build a bigger battery pack in the camper version.
While I agree power train problems and maintenance will be less (although cars are pretty reliable now); many of the other problems will persist. Window regulators will break, power seats malfunction, windshield wiper motors fail, and all the other non-power train issues car face
The idea behind pause ads is that instead of facing forced commercial breaks at specified interludes, users would be more accepting of ads that play when they choose to pause a show for a bit while they do something else.
Of course, that's what they say now; and would not be surprised if you are right. Still, if it an option that gets rid of forced ads I'd prefer that to forced ads.
I'll take pause ads over forced ads. I route my TV through a receiver so I can always mute it, and being able to to watch a show with with no ads is more appealing than forced ads. I am usually leaving the room when I pause anyway, so it really won't impact my viewing. Now, when they include a remote that listens to hear the ad I'll change my mind. Then when I pause to answer the phone to find out I have viruses on my computer and they need my CC number to fix it I am screwed...
Guess they are just screwed. I know you city dwellers that never leave the city, don't get why
people live in "flyover country", but there are a TON of potential customers that will be out of
all television. Most live too far away for over the air, now that all the signals are digital and their
power to reach is very limited.
I do a lot of traveling in the midwest. Satellite dishes are EVERYWHERE.
Someone will come along to take over that market.
Dish, no doubt. In addition, as 5G rolls out it will be a viable option as well; and a lot cheaper to run than ghaving a satelite option. I think satelite TV will be dead in 5 years or so. As oteh roptions become more readily available compaiies will look to dump the costs assocuiated with satellite and won't care about the small fraction that lose TV all together. They'll wait until it is small enough to avoid a political backlash when people compalin the their representatives.
If you already have broadband, you could just run a directv app on your existing devices or buy an inexpensive one.
Though I did get such an app (att watch tv) bundled with my phone service and itâ(TM)s terrible... so maybe their capacity to write one is limited.
I'm guessing they're going to push their fiber with a DirectTvNow bundle at some point. If they can get DTVN a better interface so that it is easier to find things and make the DVR more flexible such as not auto deleting old shows, they will have a decent product. I have it and like not being thethered to their box so I can watch it virtually anywhere thanks to the magic of VPNs. Reliability is still an issue - it occasionally goes balck on me and I have to go to the menu to resatrt the program, and not all subscribed services let me use their apps with a DTVN login. I also have uVerse becasue it is cheaper to bundle it and get no data caps tahn have just internet service. I would guess if the bundle DTVN with internet servcie their app would not count against data caps; or they would just lift tha cap as they do know with bundles.
The bound of the estimate is a hard deadline for all practical purposes.
My 2 - 2 - 10 rule for projects: No matter the estimate, it wil take twice as long, cost twice as much and ten percent of the planned capablity will not be delivered
A typical English car gets 45mpg, that's best of the best in the US. A humvee gets 12, downhill.
True, since most people in the US don't drive the tiny sub compacts; even so at 2X gas prices a US car would nead to average 22.5 MPG, with the latest average at 24 per DOT, making the costs about the same on a per mile basis or a bit cheaper in the US. Even long wheel base light duty vehicles (some cars, trucks, vans, etc.) hit 17. New light trucks hit 27 and cars 37. If you compare similar vehicles the UK's fuel costs are signifiantly higher. Even if you look at cost for total miles driven the US only pays 25% more to drive 50% more miles. The OP's notion that US drivers pay significantly more because they drive more is incorrect.
Your analysis is insane. Our vehicles are heavier, but not twice as heavy. Cars have bulked up across the board in the last couple of decades due to amenities and safety equipment.
In addition, the miles driven on average are not that different, the US drives about 50% more miles on average at about 1/2 the cost of fuel; so the same vehicle would be cheaper to operate in the US than the UK. That does not account for any differences in annual registration costs or other fees such as congestion charges, etc.
The extra added on to petrol in Britain simply gets paid by the US driver by other means. And by having more people collecting the money by more methods, you pay a higher premium.
Your distances are about twenty times greater, and your vehicles maybe twice as heavy, so you end up using fourty times the fuel for the same tasks.
So you pay far more and pay far more often, all you do is pay less at a time.
And you fell for it.
After I said: "Not realy.[sic] If you look at average milage per year, the US is about 12K, EU 10K and UK 8K based on the latest numbers I could find. If you assume UK/EU fuel prices are 2X vs the US, the EU and UK pay more per mile driven in fuel costs than the US; even though you drive less.
