Well, that's one way to compete against Emirates I suppose...

denverpilot said:
It's an interesting side topic for sure.

We used to hear all of those thoughts in telecom and IT, too. Especially conventions or tradeshows. Some of them just won't die, but they're generally worthless unless they include one of two things anymore... training opportunities (fading - that is done remotely now too) and vacation destinations with a tax write off. COMDEX is a good example. It's been dead for decades. You used to really have to go. Literally no one needs to anymore.


--SNIP--

Which leads to the other important thing. Never be single-sourced. If you are, know it's a significant risk. Always. Companies change priorities on a whim. You might have been the invoice that made their nut and kept them alive for years and you just took a back seat to a whale. You can tell when you see it happening. An on site usually doesn't confirm it or deny it.
Click to expand...

Try that in Asia and fail.
Again, the majority of world's population (read: Asia and India) does not work the way Europe/US does.
 
mtuomi said:
Try that in Asia and fail.
Again, the majority of world's population (read: Asia and India) does not work the way Europe/US does.
Click to expand...

They'll catch up. No motivation to catch up because their labor costs are so much lower. It'll change. Always does. The tech will win eventually over wasting time on airliners.
 
denverpilot said:
They'll catch up. No motivation to catch up because their labor costs are so much lower. It'll change. Always does. The tech will win eventually over wasting time on airliners.
Click to expand...

Yep, give it 50 or so years. It's not just about catching up, it's cultural. They've been doing it like that for a few thousand years, unlikely it'll change quickly.
 
mtuomi said:
Yep, give it 50 or so years. It's not just about catching up, it's cultural. They've been doing it like that for a few thousand years, unlikely it'll change quickly.
Click to expand...

Try 500 years. Think about where Japan was culturally 50 years ago and whether they've really changed all that much.
 
deonb said:
Try 500 years. Think about where Japan was culturally 50 years ago and whether they've really changed all that much.
Click to expand...
Japan is about the MOST racist country I have ever been to. I have been told to my face "no round-eyes allowed" and then they actually laughed after they said that. Wow, just wow !
 
deonb said:
Try 500 years. Think about where Japan was culturally 50 years ago and whether they've really changed all that much.
Click to expand...

Well, they got toppled as the place to go for electronics manufacturing, for the most part. That says something about whether not adapting helps or hurts business.

The good news is, with various Asian countries already beating lots and lots of places in labor costs, their silly decisions NOT to be more efficient are actually helping those who compete against them. You don't want them figuring out videoconferences and lack of need to travel DoD in person meetings, because that would give them many many man-days worth of time back and they're already kicking serious butt.

Need that time to let their workers realize they want a better lifestyle out of all that work.
 
denverpilot said:
It's an interesting side topic for sure.

We used to hear all of those thoughts in telecom and IT, too. Especially conventions or tradeshows. Some of them just won't die, but they're generally worthless unless they include one of two things anymore... training opportunities (fading - that is done remotely now too) and vacation destinations with a tax write off. COMDEX is a good example. It's been dead for decades. You used to really have to go. Literally no one needs to anymore.

Some (usually those on well funded expense reports) think those style conferences are still "necessary" but you dig down and find out they're just eating fancy dinners on the company dime and the cost of the booth, the gear, a fleet of people to set it up and man it, the silly union folks to bolt it together on site and power it, and all of that, rarely pays off in a sale that covers it all. It works for new consumer goods because it gives the press somewhere to go.

I don't know what you make but maybe the in person demo. I don't know. It's really rare I can't figure out what a product does from its YT videos or the company website. Very rare.

I also get the concept of showing up in person to freak out a vendor but I can usually tell when they're screwing up from afar long before the visit. And they carefully stage who you'll be seeing and what you'll be seeing when you arrive anyway. Have seen that dog and pony show before. The boards they screwed up won't be sitting in a big pile being reworked when you arrive. They'll be hidden in a closet or the back dumpster. Haha.

Once they start lying to you or not answering direct questions on the phone, the relationship won't be fixed on site. Especially if they recommend you come out for a little steak and wine to discuss it. LOL.

Which leads to the other important thing. Never be single-sourced. If you are, know it's a significant risk. Always. Companies change priorities on a whim. You might have been the invoice that made their nut and kept them alive for years and you just took a back seat to a whale. You can tell when you see it happening. An on site usually doesn't confirm it or deny it.
Click to expand...

A lot of industries, I would fully agree with you. We manufacture equipment for fire and rescue. The face to face component, trade shows, conferences, and training, training, training, will never go away for us. They actually expand, change, and evolve, and for different reasons depending on what part of the world you're in. It's growth, with the small exception of regional trade shows and conferences that do not pull enough resources together to justify the cost to the exhibitors or the attendees.
 
