Surely NASA is a "civilian" space agency, and the shuttle therefore a civilian craft?
No, numerous design decisions early on in the program were made strictly to appease the defense dept. Most of them revolved around the mission requirement of launching, grabbing a russian spy sat and placing it in the cargo bay, and landing on next orbit. This requires a ridiculous cross-range capability as the launching site rotates with the earth about 2000 miles east during an orbit. Also the DoD mandated some weird on orbit maneuvering capability which I don't remember (probably some classified anti-asat maneuverability, or maybe it was something to do with the RCS system being stable enough to stick a telescope in the cargo bay for military observational purposes?)
There was also a long cross range capability for military purposes... If a civilian is worried about landing short, just aim at the center of the USA and you're all good. Insane as it sounds, if you want to land at a military base in Japan or Israel, and its a no-go for weather or whatever, you need crossrange to... somewhere freaking far away. What, Korea or Australia as alternates for Japan, or maybe... diego garcia as an alternate for israel? Unlike F-16s etc we never sold any shuttles to Israel or even landed ours in Japan. But the DoD made us design the vehicle to possibly do it.
The point wasn't to actually steal russian sats, which would be quite the diplomatic incident. The point was to scare them into a higher orbit out of SS range. Same sat higher up means lower resolution and less consumables means its got less lifetime and/or costs more. You only have to scare them once, during design phase, and their sats are crippled until the next generation. Presumably we wouldn't steal our own sats, and they were not going to make a clone of our SS (although turns out they did anyway) so in true cold war deterrence fashion, the end result of building the SS to DoD specs means the russians inherently end up with crappier spy sats than we do.
Well, we never did a mission like that, never even flew a super long cross range landing, for most of the active flying SS program the USSR no longer existed, it got really popular to put a giant sat with giant optics and long lifetime in geosync instead of little ones in low orbit that deorbit relatively rapidly. So it was all kind of pointless.
I think it's more like asking, "If these plants typically grow in 65-100 degree weather, why are we putting them in a greenhouse instead of outside where it's typically 65-100 degrees?" Plants in that region don't need more heat - They have plenty.
I think you're confusing average temperature for the entire year, averaged across the entire state, with minimum winter temps in the north. Weird as it must sound to people who don't live there, my AZ cousin "often" had colder weather in northern AZ during the winter than I did in WI. Frost is very common and below 0 F is about as newsworthy as it is in WI. Something to do with moderating effect of large bodies of water, also higher altitude.
Trust me, its pretty easy to freeze to death in the desert, either at night, or in the winter, or both. Idiots get killed all the time going out in the desert in tee shirts and shorts on a warm/hot day, then get stuck out there and freeze to death. Unlike the midwest, you need blankets in the car trunk, just in case, even if its 80 degrees at noon. I lived near the gulf coast and on a cloudy day the delta T from midnight to noon might have been 10 degrees... in the upper midwest its about 20 degrees... in the desert its often 60 degrees... Plants don't like that, you need a greenhouse in AZ a lot more than you need it in WI.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Check the numbers for unemployment of grads, average pay rates at all districts not just the rich ones... I also have relatives in the business, and some acquaintances, not that it matters.
Also it's an unfair comparison. If, instead of "decompressing" between tasks and firefighting problems by smoking or coffee or my choice slashdot, I took on contract jobs, and I tutored old people at the local community college while I was on pager duty, then I could haul in extra cash...
Man, if that's true, he's a fucking moron. One of the most basic human responses is to ignore big tragedies and go straight for the scandals because they don't want to be reminded of bad stuff, but of how they're better than everyone else. I'd almost think it's more likely that everyone else sat on this until now and are using it in an attempt to distract from all the other big news.
True but, its almost more my fault for not mentioning that kind of stuff. We also had the royal wedding as alluded to above, a white girl went missing so the media convicted her mother on the evidence being that she got a tattoo therefore that proves she must have killed her kid, a loser congressmen (but I repeat myself) sent pix of his namesake to some chicks (at least the story wasn't underage boys... this time), the rich NFL players and rich team owning corporations are having a little love spat about who's going to get richer, etc etc. I don't watch TV or read people magazine but even I know these stories; there are probably more.
If they want a more accurate profile of me to present ads which I might conceivably be interested in while I'm doing my friends-and-family socializing, that works fine by me. I've dismissed about a million Zynga ads on Facebook and their ad-bot code can't take a hint so more accurate ad profiling works in my favor by being less irritating by several orders of magnitude.
