People like you say this because you don't realize just how inconvenient the conventional UI really is (it's the same line of reasoning that had people saying GUI would never replace DOS for serious users). Think of the difference between drafting in AutoCAD and drafting on a drafting table. If it weren't for AutoCAD's ability to rapidly make changes to designs, and it's precision, you'd never use it over a drafting table. Now, imagine that you have the benefits of both. That's what a multi-touch OS is. You aren't constrained to your mouse and keyboard. It's only a matter of time before the conventional desktop is completely dead, and you won't believe you were ever stupid enough to have said what you said here.
I think the idea is that if you dig up water on the moon, you can electrolyze it and use it as rocket propellant to get you to other locations (like mars, or wherever) less expensively than launching from the earth. Here is a nifty depiction of the potential benefit.
It's not clear that you'd own what you dig up? Who could stop you from using it?! I'd say the fundamental concept of ownership (if you've got it, it's yours) applies more than some bizarre treaty that's never had any real significance.
I have done it, I'm pretty sure i've seen other people do it too. I even RTFA first, I was really surprised by it. And I don't think that should count.
It's bad to solve a problem like that by working harder (unless you are presently very lazy), because you'll be stuck working harder forever to maintain profitability.
If your product is not appealing to clients, you should make a deliberate effort to find what it's missing or what's wrong with it, and fix only that. If the problem is entrenched competition, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition by offering something different. If you've got that down, but it still isn't selling, you should hire a different salesmen. But don't ever just race to the bottom on quality and price, that's not a good place to be.
I said that they had good business practices, not that they had no bad ones. I specifically mentioned two business practices that have been effective for them. I did not mean to imply that there weren't other good practices, but I certainly did not mean to imply that all their practices were good either.
The issue of whether or not other businesses follow the same practices is relevant, since we are comparing them to other businesses.
As for whether or not the courts generate the most FUD, I suppose it depends whether you are talking about volume (since the stuff lawyers write is quite wordy) or exposure (practically no one reads legal documents). Of course, I am making use of hyperbole. Courts are not a relevant source because they do not seek to evaluate the goodness of practices, but rather adherence to laws written by politicians or contracts written by lawyers. I don't believe being a politician or a lawyer makes one an expert on good business practices.
While I would say unpaid overtime is a bad practice, I also believe it has a negative overall effect on the company's bottom line (and that is why I consider it bad). The same goes for discrimination (and it is likely that the management feels the same way on that one). Hiring illegals is certainly not bad, by any reasonable standard.
Citing court cases is problematic also because Wal-Mart's status as the world's largest retailer makes them a lightning rod for litigation and FUD alike. Everyone want's a piece of the action.
In any case, I've worked for several large businesses including Wal-Mart, and I'd rate their management and work environment as the best (and the job as the second best in terms of how much I enjoyed being there). I have friends who worked there who feel the same way, and all the Wal-Mart employees I talk to seem pretty happy. You're not going to be able to convince me they're a bad place to work without more compelling evidence than a couple court cases.
The courts are the largest source of FUD on the planet. In the US you can sue anyone for anything. Simply being sued does not in any way imply guilt and it is not even clear if discrimination lawsuits of this nature can even be granted class-action status.
Unpaid overtime is a bad practice, but it's common in a lot of industries. It is not clear that this is a problem specific to WalMart in any way. Nor is it clear that it is an ongoing problem. Moreover I did not claim that WalMart was perfect (such a claim would surely be wrong) but that their good business practices are what gives them an edge, not worker exploitation.
Also, I don't give a rats ass if they employ illegal immigrants. In my opinion there should be no such thing as an illegal immigrant, and it's a crime against humanity that our government has decided to attach that label to certain individuals occupying the united states (where we supposedly value individual freedom, btw). But do you honestly expect me to believe that most small businesses don't employ "illegals"? That is absurd.
Space X works with fixed price contracts, which do not allow the kind of strict oversight NASA has to contend with. All they have to do is look at the contract up front and say "it's $5 billion with the SRBs and $1 billion without" and congress won't be able to justify the additional expense (or at least, I hope a couple of them would lose their spots for so overtly insisting more be spent specifically to develop an inferior launch system).
If you're doing a one-time launch it would cost less for sure, but the more launches you do the more likely it is you would have saved money by designing a larger liquid fuel system to start with. As far as where the break even point is, I'm not really familiar with it enough to know, and you can't really know until you're done it. In my experience as an engineer, however, I find things work out better in the end if you do them the best you can at the time rather than taking short-cuts.
