It is very difficult for any company to sustain a 90% marketshare. At this level it is very difficult for MSFT to distinguish truly exceptional programmers, managers, salespersons from the mediocre ones who just pile on to the juggernaut plowing through the fields. The truly exceptional are migrant and they leave, but the incompetents know it and they stay on. Thus over time it gets completely calcified like an old boiler. Even then it is very difficult for me to believe that Macs have a chance. Linux might.
Dick Cheney seems to be absolutely right. The insurgency seems to be in its last throes. Only difference is it is not the insurgency in Iraq fueled by the blind racistic xenophobia of Iraqis, shias or sunnis.
The insurgency that is dying is the one that began 230 odd years ago, against a distant King in England, by a ragtag group of people who believed in liberty. What kind of country we have now, if our citizenry can be so scared by the loss of couple of skyscrapers and surrender the freedoms so quickly?
The insurgency led by Geroge Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers is really in its last throes.
Dear Esteemed President or CEO of Tiny Company, USA,
My name is Oolong Mgobotu, a large scale SPAM operator from Nigeria. Please remit 100,000$ to the secret numbered 102-3459-949-222 account in Cayman Island. Or we will blast SPAM touting you stock to millions of US email addresses. Your stupid SEC will suspend trading on your stock and you will become a micro-penny stock.
sincerely,
Oolong Mgobotu, BAR-at-Law, Adis-A-Baba, Nigeria.
Another scenario would be for the spammers to short the stock and then blast spam touting, and getting the company's stock suspended. With tarnished reputation these tiny companies would not survive.
Spammers and scammers are very nimble and they game the system faster than you can block the breaches.
Why I am not packing my bags to go back to India :
The other poster listed the advantages. The advantages of USA are, of course, clear air and water, largely honest and ethical population/politics/governance. And less competitive system for my children. I slogged my balls off in my high school and junior college to get into IIT. I want my kids to have a less stressful life.
Education is free in USA You are completely wrong about it. Only primary and secondary education is free in USA. College costs money man, big money. Average tuition in Govt universities are around 9000$ a year and private colleges charge, get this, 40,000$ a year. College grad in USA gets 50K salary, but only 25% of Americans have the money to go to college. In India higher education is subsidized like nobody's business. All I had to do is to get through the entrance examn. My annual tuition fees to IIT was, get this 200 Rs. Those days a dollar was 12 rupees. Even that was waived because my dad was making less than 500 Rs a month. Only 40% of Indians finish high school. But those who pass Secondary School Certificate Exam, 80% of them go to college. It is YOU who got free/subsidized college education competing with Americans who spent between 40,000$ to 160,000$ to get a degree.
Common prove your self. Its a competitive world. Dont sit and act like cry babies. Well, Zathura, I have news for you. The average Indian is illiterate. The average female literacy rate in BIMARU states is less than 15%. India churns out about 200,000 engineering grads a year. I estimate about 2,000 are world class and about 15,000 are comparable to average US educated engineer. The rest are fluff. They might want to come to USA and work on a H1B. But they wont make grade.
you dont have to right to stop immigrants from getting a job. Well, buddy, America is MY country now, and I wont let you spoil it like you spoiled India. An average American will do a better job than an average Indian. The top Indian will definitely outclass an average American, and unfortunately the top Indians dont want to come here and only the second and third class Indians are willing to come here. And the only thing the second and third class Indians compete with us is on pay, salary and benefits. I have fired IIT grads for under performance. OK? Dont think it is all clear sailing once you get a H1B and land here. I, and my fellow Americans, will be the bosses and if you dont deliver more than what I am paying you, you will be on a Chicago-Mumbai flight before you could say, "Aishwarya Roy".
How did that Zathura's post get +2 insightful rating instead of -2 troll?
You can bet it is not going to crow, "All your bases are belong to us". It will make such innocuous statements. If it is a private company it will offer deep discounts, (like 75$ for 1150$ list price product offered to Australian students). In the public sector, it will go over the head and talk to the White House, Congress and Senate (both parties) and make them buy it at list price or have him replaced soon.
When job reqs get that specific, it means that there already someone with exactly the same qualifications working for them, most likely an H1B and or someone with F1-practical-training waiting to become H1B. These adverts are crafted to reduce or reject other applicants, not to select any.
