European style soft socialism is only sustainable in small, highly homogenous cultures were everyone knows the rules and tremendous social pressure is exerted not to abuse them. That's the case for a handful of countries in Europe.
The rest are being bled to death by socialism, suffocating taxes because of payouts to free riders, dragging along stagnant economies and dying off because they can't be bothered to reproduce enough to simply replace themselves.
The US has just started down the path that European countries have barrelled down, and hopefully we can learn from their folly before it's too late.
What more, democracy is even more dangerous than some other forms, since you will always find more than half in numbers of those who don't know or don't have in your population to exploit so you can force whatever you want onto the population as a whole.
Democracy is a horrible form of government, with the sole benefit being all other forms of government are much, much worse.
The last thing any country in the world needs is to be ruled by an individual or a group that fancies themselves 'enlightened', 'intellectual' or 'anointed' for leadership. Such people are inevitably no better at anything than anyone else, they just have an unwarrantedly high opinion of themselves.
I'll take my chances with Democratic/Republic type governments, thanks. As a group, they have undisputably outperformed any other nation with a non-democratic government in pretty much every category that exists. Sure, the soviets made a good run of it, but they ultimately collapsed, didn't they?
And if you dare claim they would have succeeded if not for the US, if the US could bury them and not the other way around, that proves my point further.
Considering that lucasarts is a shitty company lately, and defecated out episodes 1,2 and 3 under Lucas' now incompetent direction, it was probably a match made in hell from the start.
A bit of a reactionary, aren't you? I never said science is just another religeon, i said that those who seek to stamp out all traces of religeon from public life have their own little religion. Ya know, those who have a beef with the crosses in the city of Los Cruces emblem, or those who sue over the town center christmas tree, or think 'under God' in the pledge of alligience is something they need to drag their kids through court over? Those sorts
First, I'd like to say 'Good Move' on Utah's part. They've got enough of a bad rep from those polygamists living on the borders that they certainly don't need anymore trouble like 'Intelligent Design.'
That being said, has anyone noticed that those who try to eradicate all traces of religeon from public life are zealots, in almost a religeous way? Except that the state is their God and provider instead of an unseen, all-powerful being.
Rambling a little bit more, it's been put thusly: "The bible tells us what God did, and science tells us how."
Somewhere out there, Journalists are looking into their pants, and finding they have testicles. -paraphased from Penny-Arcade.
No, they aren't. Otherwise they'd print the Mohommad cartoons that are blamed as the reason for riots all over the world. If those cartoons aren't genuinely newsworthy, I don't know what is. Truth be told, news outlets are afraid of violence from Muslim fanatics, but they're not afraid of any retribution from the DoD.
Suing the DoD is hardly a bold move, considering the worst possible consequence is money lost on lawyers and a 'no' from the DoD and a court.
It's amusing what people consider bold nowadays. "I spoke truth to power!" "I sued a government entity!" "I stood up to a major coporation, like I wish I could to my father!"
What are you, the comic book guy from the Simpsons? Star Wars Episodes 1-3 were the most terrible movies made in the last decade, and you want to draw political lessons from a hack like Lucas who can do nothing but special effects lately? And you dare accuse me of living under a rock?
Think what you like of me, but you're your own special kind of freak. I've continued the discussion with others in this thread, feel free to read those.
Yeah, cause the jews really did burn the riechstag and bomb the bismark and bomb the reichstag before they burned it and killed a barracks full of German troops with a truck bomb and blow up the spanish train system and mass immigrated into Scandinavian countries, rape their women, murder their authors, and hold riots over cartoons and....
More than ever, the only way to win this game is to not play at all. You don't have be a willing participant to end up in a fight... or a beating. This isn't tic tac toe.
I've questioned and disagreed with plenty of Bush's actions. Just not this one. While lefties are uniform in their hatred of everything Bush related, on the right we do debate the finer points of various policies.
This conversation, however, is about one thing: spying on our enemies.
