There is a PBS Nova documentary (Battle of the X Planes) that explains that if you took fighter development and acquisition costs and graphed it out that in 50 years you would be spending the entire defense budget on 1 plane. The Air Force would fly the plane 4 days a week, the Navy 3 days a week, and the Marines could have it once every 4 years on leap day.
The F-35 was supposed to address the soaring costs by use of a fairly standard airframe and parts across 3 distinct users. The F-35 would also provide more of a ground attack capability than the F-22 and be available for export.
Needless to say the project hasn't gone as envisioned and the F-35 is likely to be the last manned fighter aircraft we ever build. If we weren't already $100s of billions into the process it would probably be better to forget the whole thing and focus on mission-specific drones rather than an unaffordable plane that does nothing particularly well.
This is silly. Even if you were able to mass produce this item and give it away for free it would still be the most expensive item these people own and a target of thieves. There's currently a project on Kickstarter for a solar oven that has pretty much the same goals. It costs $300, the main component is a glass tube, and it's completely worthless. It has raised $80,000.
This design is nothing but a rocket stove which can be made from a variety of found components by someone with minimal tools and knowledge. We'd be better off spending that $900,000 on training a few guys to travel around these regions to set up stove factories and train the local population on the concepts. Not only would we be teaching them how to build their own stoves we'd be supporting the local economy. Teaching a man how to fish, so to speak.
Time was when you had to rent a phone. That phone would probably last you 20 years though. Now you have to buy a phone and since that phone is actually a computer it's subject to Moore's Law and will be practically useless within 3 years. AT&T learned quite a few things when their monopoly was broken up in the '80s and since that time they've worked very diligently to put it back together. Unfortunately most of their infrastructure seems to date back to their telegraph days.
I think Office is 1 of the main problems with any Microsoft offering. People expect Office to look and behave the same regardless of device, screen size, or input method. When they can't use their phone like they would a desktop they get upset. Microsoft trying to chase this goal of Windows and Office on everything is silly. Office (at least outside of academia and business) is silly. They charge $200 for Word and Excel. They may as well start charging for IE.
I see very little business use for tablets and only tradeoffs when compared to a traditional laptop. Corporate purchasing at this time is being done because of "oooh shiny" and "we have to keep up with our competitors...at...something. Also the kids like it."
The only person Ballmer can outfox is Ballmer. Bold prediction here: Surface will never see production. Microsoft is late to the party and unable to buy or bully their competition. Unless they are willing to take huge losses (as with the Xbox) to establish some foothold and heavily subsidize an as yet unknown killer-app the Surface will just be Zune v2 (nice specs, terminally uncool, doomed to a protracted and very public death).
The B-1 should have never been built. Why did Carter cancel it? Because Carter knew about the B-2 program and knew that it would change everything. Of course being "stealth" meant keeping the entire program in the black so Reagan was able to score political points by bringing the B-1B into production. Now we have 70ish B-1Bs (with around 10 in the boneyard), and only 19 B-2s which are too valuable to use except in the most urgent of situations. The B-2s are so expensive we can't afford new ones. We have the cost and complexity of servicing 3 bombing platforms, 2 of which were built for threats that no longer exist, and 1 that was obsolete before it even entered service. The B-1 may be cheap considering the cost of more recent platforms (F-22, F-35) but it's still yet another example of a military boondoggle and a technological dead end.
I don't think the Russians kept that close a count and the number includes T-34 variants like anti-tank guns and self propelled artillery. I do have something that says in 1943 a T-34/76 took 3,000 hours to build while the Panther took 55,000 hours. The Russians could build in a month what it took the Germans a year to do. And by 1943 the T-34 was a proven design with established doctrine. The Panther had major early problems and while it turned into the best medium tank given 1:1 odds, the odds were never 1:1.
"One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games."
But now I ask, do I have to rent DVDs to rent games?
Facebook continues to exist on weight alone, and that weight can't increase. Everyone that wants an account has one...we're at Peak Facebook. Other than selling some (usually low-end) targeted advertising and taking a (decreasingly lucrative) cut on virtual farm tractors, Facebook has no income. New features do not bring new users in and usually end up straddling the line between creepy and useful. While I think it's imperative to have a white pages for the internet, I don't see how that can be valued at anywhere near $50 billion.
This needs to be reduced to a size where it can be fit on a couple semis and moved around to disaster (flood, tornado, hurricane) sites where there is a large spike in the number of appliances needing disposed of. Of course then the problem becomes what you do with the fridges contents that have sometimes been stewing for weeks. I did some work in Joplin where 1 family had 3 refrigerators full of food. Moving a fridge is hard enough. Moving it when it's full of food is twice as hard. Moving a full refrigerator through a destroyed house while trying to avoid seeping goo of unknown composition is where it gets interesting.
