I am glad not everyone shares your viewpoint. This is an entire industry still in its infancy. Using a strategy like selling rich people seats so they can be the first ones up there is perfectly satisfactory to get the technology developed and bring costs down an open it up to a wider audience. It's not a zero sum game.
No offense, but "the goal" was achieved decades ago. These people died for the profit of shareholders, not some "goal" of space flight which has been going on for half a century.
The goal of commercial manned spaceflight was already achieved decades ago? Odd. I seem to have missed it.
CVS is giving up less than 2% of it's total sales by dropping tobacco while they are growing sales overall by 10+% a year.
It does not have a significant effect on their corporation.
Is that loss just the tobacco sales, or does it include the loss of all sales by smokers? There is a difference.
Part of the US credit card fee of ~3% or so is to cover fraud. When your banks switched to EMV, did they reduce the fees at all to compensate or are they taking the reduced risk of fraud as profit?
Yeah, that is so much easier.
There must be something wrong with me. Not once have I ever purchased something in a store and thought, "Gee, conducting that transaction was incredibly difficult. I wish someone would make an easier way to pay for this bag of groceries than this complex and difficult process of swiping a credit card."
In the name of progress:
In the beginning people counted out change in chickens and goats, or other favors.
Then came currency, where change was counted out in pennies and dollars.
Then came bank checks, which were convenient, but took time to write out.
Then came credit companies with a mechanical swipe tool in carbon copy. Too slow: add convenient swipe and sign. Gosh, who uses checks, they take forever!?
Finally comes touchless. Precious seconds are saved! No swipe, no sign, no finding a pen - just touch phone/device and authenticate with it.
This probably saves a few seconds, and potentially adds important network security. Hopefully your phone doesn't run out of power or criminals don't find a loophole through the extra third parties.
Personally, I still prefer cash wherever possible with credit card as secondary. Lots of small companies give a cash discount if you ask...
7) In the US, at least, a credit card company provides certain financial protections that banks do not. Generally it is far easier to recover funds stolen by theft if a credit card was used than a bank account debit. A credit card expenditure is not your money and federal law prohibits companies from passing on unauthorized transactions to you (there is a minimum that may vary depending on credit company no more than $50, I believe). Fully-paid credit accounts generally have zero fee/interest, as well.
Credit theft has happened to me a few times (one stolen and used at a gas station, another series of foreign transactions, incorrect charge at a restaurant, etc) and I paid $0 of the contested amount, without any reduction of my existing/liquid funds. If I had used a debit card, I don't even know the recovery process but it certainly wouldn't be free in the short term. Liquid money at a bank is spent until refunded, unable to be spent on other things in the interim.
In several ways
1)Debit cards don't build credit history. This makes it hard to get a car or house loan at good rates.
2)Credit cards have 0% interest if you pay at the end of the month every month.
3)Debit cards do not earn you interest. If you have an interest checking account (rare, and usually such a low rate that its a joke, sub 1% in most cases), you earn that money regardless of if you have or use a debit card.
4)In the US, many purchases such as hotel, rental car, and gas put a hold on your account for more money than the actual charge. This hold goes away once the car is returned/hotel is checked out/a few days (for gas), but in the meantime that's additional money you can't access.
5)Emergencies/hard times. Sometimes shit happens. You may lose your job and run low on cash. You may have a series of car and house repairs. Its always a good idea to have an additional emergency fun you can call on for short term cash.
6)Your bank may put a hold on your debit card for suspicious activities. In that case, your card is useless. Having a backup is always a good idea. There's been several times this has saved my ass when traveling.
Why upgrade, Windows7 does everything I need.
Good for you. However, you won't be too happy when you get a new machine that doesn't come with anything other than 9. Or when your windows 7 drivers need an update to fix a bug or add a feature and the only available ones are for Windows 9. Or you want that snazzy new program and it's minimum requirements are Windows 9.
Like it or not, the world moves on. If standing still works for you then more power to you.
XP still works for me. There is no downside. Snazzy new features don't improve my efficiency at work.
I agree, when a computer breaks and we have to get Windows 7 because we are forced to, a painful upgrade period occurs because the software never seems to work on the new OS. There is no advantage except for the newer hardware computation power. Who cares about Windows 9?
What about industrial businesses? My company is just finally minimizing XP to only a handful of lab computers and ones necessary for legacy support such as our single remaining Windows 2k system. We are struggling to get one more system moved to Windows 7 (under the guise of a faster computer and therefore less time waiting on the computations) and the application just doesn't work on that OS yet. The vendor is working with us to find a solution, but it may take several months (if ever) because they licensed the software from someone else.
The computer is a tool to do RF measurements and calculations and prepare presentations. I just got my first VNA with no floppy drive and more than one USB port! That is a big event.
512GB with a max read/write speed of 90-95MB/s will take at least an hour and a half to transfer all of the data.
The basis for the inspectors complaint is, in large part, not that the plant is not capable of withstanding the quake, nor that the analsyis is faulty or incorrect, but rather that the licensing basis document has not been revised to require a higher peak acceleration design level. It is debateable whether such a would make any difference, since they are already required to analyze for the higher levels. Meanwhile, the concern is being handled through the appropriate processes.
I agree with your conclusion however I took away a different interpretation from TFA: the Hosgri fault was discovered during construction and not properly accounted for in the first place- making the comparison of the Shoreline fault to the Hosgri fault data questionable.
"Peck wrote that after officials learned of the Hosgri fault's potential shaking power, the NRC never changed the requirements for the structural strength of many systems and components in the plant."
They wasted a very valuable opportunity here. The jaws do not have razor sharp jagged teeth nor are either of the recipients over 7 feet tall.
Floating in space makes height somewhat irrelevant. Ability to chew through cables is obviously an advantage, though.
Yes it does. Any toleration of law breaking undermines the order of society.
Order of society flows from legitimacy rather than enforcement of law. While related the capability to enforce law is directly dependent on ability to obtain legitimacy.
Loss of legitimacy undermines the order of society. Unenforceable law erodes legitimacy.
Tolerance of law breaking is an important safety valve.
See the feedback loop?
If you need convincing you need only look into history of prohibition and war on drugs to see what happens when legitimacy is eroded.
Realities of environment in which people live matters. In extreme circumstance if enough people are desperate enough even normally universally agreeable rules against stealing can temporarily fall into the realm of unenforceable where the peoples only perceived choice is steal or starve/die. This is why governance is difficult and why zero tolerance is reserved for North Koreans, decapitated dictators and hypothetical alien overlords.
THIS. I wish I had mod-points.
"Cashless" is also a giant vacuum sucking service fees back to the banks and so on. Retailers pay a certain amount per transaction to a payment processor, even if you the customer don't pay directly. Think that doesn't come out of your pocket in the end through higher prices?
THIS. I can't believe everyone is so supportive of a cashless society when cash is the only transaction-free method of payment (also anonymous). Paying 3-5 percent convenience charge simply to not use cash boggles my mind. I often ask for a cash discount on large purchases and usually the merchant is quite eager.
Cash is king.
Ever heard of "moving"?
Wow. Moving to get better power quality to make the efficient light bulbs last longer is a great solution.
Ballasts go because of poor quality power, nothing more and nothing less (or putting a non-dimmable one on a dimmer circuit - same thing, just self-inflicted poor power quality).
Some people just have bad power quality. A product *should* be of high enough quality to deal with it. All you are defending is an elitist attitude and poor product designs.
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
