"It is the sole duty of the operators of a commercial prison to maximize revenue for the shareholders."
No, no it's not. I was around back in the 70's and 80's when Ross Perot, T. Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn started spouting this crap, and they go laughed out of the room at first. Even Wharton business professors gave interviews saying those corporate raiders were out of their mind with that argument.
Pick up any macroeconomics textbook. The purpose of business is the efficient distribution of goods and services throughout society. It is in pursuit of that goal that private profit is justified.
Look at any corporate charter filed with the state. In each one, the explicit promise is made that if ou grant us the legal fiction of personhood, shield us from liability and offer us tax considerations, then we will benefit the people of this state.
Think about that. Why would We the People ever grant a corporate charter if the stated goal was "To have no other obligations other than making our owners rich?" Why would we agree to shield the owners from liability? Why would we grant that deal the legal fiction of personhood? Why would we agree to tax the owners at a lower rate then they could find in a partnership or sole proprietership?
A lot of kids respond to me these days, "Well, if we didn't, we wouldn't have businesses." Sure we would, but they would be partnerships, taxed at normal rates and liable in court for the damage they do.
I invite you to join me in correcting this dangerous PR line, that a corporation has no duty but to enrich the owners. A corporation's stated, admitted, confessed duty in black and white is to benefit the people of whatever state they were incorporated in. If the men behind that corporation want to pursue their own enrichment above all else, they are free to do so, but they must do so under the legal strictures of partnership, not corporation. They may then pursue as much profit as they wish, but they will be taxed at normal rates and be liable for their actions in court -- just like the rest of us.
As far as privately-run prisons, we used to have them in this country in the years between the Civil War and the Depression. They led to such horrors and scandals they were eventually outlawed. Unfortunately, like a lot of other cockroaches, they crawled back in during the Reagan years.
...but lately eminent domain is being used for such causes as strip malls, private golf courses, hardware stores and car dealerships. The justification for this has been the laughable "These businesses will pay more taxes than you do, so this seizure is in the public interest..."
What's truly frightening is that a few courts have been going along with this nonsense.
You miss the target by focusing your anger against "Americans." Sweden's sovereignty isn't being tested against America -- it's being tested against the power of multinational corporations that owe no one nation any allegiance.
The average uneducated man in Saudi Arabia will tell you he hates America, because he's been taught so by his leaders. "America" makes a handy scapegoat. You could replace "America" with any other string, and the situation wouldn't change. The average uneducated American will tell you he hates Commies and Terrorists, but the situation is the same. They're just parroting what they've been taught.
You're caught in the same trap. You think that Disney, et al, care about and represent "America" because those corporations were born here.
They don't. They could care less about this country. They could care less about ANY country. Sony and NEC don't care about the average salaryman. Wipro doesn't care about the misery in India. Nokia couldn't care less about the average Finn. BMW doesn't think their primary responsibility lies with Mutti and Sauerkraut. IBM and Goodyear sold to both sides DURING the war.
The men who run these companies love money, and only that. They dump their children on hirelings to raise. They run through women like fashion accessories. They don't respect the past. They don't worry about any future beyond their own. Their one concern, their only interest, is the accumulation of wealth, even when they've gathered so much that an increase of it would pretty much only be a theoretical concern. They look at masterpieces and admire only the price tags. They see athletes set records and think only of the endorsement dollars. They have no appreciation for science whatsoever beyond patent royalties. They idolize Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They've never heard of Steve Wozniak and Paul Allen.
The threats against your sovereignty don't come from "America," though the US government might currently be the lever used against you. When the US is a ruined husk -- and we're well on our way, mind you -- the men who threaten you will move on to another place and threaten you from there. When you eliminate the "American" threat, they'll find another cat's paw in China, in India, in Europe -- anywhere politicians can be bought and sold like cattle, which is pretty much anywhere on the whole damn planet.
I'm not pretending I have a solution for this. Libraries around the world are filled with books screaming that unrestrained greed is killing us. It's a cancer that has ruined untold societies, be it Rome collapsing under its own weight or the Rapanui destroying their own agriculture. We never seem to learn.
Just don't kid yourself that it's just the Americans causing the problem. The world was wrecking itself well before 1776 and it'll still be wrecking itself long after we're gone, which at the rate we're going should be sometime early next week...