One good silver lining in this whole issue is that India is a democracy. It cant keep its currency low like China or cap the pay and extract blood from its workers. Indian infotech worker salaries are sky rocketing, considering the productivity, other costs and exchange rate, India will soon stop being such a great source of cheap intellectual labour. Even if we raise the H1B quota back to 120,000 like it used to be till 2000, we will not be getting top talent from India. Now a days it is very difficult to persuade IIT/IIM grads to settle in USA. My classmate is so furious with the insulting treatment by our (I was an Indian now I am an American to clarify the us/them for you) cosulate in Chennai, India when he applied for a two week tourist visa, he said he would never set his foot again in USA. We might get 120K applicants from India, they will be of such poor quality companies will quickly sour on them.
Both me and my brother are Appus. There is a sea change in the attitude of the next generation of Appus. They dont want to come to USA on a permanent basis. Till about 2000, they (now I am an American, so I call them they) would given an arm and a leg to come to USA slog for six years, get employers to sponsor them for green cards (most employers do) and run back to India to get a bride before filing I-480 [*FN1]. That was then and now not many want to come. Main reason: domestic help. In India their salaries have gone up not the wages for servant maids. They live like little Kings there, usually employing a cook, a maid and a driver. Most Indian middle class employs servant maids. We were barely middle class growing up, still we had one maid to do the floors, dishes and wash clothes. Most middle class grows up believing it is beneath their diginity to do housework. Till about 2000 these girls see the shiny cars and air-conditioned carpeted homes and got married to H1Bs. Only after landing here they realize, unlike Indian families in India with airconditioned homes and shiny cars, the American household does NOT employ an army of servants. They reported back and the next generation of Indian women are extremely reluctant to marry H1Bs. So H1Bs would rather stay in India.
The USdollar is worth 45 Rs +-2 Rs on the exchange rate. But IMF and others have calculated that on the Purchase Power Parity basis, just 10 Rs buys in India what a dollar buys in USA. Adjusted for this, and the cheap labour for other services, and the inherant aversion for the Indian middle class to do blue collar work, leave alone menial labour, US has lost its attraction. You can raise back the H1B quota back to 120,000 from the present 65,000 like it was till 2000. But unless Mr Gates offers domestic servants, he is not going to get that many applicants from India.
[*FN1] If you are married when you file the dependants form, both get green card at the same time. If you get married after green card, spouse waits for as long as 7 years to get one.
1. How many oridianry people know how DVD/CD players work? Have you seen the price vs time graph of CD players and DVD players? Price war will break out and prices will come down.
2. Remember how much you used to pay for long distance phones just 10 years? What happened? Price war happened.
Price war happens in unregulated markets and where cost of entry is not very high. Grocery stores for example. Once regulation comes in, that is a barrier to entry and that protects existing players. Restaraunts have to obey food safety rules etc and their margins are higher. Telephone and wireless services are highly regulated. They may be able to maintain high prices. That is because of the regulation and cost of entry barriers. Nothing to do with whether or not kids understand the technology behind texting or the
operation marginal cost overhead of its implementation. Want lower prices? Campaign for less regulation, less barriers to entry and more competition. Or you can do what Dvorak is saying: Educate the teenagers about the profit margins in the texting business and ask them revolt against high prices. Dont know about you, but I think educating the teens is harder than convincing a senator to legislate in the interests of the people than the corporations.
I think you are right about SMS costing nothing to the phone companies and they are charging too much for the service. But that has nothing to do with kids not knowing how SMS works or the fact that kids are willing to pay a lot for "cool" features.
Most people dont know how a complex device works. Most people dont know how radio, TV, TiVo or digital camera work. Heck, most people dont know how the sewing machine works. And it is more than 150 years old! But trust the markets, some company somewhere will break ranks and offer lower cost SMS sometime and the price war will break out. Eventually the price will come down.
Is it really true that in Germany if you declare that you belong to a church then you have to pay a tax to that church? And by declaring that you dont belong to a church you save money? I vaguely recall hearing such a thing on a radio show. How do I google for this info?
Long time ago there was bad blood between a class of gods (note the lack of capitalization) called Devas and a nation of demons called Asuras. They needed to churn the ocean of milk to get the elixir of immortality. So peace treaty was signed between them because it was too big a task for any one nation/race/people to do. So with Lord Vishnu himself forming the pivot in the form of a Giant Tortoise, and the axis of the universe, also known as the Mount Meru as the churner and the giant divine snake Vasuki as the rope they churned.
