How difficult would it be to equip ships with Browning M2.50 machine guns and man a watch for incoming pirate vessels. The Browning M2, with an maximum effective range of 1.2 miles, could turn those pirate skiffs into driftwood long before the pirates were in AK-47 or RPG range. Shoot em full of holes and leave them for the sharks; when word gets around the piracy doesn't pay, the pirates will forced to give up or be killed. From all appearances the pirates are in it for the money so they will give up if piracy doesn't pay; after all, dead men tell no tales and spend no money.
Why does NASA have to campaign for greater safety standards? Why can't they implement them without the "politicians" approval?
Perhaps they wish to hobble private competitors, like SpaceX, with so many onerous restrictions and regulations that they exit the launch business and leave NASA with a government funded monopoly. NASA doesn't really care about how much launches cost, up to a point, but they do care about having to compete with a private agency for their Raison d'être. This is about using the power of government to eliminate or at least severely restrict the marketplace for private launches. One has to know how federal government bureaucrats think to understand this. Federal bureaucrats generally want three things:
Their first priority is to ensure that their budget is never cut or that if it is cut then it is cut as little as possible and increased again as soon as possible (generally during the next budget cycle).
Their second priority, if possible, is to have their budget increased in each budget cycle.
Finally, their third priority is to have the scope and powers of their agency increased so that the first two priorities become ever easier to achieve in subsequent budget cycles.
In this way the successful bureaucrat becomes lord of their of political fiefdom within the vast domain of government; protected from competition, indispensable, and mandated to exist for all eternity.
If nuclear fusion can be perfected in the next decade or two then there will be no reason to burn fossil fuels, conserve energy, or give the government a fascist grip on the economy.
Can it be? I was under the impression that most (perhaps all?) of the conventionally known means for achieving fusion had been explored and found wanting. Even if we commit that money how will it be productively spent? Do scientists have even the slightest idea of how to make a fusion reactor efficient or even positively productive? I think that it will take more than a few decades and cost more than a few billions to find the answer.
They have also kept wages depressed around the world.
High wages are not necessarily a panacea if they are also accompanied by high inflation and high prices. What maters is the purchasing power of those wages, not their absolute amounts. Money is primarily a means of exchange and unit of account, not so much a store of wealth anymore. If you don't believe that then ask yourself why the wealthiest people in this world generally choose to keep so little of their wealth, as a percentage, in the form of cash.
The only issue I have with Amazon is if you buy from one of their preferred vendors but not Amazon themselves the shipment takes forever usually to get.
That is why I frequently don't buy if it is sold by a vendor partner instead of Amazon; especially if I can purchase it somewhere locally where I live. The outside vendors are usually small businesses who are too darn cheap to actually keep the items that they claim to stock in inventory. They wait until they receive an order from Amazon before they even attempt to get the item from their suppliers and you have already paid them up front. This is an old trick used by small businesses taking orders online and particularly by those that are looking for quick hit one-off sales and don't care as much about repeat customers (i.e. they don't believe that you will come back again anyway because you found them through an Amazon search and not because you actually wanted to buy your camping equipment from 'Bobs World of Camping' in some backwater town in the southeastern United States).
At TFA points out, Amazon serves more affluent urban populations that prefer to make their purchases online and thus avoid unnecessary trips to pick up items which can just as well be delivered. Not to mention the fact that many of these wealthier urban dwellers live in higher tax states and in higher cost cities where using Amazon doesn't add sales tax (New York being an notable exception) and the nearest WalMart might be a bit of a drive (assuming that they even own a private vehicle). Amazon also has a sophisticated website and online order fulfillment system, including a strong franchise in intelligent and automated recommendations, which they have built up over many years of successful business and feedback; WalMart is definitely playing catchup here. On the other hand, WalMart practically wrote the book on retail supply chain management (the TFA points out that Amazon has poached talent from WalMart in the past to improve their own supply chain logistics) and has detailed regional knowledge of consumer trends and which items maximize profits and at what prices. Amazon has their affiliate program, but these affiliates are often unable to match the prices offered by WalMart when Amazon itself doesn't stock the items in question. IMHO, in the long run, both companies will continue to be successful and while there will be battles over turf (DVDs, Books, Electronics, etc) there are sufficient differences in consumer preferences to accommodate both business models going forward.