I use G+, but I only use firefox and adblock plus, so my internet doesn't have ads. Could someone with an inferior browser verify if G+ has ads, and if so are they adaptive ads like I'd guess?
I did hear early in the beta that they hadn't even integrated it with the ads system, so there were no ads.
Frankly, when I go shopping online, a lot of shopping is searching google to find stuff. I wanna use a PTC thermistor on a crystal oscillator to temperature stabilize it, I'm thinking about 12 volts operating and more than 40 ohms cold resistance so as not to blow a fuse and a stable operating point around 50 C would be about right... Yes GE MADE some perfect ones that exactly fit my needs but they stopped sometime around the RoHS changeover. After much agony, and endless suppliers who list it as a product but not in stock, or claim they can order them but it seems they can't, I somehow found a horde of them at Mouser. Now if I got cool ads like PTC thermistor crystal stabilizer heaters, then I would not block ads. Or maybe any ad from adafruit or dangerous prototypes would make me happy. Or any ad from kenwood / icom / yaesu / elecraft / tentec would make me happy. And since I buy a lot of stuff from those people they'd like to pay to show me the ads. But the only ads I ever get are "singles in your area" and "click the monkey to win" BS.
I don't really want my real name out there except to people I really know well. But I have plenty of followers on Twitter who like what I post and don't care that much EXACTLY who I am.
The problem is that 99.99% of the people using fake names are spammers, trolls, or other lowlifes. Its hard to allow them in, just to allow you to maintain anonymity.
If, rather than binary "friending" they had a rating system even as crude as/.s, then anonymity could work. Look at the web-o-trust on freenet, at least when its not outputting java errors. (come on, java, really? on a deployed application? its just not enterprise grade much less end user grade)
Until then, "A non-anonymous society is a polite society"
There's a couple brain cells floating around thinking Blockbuster is still the ONLY way to watch at home. A hangover from the era after Blockbuster destroyed all other video rental operations, but before netflix and cabletv ondemand destroyed Blockbuster. Until those memories fade, the brand will still have some minimal viability.
"Blockbuster? Thats the only way to watch at home, isn't it?"
I'm not sure how it was back in the 80's but as a recent graduate (2010) and current Graduate Student in engineering, with the job field how it is now, you need minimum a 3.5 GPA to even consider getting a decent job straight out of undergrad.
Note that after many years of grade inflation, a 3.5 is roughly equivalent to a 2.0 from the 90s. So warning old timers don't freak out when you see a 3.5.
Where's that soil end up? On the greenhouse glass, of course. If the wind flow is enough to toss heavy rocks 2500 feet up (size and weight of hailstones?) then they'll make quite a dent when they hit the glass below.
distributing food, vaccines, or doing disease tests
You'd be surprised how handy it is to have infrastructure to handle the inevitable logistics problems. You don't want to "have to" start reusing needles, for example.
It depends where you are... "city" means the dr already has a cell phone to handle logistics so they simply don't need you. Doing vaccinations deep in the wilderness its really convenient to order more "stuff" over a radio rather than having to hike "home" and back out again. Pretty much if there's a road, they don't need help, but if they don't have a road, they'll need a radio operator. You'll also probably end up as a psuedo-nurse when you're not on the radio, so if vaccination needles make you faint, stay at home. Also "real doctors" are a magnet for every sick person, even if you insist you're just vaccinating, you'll have people show up with every crazy ailment you can imagine, so you'd best be prepared with comms if necessary. Would be a shame if someone died because you can't order a simple antibiotic airdropped.
...And what makes you think people there aren't already qualified to dig ditches?
It's the higher education they need, not more hands to provide manual labor.
The higher education is a guy pointing to a spot and saying "dig there". No, don't put the latrine next to the water well. etc.
I have a relative who pretty much did that in a South African township in the 80s.
I would imagine the frustrating part is you can do all the civil engineering work you want, if they aren't willing to actually dig the hole where sanitation requires, then you're better off just staying home and playing video games.
You'd be surprised how thin on the ground surveyors are in the 3rd world... if you're geeky enough you can do the book learning for surveying in about a week of really hard work, then help them lay out roads and plan bridges and teach them how to do it themselves.
Considering that the blockbusters outsell any other genre of movie by disgusting margins. I'd say that your theory is more then a little off.