Before now, I'd never heard of Mark or Rhonda Lesher. Now that they're suing, the name "Lesher" and the words "sexual assault" are going to be linked together forever in my mind. And of course, my little squishy blob of memory is nothing next to the Mighty Google.
One of the things the NRA and the associated gun nuts always point out is the numerous court cases -- including one involving a police officer who allowed a brutal gang rape to continue for over an hour while he hid and "waited for backup" -- that affirm the police have NO duty to protect you personally. They have an "overall" duty to promote order in society IN GENERAL, but if a cop is walking by while you're getting mugged, it would be nice if he intervened, but he doesn't HAVE to.
Building a DNA database will help raise conviction rates, which theoretically might take more criminals off the street, but make no mistake, this isn't being done to increase your security. This is being done to increase police power and prestige through conviction rates.
The DNA database would increase security the way that traffic cameras increase safety.
All those jobs that were lost that weren't "true" IT jobs, do you think they don't impact you?
Connect the dots. Those unemployed people are now out of work. They get the following advice: "Your skills are obsolete, you need to retrain!" Well, which jobs do you think they retrain for? They all rush out and get their MCSAs and CCNAs, because they've been told "We have a shortage of IT workers in this country!"
So now, for every job, thousands of resumes flood in, and it doesn't matter that we're talking about a million-node network that really ought to be sheparded by some MsEE/double CCIE with 15 years of experience, all HR reports is that the job posting attracted 5,000 resumes, which means the suits upstairs assume the candidates for this task are a dime a dozen. They old "If you don't like it, I can have a dozen people to replace you tomorrow" mindset creeps in.
When the H1-B visas first began, domestic employees crowed "They'll never match us on quality." A couple of decades down the line, we discovered they didn't have to -- simply by flooding the market they distorted the wage curve down. The suits looked at two codebases -- one a thing of elegant beauty with 1,000 lines, the other an Abomination Before God with 3,000 lines, and decided the one with more text reflected three times as much work and therefore value.
Unemployment IN GENERAL is a bad thing for people who sell labor. It takes cards out of your hand and puts them in the hands of employers. Don't kid yourself -- those people losing their jobs bodes ill for you.
Oh, here we go, cue the chorus of "Dude, if yer the best you can alwayz get werk..."
Listen up. You have to look at this systemically. If there are a thousand people willing to do your job for less, it doesn't matter how leet and brilliant you are. You are an expensive widget, and the business side will always sacrifice quality for cost. Do you really think the suits upstairs can tell the difference between Linus and Zaboomafoo the Typing Lemur?
My phone rings daily with scared-crapless kids whose networks are falling apart because they don't have the experience the position requires. Every one of those kids replaced some grey-haired 40-year-old who would have avoided the disaster months ago, but was let go because Billy the Paperboy braindumped his certs and offered the do the job for less.
No one, No. One. Ever connects the million-dollar disaster with the now-incredibly-cheap-looking salary that would have saved the company untold amounts of money.
So, for the Beavis-and-Butthead crowd sitting around crowing about how they're the best, look at it this way: The surplus resumes flooding the market may not cost you your job, but they will cost your your raise, as well as any leverage you might have had to push back against bad ideas. They'll cost you in the midnight calls you get and the tribute of overtime demanded because your boss knows you don't have any other options. And if you really are that good, it still might not save you.
My typical job involves wading into an unholy cluster.... with people screaming and yelling about why the whole network is down. I'd love to tell them "Our communication will be through email only," but they'd get even more upset.:-)
When people call me for help, I want to hear clear and recognizable names, whether it's "Bert" and "Ernie" or "Portland" and "Chicago."
What really increases my alcohol consumption is when I see networks with five thousand devices all named on a variation of "djfh4538kj01", followed by communication difficulties. Congratulations, now your oh-so-clever naming schmeme means that we're going to spend the rest of the conversation talking about your boxes with the Nato phonetic alphabet.
"I'm sorry, are you seeing the route flap on Delta Juliet Foxtrot Hotel or Bravo Juliet Sierra Hotel?"
Do that a few times and you'll long for a cluster of boxes named Mal, River and Simon...
Holy Crap, you're a stupid putz. All you gotta do is open your slash.conf file under/etc/http/sys/slashhacks with Vi and scroll down to line 239 -- it's clearly documented with the REM statement! -- and change the value "invitefriends=0" to "invitefriends=1".
