Samsonite

"Airbus Subsidies Have Destroyed Thousands of U.S. Jobs Author: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. Date: Monday, December 21, 2009 In a few days, the world's two major producers of commercial transports (jet airliners) will release their order and delivery results for 2009. The results will show that European champion Airbus delivered slightly over 50% of all planes built, while greatly exceeding American champion Boeing in the number of new planes ordered. It's been going this way pretty much since the decade began, because after 40 years of subsidies from European governments, Airbus now has a complete family of transports that can aggressively compete in virtually any capacity/range category with Boeing. In 1990, U.S. commercial transport producers had an 85% share of the global market and Airbus had a mere 15%. But as Airbus leveraged subsidies to aggressively price its planes and expand offerings, U.S. producers gradually lost ground. Lockheed exited the business in the 1980s. McDonnell Douglas effectively gave up in the 1990s. Boeing saw its market share fall from over 60% to under 50% in the current decade. As a result of these setbacks, tens of thousands of American aerospace jobs disappeared, and tens of billions of dollars in export earnings were lost. This posting isn't about why policymakers should take illegal subsidies into account in comparing the Airbus and Boeing planes being proposed as a future Air Force tanker. I'll talk about that some other time. It's about something more basic: a political system that is so insular and disorganized that it allows its great industries to be destroyed one by one through unfair, anti-competitive behavior without even noticing, much less acting. We have seen similar decay in steel, in electronics, in shipbuilding, in chemicals, in paper and in autos -- and the net result is that America now runs a trade deficit in manufactured goods of over a billion dollars per day. Needless to say, this has not been a positive development for the U.S. dollar's role a reserve currency. What bothers me, and no doubt Boeing, is how European governments have been allowed to deliberately and systematically destroy America's global lead in jet airliners without any real sense of outrage in Washington. The European governments and Airbus routinely issue dishonest statements about how Boeing gets unfair assistance too, but when the time came to lodge a case with the World Trade Organization, they didn't even allege that Boeing gets the kind of launch aid that has enabled Airbus to undercut Boeing on price. Instead, they referred to more modest types of aid that Airbus gets too. The lesson of all this is that when countries have been Number One in the world for as long as America has, it takes a while to grasp that the global alignment of power is changing. We were indifferent when Japan kicked American auto companies out so Toyota would have a protected home market, and we were barely aware when China built up its steel industry to five times the size of ours. But if we don't start getting our act together on demanding fair treatment of our exporters -- starting with Boeing -- then we shall not be Number One for much longer. Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D. http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/airbus-s...?a=1&c=1171

Well, I know it wasn't directed at me, but thought it important to point out Mr. Bush was not responsible for the long standing government policy of giving tax breaks to companies who move their manufacturing plants overseas. A policy I certainly don't agree with, BTW. The color of his skin has nothing to do with it. Attacking someone by calling them a racist, is typical of the left wing nuts who use that tactic to sidetrack any intelligent, rational discussion. If you don't totally agree with the feminazis, they call you a misogynist. If you don't agree with the fags and lesbians, they call you a homophobia. If you don't agree with Mr. Obama and the "democommunists" you are called a racist, and so on, and so on. Such people are incapable of seeing both sides of an issue and discussing the pros and cons of both points of view. As to the stock market, do you know the difference between a stock and a bond? The current news supplies the excuses used by 'big boys' to try and explain the daily movements of the market. Nothing happens that the bankers don't want to happen. They make their money before the rest of the world really knows what is going on. You can't beat the house, and that is the reason the market is called, "The gentlemen's Las Vegas."

That has been going on since the 1960s, if not the '50x, and it was started by some boneheads at Foggy Bottom (The State Department). I'm not even going to start about OneBigAssMistakeAmerica.

Well, as usual, you don't know what you are talking about. (I was going to say you still have your head up your ass, but that wouldn't be nice. ) They are called "test flights" for a reason. Get it, there wacky? "Test" flight. Tuesday's flight of the second "TEST" plane had a problem with a landing gear door and the problem was resolved. Details here: http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightbl...ve-noticed.html The first "TEST" flight was cut short by two hours due to the weather. They couldn't even find enough good weather to fly straight and level for the required distance.