Not at all... Lets try it with your numbers...
"Then instead of getting a blockbuster miracle percentage of 100% of the 10 million easily amused population to show up at a theater, you might get perhaps 10% of the 300 million total population to show up.
Run the numbers, see which profit you'd prefer."
The part they don't get is if your product's market is only a tiny fraction of the total population, no matter how perfectly and expensively it appeals to that tiny little market, even the most mediocre competitor that appeals to a good fraction of "everyone" can outsell you 10 to 1 without even trying.
Or rephrased, almost no one cares about movies anymore because they're only manufactured to appeal to the small subculture that likes them. Standard slashdot car analogy is its like making a big deal about Volvo's new car lineup; no one cares. Now the Ford F-150, that's a big deal because a very large segment of the population is interested.
Why would they spend time and money on developing new ideas that may or may not be a bust, when they have old ideas that are more or less ensured to be a blockbuster?
Narrowcasting is the death of the industry.
The only people participating in their tiny little market are those who are easily amused. I can't be bothered to watch this tripe for free.
Lets say something new and edgy, the "star wars" of the late 70s, came along.
Then instead of getting a blockbuster percentage of 50% of the 8 million easily amused population to show up at a theater, you might get perhaps 10% of the 300 million total population to show up.
Run the numbers, see which profit you'd prefer.
We're in a vicious narrowcasting fight right now in the media in general. The same thing is killing TV. Practically no one watches, and all the producers are interested in is increasing their share of a shrinking, tiny little pie. Same problem with the music industry, FPS video games, etc.
That's a symptom of oversupply of labor, not a structural change. With unemployment so high, if I'm looking to hire someone, why would I hire someone who needs training if I there are 10 people in a line with high experience who are competing for the same job?
You're using "free market" terminology in something thats inherently an non-free non-fair market. Mostly, when supply outstrips demand, you end up with the candidate who is the best liar. Whos likely to be a better candidate, "I have 20 years experience admining Windows 7" or "I have 2 years experience admining Vista". I know which one I'd trust to admin the credit card database tables, and thats not going to be the HR and PHB approved "winner".
The problem with our education system is simple; it's run by politicians. Education should not be run by people who a) don't have a solid grasp of the material they are mandating and b) are more interested in reelection.
and c) have a vested interest in the populace being uneducated therefore easier to manipulate. A fox guarding the henhouse situation.
Money might be a good start. Even in schools where this $5 Billion reaches, they still expect to pay teachers poverty wages.
The social contract was you pay them poverty wages at age 22 right outta college then every year they get inflation adjusted PLUS 5% more. So rather suddenly they find themselves middle class, and by the time the gray hair arrives, they're doing pretty darn well.
This is completely different from the private industry model, where you hire at 22, pay pretty good wages, fire at 35 due to ageism, and after that they... I donno what we/they do.
The problem is we're having a second great depression, and the hiring has stopped, and the laying off has begun. So they no longer hire at 22, they hire at, say, 35. Not so easy to get 40 years in if you're not hired for your real job until 35. So the social contract has gone from "you'll start out young and poor, and retire rich" to "you'll work as a day care worker and/or bartender until middle aged, then be dirt poor, and maybe with luck retire as almost middle class".
The other problem is the union busting government wants to change the social contract to the private industry model, yet not modify salaries to match. So they wanna hire them at 22, tell them they'll get 5% wages until they retire, then fire them at 35 once they get too expensive relative to a new grad who will hear the same old lie about starting out in poverty but you'll get 5% raises until you retire (forgetting to mention they'll be forcibly retired at 35 now instead of 65)
The only solution is to let it completely blow up and self destruct, then start over with something new.
those who do poorly (excluding those with learning disabilities)
I had two relatives in the biz, one got out, the other is trying to escape before the system completely implodes. Which, frankly, is probably not too much longer. There's already a lost generation where virtually all teachers between 22 and 40-something have been laid off per union seniority rules, and all the boomers are starting to retire, so rather suddenly the average age, salary, and competence level of school teachers is about to collapse once the last boomer leaves the building and they hire all fresh grads.
My understanding is the special ed teachers are in high demand and as such demand high salaries.
