Given your use scenario, would not a netbook like the Asus eeepc fit the bill? It is inexpensive, runs linux very well, good battery life, has a lot of support and comes in various configurations. The only change from your plans would be that I would install a KDE based distro instead of edubuntu. If you are wanting specific apps included with edubuntu, you could install kubuntu and add the apps desired.
Again, if state funding is constant and enrollment has increased then state funding per student has decreased so it makes sense that tuition would have increased. There is no doubt that student out of pocket costs have increased, the question is whether the cost of educating a student is growing greater than the inflation rate. Once that is known, then why it is growing at an accelerated rate can be looked at and finally after that, the discussion should turn to who should pay what for that education.
A different example may be helpful, compared to the 1960s, automobile prices have risen faster than the overall inflation rate, too. However, today's cars are more reliable, last longer and are safer. Those additional features along with inflation easily explain the rise in prices and therefore the rise is because today, you get a better value for your dollar and that is why you are paying proportionately more.
So to with education. There are any number of reasons why tuition is going up. If it is going up because the state subsidy per student is declining, then is the problem that the university isn't controlling costs or the state has set its priorities elsewhere? If it is because even after figuring in the declining state subsidy, other costs to the university have increased at a greater rate than inflation and these cost are being passed on to the students, then that calls for a different solution. Maybe 20 years ago, there was a lot of deferred maintenance on plant and equipment to keep costs down and now plant and equipment is simply worn out and needs replacement. That would be a legitimate increase.
All I am saying is that without determining what the actual cost of educating a student is and how that cost has grown, one cannot actually address solutions to making education affordable.
You are basically correct, but whether the student is paying for college from their own savings or via student loans really doesn't matter if it is simply a shifting of funding sources (state vs individual). Also, with student loans, while they may be in default the debt isn't forgiven. If it's not paid by the time you die, student loans get first dibs on your estate. Only if your estate cannot pay the full amount is the debt forgiven.
The retailer can do it and sell it as used, without warranty, but who would buy it?
The retailer can restore the factory image and sell it as an 'open box' with the remaining warranty. That's what Microcenter did with this Toshiba that I am using right now. I saved about $200 on a $1200 laptop.
I do not doubt that is what Microcenter did, but legally, they must tell you it is a used computer. Open box only means that the box was opened. A display model could be sold as open box. Open box does not mean it was returned. Also, if it was returned and you are purchasing used, you should not have to pay for sales tax, but that could depend on the state you are located in.
I got a substantial one time-only discount when I mentioned that I was not using insurance and unemployed, but would be paying for the items in full out of pocket, the process ended up being $900.00 for the root canal, instead of $1400.00 and $500.00 for the crown instead of 750.00.
Insurance companies negotiate discounted rates. I have yet to see my insurance provider pay more than 40% of the billed cost of any procedure I, my wife, or my kids have had done.
Usually the statement from the healthcare provider looks something like this:
Procedure X $350.00
Negotiated discount (255.00)
Insurance paid (75.00)
Copay paid (20.00)
Balance Due: 0.00
And you might not realize you're getting soaked, it's because your discount is less than that given to insurance companies. The providers increase their client base by accepting the insurance in exchange for giving a steep discount.
The reason your insurance company only pays 40% of billed charges, is because most billed charges are heavily inflated. The medical profession uses funny math so that if you are uninsured you are charged a huge amount so that when you can't pay it, they can write it off against other revenues. Case in point, my son broke his ankle while in college. There was a delay with the insurance so the hospital billed us direct. The total cost billed was just under $14,000. Once the insurance issues were worked out, the total allowable was $3,800, of which I paid my portion and insurance paid theirs. Now, nobody can think that the hospital didn't still turn a profit on the $3,800 charge. So if that is what it really costs to take care of the broken ankle, then why not charge everybody that instead of some bogus inflated amount?
The reason it happens is because it can happen. The difference with insurance companies is that they know what the real cost to treat conditions really is and they won't pay more than that. The individual without insurance doesn't know that and the hospital can charge whatever they want. In addition, when the person can't pay, the government usually steps in to make up the shortfall.
HSA plans are another ploy to shift costs to the average worker. Executives can readily afford the high deductibles and since they are in a higher tax bracket, money they set aside has a better tax consequence for them.
If you make $250,000/yr and have an HSA with a $5,000 deductible, that is only 2% of your income going toward it. However the average worker makes something like $30,000, so that $5,000 deductible is just under 17% of their wages.
For the worker, their monthly premium is usually reduced in half, but if they do get sick, the actual deductible will far outweigh the monthly savings. What studies have shown is that most young workers go for the HSA to keep down their premium. But they are the same healthy ones who help keep down everyone's premiums. The HMO and PPO plans, then are left with those people who will probably make use of the benefits and without the healthy young people in the group the HMO/PPO premiums sky rocket. That is just the opposite effect that people want with insurance. The idea behind insurance is to spread the risk over larger groups, thereby mitigating the risk to any one person.
