Look at it from the corporate side. Corporations exist for the quick buck. Free money from the government is the ultimate quick buck. Now that the government has sunk so much money into AIG the government has acquired a case of sunk costs syndrome. They will not let AIG go now, no matter the cost. A cost which AIG itself can manipulate. So what's the only route a responsible corporation can take to fulfill its lawful duty to act only in the interest of proift? Soak the government for every penny it can.
Being in the same country as California is still marginally (as in if there could be a non-zero number that was equal to 1 -.9... it would be that number) better than being in the same country as Quebec.
Sometime you should look up the break down of where corn goes.
Here's a spoiler for you: the vast majority of corn produced goes into animal feed. Not 50%. Not 60% More like 80%+. Corn used for ethanol fuel is a sliver of the human use percentage.
But yeah, we're totally starving third world countries to make ethanol. Totally.
You really have to love the current crop of high fructose corn syrups ads on TV. "It's OK in moderation." Good luck with that when it's in freaking everything.
Hopefully some Stevia based pop will make it to the mainstream sooner than later. In the meantime I'll have to keep pestering the local co-ops to carry some.
Actually it be more along the lines of someone suggesting to the Linux guys that they should do something and the Linux guys telling the person "go make the commercial yourself".
If you have a lot of people sitting in jail you'll need privately run jails. Filling those jails with violent offenders wouldn't be nearly as profitable.
If the cops are busy with the petty crimes then they aren't busy with the real crimes being committed. Less overhead in bribes and extortion and the police departments get to look like they're tough on crime.
So yes, it is a drain on public resources. The important part no one talks about is where that drain actually goes...
And we can't have people getting embarrassed. That'd hurt their feelings and rack up all sorts of bills at the therapist. And ignorance forbid, someone might actually learn a life lesson.
There is, but it requires spending money as opposed to making money.
You hire cops. You get stopped by the cop for some other infraction. If you don't have insurance the cop tickets/charges you for that as well. Problem is you have to pay cops and to match the coverage of a camera system you'd need a lot of cops, which in turn costs a lot of money.
If cities actually thought of their police departments as law enforcement and the whole "to protect and serve" bit you'd think they'd employ more than a skeleton crew large enough to keep the city from falling into chaos and thus financial ruin. But it's all about the profit.
Racist! Why do they have to be Mexicans? Americans are the ones doing meth and pot. (BTW: I am American and don't do any!)
Country-ist, thank you very much. Regardless of what race they are, a lot of the major meth labs around here are run by people from Mexico. Which would make them, *drumroll* Mexicans. People in America (aka Americans) are consuming the product but a lot of it is produced by foreigners though not necessarily on foreign soil.
Ahh, sorry, I have an update coming in. That should be "too bad for the motorists that Chicago is not a bastion of integrity".
You'd think more people would be worried when law enforcement is publicly billed as a revenue source.
It's why they'll never end the war on drugs or even legalize pot: the departments couldn't afford to lose all the free money they get from drug related forfeitures. And pot heads make very easy targets. Which do you think a cop would rather bust: a vegged out pot head or a well armed group of Mexicans with a meth lab in the middle of a corn field?
Manually sorting and storing music was annoying back in 1997. I don't see how going back to a system that was cumbersome with only a gig or two of 96/128kbps mp3 files is supposed to be better for devices that can store 60+ gigs. I (and most likely not for one) like my metadata.
You do remember that ancient greeks approved of slavery as well, right?
And your point is?
Slavery was pretty much how the pre-industrial world ran. It varied how they sorted out slave and master and if it was a permanent status or temporary but almost all cultures of the time used slaves.
I would say that the time when one person COULD (not had to) stay at home is long gone.
Dual income *looks* like it has more spending power, twice the gross income, but there is a rapidly diminishing return when you get down to net income. And then society gets to pay for the inevitably screwed up kid(s).