Why does a company as large as mickeysoft feel they have to steal?! With all the people on their payroll you would think someone would come up with an original idea every now and then, eh? Here we go again: "Court bans sale of Word; Microsoft promises fix Reuters By JESSICA MINTZ, AP Technology Writer – Tue Dec 22, 6:42 pm ET SEATTLE – A federal appeals court ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling its Word program in January and pay a Canadian software company $290 million for violating a patent, upholding the judgment of a lower court. But people looking to buy Word or Microsoft's Office package in the U.S. won't have to go without the software. Microsoft said Tuesday it expects that new versions of the product, with the computer code in question removed, will be ready for sale when the injunction begins on Jan. 11. Toronto-based i4i Inc. sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool in the popular word processing program. The technology in question gives Word users an improved way to edit XML, or code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document's contents. A Texas jury found that Microsoft Word willfully infringed on the patent. Microsoft appealed that decision, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Tuesday upheld the lower court's damage award and the injunction against future sales of infringing copies of Word. Michel Vulpe, founder and co-inventor of i4i, said in a statement that the company is pleased with the decision, calling it "an important step in protecting the property rights of small inventors." Microsoft said it has been preparing for such a judgment since August. Copies of Word and Office sold before Jan. 11 aren't affected by the court's decision. And Microsoft said it has "put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature" from versions of Word 2007 and Office 2007 that would be sold after that date. "Beta" or test versions of Word 2010 and Office 2010, expected to be finalized next year, do not contain the offending code, the software maker said. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said it may appeal further, asking for either a rehearing in front of the appeals court's full panel of judges or in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. ___ Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett in Washington contributed to this report. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091222/ap_on_...291cnRiYW5zc2Fs

It was all fairly well documented in a PBS Specal called "The Triumphs of the Nerds." If you can't find a copy you can rent it from Netflix. The story was also ran with interviews, as was done in "The Triumphs of the Nerds," with people who were actually involved, on a PBS show by the name of, 'Computer Chronicles." Not quite. The head of IBM knew that because of their huge bureaucracy it would takes years to get anything done and commissioned a hand full of his employees to "do it on their own" almost as if it were a "secret project." IBM built their own PCs, but they did it with off the shelf parts. IBM is and was headquartered in Armonk, New York. The PC project once it was given the green light, was headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM, thinking microsoft did operating systems, made the first trip to Seattle. I'll give gates this, he told IBM they did not have an operating system and sent IBM to Digital Research who was headquartered in Monterey, California. Pacific Grove, California, actually. Gary Kildal was not there when the meeting first started, but by the time he arrived his wife and the company attorney had already refused to sign the disclosure form. iBM went back to microsoft and gates, not one to miss an opportunity told IBM they would get an operating system. It was called Quick and Dirty Dos and was written by Tim Paterson, an employee of Seattle Computer who admitted on screen he used Digital Research's CP/M documentation as his guide line. The narrator, actually the guy who wrote "The Triumphs of the Nerds," put two monitors side by side and shows you that other than changing the prompt and the name, there were no differences between what became known as ms-dos and CP/M. When IBM sold the first PCs, they gave the buyer the option of either ms-dos or Digital Research's CP/M. ms-dos was priced at $40.00. CP/M was priced at... around $240.00. Digital Research had nothing to do with that pricing policy and it came as a complete surprise to them. As a result of such a wide difference in the price, well, as they say, the rest is history. He has admitted that. It was during a, IIRC a "60 Minutes" interview. The softball question was to inferred that if gates hadn't made his fortune in software he would have done it some other way. His response was a flat, no. He basically said he was in the right place at the right time or it never would have happened.

ZA002 is Airborne! ZA002 took to the skies at approximately 9:10 PST from Paine Field in Everett, Washington after completing three taxi runs. At the controls is Capt. Randy Neville, accompanied by Capt. Mike Carriker in the right seat. Follow the latest developments on the first flight of Boeing 002 Experimental on twitter by following me and the #787FT hashtag." http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/

There have been times when I've thought of giving up and becoming a microsoftie Kool-Aid drinker like one poster in this thread (not you), but when so moved I boot over to windows and it only takes about 20 minutes and I'm "cured." Once you have set up and ran a good Linux system and, therefore, have at hand something to compare ms-windows to, it becomes painfully obvious ms-windows is an inferior operating system. There are alternatives to the microsoft monopoly and there is very little done on a windows machine that can't be duplicated on a Linux box or a Mac, even if that means running windows in a virtual machine on your Linux or Mac desktop. For example, while HP supplies Linux drivers for their "All-In-One" office products and their standalone printers, they do not, for whatever reasons, provide Linux drivers for their standalone scanners. As the HP prosperity software that came with my scanner does a better job than the generic Linux scanning software (this just applies to this one particular model) I have XP running in a virtual box (machine) on my Slackware64 Linux/KDE desktop. XP thinks it is a separate box on a network, but it is running on the Linux desktop as another application. OpenSUSE Linux (11.2 is the current version) would be a good choice for ms-windows users who would like to try Linux. Like most Linux distributions it can be downloaded for free from the Internet. http://www.opensuse.org/en/ PCLinuxOS is a more multimedia oriented distribution and very popular. http://pclinuxos.com/ If you would like to get under the hood (bonnet) and learn Linux then you would enjoy Slackware Linux. The oldest and still active Linux distribution available. http://www.slackware.org

