The article keeps repeating how diverse the participants in the study will be. But I'm going to guess that they won't find very many people who have genetic diseases which cause a person to die before they reach oh, say their 65th birthday.
As others have already pointed out, Medicare is a terrible example. When you compare overhead per patient served, private insurance beats Medicare handily. And with the profit motive removed there's relatively little incentive to reduce fraud, as reflected in the enormous amount of outright fraud and unnecessary work billed to Medicare.
Government is better at providing services that can't easily be charged to those who use them (CIA and military are good examples). As soon as it makes sense to directly charge for something like a parking lot or private security the private sector takes over.
There is always an interest cost on an investment. You pay it or you sacrifice the opportunity to earn it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/opportunity-cost
And please stop trying to use subsidized costs (after rebate, after tax incentive, low interest loans, etc); those don't change the cost, they only shift the burden of paying it to someone else. How about if the Federal government subsidized 100% of the cost of a nuclear reactor, would that make the electricity it generates free?
The savings is what got New Jerseyans Bob and Mary Keppel to install a 6-kilowatt solar system on the roof of their Cinnaminson, N.J. home this past summer....
The full price of the project, including installation, came to $48,000. Right away, the state sent a subsidy check for $10,500 that the Keppel’s signed over to the contractors to buy supplies. Using computer software, their contractor estimates that they will get a $11,250 federal tax credit this year. That would cut the total cost to $26,250, a 45-percent reduction.
How do rebates "cut the total cost"? The system cost was $48,000 for a mere 6kw of capacity. It doesn't matter if the homeowners or the taxpayers foot the bill, it's still $48,000, that's not cheap by any measure.
...is this really the best thing for our _space_ agency to focus on? Don't we have some government departments just for handling historical records? Can't we just turn this over to them and let NASA focus on its basic mission?
You've never worked for a government agency, have you? Giving up budget dollars is unthinkable.
They sent word to out the ambulances to divert to another hospital. It's not like they turned them away at the door.
Basically they couldn't keep up with the number of patients without compromising patient safety or having incomplete records. In a real emergency they could still have treated patients, but in a lawsuit happy country like the USA they don't dare skip record keeping in a non-emergency situation.
The only time a company I worked for ran into licensing issues was with a proprietary runtime executable. We had a "freely redistributable" license under 7.0 for the runtime. We upgraded to 8.0, which had a runtime with the same name, but we didn't read the fine print in the new license until later when we were told by the vendor that we owed them a five-figure royalty fee for redistributing the 8.0 version.
What's the cost of the solar panels *before* subsidies?
Using the cost of solar panels after US and State subsidies is like using the cost of the nuclear power plant after the Chinese government's contribution, which probably makes the "cost" of the nuclear plant $0.00/watt.
I don't see anything in McCain's response either. He was joking at first, this is the transition to a more serious part of his speech so he stops smiling while he waits for the crowd to quiet down. In other words: Nothing to see here, move on.
I listened to it several times. I suppose if you want to hear "Kill him" you could make it that, but what I heard was McCain ask "Who is the real Barack Obama?", and in response the person yelled "Tell us!".
The same selection of the smallest happens in the logging industry when people cut down the bigger trees and think the little ones will grow up to fill in. That's called "high cutting" and it will ruin a forest for generations. As much bad publicity as clear cutting gets it's usually the best way to manage timber cutting.
Tens of billions of dollars to kick start an industry that might become a multibillion dollar industry. Except battery manufacturing is already almost entirely overseas.
It's not clear to me that batteries are the best technology for automobiles. Synthetic fuel or hydrogen are far more likely to be domestically produced if we had cheap and plentiful electricity (*cough* nuclear *cough*).
Not trying to start a war here, but I'm still not sold on a couple of your assumptions. First, how you finance it (mortgage, borrow from a grandparent, whatever) doesn't matter. What does matter is the investment you sacrifice because you put the money in solar panels instead of somewhere else, presumably at a better rate of return. Second, you're assuming the best use of public money is to jumpstart mass adoption of the use of solar panels; there are lots of other worthwhile projects competing for the same money.
Your future value calculations don't look right to me. $37K at 15.43% compounded should be around $2.75 Million
But the real investment is $55K, not $37K. Someone paid for those rebates. Even assuming a conservative interest rate of 5% that would be worth over $2m in thirty years. Not so sure I would like that "green" feeling.
Objective or subjective models don't mean anything to people who only care about short-term performance. Whether the investment is good or bad in the long term doesn't matter to an investment manager who stands to get a seven figure bonus based on the current year's numbers. So what if the company fails next year? Not his problem.
Neither commuter nor long distance passenger rail will work until you solve the "last mile" problem. American cities and suburbs grew up after WWII based on a culture of driving everywhere. There will need to be massive investment in building housing, offices, factories, and shopping within walking distance of commuter rail lines before riders can stop using their car. Otherwise all you've done is changed the destination of the daily commute in the car.
Moving freight has the same problem. Load it onto a truck, bring it the first mile to a rail yard, load it onto a train, unload it from train back onto a truck at the destination, then truck it the last mile. All that loading/unloading kills any savings from using a train.
Slashdot Mirror
The same idea was marketed 30 years ago as the "Bone Phone". Might've done better if they had thought about that name some more.