I should have added "for a vehicle that gets the same gas milage." You can get a fuel efficient vehicle or a gas hog; depending on you choice; either would be more expensive to drive in the UK or EU.
The extra added on to petrol in Britain simply gets paid by the US driver by other means. And by having more people collecting the money by more methods, you pay a higher premium.
Your distances are about twenty times greater, and your vehicles maybe twice as heavy, so you end up using fourty times the fuel for the same tasks.
So you pay far more and pay far more often, all you do is pay less at a time.
And you fell for it.
Not realy. If you look at average milage per year, the US is about 12K, EU 10K and UK 8K based on the latest numbers I could find. If you assume UK/EU fuel prices are 2X vs the US, the EU and UK pay more per mile driven in fuel costs than the US; even though you drive less.
Has the EU eliminated roaming charges when you are outside of your home market? Are the EU plans unlimited data? The article doesn't reall go into much detail on how the plans compare beyond pricing.
Doesn't NASA need a spacecraft that can fly to the IIS before selling seats on it? They don't currently have vehicle that can go to the IIS. Are they selling seats on the SLS, which might get cancelled after spending billions? Or are they selling seats on the Soyuz, Dragon or Dreamliner, which they don't own?
It's all part of the new commercialization approach. Create idea for product, sell product, ?, profit.
In the power industry, under rate base (power industry jargon for 'cost plus %') the expression was: 'We can make a profit remodelling the executive offices.' So they did, every year or two, at great expense.
I haven't heard that one in a while.
When I was building plants the experession was "We'll give them the plant for nothing and make a killing on the change orders..."
The American taxpayer should never be in the business of enriching for profit companies. Those companies should be required to sell to the US at cost + a % of overhead provided they meet deadlines and cost estimation projections. It's unfair and totally prone to abuse for for-profit companies to make profit off of taxpayers. We need to end corporate subsidies and return to the era of a separation of state and corporations. Companies are not people. Until Texas executes a company, they're not alive.
Good idea in theory, lousy one in practice. Cost plus contracts are often used on big projects where costs can't be accurately estimated for a variety of reasons, the least of which is the govenrment often does a bad job of writing specifications so it is not clear what is in or out of spec. It also makes it easier to make changes to the specification since any added cost is covered.
That said, companies will not take on high risk projects if there is a lot of uncertainty as to their profitablity; and 5 year programs turn into multi-generational jobs that keeps the cost plus gravy flowing.
If you did them on a firm fixed price basis the costs would be so high to cover the uncertainties surrounding the project it would not get done; and if a spec gets changed it is necessary to add more money to cover the change order.
As for not making a profit of of the government; to me the real question is "Is it cheaper to DIY or have a contarctor do it?" If a contractor is cheaper than DIY than how much profit is made is irrelevant to the decision. A seperate argument is, of course, is it necessary to do this in the first place?
Nope. When we hire, we are looking for people who can think and do.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies want that but at cut rate prices. As the labor market tightens the cheapskates will lose talent; and whine thay can't get any or people don't turn up for interviews. If you hadn't treated them like crap when you had the upperhand they wouldn't turn around and do the same to you.
Feds could easily snap their fingers and send several thousand new knowledge worker jobs to Tulsa within the next 1-3 years just by giving marching orders to a few agencies to move out of metro DC and set up jobs in that general region. It would also save the taxpayers probably on the order of 25-40% on contract costs.
I have never understood why the other 48 states, particularly California with all of its collective bitching about paying more than it receives, has allowed MD and VA to grow fat on all of these jobs. Metro DC could easily be forcibly disassembled by the other 48 states legislatively if they chose to cooperate.
New jobs, maybe. Moving existing jobs is not easy, for several reasons. First is Congress will protect jobs in their region since they represents voters and money. Moving Fed workers isn't easy either. they have a number of job protections so they can't simply say move. As a result, years of expereince walks out the door, and is not easiliy replaced. Buildings have to meet new security requirements that older ones don't. I've seen some government moves and they often wind up with fewer jibs moving than initially promised.
As for the other states cooperating, can you imagine the fighting over say 100K jobs and the accompanying spending? I doubt many politicians would help anotehr state get jobs at their state's expense.
The funniest part is their (HBO, Disney, CBS, etc) total failure to see the glaring flaw in their attempt to capitalize on people who really just want a-la-carte content: they still aren't offering a-la-carte content.
