You're in a giant wheel inside a cage. You paid $50 for the wheel, and it costs you $15 a month to rent the cage it's in.
Yes, but it is a cheaper wheel than going to the bar every Friday night, or going out to a movie twice a month, or even going out to lunch with coworkers once a week... if you enjoy it and do it in lieu of other social activities it is a great money saver. Especially once you have kids. Kiddies go to bed around 7 or 8, you have a few hours alone with your wife... once you've "ground out" a few levels in the bedroom together it's fun to play a MMO together and grind out a few levels together in game. Also a good way to keep in touch with friends who live far away... when I moved from WI to AL, we all played Everquest, and it was probably the cheapest way to keep in touch besides IM...
In short it's something to do. I bounce between WoW and EQ (I love original EQ, but my wife loves WoW, heart gets split in two) and play probably 3-4 months out of the year in between dissertation research and other extra-work work.
The economy is low on my list. My personal convictions with respect to wealth distribution, taxation, gun rights, abortion, freedom of speech, supreme court appointments, etc. These are the things that make my decision over a candidate, and as a result, these things will sculpt the economy and other issues in the next election cycle.
Single issue voters looking at a single transient issue is pointless. Pick the man, woman or hermaphrodite ("Chicks with dicks that put mine to shame" - Randal Graves, Clerks) who you think is best to serve the whole of the country and the transients will eventually fall in line.
As much as the economy comes up on a geek news site, it's like you whippersnappers have never seen a dip in the market before... now's the time to buy, it's all on sale.
And theres one in Milwaukee, WI on W. Oklahoma Ave. They are both affiliated and is the same place as
www.sciplus.com, which great-grandparent originally mentioned, although the retail shops often have some unique items not on the website or in the catalog. The guys working the shops are really handy. I've sourced them for robotic parts in high school (including gears and motors), haven't been back much since leaving the greater WI area, but they also had a lot of chemistry and random items. The Milwaukee shop had a tank gun bore above the counter... for sale.
If the game is profitable, who gives a fuck about total subscribers? As a customer, I don't.
I'm one of those light blue triangles that still plays EQ1. My wife plays EQ2. Still pumping out expansions and features in both games. We both played WoW for a time (and I've played Vanguard, LOTRO, Hellgate, etc.) and we keep coming back because most every "modern" MMORPG is a washed down game built to appeal to the least common denominator of a gamer. WoW is screwing us over by providing a model for "success" that attracts brain-dead gamers but doesn't provide real substance.
My belief is I'd rather have 100 MMO's that are profitable with a few ten thousand subscribers that provide diverse gameplay options than 10 MMO's with millions of subscribers that wash the game down and appeal to the least common denominator. In the former, the gamer wins, in the latter, we lose.
And I'm not the only one: our guild in EQ1 saw many people leave when WoW came out, and most trickled back. I'm curious what WoW will look like in 8 years. You will probably see the same curve of growth and decline as the shine wears off.
The place where Excel is excellent is in the middle of the engineering cycle. I do aeroheating and thermal analysis using codes written in FORTRAN and C++, along with CFD. Ultimately the final product is tabular input files for another code along with a.pdf with figures and explanation of methodology, results, etc.
However in between setting up the problem and shipping out the final product - IE, when interacting with the customer to refine the product to their liking, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's - we use Excel a lot. We input the output from our codes into Excel and whip up plots for all the data (we had someone whip up a plot tool in VBA, point it at a directory it will open every data file, plot everything of interest in separate files, crossplot certain data points across multiple files in a single file, formatted in appropriate font point, colors, etc. and auto-generate a PowerPoint presentation of the data in sequence. Nifty.) Got the data sets in presentation format in 5 minutes. Go to meeting, present interim results. Customer often wants to see either iterpolated data our outliers or something that requires real-time data manipulation. In Excel in a matter of seconds we can show the underlying data or provide a manipulation, etc.
This is where Excel excels. I can go to any meeting room with Office and do this. I don't need to be able to hit a license server for (expensive_software_suite_X). I don't need to pre-load every presentation room across the center with (open_source_package_X).
