Wrong. International Maritime laws recognize only 12 miles of sea from seashore. Period. USA can claim the Atlantic is its Pond and that the pacific ocean is its swimming pool. So can the rest of the world. READ THE LAWS BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR FLY!
As part of its "stimulus package" would Microsoft forego the repayments it is asking from laid-off employees? It is a stimulus in reality for both Microsoft and the ex-employee: Microsoft gains a HUGE PR which even the Seinfeld actor can't provide, which translates to sales. The laid-off guy has a bonus.
Yup. Since when do people who use undocumented features became criminals? And what right do the governments have in labeling such people criminals? Have they been proven guilty in a court of law? If not, then it means if the government indulges in unauthorised snooping it is OK by law? Why can't be governments be held under the same law that they pass for citizens? For instance in US, it is a criminal offense to eavesdrop on a telephone line without a court order. If i do it, i have committed a criminal offense. But if the NSA does it, its legal??? When nixon said that if the president does it, it must be legal, he was right. If i "forget" to pay my income tax on the deadline, i get a mandatory fine AND penal interest at 3% per month. However, the government has no such refund deadlines. If it "forgets" to refund my income tax excess, it gets away with a simple apology and a interest rate of 1% per year! Why can't the government be criminalized if it fails to refund me excess income taxes? Because it would bankrupt the government? Since when did the Government become an entity separate from the people? The French are right: we need another Republic. The Government IS the problem: anywhere.
Am not saying you go to court every month. Am referring to specific termination payment demanded by Microsoft. Belgium is different. US is a different ball game.
Wrong. On so many counts. 1) You hire a lawyer ONLY if MS sues you in your city (which you specify in your letter). You can also defend yourself in courts. 2) If MS is able to prove you owe them money via accounts, judgement is not default. You have the right to question each and every witness or proof they provide. This will take sufficient time for them, especially if you are unemployed. 3) if MS is able to prevail, the judge orders you to pay up. Legal costs are borne by each party, unless MS appeals separately for it. Judges usually frown upon large corporates demanding legal costs from unemployed people. 4) If you win, you don't have to pay, plus you can ask the judge to award legal costs for the trouble you went through. Usually you prevail, but even if you don't, WTF, you got away not paying something to Microsoft
Why are you SO afraid of large corporates? Are they demons? will they eat you alive? Wake up and grow a pair...today they send you a letter demanding repayment, tomorrow they send you a notice to pay up extra fees for using IE and MSN or disconnect you, will you obey?
US Army? After all the US Army has a stellar record of violence and brutality at times. These "exiles" will feel right at home. Plus, the US Army contract will force them to serve until they retire, or kicked out, or killed in Afghanistan/Iraq/Venezeuala/Iran/China (whichever country at the moment USA is fighting). Add to that the fact that the US Army is indeed willing to accept criminals, it makes all the more a good thing. We get rid of a few killers, the army benefits by them, and the country at receiving end will rue its day.
Nope. People may pay back all the time. Corporates don't pay back. If an employee disputes a settlement and demands the correct amount, a corporate WILL NOT pay. It will just sit on the letter, and send back a regret response, leaving this poor guy with no recourse but to sue them. Same should be applied here by employees. Just because a LARGE corporate demands money from them, they should not poney up. After all, legally, it makes no sense, and in a way amounts to RICO charges. If i were such an employee, i would sit tight and send a regret letter informing them of my policy that prevents me from paying without substantial proof. I will also let them know that by opening my letter they have agreed to sue me if necessary ONLY in my home town's county court.
Bad PR?? Lack of morals??? hey, we are talking about Microsoft here!
