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We are a machine company in the Pacific Northwest. We are still English rather than S.I. Our Vendors call it the "Boeing Effect". Most of their customers are metric. Only ones who do a significant amount of aerospace work tend to be english.
I would gladly refuse all Federal Dollars in my State, as soon as they turn over title of all the land in the State they own to the State Government.
Feds own 60% of the land inside my State borders. Much of that Federal "welfare" is just money the Feds are spending maintaining and operating on THEIR land.
Consider the money the Feds pay my State as Rent for operating Wilderness Areas, National Forests, National Research Laboratories and Military Bases for them.
It was a smoke grenade. It might have started a fire, but it wouldn't have brought down the plane.
Part of the reason for the US bias against diesel is the fuel taxes.
The US Government, and the States, have huge fuel taxes on diesel because "those big trucks do more damage to the roads". That could very well be true. But in my region, because of those taxes, diesel has been more expensive than gasoline for a long long time.
Most of our refineries have been modified to produce more gasoline than diesel now. If we were to switch the buying habits, they would have be be changed back.
We don't machine tungsten carbide in our shop, but we do make some pure tungsten parts
We buy it in 2' long rods from China. We have to buy a years worth at a time, lead time is so bad it is the only feasible way we have found to get any kind of price discount.
Cheaper titanium would be useful for us too.
You're an idiot. I am not saying that it should be news because of this person's status. I'm saying that it's being reported on because of it. I dont agree with that, in fact I abhore it. My whole fucking point was that it is wrong to dismiss this bad behavior of govt agents, and the level of wealth of the victim is and should remain wholly irrelevent.
I guarantee you that if Homeland Security took something from some destitute single mom, and the media got wind of it, they'd be all over it. Stop letting your envy get in the way of real life.
And you'd be wrong. This shit happens every day at the border and at airports, and even along roadways. People doing absolutely nothing wrong are pulled over and detained for hours, goods are confiscated, possessions are damaged. I personally know of one person who was pulled over in Colorado for speeding (4MPH over...) and sat on the side of the road with her 2 kids under 10years old for SIX FUCKING HOURS in 90+ degree heat while DEA tore her car apart. She politely pointed out a procedural error of the officer that pulled her over and the next thing you know there's a DEA officer there. Why? Who the fuck knows. He was chatting with my friend being all friendly and said he had a drug dog in training in his vehicle, and would it be ok to just use this as a training excercise and let the dog sniff around the car. Believing she had nothing to fear she agreed. The dog reacted to something, or more likely to nothing, and they treated it like a full on smuggling incident from that point on and had multiple state patrol and DEA vehicles there in minutes.
They never had any reasonable suspicion and never found anything, and you never heard shit about it even though it's been in letters to the editor for 3 major news agencies.
According to the US Supreme Court, an alert from a drug dog is "probable cause" and "reasonable suspicion" exists to pull her over for exceeding the speed limit by any amount
It was also much more true back in the days when 'yachts' were custom-made wood boats. I've been told that a wood boat takes 2 hours per week for every 10 feet of length to maintain. I think that number goes up a lot above 15 or 20 feet (4-6 meters). So back in the day, a boat of significant length required a full time crew just to keep it afloat. Fiberglass, to a lesser extent steel and aluminum, and relatively 'mass' production methods have rewritten the boat ownership equation.
I looked at buying a boat one time. The rule of thumb I was taught was about 10% of the boats value in annual maintenance and fees.
The Federal Government claims sovereign authority over everything over 500 ft. The Feds will continue to regulate this airspace, and if someone has a Federal license to operate a drone, it will override local regulations anyway.
Only thing this will do is bust people using unregulated space. We will probably hear about it being applied to kids strapping cameras to their RC airplanes.
More, the states are backing up employers far more than they did in past decades. I think it was Michigan that just became a "right to work" state. The employer need prove nothing - the employer rules, and you obey.
"Work at Will" and "Right to Work" are two different things. What you are describing is a Work at Will, not Right to Work. Michigan has been a Work at Will state for a long long time. But they do recognize the Public Policy and Implied Contract exceptions. If your firing would be in violation of an Official Public Policy, or break an Implied Contract with your employer, they can't fire you.
But you are correct, 43 of the 50 States are "Work at Will" States, and the employer has a lot of leeway to fire you for anything, if there isn't a contract in place. Right to Work makes it more likely that you won't have a contract to protect you.
My company doesn't do a lot of DOD work, but enough of what we do has a NOFORN or higher classification that we have banned all cell phones with integrated cameras from the building.
Even the company president and the sales manager leave their iPhones in their car.
We haven't tried the "destroy the camera" exception.
Our letter had the same patent numbers included in the Bluewave case. So I just assumed after getting their Asses handed to them once, they changed their name to try and fog up the landscape on how to beat them.
Our company got one of these about 6 weeks ago. We kept it, but after some research, we decided to ignore it, for now.
Project Paperless was losing a really big case, that might have got their patent rejected, when they filed to dismiss their lawsuit against someone last year. The defendent got one of the major Copier companies included as another defendent. Project Paperless dismissed the case and ran away and hid. Now they are back.
Our plans to do the same thing if they continue to come after us. Have HP and Microsoft included as defendents, because we are using the software and equipment as designed by both companies.
When I worked for a previous employer, I came up with an idea that was eventually patented. My name is on the inventory, the company was assigned the rights of use.
All patents are like that. The company is never the inventor.
I watched this week as Kodak sold their patent portfolio to a known patent troll. I wondered how we could stop this. Maybe a simple change in US Law.....
Rights could still be assigned to employers, but employers would not have the right to resell those assigned rights. If the company went bankrupt, all those assigned rights would roll back to the original inventor. Anyone else who wanted those rights would have to negotiate with the original inventor. If a Company was purchased by another Company, those assigned rights wouldn't transfer, The new company would have to renegotiate with the original inventory.
This would make it much more difficult/expensive to accumulate portfolios of patents, if they were not the company employing the true inventors.
Sometimes Grid Tie systems are designed that way for the protection of the utility workers, and emergency responders.
If you have a fire in your home/building, firefighters can be at risk for electrocution if they can't easily isolate the solar panels. Grid-tie was designed to automatically isolate the panels when the utility power was cut for this reason.
The other problem with the Disabled Treaty is it is modeled on the American's with Disabilities Act.
While the ADA has done a lot of good for disabled people in our country, I don't see any value to signing a Treaty which would essentially duplicate it. It would unnecessarily complicate the discussion about accessibility and what is required and what isn't.
Since we're all here, we must not be all there. -- Bob "Mountain" Beck