I never liked Matlab or Octave. I tried. Honestly though the best data manipulation software I've used (for tabular data) is Pioneer, but you have to be a DoD customer to use it... each data file is treated as a data stream, and your UI is a grid, and each operation is treated like a filter, which is dragged and dropped on the grid. Filters are then interconnected between data streams to manage the data. You can cross-connect streams of data of any kind by any variable (time, position, etc.). The configurations can be saved and re-used. It's very nifty once you get the hang of it. They have filters to deal with flat telemetry data, video data, etc. You can write your own filters too...
Most of my work is CFD though and then you need the big guns like Tecplot and Ensight:)
Okay, you had me up until that point, but this campaign is as doomed as the previous. We all know which operating system guys with beards use.
Avast, me hearties! Dread pirate Philski here to set the record straight on bearded computer usage, from a pirate that has worn everything from a chinstrap to a friendly mutton chops to the present full beard. While not pillaging or grogging with my favorite wenches, I use this here Windows computer, along with a RHEL box. 'Tis what thar employar gives me. At home, I use a Vista box for planning future pillaging, grogging, wench-gatherings and the like. Savvy?
While perhaps not incriminating, it is hugely inappropriate. Either she was sending them personal messages -- which is inappropriate; she should have sent those to their personal accounts, or she was sending or receiving work related messages which is completely unacceptable.
I believe you are mistaken. If she was sending business information from a personal email to a personal email this would be wrong as it avoids the public record and indeed was the original criticism. So far none of this has been shown in the emails that have surfaced to date (at least in the news reports I have seen).
Some incidental emails (low volume) from personal to work email addresses and vice versa are acceptable, no different than an occasional personal phone call during business hours which sometimes is unavoidable and also is acceptable. I don't work in Alaska unless their state laws dictate otherwise but I have worked in government for nearly 5 years and this does not conflict with any of the "records training" I have received.
In any case, the value of oil is only going to go up. We should sit on it as long as we can.
Its value goes up until it becomes antiquated by other technology - when we replace oil on a large scale with CNG or solar wind and fairy farts like the Dems tells us we will be in 10-20 years (or demand falls due to other circumstances). If you believe this to be true then you start drilling today while the oil is worth something, because while it will be worth more tomorrow, in 10 or 20 years when the demand is lower it will be worth little to nothing, and not worth drilling.
I realize it's an old post, but McCain has never been a good speech-giver. He's much better in the town hall setting - which is why they modified the stage so he was in the middle of a crowd of people to give him the feel of being in the middle of a town hall. And good in the debate structure.
That being said a lot of professional critics said, for a McCain speech, it was pretty good.
What will be truly interesting is the debates. Obama is an orator - he lives and dies by the teleprompter. McCain is the exact opposite, he is not an orator but he does well at the debate and town hall type format. I submit two examples: (1) the Saddleback interviews, which the media overwhelmingly claim McCain "won", and (2) the fact that Obama will not consent to McCain's proposal to have multiple town hall meetings to address the concerns of the common people.
It'll be interesting how it swings things. Not only did McCain have higher viewer ratings than Obama for convention speeches with a poorer speech, but he might just beat out Obama in the three upcoming presidential debates, due to reasons cited.
Barack doesn't even vet Clinton, thinks the Clinton voters will just fall in line, and out comes Palin. While Palin is a different breed of woman than Clinton, feminism is back on the table.
Certainly, most Clinton supporters will vote Obama if they stick to issues, but even Bill Clinton made the "hypothetical" case for John McCain (google "candidate X candidate Y" if you haven't heard it), and if they can identify with Palin, it makes it that much more palatable. What Obama dismissed as being a non-issue lives on and out of his control. (Not to mention the Clintons controlled half the democratic convention that was supposed to be his coronation, but now we are really off topic...)
Or perhaps the company that they put their OWN MONEY into raided the retirement fund and there's nothing left.... Or it went belly up. Or it managed to pawn the retirement fund off on the taxpayers. Or the stock market crashed.
You don't put all your eggs in one basket and you never count your chickens before they hatch. One in the hand is worth two in the bush. Etc. You diversify your investments. This in investment 101.
Retirement should not be a crapshoot. It should be managed by an entity with the resources and accountability to actually pay what it promises.
Find an investor you trust. For me, I work with my dad (an insurance agent who has a finance background) and we make a financial plan. I don't want the government managing my future. I believe I can do better, I know I can do better - my Roth has had positive returns this year.