Again, the executive or those making significantly more than the average worker in America, can afford the higher deductible, particularly when they are young, but HSAs do nothing to minimize health care costs, but they certainly drive up the insurance cost for everybody not able to afford an HSA.
I think you miss the point. When Joe Sixpack doesn't have to pay for Product X, he doesn't care whether Product X costs $10 or $10,000,000.
Health insurers pass the cost on to employers, who have to keep paying the increased premiums to keep their employees happy. If Joe Sixpack had to pay for their own health insurance, then he would object when they doubled the premiums to cover those $10,000,000 products that could have been bought in a free market for $10.
Until you realize that many insurance programs don't cover hearing aids or have severe caps on them. However, more to your point, as you are probably aware, health insurance was provided by employers during WWII because of wage freezes. Employer provided health insurance was a way to increase the benefit to the employee for working at said company. However, it is important to remember that it was in lieu of increasing wages.
Jump ahead 60+ years. If Joe Sixpack suddenly had to provide his own insurance instead of his employer, what makes you think that wages won't increase correspondingly to cover the cost. Whether Joe Sixpack is paid 100% in cash or 80% in cash and 20% in other benefits, the cost to the company is the same. We see this all the time. When housing, fuel, food and other things that effect the cost of living, wages have to increase. If the employer paid portion of health insurance is suddenly passed on to the employee, then likewise, wages will have to increase. Furthermore, as the 100% employee paid premiums increase, wages will still have to increase. One way or another, it will cost the employer the same amount. Most likely it will cost more, because skilled labor will migrate to those companies that show better care and working conditions for their employees. Then the worker productivity at the original company will decline and overall profit margins decrease.
Face it. If a business is paying a worker $30,000 in wages and $8,000 for the employer share of health insurance, they are effectively paying $38,000 for that position. Cutting out health insurance will just mean that they end up paying $38,000 in wages, unless they really think they will be able to get workers for the equivalent of paying them 17% less than the do now.
While your analysis is interesting, just measuring the tuition cost increase compared to inflation is insufficient, because as you point out, state funding has probably decreased. The real analysis needs to look at the cost the university spends educating per credit hour and seeing how that has grown compared to inflation.
Put differently, if in 1993 at Central Michigan, it cost $300 per credit hour and the student paid $135.98 and the state paid the balance and today it costs $480 per credit hour, but the student foots the $358 and the state portion has decreased, then all that has changed is the funding source, but the actual cost grew in line with the inflation rate over the same period.
Now, I doubt that the problem with affordable education is simply a shifting of funding from the state to the individual and is more likely the combination of that AND spending that far exceeds the inflation rate. But, without the actual cost to educate per credit hour, it's impossible to tell. Let alone fix the problem.
First, I agree that you should be able to install any OS that you want on a computer without it invalidating the warranty. However, the reality is that retailers and manufacturers see product returned because people overclock their computers and fry something, accidentally drop it, etc. Because of a few people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions, retailers and manufacturers are forced to make the warranty terms relatively strict.
Secondly, If you want to install another OS and maintain your warranty then you should be smart enough to realize that you have revert it back to the shipped configuration. The best way to do this would be to buy a new drive, swap it with the factory one, then install LINUX. If something goes wrong, you just swap the original drive back in. The other option, if you have another computer, is to remove the factory shipped hard-drive, take a drive image, re-install, and then install LINUX. You can then re-image the drive if you have to ship the computer back.
The first thing that I do when I get a new laptop is take an image of the shipped drive. Then I blow it away and install Windows from scratch. If a Windows guy can figure this out, why can't you LINUX guys and gals... (grin)
Evidently, the linux guy did figure it out. The problem was a hardware failure which even the BIOS detected as such. I'm pretty sure that no matter how soon after turning on your new computer and imaging the hard drive, restoring the image won't fix a hardware failure. I am all for people being responsible, but really, if installing another OS violates Neweggs return policy (which it doesn't according to the policy itself), then they should state so. Of course, that would mean you couldn't put Windows 7 on top of the pre-installed Vista or Windows 8 when it ships, either.
Depending on the cost of the computer, the purchaser should take Newegg to small claims court to get their money back.
Why give them a break? From the actual article, there return policy does not preclude installing linux or any other operating system on a computer. The computer in question had a hardware failure in the time covered by their return policy. If it had been the drive that had failed, how would they have reinstalled windows on it? Lenevo didn't sell the computer to the customer, Newegg did. As such, they should stand behind their stated return policy and if anything hold Lenevo's feet to the fire.
Usually it's not the retailer who wipes the disk and reinstalls, at least not if they want to claim that it is factory refurbished. The retailer can do it and sell it as used, without warranty, but who would buy it? As for the factory refurbished, most likely the manufacturer is not reinstalling the OS from the recovery partition, but instead replacing the drive with an already installed system and then wiping the drive and installing a new image on it (so that drive may be used for warranty repairs).
Anyway, to make a long story short, it shouldn't matter if the recovery partition was trashed or not.
