How accurate is this device (what is the false positive rate)?
If my saw has this device and I cut something to make it activate, can I sue the company to get the saw repaired? The cost of an activation is not trivial. Should my saw destroy itself because I decide to use it to open my hotdog packet? Will I even be able to buy a table saw in the future to cut my hotdogs?
I think this technology is awesome, but what is the liability if it is mandated? I am personally in favor of having choices.
I disagree. I don't know what 90% you are talking about, but I know that when I was a teenager just about everyone I knew had some way of downloading music and movies. Very often we would go over to someone's house and watch a movie that had just been released a couple of days before. We watched a bootleg copy of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in my english class (before it was released on DVD in the US). And teenagers are not an insignificant part of the market. And that was about 10 years ago.
Older people probably don't download as much. But people who downloaded in high school are probably still downloading today. And I am sure they will still be downloading in 30 years.
Now, I am not trying to say that every time a person watches a bootleg movie that is equivalent to a lost ticket sale. But I do think it affects ticket sales. And, honestly, I would rather now pay the ticket price and watch the movie when it comes out on my big screen TV with my surround sound and fully stocked fridge (and beer) than go to a theater. And there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
My point, though, is not to argue how much piracy affects profits (or whether it affects them at all), or even whether downloading a movie for personal use is moral. The fact is that the business environment in which these studios work is changing. Technology is changing and the public's attitude is changing. I think you can agree with that. And I am hopeful that they are latching onto 3D movies as a way to adapt to the changing environment. If the majority of their profits are not affected by people downloading movies, then they do not need to spend millions in Congress lobbying against it or always live in fear of the next court decision. I am hopeful that they are actually a dynamic business that find new ways of profiting from new technology instead of trying to hold back that technology to preserve their old business plan (like the RIAA). But, I may just be young and idealistic.
I hope this means that they are trying to will stop trying to enforce their old model with the courts (suing people to prevent downloading)
Apparently I didn't proofread this sentence enough, but I was trying to say that I think they should let people download movies for their personal use. I was NOT saying that piracy was bad (though I am not saying it is good) or that the studios need to be protected from privacy. What I was trying to say is that I hope that they can adjust their business model to take piracy into account, and either make the pricing and timeframe such that people won't pirate, or make money off of other value-add that aren't pirated (such as 3D). Thereby making piracy a non-issue as far as it affects their bottom line. Thats what a good business does... It accepts changes to its environment and adjusts to the current conditions. And I wish the music industry would do the same thing (i.e. become performance centric and allow the music to be shared).
Hey... settle down. I see about 2 movies in theaters a year. I don't think they are worth the money at all unless the movie is really good. I was just stating the facts as I see it, not passing judgment on the way things should be. But, if the impatient unwashed masses are willing to pay that money for the privilege of seeing it now, then the movie industry should do what it can to profit from it.
But, the problem is that you have to wait 2 months (or more) to see the movie. Some people are willing to pay more to see the movie when it comes out. Others are not. This is called market segmentation. There are some people who download movies who would have gone to see it in the theater if they had not been able to download the movie. This is lost profit for the movie.
I do think, though, that the studios are causing illegal downloading through their pricing schemes. Technology has moved past them. Arbitrage is occuring because of this new technology and I don't think that courts are the way to prevent it. As I said before, they need to modify their business model to adapt to current conditions. I think that 3D is a good way to segment the market to allow them to get more money out of the system in a way that is not morally reprehensible.
Nothing wrong with books. Our brain fills in the images. Been doing it for eons with other types of writing.
There is an entire art of photographic/cinematographic composition that relates to how lines, shapes and form relate to the frame.
To paraphrase.... "Back in my day, we used lines, shapes and form to relate to the frame."
No new media is used to its full potential when it first comes out. But, art comes out of every media. I am sure there will be a lot of crappy 3D films. But there will also be some amazing ones as talented people get used to the new technology.
The problem is that the business model you are talking about is being destroyed by piracy. When people can download a pirated version of the movie while it is still in theaters, people can stay at home the first 2 months and still stay up to date on the current movies. I think the movie industry is adjusting its business model to changes in technology (filesharing and the ability to download movies). I hope this means that they are trying to will stop trying to enforce their old model with the courts (suing people to prevent downloading). It might actually work if they go about it the right way. They could release movies on DVD at the same time as they put the 3D movie in theaters. And, it will be a while before people start pirating 3D versions of the movies because while 3D might come to home theaters in the near future, it will be a while before it is on your home TV or laptop.
