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Comment Re:Very unlikely to be triggered in the field (Score 2) 250

If it ever happened on a plane, then it means that the maintenance was intentionally skipped. If they reach 248 days of continuous operation then a number of significant maintenance cycles have been skipped (some 23-25 inspection / maintenance cycles that generally require shutting down the electrical system). The generators in question are attached to the engines. The engines have a overhaul schedule that is shorter than 248 days of continuous operation. If they managed to reach this point, then the major maintenance cycles have been skipped and the engines are long overdue for a tear down inspection and overhaul. Any plane which could reach this point, 248 days of continuous operation missing all of the required maintenance; this is not a plane (or an airline for that matter) which anyone should be flying on.

You would think that if this situation was unlikely to ever happen in practice that the FAA wouldn't have deemed it necessary to issue an AD requiring that the GCUs be power cycled at intervals no longer than 120 days. You'd think they'd already be aware of required maintenance intervals that require powercycling the GCUs, and they waived the usual comment period before issuing the AD due to the perceived imminent danger.

Comment Re: I wish it had been dismissed on the merits (Score 1) 126

The government does give them our money. Kerosene is taxfree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

As of 2007, jet fuel (called "kerosene for aviation" by the IRS) is taxed at 21.9c/gal unless it is used for commercial aviation (airlines such as American Airlines and United Airlines and small chartered commercial jets). Because such commercial operations are subject to the federal transportation tax, they are subject to a reduced fuel tax of 4.4c/gal.

Comment Re:I wish it had been dismissed on the merits (Score 4, Insightful) 126

I've never understood why they won't transfer me to an otherwise empty seat on an earlier flight when I happen to be early for a connection. It would seem to be in their best interest to fill up the planes and push the "empty seat" to a later flight when they have a chance of selling it, but they never do offer me a free change, they always want to charge me an extra $50, so I just get a soda and wait it out.

They used to do that, I used have no problem fly standby on an earlier flight when I got there early. But then I guess they found out that it's convenient for passengers so it's something that they need to charge for because no one should get anything for free when flying.

Comment Re:'Hidden city' explanation (Score 1) 126

How does this work with checked luggage? Presumably your stuff won't be pulled from baggage if you aren't expected to get off in Chicago, but instead in LA.

Obviously, if you only have carry on luggage, that works fine.

I think that's implied -- if you check your bags to the destination on the ticket when you don't intend to travel to that city, then you deserve to lose your bags.

Comment I wish it had been dismissed on the merits (Score 4, Interesting) 126

Too bad it was just a procedural dismissal due to wrong venue and not due to the merits of the case.

United said such ticketing schemes violate its fare rules. For one thing, the tickets capture seats that will go unused, and an airline would have no way to sell those unused seats

Well, actually, they already *have* sold those seats -- to the person that bought the ticket and decided not to use the rest of it. But it's not true that they have no way to sell those seats -- if the flight is overbooked or full, then they'll fill the unused seat with a bumped or standby passenger. But if they want to be able to sell that seat before departure time, all they have to do is give the ticket holder a way to cancel that leg of the bookng, perhaps refunding a small percentage of the purchase price as an incentive to do so.

So it's not true that they have no way to sell the seats, they just don't want to do it.

Comment Re: when? (Score 1) 182

I'm suspicious of any argument resembling "nothing we do today needs X, so therefore nothing needs X, so therefore nobody needs X, so therefore nobody should [almost always with an implicit ~be allowed to~] offer it".

I can't even use a 2 gigabit connection at home,

Yes you can. You have a _6_ gigabit connection at home. It 's your SATA link. That's getting slow, these days.

I tried plugging my SATA cable into the cable box for faster internet and it didn't work -- plus that 1 meter cable length limitation means I have to sit on the floor in front of the TV to use it.

So I figured if SATA was good, then plugging it right into the PCI bus would be better, so I plugged the ethernet into my PCIe x16 bus so I could enjoy 120Gbit speeds. But that didn't work either.

What am I doing wrong? It's almost as if internet access and local system buses are completely different and incompatible.

Comment Re: when? (Score 2) 182

Nobody cares if you don't use it. There is demand for it so it's useful enough. Not to mention ISPs have been teasing us with fiber since the 90's.
It's like asking "who needs more than 1 gallon per minute water service at home?" It isn't up to you.

Who is asking for it? Where is this demand coming from?

I think your analogy is a bit off -- I already have a 20 gallon per minute pipe to my house. Maybe 100 gpm would be useful from time to time, I could understand paying for that. And maybe once a year when I'm filling my pool, 1000 gpm would be nice but certainly not worth paying extra for since i'd utilize it so rarely. But 2000 gpm? Who needs that, and what are they doing with it?