The problem is two part time jobs don't equal one full time job. You can't keep your benefits with both spouses working part time and that will cost you big time since you'll be shelling out for insurances out of pocket and probably losing out on retirement plans or bonuses. One person basically *HAS* to work full time. I've worked at places where if you weren't full time you were capped at 38 hours a week and never allowed the overtime to hit 40. Almost all the work of a full timer but basically non of the benefits. We'd need a corporate culture shift to get equal time at home. And that shift would be an expensive one so it would never happen.
Shoulder bags can be easily slung to the side or front if you ever want to do this thing called "sitting in a chair or seat" or if you want better control of the bag (for those of us without eyes in the back of our heads). Most backpacks become rather uncomfortable if hung off of just one strap and look plain silly carried in front of you.
I have this faint suspicion the same people that are lampooning the very idea of a quality bag are the same ones that would cut their own heads off if it would prove their argument of why they *NEED* four $1000 octo-core video cards to play a video game.
East Texas is patent troll central. If you need a judge that's going to side in favor of the troll, you get the case heard there. If it was a legit claim it would have been heard elsewhere.
They got the patent in 2000. The companies they are suing released their products years later. If they weren't a troll, they'd have brought it up as the projects were announced publicly or shortly after being released. Trolls wait until their victims have money and a reason to pay.
Why go after a game with ~200k subscribers when there's an even bigger infringer with 12 million subscribers? Unless you really don't have a case and you need to set precedent so a competent judge won't personally dropkick you out of the courtroom, that's why you go after the small fries first. If they had a solid case they'd be able to force Blizzard and Sony into a settlement that would be larger than all the combined assets of NCSoft.
And apparently I've found the only slashdotter with a six digit ID that doesn't know what astroturfing means and who can't be bothered to go hit up wikipedia. Either that or the check must have been worth trashing such a low ID.
If the Army does it, it goes in the Army budget, comes out of the Army budget and goes to someone in the Army.
If the Army outsources it, it goes in the Army budget comes out of the Army budget and goes to some contractor friend of a congresscritter who wants defense money but doesn't want to be in the Army. If you ignore the Army as the middle man this lets politicians give money to the people they want to give money to, in military sized amounts, without looking like they are giving it to them, cause, ya know, they gave it to the Army.
Why pay some Private to stand at a gate when you can hire your buddy's security firm to send someone to do it at twice the price?
Holding the case in East Texas? Check. Sat on the patent for at least five years? Check. Suing over a patent that is obvious enough for multiple entities to independently and simultaneously develop? Check. Testing the waters with the little guys first? Check.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck. Or in this case patent troll.
I was pulled over for doing 72 mph on the 70 mph interstate while in a line of cars all going 72 mph. The best part? As the cop was rolling up on me before putting on the lights a van passed the cop, myself and the line of cars I was in doing at least 80.
I've also encountered "one of your brake lights is DIMMER than the other". Functional, yes. Visible in daylight and at night, yes. The same intensity as the other one, no. Apparently that is somehow suspicious.
Basically the people who want to be cops aren't the people we want to be cops.
You want excessive violence? Check out the Old Testament. This God guys goes biblical on not just a couple of cities, not just entire nations but the whole fricken world outside of one family in a smelly boat. Spare the sacrificial altar and spoil the child.
Then you've got our classic mythology. Sumerian gods leg humping goddess. Egyptian gods getting dismembered, fed to crocodiles and then mostly reassembled. Greek monsters that have scorpions and vermin for ejaculate. Norse heaven is a perpetual battlefield and Loki gets it on with anything that moves.
The story of some guy who runs around and kills some cops is chump change compared to the stuff previous generations were raised on.
Ya, it's not like you need a Federal Firearms License to own an automatic weapon or anything. And FFLs are sooooooo easy to get. Hand them out like candy they do.
Slashdot Mirror
Explain why we are still not in an ice age if the "natural contributions of the Earth's own systems" are stable and don't cause climate change.
How about a tie in with my All Natural Green Organic Hemlock Energy Drink?
"If it's good enough for Socrates it's good enough for us!"
Every can comes with a coupon for the sequestration of your carbon.