Template of a sample Letter to be sent to Microsoft: Sir: Sub: Refund of "overpayments" supposedly made by Microsoft, Corp to XYZ bearing SSN 000-00-0000 This refers to your letter dated xxx-nn-yyyy bearing reference number: bbbb/nnn stating that you have "overpaid" me an amount of $nnnn and demanding a refund of this excess amount. I regret to inform you that my policy prevents me from discussing this further until you agree to my following contract conditions: 1) My "record retrieval fee" is $100 for every hour i spend on retrieving my records pertaining to this supposed "overpayment" as you claim. 2) My "billing fee" is $250 per hour for the time i spend on handling this supposed "overpayment" case. This includes waiting time for you to receive this letter sent via First class Post, and to receive a written, signed response from you. This excludes all taxes, surcharges and other charges including but not limited to telephone charges, postal charges, fax charges, stationary supplies, medicare and others i may deem necessary. 3) All legal disputes arising out of this and subsequent related disputes may be pursued only in the County court of Keene, NH 4) This does not construe a legal contract and the terms & conditions specified herewith may be changed by me without notice to you at any time. If you agree to above specified terms & conditions, kindly send across a signed contract signifying your acceptance along with a payment to the tune of advance 8 hours of work. If you fail to respond within 48 hours of receipt of this letter, i shall assume that your query has been answered to your satisfaction and no further communication or correspondence shall be entertained. If you refuse to accept these terms & conditions, kindly signify the same in a signed, written letter stating your response clearly and legibly in English. Your refusal to accept these terms & conditions shall in no way mean i have accepted your demand, nor shall your acceptance of terms & conditions mean i have accepted your demand to pay. In the absence of your refusal to accept these terms & conditions, i regret to say my personal policy prevents me from taking any action on your demand. Thanks XYZ
Prove it! Let Microsoft prove it in a court of law that it overpaid them. Just because a BIG corporate demands money from you doesn't mean you have to bend over. If i claim Microsoft wasted my money due to faults in its XP, would Microsoft bend over and pay me? NO They will regretfully inform me of their inability to pay and thank me for my comments. So, i have to sue them. Similarly, each such employee should send a simple regret letter expressing their deep regret at microsoft and stating clearly their personal policies prevent them from paying. Neither confirm nor deny you owe them money. State POLICY. Simple. Microsoft will spend 10x times the money on lawyers to recover the money from you.
Steve Jobs should NOT respond to Ballmer. After all negotiating with terrorists is neither the US Govt. business, nor Steve Jobs' business. Instead, Steve Jobs should make more fun of Windows Mobile in iPhone ads. "Do you want to reboot your phone today" should be the watchword. I know someone will mod me down, but, hey i have karma to burn!
Well, i need subsidy from the ARRA funds to the tune of $353,000 this year, a tax break on the paper i buy, and a bailout for coming two years since i won't be able to work maintaining these records.
Hey, if an automaker could ask for $17 Billion to fire 47,000 workers and people call it a Business Plan, why can't these renewable energy producers call it?
GPS can be used. But not as the only one. GPS can become corrupt due to satellite problems. Which is why you have backup IGS. I stated a scenario where GPS is screwed. Safety First.
For Burns in orbit, even compressed air is sufficient to provide thrust. I assume the spaceplane is launched from the underbelly of a larger Boeing 777, or some traditional fuel planes or even a HUGE blimp. LOX is compact, true. But storing it as LOX requires a LOT of power for cooling and compression. Costly. You need something slushy at room temperature or 2x atmospheres. Cost is the main problem with LOX. Guidance, am sorry, but an iPhone won't do. You are talking about Landing on an airstrip from 200 miles away: much farther away than a civil/military aircraft. Accurate guidance is a MUST. And redundant. We are talking about Cruise missile guidance here, not Garmin GPS stuff. The max the space plane can go to would be NEO. 250-350 miles max. That itself a HUGE improvement over Spaceship One. Once the cost factor is solved, everything else will fall into place.
Let's see the practicalities here: 1) Finding funding for building solar panels in space taking into account space insurance, multiple launches, space walk fees by NASA, etc.
2) Microwave power that can possibly fry the contents aluminium cans with wings that fly all over the world? It requires dedicated road to space. That costs money in many ways: First of all congressional critters and senators have to bought to introduce an amendment that would allow FTA and FCC to provide an exemption to existing air occupancy laws. Occupying a particular part of air and space 24x7 requires a lot of changes in laws and that costs money. Senators don't come cheap and with the ultra-clean image Obama is promoting, they are costly.
3) Downtime and Uptime for plugging into grids: Coal and Gas fired stations operate on a 99.9996% uptime. Even though the panels stay above weather, the downstreaming of microwaves are affected by Tornadoes, Winds, Storms, etc., This reduces the uptime. Grids don't like unscheduled downtimes.
