Since he knew his fellow conservatives would want to cut the research budgets, he offered up a less-than-inflationary offer for an increase. He'll likely cave on either no increase whatsoever, or a small cut.
Thanks a lot, President Lawnchair. Maybe some time in my lifetime we'll get an actual liberal in the white house (though I can't think of when that would be)?
CompUSA I cared and still care that they went under
As a former employee of CompUSA - and I worked there before it was bought out by the richest man in Mexico - I find it puzzling that you would care that they went under. I presume you were not aware of how thoroughly dysfunctional they were at the top. The number of things that us lowly employees were strictly forbidden from doing for customers; obvious things like special ordering parts that were in the system or providing very simple parts like case fans, was astonishing. Instead they wanted their staff to focus on how to sell cables, extended warranties, and later televisions, movies, musical instruments, and r/c toys.
I can't find a local place that has the computer cable and small parts selection they had.
Unfortunately they had the worst prices on all of those, as they were selected for extreme margin. Markup on most cables ranged from 400-800% or more.
And of course they wondered why nobody wanted to pay $70 for a firewire cable, after sending hundreds of them to every store. We generally had 3-4 times more 5' firewire cables than the total number of firewire devices in the store.
I think people will pay a little more if they have a better experience
That same statement is made, instead ending with "to support a local business" or "to buy an American-made product" or "to support a good cause". But in the end it's just words, words that most often are not backed up by action.
Retailers can't compete on price with the online retailers, even with sales tax (which is a nightmare of logistical nonsense just waiting in the wings)..
The problem is though - and anyone who works in retail can tell you this - customers walk in to the store and if it isn't something they need right away (and even some times if it is) they'll say "I can buy it for less through [random fly-by-night online site that's been up less than a week]". So the retailers have to be aware of their online competition and at least put up a good fight on price.
Retailers need to stop focusing on price and margins and wonder if there is still such a thing as customer loyalty. I don't know if there is, but companies like Best Buy don't seem to give a shit about trying.
I'm moderately happy with their rewardzone program. Granted I live in a place where there is no alternative for electronics if I can't wait for them to be shipped, so they have me in somewhat of a bind.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work... but for fuck's sake, how can these companies make the SAME EXACT mistakes that their dead competitors make and expect to come out on top, or even alive for that matter?
Because they all get lead down the same street. They all face the same customers.
The real tragedy, though, is that they all promote the same kind of shit-for-brains thinking to upper management. Not only do they push the stores to select for the least knowledgeable (and hence least expensive on payroll) employees, they also strive to give their employees as little power as possible when dealing with customers.
Quite honestly, many of the employees at Best Buy couldn't give you good customer service even if they wanted to, as they simply are not allowed to do such a thing. I saw the same thing as an employee at CompUSA and now I can see it in the employees at Best Buy with myself as a customer.
Brick & Mortar will still serve a purpose for a while yet. There will always be times when you need some widget that day, and no amount of money will solve that problem through Amazon. It might not be Best Buy, but it certainly won't be WalMart either; we will have a large nationwide chain carrying electronics for people who need something now and don't mind paying a little more for it than they would online.
That said the complaints listed in the (over 1 month old) article are very similar to what was happening at CompUSA when they were in their death spiral; young kids were being hired with no knowledge of anything, and corporate suits with decision making power were being promoted who knew even less.
President lawnchair took the pro-big-business action that lead to this guy losing his job. Now he's giving lip service to the guy's predicament but not doing anything meaningful to help the rest of the millions of people who have lost their jobs under these three consecutive bush administration terms.
The only thing Obama accomplishes in this action is he helps secure his own reelection. There is not a single republican contender who would have done anything any differently, which makes it senseless and wasteful to vote for any of them to take over and keep doing the same exact shit.
thousands will die before any usefull data will be discovered from such research.
That simply isn't true. Sure, some will die before advancements are made from sequencing their tumors, but they would still receive standard oncology care during the process same as they would have without the sequencing initiative - in other words, they didn't die from the sequencing.
Even more so, new treatment modalities have already come online in the past decade or so that have come from genomic identification of tumors. Genomics has changed what we know about cancer progression and has allowed for much better tailoring of treatment already. You don't need to necessarily sequence the entire genome of a tumor to know quite a bit about it; most tumors fall into a few genetic classifications rather quickly and that information is tremendously valuable in treatment decisions.