I think I've watched 2 of the Starz films offered on streaming: Toy Story 3 and The Other Guys. Sorting the selection of Starz films by rating shows the top 15 films were all made prior to 1995. I will not miss Starz.
Late to the party and offering nothing new. Walmart briefly offered a Netflix competitor (DVD rentals by mail) not long ago...they sold it to Netflix. This is another dead end.
In those cases users left the previous site for something else (Geocities to Friendster to Myspace to Facebook). So what are Facebook users leaving for now? Twitter? I will never go to Twitter. Back to blogging? Good luck with that. Facebook has not only reached saturation, they've reached burnout. Few places left to grow and few new features to add that don't cross over into being creepy.
You never really leave Facebook. I thought I had deleted my account but signed back in a month later and it was still there. All my friends still present. Even the pictures and comments I had deleted individually were still there.
Holy crap, this is an actual desired and planned for change to the UI? I was thinking it was a bug that prevented the entire page from being loaded. What Netflix has done to the web UI is so bad that I now have to go to my Wii or Roku to manage my account. The changes to the web version result in a slower and barely tolerable experience. I now have to find an nonexistent scroll bar to look through box art (no titles) and there's no indication how long the list is. I can't sort anything. This isn't quite enough reason to cancel, but it's surely not a reason for someone to sign up.
Let me find another company with around $300 million in profits. Here's one: 100% rise in sales over the last 10 years, $1 billion increase in sales over the last 5 years, stock price up more than 100% over the last 5 years. Wow, this must be an exciting and dynamic company pioneering a new market...what business are they in?
It's Family Dollar. They do discount retail. Their market cap is $6.5 billion.
I haven't figured out how Facebook makes any money other than taking a cut on the sale of imaginary farm tractors. Let me check my Facebook ads...something about myLife which appears to be a stalking service, a credit card made of carbon fiber with a $500 annual fee, a coupon to buy Levi's jeans (I didn't even know Levi's was still around), and University of Phoenix. This doesn't sound like a very lucrative ad market.
I hope Facebook does go public at $50 billion. I'm sure people will buy it at that price. I doubt many of them will be around after 6 months. I don't think any of them will keep the stock for a year.
I read something interesting the other day about the T-34 and the tank the Germans designed to counter it (the Panther). In 1943 the T-34 cost $25,470 to build and the Panther cost $51,600. That's not really surprising. What is surprising is that the T-34 took 3,000 man hours to build while the Panther took 55,000. Tigers seem to at least double the Panther on both cost and hours.
German tanks were horribly unreliable, heavy, underpowered, and even used gasoline engines. They did have great guns, optics, and armor; but given the choice between 18 T-34s and 1 Panther I'm taking the T-34s.
Win7 is a worthy upgrade mostly because the hardware still running XP is no longer capable of running the latest web browser, updated software, or the subsequent services packs and upgrades. I dread the day I have to take my parent's 9 year old XP machine away from them because I know it will mean a month of screaming and phone calls complaining their computer doesn't work. I prefer to just let them suffer in a slowness they really don't know exists.
Eh not really. Netflix content of TV shows is at least 1 season behind what you get from cable/satellite/antenna/Hulu. It's more a situation of a game being released at $60 and a year later being $19.99. If you haven't seen or played it before it still has 100% of its entertainment value left, it's just not poppin fresh (or whatever the kids say today).
At least with me, watching TV shows from Netflix has increased the amount of broadcast TV I watch. I never bothered with "30 Rock" before giving it a try on Netflix and now watch the new episodes on TV.
Would you call WMT a dividend stock? I can assure you that Walmart management does not want to be a dividend stock. But lets say they are a dividend stock. $100,000 invested in WMT 2 years ago would have resulted in $4,792 in dividends and $6,720 in stock growth. So about a 5.8% yearly return, 2.4% of which is from dividends. If I'm going to tie up $100K in capital for 2 years, I'm going to need better than 5.8%. My teeny-tiny 401k that is 80% bonds more than doubles that.
The same amount invested in Target would be worth $127,844. That's greater than a 13.5% yearly return.
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There is a PBS Nova documentary (Battle of the X Planes) that explains that if you took fighter development and acquisition costs and graphed it out that in 50 years you would be spending the entire defense budget on 1 plane. The Air Force would fly the plane 4 days a week, the Navy 3 days a week, and the Marines could have it once every 4 years on leap day.
