That is quite a runway. I flew there as a student pilot in a Cessna 172 a long time ago. As I was taxing back (a long taxi) for takeoff the ground controller said things like "you can take off from taxiway Bravo and have 10,900 feet or taxiway Delta and have 8,500 feet", etc. I wanted to tell him with the crosswinds they had that day I could have taken off across the runway. It is 500 ft wide!
Regarding your point A, the US government isn't dependent on Social Security to finance its debt. Think of the US government and Social Security as two separate organizations. Social Security brings in funds that it holds in accounts. Like a bank it wants to invest those funds to earn interest.
The US government on the other hand is now running a deficit. To fund the deficit it issues bonds. Lots of people, corporations, and countries buy these bonds. Whoever buys them the US government is obligated to pay them back once the bonds mature.
Now Social Security, by law, can only invest by buying US government bonds. So it gets in line like everyone else who want to buy bonds. The government pays them back just like anyone else as well.
When people talk about the US government "raiding" Social Security to fund the deficit or even your softer version, that's just political rhetoric. Social Security wants to invest the money as best it can given the laws it must follow. The US government wants people and groups to buy bonds. There is nothing special about the relationship of the US government and Social Security in this regard.
Everything else you said is reasonable though I wouldn't characterize inheritence as bringing out greed in more than a trivial number of cases. Just a difference of opinion.
This is a multi-step process. The first step is to get some percent, any percent really, of a person's social security under the individual's control.
Later the argument will be made that the benefits paid by the public part of social security can be cut since the private part makes up the difference. In fact, if the private account does better than the public part (as it appears to based on historical rates of return), the benefits can be cut even more than the percentage of contribution alone would allow.
To make this argument now would be too much fodder for the anti-change crowd. "Bush plans to cut social security benefits" and so on.
The big plus I see to this is for poor people who might not have any assets to leave their children after death. With private retirement account they will now potentially have something to pass on. It isn't much but compared to nothing I think its big.
"It sets levels for all countries at the time the treaty was written. The lower-tier countries still have a limit on their production - its just not as tight as the largest producers."
Where do you see this in the protocol? I can't find it.
"Imagine a bullet-proof jumpsuit, no thicker than ordinary spandex,..."
Possible. All you need is a material that becomes rigid in a more or less linear fashion in response to acceleration. Such a material would be flexible for normal activities but the moment a bullet tries to penetrate it (a force attempting to accelerate the fabric at a rate faster than it can physically tolerate), it would become rigid and spread the force of the bullet over a wide area rendering it non-lethal.
Whoa is that right? Good thing I'm not in the business. My intuition was telling me it would take at least 10 lbs of black powder to launch an average size shell.
I wouldn't have survived the R&D.
Actually its more than software. Its a device (HTPC type case, VIA motherboard, Linux, etc.) so I have more to worry about than the code. I've written most of it myself already. That's why said on my first post that I only need to finish it up. That means there is a little left to write and QA mostly. I could finish it myself but that would take longer. I'm also looking to the next device (I have 4 in mind) to get a head start on those. I also need some people in place to help support the product otherwise that will suck all my time after the device rolls to market. (Please lets not start a thread on outsourced product support. I'm not sure I want them to be tier 1 support yet.)
I do outsourced development in my day job. I spend about half my time between the US and India. Yes you are quite right that you have to be extremely clear and precise. I think I have a pretty good grasp of the issues. Of course I could be wrong.
I doubt the favorable economics of outsourcing to India will last long. I interviewed a guy for the India office who wanted 50k USD and a car. Reminds me of San Jose in 1999.
Most management types I associate with in Bangalore think all this will run its course in about 5 years. This bubble will burst for them just like it did for us with the.com era. Then they will complain about their jobs being sent to China.
You're right about the distraction. I'm sure it a factor.
Sorry I didn't intend to troll. I was trying to add a real life example of how outsourcing can be beneficial.
Outsourcing is giving me an opportunity that I would not have otherwise had. I can't afford developers with US salaries so I never hired any. I can afford developers at India salaries so now I have a development team where before I had none.
The outsourcing debate is not as simple as greedy corporations shipping high paying jobs to India as most of the posts seem to suggest.
I'm just a lone guy with an idea for a product. I've been working nights and weekends for some time to put together something I can sell. As you can imagine this is a huge task. Not only is there software to write but vendors to deal with, manufacturing to consider, product support, marketing, etc. Right now I'm doing it all alone.
Because of my contacts in Bangalore I'm in a position to hire some developers there to deal with the software part. I don't currently have employees so no one is losing their job over this. I'm not over my head with the technology. It's just there's too much to do alone in a reasonable timeframe.
Sure I could mortgage my house to hire a team in the US but I can do the same in India out of pocket.
I'm sure they could do it for less just not far less. And yes, many of the advantages I have right now are temporary and accidental. But isn't that always true? These are called opportunities and goal is to take advantage of the opportunities available.
Besides, that's what makes all this so exciting. If the people I hire today are not competitors 10 years from now, I didn't hire very good people.
That's a risk you take regardless of who does the work. In this case it is unlikely they could do it for "far less" than me. I'm already looking globally for suppliers and manufacturing capability. Nor do they don't have the US contacts I have.
Whoa. I work for a US company that has outsourced development to India. I work both sides of the Pacific. I've done significant work with the India team and find them to be smart, hard working, and very capable. In fact looking from here (I'm in Bangalore right now) back to the US, the US teams appears sloppy and don't think things through.
People that say outsourcing doesn't work don't have a good process in place to take advantage of it.
Well its good for me and that's half of us. I'm working to bring a product to market but need help finishing up the software. I can hire 4 programmers in Bangalore for less than 2000 USD per month. I'm a small company but that's managable for me.
