The "good cop, bad cop" routine does not require the use of torture. It only requires the THREAT of torture, or some other unpleasant things occurring. The routine is very effective, of course, in certain situations.
"Other people however have more trouble managing their money, and might be severely inconvenienced by having to pay cash."
That is just so far - out there.
People who have trouble managing their money are the very last people who should have a credit card. They should be highly encouraged to use cash for every thing. They are the very people that predatory credit cards companies are looking for. "Look, Joe Schmuck can''t manage his money very well - GIVE HIM A CARD!" Joe accepts the card, bungles his money management, misses some payments, and suddenly he's in debt forever, paying the highest interest rates that the law allows.
A guy who has to keep a few bucks in his pocket just to eat, will learn pretty soon to KEEP that money in his pocket. The guy who can just sign a receipt to eat can, and sometimes does, lose sight of the fact that he has less money than he's spending.
The credit card companies are raping you coming, and going. Everything they do is designed to turn YOUR money into THEIR money. Exorbitant interest rates, extortionist penalties, fees for this, fees for that - but few people understand that credit card companies are predators.
The US treasury mints what, exactly? Nothing that I'm aware of. All the currency in circulation today belongs to private banks, not to the government. The Federal Reserve is misnamed, intentionally, to hide the fact that they are neither "federal", nor are they a "reserve".
I wouldn't cooperate either. Never cooperate in any criminal investigation in which you might be a subject. Never, never, never. You have the right to be silent - USE IT IDIOT!!!
Investigators never ask an innocent question. A totally innocuous question, such as, "Isn't that a beautiful child?" answered affirmatively, will be used to paint you as a pedo. Never cooperate!
No, he panned it. He thought the movie sucked, so he tossed it into a pan, and sauteed it in butter. The movie still sucked, so he left it out for the cats to eat. They're not touching it either.
We KNOW this because of testimony from the CIA operatives who worked with the captives who provided information about Osama.
In short, they tortured people suspected of knowing important information, and those "informants" gave up shit for intel. They'd say ANYTHING they thought the torturers wanted to hear. And, it was useless.
AFTER all the torturing was finished, different operatives approached the same "informants" in a more friendly manner, and basically bribed useful information from the "informants". Promises of better treatment, promises of religious practice, a little sympathy, a little empathy, share a smoke - the little things that denote that you recognize a man as a man, and that you respect him.
FFS, parents who are worthy of that title can tell you that they can tease information from their children far more readily than they can threaten it or beat it out of them.
Our own experiences in Viet Nam demonstrated quite clearly that our guys would, eventually, tell their torturers anything that the torturers wanted to hear. And, our guys fed the Viet Cong garbage for the most part. The interrogator wants to hear about troop concentrations, complete with equipment lists? Fine, spout some nonsense at them, transpose numbers, inflate some, deflate others, blah blah blah.
Everyone has a breaking point, but the interrogator is only guessing at what that point is, and he's only guessing at the usefulness of the information he extracts.
I don't think so. I suspect an extraterrestrial ship parked in a geothermal vent somewhere. They're out of sight, they get free energy, and they're close enough to a server to hack into it with their advanced computers. They've given up on those abductions and anal probes, now they're just hacking into the network to discover whatever might be on our minds.
Or, maybe it's occurred to them that we don't keep our brains next to our rectum?
In half a year, things may actually look rosy to the people who jump on the bandwagon. I say, let's ask again in about three, or five years. Sometimes, it takes time for an evil plan to come to fruition.
It's way cooler among those who grew up indoctrinated in the Microsoft ecology, I guess. It's remotely possible that I'll forgive Microsoft, some day. I'll never forget.
Nope. A select few started using that word "steal, in relation to copyright infringement. A very select few. It's not a "language evolves" thing at all. It was a deliberate form of indoctrination. Non-savvy people read news articles about "stealing music", and they believed that nonsense.
The indoctrination continues. I refuse to be indoctrinated, thank you very much.
