That's an important note, also, and had to do with the structure of the contracts.
One of the ideas with the Space Shuttle was that there would always be a shuttle launch going on and contracts were designed accordingly. In 1985, there were 9 shuttle launches and during the height of the program there were 6-8 launches a year. So the costs of the staff to handle the shuttle from landing to loading to launch was a fixed cost. The fewer number of launches, the more each launch cost.
The Space Shuttle was awesome, but it was 10x more than we need and 10x more expensive to operate. If all we're doing is supplying crew, it's probably better to have a less expensive way to do it.
I gotta admit, I liked the "high volume/low margin" aspect of this.
Rather than picking one person and threatening to ruin their lives unless they pay a large amount of money, you hit everybody and see if they'll pay a small amount. I might think twice about $10,000 to keep this quiet, but I'd probably be fine with "Yeah, here's a dollar, don't e-mail my wife." Obviously, I'd be making plans to tell her anyway, because they'll certainly be back asking for more...
I'd be curious to see how this works out for them. If nothing else, maybe you'll start seeing new Spam being sent to everybody about this. "Saw your name on Ashley Madison. Send $10 or I tell your wife." Lots of people wouldn't even know how to prove them wrong and you might scare enough people into sending you money.
The cost of operating a plane does not significantly change based on passenger demand.
Demand? No. But it does make a difference based on the number of passengers: fuel costs. Last minute changes can affect carefully laid out plans.
Simple example: My roomate used to work as a driver for a trucking company. Since fuel is expensive, the company bought it wholesale and dispensed it at their facilities. They would also plan routes so that the driver could fill up using their fuel at their facilities versus stopping at a truck-stop along the freeway, where gasoline was considerably more expensive. Everything was calculated and figured out by the computers at the main office: This truck with this much cargo traveling this route should need this much fuel, so costs will be this much, add in some profit, and we'll charge the customer x. This might be determined two weeks or more before the actual hauling happens.
Add in unknowns--the weight of the cargo is somehow different than what they were told or there are headwinds--and, suddenly, the driver might not be able to make it on the fuel provided by the company. So the driver has to stop at the truck-stop and now that trip is going to be less profitable than before. If your margins were low enough, you might even lose money on the job.
I don't disagree with your hypothesis, necessarily. Yes, airlines charge more for last minute flights and high-demand flights because they can. If I have 300 seats going from New York to LA and 400 people who absolutely positively have to be on that flight, I'll raise my prices until I have 300 people to sit in those seats and 100 people who say, "Nah, not worth it, I'll take a different flight." That's capitalism at work.
But those planes that you're getting on are part of a network of other planes and routes and such that the airline manages and, yes, wants to run as profitably as possible. So, for example, imagine I'm flying 150 people and 150 empty seats from New York to LA and suddenly 150 people show up and want to get on board, I need to have the fuel to get those 150 people there. If I take it from my supply in New York--which would be cheaper--that other New York to London flight is not going to be able to fill up their tanks when they arrive from Poughkeepsie, so I'm going to need get gasoline fast for that flight. Or when our New York to LA flight lands in LA with it's extra 150 passengers, it's supposed to turn around and go to Portland. It used to have enough fuel to do that but now--with the extra weight of 150 people--it doesn't so it needs to get fuel in LA and that affects the take-off times because we didn't factor that in to the time table and now we're going to be 10 minutes late which means that the flight from Seattle to LA isn't going to have a place to unload their passengers and that's going to delay them on their next trip to Newark and...
Uh...I believe the "company" in question is JAXA--the Japanese equivalent of NASA. That's like saying that the National Weather Service gets heavy tax "incentives" for predicting the weather. They're a government organization.
Fortunately, they haven't lost half their launches. At the moment, I believe, they've got about a 90% success rate. The Japanese rocket carried about 20% more than the Space-X Falcon for twice the cost.
can you please tell us where today there is a place with a "no blacks" sign with regards to getting photo IDs?