Science isn't failing the public, rather the public is failing science - especially in the US. The American public expects great things from science for almost no money invested, and simultaneously refuses to make any effort to understand any results that are more complicated than "we just cured cancer!" (nevemind that such a thing is, inherently, massively complicated).
Actually, in that blue-blood upper-class suburb they might have fewer pizza delivery options (at least at rates that techs can afford to pay) than they would have in the city proper.
Has many of the most expensive homes in the state. Part of the city borders on Lake Minnetonka, which is a popular place for wealthy famous people to build their mansions. Now as more people are looking to live in that second-ring suburb, a lot of neighborhoods are popping up featuring McMansions like the one you see there. Should fit in well, though I'm not sure it would be that advantageous to the company to place themselves that far outside the city of Minneapolis, unless they expect the majority of their customers to be from the suburbs.
Every summer while I was in undergrad, I was taking classes for my degree, working my ass off to pay my tuition and other bills, or both. I'm baffled by the students who feel entitled to spring break in some exotic location and summer break to do nothing of any value. Not once during my undergrad years was I more than 600 miles from school with the exception of a conference my employer sent me to for undergraduate research I was working on.
And PNAS has it listed as open access, which means you should be able to download the full text regardless of your subscriber (or non-subscriber) status. Just click the Full Text link.
How many cybercrime gangs are operating in Russia these days? Are they competing with each other, collaborating with each other, or are they mostly ignoring each other?
And more importantly, could something useful be extracted from that?
but once they find out you can't defend a nation with a posse carrying six-guns any more and the amount it will raise their taxes to become a real military power with a full Army, Air Force, Coast Guard (370 miles of coastline in the smugglingest water in America), and Border Patrol (1250 miles of border with Mexico, over 60% of the whole border; plus 1400 miles with New Mexico, Okalahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana). Duplicating the rest of the functions of the federal government won't be a cakewalk, either, and don't pretend they'll just let that all fall flat. Economies of scale mean that being a part of the entire nation is cheaper than going it alone. And Texas' physical scale makes it more expensive to administer, not less. Throw in the added expense of commerce across borders, and no protections against tarriffs from the commerce clause, and businesses in the state doing any business out of state will be crippled.
From my vantage point, it seems that many of the loudest mouths in Texas want to see their state turned into a third-world country any ways. I say let them go ahead and try. Set up an amnesty program for the first year or so, enabling the 12 intellectuals left in their state time to get out, and some of our crazies time to go in, and then say goodbye and good riddance.
You are calling the wrong secession movement, there. California isn't likely to leave. Much more likely is Texas. And if Texas does leave, I'll happily be here telling them not to let the door hit them on the way out.
And to have fun building that wall they've been wanting for so long, on their own.
They employ 1.5 million people and never in the last 10 years have they lost even 0,1% of that.
Are you talking about casualties or declining enrolment numbers?
Nonetheless, the recruitment numbers for the US armed forces have been suffering, ever since the country realized that we were lead into a war in Iraq on a massive pack of lies and dragged through it with no end game whatsoever. Anyone who has had their eyes and ears open in the past decade or so knows that the armed forces have had to constantly reduce their recruitment goals, while simultaneously reducing their criteria for acceptance, just to put up the numbers they have posted lately.
Which is utterly pathetic, considering how awful the job market is. You no longer even need a GED to sign up in the army. You can even get in with criminal offenses on your record that used to automatically disqualify you. Yet even with those barriers to entry removed, some unemployed people would still rather take their chances at home than volunteer to be cannon fodder in a war that we never should have started.
But keep on dreaming that it would have happened without "President Lawnchair"...
It was the next logical step to get enrolment up to where the armed services needed it.
I guess "continuing to lose rights and freedoms" might not be a second order change (i.e. the rate of change remains unchanged).
Even more so. the direction of change remains unchanged. President Lawnchair has yet to do a single thing as POTUS that his predecessor would not have done as well. Not. One. Thing.
Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.
That repeal was required in order to sustain the war efforts that the republicans support. Eventually the armed services would have been too tapped out without allowing openly homosexual troops to serve. While the conservatives hate homosexuality, they love war enough to overlook it. And besides, there are plenty of economically disadvantaged homosexuals who could serve in the place of their own silver spoon children once DADT is repealed.
I'm willing to say with confidence that had a bill been authored to repeal it while GWB was still in office, he would have signed it. He just didn't make it an issue while he was running. Now in the third Bush administration, it has been done.
I guess "continuing to lose rights and freedoms" might not be a second order change (i.e. the rate of change remains unchanged).