Heck, the contribution cap for an IRA hasn't changed in 20 years...
That's why you don't put all of your money in an IRA...
It's pretty hard these days to 'save up' for retirement. Not because people are living frivolously, but because wages have essentially been flat for the last 20 years in the broad mid-career band, while everything else has been going up, including the number of hours worked.
I don't get a pension. I don't factor social security or any other government program into my retirement plan - I assume they will not be there for me. No tricks about it, I put over 20% of what I earn into interest-bearing accounts. Spread the wealth. 401(k), Roth IRA, a little in a money market. If you are filling all those buckets then move to "hard" investments like land, buildings and businesses. There are always mutual funds, index funds and stocks too. Yeah, you live a little below your means, you live in a little smaller house than your coworkers. So what?
You have to start investing when you are young so that the money can grow with time. Don't wait. I'm 26 and have been saving for retirement since I was 23 and graduated from college. Now sum up 20% of my income power by 30 years or so, in interest-bearing accounts, minus inflation and it's enough to retire off of around 55-60 if you are determined and have your debts paid down.
I think the difference is that with SpaceX, the fixes have been quite simple
Slight nitpick, the issue with flight #3 was residual propellants causing longer thrust, due to an engine change. This wasn't needed, it was an "upgrade". So this wasn't a "fix" from a prior flight but a design change which caused a failure. Had they stuck with the older engine, the staging event would have succeeded. Who knows about upper stage though, we've only seen part of upper stage fire on one of the flights, it's still a relative unknown.
Also, the total cost of all SpaceX's launches so far is still less than the launch cost of a single EELV, let alone a space shuttle.
Right. But until you hit orbit, it's all for naught. They need to show reliability, and they will have their market. As of right now they have hundreds of millions in sunk costs that they need to recover, and Elon had to go so far as to get additional funding to cover additional proving flights... again, I'm very optimistic, but they need to show capability soon.
I don't remember which show last night cause I flipped through like 10 of them, but some commentator made the point that we don't often make the case for presidents or VP's based on their education, if you wanted someone from an ivory tower there are thousands of polysci professors out there who would be good candidates by that criterion. What we generally look for in elections is people with accomplishments they can point to - I did this, I did that, and I can continue to do this and that in this higher office. Executors, not deliberators.
And in that sense, a state governor accomplishes more in two years than a senator in four years, hands down. They are making decisions on a daily basis, versus legislators who are deliberating over bills for months. And the fact that (most) everyone is comparing Palin to Obama, instead of Biden, is making most republicans' smile.
Either they choose to keep working, or they didn't put enough of THEIR OWN money away for retirement.
Why should we trust someone else to plan retirement for us? Yes, yes, I know, 40 years ago was a different time, but for those who didn't work a cushy job that came with a pension (my paternal grandparents were farmers, my maternal grandparents knew the pension would be insufficient), you realize you need to sock money away for retirement.
Myself, I plan on being financially independent by 55 (and have the plan to do it), although I have no intentions to stop working. At that point in time, work is no longer a necessity, you aren't doing it because you NEED it, but because you WANT it, and I can stop to take a trip with my wife whenever we feel the urge, or go visit the kids, etc. It's a good place to be in.
The problem will be that the $4B or whatever will come out of Ares project. Gov't has been stingy with NASA and regardless of your opinion of NASA (I respect all views, honestly, I do work for NASA but have a lot of friends who have valid criticisms of the beast, it is a gov't entity after all), it is a lot more efficient, per dollar, than most government agencies when you look at buying power.
Sadly though it's underfunded when you compare to other agencies, and again compare accomplishments. That $4B, I guarantee you, will come from Ares project dollars, not new funding, if this becomes reality, which further sets back Ares. So we dig our hole deeper, and deeper, and deeper still.
People mention COTS - COTS is great, or will be great, when the COTS members prove they can do it. SpaceX is 0 for 3. I am confident they will hit space, but until they can prove reliability we can't just rely on them as the primary source. We have to see a few Dragon modules go up and dock with ISS, and come back with minor, if any, hitches.
Your numbers are wrong, which you admitted, Palin has more experiance in office.