Ahhh... I see what you did there. You searched for that one poorly phrased sentence so you would not have to answer the rest of my post. Very smart. Your distraction almost worked.
Yes... I believe that real estate has intrinsic value that will keep going up as long as it keeps getting scarcer (as long as the population keeps increasing).
Home prices historically go hand-in-hand with rental prices. Rental prices traditionally go up at about the same rate as inflation. In the mid 90's, housing prices became the subject of speculation and investment, and lost their connection with rental prices. People thought, for some reason, that the price of real estate would always go up without a thought to the underlying worth of the property. Just because that is not the case, does not mean that property values are going to decrease over the long term. The value of real estate will reset back to what it should be based upon the income that can be derived from the property.
"What about the rent prices?" you might ask. "Aren't they also going down?". Quick answer... no. From all I have been able to find, in general they are actually going up because more people are trying to rent now. But, that is probably not going to continue as the housing market stabilizes, so I would predict that they would continue to rise quicker than inflation for the rest of this year (and maybe some of next year) and then rise slower than inflation for a few years after that. But, I am not an economist so YMMV.
But I do want to apologize. As you have been so eager to point out, my comment was poorly phrased. I don't think that housing prices will always rise, just like I don't think that the stock market will always rise. It will go up and down according to the economic conditions. But, in the long term I believe it will always rise because in line with its inherent value.
Also, I do not work in any way in politics. I am an engineer and happy to stay there. All the information I know can be obtained by anyone who knows how to use the internet and has a mind open to looking at things beyond their own biases. But, I feel I have a duty to inform people of where their ideas deviate from reality because of the fear mongers and propagandists at Fox News and idiots like Sarah Palin. If you really feel like my views are wrong, please try to convince me. I welcome the challenge and am excited about maybe learning something new (though this most recent post had absolutely no information whatsoever in it so I am not very hopeful). I do not like to waste my time, though, so if you refuse to add any useful information then I will cut our little conversation short.
Or, there could be malware in RAM, not diverting read requests, and the checksum will be the expected result, and without a delay.
I think you missed the part where you write over the RAM with random data first. If malware gets written over by random data in RAM, it is basically no longer in RAM (erased). Then, the protection program can scan all other memory for all known viruses and be done with it. If the virus is unknown (is not found in the scan) it will not be found until someone discovers it and adds it to the virus scan. The point of this article is that it is (supposedly) a way to guarantee that a known virus does not avoid being fixed by the virus scan by hiding in RAM.
The alternative is to re-inflate the bubble, or at least inflate another bubble and have a bigger crash a year later.
Yes. The government's job right now is to inflate a bubble. Right after a bubble bursts, you have the opposite of a bubble (I don't really know what this is called, maybe a pit?). We still have this to some degree. Assets are undervalued because people are afraid things will get worse. This is what I was talking about in my last post. Pessimism feeds on pessimism. The government's job is to create a bubble in the "pit". Not fill in the pit, but at least make it less deep. This makes things seem better which decreases the pessimism, which makes things actually better. This tempers the business cycle as opposed to the free market (which you are such a fan of) which creates bubbles during peaks and pits in depressions. I am not worried about a crash because of this bubble though. You get another crash if assets are fundamentally overvalued (which is not currently the case). I am worried about the pending crash in the commercial real estate market due to foreclosures on business loans. Hopefully we can buoy up the economy enough to weather that one without too much pain.
Btw, just so you are aware of how things work... If McCain had gotten into office, he would be basically doing the same thing as Obama. Except, he would have slashed taxes for the rich while keeping spending the same. End result is still a huge deficit (but with richer rich people and more poor people). And McCain would have done the same bank bailout (keep in mind that it started under the Bush administration). And I see no reason why he would not have done similar things to try to "stimulate" the housing market. Since it is the source of most of our problems, that is really an obvious choice.
So are we now going to have a yearly bailout ?