By "flatline", do you mean that no one buys these items anymore?
Or, by "flatline", do you mean that the market is no longer growing?
See, "flatline" is a medical term, to me, implying someone is dead, dead, dead. Obviously, laptop and desktops aren't "dead, dead, dead" because millions of us use them. Newegg and other retailers still offer and sell them.
Using the term to describe markets that no longer enjoy astronomical growth is misleading at best, and probably dishonest.
1. Get married. 2. Wait for the new bride to wash you wool. 3. Blow up when you find that you can no longer wear hundreds, even thousands, of dollars worth of perfectly good clothing. 4. Stay in the dog house for a week, or until she feel horny. 5. Explain to her, very gently, that it was the HOT WATER that destroyed your wardrobe.
To be fair, my wife only destroyed about $750 worth of clothing. I should have known that a southern girl wouldn't know how to launder wool . . . .
"[*]Citation hard to find, but the original article was, IIRC about a homonid with an advanced case of degenerative bone disease. Basically the disease is not survivable in that state without external assistance because it makes the afflicted person unable to hunt or gather. This implies that other homonids fed and cared for the diseased one."
Well, it might imply what you suggest. Or - it might imply that the diseased hominid found one method or another to barter for the food and other supplies that he could not attain for himself.
I don't mean to start a crude discussion about relations between males and females, but it seems that our two genders have traded services since caveman days. The guys went out and fought saber tooth tigers to get the meat, the gals tended the fires (once they discovered fires, anyway) and served up the food, kept the cubs safe and entertained, etc. It's not unreasonable to suppose that our diseased hominid might have had some talents for which other hominids were willing to trade for.
"What would happen to you if you were struck down by a degenerative disease? What would happen if it happened in your 20's before you'd had the opportunity to save much money? What about your teens when you'd had no opportunity."
Then, I would be another statistic. Of course, we are ALL statistics, anyway.
"Without society, life is short, nasty and brutal."
We all make sacrifices for others. But, how much sacrifice is enough? We face a situation today, with the baby boomers aging, and attempting to retire. The working population that was expected to support the baby boomers has grown considerably smaller than expected. Tell me - how many old folks can the working population support? How many SHOULD they support? Should they be REQUIRED to support all those boomers? How long? Exactly HOW MUCH medical support should all those boomers expect?
I'm only a few years behind the baby boomers. I watch all the Obama-care debates, I watch the other party pushing back, and I wonder. Do I have a "right" to expect the younger generation to support me for twenty, or thirty, or maybe even sixty years after I retire?
Sorry, but I don't think so. Hell, I don't even WANT to live that long, warehoused in some hospital or nursing home, listening to a clock tick, day by day, counting down to my last breath.
If I don't expect today's youth to support me forever, then I damned sure don't expect them to support dangerous people who are incapable of ever repaying society for the care they are given.
Life is full of tough decisions - with or without society to help decide.
Check the specifications of US military assault weapons, written before and during weapons testing and procurement. The military specifies whether they want an automatic, a semi-automatic, lever action, bolt action, pump action, or even a single shot weapon.
Historically, any and all weapons have been readily available for resale to the civilian population, except full auto capable weapons. Full auto were available during much of the prohibition era, then they were pretty much outlawed. Even then, semi-auto weapons were still readily available to the civilian population, as were any other military surplus small arms. My first hunting rifles were M1's, a bolt action rifle with a 5 round capacity - 6 rounds if you were dumb enough to keep a round in the chamber.
You could try an experiment. Get yourself a few wheelbarrows of cash money. Go downtown, and start handing out money to passerby. Rinse and repeat daily for a few years.
Come back one day, without your wheelbarrow, and see how many people are willing to buy your lunch for you.
Love? Yeah, right. Propping up a puppet in Egypt has charmed the Egyptian people, hasn't it? Current events in Egypt today seem to show that US aid is a factor in their politics, but it isn't a ruling factor. And, what the US wants Egypt to do isn't a factor at all, seems to me.