Plus, your cloud vendor is in the IT business like everybody else. Like any IT business (or any business for that matter), they have a bottom line to watch and will choose to provide the minimal acceptable service to maximize profits, or they will charge a lot extra to exceed those standards. But, unlike your business, when they need to make business decisions that lead to cost reductions, you don't necessarily know about it until it is too late.
I deal with large MFP copiers that can scan to email and I love "THE CLOUD". Since the two manufacturers I deal with cannot figure out TLS it's a huge issue. Then the IT guys yell at me cause he moved everything without ever asking if our equipment would have an issue.
Good thing Stunnel exists or we would be having major issues.
Scanning to email has been around for the past 15 years. That really isn't "THE CLOUD."
All that stakeholders care about is results. If you have an infrastructure problem internally and push things to the cloud to solve it (as the summary discusses) and your cloud vendor is not 100%, your stakeholders are still going to come after you (meaning I.T.). After all, they really shouldn't have to worry about where data is stored or how it is accessed. That is your job (I.T.) not theirs. On the other hand, any problems with service affects their jobs and your department (I.T.) is at fault regardless if it is an internal problem or with a vendor you contracted with.
People complain about the bean counters all the time. They're a piece of cake, you just need to talk their language and show a decent ROI. Upset the sales or manufacturing side of things, though and you will be out on the street.
It's not that adopting the cloud kills your career. It's putting your career in the hands of outside vendors that has the potential to kill it.
The government gets taxes from the increased revenue of the businesses you're talking about.
But that's besides the point. Public investments pay off in private income in America. And in improved living conditions. The government payoff is leadership, and in teaching the Russians that we could do in space during the Cold War what we did in the Pacific during WWII: ramp up tech and production to bring it right in their face and beyond.
Of course NASA shouldn't keep a monopoly on the tech it develops. It should transfer it to American developers, as it has. If anything it should hold less, especially now that so much NASA work is for spies and so not shared.
That is a common misconception. NASA, like military spending, funds huge amounts of research (or jobs and income, if you wish). However, the people (taxpayers) whose money government spends don't see a benefit. Take any technology you want. Individuals are taxed, their taxes pay private companies to develop products and those products are sold to the government (requiring more taxes) and also sold back to the public. When the government subsidizes businesses, particularly large corporations, it is just another form of welfare, corporate welfare. When those same corporations, then take the technology and build products with it in Asia, there are no jobs created in the US with it. There is just the transfer of wealth, from the taxpayers to the shareholders of the corporation. Those same corporations and shareholders then pay back some of those funds to re-elect sympathetic members of congress to perpetuate the process. And the cycle continues.
If you really want to know how the system works, it is quite simple, follow the money.
One way or another humans will render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. Sooner or later.
The only way to give humans a chance to survive our own suicidal idiocy is to colonize other places. The Moon is the obvious necessary step towards that.
There's plenty of other reasons to make it worthwhile until the Earth is done. But let's get started already. There's a chance that spreading somewhere else might take the pressure off and postpone the inevitable down here.
The moon and mars, etc. are already uninhabitable by humans. If humans do make the earth uninhabitable, which is questionable, then why not just build the habitats here?
Until the individual scientist is viewed (and paid) like the athlete, investment banker, doctor, lawyer, etc. you aren't going to get kids engaged in it. Why go to college for 8 years and run up so much debt that you will never be able to buy a house when for a lot less work and money, you can have a career that pays a lot more to boot?
The return on that $150B investment has been many, many times that amount. How much return on the NSF investment is there in an equivalent 10 years since the money was spent?
Maybe the NSF has an even better rate of return. Even if you exclude the incomparable inspiration of the Apollo programme. All that means is that we should spend $150B again on space R&D, and on NSF R&D. Instead of on war and the banks.
No it has not. The return on the $150B investment has been virtually non-existant. Why? Because the government, who invested the $150B didn't get to profit from the returns on that investment. Private businesses did. These same businesses were also paid for their services and products, so they made a profit from the actual work performed and a windfall from all of the discoveries that the government or should I say the people paid for.
If NASA had been allowed to patent the inventions created for the space program, they wouldn't need government funding today.
I never meant to imply that it wasn't cheaper for the government to contract out to SpaceX than build it's own rockets. However, there is also nothing that would prevent the government (NASA) from using sound business practices in building their own rockets and have similar savings if built themself (still with contracting things out). It would take a change in the way the procurement policy and procedures work, but government is the only place where you sign a contract with a vendor to produce X for $Y and it ends up costing three times as much, if not more, and the customer, the government, has to pay. No other business works that way. In those, the vendor is held to the terms of the contract. Also, unlike other businesses, the fruits of research don't benefit NASA, how much does NASA get from teflon, velcro or even WD-40? All were developed as part of their space programs, but private companies get to market and profit from them. SpaceX, on the otherhand, gets to profit from any products developed from its own research.
So, yes, it is easy to say that SpaceX can do the job more economically than NASA, but then again, it is only because our own government restricts how NASA is allowed to operate (same problem Amtrak has - has to be profitable, but not allowed to drop routes or raise fares).