From the Ocean of Milk, came white elephants, the Goddess of Wealth Lakshmi, the deadly poison etc before the elixir. At that time Devas decided to keep all the elixir for themselves (but that is ok because they are the good guys). Lord Vishnu took the form of a siren and distracted the Asuras. Asuras, being bad guys, were very easily distracted by bewitching female form and went after her. The Devas divided the elixir among them and drank them. But among the Asuras was one named Rahu, who managed to get in the line and drink a portion of it. But before he could swallow it, Vishnu saw what was going on and cut his head off. Thus his body died but the decapitated head remained immortal floating around the heavens. Once in a while when it comes within range of the Sun or the Moon, it will swallow it creating the eclipse. But the Sun/Moon will pass through the open wound in the neck and re-emerge unscathed. That is how eclipses were explained in Hindu Mythology.
Nice story. Lots of interesting details. May be I should form a ReDiscovery Institute and start a campaign to get this theory "equal time" along with other astronomical theories to explain the eclipses. Dover, PA is nearby. Should run for a position in its school board, may be.
The Giant divine snake Ketu will start devouring the Moon. Don't eat or cook anything between 2 pm and 8pm CST. Discard all food prepared before the curse of Ketu (cool picture of the very Ketu himself!) . Must take a purifying bath/shower after Ketu disgorges the Moon. Ideally you should write the prayers ( sold here ) to Ketu in a dried palm leaf and tie it around your forehead during the bath. Paper is an acceptable substitute. People who have lost their fathers should do their monthly new moon day ritual after the eclipse is completely over.
I have not heard of problems of holding conversations in anehoic chamber, but that just show how little I know about it. I am not surprised though, human hearing is not something that evolved to handle anechoic chambers!
Too much of echo is the more serious problem. Not just in optical frequencies, even in plain and simple electronics. Many wireless communication devices stop working indoors due to multiple echos.
I did not read either the summary or the fine article, from what I heard on NPR, this coating improves the signal to noise ratio of communications. Sort of like talking in an anechoic chamber versus a room with highly sound reflective walls with booming echos.
This is how I would explain it. All these reflections are really echos of light. And when a pulse of light is fired along the fiber, it gets reflected at many interfaces, travel backward, gets reflected again and travels forward etc. Thus the single
transmitted pulse arrives as multiple pulses of varying strengths and varying time differences. When a series of pulses are fired, at somepoint the echos completely overwhelm the signal. The anechoic coating will help communication, stealth aircraft etc. It might find applications in improving solar cell efficiency. But might not make your light bulb any brighter.
Mullah Nassirudin wanted to learn music, and he enquired the tuition rates. "20 dinars for the first month and 10 dinars a month from the second month" was the quote he got. So the old Mullah said, "I will start from the second month".
If all of us were wise as the Mullah, teaser rates from credit card/mortgage companies, cell phones companies, ISPs etc wont work.
But in most parts of the world, inertia rules. Once you accept a monthly bill, then they got you.
Well why corporate America is so silent on this issue? After all almost all the revenue of MSFT comes from corporations. If the palying field becomes level and multiple vendors compete to serve them while being fully inter-operatble, it will be the corporate America that will benefit most. Technically they are the victim of the monopolistic deeds of MSFT. Still they remain silent, and the Govenment, after protecting the citizens from their own stupidity (seat belts, airbags, spacing between crib railings) now comes to rescue corporate America?
If Government intervention is what it takes to force a level playing field, I will accept it. But still I would prefer it if market forces create a level playing field instead of government mandates.
The most difficult market to take out of MSFT's grasp is the Office software, with legacy files, macros, APIs, integration with workflow etc. And since Office is tied to Windows OS, it allows MSFT to continually tweak the OS, foist upgrades in a never ending cycle. But another big cake in MSFT's plate is the license revenue from the Microsoft Exchange Server. It is not bulk priced, every email id created by the its corporate clients not MSFT, creates license revenue for MSFT. This is the market most easily wrenched from MSFT's grasp.
A good browser is all the interface needed to deliver email. And not being tied to a machine but being
available over the net is a useful thing. So the Google Calender and email can compete with MSFT. That is
where is Google is making a move. The corporate email market is so big and is such a huge revenue generator,
there is place for both Google and Exchange and Lotus Notes and may be yet another player. If Google corners anywhere between 20% to 33% of the corporate email market, it can outfox MSFT. If the next upgrade of Vista
is not compatible with Gmail's corporate clients, they would even consider not upgrading. Already there is some reluctance in the marketplace to upgrade and people are getting upgrade-weary. If the OS upgrade forcing
Office grade cycle gets broken, and if some corporations demand true interoperability instead of settling
for MSFT compatibility, cracks will develop in MSFT's dominance. But it is all well into the future. Might
take 5 years for this to happen.