Beyond that, she has executive experiance, which both Obama and Biden lack.
Factoid: The last senator to be elected to office was Kennedy in 1960. State governors tend to make up the winning tickets, not senators. The executive experience means something to voters. But again, it's in the veep seat, so we'll see what it means this election cycle... probably not as much as if the top slot were a governor.
IMO (and I'm a republican, so take it with a grain of salt as big as you like) she beats out Obama on a side by side comparison when you simply compare her introduction speech this Friday AM with his nomination acceptance speech Thursday PM. He had a lot of forward-looking statements and not a whole lot of "meat" where he said "I did this, I've done this, on the state level and on the senatorial level, and likewise I'll do it in office". Palin, on the other hand, had a list of accomplishments she was able to rattle off from her years in office, many aligning with things Obama **hopes to do**; they were things she has **done**. Forward looking statements versus accomplishments. This is key. When Biden goes to debate her and says "we will do X", she can state "I did Y".
I've heard a few people comment that she should hold her own against Biden, who has a tendancy to talk over people. While this may be acceptable against a man, albeit rude, against a woman, all she has to do is start tapping her foot or give some other indication that her speaking time is being infringed and it really makes Biden look bad. "The man" holding her down, etc.
Good contrast in beliefs, senatorial v. executive experience, should be interesting! I really didn't know who I wanted as VP but hearing her speak this morning, I think she can be solid.
Hillary's women spiteful voters may defect to McCain, but most will just hold their nose and go Obama.
Don't have the link, but as of the moment, there are more "HilRaisers" donating to the McCain campaign than the Obama campain. This was prior to the Palin announcement even.
Besides - Palin's just too easy to pick on. Off the top of my head - mayor of a town of 5000 people just 2-3 years ago, images of threatening Iran while breastfeeding in the oval office in case McCain croaks mid-term (she's got 5 kids, one of them just a few months old), that business with her brother-in-law state trooper...
Compare Obama to Palin. We shouldn't even be doing this - one is running for President, the other only as veep. Palin has been a city councilwoman, a mayor, and a governor. She has executive experience, which the Obama ticket lacks completely. The last senator elected president was Kennedy in 1960, governors have appeal in elections. She's called out members of her own party in ethics reforms, she canned the "bridge to nowhere". Her approval rating is 80%. Obama talked last night about making cuts to unfruitful projects: she used her veto power to make $237M in cuts last year. In her personal life she has a son deploying to Iraq and another son with Downs' syndrome which she chose not to abort which plays well with her base, which were concerned about a pro-choice veep like Liberman.
So what it boils down to is, if you listen to Obama, he makes forward-looking statements, but has no real record to run off of, compared to McCain. But even "inexperienced" Palin can tell you what she's done, and she's made the cuts and difficult decisions that Obama can only talk about at this point.
And the images of "breastfeeding while threatening Iran", that's just precious, you should know better than to threaten a mother around her young... and their son born in April, most mothers quit breastfeeding in 8-12 months. So safe to say, it won't likely be an issue, if she even breast feeds, which is doubtful given her job.
The state trooper issue is a question, but at worse, it can't be any worse than Rezko or Ayers is to Obama. Chances are it is as she claims it is although the spin machine is on 24/7.
Sounds good to me! If you're making more than $250k a year then you can afford to shoulder a little more of the tax burden.
Until you start to consider small business owners, to many of which $250k a year isn't even breaking even. So now you are going to tax them even more heavily and either (a) drive them to tax loopholes that Obama denounced during his acceptance speech or (b) drive them out of business.
Obama is bad for small business owners exactly because his threshold of "rich" and "poor" is so low. It needs to be at least double that. It's hard to understand if you are a wage earner, but if you are a small business/self employed person who pays all his or her expenses, including travel, health care, full compliment of taxes, etc. half of that 250k goes away, easily, and then Obama wants to levy additional taxes? No thanks.
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You're in a giant wheel inside a cage. You paid $50 for the wheel, and it costs you $15 a month to rent the cage it's in.