Gawd, yer dense!
(tag: humor, for the humor impaired, or in the case that this is close enough to reality to be taken seriously...)
Yes, "Lie to Me" does disparage polygraphs. I should have been more clear. "Micro-expressions" and "body language" have even less validity than a Scientology e-meter. "He flashed me a 0.2 second LIP QUIVER! You know he's lying! And the Latina always knows when you are full of it!"
Again, it's just made-up nonsense that large government agencies like to use to bullshit their way into doing whatever they want, only this time they don't have to cough up for a collection of wires, string, blinky lights and tin cans....
Really, just stop and consider this for a minute. If sincerity could ever actually be systematically, categorically proven one way or the other, if there ever were "naturals" or machines that could guarantee that this person, to the best of their knowledge, either is or is not telling the truth, then it would revolutionize society in ways that would make the internet insiginificant in comparison.
The police force as we know it -- gone. The accounting game as it's currently played -- gone. Politics -- DRASTICALLY changed. Poker -- gone. Marriages -- oh God help us...
Polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, coin flips, sticking your hand in the statue's mouth and Scientology's "E-Meters" all share the same validity in catching lies -- basically none. It's all pretend "science" with cool moving needles and wires, but you might as well be watching a seismograph for all the good it does you. It simply gives government agencies and insurance companies an excuse to call you a liar. "Hey, don't look at me, the MACHINE says you're lying..."
Now FOX has this propaganda puff piece for the TSA called "Lie to Me" going where an actor I like is helping spread nonsense I can't stand.
Can you imagine the revolution society would undergo if "voice stress analyzers" actually worked? "I did not have sex with that woman!" BZZZ! "Saddam Hussein is building nuclear weapons!" BZZZ! "The 700 billion will be wisely spent!" BZZZZ! "I was misquoted!" BZZZ!
Same here. Had some helicopter IRL buzz kind of low after I finished that game, and the first thing that went through my head was "*curse* find it, Find It, FIND IT!"
My wife, who tends to know what I'm thinking before I do, saw the thought flit through my head and laughed for five minutes straight.
Now accepting bets for how long it takes before the first replacement child is cloned. If they can do a dog, they can do a kid, and the article reads just fine if you replace "our dog" with "our child."
I'm glad I lived long enough to see Dick Tracy's "wrist radios" and William Gibson's "matrix" become reality. I'm sorry I lived long enough to see this.
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as "voting with your wallet" any more.
Most ISPs are monopolies in their area. You either play their way or go without. You can complain to the municipal powers that regulate them. You'll be ignored. Your local municipal regulatory powers are far more interested in keeping the ISP gravy train running than worrying about disgruntled people...
We could all just walk, and go without broadband, in which case, the Telcos will go running to Congress for an emergency bailout and will receive 700 billion dollars deducted from our paychecks.
Look at the auto industry. American cars were so bad we quit buying them. We "voted with our wallets." Rather than competing, the leaders of those companies simply took their private jets to Washington and had their pet congressman hand them our money.
Look at our banks. They made loans that were laughable, mortgages that were guaranteed to fail. Did they face the consequences of their poor judgement? Nope, they took 700 billion of our tax dollars, and as of yesterday, the Treasury department refuses to tell Congress so much as who they gave the money to. It's gone and never coming back, like the two billion in cash that disappeared in Iraq.
If the president of some telco goes on a cocaine-and-entourage-of-hookers-fueled multi-million-dollar binge through Las Vegas and Macao, we'll cover the tab without question. If some 40-year-old single-mother-of-two waitress widow develops breast cancer, we'll give her a lecture about how her crotchfruit are a consumption choice and how she needs to learn personal responsibility.
It's time we face the terrifying reality that we no longer live in a democracy, and those in power can simply take what they want like in any other third-world hole...
When you're a pirate, and you take control of a ship, the idea is not to set up a long and prosperous shipping company.
A brain tumor does not worry about surviving its host.
The men who plundered these companies executed precisely their intended plan. They stripped the company, took outrageous bonuses, and ran, leaving the chumps holding the bag. You see the pattern whether it's happening to your department, that company or the country as a whole.