ZA002 to fly December 22nd, weather permitting By Jon Ostrower on December 21, 2009 7:40 PM | Boeing has confirmed that ZA002 (N787EX) will fly around 845 AM PST from Everett on Tuesday, December 22nd. At the controls will be Captain Randy Neville and chief project pilot Captain Mike Carriker. Neville will fly left-seat for this second 787 flight that will see the aircraft flown from Paine Field to Boeing Field as part of a quick ferry flight from the factory site to the flight test center. The weather at the time of takeoff is slated to be partly cloudy and 37 F, 3 kt winds from the SSW with a 20% chance of rain, significantly better than the window that allowed ZA001 to take off on December 15. ZA002, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, is the second of six flight test aircraft participating in the flight test campaign. The Future of Flight will open the Stratodeck viewing area overlooking the airport beginning at 8 AM to view the flight." http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/

The question then becomes, why, when there are alternatives?

Look up a Open Source package called, "Truecyrpt."

Not quite correct. There are programs that will "scrub" the disk. it is matter of how many times it "writes" over the previously used space. After enough passes, about seven should do it, and it is impossible to read what may have once been written to each sector. If your files are encrypted and they are not "open" when someone tries to run COFEE, they will not have access to those files. There are several encryption methods available that would take a modern mainframe about 128 years to crack, if then. Now, law enforcement might try to force you to give up the password, but I guess that is a decision one would have to make if they ever found themselves in that position. As baht_miser has suggested, don't put anything on your hard drive that could cause you trouble.

microsoft said? microsoft said??!! So you are assuming a company with their track record is telling the truth and the victim of their crime is not?

It is just amazing that there is absolutely nothing in this universe, and, perhaps, beyond, of which you are not knowledgeable and, in turn, able to enlighten we mere mortals with an such authoritative insight.

Could you please be kind enough to provide a link to that information? Sounds similar to the time mickeysoft bought "Quck & Dirty Dos," which, in turn, was nothing more than a plagiarized copy of Digital Research's CP/M.

It's not the first time. Think of Stac Electronics, their product 'Stacker' and m$-dos 6.0.

If you thought you were secure because you have password protected or encrypted your files, think again! Ignore the what is said about "DECAF" and notice take note of what it says about COFEE. More on COFEE here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Onli...dence_Extractor http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009...ome-decaf-1.ars "Protect yourself from COFEE with some DECAF (Updated) Two developers have created "Detect and Eliminate Computer Assisted Forensics" (DECAF). The tool tries to stop Microsoft's Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), which helps law enforcement officials grab data from password-protected or encrypted sources. By Emil Protalinski | Last updated December 15, 2009 7:00 PM Text Size Decrease Text Size Increase Text Size Print this article Leave a comment In response to Microsoft's Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), which helps law enforcement officials grab data from password-protected or encrypted sources, two developers have created "Detect and Eliminate Computer Assisted Forensics" (DECAF), a counter intelligence tool designed to thwart the Microsoft forensic toolkit. DECAF monitors the computer it's running on for any signs that COFEE is operating on the machine and does everything it can to stop it. More specifically, the program deletes COFEE's temporary files, kills its processes, erases all COFEE logs, disables USB drives, and even contaminates or spoofs a variety of MAC addresses to muddy forensic tracks. It can be told to disable almost every piece of hardware on a machine and delete pre-defined files in the background. The 181KB DECAF program even has a 'Spill the cofee' mode in which it simulates COFEE's presence to give the user an opportunity to test his or her configuration before actually using it. Source code for DECAF has not been made available, since the authors fear it will be reverse engineered, making it unclear what else the tool might be doing and whether or not it is completely safe to use. DECAF's developers say future versions of the program will allow computer owners to remotely lock down their machine via text message and e-mail once they detect that it has fallen into law enforcement hands and even send out notifications to other parties in the case of an emergency. The plan is to make DECAF's next release more light-weight, possibly having it run in the form of a Windows service. COFEE, a suite of 150 bundled off-the-shelf forensic tools that run from a script, was created by Microsoft to help law enforcement officials gather volatile evidence that would otherwise be lost in traditional, offline forensic analysis. Officers can run the script in the field from a USB stick, before the computer is brought back to the lab, letting them grab data from password-protected or encrypted sources. The forensics tool works best with Windows XP, but Microsoft is working on a new version of COFEE for next year that fully supports Windows Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft first revealed the 15MB tool back in April 2008, and in April 2009, the company announced that it will aid global law enforcement in fighting cybercrime by providing COFEE free of charge to 187 countries, distributing it through Interpol. Microsoft managed to keep the existence of it quiet until November 2009, when pirates decided it was time to leak the tool so that people other than just government crime-fighters could use it. Weeks later, Microsoft started issuing takedown notices to multiple websites that hosted the tool. It's unclear whether Microsoft will react to the fact that there's now software that aims to render COFEE useless. Update Apparently, it was all just a stunt. All copies of DECAF have been disabled. The official site, DECAFme has more information."