Some wise people have said that you can't buy love. If there is love for the US, I'd wager that it's found in our sister countries that were English colonies. Maybe France. Possibly some "like" in other nations, but not a lot of "love". Everyone, everywhere, loves our money, as long as it continues to flow. Even North Korea loves our money, and they'll take all that they can get, by whatever means that doesn't require them to bow down to our wishes. Ditto with Iran.
The reality is - California doesn't have any budget surplus. California has politicians claiming that they will have a surplus at some point in the future, while the eggheads at Berkeley are telling us that the politicians are full of shit.
Who ya gonna trust? Politicians, or eggheads? I don't see any competition here, unless you're just another partisan with a vested interest.
"5secondfilms is an art form. This new "service" is a dumpster where a bunch of kids will throw their crap that even youtube and MySpace does not want."
"On Twitter I can actually interact with celebrities directly"
Has it ever crossed your mind that you could just get a life, instead? WTF does a celebrity have to say that could possibly interest me? I visit Sodahead occasionally. A vast majority of the posts/surveys are mindless drivel about people that I simply don't give a damn about. If a catastrophe took them all out tomorrow, I'd never miss any of them. The headline would catch my eye, and I'd go "Awww, that's a shame." Ten minutes later, I'd forget about them.
Creative accounting doesn't work for liberals or conservatives. Follow Ded Bob's link. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter which side the bullshit comes from. It's still a deficit.
Slashdot Mirror
The "good cop, bad cop" routine does not require the use of torture. It only requires the THREAT of torture, or some other unpleasant things occurring. The routine is very effective, of course, in certain situations.
Because the corporate world is enamored with Gestapo films and tactics? And, the government lackeys enjoy playing the game as well?
We have a credibility problem with this post. A retailer who doesn't understand the difference between a debit and a credit card? Suspicious, I say.
"We really love it when a customer pays by debit and gets cash back at the same time"
Oh - sorting coins into rolls? FFS, just buy a cheap little mechanical device to do it for you. What, fifteen dollars invested? Let me look - - - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Semacon-Professional-Coin-roller-Model-CM-65-/111003606891?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19d8549f6b Used or slightly used for about fifty bucks, complete with a "cereal number". Makes me wonder if he was sorting his corn flakes by size or something, but hey, it's none of MY business what he does behind closed doors!
"Other people however have more trouble managing their money, and might be severely inconvenienced by having to pay cash."
That is just so far - out there.
People who have trouble managing their money are the very last people who should have a credit card. They should be highly encouraged to use cash for every thing. They are the very people that predatory credit cards companies are looking for. "Look, Joe Schmuck can''t manage his money very well - GIVE HIM A CARD!" Joe accepts the card, bungles his money management, misses some payments, and suddenly he's in debt forever, paying the highest interest rates that the law allows.
A guy who has to keep a few bucks in his pocket just to eat, will learn pretty soon to KEEP that money in his pocket. The guy who can just sign a receipt to eat can, and sometimes does, lose sight of the fact that he has less money than he's spending.
BINGO!! We have a winner.
The credit card companies are raping you coming, and going. Everything they do is designed to turn YOUR money into THEIR money. Exorbitant interest rates, extortionist penalties, fees for this, fees for that - but few people understand that credit card companies are predators.
The US treasury mints what, exactly? Nothing that I'm aware of. All the currency in circulation today belongs to private banks, not to the government. The Federal Reserve is misnamed, intentionally, to hide the fact that they are neither "federal", nor are they a "reserve".
I wouldn't cooperate either. Never cooperate in any criminal investigation in which you might be a subject. Never, never, never. You have the right to be silent - USE IT IDIOT!!!
Investigators never ask an innocent question. A totally innocuous question, such as, "Isn't that a beautiful child?" answered affirmatively, will be used to paint you as a pedo. Never cooperate!