Once it is offered, someone from the Third World would offer services to touch up the photos, clearing the background and adjust the color balance etc on the web using the free adobe photoshop. Already I have seen ads from people willing solve CAPTCHAs for less than a dollar an hour. Homework service for school children is also popping up. If only someone would invent a lawnmower that could be driven remotely via the net...
ISRO has fixed launch pads and the Vehicle assembly building moves on rails out of the way for launch. NASA has a fixed Vehicle assembly building and the rocket moves on very complex tracked vehicle a few miles to the launch site. So far ISRO has not launched anything the size NASA has. The largest payload by ISRO, a six ton Low earth orbit, 1 ton Geostationery payload (quoting from memory, pardon errors) is very small compared to what NASA has done. So the building capable of assembling something the size of space shuttle cant easily move out of the way. But the could try to create a simpler building mainly to protect the vehicle without all that expensive jigs and assembly equipment that moves out of the way on the day of launch. They would not really like to have a fueled vehicle inside a building.
Japanese in the WW-II tried to use
bats to carry bombs . Another great idea they had was to release hot air balloons filled with incindiary devices and release them into the jet stream. Two or three such bombs actually reached US mainland, and the fact was classified to prevent panic in USA. Finally when they carried tiny airplanes with bombs in their submarines to attack US mainland, they tried to bomb the forests. The Japanese military high command had such exaggerated reports of US and its forests, they believed that if these forests were set afire, it will burn the whole damned continent! So I am not surprised the Chinese are innovating trying to use piegons.
Slashdot Mirror
It is very difficult for any company to sustain a 90% marketshare. At this level it is very difficult for MSFT to distinguish truly exceptional programmers, managers, salespersons from the mediocre ones who just pile on to the juggernaut plowing through the fields. The truly exceptional are migrant and they leave, but the incompetents know it and they stay on. Thus over time it gets completely calcified like an old boiler. Even then it is very difficult for me to believe that Macs have a chance. Linux might.
The insurgency that is dying is the one that began 230 odd years ago, against a distant King in England, by a ragtag group of people who believed in liberty. What kind of country we have now, if our citizenry can be so scared by the loss of couple of skyscrapers and surrender the freedoms so quickly?
The insurgency led by Geroge Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers is really in its last throes.
My name is Oolong Mgobotu, a large scale SPAM operator from Nigeria. Please remit 100,000$ to the secret numbered 102-3459-949-222 account in Cayman Island. Or we will blast SPAM touting you stock to millions of US email addresses. Your stupid SEC will suspend trading on your stock and you will become a micro-penny stock. sincerely,
Oolong Mgobotu, BAR-at-Law, Adis-A-Baba, Nigeria.
Another scenario would be for the spammers to short the stock and then blast spam touting, and getting the company's stock suspended. With tarnished reputation these tiny companies would not survive.
Spammers and scammers are very nimble and they game the system faster than you can block the breaches.
Why I am not packing my bags to go back to India : The other poster listed the advantages. The advantages of USA are, of course, clear air and water, largely honest and ethical population/politics/governance. And less competitive system for my children. I slogged my balls off in my high school and junior college to get into IIT. I want my kids to have a less stressful life.
Education is free in USA You are completely wrong about it. Only primary and secondary education is free in USA. College costs money man, big money. Average tuition in Govt universities are around 9000$ a year and private colleges charge, get this, 40,000$ a year. College grad in USA gets 50K salary, but only 25% of Americans have the money to go to college. In India higher education is subsidized like nobody's business. All I had to do is to get through the entrance examn. My annual tuition fees to IIT was, get this 200 Rs. Those days a dollar was 12 rupees. Even that was waived because my dad was making less than 500 Rs a month. Only 40% of Indians finish high school. But those who pass Secondary School Certificate Exam, 80% of them go to college. It is YOU who got free/subsidized college education competing with Americans who spent between 40,000$ to 160,000$ to get a degree.
