Wait, this is the French we're talking about? Am I missing something? Isn't cheating their national sport or pastime or something? I would have figured that you'd be pretty safe accusing any of them of cheating.
Well, to plant enough trees to compensate for the carbon we're throwing in the air, we'd probably have to reforest the Amazon for millions of years. Not that it's a bad idea, I just sayin'...
I'm frankly tired of seeing things which are not harmful being labeled as "harmful".
Well, since toxicity is related to dosage rather than substance, one could argue that everything is harmful, and should be regulated, taxed, and carry a warning label, which is where a lot of the alarmists would like to take us.
That being said, coal-fired power plants suck ass is a major way, and fuck up the environment for lots of people who bear none of the benefits of that plant. The water here in the northeast has been plagued for decades by acid rain produced by power plants in the midwest. The local power producers there reap the benefits of cheap coal, allow the fallout to cause problems here, while they deny responsibility and refuse to modernize their equipment. They profit at the expense of my backyard.
I don't like the idea of a carbon tax, and I don't like the idea of over-regulating industry, or granting the government another revenue stream to become addicted to. However, I love seeing coal plants take a good kick in the nuts, because that's exactly what they've been doing to the rest of us for a long time now.
Of course, the problem here is that the coal plants won't suffer much... it will all fall on the shoulders of consumers. Good luck to the unemployed folks in Minnesota paying their electric bill.
If they were regular people, maybe. Even then, decent investigative work should show that they were framed, so to speak (har har har). I know you're just joking, but can you imagine the uproar this would cause? Hilarious, to be sure, until the congresscritters use it as an excuse to legislate another rights-curbing abomination to control the internet in the name of protecting the children.
Huh. I always wondered where Allah would find a bunch of virgins. Then I figured maybe the afterlife isn't separated into two domains - heaven and hell - maybe it's a single place, but your role in it determines which it appears to be for you.
For instance, if your eternal "reward" is to be one of 72 virgin women serviced by one single hairy, smelly misogynist and your hymen grows back each time it is lost, make no mistake about it - you must have done something really evil, because you are in the deepest circle of hell.
I wonder what a virgin could do that is so wrong they get punished with that? Probably something unforgivable, like learning to read.
Yes, but since it also prohibits suicide and the killing of innocents, you have to realize that these guys aren't exactly following the game plan verbatim. Except for the virgins. There had better be virgins.
Any engineer who can't figure out which parts go together isn't a very good engineer. Connectors are called male and female for a reason - in case an engineer somehow has an opportunity for sex, he/she can remember what goes where.
proof of how human intelligence is the only really fading skill...
On one hand, I second your lament for the loss of penmanship. However, I doubt that handwriting is an important indicator of human intelligence, or even a marginal one.
Better. I was an appraiser in the early to mid 1990's.
proceeded to tell the appraiser the value my house needed to be
There are a lot of rubber-stamp appraisers out there. OTOH, the appraiser needs to know the loan-to-value ratio. If the value looks like it is coming in low, the appraiser tries to give the loan originator a heads-up. Also, appraisal is as much art as it is science. There is a certain legitimate amount of discretion (about 5%) in writing the appraisal and arriving at a value, especially in an area where properties are not homogeneous
this is the kind of thing that got us into this foreclosure crisis
Meh. I wouldn't be so quick to blame the appraisers, even the bad ones. The appraiser's job is to determine what a given property would sell for given the current and recent market, which means that he/she is trying to predict the future based on the past. Anyone who has read a prospectus should recognize the phrase "past performance is no guarantee of future returns", which is apropos here as well. Done properly, even the best appraisal is nothing more than a point-in-time snapshot of a constantly moving target. If the market has soared, the appraiser has to appraise accordingly.
Prices rise because that's what people are willing to spend, which is what appraisers are trying to estimate. I remember seeing a property that sold for $390k that was only worth $370k by my appraisal and I know my number was dead on, based on the recent (at the time) local market. The low appraisal didn't kill the sale because the borrower was putting a lot of money down. Guess what? That sale helped benchmark the next appraisal values in that neighborhood.
I'm not defending the poor practices of those appraisers who take shortcuts or just try to hit a number, but it's unfair to blame the barometer for the storm. I have a whole big rant about how artificially low interest rates created artificially high real estate prices by boosting buying power and shifting the demand curve, but don't really feel like digging it out.