No. If Obama follows the correct path, the housing market will flat line (ideally) when the economy starts to get back on good footing. This will happen if the government deflates their bubble as the market climbs out of the "pit". Whether he actually does that remains to be seen, but I will wait to condemn him until he does something wrong.
Btw, this is what you are hearing about the fed doing. They have inflated the financial market by buying a lot of the toxic securities, and they are waiting for the market to recover enough to gradually put them back on the market once it can handle them.
All Obambi did is reinflate the same housing bubble, only he inflated it bigger than it was in 2009.
How do you figure it is inflated bigger than 2009? Are houses selling for more than they were in 2009? If you want me to believe an extreme assertion such as that, you are going to have to provide a citation. Or are you trying to say that the underlying value of real estate is actually declining over time? Again, cite would be needed.
So it's perfectly clear what is going to happen. Well, there is perhaps the small advantage that investers know now that however bad the US behaves, it is still fiscally (and I know how baffling and idiotic this sounds) the best behaved country around the world. But I seriously doubt that's going to make much of a difference, and I expect many will settle for China's securities.
We have no choice in the matter, re-inflating the bubble can only be done with an ever-bigger money infusion by the government. Since that money resource is limited (see zimbabwe), it's going to fail.
So we have actually *zero* choice in the matter, and we WILL end up here:
See comment 1 above. Your assumptions are wrong.
The only question is how deep the abyss is going to be. Everytime you "try to moderate" (ie. reinflate the bubble) the abyss gets deeper and deeper. And eventually we *will* fall in.
This financial crisis basically showed us that the free market cannot be trusted. It is what got us into this mess in the first place. The government listened to the free market worshipers who said that if left alone, the free market would do the "right thing". Everything would price itself correctly and there would be peace and harmony. What actually happened was that we were shown that the free market is a product of human beings and subject to the whims of human emotion. We had an enormous speculative bubble, cause by people assuming the market would keep going up regardless of what the facts were telling them. That was optimism feeding optimism. If the government had not stepped in, the opposite would have happened. Pessimism would have fed pessimism (and did). The markets crashed, but without government assurances and interventions they would have crashed much further. While it would have caused many businesses to fail (and taught them a good lesson) all of the people who made the decisions would have floated down on their golden parachutes while the average American would have been the one to suffer. While that may have made you happy in your ideal world, in the real world it is real people who lose their homes and lose their jobs. It is real people who die when riots happen. This isn't a game you can just start over if you screw things up. It is people's lives you are playing with.
So, you thought that with the enormous bubble that we had in the housing/financial/everything else markets that the US could just print money and there would be no pain. Wow, you are naive. Here is why I stand by what Obama has done. Markets crashes are vicious cycles. As you have seen if you have been paying attention, foreclosures beget more foreclosures. The laws of supply and demand state that if supply goes up and demand stays the same then the price will drop. If the prices seem like they will be dropping, then demand decreases and prices drop more. The more prices drop, the more people that say "fuck it, i owe twice as much as this house is worth" which means there are more foreclosures. And the cycle begins again. The same happens with banks. If banks start to fail then they get liquidated. Their assets get put on the market so you have extra supply. As the assets drop in price other banks become insolvent which repeats the cycle.
So, we had two choices (as far as I can tell). We could have let everything fail, bunker up for 6 months, and hope there was a country left after everything readjusted itself. Or, we accept that there is going to be a decline and try to moderate it so the drop does not go as low. The downside of the second option is that it will probably drag the whole thing out for a much longer time. But, you avoid that pesky civil unrest that comes with a system basically collapsing. So please, tell me where I am wrong in the analysis of the situation. Tell me what you would have done that would have magically allowed the bubble to deflate without any loss of production or jobs.
I don't know that the bailouts were necessary. But I also don't know that they weren't necessary. The very concept of them sickened me, and I wish I could find some evidence that would say Obama made the wrong decision, but I haven't seen it. It is usually pretty easy to look back after the fact and be an armchair politician and state what they should have done or should not have done. But in this case it still isn't clear what the right choice was, so it is hard to fault the decisions he made in the middle of it.