I think you've misinterpreted this. The insurance costs for the private and public sectors are the same. If the government insures a private launch, that's not any more expensive than insuring its own launch, so this won't end up making a difference if, say, the government is deciding whether to launch a rocket itself or hire SpaceX to do it. I think the issue here is actually whether other launch customers (e.g. companies paying to have a satellite launched) will end up on the hook for the cost of insurance, or if US taxpayers will pick up the tab for every launch. However, if they decide that the customers have to pay, that may reduce the size of the space market sufficiently that private space launch companies like SpaceX are no longer viable, and that is the sense in which this would hurt SpaceX.
If it really is true that they're considering making it a choice between private contractors + private insurance OR a public launch with free government-provided insurance, that's pretty much horrible policy and it would make me very sad. But TFA seems to focus more on foreign competitors using this to undercut SpaceX pricewise.
I understand the insurance cost being the same. However, if the private launch company has to pay the insurance and therefore their launch vehicle is too costly for other businesses to use, then the private launch system is not cost effective. The government, since it does not have a profit motive, but obviously should not operate at a loss per launch, either, should be as competitive if not more so than the private company. Fuel to lift a kilogram is the same regardless (although the government may purchase in large enough quantity to have some savings there). Materials for the rocket itself should be the same. Chances are the insurance, liability, that is would be less for the government for two reasons. First, it's launch sites tend to be over the ocean or the middle of the desert, so there is less chance of damage to others if a catastrophe occurs. Second, and probably more importantly, the government is large enough that it can safely self insure itself against the risk. That is something that a private company cannot do and that is where the real price difference comes in.
So the question would remain, with all other costs being equal, why should the taxpayer take on the risk of a private launch vehicle so somebody else can receive the profit from the launch? Even with competition from foreign competitors, who are being subsidized by their own governments, why should the US do the same? If it is not profitable, then it is not profitable (from a for profit business). It would seem to make more sense for the government to get back into the payload delivery business and sell the payload space to others for a profit than to subsidize the selling of that space for a private business.
Put differently, just because China subsidizes their steel industry doesn't mean that US should, too. A better solution would be to get China to stop subsidizing it. With steel there are tariffs. With launch vehicles, it is with the government providing that service.
Also, all of those nuclear power plants carry insurance, as do coal, hydro, etc. Lloyds insures most of them. It may be true that the government gets involved with the cleanup, but that is not because they weren't insured. They get involved with the cleanup because it is a public safety issue by that time.
In the UK each plant is only legally required to have £140m of insurance, and in the US the entire industry is only insured for $10bn. Fukushima has already cost over $200bn, and that doesn't include money spent by the government on things like re-homing people and benefits because they are now unemployed.
The US cap on insurance is $12.6B per incident. The Three Mile Island, the only nuclear accident in the US cost $70 million in damages, mainly for evacuation as the containment building actually contained the accident. The insurance is not for the plant itself, that would be property insurance. The insurance is liability insurance, or damages to others basically for your negligence. So, at Fukushima, the $200B in damages would not be covered by the mandatory insurance in the first place, nor was the damage to the plant at Three Mile Island. Those companies have separate insurance policies for that and those are not capped.
The $12.6B cap does not mean the government picks up the tab if claims exceed that amount. It means that if all of the regulations set by the government our followed, then claims won't exceed that amount by statute. If the government has to re-home people, that would come from disaster recovery funds just like a flood or hurricane and would not be related to liability claims from the power plant.
The likelihood of a total melt down that breaches the containment building is very small. As such, $12.6B per incident, which covers many more likely scenarios, is probably adequate for liability claims, since just following the NRC rules and regulations keeps claims from being made. Now, if somebody doesn't follow the rules and their are lawsuits, then after $12.6B is paid by insurance, then the corporate assets would be next. Still the US Government would not be paying out anything other than what it would for any other disaster, unless congress decided to make a special appropriation at the time it occurred.
I can't speak as to how things are done in the UK, but that is how it works in the US.
I did not mean to imply that the "cloud" is not important, or at least won't be. I was really commenting on the COBOL side of things. However, with the exception of the monetizing of consumer products, such as Netflix that you mention. Aren't most cloud applications really just an extension of the client server model that we were all using in the 90s (your expense account example for instance). Of course, back then, they were all running on TCP/IP on internal networks or across T-1 lines where as now they are running on TCP/IP across the internet.
It seems that what cloud computing really means, today, is the use of the public network to replace private networks that relayed the same information. Granted such a use has more capabilities, particularly being able to access from almost any where, but the underlying technologies aren't really different than 20 years ago (thin clients with data bases on the back end -- although the tools have improved since then).
Even in our mainframe environment, we use a lot of COBOL on the back end with Java on the front, therefore leveraging what each tool is best at. I would agree, that the cloud is more than a buzzword, but it is over-hyped by marketers and the media. It is just a natural progression (evolution, if you will) of what came before it, from these applications running across private networks to public networks. I do look forward to buying and reading your book.
