Why do many corporations assume and try to tailor their employee training with the assumption that every employee is replaceable with a new employee of the same value and effectiveness? Why does it seem to me that if it takes four to six months at a position to get comfortable, and even more months increases employee efficiency, that employee retention would be extremely important. Looking back on it, Circuit City's management decision to fire all of their long term employees in order to save on payroll seems to have been a less than excellent decision today.
You miss something, African-Americans are not distributed in the American socio-economic hierarchy the same way as other racial groups and thus their voting should not be expected to be similar to that of whites. Besides, when all the Republican Party has to offer African-Americans is Alan Keyes, failed trickle-down economic policies, beliefs like the government is always worse than private industry, and unfavorable social policies, the Republican party will lose again and again. Until Republicans are willing to modernize their views to bring them more in line with voters in order to capture more elected offices, they will continue to lose. Then, to prevent their election gains from lasting any more than an election cycle, these new views an policy goals cannot be marginalized by the old policy goals. Also any new policy goals will probably not be much like hard core libertarian views, if Ron Paul's performance and polls are any judge. Instead, Republicans will probably need to be pragmatic and open to compromise with Democrats. I wait to see this happen though, the continued extreme tilt further to the right of the Republican Party is still ongoing with its continuing intra-party bloodbath.
Cops do get in trouble, just like normal citizens do, if they lie under oath, which is perjury, one of the things that Libby was convicted of. Libby was also convicted I imagine because Libby had to sign a written statement that said he was telling the truth to the best of his knowledge. This is a bit like signing a false tax return, the fifth amendment does not apply to you when you do something that dumb. Also, lying to the cops is a dumb idea in general, especially when you are trying to hinder an investigation to protect others.
I do agree with you, always ask for a lawyer if you are arrested regardless of your guilt or innocence, stay quiet until the lawyer arrives and do only what your lawyer says after that. Going pro se, or being your own lawyer, is a recipe for losing your case and getting more time in prison than you ever thought possible.
IEEE1394c at S3200 or 3200Mbps using the same wiring as 9-pin IEEE1394b S800 cables, is going to be have more throughput, carry more power, and have less CPU load than USB3 at 4.8Gbs, USB3's actual rated speed. The new cable requirements applicable to USB3 also makes USB3 cables use essentially the same type of cable as IEEE1394c, negating any sort of benefit with respect to cost that USB 2.0 has. Cost refers to the cost of silicon on the device, the cost of routing the traces on a PCB, as well as the cost of the cable. I'm hoping for IEE1934c next year, but lets see if Intel can screw the market over with USB3 like it did with USB2.
There are probably some types of reasonably priced types of solder that either do not use tin or have tin and are alloyed in such a way that "tin whiskers" is not an issue. Otherwise, RoHS guidelines offer exemptions for certain applications if no other substance will work or is not economical. For instance, lead is still legal in CRT picture tubes and in the solder bumps between a silicon die and its flip-chip package substrate. However, the EU will not allow one to use lead because lead-free alternatives would add a small amount to the cost of the finished product that goes to the final consumer. The threshold for an exemption is fairly high, as a totally random guess, a 25% cost increase might still be too low, and it may still depend on the item's cost though.
For comparison, while there were plenty of plumbers that were displeased with the removal and replacement of lead pipes and later lead bearing solder, indoor plumbing is still around and lead-free. These same plumbers may have complained about the added cost of having to use a soldering alloy that uses tin and antimony, but responsible plumbers did it. Pure metallic tin slowly over the course of years goes through a phase change below 58F into a brittle, crumbly, non-metallic phase, potentially resulting in the failure of the solder joint. Look up "tin pest" for more.
Good luck finding lye as a private citizen in the US, not that I have tried to buy lye recently. The Sodium in lye, NaOH, is a better ingredient for making methamphetamines, than the Lithium Hydroxide (LiOH) more commonly used in US produced meth. Metallic Lithium is obtained from disposable Lithium batteries, add water and you have Lithium Hydroxide. When Sodium Hydroxide is used for meth production, the meth is produced faster and more efficiently than Lithium Hydroxide. I also shudder to think as to the amount of Lithium left in street grade meth made using Lithium Hydroxide. Lithium has a relatively low toxicity and blood tests are needed for patients legitimately prescribed Lithium to prevent toxicity.