Look at it from the corporate side. Corporations exist for the quick buck. Free money from the government is the ultimate quick buck. Now that the government has sunk so much money into AIG the government has acquired a case of sunk costs syndrome. They will not let AIG go now, no matter the cost. A cost which AIG itself can manipulate. So what's the only route a responsible corporation can take to fulfill its lawful duty to act only in the interest of proift? Soak the government for every penny it can.
Being in the same country as California is still marginally (as in if there could be a non-zero number that was equal to 1 - .9... it would be that number) better than being in the same country as Quebec.
Sometime you should look up the break down of where corn goes.
Here's a spoiler for you: the vast majority of corn produced goes into animal feed. Not 50%. Not 60% More like 80%+. Corn used for ethanol fuel is a sliver of the human use percentage.
But yeah, we're totally starving third world countries to make ethanol. Totally.
You really have to love the current crop of high fructose corn syrups ads on TV. "It's OK in moderation." Good luck with that when it's in freaking everything.
Hopefully some Stevia based pop will make it to the mainstream sooner than later. In the meantime I'll have to keep pestering the local co-ops to carry some.
Actually it be more along the lines of someone suggesting to the Linux guys that they should do something and the Linux guys telling the person "go make the commercial yourself".
If you have a lot of people sitting in jail you'll need privately run jails. Filling those jails with violent offenders wouldn't be nearly as profitable.
If the cops are busy with the petty crimes then they aren't busy with the real crimes being committed. Less overhead in bribes and extortion and the police departments get to look like they're tough on crime.
So yes, it is a drain on public resources. The important part no one talks about is where that drain actually goes...
And we can't have people getting embarrassed. That'd hurt their feelings and rack up all sorts of bills at the therapist. And ignorance forbid, someone might actually learn a life lesson.
There is, but it requires spending money as opposed to making money.
You hire cops. You get stopped by the cop for some other infraction. If you don't have insurance the cop tickets/charges you for that as well. Problem is you have to pay cops and to match the coverage of a camera system you'd need a lot of cops, which in turn costs a lot of money.
If cities actually thought of their police departments as law enforcement and the whole "to protect and serve" bit you'd think they'd employ more than a skeleton crew large enough to keep the city from falling into chaos and thus financial ruin. But it's all about the profit.
Racist! Why do they have to be Mexicans? Americans are the ones doing meth and pot. (BTW: I am American and don't do any!)
Country-ist, thank you very much. Regardless of what race they are, a lot of the major meth labs around here are run by people from Mexico. Which would make them, *drumroll* Mexicans. People in America (aka Americans) are consuming the product but a lot of it is produced by foreigners though not necessarily on foreign soil.
Ahh, sorry, I have an update coming in. That should be "too bad for the motorists that Chicago is not a bastion of integrity".
You'd think more people would be worried when law enforcement is publicly billed as a revenue source.
It's why they'll never end the war on drugs or even legalize pot: the departments couldn't afford to lose all the free money they get from drug related forfeitures. And pot heads make very easy targets. Which do you think a cop would rather bust: a vegged out pot head or a well armed group of Mexicans with a meth lab in the middle of a corn field?
Manually sorting and storing music was annoying back in 1997. I don't see how going back to a system that was cumbersome with only a gig or two of 96/128kbps mp3 files is supposed to be better for devices that can store 60+ gigs. I (and most likely not for one) like my metadata.
You do remember that ancient greeks approved of slavery as well, right?
And your point is?
Slavery was pretty much how the pre-industrial world ran. It varied how they sorted out slave and master and if it was a permanent status or temporary but almost all cultures of the time used slaves.
The egalitarian ideal is a rather modern concept.
Don't worry, the President will just issue an executive order stating that the treaty was ratified.
Really, I don't know why we keep congress around. They just slow down legislation and we've got the President to make laws for us.
</sarcasm>
I would say that the time when one person COULD (not had to) stay at home is long gone.
Dual income *looks* like it has more spending power, twice the gross income, but there is a rapidly diminishing return when you get down to net income. And then society gets to pay for the inevitably screwed up kid(s).
