The key word here is practical... and since you later agree with me that no stirling engines are practical (as in too expensive), my inclusion of the impractical ones that are impressively efficient isn't too far off the mark.
A stirling engine is remarkably efficient - it approaches the carnot limit of efficiency. (You can get one that will run off the heat from your body!) The problem is that its $/Kw is way too high - and it gets worse as you draw more power from it. Turbines, while a little less efficient, can cheaply handle extremely large power levels. So if you weigh in the lifetime cost, you normally go with turbines.
While I also believe the usefulness of suborbital space flight is limited, please note that the announcement includes the intention of the Air Force to use flights to test new space systems in an environment that is very hard to properly simulate down here...
While I commiserate with your sentiment, please note that XCOR is not a no-product company. They have built many engine designs, both internally and under contract - and more importantly, they have built and flown a rocket plane for the last few years. They have recently retired that plane, because they are working on two new designs.
The first is the base design for the rocket racing league, and the second is the Lynx. The rocket racing league plane is what you would probably call "almost done", ie it looks like a plane, its engine works, and it is probably flyable - but there is still a lot of qualification and other work ahead of it before it races.
The second is the recently announced Lynx. Frankly, I'm rather surprised that they announced this early - they typically don't announce until it is flying. But I guess the fact that it is funded is a big step, and considered worthy of the big press.
(I'm not working for XCOR, but am sort of a competitor - but they are "the real deal", and should not be dismissed.)
I wish you were right, but unfortunately this is polictics. Obama is very popular among the younger set, but does not fair well in the older generation of Democrats. I predict that Obama will win the popular vote, but then Hillary will a) have the "uncounted" votes reinstated (because they went very strongly to her), and b) the superdelegates will vote for Hillary (because they are old-school, and believe Hillary is more likely to ignore their earmarks).
Politics suck perhaps, but I don't think Obama has beaten Hillary - she is a formidable adversary.
I agree that this was a political operation, but note that what we are talking about is a steel tank of solid hydrazine - since it is a solid, the heating from reentry would be different. There is a good chance that something would make it all the way down. (Of course, there is no chance whatever made it down would actually hit anyone...)
Don't be a moron - just look at the data, don't just read someone's drivel about it!
What about the fact IRS claims that less than 10.1% of total income taxes come from corporations?
Well, the return (gross profit) of a corporation is divided into two parts for payment. On average, 80% of the take is paid to employees (you). 20% is paid to corporate shareholders (your grandma). So you would expect there to be a lot more tax paid by the 80% employees rather than the 20% shareholders (only the shareholder's portion is taxed as corporate tax). The fact that there are some obscenely overpaid CEOs [who are not corporate shareholders - in fact you can argue that they are robbing the shareholders] means that the ratio is balanced even further away from the corporation.
stating GAO report that 61% of US corporations paid no taxes.
Well, what about it? Why didn't they pay? Were they non-profits? Were they just not profitable? Very few small corporations are profitable - most are started and die soon after. A good percentage of corporations in 2004 made no money - why should they pay taxes?
What about which states 71 companies paid ZERO state income tax
That doesn't have anything to do with federal income tax, does it? It is very easy to not pay state taxes - all you have to do is convince the state that your business is more important than the tax revenue, and threaten to leave. Of course, I'm sure this report also included companies that were doing business in many states and only paid in the ones where they recorded profits. While this is bad for one state, it is good for another, and I believe that from such competition between states better states are formed.
corporate taxes have falled to less than 1.4 % of GDP
This is a foolish comparison - GDP is related to gross revenue, not gross profit. If I buy a building for $1M, and sell it to you for $1.01M, you want me to pay $100K in taxes on that $10K I earned? Don't be stupid - the average gross margin is about 20%, so gross takes are 20% of GDP. Like I said previously, 80% goes to employee salaries, so we are down to 4% of GDP as corporate profits. I claimed a corporate tax rate of 35% - hey look, 35% of 4% is (drumroll) 1.4% - imagine that, I was right!
the IRS refunded corporations $63 billions
And the IRS refunded individuals $109B - what is your point? That only shows that corporations are forced by the government to overpay more often than ordinary citizens - this does not benefit the corporations...
Pepco Holdings profit was $725 million while its tax REFUNDS were $432m
OK, someone else rebutted this one right through your thick head, so let me just add this: You get a refund because you were forced to pay too much tax earlier - a refund is NEVER a good thing, moron; it means the government forced you to give them a 0% loan at gunpoint.