I owned a Pentium D Sony Vaio system that came with a defective motherboard and went two more rounds of bad motherboards. Each time a tech came out to do an on-site and replaced the motherboard, eventually the fourth motherboard was good and has stayed good. However, I did not think that this was an exceptionally a good thing for Sony.
Classic MacOS for the PPC only ran application code and much of the system code in PowerPC User Mode, which is a bit like Ring 3 on x86. The classic MacOS Nanokernel was the only code running in PPC Supervisor Mode, the instruction privilege mode that is like Ring 0 on x86. 68K application code on the 68K Macs, however, ran in 68K supervisor mode the PPC Macs had to deal with in emulation. Things were also a bit strange, 68K driver code was present on Nubus expansion cards as well as the software drivers for hard drives among other places. This sucked a bit as it meant until MacOS 8, all of the drive I/O code on PPC Macs was emulated 68K code, and thus very slow.
At any rate, the fact that nearly all of the classic MacOS ran in PPC user mode helped make Classic perform well enough to be usable. On the other hand, the fact that PowerPC instruction set architecture (ISA) and machine architecture is nominally sane due to being designed that way, with obsolete parts removed helps. On the other hand, the x86 ISA and x86 PC hardware has gone through enough accretion during over 30 years to become a galaxy-sized glob of insane.
One of those Soviet submarine "political officers" played a very important check during the Cold War and prevented the submarine captain from firing off the nukes on board the sub at the US. So all and all, not that bad of a program.
The statement: "We can't calculate every possible variable, currently. Since we can't predict with perfection, we should not do anything because we do not know the precise outcome." This is a statement straight from the standard denialism handbook and has been used against scientific approaches to so many large problems like the economy, global warming and plenty of other large problems. It is a bullshit argument so that denialists of all stripes do not have to have their reasoning tested and disproven. When shown data that invalidates their reasoning, they claim the reasoning is still valid because not enough data was collected or they have their own badly collected data or anecdotes that "prove" their reasoning. I have news for denialists: you are so incorrect you are not even wrong.
That method works, but for the day or more it took them to do that, using the Secure Erase ATA command on that drive would have been more secure and taken only an hour or two. The Secure Erase command is part of the ATA standard and present on every ATA drive larger than 15GB. The command "dd" cannot access and erase every sector as ATA drives do not allow access to certain sectors, like reallocated sectors. Even though SCSI drives do not have this limitation, I still wouldn't erase one with "dd", there are probably better open source tools. An even better and faster option for even more secure erasure on ATA drives, is to use the drive in encrypted mode. When done with the drive, toss the encryption key. This makes any data on the drive practically unusable. Reuse of the drive is still possible with a standard reformat after unlocking the drive.
There is a problem with doing that however, unless you use water with no tritium in it it will be easily determined as a fake. Tritium was created during nuclear testing in the 1950's and is present in small quantities worldwide, even now. Before the 1950's there was essentially no Tritium in surface water. Using modern rainwater to water your plants would leave detectable amounts of Tritium in any "aged" product. Older groundwater that has been underground since the 1950's and has not been mixed with modern rainwater would work, however. Just avoid using or attempt to mask any unique chemical signature in the water. Also, a good deal of groundwater is saline and not potable for humans.
If you had owed money after the audit, you still probably would not have been criminally prosecuted, unless the deficiency was willful. If you honestly believed you filled out your tax returns properly, you haven't done anything criminal, yet. However, willful ignorance on tax returns is not a defense.
That's funny. For all of your railing against the "free market" and for socialism, it's apparent that you simply don't know how the free market is even supposed to work.
Funny can you actually point out a market that is free and works? Thought not.