4) Changes in Grid: It was set up primarily to draw energy from nearby coal-fired power plants and to provide a steady flow of electricity to customers. It was not intended to incorporate power from remote sources like solar panels and windmills, whose output fluctuates with weather conditions -- variability that demands a far more flexible operation. Translation: Storage and resuppy as capacitors or batteries or even to power compressed CO2 which can turn turbines to produce electricity. Is our Grid flexible?
5) Investment Returns: Investors of today expect quicker returns. Within 3 years max. The microwave alone will take about 5 years to setup not including space launch failures, damages panels and bolts, shuttle politics and ESA confrontation. Oh and i didn't include the cost of litigation to fight off patent challengers, copyright grabbers, and local politicians who would put a chicken in the microwave frying pan and show it to FOX as Fried, thus calling it "dangerous"
6) Enviro Nuts: All it takes would be one endangered spotted owl and an Eagle to be fried in the beam to bring the whole project down. With liberals in control and not republicans, they would surround the project to shut it down AND imprison the scientists who fried the eagle and owl.
7) Price of Oil: As an oil baron reportedly said to GM during the EV-1 days: "We can always drop the price of oil." All it takes for Exxon or BP to do is to drop the price of oil by the exact margin of profit of this solar project. Poof! There goes the investment.
8) OSHA and FCC(again): Damages to telecom networks and mobile systems will be high enough for OSHA to raid the plant. Plus FCC would probably put such a low threshold of voltage, that it would be useless except to power RFID chips in the FCC commissioner's passport.
To conclude, Peter Sage is a naive who has read too many "oil crisis" books and thinks starting and running a business in USA is easy. Obviously he hasn't done it, yet. Ask any small business owner in USA who has built a NEW business today.
It actually makes sense. Why? AT&T, MSN, yahoo, verizon all have paid their protection money to the mafia, excuse me, the congress critters. Google not only refuses to pay, it also drags the Federal Govt into court for the Feds "simple" request of customers' personal data. So...
Ahhh No. The mach numbers become useless when there are a few molecules of air per Sq.Meter. It switches to feet/second. However, the what could be a limiting factor for rocket-powered spaceplane could be: 1) Gravity: Or lack of it in space. this will require a toothpaste kinda arrangement that can squeeze fuel into the rocket engines. 2) Fuel: Unlike Saturn or Proton rockets, this is a spaceplane. So the fuel tank cannot be meters long and meters wide. it must be compact like a gasoline tank, yet be able to contain ALL fuel for launch from high-altitudes and return. Compression matters a lot. Oxygen can be compressed but cannot be super-cooled. Probably made into a mushy liquid/gel formation which releases gas when de-compressed. 3) Re-Entry radar and guidance: Unlike the spaceshuttle, the spaceplane is much smaller in size, so it has to depend on both inertial guidance AND GPS. Why? GPS is screwed it needs inertial.
I forgot to add CDO's which derive their income from Gliese 581c and labeled as "AAA" by our rating agencies in NYC which have no idea where Gliese is located. But they are willing to by: "We may be witnessing the start of a cosmic real estate boom," says astronomer Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute. Yup. Cosmic Real Estate. Was i wrong in predicting?
Nope. Unless the Alien species literally spit on our faces and blew apart our cities, we would NOT, repeat NOT start investing in Space. Because, the bankers would get to them before the scientists. And before you know, that poor alien world would be hit with Derivatives and a mortgage scandal of truly galactic proportions. Inspite of Obama's speeches, money spent on Science is $76 million less than 1% of the total proposed bailout. I only hope that the Alien book "How to serve man" is NOT a cookbook. But if it is, i volunteer Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Hell, they did. Fighter parts for fighters sold to Shah. Duh! In the future we can expect them to get bid on Black Hawk helicopters and Blackwater guards. After all blackwater is mercenary. So...am just saying its possible.
The pursuit of profit is directly in opposition to the pursuit of innovation
Capitalism is one way to earn profit: and the worst. Sweden is socialist. So is France. So is Norway. And are you saying they "need" to be raw capitalists to earn profits? Then why do their famed companies earn so much profit? Sweden's socialist medicare and education enables me to decide which doctor is BEST for me, not some profit-hungry HMO. I don't need a wallet to educate my child at best schools: the intellectual of my son is enough. That too is not capitalism. And they rock. Swedes are the healthiest people in the world and their education rocks. Plus they solved the stupid banking problem pretty easily. Capitalism is still the enemy of the people. You can argue socialism is bad and hinders capitaliasm. But facts say otherwise: If France's doctors do home visits at state expenses to make sure a child is perfect, then i would say socialism rocks. US citizens still pay social security and high taxes and get neither. France and Swedes and EU pay the same and get much better benefits. So you still saying socialism is bad and capitalism is great? You will, if you are an investment banker whose bank has been bailed out by TARP.