FISA is an independant path of authorizing survellience, apart from the Presidents authority. If the FISA statute attempted to limit the Presidents authority to conduct the kind of survellience that is under debate, it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority to do such. Some people have become confused as to the equality of the branches of the government, holding that the judiciary is superior to the legislature, and the legislature is superior to the executive. This is not the case, they are co-equal with different responsibilities.
Blind following of leadership is not as patriotic as questioning it. Ah, the old 'if you don't agree with me your ignorant!' canard repackaged. Do not think it possible to view similar sets of facts, and come to a different conclusion?
And like I said at the end, I question your judgement most of all.
We have virtually no chance of 'losing' this one. Terrorism does not aim to conquer, it aims to change public opinion. If we continue to support Israel, speak our minds, and behave like Westerners, we've already won.
I don't disagree on any one point, but I do take great offense to those who go out of their way to murder us, and my desire for the preservation of my friends, myself and my family demands hunting such people down without mercy.
As for aiming to conquer, I don't know if you followed my Norway link, but it appears that a number of Scandinavian/European nations are folding under pressure from this drummed-up cartoon jihad, and that is how we can lose- when we no longer have the confidence in ourselves to deal with threats in a serious manner. I think that the United States isn't likely to capitulate to non-assimilated, belligerent Muslim immigrants any time soon, but the path to defeat is laid before us, that we might gaze down the road before we ourselves go down it. The public opinion they aim to impose is that living under sharia is the way to not be killed by them. They're not terribly secretive about this goal.
Cultures die most often by suicide, not by conquest. I see Europeans baring their necks and begging for mercy from their new Islamic rulers, and it doubles my resolve that we must violently prosecute the fight against fundamentalist muslims who would do us harm and change us into proper dhimmis.
The meat of the Norway Link, for your reading pleasure:
On February 10, in Oslo, came a dramatic capitulation that seemed a classic case of sharia in action. For days, Velbjorn Selbekk, editor of the tiny Christian periodical Magazinet - the first publication to reprint the now-famous Muhammed cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten - had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists (who made death threats) and by the Norwegian establishment (which urged him to give in). But then, on that morning - the day before a planned mass demonstration against the cartoons - Norway's Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion, Bjarne Hakon Hanssen, hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo.
There, to the astonishment of his supporters, Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition on behalf of 46 Muslim organizations and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway's Islamic Council. In attendance were members of the Norwegian cabinet and the largest assemblage of imams in Norway's history. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom: the dhimmi prostrating himself before the Muslim leader, and the leader pardoning him - and, for good measure, declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection, as if it were he, Hamdan, and not the Norwegian police, that held in his hands the security of citizens in Norway.
Selbekk, in his prepared remarks, leaned heavily on the usual soothing multicultural language, including the word "understanding." It was clear that Selbekk had indeed come to an understanding: he understood that if he didn't relent, he risked physical harm. He also spoke of "respect" - a word that in this context must surely have been understood by the imams to refer not to a volitional regard for a social equal but to the obligatory deference of a repentant infidel. As for Handam, he noted that "Selbekk has children the same age as my own. I want my children and his children to grow up together, live together in peace, and be friends." This was rather chilling, given that Selbekk's family, too, had been under threat.
As for the entire FISA fiasco, FISA is an independant path of authorizing survellience, apart from the Presidents authority. If the FISA statute attempted to limit the Presidents authority to conduct the kind of survellience that is under debate, it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority to do such. Some pe
Why is it called 'Domestic Spying' when the monitored conversations occured between foriegn, self-proclaimed enemies of the United States who are engaged in armed conflict with us, and people inside the United States?
That's surviellence of an enemy, and given the Presidents power to wage war, it's not any stretch of the imagination that this sort of activity is within his authority.
The problem with this entire debacle is that you have people who are trying to apply the law-enforcement model of handling things to a war. A guerilla War, to be sure, but a War nonetheless. Do you think that Britain and the US got warrants when they were trying to break Germanys enigma code in World War 2? Do you think they thought twice about intercepting any communications between Germany and the US? No, because we wanted to ultimately hunt down and kill those we were monitoring, those they were associated with, and break the will of Germany to wage further war. It's not pretty but it sure as hell is necessary.