So maybe you better look into the facts, truther. The world does not run the way you think it does.
More Context: 3 oil companies pay $44.3B out of the $1T in income tax. (In the US, the vast majority of tax revenue is income tax - our sales taxes are for city governments.) So 3 companies paid about 1/20 of the total income tax of the US. (They are not 1/20 of the population, revenue, or anything else.)
Those costs will end up in corporate coffers which are largely untaxed.
What utter BS! Corporations pay much higher taxes than normal people! Most large corporations pay 35% taxes. In fact, the three largest oil companies paid $44.3B in taxes in 2005. In comparison, the bottom half of all income tax payers combined was only $28.7B in 2005!
The US you live in is payed for by corporations and rich guys. And you wonder why they end up with all the power?
your numbers were a case of substituting your intuition for reality
That could very well be - although my thoughts originated in a conversation with a heart surgeon turned policy adviser, so I was looking for collaborating evidence rather than using just my intuition. I may, indeed, be in error - looking further, the best information I can find on hospital costs is that labor is the majority of it - which would seem to not enforce my point.
One thing to remember in all this is that health care costs have been increasing above inflation for decades - this is not recent. What is recent is that an exponential rise in health care costs has finally got it to a level where people really can't afford it for much longer. The way I look at the data is that we consider health care to be extremely important, and have been willing to expend an increasing amount of our paychecks on it - but we are getting to the point where we cannot afford to increase the cost any longer. To me, that means that new stuff is not going to be implemented - what else is possible? The money goes into people, per building items, and per patient items. We most likely cannot pay the people less (unless we dramatically change the game, like abolishing the AMA and having "doctors" take a 6 month training course in a VERY narrow field instead of training for years to be a generalist); The buildings are in place, so decreasing future outlays for equipment may be possible (with a lowering standard of future care - hospitals will simply not have the best new scanner available); Per patient expenditures (like implants, cast material, etc.) are already a tiny portion of costs.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't see government as the perfect answer here - note that the insurance costs plus the government costs are only 10% - so going government buys us only 1 year in a perfect world, where insurance and regulatory costs are zero. (In one year, the "natural" growth rate of 9% would eat through the savings of eliminating insurance). So if we are going government medical, it can't be to eliminate the insurance overhead - that is just too small. So we are back to rationing - and governments always screw that up.
If the government bought the entire medical insurance industry...
If it would end there, then yes. But it wouldn't - the government has too much power to not abuse it, and it would have the rationale of helping the little guy to excuse the abuse. GE makes a new wonder-scanner - at a cost of $10B, but only a $10,000 cost to build. It offers the units at $10M each - but then some congressman (who wants to make a name for himself) says "hey, we are the government - either you provide your equipment at cost, or we invalidate your patent! Lives are at stake - you are murdering kid by not giving your equipment away!"
He will succeed, and the cost will be invisible - no one will work on medical R&D anymore.
That said, this is an area where reasonable people can differ - I just think that we need to consider the likely outcomes of more government involvement, so we can avoid the worst effects. (Like maybe the government should fund all medical R&D, after the fact. Essentially, if you make something useful the government pays you back your R&D money, so you can sell at cost. Or not, I'm just saying the conversation has merit.)
In the parent's info, admin means government and insurance costs. It is true that drugs and admin are the fastest growing, at 15% growth per year - providing an explanation for only about 3% of the growth rate combined. That other 6% of growth is mainly from Hospitals - about 3% of cost growth can be attributed to hospitals.
Again, I'm interested in where you're getting your numbers.
Numbers?!? This is Slashdot, you heretic! OK, that aside, you mention some stuff about pharma companies. Total US pharma sales in 2000: $122B. Total US medical expenditure: $1.2T. The numbers are so far apart that any increase in pharma just isn't going to be noticed.
For further research, here is a breakdown of the 2002 numbers: Total spending $1.6T Admin: 7% Nursing home/Home health care: 9% Other: 10% Dental/Other professional: 10% Drugs: 10% Physician/Clinical services: 22% Hospital care: 31%
Note that the only "large" portion of this is Hospital care - where the machines are. Most of the work (by numbers of patients seen, for example) would go under "Physician/Clinical". So it is fair to say that the majority of the possible cost savings are in R&D - building machines for hospitals.
I note with interest that you were happy to demand my numbers, but did not provide any meaningful numbers yourself. I can say that frog-catching costs have doubled, but that will still have no bearing on inflation rates...