Hmmm. considering they introduced the first SABOT rounds, sloped armor of T-34 tanks which busted the Heer's nuts, Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, not to mention the HUGE Proton Rockets which can easily lift a few tonnes, the MiG-27 and MiG-29 which can outrun, outfight and generally kick the F-15E ass even with 2-1 advantage,i would say they had a good time. Oh, and the D-Day didn't end the war. The Russians did that already in 1942 and 1943 offensives.
Since 1970s, the deaths in US hospitals due to ill-treatment or no treatment has steadily risen, while creativity has been run low and become slave to corporate greed. Again, the pursuit of ONLY profit is the sole reason for this. If corporation are "persons" why are they not judged according to persons? Like death penalty for poisoning, jail for other crimes? Rape, by KBR carries 20 yrs penalty. Can i pay a fine like KBR and escape rape punishment? China executed people of corporates responsible for poisoning the milk supply. Have we ever done that? Answer that and then we will discuss.
The pursuit of profit is directly in opposition to the pursuit of innovation. That's a fact proven by: 1) Medical companies and Hospitals: No "financial" incentives to cure a person. Only symptom treatment matters. 2) Arms Manufacturers: The F-16s and F-15 require high ground maintenance to run. No incentive to produce single-shot planes with no frequent repairs and services. 3) TVs & PCs: shoddy manufacturing and no spares: forcing you to replace the entire unit. 4) Laser printers: No common refill packages. China had decreed that ALL mobile phones manufactured from 2008 need to have only USB adapters for charging. Period. The business of business is business and nothing but business. Which is why customers always LOSE.
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Wrong. International Maritime laws recognize only 12 miles of sea from seashore.
Period.
USA can claim the Atlantic is its Pond and that the pacific ocean is its swimming pool.
So can the rest of the world.
READ THE LAWS BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR FLY!
As part of its "stimulus package" would Microsoft forego the repayments it is asking from laid-off employees?
It is a stimulus in reality for both Microsoft and the ex-employee:
Microsoft gains a HUGE PR which even the Seinfeld actor can't provide, which translates to sales.
The laid-off guy has a bonus.
Why?
Because you can't find a proper response, you resort to insults, coward?
Yup.
Since when do people who use undocumented features became criminals?
And what right do the governments have in labeling such people criminals?
Have they been proven guilty in a court of law?
If not, then it means if the government indulges in unauthorised snooping it is OK by law?
Why can't be governments be held under the same law that they pass for citizens?
For instance in US, it is a criminal offense to eavesdrop on a telephone line without a court order.
If i do it, i have committed a criminal offense.
But if the NSA does it, its legal???
When nixon said that if the president does it, it must be legal, he was right.
If i "forget" to pay my income tax on the deadline, i get a mandatory fine AND penal interest at 3% per month.
However, the government has no such refund deadlines. If it "forgets" to refund my income tax excess, it gets away with a simple apology and a interest rate of 1% per year!
Why can't the government be criminalized if it fails to refund me excess income taxes? Because it would bankrupt the government?
Since when did the Government become an entity separate from the people?
The French are right: we need another Republic.
The Government IS the problem: anywhere.
Am not saying you go to court every month.
Am referring to specific termination payment demanded by Microsoft.
Belgium is different. US is a different ball game.
Wrong. On so many counts.
1) You hire a lawyer ONLY if MS sues you in your city (which you specify in your letter). You can also defend yourself in courts.
2) If MS is able to prove you owe them money via accounts, judgement is not default. You have the right to question each and every witness or proof they provide. This will take sufficient time for them, especially if you are unemployed.
3) if MS is able to prevail, the judge orders you to pay up. Legal costs are borne by each party, unless MS appeals separately for it. Judges usually frown upon large corporates demanding legal costs from unemployed people.
4) If you win, you don't have to pay, plus you can ask the judge to award legal costs for the trouble you went through. Usually you prevail, but even if you don't, WTF, you got away not paying something to Microsoft
Why are you SO afraid of large corporates? Are they demons? will they eat you alive?