Go to a barbecue. Some people will worry that everyone gets enough. Others will run to grab the last piece. Watch a shipwreck. Some people will try to organize everything out in the open on the beach, others will horde secret stashes.
Some people think "We're all in this together." Some people think "It's every man for himself."
You're the first type. The people in charge are the second. Host and parasite.
If you want to argue that you have some fancy scientific test that shows you're not guilty, then yeah, you'll need an expert witness to back it up. Paying for such witnesses has always been a burden on the defense.
As for the other arguments, absolutely. If Dexter's gonna argue that the blood splatter evidence points to me as the killer, then I want Dexter to be able to explain from first principles why this is so.
I certainly don't want to hear Dexter respond that his blood tests are porprietary and not to be questioned...
"Tons of money have to be spent by the DA's office, which means higher taxes."
Surely you're not arguing it's just more cost-effective to throw more people in jail?! We should gladly pay whatever amount of money is needed to ensure justice is done. We've bought justice at the price of blood in this country. Surely you're not arguing we should toss it out because we don't wanna pay the lab and witness fees...
In re "Section 16-15-370. (A) It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.
Please remove the following material with Dewey Decimal numbers; 000-100, 100-200, 200-300, 400-500...
Hmmm. Maybe this would be easier if we said what could stay...
OK, 801-805 are OK....
Well, there is that one, and that one... Never mind.
Hmmm....
Oh, GOOD, number 623.43 is definitely OK... well, it would be if you ripped out page 46... and 58... and probably 124...
(aside) Look, just find something, OK, ya sure?
All right, number 234.98 is absolutely OK if you ignore chapter 12... and 43...
Slashdot Mirror
"Card counting on your own, isn't that hard. Sure, it takes a bit of practice, but, it isn't rocket science."
And the second they suspect you're doing it, you'll be escorted off the property. Casinos ain't there to play fair, son...
"It is the sole duty of the operators of a commercial prison to maximize revenue for the shareholders."
No, no it's not. I was around back in the 70's and 80's when Ross Perot, T. Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn started spouting this crap, and they go laughed out of the room at first. Even Wharton business professors gave interviews saying those corporate raiders were out of their mind with that argument.
Pick up any macroeconomics textbook. The purpose of business is the efficient distribution of goods and services throughout society. It is in pursuit of that goal that private profit is justified.
Look at any corporate charter filed with the state. In each one, the explicit promise is made that if ou grant us the legal fiction of personhood, shield us from liability and offer us tax considerations, then we will benefit the people of this state.
Think about that. Why would We the People ever grant a corporate charter if the stated goal was "To have no other obligations other than making our owners rich?" Why would we agree to shield the owners from liability? Why would we grant that deal the legal fiction of personhood? Why would we agree to tax the owners at a lower rate then they could find in a partnership or sole proprietership?
A lot of kids respond to me these days, "Well, if we didn't, we wouldn't have businesses." Sure we would, but they would be partnerships, taxed at normal rates and liable in court for the damage they do.
I invite you to join me in correcting this dangerous PR line, that a corporation has no duty but to enrich the owners. A corporation's stated, admitted, confessed duty in black and white is to benefit the people of whatever state they were incorporated in. If the men behind that corporation want to pursue their own enrichment above all else, they are free to do so, but they must do so under the legal strictures of partnership, not corporation. They may then pursue as much profit as they wish, but they will be taxed at normal rates and be liable for their actions in court -- just like the rest of us.
As far as privately-run prisons, we used to have them in this country in the years between the Civil War and the Depression. They led to such horrors and scandals they were eventually outlawed. Unfortunately, like a lot of other cockroaches, they crawled back in during the Reagan years.
...but lately eminent domain is being used for such causes as strip malls, private golf courses, hardware stores and car dealerships. The justification for this has been the laughable "These businesses will pay more taxes than you do, so this seizure is in the public interest..."
What's truly frightening is that a few courts have been going along with this nonsense.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28680.html
"Reality has a liberal bias."
I love that slogan, and I'm going to blatantly rip you off with less remorse than a Wall Street banker.
Seriously, awesome phrase...
You miss the target by focusing your anger against "Americans." Sweden's sovereignty isn't being tested against America -- it's being tested against the power of multinational corporations that owe no one nation any allegiance.