You can get a photo ID from your local DMV! Of course, your "local" DMV is 40 miles away. Oh, and the bus to take you there requires 3 transfers and will take 4 hours--not counting the time spent waiting at the DMV. And the hours of operation for the DMV are M-F from 9 AM to 5 PM.
So if you've actually got a job during those hours, you're SOL.
Funny how these things seem to happen around black neighborhoods. White neighborhoods, conversely, have 3 DMV offices in a 20 mile radius that are open on weekends. But, unfortunately, the state just doesn't have the budget to offer weekend service at all DMV offices.
If a robotic mower will do it for you, then putting down the wire doesn't seem like much cost.
Depends on how much property you're talking about.
If you're talking about your typical suburban backyard, then, no, burying a wire isn't that big a deal. On the other hand, neither is mowing a lawn by hand. So, in that case, this is more of a conversation piece than anything else.
If you're talking about having a few acres of lawn--which isn't that much out in the country--you're at that point where it becomes a real nuisance. Growing up in rural Vermont, mowing the lawn was usually an all day affair.
I was looking into this when my father was in the early stages of senile dementia. He was doing a pretty good job of wrecking mowers and I was thinking that it would be worthwhile to consider it. But burying a wire along about three-quarters of a mile of road-frontage was going to be a fair amount of work. Making sure that wire survived the winters, even more so. And my Dad was starting to get paranoid, anyway, and probably would have thought the mower was out to get him...
IANAL, nor do I play one on television, but last I knew, if you throw your baseball onto my property, you must ask me for permission to go get it. Otherwise, it's trespassing--even though you are retrieving your property.
The question I don't know the answer to is if you throw the baseball onto my land and I refuse to allow you to retrieve it, does that baseball become mine?
Many years ago, I worked with some Saudis who had brought their wives and kids over. They would be going to back when the work was done, but rather than spend a couple years away from the family, they brought them with them.
At one point, I was talking to one of the wives and mentioned how they must be enjoying being able to drive themselves around. She replied that she was looking forward to having a driver (the husband could afford to hire a driver for his wife when in Saudi Arabia). LA Traffic is not all that much fun and she'd far rather have someone else deal with it.
I wonder how well driverless cars will work over there? Of course, considering how badly they drive, a driverless car is definitely going to need some serious skills in accident avoidance...
Heroes can only ever be as interesting as their antagonistic foils.
Well, it depends.
I always say, you can have interesting characters or an interesting story. If you have both, you really have something!
The first Iron Man is a neat example. It's considered a very good superhero movie, but the villains--either the terrorist guy or Tony's partner--are pretty weak. But Tony Stark is an interesting character and Robert Downey Jr. did a great job portraying him. Guardians had a pretty lame bad guy, but the characters were fun enough that we let it slide. I actually kind of like what they did in Iron Man 3 with the "bad guy," but I was not all that invested in the comic book version to really know what I was missing (and I like that Marvel went in and ret-conned it in a one-shot).
So if he wants to call a company in Germany, and wonder if it is the middle of the night for them, he would simply have to figure out the sunrise and sunset times in UTC for a geographic region, and then estimate normal business hours?
I'm sure there's an app for that. I mean, it is the 21st century last I checked. You can check the web. Heck, I remember seeing clocks like this when I was a kid.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if the VCs aren't doing it at all?
That's an important note, also, and had to do with the structure of the contracts.
One of the ideas with the Space Shuttle was that there would always be a shuttle launch going on and contracts were designed accordingly. In 1985, there were 9 shuttle launches and during the height of the program there were 6-8 launches a year. So the costs of the staff to handle the shuttle from landing to loading to launch was a fixed cost. The fewer number of launches, the more each launch cost.
Not really.
The Space Shuttle was awesome, but it was 10x more than we need and 10x more expensive to operate. If all we're doing is supplying crew, it's probably better to have a less expensive way to do it.
Or how about an automated tunneling drone?
I gotta admit, I liked the "high volume/low margin" aspect of this.