The executives and managers are being short-sighted. Eventually those overseas engineers and scientists, whom we have trained with all of the necessary skills, will team up with their home grown businessmen and collectively they will eat America's lunch. If they can do without our scientists and engineers then they can certainly do without our executive MBA types. It is in the long term interest of CEOs to make sure that their corporations are competitive in the global marketplace. Outsourcing everything undermines that goal in service of short term gains and cost-cutting profits (the ultimately self-destructing kind).
but I certainly wouldn't turn molehills into mountains by risking jail time.
The wall street bankers didn't go to jail. On the contrary, they were rewarded with your tax dollars. The real world plays hardball; maybe you should too.
No offense, Mr. President, but you want to know what really gets us fired up about those things? Getting paid for it.
You hit the nail on the head. There are plenty of intelligent and qualified students here in the United States who would be willing to study mathematics, science or engineering except that the pay is not in line with the amount of effort required. Who wants to go $100K+ into debt, work hard for close to a decade after highschool acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills, and then be rewarded with $40K per year? That might be feasible in India, South Korea, or China but here in the United States elite students have much higher income expectations which means math and science oriented careers, which btw can and are easily outsourced, are out of the question. The best students choose business, law, or medicine (although that too will change if Obama gets healtchare 'reform' passed) instead of mathematics, physics, engineering, or computer science. If Obama wants to increase interest in math and science then he has to promote policies which make hard work in those fields pay off; otherwise, he is likely to remain disappointed with the US math and science numbers.
Like it or not Murdoch's papers are the best business news around, at least here in the United States. Even other papers, including left leaning papers, pay to reprint articles from the Wall Street Journal. If you want to be an investor and make money then the Wall Street Journal is pretty much required reading.
I hope Microsoft continues to think of ChromeOS as just a toy that will never be a serious contender with Windows outside of very limited niche devices.
As other posters have already pointed out, Microsoft (and others) are probably right about it never being a serious competitor to Windows, Linux, or indeed any other "full" operating system; but then again it isn't trying to be serious contender to full service operating systems. This is not to say that Google couldn't convert chrome into one, but what would be the point? If they were going to do that then why not just build or sponsor their own general purpose Linux distribution? Why re-invent the wheel? Google is trying to serve what they believe to be a substantial niche audience with a product designed to do a subset of standard OS functions quickly, easily, and cheaply. There is nothing wrong with recognizing and serving a niche, lots of companies do that. Given that there are many non-tech people out there in need of something simpler, like ChromeOS, I think that Google is probably on to something.
This is a surprise to someone? Who ever though this *could* work?
Angry environmentalists who hate internal combustion, want all of us to live as subsistence sustainable vegetable farmers, and are willing to suspend disbelief for just about any pseudo-science "solution" that comes along?
What if I don't give a crap about carbon footprints? There are very good reasons why gasoline is the transportation fuel of choice for many personal vehicles. It stores a very large amount of energy in a compact space at atmospheric pressures and temperatures and it provides large quantities of energy very quickly on demand. Until alternative vehicle power sources can beat gasoline internal combustion in both performance and range at a comparable market price, I will be keeping my gasoline internal combustion vehicle.
The problem with environmentalists is that they are always trying to sell us "hair shirt" austerity solutions to problems that many of us regard as neither particularly serious nor pressing. Why should I make do with less so that someone else can enjoy the benefits? Nah, they can go ahead and drive glorified golf carts if that soothes their guilty conscience, but I will continue driving my car.
They were first developed to be used in environments, where sparks could lead to an explosion (e.g. chemical plants or refineries). There you can't use electric cars.
Another example would be vehicles used in underground coal mines where any sparks can potentially become an ignition source for naturally occurring flammable gases. However, it seems unlikely that the air car will displace established battery electric vehicles in most of these roles because lack of combustion or spark does not appear to be a substantial advantage over electric except in the most niche of applications.
Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong century. The internet is way over-rated.
Be careful what you wish for; the stories of the "good old days" are most often promulgated by those who did not live during those centuries. Before industrialization, antibiotics, and the green revolution life was nasty, brutish, and short for 90%+ of the population. If you don't believe that, then look at the one continent that has largely not experienced these modern benefits, Africa, and tell us that you would find life in some backwards village or the slums of Nairobi strangely romantic.
This is true. However, as you pointed out, our enemies (and our friends) must be confident that our weapons would work, should we need to use them, in order to ensure their continued effectiveness as a deterrent against first-strikes. It is also important to reiterate to the Ahmadinejads of the world that we will retaliate with overwhelming force, including possibly a reciprocal nuclear strike, in response any first-strikes against us or our allies.
Perhaps, but probably not as much as the "market price" of those Colombia House CDs (or at least what Columbia House wished the market price was) would tend to suggest. I don't know about anyone else, but I doubt that "Kenny G's Greatest Hits" would fetch $30.00 per unit for 100,000 units on the open market. Personally, I believe that class action litigation is an idea that sounds good in principle (and sometimes is used responsibly), but which mostly fails to achieve its stated objectives in practice.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it lacks sophistication. Sure, you may eventually get your $5 settlement check, but in the meantime you have paid many times that amount in higher costs for a broad range of consumer goods and services due to the excessive number of class action lawsuits whose costs have been passed on to you the consumer in the form of higher prices. Most class action lawsuits are simply tools which attorneys use to extract uncompensated value from society rather than the implements of consumer liberation (as they were originally sold to the public).
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How difficult would it be to equip ships with Browning M2 .50 machine guns and man a watch for incoming pirate vessels. The Browning M2, with an maximum effective range of 1.2 miles, could turn those pirate skiffs into driftwood long before the pirates were in AK-47 or RPG range. Shoot em full of holes and leave them for the sharks; when word gets around the piracy doesn't pay, the pirates will forced to give up or be killed. From all appearances the pirates are in it for the money so they will give up if piracy doesn't pay; after all, dead men tell no tales and spend no money.
Why does NASA have to campaign for greater safety standards? Why can't they implement them without the "politicians" approval?
Perhaps they wish to hobble private competitors, like SpaceX, with so many onerous restrictions and regulations that they exit the launch business and leave NASA with a government funded monopoly. NASA doesn't really care about how much launches cost, up to a point, but they do care about having to compete with a private agency for their Raison d'être. This is about using the power of government to eliminate or at least severely restrict the marketplace for private launches. One has to know how federal government bureaucrats think to understand this. Federal bureaucrats generally want three things:
In this way the successful bureaucrat becomes lord of their of political fiefdom within the vast domain of government; protected from competition, indispensable, and mandated to exist for all eternity.
If nuclear fusion can be perfected in the next decade or two then there will be no reason to burn fossil fuels, conserve energy, or give the government a fascist grip on the economy.
Can it be? I was under the impression that most (perhaps all?) of the conventionally known means for achieving fusion had been explored and found wanting. Even if we commit that money how will it be productively spent? Do scientists have even the slightest idea of how to make a fusion reactor efficient or even positively productive? I think that it will take more than a few decades and cost more than a few billions to find the answer.
There may be people on either side of the debate that aren't interested in the truth
This may include more people than you think, or as Keynes said, "in the long run we are all dead".
Wal-Mart would tear Amazon's arms off like an angry wookie.
Wal-Mart: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgh
C-3PO: He made a fair move. Screaming about it can't help you.
Han Solo: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee.
C-3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
Han Solo: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.
Wal-Mart: Grrf.
C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, Amazon: let the Wookiee win.
They have also kept wages depressed around the world.
High wages are not necessarily a panacea if they are also accompanied by high inflation and high prices. What maters is the purchasing power of those wages, not their absolute amounts. Money is primarily a means of exchange and unit of account, not so much a store of wealth anymore. If you don't believe that then ask yourself why the wealthiest people in this world generally choose to keep so little of their wealth, as a percentage, in the form of cash.