Maybe someone did the market research and decided that the revenue added by giving people more granular options wouldn't make up for the cost of supporting so many options and the revenue lost from people downgrading from "all the things" subscriptions to less costly subscriptions. But it still feels like a missed opportunity to me.
If they do go a la carte it is more likely to be through a service such as iTunes where you buy a season for a fixed price, somewhat less than the same price if you subscribed for the duration if the run.
The problem is not too many streaming services. Competition is good for consumers. The problem is too many exclusives. Game of Thrones only on HBO Go, Star Wars only on Disney+, Star Trek only on CBS-All-Access. All of them are charging as if they were a full cable replacement instead of a single cable channel.
They all have exclusives because that is what gets people to buy their services. If multiple services offered their content they would get a smaller cut of the revenue. As for charging, they are charging much in the same way they charged the cable companies; i.e. their offerings were more expensive because it is what drove subscribers to cable, unlike the marginal offerings such as SyFi, Velocity, HGTV, etc. who only survive because they get paid a few pennies per subscriber, and don't have to depend on actual viewership to survive=. They haven't gone at it alone because for many of them they would not make enough to survive.
Called Scan and Go, you scan each barcode, checkout with credit card and it displays a barcode that's scanned at checkout. Only limit is you have to pay for alcohol in person.
Slashdot Mirror
And, remember, as Mater said, And then I remembered what they say about old British engines: "If there ain't no oil under 'em, there ain't no oil in 'em."
This fixes that.
Yup. If you rebuild it it'll just leak clean oil for awhile.
great way to ruin your investment by making the car near worthless. it will only be worth its money if it is in its original state.
Maybe not. This isn't someone doing a backyard conversion; it's Aston Martin engineering a solution so it's still an Aston Martin and not some cobbled up Frankenmartin. In addition, they are doing a limited run per TFA so each conversion will be a rare variant. Plus, the whole thing is reversible:
Given the historical significance of these collectors cars it’s vital any EV conversion is sympathetic to the integrity of the original car. The cassette system offers the perfect solution, offering owners the reassurance of knowing their car is future-proofed and socially responsible, yet still an authentic Aston Martin with the ability to reinstate its original powertrain if desired.
Giving all of that they may wind up being more valuable to a collector.
You usually do not buy an Aston Martin for your commute.
True. Unless it is an Aston Martin Cygnet http://www.astonmartin.com/en/...
You may not be paying for it when you use it, but it's being paid for though taxation. It's not free, far from it.
But let's be real. "Public transportation" is ALWAYS taxpayer funded in some way. Why? Because there is no way it would be possible for the private sector to do this kind of thing at a "reasonable" cost for the average user. The business model is unworkable. The only option is to throw taxpayer funds into it.
Very true. It comes down to, once you provide the service, how to best fund it. Doing all of it via taxation means some people will pay for it but never use it; however there are many government services that do the same thing so it balances out. People also benefit from externalities even if they never use a service they help fund via taxes. The challenge is, once it has no fare costs, is how to deal with a sudden increase in demand if it occurred? Such a change, in some cases, could overwhelm the existing supply of space at some times of the day; driving up the costs as demand is met. In addition, what happnes to underserved areas who all of a sudden aren't getting a "free service?" I would guess first class will go away as rolling stock is replaced or refurbished as it no longer makes sense to use space that isn't generating incremental revenue.
Unless of course that is their plan and they simply won't be updating their platforms anymore but continue selling them for as long as possible. Sort of how the Crown Vic soldiered on with the same platform for a quarter century.
Exactly. A platform can last a long time as it is the base on which vehicles are built. One platform can be used in a variety of vehicles, and the vehicle's shell redesigned as need in periodic refreshes. Car manufacturers do that toady with vehicles undergoing mid-production life face lifts to update the design, add new features, etc. The basic platform can soldier on for years even though the vehicles do not look similar. More telling is VW's comment:
“We’re gradually fading out combustion engines to the absolute minimum.”
The "gradually" tells me not to expect to see VW being all electric anytime soon. Which makes sense since it will take time to build up infrastructure, work out design and engineering issues, gain public acceptance of EVs as an ICE alternative, etc.