Art VanDelay said:
Japan is about the MOST racist country I have ever been to. I have been told to my face "no round-eyes allowed" and then they actually laughed after they said that. Wow, just wow !
Click to expand...

Japan can be bad, but Korea is by far the worst.
It's not all about the race, it's about being an American.
I never had any issues, my wife and most of my American friends did.
 
TheTraveler said:
A lot of industries, I would fully agree with you. We manufacture equipment for fire and rescue. The face to face component, trade shows, conferences, and training, training, training, will never go away for us. They actually expand, change, and evolve, and for different reasons depending on what part of the world you're in. It's growth, with the small exception of regional trade shows and conferences that do not pull enough resources together to justify the cost to the exhibitors or the attendees.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I'm not even in that biz but I can name three top brands that departments use that would be hard to argue with even if they're slightly more expensive. I have been around public safety a bit, though.

This would be for standard/common stuff, not brand new tech and specialized gear though. I don't think the typical purchaser would need to travel anywhere to order those common items.

It's just not hard to find info on this stuff anymore. Not like it would have been when i was young. Or network with other departments. What used to take a paper letter typed on an IBM Selectric to ask a Chief you know in the next county over what he's using and what's working for him or her and their crews, is an email away now.

Yeah you might miss a deal on an off brand but you'd also miss the PR nightmare if that gear hurt someone.

And small departments would just talk to the larger department's staff who went anyway, the rural folk can't spend like they can on someone else's dime. Heck our volunteer department is driving all city hand-me-down trucks for that matter. Let the city folk pay to send people to Vegas on per diem and buy the new stuff so the rural department can get the hand me downs sooner.

It still didn't save this house up the road from mine. Total loss. VFD was on scene within minutes. Was already showing flame from both stories by the time they got there.

c083af81e94a051d03c4c6af019f968a.jpg
 
denverpilot said:
Interesting. I'm not even in that biz but I can name three top brands that departments use that would be hard to argue with even if they're slightly more expensive. I have been around public safety a bit, though.

This would be for standard/common stuff, not brand new tech and specialized gear though. I don't think the typical purchaser would need to travel anywhere to order those common items.

It's just not hard to find info on this stuff anymore. Not like it would have been when i was young. Or network with other departments. What used to take a paper letter typed on an IBM Selectric to ask a Chief you know in the next county over what he's using and what's working for him or her and their crews, is an email away now.

Yeah you might miss a deal on an off brand but you'd also miss the PR nightmare if that gear hurt someone.

And small departments would just talk to the larger department's staff who went anyway, the rural folk can't spend like they can on someone else's dime. Heck our volunteer department is driving all city hand-me-down trucks for that matter. Let the city folk pay to send people to Vegas on per diem and buy the new stuff so the rural department can get the hand me downs sooner.

It still didn't save this house up the road from mine. Total loss. VFD was on scene within minutes. Was already showing flame from both stories by the time they got there.
Click to expand...

I don't want to hijack. It's a deep subject, though.
 
denverpilot said:
Interesting. I'm not even in that biz but I can name three top brands that departments use that would be hard to argue with even if they're slightly more expensive. I have been around public safety a bit, though.

This would be for standard/common stuff, not brand new tech and specialized gear though. I don't think the typical purchaser would need to travel anywhere to order those common items.

It's just not hard to find info on this stuff anymore. Not like it would have been when i was young. Or network with other departments. What used to take a paper letter typed on an IBM Selectric to ask a Chief you know in the next county over what he's using and what's working for him or her and their crews, is an email away now.

Yeah you might miss a deal on an off brand but you'd also miss the PR nightmare if that gear hurt someone.

And small departments would just talk to the larger department's staff who went anyway, the rural folk can't spend like they can on someone else's dime. Heck our volunteer department is driving all city hand-me-down trucks for that matter. Let the city folk pay to send people to Vegas on per diem and buy the new stuff so the rural department can get the hand me downs sooner.

It still didn't save this house up the road from mine. Total loss. VFD was on scene within minutes. Was already showing flame from both stories by the time they got there.
Click to expand...
I can't speak to the FD stuff specifically, but for the larger cities the LEO side is very much about who you know, not the product itself (even in the days where the Batwing company was battling the two-letter guys in the radio stuff).

In a past life I bid consulting contracts and was told by one major market government group "we really haven't seen you before - after you bid a few more projects and we get to know you then we'll consider you".

Face-to-face and relationship are critical.
 
wsuffa said:
I can't speak to the FD stuff specifically, but for the larger cities the LEO side is very much about who you know, not the product itself (even in the days where the Batwing company was battling the two-letter guys in the radio stuff).