The average uneducated man in Saudi Arabia will tell you he hates America, because he's been taught so by his leaders. "America" makes a handy scapegoat. You could replace "America" with any other string, and the situation wouldn't change. The average uneducated American will tell you he hates Commies and Terrorists, but the situation is the same. They're just parroting what they've been taught.
You're caught in the same trap. You think that Disney, et al, care about and represent "America" because those corporations were born here.
They don't. They could care less about this country. They could care less about ANY country. Sony and NEC don't care about the average salaryman. Wipro doesn't care about the misery in India. Nokia couldn't care less about the average Finn. BMW doesn't think their primary responsibility lies with Mutti and Sauerkraut. IBM and Goodyear sold to both sides DURING the war.
The men who run these companies love money, and only that. They dump their children on hirelings to raise. They run through women like fashion accessories. They don't respect the past. They don't worry about any future beyond their own. Their one concern, their only interest, is the accumulation of wealth, even when they've gathered so much that an increase of it would pretty much only be a theoretical concern. They look at masterpieces and admire only the price tags. They see athletes set records and think only of the endorsement dollars. They have no appreciation for science whatsoever beyond patent royalties. They idolize Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They've never heard of Steve Wozniak and Paul Allen.
The threats against your sovereignty don't come from "America," though the US government might currently be the lever used against you. When the US is a ruined husk -- and we're well on our way, mind you -- the men who threaten you will move on to another place and threaten you from there. When you eliminate the "American" threat, they'll find another cat's paw in China, in India, in Europe -- anywhere politicians can be bought and sold like cattle, which is pretty much anywhere on the whole damn planet.
I'm not pretending I have a solution for this. Libraries around the world are filled with books screaming that unrestrained greed is killing us. It's a cancer that has ruined untold societies, be it Rome collapsing under its own weight or the Rapanui destroying their own agriculture. We never seem to learn.
Just don't kid yourself that it's just the Americans causing the problem. The world was wrecking itself well before 1776 and it'll still be wrecking itself long after we're gone, which at the rate we're going should be sometime early next week...
Before now, I'd never heard of Mark or Rhonda Lesher. Now that they're suing, the name "Lesher" and the words "sexual assault" are going to be linked together forever in my mind. And of course, my little squishy blob of memory is nothing next to the Mighty Google.
The police do not offer "security."
One of the things the NRA and the associated gun nuts always point out is the numerous court cases -- including one involving a police officer who allowed a brutal gang rape to continue for over an hour while he hid and "waited for backup" -- that affirm the police have NO duty to protect you personally. They have an "overall" duty to promote order in society IN GENERAL, but if a cop is walking by while you're getting mugged, it would be nice if he intervened, but he doesn't HAVE to.
Building a DNA database will help raise conviction rates, which theoretically might take more criminals off the street, but make no mistake, this isn't being done to increase your security. This is being done to increase police power and prestige through conviction rates.
The DNA database would increase security the way that traffic cameras increase safety.
Pointing out that "the best" need to be willing to accept a lower salary, hence you've made my point for me...
as long as you are willing to adjust your expectations slarywise.
All those jobs that were lost that weren't "true" IT jobs, do you think they don't impact you?
Connect the dots. Those unemployed people are now out of work. They get the following advice: "Your skills are obsolete, you need to retrain!" Well, which jobs do you think they retrain for? They all rush out and get their MCSAs and CCNAs, because they've been told "We have a shortage of IT workers in this country!"
So now, for every job, thousands of resumes flood in, and it doesn't matter that we're talking about a million-node network that really ought to be sheparded by some MsEE/double CCIE with 15 years of experience, all HR reports is that the job posting attracted 5,000 resumes, which means the suits upstairs assume the candidates for this task are a dime a dozen. They old "If you don't like it, I can have a dozen people to replace you tomorrow" mindset creeps in.
When the H1-B visas first began, domestic employees crowed "They'll never match us on quality." A couple of decades down the line, we discovered they didn't have to -- simply by flooding the market they distorted the wage curve down. The suits looked at two codebases -- one a thing of elegant beauty with 1,000 lines, the other an Abomination Before God with 3,000 lines, and decided the one with more text reflected three times as much work and therefore value.
Unemployment IN GENERAL is a bad thing for people who sell labor. It takes cards out of your hand and puts them in the hands of employers. Don't kid yourself -- those people losing their jobs bodes ill for you.