Even more so. the direction of change remains unchanged. President Lawnchair has yet to do a single thing as POTUS that his predecessor would not have done as well.
Not. One. Thing.
And being as conservatives rallied around his predecessor as a great conservative, and are trying to emulate him, they will completely and utterly fail to differentiate themselves from Obama. Hence unless they are counting on bringing all the racists out of the woodwork who will vote for anyone in order to get the black guy out of the white house, the republicans are doomed to fail this round because they sure as hell can't win on policy.
Although, there is one last thing the GOP can hope for. The democrats excel at snatching failure from the jaws of victory, and hence may find a way to blow this on their own.
I think he just lost a bunch of campaign contributions with that blog.
Not that it matters. The GOP can't find a candidate who can defeat Obama in 2012 anyways. None of the candidates who have a remote chance of winning the nomination are demonstrably more conservative than the actions of President Barack "lawnchair" Obama. If Hollywood completely turned off the tap, Obama could still phone in his re-election campaign and win it easily.
The real loss here, though, is that some people will vote for Obama expecting something to change, in spite of the fact that since 2008 (and really, much further back than that) nothing has.
It was just published online today, I don't see any other copies available yet. However, the primary author of the paper is supported by an NIH grant, so the paper should be released in its entirety as a non-paywalled article fairly soon to comply with the NIH funding rules.
The V-ATPase generally has more than 6 proteins that cross the membrane. Depending on the species, it is usually more around 10-12 individual subunits that work together to form a ring for useful transport.
From a biochemical perspective, it is also worthwhile to point out that the enzyme is powered by ATP hydrolysis - hence the name V-ATPase. It is a motor, and ATP is the fuel. Without ATP you get no useful work.
That explanation describes the occupy movement as accurately as the Bible describes quantum mechanics. You could undoubtedly find an equally (or more) useful explanation at PBS Kids.
Slashdot Mirror
Since he knew his fellow conservatives would want to cut the research budgets, he offered up a less-than-inflationary offer for an increase. He'll likely cave on either no increase whatsoever, or a small cut.
Thanks a lot, President Lawnchair. Maybe some time in my lifetime we'll get an actual liberal in the white house (though I can't think of when that would be)?
CompUSA I cared and still care that they went under
As a former employee of CompUSA - and I worked there before it was bought out by the richest man in Mexico - I find it puzzling that you would care that they went under. I presume you were not aware of how thoroughly dysfunctional they were at the top. The number of things that us lowly employees were strictly forbidden from doing for customers; obvious things like special ordering parts that were in the system or providing very simple parts like case fans, was astonishing. Instead they wanted their staff to focus on how to sell cables, extended warranties, and later televisions, movies, musical instruments, and r/c toys.
I can't find a local place that has the computer cable and small parts selection they had.
Unfortunately they had the worst prices on all of those, as they were selected for extreme margin. Markup on most cables ranged from 400-800% or more.
And of course they wondered why nobody wanted to pay $70 for a firewire cable, after sending hundreds of them to every store. We generally had 3-4 times more 5' firewire cables than the total number of firewire devices in the store.
I think people will pay a little more if they have a better experience
That same statement is made, instead ending with "to support a local business" or "to buy an American-made product" or "to support a good cause". But in the end it's just words, words that most often are not backed up by action.
Retailers can't compete on price with the online retailers, even with sales tax (which is a nightmare of logistical nonsense just waiting in the wings)..
The problem is though - and anyone who works in retail can tell you this - customers walk in to the store and if it isn't something they need right away (and even some times if it is) they'll say "I can buy it for less through [random fly-by-night online site that's been up less than a week]". So the retailers have to be aware of their online competition and at least put up a good fight on price.
Retailers need to stop focusing on price and margins and wonder if there is still such a thing as customer loyalty. I don't know if there is, but companies like Best Buy don't seem to give a shit about trying.
I'm moderately happy with their rewardzone program. Granted I live in a place where there is no alternative for electronics if I can't wait for them to be shipped, so they have me in somewhat of a bind.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work... but for fuck's sake, how can these companies make the SAME EXACT mistakes that their dead competitors make and expect to come out on top, or even alive for that matter?
Because they all get lead down the same street. They all face the same customers.
The real tragedy, though, is that they all promote the same kind of shit-for-brains thinking to upper management. Not only do they push the stores to select for the least knowledgeable (and hence least expensive on payroll) employees, they also strive to give their employees as little power as possible when dealing with customers.