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Given your use scenario, would not a netbook like the Asus eeepc fit the bill? It is inexpensive, runs linux very well, good battery life, has a lot of support and comes in various configurations. The only change from your plans would be that I would install a KDE based distro instead of edubuntu. If you are wanting specific apps included with edubuntu, you could install kubuntu and add the apps desired.
Again, if state funding is constant and enrollment has increased then state funding per student has decreased so it makes sense that tuition would have increased. There is no doubt that student out of pocket costs have increased, the question is whether the cost of educating a student is growing greater than the inflation rate. Once that is known, then why it is growing at an accelerated rate can be looked at and finally after that, the discussion should turn to who should pay what for that education.
A different example may be helpful, compared to the 1960s, automobile prices have risen faster than the overall inflation rate, too. However, today's cars are more reliable, last longer and are safer. Those additional features along with inflation easily explain the rise in prices and therefore the rise is because today, you get a better value for your dollar and that is why you are paying proportionately more.
So to with education. There are any number of reasons why tuition is going up. If it is going up because the state subsidy per student is declining, then is the problem that the university isn't controlling costs or the state has set its priorities elsewhere? If it is because even after figuring in the declining state subsidy, other costs to the university have increased at a greater rate than inflation and these cost are being passed on to the students, then that calls for a different solution. Maybe 20 years ago, there was a lot of deferred maintenance on plant and equipment to keep costs down and now plant and equipment is simply worn out and needs replacement. That would be a legitimate increase.
All I am saying is that without determining what the actual cost of educating a student is and how that cost has grown, one cannot actually address solutions to making education affordable.
You are basically correct, but whether the student is paying for college from their own savings or via student loans really doesn't matter if it is simply a shifting of funding sources (state vs individual). Also, with student loans, while they may be in default the debt isn't forgiven. If it's not paid by the time you die, student loans get first dibs on your estate. Only if your estate cannot pay the full amount is the debt forgiven.
The retailer can do it and sell it as used, without warranty, but who would buy it?
The retailer can restore the factory image and sell it as an 'open box' with the remaining warranty. That's what Microcenter did with this Toshiba that I am using right now. I saved about $200 on a $1200 laptop.
I do not doubt that is what Microcenter did, but legally, they must tell you it is a used computer. Open box only means that the box was opened. A display model could be sold as open box. Open box does not mean it was returned. Also, if it was returned and you are purchasing used, you should not have to pay for sales tax, but that could depend on the state you are located in.
Insurance companies negotiate discounted rates. I have yet to see my insurance provider pay more than 40% of the billed cost of any procedure I, my wife, or my kids have had done.
Usually the statement from the healthcare provider looks something like this:
Procedure X $350.00
Negotiated discount (255.00)
Insurance paid (75.00)
Copay paid (20.00)
Balance Due: 0.00
And you might not realize you're getting soaked, it's because your discount is less than that given to insurance companies. The providers increase their client base by accepting the insurance in exchange for giving a steep discount.
The reason your insurance company only pays 40% of billed charges, is because most billed charges are heavily inflated. The medical profession uses funny math so that if you are uninsured you are charged a huge amount so that when you can't pay it, they can write it off against other revenues. Case in point, my son broke his ankle while in college. There was a delay with the insurance so the hospital billed us direct. The total cost billed was just under $14,000. Once the insurance issues were worked out, the total allowable was $3,800, of which I paid my portion and insurance paid theirs. Now, nobody can think that the hospital didn't still turn a profit on the $3,800 charge. So if that is what it really costs to take care of the broken ankle, then why not charge everybody that instead of some bogus inflated amount?
The reason it happens is because it can happen. The difference with insurance companies is that they know what the real cost to treat conditions really is and they won't pay more than that. The individual without insurance doesn't know that and the hospital can charge whatever they want. In addition, when the person can't pay, the government usually steps in to make up the shortfall.
That, unfortunately, is how the system works.
HSA plans are another ploy to shift costs to the average worker. Executives can readily afford the high deductibles and since they are in a higher tax bracket, money they set aside has a better tax consequence for them.
If you make $250,000/yr and have an HSA with a $5,000 deductible, that is only 2% of your income going toward it. However the average worker makes something like $30,000, so that $5,000 deductible is just under 17% of their wages.
For the worker, their monthly premium is usually reduced in half, but if they do get sick, the actual deductible will far outweigh the monthly savings. What studies have shown is that most young workers go for the HSA to keep down their premium. But they are the same healthy ones who help keep down everyone's premiums. The HMO and PPO plans, then are left with those people who will probably make use of the benefits and without the healthy young people in the group the HMO/PPO premiums sky rocket. That is just the opposite effect that people want with insurance. The idea behind insurance is to spread the risk over larger groups, thereby mitigating the risk to any one person.
Again, the executive or those making significantly more than the average worker in America, can afford the higher deductible, particularly when they are young, but HSAs do nothing to minimize health care costs, but they certainly drive up the insurance cost for everybody not able to afford an HSA.