One thing that makes it difficult to compare "socialized medicine" and the US system is the free rider problem: Virtually 100% of medical advances come from the US, and are 90% paid for by US medical costs. For example: A company in the US develops a drug to combat Aids, at a cost of $1B. The company sells the drug at a cost of $1B/users. But then countries with socialized medicine go to the drug company and say "look here, this drug only costs $1 to create, so we are only going to pay $2 per dose - and since we are the government, you just deal with it because we are the force of law."
Obviously, that in effect decreases the users in the denominator, and raises the price of drugs in the US. If the US converts to socialized medicine, costs will come down - but that is because no one will develop any future drugs. That is the real problem, that the "hidden cost" of all those future deaths will not be noticed or tallied - how can you estimate the cost of not creating something?
Most of the cost of medical care in the US can be traced to R&D costs. (If doctors worked for free, the overall price structure wouldn't change that much - a catscan machine costs tens of million dollars, and has a useful life of maybe 20,000 uses, so each use burns a thousand dollars or so of R&D.)
Hmmm... I have to admit, I think in the end Obama will win the popular vote - so Hillary will have all the uncontested elections reinstated, and win the nom. Why else has she been working those states?
1) Romney has received more donations than any other Republican candidate, leaving out the donations from himself. 2) Romney turned around Massachusetts, taking the state from a deep deficit to a surplus without raising taxes. He did the same for the Olympics. His father was not involved with either of these - how could he have been? (Worst you can say is that his father helped him get the job - but he did the job.) 3) I am unaware of any polls to that effect...;-}
Well, the plates were purported to have been made by Native Americans, not by God - I doubt they had much Iridium, but before the Spanish they did seem to have a lot of gold around.
As for Mormons being strange, well they are the third largest Christian religion (as in the third largest religion that self-reports as Christian, ignoring the Nicaean creed issue). And since all religions are somewhat strange unless you study them, perhaps you should just let it go...
Interesting - I never use Windows Explorer, I start from "my computer" where they redesigned the UI. I would bet serious money that not changing Windows Explorer was an oversight by Microsoft...
why did you choose to buy
This was purchased at the time that Microsoft had decreed all new computers must have Vista, but before they caved to the backlash. There were no non-Vista computers available when it was purchased.
How exactly can 'the trojans bypass it"
Honestly, I don't know - I do know that Microsoft did a reasonable first pass job on securing windows (though a tad late). But I also know that trojans can be installed in Vista without popping that dialog - and so my point is valid.
Just to beat this to death - as an example, how did you know to Google UAC? I did not immediately think of that acronym for "annoying pop-up box that gives a false sense of security while making remote administration impossible."
That is my point - I should not have to learn "the new way" unless I care. If I don't care, it should at least work.
Did you not read what I wrote? The system has an optional way to save so that everyone else in the organization can read it. Yay! Now I get to explain that to the minimum wage call center reps in every department in my company. Why didn't I think of that?
Further, the one special format used most often (html, in my case) has been altered. There is NO way to save using the previous version's html output format. Nothing on our intranet works... so I'm sure you'll say "don't blame Microsoft, no one ever got fired for choosing them..."
This is a single machine - I do not want to alter processes across an enterprise for a single new machine!
Linux may be hard to set up, but once it is set up it works with no further intervention - so your time is an investment rather than a waste. (And let's face it, making a linux boot CD for your call center eliminates 90% of the IT workload of the center...)
Save As allows you to save in older ".doc" formats. It does not allow older ".html" formats, which were used for interoperability in other programs.
I have no interest in blaming someone. I am at the top of my organizations - so I have to accept responsibility no matter who's "fault" it is. (If you worked for me, I would hope that your risk management decisions would be similarly based. I find that the reason for most people with your attitude towards risk is poor management.)
The fact that you saved some time does not help me when faced with retraining me entire staff. If I have to retrain my staff, I will retrain them to an option that will prevent me from needing to do this again. (Here I am not talking about programmers - they could figure it out if I swapped Word for vi! I am concerned about my program managers and call reps, mostly)
Slashdot Mirror
but practical Stirling engines
The key word here is practical... and since you later agree with me that no stirling engines are practical (as in too expensive), my inclusion of the impractical ones that are impressively efficient isn't too far off the mark.