Rather than picking one person and threatening to ruin their lives unless they pay a large amount of money, you hit everybody and see if they'll pay a small amount. I might think twice about $10,000 to keep this quiet, but I'd probably be fine with "Yeah, here's a dollar, don't e-mail my wife." Obviously, I'd be making plans to tell her anyway, because they'll certainly be back asking for more...
I'd be curious to see how this works out for them. If nothing else, maybe you'll start seeing new Spam being sent to everybody about this. "Saw your name on Ashley Madison. Send $10 or I tell your wife." Lots of people wouldn't even know how to prove them wrong and you might scare enough people into sending you money.
Just sayin'...
The cost of operating a plane does not significantly change based on passenger demand.
Demand? No. But it does make a difference based on the number of passengers: fuel costs. Last minute changes can affect carefully laid out plans.
Simple example: My roomate used to work as a driver for a trucking company. Since fuel is expensive, the company bought it wholesale and dispensed it at their facilities. They would also plan routes so that the driver could fill up using their fuel at their facilities versus stopping at a truck-stop along the freeway, where gasoline was considerably more expensive. Everything was calculated and figured out by the computers at the main office: This truck with this much cargo traveling this route should need this much fuel, so costs will be this much, add in some profit, and we'll charge the customer x. This might be determined two weeks or more before the actual hauling happens.
Add in unknowns--the weight of the cargo is somehow different than what they were told or there are headwinds--and, suddenly, the driver might not be able to make it on the fuel provided by the company. So the driver has to stop at the truck-stop and now that trip is going to be less profitable than before. If your margins were low enough, you might even lose money on the job.
I don't disagree with your hypothesis, necessarily. Yes, airlines charge more for last minute flights and high-demand flights because they can. If I have 300 seats going from New York to LA and 400 people who absolutely positively have to be on that flight, I'll raise my prices until I have 300 people to sit in those seats and 100 people who say, "Nah, not worth it, I'll take a different flight." That's capitalism at work.
But those planes that you're getting on are part of a network of other planes and routes and such that the airline manages and, yes, wants to run as profitably as possible. So, for example, imagine I'm flying 150 people and 150 empty seats from New York to LA and suddenly 150 people show up and want to get on board, I need to have the fuel to get those 150 people there. If I take it from my supply in New York--which would be cheaper--that other New York to London flight is not going to be able to fill up their tanks when they arrive from Poughkeepsie, so I'm going to need get gasoline fast for that flight. Or when our New York to LA flight lands in LA with it's extra 150 passengers, it's supposed to turn around and go to Portland. It used to have enough fuel to do that but now--with the extra weight of 150 people--it doesn't so it needs to get fuel in LA and that affects the take-off times because we didn't factor that in to the time table and now we're going to be 10 minutes late which means that the flight from Seattle to LA isn't going to have a place to unload their passengers and that's going to delay them on their next trip to Newark and...
You start to get the idea.
Improvements in battery technology are one of the most important stepping stones in getting us to that Star Trek utopia.
I fail to see how battery technology will get me laid by gorgeous green women.
Of course, we may have different ideas about Utopia...
(RIP, Yvonne)
Uh...I believe the "company" in question is JAXA--the Japanese equivalent of NASA. That's like saying that the National Weather Service gets heavy tax "incentives" for predicting the weather. They're a government organization.
About the only thing Space-X got--which I believe saved their bacon--was a contract from NASA to send supplies to ISS. Of course, so did Orbital Sciences.
Or is you one of them "big gubmint"-types who thinks the gubmint should be doing everything?
Fortunately, they haven't lost half their launches. At the moment, I believe, they've got about a 90% success rate. The Japanese rocket carried about 20% more than the Space-X Falcon for twice the cost.
Hopefully, the Japanese will finish the Centrifuge Accommodation Module and send it up there...
Fresno?! No one goes to Fresno anymore!
can you please tell us where today there is a place with a "no blacks" sign with regards to getting photo IDs?