I think you miss the point. When Joe Sixpack doesn't have to pay for Product X, he doesn't care whether Product X costs $10 or $10,000,000.
Health insurers pass the cost on to employers, who have to keep paying the increased premiums to keep their employees happy. If Joe Sixpack had to pay for their own health insurance, then he would object when they doubled the premiums to cover those $10,000,000 products that could have been bought in a free market for $10.
Until you realize that many insurance programs don't cover hearing aids or have severe caps on them. However, more to your point, as you are probably aware, health insurance was provided by employers during WWII because of wage freezes. Employer provided health insurance was a way to increase the benefit to the employee for working at said company. However, it is important to remember that it was in lieu of increasing wages.
Jump ahead 60+ years. If Joe Sixpack suddenly had to provide his own insurance instead of his employer, what makes you think that wages won't increase correspondingly to cover the cost. Whether Joe Sixpack is paid 100% in cash or 80% in cash and 20% in other benefits, the cost to the company is the same. We see this all the time. When housing, fuel, food and other things that effect the cost of living, wages have to increase. If the employer paid portion of health insurance is suddenly passed on to the employee, then likewise, wages will have to increase. Furthermore, as the 100% employee paid premiums increase, wages will still have to increase. One way or another, it will cost the employer the same amount. Most likely it will cost more, because skilled labor will migrate to those companies that show better care and working conditions for their employees. Then the worker productivity at the original company will decline and overall profit margins decrease.
Face it. If a business is paying a worker $30,000 in wages and $8,000 for the employer share of health insurance, they are effectively paying $38,000 for that position. Cutting out health insurance will just mean that they end up paying $38,000 in wages, unless they really think they will be able to get workers for the equivalent of paying them 17% less than the do now.
While your analysis is interesting, just measuring the tuition cost increase compared to inflation is insufficient, because as you point out, state funding has probably decreased. The real analysis needs to look at the cost the university spends educating per credit hour and seeing how that has grown compared to inflation.
Put differently, if in 1993 at Central Michigan, it cost $300 per credit hour and the student paid $135.98 and the state paid the balance and today it costs $480 per credit hour, but the student foots the $358 and the state portion has decreased, then all that has changed is the funding source, but the actual cost grew in line with the inflation rate over the same period.
Now, I doubt that the problem with affordable education is simply a shifting of funding from the state to the individual and is more likely the combination of that AND spending that far exceeds the inflation rate. But, without the actual cost to educate per credit hour, it's impossible to tell. Let alone fix the problem.
First, I agree that you should be able to install any OS that you want on a computer without it invalidating the warranty. However, the reality is that retailers and manufacturers see product returned because people overclock their computers and fry something, accidentally drop it, etc. Because of a few people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions, retailers and manufacturers are forced to make the warranty terms relatively strict.
Secondly, If you want to install another OS and maintain your warranty then you should be smart enough to realize that you have revert it back to the shipped configuration. The best way to do this would be to buy a new drive, swap it with the factory one, then install LINUX. If something goes wrong, you just swap the original drive back in. The other option, if you have another computer, is to remove the factory shipped hard-drive, take a drive image, re-install, and then install LINUX. You can then re-image the drive if you have to ship the computer back.
The first thing that I do when I get a new laptop is take an image of the shipped drive. Then I blow it away and install Windows from scratch. If a Windows guy can figure this out, why can't you LINUX guys and gals... (grin)
Evidently, the linux guy did figure it out. The problem was a hardware failure which even the BIOS detected as such. I'm pretty sure that no matter how soon after turning on your new computer and imaging the hard drive, restoring the image won't fix a hardware failure. I am all for people being responsible, but really, if installing another OS violates Neweggs return policy (which it doesn't according to the policy itself), then they should state so. Of course, that would mean you couldn't put Windows 7 on top of the pre-installed Vista or Windows 8 when it ships, either.
Depending on the cost of the computer, the purchaser should take Newegg to small claims court to get their money back.
Why give them a break? From the actual article, there return policy does not preclude installing linux or any other operating system on a computer. The computer in question had a hardware failure in the time covered by their return policy. If it had been the drive that had failed, how would they have reinstalled windows on it? Lenevo didn't sell the computer to the customer, Newegg did. As such, they should stand behind their stated return policy and if anything hold Lenevo's feet to the fire.
Boycott Newegg
Usually it's not the retailer who wipes the disk and reinstalls, at least not if they want to claim that it is factory refurbished. The retailer can do it and sell it as used, without warranty, but who would buy it? As for the factory refurbished, most likely the manufacturer is not reinstalling the OS from the recovery partition, but instead replacing the drive with an already installed system and then wiping the drive and installing a new image on it (so that drive may be used for warranty repairs).
Anyway, to make a long story short, it shouldn't matter if the recovery partition was trashed or not.
Plus, your cloud vendor is in the IT business like everybody else. Like any IT business (or any business for that matter), they have a bottom line to watch and will choose to provide the minimal acceptable service to maximize profits, or they will charge a lot extra to exceed those standards. But, unlike your business, when they need to make business decisions that lead to cost reductions, you don't necessarily know about it until it is too late.