Net result, I'm able to get my company off the ground now where it would have taken me ages relying on US resources alone.
Outsourcing isn't just about multi-national corporations.
But you're fogetting the the pool of programmers, even in the global market, is still limited. I'm in Bangalore right now working with a development team. The market is treating them very well. Though they make a fraction of what a US developer makes they make good money compared to their peers.
The market is changing. Things will never be the way they were. Find a way to take advantage of the new opportunities change provides.
BTW: I did try recruiting in the local prisons but they just didn't have the skill set I was looking for.
A flight director is not the same thing. A flight director is driven by the autopilot to tell the pilot how to manually stay on the autopilot profile for course and altitude. If the autopilot flight profile takes the airplane through the top of a mountain, the flight director will dutifully tell the pilot how to make it happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Then perhaps you would like the MS-series EPIA motherboard?
s p?motherboardId=281
http://www.viaembedded.com/product/epia_ms_spec.j
That is quite a runway. I flew there as a student pilot in a Cessna 172 a long time ago. As I was taxing back (a long taxi) for takeoff the ground controller said things like "you can take off from taxiway Bravo and have 10,900 feet or taxiway Delta and have 8,500 feet", etc. I wanted to tell him with the crosswinds they had that day I could have taken off across the runway. It is 500 ft wide!
US Congress adopted the metric system in 1893. What more could anyone want? http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html
The US government on the other hand is now running a deficit. To fund the deficit it issues bonds. Lots of people, corporations, and countries buy these bonds. Whoever buys them the US government is obligated to pay them back once the bonds mature.
Now Social Security, by law, can only invest by buying US government bonds. So it gets in line like everyone else who want to buy bonds. The government pays them back just like anyone else as well.
When people talk about the US government "raiding" Social Security to fund the deficit or even your softer version, that's just political rhetoric. Social Security wants to invest the money as best it can given the laws it must follow. The US government wants people and groups to buy bonds. There is nothing special about the relationship of the US government and Social Security in this regard.
Everything else you said is reasonable though I wouldn't characterize inheritence as bringing out greed in more than a trivial number of cases. Just a difference of opinion.
Later the argument will be made that the benefits paid by the public part of social security can be cut since the private part makes up the difference. In fact, if the private account does better than the public part (as it appears to based on historical rates of return), the benefits can be cut even more than the percentage of contribution alone would allow.
To make this argument now would be too much fodder for the anti-change crowd. "Bush plans to cut social security benefits" and so on.
The big plus I see to this is for poor people who might not have any assets to leave their children after death. With private retirement account they will now potentially have something to pass on. It isn't much but compared to nothing I think its big.
Technically it isn't soil. Organic matter is a key component of soil. Check it out here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil.
Ooops. Learn something every day. My bad.
The justic department isn't responsibile for investigating such crimes. That task belongs to the FBI.
Not that I'm trying to take anything away from your "insightful" rant of course.
See the sig...
"It sets levels for all countries at the time the treaty was written. The lower-tier countries still have a limit on their production - its just not as tight as the largest producers."
t .html gives different perspectives on the treaty.
Where do you see this in the protocol? I can't find it.
http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~GEL10/Warming/tex
http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleporta
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/6/10
"Imagine a bullet-proof jumpsuit, no thicker than ordinary spandex, ..."
Possible. All you need is a material that becomes rigid in a more or less linear fashion in response to acceleration. Such a material would be flexible for normal activities but the moment a bullet tries to penetrate it (a force attempting to accelerate the fabric at a rate faster than it can physically tolerate), it would become rigid and spread the force of the bullet over a wide area rendering it non-lethal.
Of course I could be wrong.
...is slashdot pulling content from the Yahoo boards?
Whoa is that right? Good thing I'm not in the business. My intuition was telling me it would take at least 10 lbs of black powder to launch an average size shell. I wouldn't have survived the R&D.
I do outsourced development in my day job. I spend about half my time between the US and India. Yes you are quite right that you have to be extremely clear and precise. I think I have a pretty good grasp of the issues. Of course I could be wrong.
Most management types I associate with in Bangalore think all this will run its course in about 5 years. This bubble will burst for them just like it did for us with the .com era. Then they will complain about their jobs being sent to China.
You're right about the distraction. I'm sure it a factor.
Outsourcing is giving me an opportunity that I would not have otherwise had. I can't afford developers with US salaries so I never hired any. I can afford developers at India salaries so now I have a development team where before I had none.
The outsourcing debate is not as simple as greedy corporations shipping high paying jobs to India as most of the posts seem to suggest.
Because of my contacts in Bangalore I'm in a position to hire some developers there to deal with the software part. I don't currently have employees so no one is losing their job over this. I'm not over my head with the technology. It's just there's too much to do alone in a reasonable timeframe.
Sure I could mortgage my house to hire a team in the US but I can do the same in India out of pocket.
Besides, that's what makes all this so exciting. If the people I hire today are not competitors 10 years from now, I didn't hire very good people.
It's an acceptable risk to me.
People that say outsourcing doesn't work don't have a good process in place to take advantage of it.
Net result, I'm able to get my company off the ground now where it would have taken me ages relying on US resources alone.
Outsourcing isn't just about multi-national corporations.
The market is changing. Things will never be the way they were. Find a way to take advantage of the new opportunities change provides.
BTW: I did try recruiting in the local prisons but they just didn't have the skill set I was looking for.
There is something like this on the market for experimental aircraft http://www.sierraflightsystems.com/symbology.htm/
http://www.viaembedded.com/product/epia_m_spec.jsp ?motherboardId=81