"Absolute minimum" means to me "Keep enough around to have a steady cash cow while we do the switch."
a
The other thing is that the cost of these things is going to keep going down. I see another trend on the horizon which will be battery replacements. I expect that once there are enough old electric cars with poor batteries, someone will start making replacement packs enmass. These will be cheap (as batteries have gotten cheaper) or have better capacity. So you can probably keep the same car for much longer and just keep changing the tyres and upgrading the pack as required.
I agree replaceable packs will be eventually part of an EV's design. However, I think there will be some issues with them:
1. I would be willing to bet manufacturers will do everything the can to prevent 3rd party packs from becoming widely available. DRM to detect and not 3rd party packs, non-standard designs along with specialized mounting hardware to make it less economical for 3rd parties to manufacture or refurbish, design patents, etc. With less maintenance work they will look to ways to replace the lost revenue to dealers and to them for parts.
2. Even if 3rd party packs are readily available they could require reprogramming of the car's engine control system to recognize a new pack and properly charge it. BMW already does that with IC cars, where replacing the battery with an aftermarket one at 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of one with a BMW sticker still requires a trip to the dealer to reset the computer so it charges properly. Granted, you can buy a 3rd party reset tool but most owners won't or can't do the swap themselves, thus an expensive (I know, redundant when saying BMW) trip to the dealer.Some dealers may not even do a reset for non-BMW batteries to avoid complaints later if there is a problem with the battery.
3. It will be interesting to see how battery degradation as it ages is handled. You can live with a phone that holds 80% of a charge without too much impact on its usefulness but when a car's mileage goes from say 400 miles to 320 per charge the impact is more noticeable, especially for drivers who typically drive longer distances. While I think the impact will be more psychological for most owners, given most don't do 400 miles all at once, seeing your car start reporting less and less range would be upsetting. A vacation trip could become problematic, especially near EOL for the battery. Building in spare cells that cut in as the battery degrades could address the degradation issues, as well as give the manufacturer a way to build in special electronics that a 3rd party can't replicate.
4. Even refurbishing batteries, similar printer cartridges know, could be thwarted by tying a pack to a specific VIN so when it is pulled the electronics will not work in another vehicle
5. Manufacturers could also not sell you the battery, instead lease it to you for a small monthly fee and when it reaches a certain capacity simply swap it out with a new one and recycle the old one. That may be attractive to regulators since it would ensure the batteries are properly disposed of and recycled and let manufacturers design packs for recycling and reuse; plus they could build in a desired profit margin in the lease costs.
I think EV's are the future, and will offer the same variety and performance options as we have today. In some ways they'll be even more fun given the capabilities of an electric motor, such as gobs of torque, as well as much greater flexibility in the design and placement of electric motors vs IC engines.Four wheel drive with one motor driving each wheel? Try that with an ICE. Sealed drivetrain that can ford a river without worrying about water lock? Sure. Running electronic devices in a camper without a generator? Just build a bigger battery pack in the camper version.
While I agree power train problems and maintenance will be less (although cars are pretty reliable now); many of the other problems will persist. Window regulators will break, power seats malfunction, windshield wiper motors fail, and all the other non-power train issues car face
You will only get both, not lose the other.
Per TFA:
The idea behind pause ads is that instead of facing forced commercial breaks at specified interludes, users would be more accepting of ads that play when they choose to pause a show for a bit while they do something else.
Of course, that's what they say now; and would not be surprised if you are right. Still, if it an option that gets rid of forced ads I'd prefer that to forced ads.
I'll take pause ads over forced ads. I route my TV through a receiver so I can always mute it, and being able to to watch a show with with no ads is more appealing than forced ads. I am usually leaving the room when I pause anyway, so it really won't impact my viewing. Now, when they include a remote that listens to hear the ad I'll change my mind. Then when I pause to answer the phone to find out I have viruses on my computer and they need my CC number to fix it I am screwed...
Guess they are just screwed. I know you city dwellers that never leave the city, don't get why people live in "flyover country", but there are a TON of potential customers that will be out of all television. Most live too far away for over the air, now that all the signals are digital and their power to reach is very limited. I do a lot of traveling in the midwest. Satellite dishes are EVERYWHERE. Someone will come along to take over that market.
Dish, no doubt. In addition, as 5G rolls out it will be a viable option as well; and a lot cheaper to run than ghaving a satelite option. I think satelite TV will be dead in 5 years or so. As oteh roptions become more readily available compaiies will look to dump the costs assocuiated with satellite and won't care about the small fraction that lose TV all together. They'll wait until it is small enough to avoid a political backlash when people compalin the their representatives.