It is well documented that the Iraqi government (Saddam Hussein) and Al Qaeda did not like each other. Ideology was not the issue in Iraq. The issue was that a government was openly opposing the United States and Bush thought he could use the political power he got from 9/11 to deal with the Iraq issue as well. And he was right. The US congress and people were all too afraid to think clearly. It was only after that the people (well, most of them) realized that they had been misled.
I was responding to Simon... I wasn't trying to contradict your post. I was replying to his statement about flip out keyboards breaking easily. Maybe I was not clear enough, but I was saying the keyboards on the Android phones are pretty nice (as in they are solid and don't seem prone to breaking easily). Your original post said nothing about keyboard durability so I don't know what your point was in your reply to me.
Except of course that most obesity is caused by insulin resistance
The main point of the study is that there seems to be a correlation between obesity and a person's ability to taste fat. You blatantly contradict this with your post. Would you care to cite your sources?
What amazes me is that you were able to RTFS, then follow the link and RTFA, and then follow the link in that article, while still being able to get first post. Absolutely amazing.
Why couldn't you use the inside of the bag to wipe? Or, even better, as an upgrade (for another 2c) have a couple pieces of biodegradable toilet paper attached to the inside of the bag. Come on, use your imagination.
Everything costs money. Cleaning up poobags (non-disposable) costs money. The government (or the neighbors) might be willing to give out these bags if it meant not having to deal with poo.
Hmmm... I don't know, but if cheap enough it might replace this. If you can design some electronics that regulate the output, then the only other consideration is cost.
How have they tried to "keep competitors out"? They have definitely used their influence and vast amounts of money to advertise their new products, but I don't see any biases against twitter or facebook in their search results or anything.
I like how google tries its hand at any business it thinks it might have success at. I don't think "Buzz" will be successful, but it puts pressure on other companies to stay competitive. As long as its actions keep pushing other companies forward (or letting them fall behind if they can't keep up) instead of trying to push them out then I will support what they do.
You still have a VCR? I can't tell if your comment is sarcastic or serious. I am really hoping for sarcastic.
But, just in case...
Our dear friend mdwh2 was arguing that you could get the same functionality out of a VCR as out of a DVR (somehow by having one with two tape decks). I refuted that statement. Whether or not that is the way it should be was not under debate. Just whether it is or is not the case. I actually do not even have cable, so hence have no DVR. How is that for "entitlement"? But that has nothing to do with whether or not a VCR can pause/fast-forward/rewind live video.
Slashdot Mirror
The table saw.
Quick thought, though....
How accurate is this device (what is the false positive rate)?
If my saw has this device and I cut something to make it activate, can I sue the company to get the saw repaired? The cost of an activation is not trivial. Should my saw destroy itself because I decide to use it to open my hotdog packet? Will I even be able to buy a table saw in the future to cut my hotdogs?
I think this technology is awesome, but what is the liability if it is mandated? I am personally in favor of having choices.
I disagree. I don't know what 90% you are talking about, but I know that when I was a teenager just about everyone I knew had some way of downloading music and movies. Very often we would go over to someone's house and watch a movie that had just been released a couple of days before. We watched a bootleg copy of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in my english class (before it was released on DVD in the US). And teenagers are not an insignificant part of the market. And that was about 10 years ago.
Older people probably don't download as much. But people who downloaded in high school are probably still downloading today. And I am sure they will still be downloading in 30 years.
Now, I am not trying to say that every time a person watches a bootleg movie that is equivalent to a lost ticket sale. But I do think it affects ticket sales. And, honestly, I would rather now pay the ticket price and watch the movie when it comes out on my big screen TV with my surround sound and fully stocked fridge (and beer) than go to a theater. And there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
My point, though, is not to argue how much piracy affects profits (or whether it affects them at all), or even whether downloading a movie for personal use is moral. The fact is that the business environment in which these studios work is changing. Technology is changing and the public's attitude is changing. I think you can agree with that. And I am hopeful that they are latching onto 3D movies as a way to adapt to the changing environment. If the majority of their profits are not affected by people downloading movies, then they do not need to spend millions in Congress lobbying against it or always live in fear of the next court decision. I am hopeful that they are actually a dynamic business that find new ways of profiting from new technology instead of trying to hold back that technology to preserve their old business plan (like the RIAA). But, I may just be young and idealistic.
