So, you have evidence that Democrats, as a group, are any less concerned about the inherent dangers of all-electronic voting systems than the population as a whole?
I'm a Democrat. I voted for Obama. I'm glad he's President. (Or rather, I'm glad McCain isn't President; not quite the same thing, but it's what we've got.) And now that we have a Democrat in the White House, I think it is exactly as important that we have a trustworthy election process as it was when had a Republican. I don't want anyone rigging elections, in favor of any candidate of any party.
No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.
In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism. There are a lot of us who still care about the future of our country.
Sure, but these lucrative post-government positions aren't a matter of government policy. What you describe is more equivalent to Company Y hiring the former CEO of Company X after he runs Company X into the ground -- which happens all the time too, of course. But there's nothing for any government employee, from the lowliest clerk all the way up to the President, which comes anywhere near to golden parachute obscenity which has become SOP in the "efficient, competition-driven free market" I keep hearing so much about.
The culture of golden parachutes developed long before the current bailout mess. So did the practice of investors and boards of directors rewarding executives for running companies into the ground. For the last couple of decades, at least, one of the best ways to make a fortune has been: take over a failing company, lay off a bunch of workers, take a bonus for "improving the bottom line," sell stock at an artificially inflated value, and then, when it becomes apparent that the company is headed for a crash, walk away with a large chunk of whatever money is left.
Private companies pay executives for the associated risks for being executives.
Risk? What risk, exactly? Company does well: executives get fat bonuses and their stock options increase in value. Company does badly: executives get giant golden parachutes. There is no penalty for failure at the boardroom level.
Government managers don't routinely get hundred-million-dollar golden parachutes for losing billions of dollars and costing tens of thousands of people their jobs, either. If you really think industry is any better at rewarding good performance and punishing bad performance, you're delusional.
No, it makes perfect sense. You own a company called Symbolics, and you have the feeling this commercial-internet thing is going to be big. So you choose your domain name to represent the face you want to show to the internet at large: symbolics.com, the commercial site for Symbolics.
IOW, it's the domain system working the way it's supposed to. Before domain name squatting. Before the idea that a name alone, rather than the thing which the name is supposed to represent, embodies actual value becoming firmly embedded in the public mind. Before the sex.com ripoff, before Mike Rowe Soft, before all the other domain name silliness we've all seen far too much of.
I suppose you think he should have registered IBM.com and held out for piles of cash. Or maybe he should have paid a consulting firm another pile of cash to come up with some vaguely pleasant-sounding and utterly meaningless collection of syllables and stuck ".com" on the end. Or something.
Some people actually remember what the domain name system is for.
Catch the jaw just right with a solid blow and just about anyone will go down.
But with bare hands, if you're the guy who landed the jaw shot, you won't be able to take advantage of it -- you'll be too busy cradling your broken hand and screaming.
I guess boxing gloves cause brain damage, too? Or maybe it's boxing that causes brain damage, and the gloves reduce the risk...
Actually, no; boxing gloves really do increase the risk of brain injury, because they protect the hand a lot better than they protect the head. It's pretty rare to hit someone hard enough with your bare fist to cause brain damage; the skull is tough enough that your hand will probably break before the other guy's head does, and experienced fighters know this. Note that the gloves worn in MMA competitions such as UFC are about half the size of those worn in professional boxing, and offer correspondingly less hand protection; the much, much lower rate of brain injury among MMA fighters compared to boxers is not a coincidence.
Not directly relevant to the helmet issue, I know, but I thought it had to be said. "Fighting with gloves is safer" is a dangerous myth.
If you don't understand what an awesome nerd accomplishment building your own Civil War cannon is... you really don't have any business calling yourself a nerd.
The employer is responsible for treating employees like human beings. Firing someone over something like this without even talking to her about it first is a stupid, evil thing to do, and $17,000 is a tiny, tiny penalty for such an offense.
Since the beginning of the Cold War, people have kept predicting the end of dogfighting... and they've kept being proven wrong.
More generally, people keep predicting that whichever type of war is being fought at the moment is the future of warfare and all other types are obsolete... and they keep being proven wrong.
There's still a lot of work for human pilots, and there probably will be for at least another generation. The first UAVs that can handle manned-aircraft combat tasks are just now being deployed, and in many ways they're Not There Yet. Are you suggesting that air forces should stop training pilots now on the assumption that drones will take up the slack?
You know, at this point there are probably about a thousand times as many people whining about this supposed attitude on the part of Mac users than there are Mac users actually displaying it.
Really, it depends on the school. My daughter's in a PG County magnet program and she's learning a hell of a lot -- if I have any worries about the program, it's that they may be working her too hard, and believe me, I have pretty high standards for what that means.
Show me the Apple ad where they've said "Macs are immune to viruses." Please. Find the ad where that statement, or an equally strong statement ("Macs are less likely to get viruses" and "Windows PCs get more viruses than Macs do" don't count) appears, and post a link. I dare you.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's a Tolkien reference. IOW, they really are geeks.
So, you have evidence that Democrats, as a group, are any less concerned about the inherent dangers of all-electronic voting systems than the population as a whole?
I'm a Democrat. I voted for Obama. I'm glad he's President. (Or rather, I'm glad McCain isn't President; not quite the same thing, but it's what we've got.) And now that we have a Democrat in the White House, I think it is exactly as important that we have a trustworthy election process as it was when had a Republican. I don't want anyone rigging elections, in favor of any candidate of any party.
No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that ... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.
In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism. There are a lot of us who still care about the future of our country.
No, there should be a software paterm term of 100 years ... the prison term for anyone who tries to file a patent on mathematics.