Common prove your self. Its a competitive world. Dont sit and act like cry babies. Well, Zathura, I have news for you. The average Indian is illiterate. The average female literacy rate in BIMARU states is less than 15%. India churns out about 200,000 engineering grads a year. I estimate about 2,000 are world class and about 15,000 are comparable to average US educated engineer. The rest are fluff. They might want to come to USA and work on a H1B. But they wont make grade.
you dont have to right to stop immigrants from getting a job. Well, buddy, America is MY country now, and I wont let you spoil it like you spoiled India. An average American will do a better job than an average Indian. The top Indian will definitely outclass an average American, and unfortunately the top Indians dont want to come here and only the second and third class Indians are willing to come here. And the only thing the second and third class Indians compete with us is on pay, salary and benefits. I have fired IIT grads for under performance. OK? Dont think it is all clear sailing once you get a H1B and land here. I, and my fellow Americans, will be the bosses and if you dont deliver more than what I am paying you, you will be on a Chicago-Mumbai flight before you could say, "Aishwarya Roy".
How did that Zathura's post get +2 insightful rating instead of -2 troll?
You can bet it is not going to crow, "All your bases are belong to us". It will make such innocuous statements. If it is a private company it will offer deep discounts, (like 75$ for 1150$ list price product offered to Australian students). In the public sector, it will go over the head and talk to the White House, Congress and Senate (both parties) and make them buy it at list price or have him replaced soon.
One good silver lining in this whole issue is that India is a democracy. It cant keep its currency low like China or cap the pay and extract blood from its workers. Indian infotech worker salaries are sky rocketing, considering the productivity, other costs and exchange rate, India will soon stop being such a great source of cheap intellectual labour. Even if we raise the H1B quota back to 120,000 like it used to be till 2000, we will not be getting top talent from India. Now a days it is very difficult to persuade IIT/IIM grads to settle in USA. My classmate is so furious with the insulting treatment by our (I was an Indian now I am an American to clarify the us/them for you) cosulate in Chennai, India when he applied for a two week tourist visa, he said he would never set his foot again in USA. We might get 120K applicants from India, they will be of such poor quality companies will quickly sour on them.
The USdollar is worth 45 Rs +-2 Rs on the exchange rate. But IMF and others have calculated that on the Purchase Power Parity basis, just 10 Rs buys in India what a dollar buys in USA. Adjusted for this, and the cheap labour for other services, and the inherant aversion for the Indian middle class to do blue collar work, leave alone menial labour, US has lost its attraction. You can raise back the H1B quota back to 120,000 from the present 65,000 like it was till 2000. But unless Mr Gates offers domestic servants, he is not going to get that many applicants from India.
[*FN1] If you are married when you file the dependants form, both get green card at the same time. If you get married after green card, spouse waits for as long as 7 years to get one.
(Ducking out to dodge the thrown chair )
2. Remember how much you used to pay for long distance phones just 10 years? What happened? Price war happened.
Price war happens in unregulated markets and where cost of entry is not very high. Grocery stores for example. Once regulation comes in, that is a barrier to entry and that protects existing players. Restaraunts have to obey food safety rules etc and their margins are higher. Telephone and wireless services are highly regulated. They may be able to maintain high prices. That is because of the regulation and cost of entry barriers. Nothing to do with whether or not kids understand the technology behind texting or the operation marginal cost overhead of its implementation. Want lower prices? Campaign for less regulation, less barriers to entry and more competition. Or you can do what Dvorak is saying: Educate the teenagers about the profit margins in the texting business and ask them revolt against high prices. Dont know about you, but I think educating the teens is harder than convincing a senator to legislate in the interests of the people than the corporations.
Most people dont know how a complex device works. Most people dont know how radio, TV, TiVo or digital camera work. Heck, most people dont know how the sewing machine works. And it is more than 150 years old! But trust the markets, some company somewhere will break ranks and offer lower cost SMS sometime and the price war will break out. Eventually the price will come down.
Found it! This site says if you declare your religion, you must pay a tax.
Is it really true that in Germany if you declare that you belong to a church then you have to pay a tax to that church? And by declaring that you dont belong to a church you save money? I vaguely recall hearing such a thing on a radio show. How do I google for this info?
From the Ocean of Milk, came white elephants, the Goddess of Wealth Lakshmi, the deadly poison etc before the elixir. At that time Devas decided to keep all the elixir for themselves (but that is ok because they are the good guys). Lord Vishnu took the form of a siren and distracted the Asuras. Asuras, being bad guys, were very easily distracted by bewitching female form and went after her. The Devas divided the elixir among them and drank them. But among the Asuras was one named Rahu, who managed to get in the line and drink a portion of it. But before he could swallow it, Vishnu saw what was going on and cut his head off. Thus his body died but the decapitated head remained immortal floating around the heavens. Once in a while when it comes within range of the Sun or the Moon, it will swallow it creating the eclipse. But the Sun/Moon will pass through the open wound in the neck and re-emerge unscathed. That is how eclipses were explained in Hindu Mythology.