Those who revealed this program have made us less safe, and made it more likely that people who want to do us harm will evade our survellience- all for some petty political points (backfiring, by the way. A significant majority of the US population approves of this activity, and they will be voting next election) and yet another chance to scream "ChimpyMcBushHaliburtonCheneyCabal is EVIL!" Yeah, AQ and gang likely figured they were being monitored, but they didn't always act like it from some reports. Thanks for reminding them and shoving it in their face every single day.
If you don't want to be monitored by the government, then don't talk to overseas agents of an organization that has killed Americans, wants to kill more, and is killing our troops every week. It's not that complex.
As for the supposed 'rights' of those inside the US, terms like 'traitor' are really underused lately, or they are simply foreign agents of an 'enemy'- a simple concept that so many have foolishly convinced themselves doesn't apply to anyone any more.
Either way, once we've gotten all the information we need from them, we should deal with them like we did in the last war we resolutely won: try and execute the traitors, kill the spies, and hold the footsoldiers as prisoners of war until the other side capitulates and hostilities cease.
Good thing the safety of the nation doesn't lie in the hands of pontificating, apologist candy asses who lack the will and confidence to defend our civilization from threats- or we'd have already capitulated cravenly like Norway did recently (if the story is no longer on his main page, there are links at the bottom for previous posts).
-1 Troll? -1 Flamebait? Sure, why not- but we're not talking about civil liberties here, we're talking about monitoring the communications of people who want to kill us, and their agents in our country. The fact that so many don't realize this- or plainly deny it because of a visceral hate for the current administration- sickens me, and you have just read the result of that disgust.
To those who are worked up about this, I question your seriousness about preserving our country. I question your patriotism. and most of all.... I question your judgement
It's a ~1250 megawatt plant, Seabrook Station. Original Design was a Westinghouse 3411, which we've power uprated to 3589 MW thermal or something like that. Yeah, I should know the specifics, but ever since we did the uprate, I can't remember them.
The cost factor still plays in strongly as burying a line is a lot more expensive (3x more?) than stringing it along poles. Also, a power line in the air doesn't need to be insulated if it's a proper distance from other pole mounted elements, but burying a 345kv line would require ridiculously thick rubber insulation, or even need to be run in a SF6 gas-insulated bus.
(Ever see what happens when you ground 345kV ? We did that once in New Hampshire and grid operators in New York were asking about it)
(SF6 gas is a fantastic insulator, but it's no longer mass produced, and is thus very expensive. Why is it no longer mass produced? Because it tears holes in the ozone like nothing else)
Like I said, there are many factors at play when choosing grid voltage, and to the folks who built and are building it, losing some electricity is preferable to the investment required to keep more of it.
My nuke plant puts out about 3400 amps at the New England Grid's 345,000 Volts. I don't know what the resistance is for the lines, but it's pretty damn low.
The outgoing three phase lines have to be kept at a considerable distance from each other (16 feet) meaning that the minimum tower width is 32 feet or so.
If you bring them any closer, you'd have arcing, or you'd need to heavily insulate them.
If you increased the voltage (some places in the US run as high as 750,000 volts), you need to move the lines further apart, or insulate them greatly- not only is this expensive, but it makes them heavier, so you'd need tougher towers, you'd have less margin for ice buildup, etc, etc.
There are numerous reasons why the main grid distribution voltage can't get substantially higher.
Also local lines need to be kept at relatively low voltages to reduce maintanance costs. Again, the higher the voltage, the more prone a line is to arching to nearby grounds. If you run 100,000 volts through a neighborhood line you'd reduce line losses, but you'd have to send tree trimming crews out alot more often, and they'd have to cut trees much further back.
In short, when you decide on a grid voltage for a particular line run, you have to weigh construction costs vs maintanance costs vs material cost vs line losses.
They have a business to run, and spending all their time time and money chasing avoidable harrasment is not in their best interest. It already takes hours sometimes to get a GM to help you, why increase that time needlessly?
Here's the rule: Don't start something you know will make a mess and then demand other people clean it up.
Yeah, it's not right for one player to harass another about their sexual orientation, but pick your fucking fights for once, mkay?