If you already have broadband, you could just run a directv app on your existing devices or buy an inexpensive one.
Though I did get such an app (att watch tv) bundled with my phone service and itâ(TM)s terrible... so maybe their capacity to write one is limited.
I'm guessing they're going to push their fiber with a DirectTvNow bundle at some point. If they can get DTVN a better interface so that it is easier to find things and make the DVR more flexible such as not auto deleting old shows, they will have a decent product. I have it and like not being thethered to their box so I can watch it virtually anywhere thanks to the magic of VPNs. Reliability is still an issue - it occasionally goes balck on me and I have to go to the menu to resatrt the program, and not all subscribed services let me use their apps with a DTVN login. I also have uVerse becasue it is cheaper to bundle it and get no data caps tahn have just internet service. I would guess if the bundle DTVN with internet servcie their app would not count against data caps; or they would just lift tha cap as they do know with bundles.
3-4-50 when dealing with Oracle.
Only 4x as much? Who gave you that discount?
But an estimate is not a hard deadline.
The bound of the estimate is a hard deadline for all practical purposes.
My 2 - 2 - 10 rule for projects: No matter the estimate, it wil take twice as long, cost twice as much and ten percent of the planned capablity will not be delivered
A typical English car gets 45mpg, that's best of the best in the US. A humvee gets 12, downhill.
True, since most people in the US don't drive the tiny sub compacts; even so at 2X gas prices a US car would nead to average 22.5 MPG, with the latest average at 24 per DOT, making the costs about the same on a per mile basis or a bit cheaper in the US. Even long wheel base light duty vehicles (some cars, trucks, vans, etc.) hit 17. New light trucks hit 27 and cars 37. If you compare similar vehicles the UK's fuel costs are signifiantly higher. Even if you look at cost for total miles driven the US only pays 25% more to drive 50% more miles. The OP's notion that US drivers pay significantly more because they drive more is incorrect.
Your analysis is insane. Our vehicles are heavier, but not twice as heavy. Cars have bulked up across the board in the last couple of decades due to amenities and safety equipment.
In addition, the miles driven on average are not that different, the US drives about 50% more miles on average at about 1/2 the cost of fuel; so the same vehicle would be cheaper to operate in the US than the UK. That does not account for any differences in annual registration costs or other fees such as congestion charges, etc.
Actually, not so good.
The extra added on to petrol in Britain simply gets paid by the US driver by other means. And by having more people collecting the money by more methods, you pay a higher premium.
Your distances are about twenty times greater, and your vehicles maybe twice as heavy, so you end up using fourty times the fuel for the same tasks.
So you pay far more and pay far more often, all you do is pay less at a time.
And you fell for it.
After I said: "Not realy.[sic] If you look at average milage per year, the US is about 12K, EU 10K and UK 8K based on the latest numbers I could find. If you assume UK/EU fuel prices are 2X vs the US, the EU and UK pay more per mile driven in fuel costs than the US; even though you drive less.
I should have added "for a vehicle that gets the same gas milage." You can get a fuel efficient vehicle or a gas hog; depending on you choice; either would be more expensive to drive in the UK or EU.
Actually, not so good.
The extra added on to petrol in Britain simply gets paid by the US driver by other means. And by having more people collecting the money by more methods, you pay a higher premium.
Your distances are about twenty times greater, and your vehicles maybe twice as heavy, so you end up using fourty times the fuel for the same tasks.
So you pay far more and pay far more often, all you do is pay less at a time.
And you fell for it.
Not realy. If you look at average milage per year, the US is about 12K, EU 10K and UK 8K based on the latest numbers I could find. If you assume UK/EU fuel prices are 2X vs the US, the EU and UK pay more per mile driven in fuel costs than the US; even though you drive less.
Has the EU eliminated roaming charges when you are outside of your home market? Are the EU plans unlimited data? The article doesn't reall go into much detail on how the plans compare beyond pricing.
Doesn't NASA need a spacecraft that can fly to the IIS before selling seats on it? They don't currently have vehicle that can go to the IIS. Are they selling seats on the SLS, which might get cancelled after spending billions? Or are they selling seats on the Soyuz, Dragon or Dreamliner, which they don't own?
It's all part of the new commercialization approach. Create idea for product, sell product, ?, profit.
The Kickstarter campaign should be interesting.