Nice story. Lots of interesting details. May be I should form a ReDiscovery Institute and start a campaign to get this theory "equal time" along with other astronomical theories to explain the eclipses. Dover, PA is nearby. Should run for a position in its school board, may be.
The Giant divine snake Ketu will start devouring the Moon. Don't eat or cook anything between 2 pm and 8pm CST. Discard all food prepared before the curse of Ketu (cool picture of the very Ketu himself!) . Must take a purifying bath/shower after Ketu disgorges the Moon. Ideally you should write the prayers ( sold here ) to Ketu in a dried palm leaf and tie it around your forehead during the bath. Paper is an acceptable substitute. People who have lost their fathers should do their monthly new moon day ritual after the eclipse is completely over.
Too much of echo is the more serious problem. Not just in optical frequencies, even in plain and simple electronics. Many wireless communication devices stop working indoors due to multiple echos.
This is how I would explain it. All these reflections are really echos of light. And when a pulse of light is fired along the fiber, it gets reflected at many interfaces, travel backward, gets reflected again and travels forward etc. Thus the single transmitted pulse arrives as multiple pulses of varying strengths and varying time differences. When a series of pulses are fired, at somepoint the echos completely overwhelm the signal. The anechoic coating will help communication, stealth aircraft etc. It might find applications in improving solar cell efficiency. But might not make your light bulb any brighter.
If all of us were wise as the Mullah, teaser rates from credit card/mortgage companies, cell phones companies, ISPs etc wont work. But in most parts of the world, inertia rules. Once you accept a monthly bill, then they got you.
If Government intervention is what it takes to force a level playing field, I will accept it. But still I would prefer it if market forces create a level playing field instead of government mandates.
A good browser is all the interface needed to deliver email. And not being tied to a machine but being available over the net is a useful thing. So the Google Calender and email can compete with MSFT. That is where is Google is making a move. The corporate email market is so big and is such a huge revenue generator, there is place for both Google and Exchange and Lotus Notes and may be yet another player. If Google corners anywhere between 20% to 33% of the corporate email market, it can outfox MSFT. If the next upgrade of Vista is not compatible with Gmail's corporate clients, they would even consider not upgrading. Already there is some reluctance in the marketplace to upgrade and people are getting upgrade-weary. If the OS upgrade forcing Office grade cycle gets broken, and if some corporations demand true interoperability instead of settling for MSFT compatibility, cracks will develop in MSFT's dominance. But it is all well into the future. Might take 5 years for this to happen.
Once it is offered, someone from the Third World would offer services to touch up the photos, clearing the background and adjust the color balance etc on the web using the free adobe photoshop. Already I have seen ads from people willing solve CAPTCHAs for less than a dollar an hour. Homework service for school children is also popping up. If only someone would invent a lawnmower that could be driven remotely via the net ...
... to blame it on the computers is even more human.
ISRO has fixed launch pads and the Vehicle assembly building moves on rails out of the way for launch. NASA has a fixed Vehicle assembly building and the rocket moves on very complex tracked vehicle a few miles to the launch site. So far ISRO has not launched anything the size NASA has. The largest payload by ISRO, a six ton Low earth orbit, 1 ton Geostationery payload (quoting from memory, pardon errors) is very small compared to what NASA has done. So the building capable of assembling something the size of space shuttle cant easily move out of the way. But the could try to create a simpler building mainly to protect the vehicle without all that expensive jigs and assembly equipment that moves out of the way on the day of launch. They would not really like to have a fueled vehicle inside a building.
Thanks for the correction.
Japanese in the WW-II tried to use bats to carry bombs . Another great idea they had was to release hot air balloons filled with incindiary devices and release them into the jet stream. Two or three such bombs actually reached US mainland, and the fact was classified to prevent panic in USA. Finally when they carried tiny airplanes with bombs in their submarines to attack US mainland, they tried to bomb the forests. The Japanese military high command had such exaggerated reports of US and its forests, they believed that if these forests were set afire, it will burn the whole damned continent! So I am not surprised the Chinese are innovating trying to use piegons.