If you had taken all of that money that you happily gave to insurance companies over the years in exchange for absolutely nothing, and instead saved it for when your wife needed her ankle fixed, you would find that you could pay cash for great service. Instead you're stuck hoping not to get screwed-over by a for-profit company with absolutely no incentive to provide your wife with appropriate care. If you were a hospital, who would you treat first, patients who offer cash or those who send their insurance company to haggle with the doctors?
My preference would be to prioritize patients and treat the guy with a treatable sucking chest wound near death first, and go from there. Whether Mr. Chest Wound is a gang banger, rich white guy, or a homeless dude does not matter. It sounds as though there are too many patients for the treatment capacity, which is a situation a for-profit company has every interest in allowing/creating. The current care facilities might run at 98% currently for instance, but adding in patients that are turned away might make the demand on services 150%. A competitor could open new care facilities, but it would have high entrance costs. The current care givers may fear seeing a drop in patients and new facilities can easily be opposed at the local or state level with enough lobbyists. Welcome to Market FAIL.
I agree that some parts of health care in the US are completely screwed up. But it appears that a major part is people like YOU who can't manage your own affairs, and expect to be able to pay someone else to do it for you. The free market is based on rational self-interest. You appear to be appropriately self-interested, yet completely irrational about it.
The for-profit medical insurance have a rational interest make sure the medical industry to make insurance as much of a mind-fuck as possible. That way you pay more than you need to and you end up under-covered or over-covered and paying out of your rectum on an ongoing basis or after one big event. This is neither rational nor a functional way to receive healthcare.
Worse, you don't seem to understand that socialist health care is exactly the same as what you already have, except the insurance companies are replaced with the government and you still get to pay out the ass in exchange for horrible service when you need it most.
Excellent, I would love the federal government to take over and run many of the horribly fucked up industries in the US. The government theoretically works for its citizens and I at least get a some sort of a say, and the government is generally responsive to its citizens. Currently, an appeal process that is not a farce may or may not exist at your health insurance company. If arbitration is the method used, certain arbitration groups seem to statistically favor the party paying for the arbitration. Generally, arbitration decisions are final as well. In the government however, you can expect at least some fairness in the proceedings and the judgement can be appealed in the court system.
The credit reporting industry is another broken industry. So far, they have made negligible efforts to fix errors in credit histories. They have no reason to research any potential errors, no money is generated by error checking and the people with credit reports essentially never pay the credit bureau money.
The market is not a perfecting force, and large companies from today do not work like a small Pre-Revolution village in France. So don't try to come up with scenarios that have not relation to current economic dynamics at any scale.
Torture is also a bad idea because when an American soldier or civilian is captured, their captors may consider torture or more severe torture methods if the US is perceived to be torturing or actually torturing their captured soldiers. It is similar to the reason the US does not attempt to assassinate the leaders of other countries, the US doesn't want their leaders assassinated either. Exceptional circumstances exist where assassination may be permissible, like in war or to prevent or stop imminent or ongoing genocide. Though I wonder if a new internation treaty banning assassination of political leaders should be considered.
Hmm, Enron, WorldCom, AIG, and CountryWide type fuck-ups come to mind in the corporate sector. The due diligence on the part of Madoff and Milken investors was also a fucked up a bit. Reagan and GWBush come to mind as nice examples of fuck-ups in the government sector, they are each responsible for the greatest Post-WW2 percentage increases of the national debt during their terms.
Great, so according to the AlGore Thesis, the CPU in my computer is AlGore-complete and thus an AlGore machine? Remind me when we get to non-halting problems like Republicans and their complements, Libertarians, which are not even AlGore recognizable. Which is bad because problems that are not AlGore recognizable are just the exactly the same problems that are not Turing recognizable and thus are impossible to even attempt to compute at all.