... if you enjoy it and do it in lieu of other social activities it is a great money saver. Especially once you have kids. Kiddies go to bed around 7 or 8, you have a few hours alone with your wife ... once you've "ground out" a few levels in the bedroom together it's fun to play a MMO together and grind out a few levels together in game. Also a good way to keep in touch with friends who live far away... when I moved from WI to AL, we all played Everquest, and it was probably the cheapest way to keep in touch besides IM...
Yes, but it is a cheaper wheel than going to the bar every Friday night, or going out to a movie twice a month, or even going out to lunch with coworkers once a week
In short it's something to do. I bounce between WoW and EQ (I love original EQ, but my wife loves WoW, heart gets split in two) and play probably 3-4 months out of the year in between dissertation research and other extra-work work.
The economy is low on my list. My personal convictions with respect to wealth distribution, taxation, gun rights, abortion, freedom of speech, supreme court appointments, etc. These are the things that make my decision over a candidate, and as a result, these things will sculpt the economy and other issues in the next election cycle.
... now's the time to buy, it's all on sale.
Single issue voters looking at a single transient issue is pointless. Pick the man, woman or hermaphrodite ("Chicks with dicks that put mine to shame" - Randal Graves, Clerks) who you think is best to serve the whole of the country and the transients will eventually fall in line.
As much as the economy comes up on a geek news site, it's like you whippersnappers have never seen a dip in the market before
And theres one in Milwaukee, WI on W. Oklahoma Ave. They are both affiliated and is the same place as www.sciplus.com, which great-grandparent originally mentioned, although the retail shops often have some unique items not on the website or in the catalog. The guys working the shops are really handy. I've sourced them for robotic parts in high school (including gears and motors), haven't been back much since leaving the greater WI area, but they also had a lot of chemistry and random items. The Milwaukee shop had a tank gun bore above the counter ... for sale.
If the game is profitable, who gives a fuck about total subscribers? As a customer, I don't.
I'm one of those light blue triangles that still plays EQ1. My wife plays EQ2. Still pumping out expansions and features in both games. We both played WoW for a time (and I've played Vanguard, LOTRO, Hellgate, etc.) and we keep coming back because most every "modern" MMORPG is a washed down game built to appeal to the least common denominator of a gamer. WoW is screwing us over by providing a model for "success" that attracts brain-dead gamers but doesn't provide real substance.
My belief is I'd rather have 100 MMO's that are profitable with a few ten thousand subscribers that provide diverse gameplay options than 10 MMO's with millions of subscribers that wash the game down and appeal to the least common denominator. In the former, the gamer wins, in the latter, we lose.
And I'm not the only one: our guild in EQ1 saw many people leave when WoW came out, and most trickled back. I'm curious what WoW will look like in 8 years. You will probably see the same curve of growth and decline as the shine wears off.
The place where Excel is excellent is in the middle of the engineering cycle. I do aeroheating and thermal analysis using codes written in FORTRAN and C++, along with CFD. Ultimately the final product is tabular input files for another code along with a .pdf with figures and explanation of methodology, results, etc.
... each data file is treated as a data stream, and your UI is a grid, and each operation is treated like a filter, which is dragged and dropped on the grid. Filters are then interconnected between data streams to manage the data. You can cross-connect streams of data of any kind by any variable (time, position, etc.). The configurations can be saved and re-used. It's very nifty once you get the hang of it. They have filters to deal with flat telemetry data, video data, etc. You can write your own filters too...
:)
However in between setting up the problem and shipping out the final product - IE, when interacting with the customer to refine the product to their liking, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's - we use Excel a lot. We input the output from our codes into Excel and whip up plots for all the data (we had someone whip up a plot tool in VBA, point it at a directory it will open every data file, plot everything of interest in separate files, crossplot certain data points across multiple files in a single file, formatted in appropriate font point, colors, etc. and auto-generate a PowerPoint presentation of the data in sequence. Nifty.) Got the data sets in presentation format in 5 minutes. Go to meeting, present interim results. Customer often wants to see either iterpolated data our outliers or something that requires real-time data manipulation. In Excel in a matter of seconds we can show the underlying data or provide a manipulation, etc.
This is where Excel excels. I can go to any meeting room with Office and do this. I don't need to be able to hit a license server for (expensive_software_suite_X). I don't need to pre-load every presentation room across the center with (open_source_package_X).