The F-35 was supposed to address the soaring costs by use of a fairly standard airframe and parts across 3 distinct users. The F-35 would also provide more of a ground attack capability than the F-22 and be available for export.
Needless to say the project hasn't gone as envisioned and the F-35 is likely to be the last manned fighter aircraft we ever build. If we weren't already $100s of billions into the process it would probably be better to forget the whole thing and focus on mission-specific drones rather than an unaffordable plane that does nothing particularly well.
This is silly. Even if you were able to mass produce this item and give it away for free it would still be the most expensive item these people own and a target of thieves. There's currently a project on Kickstarter for a solar oven that has pretty much the same goals. It costs $300, the main component is a glass tube, and it's completely worthless. It has raised $80,000.
This design is nothing but a rocket stove which can be made from a variety of found components by someone with minimal tools and knowledge. We'd be better off spending that $900,000 on training a few guys to travel around these regions to set up stove factories and train the local population on the concepts. Not only would we be teaching them how to build their own stoves we'd be supporting the local economy. Teaching a man how to fish, so to speak.
Time was when you had to rent a phone. That phone would probably last you 20 years though. Now you have to buy a phone and since that phone is actually a computer it's subject to Moore's Law and will be practically useless within 3 years. AT&T learned quite a few things when their monopoly was broken up in the '80s and since that time they've worked very diligently to put it back together. Unfortunately most of their infrastructure seems to date back to their telegraph days.
What was your reasoning behind 3 smaller AC units over a single (equally efficient) large 1 (other than being able to control zones)?
I think Office is 1 of the main problems with any Microsoft offering. People expect Office to look and behave the same regardless of device, screen size, or input method. When they can't use their phone like they would a desktop they get upset. Microsoft trying to chase this goal of Windows and Office on everything is silly. Office (at least outside of academia and business) is silly. They charge $200 for Word and Excel. They may as well start charging for IE.
I see very little business use for tablets and only tradeoffs when compared to a traditional laptop. Corporate purchasing at this time is being done because of "oooh shiny" and "we have to keep up with our competitors...at...something. Also the kids like it."
The only person Ballmer can outfox is Ballmer. Bold prediction here: Surface will never see production. Microsoft is late to the party and unable to buy or bully their competition. Unless they are willing to take huge losses (as with the Xbox) to establish some foothold and heavily subsidize an as yet unknown killer-app the Surface will just be Zune v2 (nice specs, terminally uncool, doomed to a protracted and very public death).
The B-1 should have never been built. Why did Carter cancel it? Because Carter knew about the B-2 program and knew that it would change everything. Of course being "stealth" meant keeping the entire program in the black so Reagan was able to score political points by bringing the B-1B into production. Now we have 70ish B-1Bs (with around 10 in the boneyard), and only 19 B-2s which are too valuable to use except in the most urgent of situations. The B-2s are so expensive we can't afford new ones. We have the cost and complexity of servicing 3 bombing platforms, 2 of which were built for threats that no longer exist, and 1 that was obsolete before it even entered service. The B-1 may be cheap considering the cost of more recent platforms (F-22, F-35) but it's still yet another example of a military boondoggle and a technological dead end.
I don't think the Russians kept that close a count and the number includes T-34 variants like anti-tank guns and self propelled artillery. I do have something that says in 1943 a T-34/76 took 3,000 hours to build while the Panther took 55,000 hours. The Russians could build in a month what it took the Germans a year to do. And by 1943 the T-34 was a proven design with established doctrine. The Panther had major early problems and while it turned into the best medium tank given 1:1 odds, the odds were never 1:1.
"One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games."
But now I ask, do I have to rent DVDs to rent games?
Facebook continues to exist on weight alone, and that weight can't increase. Everyone that wants an account has one...we're at Peak Facebook. Other than selling some (usually low-end) targeted advertising and taking a (decreasingly lucrative) cut on virtual farm tractors, Facebook has no income. New features do not bring new users in and usually end up straddling the line between creepy and useful. While I think it's imperative to have a white pages for the internet, I don't see how that can be valued at anywhere near $50 billion.
This needs to be reduced to a size where it can be fit on a couple semis and moved around to disaster (flood, tornado, hurricane) sites where there is a large spike in the number of appliances needing disposed of. Of course then the problem becomes what you do with the fridges contents that have sometimes been stewing for weeks. I did some work in Joplin where 1 family had 3 refrigerators full of food. Moving a fridge is hard enough. Moving it when it's full of food is twice as hard. Moving a full refrigerator through a destroyed house while trying to avoid seeping goo of unknown composition is where it gets interesting.