Filing rebates online eliminates a paper trail, which will allow them to sit back and say, "whoops, you entered a number wrong, you don't get your rebate" or "whoops, you didn't submit on time, sorry, no rebate", or even "whoops, we never got your submission, sorry."
The only trouble I ever had with rebates was with sprint and their new phone discounts every 18 months- and I sorted that out with a phone call or two. Of course, since i was a regular customer of theirs, it was in their interest to keep me happy.
I've always gotten my best buy and staples rebates. YMMV with smaller outfits who don't worry about their reputation
Just don't fuck up the forms- really, they aren't all that complex, are they? And how hard is it to sit down for five minutes when you get home, address an envelope or two, fill out the slip on the reciept, cut out the UPC and drop it all in the mail?
If my experience with a couple dozen best buy and staples rebates is any indication, most of the people bitching about their rebates here are either: 1. Sloppy 2. Procrastinators or both.
Honestly I don't have much sympathy for dumb, lazy shits. Do you?
Those are the only companies I have a body of experience with, so I can't really say anything about the honesty of other rebate places.
Someone already pointed out that the rebates serve two purposes: 1. Sell items at a reduced cost to drive foot traffic or move merchandise 2. Limit the volume of merchandise sold to an individual so those same items don't end up on ebay or a local retailer competing with later, undiscounted items sold from the rebate-offering retailer.
Why is this modded funny? You could go to your local small claims court, sue them for the rebate+court costs+your time in the matter @$60/ hour and it still wouldn't amount to enough money to make it worth sending a lawyer, so you'd likely win by default- just show the judge you did everything correctly.
I just glanced over a staples rebate form I have here, and there's no attempt to limit jurisdiction for lawsuits. YMMV by retailer, and such attempts to limit jurisdiction may or may not hold water.
For the record, I submitted my staples online rebates for a $600 printer and got $200 back in a month, and every best buy rebate I've submitted I eventually recieved back. I don't watch the calender on such things, but the checks do come.
hehe... you need to lighten up. And the other poster is correct, I can't mod you if I write in the thread at all.
I didn't read your post past the first two sentences because it's obvious you're taking it all too seriously.
Here's the chain of events: 1. You make a strained connection to politics in an unrelated thread. 2. I mock you for it. 3. You post a serious 3 page response.
It's just slashdot. Nothing here matters, we're all just a bunch of assholes opining about things that 99.999% of us have no power over whatsoever. If your blood pressure rises at all from anything posted on slashdot or any online forum, you need to step away from the keyboard for a week or two.
Slashdot Mirror
One can hope, and fight against a forseeable collapse. What else is there to do?
Would this be the start of the end of capitalism?
No.
Because there is no viable alternative.
European style soft socialism is only sustainable in small, highly homogenous cultures were everyone knows the rules and tremendous social pressure is exerted not to abuse them. That's the case for a handful of countries in Europe.
The rest are being bled to death by socialism, suffocating taxes because of payouts to free riders, dragging along stagnant economies and dying off because they can't be bothered to reproduce enough to simply replace themselves.
The US has just started down the path that European countries have barrelled down, and hopefully we can learn from their folly before it's too late.
What more, democracy is even more dangerous than some other forms, since you will always find more than half in numbers of those who don't know or don't have in your population to exploit so you can force whatever you want onto the population as a whole.
Democracy is a horrible form of government, with the sole benefit being all other forms of government are much, much worse.
The last thing any country in the world needs is to be ruled by an individual or a group that fancies themselves 'enlightened', 'intellectual' or 'anointed' for leadership. Such people are inevitably no better at anything than anyone else, they just have an unwarrantedly high opinion of themselves.
I'll take my chances with Democratic/Republic type governments, thanks. As a group, they have undisputably outperformed any other nation with a non-democratic government in pretty much every category that exists. Sure, the soviets made a good run of it, but they ultimately collapsed, didn't they?
And if you dare claim they would have succeeded if not for the US, if the US could bury them and not the other way around, that proves my point further.
What's the difference between a professional and an amatuer?