I can't even use a 2 gigabit connection at home, I have no 10 gig router or ethernet switch to plug it in to, and I doubt many residential users do. I primarily use the internet over Wifi, and I can "only" get around 200mbit from my Wifi (if I'm in the same room).

Comment Re:How about... (Score 1) 403

I hardly think "Can't use an Apple Watch" ranks very highly on the list of reasons not to get a tattoo since there's such an easy workaround -- don't buy an apple watch.

How about "Emergency services personnel can't use a pulse oximetry device on your tattooed skin in order to save your life following a car accident"?

The device that's being interfered with is a pretty standard non-invasive pulse ox device that happens to be built into the watch.

Maybe the paramedics should use a standard finger pulse-ox meter instead of an iWatch.

Comment Re:FSJ (Score 2) 403

The sensors on the Apple Watch and other devices use specific color range of light to detect blood flow through the skin. The tattoo ink can block it.
Yet another reason not to mark up one's body.

I hardly think "Can't use an Apple Watch" ranks very highly on the list of reasons not to get a tattoo since there's such an easy workaround -- don't buy an apple watch.

Comment Carpool (Score 1) 280

When I travel far enough to fly, I don't usually travel by myself, I'm usually on vacation with family or on a business trip with coworkers, so by adding just one person to the car, that makes driving and flying almost equivalent -- probably even moreso since I can drive from my house directly to my destination instead of driving 20 miles to the airport on one end, then another 30 miles on the other end.

Comment Re:Any wage? (Score 1) 636

If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us,

I don't think you understand the concept of "market rate". If you have to pay more to get qualified candidates, then that higher rate is the market rate.

Well that's *a* market rate, but not a fair market rate. If the intention is to use scarcity to drive up wages without bound, then at least my company is large enough that we have a better option -- open up an offshore research center, move half (or even all) of the development team there and do our offshore hiring from there.

Comment Re:Any wage? (Score 1) 636

My company hires a lot of H1-B's (typically PhD's from various European countries), and while we pay a good salary, we can't find enough american workers to fill our open positions. If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us, but our salary costs are already high, and paying several times market rate would probably drive the company into the ground.

Your post is anecdotal evidence that H1B visas are depressing market rate. Maybe you should figure out why people won't come work for you at what you consider to be "market" rate.

A large part of it is because we're a startup, and though we can match the salary of Google, Facebook, Apple, etc, we don't have the big name, nor the stability that comes from working for one of the big guys. We've got several Executives that are well connected in the industry (and came from Google and Apple), and they have a pretty good idea of what the big companies are paying and we know we're competitive with the salaries.

We're pretty strong at college recruiting, and have all the interns we can handle as well as recruiting new graduates that are doing research in our field, but we still need more senior people for some roles, and these are hard to find,a lot of them are already locked up at the big companies (Google, Apple, investment banks, etc) and aren't interested in switching jobs.

H1B fees and legal expenses are not cheap, nor is paying international relocation expenses for a candidate and his/her family, so we're certainly not saving money by hiring H1B's.

Comment Any wage? (Score 1) 636

How can any company have a position which "can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position"?

With a high enough salary, any position can be filled, so unless companies are expected to get into bidding wars and offer multi million dollar salaries to compete for one of the american workers that could fill the position, how can such a policy be enforced? My company hires a lot of H1-B's (typically PhD's from various European countries), and while we pay a good salary, we can't find enough american workers to fill our open positions. If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us, but our salary costs are already high, and paying several times market rate would probably drive the company into the ground.

Comment Re:Only 8% HF Ops? (Score 1) 141

Surprising that so few hams in Nepal are setup for HF operations. I wonder how many HF ham stations there are in the U.S. One can't tell by license class. I know that in a real emergency my QRP FT-817 is not going to be the most reliable but until I can fork out for some bigger solar panels and batteries to run an amp, 5 Watts is going to be what I've got. With morse code that's enough to work the world, sometimes. Beats the hell out a walkie talkie.

I've been a licensed ham for almost 20 years and don't do HF because I don't find it to be very fun or interesting - making a contact 1000 miles away has lost its allure (to me) in the internet age. I do participate in local disaster drills using VHF/UHF, but am not really interested in HF to get out of the area. Though my club dues do help pay for their HF equipment, and I'm glad that we do have members interested in HF. I can run a VHF/UHF crossband repeater from my car for an unlimited time thanks to solar, but I can't reach much farther than I can see since I don't do HF.

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