Poor districts can't afford them. So they don't have them. Coincidentally, they have not identified their LD students as LD; to do so would open them to firing for providing inadequate services. On the other hand, if they happen to not have LD kids, then they are not in trouble for not providing services to the kids that don't exist. In some areas, on a percentage basis, there are more LD kids in the well fed rich, well taken care of districts, than in the poor crack and alcohol infested once a day and only junk food meals districts, which is the reverse of what you'd expect. They'll try to tell you it's because in the poor areas, the dumber kids drop out of high school, until you point out this applies to 1st graders. Oddly enough this results in much lower average achievement in poor districts vs rich districts amongst children not identified as LD. I have heard about this systemically, and also experienced it first hand... in a sorta-rich area, where they brag about the schools, any below median kid is LD and receives special services. In the poor areas, they just mainstream the kids and blame the parents, society, etc for lack of achievement.
Aside from straight up special ed classroom teachers, this also applies to teachers aides, speech and language development teachers, specialists in reading and math, specially-designed-phy-ed, etc. My kids "rich-ish" school has a dedicated speech teacher and a librarian with a reading specialization degree... the poor kids school, eh, not so much. Maybe one per district instead of one per school.
The signalling is not completely a waste, in that rich districts really do provide better service for the kids at the low end. However, the signalling fails in that a truly average human kid would not do as poorly in a poor district as the numbers imply. Yes, they would do considerably worse, but not as bad as expected. Also explains why forced integration didn't really help the school test scores very much, because the poor school still can't afford to provide services to failing rich kids.
Those are terrible trade goods because they can be returned at extremely high velocity if the receiving party feels like reverting the deal or would simply like more, perhaps your entire stock. If society gets to the point of.22 rimfire being the medium of exchange, actually trading.22 rimfire to someone who can/will "return" it to you is probably the worst mistake you could possibly make.
Now vacuum packed mylar bags of rice, that is safe to trade... Or water filtration apparatus. Or, literally, aspirin and bandaids. Cold medicine decongestant pills... batteries... disposable diapers... TP... but ammo would be profoundly unwise.
Just on the off chance that you're not lying, what utility, mortgage lender, and shops accept Bitcoin in payment?
All of them. Just like none of them technically will accept my payment using payroll and dividend checks with my name on them, yet I've always managed to pay my creditors anyway with a couple extra steps. I once got some cash for selling something on craigslist, and I spent that cash at the food store, and thats possibly the only time in my life I've directly received and spent money without the financial industrial complex making a commission off me.
I can convert BTC into $ faster, easier, and with lower fees than any other currency. Not any other digital currency, but any currency... at all. I can actually convert BTC into $ with lower fees than I can convert small change into bills using that "coin-star-change" kiosk thingy at the food store. It is absolutely insane that its cheaper, faster, and easier to convert digital money into paper money dollars than convert coins into paper money.
I recently purchased some cool ham radio microwave electronics kits/pcbs/components from a "well known" (in the business) company in Australia. I'm building a ham radio propagation beacon using some of their weirder subassemblies combined with some weird subassemblies I already own, which is why I tolerate dealing with an island on the other side of the planet instead of off the shelf from locals like DEMI or making my own stuff from mouser and minicircuits. Anyway it was a freaking nightmare to pay them thru paypal, probably intentionally done by paypal to encourage us to use ebay and make them even more fees, but after a week of agony we're both finally happy, they got my dough and I got my parts and paypal made way the heck too much money off this transaction, for what little they did. If I ever purchase from.au again, its gonna be via a friend in.au who I will pay in BTC. Paying double postage is still cheaper than paying paypal, and being a friend in the hobby he can merely add my order to his existing order(s), so it's not really double postage anyway. Even if I round up and let him keep the change, I'd rather give my money to a buddy than to paypal.
Meanwhile Russia can shutdown the US power grid, successfully leached Nuclear secrets in the 50's and owns most of US Steel manufacturing. Yet some shitty hacker outfit called Lulzsec is "easily manipulated. Har! Is it Pirate Day already?
Whoever will take more of my money and more of my civil rights will surely save me.
Slashdot Mirror
... will I have to add air conditioning to get rid of the heat?
Been there, done that, in the basement its not much of an issue. Takes it from 60 degrees 24x7 up to a more pleasant 70.
The problem you didn't think of was the required dehumidifier. And a working sump pump.
lack of physical security won't be an issue
Your data might not end up on pirate bay / freenet / i2p, but your copper cables and steel racks WILL end up at the local recycler.
Surely NASA is a "civilian" space agency, and the shuttle therefore a civilian craft?