Quite honestly, many of the employees at Best Buy couldn't give you good customer service even if they wanted to, as they simply are not allowed to do such a thing. I saw the same thing as an employee at CompUSA and now I can see it in the employees at Best Buy with myself as a customer.
Brick & Mortar will still serve a purpose for a while yet. There will always be times when you need some widget that day, and no amount of money will solve that problem through Amazon. It might not be Best Buy, but it certainly won't be WalMart either; we will have a large nationwide chain carrying electronics for people who need something now and don't mind paying a little more for it than they would online.
That said the complaints listed in the (over 1 month old) article are very similar to what was happening at CompUSA when they were in their death spiral; young kids were being hired with no knowledge of anything, and corporate suits with decision making power were being promoted who knew even less.
Prove there is a god
I'm willing to bet all I own that neither will ever be successfully claimed. You need faith to accept either to be met.
So if we make a quantum computer that can log in to facebook, it clearly is not doing useful work. Would we then win?
President lawnchair took the pro-big-business action that lead to this guy losing his job. Now he's giving lip service to the guy's predicament but not doing anything meaningful to help the rest of the millions of people who have lost their jobs under these three consecutive bush administration terms.
The only thing Obama accomplishes in this action is he helps secure his own reelection. There is not a single republican contender who would have done anything any differently, which makes it senseless and wasteful to vote for any of them to take over and keep doing the same exact shit.
thousands will die before any usefull data will be discovered from such research.
That simply isn't true. Sure, some will die before advancements are made from sequencing their tumors, but they would still receive standard oncology care during the process same as they would have without the sequencing initiative - in other words, they didn't die from the sequencing.
Even more so, new treatment modalities have already come online in the past decade or so that have come from genomic identification of tumors. Genomics has changed what we know about cancer progression and has allowed for much better tailoring of treatment already. You don't need to necessarily sequence the entire genome of a tumor to know quite a bit about it; most tumors fall into a few genetic classifications rather quickly and that information is tremendously valuable in treatment decisions.
Science isn't failing the public, rather the public is failing science - especially in the US. The American public expects great things from science for almost no money invested, and simultaneously refuses to make any effort to understand any results that are more complicated than "we just cured cancer!" (nevemind that such a thing is, inherently, massively complicated).
Easier for the techs to get pizza delivery.
Actually, in that blue-blood upper-class suburb they might have fewer pizza delivery options (at least at rates that techs can afford to pay) than they would have in the city proper.
Has many of the most expensive homes in the state. Part of the city borders on Lake Minnetonka, which is a popular place for wealthy famous people to build their mansions. Now as more people are looking to live in that second-ring suburb, a lot of neighborhoods are popping up featuring McMansions like the one you see there. Should fit in well, though I'm not sure it would be that advantageous to the company to place themselves that far outside the city of Minneapolis, unless they expect the majority of their customers to be from the suburbs.
Every summer while I was in undergrad, I was taking classes for my degree, working my ass off to pay my tuition and other bills, or both. I'm baffled by the students who feel entitled to spring break in some exotic location and summer break to do nothing of any value. Not once during my undergrad years was I more than 600 miles from school with the exception of a conference my employer sent me to for undergraduate research I was working on.
Experimental evolution of multicellularity
And PNAS has it listed as open access, which means you should be able to download the full text regardless of your subscriber (or non-subscriber) status. Just click the Full Text link.
How many cybercrime gangs are operating in Russia these days? Are they competing with each other, collaborating with each other, or are they mostly ignoring each other?
And more importantly, could something useful be extracted from that?
but once they find out you can't defend a nation with a posse carrying six-guns any more and the amount it will raise their taxes to become a real military power with a full Army, Air Force, Coast Guard (370 miles of coastline in the smugglingest water in America), and Border Patrol (1250 miles of border with Mexico, over 60% of the whole border; plus 1400 miles with New Mexico, Okalahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana). Duplicating the rest of the functions of the federal government won't be a cakewalk, either, and don't pretend they'll just let that all fall flat. Economies of scale mean that being a part of the entire nation is cheaper than going it alone. And Texas' physical scale makes it more expensive to administer, not less. Throw in the added expense of commerce across borders, and no protections against tarriffs from the commerce clause, and businesses in the state doing any business out of state will be crippled.
From my vantage point, it seems that many of the loudest mouths in Texas want to see their state turned into a third-world country any ways. I say let them go ahead and try. Set up an amnesty program for the first year or so, enabling the 12 intellectuals left in their state time to get out, and some of our crazies time to go in, and then say goodbye and good riddance.