No, he panned it. He thought the movie sucked, so he tossed it into a pan, and sauteed it in butter. The movie still sucked, so he left it out for the cats to eat. They're not touching it either.
WTF is Beyonce?
We KNOW this because of testimony from the CIA operatives who worked with the captives who provided information about Osama.
In short, they tortured people suspected of knowing important information, and those "informants" gave up shit for intel. They'd say ANYTHING they thought the torturers wanted to hear. And, it was useless.
AFTER all the torturing was finished, different operatives approached the same "informants" in a more friendly manner, and basically bribed useful information from the "informants". Promises of better treatment, promises of religious practice, a little sympathy, a little empathy, share a smoke - the little things that denote that you recognize a man as a man, and that you respect him.
FFS, parents who are worthy of that title can tell you that they can tease information from their children far more readily than they can threaten it or beat it out of them.
Our own experiences in Viet Nam demonstrated quite clearly that our guys would, eventually, tell their torturers anything that the torturers wanted to hear. And, our guys fed the Viet Cong garbage for the most part. The interrogator wants to hear about troop concentrations, complete with equipment lists? Fine, spout some nonsense at them, transpose numbers, inflate some, deflate others, blah blah blah.
Everyone has a breaking point, but the interrogator is only guessing at what that point is, and he's only guessing at the usefulness of the information he extracts.
I don't think so. I suspect an extraterrestrial ship parked in a geothermal vent somewhere. They're out of sight, they get free energy, and they're close enough to a server to hack into it with their advanced computers. They've given up on those abductions and anal probes, now they're just hacking into the network to discover whatever might be on our minds.
Or, maybe it's occurred to them that we don't keep our brains next to our rectum?
In half a year, things may actually look rosy to the people who jump on the bandwagon. I say, let's ask again in about three, or five years. Sometimes, it takes time for an evil plan to come to fruition.
It's way cooler among those who grew up indoctrinated in the Microsoft ecology, I guess. It's remotely possible that I'll forgive Microsoft, some day. I'll never forget.
Again - nope. Copyright infringement has historically been a civil matter, argued in civil court. This "felony" nonsense must stop.
Nope. A select few started using that word "steal, in relation to copyright infringement. A very select few. It's not a "language evolves" thing at all. It was a deliberate form of indoctrination. Non-savvy people read news articles about "stealing music", and they believed that nonsense.
The indoctrination continues. I refuse to be indoctrinated, thank you very much.
By "flatline", do you mean that no one buys these items anymore?
Or, by "flatline", do you mean that the market is no longer growing?
See, "flatline" is a medical term, to me, implying someone is dead, dead, dead. Obviously, laptop and desktops aren't "dead, dead, dead" because millions of us use them. Newegg and other retailers still offer and sell them.
Using the term to describe markets that no longer enjoy astronomical growth is misleading at best, and probably dishonest.
1. Get married.
2. Wait for the new bride to wash you wool.
3. Blow up when you find that you can no longer wear hundreds, even thousands, of dollars worth of perfectly good clothing.
4. Stay in the dog house for a week, or until she feel horny.
5. Explain to her, very gently, that it was the HOT WATER that destroyed your wardrobe.
To be fair, my wife only destroyed about $750 worth of clothing. I should have known that a southern girl wouldn't know how to launder wool . . . .
"[*]Citation hard to find, but the original article was, IIRC about a homonid with an advanced case of degenerative bone disease. Basically the disease is not survivable in that state without external assistance because it makes the afflicted person unable to hunt or gather. This implies that other homonids fed and cared for the diseased one."
Well, it might imply what you suggest. Or - it might imply that the diseased hominid found one method or another to barter for the food and other supplies that he could not attain for himself.
I don't mean to start a crude discussion about relations between males and females, but it seems that our two genders have traded services since caveman days. The guys went out and fought saber tooth tigers to get the meat, the gals tended the fires (once they discovered fires, anyway) and served up the food, kept the cubs safe and entertained, etc. It's not unreasonable to suppose that our diseased hominid might have had some talents for which other hominids were willing to trade for.