Whoa. If you change the source a little, you can enter 1000000 into the Maximum number of CPUs field! Linux is ready for up to a million cores.
640K cores is more than anyone will ever need.
The article keeps repeating how diverse the participants in the study will be. But I'm going to guess that they won't find very many people who have genetic diseases which cause a person to die before they reach oh, say their 65th birthday.
Government is better at providing services that can't easily be charged to those who use them (CIA and military are good examples). As soon as it makes sense to directly charge for something like a parking lot or private security the private sector takes over.
1) Synchronous Conversation - face-to-face, telephone, IM
2) Asynchronous Mail - snail mail, email, fax, telegraph
3) Broadcasting - mass media, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave
The article muddles all three together without recognizing that there's a place for each.
There is always an interest cost on an investment. You pay it or you sacrifice the opportunity to earn it. http://www.answers.com/topic/opportunity-cost And please stop trying to use subsidized costs (after rebate, after tax incentive, low interest loans, etc); those don't change the cost, they only shift the burden of paying it to someone else. How about if the Federal government subsidized 100% of the cost of a nuclear reactor, would that make the electricity it generates free?
Just the interest on $48k is probably twice their monthly electric bill. No way this is ever going to pay off the investment plus interest.
The savings is what got New Jerseyans Bob and Mary Keppel to install a 6-kilowatt solar system on the roof of their Cinnaminson, N.J. home this past summer.... The full price of the project, including installation, came to $48,000. Right away, the state sent a subsidy check for $10,500 that the Keppel’s signed over to the contractors to buy supplies. Using computer software, their contractor estimates that they will get a $11,250 federal tax credit this year. That would cut the total cost to $26,250, a 45-percent reduction.
How do rebates "cut the total cost"? The system cost was $48,000 for a mere 6kw of capacity. It doesn't matter if the homeowners or the taxpayers foot the bill, it's still $48,000, that's not cheap by any measure.
Technology reporters need to report on something, Twitter will get coverage until the Next Big Thing comes along, then it will fade away.
...is this really the best thing for our _space_ agency to focus on? Don't we have some government departments just for handling historical records? Can't we just turn this over to them and let NASA focus on its basic mission?
You've never worked for a government agency, have you? Giving up budget dollars is unthinkable.
But it would probably be easier to just convert it into HTML and let Google's spider index it all.
They sent word to out the ambulances to divert to another hospital. It's not like they turned them away at the door. Basically they couldn't keep up with the number of patients without compromising patient safety or having incomplete records. In a real emergency they could still have treated patients, but in a lawsuit happy country like the USA they don't dare skip record keeping in a non-emergency situation.
The only time a company I worked for ran into licensing issues was with a proprietary runtime executable. We had a "freely redistributable" license under 7.0 for the runtime. We upgraded to 8.0, which had a runtime with the same name, but we didn't read the fine print in the new license until later when we were told by the vendor that we owed them a five-figure royalty fee for redistributing the 8.0 version.
What's the cost of the solar panels *before* subsidies? Using the cost of solar panels after US and State subsidies is like using the cost of the nuclear power plant after the Chinese government's contribution, which probably makes the "cost" of the nuclear plant $0.00/watt.
They leave the seat up...
I don't see anything in McCain's response either. He was joking at first, this is the transition to a more serious part of his speech so he stops smiling while he waits for the crowd to quiet down. In other words: Nothing to see here, move on.
I listened to it several times. I suppose if you want to hear "Kill him" you could make it that, but what I heard was McCain ask "Who is the real Barack Obama?", and in response the person yelled "Tell us!".
Because then I could get it to run Linux.
The same selection of the smallest happens in the logging industry when people cut down the bigger trees and think the little ones will grow up to fill in. That's called "high cutting" and it will ruin a forest for generations. As much bad publicity as clear cutting gets it's usually the best way to manage timber cutting.
Tens of billions of dollars to kick start an industry that might become a multibillion dollar industry. Except battery manufacturing is already almost entirely overseas. It's not clear to me that batteries are the best technology for automobiles. Synthetic fuel or hydrogen are far more likely to be domestically produced if we had cheap and plentiful electricity (*cough* nuclear *cough*).
Not trying to start a war here, but I'm still not sold on a couple of your assumptions. First, how you finance it (mortgage, borrow from a grandparent, whatever) doesn't matter. What does matter is the investment you sacrifice because you put the money in solar panels instead of somewhere else, presumably at a better rate of return. Second, you're assuming the best use of public money is to jumpstart mass adoption of the use of solar panels; there are lots of other worthwhile projects competing for the same money.
But the real investment is $55K, not $37K. Someone paid for those rebates. Even assuming a conservative interest rate of 5% that would be worth over $2m in thirty years. Not so sure I would like that "green" feeling.
Objective or subjective models don't mean anything to people who only care about short-term performance. Whether the investment is good or bad in the long term doesn't matter to an investment manager who stands to get a seven figure bonus based on the current year's numbers. So what if the company fails next year? Not his problem.
You should try Brawndo. It's got what plants crave.
Can't do that, because we've never used Brawndo before.
Moving freight has the same problem. Load it onto a truck, bring it the first mile to a rail yard, load it onto a train, unload it from train back onto a truck at the destination, then truck it the last mile. All that loading/unloading kills any savings from using a train.