Oh, here we go, cue the chorus of "Dude, if yer the best you can alwayz get werk..."
Listen up. You have to look at this systemically. If there are a thousand people willing to do your job for less, it doesn't matter how leet and brilliant you are. You are an expensive widget, and the business side will always sacrifice quality for cost. Do you really think the suits upstairs can tell the difference between Linus and Zaboomafoo the Typing Lemur?
My phone rings daily with scared-crapless kids whose networks are falling apart because they don't have the experience the position requires. Every one of those kids replaced some grey-haired 40-year-old who would have avoided the disaster months ago, but was let go because Billy the Paperboy braindumped his certs and offered the do the job for less.
No one, No. One. Ever connects the million-dollar disaster with the now-incredibly-cheap-looking salary that would have saved the company untold amounts of money.
So, for the Beavis-and-Butthead crowd sitting around crowing about how they're the best, look at it this way: The surplus resumes flooding the market may not cost you your job, but they will cost your your raise, as well as any leverage you might have had to push back against bad ideas. They'll cost you in the midnight calls you get and the tribute of overtime demanded because your boss knows you don't have any other options. And if you really are that good, it still might not save you.
"making an 5W VHF or UHF radio is so 1970's"
Yeah, my daughter's middle school class was going to make model rockets until they realized that third-law propulsion was so 1680s.... :-)
My typical job involves wading into an unholy cluster.... with people screaming and yelling about why the whole network is down. I'd love to tell them "Our communication will be through email only," but they'd get even more upset. :-)
When people call me for help, I want to hear clear and recognizable names, whether it's "Bert" and "Ernie" or "Portland" and "Chicago."
What really increases my alcohol consumption is when I see networks with five thousand devices all named on a variation of "djfh4538kj01", followed by communication difficulties. Congratulations, now your oh-so-clever naming schmeme means that we're going to spend the rest of the conversation talking about your boxes with the Nato phonetic alphabet.
"I'm sorry, are you seeing the route flap on Delta Juliet Foxtrot Hotel or Bravo Juliet Sierra Hotel?"
Do that a few times and you'll long for a cluster of boxes named Mal, River and Simon...
Never, ever underestimate the awesome destructive power of a drunk, belligerent, brute-force-loving, pissed-off engineer...
Holy Crap, you're a stupid putz. All you gotta do is open your slash.conf file under /etc/http/sys/slashhacks with Vi and scroll down to line 239 -- it's clearly documented with the REM statement! -- and change the value "invitefriends=0" to "invitefriends=1".
Gawd, yer dense!
(tag: humor, for the humor impaired, or in the case that this is close enough to reality to be taken seriously...)
Yes, "Lie to Me" does disparage polygraphs. I should have been more clear. "Micro-expressions" and "body language" have even less validity than a Scientology e-meter. "He flashed me a 0.2 second LIP QUIVER! You know he's lying! And the Latina always knows when you are full of it!"
Again, it's just made-up nonsense that large government agencies like to use to bullshit their way into doing whatever they want, only this time they don't have to cough up for a collection of wires, string, blinky lights and tin cans....
Really, just stop and consider this for a minute. If sincerity could ever actually be systematically, categorically proven one way or the other, if there ever were "naturals" or machines that could guarantee that this person, to the best of their knowledge, either is or is not telling the truth, then it would revolutionize society in ways that would make the internet insiginificant in comparison.
The police force as we know it -- gone. The accounting game as it's currently played -- gone. Politics -- DRASTICALLY changed. Poker -- gone. Marriages -- oh God help us...
Polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, coin flips, sticking your hand in the statue's mouth and Scientology's "E-Meters" all share the same validity in catching lies -- basically none. It's all pretend "science" with cool moving needles and wires, but you might as well be watching a seismograph for all the good it does you. It simply gives government agencies and insurance companies an excuse to call you a liar. "Hey, don't look at me, the MACHINE says you're lying..."
Now FOX has this propaganda puff piece for the TSA called "Lie to Me" going where an actor I like is helping spread nonsense I can't stand.
Can you imagine the revolution society would undergo if "voice stress analyzers" actually worked? "I did not have sex with that woman!" BZZZ! "Saddam Hussein is building nuclear weapons!" BZZZ! "The 700 billion will be wisely spent!" BZZZZ! "I was misquoted!" BZZZ!