No, numerous design decisions early on in the program were made strictly to appease the defense dept. Most of them revolved around the mission requirement of launching, grabbing a russian spy sat and placing it in the cargo bay, and landing on next orbit. This requires a ridiculous cross-range capability as the launching site rotates with the earth about 2000 miles east during an orbit. Also the DoD mandated some weird on orbit maneuvering capability which I don't remember (probably some classified anti-asat maneuverability, or maybe it was something to do with the RCS system being stable enough to stick a telescope in the cargo bay for military observational purposes?)
There was also a long cross range capability for military purposes... If a civilian is worried about landing short, just aim at the center of the USA and you're all good. Insane as it sounds, if you want to land at a military base in Japan or Israel, and its a no-go for weather or whatever, you need crossrange to ... somewhere freaking far away. What, Korea or Australia as alternates for Japan, or maybe... diego garcia as an alternate for israel? Unlike F-16s etc we never sold any shuttles to Israel or even landed ours in Japan. But the DoD made us design the vehicle to possibly do it.
The point wasn't to actually steal russian sats, which would be quite the diplomatic incident. The point was to scare them into a higher orbit out of SS range. Same sat higher up means lower resolution and less consumables means its got less lifetime and/or costs more. You only have to scare them once, during design phase, and their sats are crippled until the next generation. Presumably we wouldn't steal our own sats, and they were not going to make a clone of our SS (although turns out they did anyway) so in true cold war deterrence fashion, the end result of building the SS to DoD specs means the russians inherently end up with crappier spy sats than we do.
Well, we never did a mission like that, never even flew a super long cross range landing, for most of the active flying SS program the USSR no longer existed, it got really popular to put a giant sat with giant optics and long lifetime in geosync instead of little ones in low orbit that deorbit relatively rapidly. So it was all kind of pointless.
I think it's more like asking, "If these plants typically grow in 65-100 degree weather, why are we putting them in a greenhouse instead of outside where it's typically 65-100 degrees?" Plants in that region don't need more heat - They have plenty.
I think you're confusing average temperature for the entire year, averaged across the entire state, with minimum winter temps in the north. Weird as it must sound to people who don't live there, my AZ cousin "often" had colder weather in northern AZ during the winter than I did in WI. Frost is very common and below 0 F is about as newsworthy as it is in WI. Something to do with moderating effect of large bodies of water, also higher altitude.
Trust me, its pretty easy to freeze to death in the desert, either at night, or in the winter, or both. Idiots get killed all the time going out in the desert in tee shirts and shorts on a warm/hot day, then get stuck out there and freeze to death. Unlike the midwest, you need blankets in the car trunk, just in case, even if its 80 degrees at noon. I lived near the gulf coast and on a cloudy day the delta T from midnight to noon might have been 10 degrees... in the upper midwest its about 20 degrees... in the desert its often 60 degrees... Plants don't like that, you need a greenhouse in AZ a lot more than you need it in WI.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Check the numbers for unemployment of grads, average pay rates at all districts not just the rich ones... I also have relatives in the business, and some acquaintances, not that it matters.
Also it's an unfair comparison. If, instead of "decompressing" between tasks and firefighting problems by smoking or coffee or my choice slashdot, I took on contract jobs, and I tutored old people at the local community college while I was on pager duty, then I could haul in extra cash...
Man, if that's true, he's a fucking moron. One of the most basic human responses is to ignore big tragedies and go straight for the scandals because they don't want to be reminded of bad stuff, but of how they're better than everyone else. I'd almost think it's more likely that everyone else sat on this until now and are using it in an attempt to distract from all the other big news.
True but, its almost more my fault for not mentioning that kind of stuff. We also had the royal wedding as alluded to above, a white girl went missing so the media convicted her mother on the evidence being that she got a tattoo therefore that proves she must have killed her kid, a loser congressmen (but I repeat myself) sent pix of his namesake to some chicks (at least the story wasn't underage boys... this time), the rich NFL players and rich team owning corporations are having a little love spat about who's going to get richer, etc etc. I don't watch TV or read people magazine but even I know these stories; there are probably more.
If they want a more accurate profile of me to present ads which I might conceivably be interested in while I'm doing my friends-and-family socializing, that works fine by me. I've dismissed about a million Zynga ads on Facebook and their ad-bot code can't take a hint so more accurate ad profiling works in my favor by being less irritating by several orders of magnitude.