I never liked Matlab or Octave. I tried. Honestly though the best data manipulation software I've used (for tabular data) is Pioneer, but you have to be a DoD customer to use it
Most of my work is CFD though and then you need the big guns like Tecplot and Ensight
There is a PCI Express card that takes RAM and shows up as a hard drive, look up DDRDrive x1 for one example.
Yeah, slow news day, multiple conservative blogs fingered this kid late last week.
... but then again I'm a conservative so I must be biased)
(Mainstream media is in the tank for Obama, that's the reason for the "slow reporting"
Okay, you had me up until that point, but this campaign is as doomed as the previous. We all know which operating system guys with beards use.
Avast, me hearties! Dread pirate Philski here to set the record straight on bearded computer usage, from a pirate that has worn everything from a chinstrap to a friendly mutton chops to the present full beard. While not pillaging or grogging with my favorite wenches, I use this here Windows computer, along with a RHEL box. 'Tis what thar employar gives me. At home, I use a Vista box for planning future pillaging, grogging, wench-gatherings and the like. Savvy?
While perhaps not incriminating, it is hugely inappropriate. Either she was sending them personal messages -- which is inappropriate; she should have sent those to their personal accounts, or she was sending or receiving work related messages which is completely unacceptable.
I believe you are mistaken. If she was sending business information from a personal email to a personal email this would be wrong as it avoids the public record and indeed was the original criticism. So far none of this has been shown in the emails that have surfaced to date (at least in the news reports I have seen).
Some incidental emails (low volume) from personal to work email addresses and vice versa are acceptable, no different than an occasional personal phone call during business hours which sometimes is unavoidable and also is acceptable. I don't work in Alaska unless their state laws dictate otherwise but I have worked in government for nearly 5 years and this does not conflict with any of the "records training" I have received.
In any case, the value of oil is only going to go up. We should sit on it as long as we can.
Its value goes up until it becomes antiquated by other technology - when we replace oil on a large scale with CNG or solar wind and fairy farts like the Dems tells us we will be in 10-20 years (or demand falls due to other circumstances). If you believe this to be true then you start drilling today while the oil is worth something, because while it will be worth more tomorrow, in 10 or 20 years when the demand is lower it will be worth little to nothing, and not worth drilling.
I realize it's an old post, but McCain has never been a good speech-giver. He's much better in the town hall setting - which is why they modified the stage so he was in the middle of a crowd of people to give him the feel of being in the middle of a town hall. And good in the debate structure.
That being said a lot of professional critics said, for a McCain speech, it was pretty good.
What will be truly interesting is the debates. Obama is an orator - he lives and dies by the teleprompter. McCain is the exact opposite, he is not an orator but he does well at the debate and town hall type format. I submit two examples: (1) the Saddleback interviews, which the media overwhelmingly claim McCain "won", and (2) the fact that Obama will not consent to McCain's proposal to have multiple town hall meetings to address the concerns of the common people.
It'll be interesting how it swings things. Not only did McCain have higher viewer ratings than Obama for convention speeches with a poorer speech, but he might just beat out Obama in the three upcoming presidential debates, due to reasons cited.
The cash saved when I bought my PC nicely pads my ass.
Well shoot, I mean, I know the dollar is making a recovery, but damn! :)
Barack doesn't even vet Clinton, thinks the Clinton voters will just fall in line, and out comes Palin. While Palin is a different breed of woman than Clinton, feminism is back on the table.
Certainly, most Clinton supporters will vote Obama if they stick to issues, but even Bill Clinton made the "hypothetical" case for John McCain (google "candidate X candidate Y" if you haven't heard it), and if they can identify with Palin, it makes it that much more palatable. What Obama dismissed as being a non-issue lives on and out of his control. (Not to mention the Clintons controlled half the democratic convention that was supposed to be his coronation, but now we are really off topic...)
There are a number of techniques to image the far side of the sun.
Or perhaps the company that they put their OWN MONEY into raided the retirement fund and there's nothing left.... Or it went belly up. Or it managed to pawn the retirement fund off on the taxpayers. Or the stock market crashed.
...
You don't put all your eggs in one basket and you never count your chickens before they hatch. One in the hand is worth two in the bush. Etc. You diversify your investments. This in investment 101.