A stirling engine is remarkably efficient - it approaches the carnot limit of efficiency. (You can get one that will run off the heat from your body!) The problem is that its $/Kw is way too high - and it gets worse as you draw more power from it. Turbines, while a little less efficient, can cheaply handle extremely large power levels. So if you weigh in the lifetime cost, you normally go with turbines.
While I also believe the usefulness of suborbital space flight is limited, please note that the announcement includes the intention of the Air Force to use flights to test new space systems in an environment that is very hard to properly simulate down here...
While I commiserate with your sentiment, please note that XCOR is not a no-product company. They have built many engine designs, both internally and under contract - and more importantly, they have built and flown a rocket plane for the last few years. They have recently retired that plane, because they are working on two new designs.
The first is the base design for the rocket racing league, and the second is the Lynx. The rocket racing league plane is what you would probably call "almost done", ie it looks like a plane, its engine works, and it is probably flyable - but there is still a lot of qualification and other work ahead of it before it races.
The second is the recently announced Lynx. Frankly, I'm rather surprised that they announced this early - they typically don't announce until it is flying. But I guess the fact that it is funded is a big step, and considered worthy of the big press.
(I'm not working for XCOR, but am sort of a competitor - but they are "the real deal", and should not be dismissed.)
In a surprise move that rocked the western world, McCain announced that Obama will be his running mate.
"Well, ya know, the VP can't actually do anything anyway - I just took him for the votes" he was quoted as remarking.
In a countering move, Hillary joined forces with Rush...
I wish you were right, but unfortunately this is polictics. Obama is very popular among the younger set, but does not fair well in the older generation of Democrats. I predict that Obama will win the popular vote, but then Hillary will a) have the "uncounted" votes reinstated (because they went very strongly to her), and b) the superdelegates will vote for Hillary (because they are old-school, and believe Hillary is more likely to ignore their earmarks).
Politics suck perhaps, but I don't think Obama has beaten Hillary - she is a formidable adversary.
I agree that this was a political operation, but note that what we are talking about is a steel tank of solid hydrazine - since it is a solid, the heating from reentry would be different. There is a good chance that something would make it all the way down. (Of course, there is no chance whatever made it down would actually hit anyone...)
Don't be a moron - just look at the data, don't just read someone's drivel about it!
What about the fact IRS claims that less than 10.1% of total income taxes come from corporations?
Well, the return (gross profit) of a corporation is divided into two parts for payment. On average, 80% of the take is paid to employees (you). 20% is paid to corporate shareholders (your grandma). So you would expect there to be a lot more tax paid by the 80% employees rather than the 20% shareholders (only the shareholder's portion is taxed as corporate tax). The fact that there are some obscenely overpaid CEOs [who are not corporate shareholders - in fact you can argue that they are robbing the shareholders] means that the ratio is balanced even further away from the corporation.
stating GAO report that 61% of US corporations paid no taxes.
Well, what about it? Why didn't they pay? Were they non-profits? Were they just not profitable? Very few small corporations are profitable - most are started and die soon after. A good percentage of corporations in 2004 made no money - why should they pay taxes?
What about which states 71 companies paid ZERO state income tax
That doesn't have anything to do with federal income tax, does it? It is very easy to not pay state taxes - all you have to do is convince the state that your business is more important than the tax revenue, and threaten to leave. Of course, I'm sure this report also included companies that were doing business in many states and only paid in the ones where they recorded profits. While this is bad for one state, it is good for another, and I believe that from such competition between states better states are formed.
corporate taxes have falled to less than 1.4 % of GDP
This is a foolish comparison - GDP is related to gross revenue, not gross profit. If I buy a building for $1M, and sell it to you for $1.01M, you want me to pay $100K in taxes on that $10K I earned? Don't be stupid - the average gross margin is about 20%, so gross takes are 20% of GDP. Like I said previously, 80% goes to employee salaries, so we are down to 4% of GDP as corporate profits. I claimed a corporate tax rate of 35% - hey look, 35% of 4% is (drumroll) 1.4% - imagine that, I was right!
the IRS refunded corporations $63 billions
And the IRS refunded individuals $109B - what is your point? That only shows that corporations are forced by the government to overpay more often than ordinary citizens - this does not benefit the corporations...
Pepco Holdings profit was $725 million while its tax REFUNDS were $432m
OK, someone else rebutted this one right through your thick head, so let me just add this: You get a refund because you were forced to pay too much tax earlier - a refund is NEVER a good thing, moron; it means the government forced you to give them a 0% loan at gunpoint.