You completely misread the intent of my post.
I hope this means that they are trying to will stop trying to enforce their old model with the courts (suing people to prevent downloading)
Apparently I didn't proofread this sentence enough, but I was trying to say that I think they should let people download movies for their personal use. I was NOT saying that piracy was bad (though I am not saying it is good) or that the studios need to be protected from privacy. What I was trying to say is that I hope that they can adjust their business model to take piracy into account, and either make the pricing and timeframe such that people won't pirate, or make money off of other value-add that aren't pirated (such as 3D). Thereby making piracy a non-issue as far as it affects their bottom line. Thats what a good business does... It accepts changes to its environment and adjusts to the current conditions. And I wish the music industry would do the same thing (i.e. become performance centric and allow the music to be shared).
Hey... settle down. I see about 2 movies in theaters a year. I don't think they are worth the money at all unless the movie is really good. I was just stating the facts as I see it, not passing judgment on the way things should be. But, if the impatient unwashed masses are willing to pay that money for the privilege of seeing it now, then the movie industry should do what it can to profit from it.
But, the problem is that you have to wait 2 months (or more) to see the movie. Some people are willing to pay more to see the movie when it comes out. Others are not. This is called market segmentation. There are some people who download movies who would have gone to see it in the theater if they had not been able to download the movie. This is lost profit for the movie.
I do think, though, that the studios are causing illegal downloading through their pricing schemes. Technology has moved past them. Arbitrage is occuring because of this new technology and I don't think that courts are the way to prevent it. As I said before, they need to modify their business model to adapt to current conditions. I think that 3D is a good way to segment the market to allow them to get more money out of the system in a way that is not morally reprehensible.
Nothing wrong with books. Our brain fills in the images. Been doing it for eons with other types of writing.
There is an entire art of photographic/cinematographic composition that relates to how lines, shapes and form relate to the frame.
To paraphrase.... "Back in my day, we used lines, shapes and form to relate to the frame."
No new media is used to its full potential when it first comes out. But, art comes out of every media. I am sure there will be a lot of crappy 3D films. But there will also be some amazing ones as talented people get used to the new technology.
Sorry Grandpa... I will get off your lawn now.
The problem is that the business model you are talking about is being destroyed by piracy. When people can download a pirated version of the movie while it is still in theaters, people can stay at home the first 2 months and still stay up to date on the current movies. I think the movie industry is adjusting its business model to changes in technology (filesharing and the ability to download movies). I hope this means that they are trying to will stop trying to enforce their old model with the courts (suing people to prevent downloading). It might actually work if they go about it the right way. They could release movies on DVD at the same time as they put the 3D movie in theaters. And, it will be a while before people start pirating 3D versions of the movies because while 3D might come to home theaters in the near future, it will be a while before it is on your home TV or laptop.
Ahhh... I see what you did there. You searched for that one poorly phrased sentence so you would not have to answer the rest of my post. Very smart. Your distraction almost worked.
Yes... I believe that real estate has intrinsic value that will keep going up as long as it keeps getting scarcer (as long as the population keeps increasing).
Home prices historically go hand-in-hand with rental prices. Rental prices traditionally go up at about the same rate as inflation. In the mid 90's, housing prices became the subject of speculation and investment, and lost their connection with rental prices. People thought, for some reason, that the price of real estate would always go up without a thought to the underlying worth of the property. Just because that is not the case, does not mean that property values are going to decrease over the long term. The value of real estate will reset back to what it should be based upon the income that can be derived from the property.
"What about the rent prices?" you might ask. "Aren't they also going down?". Quick answer... no. From all I have been able to find, in general they are actually going up because more people are trying to rent now. But, that is probably not going to continue as the housing market stabilizes, so I would predict that they would continue to rise quicker than inflation for the rest of this year (and maybe some of next year) and then rise slower than inflation for a few years after that. But, I am not an economist so YMMV.
But I do want to apologize. As you have been so eager to point out, my comment was poorly phrased. I don't think that housing prices will always rise, just like I don't think that the stock market will always rise. It will go up and down according to the economic conditions. But, in the long term I believe it will always rise because in line with its inherent value.