A professional fixes his mistakes fast enough that no one notices.
And if America is anything like I think it is
It isn't.
Considering that lucasarts is a shitty company lately, and defecated out episodes 1,2 and 3 under Lucas' now incompetent direction, it was probably a match made in hell from the start.
A bit of a reactionary, aren't you?
I never said science is just another religeon, i said that those who seek to stamp out all traces of religeon from public life have their own little religion. Ya know, those who have a beef with the crosses in the city of Los Cruces emblem, or those who sue over the town center christmas tree, or think 'under God' in the pledge of alligience is something they need to drag their kids through court over? Those sorts
Take a fucking chill pill man.
First, I'd like to say 'Good Move' on Utah's part. They've got enough of a bad rep from those polygamists living on the borders that they certainly don't need anymore trouble like 'Intelligent Design.'
That being said, has anyone noticed that those who try to eradicate all traces of religeon from public life are zealots, in almost a religeous way? Except that the state is their God and provider instead of an unseen, all-powerful being.
Rambling a little bit more, it's been put thusly: "The bible tells us what God did, and science tells us how."
When did we ever have trials for prisoners of war?
Somewhere out there, Journalists are looking into their pants, and finding they have testicles. -paraphased from Penny-Arcade.
No, they aren't. Otherwise they'd print the Mohommad cartoons that are blamed as the reason for riots all over the world. If those cartoons aren't genuinely newsworthy, I don't know what is. Truth be told, news outlets are afraid of violence from Muslim fanatics, but they're not afraid of any retribution from the DoD.
Suing the DoD is hardly a bold move, considering the worst possible consequence is money lost on lawyers and a 'no' from the DoD and a court.
It's amusing what people consider bold nowadays.
"I spoke truth to power!"
"I sued a government entity!"
"I stood up to a major coporation, like I wish I could to my father!"
\golfclap
What are you, the comic book guy from the Simpsons? Star Wars Episodes 1-3 were the most terrible movies made in the last decade, and you want to draw political lessons from a hack like Lucas who can do nothing but special effects lately? And you dare accuse me of living under a rock?
Think what you like of me, but you're your own special kind of freak. I've continued the discussion with others in this thread, feel free to read those.
-100, Godwin.
Yeah, cause the jews really did burn the riechstag
and bomb the bismark
and bomb the reichstag before they burned it
and killed a barracks full of German troops with a truck bomb
and blow up the spanish train system
and mass immigrated into Scandinavian countries, rape their women, murder their authors, and hold riots over cartoons
and....
oh, wait, they didn't do all those things.
More than ever, the only way to win this game is to not play at all.
You don't have be a willing participant to end up in a fight... or a beating. This isn't tic tac toe.
I've questioned and disagreed with plenty of Bush's actions. Just not this one. While lefties are uniform in their hatred of everything Bush related, on the right we do debate the finer points of various policies.
This conversation, however, is about one thing: spying on our enemies.
Congress determines that authority.
FISA is an independant path of authorizing survellience, apart from the Presidents authority. If the FISA statute attempted to limit the Presidents authority to conduct the kind of survellience that is under debate, it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority to do such. Some people have become confused as to the equality of the branches of the government, holding that the judiciary is superior to the legislature, and the legislature is superior to the executive. This is not the case, they are co-equal with different responsibilities.
Blind following of leadership is not as patriotic as questioning it.
Ah, the old 'if you don't agree with me your ignorant!' canard repackaged. Do not think it possible to view similar sets of facts, and come to a different conclusion?
And like I said at the end, I question your judgement most of all.
I don't disagree on any one point, but I do take great offense to those who go out of their way to murder us, and my desire for the preservation of my friends, myself and my family demands hunting such people down without mercy.
As for aiming to conquer, I don't know if you followed my Norway link, but it appears that a number of Scandinavian/European nations are folding under pressure from this drummed-up cartoon jihad, and that is how we can lose- when we no longer have the confidence in ourselves to deal with threats in a serious manner. I think that the United States isn't likely to capitulate to non-assimilated, belligerent Muslim immigrants any time soon, but the path to defeat is laid before us, that we might gaze down the road before we ourselves go down it. The public opinion they aim to impose is that living under sharia is the way to not be killed by them. They're not terribly secretive about this goal.
