Edited Repost of an earlier comment I made

Nuclear power is only expensive because of the coal and enviromental lobbists

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=886&dat=19890326&id=dOdSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KYEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6879,6110878

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station

Inital proposed costs 2.8 Billion

Final Cost 5.8 Billion, 9.3 Billion with Financing added in

1.8 million Manhours wasted

Unreasonable costs attributed to APS management from the post construction independent audit:
50.34 Million

I talked once with a senior security administrator at APS who started out back in the day working security at the construction of that plant and he told me this story.

Due to regulations each contractor had to have the contents of their tool bag inventoried before they were allowed to begin work or leave work and had to log each item used and where it went.

Each item brought into the plant had to be listed on a sheet with each Item getting a line.

Example 1 box of screws
1. cardboard box screws with plastic window 50 count
2. plastic window from box of screws 50 count
3. 1 screw - from box of screws 50 count
4. 1 screw from box of screws 50 count
5. 1 screw from box of screws 50 count

I could go on but you get the point

This was in the days before computers were everywhere so it had to be hand written. At the end of the shift the same procedure was followed and the lists were compared and if there was any discrepency between the two and the contractors work log which recorded each item used and where it was used, a security guard had to accompany the contractor to locate the missing item and recover it.

Initally contractors were put on the clock before they entered security and taken off the clock after they exited security, so there was incentive for workers to pad their hours by bring in unnecessary boxes of screws, and ocassionally leaving an item in the facility so that they could milk overtime. eventually it was sorted out but the contractors constantly found ways to abuse the regulations to justify extra pay.

The plant at the time of the above story had no nuclear material present and the above work area that the contractors were being let into would never be exposed to nuclear material during operation (office building), but the regulation was in place purportedly to reduce the amount of potential nuclear waste by limiting and controlling the amount of material that went into the plant.

Until the regulations governing nuclear power plant construction are rationalized there will be little nuclear plant construction in the US and it will always be expensive and over budget. Nuclear is cheaper than current solar technologies and coal but its the ridiculous unnecessary regulations that drive up the cost. Corner cutting is a logical outcome of excessive and unnecessary regulation. Regulations need to be in place, but they need to make sense too.

Nuclear power is only expensive because of the coal and enviromental lobbists

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=886&dat=19890326&id=dOdSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KYEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6879,6110878

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station

Inital proposed costs 2.8 Billion

Final Cost 5.8 Billion, 9.3 Billion with Financing added in

1.8 million Manhours wasted

I talked with a Senior Security employee at APS once who started out back in the day working security at the construction of that plant and he told me this story.

Due to regulations each contractor had to have the contents of their tool bag inventoried before they were allowed to begin work or leave work.

Each item brought into the plant had to be listed on a sheet with each Item getting a line.

Example 1 box of screws
1. cardboard box screws with plastic window 50 count
2. plastic window from box of screws 50 count
3. 1 screw - from box of screws 50 count
4. 1 screw from box of screws 50 count
5. 1 screw from box of screws 50 count

I could go on but you get the point

This was in the days before computers were everywhere so it had to be hand written At the end of the shift the same procedure was followed and the lists were compared and if there was any discrepency between the two and the contractors work log which recorded each item used and where it was used, a security guard had to accompany the contractor to locate the missing item and recover it.

Initally contractors were put on the clock before they entered security and taken off the clock after they exited security, so there was incentive for workers to pad their hours by bring in unnecessary boxes of screws, and ocassionally leaving an item in the facility so that they could milk overtime. eventually it was sorted out but the contractors constantly found ways to abuse the regulations to justify extra pay.

The plant at the time of the above story had no nuclear material present and the above work area that the contractors were being let into would never be exposed to nuclear material during operation (office building), but the regulation was in place purportedly to reduce the amount of potential nuclear waste by limiting and controlling the amount of material that went into the plant.

Until the regulations governing nuclear power plant construction are rationalized there will be almost no nuclear plant construction in the US and it will always be expensive and over budget. Nuclear is cheaper than current solar technologies and coal but its the regulations that drive up the cost.