I use G+, but I only use firefox and adblock plus, so my internet doesn't have ads. Could someone with an inferior browser verify if G+ has ads, and if so are they adaptive ads like I'd guess?
I did hear early in the beta that they hadn't even integrated it with the ads system, so there were no ads.
Frankly, when I go shopping online, a lot of shopping is searching google to find stuff. I wanna use a PTC thermistor on a crystal oscillator to temperature stabilize it, I'm thinking about 12 volts operating and more than 40 ohms cold resistance so as not to blow a fuse and a stable operating point around 50 C would be about right... Yes GE MADE some perfect ones that exactly fit my needs but they stopped sometime around the RoHS changeover. After much agony, and endless suppliers who list it as a product but not in stock, or claim they can order them but it seems they can't, I somehow found a horde of them at Mouser. Now if I got cool ads like PTC thermistor crystal stabilizer heaters, then I would not block ads. Or maybe any ad from adafruit or dangerous prototypes would make me happy. Or any ad from kenwood / icom / yaesu / elecraft / tentec would make me happy. And since I buy a lot of stuff from those people they'd like to pay to show me the ads. But the only ads I ever get are "singles in your area" and "click the monkey to win" BS.
I don't really want my real name out there except to people I really know well. But I have plenty of followers on Twitter who like what I post and don't care that much EXACTLY who I am.
The problem is that 99.99% of the people using fake names are spammers, trolls, or other lowlifes. Its hard to allow them in, just to allow you to maintain anonymity.
If, rather than binary "friending" they had a rating system even as crude as /.s, then anonymity could work. Look at the web-o-trust on freenet, at least when its not outputting java errors. (come on, java, really? on a deployed application? its just not enterprise grade much less end user grade)
Until then, "A non-anonymous society is a polite society"
There's a couple brain cells floating around thinking Blockbuster is still the ONLY way to watch at home. A hangover from the era after Blockbuster destroyed all other video rental operations, but before netflix and cabletv ondemand destroyed Blockbuster. Until those memories fade, the brand will still have some minimal viability.
"Blockbuster? Thats the only way to watch at home, isn't it?"
I'm not sure how it was back in the 80's but as a recent graduate (2010) and current Graduate Student in engineering, with the job field how it is now, you need minimum a 3.5 GPA to even consider getting a decent job straight out of undergrad.
Note that after many years of grade inflation, a 3.5 is roughly equivalent to a 2.0 from the 90s. So warning old timers don't freak out when you see a 3.5.
Hmmm... What plants grow at those temperature?
Locally mix in some cold air during the winter, it'll be nice.
Kind of like asking, if my natural gas furnace burns a 2500 degree blue flame, how can I use it to keep my house at 72 degrees in the winter?
At "176-194 F", I'm not familiar with any plants that grow well.
The sad part is that is well done for beef. I prefer medium well, myself, around 155 F.
Perhaps on a cloudy day you could stampede cattle under the greenhouse, and have a rather large steak dinner a couple hours later.
lots of soil loss
Where's that soil end up? On the greenhouse glass, of course. If the wind flow is enough to toss heavy rocks 2500 feet up (size and weight of hailstones?) then they'll make quite a dent when they hit the glass below.
distributing food, vaccines, or doing disease tests
You'd be surprised how handy it is to have infrastructure to handle the inevitable logistics problems. You don't want to "have to" start reusing needles, for example.
It depends where you are... "city" means the dr already has a cell phone to handle logistics so they simply don't need you. Doing vaccinations deep in the wilderness its really convenient to order more "stuff" over a radio rather than having to hike "home" and back out again. Pretty much if there's a road, they don't need help, but if they don't have a road, they'll need a radio operator. You'll also probably end up as a psuedo-nurse when you're not on the radio, so if vaccination needles make you faint, stay at home. Also "real doctors" are a magnet for every sick person, even if you insist you're just vaccinating, you'll have people show up with every crazy ailment you can imagine, so you'd best be prepared with comms if necessary. Would be a shame if someone died because you can't order a simple antibiotic airdropped.
...And what makes you think people there aren't already qualified to dig ditches?
It's the higher education they need, not more hands to provide manual labor.
The higher education is a guy pointing to a spot and saying "dig there". No, don't put the latrine next to the water well. etc.
I have a relative who pretty much did that in a South African township in the 80s.
I would imagine the frustrating part is you can do all the civil engineering work you want, if they aren't willing to actually dig the hole where sanitation requires, then you're better off just staying home and playing video games.