Wake up and grow a pair...today they send you a letter demanding repayment, tomorrow they send you a notice to pay up extra fees for using IE and MSN or disconnect you, will you obey?
US Army? After all the US Army has a stellar record of violence and brutality at times.
These "exiles" will feel right at home.
Plus, the US Army contract will force them to serve until they retire, or kicked out, or killed in Afghanistan/Iraq/Venezeuala/Iran/China (whichever country at the moment USA is fighting).
Add to that the fact that the US Army is indeed willing to accept criminals, it makes all the more a good thing.
We get rid of a few killers, the army benefits by them, and the country at receiving end will rue its day.
Nope.
People may pay back all the time. Corporates don't pay back. If an employee disputes a settlement and demands the correct amount, a corporate WILL NOT pay.
It will just sit on the letter, and send back a regret response, leaving this poor guy with no recourse but to sue them.
Same should be applied here by employees.
Just because a LARGE corporate demands money from them, they should not poney up.
After all, legally, it makes no sense, and in a way amounts to RICO charges.
If i were such an employee, i would sit tight and send a regret letter informing them of my policy that prevents me from paying without substantial proof.
I will also let them know that by opening my letter they have agreed to sue me if necessary ONLY in my home town's county court.
Bad PR?? Lack of morals???
hey, we are talking about Microsoft here!
Template of a sample Letter to be sent to Microsoft:
Sir:
Sub: Refund of "overpayments" supposedly made by Microsoft, Corp to XYZ bearing SSN 000-00-0000
This refers to your letter dated xxx-nn-yyyy bearing reference number: bbbb/nnn stating that you have "overpaid" me an amount of $nnnn and demanding a refund of this excess amount.
I regret to inform you that my policy prevents me from discussing this further until you agree to my following contract conditions:
1) My "record retrieval fee" is $100 for every hour i spend on retrieving my records pertaining to this supposed "overpayment" as you claim.
2) My "billing fee" is $250 per hour for the time i spend on handling this supposed "overpayment" case. This includes waiting time for you to receive this letter sent via First class Post, and to receive a written, signed response from you. This excludes all taxes, surcharges and other charges including but not limited to telephone charges, postal charges, fax charges, stationary supplies, medicare and others i may deem necessary.
3) All legal disputes arising out of this and subsequent related disputes may be pursued only in the County court of Keene, NH
4) This does not construe a legal contract and the terms & conditions specified herewith may be changed by me without notice to you at any time.
If you agree to above specified terms & conditions, kindly send across a signed contract signifying your acceptance along with a payment to the tune of advance 8 hours of work.
If you fail to respond within 48 hours of receipt of this letter, i shall assume that your query has been answered to your satisfaction and no further communication or correspondence shall be entertained.
If you refuse to accept these terms & conditions, kindly signify the same in a signed, written letter stating your response clearly and legibly in English.
Your refusal to accept these terms & conditions shall in no way mean i have accepted your demand, nor shall your acceptance of terms & conditions mean i have accepted your demand to pay.
In the absence of your refusal to accept these terms & conditions, i regret to say my personal policy prevents me from taking any action on your demand.
Thanks
XYZ
Prove it!
Let Microsoft prove it in a court of law that it overpaid them.
Just because a BIG corporate demands money from you doesn't mean you have to bend over.
If i claim Microsoft wasted my money due to faults in its XP, would Microsoft bend over and pay me? NO
They will regretfully inform me of their inability to pay and thank me for my comments.
So, i have to sue them.
Similarly, each such employee should send a simple regret letter expressing their deep regret at microsoft and stating clearly their personal policies prevent them from paying. Neither confirm nor deny you owe them money. State POLICY.
Simple.
Microsoft will spend 10x times the money on lawyers to recover the money from you.
Steve Jobs should NOT respond to Ballmer.
After all negotiating with terrorists is neither the US Govt. business, nor Steve Jobs' business.
Instead, Steve Jobs should make more fun of Windows Mobile in iPhone ads. "Do you want to reboot your phone today" should be the watchword.
I know someone will mod me down, but, hey i have karma to burn!
Well, i need subsidy from the ARRA funds to the tune of $353,000 this year, a tax break on the paper i buy, and a bailout for coming two years since i won't be able to work maintaining these records.