Seriously though, global warming deniers are starting to look much like Holocaust deniers. If a Holocaust denier tried to claim that that the Holocaust didn't occur because there were still Jewish and homosexual concentration camp prisoners that survived past World War II, the denier would be wrong and labeled a lunatic, which he would be. Now there are people using isolated pieces of data like this figure in the article and claims like faulty ice extent satellite readings from the North Pole, for which the data are easily corrected, to claim that global warming is not happening. These outlying data points are easily explained, not that global warming deniers accept them, but it sounds much like the Holocaust denier example from above.
Much like Holocaust deniers, global warming deniers ignore mountains of evidence and try to make an absurd argument, in the hope that one or two problems will invalidate the other side's interpretation. When the problems are quickly and easily refuted, they go into a corner, pout, and look for even more absurd "problems". They do this without coming up with their own hypotheses that explain all of the available data. On the other hand, sometimes these people do have "theories", but their claims are quickly refuted and dismissed. Which leads these types into more pouting in the corner.
Asking someone nicely to stop sending you email and then if sender continues, is harassment. Any number of e-mails sent after that, are unwanted harassment. Especially if they are a form letter or if sent in bulk.
A senator can ask me to stop sending him emails, but I have no legal requirement to stop sending emails to him - if I did *have* to or else face legal sanctions, that would violate the 1st Amend.
Harassment is not speech, again for the slow people, harassment != speech. Laws that make it a crime for one to send e-mails in order to harass or otherwise obstruct the normal functioning of an elected official or even a normal person are entirely constitutional and have been upheld. Also, the First Amendment has not been interpreted to mean that you have a right to a response, be listened to, or even to be heard while exercising your right of free speech by any government official whether elected, appointed, or a regular government employee. In other words, do not attempt to construe this snippet from the First Amendment: "petition the government for a redress of grievances" as a right to even be heard. Read it in context with the rest of the sentence.
Also, keep in mind that white LEDs produce light that has a spectral distribution similar to sunlight, if somewhat shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. This also assumes you ignore the significant dip in output in the turquoise range. Adding a turquoise LED seems to help reduce this problem. Good luck finding a light like this though.
AFAIK the Nintendo DS still uses mask ROMs for the cartridges, much like every variety of Gameboy game or other cartridge system does. The type of memory used is not EEPROMs, NAND Flash or NOR Flash. Mask ROMs are different in that they use a unique set of lithographic masks for each game and are truly Read Only Memory, their contents cannot be modified after manufacture.
Facepalm! That is not much of a performance review. The reviewer gives the a score of 1 to the OS that was fastest on a given test for hardware second best OS a 2, third best a 3, fourth best a 4, and worst a five. So a test where the difference between the fastest and slowest is 5% and another where the difference is 50% both get scored the same. Add the results from the 31 tests done and a pre-release version of Windows 7 can look very nice even if the margin of final scores do not accurately represent the actual performance. Worse yet, how do we know whether of not there are still features, DRM or otherwise, that cripple performance? We don't know, and we won't know until Microsoft releases feature complete versions of the various Windows 7 version tiers.
They all love sucking up to commie dictators so bending over and grabbing their ankles for a murderous, misogynistic religion should be right up their alley.
Add Pat Robertson to that list as well, its not like transporting diamond mining equipment from Rwanda to Zaire in 1994 for a corporation that was a joint venture between Robertson and Zaire's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Worse, Robertson claimed he was transporting refugees out of Rwanda and solicited donations on his show, the 700 Club, using that claim. Scratch that, Pat Robertson is worse than those you mentioned, they aren't actually criminals. Pat Robertson has the distinction of being a war criminal.
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Why do many corporations assume and try to tailor their employee training with the assumption that every employee is replaceable with a new employee of the same value and effectiveness? Why does it seem to me that if it takes four to six months at a position to get comfortable, and even more months increases employee efficiency, that employee retention would be extremely important. Looking back on it, Circuit City's management decision to fire all of their long term employees in order to save on payroll seems to have been a less than excellent decision today.