Solid boosters are more expensive in terms of specific impulse for large launch systems. Dollar for dollar you can launch more into orbit with a liquid fueled system than you can with a solid rocket or a combined system. And there's no getting around it because the fuel itself is heavy and expensive.
The idiocy of using the solid rocket boosters on a new generation heavy lift vehicle is mind-boggling. If I were a NASA engineer, I would rather shoot myself than work on such an obviously ill-conceived project. Lets just give SpaceX a 1 billion dollar contract to develop the Falcon XX over the next 3-5 years. I'm sure they are capable. We just need to keep congress out of the loop as much as possible, and that's all there is to it.
This is historically how banks have done business. I'm not saying it isn't fraud, but you are basically wanting to outlaw banks (again, that's not necessarily a bad idea).
But you literally said "The more government control we have, the richer people become through better products in the marketplace." Do you believe that there is no end to how much we should increase government control? If not, surely there is room to argue about where government control should end.
When a corporation posts a profit, they pay taxes on that profit. Then if they pay it out as a dividend it is taxed again as income. The result is a much higher tax rate for corporate profits, as they are added on top of the income tax that will have to be paid no matter what. Small businesses avoid this tax, by paying any profit to the owner as a wage. Large businesses can't do that because they are publicly traded (and need to generate shareholder value).
No, small businesses almost always pay out everything to the owner as a wage rather than posting a profit. That way it is all taxed as income. They also function as a nifty tax shelter because the owner can deduct a lot of personal expenses as business expenses (vehicles, meals, equipment, stuff like that). If you own your own small business, you are in a much better situation than Wal-Mart as far as taxes are concerned.
If some is good and more is better, why not go all the way and put the government in charge of everything? Isn't that the ultimate destination of ever increasing regulation? Most people think there's some point where enough is enough.
To me it looks like the government is enabling the financial sector by basically guaranteeing their loans. They'd all be out of business right now were it not for that. I consider the financial sector to be like an unofficial (quasi-official?) branch of the government.
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People like you say this because you don't realize just how inconvenient the conventional UI really is (it's the same line of reasoning that had people saying GUI would never replace DOS for serious users). Think of the difference between drafting in AutoCAD and drafting on a drafting table. If it weren't for AutoCAD's ability to rapidly make changes to designs, and it's precision, you'd never use it over a drafting table. Now, imagine that you have the benefits of both. That's what a multi-touch OS is. You aren't constrained to your mouse and keyboard. It's only a matter of time before the conventional desktop is completely dead, and you won't believe you were ever stupid enough to have said what you said here.
how would they even know? and where would they sue you? in space court?
I think the idea is that if you dig up water on the moon, you can electrolyze it and use it as rocket propellant to get you to other locations (like mars, or wherever) less expensively than launching from the earth. Here is a nifty depiction of the potential benefit.
It's not clear that you'd own what you dig up? Who could stop you from using it?! I'd say the fundamental concept of ownership (if you've got it, it's yours) applies more than some bizarre treaty that's never had any real significance.
This is a metallic glass, also known as an amorphous metal. Metals are not transparent.
I have done it, I'm pretty sure i've seen other people do it too. I even RTFA first, I was really surprised by it. And I don't think that should count.
What if you got it by accident, and didn't even acknowledge it in your post? I think this standard is unfair.
I don't have a problem with him serving a little time. What worries me is all those CIA agents running around completely free.
I like warm weather. I like water. Sounds like a win-win situation.
It's bad to solve a problem like that by working harder (unless you are presently very lazy), because you'll be stuck working harder forever to maintain profitability.
If your product is not appealing to clients, you should make a deliberate effort to find what it's missing or what's wrong with it, and fix only that. If the problem is entrenched competition, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition by offering something different. If you've got that down, but it still isn't selling, you should hire a different salesmen. But don't ever just race to the bottom on quality and price, that's not a good place to be.
I said that they had good business practices, not that they had no bad ones. I specifically mentioned two business practices that have been effective for them. I did not mean to imply that there weren't other good practices, but I certainly did not mean to imply that all their practices were good either.
The issue of whether or not other businesses follow the same practices is relevant, since we are comparing them to other businesses.
As for whether or not the courts generate the most FUD, I suppose it depends whether you are talking about volume (since the stuff lawyers write is quite wordy) or exposure (practically no one reads legal documents). Of course, I am making use of hyperbole. Courts are not a relevant source because they do not seek to evaluate the goodness of practices, but rather adherence to laws written by politicians or contracts written by lawyers. I don't believe being a politician or a lawyer makes one an expert on good business practices.