Same here. Had some helicopter IRL buzz kind of low after I finished that game, and the first thing that went through my head was "*curse* find it, Find It, FIND IT!"
My wife, who tends to know what I'm thinking before I do, saw the thought flit through my head and laughed for five minutes straight.
Now accepting bets for how long it takes before the first replacement child is cloned. If they can do a dog, they can do a kid, and the article reads just fine if you replace "our dog" with "our child."
I'm glad I lived long enough to see Dick Tracy's "wrist radios" and William Gibson's "matrix" become reality. I'm sorry I lived long enough to see this.
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as "voting with your wallet" any more.
Most ISPs are monopolies in their area. You either play their way or go without. You can complain to the municipal powers that regulate them. You'll be ignored. Your local municipal regulatory powers are far more interested in keeping the ISP gravy train running than worrying about disgruntled people...
We could all just walk, and go without broadband, in which case, the Telcos will go running to Congress for an emergency bailout and will receive 700 billion dollars deducted from our paychecks.
Look at the auto industry. American cars were so bad we quit buying them. We "voted with our wallets." Rather than competing, the leaders of those companies simply took their private jets to Washington and had their pet congressman hand them our money.
Look at our banks. They made loans that were laughable, mortgages that were guaranteed to fail. Did they face the consequences of their poor judgement? Nope, they took 700 billion of our tax dollars, and as of yesterday, the Treasury department refuses to tell Congress so much as who they gave the money to. It's gone and never coming back, like the two billion in cash that disappeared in Iraq.
If the president of some telco goes on a cocaine-and-entourage-of-hookers-fueled multi-million-dollar binge through Las Vegas and Macao, we'll cover the tab without question. If some 40-year-old single-mother-of-two waitress widow develops breast cancer, we'll give her a lecture about how her crotchfruit are a consumption choice and how she needs to learn personal responsibility.
It's time we face the terrifying reality that we no longer live in a democracy, and those in power can simply take what they want like in any other third-world hole...
"...the first time I see the second personalities, I will kill her."
The breakup was that bad, huh? My sympathies.
When you're a pirate, and you take control of a ship, the idea is not to set up a long and prosperous shipping company.
A brain tumor does not worry about surviving its host.
The men who plundered these companies executed precisely their intended plan. They stripped the company, took outrageous bonuses, and ran, leaving the chumps holding the bag. You see the pattern whether it's happening to your department, that company or the country as a whole.
Go to a barbecue. Some people will worry that everyone gets enough. Others will run to grab the last piece. Watch a shipwreck. Some people will try to organize everything out in the open on the beach, others will horde secret stashes.
Some people think "We're all in this together." Some people think "It's every man for himself."
You're the first type. The people in charge are the second. Host and parasite.
If you want to argue that you have some fancy scientific test that shows you're not guilty, then yeah, you'll need an expert witness to back it up. Paying for such witnesses has always been a burden on the defense.
As for the other arguments, absolutely. If Dexter's gonna argue that the blood splatter evidence points to me as the killer, then I want Dexter to be able to explain from first principles why this is so.
I certainly don't want to hear Dexter respond that his blood tests are porprietary and not to be questioned...
"Tons of money have to be spent by the DA's office, which means higher taxes."
Surely you're not arguing it's just more cost-effective to throw more people in jail?! We should gladly pay whatever amount of money is needed to ensure justice is done. We've bought justice at the price of blood in this country. Surely you're not arguing we should toss it out because we don't wanna pay the lab and witness fees...
Attention South Carolina Librarians:
In re "Section 16-15-370. (A) It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.
Please remove the following material with Dewey Decimal numbers; 000-100, 100-200, 200-300, 400-500 ...
Hmmm. Maybe this would be easier if we said what could stay...
OK, 801-805 are OK ....
Well, there is that one, and that one... Never mind.
Hmmm....
Oh, GOOD, number 623.43 is definitely OK ... well, it would be if you ripped out page 46... and 58... and probably 124...
(aside) Look, just find something, OK, ya sure?
All right, number 234.98 is absolutely OK if you ignore chapter 12... and 43...
Fuck it. Shit, just torch the damn place...