Sure, but these lucrative post-government positions aren't a matter of government policy. What you describe is more equivalent to Company Y hiring the former CEO of Company X after he runs Company X into the ground -- which happens all the time too, of course. But there's nothing for any government employee, from the lowliest clerk all the way up to the President, which comes anywhere near to golden parachute obscenity which has become SOP in the "efficient, competition-driven free market" I keep hearing so much about.
The culture of golden parachutes developed long before the current bailout mess. So did the practice of investors and boards of directors rewarding executives for running companies into the ground. For the last couple of decades, at least, one of the best ways to make a fortune has been: take over a failing company, lay off a bunch of workers, take a bonus for "improving the bottom line," sell stock at an artificially inflated value, and then, when it becomes apparent that the company is headed for a crash, walk away with a large chunk of whatever money is left.
Private companies pay executives for the associated risks for being executives.
Risk? What risk, exactly? Company does well: executives get fat bonuses and their stock options increase in value. Company does badly: executives get giant golden parachutes. There is no penalty for failure at the boardroom level.
So tell me, how much transparency do you get from your insurance company?
Ask anyone who's had diabetes for more than a decade or so about whether biotech has made it into the consumer market yet.
Government managers don't routinely get hundred-million-dollar golden parachutes for losing billions of dollars and costing tens of thousands of people their jobs, either. If you really think industry is any better at rewarding good performance and punishing bad performance, you're delusional.
No, it makes perfect sense. You own a company called Symbolics, and you have the feeling this commercial-internet thing is going to be big. So you choose your domain name to represent the face you want to show to the internet at large: symbolics.com, the commercial site for Symbolics.
IOW, it's the domain system working the way it's supposed to. Before domain name squatting. Before the idea that a name alone, rather than the thing which the name is supposed to represent, embodies actual value becoming firmly embedded in the public mind. Before the sex.com ripoff, before Mike Rowe Soft, before all the other domain name silliness we've all seen far too much of.
I suppose you think he should have registered IBM.com and held out for piles of cash. Or maybe he should have paid a consulting firm another pile of cash to come up with some vaguely pleasant-sounding and utterly meaningless collection of syllables and stuck ".com" on the end. Or something.
Some people actually remember what the domain name system is for.
Catch the jaw just right with a solid blow and just about anyone will go down.
But with bare hands, if you're the guy who landed the jaw shot, you won't be able to take advantage of it -- you'll be too busy cradling your broken hand and screaming.
I guess boxing gloves cause brain damage, too? Or maybe it's boxing that causes brain damage, and the gloves reduce the risk...
Actually, no; boxing gloves really do increase the risk of brain injury, because they protect the hand a lot better than they protect the head. It's pretty rare to hit someone hard enough with your bare fist to cause brain damage; the skull is tough enough that your hand will probably break before the other guy's head does, and experienced fighters know this. Note that the gloves worn in MMA competitions such as UFC are about half the size of those worn in professional boxing, and offer correspondingly less hand protection; the much, much lower rate of brain injury among MMA fighters compared to boxers is not a coincidence.
Not directly relevant to the helmet issue, I know, but I thought it had to be said. "Fighting with gloves is safer" is a dangerous myth.
If you don't understand what an awesome nerd accomplishment building your own Civil War cannon is ... you really don't have any business calling yourself a nerd.
"General Grant, the Rebs have broken through our lines! What are we going to do?"
"Calm down, Colonel. Get the Beowulf Battery on line."
The employer is responsible for treating employees like human beings. Firing someone over something like this without even talking to her about it first is a stupid, evil thing to do, and $17,000 is a tiny, tiny penalty for such an offense.
Enjoy, libtards.
Ending F-22 production was a thoroughly bipartisan matter.
Jesus H. Christ, did you actually read the article you linked to?
Since the beginning of the Cold War, people have kept predicting the end of dogfighting ... and they've kept being proven wrong.
More generally, people keep predicting that whichever type of war is being fought at the moment is the future of warfare and all other types are obsolete ... and they keep being proven wrong.
There's still a lot of work for human pilots, and there probably will be for at least another generation. The first UAVs that can handle manned-aircraft combat tasks are just now being deployed, and in many ways they're Not There Yet. Are you suggesting that air forces should stop training pilots now on the assumption that drones will take up the slack?
So this means we can take those idiotic commercials off the air, right?
When there's as much malware for OS X as there is for Windows, sure.
Okay, I'll make it easy. When there is a tenth as much malware for OS X as there is for Windows, sure.
Hmmm, this isn't working. When there's a hundredth as much ... um, no, that doesn't work either.
A thousandth -- no, damn.
You get the idea. Or maybe you don't.
You know, at this point there are probably about a thousand times as many people whining about this supposed attitude on the part of Mac users than there are Mac users actually displaying it.
To the right-wing mind, helping people is intrusive "big government," but killing people is fine and dandy.
Hope that clears things up.
You don't have kids, do you? ;)
Really, it depends on the school. My daughter's in a PG County magnet program and she's learning a hell of a lot -- if I have any worries about the program, it's that they may be working her too hard, and believe me, I have pretty high standards for what that means.
Also, you may want to learn to read usernames on the posts you're replying to. You're confusing me with someone else.
That ad does not say Macs are immune to viruses. Neither does any other Apple ad you will be able to find.
Show me the Apple ad where they've said "Macs are immune to viruses." Please. Find the ad where that statement, or an equally strong statement ("Macs are less likely to get viruses" and "Windows PCs get more viruses than Macs do" don't count) appears, and post a link. I dare you.