Retirement should not be a crapshoot. It should be managed by an entity with the resources and accountability to actually pay what it promises.
Find an investor you trust. For me, I work with my dad (an insurance agent who has a finance background) and we make a financial plan. I don't want the government managing my future. I believe I can do better, I know I can do better - my Roth has had positive returns this year.
Heck, the contribution cap for an IRA hasn't changed in 20 years...
That's why you don't put all of your money in an IRA
It's pretty hard these days to 'save up' for retirement. Not because people are living frivolously, but because wages have essentially been flat for the last 20 years in the broad mid-career band, while everything else has been going up, including the number of hours worked.
I don't get a pension. I don't factor social security or any other government program into my retirement plan - I assume they will not be there for me. No tricks about it, I put over 20% of what I earn into interest-bearing accounts. Spread the wealth. 401(k), Roth IRA, a little in a money market. If you are filling all those buckets then move to "hard" investments like land, buildings and businesses. There are always mutual funds, index funds and stocks too. Yeah, you live a little below your means, you live in a little smaller house than your coworkers. So what?
You have to start investing when you are young so that the money can grow with time. Don't wait. I'm 26 and have been saving for retirement since I was 23 and graduated from college. Now sum up 20% of my income power by 30 years or so, in interest-bearing accounts, minus inflation and it's enough to retire off of around 55-60 if you are determined and have your debts paid down.
I think the difference is that with SpaceX, the fixes have been quite simple
... again, I'm very optimistic, but they need to show capability soon.
Slight nitpick, the issue with flight #3 was residual propellants causing longer thrust, due to an engine change. This wasn't needed, it was an "upgrade". So this wasn't a "fix" from a prior flight but a design change which caused a failure. Had they stuck with the older engine, the staging event would have succeeded. Who knows about upper stage though, we've only seen part of upper stage fire on one of the flights, it's still a relative unknown.
Also, the total cost of all SpaceX's launches so far is still less than the launch cost of a single EELV, let alone a space shuttle.
Right. But until you hit orbit, it's all for naught. They need to show reliability, and they will have their market. As of right now they have hundreds of millions in sunk costs that they need to recover, and Elon had to go so far as to get additional funding to cover additional proving flights
I don't remember which show last night cause I flipped through like 10 of them, but some commentator made the point that we don't often make the case for presidents or VP's based on their education, if you wanted someone from an ivory tower there are thousands of polysci professors out there who would be good candidates by that criterion. What we generally look for in elections is people with accomplishments they can point to - I did this, I did that, and I can continue to do this and that in this higher office. Executors, not deliberators.
And in that sense, a state governor accomplishes more in two years than a senator in four years, hands down. They are making decisions on a daily basis, versus legislators who are deliberating over bills for months. And the fact that (most) everyone is comparing Palin to Obama, instead of Biden, is making most republicans' smile.
Either they choose to keep working, or they didn't put enough of THEIR OWN money away for retirement.
Why should we trust someone else to plan retirement for us? Yes, yes, I know, 40 years ago was a different time, but for those who didn't work a cushy job that came with a pension (my paternal grandparents were farmers, my maternal grandparents knew the pension would be insufficient), you realize you need to sock money away for retirement.
Myself, I plan on being financially independent by 55 (and have the plan to do it), although I have no intentions to stop working. At that point in time, work is no longer a necessity, you aren't doing it because you NEED it, but because you WANT it, and I can stop to take a trip with my wife whenever we feel the urge, or go visit the kids, etc. It's a good place to be in.
The problem will be that the $4B or whatever will come out of Ares project. Gov't has been stingy with NASA and regardless of your opinion of NASA (I respect all views, honestly, I do work for NASA but have a lot of friends who have valid criticisms of the beast, it is a gov't entity after all), it is a lot more efficient, per dollar, than most government agencies when you look at buying power.
Sadly though it's underfunded when you compare to other agencies, and again compare accomplishments. That $4B, I guarantee you, will come from Ares project dollars, not new funding, if this becomes reality, which further sets back Ares. So we dig our hole deeper, and deeper, and deeper still.
People mention COTS - COTS is great, or will be great, when the COTS members prove they can do it. SpaceX is 0 for 3. I am confident they will hit space, but until they can prove reliability we can't just rely on them as the primary source. We have to see a few Dragon modules go up and dock with ISS, and come back with minor, if any, hitches.