"What would happen to you if you were struck down by a degenerative disease? What would happen if it happened in your 20's before you'd had the opportunity to save much money? What about your teens when you'd had no opportunity."
Then, I would be another statistic. Of course, we are ALL statistics, anyway.
"Without society, life is short, nasty and brutal."
We all make sacrifices for others. But, how much sacrifice is enough? We face a situation today, with the baby boomers aging, and attempting to retire. The working population that was expected to support the baby boomers has grown considerably smaller than expected. Tell me - how many old folks can the working population support? How many SHOULD they support? Should they be REQUIRED to support all those boomers? How long? Exactly HOW MUCH medical support should all those boomers expect?
I'm only a few years behind the baby boomers. I watch all the Obama-care debates, I watch the other party pushing back, and I wonder. Do I have a "right" to expect the younger generation to support me for twenty, or thirty, or maybe even sixty years after I retire?
Sorry, but I don't think so. Hell, I don't even WANT to live that long, warehoused in some hospital or nursing home, listening to a clock tick, day by day, counting down to my last breath.
If I don't expect today's youth to support me forever, then I damned sure don't expect them to support dangerous people who are incapable of ever repaying society for the care they are given.
Life is full of tough decisions - with or without society to help decide.
Check the specifications of US military assault weapons, written before and during weapons testing and procurement. The military specifies whether they want an automatic, a semi-automatic, lever action, bolt action, pump action, or even a single shot weapon.
Historically, any and all weapons have been readily available for resale to the civilian population, except full auto capable weapons. Full auto were available during much of the prohibition era, then they were pretty much outlawed. Even then, semi-auto weapons were still readily available to the civilian population, as were any other military surplus small arms. My first hunting rifles were M1's, a bolt action rifle with a 5 round capacity - 6 rounds if you were dumb enough to keep a round in the chamber.
You could try an experiment. Get yourself a few wheelbarrows of cash money. Go downtown, and start handing out money to passerby. Rinse and repeat daily for a few years.
Come back one day, without your wheelbarrow, and see how many people are willing to buy your lunch for you.
Love? Yeah, right. Propping up a puppet in Egypt has charmed the Egyptian people, hasn't it? Current events in Egypt today seem to show that US aid is a factor in their politics, but it isn't a ruling factor. And, what the US wants Egypt to do isn't a factor at all, seems to me.
Some wise people have said that you can't buy love. If there is love for the US, I'd wager that it's found in our sister countries that were English colonies. Maybe France. Possibly some "like" in other nations, but not a lot of "love". Everyone, everywhere, loves our money, as long as it continues to flow. Even North Korea loves our money, and they'll take all that they can get, by whatever means that doesn't require them to bow down to our wishes. Ditto with Iran.
I stand corrected. I chose my words poorly - and my typing fingers got well ahead of any second thoughts.
The reality is - California doesn't have any budget surplus. California has politicians claiming that they will have a surplus at some point in the future, while the eggheads at Berkeley are telling us that the politicians are full of shit.
Who ya gonna trust? Politicians, or eggheads? I don't see any competition here, unless you're just another partisan with a vested interest.
"5secondfilms is an art form. This new "service" is a dumpster where a bunch of kids will throw their crap that even youtube and MySpace does not want."
Think that's more accurate?
"On Twitter I can actually interact with celebrities directly"
Has it ever crossed your mind that you could just get a life, instead? WTF does a celebrity have to say that could possibly interest me? I visit Sodahead occasionally. A vast majority of the posts/surveys are mindless drivel about people that I simply don't give a damn about. If a catastrophe took them all out tomorrow, I'd never miss any of them. The headline would catch my eye, and I'd go "Awww, that's a shame." Ten minutes later, I'd forget about them.
Creative accounting doesn't work for liberals or conservatives. Follow Ded Bob's link. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter which side the bullshit comes from. It's still a deficit.