You'd be surprised how thin on the ground surveyors are in the 3rd world... if you're geeky enough you can do the book learning for surveying in about a week of really hard work, then help them lay out roads and plan bridges and teach them how to do it themselves.
Considering that the blockbusters outsell any other genre of movie by disgusting margins. I'd say that your theory is more then a little off.
Not at all... Lets try it with your numbers...
"Then instead of getting a blockbuster miracle percentage of 100% of the 10 million easily amused population to show up at a theater, you might get perhaps 10% of the 300 million total population to show up.
Run the numbers, see which profit you'd prefer."
The part they don't get is if your product's market is only a tiny fraction of the total population, no matter how perfectly and expensively it appeals to that tiny little market, even the most mediocre competitor that appeals to a good fraction of "everyone" can outsell you 10 to 1 without even trying.
Or rephrased, almost no one cares about movies anymore because they're only manufactured to appeal to the small subculture that likes them. Standard slashdot car analogy is its like making a big deal about Volvo's new car lineup; no one cares. Now the Ford F-150, that's a big deal because a very large segment of the population is interested.
Why would they spend time and money on developing new ideas that may or may not be a bust, when they have old ideas that are more or less ensured to be a blockbuster?
Narrowcasting is the death of the industry.
The only people participating in their tiny little market are those who are easily amused. I can't be bothered to watch this tripe for free.
Lets say something new and edgy, the "star wars" of the late 70s, came along.
Then instead of getting a blockbuster percentage of 50% of the 8 million easily amused population to show up at a theater, you might get perhaps 10% of the 300 million total population to show up.
Run the numbers, see which profit you'd prefer.
We're in a vicious narrowcasting fight right now in the media in general. The same thing is killing TV. Practically no one watches, and all the producers are interested in is increasing their share of a shrinking, tiny little pie. Same problem with the music industry, FPS video games, etc.
I'm still not sure how much I'd enjoy 90 minutes of "Increase speed, drop down and reverse direction!".
That would be an improvement on NASCAR.
That's a symptom of oversupply of labor, not a structural change. With unemployment so high, if I'm looking to hire someone, why would I hire someone who needs training if I there are 10 people in a line with high experience who are competing for the same job?
You're using "free market" terminology in something thats inherently an non-free non-fair market. Mostly, when supply outstrips demand, you end up with the candidate who is the best liar. Whos likely to be a better candidate, "I have 20 years experience admining Windows 7" or "I have 2 years experience admining Vista". I know which one I'd trust to admin the credit card database tables, and thats not going to be the HR and PHB approved "winner".
The problem with our education system is simple; it's run by politicians. Education should not be run by people who a) don't have a solid grasp of the material they are mandating and b) are more interested in reelection.
and c) have a vested interest in the populace being uneducated therefore easier to manipulate. A fox guarding the henhouse situation.
Money might be a good start. Even in schools where this $5 Billion reaches, they still expect to pay teachers poverty wages.
The social contract was you pay them poverty wages at age 22 right outta college then every year they get inflation adjusted PLUS 5% more. So rather suddenly they find themselves middle class, and by the time the gray hair arrives, they're doing pretty darn well.
This is completely different from the private industry model, where you hire at 22, pay pretty good wages, fire at 35 due to ageism, and after that they ... I donno what we/they do.
The problem is we're having a second great depression, and the hiring has stopped, and the laying off has begun. So they no longer hire at 22, they hire at, say, 35. Not so easy to get 40 years in if you're not hired for your real job until 35. So the social contract has gone from "you'll start out young and poor, and retire rich" to "you'll work as a day care worker and/or bartender until middle aged, then be dirt poor, and maybe with luck retire as almost middle class".
The other problem is the union busting government wants to change the social contract to the private industry model, yet not modify salaries to match. So they wanna hire them at 22, tell them they'll get 5% wages until they retire, then fire them at 35 once they get too expensive relative to a new grad who will hear the same old lie about starting out in poverty but you'll get 5% raises until you retire (forgetting to mention they'll be forcibly retired at 35 now instead of 65)
The only solution is to let it completely blow up and self destruct, then start over with something new.
those who do poorly (excluding those with learning disabilities)
I had two relatives in the biz, one got out, the other is trying to escape before the system completely implodes. Which, frankly, is probably not too much longer. There's already a lost generation where virtually all teachers between 22 and 40-something have been laid off per union seniority rules, and all the boomers are starting to retire, so rather suddenly the average age, salary, and competence level of school teachers is about to collapse once the last boomer leaves the building and they hire all fresh grads.