I deal with large MFP copiers that can scan to email and I love "THE CLOUD". Since the two manufacturers I deal with cannot figure out TLS it's a huge issue. Then the IT guys yell at me cause he moved everything without ever asking if our equipment would have an issue.
Good thing Stunnel exists or we would be having major issues.
Scanning to email has been around for the past 15 years. That really isn't "THE CLOUD."
All that stakeholders care about is results. If you have an infrastructure problem internally and push things to the cloud to solve it (as the summary discusses) and your cloud vendor is not 100%, your stakeholders are still going to come after you (meaning I.T.). After all, they really shouldn't have to worry about where data is stored or how it is accessed. That is your job (I.T.) not theirs. On the other hand, any problems with service affects their jobs and your department (I.T.) is at fault regardless if it is an internal problem or with a vendor you contracted with.
People complain about the bean counters all the time. They're a piece of cake, you just need to talk their language and show a decent ROI. Upset the sales or manufacturing side of things, though and you will be out on the street.
It's not that adopting the cloud kills your career. It's putting your career in the hands of outside vendors that has the potential to kill it.
The government gets taxes from the increased revenue of the businesses you're talking about.
But that's besides the point. Public investments pay off in private income in America. And in improved living conditions. The government payoff is leadership, and in teaching the Russians that we could do in space during the Cold War what we did in the Pacific during WWII: ramp up tech and production to bring it right in their face and beyond.
Of course NASA shouldn't keep a monopoly on the tech it develops. It should transfer it to American developers, as it has. If anything it should hold less, especially now that so much NASA work is for spies and so not shared.
That is a common misconception. NASA, like military spending, funds huge amounts of research (or jobs and income, if you wish). However, the people (taxpayers) whose money government spends don't see a benefit. Take any technology you want. Individuals are taxed, their taxes pay private companies to develop products and those products are sold to the government (requiring more taxes) and also sold back to the public. When the government subsidizes businesses, particularly large corporations, it is just another form of welfare, corporate welfare. When those same corporations, then take the technology and build products with it in Asia, there are no jobs created in the US with it. There is just the transfer of wealth, from the taxpayers to the shareholders of the corporation. Those same corporations and shareholders then pay back some of those funds to re-elect sympathetic members of congress to perpetuate the process. And the cycle continues.
If you really want to know how the system works, it is quite simple, follow the money.
One way or another humans will render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. Sooner or later.
The only way to give humans a chance to survive our own suicidal idiocy is to colonize other places. The Moon is the obvious necessary step towards that.
There's plenty of other reasons to make it worthwhile until the Earth is done. But let's get started already. There's a chance that spreading somewhere else might take the pressure off and postpone the inevitable down here.
The moon and mars, etc. are already uninhabitable by humans. If humans do make the earth uninhabitable, which is questionable, then why not just build the habitats here?
Until the individual scientist is viewed (and paid) like the athlete, investment banker, doctor, lawyer, etc. you aren't going to get kids engaged in it. Why go to college for 8 years and run up so much debt that you will never be able to buy a house when for a lot less work and money, you can have a career that pays a lot more to boot?
The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012
ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.
There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.
That's why the EU is making a case to return to the moon -- so somebody else will foot the bill for them.
The return on that $150B investment has been many, many times that amount. How much return on the NSF investment is there in an equivalent 10 years since the money was spent?
Maybe the NSF has an even better rate of return. Even if you exclude the incomparable inspiration of the Apollo programme. All that means is that we should spend $150B again on space R&D, and on NSF R&D. Instead of on war and the banks.
No it has not. The return on the $150B investment has been virtually non-existant. Why? Because the government, who invested the $150B didn't get to profit from the returns on that investment. Private businesses did. These same businesses were also paid for their services and products, so they made a profit from the actual work performed and a windfall from all of the discoveries that the government or should I say the people paid for.
If NASA had been allowed to patent the inventions created for the space program, they wouldn't need government funding today.
I still don't know why they're calling it "austerity" instead of "prosperity".
Because it will take 20 years of austerity before Europe returns to prosperity.
I never meant to imply that it wasn't cheaper for the government to contract out to SpaceX than build it's own rockets. However, there is also nothing that would prevent the government (NASA) from using sound business practices in building their own rockets and have similar savings if built themself (still with contracting things out). It would take a change in the way the procurement policy and procedures work, but government is the only place where you sign a contract with a vendor to produce X for $Y and it ends up costing three times as much, if not more, and the customer, the government, has to pay. No other business works that way. In those, the vendor is held to the terms of the contract. Also, unlike other businesses, the fruits of research don't benefit NASA, how much does NASA get from teflon, velcro or even WD-40? All were developed as part of their space programs, but private companies get to market and profit from them. SpaceX, on the otherhand, gets to profit from any products developed from its own research.
So, yes, it is easy to say that SpaceX can do the job more economically than NASA, but then again, it is only because our own government restricts how NASA is allowed to operate (same problem Amtrak has - has to be profitable, but not allowed to drop routes or raise fares).