Cultures die most often by suicide, not by conquest. I see Europeans baring their necks and begging for mercy from their new Islamic rulers, and it doubles my resolve that we must violently prosecute the fight against fundamentalist muslims who would do us harm and change us into proper dhimmis.
The meat of the Norway Link, for your reading pleasure:
As for the entire FISA fiasco, FISA is an independant path of authorizing survellience, apart from the Presidents authority. If the FISA statute attempted to limit the Presidents authority to conduct the kind of survellience that is under debate, it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority to do such. Some pe
Why is it called 'Domestic Spying' when the monitored conversations occured between foriegn, self-proclaimed enemies of the United States who are engaged in armed conflict with us, and people inside the United States?
That's surviellence of an enemy, and given the Presidents power to wage war, it's not any stretch of the imagination that this sort of activity is within his authority.
The problem with this entire debacle is that you have people who are trying to apply the law-enforcement model of handling things to a war. A guerilla War, to be sure, but a War nonetheless. Do you think that Britain and the US got warrants when they were trying to break Germanys enigma code in World War 2? Do you think they thought twice about intercepting any communications between Germany and the US? No, because we wanted to ultimately hunt down and kill those we were monitoring, those they were associated with, and break the will of Germany to wage further war. It's not pretty but it sure as hell is necessary.
Those who revealed this program have made us less safe, and made it more likely that people who want to do us harm will evade our survellience- all for some petty political points (backfiring, by the way. A significant majority of the US population approves of this activity, and they will be voting next election) and yet another chance to scream "ChimpyMcBushHaliburtonCheneyCabal is EVIL!" Yeah, AQ and gang likely figured they were being monitored, but they didn't always act like it from some reports. Thanks for reminding them and shoving it in their face every single day.
If you don't want to be monitored by the government, then don't talk to overseas agents of an organization that has killed Americans, wants to kill more, and is killing our troops every week. It's not that complex.
As for the supposed 'rights' of those inside the US, terms like 'traitor' are really underused lately, or they are simply foreign agents of an 'enemy'- a simple concept that so many have foolishly convinced themselves doesn't apply to anyone any more.
Either way, once we've gotten all the information we need from them, we should deal with them like we did in the last war we resolutely won: try and execute the traitors, kill the spies, and hold the footsoldiers as prisoners of war until the other side capitulates and hostilities cease.
Good thing the safety of the nation doesn't lie in the hands of pontificating, apologist candy asses who lack the will and confidence to defend our civilization from threats- or we'd have already capitulated cravenly like Norway did recently (if the story is no longer on his main page, there are links at the bottom for previous posts).
-1 Troll? -1 Flamebait? Sure, why not- but we're not talking about civil liberties here, we're talking about monitoring the communications of people who want to kill us, and their agents in our country. The fact that so many don't realize this- or plainly deny it because of a visceral hate for the current administration- sickens me, and you have just read the result of that disgust.
To those who are worked up about this,
I question your seriousness about preserving our country.
I question your patriotism.
and most of all....
I question your judgement
It's a ~1250 megawatt plant, Seabrook Station. Original Design was a Westinghouse 3411, which we've power uprated to 3589 MW thermal or something like that. Yeah, I should know the specifics, but ever since we did the uprate, I can't remember them.
The cost factor still plays in strongly as burying a line is a lot more expensive (3x more?) than stringing it along poles. Also, a power line in the air doesn't need to be insulated if it's a proper distance from other pole mounted elements, but burying a 345kv line would require ridiculously thick rubber insulation, or even need to be run in a SF6 gas-insulated bus.
(Ever see what happens when you ground 345kV ? We did that once in New Hampshire and grid operators in New York were asking about it)
(SF6 gas is a fantastic insulator, but it's no longer mass produced, and is thus very expensive. Why is it no longer mass produced? Because it tears holes in the ozone like nothing else)
Like I said, there are many factors at play when choosing grid voltage, and to the folks who built and are building it, losing some electricity is preferable to the investment required to keep more of it.