You can get a photo ID from your local DMV! Of course, your "local" DMV is 40 miles away. Oh, and the bus to take you there requires 3 transfers and will take 4 hours--not counting the time spent waiting at the DMV. And the hours of operation for the DMV are M-F from 9 AM to 5 PM.
So if you've actually got a job during those hours, you're SOL.
Funny how these things seem to happen around black neighborhoods. White neighborhoods, conversely, have 3 DMV offices in a 20 mile radius that are open on weekends. But, unfortunately, the state just doesn't have the budget to offer weekend service at all DMV offices.
Fewer and fewer, since we're off-loading all the bacteria killing to chemicals...
Fox News doesn't count.
If a robotic mower will do it for you, then putting down the wire doesn't seem like much cost.
Depends on how much property you're talking about.
If you're talking about your typical suburban backyard, then, no, burying a wire isn't that big a deal. On the other hand, neither is mowing a lawn by hand. So, in that case, this is more of a conversation piece than anything else.
If you're talking about having a few acres of lawn--which isn't that much out in the country--you're at that point where it becomes a real nuisance. Growing up in rural Vermont, mowing the lawn was usually an all day affair.
I was looking into this when my father was in the early stages of senile dementia. He was doing a pretty good job of wrecking mowers and I was thinking that it would be worthwhile to consider it. But burying a wire along about three-quarters of a mile of road-frontage was going to be a fair amount of work. Making sure that wire survived the winters, even more so. And my Dad was starting to get paranoid, anyway, and probably would have thought the mower was out to get him...
Or GM...
Though it will be a long time before we will be able to have cows in space [...]
But what about Pigs?
(It just occurred to me that Disney owns both of these now...)
Does he, though?
IANAL, nor do I play one on television, but last I knew, if you throw your baseball onto my property, you must ask me for permission to go get it. Otherwise, it's trespassing--even though you are retrieving your property.
The question I don't know the answer to is if you throw the baseball onto my land and I refuse to allow you to retrieve it, does that baseball become mine?
Many years ago, I worked with some Saudis who had brought their wives and kids over. They would be going to back when the work was done, but rather than spend a couple years away from the family, they brought them with them.
At one point, I was talking to one of the wives and mentioned how they must be enjoying being able to drive themselves around. She replied that she was looking forward to having a driver (the husband could afford to hire a driver for his wife when in Saudi Arabia). LA Traffic is not all that much fun and she'd far rather have someone else deal with it.
I wonder how well driverless cars will work over there? Of course, considering how badly they drive, a driverless car is definitely going to need some serious skills in accident avoidance...
Heroes can only ever be as interesting as their antagonistic foils.
Well, it depends.
I always say, you can have interesting characters or an interesting story. If you have both, you really have something!
The first Iron Man is a neat example. It's considered a very good superhero movie, but the villains--either the terrorist guy or Tony's partner--are pretty weak. But Tony Stark is an interesting character and Robert Downey Jr. did a great job portraying him. Guardians had a pretty lame bad guy, but the characters were fun enough that we let it slide. I actually kind of like what they did in Iron Man 3 with the "bad guy," but I was not all that invested in the comic book version to really know what I was missing (and I like that Marvel went in and ret-conned it in a one-shot).
Uh...You are aware she plays Lt. Uhura? And she played Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean?
So if he wants to call a company in Germany, and wonder if it is the middle of the night for them, he would simply have to figure out the sunrise and sunset times in UTC for a geographic region, and then estimate normal business hours?
I'm sure there's an app for that. I mean, it is the 21st century last I checked. You can check the web. Heck, I remember seeing clocks like this when I was a kid.
For you kids in the crowd: Spiders & Snakes and Wildwood Weed.
The AC is mixing his metaphors.
Maybe China's been listening to George Carlin.
(Sounds like something that Scott Walker would say)
Even a high speed train will be much slower than an aircraft.
And significantly cheaper. It rare to send bulk product by way of plane--something has to be pretty screwed up for that to happen.
And it could lead to nuclear war! And we don't have Rock Hudson to save us!