I've been saying for years that microsoft has begged, borrowed, or stolen nearly everything they have ever done, and the thieving bastards have done it again: ************** Plurk: Microsoft went to great lengths to steal code Plurk has issued an official response to Microsoft's apology, and it isn't pretty. The startup is hinting that it wants to hold Redmond accountable. By Emil Protalinski | Last updated December 17, 2009 9:28 AM Plurk has issued an official response to Redmond's apology for stealing Plurk's code for use in the microblogging service Juku. The startup isn't ruling out taking the software giant to court. "We are still thinking of pursuing the full extent of our legal options available due the seriousness of the situation. Basically, Microsoft accepts responsibility, but they don't offer accountability." Earlier this week, Plurk accused Microsoft of stealing about 80 percent of its code to create the microblog Juku for MSN China. Redmond responded by pulling the site down and starting an investigation. So far, Microsoft has "acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied," though it blamed a vendor for doing the stealing, which was "in clear violation of the vendor's contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft's policies respecting intellectual property." Plurk further explained that it has only been around for two years, still doesn't have a marketing department or a sales department, and that all capital is put toward development. The startup even offers open source code for some parts of its efforts. After trying to win over the reader by showing how small, but hard-working the company is, Plurk gets serious again. Apparently, Microsoft went to great lengths to the steal the code, according to Plurk: "This event wasn't just a simple matter of merely lifting code; due to the nature of the uniqueness of our product and user interface, it took a good amount of deliberate studying and digging through our codes with the full intention of replicating our product user experience, functionality, and end results." Microsoft then had the advantage of its huge marketing budget for promoting its "innovative product" while Plurk stood by the wayside. At least Microsoft's huge mistake is giving Plurk a ton of free publicity. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009...-steal-code.ars

The first ones are scheduled to be delivered to ANA by late next year (2010). Neither China Air or EVA are on the list of airlines that have placed direct orders with Boeing for the 787. They might lease them, but unlikely as they both usually buy directly from Boeing. EVA has been buying the Boeing 777-300ER to replace their passenger versions of the 747s. China Air has purchased several 747-400s over this last decade. In fact, I believe they took delivery of the last 5 passenger versions of the 747-400s ever made, and a dozen or more of the freighter version, so they are not in any hurry to buy new long haul aircraft.

I just looked it up and they use American Airlines from Orlando to LAX.

Orlando? They don't fly to BKK from Orlando, do they? What airline did she use to make the connection on the West Coast?

Holy Nonsense, Bullshit Man! Airbust wouldn't even exist if it wasn't being supported by Spain, France, Germany, and England. Regardless of what spin you want to put on it Airbust has been taking illegal subsidizes. They couldn't have built the a380 otherwise and they are asking for more to build the a350. If it were a level playing field Airbust would have folded years ago. Let's see what happens if the WTO pulls the rug out from under the Airbust magic act.

I've flown China Air (Taiwan) many times and while they can't come close to Singapore Air, they are better than JAL, IMHO. Nothing fancy, but they have always been on time and have always been willing to make any changes I desire and they do it with a smile, unlike to some of the others airlines.

If you can't afford one, give me your paypal account number and I'll deposit enough so you can buy a good dictionary.

"DATE:18/12/09 SOURCE:Air Transport Intelligence news Boeing hails WTO warning by Congress By Stephen Trimble Boeing has praised 125 US lawmakers for signing a letter urging the US government to take action after the World Trade Organization (WTO) releases an "imminent" final ruling against Airbus. The brief letter, spearheaded by Representatives Todd Tiahrt, of Kansas, and Norm Dicks, of Washington, was sent to President Barack Obama. "Our policies should not reward foreign governments or companies that benefited from illegal subsidies," the letter says. "When the WTO's final ruling in this matter confirms U.S. claims that Airbus products were illegally subsidized, we will be committed to ensuring this principle is upheld." In a separate news release, Boeing said the WTO decision could be reached soon. An interim ruling on 4 September reportedly found that Airbus accepted illegal subsidies to launch the A380. Boeing's statement warned that Airbus wants to use the same practices to finance the A350. "We look forward to working with Congress to ensure this matter of principle and of important policy is enforced," Boeing says. The European Union is waiting for an interim ruling from the WTO in a case that accuses of Boeing of accepting illegal subsidies from the US government." http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/...y-congress.html