The only issue I have with Amazon is if you buy from one of their preferred vendors but not Amazon themselves the shipment takes forever usually to get.
That is why I frequently don't buy if it is sold by a vendor partner instead of Amazon; especially if I can purchase it somewhere locally where I live. The outside vendors are usually small businesses who are too darn cheap to actually keep the items that they claim to stock in inventory. They wait until they receive an order from Amazon before they even attempt to get the item from their suppliers and you have already paid them up front. This is an old trick used by small businesses taking orders online and particularly by those that are looking for quick hit one-off sales and don't care as much about repeat customers (i.e. they don't believe that you will come back again anyway because you found them through an Amazon search and not because you actually wanted to buy your camping equipment from 'Bobs World of Camping' in some backwater town in the southeastern United States).
I was under the impression that Canadians liked paying taxes.
Someone has to pay for all of that "free" healthcare, it might as well be you.
Is the website of WalMart substantially better in this regard?
At TFA points out, Amazon serves more affluent urban populations that prefer to make their purchases online and thus avoid unnecessary trips to pick up items which can just as well be delivered. Not to mention the fact that many of these wealthier urban dwellers live in higher tax states and in higher cost cities where using Amazon doesn't add sales tax (New York being an notable exception) and the nearest WalMart might be a bit of a drive (assuming that they even own a private vehicle). Amazon also has a sophisticated website and online order fulfillment system, including a strong franchise in intelligent and automated recommendations, which they have built up over many years of successful business and feedback; WalMart is definitely playing catchup here. On the other hand, WalMart practically wrote the book on retail supply chain management (the TFA points out that Amazon has poached talent from WalMart in the past to improve their own supply chain logistics) and has detailed regional knowledge of consumer trends and which items maximize profits and at what prices. Amazon has their affiliate program, but these affiliates are often unable to match the prices offered by WalMart when Amazon itself doesn't stock the items in question. IMHO, in the long run, both companies will continue to be successful and while there will be battles over turf (DVDs, Books, Electronics, etc) there are sufficient differences in consumer preferences to accommodate both business models going forward.
The executives and managers are being short-sighted. Eventually those overseas engineers and scientists, whom we have trained with all of the necessary skills, will team up with their home grown businessmen and collectively they will eat America's lunch. If they can do without our scientists and engineers then they can certainly do without our executive MBA types. It is in the long term interest of CEOs to make sure that their corporations are competitive in the global marketplace. Outsourcing everything undermines that goal in service of short term gains and cost-cutting profits (the ultimately self-destructing kind).
and then everything goes to hell.
that only happens in religious schools, in public schools it just creates a mess.
Who else but an investor would be reading WSJ for any reason?
Considering that most Americans are in the driver's seat for their own retirement these days, that should be basically everyone.
but I certainly wouldn't turn molehills into mountains by risking jail time.
The wall street bankers didn't go to jail. On the contrary, they were rewarded with your tax dollars. The real world plays hardball; maybe you should too.
No offense, Mr. President, but you want to know what really gets us fired up about those things? Getting paid for it.
You hit the nail on the head. There are plenty of intelligent and qualified students here in the United States who would be willing to study mathematics, science or engineering except that the pay is not in line with the amount of effort required. Who wants to go $100K+ into debt, work hard for close to a decade after highschool acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills, and then be rewarded with $40K per year? That might be feasible in India, South Korea, or China but here in the United States elite students have much higher income expectations which means math and science oriented careers, which btw can and are easily outsourced, are out of the question. The best students choose business, law, or medicine (although that too will change if Obama gets healtchare 'reform' passed) instead of mathematics, physics, engineering, or computer science. If Obama wants to increase interest in math and science then he has to promote policies which make hard work in those fields pay off; otherwise, he is likely to remain disappointed with the US math and science numbers.
I would only read the WSJ to figure out what NOT to do.
Says the guy with the billion dollar portfolio...
