How can we, as a country and a people, advance on the world stage
in anything, when our system rewards people whether they be a
lawyer on their own or a person that hired a lawyer, or the
government wanting to take whatever they want from the citizens. We
often hear from the linux group refer to the newest programs as
"bleeding edge". How long before they are afraid of being sued and
stop working on new software?

If you develop something and it doesnt work, you get sued for tens
if not hundreds of millions of dollars. If a drug company makes a
new drug that cures millions and .05% of the recipients develop
complications
from taking the drug, by all accounts thats a goo d thing. But, the
small percentage that has problems will cause the drug company to stop
making that drug. And the vast majority suffer. And, the majority that
have good results have to pay hundreds of times more for the drug
because it doesnt work for everything for everybody.

I used to employ 74 people in a multimillion dollar company. After
being targeted by lawyers and the IRS, and spending 4 years in
court, I let everyone of them go and now work from home on my
computer, by myself.

How many other businesses have gone the way of mine- its too much
trouble to stay in business. I have bonafide ideas for inventions that
will help out and be profitable. However, my plans are to develop these
outside the US and let them be imported. Just like the chinese bearings.
If we use the chinese bearings and we crash, I doubt we would be
successful in a lawsuit against the bearing manufacturer.

I would venture to guess that you guys have experienced the same things
that I have- when you go to the parts store, do you tell them the parts
will be for an airplane? Have you been told yet that they wont
sell them to you if they are? I have. Our legal system has taken
the American Spirit away.

Its not just Obama, its all of it. And it only took us 200 years to
screw it up.

Kevin Alderman

I sympathise with your position Kevin, I too could hire more people
but the risk and effort is not worth the reward.
The ability to sue is a safeguard against profit over people, so
that people can't sell you junk that fails, or be reckless regarding
safety. Clearly the balance has toppled. The rules are designed to
protect everyone. That means if you are stupid enough to think that
the cruise control in your Winnebago will drive the vehicle while you
make a cup of coffee in the back, you will be able to sue when you
crash. ( In all honesty that person's I.Q.should qualify them for
reclassification as a primate and given free housing and food at a
nearby zoo, I bet a lot of people would pay to see what such a person
looks like). I doubt china has such restrictions, so they can sell
with-out the risk of legal ramifications only the risk of losing
customers. Once the competition has folded the only customers they
lose is 1) from death, 2) and those too smart to risk quality for
price.Without a quality alternative those in group 2, will be
condemned to group1). People dying doing stupid things used to be
called survival of the fittest ( apologies to creationists). Now its
called point the finger!!! If the smart people out there decided to
look for a loop-hole, sue, and retire instead of leading industry
we'll all be screwed. If Idiots can do it why should we work hard for
our money? I'm sure most of us have found ourselves in such a
position and resisted going with the trend, but relying on human
nature is a risky business indeed. To buy parts for aircraft use,
one needs to carry around a pile of disclaimers that state you have
been dully warned against use in aircraft, to excuse the seller from
responsibility. Or don't ask, don't tell! that works doesn't it ?

SKF have a reputation for quality, and hopefully they are responsible
for Q.C. on these items.

On another note I was watching a documentary called "China is
Coming"and they went to the steel making heartland of USA. whats
left. However a new plant has been set up to produce drilling pipe,
the sole purpose to prove, successfully, that the Chinese imports
were being sold below cost of production. As a result the Chinese
product has been banned. This seems to have stirred the pot as
Chinese subsidies are being used to force out competition. What else
are they subsidizing? What action will the US take, stay tuned!!! No
doubt Australia will follow suit, If our leaders possess the
intestinal fortitude. We have big export contracts with the chinese
don't you know, they're driving our economy don't you know. If they
don't want our Iron ore perhaps we could sell it to the resurgent
American industry, or hell, leave it in the ground it aint' goin'
nowhere and someone will want it sooner or later. Oh by the way a
weak $US makes our ore cheaper as it too is based on the $US. The
Chinese closed their borders to foreigners all that time ago because
their economy was crippled by the loss of the tea trade. Tea
cultures were taken to Ceylon(now Sri Lanka) and India, this
combined with the control of the opium trade, bankrupted the Chinese
economy. So one perhaps can understand what may be going on here, perhaps
revenge on western economies? For warned is for armed. $1.3 million
could have been spent on creating a united front for the remaining
companies to fight on. not funding the opposition.
Graeme Riley

The lawyers are not our largest problem. It is our current
president that does not understand what 15 trillion dollars in debt
is doing to this country. On the other hand maybe he does and he
wants to destroy this country. In that case perhaps he is so stupid,
naive and ignorant of recent history that he thinks he can replace
capitalism with communism. Socialism/communism never has worked and
never will work.

People will not work and feed other people that don't work. The
history of man is over one million years old. This attitude became
part of the hard wired human brain in the days of the cave man. They
had a saying in Russia "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay
us". One look around Russia proved it before the iron curtain came
down. I was there right after. The infrastructure and and once
beautiful buildings looked like the worst of the third world
countries. The cannon on the bow of the Aurora cruiser in Saint
Petersburg harbor that fired a shot at the winter palace to trigger
the Russion revolution has Russian a joke associated with it. "See
that cannon on the bow of that cruiser? That is the most powerful
cannon in the world. One shot from that cannon devastated Russia for
the next 70 years."

Paul Lamar


Another expression they have is; smart people, stupid machine. The idea
behind
this is you must use your head and think about what you are doing when
using
equipment. I suggested to them that we should have a similar expression;
stupid people, make smart machine to protect dummies.

Dale Davies



In the design community we say it a bit differently.  "You can make it
fool proof, but you can't make it sailor proof."

 Mark LaPierre