If you want to find a good appraiser, look for one that does work for relocation companies. They actually get graded on accuracy by the companies they do work for. They aren't given a number to start with. If they come in to high, the relocation company loses money when it goes to sell the property. If they come in to low, the relocation company loses the deal, because the homeowner isn't willing to sell.
Without the pay of athletes and surgeons, or guns and authority if LEO and military, I'd say the uniforms in question here connote something different entirely. Even in law enforcement, the uniform of a patrol officer is different than the suit & tie of a detective.
How about make things equal across the board? Sales gets mandatory "Sales" polo shirts, finance/accounting get their own, as does marketing, management, etc. Either everyone gets treated the same way, or the IT helpdesk is getting singled out in a less-than-flattering manner.
It also creates a time accounting nightmare. If a helpdesk guy gets a call, he works on it, logs what he did and how long it took, and moves on to the next one. If someone grabs him on the way by their desk because he has a shirt that advertises him as helpful, there is no audit trail. Come annual performance or budget review, the question "So, what did you do with your time this past year" goes poorly answered unless there is a way to document all those unofficial helpdesk calls.
Slashdot is no longer for geeky science. The geeky science here only serves as a pretext to allow nerds to come together to vent political angst. There's a Slashdot corollary to Godwin's Law, which states that the longer a discussion goes on, the odds of it spiraling off-topic into a debate over American politics approaches 100%.
I suppose that depends on what the user wants to do, doesn't it? Solaris rocks for its stability, power, security, ZFS, and containers, among other things, which makes sense considering it is generally used (and intended) as a server OS rather than desktop. But that's not to say it's not a good user desktop for web & office (OpenOffice), and other end user apps that are available for it, which is all many people need.
Slashdot Mirror
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I propose that scientists start working on making people more like mice.
Why not, politicians have already turned us into sheep. Most of us, anyway.
Wait, this is the French we're talking about? Am I missing something? Isn't cheating their national sport or pastime or something? I would have figured that you'd be pretty safe accusing any of them of cheating.
...)
(I kid, I kid
Well, to plant enough trees to compensate for the carbon we're throwing in the air, we'd probably have to reforest the Amazon for millions of years. Not that it's a bad idea, I just sayin' ...
I'm frankly tired of seeing things which are not harmful being labeled as "harmful".
Well, since toxicity is related to dosage rather than substance, one could argue that everything is harmful, and should be regulated, taxed, and carry a warning label, which is where a lot of the alarmists would like to take us.
... it will all fall on the shoulders of consumers. Good luck to the unemployed folks in Minnesota paying their electric bill.
That being said, coal-fired power plants suck ass is a major way, and fuck up the environment for lots of people who bear none of the benefits of that plant. The water here in the northeast has been plagued for decades by acid rain produced by power plants in the midwest. The local power producers there reap the benefits of cheap coal, allow the fallout to cause problems here, while they deny responsibility and refuse to modernize their equipment. They profit at the expense of my backyard.
I don't like the idea of a carbon tax, and I don't like the idea of over-regulating industry, or granting the government another revenue stream to become addicted to. However, I love seeing coal plants take a good kick in the nuts, because that's exactly what they've been doing to the rest of us for a long time now.
Of course, the problem here is that the coal plants won't suffer much
as per Messr. Zombie?
Turn in your geek card, and don't come back until you've watched Blade Runner.
Or coat them in honey.
I don't think they get all 72 virgins if the mission isn't a success.
Instant slammer time for all politicians.
If they were regular people, maybe. Even then, decent investigative work should show that they were framed, so to speak (har har har). I know you're just joking, but can you imagine the uproar this would cause? Hilarious, to be sure, until the congresscritters use it as an excuse to legislate another rights-curbing abomination to control the internet in the name of protecting the children.
Huh. I always wondered where Allah would find a bunch of virgins. Then I figured maybe the afterlife isn't separated into two domains - heaven and hell - maybe it's a single place, but your role in it determines which it appears to be for you.
For instance, if your eternal "reward" is to be one of 72 virgin women serviced by one single hairy, smelly misogynist and your hymen grows back each time it is lost, make no mistake about it - you must have done something really evil, because you are in the deepest circle of hell.
I wonder what a virgin could do that is so wrong they get punished with that? Probably something unforgivable, like learning to read.