Hey, if an automaker could ask for $17 Billion to fire 47,000 workers and people call it a Business Plan, why can't these renewable energy producers call it?
GPS can be used. But not as the only one. GPS can become corrupt due to satellite problems. Which is why you have backup IGS.
I stated a scenario where GPS is screwed. Safety First.
For Burns in orbit, even compressed air is sufficient to provide thrust.
I assume the spaceplane is launched from the underbelly of a larger Boeing 777, or some traditional fuel planes or even a HUGE blimp.
LOX is compact, true. But storing it as LOX requires a LOT of power for cooling and compression. Costly. You need something slushy at room temperature or 2x atmospheres. Cost is the main problem with LOX.
Guidance, am sorry, but an iPhone won't do. You are talking about Landing on an airstrip from 200 miles away: much farther away than a civil/military aircraft. Accurate guidance is a MUST. And redundant. We are talking about Cruise missile guidance here, not Garmin GPS stuff.
The max the space plane can go to would be NEO. 250-350 miles max. That itself a HUGE improvement over Spaceship One.
Once the cost factor is solved, everything else will fall into place.
Let's see the practicalities here:
1) Finding funding for building solar panels in space taking into account space insurance, multiple launches, space walk fees by NASA, etc.
2) Microwave power that can possibly fry the contents aluminium cans with wings that fly all over the world? It requires dedicated road to space. That costs money in many ways: First of all congressional critters and senators have to bought to introduce an amendment that would allow FTA and FCC to provide an exemption to existing air occupancy laws. Occupying a particular part of air and space 24x7 requires a lot of changes in laws and that costs money. Senators don't come cheap and with the ultra-clean image Obama is promoting, they are costly.
3) Downtime and Uptime for plugging into grids: Coal and Gas fired stations operate on a 99.9996% uptime. Even though the panels stay above weather, the downstreaming of microwaves are affected by Tornadoes, Winds, Storms, etc., This reduces the uptime. Grids don't like unscheduled downtimes.
4) Changes in Grid: It was set up primarily to draw energy from nearby coal-fired power plants and to provide a steady flow of electricity to customers. It was not intended to incorporate power from remote sources like solar panels and windmills, whose output fluctuates with weather conditions -- variability that demands a far more flexible operation. Translation: Storage and resuppy as capacitors or batteries or even to power compressed CO2 which can turn turbines to produce electricity. Is our Grid flexible?
5) Investment Returns: Investors of today expect quicker returns. Within 3 years max. The microwave alone will take about 5 years to setup not including space launch failures, damages panels and bolts, shuttle politics and ESA confrontation. Oh and i didn't include the cost of litigation to fight off patent challengers, copyright grabbers, and local politicians who would put a chicken in the microwave frying pan and show it to FOX as Fried, thus calling it "dangerous"
6) Enviro Nuts: All it takes would be one endangered spotted owl and an Eagle to be fried in the beam to bring the whole project down. With liberals in control and not republicans, they would surround the project to shut it down AND imprison the scientists who fried the eagle and owl.
7) Price of Oil: As an oil baron reportedly said to GM during the EV-1 days: "We can always drop the price of oil." All it takes for Exxon or BP to do is to drop the price of oil by the exact margin of profit of this solar project. Poof! There goes the investment.
8) OSHA and FCC(again): Damages to telecom networks and mobile systems will be high enough for OSHA to raid the plant. Plus FCC would probably put such a low threshold of voltage, that it would be useless except to power RFID chips in the FCC commissioner's passport.
To conclude, Peter Sage is a naive who has read too many "oil crisis" books and thinks starting and running a business in USA is easy.
Obviously he hasn't done it, yet.
Ask any small business owner in USA who has built a NEW business today.
It actually makes sense. Why?
AT&T, MSN, yahoo, verizon all have paid their protection money to the mafia, excuse me, the congress critters.
Google not only refuses to pay, it also drags the Federal Govt into court for the Feds "simple" request of customers' personal data.
So...
Ahhh No. The mach numbers become useless when there are a few molecules of air per Sq.Meter.
It switches to feet/second.
However, the what could be a limiting factor for rocket-powered spaceplane could be:
1) Gravity: Or lack of it in space. this will require a toothpaste kinda arrangement that can squeeze fuel into the rocket engines.