You miss something, African-Americans are not distributed in the American socio-economic hierarchy the same way as other racial groups and thus their voting should not be expected to be similar to that of whites. Besides, when all the Republican Party has to offer African-Americans is Alan Keyes, failed trickle-down economic policies, beliefs like the government is always worse than private industry, and unfavorable social policies, the Republican party will lose again and again. Until Republicans are willing to modernize their views to bring them more in line with voters in order to capture more elected offices, they will continue to lose. Then, to prevent their election gains from lasting any more than an election cycle, these new views an policy goals cannot be marginalized by the old policy goals. Also any new policy goals will probably not be much like hard core libertarian views, if Ron Paul's performance and polls are any judge. Instead, Republicans will probably need to be pragmatic and open to compromise with Democrats. I wait to see this happen though, the continued extreme tilt further to the right of the Republican Party is still ongoing with its continuing intra-party bloodbath.
Cops do get in trouble, just like normal citizens do, if they lie under oath, which is perjury, one of the things that Libby was convicted of. Libby was also convicted I imagine because Libby had to sign a written statement that said he was telling the truth to the best of his knowledge. This is a bit like signing a false tax return, the fifth amendment does not apply to you when you do something that dumb. Also, lying to the cops is a dumb idea in general, especially when you are trying to hinder an investigation to protect others.
I do agree with you, always ask for a lawyer if you are arrested regardless of your guilt or innocence, stay quiet until the lawyer arrives and do only what your lawyer says after that. Going pro se, or being your own lawyer, is a recipe for losing your case and getting more time in prison than you ever thought possible.
IEEE1394c at S3200 or 3200Mbps using the same wiring as 9-pin IEEE1394b S800 cables, is going to be have more throughput, carry more power, and have less CPU load than USB3 at 4.8Gbs, USB3's actual rated speed. The new cable requirements applicable to USB3 also makes USB3 cables use essentially the same type of cable as IEEE1394c, negating any sort of benefit with respect to cost that USB 2.0 has. Cost refers to the cost of silicon on the device, the cost of routing the traces on a PCB, as well as the cost of the cable. I'm hoping for IEE1934c next year, but lets see if Intel can screw the market over with USB3 like it did with USB2.
There are probably some types of reasonably priced types of solder that either do not use tin or have tin and are alloyed in such a way that "tin whiskers" is not an issue. Otherwise, RoHS guidelines offer exemptions for certain applications if no other substance will work or is not economical. For instance, lead is still legal in CRT picture tubes and in the solder bumps between a silicon die and its flip-chip package substrate. However, the EU will not allow one to use lead because lead-free alternatives would add a small amount to the cost of the finished product that goes to the final consumer. The threshold for an exemption is fairly high, as a totally random guess, a 25% cost increase might still be too low, and it may still depend on the item's cost though.
For comparison, while there were plenty of plumbers that were displeased with the removal and replacement of lead pipes and later lead bearing solder, indoor plumbing is still around and lead-free. These same plumbers may have complained about the added cost of having to use a soldering alloy that uses tin and antimony, but responsible plumbers did it. Pure metallic tin slowly over the course of years goes through a phase change below 58F into a brittle, crumbly, non-metallic phase, potentially resulting in the failure of the solder joint. Look up "tin pest" for more.
Good luck finding lye as a private citizen in the US, not that I have tried to buy lye recently. The Sodium in lye, NaOH, is a better ingredient for making methamphetamines, than the Lithium Hydroxide (LiOH) more commonly used in US produced meth. Metallic Lithium is obtained from disposable Lithium batteries, add water and you have Lithium Hydroxide. When Sodium Hydroxide is used for meth production, the meth is produced faster and more efficiently than Lithium Hydroxide. I also shudder to think as to the amount of Lithium left in street grade meth made using Lithium Hydroxide. Lithium has a relatively low toxicity and blood tests are needed for patients legitimately prescribed Lithium to prevent toxicity.
I owned a Pentium D Sony Vaio system that came with a defective motherboard and went two more rounds of bad motherboards. Each time a tech came out to do an on-site and replaced the motherboard, eventually the fourth motherboard was good and has stayed good. However, I did not think that this was an exceptionally a good thing for Sony.