In the power industry, under rate base (power industry jargon for 'cost plus %') the expression was: 'We can make a profit remodelling the executive offices.' So they did, every year or two, at great expense.
I haven't heard that one in a while.
When I was building plants the experession was "We'll give them the plant for nothing and make a killing on the change orders..."
The American taxpayer should never be in the business of enriching for profit companies. Those companies should be required to sell to the US at cost + a % of overhead provided they meet deadlines and cost estimation projections. It's unfair and totally prone to abuse for for-profit companies to make profit off of taxpayers. We need to end corporate subsidies and return to the era of a separation of state and corporations. Companies are not people. Until Texas executes a company, they're not alive.
Good idea in theory, lousy one in practice. Cost plus contracts are often used on big projects where costs can't be accurately estimated for a variety of reasons, the least of which is the govenrment often does a bad job of writing specifications so it is not clear what is in or out of spec. It also makes it easier to make changes to the specification since any added cost is covered.
That said, companies will not take on high risk projects if there is a lot of uncertainty as to their profitablity; and 5 year programs turn into multi-generational jobs that keeps the cost plus gravy flowing.
If you did them on a firm fixed price basis the costs would be so high to cover the uncertainties surrounding the project it would not get done; and if a spec gets changed it is necessary to add more money to cover the change order.
As for not making a profit of of the government; to me the real question is "Is it cheaper to DIY or have a contarctor do it?" If a contractor is cheaper than DIY than how much profit is made is irrelevant to the decision. A seperate argument is, of course, is it necessary to do this in the first place?
>But that's exactly what Industry wants.
Nope. When we hire, we are looking for people who can think and do.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies want that but at cut rate prices. As the labor market tightens the cheapskates will lose talent; and whine thay can't get any or people don't turn up for interviews. If you hadn't treated them like crap when you had the upperhand they wouldn't turn around and do the same to you.
Feds could easily snap their fingers and send several thousand new knowledge worker jobs to Tulsa within the next 1-3 years just by giving marching orders to a few agencies to move out of metro DC and set up jobs in that general region. It would also save the taxpayers probably on the order of 25-40% on contract costs.
I have never understood why the other 48 states, particularly California with all of its collective bitching about paying more than it receives, has allowed MD and VA to grow fat on all of these jobs. Metro DC could easily be forcibly disassembled by the other 48 states legislatively if they chose to cooperate.
New jobs, maybe. Moving existing jobs is not easy, for several reasons. First is Congress will protect jobs in their region since they represents voters and money. Moving Fed workers isn't easy either. they have a number of job protections so they can't simply say move. As a result, years of expereince walks out the door, and is not easiliy replaced. Buildings have to meet new security requirements that older ones don't. I've seen some government moves and they often wind up with fewer jibs moving than initially promised.
As for the other states cooperating, can you imagine the fighting over say 100K jobs and the accompanying spending? I doubt many politicians would help anotehr state get jobs at their state's expense.
The funniest part is their (HBO, Disney, CBS, etc) total failure to see the glaring flaw in their attempt to capitalize on people who really just want a-la-carte content: they still aren't offering a-la-carte content.
Maybe someone did the market research and decided that the revenue added by giving people more granular options wouldn't make up for the cost of supporting so many options and the revenue lost from people downgrading from "all the things" subscriptions to less costly subscriptions. But it still feels like a missed opportunity to me.
If they do go a la carte it is more likely to be through a service such as iTunes where you buy a season for a fixed price, somewhat less than the same price if you subscribed for the duration if the run.
The problem is not too many streaming services. Competition is good for consumers. The problem is too many exclusives. Game of Thrones only on HBO Go, Star Wars only on Disney+, Star Trek only on CBS-All-Access. All of them are charging as if they were a full cable replacement instead of a single cable channel.
They all have exclusives because that is what gets people to buy their services. If multiple services offered their content they would get a smaller cut of the revenue. As for charging, they are charging much in the same way they charged the cable companies; i.e. their offerings were more expensive because it is what drove subscribers to cable, unlike the marginal offerings such as SyFi, Velocity, HGTV, etc. who only survive because they get paid a few pennies per subscriber, and don't have to depend on actual viewership to survive=. They haven't gone at it alone because for many of them they would not make enough to survive.
Called Scan and Go, you scan each barcode, checkout with credit card and it displays a barcode that's scanned at checkout. Only limit is you have to pay for alcohol in person.