My understanding is the special ed teachers are in high demand and as such demand high salaries.
Poor districts can't afford them. So they don't have them. Coincidentally, they have not identified their LD students as LD; to do so would open them to firing for providing inadequate services. On the other hand, if they happen to not have LD kids, then they are not in trouble for not providing services to the kids that don't exist. In some areas, on a percentage basis, there are more LD kids in the well fed rich, well taken care of districts, than in the poor crack and alcohol infested once a day and only junk food meals districts, which is the reverse of what you'd expect. They'll try to tell you it's because in the poor areas, the dumber kids drop out of high school, until you point out this applies to 1st graders. Oddly enough this results in much lower average achievement in poor districts vs rich districts amongst children not identified as LD. I have heard about this systemically, and also experienced it first hand... in a sorta-rich area, where they brag about the schools, any below median kid is LD and receives special services. In the poor areas, they just mainstream the kids and blame the parents, society, etc for lack of achievement.
Aside from straight up special ed classroom teachers, this also applies to teachers aides, speech and language development teachers, specialists in reading and math, specially-designed-phy-ed, etc. My kids "rich-ish" school has a dedicated speech teacher and a librarian with a reading specialization degree... the poor kids school, eh, not so much. Maybe one per district instead of one per school.
The signalling is not completely a waste, in that rich districts really do provide better service for the kids at the low end. However, the signalling fails in that a truly average human kid would not do as poorly in a poor district as the numbers imply. Yes, they would do considerably worse, but not as bad as expected. Also explains why forced integration didn't really help the school test scores very much, because the poor school still can't afford to provide services to failing rich kids.
these as alternate currencies.
Those are terrible trade goods because they can be returned at extremely high velocity if the receiving party feels like reverting the deal or would simply like more, perhaps your entire stock. If society gets to the point of .22 rimfire being the medium of exchange, actually trading .22 rimfire to someone who can/will "return" it to you is probably the worst mistake you could possibly make.
Now vacuum packed mylar bags of rice, that is safe to trade... Or water filtration apparatus. Or, literally, aspirin and bandaids. Cold medicine decongestant pills... batteries... disposable diapers... TP... but ammo would be profoundly unwise.
Just on the off chance that you're not lying, what utility, mortgage lender, and shops accept Bitcoin in payment?
All of them. Just like none of them technically will accept my payment using payroll and dividend checks with my name on them, yet I've always managed to pay my creditors anyway with a couple extra steps. I once got some cash for selling something on craigslist, and I spent that cash at the food store, and thats possibly the only time in my life I've directly received and spent money without the financial industrial complex making a commission off me.
I can convert BTC into $ faster, easier, and with lower fees than any other currency. Not any other digital currency, but any currency... at all. I can actually convert BTC into $ with lower fees than I can convert small change into bills using that "coin-star-change" kiosk thingy at the food store. It is absolutely insane that its cheaper, faster, and easier to convert digital money into paper money dollars than convert coins into paper money.
I recently purchased some cool ham radio microwave electronics kits/pcbs/components from a "well known" (in the business) company in Australia. I'm building a ham radio propagation beacon using some of their weirder subassemblies combined with some weird subassemblies I already own, which is why I tolerate dealing with an island on the other side of the planet instead of off the shelf from locals like DEMI or making my own stuff from mouser and minicircuits. Anyway it was a freaking nightmare to pay them thru paypal, probably intentionally done by paypal to encourage us to use ebay and make them even more fees, but after a week of agony we're both finally happy, they got my dough and I got my parts and paypal made way the heck too much money off this transaction, for what little they did. If I ever purchase from .au again, its gonna be via a friend in .au who I will pay in BTC. Paying double postage is still cheaper than paying paypal, and being a friend in the hobby he can merely add my order to his existing order(s), so it's not really double postage anyway. Even if I round up and let him keep the change, I'd rather give my money to a buddy than to paypal.
Meanwhile Russia can shutdown the US power grid, successfully leached Nuclear secrets in the 50's and owns most of US Steel manufacturing. Yet some shitty hacker outfit called Lulzsec is "easily manipulated. Har! Is it Pirate Day already?
Whoever will take more of my money and more of my civil rights will surely save me.