2) Fuel: Unlike Saturn or Proton rockets, this is a spaceplane. So the fuel tank cannot be meters long and meters wide. it must be compact like a gasoline tank, yet be able to contain ALL fuel for launch from high-altitudes and return. Compression matters a lot. Oxygen can be compressed but cannot be super-cooled. Probably made into a mushy liquid/gel formation which releases gas when de-compressed.
3) Re-Entry radar and guidance: Unlike the spaceshuttle, the spaceplane is much smaller in size, so it has to depend on both inertial guidance AND GPS. Why? GPS is screwed it needs inertial.
I forgot to add CDO's which derive their income from Gliese 581c and labeled as "AAA" by our rating agencies in NYC which have no idea where Gliese is located.
But they are willing to by: "We may be witnessing the start of a cosmic real estate boom," says astronomer Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute.
Yup. Cosmic Real Estate.
Was i wrong in predicting?
Nope. Unless the Alien species literally spit on our faces and blew apart our cities, we would NOT, repeat NOT start investing in Space.
Because, the bankers would get to them before the scientists.
And before you know, that poor alien world would be hit with Derivatives and a mortgage scandal of truly galactic proportions.
Inspite of Obama's speeches, money spent on Science is $76 million less than 1% of the total proposed bailout.
I only hope that the Alien book "How to serve man" is NOT a cookbook.
But if it is, i volunteer Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Your sarcastic comment would be funny, if it weren't sadly true.
Hell, they did.
Fighter parts for fighters sold to Shah.
Duh!
In the future we can expect them to get bid on Black Hawk helicopters and Blackwater guards. After all blackwater is mercenary. So...am just saying its possible.
I said:
The pursuit of profit is directly in opposition to the pursuit of innovation
Capitalism is one way to earn profit: and the worst.
Sweden is socialist. So is France. So is Norway.
And are you saying they "need" to be raw capitalists to earn profits? Then why do their famed companies earn so much profit?
Sweden's socialist medicare and education enables me to decide which doctor is BEST for me, not some profit-hungry HMO.
I don't need a wallet to educate my child at best schools: the intellectual of my son is enough.
That too is not capitalism.
And they rock. Swedes are the healthiest people in the world and their education rocks.
Plus they solved the stupid banking problem pretty easily.
Capitalism is still the enemy of the people.
You can argue socialism is bad and hinders capitaliasm.
But facts say otherwise: If France's doctors do home visits at state expenses to make sure a child is perfect, then i would say socialism rocks.
US citizens still pay social security and high taxes and get neither.
France and Swedes and EU pay the same and get much better benefits.
So you still saying socialism is bad and capitalism is great?
You will, if you are an investment banker whose bank has been bailed out by TARP.
Hmmm. considering they introduced the first SABOT rounds, sloped armor of T-34 tanks which busted the Heer's nuts, Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, not to mention the HUGE Proton Rockets which can easily lift a few tonnes, the MiG-27 and MiG-29 which can outrun, outfight and generally kick the F-15E ass even with 2-1 advantage,i would say they had a good time.
Oh, and the D-Day didn't end the war. The Russians did that already in 1942 and 1943 offensives.
Since 1970s, the deaths in US hospitals due to ill-treatment or no treatment has steadily risen, while creativity has been run low and become slave to corporate greed.
Again, the pursuit of ONLY profit is the sole reason for this.
If corporation are "persons" why are they not judged according to persons? Like death penalty for poisoning, jail for other crimes? Rape, by KBR carries 20 yrs penalty. Can i pay a fine like KBR and escape rape punishment?
China executed people of corporates responsible for poisoning the milk supply.
Have we ever done that?
Answer that and then we will discuss.
The pursuit of profit is directly in opposition to the pursuit of innovation.
That's a fact proven by:
1) Medical companies and Hospitals: No "financial" incentives to cure a person. Only symptom treatment matters.
2) Arms Manufacturers: The F-16s and F-15 require high ground maintenance to run. No incentive to produce single-shot planes with no frequent repairs and services.
3) TVs & PCs: shoddy manufacturing and no spares: forcing you to replace the entire unit.
4) Laser printers: No common refill packages.
China had decreed that ALL mobile phones manufactured from 2008 need to have only USB adapters for charging. Period.
The business of business is business and nothing but business.
Which is why customers always LOSE.