My nuke plant puts out about 3400 amps at the New England Grid's 345,000 Volts. I don't know what the resistance is for the lines, but it's pretty damn low.
The outgoing three phase lines have to be kept at a considerable distance from each other (16 feet) meaning that the minimum tower width is 32 feet or so.
If you bring them any closer, you'd have arcing, or you'd need to heavily insulate them.
If you increased the voltage (some places in the US run as high as 750,000 volts), you need to move the lines further apart, or insulate them greatly- not only is this expensive, but it makes them heavier, so you'd need tougher towers, you'd have less margin for ice buildup, etc, etc.
There are numerous reasons why the main grid distribution voltage can't get substantially higher.
Also local lines need to be kept at relatively low voltages to reduce maintanance costs. Again, the higher the voltage, the more prone a line is to arching to nearby grounds. If you run 100,000 volts through a neighborhood line you'd reduce line losses, but you'd have to send tree trimming crews out alot more often, and they'd have to cut trees much further back.
In short, when you decide on a grid voltage for a particular line run, you have to weigh construction costs vs maintanance costs vs material cost vs line losses.
There are numerous factors at play here.
They have a business to run, and spending all their time time and money chasing avoidable harrasment is not in their best interest. It already takes hours sometimes to get a GM to help you, why increase that time needlessly?
Here's the rule: Don't start something you know will make a mess and then demand other people clean it up.
Yeah, it's not right for one player to harass another about their sexual orientation, but pick your fucking fights for once, mkay?
Filing rebates online eliminates a paper trail, which will allow them to sit back and say, "whoops, you entered a number wrong, you don't get your rebate" or "whoops, you didn't submit on time, sorry, no rebate", or even "whoops, we never got your submission, sorry."
The only trouble I ever had with rebates was with sprint and their new phone discounts every 18 months- and I sorted that out with a phone call or two. Of course, since i was a regular customer of theirs, it was in their interest to keep me happy.
I've always gotten my best buy and staples rebates. YMMV with smaller outfits who don't worry about their reputation
Just don't fuck up the forms- really, they aren't all that complex, are they? And how hard is it to sit down for five minutes when you get home, address an envelope or two, fill out the slip on the reciept, cut out the UPC and drop it all in the mail?
If my experience with a couple dozen best buy and staples rebates is any indication, most of the people bitching about their rebates here are either:
1. Sloppy
2. Procrastinators
or both.
Honestly I don't have much sympathy for dumb, lazy shits. Do you?
Those are the only companies I have a body of experience with, so I can't really say anything about the honesty of other rebate places.
Someone already pointed out that the rebates serve two purposes:
1. Sell items at a reduced cost to drive foot traffic or move merchandise
2. Limit the volume of merchandise sold to an individual so those same items don't end up on ebay or a local retailer competing with later, undiscounted items sold from the rebate-offering retailer.
Why is this modded funny?
You could go to your local small claims court, sue them for the rebate+court costs+your time in the matter @$60/ hour and it still wouldn't amount to enough money to make it worth sending a lawyer, so you'd likely win by default- just show the judge you did everything correctly.
I just glanced over a staples rebate form I have here, and there's no attempt to limit jurisdiction for lawsuits. YMMV by retailer, and such attempts to limit jurisdiction may or may not hold water.
For the record, I submitted my staples online rebates for a $600 printer and got $200 back in a month, and every best buy rebate I've submitted I eventually recieved back. I don't watch the calender on such things, but the checks do come.
hehe... you need to lighten up. And the other poster is correct, I can't mod you if I write in the thread at all.
I didn't read your post past the first two sentences because it's obvious you're taking it all too seriously.
Here's the chain of events:
1. You make a strained connection to politics in an unrelated thread.
2. I mock you for it.
3. You post a serious 3 page response.
It's just slashdot. Nothing here matters, we're all just a bunch of assholes opining about things that 99.999% of us have no power over whatsoever. If your blood pressure rises at all from anything posted on slashdot or any online forum, you need to step away from the keyboard for a week or two.