Like it or not Murdoch's papers are the best business news around, at least here in the United States. Even other papers, including left leaning papers, pay to reprint articles from the Wall Street Journal. If you want to be an investor and make money then the Wall Street Journal is pretty much required reading.
I hope Microsoft continues to think of ChromeOS as just a toy that will never be a serious contender with Windows outside of very limited niche devices.
As other posters have already pointed out, Microsoft (and others) are probably right about it never being a serious competitor to Windows, Linux, or indeed any other "full" operating system; but then again it isn't trying to be serious contender to full service operating systems. This is not to say that Google couldn't convert chrome into one, but what would be the point? If they were going to do that then why not just build or sponsor their own general purpose Linux distribution? Why re-invent the wheel? Google is trying to serve what they believe to be a substantial niche audience with a product designed to do a subset of standard OS functions quickly, easily, and cheaply. There is nothing wrong with recognizing and serving a niche, lots of companies do that. Given that there are many non-tech people out there in need of something simpler, like ChromeOS, I think that Google is probably on to something.
This is a surprise to someone? Who ever though this *could* work?
Angry environmentalists who hate internal combustion, want all of us to live as subsistence sustainable vegetable farmers, and are willing to suspend disbelief for just about any pseudo-science "solution" that comes along?
What if I don't give a crap about carbon footprints? There are very good reasons why gasoline is the transportation fuel of choice for many personal vehicles. It stores a very large amount of energy in a compact space at atmospheric pressures and temperatures and it provides large quantities of energy very quickly on demand. Until alternative vehicle power sources can beat gasoline internal combustion in both performance and range at a comparable market price, I will be keeping my gasoline internal combustion vehicle.
The problem with environmentalists is that they are always trying to sell us "hair shirt" austerity solutions to problems that many of us regard as neither particularly serious nor pressing. Why should I make do with less so that someone else can enjoy the benefits? Nah, they can go ahead and drive glorified golf carts if that soothes their guilty conscience, but I will continue driving my car.
They were first developed to be used in environments, where sparks could lead to an explosion (e.g. chemical plants or refineries). There you can't use electric cars.
Another example would be vehicles used in underground coal mines where any sparks can potentially become an ignition source for naturally occurring flammable gases. However, it seems unlikely that the air car will displace established battery electric vehicles in most of these roles because lack of combustion or spark does not appear to be a substantial advantage over electric except in the most niche of applications.
Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong century. The internet is way over-rated.
Be careful what you wish for; the stories of the "good old days" are most often promulgated by those who did not live during those centuries. Before industrialization, antibiotics, and the green revolution life was nasty, brutish, and short for 90%+ of the population. If you don't believe that, then look at the one continent that has largely not experienced these modern benefits, Africa, and tell us that you would find life in some backwards village or the slums of Nairobi strangely romantic.
This is true. However, as you pointed out, our enemies (and our friends) must be confident that our weapons would work, should we need to use them, in order to ensure their continued effectiveness as a deterrent against first-strikes. It is also important to reiterate to the Ahmadinejads of the world that we will retaliate with overwhelming force, including possibly a reciprocal nuclear strike, in response any first-strikes against us or our allies.
Yeah, that deters bad behavior. You bet.
Perhaps, but probably not as much as the "market price" of those Colombia House CDs (or at least what Columbia House wished the market price was) would tend to suggest. I don't know about anyone else, but I doubt that "Kenny G's Greatest Hits" would fetch $30.00 per unit for 100,000 units on the open market. Personally, I believe that class action litigation is an idea that sounds good in principle (and sometimes is used responsibly), but which mostly fails to achieve its stated objectives in practice.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it lacks sophistication. Sure, you may eventually get your $5 settlement check, but in the meantime you have paid many times that amount in higher costs for a broad range of consumer goods and services due to the excessive number of class action lawsuits whose costs have been passed on to you the consumer in the form of higher prices. Most class action lawsuits are simply tools which attorneys use to extract uncompensated value from society rather than the implements of consumer liberation (as they were originally sold to the public).