Yes, but since it also prohibits suicide and the killing of innocents, you have to realize that these guys aren't exactly following the game plan verbatim. Except for the virgins. There had better be virgins.
Any engineer who can't figure out which parts go together isn't a very good engineer. Connectors are called male and female for a reason - in case an engineer somehow has an opportunity for sex, he/she can remember what goes where.
Comedians basically review society. The art is to do so from an interesting perspective.
proof of how human intelligence is the only really fading skill...
On one hand, I second your lament for the loss of penmanship. However, I doubt that handwriting is an important indicator of human intelligence, or even a marginal one.
Have you ever had an appraisal done?
Better. I was an appraiser in the early to mid 1990's.
proceeded to tell the appraiser the value my house needed to be
There are a lot of rubber-stamp appraisers out there. OTOH, the appraiser needs to know the loan-to-value ratio. If the value looks like it is coming in low, the appraiser tries to give the loan originator a heads-up. Also, appraisal is as much art as it is science. There is a certain legitimate amount of discretion (about 5%) in writing the appraisal and arriving at a value, especially in an area where properties are not homogeneous
this is the kind of thing that got us into this foreclosure crisis
Meh. I wouldn't be so quick to blame the appraisers, even the bad ones. The appraiser's job is to determine what a given property would sell for given the current and recent market, which means that he/she is trying to predict the future based on the past. Anyone who has read a prospectus should recognize the phrase "past performance is no guarantee of future returns", which is apropos here as well. Done properly, even the best appraisal is nothing more than a point-in-time snapshot of a constantly moving target. If the market has soared, the appraiser has to appraise accordingly.
Prices rise because that's what people are willing to spend, which is what appraisers are trying to estimate. I remember seeing a property that sold for $390k that was only worth $370k by my appraisal and I know my number was dead on, based on the recent (at the time) local market. The low appraisal didn't kill the sale because the borrower was putting a lot of money down. Guess what? That sale helped benchmark the next appraisal values in that neighborhood.
I'm not defending the poor practices of those appraisers who take shortcuts or just try to hit a number, but it's unfair to blame the barometer for the storm. I have a whole big rant about how artificially low interest rates created artificially high real estate prices by boosting buying power and shifting the demand curve, but don't really feel like digging it out.
If you want to find a good appraiser, look for one that does work for relocation companies. They actually get graded on accuracy by the companies they do work for. They aren't given a number to start with. If they come in to high, the relocation company loses money when it goes to sell the property. If they come in to low, the relocation company loses the deal, because the homeowner isn't willing to sell.
Without the pay of athletes and surgeons, or guns and authority if LEO and military, I'd say the uniforms in question here connote something different entirely. Even in law enforcement, the uniform of a patrol officer is different than the suit & tie of a detective.
How about make things equal across the board? Sales gets mandatory "Sales" polo shirts, finance/accounting get their own, as does marketing, management, etc. Either everyone gets treated the same way, or the IT helpdesk is getting singled out in a less-than-flattering manner.
"Hey Bozo, my internet is doing that funny thing again"
FTFY
It also creates a time accounting nightmare. If a helpdesk guy gets a call, he works on it, logs what he did and how long it took, and moves on to the next one. If someone grabs him on the way by their desk because he has a shirt that advertises him as helpful, there is no audit trail. Come annual performance or budget review, the question "So, what did you do with your time this past year" goes poorly answered unless there is a way to document all those unofficial helpdesk calls.
Nope. It's being caused by the LHC.
Slashdot is no longer for geeky science. The geeky science here only serves as a pretext to allow nerds to come together to vent political angst. There's a Slashdot corollary to Godwin's Law, which states that the longer a discussion goes on, the odds of it spiraling off-topic into a debate over American politics approaches 100%.
Ivor Nardon
tell em ur hearin voices theyl put u on section 2 ! ur out in a few weeks blag em ur takin the meds no more jail !
That's what real estate appraisers are for.
You might want to re-check the status of the Bald Eagles.
I suppose that depends on what the user wants to do, doesn't it? Solaris rocks for its stability, power, security, ZFS, and containers, among other things, which makes sense considering it is generally used (and intended) as a server OS rather than desktop. But that's not to say it's not a good user desktop for web & office (OpenOffice), and other end user apps that are available for it, which is all many people need.
Which color? Amber, green or white?