In a past life I bid consulting contracts and was told by one major market government group "we really haven't seen you before - after you bid a few more projects and we get to know you then we'll consider you".

Face-to-face and relationship are critical.
Click to expand...

Yeah I get it. Many people choose on emotion rather than merit. It's why TETRA never came to the States.

That system kicked P-25's ass up and down the street any day of the week and on its day off on Sunday, too. But buy gear from the French?! (Thales ..) or similar? Gasp. I'm "scared"...

The "personal relationship" true hard costs in public safety radio make those systems into the hundred million dollar boondoggles that they always are. No doubt.

Mother M *only* gets $100,000 every year for "software support" on what's essentially just a Unix box translating bitstreams and mixing them. (Zone controllers.) From every system out there.

Wandering far afield of the original topic here, but it's an interesting discussion.

I wonder if the TSA P-25 repeater is still unencrypted and not secured at DIA. LOL. Haven't listened or checked in a while. Always thought that was "brilliant" during the initial deployment. Hahaha. Two minutes with a receiver when there was traffic on it, and you had all the info you needed to program any P-25 radio to talk through it. Beat head here.
 
Nate is still a (quasi) "young pup". Yeah, information wasn't available back then like it is now. Go farther back. I'm a late 1939 model; yep, older than dirt. My formative years definitely were not filled with information the way they are now. We had to rely on our parents and teachers for news and information or go to the library (if there was one nearby) and check the Encyclopedia Britannica for information that was likely long out of date when it was published. It was a whole different world than today when a click of the mouse brings up timely options ( and a lot of BS to go with it, gotta separate wheat from chaff) we could only have dreamed of back then. The things we take for granted today were the fodder for science fiction movies. The news consisted of going to the local theater ans watching the news reels presented before the show began. Tell us old timers again how rough you young pups have it. The world turns; at the speed of information.
 
Norman said:
Nate is still a (quasi) "young pup". Yeah, information wasn't available back then like it is now. Go farther back. I'm a late 1939 model; yep, older than dirt. My formative years definitely were not filled with information the way they are now. We had to rely on our parents and teachers for news and information or go to the library (if there was one nearby) and check the Encyclopedia Britannica for information that was likely long out of date when it was published. It was a whole different world than today when a click of the mouse brings up timely options ( and a lot of BS to go with it, gotta separate wheat from chaff) we could only have dreamed of back then. The things we take for granted today were the fodder for science fiction movies. The news consisted of going to the local theater ans watching the news reels presented before the show began. Tell us old timers again how rough you young pups have it. The world turns; at the speed of information.
Click to expand...

T'is true, but I'm in the in-between demographic. We had the Encyclopedia Brittanica at home at first.

What I get a chuckle out of is when an old timer walks up and asks a question and I Google the answer for them. There's still a sub-set of folks who don't quite get it yet that information isn't as "scarce" as it once was.

But I can still rock a card catalog and the Dewey Decimal system if required. ;-)

I did get a chuckle out of the post that said people who couldn't afford smartphones if they had to pay full price up front for them, would miss them because they would miss "looking up the answer to something" on them at lunch during a discussion.

The vast majority of the time I see folks poking at smartphones during their lunch time, they're not looking up new or useful information or finding answers to their deep life questions. They're opening social media and being FED garbage information. And paying for the "privilege". Ha.

And I'm the first to admit I'm in that boat. I usually surf PoA at lunch. Hahaha. And many evenings.

(Although I do find there's a few posts that rise above the level of "the usual arguments" and certainly it's a notch above the crap most folks post on other social media outlets.)

Reddit has some gems also. And of course there's always 4chan. LOL.
 
Go to lunch with a friend and text each other across the table. My, how times have changed. :heli:
 
I know someone that still uses a flip-phone and has no inter st in a smart phone. After hearing a former three letter agency CTO today, I have no desire to use smart appliances.
 
wsuffa said:
I know someone that still uses a flip-phone and has no inter st in a smart phone. After hearing a former three letter agency CTO today, I have no desire to use smart appliances.
Click to expand...

Most new ones are just embedded Android.
 
Hurrah, we can go back to being treated like dirt for high prices on US carriers!
 
denverpilot said:
High prices? I'd have to go run the numbers, but domestic fares haven't kept up with inflation in a very long time.
Click to expand...

Emirates dont fly domestically. On the routes the do fly their is a huge difference.

E.g. SEA to JNB business class return:

EK: $4400 per person
AA: $7000 per person
 
deonb said:
Emirates dont fly domestically. On the routes the do fly their is a huge difference.

E.g. SEA to JNB business class return:

EK: $4400 per person
AA: $7000 per person
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Sounds like a ripoff at either price to me, but whatever.
 
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