Also, I do not work in any way in politics. I am an engineer and happy to stay there. All the information I know can be obtained by anyone who knows how to use the internet and has a mind open to looking at things beyond their own biases. But, I feel I have a duty to inform people of where their ideas deviate from reality because of the fear mongers and propagandists at Fox News and idiots like Sarah Palin. If you really feel like my views are wrong, please try to convince me. I welcome the challenge and am excited about maybe learning something new (though this most recent post had absolutely no information whatsoever in it so I am not very hopeful). I do not like to waste my time, though, so if you refuse to add any useful information then I will cut our little conversation short.
Or, there could be malware in RAM, not diverting read requests, and the checksum will be the expected result, and without a delay.
I think you missed the part where you write over the RAM with random data first. If malware gets written over by random data in RAM, it is basically no longer in RAM (erased). Then, the protection program can scan all other memory for all known viruses and be done with it. If the virus is unknown (is not found in the scan) it will not be found until someone discovers it and adds it to the virus scan. The point of this article is that it is (supposedly) a way to guarantee that a known virus does not avoid being fixed by the virus scan by hiding in RAM.
The alternative is to re-inflate the bubble, or at least inflate another bubble and have a bigger crash a year later.
Yes. The government's job right now is to inflate a bubble. Right after a bubble bursts, you have the opposite of a bubble (I don't really know what this is called, maybe a pit?). We still have this to some degree. Assets are undervalued because people are afraid things will get worse. This is what I was talking about in my last post. Pessimism feeds on pessimism. The government's job is to create a bubble in the "pit". Not fill in the pit, but at least make it less deep. This makes things seem better which decreases the pessimism, which makes things actually better. This tempers the business cycle as opposed to the free market (which you are such a fan of) which creates bubbles during peaks and pits in depressions. I am not worried about a crash because of this bubble though. You get another crash if assets are fundamentally overvalued (which is not currently the case). I am worried about the pending crash in the commercial real estate market due to foreclosures on business loans. Hopefully we can buoy up the economy enough to weather that one without too much pain.
Btw, just so you are aware of how things work... If McCain had gotten into office, he would be basically doing the same thing as Obama. Except, he would have slashed taxes for the rich while keeping spending the same. End result is still a huge deficit (but with richer rich people and more poor people). And McCain would have done the same bank bailout (keep in mind that it started under the Bush administration). And I see no reason why he would not have done similar things to try to "stimulate" the housing market. Since it is the source of most of our problems, that is really an obvious choice.
So are we now going to have a yearly bailout ?
No. If Obama follows the correct path, the housing market will flat line (ideally) when the economy starts to get back on good footing. This will happen if the government deflates their bubble as the market climbs out of the "pit". Whether he actually does that remains to be seen, but I will wait to condemn him until he does something wrong.
Btw, this is what you are hearing about the fed doing. They have inflated the financial market by buying a lot of the toxic securities, and they are waiting for the market to recover enough to gradually put them back on the market once it can handle them.
All Obambi did is reinflate the same housing bubble, only he inflated it bigger than it was in 2009.
How do you figure it is inflated bigger than 2009? Are houses selling for more than they were in 2009? If you want me to believe an extreme assertion such as that, you are going to have to provide a citation. Or are you trying to say that the underlying value of real estate is actually declining over time? Again, cite would be needed.
So it's perfectly clear what is going to happen. Well, there is perhaps the small advantage that investers know now that however bad the US behaves, it is still fiscally (and I know how baffling and idiotic this sounds) the best behaved country around the world. But I seriously doubt that's going to make much of a difference, and I expect many will settle for China's securities.
We have no choice in the matter, re-inflating the bubble can only be done with an ever-bigger money infusion by the government. Since that money resource is limited (see zimbabwe), it's going to fail.
So we have actually *zero* choice in the matter, and we WILL end up here :
See comment 1 above. Your assumptions are wrong.
The only question is how deep the abyss is going to be. Everytime you "try to moderate" (ie. reinflate the bubble) the abyss gets deeper and deeper. And eventually we *will* fall in.