Classic MacOS for the PPC only ran application code and much of the system code in PowerPC User Mode, which is a bit like Ring 3 on x86. The classic MacOS Nanokernel was the only code running in PPC Supervisor Mode, the instruction privilege mode that is like Ring 0 on x86. 68K application code on the 68K Macs, however, ran in 68K supervisor mode the PPC Macs had to deal with in emulation. Things were also a bit strange, 68K driver code was present on Nubus expansion cards as well as the software drivers for hard drives among other places. This sucked a bit as it meant until MacOS 8, all of the drive I/O code on PPC Macs was emulated 68K code, and thus very slow.
At any rate, the fact that nearly all of the classic MacOS ran in PPC user mode helped make Classic perform well enough to be usable. On the other hand, the fact that PowerPC instruction set architecture (ISA) and machine architecture is nominally sane due to being designed that way, with obsolete parts removed helps. On the other hand, the x86 ISA and x86 PC hardware has gone through enough accretion during over 30 years to become a galaxy-sized glob of insane.
One of those Soviet submarine "political officers" played a very important check during the Cold War and prevented the submarine captain from firing off the nukes on board the sub at the US. So all and all, not that bad of a program.
The statement: "We can't calculate every possible variable, currently. Since we can't predict with perfection, we should not do anything because we do not know the precise outcome." This is a statement straight from the standard denialism handbook and has been used against scientific approaches to so many large problems like the economy, global warming and plenty of other large problems. It is a bullshit argument so that denialists of all stripes do not have to have their reasoning tested and disproven. When shown data that invalidates their reasoning, they claim the reasoning is still valid because not enough data was collected or they have their own badly collected data or anecdotes that "prove" their reasoning. I have news for denialists: you are so incorrect you are not even wrong.
That method works, but for the day or more it took them to do that, using the Secure Erase ATA command on that drive would have been more secure and taken only an hour or two. The Secure Erase command is part of the ATA standard and present on every ATA drive larger than 15GB. The command "dd" cannot access and erase every sector as ATA drives do not allow access to certain sectors, like reallocated sectors. Even though SCSI drives do not have this limitation, I still wouldn't erase one with "dd", there are probably better open source tools. An even better and faster option for even more secure erasure on ATA drives, is to use the drive in encrypted mode. When done with the drive, toss the encryption key. This makes any data on the drive practically unusable. Reuse of the drive is still possible with a standard reformat after unlocking the drive.
More reading:
Hard Drive data erasure methods are described on page 27 of the PDF or page 19 as printed on the document:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf
Describes different methods of data sanitization on magnetic hard drives. Discusses hard drives exclusively, unlike the NIST paper above.
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/DataSanitizationTutorial.pdf
Page from the author of the above paper with a DOS program that can send a Secure Erase ATA command to a drive, no source though:
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
However, t13.org the website of the ATA standards body is here, and has the last drafts of standards available here (nearly as good as the actual standards, which cost money):
http://www.t13.org/Documents/MinutesDefault.aspx?DocumentType=4&DocumentStage=2
Start here though for the Secure Erase Command:
http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2009/d2015r1a-ATAATAPI_Command_Set_-_2_ACS-2.pdf
There is a reason for the lack of direct entry of Unicode.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32808&cid=3541545
However, I think that there are at least 100 better ways of handling Unicode related issues than the current method.
There is a problem with doing that however, unless you use water with no tritium in it it will be easily determined as a fake. Tritium was created during nuclear testing in the 1950's and is present in small quantities worldwide, even now. Before the 1950's there was essentially no Tritium in surface water. Using modern rainwater to water your plants would leave detectable amounts of Tritium in any "aged" product. Older groundwater that has been underground since the 1950's and has not been mixed with modern rainwater would work, however. Just avoid using or attempt to mask any unique chemical signature in the water. Also, a good deal of groundwater is saline and not potable for humans.
If you had owed money after the audit, you still probably would not have been criminally prosecuted, unless the deficiency was willful. If you honestly believed you filled out your tax returns properly, you haven't done anything criminal, yet. However, willful ignorance on tax returns is not a defense.