The problem is two part time jobs don't equal one full time job. You can't keep your benefits with both spouses working part time and that will cost you big time since you'll be shelling out for insurances out of pocket and probably losing out on retirement plans or bonuses. One person basically *HAS* to work full time. I've worked at places where if you weren't full time you were capped at 38 hours a week and never allowed the overtime to hit 40. Almost all the work of a full timer but basically non of the benefits. We'd need a corporate culture shift to get equal time at home. And that shift would be an expensive one so it would never happen.
Shoulder bags can be easily slung to the side or front if you ever want to do this thing called "sitting in a chair or seat" or if you want better control of the bag (for those of us without eyes in the back of our heads). Most backpacks become rather uncomfortable if hung off of just one strap and look plain silly carried in front of you.
I have this faint suspicion the same people that are lampooning the very idea of a quality bag are the same ones that would cut their own heads off if it would prove their argument of why they *NEED* four $1000 octo-core video cards to play a video game.
East Texas is patent troll central. If you need a judge that's going to side in favor of the troll, you get the case heard there. If it was a legit claim it would have been heard elsewhere.
They got the patent in 2000. The companies they are suing released their products years later. If they weren't a troll, they'd have brought it up as the projects were announced publicly or shortly after being released. Trolls wait until their victims have money and a reason to pay.
Why go after a game with ~200k subscribers when there's an even bigger infringer with 12 million subscribers? Unless you really don't have a case and you need to set precedent so a competent judge won't personally dropkick you out of the courtroom, that's why you go after the small fries first. If they had a solid case they'd be able to force Blizzard and Sony into a settlement that would be larger than all the combined assets of NCSoft.
And apparently I've found the only slashdotter with a six digit ID that doesn't know what astroturfing means and who can't be bothered to go hit up wikipedia. Either that or the check must have been worth trashing such a low ID.
Look at it this way:
If the Army does it, it goes in the Army budget, comes out of the Army budget and goes to someone in the Army.
If the Army outsources it, it goes in the Army budget comes out of the Army budget and goes to some contractor friend of a congresscritter who wants defense money but doesn't want to be in the Army. If you ignore the Army as the middle man this lets politicians give money to the people they want to give money to, in military sized amounts, without looking like they are giving it to them, cause, ya know, they gave it to the Army.
Why pay some Private to stand at a gate when you can hire your buddy's security firm to send someone to do it at twice the price?
Holding the case in East Texas? Check.
Sat on the patent for at least five years? Check.
Suing over a patent that is obvious enough for multiple entities to independently and simultaneously develop? Check.
Testing the waters with the little guys first? Check.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck. Or in this case patent troll.
How much was your check for astroturfing?
I was pulled over for doing 72 mph on the 70 mph interstate while in a line of cars all going 72 mph. The best part? As the cop was rolling up on me before putting on the lights a van passed the cop, myself and the line of cars I was in doing at least 80.
I've also encountered "one of your brake lights is DIMMER than the other". Functional, yes. Visible in daylight and at night, yes. The same intensity as the other one, no. Apparently that is somehow suspicious.
Basically the people who want to be cops aren't the people we want to be cops.
The problem is we've gone soft.
You want excessive violence? Check out the Old Testament. This God guys goes biblical on not just a couple of cities, not just entire nations but the whole fricken world outside of one family in a smelly boat. Spare the sacrificial altar and spoil the child.
Then you've got our classic mythology. Sumerian gods leg humping goddess. Egyptian gods getting dismembered, fed to crocodiles and then mostly reassembled. Greek monsters that have scorpions and vermin for ejaculate. Norse heaven is a perpetual battlefield and Loki gets it on with anything that moves.
The story of some guy who runs around and kills some cops is chump change compared to the stuff previous generations were raised on.
Ya, it's not like you need a Federal Firearms License to own an automatic weapon or anything. And FFLs are sooooooo easy to get. Hand them out like candy they do.
*cough*emulators*cough*
Hopefully they'll figure out credit card transactions in time for their second run.