S. 2590 was introduced on April 6, 2006 by Senator Coburn, along with Senators Obama, McCain and Carper as original co-sponsors. Nice omission there.
Your numbers are wrong, which you admitted, Palin has more experiance in office.
... probably not as much as if the top slot were a governor.
Beyond that, she has executive experiance, which both Obama and Biden lack.
Factoid: The last senator to be elected to office was Kennedy in 1960. State governors tend to make up the winning tickets, not senators. The executive experience means something to voters. But again, it's in the veep seat, so we'll see what it means this election cycle
IMO (and I'm a republican, so take it with a grain of salt as big as you like) she beats out Obama on a side by side comparison when you simply compare her introduction speech this Friday AM with his nomination acceptance speech Thursday PM. He had a lot of forward-looking statements and not a whole lot of "meat" where he said "I did this, I've done this, on the state level and on the senatorial level, and likewise I'll do it in office". Palin, on the other hand, had a list of accomplishments she was able to rattle off from her years in office, many aligning with things Obama **hopes to do**; they were things she has **done**. Forward looking statements versus accomplishments. This is key. When Biden goes to debate her and says "we will do X", she can state "I did Y".
I've heard a few people comment that she should hold her own against Biden, who has a tendancy to talk over people. While this may be acceptable against a man, albeit rude, against a woman, all she has to do is start tapping her foot or give some other indication that her speaking time is being infringed and it really makes Biden look bad. "The man" holding her down, etc.
Good contrast in beliefs, senatorial v. executive experience, should be interesting! I really didn't know who I wanted as VP but hearing her speak this morning, I think she can be solid.
Hillary's women spiteful voters may defect to McCain, but most will just hold their nose and go Obama.
... and their son born in April, most mothers quit breastfeeding in 8-12 months. So safe to say, it won't likely be an issue, if she even breast feeds, which is doubtful given her job.
Don't have the link, but as of the moment, there are more "HilRaisers" donating to the McCain campaign than the Obama campain. This was prior to the Palin announcement even.
Besides - Palin's just too easy to pick on. Off the top of my head - mayor of a town of 5000 people just 2-3 years ago, images of threatening Iran while breastfeeding in the oval office in case McCain croaks mid-term (she's got 5 kids, one of them just a few months old), that business with her brother-in-law state trooper...
Compare Obama to Palin. We shouldn't even be doing this - one is running for President, the other only as veep. Palin has been a city councilwoman, a mayor, and a governor. She has executive experience, which the Obama ticket lacks completely. The last senator elected president was Kennedy in 1960, governors have appeal in elections. She's called out members of her own party in ethics reforms, she canned the "bridge to nowhere". Her approval rating is 80%. Obama talked last night about making cuts to unfruitful projects: she used her veto power to make $237M in cuts last year. In her personal life she has a son deploying to Iraq and another son with Downs' syndrome which she chose not to abort which plays well with her base, which were concerned about a pro-choice veep like Liberman.
So what it boils down to is, if you listen to Obama, he makes forward-looking statements, but has no real record to run off of, compared to McCain. But even "inexperienced" Palin can tell you what she's done, and she's made the cuts and difficult decisions that Obama can only talk about at this point.
And the images of "breastfeeding while threatening Iran", that's just precious, you should know better than to threaten a mother around her young
The state trooper issue is a question, but at worse, it can't be any worse than Rezko or Ayers is to Obama. Chances are it is as she claims it is although the spin machine is on 24/7.
Sounds good to me! If you're making more than $250k a year then you can afford to shoulder a little more of the tax burden.
Until you start to consider small business owners, to many of which $250k a year isn't even breaking even. So now you are going to tax them even more heavily and either (a) drive them to tax loopholes that Obama denounced during his acceptance speech or (b) drive them out of business.
Obama is bad for small business owners exactly because his threshold of "rich" and "poor" is so low. It needs to be at least double that. It's hard to understand if you are a wage earner, but if you are a small business/self employed person who pays all his or her expenses, including travel, health care, full compliment of taxes, etc. half of that 250k goes away, easily, and then Obama wants to levy additional taxes? No thanks.