That's funny. For all of your railing against the "free market" and for socialism, it's apparent that you simply don't know how the free market is even supposed to work.
Funny can you actually point out a market that is free and works? Thought not.
If you had taken all of that money that you happily gave to insurance companies over the years in exchange for absolutely nothing, and instead saved it for when your wife needed her ankle fixed, you would find that you could pay cash for great service. Instead you're stuck hoping not to get screwed-over by a for-profit company with absolutely no incentive to provide your wife with appropriate care. If you were a hospital, who would you treat first, patients who offer cash or those who send their insurance company to haggle with the doctors?
My preference would be to prioritize patients and treat the guy with a treatable sucking chest wound near death first, and go from there. Whether Mr. Chest Wound is a gang banger, rich white guy, or a homeless dude does not matter. It sounds as though there are too many patients for the treatment capacity, which is a situation a for-profit company has every interest in allowing/creating. The current care facilities might run at 98% currently for instance, but adding in patients that are turned away might make the demand on services 150%. A competitor could open new care facilities, but it would have high entrance costs. The current care givers may fear seeing a drop in patients and new facilities can easily be opposed at the local or state level with enough lobbyists. Welcome to Market FAIL.
I agree that some parts of health care in the US are completely screwed up. But it appears that a major part is people like YOU who can't manage your own affairs, and expect to be able to pay someone else to do it for you. The free market is based on rational self-interest. You appear to be appropriately self-interested, yet completely irrational about it.
The for-profit medical insurance have a rational interest make sure the medical industry to make insurance as much of a mind-fuck as possible. That way you pay more than you need to and you end up under-covered or over-covered and paying out of your rectum on an ongoing basis or after one big event. This is neither rational nor a functional way to receive healthcare.
Worse, you don't seem to understand that socialist health care is exactly the same as what you already have, except the insurance companies are replaced with the government and you still get to pay out the ass in exchange for horrible service when you need it most.
Excellent, I would love the federal government to take over and run many of the horribly fucked up industries in the US. The government theoretically works for its citizens and I at least get a some sort of a say, and the government is generally responsive to its citizens. Currently, an appeal process that is not a farce may or may not exist at your health insurance company. If arbitration is the method used, certain arbitration groups seem to statistically favor the party paying for the arbitration. Generally, arbitration decisions are final as well. In the government however, you can expect at least some fairness in the proceedings and the judgement can be appealed in the court system.
The credit reporting industry is another broken industry. So far, they have made negligible efforts to fix errors in credit histories. They have no reason to research any potential errors, no money is generated by error checking and the people with credit reports essentially never pay the credit bureau money.
The market is not a perfecting force, and large companies from today do not work like a small Pre-Revolution village in France. So don't try to come up with scenarios that have not relation to current economic dynamics at any scale.
Torture is also a bad idea because when an American soldier or civilian is captured, their captors may consider torture or more severe torture methods if the US is perceived to be torturing or actually torturing their captured soldiers. It is similar to the reason the US does not attempt to assassinate the leaders of other countries, the US doesn't want their leaders assassinated either. Exceptional circumstances exist where assassination may be permissible, like in war or to prevent or stop imminent or ongoing genocide. Though I wonder if a new internation treaty banning assassination of political leaders should be considered.
Hmm, Enron, WorldCom, AIG, and CountryWide type fuck-ups come to mind in the corporate sector. The due diligence on the part of Madoff and Milken investors was also a fucked up a bit. Reagan and GWBush come to mind as nice examples of fuck-ups in the government sector, they are each responsible for the greatest Post-WW2 percentage increases of the national debt during their terms.
Great, so according to the AlGore Thesis, the CPU in my computer is AlGore-complete and thus an AlGore machine? Remind me when we get to non-halting problems like Republicans and their complements, Libertarians, which are not even AlGore recognizable. Which is bad because problems that are not AlGore recognizable are just the exactly the same problems that are not Turing recognizable and thus are impossible to even attempt to compute at all.