To this day they could make a comeback as no one has replaced them yet as a cool portal for communities, groups, and cool links.
Reddit and before them Digg. All I use Yahoo! for now is college football scores.
I think I've watched 2 of the Starz films offered on streaming: Toy Story 3 and The Other Guys. Sorting the selection of Starz films by rating shows the top 15 films were all made prior to 1995. I will not miss Starz.
Late to the party and offering nothing new. Walmart briefly offered a Netflix competitor (DVD rentals by mail) not long ago...they sold it to Netflix. This is another dead end.
The changes to the website are horrible. There is a Chrome extension that puts it back and allows sorting:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngacmlmclfopgbnmefcffgbcjiafbfpo
There is something similar for Firefox but it requires an added plug-in to run.
Paypal is entirely owned by eBay...which perfectly explains why they behave like bastards.
In those cases users left the previous site for something else (Geocities to Friendster to Myspace to Facebook). So what are Facebook users leaving for now? Twitter? I will never go to Twitter. Back to blogging? Good luck with that. Facebook has not only reached saturation, they've reached burnout. Few places left to grow and few new features to add that don't cross over into being creepy.
You never really leave Facebook. I thought I had deleted my account but signed back in a month later and it was still there. All my friends still present. Even the pictures and comments I had deleted individually were still there.
Holy crap, this is an actual desired and planned for change to the UI? I was thinking it was a bug that prevented the entire page from being loaded. What Netflix has done to the web UI is so bad that I now have to go to my Wii or Roku to manage my account. The changes to the web version result in a slower and barely tolerable experience. I now have to find an nonexistent scroll bar to look through box art (no titles) and there's no indication how long the list is. I can't sort anything. This isn't quite enough reason to cancel, but it's surely not a reason for someone to sign up.
Let me find another company with around $300 million in profits. Here's one: 100% rise in sales over the last 10 years, $1 billion increase in sales over the last 5 years, stock price up more than 100% over the last 5 years. Wow, this must be an exciting and dynamic company pioneering a new market...what business are they in?
It's Family Dollar. They do discount retail. Their market cap is $6.5 billion.
I haven't figured out how Facebook makes any money other than taking a cut on the sale of imaginary farm tractors. Let me check my Facebook ads...something about myLife which appears to be a stalking service, a credit card made of carbon fiber with a $500 annual fee, a coupon to buy Levi's jeans (I didn't even know Levi's was still around), and University of Phoenix. This doesn't sound like a very lucrative ad market.
I hope Facebook does go public at $50 billion. I'm sure people will buy it at that price. I doubt many of them will be around after 6 months. I don't think any of them will keep the stock for a year.
I read something interesting the other day about the T-34 and the tank the Germans designed to counter it (the Panther). In 1943 the T-34 cost $25,470 to build and the Panther cost $51,600. That's not really surprising. What is surprising is that the T-34 took 3,000 man hours to build while the Panther took 55,000. Tigers seem to at least double the Panther on both cost and hours.
German tanks were horribly unreliable, heavy, underpowered, and even used gasoline engines. They did have great guns, optics, and armor; but given the choice between 18 T-34s and 1 Panther I'm taking the T-34s.
Win7 is a worthy upgrade mostly because the hardware still running XP is no longer capable of running the latest web browser, updated software, or the subsequent services packs and upgrades. I dread the day I have to take my parent's 9 year old XP machine away from them because I know it will mean a month of screaming and phone calls complaining their computer doesn't work. I prefer to just let them suffer in a slowness they really don't know exists.
Eh not really. Netflix content of TV shows is at least 1 season behind what you get from cable/satellite/antenna/Hulu. It's more a situation of a game being released at $60 and a year later being $19.99. If you haven't seen or played it before it still has 100% of its entertainment value left, it's just not poppin fresh (or whatever the kids say today).
At least with me, watching TV shows from Netflix has increased the amount of broadcast TV I watch. I never bothered with "30 Rock" before giving it a try on Netflix and now watch the new episodes on TV.
My electric utility beats WMT on return.
Would you call WMT a dividend stock? I can assure you that Walmart management does not want to be a dividend stock. But lets say they are a dividend stock. $100,000 invested in WMT 2 years ago would have resulted in $4,792 in dividends and $6,720 in stock growth. So about a 5.8% yearly return, 2.4% of which is from dividends. If I'm going to tie up $100K in capital for 2 years, I'm going to need better than 5.8%. My teeny-tiny 401k that is 80% bonds more than doubles that.
The same amount invested in Target would be worth $127,844. That's greater than a 13.5% yearly return.