I think you've misinterpreted this. The insurance costs for the private and public sectors are the same. If the government insures a private launch, that's not any more expensive than insuring its own launch, so this won't end up making a difference if, say, the government is deciding whether to launch a rocket itself or hire SpaceX to do it. I think the issue here is actually whether other launch customers (e.g. companies paying to have a satellite launched) will end up on the hook for the cost of insurance, or if US taxpayers will pick up the tab for every launch. However, if they decide that the customers have to pay, that may reduce the size of the space market sufficiently that private space launch companies like SpaceX are no longer viable, and that is the sense in which this would hurt SpaceX.
If it really is true that they're considering making it a choice between private contractors + private insurance OR a public launch with free government-provided insurance, that's pretty much horrible policy and it would make me very sad. But TFA seems to focus more on foreign competitors using this to undercut SpaceX pricewise.
I understand the insurance cost being the same. However, if the private launch company has to pay the insurance and therefore their launch vehicle is too costly for other businesses to use, then the private launch system is not cost effective. The government, since it does not have a profit motive, but obviously should not operate at a loss per launch, either, should be as competitive if not more so than the private company. Fuel to lift a kilogram is the same regardless (although the government may purchase in large enough quantity to have some savings there). Materials for the rocket itself should be the same. Chances are the insurance, liability, that is would be less for the government for two reasons. First, it's launch sites tend to be over the ocean or the middle of the desert, so there is less chance of damage to others if a catastrophe occurs. Second, and probably more importantly, the government is large enough that it can safely self insure itself against the risk. That is something that a private company cannot do and that is where the real price difference comes in.
So the question would remain, with all other costs being equal, why should the taxpayer take on the risk of a private launch vehicle so somebody else can receive the profit from the launch? Even with competition from foreign competitors, who are being subsidized by their own governments, why should the US do the same? If it is not profitable, then it is not profitable (from a for profit business). It would seem to make more sense for the government to get back into the payload delivery business and sell the payload space to others for a profit than to subsidize the selling of that space for a private business.
Put differently, just because China subsidizes their steel industry doesn't mean that US should, too. A better solution would be to get China to stop subsidizing it. With steel there are tariffs. With launch vehicles, it is with the government providing that service.
Also, all of those nuclear power plants carry insurance, as do coal, hydro, etc. Lloyds insures most of them. It may be true that the government gets involved with the cleanup, but that is not because they weren't insured. They get involved with the cleanup because it is a public safety issue by that time.
In the UK each plant is only legally required to have £140m of insurance, and in the US the entire industry is only insured for $10bn. Fukushima has already cost over $200bn, and that doesn't include money spent by the government on things like re-homing people and benefits because they are now unemployed.
The US cap on insurance is $12.6B per incident. The Three Mile Island, the only nuclear accident in the US cost $70 million in damages, mainly for evacuation as the containment building actually contained the accident. The insurance is not for the plant itself, that would be property insurance. The insurance is liability insurance, or damages to others basically for your negligence. So, at Fukushima, the $200B in damages would not be covered by the mandatory insurance in the first place, nor was the damage to the plant at Three Mile Island. Those companies have separate insurance policies for that and those are not capped.
The $12.6B cap does not mean the government picks up the tab if claims exceed that amount. It means that if all of the regulations set by the government our followed, then claims won't exceed that amount by statute. If the government has to re-home people, that would come from disaster recovery funds just like a flood or hurricane and would not be related to liability claims from the power plant.
The likelihood of a total melt down that breaches the containment building is very small. As such, $12.6B per incident, which covers many more likely scenarios, is probably adequate for liability claims, since just following the NRC rules and regulations keeps claims from being made. Now, if somebody doesn't follow the rules and their are lawsuits, then after $12.6B is paid by insurance, then the corporate assets would be next. Still the US Government would not be paying out anything other than what it would for any other disaster, unless congress decided to make a special appropriation at the time it occurred.
I can't speak as to how things are done in the UK, but that is how it works in the US.
I did not mean to imply that the "cloud" is not important, or at least won't be. I was really commenting on the COBOL side of things. However, with the exception of the monetizing of consumer products, such as Netflix that you mention. Aren't most cloud applications really just an extension of the client server model that we were all using in the 90s (your expense account example for instance). Of course, back then, they were all running on TCP/IP on internal networks or across T-1 lines where as now they are running on TCP/IP across the internet.
It seems that what cloud computing really means, today, is the use of the public network to replace private networks that relayed the same information. Granted such a use has more capabilities, particularly being able to access from almost any where, but the underlying technologies aren't really different than 20 years ago (thin clients with data bases on the back end -- although the tools have improved since then).
Even in our mainframe environment, we use a lot of COBOL on the back end with Java on the front, therefore leveraging what each tool is best at. I would agree, that the cloud is more than a buzzword, but it is over-hyped by marketers and the media. It is just a natural progression (evolution, if you will) of what came before it, from these applications running across private networks to public networks. I do look forward to buying and reading your book.