I appreciate all the hard work you have done to combat bigotry and bridge gaps to help make the world a better place.
The loudest people in Texas want their state to be a third-world country. To them, I say go ahead.
Thank God I'm a Native Texan. At least then I'll be able to move there, and get out of the United States of Fucking America.
So, you're not living there currently why?
You are calling the wrong secession movement, there. California isn't likely to leave. Much more likely is Texas. And if Texas does leave, I'll happily be here telling them not to let the door hit them on the way out.
And to have fun building that wall they've been wanting for so long, on their own.
They employ 1.5 million people and never in the last 10 years have they lost even 0,1% of that.
Are you talking about casualties or declining enrolment numbers?
Nonetheless, the recruitment numbers for the US armed forces have been suffering, ever since the country realized that we were lead into a war in Iraq on a massive pack of lies and dragged through it with no end game whatsoever. Anyone who has had their eyes and ears open in the past decade or so knows that the armed forces have had to constantly reduce their recruitment goals, while simultaneously reducing their criteria for acceptance, just to put up the numbers they have posted lately.
Which is utterly pathetic, considering how awful the job market is. You no longer even need a GED to sign up in the army. You can even get in with criminal offenses on your record that used to automatically disqualify you. Yet even with those barriers to entry removed, some unemployed people would still rather take their chances at home than volunteer to be cannon fodder in a war that we never should have started.
But keep on dreaming that it would have happened without "President Lawnchair"...
It was the next logical step to get enrolment up to where the armed services needed it.
I guess "continuing to lose rights and freedoms" might not be a second order change (i.e. the rate of change remains unchanged).
Even more so. the direction of change remains unchanged. President Lawnchair has yet to do a single thing as POTUS that his predecessor would not have done as well. Not. One. Thing.
Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.
That repeal was required in order to sustain the war efforts that the republicans support. Eventually the armed services would have been too tapped out without allowing openly homosexual troops to serve. While the conservatives hate homosexuality, they love war enough to overlook it. And besides, there are plenty of economically disadvantaged homosexuals who could serve in the place of their own silver spoon children once DADT is repealed.
I'm willing to say with confidence that had a bill been authored to repeal it while GWB was still in office, he would have signed it. He just didn't make it an issue while he was running. Now in the third Bush administration, it has been done.
I guess "continuing to lose rights and freedoms" might not be a second order change (i.e. the rate of change remains unchanged).
Even more so. the direction of change remains unchanged. President Lawnchair has yet to do a single thing as POTUS that his predecessor would not have done as well.
Not. One. Thing.
And being as conservatives rallied around his predecessor as a great conservative, and are trying to emulate him, they will completely and utterly fail to differentiate themselves from Obama. Hence unless they are counting on bringing all the racists out of the woodwork who will vote for anyone in order to get the black guy out of the white house, the republicans are doomed to fail this round because they sure as hell can't win on policy.
Although, there is one last thing the GOP can hope for. The democrats excel at snatching failure from the jaws of victory, and hence may find a way to blow this on their own.
I think he just lost a bunch of campaign contributions with that blog.
Not that it matters. The GOP can't find a candidate who can defeat Obama in 2012 anyways. None of the candidates who have a remote chance of winning the nomination are demonstrably more conservative than the actions of President Barack "lawnchair" Obama. If Hollywood completely turned off the tap, Obama could still phone in his re-election campaign and win it easily.
The real loss here, though, is that some people will vote for Obama expecting something to change, in spite of the fact that since 2008 (and really, much further back than that) nothing has.
Here is the Nature Article mentioned in the summary - the link in the summary goes to a PLoS Biology article.
It was just published online today, I don't see any other copies available yet. However, the primary author of the paper is supported by an NIH grant, so the paper should be released in its entirety as a non-paywalled article fairly soon to comply with the NIH funding rules.
The V-ATPase generally has more than 6 proteins that cross the membrane. Depending on the species, it is usually more around 10-12 individual subunits that work together to form a ring for useful transport.
From a biochemical perspective, it is also worthwhile to point out that the enzyme is powered by ATP hydrolysis - hence the name V-ATPase. It is a motor, and ATP is the fuel. Without ATP you get no useful work.
Here is an explanation.
That explanation describes the occupy movement as accurately as the Bible describes quantum mechanics. You could undoubtedly find an equally (or more) useful explanation at PBS Kids.