Where would we be if we hadn't funded defense in the past, lets see:

Nuclear Power - some of the first nuclear reactors were built as a part of a weapons research program

Computers - original research into computers was funded in a large part by the military for codebreaking

Internet - development largely enabled by military research

Global Positioning System - originally a military system

Cellphones - Enabled by military research into compact and low power radios

Jet Aircraft - Developed by military research

Aircraft in general - benefited from a large amount of military research throughout their entire history

Medicine - The treatment of trauma, infection, disease and various re-constructive surgeries have been greatly improved due to military research.

I could go on, but you get the point. Just about every technology that is used in modern society can trace some part of its lineage to military spending without which it may not have been invented, or invented as quickly or put into general use as the early research was too expensive and had such a poor ROI for anyone but the military to fund.

By all means lets stop funding military research as it has no practical use other than blowing stuff up.

Albert Bandura and the Bobo Doll experiment was the first to document a link between observing violent behavior and copying it, if you need more proof just look at the number of kids hospitalized from imitating Pro Wrestling and those Jackass shows.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHDNU&feature=related

The difference is that in WW2 the US Military was made up from draftees and in a generally popular war (its necessity was seen publicly) and the modern military is composed of volunteers and fights conflicts with less public support against vastly inferior forces. The political cost of the large numbers of casualties that good enough technology and attrition tactics would create justifies the high cost of equipment. Also considering the tight manpower requirements keeping each soldier alive as long as possible is necessary to maintain military capability as it is hard to get trained replacements. Quantity only counters Quality when the large numbers of troops are fiercely dedicated and willing to take large numbers of casualties to achieve an objective, and your opponent does not have the reserves to match your quantity.

If America got into a war where quantity mattered again and the draft was re-instituted, we would once again see "good enough" equipment in large numbers. Currently though, the the ability to utterly crush any opponent afforded by the expensive equipment limits nearly everyone from competing in arms races as they cannot afford either the quality or the quantity needed to counter American technology in a direct fight. This in itself has prevented major conflicts since WW2, the wars that have been fought since were comparatively small and localized conflicts.

America currently has a small but expensive military because manpower is harder to come by than money, and spending money to keep soldiers alive is cost effective as they are more difficult to replace than equipment. If a major war were to occur we would likely re-institute the draft, ramp up training and break out the cheaper technology as we could afford the political and military cost of higher casualties.

The problem that China will face if they want to counter American technology is that they will need both good enough technology and large enough numbers to directly oppose America. Both require money and large numbers of troops, Both of which China has. China has the ability to establish a defensively competitive military easily that could make any American military pressure ineffective and be able to locally project power without American interference. China doesn't have to directly compete with America, they simply have to make interference with their goals too costly short of another World War.

America spends so much on weapons because we want to have a big enough stick to prevent wars from developing by easily crushing all conceivable opponents, while China simply has to keep America off it's back long enough to gobble up interesting nearby tidbits.

America's military is currently designed to not be used, by intimidating potential opponents into diplomacy by its sheer superiority. While it can be used, its intended purpose is to prevent war as military action is politically costly in a democratic republic.

China's military is likely to be designed for practical use, with equipment cheap enough to be used up and just effective enough to stop its opponents. China has a political structure that could engage in opportunistic warfare and conquest.

America's military goal is to make war too costly to contemplate. China is becoming rich enough to think about it.

Stress is a killer, dealing with all the stupid people weakens the smart people and they die sooner. Stupid people are happier and have less stress as they off load it to those smarter than them thus living longer (those that don't win Darwin awards early on). Stupidity has advantages, it is why it will always be with us.

This would simply force TI to release a new calculator format and to have every textbook manufacturer change their key by key instructions as well as convincing the universities to blacklist all previous TI models due to the cracked firmware. Given their dominance in American schools this would be easy for them. If any firmware for the previous models isn't cracked they would probably leak cracks themselves and scare universities about cheating using the previous models. This would result in massive sales to both TI and the Textbook makers. You are right, Casio should do that, TI would love them for it.