So maybe you better look into the facts, truther. The world does not run the way you think it does.
More Context: 3 oil companies pay $44.3B out of the $1T in income tax. (In the US, the vast majority of tax revenue is income tax - our sales taxes are for city governments.) So 3 companies paid about 1/20 of the total income tax of the US. (They are not 1/20 of the population, revenue, or anything else.)
Earth is already an ocean of muck - your proposal would just change from biological muck to non-biological muck...
Those costs will end up in corporate coffers which are largely untaxed.
What utter BS! Corporations pay much higher taxes than normal people! Most large corporations pay 35% taxes. In fact, the three largest oil companies paid $44.3B in taxes in 2005. In comparison, the bottom half of all income tax payers combined was only $28.7B in 2005!
The US you live in is payed for by corporations and rich guys. And you wonder why they end up with all the power?
Well, they did say they were giving them shuttle data...
way to much typing - cheat and do this:
find / |grep "file name here"
Hey, it works - and it optimizes my time typing, not the computer's time searching...
your numbers were a case of substituting your intuition for reality
That could very well be - although my thoughts originated in a conversation with a heart surgeon turned policy adviser, so I was looking for collaborating evidence rather than using just my intuition. I may, indeed, be in error - looking further, the best information I can find on hospital costs is that labor is the majority of it - which would seem to not enforce my point.
One thing to remember in all this is that health care costs have been increasing above inflation for decades - this is not recent. What is recent is that an exponential rise in health care costs has finally got it to a level where people really can't afford it for much longer. The way I look at the data is that we consider health care to be extremely important, and have been willing to expend an increasing amount of our paychecks on it - but we are getting to the point where we cannot afford to increase the cost any longer. To me, that means that new stuff is not going to be implemented - what else is possible? The money goes into people, per building items, and per patient items. We most likely cannot pay the people less (unless we dramatically change the game, like abolishing the AMA and having "doctors" take a 6 month training course in a VERY narrow field instead of training for years to be a generalist); The buildings are in place, so decreasing future outlays for equipment may be possible (with a lowering standard of future care - hospitals will simply not have the best new scanner available); Per patient expenditures (like implants, cast material, etc.) are already a tiny portion of costs.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't see government as the perfect answer here - note that the insurance costs plus the government costs are only 10% - so going government buys us only 1 year in a perfect world, where insurance and regulatory costs are zero. (In one year, the "natural" growth rate of 9% would eat through the savings of eliminating insurance). So if we are going government medical, it can't be to eliminate the insurance overhead - that is just too small. So we are back to rationing - and governments always screw that up.
If the government bought the entire medical insurance industry...
If it would end there, then yes. But it wouldn't - the government has too much power to not abuse it, and it would have the rationale of helping the little guy to excuse the abuse. GE makes a new wonder-scanner - at a cost of $10B, but only a $10,000 cost to build. It offers the units at $10M each - but then some congressman (who wants to make a name for himself) says "hey, we are the government - either you provide your equipment at cost, or we invalidate your patent! Lives are at stake - you are murdering kid by not giving your equipment away!"
He will succeed, and the cost will be invisible - no one will work on medical R&D anymore.
That said, this is an area where reasonable people can differ - I just think that we need to consider the likely outcomes of more government involvement, so we can avoid the worst effects. (Like maybe the government should fund all medical R&D, after the fact. Essentially, if you make something useful the government pays you back your R&D money, so you can sell at cost. Or not, I'm just saying the conversation has merit.)
In the parent's info, admin means government and insurance costs. It is true that drugs and admin are the fastest growing, at 15% growth per year - providing an explanation for only about 3% of the growth rate combined. That other 6% of growth is mainly from Hospitals - about 3% of cost growth can be attributed to hospitals.
Again, I'm interested in where you're getting your numbers.
Numbers?!? This is Slashdot, you heretic! OK, that aside, you mention some stuff about pharma companies. Total US pharma sales in 2000: $122B. Total US medical expenditure: $1.2T. The numbers are so far apart that any increase in pharma just isn't going to be noticed.
For further research, here is a breakdown of the 2002 numbers:
Total spending $1.6T
Admin: 7%
Nursing home/Home health care: 9%
Other: 10%
Dental/Other professional: 10%
Drugs: 10%
Physician/Clinical services: 22%
Hospital care: 31%
Note that the only "large" portion of this is Hospital care - where the machines are. Most of the work (by numbers of patients seen, for example) would go under "Physician/Clinical". So it is fair to say that the majority of the possible cost savings are in R&D - building machines for hospitals.