While I would say unpaid overtime is a bad practice, I also believe it has a negative overall effect on the company's bottom line (and that is why I consider it bad). The same goes for discrimination (and it is likely that the management feels the same way on that one). Hiring illegals is certainly not bad, by any reasonable standard.
Citing court cases is problematic also because Wal-Mart's status as the world's largest retailer makes them a lightning rod for litigation and FUD alike. Everyone want's a piece of the action.
In any case, I've worked for several large businesses including Wal-Mart, and I'd rate their management and work environment as the best (and the job as the second best in terms of how much I enjoyed being there). I have friends who worked there who feel the same way, and all the Wal-Mart employees I talk to seem pretty happy. You're not going to be able to convince me they're a bad place to work without more compelling evidence than a couple court cases.
Sounds like a good job opportunity.
The courts are the largest source of FUD on the planet. In the US you can sue anyone for anything. Simply being sued does not in any way imply guilt and it is not even clear if discrimination lawsuits of this nature can even be granted class-action status.
Unpaid overtime is a bad practice, but it's common in a lot of industries. It is not clear that this is a problem specific to WalMart in any way. Nor is it clear that it is an ongoing problem. Moreover I did not claim that WalMart was perfect (such a claim would surely be wrong) but that their good business practices are what gives them an edge, not worker exploitation.
Also, I don't give a rats ass if they employ illegal immigrants. In my opinion there should be no such thing as an illegal immigrant, and it's a crime against humanity that our government has decided to attach that label to certain individuals occupying the united states (where we supposedly value individual freedom, btw). But do you honestly expect me to believe that most small businesses don't employ "illegals"? That is absurd.
Space X works with fixed price contracts, which do not allow the kind of strict oversight NASA has to contend with. All they have to do is look at the contract up front and say "it's $5 billion with the SRBs and $1 billion without" and congress won't be able to justify the additional expense (or at least, I hope a couple of them would lose their spots for so overtly insisting more be spent specifically to develop an inferior launch system).
If you're doing a one-time launch it would cost less for sure, but the more launches you do the more likely it is you would have saved money by designing a larger liquid fuel system to start with. As far as where the break even point is, I'm not really familiar with it enough to know, and you can't really know until you're done it. In my experience as an engineer, however, I find things work out better in the end if you do them the best you can at the time rather than taking short-cuts.
Solid boosters are more expensive in terms of specific impulse for large launch systems. Dollar for dollar you can launch more into orbit with a liquid fueled system than you can with a solid rocket or a combined system. And there's no getting around it because the fuel itself is heavy and expensive.
The idiocy of using the solid rocket boosters on a new generation heavy lift vehicle is mind-boggling. If I were a NASA engineer, I would rather shoot myself than work on such an obviously ill-conceived project. Lets just give SpaceX a 1 billion dollar contract to develop the Falcon XX over the next 3-5 years. I'm sure they are capable. We just need to keep congress out of the loop as much as possible, and that's all there is to it.
This is historically how banks have done business. I'm not saying it isn't fraud, but you are basically wanting to outlaw banks (again, that's not necessarily a bad idea).
But you literally said "The more government control we have, the richer people become through better products in the marketplace." Do you believe that there is no end to how much we should increase government control? If not, surely there is room to argue about where government control should end.
When a corporation posts a profit, they pay taxes on that profit. Then if they pay it out as a dividend it is taxed again as income. The result is a much higher tax rate for corporate profits, as they are added on top of the income tax that will have to be paid no matter what. Small businesses avoid this tax, by paying any profit to the owner as a wage. Large businesses can't do that because they are publicly traded (and need to generate shareholder value).
Yes it is. It is exactly the same. You do not owe taxes on anything you deduct from your income.
No, small businesses almost always pay out everything to the owner as a wage rather than posting a profit. That way it is all taxed as income. They also function as a nifty tax shelter because the owner can deduct a lot of personal expenses as business expenses (vehicles, meals, equipment, stuff like that). If you own your own small business, you are in a much better situation than Wal-Mart as far as taxes are concerned.
If some is good and more is better, why not go all the way and put the government in charge of everything? Isn't that the ultimate destination of ever increasing regulation? Most people think there's some point where enough is enough.
To me it looks like the government is enabling the financial sector by basically guaranteeing their loans. They'd all be out of business right now were it not for that. I consider the financial sector to be like an unofficial (quasi-official?) branch of the government.
I see. You are saying they have the potential to do good. I am saying they currently do a lot more bad than good.