Seriously though, global warming deniers are starting to look much like Holocaust deniers. If a Holocaust denier tried to claim that that the Holocaust didn't occur because there were still Jewish and homosexual concentration camp prisoners that survived past World War II, the denier would be wrong and labeled a lunatic, which he would be. Now there are people using isolated pieces of data like this figure in the article and claims like faulty ice extent satellite readings from the North Pole, for which the data are easily corrected, to claim that global warming is not happening. These outlying data points are easily explained, not that global warming deniers accept them, but it sounds much like the Holocaust denier example from above.
Much like Holocaust deniers, global warming deniers ignore mountains of evidence and try to make an absurd argument, in the hope that one or two problems will invalidate the other side's interpretation. When the problems are quickly and easily refuted, they go into a corner, pout, and look for even more absurd "problems". They do this without coming up with their own hypotheses that explain all of the available data. On the other hand, sometimes these people do have "theories", but their claims are quickly refuted and dismissed. Which leads these types into more pouting in the corner.
I'm sorry, but I don't see any harassment there.
Asking someone nicely to stop sending you email and then if sender continues, is harassment. Any number of e-mails sent after that, are unwanted harassment. Especially if they are a form letter or if sent in bulk.
A senator can ask me to stop sending him emails, but I have no legal requirement to stop sending emails to him - if I did *have* to or else face legal sanctions, that would violate the 1st Amend.
Harassment is not speech, again for the slow people, harassment != speech. Laws that make it a crime for one to send e-mails in order to harass or otherwise obstruct the normal functioning of an elected official or even a normal person are entirely constitutional and have been upheld. Also, the First Amendment has not been interpreted to mean that you have a right to a response, be listened to, or even to be heard while exercising your right of free speech by any government official whether elected, appointed, or a regular government employee. In other words, do not attempt to construe this snippet from the First Amendment: "petition the government for a redress of grievances" as a right to even be heard. Read it in context with the rest of the sentence.
So will Mein Kampf, but that's not the legacy I would want to leave behind.
Also, keep in mind that white LEDs produce light that has a spectral distribution similar to sunlight, if somewhat shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. This also assumes you ignore the significant dip in output in the turquoise range. Adding a turquoise LED seems to help reduce this problem. Good luck finding a light like this though.
AFAIK the Nintendo DS still uses mask ROMs for the cartridges, much like every variety of Gameboy game or other cartridge system does. The type of memory used is not EEPROMs, NAND Flash or NOR Flash. Mask ROMs are different in that they use a unique set of lithographic masks for each game and are truly Read Only Memory, their contents cannot be modified after manufacture.
The power of Jesus compels you! The power of Jesus compels you! The power of Jesus compels you!
Pretty please?
The power of Xenu compels you! The power of Xenu compels you! The power of Xenu compels you!
Okay, maybe not?
Facepalm! That is not much of a performance review. The reviewer gives the a score of 1 to the OS that was fastest on a given test for hardware second best OS a 2, third best a 3, fourth best a 4, and worst a five. So a test where the difference between the fastest and slowest is 5% and another where the difference is 50% both get scored the same. Add the results from the 31 tests done and a pre-release version of Windows 7 can look very nice even if the margin of final scores do not accurately represent the actual performance. Worse yet, how do we know whether of not there are still features, DRM or otherwise, that cripple performance? We don't know, and we won't know until Microsoft releases feature complete versions of the various Windows 7 version tiers.
They all love sucking up to commie dictators so bending over and grabbing their ankles for a murderous, misogynistic religion should be right up their alley.
Add Pat Robertson to that list as well, its not like transporting diamond mining equipment from Rwanda to Zaire in 1994 for a corporation that was a joint venture between Robertson and Zaire's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Worse, Robertson claimed he was transporting refugees out of Rwanda and solicited donations on his show, the 700 Club, using that claim. Scratch that, Pat Robertson is worse than those you mentioned, they aren't actually criminals. Pat Robertson has the distinction of being a war criminal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson_controversies