I note with interest that you were happy to demand my numbers, but did not provide any meaningful numbers yourself. I can say that frog-catching costs have doubled, but that will still have no bearing on inflation rates...
One thing that makes it difficult to compare "socialized medicine" and the US system is the free rider problem: Virtually 100% of medical advances come from the US, and are 90% paid for by US medical costs. For example: A company in the US develops a drug to combat Aids, at a cost of $1B. The company sells the drug at a cost of $1B/users. But then countries with socialized medicine go to the drug company and say "look here, this drug only costs $1 to create, so we are only going to pay $2 per dose - and since we are the government, you just deal with it because we are the force of law."
Obviously, that in effect decreases the users in the denominator, and raises the price of drugs in the US. If the US converts to socialized medicine, costs will come down - but that is because no one will develop any future drugs. That is the real problem, that the "hidden cost" of all those future deaths will not be noticed or tallied - how can you estimate the cost of not creating something?
Most of the cost of medical care in the US can be traced to R&D costs. (If doctors worked for free, the overall price structure wouldn't change that much - a catscan machine costs tens of million dollars, and has a useful life of maybe 20,000 uses, so each use burns a thousand dollars or so of R&D.)
Hmmm... I have to admit, I think in the end Obama will win the popular vote - so Hillary will have all the uncontested elections reinstated, and win the nom. Why else has she been working those states?
Your information on Romney is incorrect:
;-}
1) Romney has received more donations than any other Republican candidate, leaving out the donations from himself.
2) Romney turned around Massachusetts, taking the state from a deep deficit to a surplus without raising taxes. He did the same for the Olympics. His father was not involved with either of these - how could he have been? (Worst you can say is that his father helped him get the job - but he did the job.)
3) I am unaware of any polls to that effect...
Well, the plates were purported to have been made by Native Americans, not by God - I doubt they had much Iridium, but before the Spanish they did seem to have a lot of gold around.
As for Mormons being strange, well they are the third largest Christian religion (as in the third largest religion that self-reports as Christian, ignoring the Nicaean creed issue). And since all religions are somewhat strange unless you study them, perhaps you should just let it go...
Open Windows Explorer
Interesting - I never use Windows Explorer, I start from "my computer" where they redesigned the UI. I would bet serious money that not changing Windows Explorer was an oversight by Microsoft...
why did you choose to buy
This was purchased at the time that Microsoft had decreed all new computers must have Vista, but before they caved to the backlash. There were no non-Vista computers available when it was purchased.
How exactly can 'the trojans bypass it"
Honestly, I don't know - I do know that Microsoft did a reasonable first pass job on securing windows (though a tad late). But I also know that trojans can be installed in Vista without popping that dialog - and so my point is valid.
Just to beat this to death - as an example, how did you know to Google UAC? I did not immediately think of that acronym for "annoying pop-up box that gives a false sense of security while making remote administration impossible."
That is my point - I should not have to learn "the new way" unless I care. If I don't care, it should at least work.
Did you not read what I wrote? The system has an optional way to save so that everyone else in the organization can read it. Yay! Now I get to explain that to the minimum wage call center reps in every department in my company. Why didn't I think of that?
Further, the one special format used most often (html, in my case) has been altered. There is NO way to save using the previous version's html output format. Nothing on our intranet works... so I'm sure you'll say "don't blame Microsoft, no one ever got fired for choosing them..."
This is a single machine - I do not want to alter processes across an enterprise for a single new machine!
Linux may be hard to set up, but once it is set up it works with no further intervention - so your time is an investment rather than a waste. (And let's face it, making a linux boot CD for your call center eliminates 90% of the IT workload of the center...)
Save As allows you to save in older ".doc" formats. It does not allow older ".html" formats, which were used for interoperability in other programs.
I have no interest in blaming someone. I am at the top of my organizations - so I have to accept responsibility no matter who's "fault" it is. (If you worked for me, I would hope that your risk management decisions would be similarly based. I find that the reason for most people with your attitude towards risk is poor management.)
The fact that you saved some time does not help me when faced with retraining me entire staff. If I have to retrain my staff, I will retrain them to an option that will prevent me from needing to do this again. (Here I am not talking about programmers - they could figure it out if I swapped Word for vi! I am concerned about my program managers and call reps, mostly)