Obama's hope is simple : he hopes it's t
This financial crisis basically showed us that the free market cannot be trusted. It is what got us into this mess in the first place. The government listened to the free market worshipers who said that if left alone, the free market would do the "right thing". Everything would price itself correctly and there would be peace and harmony. What actually happened was that we were shown that the free market is a product of human beings and subject to the whims of human emotion. We had an enormous speculative bubble, cause by people assuming the market would keep going up regardless of what the facts were telling them. That was optimism feeding optimism. If the government had not stepped in, the opposite would have happened. Pessimism would have fed pessimism (and did). The markets crashed, but without government assurances and interventions they would have crashed much further. While it would have caused many businesses to fail (and taught them a good lesson) all of the people who made the decisions would have floated down on their golden parachutes while the average American would have been the one to suffer. While that may have made you happy in your ideal world, in the real world it is real people who lose their homes and lose their jobs. It is real people who die when riots happen. This isn't a game you can just start over if you screw things up. It is people's lives you are playing with.
So, we had two choices (as far as I can tell). We could have let everything fail, bunker up for 6 months, and hope there was a country left after everything readjusted itself. Or, we accept that there is going to be a decline and try to moderate it so the drop does not go as low. The downside of the second option is that it will probably drag the whole thing out for a much longer time. But, you avoid that pesky civil unrest that comes with a system basically collapsing. So please, tell me where I am wrong in the analysis of the situation. Tell me what you would have done that would have magically allowed the bubble to deflate without any loss of production or jobs.
I don't know that the bailouts were necessary. But I also don't know that they weren't necessary. The very concept of them sickened me, and I wish I could find some evidence that would say Obama made the wrong decision, but I haven't seen it. It is usually pretty easy to look back after the fact and be an armchair politician and state what they should have done or should not have done. But in this case it still isn't clear what the right choice was, so it is hard to fault the decisions he made in the middle of it.
It is well documented that the Iraqi government (Saddam Hussein) and Al Qaeda did not like each other. Ideology was not the issue in Iraq. The issue was that a government was openly opposing the United States and Bush thought he could use the political power he got from 9/11 to deal with the Iraq issue as well. And he was right. The US congress and people were all too afraid to think clearly. It was only after that the people (well, most of them) realized that they had been misled.
I was responding to Simon... I wasn't trying to contradict your post. I was replying to his statement about flip out keyboards breaking easily. Maybe I was not clear enough, but I was saying the keyboards on the Android phones are pretty nice (as in they are solid and don't seem prone to breaking easily). Your original post said nothing about keyboard durability so I don't know what your point was in your reply to me.
Except of course that most obesity is caused by insulin resistance
The main point of the study is that there seems to be a correlation between obesity and a person's ability to taste fat. You blatantly contradict this with your post. Would you care to cite your sources?
What amazes me is that you were able to RTFS, then follow the link and RTFA, and then follow the link in that article, while still being able to get first post. Absolutely amazing.
Depends on the phone. The android phones with keyboards are pretty nice in my experience.
Why couldn't you use the inside of the bag to wipe? Or, even better, as an upgrade (for another 2c) have a couple pieces of biodegradable toilet paper attached to the inside of the bag. Come on, use your imagination.
A guy can't afford a can of beans
there is always a ready supply of babies.
I have a Modest Proposal for you...
Everything costs money. Cleaning up poobags (non-disposable) costs money. The government (or the neighbors) might be willing to give out these bags if it meant not having to deal with poo.
Hmmm... I don't know, but if cheap enough it might replace this. If you can design some electronics that regulate the output, then the only other consideration is cost.
I like how google tries its hand at any business it thinks it might have success at. I don't think "Buzz" will be successful, but it puts pressure on other companies to stay competitive. As long as its actions keep pushing other companies forward (or letting them fall behind if they can't keep up) instead of trying to push them out then I will support what they do.
You still have a VCR? I can't tell if your comment is sarcastic or serious. I am really hoping for sarcastic.
But, just in case...
Our dear friend mdwh2 was arguing that you could get the same functionality out of a VCR as out of a DVR (somehow by having one with two tape decks). I refuted that statement. Whether or not that is the way it should be was not under debate. Just whether it is or is not the case. I actually do not even have cable, so hence have no DVR. How is that for "entitlement"? But that has nothing to do with whether or not a VCR can pause/fast-forward/rewind live video.
I will get off your lawn now, sir.